The Appeasement Debate

Peace for our time

On the evening of 30 September 1938 Neville Chamberlain stood at a window in Downing Street and told the crowd that he had brought back from Germany peace with honour, and that he believed it was peace for our time. He had flown to Germany three times in fifteen days, to Berchtesgaden on the 15th, to Bad Godesberg on the 22nd and to Munich on the 29th, and had agreed with Hitler, Mussolini and Daladier that the Sudetenland, the border region of Czechoslovakia where around 3 million Germans lived, should pass to Germany from 1 October. The Czechs were not in the room. Britain had never been so relieved, and within a week Winston Churchill told the Commons that the country had sustained a total and unmitigated defeat. Appeasement was not one decision but a policy with reasons. Britain had lost around 750,000 dead between 1914 and 1918 and had no wish to repeat it; in the Peace Ballot of 1934 to 1935 around 11.6 million people had answered a questionnaire on the League and disarmament, and the great majority wanted peace kept by collective means. The Treasury said rearmament would wreck the recovery, the Chiefs of Staff warned in 1938 that Britain could not fight Germany, Italy and Japan at once, the Dominions would not promise to follow, and the United States would not join. Many in Britain thought Versailles had been unjust and that German grievances were real, and some thought a strong Germany the best barrier to Stalin. Against all that stood the record: every concession from the naval agreement of 1935 to Munich had been followed by a larger demand, Czechoslovakia lost its fortifications and its Skoda arms works without a shot, Stalin drew his conclusions and signed with Hitler in August 1939, and Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939. AQA asks you to weigh the two cases with evidence and reach a judgement. This module gives you the reasons, the crisis, the ending and the source and judgement shapes.

Five terms with their dates

Each definition carries the date and the figure that make it usable as evidence, because a bare definition earns nothing in a source or judgement answer.

Appeasement in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• Britain lets Germany build a navy of 35 per cent of its own without telling France
• Chamberlain becomes prime minister
• German troops enter Austria and Britain sends a protest
• Chamberlain flies to Berchtesgaden to meet Hitler for the first time
• German troops occupy Prague and the rest of the Czech lands
• Britain guarantees Poland

Why did Britain appease?

Britain had the largest navy in the world and an empire covering a quarter of the globe, and it gave way to Germany at every point from 1935 to 1938. Which explanation best accounts for the policy?

• Several reasons worked together and each was real: the memory of around 750,000 dead and a public that had answered the Peace Ballot in millions made war politically impossible; the Chiefs of Staff told the cabinet in 1938 that Britain could not fight Germany, Italy and Japan together, and the RAF had a handful of modern fighters; the Treasury would not fund rearmament at the pace needed; the Dominions and the United States would not commit; and a widespread belief that Versailles had been unjust made the German demands for the Rhineland, Austria and the Sudetenland look like grievances to be settled rather than steps in a plan.
• Chamberlain was personally a coward.
• The British government secretly supported the Nazis.
• Britain was tricking Hitler to gain time for war.

The case for and the case against

The two columns are the raw material of the 16-mark judgement. Each item carries the evidence that turns it from an opinion into a point, and the last item in each column is the one that decides most judgements.

Question 1: how do you know?

Source A: a description of a cartoon by David Low published in the Evening Standard on 8 July 1936, four months after the remilitarisation of the Rhineland. Hitler, in uniform, goose-steps up a staircase; each step is the bowed back of a European statesman, and the steps are labelled Rhineland, then Danzig, Austria, Czechoslovakia and so on upwards. A signpost reads: Spineless Leaders of Democracy. Hitler is heading for the top, where the last step is unlabelled and out of sight. AQA Question 1 says: Source A is critical of the policy of appeasement. How do you know? Tap the TWO details that show the criticism most directly.

• The steps are the bowed backs of the democratic statesmen themselves, which presents each concession as the leaders lowering themselves so that Hitler can climb higher.
• Hitler is drawn in uniform.
• The steps are labelled Rhineland, Danzig, Austria and Czechoslovakia in ascending order, which presents each concession as leading to the next demand rather than satisfying him.
• The cartoon appeared in a London evening newspaper.
• It was published in July 1936.

The Sudeten crisis and Munich

Select the THREE statements that are accurate about the crisis of September 1938 and its settlement.

