NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN'S WAR

When one thinks of Great Britain during its war against Adolf Hitler’s Germany, the figure that usually comes to mind is Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill’s predecessor, Chamberlain, by contrast, is associated mainly with a failed policy of Nazi appeasement. By signing the Munich Agreement with other leaders in 1938, Chamberlain allowed Germany to seize the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, hoping in vain that it would curb the Nazi dictator’s expansionist ambitions. According to Seager, however, Chamberlain’s mistakes far exceed the Munich Agreement. He was the prime minister when Britain formally declared war on Germany in 1939 and thus a dominant figure at a pivotal moment. He largely kept British forces out of open conflict, thinking, again in vain, that he could break the Germans via economic pressures. This early period of the war, prior to Germany’s invasion of France and the commencement of large-scale battle—a period known in Britain as “the Twilight War,” in France as “La Drôle de Guerre” (“the Strange War”), and in the United States as “the Phoney War”—is perhaps the least covered of the entire conflict. Despite this, Seager argues, it has vital lessons to teach us: “There was nothing glorious about the Phoney War, and that is precisely why it merits our attention,” writes the author in his introduction. “In the context of international relations, it was worse than a crime—a tragic blunder.”

Over the course of this book, Seager effectively argues that Chamberlain accelerated Germany’s conquest by declaring a war that he had no intention of prosecuting, thus inviting Hitler to subjugate a number of countries that might otherwise have escaped brutal, multiyear occupation. Chamberlain’s missteps, the author asserts, proved catastrophic not only for millions of Europeans, but also for the future of the British Empire. Seager’s account is thoroughly researched and inflected with thrilling, lesser-known details of the time. Here, for example, he describes how the British began to second-guess their slow-moving French allies: “At this point, the corridors of Parliament were abuzz with rumors that the French were ‘ratting.’ French ambassador Charles Corbin was assailed with aggressive questions from British journalists and parliamentarians, who could not understand France’s delay. He tried to explain that mobilizing an army of some five million men took several days at best.” The author adeptly documents the numerous tiny decisions that influenced the course of history. However, he’s less skilled when it comes to bringing to life the personalities behind the policies; Chamberlain is the central figure of the work, but readers are likely to wish that there was a bit more insight into his personality. Even so, Seager provides an engaging window into an underexplored time frame and convincingly argues that this period of the war still has much to teach people.