Russel Grenfell
Unconditional Hatred
German War Guilt and the Future of Europe
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[Inside book cover] $4.00
UNCONDITIONAL HATRED
German War Guilt and the Future of Europe
By CAPTAIN RUSSELL GRENFELL, R.N.
The author of this hard-hitting book came from an old English naval family. He served in the Royal Navy for over thirty years, participating in most of the decisive actions of World War I and subsequently helping to direct the Royal Navy Staff College.
Captain Grenfell's books on naval strategy — Sea Power (1941), The Bismarck Episode (1948), Nelson the Sailor (1949), and Main Fleet to Singapore (1951) — are known throughout the English-speaking world for their brilliance and their clarity. They were given top priority by reviewers here and abroad.
This final book — Captain Grenfell died suddenly of unknown causes in 1954 as he was drafting a sequel to it — is a 21-gun broadside on policy rather than strategy; it touches on so many raw nerves, conflicts with so many prejudices and vested interests, that publication has had to take place in our still largely free and uncensored United States. No English publisher will touch it as of the present — nor has any important American reviewer recognized its existence.
Those who are still fighting World War II will not like this book; but those who are tired of the same old black-and-white clichés with regard to Germany will welcome it as a breath of fresh air. Unconditional Hatred will find its readership, despite an almost complete blackout by the press. The present printing includes the final corrections and last-minute additions of Captain Grenfell.
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
23 East 26th Street, New York 10, N. Y.
CAPTAIN RUSSELL GRENFELL, R.N.
FIRST WORLD EDITION. Printed in U.S.A.
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 53-12064
First printing, October, 1953
Second printing, January, 1954
Third printing, November, 1954
Fourth Printing, June, 1958
German War Guilt and the Future of Europe
Unconditional Hatred
CAPTAIN RUSSELL GRENFELL, R.N.
We have grown accustomed to hear it insinuated that all the adventures and anxieties and austerities of the past half-century carried our country on until, in 1940, it came to 'its finest hour'; and that may be, provided it is stressed that what is meant is, not the finest hour of the politicians who, if the truth be told, have shown grievous ineptitude, bringing Britain to the very edge of catastrophe by their imbecilities, but the finest hour of the fighting men.
(Algernon Cecil in QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER PRIME MINISTERS, p. 338)
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY NEW YORK 1958
Preface
Many things can go wrong in war: minor tactics, major tactics, minor strategy, major strategy, supply, training, intelligence. Should there be failure in any of these, adverse consequences will ensue, to a greater or lesser degree according to the magnitude of the fault in relation to the war as a whole.
There is one other factor, however, in which error is nearly always serious. This is policy; since policy is the governing element controlling all the rest. The evidence regarding the Second World War indicates that American and British policy, both separately and in combination, suffered from defects of a major character. The greatest military effort in history was based on the belief that the complete defeat and permanent disarmament of Germany would exorcise the evil of war from the world. That belief turned out to be wholly false; so that in spite of all the bloodshed and sacrifice, Germany had to be asked to rearm shortly after the allied victory that was to mark the end of German military power. It is therefore clear that something was badly amiss with the approach to war of the American and British political leaders, and it is my purpose in this book to investigate and determine where they went wrong, with particular emphasis on the British aspect of the matter.
The reader will find that I have been somewhat iconoclastic. But I do not think it necessary to apologise for that. There is nothing, I fancy, in the handbook of democracy to suggest that politicians are immune from criticism. Surely very much the reverse. Freedom for the citizen to criticize his rulers is indeed the main distinguishing mark of a free society, and needs to be made use of if the power to do so is not to fall into decay.
Not that any sensible person would question the soundness of Sir Winston Churchill's conduct of the war unless he felt, rightly or wrongly, that he had solid grounds for doing so; for captious criticism in that direction would harm only the critic.
Nor, I trust, am I insensitive to Sir Winston's truly remarkable qualities as a war leader. There was no other politician in Britain capable of infusing such enormous energy and resolution into the war effort as he. But that only makes it the more important to determine whether all his superabundant drive and vigour was being exerted in the right direction – or the wrong one. For Churchill's example is bound to have considerable influence on any of his successors who may find themselves in a similar position.
This book was completed just as Malenkov took over the reins of government in Russia, and electrified the world by his "new charm." I have, however, left the book substantially unaltered. Even if Russian policy is in process of drastic reorientation towards co-operation with the West, about which we cannot yet be certain, the problem presented by the military vacuum in central Europe would remain no less critical than in Stalin's time; possibly more so.
I am presented with a difficulty over Sir Winston Churchill's knighthood. It is from no discourtesy that I find it hard to bring all my references to the wartime Prime Minister up to date. It just doesn't sound right as applied to those days. One of the two or three most famous men in the world was for six hectic years thought of universally as "Mr." Churchill. It would in my
judgment be doing violence to history to describe him otherwise in relation to those years. Besides, how am I to tell that by the time this book appears in print, Sir Winston Churchill may not be known by another title still?
I have received valuable help from a number of people in writing this book; to all of whom I wish to express my most grateful thanks. I prefer, however, not to make specific acknowledgment, as I wish to retain full and undivided responsibility for a book for which unqualified acclamation is hardly to be counted on. R. G.
