Everything you probably think you know about Chamberlain – that he was a gullible fool who was easily manipulated by Hitler – is absolutely wrong.
This post is based on the work of Dr. Gerhard Weinberg, an award-winning historian at the University of North Carolina and author of The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany and a 1000-page popular history of the war, The World at Arms.
When Chamberlain and Hitler met at Munich, both men knew very well that war was inevitable – and both knew that the sooner that war started, the more likely Germany would win. The Munich conference was a brilliant act of diplomatic jui-jitsu. By giving Hitler exactly what he said he wanted - a free hand in Czechoslovakia - Chamberlain denied him what he actually wanted - the outbreak of a global war in 1938 instead of 1939. He bought Britain a crucially needed year to continue rearming and shore up its diplomatic position.
Weinberg’s work with then-recently declassified German papers reveals that Hitler himself was furious with the outcome of Munich, and regarded it as a humiliating defeat at the hands of Chamberlain. Churchill complained in Parliament about “appeasement” and abstained from the vote to ratify the Munich agreement, but privately admitted to Czech officials that he would have done the same thing if he had been PM.
The Chamberlain government in fact had been increasing the military budget for years, and in spring of 1940 instituted the first peacetime draft in British history. These aren’t the actions of a man who actually thought he had achieved “peace in our time”.
Note that Britain did not have any treaty obligations to defend Czechoslovakia against aggression – but both France and the USSR did, and both ignored those obligations. I don’t know that the extra year did any good in this regard, but Chamberlain can hardly be blamed for feeling he could use some more time to try to strengthen the resolve of Britain’s future allies. At the time, a defensive alliance with the USSR seemed reasonably within the realm of possibility, and obviously that would have greatly strengthened the Allied position if it had been achieved.
The impact on British domestic politics also needs to be considered. The public did not want war – when Chamberlain returned from Munich, the sidewalks were crammed with cheering crowds for the entire nine miles from the airport to the Palace. When war came, the British public displayed a stunning degree of unity and resolve which is still remembered with awe and admiration today. That was only possible with the leadership of a government which couldn’t be accused of not having tried its best to avoid war.
Shortly before his death, Chamberlain wrote:
So far as my personal reputation is concerned, I am not in the least disturbed about it. The letters which I am still receiving in such vast quantities so unanimously dwell on the same point, namely without Munich the war would have been lost and the Empire destroyed in 1938 … I do not feel the opposite view … has a chance of survival. Even if nothing further were to be published giving the true inside story of the past two years I should not fear the historian’s verdict
Sadly, history has not been kind to Chamberlain. Nearly a century later, his name remains a synonym for clueless and ineffective leadership. Worse, his memory is often used by warmongers to attack those who argue against war as cowards or “appeasers”. But at least here on the Dope, this ignorance can be fought.
Cite : Here is an editorial Weinberg wrote in the Washington Post in 2002, briefly outlining his case for a revisionist view of Chamberlain in the context of opposing Bush’s war in Iraq.
