Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Chamberlain‐Temperley Connection: Munich's Historical Dimension

1985; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 48; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1540-6563.1985.tb00681.x

1540-6563

John D. Fair,

World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. Donald Watt, “The Historiography of Appeasement,” in Alan Sked and Chris Cook, eds., Crisis and Controversy, Essays in Honour of A.J.P. Taylor (New York, 1976), 110–11.2. Ernest R. May, ‘Lessons’ of the Past: the Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (New York, 1973). Remarkably, May almost totally ignores the Dulles era in formulating his thesis. Nor does he recognize the obvious prescience of young John F. Kennedy's book on Why England Slept (New York, 1940), prepared originally as a Harvard senior thesis.3. For surveys on the extensive literature on appeasement see D. C. Watt. Appeasement, The Rise of a Revisionist School Political Quarterly 36 (April-June 1965): 191–213 and William R. Rock, British Appeasement in the 1930s (New York, 1977).4. The foremost proponent of the former view is C. A. Pyper in Chamberlain and His Critics: A Statesman Vindicated (London. 1962). An effective refutation of the argument that Chamberlain acted at Munich to encourage German aggression in the east against Soviet Russia is made by Donald Lammers, Explaining Munich: The Search for Motive in British Policy (Palo Alto. 1966).5. A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London, 1963). 9.6. Ibid., 234–35.7. Keith Robbins, Munich 1938 (London. 1968), 4–5. Chamberlain's biographers include: Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London. 1946); lain Macleod, Neville Chamberlain (New York, 1962); and Alan Beattie, “Neville Chamberlain,” in John P. Mackintosh, d., British Prime Ministers in the Twentieth Century, 2 vols. (New York, 1977), 1:219–71.8. See Bradford Lee, Britain and the Sino‐Japanese War, 1937–1939, A Study in the Dilemmas of British Decline (Stanford, 1973); Lawrence R. Pratt, East of Malta, West of Suez, Britain's Mediterranean Crisis, 1936–1939 (Cambridge, 1975); C. A. MacDonald, The United States, Britain and Appeasement, 1936–1939 (New York, 1981); following upon A. A. Offner, American Appeasement, United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933–1939 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), and R. Ovendale, “Appeasement” and the English Speaking World, Britain, the United States, the Dominions, and the Policy of “Appeasement”, 1937–1939 (Cardiff, 1975); Bernd‐Jürgen Wendt, Economic Appeasement, Handel und Finanz in der britischen Deutschland‐politik, 1933–1939 (Dusseldorf, 1971); Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hiller, British Politics and British Policy, 1933–1940 (Cambridge, 1975); and vol. 3 of Steven W. Roskill, Hankey, Man of Secrets, 3 vols. (London, 1970–1974), covers the years from 1931–1963.9. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Lothar Kettenacker, eds., The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement (London, 1983), xii.10. Roy Douglas, “Chamberlain and Appeasement,” in Mommsen and Kettenacker, Fascist Challenge, 86. Another of the authors included in this reassessment, Anthony Adamthwaite, concludes in a recent review article that “British ministers, like their French colleagues, were tormented by cruel dilemmas. The release of public and private papers in the late 1960s finally buried the Guilty Men approach to British policy. Appeasement, it appeared, far from being rooted in fear, delusion, and ineptitude, was a realistic search for European detente, propelled by detestation of war and the conviction that Germany had genuine grievances. Military and economic weakness, combined with world‐wide threats to Britain's power, left governments with no choice but to conciliate the dictators and gain time for rearmament.” See Anthony Adamthwaite, “War Origins Again,”The Journal of Modern History 56 (March 1984); 106.11. Telford Taylor, Munich, The Price of Peace (New York, 1979). The Munich analogy has been used repeatedly in the public pronouncements of Ronald Reagan. So, in a sharp attack on the anti‐nuclear movement on August 23, 1983, he told a gathering of the American Legion in Seattle that the “members of the real peace movement—the real peacemakers—are people like you… Neville Chamberlain thought of peace as a vague policy in the 1930s. and the result brought us closer to World War II… History teaches us that by being strong and resolute we can keep the peace.”New York Times, 24 August 1983, 1 and 7.12. See Feiling, Life of Neville Chamberlain, 360–61, and H. W. V. Temperley, The Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–2827 (1925; reprint, Hamden, Conn., 1966).13. Taylor, Munich, 674.14. Larry