Nations while reassuring the electorate that there
would be no extensive rearmament. After another
electoral victory in 1935, almost as massive as the
1931 landslide, the Conservatives had most to
fear from their own supporters, and from one in
particular, Winston Churchill, who from the
backbenches constantly attacked the govern-
ment’s weak response to German rearmament.
When, on coming to power, Hitler accelerated
German rearmament in defiance of the Versailles
Treaty, he was in fact taking no real risk. The lack
of effective Allied reaction during the period from
1933 to 1935 was not due to the finesse of Hitler
or of his diplomats, nor even to Hitler’s decep-
tive speeches proclaiming his peaceful intentions.
The brutal nature of the Nazi regime in Germany
revealed itself quite clearly to the world with the
accounts of beatings and concentration camps,
reinforced by the exodus of distinguished, mainly
Jewish, refugees. Britain tolerated Hitler’s illegal
actions just as rearmament in the Weimar years
had been accepted. France, though more alarmed
than Britain by the development of German mil-
itary strength, would not take action without the
certainty of British support in case such actions
should lead to war with Germany. But until 1939
British governments refused to back France unless
France herself were attacked by Germany. The
French army would have been much stronger
than Germany’s in 1933 and 1934 at the outset
of any war, but France’s military and industrial
potential for war was weaker.
The weakness of the French response was not
wholly due to the defensive military strategy sym-
bolised by the great Maginot fortress line. The
French had reached a conclusion diametrically
opposite to the Germans. The French did not
believe that a lightning strike by its own armies,
before Germany had a chance to mobilise its
greater manpower and industry for war, could
bring rapid victory. In short, the French aban-
doned the notion of a limited punitive military
action such as they had undertaken in the Ruhr
ten years earlier. Any military response, so the
French high command advised the governments
of the day, could lead to general war; there-
fore, it could not be undertaken without prior
mobilisation placing France on a war footing.
This left the French governments with no alter-
native but diplomacy, aimed at aligning allies
against Germany in order to exert pressure in time
of peace. But no British government was prepared
to face another war unless Britain’s own national
interests were clearly imperilled.
This nexus between the rejection of any limited
military response and Britain’s and France’s per-
fectly understandable desire to avoid outright
war unless there was an attack on their territories,
or a clear threat of one, made possible Hitler’s
rake’s progress of treaty violations and aggressions
until the serious crisis over Czechoslovakia in
September 1938. All Hitler required was the nerve
to seize where there would be no resistance. He
had only to push against open doors.A disarmament conference under the auspices of
the League was proceeding in Geneva when
Hitler came to power. It served as a useful smoke-
screen for the Nazis. The Germans argued a
seemingly reasonable case. It was up to the other
powers to disarm to Germany’s level, or Germany
should be allowed to rearm to theirs. The French
could never willingly give their blessing to this
proposition, so they were placed in the position
of appearing to be the unreasonable power,
blocking the progress of negotiations which the
British wished to succeed for they had no
stomach for increasing armaments expenditure in
the depth of the depression. The British argued
that some agreement, allowing but limiting
German rearmament, was better than none.
The French, however, refused to consent to
German rearmament. In fact, it made no differ-
ence whether the British or the French policy was
pursued. In April 1933 the German delegate to
the disarmament negotiations confidentially
briefed German journalists, telling them that,
while Germany hoped to secure the consent of
the other powers to a standing army of 600,000,
it was building the army up to this size anyway.
Hitler was giving rearmament first priority,
regardless of the attitude of other nations, though
any cover which Anglo-French disagreements
gave for his own treaty violations was naturally
welcome to him. In June 1933 he happily signed
a four-power treaty proposed by Mussolini which