IB History Appeasement Notes

What Was Appeasement?

1. Appeasement was the policy pursued primarily by Britain (and supported reluctantly by France) of making concessions to the dictators' demands in order to avoid war. It represented a shift away from collective security through the League toward direct negotiation.
2. Appeasement began under Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (1935-1937) during the Abyssinian Crisis and Anglo-German Naval Agreement, but became most closely associated with Neville Chamberlain (1937-1940).
3. Chamberlain believed that Hitler had legitimate grievances arising from the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles, and that satisfying these grievances through negotiation would remove the causes of conflict and preserve European peace.
4. In practice, appeasement meant accepting Hitler's violations of Versailles: rearmament (1935), the Rhineland (1936), the Anschluss (1938), and the Sudetenland (1938) without military resistance.

Motives for Appeasement

Horror of War and Public Opinion

1. The memory of World War I dominated British and French thinking. Over 10 million soldiers died in WWI, including nearly 1 million British and 1.4 million French. The public was overwhelmingly opposed to another war.
2. The 1933 Oxford Union debate voted that "this House would under no circumstances fight for its King and Country." The Peace Ballot (1935) showed over 11 million Britons supported the League and disarmament.
3. The bombing of Guernica (April 1937) during the Spanish Civil War terrified the British public. Experts predicted that future air raids on London could kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in the first weeks of a war.

Belief That Versailles Was Unjust

1. Many British politicians believed the Treaty of Versailles had been too harsh on Germany. Lloyd George himself had warned during the Paris Peace Conference that excessive punishment would produce a German desire for revenge.
2. Economist John Maynard Keynes had published The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), arguing that Versailles was economically catastrophic. His views shaped a generation of British policymakers who felt Germany deserved revision of the treaty.
3. Hitler's demands for the Rhineland, Anschluss, and Sudetenland could all be justified as applications of national self-determination, the very principle on which the post-war settlement was supposedly based.

Military Weakness and the Need to Buy Time

1. Britain's military was severely weakened by the Ten Year Rule (1919-1932) and Depression-era budget cuts. The Chiefs of Staff repeatedly warned Chamberlain that Britain was not ready to fight Germany, Italy, and Japan simultaneously.
2. Chamberlain was not naive; he understood that war might come. Appeasement bought time for British rearmament. Between 1936 and 1939, defence spending increased from £186 million to £719 million, including development of the Spitfire fighter and radar.
3. Britain could not count on US support. The Neutrality Acts (1935-1937) made clear that America would not intervene in European conflicts. Without the US, Britain feared it could not win a prolonged war against Germany.

Fear of Communism and Strategic Calculations

1. Many British conservatives feared communism more than fascism. A strong Germany was seen as a useful buffer against Soviet expansion into Western Europe. Destroying Nazi Germany might simply create a power vacuum for communism to fill.
2. Japan's expansion in Asia also threatened British imperial interests in the Far East (Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore). Appeasement in Europe would free resources to address the Japanese threat.

France and Appeasement

1. France supported appeasement reluctantly. Unlike Britain, France had been invaded by Germany in 1914 and had suffered 1.4 million dead. French public opinion was deeply divided between those who wanted to confront Hitler and those who feared another bloodbath.
2. France's 11 governments in 4 years (1932-1935) meant no coherent foreign policy could be sustained. The economy was too weak for major rearmament (France only began serious rearmament in 1936).
3. France's defensive strategy (the Maginot Line) meant it was unwilling to take offensive action against Germany without British support. When Britain refused to act over the Rhineland in 1936, France followed suit.
4. France's priority was maintaining the alliance with Britain, believing that only together could they eventually face Hitler. In practice, this meant France followed Britain's lead on appeasement, even when French interests (such as the alliance with Czechoslovakia) were sacrificed.

Appeasement in Action

1. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (June 1935) allowed Germany to build a navy up to 35% of British strength. Britain negotiated directly with Germany, bypassing the League and undermining the Stresa Front.
2. When Hitler remilitarised the Rhineland (March 1936), Britain refused to support French military action. Lord Lothian famously said the Germans were merely "going into their own back garden."
3. The Anschluss (March 1938) absorbed Austria into Germany. Chamberlain accepted it as a fait accompli, arguing that Austria's German-speaking population had the right to self-determination.
4. The Sudetenland Crisis (September 1938) was the peak of appeasement. Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia's border region containing 3 million ethnic Germans. Chamberlain flew to Germany three times to negotiate.
5. At the Munich Conference (29-30 September 1938), Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, and Mussolini agreed to transfer the Sudetenland to Germany. Czechoslovakia was not invited to the conference that dismembered its country.
6. Chamberlain returned to London waving the agreement and declaring "peace for our time." He was initially greeted as a hero. Winston Churchill, however, warned: "We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat."

The Failure of Appeasement

1. In March 1939, Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia, annexing Bohemia and Moravia and creating a puppet state in Slovakia. This could not be justified by self-determination; it was naked aggression against a non-German population.
2. Appeasement was finally discredited. Chamberlain reversed course and issued guarantees to Poland (March 1939), pledging that Britain and France would defend Poland if attacked by Germany.
3. Britain introduced peacetime conscription (April 1939) for the first time in its history, signalling that it was now preparing for war rather than trying to avoid it.
4. Appeasement had emboldened Hitler at every stage. Each concession convinced him that Britain and France would never fight. It also alienated potential allies (Czechoslovakia was sacrificed, the USSR was excluded from Munich) and helped push Stalin toward the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
5. When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Britain and France declared war on 3 September. The policy of appeasement had failed to prevent the very war it was designed to avoid.

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