Chamberlain's strategy of turning Germany eastwards to destroy Soviet Union - What is your opinion?

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain implemented his plan in 1937 to turn Nazi Germany eastwards to destroy the Soviet Union, was this a good strategy?

His plan was to let Germany annex Austria, Sudetenland, Danzig and Polish corridor and hope that Hitler would then attack Soviet Union across the baltic states.

Was this a good strategy from a military strategic point of view?

Let Germany go east and let it destroy Soviet Union?




...And by this date, certain members of the Milner Group and of the British Conservative government had reached the fantastic idea that they could kill two birds with one stone by setting Germany and Russia against one another in Eastern Europe.

In this way they felt that the two enemies would stalemate one another, or that Germany would become satisfied with the oil of Rumania and the wheat of the Ukraine.

It never occurred to anyone in a responsible position that Germany and Russia might make common cause, even temporarily, against the West. Even less did it occur to them that Russia might beat Germany and thus open all Central Europe to Bolshevism.

This idea of bringing Germany into a collision with Russia was not to be found, so far as the evidence shows, among any members of the inner circle of the Milner Group.

Rather it was to be found among the personal associates of Neville Chamberlain, including several members of the second circle of the Milner Group. The two policies followed parallel courses until March 1939. After that date the Milner Group’s disintegration became very evident, and part of it took the form of the movement of several persons (like Hoare and Simon) from the second circle of the Milner Group to the inner circle of the new group rotating around Chamberlain...

Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, ch 12


...Eden noted in his diary after talks with Hitler:"Only thing Hitler wants is Air Pact without limitation. Simon much inclined to bite at this....I had to protest and he gave up the idea.... Simon toys with the idea of letting Germany expand eastwards. I am strongly against. Apart from dishonesty it would be our turn next"(cited in Dutton 1994, 50)...

http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=UyMXon0JmBsC&pg=PA107&lpg


Harold Ickes, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, wrote at the time in his journal: `(England) kept hoping against hope that she could embroil Russia and Germany with each other and thus escape scot-free herself.'

The Germano-Soviet Pact



[SIZE=-1]Henry "Chips" Channon MP put it this way: "we should let gallant little Germany
glut her fill of the Reds in the East and keep decadent France quiet while she does so".[/SIZE]

http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=8tJuB2AEDogC&pg


...There is one danger, of course, which has probably been in all your minds - supposing the Russians and Germans got fighting and the French went in as allies of Russia owing to that appalling pact they made, you would not feel you were obligated to go and help France, would you? If there is any fighting in Europe to be done, I should like to see the Bolshies and the Nazis doing it...

- British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, July 1936

http://books.google.com/books?id=qVMXHWtCeAUC&pg


Two weeks after Munich Baldwin said in a conversation with Lord Hinchingbrooke: "Can't we turn Hitler East? Napoleon broke himself against the Russians. Hitler might do the same".

Stanley Baldwin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Letter from WSC to Major-General Sir Hugh Tudor, thanks for letter on the European political situation. Commenting that a strong and growing section of Conservative opinion agreed with Tudor that Britain should form a strong Western Alliance with France and Germany, leaving Germany free to deal with the Soviet Union...

The Churchill Papers: A catalogue


Mao: We are prepared for it to come, but it will collapse if it comes. It has only a handful of troops, and you Europeans are so frightened of it! Some people in the West are always trying to direct this calamity toward China. Your senior, Chamberlain, and also Daladier of France were the ones who pushed Germany eastward.

Heath: I opposed Mr. Chamberlain then.

http://english.pladaily.com.cn/special/mao/txt/w24.htm ​

 

Interesting! I think it would have been an excellent military strategy...at least from the British point of view.I remember reading some time ago (can't actually remember where, though) that Hitler dreamed of taking over the world with the British as his allies, and that he was very disappointed when he the UK declared war against the 3rd Reich.
Still...if that was Chamberlain's plan then, what went wrong?...what made him change his mind?...

 

I had no idea Chamberlain had a plan at all about anything

The outcome was that Britain found itself on the same boat as the USSR, "My enemies enemy is my frind"

The outcome would have been immensely curious if the British troops to Finland during the Winter War had gone ahead, or the bombing of Baku from bases in Northern Irak, but all this belongs to the realm of what Ifs...

​

That map is curious too. Kingdom of Iceland, German Realm, etc.

