'Guilty Women', Foreign Policy, and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain by Julie V. Gottlieb (review)

Julie V. Gottlieb's new book focuses on the role of women in the appeasement and anti-appeasement movements in late-1930s Britain. She is wellsuited to the task; an established women's and political historian of the interwar period, Gottlieb knows this material as well as anyone and better than most. Accordingly, she introduces her readers to an interesting cast of characters—primarily elite women involved in high politics either directly or indirectly—and largely succeeds at proving that these women's actions and voices mattered in the British debate over how to deal with Nazi aggression.

Gottlieb is most successful when she focuses on personalities such as the redoubtable Katherine, Duchess of Atholl. As in her previous monograph on women in British fascism, the author has a gift for making such figures as the "Red Duchess" come alive. In that case, the Duchess was simultaneously a conservative, an anti-communist, a supporter of the Spanish Republic during the Civil War, and a determined opponent of appeasement (224–229, 249–253). By using her as an example, Gottlieb succeeds at outlining some of the positions, actions, and influence of one group of women she dubs "defencists" who wanted the British government to take a stronger stand against the German and Italian dictators. Similarly, she uses other high profile women such as Nancy Astor, Ellen Wilkinson, and Eleanor Rathbone as exemplars of important political currents and tendencies. She then often supplements these examples with evidence from more socially humble women—most often citing the letters such women would write key figures such as Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill, particularly during and after the Munich Crisis (see 185–211).

The author also certainly makes her case that women were critical to the appeasement movement. Her argument is most convincing when she discusses the women who influenced Chamberlain, the prime minister who famously proclaimed "peace for our time" following the signing of the Munich Agreement. As Gottlieb outlines, Chamberlain leaned heavily on his wife and two sisters for support and took succor from the adulation he received from pro-appeasement women (101–130). She likewise demonstrates that there were at least some key female figures in the anti-appeasement camp (235–265).

The complexity the book captures is likewise admirable. Gottlieb does not fall into a left-right or male-female dichotomy and is very careful, on the contrary, to explain the diverse political origins and motivations of actors on both sides of the appeasement debate. In so doing she illustrates that even those we might find sympathetic from our twenty-first century vantage point, such as those progressive feminists like Wilkinson who opposed appeasement, tended to rely on gender stereotypes in their rhetoric and thinking (237–239).

The book is successful and well worth reading for those interested in the subject. Organizationally, however, it could have been stronger. It is frankly too long at 340 pages, including 265 pages of text, and several chapters could easily have combined. There are, for example, four consecutive chapters that focus largely on women in the appeasement movement and while the author is trying to draw the reader's attention to the different kinds of women within the appeasement coalition, the effect is repetitive. Other chapters were questionable additions to the text. Did the analysis really require an entire chapter dedicated to "The Female Franchise Factor and the Munich By-Elections," for example? The key point therein was that there was no consistent effect of the Munich Crisis on the various byelections that followed it and that therefore contemporary assumptions about women voters' proclivities were wide of the mark; this could have been said more succinctly. Similarly, the evidence examined in "Women's Expressions of Opinion on Appeasement," from Mass Observation and women's letters, should have been integrated into the rest of the text rather than contained in a stand-alone...