“Churchill’s Chamberlain: The Unnecessary War,” an article by Ronald Bleier, is projected as the first in a series of articles unearthing some of the hidden history of the origins of WWII. Following in the footsteps of the late Clement Leibovitz’s The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal, the theme is the treasonous activity of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his role as Hitler’s most highly placed and perhaps most valuable spy and the indispensable enabler of his aggressions.
http://desip.igc.org/Hitler-Chamberlain/Chamberlainswar.html
The first two paragraphs follow:
In the “Preface” to The Gathering Storm, volume I of his World War II memoirs, Winston Churchill writes that when President Roosevelt asked for suggestions about what the war should be called, he replied that it should be called “the Unnecessary War. There never was a war more easy to stop.
Churchill doesn't explain in his brief "Preface" how war could have been prevented, but two thirds of his memoir is taken up with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's conduct in office in the crucial years 1937-1940. During that time Churchill was the most high profile critic of the prime minister's appeasement policies, marked by Britain's extraordinary and devastating security concessions to Hitler. Churchill was particularly outraged by what he saw as the prime minister's purposeful obstruction of British rearmament in the face of the manifest threat from Germany. Churchill's book may be read as a record of his frustration and its sum and substance amounts to an indictment of Chamberlain.
The war would have been trivial to stop, really. Hitler wanted a permanent alliance with England, territorial concessions from France and Eastern Europe and absolutely no interest in America. England started that war, at least as a world war.
Other than the Holocaust, Churchill was more evil than Hitler.
In an indirect way, Churchill and Roosevelt are probably responsible for the holocaust. Otherwise Hitler would have just expropriated and deported them. Still a dick move, but not the same as mass slaughter.
I understand it's supposed to be typical British nationalist propaganda to talk about the saint that Churchill was, but to go as far as saying that Chamberlain was a traitor may be something that even Churchill himself would have found offensive.
You are basically suggesting that a government, in a country with a history of people showing high deference* to their statesmen and priding in the high level of honesty of their establishment, was run by traitors at the very top. That may or may not be true, but it won't win you much praise from your "Britain greatest country" target audience.
*(perhaps too high, one might guess)
I don't think Chamberlain was a 'traitor', I think he was incompetent and waffled between statism and liberalism. The last great English statesman was John Morley. When Gladstone died, the English government was composed almost entirely of reptiles and drunks.
If you ever read the Bagehot section of The Economist, you may have read one interesting piece.
The British public once had a very strong trust in its statesmen. That's because for the longest time it had a small and honest government. Some may point out the close connections of people who worked in it, because one man, his uncle, and his nephew could be heading several major departments. But that didn't hurt honesty, even if it may seem to be cronyism, elitism, or favouritism.
Even after the 1920s to the 1940s, the British public still had a certain level of deference to its statesmen. By this time, a few more-than-dishonest characters had entered. But nobody would suspect the worst of them and they were all honourable men until proven otherwise.
Fast forward years of the Labour Party and then Margaret Thatcher and finally culminating in Tony Blair, Britain's public leadership fell very fast in honesty. Tony Blair may have been the least honourable person in recent memory to be a British Prime Minister. Know that even Churchill condemned the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre while Blair did not blink an eye in torturing hundreds of people.
Even as Britain became more democratic and its government more activist, respect for statesmen declined and suspicion became the norm.
Thanks to all who have replied so far and to all those who will reply in future.
I meant to add that Clement Leibovitz's book, The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal, (1993) is out of print but is available at no charge on the DESIP website at:
http://desip.igc.org/bookdownloads/Leibovitz_Chamberlain_Hitler__complete.pdf
Readers may be also be interested in a later and different version of the book by Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel, entitled In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion (1998), available via Amazon and other booksellers.
--Ronald
Ronald, this community isn't primarily for self-promotion of individuals and their websites, so if you're going to promote your own work, at least participate in the broader Austrian and libertarian discussions as well.
Thanks for the tip. I'm new to this community. I hope to look into your suggestions. Meanwhile, I'm hoping to get a discussion going on who was Chamberlain and who was Hitler and whether or not WWII was inevitable and related subjects.
Nothing that Hitler did before Britain declared war had any relation to Britain whatsoever. Referring to British reaction to Germany as "appeasement" is like referring to the United States not frequently bombing and invading all over the world as "appeasement".
You might want to listen to Raico's Rethinking Churchill, David Irving on his book Churchill's War as well as the clip Did Hitler Aim for World War?,
Nothing that Hitler did before Britain declared war had any relation to Britain whatsoever.
Except the thing where he declared war on a country guaranteed by Britain.
Oh, please, that was a deliberate ploy at the last minute (just like the Belgium nonsense) to have an excuse to attack Germany by an already belligerant England; and Hitler had just as much a claim to the disputed territories as Poland did. He also had good reason (including assurances from ambassadors) that England would not actually hold that treaty. And England conveniently ignores it when Uncle Joe, a far worse tyrany and murderer than Hitler ever dreamed to be, takes over Poland and begins slaughtering people en masse.
