Roosevelt and British Appeasement in 1938

Abstract

Early in 1938, before those steps had been taken that rendered all but inevitable the European war of late 1939, President Roosevelt suggested to Mr. Chamberlain a form of international conference intended to avert the danger. Mr. Chamberlain rejected it. This, wrote that greatest of all Anglo-Americans, Sir Winston Churchill, ten years later, meant “the loss of the last frail chance to save the world from tyranny otherwise than by war”. Indeed, that the “proffered hand” should thus have been waved away left him “breathless with amazement”. Greater statesman than historian though he was, Churchill's judgement must nonetheless be respected. Yet so must that of a much lesser statesman and historian, Sir Samuel Hoare, later Lord Templewood. Writing after Churchill, this Englishman to the core and arch-defender of Chamberlain put the blame on Roosevelt: “It was, in fact, we who finally agreed to support the proposal, and Roosevelt who decided that the moment was no longer suitable for it”. Not content with this, he went on to assert that “in the months that followed, Anglo-American relations became increasingly intimate and culminated in the parallel efforts that Washington and London made throughout the Czechoslovak crisis”. The odd thing is that the judgements of both men are right, or almost right.