Appeasing Hitler Read online




  Appeasing Hitler

  Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War

  TIM BOUVERIE

  Contents

  Preface: ‘Never Again!’

  Prologue: The Storm Breaks

  I The Hitler Experiment

  II ‘I Sing of Arms and the Man’

  III Tea with Hitler

  IV The Abyssinian Imbroglio

  V Across the Rhine

  VI The Defence of the Realm

  VII Hitler’s Wonderland

  VIII Enter Chamberlain

  IX Hunting for Peace

  X ‘Bowlers Are Back!’

  XI The Rape of Austria

  XII Last Train from Berlin

  XIII Hons and Rebels

  XIV A Faraway Country

  XV The Crisis Breaks

  XVI To the Brink

  XVII A Piece of Paper

  XVIII Peace for Our Time

  XIX Chamberlain Betrayed

  XX Deterring the Dictators

  XXI The Last Season

  XXII Final Hours

  XXIII Ghosts of Appeasement

  XXIV The Fall of Chamberlain

  XXV Appeasement’s Last Stand

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Sources and Bibliography

  Index

  About the Author

  Tim Bouverie read history at Christ Church, Oxford. From 2013–2017 he was a political journalist at Channel 4 News, where he worked alongside Michael Crick, as his producer, and covered all major political events, including both the 2015 and 2017 General Elections and the EU Referendum. He regularly reviews history and politics books, and has written for the Spectator, Observer and Daily Telegraph. He has also for the last five years worked at the Chalke Valley History Festival as an interviewer.

  To my parents, with love and gratitude

  Picture Credits

  1. Hitler at Nuremberg, May 1933 (AF Archive/Alamy Stock Photo).

  2. Nazi boycott of Jewish shops, 1 April 1933 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images).

  3. Sir Horace Rumbold (Alamy Stock Photo).

  4. Winston Churchill, September 1938 (Picture Press/Alamy Stock Photo).

  5. Stanley Baldwin crosses Parliament Square, 7 June 1935 (Popperfoto/Getty Images).

  6. Anthony Eden at a reception at the Polish Embassy, November 1936 (Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images).

  7. Lord Halifax (Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images).

  8. Lord Lothian reading Mein Kampf, c.1935 (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images).

  9. Hitler with Sir John Simon and Anthony Eden, 25 March 1935 (ullstein bild/Getty Images).

  10. Viscount Cecil presents three million signatures in support of the International Disarmament Conference, January 1932 (Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images).

  11. Haile Selassie appeals to the League of Nations, 30 June 1936 (Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo).

  12. German troops enter the demilitarised Rhineland, 7 March 1936 (Fox Photos/Getty Images).

  13. Crowds in the Berlin Olympic Stadium, August 1936 (Heinrich Hoffmann/ullstein bild/Getty Images).

  14. David Lloyd George visits Hitler at the Berghof, 4 September 1936 (World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo).

  15. Sir Neville Henderson with Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg Rally (Heinrich Hoffmann/ullstein bild/Getty Images).

  16. Lord Halifax with Hitler and Neurath at the Berghof, 19 November 1937 (Heinrich Hoffmann/ullstein bild/Getty Images).

  17. Neville Chamberlain fishing, 8 June 1938 (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images).

  18. Chamberlain with Mussolini, September 1938 (Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo).

  19. Hitler addresses a crowd in Vienna’s Heldenplatz, 15 March 1938 (ullstein bild/Getty Images).

  20. Viennese Jews are forced to scrub the streets after the Anschluss (Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo).

  21. Joachim von Ribbentrop leaves the German Embassy in London, 13 March 1938 (Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Getty Images).

  22. Sir Robert Vansittart and Sir Alexander Cadogan leave Downing Street, 11 September 1938 (H. F. Davis/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images).

  23. Chamberlain prepares to depart Heston airport for his first meeting with Hitler, 15 September 1938 (Imagno/Getty Images).

