Between Hitler and Hamas: The Dangers of Appeasement and Genocidal Aggression

Despite the passage of time, the study of appeasement and of Hitler’s genocidal aggression continues to be relevant. Our understanding of appeasement is clear enough. Its characteristics can be described and identified. At the same time, there is a willingness to speak of Hitler’s genocidal aggression in the same breath. This tendency is closely associated with the 1930s, the experience of Munich, and continues to the present. For example, the recent decision of the U.K., France, Australia, Canada, and their partners to recognize a non-existent “State of Palestine” was an act of pure appeasement and an example of virtue-signaling for which nothing was received in exchange.

Appeasement, as it is commonly known, was a policy adopted by the British political class during the first decades after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles (June 28, 1919). Many considered its terms so one-sided that they would prevent Germany’s recovery. Therefore, British politicians thought it a moral necessity to correct the situation by appeasing Germany. The following is a brief description of appeasement by D. C. Watt, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics:

Appeasement. A term first employed in political contexts in the 1920s, when it meant the removal, by mutual agreement, of grievances arising from the 1919 peace settlement. After the appointment on January 30, 1933, of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, the term was applied to the (unsuccessful) policy by the British and French governments of trying to avoid war with Germany by judicious, frequently dishonorable, and inevitably unrequited concessions, weakening to those who made them and often made at the expense of third parties. The epitome of appeasement policy was the Munich Agreement of September 30, 1938.¹

I. Learning from the Mistakes of Others

At a time when Israelis are again facing a mix of hope and uncertainty, we are seeking insights to help us navigate the future. Several weeks ago, we received twenty live hostages and were promised the remains of those whom Hamas kidnapped and murdered in captivity. With the intervention of the United States, President Trump and his designated negotiators, supported by the Israel Defense Forces, a reasonably acceptable outcome may have been reached, despite the high cost of innocent Israeli lives which resulted from a “miscalculation” and a dereliction of duty on the part of those who were entrusted with safeguarding the security of the State and its citizens. This painful reality must be faced honestly. As we look forward, we must learn how to do better in the future.

To understand the present situation in a valid historical perspective, the basic facts must be recorded and sorted out. There is a practical benefit to this approach. The classical Prussian theorist of war, Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), wrote that strategy is based on the study of experience.

More than a century later, we can learn from several contemporary thinkers who published their views on appeasement. These were A. L. Rowse, a fellow of All Souls College at Oxford, who described the powerful influence of pro-German feeling which prevailed among the intellectual elite of Britain before the Second World War; Sir Orme Sargent, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the British Foreign Office; and Sir Harold Nicolson, a distinguished British diplomat, Member of Parliament, and author, who published a popular paperback in 1939, Why Britain is at War.

A. L. Rowse observed that the members of the political class with whom he interacted at All Souls College, including the editor of The Times, Geoffrey Dawson, had no sense of history and strategy. He described them as “middle class men with pacifist backgrounds, no knowledge of Europe, its history or its languages, or of diplomacy, let alone strategy or war” …. “Their deepest instinct was defeatist, their highest wisdom surrender.” His conclusion: “The total upshot of their efforts was to aid Nazi Germany to achieve a position of brutal ascendancy, a threat to everybody else’s security or even existence, which only a war could end.”

Sir Orme Sargent, the Permanent Under-Secretary of the British Foreign Office, drafted a brief but penetrating letter in 1946 with his “cogitations” on appeasement for the benefit of historian John Wheeler-Bennett. Sir Martin Gilbert republished this document in The Roots of Appeasement (1966). Sargent argued that appeasement could be justified if it worked and did not require sacrifices from a third party. At the same time, he added an important new thought: appeasement could be confused with blackmail, or worse. He noted that before Munich, “Hitler’s method” succeeded “on at least three occasions: in rearming, in the reoccupation of the Rhineland and in the seizure of Austria.” Therefore, he expected continued success in his demand for the Sudetenland.

There is a reciprocal dynamic in this relationship. On the one hand, the side that resorts to appeasement and concession does so in hopes of gaining an advantage. On the other hand, the aggressor seeks to conquer independently. As a rule, this contest ends when one side resorts to violence or the other to defeat. Sargent argued that one side, namely Britain, followed a policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany, whereas Hitler systematically followed a strategy of opportunistic aggression. Expecting continued success, Hitler had no idea that Britain ultimately would reverse its policy of appeasement.

Sargent presented an original insight in his description of “Hitler’s method,” which took advantage of a policy of appeasement:

It was not as though Hitler was a blackmailer, and could be bought off as such—dangerous though the process usually is. He was just the reverse of a blackmailer. The blackmailer threatens to do you an injury in order to extort money from you, whereas Hitler did you the injury in the hope, by choosing the right moment and circumstance, of so weakening and demoralizing you that he would be able to repeat the process with progressively less danger each time of your reacting or resisting. In other words, whereas the blackmailer wants your money but does not want to do you the injury he threatens, Hitler did not want your money but was determined as part of a long and carefully worked out plan to do you an injury—in fact one injury after another—and was concerned as to how he could carry through this process without provoking you to defend yourself before it was too late.

At this point, Sargent interjected a devastating accusation:

You remember the famous passage in Mein Kampf – you probably know it by heart – when Hitler frankly and cynically expounds and justifies his whole method of political and military undermining. If Chamberlain did not know this passage or had forgotten it, he showed criminal negligence. If he knew and chose to ignore it, he was taking a criminal risk which cannot be explained away.

II. In Search of the “Famous Passage”

Sir Orme Sargent referred specifically to “The Famous Passage” as the key to our understanding of Hitler’s “whole method of political and military undermining.” From his description, the passage would have been hard to miss. Using this description as a guide, it is possible to make an educated guess as to its origin.

