Hitler and Appeasement

by Peter Neville

Hitler, Mussolini and Japan posed a terrible threat to Britain and its empire. With America withdrawn into isolationism and Stalin's Russia hostile to the West, it is hardly surprising that Britain strove to sustain peace for as long as possible by the traditional tools of diplomacy and accommodation. Stigmatised as 'Appeasement', this has often been held to be a bankrupt policy, epitomised by Chamberlain's Munich Agreement in 1938, handing over the Sudetenland. Hitler and Appeasement shows, in contrast, that many of the government's policies were reasonable and well-thought-out; nor did ministers ignore rearmament. After the appalling experiences of the First World War, no one in Britain wished to be in another war. It was only the unpredictable catastrophes of the Russo-German agreement of 1939 and the Fall of France in 1940 that cast Appeasement into disrepute, leaving stains on the reputations of Baldwin and Chamberlain that are little deserved.

Genres: World War II

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 21, 2005

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Appeasement" is a word loaded with historical baggage -- specifically, its association with the failed efforts by the British and the French in the 1930s to avert war in Europe by accommodating Adolf Hitler's territorial demands. The effort, of course, was in vain, and when war came in 1939 Germany began it in a stronger position than they had been just a few years before, thanks in no small measure to the earlier concessions of his foes.

This failure to avert the war has been viewed ever since as the ultimate discrediting of appeasement as a policy, with its advocates viewed as fools or worse. Peter Neville takes exception to this view, however. Surveying the evolution of appeasement in the interwar period, he offers a sympathetic assessment of the situation policymakers faced and the decisions they made. He highlights the difficult choices facing British policymakers, with a multitude of vulnerabilities worldwide and few partners other than France (which itself was riven with problems) to help shoulder the load. Given the initial focus on bordering territory with ethnically German populations, appeasement was the best available option while the British rearmed their forces.

Neville is not uncritical of the decisions British politicians made, and he is particularly astute as to the personality clashes which often determined who exerted influence. He also incorporates appeasement's opponents into his analysis, showing how such esteemed figures as Winston Churchill were not always as hostile to the policy as they later sought to portray themselves as being. Overall it makes for a provocative reassessment of what remains an extraordinarily controversial period in history, one that helps us to better understand the choices people made and why it was that they failed in their goals.