It is customary in analyses of appeasement to concentrate solely on events in Europe, as if in anticipation of the European theater of war. This is a mistake.
Fifty years ago the British were not Europeans in today’s sense of the term. Britain was the heart of a worldwide maritime empire. Its liabilities and preoccupations, its international status, and the outlook of its people were all governed by its paramount position as a world power.
After World War I—felt by some to have been a tragic aberration in British strategic behavior—Britain’s attention was brought back sharply to the security of its Far Eastern empire. Relations between Japan and Britain had long been cordial, and the security offered by the Anglo-Japanese alliance had enabled the Admiralty to maximize its naval resources at home to counter the Kaiser’s fleet. The system worked to mutual advantage, but the Americans objected to it and were determined to break it up.
A new and seemingly pointless naval race threatened, centered on the Pacific. It soon became clear that war- weary Britain would either have to stop it or win it, for otherwise it would find itself shoved from first to third among naval powers, and its empire would be undefended. When the Americans invited the Pacific powers to discuss their differences, the British readily agreed. The seeds of future appeasement were sown in that cooperation, the 1922 Naval Treaty of Washington. The Anglo- Japanese alliance was replaced by multilateral guarantees: Britain accepted parity with the United States in battleships; Japan was allowed a 60% ratio with the big two; France and Italy, 35%. Other major warship types were also subjected to limitations, for a period of ten years. To make the Far East accessible to the British battle fleet—in compensation for the loss of the alliance—a major naval base was begun at Singapore.1
There was nothing unsound for Britain in these arrangements as long as the European shipyards remained idle. But when Britain, the United States, and Japan agreed to extend the Washington restrictions for an additional five years at the 1930 London Naval Conference, France and Italy refused to comply: the former due to a fear of German new construction, the latter allegedly due to a fear of France. The dormant naval yards of Europe were already beginning to stir. In September 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. In January 1933, Hitler arrived.
The predicament of a global military power trapped in an arms-limitation bargain based on regional mathematics began to disturb the Royal Navy’s senior officers. Doubt grew over Washington’s assumption that the British main fleet would be available, wherever it was needed, to defend the Far East. The 1922 settlement set the scene for “a game of poker in which the stakes were the Empire itself and the bluff could be called by Japan declaring war concurrently with Germany.”2 Neither of the other two big Pacific powers was compromised in this fashion. The passing of the Anglo-Japanese alliance was bitterly lamented; Britain had lost the freedom to concentrate its fleet.3
From this perspective it is not surprising that pressure for appeasement originated and gathered steam in those ministries most responsible for Britain’s worldwide strategical balancing act, and that its most dogged advocates were found in the Admiralty.
The government, meanwhile, continued to assure Britain’s military dependents that all was well. Australia, for instance, accepted these assurances, partly because of its trust in Britain’s commitment to the empire and partly because it was not willing to shoulder the financial responsibility for its own defense.4
From 1933 on, Admiral Sir Ernie Chatfield, the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff—described by A. J. Marder as ‘‘the dominant personality in the formulation of British strategic policy” before World War II—relentlessly warned that Japan would surely strike south if the Royal Navy became detained elsewhere.5
In December, he told the Defence Requirements Committee (DRC) that it was “imperative to do everything possible to keep on good terms with Japan.”6 In February 1934, Chatfield wrote to the Commander in Chief China. Admiral Sir Frederick Dreyer, speculating that Japan was not likely to provoke Britain until it knew that Britain was Preoccupied with a danger nearer to home. That danger, he predicted, would emanate from Nazi Germany in about five years’ time.7
The next month, the cabinet, prompted by the DRC, discussed the need to get back to Britain’s former terms of mutual respect and cordiality with Japan. Their extensive discussion centered on the essentially naval character of imperial security. The cabinet’s consensus approach amounted to the beginnings of a British policy of appeasement. Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Played a central role in the formation of a foreign policy based on developing amicable relations with potential enemies.
