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Neville Chamberlain

Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS (/ˈtʃeɪmbərlɪn/; 18 March 1869 – 9 November 1940) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940 and Leader of the Conservative Party from May 1937 to October 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Following the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, Chamberlain announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later and led the United Kingdom through the first eight months of the war until his resignation as prime minister on 10 May 1940.

For other people named Neville Chamberlain, see Neville Chamberlain (disambiguation).

The Right Honourable
Neville Chamberlain
FRS

George VI

Stanley Baldwin

Winston Churchill

Sir Douglas Hacking

Stanley Baldwin

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill

The Earl Stanhope

Sir John Anderson

Philip Snowden

Sir John Simon

Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin

Philip Snowden

Ramsay MacDonald

Arthur Greenwood

Hilton Young

Stanley Baldwin

John Wheatley

Arthur Greenwood

Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen

Sir William Joynson-Hicks

Bonar Law

Sir Tudor Walters

Sir William Joynson-Hicks

Bonar Law

Frederick Kellaway

Sir William Joynson-Hicks

Sir Francis Lowe

Sir Francis Lowe

Sir Peter Bennett

Constituency established

Wilfrid Whiteley

Arthur Neville Chamberlain

(1869-03-18)18 March 1869
Birmingham, England

9 November 1940(1940-11-09) (aged 71)
Heckfield, England

Westminster Abbey

Conservative

Liberal Unionist Party

​
(m. 1911)​

2

Rugby School

Mason College

  • Businessman
  • politician

A neatly written "Neville Chamberlain"

After working in business and local government, and after a short spell as Director of National Service in 1916 and 1917, Chamberlain followed his father Joseph Chamberlain and elder half-brother Austen Chamberlain in becoming a Member of Parliament in the 1918 general election for the new Birmingham Ladywood division at the age of 49. He declined a junior ministerial position, remaining a backbencher until 1922. He was rapidly promoted in 1923 to Minister of Health and then Chancellor of the Exchequer. After a short-lived Labour-led government, he returned as Minister of Health, introducing a range of reform measures from 1924 to 1929. He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the National Government in 1931.


Chamberlain succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister on 28 May 1937. His premiership was dominated by the question of policy towards an increasingly aggressive Germany, and his actions at Munich were widely popular among the British at the time. In response to Hitler's continued aggression, Chamberlain pledged the United Kingdom to defend Poland's independence if the latter were attacked, an alliance that brought his country into war after the German invasion of Poland. The failure of Allied forces to prevent the German invasion of Norway caused the House of Commons to hold the historic Norway Debate in May 1940. Chamberlain's conduct of the war was heavily criticised by members of all parties and, in a vote of confidence, his government's majority was greatly reduced. Accepting that a national government supported by all the main parties was essential, Chamberlain resigned the premiership because the Labour and Liberal parties would not serve under his leadership. Although he still led the Conservative Party, he was succeeded as prime minister by his colleague Winston Churchill. Until ill health forced him to resign on 22 September 1940, Chamberlain was an important member of the war cabinet as Lord President of the Council, heading the government in Churchill's absence. His support for Churchill proved vital during the May 1940 war cabinet crisis. Chamberlain died aged 71 on 9 November of cancer, six months after leaving the premiership.


Chamberlain's reputation remains controversial among historians, the initial high regard for him being entirely eroded by books such as Guilty Men, published in July 1940, which blamed Chamberlain and his associates for the Munich accord and for allegedly failing to prepare the country for war. Most historians in the generation following Chamberlain's death held similar views, led by Churchill in The Gathering Storm. Some later historians have taken a more favourable perspective of Chamberlain and his policies, citing government papers released under the thirty-year rule and arguing that going to war with Germany in 1938 would have been disastrous as the UK was unprepared. Nonetheless, Chamberlain is still unfavourably ranked amongst British prime ministers.[1]

(FRS) – 1938[25][246]

Fellow of the Royal Society

– DCL[41]

Oxford University

– LLD[41]

University of Cambridge

– LLD[41]

Birmingham University

– LLD[41]

Bristol University

– LLD[41]

Leeds University

– DLitt[41]

Reading University

(1997). "Guilty Man: the Case of Neville Chamberlain". In Finney, Patrick (ed.). The Origins of the Second World War. Edward Arnold. pp. 62–77. ISBN 978-0-340-67640-0.

