Was the Polish alliance with the UK and France a mistake?

[LWD]

Hi wm?

"Germany was too small"?

One thing Germany was not is small, in European terms.
....

My impression was that he mean too small to successfully conquer most of Europe at one time.

[Sid Guttridge]

If so, he was clearly very wrong!

Germany was both big and modern. A combination of these factors made its rearmament large and rapid. Within three or four years it had gone from a mere ten divisions, three of them horsed cavalry, with obsolescent equipment, to a much more modern and mechanized army of around a hundred divisions. It had moved from having an army that probably ranked about 10th in Europe in terms of divisions to approaching second, with a lot of potential for further growth that almost guaranteed the second spot within another year.

wm's proposition was that the year between Munich and the outbreak of war did not change the ballance of strengths much. I would suggest that it very much did, both because German mobilizeable division strength continued to grew disproportinally fast while the Allies suffered the loss of 38 Czechoslovak divisions or division equivalents in Czechoslovakia (all of their equipment entering German or German-allied Slovak depots).

Cheers,

Sid.

[wm]

Judging by the 1939 Polish campaign, the Czechoslovak divisions would be irrelevant. The Polish Army had been destroyed before the ponderous French Army did anything.
And because of that the Polish divisions contributed nothing useful to the later battle of France. Of course the German Army suffered casualties, some equipment got destroyed but it learned a lot and gained much valuable experience - the experience, I think, was more important that the casualties.

Only a two front war would be of use, and France was incapable of forcing a two front war on Germany in 1938 - as in 1939.

Germany wasn't that big and that modern. Thatched roofs and lots of horses could be seen there too.
This shows relative strength of economies of some of those countries in 1937:

economies1.gif (20.37 KiB) Viewed 750 times

as can be seen Poland and Czechoslovakia was no match for Germany, together or not - they were no match. So their alliance wouldn't be that useful too.
Even more the Allies didn't really need Poland or Czechoslovakia - their economies were so small so their contribution was small too.
It made sense to the Allies to wait, gather strength and then fight the war mano-a-mano with Germany - without the Allies' little helpers.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

Sigh!

Germany had a population of 80 million Germans in 1939. Its nearest continental competitor that shared a common frontier, France, had only 45 million. Because of lower French birth rates, Germany was producing twice as many conscripts annually as France. Germany was big and modern, by contemporary standards.

The Czech armaments industry was proportionally far larger than its general economy. For example, Skoda had the largest artillery plant in the world. During the war Czech factories produced as many armoured vehicles for Germany as Italy did for itself! See above for the high proportion of the Wehrmacht's gun-armed tanks that were Czech-built when it attacked Poland.

There is little point in us laying these facts before you if you continue to ignore them. Perhaps this thread should be wound up?

Sid.

[gebhk]

It made sense to the Allies to wait, gather strength and then fight the war mano-a-mano with Germany - without the Allies' little helpers.

And that worked so well for them And given that it did (not!), are you arguing that despite the obvious arythmetic, France and Britain were in fact better off fighting Germany in 1940 than they were in 1938?

[wm]

I don't know that. They say in 1940 luck was on the German side, and the French made a few horrible mistakes. We can't possible know the mistakes they would have made, and on which side luck would have fought in 1938.
In 1940 France was sufficiently strong to stop the German Army and force a stalemate on Germany. That wouldn't be a bad outcome because the world and time was on their side - as in 1918. But France was incapable of overrunning Germany - both in 1938 and 1940. So both wars shouldn't be much different.

Germany had a population of 80 million Germans in 1939. Its nearest continental competitor that shared a common frontier, France, had only 45 million. Because of lower French birth rates, Germany was producing twice as many conscripts annually as France. Germany was big and modern, by contemporary standards.

That means the tiny Czechoslovakia was even more doomed.
Modern is subjective. The US was certainly more modern, the British Army was more modern - at least didn't ride into battle on horses, the French/Soviet tanks and artillery were better and more numerous.

The Czech armaments industry was proportionally far larger than its general economy. For example, Skoda had the largest artillery plant in the world. During the war Czech factories produced as many armoured vehicles for Germany as Italy did for itself! See above for the high proportion of the Wehrmacht's gun-armed tanks that were Czech-built when it attacked Poland.

That nice but the Czech industry and those weapons would be used against France in 1938 too.
I didn't say the Czechoslovak Army lacked weapons. Except the planes, those were outdated or even junk. And we know the value of an army that lost air superiority.
Too bad the Czechoslovak industry was largely in Germans' hands, many of the drivers and mechanics of those tanks were Germans, as the artillery officers - Germans usually served in technical positions in the Czechoslovak Army.
And there were so many of them everywhere, even in the capital city.
Praguers of German ethnicity:

1940.jpg (142.67 KiB) Viewed 728 times

from: 70. výročí Operace Anthropoid

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi wm,

France and her allies was certainly more capable of defeating Germany in 1938 than in 1940 for the reasons given above.

