How and why have the following resulted in differing interpretations of appeasement: the Second World War; the Cold War; new sources of evidence c.1990 onwards?

Arguments, said the German philosopher Georg Hegel, tend to follow a certain format.  They start by someone making a statement (the ‘thesis’).  This provokes opposition and counter-arguments (the ‘antithesis’).  But out of the debate comes a combination of ideas (a ‘synthesis’) which is better than either.  It is a good format for your essays, btw.  And it is the form in which most accounts of historiography are presented. 

WatHistory’s helpful treatment of Interpretations of Appeasement – which is based on this factsheet from the Brookvale-Groby Learning Campus – fits this format, and is useful place to start your study of OCR’s GCSE Topic: “Changing interpretations of Appeasement”. 

WatHistory on CHANGING INTERPRETATIONS OF APPEASEMENT

The Orthodox View

Although popular at the time – this approach suggests – appeasement became a “dirty word” after War broke out.  The British public had always felt guilty at abandoning Czechoslovakia, appeasement had not worked, and Chamberlain was a convenient scapegoat, so an angry public accepted the verdict of the book The Guilty Men (1940), and of Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm (1948), that appeasement a misjudgement and miscalculation – “a very grave mistake”. 

This view persisted into the 1960s, connected to the need that people felt during the Cold War “not to repeat the mistakes of appeasement” and to stand up to the Soviet Union. 

Revisionist Views

From the 1960s, however, the video continues, this view of appeasement softened.  Starting with AJP Taylor (1961), who depicted Hitler as an expansionist opportunist with whom it would always have been impossible to negotiate, historians presented a Chamberlain who – given the impossible position he found himself in – did as well as could be expected. 

One of these historians, we are told, was Donald Cameron Watt. 

This view, the video suggests, which lasted into the 1970s and 1980s, was the product of a ‘different way of thinking’ in the 1960s, of the disillusionment with and opposition to the disastrous War in Vietnam … and also of the release of a huge body of hitherto-unseen official documents after the Public Records Act of 1967 made them available to historians. 

Counter-revisionist Views

By the 1990s, however, the video suggests, a more negative view of Chamberlain began again to be considered, based on RAC Parker’s book of 1993.  Parker – whilst accepting that Chamberlain found himself in a difficult position – criticized him for overrating his own abilities, failing to understand Hitler, ignoring the advice of others, and betraying Czechoslovakia. 

Most of all, Parker suggested that Chamberlain did NOT have ‘no other choice’ … which has led a succession of modern historians to suggest alternatives (including Niall Ferguson, who has explored the possibility of a ‘Grand Alliance’ through a computer simulation), and to be generally less sympathetic to Chamberlain. 

This new view, the video suggests, was partly caused by the fall of Soviet Union in 1991, which released a large number of Soviet documents for historians to study. 

This then, is the orthodox historiography.  It directly addresses the demands of the OCR Specification – the ‘Changing interpretations of Appeasement’; and how and why the Second World War; the Cold War; new sources of evidence c.1990 onwards “have resulted in differing interpretations of appeasement”.  So you would be foolish not to give it huge weight in your answers. 

But is it right?

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IS THE WatHistory SEQUENCE OF HISTORIOGRAPHY CORRECT?

In 2008 the Canadian historian Sidney Aster produced a massive 18,000-word essay on the historiography of Appeasement, and came up with a number of uncomfortable conclusions. 

The most significant for us is the finding that an historiography which posits a simple "linear projection from orthodoxy, to revisionism, to counter- or post-revisionism’ is not accurate" [my italics], but that arguments for and against appeasement and Chamberlain have existed side-by-side since before the war. 

Was there ever an uncontested orthodox view?

The answer is no.  Although the weight of comment after the War seems to have been along the ‘Guilty Men’ lines, Aster lists a number of historians, politicians and former diplomats who came forward in the 1940s and 1950s to defend the decisions of the 1930s ...  including Chamberlain himself:

"The day may come when my much cursed Munich will be understood.  Neither we nor the French were prepared for war… Whatever the outcome it is clear as day-light that if we had had to fight in 1938 the result would have been far worse."

One supporter was the historian EH Carr – the proponent of ‘realism’ in international diplomacy who had so criticised the League of Nations' idea of ‘collective security’ – who commented that the job of diplomats is to “balance the chances, and not pursue a policy which is likely to expose his country to war against equal or superior odds”. 

Was there ever an uncontested revisionist view?

No.  Aster does list many historians who approved of appeasement 1960-1990, for example:

•   DC Watt, who in 1963 announced “the rise of a revisionist school”;

•   Martin Gilbert – who in 1963 had concluded that British policy simply convinced Hitler that the British were pushovers, in 1966 changed his view and declared that appeasement “was not a silly or treacherous idea in the minds of stubborn, gullible men, but a noble idea, rooted in Christianity, courage and common sense.”

But Aster then goes on to acknowledge that there was never a ‘revisionist monopoly’ and cites among others:

•   Keith Middlemas (1972), who castigated the “diplomacy of illusion”, poorly planned and run by Chamberlain as a one-man band;

•   Corelli Barnett (1972), who accused the Chamberlain government of a naive inability to see "the simple and obvious truth about German intentions";

•   LW Fuchser (1982), who based his comments on the same Chamberlain papers as the revisionists … but nevertheless concluded that Chamberlain was an autocratic bully who put cost ahead of rearmament and “did nothing to prepare the British people for war”. 

