be persuaded, or if Germany marched, the fat was in the fire anyway; if the Poles could
be persuaded to yield, the guarantee was so worded that Britain could not act under it to
prevent such yielding. This was to block any possibility that British public opinion might
refuse to accept a Polish Munich. That this line of thought was not far distant from
British government circles is indicated by a Reuters news dispatch released on the same
day that Chamberlain gave the guarantee to Poland. This dispatch indicated that, under
cover of the guarantee, Britain would put pressure on Poland to make substantial
concessions to Hitler through negotiations. According to Hugh Dalton, Labour M.P.,
speaking in Commons on 3 April, this dispatch was inspired by the government and was
issued through either the Foreign Office, Sir Horace Wilson, John Simon, or Samuel
Hoare. Three of these four were of the Milner Group, the fourth being the personal agent
of Chamberlain. Dalton's charge was not denied by any government spokesman, Hoare
contenting himself with a request to Dalton "to justify that statement." Another M.P. of
Churchill's group suggested that Geoffrey Dawson was the source, but Dalton rejected
this.
It is quite clear that neither the Chamberlain group nor the Milner Group wanted an
alliance with the Soviet Union to stop Hitler in 1939, and that the negotiations were not
sincere or vigorously pursued. The Milner Group was not so opposed to such an
agreement as the Chamberlain group. Both were committed to the four-power pact. In the
case of the Chamberlain group, this pact could easily have developed into an anti-Russian
alliance, but in the case of the Milner Group it was regarded merely as a link between the
Oceanic Bloc and a Germanic Mitteleuropa. Both groups hated and despised the Soviet
Union, but the Milner Group did not fear it as the Chamberlain group did. This fear was
based on the Marxist threat to the British economic system, and the Milner Croup was not
wedded nearly as closely to that system as Chamberlain and his friends. The Toynbee-
Milner tradition, however weak it had become by 1939, was enough to prevent the two
groups from seeing eye to eye on this issue.
The efforts of the Chamberlain group to continue the policy of appeasement by
making economic and other concessions to Germany and their efforts to get Hitler
to agree to a four-power pact form one of the most shameful episodes in the history
of recent British diplomacy. These negotiations were chiefly conducted through Sir
Horace Wilson and consisted chiefly of offers of colonial bribes and other concessions to
Germany. These offers were either rejected or ignored by the Nazis.
One of these offers revolved around a semi-official economic agreement under
which British and German industrialists would form cartel agreements in all fields
to fix prices of their products and divide up the world's market. The Milner Group
apparently objected to this on the grounds that it was aimed, or could be aimed, at
the United States. Nevertheless, the agreements continued; a master agreement,
negotiated at Dusseldorf between representatives of British and German industry, was
signed in London on 16 March 1939. A British government mission to Berlin to help
Germany exploit the newly acquired areas of eastern Europe was postponed the same day
because of the strength of public feeling against Germany. As soon as this had died
down, secret efforts were made through R. S. Hudson, secretary to the Department of
Overseas Trade, to negotiate with Helmuth Wholthat, Reich Commissioner for the Four
Year Plan, who was in London to negotiate an international whaling agreement. Although
Wholthat had no powers, he listened to Hudson and later to Sir Horace Wilson, but
refused to discuss the matter with Chamberlain. Wilson offered: (1) a nonaggression pact
with Germany; (2) a delimitation of spheres among the Great Powers; (3) colonial
concessions in Africa along the lines previously mentioned; (4) an economic agreement.
These conversations, reported to Berlin by Ambassador Dirksen in a dispatch of 21 July
1939, would have involved giving Germany a free hand in eastern Europe and bringing
her into collision with Russia. One sentence of Dirksen's says: "Sir Horace Wilson
definitely told Herr Wohlthat that the conclusion of a non-aggression pact would enable
Britain to rid herself of her commitments vis-a-vis Poland." In another report, three days
later, Dirksen said: "Public opinion is so inflamed, and the warmongers and intriguers are
so much in the ascendancy, that if these plans of negotiations with Germany were to
become public they would immediately be torpedoed by Churchill and other incendiaries
with the cry 'No second Munich!'"
The truth of this statement was seen when news of the Hudson-Wohlthat
conversations did leak out and resulted in a violent controversy in the House of
Commons, in which the Speaker of the House repeatedly broke off the debate to protect
the government. According to Press Adviser Hesse in the German Embassy in London,
the leak was made by the French Embassy to force a break in the negotiations. The
negotiations, however, were already bogging down because of the refusal of the Germans
to become very interested in them. Hitler and Ribbentrop by this time despised the British
so thoroughly that they paid no attention to them at all, and the German Ambassador in
London found it impossible to reach Ribbentrop, his official superior, either by dispatch
or personally. Chamberlain, however, in his eagerness to make economic concessions to
Germany, gave to Hitler £6 million in Czechoslovak gold in the Bank of England, and
kept Lord Runciman busy training to be chief economic negotiator in the great agreement
which he envisaged. On 29 July 1939, Kordt, the German charge d'affaires in London,
had a long talk with Charles Roden Buxton, brother of the Labour Peer Lord Noel-
Buxton, about the terms of this agreement, which was to be patterned on the agreement of
1907 between Britain and Russia. Buxton insisted that his visit was quite unofficial, but
Kordt was inclined to believe that his visit was a feeler from the Chamberlain group. In
view of the close parallel between Buxton's views and Chamberlain's, this seems very
likely. This was corroborated when Sir Horace Wilson repeated these views in a highly
secret conversation with Dirksen at Wilson's home from 4 to 6 p.m. on 3 August 1939.
Dirksen's minute of the same day shows that Wilson's aims had not changed. He wanted a
four-power pact, a free hand for Germany in eastern Europe, a colonial agreement, an
economic agreement, etc. The memorandum reads, in part: "After recapitulating his
conversation with Wohlthat, Sir Horace Wilson expatiated at length on the great risk
Chamberlain would incur by starting confidential negotiations with the German
Government. If anything about them were to leak out there would be a grand scandal, and
Chamberlain would probably be forced to resign." Dirksen did not see how any binding
agreement could be reached under conditions such as this; "for example, owing to
Hudson's indiscretion, another visit of Herr Wohlthat to London was out of the question."
To this, Wilson suggested that"the two emissaries could meet in Switzerland or
elsewhere." The political portions of this conversation were largely repeated in an
interview that Dirksen had with Lord Halifax on 9 August 1939.(18)