Rather than being yet another study on British appeasement, this research is an illuminating study of the most popular alternative, namely the policy of alliance-building with France and America to resist the revisionist powers during the 1930s. Chamberlain has long been criticised for choosing the policy of appeasement. However, this thesis offers a bold reinterpretation which highlights the sheer infeasibility of an alliance-building alternative through an in-depth analysis of the highly-acrimonious relations between Britain, France and America throughout the interwar period; their continuous failure to collaborate diplomatically or militarily on the world stage; and British intelligence on their military, economic, political and social troubles between 1936 and 1940. In short, this research exonerates Chamberlain. Britain’s acute awareness of America’s military incapability also has particularly powerful implications for the existing historiography, which only recognises American isolationism as a sole restraint on Roosevelt, preventing him from intervening in European or Far Eastern affairs.
This thesis uses six archival sources to explore British intelligence on the military, economic, social, political and diplomatic strengths and weakness of France and America between 1936 and 1940: the Admiralty, War Office, Air Ministry, Foreign Office, Cabinet and Chamberlain’s private documents. Collectively, the author’s primary and secondary research reveals that the three great democracies were incapable of political collaboration on the world stage and were increasingly handicapped militarily, strategically, economically, socially, politically and diplomatically. These negative trends set the conditions for Chamberlain’s premiership from 1937 onwards, leaving him without a feasible alliance-building alternative to appeasement. Whilst Steiner and most other historians stress the Triumph of the Dark, this thesis underlines the Failure of the Light.
