Review of Appeasement by Tim Bouverie

Cover of “Appeasement” by Tim Bouverie, photographed by Alexander I. Velasquez

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Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, history, international diplomacy
Page Count: 419 (Paperback Edition)
Year of Publication: 2019
Rating: 5/5
10-Word Summary: The diplomatic history of Neville Chamberlain’s failed policy of appeasement.

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About Appeasement

Tim Bouverie wrote the authoritative book when it comes to Neville Chamberlain’s failed policy of appeasement in the 1930s. After getting through this masterpiece of a book, I had to stop and ask myself: “How did the British refrain from placing Chamberlain’s head on a spike?”

Appeasement begins with Adolf Hitler’s ascension as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The British press didn’t know what to make of Hitler; The Times claimed he “was held to be the least dangerous solution of a problem bristling with dangers,” while The Economist, the Spectator, and the New Statesmen foolishly stated: “We shall not expect to see the Jews’ extermination, or the power of big finance overthrown.” (Pages 8-9) The French press was equally clueless, and reading all this gave me the realization that newspapers, in general, are terrible sources for geopolitical information, as journalists usually guess as to what a world leader is really up to, and their guesses do not constitute knowledge any more than the average person on the street who guesses correctly which side a six-sided die will fall on.

As for the policy of appeasement itself, Bouverie gives a wonderful explanation as to why it was the foreign policy of choice for Britain throughout the 1930s: The Allies believed that they were to blame for the rise of the Nazi Party; as a matter of fact, Nazism was “the natural, if violent, reaction to legitimate grievances stemming from Versailles.” (Page 48) At this point, the Treaty of Versailles had come to be viewed a treaty that was too harsh, hence the idea was that “the Treaty should be altered and Germany allowed to regain that place and status to which her size and history entitled her.” (Page 48) The only problem with this policy is that it assumed Hitler could be appeased, and few people saw Hitler for who he really was.

Mein Kampf

Anyone who reads Mein Kampf will be baffled at how open Hitler was in stating his foreign policy ambitions: He announces his desire to unite Germany with Austria, he announces his desire to expand Germany’s territory at the expense of Russia, who he refers to as a “culturally inferior” nation, and he announces that the French were the mortal enemy of the Germans. Hitler said the following about France:

Never suffer the rise of two continental powers in Europe. Regard any attempt to organize a second military power on German frontiers, even if only in the form of creating a state capable of military strength, as an attack on Germany, and in it see not only the right, but also the duty, to employ all means up to armed force to prevent the rise of such a state, or, if one has already risen, to smash it again. (Mein Kampf, Page 664; First Mariner Books Edition)

All of this begs the question: With Hitler’s foreign policy of territorial conquest out in the open, why did the British choose the policy of appeasement? If anything, one would think that the British leaders would favor to formulate some sort of Bismarck-style alliance system with France, the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia in an attempt to keep Hitler from conquest.

But Bouverie makes it clear that the British chose appeasement for the same reason we in the 2020s would chose appeasement if Adolf Hitler were around today: No one read Hitler’s book. And those that did read his book were of split opinion: Since Hitler was proclaiming that he was “a man of peace” early in his chancellorship, those that believed him dismissed his early writings as the “the moribund rantings of a young firebrand.” (Page 18) Even Neville Chamberlain, who had read excerpts of Mein Kampf, chose to ignore Hitler’s early writings, stating: “If I accepted the author’s conclusions I should despair.” (Page 418) This brings me to my final point and the main character of Bouverie’s book: Neville Chamberlain.

Neville Chamberlain

To be fair, I don’t want to put all the blame on Chamberlain, as Bouverie makes it clear that appeasement had already been the policy of choice for both the government and, more importantly, for the British people. Stanley Baldwin, who preceded Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister, admitted that even if he were to go back in time and try to convince the British populace that Germany was a threat and that Britain should focus on rearmament in the midst of an economy attempting to get out of the Great Depression, the effect would have been disastrous and have meant the loss of a General Election. (Pages 25-26) Indeed, it was Winston Churchill’s pursuit of rearmament that made him so unpopular in the 1930s until his eventual ascension to Prime Minister in 1940.