• Chamberlain flew to Berchtesgaden on 15 September and agreed in principle to the transfer of the Sudetenland, flew to Godesberg on 22 September to find that Hitler now wanted immediate occupation by 1 October, and flew to Munich on 29 September where a conference proposed by Mussolini produced the agreement in the early hours of the 30th.
• Neither Czechoslovakia nor the Soviet Union was represented at Munich, although the Soviet Union had a treaty of 1935 to defend Czechoslovakia if France did, and the Czech government was told the terms and given the choice of accepting them or fighting alone.
• The transfer gave Germany the Czech frontier fortifications and much of its heavy industry, and in March 1939 German troops occupied Prague without resistance, took over the Skoda arms works and the tanks of the Czech army, and turned the rest of the country into a protectorate.
• The Czech president Benes signed the Munich Agreement alongside the four powers.
• Stalin attended Munich and agreed to the transfer.
• Britain declared war on Germany when it occupied the Sudetenland in October 1938.

The map after Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles redrew the map of Germany, and almost every crisis of the 1930s happened on that new map. In the west, Alsace-Lorraine went back to France, the Rhineland was demilitarised, and the coal-rich Saar was run by the League of Nations for fifteen years. In the east, the Polish Corridor gave Poland a route to the sea and cut East Prussia off from the rest of Germany, with Danzig made a free city. The Sudetenland, the German-speaking rim of Czechoslovakia, was never German before 1938, but Hitler claimed it all the same. Austria, to the south, was forbidden to unite with Germany.

Question 2: how useful are two sources?

AQA Question 2 gives you two sources and asks how useful they are to a historian studying one thing, for 12 marks. The two below are described for this module; the exam prints the real text. Enquiry: British attitudes to appeasement in 1938. Source B. From the radio broadcast Chamberlain made to the nation on the evening of 27 September 1938, between Godesberg and Munich, in which he said how horrible, fantastic and incredible it was that the British should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom they knew nothing, and that he would not commit the country to war for a small nation against a great power unless a bigger issue were at stake. Source C. From the speech Churchill made in the House of Commons on 5 October 1938 in the debate on the Munich Agreement, in which he said that Britain had sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, that one pound had been demanded at the pistol point, then two pounds, and that the dictator had finally consented to take one pound seventeen and six with the rest in promises of goodwill; and that this was only the beginning of the reckoning. The method is the same for both: content, provenance and own knowledge. Source B is useful for the mind of the man making the policy at its most anxious moment, and its provenance is its strength: a broadcast to the whole nation, chosen to prepare people either for war or for a settlement, so the phrase about a far-away country shows what he thought the public would accept. Its limit is that it is an argument, made two days before Munich, by a man who needed the settlement to seem reasonable. Source C is useful for the opposition to appeasement in the very week of its triumph, from a backbencher whose warnings had been ignored for five years; its limit is that it was the view of a small minority, since the Commons approved Munich by 366 votes to 144 in that same debate, and Churchill was speaking for his own return to office as well as for the Czechs. This meant that B shows the majority attitude and C the minority that would be proved right, and a top-level answer says what each is useful for rather than which is better.

In the shoes of Chamberlain

Four decisions between September 1938 and March 1939. Choose what was actually done at each, and notice what each choice left him with.

• 23 September 1938, Bad Godesberg. You have come back to Hitler with the Sudeten transfer agreed by the Czechs and the French, and he tells you it is no longer enough: German troops must occupy the region by 1 October, with no commission and no plebiscites. What do you do?
• 29 September 1938, Munich. The conference has agreed a transfer in stages with an international commission. The Czech delegates are waiting in another room and the Soviet Union has not been asked. What do you do?
• 15 March 1939. German troops have entered Prague and Hitler has declared Bohemia and Moravia a protectorate. Not one of the people concerned is German. What do you do?
• 31 March 1939. Hitler is demanding Danzig and a road across the Polish Corridor, and rumours reach London of an imminent attack. Poland is a country Britain cannot reach. What do you do?

From cause to consequence

Because Britain had lost around 750,000 dead in the last war and millions had answered the Peace Ballot, no government could go to war in 1938 with the public behind it. Because the Chiefs of Staff said Britain could not fight Germany, Italy and _____ at once, Chamberlain looked for a settlement rather than a stand. Because the Czechs and the Soviets were kept out of the room at _____, the settlement was a surrender in their eyes and Stalin concluded the West would not fight. Because the Sudetenland carried the Czech _____, the rest of the country could not be defended and fell in March 1939 without a shot. Because Prague was not a German city, the occupation destroyed the belief that Hitler wanted only Germans, and Britain guaranteed _____ sixteen days later. And because the year between Munich and war was used to build Spitfires and _____ stations, the policy its critics called a defeat also armed the country that survived 1940.

