Editing Alec Douglas-Home (section)

== Wartime career (1937–1945) ==
===Chamberlain and war===
By the time of Dunglass's appointment, Chamberlain was generally seen as the heir to the premiership,<ref>Pike, p. 408</ref> and in 1937 the incumbent, [[Stanley Baldwin]], retired, and Chamberlain succeeded him. He retained Dunglass as his PPS, a role described by the biographer [[D. R. Thorpe]] as "the right-hand man&nbsp;... the eyes and ears of Neville Chamberlain",<ref>Thorpe (1997), p. 59</ref> and by Dutton as "liaison officer with the Parliamentary party, transmitting and receiving information and [keeping] his master informed of the mood on the government's back benches."<ref>Dutton, p. 9</ref> This was particularly important for Chamberlain, who was often seen as distant and aloof;{{Sfnp|Young|1970|p=46}} [[Douglas Hurd]] wrote that he "lacked the personal charm which makes competent administration palatable to wayward colleagues&nbsp;– a gift which his parliamentary private secretary possessed in abundance."<ref name="dnb">Hurd, Douglas [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/60455 "Home, Alexander Frederick Douglas-, fourteenth earl of Home and Baron Home of the Hirsel (1903–1995)"],''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 14 April 2012 {{Subscription required}}</ref> Dunglass admired Chamberlain, despite his daunting personality: "I liked him, and I think he liked me. But if one went in at the end of the day for a chat or a gossip, he would be inclined to ask 'What do you want?' He was a very difficult man to get to know."<ref>''Quoted'' in Dutton, p. 9</ref>

As Chamberlain's aide, Dunglass witnessed at first-hand the Prime Minister's attempts to prevent a second world war through [[appeasement]] of [[Adolf Hitler]]'s Germany. When Chamberlain had his final meeting with Hitler at Munich in September 1938, Dunglass accompanied him. Having gained a short-lived extension of peace by acceding to Hitler's territorial demands at the expense of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain was welcomed back to London by cheering crowds. Ignoring Dunglass's urging, he made an uncharacteristically grandiloquent speech, claiming to have brought back "Peace with Honour" and promising "peace for our time".{{Sfnmp|ps=none|1a1=Heath|1y=1998|1p=120|2a1=Thorpe|2y=1997|2pp=85–86}} These words were to haunt him when Hitler's continued aggression made war unavoidable less than a year later. Chamberlain remained prime minister from the outbreak of war in September 1939 until May 1940, when, in Dunglass's words, "he could no longer command support of a majority in the Conservative party".{{Sfnp|ps=none|Home|1976|p=75}} After a vote in the Commons, in which the government's majority fell from more than 200 to 81, Chamberlain made way for [[Winston Churchill]]. He accepted the non-departmental post of [[Lord President of the Council]] in the new coalition government; Dunglass remained as his PPS,<ref name=dnb/> having earlier declined the offer of a ministerial post as Under-secretary at the Scottish Office.{{Sfnp|ps=none|Thorpe|1997|p=65}} Although Chamberlain's reputation never recovered from Munich, and his supporters such as [[R. A. Butler]] suffered throughout their later careers from the "appeasement" tag, Dunglass largely escaped blame.{{Efn|In a 1964 study of Douglas-Home John Dickie comments that Dunglass as a PPS lacked influence in decision making, and that such opprobrium as later attached to him was "guilt by association".<ref>{{Citation |title=Foreign and Comparative Government |date=March 1965 |journal=[[The American Political Science Review]] |volume=59 |issue=1 |pages=184–207 |doi=10.2307/1976143 |jstor=1976143 |s2cid=151984436}}{{Subscription required}}</ref> Thorpe in his biography of Harold Macmillan writes that Butler's career was blighted by his support for the Munich agreement as a Foreign Office minister, but that {{"'}}Munich' was never held against Alec Douglas-Home".{{Sfnp|ps=none|Thorpe|2010|p=135}}}} Nevertheless, Dunglass firmly maintained all his life that the Munich agreement had been vital to the survival of Britain and the defeat of Nazi Germany by giving the UK an extra year to prepare for a war that it could not have contested in 1938.<ref name=dnb/> Within months of his leaving the premiership, Chamberlain's health began to fail; he resigned from the cabinet, and died after a short illness in November 1940.

=== Military service and backbench MP===
Dunglass had volunteered for active military service, seeking to rejoin the Lanarkshire Yeomanry<ref name=dnb/> shortly after Chamberlain left Downing Street. The consequent medical examination revealed that Dunglass had a hole in his spine surrounded by [[tuberculosis]] in the bone. Without surgery he would have been unable to walk within a matter of months.<ref name="t109">Thorpe (1997), p. 109</ref> An innovative and hazardous operation was performed in September 1940, lasting six hours, in which the diseased bone in the spine was scraped away and replaced with healthy bone from the patient's shin.<ref name=t109/>

{{Quote box |quoted=true |bgcolor=#E0E0F8 |salign=right| quote = <big>You have put backbone into a politician!</big>| source = Dunglass to his surgeon<ref name="p461">Pike, p. 461</ref>|align=left| width=200px}}
For all of Dunglass's humour and patience, the following two years were a grave trial. He was encased in plaster and kept flat on his back for most of that period. Although buoyed up by the sensitive support of his wife and family, as he later confessed, "I often felt that I would be better dead".<ref>Home (1976), p. 86</ref> Towards the end of 1942 he was released from his plaster jacket and fitted with a spinal brace, and in early 1943 he was mobile for the first time since the operation.<ref name=p461/> During his incapacity he read voraciously; among the works he studied were ''[[Das Kapital]]'',{{Efn|According to Thorpe, Douglas-Home was the only British Prime Minister known to have read the work.<ref name="t115">Thorpe (1997), p. 115</ref>}} and works by [[Engels]] and [[Lenin]], biographies of nineteenth and twentieth century politicians, and novels by authors from [[Dostoyevsky]] to [[Arthur Koestler|Koestler]].<ref>Thorpe (1997), pp. 115–116</ref>

In July 1943 Dunglass attended the House of Commons for the first time since 1940, and began to make a reputation as a backbench member, particularly for his expertise in the field of foreign affairs.{{Sfnmp|ps=none|1a1=Pike|1y=1968|1p=461|2a1=Thorpe|2y=1997|2p=121}} He foresaw a post-imperial future for Britain and emphasised the need for strong European ties after the war.{{Sfnp|ps=none|Thorpe|1997|p=121}} In 1944, with the war now turning in the Allies' favour, Dunglass spoke eloquently about the importance of resisting the [[Soviet Union]]'s ambition to dominate eastern Europe. His boldness in publicly urging Churchill not to give in to [[Joseph Stalin]] was widely remarked upon; many, including Churchill himself, observed that some of those once associated with appeasement were determined that it should not be repeated in the face of Russian aggression.{{Sfnp|ps=none|Thorpe|1997|p=124}} Labour left the wartime coalition in May 1945 and Churchill formed a caretaker Conservative government, pending a general election in July. Dunglass was appointed to his first ministerial post: [[Anthony Eden]] remained in charge of the Foreign Office, and Dunglass was appointed as one of his two Under-secretaries of State.{{Sfnp|ps=none|Dutton|2006|p=15}}