Thirty Pieces of Silver

Excerpts from Alistair Buchanan,Thirty pieces of silver: The Czechoslovak war as tragic prelude(Glasgow: Penguin, 1989)

The German invasion of Czechoslovakia was, in every sense, a military, strategic and economic disaster for Hitler’s government and the Wehrmacht. It was not the walkover campaign that the German propaganda reels proclaimed it. But with Germany a closed society, strategically aligning with British interests and the ultimate victor, these crucial truths could ultimately be concealed to much of the broader world. However, it was on this disaster that Hermann Goring would build the foundations for German military successes in the Second World War. Failure is a powerful teacher, and the major losses of manpower and equipment in against an enemy the Wehrmacht utterly outmatched in firepower and numbers catalyzed major changes in German military-industry, doctrine and training.

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Political

The looming Czechoslovak war was a major source of political instability in Hitler’s government. The need to make good on the Sudeten claims drove the Nazi Party’s insistence on the war. Humiliation would be unacceptable to the ideology. The militants of the party demanded the total repatriation of the Volksdeutsche and their lands to the Reich, and beyond Hitler’s own personal vision he would have to make good on that or the NSDAP would fracture.

Additionally, Hitler desired access to the industrial resources of Bohemia and the Sudetenland, an important first step to preparing the Reich for war on a continental scale, both to secure lebensraum in the East and to avenge the Versailles diktat.

However, Hitler’s consolidation of power in the Reich was far from complete. The traditional military-bureaucratic elites were still their own political force, as were the major industrialists. Hitler had earned some measure of respect through his diplomatic successes and the suppression of the German working class’s bargaining power, but they were not yet brought to heel.

Many men in the Wehrmacht old guard had little respect for the “Bohemian corporal”. The prospect of war with Czechoslovakia was a terrible, foreboding nightmare in the General Staff. Anschluss had changed the calculation somewhat, allowing the military to outflank the Sudeten border fortifications, and added several divisions to Germany’s military strength, including the 9th Panzer, and the 44th Infantry, but there remained the problem of the French-Czechoslovakian mutual defense treaty.

Britain may have been willing to give Hitler a relatively blank cheque, but the French were not. Hitler had secured a diplomatic note pledging British non-interference with German aims on Czechoslovakia in 1936, but France had stubbornly resisted.

As the planning of the invasion advanced, the dominos began to line up. If France honored her treaty, then the country would be fighting on not less than two fronts. If France stood up, then Belgium would likely ally with France. And perhaps even Poland would wish to exploit the situation and transform it into a three-front war.

Similarly, German industrialists did not forget the ruin caused by defeat in the Great War. The expense of the war bankrupted many when the expected treasure from the peace settlement turned out to be a mirage. Still others folded in the anarchy of the working class uprising that followed. While Hitler’s programs, such as the Autobahn, and rearmament programs, had significantly reduced unemployment and restored economic prospects for the Reich, they had come with their own financial problems in the form of flooding the market with promissory notes, which were beginning to come due after years of extensions. With the corporation issuing these notes only existing on paper, any war could easily ruin their value.

In light of these problems, the non-Nazis in the military and state leadership would not invite another such disaster that would ruin and humiliate Germany. Conspiracies were forming in the military and civil service to oust Hitler and the Nazis if he moved ahead with war without diplomatic guarantees.

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Military

The Wehrmacht was the strongest military force on the continent in 1938, but not by a very large margin. Conscription had only been reintroduced in Summer 1934. The manpower classes of 1914-17 were small due to the privations of the war, and would constitute the bulk of Germany’s army and very thin reserve pool. Efforts to train up the much larger “white years” of 1900-13 had begun but would not reach full strength for sometime. Consequently, the nearly 3.5 million men of the Wehrmacht would be a powerful but brittle force ill-suited to a protracted struggle.

