The world failed to learn the lessons of WWII
Opinion: Hitler's madness, the outrageous complacency of heads of state and the most hideous conflict humanity has ever seen claimed the lives of tens of millions, including 6 million European Jews, but it happened because of Western appeasement of a madman
"At 4.45 am on 1 September 1939 the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish garrison of the Westerplatte Fort, Danzig, in what was to become the first military engagement of World War Two," wrote historian Richard Aubrey in his famous book "1939."
The German invasion of Poland involved 1.5 million troops and 1500 airplanes. The intelligence agencies of Britain, France and the U.S.relayed to their respective governments reliable updates regarding Germany's preparations to seize control of its neighbor, which was initially supposed to happen on August 26, but none of them did anything to prevent it.
Poland was effectively abandoned to its fate, together with the 3 million Jews who lived within its borders.
World War II and the Holocaust that befell the world's Jewish population were unprecedent bloodbaths in human history.
Even after 80 years, its hard to understand and digest the blind eye that was turned towards the Nazis, Nazism and Hitler by the decision makers of the world.
They didn’t lift a finger when immediately after Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany, he disbanded parliament and effectively turned the country to a dictatorship. They didn’t lift a finger when in March 1935 Germany annexed Saarland from France and they turned a blind eye when Germany passed their anti-Semitic racial discrimination laws in Nuremberg that same year, and that's only to name a few.
Although Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, and France followed suit, both did nothing to backup this declaration.
The Royal Air Force settled for scattering flyers above Germany, American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced in a special national broadcast that the U.S. would remain neutral and out of the war. The Soviet Union was paralyzed by an agreement to carve up Poland struck by Hitler and Joseph Stalin, a pact that was signed by the countries' two foreign ministers, Molotov and Ribbentrop on August 23, 1939.
Stalin wouldn’t have the strength to deal with Hitler either way between 1937 and 1939 - he was too busy cleansing the higher ranks of the Red Army instead of arming it.
At any one of these historical junctures, the United Nations had the power to stop and eliminate Hitler, or at least his wild ambition for an ever-growing German-led Aryan empire bent on cleansing Jews from the world.
A couple of bombings of a few select targets in Berlin and other major German cities would have been enough to restrain Hitler and his generals. Why didn’t it happen, and what caused that complacency towards the Nazis?
The answer the historians gives us is that although the reports reaching the West of Hitler's imperialistic and murderous ambitions were accurate, the attitude was one of anti-war and pacifism.
In his chilling book "Appeasing Hitler," British historian Tim Bouverie quotes the decision of Britain's Labour Party to demilitarize completely, and call for an all-out strike should the British government decide to march to war.
The student unions at Oxford and Cambridge rallied the younger generations not to fight for the homeland in any way.
British, France and American politicians were adamant in denying Germany's vast armament, writes Bouverie. Not because they didn’t know about it, but because they preferred to surrender to a few vocal opinion leaders.
Hitler picked up on this weakness, and in the run-up to invasion of Poland was heard giving an assessment that might explain his conduct. "Our enemies are nothing but little worms," he said.
The statesman of the West created another illusion regarding Hitler, one where he sought only to expand Germany's rule to where German-speaking citizens were settled, one where he would found the German Third Reich and then calm down.
And they were wrong, Hitler did not calm down as from the very beginning, he presented himself as a super leader, one who would achieve a vision of "a world without Jews" - the name of a book by Israeli-born historian Alon Confino.
Hitler, Confino writes, saw the Jewish people as the personification of evil and the eternal enemy. In 1941, the madness of anti-Semitism drove him to declare war on the Soviet Union (the bastion of Jewish communism) and on the U.S. (the bastion of Jewish capitalism). This madness marked his eventual end.
The West's policy of appeasement towards Hitler was meant as a way to avoid war at all costs, and ended up exacting the most horrible price humankind has ever paid.
Between 80 to 110 million people killed - both soldiers and citizens - among them more than 6 million Jews murdered, the most barbaric, global, savage and disastrous war humankind has ever waged. Were the lessons learned? Is there appeasement in the air today as well?
