Give Donald Trump a bust of Neville Chamberlain
At the start of both of Donald Trump’s terms of office, there were many admiring reports of his restoration of a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office.
Given Trump’s conduct towards Ukraine it would more appropriate to send him a bust of Neville Chamberlain. His approach to Hitler ominously foreshadows that of Trump to Putin.
Although in far less extravagant language than Donald Trump, Chamberlain saw himself as a dealmaker, and imagined that all problems with Hitler could be solved by a business agreement. He was indifferent to the threat of Hitler’s political and economic dominance of eastern and southern Europe, and sought large-scale trade agreements with Nazi Germany to be lubricated by British loans. The overt viciousness of Hitler’s régime made no more difference to Chamberlain’s approach than that of Putin’s makes to Trump. Chamberlain was occasionally irritated when Nazi crimes inflamed British public opinion and interfered with his pursuit of appeasement.
Like Trump, Chamberlain cowed and crushed opposition to his appeasement policies within his government and party. Chamberlain often had to work hard to achieve this and to use dark channels: over Ukraine it is not clear how much opposition Trump needs to cow and crush, but he clearly enjoys doing this to his party on general principle.
Like Trump with Putin, Chamberlain (or his ministers with his authority) would issue occasional warnings to Hitler but never followed through on them and resumed his policies of appeasement. Understandably, Hitler refused to believe Chamberlain’s final warning over Poland and expected yet another deal in his favour.
Like Trump with Putin, Chamberlain wrongly assumed that he had formed a personal relationship with Hitler and even a measure of dominance over him.
Like Trump with Putin, Chamberlain preferred personal envoys to Foreign Office ministers or expert diplomats. Chamberlain’s main choice for this role, Sir Horace Wilson, was at least an experienced civil servant, with a successful record in domestic matters, unlike Trump’s Mr Witkoff, a real estatenik and his golfing buddy. Like Trump with Putin, Chamberlain and his emissaries sometimes had key meetings with Hitler without their own interpreter, and relied on Hitler’s Dr Paul Schmidt.
Of course, like Trump with Ukraine, Chamberlain settled the fate of another country over its head. At Munich he went so far as to secure the presence of two Czech observers, with no negotiating powers. These men were incarcerated in their hotel room until eventually they were informed (by a French official) of the fate to be imposed on their country, with no power to vary the terms. Chamberlain rendered rump Czecho-Slovakia defenceless (it acquired an ominous hyphen after Munich). He offered it a guarantee which he had no intention of keeping and readily abandoned it when Hitler extinguished its independence.
Like Trump with Ukraine, Chamberlain was ready to blame Czechoslovakia as an obstacle to peace (and later the “recalicitrant” Poles and other countries in Hitler’s sights) rather than Hitler.
As for Keir Starmer, now a passenger of Donald Trump, he might be given a portrait of the French Prime Minister, Edouard Daladier, haggard and miserable at Munich having placed himself in the same relationship to Neville Chamberlain, and powerless to present the surrender of French interests, values and pride.
Richard Heller was chief of staff to Denis Healey and Gerald Kaufman, and as a journalist has reported on and analysed six Presidential elections. He is also the author of The Prisoner of Rubato Towers.
