Appeasement

Policy followed by Britain and France in the 1930s to prevent war by satisfying Adolf Hitler's and Benito Mussolini's territorial ambitions. Their concessions over remilitarization of the Rhineland, Anschluss with Austria and the Munich Agreement for German annexation of the Sudetenland only emboldened Hitler. After Germany occupied all of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, appeasement was replaced by guarantees to Romania, Greece and Poland; these became the basis of the British and French declarations of war following the German invasion of Poland.