UK Politics

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Disappointing, but not surprising (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by Acamon@lemmy.world to c/uk_politics@feddit.uk

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[–] chaogomu@lemmy.world 7 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

The thing everyone gets wrong about Chamberlain is that appeasement wasn't happening in a vacuum.

First is that thanks to Churchill, the UK never had a roaring 20s. First was the WW1 debt, and then Churchill, who was in charge of monetary policy, implemented a strict gold and silver policy that made trade with any other countries extremely disadvantageous for the UK.

So yeah, the UK started the Great Depression early.

So Chamberlain comes into power with three major issues.

First is a madman in Europe who every knew was going to start another world war.

Second was the fact that the UK didn't have a modern military.

Third was the fact that the UK didn't have an economy that could support modernizing the military.

So yeah, Chamberlain had to "appease" Hitler while he worked on the economy and ordered a massive buildup of short range fighter aircraft.

And that right there is the only reason the UK survived the Battle of Britain.

Then Churchill comes in and starts screaming about appeasement, badmouthing Chamberlain left and right. When Churchill himself made the conditions that lead to appeasement.

But that's how conservatives work. They cause a problem, then blame person who tries to fix it for not being magically able to undo the damage.

[–] Acamon@lemmy.world 4 points 21 hours ago

That's very interesting. It's not an area of history I've studied much, but even my brief reading this morning came across some pretty reasonable statements from Chamberlain. Basically, "no one had any complaints when I went off to Germany to reach a deal with Herr Hitler. But now with hindsight everyone's blaming me for something we all wanted." and from what your saying, even with hindsight it was the right decision at the time to give Britain time to get on a war footing.