Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain (pronunciation, /ˈɑːθə ˈnɛvɪl ˈtʃeɪmbəlɪn/; Birmingham, March 18, 1869-Heckfield, November 9, 1940) was a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister minister between May 28, 1937 and May 10, 1940. He is famous for his policy of appeasement with respect to the Third Reich, as well as for his signing of the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938, granting that country the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. After the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, which marked the beginning of World War II, he announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later and led the United Kingdom for the first eight months of the war until his resignation. in charge.
After working in business and local government and a brief stint as director of the National Service in 1916 and 1917, at the age of 49 he followed in the footsteps of his father Joseph Chamberlain and older half-brother Austen to participate in the 1918 general election and being elected as a Member of Parliament for the new constituency of Birmingham Ladywood. He declined a sub-ministerial post, remaining without a government post until 1922. He was quickly promoted in 1923 to Minister of Health and then Chancellor of the Exchequer. After a short-lived Labour-led government, he returned as Health Minister, introducing a series of reform measures between 1924 and 1929. He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the National Government in 1931.
He succeeded Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister on 28 May 1937. His tenure was dominated by the question of foreign policy towards an increasingly aggressive Germany and his actions in Munich were very popular with the British at the time. In response to Adolf Hitler's continued aggression, Chamberlain pledged the country to defend Poland's independence in the event of attack, an alliance that brought the United Kingdom into the war after the German occupation. The failure of the Allied forces to prevent the German invasion of Norway prompted the House of Commons to hold the historic "Norway Debate" in May 1940. Their conduct towards the war was harshly criticized by members of all parties and, in a no-confidence motion, her majority rule was considerably reduced. Recognizing that a national government supported by all major parties was crucial, he resigned because Labor and the Liberals would no longer participate under his leadership. Although he still led the Conservative Party, his colleague Winston Churchill succeeded him in office. He continued to serve in the government and was an important member of the war cabinet as Lord President of the Council, leading the country in Churchill's absence, until ill-health forced him to resign on 22 September. He died of cancer at the age of 71 on November 9, six months after stepping down as prime minister.
His reputation remains controversial among historians, as the initial high regard he held was eroded by books such as Guilty men (1940), which blamed him and his colleagues for the Munich Agreement and for allegedly failing to prepare the country for war. Most historians of the generation after his death held similar views, led by Churchill in The Gathering Storm (1948). Some later historians have taken a more favorable view of him and his policies, citing government documents published under the "thirty year rule" and arguing that going to war against Germany in 1938 would have been disastrous, since the United Kingdom did not I was ready; although, on the other hand, the Nazi intelligence officer Karl-Erich Kühlenthal recognized at the beginning of 1937 that the German aviation was not well prepared and that they would need four years of intensive training to reverse this situation, according to declassified American reports. Chamberlain continues to be ranked unfavorably among British Prime Ministers.
Early Years
He was born on 18 March 1869 in a house called Southbourne in the Edgbaston district of Birmingham. The only child by the second marriage of Joseph Chamberlain, who later became Mayor of Birmingham and a British government minister. His mother was Florence Kenrick, a cousin of William Kenrick MP; she passed away when he was a young child. His father had had another child, Austen, from his first marriage. Neville was educated at home by his older sister Beatrice, and later at Rugby School. His father later sent him to Mason College, now University of Birmingham. He had little interest in his studies there, and in 1889 his father apprenticed him to an accounting firm, and within six months he was a salaried employee.
In an effort to regain the family fortune, his father sent him to establish a sisal plantation on Andros Island in the Bahamas. He spent six years there, but the plantation was a failure; his father lost £50,000. On his return to England, he entered the business world, acquiring — with the help of his family — Hoskins & Company, a manufacturer of metal boat moorings.He was CEO of the company for seventeen years, during which the company prospered.He also became involved in civic activities in Birmingham. In 1906, as Governor of the Birmingham General Hospital and together with "not more than fifteen" other dignitaries, he was a founding member of the British Medical Association's National United Hospital Committee.
At forty, he hoped to remain single, but in 1910 he fell in love with Anne de Vere Cole, a distant relative by marriage, and married her the following year. They had met through his aunt Lilian, a Canadian-born widow of Joseph Chamberlain's brother, Herbert, who in 1907 had married Anne's uncle, Alfred Clayton Cole, a director of the Bank of England. Anne Cole encouraged and supported her husband's entry into local politics and she was his constant helper and trusted companion, fully sharing his interests in real estate and other political and social activities after his election as a Member of Parliament. The couple had a son and a daughter.
Beginnings in politics
He initially showed little interest in politics, although his father and half-brother Austen were in Parliament. During the general election of 1900 he made speeches in support of his father's Liberal Unionists. This party allied with the Conservatives and later merged with them under the name of the Unionist Party, which in 1925 became known as the Conservative and Unionist Party. In 1911, Chamberlain ran as a Liberal Unionist for Birmingham City Council for the borough of All Saints, located within his father's parliamentary constituency.
He was appointed chairman of the Town Planning Committee. Under his leadership, Birmingham soon adopted one of the first urban development plans in the country. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 prevented the realization of his plans.In 1915, he became mayor of Birmingham. In addition to his father, five of his uncles had also risen to Birmingham's foremost civic dignity: Joseph's brother Richard Chamberlain, William and George Kenrick, Charles Beale—four-time mayor—and Thomas Martineau. As wartime mayor, he had a heavy workload and insisted that his councilors and clerks work equally hard. He halved the mayor's expense allowance and the number of civic duties that befit the office. In 1915, he was appointed a member of the Central Control Board against liquor trafficking.
In December 1916, Prime Minister David Lloyd George offered him the new post of Director of the National Service, with responsibility for coordinating conscription and ensuring essential war industries could function with sufficient manpower. His tenure was marked by conflict with Lloyd George; in August 1917, having received little support from the Prime Minister, he resigned.The relationship between Chamberlain and Lloyd George would henceforth be one of mutual hatred.
He decided to run for the House of Commons and was approved as a Unionist candidate for the Birmingham Ladywood district. At the end of the war, a general election was called almost immediately. The campaign in this constituency had attracted attention because its opponent, from the Liberal Party, was Margery Corbett Ashby, one of seventeen candidates who stood for Parliament in the first election in which women were eligible. Chamberlain reacted to that turnout by being one of the few male candidates to specifically target female voters using his wife, issuing a special pamphlet titled "A word to the Ladies" (A word to the Ladies) and holding two rallies in the afternoon. He was elected with nearly 70% of the vote and a majority of 6,833. He was 49 years old, making him the oldest future prime minister when first elected to the House of Commons.
Parliamentarian and Minister of Health
Free legislator
Once elected, he threw himself into parliamentary work, lamenting the times when he could not attend debates and spending much time on committee duty. He was Chairman of the National Committee on Unsanitary Areas (1919-1921) and, in that capacity, visited the slums of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Cardiff. Consequently, in March 1920, he was offered a position by Bonar Law junior in the Ministry of Health on behalf of the Prime Minister, but Chamberlain was unwilling to serve in Lloyd George's government and no further proposals were offered to him during that term. When Law resigned as leader of the Unionist party, Austen Chamberlain took his place as Unionist leader in Parliament. Unionist leaders were prepared to run in the 1922 election in coalition with Lloyd George's Liberals but, on 19 October Unionist MPs held a meeting at the Carlton Club where they voted against running in the coalition election with Lloyd George. Lloyd George resigned, as did Austen Chamberlain, and Law returned from retirement to lead the Unionists as Prime Minister in coalition with the Conservatives.
