Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom
You are suggesting appeasement was the way to go?
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I was referring more to the comment about the English following Churchill instead of Chamberlain. It was Chamberlain who took us into the war. No one followed Churchill, we had already been at war for a while when Churchill took over and he wasn't elected, he just took over when Chamberlain resigned a few months before his death. Also, just after the war he and his party were kicked out when the Labour party won a landslide victory.
In 1938 when Chamberlain went to Munich the British public had no appetite for war, certainly not over the Czechoslovakian issue. It was only 20 years after WW1 where we had sustained brutal losses.
No, appeasement isn't always the way to go, but at that time it was probably the thing that saved us. If we had gone to war then we would almost certainly been defeated as we were very under equipped and the military were advising him against war (as records now released show). We were just not ready for it. He bought us valuable time to build up our forces, particularly the RAF which enabled us to beat the Germans in the Battle of Britain which was what stopped Hitler invading. We wouldn't have had the support of our WW1 allies such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada as they would not automatically have been brought into the war as they were in WW1. France also wasn't ready and the US certainly wouldn't have supported us. If we had gone to war in 1938 things may be very different for us now.
Chamberlain had the overwhelming support of the British public for what he did. He really had no choice. I read an article - which I'll try and find sometime - which ended with words saying something like Chamberlain fought for peace as long as possible and only went to war as a last resort, that's not a bad epitaph.
Of course opinions differ but I read a lot of history and most historians, as more information has become available, are seeing him in a lot better light.
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