Remilitarization of the Rhineland 1935. On 7 June 1935, MacDonald resigned as British Prime Minister due to ailing health and was replaced by Stanley Baldwin of the Conservative Party; the leadership change did not affect British foreign policy in any meaningful way. On October 3, 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia, and thus began the Abyssinia Crisis. Under strong pressure from a moralistic British public opinion, which was very much in favor of collective security, the British government took the lead in pressing the League of Nations for sanctions against Italy. The decision of the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to take a strong line in
Stanley Baldwin war to be "the most fearful terror and prostitution of man's knowledge that ever was known". With MacDonald's health in decline, he and Baldwin changed places in June 1935: Baldwin was now Prime Minister, MacDonald Lord President of the Council. In October that year Baldwin called a general election. Neville Chamberlain advised Baldwin to make rearmament the leading issue in the election campaign against Labour, saying that if a rearmament programme were not announced until after the election, his government would be seen as having deceived the people. However, Baldwin did not make rearmament the central issue in the election.