"Why did the Anglo-French appease Hitler? " Topic

"In books written immediately after 1945, historians blamed the French and especially the English leaders that their appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1939 caused the WW2. However, the appeasement myth is present even today, although the opinions of what led to the WW2 have changed more or less. Therefore, it is very important to shed light on the reasons that made the Western leadership implement such a controversial policy towards a dictator like Hitler…"
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Amicalement
Armand

We could argue various things, but first, could someone explain to me why, if the British started rearmament in 1932-33 (and that's also when the French put a few things in motion) they can't reasonably be expected to keep up with the Germans who start in 1933 and from a much lower base?
Then we can go on to why it was somehow evil for the US to expect Europeans to deal with European affairs. When it came to the British and French Empires, we were told to mind our own business, but evidently we were supposed to keep up a fair-size army in case their own bad decisions at Versailles and later came back to haunt them.

They were hoping common sense would prevail

After all, even with their head start in 1940 the Anglo-French still had more tanks and guns than the Germans

It's important to understand what happened in 1914. Nobody wanted war, everybody expected that the concert of Europe would step in and defuse the whole thing. The leaders of Europe made the assumption they could rattle their sabers in a limited war at worst and everybody else would back down and that's where the system put in place to prevent war initiated the conditions in which nobody could back up again.

1814 had been the turning point of European history. The great European Civil War which had started in the 16th century was now entering a phase of 100 years of relative peace. But by 1870 there had been a dramatic shift. The idea that a unified would become a balancing factor against the aspirations of France simply shifted the problem to the other side of the border. It didn't help that "Cousin Willie" became isolated and resentful to the rest of the family.

Wilhelm was not a wannabe conqueror, he was a militarist and dreamed of endless glory, but he didn't see the invasion of other nations as inevitable, not the way Napoleon and Hitler saw it.

So when it happened, nobody wanted to go to war, but nobody would avoid it once it happened because Europe's powers had been rubbing together for years like tectonic plates ready to snap.

What followed was almost incomprehensible to the people at the time. Nobody had ever experienced a war where soldiers were permanently in the field, fighting in the same area year after year, summer or winter. Wars were mainly long periods of inactivity, interspersed with campaigns and the odd battle. Now a battle itself would go on for months on end.

This is a double whammy, people had become complacent about war and were suddenly trust into something that had no common ground with what anyone had experienced up to that time. Aside from a rising peace movement there were those who deduced that another such conflict would be a costly disaster, it might not cripple individual nations, but the whole of Europe and the rest of the world. The Great War had dramatic consequences in that many of the leading houses were now gone, the economic and human cost was staggering and there was no real resolution to the imbalance that had caused the war, and the attempts to limit the threat from Germany only made things worse.

A first effort was made to renew the fundamentally sound principle of the Concert of Europe where mediation by other nations was used to defuse potential problems and expand it into the League of Nations. Often decried as flawed, it was a better version of an instrument that had proven itself before.

The core of the problem was that unlike 1914, by 1939 we were dealing with very different leaders. France and Britain were still trying to deal rationally with a regime that despised every possible civilized discourse and was only looking for opportunities to score at the expense of others. There lies the fundamental problem that people kept hoping that Herr Hitler was a rational man who would see that precipitating Europe into another war was not to anyone's advantage. The problem was that Hitler didn't wand a peaceful resolution, he desired war, he desired power and he would not act rationally. He was convinced that democracies were weak and would be swept aside by a system of authoritarian regimes where only the strongest could prevail.

Democratic politicians were tied to the vote. Choose for war and you ran the risk of causing instability. France was already politically unstable. The French far right despised anything German but were enthralled by the idea of a strong leader like Hitler or Mussolini. The left was possibly even more vehemently anti-German and anti-Hitler but the communists followed the great example of Moscow.

The British establishment was also rocking harder than they wished for. Churchill was one of the few dissenting voices at a time where Whitehall tried to steady the ship above all and deal with Germany even if it meant giving up chunks of Europe.

