tomroushonline.com

Conflict is inevitable. Nature engages in conflict as a part of its natural design. The fundamental elements of chemistry conflict. The weather is a product of competing forces. The flora and fauna conflict, more often than not, violently, and there are winners and losers. The world as we know it is the outcome of conflicts from the past, and the future is made by the conflicts of today.

The potential for conflict is infinite, but the responses to conflict are not. There can be a war, with a winner or loser. There can be a negotiation, with the competitors deciding the negotiated outcome is better than the cost and risk of a war. There can be appeasement, where one side gives in to avoid a war. And there can be deterrence, where one or both sides see the conflict, but decline to move forward to open war because the cost is too great.

In this short series, we shall look at examples of each of the outcomes of human conflict.

Appeasement

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin

History is replete with examples of appeasement, typically when a weaker country or people must make a forced peace with a stronger people or country, and so it is unfortunate that poor Neville Chamberlin is the name at the tip of the tongue when appeasement is wanting an example. Chamberlin was the British Prime Minister in the late 1930s and so he is who had to respond to the early efforts of Adolf Hilter’s efforts to push Germany past the limits put on the nation at the end of World War 1.

It is worth nothing that the British experience in World War 1 was so horrifying that inspired its own genre of tragic poetry, and therefore, it is understandable that Chamberlain would go to great lengths to avoid restarting the war in the same places against the same enemy. Britain was not weak and therefore, did not have to choose appeasement, but Britain, and France, and virtually everyone else, did not want a new war, and so appeasement was a viable option.

World War 1 ended in a negotiated settlement, and not a total defeat and surrender of the Germans, and that treaty, the Treaty of Versailles, was what the former Corporal in the German Army, Herr Hitler, wanted to breach. When Hitler had managed to breach all the safeguards in the post-war German system of governance and take full power, itself a breach of the treaty, he started creating the military he wanted to use in due time. These many breeches demanded action on the part of the other signers, mainly the UK and France, and so a convention was held, and from that meeting between the British, French, Germans and Italians came the Munich Agreement, and that deal signed off on the German intention to annex a portion of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland. But this aggression was to be it! After this, Hitler was to be nice.

In September of 1938, just a year before World War 2 began, Chamberlain flew back to the UK, waved his agreement in the air, and declared that he had secured “peace for our time.” This declaration, fair or not, stained his reputation for all time as one of history’s great appeasers.

Chamberlin did seek to appease Hitler, which was an error. He clearly misread his opponent. Hitler was locked into his warpath by his personality. He should have been deterred by his own countrymen or population, but the Germans had weak governance combined with a history of authoritarian strong men. Hitler passed the few controls on his options and emerged in complete control. Hitler’s personal will was the state, and his will was perverse, immature, underdeveloped, vainglorious, but malignant and aggressive. Chamberlain failed to see any of this. The British did not want another war with the Germans so soon after the horrors of the last one, but they did not choose the path of deterrence. Perhaps Chamberlin knew Hitler was locked onto a path for war and the appeasement was a sort of secret negotiation to gather more time. If that was not what he thought, he didn’t say it.

Neville Chamberlin was not a bad man, but he made a big mistake. His ‘peace in our time’ was just a prelude to a shattering war that ended the basic idea of superior European civilization for good. Europe has never recovered from World War 2, and won’t. If it could have been avoided by a British confrontation with Hitler early, Chamberlin blew that chance with his treaty. Hitler was already in breach of a treaty, and so breaching the next was no problem. Peace can’t be made with those that are bound and determined to make war.

The next Prime Minster, Winston Churchill, thought the Munich Agreement was a disaster but he spoke kindly of Chamberlin at his funeral, which happened before Chamberlain had the chance to observe the flower of his appeasement reach its’ full bloom. Chamberlin died in November of 1940, after the war started, but before it’s full horror was known.

Of him, Churchill stated: “Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.”

Chamberlin’s unfortunate speech can be heard here:

If you like these kinds of short takes on critical history, follow my author page on Amazon and pick up a book here!