The Peace Ballot

In the Peace Ballot of 1934 to 1935 around 11.6 million people returned the questionnaire, and around 10.5 million of them said Britain should remain in the League of Nations. To the nearest whole number, what percentage of those who answered supported the League?

Name the places on the map

Tap a place name, then tap the pin on the region it names.

Question 1: how do you know, marked

AQA Question 1 asks: Source A (the Low cartoon Stepping Stones to Glory) is critical of the policy of appeasement. How do you know? It is marked for 4 on identifying the message and supporting it from the source and from own knowledge. Which answer scores all four?

• I know because Low draws the statesmen of the democracies as a staircase of bent backs labelled with the places Hitler has taken or will take, so that each concession is shown carrying him one step higher rather than satisfying him, and the signpost calling them spineless makes the judgement explicit. That fits the moment: the cartoon appeared in July 1936, four months after Hitler had marched into the Rhineland and Britain and France had done nothing, and the labels on the higher steps, Austria and Czechoslovakia, predict exactly what followed in 1938.
• The cartoon shows Hitler walking up some stairs made of people.
• Low was a left-wing cartoonist who always attacked Hitler.
• The cartoon shows that the democratic leaders were helping Hitler to bring peace.

Munich, 1938

At Munich in 1938, Britain and France agreed to hand this area to Germany. Tap it.

Question 3: an account, marked

Question 3: Write an account of how appeasement came to an end between September 1938 and April 1939. The Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938 seemed at first to be the triumph of appeasement, because Chamberlain returned with the Sudetenland transferred peacefully, a signed declaration that Britain and Germany would never fight again, and the Commons approved the settlement on 6 October by 366 votes to 144. However, the terms had removed the Czech fortifications and the Skoda works, and this meant that the rest of the country could not be defended. On 15 March 1939 German troops occupied Prague and Hitler proclaimed a protectorate over Bohemia and Moravia, and because the Czechs were not Germans this destroyed the argument on which appeasement had rested, that Hitler wanted only to bring German speakers into the Reich. As a result Chamberlain, who told the Commons that day that the guarantee had lapsed, asked in Birmingham on 17 March whether this was the last attack on a small state or the first of many, and the policy was reversed within a fortnight: on 31 March Britain and France guaranteed Poland, on 13 April the guarantee was extended to Greece and Romania, and on 26 April the government announced conscription in peacetime for the first time in British history. The account shows a policy that ended not when its critics spoke but when its central assumption was falsified in a single day. What earned the marks: a sequence with dates and figures; each step linked to the next by because, this meant that and as a result, so that the account explains how the ending happened rather than listing the events; and a closing sentence that says what the pattern shows. That structure, sustained, is what reaches the top level of the 8-mark account.

Question 4: the 16-mark judgement

"Appeasement was the right policy for Britain to follow in 1938." How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

• Make the case for the statement with evidence: military readiness, allies, public opinion and what the year bought, each with a date or a figure
• Make the case against with evidence: the pattern of concession and demand, what Czechoslovakia lost, the Soviet reaction and how Germany used the year

Question 4: the judgement, tested

A student has argued that appeasement was the right policy because Britain was not ready for war in 1938 and the year gained gave it the Spitfires and radar that won the Battle of Britain. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST that judgement, in the way the top level of Question 4 requires?

• The year was not gained by Britain alone: Germany used it to complete the Siegfried Line, take over the Czech tanks and arms works that had been given away at Munich, and raise Luftwaffe strength, while Britain lost the 35 Czech divisions and the fortified frontier that would have forced Hitler to fight in the east, and lost the Soviet Union, which drew from its exclusion at Munich the conclusion that produced the pact of August 1939; so the balance in September 1939 was not clearly better than in September 1938, and a judgement that rests on the year bought has to weigh what Germany bought with the same year.
• Chamberlain was a coward and Churchill was right.
• Appeasement was wrong because the war happened anyway.
• Britain was not ready for war, so appeasement must have been right.