The Munich Agreement was popular with most people in Britain because it appeared to have prevented a war with Germany. However, some politicians, including Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, attacked the agreement. These critics pointed out that not only had the British government behaved dishonourably, but it had lost the support of Czechoslovakian Army, one of the finest in Europe; One staunch critic of appeasement was the journalist Vernon Bartlett. He was approached by Richard Acland to stand as an anti-Chamberlain candidate at a by-election in Bridgwater. Bartlett agreed and in the November of 1938 he surprisingly won the previously 'safe' Tory seat. Henry (Chips) Channon, a junior member of the government wrote in his diary. "This is the worst blow the Government has had since 1935".
In March, 1939, the German Army seized the rest of Czechoslovakia. In taking this action Adolf Hitler had broken the Munich Agreement. The British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, now realised that Hitler could not be trusted and his appeasement policy now came to an end!
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The reason why the Policy of Appeasement was so bad is because it gave Adolf Hitler, half of Europe, and 2 years to fully arm himself before any fighting started. If, when Hitler mobilised his forces into the Rhineland the Allies had made a move against him then they could have shut him down fairly quickly. Strategically, Hitler was given a great advantage to aid his attempt of the conquest Europe.
Firstly, in 1936, Hitler's mobilisation of troops in the Rhineland was a direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Neville Chamberlain, FDR, and Leon Blum should have told Hitler to remove his forces. The allies of W.W.I had agreed on keeping Germany out of the Rhineland as it was where the Germans began the Von SchlieffenPlan* through Switzerland in W.W.I and so the allies wanted to keep war from breaking out again, especially in an area of such close rivalry between the French and Germans, thus making the stipulation on future, potential German military action; So, when this part of the treaty was broken, the allied reaction to maintain peace should have been to defend the rules set out in the Versailles Treaty. But in not doing this, the allies made there first big mistake. They could have easily overrun the Germans in a quick decisive battle, as the Germans were not fully armed nor ready for war. Instead, the USA passed the Neutrality Acts so that they would not have any hand in the responsibility, and Britain and France thought nothing of the move by Hitler because they put up the Maginot Line**. Who would have thought that the new military technology could allow the Germans to simply go around the Line, and begin the invasion of France right where it began in W.W.I?
The next big mistake was appeasing Hitler by allowing him to march right into Austria in 1938. The way it was seen by the masses was that the Anchluss had invited Hitler and the Nazi Party into to Austria, because Hitler was Austrian. What really happened was that corrupt Austrian politicians brought Hitler in, specifically Arthur Seyss-Inquart the Austrian Chancellor and Leader of the Austrian Nazi Party!? The allied leaders knew this, but they took no action. Still, they could have easily stood up against it, or had the League of Nations intervene, especially as Hitler was still not ready for war.
Not much longer after that, at the Munich Conference in 1938, Hitler was granted autonomy for the Sudetenland. Hitler reasoned that there were 3 million Germans in the western region of Czechoslovakia, so the German Government should be able to preside over them. Winston Churchill, Britain's new Prime Minister, gave in when Hitler promised Churchill this was the last thing he would take. So, Churchill went back to England thinking and exclaiming that he had prolonged peace. In fact, Churchill had just sold away Europe's dignity.
As expected, in March of 1939, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia. But what did everyone think to this aggressive move? Especially after Hitler had declared he 'did not want anything else' at the aforementioned meeting with Churchill in Munich! The League of Nations figured that as he had a good chunk of Czechoslovakia, why not let him have it all? Therefore, Hitler remained untried in battle, and had already tripled the size of his fascist empire.
Later, in August of 1939, the League of Nations became worried. The sudden reason for worry was that Stalin and Hitler made a pact not to fight each other, known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact. They also agreed to invade Poland, splitting it right down the middle. When learning this, the League of Nations, primarily Britain and France, decided they would defend Poland if invaded! On September 1st 1939, Germany and Russia invaded Poland. Within a month Poland was conquered and in ruins, and Britain and France declared war on Germany, and it was about time Great Britain and France took action. At that point, Germany was almost half of Europe, and steadily increasing.
If they had appeased any longer, there may well be no Europe today, just Germany. As it is evident, the Policy of Appeasement directly caused W.W.II.!
* The Von Schlieffen Plan
Count Alfred von Schleiffen, who became Chief of the Great General Staff in 1891, submitted his plan in 1905; it was adopted, slightly modified, in 1914.
All writers have been in accord that Moltke made the left or defensive wing in Alsace and Lorraine stronger than Schlieffendesigned, and that he did so at the expense of the right wing, the decisive one, which in swinging round was to sweep the French Armies against the back of their eastern frontier fortresses and against the Swiss frontier. According to General Groener in Das Testament des Grafen Schlieffen, the deployment of the troops against France in the 1905 plan and in 1914 were, omitting Landwehr and Ersatz troops, for sieges and L. of C. purposes:
Schlieffen detailed 10 divisions for the Eastern front; Moltke, 8. Moltke, still less Schlieffen, never had the number of corps and divisions which the Schlieffen plan assumed to exist -- the latter's plan was only a "project." But, taking the above figures: In Schlieffen's plan the defensive wing is to the offensive as 4 to 37 1/2 ( 1 to 9 3/8 ), in Moltke's 8 to 27 (1 to 3 3/8); but Schlieffen's with the forces available in 1914, would have been 4 to 31 (1 to 7 3/8).
The reasons for strengthening the left wing are given by Dr. Bredt as follows: Moltke could not abandon Alsace, as Schlieffen designed to do, for the Italians might take part on the German side; General Pollio, the Italian Chief of Staff until his death in 1914, had assured him they would As they were to be brought to Alsace, Moltke considered it necessary to hold that province with two corps. If the Italians did not appear, then the question of the transport of the two corps to the right wing would arise. These two corps, plus the two corps sent from France to Russia, would, if added to the right wing, have made it as strong as Schlieffen intended.
