neville chamberlain should be praised not buried!!

In most minds, Chamberlain remains the "Guilty Man" who sought, vainly and foolishly, to quench Hitler's insatiable thirst through unjustified concessions, generally at the expense of other nations. The policy with which he is inextricably associated – appeasement – has become a dirty word in international diplomacy, with the supposed lessons of the 1930s trundled out with monotonous regularity to justify a hard line towards aggression.

Neville Chamberlain should be praised, not buried - Telegraph

 

It certainly is a different way of viewing the whole situation and perhaps the writer is right, could anyone have done any better?

What if Chamberlain had declared war earlier on? What would have happened to England then, Germany although not ready for war was far more ready then Britain, we any of us declared war in a similar state?

 

catch 22 tom,had he been allowed to remain as prime ministe? how would?or what would the chain of events have been,interesting to say the least,ray..

 

This has been discussed before if you are interested in it.

http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-general/25...s-destroy-soviet-union-what-your-opinion.html

http://www.ww2f.com/what-if-other/25474-chamberlain-supported-russia.html
http://www.ww2f.com/what-if-other/23481-chamberlain-didnt-give-sudetenland-hitler.html
http://www.ww2f.com/what-if-europea...n-poland-germany-granted-polish-corridor.html
http://www.ww2f.com/what-if-europea...-great-britain-makes-peace-hitler-1940-a.html

 

I think Dutton is correct. Chamberlain did what he could with what he had, I don't think I'd envy anyone in that circumstance.
Despite his popular reputation for weakness, I suspect Chamberlain's only real weakness was the underestimation of what he was dealing with in a person like Adolf. And many others at that time would share a certain incredulity that a state's leader would behave in such a manner as the German dictator.

Reminds me of the recent obituaries of Earl Haig's son, George, who spent his life working on his father's (I think) undeserved popular reputation.
Serious history can expose the truth of a reputation, but the populist variety ('Zeitgeist' even) can be cruel.

~A

 

Personally I am of the generation of school children that has benefited from access to both the 'guilty men' and subsequent reformist school of thought, and the evolution of these two sides over the past five decades. As a result I believe we were provided a very balanced view of the issue, though at the time, and to this day still, think that chamberlain has recieved a very bad press.

I think the evidence is pretty clear that, from the position Britain faced in the 1930s, the appeasement policy was the lesser of several evils. From the perspective of the British they found themselves, in 1935 and the public admission of German rearmament by Hitler, on the recieving end of a very rude awakening call. Until that point I don't think anybody thought Germany, a defeated former-power, to be a 'true' threat to security in Europe. Of course the British intelligence services, despite being wound down after the Great War and grossly underfunded, had realised that nazi Germany posed a threat and had been aware of German rearmament efforts under Hitler and before that the Weimar Republic. However they certainly did not realise the extent to which progress had been made on that front. Indeed, Wesley K. Wark an intelligence historian, showed persuasively that the British intelligence community under-estimated German strength of arms until 1936.* As a result the sudden shock to find that German spending on defence outstripped their own came as quite a shock. This goes for both government and the intelligence services, the latter of which then went to the other extreme and began to substancially over-estimate German strength and war-readiness.

Furthermore I doubt that British public opinion would have allowed war to be an option until after the invasion of the rump state. So Chamberlain was left in a position where the threat of war would have been a bluff. Of course he didn't know that Hitler was also bluffing and that the resports of German strength were inflated beyond reality. Of course he could have turned to Russia, but after the purge of the Red Army I can see why he dismissed the Soviets as a useful partner.

I guess a lot of people may disagree, but that is how I see it.

* Wesley K. Wark, The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany 1933-1939 (Oxford, 1986).

 

One of my major criticisms of Chamberlain is the fact that in September 1939 Britain was only capable of sending 5 infantry divisions and a small number of tanks to France.
Given the warnings the British had about German re-armament in the years before this is a pathetically small amount.

 

Well if we are talking about appeasement specifically in terms of Chamberlain's role as Prime Minister then this is anachronistic; the Rhineland was remilitarised in 1936 and Chamberlain became PM in 1937 nearly a full year later. But if we are discussing appeasement more broadly then we are left with the issue that politically speaking the full militaristic and expansionist nature of Hitler's regime had not become understood, and nor in re-militarising the Rhineland was it felt that Hitler had actually done anything wrong certainly not enough to be worth issuing the threat military resistance. Rather it was seen as undoing an element on an unfair and unjust peace treaty.

We are also left with the fact that throughout the appeasement era in the latter half of the 1930s the weaknesses of the German position were simply not known. The evidence from intelligence reports, from 1936 onwards, suggested that Germany was stronger than she actually was; and the British military was in no position to offer a serious threat.

In short the British policy makers were not willing to gamble and risk a war they were informed from their military chiefs that they would lose and, given the climate of public opinion, almost certainly brought down the government. Hitler was willing to take that risk.

 

Well, so you claim. But you haven't provided any alternative policy Chamberlain could have employed. What, precisely, would you have had him do?

 

I was watching a documentary about the part with Chamberlain and it said that when he flew to Germany that was the first time he ever road in airplane. I was thought it was not really his fault that Hitler was going to destroy the agreement that he and Chamberlain signed. How could Chamberlain know that Hitler was going to try invade other countries he could not at least that is what I think but what do I know.