EUROPE: War Machines

In 1933, the last effective year of the Versailles-League of Nations system, the world’s armies numbered 7,000,000 men, its navies totaled 3,000,000 tons, its military planes were 14,000, and $4,000,000,000 was spent to keep the men and machines of war. Pacifists considered these figures pretty horrible. As it turns out they were small potatoes.

In 1938, the year of Munich, armies had increased to 10,000,000 men, naval tonnage had jumped to 8,000,000, military planes had possibly trebled in number and $17,000,000,000 went slithering down the gullet of the hungry god of war-to-be. This year, with Russia leading the Big Parade (U. S. S. R. war budget for 1939 is $8,000,000,000), these figures are again skyrocketing.

The only reason that so much of the world’s hard-earned wealth is poured down an uneconomic rathole is that men expect and fear the coming of a Second World War. That expectation and fear is the greatest political force in the world today. Horror of the war itself makes mankind recoil towards peace, but the probable nature of the war and the fear of its outcome drive men to prepare for it.

What is the prospect of the war—not in terms of human, political or economic suffering—but in terms of its military factors from which all other consequences will spring? No man can write its history beforehand. Yet an outline for its history has already been laid down in the armies and the armaments of Europe.

Great Unknowns. That outline is not yet definitive because there are several big imponderables. It is not known for certain who may fight whom; in stacking up the armed forces of the world against each other it is not certain for example whether Japan is to be counted as one of the Axis powers, or because of her involvement in China she may remain neutral ; it is equally uncertain whether Russia may belong to the Democratic front or be a neutral; it is even uncertain whether the U. S. will be a neutral or a member of the Democratic front.

If the nations which may be lined up against each other can be guessed, it is possible to make a reasonably accurate estimate of their fighting strength in men, guns, ships, planes. But such an estimate though quantitatively correct may be in total error from the qualitative standpoint.

Quality oftener than not outweighs quantity in war — the best soldiers, the best guns, the best ships, the best planes mean more than mere big numbers.

Not least of the unknowns are the imponderables of strategy and tactics. Wars are fought by human beings as well as by machines, and, as Napoleon suggested, an army of lions that is led by a lamb can be beaten by an army of lambs under the leadership of a lion. Failure of leadership lost the World War for Germany at the outset when a timid High Command failed to keep the strength of its right wing up to the plan of Alfred von Schlieffen on the famed swing through Belgium. Conversely, the Japanese capitalized on brilliant chance-taking when they sent an army to the Asiatic mainland in 1904 with out first bothering to clear out the Russian Navy.

Three Big Facts. In contrast with the great imponderables are the undisputed facts:

> Although experts dispute its exact size the German air force is still the biggest and best in Europe. Major George Fielding Eliot in his new book, Bombs Bursting in Air* estimates it at 4,000 first line planes, 4,000 in a first-line reserve, 2,500 in a second-line reserve, and a war-time replacement manufacturing capacity of 1,000 a month.

> The British Navy is big enough to whip any two European navies, strong enough to command the English Channel, the North Sea and the whole Eastern Mediterranean, thus leaving the French Navy free to police the Western Mediterranean.

> The French army, 800,000 men (with a trained reserve of 5,500,000) for a total male population of 20,000,000, was the big armed force of Europe from 1919 to 1935. Last September General Marie Gustave Gamelin, France’s Chief of Staff, assured his Government that he could roll his men through the unfinished German Siegfried (or Limes) Line like marmalade. Both the German army and the Limes are stronger now, but as of June 1939 the French army is still the strongest all-around fighting machine in Europe.

Sum Totals. Like the last, the next great European war is not likely to be fought between only two nations. Most of Europe will choose sides and victory may well go to the weakest nation if it is on the stronger side.

In counting up the strength of sides, military men talk about divisions, the basic, more or less self-contained units which generals add or subtract from armies. In fact divisions figure in their calculations as building blocks figure in the architectural dreams of children. Divisions are only roughly equal in size and strength—in France and Russia there are 18,000 men to a division, in Germany, 15,200; in Poland and England, 12,000. Mechanized divisions are even smaller, but their strength is computed in terms of tanks, armored cars, machine-guns.

