Unitarians

"During these long violent months of war we had come closer together than at any time in our twenty years of friendly relationship amid the ups and downs of politics. I greatly admired his fortitude and firmness of spirit. I felt when I served under him that he would never give in: and I knew when our positions were reversed that I could count upon the aid of a loyal and unflinching comrade."

"It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man. But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused? They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour."

"On May 28, 1937, after King George VI had been crowned, Mr. Baldwin retired. His long public services were suitably rewarded by an earldom and the Garter. He laid down the wide authority he had gathered and carefully maintained, but had used as little as possible. He departed in a glow of public gratitude and esteem. There was no doubt who his successor should be. Mr. Neville Chamberlain had, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, not only done the main work of the Government for five years past, but was the ablest and most forceful Minister, with high abilities and an historic name. I had described him a year earlier at Birmingham in Shakespeare's words as the "pack-horse in our great affairs," and he had accepted this description as compliment. I had no expectation that he would wish to work with me; nor would he have been wise to do so at the time. His ideals were far different from mine on the treatment of the dominant issues of the day. BUt I welcomed the accession to power of a live, competent, executive figure. While still Chancellor of the Exchequer he had involved himself in a fiscal proposal for a small-scale national defence contribution which had been ill-received by the Conservative Party and was, of course, criticised by the Opposition. I was able, in the first days of his Premiership, to make a speech upon this subject which helped him to withdraw, without any loss of dignity, from a position which had become untenable. Our relations contnued to be cool, easy and polite both in public and in private."

"Neville Chamberlain, on the other hand, was alert, businesslike, opinionated, and self-confident in a very high degree. Unlike Baldwin, he conceived himsef to be able to comprehend the whole field of Europe, and indeed the world. Instead of a vague but none the less deep-seated intuition, we had now a narrow, sharp-edged efficiency within the limits of the policy in which he believed. Both as Chancellor of the Exchequer and as Prime Minister, he kept the tightest and most rigid control upon military expenditure. He was throughout this period the masterful opponent of all emergency measures. He had formed decided judgments about all the political figures of the day, both at home and abroad, and felt himself capable of dealing with them. His all-pervading hope was to go down to history as the Great Peacemaker; and for this he was prepared to strive continually in the teeth of facts, and face great risks for himself and his country. Unhappily, he ran into tides the force of which he could not measure, and met hurricanes from which he did not flinch, but with which he could not cope. In these closing years before the war, I should have found it easier to work with Baldwin, as I knew him, than with Chamberlain; but neither of them had any wish to work with me except in the last resort."

"[In September 1938] I asked Chamberlain straight out, did he really believe that Hitler wanted a peaceful settlement? The Prime Minister paused before replying and then said reflectively: "If we accept the challenge now it means war. If we delay a decision something might happen. Hitler may die." Morrison, Dalton, and I looked at one another but said nothing."

"This was one of the frankest interviews I had attended, but my experience of Chamberlain had shown him to be far more forthcoming in private conversation than most of his predecessors. He was not liked by my colleagues, and my own first impressions were similar to theirs, with the major difference that I was considerably impressed by the incisiveness of his mind and the clarity of his speech. He always knew his case, but I felt that he showed little generosity in his attitude to anyone whom he felt was a political opponent. He was an adept at veiled sarcasm when he replied to trade union people ... I remember one occasion when he was tearing up some argument which we had presented, Ben Tillett interposing mildly: "Don't be sarcastic. You can put your case without that." Chamberlain seemed rather taken aback, and as far as I could judge, he tried to follow Ben's advice. He appeared at that time to be utterly devoid of human sentiment. Like Poo Bah in the Mikado, he seemed to have been born sneering."

"I can never erase from my mind the thought of his struggle, in the later days of his life, against the depression resulting from his political misfortunes and knowing that he was suffering from an incurable illness. Knowing also that, despite his long public service, few of those who cheered him so loudly on his return from Munich really cared what happened to him."

