History of England 1-6

After the conference, Chamberlain had another of his tête-à-têtes with Hitler, during which he asked the chancellor to sign a declaration committing Germany to ‘the method of consultation … to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries’ and describing the Munich Agreement as a symbol ‘of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war again’. Hitler was delighted to sign the declaration and, when Chamberlain stepped off the plane on his return to England, he waved the accord in the air. ‘The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem,’ he announced, ‘is only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.’ Later that evening he was even more jubilant: ‘There has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour,’ he declared. ‘I believe it is peace for our time.’

Many newspapers echoed Chamberlain’s triumphalism, while most English people felt overwhelming relief. ‘The general opinion,’ commented a clergyman, ‘is that the P.M. has saved civilisation … No one seems to care which side has got the better of the other. The one thing they care for is that there will be no war … Thank God.’ Sugar umbrellas were sold in the shops, confirming that the prime minister who carried a brolly with him everywhere had become a national hero.

Yet voices of dissension soon rose in the Commons. Attlee complained that a democratic European country had been ‘betrayed and handed over to a ruthless despotism’, while Churchill called the affair ‘a total and unmitigated defeat’. He predicted that Hitler would now advance triumphantly ‘down the Danube Valley to the Black Sea’ without ‘firing a single shot’, and that Britain would, in the near future, be forced to accept ‘subservience to Germany’. After returning home from one parliamentary debate, the diarist Harold Nicolson went to bed ‘pondering the Decline and Fall of the British Empire’.

Yet perhaps Chamberlain was not taken in by the rhetoric he had used on his return from Munich. In the winter of 1938 he claimed to have signed the Munich Agreement only in order to buy necessary time to rearm. He now made plans to create an army capable of fighting a continental war and bolstered the RAF. On the home front, meanwhile, detailed evacuation plans were drawn up for the major cities, and an increasing number of gas masks were distributed. Sandbags accumulated at the end of residential streets, and ‘blackout’ tests were carried out across England, in preparation for air strikes. The population watched these developments with a mixture of anxiety and disbelief. How could it have come to this, only two decades after the carnage of the Western Front?

The descent from Munich to war was rapid. A few days after the conference, Hitler, with his eye on the Free City of Danzig, declared his determination to settle the fate of ‘other German populations’ not yet incorporated into the Fatherland. He then demonstrated his belief that he could act with impunity by carrying out a pogrom against Jews, foreshadowing the genocide to come. In Austria, the Sudetenland and in Germany, Nazi thugs murdered hundreds of Jewish German citizens and destroyed their houses, shops, schools and synagogues. The widely reported massacre provoked outrage in Britain, but did not immediately alter its government’s foreign policy.

In January 1939, with the help of Germany and Italy, Franco finally defeated the Spanish Republic. Fascist forces had again prevailed over a democratic continental government, and Britain had been unwilling, or unable, to prevent it. In an attempt to improve relations with the Italians, Chamberlain recognized Franco’s Spanish government a few weeks later, and embarked on further talks with Mussolini’s government in Rome. The prime minister left these talks convinced of the ‘good intentions’ and ‘good faith’ of the Fascists, while the Italians were convinced only of Britain’s weakness. A decidedly unimpressed Mussolini rebuffed Chamberlain’s advances and moved closer to Hitler, transforming Italy’s political axis with Germany into the military ‘Pact of Steel’.

Meanwhile, Hitler encouraged internal division inside what remained of the Czech state. In the early months of 1939 the mutilated country disintegrated, and the western half fell into his hands, with the eastern portion becoming the independent state of Slovakia. By annexing ‘Czechia’, Hitler not only ripped up the agreements he had signed at Munich, but he also contradicted almost every official statement he had ever made on foreign policy, by absorbing non-German peoples into the Reich. There seemed to be no limit to his expansionist ambitions, and no rationale to his policy.