War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy

But Napolepn and Hitler have their allies too. Napoleon, ever anxious to conserve the blood of Frenchmen, manipulates Austria and Prussia. Today Hitler too has his puppets—Finland, Rumania, Italy, others. But both Napoleon and Hitler have allies more important than these. Today such allies are called appeasement groups. War and Peace offers an excellent picture of the 1805 appeasement group (analogous to the men of Munich) in St. Petersburg. This consists mainly of spiritually diseased nobles and cowards of all stripes, including a few romantic intellectuals—for a while Pierre Bezúkhov himself is one of them—who are taken in by the “glory” of Napoleon. In 1812 the same group is headed by the Tsarévich. At this writing there seems to be no appeasement group in Russia, but the reader of Tolstóy cannot help thinking of the Cliveden set and of the French upper classes who succeeded in betraying their country. Nor are Nazappeasers lacking in our own nation.

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