Cabinet's Finest Hour Page 5
Despite their later differences, Churchill did not initially turn his fire on Chamberlain. When Anthony Eden resigned as Foreign Secretary, having widened his protest to include Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, Churchill was quick to indicate in the House of Commons support of Chamberlain’s policy, and told the Chief Whip, David Margesson, on 17 March that the Prime Minister’s point of view and his were not divergent.3 Why did Churchill respond like this? It is hard to escape the conclusion that he did not want to unduly boost Eden to the extent that the latter might displace him as the most powerful backbench Conservative critic of appeasement. When assessing Churchill’s image, it is a significant fact that he was the relentless and ever-watchful hawk in all debates concerning what to do about Hitler. Halifax had visited Hitler with the full support of the then Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, on 18–19 November 1937. It signalled, according to Roberts, the high watermark of Halifax’s personal appeasement. “Hitler took Halifax in both personally and politically”, albeit Halifax initially mistook Hitler for a footman and was saved by the prompt of ‘Der Führer! Der Führer!’4
Following Eden’s resignation, according to Gallup, only 26 per cent favoured Chamberlain’s foreign policy and 71 per cent thought Eden had been right to resign. Yet, by March, Gallup showed only 33 per cent wanted to express support for Czechoslovakia in the event of German aggression and 43 per cent opposed support in line with Chamberlain’s policy. Eden’s resignation, therefore, never became the parliamentary rallying point to remove Chamberlain, in part because of Churchill’s attitude, but most likely owing to the movement in public opinion.
Chamberlain’s personal diplomacy during two weeks in September 1938 was disastrous and Munich still reverberates in history. ‘More dangerous still was the idealism (and hubris) of a politician who believed he could bring peace to Europe.’5 The Mass-Observation organisation sampled opinion on 15 September 1938, the day Chamberlain flew to Germany for the first time, and reported a ‘sensational swing’ of opinion in the Prime Minister’s favour. No British Prime Minister had been to Germany since Disraeli attended the Congress of Berlin in 1878.
Chamberlain said of Hitler on 17 September that “when he had included the Sudeten Germans in the Reich he would be satisfied”.6 As Roberts described him, “Here was the hubris required by all the best tragedies before any eventual nemesis.”7
Chamberlain revealed in a letter to his sisters written on 19 September that President Woodrow Wilson had heard that Hitler was impressed by him and continued that Hitler was a man “with whom I can do business”. He also claimed: “I am the most popular man in Germany!”8
Yet by 22 September, when Chamberlain flew again to Bad Godesberg, opinion was hardening against further concessions and protestors booed as he flew off. On his return war seemed imminent and public opinion grew fearful. On 24 September the Foreign Office’s senior diplomat, Alec Cadogan, noted in his diary about his boss, Lord Halifax (whom he abbreviates to H): “Still more horrified to find PM has hypnotised H who capitulates totally ... I gave H a note of what I thought, but it had no effect … Cabinet at 5.30 and H got back at 8.00 completely and quite happily défaitiste – pacifist.”9 But Cadogan’s bluntness did have its effect. Halifax changed his mind after their discussion and a night of restlessness. He told the Cabinet the next morning, 25 September, that “So long as Nazism lasted, peace would be uncertain. For this reason he did not feel that it would be right to put pressure on Czechoslovakia to accept ... he imagined that France would join in and if the French went in we should join them”.10
Chamberlain sent Halifax a pencilled note: “Your complete change of view since I saw you last night is a horrible blow to me, but of course you must form your opinions for yourself … If they [the French] say they will go in, thereby dragging us in, I do not think I could accept responsibility for the decision.” Halifax replied: “I feel a brute – but I lay awake most of the night, tormenting myself.” Chamberlain retorted tersely: “Night conclusions are seldom taken in the right perspective.”11
Hitler responded positively on 28 September 1938 to holding a meeting in Munich. The House of Commons celebrated when the Prime Minister confirmed he would go the next day and that Mussolini and the French Prime Minister Daladier were involved as well. Members stood, cheered and waved their order papers. In the public galleries, against the rules, people clapped. When Chamberlain returned from Munich on the 29th it took the Prime Minister’s car an hour and a half to drive from Heston Airport to Downing Street. During this time, according to Roberts, Halifax – who was with the Prime Minister in the car – performed the function of the slave in ancient Rome, who constantly whispered in the victorious general’s ear reminders of his mortality in the hope of curbing his hubris. Chamberlain’s public waving of the piece of paper carrying his and Hitler’s signature was ill-advised, as was the invitation by the new king, George VI, for Chamberlain to appear with him on the balcony of Buckingham Palace where thousands of people cheered below. Yet most newspapers were overwhelmingly supportive.
