The policy of appeasement and the road to war, including the Anschluss (1938), Munich Agreement (1938), the Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939), and the invasion of Poland

What this dot point is asking

NESA examines appeasement as both a policy and a debate. You need to know the sequence of crises from the Rhineland to Poland, the British and French logic for accommodation, and the historiographical clash between A.J.P. Taylor (revisionist) and Richard Overy (intentionalist) over the origins of WWII.

The answer

The logic of appeasement

Appeasement was the policy of conceding to Germany's revisionist demands in the hope that a satisfied Germany would not start a general war. The policy was driven by several factors.

The trauma of the Great War (1914-1918) made another European war unthinkable; British casualties had been 880,000 dead. Britain and France had not rearmed during the Depression. The League of Nations had collapsed after Abyssinia. The USSR was distrusted after the Purges (1936-1938) and the Spanish Civil War. The British Empire was over-stretched: a war in Europe would invite Japan in the Pacific. There was a moral case too: the Treaty of Versailles was widely seen in Britain by 1938 as unjustly harsh, and German demands for self-determination of ethnic Germans seemed reasonable.

Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister on 28 May 1937. The Foreign Office had been pursuing accommodation since the mid-1930s under Stanley Baldwin; Chamberlain personalised and accelerated it.

Anschluss (12 March 1938)

Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg attempted to call a plebiscite on Austrian independence. Hitler issued an ultimatum; Schuschnigg resigned. Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the new Chancellor, "invited" the Wehrmacht in. Hitler entered Vienna on 14 March. A plebiscite (10 April 1938) endorsed union with Germany at 99.7 per cent. Britain and France protested but did not act. The Treaty of Versailles had explicitly banned Anschluss; this prohibition was now a dead letter.

The Munich Agreement (29 to 30 September 1938)

Hitler demanded the Sudetenland (the German-speaking border regions of Czechoslovakia, home to 3.5 million ethnic Germans and most of the country's industry and fortifications). Chamberlain flew to Germany three times in September 1938: Berchtesgaden (15 September), Bad Godesberg (22 September), and Munich (29 to 30 September).

At Munich, Hitler, Chamberlain, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and Mussolini agreed to the German annexation of the Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia was not represented. The Czech government accepted under duress. Britain and France guaranteed the remainder of the country. Chamberlain produced an additional Anglo-German declaration of friendship ("the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again") which he waved on the steps of 10 Downing Street as "peace for our time."

Six months later, on 15 March 1939, German forces occupied Prague. Bohemia and Moravia became a German Protectorate; Slovakia became a Nazi client state. The Czech guarantee was not invoked.

The pivot to Poland

The Prague occupation ended British public support for appeasement. On 31 March 1939 Chamberlain announced a unilateral guarantee of Polish independence. Hitler took this as evidence that the democracies would interfere with his plans for Lebensraum in the east. On 23 May 1939, in a speech to his generals (the "Schmundt Memorandum"), Hitler declared war on Poland to be unavoidable.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact (23 August 1939)

Negotiated by Foreign Ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact stunned the world. Secret protocols divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence: Estonia, Latvia, Finland, eastern Poland, and Bessarabia to the USSR; western Poland and Lithuania to Germany. Stalin's logic was strategic: Anglo-Soviet talks earlier in 1939 had stalled, Munich had shown the west would not fight, and the pact bought time to rearm after the Purges. Hitler's logic was tactical: avoid a two-front war.

The invasion of Poland (1 September 1939)

A staged "Polish" attack on the Gleiwitz radio station (31 August 1939) gave Hitler his pretext. Germany invaded at 4.45am on 1 September 1939. Britain and France issued ultimatums and declared war on 3 September 1939. The USSR invaded eastern Poland on 17 September. Poland was partitioned within five weeks.

Historiography

A.J.P. Taylor (The Origins of the Second World War, 1961) argued Hitler was an opportunist German nationalist responding to circumstances, not a uniquely demonic master planner. He blamed appeasement and Anglo-French miscalculation, especially over Poland.

Richard Overy (The Origins of the Second World War, 1987; Why the Allies Won, 1995) is the modern consensus: Hitler's ideology of racial war and Lebensraum drove him deliberately towards a continental war.

Donald Cameron Watt (How War Came, 1989) presents a granular diplomatic account that complicates Taylor without rejecting his core insight that decisions in 1939 were contingent.

R.A.C. Parker (Chamberlain and Appeasement, 1993) is the standard study of Chamberlain: he argues alternatives to appeasement existed and were rejected for political, not strategic, reasons.

Road to war timeline

How to read a source on this topic

Section I sources on appeasement commonly include David Low's "Stepping Stones to Glory" (8 July 1936), the famous Chamberlain "peace for our time" photograph (30 September 1938), the Munich Agreement text, Hossbach Memorandum extracts, or the Nazi-Soviet Pact secret protocols (only fully published after 1945). Three reading habits.

First, separate British public opinion at the time from later judgement. In October 1938, Chamberlain returned to a hero's welcome at Heston Aerodrome. Within six months, public opinion had reversed. A source from October 1938 captures a different mood than one from March 1939.

Second, weigh Hitler's stated and actual aims. The Hossbach Memorandum (1937) outlined war by 1943 to 1945. Sources from the Anschluss and Munich present Hitler's demands as the last territorial revision; the Prague occupation (March 1939) revealed this as untrue. Use the Memorandum to read the public claims sceptically.

Third, note what is absent. Czechoslovakia was not at Munich; Stalin was not at Munich. The omissions are themselves part of the source's evidence about the politics of appeasement.

Common exam traps

Treating appeasement as a single decision. It was a five-year policy, from the Rhineland (1936) to the Polish guarantee (1939).

Forgetting the Munich participants. Czechoslovakia was not at Munich. The phrase "Czechs decided" is wrong.

Treating Taylor as the consensus view. He is the most famous revisionist, but Overy's view is now dominant.

Misdating the Nazi-Soviet Pact. 23 August 1939, not 1 September.

In one sentence

The policy of appeasement, pursued by Chamberlain through the Anschluss (March 1938), the Munich Agreement (September 1938), and the rump Czechoslovakia crisis (March 1939), emboldened Hitler and was overturned in 1939 by the Polish guarantee, the Nazi-Soviet Pact (23 August 1939), and the invasion of Poland (1 September 1939), with Overy (against Taylor's revisionism) treating WWII as the deliberate product of Hitler's ideological programme.