Strange Allies

Britain, France and the Dilemmas of Disarmament and Security, 1929-1933

Andrew Webster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138019348
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351596022
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Strange Allies examines three intersecting themes of fundamental importance to the international history of the period between the two world wars. First, and most broadly, it is a study of the international history of the pivotal 'hinge years', running from the onset of the Depression in late 1929 to the Nazi capture of power in Germany in early 1933. The second theme is the strategic relationship between Britain and France, the critical dynamic in the management of global and European international relations during this time of great fluidity and uncertainty. The most contentious and intractable issue that divided the two countries was the pursuit of international disarmament, which forms the third theme of the book.

Strange Allies is based upon extensive research in British and French archives, as well as in the archives of the League of Nations in Geneva. The book's focus on 1929–31 in particular makes a major contribution to the international history of the interwar period by re-examining the security and strategic policies of the second Labour government in Britain and of foreign minister Aristide Briand in the post-Locarno years in France. For 1931–33, the book looks at the impact of the great financial and economic crisis of 1931 on security and disarmament planning in Britain and France. It then considers the impact of the Anglo-French relationship on the instability of Europe and on the failure of the World Disarmament Conference.

This book is the first detailed study of the Anglo-French relationship during a critical period which saw a reshaping of the boundaries of global security. Although the Anglo-French alliance is rightly seen to be pivotal to both the initial phase of implementing the Versailles settlement of 1919 and the efforts to contain Hitler and protect Europe after 1936, Strange Allies demonstrates the degree to which these states' conflicting views of security were central to international relations in the years leading up to Hitler's accession to power.

1 The trials of victory

France, Britain and disarmament after the Great War

Aftermath of war

The problem of international disarmament would prove a constant challenge for Anglo-French relations during the post-war decade.¹ Policymakers had no choice but to engage with it, public opinion would accept nothing less, but each of the many shapes that it took during these years seemed to come back to the same essential division. In the aftermath of the great struggle of 1914–18, an island maritime power connected to a global empire and commonwealth and a continental land power directly abutting its still-powerful recent enemy were inevitably going to possess entirely different conceptions of disarmament’s strategic implications. Where the British looked towards policies that emphasised the rapid reconstruction of Europe without the cost of any direct commitment of their own, the French proved consistently unwilling to accept any new arrangements that altered the distribution of power on the continent in a manner that could potentially jeopardise their ability to provide for their own security. Both countries took extensive steps to cut back their armed forces and defence budgets, for political, strategic and especially financial reasons, as they placed their military establishments on a peacetime basis. But such cuts were made independently and not as part of any coordinated international process of arms reductions. It was possible and convenient therefore for each power to portray its actions as leadership in disarmament, yet neither based its disarmament policy on a spirit of international altruism or cooperation and both continued to pursue self-sufficiency in national security.

Interwar French foreign policy was fundamentally shaped by the experience of the First World War and the system of security created by the Treaty of Versailles.² Besides the principal tragedy of horrendous human losses, the war had also caused enormous material harm and deep psychological scarring – and there was little doubt in French minds about who should pay for them. Combined with the desire for retribution against Germany was a powerful and multifaceted sense of fear that would shape the way in which France considered every European question: fear of Germany’s superior demographic, industrial and potential military power; fear over the uncertain payment of reparations and the enforcement of German disarmament; and fear of a revival of an aggressive German nationalism. The primary French concern was for their own physical safety, for the depressing truth was that France was simply weaker than Germany. Despite the territorial, economic and military restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had emerged with its essential superiority over France intact. France still required guarantees against possible future German aggression.

The wide variety of political opinion notwithstanding, most French policymakers both supported negotiating with Germany from a position of strength and dismissed any idea that France was seeking hegemony over Europe as a whole. In its search for security, France followed two interweaving and sometimes contradictory paths. On the one hand, it felt the need for vigilance against Germany and for military superiority and alliances to enforce the Versailles treaty. But this was for self-protection, as wartime experience had demonstrated that France could not defeat Germany alone, and not out of a desire for war or the domination of Europe. On the other hand, France pursued hopes of peace through a spirit of conciliation and modest compromise, and through recourse to new international institutions such as the League of Nations. But this did not imply unilateral disarmament or unwarranted concessions to Germany’s demands for treaty revision. Most French policymakers rejected the idea that a disarmament agreement was the most direct route to European stability. On the contrary, they insisted that the political and military organisation of security had to precede disarmament: the only way to ensure peace was to create a system which could, if necessary, enforce it. Until such additional and substantive security guarantees materialised, France would refuse to surrender those elements of superiority over the defeated enemy enshrined in the Versailles treaty. Neither the new League of Nations with its imperfect Covenant, nor the temporary occupation of the Rhineland, nor the enforced restrictions upon German armaments were enough to allow France to let down its guard.

