Chapter 7 Volume 1, Chapter 3, Potential Danger

My reflections in 1928 The destructive horror of future wars Several predictions of war technology Working and advocating the Second Scharnhorst January 1927 Allied Regulatory Commission rescission of German aviation default and camouflaged German Navy Rathenau's armament program refittable factory ten years without war provisions. In my book, After the War, I have written some reflections on the four years between the armistice in Europe and the change of government in Britain at the end of 1922.The book was written in 1928, when I already felt the catastrophe of the future: It was not until the beginning of the twentieth century of the Christian era that war began to enter the era when it could destroy human beings.Humanity has been organized into great nations and great empires, and the rise of nations imbued with a collective consciousness has enabled the enterprise of massacre to be devised and carried out with a scale and fortitude previously unimagined.Individual excellence is concentrated to develop the capacity for mass murder.Strong financial resources, resources for world trade and credit, and the accumulation of vast capitals have enabled for a considerable period of time to devote the energies of peoples to the cause of devastation.The system of democratic politics enables the willpower of hundreds of millions of people to be expressed.Education not only imbues the lessons of war in the minds of every man, but enables every man to be the most useful to the ends at hand.Newspapers became a vehicle for solidarity and mutual motivation.As for religion, on the basic point of view, although it is wise to avoid talking about struggle, it uses various methods to encourage and comfort all combatants without discrimination.In the end, science has opened up its treasures and secrets to satisfy the desperate demands of men, and to place in their hands those instruments and devices which, so to speak, determine.

As a result, many novel features emerged.Not only fortified cities suffered from famine, but entire peoples were systematically placed or would be placed in the process of being enfeebled by famine.The entire population, participating in a war in one capacity or another, is likewise the object of attack.A way was opened in the sky to carry death and terror far behind the lines of battle, to the old, the sick, women, and children whom former wars had inviolated.Means of transportation such as railroads, ships, and automobiles were miraculously organized so that millions of men could continue to fight.Advances in medical and surgical excellence sent them back again and again to the killing fields.Nothing that could be used in such an enterprise of mass waste is ever wasted.The death throes of soldiers can also have military effects.

What happened in the first four years of the war, however, was only the prologue to the preparations for the fifth year of fighting.I am afraid that the campaign of 1919 will see a great increase in lethality.Had the German troops been able to maintain their morale and make a successful retreat to the Rhine, they would have been attacked in the summer of 1919 with unprecedented and incomparably more terrifying force and technology.Thousands of planes will blow up their cities.Tens of thousands of cannon will level their lines.At that time, the Allied Powers were making various deployments, preparing to send two to three hundred thousand troops equipped with all necessary equipment during the same period, and marching across the country in an endless stream of mechanized vehicles that traveled ten to fifteen miles a day.Only a secret gas mask (which the Germans had not produced in time) could actually defend against an incredibly vicious gas which would suffocate all resistance and paralyze all life in the attacked enemy line.Of course, the Germans had their plans then.But the time for anger is over.A disarm has been issued.The horrors of 1919 were thus placed in the archives of the major belligerents.

The war came to an abrupt and total cessation, as it had been when it began.The world raised its head and looked at the ruins after the catastrophe. Both the victor and the defeated breathed a sigh of relief.In hundreds of laboratories, in thousands of arsenals, factories, and offices of all kinds, people suddenly stood up and left the work they had devoted so many years to.Their plans were unfinished, unexecuted, and cast aside, but their knowledge survived; their materials, data, and inventions were hastily bundled up by the military agencies of various countries, and annotated for the future. refer to.The campaign of 1919 was not fought, but its ideas were still advancing.In the armies of every nation, under the guise of peace, these ideas are being studied, refined, and refined.If there were to be another war in the world, it would be not with the weapons and instruments that were prepared for combat in 1919, but with the development and expansion of those weapons, which would be incomparably more terrifying and deadly.

It is in this context that we enter this exhausting period known as peace.In any case, it provides us with an opportunity to consider the overall situation.Certain worrying but unmistakable facts had gradually emerged, as if mountain peaks had gradually emerged from drifting clouds.It is certain that from now on, once a war breaks out, the entire population will join in the battle, and everyone will do their best to avoid the fierce attack of the enemy.It is certain that nations which feel their very existence is at stake will do whatever it takes to ensure it, and most likely not, it is certain that in the next war some of the means they will use will be large-scale, indiscriminate Restricted weapons and methods of destruction, perhaps uncontrollable once fired.

