Synopsis
This, chronologically the first of the six volumes of 'Grand Strategy in the Second World War', is subtitles 'Rearmament Policy' and is designed to illustrate the development of the defence policy of the British Government during the inter-war years period with special emphasis on the last six pre-war years, 1933-1939. It is the last of these volumes to appear and has the significant advantages that most of the official records on which it is based may now be referred to openly, and that the ministers responsible for shaping policy may be mentioned by name, advantages which most of the volumes published earlier did not enjoy.
The aim of the author, who is Chichele Professor of the History of War in the University of Oxford, has been to provide an outline of the development of British policy at the highest level, i.e. in the Cabinet and its committees, the Committee of Imperial Defence and the Chiefs of Staff Committee.
The long-term strategic policies of the Government and the Services reflected to a great extent the phases in the development of public opinion in the nation as a whole. The war-weariness of the early twenties and the hopeful striving towards the ideas of world peace and disarmament, as expressed in support of the League of Nations, gave place to a gradually increasing conviction that Germany, Italy and Japan were determined to further their expansionist ambitions, if necessary, by force. During the thirties, in face of the growing threat posed by the rapid rearming of potential aggressors, the policy of appeasement seemed to British governments the only possible course to follow in order to reduce the number of enemies this country might be confronted with in the event of war. Some historians have blamed the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments for such appeasement policies; but the present author argues that they developed from the views and actions of all inter-war British governments, and that they were largely acceptable at the time to Parliament and to the public.
At the same time, however, there was a slow but persistent revision of defence programmes and an attempt to rebuild the country's greatly depleted armaments. The author's study of the official documents satisfies him that, even during the period of appeasement, the Royal Air Force was being provided with the framework for massive wartime expansion in both machines and men; while the Royal Navy, though limited by the heavy demands on the nation's finances, was brought to a state of readiness by September 1939, which promised something approaching Britain's traditional naval supremacy in a purely European war. The most obvious weakness, when the Second World War began, lay with the Army. But that was both because the demands of a continental land war were not fully accepted until shortly before war broke out, and also because so much of the Army's limited resources had been devoted to its contribution to the air defence of Britain.
In the latter part of the book the author devotes two chapters to a review of the Anglo-French Staff talks in the years 1936-39 and a further two chapters to British policy towards Eastern Europe and to the abortive Anglo-French-Soviet relations up to August, 1939.
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