The son of the politician Joseph Chamberlain, he pursued a policy of appeasement towards Germany, Italy, and Japan as Prime Minister of a coalition government; in 1938 he signed the Munich Agreement ceding the Sudetenland to Germany, which he claimed would mean ‘peace in our time’. Although the policy was primarily intended to postpone war until Britain had rearmed, it caused increasing discontent in his own party; he was forced to abandon it and prepare for war when Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He declared war on Germany in 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland. Chamberlain’s leadership in World War II proved inadequate and he was replaced by Winston Churchill.