the red army and the munich crisis author(s): g. jukesreviewed

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The Red Army and the Munich CrisisAuthor(s): G. JukesReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1991), pp. 195-214Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/260788.

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G.JukesThe RedArmyand the MunichCrisis

Although enthusiastically received by majority British and Frenchopinion at the time, the Munich Agreement of 1938 soon came to beviewed as a shameful act of capitulation. At the time, Conservativedissidents headed by Churchill, as well as many Opposition figures,particularly criticized the failure of the Chamberlain and Daladiergovernments to make common cause with, or even sound out, theSoviet Union, which had treaties of alliance with both France andCzechoslovakia.Defence of this inaction, as far as the British are concerned, hashinged on Chamberlain'sdeep-rooted distrust of communism and onmilitaryadvice, specificallythe opinion of the Chiefs of Staff, that theRed Army had been so harmed by Stalin's purge of the militaryleadership as to be incapable of effective action. This opinion theycontinued to hold until some time after the Germaninvasion of 1941,apparently taking the poor Soviet performance in the Winter Waragainst Finland in 1939-40 as more definitive than the much betterrecord against the Japanese army before Munich in the summer of1938 and after it in Mongolia in 1939.Up to now, assessment of whether Soviet military action couldhave made any difference to the outcome of the crisis has dependedentirely upon subjective judgments about the effect of the purges.However, even grantingthat they weregravelydetrimentalto the RedArmy's effectiveness, the crisis, if it had led to war, would haverequiredGermany to face not the Red Army alone but the armies ofFrance, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, that is a war on threefronts, which it would probably have had to fight without allies.Conduct of such a war, difficult enough in itself, would have beenfurther complicated by Anglo-French naval blockade. Even withpoorly-led Soviet forces, the odds against Germany would have been

Journal of ContemporaryHistory (SAGE, London, Newbury Park and New Delhi),Vol. 26 (1991), 195-214.

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Journalof ContemporaryHistoryconsiderably higher than they were in September 1939,when it had tofight only Poland, and that with Soviet connivance.Until now, it has not been feasible to assess this possible alternativeoutcome because Soviet statements of their readiness to helpCzechoslovakia have not been backed by any details of the militarypreparationsundertakenby the Red Army duringthe crisis. Even thespate of recent publications on the circumstances leading up to theoutbreak of the second world war for the most part contain noreferences to the military factor.' However, two of them dospecifically deal with it.2 The more readily accessible, because it is inEnglish, is by Professor Oleg Rzheshevskiy of the Institute of WorldHistory, but his sources are not cited. However, the information hegives appears to have its origins in the same archival materials as thesecond publication.This is a book by Marshal of the Soviet Union, M.V. Zakharov,about the Soviet General Staff in the pre-war years, written in1969 but not published until 1989. When he wrote it, Zakharov wasChief of the General Staff; he had been a staff officer for mostof his career, and at the time of Munich was an assistant to thethen Chief of General Staff, Army Commander First Rank (laterMarshal) Shaposhnikov. In a postscript to the book, Army GeneralM.A. Moyseyev, the present Chief of General Staff, gives reasonsfor the twenty-year delay in publication. First, at that time therewere strict limits on what might be published about the organization,operational and mobilization roles of the General Staff. Second,the consent of a number of authorities was then required forpublication of any military-politicalwork. These deliveredconflictingopinions, and required deletions and insertions which Zakharovdeclined to accept because he considered that they devalued thework.

Zakharov's account of the Red Army's preparations for war inSeptember 1938 is therefore that of a high-level participant, and hisposition at the time he wrote his book ensured him privileged accessto Ministry of Defence archives. Unfortunately he does not identifythe sources for his account of the mobilization and redeployment offorces in September 1938,but his account is too detailed to have beencompiled from memory alone, and can only be based on archivematerials.

lHeclaims that the Soviet government, which after the Germanoccupation of Austria in March 1938 had several times declaredits willingness to aid Czechoslovakia if attacked, replied on 20

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Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich CrisisSeptember to an enquiry from President Benes that it would assistCzechoslovakia militarilywhether or not France did so, and orderedforces to be brought to 'readiness to fight' for the purpose. Thedeployments he lists are too detailed to give here in full, but can besummarized as follows.The Kiev Special Military District was ordered at 18.00 hours on21 September to set up a force comprising an Army GroupHeadquarters, the 4th Cavalry Corps, 25th Tank Corps, 17th RifleCorps and 23rd and 26th Light Tank Brigades (equivalent to aboutten divisions) and deploy it in the areas of Volochisk, Proskurov andKamenets-Podol'skiy, close to the border with Poland, then muchfurthereast than it is now. To bringunits up to full warestablishment,the District was ordered to call up 8,000 reservistsperdivision and torequisition horses from the civilian economy (the Red Army, like allcontinental armies of the time, including the German, dependedheavily on horse-drawn transport). Divisions of the 2nd CavalryCorps were simultaneously advanced to the border. Three airregiments of fighters, three of light bombers, one of heavy bombersand the District's own air force units were assigned to the force, andair force reservistsmobilized to bring two main air bases up to fullstrength in ground staff.The District headquarters began to implement the order at 4:00a.m. on the following day, and a Headquarters group under theDistrict Commander, Army Commander First Rank (later Marshal)Timoshenko, was immediately set up at Proskurov.Two days later, at 23.45 hours on 23 September, the adjoiningBelorussian Special Military District was ordered to deploy, in fourborder areas west of Polotsk, Lepel, Minsk and Slutsk respectively,forces totalling fiveinfantrydivisions and one infantryregiment,fourcavalry divisions (less one regiment), three tank brigades and ahowitzer regiment. All units were to move on the morning of 24September (i.e. immediately). Fighter and light bomber regimentswere advanced to forward airfields, and heavy bombers ordered tooperational readiness from their existing bases. The District Head-quartersreportedcompliance at 10:55a.m. on 24 September.

