Abstract
On 23 March 1933 Churchill warned the House of Commons that the Nazi regime which had recently come to power in Germany threatened the peace of Europe, and observed that ‘there are a good many people who have said to themselves, as I have been saying for several years: “Thank God for the French Army”.’ He returned to this theme in April, declaring emphatically that: ‘France is not only the sole great surviving democracy in Europe; she is also the strongest military power, I am glad to say, and she is the head of a system of States and nations.’ Some years later, when writing the first volume of his war memoirs, The Gathering Storm, Churchill looked back on these speeches and recalled ‘the look of pain and aversion which I saw on the faces of members in all parts of the House when I said “Thank God for the French Army”’.1
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Notes
Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. I, The Gathering Storm (London, 1948), pp. 59–60.
See especially: David Dutton, Neville Chamberlain (London, 2001);
John Charmley, Churchill: The End of Glory. A Political Biography (London, 1993);
R.A.C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement (London, 1993) and Churchill and Appeasement (London, 2000);
Robert Self, Neville Chamberlain: A Biography (Aldershot, 2006).
Robert Cecil’s speech, and Lentin’s comment, in Anthony Lentin, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and the Guilt of Germany: An essay in the pre-history of appeasement (Leicester, 1984), p. 135.
R.B. McCallum, Public Opinion and the Last Peace (London, 1944), p. 101, note 1.
R.W. Seton-Watson, Britain and the Dictators (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 76–7, p. 80.
Robert Self, (ed.), Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, vol. 4, The Downing Street Years (Aldershot, 2005), p. 123.
Nigel Nicolson, (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, 1930–1939 (London, 1966), p. 243, entry 13 Feb. 1936.
Tom Jones, Diary with Letters (Oxford, 1954), pp. 180–1, letter from Jones to Lady Grigg, 8 March 1936.
Morel and Brailsford quoted in A.J.P. Taylor, The Trouble Makers (London, 1957), p. 177.
Georges Suarez, Une nuit chez Cromwell (Paris, 1938) gives a vivid account of this meeting from a French point of view. Perhaps not many British readers will recognise MacDonald in the guise of Oliver Cromwell!
MacDonald diary, 9 Jan. 1935, quoted in Nicholas Rostow, Anglo-French Relations, 1934–1936 (London, 1984), p. 85.
N. Smart, (ed.), The Diaries and Letters of Robert Bernays, 1932–1939 (Lampeter, 1996), p. 184; letter from Bernays to his sister, 8 March 1935.
Robert Rhodes James, (ed.), Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (London, 1993), p. 28; entry for 16 March 1935 17 the date of the German announcement of the introduction of conscription.
Ibid., pp. 95–105; Churchill, Gathering Storm, p. 165; Martin Gilbert, (ed.), Winston S. Churchill, vol. V, Companion, Part 3, The Coming of War, 1936–39 (London, 1982), p. 470;
N. Thompson, The Anti-Appeasers: Conservative Opposition to Appeasement in the 1930s (London, 1971), p. 162.
Quoted in Robert Rhodes James, Anthony Eden (London, 1986), p. 134.
Quoted in Michael Dockrill, British Establishment Perspectives on France, 1936–40 (London, 1995), p. 53.
H.C. Deb., 5th. Series, vol. 339, cols. 360–73. See accounts of the debate in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, 1922–1939 (London, 1976), pp. 997–8,
and David Faber, Munich: The 1938 Appeasement Crisis (London, paperback, 2009), pp. 422–5.
Elisabeth du Reau, Edouard Daladier, 1884–1970 (Paris, 1993), pp. 262–4.
Quoted in Parker, Churchill and Appeasement, pp. 256–7, from Girard de Charbonnieres, La plus evitable de toutes les guerres (Paris, 1985), pp. 206–7. De Charbonnieres was the official who took Churchill’s call to the Embassy.
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© 2013 Philip Bell
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Bell, P. (2013). ‘Thank God for the French Army’: Churchill, France and an Alternative to Appeasement in the 1930s. In: Baxter, C., Dockrill, M.L., Hamilton, K. (eds) Britain in Global Politics Volume 1. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137367822_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137367822_8
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