ABSTRACT
Chamberlain and Churchill were on opposite sides of the appeasement debate. But what united them was a belief in the continuation of the British Empire and its centrality to both the national interest and the prospects for the Conservative Party. For Chamberlain the survival of the Empire was based on avoiding another war and a diplomatic solution to the inconsistencies of the Versailles Treaty was a political imperative. World War I had shaken the Empire to its foundations and avoiding a repeat was imperative. From this belief the Munich Treaty was justifiable. For Churchill the appeasement policy would make a war more likely by inflating Hitler’s already considerable appetite for aggression and conquest. Until the collapse of the Munich Agreement when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939 Chamberlain held sway; thereafter Churchill’s time beckoned. But the evidence suggests that Chamberlain gave the guarantee to Poland, which triggered World War II, out of a desire to rein in Churchill’s rising popularity, rather than in the expectation that a war would be inevitable.
