Summary: Appeasement, grounded on a wish for peace
between the European states in order that Britain
could regain her pre-war prosperity, was the
consistent inter-war policy. In contrast, Churchill
wanted stronger armed services and, initially, isolation
or detachment from Europe and uninvolvement in
international collaboration. Latterly, he favoured an
alliance of powers and military co-operation to stand
up to Hitler. With the advantage of hindsight, only
Churchill’s policy could win Britain’s security by
limiting Hitler’s overbounding ambitions.
Questions to consider

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Can it be claimed that the policy of appeasement made no sense to
those who understood Mein Kampf and the personality of Hitler?
Should Chamberlain have accepted German conquest of Poland and
eastern Russia?
Was Churchill right to condemn, initially, the League of Nations?
Was Britain’s greatest inter-war foreign policy weakness delay in
rearmament until 1936?
Was the fundamental problem of inter-war international politics the
failure of the allies to counter the French wish for revenge and
punishment of Germany at the Versailles peace talks?
NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, THE APPEASER, and Winston Churchill, the Warrior,
personify the crowning controversy in modern British History. Should we
have conciliated Hitler or resisted him? Could the Second World War have
been prevented? Dispute about the answers grows in volume and acerbity
among historians and their readers: understandably, since the Second World
War was horrible and the British part in it, although glorious, was doubtfully
beneficial to British prosperity and security. Chamberlain and Appeasement
increase in reputation; Churchill it is nowadays fashionable to denigrate and
undermine. They were distinguished competitors. Chamberlain embodied
confidence both in appearance and reality. His clothes, brilliantly outdated, his plain, clear manner of speech went with regularity, industry and
reliability. His assured and substantial income, firmly based on respectable
manufacturing, made him a symbol of the virtues of worthy Victorian
prosperity. Around Churchill there hovered always a hint of Edwardian
raffishness. As one of the most talented freelance writers of the century, he
supported, by his own work, an indulgent way of living: ’There has never
been a day in my life when I could not order a bottle of champagne for
myself and offer another to a friend’.
This essay reconsiders appeasement. It supports Churchill not Chamberlain.
This dispute, however, concerns 1938 and 1939, the months of the coming
of war. Before then, as many people preferred later to forget, especially
during the years when Churchill was supposed to have possessed supreme
wisdom, appeasement was a policy approved by nearly everyone in Britain.
The word ’appeasement’ became a word of abuse, something short-sighted,
foolish, and distasteful only in 1939. In 1936, the foreign secretary, the
elegant, ambitious Anthony Eden, assured the Commons ’that it is the
appeasement of Europe as a whole that we have constantly before us’. He
was promising to work to make Europe peaceful. Of course, everyone
thought that to be good; especially after the First World War had crushingly
shown that war was not at all some sort of healthy organised game.
Everyone agreed on the aim of ending war; more surprisingly in the 1920s
and 1930s almost everyone in Britain agreed on how to gain the prize of
peace.
Appeasement - an Established and Popular Policy
The answer, almost everyone agreed, was to persuade the strongest nation
in Europe that everything it reasonably desired could be secured peacefully.
Germany had proved itself in the war of 1914-18 militarily the strongest by
far. Should Germans be persuaded to be peaceful by force or by
conciliation? Appeasement meant conciliation and the British more and
more chose that line in the 1920s. It began with Lloyd George, that flexible,
charming Welshman, the patron and friend of Winston Churchill,
collaborators in peace and war, who admired each other’s intellect and who
both excelled as speakers, one by verbal agility, the other with wellprepared, rhetorical set pieces.
