The Gathering Storm, page 16
Meanwhile, in the military sphere the formal establishment of conscription in Germany on March 16, 1935, marked the fundamental challenge to Versailles. But the steps by which the German Army was now magnified and reorganized are not of technical interest only. The whole function of the army in the National-Socialist state required definition. The purpose of the law of May 21, 1935, was to expand the technical elite of secretly trained specialists into the armed expression of the whole nation. The name Reichswehr was changed to that of Wehrmacht. The army was to be subordinated to the supreme leadership of the führer. Every soldier took the oath, not as formerly to the Constitution, but to the person of Adolf Hitler. The War Ministry was directly subordinated to the orders of the führer. Military service was an essential civic duty, and it was the responsibility of the army to educate and to unify, once and for all, the population of the Reich. The second clause of the law reads: “The Wehrmacht is the armed force and the school of military education of the German people.”
Here, indeed, was the formal and legal embodiment of Hitler’s words in Mein Kampf:
The coming National-Socialist state should not fall into the error of the past and assign to the army a task which it does not and should not have. The German Army is not to be a school for the maintenance of tribal peculiarities, but rather a school for the mutual understanding and adjustment of all Germans. Whatever may have a disruptive effect in national life should be given a unifying effect through the army. It should furthermore raise the individual youth above the narrow horizon of his little countryside and place him in the German nation. He must learn to respect, not the boundaries of his birthplace, but the boundaries of his Fatherland; for it is these which he too must someday defend.
Upon these ideological bases the law also established a new territorial organization. The army was now organized in three commands, with headquarters at Berlin, Cassel, and Dresden, subdivided into ten (later twelve) Wehrkreise (military districts). Each Wehrkreis contained an army corps of three divisions. In addition a new kind of formation was planned—the armoured division, of which three were soon in being.
Detailed arrangements were also made regarding military service. The regimentation of German youth was the prime task of the new regime. Starting in the ranks of the Hitler Youth, the boyhood of Germany passed at the age of eighteen on a voluntary basis into the S.A. for two years. By a law of June 26, 1935, the work battalions or Arbeitsdienst became a compulsory duty on every male German reaching the age of twenty. For six months he would have to serve his country, constructing roads, building barracks, or draining marshes, thus fitting him physically and morally for the crowning duty of a German citizen—service with the armed forces. In the work battalions, the emphasis lay upon the abolition of class and the stressing of the social unity of the German people; in the army, it was put upon discipline and the territorial unity of the nation.
The gigantic task of training the new body and of expanding the cadres prescribed by the technical conception of Seeckt now began. On October 15, 1935, again in defiance of the clauses of Versailles, the German Staff College was reopened with formal ceremony by Hitler, accompanied by the chiefs of the armed services. Here was the apex of the pyramid whose base was now already constituted by the myriad formations of the work battalions. On November 7, 1935, the first class, born in 1914, was called up for service: 596,000 young men to be trained in the profession of arms. Thus, at one stroke, on paper at least, the German Army was raised to nearly seven hundred thousand effectives.
With the task of training came the problems of financing rearmament and expanding German industry to meet the needs of the new national army. By secret decrees Doctor Schacht had been made virtual economic dictator of Germany. Seeckt’s pioneer work was now put to its supreme test. The two major difficulties were first the expansion of the officer corps, and secondly the organization of the specialized units, the artillery, the engineers, and the signals. By October 1935, ten army corps were forming. Two more followed a year later, and a thirteenth in October 1937. The police formations were also incorporated in the armed forces.
It was realized that after the first call-up of the 1914 class, in Germany as in France, the succeeding years would bring a diminishing number of recruits, owing to the decline in births during the period of the World War. Therefore, in August 1936, the period of active military service in Germany was raised to two years. The 1915 class numbered 464,000, and with the retention of the 1914 class for another year, the number of Germans under regular military training in 1936 was 1,511,000 men, excluding the para-military formations of the party and the work battalions. The effective strength of the French Army, apart from reserves, in the same year was 623,000 men, of whom only 407,000 were in France.
The following figures, which actuaries could foresee with some precision, tell their tale:
Comparative French and German Figures for the Classes Born From 1914 to 1920, and Called Up from 1934 to 1940
German
1914: 596,000
1915: 464,000
1916: 351,000
1917: 314,000
1918: 326,000
1919: 485,000
1920: 636,000
Total: 3,172,000
French
1914: 279,000
1915: 184,000
1916: 165,000
1917: 171,000
1918: 197,000
1919: 218,000
1920: 360,000
Total: 1,574,000
Until these figures became facts as the years unfolded, they were still but warning shadows. All that was done up to 1935 fell far short of the strength and power of the French Army and its vast reserves, apart from its numerous and vigorous allies. Even at this time a resolute decision upon the authority, which could easily have been obtained, of the League of Nations might have arrested the whole process. Germany either could have been brought to the bar at Geneva and invited to give a full explanation and allow inter-Allied missions of inquiry to examine the state of her armaments and military formations in breach of the treaty; or, in the event of refusal, the Rhine bridgeheads could have been reoccupied until compliance with the treaty had been secured, without there being any possibility of effective resistance or much likelihood of bloodshed. In this way the Second World War could have been prevented or at least delayed indefinitely. Many of the facts and their whole general tendency were well known to the French and British staffs, and were to a lesser extent realized by the governments. The French government, which was in ceaseless flux in the fascinating game of party politics, and the British government, which arrived at the same vices by the opposite process of general agreement to keep things quiet, were equally incapable of any drastic or clear-cut action, however justifiable both by treaty and by common prudence. The French government had not accepted all the reductions of their own forces pressed upon them by their ally; but like their British colleagues they lacked the quality to resist in any effective manner what Seeckt in his day had called “The Resurrection of German Military Power.”