William fuchser, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement, A Study in the Politics of History (New York, 1982), 137.15. See Charles Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 1815–1822 (London, 1925). Herbert Butterfield, their junior colleague, writes that “Both men had originally been students of history at King's College, Cambridge, though Webster had been the junior by a few years. Both of them could appear as booming giants, cumbersome and dangerous to crockery, bulging with warmth and good feeling, yet capable of overbearingness—terrible lions if you trod on their tails. Sometimes they seemed inseparable, glorious in their collaborations, charming in their avowals of indebtedness to one another—boosting one another at International Congresses, each for ever making reference to his ‘distinguished friend.”’ Temperley, Foreign Policy of Canning, xii‐xiii.16. Only two historians have suspected this curious link with the past. Ian Colvin, upon studying the cabinet records for 1938 that were released with the implementation of the Public Records Act of 1969, discovered several documents suggesting reflections on the Canning era by Chamberlain. See The Chamberlain Cabinet (New York, 1971), 99, 111, and 267. And from a more general perspective Paul Schroeder argues in a recent article that “Munirh did not represent a departure from tradition, but rather conformed 10 the standard nineteenth‐century British approach to Central and East European problems.” See “Munich and the British Tradition,”The Historical Journal 19 (March 1976):224.17. Feiling, Life of Chamberlain, 120.18. B. S. Benedikz. Guide to the Chamberlain Collection (Birmingham, 1978). 6. Chamberlain‐Temperley Connection part. He came into office determined to try to get on terms with Germany and Italy. 19 In a “Candid Portrait” prepared in 1939, David Margesson, a member of his cabinet, explained that19. M. Hankey to R. Hankey, 1 March 1938. Hankey Papers, 3/43, Churchill College.20. “Chamberlain: A Candid Portrait 1939”, Margesson Papers, Churchill College.21. Viscount Simon, Retrospect, The Memoirs of The Rt. Hon. Viscount Simon (London, 1952), 275.22. D. C. Watt, Personalities and Policies, Studies in the Formulation of British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (South Bend, Ind., 1965), 163.23. Sir Charles Petrie, The Life and Letters of the Right Hon. Sir Austen Chamberlain, 2 vols. (London, 1940), 2:154–55.24. Parl. Deb., 5th ser., 332 (22 February 1938): 227.25. The Times, 15 July 1938, sec. c, 9.26. Parl. Deb., 5th ser., 338 (26 July 1938): 2950–59.27. The Times. 27 August 1937. sec. a, 8.28. Ibtd., 28 July 1938, sec. e, 15.29. Ibid., 29 July 1938, sec. e. 15. The Times correspondence touched off a flurry of comment in The Star where the point was made that the “giant's strength” passage was actually taken from Shakespeare's “Measure for Measure” and that at least Canning was aware of its source. The Star, 29 July and 3 August 1938.30. Strauss to Chamberlain, 29 July 1938, Chamberlain Papers, University of Birmingham Library, NC 7/11/31/256. I am grateful to the university trustees for permission to use passages from the chamberlain Papers.31. Parl. Deb., new ser., 4 (20 March 1821): 1373–76.32. Temperley to Chamberlain. 29 July 1938, Chamberlain Papers, NC 7/11 /31/266.33. Chamberlain to Temperley. 3 August 1938, ibid., NC 7/11/31/267.34. Temperley, Foreign Polirv of Canning, 35.35. Ibid., 39.36. Ibid., 45.37. Ibid., 47–48.38. Ibid., 86–87.39. Ibid., 119–20.40. Ibid., 154–55. That Chamberlain was conscious of the possible importance of American support was indicated by a remark made to Lord Dunglass just after the Munich conference that any violation of Hitler's word would have the salutary effect of “mobilising public opinion against him, particularly in America.” Sir Alec Douglas‐Home, The Way the Wind Blows: An Autiobiography (New York, 19761, 66.41. Diary, 18 August 1938, Simon Papers, I/7, Bodleian Library, Oxford.42. Cabinet Minutes, 30 August 1938, CAB 23/94, Public Record Office [PRO]. It is possible, though by no means probable, that Chamberlain derived his knowledge of the Schleswig‐Holstein episode, illustrating the limits of England's power to interfere in continental affairs and the futility of making threats unable to be carried out, from two works that had recently been published. See R. W. Seton‐Watson, Britain in Europe, 1789–1914, A Survey of Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 1937) and Sir Llewellyn Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815–1870 (Oxford, 1938).43. See page 9, fn 27.44. Temperley, Foreign Policy of Canning, 81. William Strang used the Canning quote in a Foreign Office memorandum on February 19, 1938, but there is no evidence that it had any significant effect on Chamberlain at that