Probably the most inappropriate Christmas card ever sent …

By | 27th November 2009 - 3:25 pm

The year is 1938, and you’re looking for a suitably seasonal picture for the front of your Christmas cards. A festive image which will convey seasonal goodwill to all humanity.

What could better symbolise those eternal truths than an international peace treaty signed by the two major European powers which had once been at war? And so it came to pass that this Christmas card was produced and exchanged some seven decades ago:

Chamberlain & Hitler

And here’s what it said inside:

Chamberlain & Hitler inside

Even reproducing that infamous piece of paper which proclaimed ‘peace in our time’:

Chamberlain & Hitler 002

In the circumstances, I think Churchill’s choice of Christmas card was more appropriate.

Images courtesy of the official Conservative Party Archive held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

The card was found amongst the papers of Percy Cohen, a prominent Jewish Conservative believed to be a former member of the Conservative Research Department. The signatory of the card, RJ Rosie, may well have been physician to King George VI and HM The Queen. It is not known if the card was an official one or personally commissioned.

Read more by or more about , or .
This entry was posted in Europe / International.
Bookmark the web address for this page or use the short url http://ldv.org.uk/16956 for Twitter and emails.

3 Comments

  • Sesenco 29th Nov '09 - 2:11pm

    At least Neville Chamberlain didn’t quite do to Hitler what Gerald Scarfe had Harold Wilson do to Lyndon Johnson.

  • A Bridge Too Far 22nd Dec '10 - 8:33pm

    Just look at the body language in that photo.

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

If you are a member of the party, you can have the Lib Dem logo appear next to your comments to show this. You must be registered for our forum and can then login on this public site with the same username and password.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Do you agree to the T&Cs?


Recent Comments

  • User AvatarJoe Bourke 18th May - 5:24pm
    Roland, Firstly, before we had council tax and its predecessor the community charge - we had rates . Relief was always available for lower income...
  • User AvatarAlex Sabine 18th May - 5:02pm
    Apologies, I forgot to unbold the text after "all 30 farm subsidies" in my second sentence... Didn't mean to shout!
  • User AvatarAlex Sabine 18th May - 5:01pm
    Indeed, Dan. When New Zealand's Labour government took the momentous decision in 1984 to abolish all 30 farm subsidies and export incentives there was a...
  • User AvatarCogload 18th May - 3:42pm
    Abolish it - job done. Or leave it to member states to decide on what Farming policy they should have. If any.
  • User AvatarJoe Bourke 18th May - 2:55pm
    Therre seem to be only two soutions for Greece, one bad and one worse - a euro exit and devaluation or potentialy decades of stagnation...