Appeasement

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain cheerfully greeted by Adolf Hitler at the beginning of the Bad Godesberg meeting on 24 September 1938, where Hitler demanded annexation of Czech border areas without delay

Appeasement in a political context is a diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to an enemy power in order to avoid conflict.[1]

The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the British Prime Ministers Ramsay Macdonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy[2] between 1935 and 1939.

Their policies have been the subject of intense debate for more than seventy years among academics, politicians and diplomats. The historians' assessments have ranged from condemnation for allowing Adolf Hitler's Germany to grow too strong, to the judgment that they had no alternative and acted in their country's best interests. At the time, these concessions were widely seen as positive, and the Munich Pact concluded on 30 September 1938 among Germany, Britain, France, and Italy prompted Chamberlain to announce that he had secured "peace for our time."[3]

The failure of collective security

"Appeasement policy, the policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini, operating jointly at that time, during 1937 and 1938 by continuous concessions granted in the hope of reaching a point of saturation when the dictators would be willing to accede to international collaboration. ... It came to an end when Hitler seized Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, in defiance of his promises given at Munich, and Prime Minister Chamberlain, who had championed appeasement before, decided on a policy of resistance to further German aggression."

Walter Theimer (ed.), The Penguin Political Dictionary, 1939

Chamberlain's policy of appeasement emerged from the failure of the League of Nations and the failure of collective security. The League of Nations was set up in the aftermath of World War I in the hope that international cooperation and collective resistance to aggression might prevent another war. Members of the League were entitled to the assistance of other members if they came under attack. The policy of collective security ran in parallel with measures to achieve international disarmament and where possible was to be based on economic sanctions against an aggressor. It appeared to be ineffectual when confronted by the aggression of dictators, notably Germany's Remilitarization of the Rhineland, and Italian leader Benito Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia.


Invasion of Manchuria

In September 1931, Japan, a member of the League of Nations, invaded northeast China, claiming it as not only Chinese but a multiple ethnic "Manchuria" region. China appealed to the League and the United States for assistance. The Council of the League asked the parties to withdraw to their original positions to permit a peaceful settlement. The United States reminded them of their duty under the Kellogg-Briand Pact to settle matters peacefully. Japan was undeterred and went on to occupy the whole of Manchuria. The League set up a commission of inquiry that condemned Japan, the League duly adopting the report in February 1933. Japan resigned from the League and continued its advance into China. Neither the League nor the United States took any action. "Their inactivity and ineffectualness in the Far East lent every encouragement to European aggressors who planned similar acts of defiance."[4] However the U.S. issued the Stimson Doctrine and refused to recognize Japan's conquest, which played a role in shifting U.S. policy to favor China over Japan late in the 1930s.[5]

Abyssinia crisis

Haile Selassie's reign as emperor of Ethiopia is the best known and perhaps most influential in the nation's history.

Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini had imperial ambitions in Abyssinia. Italy was already in possession of neighboring Eritrea and Somalia. In December 1934 there was a clash between Italian and Abyssinian troops at Walwal, near the border between British and Italian Somaliland, in which Italian troops took possession of the disputed territory and in which 150 Abyssinians and 50 Italians were killed. When Italy demanded apologies and compensation from Abyssinia, Abyssinia appealed to the League, Emperor Haile Selassie famously appealing in person to the assembly in Geneva. The League persuaded both sides to seek a settlement under the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928 but Italy continued troop movements and Abyssinia appealed to the League again. In October 1935 Mussolini launched an attack on Abyssinia. The League declared Italy to be the aggressor and imposed sanctions, but coal and oil were not included; blocking these, it was thought, would provoke war. Albania, Austria and Hungary refused to apply sanctions; Germany and the United States were not in the League. Nevertheless, the Italian economy suffered. The League considered closing off the Suez Canal also, which would have stopped arms to Abyssinia, but, thinking it would be too harsh a measure, they did not do so.[6]

Earlier, in April 1935, Italy had joined Britain and France in protesting against Germany's rearmament. France was anxious to placate Mussolini so as to keep him away from an alliance with Germany. Britain was less hostile to Germany and set the pace in imposing sanctions and moved a naval fleet into the Mediterranean. But in November 1935, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister, Pierre Laval, had secret discussions in which they agreed to concede two-thirds of Abyssinia to Italy. However, the press leaked the content of the discussions and a public outcry forced Hoare and Laval to resign. In May 1936, undeterred by sanctions, Italy captured Addis Ababa, the Abyssinian capital, and proclaimed Victor Emmanuel III the Emperor of Ethiopia. In July the League abandoned sanctions. This episode, in which sanctions were incomplete and appeared to be easily given up, seriously discredited the League.

