The Red Army and The Munich Crisis Author(s) : G. JukesReviewed

The Red Army and the Munich Crisis Author(s): G.
Jukes Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 195-214 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260788 . Accessed: 15/02/2013 04:50
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Sage Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Contemporary History.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded on Fri, 15 Feb 2013 04:50:40 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
G.Jukes
TheRedArmyand the Munich Crisis
Although enthusiastically received by majority British and French opinion at the time, the Munich Agreement of 1938 soon came to be viewed as a shameful act of capitulation. At the time, Conservative dissidents headed by Churchill, as well as many Opposition figures, particularly criticized the failure of the Chamberlain and Daladier governments to make common cause with, or even sound out, the Soviet Union, which had treaties of alliance with both France and Czechoslovakia. Defence of this inaction, as far as the British are concerned, has hinged on Chamberlain'sdeep-rooted distrust of communism and on military advice, specifically the opinion of the Chiefs of Staff, that the Red Army had been so harmed by Stalin's purge of the military leadership as to be incapable of effective action. This opinion they continued to hold until some time after the German invasion of 1941, apparently taking the poor Soviet performance in the Winter War against Finland in 1939-40 as more definitive than the much better record against the Japanese army before Munich in the summer of 1938 and after it in Mongolia in 1939. Up to now, assessment of whether Soviet military action could have made any difference to the outcome of the crisis has depended entirely upon subjective judgments about the effect of the purges. However, even granting that they were gravely detrimental to the Red Army's effectiveness, the crisis, if it had led to war, would have required Germany to face not the Red Army alone but the armies of France, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, that is a war on three fronts, which it would probably have had to fight without allies. Conduct of such a war, difficult enough in itself, would have been further complicated by Anglo-French naval blockade. Even with poorly-led Soviet forces, the odds against Germany would have been
Journal of ContemporaryHistory (SAGE, London, Newbury Park and New Delhi), Vol. 26 (1991), 195-214.
196
Journal of ContemporaryHistory
considerably higher than they were in September 1939, when it had to fight only Poland, and that with Soviet connivance. Until now, it has not been feasible to assess this possible alternative outcome because Soviet statements of their readiness to help Czechoslovakia have not been backed by any details of the military preparations undertaken by the Red Army during the crisis. Even the spate of recent publications on the circumstances leading up to the outbreak of the second world war for the most part contain no references to the military factor.' However, two of them do specifically deal with it.2 The more readily accessible, because it is in English, is by Professor Oleg Rzheshevskiy of the Institute of World History, but his sources are not cited. However, the information he gives appears to have its origins in the same archival materials as the second publication. This is a book by Marshal of the Soviet Union, M.V. Zakharov, about the Soviet General Staff in the pre-war years, written in 1969 but not published until 1989. When he wrote it, Zakharov was Chief of the General Staff; he had been a staff officer for most of his career, and at the time of Munich was an assistant to the then Chief of General Staff, Army Commander First Rank (later Marshal) Shaposhnikov. In a postscript to the book, Army General M.A. Moyseyev, the present Chief of General Staff, gives reasons for the twenty-year delay in publication. First, at that time there were strict limits on what might be published about the organization, operational and mobilization roles of the General Staff. Second, the consent of a number of authorities was then required for publication of any military-political work. These deliveredconflicting opinions, and required deletions and insertions which Zakharov declined to accept because he considered that they devalued the work. Zakharov's account of the Red Army's preparations for war in September 1938 is therefore that of a high-level participant, and his position at the time he wrote his book ensured him privileged access to Ministry of Defence archives. Unfortunately he does not identify the sources for his account of the mobilization and redeployment of forces in September 1938, but his account is too detailed to have been compiled from memory alone, and can only be based on archive materials. lHe claims that the Soviet government, which after the German occupation of Austria in March 1938 had several times declared its willingness to aid Czechoslovakia if attacked, replied on 20
Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis
197
September to an enquiry from President Benes that it would assist Czechoslovakia militarily whether or not France did so, and ordered forces to be brought to 'readiness to fight' for the purpose. The deployments he lists are too detailed to give here in full, but can be summarized as follows. The Kiev Special Military District was ordered at 18.00 hours on 21 September to set up a force comprising an Army Group Headquarters, the 4th Cavalry Corps, 25th Tank Corps, 17th Rifle Corps and 23rd and 26th Light Tank Brigades (equivalent to about ten divisions) and deploy it in the areas of Volochisk, Proskurov and Kamenets-Podol'skiy, close to the border with Poland, then much furthereast than it is now. To bring units up to full war establishment, the District was ordered to call up 8,000 reservists per division and to requisition horses from the civilian economy (the Red Army, like all continental armies of the time, including the German, depended heavily on horse-drawn transport). Divisions of the 2nd Cavalry Corps were simultaneously advanced to the border. Three air regiments of fighters, three of light bombers, one of heavy bombers and the District's own air force units were assigned to the force, and air force reservists mobilized to bring two main air bases up to full strength in ground staff. The District headquarters began to implement the order at 4:00 a.m. on the following day, and a Headquarters group under the District Commander, Army Commander First Rank (later Marshal) Timoshenko, was immediately set up at Proskurov. Two days later, at 23.45 hours on 23 September, the adjoining Belorussian Special Military District was ordered to deploy, in four border areas west of Polotsk, Lepel, Minsk and Slutsk respectively, forces totalling five infantry divisions and one infantry regiment, four cavalry divisions (less one regiment), three tank brigades and a howitzer regiment. All units were to move on the morning of 24 September (i.e. immediately). Fighter and light bomber regiments were advanced to forward airfields, and heavy bombers ordered to operational readiness from their existing bases. The District Headquarters reported compliance at 10:55 a.m. on 24 September. Also on 23 September, the Kalinin Military District was ordered to advance one infantry division to the border, and all the Districts already mentioned, plus those of Leningrad, Moscow and Khar'kov, were ordered to put their anti-aircraft defence systems on 'readiness to fight'. Static defences ('fortified regions') along the border were also brought up to this status and made up to strength with reservists.
