This chapter examines the last moments of peace in Europe and the situation that emerged after war erupted between Germany and Poland, sustained by Great Britain and France. Its approach will be that of creating an intelligence assessment by making an evaluation of alternative scenarios and then pursue the likely outcomes or options, in terms that are familiar to intelligence analysts as being possible, probably or likely. In examining alternatives to the events of this crucial period, we might consider first whether war might have been avoided entirely, and then to speculate upon other alternatives to the way in which the war became an enervating phony war in the absence of decisive action by the western allies. In short, the underlying issue is whether or not Hitler might have been prevented from having his war in 1939, or assuring that if the war came he might have been more effectively challenged, if not halted. The main concern is the question of deterrence, blocking Hitler, either by actions that would cause him to stop short of war or actions that might produce a change in regime and the elimination of Hitler. Could Hitler have been stopped, contained or frustrated in his ambitions, including his determination to have his war in Poland as a prelude to his destruction of the French army as a threat to his ultimate goal of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe?
In retrospect it appears that the Nazi–Soviet pact of 1939, an event that precipitated the outbreak of war in Europe and that struck observers at the time and since as a “thunderclap,” was less surprising than the alternative of a political and military agreement with the western powers. The ideological war of words between the Soviets and Nazi Germany had obscured the hard reality that the western allies could offer Stalin less than could Hitler, who was prepared to concede temporarily a vast Soviet sphere of influence in the Baltic – a particularly important concern for Stalin – and Eastern Europe, notably a recovery of territory that had been “lost” to Poland as a result of the 1921 Treaty of Riga and a repossession of Bessarabia from Romania. At least this was Stalin's assumption, tied to his conviction that the west needed his alliance more than he needed western support. The western allies wished to preserve the status quo in Europe and asked, belatedly, for Soviet willingness to risk war with Germany for non existent gains. Stalin was determined that Russia would not bleed for the benefit of the British Empire and have nothing to show for his sacrifice. On the other hand, diplomatic exchanges with Germany that began after Stalin's speech to the Eighteenth Party Congress in March, 1939 hinted at regaining an impressive sphere of influence in Eastern Europe through an arrangement with Germany. The Soviets raised their demands, and from July 1939 there was little doubt that Hitler and Ribbentrop were prepared to meet them – at least temporarily.
The British and French guarantees to Poland ironically gave Stalin the ability to engage in a bidding war for his favor. When Chamberlain and Daladier offered their guarantees to Poland, they should have made such support meaningful with a previous or simultaneous agreement with the USSR in the spring rather than in August of 1939. Without that assurance, the western guarantee to Poland gave Stalin an unexpected bargaining chip in dealing with Hitler. In turn, the failure to come to terms with Stalin deprived the west, as Hitler noted, of its trump suit. Thus, as of May 1939 any assessment of the prospects for a western agreement with the Soviets, rather than an arrangement with Germany, should have been rated as unlikely. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this argument, we assume that Stalin concluded in the summer of 1939 that Hitler remained a more serious threat to the USSR than did the capitalist west in both the long and the short term, and he chose to continue a path of containment by reaching agreement with the western delegation in August.
We know the conditions that Stalin would have insisted upon for any western alliance. Access of Soviet troops into Poland and Romania and guarantees of Soviet security demands in the Baltic states would have been part of any arrangement with the west if the Soviets were to have an impact in deterring Hitler from an aggression in Eastern Europe. In short, Great Britain and France would have had to accept a Soviet sphere of domination in Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the western shore of the Black Sea. These were the conditions presented to the allied delegation when it arrived in Moscow on 11 August to begin conversations on a possible military convention. This was a substantial price. Nevertheless, “what if ” these conditions had been met? Stalin had signed with the west, and Hitler had to contemplate a full scale war against three major powers if he insisted upon his invasion and military campaign in Poland in the late summer of 1939. Stalin also had need of the western alliance, and confronting Hitler in 1939 would have been less catastrophic for the USSR than in 1941. Would Hitler have pulled back from a full-scale European war that might have escalated into a world conflict in the event of a Soviet-western pact, or would he have plunged ahead with his determination to destroy Poland before embarking upon his campaign in the west?
While it is risky to guess what Hitler's reaction might have been, given his mood swings, it is clear that he was both determined to have his military conquest of Poland and anxious about the reaction of Great Britain. All accounts suggest Hitler's high degree of nervousness during the jockeying for position that summer; his edginess reflected his anxiety about keeping Great Britain out of his Polish war, even after the conclusion of the Nazi–Soviet pact and Ribbentrop's fatuous assurances that the British would never honor their pledge to Poland. Hitler cancelled orders for an attack literally at the last minute on 25 August. This suggests a high degree of anxiety.
