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The consequences of Appeasement

© Joseph Sramek

On September 29th, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich to participate in a conference with Adolf Hitler of Germany, Eduoard Daladier, premier of France, and Benito Mussolini of Italy. The topic: the cession of the Czech Sudetenland to Germany. Czechoslovakia was not invited to the conference, and the Czech delegate was forced to remain outside the room until the conference was over.

Ten hours later, an agreement was reached which granted each of Hitler's demands. The following morning, Chamberlain presented to Hitler an additional treaty which, to paraphrase it, demonstrated "the desire of the peoples of both our countries never to go to war again." Then Chamberlain flew back to London, and when he arrived was granted a tremendous reception. He was invited to Buckingham Palace by George VI. After his audience with the King, Chamberlain then addressed the crowd that developed and uttered the now famous sentence: "I believe this represents peace in our time."

As everyone knows, six months later, Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia and, 11 months after Munich, England and Germany were at war. Ever since then, Munich has been characterized as England's greatest embarrassment, Chamberlain has been characterized as a wimp with an umbrella, and any attempt to "sooth or to pacify," which is the original meaning of Appeasement, has been tainted with the stigma of Munich.

During the Battle of Britain three British journalists (Michael Foot, Peter Howard, and Frank Owen), writing under the pseudonym "Cato," wrote Guilty Men, blaming Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin (Prime Minister from 1935-37), and Ramsay MacDonald (Prime Minister from 1929-35), and other members of the National Government (the Government from 1931-40) entirely for the crisis that Britain found itself in then. According to Foot, Howard, and Owen, they ". . . were "guilty" of being blind to their duty, of failing to rearm sufficiently, of refusing to hear - in fact of stifling - other voices which spoke the truth." (1) This has been the consensus that has been accepted in the past 58 years by nearly everyone.

Britain eventually did win the war, but at a large cost. It was forced to liquidate many of its overseas investments, and even to give 99-year leases for military bases on its colonies in North America to the United States. It has lost all of its Great Power status. Its economy has suffered from gradual decline - so much so that Great Britain is now one of the poorest industrialized countries in the world. In fact 12 years ago, even Italy surpassed Britain's per capita income.

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