This question considers a highly debated and widely researched aspect of international diplomacy leading up to WWII, particularly between Britain/France and Germany.
**From this paper, List the historians associated with this topic. use the articles from your paper on your topic. What are some debatable issues, perspectives, or arguments advanced by historians?
Examples:
AJP Taylor argues in The Origins of the Second World War that Hitler did not intend to conquer Europe; Chamberlain’s interventionism caused the war. Further investigation in the 1960s gave rise to common acceptance that Hitler had plans for world domination; this view was widely dismissed (British misunderstanding of Hitler’s intentions)
David Dilks, biographer of Chamberlain, argues that appeasement was a “realistic” policy at the time. Argues the difficulty of rearmament bc of economic depression and public hostility.
Gilbert and Gott, The Appeasers, show they were honorable men who did everything possible to avoid war.
Pseudonym “Cato” (three journalists) published Guilty Men in 1940, highlights the weaknesses of Macdonald, Baldwin, and Chamberlain (the three guilty men) in not standing up to the Nazis. Argues that war could have been avoided with quicker British rearmament and French prevention of Rhineland’s remilitarization in 1936. Churchhill published war memoirs that supported this belief.
R.A.C. Parker & counter revisionists: argue Chamberlain manipulated public opinion in favor of appeasement, meanwhile too hesitant in rearmament and overestimated German military power, clung to appeasement too long even after not going to work (i.e, even in Sep. 1929)
Critics of counter revisionists (1990s, John Charmley, slightly “counterfactual” argument): the belief that Britain should have stayed out of the war, could have kept Brit. Empire and let Stalin and Hitler war with each other. This view is criticized as unrealistic because how could Britain disinvolve herself in a European war of European interests? TWE too “counterfactual”?