All Alone
HITLER AND VON RIBBENTROP may have done a good job convincing Mussolini they would sweep Britain and France from the board, but that kind of gung-ho rhetoric wasn’t persuading many within the Wehrmacht, who felt nothing but a sense of impending doom – and, frankly, with good reason. If any country stood alone in 1940 then it was Germany in the spring of that year. There was the pact with the Soviet Union, but neither Hitler nor anyone else in Germany were kidding themselves that it had any long-term future. Economically, Germany was isolated. Part of the deal with Russia had been a trade agreement and although the raw materials now coming in from the east were much needed, they did not make up for the sudden and dramatic loss of overseas trade as a result of the Allied blockade. Because of Germany’s geographical position, the blockade was relatively easy to enforce – even with half of Poland now morphed into the Reich, there was still only a comparatively short coastline facing the North Sea and a further stretch tucked away in the Baltic. The opportunities for reaching the world’s oceans were limited, to say the least. This had been a problem for the Kaiser’s imperial plans back at the turn of the century and had crippled the German effort in the last war. It was every bit as much of a problem for Hitler now. Great powers of the modern age needed either plentiful natural resources or easy access to the global sea lanes, or, even better, both. Germany had neither.
The truth of the matter was that, despite the Four-Year Plan, Germany had begun the war still heavily dependent on overseas imports – imports that were now largely cut off by the blockade. Even without British mining of the Leads, little iron ore was getting through that first winter of war, and oil and copper imports fell to almost nothing. So critical was the shortage of copper that Germany had been forced to ask Italy for crucial supplies, exchanging coal for this much-needed metal. Since Italy did not have the 3,500 tons demanded, Mussolini extorted it from the people – effectively stealing housewives’ copper pans and chalices from the Church. Ciano warned him the Church would take a poor view of such an action, but the Duce ignored him.
By March, Germany had suffered an 80 per cent reduction in its pre-war imports; this meant it was bringing into the Reich less than a third of the raw materials it had consumed in 1932, the nadir of the Depression and a time when more than half its industrial capacity had ceased to function. It was almost as though the Hindenburg Programme of 1916–17 were happening all over again; back then, increasing industrial output had been achieved only by taking from agricultural production. The result had been food shortages and increased prices, leading to a nation, by 1918, that was on the verge of starvation. It was knowing all this that had so horrified many of the leading figures within the Wehrmacht when Britain and France had declared war. The Führer had told them the Western Powers had been bluffing and he had been wrong; it had shaken their faith in his judgement. Those who remembered the blockade of the last war, the terrible deprivations, and the bitter defeat and consequences after being economically crushed, feared history would repeat itself.
For men like General Georg Thomas, head of the military-economic staff at the OKW, and Walther Funk, the Minister for Economic Affairs, the only small sliver of hope lay in hardening the economy and trying to sustain a long, drawn-out war in which eventually all sides concluded a negotiated peace. It would mean absolutely no offensive action whatsoever. Thomas reckoned Germany could spin out resources in this way for about three years at the most.
This was so far from Hitler’s view that it is no wonder he felt both contempt for and deep frustration with men like Thomas. For Hitler, it was always all or nothing. There was no grey area in any aspect of his thinking. The Third Reich would last a thousand years or it would crumble into dust. He had gambled on Britain and France not declaring war and had lost; this time, he would gamble again in a go-for-broke, all-or-nothing strike for a decisive victory. Even Hitler, with his tenuous grasp on reality, correctly recognized that he had but one choice: to hurl everything on one throw of the dice. There would be no stockpiling of resources; there would be no succour for the civilian population – the Volk of the Reich would have to stomach rationing, coal shortages, commandeered cars and other privations in the interest of bringing all German resources to bear on a rapid and crushing victory over the West.
