Williamsburg Regional Library

Fighting Churchill, appeasing Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Sir Horace Wilson, & Britain's plight of appeasement, 1937-1939, Adrian Phillips

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 389-433) and index

platesillustrations

index present

non fiction

Fighting Churchill, appeasing Hitler

bibliography

1127650565

Adrian Phillips

Neville Chamberlain, Sir Horace Wilson, & Britain's plight of appeasement, 1937-1939

A radically new view of the British policy of appeasement in the late 1930s, identifying the individuals responsible for a variety of miscalculations and moral surrender that made World War II inevitable. Appeasement failed in all its goals. The kindest thing that can be said of it is that postponed World War II by one year. Its real effect was to convince Hitler and Mussolini that Britain was weak and afraid of confrontation, encouraging them to ever-greater acts of aggression. The turning point of the Czech crisis in September 1938 came when Wilson saw Hitler on his own and left him convinced that Britain was bluffing and would not go to war to defend Czechoslovakia. The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia that followed was not the end of appeasement. The Anglo-German Declaration was Chamberlain's personal vanity project but both Chamberlain and Wilson believed that it genuinely brought "peace for our time." Chamberlain and Wilson blindly pursued bilateral friendship between Britain and the dictators and ferociously resisted alternative policies such as working with France, the Soviet Union, or the U.S. to face down the dictators. They resisted all-out rearmament which would have put the economy on a war footing. These were all the policies advocated by Winston Churchill, the most dangerous opponent of appeasement. Churchill was a hated figure for Chamberlain and Wilson. They could not accept Churchill's perception that Hitler was the implacable enemy of peace and Britain, and opposing him became an end in itself for them. Churchill and Wilson had been bitter adversaries since early in their careers because of an incident that Fighting Churchill, Appeasing Hitler reveals publicly for the first time. Chamberlain had a fraught relationship with Churchill long before appeasement became an issue. Neither Chamberlain nor Wilson had any experience of day-to-day practical diplomacy. Both thought that the dictators would apply the same standards of rationality and clarity to the policies of Italy and Germany that applied in Britain. They could not grasp that Fascist demagogues operated in an entirely different way to democratic politicians. The catastrophe of the Chamberlain/Wilson appeasement policy offers a vital lesson in how blind conviction in one policy as the only alternative can be fatally damaging

A man I can do business with -- Personal discourtesy is his chief weapon -- Winston's power for mischief -- My master is lonely just now -- Taking personal charge -- Woolly rubbish -- Getting on terms with the Germans -- A new chapter in the history of African colonial development -- All that is well sewn up -- The central weakness -- Every effort to bring about appeasement -- A nice fraudulent balance sheet -- A wise British subject -- The best the English can do -- Their just demands had been fairly met -- Clearly marked out for the post -- The appalling sums it is proposed to spend -- Well anchored -- Abandonment and ruin -- Riding the tiger -- The right line about things -- Advice from the devil -- The mountebank -- Combating Hoare's heresies -- The end of the rainbow -- Pay whatever price may be necessary -- Catching the mugwumps -- Talking appeasement again -- More ways of killing a cat -- Mr Boothby expects a rake-off -- Too many people at the job -- Entitled to demand concessions -- Pathetic little worms -- A potato war -- A civil servant with a political sense -- Minister to Iceland -- A guilty man in the realm of King Zog -- He has returned to Bournemouth

adult