German conduct of defensive war in WWII in reaction to allied, British (and French) aggression

Apollonian

Guest Columnist
The Reluctant Conqueror: Germany’s Invasions of Greece, Yugoslavia and North Africa

John Wear

Link: https://inconvenienthistory.com/11/4/6936

The question is often asked: If Hitler wanted peace, why did he invade so many countries? My book Germany’s War analyzes why Germany united with Austria absorbed portions of Czechoslovakia and Poland and invaded Poland, the Soviet Union and other European countries. This article will explain why Germany invaded and occupied Greece, Crete, Yugoslavia as well as several areas in North Africa. It will also discuss some of the effects of Germany’s invasion and occupation of these areas.

Germany’s Invasion of Greece and Crete

Keeping a lid on simmering tensions in the Balkans was a high priority for Germany during the war. Hitler told Italian Foreign Minister Ciano on July 20, 1940, that he attached “the greatest importance to the maintenance of peace in the Danube and Balkan regions.” The Germans were eager to prevent disturbance in this region, both to prevent further Soviet encroachment and to retain German access to oil from Romania. Impulsive Italian action against Yugoslavia could lead to Soviet intervention, and Italian action against Greece could bring in the British through a back door.[1]

In August 1940, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop twice repeated to Italian Ambassador Dino Alfieri that Hitler wanted to keep peace in the Balkans. Despite these and other German warnings, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini decided to attack Greece from occupied Albania on October 28, 1940. The Italians deemed the Greek army to be weak, and Mussolini expected a swift victory. Instead, the Greek forces fought valiantly, helped by good organization, knowledge of difficult terrain, and the superior motivation of troops protecting their homeland. The Italian campaign rapidly became a fiasco, and what was supposed to have been an easy victory turned into a humiliation for Mussolini’s forces.[2]

Within little over a week the Italians were forced to halt their offensive in Greece, and by a week later they were being pushed back over the Albanian border by a Greek counterattack. The Italian front finally stabilized about 30 miles inside Albania. To make matters worse, the Italian fleet anchored at Taranto in southern Italy was severely damaged by a British aerial attack in November 1940. Half of the Italian warships were put out of action, and Italian dreams of empire sank along with the ships. The balance of naval power in the Mediterranean was decisively altered with this highly successful attack.[3]

The military situation in Greece could only be remedied with German help. This was a situation that Hitler had hoped to avoid. Hitler had wanted the Balkans to remain quiet, but he could not ignore the threat now posed by intensified British military involvement in Greece. Hitler eventually decided in March 1941 that a major military operation would be necessary to evict the British from the European mainland. The German invasion of Greece to bail out Mussolini’s ill-fated invasion resulted in Greece’s surrender on April 23, 1941.[4]

Hitler in his last testament in 1945 stated his displeasure with Italy’s attack on Greece: “But for the difficulties created for us by the Italians and their idiotic campaign in Greece, I should have attacked Russia a few weeks earlier.”[5] Hitler had unquestionably wanted Greece and the other Balkan countries to stay neutral during the war.

The remaining Greek, British and other Allied forces as well as the Greek government and king retreated to Crete. German airborne forces landed in Crete on May 20, 1941, and quickly seized control of the main airfields. A chaotic evacuation of British forces began on May 26, 1941, but more than 11,000 British troops were captured and nearly 3,000 British soldiers and sailors died. The whole operation was a disaster for Great Britain. Churchill and his advisors conceded it had been a mistake to send troops to Greece in the first place.[6]

Adverse Developments in the Occupation of Greece

When the German army took control of Greece in April 1941, German supply officers seized large quantities of olive oil, rice, oranges, lemons and other foodstuffs. As tired and hungry German troops entered Athens, they began to demand free meals in restaurants and loot houses and passers-by of their belongings. Soon hunger and malnutrition were prevalent in Greece. While the Italians began to send in extra supplies to Greece to alleviate the situation, Germany refused to follow suit, arguing that this would jeopardize the food situation in Germany.[7]

