Neville Chamberlain, Architect of Appeasement: Hitler's Dupe or Nemesis?

...Chamberlain's inner circle backed his ill-judged 'Z Plan' – a flight to Germany to make a face-to-face appeal to, of all things, Hitler's vanity ... 'The right course", the Prime Minister argued, 'was to open by an appeal to Herr Hitler on the grounds that he had a great chance of obtaining fame for himself by making peace in Europe ..." In truth, this was the kind of fame Chamberlain coveted for himself. 

The War of the World, Niall Ferguson, 2006.

It is a matter on which there is very general agreement that, in the period leading up to Britain's declaration of war on Nazi Germany, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain pursued a disastrous course. 

Chamberlain's catastrophic errors, so it is held, were threefold. 

First, he induced the Government of Czechoslovakia to cede the ethnically German Sudetenland to Hitler's Reich. By this action he claimed to have secured peace by appeasing Germany resentment of the harsh terms of the post-World War I Versailles Treaty. But as a consequence of this transfer of territory, Czechoslovakia sacrificed the border fortifications it had constructed in response to the rising threat of Nazi Germany. It could not, therefore, have surprised many that within six months, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and annexed much of that country's remaining territory.

Second, Chamberlain declined to create the million-man ground force that some, including Winston Churchill, deemed necessary to contain Germany. Instead, Chamberlain, who served as both Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, applied the bulk of Britain's defense expenditure to the Air Force and Navy. Thus:

In October 1936, ... Chamberlain had told the Cabinet, "Air power was the most formidable deterrent to war that could be devised".[5] ...The importance of the RAF to Chamberlain can be seen by noting that its budget rose from £16.78 million in 1933 to £105.702 million in 1939, surpassing the British Army's budget in 1937 and the Royal Navy's in 1938.[6] (Source).

Third, following Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain gave Poland an unconditional guarantee of British armed assistance should Hitler resort to force in pursuit of access to, and control of, the formerly German city of Danzig. Thus, when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Britain was morally committed to war with Germany on behalf of Poland, a country of essentially zero geopolitical significance to Britain, and to which Britain had no means of providing military aid. 

For these reasons, Chamberlain's diplomatic course has been widely viewed as not only foolish but catastrophic. Yet there is a striking contradiction between that judgement of Chamberlain's response to the rise of Nazi Germany, and the actual consequences of his actions. 

And yes, by enabling Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain's policy of appeasement substantially enhanced Germany's military might by providing access to Czechoslovakia's substantial inventory of armaments, including the Czechoslovakia-developed Panzerkampfwagen 38(t) tank, which was superior to tanks then in possession of the German army. Furthermore, occupation of Czechoslovakia gave Germany control of that country's substantial armaments industry.

However, a fact this critique fails to address is that, prior to the outbreak of World War II, there was not one, but two brutal expansionist tyrannies in Europe, both arming at breakneck speed. Of these, one was headed by the megalomaniac Adolph Hitler, the other by the cold-blooded mass murderer, Joseph Stalin, who was committed to the goal of world Communist revolution. Not only was Stalin  providing material aid to the ultimately triumphant Communist revolutionaries in China, he was also providing financial aid to Communists in Europe, including crypto-communist members of Britain's Labour Party, British trades union leaders, and Britain's Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker. 

What then to do? Destroy German power through a preemptive war in a joint operation with France? But that would have left the way clear for Soviet expansion to the West? Or was it better to allow and even assist Germany in matching the Soviet military build-up, the latter achieved at the cost of millions of lives lost due to starvation as grain was exported to pay for strategically vital Western technology. Such imports included 16 oil refineries provided by America's Koch Industries; automotive production lines provided by Henry Ford, which were later converted to the production of tanks; hydro-electric turbines and generators supplied by General Electric; plus steel mills, tank designs and much else sold to the USSR by American, German and British companies.

Whatever may have been in Neville Chamberlain's mind when he sought to appease Hitler's appetite for territorial expansion, the consequences are indisputable. His actions facilitated Germany's breakneck rearmament, thereby creating a huge impediment to Soviet ambitions for territorial aggrandizement. 

That Chamberlain failed to anticipated this outcome seems hardly credible. There were abundant reasons to expect that, under Hitler's leadership, Germany would not merely block Soviet Westward expansion, but would invade the Soviet Union to fulfill Hitler's long-known objective of gaining living space (Lebensraum) for the German people in Eastern Europe. Confirming that this remained the plan, when Hitler's soon-to-be foreign Minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, visited England in 1937 and met with Winston Churchill at the German embassy, he showed Churchill a map indicating the swath of Russian territory Germany intended to seize. The vast extent of this planned land grab is evident from Churchill's reaction: "We don't like the Russians, but we don't hate them that much."