By the time Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister in 1935, his main goal was to balance the budget and cut expenses to get Britain out of the Great Depression; but he just so happened to take the job at the same time Hitler’s rearmament program was in full swing. Eerily, it was Chamberlain’s half-brother Austen Chamberlain who had reminded Neville after a dinner in 1936: “Neville, you must remember you don’t know anything about foreign affairs.” (Page 129) That statement turned out to be prophetic, as the rest of the book details how poorly Chamberlain handled the international situation. To make things worse, Chamberlain was hard-headed, always convinced that he was right. For example, his desire to appease Benito Mussolini’s aggression in Ethiopia would eventually lead to the resignation of his Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, all of which Bouverie brilliantly details in chapter ten. Chamberlain even went so far as to have secret channels of communication with Mussolini so as to not have to go through his secretary—an obvious sign that Chamberlain felt he could handle the international situation himself without the need to seek advice from any members of his cabinet. And when you couple Chamberlain’s stubbornness with the fact that he surrounded himself with “yes men” who were convinced that appeasing Hitler’s desires for German greatness was the right policy to pursue, what you get is a recipe for disaster.

Should You Read Appeasement?

The answer is a definite yes. Tim Bouverie’s first book is both a classic and a must-have for those who are interested in history—in particular the diplomatic history leading up to the Second World War—and the best source for explaining why Britain’s policy of appeasement failed to stop Adolf Hitler in his pursuit of empire. Bouverie does a wonderful job weaving the policy of appeasement in the 1930s into one dramatic narrative, and, if you can, read the book along with the audiobook narrated by John Sessions. Sessions did an amazing job narrating and deserves an equal amount of praise for his performance.

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Review of Munich, 1938 by David Faber

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

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Book Title

Category: Non-fiction, diplomatic history, politics
Page Count: 504 (Paperback)
Year of Publication: 2010 (Simon & Schuster Reprint Edition)
Rating: 1/5
10-Word Summary: A detailed diplomatic history between Britain and Germany from 1937-1938.

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About Munich, 1938

I don’t like this book; I’m just going to state it from the beginning. I will never write a review for a book having read only half of it—in this case 230 pages. For me, I have to read the entirety of a book to write a good and comprehensive review. But I’m willing to make an exception in this case for one major reason: The title is completely misleading.

The title is Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II. Yet, Munich 1938 gets one or two chapters at the end of the book. And I get it: Faber is writing the buildup to Munich 1938 and all the diplomacy that preceded it. But Faber starts his account from November 1937. Why on earth would anyone start at November 1937? The logical place would be to start at 1933 because that is when Hitler comes to power and assumes the chancellorship in Germany.

Also, to understand Munich 1938, one would have to understand Hitler’s foreign policy ambitions and, hence, understand what lies in the pages of Mein Kampf. Yet, Faber never mentions Hitler’s famed book or even references his ultimate foreign policy objective of fighting the Soviet Union and destroying France. And because Faber starts his account so late in 1937, it’s impossible to understand why Hitler is even invading Austria and Czechoslovakia in the first place.

What about appeasement? Appeasement is never fully explained. Faber makes it clear that Chamberlain wanted to appease Hitler but not why he wanted to appease Hitler.

What about World War II? Everything in the book happens before World War II. I have no idea why World War II is even part of the title of this book.

The real title of this book should be: A detailed diplomatic history between Britain and Germany from November 1937 to October 1938; that’s all this book is. And I’m upset because I bought this book to understand appeasement, to understand why Chamberlain trusted Hitler’s promise at Munich, and to understand those who opposed appeasement. After all, appeasement is in the title of the book. You would think things like this would be explained. But no. I got none of that.

There are also so many people in this book—too many as a matter of fact. Because Faber condenses a dramatic eleven month history of diplomacy, his account is overly detailed and has so many people involved that it is easy to forget who most of them are outside of the major players in the account such as Hitler, Chamberlain, Eden, and so on. It makes for a very frustrating read having to constantly ask the question, “Wait, who is this again?”

Just about the only positive thing I have to say about this book is that Faber does know his stuff, and he gives a very detailed account of all of the diplomacy, both secret and public, that went on in both Hitler’s and Chamberlain’s cabinet from 1937-1938. Otherwise, this book was completely useless for me.

Should You Read Munich, 1938?