 

He had a strategy to turn Germany eastwards to destroy Soviet Union, but there was a screw up along the way and he was forced to fight Germany.

That was why there was a "phoney" war when Chamberlain was managing the war.

But this fact is covered up in most british history texts.

So it is not widely known in english speaking countries I think.

Anyway here is a narrative of the british plan to instigate a German-Soviet war:

…Any analysis of the motivations of Britain in 1938-1939 is bound to be difficult because different people had different motives, motives changed in the course of time, the motives of the government were clearly not the same as the motives of the people, and in no country has secrecy and anonymity been carried so far or been so well preserved as in Britain. In general, motives become vaguer and less secret as we move our attention from the innermost circles of the government outward.

As if we were looking at the layers of an onion, we may discern four points of view:

(1) the anti-Bolsheviks at the center,
(2) the “three-bloc-world” supporters close to the center,
(3) the supporters of “appeasement,” and
(4) the “peace at any price” group in a peripheral position.

The “anti-Bolsheviks,” who were also anti-French, were extremely important from 1919 to 1926, but then decreased to little more than a lunatic fringe, rising again in numbers and influence after 1934 to dominate the real policy of the government in 1939. In the earlier period the chief figures in this group were Lord Curzon, Lord D’Abernon, and General Smuts. They did what they could to destroy reparations, permit German rearmament, and tear down what they called “French militarism.”

This point of view was supported by the second group, which was known in those days as the Round Table Group, and came later to be called, somewhat inaccurately, the Cliveden Set, after the country estate of Lord and Lady Astor.

It included Lord Milner, Leopold Amery, and Edward Grigg (Lord Altrincham), as well as Lord Lothian, Smuts, Lord Astor, Lord Brand (brother-in-law of Lady Astor and managing director of Lazard Brothers, the international bankers), Lionel Curtis, Geoffrey Dawson (editor of The Times), and their associates. This group wielded great influence because it controlled the Rhodes Trust, the Beit Trust, The Times of London, The Observer, the influential and highly anonymous quarterly review known as The Round Table (founded in 1910 with money supplied by Sir Abe Bailey and the Rhodes Trust, and with Lothian as editor), and it dominated the Royal Institute of International Affairs, called “Chatham House” (of which Sir Abe Bailey and the Astors were the chief financial supporters, while Lionel Curtis was the actual founder), the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and All Souls College, Oxford.

This Round Table Group formed the core of the three-bloc-world supporters, and differed from the anti-Bolsheviks like D’Abernon in that they sought to contain the Soviet Union between a German-dominated Europe and an English-speaking bloc rather than to destroy it as the anti-Bolsheviks wanted. Relationships between the two groups were very close and friendly, and some people, like Smuts, were in both. The anti-Bolsheviks, including D’Abernon, Smuts, Sir John Simon, and H. A. L. Fisher (Warden of All Souls College), were willing to go to any extreme to tear down France and build up Germany.

Their point of view can be found in many places, and most emphatically in a letter of August 11, 1920, from D’Abernon to Sir Maurice (later Lord) Hankey, a prot้g้ of Lord Esher who wielded great influence in the inter-war period as secretary to the Cabinet and secretary to almost every international conference on reparations from Genoa (1922) to Lausanne (1932).

D’Abernon advocated a secret alliance of Britain “with the German military leaders in cooperating against the Soviet.” As ambassador of Great Britain in Berlin in 1920-1926, D’Abernon carried on this policy and blocked all efforts by the Disarmament Commission to disarm, or even inspect, Germany (according to Brigadier J. H. Morgan of the commission).

The point of view of this group was presented by General Smuts in a speech of October 23, 1923 (made after luncheon with H. A. L. Fisher). From these two groups came the Dawes Plan and the Locarno pacts. It was Smuts, according to Stresemann, who first suggested the Locarno policy, and it was D’Abernon who became its chief supporter. H. A. L. Fisher and John Simon in the House of Commons, and Lothian, Dawson, and their friends on The Round Table and on The Times prepared the ground among the British governing class for both the Dawes Plan and Locarno as early as 1923 (The Round Table for March 1923; the speeches of Fisher and Simon in the House of Commons on February 19, 1923, Fisher’s speech of March 6th and Simon’s speech of March 13th in the same place, The Round Table for June 1923; and Smuts’s speech of October 23rd).

