From Preparedness to Appeasement: By Victor Davis Hanson
From Preparedness to Appeasement
Grueling war, promises of peace, new attack — are we about to repeat this tired cycle?
By Victor Davis Hanson
By 1930 Verdun had been transmogrified almost into a dirty word in French schools. Throughout the late 1920s, the First World War was increasingly reinterpreted in the West as a futile bloodletting. International “Merchants of Death” and greedy capitalists, not the Kaiser’s aggressive Prussian militarism, were now seen as the true causes of that recent horrific war. A punitive Versailles Treaty — and not the failure to invade, occupy, democratize, monitor, and transform a defeated Germany — was seen as the real mistake on the part of the victors.
Britain and France all but disarmed. The Maginot defensive line, England’s island status, the new….
and…..