The Second World War, Part I (September 20th, 1937 - November 8th, 1938) | A House Divided Alternate Elections
Frozen Frontlines
With the Italian seizure of the Tirol being central to the casus belli of the German Empire, it came as no surprise that one of the first major offensives of the war was an attempt to wrest back control of the territory after its occupation. The Imperial German Army opened the fighting with a bidirectional assault focusing on securing the city of Bozen, a rail hub at the junction of the Reschen and Brenner Passes, as well as supporting efforts to dislodge the Italians from the Karst Plateau. With the Italian positions held by their elite Alpini troops, considered the world’s experts in mountain warfare, the Germans led by General Erwin von Witzleben encountered stiff resistance and were repulsed time and time again. These battlefield defeats were only compounded by difficulties such as a lack of appropriate winter clothing, logistical issues from supply lines compromised by Austrian partisans, and poor weather limiting the effectiveness of fire support. As winter snows began to set in and block the Alpine passes during November, the German Army suspended its offensive to concentrate on crushing the Prague uprising which was complicating its supply network, stabilizing its position in recently annexed Austria, and laying the logistical groundwork for future offensives.
Despite a much more temperate climate, the frontline on the French-German frontier remained equally static. During the interwar period, the German defense policy had been to construct a series of fortifications known as the “Westwall” to stymy a French advance in the event of war in order to buy time to ramp up Germany’s formidable war industry and defeat the nation’s enemies with its industrial might. Likewise, the French had built their own defensive line as a force multiplier to make careful use of their limited manpower in the aftermath of the devastating First Great War. Moreover, the French had been caught somewhat unawares by the sudden outbreak of a general European war, and were reluctant to commit to a major offensive before fully mobilizing their army. Several probing attacks thus turned into costly failures for both sides, with air raids just adding carnage in civilian centers, and soon the border between the two rivals settled into an uneasy calm.
Italian Alpini scaling a treacherous mountainside during the Battle of Bozen
The Belgrade Agreement
Not wanting to commit many soldiers to the Albanian front, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini instead opted for the use of diplomacy to outmaneuver the impending threat of the Bulgarian Army. With King George Obrenović of Serbia vacillating between committing to either side of the incipient Great War, many Serbian military officers were bristling at the lack of action when the nation had much it could gain. Moreover, King George was deeply unpopular in the country due to his illegitimate birth and his perception as a puppet of the Austrians due to his installation after the Great War. Thus, there was fertile ground for Italian ambassador Mario Indelli to orchestrate a coup that deposed the king and invited Alexander Karadordević to claim the throne. Of course, King Alexander held little power in a regime that was in reality dominated by a clique of military officers. After a meeting between the Italian and Hungarian ambassadors in Belgrade, the three countries agreed to a plan that would partition the independent Kingdom of Croatia into three parts: Istria and the Dalmatian coast would go to Italy, the historic crownlands of Croatia-Slavonia to Hungary, and Bosnia and Montenegro would be granted to Serbia. However, this last award was only given on the condition that Serbia agree to declare war on Bulgaria.
Thus, the war expanded once more in the Balkans, as the Serbians sought to achieve their vengeance against one of many historic rivals. The threat posed by the Serbian invasion of Vardar Macedonia forced Bulgarian General Nikola Mihov to halt his offensive against Italian Albania and focus on maintaining a defensible line in his now exposed salient. Despite this setback, the Bulgarian Army remained a formidable opponent, particularly when compared to the ill-equipped and poorly trained troops of Serbia. After regrouping their position and parrying the Serbian attack, the Bulgarian Army launched a devastating offensive towards the Serbian city of Niš which destroyed large portions of the Serbian forces thanks in large part to the disparity in military equipment. However, spring rains turned local roads into a deluge of mud that prevented the Bulgarians from effectively capitalizing on their success. Perhaps in retribution for this turn of bad luck, the Bulgarian army carried out reprisals against Serbian prisoners of war and civilians in Niš, murdering men, women, and children who had little control over the whims of the weather.
Meanwhile, the war in Hungary would prove to be one of the most dynamic theaters of the conflict. After Ukrainian incursions into Western Ruthenia and the German occupation of Sopron, the Kingdom of Hungary had joined forces with Italy in resisting the forces of Mitteleuropa. Unfortunately, this move had left it virtually surrounded by its enemies. Successfully stalling the Polish and Ukrainian armies on the Carpathian Mountains as they became snowed in during the winter, Hungarian forces were able to concentrate on organizing a defense against the German army in the Western reaches of the country. Although comparatively disorganized and unprofessional, the Hungarian forces had a spirited morale thanks to the imagery of national defense, held the support of local partisans, and had retained much of the military equipment of the former Triune. Despite this, the German troops held a clear advantage in heavy equipment, particularly tanks, which saw their first widespread use in the war on the easily traversable plains of Western Hungary.