  24. Chamberlain with Hitler at the Berghof, 15 September 1938 (Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo).

  25. Hitler welcomes Chamberlain at the Hotel Dreesen in Bad Godesberg, 22 September 1938 (Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo).

  26. Trying on gas masks, September 1938 (Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images).

  27. The participants of the Munich Conference, 29 September 1938 (World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo).

  28. Tribute to Chamberlain at a London florist’s, 30 September 1938 (Harry Todd/Getty Images).

  29. Chamberlain at the window of 10 Downing Street, 30 September 1938 (TopFoto).

  30. Women in the Sudeten town of Eger react to the arrival of German troops, 3 October 1938 (Bettmann/Getty Images).

  31. Chamberlain inspects the Duce’s personal bodyguard, 11 January 1939 (ullstein bild/Getty Images).

  32. German troops enter the grounds of the Hradćany Castle in Prague, 15 March 1939 (Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo).

  33. Molotov signs the Nazi–Soviet Pact, watched by Ribbentrop and Stalin, 23 August 1939 (Corbis/Getty Images).

  34. German soldiers advance through Polish countryside, 1 September 1939 (Print Collector/Contributor/Getty Images).

  35. Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain, 23 February 1940 (Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo).

  Dismemberment of Czechoslovakia: Border Changes, October 1938–March 1939

  Preface

  ‘Never Again!’

  The desire to avoid a second world war was perhaps the most understandable and universal wish in history. More than 16.5 million people died during the First World War. The British lost 723,000; the French 1.7 million; the Russians 1.8 million; the British Empire 230,000; the Germans over 2 million. Twenty thousand British soldiers died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, while the ossuary at Douaumont contains the bones of some 130,000 French and German soldiers – a mere sixth of those killed during the 302-day Battle of Verdun. Among the survivors there was scarcely a soul that was not affected. Almost everyone had a father, husband, son, brother, cousin, fiancé or friend killed or maimed. When it was over, not even the victors could feel victorious. The Cenotaph, unveiled on Whitehall on 19 June 1919, was no Arc de Triomphe but a symbol of loss. Every Armistice Day, thousands of Britons shuffled past it in mournful silence, while, on both sides of the Channel, schools, villages, towns and railway stations commemorated friends and colleagues with their own memorials. In the years that followed the mantra was as consistent as it was determined: ‘Never again!’

  But it did happen again. Despite the best of intentions and efforts aimed at both conciliation and deterrence, the British and French found themselves at war with the same adversary a mere twenty-one years after the ‘war to end all wars’. The purpose of this book is to contribute to our understanding of how this happened.

  The debate over appeasement – the attempt by Britain and France to avoid war by making ‘reasonable’ concessions to German and Italian grievances during the 1930s – is as enduring as it is contentious. Condemned, on the one hand, as a ‘moral and material disaster’, responsible for the deadliest conflict in history, it has also been described as ‘a noble idea, rooted in Christianity, courage and common-sense’.1 Between these two polarities lies a mass of nuance, sub-arguments and historical skirmishes.
History is rarely clear-cut, and yet the so-called lessons of the period have been invoked by politicians and pundits, particularly in Britain and the United States, to justify a range of foreign interventions – in Korea, Suez, Cuba, Vietnam, the Falklands, Kosovo and Iraq (twice) – while, conversely, any attempt to reach an accord with a former antagonist is invariably compared with the infamous 1938 Munich Agreement. When I began researching this book, in the spring of 2016, the spectre of Neville Chamberlain was being invoked by American conservatives as part of their campaign against President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, while today the concept of appeasement is gaining new currency as the West struggles to respond to Russian revanchism and aggression. A fresh consideration of this policy as it was originally conceived and executed feels, therefore, timely as well as justified.