The German military leadership widely held this view and much of it was appalled at the risks taken in occupying Austria in March 1938, Czechoslovakia in September 1938 and March 1939 and Poland in September 1939.

Czechoslovakia in 1938 had nearly as many trained soldiers under 40 as Germany, because it had had conscription since WWI, whereas Germany hadn't.

In 1938 Czechoslovakia could field some 38 divisions or division equivalents, whereas the active German army had around 45 active divisions and only about 10 mobilizeable reserve divisions. To overwhelm Czechoslovakia would require the deployment of almost all Germany's strength, without leaving much to cover the Poles or French.

"Modern" is subjective? I think not. Modern is "relative". Relative to the rest of Europe, Germany was very modern. Only the UK and France were comparable amongst the larger countries, but each had barely half Germany's population.

Err, how were Czech armaments going to be used against France in 1938?

Certainly Germans were relatively strong in the technical arms of the Czechoslovak Army in 1938. However, you seem to presume that they were universally for Reich and that the Czechs had not anticipated this. In fact, the Czech Army's 1st and 2nd Rapid Divisions had no problem in chasing the local Nazi stormtroopers from the Sudetenland over the border in mid-September 1938. What is more, Germans formed a significant proportion of the Slovak-raised Czechoslovak forces that fought border skirmishes with the Poles that year. The Germans of Czechoslovakia were relatively prosperous and, according to the Reich Yearbook of 1939-40, they had a higher life expectancy than Alt Reich Germans. Immediate and universal disloyalty should not be taken for granted.

And don't be fooled by the plebiscite result. It was rigged in exactly the same way as the Austrian plebiscite was. Why would the Nazis rig the plebiscite if they were fully confident of the result? I don't doubt that most Czechoslovak volksdeutsche would like to have been inside the Reich, but whether they were militantly pro-Nazi is another matter. When the German Army moved into the Sudetenland they were on at least one occasion sniped at by leftist Germans, not Czechs.

You seem to make far to many assumptions.

Cheers,

Sid.

[gebhk]

I think far too much is made of ethnic divisions as a catalyst for breakdown of military discipline. Military organisations have a tried and tested methodology for ensuring soldiers 'do their duty' and very effective it is too. One can quote endless examples from at least Roman times onwards. In fact the biggest risk appears to be negative racist attitudes among superiors rather than the ethnicity itself. Ethnic background may have an impact on increased desertion rates but this has as much to do with social attitudes to authority as it does with ethnicity per se. In the Polish Army, desertion rates among some ethnic minorities were consistently higher than among ethnic Poles but lower among others.

Once an army begins to disintegrate in battle all bets are off, however by this stage ethnicity is way down the list of priorities.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi gebhk,

I think you have a point, but it all depends on circumstance.

The Poles and Czechoslovaks had the practice of sending many conscripts from their minority populations to serve at the other end of the country. There they were temporarily divorced from their normal home background and less easily subverted by local nationalist sentiment. This was one reason why the Ruthenians and Slovaks had problems mobilizing against the Hungarians in March 1939 - most Slovak officers were in Bohemia-Moravia and the regular units in Ruthenia were filled with Czechs who only wanted to go home.

However, Yugoslavia collapsed very quickly in April 1941 partly because Croats served in Croatian units in Croatia and were subverted by the local nationalist political culture.

In WWI the Austro-Hungarians sent disproportional numbers of Slavs and Romanians to the Italian Front because they were less reliable when opposing other Slavs and Romanians in the East. This seems to have lessened the risk of desertion or defection significantly. It took four years to grind Austria-Hungary into the ground, so there is no necessary reason to think that multi-ethnic armies collapse at the first onset. On the other hand, their problems of cohesion are clearly greater.

Cheers,

Sid.

[gebhk]

Dear Sid - I agree completely on the 'depends on circumstance'.

Being a cynic, I believe the majority of 'ethnic problems' and 'religious problems' are in fact good old fashioned social/economic ones, it just so happens that social/economic divides often run parallel to religious and/or ethnic ones. I rather think that how enthusiastic a bunch of people are to fight for the status quo depends strongly on how happy/content they are with their quality of life. Conversely their likelihood to defect to an invader will depend on to what extent they believe their lot will be improved if the invader is successful. I don't think it is a coincidence that the strongholds of separationism in pre-war Poland were in some of the poorest areas of the country. This is of course not the whole story and social attuitudes to authority also play a significant part.

I write invader because I suspect few people defect to a clearly loosing side. Which brings us back to the all bets are off when an army disintegrates losing its ability to coerce. I would suggest it might be difficult to disentangle completely whether Yugoslavia collapsed more rapidly becuase of Croatian defection or Croatians defected because of the rapid collapse of the Yugoslavian Army.

