That is an interesting analysis. It would have been interesting had the British been that Machiavellian in their approach to political warfare.
Chamberlain wasn’t really that deep though. He was an ardent supporter of the policy of appeasement and the agreement at Munich he felt had proved out his point. He geniuenly believed that he had acheived “peace in our time” with that agreement and the absorbtion of the rump state of Czecho-Slovakia in March of 1939 was a real slap in the face to him.
From there he really was a changed man. If not so much in words, in practice he abandoned appeasement altogether and signed on to support Poland. This was almost an over-reaction (though I’m sure the Poles would not see it that way) in that he was going to go to war over Poland no matter what form of aggression the Germans took against her was. Had Germany only moved troops into Danzig and the corridor which would have been in line with Hitler’s initial demands, London would most likely still had gone to war.
I think that this is a case of the simplest explanation being the correct one in that the level in intrigue was not very spectacular. Even the upcoming “Polish” attack on the German radio station was not very convincing to any of the players.
Think something is gonna happen tomorrow?
I was somwhat taken aback this morning while cruising the news stories; apparently I’m not alone in questioning the beginnings of WWII: Food for thought.
See:http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/53332
“Did Hitler Want War?” Pat Buchannan:
“On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war.
Now one may despise what was done, but how did this partition of Czechoslovakia manifest a Hitlerian drive for world conquest?
Comes the reply: If Britain had not given the war guarantee and gone to war, after Czechoslovakia would have come Poland’s turn, then Russia’s, then France’s, then Britain’s, then the United States. We would all be speaking German now.
But if Hitler was out to conquer the world—Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia—why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea?
If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?
Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?
Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?
Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser’s fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?
Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.
Hitler had never wanted war with Poland, but an alliance with Poland such as he had with Francisco Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, Miklos Horthy’s Hungary and Father Jozef Tiso’s Slovakia.
Indeed, why would he want war when, by 1939, he was surrounded by allied, friendly or neutral neighbors, save France. And he had written off Alsace, because reconquering Alsace meant war with France, and that meant war with Britain, whose empire he admired and whom he had always sought as an ally.
As of March 1939, Hitler did not even have a border with Russia. How then could he invade Russia?
Winston Churchill was right when he called it “The Unnecessary War”—the war that may yet prove the mortal blow to our civilization.”