Assuming that Germany, Italy, Hungary and Spain fight under the banner of the Axis, and that Britain, France, Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Greece and Egypt fight as allies in a “stop-Hitler coalition,” Major Eliot last month offered his tabulation of relative strengths in the New Republic:

First-Line Divisions Reserve

Infantry Cavalry Armored Divisions

Germany 49 3 4 38

Italy 46 3 — 35

Hungary 7 1 — ?

Spain 21 1 1 ?

— — — —

Total Axis 123 8 5 73

France 32 4 2 40

Britain 4 1 2 12

Poland 30 5 1 30

Rumania 24 3 — 22

Turkey 22 3 — 18

Greece 13 1 — 10

Egypt 3 — — —

— — — —

Total Allies 128 17 5 132

This would give the Allies the edge with a grand total of 282 divisions to 209 divisions for the Axis. It gives a rough idea of relative strength but is not definitive. Yugoslavia with 30 divisions. Bulgaria with some four divisions might join the Axis. Some professional soldiers believe that Germany has at least 30 more divisions—nearly half a million men—besides those Major Eliot names. So instead of 209 divisions the Axis strength would come to 273 divisions—not counting Japanese aid.

The Allied side of the balance sheet might also be increased. If Russia joined the Allies a good part of her 130 divisions could be added to the Allied strength. And if the U.S. should ever again send an A.E.F. to Europe the Allies would have another 27 to 62 divisions to count on.

In the air, however, the Axis has the edge. The following is Major Eliot’s table showing the strength in military planes of the same two sides: First-Line Reserves Replacements*

Germany 4,000 4,000 1,000

Italy 2,400 600 300

Hungary 100 — —

Spain 300 100 50

— — —

Total Axis 6,800 4,700 1,350

France 2,000 0 200

Britain 2,600 1,300 600

Poland 900 400 50

Rumania 500 — —

Turkey 300 — —

Greece 200 — —

All Others — 200 —

— — —

Total Allies 6,500 1,900 850

With the U. S. S. R. added to the Allies, the Axis superiority would vanish, for the Russians have 4,500 first-line planes and some 6,000 in reserve, plus a replacement capacity of 580 a month. The above fig ures for Allied replacements may be high but purchases from the United States might swell the Allied replacement total.

Quality. Anyone who translates these raw figures into inevitable victory for either side is misled. Quality counts as much as or more than quantity. In World War I, for example, command of the air changed hands several times, and the command changed not only when numbers varied but when one side introduced a superior new plane which could outfight the opposing machines. Something of the same sort was seen recently in Spain where German Messerschmitts 109 could outfly Russian Moscas, Russian Chatos could out-maneuver Italian Fiats. In general, Germany is known to have some of the best fighting ships in Europe. Britain is perhaps runner up in airplane quality; Russia, although she has many ships, is somewhere down near the tail of the procession.

The difference in quality between planes is matched by differences in the quality of troops—their training, their arms, their physique, their leadership. In these respects, for example, 13 divisions of Greeks are certainly no match for 13 divisions of Germans. In peace time the quality of troops is purely a matter of judgment, but judgment is not guess work. Each nation’s army has a character of its own as distinct as the character of each individual man and these characters stand out even in peace time:

France. Unlike the German army, the French army does not strut. The French people are proud of their soldiers, but do not worship them. Since the fiasco of General Boulanger’s attempt at a military dictatorship in the 1880s and the Dreyfus case in the ’90s, the French army has eschewed politics.

The French soldier is apt to look sloppy in the ranks but the army is well grounded in the essentials and its men are tough individual fighters, particularly on the defensive. In training the rank and file, the French forget fancier phases of close-order drill, concentrate on teaching men how to shoot. Majority of French ordnance is old; but, like a skilled automobile mechanic with a battered jalopy, French marksmen get the most out of 1914 Hotchkisses, 1897-model Seventy-fives. The French are short on good anti-tank guns, way behind in the air (nationalization of the aircraft industry was a flop under the Popular Front), well-fixed for heavily-armored tanks.

