> Look: In September 1939 Chamberlain and Daladier faced a choice. They
> could either honor their promise to Poland and declare war on Nazi
> Germany, or they could say "Ooops! We were bluffing!" and stand aside.
>
> They chose to do the first.
>
> They were the only leaders (before 1943) to lead their countries into
> war with Nazi Germany.
>
> We should be very grateful.
I still don't follow. They still were bluffing as far as Poland was concerned. Their declaration did nothing to help her. They were declaring war for purely self-defense reasons when it indisputably was the only resort, just like everyone else in the war. They declared it before they were physically attacked because it allowed them to immediately attack commerce, esp. oil, which they could see was their only real card to slow the physical attack, and to put immediate pressure on the US to aid them (again largely with oil) which was absolutely crucial to the UK's survival.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this policy at all. I just don't see anything unusually noble about it. It was simply a continuation of the reasoning for appeasement at Munich: stall as long as there's a chance it will do any good while desparately trying to catch up on preparations. And empty declaratino of war was a way of increasing the pace of preparations while still trying to stall the actual contact. And they switch from plan A to plan B only when it was clear war on them personally was unavoidable.
Michael