and the enslavement of ‘inferior’ races. For Hitler,
then, the question of war and peace was a ques-
tion of timing, of choosing the moment that
promised the greatest chance of success.
The French, whose assessment of Hitler’s aims
tended to be more realistic than that of the British,
would not in any case risk war with Germany
without a cast-iron guarantee of Britain’s backing.
Even then doubts about France’s survival as a
great power if it were further weakened by heavy
losses of men and reserves made the French
look at the prospect with horror. What was true
of France was also true of Germany’s smaller
neighbours. As for the Soviet Union, it shared
no frontier with Germany and hoped to contain it
by deterrence in association with the Western
powers; but that policy was bluff since the Soviet
alternative to the failure of deterrence was not war
but a truce, an accommodation with Germany.
The US championed democracy abroad, though
imperfectly at home and, equally fervently, neu-
trality if it should come to war in Europe. That
gave Britain the key role.
Until the spring of 1939, Neville Chamberlain
dominated the Cabinet as few prime ministers had
before him. He was Hitler’s most formidable pro-
tagonist. Chamberlain too, though subject to
public opinion and the pressure of his colleagues,
would have to decide when to accept that general
European war was inevitable, unless Britain were
simply to stand by while Hitler secured the dom-
ination of the European continent. The conquest
of Poland would have been followed by other
conquests, though no one can be sure in what
direction Hitler would have struck first and so
what precise sequence he would have followed.
Nor did he intend to spare a hostile and inde-
pendent Britain. When Hitler passed from ‘cold’
war to ‘hot’ war, Chamberlain reluctantly accept-
ed that a great European war would become
inevitable if Britain’s independence and security
were to survive.
Chamberlain’s attitude stands in stark contrast
to Hitler’s. Chamberlain abhorred war. He
belonged to the generation of the Great War.
Humanitarian feelings were the positive motiva-
tions of his life. He wished to better the lot of his
fellow men, to cure the ills, in particular unem-
ployment, that still beset Britain’s industrial life.
War, to him, was the ultimate waste and negation
of human values. He believed in the sanctity of
individual human life and rejected the crude
notions of a people’s destiny, purification through
violence and struggle, and the attainment of ends
by brute force. He had faith in the triumph of
reason and, believing himself to be fighting the
good fight for peace, he was prepared to be
patient, tenacious and stubborn, drawing on
inner resources to maintain a personal optimism
even when conditions all around pointed the
other way. To the very end he hoped for some
miracle that would ensure a peaceful outcome.
Only a week away from war at the end of August
1939 he expressed his feelings in a private letter
to his sister Hilda:
I feel like a man driving a clumsy coach over
a narrow cracked road along the face of a
precipice... I sat with Annie [Mrs
Chamberlain] in the drawing room, unable to
read, unable to talk, just sitting with folded
hands and a gnawing pain in the stomach.
When Chamberlain spoke to the nation over the
BBC at the outbreak of war, he, unlike Hitler,
could say with sincerity:
You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me
that all my long struggle to win peace has
failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is any-
thing more or anything different that I could
have done and that would have been more suc-
cessful. His [Hitler’s] action shows convinc-
ingly that there is no choice of expecting that
this man will ever give up his practice of using
force to gain his will. He can only be stopped
by force.
There is no meaningful way Chamberlain’s
responsibility for war can be compared on the
same basis as Hitler’s, any more than a man who
violently attacks his neighbour is less responsible
for his action because of the weakness of the
police force.
This is not to suggest that the origins of the
war in Europe can be reduced to a contrast
1
THE OUTBREAK OF WAR IN EUROPE, 1937–9 221