Remilitarization of the Rhineland

Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, unknown date

Under the Versailles Settlement, the Rhineland was demilitarized. Germany accepted this arrangement under the Locarno Treaties of 1925. Hitler claimed that it threatened Germany and on 7 March 1936 he sent German forces into the Rhineland. He gambled on Britain not getting involved but was unsure how France would react. The action was opposed by many of his advisers. His officers had orders to withdraw if they met French resistance. France consulted Britain and lodged protests with the League, but took no action. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said that Britain lacked the forces to back its guarantees to France, and that in any case public opinion would not allow it. In Britain it was thought that the Germans were merely walking into "their own back yard". Hugh Dalton, a Labour Party MP who usually advocated stiff resistance to Germany, said that neither the British people nor Labour would support military or economic sanctions.[6] In the Council of the League, only the Soviet Union proposed sanctions against Germany. Hitler was invited to negotiate. He proposed a non-aggression pact with the Western powers. When asked for details he did not reply. Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland had persuaded him that the international community would not resist him and put Germany in a powerful strategic position.

The conduct of appeasement, 1937–39

Seyss-Inquart and Hitler in Vienna, March 1938

In 1937 Stanley Baldwin resigned as Prime Minister and Neville Chamberlain took over. Chamberlain pursued a policy of appeasement and rearmament.[7] Chamberlain's reputation for appeasement rests in large measure on his negotiations with Hitler over Czechoslovakia in 1938.

The Anschluss

Main article: Anschluss

When the German Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire were broken up in 1918, Austria was left as a rump state with the temporary adopted name Deutschösterreich ("German-Austria"), with the vast majority of the Austrian Germans wanting to join Germany. However, the victors' agreements of World War I (Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain) strictly forbade union between Austria and Germany, as well as the name "German-Austria", which reverted to "Austria" after the emergence of the First Republic of Austria in September 1919. The constitutions of both the Weimar Republic and the First Austrian Republic included the aim of unification, which was supported by democratic parties. However, the rise of Hitler dampened the enthusiasm of the Austrian government for such a plan. Hitler, an Austrian by birth, had been a pan-German from a very young age and had promoted a Pan-German vision of a Greater German Reich from the beginning of his career in politics. He said in Mein Kampf (1924) that he would attempt a union of his birth country Austria with Germany, by any means possible and by force if necessary. By early 1938, Hitler had consolidated his power in Germany and was ready to implement this long-held plan.

The Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg wished to pursue ties with Italy, but turned to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania (the Little Entente). To this Hitler took violent exception. In January 1938 the Austrian Nazis attempted a putsch, following which some were imprisoned. Hitler summoned Schuschnigg to Berchtesgaden in February and demanded, with the threat of military action, that he release imprisoned Austrian Nazis and allow them to participate in the government. Schuschnigg complied and appointed Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a pro-Nazi lawyer, as interior minister. To forestall Hitler and to preserve Austria's independence, Schuschnigg scheduled a plebiscite on the issue for 13 March. Hitler demanded that the plebiscite be canceled. The German ministry of propaganda issued press reports that riots had broken out in Austria and that large parts of the Austrian population were calling for German troops to restore order. On 11 March, Hitler sent an ultimatum to Schuschnigg, demanding that he hand over all power to the Austrian Nazis or face an invasion. The British Ambassador in Berlin registered a protest with the German government against the use of coercion against Austria. Schuschnigg, realizing that neither France nor the United Kingdom would actively support him, resigned in favour of Seyss-Inquart, who then appealed to German troops to restore order. On 12 March the 8th German Wehrmacht crossed the Austrian border. They met no resistance and were greeted by cheering Austrians. This invasion was the first major test of the Wehrmacht's machinery. Austria became the German province of Ostmark, with Seyss-Inquart as governor. A plebiscite was held on 10 April and officially recorded a support of 99.73 percent of the voters.[8]

