Five Brothers and a War

How Did/Does it Happen?

The Hitler/Putin comparison is interesting on a number of levels, one of which is a look back at what Hitler could have done, through the use of events 75 years later. In the first place, it appears that there was no way for the so-called Third Reich to have survived, as can be demonstrated by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The fervor of the Germans, to the extent that it really did exist with the majority of, much less all, Germans, never did translate to occupied countries. The deeply-held opposition could not have been suppressed for any length of time. Within the context of the modern world, rather than seeing people unite into larger political units, the opposite is occurring. The world is becoming a highly complex collective of villages and tribes as people separate themselves from larger groups in favor of historically established smaller ones. For example, the Scottish have not forgotten that they were conquered by the English hundreds of years ago, and there is a very strong movement to restore the nation to its full status. Other examples include Quebec versus the rest of Canada, the Irish/Northern Irish (Republicans/Loyalists), Jews and Palestinians, etc. Old wounds have often never healed, and perhaps never will. Another interesting look-back issue deals with the hypothetical of what would happen if Putin stops with his current conquests within Ukraine—and then, what would the world have looked like had Hitler stopped after he re-militarized the Rheinland, taken Austria, and annexed the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The answer in current history is that if Putin stops now, and does not take the rest of Ukraine [equal to the rest of Czechoslovakia] and does not re-conquer one of the Baltic States, he would likely be left alone by the rest of the world. That would indicate, again on at least a theoretical/hypothetical basis that Hitler would have been left to his conquests had he not invaded Poland. But it also points out the problem of having a weak American President— in conjunction with weak allies in London, Paris, and Berlin. Doing nothing carries less political heat, but also magnifies the problem, making it ever more difficult to deal with at a later date.

commentary

Five Brothers and a War

Page 666