The Road to War (1/8) : Great Britain
For educational purposes
A detailed account of the lead up to the British involvement in World War II featuring historical footage, evidence and interviews with surviving members of government, society and contemporaries.
Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939; eight months later the British army was in retreat from the beaches of Dunkirk.
New research shows the possible cause of Britain’s near-defeat a country weakened by World War 1, desperate to avoid another conflict, and struggling to support an overextended Empire.
By the late 1930s, Chamberlain was caught in a hopeless position, confronting the irrational aggression of Hitler and Mussolini while trying to preserve the illusion of British imperial power.
A detailed account of the lead up to the British involvement in World War II featuring historical footage, evidence and interviews with surviving members of government, society and contemporaries.
Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939; eight months later the British army was in retreat from the beaches of Dunkirk.
New research shows the possible cause of Britain’s near-defeat a country weakened by World War 1, desperate to avoid another conflict, and struggling to support an overextended Empire.
By the late 1930s, Chamberlain was caught in a hopeless position, confronting the irrational aggression of Hitler and Mussolini while trying to preserve the illusion of British imperial power.
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LearningTranscript
00:00And now it has come to us to stand alone in the breach and face the worst that the tyrant's
00:10might and enmity can do.
00:13Winston Churchill in the summer of 1940.
00:17Britain was unprepared for war.
00:19As the army retreated across the English Channel from the beaches of Dunkirk, many must have
00:24blamed the guilty men, the politicians who'd rejected vigorous rearmament in favor of
00:29placating the dictators.
00:31For the next half century, Britain's policy of appeasement was remembered with shame.
00:36But what brought Britain to the verge of defeat was not the guilt of the few.
00:41It was the collective illusion of a nation.
00:59And now it has come to us to stand alone in the breach and face the worst that the tyrant's
01:24might and enmity can do.
01:34Twenty years before the retreat from Dunkirk, the body of an unidentified casualty of the
01:39First World War was brought from the battlefields of France across the English Channel to Britain.
01:49Born on a gun carriage, the coffin was drawn through London, and in the presence of King
02:03George V, the unknown soldier was given a state funeral in Westminster Abbey.
02:18In four and a half years, Britain had lost a million men.
02:24Never before had there been such slaughter.
02:27The shock to the system, the national system of the First War, had really gone very, very,
02:33very deep.
02:34It's almost impossible now, looking back, to think how deep it had gone.
02:37But that was the truth of the matter.
02:39And the trench warfare of the last four years of the First War had really bitten into everybody's
02:47soul.
02:48And we remember, of course, there was to be no more war.
02:53It was the war to end all wars.
02:59It had been such a horrible war.
03:11The people that got killed, I mean, our own personal example, my mother lost her two brothers,
03:16one, 19, in the Somme, and Uncle Alf, who was a regular soldier, had just come home
03:20from India.
03:21Well, he didn't get home, actually.
03:23They diverted him to France, and he went to the battles, early battles and that, and he
03:29got killed.
03:30And such a lot of people went.
03:33I mean, such a lot of young men were killed in the Somme and that, that I think people
03:37were really horrified and thought they'd never have another war.
03:40People really didn't want it.
03:41In those days, Britain was a superpower.
03:59The Union Jack flew proudly over a fifth of the surface of the globe.
04:03Her imperial possessions contained a quarter of the world's population.
04:07But the war had brought her close to bankruptcy.
04:11To cheer people up, the government organised an exhibition at Wembley.
04:15Its theme was the Empire.
04:18It seems to me that someone must have said, now we've got this terrible war over, we must
04:25do something to promote business, trade, to let the world know that the British Empire
04:31is still alive and well, and to boost morale, generally, and what better than a British
04:37Empire exhibition.
04:40The brand new stadium was the setting for the Royal Opening Ceremony.
04:49The mass bands and choirs were conducted by the composer, Edward Elgar.
05:07We were, of course, extremely patriotic people in those days and the British Empire was part
05:15of our life.
05:17Patriotism ran through everything, like a thread through everything, through your school,
05:22through your family, through society.
05:27We thought that the Empire was a force for good in the world, a benign force, and we
05:34thought that the British were a little bit better than most people.
05:38In fact, the British, even working men, who at that time, many of them had rather a poor
05:45standard of life, were nevertheless intensely patriotic and thought that, generally, that
05:52a Britisher was as good as ten foreigners.
05:55To fight the war, Britain had mobilised five million men.
05:59All but a few were discharged.
06:02Despite the demands of imperial defence, there was no money to maintain large armed services.
