It is common for pundits to quote Churchill about the policy of appeasement and its inevitable failure to cope with aggressive dictators. But this unfairly allows the policy’s opponents to define it, and gives rise to the feeling (by modern-day appeasers) that the term is an ugly epithet which no one of good will really deserves.
But in fact it was Chamberlain himself who called his policy “appeasement”. And under that very name it was extremely popular, as witness the cheering crowds greeting his return from Munich, and his 369-150 vote of support in Commons.
So how did Chamberlain define appeasement? One of his best summations was the following, from his speech in defense of the Munich agreement, where Czechoslovakia was sold out in exchange for Hitler’s promises of peaceful behavior.
“We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a program would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with dictators, and of talks man to man on the basis that each, while maintaining his own ideas of the internal government of his country, is willing to allow that other systems may suit better other peoples.”
It is all there. The one stated purpose is “to avoid war,” not to protect the nation, and certainly not to defend democratic allies from aggression. The spirit of collaboration and good will is to be offered to and expected from aggressive dictators. There is the humble (and very modern) acknowledgement that democracy and freedom are not to be regarded as somehow better than dictatorship, along with the assumption that dictators will return our humility with a similar attitude toward their own Reichs.
Incredibly naïve, we now say. To think Hitler or Mussolini would be impressed by such man-to-man humility, such reasonableness, such pacifism.
Bu Chamberlain was dead right about one thing. “I cannot believe that such a program would be rejected by the people of this country.” Indeed not; it was very popular, and it remained so until it fell apart five months later, when Hitler broke every promise and “silent, mournful, abandoned, broken Czechoslovakia receded into the darkness” (or, to use more modern parlance, was wiped off the map.)
And appeasement still has its popular appeal. After all, which sentence of Chamberlain’s statement is inconsistent with the foreign policy of our present administration, and of the extremely popular politician who heads it?
President Obama’s recent foray into the wider world was positively Chamberlainesque (although there is no evidence that Chamberlain ever actually bowed to Hitler.) His humble apologies for our sins, his delicate refusal to criticize Iran’s warmongering or Saudi Arabia’s persecution of women or China’s dictatorship, his pious moral equivalence of Israel and Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah.
Still, maybe this time appeasement will work. You never know.
[Flashback: Bullwinkle: “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!” Rocky: “That trick never works.” Bullwinkle: “This time for sure.” Bullwinkle (after trick fails): “I gotta get a new hat.”]
Since I started by quoting Chamberlain’s defense of appeasement, let me finish with a critic – no, not Churchill, but Clement Attlee, leader of Britain’s Labour Party (who subsequently defeated Churchill in the first postwar election).
“This [Munich] has not been a victory for reason and humanity. It has been a victory for brute force….We have seen the cause of democracy, which is, in our view the cause of civilization and humanity, receive a terrible defeat….
“The prime minister has been the Dupe of the Dictators, and I say that today we are in a dangerous position.”
Yes, we are.
0 Responses to “Appeasement, Old and New”