[garjog]

One sympathetic view of Chamberlin I read was that he was buying time for the British to build up for war. What do you think?

[Peter Libra]

I note your comment and it is noted that the British aircraft industry went into overtime production in the interim. About 13 months to bring in the all metal fighter planes which were crucial against the all metal Luftwaffe fighters. I read they had a 1000 Spitfires/ Hurricanes ready to go. Molders, the foremost German air ace, had a field day against the vulnerable French, Polish, Dutch airmen. He had over a 100 kills. They were made of non-metal construction WW1 type vintage.

Somebody did their homework. It is true that Winston Churchill by then, was urging these intense preparations. Alas, Chamberlain became a symbol for appeasement. Right or wrong one can take one's choice.

[eddiespaghetti]

Perhaps my source (Gerhard Weinberg of UNC) is the same as yours, but Chamberlain could not have gone to war in 1938 even if he wanted to.

First off, he was left in bad shape defense-wise by his predecessor, Stanley Baldwin, who refused to have Britain re-arm in any way. It is Baldwin who, IMO, deserves the scorn that is routinely thrown at Chamberlain.

Then, around Munich, Chamberlain was warned by his Air Marshal, “Stuffy” Dowding, that the RAF lacked sufficient aircraft for a war with Germany; the “dominions” (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa), without whose assistance Britain could not fight Germany, warned Chamberlain that they would not go to war with Germany over the Sudetenland, which, after all, was the ostensible crisis behind the Munich summits. (Awarding the Sudetenland to the newly-formed Czechoslovakia after WW I was also considered one of Woodrow Wilson’s not-very-bright ideas).

[MuttTheHoople]

No, he knew the devastation of World War I, and how it wiped out the flower of British youth. He felt that if a dictator just wanted a little bit of land, he would be satisfied with that.

If France and Britain had declared War on Germany after taking the Sudetenland, they'd have rolled them up. Germany would've immediately been fighting a two-front war with GB and France from the west, and the Czechs and quite possibly the Soviets from the East.