"Chamberlain brought back far more than a piece of paper. He gained time. "
Surely the point is that, if Hitler's obvious ambitions had not been ignored he could have been stopped much earlier - that is the point I am making
The British Establishment (and a large slice of Europe and the U.S.) was not just unprepared; it was happy to work with the Nazi regime as long as they washed their dirty linen in the privacy of Germany
Hitler had many supporters in Britain - from the King down
Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail ran a campaign on THE GLORIES OF FASCISM

Spain was an obvious opportunity to cry "enough" - the German army was not ready for war, the Luftwaffe was allowed to tryout their untrained young pilots and new planes on Guernica

German re-armament began secretly immediately after Versailles but it became public when th Nazis took control - by the rules of the treaty, the allies could have stopped it.
Labour was the only party to oppose German re-armament

Chamberlain came back from Munich with a promise of 'Peace in our time", he convinced everybody that there would be no war - that is not preparing for one.
Even if he had believed otherwise, that would have been a case of locking the stable after the horse had won the 'Grand International'

I think we've naused up this thread enough - time to move on maybe
Jim Carroll