Appeasement

In the early 1930s, appeasing concessions were widely seen as desirable because of the anti-war reaction to the trauma of World War I (1914–1918), second thoughts about the perceived vindictive treatment by some of Germany in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and a perception that fascism was a useful form of anti-communism. However, by the time of the Munich Agreement, which was concluded on 30 September 1938 between Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy, the policy was opposed by the Labour Party and by a few Conservative dissenters such as future Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War Duff Cooper, and future Prime Minister Anthony Eden. Appeasement was strongly supported by the British upper class, including royalty, big business (based in the City of London), the House of Lords, and media such as the BBC and The Times.

As alarm grew about the rise of fascism in Europe, Chamberlain resorted to attempts at news censorship to control public opinion. He confidently announced after Munich that he had secured "peace for our time".

Academics, politicians and diplomats have intensely debated the 1930s appeasement policies ever since they occurred. Historians' assessments have ranged from condemnation ("Lesson of Munich") for allowing Hitler's Germany to grow too strong to the judgment that Germany was so strong that it might well win a war and that postponing a showdown was in the best interests of the West.

History

Failure of collective security

Appeasement policy, the policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini, operating jointly at that time, during 1937 and 1938 by continuous concessions granted in the hope of reaching a point of saturation when the dictators would be willing to accede to international collaboration.... It came to an end when Hitler seized Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, in defiance of his promises given at Munich, and Prime Minister Chamberlain, who had championed appeasement before, decided on a policy of resistance to further German aggression.

— Walter Theimer (ed.), The Penguin Political Dictionary, 1939

Chamberlain's policy of appeasement emerged from the failure of the League of Nations and the failure of collective security. The League of Nations was set up in the aftermath of World War I in the hope that international co-operation and collective resistance to aggression might prevent another war. Members of the League were entitled to the assistance of other members if they came under attack. The policy of collective security ran in parallel with measures conducted since the early 1920s like the Washington Naval Conference to achieve international disarmament that were stepped up with the largely symbolic Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 and the Disarmament Conference of 1932-34, and, if possible, was to be based on economic sanctions against an aggressor.

Invasion of Manchuria

In September 1931, the Empire of Japan, a member of the League of Nations, invaded Manchuria, in northeast China, by claiming that the regional population was not only Chinese but was multi-ethnic. The Republic of China appealed to the League of Nations and to the United States for assistance. The League of Nations Council asked the parties to withdraw to their original positions to permit a peaceful settlement. The United States reminded them of their duty under the Kellogg–Briand Pact to settle matters peacefully. Japan was undeterred and went on to occupy the whole of Manchuria. The League set up the Lytton Commission, a commission of inquiry that condemned Japan, and the League duly adopted the report in February 1933. In response, Japan resigned from the League and continued its advance into China, with neither the League nor the United States taking any action. However, the U.S. issued the Stimson Doctrine and refused to recognize Japan's conquest, which played a role in shifting U.S. policy to favour China over Japan during the late 1930s. Some historians, such as David Thomson, assert that the League's "inactivity and ineffectualness in the Far East lent every encouragement to European aggressors who planned similar acts of defiance". However it may be argued that the Lytton Commission’s report and the League’s ineffectual opposition to Japan, while not effective was also highly critical and therefore should not be taken as precedent for the appeasement of Germany in the later 1930s. World opinion never excused Japanese action in 1931-33 anywhere near the way it did German action in 1936-38.

Disarmament Conference

The Disarmament Conference had come at a time when the League was still a recognised arbiter of international disputes, was still looking at the Manchurian invasion, and as world leaders tried a myopic attempt to forestall war. The German delegates argued that either other states should cut their armaments to the Versailles‑imposed German levels or Germany should be allowed to attain military parity with its neighbours. Well before Hitler came to power, Weimar politicians had backed rearmament drives such as treaties of cooperation with the other international pariah, the Soviet Union. Hitler's walking out of the Conference signalled a new form of diplomacy that did not necessarily involve the League, which arguably had been bound to fail given the exclusion of isolationist America since 1920. From then on a new exploration of this diplomacy by Britain, who did not wish to cut off Germany entirely, was directed by National Government Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare beginning with the 1934 Anglo-German Payments Agreement stabilised economic relations between Britain and Germany, guaranteeing German interest repayments on bonds arising from World War I reparations (which Hitler had stopped repaying in any case) and deepening British economic ties to Germany, particularly in the area of trade. Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador to Britain, in 1938 characterised the agreement, alongside the 1935 naval agreement, as carrying "the swaying structure of foreign relations [between the UK and Germany] even in critical periods".