The Second London Naval Conference was approaching. The Americans sought to continue their policy of suppressing Japanese naval strength. Chamberlain was confined that Britain’s aligning itself with this position would, in Japanese eyes, add insult to the injury of the termination of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, whereas Britain might be uniquely able to restrain Japan through friendship. He advocated telling the Japanese that the British did not agree with the American stance and suggested an Anglo-Japanese nonaggression pact that would ease Japanese fears of a hostile English-speaking alliance. Chamberlain was strongly supported by the First Lord (the Political head) of the Admiralty, and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald concluded that the entire cabinet agreed with the idea of improving relations with Japan.8
Chamberlain was not, in fact, merely putting this view forward academically, as a basis for discussion, for he also wrote privately about the ease with which Britain could arrange an agreement with the Japanese if only the Americans were not in the picture.9 Furthermore, Chamberlain’s chief of staff at the Treasury, Sir Warren Fisher, believed that Britain should be prepared to sacrifice American friendship to regain its more valuable friendship with Japan.10
In comparison, the Admiralty’s statements confined themselves to strong support of detente with Japan and made no reference to the United States. For example, the First Sea Lord told Dreyer that: “While we remain unready we have to do everything that is possible to avoid a conflict with Japan. . . . We [in the Admiralty] have done all we can do at the moment . . . our foreign policy must do the rest while we are gaining strength ... the main national policy is keeping out of war with Japan at all costs.”11
Chamberlain was right to suppose that the ending of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in Washington in 1922 had offended the Japanese. They felt discarded and perceived the beginnings of an Anglo-Saxon combination against them. It was extremely difficult for Britain’s reputation in Japan to recover from this position, complicated by such other obstructions as growing trade conflicts, tension over China, and the suspicions of the Americans.
The Second London Naval Conference opened in 1935 to see if the Washington ratio system could be extended again. Japan demanded an equal upper limit for the fleet strengths of itself, Britain, and America; but in the words of the British cabinet minutes, “The Japanese delegation had conveyed the impression that their ‘plan’ was actuated not against us but against the USA. Indeed they had stated that Japan was quite willing that the UK should have a stronger Navy than Japan. This of course gave rise to an almost insoluble problem in as much as the US insisted on naval parity with ourselves.”12
Impasse.
In 1935, Britain found itself caught up in the hostility between France and Germany, in much the same way as the conflict between Japan and the United States in the Pacific. The Geneva Disarmament Conference foundered because Germany wanted equal status among European states, which was possible only if the humiliating Treaty of Versailles were rescinded. This the French would not countenance, preferring a breach of treaty if German rearmament was going to happen at all. Britain combined sympathy with Germany’s wish for rehabilitation with alarm at the stridency of Nazi militarism.
Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles in March 1935 and made clear his intention of, among other things, building a new fleet of capital ships. Another headache therefore hit Britain’s naval strategists. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 gets unfavorable press in the history books because it appeared to partially legitimize Germany’s abrogation of Versailles, and Chatfield was touchy about it in retrospect.
