Anyone who has actually studied the period that led up to World War II knows that the Western democracies followed feckless policies remarkably similar to those that we are following today. And anyone who studies that war itself knows that the West came dangerously close to losing it before finally getting their act together and turning things around.
In a nuclear age, we may not have time to let reality finally sink in on our leaders and wake up the public to the dangers.
There was lots of "happy talk" in the West while Hitler was building up his Nazi war machine during the 1930s, as the Western intelligentsia were urging the democracies to disarm.
The dangers of Hitler's sudden rise to power in Germany during the early 1930s were played down, and even ridiculed, by politicians, journalists and the intelligentsia in both Britain and France.
A temporary political setback for the Nazis in 1933 was hailed by a French newspaper as "the piteous end of Hitlerism" and a British newspaper said even earlier that Hitler was "done for." Prominent British intellectual Harold Laski opined that Hitler was "a cheap conspirator rather than an inspired revolutionary, the creature of circumstances rather than the maker of destiny."
In other words, Hitler and the Nazis were the "junior varsity" of their day, in the eyes of the know-it-alls.
Even after Hitler consolidated his political power in Germany, imposed a dictatorship and began building up a massive war machine, the Western democracies continued to believe that they could reach a peaceful understanding with him.
There was euphoria in the West when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from a conference in Munich, waving an agreement signed by Hitler, and declaring that it meant "peace for our time." Our time turned out to be less than one year before the biggest and most ghastly war in history broke out in 1939.
Glib 'Happy Talk' - Thomas Sowell - Page full