198
Altogether in the first instance, one Tank Corps, thirty infantry and ten cavalry divisions, seven tank, one motorized infantry and twelve air brigades and seven 'fortified regions' were made ready to fight, and in the Air Defence system two corps, one division, two brigades, sixteen regiments and a number of independent antiaircraft batteries were placed on full alert. On 28 September, all eleven Military Districts west of the Urals (those previously mentioned plus Orel, Volga, Urals, North Caucasus and Transcaucasus) were ordered to cease until further notice the release of time-expired conscripts. On 29 September, the Leningrad, Belorussian and Kiev Districts were ordered to call up for training within the next two weeks reservists for seventeen infantry divisions, three tank corps, fifteen tank and several air brigades and thirty-four airfields, and to bring officer strength to full war establishment. On the same day, all other Military Districts west of the Urals except Transcaucasus were ordered to call up 250-275 reserve officers for each of their divisions within two weeks. Altogether, sixty infantry and sixteen cavalry divisions, three tank corps, twenty-two independent tank and seventeen air brigades plus some other units were brought to war readiness; almost 330,000 reservists were called up, and tens of thousands of others due for release were retained in service.3 Zakharov also says that on 25 September a cable was sent to the Soviet Embassy in Paris for transmission to the French military authorities. The text of this was released in 1958 and it reads as follows:
Our command has up to now taken the following steps: 1. 30 infantry divisions have been moved forward to areas immediately adjacent to the western border. The same has been done in relation to cavalry divisions. 2. Units have been appropriately made up to strength with reservists. 3. As for our technical forces -air force and tank units -they are at full readiness.4
On 28 September the same information was repeated to the French Military Attache in Moscow, Colonel Palasse. Thus Zakharov's account. If fabricated, it could have had only one purpose when written in 1969 - to present the Soviet Union in as favourable as possible a light to Czechoslovakia, recently invaded by its Warsaw Pact partners. This can be dismissed out of hand -the Munich episode takes up only a few pages in a book of over 300 pages, and the book was not published at the time when it might have served
199
this purpose. In any event, while Soviet senior officerswere, until very recently, constrained to economy with the truth to support the official line over the political circumstances attendant on military action,5 they normally prefer silence to lying about purely military matters. That, plus the detail into which Zakharov goes, down to the numbers of the divisions, corps and, in some cases, regiments, indicates that the Red Army made very extensive preparations to go to Czechoslovakia's assistance. He also says that the Soviet government, observing the Polish army concentrating at the Czech border (with the intention of seizing Teschen), warned Poland on 23 September that it would treat invasion as 'unprovoked aggression' (a specific requirement for activating the Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty), and abrogate the SovietPolish non-aggression treaty of 1932.6 Rzheshevskiy adds some further details to Zakharov's account, noting that in August 1938 the head of the Czechoslovak air force, General Fajfr, was invited to Moscow to discuss direct co-operation with the Soviet air force, but Czechoslovak governmental reluctance was such that he arrived only after repeated Soviet reminders. Fajfr wrote later that 'a plan for defending Czechoslovakia with Soviet assistance was worked out' and 'joint meetings resulted in an agreement under which the Soviet Union would promptly help us by sending 700 fighters, on condition that we prepared suitable airfields for them, with our anti-aircraft artillery providing cover'.7 Air force assistance would have been a crucial element. The Soviet air force was the world's largest, and reaching Czechoslovakia would have involved only brief overflights through Polish or Romanian airspace. The two governments would probably have refused consent, but protocol could have been satisfied, and confrontation avoided, by inaccurate anti-aircraft fire. The German Minister in Romania reported on 3 June that the Romanian General Staff had agreed to Soviet overflights, provided the aircraft carried Czechoslovak markings, and the crews only Czechoslovak identity documents. Three weeks later he reported that the King had vetoed this proposal, but that the Court Minister had admitted that Romania lacked the resources to enforce a ban.8 In late August, the Romanian government told the French Head of Mission that it would 'shut its eyes to Soviet aircraft flying over Romania at an altitude of 3,000 metres or more, since this altitude is practically out of range of Romania's antiaircraft artillery'.9
200
