Confronting the Two-Front Menace

Abstract

The existence of a two-front danger was first systematically analysed in the Chiefs of Staff’s Review for 1933. While acknowledging the undiminished importance of the Far East as ‘a potential danger zone’ they warned that it should no longer command entire attention because ‘a second danger zone’ had appeared in Europe. The interrelationship between the two dangers and the impracticality of considering commitments separately was underlined: ‘Even though we might be engaged in operations in the Far East, it would obviously be impossible to consider the position in that area without, at the same time, taking into account the position nearer home.’¹ The Review, issued on 12 October and discussed by the CID on 9 November,² marked the first stage in the debate about the relative priority of enemy threats towards Britain. Before considering the Review and the ministerial reaction in more detail, however, it is necessary to comment upon the context. It was the serious decline in Europe, combined with pacification in China, which underlay the differing emphases of the 1932 and 1933 Reviews. The Chiefs derived their foreign political perspective from the Foreign Office’s memorandum of May 1933, cited above.³ Analysis of the latter, together with an examination of the views expressed by the Chiefs in their discussion of the Foreign Office’s evidence on 20 June,⁴ sheds further light on the growing anxiety about Germany.