possible alterations in the European order
which might be destined to come about with
the passage of time. Amongst these questions
were Danzig, Austria, Czechoslovakia. Britain
was interested to see that any alterations
should come through the course of peaceful
evolution...The German record is more pointed and has
Halifax expressing the view that he ‘did not
believe that the status quo had to be main-
tained under all circumstances’. As further baits
to persuade Germany into the paths of peace,
Chamberlain was prepared to make economic
concessions and even envisaged some eventual
African colonial appeasement.
Privately, Chamberlain explained to his sister
Ida in November 1937 that he regarded the visit
a great success because it had created an atmos-
phere that would make possible discussions with
Germany on ‘the practical questions involved in
a European settlement’:What I wanted to do was to convince Hitler
of our sincerity and to ascertain what objec-
tives he had in mind... Both Hitler and
Göring said separately and emphatically that
they had no desire or intention of making war
and I think we may take this as correct at any
rate for the present. Of course they want to
dominate Eastern Europe; they want as close
a union with Austria as they can get without
incorporating her in the Reich and they want
much the same thing for the Sudeten Deutsch
as we did for the Uitlanders in the Transvaal.... But I don’t see why we shouldn’t say to
Germany give us satisfactory assurances that
you won’t use force to deal with the Austrians
and Czecho-Slovakians and we will give you
similar assurances that we won’t use force to
prevent the changes you want, if you can get
them by peaceful means.
The flaws in Chamberlain’s reasoning were
several and serious. First, it was wrong that Hitler
was pursuing a nationalist foreign policy that
could be satisfied by limited territorial adjust-
ments. Down to the outbreak of war in 1939
Chamberlain failed to comprehend the centralracialist kernel of Hitler’s policy and therefore the
significance of the persecution of the Jews. There
is one interesting piece of evidence about this in
an unpublished private letter. His sister Hilda had
passed the absurd information to him that it was
possible for Jews to be admitted to the Hitler
Youth, and Chamberlain replied in July 1939:I had no idea that Jews were still allowed to
work or join such organisations as the Hitler
Youth in Germany. It shows, doesn’t it, how
much sincerity there is in the talk of racial
purity. I believe the persecution arose out
of two motives: a desire to rob the Jews of
their money and a jealousy of their superior
cleverness.Chamberlain, unlike Churchill, did not have
warm feelings for Jews in general. He wrote that
he did not regard them a ‘lovable people’ but
condemned their persecution: ‘I don’t care about
them myself’ but that was not sufficient reason to
justify pogroms. Chamberlain failed to grasp early
on the limitless nature of Hitler’s demands. He
worked for a ‘reasonable’ settlement so that a
great war would be seen as a needless and crimi-
nal sacrifice of life.
The second flaw, which led to the taint of
moral guilt, was that Chamberlain believed in the
justification of the greater good, or more precisely
the avoidance of the greater evil, which for him
was a general war. This played into Hitler’s hands.
Hitler intended to secure the maximum advan-
tages at minimum cost. He would thus without
risk of general war provide Germany with a strong
base before launching his ultimate wars of con-
quest. The sacrifices Chamberlain called for,
moreover, were not of British territory. It would
be the Austrians, Czechs and other ‘foreigners’
who would actually suffer the consequences. So,
too, the colonial concessions in Africa would be
offered largely at the expense of Portugal and
Belgium and, far more importantly, would have
placed racist Nazis in control of black peoples
whom they looked on as subhumans. It is doubt-
ful whether Chamberlain really grasped this fact.
The third flaw was the weakening of Britain’s
allies, actual and potential, on the continent. But