The Road to War (1989) s01e01 Episode Script
Part 1
And now it has come to us to stand alone in the breach and face the worst that the tyrant's might and enmity can do, Winston Churchill in the summer of 1940, Britain was unprepared for war As the army retreated across the Channel from Dunkirk, many must have blamed the''guilty men'' - the politicians who'd rejected rearmament in favour of placating the dictators For a half-century, Britain's policy of appeasement was remembered with shame, but what brought Britain to the verge of defeat was not the guilt of the few lt was the collective illusion of a nation, 20 years before the retreat from Dunkirk, the body of an unidentified casualty of the First World War was brought from the battlefields of France across the English Channel to Britain, Borne on a gun carriage, the coffin was drawn through London and in the presence of King George V, the Unknown Soldier was given a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, ln four and a half years, Britain had lost a million men Never before had there been such slaughter The shock to the system - the national system - of the First War had really gone very, very deep.
lt's impossible now to think how deep it had gone, but that was the truth of the matter.
And the trench warfare of the last four years of the First War had really bitten into everybody's soul.
And remember, of course, there was to be no more war, lt was the war to end all wars All quiet on the Western Front lt was such a horrible war.
The people that got killed Our own example, my mother lost her two brothers - one, 19, in the Somme and Uncle Arthur was a regular soldier in lndia He didn't get home.
They diverted him to France.
He went through the early battles and then he got killed.
Such a lot of people went.
Such a lot of young men were killed on the Somme.
People were horrified and thought they'd never have another war.
All quiet on the Western Front Please, God, let it stay that way ln those days, Britain was a superpower The Union Jack flew over a fifth of the surface of the globe Her Empire contained a quarter of the world's population But the war had brought her close to bankruptcy To cheer people up, the government organised an exhibition at Wembley lts theme was the Empire, lt seems to me that someone must have said, ''Now we've got this terrible war over, ''we must do something to promote business, trade, ''to let the world know that the British Empire is still alive and well and to boost morale generally.
'' What better than a British Empire exhibition? The new stadium was the setting for the royal opening ceremony The bands and choirs were conducted by the composer, Edward Elgar And did those feet in ancient times Walk upon England's mountains green We were, of course, extremely patriotic people in those days and the British Empire was part of our life, Patriotism ran through everything - like a thread through everything.
Through your school, through your family, through society.
We thought the Empire was a force for good in the world - a benign force, And we thought that the British were a little bit better than most people, ln fact, the British - even working men, who at that time, many of them had rather a poor standard of life - were nevertheless intensely patriotic and thought, generally, that a Britisher was as good as ten foreigners.
To fight the war, Britain had mobilised five million men, All but a few were discharged, Despite the demands of defence, there was no money to maintain large armed services Britain, like other victorious powers, was determined to disarm, especially now that no conceivable enemy existed The army was the first to be emasculated To justify the cuts, the government adopted the''Ten Year Rule'' - an assumption for the purposes of military planning that peace would last ten years The navy - guardian of the imperial sea lanes - was drastically diminished By the start of the 1930s, Britain was a weaker naval power in relation to her rivals than she had been since the 1 7th century when her fleet had been defeated by the Dutch, Britain's most modern service, the air force, was all but grounded, When the war ended, the Royal Air Force was the largest air force in the world and the only independent air force in existence, lt had 22,000 aircraft on charge, 1 ,600 of them in actual action on the Western Front, And then, dramatically, in two years, it had reduced from that 22,000 on charge to only 120 serviceable aircraft in the whole of the Royal Air Force.
Tremendous drop.
And aircraft were being scrapped, chopped up, burned in every direction.
You could buy an SE-5 fighter for five pounds and a 504 trainer forjoyriding for ten.
Weakened by disarmament, the British put their trust in the League of Nations, set up in Geneva, The League was to settle disputes by arbitration and in the last resort would fall back on ''collective security'', ln extreme cases, this meantjoint military action by member nations, Britain's immediate concern was the preservation of its vulnerable Empire, By the 1930s, she was scarcely strong enough to protect even the British lsles against a threat from Europe, and that was only a first commitment, Another lay along the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, on the sea lane to the brightestjewel in the imperial crown, lndia, Further east, and dangerously exposed, were Burma, Malaya, Hong Kong, The Empire was hugely overstretched, lt was in Asia that aggression began, ln 1931 , Japan invaded Manchuria - nominally part of China.
Japan had been a British ally since the start of the century, but in 1922, under pressure from America, Britain had ended the alliance.
With that, Japan became a potential enemy.
But an even greater threat was emerging much nearer home, in Europe.
Hitler gets an ovation when leaving for his first Cabinet meeting.
Hitler came to power on a promise to tear up the peace treaties and restore Germany's role as a major power.
The British were sympathetic.
There was a widespread feeling that Germany had been treated too harshly after the war.
From across the way, Hitler appears at his window and another milestone is marked in Germany's political history, l think people were concerned, but l can't say that they felt alarmed at that stage.
l think there was a certain feeling in the country that, er the Germans, one thing they do is love playing at soldiers and as they had no soldiers, they devised the Brownshirts and the Nazi movement as a good alternative.
But l don't think anybody suspected that they would break out into something as terrible as they did.
To the British government - a coalition of Conservative, Labour and Liberal - the threat abroad was a long way off.
The only pressing concern was the desperate state of Britain's economy - a result of the world depression.
The threats abroad were rather remote, but the economic crisis was immediate.
Something had to be done almost overnight.
Otherwise, we were told - notjust by fools and people who wanted to frighten us, but by leading economists, the financial correspondents of every newspaper - an appalling crisis will affect the British people, which will have dreadful effects.
That was an immediate thing and so all attention was concentrated on that problem rather than on the developing European situation with its threat of war.
The wartime government had promised the survivors ''a country fit for heroes to live in,'' The pledge was not fulfilled, lndustry had lost ground to foreign competition and, in the early 1930s, one in five of the working population was unemployed, Millions of families lived in abject poverty, So you saw real hunger.
l mean, l've been really hungry l'm not talking about starving in the sense of Africa, but l've known hunger pangs and not known where the next meal was coming from.
l've seen the desperation on my mother's face as to how to feed five children.
We used to go out and buy four penn'orth of scrag end of lamb and with that my mother would make a big succulent stew which would last us two or three days.
l can remember coming home one day being very hungry and there on the stove was this big stew, and my mother started taking it out of the house.
l said,''Where are you going?'' She said she was going to give it to a Mrs Bushell.
l said,''But l'm hungry.
'' And l remember she slapped my face.
She said,''You're hungry, but they're starving.