Although the victorious Allies of World War I had prohibited the union of Austria and Germany, their reaction to the Anschluss was mild.[9] Even the strongest voices against annexation, particularly those of Fascist Italy, France and Britain (the "Stresa Front") were not backed by force. In the House of Commons Chamberlain said that "The hard fact is that nothing could have arrested what has actually happened [in Austria] unless this country and other countries had been prepared to use force."[10] The American reaction was similar. The international reaction to the events of 12 March 1938 led Hitler to conclude that he could use even more aggressive tactics in his plan to expand the Third Reich. The Anschluss paved the way for Munich in September 1938 because it indicated the likely non-response of Britain and France to future German aggression.

From left to right: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Agreement, which gave the Czechoslovak border areas to Germany.

The Munich Agreement

Main article: Munich Agreement

"How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing."

Neville Chamberlain, 27 September 1938, 8 p.m. radio broadcast, on Czechoslovak refusal to accept Nazi demands to cede border areas to Germany.

Under the Versailles Settlement, Czechoslovakia was created with territory of the Czech part more or less corresponding to the Czech Crown lands as they had existed within the Austria-Hungary and before. It included Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia and had border areas with a majority German population known as the Sudetenland and areas with significant numbers of other ethic minorities (notably Hungarians, Poles and Ruthenes). In April 1938, Sudeten Nazis, led by Konrad Henlein, agitated for autonomy and then threatened, in Henlein's words, "direct action to bring the Sudeten Germans within the frontiers of the Reich".[11] An international crisis ensued.

France and Britain advised Czech acceptance of Sudeten autonomy. The Czech government refused and ordered a partial mobilization in expectation of German aggression. Lord Runciman was sent by Chamberlain to mediate in Prague and persuaded the Czech government to grant autonomy. Germany escalated the dispute, the German press carrying stories of alleged Czech atrocities against Sudeten Germans and Hitler ordering 750,000 troops to the German-Czech border. In August, Henlein broke off negotiations with the Czech authorities. At a Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg on 12 September, Hitler made a speech attacking Czechoslovakia[12] and there was an increase of violence by Sudeten Nazis against Czech and Jewish targets.

Chamberlain, faced with the prospect of a German invasion, flew to Berchtesgaden on 15 September to negotiate directly with Hitler. Hitler now demanded of Chamberlain that the Sudetenland should be absorbed into Germany, convincing Chamberlain that refusal meant war. The geography of Europe meant that Britain and France could not forcibly prevent the German occupation of the Sudetenland except by the invasion of Germany.[13] Chamberlain therefore returned to Britain and agreed to Hitler's demands. Britain and France told the Czech president Edvard Beneš that he must hand to Germany all territory with a German majority but Hitler increased his aggression against Czechoslovakia, ordering the establishment of a Sudeten German paramilitary organisation, which carried out terrorist attacks on Czech targets.

On 22 September, Chamberlain flew to Bad Godesberg for his second meeting with Hitler, saying that he was willing to accept the cession of the Sudetanland to Germany. Chamberlain was startled by Hitler's response, that cession was not enough and that Czechoslovakia (which he had described as a "fraudulent state") must be broken up completely. Later in the day, Hitler resiled, saying that he was willing to accept the cession of the Sudetenland by 1 October. On 24 September, Germany issued the Godesberg Memorandum, demanding cession by 28 September, or war. The Czechs rejected these demands, France ordered mobilization and Britain mobilized its Navy.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, landing at Heston aerodrome on 30 September 1938 after his meeting with Hitler at Munich. In his hand he holds the peace agreement between Britain and Germany.

