War is Hard, Part III

The Battle of Towton
Richard Caton Woodville, Jr.
(Source)

The incumbent King of England, Henry VI, on the throne since 1422, was a weak, ineffectual and mentally unsound ruler, which encouraged the nobles to scheme for control over him. (Ibid)

Sounds kind of familiar, know what I mean?

Yes, having a weak leader encourages foreign leaders with an agenda to take advantage of that weakness. Nature abhors a vacuum, so does power.

Does anyone think Putin would have gone into Ukraine if say, Teddy Roosevelt was the President? Note well that I say "Putin" and not "Russia." Putin is a despot, a latter-day Tsar wanna-be. He is no better than Hitler salivating over the Sudetenland in 1938. "Hey, those are ethnic Russians in there, and they're being mistreated!" The Russian people are not behind this invasion. Most of them were just as surprised as the Ukrainians when the Russian Army went in. (As were many of the soldiers in that army!)

I'm not too spun up over the Crimea, it wasn't traditionally part of Ukraine, Khrushchev gave it to them in 1954. Nor the other "separatist" region of Donbas (which is broken into two areas: the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic). Those areas contain a majority of Russians (so my research shows), so them being a part of Ukraine is a bit of a stretch.

But the rest of the nation of Ukraine, Russia should stay out.

What gives me pause concerning this whole Russo-Ukrainian War (Part Deux) is the similarities between now and 1938. While history doesn't really repeat itself, it does, as they say, "rhyme." In other words, similar circumstances could lead to similar outcomes.

In 1938 Adolf Hitler was the Chancellor of Germany. He was actually popular from what I've read. He had reduced unemployment, he had remilitarized the Rhineland which the Treaty of Versailles stipulated could not have any German troops in it. This area borders the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. By keeping the German military out of a 50-mile strip in that region, it was thought to both deter German aggression and also provide an easy path to the Rhine from the West.

Hitler sent his troops into the Rhineland, suspecting that weak leadership in Britain (Neville Chamberlain) and France (Léon Blum) would do nothing to oppose him. He was correct.

To be fair, the people of the United Kingdom and France were in no mood to fight another war considering that WWI had ended only eighteen years before. This was territory they recognized as being German, people who were citizens of Germany in fact.

But it made Hitler overconfident. So he set his sets on Austria, after all didn't they also speak German? Shouldn't they be incorporated into Greater Germany (Großdeutschland)?

Truth be told, Austria had never been part of Germany, but no one was in any mood to contest that move either. Well sure, they are all German speakers, so why not?

In the former country of Czechoslovakia there was a region along the border with Germany called the Sudetenland. There were a great many German speakers in the area and that region had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the war. As had all of Czechoslovakia (and Hungary, and Yugoslavia, and a few other areas as well, that Empire had been pretty big). Hitler set his sights on that area next.

Once again the French and British leaders let him do it, they even persuaded the Czechs that they could do nothing about it if the Germans attacked them and simply took the region. They would not send French and British soldiers to die for Czechoslovakia.

The Sudetenland became part of the Greater German Reich shortly thereafter. (In truth the German generals were terrified that Hitler would attack the Czechs. The Sudetenland is rugged country and the Czechs had set up very rugged defensive works therein. They assumed that an invasion, even if successful, would be costly and set back Hitler's future plans for expansion.)

By the end of 1938, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, the Germans absorbing parts of the country into Germany proper and creating the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia (which contained Prague). The Slovaks declared their independence from Czechoslovakia and formed the Slovak Republic, which promptly allied itself with Germany. (Hungary also nicked a piece for themselves, the Ruthenian part – Subcarpathian Rus as it was known then.)

Are you seeing any similarities to today?

I am.

And it's unnerving to see this happening again.

But is modern day Russia the equivalent of 1930s Nazi Germany? I don't think so, but it certainly looks like Putin is using Hitler's playbook as regards Ukraine.

Consider this:

• The American people are tired of war, after our two decades long idiotic involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. What the Hell is "nation building" anyway but an attempt to impose an alien culture upon another culture?
• The Europeans have been living under the American nuclear umbrella since 1945. Most of their armies are of no use in opposing Russia over Ukraine. They're too small and their governments have not been spending the money to maintain their equipment and training.
• Where is the vital national interest in Ukraine? Should American men and women be sent to die there? Because they will if they are sent in by the idiots in DC.

I have no doubt that our government will do something stupid, that's pretty much their track record for the last eighty years (give or take). At the very least, it's going to cost the American taxpayer a lot of money. Qui bono?

Things could get pretty sporty here over the next few months, don't forget to keep an eye on China. I'm sure they're watching all this with a gleam in their eyes. Get the Americans and the West bogged down in Ukraine? Bye bye Taiwan.

Yup, war is hard.

And damned dangerous as well!