A major reason for this anxiety and the last-minute cancellation was Hitler's realization that Mussolini would remain neutral in the event of a war with Poland. Just a few days earlier on 22 August in his speech to his military commanders at the Berghof, Hitler had boasted of Mussolini's loyalty as one of three major advantages that Germany had in the event of a war to crush Poland. In the early afternoon of the 25th this assurance was swept away when the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Bernardo Attolico, delivered Mussolini's telegram, informing Hitler that Italy would remain neutral in event of war with Poland. Hitler was visibly shaken by this news and immediately called General Keitel to cancel plans for the imminent attack. One of Mussolini's arguments, beside his army's lack of preparation, was his conviction that Britain would intervene, leaving Italy's coast exposed to the Royal Navy. Three days later Hitler had recovered his nerve and ordered an attack upon Poland, arguing that Italian neutrality best served Germany's interests. Thus, Hitler went ahead, and his hesitation of the 25th, while dramatic, was not a permanent renunciation.
Despite his determination to “resolve” the Polish question before the onset of the fall rains, Hitler might have been forced to at least a short-term postponement rather than confront a stiffened Great Britain, a hostile rather than a friendly and neutral USSR, and a still-feared French army on the western frontier. An Anglo-French-Soviet alliance might have deterred Hitler's aggression, at least in 1939. Without an isolated Poland, even a gambling risk-taker might have hesitated to precipitate a drawn-out two front war, something that Hitler claimed he would never do and something that the whole concept of blitzkrieg was designed to avoid. The historical judgment on whether or not a triple alliance of France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, reviving the 1914 coalition, would have sufficed to postpone war in September 1939 is at best a conditional one; it might have worked. One scenario, then, is that the Soviet-western pact might have forced Hitler to abandon his plan for a Polish campaign in the later summer of 1939. Hitler's postponement would have been a disappointment, accompanied by the usual tirades, but it would have been no more than a temporary set-back to his determination to reorder the map of Eastern Europe and pursue his fundamental objective of expansion there. What the western-Soviet agreement would have caused may be seen as an alteration of Hitler's tactics, not his objectives.
A likely outcome of this postponement, then, would have been a further shuffling and period of maneuver in the alliance systems of Eastern Europe. Given Hitler's opportunism, Nazi foreign policy might have engaged in several ways of creating confusion among Hitler's likely opponents in Eastern Europe and might have spurred him to foster distrust and undermine the western-Soviet pact as well. With Hitler's predilection for pressing initiatives in several directions to see what might work to his advantage, one could imagine his beginning a campaign to promote German interests in Eastern Europe by trying to soften up Poland, even to the point of granting concessions that might undermine Poland's need for guarantees from the western powers. He could have worked upon the fears and antagonisms among the often quarreling states of Eastern Europe by embarking upon a series of bilateral deals. He could also have tried to undermine any western accord with the Soviet Union, perhaps by raising the stakes toward the Soviets, or by offering some olive branch to the west that might have left him free to turn eastward, assured that the French army would be neutral. Alternatively, his maneuvers in Eastern Europe might have assured neutrality, with the smaller states of the east serving as a buffer between Germany and the USSR, enabling him to concentrate upon an attack and, presumably, rapid victory against France and Great Britain. With a western agreement with the Soviet Union, his most likely first gambit would have been to find a way to neutralize the situation on his eastern frontier.
All of the states of Eastern Europe found themselves shaken by the events of Munich. Hitler might have seen an opportunity to embark upon a diplomatic offensive in which he would portray Nazi Germany as the guarantor of security in Eastern Europe against the dangers of Soviet intervention with western approval. The immediate goal would have been obtaining the neutrality of Eastern Europe through diplomatic means, including a systematic wooing of Poland. Hitler had pursued an option of this sort in his various proposals keeping the Poles quiescent as he turned his attention westward. This would have deprived the west of an issue – the protection of Poland's territorial integrity – that was at the heart of its guarantees.
Whatever Polish Foreign Minister Beck's reaction would have been, German efforts to strengthen ties with Poland and, for that matter, with the other smaller states of Eastern Europe would have represented a return to German diplomatic efforts during the winter of 1938-39 when, up to 25 March and the final dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, Hitler's intention was to neutralize these states. His tactic had been to get them to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, thereby assuring their passivity as he turned his attention toward the western allies and prepared for war in that direction. A signing of an Anglo-French-Soviet pact might easily have produced a renewed offensive in this sense whereby Poland, Hungary and Romania, despite the serious ethnic quarrel between the latter two, would be urged to join this pact. This, of course, would have vitiated the British-French guarantee to Poland, and it would have required the burying of deep seated nationalistic conflicts in the region. Alternatively, as Hitler would do during his diplomatic offensives in the winter of 1940-41, he might well have negotiated a series of bilateral agreements in a “divide and conquer” diplomatic initiative. Hitler's preference for bilateral arrangements is well known. Given the remarkable fluidity of the diplomatic situation in Eastern Europe that followed Munich, however, another reversal in Hitler's plan of action was at least possible as a consequence of a western agreement with the Soviets.
