Was the policy of appeasement justified?
The policy of appeasement means that Chamberlain should of kept peace at any cost. There are numerous arguments for and against appeasement. Firstly people felt that Germany had been treated too harshly in the Treaty of Versailles, so in 1935 the Anglo-German naval agreement which broke the terms of the Treaty. When Hitler remilitarised the Rhineland in 1936 the universal feeling was that of:
They were marching in to their own backyard. So Chamberlain believed that Hitler would be satisfied with this step and not ask for anymore.
Britain and France wanted to keep peace and not have another major war on their hands. So the idea of collective responsibility arose again as people lay their trust in the hands of the League of Nations.
As the world's economy was just finding its feet again it was thought that Germany, Italy or Japan would be able to afford the costs of rearmament. In 1938 when Hitler invaded and took Czechoslovakia they promised that that was all that Germany needed, but Chamberlain was not sure.
Britain's rearmament program started in 1936 and was scheduled to finish in 1940. So when Hitler invaded Britain knew that they had a race against time to build up their armies. At the Munich conference Chamberlain was desperate for a solution that could save the breakout of war. Hitler demanded that he be given the Sudetenland. This was agreed by Britain but the four powers: Britain, France, Italy and Germany were to be guaranteed by all of the four powers. But Hitler did not acknowledge this as both Poland and Hungary took territory.
Britain and France faced a big problem with the fact that they were dealing with the threat from Germany in Eastern Europe. Britain and France now realised that they could not actually protect countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland from being invaded by Germany because they are simply too far for them to defend, as it would take weeks to get their armies mobilised and transport them all the way across Europe. Chamberlain now realised that the only power that could protect these countries was the Soviet Union. It was also well known that Stalin was an equal threat as Hitler was. But most Politicians could not make up their minds whether the Soviet Union or Germany was the greater threat.
The leading politicians in Western Europe all misjudged Hitler as they treated him like a normal human being and not as a powerful dictator that they should of treated him as. The consequences of this was as they agreed with Hitler to try desperately to keep peace in Europe, Hitler got tasters of what he could manage. So the more that the politicians gave Hitler the more that Hitler wanted as he now realized that he could demand most things and be granted them as Chamberlain was going to do anything, even break the treaties that were set up after the first world war to stop another world war.
Britain and France were so afraid of Hitler that they let him trample all over the treaties without punishment. When Hitler demanded that he have the Sudetenland their was nothing that Britain and France could do apart from abandon Czechoslovakia and replace it's meaning with pointless promises that they were never going to work out.
People at the time believed that Chamberlain was using the word appeasement as a cover up for his military weakness and cowardice.
In 1936 when Hitler remilitarised the Rhineland his military force was very pathetic and he Realised that any retaliation from Britain or France who would have crushed the Nazi powers. Chamberlain was not looking for any opportunities to crush Hitler but he was looking for any opportunity to give Hitler whatever he wanted! Later Hitler admitted that if a French force were to oppose Hitler's forces he would have been made to withdraw. At the Munich agreement in 1938, Britain and France abandoned Czechoslovakia when it was well armed and would of put up good resistance to Hitler's forces. So again Chamberlain had given up a good opportunity to suppress Hitler, but instead they were looking for ways to give Hitler what he wanted.
I believe that appeasement was not justified, as I also believe that Britain and France and enough opportunities to suppress Hitler, but the politicians were so cowardly and pathetic to even try to stop Hitler in his tracks.
According to Winston Churchill's later account appeasement prevailed because of the blindness of British politicians to Hitler's real intentions and because of their timidity in not standing up to successive acts of German aggression. Personal defects loom large in this explanation for, with the benefit of hindsight, it seemed so obvious what the outcome of a craven failure to stand up to Hitler's ruthless ambitions was going to be. As the Second World War has faded into history it is possible to make out a better case for those who favoured appeasement, and notably Neville Chamberlain amongst them, than Churchill would ever have allowed.
`Appeasement had so few critics and aroused no massive public hostility because as a policy it was well in tune with the public mood of the thirties. It was not just a question of a few pacifists or motions at the Oxford Union or a Fulham bye-election result, but something more widespread. The horrors of the First World War were much written about and were still a bitter personal memory for many, civilian newsreels from Spain nightly revealed the future horrors of aerial bombardment of civilian targets, for it was not just Baldwin who believed the bomber would always get through. In any case the burdens of unemployment and the enormous National Debt seemed to undermine any hope of resolute action in foreign policy. There was also a general feeling that Germany might have been harshly treated at Versailles and that on certain issues, for example the re-militarisation of the Rhineland, might have quite a good case. Without this prevailing mood the illusions of the political establishment might have been less firmly set.
`Appeasement prevailed however because the political leadership of the National, really Conservative, Government and their leading advisers favoured it or indeed saw no alternative to it. The key figure was Neville Chamberlain. He fully shared the public horror at the thought of the destruction which another war would bring and how a vigorous, and therefore expensive, defence and foreign policy would distract from pressing problems at home. He was a decent man who held a sincere belief that reasonable negotiation and goodwill could overcome the diplomatic problems of the day. In any case there was no thinkable alternative. Some historians think Chamberlain's policy of appeasement made little sense. After all, Hitler made no secret of his aim to dominate Europe and the world. He was a ruthless tyrant who was prepared to use war to achieve his evil ends. In consequence the only correct policy was to stand firm against him at the earliest opportunity. They argue that appeasement simply whetted his appetite and encouraged him to make fresh demands. With each surrender Germany grew stronger and more dangerous. However, after 1935 Germany could not have been challenged without the risk of a long and bloody war, a war for which Britain was woefully unprepared and which she might not win. Britain had little to gain even from a successful war; it would also be ruinessly expensive and seriously damage Britain's economic position.
