The many cliches about the stupidity of appeasing Hitler never fill in the chronological sequence of events in the 1930s that, when remembered after WW II until a generation later, discredited the idea of appeasing demonstrably EVIL POLITICAL MOVEMENTS.
As a political policy, ‘appeasement’ is a perfect analogy to the personal policy of every selfish, immoral bureaucrat to not recognize a real institutional problem before it grows ever bigger and out of control. In all bureaucracies – government, private business or other private non-profit – the selfish, immoral bureaucrat knows his personal circumstances are not permanent the way the institution in which he is employed is supposed to be. Countless times, in my business consulting history, I would run into a manager who would sacrifice anything and everything in the institution to maintain his position, income and guaranteed mortgage and other financial familial responsibilities. The theory is that when the ‘problem’ is too big to ignore, someone else will be in ‘this position’ to suffer the consequences.
If your perspective is ‘short-term’ however defined in space and time, only Appeasement is guaranteed 100% to forestall the need to struggle against the bureaucratic institutional ‘cancer’ or the political DEMONSTRABLE EVIL being Appeased. Once Appeasement is replaced by Confrontation, the palpable personal ‘trouble’ can no longer be ignored.
In the political world, Confrontation is one of two options besides Appeasement. Historically there are many examples of Total Avoidance in every aspect of life. Before President Jefferson and generations later, President Theodore Roosevelt sent naval force to end the Barbary Pirates’ violent criminality in the Western Mediterranean, the rest of the ‘civilized’ world simply paid the required bribe money. Back in earlier America, our political leadership, unlike the European powers, followed a policy expressed in the phrase: “Millions for Defense; but not one cent for Tribute.”
Appeasing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard began with the Carter Administration and, with the exception of the Trump Administration, never stopped. Now Iran has Nuclear Weapons. BUT MANY LIVES HAVE BEEN SAVED BY ALLOWING THIS DEMONSTRABLE EVIL TO GROW EVER MORE POWERFUL!
Muslim Brotherhood’s multi-faceted Capital (UNPUNISHED) War Crimes have quite a history beginning with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (after the fall of the Ottoman Turkish Empire by being on the losing side of WW I).
The massacre of 9/11 is still experienced as a ‘Domestic Crime’ unrelated to the DEMONSTRABLE EVIL of the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD in a thousand different violent and Politically Subversive ways [i.e., Committee of Islamic American Relations (CIAR) as part of the Biden Administration] to destroy Civilization as we used to know it and replace it with SHARIA LAW and, thereby, make an IDEALISTIC BETTER WORLD!
Back to Hitler in the 1930s.
The first step to ‘test’ the self-respecting will of Western Civilization, shortly after his ascent to power, was to send a small military force to occupy the West Bank of the Rhine where the Treaty of Versailles disallowed any German troops to be stationed. Unbeknownst to the western Powers, ‘Germany was still far too weak to FORCE the issue. The troops were ordered to withdraw if confronted. Western Cowardice let them stay.
In the middle-1930s, two new challenges went unaddressed. A murderous Nazi assassination squad tried to take over the Austrian government for Hitler. At the time, the Western Powers begged Mussolini to intervene. Italian troops were sent to the southern Austrian border at the Brenner Pass. Hitler’s troops were yet to be powerful enough to defeat the Italians so he backed off.
At the 1936 Olympics in Germany, Hitler pulled off an enormous bluff. The then still small German Air Force (Luftwaffe) flew over the packed Olympic Stadium in a clever way. They would, out of sight of the world’s eyes, circle back, again and again and again, creating the fearful impression that it was many times greater than it actually was.
By 1936, avoiding war became a political necessity to the world’s politicians – excepting Winston Spencer Churchill who could not ignore DEMONSTRABLE POLITICALLY ORGANIZED EVIL.
By 1938, Hitler coveted Czechoslovakian territory and especially its vast SKODA Armament Factories to expand his war-making capacity. When the famous Munich ‘Peace in Our Time’ disaster occurred, two note-worthy facts have become mostly forgotten. When France and the UK ‘handed’ Western Czechoslovakia to Hitler, there was not a single representative of the victimized Czech Government present. The Czechs were effectively told that ‘TO LOWER TENSIONS’ they had to relinquish the territory and its people. Few people in the last fifty years know that the German Military Leaders secretly informed the Western Powers of two truths: (1) The Czech border defenses, constructed with French money, were much too powerful to be overcome by force in 1938 and (2), if ordered to attack, to save Germany, the German Army would overthrow the Hitler Government by Putsch (Coup d’Etat).
Without the enormous output of the SKODA Armament Factories, Hitler would not be ready to expand his aggression for years.
PS: Not even Hitler ever did, in public for the world (that did not avert its eyes) to see, what the combined Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Muslim Brotherhood HAMAS and company performed on October 7, 2023 with perpetually unwatched ‘OPTICS’ posted on to the Internet to be eternally ignored. Hitler’s four Einsatzgruppen Mobile Mass Murder Death Squads and extermination camps such as Auschwitz were not shown – even to the general public in Germany.
My how times have changed – and not for the better – if you value Civilization!