Anglo-German Naval Agreement

The 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement had Britain permit Germany to begin rebuilding the German Navy, including its U-boats, despite Germany having repeatedly violated the Treaty of Versailles. Previously, since the Night of the Long Knives and the attempted coup against Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria, a pro-Austria (then an Italian satellite) Mussolini sought a common front with Britain and France against Hitler’s revisionism, the Stresa Front.

However a similar mutual defence pact with the Soviet Union by French foreign minister Louis Barthou, killed with King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934, had been ratified anyway by the French in 1935, this driving Conservative opinion in Britain against the Stresa Front and in favour of direct dealing with Germany, hence the signing of the Agreement. This marked the first major step in a process originating from the failed Disarmament Conferences of 1933–34, which had begun optimistically, and led the British government and public opinion to seek a new European settlement treating Germany as an equal partner instead of under the Treaty of Versailles. The policy might have succeeded had German foreign policy been steered by moderate, cautious traditional right-wingers, as under Gustav Stresemann in the Weimar era, rather than by Hitler, a "va banque" gambler and megalomaniac.

According to A.J.P. Taylor, the British government was a key player with agency in the non-fascist camp’s diplomatic scene of the 1930s, as the United States was still overwhelmingly isolationist following the reaction to interventionism after 1917-18, and France was paralysed by a number of successive governments of the French Third Republic, often with razor-thin political margins that they did not wish to expend it on foreign policy and so chose or were obliged to follow Britain’s lead up until September 1939.

Abyssinia crisis

Benito Mussolini had imperial ambitions in Abyssinia. Italy was already in possession of the neighbouring Eritrea and Somalia. In December 1934, there was a clash between Royal Italian Army and Imperial Ethiopian Army troops at Walwal, near the border between British and Italian Somaliland, in which Italian troops took possession of the disputed territory, and about 150 Abyssinians and 50 Italians were killed. Italy demanded apologies and compensation from Abyssinia, which appealed to the League, with Emperor Haile Selassie famously appealing in person to the assembly in Geneva. The League persuaded both sides to seek a settlement under the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928, but Italy continued troop movements, and Abyssinia appealed to the League again. In October 1935 Mussolini launched an attack on Abyssinia. The League declared Italy to be the aggressor and imposed sanctions, but coal and oil were not included, as it was feared sanctioning them would provoke war. Albania, Austria and Hungary refused to apply sanctions, and Germany and the United States were not in the League. Nevertheless, the Italian economy suffered. Britain considered closing off the Suez Canal, which would have stopped arms to Abyssinia, but thinking that would be too harsh a measure, failed to do so.

Earlier, in April 1935, Italy had joined Britain and France in protest against German rearmament. Britain was less hostile to Germany and set the pace in imposing sanctions and moved a naval fleet into the Mediterranean, but in November 1935, British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval had secret discussions in which they agreed to concede two thirds of Abyssinia to Italy. However, the press leaked the content of the discussions, and a public outcry forced Hoare and Laval to resign. This effectively cancelled out British attempts at resuming traditional non-League diplomatic tactics to keep Italy aboard the Stresa Front, as Britain had taken with the agreements with Germany, and, by the three principal remaining guarantors of the League operating so blatantly outside the League at the expense of another member, doomed its already tottering credibility in public eyes. After Abyssinia, international crises like the Czechoslovak crisis were barely even referred to the League, with traditional diplomacy having resumed its place in international affairs. Wilsonian idealism was now definitively dead, if it had ever truly been alive.