"The Prime Minister then told us the story of his visit to Bechtesgaden. Looking back upon what he said, the curious thing seems to me now to have been that he recounted his experiences with some satisfaction. Although he said that at first sight Hitler struck him as "the commonest dog" he had ever seen, without one sign of distinction, nevertheless he was obviously pleased at the reports he had subsequently received of the good impression that he himself had made. He told us with obvious satisfaction how Hitler had said to someone that he had felt that he, Chamberlain, was "a man." But the bare facts of the interview were frightful... After ranting and raving at him, Hitler had talked about self-determination and asked the Prime Minister whether he accepted the principle. The Prime Minister had replied that he must consult his colleagues. From the beginning to end Hitler had not shown the slightest sign of yielding on a single point. The Prime Minister seemed to expect us all to accept that principle without further discussion because time was getting on."

"Personally I believe that Hitler has cast a spell over Neville. After all, Hitler's achievement is not due to his intellectual attainments nor to his oratorical powers, but to the extraordinary influence which he seems able to exercise over his fellow-creatures. I believe that Neville is under that influence at the present time. "It all depends," he said, "on whether we can trust Hitler." "Trust him for what?" I asked. "He has got everything he wants for the present and he has given no promises for the future." Neville also said that he had been told, and he believed, that he himself had made a very favourable impression on Hitler, and that he believed he might be able to exercise a useful influence over him."

"At 8 p.m. we listened to the Prime Minister's broadcast... It was a most depressing uterrance. There was no mention of France in it or a word of sympathy for Czecho-Slovakia. The only sympathy expressed was for Hitler, whose feeling about the Sudetens the Prime Minister said that he could well understand, and he never said a word about the mobilisation of the Fleet. I was furious. Winston rang me up. He was also most indignant and said that the tone of the speech showed plainly that we're preparing to scuttle."

"Neville Chamberlain was determined to go to extreme lengths in the cause of peace ... That was why he flew to Germany ... I may recall that after thirty years in Parliament I never saw a House of Commons so unanimous in its apparent goodwill to a national leader and never before did Socialist Members of Parliament open their hearts so fully to a traditional opponent such as myself. At least five of them told me spontaneously how fine they thought Chamberlain's action, and one of them, a famous extremist from the North, rushed up to me with tears streaming down his cheeks, put his hand on my shoulder and exclaimed, "Isn't it marvellous how God has found a man to save us from all the misery of war?""

"Very shortly after his return from Munich Neville Chamberlain asked me to lunch quietly at No. 10. I put the question straight to him: "What really is your impression of Hitler?" He answered that he "believed that no man, much less the accepted leader of a great nation, could have sworn to me his will for peace unless he meant it. Hitler's words rang absolutely sincerely, never from anyone have I had assurances so emphatic." I immediately asked the Prime Minister: "Then why...did you start the very day after your return to do everything possible to speed armaments all round?" He answered, that although he believed Hitler he had felt that he was "in the presence of a man of intense cruelty and I was obsessed with the fact that if in a year or two he changed his mind he would be so ruthless that he would stop at nothing.""

"What a Chamberlain government would have done had there been no war in 1939 will never be known, but an election was due in 1940, and the manifesto proposals outlined by the Conservative Research Department embraced family allowances and the inclusion of insured persons' dependants in health cover—about half the advances usually attributed to Beveridge. As Lady Cecily Debenham wrote to Chamberlain's widow, Anne, after his death: "Neville was a Radical to the end of his days. It makes my blood boil when I see his ‘Tory’ and ‘Reactionary’ outlook taken as a matter of course because the Whirligig of Politics made him leader of the Tory party.""

"I would like to testify that you did more than any former British Statesman to make a true friendship between the peoples of our two countries possible, and, if the task has not been completed, that it has not been for want of goodwill on your part. I hope that you may still be able to work for, and that we may both be spared to see, the realisation of our dreams,—to see our two peoples living side by side with a deep neighbourly sense of their value one to another, and with a friendship which will make possible whole-hearted co-operation between them in all matters of common interest."

"All those months of acute anxiety that heralded and followed the French collapse while I was at the War Office, Neville was so unvaryingly sympathetic and helpful, that I feel I could never thank him enough for all he did. His faith in final victory never wavered at the darkest hour; I am confident that he will still share with us the happier days that must come."

"Duncan: I'm sure we've got everything under control."

"Hacker: Chamberlain thought Hitler was under control."