Tabulation of the events of the crisis tends to suggest that the military moves were entirely consistent with the Soviet government's declarations of support for Czechoslovakia following the Anschluss, but came too late to affect the situation. Partial mobilization began with the issue of orders to the Kiev Special Military District at 18.00 hours Moscow time (16.00 GMT) on 21 September, a direct followup to the assurance given to Benes on the preceding day. It appears from other sources that in 'early September' Maisky, Soviet ambassador in London, told Churchill that the Soviet Union was prepared to use force if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, and that Churchill reported this to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax.'o On 10 September Fierlinger, the Czechoslovak Minister in Moscow, reported having been told by 'a source close to the Kremlin' that 'even the question of action without France' had been discussed there." However, he could not say whether a decision had been reached. On 19 September Benes sought an assurance that the Soviet Union would act if France did, and received an affirmativeanswer on the next day.12 This is presumably the question mentioned by Zakharov.13 Benes also asked Gottwald, the leader of the large and influential Czechoslovak Communist Party, whether the Soviets would act if France did not. Gottwald advised him to put the question directly to Moscow, but he did not.14 His reasons for inaction are unexplained, but would result from the delicate political balance within Czechoslovakia itself, the vehemence with which German propaganda had long been depicting the country as an outpost of communism, and the known aversion of the British and French governments, geopolitical as well as political, to anything which would give the Soviet Union greater influence in European
affairs.15
On 13 September, Chamberlain told King George VI that he intended to fly to meet Hitler, and to offer him an Anglo-German understanding, provided the Czechoslovak question was 'settled' first. Chamberlainflew to Germany on 15 Septemberand returnedthe next day, having committed himself to 'separation' of the Germanmajority Sudetenland, provided that the 'practical difficulties' could be overcome.'6 The major 'practical difficulty' was, of course, how to coerce Czechoslovakia into accepting truncation, and it must have been knowledge of British intentions that motivated Benes to seek assurance from the Soviet government. The British and French 'terms' were delivered to him on 19 September, and he was requiredto
201
reply before Chamberlain's next meeting with Hitler, scheduled for 21 September (it actually took place on 22-23 September);to leave no doubt as to what answer was expected, the British Minister, Newton, told the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Dr Krofta, that 'refusal or evasion would mean the destruction of his beautiful country'.17 Benes put his question to Moscow that day, and received his affirmative reply the next day, 20 September (a Saturday). This presumably motivated the formal Czech refusal of the Anglo-French terms, which was received in London that evening; the British inner Cabinet met at 10:30 p.m., and, after consultation with the French, cables were sent to the British and French envoys in Prague. They in turn awakened Benes at 2:15 a.m. on Sunday 21 September to tell him that the Czech reply 'in no way meets the critical situation' and that he must 'urgently consider an alternative which takes account of realities'.l8 Benes replied at 5:00 p.m. on the same day that the Czech government 'sadly accepts the British and French proposals'. Just one hour earlier (18.00 hours Moscow time, i.e. 17.00 hours Central European time, 16.00 GMT), Moscow had ordered Kiev Special Military District to begin the preparations outlined above. Benes might have responded differently to the Anglo-French pressure if he had known that Stalin had begun bringing to war readiness almost twice as many divisions as Hitler then had at his disposal.'9 As it was, the Czechoslovak government ordered mobilization at 10:00 p.m. on 22 September, and France ordered a partial mobilization on 24 September. These moves were not linked to the Soviet measures, which were not notified to the French until 25 September, but they caused additional apprehension among the already very uneasy German military. General Jodl, Head of Operations at the High Command (OKW) noted in his diary on 28 September that, after receiving information about French and British measures amounting to partial mobilization,20the Commander-inChief of the army (OKH), General von Brauchitsch, had begged the Chief of OKW, General Keitel, 'to rememberhis responsibilities and do everything possible with the Fuehrer to make sure Sudeten If OKH could be that apprehensive at the territory is not invaded'.21 relatively limited Anglo-French measures, it is easy to conjecture what they would have thought if they had also known about the simultaneous and much larger Soviet preparations. Some attention to the military balance of 1938 is relevant at this point. The plan for invasion of Czechoslovakia ('Fall Gruen'- Case Green) had been approved on 30 May 1938, as an Amendment to the
202
Directive for Unified War Preparations. It made no mention of the British, but assumed that Hungary and Poland would join in, especially if Italian support for Germany deterred France or made it hesitate to intervene, and that 'in all probability' Russia would attempt to support Czechoslovakia, particularly with its air force but with no attempt to assess the likely scale of Soviet efforts. The plan's intent was to crush Czechoslovakia within a few days, failing which 'a European crisis will certainly arise'. Germany's western border would be given cover 'limited in quantity and quality in accordance with the existing state of the fortifications', i.e. minimal.22 The plan was clearly risky, especially at the stage of rearmament Germany had reached in 1938. The army was capable of fielding about fifty-one divisions, only three of which were armoured (and the fortifications along the only two of those as yet fully equipped),23 and the army leaders were border with France were far from ready,24 naturally unenthusiastic at Hitler's intention to take on France, Britain and the Soviet Union simultaneously. British plans envisaged putting only five divisions on to the continent, but France could be expected to mobilize about seventy divisions25and the Soviet Union at least two hundred. Nor could the Czechoslovak army be ignored. It comprised thirty-eight divisions on full mobilization, was well equipped with products from the large and modern Skoda works, and had formidable fixed defences along the whole of its border with Germany, except that with the recently incorporated Austria. The divisions would have been of uneven quality (reservists of German origin were clearly a dubious asset,26 the Polish and Hungarian minorities would have been doubtfully motivated, and so would some of those from Slovakia, where a secessionist movement enjoyed considerable support), but the army in general was regarded as competently trained and led. The British27and German28Military Attach6s in Prague both assessed its morale as high. General Beck, Chief of General Staff of OKH until his resignation at the end of August, considered it to be capable of resisting German invasion for three weeks, and French Intelligence, in a report issued on 25 September, assessed it as capable of holding out for one month.29The correctness or otherwise of these assessments is less important than that they expressed professional military belief of enemy and ally alike that Czechoslovakia could not be overcome within the few days which Case Green postulated as essential. The steps taken by the Red Army in September were equivalent to mobilizing over ninety divisions (sixty infantry, sixteen cavalry
