Deep-searched with sourcey book
Richard Lamb
CHAMBERLAIN AND APPEASEMENT: BRITISH POLICY AND THE COMING OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR by IL A. C. Parker Macmillan, £.35, £11.99, pp. 388 Alastair Parker, an Oxford history don, writes with clarity, and skilfully uses both the official archives and Chamber- lain's revealing letters to his sisters. Soon after Harold Wilson reduced the 50-year rule to 30 for the release of official docu- ments in the Public Record Office, Parker wrote a fascinating article in the English Historical Review showing that the Foreign Office documents entirely contradicted the statement Anthony Eden made in his memoirs that he knew nothing about the
Hoare-Laval Pact until Vansittart came back to London with the signed Agree- ment. Instead, the Foreign Office minutes show that Eden had read the proposals beforehand and had minuted this Agree- ment in principle. This article influenced me and some other historians to write from then on as far as possible from the official archives.
In this authoritative and concise book Parker does not digress to reiterate this exposure of Eden's inaccuracy. However, he castigates Eden as an appeaser of Ger- many, writing that 'Chamberlain was an optimistic appeaser; Eden an appeaser too, but more pessimistic.'
However Eden would have been pleased that Parker suggests that if France and Britain had insisted on strong sanctions against Italy during the Abyssinian war 'they might have been able to recruit a humbled Italy into a partnership against Germany', with Mussolini 'making a grace- ful retreat'. This is highly controversial, but this view was repeated by Eden until the end of his life, and was also widely held by enthusiastic Labour and Liberal supporters of the League of Nations at the time. More probably a rigid oil sanction would have resulted in a 'mad dog' act of war by Mus- solini in the Mediterranean. Still it is impossible to predict the reaction of so temperamental a dictator, and it is conceiv- able that Mussolini might have opted for
peace if he had been faced with an acute shortage of oil, and the face-saver of gener- ous peace terms on the line of the Hoare- Laval Pact which had included cession to Italy of much of Haile Selassie's empire, plus economic control over the rest.
Parker proves from the official docu- ments that Chamberlain got rid of Eden as Foreign Secretary in 1938 only because Eden refused to make overtures to Mussolini, and that Eden's resignation had nothing to do with Chamberlain's appease- ment of Hitler. The often repeated canard that Eden resigned because of Chamber- lain's soft line towards Germany originated from Winston Churchill who, being out of office at the time, had no idea of what was going on behind the scenes.
The attempt by Dr Channley to rehabili- tate Chamberlain carries no weight with Parker, who describes Chamberlain as excessively vain and susceptible to flattery, and states that part of the tragedy was that Hitler exploited this latter weakness.
The only significant omission I can find is the Reparations Conference at Lausanne in 1932. Here Chamberlain as Chancellor of the Exchequer backed the French demand for a final slice of reparations at a moment when Germany was down and out ecomonically with the democratic political parties discredited and the Nazis on the up and up. At Nuremburg the then German Chancellor, von Papen, described how on his return to Germany he was pelted with rotten eggs because he had agreed to more reparations, while Goering boasted that under the Nazis Germany would not pay another penny. Parker underestimates the effect of reparations on the fatal 1933 Ger- man General Election which swept the Nazis into power. After taking a hard line against democratic Germany and thus paving the way for the Nazi electoral suc- cesses, Chamberlain, once Prime Minister, leant over backwards to appease Hitler.
Although Baldwin and Eden must take the chief blame for Britain's refusal to sup- port France when they wanted to use force to throw the Germans out of the Rhineland after they illegally remilitarised it in March 1936, Chamberlain supported them one hundred per cent in their cow- ardly policy of inertia which threw away our last chance to stop Hitler dead in his tracks.
When Chamberlain became Prime Minister, relations with France had been soured by the disastrous Anglo-German Naval Agreement concluded by John Simon, the worst Foreign Secretary ever, without consultation with France. This allowed Germany to rearm in breach of Versailles and Locarno. Chamberlain was shocked because the French made the Franco/Soviet Pact on the rebound. Hence, instead of trying to restrain Hitler by a strong military alliance with France, Chamberlain tried to appease him by colonial concessions and a free hand for Germany in the east.
The view is often expressed that Cham- berlain bought a year at Munich, and that this year was well spent because British and French military strength caught up with Germany. It is unsustainable. Even after Hitler had torn up the Munich Agreement by occupying Prague and the rump of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain still claimed Munich was a victory. It is difficult to read this book without being convinced that Chamberlain ought to have resigned after Prague in March 1938.
Instead, Chamberlain made a panic agreement to defend Poland although he knew it was impossible for Britain or France to send military aid. Reluctantly he agreed to staff talks with the Soviet Union, although he thought such collaboration undesirable and unnecessary'. Accordingly, at the same time he made secret overtures to Hitler while Europe tottered on the brink of war. Stalin learnt of this and, dis- gusted with such double dealing, made a non-aggression pact with Germany. Even after Poland had been invaded, Chamber- lain tried to persuade Mussolini to call another peace conference to rewrite Ver- sailles. Finally he had to be dragged into war against his will because his cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary party would no longer support him. Here is a sad indictment of British politicians in the Thirties: almost no one apart from Churchill emerges with credit.
Richard Lamb's The Drift to War 1922- 1939 was published in paperback by Blooms- bury last year.
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