time. Memorandum from Strang, FO 371/22312, PRO.45. Evidvnce shows that the idea for Plan Z was entirely Chamberlain's, was formulated in the latter part of August, and was probably revealed for the first time on August 28. See diary, 19 September 1938, Simon Papers, I/7, and a memoradum from Sir H. Wilson, 30 August 1938, Prime Minister Documents, PREM 1/266A, PRO.46. FTemperley. Foreign Policy of Canning, 314 and 381.47. Ibid., 388–89. “On high sits Arcadian (Greek)Æolus, holding his wand; He softens (the) souls and tempers (the) rages; If not, the seas, the earth and heaven would soon become wild, as if pulled in a gale.”48. Ibid., 459–60.49. Ibid., 470–71. Temperley summarized the chief points of Canning's “system of policy” as follows: “no Areopagus, non‐intervention; no European police system; were nation for itself, and God for us all; balance of power; respect for facts, not for abstract theories; respect for treaty rights, but caution in extending them…. ‘England not Europe’; ‘Our foreign policy cannot be conducted against the will of the nation’: ‘Europe's domain extends to the shores of the Atlantic, England's begins there.’ England's function is ‘to hold the balance between the conflicting principles of democracy and despotism,’ to mediate between two hemispheres, and to bring the New World (pace Monroe) into connection with the Old. “50. Ibid., 474.51. Ibid., 232 and 234–35.52. Chamberlain to Temperley, 11 September 1938, Temperley Papers, Thorney House, Somerset. I wish to thank Professor H. N. V. Temperley for allowing me to use his father's papers and for his assistance in the preparation of this article.53. N. Chamberlain to I. Chamberlain, 11 September 1938, Chamberlain Papers, NC 18/1/1068.54. See 11, fn 32 and 33.55. See 8 and 12, fn 25 and 38.56. Chamberlain to the king, 13 September 1938, in Sir John Wheeler‐Bennett, King George VI, His Life and Reign (New York, 1958), 346–47.57. Temperley, Foreign Policy on Canning, 469–70. Italics are author's.58. Temperley to Chamberlain, 20 September 1938, Chamberlain Papers, NC 7/11/31/268.59. See italicized portions of the above statements by Chamberlain, Canning, and Temperley for parallels in thought—my italics.60. Temperley to Chamberlain, 20 September 1938, Chamberlain Papers, NC 7/11/31/268.61. See Iain Macleod, Neville Chamberlain (New York, 1962), 250.62. Temperley, Foreign Policy of Canning, 86. Also see fn 27, 31, 32, 33 and 42.63. Chamberlain, In Search of Peace (London, 1939), 302–3.64. See H. W. V. Temperley, Life of Canning (London, 1905), 164.65. See 6, fn 18.66. The Times, 11 October 1938, sec. e, 15. Subsequently Temperley's old adversary, Charles Webster, received a note from Eileen Power, a London University colleague. “Have you seen Temperley's letter ‘The Pilot who weathered the storm?’ indeed. More like the Pilot who was swallowed by a whale!” Power to Webster, 11 October 1938, Webster Papers, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1/3(23).67. Temperley accordingly inscribed the book to “‘The Pilot who weathered the Storm’ in our day as Pitt did in his.” Temperley to Chamberlain, 10 November 1938, Chamberlain Papers, NC 7/11/31/269.68. Chamberlain to Temperley, 14 November 1938, Temperley Papers.69. See 13, fn 41.70. Trevelyan to Temperley, 14 November 1938, Temperley Papers.71. Langer to Temperley, 1 December 1938, Langer Papers, HUG (FP) 19.9, Box 6.72. Harewood to Temperley, 13 February 1939, ibid.73. See “Munich Reconsidered,” in International Affairs 37 (April 1961): 137–53.74. Feiling, Life of Neville Chamberlain, 121–22.75. See Lee, Britain and the Sino‐Japanese War and MacDonald, The United States, Britain and Appeasement.76. As a leading proponent of this view D. C. Watt explains that “Chamberlain seems to have had a vision of a self‐regulating European system of states which excluded the United States and the Soviet Union on the grounds that neither was a European state, while reluctantly recognizing that if his efforts to keep the European system functioning were to break down it might be necessary to call in one or, still worse, both of the future Super Powers to redress the balance.” See Watt, “The European Civil War” in Mommsen and Kettenacker, Fascist Challenge, 4. Also, essays by Bernd‐Jürgen Wendt, “Economic Appeasement—A Crisis Strategy”; Hans‐Jürgen Schröder, “The Ambiguities of Appeasement: Great Britain, the United States and Germany, 1937–9; and Callum A. MacDonald, “The United States, Appeasement and the Open Door” in the same volume.77. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Mrs. William L. Langer for permitting use of the Langer Papers and to the Harvard University Archives for making them accessible.Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn D. FairThe author is Professor of History at Auburn University at Montgomery, Alabama.