England started that war, deliberate, with pre-meditation. Hitler was not a pacifist, but he was not a moron and had not planned for a world war. Whatever it might have turned out to be I am pretty certain there would have been no deaths in the millions; and if there were it would have been the Sovs and Nazis fighting it out, good riddance. As for France, they were basically run by Communists themselves before the war.
Keynes saw it coming... KEYNES!
Evilsceptic: Keynes saw it coming... KEYNES! Well, Keynes wasn't stupid, he was just conceited like most academic intellectuals. He was actually quite brilliant by all accounts. In any case, I agree, The Economic Consequences of the Peace is by far his best work; well worth reading today. I will break in the doors of hell and smash the bolts; there will be confusion of people, those above with those from the lower depths. I shall bring up the dead to eat food like the living; and the hosts of dead will outnumber the living. | Post Points: 5
Oh, please, that was a deliberate ploy at the last minute (just like the Belgium nonsense) to have an excuse to attack Germany by an already belligerant England; and Hitler had just as much a claim to the disputed territories as Poland did. He also had good reason (including assurances from ambassadors) that England would not actually hold that treaty. England started that war, deliberate, with pre-meditation.
England started that war, deliberate, with pre-meditation.
The views of which historian are these?
Hitler had just as much a claim to the disputed territories as Poland did.
A red herring. Once he launched the war he wasn't going to settle for Danzig and the corridor. He would have settled for Danzig, the corridor and Poland as a satellite if he could have achieved this without a war with Poland. But once he had to fight for it regardless, he however preferred the erradication of Poland.
Since the Poles were - with or without the British guarantee - going to resist there was always going to be a war, where the war aim of Germany was the conquest of Poland and the aim of Nazi policy after the conquest the destruction (not necessarily biological) of the Polish nation.
Buchanan, Irving, Veale and more I can't name off the top of my head. Anyone who pretends otherwise is just politically naive.
Also, Poland was just made up by the British after WW1; like all these countries in the Middle East were made up after WW2. What a surprise that it was an unstable tyranny.
Buchanan, Irving, Veale and more I can't name off the top of my head.
You are misrepresenting Buchanan. He nowhere states the guarantee was intended to get Britain into war.
I don't know who Veale is.
How was Hitler able to invade a made up place? Wouldn't his tanks sink into the ground or be eaten by dragons from the seventh dimension?
I mean it hadn't been a country, it was a State constructed arbitrarily out of pieces that weren't even part of Old Poland; not that Old Poland existed anymore anyway.
Whatever the case, screw Poland, England and German governments to Hell. None of them had any business fighting that war, and if it wasn't for Jolly Ol' England it never would have been a conflict of that scale.
Whatever the case, screw Poland, England and German governments to Hell. None of them had any business fighting that war,
False moral equivalence. Once the Germans invaded the Polish government had an obligation to fight and not leave the Polish people defenseless.
if it wasn't for Jolly Ol' England it never would have been a conflict of that scale.
That is a little axiomatic isn't it? Britain entered the war, therefore it expanded its scale by addition of itself to the war. Brazil also expanded the scale of the war. As did Haiti. Bad Haiti!
Once the Germans invaded the Polish government had an obligation to fight and not leave the Polish people defenseless.
That's nonsense. The only thing governments have an obligation to do is cease to exist. The same thing goes for the Confederacy. The Confederate army had no right to exist and it botched the war, it was based on extortion and it disrupted trade and production; even though any person or group of person had a right to non-coercively defend themselves against the Union all the Confederacy did was lose the war and get a lot of people pointlessly slaughtered. The same goes for Poland.
There is no good government, there is nothing the government can ever do correctly. I don't support sending murderers to prison or police catching thieves, because no matter what they do it will be the wrong thing.
The Poles had the right to in their defence use the organisation and the equipment created by the state for the waging of war. It would be foolish of them disband the armed forces that were created by expropriating them on the eve of an invasion of their country - when they had no alternative structure for defense in place. Anybody asserting they should have done so and on the spot dismantle the command structure and the rest of the military buerocray which is obviously an asset in war is saying the equivalent of that they commited aggression for not blowing up their own artillery pieces etc.
Oh, sure, they can use whatever they've got. But the actual government continued to tax and impress people, and had no right to do so. It also took command of the military and defense operations, and predictably sucked at it.
But the actual government continued to tax and impress people, and had no right to do so.
Yeah, but a husband who beats his wife is stil entitled to defend his families home from a burglar. (And if he has ran out the eldest son who could have otherwise defended the home, he has not just a right but a moral obligation to defend it.)
he has not just a right but a moral obligation to defend it
Nonsense. Obligations are fantasies people make up to get people to do things they have no reason to do.