Word: chamberlaine
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This one sweeping condemnation contains all that is wrong with this book. The appeasers saw a good deal more than they are given credit for but they were limited in choosing from what they saw. Although Chamberlain and his advisers were obviously as "soft" toward Germany as Gilbert and Gott maintain, they also were a good deal more aware of Britain's situation than the authors...
...Chamberlain and Simon, Chancellor of the Exchequer before the War, are especially castigated for their economic appeasement of Germany; Simon constantly negotiated for expansion of trade with the Germans from 1937 on. Gilbert and Gott cite this as an insidious and unnecessary aid to Hitler...
...Gilbert and Gott, appeasement was the "sympathy of men in a slow, sluggish society for the dynamism of autocracy." The appeasers had one goal in mind--friendship with Germany--and they relentlessly pursued that goal despite all of Hitler's aggression. When Chamberlain became Prime Minister in 1937, he ignored the opponents of appeasement and sought the advice of its supporters. He surrounded himself with men like Sir Horace Wilson, "whose temporising, formula-evolving mind reinforced and emphasized the weakness of the Prime Minister...
...authors' case against the appeasers is most devastating at its most intimate. They reveal the furious maneuvers of Chamberlain to avoid war before Munich and the cowardly attempts to coerce the Poles in August 1939. During negotiations, "the appeasers never remained firm for long. The essence of their craft was weakness, vacillation and uncertainty." Their worst crime, according to the authors, was that they "saw only what they wished...
Gilbert and Gott find Britain's political advances to Hitler much more annoying than her economic connections. At the time, however, these approaches seemed somewhat understandable. Chamberlain had been a careful student of pre-World War I diplomacy, and he hoped to avoid the basic mistake made by both the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente--both systems were so inflexible that war could not be avoided once the first shot had been fired. Chamberlain wanted to preserve to the last minute the flexibility that Loyd George had lacked. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister went too far, as the authors...