Also on 23 September,the Kalinin Military District was ordered toadvance one infantry division to the border, and all the Districtsalreadymentioned, plus those of Leningrad,Moscow and Khar'kov,were ordered to put their anti-aircraftdefence systems on 'readinessto fight'. Static defences ('fortified regions') along the border werealso brought up to this statusand made upto strengthwith reservists.

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Journalof ContemporaryHistoryAltogether in the first instance, one Tank Corps, thirty infantryand ten cavalry divisions, seven tank, one motorized infantry andtwelve air brigades and seven 'fortified regions' were made ready to

fight, and in the Air Defence system two corps, one division, twobrigades, sixteen regiments and a number of independent anti-aircraft batteries were placed on full alert.On 28 September, all eleven Military Districts west of the Urals(those previously mentioned plus Orel, Volga, Urals, NorthCaucasus and Transcaucasus) were ordered to cease until furthernotice the release of time-expired conscripts. On 29 September, theLeningrad,Belorussianand Kiev Districts were ordered to call up fortraining within the next two weeks reservists for seventeen infantrydivisions, three tank corps, fifteen tank and several air brigades andthirty-four airfields, and to bring officer strength to full war estab-lishment. On the same day, all other Military Districts west of theUrals except Transcaucasus were ordered to call up 250-275 reserveofficers for each of theirdivisions within two weeks. Altogether, sixtyinfantry and sixteen cavalry divisions, three tank corps, twenty-twoindependent tank and seventeen air brigades plus some other unitswere brought to war readiness;almost 330,000 reservistswere calledup, and tens of thousands of others due for release were retained inservice.3Zakharov also says that on 25 September a cable was sent to theSoviet Embassy in Paris for transmission to the French militaryauthorities. The text of this was released in 1958 and it reads asfollows:

Our command has up to now taken the following steps:1. 30 infantrydivisions have been moved forward to areas immediately adjacentto the western border. The same has been done in relation to cavalry divisions.2. Units have been appropriately made up to strength with reservists.3. As for our technical forces -air force and tank units -they are at fullreadiness.4On 28 September the same information was repeated to the FrenchMilitary Attache in Moscow, Colonel Palasse.

Thus Zakharov's account. If fabricated, it could have had only onepurpose when written in 1969 - to present the Soviet Union in asfavourable as possible a light to Czechoslovakia, recently invaded byits Warsaw Pact partners. This can be dismissed out of hand -theMunich episode takes up only a few pages in a book of over 300pages,and the book was not published at the time when it might have served

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Jukes: TheRed Armyand the MunichCrisisthis purpose. In any event, while Soviet seniorofficerswere, until veryrecently,constrained to economy with the truth to support the officialline over the political circumstances attendant on military action,5they normally prefer silence to lying about purely military matters.That, plus the detail into which Zakharov goes, down to the numbersof the divisions, corps and, in some cases, regiments,indicates that theRed Army made very extensive preparations to go to Czech-oslovakia's assistance.He also says that the Soviet government, observingthe Polish armyconcentrating at the Czech border (with the intention of seizingTeschen), warned Poland on 23 September that it would treatinvasion as 'unprovoked aggression' (a specific requirement foractivating the Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty),and abrogate the Soviet-Polish non-aggression treaty of 1932.6Rzheshevskiy adds some further details to Zakharov's account,noting that in August 1938 the head of the Czechoslovak air force,General Fajfr, was invited to Moscow to discuss direct co-operationwith the Soviet air force, but Czechoslovak governmental reluctancewas such that he arrived only after repeated Soviet reminders.Fajfr wrote later that 'a plan for defending Czechoslovakia withSoviet assistance was worked out' and 'joint meetings resultedin an agreement under which the Soviet Union would promptlyhelp us by sending 700 fighters, on condition that we preparedsuitable airfields for them, with our anti-aircraft artillery providingcover'.7Air force assistance would have been a crucial element. The Sovietair force was the world's largest, and reachingCzechoslovakia wouldhave involved only brief overflights through Polish or Romanianairspace. The two governments would probably have refusedconsent, but protocol could have been satisfied, and confrontationavoided, by inaccurate anti-aircraft fire. The German Minister inRomania reported on 3 June that the Romanian General Staff hadagreed to Soviet overflights, provided the aircraftcarriedCzechoslo-vak markings, and the crews only Czechoslovak identity documents.Threeweeks laterhe reportedthat the King had vetoed this proposal,but that the Court Minister had admitted that Romania lacked theresources to enforce a ban.8 In late August, the Romanian govern-ment told the French Head of Mission that it would 'shut its eyes toSoviet aircraft flying over Romania at an altitude of 3,000 metres ormore, since this altitude is practicallyout of rangeof Romania's anti-aircraftartillery'.9

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Journalof ContemporaryHistoryTabulation of the events of the crisis tends to suggest that the