The Heer itself was well-trained and decently equipped by interwar standards: 36 regular infantry divisions still moving at the speed of horse drawn carts constituted the bulk of the firepower, but the motorization of the artillery had largely been completed. The infantry would be supported by four Panzer divisions, four motorised infantry divisions, and four of the Leichte divisions, essentially a Panzer demi-division. Three mountain and one cavalry division would provide some additional expertise in the varied terrain of the campaign. The regular army would be backed up by eight reserve divisions, 21 Landwehr divisions, and another twenty divisions of infantry to be organized during the mobilisation call-up.

By contrast, Czechoslovakia would field 1.3 million men with total mobilization. This almost 3:1 disparity was not as bad as it initially seems. The Czechoslovak Army could field almost its entire force against Germany and the expected Hungarian allies in the campaign, whereas Germany would have to keep significant forces deployed in other military districts to secure its borders and continue the training and mobilization of new formations. Additionally, the mountainous terrain of the Sudetenland and the well developed fortifications would restrict attack frontages and multiply the defender’s advantage.

The Germany military would rely on the employment of superior firepower to make up the difference. The OKW hoped to achieve a 5:1 correlation of forces in artillery, tanks and aircraft. These would be the force multiplier to break open the static fighting and transition to bewegungskrieg in the Bohemian plain.

It must also be noted, though, that these were not the vaunted weapons of the Luftwaffe and Panzertruppen we are familiar with from the Second World War. They were in technical terms significantly less capable, and the doctrine and training that guided their employment was significantly underdeveloped in 1938.

Nearly half of the German tanks deployed would be machine gun armed Panzer Is, suited only for support of infantry. Only a handful of the modern Panzer IIIs would be available for the campaign. The bulk of the tank force’s actual fighting power would be from its Panzer IIs, armed with 20mm autocannons. The Panzer IV Nashorn breakthrough tank would still be years away from deployment, as would the very effective Sturmgeschutz assault gun.

Thus the Panzertruppen were only suited for the cavalry exploitation role in the Czechoslovak campaign. The assaults on the fortifications and entrenched infantry would have to be conducted by the infantry with their field support guns.

The air force would be the branch that picked up the slack. While much of the Luftwaffe was still using older biplanes such as the He-51, and early monoplanes such as the Ju-52, new aircraft, including the Bf-109 and Ju-87, were among the best in the world in 1938. The small native Czechoslovak air industry could not compete, and with the exception of the IVA volunteer group, the Czechoslovak Air Force would be largely taken off the board in the opening days of the campaign.

German tactical bomber squadrons would be able to reave with relative impunity as a result, both supporting ground forces as well as interdicting rear echelon forces.

Industrial

But forces in the field are only one story. German rearmament was a messy, slapdash affair. The problem that became readily apparent in early 1938 was that the haphazard rearmament schedule was extremely front heavy. The German military had succeeded in building large amounts of infantry weapons, mortars, artillery, tanks and aircraft, at least by interwar standards, in a few short years. But those weapons were in danger of running out of munitions.

The munitions crisis threatened to derail the whole affair and potentially bring down Hitler’s government prematurely. But this crisis was also an opportunity. The failures of Hjalmar Schacht and German industrialists gave an entry point for Fritz Todt, and the American exiles, particularly Henry Ford, to rise to prominence.

Göring, Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, became Todt and Ford’s patron, and used their counsel and prestige to aggrandize his own position in the Reich. Hitler, already an admirer of Ford’s business genius, was soon wooed by the expat’s proposals for a major reorganization of the German war economy.

This move would further empower the German Labor Front (DAF) to militarize the German working class. The system of craft production would be rationalized with Fordist mass production methods. A singular Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition would centralize the production process.

Fritz Todt would be its chief, with Ford as his deputy. Todt had the herculean task of rationalizing the mess of arms contracts and industrial fiefdoms that were the major Konzerns. There had been significant corruption and patronage that they would not be happy to part with for more streamlined contracts. Similarly, the heads of the major concerns, especially Krupp, were afraid that a change in production systems and management styles would end the period of labor peace and return to the confrontations of the Weimar period.

