Appeasement
Based on Wikipedia: Appeasement
The Word That Became an Insult
In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepped off an airplane waving a piece of paper. He had just returned from Munich, where he'd negotiated with Adolf Hitler over the fate of Czechoslovakia. "I believe it is peace for our time," he declared to cheering crowds.
Within a year, the world would be at war.
The word "appeasement" has never recovered. Today, calling someone an appeaser is an accusation, not a description. It suggests cowardice, naivety, or worse—collaboration with evil. But in the 1930s, appeasement was a respectable foreign policy strategy, supported by kings, business leaders, major newspapers, and ordinary citizens exhausted by the memory of the First World War.
Understanding how appeasement went from sensible policy to historical byword requires understanding the world that created it: a world still bleeding from the trenches, desperate for any alternative to another catastrophic war, and deeply uncertain about whether the new fascist regimes in Europe were genuinely dangerous or merely loud.
What Appeasement Actually Meant
Appeasement, in diplomatic terms, means making concessions to an aggressive power in hopes of avoiding conflict. You give something up—territory, influence, principle—expecting that the aggressor will be satisfied and stop pushing.
The logic isn't inherently foolish. Sometimes aggressors do have legitimate grievances. Sometimes a small sacrifice prevents a larger catastrophe. The Munich Agreement, which gave Hitler a region of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, was built on precisely this reasoning: Germany claimed the Sudetenland because its population was largely German-speaking, and perhaps satisfying this demand would finally satisfy Hitler.
It didn't.
But that outcome wasn't obvious to everyone watching in real time. Many intelligent, well-informed people believed appeasement would work—or at least that the alternatives were worse.
The Shadow of the Trenches
To understand appeasement, you must understand what came before it.
The First World War killed approximately seventeen million people between 1914 and 1918. An entire generation of young men from Britain, France, Germany, and beyond was decimated in muddy trenches stretching across France and Belgium. Machine guns, poison gas, and artillery shells created a new kind of industrial slaughter that no one had imagined possible.
The survivors came home traumatized. The societies they returned to were transformed. Britain alone lost nearly a million dead, with millions more wounded. Every village had its war memorial. Every family had its ghosts.
By the 1930s, the men making policy had lived through this catastrophe. They had watched friends die. They had seen what modern warfare could do. The idea of starting another such war over a distant territorial dispute seemed not just unwise but monstrous.
This wasn't cowardice. It was lived experience.
Second Thoughts About Versailles
There was another factor too: doubt about the peace settlement that had ended the First World War.
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles had imposed harsh terms on Germany. The country lost territory to France, Poland, and others. Its military was drastically limited—no more than one hundred thousand soldiers, no air force, no submarines, no tanks. Germany was required to pay enormous reparations to the victorious powers. Perhaps most galling to German pride, the treaty included a "war guilt clause" that forced Germany to accept sole responsibility for starting the war.
By the 1930s, many people in Britain and France had come to view these terms as too harsh. The British economist John Maynard Keynes had written a bestselling book in 1919 arguing that the reparations would cripple Germany economically and destabilize Europe. His warnings seemed prescient as Germany lurched through hyperinflation, depression, and political chaos.
This created a moral ambiguity that Hitler exploited brilliantly. When he demanded the right to rebuild Germany's military, or to reclaim territories lost at Versailles, he could frame these as reasonable corrections to an unjust peace. And many in Britain agreed.
The historian A.J.P. Taylor later argued that Hitler's early demands were essentially those of any German nationalist, not uniquely Nazi. This interpretation is controversial, but it captures something important: in the mid-1930s, the distinction between German grievances and Nazi aggression wasn't always clear.
The Useful Fascists
There was a third reason appeasement seemed reasonable: fear of something many considered worse.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 had created the Soviet Union, the world's first communist state. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, communist parties grew across Europe. To many in the British establishment—the aristocracy, the financial sector, the military—communism represented an existential threat to their entire way of life.
Fascism, whatever its faults, was anti-communist. Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany both built their movements partly on the promise to destroy the communist threat. For some observers, this made them useful—perhaps even necessary.
This calculation shaped policy in ways that seem shocking today. British newspapers like The Times and the Daily Mail often portrayed Hitler sympathetically. King Edward VIII, before his abdication in 1936, expressed admiration for Nazi Germany. Business leaders saw Hitler as a bulwark against Bolshevism and a potential trading partner.
The result was a widespread willingness to look past Nazi brutality. When Hitler's regime persecuted Jews, when it crushed political opponents, when it began rearming in violation of Versailles—many in the British establishment found reasons to excuse or minimize these actions.