military moves were entirely consistent with the Soviet government'sdeclarations of support for Czechoslovakia following the Anschluss,but came too late to affect the situation. Partial mobilization beganwith the issue of orders to the Kiev Special Military District at 18.00hours Moscow time (16.00 GMT) on 21 September, a direct follow-up to the assurance given to Benes on the preceding day.It appears from other sources that in 'early September' Maisky,Soviet ambassador in London, told Churchill that the Soviet Unionwas preparedto use force if Germany attacked Czechoslovakia, andthat Churchillreported this to the Foreign Secretary,Lord Halifax.'oOn 10 September Fierlinger, the Czechoslovak Minister in Moscow,reported having been told by 'a sourceclose to the Kremlin' that 'eventhe question of action without France' had been discussed there.However, he could not say whether a decision had been reached. On19SeptemberBenessought an assurance that the Soviet Union wouldact if Francedid, and received anaffirmativeansweron thenext day.12This is presumablythe question mentioned by Zakharov.13 Benes alsoasked Gottwald, the leader of the large and influential CzechoslovakCommunist Party, whether the Soviets would act if France did not.Gottwald advised him to put the question directly to Moscow, but hedid not.14His reasons for inaction areunexplained, but would result from thedelicate political balance within Czechoslovakia itself, the vehemencewith which German propaganda had long been depicting the countryas an outpost of communism, and the known aversion of the Britishand Frenchgovernments, geopolitical as well as political, to anythingwhich would give the Soviet Union greater influence in Europeanaffairs.15On 13 September, Chamberlain told King George VI that heintended to fly to meet Hitler, and to offer him an Anglo-Germanunderstanding, provided the Czechoslovak question was 'settled'first.Chamberlainflew to Germanyon 15Septemberand returnedthenext day, having committed himself to 'separation' of the German-majority Sudetenland, provided that the 'practicaldifficulties'couldbe overcome.'6The major 'practical difficulty' was, of course, how to coerceCzechoslovakia into accepting truncation, and it must have beenknowledge of British intentions that motivated Benes to seekassurance from the Soviet government. The British and French'terms'weredeliveredto him on 19September,and he was requiredto

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Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich Crisisreply before Chamberlain's next meeting with Hitler, scheduled for21 September(it actually took place on 22-23 September);to leave nodoubt as to what answerwas expected, the BritishMinister, Newton,told the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Dr Krofta, that 'refusal orevasion would mean the destruction of his beautifulcountry'.17 Benesput his question to Moscow that day, and received his affirmativereply the next day, 20 September (a Saturday). This presumablymotivated the formalCzech refusalof the Anglo-French terms,whichwas receivedin London that evening;the BritishinnerCabinet met at10:30p.m., and, after consultation with the French, cables were sentto the British and French envoys in Prague. They in turn awakenedBenes at 2:15 a.m. on Sunday 21 Septemberto tell him that the Czechreply 'in no way meets the critical situation' and that he must'urgently consider an alternative which takes account of realities'.l8Benesrepliedat 5:00p.m. on the sameday that the Czechgovernment'sadlyaccepts the Britishand Frenchproposals'. Just one hour earlier(18.00 hours Moscow time, i.e. 17.00 hours Central European time,16.00 GMT), Moscow had ordered Kiev Special Military District tobegin the preparations outlined above. Benes might have respondeddifferentlyto the Anglo-French pressureif he had known that Stalinhad begun bringing to war readiness almost twice as many divisionsas Hitler then had at his disposal.'9As it was, the Czechoslovak government ordered mobilization at10:00 p.m. on 22 September, and France ordered a partialmobilization on 24 September. These moves were not linked to theSoviet measures, which were not notified to the French until 25September, but they caused additional apprehension among thealready very uneasy German military. General Jodl, Head ofOperations at the High Command (OKW) noted in his diary on 28Septemberthat, afterreceivinginformation about Frenchand Britishmeasures amounting to partial mobilization,20the Commander-in-Chief of the army (OKH), General von Brauchitsch,had begged theChief of OKW, General Keitel, 'to remember his responsibilitiesanddo everything possible with the Fuehrer to make sure Sudetenterritoryis not invaded'.21 f OKH could be that apprehensiveat therelatively limited Anglo-French measures, it is easy to conjecturewhat they would have thought if they had also known about thesimultaneous and much largerSoviet preparations.Some attention to the military balance of 1938 is relevant at thispoint. The plan for invasion of Czechoslovakia ('Fall Gruen'- CaseGreen) had been approved on 30 May 1938,as an Amendment to the

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Journalof ContemporaryHistoryDirective for Unified War Preparations. It made no mention of theBritish, but assumed that Hungary and Poland would join in,especially if Italian support for Germany deterredFrance or made ithesitate to intervene, and that 'in all probability' Russia wouldattempt to support Czechoslovakia, particularlywith its air forcebut with no attempt to assess the likely scale of Soviet efforts. Theplan's intent was to crush Czechoslovakia within a few days, failingwhich 'a European crisis will certainly arise'. Germany's westernborder would be given cover 'limited in quantity and quality inaccordance with the existing state of the fortifications', i.e. minimal.22The plan was clearly risky, especially at the stage of rearmamentGermany had reached in 1938. The army was capable of fieldingabout fifty-one divisions, only three of which were armoured (andonly two of those as yet fully equipped),23 he fortifications along theborder with France were far from ready,24 nd the army leaderswerenaturally unenthusiastic at Hitler's intention to take on France,Britain and the Soviet Union simultaneously. Britishplans envisagedputting only five divisions on to the continent, but France could beexpected to mobilize about seventy divisions25and the Soviet Unionat least two hundred.Nor could the Czechoslovak armybe ignored. Itcomprised thirty-eight divisions on full mobilization, was wellequipped with products from the largeand modern Skoda works, andhad formidable fixed defences along the whole of its border withGermany, except that with the recently incorporated Austria. Thedivisions would have been of uneven quality (reservists of Germanorigin were clearly a dubious asset,26the Polish and Hungarianminoritieswould have been doubtfully motivated, and so would someof those from Slovakia, where a secessionist movement enjoyedconsiderable support), but the army in general was regarded ascompetently trained and led. The British27and German28MilitaryAttach6s in Prague both assessed its morale as high. General Beck,Chief of General Staff of OKH until his resignation at the end ofAugust, considered it to be capable of resisting German invasion forthree weeks, and French Intelligence, in a report issued on 25September,assessed it as capable of holding out for one month.29Thecorrectness or otherwise of these assessments is less important thanthat they expressed professional military belief of enemy and allyalike that Czechoslovakia could not be overcome within the few dayswhich Case Green postulated as essential.The steps taken by the Red Army in Septemberwere equivalent tomobilizing over ninety divisions (sixty infantry, sixteen cavalry