In this atmosphere of growing conflict, Mussolini persuaded Hitler to put the dispute to a four-power conference and on 29 September 1938, Hitler, Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier (the French Prime Minister) and Mussolini met in Munich. Czechoslovakia was not to be a party to these talks, nor was the Soviet Union. The four powers agreed that Germany would complete its occupation of the Sudetenland but that an international commission would consider other disputed areas. Czechoslovakia was told that if it did not submit, it would stand alone. At Chamberlain's request, Hitler readily signed a peace treaty between the United Kingdom and Germany. Chamberlain returned to Britain promising "peace for our time". Before Munich, President Roosevelt sent a telegram to Chamberlain saying "Good man", and afterwards told the American ambassador in Rome, "I am not a bit upset over the final result." [14]

As a result of the annexation of the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia lost 800,000 citizens, much of its industry and its mountain defenses in the west. It left the rest of Czechoslovakia weak and powerless to resist subsequent occupation. In the following months Czechoslovakia was broken up and ceased to exist. Germany annexed the Sudetenland, Hungary part of Slovakia, and Poland Carpathian Ruthenia. On 15 March 1939, the German Wehrmacht moved into the remainder of Czechoslovakia and, from Prague Castle, Hitler proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, completing the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. An independent Slovakia was created under a pro-Nazi puppet government.

In March 1939, Chamberlain foresaw a possible disarmament conference between himself, Edouard Daladier, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin; his home secretary, Samuel Hoare, said, "These five men, working together in Europe and blessed in their efforts by the President of the United States of America, might make themselves eternal benefactors of the human race."[15]

In effect, the British and French pressed their ally to cede territory to a hostile neighbor in order to preserve peace. Winston Churchill likened the negotiations at Berchtesgarten, Bad Godesberg and Munich to a man demanding £1, then, when it is offered, demanding £2, then when it is refused settling for £1.17s.6d.[16] It was not known at the time that, as early as June, Hitler had made a secret order for an attack on Czechoslovakia to begin on 1 October,[17] nor that his plans were considered to be so dangerous that senior military figures planned a coup to remove him.[18] Czechoslovakia had a modern, well-prepared military and Hitler, on entering Prague, conceded that war would have cost Germany much blood.[19][16] But the decision by France and Great Britain not to defend Czechoslovakia in the event of war (and the exclusion from the equation of the Soviet Union, whom Chamberlain distrusted) meant that the outcome would have been uncertain.[16] This event forms the main part of what became known as Munich betrayal (Czech: Mnichovská zrada) in Czechoslovakia and the rest of Eastern Europe,[20] as the Czech view was that Britain and France pressured them to cede territory in order to prevent a major war that would involve the West. The Western view is that they were pressured in order to save Czechoslovakia from total annihilation.

Outbreak of war

On 1 September 1939, German forces invaded Poland; Britain and France joined the war against Germany. Chamberlain's conduct of the war was not popular and, on 10 May 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. In July, some politicians inside and outside the government were still willing to consider Hitler's peace offer, but Churchill would not.[21] Chamberlain died on 9 November the same year. Churchill delivered a tribute to him in which he said, "Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged."[22]

Changing attitudes to appeasement

As the policy of appeasement failed to prevent war, those who advocated it were quickly criticized. Appeasement came to be seen as something to be avoided by those with responsibility for the diplomacy of Britain or any other democratic country. By contrast, the few who stood out against appeasement were seen as "voices in the wilderness whose wise counsels were largely ignored, with almost catastrophic consequences for the nation in 1939–40".[23] More recently, however, historians have questioned the accuracy of this simple distinction between appeasers and anti-appeasers. "Few appeasers were really prepared to seek peace at any price; few, if any, anti-appeasers were prepared for Britain to make a stand against aggression whatever the circumstances and wherever the location in which it occurred."[23] The former statement is certainly true of Chamberlain, whose resistance to German aggression stiffened after Munich, leading him to a programme of rapid re-armament and preparation for the possibility of war.

After the First World War


Chamberlain's policy in many respects continued the policies of MacDonald and Baldwin, and was popular until the failure of the Munich Agreement to stop Hitler in Czechoslovakia. "Appeasement" had been a respectable term between 1919 and 1937 to signify the pursuit of peace.[24] Many believed after the First World War that wars were started by mistake, in which case the League of Nations could prevent them, or that they were caused by large-scale armaments, in which case disarmament was the remedy, or that they were caused by national grievances, in which case the grievances should be redressed peacefully.[6] Many thought that the Versailles Settlement had been unjust, that the German minorities were entitled to self-determination and that Germany was entitled to equality in armaments.

