Why did Britain declare war on Germany

Britain finally decided to go to war with Germany in 1939. There were many reasons for this outcome which I will include in this essay. Firstly I am going to discuss the relationships between countries in Europe at this time as this is an important cause of World War Two. Britain and Germany were at unease from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in World War One, they felt hard done by as their power was dramatically taken away from them, they lost territory and their army was cut down significantly. Germany also felt humiliated and their new leader Hitler wanted to make Germany into a great and powerful country again. To do this he firstly had to build up his army, so Hitler started to rearm Germany, he increased his army to 600,000 men and started to prepare for war, they built up the navy and their air force. Meanwhile Britain ignored what Hitler was doing as they did not look at it as a threat. Hitler then started to press on rapidly by marching into the Rhineland in March 1936 with absolutely no resistance. This was the first sign of appeasement where Britain saw what Hitler was doing but took no action as they also thought that this was not a threat and also that the demands weren’t to unreasonable.

Then to increase Germanys power in Europe Hitler and Mussolini signed an agreement. Hitler then went forward again and took over Austria in the Anschluss of 1938; again France and Britain did absolutely nothing to stop Hitler. This was a very important invasion for Hitler as this was mostly a German speaking country which made Hitler a far more powerful man.

Still after this Hitler wanted more, so his next step was to go and take over the Sudetenland which was the German speaking area of Czechoslovakia, and to ...

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Still after this Hitler wanted more, so his next step was to go and take over the Sudetenland which was the German speaking area of Czechoslovakia, and to everybody’s surprise there was no British or French presence to stop him. The strategy that Britain was using was appeasement which I have mentioned before. Britain’s prime minister at the time was Neville Chamberlain and he strongly believed in appeasement firstly because he wanted to avoid war at all costs, so he went to Germany to talk to Hitler to see what he wanted to avoid war, this policy reached its peak at the Munich Agreement where I mentioned before that Britain and France let Hitler have the Sudetenland. Chamberlain also undertook appeasement because he felt negotiating was better than force, which was a failure as his policy to avoid war did not work.

During the war Hitler could not have been trusted as he broke the Munich agreement by marching in and taking over most of Czechoslovakia.

By this stage Chamberlain had finally realised that Hitler could not be trusted again and so Britain promised to defend Poland if Germany was to attack them.

Britain then also realised that it was time to start to rearm Britain as war looked a likely outcome.

Then in Russia Stalin was getting worried about Hitler so even though they both hated each other after World War One they joined together forming the Nazi soviet pact. Hitler signed the pact because they didn’t want to worry about the Russian forces when attacking Poland and Stalin signed it for breathing space so they would have time to build up there army.

Hitler demanded Poland but was refused. Then Hitler invaded Poland. Britain and France then had no option but to declare war on Germany so declaration of war was on the 3rd September 1939.

Even though he wasn’t allowed Hitler built his country from scratch. The British were foolish to pursue appeasement which in the end turned out as a World War

By Owen Hanna