The more moderate Round Table group, including Lionel Curtis, Leopold Amery (who was the shadow of Lord Milner), Lord Lothian, Lord Brand, and Lord Astor, sought to weaken the League of Nations and destroy all possibility of collective security in order to strengthen Germany in respect to both France and the Soviet Union, and above all to free Britain from Europe in order to build up an “Atlantic bloc” of Great Britain, the British Dominions, and the United States.

They prepared the way for this “Union” through the Rhodes Scholarship organization (of which Lord Milner was the head in 1905-1925 and Lord Lothian was secretary in 1925-1940), through the Round Table groups (which had been set up in the United States, India, and the British Dominions in 1910- 1917), through the Chatham House organization, which set up Royal Institutes of International Affairs in all the dominions and a Council on Foreign Relations in New York, as well as through “Unofficial Commonwealth Relations Conferences” held irregularly, and the Institutes of Pacific Relations set up in various countries as autonomous branches of the Royal Institutes of International Affairs.

This influential group sought to change the League of Nations from an instrument of collective security to an international conference center for “nonpolitical” matters like drug control or international postal services, to rebuild Germany as a buffer against the Soviet Union and a counterpoise to France, and to build up an Atlantic bloc of Britain, the Dominions, the United States, and, if possible, the Scandinavian countries.

One of the effusions of this group was the project called Union Now, and later Union Now with Great Britain, propagated in the United States in 1938-1945 by Clarence Streit on behalf of Lord Lothian and the Rhodes Trust. Ultimately, the inner circle of this group arrived at the idea of the “three-bloc world.”

It was believed that this system could force Germany to keep the peace (after it absorbed Europe) because it would be squeezed between the Atlantic bloc and the Soviet Union, while the Soviet Union could be forced to keep the peace because it would be squeezed between Japan and Germany.

This plan would work only if Germany and the Soviet Union could be brought into contact with each other by abandoning to Germany Austria, Czechoslovakia, and the Polish Corridor. This became the aim of both the anti-Bolsheviks and the three-bloc people from the early part of 1937 to the end of 1939 (or even early 1940).

These two cooperated and dominated the government in that period. They split in the period 1939-1940, with the “three-bloc” people, like Amery, Lord Halifax, and Lord Lothian, becoming increasingly anti-German, while the anti-Bolshevik crowd, like Chamberlain, Horace Wilson, and John Simon, tried to adopt a policy based on a declared but unfought war against Germany combined with an undeclared fighting war against the Soviet Union.

The split between these two groups appeared openly in public and led to Chamberlain’s fall from office when Amery cried to Chamberlain, across the floor of the House of Commons, on May 10, 1940, “In the name of God, go!”

Outside these two groups, and much more numerous (but much more remote from the real instruments of government), were the appeasers and the “peace at any price” people. These were both used by the two inner groups to command public support for their quite different policies. Of the two the appeasers were much more important than the “peace at any price” people.

The appeasers swallowed the steady propaganda (much of it emanating from Chatman House, The Times, the Round Table groups, or Rhodes circles) that the Germans had been deceived and brutally treated in 1919. For example, it was under pressure from seven persons, including General Smuts and H. A. L. Fisher, as well as Lord Milner himself, that Lloyd George made his belated demand on June 2, 1919, that the German reparations be reduced and the Rhineland occupation be cut from fifteen years to two.

The memorandum from which Lloyd George read these demands was apparently drawn up by Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), while the minutes of the Council of Four, from which we get the record of those demands, were taken down by Sir Maurice Hankey (as secretary to the Supreme Council, a position obtained through Lord Esher).

It was Kerr (Lothian) who served as British member of the Committee of Five which drew up the answer to the Germans’ protest of May, 1 919. General Smuts was still refusing to sign the treaty because it was too severe as late as June 23, 1919.

As a result of these attacks and a barrage of similar attacks on the treaty which continued year after year, British public opinion acquired a guilty conscience about the Treaty of Versailles, and was quite unprepared to take any steps to enforce it by 1930. On this feeling, which owed so much to the British idea of sportsmanlike conduct toward a beaten opponent, was built the movement for appeasement.

This movement had two basic assumptions: (a) that reparation must be made for Britain’s treatment of Germany in 1919 and (b) that if Germany’s most obvious demands, such as arms equality, remilitarization of the Rhineland, and perhaps union with Austria, were met, Germany would become satisfied and peaceful.

The trouble with this argument was that once Germany reached this point, it would be very difficult to prevent Germany from going further (such as taking the Sudetenland and the Polish Corridor).

