This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History with input by Robbie Tayor, Philip Ebbrell, and Allen W. McDonnell.
Sep 15, 1938-
A Lockheed 14
Super Electra departed Hendon Aerodrome carrying British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain on his ill-fated flight to Munich. Tragedy struck
when a mechanical failure occurred with the plane
only 200 feet off the ground. The right wing dipped, sending the
aircraft into a sharp turn, causing it to slow and lose lift, resulting
in a rapid descent. It crashed into a nearby field, killing all on board.
The British government was facing a unique crisis of confidence even before the Hendon Air Disaster.
Having never flown in an aircraft before, Chamberlain was taking a
unique set of personal and political risks in agreeing to meet Adolf
Hitler. He considered this absolutely necessary because the unchecked
rise of Fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain threatened to sweep away
British influence on the continent and beyond. His previous activity in
no way prepared him for the challenges for this role, causing growing
tension in his cabinet. By now, members of the Tory Caucus were
entertaining serious doubts about his appeasement policy, causing the
recent resignation of Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden.
Chamberlain
was personally leading the diplomatic mission because this troubled
great office was the political hot seat seeing a rapid turnover of university-educated individuals ill-equipped to form a foreign policy
under extreme circumstances. Not only had the European security
structure collapsed, but the victor powers were weakened by economic
depression and war weariness.
A strategic pause to re-arm would only allow Germany to grow in strength
as well, and the necessary choice of engaging Stalin was politically
unacceptable to the Tories. Eden's successor at the foreign office was
his de facto deputy Viscount Halifax, the former Viceroy of India,
and current Leader of the Lords. Having personally met Hitler, he
strongly believed "we ought to get on good terms with Germany." In
addition to these unique insights, he had the natural authority of an aristocrat
aided by his immense height. Like Chamberlain, he wanted to deter
further German aggression, but he was personally inclined to fight even
though the mood of the country was strongly against it. Memories of the
Great War remained strong; only five years earlier, the Oxford Union
Society had presented a motion that "This House will under no
circumstances fight for its King and country."
Chamberlain had only been considered to be a placeholder to take the
Conservatives to the next general election after Stanley Baldwin stepped
down in the wake of the abdication crisis. His natural successor at 10
Downing Street would likely have been Samuel Hoare but he was strongly
disliked by the right wing for his involvement in the Government of India Act and his part in the shameful Hoare-Laval Pact that ended the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.
It was Halifax that led demands for Hoare's resignation, and Eden
strongly supported this move believing Mussolini to be an untrustworthy
gangster without gestures of good faith on his part. And so, with Eden
out of office, Halifax emerged as the senior figure in the party even
though as a peer he was not a member of the House of Commons. Also
working in his favour was the active support of the King George VI who
distrusted Winston Churchill and other Tories for their role in the
abdication crisis.
Great Britain stood at a crossroads. The Empire, the Class
System, and the Monarchy overshadowed the interests of a divided country,
with a revitalized Labour Party under Clement Attlee ready to take
office.
Being desperately short of political allies, Halifax had to listen to
the advice of Hoare. In their discussions, they returned to the
cornerstone of foreign policy that the
dictatorships' very separate interests could be teased apart. Despite
the circumstances of the forced resignation, Halifax had broadly agreed
with Hoare's strategic approach but rejected his approach as "too much
like the off-the-stage arrangements of nineteenth-century diplomacy."
The new prime minister quickly realized that an accommodation with
Fascist Italy was the only way forward because Mussolini also feared
subordination to Hitler's Germany. Rather than following in
Chamberlain's steps, he exploited this opportunity by flying to Rome
instead for a fateful meeting with Il Duce. This ultimately would
grant Italy wide scope for expansion in the Mediterranean that would
not lead to an Empire Reborn, but at least keep Italy within the a
proven security structure, the so-called Stresa Front with Britain and France.