"Duncan: Ah, well, Chamberlain."

"Hacker: Eden thought Nasser was under control."

"Duncan: Are you suggesting the Foreign Office doesn't know what it's doing?"

"Hacker: No, I am suggesting that they are not telling us what they're doing!"

"Things don't happen just because Prime Ministers are very keen on them. Neville Chamberlain was very keen on peace!"

"Few men had a more real enjoyment of all things of beauty and art, whether in the world of nature or of men, which make life colourful and rich, and few had his knowledge and deep appreciation of all that is greatest in music. No one was a truer lover of the countryside. He shared with Lord Grey the love of birds, and like him had learnt as a fisherman the art of patience, so essential to the trade of politics. Anyone who worked with him, and I suppose I worked as closely with him as anybody, was bound to be impressed by two things. One was his complete disinterestedness and disregard of any lesser thoughts of self; and the other his unfaltering courage and tenacity, once he had made up his mind that a thing was right. These are qualities of signal value for a democratic leader, and all who have the vision to appreciate how close they lie to the roots of health in a democratic state will feel a debt to Neville Chamberlain for his practical demonstration of them."

"No man could have done more to save the world from this war. Your efforts to secure peace gave to our cause a moral strength that can never be disregarded. For this all who have regard for Britain's honour must be profoundly grateful. You have saved us from a war at a moment when we were unready, and if others had been sincere and faithful to their pledges would have prevented hostilities in Europe perhaps for generations. You will surely receive the reward of those who are promised the blessing of peace-makers."

"If ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I'll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers."

"What calibre of Conservatism Chamberlain would have sought to impose is open to conjecture, since he never properly had an opportunity to impose one. He was kept cramped in the wings for so long that he reached the centre stage only moments before the intermission. Yet there is a strong impression that he would have tried to impose something: his politics was a doctrine of action because that was the sphere where he knew himself to be at his best and because that was what he thought he was there to do. It is far from clear, on the other hand, in which direction he would have gone. His own introduction of tariffs in 1932, with suitable acknowledgement to "name and blood", had blocked one path. It may be that he would have extended the moderate collectivism towards which Conservatism, in its "national" guise, had been moving; certainly he took pains to rebut the charge that the National Government was a sterile administration. His view that British government in the 1930s was reformist may have been heartfelt for his achievement, as much as his propaganda, suggests that he pursued a measure of social reform as an end in itself. To that extent the European imbroglio to which Chamberlain was heir has masked the degree to which he was a radical democrat. He was closer to a compassionate understanding of "the people" than any other leader examined here. He understood the urban poor, as Baldwin did not, and he had the organizational equipment to direct those who agreed with him."

"My reliable informants in the German camp had already made it clear to me that Hitler regarded the Prime Minister [Neville Chamberlain] as an impertinent busybody who spoke the ridiculous jargon of an out-moded democracy. The umbrella, which to the ordinary German was the symbol of peace, was in Hitler's view only a subject of derision."

"I was never able to discover what passed through Mr. Chamberlain's mind in this fleeting negotiation which he conducted entirely alone without, so far as I am aware, warning anyone in advance. Did he believe in Hitler's sincerity? Or was he carried away by the emotion of relief that war had been averted? Or did he believe that the best chance with Hitler was to try to bind him by a public declaration and then to proclaim the belief that Hitler would keep his word? I am inclined to think that the last is the most likely hypothesis. One thing is certain. The subsequent seizure of Prague was a bitter blow to Mr. Chamberlain, which provoked a personal resentment against Hitler. I noticed that whenever Hitler's name was mentioned after March 17th [1939], the Prime Minister looked as if he had swallowed a bad oyster."

"I cannot but add that I have always been a supporter and defender of your policy when you were Prime Minister. I am sure that it was right. In view of the attitude of France and of the unreadiness of this country for which you were in no way to be blamed, it would have been folly to precipitate then a war with Germany. It was your strength of will and purpose and self-restraint that saved us from that mistake. When the time to meet the challenge of Hitler came, you had made it plain to the whole impartial world that you had done everything possible to keep Europe from war, and to fix the blame for that calamity on the unbridled ambition of Hitler. You enabled your country to enter the war with a clear conscience and a united will."