In November 1939, Penguin Books published a popular paperback, Why Britain is at War. They had commissioned Sir Harold Nicolson to write this brief book, which sold 100,000 copies. Nicolson had an original approach, devoting special attention to Hitler’s method. His first chapter described the method of a serial murderer, George Joseph Smith, who married several women in succession and killed them by drowning to inherit their estates. The perpetrator attracted attention to himself as the method of his murders aroused the suspicion of the police. For Nicolson, the method was a matter of critical importance.

Nicolson devoted special attention to the passage in Mein Kampf in which Hitler described his method. He emphasized the importance of reading Mein Kampf in the original German because the translations into English had been sanitized. It is evident that he personally translated the original text into English with the admonition that it is necessary to understand one’s enemy:

It seems almost unbelievable that any foreign Government, possessing knowledge of Adolf Hitler’s origins and previous record, having before their eyes the document in which he had confessed the unlimited scope of his ambitions, the true nature of his opportunism and the cynicism of his methods, could have hoped that this anarchist could be satisfied by minor concessions or controlled by reasonable persuasion….

…. There is another passage which would, had they [the governments of Britain and France] noticed it, have warned them of the method which the Führer was likely to adopt. It runs as follows:

“A wise victor will, if possible, always impose his claim on the defeated people stage by stage. Dealing with a people which has grown defeatist—and this is every people who has voluntarily submitted to force—he can then rely on this fact that in not one of these further acts of oppression will it seem sufficient reason to take up arms again.”²

The assertion that Hitler had a systematic and coherent method of progressively weakening and destroying an adversary anticipated an important scholarly debate. Nicolson’s emphasis on method coincides with Sir Orme Sargent’s description of “the Famous Passage,” above. In addition, the contemporaries we have cited emphasize the lack of general education and sense of responsibility of Britain’s political class.

III. The Method and the Historians

During the first years after the war, historian Alan Bullock portrayed Hitler as an opportunistic pursuer of power for its own sake, an interpretation that was superseded by the publication of the German historian Eberhard Jäckel’s Hitlers Weltanschauung (Hitler’s Worldview, 1969). Historian Peter Hayes described the state of the question in an online publication of Cambridge University (2019):

Jäckel’s slim volume needed only 139 pages, including notes, to overturn the interpretation of Hitler established more than two decades earlier by Alan Bullock’s almost 800-page biography.³ In place of an opportunistic pursuer of power for its own sake, Jäckel portrayed [Hitler as] a consistent ideologue, an autodidact capable of considerable tactical flexibility but no deviation from his purposes.⁴

Pursuing my own research, I searched both volumes of Mein Kampf (at the Yad Vashem Library) but could not find the “Famous Passage.” Therefore, I wrote to Professor Jäckel in Stuttgart, the leading expert on Hitler’s worldview, and he kindly contributed an original observation. On August 30, 2006, he wrote:

Dear Dr. Fishman,

I do not know a certain passage (neither a famous one as Sir Orme Sargent wrote nor a “particular one” as you write) in Mein Kampf where Hitler “justifies his whole method of political and military undermining.”

Although Jäckel could not locate “the famous passage,” he accepted the merit of Sargent’s analysis. This made sense because he looked beyond the detail and focused on Hitler’s world view, of which he was the authority, writing further in his letter:

Whereas his aims were war (of conquest) and removal (of the Jews), he was not interested in justifying his method. It was rather the very essence of his whole book that his aims were to be attained unconditionally, i.e., without previous blackmailing. If such a passage should exist at all, it is most likely to be found in chapters 13 and 14 of the second volume. But I cannot find it.⁵

Jäckel’s emphasis on the worldview defined the subject in a way that allows comparisons with similar sets of facts and circumstances. His solution applied both to appeasement and Hitler’s program of conquest.

IV. From Hitler to Hamas

The study of the past has valuable benefits for the present, not the least the ability to build a strategy. It also provides insight into the enemy and his methods. Although future behavior cannot be calculated with reproducible accuracy, there remains a clear relationship, a continuity between past and present, which can provide an awareness of possible options. The study of past experience, an understanding of distinct national and cultural characteristics, and a strong general education are essential for this type of strategic learning.

It is also true that Mein Kampf is readily available in Arabic. The unanswered question is the extent of Hitler’s influence. The dots must be connected. The following is a direct quotation from Hitler’s speech of September 12, 1938, at Nuremberg (as quoted by Alan Bullock):

I am in no way willing that here in the heart of Germany a second Palestine should be permitted to arise. The poor Arabs are defenseless and deserted. The Germans in Czechoslovakia are neither defenseless nor are they deserted, and people should take notice of that fact.⁶

Bullock then described the positive response of his audience to this defiant declaration:

At every pause the deep baying of the huge crowd gathered under the stars, and the roar of “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” supplied a sinister background. At last, the one-time agitator of the Munich beer halls had the world for an audience. Yet, for all his tone of menace Hitler was careful not to pin himself down; he demanded only justice for the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, and left in his own hands the decision as to what constituted justice.⁷

The past is never far away. The study of Hitler’s “whole method of political and military undermining” and today’s methods of Hamas raises an open question. While we may have a clear understanding of appeasement, our appreciation of “Hitler’s method” has not reached the same level. Both the Munich Agreement and World War II remain in our consciousness. With the events of October 7, 2023, fresh in our minds, it is clear that Hamas’s war aims unabashedly include the destruction of Israel and genocide. For example, MEMRI has cited Ghazi Hamad of Hamas’s political bureau, who said on October 24, 2023, on LBC TV (Lebanon) that “Hamas is prepared to repeat the October 7 ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ Operation time and again until Israel is annihilated….” If one takes into account “revealed preference,” the ideas of Mein Kampf likely remain current, and Hamas has copied a page or two.

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Notes