203
divisions, three tank corps and twenty-two tank brigades), with appropriate support from what was then the world's largest air force. Whatever doubts might be held about the quality of the post-purge Red Army, the numerical odds against Germany looked enormous. Remembering the size and role of the British army in the first world war, and the effectiveness of the naval blockade, German military planners could not afford to ignore Britain or to assume that its contribution would be only nominal. But even without it, fifty or so German divisions appeared likely to have to face sixty-five French, thirty-eight Czechoslovak and at least ninety Soviet divisions from the outset, with as potential allies only Italy, Poland and Hungary. The last two of these, concerned only to grab their share of a Czechoslovakia conveniently dismembered by Germany, would probably not move at all rather than fight such a large coalition of opponents. As for Italy, its active participation could no more be counted on in 1938 than later;its declaration of war came only in June 1940, after Germany had already won the Battle of France. Beck wrote a number of memoranda during 1938, in which he set out his reasons for opposing Hitler's plans. In them he tended to overstate the strength of the French army, which he accepted as the strongest in Europe, but the most important point is that he believed Hitler's plan to overrun Czechoslovakia before any other power could react to be unfeasible, and Germany's position to be parlous even without taking the Soviet Union into account. Even granted the low military opinion in Europe of the post-purge Red Army's effectiveness, Beck and his successor Halder, both convinced that Germany could not beat the combined strengths of Britain, France and Czechoslovakia, could hardly, had they known about it, have ignored the additional threat posed by ninety Soviet divisions, however badly led. Not surprisingly, military plotting to remove Hitler, already in progress under Beck, continued under Halder.30 The plotters, however, felt that without a justification readily intelligible to the German public, a military coup would be followed by nazi resistance and perhaps a civil war. Hence the German opposition's efforts to persuade the British government to resist Hitler's demands, including Ewald von Kleist's meeting with Vansittart on 17 August (Vansittart's account of this meeting was on Chamberlain's desk on 19 August), and with Churchill on 18 August.3' There were several reasons for the plotters' inability to convince the British. Both Chamberlain and Halifax had met Hitler personally and
204
believed in the possibility of coming to an understanding with him,32 as did most of the other Cabinet members. The plotters could give only promissory notes in return for the action they requested, and Vansittart, the Foreign Office functionary most acquainted with the opposition (and, because of his hostility to yielding to Hitler, a potential 'friend at court'), did not believe them capable of effective action. Nor, with memories of the first world war still vivid, would the British public necessarily have seen a military take-over in Germany as a move for peace, while the core of the government's dilemma was that Hitler's claim on the Sudetenland, presentable, and presented, as rescuing Germans from alien rule, was widely accepted as a reasonable instance of self-determination. Also underlying the government's actions or inaction were the belief of many British conservatives that communism was the more dangerous enemy and their reluctance to choose between nazi and communist dictators, particularly since some of Stalin's crimes were already known, whereas most of Hitler's still lay in the future; and in relation specifically to Central and South-east Europe, Chamberlain accepted German hegemony over it as preferable to Soviet.33So even if the Soviet moves had been made and publicized earlier, an Anglo-French surrender to Hitler's demands, though more difficult, would not necessarily have become impossible. The crucial factor clearly was the attitude of the Czechoslovak government.On 19 Septemberit had sought and receivedan assurance that the Soviet government would stand by its treaty obligations, but had not been told what specific measures Stalin proposed to take. On 20 September it had rejected the Anglo-French proposals to surrender the Sudetenland but, under pressure from the two powers, it reluctantly accepted them on 21 September. Had it known of the Soviet military preparations then being initiated, it might not have yielded.34Although the French government vacillated, Prime Minister Daladier had more than once said that France would fight if it had to.35The sequence of mobilizations, Soviet on 21 September, Czechoslovak on 22, French on 24, and alerting of the British fleet, known to the Germans by 27 September, could have constituted a deterrent display. They did not because (1) the Soviets told no one what they were actually doing until 25 September, (2) the Czechs, French and British had already yielded; their mobilizations were not against surrendering the Sudetenland, but over how it should be done, after Hitler stiffened his terms in his meeting with Chamberlain late on 21 September.
205
Had the powers made common cause, there would have been two possible outcomes - either Hitler would have backed down, or he would not. To back down would have constituted a humiliating reverse, following which his opponents in the military might have been able to remove him for hazarding Germany's future by uniting the major powers against it, and, as Kleist told Vansittart and Churchill in August, make it 'the prelude to the end of the regime and the renaissance of a Germany with which the world could deal'.36 However, Hitler's Unified War Plan Directive indicates that he intended to fight even if the Soviet Union were involved, relying on over-running Czechoslovakia in a few days from 1 October 1938, before the major powers could mobilize to intervene. As already mentioned, neither German nor French military opinion believed such a fait accompli to be possible. Beck's estimate of three weeks and the Deuxieme Bureau's of four are both well beyond the four days the French army needed for partial or the seventeen days it required for full mobilization. The ninety or so Soviet divisions which had been readied to fight by 1 October had no access to Czechoslovakia except through Poland. The Polish regime had two sound geopolitical reasons to be more anti-Soviet than anti-German at that time. First, its