Credit where credit is due for Neville
DEAR Editor, The film Munich: The Edge of War on Netflix, based on the novel by Robert Harris, deservedly received good reviews.
I share the scepticism about the purpose of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy with Nazi Germany being to buy time to allow Britain to prepare more adequately for war.
Chamberlain, because of his naive foreign policy towards Nazi Germany, is unfairly and unfavourably ranked among British prime ministers.
However, apart from his policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler’s Germany in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Second World War, Chamberlain, unlike Churchill, was a great peacetime prime minister.
Chamberlain also served the country with distinction in several other government posts, most notably minister of health and chancellor of the exchequer (he was also, like his father, a great Lord Mayor of Birmingham, his place of birth) before he succeeded Baldwin as prime minister in 1937.
For me, the most compelling evidence that Chamberlain’s strategy was not that of buying time for Britain to better prepare for war are the words of his most senior and trusted and confidential adviser, Sir Horace Wilson then head of the British Civil Service, who along with Neville Chamberlain was the chief architect of the attempt to appease Nazi Germany.
Wilson accompanied Chamberlain on his first mission to negotiate with Hitler about the disputed territory of the Sudetenland on the September 15, 1938, at Berchtesgaden.
Wilson said in 1962: “Our policy was never designed just to postpone war, or enable us to enter war more united.
“The aim of our appeasement was to avoid war all together, for all time”.
The naivety of Chamberlain and Wilson in their dealings with Hitler were best described by the British diplomat and author Sir Harold Nicholson in his book Why Britain is at War, 1939: “Chamberlain and his adviser, Sir Horace Wilson, stepped into diplomacy with the bright faithfulness of two curates entering a pub for the first time; they did not observe the difference between a social gathering and a rough house; nor did they realise that the tough guys assembled did not speak or understand their language.”
For me, the best insight into the mindset of the two chief protagonists are the following statements. Neville Chamberlain on March 18, 1938: “The seizure of Czechoslovakia would not be in accordance with Herr Hitler’s policy.” This comment was brutally contradicted by Hitler on the May 30, 1938: “It is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future”.
Chamberlain was dealing with a pathological liar and a murderous psychopath who was responsible for the most destructive conflict in history, which left tens of millions dead and great cities in ruins.
Peter Henrick, Northfield, Birmingham