From The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Alone, 1932 – 1940, by William Manchester:
The appeasers distrusted France, blamed her for the punitive Versailles clauses, felt Germany had been wronged, and were determined to make restitution. Lord Lothian declared that it was Britain’s moral obligation to support the Germans in their struggle to “escape from encirclement” (the encircling powers, presumably, being France, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg) “to a position of balance.” He neglected to add that any shift in the status quo would mean the liquidation of legitimate governments. At Versailles the 1914-1918 holocaust had been blamed on the Germans. Now the fashionable scapegoat was Germany’s ancient enemy. “Lady Astor,” The Week reported, “is obsessed with a vivid personal dislike of the French.” As late as November 7, 1936, a member of the cabinet told his ministerial colleagues that Francophobia was increasing in England because the French were an obstacle to Britain “getting on terms with the dictator powers.”
Read on: Download Holding out for a hero
