This is a history book that gave me the information I wanted. I think it is a text book and that is why it is way overpriced for a book of less than 100 pages.

The writing is dry and informative with facts and some arguments.

Basically, Prime Minister Chamberlain gave Hitler everything he wanted in Europe (like Austria and then Czechoslavakia) until Hitler decided he wanted Poland. By that time he had gone so far that he could not be easily stopped.

An argument is made that Britain wasn't militarily ready to fight Germany in the mid to late 1930s. So, their military needed the time to prepare, but Chamberlain was desperate for peace and Hitler knew it and it also allowed Hitler to bulk up his resources while they negotiated to give Hitler this territory and that to make him happy. The only thing was he was a monster and nothing (short of ruling the world) would ever satisfy his blood lust. He was very open about what he wanted to do to the Jewish and Polish people (dispose of them so the population of Germany could move into their lands and properties).

The defense of Chamberlain seems to be that he echoed the press and public sentiments of the time. When public opinion changed on appeasement, he was out the door and Churchill was in.

The book gave me a lot of information about what happened, but it is not fun or easy reading because it is so dry. The guy who wrote it has a lot of nerve charging almost 20$ for a new copy. I got it used.

anyone researching the history of how things came to the second world war. I learned that Great Britain lost a big opportunity to stop Hitler because they wouldn't negotiate with Russia and Josef Stalin. Of course, they had to negotiate with Russia (just as the U.S. did) in order to defeat Hitler. Stalin was a monster too, but they needed his help to defeat a much worse type of horror for the world.

Stalin was a horrible human being, no doubt about that and he killed a lot of his own people. So, dealing with him wasn't pleasant, but he would have been on board to stop Hitler who was gunning for him eventually. Not dealing with him opened the door for him to forge an uneasy alliance with Hitler for a time, but even Stalin couldn't stand Hitler for long.

learning about what that guy Edward who abdicated the British throne was up to. He liked Hitler, which totally tanks my opinion of him. He was biding his time to run England again when Hitler would take over there. Only, the British people had other ideas.

the way the French and British governments treated Czecholavakia and Austria, which was as if the people there didn't matter. To me, this was almost as bad as Hitler.

quite angry when I finished it about the rip off of charging a lot for the book and presenting pro Hitler opinions at times.

This book is part of my quest to learn more about the 1930's and what led up to World War II. This was a very clinical textbook, which goes to great lengths to provide different sides to the issues involved. That the educated person who wrote thinks there could be more sides is a bit alarming to me. But, plenty of people liked Hitler or he could not have slaughtered so many innocents. Shame on academia and politicians who went along with appeasement at the time and even now in their opinions.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of Hitler, Chamberlain and Appeasement (Cambridge Perspectives in History)   from Amazon.Com!

Created Oct 14, 2015 at 10:42am • Submit your own review...