- University of Sheffield historian has revealed how the Munich Crisis affected ordinary people across the UK
- Research is the first to show how the UK's role in appeasing Hitler affected the hearts and minds of the British public
- Munich Crisis of September 1938 - 85 years ago this week - saw British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain negotiate the Four Powers Pact with Hitler, allowing Nazi Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia in attempt to avoid a Second World War
- Historian's research reveals how the policy of appeasement and the anxious suspence of the Munich Crisis triggered mental health problems for ordinary people throughout Britain, including a spate of suicides, as people feared they were living on the edge of war
Britain's appeasement of Hitler caused mental health problems for people throughout the country, including a spate of suicides, according to research from a historian at the University of Sheffield.
The research by Professor Julie Gottlieb, Professor of Modern History, is the first to be primarily concerned with how ordinary people throughout the UK responded to the Munich Crisis.
For generations when people said "the war" everyone took it for granted it was WWII, for years after the events of September-October 1938 when people talked about where they were and how they experienced "the Crisis", they were referring to the Munich Crisis.
As an event, its impact was deep, politically and diplomatically but also emotionally and psychologically.
This week is the 85th anniversary of the Munich Agreement when Britain, France, and Italy agreed that Nazi Germany could take over much of Czechoslovakia. It is also the anniversary of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's separate Anglo-German Declaration that Hitler agreed to sign expressing "the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again." (30 September).
