"A new history of the British appeasement of the Third Reich on the eve of World War II"--

On September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew back to London from his meeting in Munich with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. As he disembarked from the aircraft, he held aloft a piece of paper, which contained the promise that Britain and Germany would never go to war with one another again. He had returned bringing “Peace with honour—Peace for our time.” Drawing on a wealth of archival material, acclaimed historian David Faber delivers a sweeping reassessment of the extraordinary events of 1938, tracing the key incidents leading up to the Munich Conference and its immediate aftermath: Lord Halifax’s ill-fated meeting with Hitler; Chamberlain’s secret discussions with Mussolini; and the Berlin scandal that rocked Hitler’s regime. He takes us to Vienna, to the Sudentenland, and to Prague. In Berlin, we witness Hitler inexorably preparing for war, even in the face of opposition from his own generals; in London, we watch as Chamberlain makes one supreme effort after another to appease Hitler. Resonating with an insider’s feel for the political infighting Faber uncovers, Munich, 1938 transports us to the war rooms and bunkers, revealing the covert negotiations and scandals upon which the world’s fate would rest. It is modern history writing at its best.

In this book historian R.J.Q. Adams examines the policy of appeasement as practiced by British Governments in the inter-war years - a programme widely praised in its day and frequently condemned as wrong-headed and even wicked ever since. In this thoroughly accessible work, he reveals the motivations and goals of the men who practiced appeasement as well as of those who opposed it, and makes clear the road to Munich - and to war.

Focusing on the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras, R. Gerald Hughes explores the continuing influence of Appeasement on British foreign policy and re-evaluates the relationship between British society and Appeasement, both as historical memory and as a foreign policy process. The Postwar Legacy of Appeasement explores the reaction of British policy makers to the legacies of the era of Appeasement, the memory of Appeasement in public opinion and the media and the use of Appeasement as a motif in political debate regarding threats faced by Britain in the post-war era. Using many previously unpublished archival sources, this book clearly demonstrates that many of the core British beliefs and cultural norms that had underpinned the Chamberlainite Appeasement of the 1930s persisted in the postwar period.