>>17940808
TL;DR Chamberlain is over hated.

The "Peace for our time" line was a press line that Chamberlain stupidly threw out. He knew war was coming and had been cutting social and domestic programs in order to fund military rearmament. At this point, Germany still had a significant lead in militarization, particularly in the number of modern combat aircraft. Also, the public wasn't yet ready to accept going to war with Germany over a region filled with Germans. Most of the western European public thought Hitler was just a blowhard and public opinion didn't form a concrete movement willing to accept war until after Kristallnacht.

Chamberlain's rearmament plan would overtake the Germans, but had to be done carefully since the economy was still shaky from the Great War. Britain and France coordinated their spending so that they would overtake the Germans, but at a sustainable pace. German military spending was hilariously unsustainable and trying to match the Anglo-French alliance was totally unachievable. As is, the military spending Hitler demanded would have led to an economic implosion in a few years. It was that monetary sword of Damocles hanging over his head and the coming eclipsing of German military force that led to Hitler declaring war on basically everyone. The German economy was being run as a ponzi scheme and they were on the edge of running out of rubes to look domestically.

Chamberlain's policy of appeasement was not pacifistic or avoidant. It was a calculated move to buy time for the military to rearm underwritten by the belief that Hitler wouldn't go full retard. It failed because Hitler was actually a retard and an overestimation of German financial solvency.