Never before has man been in such a position that, having made no noteworthy progress in morals, and lacking right guidance in reason, he had for the first time at his disposal the instruments sure to destroy him.In the process of human development, all the glory and labor of human beings have led human beings to such a culmination.People would do well to pause and reflect on their new responsibilities.The god of death is standing at attention, obeying orders, waiting for orders, and preparing to perform tasks; preparing to slash and kill all human beings in large numbers; preparing to crush everything left by human civilization to powder when summoned, with no hope of restoration forever.He just waited for an order.He waited for the order from a feeble, bewildered man who had been his victim and now, for just one moment, his master.

All these words were published on January 1, 1929.Now, it is New Year's Day eighteen years later, and I still can't write the same words as before.In the period between the two wars I was personally responsible for everything I said and did with the sole purpose of preventing the Second World War; can survive.Perhaps there has never been a war more easily prevented than World War II.In order to resist tyranny and prevent the destruction of the world, we are ready to use force at any time.But had England, the United States, and the other Entente nations conducted their affairs with the same consistent spirit in which business is usually done, and with the common sense which common households customarily possess, there would have been no need for force, for marching without legal accompaniment.Nay, in a just cause we may use our strength without necessarily risking bloodshed.Britain, France, and especially the powerful and impartial United States, by abandoning their own aims and even the ideas they wholeheartedly espouse, allowed the situation to develop gradually until it finally reached the summit they most dreaded.

Now, we are faced with new problems that are very similar, as long as these countries continue to use that well-meaning but short-sighted approach to deal with it, it will inevitably lead to the third major disturbance, and I am afraid that no one will survive to tell the story up. As early as 1925, I wrote about some technical thoughts and questions that should not be ignored now: Will there be new ways of utilizing the energy of explosions, making them incomparably more violent than all hitherto discovered?Would it be possible to invent a bomb the size of an orange with a secret power to destroy a swath of a building or concentrate the power of a thousand tons of explosives to level an entire urban area in one fell swoop?Even the existing bombs, can they be mounted on flying vehicles, controlled by radio or other rays, without a pilot, to automatically and continuously bombard enemy cities, arsenals, barracks or shipyards?

As for poison gas and various forms of chemical warfare, this is only the first chapter in a horror book.To be sure, all these new methods of destruction are being studied with science and patience on both sides of the Rhine, and why should they be thought to be limited to inorganic chemistry?For the research on diseases, various viruses are prepared in an organized way, and they are deliberately released to the enemy's humans and animals. This must not only be carried out in the laboratories of a big country.The vermin that destroys crops, the anthrax that kills horses and cattle, the plague that poisons not only armies but entire regions—these are the lines along which military science is relentlessly advancing.

All these words were said nearly a quarter of a century ago. It is only natural that a proud nation, defeated in war, must strive to rearm as quickly as possible.As long as they have the means, they will not respect the treaties they are forced to obey. The ease of the situation will change the vows made in pain, and see it as forced by violence and void. It is therefore the victor's duty to force a defeated enemy to remain disarmed.For this purpose, they must adopt a twofold policy: first, they must maintain adequate armaments themselves, and at the same time must, with unrelenting vigilance and authority, carry out the various provisions of the peace treaty prohibiting the original enemy countries from restoring their military strength. terms.Secondly, they must adopt lenient measures designed to prosper the defeated country, make it as content as possible with its condition, and try by all means to create a basis of genuine friendship and common incentives are gradually eliminated.In the past few years, I have put forward a principle: Eliminate the grievances of the defeated country first, and then disarm the army of the victorious country.As can be seen below, Great Britain, the United States and France took largely the opposite approach.So there is a story to tell below.

