Let Slip The Assembly Lines Of War

Cry Havoc is a book about the cause of World War 2. I'm sure that's a category exhaustively covered by writers, though I don't know how many have pinned the cause on the arms race, as Joseph Maiolo does here.

Maiolo's argument is that a major lesson taken from World War 1 was that future wars would be "total wars". It wouldn't simply be armies against armies, but entire countries, their societies and economies against each other. So by the early 1930s, countries began to rearm, but also tried to make arrangements where the entirety of their country's industrial power could be turned towards weapons manufacture at the moment it's needed. naturally, once one country starts up with this, all the other powers start in as well, which prompts the original rearmer to up production, prompting a similar response in the other countries, and so on.

Maiolo starts the book with chapters focusing on a specific country and its post-WWI history, up to the early 1930s. As the book progresses, the chapters tend to cover less time, but touch on actions taken by more countries, since measures were occurring in tandem, or as a response. There's naturally some discussion of the economy, since the Great Depression was something the major powers had to cope with in their attempts to build up their military, but it's generalized enough you don't have to be well-versed in economics to follow the problems faced. Generally, the biggest problem is most of the European nations (and Japan) lack the natural resources they need, so they have to import, but all that steel, oil, etc., is being used on armaments, so they aren't exporting as much. Trouble ensues.

One thing that comes through in the book is how much countries try to copy each other. The Soviet Union tried to design tractor factories so they could be converted to tank production as necessary. This was apparently an idea they took from observing American factories. The Germans (and Soviets, and probably Italians) used civilian airlines as a way to build and test bombers on the sly. The factories are already producing aircraft, just modify the construction a bit and they've got warplanes. Everybody exaggerates the strength of their enemies' forces. Sometimes it's out of ignorance (at some point before the war, the Soviets were convinced the Germans would field a air force of 48,000 planes, and an army of 24,000 tanks. I'm not sure Germany produced 48,000 planes throughout the war, let alone had that many active at one time.) In other cases it's done deliberately, to serve personal agendas. Mussolini tried to scare the Brits and French with false reports on the strength of the German military. Churchill received other exaggerated reports he further exaggerated to suit his claims the government needed to take a more active hand in business to help the country prepare faster. Hitler ordered increases in the production of ships and planes in response to erroneous projections of British military might. So and so forth.

The most obvious example though, is the democratic countries wanting to emulate the fascist nations' control of industry. It becomes a frequent refrain amongst military men (and warhawk politicians) in England and France in the mid-1930s that they simply can't match the military power of the Fascist countries because production isn't high enough. And the way for England and France to make more tanks and planes is the government takes control of businesses the way Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviets have. I find that a concerning argument, that they need to be like their enemies to defeat them, and so did many others at the time, which is encouraging. The thing is, even the people generally opposed to it recognize that once war actually breaks out it'll probably need to happen. They just object to the idea of doing so when they aren't actually at war. Why force your citizens to live in a state of war when there isn't an actual war?

It's kind of amazing how quickly things escalated. Germany wound up fighting Britain and France in 1940, after invading Poland, plus the earlier conquests of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Hitler's original plan was not to actually start fighting until at least 1946. He was going to give his country over a decade to prepare before going to war. What he found was Germany couldn't sustain the level of production he was demanding, and as the eventual Allies began to gear up their industries, he realized that by 1946 (or even sooner), Germany would be at a severe disadvantage. Even before he invaded Poland, he was telling Mussolini it would be another 3 or 4 years before he'd challenge England and France. That was how quickly things kept changing, not just in Germany. England would frequently come up with plans for their defense, such as Plan A, Plan B, and so on. What usually wound up happening was a new Plan would be introduced, and before it could really begin to be implemented, new information (maybe true, maybe not) would come to light, and there'd need to be a new Plan. I believe they were up to at least Plan M by the time the war actually started, at which point they were looking at relying on fighters planes defending England as their primary force.

A couple of other pieces that interested me. In an early chapter about Japan's early rearmament. The Japanese had apparently taken the idea of "total war" to heart after witnessing Germany's WWI defeat. They'd also adopted the idea of decisive war vs. continuous war. They felt continuous war was the future, and that was where total war came in. If wars were going to be long, drawn-out affairs, then a country would naturally need the resources and industrial capacity to maintain the armed forces for that period of time. it's never stated quite as clearly in any other chapter, but it seems clear most countries recognized a similar situation. Britain and France both seemed to be planning for a war where they'd try to simply outlast Germany, until their superior resources turned the tide. The Germans and Italians seemed to be thinking the same way initially, but upon recognizing their economic limitations (especially Italy), they tried to win a decisive war.

Then there were the hilarious attempts to bring about peace in a self-interested way. On a couple of occasions, Mussolini tried to chair treaty discussions that would convince the powers to slow their rearming. Not out of some concern for the world, but because he saw how quickly Italy was being surpassed, and he hoped by slowing everyone else down to keep his country in the discussion as a power. Britain was concerned about all the other countries trying to build up their navies, and it was posited that these countries simply needed to stop worrying about how they ranked in the world. . . as long as they recognized Britain was #1, of course.

Maiolo also helped give me more of an appreciation for Neville Chamberlain*. He presents Chamberlain as a seriously rational problem solver, someone who believes every problem has a solution. So throughout the book, after he reaches a position of power anyway, Chamberlain is making all these attempts to keep the peace, searching for that solution that will keep things calm. How much should the government meddle in industry? Should he devote more funds to the air force, or the navy? What about the army, because the French would like a little more of an English presence on the ground with them against the Germans? Should he ally with France for that matter? Maiolo quotes some letters Chamberlain sent his sister, including one in the last assessing the situation during the Phoney War, I believe. In it, he believes Hitler will not push things because when Chamberlain looks at the situation, he sees Hitler as having missed his chance to strike at England and France. Now they're rearming and united, and the U.S. is promising war planes, and it'll be too much for Germany. Chamberlain knew what he would do in Hitler's shoes, and believed Hitler would see things the same way.

The problem being, Hitler doesn't see it that way. He does agree that if he waits, his enemies will be too strong, but he doesn't agree that they're already too strong. Faced with the situation, he doesn't say "Our moment is gone, forget it". He thinks, "We have to strike now or never, even if the odds are against us." That may ultimately be the flaw in Maiolo's premise. For all that an arms race may have heightened tensions between countries, most of the countries didn't really seem to want war. It took one guy deciding to go for it to make it happen. But odds are he would do so eventually anyway (1946, originally), so the arms race just accelerated it.

* Between this, The Continental Commitment, and With Wings Like Eagles, that's been happening a lot the last few years.