At this stage it is hard to see the problem of Neville Chamberlain adopting a policy of appeasement, after all it was clear that the British public were heavily against a war especially seeing the horrors of the First World War, it also allowed Britain to rearm and recover economically. Chamberlain and Hitler were largely motivated by the same concern for the revision of European status quo, so how did they drift into war? One view of it is that Chamberlain had the right ideas and was working on the right policy, but several years too late. When Chamberlain began putting out his first diplomatic ‘feeler’ to Hitler and sent Lord Halifax to Berlin in November 1937, Hitler had already decided and planned the ‘acquisition’ of Austria and Czechoslovakia and wanted Chamberlain to believe that a settlement agreement between Britain and Germany was still possible and he was prepared to string Chamberlain along for any short-term tactical advantage it could gain. In fact by the time Chamberlain had actually got into power (1937) Hitler was already prepared to take the law of the treaty into his own hands and had indeed done so by marching into the Rhineland (1936). By the time Chamberlain tried to seize the initiative in November 1937 it was too late. At this juncture the blame could be put onto Chamberlain’s predecessors, namely, Baldwin and Macdonald who may have accepted the principles of appeasement but they did absolutely nothing about putting those principles of appeasement. Their foreign policy was lacking any firmness or purpose and was hardly a policy at all. They had neither applied themselves to the cause of treaty revision nor had they stood by the obligations imposed upon them by existing treaties, and it was left to the ill-fated Chamberlain to try and rescue British policy. If Chamberlain had been Prime Minister in 1925 and offered a similar proposal to Stresemann the situation between him and Hitler would have been much more straightforward and dealt with efficiently; furthermore Hitler probably would never have come to power.
However Chamberlain could have easily adapted his policy or scrubbed it all together to put him in a healthier position, yet he never appreciated this which proved to be one of his major weaknesses. His laudable idea for a general European settlement based on the removal of German grievances had become such a fixed idea even before Halifax’s first discouraging mission to Berlin in 1937. After that, Chamberlain refused to tolerate anything that seemed to conflict with or undermine his policy. “Chamberlain knew his own mind and saw it that he had his own way. An autocrat with all the courage of his convictions right or wrong.” This is justifiable, Chamberlain was strong willed and this is regarded by many to be one of his stronger talents yet it is typical of a revisionist’s view; however this can also mean he was unrealistic and unreliable as politician, his self determination that his policy was the right one to choose could of clouded his vision to see his position and Hitler’s advancements. Having set his course, he was very stubborn in his way and would not be swayed. Anyone who endeavoured to point out that Hitler was in fact a bigger threat than previously thought and was not amenable to ‘judicious reform’ was often ignored or at times forced to resign. I would be inclined to agree Chamberlain’s cabinet did, all too conveniently, have assured confidence in his ability with regards to foreign/fiscal policy. In fact, it was only Sir Robert Vansittart, Churchill, Eden and Duff Cooper who stood in Chamberlain’s way. His inflexible resolve made him a formidable politician, but quite unable to respond to changing circumstances or fresh evidence that might have informed or altered his policy.
Of course there are other factors that make appeasement a more complicated issue. Military force play a crucial role in the type of foreign policy a nation follows. The revisionists such as Watt and Charmley argued the sensibleness of Chamberlain’s continuation of appeasement in order to rearm. It seems clear that the poor state of Britain’s military forces had many influences on the policy of appeasement. However, it is unwise to believe the weakness of Britain’s forces alone dictated a conciliatory stance. The relationship between military strength and appeasement is extremely complex. Economic resources and political considerations also played important roles in influencing the pace of the rearmament programme. Britain’s Military weakness goes back to the impact of the First World War which led to the ‘ten-year rule’ (followed until 1932) as peaceful solutions to international conflict became the central aim of British policy. Lloyd George informed British military chiefs in 1919 to plan defence spending on the assumption that no major war would break out within ten years, soon, however “it took on a life of its own, became endowed with its own mystique and aura of infallibility. It had the effect of intensifying inter-service rivalry over the allocation of funds and gave the treasury a trump card whenever defence expenditures were discussed.” It is not surprising then that they extended the Ten Year Rule further onto a daily basis where unless specified there would be no military action of any kind.
The Ten Year Rule has been described as ‘infamous’, ‘notorious’ and ‘calamitous’, but this seems unjust. A shorter initial period might have been wiser, but it was not the introduction of the rule that is open to criticism but more its extension which doesn’t strengthen Chamberlain’s appeasement. After all the consequences of the Rule and especially its extension resulted in a weak economy and little drive for new equipment which the British military desperately needed at the time. It also lead to specialist companies closing or switching to alternative products causing a loss in skilled workers and design teams. Even when new orders eventually started taking place the reduced manufacturing capacity often meant that they could not be fulfilled. Nearly all aspects of the military suffered from The Ten Year rule ranging from shipbuilding, armoured vehicles and precision instruments to research and development in new war technology meaning Britain was rapidly falling behind other countries. In Chamberlain’s defence it was his critic Churchill who extended the Rule. In 1928, taken in the year of the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, Germany was a member of the League of Nations and there was no immediate threat. Such an extension could have postponed the completion of the Singapore naval base, push back decisions regarding new aircraft and prevent the army from preparing for any major emergency. Having said this many Traditionalist and counter-revisionist historians have blamed Chamberlain for such military cut backs. Nor was it just Chamberlain at fault but many supported the Ten Year Rule, Churchill for one defended the rule with many accounts from The Gathering Storm suggesting it was a sensible option.
