These anti-war feelings were erected from the impact of WW1 on Britain. After the war, many had placed peace pledges, and to be heard formal pacifist debates were held at the Oxford Union to express their feelings. Chamberlain himself was also antiwar, as when fighting in the war he lost many friends and relatives, and was not prepared to lose more. Another major threat according to Chamberlain was the spread of Communism. Politicians also shared this opinion. It was possible that Britain would have to face wars from the Communists and the Germans if either or both sides were provoked. As a result the British tackled this problem by revising the Treaty of Versailles. They allowed Germany to have the Rhineland and Sudetenland, and the restrictions of Germany rearming were discarded. This was a vain attempt to let Germany fight Communism. Also Hitler was encouraged to expand east wards into the USSR (The British wanted to protect themselves and their empire at all costs- especially India)
It would seem that if Britain had such a large empire, it should call on its dominions for help. However none of these countries were prepared to help us fight a war, unless Britain were in real danger. We also did not have many allies willing to help us. The US was ‘isolationist’, and therefore neutral but did intervene after the Pearl Harbour incident in 1941. The Russian were communist, therefore were great Threat, and this left only France on our side. However internally they were politically divided and so inactive. Britain could not force any “allies” or dominions to fight for us as the country was in a state of depression from the Wall Street crash, and so there was mass unemployment. This meant that money was hard to get hold of to create an effective re-arment policy in case of an outbreak of war. (The army and RAF were not in shape for another war, due to the money being spent on our navy.)
Soon international tension increased once again when began demanding that the in should be under the control of the German government. On 29th September 1938, Hitler, Chamberlain, and signed the , which transferred the to Germany, a fortified frontier region that contained a large German-speaking population. When, Czechoslovakia appealed to Britain, told him that Britain would be unwilling to go to war over the .
During the summer the pro-Nazi elements among the Czech Germans demanded to secede from Czechoslovakia, a move that the Czechs could not resist. The result- -a clear example of the workings of appeasement time In March 1939, the seized the rest of . In taking this action, had broken the . The British Prime Minister, , now realised that Hitler could not be trusted and his appeasement policy now came to an end.
