Weygand and the Eastern Command
I
NEVER before, perhaps, has the experience gained in one war been carried over so fully into the next. All the Allied officers now in high command were formed by service in the war in responsible and exacting posts; all ended the war as men marked out for a distinguished career in the future.
After two years on the Western Front, General Wavell was sent out as British military attaché with the Russian army in the Caucasus. He is probably the only officer now in the army who saw at first hand the conduct of war in that little-known region which once again may become a theatre of war. In 1917 and 1918 he served in Egypt and Palestine, and after a distinguished postwar record was sent out in 1937 to take command in Palestine and Transjordania. Today, as Commander in Chief of the British forces in the East, he is literally in his home sector — while if war breaks out on the Russo-Turkish frontier he will no doubt have to be promptly sent for. Fitting in both as a round peg and as a square peg is by no means the rule.
To General Weygand as well the Near East is familiar ground. Early in 1923 an outbreak of mutual defiance between the Arabs and the Turks led to a mobilizing of Turkish divisions along the Syrian frontier. Weygand was sent out at once, with the double authority of High Commissioner in Syria and Commander in Chief of the troops in the Levant. His record with Foch pointed him out as one who could take charge of a war if necessary — but who would be no less competent in preventing a war if possible. Without ‘incidents’ or commotion of any kind, the defense of the frontier was promptly arranged; the Arab tribesmen were quieted down; and the Turks presently demobilized their divisions. Thus ended the military history of Weygand’s first independent command — without the firing of a shot or the issuing of a single communiqué. Thereafter, as one in high favor among the Arab chiefs, he was free to reconnoitre every corner of Syria and the Lebanon, and to go over the ground with the British officials in Palestine and Egypt.
Poincaré, who had chosen him for a critical task, was highly pleased with the outcome. The Syrian and Arab population were no less gratified. On Weygand’s departure, Beirut turned out en masse; Arab leaders traveled hundreds of miles to bid him farewell; and the formalities called for by the demonstration delayed the sailing of his steamer for hours. Troops guarded the sailing of General Sarrail only a few years later. The bungling hand of this successor revealed how easily the whole Arab population could be set in arms — and for a time Syria became practically hostile territory. Only by laboriously undoing this harm during the following years was it made possible for Syria to be used today as a friendly base for an Allied army; and the good name Weygand brings back with him will be by no means the least of his present military resources.
II
The prompt assembling of an Allied army in the Near East is itself a fruit of the experience of the Great War. If the war came as a surprise in 1914, Turkey’s unforeseen plunge into the fray created a state of affairs that was in no way provided for. Within six months or so, while troops from India were being hurried as a first-aid reënforcement to the Western Front, a Turkish army suddenly drove forward to the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, and the critical issue of the Western Front was in an instant complicated by the threat at the opposite corner of Europe. From this time forward until 1916, everything that happened in the East was a combination of surprise and improvisation. Palestine, Mesopotamia, Gallipoli and Salonica, were all expedients taken up under the immediate pressure of meeting new and unexpected dangers. Not until after Sir William Robertson took control in 1916 were these various fronts brought into a rational and coherent scheme of policy, and only in 1918, with the Hundred Days’ defeat of the German Divisions in France, were the eastern armies able to move forward.
The present arrangement is for one thing an effort to take time by the forelock: to survey in advance the contingencies that may occur; to make ready to deal with them in orderly fashion; and to set promptly to work at assembling adequate forces.
