Wednesday, March 24, 2004
The True Meaning Of Appeasement
According to some people, the recent tragedy in Madrid, Spain was compounded by the election loss of the ruling conservative government. According to this group, the incoming Socialist government is appeasing the terrorists by threatening to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq, and thus withdraw from the “coalition of the willing”.
What happened in Spain on March 11, 2004 (exactly 911 days after our tragedy of September 11, 2001) was so shocking and horrific that it went beyond what most Europeans had usually gone through. We won’t completely know why the Spanish voted the way they did, but many had said they were fed up with the previous government’s attempts of hiding the truth over who was responsible for the attacks.
Either way, whether one agrees with the people’s electoral verdict or not, this was democracy in action, and the Spanish people had spoken. To now claim that their act of democracy is defeatist and that they are aiding and abetting the terrorists is nothing but a disgrace. Does this mean that if Kerry wins in November that his election is also a victory for terrorists? (I know that some are already saying this!)
The term “appeasement” has been bandied about as of late where it has become synonymous with defeatism. The same argument was used during the Cold War whenever anyone spoke of negotiating with the Soviet Union or Communist China. It was only when Nixon and Kissinger introduced détente with the Soviets and visited Red China that the term “appeasing the enemy” was mostly discarded. Even then, there were still some diehards who accused Nixon of appeasement. Yet, how could such an arch anti-communist like Richard Nixon be considered an appeaser? (Thus, we have a modern proverb: “Only Nixon could go to China”.)
It may be hard to believe for many, but appeasement was once considered a valid form of policy. Those of you who know history will remember that appeasement was associated with Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister right before the Second World War. What many don’t know (or care not to remember) was the fact that Chamberlain was a member of the Tory (or Conservative) Party. I say this not for ideological reasons but to point to an irony that it’s often conservatives who use the term “appeasement” as a bullwhip against anyone who goes against them.
The fact is that the appeasement of Adolf Hitler was a conservative policy. Mind you, not all conservatives were appeasers. Certainly, Winston Churchill wasn’t, but he was in the “wilderness” and didn’t have as much influence then as he later did. The reason why many conservatives in Britain and elsewhere wanted to appease Hitler was because they saw Nazi Germany as a buffer and a bulwark against what they considered to be their real enemy – the Bolsheviks, Communist Russia, the Soviet Union.
When Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia in September 1938, thus threatening to plunge Europe into another war, Chamberlain did his darndest to prevent that from happening. The issue was the annexation of the Sudetenland region of western Czechoslovakia. This part of the country had a German-speaking population that Hitler claimed needed to be “liberated” and join with Germany. Austria had already been annexed earlier in the year (March 1938). On the face of it, it sounded reasonable. After all, wasn’t Hitler following Woodrow Wilson’s policy of popular sovereignty? If the Sudeten Germans wanted to join a Greater Germany, why should the Prague government stop them?
The issue for the Czech people was national sovereignty. Who was Germany, a very powerful nation, to bully a smaller country like Czechoslovakia? Besides, the Sudetenland was also a mountainous region that would have been well-defended by the Czech army. (That was to be found out afterwards, when the border was crossed without a fight!)
So, Prime Minister Chamberlain of Britain, Premier Daladier of France and that other Fascist, Mussolini of Italy convened with Hitler in Munich, Germany. There, Chamberlain, who seemed to fear war more than anything, decided to sell Czechoslovakia down the river. It didn’t matter to him that a small country’s national rights was trampled. Chamberlain thought he was doing the greater good – preventing a world war and keeping the Soviet Union at bay.
There are quite a few ironic tragedies here, but I’ll mention two. First, Czechoslovakia was the only democracy in Eastern Europe at that time. All of the other countries - Poland, Hungary, Austria (before the Anschluss), Bulgaria and Rumania – were all Fascist like Italy and Germany. At that time, democracy was seen as weak. People wanted order and the fascists gave it to them – at a price, of course! They also wanted to keep the Bolsheviks at bay, which leads to the second irony – the Soviet Union was willing to fight with the British in defense of Czechoslovakia.