The League's Failure
Appeasement didn't emerge in a vacuum. It arose from the collapse of an alternative system.
The League of Nations, created after the First World War, was supposed to prevent future conflicts through collective security. The idea was simple: if any nation attacked another, all League members would unite against the aggressor. No country would dare start a war knowing it would face the combined opposition of the world.
It didn't work.
The first major test came in 1931, when Japan invaded the Chinese region of Manchuria. China appealed to the League. The League investigated, condemned Japan, and... did nothing effective. Japan simply resigned from the League and kept Manchuria.
The lesson was clear: collective security was a fantasy. The League had no military force of its own. Its members had no appetite for war to defend distant territories. A determined aggressor could simply ignore international opinion.
The failure over Manchuria set a pattern. When Italy invaded Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) in 1935, the League imposed economic sanctions—but carefully excluded oil and coal, the resources Italy actually needed for its military. Britain considered closing the Suez Canal to Italian shipping but decided it would be "too harsh." Emperor Haile Selassie personally addressed the League assembly in Geneva, warning that if the international community abandoned his country, they would be next. He was ignored.
By 1936, Italy had conquered Abyssinia. The League lifted its ineffective sanctions. The message to Hitler was unmistakable: international institutions would not stop a sufficiently aggressive power.
Walking Into Their Own Backyard
Hitler's first major gamble came in March 1936, when he sent German troops into the Rhineland.
Under the Versailles Treaty, the Rhineland—German territory along the border with France—was required to remain demilitarized. No German soldiers, no German weapons. This was meant to give France a buffer zone and warning time if Germany ever turned aggressive again.
Hitler ordered his troops to march in anyway.
It was an enormous risk. The German military was still weak in 1936. Hitler's generals had orders to retreat immediately if France resisted. A firm response might have stopped Nazi expansion before it truly began.
France did nothing. Britain did nothing. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin explained that Britain lacked the military forces to oppose Germany, and that public opinion wouldn't support action anyway.
The British attitude was captured in a common phrase of the time: the Germans were merely walking into "their own backyard." The Rhineland was German territory, after all. Who were the British to say Germany couldn't station troops on its own soil?
Even Hugh Dalton, a Labour Party politician who generally favored resistance to Germany, admitted that neither the British public nor his own party would support military or economic action over the Rhineland.
Hitler learned his lesson. International opposition was a paper tiger. He could push further.
The Spain Question
The Spanish Civil War, which erupted in 1936, offered another test of international resolve—and revealed how ideological considerations shaped the appeasement era.
When General Francisco Franco led a military rebellion against Spain's elected left-wing government, the conflict quickly became an international proxy war. Hitler and Mussolini sent troops, aircraft, and weapons to support Franco. The Soviet Union aided the Republican government.
Britain and France declared a policy of non-intervention, refusing to support either side.
This neutrality wasn't really neutral. By declining to help the legitimate Spanish government while Germany and Italy poured resources into the rebel cause, Britain and France effectively tilted the balance toward Franco. Some historians argue this reflected the British establishment's anti-communist sympathies—better a fascist Spain than a left-wing one.
Others suggest Britain was simply hedging its bets, hoping to maintain good relations with whichever side won. Either interpretation reveals how ideological calculations shaped policy decisions that were officially presented as principled neutrality.
Munich: The Breaking Point
The crisis over Czechoslovakia in 1938 brought appeasement to its climax.
Czechoslovakia was a democratic country created after the First World War from former Austro-Hungarian territory. Its western region, the Sudetenland, had a substantial German-speaking population. Hitler demanded this region be transferred to Germany, claiming the German-speakers were being oppressed.
Unlike the Rhineland, this wasn't German territory being reclaimed. It was part of another sovereign nation. Czechoslovakia had a modern military, defensive fortifications in the Sudetenland mountains, and alliance treaties with France and the Soviet Union.
If Hitler was going to be stopped, this seemed like the place to do it.
Chamberlain flew to Germany three times in September 1938 to negotiate directly with Hitler—an unprecedented step for a British prime minister. He was desperate to avoid war. In the end, Britain and France agreed at Munich to let Hitler have the Sudetenland in exchange for a promise of no further territorial demands.
Czechoslovakia wasn't invited to the conference that dismembered its country.
Chamberlain returned home triumphant, waving the paper that Hitler had signed. But not everyone was convinced. Winston Churchill, then a backbench member of Parliament often dismissed as a warmonger, delivered a devastating speech: "We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat... And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning."
