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National Security and Imperial Defence: British Grand Strategy and Appeasement, 1930–1939 B. J. C. McKercher To cite this article: B. J. C. McKercher (2008) National Security and Imperial Defence: British Grand Strategy and Appeasement, 1930–1939, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 19:3, 391-442, DOI: 10.1080/09592290802344954 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09592290802344954

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Diplomacy and Statecraft, 19: 391–442, 2008 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN 0959-2296 print/1557-301X online DOI: 10.1080/09592290802344954

1557-301X and Statecraft 0959-2296 FDPS Diplomacy Statecraft, Vol. 19, No. 3, July 2008: pp. 1–89

NATIONAL SECURITY AND IMPERIAL DEFENCE: BRITISH GRAND STRATEGY AND APPEASEMENT, 1930–1939

British B. J. C.National McKercher Security and Imperial Defence

B. J. C. McKercher

British grand strategy in the 1930s had two cardinal elements: security of the home islands and Imperial Defence. This article questions the view that Britain did not have a strategic commitment to the continent of Europe till late in the 1930s. It also provides an over-arching analysis of the two distinct but intertwined periods in the evolution of national strategy and Imperial defence in that decade: before 1930 till late 1937 built around the strategy of the balance of power; and from late-1937 till early 1939 built around the strategy of appeasement. Moreover, it is impossible to understand the high level debate within the British government over strategic issues without putting the domestic political situation into the context of the impact of the First World War on Britain’s society and economy. Similarly, the development of the new international order created at the Paris Peace Conference – and its demise in the ‘hinge years’ of the early 1930s – also needs to be better understood in terms of how British grand strategy emerged in this period. A rational and realistic policy, appeasement was a tactical diplomatic manoeuvre; it had no place serving as the strategic basis of British external policy.

I cannot believe that the next war, if it ever comes, will be like the last one and I believe our resources will be more profitably employed in the air & on the sea than in building up great armies. Neville Chamberlain, February 19361

In the narrowest sense, as it had been since at least the late seventeenth century, British grand strategy in the 1930s had two cardinal elements: to ensure the security of the home islands and to allow for the protection of the Empire.2 No one in responsible positions in Britain in those ten years disagreed with the strategic goals of foreign and defence policy, the overarching purpose of which was to ensure international stability as the best means to protect the country’s myriad economic, political, and strategic

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interests. But that decade proved a difficult moment in Britain’s evolution as a Great Power: the persistence of the Great Depression and the ancillary of massive unemployment threatened both trade—the lifeblood of Britain’s finances and economy—and the social fabric of the state; and the advent of aggressive and antagonistic Powers in three crucial regions of the globe—fascist Italy in the Mediterranean, militaristic Japan in the Far East, and Nazi Germany on the European continent—menaced both national security and the Imperial edifice. In this atmosphere, throughout those ten years, a continual debate occurred amongst politicians and civil servants responsible for making and executing foreign and defence policy over what means to use to achieve the two strategic ends. And outside of the Cabinet and the small group of Civil Service officials who advised it, the opposition parties, the press, and private organisations interested in external issues looked to influence that debate and the policy that resulted from it. Still, following on its success in the early 1920s in winning control over foreign policy-making and execution, the Foreign Office largely determined the way that British governments pursued grand strategy till late 1937;3 until that moment, British foreign policy found basis on the pursuit of the balance of power both in Europe and in the wider world to protect British interests in the form of prestige, markets, strategic outposts, and lines of communication. But following Neville Chamberlain’s rise to the premiership in May 1937, the strategic basis under-pinning British external policies underwent profound change. Seeing the balance of power in much the same way that Lady Caroline Lamb portrayed Lord Byron—mad, bad, and dangerous to know—Chamberlain determined that a different strategy would better provide for British security. Accordingly, he moved to control British foreign policy and, in so doing, cast aside reliance on the balance in favour of what he called “better relations” with Britain’s adversaries.4 Tied to the state of the country’s financial strength and military resources, Chamberlain’s brand of “appeasement” was a sensible policy given Britain’s international position after 1937: it embodied realpolitik in the coldest Bismarckian terms. Of course, it failed ultimately to restrain Adolph Hitler’s Germany from embarking on the destruction of Poland in September 1939 and, thereby, endangering the security of the British Isles and the safety of the Empire.5 A strategy of appeasement had, in fact, ceased to govern British foreign and defence policy after the “Prague crisis” of March 1939. Although Chamberlain clung to the belief that Anglo–German accommodation remained possible in Spring and Summer 1939, his Cabinet and the Foreign Office looked for more robust means to deter further German expansion. Nonetheless, conclusion of the Nazi–Soviet non-aggression pact on 23 August and Germany’s attack on Poland eight days later forced Britain into a continental war to ensure its national survival.

British National Security and Imperial Defence

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The study of British grand strategy in the 1930s has not been ignored. Norman Gibbs’ masterful exegesis more than thirty years ago laid the ground for subsequent analyses of particular elements in the evolution and application of British foreign policy in the 1930s.6 These examinations have not always agreed on British capabilities and intentions in that difficult decade; and in some cases, they have spawned fundamentally divergent interpretations and vituperative historiographical discourse within the context of the appeasement debate.7 However, the overwhelming majority of the studies of British external relations concerning those pivotal years have concentrated largely on the twenty-seven months between Chamberlain’s rise to the premiership in late May 1937 and the outbreak of general European war in September 1939.8 Only a few historians have considered strategic problems between 1930 and mid-1937.9 In consequence, two issues need to be addressed in assessing British grand strategy in the 1930s. First, Gibbs argues that British strategy throughout the 1930s, “at any rate until the last few months before [September 1939], was essentially one of isolation from rather than commitment to continental Europe.”10 Gibbs’ views about British strategic detachment from Europe in 1933–1936 have been recently questioned;11 their applicability till December 1937 will be challenged here. The second issue concerns the need to provide an over-arching analysis of British grand strategy in the 1930s.12 In terms of British external policy, there were two eras in that decade defined by the tactical and operational means to ensure national security and allow for Imperial defence: before 1930 till late 1937—foreign and defence policy built on the balance of power; and the final twenty months of peace in Europe—that policy determined chiefly by adherence to appeasement. An over-arching treatment allows for understanding better these two distinct but intertwined periods in Britain’s quest to preserve its national security and Imperial holdings. Suffusing the development of British foreign and defence policy in the 1930s—indeed, suffusing all elements of British political and social evolution in that decade—was the international economic crisis that began in October 1929 with the collapse of the American stock market. Although indications of Wall Street’s weakness appeared six months before, October’s events precipitated the Great Depression.13 After the First World War, international capitalism constituted a fragile, interlocking system in which any upset quickly reached all its parts. Wall Street’s collapse incapacitated this system. Beginning as an American financial problem—an over-valued money market—falling stock prices saw the crisis pass from finance to industry. American commodity prices began declining and spread abroad. The situation became complicated when, just before October 1929, the American Congress increased customs duties: the Smoot–Hawley tariff. Coming into effect in June 1930, the tariff

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raised rates on imported raw materials and other goods. As Wall Street’s debility constrained exports of American capital, American creditors began calling in loans to be paid in dollars. But higher American tariffs made it difficult for European and other debtors to acquire dollars. International commodity prices devalued, debts contracted before 1929 were paid with difficulty, if at all, and large-scale unemployment emerged everywhere. Linked to regular liabilities like capital investment were special ones incurred in the 1920s: debts and reparation payments arising from the Great War.14 In full-swing by mid-1930, the general international economic and financial malaise continued into the mid-decade. International economic conditions had a major effect on Britain, with a trade-based economy. Wedded to free trade and fiscal orthodoxy— government spent only what it acquired from revenues—a minority Labour ministry led by James Ramsay MacDonald took power in June 1929 and began introducing reformist legislation. However, by mid-1931, constriction of both domestic and international markets, artificially inflated sterling caused by adherence to the gold standard, and high and increasing unemployment—twenty percent or 2.2 million—forced MacDonald’s government to cut spending by £97 million, including £67 million in unemployment assistance.15 A run on sterling in the Summer saw a section of the Cabinet willing to abandon the gold standard to improve exports. For a ministry dedicated to improving social welfare and now riven with faction, the stress proved too much. It broke apart in late August 1931 and, befitting a national emergency, was replaced by an interim coalition—a “National Government”—of pro-MacDonald Labourites, the Conservative Party led by Stanley Baldwin, and a rump of free trade Liberals headed by Herbert Samuel. MacDonald remained prime minister.16 Confirmed in a General Election in October—MacDonald continued as premier whilst the Conservatives had an outright majority—Baldwin emerged as the dominant force within the ministry. The “National Government” presided over British political life for the remainder of the 1930s—indeed, it lasted in varying forms until Summer 1945 to meet, first, the economic crisis spawned by the seemingly interminable Depression and, then, emergency conditions tied to fighting what became the Second World War. In the 1930s, two men dominated British political life because of Conservative command of the coalition government: Baldwin until May 1937; and Chamberlain thereafter. As lord president of the Council until June 1935 and premier until his retirement two years later, Baldwin concerned himself primarily with domestic politics; his focus was to ensure the country’s social stability as the stresses engendered by the economic crisis accentuated class divisions and saw the emergence of radical political alternatives on both the right and the left.17 This does not mean that he ignored domestic and international fiscal matters


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or foreign and defence policy between late 1931 and mid-1937. As the locus of political power within Whitehall, he understood completely his ultimate responsibilities. But a new element marked British political life as a result of the Great War: mass democracy.18 After their large and important contribution—and personal sacrifices—to the fighting between 1914 and 1918, the post-war middle and working classes sought to assert their control over Parliament. Accordingly, the aristocracy and the landed-interests were forced aside after 1918 as industrialists and the middle and working classes demanded political expression. The result was a watershed in politics whereby the great Victorian Liberal Party splintered, Labour emerged as the expression of left of centre political ambitions, and, in October 1922, the Unionists re-formed as the Conservative Party to appeal to an amalgam of the landed and industrial interests and the middle and working classes.19 From a Midlands steelmaking family with a traditional education from Harrow and Cambridge, Baldwin had been an MP since 1905, had held some minor portfolios, and been briefly chancellor the Exchequer before becoming Conservative Party leader in 1923. Prior to joining the National Government, he had also been prime minister twice: from April 1923 to January 1924 and from October 1924 to June 1929.20 Whilst sometimes disparaged for lack of attention to detail, for being a poor administrator, and for occasionally allowing time rather than human agency to resolve difficult issues—he could, nonetheless, move quickly when he had to do so—his great political gift involved an innate understanding of the new mass politics. His ability to read and respond to the public mood saw him make the Conservative Party into the leading political force in inter-war Britain. His ministries were dominated by industrialists and the middle classes; believing that proletarian voters were not necessarily enamoured by socialist prescriptions and would support “conservative” approaches to political, economic, and social problems, his calm, careful leadership drained working class support away from the Labour Party.21 Moreover, Baldwin was an excellent manager of political talent. He might not be adept at detail or administration, but he found ministers and civil servants who were. In plain terms, he charted the course for his governments; subordinates followed his direction. But Baldwin was nothing if not politically pragmatic; he was always willing to listen to advice and, if necessary, modify tactics to achieve his political goals. Neville Chamberlain offered stark contrast in leadership. The younger son of the Victorian statesman, Joseph Chamberlain, and a younger halfbrother of Austen Chamberlain, a former leader of the Unionist Party trained for high office, Neville’s original lot in life was to enter business to provide the financial means for his father and brother to pursue political careers.22 Lacking university education and toiling in local Birmingham

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politics before entering Parliament in 1918, he made a national reputation as a reformist minister of health in Baldwin’s second ministry.23 During the subsequent two years of Labour minority government, he emerged as Baldwin’s chief lieutenant by being adept at political minutia, by showing administrative skill, and by carrying out effectively instructions from his Party leader—between June 1929 and August 1931, Baldwin’s leadership had been attacked by dissident Conservatives who blamed him for the loss of the 1929 General Election.24 But where Baldwin’s political persona had an air of diffidence and bonhomie—which hid a shard of ice in his heart that made him an effective leader—Chamberlain’s was permeated with a presumption of authority and a coldness that forced his colleagues to bend to his will. Distinguished by a disposition for hard work and dedicated to technicality, he personified the modern term of a “micro-manager.” He was also the most intelligent man he ever met, and this self-assurance brought respect rather than affection.25 Chamberlain’s leadership style consequently had a rigidity that deprecated advice and ideas contrary to his own.26 He sought not so much to manage talent as to force it to construct policy in the way he demanded. That he was able as prime minister to control the Conservative Party completely till the Prague crisis, and, thus, harness Baldwin’s earlier labours to keep mass democracy on his side, gave him an authority to shape domestic and foreign policy in his image in the last two years of peace. Considering the economic crisis that bedevilled Britain in the 1930s— a crisis plaguing all states great and small—it is not surprising that the Conservatives took control of National Government economic policy. Whilst Baldwin busied himself with social politics and undermining the opposition parties—the anti-MacDonald Labourites and a rump of Liberals clustering around David Lloyd George—and radical groups on the left and right, Chamberlain served as chancellor of the Exchequer.27 Looking back to the Victorian heyday of British economic and financial success, the coalition partners began their term in office wedded to free trade and fiscal orthodoxy as the formulae to break the back of the Depression within Britain. With Chamberlain’s firm hand at the Treasury, retrenchment and improving trade became the leitmotif of National Government economic policy domestically, in the Empire, and internationally. Different economic recipes, of course, were available to Baldwin, Chamberlain, and their partners. Some imaginative economists advocated short-term government deficit financing to spend Britain out of its economic straits—and they were joined by opposition politicians like Lloyd George, hungry for means to weaken the government.28 Free trade also suffered an assault from protectionists like Leopold Amery, a former Conservative dominions and colonial secretary, who championed Imperial preference as the way to shield Britain and its Empire from international


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economic chaos.29 As Britain was a trading nation, the National Government ultimately proved willing to modify free trade—at the 1932 Ottawa Imperial Conference that tried to create an Imperial customs union and, five years later, after special tripartite tariff talks involving Canada and the United States.30 Nonetheless, fiscal orthodoxy could not be compromised; supported by Baldwin and the coalition Conservatives, Chamberlain and the Treasury would not bend on this point. Government programmes—especially those touching foreign policy and defence—had to be based on available public funds.31 The result was that, slowly, Britain recovered from the “Slump.”32 Crucially, as befits liberal and mass democracy, the coalition partners within the National Government could not dictate to the country. Each party represented the different political aspirations of their supporters.33 Policy had to have wide support not just to be effective, but to ensure electoral success. This task was not always easy, for instance, in September 1932 when Samuel and a handful of free trade Liberals retreated to the opposition benches over the Ottawa tariffs. But the coalition that took office in August 1931 held together until May 1940—when it was restructured more broadly to meet the war crisis after Chamberlain lost the confidence of the Commons. It did so because the Conservative Party always had an absolute majority in Parliament, even after a General Election in November 1935. The reason for its political resilience devolved from the fact that above the partisan support that MacDonald Labourites, National Liberals, and Conservatives received from their respective followings amongst voters, coalition leaders appealed to wider public opinion with their policies, including foreign and defence policy.34 Here Baldwin’s deft touch was crucial—Chamberlain never once fought a General Election as prime minister. Mass democracy in inter-war Britain was distinguished by the rise of influential sectional interests and public opinion groups, including agricultural, industrial, and financial bodies, trade unions, and other organisations. Importantly, again the result of the Great War, a number of organisations as diverse as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the League of Nations Union, and the Women’s League of International Peace and Freedom sought to influence foreign policy.35 It is axiomatic that free electorates get governments that they want and deserve. Appealing to British voters in a calm, dispassionate way, and with the economy slowly mending, Baldwin brought significant electoral support to both the Conservatives and the National Government. Of course, he sometimes obfuscated issues; he also showed no aversion to massaging the national political psyche with avuncular words, even via the new media of radio and cinema news reels.36 Other British leaders at the time—and since—sought to do the same. But Baldwin succeeded where Lloyd George and other opposition politicians failed.37 National