CONTENTS
1 How Britain Entered the First World War 3
2 Lord Vansittart and the German Butcher-Bird 24
3 Germany and Denmark (1864) and Austria (1866) 35
4 The Butcher-Bird and France (1870) 48
5 Who Started the First World War? 64
6 Germany and Poland (1939) 80
7 What Was Mr. Churchill's War Object? 91
8 Mr. Churchill's Mistake 106
9 The High Cost of Hatred 116
10 Politicians in Control of War 130
11 Errors by Wartime Politicians 145
12 The British Object in 1815 and 1945 171
13 International Guilt and Innocence 186
14 Advantages of Negotiated Peace 196
15 The Prospect of Europe 210
16 Britain and the Immediate Future 223
17 Conclusions 238
APPENDICES
1 The Ems Telegram and Bismarck's Press Communiqué 263
2 The Austrian Demands on Serbia in 1914 264
3 Resolution Passed by Various German ex-Service Organizations in July 1952
265
4 Addenda 268
INDEX 269
1 How Britain Entered the First World War
Twice in the lifetime of many persons now living, there has been a great "war to end war." It is true that neither war started quite like that, anyway as far as Britain was concerned. Indeed, of the various factors which led to British participation in the war of 1914, any idea of using violence to end violence finds no place. Britain entered the war for other reasons, and they are sufficiently intriguing to justify a brief examination as a prologue to the arguments which will be developed later in this book.
British embroilment in the war of 1914-18 may be said to date from January 1906, when Britain was in the throes of a General Election. Mr. Haldane, the Secretary of State for War, had gone to the constituency of Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, to make an electioneering speech in his support. The two politicians went for a country drive together, during which Grey asked Haldane if he would initiate discussions between the British and French General staffs in preparation for the possibility of joint action in the
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event of a Continental war. Mr. Haldane agreed to do so. The million men who were later to be killed as a result of this rural conversation could not have been condemned to death in more haphazard a fashion. At this moment not even the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, let alone other members of the Cabinet, knew what was being arranged.
A few years earlier, at the turn of the Century, the British Foreign Office had made persistent efforts to conclude an alliance with Germany, but had been rebuffed. Disappointed in that direction, Britain had then turned towards Germany's rival, France, also a traditional rival of England's, and had effected a rapprochement with her. At this time, Europe was divided into two Power groups: the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, and the Dual Alliance of France and Russia. By making friends with France, Britain was therefore making a gesture of sympathy towards the Franco-Russian group. But it was no more than a gesture, since when first made (in 1904) it consisted only of a settlement of outstanding points of friction between France and Britain, principally in Egypt and Morocco, France agreeing to give Britain a free hand in Egypt and vice versa as regards France in Morocco. Nothing was agreed about military assistance.
However, in the second week of January, 1906 when a new set of Ministers had just come into office in Britain, the French asked a question that was to have a dire influence on the course of British history. Their Ambassador inquired of Sir Edward Grey if conversations could be insti
tuted between the respective Army Staffs to facilitate quick action should Britain come to France's assistance against a German attack. Any man of average intelligence and reasonable common sense might have been expected to realise the very tricky nature
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of such conversations and to what a delicate and even dangerous situation they might well lead. But apparently nothing of that kind occurred to Sir Edward Grey. Hence his request to Mr. Haldane to get the conversations under way even before anything had been said to the Prime Minister. It is true that Mr. Haldane agreed to mention the matter to the Prime Minister before taking action, and did so; but no steps were taken to consult the Cabinet about a proposal that was supercharged with future possibilities of the gravest kind. The matter remained for long a secret with the three Ministers mentioned.*
Actually, there had already been – several months before and under the previous Government
– some form of unofficial naval discussion. The French Naval Attaché in London had asked the First Sea Lord (Sir John Fisher) if the British wanted any French naval help in the event of war, and had been told that, substantially, none was required. Hence, no British obligation towards the French was incurred in this way at this period.
The three Ministers originally in the secret of the military conversations agreed, and the French were told, that nothing in any staff conversations must be taken as committing Britain to positive action. But not very much imagination was required to appreciate that the conversations could not fail to be binding, and we know from Sir Edward Grey's autobiography that they came in the end to be as binding as a formal military alliance, at all events as regards himself. Had the question been given full and leisured examination, it is conceivable that the obvious pitfalls inherent in the suggested conversations might have been appre-
*Lord Ripon, Government leader in the House of Lords, appears also to have known, but took no active part in the matter.
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hended in time. But they were hurried into operation by three – or really two – men during all the bustle and distractions of a General Election.*
So the talks began, and in five years' time resulted in the elaboration of very detailed and efficient plans to move six British Army Divisions to take their place on the left of the French line in twelve days from the commencement of mobilisation.**
These plans involved a drastic reshaping of higher army organisation, which had previously been devised for Colonial and not for Continental warfare. Mr. Haldane takes a good deal of credit to himself in his books*** for this reorganisation, to which he is certainly entitled. But he is not entitled to the claim he also makes that it was due largely to "scientific thinking" on his part, both as regards the administrative reforms introduced and the strategy on which they were based. The reforms, as he himself admits, were not the consequence of deep and original thinking by him and his military advisers, either separately or in combination; they were mainly imitations of the German system which he deliberately and openly copied from information
obtained during a visit to Berlin in 1906, though they were naturally adapted to British re-quirements. And, as we shall see, there was little that was scientific about the Haldane strategy.
This strategy was based on the belief that the six British Divisions which War Office calculations showed were the most that could be sent to France in