This bold new interpretation of Anglo-German appeasement challenges existing accounts, both orthodox and revisionist, by focusing on the economic motivations behind appeasement rather than on the workings of foreign policy. Scott Newton argues that appeasement stemmed from the determination of interwar administrations, particularly that of Neville Chamberlain, to protect the liberal-capitalist status quo established in the collapse of Lloyd George's attempts at reconstruction after 1918. Newton shows that the Government, aided and abetted by the Bank of England, the City, and large-scale industry, maintained its search for detente well beyond the outbreak of war, up until Churchill became Prime Minister in May 1940. The author goes on to reveal that certain circles within the establishment loyal to the prewar order continued their efforts to reach agreement with Germany even after 1940. He argues that the Hess affair represented the appeasers' last throw: the subsequent entry of the USSR and the USA into the conflict guaranteed the impossibility of a separate Anglo-German settlement, and combined with war socialism at home to open the door to a new era characterized by the welfare state and the Anglo-American special relationship. This is the first major study to provide a thorough analysis of the domestic political and economic background to appeasement, and to explain fully the reasons behind the persistence of the appeasement lobby even beyond the outbreak of war.

This study of appeasement in the early 20th century looks beyond the machinations of foreign policy to the underlying domestic, political, and economic motivations. It describes how the British government worked towards an Anglo-German peace accord until Churchill became Prime Minister.

Wages of Appeasement explores the reasons why a powerful state gives in to aggressors. It tells the story of three historical examples of appeasement: the greek city-states of the fourth century b.c., which lost their freedom to Philip II of Macedon; England in the twenties and thirties, and the failure to stop Germany's aggression that led to World War II; and America's current war against Islamic jihad and the 30-year failure to counter Iran's attacks on the U.S. The inherent weaknesses of democracies and their bad habit of pursuing short-term interests at the expense of long-term security play a role in appeasement. But more important are the bad ideas people indulge, from idealized views of human nature to utopian notions like pacifism or disarmament. But especially important is the notion that diplomatic engagement and international institutions like the u.n. can resolve conflict and deter an aggressor––the delusion currently driving the Obama foreign policy in the middle east. Wages of Appeasement combines narrative history and cultural analysis to show how ideas can have dangerous and deadly consequences.

This book, first published in 1983, illustrates the domestic and internal dimension of appeasement and explores the political options open to the western powers in the run up to the Second World War. It looks at the factors pointing in the direction of a general settlement with the dictators: limitation of resources and strategic over-commitment by Britain; economic decline and financial exhaustion of France; lack of support from the United States and the Soviet Union.

In Appeasing Bankers, Jonathan Kirshner shows that bankers dread war--an aversion rooted in pragmatism, not idealism. "Sound money, not war" is hardly a pacifist rallying cry. The financial world values economic stability above all else, and crises and war threaten that stability. States that pursue appeasement when assertiveness--or even conflict--is warranted, Kirshner demonstrates, are often appeasing their own bankers. And these realities are increasingly shaping state strategy in a world of global financial markets. Yet the role of these financial preferences in world politics has been widely misunderstood and underappreciated. Liberal scholars have tended to lump finance together with other commercial groups; theorists of imperialism (including, most famously, Lenin) have misunderstood the preferences of finance; and realist scholars have failed to appreciate how the national interest, and proposals to advance it, are debated and contested by actors within societies. Finance's interest in peace is both pronounced and predictable, regardless of time or place. Bankers, Kirshner shows, have even opposed assertive foreign policies when caution seems to go against their nation's interest (as in interwar France) or their own long-term political interest (as during the Falklands crisis, when British bankers failed to support their ally Margaret Thatcher). Examining these and other cases, including the Spanish-American War, interwar Japan, and the United States during the Cold War, Appeasing Bankers shows that, when faced with the prospect of war or international political crisis, national financial communities favor caution and demonstrate a marked aversion to war.

The interwar peace movements were, according to conventional interpretations, naive and ineffective. More seriously, the standard histories have also held that they severely weakened national efforts to resist Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Cecelia Lynch provides a long-overdue reevaluation of these movements. Throughout the work she challenges these interpretations, particularly regarding the postwar understanding of Realism, which forms the basis of core assumptions in international relations theory.The Realist account labels support for interwar peace movements as idealist. It holds that this support--largely pacifist in Britain, largely isolationist in the United States--led to overreliance on the League of Nations, appeasement, and eventually the onset of global war. Through a careful examination of both the social history of the peace movements and the diplomatic history of the interwar era, Lynch uncovers the serious contradictions as well as the systematic limitations of Realist understanding and outlines the making of the structure of the world community that would emerge from the war.Lynch focuses on the construction of the United Nations as evidence that the conventional history is incomplete as well as misleading. She brings to light the role of social movements in the formation of the normative underpinnings of the U.N., thus requiring scholars to rethink their understanding of the repercussions of the interwar experience as well as the significance of social movements for international life.