Alone, 1932-1940

by William Manchester

  The House did not hear him in silence. When he spoke proudly of the release by the Czechs of Sudetendeutsche prisoners, one MP called: “What about the kidnapped Czechs?” When he spoke of his “profound feeling of sympathy” for Czechoslovakia, several members cried, “Shame!” He replied: “I have done nothing to be ashamed of. Let those who have, hang their heads. We must feel profound sympathy for a small and gallant nation in the hour of their national grief and loss.” A backbencher interrupted him: “It is an insult to say it.” He told the House that “the real triumph” of Munich “is that it has shown that representatives of four great Powers can find it possible to agree on a way of carrying out a difficult and delicate operation by discussion instead of by force of arms, and thereby they have averted a catastrophe which would have ended civilisation as we have known it.”6

  Watching the prime minister, Harold Nicolson thought: “He is obviously tired and irritable and the speech does not go down well. Then up gets Anthony Eden. I felt at first that he was not coming out strongly enough, but he was getting the House on his side before opening the attack. When it came, it was superb.” Eden doubted that “the events of the last few days… constitute the beginning of better things, as my right honorable friend [Chamberlain] hopes.” Instead, he believed, “they only give us a breathing space, perhaps of six months or less, before the next crisis is upon us.”7

  Attlee, coming next, declared that they were “in the midst of a tragedy. We have felt humiliation. This has not been a victory for reason and humanity. It has been a victory for brute force.” Sinclair noted that the P.M. had called the Munich terms a victory for self-determination; it was, he said, “a plain travesty of self-determination,” because although the areas ceded were inhabited by “a substantial minority” of Germans, they were a minority, and many of them wanted no part of the Reich. The “irruption of German troops,” he predicted, accurately, “will sweep before them a whole crowd of refugees who certainly would have been in favour of remaining in those territories. There is no justice or self-determination about that.” Attacks on the settlement by Amery, Macmillan, and Bracken followed.8

  Churchill sat, silent and immobile, for nearly three days of debate. He was scheduled to speak Wednesday after Sir John Simon, the chancellor of the Exchequer, wound up for the government. Simon declared that Chamberlain would be vindicated by time: “It can only be for history to decide hereafter whether the things done in Munich the other day lead… to better things, or whether the prognostications of increasing evil will prove to be justified.” The crisis, he said, had been a splendid experience for the British people. Next time they would know precisely what to do. The Munich terms were “a vast improvement over the Godesberg Memorandum,” he insisted. Everyone in the chamber knew that was untrue, and he finally acknowledged that His Majesty’s Government was “deeply conscious today that while war has been avoided, Herr Hitler has again achieved the substance of his immediate and declared aim without declaring war.”9

  It was 5:10 P.M. when the Speaker recognized Churchill, and as Winston rose the mood of the House resembled that of Spaniards when the bull lunges into the arena. Before he had spoken a dozen words the turmoil began, and because nothing he said was conciliatory, it continued throughout the forty-nine minutes of his speech, led by Nancy Astor’s cries of “Rude! Rude!” Sweeping the House with a hard stare, chin down, thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, feet solidly planted far apart, he declared that he would begin by saying “the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing…. We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and… France has suffered even more than we have.” Nancy called out, “Nonsense,” and he whirled on her: “When the Noble Lady cries ‘Nonsense’ she could not have heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer admit in his illuminating and comprehensive speech just now that… the utmost… the Prime Minister has been able to secure by all his immense exertions, by all the great efforts and mobilisation which took place in this country, and by all the anguish and strain through which we have passed in this country, the utmost he has been able to gain has been—” He was interrupted by cries of “Peace!” “… the utmost he has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia and in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.” He saw no point in distinguishing between the positions reached at Berchtesgaden, Godesberg, and Munich. “They will be very simply epitomized, if the House will permit me to vary the metaphor. One pound was demanded at the pistol’s point. When it was given, two pounds were demanded at the pistol’s point. Finally, the dictator consented to take one pound, seventeen shillings and sixpence and the rest in promises of good will for the future.” The terms Chamberlain had brought back with him could have been reached “through the ordinary diplomatic channels at any time during the summer. And I will say this, that I believe the Czechs, left to themselves and told they were going to get no help from the Western Powers, would have been able to make better terms than they have got.”

  He reviewed Hitler’s successive aggressions and why all efforts to check him had failed: “There can never be absolute certainty that there will be a fight if one side is determined that it will give way completely.” He himself had “always held the view that the maintenance of peace depends upon the accumulation of deterrents against the aggressor, coupled with a sincere effort to redress grievances.” France and Britain—“especially if they had maintained a close contact with Russia, which certainly was not done”—could have influenced the “smaller States of Europe, and I believe they could have determined the attitude of Poland.” Indeed, their impact would have been felt in the Reich, giving “strength to all that intense desire for peace which the helpless German masses share with their British and French fellow men, and which, as we have been reminded, found a passionate and rarely permitted vent in the joyous manifestations with which the Prime Minister was acclaimed in Europe.”

