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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
"A Vote for 'ABBB' (Any Body But Biden) is a Vote for Trump and Republo-Fascism." (S. Jonas, March, 2024)
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(For maps, see Click Here iatlas.com/maps/europe/19390823/)
The Situation in Eastern Europe, Now
"Europe is in a 'pre-war era' reminiscent of 1939 and nobody will feel safe if Ukraine is defeated by Russia, Donald Tusk has warned." (Mr. Tusk is a former president of the European Council and last October was elected prime minister of Poland. His party and allies replaced a Far-rightist government that had ruled the nation for eight years.) "Well," as I said in the title of this column, "no." In terms of what the situation in Eastern Europe (and Central Europe as well) really was in 1939, there are few if any similarities.
Mr. Tusk is of course referring to Russia's war on Ukraine, which began in 2022. He reflects a fear that somehow "Putin's War," seems to have no end in sight (unless the U.S. Trumpublican Party, led in the Congress by House Speaker Mike Johnson, succeeds in denying it the arms it desperately needs to keep the war going). Unlike in 1939, to its East Poland does not share a common border with Russia proper, but rather with a close Russian ally (?puppet-state) Byelo-Russia, with Ukraine, and with that strange, cut-off piece of Russia (left over from the pre-World War II East Prussia), Kaliningrad, which is so small, and is cut-off from Russia proper, by itself cannot be regarded as a threat to Poland. And so, exactly how would the situation in Eastern Europe be "reminiscent" of 1939? Well, not very.
Certainly, on paper, and at the landing end of missiles, Mr. Tusk's Poland certainly has something to fear from Russia. But as for a land war? Well, "hardly" would appear to be the right word. Russia, obviously a much larger country than Ukraine, with (on paper at least) a much larger army than Ukraine's, should have been able to roll right over it. (The comparative populations are 145,000,000 or so to 44,000,000 or so). But the Russians haven't been able to do that. In fact for the most part the battle lines are similar (not precisely the same to-be-sure) to what they were at the start Putin's "Special Military Operation [SMO]." I have previously described this invasion as an attempt by Putin to "Make the World Safe for Plutocracy." And so, I will not discuss that topic further here, except to say, once again, that the situation in Eastern Europe does not resemble that of 1939 at all.
Eastern Europe in 1939
The "situation in Eastern Europe in 1939" actually in part goes back to a diplomatic/military operation that took place at the end of the 18th Century, the Partition of Poland between the Prussia, the Russian Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Thus, Poland as a nation disappeared from the map of Europe until it was restored to its existence over a century later by a combination of the victory in World War I over Prussia and Austria-Hungary by the Western Powers in World War I, and (ironically) by the defeat of the Russian Empire by Prussia in the same conflict. The victors' Treaty of Versailles (1919), restored the nation of Poland and thus re-configures the borders of Eastern Europe. In so doing, it did leave behind one territorial anomaly which came to play an important role in starting the next World War: "East Prussia." It was a piece of the former Prussian Empire that had been connected directly to the Prussian Empire, but was now left as part of the new, renamed nation of Germany, separated from it however, by a goodly chunk of Polish territory.
As is well-known, once Hitler and the Nazi Party took over Germany in 1933, very early on they began re-armament (which had been forbidden to it by the Versailles Treaty). But the Western Powers did nothing to deal with that development (a policy called "Appeasement"). Nazi Germany's first overtly military operation was to "Remilitarize the Rhineland" (1936), an action explicitly prohibited by the Versailles Treaty. Again, the Western Powers did nothing. Then, in 1938 came the Munich Agreement, which gave a goodly chunk of Western Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, without a fight. The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, famously advertised the Agreement as "Peace in our Time." But, as it happened it, was quickly proven to be nothing of the sort, when a few months later, in March 1939 Nazi Germany occupied eastern Czechoslovakia, that is "Slovakia," without a fight.
(As it happened, operating outside of its borders had begun in 1937, when Germany, in cooperation with Mussolini's fascist Italy, had begun to aid the fascist revolutionary force in Spain, led by Francisco Franco, while the "democratic" Western Powers, including the United States, refused to sell arms to the elected government of the Spanish Republic. Only the Soviet Union did, in an effort that was limited in part by distance and German/Italian control of the Mediterranean.)
But what was real objective for the Western European powers at "Munich?" As described in some detail in a book referenced just below, it actually had nothing to do with "peace in or time," but rather with maintaining Hitler in his policy of a "Drang nach Osten" --- his "Drive to the East" (which was actually an extension of Prussian Imperial policy from the 19th century). As I described it in a column ostensibly on Obama administration policy (comparing it in a way to British "appeasement" --- but rather of the Republicans and their then-further-to-the-Right supporters), what really happened at "Munich," went as follows.
