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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #138041 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-29
• Released on: 2008-04-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780374531331
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In 1930s England, faced with the gathering menace of fascism, 30 or so junior members of Parliament understood that Hitler would not be dissuaded by Prime Minister Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. Their rebellion against their leader and the "elderly mediocrities" of their own Conservative Party is the subject of Olson's absorbing book. The forces opposed to Chamberlain were initially inhibited by party loyalty and the ferocious reprisals threatened against anyone who challenged the prime minister. Olson traces how Hitler's continuing depredations (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland) served to recruit more insurgents in the House of Commons and galvanize those shamed by England's inaction. Olson's story picks up energy as she reviews the events of 1940, when at long last Chamberlain was replaced by Churchill. Olson is interested in the moral imperatives driving her protagonists. The dominant figure in the narrative, of course, is Churchill, who despised Chamberlain's defeatism but served loyally in his cabinet until Chamberlain's forced resignation. Infused with the sense of urgency felt by the young Tories, Olson's vivid narrative of a critical generational clash leaves the reader wondering what might have happened had they prevailed earlier on. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Reviewed by David Cannadine

He was a dominant leader of his government, utterly convinced of the righteousness and the rectitude of his policies, especially insofar as they concerned international affairs. He gathered around him a coterie of tight-lipped conservative advisers who were as like-minded and narrow-minded as he was. He scorned his critics in the legislature, branding them foolish, ignorant and unpatriotic. He had no time for members of any party but his own, and he treated the opposition with contempt. He cowed and coerced the media, and he authorized telephone tapping on an unprecedented scale. By such arrogant and intimidating means, he was determined to leave a more significant mark on public affairs than either his father or his brother had. But the result was a succession of foreign policy disasters that did his country untold damage in the eyes of the world.

George W. Bush? No, Neville Chamberlain. As Lynne Olson, a former White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, points out in this vivid and compelling book, these were exactly the criticisms directed at the British prime minister as he persistently pursued his policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler in a manner that may be described as vain in both senses of that word. Chamberlain was conceitedly confident during the late 1930s that he was doing the right thing, but his policy crashed into ruins when it turned out that the Führer could not be sated and that a second world war with Germany could not be avoided.

Troublesome Young Men describes and celebrates the efforts of Chamberlain's opponents within his own Conservative Party. These Tory rebels finally succeeded in bringing the prime minister down after a famous debate in the House of Commons in early May 1940 in which Leo Amery ended his powerful speech by quoting the terrible words that Oliver Cromwell had used to dismiss the Long Parliament 300 years before: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing! Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" Chamberlain grudgingly resigned, and Winston S. Churchill succeeded him, convinced that destiny had nurtured him and prepared him for what would soon be his finest hour. Yet while this may all seem inevitable in retrospect, there was nothing predestined about it at the time.

One problem (which Olson does not address) is that the opponents of appeasement had no effective alternative policy. In the 1930s, Britain's empire and military commitments were overextended, especially as regards Europe and the Far East. That meant that waging war on two continents was a nightmare prospect, to which appeasement seemed for a time the only option. The second difficulty (which Olson reluctantly concedes) was that the Tory rebels formed a rather motley crew: Churchill himself was widely regarded as a reactionary has-been who was too fond of the bottle, Anthony Eden was a lightweight, and Amery was boring. Their junior colleagues were no more impressive: Robert Boothby was a philanderer, Harold Macmillan was a cuckold, Alfred Duff Cooper drank too much, and Harold Nicolson was insufficiently combative.