Aster, Sidney

Aster, Sidney (September 2002). "Viorel Virgil Tilea and the Origins of the Second World War: An Essay in Closure". Diplomacy and Statecraft. 13 (3): 153–74. :10.1080/714000341. S2CID 154954097.

doi

(1983). "The Continental Commitment in British Strategy in the 1930s". In Mommsen, Wolfgang; Kettenacker, Lothar (eds.). The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement. George Allen & Unwin. pp. 197–207. ISBN 978-0-04-940068-9.

Bond, Brian

Crozier, Andrew J. (1988). Appeasement and Germany's Last Bid for Colonies. Macmillan Press.  978-0-312-01546-6.

ISBN

Eccleshall, Robert, and Graham Walker, eds. Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (1998) pp. 289–294.

online

(1966). The Roots of Appeasement. New American Library.

Gilbert, Martin

Goldstein, Erik (1999). "Neville Chamberlain, The British Official Mind and the Munich Crisis". In Mommsen, Wolfgang; Kettenacker, Lothar (eds.). . Frank Cass. pp. 276–92. ISBN 978-0-7146-8056-9.

The Munich Crisis 1938: Prelude to World War II

Greenwood, Sean (1999). "The Phantom Crisis: Danzig, 1939". In Martel, Gordon (ed.). . Routledge. pp. 225–46. ISBN 978-0-415-16325-5.

The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: A.J.P. Taylor and the Historians

(1976). Neville Chamberlain (British Prime Ministers). Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-29777-229-3.

Hyde, H. Montgomery

Kelly, Bernard. (2009) "Drifting Towards War: The British Chiefs of Staff, the USSR and the Winter War, November 1939 – March 1940", Contemporary British History, (2009) 23:3 pp. 267–91, :10.1080/13619460903080010

doi

; Imlay, Talbot (1999). "Appeasement". In Martel, Gordon (ed.). The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: A.J.P. Taylor and the Historians. Routledge. pp. 116–34. ISBN 978-0-415-16325-5.

Kennedy, Paul

ed. Reader's Guide to British History (2003) 1: 244–45; historiography

Loades, David

(1998). Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4832-6.

McDonough, Frank

McDonough, Frank (2001). Hitler, Chamberlain and Appeasement. Cambridge University Press.  978-0-521-00048-2.

ISBN

Milton, Nicholas (2019). Neville Chamberlain's Legacy: Hitler, Munich and the Path to War. Pen & Sword.  978-1-526-73225-5.

ISBN

(1938). The Chamberlain Tradition (First American ed.). Frederick A. Stokes.

Petrie, Charles

Redihan, Erin. "Neville Chamberlain and Norway: The Trouble with 'A Man of Peace' in a Time of War." New England Journal of History (2013) 69#1/2 pp. 1–18.

Stewart, Graham (2000). Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain, and the Battle for the Tory Party (revised ed.). Phoenix.  978-0-7538-1060-6.

ISBN

Strang, Bruce (1996). . Journal of Contemporary History. 31 (4): 721–52. doi:10.1177/002200949603100406. S2CID 159558319.

"Once More unto the Breach: Britain's Guarantee to Poland, March 1939"

(1989). How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939. Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-394-57916-0.

Watt, D. C.

(2010). Hitler's Foreign Policy, 1933–1939: The Road to World War II. Enigma Books. ISBN 978-1-929631-91-9.

Weinberg, Gerhard

(1948). Munich: Prologue to Tragedy. Duell, Sloan and Pearce.

Wheeler-Bennett, John

1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Neville Chamberlain

Hansard

Video: Neville Chamberlain Appeasement World War II

: the political papers of Neville Chamberlain

University of Birmingham Special Collections

at Internet Archive

Works by or about Neville Chamberlain

at Faded Page (Canada)

Works by Neville Chamberlain

at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Works by Neville Chamberlain

. UK National Archives.

"Archival material relating to Neville Chamberlain"

at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Portraits of (Arthur) Neville Chamberlain

in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Newspaper clippings about Neville Chamberlain

Portrait of Neville Chamberlain in the UK Parliamentary Collections