Thus, to Chamberlain, the alternative to confronting Hitler, would have been obvious: point Germany to the East and let the totalitarian bastards fight one another to exhaustion. Moreover, to assuage Hitler's fear of a two-front war, resist pressure for a build-up of British ground forces. As for Chamberlain's declaration of war on Germany, it was essentially meaningless, resulting, for more than a year, in nothing more than the deployment of heavy bombers to drop leaflets over Germany. 

But whatever its objective, Chamberlain's policy did much to facilitate war between the tyrannies Russia and Germany, tyrannies that threatened the Western world. Moreover, as that stupendous clash evolved, its outcome was materially influenced by Western intervention. At the outset, as German forces advanced deep into Russian territory, killing and capturing literally millions of Russian troops, both Britain and the United States shipped vast quantities of military equipment to the Russians. But then, as Russia turned the tide and advanced into Western Europe, the Anglo-American invasion force was there, in Berlin, to block Russia's further Westward advance. Four months later, reminding Stalin of what he was up against, the US exploded an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. 

Though despised by all and sundry, it may thus be said that Neville Chamberlain was, more than any other statesman, the architect of victory by the free nations of the West against the threat of totalitarian domination, Nazi or Soviet.

America: A Failed State

Survival Blog, September 21, 2020: What’s happening to America? It’s a question that Americans — and people around the world — are asking, horrified and bewildered.

The answer to that question goes like this. America was a failed state. And now it’s becoming an authoritarian one. America is now 60 days from the final stage of social collapse — the terminal stage, the point of no return, at which a society goes full-blown authoritarian, permanently — and it’s looking increasingly likely to us survivors and scholars of authoritarianism that that final, terminal stage is going to happen. America is dying.

And yet that’s a classical, textbook, predictable sequence. Which, if you really want to prevent, you should probably understand. Let me explain.

What do you imagine a failed state is? If you’re a “real” American, you probably think it’s some distant, war-torn land. And in a sense, you’re right. But it was also America, and is.

A failed state is a place where people can no longer really obtain the basics of life, in any fair or decent or sane way. There is not enough to go around. The result is that people live under the rule of a kind of violence, in a state of chaos, in perpetual despair and rage and panic. Where will tomorrow’s water, food, medicine, the money to pay for it all, come from?

...

The state’s most basic job is to organise society in such a way that people can obtain the basics of life. We all need shelter, food, water, and medicine to live. To live well, at even a minimal level, we need safety, education, income, savings. That doesn’t mean that the state has to give those things to people necessarily — but it does have to organise society in such a way that those things can be had.

And that is precisely where America failed. Americans — especially “real” ones — are used to growing up in an atmosphere of fevered propaganda, exceptionalism. But what really happened in America from 1980 to about 2015 was this.

America became a society where people couldn’t obtain the basics of life anymore. I mean that in both absolute and relative ways. Want to have a child? That’ll cost you $50,000. Want to educate one? That’ll cost you $250,000. Need a life-saving operation? Sorry, that’ll cost you $500,000. What the? Entire cities had infrastructures which simply failed, like Flint.

Society as a whole had no functioning social systems — healthcare, retirement, pensions. So Americans’ only choice was to pay the prices that their system demanded. Want a pension? Wall St will sell you a “401K” — and take a fat cut, while hedge funds raid whatever was left of your life savings. Want healthcare? Sure, that “premium” will cost you thousands a month, for a plan that provides little care or choice at all.

Americans were locked into broken, dysfunctional systems, which no longer provided them the basics of life, at prices they could afford.

The income of the average American was scarcely $50k. How were they to afford any of this? They couldn’t, quite obviously.

The result was that many Americans began to go without the basics of life. They chose between that life-saving operation, or keeping a roof over their kids’ heads. They ate cheap, industrially processed food, and grew obese and ill, because it had little nutritional value. They worked jobs that would never lead to careers or mobility desperately just to retain some access to the meagre “benefits” only jobs now provided. Young Americans found themselves crippled by educational debt, and unable to begin independent lives of their own.

See the point clearly. America could no longer provide the basics to people. It could not feed, shelter, educate, or employ its people. Not affordably, and certainly not well. The situation was so bad, for example, that Americans just gave up looking for work, in fact, reaching a point where just above half of the working age population were employed at all. That millennials became a lost generation stuck at home forever, working crap jobs. That strangers begged one another for money to pay for medicine online.

This was a Soviet society by any other name. The Soviet Union famously had breadlines, where you’d never get the bread. America had unobtainable basics, too, in even larger and more lethal ways.

What did Americans have to do to simply even attempt to afford the basics of life — medicine, education, food, water, housing? They had to go into massive debt. Today, the average American dies in debt, meaning his or her debts are unpayable. And that means that he never in net terms really owns, saves, or earns a penny.