Greece was predominantly a rural country; it produced mainly cash crops such as olive oil, tobacco and currants. Greece was dependent on the annual import of 450,000 tons of American grain for one-third of its food, but the British blockade of occupied Europe cut Greece off from all imports. In the summer of 1941, the Red Cross, the U.S. government and groups within Great Britain all urged the British government to revise its blockade policy and allow food aid to reach Greece. Churchill initially refused to lift the blockade. Herbert Hoover described Churchill as “a militarist of the extreme school who held that incidental starvation of women and children was justified.”[8]

The famine in Greece was on such a vast scale that Churchill eventually allowed food aid for Greece through the blockade. This was the only significant exception Churchill made to the blockade against occupied Europe during the war. In January 1942 shipments of wheat were allowed through the blockade, and from April 1942 regular cargoes of wheat and other foodstuffs where allowed to enter Greek ports.

The food imported from the Allies was never enough to feed the Greek people. Although the Allied food imports blunted the large-scale urban famine, Greeks continued to die of starvation. The German army denied food aid to villagers in those areas where Greek partisans were active, and in 1943 and 1944 much of the Greek countryside starved. By one estimate half a million Greeks died from hunger and associated diseases during World War II.[9] Another historian estimates that 300,000 Greeks died of starvation during the German occupation.[10]

The starvation of so many Greek civilians was one of the great tragedies of World War II. The Greek famine was caused by a combination of factors. First, Italy’s ill-advised invasion of Greece expanded the war into a region that should have remained peaceful throughout the war. Second, Germany’s initial confiscation of food and later refusal to supply food meant that famine would stalk the Greeks. Finally, Great Britain’s initial refusal to end its blockade of imports into Greece caused unnecessary starvation in a country dependent on imported food.[11]

German reprisals against anti-partisan activity were also brutal in Greece. Since the Germans in Greece did not have occupying forces large enough to take full control of all areas, terror against the civilian population was deemed necessary to discourage insurgency. In December 1943, German troops rounded up all of the men found in the mountain town of Kalavryta and shot them. This massacre of at least 500 men was a reprisal for the kidnapping and murder of German soldiers by Greek partisans. Waffen-SS soldiers did not even spare women and children in later counter-insurgency reprisals the following spring in central Greece.[12]

Germany’s Invasion of North Africa

Italian military overreach was also the reason Hitler sent troops to north Africa. Italy’s attempt to invade British-held Egypt from the Italian colony of Libya in December 1940 had been repulsed by a well-trained Anglo-Indian force of 35,000 men. Britain took 130,000 Italian prisoners and captured 380 tanks in this conflict. In April 1941, a force of 92,000 Italian and 250,000 Abyssinian soldiers was defeated at the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa by 40,000 British-led African troops. The Allies took control of Addis Ababa and the whole northeast part of Africa after this conflict.

Gen. Erwin Rommel arrived in Africa on February 12, 1941 with the assignment to rescue the situation in North Africa. Appointed to head the newly formed Afrika Korps, Rommel was told to prevent any further Italian collapse in Libya. Building on his previous experience of coordinated air-and-armor warfare, Rommel’s troops took the key Libyan seaport of Tobruk in June 1942 and forced the British back deep into Egypt. Rommel was within striking distance of the Suez Canal, threatening a major British supply route along with the potential to gain access to the vast oilfields of the Middle East.[13]

British interdiction of supplying his troops by either land or sea eventually weakened Rommel’s position in North Africa. The British held their ground at El Alamein, and the Allies recaptured Tobruk in November 1942. Rommel returned to Germany on sick leave in March 1943. Defeat in North Africa was complete when 250,000 Axis troops, half of them German, surrendered to the Allies in May 1943.[14] The German invasion of North Africa had been designed to shore up Italian forces and later to possibly disrupt British oil supplies and gain access to Middle East oil. Germany’s activity in North Africa was not about German territorial expansion.

