Was appeasement the only option open to Britain in 1938-1939?

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Was appeasement the only option open to Britain in 1938-1939?

In answering the question of whether appeasement was the only option open to Britain in 1938-1939 we must consider that the policy could have taken a number of routes and that the path chosen by Chamberlain was an extreme of a policy which had massive backing, both from the public and his fellow MPs and Lords. It was widely felt that the treaty of Versailles had been unreasonably harsh on Germany and was of no advantage to the other European states and therefore was open to reform. The isolationism of the USA from European affairs was an important factor in the nature of the appeasement policy as, with the unwillingness of Britain to work with Communist Russia, this lead to a policy which although reasonable in its approach, essentially became less and less so as Hitler’s demands became harder to sympathise with. It has often been suggested that without a clear intention to back up their concessions, the great powers of Europe were only increasing the "appetite of the tiger" with their concessions to the Nazi government. This lack of co-operation with Russia was the source of much discontent in the houses as recorded in Harold Nicolson’s diary “Winston says (and we all agree) that the fundamental mistake the P.M. has made is his refusal to take Russia into his confidence”1. The isolation of the USA from European affairs also convinced European leaders that a threat to Germany if they were non compliant would be unreasonable in the face of the might of the German military compared to their own, leading them to the conclusion that appeasement seemed the only option. This was in fact a common and very damaging misconception and led to the lack of any substantial effort to quell the demands of Hitler or either to make a stand on the numerous occasions when he bullishly ignored the will of the rest of Europe.

With the much relied upon “balance of power” upset by the expansion of Prussia to form the united German state in the late 19th century, the remainder of the 19th and the first part of the 20th century were spent trying to establish a common foreign policy in order to keep Europe at peace. It seemed to many at the time that the culmination of the expansion of Prussia would be the Great War of 1914-19 however this was only to set up Europe for the second world war as the great powers of Europe, centred their foreign policies around avoiding a repeat of the catastrophic loss of life of the 1st world  war. Essentially it was this central belief which shaped the policy of appeasement, preventing British politicians from seeing when the policy was failing in its key objective; the avoidance of war. In its essential make up, appeasement was however a viable option for continuing the peace in Europe but without the proper force to back up the overly reasonable concessions made, it quickly became Hitler’s tool for the destruction of Czechoslovakia and the start of World War II.

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The policy itself relied upon the notion that the existing territorial disputes in Europe could be met without resorting to even the threat of violence. Most significantly this applied to the claims of Nazi German for Austria and areas of the Czechoslovakia which contained the Sudeten Germans. The belief of the general populous of Britain was that these Germans deserved the self-determination they were claiming and so the Anschluss was widely accepted however the issue became more heated when concerning the Germans of the Sudetenlands. The policy began to gain much criticism from powerful members of the Commons such as ...

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