The efforts by the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and his French counterpart, Édouard Daladier, to satisfy the demands (1936–39) of the Axis powers. Their policy of appeasement enabled Hitler to occupy the Rhineland, to annex Austria, and to acquire the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia after the Munich Pact of 1938. Appeasement ended when Hitler, in direct contravention of assurances given at Munich, invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. A policy of ‘guarantees’ was then instituted, by which Britain and France pledged themselves to protect Romania, Greece, and Poland should they be attacked by Germany or Italy. The German invasion of Poland five months later signalled the outbreak of World War II.