Free To Lose a Battle by Alistair Horne

Ministers looked at eachother in horror. Mobilization! And six weeks before an election? It was madness. The electorate would never stand for it. Parliamentary defeat would be certain – why their very jobs were at stake! It was impossible. Now both the military and the politicians had their excuses. It remained to blame Britain for their joint paralysis of will. This was, however, said Churchill, ‘an explanation, but no excuse’; and indeed, at least in the opinion of Paul Reynaud, had France acted alone, in defence of her vital interests, Britain would have been bound to back her up.
    Belgium Opts Out
    So France did nothing, and Hitler got away with his first and most desperate gamble. The consequences were not long delayed. The most immediate followed with the reaction of France’s ally, Belgium. That gallant sovereign who signed the Franco-Belgian Alliance of 1920, King Albert, had died tragically in 1934, and his son, Leopold III, did not inherit the full measure of his wisdom and moral courage. Instead of the protective belt of the demilitarized Rhineland, the new King now saw armed German soldiers once again on Belgium’s frontier, while behind him he saw an apparently impotent France. Wherein lay the security of Belgium? On 14 October 1936, Leopold III revoked the Franco-Belgian Treaty, thereby opting for a return to the neutral status of pre-1914. Said the King, with the optimism of the imprudent little pigs: ‘This policy should aim resolutely at keeping us apart from the quarrels of our neighbours…’ For France it meant that, in the event of war, she could not enter Belgium until Hitler had already invaded. In one stroke the whole of her Maginot Line strategy lay in fragments. Belgium’s neutrality now confronted France with two fearful alternatives. No longer could there be any‘rush into Belgium’ carefully co-ordinated with the army of an ally; instead, either she would have to meet the invading Germans somewhere on the defenceless Flemish plains, in a hastily improvised battle of encounter, such as her defensive-minded Army was least suited for, or prepare to meet them once again on French soil, the prospect dreaded above all others. The only way to certain safety now lay in prolonging the Maginot Line to the sea. But the 87 existing miles of ‘fortified regions’ had already cost 7,000 million francs, and it was obvious that to extend the Line all the way to the sea, through the industrialized north, would prove infinitely more expensive. So the politicians of the Third Republic resorted to that time-honoured expedient of deceiving their constituents – and their allies – by pretending to do something which they recognized to be beyond their powers.
    Meanwhile, in the reoccupied Rhineland itself, Hitler hastened the construction of his own powerful line of concrete forts, opposing the Maginot Line – the West Wall, or ‘Siegfried Line’. As Churchill predicted in a remarkable prophecy on 6 April 1936, those fortifications would
enable the German troops to be economised on that line, and will enable the main forces to swing round through Belgium and Holland. Then look East. There the consequences of the Rhineland fortification may be more immediate… Poland and Czechoslovakia, with which must be associated Yugoslavia, Roumania, Austria and some other countries, are all affected very decisively the moment that this great work of construction has been completed.
    Indeed, its completion would make it virtually impossible for France to render any effective aid to her eastern allies. Hitler could henceforth mop up in the East at will, then, with his rear secured, deal with an isolated France when the moment came.
    The reoccupation of the Rhineland marked the watershed between 1919 and 1939. No other single event in this period was more loaded with dire significance. From March 1936, the road to France’s doom ran downhill all the way. In Germany, Hitler was rearming with terrifying