Who Is More to Blame for the British Policy Appeasement to Nazi Germany & the Lack of Prepardedness to Re-Arm, Neville Chamberlain or Stanley Baldwin?

@Burnley123 Russia-Ukraine is the only where the comparison stands, Russia being big enough and armed enough to represent a global threat if allowed to expand with little to no repercussions because everyone is afraid of their nukes.

I agree that it's a bullsh*t comparison when it comes to wars involving non-nuclear regional powers like in the ME region, or even mere terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas.

@Burnley123

Chamberlain, of course, was the P.M. who famously waved around the paper bearing his signature and Hitler's. But I think Baldwin gets off with barely a mention of responsbility.

Baldwin could have fought to increase Britain's military readiness. in the mid 1930s. The German-Anglo Naval Agreement is on him. He didn't learn the lessen of the U-boat menace from the First World War. And the failure to support the French when Germany re-militarized the Rhineland in 1936 is also on him. It is said he didn't push for greater military expenditures because he was afraid it could cost him the 1935 election. And so he kept from the public information about Germany's quick rise in military rearmament - although Winston Churchill was able to get secret documents from Ralph Wigram of the Foreign Office (as well as others) which he used to embarrass Baldwin.

Chamberlain did try to belatedly address Britain's military prepardedness once he became P.M. But he also rightfully deserves a heap of scorn for his bumbling efforts at diplomacy. Chamberlain failed to make a stand over Czechoslovakia. He felt Britain needed more time to rearm. In reality by giving Germany more time as well, the gap didn't close and instead widened in the Nazi's favor. War breaking out in 1938 would have forced Germany to fight for every inch of Czech soil and they wouldn't have captured that country's important armament factories intact. It would have thrown the Fall Weiss timetable into chaos, as Germany could have not been both fighting a guerrilla warfare in Czechoslovakia and invading Poland at the same time - while facing a strong combined French-British army on the Western front.

It's a tought call. Perhaps Chamberlain ends up slightly more to blame when you add in Britain's disastrous military losses early in the war,

@LeopoldBloom
I have to strongly disagree. Time was not an ally of the British or French. The gap favoring Germany grew as time passed. It only changed after the U.S. entry into the war.

But wIth Germany having to invade Czechoslovakia, this would have given the Poles time to fully mobilize and the invasion of Poland would have been delayed.

Germany had neither the aircraft nor the tanks needed to rout the French in 1938 as they did in 1940. Rearmament had built the army up to just 48 divisions by 1938, only 3 of which were panzers with another 4 that were motorized infantry. Nor was the quality or training up to its late 1939 standards.

The Kreigsmarine was in no way ready for war in 1938, either. Neither the battlecruiser Scharnhorst or Gneisenau was completed, nor were any of the heavy cruisers. The German navy had only the three "pocket" battleships, seven destroyers and a mere 7 U-boats. The Italians were even more vulnerable.

While the RAF had no modern fighter aircraft in production, the Luftwaffe had a mere 500 Messerschmitt Bf 109s with inexperienced pilots they were having high accident rates. They would have suffered high losses in a Czechoslovakia campaign, and the Luftwaffe wouldn't even be a major factor in a campaign against France, much less against Britain.

With Germany facing defeat and the Nazi regime in peril, the Japanese would have been facing nearly the entire strength of the Royal Navy and the U.S. and French fleets should it have still chosen to go to war against the Allies.

Nationalist China might then have become the biggest recipient, as the western Allies might then have seen China as a strong bulwark against communist expansion by the U.S.S.R.