Festering at the bottom of the list will be figures such as James Callaghan (Labour), who was responsible for allowing the unions to hold this country to ransom in the late '70s, Anthony Eden (Conservative) who was Prime Minister during the disastrous Suez campaign in 1956, where it is traditionally seen that Britain was confirmed as no longer being a first-rate world power. And of course, Neville Chamberlain, Churchill's immediate predecessor. Why would he be there? Because his spineless appeasement policies towards Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s were a disaster that led to the outbreak of another world war in September 1939.
The demonisation of Chamberlain in post-war historiography and in popular British culture as a whole is centred on his infamous "Peace in Our Time" declaration, following his return from the Munich Conference in 1938, which gave the mainly German-populated Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Hitler and set the precedent for the subsequent invasions of the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and finally Poland, in September. In less than a year after returning home "triumphant" from Munich, Britain was again at war with Germany. So Chamberlain has been interpreted as ridiculously naive, lacking the charisma, the strength and even the willingness to stand firm against Hitler. He has been painted as being so deluded and optimistic in his ability to constrain the Fuhrer, reach an understanding with the man and maintain peace at all costs.
This in my opinion is a completely one-sided judgement of Chamberlain, that shows a complete lack of understanding of the enormous diplomatic and geopolitical pressures that were challenging Britain in the late 1930s, all factors that Chamberlain had to take into account when dealing with Hitler. At his core, Chamberlain was a dedicated pacifist - his diaries indicate just how desperate he was to ensure peace prevailed and he vividly remembered the horrors of the First World War. Although he may have appeared wildly optimistic and naive about Nazi Germany and Hitler in public, in his diaries he despairs that "all Germany can understand is force" and repeats several time at different intervals that he was sure of Germany's "untrustworthiness". But because he was committed to ensuring peace prevailed and that another war did not break out, this severely limited his options in dealing with a warmongering dictator like Hitler. Counter-revisionists would argue that a diplomat with more talent than Chamerblain possessed would have found a solution. But, one must illustrate fully just how complicated and interconnected the external factors were that acted to constrain Chamberlain's room for manoeuvre. In a list-style, these were:
1.) Public fear of another war. 2.) Britain's unprepared military position 3.) Fear for the British economy, still recovering from the Great Depression and the continued economic viability of the British Empire 4.) Isolation of the Dominions and the United States. 5.) Lack of confidence in France as a viable ally against Hitler. 6.) Lack of general interest in central Europe. 7.) Continued fear and distrust of the Soviet Union and Bolshevik Communism 8.) Absence of a viable policy alternative to appeasement under these circumstances.
Thus, the revisionist thesis - which I am an adherent of - puts emphasis on the military, economic and geopolitical constraints that limited Chamberlain's diplomatic alternatives. In my opinion, it is a mistake to try and interpret and understand the Munich Conference, the British position and its subsequent consequences by only focussing on Europe - remember, Britain was still a major world imperial power at this time and extra-European factors were at the forefront in Chamberlain's calculations. On the contrary, Germany was - and always has been - a European-based Great Power, with most of its chief interests based on the European Continent. This was of enormous advantage for Germany in the diplomatic game of the 1930s, as Hitler never had to consider the impact that events in Europe would have on precious German interests overseas, as they simply did not exist. For Chamberlain, the Empire itself became an enormous constraint in his ability to reign in Hitler in Europe. The three most important factors in Britain's extra-European considerations in the late 1930s were; 1.) Chamberlain's uncertainty about assured Commonwealth support if Britain went to war. 2.) Uncertainty of how the United States would respond to the outbreak of a European war. 3.) Possible British weaknesses in the Far East.
When Britain declared war against Germany in 1914, all four of the Dominions had declared war immediately after. In the First World War, Canadian, South African and ANZAC troops were critical in the Allied war effort and played decisive roles in several of the most important battles on the Western Front. The British Raj in India had also contributed thousands of troops to the British war effort. By the 1930s, the Dominions had achieved complete foreign policy independence from Britain in the 1931 Statute of Westminster and Indian nationalism led by Gandhi and the Indian National Congress was becoming a persistent if not serious threat at this point to the Raj's colonial power. Chamberlain thus feared that if Britain went to war, the Commonwealth and Empire would not automatically support Britain, as it had done twenty-five years earlier and he firmly believed that without complete Empire support, Britain would be doomed to defeat. At Munich, all of the Dominions had put pressure on Czechoslovakia to accept the settlement over the Sudetenland. Thus, if Chamberlain had taken Britain to war over the Czech crisis, he feared that he would not be able to convince the Dominions that such a war was justified and that they should support Britain.
It is of historical certainty that the entrance of the United States into the First World War in 1917 gave the Allies a much-needed boost to their war effort and was a determining factor in the final defeat of a war-weary Germany the following year. Chamberlain calculated that if another general European war erupted, Britain would need the support of the United States to prevail. However, President Roosevelt, who detested European fascism and was enormously sympathetic to the British position, was strong handicapped to openly support Britain due to the strong feeling of isolationism in the American public. In a meeting with the British ambassador to Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay in September 1938, Roosevelt made it clear that he could not send troops to Europe in the event of war. So, even before the Munich Conference, Chamberlain was aware that the United States would remain neutral.
Third and finally, Chamberlain had to consider important British interests in the Far East, where Britain's most prosperous and strategically important colonies were located - Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Burma and of course, India. There was great fear in the Foreign Office and the military Chief of Staff that an Anglo-German war in Europe would encourage the Japanese to expand their interests in the Far East at the expense of Britain. This fear was further stoked in September 1938, when Japan revealed it had been in secret negotiations with Germany over a possible military alliance. There was also a fear that an Anglo-German war would intensify the campaign of Indian nationalists and Britain would have to expend precious resources to support the Raj. Both Australia and New Zealand were insisting that Britain maintain a formidable Royal Navy presence in Far Eastern waters to deter Japanese aggression. With these interests too great to abandon, Chamberlain was confident that British military forces would be spread across the globe and Europe could not possibly be given first priority, as there was an accepted pessimism that an Anglo-German war would undoubtedly cause the conflict to spread to the Far East.
Chamberlain essentially knew that under these circumstances that Britain could not defend Czechoslovakia. All he could hope for was more time to prepare Britain for war, in terms of continued remilitarisation and to diplomatically work to ensure Dominion support. However, it must also be noted that in 1938, even the seemingly-confident Hitler was convinced that he could not fight Britain to victory - leading to the contentious argument that if Britain had pushed Germany into war in 1938, the war would have been both shorter and much less destructive.
Chamberlain, realising the constraints and limitations on the declining British hegemonic power, did all he could to give Britain more time and breathing space to prepare. Although he remained dedicated to maintaining peace until the very last moment, he succeeded in ensuring that when the Second World War did begin, Britain was in a much stronger military and diplomatic position than it had been a year before at Munich. This is something he should be thanked for.
(My sources for this posts include extracts from Chamberlain's own diaries and the article "Munich's Lessons Reconsidered", by Robert J. Beck, in International Security, Vol. 14, No. 2)
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