Yet in the end, the rebels were proved right, and they eventually prevailed. Several (though not all) were rewarded with junior jobs by Churchill in his great wartime coalition, and two of them, Eden and Macmillan, later became prime minister. In Macmillan's case, this was something of a surprise, but Eden had long been Churchill's heir apparent. Yet his prime ministership turned out to be a disaster. Convinced that Egypt's nationalist president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was another Hitler, Eden launched a military expedition in 1956 to get back the Suez Canal, which Nasser had nationalized. World opinion was outraged, and the Americans refused to help; Eden's health collapsed, and he was obliged to resign, whereupon Macmillan succeeded him. "Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last," Olson rightly notes, "the lessons of Munich and appeasement were wrongly applied to a later international crisis." President Bush and his fellow neocons should take note.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Historians have attacked the problem of explaining Britain's appeasement policy of the late 1930s from every conceivable angle; Olson approaches it through the House of Commons. She integrates an expression of its parliamentary customs with a narrative of the political maneuvers of a small number of Tories who opposed placating Nazi Germany. Through biographical sketches of the antiappeasers, several of whom contemporary opinion tipped as future prime ministers (as three became in fact: Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, and Harold Macmillan), Olson develops at least one difficulty they faced in challenging Neville Chamberlain: to get along one had to go along, and the price of opposition could be political ruination. The instances of such retribution by Chamberlain's lieutenants illuminate a degree of caution in the antiappeasers' actions, which Olson plentifully details in their parliamentary speeches. Their calculations of when to strike animate her account, and her well-organized research into this crucial background to Churchill's elevation to the premiership in May 1940 should gain readers interested in this fateful period in history. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say
and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

With those words to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on May 7, 1940 (quoting a speech of Oliver Cromwell to Parliament in 1653), Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), Leo Amery stunned Parliament and Britain and sounded the death knell for Chamberlain's term as Prime Minister. Three days later, on May 10, 1940, Neville Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill took office. Chamberlain's resignation marks the emotional climax of Lynne Olson's compelling popular history, "Troublesome Young Men". "Troublesome Young Men" tells the story of the small group of Conservative MPs who opposed Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement toward Hitler's Germany from the mid-1930s until Churchill's accession to power.

Olson's book is a valuable piece of work for a number of reasons. During the premiership of Neville Chamberlain it was not Winston Churchill who stood out as the primary threat to Chamberlain's appeasement policies but the young MPS who are the subject of Olson's book. Those MPs included future Prime Ministers in Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan and others including Robert Boothby, Ronald Cartland, Bobbety Cranborne (the future Lord Salisbury) and Violet Bonham Carter. Leo Amery was certainly not young, he was a schoolmate of Churchill's at Harrow, but was just as `troublesome'. Olson does an admirable job of taking this cast of characters and providing the reader with information as to who they were and why they took a political stand in the face of fierce opposition from a fierce and vindictive Conservative Party leadership.

Olson also does a commendable job of portraying Chamberlain in a light that, while being far from sympathetic, paints a more substantive picture than the usual superficial clichés about his character and premiership that one often finds. Chamberlain's foreign policy decisions were, in fact, disastrous and were the product of the naïve belief that he and he alone, could deal with and control Herr Hitler. However, the image of him as nothing more than a prim, umbrella-toting milquetoast does not stand scrutiny. As Prime Minister, Chamberlain was far from docile and, in fact, was suspicious, domineering and close to tyrannical when it came to maintaining control over Parliament. Olson portrays him, accurately I think, as a very astute politician with a well-developed Machiavellian sense of tactics. Chamberlain outmaneuvered these troublesome young men at every turn. Unfortunately, this masterful ability was expended solely in Parliament and solely for the purpose of keeping himself in power. When it came to foreign policy Chamberlain was hopelessly lost.

Perhaps the most compelling and disturbing portrait painted by Olson is that of Anthony Eden. It is easy to forget that during the premiership of Neville Chamberlain that it was not Winston Churchill who stood out as a threat to Chamberlain's appeasement policies but Anthony Eden. The troublesome young men were generally considered to be "Edenites. But Eden, for all his intelligence, comes across as a timid and vacillating political rival notoriously incapable of making tough political decisions. Eden's indecisiveness reminded me of Leon Trotsky. Like Trotsky, Eden managed to fall ill or absent himself from the center of action at critical moments in time when a few well-chosen words or strong action could have set Chamberlain's policy of appeasement on its heels. Time and time again the troublesome young men turned to Eden and time and time again he found a way to avoid making a tough decision. It is no wonder that even his friends referred to him as Hamlet.

Eden's inability to commit effectively left Winston Churchill as the only viable alternative to Chamberlain. To the extent that Eden's vacillation helped pave the way for Churchill one cannot help but think that Britain and the U.S. owe Eden a debt of gratitude for his indecisiveness.