Those are the economics of failed states. People end up broke. A society descends into mass poverty. Nobody much can afford the basics. Meanwhile, those who have monopolies over said basics become ultra, mega rich. Vast inequality sets in. An economy becomes a kind of caste society — a large pool of hopeless and powerless proles, and a tiny number of billionaires so rich and powerful they resemble feudal lords of old.

Worse, nobody much understands — because a society’s economic statistics don’t show it. In America, like in the Soviet Union, economic statistics failed to reflect any of the real pain or despair people were beginning to live in. The stock market boomed — forever. Profits rose and rose. The unemployment rate seemed suspiciously low. Things had never been better! Then why was the average American broke, dying in debt, working a go-nowhere job, descending into poverty? These two sets of facts did not comport. One had to be lying, and the other telling the truth. But America’s intellectuals and politicians were incurious, lazy. They did not seem to care that the story economics was telling didn’t seem to be telling any remotely accurate truth about people’s living standards anymore.

Read full article: 

America A Failed State, That’s The First Stage Of Collapse

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The European Union: Why Britain Should Never Have Gone In; Why Britain Must Come Out

Against joining: Here is the impassioned Speech (I heard it broadcast live) by the late Hugh Gaitskell,* speaking as party leader at the 1962 Labour Party annual conference:

For Britain’s entry into a Customs Union – such as the Economic Community of Europe – has a double effect. The barriers go down between us and the six countries of Europe. But they go up between us and the Commonwealth. We shall find it easier to sell in the markets of the six, because we shall no longer be faced with tariffs against our goods. How much are they now? Ten to fifteen per cent. But we shall be at a disadvantage in the rest of Europe compared with our position today, because in the European Free Trade Area we now have a tariff advantage over and against the six countries, which we shall lose if we go in. And since it would be rash to assume that the advantages which the Commonwealth countries give us in their markets will be retained by us when we deprive them of the advantages they at present have in ours, we shall also lose in Commonwealth markets for the same reason. What does all this amount to? In 1961, 16.7 per cent of our exports went to the Common Market countries: 13.1 per cent – not so very far off it – to the rest of Western Europe – the E.F.T.A. countries, and 43 per cent went to the countries of the Commonwealth Preference System. We would gain in markets were we sell less than one-fifth of our exports and lose in markets where we sell about half our exports. This needs to be qualified a little because of the level of the tariffs. But nobody who has even glanced at this problem can really suppose that there is any advantage to be expected from the switch. ... Full Text

For leaving: Prime Minister Boris Johnson, speaking today at the Conservative Party annual conference:

——— * Hugh Gaitskell, a right-wing member of the Labour Party, died shortly after this speech, poisoned so he is said to have believed, by the Soviet Secret police. His place was taken by Harold Wilson, a left-wing socialist, said to have been favored by the Soviet Union.

How the Soviets Read the Message of the Kennedy Assassination

President John F. Kennedy was killed by a bullet to the head received while traveling in a open car through Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, on November 11, 1963. The Commission of inquiry into the assassination, which was headed by US Chief Justice Earl Warren, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone nut, fired the fatal shot from the Texas School Book Depository Building, which was located directly behind the President at the moment he was struck.

However, the evidence we have reviewed establishes that Kennedy was fatally wounded by a bullet to the head, not from behind, but from in front of the car in which he was riding. The critical evidence was suppressed at the time of the assassination, although it would have been readily available to the Warren Commission had they desired to have it. Therefore it can be concluded with confidence that the Warren Commission Report was a cover up.

If Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy, it follows that the Kennedy assassination was the result of a conspiracy, and apparently a rather elaborate one at that.

Oswald was not just a patsy, as he claimed before being himself assassinated. He was a patsy with Soviet connections, who'd defected to Russia, then returned to the United States, where he had agitated on behalf of a shadowy organization, the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee," which sought to promote grassroots support in America for Cuba's Communist government.

Thus any inclination that the Soviets may have had to challenge the findings of the Warren Commission Report for propaganda purposes would have been negated by the fact that this would inevitably bring upon the Soviets the charge of complicity in the killing.

Consistent with this view,  FBI Director,  J. Edgar Hoover, wrote in a memorandum to the office of the President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, that according to "[a] source who has furnished reliable information in the past and who was in Russia on the date of the assassination. ..." news of the assassination was:

...greeted [in Moscow] by great shock and consternation and church bells were tolled in the memory of President Kennedy.... According to our source, officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the 'ultraright' in the United States to effect a 'coup.' They seemed convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part."

So the Commies, who were no dopes, concluded that Kennedy was killed because he was soft on Communism. That the Soviets came to that conclusion means that the objective of the conspirators, which was, in part, to send the Soviets a message, had been achieved: Kennedy may have failed the test of leadership, but American leadership consisted in more than one man and, the poor judgement of of a weak president would not be allowed to prevail.

