Wednesday, March 28, 2007

I'll take "Things that are like Munich for $200, Alex"

As TBogg points out today, boy wonder Ben Shapiro compares the capture of 15 British sailors, and the resulting fracas to Munich in 1938. Let's see what else is like Munich in 1938:

3/25/07 Neoneocon also says it's the sailors:

Just as Hitler was testing the waters of Allied determination in Munich and finding them surprisingly warm and pleasant, Iran has been testing the waters of the West since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, and swimming quite comfortably there.


11/30/06 Old Atlantic Lighthouse says it's the Iraq Study Group:

What they are proposing is the 1938 Munich Pact with the devil updated to the modern equivalents. They are selling us out. If you are realistic, you know, that’s what realists do.


02/16/07 Cliff May in National Review says it's Islamist revolutionaries (or something):
As for what Larijani and his fellow Islamist revolutionaries think of their European hosts, one can only surmise. But I suspect it is not too far from the Führer’s appraisal of those he humiliated in Munich nearly 70 years ago.


11/28/06 Rick Richman in The American Thinker says it's negotiating with Iran and Syria (bonus: Netanyahu says it's Iran's nukes):

“It is 1938; Iran is Germany; and it is racing to acquire nuclear weapons.” Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly punctuated his speech in Los Angeles earlier this month with that sentence. It was an effective rhetorical device, conveying both a sense of threat and a sense of urgency.

...

In historical terms, it seems clear that Iran and Syria are the Germany and Italy of 2006 -- a totalitarian regime with global ambitions, with a fascist ally, already fighting proxy wars comparable to the Spanish Civil War.


03/28/07 JaxConservative says it's setting a timeline for troops to leave Iraq (nice site design btw):

The Democratic majority, less Senators Lieberman and Mark Pryor,with the votes of two RINOs, Senators Hagel and Gordon Smith, narrowly passed the modern day equivalent of the 1938 Munich Pact.


Finally, for some relief, Dr. Leo Strauss of Stop The Spirit Of Zossen provides some actual historical perspective of what Munich 1938 was and what it wasn't:

The problem is that May has no idea what he is talking about. The truth is that the Corporal saw Munich as a defeat. The historical German record is clear about Hitler's outrage. He was furious that Chamberlain saddled him with diplomacy and averted war in 1938.

Hitler wanted and needed war in 1938. He knew that his military modernization program gave him a significant but diminishing advantage. By 1940 he knew the gap would for all intents and purposes close. The German General Staff under Beck was ordered to and did prepare for a 1938 invasion (Beck was a regime opponent and even mused about a coup against Hitler at this time). A war beginning in 1938 would have favored the Germans even more than that in September 1939. Had the Mays of the world had their say in 1938, the Western democracies would have been even more unprepared (if one can imagine such a thing). The Russians, one year after the 1937 military purges and the ongoing Yezhovschina, would have been a non factor. Hitler's anger was amplified all the more precisely because for class and other reasons, Chamberlain as the personification of the 'English Genteman'. To the low born Corporal, Chamberlain (like the hated Prussian Junkers class) was indeed a worm, etc. Yet he still did not get his war.


Time to go back invoking 9/11, and a "pre 911 mindset." This Munich thing isn't working out.

1 comment:

Sinfonian said...

You realize, of course, that any allusions to Jeopardy! require you to pay royalties ... to me.

;)