Peace With Honour; Peace in Our Time

were the words of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, on his return to England from a meeting with Adolf Hitler which had taken place on October 3^rd, 1938.

That meeting was the culmination of a policy which historians later called “appeasement” and which sought to stave off war at any cost.

The reasons for this policy are easily understood by us today because we are once more faced with a junior Hitler, Saddam Hussein, whose agenda is the same as that of his predecessor seventy years ago. In fact, it was on January 30, 1933 that Hitler became the “Chancellor” of Germany, a position he had attained by legal means, not by violence.

Then, as now, there were a few who understood that agenda and recognized the threat. Among them was Winston Churchill, who became Prime Minister of England when it was too late to stop the tyrant. Neville Chamberlain, however, was motivated by the protesters and appeasers in England who greeted the Nazi threat at once by the so-called Oxford University Union debate which led to this resolution: “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.”

By 1936 English pacifism led to the formation of the Peace Pledge Union, which collected 130,000 signatures from men and women that they would not support any war.

Even as we are told today that we must allow the so-called “United Nations” to deal with Hussein, British public opinion as late as 1937 supported the idea that the League of Nations could best keep the peace and constrain Hitler.

In September of 1938, 70% of the British public still believed that Hitler could be persuaded to keep the peace by the trip Chamberlain took to talk to the dictator in Munich.

Earlier in 1938, the French Prime Minister Leon Blum, a Jew, was returned to office. Blum then began to argue for the end of the non-intervention policy France had adopted with regard to German aggression. Thereupon the pro-fascist French press together with the “hero” Marshall Petain and others railed against Blum, which led to his political downfall.

It seemed that the European appeasers had won and that Winston Churchill was the only, but discredited, politician who spoke forcefully against Nazi aggression but without the power to do anything about this.

Today, the appeasers are again everywhere. The appeasers find no fault with the brutality of Saddam Hussein. They see nothing wrong with his murder of his own people and his threat to Israel and the whole Middle East. They blame our own government for seeking to oppose the brutal dictator and pretend that President George W. Bush seeks to invade Iraq only because he wants to seize the oil resources there.

Once more the Europeans are in the lead in supporting Hussein and cursing the United States. Of course the Germans and the French are renouncing the North Atlantic Treaty, which calls for mutual aid and defense in case of aggression. The French have “forgotten” the sacrifices made on their behalf by American boys on the beaches of Normandy sixty years ago. The Germans, tremendous beneficiaries of American largesse, support the brutal Hussein and talk about the United States in the same idiom as they talk about “the Jews.” Here are the greediest money grubbers of all time who made lampshades out of the skins of Jewish children and soap out of Jewish bones, complaining that Americans are only interested in money. Hey, NAZIS, how about restoring to the Jewish people all the property you stole from the six million corpses you produced between 1933 and 1945? Before lecturing the American people, how about giving back all the property of Jewish refugees that were auctioned off to the highest bidder among the German population every Sunday from 1933 -1945?

So now we have the Germans lecturing us about morality.

We are fortunate therefore that we have a President, George W. Bush, who understands all that. The snide “liberals” who pervert that word by supporting the most brutal dictatorships everywhere are the real “war mongers”. It is they who seek to perpetuate aggressive tyrannies until only dictators rule. It is they who seek to protect these brutal dictators from American resistance and from a President who, surprise, surprise, wants to stand up to the modern day Hitler and prevent the bloodshed the monster is planning.

We have mentioned the appeasers in Europe because that is where the Second World War started. Yet, we in this country were also plagued by appeasers and Nazi sympathizers. Foremost among them was Charles Lindbergh, who accepted a medal from Hitler and spoke in his favor in public. Likewise, Henry Ford visited Hitler, as did other home grown anti-Jewish haters and Nazi admirers.

In this country, the then President Franklin Roosevelt, by no means a friend of the Jewish people, saw and understood the Nazi threat. Yet, until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt could not persuade Congress and the American people to oppose the aggressors.

Today, George W. Bush is better off because we have a large defense force supplied with weapons which can teach Hussein a lesson in a week, if not a day. Yet, like 1938, the protesters shout in the streets, not against the enemy, but against our own government.

Let us be certain that there are no Jews among those who seek to undermine the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. He does not deserve that, and we cannot afford it.

Shalom u’vracha.

Dr. Gerhard Falk is the author of numerous publications, including Grandparents: A New Look at the Supporting Generation (with Dr. Ursula A., Falk, 2002), & Man's Ascent to Reason (2002).

[ Home ] [ Up ]