And there lies the underlying problem in the years leading to the war. Just like nobody expected a conflict on the scale of the Great War based on previous experience, nobody expected something like the Second World War.

I think that at best people had some idea of what might happen, but I doubt that anyone would imagine the sheer scope of the conflict to come.

From our perspective it looks like an open and shut case, let's drive tanks all the way to Berlin and kick Hitler in the head until it's red mulch with a funny mustache. From the 1930's perspective it's hard to tell if Hitler is just posturing or is really a threat. Even the display of military might rising to a crescendo didn't convince everyone it was a sound idea to plunge Europe into a war if Hitler was just another misread Wilhelm and we plunge into another war without a clear resolution, who might we have to deal with then ?

It's easy to say "rearm and go to war" when that's exactly what got people into this mess in the first place.

We are doomed to have hindsight, we know of the horrors that happen, we know there was a chance the Europe could have escaped this problem if only people had to make the right choices.

And that's I pose to you the following problem. North Korea, propose a fix. Do you go to war ? Do you appease ? Do you wait until the regime implodes ?

We could argue various things, but first, could someone explain to me why, if the British started rearmament in 1932-33 (and that's also when the French put a few things in motion) they can't reasonably be expected to keep up with the Germans who start in 1933 and from a much lower base?

So Britain and France started to re-arm before Hitler came to power? That's a new one Robert, and contrary to the facts as I have read them. Who were they re-arming against? Of course, if you believe that re-armament started in 1934 then it becomes clear who they were preparing for.

Actually, deephorse, Robert is correct. The British started re-arming early on. A large effort was devoted to developing a longer range bomber as a deterrent to German aggression.

Actually, contrary to the facts as I understand them, too, deephorse. But if you read Tango's link, that's what it says--Britain begins rearming in 1932. And there is some motion, but not much.

And, as I said,the French really are (very slowly) limbering up in terms of building a modern tank force as soon as Hitler comes in, with a few preliminary steps earlier. But the tanks trickle in late for internal French reasons--orders in small batches, nationalization of key plants and a union opposition to shift work among others. As it was with the Brits, building a deterrent military would have inconvenienced a lot of people. The "leadership" of those years gave the populace what it wanted and not what it needed. The article, to say the least, doesn't stress this.

My own personal reason for appeasement, which the article doesn't mention at all? Too much of what Hitler wanted was reasonable. The Germans had been shafted at Versailles, and by now it was pretty obvious. Hitler was a hateful person on all kinds of levels, and proved to be a serious threat to peace--but in 1938 a lot of that was mind reading. He was re-arming, yes, but every German government since 1919 had protested the restrictions on the German Army. The Rhineland was German territory. Austria had petitioned to join Germany in 1919, and when German troops moved in, they were met with flags and flowers. The Sudetenland was solidly ethnic German, given to the Czechs very much against their own wishes in 1919. If Hitler had stuck to the Munich agreement--that he could have the Sudetenland, but it must be his "last territorial demand in Europe"--meaning he wrote off the German populations of Alsace, upper Silesia and West Prussia--appeasement would be one of the world's great diplomatic success stories. It was only his annexation of the rest of Czechoslovakia--excuse me: "Bohemia and Moravia"--which made it clear to everyone that in fact Hitler's word was worthless, and he couldn't be stopped without the use of force. And in fact, from that point, France and Britain abandon appeasement, even signing a treaty with indefensible Poland.

The problem was not appeasement as such, but the failure to build a military force capable of dealing with Hitler should appeasement fail. Frederick's right: the western allies had more men and tanks, but they had no training, doctrine or more important attitude which would do anything but let them wait for Hitler's next blow to fall. The French were to a degree unlucky in 1940. But if you stand on the defensive with your industry near your border, you're betting pretty heavily on not being unlucky even once.

In time of peace, prepare for war. Don't go looking for a fight, but be prepared.

@robert

In my view, your latter assessment has a lot of good observation and analysis. I would agree with pretty much everything you stated.

But there is a component which I think is missing from your assessment, which is touched on a bit by Patrick R. But I would start with his initial observations, and take them in a different direction.

