Politics

Appeasement

Appeasement: the policy of Britain and France in the 1930s, above all of Chamberlain's government, of avoiding war through concessions to Hitler and Mussolini. Its high point was the Munich Agreement of 1938.

Supporters of appeasement believed that some of Germany's grievances against the Versailles settlement were justified and that meeting them would prevent a new war for which Britain was unprepared. Hitler's successive moves, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland and the Anschluss, met only protests. In September 1938 at Munich Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier agreed to hand the Sudetenland to Germany without Czechoslovakia taking part, and Chamberlain proclaimed "peace for our time" in London.

After Germany seized the rest of the Czech lands in March 1939, London abandoned the policy and on 31 March gave Poland a guarantee. In the Norway Debate of May 1940 criticism of appeasement helped bring Chamberlain down. The word later became a byword for giving in to an aggressor.