After Germany’s defeat in North Africa, Rommel met with Mussolini and told him that he blamed Mussolini for the Axis defeat in North Africa.[15] A notable positive aspect of Germany’s war in North Africa is that it was widely regarded as a “clean” war. Rommel was the one German field marshal whom all of the Western Allies respected, and whom many senior British and American officers openly admired. Hans Speidel, Rommel’s chief of staff, successfully exploited his association with Rommel to enhance his career in postwar Germany.[16]

Germany’s Invasion of Yugoslavia

The German invasion of Yugoslavia was in response to an unexpected military takeover of that country. On the night of March 26-27, 1941, a group of Serb officers executed a coup and established military control of the Yugoslav government. Hitler stated in regard to the Yugoslavia coup:

Although Britain played a major role in that coup, Soviet Russia played the main role. What I had refused to Mr. Molotov during his visit to Berlin, Stalin believed he could obtain indirectly against our will by revolutionary activity. Without regard for the treaties they had signed, the Bolshevik rulers expanded their ambitions. The [Soviet] treaty of friendship with the new revolutionary regime [in Belgrade] showed very quickly just how threatening the danger had become.[17]

The coup in Yugoslavia divided an already politically unstable country and provoked the Germans to denounce the illegitimate new government. Germany attacked Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941, and defeated the Yugoslav military in 12 days. The defeat of Yugoslavia was made easier because Yugoslavia was not a nationally unified country, and large portions of its population did not support the new government. The Yugoslav army’s feeble resistance resulted in only 151 German fatalities during the brief campaign.[18]

Yugoslavia and other regions in the Balkans experienced severe German anti-partisan reprisals during the war. For example, a partisan attack on a German unit in Serbia prompted the Germans on October 20-21, 1941 to round up nearly 10,000 men in the town of Kragujevac and shoot 2,300 of them in batches. Another 1,736 men were executed in the town of Kraljevo. The shock of these German measures caused many Serbs to cease partisan operations to avoid further reprisals on the civilian population.[19]

It should be noted that while German anti-partisan units committed numerous atrocities in the Balkans during the war, the partisan activities against German forces were also illegal, brutal and barbaric. Gen. Alfred Jodl summarized the German position regarding anti-partisan warfare in his closing address at the main Nuremberg trial: “In a war like this, in which hundreds of thousands of women and children were killed by saturation bombing and in which partisans used every—and I mean every—means to their desired end, tough methods, however questionable under international law, do not amount to crimes of morality or conscience.”[20]

The war in Yugoslavia created extremely hard feelings, and German civilians in Yugoslavia were subjected to brutal treatment and expulsions after the war. Ethnic Germans were dispossessed of all their property by law. The internment camps erected for Germans by the Tito government in Yugoslavia were decidedly not mere assembly points for group expulsion; rather, they were consciously and officially recognized as extermination centers for many thousands of ethnic Germans. There was little or no food or medical care in these internment camps, and internees were left to starve to death or perish from rampant disease. The primary purpose of these internment camps appears to have been to inflict misery and death on as many ethnic Germans as possible.[21]

In a dispatch that was circulated to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s cabinet, the British Embassy in Belgrade reported in 1946 that “conditions in which Germans in Yugoslavia exist seem well down to Dachau standards.” The embassy staff added that there was little to be lost by placing these facts before the public “as it will hardly be possible for the position of those that are left in camps to deteriorate thereby.” The British Embassy further stated that the “indiscriminate annihilation and starvation” of the Yugoslav Volksdeutsche “must surely be considered an offence to humanity” and warned that “if they have to undergo another winter here, very few will be left.”[22]

The forced expulsion of Yugoslavia’s ethnic Germans had a long-term adverse effect on Yugoslavia’s economy. Tito’s vice premier, Edvard Kardelj, later observed to Milovan Djilas that in expelling its ethnic Germans, Yugoslavia had deprived itself of “our most productive inhabitants.”[23]

Conclusion

Mussolini’s unbidden invasion of Greece and Italian military ineffectuality were the sole reasons why Germany invaded Greece. Hitler had wanted the Balkans to remain quiet, but he could not ignore the threat posed by intensified British military involvement in Greece. Germany was forced to invade Greece and later Crete to remove the strategic threat posed by the British Army.

Italian military incompetence also moved Hitler to send Gen. Erwin Rommel to North Africa to rescue the collapsing Italian army. Although Rommel was eventually forced out of North Africa, he succeeded in tying up superior British forces. British historian David Irving writes: “History will not forget that for two years he withstood the weight of the entire British Empire on the only battlefield where it was then engaged, with only two panzer divisions and a handful of other ill-armed and undernourished forces under his command.”[24]

The German invasion of Yugoslavia was made necessary by a Soviet-sponsored coup which established military control of Yugoslavia. Germany was forced to invade Yugoslavia to eliminate this strategic threat. Similar to Greece, Crete and North Africa, Hitler sent German troops into a country in which he had never wanted to be militarily involved.