eastern territories, through which Soviet troops would have had to transit, were themselves highly disputable. They were well east of the 'Curzon Line', populated mostly by Belorussians and Ukrainians, not Poles, and had been seized at a time when Russia was debilitated by civil war. The Polish government therefore had good reason to doubt whether Soviet troops would leave once admitted. Secondly, Poland had an interest in dismembering Czechoslovakia. It intended to seize the Teszin area when Germany marched into the Sudetenland. A third, much more subjective, factor was the Polish regime's overoptimistic belief that Stalin's purges were acts of desperation heralding the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. The Anglo-French 'soundings' of Poland and Romania about their willingness to allow Soviet troops to transit were perfunctory compared to the lengths Britain and France went to in pressuring Czechoslovakia to capitulate. They could hardly be otherwise, given the expressed hostility of the Chamberlain and Daladier governments to Soviet involvement in the affairs of Europe. However, had war actually broken out, it would have become a perceived interest of France and, though less directly, of Britain, to relieve German pressure on themselves and Czechoslovakia by facilitating Soviet
206
intervention before Czechoslovakia was completely over-run. Faced with simultaneous pressure from France, Britain and the Soviet Union, it is likely that Poland, or Romania, or both, would have at least declared readiness to permit Soviet transits and overflights. At that point, i.e. before any transits actually took place, the German military, faced with war on three fronts, would have received the justification it sought for removing Hitler. Even had it not done so, the very worst outcome would have been that the second world war began a year sooner, in much less favourable circumstances for Germany than obtained in 1939. What would those circumstances have been? First, Germany would have been encircled. Even ignoring the front with Czechoslovakia, it would have been fighting from the outset the two-front war its military dreaded, and which in the actual second world war it did not have to face seriously until 1944. It would also have been much more vulnerable to British naval blockade than it became after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 had made the Soviet Union a major supplier of its food, fuel and minerals. Militarily, Germany would have been at two major disadvantages in 1938, first in having to fight several enemies at once, and second in doing so at a relatively early stage of its rearmament programme. Its successes up to 1941 depended greatly on what later came to be called 'salami tactics'. In 1939 there were two more bloodless victories against small opponents, the occupation of the rump Czechoslovak state and the seizure of the Lithuanian port of Memel. These enhanced Hitler's reputation for getting what he wanted without actually having to fight, and furthereroded the opposition's prospects of unseating him. Once he did have to fight, his status was further confirmed by the succession of victories between the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the repulse in front of Moscow in December 1941, the only failure being in the air battle over Britain in 1940; with each victory the German army improved its performance, and the prospects of unseating Hitler became more remote. Had the war broken out in 1938, the situation would have been entirely different. Instead of the first test of mechanized warfare taking place against an isolated, outnumbered, poorly equipped and badly led Polish army, and with the Soviets as tacit allies, Germany would have had to fight two major opponents, France and the Soviet Union, with British blockade and a by no means negligible minor land opponent, Czechoslovakia, to complicate the issue. It would have had to do so with a mechanized spearhead of only three Panzer
207
divisions, mainly armed not with the Mk III and Mk IV tanks of 1939-41, but with the much less effective Mks I and II, and with little effective help from the recently incorporated Austrian army, which there had not yet been time to re-equip and train to Wehrmacht standards. And the mostly good-quality modern equipment of the Czechoslovak army, used after the occupation in 1939 to equip over thirty additional German divisions, would have been not merely unavailable, but actually used against Germany by the thirty-eight Czechoslovak divisions fighting, except along the Austrian border, from fixed fortifications whose strength and comprehensiveness astonished the Germans when they examined them after occupying the Sudetenland.37 As for Hitler's standing with the German public, the reports on public opinion compiled twice weekly by the SD (Security Service)38 were to show that, even at the height of German successes in mid1942, scepticism as to the final outcome of the war was still widespread. Had the Czechoslovak crisis erupted into war in 1938, Hitler's foreign policy 'record' of two bloodless victories (Rhineland and Austria), followed by an unwanted war against all the major European powers except Italy, would have appeared to most Germans the work of a dangerous bungler, meriting only instant removal from power by the army, still a respected institution. Of course none of this happened. The British and French governments, dominated by awareness of their own unreadiness for war, overestimating Germany's readiness for it and the destructive capability of German bombers, undecided whether nazism or communism was the greater evil, and intent on keeping the Soviet Union out of European affairs as much as possible, successfully pressured Czechoslovakia to give in. The most pragmatic defence of Munich was that it gave the Allies an extra year to prepare for an inevitable war. However, Hitler made much better use of the time, not merely in increasing German armed forces and armaments, but in removing the Soviet Union from the opposing camp until such time as he would choose to invade it, so that particular defence of Munich has long ceased to be used. Marshal Zakharov's disclosures tend to support the opposite conclusion, that there was never a better chance of averting (or even of fighting) the second world war than in the last two weeks of September 1938. It is legitimate to wonder what would have happened if the Czech cabinet had known, when drafting its telegram of surrenderto Anglo-French pressure on 21 September, that at the very same time Moscow, in
208
