Justifying Appeasement

Justifying Appeasement

Appeasement was the foreign policy followed by the British and French

governments in the 1930s, whereby they did not attack or confront

other governments, specifically that of Germany's, when international

laws were breached, but rather gave into some of the demands to keep

the peace.

After the horror and dramatic loss of innocent lives (amassing over 3

million) in the First World War, both the French and the British

governments were keen to avoid any more blood shed and their pacifist

policies meant they started to take a very lenient attitude towards

breached international laws. They knew that the general public, for

whom the memories of war were still rife, thought the idea of another

conflict unacceptable. When the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931,

the League of Nations were unable to enforce any effective sanctions

and when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in 1936, the economic sanctions

they managed to enforce had little effect. Without military threat the

League of Nations had little power over countries who broke the laws

and the British and French wanted to abstain from conflict, even if it

meant no resolution was met. Hitler, no doubt, saw this weakness and

found ways to exploit the lenience he observed throughout the early

1930s.

Like the rest of the World, Britain and France were suffering the

effects of the Great Depression so the financial implications of war

also served as a deterrent. It was increasingly becoming accepted that

the Treaty of Versailles was unfair to Germany, in particular the War

Guilt Clause by which they not only accepted full responsibility for

the war but also had to ...

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...f a responsibility to think through their policies thoroughly in

order to have properly assessed its justification. Lord Chamberlain's

trusting relationship with Hitler may have been, in part, responsible

for such blind faith in expecting Hitler to stop and be satisfied when

his early demands were met. However, Britain and France did not appear

to thoroughly consider the policy and consequently, as we have seen,

Hitler was allowed to go against the terms of the Treaty of

Versailles, increasing in military strength, reuniting with Austria,

conquering the Sudetenland, all the while becoming an even stronger

threat. However, during the 1930s the policy of Appeasement did allow

Britain and France to rearm. Perhaps without this time to increase

their military power, they may not have finally defeated Hitler and

won the War.