Let’s retire Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella.  It’s become a pretty threadbare symbol over the years. In negotiating with Hitler in Munich in September 1938, as historians in the ’70s and ’80s pointed out, the British prime minister believed he was acting on the Wilsonian principle that a people had a right to govern itself, and that consigning the “Sudeten” Germans to Czechoslovakia had been one more injustice perpetrated at Versailles. More important, Britain was not prepared for war.  The nation, in the first place, had to defend a global empire.  And unlike Germany, it was only slowly recovering from the Great Depression, and had severely curtailed military expenditure.  At the beginning of 1938, only two infantry divisions and one mobile division were available for a Continental expeditionary force.  Also, until 1937, defense planners believed that “the bomber will always get through” and...(Read Full Post)