Dilemmas of appeasement

Post, Gaines

This distinguished book offers fresh perspectives on British appeasement, grand strategy, and policymaking in a crucial and much-debated period of history. Innovative in both his interpretation and his method, Gaines Post, Jr., reexamines how British leaders planned foreign policy and imperial defense as they faced the increasing likelihood of war with the dictatorial regimes of Germany, Italy, and Japan. He clarifies the ways in which the dynamics of the machinery of government affected the choice of policies, delimited the management of crises, and restricted the pace of rearmament. Post provides a novel and intricate synthesis of what we know about British foreign policy in the 1930s: rearmament, deterrence, decisionmaking, and the question of timing. Analyzing the Ethiopian and Rhineland crises as case studies, he shows how they defeated British efforts to develop a comprehensive...

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