A variation on this 1938-39 gambit might have been to split the USSR from the western allies by proposing some sort of vast Eastern European security pact with a German guarantee. Such an effort would have been undertaken as the necessary prelude to secure Hitler's eastern frontier while concentrating his forces against the western powers. One can assume that German diplomacy, orchestrated by Hitler, would have sent up several trial balloons in the winter of 1938-39, reflecting not only Hitler's tendency to gamble, but also his opportunism. An implication of Stalin's agreement with France and Great Britain would have been another shift in Nazi diplomacy, no longer to isolate Poland but to prepare for a war in the west. This preparation would undoubtedly have revived and strengthened the military leadership's opposition to a policy that would have led to a generalized European conflict. While war with Poland, if isolated, might have been acceptable to the High Command, a war against a British-French coalition, perhaps backed by a Soviet intervention into Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, would have been regarded with alarm as a foolish plunge into a protracted conflict Germany could not win. A western-Soviet accord, followed by Hitler's return to his original notion of a western offensive to eliminate the threat of the French army prior to embarking upon his fundamental goal of Lebensraum in the east, might have galvanized the military opposition into renewed plotting after the Munich crisis had thrown them into confusion. We know that the opposition embarked upon a further round of conspiracies against Hitler, culminating in the events of 5 November, 1939 when Brauchitsch quailed before an infuriated Führer and backed away from pressing on with efforts to remove him. Without this victory and with only a possible Polish guarantee of neutrality, or even a Soviet/Eastern European non-aggression pact, the prospects of a successful campaign in the West would have looked even less promising than they actually appeared in November 1939. A revived opposition in the aftermath of an agreement between the western powers and the USSR, followed by a possible agreement between Nazi Germany and Poland, may be considered possible.
We know that the generals and the anti-Hitler conspirators were strongly opposed to any western adventure and most likely would have been just as determined to block a western campaign even with the reassurance of a neutralized eastern frontier. The German military leadership continued to regard the French army as a potentially dangerous adversary, and memories of the western front stalemate of 1914-18 were constantly in the minds of German commanders. A correspondingly reasonable assumption is that the opposition would have seen the plunge into war in the west as a dangerous folly that would have justified intervention to bring down the regime. To precipitate this drastic action, the military would have required firm evidence that a war in the west was coming and that their attempt would be generally supported both within the ranks of the army and by a civilian population equally fearful that a war with the west might become protracted, devastating and lead to defeat.
Might the existence of an agreement with the USSR have further stiffened the French and British opposition to Hitler, or have led them to engage seriously with the internal German opposition? A delay of the outbreak of war in the east and renewed efforts of the opposition to prevent a conflict might have enabled further contacts between the conspirators and the western leadership. That such contacts took place, and would occur again during the phony war, is well known. Less certain is the response that might have been produced. Neither the British nor the French seemed persuaded that the resistance could end the regime with encouragement from western statesmen. More likely is the scenario in which the resistance would have had to rely upon its own resources for the coup, and clearly the military conspiracy would have required sound evidence that war with the west was inevitable and likely to lead to disaster for Germany. Whatever the attitude of the west, a successful coup would have ended the Nazi regime.
Another possible scenario is that Hitler might have pursued his war against Poland even with a western military agreement with the Soviet Union. Hitler appeared determined to have his war in Poland as early as May, before there was much more than rumor of a rapprochement between Berlin and Moscow. If the agreement between the west and Moscow allowed Soviet forces to enter Poland, and if the allies were committed to take forceful action against Germany's western border, Hitler might have hesitated to engage the Soviets in Poland. However, Hitler had an even greater contempt for the Soviet military, following the purges, than did the western allies. We now know, not only as seen in the Winter War with Finland but as a result of recent Soviet revelations, that Stalin's impact upon the Soviet army was even more devastating than anyone in either the west or Germany imagined at the time. Given Hitler's convictions that Soviet communism was rotten to the core and the Slavs were an inferior race, he might well have pressed on with his war in Poland, convinced that it would be over before the Soviets could get moving or the west could lift a hand to aid either their Polish or Soviet allies. When General Keitel expressed some of the military fear that an attack on Poland meant expansion into a general European conflict that might ultimately bring in the United States, Hitler assured Keitel that the Soviet deal was his insurance policy against such an eventuality. Hitler may well have gone ahead with his war against Poland with or without the Nazi–Soviet pact. What is certain is that he seems determined, after a brief crisis of nerves on 25 August, to have had his war whatever the risks once the agreement was signed.
