re: #102 Targetpractice

Chamberlain gets a bad rap, but a lot of it came from his contemporary political rivals than a realistic look at what he did and what it accomplished. The reality is that, in 1938, Britain was in no position to make war on what was becoming the Axis Powers. Really, the only person who believed that he was ready for war was Hitler, and history has shown that the man was militarily incompetent.

But Hitler wasn’t really ready, and Germany would have been in a worse position than it was a year later had the balloon gone up in 1938. Germany would have still been blockaded with the Kriegsmarine at an even worse force balance against the Royal Navy, and would have had to devote large resources to guarding its border with either Poland, or France depending on where it planned to strike next.

Germany would also have been without the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, and thus would have had the possibility of the Soviet Union as an enemy to watch out for.