"A vein of self-sufficient obstinacy in the new Minister contributed to the difficulties that baffled all our endeavours ... The machinery which Mr. Chamberlain created showed itself incompetent to deal even with volunteer recruits, and certainly too unreliable to be entrusted with the administration of dictatorial powers ... Mr. Neville Chamberlain is a man of rigid competency. Such men have their uses in conventional times or in conventional positions, and are indispensable for filling subordinate posts at all times. But they are lost in an emergency or in creative tasks at any time."

"Mr Chamberlain views everything through the wrong end of a municipal drain-pipe."

"[T]he Parliament of 1924–9 was a great constructive Parliament. It marked some of the greatest advances in social and administrative reforms that have ever been made. For these, Baldwin relied on Neville Chamberlain and on Churchill... [Chamberlain] moved firmly along a clearly marked course. He was associated, above all, with the Widows, Orphans and Old Age Pensions Act—one of the foundations of the modern Welfare State—and with the great reforms of local government... Neville Chamberlain in this Parliament, as in previous ones, proved himself a true successor to the reforming tradition of England. Some of his ideas went back to those of Disraeli; others to the unauthorised programme of his great father, Joseph Chamberlain. Others followed naturally on the work of social reform which made the Liberal Governments of 1906 onwards so outstanding. His heart was in all this work, which he thoroughly understood. But he did not wear his heart upon his sleeve; on the contrary, he kept it so closely buttoned up behind his formal morning-coat that he was not suspected of anything except a desire for efficiency. In fact, he was inspired by a deep sentiment and feeling for the poor and suffering. Neither the Opposition who disliked him, nor those of our party who admired him, could see behind the mask. Yet in this Parliament he stood out. If Baldwin was by nature indolent, Neville Chamberlain was the most hard-working of men. The troubles of later years should never be allowed to obscure the great achievements of this period."

"Chamberlain was not a favourite of the House, and he never obtained that attention from the Opposition which it is necessary for a leading Minister to secure. This was a defect partly of manner and partly of feeling. He had a certain intellectual contempt for people whose views he thought ridiculous; and most of the Labour Party he put into that category. But he was not able to conceal this, and his tone revealed a degree of sarcasm and even rudeness towards his opponents, which is contrary to the true House of Commons tradition, at least at the top. Hard blows can be taken and given in our Parliamentary system. They are not long remembered. But superciliousness and arrogance are much more wounding. Nevertheless, he was a commanding personality. His speeches were admirably prepared and argued. If his voice was rasping and often weak, his Parliamentary style was good. He marshalled facts and statistics with ease. His slim figure, conventionally dressed (he usually wore a tail coat and stiff wing-collar), his well-groomed appearance, his corvine physiognomy, his perfect self-control: all these made him an outstanding Parliamentarian. I can still see him standing at the box, erect and confident. But he was respected and feared, rather than loved, except by the few who were his intimates and knew the kindliness that lay behind his bleak exterior."

"Although one of the Opposition, I feel I must say how much your presence in the House is missed by me. However profoundly I may have felt disagreement with you over foreign policy at times, I could not take less account of several splendid things you did during the short time it has been my privilege to share the same historic floor with you. I recall how you stood firm over Members' pensions, your moving tribute to George Lansbury, your greatness in making room for Winston Churchill and then facing the same House by his side. I would like to have understood you better; public criticism can be so unfair to a sincere man. I can only assure you of my deep respect, and continuous thought for you in such a disappointing moment as this."

"These men are not made of the same stuff as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the empire. These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their empire."

"That, too, was what Neville Chamberlain was clearly doing in London from 1937 until the gray morning of 1941 when his cancer finally killed him. During those fateful years he too was "sparring with the situation," seeking an easy way out. He has been accused round the world of being a foolish old man who did not understand what it would take to defend his country against the Nazis. That, I am sure, is a fundamental error. He knew full well the number of planes and tanks it would take, but he could not bring himself to the hard decision of ordering the industrial and economic revolution that was necessary to produce them."

