My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyThe giving of a guarantee to Poland by the British Government cut clean across theGerman drive east to unite their separated populations. It is true that if Hitler hadplayed his hand with more patience and skill the whole situation might have beenavoided. On the other hand, our British Government's guarantee to Poland was simplyasking for war. If we had lost a war, and as a result Lancashire had been divided fromYorkshire by a corridor accorded to a foreign power in a peace treaty universallyagreed to be monstrous, how should we have liked it if the status quo had beenguaranteed by Germany under threat of war? Would the British people have put upwith it? What conceivable interest of our people lay in this guarantee to the inflatedclaims of Poland? What motive had we in Poland, except the passion of the parties tostop Germany at all cost by encircling it on all fronts? I repeat the question: was notthis policy simply asking for war?The Polish guarantee came at the end of a long, fuddled, fumbling movement towardsthe encirclement of Germany on its eastern front; it was fatal. Not only did itobviously convince Hitler that war was inevitable, but it altered the whole strategicand political position of Britain. So long as it was a question of defending Britain andwestern Europe, we could look after ourselves. Directly we opposed in principle andcommitment German eastern expansion, we depended on others. This objective couldonly be achieved by the frustration of Germany to the point of its destruction, and forthis the forces of Britain and France were plainly inadequate. For this purpose Britainmust call in America and Russia as soon as possible, and that meant the future ofBritain and of Europe would pass into other hands. Alone we could stop Germanydefeating us, but we could not alone defeat Germany.The policy of making Britain's air force equal to any in the world, which I hadadvocated from 1932, would undoubtedly have saved our country from any possibilityof invasion. If the Germans with their numerically far superior force could not crossthe Channel in face of the heroic band of Spitfire pilots in 1940, what hope had theyof defeating us if our air defences had been not betrayed but fortified to the point ofequality? It is not just pride in the air arm in which I previously served which inspiresthe conviction that a British air force with an equal chance cannot be defeated. It isproved by what it did without an equal chance, and this confidence is sustained by therare combination of physical and traditional qualities which give the English asingular aptitude for air combat.Not only would a British air force equal to the Germans have ensured the safety ofthese islands, it would also have been a powerful factor in the event of a Germaninvasion of France. If our joint defence had been further strengthened by the'modernised and mechanised' army which I advocated, France too might have beendefended without intervention external to Europe. Certainly this would have been thecase if a clear-cut, decisive British foreign policy had shown France that we could notintervene in eastern Europe, but together would plan a massive defence in case wehad any trouble in the west. France was dragged with reluctance into our easternadventures, and would have been only too willing to concentrate effectively andrealistically on the true basis of all French policy, which is the maintenance inviolateof France.The contrary policy of neglecting our defences while making an explosion in the westinevitable by the eastern encirclement of Germany, entailed also the defeat and327 of 424