The
promise of self-determination for the three million German people
living in the Sudetenland was justifiably consistent with the principles
of the Treaty of Versailles, at least on paper. In a joint
communiqué from Rome, Mussolini and Halifax would demand a plebiscite
accompanied by robust guarantees for the rest of Czechoslovakia, an
artificial state created from Habsburg lands. The man of the hour,
Halifax would gleefully arrive in Hendon promising "peace in our time,"
although his wiser French counter-part Daladier would return to buoyant
crowds in Paris and famously soliloquy "Oh, the fools!"
Italy's
subsequent neutrality regarding German war efforts would remove a wheel
from an axis on which the world might have turned. As Hitler and Stalin
deeply distrusted each other, the war in the East started early with the
Soviets thinking they had better move first and Stalin having won the
border war with Japan and ended the Great Purge. This Soviet-German
War would exhaust both sides until the final victor was too weak to go
on with conquest.
Author's Note:
Chamberlain completed the trip, returning to London with the mistaken
belief that he had obtained a breathing space during which agreement
could be reached and the peace preserved.
The role of Halifax is famously explored in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day, his policies are summarized in a TV broadcast in 1939.
His conviction to fight collapsed during the Battle of France. With the
Allies facing apparently catastrophic defeat and British forces falling
back to Dunkirk, he favoured approaching Italy to see if acceptable
peace terms could be negotiated. He was overruled by Churchill after a
series of stormy meetings of the War Cabinet. From 1941 to 1946, he
served as British Ambassador in Washington.
Provine's Addendum:
Though Britain, France, and Italy watched violence in the east and west with the Spanish Civil War at last proving a fascist victory, their empires were not immune. Italian East Africa, recently established after the Second Italo-Ethiopian War that had worn out the first Stresa Front, faced numerous rebellions that eventually evolved into a third war. France saw similar internal struggles in Africa, but their greatest threat proved to be encroaching Japanese influence on their holdings in Indochina. Britain devoted huge resources to repress independence movements in India. Attempting to reinvigorate their position near the Suez Canal also, leaders brought a new wave of encouragement to the 1917 Balfour Declaration for a "national home for the Jewish people" within the British Mandate for Palestine. Jewish people fleeing the increasingly oppressive regimes in Germany and other parts of Europe flocked to the region, sparking strife with Palestinian locals. "Peace in our time" proved hardly universal, and world leaders held their breath to see where the next great war would begin.
Well thought out and believable. The USSR is so massive with so many resources that Stalins dictum "Quantity has a quality of its own" comes into play. The Commissars were willing, even eager to throw waves of troops against any opponent exhausting the enemy supply of ammunition if necessary to advance for the glory of Rodina and Marxist Leninist victory. The frequently half trained draft soldiers spoke a multitude of languages because Russia conquered not only their slavic kanguage near neighbours but also Georgia, Armenia, a galf dozen islamic nations whose names ended in -stan and all of Siberia where a hundred tribal groups each had their own dialect. Add in the Jewish and German immigrants Tsar's had encouraged to migrate in with skills in banking, law and renaissance era skills Russia was laking at the time and the language of any draftee was diverse to say the least. These poor souls were given a bolt action rifle and explicitly told to advance or die by summery execution which might also fall on any remaining family back in the small village they were drafted from.
ReplyDeleteFacing them were some of the best trained and committed soldiers on earth in the Nazi military who unfortunately lacked repeating rifles like the American Garand that had been adopted nearly a decade earlier. On the other hand training and skill levels were so high that even using 1898 pattern bolt action Mauser rifles and tanks armed with 35mm main guns they cut through the Red Army like a scythe through ripe rye! Unfortunately quality like that had limited quantity to draw upon and even if every German killed five Soviet soldiers they would still lose in the game of attrition.
This scenario rightly points out that in a more or less German-Soviet war both sides would suffer greatly as whole armies would go into the graveyard in their epic war if mutual attrition.