"We, like the the British and French, improvised and compromised, and these two words, I am convinced, are the patents of "too little and too late." All this is relevant to our present situation because once a nation or the leaders of a nation get into the habit of substituting palliatives for cures, once they refuse to face the facts and deal with them directly and courageously, their capacity for self-deception is unlimited. Neville Chamberlain was tragic proof of this point. When he came back from Munich, waving Adolf Hitler's signature on a no-war scrap of paper and announcing "peace in our time," he gradually convinced himself that what he wanted to believe was true, and so he became so convinced of it that on March 9, 1939, he sent a note up to the press gallery in the House of Commons telling the reporters that he would like to see them that afternoon at four o'clock. When the reporters arrived for this unexpected conference, they found him beaming, which was unusual. He said he had called this meeting because he was convinced at last that there was now real hope of a European settlement. He explained his feeling at full length and finished by talking not only of better Anglo-German relations but of European disarmament. Now, Neville Chamberlain may have been a misguided statesman, but he was an honest man, and while the Foreign Office was visibly astounded by his remarks, we sent them out to the world that same afternoon. Six days later, the German Army marched into Prague."

"Afterward Strang, like many in the Foreign Office, described Munich frankly as a “débâcle.” And there is no doubt that Chamberlain’s personal diplomacy looks profoundly amateurish by the standards of later summits. No psychological profiles of his opponent had been prepared; there was no sign of what would now be called “position papers” or “briefing books.” The prime minister kept professional diplomats at arm’s length, including his foreign secretary, and went to Berchtesgaden without even his own interpreter and record keeper. He did not think through his bottom line and tended to throw away bargaining chips without gaining anything in return. But Chamberlain’s basic problem was not one of method but of assumptions. He flew to Berchtesgaden because he feared that the fate of Europe was in the hands of a madman; he came back with the illusion that he was forging a personal relationship with Hitler and that this would bear fruit because, at root, the Führer was a man of his word. More dangerous still was the idealism (and hubris) of a politician who believed he could bring peace to Europe and, perhaps, the ambition of a marginalized younger son determined to outdo his father and his brother. But none of this would have mattered if Chamberlain and most of his colleagues had not convinced themselves that war over Czechoslovakia would mean the devastation of much of London. Not for the last time a British prime minister got it profoundly wrong about weapons of mass destruction."

"In short, Hitler was a much more effective negotiator than Chamberlain, but he never wanted to negotiate, whereas Chamberlain, a less skilled tactician, got what he really wanted—peace not war. Yet it was a hollow victory, because Hitler never intended to honor the Munich agreements. He was soon kicking himself for losing his nerve at the end of September. In March 1939, when he seized the rest of Czechoslovakia, he was not only going beyond his professed aim of simply bringing Germans within the Reich, he had also torn up what had been signed at Munich. A disenchanted Chamberlain was forced into a complete U-turn, offering guarantees to Poland, Romania and other countries possibly on the Nazi hit-list in a belated and panicky effort to deter further German expansion. That summer Chamberlain still hoped for peace but Hitler was now bent on having a war over Poland, determined not back down a second time. He felt he had the measure of his opponents. “Our enemies are small worms,” he told his generals in August 1939. “I saw them in Munich.""

"[H]e was later one of the most successful Departmental Ministers of his time. The Ministry of Health probably regards him as the best Minister assigned to it since its creation; the Treasury as perhaps the most competent Chancellor for the current business of the Department, and within the limits of orthodox policy, since Gladstone. He has all the qualities that Whitehall most desires for its normal tasks: industry, order, precision, correctitude, decision. He is neither wayward, nor fickle, nor fanciful. He is a lucid expositor, a competent defender, of departmental policy."

"Spare, even ascetic, in figure, dark-haired and dark-eyed; with a profile rather corvine than aquiline; he carries his seventy years well and looks and seems less than his age. His voice has a quality of harshness, with an occasional rasp, and is without music or seductive charm, but it is clear and resonant and a serviceable instrument of his purpose. In debate and exposition his speech is lucid, competent, cogent, never rising to oratory, unadorned with fancy, and rarely touched by perceptible emotion. But it gives a sense of mastery of what it attempts, well reflects the orderly mind behind and, if something is lost, it derives strength from its disregard of all that is not directly relevant to the close-knit argument of his theme. In manner he is glacial rather than genial."

