by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
Had England or France swatted the stumbling German Army while Adolf Hitler was still a madman junior grade, Europe no doubt would have exploded with late 1930s versions of Michael Moore and John Kerry.
Any British or French troops killed, say, in shooting the Nazis off the Rhine River bridge which they crossed illegally into Allied territory in 1936 or capturing and killing Hitler, Himmler et al. after subsequent aggression into Czechoslovakia would have been said by the Michael Moores to have “died for nothing” – just as the left is saying now of our war dead in Iraq.
Paying attention to the crazy-talking German chancellor while he was still warming up – the stage at which George W. Bush did, in fact, halt Saddam Hussein – just wasn’t on the peace movement agenda.
As for the governing leaderships of England and France, the Kerrys of the day argued Hitler could better be bargained with than confronted.
They learned otherwise. Subsequent blitzkrieg and panzer warfare against Poland and the Low Countries, launching World War II, proved the absurdity of negotiating with megalomaniac dictators.
Substitute Saddam Hussein for Hitler and it only proves, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
The little German “Fuhrer” didn’t really mean what he said about eliminating Jews or retaking former German territory or the “Thousand Year Reich” or other matters.
And even if he did, neither he nor Germany, barely recovering from economic shambles from World War I, were worth the democracies’ time.
So they said.
Hitler’s pledge to rid Germany of political opposition and Jews was not political rhetoric for domestic consumption – one bit of the “peace” rational of the day. Yes, he meant it! A 1939-1940 timetable was already shaping up.
We know Saddam meant what he said about Jews. His $25,000 gifts to the families of suicide bombers prove that. And he certainly meant it about political opponents. The Allied military has already found 400,000 graves in the desert.
Hitler’s goal, like Saddam’s, was to keep his enemies off balance with bluffs, feints and talk while his scientists and generals developed the required weapons.
We think Saddam had his timetable, too – for weapons of mass murder, foreign military conquest and world economic conquest via oil control.
As for the relatively small numbers of French and British soldiers who would have died in 1936-1938 stopping Hitler while he was still weak and bluffing, would they really have “died for nothing?”
Think about it.
Estimates place the dead on all sides in World War II (1939-1945) at 50 million. The Allied dead alone topped 20 million.
It’s an open question, but this writer believes the Japanese would never have dared attack the United States without a victorious German Army controlling Europe – as it did on Dec. 7, 1941.
Very directly the failed political leadership and the peace movements of France and England let World War II happen.
The test of a leader is making hard choices before they are thrust upon him.
Neville Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin and England’s Conservative Party dithered in their day, just as John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats are doing today.
That is why George W. Bush rates our highest marks. His resolve to stop Saddam in 2003 before the mad dictator had fully developed the weapons to again pick off Kuwait, this time with a nuclear hole card, and then move on to Saudi Arabia, the lesser oil states and probably Iran and Syria was a correct reading of the tyrannical mind.
After six months of “hate Bush” Democratic primaries and now the general election rhetoric, few on the left say much about the crazed Saddam. If they do, it tends to be about whether he can get a fair trial.
When mad dictators talk, affluent and easy living democracies need to listen.
Europe in 1936 did not heed the rants of Adolf Hitler, and the world paid a horrible price.
Bush understood that in the Middle East the year 2003 was 1936 on aggression’s timetable.
Kerry doesn’t seem to know what time it is.
October, 2004
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