The Spirit of Ulysses? Ideology and British Appeasement in the 1930s

The British government's appeasement of fascism in the 1930s derived not only from economic, political, and strategic constraints, but also from the personal ideologies of the policy makers. Widespread guilt about the terms of the Versailles Treaty and tensions with France created sympathy for German revisionism, but the Cabinet properly recognized that Nazi Germany represented the gravest threat to peace in the 1930s. Fear of war and the recognition that Britain would have to tolerate peaceful change underlay attempts to appease the dictators, culminating in the Munich agreement in September 1938. After Munich, continued German belligerence, the Kristallnacht, and British intelligence assessments indicating that Hitler was prepared to attack the Western powers led to a reassessment of appeasement. The British government gave security guarantees to several European countries, seeking to deter future aggression and to lay the groundwork for a successful war against Germany should it prove necessary. While most of the British elite detested communism, anti-communist views did not govern British policy; security considerations required Soviet support in Eastern Europe, and Britain and France made a determined effort to secure Soviet support for the Peace Front.     

The Rhetoric of Appeasement: Hitler's Legitimation and British Foreign Policy, 1938–39

Few grand strategies have been more scrutinized than Britain's decision to appease Nazi Germany. From 1933 to 1938, Britain eschewed confrontation and attempted to settle German demands. However in the five months following the negotiations at Munich, the British abandoned appeasement and embraced a policy of confronting the German state. The roots of both appeasement and confrontation can be found in Germany's legitimation strategies. Until the Munich crisis, Adolf Hitler justified Germany's aims with appeals to collective security, equality, and self-determination—norms central to the European system established by the Treaty of Versailles. After Munich, in contrast, German politicians abandoned these legitimation strategies, arguing instead that expansion was justified as a matter of German might, and not international rights. As Britain came to see German demands as illegitimate, so too did they decide this revisionist state was insatiable, impervious to negotiation, and responsive only to the language of force.     

Austen Chamberlain and the continental balance of power: strategy, stability, and the league of nations, 1924-29

As foreign secretary from November 1924 to June 1929, Austen Chamberlain dominated British foreign policy. Central to his diplomatic strategy was the maintenance of the European balance of power and, in this circumstance, pursuit of a leadership role for Britain within the League of Nations. The foundation upon which Chamberlain based his European strategy lay with his determination to have Britain play the vital role of stabilizing relations between France and Germany, whose mutual antipathy after the Great War, compounded by the severity of the Treaty of Versailles, threatened continental security. By October 1925, his work bore fruit with the conclusion of the Locarno agreements. For the remainder of his tenure at the Foreign Office, Chamberlain used Locarno - and Germany's membership in the League that was part of that settlement - as the diplomatic mechanism to underwrite his strategic conception of the balance of power. This article addresses the neglected issue of the strategic base of Chamberlain's European policy and addresses three criticisms of his record as foreign secretary.     

An Economic Bridgehead: Weimar Germany's Attempt to Mediate Between Soviet Russia and the United States

Between 1919 and 1926 Weimar Germany pursued a foreign policy that sought to place Germany in a position to mediate between Soviet Russia and the United States. In particular, Berlin was eager to act as a mediator in the economic and commercial relations between these two powers. Germany hoped that such a policy would align it with two Powers that, like itself, were hostile to the Versailles order. Berlin also hoped that such a relationship would contribute to German postwar economic recovery and thereby to Berlin's re-emergence as a Great Power in the aftermath of its defeat in 1918. This policy culminated in 1925–1926 with Berlin's efforts to arrange for American financing of a 300 million Mark credit to the Soviet Union. Ultimately this and other efforts failed as result of Germany's own financial weakness, Washington's refusal to cooperate with Berlin's initiatives, and the nature of the Soviet economic system.     

IAI annual report, 1971

Despite the belief of some that British Prime Minister Brown's attitudes towards the European Union could not be predicted, much in his period as Chancellor of the Exchequer suggested that Britain's role within the European Union would not be a high priority of his premiership. Early indications bear out this expectation. There will probably not be a British referendum on the Reform Treaty, but the rhetoric employed by Brown's government to describe the Treaty will be negative and minimalist. Although no significant body of British opinion favours withdrawal from the European Union, British popular resentment towards the Union is unlikely to disappear under Brown's leadership.     

