Winston Churchill famously said, "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last". Appeasement is a policy which concedes to belligerent demands in order to preserve peace. The use of this policy in negotiations with Hitler in the 1930s would be the best example. Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister during this time period, was the primary developer and supporter of this policy. Most British conservatives at the time were in favour of it, alongside contemporary historians such as Andrew Stedman, Nicholson Baker, and the late AJP Taylor. From a political, military and economic perspective, it can be argued that appeasement was not the foolish mistake that many consider it to be, but was instead crucial in setting
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The deaths of almost a quarter of a million British soldiers, as well as slow global recovery from the Great Depression in the early 1930s, had strongly lowered morale. Appeasement’s sole aim was to avoid war at all possible costs, and seemed a reasonable response to Hitler’s demands, which were also considered justified. There was almost no resistance to German troops who marched into the Sudetenland; they were welcomed as heroes. The 1938 Sudeten Crisis seemed pivotal in proving that the policy was successful in preventing war; this illusion remained intact until the 1st of September 1939, when the Nazi invasion of Poland encouraged conflict and made it unavoidable. Hitler was unable to pretend that his invasion was acceptable, as there were virtually no Germans to be “united” from …show more content…
This can be seen by the time gained in order to produce more warfare, which was crucial in case of war. Nevertheless, it was the aftermath of WW1 that had led Chamberlain in trying to find a diplomatic and non-violent way of maintaining peace and not repeating the past. At the time, politicians and the majority of the public were not able to foresee Hitler's true intentions and held the opinion that his actions were reasonable because of the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles. For this reason, Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement was a justified approach towards Germany before the outbreak of World War
The deaths of almost a quarter of a million British soldiers, as well as slow global recovery from the Great Depression in the early 1930s, had strongly lowered morale. Appeasement’s sole aim was to avoid war at all possible costs, and seemed a reasonable response to Hitler’s demands, which were also considered justified. There was almost no resistance to German troops who marched into the Sudetenland; they were welcomed as heroes. The 1938 Sudeten Crisis seemed pivotal in proving that the policy was successful in preventing war; this illusion remained intact until the 1st of September 1939, when the Nazi invasion of Poland encouraged conflict and made it unavoidable. Hitler was unable to pretend that his invasion was acceptable, as there were virtually no Germans to be “united” from …show more content…
This can be seen by the time gained in order to produce more warfare, which was crucial in case of war. Nevertheless, it was the aftermath of WW1 that had led Chamberlain in trying to find a diplomatic and non-violent way of maintaining peace and not repeating the past. At the time, politicians and the majority of the public were not able to foresee Hitler's true intentions and held the opinion that his actions were reasonable because of the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles. For this reason, Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement was a justified approach towards Germany before the outbreak of World War