For an updated page of quotes:
HISTORIANS AND QUOTES
for the INTERWAR years
HISTORIANS
Audin-Rouzeau- The Versailles Treaty Going Too Far
JR Western- LoN died with Abyssinia
James Joll- failure of LoN, ToV devided Europe- into countries who wanted to revise it, ones who wanted to uphold it and the ones who were not interested
AJP Taylor- failure of LoN, unfairness of ToV
HAL Fisher- members of LoN responsible for war
John Maynard Keynes: The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
E.H.Carr- LoN did not fail but the members did, ToV was based on unworkable idealistic principles-because it did not solve German Problem just selfish needs
PMH Bell- critique of ToV
Anthony Lentin- ToV failed to tackle the underlying potential of Germany
Ruth Hening- ToV was a good idea
Adam Adamthwaite- ToV was a good idea
Paul Birdsall- USA not involved-main reason for failure of ToV and LoN
Paul Kennedy- ToV and LoN was successful in 1920’s, but crushed by militarism of Japan, Germany and Italy in 1930’s cause by Great Depression
Denis Mack Smith- criticism of Mussolini
Hannah Arendt- Italian fascism much less totalitarian than Germany and Russia
Sir Ian Keshaw- comparison of domestic policies of Hitler and Mussolini
McGregor Knox- greatness of Mussolini’s aims
AJP Taylor about ToV: “No German accepted it as a fair settlement and all Germnas wanted to shake it off.”
PMH Bell about ToV: “The settlement was a rickety edifice which was unstable from the start.”
Adam Adamthwaite: “ToV was a brave attempt to deal with intractable, perhaps insoluble problems.”
Woodrow Wilson said: “I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty”
British people wanted Germans to pay: “everything you can squeeze out of a lemon”
German foreign minister Count Brockdorff-Rantzau- “It is demanded that we confess ourselves guilty. Such a confession in my mouth would be a lie.”
Lloyd George: “We shall to fight another war again in 25 years time”
French Marshall Ferdinand Foch 1920- “This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.”
Abyssinia: historian JR Western 1971: “The crisis was fatal to the League. Nobody took it seriously again. They got ready for the Second World War.”
Historian J Joll 1976: “After Manchuria and Abyssinia, people decided that it was no longer any use putting hopes in the League.”
Historian AJP Taylor 1966: “The League died in 1935. One day it was a powerful body imposing sanctions, the next day it was a useless fraud, everybody running away from if as quickly as possible. Hitler watched.”
HAL Fisher 1935: “If the nations want peace, the League gives them the way by which peace can be kept. Bet, League or no League, a country which is determined to have a war can always have it”
Churchill about Munich 1938: “It is a total defeat. Czechoslovakia will be swallowed up by the Nazis. And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning.”
Chamberlain: Czechoslovakia- “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”
Chamberlain about Munich: “I believe it is peace for our time.”
Chamberlain: “War is a terrible thing, and we must make sure hat it is the great issues that are involved.” “Hitler was a man who could be relied on.”
Hitler: “Sudetenland is the last claim I have to make.”
Churchill: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
Churchill: “Second world war was the easiest war to be prevented.”
Stalin after Nazi-Soviet pact: “We got peace for our country for 18 months, which let us make military preparations.”
“Stalin was sure that Russia could only gain from a long war in which Britain, France and Germany exhausted themselves.”
Mussolini- “Obedience not discussion”
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