Editing Stanley Baldwin (section)

===Attitude to appeasement===
Baldwin supported the [[Munich Agreement]] and said to Chamberlain on 26 September 1938: "If you can secure peace, you may be cursed by a lot of hotheads but my word you will be blessed in Europe and by future generations".<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1045.</ref> Baldwin made a rare speech in the House of Lords on 4 October and said that he could not have gone to Munich but praised Chamberlain's courage. He also said the responsibility of a prime minister was not to commit a country to war until he was sure that it was ready to fight. If there was a 95% chance of war in the future, he would still choose peace. He also said he would put industry on a war footing the next day, as the opposition to such a move had disappeared.<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1046.</ref> Churchill said in a speech: "He says he would mobilise tomorrow. I think it would have been much better if Earl Baldwin had said that two and a half years ago when everyone demanded a Ministry of Supply".<ref>Cato, ''Guilty Men'' (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1940), p. 84.</ref>

Two weeks after Munich, Baldwin said prophetically in a conversation with [[Victor Montagu|Lord Hinchingbrooke]]: "Can't we turn Hitler East? [[Napoleon]] [[French invasion of Russia|broke himself against the Russians]]. Hitler might [[Eastern Front (World War II)|do the same]]".<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1047.</ref>

Baldwin's years in retirement were quiet. After Chamberlain's death in 1940, Baldwin's perceived part in prewar [[appeasement]] made him an unpopular figure during and after [[World War II]].<ref name="Middlemas4">Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1055.</ref> With a succession of British military failures in 1940, Baldwin started to receive critical letters: "insidious to begin with, then increasingly violent and abusive; then the newspapers; finally the polemicists who, with time and wit at their disposal, could debate at leisure how to wound the deepest".<ref name="Middlemas4"/> He did not have a secretary and so was not shielded from the often-unpleasant letters that were sent to him.<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1054, p. 1057.</ref> After a bitterly critical letter was sent to him by a member of the public, Baldwin wrote: "I can understand his bitterness. He wants a scapegoat and the men provided him with one". His biographers Middlemas and Barnes claim that "the men" almost certainly meant the authors of ''[[Guilty Men]]''.<ref>Middlemas and Barnes, p. 1058 and note 1.</ref>