Back a few months I wrote how my oldest son gave me a birthday present:
What prompted me to better understand what I call the “inter-war” period from the end of WWI in 1918 to the beginning of WWII in 1939 was a book my oldest son gave me for my birthday/Father’s Day called “Appeasement” by Tim Bouverie. Written from a British perspective, Tim paints the 1938 efforts as a lost cause for keeping the world safe from Nazi expansionism.
Well, after intermittent reads, I finally wrapped that book up today. My initial view was that the author was a Churchill worshiper, however, by page 400 I did see the author admit that many of Churchill’s mistakes were lumped on Neville Chamberlain as England needed a scapegoat after being outmaneuvered by Hitler off the coast of Norway in Germany’s attempt to keep the supplies from Sweden undeterred in Germany’s effort to maintain and ramp up industrial war production activities in their homeland.
I was pleasantly surprised that the author shared some truth as to Neville’s own transformation from what appeared to be a pacifist (was really just a non-interventionists) to a realist by 1939 in he dealings with Hitler. All in all the tilt was toward appeasement being a “lost cause”, but he did admit that IF the British would have ramped up war efforts in the mid-30s, their planes would have been outdated by the time they would have needed them in the 1940s to defend their own homeland.
If nothing else, the learning from this book taught be the risks that empires have once more. (I think all one has to do is read about King Solomon in the Bible to see how even the wisest man in the world could not keep all the alliances with various nations intact for a peaceful coexistence of Israel back when both Egypt and Babylon’s empires contracted) Multiple “entangling” alliances, which triggered WWI were resorted to again in the run up to WWII as well as the fact that empires can’t just think of protecting their homeland, but also colonies scattered across the globe that are only thought of from time to time as political bargaining chips.
However, no honest discussion of WWII can be had without knowing how the Treaty of Versailles at the conclusion of WWI set the stage for a humiliated Germany to roar back to life in only 20 years. It also involves decisions made back to 1906 that involved NOT Neville Chamberlain, but Winston Churchill, as the primary villain that created the climate for Hitler to gain success in Germany with his Nazi party.
Patrick Buchanan has several articles here and here that address this as does his book called: Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World
.. it was colossal blunders of British statesmen, Winston Churchill foremost among them, that turned two European wars into world wars that may yet prove the mortal wounds of the West.
Wow, quite the accusation. But Pat does give us plenty of data to support these findings decades later:
- The first blunder was a secret decision of the inner Cabinet in 1906 to send a British army across the Channel to fight in any Franco-German War. Had the Kaiser known the British Empire would fight for France, he would have moved more decisively than he did to halt the plunge to war in July 1914. Had Britain not declared war on Aug. 4 (1914) and brought in Japan, Italy and the United States, the war would have ended far sooner. Leninism and Stalinism would never have triumphed in Russia, and Hitler would never have come to power in Germany.
- The second blunder was the vengeful Treaty of Versailles that added a million square miles to the British Empire while putting millions of Germans under Czech and Polish rule in violation of the terms of the armistice and Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points.
- A third was the British decision to capitulate to U.S. demands in 1921 and throw over a faithful Japanese ally of 20 years. Tokyo took its revenge, 20 years later, by inflicting the greatest defeat in British history, the surrender of Singapore and an army of 80,000 to a Japanese army half that size.
- A fourth British blunder, which Neville Chamberlain called the “very midsummer of madness,” was the 1935 decision to sanction Italy for a colonial war in Ethiopia. London destroyed the Stresa Front of Britain, France and Italy that Mussolini had forged to contain Germany, and drove Mussolini straight into the arms of a Nazi dictator he loathed.
This is the world stage that Neville Chamberlain entered as Winston Churchill was sidelined for a few years in. Neville’s 1938 Munich Treaty effort was a direct, if not inevitable, consequence of a Versailles treaty that had consigned 3.5 million Sudeten Germans to Czech rule against their will and in violation of the principle of self-determination.
The seeds of the crisis were planted at the Paris peace conference of 1919. There, the victorious Allies carved the new nation of Czechoslovakia out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
But instead of following their principle of self-determination, the Allies placed under the rule of 7 million Czechs 3 million Germans, 3 million Slovaks, 800,000 Hungarians, 150,000 Poles and 500,000 Ruthenians. These foolish decisions spat upon Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points, under the terms of which the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians had laid down their arms.
