The Problem of Appeasement

Extract

An evaluation of British foreign policy towards Nazi Germany is still overlaid in England by political controversy. The two main political parties cannot deny their descent from the parties that confronted each other in the 1930's. The question of responsibility for that tragically unsuccessful foreign policy and for the ensuing war still produces heated reproaches in the political arena and equally heated debates among historians. The belief that, had Britain taken the “right line,” the war could have been prevented is still very strong. In the words of the Oxford historian, A. L. Rowse: “There was a hope then, and it did matter what line we took; during that last decade this country exercised a leading influence in Europe and still held a position of leadership in the English-speaking world. All that has changed: the real decisions are made elsewhere” (p. 4). Had Hitler been checked and the exhaustive blood-letting avoided, would the “real decisions” still be made in England? These nagging questions arise again and again on the rostrum, in the newspapers, in Senior Common Rooms. They have produced two sets of legends, of which various versions circulate. The Right asserts in Quintin Hogg's words that “the Left was never right,” and that by demagogically exploiting the public's pacifist temper it kept Britain from rearming so that the Conservative governments had no alternative to appeasement. The Left, on the other hand, developed the legend that Tories feared Soviet Russian communism more than Nazism and saw in Hitler the man who stemmed the Red tide from spreading westward. The Communist version of this goes further; it asserts that Neville Chamberlain, in true Machiavellian fashion, encouraged Hitler to expand towards the East in order to involve him in a serious conflict with Stalin.