Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain holding the paper containing the resolution to commit to peaceful methods signed by both Adolf Hitler and himself on his return from Germany at Heston Airport on September 1938. He said: My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was born in 1869 and died in 1940. He became Prime Minister in 1937 and together with France's Edouard Daladier signed the Munich Pact with Germany. This allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland in exchange for peace. Chamberlain received a hero's welcome upon his return to Great Britain, declaring that the pact had provided "peace in our time." He also immediately took steps to bring the Britsh armed forces into a state of readiness for war.

Not long after, Hitler took all of Czechoslovokia and then invaded Poland, starting World War II. Shortly thereafter, Chamberlain resigned and Churchill became Prime Minister.

Chamberlain has often been depicted as a coward, but it is much more likely he was trying to buy time for Britain to prepare for war, in fact without the months to prepare that Chamberlain had gained by making the Munich Pact, the war would undoubtedly have gone far worse for the United Kingdom than it did.