Like much else, the Russo-Ukrainian war and its build-up have drawn comparisons with the Nazi period. With other historical analogies seemingly lacking, some have cast 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union as the new 1918-19, while for others the 2018 World Cup was Putin’s version of the 1936 Olympics. The history of appeasement also has much to tell us about the present conflict, apparently, with ‘1938’ and ‘Munich’ being held up as blueprints for how not to deal with authoritarian leaders’ territorial ambitions since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. This helps explain the sudden re-emergence of appeasement as a topic of public interest. Tim Bouverie’s bestselling Appeasing Hitler (2019) is an example of how research is feeding this trend. Another is Charles Spicer’s Coffee with Hitler, although in comparison to Bouverie’s more traditional telling, Spicer claims to offer both a new angle and interpretation of the appeasement story.
On the first count, Spicer’s book is a resounding success, retelling the fascinating history of the Anglo-German Fellowship, a cross-border trade organisation patronised by leading industrialists, politicians and royals which served as a forum for informal diplomacy between the two countries. In particular, it focuses on three amateur diplomats, albeit ones with ties to the British government – Philip Conwell-Evans, Ernest Tennant and Malcolm Christie – and how they used the Fellowship to try to improve relations and, later on, to prevent war, with Nazi Germany. They did so by cosying up to Nazi leaders like Joachim von Ribbentrop and Hermann Göring, or arranging exchange trips to the Berlin Olympics, Nuremberg party rallies and football matches at White Hart Lane. There were also attempts to organise more formal summits between Hitler and senior figures in the British government, although the best they managed was a meeting with the retired Lloyd George at Hitler’s mountain retreat, the Berghof.
