True historic account shows appeasement
Re “It’s important to know history,” Sept. 29 Commentary:
?It is very disturbing to read a Commentary in which a historian brags about the diplomatic peace efforts of the English Prime Minister ?Neville Chamberlain in handling Adolf Hitler in 1938. Actually Hitler gave England and France his word at Munich and then invaded Poland the next year and Chamberlain was then compelled to commit English troops to the continent. Troops who were sadly unprepared, due to the anti-Churchill, anti-war crowd that had managed to obstruct the English defenses.
What followed was a period of “phony war” on the Western front while Hitler and Stalin divided up Poland. Hitler then turned to the west and defeated English and French armies and France collapsed.
To be sure, history is important as long as it is truthfully recorded, for it is replete with the sad record of the natural human desire for peace, only to be thwarted by the unrealistic temptation to appease aggressors. Current world events are good examples of would-be statesmen announcing face-saving agreements with potentially lethal adversaries.