06:07And besides, Britain, like other victorious powers, was determined to disarm, especially
06:12now that no conceivable enemy existed.
06:16The army was the first to be emasculated.
06:18To justify the cuts, the government adopted what it called the Ten Year Rule, an assumption
06:23for the purposes of military planning that peace would last at least ten years.
06:29The navy, Britain's guardian of the imperial sea lanes, was drastically diminished.
06:34By the start of the 1930s, Britain was a weaker naval power in relation to her rivals than
06:39she had been since the 17th century, when her fleet had been defeated by the Dutch.
06:46Britain's most modern service, the air force, was all but grounded.
06:51When the First World War ended, the Royal Air Force was both the largest individual
06:56air force in the world and the only independent air force in existence.
07:01It had 22,000 aircraft on charge, 1,600 of them in actual action on the Western Front.
07:08And then dramatically, in two years, it had reduced from that 22,000 on charge to only
07:15120 serviceable aircraft in the whole of the Royal Air Force.
07:20Tremendous drop.
07:22And aircraft, of course, were being scrapped, chopped up, burned in every direction.
07:27You could buy a SE-5 fighter for five pounds and a 504 trainer for joyriding for ten.
07:37Weakened by disarmament, the British put their trust in the League of Nations, set up at
07:42Geneva.
07:43The League was to settle disputes by arbitration, and in the last resort, would fall back on
07:47what it called collective security.
07:50In extreme cases, this meant joint military action by member nations.
07:55But Britain's immediate concern was the preservation of its highly vulnerable empire.
08:00By the 1930s, she was scarcely strong enough to protect even the British Isles against
08:05a threat from Europe, and that was only a first commitment.
08:11Another lay along the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, on the sea lane to the brightest
08:15jewel in the imperial crown, India.
08:18To the east, and dangerously exposed, were Burma, Malaya, Hong Kong.
08:24The empire was hugely overstretched.
08:26It was in Asia that aggression began.
08:32In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, nominally part of China.
08:37Japan had been a British ally since the start of the century, but in 1922, under pressure
08:42from America, Britain had ended the alliance.
08:46With that, Japan became a potential enemy.
08:51But an even greater threat was emerging much nearer home, in Europe.
08:57Hitler gets a tremendous ovation when leaving for his first cabinet meeting.
09:07Hitler came to power on a promise to tear up the peace treaties and restore Germany's
09:11role as a major power in Europe.
09:14In principle, the British were sympathetic.
09:16There was a widespread feeling that Germany had been treated too harshly after the war.
09:21From across the way, Hitler appeared at his window, and another milestone is marked in
09:28Germany's political history.
09:30I think people were concerned, but I can't say that they felt alarmed at that stage.
09:35I think there was a certain feeling in the country that the Germans, one thing they do
09:42is love playing at soldiers.
09:46And as they had no soldiers, they advised, they took the brown shirts and the Nazi movement
09:52as a good alternative.
09:53But I don't think anybody suspected that they would break out into something as terrible
10:00as they did.
10:04To the British government, a coalition of the Conservative, Labour, and Liberal parties,
10:08the threat building up abroad was a long way off.
10:11The only pressing concern was the desperate state of Britain's economy, the result of
10:16the World Depression.
10:18The threats that were building up abroad were rather remote, but the economic crisis was
10:23immediate.
10:24Something had to be done almost overnight.
10:26Otherwise, we were told, not just by fools and people who wanted to frighten us, but
10:33by the leading economists, the financial correspondents of every newspaper, a appalling crisis is
10:40going to affect the British people, which will have dreadful effects.
10:44That was an immediate thing.
10:46And therefore, for the time being, all the intention was concentrated on that problem
10:51rather than on the developing European situation with its threat of war.
10:59The wartime government had promised the survivors of the fighting a country fit for heroes to
11:03live in.
11:04The pledge was not fulfilled.
11:07Industry had lost ground to foreign competition, and in the early 1930s, one in five of the
11:12working population was unemployed.
11:16Millions of families lived in abject poverty.
11:20So you saw real hunger.
11:21I mean, I'd been really hungry.
11:25I'm not talking about starving in the sense of peoples of Africa, but I'd known hunger
11:31pangs and not known where the next meal was coming from.
11:35And I've seen the desperation on my mother's face as to how she was going to feed five
11:39children and a husband.
11:42We used to go out and buy four pennies of scrag end of lamb, and with that, my mother
11:48would make a big succulent stew, which would last us two or three days.
11:54And I can remember coming home from school one day, being really very hungry, and there
11:57on the stove was this big stew.
