Chamberlin Appeasement Policy

Analyze Chamberlin’s appeasement policy
As the League of Nations crumbled, politicians turned to a new way to keep the peace in the form of appeasement. This was the policy of giving Hitler what he wanted to stop him from going to war. This policy was commonly used by Britain in the 1900s but British politician Chamberlin made it unpopular in the 1930s by using it with Hitler. He reasoned using this approach with the hopes that “what Hitler wanted was reasonable” and, when his reasonable demands had been satisfied, he would stop. However, Chamberlin’s appeasement policy failed but is justified by social, economic and political reasons.
In 1938 Germans demanded the unity of border areas of Czechoslovakia with Germany. Many of the Czechs reused, but Hitler threatened war. At this time British forces could not have helped Czechoslovakia, so on September 30, 1938 in the Munich agreement, Britain and France gave the Sudetenland to Hitler and Germany without asking Czechoslovakia. Many Czechs of the Sudetenland also admired Hitler, and willingly wanted to join the German Reich. When German troops marched into the Sudetenland, they were welcomed by many Czechs. Chamberlain used this to socially support the idea of annexation because he reasoned that many Czechs would be in favour of the annexation. There were various reasons why Chamberlin appeased Hitler and thought it would hurt the nations more if war broke out. He knew the British people would not have supported war because of the slaughter left from the First World War. The world was left disillusioned and demoralized after the first war, and he strongly believed the British people may not recover in the face of another war. Chamberlin also wanted to spare lives because the casualties of the first war were a shocking 36 million. The total amount of land Hitler demanded in comparison to the size of German itself was in no way a large territorial chunk, so his demands appeared quite reasonable in comparison to the deaths and disaster that could result.
Britain and all nations could economically not support another war of mass calibre. The first word war had killed a fourth of the German population due to food shortages, and many of the nations lacked the natural resources and supplies to build up militaries to fight. The treaty of Versailles had called for demilitarization of the nations, so instead of building up militaries and preparing for war, they were tearing them down. Thus no nation expect Germany and Russia that had secretly rearming for war were prepared. However, there was still a large amount of debt and loans that these European nations had

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