The answer to this question takes us again back to the western guarantees to Poland that came in the Spring of 1939. Hitler could only assume that the Nazi–Soviet pact had checked allied assurances to Poland by depriving the western powers of any ability to bring meaningful aid in time. The preponderance of evidence suggests that Hitler was determined to eliminate Poland as a threat on his eastern border before turning west. Hitler's demands on Poland were calculated to be rejected, showing his determination to launch the military operation, whatever the risk. Hitler struck under circumstances in which he knew that the western powers would honor their obligations to Poland. He may have held a faint hope that the appeasers would again flinch, but it appears that in ordering his attack on Poland, he had decided to take the fatal plunge by eliminating the threat of a Polish “stab in the back” before dealing with the French army. In short, the preponderance of evidence suggests that Hitler had decided to have “his” war in September, even if it meant a conflict with the west, and perhaps even because it meant dealing with the west sooner rather than later. Evidence for this view can be adduced indirectly from Hitler's seemingly diffident response to the news that Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany.
This apparent decision meant that Hitler accepted the risk not only of a local, but a general war in September 1939, despite the reservations of his military leadership, and despite Germany's lack of preparation for a long and drawn out war. We know that the Germany that went to war in September 1939 was not ready for a “total” war effort. Even into the attack on the USSR two years later, Germany had not mobilized for a full wartime economy. Hitler always claimed that the quick strikes of the lightning war obviated any need for long-term planning and preparation. At some point, of course, a huge war effort would be necessary. Nevertheless, given the lack of preparation in the west, his dismissal of the Soviet army as an effective fighting force, and his conviction that bluff and determination would prevail over the timorous democratic leaders, Hitler did not, as A. J. P. Taylor argues, blunder into a general war in 1939. To be sure, that war proved quite different from what he hoped to have: a quick victory, followed by some breathing space. For Hitler timing was all important. Having once accomplished his strategic objective of a neutralized eastern frontier, he could not hesitate too long before dealing with the threat in the west. That became apparent with the orders that Hitler gave almost immediately upon conclusion of the Polish campaign.
A corollary of this question is whether or not the certainty of a long war would have been a sufficient deterrent for Hitler. Here the temptation is to see Hitler holding back, sharing his generals' conviction that a long war would be fatal for Germany. This question is difficult to answer, even tentatively, since Hitler often acted on impulse to take advantage of a momentary opportunity. He held the conviction that a long war had been fatal for Germany in 1914-18, and his diplomatic-military strategies were predicated on avoiding that danger, primarily in avoiding a two-front war. The most reasonable speculation is that Hitler, particularly after the Nazi–Soviet Pact, became convinced that he had not only isolated Poland but avoided the trap of a two-front war. Had Hitler expected a longer war in 1939, then a quite different set of plans and preparations would at least have been initiated. We know that there was little of that; instead, Hitler cancelled plans for aircraft carrier development and for two proposed additional battleships that were to have been laid down. Hitler's war planning, like his diplomatic initiatives, had an improvised quality that belies any sense of urgency about preparations for a lengthy war effort.
It might be mentioned that Hitler did not see the war expanding beyond Europe. He was convinced that the United States would remain isolationist. If necessary, Japan might be useful in keeping the Americans isolated and in providing a baton to wave at the British Empire in Asia. It should be noted, however, that Hitler apparently set little stock in the Japanese alliance. His signing of the Nazi–Soviet pact had greatly alarmed Japanese leaders, who ultimately sought their own version of a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in April 1941 and decided to turn south in their pursuit of resources that would enable them to bring the war with China to a conclusion, despite the risk of war with the British Empire and the United States. Hitler showed little concern for these long-term or global implications of his decision to go to war in Europe, despite the grandiose nature of his speeches about world conquest and a thousand year Reich. Indeed, Hitler tended to disregard the global perspective in favor of a war for European domination.
It may be questioned whether or not Hitler would have been dissuaded from the war that began in Poland even if he had realized that it would last three years, since he tended to underestimate the long-term consequences of any event. This issue was crucial, however, to the arguments of the anti-war opposition, who correctly foresaw that in a longer conflict that would marshal the resources of the United States behind an anti-German, western alliance, the Germans would be at a disadvantage, even with the prospects of securing resources from the USSR as a result of the continuance of the Nazi– Soviet agreement. Had Hitler been committed to a long war of attrition against the British Empire, then his planning would have been quite different. Instead he remained supremely confident right up to the attack upon the Soviet Union in 1941 that he could eliminate his opponents one by one.