It emerges incidentally that the Schlieffen plan was worked out for war on the Western front only; for when drawn up, Russia was still very weak as a result of the Manchurian War. It also contemplated additions to the army that did not take place. There was only a general statement that in the case of Russia intervening, ten divisions should be withdrawn from the Western front and sent to the East, without altering the proportion of the two wings.
More important than the changes in the technical details was the alteration of the plan politically. In the Schlieffen plan 'there was no ultimatum to Belgium, but the German army, without any notification, was first to deploy on the Dutch-Belgian frontier.' As the German plan would be divulged by this, it was assumed that the French would take countermeasures These, according to Schlieffen's views, could only be the occupation of the natural defensive position in the Meuse valley south of Namur; and thus the French would themselves violate Belgian neutrality. Such a plan must have been at least considered by the French, and in 1914 the German General Staff took it for granted that they would advance to the Meuse. All this presumed that Belgian neutrality would not be broken by Germany first. Such a step Graf Schlieffen desired, if possible, to avoid. He wished to leave sufficient time so that, in one way or another, the German statesmen would be able to evade the reproach of the violation of Belgian neutrality. 'Th at Liege would always be captured sufficiently soon after the entry of the German army into Belgium, to serve as the railway junction for reinforcements and supply, could be accepted.'
'Schlieffen did not consider it out of the question, in view of the then [1905] political situation, as he judged it, that German diplomacy might succeed on the outbreak of war against England in obtaining from the Netherlands Government by an ami cable arrangement (auf geftlichen Wege) permission for the German army to cross the Dutch province of Limburg (Maastrich, Roermond). By this means the fortress of Liege would be avoided by passing north of it, and could quickly be brought to surrender by threatening it in the rear.'
Moltke did not believe that Holland would give permission to traverse her territory, and dropped the idea of an advance of the German right wing by this route. On the other hand he feared that Liège could not be taken quickly enough by an accelerated artillery attack to prevent a delay in the general advance of the right wing. It was most important not to give the Belgians time to put the fortress in a state of defence, and in particular to construct defences in the intervals between the forts and destroy the important railways passing through Liege. It also appeared to him that it was impossible to march an army between Liege and the Dutch frontier. He therefore decided to take Liege by a coup de main carried out by troops of the peace establishment without mobilisation immediately on outbreak of war. 'Two days and the following night were allowed for the execution of the coup de main.'
** Maginot Line
The Maginot Line was built between 1929 and 1940 and was a powerful line of defence which stretched from Switzerland to the Ardennes in the North, and from the Alps to the Mediterranean in the South. It was built to protect France from her long-time enemy, Germany, and to defend the traditional invasion routes across her eastern frontier. The Maginot Line was built to provide time for the French army to mobilise and to make up for a potentially disastrous shortfall of manpower predicted for the late 1930s. Most of all, it was built to provide a place behind which the French army could hide, a so-called "Great Wall" of France where the nation could feel secure in its doctrine which would become known as the "Maginot" mentality.
The line was named in honour of André Maginot, war hero, beloved Minister of Veteran's Affairs, and Minister of War from 1928 to 1932. It could just as easily have been called the "Painlevé Line" after the Minister of War who was responsible for introducing debate on the line in Parliament, or the "Pétain Line," after the man who thought of the concept. But it was named after Maginot, whose contribution was his gift of oration which persuaded parliament, both the right and the left, to allocate the money for the project : It was a vast, dynamic, state-of-the-art, ultra-modern defensive system. Most of its components were underground, where interconnecting tunnels stretched for kilometres, and where, beneath the earth, thousands of men slept, trained, watched, and waited for a war that never came: The line saw little action until 1944.
In the end, the Maginot Line was considered by many to be a failure. It was powerful and supposedly impregnable, yet it failed to save France from a humiliating defeat in 1940. But was it truly a failure? The truth is that the Maginot Line served the exact purpose for which it was built. It dissuaded the Germans from attacking across France's eastern frontier; it gave the French Army time to fully mobilise and deploy; and, if properly used, it could have made up for France's anticipated manpower shortage. The greatest defect of the line itself was that it was too short. In May 1940 Hitler simply chose to ignore it.
The Maginot Line did not fail France, but the "Maginot mentality" did cause her defeat, as did the refusal of her leaders to acknowledge the coming of modern warfare, mobile battles that would be fought with tanks and aircraft. Thus, while France built a modern version of the First World War's Hindenburg Line, Hitler built Panzers and Stuka dive bombers.
In May 1940, Hitler attacked through the "impenetrable" Ardennes Forest in neutral Belgium. By mid-June, the Wehrmacht had completely surrounded the French army in Alsace, yet, only one Maginot fort, Villy la Ferté, had fallen and the line was still intact, and still lethal. Many fortress commanders wanted to hold out in a fortified redoubt, but the French army's impotent leadership, led by Maxime Weygand, called for an armistice. Some of the forts fought on, but by the end of June it was over and the proud fortress garrisons marched into captivity.
The Allies fought through a small portion of the line around Metz in the fall of 1944 and in northern Alsace in December.
After the war ended, the line was manned once again by the French army. Several of the forts were modernised throughout the 50s and 60s, but when De Gaulle pulled France out of NATO, all but a few forts were abandoned. France subsequently relied on her nuclear forces for protection. In the 1970s, many of the Maginot Line forts and casements were auctioned off to the public. Some were used for mushroom farming, a handful opened for tourists, and the rest lapsed into decay and disappeared into the French countryside.