Notes

[1] Kershaw, Ian, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941, New York: The Penguin Press, 2007, pp. 165-166.

[2] Ibid., pp. 130, 166.

[3] Ibid., p. 176.

[4] Ibid., pp. 177, 180.

[5] Fraser, L. Craig, The Testament of Adolf Hitler: The Hitler-Bormann Documents, p. 39.

[6] Evans, Richard J., The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945, London: Penguin Books, 2008, p. 155.

[7] Ibid., p. 156.

[8] Collingham, Lizzie, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food, New York: The Penguin Press, 2012, pp. 166-167.

[9] Ibid., pp. 167-168.

[10] Burleigh, Michael, The Third Reich: A New History, New York: Hill and Wang, 2000, pp. 416-417.

[11] Collingham, Lizzie, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food, New York: The Penguin Press, 2012, pp. 166-168.

[12] Mazower, Mark, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, New York: The Penguin Press, 2008, p. 497.

[13] Evans, Richard J., The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945, London: Penguin Books, 2008, pp. 148-150.

[14] Ibid., pp. 467-468.

[15] Irving, David, The Trail of the Fox, New York: Thomas Congdon Books, 1977, p. 309.

[16] Ibid., pp. 450-454.

[17] Weber, Mark, “The Reichstag Speech of 11 December 1941: Hitler’s Declaration of War Against the United States,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 8, No. 4, Winter 1988-1989, pp. 394-395.

[18] Keegan, John, The Second World War, New York: Viking Penguin, 1990, pp. 151, 155-156.

[19] Mazower, Mark, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe, New York: The Penguin Press, 2008, pp. 483-484.

[20] Irving, David, Nuremberg: The Last Battle, London: Focal Point Publications, 1996, p. 254.

[21] De Zayas, Alfred-Maurice, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 2nd edition, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 99-100.

[22] Douglas, R. M., Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2012, p. 151.

[23] Djilas, Milovan, Wartime, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977, p. 423.

[24] Irving, David, The Trail of the Fox, New York: Thomas Congdon Books, 1977, p. 454.


Author(s): John Wear

Title: The Reluctant Conqueror: Germany’s Invasions of Greece, Yugoslavia and North Africa

Sources:

Dates: published: 2019-10-20, first posted: 2019-10-20 23:08:05
 

Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop begged former king Edward VIII to appear as a witness for him at Nuremberg to avoid the hangman's noose, letter reveals​

Link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ged-Edward-VIII-support-Nuremberg-trials.html
  • Hitler's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop asked Edward VIII for support
  • He helped orchestrate the Holocaust and Czechoslovakia and Poland invasions
  • The senior Nazi asked the former King to offer evidence at Nuremberg war trials
  • The letter said Edward agreed 'close relationship' for England and Nazi Germany
By OLIVER PRICE FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 21:08 EST, 24 November 2022 | UPDATED: 21:17 EST, 24 November 2022

The former King Edward VIII was begged by a high-ranking Nazi to give supportive evidence in his favour at the Nuremberg war trials, a newly rediscovered letter has revealed.
The letter was written in January 1946 by Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler's foreign affairs minister.
In the letter he recalled a 1936 meeting with Edward where they agreed to work towards the 'closest possible relationship' between England and Nazi Germany.
Von Ribbentrop helped orchestrate the Holocaust and was instrumental to the Nazi invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland, which triggered the start of the Second World War. He also encouraged the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbour.
After the war he was arrested and put on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg.
He made a desperate bid to improve his situation by calling on the Duke of Windsor, a suspected Nazi sympathiser, to appear as a witness on his behalf.
The Nazi monster sought to use the prince's evidence to disprove counts one and two, of crimes against peace, and deliberately planning a war of aggression, which he had been charged with.
Von Ribbentrop was found guilty and was the first Nazi defendant to be executed by hanging.
The former King Edward VIII was asked by a high-ranking Nazi to give supportive evidence in his favour at the Nuremberg war trials. Pictured: Edward flanked by Nazi officers when leaving a car factory after a visit to Nazi Germany in 1937