accordance with its assurances to Benes, was putting forces almost twice the size of the Wehrmacht on war alert. It would surely have reiterated its refusal. The French government, bound by a FrancoSoviet-Czechoslovak treaty of guarantee, would have been hard put to renege (and would have had far less reason to do so) if the Soviets had told it on 21 September rather than, as they actually did, four days later, what measures the Red Army had been ordered to implement. The British government would have had no choice but to support France and Czechoslovakia, and the German generals would have had the grounds they sought for removing Hitler. The greatest imponderable, of course, is whether they would actually have done so; but at the very least Hitler's hold on the German people would have been severely damaged, if the almost unbroken string of successes he enjoyed up to the end of 1942 had been broken in 1938. No explanation has been given for the prolonged silence, but there are several possible reasons, most of which relate to political realities at different times from September 1938 onwards. First of all is general Soviet secretiveness about mobilization procedures and schedules. For example, though glasnost has facilitated disclosure of many new details about the conduct of the second world war, very little information is available even now about the numbers mobilized, the time needed for full mobilization, or the procedures employed. In his epilogue to Zakharov's book, General Moyseyev mentioned the sensitivity of General Staff work as among the reasons why the book was not published in 1969, saying specifically that, 'Above all, there were still in force at that time fairly severe restrictions relating to publication in the overt press about the organizational, operational and mobilization activity of the General Staff' (my emphasis). It is significant that the first reference to details of the 1938 mobilization was made only thirty years later, that its author, Zakharov, was by then the third-highest member of the military hierarchy, and that even he encountered difficulties which delayed publication a further twenty years. We do not know whether the Munich details were among the difficulties, but we do know that they were not published anywhere else in the interim. Second, a variety of particular reasons for silence arose in succession. Up to the invasion of June 1941, these concerned relations with Germany. Stalin's preferred option initially seems to have been collective action with Britain and France to contain Germany, but the Western powers were doubtful allies, and the alternative option of a deal with Germany was not to be foreclosed because of what it could
209
offer on the Soviet western borders, namely restoration of territories lost only twenty years previously - Finland, the three Baltic States and Eastern Poland. The first of these periods was very brief-- 21 to 25 September 1938. When the orders went out, no other country had mobilized. For Stalin to make the mobilization public then would at best have branded the Soviet Union as the most hostile of Germany's potential enemies, at worst have left it to face Germany alone. It may have been for that reason that on 21 September, the very day that the first mobilization orders went out, the editorial in Pravda displayed a curmudgeonly evenhandedness, declaring that the Soviet Union saw 'no difference between German and English robbers'. When France declared partial mobilization on 24 September, this danger ceased to exist, so the French were informed on the next day. However, there was still a clear case against making the mobilization public, namely the risk that the French would still prefer to yield to Hitler. Telling them what he had done was intended to stiffen their backbones, but if it failed to do so, his relations with Germany could be badly damaged by disclosure of the lengths to which he had been prepared to go. Which of Stalin's options would prove the more feasible depended on whether the British and French could be reliable allies against Germany. Conflicting signals were coming from London and Paris during September, so Stalin attempted to cover both possibilities to mobilize, so as to contribute to a joint effort to contain Germany, but to do so without publicity, so as to keep open the possibility of a deal with Germany if the Western powers defaulted. This deal began to take shape in April of the next year but, apart from the Pravda editorial, the only evidence that such thinking was around in Moscow as early as September 1938 is Deputy Foreign Minister Potemkin's alleged remark to French Ambassador Coulondre that the Munich Agreement had made a fourth partition of Poland inevitable. However, once it was known that Britain and France intended not only to yield to Hitler's demands, but to force them on Czechoslovakia, a deal with Germany became the more serious option. This dictated continued silence about how willing Stalin had recently been to confront Germany. In August 1939, Stalin was dickering simultaneously with UKFrance and with Germany. Clearly, he still had no wish to tell the Germans that he had been ready to send ninety divisions against them in 1938. But neither was it politic to remind the British and French, because they might leak it to bedevil Soviet-German relations. This
210
need for discretion may explain why the normally very protocolconscious Stalin had two People's Commissars (Ministers), Molotov and Voroshilov, head the Soviet side in talks with the much lowerstatus British and French delegations; having such senior spokesmen reduced the risk that a junior diplomat or soldier would make the disclosure inadvertently. Against that, it can be argued that the French military already knew, having been told on 25 and 28 September 1938; but for Stalin this constituted a risk of disclosure, not a certainty. The French government had kept silent about the Soviet mobilization, because to disclose it would have made its decision to appease Hitler the more difficult to justify. It was therefore likely that the French government would keep quiet, because the disclosure's potential for political embarrassment was still high in 1939. Either way the best course for the Soviets was to say nothing. Once the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had been signed, neither had any incentive to prejudice a mutually profitable arrangement by referringto the Soviet Union's apparent willingness to fight Germany in 1938. This continued to be the case until the German invasion in June 1941, but from then until the end of the war, Soviet silence is harder to explain - to tell Churchill would have been a flattering confirmation of the line he had taken in 1938. However, it would also have opened an issue Stalin probably preferred not to discuss, namely how, for the sake of a short-term and controversial gain (the dismembering of a British ally, Poland, and annexation of three independent Baltic states with which Britain enjoyed good relations), he had assisted Hitler to change the European balance of power, a course of action which had proved catastrophic to France, Britain and, ultimately, to the Soviet Union itself, and had been comprehensively hoodwinked by him. In any event, having many important matters of present and future to discuss at their infrequent meetings, the Allied leaders had little time to spare for dissecting past errors. From the end of the war until the onset of glasnost, the official Soviet 'line' was that the Munich Agreement had been an AngloFrench conspiracy to turn Germany eastwards against the Soviet Union, and therefore had a prearranged outcome which no Soviet action could affect. Most Czechoslovaks accepted until 1968 that the democracies had betrayed them in 1938-9 and the Red Army rescued them in 1944-45, so there was no political advantage to be gained by detailing the 1938 preparations.
