Why appeasement isn't affective?

Answer 1

Appeasement - giving a thug what he says he wants, to keep him from threatening you further - only encourages the thug to demand more, and then more, and then MORE. The thug is getting rich, and you're being worn down by continuing threats. Eventually, the thug is going demand more than you can give him.

The same principle works the same way in international politics. A thug - or tyrant, in this scenario - demands concessions of rights, power, land, people, whatever. If you give in, he'll demand more later. and then more, and MORE, until you surrender or finally go to war.

That's how it was in 1934. The German Army had been limited, by the Versailles treaty, to a very small army, a small navy, and NO air force. A section of Germany called the "Rhineland" along the Rhine river had been taken from Germany and set up as a tribute zone between Germany and France. The French had suffered terribly in "The Great War", and didn't want to risk a second conflict. So in 1936, the German Army re-occupied the Rhineland in clear violation of the Versailles treaty. The French and British forces would have been easily able to defeat the tiny (but rapidly growing, in secret) German Army; the campaign might have taken six weeks, at the cost of a few thousand dead. But the French appeased the Germans by not insisting on the Treaty obligations.

Three more times, the Germans would demand more territory, more concessions, but each time they promised that THIS time would be the last demand - and the British and French appeased Hitler. In October 1938, Hitler invaded and took over the nation of Czechoslovakia, and assured the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that Hitler had "no further territorial ambitions in Europe". Chamberlain flew back from Munich, Germany to London and declared, at the airport holding the agreement signed by Hitler, that Chamberlain had come back with an assurance of "peace for our time".

Almost immediately, Hitler broke this agreement, and began demanding territory in Poland and the city of Danzig, a "free city" that had once been part of Germany. Chamberlain was outraged, and declared that there would be no more appeasements.

World War II started about 10 months later. Danzig was re-incorporated into Germany as Germany overran Poland. (Seven years later, with Germany crushed between the Allied troops of the Americans and British armies to the west and the Red Army of the Soviet Union to the east, Danzig became the Polish city of "Gdansk", as this city is still known.)

Appeasement doesn't work with thugs or tyrants; the only thing that they respect is superior force. Had the French and British re-occupied the Rhineland in 1936, Hitler would have been killed or imprisoned, and the Great War would not have become World War One, and there never would have been a "World War 2".

In terms of modern history, please compare THESE events to what is happening in Ukraine in 2014; the Crimea re-occupied, western Ukraine invaded by "Ukrainian separatists" who spoke Russian and had Russian Navy and Army insignia. The increasing level of violence happening there.

Karl Marx wrote that history repeats itself; first as tragedy, and the second time as farce. This is the tragic phase of this repetition of Austria and Czechoslovakia.

For more on this topic, read Winston Churchill's book "The Gathering Storm", the first volume of his six-book series about the Second World War.