Hi everyone!
I am translating a biography of W. Churchill and I have come across a strange (I mean counterintuitive) sentence:

This is the one (the date is 14 March 1938, two days after Hitler's invasion of Austria and declaration of Anschluss, at which moment Churchill explains at the Commons that the next nazi target will assuredly be —as it was— Czechoslovakia):

Quote :

To English ears, the name of Czechoslovakia sounds outlandish,’ he said. ‘No doubt they are only a small democratic State, no doubt they have an army only two or three times as large as ours, no doubt they have a munitions supply only three times as great as that of Italy, but still they are a virile people; they have their treaty rights, they have a line of fortresses, and they have a strongly manifested will to live freely.

If I am not wrong, this means Czechoslovakia had a bigger army than Great Britain at that time. But that sounds weird to me. Does anyone know if it was actually so, or am I confronted to an even weirder and churchillian way of saying that the army of the Czech were only a half or a third the size of the British, and their munitions supply just a third of the Italian? I wouldn't like to make a blunder in a question that is for sure a well known fact for historians. (Unfortunately, the internet is not helping me here).

Thanks a lot for all your help and great explanations, as you have always done.

CM

He was using "only" in a sense one doesn't hear much these days. "Singularly" would probably be a close modern equivalent.

In 1938 Czechoslovakia had mobilised its army following the Munich Conference to its full strength, about 1.28 million soldiers according to German estimates at the time, and had also undergone some very rapid modernisation - as one of Europe's leading arms and munitions manufacturers it had diverted much of this production into its own military organisation, making it at the time an internationally feted "model army", referred to by Churchill on several occasions at the time as being at least something to which Britain should aspire to emulate, one of his constant criticisms of Chamberlain's policies being that Britain was woefully unprepared to counter what he saw as inevitable German military aggression on the continent.

So yes, Czechoslovakia had a bigger army than Britain in 1938, and was also believed to have stockpiled munitions exceeding most other European states (it hadn't actually, but in March 1938 this was the common belief). Churchill in his speech was making a case for Britain to support the Little Entente militarily, and was using what he regarded as Czech anticipation of having to counter impending German military incursion into their territory as an example of what Britain itself should also be doing regarding strengthening its own defence capabilities.

Yes. That's what I call a great answer. Thanks a lot Nordmann.

Of course, Churchill was completely upset by the appeasement policy that Baldwin, and then Chamberlain, were prone to follow. He was accused of warmongering, and, in this case at least, history showed him right.

That's very good to have that problem so easily solved.

Have a great day, Nordmann!

CM

Not relevant to your question but it is interesting to compare the size of Czech army to that of the 'mighty' USA. Due to its isolationist policies, in June 1939 the US army comprised just 189,839 personnel (with about the same number of reservists). That ranked it at something like 19th place in the world in terms of the number of men. By contrast in 1939 France had a standing army of 900,000 and in September the French reserves of 5 million troops were added to that number. Mindful of Britain's inadequacy, Churchill commented, "Thank God for the French army" ... although in the event even the huge French army couldn't save France.

According to the book 'Munich - The 1938 Appeasement Crisis' by David Faber, the French General Gamelin reported that the Czech army had 34 divisions available and 500 aircraft of their own together with 250 aircraft from the USSR.  He also reported that Germany had only 8 divisions on French border facing 23 French divisions.  

When Germany attacked in the West in 1940 a lot of their tanks and artillery were captured Czech equipment, my recollection is that about 1/3 of the tanks and 1/2 the artillery were Czech in origin although some of this would have been manufactured after the German occupation.

The Czech munitions industry also produced the ZGB 33, the predecessor to the most widely used British light machine gun of WWII and many years after, the Bren, with the name coming from the two towns of BRNO and ENFIELD. The most common tank mg in British service, the Besa, was almost directly copied from the TK vz. 37. The last shipment of steel from Czech sources before the Germans stepped in was for the armoured flight deck of HMS Illustrious.

This was on another forum, the poster did not give a source for the figures:

Axis History Forum



Numbers of weapons of Czechoslovak army in 1938:

1.280.000 soldiers
217.000 horses
26.000 motor vehicles

207.200 pistols
1.536.000 hand-grenades
864.500 rifles
34.500 light machine-guns LK vz. 26
7.100 heavy machine-guns TK vz. 24 (old style)
1.600 heavy machine-guns TK vz. 37

600 anti-tank guns 37 mm
230 anti-aircraft guns 20 mm (Oerlikon)
90 anti-aircraft guns 80 mm
140 anti-aircraft guns 83,5 mm (old style 1922)

15 heavy armoured cars vz. 27
50 light armoured cars vz. 30
70 tankettes vz. 33
50 light tanks vz. 34
300 light tanks vz. 35

900 mine-thrower 80 mm
200 mine-thrower 90 mm (old style 1917)
240 mountain guns 75 mm (old style 1915)
270 light guns 80 mm (old style 1917)
600 light howitzer 100 mm (old style 1914/1919)
100 heavy guns 105 mm
340 heavy howitzer 150 mm

370 fighters Avia B-534
60 light bomber and reconnaissance aircraft Avia B-71 (soviet SB-2)
50 heavy bombers MB-200
300 light bomber Letov Š-328
100 light reconnaissance aircraft Aero A-100/Ab-101

Hi Triceratops,
thanks for the precision and numbers.

CM