In the 1920s the overriding objective of British policy-makers was to maintain the liberal capitalist international order that they had helped to establish after the Great War. To do so they pursued four closely interwoven policies, described by the Foreign Office in 1931 as:
In the 1920s they were generally successful, partly because the revisionist powers who might have opposed them had comparatively little hard power, partly because Britain’s own armed forces were, relatively speaking, strong and so could give British diplomatists the backing they needed, and partly because British diplomatists and politicians were confident that they were working with the grain of public opinion. But in the early 1930s much of this changed. Since 1919 two of the major pillars sustaining British grand strategy had been the existence of an embryonic system of collective security, which was coupled with a widespread belief that security could best be achieved thorough negotiating multi-lateral disarmament agreements. Those agreements would, in turn, mean that the British could maintain their security with armed forces that were both limited in size and affordable. In June 1931 the Foreign Office highlighted the importance of the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand pact and Locarno, for ‘They, and all that they stand for, are the corner-stone of our policy, and the hope of safety for our civilisation.’2 But within three years that corner-stone was looking distinctly unstable. The failure of the World Disarmament Conference disheartened those who still believed that the road to peace and security lay through multilateral disarmament. The ability of the League of Nations to do no more than wring its hands in the face of Japanese aggression in Manchuria did nothing to sustain a belief in the efficacy of collective security. The Great Depression had shattered the structure of international trade and finance and encouraged country after country to opt for protectionist policies. Between 1933 and 1936 the advent of Hitler to power in Germany, and the failure to contain Germany’s rearmament, the failure to restore good relations with Japan in the Far East, and Mussolini’s willingness openly to flout the League of Nations and invade Abyssinia combined to mark the end of the benign international system that had so favoured the British since the end of the First World War.
British policy-makers therefore had no option other than to conduct an agonizing reappraisal of how they might secure their interests in a world of new and emerging threats. To be successful they had to do three things. They had to understand the nature and reality of their opponents’ intentions and capabilities. They had to formulate a grand strategy that would either deter or coerce their enemies, and which was acceptable to their own people. And, if deterrence or coercion failed, they had to construct a sufficiently powerful coalition to defeat their enemies. These tasks were anything but simple. In the 1920s, except for the USSR, British policy-makers needed to pay little attention to the extent to which differing ideologies determined the foreign policies of other states. This worked well enough in the 1920s, for it was a time when the policies of most powers were driven by a combination of the pursuit of national interests as traditionally conceived, the personalities of their leaders, and the interplay of different factions within their policy-making elites. But such a mindset was less likely to yield accurate results in the 1930s when it was applied to the fascist dictatorships. They were driven by ideological assumptions that many British policy-makers found it hard to comprehend.3 Writing to one of his sisters in 1935 in the run-up to the Abyssinian crisis, Neville Chamberlain found it inconceivable and ‘barbarous that in these days it should still be in the power of one man, for a whim or to preserve his personal influence, to throw away the lives of thousands of Italians by sickness or disease if not by wounds.’4
British political culture, in regard both to domestic and foreign policy issues, had for a long time been grounded on the belief that different interests could and should be adjusted by processes of negotiation and compromise.5 But this was anathema to the leaders of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Rather than work within the international system as it had been re-created after 1919, they were intent on destroying it. They regarded Wilsonian New Diplomacy with contempt. Whereas MacDonald, Baldwin, and Chamberlain were insistent that their policies always had to be consistent with what they believed would be acceptable to British public opinion, their opponents saw that public opinion was something that could be manipulated in ways that they chose. British policy-makers wanted peace and regarded war as a policy of very last resort. Such was not true of the fascist powers, none of whom regarded peace as being a necessarily desirable state of affairs. Hitler and Mussolini repeatedly stressed that their aims were peaceful while simultaneously expanding their armaments. British policy-makers could not do likewise at anything like the same pace because they did not believe that the public would let them. The notions that the First World War had sprung from the pre-war international arms race, combined with the policies of the great powers in allying against each other and dividing Europe into two competing blocs, died hard in the 1930s. These constraints were not unchangeable, but it would require a willingness on the part of politicians to educate the public in the new realities of international relations before they could be removed.
Even before the Manchurian crisis and the failure of the World Disarmament Conference, some policy-makers believed that placing the ‘Ten-Year Rule’ on a rolling basis in 1928 had been a mistake. In each of their Annual Reviews of British defence policy the COS highlighted the wide discrepancies between British commitments and the ability of the armed forces to meet them.6 By late 1930 Hankey and Vansittart, worried that it was likely that Germany would soon accelerate its clandestine rearmament programme, agreed that basing defence policy on the 1928 assumption was ‘to be living in a fool’s paradise.’7 At the Three Party Conference on Disarmament in May 1931 Austen Chamberlain opined ‘that the trend of recent events in Europe was towards greater unrest, and he was doubtful in his mind whether it was really safe to lay down any hard and fast rules of this kind in view of the changed circumstances.’8 But it was not the failure of the World Disarmament Conference that persuaded ministers to look again at the question. It was the outbreak of the Manchurian crisis and more especially the threat to Shanghai. In their Annual Review completed in February 1932 the COS insisted that ‘a decision should not be delayed until the results of the Disarmament Conference are known. Recent events in the Far East are ominous. We cannot ignore the Writing on the Wall.’9 What that writing told them was that hard power mattered, and that Britain needed more of it because its armed forces were in no state to fight a major war in the Far East or anywhere else. ‘The whole of our territory in the Far East, as well as the coastline of India and the Dominions and our vast trade and shipping, lies open to attack.’ 10 The picture was equally bleak elsewhere. The fleet was ageing, too few new ships were being built to replace obsolescent vessels, and only thirty-nine of the fifty-two squadrons of the HDAF were in existence, London had less than half the approved number of anti-aircraft guns, and there were no anti-aircraft defences protecting the navy’s home ports. In 1914 the army had been able to despatch six divisions to the continent within a month of the outbreak of war. Now, if Britain was called upon to meet its obligations under the Locarno treaties, it could send only a single division. Re-equipping the forces would not be easy because the defence industrial base had shrunk to a perilously low level.11 Consequently, the rule must be cancelled and ‘a start should be made in providing for commitments which are purely defensive’.12
Their request evoked a blunt response from the Treasury in one of the first major interventions into the realm of defence policy and grand strategy by the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain. Unlike his father, Joseph, and his half-brother, Austen, Neville had little knowledge of foreign affairs or foreign countries. Austen, always intended by his father for a political career, was sent to university and then on a grand tour to prepare him. But for Neville a university education seemed an unnecessary expense for a young man destined for a career in business, and so he missed the opportunity to imbibe an understanding that the opinions of others, even when they differed from his own, might still be valid. He also missed the opportunity to learn how to distinguish between things as he wished them to be and things as they were.13 Instead, he grew to be immensely industrious, stubborn, convinced of the rightness of his own opinions, and sometimes contemptuous of those who disagreed with him. People who claimed that his sometimes-simplistic solutions to complex foreign policy issues might not work were dismissed as advocates of drift or obstructionist. He had come to national politics late in life, not entering the Commons until he was 50 years old, but he was intensely ambitious, determined to make his own mark, and he knew that both the National Government, and his own career, would stand or fall on whether he was able to engineer a recovery from the Slump. His response to the COS submission amounted to an early exposition of the thesis that Britain’s financial and economic strength (or weakness) amounted to a fourth arms of defence. He conceded that Japan may have been encouraged to act in China because it recognized that Britain did not have the military wherewithal to fight her. But, ‘Japan has probably been influenced in embarking on her present course as much by our financial and economic difficulties and preoccupations as by our military weakness. The fact is that in present circumstances we are no more in a position financially and economically to engage in a major war in the Far East than we are militarily. It would seem, therefore, that as regards the Far East we must for the time being be content with applying such deterrents as may be available.’14 Elsewhere, he countered the COS fears that Britain had permitted her defences to become too weak by insisting that this situation would only constitute a danger if Britain were engaged in a war against France, which was the only power able to menace Britain at home and abroad, and that as long as Germany continued to menace France’s eastern frontier, such a war was inconceivable. But underpinning the whole of his argument was that the National Government had been elected to engineer a recovery from the Slump, and, ‘the position and future of this country depend on the recovery and maintenance of sound finances and a healthy trading position. Without these we cannot provide resources for Imperial or national defence. What we need above all is a period of recuperation, diminishing taxes, increased trade and employment.’15
Ministers therefore had to weigh the threat of external military aggression against the failure to engineer an economic recovery, a recovery that could only be brought about by lowering public spending, and, in Chamberlain’s opinion:
at the present time financial risks are greater than any other that we can estimate. They do not desire any more than other Departments that the country should be exposed to any of the dangers which may arise from weakness in our naval, military and air forces, and when the financial and economic condition of the country has improved they will not raise objection to a further review of the provision for the Defence Services. They do, however, submit that to-day financial and economic risks are by far the most serious and urgent that the country has to face and that other risks must, be run, until the country has had time and opportunity to recuperate and our financial situation to improve.16
Chamberlain won the day. In March 1932 the CID and the Cabinet accepted the COS’s recommendation that the Ten-Year Rule had to be abandoned. But ministers did not endorse the COS insistence that more money would have to be spent making good the services’ deficiencies beyond subsequently agreeing to some acceleration of works at Singapore.17 Economic recovery had to come before the immediate needs for defence.18
Thus, barely six weeks after the World Disarmament Conference met the Cabinet had abandoned the main principles that had underpinned British defence policy since 1919. But they had put nothing in their place and the issue remained dormant for over a year. It was not until late 1933 that ministers accepted that something more was necessary. In June 1933 the COS agreed that, following Japan’s departure from the League, Hitler’s advent to power in Germany, and the deadlock at the Disarmament Conference, their next Annual Review must examine both Britain’s commitments and highlight the inability of the services to meet them.19 The review was completed on 12 October, just two days before Hitler withdrew from the Conference and the League. Britain’s defence priorities, in order of importance, were the defence of British interests in the Far East, the European commitments Britain had undertaken at Locarno, and the defence of India against Soviet aggression. But the services suffered from such serious deficiencies that they could not fulfil any of them. Although the navy would be able to meet its obligations in a war with France against Germany, it would not have enough capital ships, cruisers, and reserves of oil to dispatch a fleet to Singapore, and most of its bases on the route to the Far East were inadequately defended. The army had the manpower to carry out the Defence of India Plan, but not the equipment or munitions to do so, and it was utterly unprepared, in terms of manpower, equipment, and munitions, to conduct a land war in Western Europe. In a war with France against Germany the RAF could meet its initial obligations by calling upon squadrons based in Great Britain, but only so long as it had no other major overseas commitments, and only if the HDAF program was continued. But over the longer term its effectiveness would be rapidly degraded because it lacked adequate reserves of men and machines. Sending reinforcements to the Far East was problematic because the air route from Calcutta to Singapore had not yet been completed. As a first step towards meeting these deficiencies the COS asked the CID to provide them with some guiding principles to replace the Ten-Year Rule.20
The international situation, and the picture of Britain’s defence deficiencies, were both sufficiently bleak to persuade ministers that they had to do something. In November they endorsed the COS’s order of priorities and agreed that the Chiefs, meeting under Hankey’s chairmanship, and with representatives from the Treasury and Foreign Office, should constitute a Defence Requirements Committee. It had the task of preparing ‘a programme for meeting our worst deficiencies for transmission to the Cabinet.’ But the Cabinet also added two important riders to the committee’s terms of reference. Germany and Japan were Britain’s potential enemies, and the committee was told to take no account of the possibility that Britain might find itself in conflict with the USA, France, or most significantly at things transpired, Italy. Secondly, the committee was to focus on what MacDonald called ‘our major deficiencies in their technical aspects’, and it was to ignore ‘their political aspects’. They would subsequently be considered ‘by a ministerial committee. The Cabinet would be quite uncommitted until these proposals had come before them.’21 In other words ministers had no intention of allowing the experts to construct a new grand strategy that ignored the political realities as they saw them.
