Posted on 09/03/2011 11:20:17 PM PDT by nickcarraway
If I wanted to be condescending, you'd be left in no doubt about it. I have attempted to be polite to you, but the simple fact is, I don't think you've studied this in any type of detail. You are repeating claims first made in the 1940s that are long since discredited. You do not seem to have been aware of any of the major players except Chamberlain and Churchill. You talk about Chamberlain having some sort of focus on the League of Nations, when, in fact, he did not - simply because by the time he was Prime Minister, the League was no longer relevant (if it had been - if Germany had still been a member - I'm sure Chamberlain would have tried to use it, but it wasn't, and he didn't) - and in fact, it was Churchill who wanted the League to be involved - albeit, a much more interventionist League.
Clearly, you like to deal in straw men.
I made one comment regarding the League of Nations, but the essential issue was the fact that Champerlain was naive in thinking that he could 'have peace in our time' with Hitler.
And save the pompus nonsense, you haven't provided a shred of hard evidence that Chamberlain was trying to buy time with appeasement.
And even if that were true, it would still be immoral since he did so at the expense of the Czech's!
[So, it isn't a fact, just an opinion.] Yes - but so are the ideas that you are presenting about Chamberlain. The opinions of people like Michael Foot, a socialist who would later be the Opposition Leader in Parliament against Margaret Thatcher, and so somebody who you can not really regard as likely to treat any conservative politician like Chamberlain in a good light, and Frank Owen - a failed Liberal Member of Parliament, who cowrote Guilty Men in 1940, the work that has coloured most later perception of Chamberlain. It was a political hit piece by his left wing opponents. And you are repeating their case (Note - it is true that they also had a Conservative journalist as their third co-author, Peter Howard, but he repudiated their case in Innocent Men only a year later. Others who attacked Chamberlain in their writings were Geoffrey Mander - a Liberal MP - who was again, attacking a political opponent when he wrote We Were Not All Wrong and Aneurin Bevan, a Labor MP (later Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, in fact) in Why Not Trust the Tories? In other words, the case you are supporting is a case that was developed by the left wing of British politics in the early 1940s and has little to do with any type of fact, but was purely politically motivated. It is very much like taking seriously a book by Hilary Clinton blaming President George W. Bush, for 9/11. The sources political bias is obvious (Foot, Owen, and Bevan, even tried to conceal their identities by writing under pseudonyms) and their case was a political case not a factual one.
The case is supported by the FACTS, that Chamberlain thought he could appease Hitler and avoid war.
Nothing you have provided has changed that view.
And the article that this spoke of secret dealings with Hitler doesn't support your thesis, but runs counter to it.
[ And they say that Chamberlain was appeasing to buy time for England to rearm?]
Yes, they do.
They do?
I remember reading A.J. Taylor and I don't remember him saying that.
Do you have any actual page numbers?
[ You just admitted there wasn't any actual evidence for that.]
No, I did not admit that at all. What I said was that it can't be proven as a fact. Very little about the motivations of politicians ever can be. But there is considerable evidence for the position. Dutton and Post, in particular, base their position on Chamberlain papers and the Cabinet papers which show the course of discussion. Feiling didn't have access to the papers - it's not clear if MacLeod did (he shouldn't have, they were still classified at the time he was writing, so he never said he did, but a lot of what he says does seem to suggest he'd seen at least some of them).
So there is no actual factual evidence for your view-just your own opinion- we have come full circle.
[ And that says nothing about Chamberlains own motives for appeasement.]
No, but as Chamberlain had been supporting rearmament since at least 1935 (possibly 1934) including delivering two rearmament budgets as Chancellor of the Exchequer and constantly knew both the current capabilities of the British forces, and knew when new capabilities would be acquired, any conclusion other than the one that he was trying to get Britain to a stage where it was capable of fighting a war is very hard to substantiate.
Again, a nice thesis with no real facts.
Now, you write a thesis on this and try to get it passed with zero actual facts and see how far you get.
Your entire view is based on mere conjecture.
Yes, it says I'm not arrogant enough to think I've always got all the answers. That's why I explore all the possibilities. Rather than insist the politically motivated polemics of the past tell us everything we need to know.
Go ahead and have the last word if you wish. You're obviously not willing to pay any attention to any other viewpoint than your own and I'm done wasting my time.
Your entire argument was based on assumptions, not facts.
Now, for the sake of argument lets say that you are correct, that Chamberlain made a deal with Hitler to buy time so England could rearm.
How would this make him less infamous?
First, if England and France had stood against Hitler there is the possibility that war had been averted without selling out the Czechs.
Second, even if Chamberlain did buy time for England, it was at the expense of the Czech's, nothing noble about that or conservative.
So, even if your view is correct, Chamberlain was still wrong in going to Munich and making concessions to Hitler.
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