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Avoid a second world war
- In the 1930s, British leaders pursued appeasement because they wanted to avoid a second world war. World War I (1914–1918) had devastated Europe and caused the deaths of millions. Catastrophic wartime losses had left Britain psychologically, economically, and militarily unprepared for another war in Europe.
encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/neville-chamberlainThe British Policy of Appeasement toward Hitler and Nazi Germany
Instituted in the hope of avoiding war, appeasement was the name given to Britain’s policy in the 1930s of allowing Hitler to expand German territory unchecked. Most closely associated with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, it is now widely discredited as a policy of weakness.
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- British Domestic Concerns
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- Germany Annexes Austria
- The Sudetenland View This Term in The Glossary Crisis
- Chamberlain Negotiates with Hitler
- Neville Chamberlain: “Peace For Our Time”
- Winston Churchill Condemns The Munich Agreement
The British policy of appeasement was partly a reflection of domestic issues, including economic problems and antiwar sentiment. In the 1930s, the Great Depression, known in Britain as the Great Slump, caused unemployment to skyrocket.Economic distress led to rallies and demonstrations in the streets. Antiwar sentiment and support for the policy of...
Britain’s imperial politics also shaped the British government’s attitudes towards war and appeasement. British wealth, power, and identity depended on the empire, which included dominions and colonies. During World War I, the British had relied on their empire for resources and troops. In the event of another world war, the British needed the empi...
The British policy of appeasement was also a reaction to the diplomatic landscape of the 1930s. The strongest international players at the time (namely the United States, Italy, the Soviet Union, and France) each had their own domestic and geopolitical considerations.1And, the League of Nations, which had been created to prevent war, proved to be i...
In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria,a blatant violation of post World War I peace treaties. The annexation of Austria signaled the Nazis’ complete disregard for their neighbor’s sovereignty and borders. Despite this, the international community accepted it as a done deal. No foreign government intervened. The international community hoped t...
All hopes that Germany would stop with Austria were dashed almost immediately. Hitler set his sights on the Sudetenland, a largely German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia. In summer 1938, the Nazis manufactured a crisis in the Sudetenland. They falsely claimed that Germans in the region were being oppressed by the Czechoslovak government. In reali...
In September 1938, Europe seemed to be on the brink of war. It was at this point that Chamberlain personally got involved. On September 15, 1938, Chamberlain flew to Hitler’s vacation home in Berchtesgaden to negotiate the German leader’s terms. Chamberlain’s goal was to reach a diplomatic solution in order to avoid war. But the matter remained unr...
Chamberlain returned from the meeting in Munich triumphant. In London, he famously proclaimed: Chamberlain is sometimes mistakenly quoted as having said “peace in our time.”
Chamberlain’s optimism did not go unchallenged. In a speech to the House of Commons on October 5, 1938,Winston Churchill condemned the Munich Agreement. He referred to it as a “total and unmitigated defeat” for Britain and the rest of Europe. Moreover, Churchill claimed that the British policy of appeasement had “deeply compromised, and perhaps fat...
Aug 10, 2018 · It was only when Hitler reneged on the promise he had given to the British Prime Minister at the Munich Conference – that he would not occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia – that Chamberlain concluded his policy had failed and that the ambitions of dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini could not be quelled.
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Despite its deeply negative connotation and close association with September 1938, appeasement had a long history in British diplomacy. Historian Paul Kennedy called it “in essence a positive policy, based on certain optimistic assumptions about man’s inherent reasonableness.”
Jul 13, 2021 · Did appeasement cause the Second World War? When Hitler came to power, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain did all he could to appease him. But had he listened to another voice; that of Conservative backbencher Winston Churchill, might history have taken a very different course?
During the 1930s, Britain followed a policy of appeasement - giving Hitler what he wanted in order to keep the peace. There are a variety of reasons for this policy and debate around its ...
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appeasement, Foreign policy of pacifying an aggrieved country through negotiation in order to prevent war. The prime example is Britain’s policy toward Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