Many high-ranking Unionists refused to form a government with Law to benefit Chamberlain, who in the course of ten months rose from backbencher to Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had initially been appointed Postmaster-General by Law and was subsequently appointed to the Privy Council. When Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, Minister of Health, lost his seat in the 1922 election and was defeated in a special election in March In 1923 by future Home Secretary James Chuter Ede, Law offered Chamberlain the post of Chancellor of Health. Two months later, Law was diagnosed with advanced terminal throat cancer. He immediately resigned and was succeeded by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stanley Baldwin. In August 1923, Baldwin promoted Chamberlain to the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He served only five months in office before the Conservatives were defeated in the 1923 general election. Ramsay MacDonald became Labor's first Prime Minister, but his government fell within months, forcing another election generals. By a margin of just seventy-seven votes, Chamberlain narrowly defeated Labor candidate Oswald Mosley, who later led the British Union of Fascists. Thinking he would lose if he ran for Birmingham Ladywood again, he arranged to run for Birmingham Edgbaston, ward. from the town where he was born and that it was a much more secure seat, which he would hold for the rest of his life. The Unionists won the election, but Chamberlain refused to return to the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, preferring his old position as Chancellor of Health..
Two weeks after his appointment as health minister, he presented to the council of ministers an agenda containing twenty-five laws that he hoped to see enacted. By the time he left office in 1929, twenty-one of twenty-five bills had passed.He sought to abolish the poor law guardian boards that administered homeless assistance; they were elected by suffrage and that in some areas they were responsible for taxes. Many of the boards were in Labor hands and had defied the Government by distributing relief funds to the able-bodied unemployed. In 1929, their Local Government Act 1929 was passed, abolishing completely the poor law boards. He had defended his proposal before parliamentarians for two and a half hours in the second reading of the bill and, when it was finished, he was applauded by all parties.
Although he struck a conciliatory note during the 1926 general strike, he was usually on bad terms with the Labor opposition. The future Labor Prime Minister Clement Attlee complained that he "always treated us like dirt", and in April 1927 Chamberlain wrote: "I feel more and more contempt for your pitiful stupidity". Relations with the Labor Party later played an important role in his eventual downfall as prime minister.
In opposition and debate on the war
Baldwin called a general election for 30 May 1929, resulting in a hung Parliament in which Labor held a majority of the seats. Baldwin and his government resigned and Labour, under MacDonald, again took office. the power. In 1931, the MacDonald government faced a serious crisis when the 'May Report' revealed that the budget was out of balance, with a projected deficit of £120 million. The Labor government resigned on 24 August and MacDonald formed a National Unity Government supported by a majority of the Conservatives. Chamberlain once again took over the Health Ministry.
After the 1931 general election, in which supporters of the mostly Conservative National Unity Government won a landslide victory, MacDonald appointed him Chancellor of the Exchequer. He proposed a 10% duty on foreign goods and lower or no tariffs on goods from the colonies and dominions. His father Joseph Chamberlain had advocated a similar policy, "Imperial Preference"; he introduced his bill to the House of Commons on 4 February 1932 and concluded his speech pointing out the relevance of his attempt to enact his father's proposal. As he finished speaking, his brother Austen came down from the back pews and shook his hand.The Import Duties Act 1932 (Import Duties Act 1932 ) passed easily through Parliament.
He presented his first budget in April and maintained the strong budget cuts that had been agreed upon at the start of the National Government. Interest on the war debt was an important financial expense. He decided to reduce the annual interest rate on most of Britain's war debt from 5% to 3.5%. Between 1932 and 1938, the percentage of the budget devoted to interest on the war debt was halved.
He hoped a cancellation of the war debt with the United States could be negotiated. In June 1933, the United Kingdom hosted the World Monetary and Economic Conference, which came to naught when US President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent word that he would not consider any remission of the war debt. In 1934, Chamberlain he was able to declare a budget surplus and reverse many of the cuts to unemployment pensions and civil servant salaries he had made after taking office. Addressing the full House he said: "We have finished the Bleak House story and are sitting down this afternoon to enjoy the first chapter of Great Expectations ."
Social and military spending
The Unemployment Assistance Board (UAB), established by the Unemployment Act 1934, was largely the brainchild of Chamberlain, who wanted to see the issue of unemployment unemployment assistance removed from the party's political argument. Furthermore, he "saw the importance of 'providing some interest in life for the large number of men who were unlikely to ever get jobs' and from this realization arose UAB's responsibility for the" well-being", in addition to maintenance, of the unemployed".
Defense spending had been cut considerably in his early budgets. In 1935, in the face of Germany's military resurgence under Hitler's leadership, he was convinced of the need for rearmament. He especially urged the strengthening of the Royal Air Force, realizing that the country's historic bulwark, the English Channel, was no defense against air power.
In 1935, MacDonald retired and Baldwin became Prime Minister for a third time. In the 1935 general election, the Conservative-dominated National Government lost ninety seats to its 1931 overwhelming majority, but still held a overwhelming representation of 255 MPs in the House of Commons. During the campaign, Labor deputy leader Arthur Greenwood had attacked Chamberlain for spending money on rearmament and that such a policy was "sheer alarmism; Shameful on a statesman of Mr. Chamberlain's responsible position, for suggesting that more millions in armaments money were needed."
Role in the abdication crisis
She is speculated to have played a significant role in the abdication crisis of 1936. She wrote in her diary that Wallis Simpson, the future wife of Edward VIII, was "a completely unscrupulous woman, who is not in love with the King, but that he is exploiting it for his own purposes. He has already ruined him in money and jewels [...]". Like the rest of the Cabinet except Duff Cooper, he agreed with Baldwin that the King should abdicate if he married Simpson, and on December 6, both insisted that Edward VIII had to make his decision before Christmas; according to one account, he believed that the uncertainty was “hurting the Christmas trade.” The king abdicated on December 10, four days after the meeting.
Shortly after the event, Baldwin announced that he would remain Prime Minister until shortly after the coronation of George VI and his consort. On 28 May 1937, two weeks after the ceremony, Baldwin resigned and advised the King to appoint Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Austen did not live to see [her brother's] last "rise... to the top of la cucaña", since he had died two months earlier.
Prime Minister
After his ascension, he considered calling a general election, but, with three and a half years remaining in the legislature, decided to wait. At 68, he was the second-oldest person in the 20th century—behind Henry Campbell-Bannerman—to be the first first-time minister and was seen by most as a watchdog who would lead the Conservative Party until the next election and would favor a younger candidate, with Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden a possible successor. Since the beginning of his tenure, it was rumored that several applicants were vying for the position.
He disliked what he considered an overly sentimental attitude by Baldwin and MacDonald in cabinet appointments and reshuffles. Although he had worked closely with the Chairman of the Board of Trade, Walter Runciman, on the issue of tariffs, he fired him rather than offer him the token position of Lord of the Privy Seal, which an already annoyed Runciman declined. Chamberlain thought that Runciman, a member of the National Liberal Party, was careless.Shortly after taking office, he ordered his ministers to prepare two-year policy programmes. These reports were to be put together with the intention of coordinating the passage of legislation through the current Parliament, whose term would expire in November 1940.
At the time he took office, his personality was not well known to the public, although there were six years of recordings of him presenting the annual budget. According to his biographer, Robert Self, these recordings seemed relaxed and modern, showing his ability to speak directly to the camera.Chamberlain had few friends among his fellow parliamentarians; an attempt by his private secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, to take him to the smoking room of the House of Commons to socialize with his colleagues ended in embarrassing silence. He made up for these shortcomings by devising the most sophisticated press management system ever employed. by a prime minister up to that point, with officials at Number 10, led by his press officer George Steward, who was trying to convince journalists that they were colleagues sharing power and inside information and that they should stick to the line of the government.