Naming the Nation: A Critical Analysis of Names in Polish Political Discourse

This article offers a critical discursive analysis of proper names used in Polish political discourse, focusing on six addresses to the nation made by prominent public figures of the Polish political scene?the president, prime minister, and the primate of the Catholic Church. The names used in the speeches did not function merely as means of referring to places or persons. The speakers used them to construct an ideologically preferred reality. Those used by the president of Poland ''embellished'' the Communist past of the country and showed his political (post-Communist) option as a viable proposal for Poland. The speeches made by the primate of Poland created a politically uncontroversial image of the country, with the head of the Catholic Church positioned as a moral authority. Finally, the visible absence of names in the prime minister's speech represented the etatistic view of Poland.     

Maynard Keynes and the ‘Bamboozlement’ of Woodrow Wilson: What Really Happened at Paris? (Wilson,Lloyd George,pensions and pre-armistice agreement)

Woodrow Wilson’s acceptance of Lloyd George’s demand for the inclusion of military pensions among the reparations payable to the Allies under the Treaty of Versailles was stigmatized by J.M. Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace as the most notorious of the President’s alleged breaches of faith with Germany. Keynes’s damning verdict remains virtually unquestioned. This paper reconsiders the case for pensions, suggests that the question was less clear-cut than Keynes insisted, and queries his influential account of Wilson’s supposed gullibility and culpability. The paper then considers Lloyd George’s intentions in the Pre-armistice agreement, from which the Allied right to reparations and pensions were derived.     

Ethnos,demos and democratization: A comparison of the Czech Republic,Hungary and Poland

With the collapse of European communism, Western observers and leaders fostered new expectations about the relative likelihood for post‐communist nations to ‘join the West’. The Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary were seen as least problematic candidates, sponsored especially by the German leadership. A troubling issue however is the emerging pattern of ethnos‐politics, identity politics based on blood ties, as opposed to demos‐politics, civic politics based on universal territorial citizenship. In the Czech Republic this ethnos‐politics appears most clearly as anti‐Romany racism and governmental discrimination. In Poland and Hungary, centre‐right parties have developed a politics of ethnic patriotism which labels opponents as traitors and foreign elements. In these nations, political liberalism has been too weak and often too opportunist to offer a viable demos‐politics as a counterweight. Instead, the ex‐communist successor parties in Poland and Hungary have re‐emerged as the mass base for a non‐nationalist demos‐politics. The West has yet to take seriously the new ethnos‐politics, prefering to give priority to economic and foreign‐policy compatibility. The admission of these nations into the European Union or North Atlantic Treaty Organization would give new legitimacy to ethnos within the West, and reinforce the ethnos‐politics of Austria's Haider and France's LePen.     

T. Tamman (2011). The Last Ambassador: August Torma,Soldier, Diplomat,Spy

ABSTRACT

This article recounts the author’s experience as a junior diplomat in the British Diplomatic Service in the late 1960s handling the file of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s ex-deputy serving a life sentence in Spandau prison in Berlin. As the only Nazi leader still imprisoned there after the release in 1966 of Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach, his fate as 'the lone prisoner of Spandau’had become an international issue. Sentenced at the Nuremberg trial of 1946, his fate was a matter for the four powers still occupying Berlin. Moscow was determined that as the last remaining symbol of the Hitler regime Hess should die there. In the West, however, and especially in Britain, there was a press campaign for his release that put pressure on the Foreign Office by way of letters from the public and parliamentary questions. As a desk officer for Germany, it fell to me to handle this by writing or drafting replies to the effect that as Hess was a prisoner of all four powers the decision required consent, that Moscow was adamantly opposed, and that Britain could not act unilaterally. But the real target of the press campaign, spearheaded by the Beaverbrook press through the Daily and Sunday Express, was Harold Wilson’s Labour Government. Anything that could demonstrate his alleged ‘appeasement’ of Moscow was grist to its mill. The now weeded file in the National Archives gives little hint of this politically-motivated agenda.     