The former King Edward VIII was asked by a high-ranking Nazi to give supportive evidence in his favour at the Nuremberg war trials. Pictured: Edward flanked by Nazi officers when leaving a car factory after a visit to Nazi Germany in 1937
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The letter from Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler's minister of foreign affairs, asking former King Edward VIII to give evidence in his favour at the Nuremberg trials. Dated January 25, 1946


The letter from Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler's minister of foreign affairs, asking former King Edward VIII to give evidence in his favour at the Nuremberg trials. Dated January 25, 1946
Russian leader Joseph Stalin (left) shakes hands with Joachim von Ribbentrop (right), the German foreign minister, in Moscow, during discussions on developments in Poland which led to the formation of the Nazi-Soviet Pact


Russian leader Joseph Stalin (left) shakes hands with Joachim von Ribbentrop (right), the German foreign minister, in Moscow, during discussions on developments in Poland which led to the formation of the Nazi-Soviet Pact
The five-page letter, written on von Ribbentrop's behalf by his legal team, is now coming up for auction.
The letter reads: 'When presenting his credentials in 1936, von Ribbentrop expressed to the then King Edward VIII the desire of the Reich Chancellor (Hitler) for the closest cooperation between Germany and England.
'In the course of this audience, King Edward VIII declared that he, too, deemed such a cooperation necessary'.
The letter was kept by Dr Hans Werner, responsible for directing the printing of the Record of the Trial of Major War Criminals in 42 volumes.
It is tipped to sell for £2,600 at International Autograph Auctions of Malaga, Spain.
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Richard Davie, specialist at the auctioneers, said: 'King Edward VIII's beliefs regarding Adolf Hitler and the Nazis have long been the subject of speculation.
'Many historians have suggested that Hitler was prepared to reinstate the Duke of Windsor as king in the hope of establishing a fascist puppet government in Great Britain after Operation Sealion, which was the secret Nazi plan for the invasion of the UK.
'It is widely believed that the Duke and Duchess sympathised with fascism before and during World War II and were moved to the Bahamas to minimise their opportunities to act on their feelings.
'Reading the document, you get a sense of von Ribbentrop's desperation. He was desperately trying to do something to get out of his situation.
'He was trying to deflect responsibility - a pattern seen time and again with defendants at Nuremberg.
'It also suggests how deluded he was - the idea that a member of the Royal family would appear as his witness at Nuremberg is quite remarkable'.
In 1937, just two years before the Second World War, the Duke of Windsor (pictured returning a Nazi salute) and his American wife, Wallis Simpson, toured Nazi Germany


In 1937, just two years before the Second World War, the Duke of Windsor (pictured returning a Nazi salute) and his American wife, Wallis Simpson, toured Nazi Germany
Defendants in the dock on the first day of the trial against leading Nazi figures for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, Germany, 20th November 1945. Second row from the back, left to right: Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Konstantin von Neurath and Hans Fritzsche. Third row from the back, left to right: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walther Funk and Dr Hjalmar Schacht


Defendants in the dock on the first day of the trial against leading Nazi figures for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, Germany, 20th November 1945. Second row from the back, left to right: Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Konstantin von Neurath and Hans Fritzsche. Third row from the back, left to right: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walther Funk and Dr Hjalmar Schacht
Edward VIII was king for less than a year before his abdication in December 1936.
In 1937, just two years before the Second World War, he and his American wife, Wallis Simpson, toured Nazi Germany.
The Nazis rolled out the red carpet for the Royal couple and the itinerary included a private meeting with Adolf Hitler at his retreat at Berchtesgaden.
The Duke of Windsor declared the Nazi economic model to be a 'miracle' and was infamously photographed giving Nazi salutes on the trip.
His links with the Nazi high command were detailed in the top-secret Marburg files, signed by Ribbentrop, whose discovery in Germany by American soldiers at the end of the war was famously depicted in season two of Netflix's hit series, The Crown.
In the show, Edward attempts to return to public life in England from France but is turned away by Queen Elizabeth, who berates him for his 'betrayal'.
During the war, Edward was at first stationed in France but after its fall was appointed governor of the Bahamas.
64922393-11467781-image-a-114_1669340357570.jpg


