Appeasement
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
[edit] Synonyms[edit] Antonyms[edit] EtymologyFrom Middle English apesen, from Old French apeser (“to pacify, bring to peace”). |
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Appeasement in an international context is a diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the British Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy between 1935 and 1939.
At the beginning of the 1930s, such concessions were widely seen as positive due to the trauma of World War I, second thoughts about the treatment of Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, and a perception among the upper-classes that fascism was a healthy form of anti-communism. However, by the time of the Munich Pact—concluded on 30 September 1938 among Germany, Britain, France, and Italy—the policy was opposed by most of the British left and Labour Party, by Conservative dissenters such as Winston Churchill and Duff Cooper, and even by Anthony Eden, a former proponent of appeasement. As alarm grew about the rise of fascism in Europe, Chamberlain resorted to news censorship to control public opinion. Nonetheless, Chamberlain confidently announced after Munich that he had secured "peace for our time".
The policies have been the subject of intense debate for more than seventy years among academics, politicians, and diplomats. The historians' assessments have ranged from condemnation for allowing Adolf Hitler's Germany to grow too strong, to the judgment that British leaders had no alternative and acted in their country's best interests.
See also
- Confidence and security-building measures
- Danegeld
- Deterrence theory
- Finlandization
- First they came...
- International relations (1919–1939)
- Lesson of Munich
- Mutual Assured Destruction
- Peace through strength
- Why Die for Danzig?
- Why England Slept