The DRC, which deliberated between November 1933 and February 1934, not only addressed the armed services’ most serious deficiencies, it also conducted the most far-reaching review of British grand strategy since 1919 as it laboured to replace the policies of the 1920s with a new grand strategy better suited to the more hostile environment confronting the British Empire in the mid-1930s.22 Its starting point was the Foreign Office’s observation that, although Britain’s goals had not changed, ‘The economic and political situation of the world has for a variety of causes seriously deteriorated, and that the course of events has not only brought to general notice the unsound basis on which international relations rest, but has also confronted the world with the unescapable dilemma of finding an urgent solution for the most serious of these questions or of witnessing the further and perhaps rapid deterioration of the situation.’23 Whereas the League’s prestige had been at an all-time high in 1930, three years later it had suffered immensely with Japan’s departure. But the threat to peace and security nearer to home was even more worrying. British policy-makers had not yet lost all faith in liberal internationalism, but such was not the case in Germany, where:
The world is once more faced with a people intended to be permanently under arms and inspired with an intensified militarism and the vicious old glorification of force. These doctrines are implicit and explicit in the pronouncements, past and present, of all the protagonists of the new regime; and, if they are allowed to run their course, we shall within measurable time be confronted by a nation imbued with a fanaticism equal to that of the Soviet Union, but with an infinitely greater efficiency. In the new—or renewed—German vocabulary the words international and pacifist are an offence, and the heart of these people is not only not at Geneva, but fundamentally opposed to all that the League of Nations in reality stands for.24
The DRC had now to find an adequate response. Hankey, the chairman, was assisted by Vansittart and the Permanent Under Secretary of the Treasury, Sir Warren Fisher, and the three COS, Sir Ernle Chatfield (CNS), Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd (CIGS), and Sir Charles Ellington (CAS). Montgomery-Massingberd, who served as CIGS between 1933 and 1936, could be charming, articulate, and persuasive, although he was handicapped in committee discussions by deafness. The reputation he gained as an arch reactionary owed more to the ill-will of the Times’s military correspondent, Basil Liddell Hart, than it did to reality. Like his predecessor, Sir George Milne, Montgomery-Massingberd was not an advocate of independent armoured forces that would take the place of conventional formations. But he did regard armoured formations as an essential part of a properly balanced army, and he earned the esteem of some of the army’s tank pioneers for his role in establishing the 1st Tank Brigade on a permanent basis in 1933, and the formation of the Mobile (i.e. armoured) Division in 1934. He was also determined to modernize the army and prepare it to fight alongside the French in a continental land war. Ellington’s appointment as CAS, a post he held from 1933 to 1937, was unexpected. It happened because of the sudden death of his predecessor, Sir Geoffrey Salmond. He was not an ideal choice. He was incapable of holding his own in debate with the other COS or senior civil servants, and allowed a good deal of his thinking to be done by his senior staff officers, and in particular by Arthur Harris, an extreme exponent of the view that the bomber would be the decisive weapon in the next war.25 Chatfield was the outstanding personality, and intellect, among the COS. Hankey acted as an honest broker between the different departmental interests represented by his colleagues. The Service chiefs tended to be marginalized during the wide-ranging discussions that surveyed the changing pattern of international relations, not least because Fisher and Vansittart had more forceful personalities than the COS, and their ministers had more power in Cabinet than did the service ministers.
Intelligence reports showed that both Germany and Japan threatened British security. From Tokyo the British ambassador reported that the Japan’s economic predicament meant that it was intent on consolidating its position in Manchuria. With a population of 60 million people, expanding at the rate of nearly 1,000,000 annually, and with their overseas trade impeded by the rising tariff walls created by many other countries, the Chinese market was of far greater importance to Japan than to any other power. Japan had left the League of Nations because its government believed they had to choose between remaining a member and sacrificing their vital interests in Manchuria. The Japanese were re-equipping their army ‘up to the most modern European standards’, and although Lindley did not believe that Japanese ambitions extend beyond the mainland of China, the Admiralty disagreed.26 They had discovered that during the Shanghai crisis the Japanese had planned to dispatch an expeditionary force of one division against Singapore, and that it could reach its objective within eight to ten days, long before the British fleet could arrive to protect the base.27 The British continued to gather intelligence pointing to Japan’s hostile intentions throughout the 1930s. They knew that Japan was spending heavily on its armed forces, was stockpiling strategic raw materials, and that political power was shifting towards the armed services and away from those ‘moderates’ with whom some British policy-makers hoped to do business. Even so they were sceptical that Japan could wage a successful war against a major European power. Not only did Japan lack the financial resources and a sufficiently large engineering industry to support its bloated armed forces in a long war, but it was all too easy for British analysts, handicapped by the difficulty of collecting intelligence in a police-state, to play down the combat effectiveness of Japan’s armed forces. Indeed, as the 1930s progressed to compensate for their inability to dispatch a powerful fleet to protect their Far Eastern empire, British naval intelligence placed ever greater emphasis on the comforting notion of the supposed inefficiency of the IJN.28
The Germans, too, were expanding their armed forces in the early 1930s and the British had no such reservations about their efficiency. In the short-term Germany did not pose an immediate threat to European peace, not least because there were rumours that the French and Poles might be contemplating coercing Germany by mounting a preventive war. But in the longer term, as Rumbold had reported, there could be no doubt that Hitler was determined to rearm. He would then reassert Germany’s status as a great power, use force to restore to Germany the territory it had lost in the east in 1919, and then to carve out a new empire at the expense of Russia and the Baltic states.29 ‘Since he assumed office’, Rumbold concluded, ‘Herr Hitler has been as cautious and discreet as he was formerly blunt and frank. He declares that he is anxious that peace should be maintained for a ten-year period. What he probably means can be more accurately expressed by the formula: Germany needs peace until she has recovered such strength that no country can challenge her without serious and irksome preparations. I fear that it would be misleading to base any hopes on a return to sanity or a serious modification of the views of the Chancellor and his entourage.’30 Shortly before the DRC convened Rumbold’s despatch had encouraged Hankey to read Mein Kampf, both in the original German version and in the expurgated English-language edition, and to compare the two so he could come to an informed judgement about the future direction of German policy.31 Rumbold’s successor in Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, shared his predecessor’s well-founded fears of German aims and methods, and was pleased that Hankey had circulated his own findings to Simon and a handful of his officials, ‘for it is essential, in my humble opinion, that German peace bellowings [sic] should not be taken strictly at their face value.’32 Militarism, Phipps reported, seemed to the rampant and the supine reaction of the British and French when Germany left the Disarmament Conference and the League only served to increase the Fuhrer’s prestige in Germany.33 But all was not yet lost, and there might still be time for coercion to work. Germany, Phipps believed in January 1934 was ‘still sufficiently conscious of her weakness and isolation to be brought to a halt by a united front abroad, though the time is not far distant when even a threat of force will prove ineffective.’34 But once Germany had rearmed, Hitler would not be deflected from a policy of expanding eastwards and southwards. By the time he left Berlin in May 1937 Phipps was utterly convinced that Hitler was a fanatic who was determined to establish German hegemony over the whole of Europe.35
The ambassadors’ assessment of Hitler’s likely course was essentially correct. In view of Germany’s diplomatic isolation and military weaknesses, Hitler did indeed tread warily between 1933 and 1936, constantly repeating the same themes. Germany wanted peace; the Nazi regime was a bulwark against Bolshevism; Germany had already disarmed in accordance with the terms of the Versailles settlement; his government was strongly in favour of disarmament and arms control and was ready to conclude non-aggression pacts with its neighbours. Germany merely wanted to rearm up to the same level as its neighbours to safeguard its own security. Its goal of peacefully revising the Versailles settlement was justified by the principle of national self-determination, which the peace treaty had failed to apply in the case of Germany.36 The non-aggression pact he signed with Poland in January 1934 seemed to be a token of his good intentions. But in reality what it did was to begin the process of undermining French influence in eastern Europe by removing the possibility of Poland participating alongside France in a preventive war against Germany.37 And behind his sham peaceful protestations lay the reality that he continued the Weimar regime’s programme of covert rearmament, although on a much-increased scale.38
All the members of the DRC were agreed that British security depended on deterring both Japan and Germany from actively threatening their interests. What they found more difficult to agree upon was how to do so. Neither Germany nor Japan represented an immediate threat to vital British interests, but there could be no doubt that in the long term their ambitions were bound to bring them into conflict with the British. Coercion in the shape of a preventive war to forestall Germany was never seriously considered. The committee had barely begun its work when Hankey concluded ‘that Ministers are beginning to see that the re-armaments in Germany is not likely to be stopped except by the most drastic measures,—for which I do not believe public opinion, either here or in France would stand.’39 Instead the committee accepted Montgomery-Massingberd’s contention that Germany would be ready to go to war within five years, and determined that their own programme must be completed over a similar timescale.40 But that did not imply that they also agreed that their first priority should be to meet the German threat. In their 1933 Annual Review the COS had favoured giving priority to the Japanese threat in the Far East, followed by Germany in Europe, and finally the defence of India against the USSR. Vansittart disagreed. The Russian threat to India could be dismissed because ‘Russia had her difficulties with Japan on one flank and with Germany on the other, and also suffered from internal chaos.’41 Furthermore, ‘The order of priorities which put Japan first pre-suppose that Japan would attack us after we had got into difficulties elsewhere. “Elsewhere” therefore came first, not second; and elsewhere could only mean Europe, and Europe could only mean Germany.’42 Britain did not have the resources to fight Germany and Japan simultaneously, ‘and he felt that of the two Germany was the greater menace.’43 Fisher agreed that Germany was a greater threat, and that Britain lacked the resources to fight both powers simultaneously. But the problem could be made more manageable if the Singapore base was completed. This would convince the Japanese that ‘we were not a country to be played with, and that we were prepared to stand up against her, as mere weakness on our part would only breed contempt.’44 Once the Japanese understood that the way would be open to negotiate a détente with Tokyo, thus leaving Germany as Britain’s only potential enemy. Fisher encapsulated his own preferences as being ‘First, the Far Eastern commitment, as to which I envisage an ultimate policy of accommodation and friendship with Japan and an immediate and provisional policy of “showing a tooth” for the purpose of recovering the standing which we have sacrificed in our post-War period of subservience to the USA. Secondly, I take Germany as the ultimate potential enemy against whom our “long view” defence policy would have to be directed.’45
Fisher and Vansittart therefore agreed that Germany, rather than Japan, was Britain’s most dangerous adversary, that Singapore should be completed by 1938 as a token of British strength and determination, and that everything possible should be done through diplomatic means to reduce, and if possible eliminate, the Japanese threat, so that the British could focus their defence resources nearer to home. Where they differed was the price they were willing to pay for a Japanese détente. The Foreign Office understood that Britain would not have the armed forces it would need to fight both Germany and Japan single-handedly even after its worst defence deficiencies had been made good. It would, therefore, have to work with other powers opposed to German and Japanese ambitions. In Europe that meant France. In the Far East it meant the USA. Like many other British policy-makers, Vansittart sometimes felt frustrated by American policies, but he also understood that alienating the USA would do Britain more harm than good, not least because, as the events of 1917–18 had demonstrated, in a long war Britain would need a well-disposed America if it was to outlast its enemies. But, like Chamberlain, Fisher had little time for pandering to the Americans.46 The Americans’ insistence that the allies must repay their war debts, and Britain’s reluctance to do so, meant that the Treasury had little love for the USA. In a series of memoranda Fisher poured forth some of the irrational bile that had built up amongst Treasury mandarins who had reluctantly seen the financial supremacy that the City of London had possessed before 1914 pass across the Atlantic to Wall Street. ‘From the outset I have, both verbally and in writing, made it clear that in my judgement the worst of our defence deficiencies is our entanglement with the USA, with all its dangerous consequences.’47 Britain had been inveigled into abandoning the Anglo-Japanese alliance for no compensating gains, and he was willing to sacrifice good relations with Washington if it meant getting once again on good terms with Tokyo.48 It was pointless hoping that the Americans would somehow neutralize Japan because ‘The barest acquaintance with the history of the American Colonies from the middle of the 18th century and of the United States since the War of Independence makes it clear to any but the most infatuated sentimentalist that America never has been and never will be politically reliable where England is concerned.’ But once Britain ceased to be subservient to the USA it could easily reach a settlement with Tokyo, and if Washington objected to the Japanese demand for naval parity at the 1935 London conference, the British should ignore them. In any case, beset by the Depression, he did not believe that the US administration would actually carry out is threat to build a fleet to outmatch the Japanese, and thus start a new naval arms race, and even if they did, they ‘should be left to circle the globe with ships if they want, to gratify their vanity by singing “Rule Columbia, Columbia rules the waves,” and to wait and see for how many years the politically all-powerful Middle West will continue to acquiesce in paying a fantastic bill related to no real requirement but primarily to indulge the braggadocio of Yahooden.’49 Once free of ‘thraldom to the USA’, the British would be able to focus on the German threat, ‘the Paramount danger at our very threshold.’50 If Japan was no longer a serious threat the navy’s programme to modernize the fleet and replace its ageing capital ships could be postponed, saving the Treasury, Fisher estimated, as much as £67 million.51 The whole committee agreed that Singapore had to be completed, but other members took a more realistic view of the difficulties in restoring good relations with Tokyo and the cost of alienating the USA.52 Hankey had little time for Fisher’s ventures into the realm of strategy, telling one of his assistants that Fisher ‘is rather mad. Apparently he has some mysterious nerve disorder and his judgement is affected thereby.’53
The COS have been accused of failing to bring to the committee an overarching doctrine to replace the defunct Ten-Year Rule.54 This is true, but it overlooks the fact that they did not believe that the kind of diplomatic sleight of hand that Fisher recommended was practicable. Chatfield, the most articulate of the COS, agreed that if Britain was at war with Germany, Japan would pounce. But, ‘On those grounds he was of the opinion that it was difficult in a long-term programme to place Germany or Japan in any particular order of priority, and he suggested that they might be considered equally.’55 What he understood was that Britain’s defence obligations were global; British interests were threatened not just by Japan in the Far East, but also by Germany in Western Europe, and over the skies of Britain itself. The implications were that all three services had an equal claim to have their deficiencies made good, and each of them presented their own shopping list. The navy wanted to prepare for a war in the Far East. Singapore had to be completed, the defences of the ports on the route to the Far East had to be modernized, and reserve stocks of war stores and oil amassed to ensure that the fleet had the mobility to reach Singapore and to fight once it arrived. Chatfield believed that until this was done, and the Royal Navy either had more battleships or a naval arms limitation agreement was in place that encompassed both the USA and Japan, it would be wise not to antagonize the Japanese. Ultimately the only thing likely to deter the Japanese was their fear that if they overstepped the mark they would be confronted by a combined response from London and Washington. But that raised one major imponderable. What line would the Japanese take at the next London Naval Conference, due to be held in 1935?56 If they opted out of the Washington system the British could either try to go it alone and build against Japan, or they could work in harmony with the Americans, who were bound to see unrestricted Japanese naval expansion as a threat to their own Far Eastern interests. But if they followed the latter course, might they find themselves embarking on an unsustainable arms race that would destabilize British imperial security in the Far East? For the time being, therefore, it seemed best to temporize, and so the navy did not put forward specific proposals for new construction. They merely warned that if the conference did not produce a successful arms limitation agreement, Britain’s ageing fleet would have to be quickly replaced in the second half of the decade.57
