What did Chamberlain miss?

2,831 Views | 11 Replies | Last: 4 yr ago by USAFAg
Smokedraw01
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So, I'm listening to Malcom Gladwell's new book and he talks a lot about Chamberlain and his meetings with Hitler. They talk a lot about the signs that he missed but never really go into what the actual signs were.

So my question is, what was the evidence that he missed when talking to Hitler?
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ABATTBQ87
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https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/chamberlain-and-hitler/
AtlAg05
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I think it was psychological, after seeing the Great War, I can't blame them for not wanting to get into another war. They convinced themselves they could prevent a massive loss of life and keep the piece.

It's a similar mindset I've seen in Georgia, we had our "Snowmageddon" where 3-4 inches essentially shutdown metro Atlanta for a few days. Now we see schools getting cancelled where there is a threat of snow. They thought they were doing the right thing, Chamberlain just didn't have that line in the sand to say enough was enough.
Mort Rainey
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AtlAg05 said:

I think it was psychological, after seeing the Great War, I can't blame them for not wanting to get into another war. They convinced themselves they could prevent a massive loss of life and keep the piece.
This happens all the time in history. People today look back on Vietnam era foreign policy and ask, how could they not see how stupid they were being?

But people making important current decisions always have recent history drastically affecting their point of view. Vietnam era policy makers were a generation of men who had served in ww2 and everything about their experience taught them that you don't back down from a bully. Chamberlain let Hitler walk all over him at Munich and it led to war, therefore, we will not let anyone walk all over us in terms of foreign policy. By this logic, the domino theory makes sense, even if it seems absurd today with all the information we have.

Move to twenty years later, and the thinking is now the opposite. There were literal genocides taking place in Europe and Africa in the mid 1990s. If ever there was a humanitarian case for American intervention, that was it. But Bill Clinton wasn't going to do that with a gun to his head. His frame of reference was Vietnam, the idea that getting involved in an international hornets next that didn't directly affect America could lead to disaster. Again, recent history proving a major influence on how a current event was managed.

You're probably exactly right with your point here. ww1 was a catastrophe the likes of which the world hadn't seen before. The numbers of dead and injured in the great war were mind blowing to the people of that era, 100k in battle after battle. It decimated entire countries, wiped out a generation, and essentially restructured the world for decades to come. By the 1930s, the men who had been there were now the policy makers, and they probably saw any kind of compromise as preferable to another Armageddon.

aalan94
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Sometimes doing the right thing is impossible. The right thing was to confront Hitler. It was impossible for Chamberlain to do it.

Some (not me) would argue that the right thing was not to drop the bomb. It was impossible for Truman not to do it.

This is because you can't make decisions in isolation. You are in events, and sometimes, you are a prisoner of them.
74OA
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Very true. British pacifism after the horrors of WWI was an overwhelmingly powerful popular and political force and Chamberlain didn't have the moral fiber to stand up to it despite the growing danger.

What is far less forgivable is how after war broke out both Chamberlain and Halifax actively worked to undermine new Prime Minister Churchill's efforts to rally the nation to resist Hitler. That was wrong.
Smokedraw01
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So as I read it, Chamberlain just misread Hitler. He didn't have any real evidence or intelligence to ignore, it was all about the meetings he had with Hitler.

I've always felt that history treated Chamberlain like he was somewhat responsible for World War 2 but it would seem that is a little unfair, in my opinion.
"If you run into an ******* in the morning, you ran into an *******. If you run into *******s all day, you're the *******." – Raylan Givens, "Justified."
74OA
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Smokedraw01 said:

So as I read it, Chamberlain just misread Hitler. He didn't have any real evidence or intelligence to ignore, it was all about the meetings he had with Hitler.

I've always felt that history treated Chamberlain like he was somewhat responsible for World War 2 but it would seem that is a little unfair, in my opinion.
Really? The militarization of German society, reconstruction of its armed forces in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, intervention in the Spanish Civil War, occupation of the French Rhineland, absorption of Austria and Hitler's demand for the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland were all facts in evidence long before Chamberlain met with him in Munich.

Despite this clear pattern, Chamberlain engineered The Munich Agreement in September of 1938 which capitulated to Hitler's threats and handed him everything he wanted. It also served to convince Hitler that the French and British would never fight no matter what he did. The Nazi invasion of Poland and WWII came the next year.

Chamberlain played a key role in convincing other European countries not to stand up to Hitler and that policy of appeasement is widely credited as setting the stage for war. He had all the "real evidence or intelligence" he needed, but didn't have the backbone to act on it. His place in history is well-earned and is not even remotely "unfair".
Belton Ag
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Smokedraw01 said:

So as I read it, Chamberlain just misread Hitler. He didn't have any real evidence or intelligence to ignore, it was all about the meetings he had with Hitler.

I've always felt that history treated Chamberlain like he was somewhat responsible for World War 2 but it would seem that is a little unfair, in my opinion.
It wasn't just Chamberlain, Hitler completely fooled Stalin as well, to the point where the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed and a secret economic alliance was formed where the Soviets sent crucial raw materials to Germany to help the Nazis build their war machine. The very war machine that initiated Operation Barbarossa 2 years later.

