I’m going back through a really smart book about why Liberals (in the British sense) supported appeasement of Hitler and Germany, and came across this really good description of Liberalism:
“Liberalism postulated the rational and ‘progressive’ nature of the historical process. Besides success, it upheld pragmatism, tolerance and compromise as the principal political virtues. At the core of the liberal outlook stood the ‘idea of limits.’ It abhorred excess and extremism; it believed that ‘absolutist’ thought of any sort assured at least failure if not perdition. All problems and conflicts were seen as soluble with the application of reason; and reason, Liberals believed, ultimately did prevail. Reason, in fact, suffused all and was identified with reality.” (3)
UK Liberals don’t correlate exactly to the Democratic or Republican Party in the US–they’re closer to centrist Democrats, Libertarians, or libertarian-oriented Republicans. And the point that the Morris book makes is that Liberals supported appeasing Hitler for very different reasons from Tories (the British conservative party). Like the Tories, they largely sympathized with the Germans regarding the punitive Versailles Treaty, disliked the French, and underestimated Hitler, but they did so for different reasons, especially regarding that last point.
They argued that Hitler had outgrown Mein Kampf, and dismissed the racism of Nazi ideology because, as Morris says, they “refused to believe that a ‘civilised’ nation of 70 millions could subscribe to it, let alone base domestic and foreign policies upon it” (7). They argued, over and over, the Nazism was really about economic issues and problems:
“Nazism was seen as the German version of Fascism, a socio-economic ideology of bankrupt capitalism. It served, and was subscribed to by, a coalition of economic ‘losers’–industrial and financial barons intent upon preserving their profits and economic empires, the unemployed and Lumpenproletariat seeking security and work, an the lower middle classes desirous of retaining their assets now imperilled by big business and political instability. Thus perceived, Nazism was an ideology of class war. [….] race doctrine was ignored or regarded as mere camouflage designed to conceal the ‘real’ (economic) motivations of the regime and its backers. ” (10-11)