What was appeasment and how did it affect world war 2?

Answer 1

Appeasement was the policy followed by British PM Neville Chamberlain and his allies immediately before the outbreak of World War II, when they allowed Hitler to occupy Austria and Czechslovakia. This allowed Germany to build up its armed forces, which led it to attack Poland and spark WWII.

Answer 2

It was an effort by the Great Powers, mainly Britain, to avoid a new war with Germany by giving Germany what it wanted.

In the 1930's, Hitler and his Nazi Germany began demanding that territory with German people that were in other countries be given to Germany- most of this territory had been previously owned by Germany or Austria before World War I ended; when the war ended, the land was taken away and given to new countries that had been trying to break away anyway. Hitler said that the German people there were being discriminated against and wanted to be rejoined with a German country, so he threatened to attack his neighbors.

Britain was still recovering from the horrors of World War I, as was France, and did not want a new war. So they famously agreed in September 1938's "Munich Agreement" to let Germany carve up its neighbor, Czechoslovakia, in order to claim "Sudentenland" (a small strip of land bordering Germany, where a lot of German people lived). Hitler promised he would not start a war if they did so.

Of course, the promise was not kept. Hitler had already engineered Austria's annexation by Germany, and now had torn up Czechoslovakia, and about six months later, split up the rest of it. A few months after that, Hitler began making the same claim against a large portion of Poland, and that time, the Allies stood against him and called his bluff. Germany (and the Soviet Union, secretly) attacked, Britain and France immediately declared war, and World War II had begun- although it should be noted that Britain and France famously did very little to fight Germany until well after Poland was conquered.

Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister of Britain during the time, became the face of appeasement because of his claim that by appeasing Hitler, he had attained "peace in our time". So, for better or worse, he tends to be the main focus of attention when speaking of appeasement, even though other leaders and countries were involved in the process.