That wasn't the mistake. Agreeing to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia was the mistake. Appeasement. The leaders of Britain and France sought to buy peace for themselves by throwing a weaker nation to the wolves. Churchill put it very succinctly. “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war."
By giving up Czechoslovakia to try and appease Hitler, the leaders of Britain and France convinced Hitler that they were weak and unwilling to fight, so he felt safe in attacking Poland. Those same British and French leaders, when Hitler attacked Poland, finally saw they couldn't placate the implacable, and did what they should have done earlier, and said "cross this line, and it means war." Hitler crossed it, and so it was war.
If they had stood firm earlier, if they had not agreed to sacrifice Czechoslovakia, it is actually possible they could have prevented a war. Hitler's position was not so secure that he might not have been toppled from power if he had been seen to have severely misjudged Allied willingness to fight. But sadly, in the worst of all possible turn of events, he only half misjudged it. The Allies weren't totally unwilling to fight, but they were unwilling to fight until Hitler had gone too far. If they had been willing to fight before that, the war could have been prevented, or at worst concluded in a relatively short time, possibly could have been localized, and would have only seen thousands dead, instead of tens of millions.
And if Britain and France had responded forcefully when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, when the Nazi party's hold on power was still not unshakeable, it's possible the war could have been prevented altogether. Indeed, there were a few in Germany who reacted to the Allies' weak response with despair, because they understood that if Britain and France had shown strength, Hitler might have lost his grip on power. They saw how the Allies lost an opportunity to stop Hitler at the outset.
reply
share