It did actually.
We delayed declaring war for as long as possible (there was a mutual assistance treaty signed...) War was effectively forced on Britain.
It would have been in the worlds interest to take action sooner, after Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by introducing military conscription - just months after becoming Fuhrer.
Then a few years later came the appeasement
To claim its "utter tosh" to say it was a mistake to not take action against Hiter sooner, and to say Britain delayed and eventually forced into war is... well, I cant say without being patronising.
You should really be able to handle somebody having a different opinion to yours without having to be so dismissive in your repsonse, even if you have had your view confirmed on a tv programme - there are lots of tv programmes you know.
War is only forced on a country by another invading it or declaring war, unless that happens one has a choice as to whether to go to war, with whom & when to do so.
Now that you're talking about the world's interests being best served by "taking action" sooner, rather than appeasing Hitler, I agree. Although, as I mentioned, there are more subtle ways than starting a rather large war.
However, as there was no early intervention, at the point when Britain declared war it made very little sense at all. Firstly the pretext was Hitler's invasion of Poland, which we could do absolutely nothing about. If we wished to present Hitler with an ultimatum it would have made more sense for it to relate to the low countries & France. Britain was also ill-prepared for war, we had no great build-up like the Germans had - we'd even been selling off our "surplus" battleships to Japan.
You should also bear in mind that Hitler's Germany wanted to expand eastwards, same as Germany had desired to in WWI, as they saw this territory as the place they could build a German Empire [Germany being a relatively young country had missed out as other countries had carved up the globe & their frustration had been building since the late 19th century]. Consequently the main war for Germany was always going to be against the Soviet Union & it's essentially the Soviet's who defeated Hitler.
From a purely selfish point of view Britain had no great need to rush to pick a side early, if at all. It would probably have been in our national interest to sit on the sidelines whilst building up our military capability in anticipation of probable involvement in the conflict at some point.
This approach may have also changed the war in the east, as it was only after we declared war on Germany that Japan moved on from the excursions into Manchuria, & the few bloody noses the Soviets gave them along the Sino-Russian borders. The Japanes rightly figured that Britain would be stretched too thinly to defends her interests in the Far East & so began their progression down through indo-china with the aim of taking India.
If you really felt Britain's hand was forced by the Holocaust, surely the same principle would see us in conflict wherever there is a totalitarian regime with genocidal tendencies - but it didn't stop us becoming allies of Stalin's USSR.