Accordingly, many of the appeasers, when this point was reached in March 1938 went over to the anti-Bolshevik or “three-bloc” point of view, while some even went into the “peace at any price” group.

It is likely that Chamberlain, Sir John Simon, and Sir Samuel Hoare went by this road from appeasement to anti-Bolshevism. At any rate, few influential people were still in the appeasement group by 1939 in the sense that they believed that Germany could ever be satisfied. Once this was realized, it seemed to many that the only solution was to bring Germany into contact with, or even collision with, the Soviet Union.

The “peace at any price” people were both few and lacking in influence in Britain, while the contrary, as we shall see, was true in France. However, in the period August 1935 to March 1939 and especially in September 1938, the government built upon the fears of this group by steadily exaggerating Germany’s armed might and belittling their own, by calculated indiscretions (like the statement in September 1938 that there were no real antiaircraft defenses in London), by constant hammering at the danger of an overwhelming air attack without warning, by building ostentatious and quite useless air-raid trenches in the streets and parks of London, and by insisting through daily warnings that everyone must be fitted with a gas mask immediately (although the danger of a gas attack was nil).

In this way, the government put London into a panic in 1938 for the first time since 1804 or even 1678. And by this panic, Chamberlain was able to get the British people to accept the destruction of Czechoslovakia, wrapping it up in a piece of paper, marked “peace in our time,” which he obtained from Hitler, as he confided to that ruthless dictator, “for British public opinion.”

Once this panic passed, Chamberlain found it impossible to get the British public to follow his program, although he himself never wavered, even in 1940.

He worked on the appeasement and the “peace at any price” groups throughout 1939, but their numbers dwindled rapidly, and since he could not openly appeal for support on either the anti-Bolshevik or the “three-bloc” basis, he had to adopt the dangerous expedient of pretending to resist (in order to satisfy the British public) while really continuing to make every possible concession to Hitler which would bring Germany to a common frontier with the Soviet Union, all the while putting every pressure on Poland to negotiate and on Germany to refrain from using force in order to gain time to wear Poland down and in order to avoid the necessity of backing up by action his pretense of resistance to Germany.

This policy went completely astray in the period from August 1939 to April 1940.

Chamberlain’s motives were not bad ones; he wanted peace so that he could devote Britain’s “limited resources” to social welfare; but he was narrow and totally ignorant of the realities of power, convinced that international politics could be conducted in terms of secret deals, as business was, and he was quite ruthless in carrying out his aims, especially in his readiness to sacrifice non-English persons, who, in his eyes, did not count…


Tragedy & Hope - Carroll Quigley (Part 12: The Policy of Appeasement, 1931-1936)

 

Ok, I surrender!

 

What a pile of rot.

Put 2 and 2 together and get 6.

WW2 was all a big British conspiracy to destroy the USSR... Nurse my pills!

 

I don't think so. If Chamberlain wanted Germany to attack the Soviet Union, why, in March, 1939, did he have his government declare that any German attack on Poland would result in France and Britain coming to Poland's aid? Germany could hardly attack the Soviet Union without gong through Poland.

I have no doubt that some influential British political leaders wanted Germany and The Soviet Union to war upon each other and thus weaken both dictatorships; the same idea was current in many parts of the US at the same time. But even though it made a lot of sense, I seriously doubt it was ever official government policy in either country to actively promote such a war. There were just too many variables to be able to control such a program. I think the attitude was it would be nice if it happened, and any opportunity to push in that direction would be welcome, but no one was going to count of a foreign policy specifically designed to result in such an event.

To answer your question; if such a war between Germany and the Soviet Union had eventuated, and remained limited to those two countries, it would have been a very good thing for the western democracies. But both Britain and the US realized that a war of any kind in Europe would almost inevitably draw other countries like France, Italy, and even Japan into it, and that was not a good thing.

 

HIS IDEA AT THE TIME WAS THAT HITLER WAS LOOKING EASTWARD AND CHAMBERLAIN DECIDED TO TURN GERMANY THAT WAY IN HIS AFFAIRS

 

Of course. And it makes perfect sense for the British government to announce that any German move against Poland (which is to the EAST of Germany) would result in Britain and France coming to Poland's aid.

Something does not compute here.

