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Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

Henri McPhee said:
There is a bit about appeasement and Chamberlain, relevant to this thread, in a book by the Prime Minister of Australia at the time, Sir Robert Menzies called Afternoon Light 1967:
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Well Menzies does share one characteristic with yourself and at least he admits it:

I have not the slightest qualification to decide the issue.
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How you think a quote from a politician who admits he doesn't know whether Chamberlain was right or not strengthens your claims I have no idea.
 
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ddt said:
According to this Globe and Mail article from 11 Sept 1939, there was no recorded vote. It mentions no dissenters in the Senate, and three in the Commons: two French-Canadians, Liguori Lacombe and Wilfrid Lacroix, who proposed a "non-participation amendment", whatever that may mean (political support but no military support?).
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Thanks. I was going off a couple of newspaper headlines I'd seen.
 
Henri McPhee said:
There is a bit about appeasement and Chamberlain, relevant to this thread, in a book by the Prime Minister of Australia at the time, Sir Robert Menzies called Afternoon Light 1967:
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Menzies was not PM at the time of Munich (he was attorney-general); he didn't become PM until after the death of Joseph Lyons in April 1939. That aside, Menzies' views on appeasement can hardly be considered unbiased, as he was himself an arch-appeaser who favored negotiations with Hitler even after the invasion of Poland and the declaration of war (see here).

And speaking of Menzies, here is an excerpt from his war speech: "It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war." Nothing about Australians' having any choice about it, though even if they had, there would still have been overwhelming support for standing with Britain, just as there would have in September 1938.

I'm going to request the book AUSTRALIA AND APPEASEMENT: Imperial Foreign Policy and the Origins of World War II, by Christopher Waters, on Inter-Library Loan. Indiana University has a copy, so I should be able to get it fairly quickly. For now, here are excerpts from two reviews. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Former Australian prime minister Billy Hughes saw through appeasement. Hughes remained in parliament as an unretired force, using power as minister for external affairs to warn of the need for rearmament and of the inevitability of war against Germany. The Lyons government in the late 1930s pledged itself to maintaining support for British appeasement policy as though that policy was the core of a strategy by the British Empire to contain Hitler. As Australia's representative in Britain, [former Australian PM Stanley] Bruce bridged the two worlds with hostility against the enemies of appeasement. He won many debates which Australian governments supported. Then the war began.

The Australian Labor Party under John Curtin was increasingly alarmed about Australia's isolation in Asia and fearful of the price which appeasement might have in leaving the nation at risk of Asian restlessness. When Bruce toured Australia in 1938, his public service mentor warned that few if any Australians seemed persuaded of his views in favour of appeasement. And in London, Australian public servants were warning that Germany and Japan could seize Dutch interests in Asia, with armed force becoming possible in Dutch Indonesia. Visiting British writer H.G. Wells had spoken publicly in Australia about Hitler's threats to peace, but the Lyons government won praise in Germany for its considered public rebuke of Wells. Home goal?​

From The Australian:

Australia's primary strategic motivation was distrust of Japan. If Britain were involved in a full-scale European conflict, its navy might become overstretched in the Far East. "The growing fear," Waters explains, "[was] that a sufficient fleet would not be sent to Singapore in a time of war."

Despite these well-justified concerns, there was never a doubt the Lyons and Menzies governments would commit Australia to war, when Britain declared it. Their support for the empire was non-negotiable. Labor, by contrast, was isolationist [but see above].​
 
I note that those who accuse others of having a Closed mind often have a mind so open that the brains fall out...
 
Henri McPhee said:
That's not quite correct. Australia, New Zealand and Canada were not colonies in 1938, though thank goodness they were on our side. They were willing to declare war against Germany in 1939, but not in 1938:

https://quizlet.com/139651631/why-did-britain-adopt-the-policy-of-appeasement-flash-cards/
This meant that it was vital to protect this Empire. In the mid 1930s, Chiefs of Staff had warned Britain's leaders that could not afford to fight a war on three fronts- Germany in Europe, Italy in the Middle East and Japan in the Far East. Mussolini tried to stir up trouble in the Empire in 1937 by encouraging the Arab Revolt which threatened the Suez canal, a vital trade route.

Led to appeasement as Britain chose to concentrate their limited armed forces on the defence of the Empire as the threat here was seen as much greater than Hitler's actions in Europe. They therefore had no choice but to appease Germany as they didn't have enough military resources to do both.

At the Imperial Conference in London in 1937, member states of the British Empire, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, made it clear that they would not take part in another war in Europe due the horrors of the first one.

Led to appeasement, as addressing Germany's grievances was seen as a safer option than going to war without military back-up.
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I found the origin of the hilited paragraph; it's from a BBC study guide for the Scottish history "higher", which I gather is something like an Ordinary Wizarding Level (O.W.L.) :D The passage is on the second page. Whoever made up those flash cards presumably cribbed it from here.

The rest of the article is fairly reasonable as far as it goes, but it's not very detailed, and cites no sources. However, as I have shown, the part about the Imperial Conference is clearly wrong.
 
SpitfireIX said:
Menzies was not PM at the time of Munich (he was attorney-general); he didn't become PM until after the death of Joseph Lyons in April 1939. That aside, Menzies' views on appeasement can hardly be considered unbiased, as he was himself an arch-appeaser who favored negotiations with Hitler even after the invasion of Poland and the declaration of war (see here).
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Their support of Appeasement pretty much guaranteed the scenario they were so afraid of. in 1938 there was little chance of Japan striking south and against a much stronger Germany in 1940-41 Singapore had to make do with British leftovers for defence.
 
So, Henri, when are you planning to answer the questions you've been asked?

