Reconciling Hitlerian Aggression to Taylorian Diplomatic Narrative
Date
2024-04-18
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Abstract
In seeking to morally defend the work of AJP Taylor one must demonstrate that properly assessing the diplomatic weight of Allied blunders, and the extent to which they helped bring about the Second World War, does not in turn inevitably lead a historian to forget or diminish Herr Hitler’s role in instigating the conflict. Instead it might enable a historian to better understand how both the Allies and Axis powers came to a place in September 1939 where they committed
to a war over Poland that neither side seemed to anticipate or desire at that given moment. Using the the Munich Pact, the zenith of Allied appeasement, as a locus point, this paper will argue that (following that moment) Allied blunders and Hitlerian opportunism were made indistinguishable within the formation of a single diplomatic system. Examining this and the events that ensued shows Taylor’s judgements on Allied policy to hold a great deal of water, so long as they are modified to contain the fixed historic principle of Hitlerian Aggression. In studying the erroneous precedents Great Britain established under the Munich Agreement, together with the further blunders she committed from that point and the German invasion of Poland, she might be said to have, in a diplomatic sense, contributed at least as much as Hitler’s own aggression towards the joining of general war in Europe as it happened at that specific place and specific time.
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Treaty of Versailles, Munich Pact, World War, 1939-1945, Taylor, Alan John Percivale (A.J.P.), Diplomacy, World War, 1939-1945 -- Origin