The army’s request for funds to modernize the defences of British ports at home and overseas harmonized with the navy’s plans to send a fleet to Singapore. Similarly, their commitment to creating an effective air-defence system around London was matched by the RAF’s plans for the air defence of Great Britain.58 But it was the third part of the General Staff’s programme that was problematic. Although in practice the army was committed to imperial defence duties between the wars, the General Staff never lost sight of developments on the continent of Europe, and recognized that one day it was likely that it would have to despatch an army to Western Europe to defend British interests.59 The experience of the First World War had demonstrated that the despatch of the small regular expeditionary force was no more than a token of Britain’s willingness to assist its continental partners. There could be no meaningful continental commitment without the mobilization of the Territorial army to create a continental-scale army. This had been made plain in 1926 when the COS agreed that:
It is most necessary to realise that the military basis on which our foreign policy must ultimately rely for the liquidation of its continental commitments is the capacity of Great Britain primarily, and eventually, subject to article 9 of the Locarno Treaty, of the Empire generally, to mobilise all their resources for war. The despatch of our small expeditionary forces to a continental theatre of war can never be more than a pledge of our readiness to fulfil our guarantees. The capacity to fulfil those guarantees will be assessed by the completeness of the framework for military expansion, and by our preparations for the industrial mobilisation necessary to keep a national army in the field—matters which are now the subject of general enquiries by the Committee of Imperial Defence and the Departments concerned. We attach importance to the continuance of those enquiries.60
The Military Members of the Army Council agreed. ‘This small Regular force can only be an advanced guard to our real military force—the Territorial Army’, the Adjutant-General reminded his colleagues in September 1933, ‘—and the recasting of our plan should, in my view, including effective measures to expedite despatch of a considerable portion of the Territorial Army.’61 Montgomery-Massingberd’s ‘advance guard’ was to be a force of four regular divisions, a cavalry division, and a tank brigade ready to go overseas within one month of mobilization. His ‘real military force’ was to be three contingents, each of four Territorial army divisions, to follow at intervals of four, six, and eight months. He knew that ‘this is a task at present quite beyond our means, in personnel or material, and in my opinion, it is the least that we ought to be satisfied with in five years’ time unless the government is prepared not to be able to implement our various commitments on the Continent.’62 But he was warned off his ambitious programme by Hankey. Its estimated total cost, £145 million spread over five years, was far beyond anything that ministers were likely to swallow, and if the General Staff set their sights so high it was likely that the Air Ministry would insist that they could provide any assistance that a continental ally might need at far less cost.63 The CIGS therefore focused on the more limited goal of asking for sufficient resources to prepare a regular field force, able to go overseas within one month of mobilization and consisting of a cavalry division, four infantry divisions, a tank brigade, two air-defence brigades, and an RAF contingent of nineteen squadrons. This force, together with a stockpile of munitions sufficient for six months of fighting, was to be ready by 1939. The Territorial army would remain the sole basis for the expansion of the army in a major war, but he shied away from preparing them according to the same timetable because ‘if their full requirements were taken into consideration the total bill would be enormous.’64 The Territorials were merely to get an increased allotment of £250,000 annually for new training equipment.65 Vansittart, who understood that diplomacy needed the backing of hard power, even if it was held in the background, thought that was too little and wanted to treble it, but the CIGS cautioned against throwing money at the Territorials before a properly formulated scheme for their expansion had been prepared.66 This was a fateful decision. It meant that at no time in the 1930s were the British ever in a position to make a meaningful continental commitment. For too long British diplomatists were therefore deprived of one element of power that might have persuaded potential allies and enemies of the seriousness of their intent.
Ellington was a poor advocate for the RAF. He wanted to complete the 1923 HDAF by forming eleven new squadrons between 1934 and 1940, which he believed would suffice to meet the Defence of India plan and any other overseas commitments that had been agreed between the Air Ministry and the War Office. But it would not, because he had forgotten to include the nineteen squadrons earmarked to accompany a field force to the continent. ‘CAS extremely weak in discussion and his utterances most confused….’67 The RAF then found themselves in the unusual position of being urged to ask for more, in the shape of an extra twenty-five squadrons.68 Both Fisher and Vansittart believed that the Germans would use the threat of air power as a political lever to exert international influence.69 They also believed that it would be an astute political move to ask for more money for air defence, for, as Vansittart warned his colleagues:
Ministers were beginning to realise that they would shortly be asked to make considerable financial provision in the interests of general defence. He thought, however, that they would expect to have proposals put before them which would include something definite which they could show to the country. If the public were to be brought to the point of paying large sums for defence, then, in his opinion, it was necessary that the Air requirements should receive full treatment. If Air requirements were brought into the background in any way, he felt the public opinion would be unwilling to meet the bill for other needs.70
That Ellington was subjected to criticism from Vansittart and Fisher also reflected the difficulty the British had in accurately estimating the growth of the German armed forces. This was partly because of the sheer practical problems of gathering information in a police-state and partly because of the weaknesses of the British intelligence machine already outlined. But it also reflected another obstacle they had to overcome, Hitler’s propensity to make policy on the hoof. Hitler had little interest in rigid or long-term planning, and his goals were so far-reaching and ambitious that he dared not bring them together in a single coherent programme without running the risk of appalling many of his own subordinates. Instead, he opted to raise targets repeatedly on an ad hoc basis. Few German policy-makers were prepared to do what the British did when they contemplated the problems of rearmament, and to spend time and effort trying to coordinate the competing imperatives of creating and expanding the material basis for rearmament, increasing the personnel of the armed services, and conducting operational planning.71 Instead, rearmament planning in Germany, if the word planning is in any way appropriate, took the form of a series of struggles between competing agencies and potentates that flouted most of the orthodox rules of economic thinking and practice.72
British analysts who tried to understand the implications and consequences of German practices therefore had a doubly difficult task. Not only was the information available to them often incomplete, but the analytical tools which they used to try to make sense of it were badly designed for the job.73 The Air Ministry’s Intelligence Department tried to fill the gaps in their knowledge and understanding by mirror-imaging, that is, by assuming that the Germans would do as they themselves were doing. Ellington’s assessment that completion of the HDAF would suffice was based on his belief that the German air force would not grow at a faster rate. They knew from their own experience of expanding the RAF in the 1920s that training air crews, building airfields and aircraft, and stockpiling reserves would take time, and on that basis concluded that by 1939 the Germans would have no more than about six hundred bombers, a force that the RAF could easily match if the fifty-two squadron HDAF was completed.74 Similarly, although there was evidence that the Germans themselves were divided over the role of their new air force, some arguing that it would be an indispensable adjunct to the land battle, and others that it would have a strategic role, the Air Staff in London, and British policy-makers more generally, had no such doubts.75 Both opted for the second interpretation, the Air Staff because it dovetailed with their own strategic doctrine, and their civilian counterparts because it mirrored their long standing fears that Britain was peculiarly vulnerable to air attack.76 They were both wrong. At no time before 1939 did the Luftwaffe have the technological capabilities or the intention of conducting a strategic air offensive against Britain. After 1919 the German shadow Air Staff developed a doctrine, based on a careful study of the lessons of the First World War, that posited that aircraft were offensive weapons and that their real purpose was to establish an air superiority over the battlefront. Strategic air operations against the enemy’s home front were not worthwhile, partly because of the high losses they would incur, and partly because it would divert assets away from combined arms operations on the battlefield. The handful of senior officers who did harbour ideas about strategic air operations had only limited influence.77 In 1939, when the Luftwaffe did examine the possibility of mounting a strategic air offensive against Britain, they quickly concluded that their fleet of medium bombers was just not up to the task.78
Preparing the DRC’s report, which was completed in February 1934, taxed even Hankey’s formidable skills as a draftsman. The strategic context largely followed the arguments of Fisher and Vansittart. The growing body of evidence indicating Germany’s intention to rearm with or without the consent of its neighbours, coupled with Japan’s deteriorating relations with Russia, justified the conclusion that Germany, not Japan, was Britain’s ‘ultimate potential enemy against whom our “long range” defence policy must be directed.’ In the Far East, ‘we envisage an ultimate policy of accommodation and friendship with Japan, and an immediate and provisional policy of “showing a tooth” for the purpose of recovering the standing which we have sacrificed of recent years.’ However, the report avoided the kind of forthright criticism of the USA that Fisher lobbied to have included, merely suggesting that ministers might wish to consider the implications of close Anglo-American relations in the context of the forthcoming naval disarmament conference. The COS got most of their own shopping lists, with the result that the committee’s recommendations represented a balanced programme of rebuilding all three services over the next five years. If the Cabinet accepted the report, the deficiency programme would provide Britain with a series of well-defended ports east of Suez (but much less well protected in the Mediterranean and on the Cape route) along which a modernized, better-equipped, and better-manned main fleet which could sail to Singapore. It would also have a regular army field force that it could send to the continent, while Britain itself would be protected by modernized coast and anti-aircraft defences, and a more powerful HDAF. The total bill to be met over the next five years would come to £71,323,580, of which the navy was to receive £21 million, the army £40 million, and the RAF £10.3 million.79 The largest single item in that bill was £25.68 million, the money needed to prepare the army’s field force for operations on the continent. This was more than one-third of the total cost of the deficiency programme. Hankey recognized that both the cost and its political implications would alarm ministers and therefore ‘that it would be essential to include in the Committee’s report a clearly worded statement as to why it was considered necessary to organize an Expeditionary Force to fight in a possible continental war. It would doubtless be necessary to convince ministers that the defence of the Low Countries against a hostile Power was as important as ever; indeed, it had become more important with the advent of Air Forces.’80
This was not an argument that could be taken for granted. Parts of the press had loudly condemned Locarno as an alliance with France that would oblige Britain to lend it military assistance in a repetition of 1914–18, and Simon believed that the outcome of a recent by-election in East Fulham demonstrated that ‘the good people of Fulham naturally use the opportunity to show that they do not mean to send their sons to France and Flanders anymore.’81 The report therefore included a lengthy justification explaining why the independence of the Low Countries remained a vital British interest. It reminded ministers that ‘For centuries this has been regarded as vital to our safety, and it is certainly not less true to-day in view of developments in modern armaments. We have fought at regular intervals on the Continent in order to prevent any Power, strong or potentially strong at sea, from obtaining bases on the Dutch and Belgian coasts.’ In case they thought that history was no longer relevant, the committee also pointed out that modern developments had made the security of the Low Countries more, rather than less, vital:
To-day the Low Countries are even more important to us in their relation to the air defence of this country. Their integrity is vital to us in order that we may obtain that depth in our defence of London which is so badly needed, and of which our geographical position will otherwise deprive us. If the Low Countries were in the hands of a hostile Power, not only would the frequency and intensity of air attacks on London be increased, but the whole of the industrial areas of the Midlands and North of England would be brought within the area of penetration of hostile air attacks.82
The regular field force, provided with modern equipment, was ‘as an essential first step; the support of this force by contingents from the Territorial Army is a matter which will require consideration when the urgent needs of the Regular Army have been met. We believe that a force organized as above, and supported by appropriate Air Forces, would, as a deterrent to an aggressor, exercise an influence for peace out of all proportion to its size.’83
At the DRC’s first meeting Fisher, taking MacDonald’s guidelines, had told the COS to propose whatever programs they felt were necessary, and without giving any consideration to their political or financial feasibility. Henry Pownall, the committee’s secretary, was justifiably cynical about this ploy. It left the Treasury’s hands free to rewrite any of the committee’s recommendations it did not like. ‘W[arren] F[isher] by disclaiming his position as Secretary to the Treasury and emphasising only his membership of the Committee is rather astute. It leaves him free to fight the financial aspect afterwards and not in the Committee face-to-face with the COS. It sounded all very cooperative and matey, but there is more to it than that.’84 His suspicions were justified. Few politicians or Treasury officials were Keynesians in the early 1930s. They still clung to the notion that in peacetime governments should demonstrate fiscal and political rectitude by balancing the budget. Chamberlain hoped that doing so would recreate confidence amongst businessmen and encourage them to resume investing. The fact that Britain had been forced to leave the gold standard two months earlier did assist Britain’s recovery from the Slump. It meant that the Bank Rate could be reduced to just 2 per cent, where it remained until 1939. The result was that there was a period of strong recovery in 1933, followed by a falling off in 1934, and then a period of rapid improvement between 1935 and 1937. However, in the middle of 1937 the recovery stalled as the economy stopped expanding, and 1938 saw a sharp recession. Thereafter the impact of rearmament was felt, business activity picked up, but a new problem then emerged. With the exceptions of 1919 and 1926, Britain had enjoyed a favourable balance of payments. It imported more goods than it exported, but the adverse balance on visible trade was counterbalanced by the invisible earnings generated by the City of London and income from overseas investments. It was this favourable balance of payments that had enabled Britain to borrow heavily in the USA during the First World War to fund both its own and its allies’ war efforts. But in 1931 Britain had a balance of payments deficit of £100 million. That had almost disappeared by 1933, but the balance was again adverse in 1934, and, after some further fluctuations, remained in deficit, with the results that Britain’s reserves of gold and foreign currency fell sharply in 1938 and 1939 as they were used to bridge the gap. These issues were of strategic significance because between a quarter and a third of the cost of the armaments Britain produced was represented by the price of imported raw materials, and the money had to be found to pay for them. As George Peden has argued, ‘It is with the balance of payments, and its effects on confidence in the financial community and on Britain’s international purchasing power, chiefly in mind that the Treasury’s attitude to the financial limits to rearmament must be considered.’85