At this time the Admiralty was clearly ahead of the government as a whole in its desire for appeasement. The Germans’ wish to be allowed a navy of up to 35% the size of the Royal Navy in surface ships, 45% in submarines, was granted. For Germany these concessions afforded respectable international status and, unlike the “Diktat of Versailles,” were not signed under duress. The Admiralty’s purpose was to forestall the development in European waters of a threat so serious as to paralyze the fleet’s capacity to act elsewhere, and indeed Germany’s senior naval officers considered the 35% limit to rule out Britain as a future adversary.11
Following hard on Germany’s reentry into strategic mathematics came Italy’s attack on Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). Owing to the disinterest of other powers, it fell to Britain alone to provide the forces of collective security for the League of Nations, and it very nearly found itself at war with Italy at a time when the last thing the Admiralty needed was the fleet tied down for an unknown duration in the Mediterranean. The headache was becoming a migraine. Chatfield, alarmed at the threat posed by Mussolini’s navy to Britain’s Mediterranean sea-lanes, privately took the view that if Italy were established in Abyssinia, the tables would be turned: its communications would then be hostage to British sea power, a state of affairs that should favor peace.14
Those responsible for imperial defense could see that a war with Germany would make such demands on the Royal Navy as to threaten the whole basis of the Admiralty’s strategy in the Far East.15 They foresaw that “in the event of our being embroiled in a European war, Japan might well consider the opportunity favourable for attempting to remove the power of Great Britain to interfere with the policy of Japan.”16 Fences needed to be mended with Italy to leave the armed forces free “to deal with the Far Eastern menace.”17
By this stage the appeasers had become directionally impartial. Even with help from allies, Britain faced the possibility of simultaneous wars against Germany, Italy, and Japan, for which it would never have enough strength.18 The First Sea Lord became desperately worried about the probability, as he perceived it, of having to send a fleet to the Far East shortly after war commenced in Europe. Where Britain had had an ally, it now faced an enemy.19
In January 1936, Britain’s senior general, the Chief of Imperial General Staff, added his voice to the rising litany when he drew the cabinet’s attention “to the recent occasions on which Japanese statesmen and soldiers had hinted that they would welcome closer relations with this country. It was recognized that there were formidable political obstacles in the way, but it was urged that our weak military situation in the Far East made every effort necessary to overcome those obstacles.” Furthermore, the First Lord of the Admiralty remarked that Germany and Japan were exchanging information on naval matters, and the prospect of those two countries being driven together presented a very real danger.20
There were two possible avenues of escape from Britain’s strategic problem: rearmament and appeasement. The former was intended to show tooth, the latter to reduce potential enmity to a level which could be handled by the expanding armed forces. With the November 1935 election safely over, the Washington building limitations out of the way, and the failure of Geneva, large-scale rearmament could be commenced as a complement to appeasement.
Notwithstanding the advice of its ambassadors, the Foreign Office was disconcerted by the demands being made on it by the Treasury and the defense lobby. In January 1937, the First Sea Lord petitioned the professional head of the Foreign Office: “As we cannot fight simultaneously in the East and the West, can we make an agreement in one area or the other, not necessarily a permanent agreement, but one which will give us greater security than we have now during our slow period of rearmament? It appears impossible that we should make an agreement with Japan that would be of the same value as the old alliance- We might placate her by recognising Manchukuo. . .A few weeks later, the Chiefs of Staff hammered away that “the difficulties and dangers of conducting a war against Japan in the Far East, particularly if we were simultaneously engaged in Europe, are so great that it's manifest that no effort must be spared to establish such good relations with our former allies, the Japanese, as will obviate, as far as possible, the chances of their being aligned against us.”22
The Foreign Office had understood the Achilles’ heel o' Britain’s Far Eastern policy as early as 1925, but it was less convinced than the military about the appeasement imperative.23 This was so partly because it obtusely continued to imagine that Britain had the option of responding to the dictators through weight of armaments production alone—if the government so wished. In fact, as was paid fully obvious to both the Treasury and the Admiralty only a few months into rearmament, existing programs ban taken up all of Britain’s available industrial capacity, leaving no scope for the further acceleration of teeth in the short term.24 Thus, by the time Chamberlain became prime minister in 1937, appeasement offered the only accessible escape from the British Commonwealth’s strategical nightmare. In Chamberlain’s words, “A political adjustment with one or more of our potential enemies was absolutely vital.”25
And so it went on. In November 1937, the Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, Sir Maurice Hankey, joined the First Sea Lord in a strident call for ‘‘something Ito be done] in the field of foreign policy to reduce our defensive commitments. With the greatest sense of responsibility, I must add my considered endorsement to the repeated warnings of the Chiefs of Staff that action ought to be taken to effect a permanent improvement in our relations with Italy. ... I wish to urge with all the strength at why command that nothing but national interest of the gravest importance should be allowed to stand in the way of a "'hole-hearted effort to secure better relations with Italy.” And Chatfield doggedly ‘‘pointed out that an improvement in our relations with Germany or Japan is urgent.”26
That same month, the Admiralty’s Director of Plans, Captain T. S. V. Phillips, painted the stark strategical urgency of rapprochement: ‘‘If we could reach a satisfactory agreement with Germany, our other defence commitments Would largely solve themselves, as Italy would never dare attack alone, and even if Japan did not moderate her policies, we should at least be in a position to deal with her.”
