While the Manchurian invasion was still being investigated, the members of the League met in Geneva at the World Disarmament Conference. The meeting inspired optimism in England, partly because of the presence of representatives of the United States, now the world’s pre-eminent power. However, it soon became clear that several of the participants, including Japan and Italy, had no real appetite for disarmament, while Russia was also reluctant to reduce its military capacity, since it believed itself to be surrounded by hostile neighbours. In any case, the conference soon ran into the difficulties that had bedevilled continental diplomacy since Versailles: Germany wanted parity of armaments with the other great powers, but France would not allow this in the absence of military guarantees from Britain and the United States to defend her borders. Eventually Germany was offered armament parity following a four-year trial period, but the proposal arrived too late: once Hitler was installed as German chancellor at the start of 1933, the time for compromise was over. Eager to consolidate his power and popularity, he rejected the offer as a ‘personal and national insult’, before withdrawing from the conference and the League.
Hitler’s audacious move was greeted with approval in Germany, and dismay everywhere else. The gloom outside Germany intensified when he openly embarked on an extensive rearmament programme. The reaction of the National Government to these events was revealing. Without consulting the League or its old ally France, it decided to secure its own interests by striking a naval agreement with the Nazis, in contravention of the Versailles Treaty. The French, who regarded the Anglo–German naval pact as illegal and treacherous, drew the lesson that Britain would place its own concerns above those of collective security. Hitler, meanwhile, concluded that the Allies were divided, and that the League was weak; he could proceed to revise the Versailles Treaty with impunity.
The British chiefs of staff were disturbed by the League’s inability to deal with events in Manchuria and Germany and urged the National Government to rearm. An additional £40 million should be spent on the army, £90 million on the navy and £15 million on the air force. The civil service, overseen by Sir Warren Fisher, also recommended a review of Britain’s defences, and advised the National Government to bear in mind that Hitler was the author of the expansionist manifesto Mein Kampf. Churchill, who believed he was ‘preparing for war’, also begged the government to rearm, and to immediately form a ministry of defence.
Yet the National Government was reluctant to increase military spending – neither Baldwin nor Chamberlain regarded Hitler as a serious threat. The idea that he was a deranged ideologue who would stop at nothing to extend Germany’s borders was too absurd and appalling to contemplate. The government wanted to believe him when he declared that he merely wished to redress Germany’s complaints concerning the Versailles Treaty, and that he desired ‘good relations between England and Germany’. In Britain’s view, Germany’s grievances were legitimate, and nor would their remedy conflict with Britain’s essential interests – the security of its empire and its supremacy of the seas. And if revoking the Versailles Treaty involved the acquisition of some ‘living space’ for Germany in the east, then perhaps that would be acceptable, since Russian rather than British interests would be threatened. ‘If there is any fighting in Europe to be done,’ remarked Baldwin, ‘I should like to see the Nazis and the Bolsheviks doing it.’
Rearmament was, in any case, neither an economically nor electorally attractive policy. In 1932–3 Chamberlain reduced defence spending to its lowest level in eight years. An increase in expenditure on armaments would entail raising taxes or increasing the public debt, and Chamberlain had vowed not to do either. Meanwhile, the public clung to its belief in collective security and disarmament. The fact that Labour was gaining ground in local and by-elections on an overtly pacifistic platform encouraged the National Government to believe, as the civil service put it, that the ‘public is not yet sufficiently apprised of the reality of our dangers to swallow the financial consequences of the official recommendations’.
Inertia and exhaustion also played their part in the government’s feeble response to the Nazi threat. Baldwin and MacDonald were now beset with the afflictions of illness and age: increasingly deaf and suffering from lumbago, the Tory leader was, as Churchill spitefully put it, ‘amazingly lazy and sterile’, while MacDonald would be ‘far better off in a home’. Even in their prime, MacDonald and Baldwin would have been unable to deal with the mad gangster who now ruled Germany; by the mid-Thirties they lacked the requisite lucidity, energy and decisiveness even to attempt that demanding task. Yet it was above all the prospect of another horrific war that determined MacDonald and Baldwin’s cautious response. Both men were loath to rearm since they believed, as Baldwin put it, that ‘great armaments lead inevitably to war’, and both were convinced that a second world conflict would destroy Western civilization.
Even so, the government eventually acknowledged that the international situation had grown more ominous. Baldwin, who took over as prime minister from MacDonald in 1935, signalled a shift in the administration’s attitude. He committed to maintaining Britain’s naval strength and achieving parity with Germany’s burgeoning air force, yet the civil service was not satisfied by these assurances. It took the unprecedented step of publishing a White Paper, in which it warned the government that given Hitler’s decision to rearm, it could no longer rely on collective security to guarantee peace. Britain had to urgently address its military deficiencies. Baldwin finally admitted the truth of such arguments, and defended the White Paper in the Commons against criticisms from pro-disarmament Labour MPs. Meanwhile, Hitler used its publication as an excuse to reintroduce conscription in Germany, and to announce his plans to expand a German air force that he claimed had already achieved parity with the RAF.
The National Government responded by signing an agreement with France and Italy in April 1935. The ‘Stresa’ declaration committed the three countries to opposing ‘by all practicable means’ any ‘repudiation of treaties which may endanger the peace of Europe’. While the agreement reaffirmed each country’s commitment to the League, it also suggested that the National Government now accepted that collective security could no longer be maintained. In effect, the declaration represented a return to the diplomacy of pre-League and pre-war days, when alliances had aimed to create a balance of power. Britain and France had recruited Mussolini as an ally because they feared he might side with his fellow Fascist Hitler, and thus tip the balance in Germany’s favour.
Despite Baldwin’s conversion to the cause of rearmament and old-style diplomacy, his government still prevaricated when it came to implementing the recommendations of the White Paper. Rearmament was still unpopular among voters, and an election would have to be called soon. Since the beginning of the Thirties, countless pacifist movements had emerged in Britain, while organizations such as the League of Nations and the National Peace Council circulated millions of pamphlets and leaflets every year, promoting the cause of peace. Between 1934 and 1935 the League conducted a survey into British attitudes to collective security that became known as the ‘Peace Ballot’, because it revealed overwhelming support for multilateral disarmament.
In October 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia, ostensibly to redress the Versailles Treaty, which had denied the Italians a share of the Allies’ colonial spoils. Britain saw Abyssinia as a legitimate sphere of Italian economic and colonial influence; it also wished to maintain cordial relations with its recently acquired Mediterranean ally. Yet Abyssinia was a member of the League, and now appealed for assistance; its fellow members condemned Italian aggression and demanded decisive collective action. Britain, however, refused to criticize Italy openly; instead the National Government tried to tempt Mussolini to call off his invasion with the promise of land in British Somalia.