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What Really Happened at "Munich;" and why there is nothing that is "1939-like" going on in Europe at the Present. [The following text, with certain slight modifications, is drawn from that earlier column of mine.]
In 1995, the historians Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel published a book entitled In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion (New York: Monthly Review Press). He (Chamberlain) wasn't attempting to appease Hitler. Based on both official sources that became available under the [British] Official Secrets Act and other correspondence and dispatches, the authors told us what was really going on between the British and German governments of the time. He was attempting to make a deal with Hitler to have him point his guns in one particular direction, to include as targets neither the United Kingdom's Home Islands nor the British Empire at large [with protection for the French and their colonial empire thrown in].
It turns out that what Chamberlain was really trying to achieve at Munich had everything to do with: A) trying to keep Hitler focused on his much-touted "Drang Nach Osten" ("Drive to the East") in order to achieve the destruction of the Soviet Union, and B) preventing the Red Army of that nation from taking up a prominent place in Central Europe. [Just check out the geographical extension of Czechoslovakia into Central Europe in 1938.] For the Soviet Union had pledged to the Czechs, who had a well-equipped and trained army of their own ready to fight the Wehrmacht, full ground and air military support. As the deadline for the threatened German invasion approached, the Red Air Force had many planes warming up ready to attack the Nazis from just a couple of hundred miles away, just awaiting a "yes" from the Czech government. But, under enormous pressure from the British and French governments, that final "go" never came from it. The Red Air Force stayed on its runways and the Czechs were left to the tender mercies of the Nazis, giving up the first non-German territory seized by them in the run-up to World War II.
Chamberlain thought that he had a long-term deal. As for the event of the following March (Hitler fully occupied the Slovakia portion of the former nation), well, for the Brits and the French, wasn't Hitler just continuing the desired Drang Nach Osten, wasn't he ? But then, in the summer of 1939, Hitler raised the ante by threatening to invade Poland over what was called the "Polish Corridor" that separated Germany from its long-held slice (pie-shaped, actually) of old Poland and Russia, called "East Prussia." Again, the Soviet Union, which by this time was getting very concerned with German expansionism accompanied by increasingly virulent anti-Soviet propaganda, offered to protect Poland militarily .
They were trying hard to negotiate a mutual defense-pact with the British and the French. But a major condition was that the Poles had to agree to let Red Army units move right up to the Polish-German border. However, the last thing that the far right-wing Polish government of the time wanted was to have the Red Army in its living room. When the Soviet Union finally gave up trying to make an anti-fascist alliance with the Western Powers, in order to give themselves some breathing room-and-time, they concluded the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on August 25, 1939. The strongly "anti-Communist" Poles then suddenly found the Wehrmacht in their living room. As it happened, for self-protection, the Soviets invaded on Sept. 17, !939, and its government went out of existence.
It has become clear from the British government papers and related documents that Chamberlain, as mentioned, had hoped to reach a deal with Hitler that would allow/coax him to destroy the Soviet Union, which Chamberlain hated only slightly less ardently than did Hitler. The deal would be not to contest his drive to the East militarily, in return for a pledge to leave Great Britain and the British Empire intact. However, Chamberlain never did get that deal. He got a good deal more, in fact, than any of his British Conservative political and economic supporters had bargained for. On September 3, 1939 the British and the French were forced to go to war with the Germans over the invasion of Poland because of a mutual aid pact that they did have with the Poles. Poland, sending horse cavalry out to fight Hitler's Panzer tanks, fell quickly. A front was opened in the West, but nothing much happened on it until the Nazis launched their surprise "Blitzkrieg" invasion of France on May 10, 1940. World War II was truly underway.
Nevertheless, during the winter of 1940, with his nation ostensibly at war, Chamberlain continued, secretly, to attempt to negotiate with Hitler to achieve his joint aims. The way Hitler negotiated with Chamberlain on the Czech situation and why Hitler refused to seriously negotiate with him on the proffered deal, unless he could get a complete capitulation as he had done at Munich, led directly to the Nazis' May 10 invasion of France, then "Dunquerque," then the Battle of Britain, then the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union ("Barbarossa" which did not conclude in the way that Chamberlain has hoped it would), and so on and so forth.
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The bottom line here is that in fact what is going on in Eastern Europe now has absolutely nothing in common with what went on in that region between 1938 and 1941. My guess is that Mr. Tusk, presumably a very well-educated man, surely knows that. But he also knows that the knowledge of history is at a pretty low level among his people as well among most of the people of Central and Western Europe. And for the historical knowledge of most U.S.? Well, I did want to end this rather gloomy column with a joke. So do forgive me for that.
Next week, we shall consider some of the differences and similarities in the United States between 1939 and the present. And unlike the situation in Eastern Europe, there are certainly some similarities.