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Jukes: TheRed Armyand the Munich Crisisdivisions, three tank corps and twenty-two tank brigades), withappropriate support from what was then the world's largest air force.Whatever doubts might be held about the quality of the post-purgeRed Army, the numerical odds against Germany looked enormous.Remembering the size and role of the British army in the first worldwar, and the effectiveness of the naval blockade, German militaryplanners could not afford to ignore Britain or to assume that itscontribution would be only nominal. But even without it, fifty or soGerman divisions appeared likely to have to face sixty-five French,thirty-eight Czechoslovak and at least ninety Soviet divisions fromthe outset, with as potential allies only Italy, Poland and Hungary.The last two of these, concerned only to grab their share of aCzechoslovakia conveniently dismembered by Germany, wouldprobably not move at all rather than fight such a large coalition ofopponents. As for Italy, its active participation could no more becounted on in 1938 than later;its declaration of war came only in June1940, after Germany had already won the Battle of France.Beck wrote a number of memoranda during 1938, in which he setout his reasons for opposing Hitler's plans. In them he tended tooverstate the strength of the French army, which he accepted as thestrongest in Europe, but the most important point is that he believedHitler's plan to overrun Czechoslovakia before any other powercould react to be unfeasible, and Germany's position to be parlouseven without taking the Soviet Union into account. Even grantedthelow military opinion in Europe of the post-purge Red Army'seffectiveness, Beck and his successor Halder, both convinced thatGermany could not beat the combined strengths of Britain, Franceand Czechoslovakia, could hardly, had they known about it, haveignored the additional threat posed by ninety Soviet divisions,however badly led.Not surprisingly, military plotting to remove Hitler, already inprogress under Beck, continued under Halder.30 The plotters,however, felt that without a justification readily intelligible to theGerman public, a militarycoup would be followed by nazi resistanceand perhaps a civil war. Hence the German opposition's efforts topersuadethe Britishgovernment to resistHitler'sdemands, includingEwald von Kleist's meeting with Vansittart on 17 August(Vansittart's account of this meeting was on Chamberlain's desk on19August), and with Churchill on 18 August.3'There wereseveralreasons for the plotters' inability to convince theBritish.BothChamberlain and Halifax had met Hitlerpersonallyand

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Journalof ContemporaryHistorybelieved in the possibility of coming to an understandingwith him,32as did most of the other Cabinet members. The plotters could giveonly promissory notes in return for the action they requested, andVansittart, the Foreign Officefunctionary most acquainted with theopposition (and, because of his hostility to yielding to Hitler, apotential 'friend at court'), did not believe them capable of effectiveaction. Nor, with memories of the first world war still vivid, would theBritish public necessarily have seen a military take-over in Germanyas a move for peace, while the core of the government'sdilemma wasthat Hitler's claim on the Sudetenland,presentable,and presented,asrescuing Germans from alien rule, was widely accepted as areasonable instance of self-determination. Also underlying thegovernment's actions or inaction were the belief of many Britishconservatives that communism was the more dangerous enemy andtheir reluctance to choose between nazi and communist dictators,particularly since some of Stalin's crimes were already known,whereas most of Hitler's still lay in the future; and in relationspecificallyto Centraland South-east Europe, ChamberlainacceptedGerman hegemony over it as preferable to Soviet.33So even if theSoviet moves had been made and publicizedearlier,an Anglo-Frenchsurrender to Hitler's demands, though more difficult, would notnecessarily have become impossible.The crucial factor clearly was the attitude of the Czechoslovakgovernment.On 19September t had sought and receivedan assurancethat the Soviet government would stand by its treaty obligations, buthad not been told what specific measures Stalin proposed to take.On 20 September it had rejected the Anglo-French proposals tosurrenderthe Sudetenland but, under pressurefrom the two powers,it reluctantly accepted them on 21 September. Had it known of theSoviet military preparations then being initiated, it might nothave yielded.34Although the French government vacillated, PrimeMinister Daladier had more than once said that France would fight ifit had to.35The sequence of mobilizations, Soviet on 21 September,Czechoslovak on 22, French on 24, and alerting of the British fleet,known to the Germans by 27 September, could have constituted adeterrent display. They did not because (1) the Soviets told no onewhat they were actually doing until 25 September, (2) the Czechs,French and Britishhad already yielded; their mobilizations were notagainst surrendering the Sudetenland, but over how it should bedone, afterHitler stiffenedhis termsin his meeting with Chamberlainlate on 21 September.

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Jukes: TheRed Armyand the Munich CrisisHad the powers made common cause, there would have been two

