The reception of Bryant’s Unfinished Victory: insights into British public opinion in early 1940

Abstract

Griffiths describes how, after its publication in January 1940, Unfinished Victory, a clearly pro-Nazi and antisemitic book by the historian Arthur Bryant, could arouse little adverse comment from the majority of its reviewers, and positive en­thusiasm from a good number of them. This examination will cause us to revise some of the usual presumptions about public opinion in relation to Nazi Germany in the period of the ‘phoney war’, and to reinforce others about the British public’s basic unconcern in relation to manifestations of antisemitism. Moreover, the belief, widely held until now, that the British public reacted violently against Bryant’s book, and that he himself immediately realized his mistake, is shown to be untrue. Bryant’s reactions to some of the few critical reviews of his book, and his correspondence with his publisher, show him to have been confident of the rightness of his attitude, as does his decision, some time after the book’s appearance, to send complimentary copies to the royal family and the prime minister. It was only after the fall of Chamberlain and the advent of ­Churchill, and the arrests of ‘fellow travellers’ in May 1940, that Bryant appears to have realized his mistake; he then bought up copies of the book, and started to write those patriotic works for which he is far more famous. An interesting aspect of the subject is Bryant’s relationship with his publisher Harold Macmillan. Surprisingly, given his anti-appeasement attitudes, Macmillan positively encouraged Bryant to produce the book, and seems to have been little affected at that time by its attitudes to Nazi Germany or by its antisemitic flavour. Given the reactions of some of his anti-­appeasement colleagues, however, he soon swung against it after its publication. His correspondence thereafter with Bryant, as he tried under various pretexts to remove him from the Macmillan list, is very revealing, as are Bryant’s knowing reactions.