Don't compare Trump with WWII's Chamberlain
National Post, 30 November 2025
There was never any doubt that the British PM opposed Hitler’s ambitions in Europe. The same cannot be said of Trump and Putin
Talk of appeasement is in the air. Thus a word ought to be said about its patron saint, as it were, Neville Chamberlain. Actually, several words, well chosen, offered by Sir Winston Churchill, who opposed with all his might Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, and then marshalled all his formidable rhetorical powers in eulogizing him.
Appeasement is the charge made against the Trump “peace plan” for ending Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine on terms wholly favourable to Russia.
The charge is made by President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in the history of the Republic.
“Putin has spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool. If administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the President ought to find new advisers,” McConnell said in a statement last week. “Rewarding Russian butchery would be disastrous.”
Since Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938, heralding an agreement with Hitler to achieve “peace for our time,” the folly of appeasing aggressive tyrants has been associated with his name. Hitler promised at Munich that if Britain and France agreed to his annexation of the Sudetenland (part of Czechoslovakia), he had no further territorial ambitions. In March 1939, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia and in September unleashed the blitzkrieg against Poland.
Chamberlain spoke of Munich as “peace with honour.” Though the exact quotation is disputed, the gist of Sir Winston’s analysis of Munich is not: “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.”
The war against Ukraine came long ago. President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is now in its 12th year, and he continues his attacks on Kyiv even as Trump acolytes press the Ukrainians to capitulate. Moscow bombards Ukraine from the sky, while Washington bullies them at the negotiating table. It is a fierce combination.
Why the United States would choose dishonour for themselves and defeat for Ukraine is a perplexity. The Trump plan does include proposed investments of frozen Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine — with profit-sharing for the Americans. Dishonour may as well be profitable.
Back then to Sir Winston eulogizing Chamberlain. Around Remembrance Day, I reread the address he gave in the House of Commons two days after Chamberlain died on Nov. 10, 1940, having ceded the premiership to Churchill the previous May. The new prime minister rose in the House to pay “a tribute of respect and of regard to an eminent man,” noting that “no one is obliged to alter the opinions which he has formed or expressed upon issues which have become a part of history.”
“I had the singular experience of passing in a day from being one of his most prominent opponents and critics to being one of his principal lieutenants, and on another day of passing from serving under him to become the head of a government of which, with perfect loyalty, he was content to be a member,” Churchill said, noting with understatement that “such relationships are unusual in our public life.”
Thus he was uniquely situated to speak that day of Chamberlain. It was one of the finest addresses in a career littered with them. Churchill was magnanimous to his rival and humble even in their disagreements.
“History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days,” he noted. The judgments of the moment are provisional and disputes need not be litigated anew.
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