It is hard work to build an army that brings together all the men of a great nation.The victorious Allied Powers, following Lloyd George's suggestion, limited the German army to 100,000 men and prohibited conscription, but this small force became a core, a melting pot, from which millions of troops would come when possible generated.These 100,000 people are 100,000 backbones. Once the expansion is decided, the soldiers will become sergeants, and the sergeants will become officers.Nevertheless, Lloyd George's plan to prevent Germany from rebuilding its army cannot be said to have been ill-conceived.In time of peace no foreign supervision can control the quality of the hundred thousand men authorized by Germany.That's not the problem.Germany needs three or four million trained soldiers just to defend its borders.And to build an army of national size that could rival the French Army, let alone surpass it, required not only the cultivation of a cadre, the restoration of the old regiments and formations, but also the introduction of a national conscription system, the annual recruitment of men of military age.Volunteers, youth movements, police expansion, old comrades' associations, and all unofficial and illegal organizations can play a role in the transition period.But if there is no universal national military service, although the skeleton is complete, it will always lack the muscles on the outside. So, unless Germany had practiced conscription for a few years, it would not have been able to build an army strong enough to rival the French army.Here is a line that cannot be crossed without the blatant destruction of the Treaty of Versailles.Covert, artful, and delicate preparations may be made before then, but one day the greatest determination will cross the line and defy the conqueror openly.In this light, Lloyd George's principles were right.Had the power and prudence of this principle been exercised then, the German war machine could not have been reforged.The recruits recruited every year, no matter how well-educated they are before entering the army, must stay in the regiment or other units for at least two years. Only after this training period can the reserve army, which is indispensable to the modern army, be gradually formed and expanded.Notwithstanding the dreadful attrition of France's manpower in the last war, it was able to train in an orderly and continuous manner the annual enlistments, and to place the trained soldiers in the reserve army as part of the country's entire fighting force.For fifteen years, Germany was not allowed to create such a reserve army.During these years, however, the French military system has been able to train and muster an organized force without difficulty, which is the result of long-term continuous arming and training.The German Army may cultivate and develop its military spirit and traditions, but it is impossible, even in its dreams, to match the power of France. The architect of the structure and core of the future German Army was General Seekert.As early as 1921, Seckert was secretly busy designing a complete German Army on paper and humbly justifying his activities with the Allied Military Control Commission.His biographer, General Rabenau, wrote in 1940, when the German army was victorious, that if the leadership core from 1920 to 1934 was only suitable for the needs of small-scale armies, it would be very difficult. It will be difficult to carry on the work from 1935 to 1939.For example, the Treaty of Versailles stipulated that the size of the officer corps be reduced from 34,000 to 4,000.The Germans used all sorts of tricks to break through this fatal boundary, and despite the efforts of the Allied Military Control Commission, Germany pursued step by step the program of rebuilding the Army.Seekert's biographer writes: The enemy had tried to destroy the General Staff and was supported by all political parties in the country.From its standpoint, the Allied Control Committee has rightly attempted for several years to make the training of the senior staff so backward that it was impossible to create a staff at all.They had had a straightforward method of finding out how staff officers were trained, but we succeeded in keeping a secret, revealing nothing, either about the system or the courses taught.Sekt never budged; for if the staff were destroyed, it would be very difficult to rebuild it.Although the form of the General Staff has been destroyed, its content remains intact. In fact, thousands of plainclothes staff officers and their assistants, in the name of the Ministry of Construction, the Ministry of Research, and the Ministry of Culture, concentrated on In Berlin, conduct an in-depth study of the past and the future. Rabenau also made a thorough explanation: without Seekert, there would be no general staff in the German sense today (1940), because this organization could only be established through the efforts of several generations; No matter how talented and hard-working the officers are, it is impossible to build them up overnight.Continuity of concept is necessary in order to guarantee leadership in the severe test of reality.Individual knowledge or ability is not enough.In war, systematically developed majority capabilities are necessary.This kind of collective ability takes decades to cultivate successfully. In a small army of 100,000 people, if the generals are not also turned into petty people, a great theoretical system must be built.For this purpose, gymnastics and military sports on a large scale must also be promoted, not for the training of the staff, but of a group of high-ranking officers.These people will be able to think in terms of regular military requirements. Seekert believes that it is necessary to avoid deriving false theories from personal experience of the First World War.All the lessons of that war have been thoroughly and systematically studied.New training principles were