What did Neville Chamberlain do wrong?
At that time – and you have to think back to a time when news was nothing like as instantaneous as it is now – there was quite a pressure to ignore Hitler and his obvious ambitions. A number of factors contributed to this – in no particular order: the politicians then in power had been through the 14-18 war and didn’t want to see frightfulness on the same scale; there was a fair amount of anti-Semitism running all through Europe (Britain included) although it wouldn’t of course, have extended to killing them; Hitler had revived the German economy by introducing what were effectively Keynesian economics before Keyes, going in for huge quantities of public works, and some people admired him for that; in other quarters he was regarded as something of a buffoon; and he had appointed a socially smooth-as-silk ambassador to the UK – Ribbentrop – who ingratiated himself with the top echelons. (If you want to read about this period, I’ve quoted for you the diaries of Chips Channon, who was a s
