When we talk about the „appeasement“ of Hitler, you have to remember that the word did not have such a negative connotation at the time. Those attempting to pacify Hitler used the word openly to describe their strategy, and outside observers, such as American policymakers, praised the likes of Neville Chamberlain for pursuing such a policy. Indeed, it was not until after Hitler violated the Munich Agreement by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia that the term „appeasement“ became pejorative. When we look back at 1938, Chamberlain is already condemned, and historical analysis of the Munich Conference starts from the assumption that the deal with Hitler was a mistake that helped to spawn another world war. Thus Chamberlain's detractors have a much easier time than his defenders (the „revisionists“), who are forced to spend much of their analysis contextualizing appeasement in order to convince their readers that it was the best option that Chamberlain had given what he knew then. But don't get me wrong—I maintain the Orthodox position that Chamberlain could have and should have taken a more aggressive stance against Hitler prior to the Second World War.

What was Appeasement?

By definition (without any of the negative connotation we ascribe to the term today), „appeasement“ a diplomatic term that means to make concessions to an enemy power in order to avoid a more destructive conflict. The word is almost always used now to refer specifically to British appeasement of Germany in the 1930s. The policy actually began before Chamberlain became prime minister of Britain. According to the Versailles Treaty negotiated by the Allied powers at the end of the First World War, Germany was not allowed to militarize the Rhineland, but when Hitler did just that in March of 1936, the British government not only passively allowed it but some even openly conceded that the Germans should be allowed to militarize their own territory. Likewise, the British did nothing when it became public knowledge that Hitler had been rapidly rebuilding the German military in violation of Versailles. The British response was to avoid conflict and to build up their own military as a deterrent to war. It is understandable that in 1936, just eighteen years after the bloody and pointless First World War had ended, that the British did not desire to enter into a second, and possibly more damaging, conflict.

When Chamberlain became prime minister in 1937, he continued to pursue the already-existing British policy of appeasement. This meant continuing to rebuild the British military—specifically the navy and air forces, which could be used to project British power without engaging a large ground force in another European war—but it also meant continuing to ignore German aggression on the continent. In March of 1938, after having stirred up unrest in Austria, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to occupy the nation and restore order. In the infamous „Anchsluss,“ Hitler annexed Austria in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Britain protested, but only weakly. Hitler then turned his attention to Czechoslovakia, a nation created by the Allies at the end of the First World War that included a large German population in the Sudeten region bordering Germany. The Allies had allowed Czechoslovakia to maintain this territory in part because the Sudeten sat in traditional Bohemia, but also because the mountainous region provided Czechoslovakia with protection against German aggression, though many, even in 1919, had felt that it was a mistake to allow the Czechoslovaks to rule over such a large German minority. When Hitler threatened war if Czechoslovakia did not cede this ethnic-German territory to him (and supporters in the region had called for Hitler to rescue them from Czech domination), the government of Edward Benes began mobilizing the Czechoslovak military in response. This „May Crisis“ led to months of anxiety and tense negotiation in Europe, which culminated in the infamous Munich Conference of September, at which the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, and Italy—but not Czechoslovakia—agreed that Hitler could annex the ethnically-German Sudeten region

Why not allow Hitler to annex the ethnically-German Sudeten region?

The analysis I provided above, as well as the analysis provided by Chamberlain at the time, seems to justify capitulation to Hitler over the Sudeten. After all, it was primarily Germans he was annexing into Germany—didn't this correspond with the ideal of the self-determination of peoples? And why would Britain go to war in order to esnure that Czechs could rule over Germans? Indeed, in justifying the appeasement of Hitler, Chamberlain had earlier declared that it would be „horrible, fantastic, incredible“ for the British people to go to war over a „far away country“ populated by people „of whom we know nothing.“ Hitler now has a terrible reputation (to say the least), but we have to recognize that in 1938, many people, including Chamberlain, sympathized with Germany's demands that all Germans be united into one nation. We might even be able to sympathize with this point of view if we ignore the fact that we now know that Hitler had always intended to go to war even if he was given the Sudeten region. In this light, critics of Chamberlain's appeasement such as Winston Churchill may seem like warmongers, even in retrospect. What reasons did Chamberlain have then to také a more aggresive stance against Hitler in 1938?

1. France and Czechoslovakia maintained a military alliance specifically designed to contain German aggression. In the 1930s, with the rise of Hitler and the failure of the League of Nations becoming more and more obvious, several nations (including Czechoslovakia and France) moved to create more meaningful collective-security arrangements. Under the leadership of foreign minister and later prime minister Edward Benes, Czechoslovakia eagerly sought a military agreement with France that would guarantee that either party come to the defense of the other if Germany started another war. This „Eastern Strategy“ for France depended strongly on its alliance with Czechoslovakia, which was then one of the wealthiest nations on earth and a leading arms producer for the world. By giving up the Sudeten region at Munich, Chamberlain ensured that this alliance would dissolve and that Czechoslovakia would be unable to defend itself from further German aggression regardless. Therefore the Munich Agreement would leave Britain in a more vulnerable position, unless, of course, Hitler really meant what he said and had no more intentions of aggressively expanding into Europe.
2. Czechoslovakia was the only democracy left in Central or Eastern Europe. The rising tide of fascism had absorbed all of Europe from Germany eastward, and the sudden loss of territory to a fascist neighbor was sure to create a right-wing push in Czechoslovakia as well. Of course, we can say definitively now that Western policymakers, including Chamberlain but also the likes of Franklin Roosevelt (who supported Chamberlain clandestinely), favored their ethnic ties to Germany over their ideological ties to Czechoslovakia. We even find the British treating their Czech counterparts as they would peoples of a British colony (as the Czechs themselves later argued), as the British would make demands of the Czechs, and then change those demands without consulting the Czechs, and finally would make threats to completely abandon the Czechs to the Germans if they did not accept whatever new plan they had reached with Germany.
3. As noted in point 1, Czechoslovakia maintained one of the larger arms industries in the world, and many in Britain (including Churchill) correctly understood that this was Hitler's real Czechoslovak prize. The German dictator had already state in the past that he intended to expand German power beyond German borders, and so why would he not want to annex Bohemian industry, which had traditionally existed under ethnic-German control as recently as twenty years earlier? If Hitler really did plan on expansion through warfare as he had claimed, then control of Czech armament factories would prove a key element to his plan. Indeed, Hitler occupied Bohemia and Moravia in violation of the Munich Agreement in 1939 employed the full force of Czech industry when he invaded France in 1940.

In short, by deciding to appease Hitler, Chamberlain re-balanced the power structure in Europe in favor of Germany without gaining anything except a promise from Hitler that he would not use the increased strength of Germany for further aggression. It should be noted, however, that Czechoslovakia's defenses had not been designed to repel an invasion from Austria, and so the Anschluss had weakened Czechoslovakia as an ally well before Munich.

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