Talk:Remilitarization of the Rhineland
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Hm.. was the idea of preventive war discussed before? I mean, there is no decisive evidence that Poland suggested France the preventive war against Germany... but most of historians I read agreed that there was such proposal.. Should it be added, what do you think? My sources are exclusively Polish, though :) Szopen (talk) 14:30, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
- I think they are discussed in Józef Piłsudski and German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact, with some refs.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 07:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Clean-Up
I don’t mean to sound rude, but some of the information contained in this page about France and the Rhineland crisis is seriously wrong. To begin, this page speaks of French troops being in the Rhineland in 1936. That is absolutely false. The French occupied the Rhineland from 1918 until 1930. The last French soldiers were pulled out in June 1930, so I really don't understand how this page can speak of the following: "So long as the French Army occupied the Rhineland, the economically important Ruhr industrial area was liable to French invasion if France believed the situation in Germany ever became a threat.". What the page should say is that as long as the Rhineland was demilitarized, then the French could easily occupy the Ruhr, which is a little different matter from speaking of French soldiers being the Rhineland six years after the last of them left. Then there is the fact that this page uses an unnamed book by William L. Shirer as a source, which is either The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969) or The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960). The problem with both books is that Shirer wrote his books in the 1950s-1960s before the French achieves were opened in the 1970s, and thus Shirer didn’t really know what the French government was thinking at the 1930s. Given that the French achieves have been open since the 1970s, I would prefer if we were to use some books that about French reactions to the Rhineland crisis that are based on primary sources as opposed to Shirer’s books, which he essentially just offers up his own assumptions and opinions about what drove French conduct. The claim that France was “psychologically unprepared” to use force against Germany, presumably because of memories of World War I, is rather silly when one remembers that French went ahead and occupied the Ruhr in 1923. 1923 was only 5 years after the end of the First World War, so if the French were so traumatized by their Great War experiences that they ““psychologically” incapable of marching against Germany in 1936 (18 years after the war’s end), how does one explain the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923?
Second, the statement by Hitler about having to ”…to withdraw with our tails between our legs” is an attempt by Hitler to show how brave and daring he was in his foreign policy, and how “providence” worked to his advantage. It was an important part of Hitler’s image that in some vague way, he was being guided by some sort of supernatural force. To promote this image, Hitler liked to make statements about how despite how the odds were all against him, somehow “providence” worked to his aid. I really do wish that historians be somewhat more critical about intreprating Hitler’s remarks because much of which he had to say was concerned about promoting his image as man guided by “providence” and "destiny". Just as an aside, in this light about Hitler’s image building that one should interpret his story about having his “vision” at the Pasewalk hospital in November 1918 in which some sort of supernatural power revealed to Hitler his “mission” to save Germany, a ridiculous story that still impresses some of the less scholarly biographies of Hitler. I am going probably going somewhat off topic, but this story about the vision is absurd for the following reasons:
- Despite having his alleged “vision” in 1918, Hitler did not see fit to mention to anyone until 1921, and then only at time when has asserting his leadership over the Nazi Party, where surprise, surprise, the story about the “vision” was used to buttress his claim to leadership.
- Even through Hitler had received his “mission” in November 1918, all of the known facts suggest it was not until the fall of 1919 that Hitler decided upon a political career, and in the months immediately following the Armistice Hitler really didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life.
- Hitler denied his “vision” story when asked about it while on trial in 1924 following the Munich Beerhall Putsch, presumably because to state something like that in court would make him look silly.
My point is that Hitler often rearranged the facts of his life in such a way to support the image of himself that he wanted to see promoted, namely that of a “Savior”, a messianic figure on a mission from some sort of supernatural power to “save” Germany. After the fact, Hitler could say about how if the French moved, he would have been forced to withdraw, but the orders given to German troops marching into the Rhineland stated that if the French were to march in, they were to resist and stage a fighting retreat. As early as October 1933, the German Defence Ministry directives stated if the French moved into the Rhineland, then the German response would be to sent in troops to stage a fighting retreat (Robertson, E.M. Hitler's Pre-War Policy and Military Plans, Longmans: London, United Kingdom, 1963 pages 25-26). What Hitler is trying to say here is that the odds against him in 1936 were so overwhemling, and yet the fact that he triumphed proved that "providence" was guiding him because he was a "man of destiny". Historians who say that if the French moved in 1936, then Hitler would have been forced to withdraw ingloriously based on a single after the fact remark by Hitler are seriously wrong. If the French responded to the German move by marching into the Rhineland, the almost certain result would have been a Franco-German war. If French soldiers marched into Germany, and German soldiers started shooting at them, it is very hard to see how events would not have escalated into a Franco-German war.
