Claim 0b44875dChecked 21 Jul 2026
TrueOn the truth scale
“Those MPs were called warmongers.”
Reasoning & Evidence21 Jul 2026
The claim that the MPs who raised the alarm about Hitler in the 1930s were called "warmongers" is well-supported by historical evidence. Multiple reputable sources confirm this:
1. **Cambridge University Press** (Cambridge Companion to Winston Churchill): "For much of the decade prior to 1940, Churchill was out of office and often seen as a warmonger."
2. **Hodder Education** (Hindsight magazine): "critics like Winston Churchill were regarded as dangerous warmongers" during the appeasement era.
3. **Wikipedia** (Winston Churchill in politics, 1900–1939): Churchill was "opposed as a war monger by some people in the United Kingdom."
4. **Wikipedia** (Duff Cooper): "German propaganda ranked Cooper with Churchill and Eden as Britain's most dangerous Conservative warmongers."
5. **The Mirror**: Anti-appeasement MPs "were denounced as warmongers, threatened with deselection and branded 'The Glamour Boys.'"
6. **BBC News**: Detailed how anti-appeasement MPs faced huge pressure from the Conservative party machine, with government-friendly newspapers attacking them.
The term "warmonger" was widely used as a pejorative label for those who opposed appeasement and warned about German rearmament. This was applied to Churchill, Duff Cooper, Eden, and the group of rebel MPs who challenged Chamberlain's policies. The claim is historically accurate.
Sources: Cambridge Companion to Winston Churchill (Cambridge University Press) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-winston-churchill/churchills-campaign-against-appeasement/DFAD28EE9F2F874026469152439E2E3D; "Appeasement in the 1930s" (Hodder Education Magazines) https://magazines.hachettelearning.com/magazine/hindsight/21/2/appeasement-in-the-1930s/; Winston Churchill in politics, 1900–1939 (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_in_politics,_1900-1939; Duff Cooper (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Cooper; "Gay MPs 'among first to warn Britain about Hitler'" (The Mirror) https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/gay-mps-among-first-warn-22936511; "The gay MPs persecuted for opposing appeasement of Nazi Germany" (BBC News) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54478753
From article
How can the entire political class be wrong? Well, they were all wrong about Hitler, weren’t they? Out of 600 MPs, there were 20 [who raised the alarm] – and do you know what they were called? Warmongers. Eccentrics. They were lampooned; they were considered to be mad. Even when Churchill produced the data [about German rearmament], the political class looked away.
You know, we’ve seen it in science, we’ve seen it in business: even if the status quo is pointing in entirely the wrong direction, it exerts a very strong force on the political class – and the more career-orientated our politicians are, the stronger it is.
Sources opened