Olson's "Troublesome Young Men" is both entertaining and informative. Although much has been written about Churchill, Chamberlain, and appeasement, by focusing on the other characters Olson has done a tremendous service. These troublesome young men (and women) exhibited courage and integrity. Some had their political careers ruined by Chamberlain's political machine. Others were considered traitors to their party. Yet they persevered and by retelling their not often told story Olson had done a tremendous job in fleshing out the historical record. 4.5 stars. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

[...]

It was no miracle
In a well-known cartoon by Sydney Harris, a mathematician works at a blackboard. A complex mass of equations is labeled "Step One," while on the other side of the board, a simple syllogism is "Step Three." In between, for "Step Two," he has written "And then a miracle occurs."

In some ways, this idea represents the conventional understanding of Winston Churchill's rise to power in 1940. For his "wilderness years," WSC was on the outside looking in, railing against appeasement and warning of the impending Nazi threat. The war begins and things look dark for the British. But then "a miracle occurs" and Churchill becomes PM, he and the British experience their Finest Hour, and Hitler is vanquished. High-fives all around.

As Lynne Olson's fine book demonstrates, Churchill's becoming prime minister was no miracle at all. Instead, it was (like most so-called "miracles") the product of some very hard work by a number of people who never got the recognition and thanks they deserved -- least of all by Churchill himself. As some reviewers have noted, "Troublesome Young Men" is not heavy on analysis or original research. It is, however, an excellent example of storytelling and characterization, and shines some much-needed light on men (and some women) who have been eclipsed by Churchill's immense shadow for too long.

This is not primarily a book about Churchill, though -- typically and inevitably -- his gravity bends and shapes the universe around him. The picture we get of The Man of the (Twentieth) Century is far from flattering: Olson notes that in spite of his independent spirit and periods of political radicalism, he was fundamentally a conservative man, and had the conservative's typical monarchical sentiment. This, she argues, is why he remained so perplexingly, infuriatingly loyal to Neville Chamberlain once he was brought into Chamberlain's cabinet, and why he never seemed to appreciate the Troublesome Young Men's efforts on his behalf. They had, after all, "disloyally" engineered the fall of a Tory leader. Even though Churchill himself (to say nothing of the nation and the world) benefited from this, regicide could never be rewarded.

Despite all we learn (or re-learn) about WSC from this book, the reader shouldn't let his dominant presence distract her from the very many other interesting characters Lynne Olson introduces us to. I've always considered a mark of a good book to be the number of *other* books an author makes me want to track down and read, and Olson scores high in this regard. Titles she cites about Leo Amery and Harold Macmillan are two obvious examples, but this also led me to Barbara Cartland's biography of her brother Ronald Cartland, who is clearly Lynne Olson's tragic hero. Andrew Roberts' "Eminent Churchillians" and Graham Stewart's "Burying Caesar: The Churchill-Chamberlain Rivalry," both of which I already own, have also moved a good ways up my to-read-someday list.

As American conservative activist and educator Morton Blackwell has said, "In politics, nothing moves unless it's pushed." Lynne Olson's "Troublesome Young Men" is an entertaining and fast-paced look at one of the most important political "pushes" in modern history. As popular historic storytelling, this title is a worthwhile and compelling read, and deserves the attention it has been receiving.

Voices In The Wilderness
As the most famous voice against the appeasement polices of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the 1930's, Winston Churchill drowns out the myriad of other voices who spoke out at great personal and political cost. "Troublesome Young Men" is the story of those voices who "brought Churchill to power" against a powerful establishment that brooked no dissent.

Prime Minister Chamberlain was detemined to avoid the slaughter of World World I by buying peace at any price and was supported by the English people. He also resembled Richard Nixon with his use of dirty tricks, including taping phone conversations. To oppose a popular PM who could ruin your career was a hard choice for Leo Amery, Ronald Cartland, Harold Nicolson and others. To support Churchill was not a sure thing as he was viewed as being over the hill (he had been in public view for nearly 40 years since the Boer War). These rebels were eloquent in their opposition and courageous in their public convictions. This is a book about politics at its best, when nothing less than the best would save the world.