12:01And my mother put a lid on it and started taking it out of the house, and I said, where
12:05is it going?
12:06She said she was going to give it to a Mrs. Bushel, a little further down the road.
12:10And I said, but I'm hungry, and I remember she slapped my face.
12:14She said, you're hungry, but now starving.
12:18The strongman of the cabinet was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain.
12:22At heart, he was a social reformer, dedicated to uplift, prosperity, and beating the Depression.
12:29He'd come to prominence as Lord Mayor of Birmingham, where his particular pride was a housing estate
12:34at Wheelie Castle, built to replace the worst of the slums.
12:49In 1933, Chamberlain went back to Birmingham for a special ceremony.
12:53The number of new council houses had reached 40,000.
13:07It was just like a little palace because we'd had nothing to say down there, and the house
13:12was dark down there, where we'd get light here and all like that.
13:17And it was marvellous to think we'd got our own things, we'd got our own toilet and bathroom
13:21and we could move, and if we wanted to wash every day, we could do and all like that.
13:26And it's such a good thing, you know, after waiting nine years.
13:38I can remember when, most every night at ten, we sang an old refrain.
13:45As we wandered in the moonlight, down Sunnyside Lane.
13:51We heard the merry lark, and if the night was dark, I'd steal a kiss again.
13:59As we wandered in the moonlight, down Sunnyside Lane.
14:05The people must be strong and healthy.
14:12They must command an income sufficient to maintain themselves and their families, at
14:19least in a minimum state of comfort.
14:24They should be able to cultivate a taste for beautiful things, whether in nature or in
14:29art, and to open their minds to the wisdom that is to be found in books.
14:38Chamberlain's priorities were soon to be upset.
14:40In 1934, a high-level government committee reviewed the state of Britain's defences.
14:46The report recommended greater spending on defence, and the creation of an expeditionary
14:50force able to fight on the continent.
14:53It drew attention to German rearmament, and identified Hitler as the ultimate potential
14:58enemy.
15:01In 1935, Hitler had been in power for two years, and the resurgence of German militarism
15:09was causing unease.
15:12Nevertheless, the peace movement in Britain commanded mass support for its campaign against
15:17war.
15:18Propaganda films denounced rearmament.
15:21I'd fight tomorrow if I thought a war would end war, but that's what they told my father
15:42in 1914, and we're no better off now.
15:45When there's a quarrel between two people, the police are called in to settle it.
15:51Why can't the League of Nations be strong enough to settle disputes between two nations?
15:56I was in the last war, and I thought that was going to be the end of it.
16:00Now, here we are again, exactly where we started.
16:04Why can't the governments of the world get together to make war impossible?
16:08Write to your MP.
16:12The peace movement launched a successful petition.
16:16We got over 11 million signatures for the peace petition, which was a significant number
16:21of the adults in this country, and that was the first beginning, I think, of the movement
16:26which then to take over the 30s feeling against war.
16:32The fear was there, ticking away like a bomb all through the 30s.
16:41I think the peace petition began to make people feel and think about it.
16:47There we were marching and fighting to stop war, to demand that the government should
16:53form a pact with Russia and others to stop Hitler, yet at the same time, in our hearts,
17:00I think there was a realization that the machinery was in motion.
17:05It couldn't be stopped.
17:06That bomb was going to explode one day.
17:10Neville Chamberlain urged the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, to come out for limited rearmament.
17:15But 1935 was an election year, and Baldwin was careful to reassure the voters.
17:21Above all, we desire to go on working to maintain world peace and strengthen the League of Nations.
17:37But it is clear from recent events that both our own influence in the world and that of
17:44the League itself will be weakened unless we make good the gaps in our defenses.
17:52I will never stand for a policy of great armament, and I give you my word, and I think you can
17:59trust me by now, that our defense program will be no more than is sufficient to make
18:06our country safe and enable us to fulfill our obligations.
18:12That much we must have.
18:15When Italy invaded Abyssinia, the need to strengthen Britain's defenses became indisputable.
18:22Italy had been an ally, and Mussolini's friendship was vital to British control of the Mediterranean
18:27and thus to the Empire's defense.
18:30A further threat now developed in Germany, where Hitler marched three battalions of the
18:34Wehrmacht into the Rhineland.
18:37It was a clear breach of treaties, but it was not unexpected.
18:40Britain and France had spent months discussing their response.
18:44In the event, they did nothing.
18:45In the words of Anthony Eden, given Germany's strength and power of mischief in Europe,
18:51it was in Britain's interest to conclude a settlement with Hitler while he was still
18:55in the mood.
