Solving the appeasement puzzle: contending historical interpretations of British diplomacy during the 1930s

Abstract

The historical interpretations of British diplomacy during the 1930s are difficult to separate from those interpretations that explain the occurrence of the Second World War. Historians often link them by relating the British policy of appeasement to the outbreak of the war. British policy becomes a “permissive” cause of World War II by allowing Hitler to rearm Germany, consolidate western German frontiers, and expand towards the east. First, the British failed to prevent Hitler from occupying the Rhineland in March, 1936, and then merely protested the German annexation of Austria two years later. Within six months after the Anschluss Prime Minister Chamberlain accepted the cessation of the Sudetenland to Germany at Munich. Finally, after Hitler conquered the remainder of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939, the British guaranteed the territorial integrity of Poland. When Hitler attacked Poland in September, 1939, the British government, with the French as allies, came to Poland's defence. The British decision to honour this commitment belatedly but irrevocably reversed their earlier appeasement policy, which was to concede Hitler's territorial demands in an attempt to reach a peaceful European settlement with Germany.