Hitler was confident that the war could be contained during his planning for the western campaign, and even up to the eve of his attack upon the Soviet Union in 1941. His refusal to listen to the cautions of his military leaders on the eve of the western offensive provides evidence of his determination to go ahead in the face of the reservations of his military professionals. Hitler had to defeat the French army: its elimination was a basic condition for one of his obsessions: an eastward expansion. In looking at Hitler's improvised tactics, historians sometimes overlook his permanent fixations. The principle that had decisive significance for his military planning was the securing of Lebensraum in the east. To accomplish this, the destruction of the French threat was essential, and it was important in 1938-40 to move quickly while he held the advantage of a neutralized eastern frontier. He contemptuously dismissed his generals' reservations, most dramatically in the attempt by Brauchitsch and Halder to obtain postponement of the western operation on November 5, 1939. Once the French army no longer threatened, the gate to the eastern lands could be thrown open. Unlike his generals, who feared a reenactment of the World War I stalemate on the Western Front, Hitler saw an opportunity for a quick victory that might not occur again, but, if successful, would assure him of mastery on the continent, whatever Great Britain might do once France had fallen. He still did not believe that his war in Europe, fought in blitzkrieg fashion, meant a world war. Had Hitler shared his generals' concern about a general European or World War, he might have acted differently. But he would also have acted out of character.
This question raises the issue of “the unfought battle” on the Franco-German front in September, 1939. The reasons why this battle was never undertaken have been extensively discussed. Explanations range from faulty intelligence, Gamelin's hesitation, a military leadership that took refuge in the strategy of a lengthy war of attrition, lack of political or moral will, obsession with the defensive strategy embodied in the Maginot line, memories of the bloodletting of 1914-18 resulting in the “unborn generation” of military age (18-22 year olds) that was not available for military service during the mid and late 1930s, and even treasonous behavior or at least cowardice on the part of appeasers. We know that the French military leadership did not have plans for an offensive strike into Germany as an option available in September 1939. (The French army's operational plan was a counterpunch that involved a thrust into Belgium and the southern tip of the Netherlands as soon as a German offensive was launched in the west.) Gamelin's directive of 31 May 1939 called for an offensive of 35-38 divisions to be mounted by the fifteenth day of mobilization, but this proved to be no more than a “reconnaissance in force” as the Poles would discover to their dismay in September.
The French High Command neither revised its strategy nor seriously contemplated a major offensive that would most likely have involved violation of Belgian and Dutch neutrality. Despite the reputation of certain French leaders' record of appeasement, there is evidence that a stronger political will had developed in France following the Munich conference, seen in Daladier's break with the Popular Front, his decrees designed to strengthen defense industries, and a public consensus in favor of a much stiffer opposition toward Germany in the winter of 1938-39. On the other hand, the dithering of the French political and military leadership during the time of the phony war, and the army's previous and disastrous experiences with “offensive” plans in 1914 and 1917, suggest that the chances of a rapid and radical change of French strategic doctrine was not likely to occur between the commitment to defend Poland in March 1939 and the attack upon France in May 1940. Recent scholarship suggests that French military leadership, despite its strong preference for a defensive strategy, was not unsympathetic to ideas of mobile, mechanized warfare. The difficulty is that this approach remained cast in a defensive context. The mobility into the low countries, which contributed to the disaster of 1940, remained largely part of a response to a German attack. The possibility of using Belgium for offensive operations against Germany may be seen in Gamelin's argument to Daladier that the right to use Belgian territory would permit the establishment of advanced air bases and offer a better terrain for an attack into the Ruhr than the narrow opening between the Rhine and the Moselle, which could be easily defended. This notion, however, remained no more than a hypothesis. The French government had no intention of violating its promise to respect Belgian neutrality.
These long-standing debates cannot be revisited here. Instead, as part of the “what if” of this question, the assumptions are that the French army had the option of an offensive operation prepared and available, and that the political leaders insisted that France fulfill the letter of its obligation to the Polish government to begin offensive operations against Germany in the west no later than two weeks after mobilization. In order for this “what if” to be developed, we must assume that French military and political leaders had the plans, the means, and the will to launch an offensive into Germany. Could this have been done in time to alter the outcome of the conflict? What would have been the most likely results both militarily and in terms of the future of the Nazi regime? And what might have been the outlines of a peace agreement, assuming the outcome of the French offensive was a victorious one?
