History has not been kind to Neville Chamberlain, the former British prime minister. He has been castigated for his policy of appeasement towards Hitler in the late 1930s and for his statement that there would be “peace in our time”.

Although Chamberlain’s reputation has been partly restored by modern historians, crediting him with a measure of shrewdness in following the appeasement approach, his big mistake was to take Hitler at his word when the two leaders met in Munich. But why was he so deceived, and what were the alternatives to the appeasement policy?