„I fear another Munich Agreement is in the making”

You have studied a period that we all know how it ended. Keeping that in mind, how was it like for you, Tim Bouverie, to write this book?

We all know that appeasement ended in the most catastrophic war in human history. But people at the time didn’t know that. Reading the diaries of leading British politi­cians, journalists, and diplomats from that period felt like following a Greek tragedy.

What makes your approach special?

The idea behind the book was to give readers the feeling of living through the 1930s from a British or French perspective—including the moral and political dilemmas of the time. My book draws on an enormous amount of contem­porary material, such as private diaries and diplo­matic corre­spon­dence. This allows me to recount the history in minute detail, right up to specific highlights such as Austria’s annex­ation by the German Reich in 1938 and the Munich Agreement in the same year. It brings to light the enormous uncer­tainties, the lack of infor­mation, the competing views and the debates that took place at the time.

I also wanted to focus on the very unusual phenomenon of amateur diplomats. They were all members of the British ruling elite and were sent on various fact finding or peace missions to Germany in the 1930s. I also question some of the arguments that are still used today in order to defend appeasement. One of these is the idea that Prime Minister Chamberlain sought to delay the war through the Munich Agreement in order to give Britain time to prepare for war. But histor­i­cally this is untenable.

How did the British perceive the Munich Agreement at that time?

The perception exists that the British only awoke from their appeasement slumber when Hitler renounced the Munich Agreement and invaded the whole of Czecho­slo­vakia in March 1939. However, my research has shown that the Munich Agree­ment’s luster had faded much earlier. At first, people were simply relieved that Britain and France would not go to war in September 1938. But it quickly became clear that there had been no need to prepare for a German attack by queuing up for gas masks and digging trenches in public parks. People also quickly realized that it was the weakness of Great Britain and France that made the Munich Agreement possible.

The first in a series of important events you examine is the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. What makes this war – and the inter­na­tional response to it – so significant?

The Abyssinian War of 1935/​36 destroyed the credi­bility of the League of Nations. The lackluster response of Britain and France, which consisted of imposing only a few mild sanctions on Italy, showed that democ­racies would bow to violence and aggression. If Britain and France had stood up to Mussolini – which they could have done very easily, for example by blockading the Suez Canal or preventing Italian ships from supplying Italian troops or even trans­porting them to Abyssinia – Hitler might have thought twice about remil­i­ta­rizing the Rhineland in March 1936. Instead, in the wake of the Abyssinian War, Britian and France only showed how weak they were. I think that is a timeless lesson. If a dictator can commit an illegal war or terri­torial seizure without being punished and without facing conse­quence – because the law-abiding parts of the world do nothing about it or no serious conse­quences follow – than it only encourages other dictators or would-be rulers to do the same.

How did Hitler respond to the Italian aggression?

Until World War II, Hitler had often tried to emulate Mussolini. It was Mussolini’s successful march on Rome in 1922 that inspired Hitler’s attempted coup in Munich in 1923. The Italian invasion of Abyssinia was also something Hitler admired and wanted to emulate. The German remil­i­ta­rization of the Rhineland in 1936 was a huge gamble. The French could have easily pushed back the few German troops that entered the demil­i­ta­rized zone. Hitler was aware of this, but he had observed how democ­racies failed to prevent Mussolini from taking Abyssinia. Instead, they had tried to appease Mussolini with an agreement. Mussolini was rewarded for his aggression with the cession of two-thirds of occupied Abyssinia.

How do you explain the reactions of Great Britain and France to this event?

In both countries, there was a clear conviction that the public had no interest in a British-French inter­vention in Abyssinia. In the 1930s, the British faced three potential enemies: Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan. The chiefs of staff constantly warned the British cabinet that it would be impos­sible for the empire to face all three enemies at once. It was believed that Mussolini posed the least threat amongst these enemies. Only Germany, which was considered the most threat­ening nation to Western European democ­racies at the time, would benefit from a serious conflict or war between Italy, Great Britain, and France. Moreover, the Italian invasion was simply not as shocking to parts of the British ruling class: A colonial war in distant Africa seemed less of an immediate threat to British and French interests than a war in Europe.

However: What Britain and France failed to recognize was the connection between all these actions. Do you see any parallels with today?

I would say that Putin’s Abyssinia or Putin’s Rhineland was the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbass in 2014. Putin waited to see what the West would do. And the West did nothing. That is precisely why Putin was reasonably confident that the West would not take any action even when he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But, like Hitler, who thought that the British and French would always respond with appeasement, Putin’s assumption proved to be wrong.

Those who have pursued appeasement for a long time find it difficult to convince dictators and aggressors that they will eventually resist. This can lead to serious misjudg­ments on the part of dictators as well – just as the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a serious misjudgment on Putin’s part. The invasions of Nazi Germany in Poland and later in France were also enormous miscal­cu­la­tions because Hitler assumed that the democ­racies would either not fight or that the British would surrender once France had been defeated.

