Appeasement

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain greeted by Adolf Hitler at the beginning of the Bad Godesberg meeting on 24 September 1938. Hitler wanted the annexation of Czechoslovak border areas with Germans without delay.

Appeasement is a diplomatic policy of meeting political demands to a possibly-aggressive power to avoid conflict.[1]

The term was used especially for the foreign policy of the British governments of Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy[2] between 1935 and 1939. It was supported by most people there and in France, most notably under Édouard Daladier, because people feared another world war.

References

  1. Appeasement – World War 2 on History Archived 4 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Robert Mallett, "The Anglo‐Italian war trade negotiations, contraband control and the failure to appease Mussolini, 1939–40." Diplomacy and Statecraft 8.1 (1997): 137–67.