Moreover, the uncorroborated claim of General Heinz Guderian that if the French had marched in 1936, then the result have been the overthrow of the Nazi regime, is to put it bluntly shows that somebody is not being as critical as they should be in evaluating historical sources. After the war, various Wehrmacht generals developed an entire genre of historical fiction masquerading as fact in they explained how despite fighting very hard for Hitler for six long years, they were really actually opposed to Hitler and everything he stood for. In actual truth of the matter is despite they were claimed after the war, both before and during the war, the overwhelming majority of the German military leadership were for Hitler and everything he stood for, and were more then happy to spill the blood of innocents for the sake of their beloved Führer. Given the way in which German generals such as Guderian lied systematically after 1945 about what they were doing under National Socialism, I would argue that using the words of a German General is rather like using David Irving as a source, namely a source that is so unreliable that it ought not to be used at all. From the viewpoint of Guderian, it is very convenient to say after the fact that if only the French moved, then the German Army would rise up and overthrown the Nazi regime, thereby by this subtle shift of hand, transferring responsibility about why Germans did not overthrow the Nazis from the Germans onto the French. This version about Hitler was not overthrown is so convenient towards the German side that it really ought to give one pause. There is no sign that anybody in the German Army ever considered the idea of overthrowing Hitler in the event of a French move into the Rhineland in 1936; even General Ludwig Beck, the chief of General Staff, who later become involved in plots against Hitler made it very clear during the Rhineland crisis via his voluminous memos that was behind Hitler 100% in 1936. All of the historical evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of the Wehrmacht was behind the Nazi regime in 1936 just as the Wehrmacht was to stay loyal to the Nazi regime under far more adverse conditions later during World War II. The idea of the Wehrmacht as a bastion of anti-Nazism is a myth pure and simple. The Wehrmacht would not have overthrown the Nazis in 1936 any more then it would overthrown the Nazis in any other time because the overwhelming majority of the German officer corps were supporters of the regime 110%.
Which brings me to the next point. In a major essay "France and the remilitarization of the Rhineland, 1936" about the French reaction to the Rhineland remilitarization published in 1986 in the French Historical Studies and reprinted in the 1997 book The Origins of the Second World War edited by Patrick Finney by the American historian Stephen Schuker, and based upon French primary sources, Schuker was able to established a number of points. First, the French Army was much weaker then what contemporary opinion believed, for it was not in the French interest to advertise their weaknesses. In the early 1930s, under the impact of the Great Depression, successive governments had cut the military budget, so that by 1936, the French Army was far weaker then one the French liked to pretend in public (Schuker, Stephen"France and the remilitarization of the Rhineland, 1936" from The Origins of the Second World War pages 208-211). Second, Schuker established that in the event of a war with Germany, and it would have been a war if the French had marched into the Rhineland, would meant the full mobilization of the French Army, which would have cost 30 million francs/per day (Schuker, Stephen"France and the remilitarization of the Rhineland, 1936" from The Origins of the Second World War pages 215-216). In 1936, the French were going through a serious financial crisis, and to put it bluntly, the money to pay for mobilizing the French Army was simply not there. The French Treasury told the government if mobilization was ordered, the result would been the bankruptcy of France. Third, the prospect of war with Germany caused the Rhineland crisis caused a major capital flight of France, which meant there was even less money to pay for the costs of mobilization (Schuker, Stephen "France and the remilitarization of the Rhineland, 1936" from The Origins of the Second World War pages 217-218). Fourth, as the historian Robert J. Young pointed out in his 1978 book In Command of France, through the French were never serious about mobilizing, they made a great show of pretending that they were about to mobilize. A major aim of the French diplomacy throughout the inter-war period was to secure the “continental commitment” from Britain, that is obtain a British promise to come to France’s aid by sending a large army. In their talks with the British, the French tried to make a trade-off between promising not to mobilize in exchange for the “continental commitment”. So in other words, the French were trying to trade off a promise not to do something that in private they knew they could not afford to do to obtain something that they had desperately wanted since 1919. Until this page brings in some of the information from Schuker’s essay and Young’s book, I am afraid this page offers a very distorted picture of French actions in 1936. --A.S. Brown (talk) 06:02, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
