Why Nobody Stopped It
The sequence from 1931 to 1939 charts the breakdown of peace:
- 1931: Japan invades Manchuria. The League of Nations fails to act.
- 1935: Italy attacks Ethiopia. Weak sanctions fail.
- March 1936: German troops enter the Rhineland, breaking Versailles and Locarno. France demurs.
- 1936–39: The Spanish Civil War. German and Italian forces back Franco, while Soviet aid supports the Republic.
- March 1938: Anschluss unites Germany with Austria.
- September 1938: The Munich agreement cedes the Sudetenland.
- March 1939: German forces seize Bohemia and Moravia.
- 23 August 1939: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact splits eastern Europe between Berlin and Moscow.
- 1 September 1939: Germany invades Poland, triggering war.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union suffered internal trauma. Collectivisation triggered the Holodomor famine in Ukraine. Later, the Great Terror (1937–38) purged the Red Army, convincing Western powers that Soviet military strength was compromised.
Debating Appeasement
Debates over appeasement developed across three main stages. Early critics called it simple cowardice. In 1961, A. J. P. Taylor argued that Hitler was merely an opportunist following traditional German foreign policy.
| Interpretation of appeasement | Core claim |
|---|---|
| Guilty Men orthodoxy | Failure of nerve and judgement by identifiable politicians |
| Taylor (1961) | Hitler was an opportunist; the war emerged from miscalculation |
| Constraint-based revision | Rearmament, empire, allies and opinion left few real options |
| Counter-revision | The constraints were real, and 1936 and 1938 were still choices |
Later revisionists highlighted British domestic constraints. The Treasury feared economic ruin from premature spending. The Dominions hesitated, public anti-war sentiment ran deep, and global threats from Japan and Italy loomed.
Common pitfall: treating appeasement as either sheer cowardice or unavoidable destiny. Good history weighs the genuine constraints of 1936, 1938, and 1939 against the alternatives then available.