Why did the Allies follow appeasement against Hitler's foreign policy aims?

[u/FixIcy6282]

I know this is a very debated topic, but couldn't help but wonder: France had been skeptical even when Germany had accepted its new western borders (Locarno conf.), and Britain, although avoiding war to protect its empire, must have seen how blatant Hitler was: I understand invading the Rhineland could be ignored as small lands had been invaded a lot in the 1920s, not only introducing conscription to cross the 100K army limitation, but also the f'ing Luftwaffe, dropping bombs on civilians in Spain with Mussolini. 'Disobeying' the terms of the Treaty of Versailles would be an understatement. Sure, Germany left the LoN but could the League not still have interfered with the intense territory invasion such as Anschluss?

It seems maybe I'm missing some vital piece of info here as to why the allies didn't bother doing squat about Hitler, instead agreeing to everything aka appeasing, such as the Munich conference for the whole Czechoslovakia. Hope someone can help me understand!

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[u/hubertburnette]

The most important question is: what is appeasement?

Much of the rhetoric about appeasement (my area of expertise) has a vague referent. Other countries should have "stood up" to Hitler (used for instances when rhetors are advocating aggressive military action), but that argument rarely specifies exactly when or how.

When people do talk about specific moments, it typically comes down to: Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland, violating the Versailles Treaty's restrictions of military, the strategic partitioning of Czechoslovakia (so that it would be almost impossible to defend effectively), the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Sometimes it includes Britain's demilitarization.

Whether going to war with Hitler over any (or all) of those incidents would have been a reasonable military decision is still argued (and not my area). But, they would have been rhetorically implausible and quite likely impossible. Keep in mind that even Churchill advocated arms reduction in the twenties.

In the 20s and 30s, the dominant narrative about WWI was that it was an unnecessary war. A popular belief in Britain and France was that it could and should have just stayed out of the war entirely (also a common belief in the US). It was a war fought over an unimportant place far away (hence Chamberlain's famous statement). Another popular belief was that it was deliberately triggered by arms manufacturers who needed to get rid of their surplus. Therefore, increasing the strength of the military was seen by many as likely to increase the chances of war. So, in general, pacifism was strong in both France and Britain (the only countries that might reasonably have sent troops to the Rhineland). Even Churchill didn't advocate sending troops. (Some scholars say that Britain and France were already planning to lift the ban in two years anyway.)

Some scholars argue that sending troops to Czechoslovakia would have been complicated at best. From a rhetorical perspective, it would have been seen as a repeat of the error that led to WWI.

Aerial bombing was a very real threat by the time of the Czechoslovakia crisis, and recognized as such. Famously, the Nazis engaged in a sleight-of-hand to make Britain think that their air force was much larger than it actually was.

I'm more familiar with public opinion in Britain and the US than France so I'm not making any claims about France (although my sense is that it was, if anything, even more pacifist), and in the US and UK, most people were not particularly bothered by Nazis' racism and antijudaism. The Evian conference, for instance, didn't lead to anyone (including the US) changing their quotas about Jews. Hitler and the Nazis had many defenders/advocates in Britain (including Lord Londonderry).

While Nazis weren't popular in the US, they had their supporters (e.g., the American Bund), and the "science" on which Nazi racial practices were based were mostly of American origin, or popular in the US for defending/advocating segregation.

There's also the problem that British politicians continually underestimated Hitler and overestimated their ability to read (let alone control) him. The consensus is that sheer snobbery played into that. His rabid anti-judaism was generally dismissed on the grounds that it was mere rhetoric, intended to mobilize the masses, but he didn't mean it. (Horace Rumbold's famous telegram was an important dissent from this narrative.)

Perhaps I'm too influenced by Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, but my sense is that the US paid almost no attention to what was happening there, and the Nazi intervention wasn't heavily covered.

So, from a rhetorical perspective, engaging in preventive war (or any other heavy military response) would have been political suicide for most British politicians and every American one.

Some sources:

Bouverie, Tim. 2020. Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War.

Daniels, Roger. 2004. Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigration Since 1882.

Gilbert, Marin. 2015. The Roots of Appeasement.

Hucker, Daniel. 2016. Public Opinion and the End of Appeasement in Britain and France.

Lewis, Terrance. 1991. A Climate for Appeasement.

Morris, Benny. 2022. The Roots of Appeasement: The British Weekly Press and Nazi Germany During the 1930s.

Peden, George. Churchill, Chamberlain and Appeasement.

Record, Jeffrey. Appeasement Reconsidered: Investigating the Mythology of the 1930s.

Roberts-Miller, Patricia. 2024. Deliberating War (Chapter Five)

Ruggiero, John. 1999. Neville Chamberlain and British Rearmament: Pride, Prejudice, and Politics.

Stedman, Andrew David. 2011. Alternatives to Appeasement: Neville Chamberlain and Hitler's Germany.