Appeasement was accepted by most of those responsible for British foreign policy in the 1930s, by leading journalists and academics and by members of the royal family, such as Edward VIII and his successor, George VI.[23]

Most Conservative politicians were also in favor, though Churchill said their supporters were divided and in 1936 he led a delegation of leading Conservative politicians to express to Baldwin their alarm about the speed of German rearmament and the fact that Britain was falling behind.[16] Churchill was unusual in believing that Germany menaced freedom and democracy, that British rearmament should proceed more rapidly and that Germany should be resisted over Czechoslovakia. A week before Munich he warned, "The partition of Czechoslovakia under pressure from England and France amounts to the complete surrender of the Western Democracies to the Nazi threat of force. Such a collapse will bring peace or security neither to England nor to France."[16] He and a few other Conservatives who refused to vote for the Munich settlement were attacked by their local constituency parties.[16] But Churchill's leadership of Britain during the war and his role in creating the post-war consensus against appeasement has tended to obscure the fact that "his contemporary criticism of totalitarian regimes other than Hitler's Germany was at best muted".[23] Not until May 1938 did he begin "consistently to withhold his support from the National Government's conduct of foreign policy in the division lobbies of the House of Commons", and he seems "to have been convinced by the Sudeten German leader, Henlein, in the spring of 1938, that a satisfactory settlement could be reached if Britain managed to persuade the Czech government to make concessions to the German minority."[23]

The Labour Party opposed the Fascist dictators on principle, but until the late 1930s it also opposed rearmament and it had a significant pacifist wing.[25][26] In 1935 its pacifist leader George Lansbury resigned following a party resolution in favour of sanctions against Italy, which he opposed. He was replaced by Clement Attlee, who at first opposed rearmament, advocating the abolition of national armaments and a world peace-keeping force under the direction of the League of Nations.[27] However, with the rising threat from Nazi Germany, and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations, this policy eventually lost credibility, and in 1937 Ernest Bevin and Hugh Dalton persuaded the party to support rearmament[28] and oppose appeasement.[29]

British public opinion was strongly opposed to war and rearmament until the late 1930s. At a debate at Oxford University in 1933, a group of undergraduates passed a motion saying that they would not fight for King and country, which persuaded some in Germany that Britain would never go to war.[16] Baldwin told the House of Commons that in 1933 he had been unable to pursue a policy of rearmament because of the strong pacifist sentiment in the country.[16] In 1935, eleven million signed the Peace Ballot pledging support for the reduction of armaments by international agreement.[16]

Czechoslovakia did not concern most people until the middle of September 1938, when they began to object to a small democratic state being bullied.[6][11] Nevertheless, the initial response of the British public to the Munich agreement was generally favorable.[6] As Chamberlain left for Munich in 1938, the whole House of Commons cheered him noisily. On 30 September, on his return to Britain, Chamberlain delivered his famous "peace for our time" speech to delighted crowds. He was invited by the Royal family onto the balcony at Buckingham Palace before he had reported to Parliament. The agreement was supported by most of the press, only Reynold's News and the Daily Worker dissenting.[6] In parliament the Labour Party opposed the agreement. Some Conservatives abstained in the vote. However, the only MP to advocate war was the Conservative Duff Cooper, who had resigned from the government in protest against the agreement.[6]

The journalist Shiela Grant Duff's Penguin Special, Europe and the Czechs was published and distributed to every MP on the day that Chamberlain returned from Munich. Her book was a spirited defence of the Czech nation and a detailed criticism of British policy, confronting the need for war if necessary. It was influential and widely read. Although she argued against the policy of "peace at almost any price"[30] she did not take the personal tone that Guilty Men was to take two years later.

A few on the left said that Chamberlain looked forward to a war between Germany and Russia.[6] The Labour Party leader Clement Attlee claimed in one political speech in 1937 that the National Government had connived at German rearmament "because of its hatred of Russia".[25] British Communists, following the party line defined by Joseph Stalin,[31] argued that appeasement had been a pro-Fascist policy and that the British ruling class would have preferred fascism to socialism. The Communist MP Willie Gallacher said that "many prominent representatives of the Conservative Party, speaking for powerful landed and financial interests in the country, would welcome Hitler and the German Army if they believed that such was the only alternative to the establishment of Socialism in this country."[32] This view has persisted on the far-left.[33]