Like many people, Josef Stalin had looked at Hitler’s rise to power with grave concern. (Of course, many people saw Stalin’s rise to power with equal graveness!) So, when Hitler annexed Austria and threatened Czechoslovakia, Stalin saw an inexorable German move eastward toward the Soviet Union. In order to prevent this, he tried to form an alliance with the British and the French against Nazi Germany. Chamberlain, like many conservatives, saw the Soviet Union as a larger threat than Nazi Germany, so he declined the offer. In fact, Stalin wasn’t even invited to Munich to discuss matters with the Big Four.
As it happened, Chamberlain waved a piece of paper to the British people saying that he had Hitler’s word that there will be no more threats. The Sudetenland was annexed, the German army crossed the border without a shot being fired, and they saw the formidable defenses that they would have come up against if they had! In the following year (March 1939), Hitler ignored Chamberlain’s piece of paper and annexed Czechoslovakia. (So much for giving his word!)
Meanwhile, Stalin was so miffed at the British that he had his foreign minister Molotov negotiate a non-aggression pact with his German counterpart, Ribbentrop. This “Pact of Steel” – much of which was secret – shocked the allies and woke Chamberlain and his fellow appeasers out of their demented slumber. It showed that two implacable foes, two ideological opposites, could actually form a partnership.
When it was time for Poland to be threatened, the British and French decided to help defend that country. Naturally, the Soviets didn’t join in this alliance. An irony here was that during the Czechoslovakian crisis the previous year, Poland had allied with Germany to help invade their neighbor to the south. (Why not help their fellow Fascists?)
One of the problems with defending Poland against Germany was that there were no natural defenses as Czechoslovakia had in the Sudetenland. When the invasion finally happened in September 1939, it was quick and complete. What made it worse was that the Soviet Union, fulfilling their end of the Pact of Steel, invaded Poland from the east two weeks after the initial invasion, thus splitting the country in two.
Meanwhile, in Britain, Chamberlain’s worst nightmare came true. His nation was at war, and the same blitzkrieg that destroyed Poland would do the same to his erstwhile ally France - as well as a number of smaller Western European countries. When his nation was then threatened with invasion, Chamberlain resigned and was replaced by Churchill. He would die a year later.
Frankly, looking back at it all, this was a clear case of the wrong people being in power. Neville Chamberlain, the arch-appeaser, thought that he needed to prevent war at all costs. He truly believed that the appeasement of such a powerful ruler was for the greater good. What he was too small-minded to see was what a monster Hitler was, but, to be fair, there were a number of people who were just as small-minded.
In 1940, when the Germans controlled most of Europe and threatened the British Isles with invasion, a neutral United States was in the throes of a strong isolationist movement. I won’t get into the motives of the Isolationists for there are many. However, among this group there were people who would fall into the appeasement camp – and I would hardly call them liberals!
At that time, a book was published called America and a New World Order written by Graeme K. Howard, an auto executive who headed the European division for General Motors. In it, Howard advocated that the U.S. ought to have dealings with Nazi Germany since it controlled most of Europe and it was therefore conducive for American business interests to work with this new order. Now, if that isn’t appeasement, what is? It didn’t matter much to Mr. Howard and his ilk that much of these “business dealings” with Nazi Germany would be on the backs of slave labor and with the blood from concentration camps. After all, we were dealing with a new world order!
Of course, we are seeing such things in retrospect, but many influential people of that time who were in positions of power just didn’t bother to notice the monsters in their midst. Now, their ideological heirs dare to cry “appeasement” and “defeatism”. It’s ironic that conservatives say “No more Munichs” when the Munich Agreement was a conservative policy failure. It’s only matched by liberals who say “No more Vietnams” which highlights a liberal policy failure – but that’s another story!
What happened in Spain on March 11, 2004 (exactly 911 days after our tragedy of September 11, 2001) was so shocking and horrific that it went beyond what most Europeans had usually gone through. We won’t completely know why the Spanish voted the way they did, but many had said they were fed up with the previous government’s attempts of hiding the truth over who was responsible for the attacks.
