European foreign policy of the Chamberlain ministry
The European foreign policy of the Chamberlain ministry from 1937 to 1940 was based on British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's commitment to "peace for our time" by pursuing a policy of appeasement and containment towards Nazi Germany and by increasing the strength of Britain's armed forces until, in September 1939, he delivered an ultimatum over the invasion of Poland, which was followed by a declaration of war against Germany.
Commitment to peace
As many others in Europe who had witnessed the horrors of the First World War and its aftermath, Chamberlain was committed to peace. The theory was that dictatorships arose if peoples had grievances and that by removing the source of those grievances, a dictatorship would become less aggressive. A popular belief was that the Treaty of Versailles was the underlying cause of Adolf Hitler's grievances. Chamberlain, as even his political detractors admitted, was an honourable man, who had been raised in the old school of European politics. His attempts to deal with Nazi Germany through diplomatic channels and to quell any sign of dissent from within, particularly from Churchill, were called by Chamberlain "the general policy of appeasement" on 30 June 1934.Rearmament
A major structural problem that Chamberlain confronted at the beginning of his premiership and was a major factor in development of his foreign policy was the problem of worldwide defence commitments, coupled with an insufficient economic and financial basis to sustain those commitments. According to a report by the British Chiefs of Staff in 1937, which had much influence on Chamberlain: Chamberlain himself expressed his concerns about the possibility of a three-front war with insufficient resources in October 1937 when he told the Cabinet, "If this country were to become involved in the Far East the temptation to the dictator states to take action whether in Eastern Europe or in Spain would be irresistible".Moreover, the economic capability to provide for a sufficient military force to meet all worldwide defence commitments did not exist, which meant a greater reliance on diplomacy would be needed to reduce to the number of potential enemies. Chamberlain had two but not mutually-exclusive, options: to reduce potential enemies by appeasing their grievances as long as the grievances were understood to be limited in nature and to be justified and to raise Britain's strength by forming alliances with other states. In 1937 and 1938, a greater emphasis was placed upon the former option, and in 1939 and 1940, the latter was prioritised. A necessary adjunct to his strategy was rearmament, which was intended to ensure that Britain could negotiate from a position of strength, deter a potential enemy from choosing war as an option, and, in the worst-case scenario of war breaking out, ensure that Britain was prepared.
Chamberlain put great emphasis upon the Royal Air Force. In October 1936, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chamberlain had told the Cabinet, "Air power was the most formidable deterrent to war that could be devised". As both Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister, Chamberlain greatly expanded the RAF's budget. The importance of the RAF to Chamberlain can be seen by noting that its budget rose from £16.78 million in 1933 to £105.702 million in 1939, surpassing the British Army's budget in 1937 and the Royal Navy's in 1938. By the 1930s, a long economic decline, accelerated by the Great Slump, had led to the British economy contracting to such a point that there were simply not enough factories, machine tools, skilled workers and money to build up simultaneously a larger RAF, a Royal Navy of such size to fight two wars in two oceans at once and a British Army capable of fighting a major European power, which led to Chamberlain favouring the RAF at the expense of both the Royal Navy and, even more so, the British Army.
In 1937, Chamberlain introduced the strategic doctrine of limited liability" in which Britain would avoid the supposed mistakes of the First World War by limiting its efforts to war in the sea and the air, rather than a large commitment of ground forces in France. Under the doctrine, the British Army suffered massive cuts while the Royal Navy and especially the RAF experienced a massive expansion.
Rearmament entailed major problems for the British economy. The huge increase in military spending in the late 1930s threatened the balance of payments, the reserves of US dollars and gold, inflation, and ultimately the government's creditworthiness. Because of a lack of indigenous sources, much of the steel, instruments, aircraft and machine tools that were needed for rearmament had to be purchased abroad, but increased military production reduced the number of factories devoted to exports, which would lead to a serious balance of payments problem. Moreover, the increased taxes to pay for rearmament hampered economic growth, and heavy borrowing to pay for rearmament damaged perceptions of British credit, leading to strong pressure being put on the pound sterling. By 1939, Chamberlain's government was devoting well over half of its revenues to defence.
