The outbreak of war

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First, Poland would not allow Soviet troops to cross its territory, so the USSR could not fight Germany to defend Poland. Second, there was deep mistrust: Chamberlain distrusted Stalin and thought the Red Army had been weakened by the purges, so Britain sent only a low-level military mission, by sea, without authority to sign an agreement.

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Source A criticises the occupation because the writer describes the Czech people's grief and anger. As German tanks drove through Wenceslas Square, people 'stood on the pavements in silence', some 'wept', some 'shook their fists' and others sang the national anthem in defiance. She also suggests that the occupation was achieved by force and broken promises. She notes that President Hácha signed 'at four in the morning', and my knowledge confirms that Hácha had been summoned to Berlin and threatened with the bombing of Prague until he agreed to place his country in Hitler's hands. Her bitter comment that 'six months ago Hitler told the world that he wanted no Czechs' refers to his speech in September 1938, when he also said the Sudetenland was his last territorial claim. Now he had taken Bohemia and Moravia, land where the people were not German, and that night he stayed at Prague Castle. This was the first time Hitler had seized non-German territory, and it broke the Munich Agreement. As a private diary written on the day by an eyewitness, the source gives an honest, if emotional, picture of how many Czechs felt.

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Source B is useful because it describes the occupation of Prague as it happened. The journalist saw German columns enter the city 'in falling snow' on the morning of 15 March 1939, and he describes how Czechs reacted: 'some people wept, others whistled and jeered', while only 'a few' gave the Nazi salute. This suggests that most Czechs saw the occupation as a national disaster, which fits what I know: this was the first time Hitler had seized land where the people were not German. The source is also useful for showing how the occupation was achieved. Czech officials told the journalist that Hácha signed only after hours of threats and a warning that Prague would be bombed, and my knowledge confirms that Hácha was summoned to Berlin after Slovakia had declared independence on 14 March and was bullied by Hitler and Göring until he signed at about four in the morning. As a report by a foreign journalist written on the day, it is independent of German propaganda and is an eyewitness account of the scenes in Prague. However, the details of what happened in Berlin are second-hand, from Czech officials who had good reason to stress that their President was forced, and it describes only one city.

Source C is useful in a different way. On the surface it claims that Hácha 'confidently placed the fate of the Czech people and country in the hands of the Führer' in order to achieve 'pacification', as if the Czechs had asked for German protection. As evidence of what really happened, it is almost worthless, because it was drafted and published by the German government to justify the occupation to Germans and to the world, and it hides the threats that produced Hácha's signature. But this is exactly what makes it useful to an historian studying the occupation: it shows Hitler's method of giving aggression a legal disguise, just as in Austria in 1938, when a request for German troops was drafted in Berlin. It is also accurate that Hácha did sign it, which the Germans used to argue that no treaty had been broken. Chamberlain at first accepted part of this argument, saying that the state had broken up from within, before his speech in Birmingham two days later changed British policy.

Overall, Source B is more useful for understanding what happened and how Czechs reacted, while Source C is useful for understanding how the Nazis presented the occupation. Together they are very useful, because the contrast between the official declaration and the eyewitness account exposes the gap between Nazi propaganda and reality.

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Appeasement was an important cause of the Second World War because it allowed Hitler to grow stronger and convinced him that Britain and France would never fight. In 1935 Britain accepted German naval rearmament in the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, and in 1936 Britain and France did nothing when Hitler remilitarised the Rhineland, even though he later admitted that his forces would have had to withdraw if France had resisted. In March 1938 they only protested when he took Austria. At Munich in September 1938 Chamberlain agreed to hand over the Sudetenland, which left Czechoslovakia without its fortifications; when Hitler took the rest of the Czech lands in March 1939, its army and the Skoda arms works fell into German hands. Each concession made Germany stronger and Hitler bolder: in August 1939 he told his commanders that his enemies were 'little worms' whom he had seen at Munich. Appeasement also damaged relations with the USSR, which was excluded from Munich and treated with suspicion in 1939, helping to bring about the Nazi-Soviet Pact. When Chamberlain finally guaranteed Poland, Hitler did not believe him.

However, appeasement was a response to Hitler, not the cause of his aims. Hitler had set out his aims in Mein Kampf: to destroy the Treaty of Versailles, unite all Germans and win living space in the east. At the Hossbach meeting in 1937 he spoke of using force by 1943-45 at the latest, and in 1939 he ordered the attack on Poland and privately admitted that Danzig was only an excuse. Appeasement made his task easier, but the decision to go to war was his. Chamberlain's policy also had understandable reasons: the British public feared another war and bombing, Britain was not ready to fight, and the Dominions would not support war over Czechoslovakia. Moreover, appeasement ended in March 1939, when Britain guaranteed Poland, so it cannot fully explain the outbreak of war in September.

Other factors were also important. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 was the immediate trigger, because it removed Hitler's fear of a two-front war. The Treaty of Versailles created grievances - over the Rhineland, Danzig, the Corridor and the Germans outside Germany - that Hitler exploited and that made many British people sympathetic to his early demands. The League of Nations had been fatally weakened by its failures over Manchuria and Abyssinia, so there was no effective collective security, and the USA remained isolationist. The Depression had helped bring Hitler to power in the first place.

Overall, I disagree that appeasement was the main cause. It was an important contributory cause, because it allowed Hitler to become strong enough to start a war and persuaded him that his enemies were weak. But the main cause was Hitler's determination to expand by force, which appeasement failed to stop rather than created. Without Hitler there would have been no need for appeasement; without appeasement, Hitler might have been stopped earlier, but his aims would still have threatened war.