Appeasement and rearmament

About this book

"Historian James P. Levy reevaluates Britain's twin policies of appeasement and rearmament in the late 1930s. Carefully examining the political and economic environment of the times, Levy argues that Neville Chamberlain crafted an active, logical, and morally defensible foreign policy designed to avoid and deter a potentially devastating war. Levy shows that through Chamberlain's experience as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he understood that Britain had not yet fully recovered from World War I, and the longer an international confrontation could be avoided, the better Britain's chances were of weathering the storm. In the end, Hitler could be neither appeased or deterred, and, recognizing this, Britain went into war better armed and better prepared to fight."--Jacket.