1939 CABINET PAPERS

Chamberlain in cloud cuckoo land

ROBERT BLAKE

A year ago I was allowed by the Public Record Office to examine on behalf of the

SPECTATOR the cabinet papers for 1938

about to be released under the Thirty Year Rule. I commented then on the helpful- ness of the officials concerned and on the admirable way in which the papers were arranged and indexed. Acting in the same capacity over the 1939 papers I will merely observe that the quality of assistance is as high as ever.

It was impossible in the time at my disposal to examine, even superficially, all the new material. I confined myself to the events leading up to the war, rather than the 'phoney war' itself, although there is clearly much valuable material in the files of the War Cabinet and its cam- mittqes. But it is 3 September 1939, not 31 December, which marks the end of an era, and it is the first eight months of this disastrous year which contain the most con- troversial decisions. Obviously there is a limit to the sort of information one could hope to find. The really difficult historical problems surrounding the origins of the war relate to Hitler's intentions and to the motives behind Russian foreign policy: it is not likely that the papers of bewildered contemporary British statesmen will throw much light there. Nor can one even expect startling revelations about British motives and objectives, if only because of the mas- sive publication during the last thirty years of British diplomatic documents, not to mention the memoirs and biographies of so many leading figures in Chamberlain's cabinet. Nevertheless the minutes of the Cabinet and its committees do possess for some purposes an authority not quite equal- led by any other source. Certainly no his- torian can neglect them.

The year opened by Chamberlain re- porting, not without complacency, his and Halifax's good reception in Italy on their visit in December. This appears in retro- spect to have been a largely meaningless exercise. Any relief at the apparent friendli- ness of one of the Dictators soon evaporated when Halifax informed his colleagues that his secret sources indicated the imminence of a German attack on the west beginning with a coup de main against Holland. He felt, so he told the Foreign Affairs. Com- mittee of the Cabinet 'that they were all moving in a mental atmosphere much like the atmosphere with which a child might be surrounded, in which all things were both possible and impossible and where there were no rational guiding rules'. He evi- dently liked this not very helpful simile, for he repeated it—and it was again duly minuted—at the Cabinet two days later. The implications of the anticipated German action were referred to the Chiefs of Staff who summed up their reaction: 'We have as we see it no choice but to regard a Ger- man invasion of Holland as a direct chal- lenge to our security.'

The repercussions of this wholly false alarm—for such it turrtd out to be— were important. Commenting a year ago on the 1938 papers I noted the remarkable lack of rapport between the French and British Chiefs of Staff. Evidently the Munich crisis, despite promises of closer cooperation, had made little difference. Halifax observed that `up to the present the staff conversations had pursued a somewhat desultory course at the attaché level'. All this abruptly changed. The Government agreed to em- bark at once on 'specific joint plans [which] would constitute a far more binding com- mitment that has hitherto been contem- plated'. It was agreed that if the French asked for reciprocity in the event of a German attack on Switzerland, Britain should give it. The Cabinet also agreed to concert plans on the assumption of war with Italy as well. Neville Chamberlain, normally so sensitive to Italian feelings, brushed aside the argument that a leakage might harm Anglo-Italian relations. The Italians would have `no reasonable ground for complaint . . . and indeed might be surprised to learn that such a concerting of plans had not already taken place between France and ourselves'. In retrospect one can but echo that sentiment.

From the end of January, therefore, joint Anglo-French plans for a possible war with Germany were being made. This seems to confirm Professor Medlicott's verdict on the next important event in European politics, Hitler's final extinction on 15 March of the moribund Czechoslovak state. 'Probably nothing is further from the truth than that Chamberlain lost his innocence, his in- genuous faith in Hitler's word overnight.' This may well be correct, for Chamberlain's credulity can easily be exaggerated. Never- theless within seventy-two hours a genuine change of attitude did take place. At first the Prime Minister played the crisis down. At the meeting of the Cabinet on 15 March at eleven a.m. he 'said that he thought that the fundamental fact was that the State whose frontiers we had undertaken to guarantee against unprovoked aggression had now completely broken un'. Halifax supported him with further subtle jesuitical arguments which appear to have been too much even for Chamberlain who thought that his own was good enough and 'it would perhaps be undesirable to supplement it with the argument put forward by the Foreign Secretary'.