This in itself is no trifling undertaking. At the outset of the war there was no surplus of British or French divisions in France, and in large part those now gathering in the East are wartime creations. Most of the troops on the scene by now have had to be brought by sea from distant quarters, and some units, such as the Australian division now in Egypt, were not in existence at the outbreak of the war. Other Anzac or South African divisions are still in the early stages of training — thousands of miles away. As yet, almost certainly, there are two distinct groups of forces: the French, in Syria, the British in Egypt and Palestine. In each there is a nucleus of French or British regular units, but the bulk of each force will be made up of Imperial or native contingents. Many of these can be used here far more effectively than on the Western Front. Most of the Indian regiments suffered severely in 1915 from the winter climate of Flanders, and were shifted back to eastern fronts; many of the French native troops could not be easily acclimatized in France. The present arrangement provides a more rational disposition of man power in many ways, while for the Indian and Australian units it shortens the line of communications by several thousand miles.
A winter of marking time on the Western Front has produced a restlessness of mind which now breaks out in a demand for a strategical effort in a different quarter. At this same stage in the Great War, and from a similar impulse, Mr. Lloyd George pressed upon the British Cabinet his proposal to uproot the British army from the Western Front, shift it by sea to the farther shore of the Adriatic, and set out by pack train over the mountains of Dalmatia — on a march to Vienna. An inward urge of this same sort today turns to the Army of the East for a strategical solution. In a surge of creative imagination we have already swollen its numbers to half a million men, and drawn up the most dynamic programs of strategy. We rather assume that the mere forming of an Interallied Command in the East represents a decision to take the offensive in one quarter or another, and that a great variety of tempting possibilities lie open.
The realities of the case seem to be quite different.
The gathering of an Interallied army in this quarter is for every reason a sound and necessary measure. But it is sound first of all because it is necessary: up to the present it represents not a speculative opening but a highly conservative insurance policy. It cannot be more than this, obviously, as long as the neighboring powers in the East stand in their present relation to the war.
1. Germany cannot now be directly attacked from the Near East.
2. Up to the present the Allies have no intention of initiating a war against Russia.
3. As long as Turkey remains neutral there is no way for the Allied armies to reach Russian territory, by land or sea or air.
4. Turkey has categorically reiterated her intention to remain neutral until she is attacked or seriously threatened.
5. As long as the position of Italy continues as uncertain and ‘jittery’ as heretofore, the Allied command in the East cannot commit a major part of its forces to a large-scale operation on the Russo-Turkish frontier.
On the other hand, the necessities of promptly gathering the force in the East are in no way contingent or hypothetical; they are only too positive and definite, and the advantages came into play from the very outset.
First of all, it was immediately necessary to safeguard the Suez Canal and the oil-producing regions of the Middle East. This is in no way a matter of local military defense. Security in this quarter implies maintaining the political stability of all the adjoining lands: Egypt, the Sudan, Arabia, Palestine and Transjordania, Syria, Iraq — and, to a certain degree, Persia. Quite apart from the war, all these lands have elements of uncertain equilibrium. Repeatedly, during the last decade or so, they have had lively disturbances from peculiar internal factors: racial or religious or factional quarrels which are more or less inherent and traditional. Even with little prospect of creating movements hostile to the Allies, the war offers abundant chances for stimulating permanent enmities or grievances against the existing order. Throughout much of the Arab world, for instance, deep-seated tribal jealousies are more or less a basic condition of life, and the spark can be kindled into flame from quarters which have outwardly no very obvious relation to enemy propaganda. But a serious disturbance in any quarter means, in effect, a real threat to that general complex of things we may term ‘the Suez Canal.’ A vast region suddenly becomes an unknown and dangerous quantity; British or French garrisons have to be established; and for a time a real military problem may develop.
On a basis of peace and quiet this whole perspective is reversed. All the resources of the countryside are at the disposal of the Allies; the whole population lends a hand directly or indirectly to their general war effort; and a surprising variety of additional forces come forward within the Allied ranks. Even on a peace footing the Egyptian army has a strength of about 15,000; it has twice as many well-trained reservists to keep its ranks filled in the event of war. The new Iraqi army has over twenty infantry battalions, three cavalry regiments, ten batteries of artillery, and the specialist units necessary to form two complete divisions.