Chatfield considered Phillips’s summary of the situation very able and sent it up to his minister with the following covering remarks: ‘‘The main proposal of this paper is that we should make an agreement with Germany because, in view of our Imperial responsibilities, we cannot afford to Prolong our enmity. ... If we have to fight her it will Probably also mean war with Japan and possibly Italy—a World war which may last for years with enormous loss of lives and money, and general misery in the world.”27
After March 1938, only Europe appeared to offer any hope for detente, for in that month Japanese intransigence obliged Britain and the United States to cut themselves free from the remnants of the Washington restrictions on warship tonnage. Only now, six months before Munich, did Britain accept the fact that friendly relations with Japan were irrecoverable.
The import of this parting of the ways was plain enough to Captain Phillips and the planning chiefs of the other services. In a paper titled ‘‘The Military Implications of German Aggression against Czechoslovakia,” they connected the Japanese threat with Britain’s options vis-a-vis Hitler. They concluded that trying to protect Czechoslovakia from being overrun by Germany would be likely to produce further enemies: ‘‘The advent of Japan on the side of Germany and Italy would produce a situation which neither the present nor the projected strength of our defence forces is designed to meet. The British Empire would be threatened simultaneously in Western Europe, in the Mediterranean and in the Far East, by an immense aggregate of armed strength and would be faced with the gravest danger. . . . We are therefore of the opinion that Great Britain should not risk the possibility of war except in the defence of interests that are vital to her.”28 That category obviously did not include Czechoslovakia.
Phillips was drowned in December 1941 when Japanese naval aircraft sank HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, the only British heavy combatants available for the Far East when push came to shove.
Some historians have sought to tarnish those who favored appeasement with the smear of being sympathetic with Hitler’s goals for Germany.29 But to ascribe such motives to Chatfield and his naval staff would be fatuous. To the Admiralty, appeasement in foreign affairs was as obvious as any damage-limitation precaution before a possible collision at sea. It was simple strategic seamanship. And, in 1939, after appeasement was seen to have failed, Chatfield advocated alliance with the Soviet Union as a means of containing Germany.
In drawing a connection between national policy and the views of the defense lobby, particularly of one department, I might be accused of claiming too much influence for the opinions of one cantankerous pressure group. But if the British Empire were to be involved in war, these men were, after all, the professional military managers who would be expected not to lose it. Furthermore, other departmental leanings toward appeasement were supported with reasoning that substantially related to Britain’s overseas responsibilities—the Admiralty’s primary strategic interest.
The question of whether it was Chamberlain’s Treasury or Chatfield’s Admiralty that most actively, or originally, promoted appeasement in the 1930s is therefore difficult to resolve. On the whole, the Treasury was more influential in the corridors of Westminster, but the Navy’s views regarding strategic policy carried immense weight among the politicians.30 When the saturation of industrial capacity compelled strategic choices in 1937, the Army’s continental hypothesis was dropped in order to maximize resources for the Royal Air Force’s bomber program, for the expansion of the fleet, and for antiaircraft guns.31 Deterrence, and the defense of Britain and its empire, took priority over the ability to intervene on the European mainland. It was a choice which, because of the Japanese alliance and the absence of air power, the strategists of 1914 had not had to make.
It is not my claim that Chamberlain went to Munich actually worrying about Singapore. The vulnerability of the Far East was a nagging anxiety, however, that supplemented his dread of another European war. As we have seen, as early as 1934 he had warned that only a retrieval of Britain’s old rapport with Japan would free the British to focus on the serious situation that was developing closer to home (in the manner of 1914). Appeasement makes sense if one understands that responsible lobbies urged it through fear that peace, once broken, would prove to be hemispherically indivisible. The admirals, in particular, were seized with the global strategic implications of Britain’s European policy and the far-reaching consequences of war.