Related:
CanSpeccy: Why the US Government Killed John F. Kennedy
CanSpeccy: Did Gerald Ford Blackmail US President Richard Nixon into Resigning Over Complicity in the JFK Assassination?

9/11: Living With Lies

9/11 has provided many people with an interesting intellectual puzzle, the solution to which, in outline at least, is fairly obvious, but which will never be publicly acknowledged short of a  coup d'état in Washington, DC.

The reason the truth cannot otherwise be acknowledged is obvious: many people were involved in 9/11, which means that public recognition of the truth would necessitate mass trials and executions of members of both Democratic and Republican Party leadership, plus many prominent persons within the security apparatus. Almost certainly, corporate entities, their directors, and members of their technical staffs would also be implicated, together with security services and corporate entities of several other countries.

How Globalization Enriches the Money Power While Undermining the Prosperity of Almost Everyone Else

Globalization is driven by international corporations seeking what in economics jargon is known as "increasing returns to scale." What "increasing returns to scale" means is an increase in profit margin with increasing market share. A consequence of the increasing returns to scale achieved by some corporations through globalization is the retardation or reversal of economic development in all but the most advanced sectors of the most advanced economies.

How returns increase with scale, i.e., how profit margins expand with market share, is easily understood by considering the case of Microsoft, one of the corporations that has profited mightily from globalization. If Microsoft spends $100 million on upgrading a software package or developing a videogame, the cost to Microsoft of the first copy of that product is $100 million. However, the second copy that Microsoft sells, if delivered over the Internet, costs only pennies. Thus, if the sale price of the software is $100, then the break even point for Microsoft is a million copies. At two million copies, Microsoft has a profit of one hundred percent. At ten million copies, Microsoft has a profit of one thousand percent. That's the magic of increasing returns to scale.

No wonder, then, that the global corporations are willing to do almost anything, including buying the allegiance of governments, to grab a greater share of the global market. Besides software developers, the companies that benefit from increasing returns to scale include: book publishers, movie makers, Internet pornographers, drug manufacturers and the the producers of consumer electronics, household appliances, and cars, all of which have high first-copy development costs.

How globalization affects the middle class of the Third World.
Image source.

Achieving increased returns to scale means having governments in place that will press for the elimination of trade barriers and regulatory regimes that restrict global sales. The result is to crush start-ups and less well capitalized competition throughout the world. The Russians, for example, had serviceable, if clunky cars (and many other products) of their own manufacture prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, after the collapse, domestic industries were hammered as state assets were looted and much of the cash thus realized expended in conspicuous consumption of imports — Mercedes, BMW and other high-end foreign brands. As a result, many of the indigenous domestic industries were destroyed and the workers made redundant, often dying prematurely as a result, while the globalized corporations that destroyed them enjoyed increased returns to scale.

The same dynamics occur wherever global competition is let loose against weak domestic producers, as is occurring in Ukraine under the economically suicidal oligarchy headed by the US and Nazi backed billionaire, Petro Poroshenko. But the damage is not confined to less developed economies. In Europe and North America, for example, globalization has devastated local manufacturers of shoes and shirts, computers and car parts to name but a few of those unable to compete against low-wage Asian sweatshops. Thus, while shareholders in Microsoft, Apple, IBM, GE, and WalMart, to name but a few, have pocketed trillions in capital gains since Bill Clinton and his European counterparts signed the 1994 GATT agreement that kicked off the current round of globalization, workers in the west have suffered falling or stagnant wages, or long-term unemployment as a direct result. Moreover, the impact on Western workers has been greatly exacerbated by mass immigration of cheap labor from the Third World, the other deadly, indeed genocidal, aspect of globalization.

 Thus, throughout the ex-Soviet Union and the Third World, globalization has meant the reversal of economic development. In these countries, the most advance industries have mostly been crushed in the competition with giants of the First World, to be replaced by either sweatshops paying mere pennies an hour, or primary industries, including farming, forestry and mining. In either case, the returns to scale are negative, thus driving a continual reduction in standard of living.  For example, a country may earn foreign income by logging its forests and exporting the products, but as production grows, prime forests are depleted forcing the resort to lower quality timber that yields lower returns on investment in labor, roads, machinery, etc. The same negative return to scale emerge in both agriculture and mining, as the best resources become fully exploited and further expansion of the industry depends on the resort to poorer land or lower grade mines.

The current drive for globalization, thus chiefly serves only one interest: that of the Money Power. To ordinary folk in every country, rich or poor, globalization has proved detrimental to human welfare. Thus now is the time to restore the independence of democratic nation states free from the control of the Money Power and free to develop national economic policies that serve the interests of the people, not those of bankers software billionaires, and sweatshop operators.

Related:

Erik Reinert: How Rich Countries Got Rich . . . and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs

CanSpeccy: Europe, the Perils of Complacency