The Appeasers, by Martin Gilbert

[p048] The Appeasers. By Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott. The authors, two Oxford-trained historians, seek to show that the pre-war Chamberlain government, was ‘unpatriotic. This government’s repeated concessions to Nazi Ger- many helped build Hitler up to the point where the German ruling class swallowed Austria and Czecho- slovakia in 1938. In August 1939, Germany’s invasion of Poland finally forced even the ‘appeasers’ to declare war on Germany, by the invoking of the Anglo-Polish Defence Pact. In sharp contrast to Chamberlain, Halifax and Simon, the authors poriray Churchill and Eden as the men of principle, defenders of freedom and the rights of small nations, etc. This theme of the au.hors turns history into a story of ‘goods and bads’, thus concealing the class interests involved in the 1939-45 world war, reflected in the differences in tactics between sections of the British ruling capitalist class. However, the numerous official documenis and extracts from press and private conversations do show one thing: wide sections of the British monopoly bosses had a great sympathy for fascism, as a means of crushing the working class in times of great crisis. The differences between Churchill, Eden and Vansittart, on the one hand and the Chamberlain government, on the other, were mainly over how much economic elbow-room Germany should have and whether former colonies should be returned as con- cessions. (Of course, the millions of Africans involved were never con- sulted either by the ‘appeasers’ or the ‘patriots’.) The murderous horrors of fascism inflicted on millions of trade union- ists and Jews did not enter any of these protagonists’ calculations. Lloyd George, the ‘liberal’ capitalist, said: ‘I only wish we had a man of his (Hitler’s) calibre in our country today.” Had not Churchill himself said in 1926 to Mussolini, ‘If I was an Italian I should be fascist as well?’ Although the authors say: ‘The Communist menace excused many things’ they still do not explain the reason for the ‘appeasement’. The Cliveden set, around the Astors, were all in favour of Germany marching East on Russia—as outlined in Hitlers ‘Mein Kampf’. Sympathy for fascist methods was reflected through the columns of the whole of 209 the capitalist press. But side-by-side with all this the ruling class was preparing for war. The re-armament programme began in 1935 when Hore-Belisha began ‘modernising’ the army. The British ruling class could appease German monopoly capitalism at the expense of other capitalist countries only so long as there was no direct threat to British imperialist interests. When this became imminent the Chamber- lain government launched into war on behalf of British imperialism. HLF. Industrial discipline