By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, April 2, 2015
The Western capitulation to Adolf Hitler in the 1938
Munich Agreement is cited as classic appeasement that destroyed Czechoslovakia,
backfired on France and Britain, and led to World War II.
All of that is true.
But there was much more that caused the Munich debacle
than simple Western naiveté. The full tragedy of that ill-fated agreement
should warn us on the eve of the Obama’s administration’s gullible agreement
with Iran on nuclear proliferation.
Fable one is the idea that most people saw right through
the Munich folly. True, Europeans knew that Hitler had never once told the
truth and was already murdering German citizens who were Jews, Communists, or
homosexuals. But Europeans did not care all that much.
Instead, the Western world was ecstatic over the
agreement. After the carnage of World War I, Europeans would do anything to
avoid even a small confrontation — even if such appeasement all but ensured a
far greater bloodbath than the one that began in 1914.
Another myth was that Hitler’s Wehrmacht was strong and
the democracies were weak. In fact, the combined French and British militaries
were far larger than Hitler’s. French Char tanks and British Spitfire fighters
were as good as, or superior to, their German counterparts.
Czechoslovakia had formidable defenses and an impressive
arms industry. Poland and perhaps even the Soviet Union were ready to join a
coalition to stop Hitler from dissolving the Czech state.
It is also untrue that the Third Reich was united. Many
of Hitler’s top generals did not want war. Yet each time Hitler successfully
called the Allies’ bluff — in the Rhineland or with the annexation of Austria —
the credibility of his doubters sank while his own reckless risk-taking became
even more popular.
Munich was hardly a compassionate agreement. In callous
fashion it immediately doomed millions of Czechs and put Poland on the target
list of the Third Reich.
Munich was directly tied to the vanity of Neville
Chamberlain. In the first few weeks after Munich, Chamberlain basked in
adulation, posing as the humane savior of Western civilization. In contrast,
loud skeptic Winston Churchill was dismissed by the media and public as an old
warmonger.
Hitler failed to appreciate the magnanimity and
concessions of the French and British. He later called his Munich diplomatic
partners “worms.” Hitler said of the obsequious Chamberlain, “I’ll kick him
downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers.”
The current negotiations with the Iranians in Lausanne,
Switzerland, have all the hallmarks of the Munich negotiations.
Most Westerners accept that the Iranian government funds
terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. It has all but taken over Iraq,
Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Yet the idea of stronger sanctions, blockades, or
even force to stop Iranian efforts to get a bomb are considered scarier than
Iran getting a bomb that it just possibly might not threaten to use.
The U.S. and its NATO partners are far stronger than Iran
in every imaginable measure of military and economic strength. The Iranian
economy is struggling, its government is corrupt, and its conventional military
is obsolete. Iran’s only chance of gaining strength is to show both its own
population and the world at large that stronger Western powers backed down in
fear of its threats and recklessness.
Iran is not united. It is a mishmash nation in which over
a third of the population is not Persian. Millions of protestors hit the
streets in 2009. An Iranian journalist covering the talks defected in
Switzerland — and said that U.S. officials at the talks are there mainly to
speak on behalf of Iran.
By reaching an agreement with Iran, John Kerry and Barack
Obama hope to salvage some sort of legacy — in the vain fashion of Chamberlain
— out of a heretofore failed foreign policy.
There are more Munich parallels. The Iranian agreement
will force rich Sunni nations to get their own bombs to ensure a nuclear Middle
East standoff. A deal with Iran shows callous disagreed for our close ally
Israel, which is serially threatened by Iran’s mullahs. The United States is
distant from Iran. But our allies in the Middle East and Europe are within its
missile range.
Supporters of the Obama administration deride skeptics
such as Democratic senator Robert Menendez and Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu as if they were doubting old Churchills.
Finally, the Iranians, like Hitler, have only contempt
for the administration that has treated them so fawningly. During the
negotiations in Switzerland, the Iranians blew up a mock U.S. aircraft carrier.
Their supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, did his usual “death to America”
shtick before adoring crowds.
Our dishonor in Lausanne, as with Munich, may avoid a
confrontation in the present, but our shame will guarantee a war in the near
future.
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