  Alliances and deterrents “of Powers, great and small, ready to stand firm upon the front of law and for the ordered remedy of grievances… might well have been effective.” He did not “think it fair to charge those who wished to see this course followed, and followed consistently and resolutely, with having wished for immediate war. Between submission and immediate war there was this third alternative, which gave a hope not only of peace but of justice.” Naturally, for such a policy to succeed, Britain “should declare straight out and a long time beforehand that she would, with others, join to defend Czechoslovakia against an unprovoked aggression. His Majesty’s Government refused to give that guarantee when it would have saved the situation, yet in the end they gave it when it was too late, and now, for the future, they renew it when they have not the slightest power to make it good.

  All is over.

  Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken,

  Czechoslovakia recedes into darkness.

  She has suffered in every respect

  by her association with the Western democracies.

  Plebiscites, he said, as defined in Hitler’s Munich office, could not “amount in the slightest degree to a verdict of self-determination. It is a fraud and a farce to invoke that name. We in this country, as in other liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination, but it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian States who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds.” In any event “this particular block of land, this mass of human beings to be handed over, has never expressed the desire to go under Nazi rule. I do not believe that even now, if their opinion could be asked, they would exercise such an option.”

  He asked: “What is the remaining position of Czechoslovakia? Not only are they politically mutilated, but, economically and financially, they are in complete confusion.” Their banking and railroad nets were “severed and broken, their industries are curtailed, and the movement of their population is
most cruel.” He gave an example: “The Sudeten miners, who are all Czechs and whose families have lived in that area for centuries, must now flee into an area where there are hardly any mines left for them to work.” He doubted—prophetically—that “in future the Czechoslovak State” could be “maintained as an independent entity. You will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured only by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed by the Nazi regime.”

  As a true Conservative, Churchill sought guidance “in the wisdom of the past, for all wisdom is not new wisdom.” On holiday he had studied the reign of King Ethelred the Unready, and particularly “the rugged words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written a thousand years ago.” He quoted a sentence: “All these calamities fell upon us because of evil counsel, because tribute was not offered to them at the right time nor yet were they resisted; but when they had done the most evil, then was peace made with them.” So it was now: “We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi Power.” The democracies’ loss of prestige, he told the House, beggared description. In Warsaw the British and French ambassadors sought to visit Colonel Józef Beck, Poland’s foreign minister. “The door was shut in their faces.” And what, he wondered, would be “the position of France and England this year and the year afterwards?” The German army probably outnumbered that of France now, “though not nearly so matured or perfected.” There were, he said, unexplored options; unfortunately, none were encouraging. But what he found “unendurable” was “the sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure…. In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands” which “may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty.” A “policy of submission” would entail “restrictions” upon freedom of speech and the press. “Indeed, I hear it said sometimes now that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticised by ordinary, common English politicians.”

  He did not “grudge our loyal, brave people… the natural, spontaneous outburst of joy and relief” when they learned that war was not imminent, “but they should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defences; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: ‘Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.’

  And do not suppose that this is the end.

  This is only the beginning of the reckoning.

  This is only the first sip—

  the first foretaste of a bitter cup

  which will be proffered to us year by year—

  Unless—

  by a supreme recovery of our moral health and martial vigour,

  we arise again and take our stand for freedom,

  as in the olden time.10

  Lord Maugham called Churchill an “agitator” who should be “shot or hanged.” The Times reported that Churchill had “treated a crowded House to prophesies which made Jeremiah appear an optimist” and referred patronizingly to his “dismal sincerity.” His speech, according to the Daily Express, was “an alarmist oration by a man whose mind is soaked in the conquests of Marlborough,” and his failure to support the government “weakens his influence among members of the Conservative Party.” It did indeed; Robert Rhodes James notes that “the feeling against him in the party was now intense.”11

  Parliament was still dominated by the privileged classes and their dread of the Soviets, a fear which Hitler played like a Stradivarius, repeatedly citing as his principal aim “zur Bekämpfung des Bolschewismus” (“the fight against bolshevism”). But out beyond Westminster and Whitehall—in the Midlands, the mines, the Lake District; the tributaries of the Thames, Humber, and Severn; and the commercial cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, and Bristol—there, once the first flush of gratitude for peace had passed, Munich became more controversial. In the House of Commons, once the big guns of Chamberlain’s critics had ceased fire—Duff Cooper, Eden, and Churchill as anchor man—the debate would proceed languidly.

