Arthur Neville Chamberlain was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940 and Leader of the Conservative Party from May 1937 to October 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Following the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, Chamberlain announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later and led the United Kingdom through the first eight months of the war until his resignation as prime minister on 10 May 1940.
The Cliveden set were an upper-class group of politically influential people active in the 1930s in the United Kingdom, prior to the Second World War. They were in the circle of Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, the first female Member of Parliament to take up her seat. The name comes from Cliveden, a stately home in Buckinghamshire that was Astor's country residence.
The Munich Agreement was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, Great Britain, the French Republic, and Fascist Italy. The agreement provided for the German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. The pact is also known in some areas as the Munich Betrayal, because of a previous 1924 alliance agreement and a 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic.
Appeasement, in an international context, is a diplomatic policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the British governments of Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy between 1935 and 1939. Under British pressure, appeasement of Nazism and Fascism also played a role in French foreign policy of the period but was always much less popular there than in the United Kingdom.
Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax,, known as the Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and the Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was a senior British Conservative politician of the 1930s. He held several senior ministerial posts during this time, most notably those of Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931 and of Foreign Secretary between 1938 and 1940. He was one of the architects of the policy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1936–1938, working closely with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. However, after Kristallnacht and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 he was one of those who pushed for a new policy of attempting to deter further German aggression by promising to go to war to defend Poland.
Archibald Henry Macdonald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso,, known as Sir Archibald Sinclair between 1912 and 1952, and often as Archie Sinclair, was a Scottish politician and leader of the Liberal Party.
Sir Howard Kingsley Wood was a British Conservative politician. The son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, he qualified as a solicitor, and successfully specialised in industrial insurance. He became a member of the London County Council and then a Member of Parliament.
Guilty Men is a British polemical book written under the pseudonym "Cato" that was published in July 1940, after the failure of British forces to prevent the defeat and occupation of Norway and France by Nazi Germany. It attacked fifteen public figures for their failed policies towards Germany and for their failure to re-equip the British armed forces. In denouncing appeasement, it defined the policy as the "deliberate surrender of small nations in the face of Hitler's blatant bullying". A classic denunciation of the former government's policy, it shaped popular and scholarly thinking for the next two decades.
Why England Slept (1940) is the published version of a thesis written by John F. Kennedy in his senior year at Harvard College. Its title is an allusion to Winston Churchill's 1938 book While England Slept, which also examined the buildup of German power. Kennedy's book examines the failures of the British government to take steps to prevent World War II and its initial lack of response to Adolf Hitler's threats of war.
Sir Horace John Wilson, was a senior British government official who had a key role, as Head of the Home Civil Service, with government of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the appeasement period just prior to the Second World War.
"Peace for our time" was a declaration made by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in his 30 September 1938 remarks in London concerning the Munich Agreement and the subsequent Anglo-German Declaration. The phrase echoed Benjamin Disraeli, who, upon returning from the Congress of Berlin in 1878, had stated, "I have returned from Germany with peace for our time." The phrase is primarily remembered for its bitter ironic value since less than a year after the agreement, Hitler's invasion of Poland began World War II.
The lesson of Munich, in international relations, refers to the appeasement of Adolf Hitler at the Munich Conference in September 1938. To avoid war, France and the United Kingdom permitted Nazi Germany to incorporate the Sudetenland. Earlier acts of appeasement included the Allied inaction towards the remilitarization of the Rhineland and the Anschluss of Austria, while subsequent ones included inaction to the First Vienna Award, the annexation of the remainder of Czech Lands to form the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, as well as the 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania forcing it to cede the Klaipėda Region.
Sir Nevile Meyrick Henderson was a British diplomat who served as the ambassador of the United Kingdom to Germany from 1937 to 1939.
Major John Ronald Hamilton Cartland was a British Conservative Party politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for King's Norton in Birmingham from 1935 until he was killed in action, aged 33. He was the brother of Barbara Cartland.
Karl-Heinrich Bodenschatz was a German general who was the adjutant to Manfred von Richthofen in World War I and the liaison officer between Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler in World War II.
Frank McDonough is a British historian of the Third Reich and international history.
The European foreign policy of the Chamberlain ministry from 1937 to 1940 was based on British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's commitment to "peace for our time" by pursuing a policy of appeasement and containment towards Nazi Germany and by increasing the strength of Britain's armed forces until, in September 1939, he delivered an ultimatum over the invasion of Poland, which was followed by a declaration of war against Germany.
Richard Austen Butler, generally known as R. A. Butler and familiarly known from his initials as Rab, was a prominent British Conservative politician.
Timothy Pleydell-Bouverie is a British historian and former political journalist at Channel 4 News.
Glamour Boys were a group of homosexual British Members of Parliament in the 1930s who were among the earliest to warn about Hitlerand the dangers of Appeasement of Nazi Germany.
