Was the appeasement of Nazi Germany by Britain and France ever anything more than an attempt to buy time?

The first 200 words of this essay...

Was the appeasement of Nazi Germany by Britain and France ever anything more than an attempt to buy time?

The policy of appeasement, which both Britain and France took toward Nazi Germany and it's expansionist aims during the late 1930s, is one of the most controversial and criticised foreign policies in history. Appeasement policy has been given short shrift by historians and the public alike since the 1930s, with the general consensus being that if Britain and France would have taken a harder line against the Nazi's then Hitler's aggressive policy could have been checked. However, the view of appeasement has not been totally one sided. Many revisionist historians have arrived at the view that appeasement was necessary for both Britain and France as a way of buying time for rearmament so that they would militarily be able to oppose Nazi Germany. This essay will closely look at that viewpoint to correctly assess whether that was one of the chief aims of appeasement.

Firstly it is apt to actually define what appeasement actually was. Appeasement was the policy of satisfying Hitler's demands by making certain concessions in order to avoid conflict. But was this policy motivated