Either way, whether one agrees with the people’s electoral verdict or not, this was democracy in action, and the Spanish people had spoken. To now claim that their act of democracy is defeatist and that they are aiding and abetting the terrorists is nothing but a disgrace. Does this mean that if Kerry wins in November that his election is also a victory for terrorists? (I know that some are already saying this!)
The term “appeasement” has been bandied about as of late where it has become synonymous with defeatism. The same argument was used during the Cold War whenever anyone spoke of negotiating with the Soviet Union or Communist China. It was only when Nixon and Kissinger introduced détente with the Soviets and visited Red China that the term “appeasing the enemy” was mostly discarded. Even then, there were still some diehards who accused Nixon of appeasement. Yet, how could such an arch anti-communist like Richard Nixon be considered an appeaser? (Thus, we have a modern proverb: “Only Nixon could go to China”.)
It may be hard to believe for many, but appeasement was once considered a valid form of policy. Those of you who know history will remember that appeasement was associated with Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister right before the Second World War. What many don’t know (or care not to remember) was the fact that Chamberlain was a member of the Tory (or Conservative) Party. I say this not for ideological reasons but to point to an irony that it’s often conservatives who use the term “appeasement” as a bullwhip against anyone who goes against them.
The fact is that the appeasement of Adolf Hitler was a conservative policy. Mind you, not all conservatives were appeasers. Certainly, Winston Churchill wasn’t, but he was in the “wilderness” and didn’t have as much influence then as he later did. The reason why many conservatives in Britain and elsewhere wanted to appease Hitler was because they saw Nazi Germany as a buffer and a bulwark against what they considered to be their real enemy – the Bolsheviks, Communist Russia, the Soviet Union.
When Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia in September 1938, thus threatening to plunge Europe into another war, Chamberlain did his darndest to prevent that from happening. The issue was the annexation of the Sudetenland region of western Czechoslovakia. This part of the country had a German-speaking population that Hitler claimed needed to be “liberated” and join with Germany. Austria had already been annexed earlier in the year (March 1938). On the face of it, it sounded reasonable. After all, wasn’t Hitler following Woodrow Wilson’s policy of popular sovereignty? If the Sudeten Germans wanted to join a Greater Germany, why should the Prague government stop them?
The issue for the Czech people was national sovereignty. Who was Germany, a very powerful nation, to bully a smaller country like Czechoslovakia? Besides, the Sudetenland was also a mountainous region that would have been well-defended by the Czech army. (That was to be found out afterwards, when the border was crossed without a fight!)
So, Prime Minister Chamberlain of Britain, Premier Daladier of France and that other Fascist, Mussolini of Italy convened with Hitler in Munich, Germany. There, Chamberlain, who seemed to fear war more than anything, decided to sell Czechoslovakia down the river. It didn’t matter to him that a small country’s national rights was trampled. Chamberlain thought he was doing the greater good – preventing a world war and keeping the Soviet Union at bay.
There are quite a few ironic tragedies here, but I’ll mention two. First, Czechoslovakia was the only democracy in Eastern Europe at that time. All of the other countries - Poland, Hungary, Austria (before the Anschluss), Bulgaria and Rumania – were all Fascist like Italy and Germany. At that time, democracy was seen as weak. People wanted order and the fascists gave it to them – at a price, of course! They also wanted to keep the Bolsheviks at bay, which leads to the second irony – the Soviet Union was willing to fight with the British in defense of Czechoslovakia.
Like many people, Josef Stalin had looked at Hitler’s rise to power with grave concern. (Of course, many people saw Stalin’s rise to power with equal graveness!) So, when Hitler annexed Austria and threatened Czechoslovakia, Stalin saw an inexorable German move eastward toward the Soviet Union. In order to prevent this, he tried to form an alliance with the British and the French against Nazi Germany. Chamberlain, like many conservatives, saw the Soviet Union as a larger threat than Nazi Germany, so he declined the offer. In fact, Stalin wasn’t even invited to Munich to discuss matters with the Big Four.