The French army is kept democratic by the invariable practice of allowing only one-half its active officers to be taken from Saint-Cyr and the Polytechnique, Gallic West Points. The result has been a businesslike class of fine professional officers. With a hierarchy of officers whose continuity of tradition has not been broken since the 1870s, the French are probably weak on new tactics. They are scholars in warfare. It is typical that able Chief of Staff Gamelin, even-tempered Parisian who studied under Foch at the Staff College, is so close a student of Napoleon’s campaigns that he is supposed to remember “every order as they were given, day by day, during the Empire” (the words are attributed to Foch). But Gamelin is considerable of a realist and it is quite possible that in the next war, he would profit by the mistakes of the last war.

Germany. The old German Imperial Army was cock-of-the-walk, and all Germans, even Socialists, gawped at it in awe. Although the Nazi army (1,000,000 men) is not the old Army’s equal either in training or in tailored splendor, it tries to carry on the tradition. But the “Versailles gap” (1919-34), a period in which conscription was prohibited, has left the Germans weak in well-trained reserves, short on crack lieutenants and captains. The gap was not complete, however, because some German officer material was lent to train the Russian, Chinese, Bolivian armies. Young officers are being rushed through training schools, but no short course can make a well-grounded officer. Old Reichswehr sergeants, now lieutenants and captains, are good drill masters, but have more limitations than talents. By recently making officers of men from the lower middle class and even peasants, the Germans have lowered the morale of their old aristocratic officer class. But despite these things, Germany has once more one of the most formidable armies in Europe.

The Germans have more anti-tank guns than the French, and learned the value of heavy armored tanks after the debacle of the light tanks in Spain. But Germans are way ahead in production of planes, build them with speed and without gadgets, “to fight in . . . [not] to live in.” Since kudos goes to Nazi airmen, morale of air force is excellent. Göring’s policy is to produce pilots in short order, then turn them loose and depend on the survival of the fittest.

German aircraft plants are, unlike the British, well-camouflaged, frequently set down in evergreen forests. Duplicate facilties for German plane manufacture exist underground. When a bombing attack threatens, movable machinery from the surface plants can be lowered by elevator into the underground and hooked up to duplicate heavy machinery that is already in place.

The German navy, consisting of four or five battleships, three “pocket” battleships, 15 cruisers and close to 100 submarines, cannot hope to engage British (or even French) headon. But its submarines can threaten Britain’s food-line, and if the battleships and cruisers can scatter over the high seas before war breaks out they can do considerable damage as commerce and convoy raiders.

German military tradition goes back to Napoleon as interpreted by Clausewitz and made “totalitarian” by Ludendorff, who believed in the nation-in-arms theory and the war of extermination. Its weakness is a traditional reliance on Schrecklichkeit (frightfulness) which—though it won at Munich—is apt to backfire by stiffening instead of breaking opponents’ morale. The modern German theory of victory by Blitzkrieg (lightning war) is untried and, in the opinion of many experts, unsound. Further, if Germany plans to carry war deep into Russian territory in case of Soviet participation, old Moscow Generals January and February (alias Cold and Hunger) will probably ruin Chief of High Command Wilhelm Keitel’s reputation even as they ruined Napoleon’s in 1812. But whatever their failings in grand strategy, the Germans are among the world’s greatest technicians in the art of war.

Italy. Like Mussolini, Italian soldiers are pouter pigeons, wear caps eight inches tall to make up for their short stature. But in the hard school of war they have learned to fight as well as strut. For the modern Italian army (900,000 men) is the only important European military machine with recent war experience. So its junior officers are apt to know more about fighting than junior officers of other nations.

Italian Alpine troops are among the best mountain troops in the world. Italians are good at engineering, transportation, supply, sanitation. Italian planes are good, their pilots well trained in Ethiopia and Spain, but production is handicapped at all times because of lack of raw materials. On sea, Italy has cruisers (21 in commission, twelve abuilding) that are among the fastest in the world, a big destroyer and submarine fleet, plus mosquito-boats manned by daredevils, all of which makes Italy an ugly foe to fight in the western Mediterranean. Hero of the Italian navy is Rizzo, motorboat commander who sank an Austrian dreadnought in the World War 21 years ago. June 10, the anniversary of that day will be celebrated throughout Italy as Navy Day.

