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27.06.2019 21:04:55
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Современность; Загадки;
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А конкретные решения Чемберлен принимал вопреки советам Гарда.
BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT PERSPECTIVES ON
FRANCE, 1936-40
Michael Dockrill
Professor of Diplomatic History
King's College, London
The creation of a small but all-mechanised British force was supported at this time by the maverick military pundit, Basil Liddell Hart, who became unofficial military consultant to the new secretary of state for war, Leslie Hore-Belisha, in June 1937.
Although Hore-Belisha asked the general staff to investigate the
possibility of raising a mechanised force, there was no prospect that it
would be accepted. As it was the War Office was facing immense difficulties in obtaining sufficient recruits for the regular army, and its problems were made worse by shortages of funding and hence equipment.
………
Many high-ranking British army officers, of course, supported the
campaign for a larger British land commitment to the continent. General
Sir W.H. Bartholomew, a former director of military operations, and now
General Commanding, Northern Command, wrote to Hankey in December:
"We cannot choose the way we will go to war and I feel [we] must
be prepared to intervene in France & Belgium and we cant [sic] do
that without some army. I do not ask for a large one but larger than
we have. Something should be done to kill the idea that we can take as
little of the war as we like relying only on a navy & air force & Home
Defence, all due to the myth created by Liddell Hart, ex-soldiers &
others."
In fact, following the change in the strategic balance in Germany's
favour as a result of the Munich settlement, Liddell Hart no longer
opposed the despatch of an expeditionary force to France. The loss of the
Czechoslovakian army had left France to face both Germany and Italy
alone, and now Liddell Hart believed that Britain would have to send an
army to help defend France.
Address by Captain B.H. Liddell Hart on 'The Role of the Army after
Munich', 20 December 1938, Dalton Mss., 4/ I.
Nevertheless Liddell Hart still maintained that the size of a British expeditionary force should be limited, telling Anthony Eden on 30 January 1939 that, while a British 'land reinforcement' of France had become 'a necessity', it could not be on the scale of Britain's efforts in 1914-18.
By the summer of 1939 Liddell Hart had, however, reverted to his pre-Munich opposition to the despatch of the expeditionary force to the Continent.
Diary Notes, Liddell Hart, 30 January 1939, Liddell Hart Mss., 11/1939/6;
Bond, Liddell Hart, pp. 104--5.
………..
By November (1939) Liddell Hart had become so depressed by what he believed to be the inability of the entente to defeat Germany once war began in earnest that he became, like Lloyd George, an advocate of a compromise peace.
'The Prospect in This War'. 7 November 1939, Liddell Hart Mss .•
111193/128.