Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Even should Britain and France together fight Germany to a standstill in France, what would be the purpose of the war? To restore the status quo ante and return the Sudeten Germans to a Czech rule 80 percent of them wished to be rid of? That would only replicate the folly of Versailles and set the stage for yet another crisis. As the British minister in Prague, Basil Newton, wrote, should Britain go to war, the most that could be accomplished was to “restore after a lengthy struggle a status quo which had already proved unacceptable and which, even if restored, would probably again prove unworkable.”75 The brutal truth: The Sudeten Germans wanted to be reunited with their kinsmen and could not forever be denied. And as Britain now believed the decision to deliver them to Prague had been a blunder, why fight a war to perpetuate a blunder? Neither the British nation nor empire, wrote Henderson, would have supported war on Germany to deny Germans the right of self-determination the Allies had so loudly preached at Paris.