These Books Shaped Vision of Appeasement

The recent publication of Tim Bouverie's, Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War, has fueled renewed interest in the reasons for the blunders of British diplomacy in the 1930s. The book has received deservedly high praise for the clarity of its analysis of appeasement's consequences. Bouverie places the major responsibility for appeasement's failure on Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain who consistently underestimated and misread Hitler's intentions. He also stresses the role played by many of the leading members of the British aristocracy, who saw Nazism as a bulwark against the threat of Communism. A third theme, and one often downplayed by some historians, is the emergence of pacifist sentiment on the left in the 1920s after the terrible losses of the First World War. He notes that Britain lost 750,000 killed during that conflict, almost double British losses, civilian and military, in World War II. Bouverie believes that the left's response to the threat from Nazism was paralyzed by pacifism. As late as the eve of World War II the British Labor Party voted against all rearmament measures.