Status Updates From Appeasing Hitler: Chamberla...

Whew, the end of ch 17 is FASCINATING!! The historical context around the Munich Agreement and its effects is intensely complex and the author explores that brilliantly in the final five pages of the chapter. This line at the end: “Hitler declared, ‘Our enemies are small worms. I saw them in Munich.’ It was a miscalculation the consequences of which would be felt across the entire world” (296).

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Page 234 is really interesting about what possibly could have been done to deter Hitler from war. It seems so inevitable in hindsight but was it? Curious to consider without ever being able to answer the question.

Brilliant paragraph at the end of chapter 13. One’s support or rejection of appeasement depending on one’s opinions of Hitler’s ambitions. What makes some people see clearly and others not? An age-old human question.

“At the heart of British policy was…a paradox: the British were resolved that they should not and could not commit to the defense of Czechoslovakia and yet, by their own actions, they became almost inextricably linked to the fate of that fragile country” (210).

Very helpful information at the start of chapter 12 about Czechoslovakia and how it was “created out of the rubble of the former Hapsburg Empire” in 1918. My European history is struggling to keep up here—lots to learn!

Hunting for Peace is such a good chapter. Lord Halifax and others who saw Nazism as less of a threat seemed not to be able to recognize that what the Nazis were doing on a small scale in their own country (terrorizing Jews and Communists) is also what they would do on a large scale. Those who could connect those things saw more clearly. Obvious in hindsight of course. Make me want to reread Remains of the Day.