In May 1936, undeterred by sanctions, Italy captured Addis Ababa, the Abyssinian capital, and proclaimed Victor Emmanuel III as Emperor of Ethiopia. In July, the League abandoned sanctions. The episode, in which sanctions were incomplete and appeared to be easily given up, seriously discredited the concept of collective security, and more and more countries began to resume the course of traditional diplomacy (which had arguably never been completely suspended even during the League’s prime in the 1920s) that Britain had begun to pursue toward Germany since at least the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. The angry British public compelled Hoare to withdraw his offer, driving Mussolini toward Hitler's Germany, the sole state unwilling to denounce his invasion, and set the revival of traditional British foreign policy against a populace still favoring Wilsonian ideals. While British foreign policy struggled to readjust itself, the Rome-Berlin Axis was rapidly concluded with the new Italian pro-German foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano.

Remilitarisation of the Rhineland

Under the Versailles Settlement, the Rhineland was demilitarised. Germany accepted that arrangement under the Locarno Treaties of 1925. Hitler claimed that it prevented Germany’s self-defence, and, on 7 March 1936, sent the Wehrmacht into the Rhineland. He gambled on Britain not getting involved but was unsure of how France would react. The action was opposed by many of his advisers. His officers had orders to withdraw if they met French resistance. France consulted Britain and lodged protests with the League but took no action. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said that Britain lacked the forces (according to intelligence that turned out to have vastly overestimated the German forces’ strength) to back its guarantees to France and that in any case, public opinion would not allow so.

In Britain, it was thought that the Germans were merely walking into "their own backyard". Hugh Dalton, a Labour Party MP who usually advocated stiff resistance to Germany, said that neither the British people nor Labour would support military or economic sanctions. Therefore, unlike over Abyssinia, public opinion coincided with that of the government’s in not opposing the act of aggression for the sake of restoring Germany to an equitable position to create a lasting peace order by overturning that of Versailles.

In the Council of the League, only the Soviet Union proposed sanctions against Germany. Hitler, who was invited to negotiate, proposed a non-aggression pact with the Western powers. When asked for details, he did not reply. Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland had persuaded him that the international community would not resist him, and it put Germany in a powerful strategic position.

Spanish Civil War

It is not so much a case of taking actual steps immediately, as of pacifying the aroused feelings of the Leftist parties... by the very establishment of such a Committee.

— Otto Christian Archibald von Bismarck

Many historians argue that the British policy of non-intervention was a product of the Establishment's anti-communist stance. Scott Ramsay (2019) instead argues that Britain demonstrated "benevolent neutrality" and was simply hedging its bets by avoiding the favouring of one side or the other. The goal was that in a European war Britain would enjoy the "benevolent neutrality" of whichever side won in Spain.

It is clear that in either case, “Non-Intervention”, a French proposal gratefully endorsed by Britain on 2 August 1936 to avoid having to do anything, amounted to a prejudiced losing game for the legitimate government of Spain, the Spanish Republic, which was starved of arms, and isolated diplomatically due to Non-Intervention, forcing her to turn to the USSR for supply, thereby further isolating her.

For the Committee of European states that supervised its application were routinely told that the powers who were actively supplying the Nationalist faction (Germany and Italy) could not have broken a non-binding commitment, and they walked out at least once. The Republic was not even allowed to bring complaints as only members could do so. The German representative, Joachim von Ribbentrop later said:

It would have been better to call this the Intervention Committee, for the whole activity of its members consisted in explaining or concealing the participation of their countries in Spain.

— Joachim von Ribbentrop in his memoirs.

All the considerations of the Powers’ behaviour was based on their acting within the scope of extra-League resumption of traditional diplomacy that had become the norm since Abyssinia. A.J.P. Taylor cites the 1937 Nyon Conference as a rare instance of fascist backing down when confronted by Great Britain over unrestricted submarine warfare. Germany and Italy went as far as they dared, while George Orwell criticised the Republic for clinging to traditional diplomacy in regard to its policy in Spanish Morocco, a recruiting base of the Moroccan regulares of Franco, which the Republicans respected to avoid antagonising France over French Morocco.

Conduct of appeasement, 1937–1939

In 1937, Stanley Baldwin resigned as Prime Minister. He was replaced by Neville Chamberlain, who pursued a policy of appeasement and rearmament. Chamberlain's reputation for appeasement rests in large measure on his negotiations with Hitler over Czechoslovakia in 1938. He had also, during the latter part of 1937, attempted to come to an understanding with Mussolini, moves opposed by his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden.