possible outcomes - either Hitler would have backed down, or hewould not. To back down would have constituted a humiliatingreverse, following which his opponents in the military might havebeen able to remove him for hazarding Germany's future by unitingthe major powers against it, and, as Kleist told Vansittart andChurchillin August, make it 'the preludeto the end of the regimeandthe renaissance of a Germany with which the world could deal'.36However, Hitler's Unified War Plan Directive indicates that heintended to fight even if the Soviet Union were involved, relying onover-running Czechoslovakia in a few days from 1 October 1938,before the major powers could mobilize to intervene. As alreadymentioned, neither German nor French military opinion believedsuch a fait accompli to be possible. Beck's estimate of three weeks andthe Deuxieme Bureau's of four are both well beyond the four days theFrench army needed for partial or the seventeen days it requiredforfull mobilization.The ninety or so Soviet divisions which had been readied to fight by1 October had no access to Czechoslovakia except through Poland.The Polish regime had two sound geopolitical reasons to be moreanti-Soviet than anti-German at that time. First, its easternterritories, through which Soviet troops would have had to transit,were themselveshighly disputable. They werewell east of the 'CurzonLine', populated mostly by Belorussians and Ukrainians, not Poles,and had been seized at a time when Russia was debilitated by civilwar. The Polish government therefore had good reason to doubtwhether Soviet troops would leave once admitted. Secondly, Polandhad an interest in dismemberingCzechoslovakia. It intended to seizethe Teszin area when Germany marched into the Sudetenland. Athird, much more subjective, factor was the Polish regime's over-optimistic belief that Stalin's purges were acts of desperationheralding the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union.The Anglo-French 'soundings' of Poland and Romania about theirwillingness to allow Soviet troops to transit were perfunctorycompared to the lengths Britain and France went to in pressuringCzechoslovakia to capitulate. They could hardly be otherwise, giventhe expressedhostility of the Chamberlainand Daladier governmentsto Soviet involvement in the affairs of Europe. However, had waractually broken out, it would have become a perceived interest ofFrance and, though less directly, of Britain, to relieve Germanpressure on themselves and Czechoslovakia by facilitating Soviet

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Journalof ContemporaryHistoryintervention before Czechoslovakia was completely over-run. Facedwith simultaneous pressure from France, Britain and the SovietUnion, it is likely that Poland, or Romania, or both, would have atleast declared readiness to permit Soviet transits and overflights. Atthat point, i.e. before any transits actually took place, the Germanmilitary, faced with war on three fronts, would have received thejustification it sought for removing Hitler. Even had it not done so,the very worst outcome would have been that the second world warbegan a year sooner, in much less favourable circumstances forGermany than obtained in 1939.What would those circumstances have been? First, Germanywould have been encircled. Even ignoring the front with Czech-oslovakia, it would have been fighting from the outset the two-frontwar its military dreaded, and which in the actual second world war itdid not have to face seriously until 1944. It would also have beenmuch more vulnerableto Britishnaval blockade than it became afterthe Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 had made the SovietUnion a major supplier of its food, fuel and minerals. Militarily,Germany would have been at two major disadvantages in 1938, firstin having to fight severalenemies at once, and second in doing so at arelatively early stage of its rearmamentprogramme. Its successes upto 1941 depended greatly on what later came to be called 'salamitactics'. In 1939 therewere two more bloodless victories against smallopponents, the occupation of the rump Czechoslovak state and theseizure of the Lithuanian port of Memel. These enhanced Hitler'sreputation for getting what he wanted without actually having tofight, and further eroded the opposition's prospects of unseatinghim.Once he did have to fight, his status was further confirmed by thesuccession of victories between the invasion of Poland in September1939and the repulse in front of Moscow in December 1941, the onlyfailure being in the air battle over Britain in 1940;with each victorythe German army improved its performance, and the prospects ofunseating Hitler became more remote.Had the war broken out in 1938, the situation would have beenentirely different. Instead of the first test of mechanized warfaretaking place against an isolated, outnumbered, poorly equipped andbadly led Polish army, and with the Soviets as tacit allies, Germanywould have had to fight two major opponents, France and the SovietUnion, with British blockade and a by no means negligible minorland opponent, Czechoslovakia, to complicate the issue. It wouldhave had to do so with a mechanized spearhead of only three Panzer

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Jukes: TheRed Army and the Munich Crisisdivisions, mainly armed not with the Mk III and Mk IV tanks of1939-41, but with the much less effective Mks I and II, and with littleeffective help from the recently incorporated Austrian army, whichthere had not yet been time to re-equip and train to Wehrmachtstandards. And the mostly good-quality modern equipment of theCzechoslovak army, used after the occupation in 1939 to equip overthirty additional German divisions, would have been not merelyunavailable, but actually used against Germany by the thirty-eightCzechoslovak divisions fighting, except along the Austrian border,from fixed fortifications whose strength and comprehensivenessastonished the Germans when they examined them after occupyingthe Sudetenland.37As for Hitler's standing with the German public, the reports onpublic opinion compiled twice weekly by the SD (Security Service)38were to show that, even at the height of German successes in mid-1942, scepticism as to the final outcome of the war was stillwidespread. Had the Czechoslovak crisis erupted into war in 1938,Hitler's foreign policy 'record' of two bloodless victories (Rhinelandand Austria), followed by an unwanted war against all the majorEuropean powers except Italy, would have appeared to mostGermans the work of a dangerous bungler, meriting only instantremoval from power by the army, still a respected institution.Of course none of this happened. The British and Frenchgovernments, dominated by awareness of their own unreadiness forwar, overestimating Germany's readiness for it and the destructivecapability of German bombers, undecided whether nazism orcommunism was the greater evil, and intent on keeping the SovietUnion out of European affairs as much as possible, successfullypressuredCzechoslovakia to give in.The most pragmatic defence of Munich was that it gave the Alliesan extra year to preparefor an inevitable war. However, Hitler mademuch better use of the time, not merely in increasingGerman armedforces and armaments, but in removing the Soviet Union from theopposing camp until such timeas he would choose to invade it, so thatparticular defence of Munich has long ceased to be used. MarshalZakharov's disclosures tend to support the opposite conclusion, thatthere was never a better chance of averting (or even of fighting) thesecond world war than in the last two weeks of September 1938. It islegitimate to wonder what would have happened if the Czech cabinethad known, when drafting its telegramof surrenderto Anglo-Frenchpressure on 21 September, that at the very same time Moscow, in