'' The strong man of the Cabinet was Neville Chamberlain, At heart, he was a social reformer, dedicated to uplift and beating the Depression, He'd come to prominence as Lord Mayor of Birmingham where his pride was a housing estate at Weoley Castle, built to replace the worst of the slums, ln 1933, Chamberlain went back to Birmingham for a special ceremony, The number of new council houses had reached 40,000, lt was just like a palace because we'd had nothing down there and the house was dark down there and we'd got lights here.
And it was marvellous to think we'd got our own toilet and bathroom and we could move, and if we wanted to wash every day, we could.
lt seemed such a godsend after waiting nine years.
l can remember when most every night at ten We sang an old refrain As we wandered in the moonlight Down Sunnyside Lane We heard the merry lark and if the night was dark l'd steal a kiss again As we wandered in the moonlight Down Sunnyside Lane The people must be strong and healthy.
They must command an income sufficient to maintain themselves and their families at least in a minimum state of comfort.
They should be able to cultivate taste for beautiful things, whether in nature or in art, and to open their minds to the wisdom that is to be found in books.
Chamberlain's priorities were soon upset, ln 1934, a government committee reviewed the state of Britain's defences, The report recommended greater spending on defence and the creation of an expeditionary force able to fight on the continent, lt drew attention to German rearmament and identified Hitler as the ultimate potential enemy ln 1935, Hitler had been in power for two years and German militarism was causing unease, Yet the peace movement in Britain commanded mass support for its campaign against war, Propaganda films denounced rearmament, l'd fight tomorrow if l thought a war would end war, but that's what they told my father in 1914 and we're no better off now.
When there's a quarrel between two people, the police settle it.
Can't the League of Nations be strong enough to settle disputes between nations? l was in the last war and l thought that was the end of it.
Now here we are again exactly where we started.
Why can't governments get together to make war impossible? Write to your MP.
The peace movement launched a successful petition.
We got over 1 1 million signatures, a significant number of the adults in this country.
That was the beginning, l think, of the movement which was then to take over the '30s - a feeling against war.
The fear was there, ticking away like a bomb all through the '30s.
l think the peace petition began to make people think about it.
There we were, marching and fighting to stop war, to demand that the government form a pact with Russia and others to stop Hitler, and yet at the same time, in our hearts, l think there was realisation that the machinery was in motion.
lt couldn't be stopped.
That bomb was going to explode one day.
Chamberlain urged the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, to come out for limited rearmament, But 1935 was an election year and Baldwin was careful to reassure the voters, Above all, we desire to go on working to maintain world peace and strengthen the League of Nations.
But it is clear from recent events that both our own influence in the world and that of the League itself will be weakened unless we make good the gaps in our defences.
l will never stand for a policy of great armament, and l give you my word - and l think you can trust me by now - that our defence programme will be no more than is sufficient to make our country safe and enable us to fulfill our obligation.
That much we must have.
When ltaly invaded Abyssinia, the need to strengthen Britain's defences became indisputable, ltaly had been an ally Mussolini's friendship was vital to British control of the Mediterranean and thus to the Empire's defence.
A further threat now developed in Germany where Hitler marched three battalions into the Rhineland.
lt was a clear breach of treaties, but not unexpected.
Britain and France had spent months discussing their response, in the event but did nothing.
ln the words of Anthony Eden, given Germany's strength and power of mischief in Europe.
Britain should conclude a settlement with Hitler while he was still in the mood lt was a classic definition of appeasement, l think we should have stopped Hitler probably when he invaded the Rhineland, but there was a feeling - in Britain, certainly - that the peace treaty had treated Germany unjustly.
There was rather a reluctance, therefore, to intervene on that particular issue.
The French showed no sign of intervening whatever.
And so l think the hope was - again, it was a false hope - that if Hitler was allowed to reoccupy the Rhineland that that would be sufficient and the end of his demands.
That feeling was wrong.
The opposition to rearmament was crumbling, as Chamberlain noted at the annual conference of the Conservative Party, There could be no doubt in the minds of any members of His Majesty's government who were present of the determination of the great audience to see the gaps in our defences filled at the earliest possible moment.
As Chancellor of the Exchequer, l feel greatly encouraged and heartened by what l heard this morning.
Britain shall spend 1 ,500 millions on arms in the next five years.
Not directed against any country, said the Chancellor, but because of our vast responsibilities in the world and for the preservation of peace.
This means no remission in taxation, but it gives security and it will reduce the figures of unemployment.
Security will bring prosperity.
Chamberlain made rearmament policy.
The air force was given priority.
Bombers and fighters would form a deterrent to enemy action against Britain.
The fear of bombing in these years almost amounted to an obsession.
Feature films added to people's fears.
Even the service chiefs joined in.
''There is the possibility, '' they wrote,''of air attacks so continuous and concentrated ''that a few weeks of bombing might so undermine the morale of civilians people'' as to make it impossible to continue a war,'' People were frightened of bombing and gas attacks, l thought about it quite early on.
People would say, ''They'll bomb us out of existence.
'' People were frightened of it.
ls London defenceless against attack from the air? RAF pilots have been giving the metropolis a lesson, The power of the bomber was constantly pushed through the late 1920s into the 1930s, All sorts of bogus statistics were traded about by which London would be bombed in ruins within a week and three million people would be milling about in the countryside.
You had a kind of conspiracy of air marshals, defence pundits and pacifists all saying that the next war would start with a colossal German strike at London.
The response of Parliament was to vote more money for the air force, A specially built factory at Acock's Green in Birmingham, To meet the shortage of skilled labour, aircraft factories were set up in areas of the motor industry, Bernard Smith left the Rover Car Company to set up one of the new shadow factories, The shadow factory scheme was a brilliant idea, lt was a unique way of using the resources of an existing motor industry to immediately double .
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for example, the output of the Bristol Aeroplane engine company.
The government were building these shadow factories, not that they very seriously thought that war was about to break out, but as a deterrent to the Germans, When l first went there, the factory itself was three parts empty and there were very few people working there.
Lots ofjigs and fixtures and a few fuselages and wings.
And we thought at the time - the chaps l was working with - that it was a bit of a joke to be building planes and we thought,''Whatever for?'' Because at that time we didn't think that there was going to be a war.
British aircraft designers had taken the prospect of war more seriously, The result was the monoplane - a forerunner of the aircraft that won the Battle of Britain, The first of the modern generation to come forward in the great expansion of the Royal Air Force was Sydney Camm's Hawker Hurricane which you see here.
The Hurricane was the first of the new generation of aeroplanes to exceed 300 mph.
Tremendous speed in those days.
