Chamberlain adopted this policy of appeasement for many reasons. Firstly, the hope was that by making concessions to the dictators, another terrible war, like the First World War, could be avoided. Chamberlain wanted to avoid war because the horrors of war were in recent memory and fathers who had been in WWI were reluctant to send their sons into a war. Aerial bombardment was also a real threat as had been demonstrated by the Luftwafe in Guernica where the whole town had been destroyed. The worry was that this could happen to London, meaning many civilian casualties on the home front – it would be total war. Furthermore, Britain was more worried about defending its empire and had been concerned about the threat from Japan in the Far East. It could not deal with aggression from both Germany and Japan. In economic terms, Britain was still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression and Chamberlain was reluctant to spend vast sums of money on improving the country’s armed forces. Weak defences, he believed, would not matter if Britain avoided war. Public opinion also supported appeasement and there was a mood of pacifism. Chamberlain, as an elected representative, was doing his job by representing the views of his people when considering foreign affairs.
Secondly, Chamberlain held a good view of Hitler and Germany. Chamberlain felt that the Treaty of Versailles had been too harsh and took a favourable view of Hitler’s complaints about how unfair the treaty had been to Germany. He believed that if Germany’s complaints were dealt with fairly then Europe could look forward to a long period of peace. Chamberlain also thought that Hitler was a reasonable man and admired him for his economic successes and achievement of stability – Hitler had managed to solve Germany’s unemployment problem, which Britain could not do. Chamberlain thought that Hitler would be satisfied once he got his position back in Europe and Hitler’s fascism was seen as preferable to Stalin’s communism.
Appeasement was a failure, since a world war broke out. Because of appeasement, Hitler was able to rearm and sustain a long war. Had Chamberlain acted earlier, this long war could probably have been avoided, as Germany was not so well armed and the Allies would have had the backing of Czechoslovakia.
Chamberlain, however, believed that he was doing what was best for Britain - we have the benefit of hindsight and much more knowledge than Chamberlain had. Chamberlain would also have been subjected to Nazi propaganda which portrayed Hitler as a peace-loving man. It was obviously not evident then that appeasement was a bad policy as only two newspapers and a handful of politicians criticised his policy.
I, however, believe that Chamberlain could have, in the circumstances, done better for Britain. Part of the reason why Germany became so confident and took so much aggressive action was that Britain was sending out mixed signals. The 1935 Anglo-German Naval Treaty sent out signals that Britain was accepting German behaviour and that further aggression would be tolerated. This treaty was also detrimental to Anglo-French relations, since Britain did not consult France upon allowing this breakage of the European-wide Treaty of Versailles to happen. Furthermore, neither Britain nor France boycotted the German-hosted Olympic Games, held after Germany had remilitarised and flouted the Treaty of Versailles. The athletes also gave the German salute. This contradicted the verbal denunciation and showed Hitler that his actions had been accepted.
Chamberlain also seems quite gullible. Hitler was able to convince Chamberlain to let him have the Sudetenland and Chamberlain came back from the Münich conference waving the agreement in his hand, saying that it would bring, “Peace in our time.” Hitler obviously didn’t take the agreement seriously, as he commented to one of his generals afterwards, but managed to convince Chamberlain that he did.
Even if appeasement was justifiable up to the point where Hitler took Czechoslovakia, it was definitely not justifiable and aggressive when Hitler took the rest of Western Czechoslovakia. Sure enough, Britain and France officially ended the policy of appeasement in March 1939. They did not, however, step in to help Czechoslovakia when she was threatened, although they had signed an agreement with her. They only began rapid rearmament and gave a guarantee to Poland.
Even after this period of appeasement ended, Britain’s policy was still lacking. Their guarantee to Poland was worthless unless they were allied with Stalin who could give them access. For this reason, they should have spent the summer of 1939 making a pact with him. As they distrusted him so much, an agreement was not found and instead, Hitler gained Russian as an ally.