developed and various new curricula developed. All existing codes of conduct were rewritten, not for the army of one hundred thousand men, but for the armed forces of the German Empire.In order to make it impossible for the Allied Powers to find out, all the items in these manuals are printed in special fonts and are made public.But the exercise code for internal use is secret.The main principle they repeatedly emphasized is that all important arms must cooperate closely.Not only the major arms such as infantry, motorized and artillery must cooperate closely tactically; but also machine gun units, mortar units, submachine gun units, anti-tank weapons units, army aviation units, and others must also cooperate with each other.In the wars of 1939 and 1940, German generals believed that their tactical success was due to this theory.By 1924, Seekert could feel that the German army was slowly growing beyond the limit of 100,000 men.His biographer said: less than ten years to get results.In 1925, the aging Field Marshal Mackensen congratulated Seckett on his establishment of the German Army, not inappropriately comparing Seckett to Scharnhorst.This Scharnhorst secretly organized the Prussian army to counter Napoleon during the years of French occupation of Germany after the Battle of Jena.Years of flames had been burning, and Entente regulation had failed to destroy any enduring elements of German military power. In the summer of 1926, Seekert led various commanders to hold a large-scale military exercise with staff and communications troops.There were no armies, but virtually all generals, commanders, and staff officers learned much of the art of war and the technical aspects of commanding a regular German army.Once the time is right, this army will be able to elevate Germany to its previous status. Small-scale, short-term training for soldiers outside the official ranks has been practiced for several years.These people are called black soldiers, that is, illegal soldiers.From 1925 onwards, these black soldiers were all led by the Ministry of Defense and maintained by state funds. The General Staff's plan for 1925 attempted to expand and improve the army beyond the treaty limits, tripling and then tripling the existing legal seven infantry divisions, but Seekert's ultimate goal was to at least Sixty-three divisions were formed.The main obstacle to this plan from 1926 onwards was the opposition of the Prussian Social-Democratic government.In 1932 the Social Democratic government was overthrown.It was not until April 1933 that it officially exceeded the establishment of an army of 100,000 soldiers.Although its strength has steadily surpassed this figure in the early days. In the mood of goodwill and hope following Locarno, the British and French governments took a questionable, if not irremediable, decision.That is: to abolish the Entente Control Commission and replace it with an investigative program under the auspices of the League of Nations and agreed upon by all parties, which can be conducted at the request of any country.It is said that this deployment can be used as a supplement to the Treaty of Locarno.But this hope did not materialize.Although Marshal Foch's report pointed out that Germany has been effectively disarmed, it must be admitted that it is impossible for a country with a population of 65 million to disarm forever.Several precautions must be taken.Nevertheless, in January 1927 the Allied Control Council withdrew from Germany.It was already known that the Germans were undermining the Treaty of Versailles in many covert and unobtrusive ways, and they were undoubtedly drawing up written plans to make Germany a military state again.They have the Boy Scouts, the NCO Corps, and many unarmed volunteer groups of youth and veterans.But nothing, army or navy, can ever be done on a large scale without detection.As for the introduction of national conscription, the establishment of an air force, or the construction of warships beyond the limits of the Treaty of Versailles, that would be a flagrant violation of Germany's obligations, and would at any time be brought up in the League of Nations to which Germany was already a member. As for the Air Force, it is even more difficult to make clear regulations.The Treaty of Versailles prohibited Germany from establishing an air force, so in May 1920, the Luftwaffe was officially disbanded.In his farewell order, Sektor said he hopes the Air Force will be built again and that the spirit of the Air Force will live on.He strongly encourages this.His first step was to form a special group of formerly experienced Air Force officers in the German Defense Ministry.It was established secretly, without the knowledge of the Allied Committee, and even from his own government.This group gradually expanded until every office or supervisory agency in the Ministry of National Defense had so-called Air Force cells, and Air Force personnel were gradually introduced into various units of the Army and became cadres of the Army.The Minister of Civil Aviation was an experienced wartime officer who was appointed by Seekert; he adapted the management and development of civil aviation to military needs.This Ministry of Civil Aviation, plus German Civil Aviation and camouflaged Air Force units in the Army or Navy, was mostly filled by former Air Force officers who had no knowledge of commercial aviation at all. Even before 1924 there was a system of airfields and civil aircraft factories throughout Germany, as well as instructors for training pilots and conducting passive air defense. At that time, there were already considerable commercial aviation demonstrations and a nationwide network of gliding groups was established to encourage the aviation spirit in large numbers of German men and women.As for the strict limits on the number of civil aviation personnel allowed to fly, they were still observed on paper, but these rules, like