Was appeasement a mistake?
By Victoria Bond
Appeasement has many different interpretations, but there are two main analyses. The first of which was believed by most politicians in the 1930’s, they thought that appeasement would keep the peace without violence. The second, believed by some politicians and most historians today, their thoughts were that appeasement helped cause the war. There are numerous differences between these two versions. However, there is one foremost difference. In the 1930’s they didn’t want a war, full stop, no fighting, no raids, no taking over anywhere, nothing. Where as the other elucidation was trying to push the war forward and to help Hitler to conquer some parts of the world.
Prior to the war in 1939, there were many discussions about the arguments for and against going to war. Even surveys were given to the community to publicise their views. In March 1938, one year before the war began, a question with 3 possible answers was sent out to the society. This question was ‘should people of Britain promise to help Czechoslovakia if Germany attacks?’ There were 33% who said yes, 43% said no and 24% said no comment. This shows that Britain was willing to stand by another country and not let Germany take over. On the other hand, most people said no, this is probably because they didn’t want to get involved. In October of the same year, Chamberlain started the discussion about the Munich agreement. He said that the conformity had shown that four great powers can agree on this difficult discussion rather than the force of arms. This demonstrates that he would rather talk it out than fight just to get an answer; this discussion seemed to have helped but not that much because the war carried on. Another discussion with Hitler also happened in this year. He said ‘I shall only decide to take action against Czechoslovakia if I am convinced that France will not march and Britain will not intervene’. This is trying to create peace because Hitler made up his mind not to attack and defeat Czechoslovakia but only if Britain and France didn’t put up any of their defences. Although Hitler still decided to keep attacking some countries he was determined to try and build peace between Germany and another country, even if he didn’t mean it. Many people thought that Germany had been treated unfairly by the Treaty of Versailles. This show that even thought Germany were against them and that they didn’t really want to support them, they did because everyone deserves to be treated fairly and they were not. This also applies for another piece of evidence which was that Germany should get the land that they lost in 1919. Even though