The German version of the letter from Von Ribbentrop to King Edward VIII


The German version of the letter from Von Ribbentrop to King Edward VIII
Von Ribbentrop was convicted of crimes against peace, deliberately planning a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity at the Allies' International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.
His judgement stated that he was 'actively involved' in planning the invasions Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland and the 'final solution', the Nazi term for the systematic murder of Jews.
As early as 1942 he had ordered German diplomats in Axis countries to hasten the process of sending Jews to death camps in the east.
At trial, von Ribbentrop repeatedly argued that Hitler made all the key decisions and that he had been 'deceived' by the Fuhrer's claims of 'only wanting peace'.
On 16 October 1946, von Ribbentrop became the first of those sentenced to death at Nuremberg to be hanged, after Herman Göring committed suicide.
The letter will be sold on November 30.
 

Operation Pike- When the Allies almost declared War on the Soviet Union in 1940​

Link: https://www.umdjanus.com/single-pos...most-declared-war-on-the-soviet-union-in-1940


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The French Military High Command after the first world war may have had the most unfortunate set of assumptions and beliefs of any High Command in history. I say unfortunate in light of the fact of how disastrous the French command dealt with the German invasion in the spring of 1940. But if one needs more evidence of “unfortunate” decisions by the French Generals, look no further than Operation Pike.

While doing some light reading through my copy of The Collapse of the Third Republic by William Shirer, I had to do a Samuel Johnson double take. As someone who has read a fair bit about World War II, I was stunned by what I had just come across, that in the spring of 1940 the Allies came ridiculously close to declaring war on the Soviet Union.

For those not keeping track, the end of 1939 and beginning of 1940 was the eight month period in which Great Britain and France watched Poland get obliterated by the Germans and the Soviets while the Allies sat and watched. While the Soviets would later join the Allied side after the Nazi German invasion in 1941, in the spring of 1940, a majority in the French government saw the Soviets as complicit in the German schemes in Poland and later in its own encroachment on Finland. The French governments were traditionally more fearful of Communism than anything else, going so far as to actually ban communism in 1939. In addition, most of its top military leaders were strongly conservative and even anti-democratic at times.


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A notable example being the “hero of Verdun” Marshal Petain himself, who became the head of the French collaborationist government at Vichy when France fell in 1940. Charles De Gaulle later said that “Certain circles saw the enemy in Stalin rather than Hitler. They busied themselves with finding means of striking Russia, either by aiding Finland or bombarding Baku or landing at Istanbul, much more than coming to grips with Germany”.[1] So it was seen in France by some that the Soviet Union was not just a threat, but a graver threat than the Nazis they were already at war with.

The French understandably did not want to fight another war on French soil with Germany, considering how much damage the first one had caused. There was also the belief that if war did come to the western front no side would be able to win an offensive, much like in the first war, and that it would turn into a war of attrition, which the Allies hoped to deny to Germany using whatever steps necessary.[2]

This brings us back to Operation Pike, the plan designed to knock out the Soviet Union's oil fields in the Caucasus, theoretically destroying the Soviet Union’s economy while also cutting off resources to the Germans. The Baku oil fields, which they intended to bomb, provided the Soviet’s with 80% of their oil during the war. In addition to cutting off the Red Army’s supply of oil, it would theoretically, by Allied estimations, drastically hamper the fighting capability of the German army. As laid out in treaties ratified after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the non aggression pact and secret dismemberment of Poland treaty, the Soviets agreed to send the Germans critical natural resources that Germany and later Nazi occupied western Europe were lacking.


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This was also part of the reason the allies were so aggravated with the Soviets that the French and British almost declared war. The Soviets were not just helping to keep the massive material production of German armaments running, without gas, Germany’s most powerful tools, the Luftwaffe and the Panzers, could not be used for any length of time.

Essentially, it was thought that it would cripple the war effort of both countries who were seen as collaborators against the Allies. As the initial strategy towards winning was a war of attrition and blockade, it does make sense why they might pursue a plan like this.

