Don't Know Much about History

 On Sunday, the New York Times writer Thomas L. Friedman wrote that Trump is another Chamberlain.

Churchill was a prolific historian, he wrote very well, and made himself the hero of WWI and WWII, and maybe a few more wars I forgot about. Of course, his histories are not altogether accurate.

In 1917, the Czar of the Russian Empire resigned and Russia capitulated to Germany, agreeing that Western Russia would become part of Germany.

With Russia gone, things were looking very bad for the UK and France, but the US banks had figured, from 1914 to 1917, that the UK and France were, by far, the strongest nations on earth and sure to win, so they loaned them a lot of money to use in WWI, and it looked like the banks would have to write off all those loans to the UK and France, making many major US banks insolvent, which was something the US could not allow, so they entered the war against Germany and were enough to let the Allies win WWI, and then in 1919, Germany had to agree to the Treaty of Versailles: they must totally disarm, give up the Russian lands ceded by Russia (but not back to Russia, to the UK and France to do with whatever they wanted), and to hand over every bit of German gold as war reparations, so Germany was very weak and impecunious, and no threat to the UK or France. And the US banks got repaid with a lot of interest.

But in 1933, Germany elected a new Chancellor who said Germany must rearm. Churchill said he thundered against such an atrocity: Churchill wrote that he said that if the UK, with all the resources of the British Empire, had demanded that an unarmed Germany must select a Chancellor who would abide by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany would have had no choice but to agree, and and if anyone had listened, WWII could have been avoided without the loss of a single drop of blood.

Only I checked the morgue, and I couldn't find a single speech by Churchill demanding that Germany pick a Chancellor who would abide by the Treaty of Versailles in 1933.

Everyone was scared to death of the USSR, and wanted a rearmed Germany able to put up a feeble effort against the inevitable Soviet invasion of Western Europe, an effort that would get the UK and France enough time to mobilise and stop the Soviet threat.

Then, in 1938, Chamberlain went to France and asked what they should do about Germany. Hitler had re-armed Germany, and released news reels to be shown during movies showing a Great German military, taking hours to march past the cameras filming for the news reels. France said, 'Wait until 1939 when we have our defensive Maginot Line ready, and then the UK and France will be able to easily defeat the Germans with very limited losses.' So Chamberlain signed a faux peace deal with Germany and promised, 'Peace in Our Time!' Fake, of course, so Germany would not attack before the UK and France were ready. Chamberlain agreed (as did France) that Germany could take back bits of Germany taken away after WWI in 1938.

Churchill wrote, and Friedman agrees, that Germany was still very weak in '38, so victory would have been possible with minimal UK-French losses (or the UK alone could have easily defeated Germany). Patently false, but Friedman calls Trump worse than Chamberlain, Russia have lost millions in the Ukraine and are on the edge of total defeat, after which Russia can be broken up into 20 small, unarmed countries, and all Russian assets can be confiscated as war reparations to American oiligarchs.

But Trump's agreeing to give a Russia, that is now almost totally defeated by the Ukrainians, a Russian victory forced upon the Ukrainians by the US, will mean a much stronger Russia in a year or two, so anyone who wants to visit the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben will have to speak Russian to ask the way.