| Appeasement is a policy to pacify aggressive powers by giving in to their demands in order to avoid war. |
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- After the carnage of the Great War most of the countries in Europe were intent on preventing another world war from breaking out.
- They would not stop aggressive powers with force - they would rather try to negotiate peaceful settlement of conflicts.
- Appeasement only became official policy in Britain in the late 1930s under the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain. However, it was practised long before that.
- This policy meant that, although Hitler started breaking the Treaty of Versailles and expanding German territory from 1933, it was only by 1939 that Britain and France had had enough and decided to declare war on Germany.
| English football team doing Nazi salute |
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Picturenet
The failure of the policy of appeasement was one of the causes of World War II, and will be discussed throughout this lesson. |
