"Steven L." <sdlitvin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
news:W6ydnb-0XfFavbPVnZ2dnUVZ_hudnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [This is a terrific example of how our educational system has failed to
> educate the baby-boom generation in the lessons of history. Read it and
> weep]
>
> May 16, 2008 8:52 AM
> Bush, and His Use of "Appeasement"
>
> Posted by Bruce Ramsey
>
> Democrats are rebuking President Bush for saying in his speech to the
> Knesset, here, that to “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” is
> “appeasement.” The Democrats took it as a slap at Barack Obama. What
> bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National
> Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the
> Munich Conference of 1938.
>
> The narrative we're given about Munich is entirely in hindsight. We know
> what kind of man Hitler was, and that he started World War II in Europe.
> From the view of 1938, what Hitler was demanding at Munich was not
> unreasonable, according to the prevailing idea of the nation-state. His
> claim was that the German-speaking areas of Europe--and ones that
> thought of themselves as German --be under German authority. He had just
> annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There
> were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of
> Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech
> Republic.
>
> We live in an era when you do not change national borders for these
> sorts of reasons. We have learned the hazards of it. But 1938 was only
> 19 years since Germany's borders had been redrawn, and not to its
> benefit. In the democracies there was some sense of guilt with how
> Germany had been treated after World War I. Certainly there was a memory
> of the “Great War.” In 2008, we have entirely forgotten World War I, and
> how utterly unlike any conception of “The Good War” it was. When the
> British let Hitler have a slice of Czechoslovakia, they were following
> the historical lesson they had learned 1914-1918: avoid war.
More specifically, avoid wars you cannot win. Britain
was in no shape militarily to take on Germany in 1938. They
were still flying biplanes in front line units, sonar and
radar were still experimental, and the public was not ready
to sup****t a war. Chamberlain bought the vital time that
the British needed to rearm and even then it was a close call.
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