Portugal urgently needs a Chamberlain – Observer
You have free access to all the articles of the Observer for being our subscriber.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, comparisons have multiplied with Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister in the years before the world war and who led an appeasement campaign with the German Nazis. These guidelines are compared, prepared, with which they are released daily, to result in more comparisons, prepared, with which they are released daily, Vladimir Putin. Apart from these criticisms, although in reality the aid of these countries to Ukraine is more discursive than many believe that some of the public would do.
Neville Chamberlain is regularly presented as the villain of a relatively simple story, especially when faced with the performance of his successor Winston Churchill. While Herr Hitler renounced the Treaty of Versailles and subjugated successive ones, from the remilitarization of the Rhineland territory, to the anschluss from Austria, do Sudetenland in Czechia Memel Lithuania, Chamberlain appeased, trying to evade a war that looked more and more like a war. The biggest betrayal remains for History, the Treaty of Munich, where Chamberlain offers the Czechoslovak region of German ethnic majority of the Sudetenland to the Reich, without even the opinion of Czechoslovakia itself. The next day, September 30, 1938, he lands in England where he is greeted as a hero. It triumphantly displays what is proclaimed the discourse that as peace for our time!
However, Churchill, the fox who had long since lost any illusions about what the Nazi regime really meant, pointed to the need for the Empire to arm itself and prepare for the worst and not to trust the Führer’s word. A few months after the beginning of Germany’s world war, more precisely when the second invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, Winston Churchill ascends to the Prime Minister’s charge and with prodigious rhetoric, an inexhaustible energy and a rare courage They carry their allies until total victory in 1945. This only the United Kingdom was against the total contribution of the USSR and the United States, which in 1941 would be Axis powers and dragged at their will into the conflict
Before attempting to assemble – at least – allow this narrative, outstanding details I greatly admire Winston Churchll. He is, in my opinion, at the top of the list of 20th century personalities whom we have to thank for the freedom and democracy that we enjoy today. A man full of people with enormous virtues and spectacular defeat in the right years, already out of the last century, a church of the few floods on the planet that had a war to lose defeat, after a war in France left almost all of Europe enslaved under the claws of Hitler and Stalin. The German leader had no interest even in continuing the war against what he publicly wanted to be a possibility of peace for Churchill, in his famous of July 19, 1940. Churchill, against the wishes of many of his communiqués and the pressure of the American ambassador Joseph Kennedy from Germany.
My defense of Chamberlain should therefore not be seen in opposition to Churchill, but as two true leaders who complement each other and to whom we owe much for freedom and peace in Europe.
Chamberlain did his best to prevent a repeat of the great war from ravaging the continent again. His generation had seen the war of 1914-18 and an escalation of destruction and carnage never before seen. But despite its policy of appeasement, was not naive and was unimaginable preparing his country for the scene. Winston’s oratory was certainly a lot, but it wouldn’t have been prepared very securely or the government wouldn’t have prepared, giving him the tools, that is, the tools, which are military methods, chosen for the survival of the United Kingdom.
It was certainly not first on May 10, 1940, when he ascended to the post of minister, that Churchill designed, tested or produced the fighter planes that a few months later would give him victory in the Battle of Britain. Either the Supermarine Spitfire, a plane as modern and effective as the Germans to present, or the Hawker Hurricane, a simpler and cheaper fighter that was the real battle horse of the battle, engines were being prepared since the mid-30s. The same can be said here of the unparalleled Rolls-Royce Merlin, which was used in both aircraft. The “shadow factories” that were built in the years before the war allowed the country’s decision to increase. It was in one of our factories, in Bromwich, that more than 60% of the approximately 20 thousand Spitfires built during the war were Castle. On the importance of these fighters and their pilots, I give the floor to Churchill himself: “Never, in the field of human conflict, have so many owed so much to so few.”. These words were only possible because the industrial capacity, the technical drawings, the pilot training and all the logistics were already in place the day Churchill came to power.
However, this battle was not only won on the basis of the technical quality of its planes, the courage of the pilots and the mastery of its political leadership. Southern England had been prepared in advance for this eventuality with the construction of the Dowding system. system, communication group all over the world trained, designed and implemented by Hugh This set, was designed and implemented in a set of radars, designed and implemented by Hughes, set of communication groups, supported by the Royal Corps south of England with little of the than an airplane reconnaissance book, binoculars). This system, and all the work done previously, was crucial to the advantage maintained throughout the battle, as recognized by Churchill: “The entire ascendancy of the Hurricanes and Spitfires would have been fruitless if not for this system that had been conceived and built before the war. It had been shaped and refined in constant action, and everything was now fused into a more elaborate instrument of war, which existed nowhere else in the world..”
Also on the political side, a part of Winston’s success must be credited to those who preceded him. On September 1, 1939, after the hours of the start of the invasion of Poland, Chamberlain summons Churchill to Downing Street, where he invites him to take part in the council of war, as he describes himself in his memoirs. Days later, he challenges him to lead the powerful British fleet, becoming First Lord of the Admiralty, a charge he had already held during the great war.
In May 1940 there were no generals1 in the United Kingdom. Churchill did not come to power as a result of a direct and expressed will of the British. He becomes prime minister because he is proposed by Chamberlain himself to parliament and the monarch. The need for parliamentary support for the new solution, as – due to its cargo mission – allows the new government to be a coalition between workers, labor and liberals. His mission speech is an example of a statesman who puts the interests of the country above himself and any sense of injustice he might feel. With rare humility, Churchill’s offer to serve on the war council was accepted, where he would be instrumental in supporting Churchill when part of the government considered a Nazi peace proposal. On Chamberlain’s performance as Mr President of the Councilfuture Labor Prime Minister Clement Atlee would later say “free from any grudge he might have felt against us. He worked hard and well: a good chairman, a good committee member, always very professional.”. A few months later, following Chamberlain’s death from cancer, Churchill would say in private: “What am I to do without poor Neville? I was counting on him to take care of the Home Front for me..”
Had it not been for Chamberlain, Churchill might have been a kind of Medina Career, someone who had a reason, but few listened to him and he ended up having no relevant impact on his country. He would certainly be remembered more for his responsibilities in the terrible military disaster of the Gallipoli war than for his insight into the Nazi danger.
I wish we were today companions for people of the caliber of Neville Chamberlain, in Europe, but especially in Portugal. Learning with courage to make decisions, having the courage to make decisions, and acting in a determined way so that you cannot be trusted, is the exact opposite of the leadership we have in our homeland.
2017, from the robberies of 2017, from the robberies of cos, from the health system during financial disasters and/or pandemics after the disasters, Portugal and the suffering leaderships of its leaderships never learned anything. They wait for the problems to pass and pray they don’t happen again. And the fault will always be exogenous factors or someone who in the past more or less could serve as a scapegoat. We don’t have anyone there with the courage, determination and vision of Churchill. Nor is anyone capable of discreetly and decisively resolving past mistakes like Chamberlain.
Now let us pray that the fires do not kill anyone. Let no one remember getting sick. That citizens don’t use public transport because they can’t stand it. And it also does not use its own vehicles because there is no parking or road capacity. That there are no economic, economic, military or any other changes. Let’s pray. And if we are going to continue to vote for them, let us pray even more.
And let’s stop using Chamberlain as an insult. Wish we had one.