Appeasement

While appeasement has a long diplomatic history—British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain described Britain's 1929 policy as "appeasement, reconciliation, and peace"—the term became permanently associated with the Munich Agreement of September 30, 1938. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Premier Édouard Daladier agreed to Adolf Hitler's demands for Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. Chamberlain declared "peace for our time," but Winston Churchill prophetically replied: "You chose dishonour and you will have war." When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, appeasement became synonymous with failed diplomacy.