Assess the view that Chamberlain's main aim in following a policy of appeasement in 1937-38 was to buy enough time to enable Britain to rearm

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Nick Williams

Assess the view that Chamberlain’s main aim in following a policy of appeasement in 1937-38 was to buy enough time to enable Britain to rearm (June ’05)

During the 1930’s it was becoming increasing clear that Germany was rearming for a war and that Britain should do the same. Germany showed no international negotiations ability by breaking the Locarno and Versailles treaty with the remilitarises of the Rhineland and the invasion of Austria-Hungary. Appeasement was a policy of agreeing to reasonable requests made by Germany, were these requests reasonable or was Britain simply giving in to by time for their own rearmament?

The policy of appeasement started as early as 1919, it was a recognition that the Treaty of Versailles was to harsh on Germany and that it should be revised to solve Germany’s genuine grievances. It was not fair that Germany wasn’t allowed an army of more than 100,000 men when the rest of Europe was building up their armies. Furthermore it’s understandable that Germany would want their troops in ‘their own backyard’ (Rhineland) to act as a buffer from France which was the same reason the French wanted the area de-militarised. Furthermore there was a growing attitude that Germany wasn’t responsible for the war guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles which was what the whole treaty was based on. This was the general feeling in Britain around the early 1920’s with top politicians gaining support for these views. The policy of appeasement was used to amend these grievances shown with the active appeasement by Britain with the creation of the Dawes Plan which was a success by stabilising the inflation rate and reducing high unemployment. However when the depression of the wall street crash happened in 1929, Britain looked to another American banker Young who suggested that Germany pay only ¼ of the total reparations amount and on a sliding scale until 1988, however by 1931 it was decided to suspend reparations payments and that time only an 1/8 of the total amount was paid. So chamberlain’s policy of appeasement can be argued that it was done to amend genuine German grievances.

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Another possible reason for the policy of appeasement was that British public opinion was mostly against a new world war. This was mainly because of the lasting impression of the devastation of the ‘The Great War’ which ironically needed to be re-named. In 1928 all men and women in Britain over 21 had the right to vote this meant that for a political party to stay or gain power they would need to be acting in the public interest. Evidence to suggest that public opinion was against the war was the 1933 Oxford Union which was comprised of ‘the ...

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