"If we wish to find the closest analogy, among statesmen of the first rank, we must turn to one of a different nation who pursued a very different, and in foreign affairs even a diametrically opposite, policy. Monsieur Poincaré, too, had a restricted range of habitual vision, and an unequalled clarity of vision within that range; what he saw, he saw precisely in all its detail; what he did not so see was altogether outside his consciousness; he had a complete mastery of all he knew, and a supreme disregard for what he did not. He was glacial and unresponsive. He had a coldly, frictionlessly functioning brain, which was a perfect instrument for his limited, inflexible purposes. The force of a strong nature, the determination of a strong will, the vigour of a robust physique, were all increased by this concentration of effort and interest. Mr. Chamberlain had all these characteristics, though all of them in a less extreme form; he is compact, cold, correct, concentrated, with both the limitations and the strength which these qualities involve. The analogy is confirmed by the similarity of the personal reactions of the Celt of genius to the Lorrainer and to the Midland Englishman."

"He cares more where he cares most, because he cares less where he cares least. His will is stronger for his central purpose, because he confines it to that purpose. His strength is the strength of concentration. And this must be the central note of any personal description. We may regret the limitation of vision, the inability to gather strength or support by setting policy on a wide and generous basis, the failure to conciliate and attract those of different outlook and ideas, the inconvenient clarity of his exposition of those features of his policy which most annoy his critics or his potential allies, the undisguised expression of his dislikes and prejudices, the inadequate comprehension of the mental attitude of many whose reactions to his declarations are of great importance. But the personal force remains, the greater for its direct purpose because it is concentrated, not dispersed. He has the defects of his qualities, but he has also the qualities of his defects."

"Being very efficient, Chamberlain had, as he said himself, "no capacity for looking on and seeing other people mismanaging things." Of his planning there is no better example than the programme that he made for the Cabinet in November 1924, for the reform of local government. It was a five-year plan to cover the whole field of health, housing, local taxation and rating, and to be carried out methodically by twenty-five Bills neatly spaced over each succeeding session of the five-year Parliament. No previous Minister of Health or President of the Local Government Board had ever contemplated so ambitious a task. Chamberlain not only convinced a doubtful Cabinet of its advantages, but passed the whole programme through Parliament in little more than four years. Without his remarkable grasp of detail, his achievement would have been impossible. From start to finish it involved an almost interminable series of administrative problems. The result was to display the remarkable talent for administration that had already made his reputation on the Birmingham City Council. The Ministry of Health and the Exchequer provided an unlimited opportunity for still further applying it. His critics sometimes thought that this grasp of detail made him undertake work that ought to have been left to his permanent staff. I am sure, however, that his reforms between 1924 and 1929 would never have been carried through if it had not been for his knowledge of detail and the use that he made of it."

"A mentality such as his was equally far apart from the easygoing quietism of Baldwin and the introspective hesitations of MacDonald. Although a man of great personal modesty, Chamberlain was not tolerant. His likes and dislikes were even stronger than Baldwin's, so strong, in fact, that they sometimes led him to mistaken decisions, and when he became Prime Minister, to some bad appointments to responsible posts. He had none of Baldwin's appeal to other men's feelings. "I like your old man Baldwin," Lloyd George once said to me. "I could work with him." He could never work with Chamberlain. Whilst it was the humanist's touch that made Labour hang on Baldwin's words, it was the analyst's accuracy that, reacting against Labour's reluctance to face unpleasant facts, made the Trade Union leaders regard Chamberlain as a bitter enemy, when in practice he was a pronounced radical reformer far to the left of many of them and most of his own party."

