By Victor Davis Hanson – Jewish World Review – April 2, 2015
The Western capitulation to Adolf Hitler in the 1938 Munich Agreement is cited as classic appeasement that destroyed Czechoslovakia, backfired on France and Britain, and led to World War II.
All of that is true.
But there was much more that caused the Munich debacle than simple Western naiveté. The full tragedy of that ill-fated agreement should warn us on the eve of the Obama’s administration’s gullible agreement with Iran on nuclear proliferation.
Fable one is the idea that most people saw right through the Munich folly. True, Europeans knew that Hitler had never once told the truth and was already murdering German citizens who were Jews, communists or homosexuals. But Europeans did not care all that much.
Instead, the Western world was ecstatic over the agreement. After the carnage of World War I, Europeans would do anything to avoid even a small confrontation — even if such appeasement all but ensured a far greater bloodbath than the one that began in 1914.
Another myth was that Hitler’s Wehrmacht was strong and the democracies were weak. In fact, the combined French and British militaries were far larger than Hitler’s. French Char tanks and British Spitfire fighters were as good as, or superior to, their German counterparts.
Czechoslovakia had formidable defenses and an impressive arms industry. Poland and perhaps even the Soviet Union were ready to join a coalition to stop Hitler from dissolving the Czech state.
It is also untrue that the Third Reich was united. Many of Hitler’s top generals did not want war. Yet each time Hitler successfully called the Allies’ bluff — in the Rhineland or with the annexation of Austria — the credibility of his doubters sank while his own reckless risk-taking became even more popular.
Munich was hardly a compassionate agreement. In callous fashion it immediately doomed millions of Czechs and put Poland on the target list of the Third Reich.
Munich was directly tied to the vanity of Neville Chamberlain. In the first few weeks after Munich, Chamberlain basked in adulation, posing as the humane savior of Western civilization. In contrast, loud skeptic Winston Churchill was dismissed by the media and public as an old warmonger.
Hitler failed to appreciate the magnanimity and concessions of the French and British. He later called his Munich diplomatic partners “worms.” Hitler said of the obsequious Chamberlain, “I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers.”
The current negotiations with the Iranians in Lausanne, Switzerland, have all the hallmarks of the Munich negotiations.
Most Westerners accept that the Iranian government funds terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. It has all but taken over Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Yet the idea of stronger sanctions, blockades or even force to stop Iranian efforts to get a bomb are considered scarier than Iran getting a bomb that it just possibly might not threaten to use.
The U.S. and its NATO partners are far stronger than Iran in every imaginable measure of military and economic strength. The Iranian economy is struggling, its government is corrupt, and its conventional military is obsolete. Iran’s only chance of gaining strength is to show both its own population and the world at large that stronger Western powers backed down in fear of its threats and recklessness.
Iran is not united. It is a mishmash nation in which over a third of the population is not Persian. Millions of protestors hit the streets in 2009. An Iranian journalist covering the talks defected in Switzerland — and said that U.S. officials at the talks are there mainly to speak on behalf of Iran.
By reaching an agreement with Iran, John Kerry and Barack Obama hope to salvage some sort of legacy — in the vain fashion of Chamberlain — out of a heretofore failed foreign policy.
There are more Munich parallels. The Iranian agreement will force rich Sunni nations to get their own bombs to ensure a nuclear Middle East standoff. A deal with Iran shows callous disagreed for our close ally Israel, which is serially threatened by Iran’s mullahs. The United States is distant from Iran. But our allies in the Middle East and Europe are within its missile range.
Supporters of the Obama administration deride skeptics such as Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as if they were doubting old Churchills.
Finally, the Iranians, like Hitler, have only contempt for the administration that has treated them so fawningly. During the negotiations in Switzerland, the Iranians blew up a mock U.S. aircraft carrier. Their supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, did his usual “death to America” shtick before adoring crowds.
Our dishonor in Lausanne, as with Munich, may avoid a confrontation in the present, but our shame will guarantee a war in the near future.
N. Chamberlain gets the flack re. Munich and that scene but if Hitler hadn’t been at heart a violent minded, fanatical, charm salesman, incomprehensible to rational people — both Chamberlain and he may have gone down in history as great men. Kicking people down the stairs and jumping on them — Hitler’s secret rule for life — and the not secret rule for life of the ayatollahs. Chamberlain took Hitler at his word — Hitler’s words were of a consummate politician, with God (yes, the Christian God!), unity, justice, salvation (for Germany), all the snake oil he could squeeze. Millions took him as genuine, and his record in administration was impressive. Man of the Year one magazine made him — funded by U.S. loans (and the pirated wealth of the German Jews!)
Chamberlain? — he was the mouthpiece of almost everyone! We might remember that it was Chamberlain’s government that finally officially guaranteed Poland in the face of Hitler’s adventurism. And he would have been the first to arm himself and go to the trenches. Only, he never saw what Churchill (and few others) could see — a fanatic. A fanatic who made winning, intelligent speeches to Germany. A seeming rational politician. Not like the ayatollahs. Which, of course, scarcely speaks well for the (Jew) J. Kerry and the totally confused U.S. President. Unlike the ayatollahs, Hitler, at least, had runs on the board as a very able administrator with an outward veneer of statesmanship — backed by a united, industrial nation. The ayatollahs, meanwhile?
Chamberlain died not long after the war began — some might say, pursued by grief — Churchill especially noted his loyalty to his fellow administrators and here is an extract from Churchill’s tribute: ” …. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. …. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. ….. N. Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity ……… one whom Disraeli would have called “an English worthy.””
As someone has noted : the First World War made the land available. The Second World War moved the people to the land. Could the failure of the West (including Australia) to keep the peace, propel the nation to world headship? Where are the counsels of Providence hidden?