The Year of Preparation
Part 8: Foreign Politics, February – November, 1938
1938 was the year that international politics struggled to keep up with the goings on of the world. Particularly in Europe, the revisionist powers were bending events to suit their will. The Allied powers were gradually finding themselves pushed up against the wall, quickly losing room for diplomatic maneuver and slowly finding that the normal tools of diplomacy were becoming irrelevant by the day.
The first event of note in international relations was the completely unexpected wooing of Ireland by Great Britain. Despite the friction between the two states that dated from Ireland’s war for independence in the immediate aftermath of the Great War, in a few short years in the mid-1930s the British had warmed relations to such an extent that Ireland agreed to a formal alliance in early February. Though on the diplomatic level a coup for Britain, this alliance did not seem to gain them anything important in a strategic sense. Another small army would fight at Britain’s side in case of a war, but even benefit was qualified by the unknown quality of the Irish army. In most other ways, to Mussolini it seemed to be the case that Ireland would actually be a drag on the British war effort rather than anything else. It would just make Mussolini’s task easier.
Ireland joining the Allies in early February.
This event was followed within a month and a half by Germany’s first overt expansionist move since its failure, at Mussolini’s hands, to annex Austria. Germany was again moving against Austria, perhaps spurred by Italy’s ongoing and successful campaign in Spain. Mussolini, now allied with Hitler and distracted by Spain besides, acquiesced to Germany’s intentions of swallowing Austria whole. Thus on March 26, the Wehrmacht marched into Vienna. For ideologues such as Winston Churchill, a Conservative backbencher in Parliament, this was the second time in a month that Fascism had gotten clean away with an unprovoked act of aggression, the first being Italy’s campaign in Spain, which had been concluded on the 18th. It is unclear whether Mussolini’s acceptance of this event was, strategically speaking, in his favor. Though it gave the two allies a direct land border, in more dire times such a link may not be in either state’s interest.
Germany’s annexation of Austria.
At some point soon after Anschluss, as the annexation of Austria came to be known, Hitler moved against Czechoslovakia. Historians have argued that he felt that he was in Mussolini’s shadow, his consumption of Austria having been preempted by the Italian campaign in Spain and his Fascist credentials but a pale mimicry of Mussolini’s extensive career. Given Hitler’s extreme political theories, being second to whom he in private referred to as ‘the decadent Italians’ was unacceptable. Whether these statements are valid is beyond this work. In short, Hitler threatened to bludgeon Czechoslovakia with the Wehrmacht until he succeeded in frightening the Allies, who rudely parted the Sudetenland from Prague’s sovereignty. Three million Germans and a notable amount of industry, including a large proportion of the Czech coal mining industry, fell into Hitler’s hands. Unlike Austria, the Sudetenland did not directly concern Mussolini except inasmuch as it related to the theories noted above: that Hitler was attempting to position himself as the natural leader of the Axis.
Czechoslovakia, having lost the Sudetenland to Germany.
While Mussolini was content with building up the readiness of his armed forces, Hitler was building up momentum. On the first of October, he dismembered the rest of Czechoslovakia in direct violation of the agreements made at the conference of Munich. Germany annexed the territory it called Bohemia-Moravia and set up Slovakia as an ostensibly independent state, though it was in reality merely a puppet of Berlin. Hungary, too, gained territory out of this butchery as it occupied Ruthenia. This did not directly impact Italy’s strategic situation and indeed, in retrospect, may be argued to have aided it in some way as international attention began focusing on Germany rather than Italy, which was in the uncomfortable accusatory spotlight of the League of Nations following its landings in southern Spain. Mussolini either did not realize this, or decided that attention was not yet sufficiently fixed on Germany to warrant any further moves on Italy’s part. Besides which, the Regia Marina was soon to receive its first fleet aircraft carrier, which would greatly impact the balance of power in the Mediterranean and raise Italy’s profile, particularly with Britain.
The end of the Czechs.
The last event of note during the year was something of a surprise to Mussolini. For over a year, Japan had been fighting the Chinese. The very occasional intelligence reports concerning this war that crossed Mussolini’s desk all pointed to a major Japanese defeat, as the Chinese were pushing into Manchuria and Korea. In mid-November, however, a diplomatic report suddenly announced that the Chinese Shanxi warlord clique had surrendered to the Japanese and turned their coats, to fight alongside the Japanese rather than against them. While of even less direct relevance to Italy than the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia was, it woke Mussolini to the prospect of Japan possibly being enough of a security threat to Britain for the British to station some forces in the Far East. This was a welcome idea, for it could only make Mussolini’s task that much easier.
Shanxi’s surrender to Japan.
1938 was the year when the two major revisionist powers of Europe, Italy and Germany, began truly preparing for what they clearly saw as the oncoming war with the Allies. This preparation most prominently took on the form of territorial acquisition. Italy in particular took very strategic tracts of land in southern Spain, from which it might conquer Gibraltar. Germany’s expansionist moves were rather scattershot and seemed to have no real strategic concept behind them except for incorporating Germans into the Reich, though occasionally this also brought industry into the fold, as with Sudeten coal. Nonetheless, the stage was slowly being set for war. Forces on both sides were marshalling with more, or less, determination and deliberation.
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