8 The twenty-year armistice, 1919–39
Introduction: contrasting decades
The author of the pessimistic prediction in the title to this chapter was Marshal Ferdinand
Foch, Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied armies on the Western Front from 3 April
1918 until 11 November (Bell, 1997: 16). His contemporary judgement on the Versailles
Settlement was to prove all too accurate. But did this twenty-year armistice have to be
such? Strategic history does not follow a preordained linear path, and those who write
about it have to beware lest they reason backwards from a great event, such as World War
II, to identify the causes that allegedly made it ‘inevitable’. A great second round was
always a possibility, given the terms and conditions that concluded hostilities and sought
to stabilize the post-war world. But what had been only a distant possibility, and a rather
implausible one at that, in the 1920s became a rock-hard certainty in the 1930s, specif-
ically after 30 January 1933. However, one must recognize the powerful influence of
contingency, including the role of such an extra-political and extra-strategic event as the
Great Depression. In addition, personalities can matter critically: people do make history.
By far the most potent force for war in the 1930s was, of course, the character, ideology
and policy pursued by Germany’s Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.
There is an obvious and undeniable unity to the years 1914 to 1945. Understandably,
many historians, following popular opinion in the period itself, are satisfied with the
concept of a second ‘Thirty Years War’. Certainly it is true that Germany was principally
responsible for both wars, and solely for 1939–45. In non-German perspective, both
events were about the curbing, and eventually the annihilation (in 1945, not 191 8 ), of
German power and influence. Nevertheless, despite the many continuities between 1914–
18 and 1939–45, it would be a serious error to see the two wars simply as succeeding
rounds in the same conflict. Similarly, even though this book explains why a second
world war eventually was inevitable, it would be a mistake to write off the 1920s and
1930s as a rather inconsequential time-out between catastrophic bloodlettings. World