As others have stated, both the Soviets and British had suffered terribly during the Great War and their leaders psychologically were willing to believe anything to avoid a repeat.
Smokedraw01
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74OA said:

Smokedraw01 said:

So as I read it, Chamberlain just misread Hitler. He didn't have any real evidence or intelligence to ignore, it was all about the meetings he had with Hitler.

I've always felt that history treated Chamberlain like he was somewhat responsible for World War 2 but it would seem that is a little unfair, in my opinion.
Really? The militarization of German society, reconstruction of its armed forces in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, intervention in the Spanish Civil War, occupation of the French Rhineland, absorption of Austria and Hitler's demand for the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland were all facts in evidence long before Chamberlain met with him in Munich.

Despite this clear pattern, Chamberlain engineered The Munich Agreement in September of 1938 which capitulated to Hitler's threats and handed him everything he wanted. It also served to convince Hitler that the French and British would never fight no matter what he did. The Nazi invasion of Poland and WWII came the next year.

Chamberlain played a key role in convincing other European countries not to stand up to Hitler and that policy of appeasement is widely credited as setting the stage for war. He had all the "real evidence or intelligence" he needed, but didn't have the backbone to act on it. His place in history is well-earned and is not even remotely "unfair".


Fair enough. I'm not well versed in this subject, which is why I asked. Thanks for the info.
"If you run into an ******* in the morning, you ran into an *******. If you run into *******s all day, you're the *******." – Raylan Givens, "Justified."
dcbowers
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Chamberlain was certainly one of the most prominent voices of pacifist Britain, but he was not alone. The scars of the Great War lingered well into the 1930's. The Oxford Oath / King and Country Debate may not have encouraged Hitler to be an aggressor, but it didn't slow him down either. There was a large pacifist movement in the US, too.
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jickyjack1
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74OA said:

Very true. British pacifism after the horrors of WWI was an overwhelmingly powerful popular and political force and Chamberlain didn't have the moral fiber to stand up to it despite the growing danger.

What is far less forgivable is how after war broke out both Chamberlain and Halifax actively worked to undermine new Prime Minister Churchill's efforts to rally the nation to resist Hitler. That was wrong.

I don't think I can agree with your second paragraph. Certainly Churchill, in anything I have ever read, has never in the slightest intimated any sort of dissatisfaction with either Chamberlain or Halifax after he became Prime Minister. He would have utilized Chamberlain (he later wrote) but for the cancer that killed him, and at his death Churchill paid tribute to the past Prime Minister fulsomely in the House of Commons.

If either of the two hindered him Churchill probably would have held his peace, at the same time having them quietly neutered while the issue was in doubt -- which there is in fact no suggestion of ever happening -- but after the war he would undoubtedly in his vast literary production have cited chapter and verse as a matter of History. Churchill the author was not vengeful in his recapitulation of events but he did not obscure or attempt to hide them either. Except, some have suggested, occasionally on his own behalf.

As to the first paragraph, an argument could be effectually made that it wasn't moral fiber that Chamberlain lacked. He was neither immoral or a coward.

The salient point about Halifax -- and it is a really big one -- is that he was first to break a lengthy silence and defer the leadership of the country to Churchill.Those might have been the two most important minutes of silence in the history of the world.

USAFAg
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jickyjack1 said:

74OA said:

Very true. British pacifism after the horrors of WWI was an overwhelmingly powerful popular and political force and Chamberlain didn't have the moral fiber to stand up to it despite the growing danger.

What is far less forgivable is how after war broke out both Chamberlain and Halifax actively worked to undermine new Prime Minister Churchill's efforts to rally the nation to resist Hitler. That was wrong.

I don't think I can agree with your second paragraph. Certainly Churchill, in anything I have ever read, has never in the slightest intimated any sort of dissatisfaction with either Chamberlain or Halifax after he became Prime Minister. He would have utilized Chamberlain (he later wrote) but for the cancer that killed him, and at his death Churchill paid tribute to the past Prime Minister fulsomely in the House of Commons.

If either of the two hindered him Churchill probably would have held his peace, at the same time having them quietly neutered while the issue was in doubt -- which there is in fact no suggestion of ever happening -- but after the war he would undoubtedly in his vast literary production have cited chapter and verse as a matter of History. Churchill the author was not vengeful in his recapitulation of events but he did not obscure or attempt to hide them either. Except, some have suggested, occasionally on his own behalf.

As to the first paragraph, an argument could be effectually made that it wasn't moral fiber that Chamberlain lacked. He was neither immoral or a coward.

The salient point about Halifax -- and it is a really big one -- is that he was first to break a lengthy silence and defer the leadership of the country to Churchill.Those might have been the two most important minutes of silence in the history of the world.


Not real sure about Chamberlain, but it appears that for the most part he sided with Churchill on war matters when push came to shove. But during the Dunkirk Crisis it's pretty clear the Halifax opposed Churchill's "fight on till the end" approach in favor of terms from Germany, either directly, or through Italy. It wasn't until it became clear after the rejection of Roosevelt's efforts at mediation that Italy would not only not help, but would enter the war on the Axis side that Halifax acceded to Churchills POV (that and Chamberlain's support of Churchill's POV).

At first, Churchill cultivated Halifax's favor because Halifax had a great deal of influence with a very large portion of the Conservatives. However, first chance he got after Dunkirk, Churchill shipped him off to Washington and replaced him.
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