300 mph made it as fast as any competitive aeroplane anywhere in the world.
What's more, it had eight machine-guns, which were deadly, and a great new advance in armament together with this advance in performance and, thanks to the Hawker method of construction, an easy aeroplane to build.
The Cinderella of the services was still the army, The chiefs of staff wanted an expeditionary force able to fight across the Channel, but the government insisted that public opinion would never stand for a continental war, We used to discuss the question as to at what point do the chiefs of staff resign.
And we came to the conclusion that you didn't resign just because you disagreed with government policy.
lf the government weren't going to send an army to the continent, you had to accept that.
But if they said, ''We're going to send an army, but you can't have any more tanks,'' then you say, ''Then we won't be responsible.
'' The army was in no position to fight a modern war The battery is charged by tanks, bogus tanks and just as well, since the 18-pounders fire at them point blank.
A direct hit and he swerves to the right, his steering gear out of order.
lt was quite an experience to be with the First Division, which should have been the spearhead of the force, should have stopped the German invasion of the Rhineland.
We had the same machine-guns as we finished the 1914-18 war with - the Lewis gun.
We had flags for men.
l had in my platoon, which should have been about 45 to 50, l had three or four men.
But we were essentially a cadre for reinforcing the lndian Army and our forces in lndia and not for an expeditionary force in France - we relied on the French to do that.
The public was blissfully unaware of the army's weakness, At the coronation of King George Vl, the soldiers of the Empire looked magnificent, and in these years of illusion, that was all most people expected of the army, The British Empire between the wars was a facade, lt made us feel strong, that was all that pink in the map.
all those dominions and colonies, but it was really a sentimental association for the white dominions, we are concerned, We had no common foreign policy.
We had no common defence policy.
There were no operational plans for the fleets and the armies.
So really the Empire existed only as a facade and the sort of thing that we saw most are jubilees and coronations, on parade, God save the King! God save the King! We're marching along and we're singing this song Gentlemen, the King! The crowds in the street round the tramp of our feet Gentlemen, the King! And if the army, the navy, the boys in the sky Shout''Are you downhearted?'' ''No!'' we reply We're marching along and we're singing this song Gentlemen, the King! The chiefs of staff were well aware of the state of Britain's defences, They now endorsed appeasement, Warning of war in the Far East, the Mediterranean and Europe simultaneously, they wrote,''We cannot exaggerate the importance of political action ''to reduce the numbers of our potential enemies,'' ln 1937, the easy-going Mr Baldwin stepped down as Prime Minister and the ablest of his colleagues took over, Neville Chamberlain combined great drive with faith in his own judgment, lt didn't take long after Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister for him to make it absolutely clear that he was determined to be his own master in foreign affairs, and this was a change from Baldwin.
Baldwin was bored to tears by foreign affairs and never took much action over them.
But Chamberlain proved very quickly that he felt very differently and that he was going to be the master.
He passionately believed that a combination of rearmament - at a certain pace - and getting onto better terms with the dictators was the best formula for peace.
That was the root of Chamberlain's foreign policy.
At the same time he agreed with his Chancellor of the Exchequer that rearming too fast could do great damage to the economy, which he'd nursed back to health.
lt was within that framework, really, that every decision was made and what Churchill has called ''false measurements'' were taken.
For 4 years, Churchill argued that the government was underestimating the extent of Hitler's military preparations and that Britain had fallen far behind, But his was a lonely voice, Churchill did his utmost in Parliament, but he had a very small following.
And he was a curious politician in that he had held every state department you could think of and yet had not become Prime Minister because he antagonised so many people whom he attacked when they were opposing him.
When he was at the Treasury, he would hit the Admiralty over the head hard and at the Admiralty, he'd hit the Treasury.
They'd all been attacked one way or another, so they didn't like him much.
And Chamberlain didn't want him in the government because he didn't want somebody pressing all the time for more arms.
He wanted somebody who would quietly keep that going and keep the Treasury happy about the amount being spent.
At 10 Downing Street, Neville Chamberlain was very much his own man.
He had little regard for the experts at the Foreign Office, who favoured taking a firmer line with the dictators, Early in 1938, Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, resigned, predicting that with the collusion of Mussolini, Hitler would take over Austria, Germany moves into Austria, These pictures may stir emotions in you which you may find hard to repress, but sit calmly - they will teach us something, They illustrate the seriousness of the times and reinforce our determination to meet difficulties with courage, Britain did not interfere, neither did France.
Chamberlain told Parliament, ''Nothing could have arrested what has happened ''unless this country and others were prepared to use force,'' He was determined that Germany's action would not deflect him from appeasement, Hitler had sworn to redress the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles, With his annexation of Austria, he was well positioned to tackle his next objective Czechoslovakia - now threatened by German divisions from the south, north and west.
The peace treaties had left a German-speaking minority inside Czechoslovakia, These Sudeten Germans now became the pretext for the war Hitler wanted to launch, ln Downing Street, Chamberlain was determined to stop him, Late on 28th August, he decided to frustrate Hitler by persuading the Czechs to surrender the Sudetenland, Chamberlain, and not his Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, would play the principal role, Appeasement was his policy and he would put it to the test, He wrote about his mission to his sister, ''ls it not positively horrible to think that the fate of hundreds of millions ''depends on one man and he is half mad? ''l keep racking my brains to try and devise some means of averting a catastrophe, ''l thought of one so unconventional and daring ''that it rather took Halifax's breath away,'' The hour of need has found the man - Mr Neville Chamberlain, Mr Chamberlain has never wavered in his determination to establish peace in Europe, At the hour when the dark clouds of war hung menacingly above us, he took a wise and bold decision, Well may we call him Chamberlain the Peacemaker, lt's almost impossible to describe to people brought up in the jet age what the news that Mr Chamberlain was flying to Bertesgarden meant to the British people, and, indeed, the world, lt was a very brave act, morally and physically.
He was, after all, an old man.
And there was a tremendous mixture of feeling in the country, First of all, admiration Three cheers for Chamberlain, Stunned surprise - absolutely electrifying Shock.
And, perhaps most important of all, the feeling that all hope was not lost, that we were still in with a chance.
Before he set off for his meeting with Hitler, Chamberlain had told the Cabinet that due to their failure to rearm, Britain and France were not in a position to fight Germany, They walked up the steps for the frank and friendly talk, Two men carrying between them the fate of 20 million, Chamberlain couldn't negotiate from a position of strength because the strength was not there, So he went into the meetings with Hitler in a weak position .
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and hoped, first of all, that he could buy time, but, secondly, that he might convince Hitler that there was no conceivable gain to be got from war.
l think those were his priorities.
