People today opine that Chamberlain should have been ready to go to war in 1938. That ignores two big facts. Italy and France wanted no part of that response and were fully on board. Second, with hindsight we know perfectly how it should have been handled. But had he suggested war in 1938, he would have been removed by a no confidence vote the next day.
There is no way the British people wanted a repeat of the horror of WWI a short 20 years later.
Things went the way the pretty much had to. It was only two years earlier that Lindbergh visited Nazi Germany and had nothing but good things to say. Two years before 1938 the British king who was pretty much a nazi abdicated and a lot of British aristocracy was not hostile to Hitler yet.
And though we don’t admit it now, neither England nor the USA both were deeply worried about the well being of the Jews. And nobody suspected mass murder was around the corner.
I don’t think Chamberlain had as many options as people think. And he would have been a poor choice once the war began.
There was still a lot of sentiment at the time that Hitler was a bulwark against the Bolsheviks, some would have even welcomed Hitler attacking in the East. Britain had her Empire, let Germany have hers’.
Apparently Lindbergh traveled to Germany several times in the late 1930s - with the approval of the U.S. military. Some Americans could see war coming, and didn't want to remain completely in the dark about German capabilities...
Agree with your take on Chamberlain... he had to play for time. But the recent popular trashing of Charles Lindberg as an eeeevil Nazi supporter is revisionist BS. The biggest hit against him is an America First speech he made in 1941 stating that America’s Jews wanted the country in the war against Hitler. By 1941, what Jew anywhere in the world wouldn’t have wanted that?
This has been an interesting thread. Seems to me that Chamberlain was negotiating from a weak position. So, the question to me is this: Did he follow up on appeasement with a call to mobilization that presupposed a treacherous Hitler?
(I don’t know, just asking.)