Drastic measures were ordered. The Z Plan for the Kriegsmarine was scrapped – there would be no more battleships, cruisers or, most importantly, aircraft carriers, even though they were already emerging as the pre-eminent modern warship. Smaller, cheaper U-boat building increased. Instead of the scrapped Z Plan came the Führerforderung – the ‘Führer Challenge’ – to raise the production of ammunition by three and a half times in 1940 and by five times by 1941, and to dramatically increase Luftwaffe production, particularly of the Ju88 bomber. At the same time, armaments were also to be increased – more small arms, more mortars, more guns. Hitler’s first demands for such an increase came at the end of the Polish campaign. Of course, results took time to kick in – which was too late for Funk, who was summarily axed in December – and were not helped by a crisis on the Reichsbahn, the state railway. Thanks to the massive amount of troop movements and a lack of investment in rolling stock or motor vehicles, bottlenecks occurred with immense railway traffic jams the consequence. In February, Göring had warned that transport issues were Germany’s biggest problem affecting the war economy. In the short term, however, the Reichsbahn traffic problems were eased in the nick of time as the front settled once more.
In March, Fritz Todt, a 48-year-old construction engineer, was made Minister for Ammunition. Todt had worked his way up the Nazi pole, catching the eye of Hitler with his work on the autobahns and then the Siegfried Line, or Westwall as it was known. To do this he had drawn together government organizations like the Reichsarbeitsdienst – the Reich Labour Service – with private enterprise and created a manual labour force, the Organisation Todt. Within a week of taking charge of ammunition production, he had instigated a number of measures, including a loosening of price controls, decentralization and the cutting of debilitating red tape.
Ammunition figures rose rapidly after his appointment, even though the groundwork had been laid in the autumn of the previous year. At any rate, with Thomas now toeing the line and with the Russian raw materials finally making their way through the system, ammunition levels were starting to soar, and the Ju88 – slower, heavier than had been conceived, but with dive-bombing capabilities – was finally in full production. War against the West the previous autumn would have been suicide, but while it was true British and French rearmament had been stepped up in the same period, at least now Germany had the shells and bombs with which to launch an offensive.
Hitler’s demands had, by April, largely been met. The price had been severe hardship at home and the neglect of other areas of the Nazi war machine. But if Hitler could smash the Western Allies in his do-or-die all-out strike, then these sacrifices would have been worth it.
In France, Capitaine Barlone and his Horse Transport Company were now stationed near Valenciennes, along with the rest of 2nd North African Division, on the North-East Front near the Belgian border. Barlone was billeted at a large, warm and comfortable house, which also doubled up as the Mess, but for most of the men the freezing temperatures were appalling. At the end of January, the temperature dropped to well below freezing, with the snow turning to ice. By day the men were now detailed to help the engineers build block houses along an anti-tank ditch that ran along the border. Barlone was not impressed – the anti-tank ditch was retained by light wattle and he rather suspected that after a brief bombardment the earth would crumble and the ditch would become easily passable once more.
In between digging and pouring concrete, Barlone and his fellow officers did what they could to keep up the spirits of the troops. Films were shown once a week and plenty of football was organized. ‘Fine,’ he noted, ‘but the best thing would be to carry on with training and work the men hard instead of letting them rust.’ These, however, were the orders from GHQ, so had to be obeyed.
Along the Maginot Line in Lorraine, Lieutenant René de Chambrun was equally concerned about the lack of activity. Life on the front had become more and more monotonous as the weeks and months had gone by. The debilitating freeze had given way to the thaw of spring, but he and his men in 162e Régiment d’Infanterie were still doing little more than the odd patrol. He had felt that in September 1939 his men – most of whom were farmers and peasants – had been ready to fight. ‘He was not so ready,’ he noted, ‘to remain inactive in trenches or billets for eight long months with the feeling that his fields were abandoned and neglected.’
Chambrun also felt the division should have been working harder; it was all just a bit slack. Across the Rhine, he had the impression there were large numbers of highly motivated and incentivized German troops, ferociously building defences and readying for the fight. Chambrun, who was, by instinct, to the right of the political spectrum, worried that the rise of the Socialists and Communists in France in recent years had done much to discourage the concept of hard work. Both the Government and the Army had been so worried about these left-wing influences they had not stood up to them. ‘During four years,’ he noted, ‘the word “travail” had been banned in the public utterance of politicians. There was also a stigma attached to the word.’
