Robert Hadow : a case study of an appeaser

Abstract

Historians differ over the origins of Britain's policy of appeasement, and many analyses concentrate on the objectives of policy using the growth of overseas obligations or more recent historical markers such as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The approach of this thesis involves relating appeasement to the personal beliefs and decisions of those responsible for foreign policy. By pin-pointing Robert Hadow, a First Secretary in the Foreign Office, as an example of an appeaser, such an approach demonstrates how intelligent and capable men in Britain fell victim to a policy which, in retrospect, appears blind and irrational. An examination of Hadow's fear of war, bias against bolshevism, and sympathy for the German minority in Czechoslovakia is made in this thesis through detailed research of Foreign Office despatches and Hadow's reports, memoranda, and personal correspondence. Much of this hitherto unpublished material sheds new light on the course of events from the collapse of the Kredit Anstalt in Austria to the outbreak of World War II. By following the course of Hadow's career during this period, this thesis seeks to explain the mentality that produced the foreign policy followed by Britain in the 1930s.