Domestic politics
He saw his rise to state chief magistracy as the final glory of a career as a national reformer, not realizing that he would be remembered for foreign policy decisions. One reason he sought quick solutions to European problems was hoping it would allow him to concentrate on internal affairs.
Shortly after being appointed prime minister, he won passage of the 1937 Factories Act (Factories Act 1937), which aimed to improve working conditions in factories and set limits on the working hours of women and children. In 1938, Parliament enacted the Coal Act 1938, which allowed for the nationalization of coal deposits. Another important piece of legislation passed that year was the Holidays with Pay Act 1938 (Holidays with Pay Act 1938), which, while only recommending that employers give workers a paid week off, led to a great expansion of holiday camps and other leisure accommodation for the working classes. rents. His plans for local government reform were shelved due to the outbreak of war in 1939. Similarly, the increase in the compulsory school age to fifteen, scheduled for implementation on 1 September of 1939, did not enter into force.
Relations with Ireland
Relations between the United Kingdom and the Irish Free State had been strained since the 1932 appointment of Éamon de Valera as Chairman of the Executive Council. The Anglo-Irish trade war (1932-1938), triggered by the withholding of cash Ireland had agreed to pay to the United Kingdom, had caused economic losses in both nations, which were anxious for a deal. Valera's government also sought to sever any remaining ties between Ireland and the United Kingdom, such as abrogating the king's status as Irish head of state. When Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chamberlain had taken a hard-line stance against concessions to the Irish, but as prime minister he sought a deal with them, convinced that strained ties were affecting relations with other domains.
Talks had been suspended by the Baldwin government in 1936, but resumed in November 1937. Valera sought not only to alter Ireland's constitutional status, but also to revoke other aspects of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, especially the issue of partition, as well as obtaining full control of the three "Treaty Ports" (Treaty Ports), namely Berehaven, Queenstown (Cóbh) and Swilly Fjord, which had remained under British sovereignty. On the other hand, the United Kingdom wanted to retain the said ports, at least in time of war, and obtain the money that Ireland had agreed to pay.
The Irish proved to be very difficult negotiators, so much so that Chamberlain complained that one of Valera's offers had "presented British ministers with a three-leaf clover, none of which had advantages for Britain." With the talks deadlocked, he made the Irish a final offer in March 1938, in which he agreed to many of their positions, though he was confident that "he had only given up the little things", so that the agreements could be made. signed on April 25, 1938. The partition issue was not resolved, but the Irish agreed to pay £10 million to the British. There was no provision in the treaties for British access to those ports in time of war, but Chamberlain accepted Valera's verbal guarantee that in the event of war the British would have access. Conservative backbencher Winston Churchill attacked deals in Parliament for handing over the Treaty ports, which he described as the "sentry towers of the western approaches". When war came, Valera denied the United Kingdom access to the Treaty ports by invoking Irish neutrality. Churchill criticized these treaties in The Gathering Storm, stating that he "never saw the House of Commons so utterly misled" and that it "made the members feel very differently when our very existence hung in the balance during the Battle of the Atlantic". Chamberlain believed that the Treaty ports were useless if Ireland was hostile and considered it worthwhile. worth securing friendly relations with Dublin.
Policy towards the continent
First events
He sought to reconcile with the Third Reich and make the Nazi state a partner in a stable Europe. He believed that Germany could be satisfied with the restoration of some of its colonies and, during the Rhineland crisis of March 1936, had declared that "if a general agreement were in sight, the British Government should consider the question" of colonial restoration. Attempts by the new Prime Minister to secure such an agreement were frustrated because Germany was in no hurry to talk with the British. United Kingdom. Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath was due to visit London in July 1937 but canceled his visit Edward Wood, Lord President of the Council, visited Germany privately in November and met with Adolf Hitler and other German officials. Both Chamberlain and the British ambassador in Berlin, Nevile Henderson, declared the visit a success. Foreign Office officials complained that Wood's trip publicly hinted that the British government was very eager for talks; furthermore, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden felt that he had been ignored.
Chamberlain also bypassed Eden, when he was on vacation, by opening direct talks with Italy, cut off internationally by its invasion and conquest of Ethiopia. In a Cabinet meeting on 8 September, he indicated that he saw "the decline of the tension between this country and Italy as a very valuable contribution towards the pacification and appeasement of Europe" which would "weaken the Rome-Berlin axis". The prime minister also established a private line of communication with the Duce Benito Mussolini, through the Italian ambassador Dino Grandi.
In February 1938, Hitler began to pressure the Austrian government to accept the Anschluß, or political union between Germany and Austria. Chamberlain believed that it was essential to strengthen relations with Italy in the hope that an Anglo-Italian alliance would prevent Hitler from imposing his rule on Austria. Eden believed that the prime minister was being too hasty in talking to Italy and possibly recognizing de iure the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Chamberlain concluded that the Foreign Secretary had to accept his policy or resign. The Cabinet listened to the two, but decided unanimously to support the Prime Minister, and despite efforts by other Cabinet members to prevent it, Eden resigned. In later years, Eden tried to portray his resignation as an anti-appeasement stance—Churchill described him in The Second World War as "a strong young figure facing long depressing tides of war." drift and surrender'—but many ministers and MPs believed there was nothing at stake worth resigning over. Chamberlain appointed Wood Foreign Secretary to replace Eden.
Tensions with Germany and Czechoslovakia
In March 1938, Austria was annexed into Germany by the Anschluß. Although the besieged Austrians appealed for help from the UK, they received no response. London sent Berlin a strong protest note. Addressing the Cabinet shortly after the German forces crossed the border, Chamberlain blamed both Germany and Austria:
It is perfectly evident now that force is the only argument Germany understands and that "collective security" cannot offer any prospect of preventing such events until it can show a visible force of overwhelming strength backed by the determination to use it.... Heaven knows I don't want to get back to alliances but if Germany continues to behave as she has done lately she may drive us to it.Now it is clear that force is the only argument that Germany understands and that “collective security” cannot offer any possibility of preventing such events until it can show a visible force of overwhelming power backed by the determination to use it. [...] God knows I don't want to go back to alliances, but if Germany continues to behave as it has lately, it can lead us to that.
On March 14, the day after the Anschluß, he addressed the House of Commons and strongly condemned the methods used by the Germans in the capture of Austria. His speech won the support of the House.
With Austria absorbed by Germany, attention turned to Hitler's next obvious target: the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. With three million ethnic Germans, the Sudetenland represented the largest German population outside the "Reich" and Hitler was pushing for the region's union with Germany. Czechoslovakia had no military agreements with the United Kingdom, but did have a mutual assistance pact with France and both the French and the Czechoslovaks also had an alliance with the Soviet Union. After the fall of Austria, the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Policy considered seeking a "grand alliance" to thwart Germany or alternatively a guarantee of aid to France if France went to war. Instead, the committee chose to advocate that Czechoslovakia be urged to try to be on the best possible terms with Germany. The Cabinet agreed with the committee's recommendation, influenced by a report by the Chiefs of Staff which stated that there was little that could be done to help the Czechs in the event of a German invasion. Chamberlain informed the House that it was responsible for being unwilling to limit his government's discretion by delivering commitments.
Italy and the UK signed an agreement in April 1938. In exchange for de iure recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, Rome agreed to withdraw some Italian "volunteers" from the nationalist (Francoist) camp) of the Spanish Civil War. At this point, the Nationalists had a great advantage in that conflict and consummated their victory the following year, in April 1939. Also in April 1938, the new French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier went to London to talk with Chamberlain and agreed follow the British position on Czechoslovakia.
