In 1933 Europe was governed by innumerable politicians presiding over the many pockets of insecure power which constituted the régime in each particular state. On all these régimes the impact of Hitler was profound. In all the geography of politics was transformed as the danger of war raised problems so acute that all other problems were affected. By 1939 few régimes had escaped a transformation. By 1945 many had been swept away.

In Britain the problem was defined psephologically. Though a general election in 1940 might have returned a Labour government with greater power than Labour had in the Churchill Coalition, the possibility was important not just because it might have occurred but because the thought that it might be prevented affected policy when Hitler had been made central, not just by himself but by publicists and the party leaders.

In these years foreign policy became centred not only because it was but because politicians could fit it into the political battle which had begun in the twenties. To the Labour party it gave a respectability it might not otherwise have regained so quickly after 1931. By others the domestic appeasement of the twenties was assumed in order to attack the international appeasement of the thirties. The result was an alliance between a class-conflict programme in the Labour party and an international-conflict programme in parts of the Liberal and Conservative parties.

In 1939 the effect was devastating. In the first nine months of the war, Chamberlain tried to circumvent it. In May 1940 he was discredited and his coalition replaced.