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This introductory chapter describes the book's aim to attempt to recognize food and agriculture as significant factors in Britain during the 1930s, not as elements standing apart from identified major issues. They also deserve to be part of the historical discourse. The relationship between food, agriculture and rearmament should be analysed as important in its own right because it provides additional insights into the decade. The end goal is to add to the understanding of the relationship between food production, processing, distribution, and consumption on the one hand, and rearmament as broadly conceived on the other. Knowing how the government planned to handle food and agriculture if war should break out as well as the extent to which the public was informed about these plans, should broaden the appreciation of many issues Britain faced in the 1930s.

This chapter provides a background on the coming together of food and agriculture with rearmament during the last half of the 1930s. What happened in food and agriculture during the First World War, the 1920s, and the first half of the 1930s had bearing on what happened later. Food-related concerns, like every facet of British life between World War I and the mid-1930s, went through a series of ups and downs with painful adjustments, or failures to adjust, to a succession of new, seemingly unprecedented situations. The chapter details significant events and solutions during the mentioned timeframe. The establishment of procedures and the setting up of an apparatus for dealing with food and agriculture in case war should break out was about to begin.

This chapter describes the events in Britain's food sector between mid-1936 and late 1938. In this period, changes in the food sector and its relation to rearmament is best described as meaningful and methodical, but not undertaken at a frantic pace. Even after the Czech crisis, which sent shock waves throughout the country, government officials did not panic but continued to build on the procedures they had worked out during the previous years. The prevalent problems at that time, the Depression and international tensions, are discussed briefly before the food sector during the period is examined. While the Depression and its effects lingered, the worst was over. Regarding the international troubles, the government saw it within the framework of three separate yet interdependent strands: finance, foreign policy, and defence. The Czech crisis made clear that the time to prepare might well be short, and so speed was of utmost importance.

This chapter discusses how the measures put in place early on worked out during the rest of the conflict and continued afterward. Food and agriculture became closely linked to rearmament in 1936, and this linkage dominated the relationship during the rest of the pre-war years. The government's preparations in food and agriculture were relatively well advanced when the war broke out. Rural and farm interests well understood what war would mean to them and their way of life. It is shown that instead of concentrating almost solely on foreign, military, industrial, and political concerns when one examines 1930s Britain, the role of food and agriculture also needs to be appreciated and taken into account. During wartime, food and other necessities should always be a fundamental concern. The government, with public backing, undertook measures during the 1930s to prepare the nation for the reality of war in food and agriculture.

This chapter analyzes events in 1950 when U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson announced at the New York Conference that the U.S. government was willing to send “substantial forces” to Europe. The American combat force would be part of a collective force with a unified command structure, a force that would ultimately be capable of defending Western Europe on the ground. But the Americans were willing to take that step only if the European allies, for their part, were prepared to do what was necessary to “make this defense of Europe a success.” The U.S. government, he said, had come to the conclusion that the whole effort could not succeed without a German military contribution. So if the NATO allies wanted the American troops, they would have to accept the idea of German rearmament.

This chapter discusses Nazi Germany's comprehensive plan for aggression, conquest, and domination in Europe and beyond. It first explains the role of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), or Nazi Party, in the Nazi plan for domination before analyzing the stages in which the plan would be executed: to overthrow the Weimar Republic, which was founded on parliamentary democracy, and to fight for the establishment of a Nazi dictatorship led by Adolf Hitler; to eliminate all opposition and establish totalitarian control over Germany; rearmament and preparation for the war of aggression. The chapter also considers the concepts of Lebensraum and Grossraumordnung on which the Nazi occupation policy was based and concludes with an assessment of the unlawful elements of the policy.

This chapter discusses the next era in the Krupp corporate history, detailing the company's various innovations and setbacks during this period, as well as the Krupp family's latest representative—Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. It first details the contentions over the next heir to the Krupp business, a question finally resolved when heiress Bertha Krupp married the diplomat Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach. Gustav was initially treated with some reserve by the directors of the company, and was moreover increasingly at odds with the nationalist management of the company. Complicating matters further was the outbreak of the First World War.

This chapter details the Krupps' struggles during the aftermath of the war, as the company struggled to find a new role in a state that was reinventing itself dramatically. It describes workplace struggles, the postwar demilitarization efforts, Krupp's attempts at hidden rearmament, financial troubles, and other difficulties buffeting the company in the aftermath of World War I. The chapter also depicts a period of stabilization and recovery for the company, though the reprieve would be short-lived, as economic depression would strike Germany sometime during the 1920s. In addition, this period heralded the arrival of a new patriarch, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach II.

This chapter debunks the myth that Krupp had been a driving force behind the high-level making of Nazi policy, rather than a participant in a massive web of ideologically driven immorality. It examines the Nuremberg trial of the Krupp directors, considering the issue of the extent to which businessmen had choices or a freedom to maneuver in the Nazi era. Furthermore, though the prospect of rearmament was an issue within the company, the chapter argues that the rise and fall of profitability did not correspond directly to the political stance of the company, its owners, and its management. Financial incentives alone did not determine the political orientation of the Krupp business, particularly as the company soon found itself embroiled in the Nazis' politics and the Second World War loomed over the horizon.

By 1949 the wartime army had been demobilised and War Office planners were creating the foundations of what Montgomery called the ‘New Model Army’. It had began to come into existence in 1947, with the passage of the National Service Act. It was not an all‐purpose army. Apart from making minimal allowances for colonial garrisons, it was configured with one major mission in mind, to deter or fight a hot war in Europe or the Middle East beginning no earlier than about 1957. But, by 1948‐49 the geopolitical situation that had given birth to it had begun to change in ways that undercut some of the fundamental assumptions upon which it had been constructed. The Cold War had begun, and after Montgomery left the War Office in November 1948, his successor as CIGS, Sir William Slim, had to spend the next three years reconfiguring his predecessor's creation to meet the new strategic circumstances that confronted Britain.

This chapter discusses the tension between French intelligence and the Nazi Machtergreifung. Intelligence observers predicted that the new regime was made in order to come up with a policy of massive rearmament and territorial expansion. Meanwhile, Military attaché General Renondeau in Berlin said that the evolution of a Hitlerian dictatorship would have a big effect on the political fabric of Germany, on Franco-German relations and on international politics. He added that if Hitler becomes Chancellor, Germany will become one big military barracks. These warnings were repeated and intensified after the Machtergreifung.

This chapter discusses the responses of intelligence to Nazi rearmament. An increasing shortage of information on armaments and aircraft production forced intelligence officials to provide estimates of the pace of rearmament in the Reich. As a result, stereotypes about the character of Germans continued to play a main role in the intelligence process.

This chapter discusses how intelligence was central to the formulation of the land and air rearmament programmes adopted by the Popular Front government in the late 1936. This decision was triggered by the support generated by the anti-Fascism in order to come up with a defence expenditure from the traditionally pacifist left.