18:56It was a classic definition of appeasement.
19:01I think that we should have stopped Hitler, probably, when he invaded the Rhineland.
19:09But there was a feeling in Britain, certainly, that the peace treaty had treated Germany
19:18unjustly.
19:19There was rather reluctance, therefore, to intervene on that particular issue.
19:25The French showed no sign of intervening, whatever.
19:29And so I think the hope was, and again, it was a false hope, that if Hitler was allowed
19:41to reoccupy the Rhineland, that that would be sufficient and that would be the end of
19:45his demands.
19:48That feeling was wrong.
19:50The opposition to rearmament was gradually crumbling, as Chamberlain noted at the annual
19:55conference of the Conservative Party.
19:57There could be no doubt in the minds of any members of His Majesty's government who
20:06were present of the determination of the great audience to see the gaps in our defences fill
20:18at the earliest possible moment.
20:21As Chancellor of the Exchequer, I feel greatly encouraged and heartened by what I heard
20:28this morning.
20:29Parliament has decided that Britain shall spend 1,500 millions on arms in the next five
20:40years.
20:41Not directed against any one country, said the Chancellor, but because of our vast responsibilities
20:45in all parts of the world, and as a measure for the preservation of peace.
20:50This means no remission in taxation, but it gives security.
20:53Even more than that, it will reduce the figures of unemployment.
20:57Security will bring prosperity.
21:00It was Chamberlain who made rearmament policy.
21:03The Air Force was given priority.
21:06Bombers and fighters would form a deterrent to enemy action against the British Isles.
21:13The fear of bombing in these years almost amounted to an obsession.
21:18Feature films added to people's fears.
21:21Even the service chiefs joined in.
21:23There is the possibility, they wrote, of air attacks so continuous and concentrated that
21:29a few weeks of bombing might so undermine the morale of our civilian population as to
21:34make it impossible for the government to continue a war.
21:48People were frightened of bombing, that and the gas attacks.
22:04I know I thought about it quite early on about the bombing, and people used to say, oh, with
22:09the world, once you come, they'll bomb us out of existence, or something like that.
22:12People were really frightened of it.
22:15With London, the world's biggest city, defenceless against attack from the air, RAF pilots have
22:20been giving the metropolis an object lesson.
22:28The power of the bomber was constantly pushed right through the late 1920s through into
22:33the 1930s, and all sorts of bogus statistics were traded about by which London was going
22:40to be bombed into ruins within a week, and three million people were going to be milling
22:44about in the countryside, and so on.
22:47And so you had a kind of conspiracy, if you like, of air marshals, defence pundits, and
22:52pacifists, all saying that the next war was going to start with a colossal German strike
22:57at London and other industrial cities.
23:01The response of Parliament was to vote more money for the Air Force.
23:09A specially built factory at Acocks Green in Birmingham.
23:13To meet the shortage of skilled labour, aircraft factories were set up in the strongholds of
23:17the motor industry.
23:19Bernard Smith left the Rover Car Company to help set up one of the new shadow factories.
23:25The shadow factory scheme was a brilliant idea.
23:31It was a unique way of using the resources of an existing motor industry to immediately
23:38double, for example, the output of the Bristol Aeroplane Engine Company.
23:48The government were building these shadow factories, not that they very seriously thought
23:54that war was about to break out, but as a deterrent to the Germans.
24:01When I first went there, the factory itself was three parts empty, and there were very
24:08few people working there.
24:11Lots of jigs and fixtures, and a few fuselages and wings.
24:18And we thought at the time, the chaps I was working with, that it was all a bit of a joke
24:23to be building planes, and we thought, whatever for?
24:28Because at that time, we didn't think that there was going to be a war.
24:33But British aircraft designers had taken the prospect of war more seriously.
24:37The result was the monoplane, the forerunner of the aircraft that won the Battle of Britain.
24:43Now the first of the modern generation to come forward in the great expansion of the
24:49Royal Air Force was Sydney Cam's Hawker Hurricane, and you see one here.
24:53The Hurricane was the first of the new generation of aeroplanes to exceed 300 miles an hour.
24:58Tremendous speed in those days.
25:00300 miles an hour made it as fast as any competitive aeroplane anywhere in the world.
25:07And what's more, it had eight machine guns, which were deadly, and a great new advance
25:12in armament, together with its advance in performance, and thanks to the Hawker method
25:18of construction, an easy aeroplane to build.
25:25The Cinderella of the services was still the army.
