A Conversation for Ask h2g2

Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 21

Secretly Not Here Any More

Pearl was never a gambit to win the war. Basically they wanted the US Navy out of the way for 6 months so they could gobble up Asian territory, and then sue for peace.

Given the reluctance of the USA to enter the war, they needn't have bothered.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 22

Sol

Counterfactual history:

http://johnnypez9.blogspot.com/2009/07/drowned-baby-timeline.html


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 23

Blue

smiley - huh How did each country try to lose the war? Or is that just a figure of speech?

Hindsight's glorious, and the two things that people tend to forget or gloss over are

1) Britain didn't give a stuff about the persecution of the Jews; no-one had commited industrial-scale genocide before and the death camps baffled the imagination. Even if they had, it's questionable whether they would have intervened. The holocaust is the great ex post facto justification of the war. It lets us off the moral hook.

2) The financial settlements after WWI sucked gold into the US and impoverished all of Europe to allow France to cripple Germany. As a result the Marshall Plan and the restructure of Europe in the 1950s were considerably saner.

So, if we flashback to 1939, we lose sight of the holocaust and we are up close and personal with the financial and therefore political instabilities on the 1930s. Was war something worth avoiding?

Hell yes.

Chamberlain was as close to WWI then as we are now to the John Major Government; far enough for the young to have no memory of it, and close enough for middle aged people to feel sick to their stomachs.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 24

Orcus

If John Major makes you sick, what does Frau Thatcher do?


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 25

Blue

smiley - blue


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 26

Orcus

>Chamberlain was as close to WWI then as we are now to the John Major Government<

can I just smiley - applause that by the way. The trick with history is *always* to try and place yourself there and of the time and get your mindset right. Not easy but really essential.

I've seen posts on this sight judging the Roman Empire to be immoral because of slavery. smiley - huh
Well yeah, but...


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 27

Orcus

Ach smiley - cross Sight = site.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 28

HonestIago

>> and close enough for middle aged people to feel sick to their stomachs.<<

Oi, who are you calling middle-aged?! I'm 26 and I remember enough of the Major government to feel ill.

It's bad enough I'm turning 27 in a couple of weeks, I don't need to be called middle aged smiley - wah


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 29

Blue

smiley - sorry
smiley - blue


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 30

Edward the Bonobo - Gone.

Another thing that Chamberlain had to consider was that there were elements within the Conservative Party that were broadly sympathetic to Nazism. They wouldn't necessarily have acceded to invasion, but the would have happily Come To An Arrangement.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 31

Edward the Bonobo - Gone.

Japan.

Yes, they had colonial ambitions. But that was not the immediate causus belli.

*We* think of the conflict as WWII, but that is only our perspective. Japan had been fighting the 2nd Sino-Japanese war since ('34? '35?). Round about '38, Britain, the US and the Netherlands enforced a blockade. Japans industrial materials and - especially - Dutch oil dried up. Particularly affected were the Japanese supply line through SE Asia to where they were trying to open up a second front. As has been mentioned, Pearl Harbour was an attempt to neutralise the US navy, opening up the route to colonisation - but principally as a means to reopening the supply routes. They were getting severely bogged down in China!

Interestingly, Tojo was against the Pearl Harbour attack right up until the eleventh hour. But he was outflanked by other generals who took their case straight to the emperor. Hirohito was not the innocent bystander that it was convenient to paint him in peacetime: he ordered Tojo to get in line.

And the rest is history...


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 32

Researcher5

I've always thought that Chamberlain has been harshly dealt with. We only rescinded the "ten year rule" - namely military planning on the basis that there would be no major war in which we would be engaged in Europe for ten years - in late 1933. The sense of "never again" after WW1 was still the prevailing popular sentiment. There is a terrific book "The Shadow of the Bomber" by Uri Bialer about the fear of the impact of civilian bombing - it was a complex picture and much better to try and understand what the landscape looked like from the perspective of the late 30's than all we know post 1945.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 33

swl

As I remember being told about it, the US Senate held hearings on the causes of WWI and decided that it was the armaments industry and bankers that had forced the United States into the war. This led to the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s which meant the Americans couldn't get involved directly in wars unless attacked and/or war was declared upon *them*. They stood by during the Spanish Civil War but the sheer brutality, savagery and inhumanity of the Japanese conquest of China persuaded the US to impose a trade embargo designed to strangle the Japanese military. When Japan struck Pearl Harbour, they had stocks of oil sufficient to last only months.

So the US policy designed to peacefully force Japan to stop the genocide in China and Korea led to the US itself being attacked. Perhaps if America had been less isolationist and had indicated a willingness to act militarily, the Japanese might have reined in their Imperial ambitions?

Given the propensity to suicide the Japanese military displayed in the field, the Pearl Harbour attack takes on a new light.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 34

pedro

Ed, re Japan 'n' oil: the US, then the biggest oil producer of the day, placed an embargo on oil exports to Japan in the summer of '41. It was a pretty clear statement of intent. I've read a few times that this was the first act of war between the two (in a realpolitik/Great Game kinda way).

In terms of Chamberlain, I've got a fair bit of sympathy for him, for the reasons previously aired. What else was there to do?smiley - erm


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 35

pedro

ooh, simulthingy!


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 36

benjaminpmoore

Um... Blue, I'd take issue you with you on a couple of points

1) It's ridiculous to compare the Major Government to World War One. Wolrd War one resulted in the mulilation and deaths of a whole male community in some populations and the so called 'lost generation' the Major Government didn't.

2) We dont' actually need to be let of the ethical hook. Chamberlain did things properly- he threatened war if conditions were not met, and when that threat was ignored he declared war. The justification for wae was that Hitler refused to get out of Poland. You are confusing Chamberlain with Tony Blair, who makes up reasons to go to war and the finds different reasons when he gets there.

3) To say we didn't give a stuff about the jews is both not true and irrelevant. We didn't go to war because of jewish persecution, but we did open our borders to more jews at a time when everyone else was shutting up shop because pogroms in Russia and Germany were sending Jews fleeing their homes left, right and centre. Besides, as I say, that wasn't Chamberlain's justification for the war in the first place, he had the trifling matter of an invasion, which wa good enough for even the un to declare war on iraq.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 37

pedro

I don't think anyone was comparing the gravity of the situation of the late 1930's to Major's Britain, benjamin.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 38

benjaminpmoore

'Chamberlain was as close to WWI then as we are now to the John Major Government; far enough for the young to have no memory of it, and close enough for middle aged people to feel sick to their stomachs.'

I thought that was Blue's point, in some way or other. I am happy to be contradicted, and if I am wrong then I humbly apologise.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 39

Edward the Bonobo - Gone.

I'm agreeing totally on the Japanese oil embargo. My only subtlety was the colonisation the SE Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines was almost, in a way, a side effect. The immediate issue was China.


Neville Chamberlain - the abominable appeaser?

Post 40

pedro

I thought s/he meant in time, not in seriousness.smiley - erm

I'm sure s/he'll tell us.smiley - smiley


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