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Journalof ContemporaryHistoryaccordance with its assurances to Benes, was putting forces almosttwice the size of the Wehrmacht on war alert. It would surely havereiterated its refusal. The French government, bound by a Franco-Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of guarantee, would have been hard putto renege (and would have had far less reason to do so) if the Sovietshad told it on 21 September rather than, as they actually did, fourdays later, what measures the Red Army had been ordered toimplement. The Britishgovernment would have had no choice but tosupport France and Czechoslovakia, and the Germangeneralswouldhave had the grounds they sought for removing Hitler. The greatestimponderable, of course, is whether they would actually have doneso; but at the very least Hitler's hold on the German people wouldhave been severely damaged, if the almost unbroken string ofsuccesses he enjoyed up to the end of 1942had been broken in 1938.No explanation has been given for the prolonged silence, but thereare severalpossible reasons, most of which relate to political realitiesat different times from September 1938onwards. First of all is generalSoviet secretiveness about mobilization procedures and schedules.For example, though glasnost has facilitated disclosure of many newdetails about the conduct of the second world war, very littleinformation is available even now about the numbers mobilized, thetime needed for full mobilization, or the procedures employed. In hisepilogue to Zakharov's book, General Moyseyev mentioned thesensitivity of General Staff work as among the reasons why the bookwas not published in 1969, saying specifically that, 'Above all, therewere still in force at that time fairly severe restrictions relating topublication in the overt press about the organizational, operationaland mobilization activity of the General Staff' (my emphasis). It issignificant that the first reference to details of the 1938 mobilizationwas made only thirty years later, that its author, Zakharov, was bythen the third-highest member of the military hierarchy, and thateven he encountered difficulties which delayed publication a furthertwenty years. We do not know whether the Munich details wereamong the difficulties,but we do know that they were not publishedanywhere else in the interim.

Second, a variety of particular reasons for silence arose insuccession. Up to the invasion of June 1941,these concernedrelationswith Germany. Stalin's preferred option initially seems to have beencollective action with Britainand France to contain Germany, but theWestern powers were doubtful allies, and the alternative option of adeal with Germany was not to be foreclosed because of what it could

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Jukes: The RedArmy and the MunichCrisisoffer on the Soviet western borders, namely restoration of territorieslost only twenty years previously

-Finland, the three Baltic Statesand Eastern Poland.

The first of theseperiods was verybrief-- 21 to 25 September 1938.When the orders went out, no other country had mobilized. ForStalin to make the mobilization public then would at best havebrandedthe Soviet Union as the most hostile of Germany's potentialenemies, at worst have left it to face Germanyalone. It may have beenfor that reason that on 21 September, the very day that the firstmobilization orders went out, the editorial in Pravda displayed acurmudgeonly evenhandedness, declaring that the Soviet Union saw'no difference between German and English robbers'. When Francedeclaredpartial mobilization on 24 September,this dangerceased toexist, so the French were informed on the next day. However, therewas still a clear case against making the mobilization public, namelythe risk that the French would still prefer to yield to Hitler. Tellingthem what he had done was intended to stiffentheirbackbones, but ifit failed to do so, his relations with Germanycould be badly damagedby disclosure of the lengths to which he had been prepared to go.Which of Stalin's options would prove the more feasible dependedon whether the British and French could be reliable allies againstGermany. Conflicting signals were coming from London and Parisduring September, so Stalin attempted to cover both possibilitiesto mobilize, so as to contribute to a joint effort to contain Germany,but to do so without publicity, so as to keep open the possibility of adeal with Germany if the Westernpowers defaulted. This deal beganto take shape in April of the next year but, apart from the Pravdaeditorial, the only evidence that such thinkingwas around in Moscowas early as September 1938 is Deputy Foreign Minister Potemkin'salleged remark to French Ambassador Coulondre that the MunichAgreement had made a fourth partition of Poland inevitable.However, once it was known that Britain and France intended notonly to yield to Hitler's demands, but to force them on Czech-oslovakia, a deal with Germany became the more seriousoption. Thisdictated continued silence about how willing Stalin had recentlybeento confront Germany.In August 1939, Stalin was dickering simultaneously with UK-France and with Germany. Clearly, he still had no wish to tell theGermans that he had been readyto send ninety divisions against themin 1938. But neither was it politic to remind the British and French,because they might leak it to bedevil Soviet-German relations. This

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Journalof ContemporaryHistoryneed for discretion may explain why the normally very protocol-conscious Stalin had two People's Commissars (Ministers), Molotovand Voroshilov, head the Soviet side in talks with the much lower-status Britishand French delegations; having such senior spokesmenreduced the risk that a junior diplomat or soldier would make thedisclosure inadvertently.

Against that, it can be argued that the French military alreadyknew, having been told on 25 and 28 September 1938;but for Stalinthis constituted a risk of disclosure, not a certainty. The Frenchgovernment had kept silent about the Soviet mobilization, because todisclose it would have made its decision to appease Hitler the moredifficult to justify. It was therefore likely that the French governmentwould keep quiet, because the disclosure's potential for politicalembarrassment was still high in 1939. Either way the best course forthe Soviets was to say nothing.Once the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had been signed, neither hadany incentive to prejudice a mutually profitable arrangement byreferringto the Soviet Union's apparentwillingness to fight Germanyin 1938. This continued to be the case until the German invasion inJune 1941, but from then until the end of the war, Soviet silence isharder to explain - to tell Churchill would have been a flatteringconfirmation of the line he had taken in 1938. However, it wouldalso have opened an issue Stalin probably preferrednot to discuss,namely how, for the sake of a short-term and controversial gain(the dismembering of a British ally, Poland, and annexation ofthree independent Baltic states with which Britain enjoyed goodrelations), he had assisted Hitler to change the European balance ofpower, a course of action which had proved catastrophic to France,Britain and, ultimately, to the Soviet Union itself, and had beencomprehensively hoodwinked by him. In any event, having manyimportant matters of present and future to discuss at their infrequentmeetings, the Allied leaders had little time to sparefor dissecting pasterrors.From the end of the war until the onset of glasnost, the officialSoviet 'line' was that the Munich Agreement had been an Anglo-French conspiracy to turn Germany eastwards against the SovietUnion, and therefore had a prearranged outcome which no Sovietaction could affect. Most Czechoslovaks accepted until 1968that thedemocracies had betrayed them in 1938-9 and the Red Army rescuedthem in 1944-45, so there was no political advantage to be gained bydetailing the 1938 preparations.

