1974/07/01 by Robert Manne
Social Sciences · #Polish Historical and Cultural Studies #Eastern European Communism and Reforms #Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics
paper · doi:10.1177/002200947400900301
The student of contemporary history is quite commonly aware of the extraordinary degree to which our opinions on the recent past are riddled by myths which, by frequent repetition, have become cosily familiar home truths. It is not surprising to find contemporary political observers, working from severely limited information, guess work and prejudice, getting things wrong. However, it is somewhat discomfiting to find these versions in the history books within half a decade, and positively alarming to see them passing from there to our body of Received Truths. I suspect that we think we know much more about the recent past than we in fact do. To come to the point of this article. It would, I think, be generally agreed that on March 30-31, 1939, Chamberlain's Cabinet panicked at news of an impending attack on Poland, and hastily, without time to reflect, extended to her a guarantee against German aggression. And it would be very widely agreed that this Cabinet because of an abhorrence of Bolshevism, and a desire to do a deal with Germany at no stage during 1939 desired an alliance with Soviet Russia, negotiating with that Government not to secure an alliance but rather to appease and dupe public opinion. In this article I will try to show that Chamberlain's Cabinet, during the latter half of March, deliberately chose Poland rather than Russia as Britain's key Eastern European ally, despite the advice of the Chiefs of Staff, but that by late May the appalling consequences of that decision had become sufficiently apparent to have converted the Cabinet to accepting the necessity of alliance with Soviet Russia.