was any more ready for war with Germany than was British. In the 1930s, therefore, the
French Army placed its confidence in its impressive system of frontier fortification,
the so-called Maginot Line (which did not cover the Franco-Belgian border), and in its
ability, with allies, to mobilize for the conduct of a long total war of resources. But
Britain did not have an army worthy of the name by European standards, and until early
1939 had not the slightest intention of staging a second major intervention in a land war
on the Continent. Thus, it is not difficult to see how it was that in the 1930s Hitler’s
aggressive moves can be likened to applying pressure upon a door that was already ajar.
Conclusion
The more closely one examines the 1920s and 1930s, the more unavoidable World War
II appears to have been in the latter years, and the less likely in the former. It is intel-
lectually unfashionable as well as strictly unsound to claim that an event was inevitable.
Nevertheless, once Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, and while
he held that office, another great war wasunavoidable. This admittedly determinis-
tic claim rests with confidence on the evidence of Hitler’s well-known character and
purpose. It is not entirely correct historically to claim that he could not be deterred. He
was deterred from potentially rash foreign policy behaviour in the early and mid-1930s
by his understanding of Germany’s contemporary military weakness. Moreover, even as
late as 193 8 he was deterred twice over Czechoslovakia by threats from Britain and
France. However, some limited success with deterrence could have only a temporary
tactical impact upon Hitler’s plans for expansion and continental domination.
There was a night-and-day difference between the 1920s and 1930s. Whereas another
great war was almost certainly unavoidable in the latter decade, such a conflict is almost
unimaginable from the perspective of the former one. That is not to say that in the 1920s
people were seduced by the illusion of an enduring peace. Illusion was rife, as usually is
the case, but it was no illusion in those years to believe that the prospect of a second
round of great power armed struggle was remote. Of course, there were many continuing
irritants in relations between Germany and the erstwhile victorious Allies. But Jeffrey
Record advances a powerful argument when he claims that ‘it is hard to see how Europe
gets to World War II without Hitler’ (Record, 2005: 43–4). As Record argues, while any
German government in the 1930s would have sought energetically to have the remaining
humiliating and constraining terms of the Versailles Settlement removed, Hitler was
surely unique both in desiring, indeed needing, war and in his absence of any sense of
the practical limitations that should restrain German ambition and behaviour.
For the 1930s to be so different politically and strategically from the 1920s, inter-
vention was required by a dramatic cause of historical non-linearity. In this case it was
the Great Depression, with its malign consequences for domestic politics in Germany.
The sharp strategic contrast between the two interwar decades serves as an eloquent
warning to those who are addicted to the comforting, but ever-misleading, phrase
‘the foreseeable future’. Only rarely is future strategic history foreseeable. The 1930s
were not strategically foreseeable by reasonable people in the 1920s. But, alas, World
War II was unavoidable in the 1930s. The latter point is made with all the advantages
of hindsight. We know that the 1930s, unlike the 1920s, turned out to be the path to
war. At the time, of course, at least until the late winter of 193 8 –9, statesmen other than
112 War, peace and international relations