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Jukes: The Red Army and the Munich CrisisIn 1968 there might have been some advantage in disclosing theMunich effort, but as the Czechs apparentlyknuckled underquickly,there was no need. It might also have tempted fate - it is not hard tosee what capital dissidents could have made by comparing the twomobilizations, that of 1938 to avert invasion, that of 1968to invade.Perhaps more fundamentally, no one responsible for defendingSoviet policy in 1968knew of the measures taken in 1938. The censorsof Zakharov's manuscript knew; but their function is to preventpublication of damaging material, not to identify potentially usefulpropaganda points; and as Zakharov preferrednot to publish rather

than bow to them, the whole matter was put into limbo for a furthertwenty years. Of pre-war leaders who might have remembered theepisode at some politically useful time, only Molotov, Voroshilov,Kaganovich and Mikoyan were still alive in 1968.The first three hadlong been ousted from power, and Mikoyan's 1938 post (foodindustries) gave him no obvious role in military matters, so heprobably knew nothing about the mobilization of that year.Any attempt to explain Stalin's actions runs up against gaps in therecord,createdby his secretiveleadershipstyle. The wartimeperiod isthe most fully reported, because he had to rely greatly on others,mostly generals, who outlived him to write their memoirs. But eventhere his secretiveness is apparent.For example his GHQ, the Stavka,had no fixed schedule of meetings (his secretary, Poskrebyshev,arranged them by telephone as required), no fixed composition(Stalin decided who should attend, according to what he wished todiscuss), no writtenagenda, no minutes, WarDiary or staff(the Chiefof General Staff, or his Head or Deputy Head of Operations, noteddown decisions and had them converted into orders).So the memoirsof generals (and one Admiral) are the main sources of information(no civilian member wrote memoirs), and archive material so far citedis essentially limited to what they use to support their accounts. Thissituation may now be changing, but the process is slow.For the late 1930s there are even greatergaps. Stalin cultivated anomniscient remoteness, and the mass butchery in which he wasengaged at the time bred few confidants. There is a faint hope thatMolotov may shed some additional light on the Munich period; hemay have spent the time between his ousting in 1957 and his recentdeath in writing his memoirs. But it is a very faint hope; he was asreticent by nature as was Stalin, and any full and truthful account ofhis role in the late 1930s would be very self-incriminating; so heprobably did not provide one.

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212 Journalof ContemporaryHistoryNotes

1. For example: V.K. Volkov (ed.), Myunkhen.PreddveriyeVoyny(Munich: TheThreshhold of War) (Moscow 1988);V.K. Volkov et al., 1939 god. Uroki istorii (TheYear 1939. Lessons of History) (Moscow 1990);S.V. Volkov and Yu V. Emel'yanov,1939. Do i posle sekretnykhprotokolov (1939. Before and After the Secret Protocols)(Moscow 1990).2. 0. A. Rzheshevskiy, Europe 1939. Was WarInevitable?(Moscow 1989); andM.V. Zakharov, General'nyyShtab v PredvoyennyyeGody(Moscow 1989).3. Zakharov, op. cit., 112-15.4. Ibid., 116. The text cited by Zakharov is Document 53 in the collection NovyyeDokumenty iz Istorii Myunkhena(Moscow 1958), editor and publisher not named.English language version, New Documents rom theHistory of Munich,was publishedin Prague in 1958.5. Zakharov, for example, says that the Soviet 'liberation' of Eastern Poland inSeptember 1939 was 'unexpected' by the Germans, and that the Winter War of 1939-40 resulted from a Finnish attack on the Soviet Union. Zakharov, op. cit., 175, 181-2.6. Ibid., 116.7. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 104.8. Documents on GermanForeign Policy 1918-1954 (hereafter DGFP), series D,vol. II (HMSO, London 1950), 383 and 434.9. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 103.10. N. Thompson, TheAnti-appeasers(Oxford 1971), 176.11. K. Robbins, Munich 1938 (London 1968), 262.12. The German Ambassador in Moscow noted on 26 September that on 21Septemberthe Soviet Foreign Minister, Litvinov, had said at Geneva that 'three dayspreviously' the Czech government had 'for the first time' asked the Soviet governmentwhether it would provide support if France did, and had received 'a clear and positiveanswer'. That places Benes's question on 18 or 19 September.DGFP, series D, vol. II,947. But see next footnote.

13. Maisky, then Soviet Ambassador in London, says in his memoirs that on 19September, immediately after receiving the 'Anglo-French plan', Benes sent forAlexandrovskiy, the Soviet Minister in Prague, and through him put two questions tothe Soviet government: would the Soviet Union help Czechoslovakia if France did,and would it support Czechoslovakia in an appeal for help to the Council of theLeague of Nations. An affirmativereply to both questions was received the next day.He also says that Alexandrovskiy telephoned the news to Benes, while the Cabinet wasmeeting to consider the Anglo-French proposals, and that it thereupon rejectedthem,proposing instead arbitration as envisaged by the German-Czechoslovak Treaty of1925. I.M. Maisky, VospominaniyaSovetskogo Diplomata 1925-1945, 2nd edition(Moscow 1987), 357-8.