German Grievances after Versailles
In the peacemaking of 1919, after presiding over British triumph in victory,
Lloyd George pursued the British desire to be left alone, undisturbed by
continental Europe, to make secure the immense British Empire and develop
British trade and prosperity. To rely on force to keep the peace meant an
eventual risk of war: safer to gain German acceptance of the peace. Lloyd
George tried to do so in the Treaty of Versailles, and failed, because he had
to make compromises with the French ally and with a British electorate still
embittered by wartime emotion. Soon, though, appeasement began: the
Treaty of Versailles must be changed, German resentments assuaged and
German property restored. The Treaty aroused three main grievances among
Germans. Reparations for the damage done by the Great War, for which the
victorious allies asserted that Germany was responsible and for which
therefore Germany should pay, created most resentment. Germans blamed
reparations for two catastrophes - the inflation of 1923 and the savage
depression of 1930-2. The second grievance lay in the loss to foreign
governments of Germans, especially to Poland and to Czechoslovakia, where
Czech dominance replaced, in most German-inhabited areas, the
supranational or culturally German rule of the Habsburg monarchy. Thirdly,
the restrictions on the army embodied in the Treaty specially annoyed the
military-minded, prominent among the still influential upper class. French
governments, supported, it seemed, by most French opinion, believed that
Versailles, if Germans objected to it, should be enforced; the British
thought that it should be softened in application and even in content.
Enforcing the Treaty, after all, might mean conflict and would certainly
require armed preparedness. The British preferred a conflict-free Europe
which could safely be ignored. They thought that their pre-war prosperity
could be restored only in a peaceful world. Political and economic interests
pointed the same way - towards appeasement, especially of Germany. In
1920 French troops occupied four German towns to enforce the Treaty; in
1923 the French army occupied the entire Ruhr region, the industrial heart
of Germany, to enforce payment of reparations. The ruin of German
industry and the total collapse of the mark followed.
Softening France’s Punishment of Germany
Then came speculation against the French franc and the isolation of this
militarist France and the first successful British attempt at appeasement. In
1924 the Dawes plan reduced the burden of reparations; the Locarno
treaties forbade further French intrusions into Germany. Reparations,
however, remained, and though further softened by the Young plan in 1929,
many Germans blamed them for the great slump of 1930 to 1932. A rightwing government tightened credit, reduced spending, increased taxes,
reduced employment and sharpened social and political conflict. It acted in
a conservative, anti-socialist, hierarchical style and began to restore
German military power. It was opposed by Socialists and Communists. In
these years there emerged a politician of genius, radical and populist,
calling for an egalitarian community to resist foreigners and the ’forces of
treachery’ inside Germany, especially Socialists and Jews. He stridently
preached a German revival based on racial purity and discipline. In a
population bewildered and frightened by economic disaster he won votes.
German conservatives could rule with democratic socialists to keep him out,
or work with him to destroy socialism. They chose the latter, and Hitler
became German Chancellor at the end of January 1933.
New Phase of Appeasement after Hitler in Power
The triumph of this threatening figure, presiding over a ferociously
nationalistic government, might have ended British appeasement of
Germany. It did nothing of the sort. On the contrary, appeasement seemed
more urgent. Hitler’s success, it appeared, resulted from insufficient
appeasement. The French, the British believed, had contributed to the
resentments that brought Hitler to power by doing nothing to help Germany
to avoid economic depression and despair. To pacify Hitler or to arouse
opposition to him in Germany, if he could not be pacified, concessions were
needed and the French must be treated more firmly and made to see
reason. Now a restored great army became an essential demand of thenew
nationalist Germany. British appeasement tried above all to persuade Hitler
to accept only limited rearmament. The British could then live securely in
peace without needing to spend inconvenient amounts of money on
defence.
Churchill’s Anti-appeasement Policy
British governments, MacDonald’s and Baldwin’s, with Chamberlain active in
both, before he became Prime Minister in May 1937, looked for concession
to persuade Germany to limit rearmament. At first, merely giving
permission to rearm was thought enough, then helping Germany to send
troops into its western frontier regions where they were forbidden by
Versailles, then restoring colonies taken from Germany after the First World
War. Nearly everyone agreed with the government’s efforts. At this stage,
Churchill’s opposition appealed only to right-wing, imperially-minded
conservatives. He favoured, in contrast to the government’s endeavours to
make Europe peaceful by solving European conflicts, a posture of isolation
from continental Europe or, at least, ’a certain degree of sober detachment
from the European scene’. Instead of attempts at international
disarmament, he demanded an enlarged British airforce able, like the Navy,
to fight all possible enemies. So far from an alliance against Hitler’s
Germany he wanted to reduce British commitments in Europe. He poured
scorn on the League of Nations and its ideal of international collaboration.