In May, Czech border guards shot two Sudeten German farmers trying to cross the border from Germany into Czechoslovakia, without stopping for checkpoints. This incident caused riots among the Sudeten Germans and it was later rumored that Germany was moving troops to the border line. In response to the report, Prague sent forces to the German border. Edward Wood sent a note to Berlin warning that if France were to intervene in the crisis on behalf of Czechoslovakia, London might support Paris. Tensions appeared to ease, and Chamberlain and Wood were hailed for their "masterful" handling of the crisis. Although it was not known at the time, it later became clear that Germany had no plans for an invasion of Czechoslovakia in May. Nevertheless, the British government received strong and almost unanimous support from the London press.
Negotiations between the Czech government and the Sudeten Germans continued until mid-1938. They achieved little; Sudetenland leader Konrad Henlein received secret instructions from Hitler not to reach an agreement. On 3 August, Walter Runciman traveled to Prague as a mediator sent by the British government. Over the next two weeks, Runciman met separately with Henlein, Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, and other leaders, but the talks did not progress. On August 30, Chamberlain met with his Cabinet and Ambassador Henderson and secured their support, although First Lord of the Admiralty Duff Cooper dissented against the Prime Minister's policy of pressing Czechoslovakia for concessions, on the grounds that the UK was in no position to back any threat to go to war.
Chamberlain realized that Hitler would likely signal his intentions in his September 12 speech at the annual congress in Nuremberg, so the prime minister discussed with his advisers the possible response if war seemed imminent. In consultation with his close adviser, Horace Wilson, he established the so-called "Plan Z": if war seemed inevitable, he would fly to Germany to negotiate directly with Hitler.
Trip to Munich
Runciman continued his task, trying to pressure the Czechoslovak government into making concessions. On 7 September there was an altercation involving Sudeten members of the Czechoslovak Parliament in the city of Ostrava (Mährisch-Ostrau in German), in northern Moravia. The Germans made a lot of propaganda out of the incident, though Prague tried to conciliate them by firing the policeman who had been involved. As the tension escalated, Runciman concluded that there was no point in attempting new negotiations until after Hitler's speech. The mission was never resumed.
There was a lot of political pressure in the last few days before Hitler's speech on the last day of the congress, as the UK, France and Czechoslovakia partially mobilized their troops. Thousands gathered outside 10 Downing Street on the night of the speech. Finally, Hitler addressed his passionate followers:
The condition of the Sudeten Germans is indescribable. It is sought to annihilate them. As human beings they are oppressed and scandally treated in an intolerable fashion... The depriving of these people of their rights must come to an end.... I have stated that the "Reich" would not tolerate any further oppression of these three and a half million Germans, and I would ask the statesmen of foreign countries to be convinced that this is no mere form of words.The condition of the Germans of the Sudetes is indescribable. You're looking to annihilate them. As human beings, they are oppressed and scandalously treated in an intolerable way [...] The deprivation of these persons of their rights must come to an end. [...] I have declared that the Reich will not tolerate more oppression of these three and a half million Germans and will ask the statesmen of foreign countries to convince themselves that this is not a simple composition of words.
The next morning, September 13, Secret Service sources informed Chamberlain and the Cabinet that all German embassies had been notified that Czechoslovakia would be invaded on September 25. Convinced that the French would not enter into the conflict—Daladier privately proposed a three-power summit to resolve the Sudetenland question—he decided to implement his "Plan Z" and sent a message to Hitler that he was willing to go to Germany to negotiate. When his proposal was accepted, he left by plane on the morning of September 15; this was the first time, except for a brief jaunt to an industrial fair, that he had traveled by air. He flew to Munich and then took the train to Hitler's refuge in Berchtesgaden.
The face-to-face meeting lasted about three hours. Hitler demanded the annexation of the Sudetenland and, by questioning him, Chamberlain was able to obtain assurances that Germany had no plans for the rest of Czechoslovakia or in areas of Eastern Europe where there were German minorities. At the end of the meeting, he returned to London believing that he had obtained a leeway with which an agreement could be reached and peace preserved. Under the proposals made at Berchtesgaden, Germany would annex the Sudetenland if a plebiscite favored the plan. Czechoslovakia would receive international guarantees of its independence that would supersede existing treaty obligations, primarily the French promise to the Czechoslovaks. The French agreed to the requirements. Under considerable pressure, the Czechoslovaks also agreed, leading to the fall of the Czechoslovak government.
Chamberlain returned to Germany and met Hitler at Bad Godesberg (Bonn) on September 22. Hitler dismissed the proposals of the previous meeting, claiming that "that will no longer do", and demanded the immediate occupation of the Sudetenland, as well as taking into account Polish and Hungarian territorial claims to Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain strongly objected, replying that he had worked to align the French and Czechoslovaks with German demands, so much so that they accused him of caving in to dictators and had been booed at his departure that morning. Hitler was unmoved. That evening, Chamberlain told Wood that the "meeting with Herr Hitler had been most unsatisfactory". he sent a five-page letter, in German, detailing the demands he had made orally the day before. He responded by offering to act as an intermediary with the Czechoslovaks and suggested that he put his demands into a memorandum that could be distributed to the French and Czechoslovaks.
The leaders met again later on the night of September 23, a discussion that lasted into the early hours of the morning. Hitler demanded that Czechs fleeing the areas to be annexed take nothing with them. He extended the deadline for the occupation of the Sudetenland to October 1, the date he had long before secretly set for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The meeting ended amicably and the British Prime Minister entrusted his hopes to the Führer that they could solve other problems in Europe in the same spirit. Hitler hinted that the Sudetenland was fulfilling its territorial ambitions in Europe. Chamberlain flew back to London and said: "Now it's up to the Czechs."
Munich Conference
Hitler's proposals met with resistance not only from the French and Czechoslovakians, but also from some members of Chamberlain's cabinet. With no deal in sight, war seemed inevitable. The prime minister issued a press statement calling on Berlin to drop the threat of using force in exchange for assistance from the British government to obtain the concessions he sought. In the evening on September 27, he addressed the nation via radio and, after thanking those who wrote to him, stated:
How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel that has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war.How horrible, fantastic and amazing we are digging trenches and testing gas masks here because of a dispute in a distant country among people we know nothing about. It seems even more impossible for a fight that has already been resolved in principle to be the object of war.
On September 28, he asked Hitler to invite him back to Germany to seek a solution through a summit involving the British, French, Germans and Italians. He received a favorable response and the news reached him just as it was concluding a speech in the House of Commons, which took for granted a grim anticipation of war. Chamberlain reported the response to the House in his speech, which drew an impassioned reaction from the public, with MPs cheering gleefully for the prime minister and even diplomats in the galleries applauding. Alec Douglas-Home later commented, "There were many appeasers in Parliament that day."
On the morning of 29 September, it took off from Heston Airfield—east of present-day Heathrow Airport—for its third and final visit to Germany. Upon arrival in Munich, the British delegation was taken directly to the Führerbau, where Daladier, Benito Mussolini and Hitler soon arrived. The four leaders and their interpreters held an informal meeting; the Führer said that he intended to invade Czechoslovakia on October 1st. Mussolini gave a similar proposal to Hitler's position at Bad Godesberg, which, in reality, had been prepared by German officials and transmitted to Rome the day before. The four discussed the draft, and Chamberlain raised the issue of compensation for the Czechoslovak government and citizens, but Hitler refused to consider it.
The leaders joined the advisers after lunch and spent hours discussing each clause of the draft "Italian" agreement. Later that night, the British and French went to their hotels, claiming that they had to seek the advice of their respective governments. Meanwhile, the Germans and Italians enjoyed the party that Hitler had intended for the participants. During this break, the Prime Minister's adviser, Horace Wilson, met with the Czechoslovaks; he briefed them on the draft agreement and asked which districts were particularly important to them The conference resumed around 10 p.m. m. and it was mainly in the hands of a small writing committee. At 1:30 a.m. m., the Munich Agreements were ready, although the signing ceremony was delayed when Hitler discovered that the ornate inkwell on his desk was empty.