many others, were muddled by Sektor.With the surreptitious help of the German Ministry of Transport, he laid the solid foundations for an efficient aviation industry and a future air force.Under the dominance of the mood in 1926, the Allies thought that too much restraint of these German breaches would hurt Germany's national pride too much.The victors thought that with the principled limit of prohibiting the establishment of an air force in Germany, they could sit back and relax.In fact, this is an extremely vague and unclear boundary. On the naval side the Germans practiced the same cover-up.According to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was only allowed to retain a small-scale navy, with a maximum strength of no more than 15,000 troops.Germany used various excuses to increase the number of people, exceeding the limit.Various naval organizations are secretly mixed among the various civil administrations.The coastal fortresses of Helgoland, though destroyed by treaty, were soon rebuilt.Submarines are also built privately, and submarine officers and soldiers are trained in other countries.Everything possible has been done to preserve the Kaiser's navy and to prepare for the day when the seas will be restored. There have also been major advances in other decisive ways.Mr. Rathenau, when he was Minister of Construction in 1919, embarked on a massive reconstruction of the German military industry.In fact he said to the generals: They have destroyed your weapons, but they are useless anyway until the next war.The next war will be fought with new weapons, and the army that is least encumbered by the old will have the greatest advantage. Nevertheless, the German staff, during the years under Entente control, always fought tenaciously to preserve the existing weapons from destruction. All means of deceit and obstruction were used to avoid the eyes and ears of the Allied Committee.The work carried out secretly is very tightly organized.The German police intervened at first, but soon cooperated with the Ministry of Defense to accumulate weapons.Under the guise of civil society, an organization was formed to keep weapons and equipment.From 1926 this organization was represented throughout Germany.Warehouses of all kinds of weapons are located all over Germany.Also, extremely ingenious methods were employed for the manufacture of machines for the future production of military supplies.Lathes formerly of military use, or capable of being converted to military use, were retained for civilian production in far greater numbers than were normally required by commerce.The national arsenal established for the war was not closed under the Treaty of Versailles. A comprehensive plan was thus put into practice.According to this plan, all new factories and many old factories opened with British and American construction loans were planned from the beginning so that they could be quickly converted into military factories.Their planning was so thorough and thoughtful that several books could be written.Mr. Rathenau was brutally assassinated in 1922 by the anti-Semitic nascent Nazi secret society.They gnashed their teeth against the faithful servant of Jewish Germany.Brüning, who came to power in 1929, continued this work with zeal and prudence, so that, while the victors were still resting on their toes with a mass of obsolete military equipment, in Germany the production of new weapons Huge potential is being formed year by year. In 1919, the British War Cabinet had decided that, as part of the economic austerity campaign, the military departments should formulate their budgets on the assumption that the British Empire would not be engaged in any major wars for the next ten years and would not need to send Expedition.In 1924, when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer, I asked the Reich Defense Council to review this regulation, but no amendment was proposed.In 1927 the War Department suggested that the 1919 Resolution should be extended for a period of ten years from the present date, as regards the Army alone.This proposal was endorsed by the Cabinet and the Reich Defense Council.On July 5, 1928, this issue was brought up for discussion again. At that time, I proposed with an attitude of acceptance: the budget of each military department should be based on the sentence that there will be no major war within ten years. This basis should be one day. The day moves forward, so this assumption should be reviewed annually by the Reich Defense Council. My proposal leaves open the door for the various military departments or self-governments to raise the question as they see fit, as the case may be. It has been argued that acceptance of this principle lulls the military sector into a false sense of security, that research is neglected, and short-sightedness prevails, especially where financial expenditures are involved.However, until I left the treasury in 1929, I felt that there was still hope, because world peace seemed to be maintained, and I saw no reason for a new decision. This did not prove me wrong in fact. .Until the autumn of 1939, war did not break out.Ten years is a long time in this unstable world.The stipulation of no major war for ten years, plus its extrapolation from day to day, was still in force until 1932.On March 23rd of that year, the Macdonald government was right to decide that this presumption may be considered to have been removed. During this period, the Allies retained sufficient strength and power to prevent any detectable rearmament by Germany.At that time, Germany also had to obey the strong joint demands of Britain, France and Italy to force it to abide by the provisions of the peace treaty.When we review the history of the eight years from 1930 to 1938, we know that we have had so much time. At least until 1934 we could prevent Germany from rearming without losing a single soldier.What we lack is definitely not time.