The worst mark against the Italian Army-is its record of disastrous defeats. Its turntail tradition goes back through the routs of Guadalajara (Spanish Civil War, 1937), Caporetto (World War, 1917), and Adowa (war against Menelek’s Ethiopia in 1896). Contrary to popular tradition, cowardliness in the ranks was probably not responsible for these catastrophes. At Guadalajara the troops were green, the generalship poor, the use of motorized columns was something of an experiment. Guadalajara proved to military men everywhere (including the Italians) that motorized troops are vulnerable except on hard ground or good roads; it also taught them the formidable power of air force in connection with counteroffensive action.

The school of war may recently have improved the mediocre quality of Italian leaders. In recent years the Italians have developed at least one competent general, Marshal Badoglio who in 1935 saved the Ethiopian campaign from failure.

Balkans and Eastern Cordon. These countries divide into 1) Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, who might fight on the side of Axis; 2) Poland, Turkey, Greece and Rumania, who tentatively line up with the “stop Hitler” front. The Hungarians and Bulgars like the Germans had a Versailles gap and lack trained reserves and officers. The Yugoslavs are tough, accustomed for generations to fighting but are not well equipped. The Greek and Rumanian armies are fourth-rate and negligible. The Turks and Poles are a different story.

The Turkish army, which controls the Dardanelles and effectively blocks Germany’s “Berlin-to-Bagdad” aspirations, is a first-rate, well-disciplined machine. In own bailiwick it would not easily be licked. The Poles, with good equipment for their 30 first-line divisions, and with best horse-cavalry in Europe, are well-to fight a delaying war with Germany territory in which roads are poor.

But horse soldiers are useless against machine guns if and when the Germans bring up, and Poland’s poverty of resources dooms her to defeat in time unless receives effective aid which only Russia is geographically placed to give.

As it was in 1914 the Russian Army is the biggest in the world (1,800,000 men, and perhaps 10,000,000 trained reserves). But the Russian Army is a more formidable machine than it was 25 years ago. Pampered by the Kremlin, Soviet soldiers today are healthier, happier, and infinitely better-trained and officered than their Tsaristic predecessors, who were bossed by aristocrats. Whereas the soldiers of the Tsar sometimes went battle without rifles, Soviet troops have now 5,000 tanks, 1,600 pieces of artillery, some 50,000 machine-guns.

Recent purges have swept away hundreds of Russia’s officers, leaving the quality of leadership of the army open to question. But the Soviet army is backed by an industrial machine such as Russia never had before and the Russian army is now a power, not just a mass, to be reckoned with.

Britain. Like the U. S., Britain puts her military trust in a small professional army that keeps out of sight, lives apart from the nation as a whole. Tommy Atkins still does great work for Britain in the colonies, but Tommy Atkins is seldom seen on the streets of London, Birmingham or Manchester. Heretofore Britain has always reckoned on her seapower to give the nation time to muster, drill and equip a force for Marlborough-Wellington offensive fighting on the Continent after war has been declared. The recent passage of a half-hearted conscription law points to a possible reorientation of British military policy.

Actually, Britain is boss of the waves to a greater extent than in 1914, when the German Navy was second in the world, not sixth. But air menace makes the value of England’s navy a conundrum, the tradition of Nelson a question mark. London, nerve-centre of the Empire, is 330 miles closer to German airports than Berlin is to English airports. British aircraft and munitions factories are easy targets in the open. And in another war Britain’s food supply from overseas may be threatened by air raiders as well as submarine raiders.

Meanwhile Britain is organizing to meet the air threat. Her air armada—pursuit planes, fast Handley Page Hampden bombers—is rapidly being increased as her manufacturing program begins to hit a good stride. The Royal Air Force is equal in morale to the German, its older pilots have had longer training. The British Army’s mechanized units (tanks, armored cars), although too few for war strength, are the most advanced in the world. And its officers—neither scholars like the French nor technicians like the Germans—are excellent leaders of men, if only rule-of-thumb strategists.

The Neutrals. In World War II it is possible that even nations who do not take sides may play a vital military part, for they may be invaded. Britain and France count on three neutrals in particular to hold off the Germans for a time. The Swiss have besides a strong mountainous position a small but tough civilian army, probably strong enough to keep Nazis from trying to outflank the Maginot Line to the south. The Belgians are armed to teeth, and their country is well fortified. The Dutch can flood part of their country to keep Germans out of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague. Each of these three is apparently strong enough to fight a delaying action that would enable the Allies to come to their assistance.

