Britain felt overextended already, defending a global empire. The Scramble for Africa had never fully subsided, while in India, Palestine, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere, insurgencies drained resources and men. The Depression and misguided fiscal and monetary tightening had undercut confidence as well: real output in 1938 was no better than it had been in 1918 (annual GDP growth averaged 0.5 percent). Various worst-case scenarios in British intelligence reports—which for a long time had been underplaying Nazi Germany’s capabilities but now grossly overestimated them—enhanced the appeal of negotiation. So did underestimation of the Red Army. On top of everything, Eastern Europe and even the continent as a whole were just not a British priority, notwithstanding the Versailles Treaty.58 Chamberlain was, by conviction, fiscally conservative. He abjured investing in a continental expeditionary force, which to his mind would only embolden France to take risks against Germany and bankrupt the British treasury.59 Still, he was investing in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy. If all else failed and Hitler tried to overrun Western Europe—which seemed unlikely, given the existence of the French land army—the British home isles, Chamberlain reasoned, could be defended.60
Chamberlain not only convinced himself that he could accede to grievances of Nazi Germany without infringing core British interests, but also the grievances of fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, and, via bilateral agreements, diminish these powers’ incentives for trilateral cooperation as well.61 His combination of diplomacy (engagement, conciliation) and a measure of deterrence (the threat of a massive bombing campaign)—what was known as appeasement (essentially to make peace)—occupied a venerable place in British policy, dating back to the nineteenth century. It offered a way of settling international quarrels by appealing to the other side’s reasonableness and forging compromises, rather than opting for costly war.62 Why stumble down the path of turning the latest equivalent of a Balkan squabble into a world war? A repeat threatened equally bloody futility, at a minimum, and potentially far worse: Communist subversion of the continent in the ruins.63
Germany’s other great-power antagonist, France, was also the only other large democracy left in Europe. Its geopolitical position was unenviable. France had triumphed in the Great War, but the conflict had been fought to immense devastation on its soil, and, in the aftermath, it lacked the wherewithal to hold down a rising Germany. The United States had tipped the balance in the war and could have provided the security guarantees that would have allowed France, in the 1920s, to make the kinds of concessions to Germany that Britain advocated and stability required, but the Americans had had no desire to do so.64 Instead, French postwar security had come to rest on three shakier pillars: a military occupation of Germany’s Rhineland, military superiority over a disarmed Germany, and alliances with the newly independent small states on the eastern side of Germany. The first two had vanished. As for the third, Eastern Europe roiled with homegrown animosities and irredentism that undermined reliable security partnerships. France’s alliance system with Poland and Czechoslovakia had hollowed out even before Hitler had put it to the test.65 And so, behind the defenses of the Maginot Line (named for a defense minister who had launched its construction), France was thrown back onto its familiar options: alliance with the British or alliance with the Russians. Before the Munich Pact, the Tory government had exhibited ruthless caution toward entanglement with France, and after Munich it took only baby steps, initiating staff talks with France.66