He did not wish Britain to cajole France into arms reductions lest they
would go with British pledges of support to a weakened France.
As German military might expanded and with it, Hitler’s readiness to use
force to impose his wishes, Churchill became ready to suggest that European
powers, including Britain, should come together to counterbalance German
power, perhaps even by using the mechanism of the League of Nations. Yet
in 1936, when the German army marched west across the Rhine in disregard
of the Versailles prohibition of armed forces in the Rhineland, Churchill
joined in the unanimous applause for the government’s success in
persuading the French not to do anything to counter this breach of the
treaty of peace Appeasement Starts to Cause Controversy
After March 1936 ’appeasement’ slowly became controversial; in 1938 it
brought impassioned disagreement. In 1936 and 1937 disillusion began.
Some officials in the Foreign Office watched the steady growth of German
armed might and the militarisation of the German people and wondered if
’appeasement’ would ever cause Hitler to call a halt. Anthony Eden, as
Foreign Secretary, heard these doubts and began to share them. Behind his
elegant, stylish, exterior he was tense and worried. In November 1937
dispute broke out, still privately, inside the government. Lord Halifax went
to Berlin, in theory to visit a hunting expedition - he was a Master of
Foxhounds - in practice to find out what changes Hitler wanted. Eden
objected. He thought Halifax’s enquiries would encourage Hitler to make
demands and so problems would become worse; Halifax thought they could
then more easily be solved. He wrote to Chamberlain, now Prime Minister:
there was no reason to oppose peaceful change ’rather liberally interpreted,
perhaps’. In other words, Britain would defuse Hitler’s threats of force by
joining in schemes to meet Hitler’s requirements.
Early in 1938 Chamberlain forced Eden out of office and made Halifax
Foreign Secretary. The change made it easier to put appeasement into
effect, a policy which he believed tenaciously to be correct - more
tenaciously, it turned out than his new associate. Halifax, very tall,
elegantly stooping, well-mannered in a formal way, a devout Anglican, a
skilled rider, in spite of his one withered arm, was deferentially modest and
pretended to be less able than he was; few disliked him and he did not show
Chamberlain’s ill-disguised contempt for opponents. In March 1938 Hitler
sent in the German army to take over the independent Austrian republic.
His forceful triumph caused Halifax and Chamberlain to believe that
appeasement must accelerate, that Hitler must more energetically be
encouraged to gain his ends without threatening war even if that meant
changing frontiers in Europe.
Czechoslovakia came next. Within its borders in the west, in what is now
the Czech republic, there lived three million Germans. They demanded
better treatment and Hitler made it more and more clear that he would
make sure, perhaps by invading Czechoslovakia, that they would get it. If
Hitler attacked Czechoslovakia, France, its ally, might help the victim; if so
Britain might be dragged in since a German defeat of France would make
Nazi Germany alarmingly powerful.
Churchill Voices His Views on German Aggression
Two days after the German army seized Austria, Churchill, in one of his
sonorous sentences, set out his reply in the House of Commons:
If a number of States were assembled around Great Britain and France in a
solemn treaty for mutual defence against aggression; if they had their
forces marshalled in what you may call a Grand Alliance; if they had their
Staff arrangements concerted; if all this rested, as it can honourably rest,
upon the Covenant of the League of Nations, in pursuance of all the
purposes and ideals of the League of Nations; if that were sustained as it
would be, by the moral sense of the world, and if it were done in the year
1938 - and, believe me, it may be the last chance there will be for doing it
- then I say that you might even now arrest this approaching war.
Chamberlain and Halifax had a different plan to arrest war. They favoured
concession, not confrontation, and Halifax, especially, employed his
admirable dialectical talents in demonstrating that everyone who disagreed
must understand that Britain could not risk war. This, it is clear, was a
justification, not the reason, for their policy.
Czechoslovakia 1938: the Stakes are Raised
They bullied France into bullying Czechoslovakia into concession. They told
the French that they could not count on British help if they supported
Czechoslovakia. In September 1938, Chamberlain, alarmed by threatening
signs of impatience on Hitler’s part, flew to talk to him to hear his wishes.