At Army headquarters in Paris, André Beaufre was also feeling increasingly frustrated. He understood the corrosive effect of inaction and had a pragmatic solution. While France’s war chiefs stuttered over unworkable plans to help the Finns and seize iron mines, and talked of bombing the USSR’s chief oil hub at Baku, or considered raising a Caucasian Legion, Beaufre believed the solution lay on their doorsteps. Italy was palpably weak both militarily and in resources, but threatened French possessions in Tunisia and British control of Egypt and the Suez Canal. Striking hard against Italy – and before Germany struck against the Allies – could well have upset the Axis balance of power decisively. After all, Germany was hardly going to sit back and accept a hostile southern flank. For Beaufre, knocking Italy out immediately killed more than one bird with a single stone. It secured the Mediterranean and the Middle East, freed up Allied naval power and resources, gave the French Army some fighting to do, and showed Germany the Allies were not afraid to take the initiative. He reckoned at least thirty divisions could have been drawn from the Maginot Line, which already had a 3:1 manpower advantage over the enemy along that stretch of the front, and there were a further ten French and three British divisions in the Middle East that could have been called upon.
There was something in Beaufre’s logic, and a strike against Italy did not lack supporters. ‘But nothing was done,’ noted Beaufre, ‘because such a decision required a firmness which was quite foreign to the nature of our leaders.’ Gamelin preferred to wait, as did the British, and Général Georges had concerns about crossing the Alps and weakening his North-East Front. Instead, France continued to make diplomatic overtures to Italy, responding to Ciano’s encouragement. By the time Mussolini had resolved to go to war, it was too late.
Like Beaufre, Edward Spears was of the opinion that the French leadership was flawed. His friend and colleague Winston Churchill had asked him to head back to France in February. The First Lord had had an idea to mine the River Rhine and disrupt German river freight – which was considerable – opposite the Maginot Line. It was to be a Royal Navy operation but required authority and co-operation from the French.
Spears’s trip included meetings with both Georges and Gamelin as well as Daladier and Reynaud. Georges he knew of old, but the general had, he thought, lost much of his lustre since being severely wounded a few years before in Marseilles, when King Alexander I of Yugoslavia had been assassinated. Another problem was that Georges was commander of the North-East Armies and the senior French battlefield commander, yet was strongly disliked by Général Gamelin, the head of the Army, not least because Georges was heir-designate as Commander-in-Chief. It did not make for a smooth chain of command. Gamelin had further put distance between himself and Georges by reorganizing General Headquarters, which had been run by a major-general at Gamelin’s HQ at Vincennes. As of January, however, ‘General Headquarters’ was moved halfway between Vincennes and Georges’s HQ under the command of Général Aimé Doumenc, and would control all fronts, including Georges’s North-East. It was a cumbersome and unnecessary extra level of staff. Georges also warned Spears that Daladier and the Government would be unlikely to support the mining of the Rhine. The Government was doing everything it could to divert the war away from its own frontiers. This had remained the principle reason for its interest in Finland, but it was also actively pursuing opportunities in the Balkans, as well as considering Beaufre’s plan for a pre-emptive strike on Italy. The British operation on the Rhine risked German retaliation on the French.
‘But the Germans are blowing up our ships all round our coast,’ Spears pointed out. ‘The mines are our answer.’
‘The politicians and maybe the public won’t see it that way,’ Georges replied. ‘They will connect your attack on enemy rivers with the probable German retort against ours. I am all for Churchill’s plan and will give him every facility. But I am telling you.’ Spears answered curtly that those who shunned striking blows for fear of being hit back were better off not engaging in war in the first place.
A trip to the front hardly assuaged Spears’s increasingly nagging doubts about his beloved France. The much-vaunted tank-trap looked, much as it had to Capitaine Barlone, rather feeble, while the pillboxes were mostly incomplete. Spears heard there had been both a shortage of concrete and arguments about design.