The Morning After
Churchill was right.
In March 1939, barely six months after Munich, Hitler invaded what remained of Czechoslovakia. There was no German-speaking population to protect this time, no territorial grievance to redress. Hitler simply wanted the territory, and he took it.
The invasion of Czechoslovakia shattered the logic of appeasement. Hitler had promised at Munich that the Sudetenland was his last territorial demand in Europe. He had lied. Appeasement had not satisfied him; it had only convinced him that he could take whatever he wanted without consequences.
British public opinion, which had largely supported Chamberlain at Munich, now turned sharply against Germany. The Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, in which Nazi mobs attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany, had already damaged Hitler's image. The invasion of Czechoslovakia finished the job.
Chamberlain himself finally abandoned appeasement. When Hitler next threatened Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war.
Who Supported Appeasement?
It's tempting to paint appeasement as purely an elite project, foisted on an unwilling public by out-of-touch aristocrats. The reality was messier.
Appeasement did have strong support among the British upper classes. The royal family, the financial establishment in the City of London, the House of Lords, and major media organizations like the BBC and The Times all backed the policy. Business interests saw Germany as a trading partner and a barrier against communism.
But working and middle-class Britons weren't eager for war either. The memory of the trenches was universal, not limited to any class. When Chamberlain returned from Munich, he was genuinely popular. The relief that war had been avoided was widespread and heartfelt.
Opposition to appeasement existed but remained marginal until late 1938. Churchill was seen as an unreliable figure, too eager for conflict. Labour generally opposed rearmament. Only after Kristallnacht and the invasion of Czechoslovakia did public opinion shift decisively against Germany.
The Great Debate
Since the Second World War, historians have argued fiercely about whether appeasement was a reasonable policy betrayed by Hitler's unprecedented aggression, or a catastrophic failure that made war worse when it finally came.
The traditional view, dominant in the immediate postwar decades, condemned appeasement utterly. The "lesson of Munich" became a foreign policy touchstone: never make concessions to aggressors, because they will always want more. This thinking shaped responses to crises from Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf War.
Later historians offered more nuanced assessments. Some argued that Britain's military weakness in the mid-1930s made resistance impossible—that appeasement bought time for rearmament. Others pointed out that the Soviet Union's alliance with Germany in 1939 might not have happened if Britain and France had taken a harder line earlier, or alternatively that earlier confrontation might have driven Hitler and Stalin together sooner.
The debate continues because it touches on enduring questions. When should democracies resist aggression? What are the costs of war versus the costs of concession? How do you judge a policy's wisdom when you can't know how alternatives would have played out?
The Echoes
The appeasement era resonates today because its dilemmas haven't disappeared.
When Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, observers immediately invoked Munich. When China presses territorial claims in the South China Sea, the question arises: is firmness provocation, or is accommodation appeasement? Every international crisis brings the same anxious calculations that Chamberlain faced: Is this aggressor's grievance legitimate? Can they be satisfied? What happens if we resist?
The answers are never obvious in real time. Chamberlain wasn't stupid or cowardly. He was trying to avoid a catastrophe he had witnessed firsthand. He was wrong about Hitler, but his reasoning wasn't absurd given what he knew.
That's what makes the history of appeasement so uncomfortable. It's easy to condemn Chamberlain from the safety of hindsight. It's harder to answer the question his story poses: How do you know, in the moment, whether you're preventing a war or enabling a worse one?
The Lesson and Its Limits
The "lesson of Munich"—never appease aggressors—has shaped decades of foreign policy. But like most historical lessons, it can be misapplied.
Not every adversary is Hitler. Not every territorial dispute is the Sudetenland. The certainty that appeasement always fails can lead to unnecessary wars, just as the hope that appeasement will work can lead to necessary wars coming too late.
Perhaps the real lesson is more modest: pay attention to what aggressors actually do, not just what they say. Hitler told everyone his plans. He wrote them in a book. He announced them in speeches. The failure of appeasement wasn't that Western leaders tried diplomacy; it was that they kept trying diplomacy after the evidence showed it wasn't working.
When Hitler violated agreement after agreement, when he broke promise after promise, the appropriate response was to update the assessment. Some leaders, like Churchill, did. Others, like Chamberlain, couldn't bring themselves to accept that they were dealing with someone fundamentally different from traditional statesmen.
The question isn't whether to negotiate with adversaries. The question is whether you're capable of recognizing when negotiation has failed—and whether you're willing to act on that recognition before it's too late.