Anschluss

When the German Empire and Austria-Hungary were broken up in 1918, Austria was left as a rump state with the temporary adopted name Deutschösterreich ("German-Austria"), with the vast majority of Austrians wanting to join Germany. However, the victors' agreements of World War I (the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain) strictly forbade union between Austria and Germany without League consent, as well as the name "German-Austria", which reverted to "Austria" after the emergence of the First Republic of Austria in September 1919. The constitutions of both the Weimar Republic and the First Republic of Austria, included the aim of unification, which was supported by democratic parties. However, the rise of Hitler dampened the enthusiasm of the Austrian government for such a plan. Hitler, an Austrian by birth, had been a pan-German from a very young age and had promoted a Pan-German vision of a Greater Germanic Reich from the beginning of his career in politics. He wrote in Mein Kampf (1924) that he would attempt a union of his birth country Austria with Germany by any means possible and by force if necessary. By early 1938, Hitler had consolidated his power in Germany and was ready to implement his long-held plan.

Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg wished to pursue ties with Italy but turned to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania (the Little Entente). To that end, Hitler took violent exception. In January 1938, the Austrian Nazis attempted a putsch following which some were imprisoned. Hitler summoned Schuschnigg to Berchtesgaden in February and demanded, with the threat of military action, for him to release imprisoned Austrian Nazis and to allow them to participate in the government. Schuschnigg complied and appointed Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a pro-Nazi lawyer, as interior minister. To forestall Hitler and to preserve Austria's independence, Schuschnigg scheduled a plebiscite on the issue for 13 March. Hitler demanded for the plebiscite to be cancelled. The German Propaganda Ministry issued press reports that riots had broken out in Austria and that large parts of the Austrian population were calling for German troops to restore order. On 11 March, Hitler sent an ultimatum to Schuschnigg that demanded him to hand over all power to the Austrian Nazis or face an invasion. The British Ambassador in Berlin, Nevile Henderson, registered a protest with the German government against the use of coercion against Austria. Schuschnigg, realising that neither France nor the United Kingdom would actively support him, resigned in favour of Seyss-Inquart, who then appealed to German troops to restore order. On 12 March, the German Wehrmacht crossed the Austrian border. They met no resistance and were greeted by cheering Austrians. The invasion was the first major test of the Wehrmacht's machinery. Austria became the German province of Ostmark, with Seyss-Inquart as governor. A plebiscite was held on 10 April and officially recorded the support of 99.73% of the voters for the Anschluss.

Although the Allies had prohibited the union of Austria and Germany, their reaction to the Anschluss was mild. Even the strongest voices against annexation, particularly those of Fascist Italy, France and Britain (the "Stresa Front"), were not backed by force. In the British House of Commons, Chamberlain said, "The hard fact is that nothing could have arrested what has actually happened [in Austria] unless this country and other countries had been prepared to use force". The American reaction was similar. The muted international reaction to the events of 12 March 1938 amounted to a significant act of appeasement, allowing Hitler to continue his expansionary policies unchecked. The Anschluss paved the way for Munich in September 1938 because it indicated the likely non-response of Britain and France to future German aggression.

Munich Agreement

How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.

— Neville Chamberlain, 27 September 1938, 8 p.m. radio broadcast, on Czechoslovak refusal to accept Nazi demands to cede border areas to Germany.

Under the Versailles Settlement, Czechoslovakia was created with the territory of the Czech part more or less corresponding to the Czech Crown lands as they had existed within Austria-Hungary and earlier. The new country included Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia and had border areas with a majority-German population that was known as the Sudetenland and areas with significant numbers of other ethnic minorities (notably Hungarians, Poles and Ruthenians). In April 1938, the Sudeten German Party, led by Konrad Henlein, agitated for autonomy and then threatened, in Henlein's words, "direct action to bring the Sudeten Germans within the frontiers of the Reich". An international crisis ensued.