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Government policies accordingly reflected the desires and interests of the majority of British voters. Just as international fiscal dislocation shaped domestic British politics, so, too, did it shape—or rather, reshape—international politics in the 1930s. After 1918, a new international order had been created with stops and starts by the greater and lesser Powers. The Great War had destroyed the pre-1914 constellation of international politics built around the European Powers and their global empires. Tsarist Russia, Austria–Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire were shattered by defeat, revolution, and the nationalist uprisings of subject peoples. Imperial Germany, the principal defeated belligerent, fell because of military defeat and economic exhaustion. Whilst in Western Europe, its successor, the Weimar Republic, lost territory to France and Belgium, in Eastern Europe, “successor” states profited at German, Russian, and Austro–Hungarian expense. Outside of Europe, in Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, German colonies fell under the control of Britain and some of its dominions—Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa—and its ally, Japan. In the Middle East, with little concern for their wartime confederate, Italy, Britain and France carved up the Ottoman Empire outside of Asia Minor. At the moment of the November 1918 Armistice, the major victorious Allies, Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, looked to establish that new international order.38 It was not an order that the supporters of the “new” diplomacy championed by the American president, Woodrow Wilson, envisaged before and during the first phases of the Paris Peace Conference.39 Some elements of Wilsonian idealism managed to issue forth—the multilateral organisation, the League of Nations, as a diplomatic mechanism to maintain international peace and security is the best example, although even it did not adhere completely to Wilson’s vision.40 But with the emotive echoes of the sacrifices of blood and gold made in winning the War influencing the peacemakers, including the Americans, a new approach in conducting foreign policy proved impossible. As the victorious Powers of all dimensions were unwilling to abandon the pursuit of their narrow national interests, to disarm, and to forsake seeking economic, political, and strategic advantage one against the other, “old diplomacy” triumphed over the “new.” Despite the advent of the United States and Japan as major Powers by 1918, Europe remained the centre of global politics, a consequence of Britain, France, and Italy having vast overseas empires, capable armed forces, and modern economies. Amongst the defeated European states, republican Germany and the Bolshevik heir to tsarist Russia possessed large, well-educated populations, latent economic and industrial muscle, and the possibility of renewed armed forces; their potential to influence international politics remained significant.41 Worried about both German and Russian revanchism, the larger Eastern European successor states,


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Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia, saw their security tied to France, now the dominant continental Power and both anti-German and anti-Bolshevik.42 And the rise of the Bolshevik regime added an unfamiliar and darker element to post-war international politics: ideology. Before 1914, British diplomats could speak disparagingly about the “menace” of German militarism;43 German ones about the danger of “slavophile Russia”;44 and their Russian contemporaries about Austro– Hungarian policies bearing “poisonous fruit.”45 Yet the pre-war Powers and their regimes were remarkably similar in that they were commanded by elites that shared common cultural, political, and social values and similar world views.46 But these elites also brought about the debacle of the Great War. Bolshevik leaders eschewed conservative, liberal, and moderate socialist political nostrums that had apparently produced the carnage of 1914–1918, promoting in Russia and abroad Marxist–Leninist dogma to create economic and social egalitarianism.47 Built on bloody revolution in Russia, and ruthless repression afterwards, the glaring contrast between communist governance and that in the rest of Europe and abroad found pro-Russian disciples in all the Powers—Hungary briefly suffered a Bolshevik regime in 1918–1919. But communism was anathema to the political majority—conservative, liberal, and socialist—outside of Russia. It also spawned in places a reaction on the extreme right of the political spectrum. Tellingly, when liberal government faltered in Italy following a political crisis in 1922, a “fascist” regime led by Benito Mussolini seized power.48 The antithesis of communism—strongly nationalist, militarist, and promoting corporate control of the economy— fascism offered a severe political contrast to communism. Still, the fountainhead of these new doctrines on the left and the right and their political expressions lay in Europe—despite their similarity in oppressive totalitarian control of populations—compounding post-Great War Europe’s political importance in the world. In this sense, the Paris Peace Conference constituted just the beginning of the diplomatic process that shaped the post-1918 international order. Although the peacemakers had ambitions for more, they essentially rearranged the map of Europe at the expense of defeated Germany and its allies, saw the transfer of German and Ottoman colonial holdings to the victors, attempted to give legality to these changes, and tried to resolve a series of issues concerning the general level of armed forces, the sovereignty of the successor states, and apportioning the war’s economic cost through reparations settlements imposed on the defeated Powers.49 It took a series of later conferences and the exertions of a range of diplomats to settle issues unresolved or made worse at Paris. In 1921–1922, responding to China’s instability, a multilateral conference at Washington brought a system of security to East Asia: a naval limitation agreement amongst the

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five great naval Powers—Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy; a nine-Power guarantee of China’s sovereignty, and a four-Power pact—Britain, the United States, Japan, and France—confirming the postwar status quo in the Pacific Ocean.50 Then beginning in 1923, a series of bilateral war debt agreements were signed between the former Allies and the United States. These agreements created trans-Atlantic tensions as the Allies argued that they contributed as much in blood as the Americans did with money.51 Strain was accentuated when, in 1921, a Republican Administration took power at Washington and reaffirmed the American tradition of political isolation from international politics—it prevented, for instance, American membership in the League. Economic diplomacy, nevertheless, constituted a different proposition and, along with enhancing American trade and investment, American leaders looked to collect war debts.52 In all of this, the German question seemed impossible to answer. Republican Germany chafed at the territorial losses imposed in 1919; its economy was weakened by reparations payments imposed by the victorious Powers; and where the forced disarmament of Weimar brought forth German concern about French triumphalism, France and its Eastern European allies searched for effective security against a revived Germany. The turning point came in January 1923, when France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s industrial heartland, to siphon off German industrial production in lieu of defaulted reparations transfers—the German economy collapsed in 1922 because of hyper-inflation brought on by the export of billions of gold marks. Over the next two years, international bankers laboured to revive the German economy and restart reparations payments.53 By late 1924, an international committee of bankers led by an American, Charles Dawes, introduced a new German currency, stabilised Germany’s economy largely with American loans, and regularised reparations.54 This agreement remained crucial because even though Washington refused to connect war debts and reparations, the former Allies used German reparations to pay their debts to the United States. The Ruhr occupation also heightened security issues. Franco–Belgian action proved a disaster—Germans offered passive resistance; German fascists, the National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazis) led by Hitler, attempted a coup; and with the British and Americans worrying about German economic recovery and using their stronger currencies to pressure the franc, France found the occupation profitless politically and financially. For almost three years because American isolationism precluded United States participation in a European security arrangement, European statesmen undertook to end the discord in Franco–German relations.55 For the British, their policy of reconstruction found basis on the balance of power. Lord Curzon, the foreign secretary under both


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Lloyd George and Baldwin from 1919 to 1923, worked with his Foreign Office advisors and the Cabinet to construct diplomatic initiatives designed to give Britain a voice in a regime of European security.56 With the importance of reviving British post-war trade, this process involved reversing French efforts to keep Germany enfeebled economically; German rearmament was a different proposition. Still, the French were undeterred, and only the absolute failure of the Ruhr occupation allowed for effective British involvement in continental security. Beginning in late 1924, Austen Chamberlain, the foreign secretary in Baldwin’s second government, broke the deadlock. Although enamoured initially by an Anglo–French alliance, he came to support a Rhineland security pact in which Britain would play the “honest broker.”57 By getting a French pledge not to invade Germany and a German one not to invade France—and by Chamberlain persuading Rome to join London in guaranteeing each pledge—the Franco–German border determined at the Paris Peace Conference became fixed.58 These undertakings were encased in the December 1925 Locarno Treaty; and accepting Eastern European concerns about German revanchism, Locarno also included a series of arbitration agreements by which Eastern European borders could be adjusted peaceably.59 As a subsidiary agreement, Germany was allowed to join the League and receive a permanent seat on the Council, its central decision-making body; permanent seats were occupied only by recognised Great Powers—Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. A system of European security had been created. With the Washington system in East Asia and the Pacific, Locarno ushered in a period of international stability that became the distinguishing feature of the latter half of the 1920s. In Europe, collaborating with Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann, respectively, the French and German foreign ministers, Chamberlain endeavoured to use Britain’s political strength to maintain Great Power tranquillity. Adhering to established British foreign policy strategy, Chamberlain understood that Britain’s role was to maintain the continental balance; in doing so, the League became the medium through which he concentrated his efforts.60 In East Asia, he also pursued an equilibrium. After the Washington conference, Anglo–Japanese economic and political interests dominated in China, the fulcrum of the balance. Working with Tokyo, Chamberlain devised a condominium that balanced British interests, based in southern China at Shanghai and along the Yangtse River, with those of Japan in the north.61 This does not suggest that international difficulties disappeared. In early 1926, Franco–German tensions arose when Briand and Stresemann privately discussed an early end to French occupation of the Rhineland, enforced by the Treaty of Versailles, the peace settlement with Germany, and to be in place till at least 1935.62 And in 1927, anti-foreign riots in

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China saw Baldwin’s second government unilaterally despatch 10,000 marines to Hankow to re-establish order.63 Yet, the “Locarno era” saw concrete diplomatic efforts to strengthen the international order whose foundations were laid at the Paris Peace Conference. In this regard, two initiatives are significant. First, a new committee of bankers under the chairmanship of another American, Owen Young, proposed scaling down German reparations; at conferences at The Hague in August 1929 and January 1930, these proposals were accepted and the distribution of reparations to the former Allies revised.64 An important corollary of The Hague Conferences was the ending of the French occupation of the Rhineland on 1 June 1930. The second initiative began earlier, in March 1926, as a consequence of Locarno. The League established a Commission to prepare for an eventual World Disarmament Conference; its goal was to produce a draft disarmament treaty that would serve as the basis for final negotiations at the Conference.65 Section V of Versailles—the forced disarmament of Germany—was posited on there being eventual general disarmament by all the Powers. Britain’s Locarno guarantee and Germany’s entry to the League meant that conditions for general disarmament were achieved. The Preparatory Commission was still meeting in January 1930. In this context, it is critical to understand that the international order that emerged in the 1920s did not contain the seeds of disaster that germinating in the 1930s produced the outbreak of the Second World War. The systems of stability in Europe and East Asia were not illusory. Chamberlain, Briand, and others in the 1920s had produced the diplomatic means to ensure peace and stability. It fell to their successors in the new decade to use them with effect. The Great Depression re-shaped international politics;66 and not surprisingly, the war debt and reparations agreements almost immediately came under assault. Whilst reduced commodity prices, shrinking industrial production, and concomitant increases in unemployment affected all countries, these developments had decided piquancy in Germany.67 German loans contracted with American banking houses as part of the Dawes Plan were now called in. German reparations to their former enemies helped fund Allied war debt payments; as ink dried on The Hague settlement, Germany’s ability to pay even reduced reparations became increasingly difficult. As the Weimar Republic had domestic enemies on the extreme left and right, huge levels of German unemployment began to enhance the electoral appeal of those enemies. In January 1933, the result was Hitler’s appointment as chancellor and the beginning of a Nazi revolution in both domestic politics and foreign policy.68 As occurred in Germany, the economic crisis affected political life in other Powers. In Eastern Europe, all the “successor” states except Czechoslovakia gradually adopted right-wing authoritarian regimes.69


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With small economies and small populations, and animated by fear of “Russian” expansionism—it mattered not if Russians were tsarist or communist—these states gradually migrated from the French alliance system into the German orbit.70 In western Europe, an area encompassing Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and France, liberal democracy proved resilient against domestic coups from either the extreme left or right.71 But the economic crisis still had an impact on their domestic politics and foreign policy. In France, for instance, resulting from its constitutional peculiarities, a series of short-term governments arose; they were shaped by the vagaries of the Depression and, in foreign policy, notable for their unpredictability.72 In the Iberian peninsula, fascist regimes emerged in Spain and Portugal by the late 1930s: in Spain through a fascist coup by Army rebels and their anti-socialist supporters that produced a bloody civil war between 1936 and 1939; and in Portugal by the political machinations of Antonio Salazar.73 Beyond Europe, in terms of the configuration of international politics, the Depression had its greatest impact on the two new Great Powers. In the United States, revulsion at Republican fiscal policies produced electoral victory for the Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, in November 1932. Despite new domestic precepts to end America’s economic crisis, Roosevelt continued Republican external policies of isolation from international political affairs and pursuit of aggressive economic diplomacy to augment American fiscal strength.74 Like Britain, Japan depended on trade for economic survival. Discrediting Japanese civilian politicians who controlled government and were blamed for Japan’s economic straits, the economic crisis allowed the rise of militarist cabinets that saw armed expansion in China as the way to revive national economic fortunes. A month after the National Government took office, the Japanese Army unilaterally embarked on the conquest of Manchuria, inaugurating Tokyo’s attempt to restructure the East Asian balance in its favour.75 It was against this backdrop of domestic politics and international affairs that British foreign and defence policy was conceived, debated, and pursued by government ministers and their advisors in the 1930s. Put succinctly, the devastation of national economies and international trade spawned by the Great Depression served as a catalyst that polarised nations politically, particularly the Great Powers in Europe, North America, and East Asia. Although Baldwin led other British politicians in stymieing the advent of radical political prescriptions in Britain,76 the genesis of Hitler’s regime and the entrenchment of militarism in Japan threatened British interests. More specifically, Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan imperiled international stability by endangering the European and Far Eastern balances of power that had been the fruit of the Washington and Locarno treaties. Added to the fact that in terms of power politics, Bolshevik

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Russia was an unknown quantity in international affairs in the early 1930s,77 British foreign and defence policy had to confront an evolving— sometimes a swiftly evolving—constellation of international power. Whilst the grand strategic goals of foreign and defence policy were never questioned, the problem lay with determining the strategic response in the difficult economic and political circumstances of the 1930s. Those means had to conform to the wishes of British voters and not jeopardize the economic health of the government. Importantly, appeasement was not Britain’s only strategic alternative. Professor Gibbs has argued that British foreign and defence policy for the interwar period divides into three periods: disarmament, 1919–1932; meeting defence deficiencies, 1933–1936; and rearmament, 1936–1939.78 Thus, the 1930s saw a shift in British external relations after 1936 when the National Government embarked on a programme both to underpin foreign policy with military strength and allow for better protection of the home islands and the Empire. Despite this transition from disarmament to rearmament in military policy, the strategic basis of foreign policy remained unchanged until 1937: it was founded on the balance of power. Although it is true that British diplomatists sometimes differed in their conception of how the balance operated,79 the essential strategy followed that outlined in a major memorandum penned by Eyre Crowe, a senior Foreign Office official, in late 1906.80 Looking at the balance in historical terms and applying it to the situation confronting Britain at that juncture, Crowe’s arguments formed the cornerstone of British policy before and after the Great War: The only check on the abuse of political predominance derived from such a position [an imbalance of power] has always consisted in the opposition of an equally formidable rival, or of a combination of several countries forming leagues of defence. The equilibrium established by such a grouping of forces is technically known as the balance of power, and it has become almost an historical truism to identify England’s secular policy with the maintenance of this balance by throwing her weight now in this scale and now in that, but ever on the side opposed to the political dictatorship of the strongest single State or group at a given time.