If you are looking for a book that will explain appeasement—what it was and why it became Britain’s foreign policy, the conflict between Chamberlain and Churchill, and the road to World War II, read Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War by Tim Bouverie (a review for this is coming soon). However, if and only if you are looking for an extremely detailed diplomatic history between Britain and Germany from November 1937 to October 1938, then this is definitely your book.

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Review of Mein Kampf, Volume Two by Adolf Hitler

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

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Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, biography, memoir, politics, history, political philosophy
Translator: Ralph Manheim
Page Count: 317 (First Mariner Books Edition)
Year of Publication: 1999
Rating: 1/5
10-Word Summary: Adolf Hitler’s political philosophy and foreign policy for Germany’s future.

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About Mein Kampf, Volume Two

Whereas Volume One of Mein Kampf follows Hitler from his youth as a boy in his native Austria to his early career as a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Volume Two is about the political philosophy and guiding principles of the party. It begins with a general philosophy of the state and its citizens and ends with recommendations for German foreign policy.

I found it much more difficult to get through Volume Two than Volume One, and this is coming from someone who majored in philosophy as an undergraduate. I suppose the main reason for why it was difficult to get through it was because Hitler continues the same pattern of writing as in Volume One—ranting on the same political point for pages on end. Hitler could have summarized the philosophy of his political party—the NSDAP—in about thirty pages, fifty maximum. The fact that he took 317 pages to tell the reader the same things over and over again makes the reading experience dreadful.

Political Philosophy

One thing that does upset me is that most people, because they have never bothered to read Mein Kampf, are misled. Most people believe the Nazis were right-wing. The Wikipedia page for the entry “Nazi Party” claims that the party was far-right. Well whoever did the entry for the Wikipedia page didn’t take the time to read Mein Kampf, otherwise they wouldn’t have said that, as the Nazi Party was neither right nor left but somewhere in the center. Let’s break down the name of the party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, in two parts:

National

There is no doubt that Hitler was a nationalist. The whole purpose of the party is to rally the Germans to first eliminate the threat at home—the Jews—and then to set its sight on the enemy abroad: the Soviet Union. Overturning the Treaty of Versailles, building a great military, and destroying France were but means to these ends but not ends in themselves: The strength of a nation lies primarily, not in its weapons, but in its will, and that, before foreign enemies are conquered, the enemy within must be annihilated. (Page 682)

Socialist German Workers’ Party

In Chapter VII, “The Struggle with the Red Front,” Hitler discusses the NSDAP rallies and the struggles to win the German workers over from the Marxist/Communist camp to his Socialist party, highlighting the strategic use of the color red during the rallies:

The red color of our posters drew them [Hitler’s political opponents] to our meeting halls. The run-of-the-mill bourgeoise were horrified that we had seized upon the red of the Bolsheviks, and they regarded this as all very ambiguous. The German national souls kept privately whispering to each other the suspicion that basically we were nothing but a species of Marxism, perhaps Marxists, or rather, socialists in disguise. For to this very day these scatterbrains have not understood the difference between socialism and Marxism. (Page 483)

Hitler makes it clear in the passage above that there is a difference between socialism and Marxism, and that he was not a Marxist but a socialist. This is why, in Chapter XII, “The Trade-Union Question,” he is still in favor of trade unions, wants employers to make sure that workers are treated fairly, and envisions a classless German society united under a strong German nationalism—similar to his experience in the German army:

As things stand today, the trade unions in my opinion cannot be dispensed with. On the contrary, they are among the most important institutions of the nation’s economic life…. The National Socialist State knows no ‘classes,’ but politically speaking only citizens with absolutely equal rights….The National Socialist employer must know that the happiness and contentment of his workers is the premise for the existence and development of his own economic greatness. (Pages 598-601)

Foreign Policy

Hitler’s foreign policy makes sense. That is to say, he understands that alliances form when there is a common interest between nations. Hence, he believes the best alliance for Germany is England, as it would be in England’s interest to keep France, their historic rival, from dominating the European mainland, and Germany can be their ally to check France’s power:

Anyone who undertakes an examination of the present alliance possibilities for Germany from the above standpoint must arrive at the conclusion that the last practicable tie remains with England…. A necessary interest on the part of England in the annihilation of Germany no longer exists today; that, on the contrary, England’s policy from year to year must be directed more and more to an obstruction of France’s unlimited drive for hegemony. (Page 618)

