Posted on 09/30/2013 9:02:59 AM PDT by the scotsman
He kept Winston out of government so that Winnie would not be discredited.
Yeah... he made “PEACE in our time”. Peace with hitler... yep.
LLS
What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?
He was trying to prop up his miserable tenure as Prime Minister. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about anything except saving his political ass. After the Nazis invaded and started a war his aim was to attempt to save his legacy.
chamberlain was put in a situation where he knew dern well that england could not stop germany from taking czech-via. the only thing chamberlain could do was buy time for england’s rearmament program to reap results before going to war with germany.
maybe he got a bad rap, but i don’t think it was becaause of personal gullibility - he knew that britian could not force germany out without a war there was no chance of winning.
Chamberlain certainly made mistakes, but the Munich agreement was in fact a peace treaty that made peace, at the cost of Czech defenses. Hitler went beyond the agreement and took over the rest of Czechoslovakia (except for bits handed to Poland and Hungary), but that wasn’t Chamberlain’s fault.
Let me begin by saying that I agree with a number of other posters that these "news" stories about Neville Chamberlain and Munich are transparent attempts to defend the Obama Administration's recent mishandling of the Syria crisis.
That said, I too am going to offer something of a contrarian view for FR about the Munich Agreement itself. The agreement was a bad choice for Britain, but it was a bad choice among other bad options.
By 1938, both Britain and France had neglected defense preparations for about a decade, a de facto bilateral policy that left someone like Chamberlain in a very poor position to act in 1938. This policy and its effects were was simply facts at the time of Munich, and this policy was the fundamental mistake. Not only were both Britain and France underprepared for war against a continental power, but the doubt each country therefore had about the other's willingness to maintain a wartime alliance between the two was quite reasonable.
Remember that Britain was not faced with destruction in 1938. Nor was the German absorption of Czechoslavakia itself a strategic threat to Britain. Britain reckoned, accurately, that should war be necessary it could be prosecuted later than the spring of 1938 from a position that was no worse than at that time.
It should be noted, too, that the strategic worries Britain had in 1938 about a major war all came to pass, as things actually happened, and the British ability to avoid these outcomes by declaring war in 1938 is doubtful. The Japanese would eventually have tried to take advantage of British weakness in the far East had Britain begun a major European war in 1938, just as actually happened, and there is no reason to think that these counterfactual Japanese adventures would have been any less disastrous for Britain than the actual ones. Germany would not have abandoned its broader war plans, and it would not have accepted any settlement denying it strategic dominance in Europe without being defeated in war. Britain only suspected as much about German intentions in 1938, true. Britain did realize, though, that the ability of Britain and France to inflict defeat on Germany in 1938 was not notably greater than they could expect it to be in the near future, such as in 1939, when war actually began.
The real significance of Munich was to make vivid the one fact that Britain and France were struggling to avoid facing. Should it be necessary to go to war to curb German aggression the two countries were neither willing nor able to do so.
This deficiency persisted right up to the start of the war in 1939. By the time Britain began preparing for war in earnest, it was too late to make good a decade of neglect. Hence the disasters that ensued.
In this respect, Britain was hardly unique. France, the United States, and the Soviet Union all systematically underestimated the German and Japanese threats, all of them neglected their defense preparations despite ample warnings of strategic danger, and all of them suffered numerous catastrophes as a result. The Munich Agreement was just the last dramatic demonstration of the danger the (eventual) Allied powers had allowed themselves to drift into before war actually began. By itself, it did little to alter the strategic situation for any of the belligerent powers.
The popular discussion of Munich tends to emphasize a narrative of personal weakness on Chamberlain's part. That is unfortunate, as the more important lesson derives from Britain's strategic weakness that left Chamberlain without good options.
It's a complicated issue, but the only real argument should be over whether war in 1938 would have been fought more successfully than in 1939.