Chapter 9
Problems of Air and Sea (1935–1939)
Technical decisions of high consequence affecting our future safety now require to be mentioned, and it will be convenient in this chapter to cover the whole four years which lay between us and the outbreak of war.
After the loss of air parity, we were liable to be blackmailed by Hitler. If we had taken steps betimes to create an air force half as strong again, or twice as strong, as any that Germany could produce in breach of the treaty, we should have kept control of the future. But even air parity, which no one could say was aggressive, would have given us a solid measure of defensive confidence in these critical years, and a broad basis from which to conduct our diplomacy or expand our air force. But we had lost air parity. And such attempts as were made to recover it were vain. We had entered a period when the weapon which had played a considerable part in the previous war had become obsessive in men’s minds, and also a prime military factor. Ministers had to imagine the most frightful scenes of ruin and slaughter in London if we quarrelled with the German dictator. Although these considerations were not special to Great Britain, they affected our policy, and by consequence all the world.
During the summer of 1934, Professor Lindemann wrote to The Times newspaper, pointing out the possibility of decisive scientific results being obtained in air defence research. In August, we tried to bring the subject to the attention, not merely of the officials at the Air Ministry who were already on the move, but of their masters in the government. In September, we journeyed from Cannes to Aix-les-Bains and had an agreeable conversation with Mr. Baldwin, who appeared deeply interested. Our request was for an inquiry on a high level. When we came back to London, departmental difficulties arose, and the matter hung in suspense. Early in 1935, an Air Ministry committee composed of scientists was set up and instructed to explore the future. We remembered that it was upon the advice of the Air Ministry that Mr. Baldwin had made the speech which produced so great an impression in 1933 when he said that there was really no defence. “The bomber will always get through.” We had, therefore, no confidence in any Air Ministry departmental committee, and thought the subject should be transferred from the Air Ministry to the Committee of Imperial Defence, where the heads of the government, the most powerful politicians in the country, would be able to supervise and superintend its actions and also to make sure that the necessary funds were not denied. At this stage we were joined by Sir Austen Chamberlain, and we continued at intervals to address ministers on the subject.
In February, we were received by Mr. MacDonald personally, and we laid our case before him. No difference of principle at all existed between us. The prime minister was most sympathetic when I pointed out the peace aspect of the argument. Nothing, I said, could lessen the terrors and anxieties which overclouded the world so much as the removal of the idea of surprise attacks upon the civil populations. Mr. MacDonald seemed at this time greatly troubled with his eyesight. He gazed blankly out of the windows onto Palace Yard, and assured us he was hardening his heart to overcome departmental resistance. The Air Ministry, for their part, resented the idea of any outside or superior body interfering in their special affairs, and for a while nothing happened.
I therefore raised the matter in the House on June 7, 1935:
The point [I said] is limited, and largely scientific in its character. It is concerned with the methods which can be invented or adopted or discovered to enable the earth to control the air, to enable defence from the wound to exercise control—indeed domination—upon airplanes high above its surface. . . . My experience is that in these matters, when the need is fully explained by military and political authorities, science is always able to provide something. We were told that it was impossible to grapple with submarines, but methods were found which enabled us to strangle the submarines below the surface of the water, a problem not necessarily harder than that of clawing down marauding airplanes. Many things were adopted in the war which we were told were technically impossible, but patience, perseverance, and, above all, the spur of necessity under war conditions, made men’s brains act with greater vigour, and science responded to the demands. . . .
It is only in the twentieth century that this hateful conception of inducing nations to surrender by terrorizing the helpless civil population by massacring the women and children has gained acceptance and countenance among men. This is not the cause of any one nation. Every country would feel safer if once it were found that the bombing airplane was at the mercy of appliances directed from the earth, and the haunting fears and suspicions which are leading nations nearer and nearer to another catastrophe would be abated. . . . We have not only to fear attacks upon our civil population in our great cities, in respect of which we are more vulnerable than any other country in the world, but also attacks upon the dockyards and other technical establishments without which our fleet, still an essential factor in our defence, might be paralyzed or even destroyed. Therefore, it is not only for the sake of a world effort to eliminate one of the worst causes of suspicion and of war, but as a means of restoring to us here in Great Britain the old security of our island, that this matter should receive and command the most vigorous thought of the greatest men in our country and our government, and should be pressed forward by every resource that the science of Britain can apply and the wealth of the country can liberate.