Once war broke out, appeasement was blamed for the failure to stop the dictators. The Labour MP Hugh Dalton identified the policy with wealthy people in the City of London, Conservatives and members of the peerage who were soft on Hitler.[34] The appointment of Churchill as Prime Minister hardened opinion against appeasement and encouraged the search for those responsible. Three British journalists, Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard, writing under the name of "Cato" in their book Guilty Men, called for the removal from office of 15 public figures they held accountable, including Chamberlain and Baldwin. The book defined appeasement as the "deliberate surrender of small nations in the face of Hitler's blatant bullying". It was hastily written and has few claims to historical scholarship,[35] but Guilty Men shaped subsequent thinking about appeasement and it is said[36][37] that it contributed to the defeat of the Conservatives in the 1945 general election.

The change in the meaning of "appeasement" after Munich was summarized later by the historian David Dilks: "The word in its normal meaning connotes the pacific settlement of disputes; in the meaning usually applied to the period of Neville Chamberlain['s] premiership, it has come to indicate something sinister, the granting from fear or cowardice of unwarranted concessions in order to buy temporary peace at someone else's expense."[38]

After the Second World War: historians

Churchill's book The Gathering Storm, published in 1948, made a similar judgment to Guilty Men, though in moderate tones. This book and Churchill's authority confirmed the orthodox view.

Historians have subsequently explained Chamberlain's policies in various ways. It could be said that he believed sincerely that the objectives of Hitler and Mussolini were limited and that the settlement of their grievances would protect the world from war; for safety, military and air power should be strengthened. Many have judged this belief to be fallacious, since the dictators' demands were not limited and appeasement gave them time to gain greater strength.

In 1961 this view of appeasement as avoidable error and cowardice was set on its head by A.J.P. Taylor in his book The Origins of the Second World War. Taylor argued that Hitler did not have a blueprint for war and was behaving much as any other German leader might have done. Appeasement was an active policy, and not a passive one; allowing Hitler to consolidate was a policy implemented by "men confronted with real problems, doing their best in the circumstances of their time". Taylor said that appeasement ought to be seen as a rational response to an unpredictable leader, appropriate to the time both diplomatically and politically.

His view has been shared by other historians, for example Paul Kennedy, who says of the choices facing politicians at the time, "Each course brought its share of disadvantages: there was only a choice of evils. The crisis in the British global position by this time was such that it was, in the last resort, insoluble, in the sense that there was no good or proper solution."[39] Martin Gilbert has expressed a similar view: "At bottom, the old appeasement was a mood of hope, Victorian in its optimism, Burkean in its belief that societies evolved from bad to good and that progress could only be for the better. The new appeasement was a mood of fear, Hobbesian in its insistence upon swallowing the bad in order to preserve some remnant of the good, pessimistic in its belief that Nazism was there to stay and, however horrible it might be, should be accepted as a way of life with which Britain ought to deal."[40]

The arguments in Taylor's Origins of the Second World War (sometimes described as "revisionist"[6][41]) were rejected by many historians at the time, and reviews of his book in Britain and the United States were generally critical. Nevertheless, he was praised for some of his insights. By showing that appeasement was a popular policy and that there was continuity in British foreign policy after 1933, he shattered the common view of the appeasers as a small, degenerate clique that had mysteriously hijacked the British government sometime in the 1930s and who had carried out their policies in the face of massive public resistance; and by portraying the leaders of the 1930s as real people attempting to deal with real problems, he made the first strides towards explaining the actions of the appeasers rather than merely condemning them.

In the early 1990s a new theory of appeasement, sometimes called "counter-revisionist",[41] emerged as historians argued that appeasement was probably the only choice for the British government in the 1930s, but that it was poorly implemented, carried out too late and not enforced strongly enough to constrain Hitler. Appeasement was considered a viable policy, considering the strains that the British Empire faced in recuperating from World War I, and Chamberlain was said to have adopted a policy suitable to Britain's cultural and political needs. Frank McDonough is a leading proponent of this view of appeasement and describes his book Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War[42] as a "post revisionist" study.[43] Appeasement was a crisis management strategy seeking a peaceful settlement of Hitler's grievances. "Chamberlain's worst error", says McDonough, "was to believe that he could march Hitler on the yellow brick road to peace when in reality Hitler was marching very firmly on the road to war." He has criticized revisionist historians for concentrating on Chamberlain's motivations rather than how appeasement worked in practice – as a "usable policy" to deal with Hitler. James P. Levy argues against the outright condemnation of appeasement. "Knowing what Hitler did later," he writes, "the critics of Appeasement condemn the men who tried to keep the peace in the 1930s, men who could not know what would come later. ... The political leaders responsible for Appeasement made many errors. They were not blameless. But what they attempted was logical, rational, and humane."[44]