25:28The chiefs of staff had pleaded for an expeditionary force able to fight across the Channel, but
25:35the government insisted that public opinion would never stand for a continental war.
25:41We used to discuss the question in the office, at what point do the chiefs of staff resign?
25:48And we came to the conclusion that you didn't resign just because you disagreed with government
25:53policy.
25:54If the government had the policy they weren't going to send an army to the continent, well,
25:58you had to accept that.
26:00They weren't going to send it.
26:02Well, if they went the other way and said you weren't going to send an army, but you
26:06can't have any more tanks, then you say, well, in that case, we won't be responsible.
26:11The army was in no position to fight a modern war.
26:15Finally, the battery is charged by tanks, bogus tanks in this case, and just as well,
26:20since the 18-pounders fire at them point blank.
26:22A direct hit, and he swerves to the right, his steering gear out of order.
26:28It was quite an experience to be with the First Division, which should have been the
26:34spearhead of the force, which should have stopped the German invasion of the Rhineland.
26:41And we had the same machine guns as we finished the 1914-18 war with, the Lewis gun.
26:48We had flags for men.
26:50I had in my platoon, which should have been about 45 to 50, I had three or four men.
26:57But we were essentially a cadre for reinforcing the Indian army and our forces in India, and
27:04not a cadre for an expeditionary force in France.
27:09We relied on the French to do that.
27:12The public at large was blissfully unaware of the army's weakness.
27:18On parade for the coronation of King George VI, the soldiers of the empire looked magnificent.
27:24And in these years of illusion, that was all most people expected of the army.
27:30The British empire between the world wars was really a facade, that it made us feel strong.
27:36There was all that pink on the map, all those dominions and colonies.
27:39But it was really a sentimental association so far as the white dominions were concerned.
27:44We had no common foreign policy.
27:46We had no common defence policy.
27:49There was no operational plans for the fleets and the armies.
27:54And so, really, the empire existed only as a facade, and the sort of thing that we really
27:59saw most at things like jubilees and coronations on parade.
28:03Long live the King!
28:06Long live the King!
28:11We're marching along, and we're singing this song,
28:15Gentlemen, the King!
28:19The crowds in the street, round the trap of our feet,
28:24Gentlemen, the King!
28:27And if the army, the navy, the boys in the sky,
28:31Shout, are you done hollering?
28:33No, we reply,
28:35We're marching along, and we're singing this song,
28:39Gentlemen, the King!
28:48The chiefs of staff were only too aware of the state of Britain's defences.
28:52They now endorsed appeasement.
28:54Warning of the danger of a war in the Far East, the Mediterranean, and Europe simultaneously,
28:59they wrote,
29:00We cannot exaggerate the importance of political action to reduce the numbers of our potential enemies.
29:08In 1937, the easygoing Mr. Baldwin stepped down as Prime Minister,
29:13and the ablest of his colleagues took over.
29:16Neville Chamberlain combined great drive with unshakable faith in his own judgement.
29:21It didn't take long after Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister
29:25for him to make it absolutely clear that he was indeed determined
29:30to be his own master in foreign affairs.
29:32And this was a big change from Baldwin,
29:34because Baldwin was absolutely bored to tears by foreign affairs,
29:38and never took much action in connection with them.
29:41But Chamberlain proved very quickly that he felt very differently,
29:47and that he was going to be the master.
29:51He passionately believed that a combination of rearmament at a certain pace,
29:59and getting on to better terms with the dictators,
30:02was the best formula for peace.
30:04That was the root of Chamberlain's foreign policy.
30:08And at the same time, he agreed with his Chancellor, Lee Checker,
30:12that over-rearming too fast could do great damage to the economy,
30:17which he'd nurse back to health.
30:19Now, it was within that framework, really, that every decision was made,
30:23and what Churchill had called false measurements, if you like, were taken.
30:28For four years, Churchill had argued that the government was underestimating
30:32the pace and extent of Hitler's military preparations,
30:35and that Britain had fallen far behind.
30:38But his was a lonely voice.
30:40Churchill did his utmost in Parliament,
30:43but he had a very small following.
30:46And he was a curious politician,
30:50in that he had held every State Department you can think of,
30:54and yet had not become Prime Minister,
30:57because he antagonised so many people,
31:01whom he attacked when they were opposing him.
31:04I mean, when he was the Treasury, he would hit the Admiralty over the head very hard.
31:08When he was the Admiralty, he'd hit the Treasury over the head.
31:11They'd all been attacked one way or another,
31:14so they didn't like him much.
