One of the regular attack lines of western politicians and journalists is that by any concession to Russia in concluding the war in Ukraine would be akin to the appeasement of Nazi Germany before World War II. That hugely oversimplifies and twists history for our own convenience, to extend a war that we have never had any intention of fighting. The only people we are appeasing are the war mongers in Brussels and London.

The argument goes that, if we make concessions to Russia, then we will have appeased President Putin in the same way that we appeased Adolf Hitler before World War II. But that is to twist history. Appeasement happened as the great powers of Britain and France made sense of how to ensure collective European security, bringing Germany back onto a peaceable footing while dealing with the rise of communism and the aftermath of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Appeasement was an approach, not an individual decision or concession towards Germany, and ran for a couple of decades after the conclusion of World War I. The Locarno Treaties of 1925 fixed the great powers’ post war borders and ushered in Germany joining the League of nations in 1926. The western powers appeased Hitler for years, in March 1936 when Hitler sent the Wehrmacht into the Rheinland, an area that had been demilitarised under the terms of the Versailles Settlement. Then followed the Anschluss in Austria in March of 1938. Britain did this at the same time seeking to normalise relations with Germany, fearing the Soviet threat in the context of the great depression of the Thirties.

Germany was still considered a great industrial power much like Britain with deep historical ties between our nations. Overtures by senior British politicians were made throughout the Thirties, including former Prime Minister Lloyd George who visited Hitler in Bavaria and said, “Germany does not want war and she is afraid of an attack by Russia”. Adolf Hitler famously viewed the English as a natural ally and made of ‘Germanic stock’. The UK and Germany brokered a naval agreement in 1935, that allowed the Nazis to expand there, navy beyond the........

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