High up in Hitler's retreat, looking over the Austrian Alps, Chamberlain told Hitler that if it could be done without force, he would not object to the detachment of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, Hitler gave a reluctant promise not to give the order to march, At their second meeting one week later, the stakes had been raised, Hitler announced that German troops would occupy the disputed territory in ten days, Chamberlain was profoundly shocked, but he agreed to put the proposal to the Czechs, He returned to a Britain preparing for war, for the air raids all believed would come within days, The slit trenches in the parks testified to Britain's unreadiness, l was writing stories about air-raid precautions and civil defence every day, but there are one or two pieces that went under my own name.
There was one where l put the question: ''How strong are the country's passive defences now? ''There is only one honest answer.
''lf peace could be guaranteed until the end of 1939, ''we could afford to view the rate of progress with equanimity, ''but for any emergency which might arise, say, before the end of this year, ''the whole of the civilian population, ''and London in particular, is still highly vulnerable.
'' To judge from Hitler's behaviour in Berlin, the emergency would come at the end of the month, But Hitler did acknowledge Chamberlain's efforts to defuse the crisis, l'm grateful to Mr Chamberlain for all his efforts l have further assured him, and l repeat now, That when this problem is solved there will be no territorial problems for Germany in Europe Chamberlain was inclined to accept Hitler's ultimatum, but public opinion was turning against appeasement and the Cabinet decided that Hitler's demands were unacceptable, On September 28th, the news came that Hitler had agreed to another conference.
The Prime Minister was the hero of Europe, Four strong men converge on the German town of Munich to make it for one day the centre of the world, - Mr Chamberlain, - The Munich Conference was an anti-climax, Britain and France had already conceded the Nazi leader's claim, Hitler was sullen, He'd been cheated of his war, ''That damn Chamberlain,'' he was heard to say, ''has spoiled my parade into Prague,'' Next morning, Chamberlain invited Hitler to sign a paper committing them both to the peaceful settlement of disputes, Hitler was unenthusiastic, He hardly read the paper before he signed it, To Chamberlain the paper was a triumph, the prelude to a general settlement in Europe and even to peace for our time, He came home to scenes of wild relief, Our Prime Minister has come back from his greatestjourney and he said; The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved .
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is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.
This morning, l had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler .
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and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.
The British rejoiced, but Chamberlain's private view of Hitler was ambivalent, as he told Lord Home on their way back from the Munich conference, l don't know that he ever worked out Hitler's state of mind properly, He told me, when we were coming back on the aeroplane from Munich, he thought Hitler was the nastiest bit of work he'd had to deal with, but you had to deal with people like that in international diplomacy and there was no escape negotiating with him.
Um ls there a contradiction there? Did he really feel that he was mad and yet negotiated with him as a normal human being? l think he felt that you had to negotiate with him .
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even though he described him as mad.
He was the leader of Germany and he was the only fellow who could say yes to peace or war.
A minority was appalled, By bowing to Hitler's threat of force, Chamberlain had paid too high a price, l can't describe our feelings about Chamberlain adequately.
l find it very difficult to find words.
He was regarded, l think, universally by working-class people, particularly by those who were Labour-inclined, as the arch-enemy.
And Munich, for us, was the climax, We felt that he'd betrayed the country and made war more inevitable, not less, They had a very powerful army - the Czech Army - and they could have put up a good deal of resistance to Hitler, who wasn't fully armed and ready for war.
But that had been denied them by this agreement.
We'd bought time, perhaps, but they'd lost time.
Con O'Neill was a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Berlin, When the Munich meeting was finally over, l was so depressed that l sent in my resignation immediately within the next day or two.
l was glad then and for many years that l had taken that resigning action, but now l have to confess that l think l was wrong.
l think probably we made certainly as good, possibly even better, use of the year's interval in rearming, Above all, in beginning to get our fighter aircraft into squadron service, The pace of Allied rearmament, especially air power, now overtook that of Germany, but its cost was a bigger worry than ever, The problem with rearmament from Britain's point of view was that we really had no longer got the financial resources or the economic base to carry it on the scale that our defences and imperial defences needed, That was the heart of the dilemma as to how much you did and how quickly.
So you find, by the beginning of 1939, the Chancellor of the Exchequer warning the Cabinet that if rearmament went on at the current rate, Britain would be bankrupt within a year or two years.
The rattle of a German army on the march echoes in Europe.
Where that march may end, no man can foretell, least of all the man who gave the order.
Here, before our eyes, unfolds the drama of a nation dying, Only five months after Munich, Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, ln Britain support for appeasement was replaced by a determination to resist Hitler's next demand.
Even Chamberlain changed his tone, sounding a Churchillian note of defiance.
The German invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Ask yourself now the question asked by the British Prime Minister, ls this the last attack upon a small state? Or is it to be followed by others? ls this, in fact, a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force? The British government assumed that Hitler's next objective would be Poland, At the end of March, Chamberlain offered the Poles Britain's support in the event of a German attack, Giving our guarantee to Poland from a military point of view was a totally crazy thing to do.
l don't know whether the Poles thought it crazy.
l'm afraid l did even at the time because there was no reason to suppose that we could help the Poles and, of course, we didn't.
But we had, to this extent, compelled ourselves to be courageous by giving that guarantee to Poland.
An Anglo-French mission now arrived in Moscow in a belated and half-hearted attempt to negotiate an alliance with Russia, lt was hoped to put muscle behind the guarantee to Poland and to reduce the military odds in Germany's favour, But the Germans surprised the world by striking a deal with Stalin, Von Ribbentrop leaving Berlin ushers in an incomprehensible chapter in German diplomacy, Where is the Anti-Comintern Pact or the principles of''Mein Kampf''? What can Russia have in common with Germany to throw over the Peace Front? Newspapers fastened on the amazing turnaround and one or two found a humorous angle, Chamberlain's last diplomatic move had come too late, All he could now do was prepare his country for certain war, Limited conscription had been introduced, Volunteers rushed to join up as their fathers had done 25 years before, The army formed the expeditionary force the government had resisted for so long, On September 3rd, two days after Hitler invaded Poland, Chamberlain broadcast to the nation, This morning, the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us, l have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany, You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed, What happened to Britain in the 20 years before the outbreak of the war and our finally getting into war at that time, a war which we could not afford to wage and which we were bound to come out of ruined even if we won it, the basic reasons for that were in the illusions of a generation, on the one hand.
You can'tjust single out guilty men, as people have done, like Chamberlain or Baldwin.
This was a generation.