31:16And Chamberlain didn't want him in the government,
31:19because he didn't want somebody pressing all the time for more arms.
31:24He wanted somebody who would quietly keep that going,
31:28and keep the Treasury happy about the amount of money being spent.
31:33At No. 10 Downing Street, Neville Chamberlain was very much his own man.
31:37He had little regard for the experts over the road at the Foreign Office,
31:41who favoured taking a firmer line with the dictators.
31:45Early in 1938, Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, resigned,
31:49predicting that with the collusion of Mussolini,
31:52Hitler would soon take over Austria.
31:55Germany moves into Austria,
31:57and these pictures will perhaps stir emotions in some of you,
32:00which you may find it hard to repress.
32:02But sit through them calmly.
32:04They will teach us something.
32:05They will illustrate the seriousness of the times in which we live,
32:08and they will reinforce our determination
32:10to meet the difficulties of our world with courage.
32:12Britain did not interfere.
32:14Neither did France.
32:16Chamberlain told Parliament,
32:17the hard fact is that nothing could have arrested what has happened
32:21unless this country and others were prepared to use force.
32:24He was determined that Germany's action
32:26would not deflect him from his policy of appeasement.
32:30Hitler had sworn to redress the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles.
32:34With his annexation of Austria,
32:36he was well positioned to tackle his next objective, Czechoslovakia,
32:40now threatened by German divisions from the south
32:43as well as the north and the west.
32:45The peace treaties had left a large and restive German-speaking minority
32:49inside Czechoslovakia.
32:51These Sudeten Germans now became the pretext
32:54for the war Hitler wanted to launch.
32:57In Downing Street, Chamberlain was determined to stop him.
33:00Late at night on the 28th of August,
33:03he decided to frustrate Hitler by persuading the Czechs
33:06to surrender the Sudetenland.
33:08He, Chamberlain, and not his foreign secretary, Lord Halifax,
33:12would play the principal role.
33:14Appeasement was his policy, and he would put it to the test.
33:17He wrote about his mission to his sister.
33:20Is it not positively horrible to think that the fate of hundreds of millions
33:24depends on one man, and he is half mad?
33:28I keep racking my brains to try and devise some means
33:31of averting a catastrophe.
33:33I thought of one so unconventional and daring
33:37that it rather took Halifax's breath away.
33:40The hour of need has found the man,
33:43Mr Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister.
33:45Since he took office, Mr Chamberlain has never wavered
33:48in his determination to establish peace in Europe.
33:51At the hour when the dark clouds of war
33:53hung most menacingly above the world of men,
33:55the prime minister took a wise and bold decision.
33:58Well may we call him Chamberlain the Peacemaker.
34:01It's almost impossible to describe to people brought up in the jet age
34:07what the news that Mr Chamberlain was flying to Bertha's Garden
34:12meant to the British people, and indeed to Europe and the world.
34:15It was a very brave act morally and physically.
34:20He was, after all, an old man.
34:23And there was a tremendous mixture of feeling in the country.
34:29First of all, admiration.
34:32Three cheers for Chamberlain.
34:36Stunned surprise. Absolutely electrifying shock.
34:41And perhaps most important of all,
34:46the feeling that all hope was not lost,
34:50that we were still in with a chance.
34:53Before he set off for his first meeting with Hitler,
34:56Chamberlain had told the cabinet that as a result of their failure to rearm,
35:00Britain and France were not in a position to fight Germany.
35:08They walked up the steps for the frank and friendly talk.
35:12Two men carrying between them the fate of 20 million.
35:18Chamberlain couldn't negotiate from a position of strength
35:22because the strength was not there.
35:25So he went into the meetings with Hitler in a weak position
35:32and hoped, first of all, that he could buy time,
35:36but secondly, that he might convince Hitler
35:41that there was no conceivable gain to be got from war.
35:46I think those were his priorities.
35:49High up in Hitler's Alpine retreat, looking out over the Austrian Alps,
35:54Chamberlain told Hitler that if it could be done without force,
35:57he would not object to the detachment of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.
36:02Hitler gave Chamberlain a reluctant promise not to give the order to march.
36:07At their second meeting one week later,
36:10Chamberlain found that the stakes had been raised.
36:12Hitler announced that German troops would occupy
36:15the disputed territory in ten days' time.
36:18Chamberlain was profoundly shocked,
36:20but he agreed to put the proposal to the Czechs.
36:24He returned to a Britain preparing for war,
36:27for the air raids, all believed, would come within days.
36:31The slit trenches in the parks testified to Britain's unreadiness.