To the French, it was so serious a plan that on January 19th 1940, Premier Daldier himself instructed General Gamelin, Commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces, and Admiral Darlan the Chief of Staff of the French Navy “to prepare a memorandum concerning eventual intervention for the destruction of the Russian oil fields.”[3]

To be fair to the French High Command, the impetus for the planned strikes against the Soviets came largely from the politicians and not from the French military. According to Gamelin himself, he understood what adding the Soviets to their list of enemies would mean, but did not feel he should stand up to the French government and tell them otherwise.[4] Whereby at this point the French Senate on both sides of the aisle were clamoring for action to be taken against the Soviets for their actions in Poland and Finland with Senators specifically calling for action to be taken against the Soviets in the Caucasus.[5] And as mentioned previously, there were certain sympathies in the French government and military that leaned towards treating the Soviets as the larger threat. Even though to both Britain and France, the Soviet Union was militarily seen as inept.

Due to the decimation that the Red Army had suffered from Stalin's purges, the Soviet army could not even push back the small Finnish army. From the information they had at the time, the Allies assumptions about the Red Army were not completely out of the blue, but as World War II journalist and historian William Shirer succinctly puts it, “The idea that France could destroy the distant Russian colossus when after six months of war it had been unable to deliver the slightest blow against Germany on its frontiers staggers the mind…”[6] General Gamelin nevertheless started to draw up plans for the invasion that General Weygand, commander of French Forces in the Near East, would be tasked with carrying out.


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A month after Daladier had asked General Gamelin for a plan, he finally delivered his report on February 22. Gamelinn’s report suggested it would be better to bomb the Baku and Batum oil fields by getting permission from Turkey and Iraq to fly over them as opposed to sending in the navy into the black sea to disrupt the shipments of resources themselves. Gamelin also considered in this report that starting a “Moslem” uprising might be to the Allies’ benefit, probably thinking something along the lines of Lawrence of Arabia.[7]

General Paul Stehlin of the French Air Force discussed with his colleagues in early February 1940, not just a bombing campaign, but “armed forces which will advance in the general direction of Baku to halt the production of oil. From there they will march Northward to meet armed forces from Scandinavia and Finland marching on Moscow.”[8] Also on the same day, General Gamelin was telling General Weygand that he expected ground operations in the Caucuses to be carried out using Turkish forces with air support from the British and French.[9] Considering Turkey would stay neutral until February 1945 when it was all but clear the Axis had lost, it was a pretty sizable claim to say they would be ready and willing to invade the Soviet Union in early 1940.

Later on March 16, Gamelin again suggested he wanted Turkey's assistance but also their allowance of Submarines into the Black Sea and for them to cooperate with Iranian land forces to invade the Soviets.[10] Since the Soviets and British would invade Iran in August 1941 for fears it had German sympathies, this is also an incredible assumption on the part of General Gamelin to assume they would help in the invasion.

So by this stage in March 1940, the French High Command was considering bringing Turkey, Iran, and the Soviet Union into the war, launching a sizeable air offensive in which planes would have to be moved from Western Europe, a land invasion of the Soviet Union by Turkey and Iran, and instigating a “Moslem” uprising. At the very least their plan was not timid.

The French continued to prepare for the “invasion” well into April. On April 17th General Weygand reported on the progres of the mission saying that none of the required aircraft had arrived, no reconnaissance had been flown, and that pilots still needed special training. But curiously reported the mission planning was “far advanced” and could be ready in approximately 45 days.[11] Which of course only 23 days after April 17th the Germans started the Battle of France which General Gamelin would so disastrously manage as to have the French Government recall General Weygand from the near East to replace him. Ending the planning for what could have been the worst mistake the Allies never made in World War II, Operation Pike.


Notes

[1] William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic (New York City, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1969), 544.

[2] Richardson, French Plans for Allied Attacks on the Caucasus Oil Fields January-April 1940 (French Historical Studies 8, no. 1 (1973), 134.

[3] Ibid, 130.

[4] Ibid,149.

[5] Shirer, The Collapse, 543.

[6] Ibid, 545.

[7] Richardson, French Plans, 138.

[8] Ibid, 139.

[9] Ibid, 141.

[10] Ibid, 142.

[11] Ibid, 151-152.
 
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