The Inter War Years (1918-1939)

Well it has been a while since my post about Monty & World War I Generals......I'm not lazy, honest!!! Since then I have read many more books on military history. This includes books on Napoleon & Wellington, The American Civil War, The North African Campaign, Operations Dynamo, Overlord, Market-Garden & Plunder Varsity and a few others. The problem with reading other peoples books about these things, is that you always ending up yelling at the author about the points you disagree with, or that they don't concentrate on the parts you would want them too, or you disagree with their overall conclusion.



That is the problem with history; everyone looks at it in their own way. That being the case means that I can disagree with just about everything I have ever read in some way or another. So the question is what to vent about first? The major conflicts that interest me most are the Napoleonic Wars, American Civil War and World War II. Of all of these I probably know more about World War II than anything else, at least where the European theatre is concerned, there aren't enough books on the pacific theatre.


I therefore thought I would start with the opening British campaign of the war, The Battle of France. However when I thought about it, almost everything that happened in that campaign was due to what happened between 1918 & 1939. The inter war years influenced the battle of France more than anything else. A lot of people think that this incredible German army with the latest technology and tactics (blitzkrieg) allowed the Germans to blitz their way across Europe (pun intended). While this had a lot to do with it, people don't seem to know that the allies had more men, planes and tanks than the Germans did! In some cases ours were better than theirs (anyone ever heard of the spitfire?). The problem was that their either weren't enough of them or they used very badly, e.g. the French Somua S35 medium tank was better than its German equivalents but it was used very badly by the French commanders.

The French Somua S35 medium tank was equal to if not better than the Panzer III, and the Spitfire was considered more than a match for the ME109 (and in my humble opinion the greatest fighter ever built!).

The reason the allies were so unprepared was because World War I became known as the war to end all wars. The whole world was going to live together in peace like one big happy family, and because of it most countries just stopped trying, particularly Britain, France and America. France was arguably the worst but understandably so, it was their land that had been destroyed in the World War I and they lost more men than any other country, and as much as people look badly on General Haig, the French Generals were far worse. The Americans went deep into isolation and Britain was no longer the power it once was, and its man power and resources were seriously depleted.

"The best means of keeping the peace, is to be prepared for war"


I have seen the above quote attributed to many people, but who exactly is irrelevant. I think it is spot on, if one country is not prepared for war at any time, another country will take advantage of it. The only countries that seemed to listen to that quote were Germany and Japan. They took full advantage of the rest of the world's naivety. The British suffered in South East Asia and the Americans at Pearl Harbour and the Philippines at the hands of the Japanese. In Europe the Germans weren't stopped until the second battle of El Alamein (23 October – 5 November 1942) in North Africa and the battle of Stalingrad in Russia (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943). All because World War I was more horrific than anything anyone had ever seen, and so of course it results in a war far worse than the original.


Disarmament is never the answer, but this is something that the public and governments do seem to forget. If a country has a couple of peaceful decades or sometimes less, they become complacent. In many cases they cut back on military spending and security. It always comes back to bite us. There is a lot of truth to the phrase 'history repeats itself'; will we ever break the cycle?