But on 17 March at Birmingham the Prime Minister uttered a warning in tones which he had never used to Hitler before. and at the Cabinet next day he made an evidently prepared speech in which he an- nounced a clear change of policy. Excusing his immediate reaction on grounds of im- perfect information and lack of time for consideration he said that 'he had now come to the conclusion that Herr Hitler's attitude made it impossible to continue negotiations on the old basis with the Nazi regime'. This did not preclude 'negotiations with the German people.' But `no reliance could be placed on any of the assurances given by the Nazi leaders'. If Hitler seized Roumania, which. owing to what now seems to have been another false alarm, was re- garded as the next country on his list, the issue would be a clear acceptance of Chamberlain's challenge at Birmingham and a declaration of intent to dominate Europe. It could not be dismissed merely as a move to improve Germany's strategic position.

The ensuing actions of the British government—the abortive search for a four power declaration (the UK. USSR. France and Poland) against Hitler. which was vetoed by Poland, the Polish guarantee of 31 March (based on another false alarm) the guarantees of Roumania and Greece in Anril—suggest that appeasement really was dead. Nevertheless there have been those who argue that Neville Chamberlain still hankered after the old policy. If so he was not prepared to advocate it to the Cabinet. On 24 May Malcolm MacDonald, Domi- nions Secretary, suggested as a result of conversations with the Dominion High Commissioners that, if Britain could re- inforce her position by an agreement with Russia. there might be a 'renewal of the search for appeasement' and that we could `make an approach from strength'. The Prime Minister said that while he did not reject this plan 'he thought it was premature to adopt it. It was necessary not merely that we should be strong but that others should realise the fact. Further, public opinion was not ready for such a move at this juncture.'

The delay between Chamberlain's ap- parent acceptance of the extinction of Czechoslovakia on 15 March and his much stronger reaction on 17 March has led to a characteristically implausible Soviet in- terpretation which can now finally be dis- missed. The argument is that Britain and France planned to divert Hitler into a war against Russia. On this theory Chamberlain's delayed reaction is explained by uncertainty over the fate of Ruthenia. the easternmost province of Czechoslovakia, bordering on Russia. If the Germans occupied it. this would be a clear sign that they intended to use it as a base for an attack on the USSR but, if. as in fact occurred, they made no effort to resist a Hungarian occupation of the province, then the prospect of a Ger- man-Russian war would at once seem less hopeful in western eyes. The trouble about this sophisticated explanation is that the Cabinet on 15 March assumed from the start that the Hungarians would take Ruthenia. Indeed the Minister for War, Hore-Belisha. went so far as to say that he thought this would be a good thing. The delay was due to slow reflexes, not subtle calculations.

It is worth noticing that neither during the crisis of the Ides of March nor there-

after is there the slightest evidence that Chamberlain and his colleagues thought in terms of pushing Hitler into war with Russia. Not that there would have been any- thing at all morally discreditable if they had. Except from the point of view of naive left wing idealists the two regimes were equally detestable. There would have been much to be said, had it been feasible, for embroiling them in a war of mutual ex- haustion while Britain and France built up their armaments to cope with whichever emerged as victor. A similar situation exists today in the rivalry between Russia and China. No doubt one should not hope for actual war between them, if only because of the danger that atomic weapons might be used, but it must be to the advantage of the west that the two barbaric powers which constitute the greatest threat to civil- ised liberal values should be on the worst possible terms with each other. What little that can be done by western diplomacy, without being counter-productive, to per- petuate this happy state of affairs deserves praise, not censure.

However this may be, the British govern- ment did not think in such terms in 1939. The Anglo-Polish guarantee was intended to stop the Drang nach Osten', which Halifax regarded the Czech coup as proof of being Hitler's objective. Some writers have ex- pressed surprise that Britain threw the virtuous democratic Czechs to the wolves at Munich and yet only six months later guaranteed the security of the undemocratic and unvirtuous Poles by an unprecedented alliance with an eastern power. After all Danzig was the most likely issue to cause a Polish-German war, and was not Hitler's case there just as good as his case over the Sudeten Germans? The answer is that countries do not go to war to preserve virtue and democracy, whatever they may say after the war has begun. They go to war for aggrandisement or for national survival. After the Ides of March the British no longer believed that Hitler had limited aims confined to the redress of legitimate grievances. He now had to be told 'this far and no further', The merits of Danzig were irrelevant.

The Cabinet was well aware that the decision of war or peace would now be placed outside their control and would largely turn on the Polish view of Danzig. When it was suggested in the Cabinet on 30 March that the proposed declaration 'might place us too much in the hands of the Polish government . -. the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said he came back to the point that the ultimate test was action which the Polish government re- garded as a threat to their own indepen- dence. The Prime Minister agreed . . If the Poles regarded the Danzig issue as constituting a threat to their independence and were prepared to resist by force, then we should have to come to their help.'

