Justifying Appeasement in the Nineteen-Thirties

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Justifying Appeasement in the Nineteen-Thirties The policy of appeasement, embraced by Great Britain and France in the 1930s, was ultimately a bid to reach a peaceful understanding with Germany. The major powers were anxious to abort any German influence over Eastern Europe. One of the points that suggest appeasement was justifiable was that it was popular with the British public, who still had grave Memories of the First World War - The United Kingdom was extremely reluctant to fight due to the psychological trauma which resulted from having witnessed the mass deaths of vast numbers of young people. For example, many British cities lost up to 40% of all young men; many families lost all their sons and most young male relatives. Secondly, appeasement gave Britain the opportunity to rearm. Chamberlain and his ministers were aware of the lack of military capacity at their disposal. This was partly due to the belief given to by many governing elites that war would no longer be an option and that military budgets could be tailored accordingly. In addition, the Wall Street Crash had forced governments to cut down on expenditures and account for increasing levels of poverty. In these circumstances, a heavily funded military was not financially possible. There was also the fact that Britain failed to recognize the evils of Nazism. Most of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s was ruled by dictators, and in the early stages there was no realization that the Nazi regime in Germany was worse than these other dictatorships. Even Winston Churchill, while recognizing the military threat posed by a re-armed Germany, was slow to recognize the evil of Nazism itself. There are also however, reasons to suggest that appeasement was not justified, such as the fact that it gave Germany more time to rearm; in 1935, Hitler announced that Germany was undergoing preparations of rearmament, a complete violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1936, Hitler continued to disobey the restrictions that followed the Great War by announcing the mobilization of troops in the French-occupied

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