`If the policy had been Chamberlain's alone it would not have survived for long. It did prevail, through to at least the spring of 1939 and, for a few, into the months of the Phoney War, because it was embraced and promoted by so many figures of the political and media establishment. Only Reynolds News amongst all the national newspapers, and owned by the Scottish Co-op, spoke out against the deal struck at Munich. ">The Times<-" under Geoffrey Dawson manipulated both news and opinion columns to pursue an appeasement policy but almost all papers maintained at best a craven policy of not rocking the appeasement boat by being nasty about Hitler. Newspaper proprietors were to the fore in creating this climate of opinion which so effectively and for so long enabled appeasement to prevail.
`There were good reasons, and bad, why this state of affairs came about. The Press was dominated by right-wing proprietors who were deeply suspicious of the 'Red menace' from the Soviet Union and from communists at home. They saw Hitler's domestic achievements and saw him as a bulwark against communism. They were not alone. Some, like Mosley and perhaps Lloyd George, saw lessons which could be applied to English problems. Hitler flattered and deluded them and, until very late in the thirties they closed their eyes to the stories coming out of Germany about the treatment of the Jews. Strong latent anti-Semitism in British society made the Jews, in any case, an unlikely rallying point for national outrage. So the unattractive features of National Socialism were glossed over and German territorial ambitions were made to seem a reasonable response to its treatment at Versailles. The Anschluss was acceptable because the Austrians were Germans and clearly wanted it, but those same sentiments could, in September
`1838, be cruelly exploited to undermine any will to help the Czechs. Not that many, if it meant war, had that will.
`A Parliamentary Opposition challenging appeasement might have brought it to an end earlier but the Labour Party, natural enemies it might have been thought of fascism, did little to stiffen Chamberlain's resolution. Some members were pacifists, others had a muddled belief in collective security under the League of Nations, but had little will to provide the arms to back the League. Churchill was the voice in the wilderness and for this there were good reasons in his political record. From Tonypandy to the General Strike he had done nothing to merit any support from the Unions or the Labour Party. His extremism over granting some measure of self-rule in India and his attempt to create a 'King's party' at the time of the abdication isolated him from the mainstream of the Conservative Party. He appeared a bellicose troublemaker, the soundness of whose judgement was increasingly open to question.
`Few men of political stature questioned the need to avoid war and for most of them a deal with Hitler was a small price to pay, especially as it would be the Czech nation and not they who would be paying. The men of power manipulated the public mood unscrupulously as the decade advanced but essentially public opinion was on the side of peace and, until his policy had eventually failed and this only as late as the spring of 1939, this meant supporting the efforts of the Prime Minister. In many ways Chamberlain was the most honourable of the appeasers, deluded but not lacking courage. His views would not have prevailed of they had not had the support of the vast majority of the politically powerful and had not caught the public mood.
During the 1930's, while the entire world reeled from a severe economic depression, Adolph Hitler was slowly retooling the German war machine. The European superpowers, France and Britain, themselves hit hard during the depression, like negligent parents, laid down their rules of how Germany should be run with the Treaty of Versailles after World War I. Yet their eyes focused on their own affairs. And then Hitler raised his demands resulting in the Munich fiasco.
There are many different reasons for the British and French to take such an apathetic stance on their actions with Germany. An entire generation of men were lost during the first World War, and neither country wanted to see that kind of loss of life and mass destruction again. Also, internal problems within each country limited its ability to keep a watchful eye on Germany. Other conflicts in neighboring Spain and distant China also kept the eyes of the British and French on different horizons.
The key parts to Britain and France's method of appeasement include letting the Germans restock their weapons unchecked and allowing Germany to have the Sudetenland at Munich in 1938. Germany's weapons and armament, by 1939, were as powerful, if not more, than the British. However, accords made in the Treaty of Versailles about German rearmament were not policed. The compromise in Munich in 1938 was a political, strategic, and moral victory for Hitler. Hitler showed that he could take what he liked, and the great powers of the West, could not and would not do anything about it.
Although Britain's and France's acts of appeasement to the Germans are appalling, the events that were allowed to follow are even more appalling. While some may view that these events gave the West valuable time to prepare for war, this theory holds some problems. If the appeasement and resolve in Munich gave the West valuable time to prepare for the war, why was France so easily overrun by the Germans? Should not the appeasement have given them time to prepare for war? It appears that it did not. If this idea were true, the Germans should have been defeated rather easily.
What really occurred was the worst war this world has ever had and the realization of a nightmare of a megalomaniac dictator, all of which could have been prevented. Europe lay in ruins, France taken over, and sixteen million dead; due in part to the inaction of Britain and France.
Could these horrible events have been avoided? The answer is yes and no. The devastating effects on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles and aftereffects of World War I set the table for another great conflict. However, if these were the seeds for the second great war, they were nurtured and raised by the neglectful actions of the British and French. Had they kept the eye on Germany as they said they would, Hitler would not have been able to amass such a destructive killing machine.