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

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Drafted by Chamberlain and Sir Horace Wilson, three sentences long, the Munich Accord read: “We, the German Fuehrer and Chancellor and the British Prime Minister … regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.”5 At the request of George VI “to come straight to Buckingham Palace so that I can express to you personally my most heartfelt congratulations on the success of your visit to Munich,” Chamberlain was driven to the palace to receive the gratitude of his sovereign.6 Though the trip was only nine miles, so dense were the crowds it took an hour and a half.7 “Even the descriptions of the papers give no idea of the scenes in the streets as I drove from Heston to the Palace,” wrote Chamberlain. “They were lined from one end to the other with people of every class, shouting themselves hoarse, leaping on the running board, banging on the windows, and thrusting their hands into the car to be shaken.”8 At Buckingham Palace, Chamberlain and his wife were invited by the King to “join him on the balcony … as a token of the ‘lasting gratitude of his fellow countrymen throughout the Empire.’”9 “It was … the first time a ruling monarch had allowed a commoner to be acknowledged from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.”