The British recognised that there were a number of German speaking peoples outside Germany who would one day want to be part of the Reich. They believed that appeasement aimed to achieve German reunification peacefully. Britain would and could not effectively defend the new countries of Eastern Europe e.g. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and therefore encouraged these states to make concessions to Germany in a peaceful way. Chamberlain also wanted to turn Germany eastwards to act as a bulwark against Communist Russia. Communist policy to expand was well known and feared greatly. Though this seems acceptable in theory, Chamberlain's mistake was the failure to recognise that Britain was declining in power and prestige and he also failed to recognise that Fascism and Nazism were unappeasable.
The first true test of the policy of appeasement came on the 7th March 1936 when Germany remilitarised the Rhineland. Under the Treaty of Versailles, the Rhineland was declared a demilitarised zone; this can be looked upon as an act of aggression as it broke the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and also the Locarno agreement. Hitler’s decision to remilitarise the Rhineland at this stage of events was triggered by the fact that Britain and France were too preoccupied with the Abyssinian crisis to pay much attention to his actions. The League of Nations had already proved incapable of decisive action to deter or reverse aggression; this showed Hitler that there was no working mechanism for other countries to stand against him. The remilitarisation also took place on a Saturday which meant limited resistance. He had seen that France and Britain were making little effort to support Abyssinia and had done little to stop the Japanese at Manchuria. Hitler believed that by the time those who were in a position to take any action were ready to he would be in control of the Rhineland. However, whilst acknowledging his army was in no position to withstand French opposition, Hitler ordered his troops to withdraw if such opposition occurred. The French however offered no such opposition. Instead the French sought the support of Britain, however the view that Germany had been too severely treated at Versailles was dominant within British society and Chamberlain’s policy was to appease Hitler’s actions, stating that "Germany has the right to station their troops anywhere within its own country." Continuing with this view Lord Lothian sated they are "only going into there own back garden." These statements clearly act in favour of appeasement, expressing that military action against Germany’s actions was not necessary as she is clearly retaliating against the unjust nature of the Versailles settlement. It has been strongly argued that Britain should have gone to war at this point, but there were problems with this. Hitler had cultivated an impression of military might - which was far in excess of his actual strength - as a result of his forces’ seemingly decisive intervention in the Spanish Civil War. His supposed strength was emphasised through the use of propaganda and his forces’ well publicised parades. Partly due to severe losses in World War 1 France was very short of man power and thus Britain and France felt too weak to tackle Germany alone. Because of the Rome-Berlin Axis Italy was no longer supporting Britain and France against Germany and as the USA also had a strong isolationist foreign policy and had made it clear that it would not intervene militarily in Europe to support Britain and France. Thus both Britain and France did not feel confident enough of victory in another (expected) war of attrition with Germany.
However Hitler did not stop there, and by the end of 1938 Austria was taken by the German Reich (empire), and Hitler was demanding the Sudetenland (half of Czechoslovakia largely populated by German speaking people). Britain and France had done little to date to stop German expansion, fearing a return to world war. They then signed the Munich Agreement making Hitler promise that he would take no more land after the Sudetenland (Hitler said at the time that the Sudetenland was: “the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe”). In March of 1939 Hitler broke the pact and took the rest of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France were shocked to find that Hitler had broken the agreement and agreed to interfere if he took anymore territory in Europe. This they were forced to do when Hitler gambled again and invaded Poland, a nation that Britain had pledged to defend.
It is clear that Chamberlain, as a former businessman and firm believer in peace, felt strongly that Hitler was a man with whom he could do business. His personal relationship with Hitler was largely one of trust. Until the remainder of Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1939 all Hitler had done seemed reasonable. Until then he had only tried to obtain lands where ethnic Germans lived. After Hitler managed the Anchluss, his economic and military power was increased; this made Britain and France even less certain that they could defeat him in any future war meaning the use of appeasement was only heightened.