After the Second World War: politicians

Statesmen in the post-war years have often referred to their opposition to appeasement as a justification for firm, sometimes armed, action in international relations.

U.S. President Harry S. Truman thus explained his decision to enter the Korean War in 1950, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden his confrontation of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Suez Crisis of 1956, U.S. President John F. Kennedy his "quarantine" of Cuba in 1962, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson his resistance to communism in Indochina in the 1960s, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan his air strike on Libya in 1986.[45]

During the Cold War, the "lessons" of appeasement were cited by prominent conservative allies of Reagan, who urged Reagan to be assertive in "rolling back" Soviet-backed regimes throughout the world. The Heritage Foundation's Michael Johns, for instance, wrote in 1987 that "seven years after Ronald Reagan's arrival in Washington, the United States government and its allies are still dominated by the culture of appeasement that drove Neville Chamberlain to Munich in 1938."[46]

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher invoked the example of Churchill during the Falklands War of 1982: "When the American Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, urged her to reach a compromise with the Argentine's she rapped sharply on the table and told him, pointedly, 'that this was the table at which Neville Chamberlain sat in 1938 and spoke of the Czechs as a faraway people about whom we know so little'." [47] The spectre of appeasement was raised in discussions of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.[48]

U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair also cited Churchill's warnings about German rearmament to justify their action in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War.[49]

In May 2008, President Bush cautioned against "the false comfort of appeasement" when dealing with Iran and its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[50]

Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali demands a confrontational policy at the European level to meet the threat of radical Islam, and compares policies of non-confrontation to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.[51]

Tibetan separatists consider the policy of the West towards China with regard to Tibet as appeasement.[52]