As it happened, Chamberlain waved a piece of paper to the British people saying that he had Hitler’s word that there will be no more threats. The Sudetenland was annexed, the German army crossed the border without a shot being fired, and they saw the formidable defenses that they would have come up against if they had! In the following year (March 1939), Hitler ignored Chamberlain’s piece of paper and annexed Czechoslovakia. (So much for giving his word!)
Meanwhile, Stalin was so miffed at the British that he had his foreign minister Molotov negotiate a non-aggression pact with his German counterpart, Ribbentrop. This “Pact of Steel” – much of which was secret – shocked the allies and woke Chamberlain and his fellow appeasers out of their demented slumber. It showed that two implacable foes, two ideological opposites, could actually form a partnership.
When it was time for Poland to be threatened, the British and French decided to help defend that country. Naturally, the Soviets didn’t join in this alliance. An irony here was that during the Czechoslovakian crisis the previous year, Poland had allied with Germany to help invade their neighbor to the south. (Why not help their fellow Fascists?)
One of the problems with defending Poland against Germany was that there were no natural defenses as Czechoslovakia had in the Sudetenland. When the invasion finally happened in September 1939, it was quick and complete. What made it worse was that the Soviet Union, fulfilling their end of the Pact of Steel, invaded Poland from the east two weeks after the initial invasion, thus splitting the country in two.
Meanwhile, in Britain, Chamberlain’s worst nightmare came true. His nation was at war, and the same blitzkrieg that destroyed Poland would do the same to his erstwhile ally France - as well as a number of smaller Western European countries. When his nation was then threatened with invasion, Chamberlain resigned and was replaced by Churchill. He would die a year later.
Frankly, looking back at it all, this was a clear case of the wrong people being in power. Neville Chamberlain, the arch-appeaser, thought that he needed to prevent war at all costs. He truly believed that the appeasement of such a powerful ruler was for the greater good. What he was too small-minded to see was what a monster Hitler was, but, to be fair, there were a number of people who were just as small-minded.
In 1940, when the Germans controlled most of Europe and threatened the British Isles with invasion, a neutral United States was in the throes of a strong isolationist movement. I won’t get into the motives of the Isolationists for there are many. However, among this group there were people who would fall into the appeasement camp – and I would hardly call them liberals!
At that time, a book was published called America and a New World Order written by Graeme K. Howard, an auto executive who headed the European division for General Motors. In it, Howard advocated that the U.S. ought to have dealings with Nazi Germany since it controlled most of Europe and it was therefore conducive for American business interests to work with this new order. Now, if that isn’t appeasement, what is? It didn’t matter much to Mr. Howard and his ilk that much of these “business dealings” with Nazi Germany would be on the backs of slave labor and with the blood from concentration camps. After all, we were dealing with a new world order!
Of course, we are seeing such things in retrospect, but many influential people of that time who were in positions of power just didn’t bother to notice the monsters in their midst. Now, their ideological heirs dare to cry “appeasement” and “defeatism”. It’s ironic that conservatives say “No more Munichs” when the Munich Agreement was a conservative policy failure. It’s only matched by liberals who say “No more Vietnams” which highlights a liberal policy failure – but that’s another story!
Let Me Introduce Myself
After writing essays for my newsletter Gleanings these past couple of years, I've decided to venture into the land of weblogs. So, here's my first blog! I don't have much to say right now, not because there aren't any worthy topics. On the contrary! Events of the last couple of weeks - not to mention the last few days! - cry out for commentary!
Let's just say that I have to gather my thoughts before I started plunging into this brave new world of blogging! For those who are familiar with my writings in Gleanings, you know what to expect. For those who don't, I hope you'll enjoy the show!
Let's just say that I have to gather my thoughts before I started plunging into this brave new world of blogging! For those who are familiar with my writings in Gleanings, you know what to expect. For those who don't, I hope you'll enjoy the show!
