‘No man has ever left in such a blaze of affection,’ commented Harold Nicolson in his diary. Baldwin had presented himself as a Victorian paterfamilias to the nation – earnest, benevolent and stern. Unfortunately, however, he was forced to deal with post-Victorian problems – including economic depression and Hitler – that were beyond his capabilities. Because he viewed England as an imperial power, he had taken little interest in the continental affairs that would determine the destiny of his country. On retiring, Baldwin was made an earl for ‘services to the country’, another emblem of the marriage of convenience between the English plutocracy and the aristocracy.
The man to whom Baldwin passed the chalice of the premiership received it eagerly, showing no concern that it might contain poison. Neville Chamberlain had been in Baldwin’s shadow since the Twenties; his family had been waiting for Britain’s highest office for almost forty years. Neville’s father, Joseph, had been the most influential politician of his day, yet had never managed to climb to the summit in an age when aristocrats still dominated politics. Neville’s stepbrother Austen had led the Conservative party but not the country – an anomaly in an era of Tory hegemony.
Neville Chamberlain had a fair domestic record. He had been a diligent health minister and a conscientious, if unimaginative, chancellor. He would enhance his reputation during his time as prime minister by passing the Factories Act, the Coal Act, the Holidays with Pay Act and a Housing Act, all of which improved workingclass conditions without costing the Exchequer, or offending Tory sensibilities, too much. Only a skilful and determined politician, with a vast capacity for work and for mastering microscopic technical detail, could have formulated and passed such legislation. Chamberlain was also a consummate manager of all departments of government, who knew in detail what each of his ministers was doing. The contrast with his indolent predecessor could not have been more marked. Where Baldwin looked like John Bull in slippers, Chamberlain, as one contemporary put it, ‘was corvine, with piercing eyes and a curving beak of a nose’.
Yet along with his efficiency, earnestness and singlemindedness, Chamberlain had several character flaws that would come to impede him. He was shy and oversensitive; his introversion and self-reliance made him obstinate, arrogant and tactless. This charmless man was as rigid as the black umbrella he seemed to carry with him everywhere. Entirely deficient in imagination, emotion and intuition, he put his faith in common sense, rational self-interest and fair play. Since he was guided by these values and motivations, he assumed the same of everyone else. His personality represented the narrow, puritanical and thrifty side of the English mercantile, Nonconformist character. It had been revealed during the abdication crisis, when he had urged the king to make his mind up over the marriage before the end of 1936, lest his shilly-shallying ‘hurt the Christmas trade’.
Chamberlain wanted to deal with continental matters quickly, so that he could concentrate on more important domestic and imperial issues. Like his father and his mentor Baldwin, he saw his country within the global context of an empire of ‘white dominions’ rather than as a European power. Unlike Baldwin, however, Chamberlain had a hubristic belief in his capacity to settle all difficulties and disputes through personal negotiation. One consequence of this attitude was that he adopted a far more active approach to European diplomacy; another was that he ignored the Foreign Office and Churchill when they warned him about Hitler’s untrustworthiness and territorial ambitions. Chamberlain preferred to rely instead on his own judgement and on the advice of an inner circle – all of them members of the so-called ‘old gang’ of experienced but unimaginative politicians. Churchill was disturbed by the ‘marked dearth of men of ability’ surrounding Chamberlain. Perhaps only an ageing, insular empire, and an archaic political system, could have produced such leaders. ‘These men’, Mussolini remarked, ‘are the tired sons of a long line of rich forefathers and they will lose their empire.’
As Lloyd George had once said, ‘Neville has a retail mind in a wholesale business’, and it was this meticulous ‘retail mind’ that now attempted to deal with the gangster and gambler in charge of Germany. Chamberlain’s strategy was the apparently reasonable and in some respects well-intentioned policy of appeasement, first invoked by Eden after Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland. Appeasement involved addressing Hitler’s grievances regarding the ‘flawed’ Versailles Treaty, and permitting the extension of Germany’s influence in Eastern Europe. Germany might be permitted to absorb the German populations who lived in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Austria, all of whom ‘merited’ self-determination. If any of these developments sparked a regrettable war, it need not involve Britain. In terms of military policy, Britain would continue to rearm, while its diplomatic strategy would be to court Mussolini, in a bid to weaken the Rome–Berlin axis.
Chamberlain and his inner circle believed that the restoration of Germany’s power and status would satisfy Hitler and encourage him to ‘settle down’. Appeasement would be promoted through direct negotiation with the German dictator; conferences were suitable in some circumstances, but there was nothing better than face-to-face discussion for resolving difficult issues. In November 1937, Chamberlain sent his trusted cabinet colleague Viscount Halifax to inform Hitler that Britain was sympathetic to German territorial claims to Austria, Danzig and Czechoslovakia. At the same time the prime minister opened up a private line of communication with Mussolini: ‘an hour or two tête-à-tête with Musso,’ he mused, ‘might be extraordinarily valuable’.
The motivations of the appeasers, and the relative merits of their policy, have been endlessly debated. Appeasement was above all else inspired by the desire to avoid another bloody and costly conflict, and the English press amplified the message. In the late Thirties, the appalling consequences of a second world conflict were endlessly discussed, with visions of the coming apocalypse vividly depicted by the wireless and the newspapers. England’s cities would be reduced to rubble; its future generations would live amidst ruins. Since the English population was overwhelmingly anti-war, appeasement was an eloquent expression of its mood.
Yet appeasement also revealed a reluctance on Britain’s part to attend to its European responsibilities, as well as an unwillingness to condemn the Nazis, either on ideological or moral grounds. Continental issues often appeared as a distraction to Britain. With its colonies and dominions averse to participating in another conflict, the country sought continental peace at any cost. Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, as well as his assassination of political opponents, had become common knowledge, yet reports of Nazi brutality did not concern the men who formulated Britain’s foreign policy. Some Conservatives admired the way Hitler had ‘restored’ his country’s economy, while the English upper classes flocked to the extravagant parties laid on at the German embassy. George VI spoke for the ruling class when he described Nazi Germany as preferable to the ‘Bolshevik’ alternative.
Some historians see appeasement as part of Chamberlain’s subtle plan to play for time and to address the deficiencies in Britain’s defences. Rearmament was intensified between 1937 and 1939, while all departments of government were prepared for another war. Yet Chamberlain’s rearmament effort was too little and too late. The £1,500 million he earmarked for defence expenditure in 1937 fell short of the £1,884 million the various defence departments saw as essential. In any case, Chamberlain had supervised the economy since 1931 and could have spent more on defence before 1937.