In this lack of diplomatic preparation and in this abandonment of Europe to German hegemony the responsibility of Great Britain was at least as great as that of France. Many powerful groups were united in restraining Great Britain from adopting a courageous and foresighted foreign policy. The bankers of the City were concerned about the money they had loaned to Germany and they persisted in the naïve hope that they could do business with a country that was shouting from the roof tops its intention to be self-sufficient. A certain number of persons of importance in England, terrified by Bolshevism, believed foolishly they had found in Nazism a barrier to the Revolution. At the same time the intellectual liberals were preaching peace at any price and unilateral disarmament, which was destined to be the death of liberalism. All these tendencies combined magnificently to play into the hands of Germany.

Nor, except in the garden or allotment or on the sports field, did Britons generally evince an eagerness for strenuous effort. A journalist with the British Army advancing into the heart of Germany in April 1945 noted: "It occurs to me that the Germans are a menacing race by reason of their docility and their ability to toil. No man ought to love work as they do – it's indecent, certainly uncivilised. We English don't love work in this slavelike way, and thank God for it." And a week later the same journalist, J. L. Hodson, confided to his notebook that the reason why the British were unable to maintain hatred for long was their temperament was "too lazy, too indifferent, too good-natured".

The average Englishman was ashamed of the British Empire and believed (quite wrongly) that it had been acquired in some wicked fashion... This sense of sin placed British governments at a disadvantage in their negotiations with Germany: they were convinced of the justice of German grievances even before the grievances were expressed. British governments had spent most of the nineteenth century trying to prevent the growth of the British Empire, and still it had grown; German governments had done their utmost to encourage colonial enterprise, and yet their empire was a failure; clearly it was the fault of British governments and they must put it right... there they stood, ears anxiously cocked for the next German complaint. Moreover, British politicians have always been peculiarly sensitive to the charge of "unfriendliness" towards other politicians or other countries... Granville's letters to Herbert Bismarck—my dear fellow, what can be wrong?—are not unique in the record of British policy, and if the dear fellow insists on this or that as the price of renewing eternal friendship, of course he must have it.

[A]mongst the chief causes of this war [is] the desire of Germany to wrest from Britain her industrial and commercial supremacy. ... [I]f I have interpreted the temper of the people of the Empire aright, they have determined that the end of this war will see, not only the downfall of Prussian military power, but of that insidious and intolerable influence which had in very many cases reached a point when Germany actually dominated the trade, not only of this Empire, but of that of our Allies.

Between the prejudices and the facts therefore the Cabinet could only follow a tortuous course of evasion. England's German policy became one of inherently futile expedients. Underlying these expedients was the illusion, extraordinary in view of Rumbold's and Phipps's reports, that the Nazi leaders would be accessible to reasoned argument and responsive to proofs of goodwill; a failure, per contra, to realise that English policy would carry no weight at all with the Nazis unless backed by English – and French – power and by an evident willingness to use that power.

The present situation arose not from temporary conflicts of interest or diplomatic combinations, but is the result of ill-will existing for years against the strength and prosperity of the German Empire. We are not pushed on by the desire of conquest; we are moved by the unbending desire to secure for ourselves and those coming after us the place on which God has put us.

Despite all the obscuration of history and all the incomplete diplomatic documents... and despite all the recent systematic endeavours to represent Russia as the incendiary of the world war, those who have carefully followed the economic struggle between Britain and Germany for a long time will not in the least depart from the view that this war is in the first place an economic war between Germany and Britain and that—even though the external cause of the outbreak of war may have lain in St. Petersburg—the inward cause was Britain's jealousy of Germany's world economy.

As the dinner progressed, it became clear that, of all those present, only Vansittart believed that the Germans would dare to precipitate another war. All the others disagreed so bluntly and positively that, after only a few minutes of conversation, I realized that it was pointless to continue the discussion. "Rickenbacker," I told myself, "just be a country boy. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open, and you might learn something."
What I learned was that the British leaders of that period were more interested in petty bickering and attempting to keep themselves in power than they were in even learning about German aims, much less preparing to defend against them. At that time in Britain, pre-preparedness was considered warmongering. Winston Churchill, one of the few eminent Britons who believed in preparedness and who made his militant voice heard at every opportunity, was very much in disfavor at the time. So was Anthony Eden. It was a government of compromise and self-delusion. In their internal political fights the English leaders had forgotten the outside world.