In November 2015 the British Government invoked appeasement to justify war in Syria.[53]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Appeasement - World War 2 on History
  2. ↑ Robert Mallett, "The Anglo‐Italian war trade negotiations, contraband control and the failure to appease Mussolini, 1939–40." Diplomacy and Statecraft 8.1 (1997): 137-167.
  3. ↑ Hunt, The Makings of the West p.861
  4. ↑ David Thompson, Europe Since Napoleon, (1964), p.691
  5. ↑ Clauss, E. M. (1970). "The Roosevelt Administration and Manchukuo, 1933?1941". The Historian. 32 (4): 595–611. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.1970.tb00380.x.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Taylor, A.J.P., English History, 1914–1945, 1965
  7. ↑ Mujtaba Haider Zaidi "Chamberlain and Hitler vs. Pakistan and Taliban" The Frontier Post Newspaper, 3 July 2013 URL: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/article/24108/[]
  8. ↑ Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (2006) pp 646–58
  9. ↑ Alfred D. Low, The Anschluss Movement 1931–1938 and the Great Powers (1985)
  10. ↑ Shirer, William L. (1984). Twentieth Century Journey, Volume 2, The Nightmare Years: 1930–1940. Boston: Little Brown and Company. p. 308. ISBN 0-316-78703-5.
  11. 1 2 Grant Duff 1938.
  12. ↑ Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War (1989) ch. 2
  13. ↑ A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, p.415
  14. ↑ The Versailles Treaty and its Legacy: The Failure of the Wilsonian Vision, by Norman A. Graebner, Edward M. Bennett
  15. ↑ International: Peace Week, Time magazine, 20 March 1939
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948
  17. ↑ Noakes, J. and Pridham, G. (eds) (2010) [2001] Nazism 1919-1945, Vol 3, Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, University of Exeter Press, Exeter, p.119
  18. ↑ Nigel Jones. Countdown to Valkyrie: The July Plot to Assassinate Hitler. Pp. 73-74.
  19. ↑ Grant Duff 1938, p. 137.
  20. ↑ František Halas, Torzo naděje (1938), poem Zpěv úzkosti, "Zvoní zvoní zrady zvon zrady zvon, Čí ruce ho rozhoupaly, Francie sladká hrdý Albion, a my jsme je milovali"
  21. ↑ Richard Overy, "Civilians on the front-line", The Second World War – Day 2: The Blitz, The Guardian/The Observer, September 2009
  22. ↑ Churchill's tribute to Chamberlain, 12 November 1940
  23. 1 2 3 4 5 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  24. ↑ Medlicott, W.N., Review of "The Roots of Appeasement" by M.Gilbert (1966), in The English Historical Review, Vol. 83, No. 327 (Apr., 1968), p. 430
  25. 1 2 Richard Toye, The Labour Party and the Economics of Rearmament, 1935–1939
  26. ↑ Rhiannon Vickers, The Labour Party and the World: The evolution of Labour's foreign policy, Manchester University Press, 2003, Chapter 5
  27. ↑ "Defence". 299 cc35-174. Commons and Lords Hansard. 11 March 1935. Retrieved 20 March 2013.
  28. ↑ A.J.Davies, To Build A New Jerusalem: The British Labour Party from Keir Hardie to Tony Blair, Abacus, 1996
  29. ↑ Clem Attlee: A Biography By Francis Beckett, Richard Cohen Books, ISBN 1-86066-101-7
  30. ↑ Grant Duff 1938, p. 201.
  31. ↑ Teddy J. Uldricks, "Russian Historians Reevaluate the Origins of World War II," History & Memory Volume 21, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2009, pp60-82 (in Project Muse)
  32. ↑ Willie Gallacher, The Chosen Few, Lawrence and Wishart, 1940
  33. ↑ See, for example, Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel, In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion, Monthly Review Press, 1997 ISBN 0-85345-999-1
  34. ↑ Dalton, H. Hitler's War, London, Penguin Books, 1940
  35. ↑ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  36. ↑ David Willets and Richard Forsdyke, After the Landslide, London: Centre For Policy Studies, 1999
  37. ↑ Hal G.P. Colebatch, "Epitaph for a Liar", American Spectator, 3.8.10 Archived 17 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
  38. ↑ Dilks, D. N., "Appeasement Revisited", Journal of Contemporary History, 1972
  39. ↑ Kennedy, Paul M. (1983). Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870–1945: Eight Studies. London: George Allen & Unwin. ISBN 0-00-686165-2.
  40. ↑ Gilbert, M., The Roots of Appeasement, 1968
  41. 1 2 Dimuccio, R.A.B., "The Study of Appeasement in International Relations: Polemics, Paradigms, and Problems", Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 35, No. 2, March 1998
  42. ↑ Frank McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War, Manchester University Press, 1998
  43. ↑ See, for example, McDonough, F., Brown, R., and Smith, D., Hitler, Chamberlain and Appeasement, 2002
  44. ↑ James P. Levy, Appeasement and rearmament: Britain, 1936–1939, Rowman and Littlefield, 2006
  45. ↑ Beck, R.J., "Munich's Lessons Reconsidered", International Security, Vol. 14, No. 2, (Autumn, 1989), pp. 161–191
  46. ↑ "Peace in Our Time: The Spirit of Munich Lives On", by Michael Johns, Policy Review, Summer 1987.
  47. ↑ Harris, Kenneth (1988). Thatcher. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 135. ISBN 0-00-637457-3.
  48. ↑ Vuilliamy, E., "Bosnia: The Crime of Appeasement", International Affairs , 1998, pp. 73–91 Year: 1998
  49. ↑ "Appeasement: The Gathering Storm (Teachers Exercises)". Churchill College Cambridge.
  50. ↑ Thomas, E., "The Mythology of Munich", Newsweek, 23 June 2008, Vol. 151, Issue 25, pp. 22–26
  51. ↑ (Dutch) Confrontatie, geen verzoening, de Volkskrant, 8 April 2006, copy here
  52. ↑ Penny McRae, "West appeasing China on Tibet, says PM-in-exile", AFP, 15 September 2009
  53. ↑ , Daily Mail, 23 November 2015

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