Appeasement

August 19, 2019
In this meticulous work, British journalist Bouverie provides a blow-by-blow recounting of Britain’s accommodation to Nazi Germany’s rearmament, beginning with the obvious observation that “the desire to avoid a second world war was perhaps the most understandable and universal wish in human history.” He convincingly argues that the failure of strong, consistent diplomatic efforts greatly contributed to the century’s great conflagration. Many British establishment figures of the time come in for fair and sometimes harsh criticism as Bouverie charts the descent toward war. Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Foreign Secretary John Simon, and, of course, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, architect of the 1938 Munich agreement that caved to Hitler’s expansionism because it promised “peace for our time,” receive deserved criticism. So do the many upper-class, right-leaning “amateur diplomats” who tried to build relations with Hitler. According to Bouverie, they wanted to believe that Hitler’s objectives were modest and feared that rearmament was unaffordable and would escalate tensions. Bouverie manages to convey how outside the mainstream Churchill’s anti-Hitler views were for much of the mid-1930s, and how dimly his WWI record was viewed by his foes in the Conservative Party. His reconstruction is both clear-eyed and well-paced. This intelligent study of British prewar diplomacy will keep readers rapt.