THE APPEASERS & THEIR FATES

See Also: THE FASCIST BARONET; THE SECOND WORLD WAR; TOWNHOUSES, DISAPPEARED Londonderry House, The Sort of Grandee Who Makes You Wonder

During the 1920s it was apparent that Germany was unhappy about the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles (1919). The idea of appeasing her was formulated in 1931 by a group of officials within the British Foreign Office. Two years later the Nazis seized control of the German state.

In the mid-1930s Neville Chamberlain became the undisputed heir-apparent to Stanley Baldwin within the Conservative Party. In 1934, in the absence of a single co-ordinating ministry, it fell to the former, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to determine the allocation of defence spending between the three military departments. He decided that the lion s share of the increase should go to the Royal Air Force for its programme of aerial rearmament. In addition, he endorsed the Defence Requirement Sub-Committee s assessment that Germany, rather than Japan, had become Britain s principal potential opponent.

Chamberlain attained the premiership in May 1937. His preference would have been to concentrate upon domestic issues, continuing the economic recovery and using it as the basis for a number of social reforms. However, he appreciated that his initial focus would have to be on foreign affairs. He invigorated the existing policy of appeasement in order to try to resolve tensions within Europe. The 3^rd Viscount Halifax was transferred from the Secretaryship of State for War to be Lord Privy Seal and the Leader of the Lords. He was allowed to range across government departments. He came to act as a de facto deputy Foreign Secretary.

Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had regarded one another in a favourable light. However, the summer witnessed a deterioration in their relationship. This was because the premier was of the view that Germany presented a greater threat to Britain s interests than Italy did.

In November Halifax, a keen foxhunter, visited Berlin at the prompting of Hermann G ring in order to attend a hunting exhibition. During the trip he was introduced to Adolf Hitler. Upon their meeting, the British aristocrat almost mistook the F hrer for a footman.

At the end of the year Cabinet decided not to increase the rate of British rearmament. In the light of the experience of the Great War of 1914-1918, there was a consensus that any foreseeable major European conflict would be a protracted war of attrition. It was believed that premature - and hopefully unnecessary - rearmament would distort the British economy and so undermine the capacity of the nation s finances to service such a struggle.

At the start of 1938 the working relationship between Eden and Halifax collapsed. The Foreign Secretary had become exasperated by the Lord Privy Seal s meddling in foreign policy. Eden believed that no more concessions should be made to Fascist Italy, Chamberlain believed that they should. The rapport between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary faltered when Eden found that Chamberlain was unresponsive to a vague proposal about United States and world peace.

Eden resigned as Foreign Secretary in February 1938. Halifax, whom Chamberlain found to be far more congenial as a colleague, was appointed to succeed him. Neither the premier nor the viscount appreciated the way in which Hitler s domestic brutality against those whom he saw as opponents or easy targets was going to extend itself to the German state s conduct of its international relations.

The following month the Nazis united Austria to Germany through the Anschluss. Czechoslovakia had a substantial German-speaking minority, the Sudetenlanders, who resided in those regions of the country that bordered Germany. Hitler signalled his sympathy for the ambitions of the Sudeten separatists. In September 1938 he proclaimed that they should have the right to self-determination (which would almost certainly lead to Sudetenland becoming part of the new Greater Germany). This precipitated what became known as the Munich Crisis. During it, Chamberlain made three separate visits to Germany in order to conduct summits with Hitler. Halifax did not accompany him on any of the three trips. This gave the impression that the Foreign Secretary was the Prime Minister s cipher.

During the first summit (Berchtesgarden), Chamberlain conceded the self-determination issue. He returned to Britain in order to have Cabinet discuss and endorse the proposed agreement. He returned believing that Hitler s ambitions were limited to a resolution of the Sudetenland issue and that thereby the tensions in Europe could be resolved.

Upon his second visit to Germany (Godesberg), he found Hitler was stating that shortly Germany would occupy the Sudetenland militarily. Chamberlain returned to Britain with the new terms. In Cabinet, Halifax proved that he was his own man and persuaded his colleagues to reject them. This development diminished the premier s authority within the body. Britain started to move towards a war footing.

Chamberlain visited Germany (Munich) a third time. Hitler backed down from his Godesberg stance but still has the initial Berchtesgarden self-determination concessions. War appeared to have been averted. Chamberlain returned to Britain. The movie news footage of his waving the signed Anglo-German Declaration and declaring that there would be Peace in our time were to become shorthand for a deeply erroneous belief. Despite having formed a very negative opinion of Hitler as a person, Chamberlain believed that a general European settlement could be forged. Halifax did not share this view.

On the night 9/10 November 1938 the Nazis carried out the Kristallnacht pogrom.

The Germany military marched into Prague on 15 March 1939. Moravia and Bohemia were declared by the Nazis to be protectorates of the Reich. Chamberlain told Cabinet that he believed no assurance that Berlin extended could be relied upon. Halifax urged the Prime Minister to stiffen his opposition to Germany. Subsequently, the premier stated that if Britain went to war with the country then it should be a war that had an eastern front as well as a western one.