211
In 1968 there might have been some advantage in disclosing the Munich effort, but as the Czechs apparently knuckled under quickly, there was no need. It might also have tempted fate - it is not hard to see what capital dissidents could have made by comparing the two mobilizations, that of 1938 to avert invasion, that of 1968 to invade. Perhaps more fundamentally, no one responsible for defending Soviet policy in 1968 knew of the measures taken in 1938. The censors of Zakharov's manuscript knew; but their function is to prevent publication of damaging material, not to identify potentially useful propaganda points; and as Zakharov preferrednot to publish rather than bow to them, the whole matter was put into limbo for a further twenty years. Of pre-war leaders who might have remembered the episode at some politically useful time, only Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Mikoyan were still alive in 1968. The first three had long been ousted from power, and Mikoyan's 1938 post (food industries) gave him no obvious role in military matters, so he probably knew nothing about the mobilization of that year. Any attempt to explain Stalin's actions runs up against gaps in the record, created by his secretive leadership style. The wartime period is the most fully reported, because he had to rely greatly on others, mostly generals, who outlived him to write their memoirs. But even there his secretivenessis apparent. For example his GHQ, the Stavka, had no fixed schedule of meetings (his secretary, Poskrebyshev, arranged them by telephone as required), no fixed composition (Stalin decided who should attend, according to what he wished to discuss), no written agenda, no minutes, War Diary or staff (the Chief of General Staff, or his Head or Deputy Head of Operations, noted down decisions and had them converted into orders). So the memoirs of generals (and one Admiral) are the main sources of information (no civilian member wrote memoirs), and archive material so far cited is essentially limited to what they use to support their accounts. This situation may now be changing, but the process is slow. For the late 1930s there are even greater gaps. Stalin cultivated an omniscient remoteness, and the mass butchery in which he was engaged at the time bred few confidants. There is a faint hope that Molotov may shed some additional light on the Munich period; he may have spent the time between his ousting in 1957 and his recent death in writing his memoirs. But it is a very faint hope; he was as reticent by nature as was Stalin, and any full and truthful account of his role in the late 1930s would be very self-incriminating; so he probably did not provide one.
212
Notes
1. For example: V.K. Volkov (ed.), Myunkhen. Preddveriye Voyny (Munich: The Threshhold of War) (Moscow 1988); V.K. Volkov et al., 1939 god. Uroki istorii (The Year 1939. Lessons of History) (Moscow 1990); S.V. Volkov and Yu V. Emel'yanov, 1939. Do i posle sekretnykhprotokolov (1939. Before and After the Secret Protocols) (Moscow 1990). 2. 0. A. Rzheshevskiy, Europe 1939. Was War Inevitable?(Moscow 1989); and M.V. Zakharov, General'nyyShtab v PredvoyennyyeGody (Moscow 1989). 3. Zakharov, op. cit., 112-15. 4. Ibid., 116. The text cited by Zakharov is Document 53 in the collection Novyye Dokumenty iz Istorii Myunkhena (Moscow 1958), editor and publisher not named. English language version, New Documentsfrom the History of Munich, was published in Prague in 1958. 5. Zakharov, for example, says that the Soviet 'liberation' of Eastern Poland in September 1939 was 'unexpected' by the Germans, and that the Winter War of 193940 resulted from a Finnish attack on the Soviet Union. Zakharov, op. cit., 175, 181-2. 6. Ibid., 116. 7. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 104. 8. Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1954 (hereafter DGFP), series D, vol. II (HMSO, London 1950), 383 and 434. 9. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 103. 10. N. Thompson, The Anti-appeasers(Oxford 1971), 176. 11. K. Robbins, Munich 1938 (London 1968), 262. 12. The German Ambassador in Moscow noted on 26 September that on 21 September the Soviet Foreign Minister, Litvinov, had said at Geneva that 'three days previously' the Czech government had 'for the first time' asked the Soviet government whether it would provide support if France did, and had received 'a clear and positive answer'. That places Benes's question on 18 or 19 September. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 947. But see next footnote. 13. Maisky, then Soviet Ambassador in London, says in his memoirs that on 19 September, immediately after receiving the 'Anglo-French plan', Benes sent for Alexandrovskiy, the Soviet Minister in Prague, and through him put two questions to the Soviet government: would the Soviet Union help Czechoslovakia if France did, and would it support Czechoslovakia in an appeal for help to the Council of the League of Nations. An affirmative reply to both questions was received the next day. He also says that Alexandrovskiy telephoned the news to Benes, while the Cabinet was meeting to consider the Anglo-French proposals, and that it thereupon rejected them, proposing instead arbitration as envisaged by the German-Czechoslovak Treaty of 1925. I.M. Maisky, Vospominaniya Sovetskogo Diplomata 1925-1945, 2nd edition (Moscow 1987), 357-8. 14. Robbins, op. cit., 276. 15. E.g., on 23 May 1938 Daladier told the German Ambassador in Paris that the 'Cossack and Mongol hordes should not be allowed to break into Europe'. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 327. Or Chamberlain on 26 March 1938: 'I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia', cited in K. Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London 1946), 403. 16. Robbins, op. cit., 263.
213
