The definition of appeasement changed over time. The word itself comes from the old French apaiser which means literally ‘to make peace’. Of course it became a dirty word. The appeasers had invited German aggression, and hence the Second World War, through their weakness and willingness to compromise and conciliate. In the canon of history of this period, these ‘guilty men’ were set against a standard (as epitomized by Churchill) of men ‘who urged England not to compromise with evil but to face the dictators with courage and conviction’. I will come to the extent and nature of opposition to the policy of appeasement in a moment, but it is enough here to note that it is an emotive term with its own baggage, which can make a more evenly-handed assessment difficult.

Parker makes the important point that the policy of appeasement, rather than being an amorphous kind of weakness in the face of bullying, was truly a policy. It was a choice of approach in the face of different options. Firstly I will argue that the forces which determined this policy choice were overwhelmingly strong, and that opposition presenting an alternative was divided, i

nconsistent or both; and second that as far as the question of failure was concerned, all policies of peace were bound to fail in the face of Hitler’s foreign policy aims and Britain’s commitment to maintaining some kind of balance of power in Europe.

British foreign policy faced a number of pretty much well known challenges in the run up to the second world war: German grievances from the 1919 Paris Peace Conference (reparations etc), the Spanish Civil War, and the rise of Italy and Japan as fascist powers (and their respective invasions of Manchuria in September 1931 and Abyssinia in October 1935. There were four options available to policy makers in Britain in response to these events. The first was to do nothing, the second was heavily armed isolation, the third was a reliance on Allies (whether that was through the League or otherwise) and the last was appeasement.

The first option – that of inaction - seemed no longer viable. Unlike the USA, the stretch of water between them and the belligerent powers was not hundreds, but tens of miles wide. Baldwin (who really establish appeasement into the Conservative consensus) summed up the way in which the Great War, and the development of new technology, especially aircraft (which was a particular concern of Baldwin) had changed the rules of defence. ‘When you think of the defence of England’ he explained in 1935 (?) ‘you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover, you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies’. The simple point about inaction is that it did not translate into a maintenance of the status quo – in the respect of the expansionist ambitions of Italy, Germany and France, an active participation in foreign policy affairs was necessary for national security. A reliance on the power of public opinion was also not a viable alternative in countries where democracy had been abolished. In fact in Nazi Germany, Hitler’s rise to be power had been based on an exploitation at a popular wish to regain international respect. Public opinion supported his belligerent approach.

Some topics in this essay:
World War, Nevile Chamberlain, United Britain, War Treasury, Ribbentrop League, Keynes Keynesian, Chamberlain Britain, Unlike USA, Westminster United, Japan Manchuria, policy appeasement, support league, foreign policy, policy war, world war, argued policy war, british support, british foreign, german ambitions, policy makers, churchill accepted, heavily armed isolation, british foreign policy, british support league, paris peace conference,