American Appeasement

Harvard University Press has partnered with De Gruyter to make available for sale worldwide virtually all in-copyright HUP books that had become unavailable since their original publication. The 2,800 titles in the “e-ditions” program can be purchased individually as PDF eBooks or as hardcover reprint (“print-on-demand”) editions via the “Available from De Gruyter” link above. They are also available to institutions in ten separate subject-area packages that reflect the entire spectrum of the Press’s catalog. More about the E-ditions Program »

During the years of the Weimar Republic, the United States worked to reintegrate Germany into the Western political and economic community; Germany itself laid great stress on good relations with America as a means of revising the Treaty of Versailles and altering the balance of power in Europe. The rise of Hitler and his National Socialists drastically changed matters, making traditional assumptions about foreign policy either irrelevant or inappropriate. Most American diplomats did not perceive the aggressive design of German policy and subscribed to the same illusions as their British and French counterparts.

This comprehensive study is based on an unusually wide variety of sources and is the only detailed treatment of America’s role in the appeasement of Germany and the events that ultimately culminated in the Second World War. “Bolder American policy,” the author concludes, “might not only have encouraged others to greater daring and resistance, but could have changed, in a way highly advantageous to the democracies, the critical political circumstances in which German and European policy developed.”