Crowe’s chief disciples inhabited the Foreign Office, younger diplomats before 1914, after 1918, they occupied senior positions in the British diplomatic establishment; as permanent under-secretary (PUS) from 1920 to 1925, Crowe promoted those who agreed with his vision.81 Robert Vansittart, PUS from January 1930 to December 1937, was one of his most ardent adherents.82


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Foreign Office influence in making British foreign policy from October 1922 till late 1937 cannot be overestimated. A critic of the social exclusiveness of the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service and distrustful of their advice, Lloyd George had largely eliminated Foreign Office influence in policy-making during his premiership—December 1916 to October 1922. Using a few influential private secretaries in Downing Street to assist him in policy-making, and placing political cronies in important embassies abroad like Paris and Berlin, he used the professional diplomats largely as tools to implement his policies.83 But once Lloyd George fell from power, prime ministerial control of foreign policy evaporated. Curzon and Crowe had actually begun the process of emplanting professional diplomats schooled in the balance of power in key positions in the Foreign Office and a few embassies before Lloyd George fell. After October 1922, Curzon, MacDonald, who served as his own foreign secretary in the short-lived first Labour government in 1924, and Austen Chamberlain all moved to reassert Foreign Office control over British external relations;84 by July 1928, when the last of Lloyd George’s ambassadorial appointments vacated the Paris Embassy, the professionals controlled completely policy-making and implementation. Part of the reason for this turn of events were the beliefs of Curzon, MacDonald, and Chamberlain about the sensibility of professional advice and the desire of Curzon and Chamberlain to keep other ministers from encroaching on their responsibilities.85 The other part derived from prime ministers, chiefly Baldwin and MacDonald, willing to concede Foreign Office control of foreign policy. In this equation, Vansittart had especial authority. He earlier formed close personal relationships with both Baldwin and MacDonald—in fact, MacDonald engineered his appointment as PUS in January 1930 because of the need for professional control of the Foreign Office.86 It developed that except for the last six months of his eight year tenure as PUS, Vansittart served two premiers who tended to accept his counsel—Foreign Office counsel—on foreign policy, especially the strategy that underpinned it. Naturally, other ministries sometimes took charge of particular external problems within their narrow purview—for example, the Treasury over reparations87—but strategy and the political thrust of policy derived from the Foreign Office. The period of disarmament in British foreign policy began in 1926, following the conclusion of Locarno. With the establishment of the Disarmament Preparatory Commission, Baldwin’s second government and its minority Labour successor began to pare the budgets for all three armed services. Coming to power only five months before the World Disarmament Conference opened in February 1932, the National Government determined to reduce further defence appropriations. In these circumstances, spending on the armed forces declined by more than fifteen percent

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between 1925–1932.88 Given inflation rates, the reality of the reductions lay in the order of twenty percent. Moreover, in July 1928, Winston Churchill, the chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin’s second government, won approval to base armed services spending and planning on a daily basis on the so-called “Ten-Year Rule.” Supported by the Cabinet’s principal sub-committee that advised on foreign and defence policy, the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), this “Rule” posited that “it should be assumed, for the purpose of framing the Estimates of the Fighting Services, that at any given date there will be no major war for ten years.”89 It contained a proviso that the assumption would guide the government “until, on the initiative of the Foreign Office or one of the Fighting Services or otherwise, it was decided to alter it.” Tied to the anticipation of success at the World Disarmament Conference, the desire of domestic ministers to have more public funds without increasing taxes, and influential British anti-war and pacifist public organisations demanding arms cuts, the “Rule” saw successive British governments pursue effective policies of arms limitation. With the advent of the Great Depression, retrenchment continued to eat away at defence spending. The levels to which British defence budgets were cut gives eloquent testimony to the fact Britain undertook a degree of unilateral cuts to its armed forces; and it proves hollow assertions by some historians that “Conservative” politicians circumvented effective arms control.90 In the first two years of the 1930s, the second Labour government dealt with three major and inter-connected foreign policy problems: reparations, disarmament, and the improvement of Anglo–American relations. In the quest to make the Young Plan succeed, British reparations policy centred on balancing the German ability to pay with French desires to retard German economic and financial revival.91 British disarmament policy had a similar thrust: within an international limitation regime that would permit sufficient British armed forces to protect its interests, find an equilibrium between French desires for security and German demands to rearm.92 The American question suffused both reparations policy and disarmament. The Washington treaty had only limited warships displacing more than 10,000 tons, leaving cruisers, the weapon to enforce or break maritime blockade, unrestricted; in 1927, to steal a march on the lethergic Preparatory Commission, the American president, Calvin Coolidge, sponsored what became failed naval disarmament talks at Geneva.93 The naval question was emotive. The British saw cruisers as the backbone of their fleet; American amour-propre demanded complete parity between the United States Navy (USN) and the Royal Navy (RN). Compounding these differences lay the chancre of post-war Anglo–American economic competition over trade, finance, and access to raw materials, and in which war debts had a place.94 Hence, improving trans-Atlantic relations could


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produce a spirit of Anglo–American cooperation that might rebound favourably over reparations and rearmament. Before it fell in August 1931, MacDonald’s ministry proved successful in meeting these intertwined questions. Importantly, as that government had failed to form a majority in the Commons in the 1929 election, MacDonald jousted with two powerful ministers—Philip Snowden, the chancellor of the Exchequer, and Arthur Henderson, the foreign secretary—to achieve political victories and, thereby, dominate the Labour Party. It followed that each took for himself one of these issues so as to augment their political strength: Snowden handled reparations, Henderson disarmament, and MacDonald the amelioration of Anglo–American differences. Long an advocate of close Anglo–American relations and as the Opposition leader from 1924 to 1929 who attacked Baldwin’s second government after the Coolidge conference for its disarmament policies and handling of the United States,95 MacDonald looked to cement close Anglo–American relations. Although groundwork for a rapprochement had actually been completed by Baldwin and Austen Chamberlain before June 1929—built around a proposed prime ministerial visit to Washington to hold discussions with Herbert Hoover, Coolidge’s successor96—MacDonald could brandish the accomplishment of Anglo–American concord to fortify the electoral appeal of the Labour Party and re-enforce his position as its leader. His visit to Washington in Autumn 1929 laid the basis for Anglo– American co-operation at the London naval conference of January–April 1930, called to extend the Washington naval treaty. Founded on a compromise that gave the RN an advantage in light cruisers over the USN in the London naval treaty of 1930, Anglo–American relations entered a co-operative phase that lasted till the advent of Roosevelt’s Administration in March 1933.97 Concurrent with MacDonald’s diplomacy towards the United States were Snowden’s efforts at the two Hague conferences to ensure that translating the Young Plan into practical politics did not further weaken Germany vis-a-vis France—and getting a greater portion of German reparations payments for the British Exchequer. As noted above, two crucial issues dominated the Hague conferences: reducing Germany’s annual reparations bill to two billion marks; and tying the new financial agreement to the early Allied evacuation of the Rhineland. In these matters, Snowden played his hand well: French suggestions to increase Germany’s annual payments were rebuffed; through hard negotiations, Britain received an increase of eighty-three percent more in payments from Germany than that proposed in the Young Plan; and, by threatening Paris that British forces would withdraw from the Rhineland on 31 December 1929, Snowden forced the French to agree to a full Allied withdrawal six months later.98 Admittedly, the longer term success of the Hague agreements

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almost immediately came into question under the pressure of the international economic crisis. Germany’s increasing difficulty in paying reparations, the former Allies’ determination to collect them, and the American government’s refusal to link Allied war debts and reparations added to both international instability and, in Germany’s case, strengthening the Nazis and the German Communist Party. A one-year moratorium on all inter-governmental debt payments proposed by Hoover in June 1931 offered some respite; accepted by the Powers, debt and reparations payments were to begin again in December 1932.99 Although the strength of the international economic crisis threatened the reparations scheme confirmed at The Hague, the most difficult foreign policy question confronting the Labour government encompassed Henderson’s bailiwick: disarmament.100 The other Powers within the Preparatory Commission had done little in gearing up for the World Disarmament Conference after 1928 because of Anglo–American discord. However, once this stalemate ended at the London naval conference in early 1930, the other Powers had to consider seriously the production of a draft treaty for the eventual conference—the moreso as the London agreement was to be the basis for naval arms limitation in the World Treaty. With patient diplomacy stretching over almost two years, Henderson and the Foreign Office played a pivotal role in the Preparatory Commission in settling on a draft treaty, finding agreement on the bureaucratic structure of the Conference, and arriving at a date for its inaugural session— 2 February 1932. In this process, the British position looked to balance French demands for increased security with German ones for “equality of treatment,” that is that since the other Powers had not disarmed to Germany’s level as promised in the Treaty of Versailles, Germany should be allowed to rearm above the limits imposed on it in 1919.101 Henderson’s success can be judged by his selection in May 1931 as President of the Disarmament Conference, a personal appointment unconnected to his position as foreign secretary; general opinion amongst the Powers held that he had pursued even-handed diplomacy.102 But despite its foreign policy record, the Labour government fell because of its inability to square domestic political requirements with the international economic crisis. In this sense, the National Government took office solely to resolve this domestic financial emergency and, once order was restored, a General Election was to be held in which the coalition partners would run separately—this especially was the view of Baldwin, whose experience as a junior minister in Lloyd George’s coalition ministry had left him with a particular distaste for coalitions. Thus, there was an irony in that Baldwin became central to the determination of coalition leaders to fight a General Election in October 1931 as a “National Government.” Such a decision was not only politically expedient for each


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coalition partner, it also offered a period of political stability in which Britain’s domestic problems could be to resolved. To meet the domestic financial crisis, economic diplomacy would need to turn to the problem of war debts and reparations. Yet, within a month of taking office, the National Government suddenly confronted an assault on the Far Eastern balance of power when Japan’s Kwantung Army launched its campaign to absorb the Chinese province of Manchuria into the Japanese Empire. Although much is now known about the fissiparous nature of the Japanese government and the impact of the Depression on Japan’s economy and society that precipitated the outbreak of war on the East Asian continent,103 immediate British concern lay in reestablishing regional stability and, from there, a regional balance of power. British military action against Japan was impossible. Although Japan’s actions violated the Washington nine-Power treaty, none of the other signatories, especially the United States, were willing to use armed force to compel Tokyo to disgorge its conquest. And given the relative strength of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the western Pacific Ocean that flowed from the Washington four-Power treaty, Britain could not unilaterally oppose Japan. Nor did the National Government, preparing for the October 1931 election, and its foreign and defence policy advisors wish to do so. The coalition took office to end the Depression in Britain; financially speaking, war in the Far East was unacceptable. So, too, was it for strategic reasons. As the Foreign Office starkly pointed out: “His Majesty’s Government’s interest in the territorial status of Manchuria is infinitely less than their interest in maintaining cordial relations with Japan.”104 Given the economic, strategic, and domestic political reality, the National Government decided to support the League in resolving the crisis—a situation created by China’s appeal to Geneva. This decision had the double merit of showing the sizeable British pro-League public interest groups that the new government, soon to go to the polls, supported the Covenant. Over the next year, despite provocative Japanese actions like the bombing of Shanghai in February 1932, the British worked through the League to resolve the Sino–Japanese dispute—a senior British statesman, Lord Lytton, headed a five-member League Commission of Enquiry sent to the Far East to investigate and make recommendations. Although the Japanese would not abandon Manchuria and extended their conquest to include most of China north of the Great Wall, the desultory nature of the Enquiry—it reported in October 1932105— helped reduce tensions amongst the Great Powers interested in China. Even when the Lytton Report found that Japan had over-reacted to protect its interests in Manchuria and Tokyo announced Japanese withdrawal from the League in February 1933, British policy sought an accommodation with Japan within a revised East Asia balance of power. This policy

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entailed no surrender to Japanese ambitions. Since the mid-1920s, British and Japanese economic spheres of interest in China had been divided on geographical lines: Britain’s in the south, at Hong Kong, Shanghai, and along the Yangste; Japan’s in the north, chiefly in Manchuria. Although a new Anglo–Japanese political accommodation after the Manchurian crisis was required to replace the Washington agreements respecting China, little change occurred in the delineation of British and Japanese interests. Still, British security in East Asia remained essential. The strategic problem for London after May 1933, when China signed the Tangku treaty acquiescing in Japan’s conquests, concerned what Tokyo might do in future to rearrange the East Asian balance more in its favour. Yet, as the Foreign Office informed the CID that month, time was on Britain’s side: “In the Far East Japan is in complete, though illegal, occupation of four Chinese provinces. . . . But in spite of its very great importance for one part of the world, the Sino–Japanese dispute is not that which at the moment threatens world peace and delays world economic recovery. The political causes of our present distresses are to be found in Europe.”106 Europe had always had priority in British strategic policy for the simple reason that whilst a part of the Empire could be lost to an adversary and Britain would not collapse, an attack on or weakening of the home islands could be a lethal blow. From 1931 to late 1933, the European threat to Britain had two elements, both of which touched the German question. The first involved the obvious inability of the Weimar Republic to meet its reparations payments—which fostered the growth of radicalism on both the German right and left and frayed the fabric of constitutional government. In January 1932, Chamberlain and the Treasury and the Foreign Office and the new foreign secretary, Sir John Simon, won Cabinet approval to hold a special reparations conference at Lausanne beginning in late January.107 Looking to end reparations and their tremendous drag on British trade—in reality, abrogating the Young Plan—Chamberlain’s strategy involved making “no public statement which would link up Reparations & War Debts but deal with Reprs first & then go to [the] U.S.A. and ask them to make their contributions.”108 A January meeting proved impossible. The advent of the Disarmament Conference diverted political energies; both Paris and Berlin asked for delay until the Summer to be better prepared—each looked for events to unfold in their favour in the interim; and Hoover’s government indicated that it would not participate in any reparations conference, a problem he argued was unrelated to war debts.109 Nonetheless, with the advent of new governments in Germany and France, a reparations conference convened at Lausanne on 16 June 1932. In less than a month of frank negotiation,110 Britain, France, and other recipient Powers formally accepted that Germany would be unable to pay reparations when the Hoover moratorium ended. In Simon’s view, success


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came because London, the “honest broker,” maintained the balance between Paris and Berlin.111 In return for Britain and France cancelling reparations, Germany would promise good behaviour and make a onetime payment of 3 billion marks, the equivalent of one and one-half annual Young Plan payments.112 Lausanne achieved its purpose: reparations were annulled and inter-governmental debt amongst the participants repudiated. But as Britain and the recipient Powers refused to divorce war debts from reparations, the agreement remained provisional, hinging on Washington’s willingness to suspend inter-governmental debts owed the United States. Privately, Henry Stimson, Hoover’s secretary of state, informed the British in April that such willingness would be possible after the November 1932 presidential-Congressional elections.113 Five weeks later, he told MacDonald that Washington supported “the utility of an Economic and Monetary Conference, if the British Government cared to call it.”114 His only proviso held that this conference would have to meet after the American elections. It seemed possible as Lausanne ended that the reparations chancre that both undermined economic recovery and enhanced political radicalism in Europe could disappear by mid-1933. Whilst the strategy underpinning economic diplomacy seemed to bring results, that concerning disarmament did not. The first phase of the Disarmament Conference lasted till the first week of June 1932.115 Almost as soon as negotiations began in February, the French and the Germans exhumed old policies that foiled progress: the French sought increased security guarantees before reducing their national armoury; still chafing at the fact that the other Powers had not disarmed to Germany’s level as promised in the Versailles treaty, the Germans reasserted their demand for “equality of treatment.” Behind the public facade, British remained concerned about European stability. Lausanne did not eliminate Franco–German resentments. Concerning disarmament, a less accommodating French government came to office on 20 February 1932; in late May, an equalling unobliging ministry assumed power in Berlin. At the end of July, Germany announced its boycott of the Disarmament Conference until the other Powers conceded “equality of treatment.” Supported by MacDonald and the Cabinet, the Foreign Office looked for diplomatic means to revive the conference. The result, the so-called “Simon Plan” enunciated on 10 November 1932,116 proposed replacing Section V of Versailles with a new agreement binding on all signatories to the new disarmament treaty. By this means, arms limitation would apply to Germany for the duration of the treaty whilst, jettisoning Versailles’ strictures, Germany could acquire qualitative parity. With Britain mediating between France and Germany, Simon’s “Plan” looked to balance French security demands with German claims for equality. Berlin announced the end of its boycott, and disarmament discussions were to reconvene on 31 January 1933.

