why did britain follow a policy of appeasement in the 1930s?

Question

please answer to each of the following;
military reasons.
economic reasons.
fear.
public opinion.
other.

Answer 1

Military Reasons - After going through World War 1 and suffering millions of casualties, nobody was willing to send so many more armies to their destruction. The Western Front especially was completely torn up, and noone felt it necessary to destroy so much again.
Economic Reasons - The nations had spent billions upon billions of dollars fighting this war, and nobody was willing to invest so many resources in fighting a person (Hitler) who they thought was just blowing smoke about how Germany would take over the world etc.
Fear - Somewhat the same reasons as above, they were afraid to risk millions of more lives and mammoth amounts of money if it was all unnecessary.
Public Opinion - The public for sure did not want war, and was in favor of avoiding it at all costs. Only Winston Churchill had the foresight to see that a small war right now could save a huge one later, but most people had had enough with World War 1 and did not want to pay the short-term costs for the long-term gains.
Other - When it became apparent that Hitler was actually becoming a force to be reckoned with and transforming Germany into a powerful nation, they figured that he would be a useful bulwark against possible Communist aggression against the West. So actually, they were planning on having Hitler on their side fighting in a future war against the Communists, but anyone who has ever opened a history book knows that it didn't happen.

Answer 2

A Policy Of Appeasement

Answer 3

Because the horrors of WWI were still not entirely forgotten by England, nor by the average German citizen.

Adolf Hitler was playing a game of intimidation. He banked on the chance that Britain would do nothing as he invaded one small country after another.

When Hitler met with Chamberlain in private, it was said Chamberlain emerged 'shaking' because Hitler would have one of his screaming tirades and shouting fits. Hitler also lied a lot, Hitler promised he would do nothing and be a nice little dictator. Chamberlain and Wilson agreed and appeased Hitler rather than upset him.

Nobody really wanted to start another world war especially after the devasting WWI.

Answer 4

from William Manchesters biography of Winston Churchill:

.....Now the 220,000 Tommies at Dunkirk, Britain’s only hope, seemed doomed. On the Flanders beaches they stood around in angular, existential attitudes, like dim purgatorial souls awaiting disposition. There appeared to be no way to bring more than a handful of them home. The Royal Navy’s vessels were inadequate. King George VI has been told that they would be lucky to save 17,000. The House of Commons was warned to prepare for “hard and heavy tidings.” Then, from the streams and estuaries of Kent and Dover, a strange fleet appeared: trawlers and tugs, scows and fishing sloops, lifeboats and pleasure craft, smacks and coasters; the island ferry Grade Fields; Tom Sopwith’s America’s Cup challenger Endeavour; even the London fire brigade’s fire-float Massey Shaw — all of them manned by civilian volunteers: English fathers, sailing to rescue England’s exhausted, bleeding sons.

Even today what followed seems miraculous. Not only were Britain’s soldiers delivered; so were French support troops: a total of 338,682 men. But wars are not won by fleeing from the enemy. And British morale was still unequal to the imminent challenge. These were the same people who, less than a year earlier, had rejoiced in the fake peace bought by the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich. Most of their leaders and most of the press remained craven. It had been over a thousand years since Alfred the Great had made himself and his countrymen one and sent them into battle transformed. Now in this new exigency, confronted by the mightiest conqueror Europe had ever known, England looked for another Alfred, a figure cast in a mold which, by the time of the Dunkirk deliverance, seemed to have been forever lost.
England’s new leader, were he to prevail, would have to stand for everything England’s decent, civilized Establishment had rejected. They viewed Adolf Hitler as the product of complex social and historical forces. Their successor would have to be a passionate Manichaean who saw the world as a medieval struggle to the death between the powers of good and the powers of evil, who held that individuals are responsible for their actions and that the German dictator was therefore wicked. A believer in martial glory was required, one who saw splendor in the ancient parades of victorious legions through Persepolis and could rally the nation to brave the coming German fury. An embodiment of fading Victorian standards was wanted: a tribune for honor, loyalty, duty, and the supreme virtue of action; one who would never compromise with iniquity, who could create a sublime mood and thus give men heroic visions of what they were and might become. Like Adolf Hitler he would have to be a leader of intuitive genius, a born demagogue in the original sense of the word, a believer in the supremacy of his race and his national destiny, an artist who knew how to gather the blazing light of history into his prism and then distort it to his ends, an embodiment of inflexible resolution who could impose his will and his imagination on his people — a great tragedian who understood the appeal of martyrdom and could tell his followers the worst, hurling it to them like great hunks of bleeding meat, persuading them that the year of Dunkirk would be one in which it was “equally good to live or to die” — who could if necessary be Just as cruel, just as cunning, and just as ruthless as Hitler but who could win victories without enslaving populations, or preaching supernaturalism, or foisting off myths of his infallibility, or destroying, or even warping, the libertarian institutions he had sworn to preserve. Such a man, if he existed, would be England’s last chance.

In London there was such a man.

Answer 5

History books.

They have all the answers.