Chamberlain's policy of rearmament faced much domestic opposition from the Labour Party, which initially favoured a policy of disarmament and, until late 1938, always voted against increases in the defence budget. Even then, Labour merely switched towards a policy of abstention on defence votes. Labour repeatedly condemned Chamberlain for engaging in an arms race with Germany and some members urged for Britain simply to disarm instead in the expectation that this example would inspire all other powers to do likewise. Throughout the early 1930s, Labour frequently disparaged Chamberlain as a crazed warmonger who preferred high levels of military spending to high levels of social spending.
Diplomatic efforts
A major problem for Chamberlain was that Britain lacked the industrial infrastructure and the financial strength to win an arms race with Germany, Italy and Japan at once. Chamberlain hoped to detach either Italy from Germany or Germany from Italy. He was indifferent as to which one of them, but Japan was considered to be hopelessly intransigent. Then, Britain could win the arms race with the remaining members of the Axis. In a letter that was written in June 1937, Chamberlain summed up his views: "If only we could get on terms with the Germans I wouldn't care a rap for Musso ". Chamberlain would later write in his diary in January 1938, "From the first I have been trying to improve relations with the two storm centres Berlin & Rome. It seemed to me that we were drifting into worse & worse positions with both with the prospect of having ultimately to face 2 enemies at once".Potential allies
Chamberlain's initial emphasis on trying to win over potential enemies was partly because of a pessimistic assessment of potential allies. Britain's top military experts consistently advised that the Soviet Union's Red Army was of dubious fighting value. The Neutrality Acts, passed by the US Congress in the mid-1930s, convinced him that no help could be expected from the United States in the event of a war. In October 1937, as part of an effort to engage the United States into international affairs, Chamberlain instructed the British delegation, which was being sent to Washington, D.C., to negotiate a free trade agreement between both countries, that for "political" reasons, reaching an agreement with the Americans at all costs was critical. Even before the talks began, he had ordered the British delegation to accept the preconditions that the Americans deemed "essentials". France was downgraded as a potential ally because of the highly-negative assessment in the dispatches of British Ambassador Eric Phipps.Germany
One of Chamberlain's early foreign policy goals was to seek a "general settlement" to win German acceptance and guarantee a peaceful Europe by settling all of the grievances that he considered to be justified. In May 1937, during the talks with Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht, who was visiting London, the British drew up a paper that listed their demands: the Germans to return to the League of Nations, a nonaggression pact for Western Europe, a treaty limiting armaments and "measures by Germany, in treaty form or otherwise, which will satisfy the governments of Central and Eastern Europe with regard ... to respect the territorial integrity and sovereign independence of all Central and Eastern European states". Most importantly, the general settlement was to be negotiated from a position of strength and so for Chamberlain, it was preferable to complete British rearmament before they undertook such talks. The emphasis was put on Germany because the report of the Defense Requirements Committee on 28 February 1934, which Chamberlain had helped to write as Chancellor of the Exchequer, called Germany "the ultimate potential enemy against whom our `long-range' defense policy must be directed".The emphasis upon Germany was because of an assessment of Germany's power. It had nothing to do with friendly feelings towards Germany on Chamberlain's part, and his feelings towards Germans were summarised well in a letter that he wrote to one of his sisters in 1930 in which he stated, "On the whole I hate Germans".
Italy
As part of his policy to reduce the number of Britain's potential enemies, Chamberlain greatly stressed the use of the Gentlemen's Agreement in January 1937 as the basis of winning Italy back to the Western fold. Chamberlain believed that Italy and Germany were tied together by the Spanish Civil War and that if Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini could be persuaded to withdraw his troops from Spain, Italy would orbit back to the anti-German Stresa Front. In the summer of 1937, Chamberlain started to use Sir Joseph Ball of the Conservative Party Research Department and the Maltese lawyer Adrian Dingli to contact Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano to circumvent the Foreign Office and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden since they were less enthusiastic on the prospects of winning back Italy. The prospect of talks was interrupted in August 1937 by Italian submarine attacks on neutral ships carrying supplies for the Spanish Republic.After strong pressure from Eden, the Nyon Conference was called in September 1937, and the British and French navies agreed to patrol the Mediterranean to suppress "piracy", a euphemism for Italian attacks. The patrols even included the Italian Navy, which was permitted to save face by patrolling the Tyrrhenian Sea against its own "pirate" submarine attacks on ships that were bound for the Spanish Republicans.