Your book clearly shows that events in Germany and further devel­op­ments under the Nazi regime were closely followed abroad from an early stage. What trends can be seen in the corre­spon­dence of diplomats and in the reports of media reporters who traveled to Nazi Germany? What did they perceive—and what did they fail to perceive?

There are two impres­sions that are almost diamet­ri­cally opposed. There was very strict censorship in Germany. Never­theless, there was extensive reporting abroad on the disman­tling of German democracy and the estab­lishment of an author­i­tarian dicta­torship, on the perse­cution of Jews and, increas­ingly, on militarism. That caused great concern, especially among centrists and leftists in Great Britain. However, between 1934 and 1936, visitors from both the British right and center-left were extremely impressed by the self-confi­dence of a nation that had been defeated in World War I and had subse­quently suffered greatly from the global economic crisis. They admired the way streets had been cleaned up, that homeless had been cleared away, and that unemployment appeared to have been tackled. However, what these reports failed to take into account, was the fact that unemployment was being combated primarily by boosting the German war economy.

What ideological distor­tions did these reports involve?

In the 1930s, the fear of communism was far greater than the fear of fascism. Most people in France were alarmed, but perhaps even more so in Britain, where private property is considered a corner­stone of democracy and freedom, as well as of successful capitalism. Most Britons found the treatment of German Jews distasteful and abhorrent. Only very few sympa­thized with it. The Reich­s­pogrom­nacht in November 1938 led to an uproar in all parts of society. Those on the right who despised communism admired Nazism in many ways and were ambivalent about anti-Semitism or even anti-Semitic themselves. In the wake of the November pogroms of 1938, however, many right-wingers in the British estab­lishment declared publicly for the first time that Britain could not possibly expect to have normal relations with a country that behaved so barbar­i­cally. It is very inter­esting that a German atrocity in their own country convinced former defenders of Nazism in Britain that recon­cil­i­ation with the Hitler regime was no longer possible.

Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was published in its original German version in 1923 and became required reading for Germans after the Nazis came to power ten years later. How was “Mein Kampf” perceived and discussed by British diplomats and journalists?

It is aston­ishing how little “Mein Kampf” was read by British and French politi­cians and diplomats. However, some studied the book carefully. Britain’s first ambas­sador to Berlin during the Nazi era, Sir Horace Rumbold, wrote a masterful dispatch based on his reading of “Mein Kampf” in which he very accurately predicted the devel­opment and ambitions of the Hitler regime. In his book, Hitler writes not only about his well-known desire to acquire so-called Leben­sraum in Eastern Europe and Russia, but also about Germany’s need to settle accounts once and for all with its old antag­o­nists, Great Britain and France. Hitler owned the copyright to “Mein Kampf”, which allowed him to control its publi­cation. The trans­lated version was a third shorter than the original and contained less inflam­matory material.

Occasionally, British diplomats or visitors to Nazi Germany asked about “Mein Kampf,” saying, “Well, your leader says he wants a war of revenge, that the nation must be in a permanent state of war, that he glorifies war.” They always received the same answer: “Oh, don’t pay any attention to that. He wrote that when he was very young and in prison.” This concept is familiar to us today from other heads of state. It is often said that they would no longer be so radical once they came to power, as the system would protect them from their more extreme state­ments made while in opposition. It is irritating that British diplomats and visitors were told to dismiss “Mein Kampf” as juvenilia, when it was required reading in Nazi Germany.

What role did this naivety and credulity play in diplo­matic dealings with Hitler?

The British ambas­sadors to Germany got worse and worse. Sir Horace Rumbold was very perceptive but had to retire in July 1933. He was replaced by Sir Eric Phipps, who wrote some very good dispatches but tended toward appeasement. His successor, Sir Neville Henderson was a complete disaster as a diplomat. Many diplomats actually believed Hitler when he said he did not want war. In reality however, Hitler tried as long as possible to hide his ambitions from the West in order to lull it into a false sense of security. And indeed, Hitler did not want war with the British Empire. But the price for all of this was that Britain had to allow German hegemony in Europe.

One of the most important – and at the same time most tragic – protag­o­nists in your book is British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Who was this man? What is his legacy?

The common image of Neville Chamberlain is that of a weak prime minister who appeased Hitler and was ineffective in doing so. As a person, however, he was a very strong and deter­mined prime minister who had a broad parlia­mentary majority behind him and was absolutely convinced that he was right and knew what he was doing. Chamberlain was deter­mined and resolute. He also acted extremely ruthlessly. As prime minister, he used the secret services to spy on his political opponents and resorted to dirty tricks to discredit people like Winston Churchill, who were critical of his appeasement policy, within the Conser­v­ative Party.