In the immediate post-war years, French policymakers focused entirely upon ensuring security through reliance upon armed strength and the strict enforcement of controls upon Germany. Three years after the war’s end, the War Ministry was certain that Europe still remained essentially unpacified: Germany’s utter refusal to accept the reality of its defeat and its rejection of an unjust peace, combined with the violations of its disarmament obligations, meant it remained a significant and genuine threat to the entire continent. In such circumstances, France had to make the ‘heavy sacrifice’ of retaining powerful armed forces. A memorandum prepared by the Quai d’Orsay similarly insisted that ‘the problem of the reduction of armaments is subordinate to the problem of the re-establishment of peace’.³ French security could not be served by international disarmament; it required concrete security guarantees such as a pact of direct military assistance with Britain. This did not mean there were no cuts from wartime force levels. During 1921–1924, France reduced its army from 52 to 32 divisions and its armed forces from 837,500 to 674,000 total effectives – though this still left it with an overwhelming numerical superiority on land over the other major powers. Similarly, French military expenditure fell from 17,734 million francs in 1919, to 7,244 million in 1920, to 7,167 million in 1921. The term of service for conscripts, significant from both a military and a symbolic perspective, was reduced from three years in 1919 to eighteen months in 1923.⁴

Table 1.1 French, British and German demographic and industrial figures

Table 1.2 French annual defence budgets, 1922–28 (1,000s francs)

As part of the effort to compensate for these reductions, French policymakers sought out new allies. The first French alliance was with Belgium (7 September 1920), followed by a series of eastern European alliances: with Poland (19 February 1921) and the ‘Little Entente’ of Czechoslovakia (24 January 1924), Romania (10 June 1926) and Yugoslavia (11 November 1927). Such links expanded the range of potential political and military partners for France. Belgian cooperation was vital if there was to be an adequate defence against a German attack similar to the one in 1914, while its support mitigated French isolation during the Ruhr occupation in 1923; Poland’s large army was a significant factor in continental security calculations; Polish and Czech delegates at the League of Nations were firm backers of French positions on the disarmament issue.⁵ Yet these alliances with small and medium-sized nations always remained of lesser consequence for France as instruments of security and economic policy than the all-important connection with Britain. Anglo-French cooperation was critical to both of the defining aspects of France’s foreign policy – as an ally explicitly against Germany or as a partner in overseeing and managing Germany’s inevitable resurgence – and thus either alliance or at least close partnership with Britain was considered essential to France’s long-term safety. At the Paris peace conference, and even before, the first, constant and overriding priority of prime minister Georges Clemenceau was to maintain a good understanding with Britain. He told the Chamber of Deputies in December 1918 that his ‘directing thought’ at the conference would be to prolong the wartime coalition: ‘to this unity, I will make every sacrifice’.⁶ The dilemma he faced was stark: it was either France alone on the Rhine or the promise of solidarity with Britain. The feeling was the same several years later. ‘We cannot remain at peace in Europe if we are not in agreement with England’, insisted the senior Quai d’Orsay official Jacques Seydoux in 1921,⁷ while the French ambassador in London observed a year later that ‘Britain is as precious an ally in war-time as its political influence, moral authority and loyalty make it in peace-time’.⁸ Yet the resurrection of the former wartime alliance was to prove an unobtainable goal.

