World Wars of the Twentieth Century 351fires’ scarcity in 1940 constituted a severe limit on the Royal Air
Force’s ability to repel the German air attack in the Battle of Britain.
No one foresaw or was in possession of enough accurate informa
tion to be able to navigate safely between the Scylla of too much too
soon and the Charybdis of too little too late. Repeatedly, critical deci
sions had to be taken in the dark. A nasty mix of faith, hope, and fear
activated those who had to decide what kind and how many new
weapons to construct. Personal empire building and group rivalries
among services, ministries, and firms combined precariously with
overall fiscal planning and control. A German four-year plan, pro
claimed in 1936, aimed at autarky by developing substitutes for such
critical materials as rubber and oil. Memories of the blockade of
World War I lay behind that policy. Great Britain hesitated to commit
itself to sending an army to France, remembering the futile years in
the trenches, and concentrated on naval and air defense. France
quailed at the prospect of renewed war against Germany, and was slow
to design and even slower to produce new tanks and airplanes. A
profound reluctance to prepare for war colored every French and
British decision; Hitler had the advantage of being the aggressor,
willing to bluff and able to choose the time and place for provoking a
crisis.^78
In Japan and the Soviet Union, a smaller industrial base was com
pensated for by earlier and more massive commitment to military
production. Elsewhere, nothing approaching the all-out mobilization
of resources achieved in 1916–18 was even attempted. When war
broke out in Europe in 1939, France and Britain still hoped to counter
the Nazi Blitzkrieg in the east with a Sitzkrieg behind carefully pre
pared defenses in the west while waiting for the naval blockade to
damage the German economy and weaken support for Hitler at home.
Mobilization plans were based on the expectation of a long war like
that of 1914–18. Strategy was dictated by the determination to avoid a
repetition of the mass bloodletting which had characterized that war.
The French, in particular, underestimated what armored columns,
- D. C. Watt, Too Serious a Business: European Armed Forces and the Approach of the
Second World War (London, 1975) is a wise and informative book. See also M. M.
Postan, British War Production (London, 1952), pp. 9–114; Robert Paul Shaw, Jr.,
British Rearmament in the Thirties: Parties and Profits (Princeton, 1977); Walter Bern
hardt, Die deutsche Aufrüstung 1934–1938: Militdrische und politische Konzeptionen und
ihre Einschatzung durch die Allierten (Frankfurt am Main, 1969); Edward L. Homze,
Arming the Luftwaffe: The Reich Air Ministry and the German Aircraft Industry, 1919–
1939 (Lincoln, Neb., 1976). I have been unable to find any comparable survey of
French rearmament.