They were partaking of the common beliefs and hopes and illusions of the whole broad spread of public opinion.
lf anybody's going to be guilty, it is the illusions of the British people.
ln a mood of quite unjustified optimism, the British Army set off for France, lt would be six months before the illusion of British invincibility was shattered by the threat of defeat, An empire has sprung to arms, lts gallant manhood marches through France, singing a new song in the old spirit, Roll out the barrel We've got the blues on the run Zing! Boom! Ta-ra-rel! Ring out a song of good cheer Now's the time to roll the barrel For the gang's all here!
lt's impossible now to think how deep it had gone, but that was the truth of the matter.
And the trench warfare of the last four years of the First War had really bitten into everybody's soul.
And remember, of course, there was to be no more war, lt was the war to end all wars All quiet on the Western Front lt was such a horrible war.
The people that got killed Our own example, my mother lost her two brothers - one, 19, in the Somme and Uncle Arthur was a regular soldier in lndia He didn't get home.
They diverted him to France.
He went through the early battles and then he got killed.
Such a lot of people went.
Such a lot of young men were killed on the Somme.
People were horrified and thought they'd never have another war.
All quiet on the Western Front Please, God, let it stay that way ln those days, Britain was a superpower The Union Jack flew over a fifth of the surface of the globe Her Empire contained a quarter of the world's population But the war had brought her close to bankruptcy To cheer people up, the government organised an exhibition at Wembley lts theme was the Empire, lt seems to me that someone must have said, ''Now we've got this terrible war over, ''we must do something to promote business, trade, ''to let the world know that the British Empire is still alive and well and to boost morale generally.
'' What better than a British Empire exhibition? The new stadium was the setting for the royal opening ceremony The bands and choirs were conducted by the composer, Edward Elgar And did those feet in ancient times Walk upon England's mountains green We were, of course, extremely patriotic people in those days and the British Empire was part of our life, Patriotism ran through everything - like a thread through everything.
Through your school, through your family, through society.
We thought the Empire was a force for good in the world - a benign force, And we thought that the British were a little bit better than most people, ln fact, the British - even working men, who at that time, many of them had rather a poor standard of life - were nevertheless intensely patriotic and thought, generally, that a Britisher was as good as ten foreigners.
To fight the war, Britain had mobilised five million men, All but a few were discharged, Despite the demands of defence, there was no money to maintain large armed services Britain, like other victorious powers, was determined to disarm, especially now that no conceivable enemy existed The army was the first to be emasculated To justify the cuts, the government adopted the''Ten Year Rule'' - an assumption for the purposes of military planning that peace would last ten years The navy - guardian of the imperial sea lanes - was drastically diminished By the start of the 1930s, Britain was a weaker naval power in relation to her rivals than she had been since the 1 7th century when her fleet had been defeated by the Dutch, Britain's most modern service, the air force, was all but grounded, When the war ended, the Royal Air Force was the largest air force in the world and the only independent air force in existence, lt had 22,000 aircraft on charge, 1 ,600 of them in actual action on the Western Front, And then, dramatically, in two years, it had reduced from that 22,000 on charge to only 120 serviceable aircraft in the whole of the Royal Air Force.
Tremendous drop.
And aircraft were being scrapped, chopped up, burned in every direction.
You could buy an SE-5 fighter for five pounds and a 504 trainer forjoyriding for ten.
Weakened by disarmament, the British put their trust in the League of Nations, set up in Geneva, The League was to settle disputes by arbitration and in the last resort would fall back on ''collective security'', ln extreme cases, this meantjoint military action by member nations, Britain's immediate concern was the preservation of its vulnerable Empire, By the 1930s, she was scarcely strong enough to protect even the British lsles against a threat from Europe, and that was only a first commitment, Another lay along the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, on the sea lane to the brightestjewel in the imperial crown, lndia, Further east, and dangerously exposed, were Burma, Malaya, Hong Kong, The Empire was hugely overstretched, lt was in Asia that aggression began, ln 1931 , Japan invaded Manchuria - nominally part of China.
Japan had been a British ally since the start of the century, but in 1922, under pressure from America, Britain had ended the alliance.
With that, Japan became a potential enemy.
But an even greater threat was emerging much nearer home, in Europe.
Hitler gets an ovation when leaving for his first Cabinet meeting.
Hitler came to power on a promise to tear up the peace treaties and restore Germany's role as a major power.
The British were sympathetic.
There was a widespread feeling that Germany had been treated too harshly after the war.
From across the way, Hitler appears at his window and another milestone is marked in Germany's political history, l think people were concerned, but l can't say that they felt alarmed at that stage.
l think there was a certain feeling in the country that, er the Germans, one thing they do is love playing at soldiers and as they had no soldiers, they devised the Brownshirts and the Nazi movement as a good alternative.
But l don't think anybody suspected that they would break out into something as terrible as they did.
To the British government - a coalition of Conservative, Labour and Liberal - the threat abroad was a long way off.
The only pressing concern was the desperate state of Britain's economy - a result of the world depression.
The threats abroad were rather remote, but the economic crisis was immediate.
Something had to be done almost overnight.
Otherwise, we were told - notjust by fools and people who wanted to frighten us, but by leading economists, the financial correspondents of every newspaper - an appalling crisis will affect the British people, which will have dreadful effects.
That was an immediate thing and so all attention was concentrated on that problem rather than on the developing European situation with its threat of war.
The wartime government had promised the survivors ''a country fit for heroes to live in,'' The pledge was not fulfilled, lndustry had lost ground to foreign competition and, in the early 1930s, one in five of the working population was unemployed, Millions of families lived in abject poverty, So you saw real hunger.
l mean, l've been really hungry l'm not talking about starving in the sense of Africa, but l've known hunger pangs and not known where the next meal was coming from.
l've seen the desperation on my mother's face as to how to feed five children.
We used to go out and buy four penn'orth of scrag end of lamb and with that my mother would make a big succulent stew which would last us two or three days.
l can remember coming home one day being very hungry and there on the stove was this big stew, and my mother started taking it out of the house.
l said,''Where are you going?'' She said she was going to give it to a Mrs Bushell.
l said,''But l'm hungry.
'' And l remember she slapped my face.
She said,''You're hungry, but they're starving.
'' The strong man of the Cabinet was Neville Chamberlain, At heart, he was a social reformer, dedicated to uplift and beating the Depression, He'd come to prominence as Lord Mayor of Birmingham where his pride was a housing estate at Weoley Castle, built to replace the worst of the slums, ln 1933, Chamberlain went back to Birmingham for a special ceremony, The number of new council houses had reached 40,000, lt was just like a palace because we'd had nothing down there and the house was dark down there and we'd got lights here.
