Appeasement in American Politics
Appeasement -diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to a dictatorial
power (or powers) in order to avoid a threatened conflict
Background: Appeasement was used by European democracies in the 1930s who wished to avoid war
with the dictatorships of Germany and Italy, bearing in mind the horrors of World War I.
The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
towards Nazi Germany between 1937 and 1939. His policies of avoiding war with Germany have been the
subject of intense debate for 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 judgement that he had no alternative and acted in Britain's best interests. At the time, these concessions
were widely seen as positive.