The Danger from Germany and Japan

Abstract

Britain’s reluctant submission to Japanese force majeure in the Tientsin crisis of June 1939, at the height of mounting European tension, prompted Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to remark that it was ‘maddening to have to hold our hands in face of such humiliations, but we cannot ignore the terrible risks of putting such temptations in Hitler’s way’.¹ His comment encapsulated the fundamental difficulty facing the architects of Britain’s strategic policy after 1933: how to prevent trouble with a single power — Japan, Germany or Italy — escalating into a two- or three-front war. It was a dilemma inhibiting the pursuit of a satisfactory policy towards any of the three, irresolvably complicating defence planning. As the Chiefs of Staff advised in March 1938, deprecating the viability of assisting Czechoslovakia in event of German invasion: ‘In the world situation today it seems to us that if such a struggle were to take place it is more than probable that both Italy and Japan would seize the opportunity for furthering their own ends, and that in consequence the problem we have to envisage is not that of a limited European war only, but of a world war.’² Capitulation to Japan at Tientsin, the humiliating Munich settlement with Hitler and the pursuit of the chimera of Italian friendship were all conditioned by apprehension at the prospect of a global war liable to instigate the collapse of British power.