Georges Clemenceau Quotes
We have won the war. Now we have to win the peace, and it may be more difficult.
Georges Clemenceau, 1841-1929, French Premier and journalist, Quoted in R. Watson, Clemenceau
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This is the quotation that came to define Chamberlain’s naivety for history and the icon of failed diplomacy. However to see the beginning of the sequence of events that would lead up to this statement, see {585940} when Chamberlain suggested the infamous meeting in Munich. There had been an interesting history to Chamberlain’s appeasement of Germany. 39 years earlier, Chamberlain’s father, then Britain’s Colonial Secretary, and advocated a natural alliance with Germany. See Joseph Chamberlain, 1836-1914: {585939}.
1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley. Chamberlain was about to leave for the Munich Conference where his appeasement emboldened Hitler and the Germans and dashed all hope of peace. Baldwin was out of office, but his support of the Munich appeasement changed his image from that of a popular statesman, to a craven appeaser. See {626930} for Churchill’s view of Baldwin.
Georges Eugène Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A popular figure of the Independent Radicals, he played a central role in the politics of the Third Republic, most notably successfully leading the country through the end of the First World War.
