Did Chamberlain do the right thing?A debate.
It is interesting to observe how people in the UK judge the two world wars in retrospect. I have placed the two debates on my blog because both of them have been asking the question whether either war could have been avoided. In the case of the outbreak of war in 1914, 63% of those who cast their vote in this debate concluded that the UK was right to enter the fray, despite the carnage that ensued and the terrible events that flowed from the war. By contrast, 52% in the ensuing debate thought that Chamberlain did not do the right thing, and as you can see in the final results, it is the side that argued the case for appeasement which won the most additional adherents during the course of the debate; though they lost the final vote. Both sides argued that in the end there was no alternative to war; but the Chamberlainites argued that he went to the ends of the earth to avoid the catastrophe, whereas the anti-Chamberlainites maintained that a firmer position by the allies against Japan in China and Hitler in Europe could have made war less likely. We are not likely to move far beyond these positions.