  In humbler neighborhoods it was another story, now that Spain had taught rank-and-file workmen that fascism could not be stopped without bloodshed. This awareness was by no means confined to them. In Mayfair, Park Lane, and Bloomsbury, the wives of many Conservative MPs denounced their husbands’ support for Chamberlain’s appeasements.

  These heated exchanges were not confined to the United Kingdom—England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Britain was still the world’s sole superpower. The repercussions of decisions made in Whitehall and Downing Street were felt almost everywhere—throughout the Dominions and even in the United States, which was bumbling about, playing blindman’s buff with the twin games of pacifism and isolationism. Churchill afterward wrote: “Among the Conservatives, families and friends in intimate contact were divided by a degree the like of which I have never seen. Men and women, long bound by party ties, the social amenities, and family connections, glared at one another in scorn and anger.” His daughter Mary remembers: “Looking back, it is difficult to describe the feelings of anger, shame, and bitterness felt by those who opposed the Munich Agreement.” And Lady Diana Cooper recalled that “husbands and wives stopped speaking to one another, fathers and sons said unforgivable things to one another; it was as if the entire country was in labor, straining to give birth. And in a way it was.”12

  Harold Macmillan believed that the new, proud Britain was two years in gestation and had been conceived in the summer of 1938, when dissident Tories, mostly young, began to form factions critical of the Chamberlain government. The followers of Leo Amery were stronger once he broke with HMG, but the most visible group was still Eden’s. Eden’s followers were pursued by the press; many of their leaders had distinguished themselves in the war, and they were commonly regarded as the next generation of ministers. Taken as a whole, however, they were altogether too civil, too respectful of their elders, too reluctant to take firm stands, and far too unimaginative to acquire the élan and vigor of successful Young Turks. They avoided offending the prime minister; they carefully disassociated themselves from Churchill and his tiny band; when Duncan Sandys expressed interest in attending one of their meetings, he was told that his presence was not required. In these weaknesses they reflected the flaws of their leader. Eden’s departure from the Foreign Office had been the political sensation of the season, but his resignation speech was so crafted to avoid affronting anyone that, as Macmillan noted, it “left Members somewhat uncertain as to what all the row was about.” At a Queen’s Hall rally protesting Munich, Eden’s discretion, according to Liddell Hart, irritated the audience, which grew restless. As he sat down, Violet Bonham Carter proposed the ritualistic vote of gratitude, but later she said she felt more like moving a vote of censure. Eden’s chief asset then was that he was neither Neville Chamberlain nor Winston Churchill.13

  In retrospect it seems that once Britain had grasped the price Chamberlain paid for Hitler’s signature, the people should have turned to Churchill. In time they did, but public opinion is slow to coalesce, and as winter deepened and 1939 arrived, England vacillated. Certainly the average Briton was appalled by the Czech sellout. A poll taken after Godesberg showed that two out of every three Englishmen had disapproved of the Anglo-French proposals as too generous to Germany. Walking home on the evening of September 22, Duff Cooper had encountered a “vast procession… marching down Whitehall crying ‘Stand by the Czechs’ and ‘C
hamberlain must go.’ ” Yet England was not ready for Churchill. Capitulation to Hitler was unpopular, but the revulsion against a renewal of trench warfare remained. Although Winston’s repeated calls for a defense buildup had been intended to avoid war, it was clear to all that, once committed, he would relish a good fight. As a Labour candidate had charged in 1923, he was “militant to the fingertips.” In the wake of Munich a House critic effectively quoted A. G. Gardiner’s comment made thirty years earlier: “Churchill will write his name in history; take care that he does not write it in blood.”14

  Macmillan recalled that “Everyone knew that so great was the strength of the Government in the country that nothing could seriously shake them in Parliament. At our almost daily conferences with our friends, we had the gloomiest forebodings. The tide was, at present, too strong. It was flowing against us—especially Churchill.” Increasingly the dissidents’ meetings were furtive, almost conspiratorial. Nicolson confided to his wife that he had attended “a hush-hush meeting” of a dozen MPs, including Eden, Amery, Macmillan, Sidney Herbert, and Duff Cooper. They had “decided that we should not advertise ourselves as a group or even call ourselves a group.” It is difficult to understand what they hoped to accomplish; they would “merely meet together from time to time, exchange views, and organise ourselves for a revolt if needed.” But they were too timid and far too respectable to rebel; Nicolson characterized them as “all good Tories and sensible men. This group is distinct from the Churchill group…. I feel happier about this.”15