And it was marvellous to think we'd got our own toilet and bathroom and we could move, and if we wanted to wash every day, we could.
lt seemed such a godsend after waiting nine years.
l can remember when most every night at ten We sang an old refrain As we wandered in the moonlight Down Sunnyside Lane We heard the merry lark and if the night was dark l'd steal a kiss again As we wandered in the moonlight Down Sunnyside Lane The people must be strong and healthy.
They must command an income sufficient to maintain themselves and their families at least in a minimum state of comfort.
They should be able to cultivate taste for beautiful things, whether in nature or in art, and to open their minds to the wisdom that is to be found in books.
Chamberlain's priorities were soon upset, ln 1934, a government committee reviewed the state of Britain's defences, The report recommended greater spending on defence and the creation of an expeditionary force able to fight on the continent, lt drew attention to German rearmament and identified Hitler as the ultimate potential enemy ln 1935, Hitler had been in power for two years and German militarism was causing unease, Yet the peace movement in Britain commanded mass support for its campaign against war, Propaganda films denounced rearmament, l'd fight tomorrow if l thought a war would end war, but that's what they told my father in 1914 and we're no better off now.
When there's a quarrel between two people, the police settle it.
Can't the League of Nations be strong enough to settle disputes between nations? l was in the last war and l thought that was the end of it.
Now here we are again exactly where we started.
Why can't governments get together to make war impossible? Write to your MP.
The peace movement launched a successful petition.
We got over 1 1 million signatures, a significant number of the adults in this country.
That was the beginning, l think, of the movement which was then to take over the '30s - a feeling against war.
The fear was there, ticking away like a bomb all through the '30s.
l think the peace petition began to make people think about it.
There we were, marching and fighting to stop war, to demand that the government form a pact with Russia and others to stop Hitler, and yet at the same time, in our hearts, l think there was realisation that the machinery was in motion.
lt couldn't be stopped.
That bomb was going to explode one day.
Chamberlain urged the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, to come out for limited rearmament, But 1935 was an election year and Baldwin was careful to reassure the voters, Above all, we desire to go on working to maintain world peace and strengthen the League of Nations.
But it is clear from recent events that both our own influence in the world and that of the League itself will be weakened unless we make good the gaps in our defences.
l will never stand for a policy of great armament, and l give you my word - and l think you can trust me by now - that our defence programme will be no more than is sufficient to make our country safe and enable us to fulfill our obligation.
That much we must have.
When ltaly invaded Abyssinia, the need to strengthen Britain's defences became indisputable, ltaly had been an ally Mussolini's friendship was vital to British control of the Mediterranean and thus to the Empire's defence.
A further threat now developed in Germany where Hitler marched three battalions into the Rhineland.
lt was a clear breach of treaties, but not unexpected.
Britain and France had spent months discussing their response, in the event but did nothing.
ln the words of Anthony Eden, given Germany's strength and power of mischief in Europe.
Britain should conclude a settlement with Hitler while he was still in the mood lt was a classic definition of appeasement, l think we should have stopped Hitler probably when he invaded the Rhineland, but there was a feeling - in Britain, certainly - that the peace treaty had treated Germany unjustly.
There was rather a reluctance, therefore, to intervene on that particular issue.
The French showed no sign of intervening whatever.
And so l think the hope was - again, it was a false hope - that if Hitler was allowed to reoccupy the Rhineland that that would be sufficient and the end of his demands.
That feeling was wrong.
The opposition to rearmament was crumbling, as Chamberlain noted at the annual conference of the Conservative Party, There could be no doubt in the minds of any members of His Majesty's government who were present of the determination of the great audience to see the gaps in our defences filled at the earliest possible moment.
As Chancellor of the Exchequer, l feel greatly encouraged and heartened by what l heard this morning.
Britain shall spend 1 ,500 millions on arms in the next five years.
Not directed against any country, said the Chancellor, but because of our vast responsibilities in the world and for the preservation of peace.
This means no remission in taxation, but it gives security and it will reduce the figures of unemployment.
Security will bring prosperity.
Chamberlain made rearmament policy.
The air force was given priority.
Bombers and fighters would form a deterrent to enemy action against Britain.
The fear of bombing in these years almost amounted to an obsession.
Feature films added to people's fears.
Even the service chiefs joined in.
''There is the possibility, '' they wrote,''of air attacks so continuous and concentrated ''that a few weeks of bombing might so undermine the morale of civilians people'' as to make it impossible to continue a war,'' People were frightened of bombing and gas attacks, l thought about it quite early on.
People would say, ''They'll bomb us out of existence.
'' People were frightened of it.
ls London defenceless against attack from the air? RAF pilots have been giving the metropolis a lesson, The power of the bomber was constantly pushed through the late 1920s into the 1930s, All sorts of bogus statistics were traded about by which London would be bombed in ruins within a week and three million people would be milling about in the countryside.
You had a kind of conspiracy of air marshals, defence pundits and pacifists all saying that the next war would start with a colossal German strike at London.
The response of Parliament was to vote more money for the air force, A specially built factory at Acock's Green in Birmingham, To meet the shortage of skilled labour, aircraft factories were set up in areas of the motor industry, Bernard Smith left the Rover Car Company to set up one of the new shadow factories, The shadow factory scheme was a brilliant idea, lt was a unique way of using the resources of an existing motor industry to immediately double .
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for example, the output of the Bristol Aeroplane engine company.
The government were building these shadow factories, not that they very seriously thought that war was about to break out, but as a deterrent to the Germans, When l first went there, the factory itself was three parts empty and there were very few people working there.
Lots ofjigs and fixtures and a few fuselages and wings.
And we thought at the time - the chaps l was working with - that it was a bit of a joke to be building planes and we thought,''Whatever for?'' Because at that time we didn't think that there was going to be a war.
British aircraft designers had taken the prospect of war more seriously, The result was the monoplane - a forerunner of the aircraft that won the Battle of Britain, The first of the modern generation to come forward in the great expansion of the Royal Air Force was Sydney Camm's Hawker Hurricane which you see here.
The Hurricane was the first of the new generation of aeroplanes to exceed 300 mph.
Tremendous speed in those days.
300 mph made it as fast as any competitive aeroplane anywhere in the world.
What's more, it had eight machine-guns, which were deadly, and a great new advance in armament together with this advance in performance and, thanks to the Hawker method of construction, an easy aeroplane to build.
The Cinderella of the services was still the army, The chiefs of staff wanted an expeditionary force able to fight across the Channel, but the government insisted that public opinion would never stand for a continental war, We used to discuss the question as to at what point do the chiefs of staff resign.
