On 14 September 1938, at the height of the crisis over the Sudetenland, the British premier Neville Chamberlain shocked the world by announcing that he would be flying to Germany to intercede personally with Hitler. It was, recorded the Conservative MP Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, one of the ‘finest, most inspiring acts of all history’. The Cabinet considered it a ‘stroke of genius’, while the Liberal News Chronicle applauded ‘one of the boldest and most dramatic strokes in diplomatic history’. Winston Churchill, on the other hand, thought it ‘the stupidest thing that has ever been done’.

The parallels between Chamberlain’s decision to fly to Hitler in September 1938, to try and resolve the Czechoslovak dispute, and Donald Trump’s announcement that he intends to meet Vladimir Putin at an unspecified future date, to end what he calls ‘this ridiculous war’ in Ukraine, are chilling. In both cases, the man on the other side of the table was, or will be, a ruthless dictator: a dedicated revanchist and extreme nationalist; a tyrant who murders his political opponents and prohibits freedom of speech. In both cases, the injured party was, or will be, excluded from the negotiations. The Czechs took no part in the Munich Conference and Trump has made it painfully obvious that the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, is not to be invited to his Saudi Arabian get-together with Putin. In both cases, the democratic leaders had, or have, a hubristic faith in their own abilities: ‘I know that I can save this country and I do not believe that anyone else can,’ declared Chamberlain three days before Hitler tore up the Munich Agreement and entered Prague (Trump’s boasts are too numerous to be worth quoting). And in both cases their acts rebounded, or will rebound: leading to a less safe world and bringing shame and dishonour upon their authors.

Yet, if the similarities between the policy of appeasement as practised in the 1930s and the policy of appeasement today appear obvious, the dissimilarities are even greater. Appeasement in the 1930s was predicated on fear: fear of another European war that would involve the democracies in an existential struggle with Hitler and his newly-created Luftwaffe. If war came, the British Chiefs of Staff warned the Cabinet in September 1938 that the country could expect anywhere between 500 and 600 tons of explosives to be dropped on it every day. London, predicted the military theorist J.F.C. Fuller, would become ‘one vast raving Bedlam’. The hospitals would be stormed, traffic would cease, and law and order would crumble. ‘What of the government at Westminster? It will be swept away by an avalanche of terror.’ Later, as Chamberlain flew back from his first meeting with Hitler, he had nightmarish visions of a German bomber following the same route. The United States, by contrast, has nothing to fear from Putin. The pre-eminent global power, she is shielded by geography, her economic and technological strength and an unrivalled military. Trump is strong, Putin is weak. And yet it is Putin that stands to gain from any peace deal.

A no less startling contrast is the moral inversion. By the summer of 1938, few outside extreme right-wing circles had anything but contempt for Hitler and his regime. ‘Hitler’s Germany is the bully of Europe’, noted Chamberlain as early as March 1935. Later, after his first visit to the Führer, he described the Nazi leader as ‘the commonest little dog’ he had ever met, and later still predicted that Europe would never be at peace as long as ‘the Jews obstinately go on refusing to shoot Hitler!’. But Donald Trump admires Putin. A fellow ‘strong man’ and anti-liberal crusader, Putin’s authoritarianism appeals to Trump, who seems to look with envy on the Russian president’s ability to silence dissent, serve multiple terms following gerrymandered elections, and use his office to enrich himself to an unimaginable degree.

Finally, there is the crucial fact that Europe was at peace in 1938, whereas Putin’s war in Ukraine has been grinding on since 2014. However misguided Chamberlain’s policy, he was sincere in his belief that his actions could save Europe from catastrophe. For Ukraine, catastrophe came on 24 February 2022. Since then, Ukrainians have suffered a daily hell of missiles and drones, tanks and mortars, killings and war crimes. Through sheer determination, inspired leadership and western assistance they have managed to defy the Russian Goliath. Although Putin’s armies have been making incremental gains for 18 months, there is no escaping the fact that the ‘special military operation’ has been a disaster for the Russian president. Why reward him now with a peace deal made at Ukraine’s expense? Why undermine NATO? Why send the strongest possible signal to the rest of the world that the United States, far from condemning acts of unprovoked international aggression, will, henceforth, side with the perpetrators of violence?

In January 1940, during the Phoney War, one of the last remaining appeasers wrote to the prime minister suggesting that the opportunity for negotiating with Hitler had not expired. Chamberlain disagreed.  The British had no problem with the German people, he explained, but with aggression. ‘Aggression has been, and there is certainly no evidence that it has ceased to be, the policy of Hitler. That is why we made war upon Hitler and why, so long as he can persuade or compel Germany to support him in such a policy, we must wage war against Germany… Nothing could be worse than an inconclusive peace or a reversion to an armed truce.’

Donald Trump should remember these words and their author’s reputation.