Immoral then; it is indefensibly immoral now…
Kasejovice, Czech Republic – The border with Germany is 45 km west – and the Sudetenland just a few minutes’ drive – from my father-in-law’s small holding where my family and I have been savoring the summer.
Forests cover miles of this corner of the Czech Republic. In the tiny villages that dot the dales and straddle the hills, the snail’s pace of life appears barely touched by the drive of 21st Century modernity.
Bohemia is so undisturbed that it is difficult to envisage a more peaceful place. How much harder to imagine that seven decades ago, this tranquil territory was hand-fed to Hitler – an appeasement sacrifice that only served to whet his desire for more.
The shocking history is well-known: How the fearful Great Powers threw their trusting friends to the wolves rather than face down the belligerent who was out to devour them all.
In an attempt to placate the strident demands of the Sudeten Germans – who were being goaded by Hitler into seeking secession to Germany – Czech President Edvard Beneš had offered them a literal blank check: an empty sheet of paper on which they could list their demands, all of which he promised to grant if they would just end their provocations.
The page came back empty. Peace was not in Hitler’s mind.
Meeting him in Munich on September 29, 1938 – while barring governmental representatives from Prague – the leaders of England and France took it upon themselves to “give” Germany the Sudetenland – the high ground encircling Czechoslovakia upon which virtually impenetrable fortifications so essential to the security of that country had just been built.
More than “just territory,” what the Munich Dictate (or Agreement) gave to the Nazis – as British diplomat Harold Nicolson observed at the time – was “the whole key to Europe.”
Winston Churchill was vehemently opposed to Hitler’s taking possession of “the mountain defense line which marks the ancient boundaries of Bohemia and was specially preserved to the Czechoslovak state as a safeguard of its national existence.”
On learning of the fait accompli, Churchill first wept, then rounded on cabinet members and furiously denounced Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s actions as “sordid, subhuman and suicidal.” It was, he thundered, “the grossest act of bullying treachery” that amounted to not only the sacrifice of England’s honor but the resulting “sacrifice of lives—our people’s lives.”
Forty-eight hours after hosting Chamberlain in his lair, the Nazi leader ordered his storm troopers into the surrendered land. Czechoslovakia lay ripe for the picking. Within months, the fuehrer would swallow it whole.
Instead of securing “peace for our time” (Chamberlain’s ostentatious assertion upon returning from Munich), the sacrifice of the Sudetenland toppled the world into war. With Prague in his pocket, Hitler could threaten, and invade, Poland.
England added shame to shame as Chamberlain fished around desperately for an excuse, any excuse, to not honor Britain’s treaty to come to Poland’s aid.
As he dilly-dallied, two million German troops smashed into the country, the Luftwaffe poured its bombs onto Warsaw, and panzer tanks sliced up the Polish countryside. Tens of thousands were slaughtered in the blitzkrieg.
Trying to convey his feelings of devastation and embarrassment to Polish Ambassador Edward Raczynski, a helpless Churchill (he was not yet prime minister) falteringly voiced his hope “that Britain will keep…will keep its…”
Voice breaking, he began to cry.
Her honor holed, Britannia was sinkng beneath the waves.
Apologists for Chamberlain have argued that his persistent attempts to buy off Hitler should be commended and not condemned. The British people were still reeling from the terrible wounds inflicted by the First World War, they say. He was doing everything he could to keep them from having to fight the Second.
But Churchill knew how wrong it was to push Czechoslovakia into paying the price for England’s peace.
Pressuring another people to surrender their land to a mutual enemy for promises of peace was indefensibly immoral then. It is indefensibly immoral now…
In October 2001, addressing the American-led international effort to appease the Arab world by pushing Israel into giving away parts of its historic land, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made an emotional appeal:
“I turn to the western democracies, first and foremost the leader of the free world, the United States. Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when the enlightened democracies of Europe decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for the sake of a temporary, convenient solution. Don’t try to appease the Arabs at our expense. We will not accept this. Israel will not be Czechoslovakia.”
His entreaty fell on outraged ears. The United States had long pursued a policy that sought to secure a quiet and stable oil-supplying Middle East at Israel’s expense. It was not about to change course. Iran’s headlong pursuit of nuclear weapons, and its threat to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, have only added impetus to America’s appeasement approach.
Today, in the waning days of the presidency that began the year Sharon lodged his appeal, President George W. Bush seems almost desperate to secure some form of initial agreement – a modern-day de facto Dictate that will see Israel cede its biblical heartland for the creation of a Palestinian state so that the USA can breathe easy for awhile.
As the Sudetenland did for Czechoslovakia, this threatened land comprises the mountain defense line which marks the ancient eastern half of the Land of Israel and which is essential as a safeguard of its national existence.
And as Chamberlain hoped to placate the Nazis with Czech land, so Bush seeks to appease the Arabs with Jews’. (It is the Jews’ land – by divine right, by historic right, and according to international law.)
There can be no acceptance of this policy; no understanding or excusing of it.
Let me say it again. Aloud:
THE POLICY THAT PUSHES ISRAEL TO GIVE UP LAND IN EXCHANGE FOR ISRAEL’S AND AMERICA’S ENEMIES’ PROMISES OF PEACE IS AN INDEFENSIBLY IMMORAL POLICY.
How often it has been said that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
The Bible puts it this way: That which has been is what will be, that which has been done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, ‘See, this is new?’ It has already been in ancient times before us. (Ecclesiastes 1: 9,10)
History has damned what Chamberlain did, and history will damn what Bush is trying to do.
As the drums of war roll on in the Middle East, and the West strives to placate Islam, will all the warnings to the United States really remain unheard?
Just as the surrender of the Sudetenland spelled the takeover of the rest of Czechoslovakia, and the fall of Europe, so would the surrender of Samaria and Judea precipitate the takeover of the rest of Israel, and threaten America’s fall.
Hitler was clear about his intentions even before he took control of Germany.
Wrote Tory Junior Minister Kitty Atholl in 1935 after reading Mein Kampf:
“Never can a modern statesman have made so startlingly clear to his reader his ambitions…”
England’s statesmen chose to ignore him. Years after Foreign Minister Anthony Eden had opposed forcefully quelling Hitler’s first acts of aggression, he acknowledged his terrible mistake:
“I should have been…stiffer to Hitler,” he said. Military intervention at that early stage “would have been the right thing to do, and many millions of lives would have been saved.”
In both their words and deeds, Israel’s enemies – the PLO, Hamas, Iran – have been clear about their ambitions for Israel.
But America and Europe have not been “stiffer” to them, opting instead for the easier way and employing “bullying treachery” against Israel.
How many millions of lives will be lost because of their “sordid, subhuman and suicidal” approach?
Churchill’s tears were for the loss of England’s honor. They could do nothing to save those who would be swept away. The perhaps soon-to-be-shed tears of some ashamed and remorseful American leader will save no-one either.
No matter how hard he cries.
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Ed note: Former Speaker of the United States House of Congress Newt Gingrich recently urged his mailing list to read a remarkable new book which, he said, speaks pointedly to the situation facing the world today. Some of the material used to write this article was found in this book:
“Troublesome Young Men – The rebels who brought Churchill to power and helped save England.” By Lynne Olson (Farrar, Strous and Giroux, New York, 2007)
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