Education
Educated at Rugby and at Mason College, Birmingham
Educated at Rugby and at Mason College, Birmingham
He became a businessman in Birmingham, and, in due course, Lord Mayor of that city in 1915-1916. He entered Parliament as Unionist member for the Ladywood division of Birmingham in 1918, after acting as Director General of National Service from 1916 to 1917. In 1922 and 1923 he was successively Postmaster General, Paymaster General, Minister of Health, and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was Minister of Health again from 1924 to 1929 and in 1931, and, as a Conservative, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1931 to 1937. Though his achievements in these positions had not been brilliant, in 1937 the Conservative Party chose him to succeed Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister partly because of the Chamberlain prestige, partly because of his faithful service in the party. An orderly administrator with a good record of reforms, his very narrowness of mind made him the strongest character, and the most powerful influence, in Baldwin's cabinet.
But he had not the knowledge, experience, or understanding for foreign affairs in an unprecedented epoch.
Chamberlain failed lamentably to cope with the aggressive policy of Hitler and Mussolini; and his technique of appeasement of the Axis powers, culminating in the Munich agreement of Sept. 29, 1938, has since been vigorously and universally condemned. In March 1939, when Chamberlain's confidence in "peace in our time" had been betrayed by the German occupation of what was left of Czechoslovakia after Munich, his government made an attempt to salvage the situation by guaranteeing Polish territorial integrity. This measure, however, merely made inevitable, less than six months later, the participation of Great Britain in the conflict that developed rapidly from the German invasion of Poland into World War II. The failure of the Allied expedition to Norway and the immediate success of the German invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium forced Chamberlain to resign as Prime Minister on May 10, 1940. He remained in the Churchill cabinet as Lord President of the Council, but resigned on October 3, after an operation.