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However, on 30 January, a consequence of Germany’s economic and political crisis, Hitler became German chancellor. The little more than three years of Great Depression had weakened the economic, political, and social sinews of the post-Great War order.117 Thus, despite continuing disarmament discussions and preparations for a World Economic Conference, domestic stresses within the major Powers, especially in Germany and Japan, began a process by which international politics began a marked transformation. That a transformation had begun was not, perhaps, appreciated until later in 1933—say, in October—when after the Economic Conference failed, Hitler took Germany out of the League and its Disarmament Conference. However, within two years, the international order created at Paris and Washington between 1919–1922 dissolved: the war debt agreements crumbled in 1933–1934; the Disarmament Conference adjourned without result in June 1934; the next March, Hitler announced German rearmament despite Versailles; and in December 1935, Japan refused to renew the 1930 London naval treaty. For those men responsible for British foreign policy, the evolving international situation saw sustained effort to strengthen that policy by increasing defence spending. A year earlier, in its 1932 “Annual Review,” the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COS)—the heads of the fighting services—argued before the CID that “the assumption that there will be no major war for ten years is contrary to the lessons of history; [and] has no counterpart in any foreign country.”118 It stressed “the following dangerous results:” being unable to meet “an aggression by Japan” in the Far East; material deficiencies in “all three Defence Services” that vitiated their ability to assure Imperial and home defence and meet Britain’s League and Locarno obligations; dilapidation of “our armament industry”; relative weakness vis-a-vis other Powers lacking a “Ten-Year Rule”; and “complacent optimism in public opinion.” Although MacDonald, Baldwin, and other ministers in the CID and Cabinet saw merit in these arguments and in effect abandoned the “Ten-Year Rule” in February 1932, a decision was made to delay meeting COS concerns:119 the country’s economic and financial health remained parlous; the Disarmament Conference might succeed; and in power only six months, and there to meet the crisis of the Depression, the National Government looked to avoid increasing expenditures early in its life. A year later the situation had changed. In April–May 1933, with disarmament discussions proving barren and just as Japan’s Manchurian conquest ended successfully, Vansittart and Sir Norman Warren Fisher, the Treasury permanent secretary, joined with the Colonial Office, India Office, and COS to pressure the Cabinet into determining a successor to the “Ten-Year Rule.”120 Their concerns were encased in the 1933 COS “Annual Report” that, completed on 12 October 1933, went to the CID—the Foreign Office, Treasury, and


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COS’s principal concern lay with the changing Far Eastern balance of power. Accordingly, the CID created a Defence Requirements Sub-Committee (DRC) to advise the government on how to meet its defence deficiencies— chaired by Sir Maurice Hankey, the secretary to both the CID and the Cabinet, its members were Vansittart, Warren Fisher, and the three service chiefs, Air Marshal Sir Edward Ellington, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd, and Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield. Its initial mandate centred on Japan’s threat to British East Asian interests; security issues in Europe and relating to India’s defence were of secondary importance.121 However, Hitler’s surprise of taking Germany out of both the League and the Disarmament Conference changed everything. In CID-modified terms of reference, the DRC had to look equally at the threats posed by both Japan and Nazi Germany.122 And from Chamberlain’s influence, these terms also comprised a modified “Tenyear rule”: “concerning defence questions, account need not be taken of any likelihood of war with the United States, France, or Italy during, say, the next ten years.”123 It began meeting in early November and reported on 28 February 1934. Although ostensibly to advise the National Government on where to direct increased defence funding, the DRC became the locus of a major examination of British strategy.124 The reason was simple: how could spending for the three armed services be set unless their missions, tied to the foreign policy goals of the government, were determined? In wideranging discussions dominated by Vansittart and Warren Fisher, the DRC concluded that Germany and militaristic Japan each constituted a “menace” to international security and Britain’s narrow national and Imperial interests.125 Importantly, Germany was designated the “ultimate potential enemy.” To meet the dual menaces in Europe and the Far East, the DRC recommended defence budget increases of £71.32 million by 1939— annual increments of ten to sixteen percent over 1933 spending—to rectify “the worst deficiencies” of the fighting services. In this reckoning, the RN would acquire supplementary funds (£21.068 million) to modernise existing capital ships, increase stores and weapons like mines and depthcharges, and strengthen seaward defences, especially at Singapore—precise estimates for new naval construction could not be made till early 1936 following the anticipated second London naval conference.126 Meeting RAF deficiencies (£10.265 million) centred on improving home defence, providing air-cover for bases east of Suez, augmenting the Fleet Air Arm, and expanding “war reserves.”127 Improving the Army (£39.991) would include expanding Territorial reserves, defending ports at home and abroad, and manning air defences Within the DRC, Vansittart and Warren Fisher dominated the determination of how to meet defence deficiencies—indeed, the COS were

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overwhelmed by the force of the arguments and the bureaucratic strength of a combined Foreign Office-Treasury view about the strategic threat to Britain and the Empire. As Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pownall, a CID staff officer who served as the DRC secretary, noted when the final “Report” was signed: “The civilians, whose presumable line was to keep down impossible service demands, have continually been the alarmist party, demanding quicker and heavier rearmament, whatever the price.”128 More than their COS colleagues, Vansittart and Warren Fisher believed that both Germany and Japan embodied clear threats to national and Imperial security. Warren Fisher reckoned that meeting naval deficiencies in the Far East—what he called “showing a tooth”—would not only deter Tokyo from actions that would imperil British colonies and commercial interests in East Asia and the western Pacific; it would allow for an improvement in Anglo–Japanese relations.129 Equally sanguine about ameliorating Anglo–Japanese differences—and over-riding less optimistic views of Foreign Office Far Eastern experts130—Vansittart argued persuasively that the East Asian and European balances of power were connected. As he instructed the DRC on 4 December 1933: “The order of priorities which put Japan first pre-supposed that Japan would attack us after we had got into difficulties elsewhere. ‘Elsewhere’ therefore came first, not second; and elsewhere could only mean Europe, and Europe could only mean Germany.”131 Constituting the leitmotif of his policy contributions in the DRC during the following two and one-half months, this logic formed the basis of the strategic prescription for British foreign and defence policy contained in the DRC “Report.” Adhering to Crowe’s conception of the balance, Vansittart held that Germany constituted the government’s principal concern so that British defence inadequacies had to be remedied with this in mind. This underlay his support for building up British armed strength, particularly the RAF, but it conformed more widely to his long held belief about a strong foreign policy by which an effective balance of power could be constructed. In this context, Vansittart proved central in giving British policy a new strategic initiative—one of potentially offensive capabilities—that reflected the DRC’s decision to reassert Britain’s commitment to maintain the continental balance as the best method of both preserving European stability and ensuring Britain’s national and Imperial security. The DRC “Report” recommended that the War Office priority be the creation of a “Regular Expeditionary Force”—a Field Force—for deployment to the continent, specifically to the Low Countries’; RAF “war reserves” would provide it with air support.132 The DRC “Report” was explicit: “We have fought at regular intervals on the Continent in order to prevent any Power, strong or potentially strong at sea, from obtaining bases on the Dutch and Belgian coasts. To-day the Low Countries are even more important to us


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in relation to the air defence of this country.”133 Such a commitment would deter possible German adventurism by indicating clearly Britain’s determination to join other Powers in preventing a rearrangement of the continental balance. Vansittart’s conception of British strategy—which became the DRC’s conception—focussed on Germany and what he had earlier described as its preparations for “external aggression.”134 As he told MacDonald and Simon as the “Report” was being drafted, “Germany will attract friends to her camp if she is allowed to grow, while we remain weak.”135 For Vansittart, greater defence spending would allow for British leadership in Europe to contain Germany. The best means of doing so entailed demonstrating to other continental Powers, primarily, France and Italy, that Britain had both means and will to oppose German ambitions. On 3 May 1934 the Cabinet, via the ministerial disarmament committee (DC(M)) that handled arms limitation, rearmament, and ancillary defence policy issues, began examinating the DRC “Report.” Even though Warren Fisher had endorsed its spending proposals and the strategic objectives that flowed from them, Chamberlain opposed the projected heavy spending on the Field Force and the relatively light funding projected for the RAF.136 One reason was political—the National Government would have to fight an election in 1935. Recent by-elections had seen National Government candidates defeated, notably in the previously Conservative safe-seat of East Fulham, where the Conservative nominee had advocated rearmament and his successful Labour opponent a reduced military budget and increased reliance on collective security.137 Another lay with the increasing threat of future aerial warfare and the possible bombing of civilian targets in Britain—Chamberlain had become an advocate of air power to better safeguard British home security, an option that was also less expensive than building up ground forces.138 Finally, acknowledging the German menace, Chamberlain thought a continental commitment dangerous. His conception of British strategy resided with a larger RAF to discourage a German attack on Britain, forsaking joint action with Belgium, Holland, Italy, and France, working with Japan, and avoiding any overtures to the United States. He supported non-intervention in Europe whilst the RAF protected Britain from air attack and the RN prevented a cross-Channel invasion. Britain could, therefore, ignore the European balance; after showing “a tooth” in East Asia, it could rely on Japanese patience to assure British interests there; and it could avoid aligning with other Powers should a crisis emerge in either the European or Imperial spheres. Some junior ministers supported Chamberlain, but senior Cabinet members, especially Baldwin, MacDonald, and the three service ministers, understood the need to improve defence and accepted the foreign policy direction that accompanied it. Vansittart’s hand can be seen here. Working

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with Simon to get the Foreign Office view before the DC(M) and using his personal relationships with Baldwin and MacDonald, he pressed the committee about the wisdom of a continental commitment.139 Moreover, the PUS penned a major Foreign Office assessment for the DC(M) on the gains that would derive from active British involvement on the continent.140 To make his point, he examined British policy before August 1914, when the government of the day did not make clear because of domestic political pressures whether Britain would intervene in Europe if war broke out between the Triple Alliance and the Dual Entente.141 Despite Wilhelmine German leaders cleaving to a belief in British neutrality—a deadly misperception—Britain went to war to support its Franco–Russian entente partners and protect its narrow national interests based on maintaining the balance. Given that Locarno and the cooperative diplomatic initiatives of the 1920s might not be practicable anymore, the National Government now needed to make the British position clear. “Europe remains in equal doubt both as to our policy and to our capacity,” he told the DC(M). “The results are already—or perhaps I should say at last— becoming manifest. . . . The political map of Europe is, in fact, altering under our eyes and to our disadvantage, if we must look upon Germany as the eventual enemy.” In the end, under Baldwin’s influence, the DC(M) accepted the DRC “Report”—to assuage public opinion, the government’s decision was phrased as rectifying defence deficiencies rather than undertaking rearmament. Chamberlain did succeed in paring the proposed spending requirements to just over £50 million—cutting RN and Army allotments and giving more to the RAF; here, the Territorial Army was the big loser. However, on the major issue of a continental commitment, Chamberlain lost the battle. The DC(M) supported the creation of the Field Force and what that decision represented for national and Imperial strategy. Britain could work with the other Powers to contain German ambitions—necessary also to dampen Japanese aspirations. In a telling way, the DRC determined British strategy for the next almost four years, that is until after Chamberlain rose to the premiership and ousted Vansittart as Foreign Office PUS. As a result, until late 1937, the Foreign Office sought to shape British foreign policy in both Europe and the Far East on the strategic basis of the balance of power. In the five crises that confronted mid-1930s British foreign policy—the announcement of German rearmament in March 1935, Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in the winter of 1935–1936, German re-militarisation of the Rhineland in March 1936, the outbreak of civil war in Spain, and Japan’s descent on China south of the Great Wall beginning in July 1937—pursuit of the balance under-pinned British efforts to maintain international stability. None of this suggests that a unanimity of opinion existed within the upper echelons of the government—in the Cabinet and


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the Civil Service—amongst those responsible for or wanting to be responsible for British strategy. Thus, consistently supportive of air rearmament, Chamberlain continued to promote the idea of jettisoning the balance in favour of bilateral agreements with Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and militaristic Japan to safeguard British interests.142 A new foreign secretary who took office in December 1935, Anthony Eden, looked increasingly on both the collective security offered by the League and on improved Anglo–American relations as a more effective way to ensure national and Imperial security.143 Others, like Chatfield and his desire for an improved RN, wanted to put even more reliance on British armed strength to deter what they perceived to be the aggressive tendencies of Germany, Italy, and Japan.144 But in these debates which continued beneath the surface in the Cabinet and the CID, the vision of Vansittart and his senior Foreign Office colleagues dominated. The reason was understandable. Although disagreeing now and then on the diplomatic tactics involved, Baldwin and MacDonald tended to support the PUS’s strategic prescription. As long as they remained in power, maintaining the balance stood as the strategic base of policy. Thus, when Hitler announced German rearmament in March 1935, the National Government’s immediate response lay in finding a basis for joining with Italy and France in finding common ground to contain German power. At a meeting at Stresa in late April, MacDonald joined with Mussolini and Pierre-Etienne Flandin, the French premier, to issue a resolution condemning Hitler’s renunciation of Versailles’ disarmament provisions—their efforts received immediate and unanimous support from the League Council.145 Along with discussions about agreements with Central European and Danubian Powers that saw danger in German actions, the “Stresa front” offered a political mechanism to balance remilitarised Germany with the armed strength of informal allies that shared concerns about growing German power. And throughout 1935, in terms of maintaining the global balance, Vansittart supported the notion of improving Anglo–Russian relations to contain Germany in Europe and Japan in the Far East.146 But Stresa proved fragile. In May, the French concluded a mutual guarantee alliance with Bolshevik Russia that, although seemingly approved by MacDonald and Mussolini at Stresa, created discomfort in fascist Italy.147 The next month, with Baldwin replacing MacDonald as prime minister in anticipation of the forthcoming General Election, the Foreign Office took the lead in concluding a naval treaty with Germany— the Reichsmarine surface fleet would be only thirty-five percent that of the RN, which gave the British a two-Power standard against Germany and Japan.148 Designed with realism to eliminate the possibility of an Anglo–German naval race of pre-1914 proportions, this agreement caused

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irritation in Paris, which argued correctly that the ending of the disarmament provisions of Versailles were now legally endorsed by London—of course, Hitler’s March announcement had already put arms restrictions on Germany. Still, as Chatfield told Vansittart: “It will be the first Naval agreement in Europe that will have been achieved and[,] if we take a strong attitude and present Europe with a courageous decision[,] it will much more likely, in our opinion, lead to something decisive in Europe generally.”149 Whilst the “Stresa Front” might have survived these French and British initiatives, the main problem confronting the unity of the three Powers involved Mussolini’s determination to expand the Italian Empire in East Africa by the conquest of Abyssinia. Although London and Paris sought to resolve worsening Italo–Abyssinian relations in the Summer of 1935, Mussolini’s forces launched their invasion of the East African kingdom from their Somalian colony in October 1935.150 Because of Abyssinia’s appeal to the League to force an Italian withdrawal, the British and French initially worked within the international organisation to find a settlement—a process in which increased economic sanctions against Italy were imposed over the Autumn. Vansittart found himself taking the lead in initiating British policy—a function of a new foreign secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, who replaced Simon in the Cabinet shuffle in June, willing to follow his expert advisor’s advice. Vansittart’s idea entailed using sanctions pressure to force a diplomatic solution that would save Italian self-esteem, essential for Stresa unanimity in Europe. But League sanctions policy both enflamed Mussolini’s bluster and, ultimately, proved ineffective. The final sanctions entailed an oil embargo against Italy, a petroleum-importing country; but coupled with passage of so-called “neutrality legislation” in United States, American oil companies that controlled more than fifty percent of the international petroleum industry refused to honour a League-embargo.151 By late November–early December, with Italian military victory imminent, Vansittart persuaded Hoare to work with Pierre Laval, the French foreign minister, to support an agreement by which Italy would acquire seven-eighths of Abyssinia and a rump Abyssinian polity would remain in place. If suitable to Italy and the League, such an agreement would have the double merit of appealing to proLeague public sentiment in Britain and keeping the Anglo–French–Italian triplice in place. But before the Hoare–Laval agreement could be explained at Rome and Geneva, its contents were leaked to the French press. Intense public disfavour in both Britain and France not only destroyed a negotiated settlement, but also forced both Hoare and Laval from office. Replacing Hoare, Eden had a pathological hatred of Mussolini, which worked against an Anglo–Italian settlement. The result was that when the Italo–Abyssinian war ended in May 1936, Anglo–Italian relations were at their nadir; and Stresa was dead.


