Rise of Neville Chamberlain a half years as Chancellor, directing Britain's financial policies as the nation emerged from the Depression. When Baldwin (who had replaced MacDonald as Prime Minister in 1935) retired in 1937, Chamberlain succeeded him. Chamberlain was born in a house called Southbourne, in the Edgbaston district of Birmingham, England, as the only son of the second marriage of Joseph Chamberlain, who later became Mayor of Birmingham, and who also served as a Cabinet minister. Joseph Chamberlain had fathered two children by his first marriage, Beatrice and Austen. Joseph's first wife, Harriet, died giving birth to Austen; Neville's mother, the former Florence
Neville Chamberlain evacuation by the Czechs was to begin the following day. At 12:30 pm the Czechoslovak government in Prague objected to the decision but agreed to its terms. Before leaving the ""Führerbau"", Chamberlain requested a private conference with Hitler. Hitler agreed, and the two met at Hitler's apartment in the city later that morning. Chamberlain urged restraint in the implementation of the agreement and requested that the Germans not bomb Prague if the Czechs resisted, to which Hitler seemed agreeable. Chamberlain took from his pocket a paper headed "Anglo–German Agreement", which contained three paragraphs including a statement that the two nations