In keeping with much recent scholarship, Hett presents Chamberlain as a complex figure, intelligent and composed but also vainglorious and gullible. That Hitler might actually desire war was to the prime minister’s rational way of thinking impossible, especially following the mass carnage of World War I. It also stepped up preparations for war, introducing peacetime conscription for the first time in British history and commencing Anglo-French military staff talks. Today, we are again in a crisis of democracy, a point Hett stresses from his opening pages. Or should the world be organized along racial and national lines, with dominant groups owing nothing to minorities and closing off their economic space as much as possible to the outer world?

Source: International New York Times August 05, 2020 16:52 UTC