Specifically, please explain:

  • how Germany was going to bomb Britain into submission in 1938
  • how Germany was going to invade Britain in 1938
  • how Germany was going to conquer France (and Belgium) in 1938, or failing that, in the spring of 1939
Please be as specific as possible, and be sure to discuss how this was going to be accomplished with far fewer Wehrmacht resources than in 1940, especially while fighting Czechoslovakia, or while recovering from having conquered Czechoslovakia.
 
With what? I remember reading a book once about the artist Dora Carrington which said her arty group were conscientious objectors in the First World War, but in the second world war they all joined up to fight.

There is an internet article on that Oxford Union debate about not fighting for King and Country in 1933, which indicates the sort of thing Chamberlain was up against trying to persuade the public and the British Empire to go to war. The public and the House of Commons did not want to go to war over the Sudetanland, mainly because they had never heard of it. They had to work it out for themselves:

https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/...ra/exercises/appeasement/king-country-debate/
 
Henri McPhee said:
With what? I remember reading a book once about the artist Dora Carrington which said her arty group were conscientious objectors in the First World War, but in the second world war they all joined up to fight.

There is an internet article on that Oxford Union debate about not fighting for King and Country in 1933, which indicates the sort of thing Chamberlain was up against trying to persuade the public and the British Empire to go to war. The public and the House of Commons did not want to go to war over the Sudetanland, mainly because they had never heard of it. They had to work it out for themselves:

https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/...ra/exercises/appeasement/king-country-debate/
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Like the peace ballot of '34-'35? (your link)
It says that the people wanted peace, but were also willing to fight if a country (now which country did they mean there?) attacked another country.

People did clearly see the evil of Nazi germany. Unfortunately not Chamberlain.
 
Henri McPhee said:
With what?
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Continuing evasion noted, as usual. :rolleyes:

Henri McPhee said:
I remember reading a book once about the artist Dora Carrington which said her arty group were conscientious objectors in the First World War, but in the second world war they all joined up to fight.
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[citation needed] Further, all of the surviving male members of the Bloomsbury GroupWP were too old for military service in 1939. Fail.

Henri McPhee said:
There is an internet article on that Oxford Union debate about not fighting for King and Country in 1933, which indicates the sort of thing Chamberlain was up against trying to persuade the public and the British Empire to go to war. The public and the House of Commons did not want to go to war over the Sudetanland, mainly because they had never heard of it. They had to work it out for themselves:

https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/...ra/exercises/appeasement/king-country-debate/
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To add to erwinl's point about the Peace Ballot, which I imagine you'll ignore, if Chamberlain believed that Britain and the Empire and Commonwealth wouldn't go to war over the Sudetenland, yet, as you have claimed, he also knew that war with Hitler was inevitable, then why was there any need for appeasement at all? Why not just let Czechoslovakia fight Germany, possibly with Soviet backing? As has been pointed out to you several times, such a war would have resulted in the expenditure or destruction of large amounts of both German and Czech war materiel, which would have made Germany significantly weaker when the conflict with the Western Allies did come.

Finally, you are attempting to change horses yet again. First, you claimed that Chamberlain was right to appease Hitler at Munich because, had war come in 1938, Germany would have easily defeated not only France and the Low Countries, but also Britain, and that the extra year of British rearmament somehow made all the difference.

After this line of argument was utterly destroyed, you then half-heartedly shifted to claiming that Chamberlain believed, based on faulty intelligence, that this would happen, and thus made the best decision he could in the circumstances. As has been pointed out to you, this claim is still wrong, however, it's at least defensible to an extent. But, frankly, you didn't do a very good job of making the case.

So now you're claiming that Chamberlain had to appease Hitler because Britain and the Empire and Commonwealth wouldn't have gone to war over the Sudetenland. This is also wrong, as has been demonstrated, but it's also nonsensical, because, as I mentioned, you have previously claimed that Chamberlain knew that armed conflict with Germany would come eventually. Appeasement only makes sense if he truly believed that he was achieving "peace in our time."
 
Peter Hitchens has a controversial viewpoint about all this Polish guarantee stuff. He seems to think that if Britain had stayed neutral, like Ireland, that Britain could have been spared the horrors of war. The problem for Chamberlain, and uppermost in his mind, is that Hitler intended an unprovoked attack on Britain, as well as Russia and America and the Czechs. In the event Britain could do practically nothing to help the Poles or the Czechs.

This is what Peter Hitchens seems to think about it all:

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/06/what-i-think-about-world-war-two.html

That Britain’s guarantee to Poland in April 1939 was dishonest, in that we knew when we made it that we had no intention of taking any material action to enforce it, and that we couldn’t have done if we had wanted to, as our armed forces (on the modernisation of which we had nearly bankrupted ourselves by 1938) were designed to defend the Empire overseas, and our home islands - but not equipped or configured for a continental land war. We also knew that the Germans were fully aware of our military weakness, in continental land forces, and likewise did not take our guarantee seriously.
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This is what Churchill wrote about the Polish guarantee and what Peter Hitchens thinks about it:

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/10/the-polish-guarantee-churchill-speaks-.html

I concede that ( as those who check the source will find) Churchill surrounds these remarks by restating his belief that a war over Czechoslovakia would have been feasible and possibly won by Britain and France. I do not think this is true, as it overestimates France’s aggressive capacity, and the defensibility of Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss. He follows it with some emotional bombast about death being better than slavery, which is undoubtedly true, but in my view is a false choice. We were only in danger of slavery because of our involvement in a war we couldn’t possibly win, because we didn’t have the weapons with which to fight it. Armed neutrality posed no such risk. So my ‘Finest Hour’ critics might do well to note what Churchill himself also says a) about Poland itself and b) about the absurdity of the Polish guarantee.
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