The Treasury understood that powerful armed forces were necessary to deter a potential aggressor, but it also feared that if Britain devoted too many resources to defence its economic recovery from the slump would falter, and taxpayers would become discontented. Together this would create the impression that Britain was both economically and politically vulnerable. Potential aggressors might conclude that Britain had neither the wherewithal nor the political will to fight. In 1932, when ministers had agreed to cancel the Ten-Year Rule, they had also accepted Chamberlain’s insistence that the financial risks far outweighed any military threats facing Britain, and the services had not been given a green light to increase their estimates. By November 1933, when the DRC began its work, there were some signs of economic recovery, but ministers continued to believe that encouraging civil industry and trade and balancing the budget should remain their priority. Constraining public expenditure was also a political imperative. The government’s political credibility was at stake, because ministers had promised that the increased rates of income tax and public sector pay cuts they had imposed in 1931 were only temporary measures and that they would reverse them as soon as possible.86 Chamberlain’s goal was therefore to reduce the DRC’s spending programme from £93 million down to £77 million, and the task facing him and his colleagues was how to translate the DRC’s recommendations into a coherent grand strategy but at considerably lower cost. This was never going to be easy and indeed the Cabinet shied away from it until in May 1934, under pressure from the three service ministers, they gave the task of examining the committee’s recommendations in detail to the Ministerial Committee on Disarmament (DC(M)).87
The committee met thirteen times between May and July 1934. MacDonald’s insistence that the DRC should prepare its recommendations without taking account of economic constraints proved to be a clever ploy, for it enabled ministers, who knew they would be facing a general election in little more than a year, to rewrite its recommendations in ways that they believed would be politically palatable to the electorate. The COS had little chance to prevent this for, although they were asked to tender advice on paper, they were never invited to attend the committee in person. MacDonald was nominally the chairman of the DC(M) but exerted little influence. Not only was his health failing, but ‘He hates the subject of rearmament’.88 Simon or Baldwin chaired most sessions, but it was Chamberlain who dominated its proceedings and imposed a new grand strategy on his colleagues. He shared in full measure Fisher’s hostility towards the USA borne out of their troubles in attempting to negotiate with the USA Treasury over the settlement of British war debts and the role they believed the USA had played at the failed World Economic Conference in 1933. This hostility spilled over into his attitude towards the Americans in the wider field of international relations, and he had already made up his mind that the best way to reduce the DRC’s bill was through a détente with Japan.89 In October 1933 he had told the Cabinet how much he regretted ‘the weakening of Anglo-Japanese relations which had resulted from the termination of the Alliance at the Washington Conference in 1921–2. In the long run we had received no adequate compensation, and our position in the Far East had only been rendered more precarious. If only we could be free from all apprehension as to a conflict with Japan the situation would be greatly eased.’90 In November 1933, when the CID had first considered the COS’s Annual Review for 1933, he had wondered whether it might be possible to eliminate certain Powers from their calculations.91 Again he lamented the passing of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, telling his colleagues that ‘If it were possible to improve our relations with Japan the whole problem in the Far East would be much simplified, and it even might be possible to reduce the Far East in the order of priority.’92 He took the same line at the DC(M). Britain did not have the resources to fight Germany and Japan simultaneously, and that meant that ‘we should get on friendly terms with Japan so as to be free to use all our resources to meet Germany.’93 This evoked the immediate opposition of both the Foreign Office and the Admiralty. The Foreign Office did not believe it would be possible to propitiate the Japanese at any price that was commensurate with British interests in the Far East and that doing so was likely to alienate both the USA and the USSR.94 Chatfield damned the Chancellor for being ready to reduce British naval power to a façade, and warned Fisher that ‘What no Board of Admiralty could agree to is that we should have a Fleet to all intents and purposes efficient, but really a bogus Fleet; a Navy built up on the principle of “window dressing”.’95
But preparing to meet Germany did not mean preparing to fight them on land. When he first questioned the War Office’s insistence on the need to provide an expeditionary force to go to the continent, Chamberlain disingenuously claimed that ‘he was not trying to set himself up as a military authority in any way’.96 In fact, that was the very thing he was trying to do.97 He saw no need to risk the lives of British soldiers in France or the Low Countries. France was adequately defended by its own army and the Maginot line. If Holland and Belgium had similar fortifications, they too would not require British support on land and if they did not have such fortifications British troops could not arrive in time to save them. The most useful contribution the British could make to the defence of Western Europe was on the sea and in the air, but not on land.98 Pownall thought that ‘His ideas on strategy would disgrace a school board’.99 The Foreign Office and the General Staff agreed. Their joint riposte pointed out that the Chancellor had taken no account of the political and psychological aspects that underpinned any alliance relationship. There was a real danger that if the French believed that the British could not offer them more than token support in a crisis, they would opt to make the best terms they could with Germany.100 Vansittart, Hankey, and Montgomery-Massingberd then briefed Hailsham, who proved to be an articulate advocate of an expeditionary force.101 Far from air power having made ground forces on the continent redundant, the advocates of an expeditionary force insisted that that the security of the Low Countries, ‘a cardinal point in our policy for hundreds of years’, was now of ‘even greater importance.’102 Not only would Britain have to send troops to the continent to assist its allies in stopping Germany from occupying the Channel Ports, but it must also prevent them from using airfields in the Low Countries, and thus give Britain ‘that depth in our defence of London which is so badly needed.…If the Low Countries were in the hands of a hostile power, not only would the frequency and the intensity of air attack…be increased, but the whole of the industrial areas of the Midlands and the North of England would be brought within the area of penetration.’103
The regular field force might be small by continental standards, but its political significance could be formidable. ‘It is not so much the size of the forces that we can send’, the COS concluded, ‘as the moral effect which their arrival would have on the Belgian defence, and the knowledge that behind those forces is the whole might of the British Empire ready and determined to wage war with all its available resources in defence of the independence of the peoples whose frontiers we have guaranteed’.104 The COS did what Chamberlain seemed unable to do. They placed themselves in the position of their putative allies and argued uncompromisingly that:
Assistance on the sea and in the air will always appear to continental peoples, threatened by land invasion, to be but indirect assistance. Refusal on our part to provide direct assistance will inevitably be interpreted by our Allies as equivalent to abandoning them to their fate; whereas the arrival of even small forces which we propose to provide will have an incalculable moral effect out of all proportion to the size of those forces.
Furthermore, if we undertake a large measure of rearmament on the sea and in the air, and at the same time make inadequate provision for military forces, that fact cannot long be concealed from other nations. The European nations are essentially military nations, actively interested in, and with knowledge of land warfare. They will realise at once that although naval blockade is valuable and may in the end be decisive, it is slow in operation and before its effects are felt the campaign may be decided by military and air forces on land. The use of aviation as the primary weapon in war has not yet been tested in Europe; consequently military Powers consider an army is essential for decision.105
In Chamberlain’s defence it must be accepted that he was only reflecting informed opinion as it existed beyond the small circle of concerned ministers and the government’s professional advisers. There was ample evidence that popular fears of air attack, already obvious in the 1920s, had not abated one whit by the early 1930s. In May 1933, for example, the London Trades Council forwarded a resolution to MacDonald asking the government, in the event of the League of Nations breaking down, to take immediate steps to protect the civil population against air attacks.106 In November 1933, just days after the DRC had begun its work, the parliamentary Air Committee put down a resolution in the Commons on the supposed lack of proper provision for the air defence of Britain and its empire, and calling on the government to bring about the early completion of the 1923 HDAF programme.107 A month later the Air Ministry found that forty-four of sixty-two London and provincial newspapers they surveyed supported the idea of a one-power standard in the air to be achieved by an increase in the strength of the RAF if the Disarmament Conference failed to bring about a reduction in the air strength of other powers.108 And from the backbenches in the Commons Winston Churchill pointed to the growing German air menace and urged the government to strengthen Britain’s air defences.109
Allied to these fears of air attack were the equally deep, widespread, and persistent fears that if the government sent another large army to the continent the result would be a repetition of the horrendous casualties of 1914–18. In 1935, when he criticized the government’s defence programme, Churchill focused on the presumed inadequacies of the RAF and the navy. Preparing the army could wait, because ‘With the army, it is mainly a question of preparing civil industry for conversion to war purposes.’110 A deputation of MPs and peers who lobbied Baldwin in July 1936 to ask him to increase defence spending did raise the inadequacies in the numbers and equipment of the regular army. But they, too, focused, their attention on the other services, and deprecated the preparations of a field force to go to the continent. Their spokesman on this point, Sir Edward Grigg, whose own military experience included serving as a senior staff officer with the Guards division in France, accepted that it might be necessary to send an army to the continent to support the French. But this could wait until after a war had started. Promising to do so before then, and making that promise public, would be fatal. What both the regular and Territorial armies needed above all was more recruits, but men would not come forward if they thought that they would have ‘to repeat our 1914 experience, fear of being committed to mass warfare in France.’ The French must, therefore, be told ‘that we agree to do all we can with the Navy and the Air Force and that we will put the Army in the field later, if that proves to be necessary, all the Army she can possibly want, but that we will not have any binding engagement to send a Field Force to France on the outbreak of war.’111 It was only in the spring of 1938, following the Anschluss, that the argument began to be voiced in public suggesting that it was high time that ministers accepted that if Britain was dragged into a big war that it would need to create a big army to fight it.
Having dismissed the need for a continental-scale army and having pointed the way towards reducing British defence commitments in the Far East, Chamberlain finally focused on how to meet the German threat. That was something he believed could be done most effectively by expanding the RAF as a deterrent to German aggression. This would be cheaper than creating a continental-scale army, and it would serve to calm the fears of those, like Lord Rothermere, the influential owner of the Daily Mail, who maintained that Britain was peculiarly vulnerable to a knock-out blow from the air which might undermine civilian morale, dislocate industry, and rob Britain of both the ability and the will to fight.112 These fears had become so widespread and acute that on 8 March 1934—that is, even before the Cabinet had begun to consider the DRC’s report—Baldwin had promised the Commons that Britain would maintain a one-power standard in the air measured against any air force within striking distance of the British Isles.113 Chatfield justifiably accused Chamberlain of having ‘taken the Daily Mail propaganda very much to heart and is definitely obsessed with the fear of air attack on this country and considers it necessary to put that before everything else.’114 He was right, and indeed Chamberlain was so convinced that it would be easier to get proposals to expand the RAF through the Commons than to spend more money on either the army or the navy, that in May he actually berated Londonderry for his reluctance to put forward a more ambitious scheme to expand the RAF.115
Chamberlain brought his whole case together in a memorandum he completed on 20 June.116 The need to present a programme likely to be acceptable to the electorate was at the forefront of his thinking. If the government was to make good its promise to restore the tax increases and pay cuts it had made in 1931, the whole of the money that the DRC wanted could not be made available. Furthermore, many of the items on the DRC programme ‘appear hardly likely to command an immediate popular support. Admitting for the moment expenditure on the ships and personnel and on Singapore, the money to be spent on such items as storage tanks, oil reserves, naval ammunition in stores, and on seaward defences presents an easy target for attack, but offers considerable difficulty in detailed explanation. Expenditure on the Army, even if no mention be made of an Expeditionary Force, bulks so largely in the total as to give rise to most alarmist ideas of future intentions or commitments. On the other hand the Air Force proposals for home defence, in which public interest is strongest, contemplate no more than the completion of a program which was adopted so long ago as 1923.’117 This was the political context within which Chamberlain argued that, as the government could not find all of the funds necessary to complete the DRC’s programme over the next five years, it must focus the money it could afford to spend on the most serious and immediate threat. That, in his view, was determined by ‘the anxieties of the British people [which] are concentrated on Europe rather than on the Far East, and that if we have to make a choice we must prepare our defence against possible hostilities from Germany rather than from Japan. My first proposition then is that during the ensuing five years our efforts must be chiefly concentrated upon measures designed for the defence of these Islands.’118 The most cost-effective way of safeguarding the home islands would be:
by the establishment of an Air Force based in this country of the size and efficiency calculated to inspire respect in the mind of a possible enemy. We must, however, contemplate the possible failure of such a Force to act as a deterrent, and we must provide the means of defence in that event. Such defence would be found, partly in the enlarged Air Force, partly in the completion of anti-aircraft equipment, and, finally, in the conversion of the Army into an effectively equipped force capable of operating with Allies in holding the Low Countries and thus securing the necessary depth for the defence of this country in the air.119
But while with one hand he seemed to be offering the army a modernized field force, with the other hand he snatched it away. He claimed that he was willing to adopt in principle what he called the ‘Army Efficiency programme included in the DRC Report’. But he immediately added the rider ‘though not necessarily its practical execution in the time contemplated.’120 He justified reducing the proposed additional expenditure on the army in two ways. The first was a perfectly reasonable argument for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to make. British industry could not to produce the equipment the army needed as rapidly as the DRC had thought possible. But his second argument, ‘on a review of conditions in present-day Germany, I can hardly believe it possible that that country will be in a condition to wage war on the West within five years’, was based on no such expertise. It reflected little except his own wishful thinking. His interpretation of the financial situation also meant that much of the navy’s wish-list would also have to be sacrificed. In the Far East the promises that the British had made to the Dominions meant that Singapore would have to be completed, although for the time being it would only be used as a base for submarines and light craft, ‘and we must postpone the idea of sending out to it a fleet of capital ships capable of containing the Japanese fleet or meeting it in battle.’121 The only real security in the Far East would rest on seeking a détente with Japan. The upshot was that whereas the DRC proposed finding an additional £21.1 million between 1934/5 and 1938/9 to complete Singapore and make good the navy’s worst deficiencies, Chamberlain wished to reduce that figure to £13 million. The naval shipbuilding program would also be reduced from £97.3 million to £68.3 million over the same period. Similarly, the extra money to be found for the army would be cut from £40 million to £19.1 million. By contrast the RAF would see its allocation of new funds rise from £15.7 million in the DRC’s recommendations to £18.2 million in Chamberlain’s programme.
