Fighting Churchill, Appeasing Hitler

Adrian Phillips

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781643132211
• eBook ISBN: 9781643132938
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: History

Appeasement failed in all its goals. The kindest thing that can be said of it is that postponed World War II by one year. Its real effect was to convince Hitler and Mussolini that Britain was weak and afraid of confrontation, encouraging them to ever-greater acts of aggression.Chamberlain and Wilson blindly pursued bilateral friendship between Britain and the dictators and ferociously resisted alternative policies such as working with France, the Soviet Union, or the U.S. to face down the dictators. They resisted all-out rearmament which would have put the economy on a war footing. These were all the policies advocated by Winston Churchill, the most dangerous opponent of appeasement.Neither Chamberlain nor Wilson had any experience of day-to-day practical diplomacy. Both thought that the dictators would apply the same standards of rationality and clarity to the policies of Italy and Germany that applied in Britain. They could not grasp that Fascist demagogues operated in an entirely different way to democratic politicians. The catastrophe of the Chamberlain/Wilson appeasement policy offers a vital lesson in how blind conviction in one policy as the only alternative can be fatally damaging.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• Dramatis Personae and Explanatory Notes
• Prologue: A Man I Can Do Business With
• Chapter One: Personal Discourtesy Is His Chief Weapon
• Chapter Two: Winston’s Power for Mischief
• Chapter Three: My Master Is Lonely Just Now
• Chapter Four: Taking Personal Charge
• Chapter Five: Woolly Rubbish
• Chapter Six: Getting on Terms with the Germans
• Chapter Seven: A New Chapter in the History of African Colonial Development
• Chapter Eight: All That Is Well Sewn Up
• Chapter Nine: The Central Weakness
• Chapter Ten: Every Effort to Bring About Appeasement
• Chapter Eleven: A Nice Fraudulent Balance Sheet
• Chapter Twelve: A Wise British Subject
• Chapter Thirteen: The Best the English Can Do
• Chapter Fourteen: Their Just Demands Had Been Fairly Met
• Chapter Fifteen: Clearly Marked Out for the Post
• Chapter Sixteen: The Appalling Sums It Is Proposed to Spend
• Chapter Seventeen: Well Anchored
• Chapter Eighteen: Abandonment and Ruin
• Chapter Nineteen: Riding the Tiger
• Chapter Twenty: The Right Line About Things
• Chapter Twenty-One: Advice from the Devil
• Chapter Twenty-Two: The Mountebank
• Chapter Twenty-Three: Combating Hoare’s Heresies
• Chapter Twenty-Four: The End of the Rainbow
• Chapter Twenty-Five: Pay Whatever Price May Be Necessary
• Chapter Twenty-Six: Catching the Mugwumps
• Chapter Twenty-Seven: Talking Appeasement Again
• Chapter Twenty-Eight: More Ways of Killing a Cat
• Chapter Twenty-Nine: Mr Boothby Expects a Rake-Off
• Chapter Thirty: Too Many People at the Job
• Chapter Thirty-One: Entitled to Demand Concessions
• Chapter Thirty-Two: Pathetic Little Worms
• Chapter Thirty-Three: A Potato War
• Chapter Thirty-Four: A Civil Servant with a Political Sense
• Chapter Thirty-Five: Minister to Iceland
• Chapter Thirty-Six: A Guilty Man in the Realm of King Zog
• Chapter Thirty-Seven: He Has Returned to Bournemouth
• Illustrations Insert
• Endnotes
• Select Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Copyright