The Post War World
Chapter IV – The Great Powers in the 1930s
The first serious blow to the post-war balance of power was the end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1922. The termination was decided by Japan, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the treaty stipulated an obligation to lend military aid only in case of Britain or Japan being at war with TWO or more other powers, and otherwise only neutrality. To Japan, coming under attack by two enemy powers seemed extremely unlikely in 1922, since Germany and the USSR were as unlikely to team up against Japan as the United States and the USSR. A Chino-Russian combination was of course a possibility, but not one Japan (perhaps somewhat overconfidently) feared: Russia was in shambles and China a wreck. Britain, on the other hand, had multiple enemies in almost all feasible scenarios and would always suck Japan into the fray with them. There was also a great Japanese frustration over what was perceived as Britain blocking her expansion – by remaining neutral in 1914, Japan had been robbed of the chance to expand on Germany’s expense, and when the scramble after French colonies was on, Japan was left without any of the spoils. The German East Asian and Pacific Empire, together with the Dutch colonies, began to be regarded by Japan as their most likely area of expansion – but after the Anglo-German rapprochement in 1921, Japan could not expect any help from Britain against either Dutch or German, quite the contrary. It was also (probably correctly) perceived that Britain would not take kindly to any expansion on the expense of China. And yet China offered the softest picking of any of Japan’s neighbours; The Chinese republic formed in 1912 was in dire straits by 1936 – warlords controlled much of the old Empire and what was left was in the hands of a corrupt nationalist movement known as the Kuomintang, which itself was under constant attack from Moscow-backed communist guerrillas.
Thus Japan opted for neutrality in order to keep its options open. If Germany and/or Holland ever became drawn into conflict with the Communist Powers, Japan fully intended to profit from their troubles – but these intentions, Japan kept carefully hidden. As if to signal a balancing between Japans relations with Britain and Germany, Japan was able to purchase the north Marianas from the debt-ridden German Government in 1922. For nine years Japan then nurtured its frustrated ambitions, until the Mukden Incident signalled the beginning of Japanese expansion in China with the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and walking out from the League of Nations. These actions brought relations with Britain and Germany (both of which regarded the League of Nations as cornerstones of their foreign policy) to an all time low.
America had grown in strength in the prosperous and peaceful years after the Great War. Its booming economy (alone accounting for between 35-40% of manufactured goods in the world) almost demanded a more prominent role on the international scene, and yet America was reluctant to step forward. Indeed, it had little reason to do so – it’s borders were not threatened anywhere except perhaps in the Pacific, its strategic situation was excellent with friendly relations to most of the Great Powers and if there was any dependency on imports, these could easily be procured from the Latin American economic sphere of interest. US armaments were thus reduced to the Naval sphere, and by 1936 the US Navy was a match for any other in the world –with 15 battleships to Britain’s 12 and 3 battle cruisers, it was the equal of the Royal Navy in every respect except carriers (where the Royal Navy had 6 to the US 3, although the American ones were larger) and light cruisers (30 British to 10 American). The third place was contested between Germany and Japan; the latter had 6 battleships, 4 battle cruisers and 4 large fleet carriers. Germany had more capital ship than Japan; 6 battleships (of which the two of the Bismarck class where the most modern and powerful in the world) and no less than 7 battle cruisers (three of them of the modern Scharnhorst-class while the balance was made up of the old Mackensen-class ), but no carriers. In medium and small combatants, however, the Japanese Imperial Navy was vastly stronger, with 14 heavy and 21 light cruisers to the German 3 heavy (which however were however brand new Hipper-class) and 13 light cruisers.
France and the Soviet Union were not considered naval Great Powers, but both had submarine fleets of unsurpassed strength by 1936. Both navies counted some 100 units, of which the French were all of late design and of the Soviet about half. Despite its first rank naval power, the United States role on the world scene in the 1920s or early 30s was limited to a few anti-insurgency interventions in Latin America and some token presence in China, protecting its citizens as the Republic came apart. With Britain, France and Germany, America had a concession in Shanghai, and spoke out strongly against Japan in the League of Nations in 1931, but otherwise acted more like a regional than a Great Power.
