In the Thirties Appeasement made a lot of sense for Britain, up to a point. 

There was the memory of the First World War.  Most of the decision-makers of the Thirties had been through the first war.  Anthony Eden, briefly the Conservative foreign secretary in the mid-Thirties, was the lone survivor among three brothers who had gone to war.  Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party, was generally known as “Major” Attlee, the rank he had attained in the war.  Neville Chamberlain, prime minister from 1937 to 1940, had spent the war trying to figure out how to stretch Britain’s limited manpower to meet the needs of both industry and the army.  They knew just what would be involved. 

There was a powerful pacifist movement.  Many of these people, and many others who were not pacifists, believed in working through the League of Nations, rather than resorting to war.  In a democracy, their opinions mattered. 

The Versailles Treaty seemed illegitimate.  John Maynard Keynes had begun to undermine the treaty as soon as it had been signed with his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace.  German historians had manipulated the diplomatic documents they had published after the war to make Germany look more sinned against than sinning.  Lots of British and American historians had written books based on these documents.  Lots of well-educated people had read these books and talked about them or written newspaper columns based on them.  British diplomats tended to be unsympathetic to the new nations of Central and Eastern Europe.  These countries seemed rickety, quarrelsome, and prone to Jew-baiting.  Perhaps someone should put the Austro-Hungarian Empire back together? 

The First World War had weakened the economic position of Britain.  To pay for massive imports of food, raw materials, and weapons, Britain had sold off many of its foreign investments and had borrowed heavily.  British shipping had been devastated by German submarines.  A second war would ruin it entirely by repeating the whole process on a bigger scale.  Should you fight a war that would wreck your country if there was some other alternative? 

The Depression made rearmament difficult.  It increased public spending for unemployment relief while reducing tax revenues.  To keep the budget balanced, something had to be cut.  Defense spending is what got cut.  The navy guaranteed connections to the empire, so it got the lion’s share of the smaller defense budget.  People were terrified about bombers destroying London in 24 hours, so the air force got what it needed for fighter defense.   This meant the army had to make do with scraps. 

Modern war required modern industry.  Britain’s industrial base had been badly eroded.  The long depression had left British industry un-modernized and long unemployment had de-skilled much of the labor force.  How would the country be able to rearm to match Germany? 

There were troubles inside the empire.  Most of Ireland had won its independence from Britain, depriving Britain of the use of the southwestern Irish ports used for convoying ships in the First World War.  In India Gandhi had begun his campaign of “militant non-violence” in an effort to drive out Britain.  In 1936 the Arab reaction against European Jewish migration to Palestine had led to an armed revolt.  Who needed to worry about a hypothetical German threat when you had several real ones in your face? 

There were other dangers than just Germany.  Britain’s empire mostly lay “east of Suez.”  In the Far East Japan was asserting its power, treating China like its special possession.  This threatened Britain’s trade with and investments in China.  The great port cities of Shanghai and Honk Kong were key parts of the empire.  Besides, if the Japanese got started in China, who knew where they might end up?   Britain might have to fight Japan.  If that happened then it needed to have secure supply lines to the Far East and the support of the Commonwealth. 

Britain’s “lifelines to the Empire” ran south around the Cape of Good Hope (long and slow) and east through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal (shorter and faster).  In the Mediterranean, Italy had begun to throw its weight around.  Mussolini talked of the Mediterranean as “our sea” and about building a “new Roman empire.”  Italian radio propaganda from Libya stirred up the Arabs in Palestine.  The Italians had a growing interest in Ethiopia, at the head of the Blue Nile and adjacent to the Red Sea, which connected the Suez Canal with the Indian Ocean.  Britain might have to fight Italy.  If that happened it would be hard to fight Japan.  If the British had their hands tied behind their back in the Mediterranean, then the Japanese might grow more aggressive in the Far East. 

You couldn’t count on the Commonwealth countries to just blindly follow the British lead.  They had done that in 1914.  Where did it get them?  Gallipoli, Ypres, massive cemeteries.  Since 1922 they had demanded to be consulted before any British declaration of war.  Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, and Canadians valued the empire and would fight for it if it was in danger.  However, they saw Japan as the great danger, not Italy or Germany.  They had a really hard time understanding why they should go to war over places like the Sudetenland or “the Polish corridor” or the Sub-Carpatho-Ukraine (a.k.a. Ruthenia). 

The Americans and the Russians weren’t likely to help out.  Russia was a Communist country formally committed to overthrowing capitalist democracy wherever it existed.  While the Messiah tarried, the Russians made do with espionage and stirring up the Communist parties in Western countries to oppose the governments in power.  In 1936 Stalin started purging the ruling group in the Soviet Union.  Pretty soon he got around to shooting or deporting to Siberia most of the senior military officers.  What kind of army would the Soviet Union have after that?  Then, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary all were between Russia and Germany.  The Russians could only get at the Germans by entering these countries.  None of them were likely to agree to let the Russians in because who knew when they would leave?  (Well, 1989, that’s when.) 

The Depression hit harder in America than it did even in Europe.  Americans were preoccupied with their domestic economic and social problems.  They had disliked the experience of the First World War.  A lot of big talk about “making the world safe for democracy” had turned into squalid deal-making at Versailles.  Then the Europeans had ratted on their war-debts to the United States in 1934.  Now the United States was adopting “neutrality legislation” intended to seal off America from any more European quarrels.  The first law, the Johnson Act (1934) barred any American bank from lending to a country which had defaulted on its war debts.  Later laws would prevent the shipping of cargoes in American ships to countries which were involved in a war. 

So British appeasement before the Second World War did not arise from a few misguided or cowardly men.  It wasn’t just Neville Chamberlain and his umbrella.  Are there lessons here for our own time?