 

And Stalin believed in 1940 that Germany and the Allied would destroy each other in a long war, so in that case the pact of Aug 1939 ( Molotov-Ribbentrop pact ) could be viewed as Stalin´s plan to direct Hitler attack towards west. Well, that´s politics, isn´t it?

Anyway, if Mussolini ( very probably directed by Göring ) had not offered to lead the Munich peace conference there would have been war in 1938. So it was not all due to Chamberlain that things went the way did. Actually you could say the Munich conference was probably due to the fact that Göring did not want war and pushed Mussolini to intervene.

 

Polish "guarantee" made by Chamberlain on 31 March 1939 was only a tactical move.

There were rumours at the time that Germany was about to attack Poland.

After Hitler's liquidation of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, British public was greatly disturbed and agitated.

Chamberlain feared that if Germany attacked Poland, british public opinion might pressure him to respond to that aggression, so he issued guarantee of Poland with the intention of giving Hitler a warning not to invade and to take Danzig and polish corridor by negotiation.

Using polish guarantee as leverage, Chamberlain later conducted secret talks with German to persuade Hitler not to make war and take Danzig and Polish corridor peacefully.

see:

...The unilateral guarantee to Poland given by Chamberlain on 31 March 1939 was also a reflection of what he believed the voters wanted. He had no intention of ever fulfilling the guarantee if it could possibly be evaded and, for this reason, refused the Polish requests for a small rearmament loan and to open immediate staff discussions to implement the guarantee.

The Milner Group, less susceptible to public opinion, did not want the guarantee to Poland at all. As a result, the guarantee was worded to cover Polish “independence” and not her “territorial integrity.”

This was interpreted by the leading article of The Times for 1 April to leave the way open to territorial revision without revoking the guarantee.

This interpretation was accepted by Chamberlain in Commons on 3 April.

Apparently the government believed that it was making no real commitment because, if war broke out in eastern Europe, British public opinion would force the government to declare war on Germany, no matter what the government itself wanted, and regardless whether the guarantee existed or not. On the other hand, a guarantee to Poland might deter Hitler from precipitating a war and give the government time to persuade the Polish government to yield the Corridor to Germany.

If the Poles could not be persuaded, or if Germany marched, the fat was in the fire anyway; if the Poles could be persuaded to yield, the guarantee was so worded that Britain could not act under it to prevent such yielding.

This was to block any possibility that British public opinion might refuse to accept a Polish Munich. That this line of thought was not far distant from British government circles is indicated by a Reuters news dispatch released on the same day that Chamberlain gave the guarantee to Poland.

This dispatch indicated that, under cover of the guarantee, Britian would put pressure on Poland to make substantial concessions to Hitler through negotiations. According to Hugh Dalton, Labour M.P., speaking in Commons on 3 April, this dispatch was inspired by the government and was issued through either the Foreign Office, Sir Horace Wilson, John Simon, or Samuel Hoare. Three of these four were of the Milner Group, the fourth being the personal agent of Chamberlain. Dalton’s charge was not denied by any government spokesman, Hoare contenting himself with a request to Dalton “to justify that statement.” Another M.P. of Churchill’s group suggested that Geoffrey Dawson was the source, but Dalton rejected this...

...The efforts of the Chamberlain group to continue the policy of appeasement by making economic and other concessions to Germany and their efforts to get Hitler to agree to a four-power pact form one of the most shameful episodes in the history of recent British diplomacy.

These negotiations were chiefly conducted through Sir Horace Wilson and consisted chiefly of offers of colonial bribes and other concessions to Germany. These offers were either rejected or ignored by the Nazis...

... If, by means of another Munich, he could have obtained a German-Polish settlement that would satisfy Germany and avoid war, he would have taken it. It was the hope of such an agreement that prevented him from making any real agreement with Russia, for it was, apparently, the expectation of the British government that if the Germans could get the Polish Corridor by negotiation, they could then drive into Russia across the Baltic States. For this reason, in the negotiations with Russia, Halifax refused any multilateral pact against aggression, any guarantee of the Baltic States, or any tripartite guarantee of Poland. Instead, he sought to get nothing more than a unilateral Russian guarantee to Poland to match the British guarantee to the same country...

Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, ch 12

 

... It is usually said that the events of March 1939 revealed Hitler's real nature and real ambitions, and marked the end of appeasement.

This is certainly not true as stated. It may have opened the eves of the average man to the fact that appeasement was merely a kind of slow suicide, and quite incapable of satisfying the appetites of aggressors who were insatiable.

