''Guilty Men'' is a short book published in Great Britain in July 1940 that attacked British public figures for their failure to re-arm and their appeasement of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
in the 1930s. A classic denunciation of the former government policy, it shaped popular and scholarly thinking for two decades.
Contents
''Guilty Men'' was a British polemical book written under the pseudonym "Cato" published in July 1940. It attacked fifteen public figures for their failed policies towards Germany and for their failure to re-equip the British armed forces. In denouncing appeasement, it defines the policy as the "deliberate surrender of small nations in the face of Hitler's blatant bullying".
The book's slogan, "Let the guilty men retire", was an attack on members of the National Government before
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
became
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...
in May 1940. Most were
Conservatives
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
, although some were National Liberals and one was Ramsay MacDonald, the former leader of the Labour Party. Several were current members of Churchill's government. The book shaped popular thinking about appeasement for twenty years; it effectively destroyed the reputation of former Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, and contributed to the defeat of the Conservative Party at the
1945 general election
The following elections occurred in the year 1945.
Africa
* 1945 South-West African legislative election
Asia
* 1945 Indian general election
Australia
* 1945 Fremantle by-election
Europe
* 1945 Albanian parliamentary election
* 1945 Bulgarian ...
Kingsley Wood
Sir Howard Kingsley Wood (19 August 1881 – 21 September 1943) was a British Conservative politician. The son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, he qualified as a solicitor, and successfully specialised in industrial insurance. He became a membe ...
David Margesson
Henry David Reginald Margesson, 1st Viscount Margesson, PC (26 July 1890 – 24 December 1965) was a British Conservative politician, most popularly remembered for his tenure as Government Chief Whip in the 1930s. His reputation was of a stern ...
Thomas Inskip
Thomas Walker Hobart Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote, (5 March 1876 – 11 October 1947) was a British politician who served in many legal posts, culminating in serving as Lord Chancellor from 1939 until 1940. Despite legal posts dominating his ...
* Leslie Burgin
* Earl Stanhope
* W. S. Morrison
*Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith
Though mostly devoted to the uncanny blindness and inertia of the Conservative majority that in 1939 led a criminally underprepared Britain into a fateful war, followed by the disastrous losses of Norway and of France in 1940, the authors look briefly at the Army's contribution to the French collapse. While praising the discipline and courage of the soldiers in the field, they point to grave errors of strategy. Some lessons that should have been obvious from the 1914-1918 war over the same terrain were ignored: you need a secure perimeter to fall back on; you need a mobile reserve to call on; in defence, you must guard against infiltration by motorised infantry; in defence, you need copious anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery; to attack, you need superiority in aircraft and tanks.
Authorship
''Guilty Men'' was written by three journalists:
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot (23 July 19133 March 2010) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Labour Leader from 1980 to 1983. Foot began his career as a journalist on ''Tribune'' and the ''Evening Standard''. He co-wrote the 1940 p ...
(a future leader of the Labour Party), Frank Owen (a former
Liberal
Liberal or liberalism may refer to:
Politics
* a supporter of liberalism
** Liberalism by country
* an adherent of a Liberal Party
* Liberalism (international relations)
* Sexually liberal feminism
* Social liberalism
Arts, entertainment and m ...
MP), and Peter Howard (a Conservative). They believed that Britain had suffered a succession of bad leaders who, with junior ministers, advisers and officials, had conducted a disastrous foreign policy towards Germany and had failed to prepare the country for war. After Victor Gollancz, creator of the Left Book Club, had been persuaded to publish the book, the authors divided the 24 chapters among themselves and wrote it in four days, finishing on 5 June 1940. Gollancz asked for some of the rhetoric to be toned down, fearing the reaction it might provoke, but he rushed it into print in four weeks.
It was under a pseudonym because the writers were employed by Lord Beaverbrook, who barred his journalists from writing for publications other than his own. Beaverbrook, who was active in the Conservative Party, was also a vocal supporter of appeasement, though he was not mentioned in the book.
There was much speculation as to who Cato was. At one time Aneurin Bevan was named as its author. In the meantime, the real authors had some fun reviewing their own work. Michael Foot wrote an article, "Who is This Cato?" Beaverbrook was as much in the dark as anyone but joked that he "made do with the royalties from ''Guilty Men''". The authors earned no money from the book as their literary agent, Ralph Pinker, absconded with the royalties.
Publication
''Guilty Men'' was published in early July 1940, shortly after Churchill became Prime Minister, the Dunkirk evacuation had shown Britain's military unpreparedness, and the Fall of France left the country with few allies. Several major book wholesalers, W H Smith and Wyman's, and the largest book distributor, Simpkin Marshall, refused to handle the book. It was sold on news-stands and street barrows and went through twelve editions in July 1940, selling 200,000 copies in a few weeks.Morgan, ''Michael Foot,'' ch 3
''Guilty Men'' remains in circulation and was reprinted for its historical interest by
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.1933 Fulham East by-election, instead of the 1935 general election, and dated the by-election to 1935. ("1935" was corrected to "1933" in later editions, but the 1998 Penguin facsimile edition reproduced the error without comment.) It also shows in its detailed description of the recent evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk.
The book's arguments and conclusions have been questioned by politicians and historians. In 1945, Quintin Hogg, MP, wrote '' The Left was never Right'', which was critical of ''Guilty Men'' and argued that "unpreparedness before the war was largely the consequence of the policies of the parties of the Left". In 1944, Geoffrey Mander had published ''We were not all wrong''.Geoffrey Mander, ''We were not all wrong – How the Labour and Liberal Parties (& also the anti-Munich Tories) strove, pre-war, for the policy of collective security against aggression – with adequate armaments to make that policy effective: the truth about the peace ballot: etc, etc.'' (London: Victor Gollancz, 1944)
The idea of appeasement as error and cowardice was challenged by historian
A. J. P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor (25 March 1906 – 7 September 1990) was a British historian who specialised in 19th- and 20th-century European diplomacy. Both a journalist and a broadcaster, he became well known to millions through his televis ...
in his book '' The Origins of the Second World War'' (1960), in which he argued that, in the circumstances, it might be seen as a rational policy.