Although many people criticise Britain’s policy of appeasement in the 1930’s I think it was a good idea. A lot of people would disagree with this though because there are several reasons why appeasement wasn’t a good idea.

Many people think that if Britain and France had stood up to Hitler they might have prevented a number of events leading up to the Second World War, e.g., Rhineland 1936, the German and Austrian “Anschluss” in 1938 and the Czech Sudetenland crisis of 1938. Hitler himself said that if Britain had opposed him when he took over the Rhineland he might not have gone on to do what he later did. Also, if they had stood up to Hitler straight away, instead of trying to compromise, the war would have started sooner but might have finished more quickly, resulting in a smaller number of the deaths of soldiers and civilians.

Another reason against appeasement, is that although Chamberlain thought that Hitler was a gentleman other people knew that he wasn’t reasonable and was only interested in his own plans, Winston Churchill knew this

The British government also thought that the public was sympathetic to Germany’s claims to The Treaty of Versailles as they thought they had been treated too harshly.

One of the terms of Appeasement was that Germany got some of Czechoslovakia’s land. This was morally wrong because the land didn’t belong to Britain and France so they shouldn’t have given it to Germany without consulting Czechoslovakia.

The British government also thought that Britain wasn’t out of recession after the Wall Street crash of 1929 and couldn’t afford another war. This wasn’t actually true as recession ended in about 1933 but this wasn’t clear then. They also didn’t want to cause another arms race as had happened in the First World War and thought that appeasement was the best way to avoid this.

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