While Capital interests resisted the new munitions regime, the demands of the militarized state proved impossible to counter. The immediate consequences included a trimming of industrialist profit margins and a near immediate increase in production, particularly in munitions.
And there was resistance. But the militarized state was capable of dealing with it for the time being.

The full effects of this reorganization would not be felt for years later. In the meantime, it achieved the simple victory of ensuring the Wehrmacht would not run out of shells, fuel or spare parts in the short but furious campaign.

The Die is Cast

As 1938 began, the German Reich and the Nazi regime were balanced on the edge of a razor. The Foreign Ministry was working around the clock to find the way out of a general confrontation across Europe. The political toll of the Spanish Civil War had provided the only boon in this period, resulting in the dissolution of the French Popular Front government. The centrist Radical Party now held the reins in France, supported by centre-right parties. Despite the change in political control initially, they would not budge on the matter of Czechoslovak independence. As D-Day neared, the mood in the OKW became increasingly dire. The Czechoslovak government refused the German ultimatum in January 1938, still confident that French support could scupper German offensive plans.

Czechoslovakia’s hopes were forlorn as British diplomatic pressure on the French government increased. In the view of His Majesty’s Government, the choice was between an ascendant Germany on the continent, or a shattered central Europe paving the way for communist revolution and Soviet advances. With the American giant waking in North America, German dominance was a necessary evil.

The unexpected element came from within the French state itself, especially within the Army and Navy. The memory of the mutinies of 1917, and of the Black Sea Mutiny had stirred. The workers councils of 1919 had threatened to topple the Third Republic.

Out of the public eye, leading French officers gave their repudiation to Edouard Daladier’s government. War with Germany, in their view, would move the frontier of Bolshevism on the continent all the way to the Rhine River, and from there there would be no hope for France.

Daladier resisted at first. Defeatists in the German military began plotting to remove Hitler. But finally, in mid May Daladier relented. Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet delivered a sealed note to his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop, pledging that the French Republic would not honor the 1924 Czechoslovak-French mutual defense treaty.

It would not take long for the ramifications to reverberate through Europe. Poland very quickly shifted from opposition to collaboration with Germany. The Czechoslovak government of Edvard Beneš was deposed, replaced by a government of national defense chaired by Antonin Hempl of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party. The Soviet Union and the United Republics began placing diplomatic pressure on Poland and Romania to allow the transit of Soviet troops and material to Czechoslovakia. It would be in vain. On 30 July 1938, Adolf Hitler crossed the Rubicon.

Stumbling to Victory

The Czechoslovak Army would not make victory easy on Germany. The Czechoslovak Army had inherited much of the experience of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire and refined it in the interwar period. Holding the Sudeten forts with a skeleton force, the Czechoslovak Army concentrated available forces in the expected areas of penetration to resist the attempt to encircle Bohemia.

Consequently, the initial assaults were slow and bloody for the German Heer. Key areas of weakness became rapidly apparent. The Wehrmacht had tremendous difficulty sustaining assaults into the ground seized from the enemy. Even advances of a few kilometres were resulting in supply issues.

The German infantry company of 1938 was well equipped with machine guns and infantry support weapons. But the bolt-action Kar-98 rifle could not keep pace with the firepower of the MG 34. From a fixed position, the German infantry could fight hard. This proved especially useful in resisting Czechoslovak counterattacks, particularly those by the Czechoslovak tank forces in their LT vz 35 light tanks and ST vz 38 medium tanks. The German military rapidly put the small amount of anti-tank experience it had gleaned in Spain into a crude but effective doctrine, finding the suppressive fire of infantry weapons enough to pin isolated enemy tanks to allow their destruction by infantry in close-quarters or to screen for the deployment of anti-tank weapons. Similarly, against infantry the available mortars and machine guns enabled a stiff defense of even an unentrenched position, buying more time to dig in further.