Had the French launched an attack, it probably would have been successful. German defense in the west rested upon the incomplete fortifications of the West Wall and on a military force that was totally inadequate to meet a major attack. The postwar testimonies and memoirs of the German generals all express astonishment at French inaction. The German forces at the outbreak of hostilities consisted of twenty-five reserve and second line replacement and militia divisions that had little training for combat situations, backed by eleven first line divisions (twenty-five is the standard number: Goutard has his own reasons for exaggerating the figure). In his postwar testimony, General Jodl claimed that the reserves were poorly trained and their mobilization was extremely slow and disorganized. He declared that the German victory in Poland occurred only because there was no battle on the Western Front. General Westphal has left a similarly pessimistic assessment of German military strength in the west, noting that there was not enough ammunition for more than three days fighting. Morale for the German troops in the west was also considered less than desirable, no better than for French troops in 1940. One of the ablest of the German generals, Colonel General Kurt von Hammerstein, regarded his northern sector's defense as inadequate and even contemplated luring Hitler to Cologne as a way of eliminating the Führer, reflecting both his hatred for the regime and his conviction that a war would be disastrous for Germany.
On the other hand, by 10 September the French army had mobilized 110 first line divisions, of which eighty-five were available to Gamelin, making allowances for protecting the Italian frontier and providing for colonial defenses. All of the French tanks, some 3,200, could be used while almost the entire German armor was engaged in Poland. French artillery was available in large numbers and high quality, capable, according to Gamelin, of penetrating the German defensive works. British and French forces together had nearly one thousand fighter planes at this point, while most of the German aircraft had been concentrated in the east. In equipment the French had major advantages, although their tanks were not designed for rapid mobility, in manpower they held a nearly three to one superiority. Gamelin himself claims that as early as 4 September he had forty divisions mobilized in the central sector of the front between the Rhine and the Moselle, while the Germans were still assembling their troops in the west.
Senior German generals in the region maintained that the French forces would have reached Mainz, trapped the best German divisions in the Saar “sack,” and taken the Ruhr within two weeks. With western Germany open much of the country's industrial strength would have been vulnerable. Beyond this, again according to Westphal, French forces could easily have crossed the Rhine and, as he noted at the Nuremberg Trial, “the whole face of Europe would have been changed.” Decisive French action in the west would have in particular encouraged the German generals to turn against Hitler, confirming their fears that he was leading the country to disaster. Although alarmed at the consequences of a protracted war with the western powers, Halder doubted the willingness of the population or the army to support a coup unless some dramatic event, such as allied bombing of German industrial regions or a military defeat on the western front, occurred to convince German opinion that Hitler had embarked upon a fatal course. Without some dramatic demonstration that a war against the western powers might prove fatal or result in a protracted and debilitating war, the military resistance hesitated to act, although convinced that such a war would lead eventually to Germany's defeat. Had the western powers bombed German industrial targets in the west and/or invaded and occupied the western industrial regions of Germany, then Hitler might have suffered a decisive blow to his prestige in the eyes of the German people, who would have accepted a move to remove him. The military conspiracy revived after the triumph in Poland when it became apparent that Hitler was determined to move quickly toward an offensive against the western allies, producing the famous crisis of October and November, 1939. Was this crisis imminent in September, particularly as a reaction to a (presumably) successful French attack in the west?
The opposition continued to look at the western powers as their “natural allies.” Would this alliance have been so natural in time of war, in the middle of a military campaign in Poland that promised victory and was generally supported by the military leadership? The basis for opposition to Hitler's military plans rested upon fears of a protracted western campaign, not upon concern for Polish military prowess. The danger of the Polish situation was that it would bring a response from the west that would threaten German security, and the French attack might have confirmed military concerns over the prospects of a long war, particularly one in which the French controlled crucial industrial resources. There was a strong and significant opposition to a war in the west after the Polish defeat, but opposing this war in the midst of a military campaign would have been difficult to mount.
While there appears to have been some revival of the opposition to Hitler in the Foreign Office, just before and after the outbreak of war, there were two gestures toward the western powers by the opposition during the actual course of the Polish campaign. One of these came through the efforts made by the former deputy mayor of Berlin, Fritz Elsas, to urge that the western powers attack in order to relieve the pressure on Poland. The outcome of this effort is significant and revealing. His contact, a member of the opposition in exile in Denmark, Dr. Hans Robinson, discouraged any action that might make it more difficult to end the war. The other attempt came from the military side when General Hammerstein made his “last play” to lure Hitler to Cologne on the pretext that this would deceive the allies on German strength in that sector. Once he had Hitler in Cologne, Hammerstein intended to kill him. The British were informed of this plot through their consul in Wiesbaden, but the assassination failed to occur when Hitler rejected the idea of going to Cologne at that time.
