Talk:Hess Agreement

I really hope Walsh mischaracterized the agreement or omitted something. It's so glaringly transparent that Germany's the only winner in the agreement as he described it. Hitler played Chamberlain and Daladier in OTL because they wanted to avoid a war so badly they thought it was worth sacrificing an ally, given that the Germans could not use the annexation to threaten the West. Now they're sacrificing half a dozen allies, leaving Germany with several new acquisitions which it can use to threaten the West, and they don't get peace out of it. I can't imagine anyone with the political savvy to win an election falling for something like that.

On an unrelated note, writing about the opposition to the Agreement inside Parliament made me realize that HT omitted some relatively important info last year. We heard about a vote of No Confidence in which Chamberlain's government was attacked by Liberals and Labour as well as some disaffected Tories. But Chamberlain's government at the time was not a purely Conservative affair. The Liberals and Labour had both split into dueling factions in the '35 election; the majorities of both parties' MPs were in Opposition, but minorities were in Government. Labour formally expelled the twenty or so MPs who joined the government, and the purged members formed the National Labour Party to stand for their seats. The Liberal split was a bit more ambiguous, but at least some people thought of the National Liberals as separate from the Liberals, even after the Liberal leadership joined Churchill's all-party coalition.

So did the National Liberals and National Labour continue to support Chamberlain in the confidence vote that followed the Big Switch, and are they now supporting Wilson? Or did they go into Opposition and reunite with their old comrades? Chamberlain wouldn't have needed a coalition in 1940; the Conservatives held a majority of seats, but a fairly slim one, and if the coalition broke up and enough Conservatives to be worth mentioning defected, Chamberlain would have had a hell of a time holding on. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:27, August 1, 2012 (UTC)