Left to themselves, these minor armies would be scattered forces far too small to act alone or to count for much in the general balance of military power. Together, gathered into the solid framework of a Franco-British army, they become a very substantial factor. Not least of all, by any means, their standing in these ranks fixes, in the most definite way, the ‘loyalty’ of their native countrysides. By this personal association remote villages which know only vaguely of France or Germany have at least a clear and concrete conviction as to which side they are on in the war. Throughout all these lands the array of Allied forces now assembling is something more than a physical fact of power. It is a visible symbol of a clear determination on the part of England and France: its mere presence alters the whole relation of the Eastern peoples toward the war. Even the tiny Arab principalities on the eastern coast of the Red Sea have formally aligned themselves with the Allies — that is, against Italy, waiting hopefully on the opposite shore.
In a more general sense this effect reaches out to Turkey, Persia, Greece, and the Balkan powers. Each has a different set of interests to safeguard, and the various fears and motives impelling them by no means coincide. But they have in common the desire not to pass gradually under Russian or German control, while Turkey, Greece, and Yugoslavia are on guard against Italy in an almost equal degree. But the past and the present join in making it impossible for them to act together. United, the three Balkan States, with Hungary, Turkey, and Greece, could put into the field over ninety divisions — a force vastly larger than that Germany or Russia could now bring against them. Alone, no one of them is strong enough to stand in security; and the mistrust as to each other’s intentions left this whole southeastern corner of Europe paralyzed with uncertainty. At the outbreak of the war, there was a dominant note of utter helplessness.
The assembling of Allied forces in the East gave the one element of certainty in this whole quarter. The treaty with Turkey was in a sense its first result. By no possibility can this army make secure the thousand-mile Balkan frontier facing Germany and Russia. Syria and Egypt are a thousand miles and more away, and a German attack on this northern frontier could be delivered in force long before Allied troops could make the journey. Allied public opinion will not grasp this fact in advance, and in case of a mishap would turn upon its own governments with angry resentment — just as it did after the overrunning of Serbia in 1915 (an event which no human power could have prevented). But for Germany and Russia the gathering of the Army of the Orient changes radically the character of such an effort: it can no longer be a quick one-act affair, like the swalling ing up of Poland — there can be no prompt closing of hostilities. It was the certainty of Allied support which allowed Turkey to make a definite choice. Turkey’s decision, in turn, left Greece far more secure against Italy. In the event of Russia’s entering the war it assures the Allies of the free use of the Straits, and, with that, a prompt command of the Black Sea. All this has made a basis upon which the Balkan States can take a more confident direction of general policy, and the result is seen in their gradual but very definite ‘firming’ against German and Russian pressure.
Merely by this stage, in short, without regard to military undertakings which may develop, the establishing of the Eastern Command has altered substantially the political war map of Southeastern Europe.
III
If the prayers of these countries are answered, it will go no further. In our present eagerness for a dramatic solution we overlook the fact that all these countries are no less isolationist than the United States. Except for Bulgaria and Hungary, none of them has further territorial aims in view; their desire is not to win the war but to keep out of it. As long as they succeed in this, the Allied armies are out of reach of the Russian frontier; as long as Italy and Russia do not move, there can be no Eastern theatre of war.
The campaign in Finland may revise Stalin’s view as to the easy triumphs the Red Army can offer. The helpless incompetence displayed by the Russian command threw into a curiously different perspective the prospect of a Soviet advance across the Armenian mountain frontier. If it required over two months to prepare an artillery attack barely outside the gates of Leningrad, how long will it take to prepare an offensive on the other side of the Caucasus, on a front almost 2000 miles from Moscow? On a stretch of over 900 miles this front is linked with European Russia by a single line of railway.
Reasoning from these facts alone, no very serious danger seems to be hanging over the Turkish frontier.
