Military Developments During The Interwar Period

During the period between the great world wars of the first half of the twentieth century, military institutions had to come to grips with great technological and tactical innovation. Some succeeded, others were less successful and failed to innovate effectively. The most significant obstacles hindering military organization from innovating during the interwar period were rigidity of military organizations, the political and strategic environment and limited defense budget. There is no doubt that rigidity is a fact of life in many military organizations. It has exercised a constant influence over military institutions capacity to innovate. This rigidity manifested in numbers of areas, and in most cases it was obvious in military doctrine.
Most innovation in the interwar period was mainly focused in mechanization, developing and building aircrafts and ships. Such innovation demanded huge resources, which not all nations can afford, despite the fact that science and technology were available. The post-World War I economic problems that Europe knew were the main factors that led many countries such France and Britain to marginalize innovative thoughts. Moreover, the lack of resources cause some countries to accept treaties with severe terms. For instance Japan accepted the Washington treaty because they were convinced that they did not have the resources to do otherwise. During peacetime, it is difficult to convince politicians to spend money in military issues, especially when there is no a clear enemy or an imminent threat. The resource constraint environment known after the World War I had limited the chance of innovation’s budget proposal by military organizations to be accepted by public or governments. Even worse, when innovators could not foresee their potential enemy and what they needed to produce. This uncertainty created ambiguity, and politicians were hesitant to make decision and take risk for unclear revolutionary suggestions and considered it a gamble investment. For instance, because of the fiscally constrained interwar period and the sense of security provided by the treaty system, the officers
In fact the catastrophic damage and loss of the post war produced an antimilitary milieu. Politicians as well as population at a certain extend held military organization responsible for the caused harm. As a result, politicians were compelled to set overcoming economic problems as a priority rather than spend money on military innovation. From 1920 until early 1939 the British Army existed in an antimilitary milieu where democratic parties rebuffed the experience of the World War I. although, the strategic approach “limited liability” of Liddell Hart had little basis in historical facts, it appeared as an attractive alternative to another blood bath on the Western front. As a result, this strategy served to cripple any ideas to create armored forces in the British Army of the 1930. Moreover, excluding major war was the dominant strategic thinking of politicians, so they avoided the burden of building big armies for major conflicts. As a result, most of the ideas that imply aggression were rejected. For instance, Gen. Jean Baptiste Estienne concept of the mechanized warfare seemed too offensively minded and too aggressive to be accepted by French politicians. Treaties also played a major role in crippling innovation. For instance, Versailles treaty which forbade possession of military aircraft hindered concepts of strategic bombing