II.

Roots of Appeasement

Appeasement was a reversion to and an extension of traditional British foreign policy and diplomacy, which during the 19th century had sought to avoid entangling itself in the problems of Europe. The rationale dealt with each new incident as it arose through the prism of British interests, with a solution achieved by negotiation and arbitration where possible. This allowed British military force to be concentrated on the policing of the Empire. During the inter-war period the Empire was at its largest and most troublesome. There were nationalist uprisings in the Middle East and India. In addition, while facing threats from Italy and Germany, Britain and France also faced threats to their Asian interests from Japanese expansionism. Given these threats, negotiating with Germany, the greatest and closest of these threats, appeared prudent policy.

There was a reluctance among policymakers in Britain, even greater in the Dominions (see Statute of Westminster), to commit to the defence of Eastern Europe—as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain put it in a moment of exasperation during the Sudeten Crisis: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!” Public opinion, in Britain and France, was largely pacifist, not only as a result of the impact on popular memory of the horrors of World War I, but also because of the fear that modern warfare would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians from poison gas and air raid attacks.

Appeasement also grew from economic realities. The relative decline of the British economy since World War I was exacerbated by the Great Depression. On top of the social and political impact of the Depression, the budgetary priorities on welfare spending meant that in 1931 defence spending was one sixth of the amount spent in 1919, and only after 1936 was defence spending finally increased to fund rearmament. France did not let defence spending drop by the same amount although the majority of it went into the building of the Maginot Line, a defensive fortification along the Franco-German border that, in the event, proved useless against Blitzkrieg.

Finally, the frantic pursuit of the appeasement of Hitler in particular reflected an unusual diplomatic situation. France, faced with huge domestic political and economic problems that even threatened civil war, lacked any assurance in diplomacy. This sense of paranoia was not helped by the refusal of the British to enter a treaty to protect the French borders, or by the diplomatic isolation of the United States. Beginning with the failure to ratify Versailles or partake in the League of Nations, and culminating in the passage of strict Neutrality Acts in the mid-1930s, the refusal of the United States to involve itself in European affairs despite it being the world’s largest economic power left a vacuum in western democratic leadership.