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In his book, Mr Cowling describes the relationship between British party politics and the conduct of British foreign policy between Hitler's arrival in office in 1933 and Chamberlain's resignation in May 1940. He sets British policy in the context of European, Imperial, League, national and isolational sentiments and takes account of the strategic and financial limitations within which decisions were made. He shows how far prime ministers, foreign secretaries and the cabinet responded to parliamentary criticism, and argues that, from mid-1936 onwards, foreign policy and the prospects of the party system were so intimately connected that neither can be understood in isolation from the other.
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THE IMPACT OF HITLER Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics EDITORS MAURICE COWLING G. R. ELTON E. KEDOURIE J. G. A. POCOCK J. R. POLE WALTER ULLMANN Mr. Anthony Eden and Viscount Halifax Illustrated London News THE IMPACT OF HITLER BRITISH POLITICS AND BRITISH POLICY 1933 - 1940 MAURICE COWLING Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521205825 © Cambridge University Press 1975 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1975 This digitally printed first paperback version 2005 A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 74—12968 ISBN-13 978-0-521-20582-5 hardback ISBN-10 0-521 -20582-4 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-01929-3 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-01929-X paperback CONTENTS Preface IX Introduction 1 PROLOGUE: THE UNFOLDING OF THE PROBLEM The recovery of the Labour party The rejection of Lloyd George The function of the League of Nations 15 33 63 P A R T I THE NEW D E P A R T U R E The failure of the League of Nations Chamberlain and Eden Chamberlain and Hitler 97 143 177 P A R T II THE O P P O S I T I O N The Labour party Eden, Churchill and their allies 209 223 P A R T III THE E F F E C T Halifax Chamberlain, Churchill and Hitler The declaration of war 257 293 313 P A R T IV THE P O L I T I C S OF E A S Y V I C T O R Y Chamberlain and the war The fall of Chamberlain 355 367 Conclusion 387 Appendix: the actors 401 Bibliography 421 Notes 427 Index 543 PREFACE This volume is the third in a sequence about The Politics of British Democracy. In the future there will be an introduction bearing the sequence-title which will deal in its widest aspects with the period from 1850 to 1940 and will assess the methods used in the volumes which have now been published. Whether there will be anything more is uncertain. For that period an abundance of material is already available or will be shortly. For later periods there is a problem. It can be only a hope that a volume entitled The Development of the Class Struggle 1924-1935 will be followed by The Impact of Inflation (from 1936 onwards). For this volume no general introduction is needed. Readers who want one should read the first twelve and last fortyseven pages of The Impact of Labour or pages 287-340 of Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution. All it is necessary to say here is that no