catastrophic drop, while Hitler realized that Paris lacked the will to resist his designs.
This was taken as definitive evidence in support of his conviction of French decline.
As strategic history, the 1930s registered an exceptionally unavoidable journey
towards war, or at least so it appears with the benefit of hindsight. Nazi Germany could
not be appeased or, ultimately, deterred. By 1939, France and Britain, belatedly and more
than a little reluctantly playing the roles of policemen for European order, had only two
policy options: to acquiesce in an open-ended process of German aggression or to
fight. There was no third way. Much earlier in the decade, probably no later than March
1936, a great war might have been avoided if a method could have been found to bring
down the Nazi regime. Unfortunately, by the time it became obvious that Germany had
to be stopped, and that the only ways to do that were by deterrence if possible and by war
if deterrence failed, the Third Reich had constructed a fragile, but formidable, military
machine. Sad to say, Berlin’s material gains through the Anschluss with Austria and in
Czechoslovakia in 193 8 –9 strengthened the Reich’s economic and military positions
considerably. So long as Germany was ruled by Adolf Hitler, a great European war
literally was inevitable.
As for those abroad who might have aborted the Nazi adventure in its early stages,
none was in a condition to act, either alone or in concert. France, the declining European
hegemon, was content with its 191 8 -style military doctrine of ‘the methodical battle’. It
believed that a future war would be waged and won in much the same way as had the pre-
vious one. Victory would be achieved by the long-term application of superior resources;
through meticulous planning for attritional combat dependent upon artillery firepower
provided by a nation fully mobilized for total war, in the context of another British,
and hopefully American, alliance. The French Army, nominally the most powerful in
Europe in the interwar years, was completely unsuited to serve as an instrument of
anything short of general war. Because of domestic politics, as of 1930 conscripts served
only a year with the colours, and no part of the metropolitan army was ready for war.
French foreign policy required a military agent capable of taking offensive action to
support allies in Eastern Europe and, if need be, to enforce the demilitarized status of the
Rhineland. The French Army was not such an agent. Jeffrey Record argues as follows:
The foundation of French appeasement was military incapacity to act against
Germany. This incapacity was inexcusable, given that France was, unlike Britain,
directly menaced overland by Germany, suffered fewer illusions about Nazi
ambitions in Europe, required allies in Eastern Europe, possessed the largest army
in Europe (upon mobilization), and was far less stressed than Britain by threatened
imperial defense obligations.
(Record, 2005: 19)France’s defensive military doctrine was mandated by the highly ideologized domestic
politics which prohibited a professional army, by the long shadow of Verdun, and, as the
1930s progressed, by policy in London. It knew that it could defeat a rearmed Germany
only with Britain as an ally, as it had before, albeit in that case with an expanding scale
of help from the United States. French hands were tied since Britain was determined to
go the extra mile for peace in its well-intentioned endeavours to appease Hitler, at least
until the winter of 193 8 –9. This is not to suggest that prior to 1939 French public opinion
The twenty-year armistice, 1919–39 111