Pyramid Lake, Nevada
Historical parallels are interesting to observe in real time, and now that the big boys are bringing out their best tanks and missiles for show and tell, and a fledgling democracy in Ukraine—and perhaps democracies across Europe—appears to swing in the balance, I was struck by the contemporary parallels to the year 1939. There are others, of course, but these in particular rang a familiar note.
Consider Hitler’s claims in light of Putin’s public statements, as William Shirer, who would later write the seminal masterpiece The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, broadcast to a still somnambulant American audience from London. The German people, he said—and he means Hitler–believed the following:
That Great Britain, backed by France, the Soviet Union, and the United States, was forging an encirclement of Germany designed to crush it.
In view of the Great War, Hitler was right to attempt to break that encirclement.
That Eastern and Southeastern Europe were a natural part of Germany’s Liebensraum…and that neither Britain nor any other country, including America, had any right to interfere with Germany’s action there.
That Germany could get what it wanted without war.
That there would be no war, and it would only come if the “encirclement powers” attacked the Reich.
That Hitler had outsmarted the “foreign tyrants” who were trying to keep Germany down and that he had restored it to its proper place in the world and done it without a single shot being fired.
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