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Munich and the British Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Paul W. Schroeder
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Extract

Despite more than thirty-five years of scrutiny, the British policy of appeasement in the 1930s continues to be the subject of discussion and controversy. The search for explanations of Munich has even been intensified in recent years by the opening of the Cabinet papers. This essay does not pretend to make any contribution to the study of the ‘causes’ of Munich - the motives and determinants of British policy - or to decide the issue between the ‘guilty men’ and the ‘terrible times’ schools of explanation. The ensuing international crisis threw into sharp focus the evolving national interests and diplomatic styles of the European powers and serves as an illuminating case-study of a particular technique of conflict resolution.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 In a wide-ranging interpretive essay such as this, it is hopeless to try to exhaust the literature or ‘prove’ the points made. Except for the particular points, the notes will serve mainly to indicate generally the sources on which I have relied. The most important works on appeasement are those which have used the recently-opened Cabinet papers: Colvin, Ian G., The Chamberlain Cabinet (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Barnett, Correlli, The Collapse of British Potwr (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Parkinson, Roger, Peace for Our Time(New York, 1972Google Scholar;) and Middlemas, Robert K., Diplomacy of Illusion (London, 1972).Google ScholarBruegel, J. W., Czechoslovakia before Munich (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar, a revised abbreviated translation of his Tschechen und Deutsche (Munich, 1967), pays some attention to the Cabinet papers. Important older studies representing the ‘guilty men’ view include Martin Gilbert and Gott, Richard M., The Appeasers (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Margaret George, The Warped Vision (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1965); and William R. Rock, Appeasement on Trial (Hamden, Conn., 1966). For the ‘terrible timesinterpretation, see Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (New York, 1966); Keith Robbins, Munich 1938(London, 1968); and Northedge, F. S., The TroubledGiant(New York, 1966).Google Scholar The classic studies of Boris Celovsky, Das Miinchener Abkommen (Munich, 1958) and Wheeler-Bennett, J. W., Munich: Prologue to Tragedy (2nd edn.. New York, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar are still helpful. Useful essays on appeasement are included in Watt, D. C., Personalities and Policies (Notre Dame, Ind., 1965)Google Scholar and Waites, Neville, (ed.), Troubled Neighbours (London, 1971).Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Middlemas, Diplomacy of Illusion, pp. 17–19; Max Beloff, The Balance of Power (Montreal, 1967), pp. 1–10.

3 Roots of Appeasement, passim.

4 The Origins of the Second World War (London, 1961), pp. 189–90; The Trouble J, Makers, (Bloomington, Indiana, 1958), pp. 186–8.Google Scholar

5 Collapse, , of British Power, pp. 1968, 241–3, et passim.Google Scholar

6 Neville Waites suggests something close to this in his introduction to Troubled Neighbhours, p. 6: ‘The British [in the 1920s] were rapidly losing interest in Europe as a whole…The British simply wanted Europe to be quiet and to leave them free to concentrate on their affairs in the Commonwealth and the world at large. This was the real and originalmeaning of $$appeasement$$$…’

7 Howard, Christopher, Britain and the Casus Belli, 1822–1902 (London, 1974)Google Scholar somewhat modifies the traditional view of Britain$$$s policy of the free hand in the nineteenth century, but in the end confirms it (see especially pp. 166–7, 173). To be sure, Britain came gradually and reluctantly to accept a limited continental commitment for balance of power reasons before 1914 (cf. Howard, Michael, The Continental Commitment (London, Penguin edn, 1974), chs. 1–2). The object, however, was not to supply a force expected to be decisive in any European land warfare, but to maintain Britain's ententes through the moral impact of a British Expeditionary Force. As Peter Dennis shows in his Decision by Default (Durham, N.C., 1972), much the same reasoning was behind the final reluctant decision for conscription and a continental commitment in 1939.Google Scholar

8 Palmerston to Lord Beauvale, Ambassador to Austria, 10 Mar. 1841, Broadlands Papers, GC/BE/561. See also Webster, C. K., The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 18301841 (2 vols.,London, 1951), 1, 200–36.Google Scholar

9 Gillessen, Guünther, Lord Palmerston und die Einigung Deutschlands (Lübeck, 1961), pp. 1011Google Scholar; Weisbrod, Kurt, 'Lord Palmerston und die europäische Revolution von 1848' (Ph.D. dissertation, Heidelberg, 1967)Google Scholar; Schroeder, Paul W., Austria, Great Britain and the Crimean War (Ithaca, 1972), pp. 135–7Google Scholar; Scherer, Paul H., '‘British Policy with Respect to the Unification of Germany, 18481871’' (Ph.D. dissertation, Madison, Wisc., 1964)Google Scholar; Block, John M., ‘British Opinion of Prussian Policy 1854–1866’ (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Wisconsin, 1969).Google Scholar On British policy toward German unification in general, see Mosse, W. E., The European Powers and the German Question, 18481871 (Cambridge, 1958).Google Scholar

