Transcript New Perspective

Churchill & Appeasement
New Perspective Article
• What features of Churchill’s
wartime leadership have led to him
having such a good reputation.
• What is the revisionist view of
Churchill, and on what evidence is it
based ?
• What criticisms are made of
Churchill?
• Traditional View
• Churchill was ignored by Chamberlain, had
he listened earlier war could have been
avoided. Finally a disastrous policy of
appeasement was replaced by the heroism
of resistance.
Mussolini was right: seeing
Chamberlain in his ‘uniform of a
bourgeois pacifist’ acted on Hitler ‘like
the taste of blood to a wild beast’.
Under Churchill, however, Britain would
either have deterred Hitler or taken him
on in better circumstance than those
prevailing in September 1939.
• Churchill had initially shown support for Hitler whose rise
to power ‘cannot be read without admiration for the
courage, the perseverance, and the vital force’ he had
shown.” and hence ‘we may yet live to see Hitler a
gentler figure in a happier age’.
• 1920’s and 30’s
• Showed sympathy with Italian fascists
• Favoured disarmament & did not call for
increased provision of fighter planes or naval
spending
• Did not oppose Japanese aggression in
Manchuria or invasion of Abyssinia
• Declined to bring down Baldwin’s govt. over
Hoare Laval pact
• Did not oppose Re-militarization of the
Rhineland by Germany
• Supported neutrality over Spain, whilst secretly
hoping for a Franco victory.
• Supported Chamberlain as Tory Party leader in
1937
• Hitler’s foreign policy was misinterpreted as
being calculated, when in reality there was a
large element of opportunism.
• His calls for a Grand Alliance were impractical
there were no reliable allies
• Hitler held no respect for Stalin’s forces
• The French were weak
• Hitler was not to be deterred
• There is little evidence to support the claim that
GB would have been in a better position to fight
in 1938 than 1939
• Edmund Ironside, one of the most senior
generals of the British Army, wrote in his diary:
• Chamberlain is, of course, right. We have not
the means of defending ourselves and he
knows it. He is a realist, and any plan he could
devise was better than war … We cannot
expose ourselves now to a German attack. We
simply commit suicide if we do… What a mess
we are in.
Post Revisionist View
• Chances of an Anti-Hitler coup before the war
were in fact highly remote
• Churchill’s main argument with the govt. had
been over the speed and extent of rearmament.
• Churchill had been in opposition to Baldwin and
Chamberlain in his calls for military production
to be given priority over civilian.
• He had called for GB & France to obtain
“position of superior force” in 1936
• After Anschluss he called for a Grand Alliance
to prevent further German hostility.
• After initially hoping for peaceful conclusion
over issue of Sudetenland he demanded GB &
France defend Czechoslovakia
• Chamberlain wrote that Churchill was “nearly
always wrong” and instead found “peace for our
time”
Post Munich
• Daily Mirror described him as “most trusted
statesman in Britain..for years he warned of
dangers which have become terrible realities”
Chamberlain’s unwillingness to ally with Russia
contributed to the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact
23rd August.
His reluctance was acknowledged by the
Russians, as was Churchill’s willingness.
What could have Churchill have done differently ?
• Churchill would probably have been more
successful in obtaining a pact with the Soviets.
• Although ambivalent at the beginning, did not
under-estimate Hitler
• Urged for research into aerial bombardment
• Wanted to divert production from civilian to
wartime production.
• Combatitive spirit from the start
• However
• Entering war in 1938 would have divided public
opinion
• Rapid rearmament may have led to economic
collapse as predicted by Chamberlain