Of the two other principals, Chamberlain and Hitler, neither wanted a general war; nor did their advisers, nor their military, nor the British or German people, nor the French government and people, who found themselves sucked along in the British wake, nor of course the Poles, who were the first victims. The situation had been created by Chamberlain’s reckless pledge to Poland; the western powers’ inability to support that pledge in any practical sense left an opening on the game board of eastern Europe between the two major powers who claimed that sphere, Germany and Russia. It was their
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