Appeasement Reconsidered: Investigating The Mythology Of The 1930s

Professor Jeffrey Record

• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781782898146
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The appeasement of Nazi Germany by the western democracies during the 1930s and the subsequent outbreak of World War II have been a major referent experience for U.S. foreign policymakers since 1945. From Harry Truman's response to the outbreak of the Korean War to George W. Bush's decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein, American presidents have repeatedly affirmed the "lesson" of Munich and invoked it to justify actual or threatened uses of force. However, the conclusion that the democracies could easily have stopped Hitler before he plunged the world into war and holocaust, but lacked the will to do so, does not survive serious scrutiny. Appeasement proved to be a horribly misguided policy against Hitler, but this conclusion is clear only in hindsight - i.e., through the lens of subsequent events.
Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at appeasement within the context of the political and military environments in which British and French leaders operated during the 1930s. He examines the nature of appeasement, the factors underlying Anglo-French policies toward Hitler from 1933 to 1939, and the reasons for the failure of those policies. He finds that Anglo-French security choices were neither simple nor obvious, that hindsight has distorted judgments on those choices, that Hitler remains without equal as a state threat, and that invocations of the Munich analogy should always be closely examined.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Hitler Remains without Equal as a State Threat.

No post-1945 foreign dictatorship bears genuine comparison to the Nazi dictatorship. The scope of Hitler’s nihilism, ambitions, and military power posed a mortal threat to Western civilization. No other authoritarian or totalitarian regime has managed to employ such a powerful military instrument in such an aggressive manner to fulfill such a horrendous agenda. Stalin had great military power but was cautious and patient; he was a realist and neither lusted for war nor discounted the strength and will of the Soviet Union’s enemies. Mao Zedong was reckless but militarily weak. Ho Chi Minh’s ambitions and fighting power were local. And Saddam Hussein was never in a position to reverse U.S. military domination of the Persian Gulf. Who but Hitler was so powerful and unappeasable and undeterrable?

Anglo-French Security Choices in the 1930s Were Neither Simple Nor Obvious.

They were at every turn severely constrained by domestic politics, economic difficulties, perceptions of military inadequacy, and Hitler’s effective strategic deception regarding Nazi Germany’s intentions and capabilities. Appeasement of attempted German revision of the Versailles Treaty made both moral and strategic sense because the treaty was unjust, strategically short-sighted, and unenforceable. Nor was it politically possible for the democracies to forcibly oppose the reunification of the German nation within a single state; the victors of 1918 had violated Woodrow Wilson’s sacred principle of self-determination by prohibiting union of Germany and Austria and by creating the polyglot state of Czechoslovakia with unhappy German minorities in that state’s border areas with Germany.

Appeasement became untenable the moment Hitler demanded, under the threat of force, the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia – which was not only a democratic state prepared to grant the Sudeten Germans considerable autonomy but also a significant military counterweight to German territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe. Yet neither Britain nor France was in a military position to defend Czechoslovakia, although Chamberlain’s threat of a general war deterred Hitler from seizing all of Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Beware of Hindsight; It Is Not 20/20 Vision.

Many hindsighters believe they now know what Britain and France (and for that matter the United States) should have done in the 1930s – regime change in Berlin via Hitler’s assassination or, failing that, an invasion of the Third Reich – because we all know that World War II and the Holocaust were the consequences of appeasement. These facts were hardly self-evident at the time. Today’s should runs afoul of yesterday’s could not and would not. British and French statesmen did not know they were on the road to general war; on the contrary, they were seeking to avoid it. In any case, neither assassination of the head of a major state nor the launching of preventive war against ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR
• SUMMARY
• APPEASEMENT RECONSIDERED: INVESTIGATING THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE 1930s
• CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS