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Originally posted by steerpikeYeah, spot on, steerpike: I think the two most important things about the celebrated footage of Neville Chamberlain proclaiming "peace in our time" on the balcony of Buckingham Palace are these:
One point about the appeasers - they exhausted the possibilities of peace. A war started in 1937 would have had many questioning the necessity to fight - by 1939 the need was obvious.
(1) He was being cheered to the blue sky - spontaneously. The country was cheering for peace.
(2) Normally, no Prime Minister would be invited within a half-mile of the monarch to be given his or her public approval after a treaty of any kind. The King invited him on the balcony not just because the political elite were craven and infected by pro-appeasement sentiment, but because Munich at that time was seen as an uncontroversial merit good. When people talk about Churchill's wilderness years, they aren't exaggerating.