Chamberlain was self-satisfied and exhausted though not depressed the day after his heady return to Heston Airport. He admitted to his sisters that he had come nearer to a nervous breakdown ‘than I have ever been in my life’.12 His mood was exultant and he had, as I argue in my book In Sickness and In Power, acquired Hubris Syndrome. He believed he had been successful in ending the prospect of war and having acted throughout with a small inner Cabinet marginalising any anti-opinion in the full Cabinet.
Chamberlain for a short time became a man of destiny. In the House of Commons, on 5 October 1938, Churchill however unleashed his full invective, calling the Munich settlement “a total and unmitigated defeat”, and his relations with Halifax deteriorated as the policies of appeasement were progressively discredited.13 After ambushing Chamberlain in Cabinet on the morning of 25 September, Halifax had progressively hardened his position, even when Hitler softened the arrangements at Munich which he had previously demanded in Bad Godesburg. The Kristallnacht pogrom on the night of 9–10 November, which saw Jewish shops smashed and much bloodshed, shocked the public and revolted Halifax. Although in a letter to a friend in 1952 he admitted he had “always been rather anti-Semitic”, the events of Kristallnacht completed his “about face on appeasement”. At the meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence on 26 January 1939, Halifax advocated “tripling the British Expeditionary Force, doubling the Territorials and instituting immediate wide-ranging Staff talks and full military conscription”.14 Chamberlain and John Simon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, opposed these measures. Not only were they worried about the financial implications of such policies, but, as Roberts points out, “they saw Staff talks as symptomatic of the pre-1914 mood that they were trying at all costs to avoid”.
Halifax continued for the rest of the year to identify Nazism as the problem and argue for a tougher stance. He accompanied Chamberlain to Paris in late November; Chamberlain saw it as giving “the French people an opportunity of pouring out their pent up feelings of gratitude and affection towards him” in a letter to his sister dated 27 November.15 By this stage Halifax was no longer a major appeaser, perhaps not even an appeaser, but there was something missing in his diplomacy rather like Grey in 1912.16 He continued private meetings with Germans during the summer of 1939 but there was no steely Machiavellian purpose and the same was revealed over the more realistic option of moving to involve Russia to bolster the defence of Poland. There is something about both Grey and Halifax detectable in those who inherit power rather than struggle for the right to wield power.
The differences of opinion between Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, evermore clear to the Cabinet, had perhaps one beneficial effect: it made it easier for Chamberlain after his resignation as Prime Minister in May 1940, and thereafter as a member of the War Cabinet, to distance himself from Halifax; he was no longer bound in “hoops of steel” in his friendship.
Exhaustion and stress were taking the
ir toll on Chamberlain by March 1939 when R. A. Butler, usually known as ‘Rab’ – then a minister in the Foreign Office, but who later became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Harold Macmillan – on learning that the Italians had invaded Albania, went over to No. 10 to inform the Prime Minister. Chamberlain was at the open window of his study feeding seed to the birds, and was rather annoyed at Butler’s arrival. He expressed amazement at Butler’s distress at the news, saying: “I feel sure Mussolini has decided not to go against us.”17 Butler’s warnings about the obvious threat to the Balkans was dismissed with a swift assertion of: “Don’t be silly. Go home and go to bed”, before continuing to feed the birds.18 The capacity for self-delusion is the most worrying aspect of this story, and the fact that it was recorded by Butler, a politician who supported Munich and appeasement, renders the testimony all the more convincing. And yet it was to become increasingly apparent that Chamberlain was never going to be easy to remove and that he would have to be forced out of No. 10 by Parliament and his colleagues.