With Germany in danger, threatened by enemies to east and west, one can well imagine Hitler denouncing the treachery of it all and Dr. Goebbels creating a noisy propaganda campaign to whip up German feelings against the traditional enemy, France, (backed by Great Britain), which was playing a dangerous game of exposing both Germany and all of Europe to the spread of Communism. One can, then, imagine Hitler employing all means to generate mass support behind him, a man beleaguered for simply asserting Germany's rightful claims. Such an appeal to nationalism in a time when the state was in danger, would have made the actions of the opposition in toppling Hitler more than a little complicated. The opposition argued that Hitler was leading the nation to catastrophe, as indeed he was, but this might not have been the perception of the ordinary German citizen, however reserved popular opinion might have been about the news of war in Poland on 1 September. Thus a French attack in the west, even if a military success, might have had the effect of rallying opinion behind the leader at a time when the country was in mortal peril.
A possibility, then, would have been a kind of call to arms from Hitler, Goebbels and the Nazi faithful. There is an alternative scenario in which the French invasion from the west provoked the military opposition to take matters into their own hands, overthrow Hitler and establish a regime that would seek terms from the invading powers. Hitler's call to arms might have had little success in stopping the advance of western forces, and could very well have produced not so much a rally of the Germans against the allied invasion as a response from the military in leading a coup against Hitler and a war policy that had brought military disaster upon the homeland. At the very least, the defeat in the west would have had to convince the German population, which was still hoping to avoid an expansion and continuation of the war, that Hitler's policies were dangerous and disastrous for Germany's interests to be successful. A French military success in the west would have created formidable problems, which the German generals recognized in their postwar assessments. The western allies would have been in control of the industrial resources that Germany needed to sustain a major war effort. We know, too, that Hitler feared the possibility that the allies might have pressured the Belgians and the Dutch into allowing allied use of forward bases for a bombing attack against Germany.
The psychological impact is another important consideration: mention already has been made of Halder's belief that a successful air and land offensive in the west might have pushed German opinion to recognize the disastrous consequences of Hitler's policies. Whether such a military defeat would have been enough to topple Hitler's regime remains at least open to question. Still, dictators most often do not survive military defeat, and on paper the prospect of an allied victory with an attack in the west was a good one. We know from the testimonies of the German commanders that the western defenses were not in good condition, and these forces lacked ammunition, perhaps no more than three days' supply was at hand, to continue a meaningful resistance.
Furthermore, with the bulk of the German army still entangled in Poland, there was little prospect of a rapid shift from east to west in time, or in sufficient force to halt the French-led offensive. By 5 September, Halder described Poland as practically defeated, and two days later plans were being drawn for the transfer of troops to the western front. This assessment gives the impression that the German army could have responded rapidly to a western attack. This is somewhat misleading, given the confusion that existed in the east, including clogged roads, breakdowns, and equipment that required replacement or refitting. The military campaign in Poland might be considered won by the end of the first week of fighting. It nevertheless still required the rest of the month for mopping-up operations, and so not all of the German forces could be available for an improvised defence on the western front. Even the internal lines of communication which had helped Frederick the Great achieve his “miracle” and had enabled the Germans to stave off the Russians in 1914 would have been of less advantage in 1939, assuming that the French were quickly off the mark in the west. The extraction of a significant part of the German army from the east would have proven difficult and complicated by the inevitable confusion that follows in the wake of a rapid and successful campaign. When the victory in Poland was assured and Hitler asked his generals on 27 September to begin planning for a western offensive, the earliest date that they could provide for deployment was 5 November. Thus, the quick victory in the east in 1939 created conditions that left Germany exposed and vulnerable in the west, certainly through the months of September and October, had the French army been equipped and prepared to seize the initiative.
Whether or not the circumstances of a French military success in the west in September 1939 would have been more likely to bring an action on the part of the German generals to remove Hitler than if the British and French had stood up to Hitler at Munich is difficult to judge. The Munich crisis was perhaps the better moment from the point of view of the opposition to Hitler, but 1939 was the point when the allies decided to stand firm. Certainly all of the leading generals, including Brauchitsch, Halder, Leeb, Bock, Rundstedt – virtually the entire Generalitat – had been approached. Many had shown a willingness to support a coup to remove Hitler under the right conditions. Perhaps the conditions in September1939 were not as auspicious or as likely to lead to a coup as they had been the year before at the time of Munich, but certainly the leading German generals were as alarmed as ever at the prospect of a western campaign, seen in the conspiracies that developed in the aftermath of the Polish campaign. Thus, it is likely that the generals might have initiated a coup when confronted with the prospect of a serious military defeat in the west brought on by Hitler's reckless plunge into war.