In Paris, he met Gamelin and had dinner with Paul Reynaud. Time and again, Reynaud returned to the same theme: the lack of drive in the prosecution of the war, and the absence of any will to take the offensive from either the French or the British Government. ‘Neither,’ Reynaud told him, ‘have begun to realise what it is all about.’ He also told Spears about an inspiring and dynamic cavalry officer – a certain Colonel de Gaulle – for whom he had much esteem. De Gaulle had both studied armoured tactics and written a book about them. Despite getting some attention, however, his tactics of using armour as a highly mobile spearhead rather than purely as infantry support, which was the current French thinking, had not gained wide approval. Another concern was the state of the aircraft industry, which had been nationalized. Rather than streamlining production, however, the effect had been dire. Indiscipline and, again, a lack of drive, Reynaud told him, were stifling efficiency. ‘It sounded ominous,’ noted Spears.
A few weeks later, on 21 March, the Government fell. The lack of action in Finland and the subsequent surrender of the Finns on 12 March prompted a public outcry. Regardless of the inherent risks of military involvement in Scandinavia, the public had demanded action; in a democracy, and one so politically diverse as France, public opinion counted for a great deal, whether that opinion was right or wrong. There was also palpable disenchantment at the front and in the cities, and an increasing perception that the Daladier Government was weak and indecisive. In Parliament, a vote of confidence was called and while the Daladier administration got 239 votes, 300 deputies abstained. The Government no longer had the confidence of the House, and Daladier had no choice but to resign.
In his place came Paul Reynaud, chosen by a majority of just one vote. One of the difficulties for Daladier had been the divergence of politics in France. At the outbreak of war, the Prime Minister had created a Union Sacrée – an all-party coalition as had been established back in 1914. The trouble was, the extremes of political views made it hard for the coalition to gel in any shape or form, despite the wartime need for political co-operation. Paul Reynaud and Georges Mandel were determined to galvanize the country, streamline production, and instil patriotic fervour and chutzpah into the French war effort, but on the other side of the spectrum were ‘softs’ like Georges Bonnet, Anatole de Monzie and Camille Chautemps, whose view was far less hawkish and whose main aim was to restore peace as soon and as bloodlessly as possible.
So while Reynaud had the kind of steely resolve and dynamism to drive the French war effort, he was horribly stymied by the need to continue the Union Sacrée and a lack of emphatic support. He would have liked to have included in his Cabinet the highly capable and more hawkish former Prime Minister Léon Blum, but such was the anti-Semitism manifested towards him in political circles that it would never have been accepted. Other ‘hards’ – or hawks – suggested by Reynaud were also blocked. The result was another Cabinet destined to achieve little, containing six Socialists, five Radical Socialists, six members of the Democratic Right, three of the Union of Socialists and Republicans, five of the Democratic Alliance, five Independents, two of the Democratic Union and one deputy who was unattached to any political group. In other words, a potent mixture of the far right and far left, Communists, conservatives worried about revolution, defeatists and pro-Fascists. The chances of these men ever agreeing on anything seemed rather unlikely.
‘The stake in total warfare is the whole stake,’ Reynaud told the Chamber on 23 March. ‘To conquer is to save everything. To succumb is to lose everything.’ Despite this rallying cry, the session descended into a slanging match between the various parties, all of whom felt the composition of the Cabinet was unfair. All Reynaud wanted to do was find enough commonality to stem the tide and breathe new life and vigour into France. He was facing an uphill battle.
On 4 March, just as Admiral Dönitz was preparing to send his U-boats in wolfpacks out into the Atlantic, his headquarters received orders to stop any further sailings. Instead, they were to be redirected to Norwegian waters as a prelude to invasion and to help ensure the Allies did not try a similar move first. Dönitz was against the move, and he was not alone. Most of the U-boat crews thought it a mad idea, and not least Oberleutnant Erich Topp. ‘A submarine is designed to be a commerce raider,’ he wrote, ‘and requires vast areas of sea space to be effective . . . Deploying U-boats in Norway’s narrow fjords, however, went against all experience and common sense.’