10 Millman, Richard, British Foreign Policy and the Coming of the Franco-Prussian War (Oxford, 1965), pp. 24–6, 42–3, 222–6Google Scholar; Bourne, K. R., ‘The Foreign Secretaryship of Lord Stanley, July 1866-December 1868’ (Ph.dissertation, D.University of London, 1955); Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, II Problema Veneto e I‘Europa 1859–1866 (3 vols., Venice, 1966–1968), 11, 200–36.Google Scholar

11 See, for example, Lord Bloomfield, ambassador to Austria, to Lord Cowley, ambassador to France, 9 and 28 July and 7 Aug. 1866, Public Record Office, FO 519/201; Clarendon to Cowley, 7 July and 28 Aug. FO 519/180; Lord John Russell to Clarendon, 2, 11 and 29 Apr and 1 May, Bodleian Library, Clarendon deposit c. 93; Stanley to Disraeli, 12, 19 and 22 July, Hughenden, MSS, B/XX/S/734–6, 741.Google Scholar

12 Stanley to Cowley, , 19 03. 1867, FO 519/182.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, Lytton, R., commercial attach%% at Vienna, to Clarendon, 21 Dec. 1869Google Scholar, Clarendon deposit c. 491; Clarendon to Bloomfield, 1 June 1870, Ibid., c. 474; The Times, October 1870.

14 Schroeder, Paul W., World War I as Galloping Gertie, a Reply to Joachim Remak’’', Journal of Modern History, xuv, no. 3 (1972), 335–45.Google Scholar On general British attitudes and policies towards Austria before the war, see Bridge, F. R., Great Britain and Austria-Hungary 19061914 (London, 1972). As Michael Howard points out (Continental Commitment, p. 44) British naval planners, dealing in 1906–7 with the contingency of war with Germany, did show concern over the possible absorption of Austria-Hungary by Germany - not, however, because this would mean the disappearance of an essential actor in the European system, but because it might intensify the German Drang nach Osten and thereby the threat to British interests in the Middle EastGoogle Scholar

15 Clarendon‘s correspondence with Bloomfield in 1868–70 (FO 356/33) contains many examples of this advice.

16 Middlemas sees the Treaty of Dover of 1670 as the most recent parallel to Munich in British history - Diplomacy of Illusion, pp.416–17.

17 Palmerston expresses this policy most clearly in his memorandum to the Cabinet 5 Jan. i860. Conceding that he was proposing a league against Austria which could conceivably result in war, he argued that the danger was slight and the effort and expense would in any case be minimal, with France and Sardinia doing all the land fighting and Austria so weak. A passage crossed out in the original draft reads: It is not foreign to the purpose to remember the helpless condition of Austria at the present moment. Her finances are deplorably embarrassed, her provinces are all of them ready to boil over with discontent, and some parts of her territory like Hungary are only waiting for a renewal of war to break out into rebellion, her army dissatisfied with recent military arrangements, and her Emperor universally disliked and extensively despised. This is not the condition in which Austria would be likely to run her head against a coalition of England Fiance and Sardinia' (Broadlands MSS, MM/IT/38.) (By kind permission of the Trustees of Broadlands.) The standard work on British policy in Italy is Beales, Derek, England and Italy, 1859–1860 (London, 1961).Google Scholar

18 Beales, England and Halt, pp. 110–62. As Denis Mack Smith has shown (Palmerston and Cavour: Some English Doubts about the Risorgimento', in Italian Studies Presented to Vincent, E. R., edited by Brand, C. P. et al. (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 244–71), British leaders were often irritated, even enraged, by Cavour’'s policies. They never wavered, however, in their basic pro-Italian stand, and never seriously considered the impact of Italian victories on Austria and Central Europe.Google Scholar

19 Wendt, Bernd Juürgen, Economic Appeasement (Diisseldorf, 1971)Google Scholar; McDonald, C. A., ‘Economic Appeasement and the German’ Moderates’ 19371939. An Introductory Essay’, Past and Present, LVI (August 1972),105–35.Google Scholar

20 Robbins, , Munich 1958, pp. 182–3.Google Scholar

21 Eatwell, Robert, Munich, Public Opinion, and Popular Front’, Journal of Contemporary History, VI, 4 (1971), 122–39.Google Scholar

23 Lammers, DonaldFrom Whitehall after Munich: the Foreign Office and the Future Course of British Policy’, Historical, Journal, xvi, 4 (1973), 831–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Ibid. pp. 852–3. As Middlemas points out, Halifax considered the European balance of power to be intact and functioning after Munich, though in some jeopardy (Diplomacy of Illusion, pp. 434–5).

25 Lammers, , ‘Whitehall after Munich’, pp. 832–3.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 850.

27 Thompson, Neville, The Anti-Appeasers (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; Gannon, F. R., The British Press and Germany, 19361939 (Oxford, 1971), esp. pp. 296–302.Google Scholar