The experience of the war had left its mark in Britain also: public and policymakers alike had no intention of being dragged into such a maelstrom again.⁹ While calls for a policy of aloofness from European problems came from ‘traditionalist’ policymakers looking towards the empire and from ‘Atlanticists’ looking to the United States, it was generally recognised that the continent and its troubles could not be ignored. With the aim of minimising all European distractions, they sought to preserve a balance of power that prevented any one power from dominating western Europe and posing a danger of invasion. Despite the brief wartime alliance, British post-war policy thus aimed itself away from any complicity with France and in the immediate aftermath of the war even identified France as Britain’s greatest potential threat. Already in December 1918, Lord Curzon could comment: ‘I am seriously afraid that the great power from whom we have most to fear in the future is France’.¹⁰ But the two countries were at once each other’s greatest potential challenger and their most considerable ally. As foreign secretary five years later Curzon would tell Dominion leaders both that ‘we go arm in arm with [France], but with one of our hands on her collar’ yet also that ‘if France and ourselves permanently fall out, I see no prospect of the recovery of Europe or the pacification of the world’.¹¹ With British governments keen on Germany’s recovery and its reinstatement as a leading nation as an essential element in restoring peace and the world economy, French measures for the strict enforcement of the Versailles treaty were condemned as unduly harsh and likely only to foster German resentment. The long discussions over whether to offer France the requested security commitments, in order provide sufficient confidence to allow for a more generous policy towards Germany, revealed a split among British policymakers. Some argued that a more secure France would be more amiable towards the defeated enemy, as did the ambassador in Paris, Charles Hardinge: ‘I feel that until France obtains some guarantee of assistance by us against possible aggression by Germany, she will continue to be unreasonable and tiresome over all questions affecting her relations with Germany’.¹² The more influential viewpoint, however, was that giving a security guarantee to France, already the strongest power on the continent, was not only an unconscionable extension of British commitments but might only encourage the French to put more pressure upon the Germans. The French could best be kept in check by keeping them uncertain. ‘If France is unlikely to accept our lead on the outstanding questions in return for the guarantee, our experience of the past does not lead us to think that she would be more tractable after a guarantee had been given… . In fact, it is not unlikely that France would be more pugnacious than ever’, wrote cabinet secretary Maurice Hankey.¹³ British policymakers thus wanted things both ways with their cross-channel neighbour. France needed to be confident enough to be forgiving and open-handed towards Germany, yet still hesitant enough not to challenge Britain’s lead.

Safe from invasion as a result of geography and sea power, Britain did not share the same security concerns as its continental wartime ally. Militarily secure behind the Channel, and spurred on by domestic concerns about costs and the need to revive the economy, British politicians and public commentators presented their extensive post-war demobilisation as ‘leading the way’ through a unilateral contribution to disarmament. After 1918, declining industrial demand, increasing unemployment and rising taxation all prompted calls for large cuts in military spending. The famous ‘ten year rule’ was introduced in August 1919, instructing the service ministries when framing their estimates to assume ‘the British Empire will not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years, and that no Expeditionary Force is required for that purpose’.¹⁴ The Royal Navy scrapped massive amounts of tonnage to reduce its bloated fleet and emasculated its enormous wartime building programs. Some twenty-seven pre-dreadnought capital ships, now outclassed in size and gun calibre, along with twenty-seven heavy cruisers and forty-eight light cruisers were struck off within months of the war’s end. The army was cut from 2,600,000 officers and men in 1919 to a mere 170,800 in 1923. Successive governments similarly reduced budgetary expenditure on national defence, from total estimates for the armed services of £616,599,660 in 1919 to £122,011,000 in 1923.¹⁵ For most British policymakers during the 1920s, disarmament was aimed at cost reduction and was not a policy goal in itself (except in terms of reducing French military strength). While Britain still maintained the world’s largest navy, this was proclaimed to be merely for self-defence and the unselfish guardianship of safety on the world’s oceans. In contrast, France was pressed to cut heavily its large army and air force, considered to be evidence of an aggressive and militarist mentality. With peace now restored to Europe, British policymakers argued that significant cuts to continental armies were possible and would in and of themselves create an even stronger ethos of peace and security. In doing so, they consistently overestimated France’s power to sustain its artificial predominance and underestimated the strength of Germany’s resurgence.

Crucial to this were differing assessments of the place of defeated Germany. British policymakers generally looked for the creation of a stable Europe through the reintegration of Germany as an equal power in a functioning international system. France was recognised to be the indispensable partner in achieving this, yet was also seen in London as an exasperating opponent blocking the wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The trials of victory: France, Britain and disarmament after the Great War
• 2 Allies of yesterday: Britain in 1929
• 3 Security is the guardian of peace: France in 1929
• 4 An opening clash: reparations and the Rhineland
• 5 Alternative paths: European union, international arbitration and general disarmament at the League Assembly
• 6 The battle of London: the continuing pursuit of naval disarmament
• 7 The problems of 1930: the Rhineland, arbitration and European union
• 8 Enfin désarmement: the Preparatory Commission concludes
• 9 Annus terribilis: 1931 as a year of crisis
• 10 Missed opportunity: preparing for the World Disarmament Conference
• 11 Collapsing centre: the World Disarmament Conference, 1932–33
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index