36:36Well, I was writing stories about air raid precautions,
36:39civil defence every day,
36:41but there were one or two pieces that went under my own name.
36:44There was one, for example, where I put the question,
36:48how strong are the country's passive defences now?
36:52The reason, only one honest answer,
36:55is peace could be guaranteed until the end of 1939.
36:59We could afford to view the rate of progress with equanimity,
37:03but for any emergency which might arise, say,
37:06before the end of this year,
37:08the whole of the civilian population,
37:10and London in particular, is still highly vulnerable.
37:19To judge from Hitler's behaviour in Berlin,
37:21the emergency would come at the end of the month.
37:25But Hitler did acknowledge Chamberlain's efforts to defuse the crisis.
37:34For all the efforts.
37:38I have assured and I repeat to you,
37:41that if this problem is solved,
37:43there will be no territorial problem for Germany in Europe.
37:48Chamberlain was inclined to accept Hitler's ultimatum,
37:51but public opinion was turning against further appeasement,
37:55and the cabinet decided that Hitler's demands were unacceptable.
37:59But on September the 28th, the news reached London
38:02that Hitler had agreed to another conference.
38:04The Prime Minister was the hero of Europe.
38:08From the north, the south and the west,
38:10four strong men converge on the German town of Munich
38:12to make it for one proud day the new centre of the world.
38:15Mr Chamberlain.
38:25The Munich conference was an anti-climax.
38:28Britain and France had already conceded the Nazi leader's claim.
38:32Hitler was sullen.
38:34He'd been cheated of his war.
38:36That damn Chamberlain, he was heard to say,
38:38has spoiled my parade into Prague.
38:43Next morning, Chamberlain invited Hitler to sign a paper
38:46committing them both to the peaceful settlement of further disputes.
38:50Hitler was unenthusiastic.
38:52He hardly bothered to read the paper before he signed it.
38:55But to Chamberlain the paper was a triumph.
38:57The prelude to a general settlement in Europe
39:00and even to peace for our time.
39:04He came home to scenes of wild relief.
39:11So our Prime Minister has come back from his third and greatest journey
39:15and he said...
39:17That the settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem,
39:21which has now been achieved,
39:24is, in my view, only the prelude
39:29to a larger settlement
39:31in which all Europe may find peace.
39:38This morning I had another talk
39:43with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler.
39:47And here is the paper
39:50which bears his name upon it as well as mine.
39:58The British rejoiced.
40:00But Chamberlain's private view of Hitler was ambivalent,
40:03as he told Lord Hume on their way back from the Munich conference.
40:08I don't know if he ever worked out Hitler's state of mind properly.
40:12I think he told me, coming back from the airplane in Munich,
40:17he thought Hitler was the nastiest bit of work he'd ever had to deal with.
40:20But you had to deal with people like that in international diplomacy.
40:24And therefore there was no escape negotiating with him.
40:30Is there a contradiction there?
40:32Did he really feel that he was mad
40:35and yet negotiated with him as a normal human being?
40:41I think he felt that you had to negotiate with him
40:45even though he described him as mad.
40:47He was the leader of Germany,
40:49and he was the only fellow who could say yes to peace or war.
40:55A minority was appalled.
40:57By bowing to Hitler's threat of force,
40:59Chamberlain had paid too high a price for temporary peace.
41:03I can't describe to you our feelings about Chamberlain adequately.
41:07I find it very difficult to find words.
41:10He was regarded, I think, universally by working-class people
41:16and particularly by those who were labour-inclined,
41:19as the archenemy.
41:21And Munich, for us, was the climax.
41:24We felt that he'd betrayed the country,
41:27that he'd made war more inevitable, not less inevitable.
41:30They had a very powerful army, the Czech army,
41:33and they could have put up a good deal of resistance to Hitler,
41:37especially at that time, who wasn't fully armed and ready for war.
41:41But that had all been denied them by this agreement.
41:44We'd bought time, perhaps, but they'd lost time.
41:48Con O'Neill was a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Berlin.
41:52When the Munich meeting was finally over,
41:56I was so depressed that I sent in my resignation
41:59immediately within the next day or two.
42:02I was glad then, for many years,
42:04that I had taken that resigning action.
42:07But now I have to confess that I think I was wrong.
42:11I think probably we made certainly as good,
42:15possibly even better use of the year's interval in rearming,
42:19above all in beginning to get our fighter aircraft into squadron service.
42:28The pace of Allied rearmament, especially of British airpower,
42:31now overtook that of Germany.
42:33But its cost was a bigger worry than ever.
