Great Britain

Fifty years ago this week, Britain declared war on Germany; eight months later the British army was in retreat from the beaches of Dunkirk. For half a century many have blamed the 'guilty men'—the government of Neville Chamberlain—for Britain's near defeat. But now a different story may be told, the story of a Britain weakened by the First World War, desperate to avoid the carnage of another conflict, and struggling to support an overextended Empire. By the late 1930s, Neville Chamberlain was caught in a hopeless position, confronting the irrational aggression of Hitler and Mussolini, while trying to preserve the illusion of British imperial power.