The problems came when the machine guns ran out of ammunition or had to relocate. The infantry company simply did not carry enough ammunition as a matter of practice for the length of typical engagements, exacerbated by poor trigger discipline by machine gun teams. And when the platoon advanced, its firepower dropped dramatically until the machine gun teams in each squad could establish their base of fire.

Many other issues plagued the campaign. Shortages of radios and trained radio personnel limited the effectiveness of air power in the close-air support role. Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers assisted greatly with the reduction of enemy fortifications, but the turn-around time for sorties and targeting effectiveness needed improvement.

The Jagdgeschwader fighter wings deployed against Czechoslovakia had superior machines at their disposal, but very little real edge in training or experience. The conquest of air superiority by the Luftwaffe was thus very much a matter of learning on the job, with pilots learning and developing new practices for communication, formation flying and dogfighting over the course of the war. One of the most critical was the continued emphasis on altitude superiority, especially by the German Bf-109s, which quickly learned to never attempt to turn with Chechoslovakian biplanes, but instead after any failed attack to immediately return to higher altitude.

Of all the branches of the Heer , the Panzertruppen suffered the most. The mechanised/motorised forces had been organized into four motorised corps for the operation, each attached to a field army. While the Panzertruppen themselves were as well prepared for the intended role as they could have been with the available equipment, the broader army was still learning how to effectively employ tanks.

In southern Saxony, the XVI. (mot) Armeekorps , commanded by then Generalleutnent Heinz Guderian had a more successful working relationship with his superior, Generaloberst Gerd von Runstedt, commander of 2. Armee. The tanks and motorised infantry were not committed until after breakthrough had been achieved, allowing the corps to advance rapidly into the rear area.

But in the two wings of the pincer attack into eastern Bohemia, the slow progress of the breakthrough resulted in the respective army commanders Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb (8. Armee) and Walter von Reichnau (12. Armee), to commit their panzers to supporting the infantry assaults.

Coordination between the regular infantry and the panzers was poor. Furthermore, the available tanks did not have the armor or weapons to adequately assist the assaults. Losses to enemy fire and mechanical attrition mounted. By the time breakthrough was achieved in late August, the Panzer divisions were unable to effectively exploit the rear. The advance would occur at the pace of the infantry.

Meanwhile, Guderian’s tanks had been able to advance rapidly enough in late August to overrun a handful of mobilising reserve divisions, and would be among the first troops to enter Prague in September. Guderian’s success has redeemed the Panzertruppen in Hitler’s eyes, who’d become quite irate at the squandering of these expensive machines.

With Bohemia surrounded by late August, and the frontlines beginning to collapse, both Hungary and Poland would join the fight to get their piece in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. The RKKA would be unable to prosecute a war without Polish cooperation. And thus Stalin made the fateful decision to begin triangulation and appeasement with Germany.

On 25 September 1938, with German troops entering Prague and the frontlines disintegrating, the Czechoslovak government capitulated. The cost in men and materiel almost broke the German military. Nearly a thousand tanks were listed as major or total losses by the end of the conflict. 416 aircraft had been lost. Official records listed 39,490 men killed, and a further 61,010 wounded over the conflict.

But the war was won. Hitler had gained the power and prestige necessary to silence or purge his detractors. The defeatists were winnowed out. The men who presided over the worst parts of the campaign were removed from active duty. The deadwood of the Reichswehr was cleaned out, allowing more competent men to rise to their place.

For the Wehrmacht , the humbling victory spurred on major reforms in training, organization, doctrine and procurement. Hitler gave Todt the free hand to ensure that the war economy would never be so unprepared.

On the home front, the reign of the Konzern was over. The Armaments Ministry, and the Front Ford military-engineering-forced labor complex were now in the saddle. The triumph of Fordism had all the consequences its detractors had feared, but the rationalization of production greatly improved the tempo of production and most importantly economized the use of manpower. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation