Neville Chamberlain (Reputations)

click here for more details, find new or used items	David Dutton New from £71.03 Used from £31.45 Pages: 272 (Hardcover) ISBN: 0340706260 Pub: Hodder Arnold Pub date: 2001-05-04 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 2099879

Reader Reviews:

Yet another attempt to whitewash Chamberlain (0/2 people found this helpful)

I was rather disappointed with this book as i felt that rather than give in detail what happened at Munich it merely attempted to whitewash Chamberlains reputation and savage Churchill's in the process.We all know that Churchill made many errors.After all his conduct of the Norwegian campaign lead in no small measure to the fall of the Chamberlain administration.However evry Prime Minister has a defing time in their career.For Churchill it was the Battle of Britain.For Chamberlain it was Munich.As a result The former is looked upon as one of the greateset Englishman who ever lived,whereas the laters name is still a byword for appeasement and cowardice.The fact is that neither he or his arch appeaser Halifax had any comprehension of the man they were dealing with because of their insular backgrounds.It says a lot about the society and politics of the time that foolish men like these should have held the highest offices in the land.What is almost worse is the fact that if it were not for the fact that Halifax sat in the Lords there is every likelihood that he would have become PM instead of Churchill.What an awful thought.

Judicious, compact study (6/6 people found this helpful)

This book is most useful for the way it traces the ups and downs in Chamberlain's reputation over the past 60-odd years. It builds a good case for rejecting the view that Chamberlain was utterly incompetent, foolish and out of his depth as a prime minister. It also provides a convincing account of the severe constraints on British foreign policy in the 1930s. It also points out how Churchill's career was riddled with errors and inconsistencies up to 1938, if not later. And yet, and yet... The most serious accusation against Chamberlain must be that he simply did not grasp the type of man Hitler was and the type of regime that Nazi Germany was. It was his responsibility as prime minister to think about these matters in a far more hard-headed way than he did. It seems evident that even Hitler's Prague coup of March 1939 did not cause Chamberlain to view appeasement as a lost cause. These misjudgements were shocking and will forever stain his reputation. Overall, a good book, though it would have been helpful to include more detail on Chamberlain's three meetings with Hitler - just how underprepared, or bullied, or deceived, or nervous, or resolute, was Chamberlain?

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