Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement, said it meant peace for our time, and declared war eleven months later. Born in 1869 into a Birmingham political dynasty, he spent seven years in the Bahamas trying to grow sisal on land his father had bought, failed entirely, and came home at thirty-two. He rebuilt himself in municipal government, became lord mayor of Birmingham, entered parliament at forty-nine, and was an unusually effective minister of health and chancellor — slum clearance, pensions, local government reform, and the fiscal management of the Depression. He became prime minister in 1937 with a domestic reputation and no foreign experience, and a settled view that another European war would destroy Britain and its empire, that the Versailles terms had genuine grievances behind them, and that Britain's rearmament was not ready. He flew to Germany three times in September 1938 — his first flights — and agreed at Munich that the Sudetenland would be transferred to Germany, with Czechoslovakia excluded from the negotiation. The relief in Britain and France was enormous at the time. Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and Chamberlain reversed course completely: a guarantee to Poland, conscription in peacetime, and a declaration of war on 3 September. He was forced out in May 1940 after the Norway debate, in which a Conservative member quoted Cromwell telling the Long Parliament to go. He served loyally under Churchill, died of cancer six months later, and has been the standard byword for appeasement ever since — including in arguments where it does not apply. He also, in the eleven months between Munich and the war, doubled the rate of aircraft production and completed the radar chain, which is the strongest thing to be said in his defence and is usually said by people arguing that it was the point. What he believed himself is recorded in his letters: he thought he had prevented a war, and then that he had been lied to.
- Lived: 1869 CE – 1940 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: prime_minister