It also made clear that Hitler was not really concerned with self-determination or with a desire to bring all Germans "back to the Reich." The annexation of territories containing millions of Slavs showed that Hitler's real aim was power and wealth and eventually world domination.

Thus, from March onward, it became almost impossible to sell appeasement to the public, especially to the British public, who were sufficiently sturdy and sensible to know when they had had enough.

But the British public and the British government were two different things, and it is quite untrue to say that the latter learned Hitler's real ambitions in March 1939 and determined to oppose them.

Above all, it is completely wrong to say this of Chamberlain, who, more and more, was running foreign policy as his own personal business.

Hitler's real ambitions were quite clear to most men in the government even before Munich, and were made evident to the rest during that crisis, especially by the way in which the German High Command seized hundreds of villages in Czechoslovakia with overwhelming Czech populations and only small German minorities, and did so for strategic and economic reasons in the period October 1-10, 1938.

But for the members of the government, the real turning point took place in January 1939, when British diplomatic agents in Europe began to bombard London with rumors of a forthcoming attack on the Netherlands and France. At that moment, appeasement in the strict sense ceased. To the government the seizure of Czechoslovakia in March was of little significance except for the shock it gave to British opinion.

The government had already written off the rump of Czechoslovakia completely, a fact which is clear as much from their direct statements as by their refusal to guarantee that rump, and the attention given to other matters even when the seizure was known (as it was after March 11th). For example, Lord Halifax sent President Roosevelt a long letter analyzing the international situation on January :4th; it is completely realistic about Hitler's outlook and projects, but Czechoslovakia is not mentioned; neither is appeasement.

Nevertheless, concessions to Germany continued. But now parallel with concessions went a real effort to build up a strong front against Hitler for the day when concessions would break down.

Moreover, concessions were different after March 17th because now they had to be secret. They had to be secret because public opinion refused any longer to accept any actions resembling appeasement, but they were continued for several reasons.

In the first place British rearmament was slow, and concessions were given to win time.

In the second place the projects of the anti-Bolsheviks and "three-bloc-world" supporters demanded continued concessions.

In the third place, Chamberlain continued to work to achieve his seven-point settlement with Hitler in the hope that he could suddenly present it to the British electorate as a prelude to a triumphant General Election which he planned for the winter of 1939-1940.

Of these three causes, the first, to gain time for rearmament, w-as the least important, although it was the one most readily used to justify secret concessions when they were found out. This is clear from the nature of the concessions. These were frequently such as to strengthen Germany rather than to gain time for Britain.

The projects of the anti-Bolsheviks and the "three-bloc-world" supporters were too dangerous to admit publicly, but they were sufficiently well known in Berlin to lead to the belief, even in moderate circles, that Britain would never go to war for Poland.

For example, Weizsไcker, the German secretary of state, chided Nevile Henderson in June 1939 for abandoning his often-repeated statement that "England desired to retain the sea; the European Continent could be left to Germany."

However, these two groups, although still active in 1939, and even in 1940, had not originally envisaged the complete destruction of Czechoslovakia or Poland.

They had expected that Hitler would get the Sudentenland, Danzig, and perhaps the Polish Corridor and that he would then be stabilized between the "oceanic bloc" and the Soviet Union, with contact with the latter across the Baltic States.

It was expected that a rump Czechoslovakia and a rump Poland would be able to survive between Germany and Russia, as Holland or Switzerland could survive between the oceanic bloc and Germany.

Moreover, the "three-bloc-world" supporters never wanted Hitler to drive southward either to the Adriatic or to the Aegean. Accordingly, although divided in respect to Romania and the Black Sea, they were determined to support Turkey and Greece against both Germany and Italy.

As a consequence of these hidden and conflicting forces, the history of international relations from September 1938 to September 1939 or even later is neither simple nor consistent...


Tragedy & Hope - Carroll Quigley (Part 13: The Disruption of Europe: 1937-1939)

 

That may well be true, but Chamberlain's move is still at variance with your theory, and you still have not explained that fact.

Making such a public announcement had the effect of painting Chamberlain's government into a very tight corner if Hitler ignored the warning, as he, in fact, did. Chamberlain could not afford to make such a move as a mere "tactical ploy" unless he was willing to back it up with a declaration of war; to do so would result in the fall of his government. Therefore, it must be assumed Chamberlain made the announcement with the full knowledge and intention that he might have to go to war to back it up.