14. Robbins, op. cit., 276.15. E.g., on 23 May 1938 Daladier told the German Ambassador in Paris that the'Cossack and Mongol hordes should not be allowed to break into Europe'. DGFP,series D, vol. II, 327. Or Chamberlain on 26 March 1938: 'I must confess to the mostprofound distrust of Russia', cited in K. Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain(London 1946), 403.16. Robbins, op. cit., 263.



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Jukes: The Red Armyand the Munich Crisis17. The Earl of Birkenhead,Halifax (London 1965), 396.18. Robbins, op. cit., 397.19. According to Keitel, forty German divisions had been earmarked for CaseGreen (the attack on Czechoslovakia). But a French Intelligence report listed theGerman forces along the Czechoslovak border as at 1900 hrs on 19 September as

totalling only twenty-six divisions (four in Silesia, seven in Saxony, seven in Bavaria,six in Austria and two unlocated). DocumentsDiplomatiquesFrancais, 2nd series, vol.XI (Paris 1977), 345. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 106,gives the figureas thirtydivisions butdoes not cite his source. It is not clear whether Keitel's figureincludes the force whichwas to cover the frontier with France during the execution of Case Green.20. In addition to the French partial mobilization, the British ordered fleetmobilization on 27 September.21. E.M. Robertson, Hitler's Pre-warPolicy and Military Plans 1933-39 (London1963), 148.22. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 300-3 contain the 20 May 1938 draft of the plan for'Fall Gruen'.

23. Thompson, op. cit., 134. At his meeting with Chamberlainon the evening of 23September,Hitler grossly exaggeratedthe forces at his disposal by saying he intendedto act because Germany could not keep '90 to 100 divisions' under arms indefinitelyand doing nothing. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 905.24. At a meeting with Hitler on 10 August, Generals Adam and von Wietersheimexpressed misgivings about the state of the West Wall defences. Hitler flew into a rage,but shortly thereafter issued a directive ordering practicalcompletion of the defencesby 28 September,and himself inspected the West Wall on 26-29 August. Thompson,op. cit., 131-2.25. Hitler claimed France could put only forty divisions on to the German border,would requirefive or six days to mobilize and a further six to deploy them. But he wasalso aware that of the twenty divisions of the German replacement army, only eightcould be available in the West at the end of three weeks. The German MilitaryAttachein Paris, Kuelenthal, on 27 Septemberreportedhis assessment that France could place'an initial' sixty-five divisions on the border on the sixth day of mobilization, i.e. 30September.Thompson, op. cit., 132 and 145, and DGFP, series D, vol. II, 977.26. The German MilitaryAttache in Prague, Toussaint, reportedon 19September,i.e. before the general mobilization, that conscripts of German origin were being usedas a labour service, underguard. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 837.27. Robbins, op. cit., 308-9.28. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 96.29. DocumentsDiplomatiquesFranfais, 2nd series, vol. XI, op. cit., 535-6.30. For a detailed account of Beck's and Halder's attempts to arrange a coup in1938,see P. Hoffmann, TheHistory of the GermanResistance 1933-45 (London 1971),54-96.

31. Robbins, op. cit., 245-7.32. The Earl of Halifax, Fullness of Days (London 1957), 185, 188, 198, 205-6.Robbins, op. cit., 263-4.33. Robbins, op. cit., 241-2.34. Professor Rzheshevskiyargues that the Czech governmentwas itself dominatedby defeatists, which included Benes himself, Prime Minister Hodza and ForeignMinister Krofta. He cites Czech historians' evidence that Benes received the positivereplyto the question mentioned by Zakharov not on 21 September,as he claimed in his

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Journalof ContemporaryHistorymemoirs, but on 20 September, that is before rather than after the Czech governmenthad bowed to the Anglo-French pressure, and cites the text of the Soviet reply, whichwas made public in 1979. The text indeed affirmsSoviet readiness to render 'promptand effective assistance' in accordance with the Treaty, provided France also did so, orunder Articles 16 and 17of the League of Nations Charter.However, the text does notindicate that orders for specific military measures were about to be issued, nor does itcommit the Soviet Union to act in isolation (Articles 16 and 17imply collective ratherthan unilateral action). Support for the 'defeatism' thesis exists, in the shape ofNewton's belief that Benes would welcome an 'ultimatum' which would enable thegovernment to yield, pleading 'force majeure'(Newton to Halifax, 20 December 1938,DGFP, 3 series, ii, 425), and in the rejection by Benes, shortly before the telegram ofsurrender was despatched on 21 September,of the demand of a group of generals, ledby the Chief of Staff,GeneralKrejci,to dismiss the governmentand establish a militarydictatorship in order to fight the anticipated German attack with expectation of Soviethelp. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 92-3.35. E.g. on 13Septemberhe 'gloomily' agreed that he would preferwar to completecapitulation, and on 25 September, in discussions with the UK Cabinet, said that'Hitler planned aggression and France would do her duty'. Robbins, op. cit., 266 and293.

36. Robbins, op. cit., 245.37. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 106-7. According to notes made by Hitler's adjutant,Schmundt, of a conference Hitler held with the military leadersat Nuremberg on 9-10September, Hitler said 'our artillery [21-cm howitzers] not adequate against thefortifications'. DGFP, series D, vol. II, 729. Speer later confirmed that in test firingsagainst the fortifications following occupation of the Sudetenland, these guns werefound to be ineffective. Rzheshevskiy, op. cit., 106.38. Series Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Sicherheitsdienst, 'Meldungen aus demReich'. Bestand R58, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz.

G. Jukesis a Senior Fellow in the Department ofInternational Relations at the AustralianNational University. He is the author of TheSoviet Unionin Asia (1973) and Hitler'sStalingradDecisions (1985) and hascontributed to various collective works onSoviet foreign, defence and nationalitiespolicy. He is currently working on a book onStalin's war leadership.

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