Chamberlain’s programme threatened to leave Britain’s Far Eastern interests at the mercy of Japan, with potentially devastating effects on relations with Australia and New Zealand. It would also ensure that the army was incapable of playing any real part in the defence of the Low Countries.122 The RAF was to be built-up, but only to meet an air threat that barely existed and could not exist unless the Germans had first occupied northern France and the Low Countries. After reading the Chancellor’s proposals Pownall correctly predicted that ‘There is going to be a rare row over the whole business: neither the Navy nor the Army can possibly stand for this.’123 Chamberlain was in a minority when the DC(M) considered his programme. Only Hoare, a former Secretary of State for Air, supported his insistence that priority must be given to expanding the RAF at the expense of the other services.124 Other ministers opposed Chamberlain’s programme either because of the impact it would have on relations with the Dominions, or because they were not yet convinced of the overwhelming need to give priority to the German air threat.125 To Baldwin’s suggestion that money could be found for a balanced defence programme if the government raised a loan, Chamberlain returned the horrified response that he ‘regarded that as the broad road which led to destruction. No doubt it would be the easiest method of finding the money, since it put upon succeeding generations the onus of repaying it. He hoped that we had not yet come to that stage and would be prepared to pay our own debts in our own generation.’126 He was equally impervious to his colleagues’ counter arguments, reiterating that while he believed there would be public support for spending more money on the air defence of Great Britain, ‘He felt that to educate the public, however, that a war in the Far East constituted a menace as great, or even nearly as great, as the air defence of this country, would be an extremely difficult task, the more so as public opinion was already alive to a considerable extent to our deficiencies in air defence.’127 It would not be possible to reconcile the electorate to any policy which denied them the restoration of the cuts imposed in 1931 for the sake of increased defence spending. In any case the completion of the field force was not as urgent as the creation of the air deterrent because the former would only be needed if the latter failed, and in any case he was willing to rely on the French coming to the assistance of the Belgians on land. But to these strategic arguments he adduced what was probably, for him, the argument of overriding importance. ‘He was faced, not only with the difficulty of finance, but with that of public opinion regarding Army expenditure, for Army expenditure would be regarded as money spent on making preparations to take part in a war on the continent. For political reasons alone, it would be very necessary to spread the Army expenditure over a considerable period in order to avoid criticism.’128
The final report of the DC(M), which the Cabinet accepted on 31 July 1934, represented a victory for Chamberlain, and a defeat for the army and navy. It also constituted the outlines of a new grand strategy. Ministers accepted that no money need be spent on preparing for a war against the USA, France, or Italy. Britain now faced two potential enemies, Japan and Germany, and of those the German threat was the more serious. Britain’s own defence deficiencies had to be put right by 1939, a timescale they chose to match what they expected would be the speed of the German rearmament programme.129 The DRC had recommended a programme that would have begun to prepare all of Britain’s armed forces for a war against either of those powers. After Chamberlain’s intervention, the DRC’s original proposals amounting to between £76 million and £78 million in extra spending over five years was reduced to a little more than £50 million to £53 million, and the defence of the British Isles dominated all other considerations. The DRC had recommended only a modest expansion of the RAF designed to create a force with the reserves of men and machines to enable it to fight a war in which squadrons were expected to suffer 50 per cent casualties each month. Instead, Chamberlain opted for a much larger number of new front-line squadrons, but a force bereft of the reserve machines and even bombs that they would need to sustain operations for more than a few weeks. His colleagues agreed. They accepted what Hankey dismissed as ‘a politicians’ window-dressing scheme’, on the grounds that ‘Considered from the point of view of the deterrent effect on Germany as a potential aggressor, and from that of public opinion in this country, there is much to be said for the formation of as large a number of squadrons as possible. To this we attach the utmost importance.’130 The money allocated to the RAF was nearly doubled, and it was told to create thirty-three new home defence squadrons by 1939.131
The army and the navy were the losers. The uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the 1935 naval disarmament conference meant that the large-scale building programme that the Admiralty wanted could be postponed until the results of the conference were known.132 Preparing a fleet able to take on the Japanese was thus put on hold. The army suffered in much the same way. The DRC had argued that as the independence of the Low Countries remained a vital British interest, the army needed a properly equipped field force capable of being despatched to the continent to contribute to its defence. The DC(M) accepted the military logic of the DRC’s report, but allowed Chamberlain to emasculate it.133 To argue that the small regular field force would have constituted a meaningful continental commitment is to stretch the meaning of the word ‘commitment’ beyond any reasonable limit. The field force, which would be a mere five divisions, would not even be ready until some unspecified date after 1939. Crucially it would lack the reserves of manpower or equipment, in the shape of a properly equipped Territorial army field force, that the COS had insisted since 1926 were essential if the British were to make a meaningful continental commitment, rather than a mere token gesture.134 Chamberlain had not lost the battle over the continental commitment, nor had the DC(M) supported the creation of a continental field force. Once the DRC’s report had emerged from the DC(M) even the tokenism represented by the DRC’s recommendations had been watered down. The DC(M) endorsed Chamberlain’s recommendation to reduce the army’s allocation of extra funds by more than half and told Hailsham to prepare a programme of army requirements on the assumption that he would receive just £19.1 million in extra funding for the period ending in March 1939, although Chamberlain could not give an absolute promise that even that much reduced sum would actually be made available. Every aspect of the army’s deficiency programme, be it equipment, stores, and munitions for the regular expeditionary force, the fixed defences of ports at home and overseas, the Territorial army, or the anti-aircraft defences of the home islands, all would remain incomplete by 1939.135 Ministers were clearly swayed by Chamberlain’s arguments that public opinion would not swallow finding the full sum recommended by the DRC and that doing so ‘would make very severe demands on the Treasury, and might necessitate a delay in the restoration of cuts, or even fresh taxation, if it were to be met. He [Chamberlain] did not think that public opinion was prepared for measures of this kind.’136
No one questioned his assertion that it would be perfectly safe to spread out completion of the army’s deficiency programme beyond 1939 because ‘he could not think that in five years from now Germany will be ready for a war on the scale of 1914–18.’137 Thus Chamberlain did not merely modify the DRC’s original report. He rewrote its central priorities. As Chancellor, Chamberlain had every right to argue that he had a duty to ensure that Britain’s defence policy had to be affordable. But his work on the DC(M) went far beyond that point, and his interference in how the total sum he was prepared to spend should be allocated proved to be seriously ill-judged. British grand strategy had generally been successful between 1922 and 1930 because, where it mattered, the British had been able to support their diplomacy by effective military deterrents. The outcome of the DC(M)s deliberations meant that in the second half of the 1930s that would no longer be the case.
The success of Britain’s new grand strategy would depend on whether the National Government could create a sufficient deterrent that would enable them to contain Germany, and whether they could improve relations with Japan without simultaneously alienating the Dominions. They failed to achieve either of these goals. A grand strategy that focused on the defence of the home islands was unlikely to please the Dominions. The paramount importance of the Royal Navy in defending the empire had been reiterated at every post-war Imperial Conference, as had the significance of Singapore as the cornerstone of British imperial strategy the Far East. But the DC(M)’s report called these principles into question. The 1926 Imperial Conference had agreed that the Dominions should be kept informed of any major developments in British defence policy likely to affect their own security, and lest continued uncertainty alarmed the Dominions, the Cabinet decided to send Hankey on an imperial tour to sell its new grand strategy to them.138 Hankey knew that doing that would be difficult so before he left he extracted from Baldwin and Chamberlain a formula encapsulating the British position. He warned them bluntly that unless Singapore was made sufficiently strong to be able to hold out until the arrival of the main fleet there was a real danger that the empire would break up.139 The form of words which he took with him revealed the essentially casuistical nature of British policy towards the Far Eastern Dominions. It was intended to give them the greatest possible reassurance of continued British protection, but also to leave the British government ample wiggle room. It stated that:
With the object of enabling the fleet to proceed to Singapore in any major emergency in the Far East, it is the intention of His Majesty’s government in the United Kingdom
The naval construction programme, however, cannot be determined until after the naval conference, 1935.140
As a formula, it was long on good intentions, but short of specific promises.
Hankey left London in September 1934 and, travelling via South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, returned to London in December. What he discovered was that each of the Dominions had their own local political and defence preoccupations, and that they did not synchronize easily with the imperial defence policy that London hoped to foist upon them.
