FOLLOWING THE EXPERTS INSTEAD OF LEADING THE NATION IS THE PRECISE INDICTMENT:

Neville Chamberlain should be praised, not buried: Faced with an impossible situation, Neville Chamberlain performed better than anyone else would have done (David Dutton, 20 Aug 2009, Daily Telegraph)

Of course, Chamberlain made mistakes in the 1930s. He overestimated his ability to reach a settlement with the dictators; he probably clung too long to the hope of averting war. But it is doubtful if anyone else would have done much better, Churchill included.

Chamberlain was no fool. But no individual could change the basic facts of the international scene, which made fighting Germany almost unthinkable for most of the decade. Like all his generation, Chamberlain had been deeply scarred by the memory of the First World War. Expert opinion predicted that any future war would be even worse: to the slaughter of the battlefield would be added unspeakable destruction from the air. Extrapolating from the Spanish Civil War, it was estimated that the first few weeks of a German air assault would bring half a million casualties: Britain was defenceless in the face of the bomber.

Of course, the calculations were way off the mark. But Chamberlain was doing what many of his critics complain he was reluctant to do – following expert advice.

Let us grant that fighting the Nazis was impossible for a British PM at that point. If we're being pure Realists shouldn't the point of British policy have been to get the Germans to attack the Soviets?

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 20, 2009 5:26 PM