Abstract
There are two kinds of responsibilities which relate directly to the approach of war. There are the diplomatic efforts which are made to preserve the peace and, should these fail, to then isolate one’s enemy. There is the strategic planning which is designed to ensure the security of the nation, by deterrence in peacetime and by the application of military force in wartime. In short, we should distrust the old dictum that war is the extension of diplomacy by other means. The two are not sequential, they coexist. In fact, both the foreign ministry and the defence ministries have as their primary task the assurance of the nation’s security in peace and in war.
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Notes
For French responses to Japan, see John E. Dreifort, Myopic Grandeur: The Ambivalence of French Foreign Policy Toward the Far East, 1919–1945 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991).
For their perceptions of Italian ambitions, see William Shorrock, From Ally to Enemy. The Enigma of Fascist Italy in French Diplomacy (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1988),
and George W. Baer, The Coming of the Italian-Ethiopian War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967) and Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia and the League of Nations (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1976).
One of the most succinct and recent treatments of Franco-Belgian relations in the 1930s is to be found in the seventh chapter of Martin S. Alexander, The Republic in Danger. General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defence, 1933–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 172–209.
See also Brian Bond, France and Belgium, 1939–1940 (London: Davis-Poynter, 1975).
General Gamelin, for one, was a firm believer in this forward defence, arguing that monies not expended on fortifying the frontier with Belgium should be put towards the development of new weapons, including armour, and improved training. See Martin S. Alexander, ‘In Lieu of Alliance: The French General Staff’s Secret Cooperation with Neutral Belgium, 1936–1940’, Journal of Strategic Studies, xiv, no. 4 (December 1991) 471.
For evidence of the longevity of these hopes, and their currency in both the Bonnet and Daladier camps, see Paul Stafford, ‘The French Government and the Danzig Crisis: The Italian Dimension’, International History Review, vi, no. 1 (February 1984) 48–87.
See Young , ‘Soldiers and Diplomats: The French Embassy and Franco-Italian Relations, 1935–1936’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 7, no. 1 (1984) 74–91; and ‘French Military Intelligence and the Franco-Italian Alliance, 1933–1939’, Historical Journal, 28 (1985) 143–68.
More recendy, and in a more critical vein, we have Nicole Jordan’s ‘Maurice Gamelin, Italy and the Eastern Alliances’, Journal of Strategic Studies, xiv, no. 4 (December 1991) 428–41.
See Elisabeth Du Réau, ‘Enjeux stratégiques et redéploiement diplomatique français: novembre 1938, septembre 1939,’ Relations Internationales, no. 35 (Autumn 1983) 328. For a recent work which strongly reiterates the Popular Front’s determination to hold on to eastern Europe, see Nicole Jordan, The Popular Front and Central Europe: The Dilemmas of French Impotence, 1918–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
For the intense resistance of the Bank of France and senior echelons in the Finance ministry, see Michael J. Carley, ‘Five Kopeks for Five Kopecks: Franco-Soviet Trade Negotiations 1928–1939’, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, xxxiii, no. 1 (Jan. -March 1992) 23–58.
The published text of this report by General Victor Schweisguth can be found in Documents Diplomatiques Français, series 2, vol. 3, no. 343, 510–14. The immediate context in which the report appeared, including a far more positive report from 1935 — for which his predecessor was reprimanded — may be found in Young , In Command of France. French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933–1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978) 145–49.
See Henry Blumenthal’s, Illusion and Reality in Franco-American Diplomacy, 1914–1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986).
See Henry Dutailly, Les problèmes de l’armée de terre française, 1935–1939 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1980) 25–70.
See Young , ‘French Military Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1938–1939’, in Ernest May (ed.) Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) 303.
See Charles de Gaulle, Le fil de Vépée (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1931); Vers l’armée de métier (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1934); La France et son armée (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1938).
See Young , ‘The Strategic Dream: French Air Doctrine in the Inter-War Period, 1919–39’, Journal of Contemporary History, ix, no. 4 (October 1974) 67–8.
For a succinct discussion of this issue, see Robert A. Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster. The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919–1939 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1985) 14–39.
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© 1996 Robert J. Young
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Young, R.J. (1996). Accord and Discord: Diplomacy and National Defence in the 1930s. In: France and the Origins of the Second World War. The Making of the 20th Century. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24890-2_4
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