Is there now an uncontested counter-revisionism?

No.  Again, it is true that books appeared after 1990 which attacked appeasement:

•   Clement Leibovitz (1993) claimed that the British were “bloody-minded protectors of privilege whose fixation with destroying communism led them to make common cause with fascists”;

•   Paul Doerr (1998) noted “a very critical assessment of Chamberlain and appeasement” among historians who have taken a multi-national (i.e.  not just a British) approach;

•   DC Watt – who had founded revisionist thinking in 1963 – changed his mind and in 1996 talked about “the immorality of appeasement” and criticised Chamberlain for “deceiving and misleading … and imposing sacrifices” on other countries. 

Nevertheless, even through the 1990s, writers continued to sound warnings about attacking appeasement:

•   Terrance Lewis (1991) stressed the importance of public opinion and the ‘fear of war’ created by the First World War;

•   Patrick Finney placed appeasement as part of national identity and national decline. 

Moreover, a number of recent books have gone even further:

•   Peter Neville (2006) concluded that the government's policies were reasonable and well thought out, and wrote: “appeasement, which involves conciliation and attempting to understand rival viewpoints is in fact the norm in international affairs … Sometimes this is not possible, and ultimately dealing with the Hitler regime was a case in point”;

•   Two American writers – James P Levy and Jeffey Record (both 2006) – have attacked as “too harsh and simplistic” the traditional view of appeasement as weakness, blindness or cowardice, whilst the American Norrin M Ripsman (2008) says that the appeasers simply realised that they could not defeat Germany in a war and “aimed to buy time for rearmament”. 

So, whilst there may have been an ebb-and-flow in general terms in the way historians have looked at appeasement, you may want to point out in your answers that there has NEVER been an uncontested view of any kind.  Historians disagree – that is the way they advance their understanding, and an unchallenged story of history is for autocracies. 

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ARE THE OCR SPECIFICATION SUGGESTIONS ABOUT INFLUENCES REASONABLE?

As part of your GCSE study of the ‘Changing interpretations of Appeasement’, the OCR Specification wants you to think how and why the Second World War, the Cold War, and new sources of evidence c.1990 onwards “have resulted in differing interpretations of appeasement”. 

On the face of it, this is a very tempting idea. 

•  The Second World War was horrific – is it not common sense to conclude that people who welcomed appeasement before the war would turn against and even blame the appeasers when that policy failed to work and plunged them into war?

•   The Cold War was a time of intense stand-off between the free world and Soviet Russia when neither side dared blink – as President Truman said in 1946: “The Russians only understand one language - ‘how many armies have you got?’  I’m tired of babying the Soviets.” Is it not reasonable to see criticisms of appeasement as emanating from such a mind-frame?

•   Similarly, the WatHistory video suggests that Revisionism came out of the rebelliousness of the 1960s – e.g.  ‘Flower Power’ and the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love (1967) – and disillusionment about the War in Vietnam. 

•   And then it goes on to see the counter-revisionism of the 1990s as connected to the fall and opening up of the Soviet Union. 

Again, don’t forget that this is what your specification is asking you to consider, and you should not ignore it in your answers. 

But does it hold water?

One of the points to come clearly out of the WatHistory video and many of the historiographies is that the big changes in opinion have come from the release of new sources of information – British official documents in 1967, Chamberlain’s personal papers in 1975, Soviet documents after 1991 … it is THESE that have stimulated new research, not the ‘nature of the times’ (from which academics tend to be insulated). 

And are historians really such slavish retailers of their own times?  If they are, how does it explain that –as we saw above – there were ALWYS historians who disagreed with the general trend.  Everyone in your class is a product of modern Britain, you were all born in the same academic year … but do you all have the same opinion of appeasement, of Chamberlain?

•   Michael Foot, one of the authors of The Guilty Men in 1940, was in 1957 one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament … what are we to make of that, and of other historians (e.g.  DC Watt and Martin Gilbert) who changed their minds?

•   Anyone who saw AJP Taylor speak could NEVER think that he was a product of flower-power. 

The truth is that different writers have different reasons for writing as they did, not all altruistic:

•   The WatHistory video suggests that Churchill was bitter about losing the election, and indeed most of the former politicians and diplomats who wrote after the war on both sides of the argument were trying to save their own reputation;

•   One of the fiercest critics of appeasement (who called Chamberlain “a vain old fool”) was the historian AL Rowse … who was an expert in Elizabethan history, and openly admitted: “I am not writing history”;

•   Both James P Levy and Jeffey Record – the American writers who wrote in 2006 – seem to have been primarily motivated to debunk the misuse of the ‘Munich analogy’ by Geroge Bush and Tony Blair as an excuse to attack Afghanistan and Iraq after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.  (The misuse of the idea that appeasement failed by Western politicians to justify attacking everyone everywhere is something that Aster, also, addresses.)

Modern Post-modernism teaches us that NOBODY can be wholly objective.  We are all to an extent created by our environment, and – much as we try otherwise– cannot prevent our feelings affecting what we say and write.  Plus – once they have worked out what they think – I suspect that an element of choosing-the-facts-to-fit-the-theory will creep into most writer’s methodology.  But I think that most of the writers we have listed above will have tried genuinely to ‘get at the truth’, and is it not a little insulting to suggest that historians simply parrot the prejudices of their age?