All of this invalidates your theory, at least as of March, 1939. That Chamberlain held secret negotiations with Hitler, if he actually did, proves nothing because after March, Chamberlain was publicly on record, and obliged to go to war if Hitler made any move to the East.

 

You want my opinion?

Okay, I think it is bullsh*t.

 

That is completely true.

If Hitler attacked Poland in late March 1939 or after, there was a risk that british public opinion might force Chamberlain to react to german aggression by declaring war.

Guarantee or no guarantee, Chamberlain might be forced to declare war.

So it was already a tense situation for Chamberlain.

So he issued guarantee to Poland as a warning to Hitler not to attack Poland, as that might forced Chamberlain to react due to public pressure.

From Chamberlain's point of view, he was running no risk or making an commitment, since he would be forced to declare war on Germany whether there was a guarantee or not.

Meanwhile, Chamberlain also started anglo-soviet talks to form an alliance against Germany.

That, too was only tactical.

Chamberlain felt that with these two cards; polish guarantee and anglo-soviet talks, he could frighten Hitler into not attacking Poland and instead take Danzig and Polish corridor by negotiation.

In late July 1939, he initiated secret anglo-german talks:

...The efforts of the Chamberlain group to continue the policy of appeasement by making economic and other concessions to Germany and their efforts to get Hitler to agree to a four-power pact form one of the most shameful episodes in the history of recent British diplomacy.

These negotiations were chiefly conducted through Sir Horace Wilson and consisted chiefly of offers of colonial bribes and other concessions to Germany.


These offers were either rejected or ignored by the Nazis.
One of these offers revolved around a semi-official economic agreement under which British and German industrialists would form cartel agreements in all fields to fix prices of their products and divide up the world’s market.


The Milner Group apparently objected to this on the grounds that it was aimed, or could be aimed, at the United States. Nevertheless, the agreements continued; a master agreement, negotiated at Dusseldorf between representatives of British and German industry, was signed in London on 16 March 1939.


A British government mission to Berlin to help Germany exploit the newly acquired areas of eastern Europe was postponed the same day because of the strength of public feeling against Germany.


As soon as this had died down, secret efforts were made through R.S. Hudson, secretary to the Department of Overseas Trade, to negotiate with Helmuth Wohlthat, Reich Commissioner for the Four Year Plan, who was in London to negotiate an international whaling agreement.


Although Wholthat had no powers, he listened to Hudson and later to Sir Horace Wilson, but refused to discuss the matter with Chamberlain. Wilson offered:


(1) a non-aggression pact with Germany;

(2) a delimitation of spheres among the Great Powers;

(3) colonial concessions in Africa along the lines previously mentioned;

(4) an economic agreement.


These conversations, reported to Berlin by Ambassador Dirksen in a dispatch of 21 July 1939, would have involved giving Germany a free hand in eastern Europe and bringing her into collision with Russia.


One sentence of Dirksen’s says: “Sir Horace Wilson definitely told Herr Wohlthat that the conclusion of a non-aggression pact would enable Britian to rid herself of her commitments vis-a-vis Poland.”


In another report, three days later, Dirksen said: “Public opinion is so inflamed, and the warmongers and intriguers are so much in the ascendancy, that if these plans of negotiations with Germany were to become public they would immediately be torpedoed by Churchill and other incendiaries with the cry 'No second Munich !' ”...

Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, ch 12


But despite the polish guarantee and the threat of an anglo-french-soviet alliance, Hitler still insisted on war. He had by this time seen the british as so weak and decadent that he paid no attention to these british offers.

So, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland.

Chamberlain on 3 September 1939 was forced to declare war against Germany or face the collapse of his government. British public opinion was impatient for him to fulfill the guarantee of Poland and his government would fall if he refused to declare war.

But after being forced to declare war, Chamberlain had no real intent to fight Germany and only staged a "phoney" war, but that is another story.

This is the truth about the events of 1938-1939.

All covered up in british history texts.

 

Interesting that France and Britain did have not-so-secret discussions with the USSR about protecting Poland´s situation since spring 1939. So which discussions were the more important ones? What if Stalin had said yes to the Allied offers in June 1939?

