<P> His view has been shared by other historians, for example Paul Kennedy, who says of the choices facing politicians at the time, "Each course brought its share of disadvantages: there was only a choice of evils . The crisis in the British global position by this time was such that it was, in the last resort, insoluble, in the sense that there was no good or proper solution ." Martin Gilbert has expressed a similar view: "At bottom, the old appeasement was a mood of hope, Victorian in its optimism, Burkean in its belief that societies evolved from bad to good and that progress could only be for the better . The new appeasement was a mood of fear, Hobbesian in its insistence upon swallowing the bad in order to preserve some remnant of the good, pessimistic in its belief that Nazism was there to stay and, however horrible it might be, should be accepted as a way of life with which Britain ought to deal ." </P> <P> The arguments in Taylor's Origins of the Second World War (sometimes described as "revisionist") were rejected by many historians at the time, and reviews of his book in Britain and the United States were generally critical . Nevertheless, he was praised for some of his insights . By showing that appeasement was a popular policy and that there was continuity in British foreign policy after 1933, he shattered the common view of the appeasers as a small, degenerate clique that had mysteriously hijacked the British government sometime in the 1930s and who had carried out their policies in the face of massive public resistance; and by portraying the leaders of the 1930s as real people attempting to deal with real problems, he made the first strides towards explaining the actions of the appeasers rather than merely condemning them . </P> <P> In the early 1990s a new theory of appeasement, sometimes called "counter-revisionist", emerged as historians argued that appeasement was probably the only choice for the British government in the 1930s, but that it was poorly implemented, carried out too late and not enforced strongly enough to constrain Hitler . Appeasement was considered a viable policy, considering the strains that the British Empire faced in recuperating from World War I, and Chamberlain was said to have adopted a policy suitable to Britain's cultural and political needs . Frank McDonough is a leading proponent of this view of appeasement and describes his book Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War as a "post revisionist" study . Appeasement was a crisis management strategy seeking a peaceful settlement of Hitler's grievances . "Chamberlain's worst error", says McDonough, "was to believe that he could march Hitler on the yellow brick road to peace when in reality Hitler was marching very firmly on the road to war ." He has criticized revisionist historians for concentrating on Chamberlain's motivations rather than how appeasement worked in practice--as a "usable policy" to deal with Hitler . James P. Levy argues against the outright condemnation of appeasement . "Knowing what Hitler did later," he writes, "the critics of Appeasement condemn the men who tried to keep the peace in the 1930s, men who could not know what would come later...The political leaders responsible for Appeasement made many errors . They were not blameless . But what they attempted was logical, rational, and humane ." </P> <P> The view of Chamberlain colluding with Hitler to attack Russia has persisted, however, particularly on the far - left . In 1999, Christopher Hitchens wrote that Chamberlain "had made a cold calculation that Hitler should be re-armed...partly to encourage his' tough - minded' solution to the Bolshevik problem in the East ." While consciously encouraging war with Stalin is not widely accepted to be a motive of the Downing Street appeasers, there is historical consensus that anti-communism was central to appeasement's appeal for the conservative elite . As Antony Beevor writes, "The policy of appeasement was not Neville Chamberlin's invention . Its roots lay in a fear of bolshevism . The general strike of 1926 and the depression made the possibility of revolution a very real concern to conservative politicians . As a result, they had mixed feelings towards the German and Italian regimes which had crushed the communists and socialists in their own countries ." </P>

During the years leading up to world war ii which nations initially followed a policy of appeasement