In South Africa the establishment in 1934 of a ‘fusion’ government between J. B. M. Hertzog’s National Party and Smuts’s South African Party, in which Hertzog was the premier and Smuts was his deputy, was founded on a fragile political consensus. Members of the government accepted that the Statute of Westminster afforded the Union independence within the Commonwealth but there was no consensus about how the Union would react if Britain became involved in a war in Europe which did not also pose an immediate threat to South Africa’s own security.141 Consequently, when Hankey explained the DRC’s recommendations to Hertzog he found him to be a largely silent and uncritical respondent, except on one point. Not wishing to undermine the foundations of his own government, he expressed vehement opposition to Britain becoming involved in a European war. Smuts was more willing to give his approval to the formula which Hankey brought, more willing to raise his vision from the narrow concerns of South African domestic politics and to understand the wider imperial context of the report and how it might impinge on South Africa’s own security. ‘If Singapore went’, he commented, ‘South Africa would come into the front line.’142
When Hankey arrived in Australia he found that the Australian navy was arguing that Australia’s defence had to be based on sea power and the assumption that the British fleet would proceed to Singapore but that the Army and Air Staffs disagreed. They maintained ‘that we are not to be trusted, and Australia, instead of cooperating in the maintenance of the Empire’s sea-power, would do better to build up an Army and an Air Force to deter and resist invasion.’143 After three meetings with Australian ministers he was able to reassure them that the fleet would indeed be sent to Singapore, and that it would be safe to reduce the army from a nominal force of five infantry and two cavalry divisions, all of which were understrength and poorly equipped, to three properly manned and equipped divisions and three cavalry brigades, and even to prepare one of the divisions for overseas service in an emergency.144
In August 1933 the New Zealand government had adopted its own six-year defence plan. It was based upon the recognition that alone, and as a small country, it was defenceless. It would stand or fall as part of the British Empire, and that ‘if the Main Fleet for any reason is unable to reach Singapore, New Zealand is thrown onto her own resources for defence, and could not in any case defend herself successfully against any protracted attack.’145 As well as maintaining a small cruiser squadron, the New Zealand government would furnish a small expeditionary force for overseas operations and provide a number of locally trained pilots for the RAF. Hankey concluded that ‘They are playing up tremendously—in one respect almost embarrassingly to the recommendations of the Chiefs of Staff in 1930.’146 For his part Hankey ensured that ‘My report to Mr Forbes [the Prime Minister] of what was to be done at Singapore and other ports East of Suez as the result of the Defence Requirements enquiries was, of course, of a reassuring character in this respect.’147 This seemed to suffice, and his exposition of the British policy towards Singapore and of seeking better relations with Japan was received warmly.148
The Canadians, however, were doing anything but ‘playing up tremendously’. Whereas the antipodean Dominions had anxiously sought the assurances that Hankey bought, many Canadians regarded him as ‘engaged on some deep-laid plot to snare Canada into British Welt-Politik.’149 Canada, like South Africa, was a society divided on ethnic lines, and many francophones wanted little to do with Britain and its empire.150 Isolationists were vocal and did not share the Australian and New Zealand fear of Japanese domination in the Pacific. The Americans would protect Canada’s Pacific coast, and collective security would safeguard the country’s Far Eastern trade.151 Few Canadians had any enthusiasm for becoming involved in overseas entanglements. The only significant exception was a handful of senior soldiers who quietly prepared plans to generate and despatch an expeditionary force overseas, believing that in the event of a major war threatening the security of the empire, Canadian public opinion would demand it. But Canada’s prime ministers, both Mackenzie King and R. B. Bennett, reflected majority opinion. They agreed that the best contribution Canada could make to imperial defence was to look after itself and to give the British no problems. They avoided attending CID meetings in case their mere presence gave the appearance of a commitment, which would cause them untold political problems at home.152 Prime Minister Bennett’s response to Hankey’s exposition of the DRC’s report was low-key in that ‘he fully understood and concurred in the Government’s policy. On the subject of our defensive arrangements in Europe he said nothing that I need repeat. He fully realised the necessity for the defensive provision we are making in the Far East.’153
Hankey had been successful in selling the DRC’s recommendations to the Dominions. But his tour had also highlighted some issues that caused concern in London. Beset by their own political and financial problems, and intent on pursuing their own regional interests, none of the Dominion governments could or would commit themselves in advance to assist Britain if it went to war. All of the Dominions shared a common fear that Britain might soon become engaged in a European war and that the repercussions of it doing so would impact on their own polity. For Australia and New Zealand that meant that the British might overlook their commitment to protect them from the threat posed by Japan. In the case of Canada and South Africa it aroused fears that unless Britain was in obvious danger itself, their own societies might be divided on ethnic and linguistic lines between those willing to go to Britain’s support and those who vehemently opposed doing so.154 That did not mean that they would not do so.155 It just meant that the British could not count on their support in advance. There was therefore an imperative, although it was never one that was overwhelmingly powerful or that guided British policy in directions that it would not otherwise have taken, for policy-makers in London to pay attention to Dominion susceptibilities and preferences.156
It also meant that, in the short term the British could not expect the Dominions to plug gaps in their own defence preparations. Although the Dominions had adhered to the recommendations of the Imperial Conferences and created and equipped armed forces on the British pattern, their forces in being remained small and poorly equipped.157
One item of welcome news that Hankey brought back to London was that the Australian and Canadian governments supported British efforts to get onto better terms with Japan.158 However, the policy of ‘showing a tooth’ failed to produce the beneficial effect on Anglo-Japanese relations that Chamberlain and Fisher had hoped it would. News from Japan gave the British mixed messages. British intelligence sources knew that the Japanese were trying to establish contacts with anti-colonial groups in their colonies and although their efforts yielded few positive results for Tokyo, they were indicative of Japanese ambitions to expand their influence at the expense of their Great Power neighbours.159 This was made clear in April 1934, when a spokesman for the Japanese Foreign Office proclaimed that Japan would oppose any foreign assistance to China, a declaration intended to establish a Japanese ‘Monroe doctrine’ over China, and an implicit challenge to the principle of the open door guaranteed by the Nine-Power treaty.160 On the other hand three months later the new British ambassador to Tokyo, Sir Robert Clive, reported that the Japanese Foreign Minister had said that his government wanted to conclude a non-aggression pact with Britain.161
This was just the opportunity that Chamberlain had been looking for, telling one of his sisters that ‘I believe myself we have just now a wonderful opportunity to do a great stroke and I am very anxious not to miss it.’162 What Chamberlain had not considered was the price that the Japanese would demand. Both Simon and Vansittart, reflecting a view widely held in the Foreign Office, opposed seeking a bi-lateral agreement with Japan. Vansittart doubted the sincerity of Japanese protestations of goodwill, and he feared that efforts to achieve a rapprochement with Tokyo would alienate the USA. More fundamentally, the Treasury’s policy ran completely contrary to his conception of how Britain should exert its power and influence. Vansittart believed that Britain’s pre-eminent position in world politics rested upon its ability to maintain favourable balances of power in those regions of the world where it had particular interests. This meant that in Europe, the Mediterranean, and in the Far East the British should seek to align themselves with those powers which had similar interests, or where no such powers existed, should seek to exploit antagonisms between their rivals. But Chamberlain’s policy would not only have made it impossible for the British to work with the USA in the Far East, but it would also have made it impossible for the British to exploit the regional tensions aroused by Japan in the aftermath of the Manchurian crisis. Vansittart looked to the growing antagonism between the USSR and Japan, an antagonism which played into Britain’s hands by compelling the Japanese to devote much of their attention to countering Soviet machinations in China. As long as Japan and the USSR were at loggerheads in Manchuria, the Japanese would lack the resources to make a sudden descent on Britain’s possessions in the Far East. Furthermore, an Anglo-Japanese rapprochement might also threaten the regional balance of power in Europe. It could lead to one of two outcomes. Either there might be an open conflict between Japan and the USSR, which would weaken the latter, or it might drive the USSR into the arms of Germany. In either case Britain could no longer count on the USSR as a counterbalance to Germany in Europe.163 Rather than run after Japan the Foreign Office’s preference was to try to improve Anglo-American relations and present Japan with a unified Anglo-American front which would allow them to contain Japanese ambitions.164 ‘Our policy’, Vansittart wrote in January 1935, ‘must necessarily be to cultivate good relations with both the USA and Japan. There is no present prospect of doing more with either of them. This is friendly realism.’165
The Treasury (supported by the Board of Trade) saw the dynamics of Japanese politics very differently. Chamberlain, Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, and their officials believed that within the Japanese government there was a group of political moderates who were willing to compromise with the British over the future of China. Simon and Vansittart, and the experts in the Foreign Office’s Far Eastern Department, disagreed. They believed Japan was intent on dominating the Far East, just as the Germans were intent on dominating Europe.166 But they accepted that the British did need to buy time so that they could eventually talk to the Japanese from a position of strength. Consequently, in September 1934 Simon agreed that the Japanese offer of a pact was at least worth exploring, and that he and Chamberlain should jointly prepare a submission explaining the issues to be considered.167 That gave Chamberlain all the opportunity he needed to place his case forcefully before his colleagues. A rapprochement with Japan would enable the British to focus their efforts on the threat from Germany, ‘so long as the gain is not off-set by very material disadvantages elsewhere.’168 He was thus prepared blithely to ignore the impact any such agreement would have on Russo-Japanese relations and their consequent repercussions for the European balance of power. But even he accepted that appeasing Japan by giving their government carte blanche in China would be a step too far. ‘Our obligations under the Nine-Power Treaty, our trading interests in China, our right to the Open Door and our obligations under the Covenant rule out from the start any notion of purchasing a promise from Japan that she will leave us alone at the price of giving her a free hand.’169
Ministers considered the pros and cons of seeking such an agreement in October 1934 but decided to postpone further consideration until some progress had been made in the preliminary discussions which were then taking place in London to pave the way for the forthcoming London Naval Conference, due to be held at the end of 1935.170 Both the Washington and London Naval Treaties were due to expire at the end of 1936 and the signatories of the later treaty were required to hold a second conference to negotiate new terms. Multilateral naval arms limitation by treaty remained a central plank of the Admiralty’s policy, for only through it could they ensure that global warship construction did not exceed Britain’s financial and industrial capacity to remain the world’s foremost sea power. Ministers, therefore, accepted the Naval Staff’s insistence that it was in Britain’s interests that the existing ratios established under the Washington and London treaties should continue to be adhered to and were reluctant to agree to an increase in Japan’s ratio without a very substantial quid pro quo. The existing regime was in Britain’s interests because ‘We should be able to send to the Far East a fleet sufficient to provide “cover” against the Japanese Fleet; we should have sufficient additional forces behind this shield for the protection of our territories and Mercantile Marine against Japanese attack; at the same time, we shall be able to retain in European waters a force sufficient to act as a deterrent and to prevent the strongest European naval Power from obtaining control of our vital Home terminal areas while we can make the necessary dispositions.’171
But there was little prospects of reaching an acceptable agreement. When the Japanese arrived in London for preliminary discussions in October 1934 Chamberlain entertained the highest hopes of success.’172 But his belief that it might be possible to come to a mutually acceptable agreement with Tokyo was wildly misplaced, based as it was on his mistaken notion that the Japanese had a rational understanding of their relative strength vis-à-vis their potential opponents. The 1930 London Naval Treaty had divided senior officers of the IJN into two hostile groups, a ‘treaty faction’ which supported the idea of a multilateral naval arms agreement, and a ‘fleet faction’, which believed that the 1930 agreement was a national humiliation. By the mid-1930s senior officers who had supported the treaty had been purged, and supporters of the ‘fleet faction’ were the dominant voice in the Japanese Cabinet. The men who made Japanese naval policy were determined that Japan would either achieve full equality at the second London Conference, or they would abandon the naval arms limitation regime and go it alone. In December 1934 they gave warning of their intention to achieve parity with the fleets of the Western powers when they formally denounced the Washington Naval Treaty, which would cease to be in effect from the end of December 1936.173 Clive was clear what this meant. British policy-makers who mirror-imaged Japanese politics and believed that there were moderates and extremists in Japan, were deluding themselves for:
although Japan has a free press and a system of parliamentary government based on our own with two main political parties, the assumption that there is a peaceful and a warlike party, a pro-military and an anti-military party, is absolutely incorrect. It was the relative weakness of the Japanese fighting forces in the decade following the war that was responsible for the so-called policy of conciliation, and the endeavour to work in harmony with the spirit of the League. That policy is now believed to have been a failure, and no Japanese political party to-day supports it.174
The militarists were in control of Japanese policy and ultimately peace in the Far East could only be secured by bowing to their demands. ‘When Japanese statesmen appear to insult our intelligence’, Clive continued:
by reiteration of the phrase that it is Japan’s mission to preserve peace in the Far East in contradiction to what strikes us as the obvious facts, I do not believe this to be a mere empty figure of speech. Japan unquestionably believes in her destiny, and that is to be, and to remain, the dominant Power in the East. If the world is prepared to accept Japan at her own valuation peace will be preserved. Otherwise Japan accepts no responsibility for any breach that may occur. The business world, the Court, the civilian departments, most certainly do not want war, but it would be self-deception to suppose that they would constitute a determined opposition to the militarists if the ordered course of Japan’s destiny were in danger.175
But rather than turn his back on efforts to improve Anglo-Japanese relations, Clive recommended that everything possible should be done to mend fences with Tokyo. The alternative was to work with the Americans, a policy he believed to be fraught with danger because, based on past precedents, he did not believe that Washington could be trusted in any serious crisis.176 This was music to Chamberlain’s ears. He insisted that it would be possible to reach an agreement with the Japanese ‘if the USA were out of the picture.’177 He received support from outside of Whitehall in the shape of the members of a Federation of British Industry Mission that visited Japan and Manchuco in late 1934. They returned home believing that it might be possible to secure commercial advantages in China if they reached an understanding with Japan to work together to rehabilitate the Chinese economy. That these were businessmen anxious to preserve and increase their profits, and whose advice might, therefore, be skewed, appears to have passed Chamberlain by. He readily accepted their insistence that ‘we have only to assert ourselves a little and she will be quite ready to work alongside us since there is room for both.’178 But Foreign Office officials with the most experience of Anglo-Japanese relations were sceptical that the Japanese would accept British interference in what they so clearly saw as their own sphere of economic and political interests.179
Simon too wanted better Anglo-Japanese relations, but not at the price of alienating China and the USA. Rather than make a unilateral approach to Tokyo, he hoped to secure a multilateral arrangement which would satisfy the Chinese, the Americans, and the Japanese.180 The advantages and disadvantages of a unilateral or multilateral policy were considered by a Cabinet committee in February 1935 and resulted in the decision to send Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, the government’s Chief Economic Adviser, first to China to study the problem of its currency and economy, and then to Tokyo to negotiate with the Japanese.181 Chamberlain entertained high hopes for his mission. If the Japanese could be persuaded to take part in a joint Anglo-Japanese loan to China, they could place the Chinese economy and public finances on a sound footing, and the loan might persuade China to accept the loss of Manchukco, and possibly pave the way for the return of Japan to the League of Nations. There was a marked improvement in the Chinese government’s finances following the mission, but that had more to do with the Chinese government’s own efforts. On all other counts the mission failed.182 What Chamberlain was slow to understand was that British attempts to strengthen the Chinese economy were utterly incompatible with parallel efforts to secure an Anglo-Japanese rapprochement. That might only have been brought about by the kind of British act of abnegation that even Chamberlain was not prepared to countenance. Leith-Ross returned to Britain in June 1936 where the Cabinet studiously ignored his report.
By then the course of Japanese politics had turned even further away from the possibility that the British might be able to build bridges to Tokyo. In January 1936 the Japanese delegation walked out of the Second London Naval Conference when the other powers refused to accept their demands for parity and embarked upon a policy of unilateral rearmament. This was a double blow for the British. It marked the collapse of two of the pillars of post-war British grand strategy. Since signing the Washington treaties, the British had been able to maintain a dominant navy by cleverly manipulating international naval disarmament agreements. January 1936 marked the end of that regime. Henceforth if the British wished to remain the world’s leading naval power, they would have to pay a great deal more for the privilege. Second, Japan’s withdrawal upset the regional balance of power in the Far East which the British had helped to construct at Washington. It meant that in time they might have to make good their promise to send a powerful fleet to Singapore. A month later Clive reported on, ‘a military coup d’etat in Tokio involving the murder of the Prime Minister and a number of Cabinet Ministers and officials.’183 The coup failed, the Prime Minister escaped by a lucky accident, but four ministers were assassinated. Even Chamberlain had to accept that it might not be quite so easy to do business with the Japanese as he had once hoped for ‘they are still a barbarous people….’184 A new government came to power intent on both militarizing Japanese society and establishing a Japanese-dominated autarkic bloc in east Asia and it began preparations for the war against the USSR which it believed was inevitable.185 The conference was no a total failure from the British point of view, for the remaining delegates did agree to limitations on the size of capital ships, aircraft carriers, and cruisers and the conference also smoothed the path towards eventual Anglo-American cooperation in the Far East.186 But it did mark the end of Chamberlains’ efforts to base Britain’s new grand strategy on a détente with Japan.