Neville Chamberlain was a man of peace. He had not fought in World War I like Churchill, for example. Chamberlain found war completely abhorrent and incom­pre­hen­sible. Chamberlain simply could not under­stand Hitler. He simply could not under­stand anyone who wanted war. He could not comprehend how a man who had also been in the trenches during World War I could really want war. Before becoming prime minister, Chamberlain had been mayor of Birmingham and had led a rather provincial life. One of his opponents within the Conser­v­ative Party quipped after his death: “The problem with Neville Chamberlain is that he never met anyone in Birmingham who was like Adolf Hitler.”

Another histor­i­cally important figure in your book is someone who still remains somewhat in the background: Winston Churchill. In today’s Britain, his legacy is contro­versial given his involvement in British colonial rule as a politician, soldier, and former war corre­spondent. What is his legacy?

Winston Churchill contra­dicts our current, often sancti­mo­nious moral sensi­bil­ities on numerous issues. Like most of his political contem­po­raries, Churchill had Victorian ideas about race and was an imperi­alist. That is one side of his person­ality, which can certainly be criti­cized. However, unlike many of his contem­po­raries, he did not harbor anti-Semitism. And one of the reasons why Churchill was able to recognize National Socialism as such a great threat and as a sinister ideology at an early stage was the anti-Semitic character of that regime.

Churchill was able to under­stand someone like Hitler, partly because of his historical imagi­nation and his war mentality. Even before Hitler came to power, Churchill believed that Germany could start a war to avenge the humil­i­ation of Versailles. He was almost alone among British conser­v­a­tives in this view.

Britain did not win the Second World War. The support of the United States and the heroism of the Red Army were necessary to defeat Germany. But in my opinion, Churchill and the British people denied Hitler victory: Hitler came closest to victory when the war cabinet in London debated negoti­a­tions with Hitler in the face of France’s collapse. Churchill rejected this. Peace at that point would have made it almost impos­sible to overthrow the Nazi regime. Hitler would have subse­quently under­mined the British Empire and then threatened areas of the world where the United States was active. If Britain had surren­dered in 1940, it would have been very difficult to save the world from Nazism.

How can a comparison between the British appeasers and anti-appeasers of that time help us to better under­stand the current geopo­litical changes and challenges?

The British appeasers claimed that Eastern and Central Europe had never been a concern of Great Britain. As a maritime and world power, the British should be much more concerned with events in Ceylon than with events in Slovakia. Poland, it was said, was not even strate­gi­cally worth the bones of a single British grenadier.

The anti-appeasers, on the other hand, had a very strong awareness of Britain’s history – not only as an empire, but also as part of Europe. For them, British policy had been guided by a single principle for several hundred years: namely, to prevent a single power from dominating the continent. That was why Britain fought against the French revolu­tionary armies and Napoleon; that was why Britain fought against the German Kaiser in World War I; and that was why Britain and France finally went to war in 1939 to prevent Nazi Germany from dominating the continent.

Dictators must be stopped at some point. If Chamber­lain’s assessment of Hitler had been correct, then the Munich Agreement of 1938 would have made sense, even if it may have been immoral and dishon­orable. Chamberlain returned from his three meetings with Hitler believing his promise that he did not want all of Czecho­slo­vakia and was only inter­ested in bringing the German-speaking population into his empire. For Chamberlain, the partition of Czecho­slo­vakia was better than another European war.

Today, with Putin, one has to ask whether he is really prepared to stop his expansion in view of the agree­ments proposed by Trump. If it could be guaranteed that the annex­ation of Crimea and Donbass would be the end, then perhaps there would be something to be said for an agreement, however immoral it might be. But I have serious doubts that Putin will stop. I think an agreement would only be a respite.

What funda­mental lessons can be learned from the period of appeasement?

Analyze your opponents, potential opponents, or aggressors clearly, realis­ti­cally, and thoroughly. What are their true goals? What are they trying to achieve, and what is their long-term goal? Does this corre­spond to what they are currently claiming? So, can Putin be trusted in a possible peace agreement in Ukraine? Will this agreement be another Munich Agreement, or is it a genuine cessation of hostil­ities? I fear that another Munich is in the making.

Secondly, do not neglect your own defense. As wrong as Donald Trump is about most things, he is right when he says that Europe has neglected its defense for far too long. Now is the time to rebuild it.

And thirdly, don’t take your allies for granted. The world has become much smaller since World War II. Many of the threats we face as a planet and as a species – from climate change to pandemics to cyber­warfare – can only be addressed at the multi­lateral level. Allies are very important, even if they can sometimes be annoying. As Winston Churchill said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than a powerful enemy, and that is a weak ally.” Even the United States may soon realize this.

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