Chamberlain and Daladier returned to their hotel and informed the Czechoslovakians of the agreement. Both urged Czechoslovakia to quickly go along with the agreement, as the evacuation of the Czechs was to begin the next day. At 12:30 p.m. m., the Czechoslovak government opposed the decision, but agreed to its terms.
Consequences and repercussions of the pact
Before leaving the Führerbau, he requested a private conference with Hitler, who agreed and they agreed to meet at his host's apartment in Munich later that morning. There, Chamberlain urged restraint in the implementation of the agreement and requested that the Germans not bomb Prague if the Czechs resisted, to which Hitler seemed to agree. He took from his pocket a piece of paper entitled "Anglo-German Agreement," which contained three paragraphs and a statement that the two nations considered the Munich Agreement "a symbol of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war again." According to Chamberlain, when it was read to him, Hitler intervened with a "Yes, yes!" (Ha! Ha!); they both signed that paper there and then.. That piece of paper doesn't matter anymore." Chamberlain, on the other hand, patted his breast pocket when he returned to his hotel for lunch and said, "Got it!" News of the outcome of the meetings leaked earlier. of his return to London, causing satisfaction among many, but sadness for Churchill and his supporters.
He returned to London in triumph. Large crowds thronged Heston, where he was greeted by George Villiers, Lord Chamberlain, who presented him with a letter from George VI expressing the Empire's enduring gratitude and calling on him to report directly to Buckingham Palace. The streets were so full of cheers that it took her an hour and a half to travel the 14 km from Heston to the palace. After informing the king, Chamberlain and his wife appeared on the balcony of the palace with the kings. He then he went to Downing Street; both the street and the lobby of Number 10 were packed. As he climbed the stairs to address the crowd from a first-floor window, someone called out to him: "Neville, come up to the window and say 'Peace for our time'"; he turned around and replied, "No, I don't do that kind of thing". However, in his statement to the crowd, he recalled some words of his predecessor, Benjamin Disraeli, upon the latter's return from the Berlin Congress:
My good friends, this is the second time there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Now I recommend you go home, and sleep stillly in your beds.My good friends, this is the second time he returns from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I think it's peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Now I recommend you go back to your homes and sleep quietly in your beds.
George VI issued a statement to his people: "After the Prime Minister's magnificent efforts in the cause of peace, I fervently hope that a new era of friendship and prosperity is dawning among the peoples of the world." When the King met Duff Cooper, who resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty over the Munich Accords, he told him that he respected people who had the courage of their convictions, but that he could not agree with him. He wrote to him. to his mother, the Queen Mother Mary, that "the Prime Minister was delighted with the results of his mission, as were all of us".. Why can't they be thankful?” Most newspapers supported the prime minister, without criticism, and he received thousands of gifts, from a set of silver cutlery to many of his trademark umbrellas.
The House of Commons discussed the Munich Agreement on October 3rd. Although Cooper opened the debate by stating the reasons for his resignation and Churchill lashed out at the pact, no Conservatives voted against the government. Around twenty to thirty abstained, including Churchill, Eden, Cooper and Harold Macmillan.
On January 24, 1939, twelve members of the Swedish Riksdag nominated Chamberlain for the Nobel Peace Prize, for his "successful attempt to prevent the outbreak of general war in Europe." Erik Gottfrid Christian Brandt, a Swedish Social Democratic parliamentarian, also nominated Hitler for that award, apparently not intending the proposal to be taken seriously, as it was a "satirical criticism" of Chamberlain's nomination because he was skeptical of the agreements reached. In the end, the 1939 Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded.
Road to War
In the aftermath of the conference, he continued to follow a course of cautious rearmament. He told the Cabinet in early October 1938: '[I]t would be folly for the country to stop rearming until we were satisfied that other countries would act in the same way. So, for the time being, we must not relax any particle of effort until our deficiencies have been fixed." Later, in October, he resisted calls to put the industry on a war footing, convinced that such action would show to Hitler that the prime minister had decided to abandon the agreement. Chamberlain hoped that the pact with Germany would lead to a general settlement of the European disputes, but Hitler did not express any public interest in following through on the agreement. After considering an election General immediately after the conference, he decided to reshuffle his cabinet. By the end of the year, public concerns caused him to conclude that "getting rid of this uncomfortable and disgruntled House of Commons by a general election" would be "suicidal".
Despite the relative quietude of the Führer when the "Reich" absorbed the Sudetenland, foreign policy concerns continued to preoccupy Chamberlain. He made trips to Paris and Rome, hoping to persuade the French to speed up their rearmament and for Mussolini to be a positive influence on Hitler. Several of his cabinet members, led by Foreign Secretary Edward Wood, they began to back away from the policy of appeasement. Wood was already convinced that the pact, while "better than a European war", had been "a horrible and humiliating business". Public revulsion over the Glass Night (Kristallnacht) pogrom >) on 9 November made any attempt to "catch up" with Hitler unacceptable, although Chamberlain did not give up his hopes.
Still confident of reconciliation with Germany, he made a major speech in Birmingham on January 28, 1939, expressing his desire for international peace, sending an advance copy to Hitler at Berchtesgaden. He apparently gave the answer from him; in his Reichstag speech on 30 January, he stated that he wanted a "long peace". Chamberlain believed that improvements in British defense since the conference would bring the German dictator to the negotiating table. This assumption was reinforced by the speech. conciliator for a Nazi official who welcomed Ambassador Henderson back to Berlin after an absence for medical treatment in the UK. Chamberlain responded with a rally in Blackburn on 22 February, optimistic that the nations would settle their differences through trade, and was gratified when his comments were reported in German newspapers. As the situation seemed to improve, the Chamberlain government on the House of Commons stood firm and convinced that it would "play home" in an election at the end of 1939.
On March 15, Germany invaded the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, as well as Prague. Although Chamberlain's initial parliamentary response was, according to biographer Nick Smart, "weak", forty-eight hours later he was speaking more forcefully against German aggression. In another speech in Birmingham on 17 March, he warned that "there is no a greater mistake than to suppose that, because war was believed to be senseless and cruel, the nation has so lost its character that it will not draw its full power to resist such a challenge, if ever it was made." He questioned whether the invasion of Czechoslovakia was "the end of an old adventure or the beginning of a new one" and whether it was "a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force". According to the Secretary for the Colonies, Malcolm MacDonald, "once the prime minister was a strong advocate of peace, whereas now he has definitely turned to the view of war." The speech was met with widespread approval in the country and recruitment to military services increased considerably.
Chamberlain set out to build a series of defense pacts among the remaining European countries as a means of deterring Hitler from war. He sought an agreement with France, the Soviet Union, and Poland, whereby the great powers would come to help the Poles if their independence was threatened, but Warsaw's distrust of Moscow caused the negotiations to fail. Instead, on 31 March, he informed the House of Commons that he had approved the British and French guarantees with which that they would render Poland all possible assistance in the event of any action threatening its independence. In the ensuing debate, Eden declared that the nation was now united behind the government; even Churchill and Lloyd George praised Chamberlain's government for issuing the guarantee to the Poles.
He continued to take other measures to deter Hitler from aggression. He doubled the size of the Territorial Army, created a Ministry of Supply to expedite the supply of equipment to the armed forces, and instituted peacetime conscription. The Italian invasion of Albania on 7 April ushered in guarantees for Greece and Romania. On June 17, the aircraft manufacturer Handley Page received an order for two hundred Hampden twin-engine medium bombers and, by September 3, the chain of radar stations encircling the British coast (Chain Home) was fully operational.
