Chamberlain's Policy of Appeasement

Chamberlain's Policy of Appeasement

In 1938 Neville Chamberlain came up with a policy that would hopefully

prevent war. This policy was to give Germany what they wanted (to

rearm, remilitarise the Rhineland and unite the Germans in Austria and

the Sudetenland) in the hope that it would keep them satisfied and

prevent war.

There are several reasons why this was the correct policy to take. The

first is that there was the memory of the Great War. People had the

memories of the Great War and they never wanted anything like that to

happen again. For instance Stanley Baldwin, a member of the British

Government said 'The bomber will always get through' showing that no

matter how hard you try there will always be at least one bomber

getting through and bombing the cities. There was now also the

invention of gas bombs, which were even more deadly than normal bombs.

Chamberlain wanted to do anything in order to make this not happen.

The second reason was that there was a question about strategic

positions. If

Britain had have gone to war with Germany straight away they would

have had a problem. Their strength was in the navy and Germany did not

have a wide border with coast and was far inland. France had put all

their money into the Maginot line, which was purely for defence so

they also would have been useless in a war with Germany. Britain also

had problems worrying about Gandhi in India, Japan in the pacific and

Italy and Africa.

The third reason is that there was an economic question. How could

Britain afford to pay for a war like this? The only way to pay for a

large army would be to print money, which could lead to depression or

increase taxes massively which would make the people unhappy.

Britain and France also had trouble interpreting Hitler. He made

himself out to be a man of peace and said that he just wanted to

restore Germany to its rightful position before the treaty of