Chamberlain’s removal was not going to be the result of opinion polls, nor the growing criticism in the press or the rumble of dissatisfaction from the armed forces. Though these were all factors, it was the large Conservative majority in the House of Commons that buttressed Chamberlain that needed to be eroded.
It became obvious very soon after Chamberlain’s reshuffle of the Government in September 1939 that his removal could only be achieved by the House of Commons as a whole, requiring MPs from all parties to come together in a unified decision. In this sense, Attlee and Greenwood became essential for the project to succeed, their refusal to act prematurely over forming a coalition was the instrument for the eventual overthrow. In an adversarial chamber where party discipline is enforced by the respective party Whips, cross-party action is not easy. But these were not normal times and, fortunately, there were a significant number of independent, principled and brave MPs across the political spectrum ready and willing to organise to remove Chamberlain after war was declared in September against Germany.
There were many factors that facilitated the creation of the crossparty political climate that allowed these groupings to flourish. The change of atmosphere was palpable shortly after Chamberlain’s Munich visit in September 1938. On 3 April 1939 Churchill had noted in the House of Commons that Labour had proposed that “the attitude of His Majesty’s Government towards Russia” be summed up in the phrase “The maximum co-operation possible”. Churchill thought that this was “a very accurate and convenient phrase”. He went on to ask, “Why should we expect Soviet Russia to be willing to work with us? No one can say that there is not a solid identity of interest between the Western democracies and Soviet Russia, and we must do nothing to obstruct the natural play of that identity of interest... The wisest course was to forget the Bolshevik past and forge Britain, France, and Russia in a Triple Alliance...”19 The Labour Party was thus in agreement with Churchill and his Conservative allies. It was, by any standard, a major new direction for the foreign policy of the country and was not just a vehicle for solidifying Labour’s domestic political criticisms of the Chamberlain Government, but a geographically-based realignment that made sense and in which there was a window of opportunity.
The Russian Ambassador, Ivan Maisky, was in the gallery to hear Churchill speak. Prior to this, on 18 March, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, three days after the destruction of Czechoslovakia, making his first attempt at rapprochement, had proposed an immediate conference in Bucharest, inviting Russia, Romania, Poland, Britain, France and Turkey, to form a “peace front” against an expanding Germany. Litvinov proposed a Soviet alliance with Britain and France, with the hope of expanding the alliance to powers under threat in the East, in order to cull further German advancement. The Quai d’Orsay made no response and the Foreign Office told the Russians that it was “not acceptable”. On 19 March, Maisky called in at the Foreign Office to ask why such a proposal was not acceptable. Halifax made the excuse that no minister was available to go to Bucharest. On 23 March Chamberlain said the Government took a dim view of establishing “opposing blocs”. In Chamberlain’s mind Bolsheviks, not Nazis, were still the greater threat to Western civilisation.