Free Lances v. Professionals. All these estimates of the quality of Europe’s military machines are subject to debate. In the debate there are in general two sides. Free-lance authorities such as bulky, unruffled Major Eliot, earnest, deep-eyed Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times,

London Telegraph’s L. G. S. Payne, or London Times’s Liddell Hart, are more inclined than the military “professionals” of the war departments to weigh intangible factors—and to be skeptical of physical achievements such as Germany’s vaunted rearmament. Free lances argue that the men in the profession are partly interested in the propaganda value of releasing juicy figures regarding the strength of presumed enemies, partly taken in by the tremendous enthusiasm which attachés in various foreign nations develop for the particular military machines that come under their eyes.

Professionals criticize the free lances for using popular stereotypes (the “robot” Germans, the “individualistic” French, the “cowardly wops,” the “bemused” Russians). They point out that before the World War the German Imperial Army was drilled to the teeth, yet the German mechanical marvel did not fall apart before the attacks of the “individualistic” French and British. Always good military technicians, the Germans teach their men infiltration tactics, stress individualist action by small groups of soldiers, encourage initiative all through the ranks.

One of the sharpest differences of opinion is over air-strength. The claims of the British to a superior air personnel are dismissed by the professionals as fantastic. Aviation, the professionals say, is a young man’s game; hence a lack of good pilots in the early-thirty age brackets is not critical. Free-lance figures for British and French air strength are judged far too high. Free lance authorities set British monthly plane replacement capacity at 600, professionals say it is closer to 240. They admit, however, that the British production rate is rising. But, while the British may have solved some of their production problems since Munich, the professionals doubt that Royal Air Force expansion will catch up with German replacement capacity.

Another major subject of debate is over the merits of present military equipment. Although the French have publicly claimed that Germany lacks artillery, most professionals believe that the Nazis, who started from scratch in 1933, have an edge in modern guns, superior to hoary French models. The Germans use a new 105 mm. howitzer while the French rock along with antiquated Seventy-fives. Some professionals also contend that French rifles are out-of-date, “tall as the Eiffel Tower,” hence difficult to conceal, whereas the Germans use a short carbine that snuggles neatly into shallow trenches and shell holes; that German anti-aircraft equipment is excellent, while the British, who need it more, are just beginning to approach bare minimum safety strength.

Brains. British Feminist Rebecca West once said: “Before a war military science seems a real science—like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.” British Military Critic Liddell Hart replied: “Perhaps that conclusion is rather hard on astrology.” The reason for Liddell Hart’s cynicism is fundamentally something that neither free-lance nor professional military critics can measure.

When revolutionary France started to defend herself against foreign enemies at the beginning of the 19th Century her army consisted of an untrained rabble which, theoretically, should have been easy meat for the professional armies of surrounding nations. But the brains of Napoleon soon fused this rabble into a fine French army and, what is more, employed it to gain the greatest French victories since the 18th-Century days of Marshal Saxe.

The ability to foresee, to outguess, to improvise, to make the best of what you have, is absolutely necessary to the successful military “scientist.” The Allies almost lost the World War because Britain’s Lord Kitchener had grown stodgy, because France’s Foch kept mistaking a trench “war of position” fof an open “war of maneuver,” because the campaign to take the Dardanelles got under way too slowly. Britain’s Sir Douglas Haig threw away a chance for a decisive breakthrough when he allowed the new invention of the tank to appear on the western front prematurely, without adequate support, in numbers far too small to be effective. If Brilliant Mind Winston Churchill and Brilliant Mind Lloyd George, whose ideas were squelched by the military men, had had full scope in 1914-18, the War might have taken a different course. And if Germany’s Brilliant Mind Schlieffen had been alive to prevent the weakening of the right wing the War might have ended with the capture of Paris in October 1914.

The great unknown factor of the next war is the capacity of the minds that will devise its strategy. Brilliance on one side can make it into a quick and easy victory for either the stronger or the weaker military machine. A bad blunder on one side can turn it into disastrous defeat. Bad blunders on both sides—such as there were in the last war and are in most wars —can turn it into a military stalemate, another human holocaust, a war of economic attrition, with no victor anywhere.

* Reynal & Hitchcock ($1.75). * Maximum monthly building capacity on war basis.