David on Neville Chamberlain

“A vein of self-sufficient obstinacy in the new Minister contributed to the difficulties that baffled all our endeavours ... The machinery which Mr. Chamberlain created showed itself incompetent to deal even with volunteer recruits, and certainly too unreliable to be entrusted with the administration of dictatorial powers ... Mr. Neville Chamberlain is a man of rigid competency. Such men have their uses in conventional times or in conventional positions, and are indispensable for filling subordinate posts at all times. But they are lost in an emergency or in creative tasks at any time.”

“In short, Hitler was a much more effective negotiator than Chamberlain, but he never wanted to negotiate, whereas Chamberlain, a less skilled tactician, got what he really wanted—peace not war. Yet it was a hollow victory, because Hitler never intended to honor the Munich agreements. He was soon kicking himself for losing his nerve at the end of September. In March 1939, when he seized the rest of Czechoslovakia, he was not only going beyond his professed aim of simply bringing Germans within the Reich, he had also torn up what had been signed at Munich. A disenchanted Chamberlain was forced into a complete U-turn, offering guarantees to Poland, Romania and other countries possibly on the Nazi hit-list in a belated and panicky effort to deter further German expansion. That summer Chamberlain still hoped for peace but Hitler was now bent on having a war over Poland, determined not back down a second time. He felt he had the measure of his opponents. “Our enemies are small worms,” he told his generals in August 1939. “I saw them in Munich."”

“Afterward Strang, like many in the Foreign Office, described Munich frankly as a “débâcle.” And there is no doubt that Chamberlain’s personal diplomacy looks profoundly amateurish by the standards of later summits. No psychological profiles of his opponent had been prepared; there was no sign of what would now be called “position papers” or “briefing books.” The prime minister kept professional diplomats at arm’s length, including his foreign secretary, and went to Berchtesgaden without even his own interpreter and record keeper. He did not think through his bottom line and tended to throw away bargaining chips without gaining anything in return. But Chamberlain’s basic problem was not one of method but of assumptions. He flew to Berchtesgaden because he feared that the fate of Europe was in the hands of a madman; he came back with the illusion that he was forging a personal relationship with Hitler and that this would bear fruit because, at root, the Führer was a man of his word. More dangerous still was the idealism (and hubris) of a politician who believed he could bring peace to Europe and, perhaps, the ambition of a marginalized younger son determined to outdo his father and his brother. But none of this would have mattered if Chamberlain and most of his colleagues had not convinced themselves that war over Czechoslovakia would mean the devastation of much of London. Not for the last time a British prime minister got it profoundly wrong about weapons of mass destruction.”