By 1938, Germany had arisen, re-armed and brought Austria into the Reich, and was demanding the right of self-determination now be granted to the 3 million Germans in Czechoslovakia, who were clamoring to be free of Prague to rejoin their kinsmen.
But the fatal blunder was not Munich. Appeasement #1 is usually blamed as a failed policy because of what happened in the next 18 months. The truth is more on what is unseen than seen (just like in economics).
Chamberlain went to Munich because he did not believe that keeping 3 million Germans inside a nation to which they had been consigned against their will was worth a world war.
Moreover, Britain was unprepared for war. She had no draft, no Spitfires, no divisions ready to be sent to France. Why should the British Empire commit suicide by declaring war on Germany, to support a Paris peace agreement that he, Chamberlain, believed had been unjustly and dishonorably imposed on a defeated Germany?
It was common knowledge in the higher positions of England and France’s political elite that Germany was done wrong with the mandated “demilitarization” of its armed forces, but to leave native people across borders does tug on the hearts of a culture. Even by 1939 the average German was not pro-war but was for the return of German people groups under Germany’s protection.
England was ecstatic as to what Neville accomplished in Munich, war was averted, German people groups would be allowed “self-determination”. However, Hitler had more people groups outside the borders of Germany:
Hitler had already turned to the next item on his menu, Danzig, a city of 350,000 Germans, detached from the Reich at Versailles and made a Free City to give the new Poland an outlet to the sea. Hitler did not want war with Poland. Indeed, he wanted the kind of alliance with Poland he had with Italy. But, first, Danzig must be resolved.
Here, too, the British Government agreed: Danzig should be returned. For of all the amputations of German lands and peoples at Versailles, European statesmen, even Winston Churchill, regarded Danzig and the Polish Corridor that sliced Germany in two as the most outrageous. The problem was the Poles, who refused to discuss Danzig.
The Polish, who disliked communist Russia, desired to stay intact. At the same time in March 1939, Czechoslovakia suddenly began to fall apart. The Sudetenland had been annexed by Germany the previous fall and Hungary had taken back its lost lands. It looked as though the wheels were coming off this peace effort, but in fact, the pre-WWI version of Europe was re-emerging as all of the political re-drawing of lines started to be erased by reality.
Chamberlain, now humiliated, mocked by Tory back-benchers, panicking over wild false rumors of German attacks on Romania and Poland, made the greatest blunder in British history. Unasked, he issued a war guarantee to Poland, empowering a Polish dictatorship of colonels that had joined Hitler in dismembering Czechoslovakia to drag the British Empire into war with Germany over a city, Danzig, the British thought should be returned to Germany.
The war guarantee with Poland actually led to a half-hearted war against Germany after Poland fell in under one month. This was a war that was declared by both France and England, and was, in fact, a “pre-emptive” war that in the end was unnecessary, which in turn led to a world war that was also unnecessary.
Result: a Hitler-Stalin Pact and a six-year war that left scores of millions dead, Europe in ruins, the British empire bankrupt and breaking, 10 European nations under the barbaric rule of Joseph Stalin and half a century of Cold War. Had there been no war guarantee to Poland, there might have been no war, no Nazi invasion of Western Europe and no Holocaust.
Sick, right?
So Neville is not as bad as he is portrayed today but made some huge mistakes. So too Churchill is not as good as he is portrayed today but he too made some huge mistakes.
He [Churchill] was behind the greatest British military blunders in two wars: the Dardanelles disaster of 1915 and the Norwegian fiasco of 1940 that brought down Chamberlain and vaulted Churchill to power.
While excoriating Chamberlain for appeasing Hitler, Churchill’s own appeasement of Stalin lasted longer and was even more egregious and costly, ensuring that the causes for which Britain sacrificed the empire — the freedom of Poland and preventing a hostile power from dominating Europe — were lost.
Politicians, no matter how wise, are in fact horrible at directing human action and human events. All collectives, whether they be monarchies, democracies, fascist or communist peril the innocent subjects in their midst with the fallout and blow-back from their leader’s decisions. From the first act of war, usually economic sanctions, to the desperate actions in war, the wanton killing of innocents, there is always a worse “unseen” aspect to war and the unintentional consequences of those decisions than there is in the honorable striving for peace.
No wonder Thomas Jefferson declared:
Churchill was, however, surely right when he told FDR in their first meeting after Pearl Harbor that they should call the war they were now in “The Unnecessary War.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
-SF1