Be that as it may, one thing I think we both can agree on is that you cannot assume that a multi-ethnic army will automatically be ineffective. If that were the case it would be difficult to explain the relative success of the Roman, US and British armies. You quite correctly point out the various reasons why many ethnic Germans might wish to defend their higher standards of living and the relative freedom to practice religious and political beliefs in Czechoslovakia against Nazi Germany.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi gebhk,

To digress....

I think the Croats were declining to fight well before the Yugoslav Army disintegrated.

From memory, the Italians suffered only about 200 casualties advancing down the Adriatic coast (some presumably against Montenegrins), but their forces in Albania suffered around 2,000-3,000 against other Yugoslavs in the south of the country. The Italian (and Hungarian) losses are almost always overlooked when totting up casualties in the Yugoslavian Campaign.

I will double check the above figures, as they are from memory.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

Hi wm,



Czechoslovakia in 1938 had nearly as many trained soldiers under 40 as Germany, because it had had conscription since WWI, whereas Germany hadn't.

In 1938 Czechoslovakia could field some 38 divisions or division equivalents, whereas the active German army had around 45 active divisions and only about 10 mobilizeable reserve divisions. To overwhelm Czechoslovakia would require the deployment of almost all Germany's strength,

Certainly Germans were relatively strong in the technical arms of the Czechoslovak Army in 1938. However, you seem to presume that they were universally for Reich and that the Czechs had not anticipated this. In fact, the Czech Army's 1st and 2nd Rapid Divisions had no problem in chasing the local Nazi stormtroopers from the Sudetenland over the border in mid-September 1938. What is more, Germans formed a significant proportion of the Slovak-raised Czechoslovak forces that fought border skirmishes with the Poles that year. The Germans of Czechoslovakia were relatively prosperous and, according to the Reich Yearbook of 1939-40, they had a higher life expectancy than Alt Reich Germans. Immediate and universal disloyalty should not be taken for granted.



Cheers,

Sid.

This is a common misconception .

[wm]

The Ukrainians in the Polish Army were a true minority, maybe one in ten, or twenty. Most of them were semi-illiterate peasants who maybe disliked Poles but primarily were concerned with returning home in one piece.
They carried orders even if grudgingly and weren't going to sabotage the war effort. They fought the Germans twenty years earlier in the Imperial Russian Army and because of that didn't have much sympathy for the Germans anyway.

Germans in the Czechoslovak Army were minority only for the lack of a better word, thirty percent is an enormous number. They were well educated, and patriotic - they were not going to fight their own German brethrens, unless driven into battle in the mythical Soviet commissars' style. The German Army was their army.
For them the cause was just - reclaiming the former German territories by Germany. It wasn't about the Nazis, or occupation of Czechoslovakia, it was all about the former German territories unfairly annexed by Czechoslovakia.
Many of them certainly weren't Nazis, but all of them were Germans. It was between the Germans, not the Nazis, and the Czechs. Blut ist dicker als Wasser. It there were doubts the usually excellent Nazi propaganda machine had means to dispel them.

Similarly the Viet Cong could have created a company from American POWs and sent them into battle - with they same results.

That the Sudeten Germans would have fought for the Czechoslovak version of democracy/freedom is a naive notion. At that time democracy was a dirty world in Europe. It was an idea that brought economic disasters, unemployment and hardship. People could see with their own eyes that the nationalistic and ideologically driven states fared better and were more successful. All that dictators all around Europe, big and small, were there for a reason.

The Czechoslovak-German relations had been excellent till the last few fateful months, this is why the Germans had so dominant position in the Czechoslovak Army, that problem hadn't been anticipated and couldn't be easily corrected.

That the best Czechoslovak divisions dispersed a few groups of civilians with handguns, the Stormtroopers despite the name weren't soldiers and knew nothing about assaults, really proves nothing.

[steverodgers801]

no the they were not German they were part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire and had never been German citizens. The only reason Germany had a 'claim" on western Poland is because they took it from Poland in the 3 part dismemberment of the Polish empire by Russia, Austria-Hungary and Prussia. That makes it illegal right??? so there fore they really had no claim to the territory.

[wm]

Well before Bismarck there was no single-state Germany worth to belong to. Some of them probably were in Saxony or Prussia but I don't know that.
It isn't really about what was right or wrong but what was politically/militarily useful. Nationalistic/patriotic feelings among those people were easy to stir up, and Czechs had nothing to counteract that. On the international political scene, from the propaganda point of view Hitler's demands looked reasonably too.

Poland was different. Except Danzig the Polish Germans didn't live in homogeneously German areas like the Sudeten Germans did. And there weren't so many of them (about 3%). Poland had valid claims to those territories from the times of the Kingdom of Poland.
So Hitler didn't even try to use the same trick again. It was Danzig and the corridor nothing more.