Confidence in this option is tempered by the knowledge that even the bloodletting of the First World War did not produce an upheaval sufficiently powerful and organized to topple a government until the Russian revolution in 1917. Presuming that military defeat discredited Hitler, the opposition conspiracy would have required popular support. This might have come in the form of the dissident trade union leadership, which was prepared to engage in a general strike to halt the plunge toward war. Against this prospect is the loyal support that Hitler commanded from Nazi fanatics to whom he could appeal in 1939, just as he would in the summer of 1944. The assessment of a successful opposition coup against Hitler in the midst of the Polish campaign and a French invasion must be tempered insofar as it would have required significant planning to remove not only Hitler, but much of the party leadership that could be blamed for bringing war and defeat upon Germany. The task of the opposition remained to convince that German people, or a least convince a significant element of the elites, that a long war was not winnable and was ruinous to Germany's status as a great power.
The need was to demonstrate, as surely a French victory in the west would do, that a war policy was disastrous not only in the long run, but in the short run as well. That task could not have been accomplished easily in September 1939 without a decisive French military offensive deep into German territory that would have deprived Germany of its industrial base and left the country open to an extensive French occupation. Yet a successful French thrust and ensuing defeat might have been the catalyst for a military move against the man who was responsible for this state of affairs. That the attack and presumed victory in the west did not come was the result of the French command's commitment to a defensive strategy, and its expectation of eventual success in a long war of attrition.
Assuming the French had launched an attack, and Hitler did not survive this disgrace but was replaced by a German equivalent of Marshal Pétain or a military-civilian directory, what might have been the shape of Europe? More to the point, what might have been the basis for a negotiated peace in September under these circumstances? We have some idea of what might have been the basis of a ‘compromise peace’ in the negotiations that occurred between the British and the anti-Hitler opposition through the intermediary of the Vatican during the winter of 1939-40. Had these terms been accepted as the basis of a Germany without Hitler and, presumably, reorganized on conservative/authoritarian lines, the new German government would have been allowed to retain Austria, the Sudetenland and, presumably, a militarized Rhineland. The situation in September under the “what if” scenario would, of course, have been quite different and left the leaders of the coup in a difficult bargaining position.
Hitler's replacements may have had no choice, if the French attack were fully successful, but to accept the terms that the allies, and particularly the French government, would have dictated, just as Marshal Pétain had no choice but to accept the terms imposed by Hitler in June 1940. It is hard to imagine that a victorious Daladier government would have been open to a peace settlement that would have been less draconian than the Treaty of Versailles. If the French army had penetrated no farther than the Rhine, it is hard to imagine that they would have quietly retreated from this position to allow a military-backed government, even one purged of Hitler and ostensibly committed to peace, to militarize the Rhineland and maintain possession of Austria. On the latter issue, the French had opposed the union of Germany and Austria in both 1919 and 1931. There was little they could do about the Anschluss in 1938. But a victorious French army on the Rhine in September 1939 would have been a different matter, since it would have stiffened French nationalism and raised again the long standing fear of Germany. It is hard to imagine any French statesman not seeking absolute guarantees against renewed German aggression under these circumstances. In political terms, the French might well have insisted that the Germans give up all of Hitler's gains, beginning with the 1936 Rhineland action. In economic matters, one may well imagine the French insisting upon annexation of the Saar, and if they reached the Ruhr, asking for at least an internationalization of that industrial region to deprive Germany of its industrial base and warmaking capacity.
A peace that would have followed a successful coup against Hitler in September 1939 might have been a compromise peace that would have left Germany in possession of Austria and, possibly, the Sudetenland, only if the British had been the decisive voice at the peace table, arguing against the French nationalists that a harsh peace would only once again sow the seeds of a German revenge policy. Perhaps the western allies would have accepted a compromise, or even a generous settlement with Germany as the price of “peace in our time,” which meant the Europe that Hitler had recast up to the time of Munich. It is just as likely that the allies, and particularly the French, would have balked at giving any of Hitler's winnings to Hitler's successors if the French army were on the Rhine, or in possession of Germany's key industrial resources in the west.
An “enlightened peace” settlement between the victorious allies and the new government in Germany might have been possible in September-October 1939, but is highly unlikely. Had the war ended in September 1939 with a French triumph in the west, with Hitler's overthrow and the installation of a military backed government in Berlin, one can safely predict that this would have ended the European phase of the Second World War for the moment. It would not have resolved the underlying territorial, ethnic, and national conflicts that Hitler had exploited in coming to power in the first place. The world would have been spared enormous suffering and grief; such horrors as the Holocaust would never have occurred had events transpired to overthrow Hitler and end the war in September 1939, but it is hard to see that the basis for a stable Europe would necessarily have emerged from the scenario described above. Such an outcome would have depended upon the enlightened self-interest of the French leadership and the restraint of the new people in power in Germany in reaching a peace settlement that would be reasonable, just and lasting, but this seems less likely than a punitive peace imposed by the victorious powers. If the French had attacked and defeated Germany in the west, Hitler might not have survived. It is, however, questionable whether a “peace of conciliation” would necessarily result from negotiations between the allies and his successors.