The charge of appeasement was also levelled at those who conducted Australian foreign policy during the 1930s. Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies, his successor as prime minister in April 1939, both supported Chamberlain in his craven diplomacy. So too did former Prime Minister Stanley Bruce, who, as Australian High Commissioner in London, played a key role; and Richard Casey, his former protégé and a senior minister in the Lyons and Menzies governments. All of them were accused, with the descent into war, of having followed Britain in its policy of appeasement. This verdict was reinforced by local episodes such as Menzies’ role as attorney-general in breaking the union embargo on exports of iron to the Japanese munitions industry in 1938, the admiration for Germany’s national purpose that he expressed when he visited Berlin in the same year, and the government’s suppression of criticism of the Nazi régime.

The guilt of the Australian appeasers was compounded by their uncritical acceptance of British foreign policy and defence strategy. Following the logic of appeasement, they left Australia unprotected. Subservient to Empire, Menzies allowed the home country to determine the Dominion’s fate: hence his announcement on 3 September 1939 that ‘Great Britain has declared war’ and that ‘as a result, Australia is also at war’. Relying on the British naval base in Singapore, he sent Australian troops to North Africa and then allowed them to be used in the disastrous expedition to Greece. In this widely held view, it was left to John Curtin to assert Australia’s national interests and to defend the country from Japan when he became prime minister late in 1941.

A number of studies have undermined these charges. The Lyons government embarked on rearmament from 1937, and Australia’s defence industry developed rapidly under Menzies. Mindful of the Japanese threat, he insisted on explicit assurances from Britain to defend Singapore before committing Australian troops to Africa. He was sceptical of the Greek campaign and highly critical of Churchill’s lack of consultation, complaining that ‘Mr Churchill has no conception of the British Dominions as separate entities’. Bruce, in London, was even more abrasive in frequent confrontations with the British prime minister. The idea that these Australian statesmen served Britain blindly in the early years of the war will not stand up to inspection.

What about the charge that they followed Britain in the disastrous policy of appeasement that led to the war? This is the question that Christopher Waters pursues in this study of the pre-war period. Using British and Australian archives, and the papers of the participants, he gives us a close and detailed account of Australia’s participation in imperial foreign policy from 1937 to 1939.

The seeds of Australian appeasement were sown in the early acts of aggression: Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935, the German and Italian assistance to Franco in the Spanish Civil War from 1936, and Hitler’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland in the same year. Here already the cabinet followed Britain in resisting sanctions in the belief that they would damage relations with the aggressors. The principal dissident was Billy Hughes, whose bellicose reputation from the previous war probably strengthened the other ministers in their determination to pursue a peaceful settlement. Thereafter the Australians urged further concessions, with Casey and Lyons arguing at the 1937 Imperial Conference that Germany be allowed a freer hand in Europe. Menzies was at this stage less committed, sympathising with his friend Anthony Eden when the British foreign minister resigned early in 1938 in protest at Chamberlain’s conviction that Germany and Italy had legitimate grievances that needed to be settled. Menzies’ subsequent visit to London and Berlin convinced him that Chamberlain was right.

In the series of crises that led to war – the Anschluss of March 1938, which subordinated Austria to Germany, the annexation of the Sudetenland in September 1938 and subsequent abandonment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the Italian invasion of Albania in April, and then the final stand over Poland – Australia urged greater appeasement. It wanted Britain to put pressure on Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland, resisted any commitment to Eastern Europe, refused to criticise the Kristallnacht, disapproved of efforts for an anti-fascist alliance with the Soviet Union, advised that Poland should be made to meet Hitler’s demands. The story that Waters tells reveals Lyons, Menzies, and especially Bruce out-appeasing the British appeasers.

This, perhaps, was the luxury of a small, dependent, remote country. It is less clear what influence the Australians had. Waters devotes considerable space to Bruce in London, constantly pressing his schemes for further concession on British ministers, just as he would importune Churchill and the War Cabinet with his advice on military strategy. With memories of the Australian’s earlier role, it is hardly surprising that Churchill gave him short shrift. The failure of the British government to consult with Australia at crucial junctures seems to suggest that the Dominion’s views were often supernumerary.

Waters presents his account clearly, with a command of context and telling use of detail. Australian foreign policy in the years leading up to the war is a heavily tilled field, but his is the most comprehensive treatment of this troubling strand. Its originality is perhaps concealed by a reluctance to engage with the historiography. Waters knows the scholarly literature, and from time to time he comments on the contribution that other historians have made to particular aspects of his subject. But he does not map the differences of opinion among these historians, or explore their implications. Rather, he turns in his last chapter to a judicial review of Australia’s role in the imperial appeasement policy. It has to be said that the case for the prosecution is more persuasive than that for the defence. In a brief final judgement, he brings in a verdict of guilty. Lyons, Menzies, Casey, and Bruce badly misjudged the foreign policy of Hitler and Mussolini, and pursued the imperial appeasement policy long after they should have recognised its failure.