On the very next day, the ministerial changes recorded in the previous chapter took place and Mr. Baldwin became prime minister. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Lord Swinton as he soon afterwards became, succeeded Lord Londonderry as air minister. One afternoon a month later, I was in the smoking room of the House of Commons when Mr. Baldwin came in. He sat down next to me and said at once: “I have a proposal to make to you. Philip is very anxious that you should join the newly formed Committee of Imperial Defence on Air Defence Research, and I hope you will.” I said I was a critic of our air preparations and must reserve my freedom of action. He said: “That is quite understood. Of course you will be perfectly free except upon the secret matters you learn only at the committee.”
I made it a condition that Professor Lindemann should at least be a member of the technical sub-committee, because I depended upon his aid. A few days later, the prime minister wrote:
8 July, 1935
I am glad you have seen Hankey, and I take your letter as an expression of your willingness to serve on that committee.
I am glad, and I think you may be of real help in a most important investigation.
Of course, you are free as air [the correct expression in this case!] to debate the general issues of policy, programmes, and all else connected with the air services.
My invitation was not intended as a muzzle, but as a gesture of friendliness to an old colleague.
Accordingly, for the next four years I attended these meetings and thus obtained a full view of this vital sphere of our air defence, and built up my ideas upon it year by year in close and constant discussion with Lindemann. I immediately prepared a memorandum for the committee which embodied the thought and knowledge I had already gathered, without official information, in my talks and studies with Lindemann and from my own military conceptions. This paper is of interest because of the light which it throws on the position in July 1935. No one at that time had considered the use of radio beams for guiding bombers. The difficulties of training large numbers of individual pilots were obvious, and it was generally held that at night large fleets of aircraft would be led by a few master-bombers. Great advances into new fields were made in the four years which were to pass before the life of the nation was to be at stake; and meanwhile the adoption of bombing guided by radio beams caused profound tactical changes. Hence much that was written then was superseded, but a good deal was tried by me when I had power—not all with success.
23 July, 1935
The following notes are submitted with much diffidence, and in haste on account of our early meeting, in the hopes that they may be a contribution to our combined thought.
General tactical conceptions and what is technically feasible act and react upon one another. Thus, the scientist should be told what facilities the air force would like to have, and airplane design be made to fit into and implement a definite scheme of warfare.
At this stage we must assume a reasonable war hypothesis, namely, that Great Britain, France, and Belgium are allies attacked by Germany.
After the outbreak of such a war, the dominating event will be the mobilization of the great Continental armies. This will take at least a fortnight, diversified and hampered by mechanized and motorized inroads. The French and German general staffs’ minds will be riveted upon the assembly and deployment of the armies. Neither could afford to be markedly behindhand at the first main shock. It may be hoped that Germany will not be ready for a war, in which the army and navy are to play an important part, for two or three years. Their navy is at the moment exiguous; they have not yet obtained the command of the Baltic; and it would appear that their heavy artillery is still inadequate. To build a navy and to produce heavy artillery and train the men will take a time measured in years rather than in months.
A large part of German munitions production is concentrated in the Ruhr, which is easily accessible to enemy bombing. She must realize that she would be cut off from foreign supplies of many essential war materials (copper, tungsten, cobalt, vanadium, petrol, rubber, wool, etc.), and even her iron supply will be reduced unless she dominates the Baltic, so that she is scarcely yet in a position to undertake a war of long duration. Great efforts are of course being made to overcome these handicaps, such as the removal of certain factories from the frontier to Central Germany, the synthetic production of substances such as petrol and rubber, and the accumulation of large stocks. But it seems unlikely that Germany will be in a position before 1937 or 1938 to begin with any hope of success a war of the three services which might last for years, and in which she would have scarcely any allies.
It would appear in such a war the first task of the Anglo-French air force should be the breaking down of enemy communications, their railways, motor roads, Rhine bridges, viaducts, etc., and the maximum disturbance of their assembly zones and munition dumps. Next in priority come the most accessible factories for their war industry in all its forms. It seems fairly certain that if our efforts from zero hour were concentrated on these vital targets, we should impose a similar policy on the enemy. Otherwise, the French would have an unobstructed mobilization, and command the initiative in the great land battle. Thus, any German aircraft used to commit acts of terror upon the British and French civil populations will be grudged and sparingly diverted.
Nevertheless, we must expect that even in a three-service war, attempts will be made to burn down London, or other great cities within easy reach, in order to test the resisting willpower of the government and people under these terrible ordeals. Secondly, the port of London, and the dockyards upon which the life of the fleet depends, are also military targets of the highest possible consequence.