Containing Germany proved to be equally problematic. On the eve of Germany’s departure from the World Disarmament Conference Simon warned the Cabinet that if Germany did leave the conference it would ‘lead the Powers to a dilemma between a preventive war or war with Germany when she was armed.’187 It was because he was anxious to avoid the former that on 24 October Hitler made the British an offer which he hoped they would not refuse: Germany was to be permitted to raise an army of 300,000 men, but armed only with defensive weapons. In December he also offered a series of non-aggression pacts to each of his neighbours.188 In late 1933 and early 1934, working through his unofficial emissary, Joachim von Ribbentrop, he coupled this with efforts to broker an Anglo-German alliance. ‘Thus last November, with all the paraphernalia of garden doors and false beards etc.’, Sir Orme Sargent, the Assistant Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office responsible for relations with Germany, wrote to a friend at the British Embassy in Paris, ‘Ribbentrop had a secret meeting with the Prime Minister, Baldwin, and the Secretary of State, of which we were never told until the other day. Of course it produced no results as our friend had not any goods to deliver but merely wanted to pump out the usual Nazi propaganda.’ He returned in February 1934 for a second round of meetings with Baldwin and Simon who ‘was not standing any nonsense, and put Ribbentrop into the witness box (or was it the dock?) and proceeded to subject him to a searching cross-examination of the kind which has made the name of Sir John Simon famous in the Law Courts.’189 What they discovered was that Hitler wanted a free hand on the continent, in return for which he would guarantee the existence of the British Empire beyond Europe.190
The British were now in a dilemma. Issuing a stern warning to Hitler might backfire, and would probably provoke an acceleration of German rearmament at the very moment when the government had neither the means nor the support of the British public to go to war, and when even economic sanctions were likely to fail.191 Turning their back on the continent was equally unrealistic. ‘No doubt many people in this country’, Simon warned his colleagues:
with some natural justification, are feeling that the more we keep out of these interminable European squabbles the better. This is very tempting. But what does it mean? Experience shows that when Great Britain plays no part in European affairs, European Powers are tempted to try adventures at the expense of their neighbours, and we have to come in at the end. Nothing would incite the Germans more than the idea that, perhaps with Italian support, they could confront the French eventually, in Great Britain’s absence from Europe, with superior force. The French would have the foresight to see the danger and might take preventive action. Whichever course were followed, Great Britain would be involved in serious dangers, both military and economic. War in Europe would be a very serious thing for our trade, but more serious than that, it would leave us confronted with a triumphant Power, able to deal with us as it wished in our isolation. The development of air power has made geographical isolation a thing of the past, and the last few days’ explosion of German feelings shows that the doctrine of hatred of us is very quickly revived there.192
That only left a third option. They would agree to something like Hitler’s proposals, for at least they promised a way of limiting the extent of Germans rearmament, but they would do so in step with the French and Italians.193 Their expectations that this policy would work was based on the common, but mistaken, belief that Hitler was surrounded by two groups of advisers vying for his attention. ‘Radicals’ such as Herman Göring, the head of the Luftwaffe and the second most powerful man in the Nazi state, and Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, were believed to be forever urging him on to pursue still more aggrandising policies. But there was also supposed to be a group of ‘moderates’, such as the economics minister, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, who acted as a brake on their more grandiose ambitions. Amongst the latter, according to the British military attaché in Berlin, Colonel Andrew Thorne, might be counted the army’s high command. They wanted to build a more powerful army, but would tread carefully so as to avoid international crises until they believed they were ready for war.194 Phipps likened Hitler to ‘a circus acrobat riding three horses, and he may possibly maintain this uncomfortable position indefinitely’. He was hopeful that ‘the counsel of the moderates may bring about a more prudent frame of mind’ amongst those close to Hitler.195 Some concessions, they believed would place the ‘moderates’ in the ascendant.
When the British proposals were published in January 1934 they had received a good press at home, and a more mixed reception abroad.196 Mussolini wanted a convention that would establish a measure of control over German rearmament and told Londonderry that he largely agreed with them.197 But Ribbentrop told the British ambassador that there was no way that the Germans would delay acquiring military aircraft for two years as proposed by the British plan, while the powers explored the possibility of abolishing military aviation.198 Hitler made a counter offer when Anthony Eden, the Lord Privy Seal and something of a roving ambassador for the Foreign Office, visited Berlin in February 1934, suggesting that he would sign the convention if Germany was permitted to have an army of 300,000 men and an air force half the size of that of France.199 But the Cabinet rejected it, for to have accepted it would have been tantamount to endorsing German rearmament.200 The French would not accede to any measure of German rearmament unless the British gave them what no British government since 1919 had been prepared to offer, a defensive alliance that would bind Britain to come to France’s aid if it were attacked by Germany.201 From the French perspective this seemed to be an increasingly pressing need, for France was on the point of facing the so-called ‘lean-years’, the period between 1935 and 1940 when the French birth-rate would suffer the consequences of the high casualties the French army had suffered during the Great War.202
Simon knew that Germany’s clandestine rearmament ‘has become flagrant and may soon become dangerous.’203 Faced by the possible collapse of his plan and a return to something akin to the pre-1914 arms race, he asked his colleagues to give serious consideration to what the French wanted, and to accept the unpalatable truth that British security was so intimately bound up with French security that ‘we may be forced to the conclusion that nothing less than a definite mutual promise of support, involving a precise military commitment, will suffice if, as we must assume, our object is that the strength of France should to some degree be a substitute for our own strength, and that the pooling of our joint resources should add to our own efficiency while reducing the strain on our finances and man power.’204 This was a deeply divisive suggestion. Even within the Foreign Office opinion was split three ways. Some officials suggested that, just as before 1914, Britain faced a choice between isolation or involvement in European affairs, and as it did not possess the means to maintain its security in isolation, it must opt for the admittedly unpopular policy of an entente with France and the Soviet Union. Others believed that Britain could remain in isolation, provided it spent enough on its own defences and issued a unilateral declaration that it would not tolerate any attack on the Low Countries. A third group proposed a middle course. Britain could not remain safely in isolation and must instead play the role of an honest broker between the French and Germans.205 The General Staff was similarly divided. Brigadier A. C. Temperley, the British military representative on the Permanent Advisory Committee of the League, was strongly in favour of giving the French what they wanted, whereas Montgomery-Massingberd shunned an outright alliance with the French, but did want to offer the Low Countries a security guarantee, so as to deprive the Germans of the use of air bases from which to bomb London.206 But it was ministers who decided and they came down decisively against a French guarantee. MacDonald was emphatic that Britain ‘cannot accept alliances which purport to grant security but which belong to the class of military alliances’. A military guarantee to France ‘would involve us in serious risk; owing to the unstable position of French Governments and policy, it is impossible to foresee what, as a matter of fact, we are guaranteeing; the opinion of the country would revolt against such a guarantee.’207 The most they were prepared to do was to reaffirm their obligations under Locarno, but to make it clear that they could not enter into any further commitments.208
Simon therefore tried a different approach, telling his colleagues that in May 1934 the Belgium Foreign Minister, Paul Hymans, had asked for a promise that if Germany invaded his country, Britain would stand beside Belgium.209 For the past hundred years Belgian independence had been a condition of British security, and that remained the case. Indeed, the advent of air power meant that ‘almost more than in the past, the independence of Belgium remains, with that of Holland and the exclusion of Germany from the French Channel ports, a vital British interest.’ Germany would not have dared to violate Belgian neutrality in 1914 had they been certain that Britain would come to Belgium’s assistance. Finally, a British guarantee ‘would also tend to remove Belgium from the French orbit and enable her to resist French pressure for a preventive war against Germany.’210 In return the Belgian government would have to maintain adequate defences on its frontier with Germany and not use the British guarantee as an excuse for relaxing its own efforts. They would also have to give the British a measure of control over their foreign policy and inform them of the terms of any political or military understanding they had with France. This was essential to ensure that Britain was not, through any agreement with Belgium, dragged along on France’s coattails into a war in which its own interests were not at stake. If these conditions were met Simon believed that such a guarantee:
would be understood by public opinion in this country as a legitimate measure of self-defence, and would not be open to the usual criticism that His Majesty’s Government were pledging British intervention in hypothetical disputes all over the world where no British interests might be involved. On the other hand, the very fact that it was known that there was, at any rate, one European question which Great Britain intended to stand firm would have a sobering effect on Germany’s plans of expansion and aggression, whether to the East or to the West. It would thus create a feeling of general security in Europe, which more far-reaching but more indefinite commitments might fail to inspire, because it is always felt with these that when the moment for decision comes the absence of the motive of self-interest may decide the issue in favour of in action or compromise.211
Simon’s preference was for a public declaration made in the Commons which would leave the Germans in no doubt as to where the British stood. Ministers accepted that the defence of Belgium was indeed a vital British interest, and even MacDonald agreed that ‘there might be advantage in a quiet but firm statement that we could not remain disinterested if Belgium was invaded by anyone else. Undoubtedly, there would be some public outcry, but this would have to be faced.’212 But before they came to a decision, they wanted to learn the views of the COS on the practical implications of such a guarantee. This allowed the Chiefs to repeat the gist of the arguments they had already laid out in the DRC’s report. Britain had three objectives in ensuring that a Germany did not establish itself in Belgium: to gain depth for the air defence of Great Britain, to obtain bases in Belgium from which the British could mount their own air counter offensive, and to prevent Germany from obtaining the use of Belgian ports from which to attack Britain’s own maritime communications.213 But to make the guarantee a reality two further steps would be necessary. There must be staff talks with the Belgians to ensure that British forces could arrive in time and, crucially, coordination with the French. ‘We have never’, they reminded ministers, ‘in the past engaged in a Continental war single-handed, nor do the modern developments in armies and their weapons render it any more possible for us to do so in the future. To attempt to oppose the army of a great continental Power, with the assistance of Belgium alone, would be to shoulder a burden that, in view of our world-wide commitments, would be altogether beyond our capacity.’ Any Anglo-Belgium agreement and staff conversations would have to be accompanied by a similar agreement and conversations with the French. ‘Without such conversations a declaration could not be implemented in time to avoid disaster.’214 The COS’s insistence on the need for close cooperation with the French killed stone dead the idea of a declaration of support for Belgium intended to deter German aggression. On 11 July Baldwin, in MacDonald’s absence, chaired a Cabinet which decided that ‘the time was inopportune for a resounding Declaration of our concern in the integrity of Belgian territory on the lines approved in principle by the Cabinet on June 7th.’ The decision, although nominally a collective one, was driven through by Baldwin himself who feared the impact it might have on the electoral prospects of the government. ‘Any Declaration on the subject’, he warned his colleagues:
must lead, by the logic of facts, to a tripartite Alliance with France, which would be very dangerous. It might be that in the event of war we should be forced into that position, but it would not be prudent to announce it at the present time. Some people held the view that Germany would like to pick a quarrel with this country and attack us without bringing France into the struggle. If we were to make a Declaration to Belgium to which France was not a party, these people would say that it gave Germany the opportunity to carry out this design. In his [i.e. Baldwin’s] view our policy should be pursued gradually. Before the end of the present Session he anticipated that the Government would be announcing a considerable Air Programme, and it was impossible to conceal that we were also considering a rectification of the deficiencies of the other Defence Services. If, on top of that statement, we were to make a formal Declaration of our intention to use force, if necessary, for the preservation of Belgian independence, the political effect might very well be very serious.215
A guarantee to Belgium was therefore impracticable. But doing nothing was still not an option. The future of the Saarland was due to be settled by a plebiscite in January 1935, and Simon believed that shortly thereafter Hitler would announce brazenly that Germany was breaking the Treaty of Versailles and would continue doing so.216 The French proved to be slightly more accommodating than the British had predicted inasmuch as they were now willing to accept German rearmament as an accomplished fact.217 After no fewer than three meetings on 3 February 1935 the British and French governments issued a declaration agreeing that Part V of the Versailles Treaty limiting Germany’s armed strength should be abandoned, and replaced by a freely negotiated arms limitation agreement that recognized Germany’s right to equality. In return Germany was asked to return to the League and to take part in an eastern Locarno—that is, a collective security pact guaranteeing the frontiers of its eastern neighbours.218 The British remained adamant that they would not enter into staff conversations with the French, but they did accept a French suggestion that the signatories of the Locarno pact should also sign an agreement to use their air forces to assist any of them if they were bombed by one of the other signatories.219 The London Declaration proved to be entirely nugatory, because it was based on a hopelessly misleading assessment of Hitler’s real aims. He had no intention of accepting any agreement that limited the ultimate level of German armaments, or of returning to the League. He not only rejected an eastern Locarno but warned that he would not for much longer accept the demilitarization of the Rhineland.220 He also offered bilateral talks with the British, hoping thereby to drive a wedge between London and Paris. The British failed to see this and happily accepted his offer. However, on 4 March 1935 the National Government published a Defence White Paper, justifying its increased defence spending by pointing to the German threat. Hitler’s response came five days later when he announced the existence of the Luftwaffe. A week later, and just a day after the French Chamber of Deputies approved an increase in the term of compulsory military service from twelve months to two years, he went a step further, reintroducing conscription and announcing that Germany would raise an army of thirty-six divisions, amounting to 550,000 men.221
Hitler’s public repudiation of the Versailles settlement ended any realistic hopes that he would be willing to pay a price for the legitimization of his rearmament programme. Foreign Office officials recognized that ‘Germany was intent on re-arming until she becomes the strongest power in Europe and that she was merely playing with us and did
not desire a Convention, that she was nibbling away at the Treaty, and that after she had a strong Army she would demand the abolition of the demilitarised zone and would try for Memel, Austria and her colonies.’222 MacDonald’s response was that ‘I have always said that Germany was the only country ready to march, if she could. They are a danger to Europe and will remain so until they dominate it. It is a terrible thing to have to face.’223 But facing it meant no more than issuing a mild protest and reiterating Britain’s readiness to continue talking.224 Baldwin believed that ‘the sooner Simon gets to Berlin the better.’225 The only alternative appeared to be an economically and electorally disastrous arms race.226 Hitler was on his best behaviour when Simon and Eden did go to Berlin in March 1935. The British party were not alarmed by his demand for an enlarged German navy, nor by his wish to bring about the retrocession of Germany’s colonies, a suggestion that Simon flatly rejected. Nor were they upset by his hint that he would welcome a closer understanding with Britain as ‘it might be that even the British Empire might one day be glad to have Germany’s help and Germany’s forces at her disposal’. What did alarm them was his claim that Germany had already achieved parity with Britain in the air.227 It meant that their hopes that they could simultaneously avoid moving closer to their continental friends and that the creation of a more powerful air force would give Britain the diplomatic muscle it needed to contain Germany’s own rearmament were unrealistic.
