My confusion in history class was based on the actions of Neville Chamberlain when he kept appeasing Hitler.
Neville Chamberlain was the British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940 and he believed that if Adolf Hitler was simply allowed to take some territory, he would not go to complete war with other countries.
Because of that, Neville negotiated for Hitler to:
- bring German soldiers back into the Rhineland
- annex Austria and make Germany bigger
- annex the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia
When he did the last on, Hitler simply went ahead and took over the rest of Czechoslovakia.
Hearing this in my history class really confused me because I felt that anyone could see that Hitler was playing Chamberlain for a fool. My confusion disappeared however, when it was made evident that Chamberlain was simply playing for time so that Britain would get ready for war.
In conclusion, Appeasement may have seemed like an ignorant policy at the time but history has been kind to it.