Chamberlain returned, and bullied the French into joining in bullying
Czechoslovakia into giving up its German areas. He went to tell Hitler, but
Hitler wanted immediate action: the Czechs must go in days. (Hitler,
Chamberlain found, was not always helpful in the pursuit of peace.)
Chamberlain continued then, and continued until war actually broke out in
1939, to think it unwise to confront Hitler; he thought his new demands,
however irritating, should be accepted. Others disagreed, including Halifax,
to Chamberlain’s surprise and dismay. The outcome was a public statement
approved by Halifax that if Hitler attacked Czechoslovakia Britain would
help France in its defence. Hitler climbed down, not very far, and agreed to
discuss his demands at the Munich conference, which made minor
modifications in the terms of Czechoslovakian surrender.
Two interpretations of Munich were possible, which summed up the rival
policies. One was that Hitler had been stopped by the belated threat of a
’Grand Alliance’ against him. Chamberlain, on the contrary, felt
appeasement had done it, that his own readiness to discuss changes with
Hitler had secured peace in September 1938 and shown the way to secure
peace in the future. ’I believe it is peace for our time’ said Chamberlain
with self-satisfied conviction.
Fundamental Flaws in the Appeasement of Hitler
Foreign policy means judging how to persuade foreign governments to do
what is convenient for your own country. It involves a view of how foreign
governments decide their plans. Supporters of Churchill felt that
Chamberlain’s policy would mean that Hitler could persuade other Germans
to support him by winning easy concessions. Chamberlain thought resistance
would anger Hitler and other Germans, and make war certain; Churchill
thought lack of resistance would give Hitler easy gains and make him
stronger and stronger domestically, and internationally less and less subject
to restraint.
In March 1939, as Churchill had predicted in October 1938, after the Munich
agreement, Hitler destroyed Czechoslovakia. Churchill’s prestige rose to
new heights. He began to be thought to be the man of insight, in contrast to
Chamberlain’s naivety. Many wanted Churchill in the government to show
that Britain would work tirelessly to check German aggression. That might
bring a last chance for peace. Chamberlain, on the contrary, felt it would
make war certain; he kept Churchill out. Churchill wanted to co-operate
with Soviet Russia against Germany to restrain Hitler. Chamberlain thought
alliance with Russia would be sure to provoke Hitler into war and to win him
the support of German opinion. In April 1939 Chamberlain agreed with Joe
Kennedy, father of the future president, to whom he spoke freely, in being
’upset’ by those people ’who really thought all that was needed to make
Hitler stop was for the British Government to threaten him with force’.
We still do not know if it was possible to make an alliance between France,
Britain and the USSR in 1939. It is certain that Chamberlain did his best to
prevent it, and may have been responsible for its failure. He was ’trying
always to leave a door open to work something out’ with Hitler. Thus he
tried to make it appear that the guarantee of Polish independence which he
was forced to give at the end of March 1939 was compatible with
negotiations about Polish frontiers. Many people imagine that Chamberlain’s
appeasement meant surrender to Hitler. That is not true, though. It was a
far more ambitious policy than that. It required Hitler to co-operate in
bringing peaceful, limited change in Europe. This was not what Hitler
wanted, which was simply that Britain should not interfere at all in
continental Europe. Chamberlain’s policy made war likely because it put
obstacles in Hitler’s path, but obstacles which were too weak to deter the
dictator. Chamberlain’s eagerness to avoid ’provocatively’ effective
deterrents perhaps made it possible for Hitler to secure enough support in
Germany to permit the Second World War.
Words and concepts to note
Acerbity: sourness, bitterness.
Cajole: to coax, to deceive.
Dialectical: discussion, disputation or debate.
Deferential: to submit to, to act in a subordinate manner.
Sonorous: a deep resonating sound.
Tenaciously: holding tight.
Questions to consider





Can it be claimed that the policy of appeasement made no sense to
those who understood Mein Kampf and the personality of Hitler?
Should Chamberlain have accepted German conquest of Poland and
eastern Russia?
Was Churchill right to condemn, initially, the League of Nations?
Was Britain’s greatest inter-war foreign policy weakness delay in
rearmament until 1936?
Was the fundamental problem of inter-war international politics the
failure of the allies to counter the French wish for revenge and
punishment of Germany at the Versailles peace talks?