The only alternative was to revert to balance of power diplomacy and to join with those powers who were still members of the League, that is France and Italy, or the USSR, to present Germany with a united front. Working with the latter was never a realistic possibility. After his visit to Berlin in company with Simon in March 1935, Eden travelled to Moscow for talks with the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, and his foreign minister, Maxim Litvinov. Estimating Soviet military potential was difficult because it was not until September 1934 that the British had military or air attachés in Moscow.228 But there was enough publicly available information to convince the Industrial Intelligence Committee, the Air Ministry, and the War Office that the Soviet government had embarked on a major rearmament programme and were developing modern weapons such as poison gas, tanks, and long-range four-engine bombers.229 The COS concluded that, although the Red Army was not as efficient as the British army, it would probably be both more efficient and reliable than its Tzarist predecessor, and that the Soviets were creating a powerful defence industry able to support both one hundred divisions and a large air force.230 The USSR was thus potentially a major military power, even if it would have considerable difficulty in projecting that power beyond its own frontiers. But anything akin to an Anglo-Soviet alliance remained unacceptable to most of British policy-makers. Not only did it smack too much of a return to the discredited practices of the old diplomacy of the pre-1914 world, but nothing had happened to cause them to abandon their long-standing distrust of the Soviet regime, a distrust still manifest on the back-benches of the Conservative party in the Commons.231 Furthermore, during his meeting with Simon and Eden, Hitler had made clear his visceral hatred of Bolshevism, so if the British moved closer to the USSR they would have to abandon any hope of reaching a general settlement with Germany.232 Before Eden had left London Vansittart had told the Soviet ambassador, Ivan Maisky, that he regarded ‘Eden’s visit as a major historic event, and it is crucial that his visit should have major historic consequences.’233 It did so, but only in a negative sense. The Soviet leaders were hard-headed realists. Germany and Japan both menaced their own security, and they could only be contained by the threat of force, and not by any arms limitation agreements. Consequently they were determined to create the kind of alliance framework that would be necessary to do this, and as a first step they had signed non-aggression pacts with some of their neighbours, and in September 1934 joined the League.234 Stalin and Litvinov now told the British minister that it was essential for the powers to work together to contain Germany, and that they hoped they would also do so in the Far East against Japan.235 Eden’s response was hardly enthusiastic. Any efforts to contain Germany must be engineered through the League, and the British would not offer any guarantees to Eastern Europe where they did not believe that their own vital interests were at stake.236
The possibility of securing Italian cooperation looked much brighter. It had received a significant boost following the failed Nazi coup in Vienna on 25 July 1934 during which the Austrian Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, was murdered. Dollfuss had been a friend and protégé of Mussolini, and German domination of the Danube basin was unacceptable to the Italian dictator, who regarded the region as Italy’s European hinterland. Furthermore, once Germany controlled Austria, it might turn its attention to the German-speaking Tyrol, which Italy had only acquired in 1919. There was ample evidence that the Germans had actively encouraged Austrian Nazis in their campaign of violent subversion against their own government and although the initiative for the failed coup came from local Austrian Nazi leaders, it is likely that Hitler knew and approved of it.237 In response the Italians had sent four divisions to the Brenner pass, and expressed the hope that the British and French would join Italy in giving a firm guarantee to Austria, including an agreement that in a crisis they would permit Italian troops to enter that country.238 The Cabinet was not prepared to go that far, but in September 1934 they did join with the French and Italians in issuing a declaration that they shared a common interest in maintaining the independence and integrity of Austria.239 Fearful that Simon’s visit to Berlin might mark the start of an Anglo-German rapprochement, Mussolini now invited the French and British to confer with him at Stresa to discuss a common policy towards those areas of Europe likely to be the subject of German meddling.
But containment was not to be the be-all and end-all of Simon’s policy. Rather he saw it as a way of establishing a position of strength from which he could negotiate a general settlement with Germany. On 5 April he told Phipps that:
I would deprecate anything which could be treated as abandoning all hope of general agreement and a mere closing of ranks against Germany until this becomes absolutely inevitable. For one thing, this has been the fashionable Gallic policy ever since the war—‘The Bosches will cheat you yet’—and, as the history of reparations shows, it has not been very successful. Volcanoes are singularly unresponsive to threats, and this particular volcano is only the more likely to erupt if provided with a constant succession of demonstrations that threats are not followed by anything but more threats. Therefore, while I would certainly face the facts, and all the facts, especially as they are very ugly facts, and would not fail to do everything possible to establish and maintain a common line with France and Italy, I do not myself believe that the common line will necessarily by itself achieve the desired results. I am for making the most of our co-operation, first because it is only when that is thoroughly done that we can judge the immensity of future danger; second, because, if well done, it is at least the only available resource against the danger; and thirdly, because Britain, thank God, is a free democracy and is capable of contributing its best only when our fellow countrymen are satisfied that every effort to produce general agreement has been exhausted.240
The Cabinet accepted Simon’s formulation, and when the British representatives, MacDonald and Simon, met their French and Italian counterparts at Stresa between 11 and 14 April 1935 they did not do so with the intention of constructing a common front to contain Germany. Rather they sought a common approach to safeguard their efforts to reach a negotiated agreement that would simultaneously satisfy the Germans and ensure their own security.241 For the British it was essential to maintain unity with their partners if only to restrain them. As MacDonald wrote in his diary, ‘We had to maintain a union for the time being with Italy and France until we knew more. For the three of us to disagree would give Germany liberty to do what it likes. This may cost us something but they will get as little from me as is necessary and even that will be limited for I cannot get away from the fact that the French policy has been a logical cause of all this trouble.’242 The common front that the Stresa agreement supposedly constituted thus fell a long way short of creating an anti-German alliance. What resulted was an anodyne agreement representing a statement of solidarity, but lacking real substance. The three powers agreed to pursue a common policy at Geneva regarding German violations of the peace treaty, and they issued a joint declaration opposing by all practicable means any unilateral repudiation of treaties that might threaten European peace. A motion drafted by the Italians and French that condemned German breaches of the Versailles settlement received the unanimous support of the Council of the League. The three powers also reaffirmed their joint declaration that they shared a common interest in preserving Austrian independence and agreed to continue negotiations for an air pact in Western Europe and a security pact in Eastern Europe. This was alliance diplomacy at its least effective.243
In March 1933 Maurice Hankey lamented in his diary that Britain’s armed forces were quite unprepared to counter the growing menace of Japan and Germany, ‘thanks to the domination of the pacifists.’244 His comments were a better reflection of his own sense of frustration that Britain could not take decisive action to check either menace than they were of political reality. Hankey was confusing pacifists—always a tiny minority—with pacifists. The former rejected war as an instrument of policy on moral or religious grounds. The latter hated war, wanted peace, and would not embark on a war unless they were convinced that Britain’s interests were under real and immediate threat. Their outlook was probably shared by most of British people throughout the 1920s and for much of the 1930s. In the 1920s British governments had developed a successful grand strategy because their policies of pursuing security through multilateral disarmament agreements coupled with a limited degree of rearmament in the air and at sea was consistent with the broader international context, with Britain’s resources, and with public opinion. But between 1930 and 1933 the political and economic consequences of the Great Depression meant that the international context, which had appeared so propitious only a few years earlier, became much more threatening. In 1933–4 the National Government faced a dilemma. They had been elected on a mandate of engineering a recovery from the Slump, a goal which they believed could only be achieved if they maintained a commitment to orthodox economic policies, which meant balancing the budget at the lowest possible level. But they were also increasingly concerned that British interests were threatened not just in the Far East by Japan but by Germany in Europe, and that to meet these threats it was necessary for them to make good the worst deficiencies under which the armed services laboured. The DRC’s report marked the beginning of a shift in emphasis in British grand strategy away from a commitment to the pursuit of security through a search for multilateral arms limitation agreements, and towards an inclination to seek the same goal through a modest commitment to rearmament. However, as their search for an air pact with Germany and their preparations for the next London Naval Conference demonstrated, that did not mean that policy-makers had completely abandoned their belief that some degree of security could be secured through carefully negotiated arms limitation agreements, even though the hope of achieving such agreements was obviously fading.245
The DRC’s report promised not only to rectify the worst deficiencies of all three of the armed services, but it would also constitute the basis of a revised grand strategy in that, by 1939, they were to be ready to meet the new range of threats facing Britain in the Far East and in Europe, and the British public was to be primed to make the necessary sacrifices to ensure that they were. The claim that the establishment of the DRC and the deliberations of the DC(M) meant that in 1933–4 the National Government had embarked upon a policy of rearmament despite the fact that most of the electorate would not support it and that ministers had ‘decided to proceed with rearmament whatever the cost’ exaggerates both their political courage and the extent to which they were prepared to ignore what they believed voters wanted.246 Austen Chamberlain’s statement in a letter to his sister was much closer to the mark. ‘Talking of the PM his passage about the Fulham election in his speech on Thursday [12 November 1936] made me shiver. Briefly summarised it comes to this: I knew the country was in danger but I was afraid to tell them so, lest I should lose more by-elections. My God! And he thinks that is leadership.’247 The program that the DC(M) and the Cabinet agreed to in July 1934 was heavily circumscribed not just by economic constraints but by what ministers believed would be acceptable or unacceptable to the electorate. The preparation of even a small regular field force for war on the continent was postponed because it was believed to be politically unpopular, whereas the creation of an air force larger than even the Air Staff wanted or believed to be practicable was accepted by ministers on the grounds that they believed that was what the electorate wanted. The National Government cannot be absolved entirely from the charge that when they were considering how to make good the worst deficiencies of the three services they placed electoral considerations before those of imperial defence.
Neville Chamberlain’s vision, which had come to dominate the Cabinet’s thinking about the future of British grand strategy by the second half of 1934, put the defence of the British Isles, and in particular its defence against air attack from Germany, far ahead of the demands of the Far East or of the need to prepare a field force to go to the continent. The Japanese threat was geographically remote, and in any case better relations with Japan would render it unnecessary to spend large sums of money on the fleet. Money spent on creating an effective field force would not command public support, and ministers were not prepared to do anything to educate the public into accepting the need for such a commitment. What was essential, in his view, was to create an eighty-squadron HDAF to deter Germany in Europe. The focus on home defence, at the expense of both the Far East and any commitment to Europe, was to remain a mainstay of British grand strategy down to early 1939. It is impossible to be categorical and to claim that if Baldwin and his colleagues had taken a more strident line in public and spelled out more clearly both the dangers confronting Britain and its empire, and the consequent need to rearm more rapidly, that the electorate would have swung behind them. But what is clear is that they barely tried to get such a message across. They deemed that all they could and should do was to focus their efforts on those parts of the defence programme, building up a more powerful aerial deterrent, that they believed already commanded public support. What is also apparent is that by early 1936 Neville Chamberlain was driving British grand strategy down a blind alley. Both Germany and Japan had unilaterally abandoned any commitment to multilateral arms control, the pace of Germany’s rearmament was accelerating, and there was no evidence that Japan intended to curb its ambitions in the Far East. What made matters even worse was that the collapse of the Stresa front added a third power to the list of Britain’s potential enemies, Italy.
Deterrence, Coercion, and Appeasement: British Grand Strategy, 1919–1940. David French. Oxford University Press. © David French 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192863355.003.0007
M. Le. Roi, Alternatives to Appeasement. Sir Robert Vansittart and Alliance Diplomacy, 1934–1937 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), KL 1009.