Facing the Second World War: Strategy, Politics, and Economics in Britain and France, 1938-1940 (review)

This lucid and tightly argued book offers a comparative account of French and British preparations for World War II. The bulk of the book comprises three pairs of chapters respectively discussing French and British performances in what Imlay labels the strategic, domestic-political, and political-economic dimensions. Though told separately, the three stories are closely interrelated. Thus, political strife within France impeded the organization of a proper war economy, a problem which, in turn, forced France to attempt to win the war before Germany's economic weight decided the issue. The milder political climate in Britain, on the other hand, conduced to a greater degree of cooperation between labor and management and, consequently, to acquiescence by both parties in a degree of government planning unattainable in France.

This is a refreshingly contrarian book. Where recent scholarship emphasizes growing French confidence and domestic discord in Britain, Imlay underscores the discouraging defects in French industrial mobilization and identifies long-term sources of social cooperation within Britain. Most strikingly, he attacks the orthodox view that France (and Britain) went to war in September 1939 confident that their superior resources promised victory in a protracted conflict. Imlay argues instead that France abandoned the "long-war" strategy as unworkable both in the absence of a strong eastern ally and in view of Germany's economic and demographic strengths. Britain followed suit, briefly yielding to the temptations of offensive operations on the continent. Indeed, Imlay argues that only France's rapid defeat saved Britain from the consequences of its dangerous flirtation with a short-war strategy.

Although Imlay supports his narrative with solid documentary evidence, there remains much to be said in defense of the alternative points of view, and his package of strategic, political, and economic analysis seems just a little too neat. His denial that France undertook any serious effort at economic planning requires, for example, that he deal with the 1938 Loi Paul-Boncour "On the Organization of the Nation for War" whose fraught history illuminates the complexities of the story.

Some of Imlay's conclusions stem from his definitions. His assertion that France abandoned the canonical "long-war" strategy to seek a military panacea in the Baltic or the Balkans is less revolutionary than he supposes. Since the "long-war" strategy was largely a set of concepts serving in the interwar period to shape the structure of French military forces and to reassure her citizens that they had little to fear from the next war, one should not be surprised that it became increasingly irrelevant once the war began. This reviewer also feels that Imlay's analysis depends too heavily on a facile distinction between "total" and "limited" war.

This is a judgmental book, centering on the (rather too sweeping) question "How well have nations and societies met the test of modern war?" Too many repetitions of the phrase "failed to meet the test of modern war," makes one feel sympathetic to two countries forced to face not only the Axis threat but such an implacable critic.

Such questions suggest that Imlay has written a thought-provoking book, one valuable especially for its detailed description of the political and economic underpinnings of military strategy. It is to be recommended both for the story it tells and for the debates it will spark.