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Always willing to exploit political fissures amongst German adversaries, in March 1936, Hitler saw opportunity in remilitarising the Rhineland whilst the Stresa Powers were falling out over Abyssinia.152 It constituted a brilliant diplomatic initiative, especially as even his military advisors had counselled against it. In a legal sense, given that Hitler’s public admission of German rearmament had terminated Versailles’ strictures on the size of Germany’s armed forces, remilitarisation of the Rhineland constituted emplacing the Wehrmacht in the sovereign territory of the Reich. Paris and London could have responded with a military offensive— the fear of the German generals—but given the constraints of public opinion in both countries about avoiding war, the ongoing Abyssinian crisis, and the fact that the British Field Force had not yet become operational, neither the French nor British governments were willing to confront Hitler. In fact, the Foreign Office view was that the Rhineland crisis constituted a lost opportunity to strengthen the continental balance via a general agreement that respected German territorial amour-propre. As Eden observed on 8 March 1936: Herr Hitler’s action is alarming because of the fresh confirmation which it affords of the scant respect paid by German Governments to the sanctity of treaties . . . by reoccupying the Rhineland he has deprived us of the possibility of making to him a concession which might otherwise have been a useful bargaining counter in our hands in the general negotiations with Germany which we had it in contemplation to initiate. . . .153

The result of the Rhineland crisis saw British diplomatic strategy turn from co-operating with Italy to restrain German ambitions to finding common ground with Bolshevik Russia and France. Even before the Abyssinian crisis, Vansittart had argued that Anglo–Russian strategic interests were similar as the Russians were “whole-hearted supporters of the present territorial status quo in Europe and Asia.”154 After Italy’s attack on Abyssinia—and the gradual worsening of Rome’s relations with Paris and London that saw Mussolini begin to seek closer ties with Hitler’s Germany—Vansittart’s energies were directed towards strengthening Anglo–Russian ties. As Michael Roi has pointed out within what he calls the seeking of a new “Triple Entente,” the best example of the PUS’s efforts concerned the conclusion of an British loan to Stalin’s regime over the winter of 1935–1936. When Orme Sargent, a senior German expert in the Foreign Office, took the position that an encircled Germany might become a dangerous Germany, Vansittart responded: “We must look after our own interests and not allow ourselves to be intimidated by rivals.”155 But the ideological animus of crucial Cabinet ministers, chiefly Chamberlain and

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Eden, to working with “communists,” scuppered Vansittart’s loan plans—both the chancellor of the Exchequer and the foreign secretary held that a bilateral agreement with Germany to remove points of Anglo– German contention constituted a better strategy than strengthening the balance of power via working with the Russians.156 But Vansittart persisted. With the Field Force’s development in the background, he and key Foreign Office advisors like Laurence Collier, the head of the Northern Department, Ralph Wigram and William Strang, successive heads of the Central Department, and Allen Leeper, head of the Western Department, worked to keep both Anglo–French and Anglo–Russian relations on an even keel to limit German strength.157 In an important sense, however, and despite the general support accorded by MacDonald and Baldwin, the Foreign Office’s efforts to support an equilibrium of power on continental Europe were criticised by Chamberlain, Eden, and a coterie of ministers, chiefly Simon, the home secretary, 1935–1937, and Hoare, first lord of the Admiralty, 1936–1937, both of whom had developed a personal animus towards Vansittart.158 Chamberlain saw danger in the pursuit of the balance that had been determined by the DRC in its various manifestations. “I cannot believe that the next war, if it ever comes,” he told his sister in February 1936, “will be like the last one and I believe our resources will be more profitably employed in the air & on the sea than in building up great armies.”159 Eden chafed at being seen to be less experienced than his PUS.160 And for the simplest of political reasons—a result of Vansittart supposedly having a role in diminishing the lustre of their earlier ministerial reputations— Simon and Hoare would support any diminution of Vansittart’s authority.161 To attack the PUS’s strategic prescription for British external policy therefore, became the means to do so. Initially, these ministers used the ill-fated Hoare–Laval plan and its distasteful domestic reaction to heap blame on Vansittart for endangering good Anglo–Italian relations.162 Thereafter, until he was forced from his office, Vansittart’s support for building up counter-veiling force to contain Germany in Europe found strategic opposition.163 For instance, in December 1936, he drafted a memorandum for the Cabinet to impress it that “a really impressive display of strength on our part” would retard German ambitions.164 Coming just as the foreign secretary was seeking Vansittart’s transfer to Paris, Eden refused to circulate it.165 Thus, whilst the strategic basis of British external policy as determined by the DRC by late 1935 remained in place, the effectiveness of British policy until late 1937 was mixed. After the Rhineland remilitarisation, German foreign policy became overtly quiescent. The National Government looked to improve Anglo–Italian relations via finding a formula to give de jure recognition to Italy’s absorption of Abyssinia into its African Empire.


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When the Spanish Civil War broke out in Summer 1936, the National Government saw merit in seeking to isolate the violence in the Iberian Peninsula. The net result was a Non-Intervention Agreement amongst the major Powers—including France and Bolshevik Russia—that bound the signatories to pursue neutrality towards both the government and the rebels in Spain.166 Of course, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy sent clandestine aid to the right-wing rebels, whilst Stalin’s regime secretly supported the left-wing government.167 But the result was that the crisis in Spain did not upset the European balance; and Hoare’s observation “that he hoped for a war in which the Fascists and Bolsheviks would kill each other off” caught the general attitude of the Cabinet and Foreign Office.168 Restraint was essential, in the face of German “volunteers” bombing Guernica, a Basque city, and attacks in the Mediterranean on neutral merchantmen by unmarked Italian airplanes and submarines. In September 1937, a conference at Nyon, boycotted by Italy and Germany because Bolshevik Russia attended, produced agreement about defending sea routes by armed force. Afterwards, whilst the war continued, the situation stablised outside of Spain. And what was true for Spain applied to the Far East after the Japanese attacked China south of the Great Wall in July 1937.169 As had been the case since before 1914, the strategic goal for the British in this crucial region lay in ensuring the security of their economic concessions and trade. Keeping a balance of power provided the means to do so. To this end, “showing a tooth” vis-a-vis Japan as accepted by the Cabinet three years before had been augmented by renewed naval construction after the second London naval conference in late 1935–early 1936—from which the Japanese withdrew when they could not get the British and Americans to agree to full naval parity.170 Although other Powers deliberated—and absent or boycotting Germany, Russia, and Italy were to be asked to accede to the new treaty—the practical result was Anglo–American agreement to expand their fleets. As this process would take time, it became imperative in the interim to protect British and American interests in China by political means. With British strategy in the Far East still pinned on strengthening Singapore, diplomacy rather than armed intervention became the order of the day.171 Vansittart’s earlier argument that “Japan would attack us [only] after we had got into difficulties elsewhere” had not lost its force. To a degree this meant finding common ground with the Franklin Roosevelt administration that, though it had taken a hardline in opposing Japan’s claims for naval parity at London, was reluctant to suggest publicly that the United States would intercede militarily to support China.172 But the British had not earlier been cowed into acquiescing in Japan’s forward policies after Manchuria. They ignored a declaration by the Japanese in 1934 that Tokyo could unilaterally determine threats to

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China’s political stability and then move to resolve them.173 In 1935, a senior British Treasury, Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, was sent to Nanking to advise on strengthening China’s currency and in preparing for a major loan.174 Moreover, in Summer 1934, the Foreign Office successfully resisted Chamberlain’s support for an Anglo–Japanese non-aggression pact with the argument that the regional balance could only be maintained by not formally aligning with any Power but, rather, working with them all to protect British interests.175 But in May 1937, when Baldwin retired from public life, Chamberlain rose to the premiership. In doing so, he created a Cabinet that reflected both his domestic and foreign policy views; and in terms of external affairs, ministerial appointments reflected the new prime minister’s determination to jettison a continental commitment and seek bilateral agreements with the dictator Powers in Europe and the Far East: Eden remained at the Foreign Office; Simon became chancellor of the Exchequer; Hoare took the Home Office; the former War secretary, Alfred Duff Cooper, who had supported the continental strategy, was transferred to the Admiralty; Leslie Hore-Belisha became War secretary; and pushing MacDonald out of the Cabinet, Lord Halifax, Chamberlain’s friend, became lord president. Moreover, in March 1936, Baldwin had created a new Cabinet portfolio, Minister of Defence Co-ordination, to manage rearmament. Thomas Inskip, the minister, remained in place under Chamberlain—Chatfield would succeed him in January 1939—and whilst a competent administrator, he proved supine to the directions emanating from Downing Street.176 Chamberlain’s notions of bilateral arrangements with Germany, Italy, and Japan to protect narrow British interests had long been gestating. With a Cabinet subservient to him, he could now put his mark on British foreign policy strategy. Upon becoming premier, Chamberlain initiated a defence review through Inskip’s ministry. All elements of British rearmament and the crucial issue of the allocation of financial and material resources, plus the nettled question of manpower, were examined.177 In doing so, the general agreement that had marked DRC deliberations in 1933–1934, disappeared. Simon contended that the government needed to balance defence spending with the available economic and financial resources.178 The COS showed that whilst Britain could fight Germany, Italy, or Japan singly, it could not fight two or all three concurrently—and in a major departure, the service chiefs did not perceive Germany as the Power with which Britain might necessarily have to fight.179 From his bailiwick, Inskip argued about balancing economic health with effective armed force.180 Just before Inskip tabled a preliminary report for the Cabinet in December, Chamberlain removed both Vansittart and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Cyril Deverell,


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from their positions, replacing them with more pliant advisors.181 Inskip’s final report, accepted by the Cabinet in February 1938, gave formal endorsement to Chamberlain’s strategic ideas. Within a final budget of £1.65 billion to be spent by 1941, there would be decided expansion of both the RAF and the RN, the former seeing heavy spending for both bombers and fighters.182 The Army, on the other hand, was a big loser. The Field Force was cancelled.183 In essence, by abandoning a continental commitment, Chamberlain and his ministers looked to create a fortress Britain in Europe, defended in the air and on the sea, whilst having adequate military assets to garrison and protect the Empire. And in this strategic equation, national security and Imperial defence would be bolstered by seeking those bilateral diplomatic arrangements. It is on the basis of seeking these bilateral arrangements that “appeasement” emerged as the strategic base of British foreign policy. Importantly, appeasement was but one of a number of rational responses to the international situation in which Britain found itself in late 1937–early 1938: continuing to pursue the balance, relying on conference diplomacy, promoting collective security through the machinery of the League, and seeking close alignments with other major Powers to contain the dictator Powers. But in Chamberlain’s mind, these responses had been tried and found wanting since the formation of the National Government in 1931.184 With Chamberlain gauging accurately that British public opinion would not countenance participation in a war, pursuit of the balance via a continental commitment would be dangerous to national security and the Empire, let alone national fiscal solvency, should Britain commit troops to Europe. Past conference diplomacy, whether over reparations, war debts, general economic issues, and arms limitation, had produced compromises that no Power fully accepted. Abyssinia had shown the failure of collective security when a major Power decided to ignore the dictates of Geneva—and when Geneva, as with the oil embargo against Italy, could not attract important neutrals like the United States to support it. Finally, closer alignment with other major Powers, chiefly France and the United States, could not be relied upon given domestic opinion in those countries that wanted their governments to pursue different national strategies. In coldly realistic terms, appeasement was just as rational, and it had the added merit in the prime minister’s view that diplomatic agreements could best promise national and Imperial security until rearmament was completed. As Chamberlain remarked just after he replaced Baldwin— and containing criticism of Vansittart and the Foreign Office: “I believe the double policy of rearmament and better relations with Germany and Italy will carry us safely through the danger period, if only the Foreign Office will play up.”185

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Yet, as Chamberlain and his Cabinet wrestled with the international crises that distinguished the thirteen months after approval of the final Inskip report and the advent of new diplomatic strategy—the German absorption of Austria in March 1938, the Czech crisis of April–September 1938 that produced the Munich agreement, and the German occupation of the rump of Czechslovakia in March 1939—appeasement proved a hollow reed on which to tie British national security and Imperial defence. Part of the problem lay in the fact that stiff opposition to German actions could not occur because Britain’s fighting forces were not yet fully rearmed—and the lack of the Field Force to bolster British policy was especially grievous. The second, and more important, devolved from the unpredictability of Hitler and his willingness to go back on written agreements in his determination to make Germany dominant on the continent. At Munich, Germany received the German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia—the former Slovakian half of that state also received its independence. Hitler had guaranteed the post-Munich territorial status quo in Central Europe; but in the six months after 30 September 1938, he had been intrigued with the Slovaks and, in mid-March 1939, the Wehrmacht had occupied Prague and the remainder of the Czech Republic. Chamberlain also failed to drive a wedge between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, now the Axis Powers after late 1937, by regularising Anglo–Italian relations through British de jure recognition of the absorption of Abyssinia into the Italian Empire. Halifax had become foreign secretary in February 1938 after Eden left the government largely over the appeasement of Italy—the appeasement of Germany was a different proposition for him. After mid-March 1939, facing both a worsening situation on the continent and a Cabinet that with Halifax and others now called for a hardline against Germany, Chamberlain reluctantly accepted that limits had to be determined and shown to Germany to indicate that a line existed beyond which Britain would not permit a re-arrangement of the continental balance to its detriment. After only one and one-half years as the strategic basis of foreign policy, appeasement was abandoned. By late March 1939, pursuit of the balance of power replaced it, as the Field Force was re-established and peacetime conscription was introduced. On the diplomatic front, working with the French, guarantees were given to Poland, Greece, and Romania whilst, harkening back to the Great War, an Anglo–French Supreme War Council was created; simultaneously, approaches to other Powers, including the United States, were begun. In the background, rearmament continued apace to sustain a hardened approach to the immediate peril of Nazi Germany.186 The notion that suffused the Cabinet in the five and one-half months after the Prague crisis was that British actions could deter Hitler from seeking further to re-arrange the continent to Germany’s advantage. But much


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time and effort in offering effective deterrence to the Nazi regime had been lost in the eighteen months when Chamberlain and his supporters had based British strategy on appeasement. No doubt exists that when Hitler decided to unleash his armies against Poland on 1 September 1939, he was responsible for beginning the “Second World War”—he was going to build a German-dominated Eurasian Empire regardless of what Britain or any other Power might do to oppose him. However, if any culpability falls on Chamberlain, it is that he abandoned a traditional and effective national strategy at a critical juncture in the evolution of interwar British foreign policy, and he stubbornly refused to accept the sage of advice of his Foreign Office experts. National strategy, effective national strategy tied to planning for the use of armed forces and the protection of the permanent interests of the state, could not be modified quickly. As rational as it was, appeasement might be used tactically; but it had no place serving as the strategic basis of external policy. NOTES Place of publication is London unless otherwise noted. 1. Neville Chamberlain to Hilda, his sister, NC [Neville Chamberlain MSS, Birmingham University Library, Birmingham] 18/1/949. 2. For example, see K. Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England, 1830–1902 (Oxford, 1970); J. Clarke, British Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, 1782–1865: The National Interest (1984); S. Mahajan, British Foreign Policy, 1874–1914: The Role of India (London, NY, 2002); H. W. V. Temperley, The Foreign Policy of Canning, 1822–1827; England, the Neo-Holy Alliance, and the New World, 2nd edition (1966); C. K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 1812–1815. Britain and the Reconstruction of Europe (1931). Cf. Anonymous, “British Foreign Policy in the Last Century,” Quarterly Review, CCXX/439 (April 1914). 3. See B. J. C. McKercher, ‘The Foreign Office, 1930–1939: Strategy, Permanent Interests, and National Security,’ Contemporary British History, 18/3 (2004), pp. 87–109; M.L. Roi, Alternatives to Appeasement: Sir Robert Vansittart and British Foreign Policy, 1930–1937 (Westport, CT, 1998). 4. In I. Colvin, The Chamberlain Cabinet. How Meetings in 10 Downing Street, 1937–1939, led to the Second World War—Told for the First Time from the Cabinet Papers (NY, 1971), p. 46. 5. That policy can be realistic and still fail is beyond the grasp of some scholars. See P. Finney, ‘The Romance of Decline: The Historiography of Appeasement and British National Identity,’ Electronic Journal of International History, (2000), paragraph 32. 6. N. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, Vol. I: Rearmament Policy (1976). 7. See Professor Aster’s chapter below. But for a taste of the debate begin with the excellent R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the

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8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