  There is, of course, already a considerable body of literature on this subject – though neither as extensive nor as up to date as is sometimes assumed. Indeed, while books on the Second World War have multiplied over the last twenty years, the build-up and causes of that catastrophe have been relatively neglected. Furthermore, while there have been many excellent books on appeasement, most of them have tended to focus on a particular event, such as Munich, or a particular person, such as Neville Chamberlain. What I wanted to do, by contrast, was to write a book which covered the entire period – from Hitler’s appointment as German Chancellor to the end of the ‘Phoney War’ – to see how the policy developed and attitudes changed. I also wanted to consider a broader canvas than that merely encompassing the principal protagonists. The desire to avoid war by reaching a modus vivendi with the dictator states extended well beyond the confines of government and, therefore, while the characters of Chamberlain, Halifax, Churchill, Daladier and Roosevelt are central to this story, I have also examined the actions of lesser-known figures, in particular the amateur diplomats. Finally, I wanted to write a narrative history which captured the uncertainty, drama and dilemmas of the period. Thus, while there is commentary and analysis throughout, my main purpose was to construct a chronological narrative, based on diaries, letters, newspaper articles and diplomatic despatches, which guides the reader through these turbulent years. In pursuit of this, I have been fortunate to have had access to over forty collections of private papers – several of which yielded exciting new material. Not wishing to disrupt my narrative, I have not highlighted these finds in the text but, where possible, have favoured unpublished over published sources in respect of both length and frequency.

  A book on international relations naturally has an international scope. Yet this is primarily a book about British politics, British society, British diplomacy. Strange as it may now seem, Britain was still nominally the most powerful country in the world in the 1930s – the proud centre of an empire covering a quarter of the globe. That America was the coming power was obvious. But the United States had retreated into isolationism in the aftermath of the First World War, while France – the only other power capable of curtailing German ambitions – chose to surrender the diplomatic and military initiative in favour of British leadership. Thus, while the British would have preferred not to become entangled in the problems of the Continent, they realised that they were, and were perceived as, the only power capable of providing the diplomatic, moral and military leadership necessary to halt Hitler and his bid for European hegemony.

  Within Britain, the choices that would affect not only that country but potentially the entire world were made by a remarkably small number of people. As such, the following pages may seem like the ultimate vindication of the ‘high-politics’ school of history. Yet these men (and they were almost exclusively men) were not acting in a vacuum. Acutely conscious of political, financial, military and diplomatic constraints – both real and imagined – Britain’s political leaders were no less considerate of public opinion. In an age when opinion polls were in their infancy this was a naturally amorphous concept. Yet exist it did – divined from letters to newspapers, constituency correspondence and conversations – and was treated with the utmost seriousness. For the majority of the 1930s the democratically elected leaders of Britain and France were convinced that their populations would not support a policy which risked war, and acted accordingly. But what if war was unavoidable? What if Hitler proved insatiable? And what if the very desire to avoid it made war more likely?

  Prologue

  The Storm Breaks

  On the evening of Friday 1 September 1939, the former First Lord of the Admiralty, Alfred Duff Cooper, changed as usual into his dinner jacket before joining his wife, Diana, and three fellow Conservatives at the Savoy Grill. A day of brilliant sunshine had given way to a balmy evening and there was nothing within the splendid art deco dining room to denote a crisis. Emerging later, however, the Coopers were bewildered to find themselves in complete darkness – a result of the hastily imposed blackout. Taxis were nowhere to be found and the couple were beginning to wonder how they were going to get home when ‘Bendor’ Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, appeared in his Rolls-Royce and offered them a lift. Gladly, the Coopers accepted, only to regret their decision when the Duke began to inveigh against the Jews, whom he held responsible for the coming war. Reminding himself that he and his wife were guests in the Duke’s car, Cooper, who had a volcanic temper, held his tongue. When, however, the Duke expressed his joy that Britain was not yet at war with Germany, since we were really Hitler’s ‘best friends’, the former First Lord could restrain himself no longer. Before making a swift exit at Victoria, he erupted, telling His Grace that he hoped Hitler would ‘soon find out that we were his most implacable and remorseless enemies’. The next day, Cooper was amused to hear that Westminster was going around saying that if Britain did end up going to war then it was all the fault of ‘the Jews and Duff Cooper’.1

