Was Neville Chamberlain merely naïve, a man of peace who was blind to Hitler's warlike intentions in the late 1930s? Or did he, with the backing of much of Britain's ruling elite, positively prefer Nazism to the threat of Communism in a politically charged era?
Alvin Finkel and Clement Leibovitz forcefully maintain the latter view. They present irrefutable evidence that in 1938 Chamberlain's government, supported by powerful business interests and an influential segment of the press, sought an agreement with the Nazis that would protect the west against attack while positively encouraging German expansion in central and eastern Europe. Attempts to conclude a pact among Britain, France, Germany and Italy were not, in fact, abandoned until Churchill's ascension to power in May of 1940.
The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion is a bold and scrupulously documented reexamination of a vital period in European history, one that definitively overturns much received wisdom.
Introduction by Christopher Hitchens
Preface
Chapter 1. The Myth of Appeasement
Chapter 2. An Obsession with Communism
Chapter 3. Heil to the Dictators
Chapter 4. Letting Hitler Rearm: Evolution of the Free Hand (From 1933 to the Nazi Occupation of the Rhineland)
Chapter 5. Preparing for a Formal Deal: From the Rhineland to the Abandonment of Czechoslovakia
Chapter 6. Formal Collusion: The Chamberlain-Hitler Meetings
Chapter 7. From Munich to the Fall of Prague: Trying to Maintain "The Deal"
Chapter 8. Trying to Save the Deal: From the Guarantee of Poland to 1940
Chapter 9. A Confusion of Enemies
Appendix. The Historians and the Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion
Index
"Finkel and Leibovitz have come up with a new and more satisfactory explanation of why the Second World War broke out when it did."
- Telegraph Journal
"Anyone who likes to read about the Second World War -- and anyone who remembers its beginnings -- will learn much from this book.... The story [The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion] tells should be better known."
- Elisabeth Cran Charlottetown Guardian
Email to a colleague
