Neville Chamberlain entered national politics after work in business and municipal government in Birmingham, where he became lord mayor in 1915. His attempt to organize National Service during the First World War ended in resignation after difficulties and conflict with Lloyd George. Elected to Parliament in 1918, he rose through ministerial offices and established a reputation for detailed administration. As minister of health he worked on housing, local government and the reorganization of Poor Law responsibilities, including the Local Government Act of 1929.

As chancellor of the exchequer from 1931 to 1937, Chamberlain pursued financial stability and protectionist measures during recovery from the Depression. Economic improvement was uneven, and unemployment continued to burden industrial communities. Defence spending grew as international danger increased. Succeeding Stanley Baldwin as prime minister in 1937, he faced pressures involving Germany, Italy and Japan and public fear of another European war. Legislation on factories, housing and paid holidays continued alongside foreign-policy crises.

Chamberlain pursued negotiation with Hitler, culminating in the Munich Agreement of September 1938. Britain and France accepted the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany without the participation of Czechoslovakia in the decisive talks. He returned claiming that peace had been secured, but the concession weakened Czechoslovakia and failed to limit further German expansion. Strategic constraints, incomplete rearmament and memories of the First World War help explain the policy's appeal; they do not make Hitler's promises reliable or erase the costs imposed on the smaller state. Germany's occupation of Prague in March 1939 exposed the failure of his expectations.

Britain then guaranteed Poland, and Chamberlain announced war on Germany on 3 September 1939 following the invasion. The unsuccessful Allied campaign in Norway provoked a parliamentary debate in May 1940. Although the government won the vote, defections revealed weakened authority, and opposition parties would not join a coalition under him. He resigned and served briefly in Churchill's government before illness forced retirement; he died in November 1940. His career joins substantial domestic administration with failed appeasement. The controversy concerns his judgment of an expansionist regime and the relationship between negotiation, military preparation and other countries' interests.