Appeasement Policy Quotes

The Cliveden Set

Towards the end of the Banquet came the news, the great world stirring news, that Neville [Chamberlain], on his own initiative, seeing war coming closer and closer, had telegraphed to Hitler that he wanted to see him, and asked him to name an immediate rendezvous…. Of course a way out will not be found. Neville by his imagination and practical good sense, has saved the world.

Ever since Barack Obama had become president, the main policy of the U.S. government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.

Admittedly, there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face.

Chamberlain and Halifax were more afraid of the spread of Communism than they were of Hitler or Mussolini.

My mind-set is Munich. Most of my generation's is Vietnam.

My father never carried an umbrella for Chamberlain.

The Pact of Munich is signed. Czechoslovakia as a power is out.

You know what happened, you know, in 1938: France, England, you know, just sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

At Munich we sold the Czechs for a few months grace, but the disgrace will last as long as history.

Appeasement does not work. As was the case in the 1930s, we see in Saddam Hussein an aggressive dictator threatening his neighbors.

Everybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.

The West can't come up with anything to deal with Moscow, except appeasement.

In general, the attitude towards Nazi Germany was not that hostile, especially if you look at the U.S. State Department reports. In 1937 the State Department was describing Adolf Hitler as a "moderate" who was holding off the forces of the right and the left.

Listening to a speech by [Neville] Chamberlain is like paying a visit to Woolworth's, everything in its place and nothing above sixpence.

I had done a lot of reading, relative for a kid, about World War Two, and I thought about Chamberlain a lot.

All attempts to appease the Nazis between 1934 and 1939 through various agreements and pacts were morally unacceptable and politically senseless, harmful and dangerous.

In the Munich agreement in late 1938 [Franklin] Roosevelt sent his chief adviser Sumner Welles, who came back with a very supportive statement saying that Hitler was someone we could really do business with and so on.

When France resolved, along with England, to lend assistance in the legitimate defense of Poland, the realization burst on us that a conflict of awesome proportions was inevitable.

I ought to have seized the initiative in 1938 instead of allowing myself to be forced into war in 1939; for war was, in any case, unavoidable. However, you can hardly blame me if the British and the French accepted at Munich every demand I made of them! (14th February 1945)

George Kennan is another extreme case. He was the American consul in Berlin until the war between Germany and the United States broke out in December 1941. And until then he was writing pretty supportive statements back stressing that we shouldn't be so hard on the Nazis if they were doing something we didn't agree with - basically repeating the idea that they were people we could do business with.

Neville [Chamberlain] has a retail mind in a wholesale business.

They will do more whether we do what we're doing or whether we don't do what we're doing. And the idea that you could appease them [terrorists] by stopping doing what we're doing or some implication that by doing what we're doing we're inciting them to attack us is just utter nonsense. It's just - it's kind of like feeding an alligator, hoping it eats you last.

Germany, which has lately united 80 million Germans, has submitted certain neighboring countries to her supremacy and gained military strength in many aspects, and thus has become, as clearly can be seen, a dangerous rival to principal imperialistic powers in Europe - England and France. That is why they declared war on Germany on a pretext of fulfilling the obligations given to Poland. It is now clearer than ever, how remote the real aims of the cabinets in these countries were from the interests of defending the now disintegrated Poland or Czechoslovakia.

Chamberlain's stubborn, fanatical insistence on giving Hitler what he wanted, his trips to Berchtesgaden and Godesberg and finally the fateful journey to Munich rescued Hitler from his limb and strengthened his position in Europe, in Germany, in the Army, beyond anything that could have been imagined a few weeks before. It also added immeasurably to the power of the Third Reich vis-a-vis the Western democracies and the Soviet Union.