Though, for Hitler, an alliance with England could serve a greater purpose: It would defend Germany’s rear while Germany focused on destroying its greatest enemy—the Soviet Union, home of the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy for world domination:

In Russian Bolshevism, we must see the attempt undertaken by the Jews in the twentieth century to achieve world domination. (Page 661)

Points of Agreement

In Chapter Two, “The State,” I agree with much of what Hitler said about education. For example, he said that the youth should not be given too much head knowledge, but rather that education should consist primarily in teaching students character, will, and determination through physical activity (pages 408-412) with the final stage of education for all German males being mandatory military service (page 428). He also believed that education should be useful, and that schools were doing a bad job of teaching students useless information that they end up forgetting as adults (not much has changed). And he desired an education consisting of the classics: the Roman and Greek civilizations:

Especially in historical instruction, we must not be deterred from the study of antiquity. Roman history correctly conceived in extremely broad outlines is and remains the best mentor, not only for today, but probably for all time. The Hellenic ideal of culture should also remain preserved for us in its exemplary beauty. (Page 423)

Probably the point that resonated most strongly with me was Hitler’s rejection of hedonism and material pleasure as the most important principle of life:

It may be that today gold has become the exclusive ruler of life, but the time will come when man will again bow down before a higher god. Many things today may owe their existence solely to the longing for money and wealth, but there is very little among them whose non-existence would leave humanity any the poorer…. This, too, is a task of our movement…. Uphold the principle that man does not live exclusively for the sake of material pleasures. (Page 436)

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, Mein Kampf’s thesis is one rooted in deep conspiracy theories that have long been proven false. To say that the Jews are trying to take over the world is already a wacky theory, but to say that they are planning on the takeover via a communist plot rooted in the Soviet Union is beyond ridiculous. On top of that, the book is heavily Darwinist and Malthusian in its economic outlook, ideas that have since been discredited. (If you are a atheist, however, then I’m sure you might agree with many of Hitler’s Darwinist conclusions.)

Should You Read Mein Kampf?

No. Unless you are a scholar of Nazi Germany or have a deep fascination with Weimar Germany, the 1920s, the origins of the Second World War, Hitler’s political philosophy, and so on, there is nothing of actual substance in this book.

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Review of Mein Kampf, Volume One by Adolf Hitler

Photo by Alexander I. Velasquez (author’s copy)

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Book Details

Category: Non-fiction, biography, memoir, politics, history
Translator: Ralph Manheim
Page Count: 370 (First Mariner Books Edition)
Year of Publication: 1999
Rating: 3/5
10-Word Summary: Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, political ideology, and future plans for Germany.

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About Mein Kampf, Volume One

I’ve always wanted to read Mein Kampf, not because I’m some closet Nazi or an admirer of Adolf Hitler; rather, I’ve always wanted to read it out of sheer curiosity. This is even more true now than in the past because it’s becoming more difficult to find the book in stores. Amazon, where I bought my copy, stopped selling the book because Jewish organizations were complaining that Amazon was profiting off anti-Semitism. On eBay, my copy of Mein Kampf, which I bought on Amazon for $20 in 2020, is now going for prices as high as $550. And this trend will only continue so long as the book becomes harder to find.

But I will say this: If you want to understand Adolf Hitler, not what he did, but why he did, then this is a must-read. Only in the pages of Mein Kampf do we get in the mind of Germany’s future dictator and truly understand his motives and vision of reality—a vision stained by social Darwinism and anti-Semitism.

Volume One of Mein Kampf is autobiographical. Hence, the book starts with young Adolf’s upbringing in Vienna and ends with the early stages of the NSDAP, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—or Nazi Party for short. But this is not autobiography for the sake of telling you his life story; this is autobiography for the sake of politics. Hitler will give bits and pieces of his life and then rant for pages on some political point until he eventually gets back to his autobiography for a few pages, and then he goes on another rant. This pattern continues until you get to the end of the volume.

For example, in his chapter on the World War, Hitler doesn’t discuss his experience as a runner in the trenches. Rather, he uses the chapter to discuss why Germany lost the war, and he rants for pages about how the war was lost on the homefront and not on the battlefield. He blames the pacifists, he blames the press, but most of all, he blames the Jews.

