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March 18, 1869, Birmingham, Warwickshire, England-November 9, 1940, Heckfield, Hampshire

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Prime minister of the United Kingdom from May 28, 1937, to May 10, 1940, whose name is identified with the policy of “appeasement” toward Adolf Hitler’s Germany in the period immediately preceding World War II.

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Neville Chamberlain’s name has become synonymous with appeasement, the policy by which the aggressive moves of the fascist powers of Europe went largely unopposed in the years before World War II.

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Foreign policy of pacifying an aggrieved country through negotiation in order to prevent war. The prime example is Britain’s policy toward Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the 1930s. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sought to accommodate Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and took no action when Germany absorbed Austria in 1938. When Adolf Hitler prepared to annex ethnically German portions of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain negotiated the notorious Munich Agreement, which permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland, in western Czechoslovakia.

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(September 30, 1938), settlement reached by Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy that permitted German annexation of the Sudetenland, in western Czechoslovakia.

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While Neville Chamberlain genuinely believed that he had won "peace with honour" and secured "peace for our time," Churchill countered “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.” Churchill was proven correct, although Chamberlain's appeasement bought the Allies several months to prepare for the coming war.

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When Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia (March 10–16, 1939), Chamberlain definitely repudiated appeasement.
The next month, peacetime military conscription was instituted for the first time in British history.

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He remained prime minister during the “phony war” period of sporadic military action, taking into his war cabinet his foremost critic, Winston Churchill, as first lord of the Admiralty.

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After the failure of a British expedition to Norway in April 1940, Chamberlain lost the support of many Conservatives in the House of Commons. He resigned on May 10, the day of the German invasion of the Low Countries. In Churchill’s coalition government he served loyally as lord president of the council until September 30, 1940, when ill health forced him to resign that office and the Conservative Party leadership. He died a few weeks later.