On the 27 March at the Foreign Policy Committee Halifax, swayed by Poland’s valuable military force of fifty divisions and feeling that Britain had to choose between Poland and Russia, chose Poland: “We were faced with a dilemma of doing nothing or entering into a devastating war. If we did nothing this in itself would mean a great accession to Germany’s strength.”20 Halifax became the driving force behind the Polish Guarantee, which committed Britain to protecting Poland from any attack on her independence. Formally offered on 31 March 1939, Chamberlain told Parliament on this day that in the event of an attack on Poland, “His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.”21 Designed to act as “an assurance against forcible aggression”, if successful in its intention there would be no need to carry out the guarantee at all.22 His biographer, Roberts, put his finger on the weakness of Halifax’s position: “One of the major accusations levelled at Halifax for concluding a Polish Guarantee without a concomitant understanding with Russia was that it tied London’s hands whilst freeing Moscow’s. Stalin was left secure in the knowledge that a German attack in the East meant help from the West. A German attack in the East however, was a war from which he [Stalin] could stand aside.”23 Another, different criticism came from Rab Butler inside the Foreign Office, who believed that the original joint British-French guarantee to Poland back in March had relieved Russia of any real anxiety about Germany’s designs on her own frontier. That guarantee was, he believed, the result in the Foreign Office “of the shame engendered in some breasts by Munich”. Halifax should have offered no guarantee to Poland unless they and Romania enter into the association offered by Russia. It was in this moment that Halifax’s new-found recognition that Hitler was the menace floundered.
On 13 April Churchill argued again for an approach to the Kremlin:
I tried to show the House the great interest that Russia has against further Eastward expansion of the Nazi power. It is upon that deep, natural, legitimate interest that we must rely, and I am sure we shall hear from the Government that the steps they are taking are those which will enable us to receive the fullest possible co-operation from Russia, and that no prejudices on the part of England or France will be allowed to interfere with the closest co-operation between the two countries.24
On 15 April, the Soviet Government received formal proposals from Whitehall and the Quai d’Orsay. Britain asked Russia to follow the British example and affirm the independence of Poland and Romania. The French had proposed that Britain, France and the Soviet Union should come to one another’s aid should Germany wage war on any one of them. Chamberlain and Halifax were not prepared to spell this out. Litvinov presented a draft agreement to Britain and France. Russia would not only provide mutual assistance if either country were attacked by Hitler, the treaty would be backed by a specific commitment defining the strength and objectives of their armies, navies, and air forces. Poland was at liberty to join if she chose. The signatories would “render mutually all manner of assistance, including that of a military nature, in case of aggression in Europe” against any member of the alliance or against “Eastern European states situated between the Baltic and Black Seas and bordering on the USSR”.25 Signatories would neither negotiate nor make peace “with aggressors separately from one another and without common consent of the three Powers”. Cadogan’s minute, hurriedly drafted, was “we have to balance the advantage of a paper commitment by Russia to join in a war on one side against the disadvantage of associating ourselves openly with Russia. The advantage is, to say the least, problematical … if we are attacked by Germany, Poland under our mutual guarantee will come to our assistance, i.e. make war on Germany. If the Soviets are bound to do the same, how can th
ey fulfil that obligation without sending troops through or aircraft over Polish territory, which is exactly what frightens the Poles.”26
Litvinov knew that Stalin would be very suspicious of any delay. Therefore he stipulated that military conversations between the three powers begin immediately. Harold Macmillan presciently felt: “This was Litvinov’s last chance. It was also ours.”27 William Manchester wrote: “On 19 April the cabinet’s Foreign Policy Committee considered the Litvinov initiative. The Foreign Office was startled by its airtight language; by contrast – and by design – Britain’s Polish Guarantee was a sieve of loopholes ... Cadogan, in the absence of Halifax, described the Russian plan as “extremely inconvenient,” suggested that Soviet military strength was trivial, and declared that “from the practical point of view there is every argument against accepting the Russian proposal.” Yet he recognised “there is great difficulty in rejecting the Soviet offer … The left in this country may be counted on” to exploit a refusal. There was also a “very remote” possibility that the Russians might join hands with the Germans. Nevertheless, Cadogan ended, “on balance” Litvinov’s offer should be turned down.28 This was a fatal error of judgement for which Halifax must bear full responsibility. He, not Cadogan, was in charge of Foreign Policy. It was a mistake as grave in its consequences as Grey’s in 1912 when not supporting Haldane’s negotiation in Berlin. Halifax then spent all his time overcoming Chamberlain’s reluctance to endorse the Polish Guarantee on the well-founded ground that it meant the certainty of war at some later date.