Viewing Chamberlain as a Peacemaker

Viewing Chamberlain as a Peacemaker

After the First World War had ended in 1918, most of Europe was

struggling to survive. The Treaty of Versailles was created because of

the war, as countries such as France and Italy wanted to get revenge

on Germany for the war, but it's harsh terms caused Germany to become

vengeful. Neville Chamberlain became the prime minister in 1917, and

he felt that the Treaty's terms were much too harsh. He decided that

the best option was to follow appeasement to best comply with Germany.

The majority of Europe (especially France and Britain) and America

were angry towards Germany for the war, and therefore created the

Treaty of Versailles. The main points of the treaty blamed Germany for

the war (article 231), made Germany harshly cut down their military

forces, forced Germany give much of their land to different countries

and finally Germany had to pay £6,600 million in reparations.

Woodrow Wilson created the fourteen points to stop himself and America

from getting into war again. The fourteenth point was to create a

League of Nations to stop future wars. Any aggressive countries would

be sanctioned by all the League's members and would be attacked as a

last resort. As America didn't join the league, it failed pretty

quickly, as it had no real structure or power.

One of the policies the British followed was appeasement. The aim of

appeasement was to avoid war with powers such as Japan, Italy and

Germany by giving in to some of their reasonable demands. The policy

was based on the League of Nations dealing with any countries, which

were too powerful, but as the League of Nations failed, so did the

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...horrors. The

British people also did not want war, and so were pressurising

Chamberlain to avoid it. And at this time, Britain was unable to

afford to rearm due to economic pressure. But the majority of these

reasons are hardly to do with Chamberlain personally, as they had been

forced upon him. In 1939 Chamberlain had given the Sudetenland to

Hitler, this gave Hitler more confidence to attack more countries and

to spread out further. When Hitler took Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain

used the excuse that he didn't know the Czechs well enough, to need to

do anything. This was cowardliness at work. Chamberlain even went to

the extreme of declaring war on Germany, a true peacemaker would not

have done, or even considered, this. Overall, Chamberlain was just

being a coward, and does not deserve to be remembered as a peacemaker.