Product Description

This is an important new reappraisal of the immediate origins of World War II. "Entertaining and absorbing ...Chamberlain hardly emerges a hero from these pages, but at least there is no excuse left for regarding him as no more than a wimp in a wing-collar." - "The Guardian".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158637 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 271 pages

Customer Reviews

Tory cynicism? I think not!
For all those who wish to examine the origins of British involvement in the Second World War, this is an excellent place to start. Charmley's analysis challenges the popular view of Chamberlain and his fellow appeasers as "guilty men". Charmley is able to demonstrate that the policy of appeasement was a calculated, logical political decision that reflected the interests of Great Britain and her Empire. From Charmley's analysis, two key points stand out:

1. The war left Britain virtually bankrupt. Her Imperial possessions fell away soon afterwards, and the balance of power in Western Europe was threatened for over 50 years from the Bolshevist menace in the East.

2. Europe, the traditional hub of influence, paled in comparison to the status of the United States and the Soviet Union after hostilities ended. Britain was never again to regain her pre-war footing. The interests of Britain herself became subordinate to post-war constructs such as NATO and the UN. The Old Order in Europe which Churchill so vehemently praised, was extinguished.

Charmley's book seriously questions the value and necessity of the British decleration of war on September 3rd 1939, and it an essential addition to anyone with an interest in political and/or diplomatic history. This should be read in conjunction with A.J.P. Taylor's excellent thesis "Origins of the Second World War".

the limits of revisionism
This is a strange book. It seeks to `readdress' the image of Chamberlain, and in doing so, relocate the word `appeasement' into a more honorable and, perculiarly British, tradition of foreign policy. Yet furthermore, it seeks to cast light on the failure of subsequent British policy to go to war, and in doing so, to create the context in which the British Empire would be lost, and the the rest of the century handed over to the Manichean struggle between the Us and the USSR. Whle it partly succeeds on the first question, it evidently fails on the second, and in doing so casts doubt on the whole purpose the book is seeking to address.

It is the role of the professional historian to create, wherever possible, the context in which decisions were TAKEN AT THE TIME. In this sense, Charmley's work is well written, well researched, and utterly plausible in setting up the expectations the British elite had of a revisionist power such as Germany, and the need to rework the absurdities of the post first world war European system. But to then cast a judegement on those decisions in the wider context of what the historian knows of the period itself, is actually a responsibility of scholarship - a moral judgement of our time. It is here that I cannot fathom or understand Charmley's purpose.

To goad Chamberlain with the question `why die for Danzig?' is one thing, to goad a contemporary audience with it, however, is quite another. Even at the time, early 1939, the issues of Britain's guarantee to Poland were perceived not just as a stake in Poland, but as a wider statement of final resistance against Nazi aggression, the growing realisation that Hitler wanted ALL of Europe. Appeasement failed here because it was in fact deployed against Germany and Hitler, as opposed to the US or France, and then `modified' too late to have any effect against a regime that had PLANNED for war. Chamberlain to his credit recognised this failure, even if he shrank from drawing the obvious conclusion that war was unavoidable.

Bewilderingly, Charmley insinuates a narrow counter factual at this stage with the concluding remark that `the venom of [chamberlain's] opponents pursued him long, but his was the only policy which offered any hope of avoiding war and of saving both lives and the British Empire' (212). How his policy could have avoided a war that Hitler desired and actually required is not addressed, unless of course, the subtext of Charmley's own view is that a separate peace with Hitler ought to have been estalished under German guarantees. Was that really Chamberlain's policy? Peace at ANY price?

Hardly - either in 1939, nor indeed in the more perilous moments of May 1940, when after hesitation, Chamberlain threw his weight behind Churchill in a War Cabinet vote against continuing diplomatic feelers to Italy on the eve of the French collapse. To imply he did is an odd way of seeking to save his reputation. How lives could have been saved and the `Empire' preserved on the basis of a deal with Hitler is an intersting puzzle, rendered pointless by the overwhelming evidence that no deals with Hitler were worth anything at all. But this puizzle is seemingly on Charmely's mind, the old High Tory cant that saw Facists as better than `reds', and not on Chamberlain's. In his preface, Charmley talks of piety. Yet to suggest that the `results of the second world war were not commensurate with the sacrifices made' is shockingly niave and profoundly conceited.

ps I have since re-read this, especially after reading Robert's biography on Halifax. With the exception of the preface and the last chapter, it is good but utterly wrong: and what is astounding still (and even more so on the second read) is almost the personal anger Charmley has for Churchill, a visceral hatred that marrs his judgement completely.