B. J. C. McKercher Coming of the Second World War (Houndmills, UK, 1993); his Churchill and Appeasement (2000); and D. Cameron Watt, How War Came. The Immediate Origins of the Second World War (1989). Cf. R. J. Caputi, Neville Chamberlain and Appeasement (Selinsgrove, PA, 2000); K. Robbins, Appeasement, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1997); G. Stewart, Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain and the Battle for the Tory Party (1999). Then see the recusant A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (1961). For instance, J. Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost Peace (1989); I. Colvin, The Chamberlain Cabinet (NY, 1971); W. Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–39 (Princeton, 1984); P. Neville, Appeasing Hitler. The Diplomacy of Sir Nevile Henderson, 1937–39 (Basingstoke, NY, 2000); P. Renouvin, ‘Les relations de la Grande Bretagne et de la France avec l’Italie en 1938– 39,’ in Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Les relations franco-britanniques de 1935 à 1939 (Paris, 1975); D. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo–American Alliance 1937–1941: A Study in Competitive Cooperation (Chapel Hill, 1982). And there are older studies, which on the whole give little in-depth analysis of strategy. See, for instance, I. Colvin, Vansittart in Office (1965); M. Gilbert and R. Gott, The Appeasers (1966); L. Namier, Europe in Decay: A Study in Disintegration (1950). Cf. S. Bourette-Knowles, ‘The Global Micawber: Sir Robert Vansittart, the Treasury, and the Global Balance of Power, 1933–1935,’ Diplomacy & Statecraft, 6 (1995); G. C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury, 1932–39 (Edinburgh, 1979). G. Post, Jr., Dilemmas of Appeasement. British Deterrence and Defense, 1934–1937 (Ithaca, NY, 1993); Roi, Alternatives. Gibbs, Rearmament, p. xxi. B. J. C. McKercher, ‘From Disarmament to Rearmament: British Civil-Military Relations and Policy-Making, 1933–1936,’ Defence Studies, 1 (2001), pp. 21–48. For instance, whilst J. Ruggiero, Neville Chamberlain and British Rearmament: Pride, Prejudice and Politics (Westport, CT, 1999) looks at the broader issue of rearmament spanning the two periods, careful consideration of British strategy is handled only obliquely. Except where noted, this and the next paragraph are based on D. Aldcroft, The British Economy, Vol. I: The Years of Turmoil 1920–1951 (Brighton, 1986); B. Eichengreen, ed., The Gold Standard in Theory and History (NY, 1985); S. V. O. Clarke, Central Bank Cooperation, 1924–1931 (NY, 1967); P. Clavin, The Great Depression in Europe, 1929–1939 (2000), especially Chapter 4; H. James and E. Müller-Luckner, The Interwar Depression in an International Context (Munich, 2002); C. P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939 (1973); N. Riddell, Labour in Crisis: The Second Labour Government, 1929–31 (Manchester, 1999); D. Rothermund, Die Welt in der Wirtschaftskrise, 1929–1939 (Münster, 1993). See D. Artaud, La question des dettes interalliées et la reconstruction de l’Europe (1917–1929), 2 vols (Paris, 1978). B. Kent, The Spoils of War. The Politics, Economics, and Diplomacy of Reparations, 1918–1932 (Oxford, 1989). Cf. J. W. Wheeler-Bennett and H. Latimer, Information of the Reparation Settlement (1930). On unemployment, see K. Laybourn, ‘“Waking up to the fact that there are any unemployed”: women, unemployment and the domestic solution in Britain,


16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

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1918–1939,’ History, 88 (2003), pp. 606–623; M. Perry, Bread and Work: Social Policy and the Experience of Unemployment, 1918–39 (2000). See the relevant statistics in B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics 1750–1970 (1975), pp. 167–171. On trade, see H. A. M. Klemann, ‘The “Tommies” or the “Jerries”: Dutch trade problems in the inter-war period,’ in N. J. Ashton, and D. Hellema, eds., Unspoken Allies: Anglo–Dutch Relations Since 1780 (Amsterdam, 2001), pp. 101–120; D. Meredith, ‘British Trade Diversion Policy and the “Colonial Issue” in the 1930s,’ Journal of European Economic History, 25 (1996), pp. 33–67; T. Rooth, British Protectionism and the International Economy: Overseas Commercial Policy in the 1930s (Cambridge, 1993). See ‘Select Statistics. Real Gross Domestic Product per Head’ and ‘International Trade Figures,’ both in D. Butler and A. Sloman, British Political Facts, 1900–1975, fourth edition (1975), pp. 306, 310. A copy of the ‘Report of the Committee on National Expenditure,’ July 1931, is in MacDonald [J.R. MacDonald MSS, National Archives, Kew] PRO 30/69/5/182. S. Ball, Baldwin and the Conservative Party. The Crisis of 1929–1931 (New Haven, 1988); pp. 172–193; J. D. Fair, ‘The Conservative Basis for the Formation of the National Government of 1931,’ Journal of British Studies, 19(1979–81), pp. 142–164; D. Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (1977), pp. 608–653; K. Middlemas and J. Barnes, Baldwin. A Biography (1969), pp. 618–633. On the right, see T. P. Linehan, British Fascism, 1918–1939: Parties, Ideologies and Culture (Manchester, 2000); M. Spurr, ‘“Living the Blackshirt Life”: Culture, Community and the British Union of Fascists, 1932–1940,” Contemporary European History, 12 (2003), pp. 305–322. On the left, see J. McIlroy and A. Campbell, ‘“For a Revolutionary Workers’ Government”: Moscow, British Communism and Revisionist Interpretations of the Third Period, 1927–34,’ European History Quarterly, 32 (2002), pp. 535–542; M. Worley, Class Against Class: The Communist Party in Britain Between the Wars (2001). Cf. C. Bussfeld, Democracy versus dictatorship’: die Herausforderung des Faschismus und Kommunismus in Großbritannien 1932–1937 (Paderborn, 2001). N. R. McCrillis, The British Conservative Party in the Age of Universal Suffrage: Popular Conservatism, 1918–1929 (Columbus, OH, 1998); A. Taylor, ‘Speaking to Democracy: the Conservative Party and Mass Opinion from the 1920s to the 1950s,’ in S. Ball and I. Holliday, eds., Mass Conservatism: The Conservatives and the Public Since the 1880s (2002), pp. 78–99. N. Gullace, The Blood of Our Sons”: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship during the Great War (2002); K. O. Morgan, Consensus and Disunity: The Lloyd George Coalition Government, 1918–1922 (Oxford, 1979); D. Powell, British Politics, 1910–1935: The Crisis of the Party System (London, NY, 2004), pp. 90–116. Middlemas and Barnes, Baldwin; P. Williamson, National Crisis and National Government: British Politics, the Economy and Empire, 1926–1932 (Cambridge, 1992). D. Watts, Stanley Baldwin and the Search for Consensus (1996); P. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin. Conservative leadership and national values (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 61–87.

428 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

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D. Dutton, ‘1932: A Neglected Date in the History of the Decline of the British Liberal Party,’ 20th Century British History, 14 (2003), pp. 43–60; K. Laybourn, ‘The Rise of Labour and the Decline of Liberalism: The State of the Debate,’ History, 80 (1995), pp. 207–226. For instance, S. Ball, ‘The Politics of Appeasement: The Fall of the Duchess of Atholl and the Kinross and West Perth By-Election, December 1938,’ Scottish Historical Review, 69 (1990), 49–83; J. J. Smyth, ‘Resisisting Labour: Unionists, Liberals, and Moderates in Glasgow between the Wars,’ Historical Journal, 46 (2003), pp. 375–401; T. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts the Opposition: The British General Election of 1935 (1980). D. S. Birn, The League of Nations Union 1918–1945 (Oxford, 1981); L. K. Schott, Reconstructing Women’s Thoughts: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom before World War II (Stanford, CA, 1997); A. Bosco, and C. Navari, eds., Chatham House and British Foreign Policy 1919–1945: The Royal Institute of International Affairs during the Inter-war Period (1994), especially G. Martel, ‘From Round Table to New Europe: Some Intellectual Origins of the Institute of International Affairs,’ pp. 13–39. Cf. G. Kennedy, ‘Britain’s PolicyMaking Elite, the Naval Disarmament Puzzle, and Public Opinion, 1927–1932,’ Albion, 26 (1995), pp. 623–643; C. Krull and B. J. C. McKercher, ‘The Press, Public Opinion, Arms Limitation, and Government Policy in Britain, 1932–34: Some Preliminary Observations,’ Diplomacy & Statecraft, 13 (2002), pp. 103–136; P. Kyba, Covenants without the Sword: Public Opinion and British Defence Policy, 1931–1935 (Waterloo, ON, 1983). S. Nicholas, ‘The Construction of a National Identity: Stanley Baldwin, “Englishness” and the Mass Media in Inter-War Britain,’ in M. Francis and I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, eds., The Conservatives and British Society, 1880–1990 (Cardiff, 1996), pp. 127–146. For instance, C. J. Wrigley, ‘Lloyd George and the Labour Movement after 1922,’ in J. Loades, ed., The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (Bangor, 1991), pp. 49–69. Cf. L. E. Ambrosius, Wilsonian Statecraft: Theory and Practice of Liberal Internationalism during World War I (Wilmington, DE, 1991); H. J. Burgwyn, The Legend of the Mutilated Victory: Italy, the Great War, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1915–1919 (Westport, CT, 1993); E. Goldstein, Winning the Peace: British Diplomatic Strategy, Peace Planning, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1916–1920 (Oxford, 1991); D. Stevenson, ‘Chapter Seven: French War Aims and Peace Planning,’ in M. F. Boemeke, G. D. Feldman, and E. Glaser, eds., The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge, 1998); Z. Steiner, ‘The War, the Peace, and the International State System,’ in J. M. Winter, G. Parker, and M. R. Habeck, eds., The Great War and the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT, 2001), pp. 263–298. See D. M. Esposito, The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson: American War Aims in World War I (Westport, CT, 1996); T. J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Princeton, NJ, 1995). G. W. Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy, Politics, and International Organization, 1914–1919 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1978); R. Henig, ‘New Diplomacy and Old: a Reassessment of British Conceptions of a League of

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Structure of Cooperation in Anglo–American Economy Diplomacy, 1918–1928 (Columbia, 1977); S. A. Wueschner, ‘Herbert Hoover, Great Britain, and the Rubber Crisis, 1923–1926,’ Essays in Economic and Business History, 18 (2000), pp. 211–221. D. Artaud, ‘Die Hintergründe der Ruhrbesetzung 1923. Das Problem der Interalliierten Schulden,’ Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 27 (1979), pp. 241–259; S. Jeannesson, ‘Les objectifs Rhenans de as Politique Française Durant l’occupation de la Ruhr (1922–1924),’ Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 4 (1995), pp. 369–389. Cf. E. Y. O’Riordan, Britain and the Ruhr Crisis (2001). M. P. Leffler, The Elusive Quest. America’s Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill, 1979), pp. 40–157; S.A. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe. The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill, 1976). See J. R. Ferris, Men, Money, and Diplomacy: The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919–1926 (Ithaca, NY, 1989), pp. 1–14, 142–57; J. Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy. Germany and the West, 1925–1929 (Princeton,1972), 3–67; A. Orde, Great Britain and International Security, 1920–1926 (1977), pp. 37–154. A. Dupré de Boulois, ‘Les Travaillistes, la France et la Question Allemande (1922–1924),’ Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 113 (1999), pp. 75–100; A. Turner, ‘Anglo–French Financial Relations in the 1920s,’ European History Quarterly, 26(1996), pp. 31–55. Outside of Europe, Anglo–French tensions also caused difficulty for London. See G. H. Bennett, ‘Britain’s Relations with France after Versailles: The Problem of Tangier, 1919–1923,’ European History Quarterly, 24 (1994), pp. 53–84; B. C. Busch, Mudros to Lausanne: Britain’s Frontier in West Asia, 1918–1923 (Albany, NY, 1976). Chamberlain to Crewe [British ambassador, Paris], 2 April 1925, Chamberlain MSS FO [Foreign Office Archives, National Archives, Kew] 800/258. Cf. Selby [Chamberlain’s private secretary] to Phipps [chargé, British Embassy, Paris], 10 March 1925, Chamberlain MSS FO 800/257; Chamberlain to his wife, 3 February 1926, AC 6/1/636. Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy, pp. 3–67; A. Kaiser, ‘Lord D’Abernon und die Entstehungsgeschichte der Locarno-Verträge,’ Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 34 (1986), pp. 85–104. Also see P. G. Edwards, ‘Britain, Mussolini and the “Locarno-Geneva System,”’ European Studies Review (1980), pp. 1–16. See R. Schattkowsky, ed., Locarno und Osteuropa: Fragen eines europäischen Sicherheitssystems in den 20er Jahren (Marburg, 1994), especially H. Olbrich, ‘Britische Sicherheitspolitik und Sicherheitsinteressen in Ost- und Südosteuropa während der Locarno-Ära,’ pp. 93–106; and a newer view, P. O. Cohrs, ‘The First “Real” Peace Settlements after the First World War: Britain, the United States and the Accords of London and Locarno, 1923–1925,’ Contemporary European History, 12 (2003), pp. 1–31. See Chamberlain minute, 21 February 1925, FO 371/11064/1252/9; and A. Chamberlain, ‘Great Britain as a European Power,’ Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 9 (1930), pp. 180–188. Cf. Jacobson, Locarno Diplomacy; and B .J. C. McKercher, ‘Austen Chamberlain and the Continental Balance of Power: Strategy, Stability, and the League of Nations, 1924–1929,’ in

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71.

B. J. C. McKercher E. Goldstein and B. J. C. McKercher, eds., Power and Stability: British Foreign Policy, 1865–1965 (2003). Cf. R. Grayson, Austen Chamberlain and the Commitment to Europe. British Foreign Policy 1924–29 (1997), 170–211; B. J. C. McKercher, ‘A Sane and Sensible Diplomacy: Austen Chamberlain, Japan, and the Naval Balance of Power in the Pacific Ocean, 1924–1929,’ Canadian Journal of History, 21 (1986), pp. 187–213. Cf. G.-S. Harum, ‘Anglo–Japanese Co-operation in China in the 1920s,’ in I. H. Nish and Y. Kibata, eds., The History of Anglo–Japanese Relations, Vol.I (Basingstoek, NY, 2000). J. Jacobson and J. T. Walker, ‘The Impulse for a Franco–German Entente: The Origins of the Thoiry Conference, 1926,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 10 (1975), pp. 157–181. W. R. Louis, British Strategy in the Far East 1919–1939 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 131–133. Artaud, La Question, II, pp. 901–908; Kent, Spoils of War, pp. 287–303. The ‘Young Plan’ is in Wheeler-Bennett and Latimer, Reparation Settlement, pp. 173–234. C. J. Kitching, Britain and the Problem of International Disarmament 1919–1934 (1999), pp. 93–97 109–14. On the “hinge” years of 1929–1933, see the insightful Z. S. Steiner, The Lights That Failed. European International History 1919–1939 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 800–816. See M. Döring, Parlamentarischer Arm der Bewegung: die Nationalsozialisten im Reichstag der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 2001); A. von Röpenack, KPD und NSDAP im Propagandakampf der Weimarer Republik: eine inhaltsanalytische Untersuchung in Leitartikeln von ‘Rote Fahne’ und ‘Der Angriff’ (Stuttgart, 2002); P. E. Swett, Neighbors and Enemies: The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin, 1929–1933 (Cambridge, NY, 2004). G. Franz-Willing, Die Hitler-Bewegung: 1925 bis 1934 (Preussisch Oldendorf, 2001); I. Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. I: 1889–1936: Hubris (1998), 381–427; E. Kolb, Was Hitler’s Seizure of Power on January 30, 1933 Inevitable? (Washington, DC, 1997). Cf. the thought-provoking C. Kaiser, Gewerkschaften, Arbeitslosigkeit und politische Stabilität: Deutschland und Grossbritannien in der Weltwirtschaftskrise seit 1929 (Frankfurt am Main, 2002). For the Polish example, M. Bernhard, ‘Institutional Choice and the Failure of Democracy: The Case of Interwar Poland,’ East European Politics and Societies, 13 (1999), pp. 34–70; J. Holzer, ‘The Political Right in Poland, 1918–1939,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 12 (1977), pp. 395–412; G. Simoncini, ‘The Polyethnic State: National Minorities in Interbellum Poland,’ Nationalities Papers, 22 (1994), Supplement 1, pp. 5–28. See W. S. Grenzebach, Jr., Germany’s Informal Empire in East-Central Europe: German Economic Policy toward Yugoslavia and Rumania, 1933–1939 (Stuttgart, 1988); R. Haynes, Romanian Policy Towards Germany, 1936–40 (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, NY, 2000); A. S. Kotowski, Hitlers Bewegung im Urteil der polnischen Nationaldemokratie (Wiesbaden, 2000). Cf. E. de Bruyne and M. Rikmenspoel For Rex and for Belgium: Léon Degrelle and Walloon Political and Military Collaboration 1940–1945 (Solihull, 2004); F. Burkhard, French Marxism Between the Wars: Henri Lefebvre and the


72.