He was reluctant to seek a military alliance with the Soviet Union; he was ideologically distrustful of the dictator Joseph Stalin and felt he had little to gain from a pact, given the recent massive purges in the Red Army. Much of his cabinet was in favor of such an alliance, and when Poland withdrew its objection to an Anglo-Soviet alliance, he had no choice but to proceed. Talks with the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, to which London sent a low-level delegation, dragged on for several months and finally collapsed on August 14 when Poland and Romania refused to allow Soviet troops to be stationed in their territories. A week after the setback in these negotiations, the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, pledging not to attack each other. In secret clauses it was agreed to divide Poland, among other countries, in the event of war. Chamberlain had ignored rumors of a Soviet-Nazi "closeness" and scorned the publicly announced pact, stating that it in no way affected British obligations to Poland. On 23 August, he requested that Henderson deliver a letter to Hitler notifying him that the United Kingdom was fully prepared to honor his guarantees to the Poles. Hitler ordered his generals to prepare for an invasion of Poland: "Our enemies are little worms. I saw them in Munich."
Warleader
Declaration of war
Germany invaded Poland in the early morning of September 1, 1939. The British Cabinet met late in the morning and issued a warning to Berlin that unless it withdrew from Polish territory, London would honor its obligations to Poland. When the House of Commons met at 6:00 p.m. m., the prime minister and the deputy labor leader Arthur Greenwood, deputy for the sick Clement Attlee, were greeted with cheers by the plenary. Chamberlain emotionally addressed the audience and blamed the conflict on Hitler.
No formal declaration of war was made immediately. French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet declared that Paris could do nothing until its Parliament met on the afternoon of September 2. Bonnet was trying to rally support for a Munich-style summit, proposed by the Italians, to be held on September 5. The British Cabinet demanded that Hitler be given an ultimatum immediately and that if the troops were not withdrawn by September 2, war would be declared. Chamberlain and Wood were convinced by Bonnet's pleas that France needed more time for mobilization and evacuation, so they postponed the expiry of the ultimatum, which had in fact not yet been delivered. In a lengthy statement to the House of The Commons did not mention any ultimatum, so it was received badly by MPs. As Greenwood stood up to "speak for the working classes", Conservative backbencher Leo Amery urged him to "Speak for England, Arthur", implying that the Prime Minister was not. doing. Chamberlain replied that telephone difficulties made communication with Paris difficult and tried to allay fears that the French were weakening. He had little success; many parliamentarians knew of Bonnet's efforts. Labor Harold Nicolson later wrote: "In those few minutes he undid his reputation." The apparent delay gave rise to fears that Chamberlain would again seek a deal with Hitler. Chamberlain's last peacetime cabinet was met at 11:30 p.m. m., with a thunderstorm outside, and determined that the ultimatum would be presented in Berlin at 9 a.m. m. the following day with a two-hour expiration, before the House of Commons met at noon. At 11:15 a.m. m., he addressed the nation on the radio, announcing that the United Kingdom was going to war with Germany:
I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.... We have a clear conscience, we have done all that any country could do to establish peace, but a situation in which no word given by Germany's ruler could be trusted, and no people or country could feel itself safe had become intolerable... Now may God bless you all and may He defend the right. For it is the evil things that we shall be fighting against, brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression, and persecution. And against them I am certain that the right will prevail.I'm talking to you from the Cabinet Room on 10 Downing Street. This morning, the British ambassador to Berlin gave the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard their response by 11 o'clock that they were immediately prepared to withdraw their troops from Poland, there would be a state of war between us. I must tell you now that such a commitment has not been received and that this country is therefore at war with Germany. [...] We have a calm conscience, we have done everything that any country could do to establish peace, but it has become intolerable a situation in which no word given by the ruler of Germany could be trusted and in which no person or country could feel safe. [...] May God bless you all and that He defends the right. For we will fight against evil things, brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution. And against these I'm sure the right thing will prevail.
That afternoon, he addressed the first Sunday session of the House of Commons in over a hundred and twenty years. Before a silent plenary session, he made a statement that even the opponents described as "moderate and, therefore, effective":
Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life has crashed into ruins. There is only one thing left for me to do: that is devote what strength and power I have to forwarding the victory of the cause for which we have sacrificed so much.Everything I have worked for, everything I have had faith, everything I have believed in during my public life has crumbled in ruins. I have only one thing left to do: dedicate the strength and power I have to bring to victory the cause for which we have sacrificed so much.
Some time later, in the midst of World War II, Churchill, who opposed the Munich Accords when they were signed, determined that the terms of the pact would not be fulfilled after the war and that the Sudetenland should be returned to post-war Czechoslovakia, considering the treaty "dead". In September 1942, the French National Committee headed by Charles de Gaulle declared the pact null and void ab initio; On August 17, 1944, the French Government ratified this decision. After Mussolini's fall, the Italian government also declared the pact null and void.
"Prank War"
He set up a War Cabinet and invited the Labor and Liberal parties to join his government, but they refused. He restored Churchill to the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty, with a seat in the War Cabinet. He also gave Eden a government post (Dominions Secretary), though not a seat in the small war cabinet. In his new role, Churchill proved a difficult colleague in the Cabinet, overwhelming the Prime Minister with lengthy memos. Chamberlain chastised him for sending so many messages, as the two met in the war cabinet every day. He suspected, as was later shown after the war, that "these letters are for the purpose of being quoted in the book that he will write." later". It also deterred some of Churchill's more extreme plans, such as "Operation Catherine", which would have sent three heavily armored battleships into the Baltic Sea, with an aircraft carrier and other support vessels, as a means of stopping shipments. of iron ore to Germany. With naval warfare the only significant front involving the British in the early months of the conflict, the First Lord's desire to wage ruthless and victorious warfare established him as a leader in waits in the public consciousness and among fellow parliamentarians.
With little ground action in the west, the first months of the war were dubbed an "illusory war," later renamed by French journalists the "joke war" (drôle de guerre). Chamberlain, like most Allied officers and generals, believed that the war could be won relatively quickly by maintaining economic pressure on Germany through a blockade, while rearmament continued. Furthermore, he was reluctant to go too far to disrupt the British economy. The government submitted an emergency war budget stating "the only thing that matters is winning the war, though we may go bankrupt in the process." Government spending rose slightly more than the rate of inflation between September 1939 and March 1940. Despite these difficulties, he still enjoyed approval ratings as high as 68% and nearly 60% in April 1940.
Fall from power
In the early 1940s, the Allies approved a naval campaign (Plan R 4) designed to seize the northern region of neutral Norway, home to the key port of Narvik, and possibly also the occupation of the mines of iron at Gällivare in northern Sweden, from which Germany drew much of its mineral resources. When the Baltic froze over in winter, iron ore was shipped south from Narvik. The Allies planned to mine Norwegian waters (Operation Wilfred), thus provoking a German reaction in Norway, and would then occupy much of the country. Foreseen by the Allies, Germany had also planned to invade Norway, and on April 9 German troops occupied Norway. Denmark and undertook the invasion of Norway in Operation Weserübung. German forces quickly occupied much of the country. The Allies sent troops to Norway, but met with little success, and on 26 April the war cabinet ordered a withdrawal. Opponents of the prime minister decided to turn the Whitsun recess postponement debate into a challenge to Chamberlain, who soon found out about the plan. After the initial fury, he decided to come forward.