With Czechoslovakia and, potentially, USSR on the Allied side it is quite possible. However, France was, though nobody really knew it at the time, hollowed out by faction and defeatism, and USSR military was even more in turmoil from Stalin's purges than it was in 1939.
Interestingly, if Stalin had allied with UK, France and CS, there is some possibility Poland would have allied with Germany. Poland wanted its piece of CS, and for darn good reason was even more wary of USSR than Germany.
Sorry, but this idea that Britain was finished by WW1 is a nonsense.
Until 1940, we were still the greatest and most powerful superpower on earth, and the financial hub of the world. We had the world’s biggest ever Empire, which EXPANDED after WW1, we had the world’s largest navy and a large army and air force. British intelligence was also the world’s finest.
And in science, technology and culture (literature, music), Britain still led the world. Be it Alexander Fleming, John Logie Baird or George Orwell. Be it radar, Colossus or penicillin.
Yes, Britain suffered in WW1. But the idea we ceased to be a major power after 1918 because of that is complete nonsense. Britain only abdicated top spot in 1940, and remained one of the three major world superpowers for another 30 years.
This is a good point of discussion. What would have happened without that agreement? I have to do some reading up on that.
I think it is funny that the left will be defending Chamberlain, because there are some on the right that are comparing Obama's Syrian failure to Chamberlain's. Chamberlain is one of modern history's greatest losers.
Let me be clear: If it weren’t for the English Channel, Hitler’s panzers would have overrun Britain as effortlessly as they did the rest of Western Europe.
GB suffered tremendously during during WWI (as did France). It’s losses were incomprehensible to most Americans who probably still don’t grasp it to this day. I’ve seen the figures. Between the wars, a huge pacifist movement took place, the economy was horrible, taxes were high and unemployment rampant.
True, you still had your empire, but mostly in primitive areas in Africa and the Middle East which were at the time easy to exploit and subjugate.
Six months after leaving office, Neville Chamberlain was dead. So that is part of the reason.
But yes, he did resign after the twin hammer blows of the Anglo-French failure in Norway and the German invasion of France and the Low Countries.
Let me be clear, you are talking nonsense. Both about an invasion of the UK and the power of Britain and the British empire.
What is the basis for your argument? The Germans had no problem in overrunning Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, France, North Africa, Yugoslavia, and much of the USSR (until the winter snow set in)-—why do you think England would have been spared a similar fate had it not been island protected by the English Channel from the rest of Europe?
Forgot, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Greece.
It wouldn't have mattered to his army without a radio. On the other hand we would have some really awesome planes now.
The Germans could not have successfully crossed the channel, its that simple. In fact the Kreigsmarine told Hitler this in summer 1940 after undertaking war games in Berlin.
The Germans did not in 1940 have any landing craft, and in late summer 1940 were desperately trying to buy up every barge in Belgium, Holland and France that they could. Self-production of landing craft had not even been commissioned.
Secondly, an invasion would have been destroyed by the Royal Navy. The RN was the largest navy in the world in 1940 by far, and much of it had been recalled to Southern England. They grossly outnumbered the German Navy and would have slaughtered any invasion crossing.
The RN in 1940 was strong enough that the Germans could have actually won the Battle of Britain, and the RN could still have successfully, with losses, stopped an invasion, despite lack of air cover.
Oh, and the Battle of Britain. I think that proves my point. A grossly outnumbered RAF defeats the Luftwaffe. The Nazis couldn’t win stage one of the invasion, let alone launch an army across the seas.....
Just my point. The English Channel is what saved Great Britain during WWII (along with considerable US aid). If the UK had been part of the European landmass it was would have been easily overrun by the Hitler’s panzer divisions just like the rest of Western Europe. This is my only point.
The US wasn’t the only country to aid Britain. Nor was it our largest supplier of arms and material, contrary to myth.
My one and only basic point remains: Without the English Channel, Hitler’s panzer divisions would have easily overrun England just as they did the rest of Western Europe.
With respect to aid, outside of Britain’s colonies, who exactly provided more aid to them than the US?
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