Poland had German-speaking populations in Silesia and around Danzig (Gdansk). The United Kingdom government issued Poland with guarantees that its independence would be supported. Broader British strategy was frustrated by the Poles being unwilling to accept Soviet troops on their soil to fight the Germans and by the fact that the Soviet Union was suspicious of Britain and France. On 23 March German forces occupied Memel, a German-speaking town in Lithuania.

Berlin and Moscow signed the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact on 23 August. Britain upgraded her guarantees to Poland into a full reciprocal military alliance. On 1 September Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

The Cabinet was reorganised. Eden returned to the body as Secretary of State for the Dominions and Winston Churchill resumed his First World War post of First Lord of the Admiralty. Halifax retained the Foreign Secretaryship. Chamberlain invited the leaders of the Labour and Liberal parties to serve under him but they declined to do so. This refusal meant that there remained a substantial bloc of ministers in Cabinet who had been intimately associated with appeasement - Halifax, Sir Samuel Gurney Hoare, and John Simon.

While the premier had been open to a negotiated peace right up until the moment that the war had started, once the conflict had begun he took the rigid stance that the only peace that was acceptable was one that satisfied not only Britain but also her allies. This new resolve helped foster a warm working relationship between him and Churchill. By April 1940 the First Lord of the Admiralty was chairing the Military Co-ordination Committee and thus effectively running Britain s involvement in the war.

For the first eight months of the conflict, Britain experienced the phoney war. During this, there was very little military action in Western Europe. Chamberlain held a strong belief that the longer such a low key conflict went on the more it would benefit the Allies. In his view it would allow them to marshal their resources, whereas Nazi Germany was being subjected to stresses that might trigger the collapse of Hitler s regime.

In April 1940, in order to safeguard Germany s access to Swedish iron, the German military invaded Denmark and Norway and swiftly overran the two countries. On the night of 7-8 May there was a debate in the House of Commons on how the British military had conducted themselves during the recent Norwegian campaign. Chamberlain won the subsequent division by 81 votes. However, 33 ministry supporters were with the minority and there were over sixty abstentions. Two days later German forces invaded France, Belgium, and The Netherlands simultaneously. The Prime Minister resigned.

Halifax was spared the strong criticism that was levelled against Chamberlain for the policy of appeasement. There were two obvious candidates to be the next Prime Minister - the viscount and Churchill. Most of the Conservative Party, many Labour M.P.s, and even King George VI would have preferred the peer to the commoner. Halifax prevaricated, claiming that the fact that he sat in the Lords effectively excluded him from serving as Prime Minister. It was an actuality that would have created constitutional complexities. However, these could have been swept away or circumvented.

Churchill seized the day and forced himself upon a political establishment that had shunned him for years. Acting according to Chamberlain s counsel, the king conferred the premiership upon him. As such, he reappointed his predecessor to the Cabinet as Lord President of the Council, a post from which he co-ordinated domestic policy, leaving Churchill free to focus on the war. Whenever the new premier was absent, Chamberlain chaired Cabinet meetings. As Churchill was still deeply disliked by large swathes of Conservative M.P.s, the new Lord President also continued to be the leader of the Conservative Party.

Churchill retained Halifax as Foreign Secretary. As it became apparent that the British Expeditionary Force was being hemmed in at Dunkirk and it was uncertain about whether or not it would be extracted, the viscount suggested strongly to Churchill that Britain should use the Italians as a conduit by which to try to ascertain what terms might be offered by Germany. The premier appreciated that for Britain to be seen to be susceptible to opening negotiations might prove to be the start of the slippery slope .

The government became polarised. The new Prime Minister, his grip on power still far from secure, won over the junior Foreign Office ministers and also received backing from Chamberlain. Halifax was outflanked and Britain embarked upon a war of attrition with Nazi Germany that would only be ended when one side or the other collapsed. It can be argued that this was the turning-point of the conflict. Had the Lord President sided with the viscount then Churchill s general unpopularity amongst the political lite might well have made his retention of the premiership impossible. On 22 September Chamberlain resigned from his office. Two months previously, he had been diagnosed as having terminal cancer.

In December 1940 Halifax accepted the post of British Ambassador to Washington. This freed the way for Eden to be reappointed as Foreign Secretary. The change was a demotion for the peer. However, he realised the importance of the work to be done and dedicated himself to the task. Despite being someone who was not given to projecting himself to the public, he energetically participated in the propaganda drive to inform ordinary Americans of what Britons were experiencing.

In 1944 Churchill acknowledged Halifax s achievements in America, by recommending to the king that the viscount should be raised in the peerage to an earldom. In the 1945 general election, a Labour government was returned. Its members had come to value Halifax. He was asked to stay in post until 1946.

Location: 4 Chesterfield Street, W1J 5JF. Eden s home. (red, yellow)

37 Eaton Square, SW1W 9DH. The home (Arthur) Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940) from 1923 to 1935. (blue, orange)

86 Eaton Square, SW1W 9AG. Halifax s home. (blue, purple)

David Backhouse 2024