World War Two started 85 years ago

[M.Świerczyński, "Warsaw, 1945"] 

“The unmentionable odour of death/Offends the September night.”

            —W.H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”

It all looks so inevitable in retrospect: the build-up of a dictatorial, war-mongering regime, the feckless response from neighboring states, the indifference to pogroms, the sniggering glee at the crushing of local communists and perhaps a coming blow to the hated Russians, and finally the gigantic explosion of all-out war, Europe consumed, quickly conquered, eventually destroyed. Sixty million dead.

Our historical memory of World War 2 is of the triumph of decency over barbarism, performed by the “Greatest Generation.” The principal lesson we carried away is to avoid “appeasement,” how Naziism arose and flourished step by step without resistance until there were no options left except a cataclysmic slaughter. The war carried off 3% of the world population, including 20% of Poland’s (5 million) and 15% of the USSR’s (26 million).

We hear quite a bit about the 1938 Munich debacle that remains the symbol of how foolish it is to attempt diplomacy with an organically aggressive state and ever to trust its promises. There is no historical figure more mocked than Neville Chamberlain returning from his final powwow with Hitler flourishing a sheaf of papers that guaranteed Czech independence.

Sullivan and Blinken share the honors as today’s Chamberlain. They flit from capital to capital emitting hollow phrases about peace and ceasefires while winking broadly to the Israelis to hurry up and complete the massacre. The world looks on placidly as real-time pogroms are committed before our eyes. Erstwhile defenders of “the rules-based order” stand by as the indulged warfare state attacks multiple enemies. America’s allies insist only that each victim stand down and never retaliate.

As their client state openly trumpets its supremacist underpinnings and applauds marauding soldiers and police as they commit atrocities and upload them to YouTube, the West turns instead to domestic dissidents, bans anti-genocide organizations, jails reporters on “terrorism” charges,  and declares the use of the term “Zionist” to be a racial slur. 

Israel may yet get its wish to drag the world into another conflagration. If they succeed, we will look back at this period as the moment when the world failed to learn the key lesson of World War Two and doomed itself to a tragic repeat.