Growing American naval strength was rivalled by its growing financial importance. With Berlin, New York competed with London for the rank as financial centre of the world, but while Berlin lagged behind from the start because of the instabilities caused by the costs of war, New York advanced steadily, and would probably have overtaken London in volume of trade in the mid-30s. The 1929 crash however was perceived (probably unjustly so) to be a result of American imbalances and policy, and this greatly damaged New York’s reputation. Furthermore, Roosevelt’s New Deal Policies in the early 30s were seen as a flirt with Socialism by the always conservative investors and speculators, and as a result London remained the steady, safe and serious centre of international monetary trade for the time being.
In Europe, geopolitics remained frozen since the early 20s, and in lieu of naval competition, from 1930 on the European powers were engaged in a land arms race. Although increasingly outnumbered by French and Russian forces, the German army was still considered the strongest in the world in matters of training and equipment. In truth, the Communist Powers were unable to duplicate the German system of low-level initiative and objective-oriented command which made the
Landsers the best regular infantry in the world. They were also lavishly equipped with up-to date artillery of all kinds, with superb light machineguns and light mortars. Wise from the experiences of the Great War, Germany had also spent considerable sums developing and producing tracks which were vastly better than the crude Sturmpanzers of 1917.
Sturmpanzerwagen II was developed by Rheinmetall-Borsig in 1923
Incorporating the best features of the FT-16 and the heavier St Chaumonds and A7V, the German Sturmpanzerwagen II by Rheinmetall-Borsig, in general service since the mid 1920s, was a big twin-turreted track with thick armour and armed with no less than four MG-34s and a short-barrelled 75mm cannon. Maximum road speed was around 35 km/h and considerably less in terrain. By 1936, every German Infantry Corps had a brigade of 150 of these powerful vehicles attached and their crews (which were considered a part of the infantry arm) were well trained in supporting the
Landsers in both attack and defence. Thus Germany operated nearly 3200 Sturmpanzerwagen IIs by 1936, a number only exceeded by the USSR. Given that a much smaller number of the vastly inferior Sturmpanzerwagen A7V tracks had allowed the German army to break through the French lines in 1917, the German High Command was confident that in any future war, its attacks would not bog down into trench warfare. In contrast to the track forces, German air power was given and independent arm status in 1922 when the
Kaiserliche Luftwaffe was formed. At first commanded by army Generals, by the late 1920s pilots had risen through the ranks to the top positions in the new arm. In 1930, Manfred
Frieherr von Richthofen (better known as the Red Baron, a Great War Ace of renown) was promoted to be the first officer with the rank of
General der Fliegertruppen and appointed Commander of the
Luftwaffe. Not surprisingly, von Richthofen completely rejected Douhet’s theories on the primacy of strategic bombing and built an air force centred on the necessity of gaining control of the skies and then supporting the army with medium bombers (and later, dive-bombers). By 1936, the Luftwaffe was widely considered as the best air force in the world, due to the exceptional quality of its machines and the skill of its pilots. In numbers, it was narrowly relegated to a second place by the Soviet Air Force.
France and Russia had drawn very different conclusions than Germany of the 1917 battles. Like the Germans, the French realized the importance of the track to break through fortified lines, but they also recognized the fact that what had really limited its success was speed and mobility. Foremost among French armoured thinkers was Major General Charles de Gaulle, who had served as a liaison with the Russian Army from soon before the February Revolution until the Armistice, and got a taste for the mobile and fluid operations typical of the Eastern Front of the Great War. He then took part in the final French offensive in 1917 and was wounded and captured by German infantry in the final counter-attack. Re-joining the Army after the political situation had stabilized in France after the Revolution (he was reportedly a conservative at heart and stayed clear of politics as far humanly possible. He never became a Party member), he became a chief proponent of tracks operating in a semi-independent role. He proposed that tracks should be organized in independent divisions, which should be concentrated to break through the enemy line, punch through, roll up the front and allow infantry to advance through the gap. According to de Gaulle, the track divisions should be track-heavy, with only enough motorized or mounted infantry and light artillery to temporarily hold captured ground until regular infantry could be brought up. While rejected during the 1920s because it would have required breaking the Versailles treaty, the de Gaulle doctrine suited Thorez’s concept of “scientific warfare” perfectly, and was officially adopted in 1930. The new French tracks were therefore conceived with mobility in primary focus. To make sure that mobility remained a central issue, France assigned its armoured forces to the Cavalry Arm of the Army, which would otherwise have been relegated to a secondary role.
