Chamberlain and the Lost Peace

Rating:
Summary: Charmley Is Right
Review: English historian John Charmley has disturbed World War II "establishment historians"--and established myths--by his iconoclastic re-interpretaion of the origins and beginning of the 1939-1945 war. Yet, in a series of closely reasoned studies he makes telling points that reveal a number of missed opportunities, in the months and weeks before and even after the outbreak of war, to have secured a satisfactory resolution of the growing hostility between the UK and Germany. He does not say that this resolution would have been permanent in the long run; indeed, the two powers may have eventually ended up in conflict. Nevertheless, the possibility that Britain could have kept out of a general war for another couple of years, while Germany was expending its resources and materiel in a war in the East, might well have changed the course of history. The "war hawk" party in London, egged on surreptiously by the Roosevelt administration and ideological "anti-fascists," managed to get Britain mired in a conflict for which it was not ready and which in the end totally exhausted it, which ended its role as world power, and that meant the destruction of the "empire." Churchill's vaunted promise to "defend the empire" was made hollow as he presided over the very destruction of that empire--and of historic Britain. Charmley offers ample notes and primary sources for his interpretation. While certainly not a new view--Barnett, Taylor and others have made similar points--Charmley's points deserve respectful consideration--not the "Establishment" condescension (and apparent fear!) that some have exhibited.

Rating:
Summary: Charmley Is Right
Review: English historian John Charmley has disturbed World War II "establishment historians"--and established myths--by his iconoclastic re-interpretaion of the origins and beginning of the 1939-1945 war. Yet, in a series of closely reasoned studies he makes telling points that reveal a number of missed opportunities, in the months and weeks before and even after the outbreak of war, to have secured a satisfactory resolution of the growing hostility between the UK and Germany. He does not say that this resolution would have been permanent in the long run; indeed, the two powers may have eventually ended up in conflict. Nevertheless, the possibility that Britain could have kept out of a general war for another couple of years, while Germany was expending its resources and materiel in a war in the East, might well have changed the course of history. The "war hawk" party in London, egged on surreptiously by the Roosevelt administration and ideological "anti-fascists," managed to get Britain mired in a conflict for which it was not ready and which in the end totally exhausted it, which ended its role as world power, and that meant the destruction of the "empire." Churchill's vaunted promise to "defend the empire" was made hollow as he presided over the very destruction of that empire--and of historic Britain. Charmley offers ample notes and primary sources for his interpretation. While certainly not a new view--Barnett, Taylor and others have made similar points--Charmley's points deserve respectful consideration--not the "Establishment" condescension (and apparent fear!) that some have exhibited.

Rating:
Summary: A very strange look at 1939
Review: John Charmley has a thesis that he has tried to hammer home repeatedly: that Britain should not have intervened in the Second World War and that, by doing so, Winston Churchill succeeded in mortgaging Britain's future to America, losing the Empire, and ushering in decades of social democracy in Britain. In other words, Charmley thinks Britain would have been better off if it had turned an even blinder eye to Nazism.

This book is nominally about Chamberlain, but we see a lot of Churchill and Charmley tries to bring in his arch-villain whenever possible. This visceral dislike for Churchill - combined with a fawning admiration for Chamberlain - is troubling in that it prevents Charmley from acknowledging that one was ever right and that the other was ever wrong. This book is about as partisan as possible.

His ultimate argument, that Nazi Germany posed no threat to Britain is absurd. Charmley does not even bother to examine Hitler's ambitions; had he done so, his argument would have fallen apart. Germany sought to be an Atlantic power, as well as a European power. Ideological bias blinds Charmley from the fact that a triumphant Germany would have effectively emasculated Britain and encouraged Italy and Japan to poach London's colonial possessions. He despises America enough to blind him to the fact that there were far more rapacious powers operating in the 1940s (see some of the letters Charmley has written to the Daily Telegraph)

All in all, this book is best read as an example of modern-day Tory cynicism and contempt for the past. As a chronicle of the years before the war it has little to recommend it.