And we came to the conclusion that you didn't resign just because you disagreed with government policy.
lf the government weren't going to send an army to the continent, you had to accept that.
But if they said, ''We're going to send an army, but you can't have any more tanks,'' then you say, ''Then we won't be responsible.
'' The army was in no position to fight a modern war The battery is charged by tanks, bogus tanks and just as well, since the 18-pounders fire at them point blank.
A direct hit and he swerves to the right, his steering gear out of order.
lt was quite an experience to be with the First Division, which should have been the spearhead of the force, should have stopped the German invasion of the Rhineland.
We had the same machine-guns as we finished the 1914-18 war with - the Lewis gun.
We had flags for men.
l had in my platoon, which should have been about 45 to 50, l had three or four men.
But we were essentially a cadre for reinforcing the lndian Army and our forces in lndia and not for an expeditionary force in France - we relied on the French to do that.
The public was blissfully unaware of the army's weakness, At the coronation of King George Vl, the soldiers of the Empire looked magnificent, and in these years of illusion, that was all most people expected of the army, The British Empire between the wars was a facade, lt made us feel strong, that was all that pink in the map.
all those dominions and colonies, but it was really a sentimental association for the white dominions, we are concerned, We had no common foreign policy.
We had no common defence policy.
There were no operational plans for the fleets and the armies.
So really the Empire existed only as a facade and the sort of thing that we saw most are jubilees and coronations, on parade, God save the King! God save the King! We're marching along and we're singing this song Gentlemen, the King! The crowds in the street round the tramp of our feet Gentlemen, the King! And if the army, the navy, the boys in the sky Shout''Are you downhearted?'' ''No!'' we reply We're marching along and we're singing this song Gentlemen, the King! The chiefs of staff were well aware of the state of Britain's defences, They now endorsed appeasement, Warning of war in the Far East, the Mediterranean and Europe simultaneously, they wrote,''We cannot exaggerate the importance of political action ''to reduce the numbers of our potential enemies,'' ln 1937, the easy-going Mr Baldwin stepped down as Prime Minister and the ablest of his colleagues took over, Neville Chamberlain combined great drive with faith in his own judgment, lt didn't take long after Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister for him to make it absolutely clear that he was determined to be his own master in foreign affairs, and this was a change from Baldwin.
Baldwin was bored to tears by foreign affairs and never took much action over them.
But Chamberlain proved very quickly that he felt very differently and that he was going to be the master.
He passionately believed that a combination of rearmament - at a certain pace - and getting onto better terms with the dictators was the best formula for peace.
That was the root of Chamberlain's foreign policy.
At the same time he agreed with his Chancellor of the Exchequer that rearming too fast could do great damage to the economy, which he'd nursed back to health.
lt was within that framework, really, that every decision was made and what Churchill has called ''false measurements'' were taken.
For 4 years, Churchill argued that the government was underestimating the extent of Hitler's military preparations and that Britain had fallen far behind, But his was a lonely voice, Churchill did his utmost in Parliament, but he had a very small following.
And he was a curious politician in that he had held every state department you could think of and yet had not become Prime Minister because he antagonised so many people whom he attacked when they were opposing him.
When he was at the Treasury, he would hit the Admiralty over the head hard and at the Admiralty, he'd hit the Treasury.
They'd all been attacked one way or another, so they didn't like him much.
And Chamberlain didn't want him in the government because he didn't want somebody pressing all the time for more arms.
He wanted somebody who would quietly keep that going and keep the Treasury happy about the amount being spent.
At 10 Downing Street, Neville Chamberlain was very much his own man.
He had little regard for the experts at the Foreign Office, who favoured taking a firmer line with the dictators, Early in 1938, Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, resigned, predicting that with the collusion of Mussolini, Hitler would take over Austria, Germany moves into Austria, These pictures may stir emotions in you which you may find hard to repress, but sit calmly - they will teach us something, They illustrate the seriousness of the times and reinforce our determination to meet difficulties with courage, Britain did not interfere, neither did France.
Chamberlain told Parliament, ''Nothing could have arrested what has happened ''unless this country and others were prepared to use force,'' He was determined that Germany's action would not deflect him from appeasement, Hitler had sworn to redress the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles, With his annexation of Austria, he was well positioned to tackle his next objective Czechoslovakia - now threatened by German divisions from the south, north and west.
The peace treaties had left a German-speaking minority inside Czechoslovakia, These Sudeten Germans now became the pretext for the war Hitler wanted to launch, ln Downing Street, Chamberlain was determined to stop him, Late on 28th August, he decided to frustrate Hitler by persuading the Czechs to surrender the Sudetenland, Chamberlain, and not his Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, would play the principal role, Appeasement was his policy and he would put it to the test, He wrote about his mission to his sister, ''ls it not positively horrible to think that the fate of hundreds of millions ''depends on one man and he is half mad? ''l keep racking my brains to try and devise some means of averting a catastrophe, ''l thought of one so unconventional and daring ''that it rather took Halifax's breath away,'' The hour of need has found the man - Mr Neville Chamberlain, Mr Chamberlain has never wavered in his determination to establish peace in Europe, At the hour when the dark clouds of war hung menacingly above us, he took a wise and bold decision, Well may we call him Chamberlain the Peacemaker, lt's almost impossible to describe to people brought up in the jet age what the news that Mr Chamberlain was flying to Bertesgarden meant to the British people, and, indeed, the world, lt was a very brave act, morally and physically.
He was, after all, an old man.
And there was a tremendous mixture of feeling in the country, First of all, admiration Three cheers for Chamberlain, Stunned surprise - absolutely electrifying Shock.
And, perhaps most important of all, the feeling that all hope was not lost, that we were still in with a chance.
Before he set off for his meeting with Hitler, Chamberlain had told the Cabinet that due to their failure to rearm, Britain and France were not in a position to fight Germany, They walked up the steps for the frank and friendly talk, Two men carrying between them the fate of 20 million, Chamberlain couldn't negotiate from a position of strength because the strength was not there, So he went into the meetings with Hitler in a weak position .
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and hoped, first of all, that he could buy time, but, secondly, that he might convince Hitler that there was no conceivable gain to be got from war.
l think those were his priorities.
High up in Hitler's retreat, looking over the Austrian Alps, Chamberlain told Hitler that if it could be done without force, he would not object to the detachment of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, Hitler gave a reluctant promise not to give the order to march, At their second meeting one week later, the stakes had been raised, Hitler announced that German troops would occupy the disputed territory in ten days, Chamberlain was profoundly shocked, but he agreed to put the proposal to the Czechs, He returned to a Britain preparing for war, for the air raids all believed would come within days, The slit trenches in the parks testified to Britain's unreadiness, l was writing stories about air-raid precautions and civil defence every day, but there are one or two pieces that went under my own name.