Nonetheless the Ten Year Rule had a strong effect on Britain’s military force, not coming as a surprise though as in 1913, 30 per cent of British government expenditure went on defence, but in 1933 a mere 10 per cent was set aside for military spending. Britain’s forces were diminished in terms of equipment and strength. The key to British security from invasion was the Royal Navy, which remained one of the most powerful fleets in the world. Yet the world wide commitments of such a fleet were enormous. Battleships, cruisers and submarines were growing old and naval disarmament agreements had led to further decline in British naval power. Two further factors effectively ended the historic supremacy of the Royal Navy, namely the Washington Naval Agreement in 1922 and the London Naval Agreement in 1930. Both disarmament agreements meant that battleships under construction must be scrapped and that no new ones should be brought into service for ten years while the London agreement stated that Britain would maintain parity with the United States in the building of battleships and a margin of five to three in the same class of vessel over Japan (the third largest naval power). This resulted in the Royal Navy reducing its cruisers from seventy to fifty and strict limits were imposed on the tonnage and armaments of submarines and aircraft carriers. Britain’s Navy remained large even after the two navy agreements yet also remained relatively out-of-date.
The army was always a secondary consideration in British strategic planning however the maintenance of a large army was beyond the pale of the British way of life. Only during the First World War did Britain maintain a large standing army which, by the end of the war, was restored to the traditional ‘Cinderella service’. By 1933 it numbered less than 400,000 troops, with over 75 per cent of its fighting strength devoted to the defence of the empire. The other sector of British Military was the Royal Air Force (RAF) which was the newest of the three services (set up in 1918) yet because Germany disarmed in the mid 1920s and thus there was little prospect of war the RAF never really expanded and remained a small organisation primary used for policing far and distant outposts of the empire. In 1919, the British government had refused to assign £21million to create a home-based air force. This lack of urgency meant that by 1932 the RAF was only the fifth largest in the world.
However this was soon to change due to the arrival of Hitler coming to power in 1933 which slowly led to a more realistic approach to the poor condition of Britain’s military forces. In March 1933, Baldwin claimed only two things frightened him – ‘air attack and a rearmed Germany.’ This anxiety grew when Germany withdrew from the world disarmament conference and the League of Nations and the issue of rearmament began to dominate government discussions of the international situation especially after March 1935 when Hitler announced German plans to rearm. It was only by this stage that politicians realised rearmament had to go full steam ahead with the main concentration being on the RAF (although this soon spread to other sections of the military). Recorded to cost £2.1 billion by 1938, of which £900 million was covered by borrowing resulting in Britain being in a very poor position economically leading to questions being asked about the Ten Year Rule and if it hadn’t taken place would Britain have been in such a financial position?
Quite clearly, the poor state of Britain’s armed forces greatly influenced appeasement. It often justified it and helped gain support for it, but did not determine it. The military preparations which Britain embarked upon in 1936 still placed the emphasis on requiring a diplomatic rather than a military solution. Chamberlain did support rearmament but consistently felt it should be kept within the limits of a peacetime economy. He also supported a set of spending priorities which placed financial strength, naval power and air defence above all-out rearmament. Up until Munich, Chamberlain pursued a military strategy which was increasingly defensive and insular. Diplomacy with Germany and Italy took on a far greater priority than preparing for the worst. This was a decision taken by the politicians, not the military, although they often justified it. This was essentially a defence strategy, dependent on conciliatory diplomacy which changed only through the pressure of events. The term ‘Phoney War’ if often used in conjunction with Chamberlain’s military strategy – it was purely defensive – which his decisions as prime minister had largely encouraged and determined. It was a war designed to keep up economic pressure on Germany while building up armaments, which he hoped would never be used, and to ‘take no offensive unless Hitler begins it.’
The quite remarkable attempt by the exceptionally strong-willed and obstinate Neville Chamberlain to prevent war will always be controversial. Few individuals have experienced such a sharp reversal of fortunes in life than Chamberlain did from the triumph of Munich to the humiliations of Prague. Few historical figures have been so retrospectively condemned and so contemporarily praised. Only days before he died on 9 November 1940, Chamberlain confessed, “I regret nothing” However throughout Chamberlain’s policy one factor often overrides all, Parker and McDonough both agree that Chamberlain’s personality was problematic which I strongly support but mainly because of the fact that appeasement had been a spectacular failure as war broke out in 1939. Chamberlain himself admitted as much in his radio broadcast to the nation on September the 3rd announcing Britain’s declaration of war : “everything I have worked for, everything that I have believed in during my public life has crashed into ruins.”
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