France and Britain advised Czechoslovak acceptance of Sudeten autonomy. The Czechoslovak government refused and ordered a partial mobilisation in expectation of German aggression. Lord Runciman was sent by Chamberlain to mediate in Prague and persuaded the Czechoslovak government to grant autonomy. Germany escalated the dispute, with the country's press carrying stories of alleged atrocities against Sudeten Germans, and Hitler ordering 750,000 troops to the Czechoslovak border. In August, Henlein broke off negotiations with the Czechoslovak authorities. At a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg on 12 September, Hitler made a speech attacking Czechoslovakia and there was an increase of violence by Sudeten Nazis against Czechoslovak and Jewish targets.

Chamberlain, faced with the prospect of a German invasion, flew to Berchtesgaden on 15 September to negotiate directly with Hitler, who now demanded that Chamberlain accept not Sudeten self-government within Czechoslovakia but the absorption of the Sudeten lands into Germany. Chamberlain became convinced that refusal would lead to war. The geography of Europe was such that Britain and France could forcibly prevent the German occupation of the Sudetenland only by the invasion of Germany. Chamberlain, therefore, returned to Britain and agreed to Hitler's demands. Britain and France told the Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš to hand over to Germany all territory with a German majority. Hitler increased his aggression against Czechoslovakia and ordered the establishment of a Sudeten German paramilitary organisation, which proceeded to carry out terrorist attacks on Czechoslovak targets.

German annexation of Sudetenland

On 22 September, Chamberlain flew to Bad Godesberg for his second meeting with Hitler and said that he was willing to accept the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany. He was startled by the response of Hitler that the cession of the Sudetenland was not enough and that Czechoslovakia, which Hitler had described as a "fraudulent state", must be broken up completely. Later in the day, Hitler resiled by saying that he was willing to accept the cession of the Sudetenland by 1 October. On 24 September, Germany issued the Godesberg Memorandum, which demanded cession by 28 September or war. The Czechoslovak government rejected those demands, France ordered mobilisation and Britain mobilised the Royal Navy.

On 26 September, Hitler made a speech at the Sportpalast in Berlin in which he claimed that the Sudetenland was "the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe", and he gave Czechoslovakia an ultimatum of 28 September at 2:00pm to cede the territory to Germany or to face war.

In the atmosphere of growing conflict, Mussolini persuaded Hitler to put the dispute to a four-power conference. On 29 September 1938, Hitler, Chamberlain, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier and Mussolini met in Munich. Czechoslovakia was not to be a party to these talks, nor was the Soviet Union. The four powers agreed that Germany would complete its occupation of the Sudetenland but that an international commission would consider other disputed areas. Czechoslovakia was told that if it did not submit, it would stand alone. At Chamberlain's request, Hitler readily signed an agreement for peace between the United Kingdom and Germany. Chamberlain returned to Britain and promised "peace for our time". Before Munich, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had sent a telegram to Chamberlain that said, "Good man" and he later told the American ambassador in Rome, William Phillips, "I am not a bit upset over the final result".

First Vienna Award and German annexation of Bohemia and Moravia

As a result of the annexation of the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia lost 800,000 citizens, much of its industry and its mountain defences in the west. The rest of Czechoslovakia was left weak and powerless to resist subsequent occupation. In the following months, Czechoslovakia was broken up and ceased to exist, as Germany occupied the Sudetenland; Hungary took part of Slovakia, including Carpathian Ruthenia; and Poland annexed Trans-Olza. On 15 March 1939, the German Wehrmacht moved into the remainder of Czechoslovakia, and from Prague Castle, Hitler proclaimed Bohemia and Moravia to be the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, completing the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Slovakia separated and became a German satellite state.

In March 1939, Chamberlain foresaw a possible disarmament conference between himself, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. Home Secretary, Samuel Hoare, said, "These five men, working together in Europe and blessed in their efforts by the President of the United States of America, might make themselves eternal benefactors of the human race".

