The man lived through world war I , I think it should be quite understandable why anyone would not want to relive the horrors of that. Yet , even in comic book movies he is portrayed as a literal villain for seeking peace or appeasing (which one neccesarily does when seeking peace) . I dont know enough about it to make any judgements but on th face of it, I feel that I can sympathize with his motivations and I was just wondering if the historical record is as damning for him as the popular imagination, which , when it was communicated to me, colors him as a coward. a fool and useful idiot
You might find /u/historyofbadgers's answer in a similar post insightful - Does Neville Chamberlain deserve his reputation?
Additionally, /u/the-bee-lord's answer in Neville Chamberlain famously sold out Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in return for "Peace in our time." Appeasement didn't work out, but would fighting WWII in 1938 have been better for the Allies? Were they ready for war, and would Czechoslovakia's border forts have made a difference? could also be of your interest.
A great deal of our historical perspective of Chamberlain's short-sightedness, cowardly behavior, or naivety towards Hitler comes from the book "Guilty Men", which was written by Michael Foot (later to be Leader of the Labour Party), Frank Owen (a former Liberal MP), and Peter Howard (a Tory journalist). Several biographers of Chamberlain (most notably David Dutton) seem to agree that the book almost singularly shaped opinions on him for the next 20 years, and in fact, it dominates the historical view of him to this day, although Chamberlain wasn't the only "guilty man". In fact, two other PMs were also considered guilty by the trio (Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin).
One of the things it's also important to note is that Chamberlain displayed astonishing lack of foresight. His policy was originally to make the Nazi government a partner within Europe and he seemed to take an attitude not dissimilar to the one years later taken by Harold Macmillan with regard to his relationship with John F. Kennedy (A senior political partner assisting a very powerful junior). He never seemed to even consider that Germany's aggressive call for Anschluss would result in war and took almost no steps to build up Britain's armed forces. He also regularly bypassed his young Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, who was a bit wiser to the kind of threat Germany was posing, with regard to talks and things of that nature.
The whole debacle over Czechoslovakia is really what puts Chamberlain's poor decision making into focus. His government pressured the Czechs to make concessions from the start and his government convinced the French (who were the ones actually allied to the Czechs) to go along with allowing Germany to take the Sudetenland. Chamberlain had a private meeting with Hitler over the signing of the Munich Agreement, and he said, "Let our two peoples never go to war again". Hitler replied vigorously in the affirmative, but afterward he said to Von Ribbentrop that the paper "meant nothing".
Germany promptly annexed all of Czechoslovakia, which had wanted to fight, but without French support, they could not have hoped to hold out. Of course Hitler outmaneuvered Chamberlain again when he invaded Poland after forming the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Chamberlain's cabinet (Particularly Eden and Duff Cooper) largely supported some sort of short term alliance or non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in order to protect Poland's sovereignty, but Chamberlain initially refused to act on, and then dragged his feet at it, which of course allowed the talks to collapse.
Even then, history might not have remembered him so harshly if his government hadn't bungled the start of the war so badly. The Norway Debate, which Robert Boothby later described on the documentary series "The World at War" as "The single most important debate I'd ever attended in my 34 years in the House of Commons", where Leo Amery quoted Oliver Cromwell's words toward the Long Parliament, "In the name of God, go!" Was really the death knell for Chamberlain's reputation.
I think the historical perspective of him is largely correct but not for the right reasons. I don't think Chamberlain was cowardly (he did eventually draw the line at the invasion of Poland, after all), but I do think that he greatly underestimated Hitler and he made the very foolish decision to take a lot of what Hitler said to him and through intermediaries at face value when, in fact, Hitler was lying through his teeth the whole time. Chamberlain listened to the wrong people, made poor judgements, and ultimately failed as PM. I don't think he was cowardly, but appeasement was absolutely a bad policy.
EDIT: Made one minor correction.