structural:scholar_edition
Anti-appeasement: 1937–1939

In May 1937, Baldwin resigned and was succeeded as prime minister by Neville Chamberlain. At first, Churchill welcomed Chamberlain's appointment but, in February 1938, matters came to a head after Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigned over Chamberlain's appeasement of Mussolini, a policy which Chamberlain was extending towards Hitler. In 1938, Churchill warned the government against appeasement and called for collective action to deter German aggression. Following the Anschluss, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons:

A country like ours, possessed of immense territory and wealth, whose defence has been neglected, cannot avoid war by dilating upon its horrors, or even by a continuous display of pacific qualities, or by ignoring the fate of the victims of aggression elsewhere. War will be avoided, in present circumstances, only by the accumulation of deterrents against the aggressor.

He began calling for a mutual defence pact among European states threatened by German expansionism, arguing this was the only way to halt Hitler. In September, Germany mobilised to invade the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Churchill visited Chamberlain and urged him to tell Germany that Britain would declare war if the Germans invaded Czechoslovak territory; Chamberlain was unwilling to do this. On 30 September, Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement, agreeing to allow German annexation of the Sudetenland. Speaking in the House of Commons on 5 October, Churchill called the agreement " a total and unmitigated defeat ". Following the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Churchill and his supporters called for the foundation of a national coalition. His popularity increased as a result.