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“Philosophies” (Amherst, NY, 2000); R. Lewin et al., Le Parti communiste de Belgique, 1921–1944: actes de la journée d’étude de Bruxelles—28 avril 1979 (Bruxelles, 1980); S. Wilson, ‘La France at l’Étranger: Aspects du nationalisme de l’Action Française,’ Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 20 (1973), pp. 464–479. See R. Davis, Anglo–French Relations before the Second World War: Appeasement and Crisis (NY, 2001); E. Mechoulan, ‘L’incomprehension Diplomatique Franco–Americaine, 1932–1933,’ Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 42 (1995), pp. 577–592; M. Thomas, Britain, France, and Appeasement: Anglo–French Relations in the Popular Front Era (Oxford, 1996). Cf. M. L. Dockrill, British Establishment Perspectives on France, 1936–40 (London, NY, 1999). On Spain, see H. Graham, The Spanish Republic at War, 1936–1939 (Cambridge, 2002); P. Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War. Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the Second Republic 1931–1936 (1978); H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 2nd ed. (1977). On Portugal, see Y. Léonard, Salazarisme et fascisme (Paris, 1996); A. C. Pinto, Salazar’s Dictatorship and European Fascism: Problems of Interpretation (Boulder, CO, 1995). See J.-B. Duroselle, France and the United States. From Beginnings to the Present (Chicago, 1976), pp. 135–146; B. J. C. McKercher, Transition of Power. Britain’s Loss of Global Preeminence to the United States 1930–1945 (Cambridge, 1999), Chapter Five; D. C. Watt, Succeeding John Bull. America in Britain’s Place, 1900–1975 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 76–84. Cf. R. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 3–20. W. M. Fletcher, The Search for a New Order. Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan (Chapel Hill, 1982); S. Wilson, The Manchurian Crisis and Japanese Society, 1931–33 (London, NY, 2002). Then see I. H. Nish, Japan’s Struggle With Internationalism. Japan, China, and the League of Nations, 1931–3 (1993); C. Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy. The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–1933 (NY, 1973). On British Communism, see L. J. MacFarlane, The British Communist Party: Its Origins and Development until 1929 (1966); S. MacIntyre, Little Moscows: Communism and Working-Class Militancy in Interwar Britain (1980); A. Thorpe, ‘Comintern “Control” of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920–1943,’ English Historical Review, 113 (1998). On the British Union of Fascists, see J. D. Brewer, Mosley’s Men: The British Union of Fascists in the West Midlands (Aldershot, 1984); S. Cullen, ‘The Development of the Ideas and Policy of the British Union of Fascists, 1932–1940,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 22(1987); T. P. Lineham, East End for Mosley: the British Union of Fascists in East London and South-West Essex, 1933–1940 (1996). M. Hughes, ‘The Virtues of Specialization: British and American Diplomatic Reporting on Russia, 1921–39,’ Diplomacy & Statecraft, 11 (2000), pp. 79–104. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, pp. xx. B. J. C. McKercher and M. L. Roi, ‘“Ideal” and “Punch-Bag”: Conflicting Views of the Balance of Power and Their Influence on Interwar British Foreign Policy,’ Diplomacy and Statecraft, 12 (2001), pp. 47–78.

434

B. J. C. McKercher

80. Crowe, ‘Present State of British Relations.’ 81. E. Maisel, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1919–1926 (Brighton, 1994); B. J. C. McKercher, ‘Old Diplomacy and New: The Foreign Office in the Interwar Period,’ in M. L. Dockrill and B. J. C. McKercher, Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy, 1890–1951 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 79–114. 82. Bourette-Knowles, ‘Global Micawber’; B. J. C. McKercher, ‘The Last Old Diplomat: Sir Robert Vansittart and the Verities of British Foreign Policy, 1903–1930,’ Diplomacy & Statecraft, 6 (1995), pp. 1–38; M. L. Roi, ‘From the Stresa Front to the Triple Entente: Sir Robert Vansittart, the Abyssinian Crisis and the Containment of Germany,’ Ibid., pp. 61–90. 83. G. H. Bennett, ‘Lloyd George, Curzon and the Control of British Foreign Policy 1919–22,’ Australian Journal of Politics & History, 45 (1999), pp. 467–482; A. Sharp, ‘The Foreign Office in Eclipse, 1919–1922,’ History, 61 (1976), pp. 198–218. Cf. Curzon ‘Memo on some aspects of my tenure of the Foreign Office,’ November 1924, Curzon MSS [India Office Library, London] F/1/ 7(Box Z). 84. See G. H. Bennett, British Foreign Policy during the Curzon Period, 1919–1924 (1995),1–11; D. Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (1977), pp. 329–356; B. J. C. McKercher, ‘Austen Chamberlain’s Control of British Foreign Policy, 1924–1929,’ International History Review, 6 (1984), pp. 570–591. 85. Cf. Curzon to Howard [ambassador at Madrid], 15 December 1923, Crowe to Howard, 9 January 1924, both Howard MSS [Cumbria County Record Office, Carlisle] DHW 9/39; MacDonald to Noel-Baker [Labour Party member], 25 May 1925; MacDonald to Henderson [Labour Party secretary], 30 March 1925 both MacDonald MSS PRO 30/69/5/36; Chamberlain minute, 9 November 1924, FO 371/9803/16848/37; Chamberlain to Wellesley [deputy under-secretary, FO], 24 April 1925, AC L.Add.84. 86. “. . . the F. O. needs the most efficient guidance it can get. The amateurs must be controlled. You may not have an easy time but you will have important work.”: in MacDonald to Vansittart, 26 December 1929, VNST [Vansittart MSS, Churchill College, Cambridge] II/6/9. On Vanisttart’s friendships with Baldwin and MacDonald, see Baldwin to Vansittart, 30 December 1929, VNST II 6/9; Vansittart to MacDonald, nd [probably January 1934 from internal evidence], MacDonald MSS PRO 30/69/1767. Only the second page of the latter holograph letter is extant. 87. Cf. G. C. Peden, ‘The Treasury as the Central Department of Government, 1919–1939,’ Public Administration, 61 (1983), pp. 371–385; P. Neville, ‘Lord Vansittart, Sir Walford Selby and the Debate About Treasury Interference in the Conduct of British Foreign Policy in the 1930’s,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 36 (2001), pp. 623–633; A. Rowley, ‘Le Tresor Britannique pendant l’entre- Deux-Guerres: “An Economic Policy-Maker,”’ Histoire, Economie et Société, 1 (1982), pp. 621–632. 88. Without considering some minor expenses for the armed forces—for instance, ‘Middle East expenditure, the net cost of which has, since 1921, fallen on the Colonial and Middle Eastern Services Vote’—calculated expenditures for the period 1919 to 1935 were in £ millions:


1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 (estimated) 1934 (estimated) 1935 (estimated)

89.

90. 91.

92.

93.

Navy £

Army £

137 84.4 69.1 47.3 46.1 47.7 51.8 48.9 49.7 48.7 47.4 43.6 42.2 41.2 44.4 47.2 50.5

405 156.8 78.9 41.5 38.5 35.9 36.3 35.4 35.5 32.5 32.4 31.4 29.9 27.8 29.7 31.4 35.3

435

Air (excluding Civil Aviation) £

Total £

54 20.3 13.2 8.6 10.2 13.7 15 14.8 14.5 15.5 16.3 16.9 17.2 16.3 16.5 16.6 19.6

596 261.5 161.2 97.4 94.8 97.3 103.1 99.1 99.7 96.7 96.1 91.9 89.3 85.3 90.6 95.2 105.4

From Committee of Imperial Defence ‘Material for Memorandum,’ nd [but early 1935], CAB [Cabinet Archives, National Archive, Kew] 21/392. For the inflation rates after the war, see the ‘Wholesale Price Index’ [1963 = 100] 1922(41), 1923(41), 1924(43), 1925(41), 1926(38), 1927(36), 1928(36), 1929(35), 1930(30), 1931(27), 1932(26), 1933(26), 1934(27). From ‘Select Statistics’ D. Butler and A. Sloman, British Historical Facts, 1900–1975, 4th ed (1975), p. 306 This and the next quotation are from Gibbs, Rearmament, pp. 55–59. Cf. Ferris, Men, Money, pp. 158–178; P. Silverman, ‘The Ten Year Rule,’ Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, 116 (1971), pp. 42–45; and responses K. Booth, ‘The Ten Year Rule: An Unfinished Debate,’ Ibid., pp. 58–73; S. W. Roskill, ‘The Ten Year Rule: The Historical Facts,’ Ibid., 117 (1972), pp. 69–71. D. Richardson, The Evolution of British Disarmament Policy in the 1920s (1989). Leith-Ross [Treasury] memorandum, ‘The Probable Effects of a Failure to Reach Agreement at the Hague Conference,’ nd, in Leith-Ross to Grigg [Treasury], 26 August 1929, T [Treasury Archives, National Archives, Kew] 172/1694; cf. Treasury memorandum, ‘The Young Plan and Sanctions,’ 10 December 1929, T 172/1379, Parts 5–7. Tyrrell [ambassador, Paris] to Henderson [foreign secretary], 1, 24 February 1930, both Henderson [Henderson MSS, National Archives, Kew] FO 800/ 281; Vansittart minute, 21 February 1930, FO 371/14259/1463/1; Vansittart minute to Henderson, nd, enclosing Sargent [FO] memorandum, 18 March 1930, with Henderson initials, FO 371/14261/2283/1. Cf. Kitching, Disarmament, pp. 7–22. D. Carlton, ‘Great Britain and the Coolidge Naval Conference of 1927,’ Poltical Science Quarterly, 83 (1968), pp. 573–98; C. Hall, Britain, America, and Arms Control, 1921–37 (1987), 36–58; B. J. C. McKercher, The Second Baldwin

436

94.

95.

96.

97. 98.

99. 100. 101.

102.

103.

B. J. C. McKercher Government and the United States, 1924–1929: attitudes and diplomacy (Cambridge, 1984, reissued 2003), pp. 36–58. See K. Burk, ‘Finance, Foreign Policy and the Anglo–American Bank: The House of Morgan, 1900–31,’ Historical Research, 61 (1988), pp. 199–211; Costigliola, ‘Financial Rivalry’; Hogan, Informal Entente. Cf. J. R. Barton, ‘Struggling Against Decline: British Business in Chile, 1919–33,’ Journal of Latin American Studies, 32 (2000), pp. 235–264; D. L. Butler, ‘Technogeopolitics and the Struggle for Control of World Air Routes, 1910–1928,’ Political Geography, 20 (2001), pp. 635–658; M. A. Rubin, ‘Stumbling Through the “Open Door”: The U.S. in Persia and the Standard-Sinclair Oil Dispute, 1920–1925,’ Iranian Studies, 28 (1995), pp. 203–229. See Marquand, MacDonald, pp. 467–474; McKercher, Baldwin Government, pp. 88–90; Ritchie [Hearst Newspapers] to MacDonald, 17 April 1929, Rosenberg [MacDonald’s secretary] to Ritchie, 22 April 1929, both MacDonald PRO 30/69/1439/1. B. J. C. McKercher, ‘From Enmity to Cooperation: The Second Baldwin Government and the Improvement of Anglo–American Rrelations, November 1928–June 1929,’ Albion, 24 (1992), pp. 64–87. McKercher, Transition, pp. 95–156. Leith-Ross memorandum, ‘The Probable Effects of a Failure to Reach Agreement at the Hague Conference,’ nd, in Leith-Ross to Grigg, 26 August 1929, T 172/ 1694; cf. Treasury memorandum, ‘The Young Plan and Sanctions,’ 10 December 1929, T 172/1379, Parts 5–7. For a conference summary and committee work, see British Delegation memorandum [CP 238(29)], 31 August 1929, CAB 24/205. Cf. Cmd.3484; D. Carlton, MacDonald Versus Henderson. The Foreign Policy of the Second Labour Government (NY, 1970), pp. 59–69; Kent, Spoils of War, pp. 313–321; Wheeler-Bennett and Latimer, Reparation Settlement, pp. 137–169. See Hoover’s Moratorium Diary, HHPP [Herbert Hoover Presidential Papers, Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa] 1015. Except where noted this paragraph is based on Kitching, Disarmament, pp. 115–135; McKercher, Transition, Chapter 3. Cf. Sargent to Rumbold [British ambassador, Berlin], 14 October 1930, Rumbold to Sargent, 16 October 1930, both Documents on British Foreign Policy [hereafter DBFP], Series II, Volume I, pp. 517–518; Rumbold despatch (861) to Henderson, 27 October, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, Part II, Series J, Volume 3, pp. 306–307; Henderson to Tyrrell, 10 November 1930, Henderson FO 800 /282. Then see League of Nations, Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference. Draft Convention (9 December 1930), LND [League of Nations Document, League of Nations Archives, Palais des Nations, Geneva] C.687.M.288.1930.IX. Cf. Tyrrell to Henderson, 3 March 1931, Rumbold to Vansittart, 29 April 1931, both Henderson FO 800/283; ‘Note from Sir Eric Drummond recording a conversation with Signor Grandi,’ 19 April 1931, DBFP II, III, 462–64; Stimson [US secretary of State] diary, 19 March 1931, Stimson [Henry Stimson MSS, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT] 15. Except where noted, the next two paragraphs follow I. H. Nish, Japan’s Struggle With Internationalism. Japan, China, and the League of Nations, 1931–3 (1993);


104. 105. 106. 107.

108. 109.

110.

111. 112. 113.

114.

115. 116.

117. 118.

119.

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C. Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy. The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–1933 (NY, 1973); Steiner, Lights, Chapter 13. DBFP II, Vol. IX, p. 31 League of Nations, Report of the Commission of Enquiry [with supplements] (Geneva, 1932), LND C.663.M.320.1932.VII. Foreign Office ‘Memorandum on the Foreign Policy of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom’ [CID 1112-B], 19 May 1933, CAB 4/24. Leith-Ross [Treasury] to Vansittart, 14 November 1931, Leith-Ross T [Treasury Archives, National Archive, Kew] 188/16; Treasury memorandum, ‘German Reparations,’ 14 November 1931, Leith-Ross memorandum, 28 December 1931, both Leith-Ross T 188/32; Sargent [Foreign Office] to Leith-Ross, 16 November 1931, Sargent MSS FO 800/279/Wd/31/2; Leith-Ross to Sargent, 16 November 1931, Sargent FO 800/279/Wd/31/3; Simon memorandum, ‘Reparations and War Debts—A Bird’s Eye View,’ 29 December 1931, Simon FO 800/285. For the Cabinet decision, see ‘British Proposals for a Reparation Conference,’ 6 January 1932, DBFP II, III, pp. 590–592. Chamberlain to Hilda, 14 January 1932, NC 18/1/767. Simon to Tyrrell, 18 January 1932, Tyrrell to Simon, 19 January 1932, Rumbold to Simon, 21 January 1932, all Simon FO 800/286; Rumbold despatch to Simon, 11 January 1932, Simon telegram (38) to Lindsay [British ambassador, Washington], 16 January 1932, Lindsay telegram (28) to Simon, 17 January 1932, Tyrrell despatch to Simon, 18 January 1932, all DBFP II, III, pp. 17–18, 32–33, 37–40. Cmd.4126; Cmd.4129; ‘German addition to Political Clause Accepted by British and French Delegations . . . July 8,’ DBFP II, III, p. 420. Cf. anonymous minute, ‘Undertakings entered into at Lausanne (other than those contained in the published documents),’ nd, T 172/1788. Simon despatch to Newton [British Embassy, Berlin], 6 June 1932, DBFP II, III, pp. 152–154. Cmd.4126, p. 5. ‘Notes of a Meeting . . . at 10 A.M. on April 23, 1932,’ Simon FO 800/286. Cf. ‘Memorandum of a Meeting, April 15, 1932’ [between the State and Treasury departments on foreign defaults], Stimson MSS [microfilm, Sterling Library, Yale University, Yale, CT], Reel 82. Simon despatch (740) to Lindsay, 30 May 1932, Simon FO 800/286. Cf. Stimson diary, 24–26 May 1932, Stimson 22; Hoover draft telegram to Mellon [American ambassador, London], 24 May 1932, Stimson R82. Kitching, Disarmament, pp. 140–146. ‘Extract from a speech by Sir J. Simon in the House of Commons, November 10, 1932,’ ‘Speech by Sir J. Simon at the Bureau of the Disarmament Conference on November 17, 1932,’ DBFP II, IV, pp. 263–265, 287–295. Steiner, Lights That Failed, Part II. COS, ‘Annual Review for 1932 by the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee’ [COS 295], 23 February 1932, CAB 53/22. Cf. ‘Report by the Deputies of the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee on the Situation in the Far East’ [COS 295 (DC)], 22 February 1932, CAB 53/22. Gibbs, Rearmament, pp. 80–81.

