GERMAN APPEASMENT - ENDING WITH THE INVASION OF POLAND (nov 25, 1937 – sep 1, 1939)

Description:

In the 1930's English prime minister Neville Chamberlain executed a plan allowing Hitler to expand German territory unchecked. Looking back, this is marked as a policy of Weakness - but at the time was widely popular and considered smart. This plan was made to discourage a world war. Hitler’s aims became clear in 1936 when his forces entered the Rhineland. Two years later, in March 1938, he annexed Austria. At the Munich Conference that September, Neville Chamberlain seemed to have avoided war by agreeing that Germany could occupy the Sudetenland, the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia - this became known as the Munich Agreement.

The public had been convinced (by Hitler) he was only invading these countries to restore land to Germany, after WWI and the Treaty of Versailles. He convinced his counterparts of this for years, until he invaded Czechoslovakia. This is when the appeasement ended and England and France announced war on Germany.