42:36The problem with rearmament from the British point of view
42:39was that we really had no longer got the financial resources,
42:43or indeed the economic base, to carry it on the scale
42:47that our defences and the imperial defences needed.
42:50And that was the absolute heart of the dilemma
42:52as to how much you did and how quickly you did it.
42:55And so you find, by the beginning of 1939,
42:59the Chancellor of the Exchequer warning the Cabinet
43:01that if even peacetime rearmament went on at the current rate,
43:05Britain would be bankrupt within about a year or two years.
43:15Once again the rattle of a German army on the march echoes in Europe.
43:19Where that march may end, no man can foretell,
43:21least of all the man who gave the order.
43:24But here before our eyes unfolds the drama of a nation dying.
43:29Only five months after Munich,
43:31Hitler invaded what was left of Czechoslovakia.
43:34In Britain, support for appeasement was replaced
43:37by an almost reckless determination to resist Hitler's next demand.
43:41Even Chamberlain changed his tone,
43:44sounding a Churchillian note of defiance.
43:47That was the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.
43:50Ask yourself now the question asked by the British Prime Minister.
43:53Is this the last attack upon a small state?
43:58Or is it to be followed by others?
44:02Is this in fact a step in the direction of an attempt
44:07to dominate the world by force?
44:11The British government now assumed
44:14that Hitler's next objective would be Poland.
44:17At the end of March, Chamberlain offered the Poles
44:20Britain's support in the event of a German attack.
44:24Giving our guarantee to Poland, from a military point of view,
44:28was a totally crazy thing to do.
44:30I don't know whether the Poles thought it totally crazy.
44:33I'm afraid I did even at the time,
44:35because there was no reason to suppose
44:37that we could help the Poles effectively,
44:40and of course we didn't.
44:42But we had to this extent compelled ourselves to be courageous
44:46by giving that guarantee to Poland.
44:49An Anglo-French mission now arrived in Moscow
44:52in a belated and half-hearted attempt
44:54to negotiate a military alliance with Russia.
44:57It was intended to put muscle behind the guarantee to Poland
45:01and to reduce the military odds in Germany's favour.
45:04But it was the Germans who surprised the world
45:07by striking a deal with Stalin.
45:09Von Ribbentrop, leaving Berlin for Moscow,
45:12ushers in a new incomprehensible chapter in German diplomacy.
45:15Where is the anti-Comintern pact?
45:17What has happened to the principles of Mein Kampf?
45:20Equally, what can Russia have in common with Germany
45:23to throw over the peace front if she has?
45:25Newspapers were quick to fasten on the amazing turnaround
45:28in Hitler's policy, and one or two found a humorous angle to it.
45:32Neville Chamberlain's last diplomatic move had come too late.
45:36All he could now do was prepare his country for certain war.
45:41Limited conscription had been introduced.
45:44Volunteers rushed to join up
45:46as their fathers had done 25 years before.
45:49The army formed the expeditionary force
45:52the government had resisted for so long.
45:56On September 3rd, two days after Hitler invaded Poland,
46:00Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the nation.
46:05This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin
46:09handed the German government a final note,
46:13stating that unless we heard from them
46:17by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once
46:21to withdraw their troops from Poland,
46:24a state of war would exist between us.
46:30I have to tell you now
46:32that no such undertaking has been received,
46:35and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany.
46:41You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me
46:45that all my long struggle to win peace has failed.
47:11MUSIC PLAYS
47:22What happened to Britain in the 20 years before the outbreak of the war
47:27and our finally getting into war at that time,
47:31a war which we could not afford to wage
47:34and which we were bound to come out of ruined, even if we won it?
47:39The basic reasons for that
47:41were in the illusions of a generation, on the one hand.
47:45You can't just single out guilty men, as people have done,
47:49like Chamberlain or Baldwin.
47:52This was a generation.
47:54They were partaking of the common beliefs and hopes and illusions
47:58of the whole broad spread of public opinion.
48:02So if anybody's going to be guilty,
48:04it is the illusions of the British people as a whole.
48:07United and in a mood of quite unjustified optimism,
48:11the British army set off for France.
48:13It would be a full six months
48:15before the illusion of British invincibility
48:18was to be shattered by the threat of defeat.
48:21An empire has sprung to arms.
48:23Its gallant manhood marches through the roads of France
48:26singing a new song in the old spirit.
48:29All out on the barrel
48:32We've got the British on the run
48:36Take the barrel
48:40We'll have us home after this
48:43Now's the time to roll the barrel
48:47On the gallows
48:59On the gallows