It is easy with hindsight to overlook the smaller things appeasement achieved, such as the opportunity for Britain to re-militarise (due to de-militarization that had been occurring previously) due to the fact that appeasement did lead to war and therefore is considered by the majority as a failure. The British people and Chamberlain strongly believed in the policy of appeasement and were shocked when it did not work. Chamberlain had total faith in the policy of appeasement and believed that eventually Hitler could be controlled. As Chamberlain said in 1939 at the outbreak of World War 2 “Everything that I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins.”
It can be considered that Chamberlain followed the policy of appeasement as a means to buy some time as he realised that British defences were hopelessly inadequate, as British military strength had been greatly reduced due to the commitment of disarmament. Even at the time of the Anschluss, Britain was declared “unprepared for war” and even earlier perhaps over the Rhineland (1936) or Manchuria and Abyssinia would have been unthinkable. Therefore whatever the reasons for the continual policy of appeasement, it can be said that appeasement with the sole aim of preventing war did not succeed, however what it was seen to do was delay the inevitable. This does not necessarily make appeasement successful however and many strongly feel that the continual demands of Hitler were flared by the lack of opposition, and his continual greed for expansion, his demands were rarely attacked, simply given into with little hesitancy. If an overly bellicose war-enthusiasm had produced the mass slaughter of World War I, then the resulting determination to avoid war at all costs in the 1930s proved equally counterproductive. With Europe's failure to oppose Hitler leading the German Führer to believe that he could do as he pleased and no-one would threaten war in response. In this view the delay caused by appeasement increased the number of people killed when war ultimately became unavoidable and appeasement can be viewed here as unsuccessful. Another view argues that there were elements within the German Army who would have removed Hitler from power if he had backed down in the face of Allied opposition. It can also be argued that had the Allies had not given in over Czechoslovakia, Germany would have had less time to rearm and the resulting war would have been less destructive.
A strong stand by Britain and France may not have caused Hitler to back down, and that in the crisis, Hitler was fully intent on going to war with Britain and France. Furthermore, the idea that an early war would have prevented a general war can also been criticized. Long before the Czech crisis, Hitler had revealed his intent to become master of Europe if not the world, and I feel that it is unlikely that a strong stand over Czechoslovakia would have caused him to permanently renounce such ambitions. In addition, though it has been pointed out that there were some in the German Army who detested Hitler and were actively looking for an excuse for a coup, there is no reason to believe that a loss of face over Czechoslovakia would have triggered a coup or that a coup would have been successful. Finally, it has been argued that there was no reason to believe that a war over Czechoslovakia would have been less destructive than the war over . In the case of , after the collapse of the Polish army, there was a lull of several months as both sides rearmed.
Given the scale of Hitler's rearming, there is no guarantee that halting Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia would have stopped the war, and it might merely have brought it forward. An additional factor which led to Britain's appeasement of Hitler was fear of . In the British MP, , declared that "I think it is well for the man on the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed.........the bomber will always get through." Fear of aerial bombing was one of the stronger reasons why Britain decided to follow this policy.
In conclusion, many people in Britain and France admired Hitler’s achievements especially in the spheres of economic policy. To some extent there was support of fascism. France had steadily lost allies: Italy, Russia and Czechoslovakia (“Czech freedom is not worth a drop of blood”) as a result of Hitler’s successful foreign policy initiatives during the 1930’s. It is difficult to judge the policy and its effectiveness with hindsight as we know what the British public and government did not know: that the policy would lead to world war. At the time, the governments of Britain and France were more concerned with the pressing economic problems inside their own countries (recession, inflation, unemployment) than with stopping Hitler. Those who opposed later claimed: "we have eaten dirt in vain", expressing the fact that Britain had tolerated the deceitful acts of Germany to no avail or success. Appeasement did give Britain time to re-arm, and it is only now that we can see other options, though at the time the British public and government did not want to engage in war under any circumstances.