Thanks in part to German attention being squandered on the Alps and putting down rebellions in Bohemia and Moravia, the Hungarians were able to stand their ground well into the summer of 1938. However, by then German priorities had shifted into a strategic flanking attack into what they viewed as the weakest link in their chain of opponents and a German invasion smashed through Hungarian defenses. The havoc wreaked by the Germans left the Hungarians forced to withdraw across the Danube and leave much of their heartland open to the German advance. The ensuing occupation saw widespread looting of businesses owned by ethnic Hungarians, while local ethnic Germans were placed into positions of power in the local administration, enjoying a dominance lost since the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.
King Joseph III of Hungary (left of center) alongside the General Staff of the Kingdom of Hungary.
The Faltering Beacon of Socialism
Although quick to declare neutrality in the conflict that erupted in Europe, Spain was not immune to its depredations. Since a revolution that had overthrown dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, Spain had undergone a socialist transformation under the auspices of Prime Minister Indalecio Prieto. Private ownership was swept aside in favor of worker control, and wide stretches of the nation’s industrial output, agriculture, and even small business were collectivized or transformed into worker’s cooperatives. Municipalities across the country were transformed into communes that eschewed traditional capitalist principles in favor of distribution of goods according to need. Beyond just its economic system, the Spanish Revolution had also precipitated a social revolution with school systems reorganized to draw inspiration from the ideas of American President John Dewey and the legal code rewritten to legalize homosexuality and abortion among other aspects of personal freedom. Yet while this was enthusiastically received among much of the population, it also earned the enmity of much of the military as well as that of the all-important Catholic Church.
Increasingly beleaguered by resistance against the further implementation of the socialist program as well as the reverberations of the Great Depression, Prime Minister Indalecio Prieto resigned in 1937 to be replaced by Ferdinand de los Rios, who promptly called new elections in order to restore their party’s mandate. Unfortunately, the elections were marred by violence and accusations of voter fraud, and only returned a minority for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party which further undermined its legitimacy. With domestic unrest reaching a fever pitch, opponents of the regime began to organize and develop a secret plan to overthrow the government. Seeking out foreign support for their plan, the Carlist wing of the opposition earned promises from the Kingdom of France while the Falangist wing secured the blessings of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Thus, sympathetic military forces launched an attempted coup d’etat in Madrid to seize control of the government. Although the attempt failed miserably amid several operational mistakes and the unified opposition of the local population, it became the inflection point for the eruption of civil conflict. Across the country, right-wing forces rose up in arms against the Spanish Republic and embroiled the country in a savage civil war that ensured its neutrality for the time being.
Spanish militiawomen garrisoning Barcelona.
Treacherous Seas
Since the Treaty of the Hague stripped away much of France’s coal and iron production, their heavy industry had become crippled in many ways. One of the manifestations of this was an inability to field a fleet able to truly confront the German High Seas Fleet in open battle. Thus, the theories of the Jeune Ecole had come to dominate French naval thinking, since lightly armored battlecruisers and submarines were considerably cheaper to produce than immense capital ships. Hoping to deprive their German foes of critical imported materials such as oil and rubber, upon the outbreak of the war the French embarked on a massive campaign of commerce raiding. Thus, the Atlantic Ocean became consumed by the fires of merchant convoys torpedoed by French submarines or sunk by French battlecruisers. Much like the Germans had practiced in the last Great War, the French ships rarely gave notice or warning before firing upon the convoys, and often struck passenger ships in attacks that doomed thousands of civilians to drown in the cold seas of the Atlantic.
With their possible responses restricted by the continued neutrality of the British Empire in the war, the German Naval Command struggled to muster much opposition to the repeated sinking of their convoys. However, this inability to clamp down on French commerce raiding granted Germany a peculiar diplomatic advantage. Key commercial partners of Germany such as Venezuela and Argentina bristled at repeated sinking of their merchant ships despite their nonbelligerent status and responded by severing diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of France. Similarly, American President Frank J. Hayes demanded an apology and a paid indemnity to American victims of the sinking of the ocean liner SS Scharnhorst, later threatening an embargo of coal and iron after a second incident involving the MS St. Louis if future ones were not avoided. The French commerce raiding campaign also repeatedly violated the waters of the neutral United Kingdom, inching the country further into antagonism against the French and Italians.
The French submarine Surcouf, one of the most notorious in the fleet due to its enormous 203mm guns.
The Scrap of Paper
Since the end of the First Great War, the enmity that had once existed between the British and German Empires had significantly dissipated. Besides just the demarcation of clear spheres of influence in the Treaty of the Hague, the two countries increasingly enjoyed the benefits of commercial partnership to the point of both economies relying upon one another. Such a relationship was further fostered by their respective royal families, with Kaiser Wilhelm III successfully proposing a match between his cousin Frederica of Hanover and Edward, Prince of Wales. Upon his ascension as Edward VIII, the King and his wife were well known to be Germanophiles, often going beyond royal decorum to make overt statements of support to the German Kaiser amid domestic debates on alleged pogroms occurring in Germany as well as the evolution of the Tirol Crisis into the Second Great War.
