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PEACE FOR OUR TIME: For those who cannot remember history
Adolph Hitler, who was born in Austria, received the iron cross for bravery on the German western front in World War I. He earned it for carrying messages from various headquarters to the officers commanding German units in the trenches and was wounded while doing so.
After the armistice, he got involved in German politics (spent some time in jail and wrote a telling book, Mein Kampf -"My Struggle"), in which he outlined all that he hoped to bring about. With the help of German industrialists and Nazi street brawlers, Hitler soon rose to be Chancellor of Germany. He achieved this mostly by speaking to the German desire for revenge for their defeat in the first World War.
The world, including a prominent film comedian, Charlie Chaplin, thought everything about Hitler was preposterous.*
Almost immediately, he began his campaign to blame and then obliterate the Jewish population in Europe for what he claimed was the primary reason for postwar Germany's many problems. Many Jews, to their ultimate horror, considered Hitler preposterous.
A charismatic speaker, at least to the majority of Germans, he unified that country and immediately began to rearm it. A war-weary world looked on impassively. He first moved German troops into the Rhineland, a highly industrialized region that had been ceded to France in the peace agreement. "The Saar area," Hitler proclaimed, "always belonged to Germany." France complained, but no one did anything.
America had fallen under the sway of isolationists.
Austria had been separated from Germany by the peace terms demanded by the Allies, but in less than four years, Hitler, now a dictator firmly in control of Germany, brought about anschluss,** with a plebiscite in Austria, in April of 1938. Austrians were asked to vote (a) if they wished Austria to be re-united with Germany and (b) if they wished for Hitler to lead the combined nation.
According to press reports circulated by the Nazi propaganda machine, there was a 99.71% turnout of Austrian voters, who voted overwhelmingly for reunification and Hitler. Out of a population of 4.4-million people, only 11,929 Austrian voters supposedly chose "Nein." Many of those who did not flee Austria ended up in a death camp.
In September of 1938, Hitler moved to "protect" people of German extraction who lived in western Czechoslovakia. Nazi propagandists claimed these ethnic Germans were being abused by officials of the new democracy that had been pieced together by the winning Allies from remnants of the old Austro-Hungarian empire.
Czech officials appealed to the Allies. The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, headed a delegation of representatives from England, France, and Italy, but not Czechoslovakia, who met with Hitler on September 30, 1938. Chamberlain returned to the UK, holding an agreement signed by Hitler that promised, as Chamberlain called it, "Peace For Our Time."
The appeasement did not satisfy Hitler for very long. Germany set-up the "protectorates" of Bohemia and Moravia and took over the rest of Czechoslovakia, claiming that the country was breaking up along ethnic lines and moved in to "restore order" by appointing Nazi administrators.
Then, on September 1 of 1939, a massive German army invaded Poland and World War II began.
If this reads like something you recently read or heard broadcast, it should. Russian troops are poised on the Ukrainian border, ready to invade that independent country, using the same pretexts used by Hitler.
Cancelling a few visas and freezing a few funds owned by Dictator Putin's friends is not going to deter him a bit. There's little right now that we can do to prevent it.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nailed it. Putin hopes to rebuild the Iron Curtain.
The grandiose displays in Sochi during the 2014 Winter Olympics reminded me of the massive Nazi display at Nuremberg in 1935. (Google the film: "Triumph of the Will").
Russia's oil is the principal support of the Russian economy. The greatest amount is pumped through pipelines that run through the Ukraine. Putin cannot risk losing them, so he probably will use some pretext to try and prevent that from taking place.
A MODEST PROPOSAL
The US should prepare with all means possible to sell Europe and Asia oil, natural gas and coal. We need a maximum effort to compete with Russia now by diverting as much shipping as possible to this effort. We need to construct the pipeline from Canada's rich petroleum resources to the Gulf of Mexico. In the meantime, we should dedicate the most powerful marketing and distribution system integrated anywhere on this planet, to accomplish what is necessary.
We must persuade the European Union that it needs to live without Russian oil. We must use every method to compete with Putin on availability and price. Are we not the world's greatest sales people and problem solvers? Logistics must be the watchword.
Hopefully, prayerfully, we can dissuade Putin from precipitating a global disaster.
If Russia invades the Ukraine, the pipelines that cross that sovereign nation will of course need to be destroyed - by the Ukrainians, or by whatever means possible. Putin is bound to do everything he can to prevent that from happening. The ramifications of this are profound.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"- George Santayana
-Phil Richardson, Observer and Storyteller
*Film: "The Great Dictator" - 1940
**Anschluss: German for "Union."
Phil Richardson, Observer and Storyteller.
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