Sir Eric Phipps, the British Government, and the Appeasement of Germany, 1933-1937

This article argues that Sir Eric Phipps' reputation as an “anti-appeaser” of Germany during his Berlin embassy 1933-1937 is not accurate. While Phipps was not in favor of placating Hitler by making territorial concessions, he had much in common with those who had sought a rapprochement with Germany in the 1920s through a policy of inclusion and reconciliation. Particular importance is placed on Phipps' attitude towards the League of Nations, with detailed consideration also being accorded to his relationship with the British Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Office officials of the period, as well as his views on the Entente Cordiale.     

French Policy in the Rhineland

From the Treaty of Versailles through to the Dawes Plan, France tried, at various times, to pursue an active policy in the territories on the left bank of the Rhine, hoping eventually to create an autonomous political body in the Rhineland detached from Berlin. The methods and objectives were not always the same under Millerand, Briand, and Poincaré, the latter in particular envisaging this as a prelude to the total disintegration of Weimar Germany. The final halting of this Rhineland policy, as part of the outcome of the Ruhr invasion, marked clearly the limits of French power in the post-war era, though it is not certain if all of France's rulers grasped this.     

Sir Eric Phipps,the British Government,and the Appeasement of Germany, 1933–1937

This article argues that Sir Eric Phipps’ reputation as an “anti-appeaser” of Germany during his Berlin embassy 1933–1937 is not accurate. While Phipps was not in favor of placating Hitler by making territorial concessions, he had much in common with those who had sought a rapprochement with Germany in the 1920s through a policy of inclusion and reconciliation. Particular importance is placed on Phipps’ attitude towards the League of Nations, with detailed consideration also being accorded to his relationship with the British Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Office officials of the period, as well as his views on the Entente Cordiale.     

Nato Enlargement and the Spread of Democracy: Evidence and Expectations

The second enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since the end of the cold war fueled an ongoing debate over whether the alliance contributes to democratization in Europe. In the 1990s, critics warned that the 1999 NATO enlargement would cultivate a new cold war and prove irrelevant to democratic consolidation in central Europe. Events have not borne out these forecasts, however. In Poland, not only did NATO build a civilian consensus in favor of democratic control over the armed forces corresponding to NATO norms, but it also delegitimized Polish arguments for defense self-sufficiency that had derived their credibility from Poland's experience of military vulnerability and foreign domination. Such democratizing and denationalizing trends have contributed to stability in postcommunist Europe. An assessment of the seven states that joined in 2004 similarly reveals some scope for NATO's influence in all cases. The alliance's access to domestic reform processes, however, will be uneven across cases in ways largely consistent with the predictions of the theoretical framework in this article.

     

DISARMAMENT AND BIG BUSINESS: THE CASE OF KRUPP, 1918–1925

Well before 1914, the Krupp Steel Foundry in Essen had gained a world-wide reputation as a major producer of heavy weaponry. The disarmament procedures set in train initially by the armistice and thereafter by the Versailles Treaty would, therefore, impact massively on one of Europe's few large-scale steel producers, whether in terms of output or with regard to its influence in German politics. This article analyses such developments during the early 1920s, with special reference to the activities of the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission (IMCC), including their impact on production and on the workforce at the Krupp factories in Essen. It also investigates efforts by Krupp's management (and also German politicians) to evade military restrictions and also to maintain expertise in the production of heavy weaponry.     

Maynard Keynes and the 'Bamboozlement' of Woodrow Wilson: What Really Happened at Paris? (Wilson, Lloyd George, pensions and pre-armistice agreement)

Woodrow Wilson's acceptance of Lloyd George's demand for the inclusion of military pensions among the reparations payable to the Allies under the Treaty of Versailles was stigmatized by J.M. Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace as the most notorious of the President's alleged breaches of faith with Germany. Keynes's damning verdict remains virtually unquestioned. This paper reconsiders the case for pensions, suggests that the question was less clear-cut than Keynes insisted, and queries his influential account of Wilson's supposed gullibility and culpability. The paper then considers Lloyd George's intentions in the Pre-armistice agreement, from which the Allied right to reparations and pensions were derived.     

Dealing with the Intractable: A Possible Negotiating Position for the New British Ambassador to Berlin,Summer 1933

Foreign Office diplomats recognised the danger to British security posed by Adolph Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship of Germany in January 1933 but differed on how to meet this challenge. This article reproduces the hitherto unpublished draft instructions prepared by Owen O’Malley, a ranking official at the Foreign Office, for the newly appointed ambassador to Germany, Sir Eric Phipps, on taking up his posting in autumn 1933. Sir Robert Vansittart, the permanent under secretary, who took a sceptical but not entirely hostile view of O’Malley’s proposals, minutes O’Malley’s suggestion of a clear warning to Hitler, accompanied by the opening of negotiations with Nazi Germany recognising its enhanced position and the justice of some of its claims. Vansittart did not forward the draft memorandum to the foreign secretary, Sir John Simon, and there is, as far as I know, no copy of this in the public archives. Included is additional information on the clashes between the two men on how dictators should be treated as well as biographical information on the careers of the three men involved in this debate.     

Brockdorff-Rantzau and the Struggle for a Just Peace

Weimar Germany’s first foreign minister, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, presented the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 with a pamphlet of detailed German counterproposals to the peace terms. In a concise cover letter, which was translated into English by the author of the article, the experienced diplomat Brockdorff-Rantzau put forward his most convincing arguments for a fair settlement at Versailles. Though the counterproposals were ultimately rejected, this rare document represents one of the only direct attempts at negotiation that took place between Germany and the Allied powers. This article analyzes Brockdorff-Rantzau’s style of negotiation in order to discern whether the German government’s hopes for a balanced settlement were based on naiveté or cynicism. By outlining three coherent themes in his writings—anger/defensiveness, compromise, and the rule of law—this paper argues that Brockdorff-Rantzau’s words are indicative of a more cynical motivation behind his seemingly perspicuous arguments.     

‘A conference now': Lloyd George and peacemaking, 1939: Sidelights from the unpublished letters of A.J. Sylvester

Lloyd George's latest infatuation [with Hitler, after his visit to Germany in 1936] was something more than the momentary lapse of a failing dotard. To sup with the devil was completely in character for the man who, at the summit of affairs in 1919, had been drawn to power like a moth to a candle, who had come to worship success for its own sake and on its own terms and to make it the first and last determinant oi his actions; and who, for his final appearance on the world stage, a few years after the Berchtesgaden visit, aspired to a role that would reconcile power with practical politics ‐ that of a British counterpart to Marshal Petain; in which capacity, let it be said, he would doubtless have pulled off a better “deal” than most. (A. Lentin, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and the Guilt of Germany. An Essay in the Pre‐history of Appeasement, 1984, p. 154.)     

Sir Austen Chamberlain and British Foreign Policy 1931–37

This article seeks to analyze Sir Austen Chamberlain’s critique of British foreign policy in the six years before his death in 1937. It presents Chamberlain as one of the most perceptive contemporary observers of the international scene, and in particular of Hitler’s Germany. Unusually among British politicians, Chamberlain drew a direct causal connection between the domestic policy of the Nazi regime and its likely behaviour in the international arena. However, it is suggested that the basis for his understanding was an innate anti-Germanism, which can be dated back to his experiences as a young man in the 1880s.     

Austen Chamberlain and Britain's Relations with France, 1924–1929

Several historians have suggested that Austen Chamberlain's Francophile tendencies during his period as foreign secretary between 1924 and 1929 were the defining features of his European diplomatic strategy. By examining four key events: the rejection of the Geneva Protocol, the conclusion of the Treaty of Locarno, the Anglo–French Compromise on disarmament and the negotiation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, this article argues that Chamberlain's relationship with the French was not entirely harmonious. After the high point of Locarno, Britain's relations with France became increasingly tense because of Chamberlain's growing disillusionment with Briand's willingness to pursue a diplomatic agenda that did not have at its heart a reinvigorated Entente Cordiale.