Understanding Hitler

The most important chapter for understanding Adolf Hitler’s beliefs and motives are to be found in chapters two and three where Hitler discusses the period of his life spent in Vienna. After the death of his father and mother, Hitler moved to Vienna to pursue his dreams of architecture.

While the young Hitler worked as a building laborer, many of Hitler’s co-workers were members of the Social Democratic Party: a Marxist political party consisting of members of the working classes whose goals were to grant the working classes more political rights. His co-workers tried to convince him to join a trade union. Trade unions had only thirty years earlier won the right for workers to strike in industrialized nations such as Great Britain. But Hitler despised their ideas because, for them, the government, laws, and schools were nothing but tools to oppress the working classes:

These men rejected everything: the nation as an invention of the ‘capitalistic’ (how often was I forced to hear this single word!) classes; the fatherland as an instrument of the bourgeoise for the exploitation of the working class; the authority of the law as a means for oppressing the proletariat; the school as an institution for breeding slaves and slaveholders…. There was absolutely nothing which was not drawn through the mud of a terrifying depth. (Page 40)

But what Hitler took notice of was how effective and successful their demonstrations and trade union strikes were because of their use of force on their employer. Hence, Hitler concluded that the only way to combat their use of force was to use a greater amount of force in return. In the words of Hitler: Terror at the place of employment, in the factory, in the meeting hall, and on the occasion of mass demonstrations will always be successful unless opposed by equal terror. (Pages 43-44)

But not only did Hitler believe that force and terror were effective methods of governing, he also believed that the masses needed a strong leader to guide that force. His belief was that the masses needed a leader or commander, tolerating no other political party other than the that of the leader’s.

His beliefs were confirmed while he sat and listened in on a session of the Austrian parliament. During the session, he came to the belief that democracy was ineffective because responsibility could only rest on the individual and not in the majority of a body of individuals. Hence, when something in the country went wrong, no one could be said to be truly responsible for what happened.

And it was on the streets of Vienna where he developed his two major beliefs while reading primarily from political pamphlets, as well as books and newspapers: social-Darwinism and anti-Semitism.

His anti-Semitism, especially, is all over Mein Kampf. Why did Germany lose the First World War? They were betrayed on the homefront by the Jews. Who was responsible for the evils of Marxism? The Jews. Why did Imperial Germany collapse into the hated Weimar Republic? It’s what the Jews wanted. And this goes on and on until finally, in chapter eleven, “Nation and Race,” he explains in detail why he despises the Jews so much.

Hitler states that the Jews have always been money-lending people only interested in self-preservation, the opposite of the Aryan-descended Germans who sacrificed themselves for the sake of preserving their race. Even though the Jews have always bounced around from civilization to civilization throughout history without a home of their own, they have always preserved themselves by lending money at high interest rates, thereby destroying the various working and lower classes of society in every and any civilization they root themselves in.

But their latest plan, according to Hitler, is world domination. He cites The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion (Page 307) as leaked proof that the Jews were secretly conspiring to dominate the world. Their plan was, after the industrial revolution, to enslave the working classes, since the they owned the means of production (i.e. the factories). Once Jews made the working classes toil endlessly in factories, the working classes would strike to ask for more political rights. The Jews would then give them an offer they couldn’t refuse: Marxism. Through Marxism, the Jews could then take political control of these groups of unhappy people and have them, ultimately, seize the government. By then spreading this movement to other nations, such as what the Soviet Union was doing in spreading communism to other nations, the final goal of world domination would be achieved.

Hitler says all this without citing a shred of evidence. As a matter of fact, some of the only proof he cites is the above mentioned Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, which has long since been proved to be a fabricated document, and the lectures of a self-taught economist by the name of Gottfried Feder who would later write The Manifesto for Breaking the Financial Slavery to Interest and would later become Hitler’s State Secretary at the Reich Ministry of Economics.

Final Thoughts

I could say much more, but I will save it for my upcoming book since I have a whole chapter on Adolf Hitler, the decisions he made that led the world into the Second World War, and how he developed his beliefs that got him there. But if this was the 1920s and someone had asked me to summarize Mein Kampf in one sentence, I would say: “A disgruntled former German soldier explains his political ideology which involves conspiracy theories as to why the Jews were the reason Germany lost the World War and why Jews are the real enemy of both Germany and the world.”

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