Neville Chamberlain’s Umbrella: ‘Object’ Lessons in the History of Appeasement

Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella was ubiquitous during the Munich Crisis and in its aftermath, as material object, as commodity, and as political emblem that came to represent the temperament and character of the ‘Man of Peace’ who had brought relief to the world by striking a ‘gentleman’s peace’ with Hitler on 30 September 1938. This culminated in the damning portrayal of the Prime Minister as the ‘Umbrella Man’ in ‘Cato’s’ Guilty Men (1940). Throwing the spotlight on the material object of the umbrella can illuminate the popular dimension of these highly charged diplomatic events, and offer some insight into how foreign policy was lived across the social spectrum and across borders. We can chart dramatic fluctuations in both mediated and visceral public opinion in the changing symbolic uses of the umbrella, by politicians, by journalists, by cartoonists, and by consumers themselves. The study of appeasement has been stuck in certain methodological ruts, and has not hitherto taken the cultural turn, nor paid much attention to popular responses to the prelude to the People’s War. By blowing the dust off Chamberlain’s old umbrella, this article suggests an alternative perspective on the politics and culture of appeasement, evoking the sights, sounds, textures, feelings and tastes of a crisis that was played out at the level of diplomacy but also very much as a ‘People’s Crisis’.