It is important to remember two factors that I believe had a significant impact on French and British political decision-making in the 1930s.

First is that they were democracies. Hitler was a populist (as were the Soviets more-or-less). We frequently miss this, in democratic societies, when we discuss totalitarian regimes. But while he put a lot of emphasis on propaganda, and feeding populist sentiment remained important to him not only in his initial rise to power but as he ruled over a period of years, he didn't face voters even one time after he gained high office. French and British political leaders did.

Second is that France and Britain were the winners in 1918.

The linkage between these two is critical. France and Britain won the war in 1918. But the common man did not feel like a winner. The cost of the "great" war was overwhelming. No local community was sheltered from the deaths of cherished sons. The number of "great war" memorials, in almost every little township and hamlet across Europe, is even to this day a surprise to me, and I have a pretty good appreciation of the history.

The common man in France or the UK drew a different conclusion from the experiences of WW1 than the common man in Germany. The German common man (with help from very active propaganda campaigns) concluded mainly that losing was a bad thing. The French or British common man reached a conclusion much more along the lines that war was a bad thing, even for the winners.

In France and Britain, with divisions of left vs. right, communist vs. socialist vs. capitalist vs. royalist, labor vs. management vs. Catholic vs. Anglican / protestant vs. anarchist vs. nihilist, about the only thing the electorate was likely to agree on was that any politician who looked like he was preparing for war was going to lose in the next election.

When you adopt the perspective that war is bad, it is easy to lose sight of the perspective that, even if war is bad, winning is less bad than losing.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Good discussions, y'all. Thanks.

Jim

Great analysis and modern-day analogy, Patrick R. Thank you.

Great thread,very interesting topic. Thanks all for the comments…the 'war is bad but losing the war is worse' vein is a gem.

The re-armament started in the early Thirties was more akin to modernisation of 20+ year old equipment…..mechanisation of the British Army was achievable because of the industrial capability of GB and the small size of the regular army. Much of the aeronautical development was carried out privately and funded by post-Depression growth.

Ww1 trauma.
Massive losses, not just the dead but the millions of crippled ones.
France and up to a point Uk, never were the same afterwards.
The Germans had a bigger population so the trauma was a bit less vivid.

A bit like ww2 for the soviets, no western country can understand the extand of the deep destruction that ww2 brought.

The directing idea was "never against" ww1 was to be the last one.

Then the Franco brits were also eying towards the threat of the bolcheviks, wotness their helping Finland.
For some Adolf was a barrage against this threat. For a while, till the pact.

"Great thread,very interesting topic…."

Totally agree!.

Many thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Starting the timeline in the 1930s makes it easy to overlook one of the main motives behind the appeasement movement. It wasn't simply the desire to avoid war caused the U.K. and France to try and buy Hitler off.

Germany had been seeking to avoid the requirements of Versailles since the 1920s and the french had learned unilateral efforts to enforce those terms would result in condemnation of the French. This taught the French they needed at least diplomatically to act in conjunction with the British. The problem was that in the U.K. there was the belief by many that the Versailles terms were too harsh and "justice" required revision of those terms. There was also an element of economic self interest, and possibly a fear of a Communist takeover in Germany. Each time Hitler moved forward there was always a group who would be willing to argue the justice of the move, and another group willing to argue it was not in the interests of the U.K. and France to go to war over the issue.

Part of the French problem was that they rearmed too soon, so that by the time the war came much of their equipment was behind the times. In short, they were well-prepared to fight the last war over again. A common failure among military and political leaders of all times and places.

I think as some have said. Many alive and/or in leadership positions/in power at that time did not want to see another war like WWI. Which only happened about 20 years before.

Many rearmed not too long after WWI. But I think they were seeing that as more as a deterrent. So to appear so powerful that their "enemies" would not think about attacking.

Of course I'd think the majority of Germans at that time after WWI were suffering greatly with the restrictions imposed on them by the allies, a very poor economic and political situation, etc. So anything that looked like it could change that, a return to "normalcy" … may have sounded good.