During the Munich negotiations, Britain and France pressured Czechoslovakia to cede territory to a hostile neighbor to maintain peace. Churchill likened the negotiations at Berchtesgarten, Bad Godesberg and Munich to a man demanding £1, then, when it is offered, demanding £2, then when it is refused settling for £1.17s.6d. British leaders committed to the Munich Agreement in spite of their awareness of Hitler's vulnerability at the time. In August 1938, General Ludwig Beck informed Lord Halifax that most of the German General Staff had readied a coup against the Fuhrer, to be triggered by "proof that England will fight if Czechoslovakia is attacked". When Chamberlain received the news, he dismissed it out of hand. In September, the British received assurance that the General Staff's offer to launch the coup still stood with key private sector police and army support, even though Beck had resigned his post. Chamberlain ultimately ceded to all of Hitler's demands at Munich because he believed Britain and Nazi Germany were "the two pillars of European peace and buttresses against communism".

Czechoslovakia had a modern well-prepared military, and Hitler, on entering Prague, conceded that a war would have cost Germany much blood but the decision by France and Britain not to defend Czechoslovakia in the event of war and the exclusion from the equation of the Soviet Union, which Chamberlain distrusted, meant that the outcome would have been uncertain. The event forms the main part of what became known as Munich betrayal (Czech: Mnichovská zrada) in Czechoslovakia and the rest of Eastern Europe, as the Czechoslovak view was that Britain and France had pressured it to cede territory to prevent a major war, which would involve Western Europe. The Western view is that the pressure was done to save Czechoslovakia from total annihilation.

German annexation of Lithuania's Klaipėda Region

Rumours had reached the Lithuanian government to the effect that Germany had specific plans to take over Klaipėda. On 12 March 1939, Foreign Minister Juozas Urbšys represented Lithuania at the coronation of Pope Pius XII in Rome. On Urbšys's return to Lithuania, he stopped in Berlin with the hope of clarifying the growing rumours. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop met Urbšys on 20 March, five days after the German occupation of Prague, while the Lithuanian Ambassador to Berlin, Kazys Škirpa, was left waiting in a separate room. The conversation lasted for about 40 minutes. Ribbentrop demanded the return of Klaipėda to Germany and threatened military action. Urbšys relayed the verbal ultimatum to the Lithuanian government. Because the ultimatum was never set down in writing and did not include a formal deadline, some historians downplay its importance and describe it as a "set of demands", rather than as an ultimatum. However, it was made clear that force would be used should Lithuania resist, and Lithuania was warned not to seek help from other nations. A clear deadline was not given, but Lithuania was told to make a speedy decision and that any clashes or German casualties would inevitably provoke a response from the German military.

Lithuania secretly informed the signatories of the Klaipėda Convention about those demands since technically, Lithuania could not transfer Klaipėda without the signatories' approvals. Italy and Japan supported Germany in the matter, and the United Kingdom and France expressed sympathy for Lithuania but chose not to offer any material assistance and followed a well-publicized policy of appeasement. The British treated the issue in the same way as the earlier Sudeten Crisis and made no plans to assist Lithuania or the other Baltic States if they were attacked by Germany. The Soviets supported Lithuania in principle but did not wish to disrupt their relations with Germany since they were contemplating the German-Soviet Pact. Without any material international support, Lithuania had no choice but to accept the ultimatum. Lithuanian diplomacy characterized the concession as a "necessary evil" to enable Lithuania to preserve its independence, and it maintained the hope that it was merely a temporary retreat.

Outbreak of World War II and Phoney War

By August 1939, Hitler was convinced that the democratic nations would never put up any effective opposition to him. He expressed his contempt for them in a speech that he delivered to his Commanders in Chief: "Our enemies have leaders who are below the average. No personalities. No masters, no men of action.... Our enemies are small fry. I saw them in Munich".

On 1 September 1939, German forces started their invasion of Poland. Britain and France joined the war against Germany but initially averted serious military involvement during the period known as the Phoney War. After the German invasion of Norway, opinion turned against Chamberlain's conduct of the war. He resigned after the Norway Debate in the British House of Commons, and on 10 May 1940 Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. In July, after the Fall of France, when Britain stood almost alone against Germany, Hitler offered peace. Some politicians both inside and outside the government were willing to consider the offer, but Churchill refused to do so. Chamberlain died on 9 November the same year. Churchill delivered a tribute to him in which he said, "Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged".