Description
Book SynopsisStanding against conventional wisdom, historian James Levy reevaluates Britain''s twin policies of appeasement and rearmament in the late 1930s. By carefully examining the political and economic environment of the times, Levy argues that Neville Chamberlain crafted an active, logical and morally defensible foreign policy designed to avoid and deter a potentially devastating war. Levy shows that through Chamberlain''s experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he knew that Britain had not yet fully recovered from the first World War and the longer an international confrontation could be avoided, the better Britain''s chances of weathering the storm. In the end, Hitler could be neither appeased nor deterred, and recognizing this, Britain and France went into war better armed and better prepared to fight.
Trade ReviewIt will be readily agreed that [Levy] has produced a lively argument that will stimulate discussion. * War in History, April 2008 *
Forty years after his death, Winston Churchill's self-serving demonisation of the appeasers of the 1930s still holds the center-ground of popular historiography. It has much to answer for. Any political inadequate on the world stage can invite Churchillian comparison merely by curtailing diplomatic processes and urging pre-emptive aggression. In fact, diplomacy had impressive 'form' in British foreign policy—for example, towards France in the early 1900s, and towards the USA in the 1920s. And given Britain's strategic, political and economic situation, it made both pragmatic and ethical sense in the late '30s. James P. Levy's succinct and beautifully written synthesis of the case for the tandem policies of appeasement and rearmament places them in their proper context and relationship. It is a sorry indictment of the objectivity of the historical profession that such a book should still be so necessary. -- Andrew Gordon, King's College London
Table of Contents1 Acknowledgment 2 Introduction 3 The Twenty-Year Truce 4 1936 5 Rearmament 6 1937-Chamberlain 7 1938-Munich 8 1939-To War 9 Epilogue: 1940 10 Conclusion 11 Bibliographical Essay