"Appeasement did not mean surrender, nor was it a policy only to be used towards the dictators. To Chamberlain it meant the methodical removal of the principal causes of friction in the world. The policy seemed so reasonable that he could not believe even Hitler would repudiate it. Hitler at the time seemed genuinely anxious to live on good terms with the British Empire. He had obtained equality of status for his country, and needed a period of peace to consolidate his political power. When, therefore, at Munich, he signed the pledge of perpetual friendship with Great Britain, he appeared not only to be acting in good faith, but to be embarking on a policy equally advantageous to himself and Germany. These were the considerations that influenced him to think that the Führer was more likely to keep his word than to break it. Supposing, however, that Chamberlain was mistaken, for he never regarded his opinion as infallible, he felt that he could fall back on the re-insurance policy that he possessed in the programme of British rearmament. The ink, indeed, was scarcely dry on the agreement when...he met the Service Ministers and Chiefs of Staff and agreed with them on a series of measures for accelerating rearmament, particularly the air programme of Spitfires and Hurricanes. Although Hitler was enraged at this reaction, Chamberlain none the less persisted with his double programme of peace if possible, and arms for certain. If I described his mind in a sentence, I would say that at the time of Munich he was hopeful but by no means sure that Hitler would keep his word, but that after Prague he came to the conclusion that only a show of greater determination would prevent him from breaking it."

"The British and German accounts of the conversation agree that he walked warily, and knew that he was dealing with an abnormal fanatic. It may be that his self-confidence misled him into thinking that the Führer could be moved by arguments and explanations that seemed to us unanswerable. British Ministers, whether Grey, Asquith or Baldwin, have always been inclined to think and act as if foreigners thought and acted like themselves. Chamberlain evidently believed that there was at least a small corner of Hitler's mind that was sufficiently like his own to respond to British arguments. The belief was something more than wishful thinking. The plan of the blitzkrieg against Czechoslovakia, for instance, was dropped as the result of Chamberlain's insistence. The truth seems to be that each of them was influenced by the other, but that neither really understood the other's point of view. Chamberlain failed to realise that Hitler wanted the whole continent and not a few million more Germans. Hitler, when he talked of perpetual peace between Germany and Great Britain, always assumed that it would be based upon the division of the old world between them."

"The mistake that the Führer made was to think that Chamberlain had accepted the Munich terms from weakness. Whatever may be said to the contrary, Chamberlain did not agree because of our military unpreparedness. On the contrary, he sincerely believed that it was necessary in the general interests of world peace to let the Sudeten Germans unite with the Germans of the Reich. The fact that we were military weak took a secondary place in his mind. Extremely obstinate by nature, he would never have submitted to a threat or surrendered through fear. He was prepared to make an agreement only because he felt that it was definitely wrong to plunge Europe into war to maintain what, even in the negotiations of the Versailles Treaty, was regarded as a precarious and vulnerable compromise. When he was told that the loss of the Sudetenland would destroy the balance of power in Europe, his answer was that a balance that depended on Czechoslovakia was no longer reliable when the defences had been turned by Hitler's occupation of Austria. Perhaps he underrated the strength of Czech nationalism. Whilst his mind was insular to the extent that he thought that foreigners thought like us, it was cosmopolitan in its indifference to nationalist movements. It was only after the occupation of Prague that he saw that his detached reasonableness was insufficient to stop Hitler. The result was our guarantee to Poland, Greece, and Roumania, the introduction of conscription, and the intensification of rearmament."

"[Neville Chamberlain] was a very honourable man ... I often thought he knew that in 1938 he must gain time to get us ready. I believe he gained more in that last year than Hitler ... it may be that we owe Chamberlain a great debt of gratitude for his judgment for what happened during those years. And it brought Winston forward that much more ... perhaps it has been one of the faults of British politicians that we look at other politicians through slightly rose-tinted spectacles thinking they are as we are."

"From 1936, and with reluctance, after it grew clear that Germany was rearming, the British government paid reluctant heed to expanding its armed forces. Local city and town officials were primed with providing a basic civil defence infrastructure, for it was clear that a new war would involve devastating aerial bombardment. However, many, especially those controlled by the broadly anti-war Labour Party, dragged their feet in imposing what was decried as a ‘militarization of everyday life’. The great majority of the British population did not favour war. Britain was no longer the almost limitlessly wealthy superpower it had been before 1914. The country’s continuing world-power status now relied on the maintenance of a rules-based international order, with its guarantees of the global status quo (and especially of Britain’s precious Empire). A world war would make British power vulnerable to Germany, and to Germany’s allies, Italy – in the Mediterranean and the Middle East – and Japan (in the Far East). This prompted much of the reasoning behind Neville Chamberlain’s so-called ‘policy of appeasement’."