But Stalin is an unpredictable quantity. Strong in his ignorance of the outside world, he keeps that world in almost equal ignorance of him. His aims, his advisers, and the pressing economic necessities which affect his policy, remain, in effect, unknown. To judge from the outside, his safest course is to continue waging an undeclared war — without further military adventures. But Stalin has shown little desire to resist temptation; and a promising opportunity may lead him to draw the sword again ‘in pursuit of peace’ — in the direction of the lost Armenian provinces or the oil regions of Northern Persia.
This brings in Turkey; cuts short automatically the maritime communications of southern Russia with the outside world; and allows Allied naval vessels to pass through the Straits. A modest force of light craft and submarines will suffice to halt all Russian shipping on the Black Sea. Its most important feature as regards the war is the transport of oil from Batum to ports on the opposite coast, where it can be forwarded by rail to Central Russia or Germany. These shipments by sea relieve the heavily overburdened railway leading from the Baku oil fields north to Russia; and so large a proportion of Baku oil has to be shipped by sea that the closing of these routes would be a serious matter. From Trebizond and the small ports farther east, naval craft could establish a tight blockade of Batum and Poti, while bombing planes could attack these ports at almost point-blank range. Baku itself, as a major source of Russian supplies of oil, is a far more important objective. It could be attacked promptly only by air. Starting from the coast near Batum, the distance by air is about 500 miles — roughly, the distance from Wilhelmshaven to Edinburgh. Kars, as the railhead of the Anatolian railway, would offer an air base about 400 miles from Baku. The distance to Baku is thus appreciably less than that repeatedly covered by British and German bombing squadrons since the outbreak of the war; and with its compact mass of oil wells, reservoirs, and refineries, Baku would make an interesting target. But such raids would be a more difficult undertaking than the unobserved voyages across the North Sea. The flights would have to be made over broken and mountainous ground; over enemy territory, and subject to counterattacks by Russian planes. We shall offer no guess as to whether or not fulldress raids on Baku are a practicable undertaking.
If Stalin moves against Northern Persia, Baku will become accessible to attack by sea, from air bases only 200 miles away on the Persian coast of the Caspian. This could hardly be taken up immediately. The air force of Iran hardly offers first-class bombing planes, and there is no railway from Mesopotamia or the Red Sea across the mountains to Northern Persia. Planes might be flown across from Mosul or from the railhead north of Basra; and the Adventures of Dunsterforce in 1918, the last and most amazing story of Stalky & Co., show that at a pinch a good deal of material could be got across Persia by motor transport. Much better routes would be available today. But to establish proper air bases in Northern Persia would not be the work of a moment, and the whole task would be complicated by the need of stiffening the military defense of the region.
From the Allied standpoint, the substantial military objective on this whole front would be the cutting down of the oil supplies drawn from Baku. The more this could be accomplished by air and by the closing of the shipping routes, the less incentive there would be for an offensive by land into the Russian provinces of the Caucasus. At the outset, it would be a full-time task to provide for the defense of the frontier provinces of Turkey and Persia. The Russians have railway communication along the whole stretch of their frontier; and until this can be cut, or broken up from the air, it gives them an immense advantage. The single line of Turkish railway wandering across the Anatolian highlands limits sharply any great concentration of Allied troops along the Armenian frontier. An offensive from Batum eastward across the Caucasus, based on a line of communications by sea from Constantinople, would depend on the amount of shipping that could be gathered. One can risk no guesses.
All in all, there is little prospect that a large-scale offensive into the Caucasus is even contemplated, as an initial operation. At a later stage of the war this front may open up in lively fashion, but as things are now, the uncertain position of Italy must hold the Army of the East to a mission of watchful waiting. If Italy enters on the enemy side, the military centre of gravity will shift far away from the Caucasus.
