I’m not a Churchill hater-but-it always seemed to me very unfair that after bringing in huge cuts, especially to the navy as chancellor of the exchequer he was the one criticising the government just as the full consequences of the cuts were becoming apparent. It’s time to end the guilty men interpretation of Chamberlain.

“Chamberlain had known form the start that the Polish guarantee left the timing of war in the hands of Warsaw, but that didn’t matter to him because its main aim was to stop a Polish-German pact, and in any case he thought the war would be, like WW1, a war of stalemate and blockade in which Poland would hold out for a good deal longer than it did, and the USSR could be persuaded to join our side.”

The Deputy Chiefs of Staff (Tom Phillips, Henry Pownall (for DCIGS) and John Slessor (for DCAS), writing on 16 August 1939, were very clear that without immediate Soviet assistance, which the Polish gvt did not want, Poland would go down in a very brief time, and the DCoS advocated that HMG apply heavy pressure on Polish gvt to persuade them to accept Soviet assistance. Admiral Sir Reginald Drax, then in Moscow, estimated that Poland would last 2 weeks without Soviet assistance. In view of this, where did Chamberlain get the idea that Poland could hold out longer than it did (and as long as Drax estimated)?

@Frank Finch:
***I dispute your choice of words and the slant of your argument when you refer to Chamberlain’s “warlike ambitions”. It’s perhaps a bit subtle but you imply that war was something he wanted. “Resignation to the necessity of war” is a better way to put it.***

I think at that point he was fervently hoping that serving up Czechoslovakia to Hitler would satisfy Hitler’s ambitions, but somehow suspected that it wouldn’t … like a failing businessman who buys into the Nigerian scam, knowing full well that it’s a fraud, but overcome by desperation. Similarly, the guarantee to Poland was hoped to be a final deterrent, although even that was dubious; a long-shot to be sure, but at that time, virtually his only chance. And at the time, no one knew how weak France really was; perhaps not even the French.

As to world war 2 there seems to have been many sub plots. Hitlers main objective was to go east and overthrown the Communits in Russia, and take lots of land,. The UK seems to have been very concerned with protecting her Empire. Which may have been why we were re-arming.

And then you have the US who didn’t declare war on Germany after Hitler invaded Poland, or France, or even after Dunkirk, and we had retreated out of main land Europe. A lot of FDRs moves seem now to be about removing the British Empire from the map and replacing it with new US interests/empire.

I believe it to have been common knowledge that Neville Chamberlain was simply buying time in his meeting with Adolf Hitler. Several years ago, I heard first hand accounts of war preparations being made months before the summit at Munich was even conceived ; I can’t imagine that the Prime Minister wasn’t aware of the preparations.

Except – Chamberlain was forced into honouring the Poland pact, which he had barely meant. See Volume 2 of Manchester’s Churchill biography. It was the threat of a confidence vote which led to him declaring war on the 3rd, having delayed since the 1st.

***PH: I’d need some chapter and verse on that. My understanding is that the supposed delay was caused by an attempt to co-ordinate declarations of war with Paris. There was no possibility of a diplomatic way out after the Germans crossed the Polish border. Chamberlain had known form the start that the Polish guarantee left the timing of war in the hands of Warsaw, but that didn’t matter to him because its main aim was to stop a Polish-German pact, and in any case he thought the war would be, like WW1, a war of stalemate and blockade in which Poland would hold out for a good deal longer than it did, and the USSR could be persuaded to join our side. ****

From the essential book “The Great Deception” (2005) by the same Mr Booker and Richard North, concerning the parliamentary debates in October 1971 about “going into Europe” (p184):

“Addressing fears of a ‘federal Europe’, [Douglas-Home, then foreign secretary] acknowledged that ‘some people might still like to pursue this idea’, but claimed that ‘political change’ in the Community had to be unanimous, and that there was no way any country could be ‘dragooned or coerced into a pattern of political association’ it did not like. There was no mention of economic and monetary union, or of the Luxembourg agreement committing the Six [founder countries] to work for a common foreign policy. Instead Douglas-Home offered the prospect that, once she was in, Britain could play a part in shaping a new regional policy, which could bring lavish subsidies to boost the poorer areas of the country.”

Plainly, Douglas-Home did not always tell the truth. However, it is much likelier he was telling the truth on that train rather than in the House four years later.

There are bunkers in the suburbs of Leeds that local historians say are ammunition bunkers, and that they were built in 1938. If this is correct, then war preparations were being made a year in advance of September 1939.

I think I read that on the Secret Leeds 2 group on Facebook.