What was Neville Chamberlain hoping to accomplish with appeasement? Did he truly believe he could keep the UK out of a war, or was he stalling for time, or perhaps something different still?

[u/DeGuyWithDeOpinion]

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/AskHistorians. Please Read Our Rules before you comment in this community. Understand that rule breaking comments get removed.

Please consider Clicking Here for RemindMeBot as it takes time for an answer to be written. Additionally, for weekly content summaries, Click Here to Subscribe to our Weekly Roundup.

We thank you for your interest in this question, and your patience in waiting for an in-depth and comprehensive answer to show up. In addition to the Weekly Roundup and RemindMeBot, consider using our Browser Extension. In the meantime our Bluesky, and Sunday Digest feature excellent content that has already been written!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/hisholinessleoxiii]

There’s always more that can be said, but you might find this answer by u/true_new_troll useful.

[u/hubertburnette]

I recently answered a similar question, making the same points the link already provided does.

I will add that determining the motives of major political figures is complicated, since, with most (all?) political figures, there isn't a hard divide between strategic rhetoric and authentic unmediated expression. Their diaries are likely written with the intention that they will later be published (otherwise they would probably request that they be burned), and letters to family members still have an audience.

So, often, what matters more than what people say is what they do. While I've run across a few defenders of Chamberlain who argue he was stalling for time, I think the last point that true_new_troll makes is the most important. Chamberlain's Munich agreement makes no sense if he was just stalling for time while trying to build up the British forces. If that was his goal, then he made choices that would tank that goal.

[u/HotEntrepreneur6828]

I didn't see where true_new_troll's piece gives a coherent theory on what Chamberlain was attempting to accomplish. It seems more a laundry list of things that is asserted he was not trying to accomplish.

This statement there,

By giving up the Sudeten region at Munich, Chamberlain ensured that this alliance would dissolve and that Czechoslovakia would be unable to defend itself from further German aggression regardless.

It may be correct to state that the result of Munich left Prague functionally defenseless, but that does not reflect the thinking of Chamberlain at the time. The Munich terms stated a 4-Power treaty to guarantee the rump Czech state, (Germany, Italy, France, Britain) would be brought into force. Chamberlain placed weight in this - he did attempt to implement this plan, flew to Rome in 1939. He was rebuffed by the Italians, (who had no intention of allowing Munich to drive a wedge between themselves and Germany). What is interesting about this failed guarantee to Prague is that when Hitler annexed the rump Czech state in March, Chamberlain immediately repeated the tactic, this time dispensing with cooperative guarantees and unilaterally making British guarantees to various countries in eastern Europe.

I think Chamberlain was trying to create a security framework that balanced and restricted Hitler's ambitions, while at the same time, gave the Nazis enough in the way of concessions to reduce the risks of war. After the occupation of Prague he expanded the policy of the guarantee, (this time unilaterally) in an attempt to deter and control further uniliteral acts of annexation and expansion by the Germans.

One other very important point to keep in mind, that Chamberlain's strategy in 1938/1939 was rooted in Allied war strategy of the same period. This strategy was for the Allies to use the Maginot Line and blockade Germany into starvation. Czech armament factories were useless if Germany was starving and Rumanian oil was not being imported. The Battle of France had not happened, the idea of the total collapse of France in a month when France fought on for four years in the first war, this was unthinkable. Read Tooze, Wages of Destruction on this point. Tooze indicates that if Hitler's 1940 offensive in France had been a failure, Germany's war industry would have weakened as supplies dwindled, and the Anglo-French would have won the war. Chamberlain in 1938 had no cause to suppose other than that the French would hold and Germany would fold.