Dramatizing the consequences of this contingency has been a major feature of Italian policy for many years past. One of the points most stressed is that, by closing the sea routes through the Mediterranean, Italy would cut the ‘life line’ which connects France and Britain with their empires in the East. But in the Great War, even with Italy as an ally, the French and British cut the life line in large part — on their own initiative. The Italian fleet made so ineffective a contribution toward checking enemy submarines in the Mediterranean that the French and British returned more and more to the route around the Cape — the sea route which had been a quite adequate life line for a century or more previous to the opening of the Suez Canal. Today it would serve as well as in 1918.
Since the outbreak of the war, Italian commentators have repeatedly pointed out that if Italy enters in, the Allied armies in the East will shrivel up — by being cut off from their main base of supplies. To a large extent the case is exactly the reverse. Whatever is necessary can be shipped around the Cape as before. (It is said that military roads across the Sahara and the Sudan now make it possible to send French troops overland from Morocco and Algeria eastward to the Nile Valley.) But the Eastern Front itself will be far less dependent on Western Europe for supplies and matériel of every sort: in no respect is there a more striking contrast to the conditions of 1918.
Turkey, Syria, and Egypt are in no way barren lands, and the Near East has easy communications by sea with South Africa, India, Australia, and the Far East — all this over water routes not seriously threatened by enemy submarines. Turkey and Egypt export large quantities of foodstuffs (as well as cattle and sheep) even in normal times. The Turkish coal mines have been greatly developed since 1918, and the 660,000 tons exported in 1935 could no doubt be vastly increased. The large deposits of excellent coal in Bulgaria could also be brought into greater production, and all the Balkan countries could provide substantial quantities of meat and foodstuffs. The Germans would be competitors in part of this field, but the Allies, by and large, can offer better (and far more certain) payment.
Many of these resources, moreover, are more or less on the spot. They can be delivered over short sea routes, or directly by rail, if necessary, without transshipment. The linking up of all the Levant by rail — from Upper Egypt straight through to Constantinople — makes a very different situation from that of 1914-1918, as does the great extension of motor transport in connection with the railway network. The near-by sources of supply will lighten greatly the burden on Allied shipping — a critically important factor; while the reliance on eastern sea routes reduces greatly the loss of tonnage from enemy mines and submarines.
Coal will be a vital necessity for railways and shipping, but oil will be far more important for other military purposes. This too is relatively on the spot. The pipe lines from Mosul bring oil directly across the desert to the coast of Palestine and Syria; and by this time arrangements for refining it are doubtless well under way. There are already refineries in Egypt. Unlimited supplies of gasoline can be got from India and the Dutch Indies — at the cost of a long but relatively safe sea route.
Except for textiles, the Near East offers little in the way of industrial resources; and the many new industries in Turkey are still in a rather embryonic stage. But as a modern industrial region India has come forward amazingly since 1918 — far more so than is generally realized in the western world. Even by 1914 the metallurgical industries of India had a good start: in the course of the war they supplied to the various eastern fronts over 1,300,000 shells, 1850 miles of railway track, over 5000 cars, and several hundred locomotives. These are mere trifles in comparison with the contribution India can offer today. Since 1918 her production of iron and steel has developed at an amazing rate, with a corresponding growth in the wide range of manufactures associated with iron and steel. The textile industries have also grown rapidly; and for fuel India has her own vast resources of coal and oil. All in all, the great increase in industrial plant and in skilled industrial labor gives India a very different status in the general pattern of British industrial resources. Apart from her own raw materials, this new equipment makes her able to utilize those available in the general world east of Suez. Except for various highly specialized products, India can manufacture most of the things needed for the armies in the East — and in abundant quantity.
Thus, the raw materials and bulky goods which absorbed such an appalling amount of tonnage during the Great War can be found to a large degree near by. Whether or not Italy enters in, the Eastern Front can be independent of Western Europe to a surprising degree, and the task of supplying it will be far easier than before. Also the task can be shifted from the shoulders of French and British man power to a much greater degree. Just as a great variety of native troops can give useful service on this front, so the bulk of the labor involved in the vast task of shipment and distribution can be provided by native labor units — which have been recruited in large numbers from the very outset. India, finally, can take over much of the load from the shoulders of the already overburdened industrial man power of England and France.