Topp was twenty-five and taller than many submariners, with pale-blue eyes and a resolute chin. He often wore a somewhat wistful expression but, like most in the German Navy, greatly enjoyed the camaraderie and somewhat special, exclusive, status of the U-boat force. He had first volunteered for the sea back in 1934, even though there was no naval tradition in his family; rather, he had been brought up inland in Hanover, where his father was an engineer, but after starting medical studies he decided to join the Navy instead, following the lure of the sea and the promise of adventure. And his training and first years in the service, not least aboard the cruiser Karlsruhe, did allow him to see something of the world: there was a voyage, for example, that took them to South America, around Cape Horn, and then up to California, under the command of Admiral Günther Lütjens. A couple of years later, in 1937, Topp joined the U-boat arm along with Engelbert Endrass, who had joined the Navy at the same time and was on the same officers’ course. They both passed out at the beginning of June 1938, Endrass to join U-47 under Günther Prien, Topp to take over as 1WO, the commander’s No. 1, aboard U-46.
He had been in that post ever since, although since the outbreak of war he and the crew of U-46 had proved one of the least successful in operation with just two sinkings to their name. They were not going to add to that score skulking in the Norwegian fjords. At the beginning of April, they were still at their station, watching, waiting, but otherwise doing little. Topp found it exhausting. ‘You have to have been with us to know what a seemingly endless waiting period can do to you,’ he wrote in his journal. ‘While on earlier patrols one surprise followed another in close succession, now we are practically devoured by the monotony of our daily routine.’
This, clearly, was a waste of a very valuable asset, one that needed to be made the most of if Germany was to have any chance of effectively severing Britain’s supply lines. Dönitz was the one senior commander who properly understood the potential of the U-boat arm and yet already those above his head, but with less understanding of naval power, were interfering with his handling of this vital weapon.
Everyone, it seemed, was getting drawn into Scandinavia.
At the beginning of April, it was remarkable how disunited most of the major countries were. In Italy, much of the leadership was fervently against war but was nevertheless unable – or unwilling – to challenge the will of the Duce. Similarly in Germany, while Hitler was set on gambling not only Nazism but Germany itself with one of the most audacious and unlikely campaigns ever launched, the vast majority of commanders in the Wehrmacht were harbouring massive doubts and reservations, while the civilian population was praying war would be over with all speed. Even the Berlin teenager Margarete Dos was beginning to wonder whether Hitler was pulling the wool over their eyes; she and her friends had started listening to the BBC’s German broadcasts and were horrified by the different picture being painted; that it was every bit as much propaganda as that which Goebbels was peddling was neither here nor there – Margarete was doubting both Hitler and the point of the war, and she was far from alone. In France, political in-fighting and a pronounced disenchantment with war also threatened to undermine fighting morale and confidence.
Only in Britain was there anything like a unity of purpose. It was, of course, different for Britain; the last war had not been fought on its soil, and the Germans were far away, not just the other side of a river. It had the security of wealth, of global reach, even of past victories. Its politics, too, reflected that and were more stable, with just three main parties covering a far narrower political spectrum. Morale surveys showed the vast majority of people not only accepted the necessity of the war, but also believed it was Britain’s right and moral duty, as the world’s leading global power and democracy, to rid the world of Nazism. Back in January, Gwladys Cox had listened to two speeches on the radio, one by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, and the other by Winston Churchill. ‘Lord Halifax does indeed seem to be imbued with a profound sense of the rightness of our cause,’ she jotted afterwards. ‘He declared he would a hundred times sooner be dead than live in a world under Nazi domination.’ Churchill’s speech on the other hand was ‘vigorous, pugnacious, and confident’. It was precisely this belief in the rightness of cause that had prompted the England cricketer Hedley Verity to join up; the Empire may have been on the wain, but the belief that Britain had to take the moral lead in the world was accepted by the majority of British people.
And there was confidence too. Jock Colville, a young man at the heart of Britain’s war machine, recognized the war might ‘wreck our economy and ruin our prosperity in the process’ but never doubted they would win in the end. The ‘assurance of victory’ was an oft-repeated line in newspapers and on the radio, and most in Britain believed that victory was indeed assured. The path to that victory might well be rocky, and it might well be long, but the defeat of Germany would be the outcome.
Events, however, were about to take place that would shake that confidence.