In February 1939, Lord Chatfield, then Minister for the Coordination of Defence, reminded the cabinet that if Britain became involved in war with Germany, “Japan could embarrass us, not [even] by active intervention, but [merely] by making a strategic disposition of her forces which would constitute a severe threat to Australia and India.”32
On 15 March, Hitler occupied Prague and tossed away the Munich peace promises. Appeasement had run its course. The Australian government immediately pressed for reaffirmation of Britain’s post-1922 commitment to send the main fleet to Singapore in the event of Japanese aggression. It was Chamberlain’s miserable task to frame an evasive reply that represented a retreat from previous assurances. As Marder has written, it came as a “bombshell” to the Australians.33
A few days later, the cabinet met to consider whether Britain should offer a guarantee of military aid to Poland. The admiral, who had spent six years burdened with imperial safety, said wearily that “if Poland were attacked, d [would be] politically impossible for us to stand aside.”34 For Britain’s Far Eastern empire, those resigned words marked the beginning of what one Australian historian has called—with some bitterness—The Great Betrayal.
The author would like to thank E. J. Grove and Professor D. C. Watt.
1. See, among others, S. W. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, Vol. I (London: Collins, 1968); M. D. Kennedy, The Estrangement of Great Britain ad Japan 1917-35 (Manchester University Press, 1969); J. R. Ferris, The Evolution of British Strategic Policy 1919-26 (London: Macmillan, 1989).
2. D. Day, The Great Betrayal (London: Angus and Robertson, 1988), p. 10.
3. See, among others, N. H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy, Vol. I, “Rearmament Policy” (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1976); C. G. L. Hall, Britain, America & Arms Control 1921-37 (London: Macmillan, 1987).
4. Day, p. 9.
5. A. J. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies (London: Clarendon, 1981), p. 30.
6. 3rd Defence Requirements Committee (hereafter DRC), 14 December 1933, Cabinet Series (hereafter Cab) 16/109.
7. 2 February 1934, Chatfield Papers (hereafter Chat.) 4/4/30.
8. 9(34), 14 March 1934, Cab 23/78.
9. Gibbs, pp. 394-95.
10. Ibid, p. 94; see also C.A. MacDonald, The United States, Britain and Appeasement 1936-1939 (London: Macmillan, 1981).
11. 7 August 1934, Chat. 4/4/38; see also 3rd DRC.
12. 37(34), 29 October 1934, Cab 23/80.
13. C. Bekker, Hitler’s Naval War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), p. 27.
14. Chatfield to Dreyer, 16 September 1935, Chat. 4/4/72.
15. Gibbs, p. 420.
16. JP Paper 105, “Defence Plans for War against Germany,” 31 October 1935, Cab 55/7.
17. Roskill, Vol. II (1976), p. 354.
18. Gibbs, p. 400.
19. Chatfield to Admiral Drax, 5 November 1937, Chat. 3/1/224.
20. 3(36), 29 January 1936, Cab 23/83.
21. Chat. 3/2/192-200.
22. Gibbs, p. 398.
23. 193rd CID, 5 June 1925, Cab 2/4.
24. See Gordon, British Seapower and Procurement Between the Wars (Annapolis- MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988).
25. Gibbs, p. 401.
26. “Defence Expenditure 1937-9,” Cab 21/534.
27. 10 November 1937, Admiralty 116/3631.
28. JP 279, 16 April 1938, Cab 55/12.
29. M. George, The Hollow Men (London: Fewin, 1967).
30. Marder, p. 34.
31. See G.C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury (Glasgow: Scottish Academic Press, 1979).
32. 6(39), 8 February 1939, Cab 23/97.
33. Marder, p. 40.
34. 16(39), 30 March 1939, Cab 23/98.