If Mussolini goes on the warpath, Italy, not the Near East, will be the region cut off from its source of supplies. The much trumpeted slogan, ‘the control of the Mediterranean,’ has served only to obscure Italy’s real economic relation to the outside world. Left to the Mediterranean, Italy would starve. Of the sum total of her import trade (in 1937) the imports coming in by sea from Mediterranean lands (excluding France and Algeria) were in the proportion of about one to eighteen. They were about one ninth the value of her import trade by sea from lands outside the Mediterranean. Of the raw materials so vital to her existence, a large proportion comes from lands beyond the Atlantic and the Red Sea — coal, oil, iron, foodstuffs, and most of her essential imports of raw materials.
If Italy enters the war, control of the Mediterranean would avail her but little. From all the coasts of the Atlantic, the Black Sea, and the Indian Ocean, not a single vessel with a cargo for Italy would leave port. Italian sea power would not provide a single meal, and the scraps tossed from Germany and Russia would make the slimmest of diets.
How much of the Mediterranean, moreover, would Italy control? The handicap she could inflict on the Allies is obvious enough, but what would happen in return? We have often been told how near Tunis is to Naples and Sicily, but Naples and Sicily are no farther away from Tunis; and French bombers can make the trip as quickly as Italian. At Bizerta, directly across from Sicily, the French have the strongest and most secure naval base in the Mediterranean. From Toulon, Corsica, and Bizerta, French submarines can patrol the whole middle stretch of Mare Nostrum. Not a merchant vessel will leave port along the whole western coast of Italy, while submarine patrols from Bizerta and Tunis will complicate seriously the shipping of supplies to troops in Libya. In short, the sting is fatal to the bee. By the very act of cutting the sea routes in the Mediterranean, Italy bottles herself up as tightly as possible, and exposes her cities to instant reprisals.
The Allied army of the Orient, in turn, closes to Italy the eastern Mediterranean. England turned to profit the sharp warning given by the Abyssinian crisis, and during the last five years has modernized her military household in all this quarter. General Weygand himself pointed out in the Revue des Deux Mondes (early in 1937) the importance of this transformation. In Egypt, on the Sinai peninsula, on the Palestine coast, and in Cyprus, air and naval bases now safeguard this critical corner of the Mediterranean. Aerodromes have been established throughout Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordania; regular motor services now connect Palestine with Mesopotamia; and a railway from the coast inland to Mosul is nearing completion.
General Weygand’s article also pointed out the military possibilities of Italy’s increased foothold in Africa, noting the stronger garrisons in Libya, and the distances from the new Abyssinian aerodromes to important points along the Nile Valley and the Red Sea. Today, from Syria, he can watch the shoe being put on the other foot. With the new divisions from Australia joining the British troops already on the spot, Egypt will hardly be blown away by General Balbo at the first puff. With these on one flank and the French Tunisian divisions on the other, is Libya a threatening, or a seriously threatened, outpost of Italian military power? The desert tribesmen, more hostile now than ever before, can return to the fray with a streamlined escort of airplanes, mobile radio stations, and swift motor transport.
The ‘blameless Ethiopians’ will welcome a similar opportunity. A generous distribution of Maria Theresa dollars, a careful filtering in of rifles and ammunition across the nebulous Abyssinian frontier, will quite suffice; with even a bare chance of success, a movement for ‘Abyssinia Irredenta’ will arise of itself like a gathering storm. The British troops now in Egypt and the new South African regiments could open the way across the western frontier; and a single battery along the Suez Canal would suffice to mark the complete isolation of Ethiopia from Europe.
Mussolini has the gift of getting the worst of every bargain. Whatever the war aims which might lead him to stake his fortune upon Hitler, the final outcome would be a plaintive lament for the lost Empire in Africa.