 

This is circular reasoning; Chamberlain feels he might be forced by public opinion to declare war on Germany if Germany attacks Poland, so he makes that virtually certain by publicly warning Hitler against making an attack on Poland. Then just to make doubly certain he will have to go to war against Germany, he tries to (secretly, you claim) arrange an alliance with the Soviet Union. Sounds to me, if you are right, that Chamberlain was trying to restrain Germany from attacking anyone. You are destroying your own argument.

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that most persons today view Chamberlain with the "peace in our time" speech ringing out. Which, in itself ignores that Chamberlain actually bought Britain a full year of time to reverse a couple of decades of military budget "belt-tightening".

One has to remember that the UK under Chamberlain outstripped all other democratic states during 1938 and into 1939 concerning re-armament spending. Once the program was fully launched, their re-armament budgets went from about £122,200,000 in 1935-36, and the same in 1936-37, to over £319,600,000 for the year 1938-39, an increase of approximately 160 % from the earlier levels!

Chamberlain must have recognized (privately if not publicly) that he was being handed a "load" by the lying snake Hitler as per the Munich Accords in September, as the British increase was put into effect even before the new year. In Britain the bulk of this huge rearmament fund went toward warship/aircraft construction, capital investment in more munitions plants, "shadow" factories and ordnance depots, as well as heavy purchases of war materials from the USA.

After "The Great War", America itself still had hundreds of thousands of rifles built on the British design in both .303 British and .30-06 American round in storage covered in cosmoline and ready for shipment overseas, I believe they were the known as the Pattern 14 and/or M1917. FDR (i.e. America), through a "loop hole" in the Neutrality Acts found a way to declare the perfectly new and usable surplus rifles we had only been using as a few training rifles as "scrap" and sell them to the UK by the pound instead of per unit!

This was the model America’s Sgt. York actually used in his "sharpshooting" episode during WW1, he was very upset that he had to turn in his Springfield and accept the "American Enfield" when he shipped out.

It seems that I read somewhere that nearly half a million of those rifles had been shipped to the UK to arm the "Home Guard" well before the time of the Dunkirk evacuation. It also seems that I recall that both Winchester and Remington were providing (as they had in WW1) as much ammunition for the British as their government could afford to purchase under America’s "Cash and Carry" policy. While Chamberlain was still in charge, and all well before Chamberlain resigned and Churchill was asked to form a government.

In 1938-39 the British budget, presented the country with the heaviest tax increases since "The Great War". While they hadn’t yet resorted to conscription to increase their armed forces numbers, Chamberlain, Sir Inskip and a number of other members of the Parliament and cabinet had prepared plans to do so on a moments notice. Even the French had increased their preparations after the 1938 Munich Accords, while theirs was less than the British, it was as much as they could afford since they had put so much of their past tax moneys into the Maginot Line, which served its purpose BTW, it deflected the German offensive north as designed, it just didn't work as it was thought it would.

Not taking anything away from Sir Winston, and not trying to glorify Neville Chamberlain. It just isn’t ever as simple as we today seem to wish. This guy did that, this guy did this. It isn’t just "bing-bang-boom", cause and effect all the time.

When Édouard Daladier returned from the "Munich Agreement" signing, and was welcomed by flower throwing cheering Parisians, he turned to his secretary and said; "the fools don’t know what we have done." He had expected to be hanged in effigy if not "stoned" in public.

 

Sorry, I like conspiracy theories ,but that one is missing even a little of probability .The story has been invented by the paranoaic communists,who were seeing everywhere conspiracies and also to forget their alliance with Hitler . The explanation is much simpler :the British did not want war at all:neither on their own part against Germany,nor on hers against Russia. The outcome of general war must be desastrous from the British point of view.For either Germany or Russia would win,and whichever happened,Britains position as a Great Power would be diminished,if not destroyed.There was a singular apperoprieteness in the Anlo-Polish allianca.Both countries were profiteers from the extraordinary circumstances in which WW I ended ,with both Germany and Russia defeated.Poland owed to these circumstances her illusory independence;Britain owed to them a greatness and authority which ,if not quiet as illusory ,could be maintained with little effort . Both countries wanted the world to stand still as it had been created in 1919.The British refused to contemplate a decisive victory for either .A Russian conquest of Eastern Europe was repugnant to Britain .A Germany which would dominate Europe from the Rhine to the Ural was dangerous for Britain .The British distrusted both Hitler and Stalin ;yet they strove for peace with the one and alliance with the other . It is not surprising that they failed in both aims .(From "The Origins of WW II by A.Taylor )