How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938-1939

778 Pages·1990·143.998 MB·English

by  Donald Cameron Watt

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF 1989
THE IMMEDIATE ORIGINS
ofEe SECOND WORLD WAR
CAMERON WATT
DONALD
1
BOSTON
PUBLIC
LIBRARY
HOW WAR CAME
Also by Donald Cameron Watt
Personalities and Policies
A History ofthe Worldin the 20th Century
Hitler's Mein Kampf(Ed.)
Too Serious a Business: European Armies and the
Approach ofthe Second World War
Succeedingjohn Bull: America in Britain's Place 1900-1975
THE IMMEDIATE ORIGINS OF
THE SECOND WORLD WAR,
1 9 3 8 - 1 9 3 9
Donald Cameron Watt
fit
PANTHEON BOOKS NEW YORK
Copyright© 1989byDonaldCameron Watt
AH rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a
division ofRandom House, Inc., New York. Originally published in
hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of
RandomHouse, Inc.,andinGreatBritainbyWilliamHeinemannLtd.,
Londonin1989.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Watt, DonaldCameron.
Howwarcame.
Bibliography, p.
Includesindex.
1. WorldWar, 1939-1945—Causes. I. Title.
D741.W36 1989 940.53'11 89-8802
ISBN0-679-73093-1
ManufacturedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
PantheonPaperbackEdition
Creditsappearonpages 710and711.
CONTENTS
Preface and acknowledgements ix
chapter i May 1945: Europe's end 1
chapter 2 The preliminaries to Europe's suicide 11
chapter 3 Hitler plans a new war 30
chapter 4 Ribbentrop in difficulties 46
chapter 5 Rearmament and settlement: Chamberlain afterMunich 76
chapter 6 Lord Halifax is alarmed 99
chapter 7 Stalin makes a speech 109
chapter 8 Divided counsels in Washington: Rooseveltbacks Britain and
France 124
chapter 9 Hitlerenters Prague 141
chapter 10 Chamberlain chooses containment 162
chapter 11 Hitler turns against Poland 188
chapter 12 AngerinRome 199
chapter 13 Stalin begins to calculate 215
chapter 14 Decisionin May 234
chapter 15 Muddled signals from Washington 255
chapter 16 The struggle for the Balkans: Round 1 -Turkey 271
chapter 17 The struggle for the Balkans: Round 2-Yugoslavia and the
drift to the West 289
chapter 18 Hitlersteps up the pressure: 'die forDanzig?' 313
chapter 19 TheJapanesearmy overplays its hand 339
chapter 20 Molotov calls for bids 361
chapter 21 The amateurs attempt to avert a war 385
chapter 22 Italy betrayed 408
chapter 23 Hitlerwills his war 430
chapter 24 Ribbentrop in Moscow: the Nazi-Soviet Pact signed 447
chapter 25 Theimpact ofthe Nazi-Soviet Pact 462
chapter 26 War ordered-and deferred: August25 inBerlin 479
* chapter 27 Regrouping forwar 498
1
HOW WAR CAME
chapter 28 Poland attacked: the West's inglorious hour 530
chapter 29 Fencing in, fencing out war: Roosevelt, Pius XII, King
Leopold and the Neutrals 55
chapter 30 Thunderin London 568
chapter 31 September 3: the British ultimatum 590
chapter 32 Afterthoughts 605
List ofabbreviations 625
Notes 627
Bibliography 679
Credits 710
Index 713
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The drive to write this book began on September 2 and 3, 1939, when,
as an eleven-year-old schoolboy, I helped my father and his colleagues
fill sand-bags in one of the great sand quarries outside Rugby, the
Midland marketing town. It grew enormously in strength two years
later when, lazing in the summer on the banks ofthe school close, with
the scent of new-mown grass in the air, I read for the first time an
account ofthe British retreat to Dunkirk. How could a British army
have come to find itselfin so near-disastrous a position? How could
things have been allowed to go so far?
My need to understand drove me to wangle, connive, volunteer and
out-compete my fellow conscripts to a posting to British Troops,
Austria as an acting sergeant in Field Security, concerned with the
tail-end of denazification, with keeping an eye on the wilder and
madderedges ofthepolitical spectrum, firstly among theinhabitants of
Styria, thenamong thetidesofrefugees fromsouth-easternEuropethat
thepolitical processes from 1943 onwards werewashing westwards out
ofRomania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Ukraine.
I
learntalmostimmediately thattherealities ofCentral European politics
covered a very widerangeofattitudes, virtuous andvicious, unimagin-
able to a teenage schoolboy in anisolated andblockaded island between
his eleventh and seventeenth birthdays.
The Social Democratic political policeman who regarded the neo-
Nazis, whose first underground stirrings became known in the winter
of 1947, as the rankest ofamateurs; the veteran oftheJewish brigade
who, from sheer need to know, kept tabs on the revival of Catholic
anti-semitism; the Hungarian Anglophile and liberal Count who first
gave me a rough guide to the political differences between the refugees
of 1943, 1944, 1945 and 1946 in preparation for the flood of 1947; the
broken disciple of Macek, the Croat leader, who for shame at the
excesses committed in Croatia's name by Anton Pavelic and his
IX
HOW WAR CAME
followers, only admitted to being a Croat himself in his blackest
moments; the Catholic anti-Nazi lawyer; the village gendarme who
regarded all politicians as equally dire acts ofGod; the ultra-nationalist
doctor (his family came from the South Tyrol), an ex-Reichswehr
surgeon, who overcame his Anglophobia to dress my poisoned toe: all
of these increased my desire to understand, while at the same time
increasing my awareness ofthe complexities to be understood. Few, if
any ofthem, fitted the stereotypes ofmy imagining.
From the army, my desire to understand drove me to read Politics,
Philosophy and Economics, taking the international history of the
inter-war years as my special subject. (Historyin Oxford ended then in
1914. In the twenty-five years since my father had emerged from
uniform at the end ofa previous world war to read first Classics and
then History, the terminal date had advanced from 1870, some thirty-
four years. But, apart from a special paper on the Anglo-French
Entente, there was nothing for the would-be historian ofthe twentieth
century.) I had the good fortune to sit at the feet ofa generation whose
historical interests had been developed by service, often at Bletchley
Park, or in SOE. Christopher Seton-Watson, my tutor, guided my
reading. Finally, with the aidofjohnWheeler-Bennett, I left Oxford to
join the small British editorial team working alongside equally small
American and French teams to screen and edit for publication the
captured archives ofthe German Foreign Ministry.
Here I worked in parallel, the first historian to read the Foreign
Ministry files for the period 1933-7 (later to be published as Series C of
Documentson German Foreign Policy) whileatthe sametimedevilling for
theeditors-in-chiefonvolumesV-XofSeries D, especiallyonvolumes
VI and VII which ran from March to September 1939. I helped collate
thedocuments withthosealreadypublishedin Series IIIofDocumentson
British Foreign Policy and with the Italian series published by Mario
Toscano, thenthedoyenofEuropeanhistorians ofdiplomacy. I drafted
editorial notes incorporating evidence cited in the Tokyo war crimes
trials.
From working alongside my French and American colleagues
I
discoveredhow grosslyinadequateintechnicaltermswas theeducation
ofwhich I was so proud; and all the time my understanding grew of
howfragmentaryinevidentialterms, andhowunsatisfactoryinhuman
terms was the accepted orthodoxy of the time. The son ofa school-
master, a great, ifself-effacing teacher, I found the language employed
to comment upon the motives and comprehensions underlying British
policyreminiscentofan end-of-term report. WhenI movedtoLondon,
and a senior professor of Diplomatic History, a terrifying female
x