There was one where l put the question: ''How strong are the country's passive defences now? ''There is only one honest answer.
''lf peace could be guaranteed until the end of 1939, ''we could afford to view the rate of progress with equanimity, ''but for any emergency which might arise, say, before the end of this year, ''the whole of the civilian population, ''and London in particular, is still highly vulnerable.
'' To judge from Hitler's behaviour in Berlin, the emergency would come at the end of the month, But Hitler did acknowledge Chamberlain's efforts to defuse the crisis, l'm grateful to Mr Chamberlain for all his efforts l have further assured him, and l repeat now, That when this problem is solved there will be no territorial problems for Germany in Europe Chamberlain was inclined to accept Hitler's ultimatum, but public opinion was turning against appeasement and the Cabinet decided that Hitler's demands were unacceptable, On September 28th, the news came that Hitler had agreed to another conference.
The Prime Minister was the hero of Europe, Four strong men converge on the German town of Munich to make it for one day the centre of the world, - Mr Chamberlain, - The Munich Conference was an anti-climax, Britain and France had already conceded the Nazi leader's claim, Hitler was sullen, He'd been cheated of his war, ''That damn Chamberlain,'' he was heard to say, ''has spoiled my parade into Prague,'' Next morning, Chamberlain invited Hitler to sign a paper committing them both to the peaceful settlement of disputes, Hitler was unenthusiastic, He hardly read the paper before he signed it, To Chamberlain the paper was a triumph, the prelude to a general settlement in Europe and even to peace for our time, He came home to scenes of wild relief, Our Prime Minister has come back from his greatestjourney and he said; The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved .
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is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.
This morning, l had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler .
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and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.
The British rejoiced, but Chamberlain's private view of Hitler was ambivalent, as he told Lord Home on their way back from the Munich conference, l don't know that he ever worked out Hitler's state of mind properly, He told me, when we were coming back on the aeroplane from Munich, he thought Hitler was the nastiest bit of work he'd had to deal with, but you had to deal with people like that in international diplomacy and there was no escape negotiating with him.
Um ls there a contradiction there? Did he really feel that he was mad and yet negotiated with him as a normal human being? l think he felt that you had to negotiate with him .
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even though he described him as mad.
He was the leader of Germany and he was the only fellow who could say yes to peace or war.
A minority was appalled, By bowing to Hitler's threat of force, Chamberlain had paid too high a price, l can't describe our feelings about Chamberlain adequately.
l find it very difficult to find words.
He was regarded, l think, universally by working-class people, particularly by those who were Labour-inclined, as the arch-enemy.
And Munich, for us, was the climax, We felt that he'd betrayed the country and made war more inevitable, not less, They had a very powerful army - the Czech Army - and they could have put up a good deal of resistance to Hitler, who wasn't fully armed and ready for war.
But that had been denied them by this agreement.
We'd bought time, perhaps, but they'd lost time.
Con O'Neill was a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Berlin, When the Munich meeting was finally over, l was so depressed that l sent in my resignation immediately within the next day or two.
l was glad then and for many years that l had taken that resigning action, but now l have to confess that l think l was wrong.
l think probably we made certainly as good, possibly even better, use of the year's interval in rearming, Above all, in beginning to get our fighter aircraft into squadron service, The pace of Allied rearmament, especially air power, now overtook that of Germany, but its cost was a bigger worry than ever, The problem with rearmament from Britain's point of view was that we really had no longer got the financial resources or the economic base to carry it on the scale that our defences and imperial defences needed, That was the heart of the dilemma as to how much you did and how quickly.
So you find, by the beginning of 1939, the Chancellor of the Exchequer warning the Cabinet that if rearmament went on at the current rate, Britain would be bankrupt within a year or two years.
The rattle of a German army on the march echoes in Europe.
Where that march may end, no man can foretell, least of all the man who gave the order.
Here, before our eyes, unfolds the drama of a nation dying, Only five months after Munich, Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, ln Britain support for appeasement was replaced by a determination to resist Hitler's next demand.
Even Chamberlain changed his tone, sounding a Churchillian note of defiance.
The German invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Ask yourself now the question asked by the British Prime Minister, ls this the last attack upon a small state? Or is it to be followed by others? ls this, in fact, a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate the world by force? The British government assumed that Hitler's next objective would be Poland, At the end of March, Chamberlain offered the Poles Britain's support in the event of a German attack, Giving our guarantee to Poland from a military point of view was a totally crazy thing to do.
l don't know whether the Poles thought it crazy.
l'm afraid l did even at the time because there was no reason to suppose that we could help the Poles and, of course, we didn't.
But we had, to this extent, compelled ourselves to be courageous by giving that guarantee to Poland.
An Anglo-French mission now arrived in Moscow in a belated and half-hearted attempt to negotiate an alliance with Russia, lt was hoped to put muscle behind the guarantee to Poland and to reduce the military odds in Germany's favour, But the Germans surprised the world by striking a deal with Stalin, Von Ribbentrop leaving Berlin ushers in an incomprehensible chapter in German diplomacy, Where is the Anti-Comintern Pact or the principles of''Mein Kampf''? What can Russia have in common with Germany to throw over the Peace Front? Newspapers fastened on the amazing turnaround and one or two found a humorous angle, Chamberlain's last diplomatic move had come too late, All he could now do was prepare his country for certain war, Limited conscription had been introduced, Volunteers rushed to join up as their fathers had done 25 years before, The army formed the expeditionary force the government had resisted for so long, On September 3rd, two days after Hitler invaded Poland, Chamberlain broadcast to the nation, This morning, the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us, l have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany, You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed, What happened to Britain in the 20 years before the outbreak of the war and our finally getting into war at that time, a war which we could not afford to wage and which we were bound to come out of ruined even if we won it, the basic reasons for that were in the illusions of a generation, on the one hand.
You can'tjust single out guilty men, as people have done, like Chamberlain or Baldwin.
This was a generation.
They were partaking of the common beliefs and hopes and illusions of the whole broad spread of public opinion.
lf anybody's going to be guilty, it is the illusions of the British people.
ln a mood of quite unjustified optimism, the British Army set off for France, lt would be six months before the illusion of British invincibility was shattered by the threat of defeat, An empire has sprung to arms, lts gallant manhood marches through France, singing a new song in the old spirit, Roll out the barrel We've got the blues on the run Zing! Boom! Ta-ra-rel! Ring out a song of good cheer Now's the time to roll the barrel For the gang's all here!