The Hotchkiss and the Panhard, the twin workhorses of the French Armoured Cavalry
The main French track in 1936 was the Hotchkiss H-35 light track, armed with a long 37mm tank gun and a co-axial 7.5mm machine gun. Road speed was similar to the Sturmpanzerwagen II (36 km/h), but crossroad performance was much better. It was accompanied in the establishment of the new
Divisions Cuirassés by the excellent Panhard armoured car, which was intended for a scouting and raiding role.
In the USSR, Trotsky had retained the title of supreme Commander of the armed forces and building on the Russian cavalry tradition, he began the construction of a formidable armoured force in the 1920s. By 1936, the Red Army had more tracks than any other nation, and instead of choosing either the German or the French approach to track warfare, it followed both. Thus the Soviet infantry was supported by such multi-turreted behemoths as the T-28 with large calibre low-velocity guns while the track divisions of the Red Army sported light, fast and heavily armed tracks such as the BT-5 and T-26 with high-velocity 45mm guns. Armoured cars such as the BA-10 were also built in great numbers. The Soviet approach to track tactics was also fashioned on traditional Russian lines – massive amounts of tracks working in cooperation with fantastic amounts of infantry and artillery were to be used in a steamroller of all arms that would grind all resistance into the ground as it advanced.
The T-26 track and the BA-10 armoured car – mainstays of the Red Army armoured forces
Britain, finally, had little in the way of army and even less of a tracked force. What little there was was organized and equipped along German lines. Britain did however possess two dissenting armoured warfare thinkers – Captain Basil Liddell Hart (retired) and Colonel John Fuller. Fuller was the more radical of the two, advocating nothing less than a fully armoured and motorized army, with only a small conventional element to hold the enemy in place. In their tactical approach, both reasoned as de Gaulle, in that the tracks had to concentrate in order to break through – but while de Gaulle had limited his scope to the battlefield, where the tracks would be used to roll up the enemy front and surround the enemy forces, the British theorists proposed that once the track had broken through, it should advance in depth to win not the battle, but the war. They had an avid follower at the German General Staff, where Colonel Heinz Guderian reasoned along much the same lines, but assigning an important role to air power in his doctrinal proposals. The three men corresponded extensively, and even met a few times when off duty, especially Fuller (who was a shameless Germanophile) and Guderian became close friends. The British officer would travel to Germany many times during the 30s to spend a few days with Guderian and his family. This “track trio” (as they were jokingly referred to by British colleagues to Fuller and Liddell Hart) was however almost entirely ignored by their fellow officers.
The “track trio” – Fuller, Liddell Hart and Guderian
In Italy, the new Fascist leader (styled “Duce”) Benito Mussolini would talk militantly about rebuilding the Roman Empire, but the country remained placid in practice, never daring to challenge the Central Powers over the former Italian claims to Tyrol and Dalmatia. Italy did maintain a powerful Navy, but its army was not formidable. Armour was mainly made up of trackettes for colonial use and most of the equipment was Great War vintage. Italy was in awkward position, opposed to the traditional Monarchist-Conservative Powers of Britain, Germany and Austria by virtue of its unvoiced claims and Fascist Ideology and to the Communist Powers by claims of Corsica, Tunisia and by ideology. Mussolini therefore strove to make friends with other Mediterranean nations also left out of the existing system of alliances. The first and obvious candidate was Spain. In the 1920s, King Alfonso XIII had appointed an authoritarian Government with General Primo De Rivera as Dictator. This right-wing monarchic dictatorship had all the makings of a good Italian ally and relations were warm – but before any formal agreement could be reached, Primo De Rivera had to step down, Alfonso XIII was forced to abdicate and a Spanish Republic was instituted which would move rapidly towards ever more left-wing Governments from its liberal beginnings. Liberal or left-wing, the Spanish Republic was hardly a natural friend of Fascist Italy. Portugal remained right-wing authoritarian and a close friend of Italy, but the link was of little practical or strategic value except against Republican Spain. Although the Spanish-Italian affaire was to have another chapter in the second half of the 1930s, for the time being Italy was as politically isolated as ever. It wouldn’t be until 1935 that Mussolini found a friend, when the Greek Republic was substituted by a Monarchy with authoritarian trappings. The Italian-Greek Axis had little time to solidify however before Europe descended once more into a crisis that would push the continent to the very brink of another Great War.
It began in Transylvania.
