In telling Hitler plainly that Britain would fight for Poland, he continued, he wanted to avoid any ‘tragic misunderstanding’.1 In a wartime note on British foreign policy, Lord Halifax argued that he thought Hitler might have been deterred ‘if, as we had failed to do in 1914, we made it unmistakably clear that the particular acts of aggression which he was believed to have in mind, would result in general war’.2 When Hitler attacked Poland, Britain and France duly honoured their pledge to defend Poland’s independence and war resulted.
