Avoiding Armageddon

AVOIDING ARMAGEDDON: From the Great War to the Fall of France 1918-40

Jeremy Black

Bloomsbury, 2012, 304pp

ISBN: 978-1-4411-5713-3

Professor Jeremy Black has written a very interesting book. Unfortunately, his writing style buries the analysis in complex sentences and paragraphs.

Black presents a strong argument for parallels between the present day and the period between the two World Wars, with low-level conflicts underway around the world during both periods. Statesmen between the wars would not have found credible the idea that the ‘war to end all wars’ had achieved that Utopian objective. From 1919 until 1939, internal and international conflicts were endemic in the vast area between the Rhine and the Pacific Ocean, and south to North Africa and the Indian Ocean. In Latin America, as well as internal conflicts, the Chaco War was a major international conflict.

As Black demonstrates, using the Second World War to judge the correctness or otherwise of British military policies between the wars ignores reality. For most of the period British forces were focussed on events in British colonies, or on protecting those colonies from attack, not on a resurgent Germany or an aggressive Japan. The Indian Army, for example, which was criticised by reformers between the wars, performed the tasks required of it effectively.

Black shows that ‘as the number of “players” in [a] conflict rose, the notions of a clear-cut definition of military forces, and of war as the prerogative of the state, were put under severe strain’, as now. The objectives of specific conflicts, and the actual opposing sides, were often obscure. This is familiar now, as is the importance of tribalism in Afghanistan.

The correct balance in armies between men and machines was not as clear between the wars as hindsight might suggest, nor was the appropriate balance between protection, firepower and mobility. The end of dominance by the battleship was not obvious when carrier aircraft were flimsy biplanes. Claims by air power enthusiasts between the wars were not borne out by events, and military power remained hostage to economic fortune. Lessons from the Great War experience aimed to ensure that another major war would not be fought like the Great War, not that there would never be another world war.

As Black reminds us, Hitler was a political failure in the 1920s, with the 1923 Munich putsch being promptly suppressed. In the 1920s Germany was planning against a Polish invasion, not to conquer Europe. The Soviet Union was contained, and France was the dominant land power in Europe. The British, Dutch and French empires retained control of their territories, largely using locally recruited forces. The Islamic world then, as now, caused much difficulty.

Reviewing the early campaigns of the Second World War, Black concludes that the German forces were not prepared for a blitzkrieg in 1939, but learned from the Polish campaign. The German Army remained largely dependent on railways and draught animals for mobility, and infantry and artillery provided essential support to its armoured spearhead. The quality of German tactical and operational leadership was not matched by strategic acumen at the highest level, and early German success owed much to errors by Poland, France and Britain. Given time and experience, other armies learned to defeat blitzkrieg tactics.

Black concludes that ‘variety and unpredictability, the importance of the Far East, and the significance of civil wars’, major themes between the World Wars, are again important. In this context, he sees the rise of China complementing the development of China’s modern identity in the civil and international conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s. Black sees parallels between the issues facing Britain then and those facing the US now, including difficulties with allies and the influence of ‘small wars’ on military development.

JOHN DONOVAN