Yet it was not only King Edward VIII who held such sympathy for the Germans. Across much of the ruling Conservative Party there was a sentiment that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and French dictator Bernard de Vesins posed threats to the British colonial empire and that the defeat of the German Empire would be economically disastrous for Britain. Thus, throughout the past several years Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had pushed for the rearmament of the British Empire to prepare for the perceived eventuality of war. After Baldwin’s retirement in 1936, King Edward VIII once again pushed the boundaries of royal norms by pressing for his personal ally Duff Cooper to succeed Baldwin as Prime Minister. Although Cooper and his Foreign Minister Anthony Eden had initially declared neutrality and urged the arbitration of the conflict between the two rival sides, as the Second Great War progressed it became increasingly clear that the pair were beginning to look for excuses to reverse their previous positions and join in on the war.
Across the channel, a new development was brewing in the Kingdom of France. Due to the material deficits of France following the Treaty of the Hague, particularly critical shortages of coal and iron, it was doubtful to the French General Staff that they could win a war of attrition against the German Empire. Thus, the ideas of Colonel Charles de Gaulle had been readily adopted, focusing the French military around a crack formation of 100,000 elite soldiers supplemented by the concentration of the country’s limited number of tanks into dedicated armored formations. In a plan developed by French Chief of Staff Charles Huntziger, de Gaulle’s formation would pierce through the ostensibly neutral German client state of Belgium as well as the Netherlands in order to break into the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr Valley. Besides devastating their industrial production, the threat to the German rear would force them to retreat from their defensive Westwall while also allowing France to regain control of its natural resource deposits. Although militarily sound, the plan came with a diplomatic wrinkle: the United Kingdom had guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium in the 1839 Treaty of London.
After Huntziger and de Gaulle commenced their invasion of Belgium on August 4th, 1938, the French government was shocked to receive an ultimatum directly from British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden threatening war if they did not withdraw from Belgium on the basis of the 100-year-old treaty. As the French were naturally unwilling to reverse course at this critical juncture, British Prime Minister Duff Cooper met privately with King Edward VIII to draw up the government’s declaration of war on France. Although he was not constitutionally required to receive the authorization of parliament, when Cooper returned to the House of Commons to announce the state of war he was met with MP’s furious that they had not even been consulted on the matter. Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the opposition Labour Party since the fall of Prime Minister Edward Snowden and a dedicated noninterventionist, led a motion to call a vote of no confidence on Prime Minister Cooper. Although many of Cooper’s own Conservative colleagues were equally disgusted by the rash declaration of war, they saw little reason in removing him after the nation had already been committed to war. Thus, Cooper’s government narrowly survived in a vote largely upon party lines, bringing the United Kingdom into the war.
French Somua S35 medium tanks during the invasion of Belgium
Guerre de l’Éclair
With the clock running out as stockpiled resources were growing depleted amid threats of an American embargo, the French offensive into Belgium proceeded with an alacrity unheard of in modern warfare. In a shocking display of the advances in mobile warfare since the last Great War, French Renault 35 and Char B1 tanks streamed into Belgium and pierced through German defenses, particularly where de Gaulle himself led an offensive through the densely wooded Ardennes Forest. Thousands of British and German soldiers became encircled at the port city of Dunkirk, where they were forced to leave behind virtually all of their heavy military equipment to escape in a rescue effort hastily organized by the British Royal Navy. Meanwhile, the French advance continued unabated to occupy much of the Netherlands within a matter of days and began spilling into the Ruhr Valley only to be constricted by a lack of infantry support and supply lines due to the rapid speed of advance. The utter failure of the Imperial German Army to contain de Gaulle’s attack prompted a mass redeployment of troops from Hungary to the West in order to halt further offensives and prepare for a counterattack. Furthermore, the Chief of the German General Staff Werner von Fristch was promptly fired for ineptitude and replaced with Fedor von Bock, with a similar fate befalling many field commanders regardless of their level of responsibility.
Unfortunately for the Germans, these hasty moves only added to the chaotic state of command and control at the front. As the French pushed the frontline into the Ruhr Valley and German troops began to abandon their positions on the Westwall, incoming reserves often blundered into enemy forces or arrived in positions that were wholly irrelevant. Although the French offensive began to peter out as the German General Staff recovered their position in the autumn of 1938, they had succeeded in wreaking havoc on the German military industry while securing for themselves the crucial coal and iron mines of the Artois, the Vosges, and the Saarland. The success of the offensive also yielded dividends for the diplomatic efforts of the Italians in the Balkans, convincing Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas that the Integralist ideology was ascendent and earning his declaration of war upon Bulgaria. Likewise, Romanian dictator Corneliu Codreanu suspended the lease of the Ploesti oil fields to Germany that had been enforced by the Treaty of the Hague, in an alignment with Paris and Rome. Yet with the British Expeditionary Force disembarking in harbors from Wilhelmshaven to Kiel and new theaters of war opening up on the colonial frontier, it was clear that the war was far from over.