What became known as the "Norway Debate" (Norway Debate) opened on May 7 and lasted for two days. Early speeches, like Chamberlain's, were bland, but Fleet Admiral Roger Keyes, representing Portsmouth North, in full uniform, launched a withering attack on the conduct of the Norwegian campaign, though he excluded Churchill from criticism.. Leo Amery then delivered a speech which he concluded by recalling Oliver Cromwell's words in dissolving the "long parliament": "You have sat here too long for any good you are doing. Go away, I say, and let us finish with you. In God's name, get out!" When Labor announced that they would call for a division of the House of Commons, Chamberlain called on his "friends, because I still have some friends in this House, to support the Government tonight". Because the use of the word friends ("friends") was a conventional term to refer to party colleagues and, according to biographer Robert Self, many MPs took it that way, it was a "misjudgment" referring to the loyalty of his co-religionists "when the gravity of the war situation required national unity". Lloyd George joined the attackers and Churchill ended the debate with a vigorous speech in support of the Government. When the split took place, the Government, which had an average majority of over two hundred MPs, prevailed with only eighty-one; thirty-eight deputies from the party's disciplinary group voted against and there were between twenty and twenty-five abstentions.
He spent much of May 9 in meetings with his Cabinet colleagues. Many Conservatives, in addition to those who voted against his government, indicated on that day and in subsequent days that they did not want Chamberlain to leave, but rather sought to rebuild his government. However, he decided to resign unless Labor was willing. to join his government, so he met with Attlee later that day, who was unwilling, but agreed to consult the National Executive Committee and then meet at Bournemouth. Chamberlain endorsed Wood as the next prime minister, but Wood was reluctant to put forward his own claims, so Churchill emerged as another option. The next day, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and Chamberlain considered remaining in office. Attlee confirmed that Labor would not serve under him, although they were willing to serve under someone else. Accordingly, Chamberlain went to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation and advise the King to send for Churchill. The latter later expressed his gratitude to him for not advising the king to appoint Wood, who would have received the support of a majority of government MPs.In a resignation issued that evening, addressing the nation he said:
For the hour has now come when we are to be put to the test, as the innocent people of Holland, Belgium, and France are being tested already. And you and I must rally behind our new leader, and with our united strength, and with unshakable courage fight, and work until this wild beast, which has sprung out of his lair upon us, has been finally disarmed and overthrown.The time has come for us to be tested, as the innocent of the Netherlands, Belgium and France are already being tested. And you and I must unite behind our new leader, with our united forces and with an unshakable courage to fight and work until this wild beast, which has emerged from his den upon us, has finally been disarmed and torn down.
Queen Elizabeth told him that her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, cried when she heard the broadcast. Churchill sent her a letter expressing his appreciation for her willingness to support him in the country's hour of need; former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Chamberlain's predecessor, wrote: "You've been through the fire since we spoke together just a fortnight ago and you've made yourself pure gold."
Lord President of the Council
In a departure from usual practice, he did not request any honors from the list for outgoing prime ministers. With Chamberlain as leader of the Conservative Party and with many MPs still supporting him and distrusting the new premier, Churchill refrained from any purge of his predecessor's loyalists. Churchill wanted Chamberlain to return to the Chancellery of the Exchequer, but he declined, convinced that this would lead to difficulties with the Labor Party. Instead, he accepted the position of Lord President of the Council, with a seat in the small five-member War Cabinet. When he entered the House of Commons on 13 May 1940, for the first time since his resignation, "the MPs lost their heads, shouted, cheered, waved their papers, and their reception was a regular standing ovation". The House received Churchill coldly; some of his great speeches there, such as "We shall fight on the beaches" (We shall fight on the beaches), were met with half-hearted enthusiasm.
His fall from power left him deeply depressed; he wrote: "Few men could have known such a reversal of fortune in so short a time". In June, he wrote: "I am now glad I have done it and will put Checkers out of my mind". As Lord President, he assumed vast responsibilities in domestic affairs and chaired the War Cabinet during Churchill's many absences. he recalled as "free of any grudge he might have felt against us. He worked very hard and well: a good chairman, a good committeeman, always very serious." As head of the Lord President's Committee, he exerted great influence over the wartime economy. Wood reported to the war cabinet on May 26, with the Netherlands conquered and French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud warning that his country might have to sign an armistice, diplomatic contacts with a still neutral Italy offered the possibility of a negotiated peace. Wood urged to go ahead and see if a worthwhile offer could be gotten. Disputes over the course of action in the war cabinet lasted for three days; Chamberlain's statement on the last day that there was unlikely to be an acceptable offer and that the matter should not be discussed at that time convinced the War Cabinet to reject negotiations.
Twice that month, Churchill broached the issue of bringing Lloyd George into government. Chamberlain indicated that, because of his long-standing dislike for him, he would immediately retire if Lloyd George was made a minister. Churchill did not appoint him, but raised the issue with Chamberlain again in early June. This time, he accepted Lloyd George's appointment, provided he gave him a personal guarantee to put the enmity aside. In the end, Lloyd George refused to serve in Churchill's government.
Chamberlain worked to align his party behind Churchill, working with the party's head of discipline (the whip), David Margesson, to overcome members' suspicions and dislikes of the prime minister. Minister. On July 4, after the British attack on the French fleet, Churchill was greeted in the House with a standing ovation by the Conservative MPs who supported him along with Chamberlain and was almost overwhelmed with emotion at the first cheer he received from the others. MPs from his own party, which they had not done since May. Churchill reciprocated his loyalty and refused to consider Labor and Liberal attempts to oust the Lord President from government. When Chamberlain's criticism appeared in the press and when he learned that Labor intended to use a forthcoming secret session of Parliament as a platform to attack him, he told Churchill that he could only defend himself by attacking the Labor Party. The Prime Minister intervened with Labor and the press and the criticism died down, according to Chamberlain, "like turning off a faucet".
In July 1940, "Cato", a pseudonym for three journalists - future Labor leader Michael Foot, former Liberal MP Frank Owen and Conservative Peter Howard - published the controversial book Guilty Men to attack the record of the National Government, alleging that it had failed to adequately prepare for war. He called for the removal of Chamberlain and other ministers who had allegedly contributed to the British disasters of the early part of the war. It sold more than 200,000 copies, many of which were passed from one hand to another, and reached twenty-seven editions in its first few months, despite not being distributed by several major bookstores. According to historian David Dutton, "his The impact on Chamberlain's reputation, both in the general public and in academia, was truly profound."
She had long enjoyed excellent health, except for occasional bouts of gout, but in that month she was in almost constant pain. She sought treatment and later entered the hospital to undergo surgery. Doctors discovered that he was suffering from end-stage bowel cancer, but they kept it from him and told him that he would not need further surgery. He resumed work in mid-August and returned to his office on September 9, but the pain returned, aggravated by the night bombing of London that forced him to go to a bomb shelter. Late-night and out of energy, he left London for the last time, on 19 September, returning to Highfield Park in Heckfield. He offered his resignation to Churchill on 22 September 1940, who was initially reluctant to accept, but when they both agreed Realizing she would never work again, he finally allowed her to quit. Churchill asked him if he would accept the highest order of British chivalry, the Order of the Garter, of which his brother had been a member. Chamberlain refused, saying that "he would prefer to die simply as 'Mr Chamberlain'." like my father before me, without any title.” The City of London granted him the title of Honorary Citizen in 1940, but he died before acceptance; his widow received the scroll the following year.