17. The Earl of Birkenhead, Halifax (London 1965), 396. 18. Robbins, op. cit., 397. 19. According to Keitel, forty German divisions had been earmarked for Case Green (the attack on Czechoslovakia). But a French Intelligence report listed the German forces along the Czechoslovak border as at 1900 hrs on 19 September as totalling only twenty-six divisions (four in Silesia, seven in Saxony, seven in Bavaria, six in Austria and two unlocated). Documents DiplomatiquesFrancais, 2nd series, vol. XI (Paris 1977), 345. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 106, gives the figure as thirty divisions but does not cite his source. It is not clear whether Keitel's figure includes the force which was to cover the frontier with France during the execution of Case Green. 20. In addition to the French partial mobilization, the British ordered fleet mobilization on 27 September. 21. E.M. Robertson, Hitler's Pre-war Policy and Military Plans 1933-39 (London 1963), 148. 22. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 300-3 contain the 20 May 1938 draft of the plan for 'Fall Gruen'. 23. Thompson, op. cit., 134. At his meeting with Chamberlain on the evening of 23 September, Hitler grossly exaggerated the forces at his disposal by saying he intended to act because Germany could not keep '90 to 100 divisions' under arms indefinitely and doing nothing. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 905. 24. At a meeting with Hitler on 10 August, Generals Adam and von Wietersheim expressed misgivings about the state of the West Wall defences. Hitler flew into a rage, but shortly thereafter issued a directive ordering practical completion of the defences by 28 September, and himself inspected the West Wall on 26-29 August. Thompson, op. cit., 131-2. 25. Hitler claimed France could put only forty divisions on to the German border, would require five or six days to mobilize and a further six to deploy them. But he was also aware that of the twenty divisions of the German replacement army, only eight could be available in the West at the end of three weeks. The German Military Attache in Paris, Kuelenthal, on 27 September reported his assessment that France could place 'an initial' sixty-five divisions on the border on the sixth day of mobilization, i.e. 30 September. Thompson, op. cit., 132 and 145, and DGFP, series D, vol. II, 977. 26. The German Military Attache in Prague, Toussaint, reported on 19 September, i.e. before the general mobilization, that conscripts of German origin were being used as a labour service, under guard. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 837. 27. Robbins, op. cit., 308-9. 28. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 96. 29. Documents DiplomatiquesFranfais, 2nd series, vol. XI, op. cit., 535-6. 30. For a detailed account of Beck's and Halder's attempts to arrange a coup in 1938, see P. Hoffmann, The History of the GermanResistance 1933-45 (London 1971), 54-96. 31. Robbins, op. cit., 245-7. 32. The Earl of Halifax, Fullness of Days (London 1957), 185, 188, 198, 205-6. Robbins, op. cit., 263-4. 33. Robbins, op. cit., 241-2. 34. Professor Rzheshevskiy argues that the Czech government was itself dominated by defeatists, which included Benes himself, Prime Minister Hodza and Foreign Minister Krofta. He cites Czech historians' evidence that Benes received the positive reply to the question mentioned by Zakharov not on 21 September, as he claimed in his
214
memoirs, but on 20 September, that is before rather than after the Czech government had bowed to the Anglo-French pressure, and cites the text of the Soviet reply, which was made public in 1979. The text indeed affirms Soviet readiness to render 'prompt and effective assistance' in accordance with the Treaty, provided France also did so, or under Articles 16 and 17 of the League of Nations Charter. However, the text does not indicate that orders for specific military measures were about to be issued, nor does it commit the Soviet Union to act in isolation (Articles 16 and 17 imply collective rather than unilateral action). Support for the 'defeatism' thesis exists, in the shape of Newton's belief that Benes would welcome an 'ultimatum' which would enable the government to yield, pleading 'force majeure' (Newton to Halifax, 20 December 1938, DGFP, 3 series, ii, 425), and in the rejection by Benes, shortly before the telegram of surrenderwas despatched on 21 September, of the demand of a group of generals, led by the Chief of Staff, General Krejci, to dismiss the government and establish a military dictatorship in order to fight the anticipated German attack with expectation of Soviet help. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 92-3. 35. E.g. on 13 September he 'gloomily' agreed that he would prefer war to complete capitulation, and on 25 September, in discussions with the UK Cabinet, said that 'Hitler planned aggression and France would do her duty'. Robbins, op. cit., 266 and 293. 36. Robbins, op. cit., 245. 37. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 106-7. According to notes made by Hitler's adjutant, Schmundt, of a conference Hitler held with the military leaders at Nuremberg on 9-10 September, Hitler said 'our artillery [21-cm howitzers] not adequate against the fortifications'. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 729. Speer later confirmed that in test firings against the fortifications following occupation of the Sudetenland, these guns were found to be ineffective. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 106. 38. Series Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Sicherheitsdienst, 'Meldungen aus dem Reich'. Bestand R58, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz.
G. Jukes is a Senior Fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. He is the author of The Soviet Union in Asia (1973) and Hitler's Stalingrad Decisions (1985) and has contributed to various collective works on Soviet foreign, defence and nationalities policy. He is currently working on a book on Stalin's war leadership.

The Red Army and The Munich Crisis Author(s) : G. JukesReviewed

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Оригинальное название

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

The Red Army and The Munich Crisis Author(s) : G. JukesReviewed

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

The Red Army and the Munich Crisis Author(s): G.

TheRedArmyand the Munich Crisis

Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis

Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis

Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis

Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis

Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis

Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis

Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis

Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis

Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisis

Вам также может понравиться