In the 1930s the deteriorating world situation presented all major political parties in Britain with profound dilemmas, whether to back pacifism, collective security or appeasementAppeasement Full Description The British and French policy of making concessions to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, associated primarily with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Its most notorious expression was the Munich Agreement of September 1938, which ceded the Sudetenland to Germany without Czech consent. Chamberlain returned to London declaring “peace for our time.” Within six months, Germany had occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. Appeasement has become a byword for the futile accommodation of aggressive dictators. Critical Perspective The post-war demonisation of appeasement — and of Chamberlain — has been substantially qualified by revisionist historians. Britain in 1938 was not ready for war: rearmament was incomplete, the dominions opposed conflict, public opinion was strongly against another war, and military advisers were pessimistic about British prospects. Appeasement bought a year’s time for rearmament. The deeper failure was not Munich itself but the preceding decade of disarmament and wishful thinking that made the choice between war and capitulation so stark.. The peripheral British Union of Fascists advocated peace with Nazi Germany in order to allow Hitler to wage his war against Europe’s Jews.

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