In what little time he had left, he was infuriated by the press's "short, cold and mostly dismissive" comments on his retirement, "without the slightest sign of sympathy for the man or even any understanding of him." that there may be a human tragedy in the background". The Kings drove from Windsor to visit the dying man on 14 October. Chamberlain received hundreds of letters of sympathy from friends and well-wishers. He wrote to John Simon, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in his government:
[I]t was the hope of doing something to improve the conditions of life for the poorer people that brought me at past middle life into politics, and it is some satisfaction to me that I was able to carry out some part of my ambition even though its permanency may be challenged by the destruction of war. For the rest I regret nothing that I have done " I can see nothing undone that I ought to have done. I am therefore content to accept the fate that has so suddenly overtaken me.[F]ue the hope of doing something to improve the living conditions of the poorest people that led me to politics in the middle of my life and it is a satisfaction for me that I could carry out part of my ambition, even though their permanence could be challenged by the destruction of war. Otherwise, I don't regret anything I've done and I don't see anything I should have done. Therefore, I am happy to accept the destiny that has so suddenly surpassed me.
Death
He died of bowel cancer on November 9, 1940 at the age of 71. He was held a funeral at Westminster Abbey, due to wartime security concerns, the date and time were not widely publicized. After cremation, his ashes were interred in the abbey alongside those of Andrew Bonar Law. Churchill eulogized him in the House of Commons three days after his death:
Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.Regardless of what history may or may not say about these terrible and tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity in accordance with his views and strived to the maximum of his ability and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the horrible and devastating struggle we are now committed. This will keep you in good position as regards the so-called verdict of history.
Although some of Chamberlain's supporters found this oratory to be false compliments to the late Prime Minister, Churchill added privately: "What am I to do without poor Neville? Trusting him to look after the home front for me." Others paying tribute in the House of Commons and Lords on 12 November included Foreign Secretary Edward Wood, Labor Party leader Clement Attlee and Liberal Party leader and Air Minister Archibald Sinclair. Lloyd George, the only remaining former Prime Minister in the House, was expected to speak, but he was absent from the proceedings. Always close to his family, the executors of his will were his cousins, Wilfred Byng Kenrick and Sir Wilfrid Martineau, who they were also mayors of Birmingham.
Legacy and reputation
A few days before his death, he wrote:
So far as my personal reputation is concerned, I am not in the least disturbed about it. The letters which I am still receiving in such vast quantities so unanimously dwell on the same point, namely without Munich the war would have been lost and the Empire destroyed in 1938... I do not feel the opposite view... has a chance of survival. Even if nothing further were to be published giving the true inside story of the past two years I should not fear the historian's verdict.As for my personal reputation, I don't care at least. The letters I continue to receive in such large quantities, unanimously, focus on the same point, that is, without Munich, the war would have been lost and the Empire destroyed in 1938. [...] I do not feel the contrary opinion [...] there were possibilities of surviving. Even if nothing else was published about the true internal history of the past two years, it should not fear the verdict of the historian.
Guilty men was not the only World War II book to damage his reputation. We were not all wrong, published in 1941, took a similar tack to Guilty men, arguing that Liberal and Labor MPs, as well as a small number of Conservatives, had fought against their appeasement policies. The author, Liberal MP Geoffrey Mander, voted against conscription in 1939. Another book against Conservative policies was Why not trust the Tories, written in 1944 by "Gracchus", who most It was later discovered it was the future Labor Minister Aneurin Bevan, who chastised the Tories for the foreign policy decisions of Baldwin and Chamberlain. Although at the end of the war some conservatives gave their own versions of events, notably Quintin Hogg in his 1945 book The left was never right, there was a firmly established public belief that Chamberlain was guilty of serious crimes. diplomatic and military misjudgments, which nearly caused the defeat of the United Kingdom.
His reputation was devastated by these attacks from the left. In 1948, with the publication of The Gathering Storm , the first of six volumes in Churchill's series, The Second World War , he suffered an even more serious blow from the right. While Churchill privately declared "this is not history, this is my case", his series was far more influential, depicting him as well-meaning but weak, blind to the threat posed by Hitler and oblivious to the fact that he claimed, the German dictator could have been removed from power by a grand coalition of European states. Churchill suggested that the one-year delay between the Munich Agreements and the war worsened the British position, and criticized Chamberlain for peacetime and wartime decisions. In the years after the books were published, few historians questioned the Churchill's trial. Anne de Vere Cole, Chamberlain's widow, suggested that the collection was full of matters which "are not real inaccuracies that could easily be corrected, but systematic omissions and assumptions about certain things which are now recognized as facts when they actually had no such condition."
In 1974, many of his family letters and extensive personal documents were bequeathed by his family to the archives of the University of Birmingham. During the war, the Chamberlain family had commissioned historian Keith Feiling to produce a biography and gave him access to private journals and documents. Although Feiling had a right of access to official documents as an official biographer of a recently deceased person, he may not have been aware of the legal provisions and the Cabinet Secretary denied their requests for access. Although Feiling produced what David Dutton described in 2001 as "the most impressive and persuasive single-volume biography" of Chamberlain, completed during the war and published in 1946, he was unable to repair the damage already done to the reputation of the former prime minister.
A 1961 biography of Chamberlain by Conservative MP Iain Macleod was the first notable of a revisionist school of thought. The same year, A. J. P. Taylor, in his book The Origins of the Second World War, found that Chamberlain had adequately rearmed the country for its defence, although a rearmament designed to defeat Germany would have required massive additional resources., describing the Munich Agreement as "a triumph for all that was best and most enlightened in British life [...and] for those who bravely denounced the harshness and myopia of Versailles".
The adoption of the "thirty-year rule" in 1967 made many of his government documents available for the next three years, helping to justify why Chamberlain acted as he did. much to the revisionist school, though they also included books that strongly criticized him, such as Keith Middlemas's 1972 Diplomacy of Illusion, which portrayed him as a seasoned politician with strategic blindness when it came to Germany. The released documents indicated that, contrary to claims made in Guilty men, Chamberlain had not ignored the advice of the Foreign Office or disregarded or run over his cabinet. Other files showed that he had considered seeking a grand coalition between European governments, such as Churchill later proposed, but rejected the plan because dividing Europe into two camps would make war more likely, not the other way around. They also showed that Chamberlain had been informed that the Dominions, following independent foreign policies under the Westminster Charter of 1931, warned that the British Government could not depend on their help in the event of a continental war. The force that Germany conquered Czechoslovakia became known publicly in these declassifications. In reaction to the revisionist school of thought regarding Chamberlain's tenure, a post-revisionist school emerged from the 1990s that used the published documents to justify the initial conclusions of Guilty men. The Oxford historian R. A. C. Parker argued that Chamberlain had the opportunity to forge a close alliance with France after the Anschluß, in early 1938, and initiate a policy of containment of Germany under the auspices of the Society of the nations. While many revisionist writers suggested that Chamberlain had little or no choice in his actions, Parker argued that the Prime Minister and his colleagues chose appeasement over other viable policies. In his two volumes, Chamberlain and appeasement (1993) and Churchill and appeasement (2000), Parker stated that the Prime Minister, due to his "powerful and stubborn personality" and skill in debate, led the UK to adopt the appeasement to the detriment of effective deterrence. Parker also suggested that had Churchill held high office in the second half of the 1930s he would have built a series of alliances that would have deterred Hitler and possibly provoked domestic opponents of the Nazis seek his dismissal.
Dutton noted that Chamberlain's reputation, for better or worse, will likely always be closely tied to his assessment of his policy toward Germany:
Whatever else may be said of Chamberlain's public life his reputation will in the last resort depend upon assessments of this moment [Munich] and this policy [appeasement]. This was the case when he left office in 1940 and it remains so sixty years later. To expect otherwise is rather like hoping that Pontius Pilate will one day be judged as a successful provincial administrator of the Roman Empire.Anything else that can be said of Chamberlain's public life, his reputation will ultimately depend on the evaluations of this moment [Agreements of Munich] and this policy [appening]. This was the case when he dropped out of office in 1940 and stayed that way sixty years later. Expecting the opposite is how to wait for Pontius Pilate to be judged someday as a successful provincial administrator of the Roman Empire.
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