438

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120. COS papers, ‘Imperial Defence Policy’ [COS 306], 24 April 1933, enclosing India Office, Colonial Office, Home Office, CID, and Joint Oversea and Home Defence Committee memoranda; and COS papers, ‘Imperial Defence Policy’ [COS 307], 20 May 1933, enclosing FO ‘Memorandum on the Foreign Policy of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom,’ 19 May 1933, both CAB 53/23. 121. CID Meeting 261, 9 November 1933, CAB 2/6. See ‘Composition and Terms of Reference’ [DRC 1], 10 November 1933, CAB 16/109. 122. Hankey memorandum [DRC 4], 23 November 1933, with enclosures, Ibid. 123. CID Meeting 261, 9 Nov 1933, CAB 2/6. See ‘Composition and Terms of Reference’ [DRC 1], 10 Nov 1933, CAB 16/109. 124. The seminal assessment is D. Cameron Watt, ‘Sir Warren Fisher and British Rearmament Against Germany,’ and ‘Britain, the United States, and Japan in 1934,’ both in idem., Personalities and Policies. Studies in the Formulation of British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (1965), pp. 83–116. Then cf. two recent disputatious articles: B. J. C. McKercher, ‘Deterrence and the European Balance of Power: The Field Force and British Grand Strategy, 1934–1938,’ English Historical Review, 123(2008), 99–131; K. E. Neilson, ‘The Defence Requirements Sub-Committee, British Strategic Foreign Policy, Neville Chamberlain and the Path to Appeasement,’ English Historical Review, 118(2003), pp. 651–684. 125. See the sections ‘The Test of the Far Eastern Menace’ and the ‘The Test of the German Menace,’ Defence Requirements Sub-Committee ‘Report,’ 28 February 1934 [hereafter 1st DRC ‘Report’], CAB 16/109. 126. 1st DRC Report, ‘Table B. Naval Deficiency Programme.’ 127. 1st DRC Report, ‘Table C. Expenditure to Meet Army Deficiencies.’ 128. Pownall diary, 28 February 1934, B. Bond, ed. Chief of Staff. The Diaries of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, Vol.I: 1933–1940 (1972), I, p. 38. 129. Warren Fisher note [DRC 9], 12 January 1934, CAB 16/109. 130. DRC Meeting 3, 4 December 1933, CAB 16/109. He later circulated these views in FO ‘Situation in the Far East (Memoranda). 1933–34’ [DRC 20], Ibid. 131. DRC Meeting 3, 4 December 1933, CAB 16/109. 132. The Field Force would cost £25,680,000, 36 percent of total DRC recommended spending and 64.2 percent of that earmarked for the Army. See 1st DRC Report, ‘Table C. Expenditure to Meet Army Deficiencies,’ CAB 16/109. 133. Ibid., 9. 134. Vansittart minute, 7 July 1933, VNST I 2/14. 135. Vansittart to Simon, 10 February 1934, Ibid. 136. Except where noted, this paragraph is based on Chamberlain’s comments in DC(M) (32) 45th meeting, 15 May 1934, CAB 27/507; and ‘Note by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Report of the Defence Requirements Committee’ [DC(M)(32) 120], CAB 27/511. 137. M. Ceadel, ‘Interpreting East Fulham,’ in C. Cook amd J. Ramsden, eds., By-elections in British Politics, revised edition (1997), pp. 94–111. 138. Cf. U. Bialer, The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and British Politics 1932–1939 (1980); A. Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists (Oxford, 1998).


439

139. Cf. Vansittart memorandum, ‘The Future of Germany’ [CP 104(34)], 7 April 1934, CAB 24/248; diary entry, 28 April 1934, in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters 1931–1950 (1954), pp. 126–129; Vansittart to Simon, 14 May 1934, CAB 21/388; Vansittart minute, 2 June 1934, VNST I 1/11; Simon memoranda [DC(M)(32) 118 and 119], both 14 June 1934, CAB 27/510, CAB 27/ 511. See Baldwin and MacDonald’s views in DC(M) (32) 50th meeting, 25 June 1934, CAB 16/110. 140. ‘Minute by Sir R. Vansittart’ [DC(M)(32) 117], 2 June 1934, CAB 27/510. 141. Z. S. Steiner and K. E. Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, 2nd edition (Basingstoke, NY, 2003), pp. 229–256. 142. See the following Cabinet Conclusions: CC 31(36), 29 April 1936, CC 39(36), 27 May 1936, CC 40(36), 9 May 1936, all CAB 23/84. Cf. Warren Fisher to Chamberlain, 15 September 1936, NC 7/11/29/19. 143. Earl of Avon, Facing the Dictators (1962), p. 9; Eden to Chamberlain, 13 March 1937, DBFP II, XVIII, 415–16. 144. See Chatfield’s comments in DRC Meeting 25, 12 November 1935, CAB 16/ 112. Chatfield to Dreyer, 16 September CHT [Chatfield Papers, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich] 4/4. 145. Simon telegram (74) to Baldwin, 18 April 1935, DBFP II, XII, pp. 927–928. 146. See Bourette-Knowles, ‘Micawber’; Roi, ‘Triple Entente.’ 147. Simon telegram (108) to Clerk [British ambassador, Paris], 18 April 1935, Malkin [FO legal advisor] minute, 25 April 1935, Simon telegram (109) to Clerk, 26 April 1935; Phipps [British ambassador, Berlin] telegram (185) to Simon, 11 May 1935, Drummond [British ambassador, Rome] telegram (296) to Simon, 13 May 1935, DBFP II, XIII, pp. 190, 204–06, 210, 249, 250. Cf. H. Azeua, Le Pacte Franco–Soviétique, 2 mai 1935 (Paris, 1968). 148. E. Haraszti, Treaty-Breakers or “Realpolitiker”? The Anglo–German Naval Agreement of 1935 (Boppard am Rhein, 1974); D. C. Watt, ‘The Anglo–German Naval Agreement of 1935: An Interim Judgement,’ Journal of Modern History, 28 (1956), pp. 155–176. Cf. J. A. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933–39: A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the Second World War (London, NY, 1998). 149. Chatfield to Vansittart, 13 June 1935, FO 371/18734/5414/22. 150. G. W. Baer, Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia, and the League of Nations (Stanford, 1976); R. A. C. Parker, ‘Great Britain, France and the Ethiopian Crisis,’ English Historical Review, 89 (1974), pp. 293–332; R. Quartararo, ‘Le Origini del Piano Hoare-Laval,’ Storia Contemporanea, 8 (1977), pp. 749–790; J. C. Robertson, ‘The Hoare-Laval Plan,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 10 (1975), pp. 433–465. 151. CC 45(35), 9 October 1935, CAB 23/82. Cf. Sargent to Warren Fisher, 3 September 1935, Treasury memorandum, 26 August 1935, Chamberlain minute, 24 August 1935, all T 172/1838; CID report on ‘Trade Questions in Time of War’ [CP 186(35)], 30 September 1935, CAB 24/257. Then see Lindsay despatch (1218) to Hoare, 18 November 1935, FO 371/18772/9713/3483; Hoare to Eden, 9 October 1935, Hoare to Runciman [president of the Board of Trade], 22 November 1935, both Hoare [Hoare MSS, National Archives, Kew] FO 800/295; and cf. Board of Trade memorandum [CP 212(35)], 27 November 1935, CAB 24/257.

440

B. J. C. McKercher

152. Except where noted, the following paragraph is based on R. Davis, ‘Le Debat sur l’ “Appeasement” britannique et français dans les Années 1930: Les Crises d’Ethiopie et de Rhenanie,’ Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 45 (1998), 822–36; D. C. Watt, ‘The Reoccupation of the Rhineland,’ History Today, 6 (1956), pp. 244–251; G. L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany, Volume I: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933–36 (Chicago, 1970), pp. 239–63. 153. Eden Memorandum, 8 March 1936, DBFP II, XVI, pp. 60–61. Cf. D. Dutton, Anthony Eden. A Life and Reputation (1997), pp. 69–74 154. Vansittart memorandum, ‘International Position of the Soviet Union in Relation to France, Germany and Japan,’ 21 February 1935, FO 371/19460/880/135. Except where noted, the following discussion is informed by Michael Roi, ‘From the Stresa Front to the Triple Entente. Sir Robert Vansittart, the Abyssinian Crisis and the Containment of Germany,’ Diplomacy and Statecraft, 6 (1995), pp. 61–90. I would like to thank Dr. Roi for his advice on this issue. Cf. L. G. Shaw, The British Political Elite and the Soviet Union, 1937–1939 (2003), pp. 51–74. 155. Sargent minute, 9 January 1936, Vansittart minute, 9 January 1936, both FO 371/20338/479/20. 156. CC 6(36), 12 February 1936, CAB 23/83. 157. For instance, Wigram minute, 16 May 1936, FO 371/19905/3677/4; Wigram minute, 23 June 1936, FO 371/19907/4525/4; Sargent minute, 15 June 1936, FO 371/19906/4136/4; Sargent minute, 30 June 1936, FO 371/19907/4646/4; Vansittart minute, 1 June 1936. FO 371/19906/3879/4. 158. On the nature of the balance, see McKercher and Roi, ‘“Ideal” and “Punch-Bag”’. 159. Chamberlain to Hilda, his sister, NC 18/1/949. 160. In December 1936, Eden lobbied Baldwin unsuccessfully to have Vansittart moved to Paris as British ambassador. Baldwin supported Vansittart. Eden to Baldwin, 27 December 1936, Baldwin MSS [University Library, Cambridge] 124; Vansittart to Baldwin 30 December 1936, Baldwin MSS 171; Baldwin to Vansittart, VNST II 1/5. 161. For instance, Hoare to Chamberlain, 17 March 1937, NC 7/11/30/74. 162. See the discussion in CC 56(35), 18 December 1935, CAB 23/90B. 163. For example, D. K. Varey, ‘The Politics of Naval Aid: The Foreign Office, the Admiralty, and Anglo–Soviet Technical Cooperation, 1936–37,’ Diplomacy & Statecraft, 14 (2003), pp. 50–68. 164. Vansittart draft memorandum, 16 December 1936, FO 371/20467/18355/ 18355. 165. Vansittart to Eden, 3 July 1937, VNST 2/14. 166. D. Blumé, ‘Contribution à l’histoire de la Politique de la Non-Intervention (en Espagne): Documents Inédits de Léon Blum,’ Cahiers de Léon Blum (1977–1978), pp. 5–93; D. Carlton, ‘Eden, Blum and the Origins of Non-Intervention,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 6 (1971), pp. 40–55. Cf. E. Moradiellos, ‘Appeasement and Non-Intervention: British Policy during the Spanish Civil War,’ in P. Catterall and C. J. Morris, eds., Britain and the Threat to Stability in Europe, 1918–1947 (1993), pp. 94–104. On the war, see Thomas, Spanish Civil War. 167. R. E. Burrell, A Case Study in Limited War: German Intervention in the Spanish Civil War (Maxwell, AL, 1971); B. R. Sullivan, ‘Fascist Italy’s Military


168. 169.

170.

171.

172.

173. 174.

175.

176.

177.

178.

441

Involvement in the Spanish Civil War,’ Journal of Military History, 59 (1995), pp. 697–727. W. N. Medlicott, British Foreign Policy Since Versailles, 1919–1963, 2nd ed. (1968), p. 150. A. Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor: Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936–41 (1995), Chapter 2; idem., British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914–1941 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, NY, 2002), Chapter 8.; Crowley, J. B. Japan’s Quest for Autonomy. National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930–1938 (Princeton, 1966), pp. 301–378. T. Kuramatsu, ‘Britain, Japan and Inter-War Naval Limitation, 1921–1936.’ In I. Gow, Y. Hirama, and J. W. M. Chapman, eds., The History of Anglo–Japanese Relations, 1600–2000, Vol. 3: The Military Dimension (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 127–38; McKercher, Transition, pp. 223–26. C. M. Bell, ‘“How are we going to make war?” Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond and British Far Eastern war plans,’ Journal of Strategic Studies, 20 (1997), pp. 123–141; G. C. Kennedy, ‘Symbol of Imperial defence: The role of Singapore in British and American Far Eastern strategic relations, 1933–1941,’ in B. P. Farrell and S. Hunter, eds., Sixty Years On: The Fall of Singapore Revisited (Singapore, 2002), pp. 42–67. See A. Best, ‘Intelligence, Diplomacy and the Japanese Threat to British Interests, 1914–41,’ Intelligence and National Security, 17 (2002), pp. 85–100; P. Lowe, ‘War and War Plans in the Far East,’ International History Review, 21 (1999), pp. 124–133. W. R. Louis, British Strategy in the Far East, 1922–1939 (Oxford, 1971), p. 222; A. Trotter, Britain and East Asia, 1933–1937 (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 71–73. Leith-Ross `Financial Mission to China,’ 4 September 1936, Appendix, CAB 27/596. Cf. S.L. Endicott, ‘British Financial Diplomacy in China: The LeithRoss Mission, 1935–1937,’ Pacific Affairs, 46 (1973–74), pp. 481–450. See Chamberlain memorandum, ‘The Naval Conference and Our Relations with Japan,’ nd [but early August 1934], with two undated minutes, all NC 8/19/1. Then see the Foreign Office opposition: Orde [Far Eastern Department] memorandum, 4 September 1934, DBFP II, XIII, 31–34 [original removed from FO 371 records]; Craigie minute, 2 October 1934, Vansittart minute, 2 October 1934, FO 371/18184/5846/591; Allen [Far Eastern Department] minute, 3 October 1934, Randall [Far Eastern Department] minute, 3 October 1934, FO 371/18184/5859/591; Craigie [head, American Department] minute, 5 October 1934, Wellesley [FO deputy under-secretary] minute, 5 October 1934, FO 371/18184/6192/591. Inskip was pilloried by Cato, Guilty Men (1940) as inadequate for his responsibilities. For an even-handed treatment, cf. S. Greenwood, ‘Sir Thomas Inskip as Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, 1936–39,’ in P. Smith, ed., Government and the Armed Forces in Britain 1856–1990, (1996), pp. 155–189. For example, see CAB 64/3 [air defence]; CAB 64/14 [manpower]; CAB 64/30 [estimates and expenditures]; CAB 64/35 [organisation, armament and equipment of the Army]. Simon memorandum [CP 165(37)], 25 June 1937, CAB 24/270.

442

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179. COS ‘Comparison of the Strength of Great Britain with that of Other Nations as at January, 1938’ [CP 296(37)], 12 November 1937, CAB 24/273; COS memorandum, ‘Planning for War with Germany,’ [COS 644JP], 13 November 1937, CAB 53/34. Cf. COS meetings 216, 221, both CAB 53/8. 180. Inskip `Interim Report on Defence Expenditure in Future Years’ [CP 316(37)], 15 December 1937, CAB 24/273. Cf. Warren Fisher memorandum, ‘Defence. Sir T. Inskip’s New Report,’ 18 December 1937, Warren Fisher [Library, London School of Economics, London] p. 1. 181. Chamberlain to Hilda, 6 November 1937, Chamberlain to Ida, 14 November, 12 December 1937, NC 18/1/1027, 1028, 1031. Cf. V. Rothwell, Anthony Eden. A Political Biography, 1931–57 (Manchester, 1992), p. 40. 182. Inskip ‘Interim Report’; Inskip ‘Report on Defence Expenditure in Future Years’ [CP 24(38)], 8 February 1938, CAB 24/274; CC 5(38)9, 16 February 1938, CAB 23/92. 183. On the state of readiness of the ‘Field Force,’ see War Office, ‘Fourth Interim Report of the Field Force Committee,’ July 1937: WO 33/1472. There were some problems to be overcome, but they were not insurmountable. 184. Except where noted, the rest of this paragraph is based on Chamberlain to Ida, 4 July, 30 October, 26 November 1937, NC 18/1/1010, 1026, 1030; Chamberlain to Hilda, 24 October 1937, 5 December 1937, NC 18/1/1025, 1030a. 185. I. Colvin, The Chamberlain Cabinet (NY, 1971), p. 46. 186. See H. Mackenzie, ‘“Arsenal of the British Empire?” British orders for munitions production in Canada, 1936–39,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 31 (2003), pp. 46–73; J. A. Maiolo, ‘Armaments Competition,’ in R.Boyce and J. A. Maiolo, eds., The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 286–307; S. Ritchie, ‘The Price of Air Power: Technological Change, Industrial Policy, and Military Aircraft Contracts in the Era of British Rearmament, 1935–39,’ Business History Review, 71 (1997), pp. 82–111.