No one, therefore, can say that the Cabinet did not know what they were doing or that the casus Belli had not been foreseen. The great question was how they proposed to help Poland. The logic of the Anglo-Polish guarantee pointed to the urgent quest for an alliance with Russia, the only potential foe of Germany capable of giving such help. The case fof a grand alliance was pressed by Churchill. Lloyd George and Attlee from outside and by Sir Samuel Hoare from inside the Cabinet. De• ploring the collapse of the Four Power Declaration owing to the Polish veto, Hoare on 27 March described Russia as 'the greatest deterrent in the East against Ger-, man aggression. All experience showed that Russia was undefeatable. The Minister of Coordination of Defence took the same view. Russia was a greater deterrent to Germany than Poland, though Lord Chat- field oddly added in the same breath that Poland was 'probably the best of potential eastern allies'. Yet the Russian alliance never came off and Hitler was allowed to strike down his victims one by one at the time of his choice. Why?

The British Cabinet papers can only give a partial answer. No one knows what con- siderations actuated the Russians, nor will anyone know in the foreseeable future. Whether a serious attempt at securing a Russian alliance would have succeeded must remain an enigma. What is quite certain is that no such attempt was made, and a perusal of these papers removes any linger- ing doubts about the reason. The essential point is that the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and nearly all their colleagues re- garded Poland not merely as a potential victim — possibly a willing one — of Hitler's expansionist policy but as an ally with a real, if not very great, military value of her own; and in any case a sounder, more reliable ally than Russia. It may seem ex- traordinary in the light of later events that this view could have been taken: Poland was to collapse like a house of cards; Russia, despite gigantic blunders and enormous casualties, was in the end to prove Hitler's undoing. But the fact remains that this was the British assessment, supported by all the professional advice available.

On 27 March in answer to Hoare, Halifax observed: 'If we had to make a choice between Poland and Soviet Russia it seemed clear that Poland would give the better value.' Moreover it was obvious that the Poles distrusted the Russians just as much as they distrusted the Germans. Any agree- ment with Russia would be strongly resisted by them. But was it necessary to bother about the Poles at all? If the British had really wanted an alliance with Russia and correctly estimated military realities, the sentiments of the Polish government could have been disregarded. But the truth was that they had no confidence at all in Russia and regarded her as only a minor, if useful, force on their side. At the same meeting Halifax reported an appreciation of the Russian army by the British Ambassador in Moscow. It was, he said, greatly weakened by recent purges and had little offensive value, though good defensive qualities. Re- ports on Russian air strength were uniformly discouraging. As for Poland, although there was no recent information, it was believed that her fifty divisions 'might be expected to make a useful contribution'.

It would be wrong to suppose that the military experts hoped for very much from Poland. Lord Chatfield thought she would be over-run in two or three months, but that some of her 230 bombers would get through to Berlin and that a large German army of occupation would be needed. But opinion of Russian capacity was even lower. This ex- plains the course of negotiations. They were not the product of 'ineptitude. Rather they were a sop to public opinion, necessary perhaps but embarrassing in terms of realpolitik. Franco, now victorious in Spain, would disapprove and could make trouble for us in the Mediterranean. Roumania and Finland would be unhappy. So would South America. The Vatican regarded Moscow as even more of a citadel of Anti-Christ than Berlin. Given these assumptions, no wonder that we find Halifax on 10 May anxious to postpone staff talks with Russia for 'as long as possible'. No wonder that on 26 July 'there was general agreement that our [military] representatives should be instruc- ted to proceed very slowly, with conversa- tions until a political pact had been con- cluded', although the Russians obviously regarded the sincerity of the former as a precondition of the latter. No wonder that the military mission proceeded by slow boat to Russia. No wonder too that the Nazi- Soviet Pact, though a shock, had to Hitler's surprise no effect on British readiness to implement the Polish guarantee: the British government never reckoned on Russia anyway.

What does provoke wonder is the sheer magnitude of military miscalculation. How could the British experts have been living in this cloud cuckoo land? Was Halifax right? Was it really a world in which all things were possible and impossible and there were no rational guiding rules? One can only say that there should have been, and that the gravest criticism of Chamber-, lain's Cabinet was the lack of a minister to probe the reports of the experts and cross.,

examine the Chiefs of Staff. Perhaps some one some day will write a critical account of the strategic calculations of the various

powers, their correctness or otherwise, and the extent to which they affected political decisions. It is a neglected field and a study of it could make a fascinating if infinitely depressing book!