  Twelve hours earlier, 1.5 million German soldiers, 2,000 aeroplanes and over 2,500 tanks had invaded Poland from the north, south and west. Luftwaffe bombers were currently laying waste to airfields and cities, while the Panzer divisions were well into their lightning dash across the Polish countryside. In London, politicians and public alike felt sure that they were on the brink of war. Under the terms of the Anglo-Polish Agreement, signed just six days earlier, Britain was committed to coming to Poland’s aid immediately following an attack. ‘We are in the same boat now’, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, assured the Polish Ambassador, Count Edward Raczyński, that morning. ‘England never breaks her word to her friends.’2

  Later that day, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, raised cheers in the House of Commons when, banging his fist on the despatch box, he declared that ‘the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man – the German Chancellor, who has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery in order to serve his own senseless ambitions’. Hearing these words, the Conservative MP Edward ‘Louis’ Spears could not help recalling Chamberlain’s boast, of only a year previously, to have secured ‘peace for our time’ at the Munich Conference. Now, however, the Prime Minister appeared firm, even bellicose. The Cabinet had authorised full mobilisation that morning, while the British Ambassador to Berlin had told the German Foreign Minister that if the German Government was not prepared to cease hostilities and withdraw its forces then ‘His Majesty’s Government’ would ‘without hesitation fulfil their obligations to Poland’. The British Government had, however, conspicuously failed to set a time limit on this semi-ultimatum.3

  The next day, Saturday 2 September, the heat became heavy and oppressive. As MPs, unaccustomed to being in town over the weekend, struggled to entertain themselves, dark clouds began to marshal on the horizon; it was clear a storm was brewing. Meanwhile, precautions against the bombing onslaught which it was expected would follow Britain’s declaration of war were continuing. Women were being evacuated to the country, following their children (most of whom had left the previous day) and most of the Old Masters from the National Gallery. Sandbags were pil
ed in front of Government buildings while, overhead, an armada of barrage balloons floated listlessly. In a gesture of delusional futility the Duke of Windsor, the former Edward VIII, sent Hitler a telegram urging him to ‘do his best for peace’.4

  In the afternoon, crowds began to form in Whitehall as Cabinet Ministers arrived at Downing Street and MPs scurried to Parliament. The atmosphere, noted Rear-Admiral Tufton Beamish, Conservative MP for Lewes, was markedly different to that of twenty-five years previously, when Britain had entered the First World War. ‘Whitehall was then full of cheering crowds, with no thought of the millions to be killed, the conscription to come, the squalor and misery and chaos … Now I see heavy hearts, clear minds and grim determination.’5

  Members of Parliament were less calm. Disconcerted by the lack of precision in Chamberlain’s statement the previous evening, they gathered in the Commons chamber at 2.45 p.m. expecting to hear that Britain was at war. Instead, Sir John Simon rose and explained that the Prime Minister had been delayed and would be making a statement later in the evening. Troubling rumours began to spread: the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, had proposed an international conference which the Cabinet were considering; the Labour Party had refused to join a coalition; the French were preparing to rat.

  In order to kill time and calm their nerves, MPs indulged heavily in the Commons smoking room. ‘The amount of alcohol being consumed was incredible!’ recorded the former Cabinet Secretary Lord Hankey.6 ‘There was a torrent of talk’, recalled one Conservative MP. ‘In every breast there was a gnawing anxiety about our guarantee to Poland.’7 ‘We felt the honour of Britain vanishing before our eyes’, noted another witness.8 Eventually, the bells rang out and MPs, filled with ‘Dutch courage’, piled back into the Chamber to hear what they assumed would be the belated declaration of war.9 The atmosphere was ‘like a court awaiting the verdict of the jury’.10