March 1939: The British Guarantee to Poland

by Simon Newman

Genres: History

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book because I happened to meet the author at a party and it is his PhD thesis, now out of print, published in 1976, but I found a dealer who would sell it to me. It was fun to stand next to him while we were talking and say "There, I've just bought your book oo my phone". It is very interesting, in fact a kind of apologia for Chamberlain and his policies in the late 1930s, a very unfashionable view these days. Newman says that war with Germany could have been avoided either by containment, or by capitulation ("granting her requirements wholesale"). Britain did, of course, neither such thing. He says it's not true that most of the Foreign Office were against Chamberlain's appeasement policy. However, the Joint Planning Committee produced an annual document, updated regularly, through most of the 1930s, titled "Planning for War with Germany". The Government became unpopular on foreign policy in the 1930s. Appearances on this are deceptive, as they usually are. In December 1938 the Duchess of Atholl (who she?) fought a by-election specifically against Chamberlain's foreign policy - and lost. Into 1939 the Anglo-German Agreement was still, unbelievably, funding German rearmament. Much of this book seems to be an attempt to rebut a book called 'The Appeasers' by Gilbert and Gott, which I confess I have not read. In March 1939 Chamberlain tells the Commons that after the annexation of Czechoslovakia appeasement has failed and the "spirit of Munich" has been violated. There followed the guarantee to Poland, which Newman says was not intended as a deterrent (pre Cold War no-one understood the notion of deterrence) but as a deliberate challenge. Newman's concluding line is that it cannot be said that appeasement never worked, because it was never really tried. Giving Italy a free hand in Abyssinia, and Germany a free hand in eastern Europe, for example. Well, hmm, but I found it a fascinating read.