70 Years Ago

TW: Actually 70 years ago yesterday, but talk about historical inflection points. Read any contemporaneous media, life was very different until September 1, 1939. While everyone "knew" war was coming by Sept '39 (understanding they only "knew" after nearly a decade of doing everything including appeasement to avoid it), they really had no idea a war that made the Great War seem like a pale dress rehearsal was coming.

I love reading old articles, their perspectives speak volumes.

From the Economist:
"...For the first time in his career, we may feel grateful to Hitler. Since a war was quite inevitable (and knowing what we now do of his state of mind, we can clearly see that it was), we could hardly have hoped for a straighter moral issue on which to fight it. The major principles involved have, of course, been established for some time; they are wrapped up in the old antagonism to the doctrine that Might is Right. But the precise occasion of the outbreak might have been confusing; Hitler obliged by making it clear...until the very last Britain and France were urging, and Poland accepting, proposals for negotiations, provided only that they were on a basis of equality. It is difficult to see how the most finicky historian of the future will find the slightest reason for doubting that Hitler deliberately and wantonly provoked the new war.

After the first breach of the peace the rest followed automatically. There was a last-minute proposal by Signor Mussolini for a five-Power conference "for the purpose of revising the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles which are the actual cause of the trouble in the European situation." Throughout Friday and Saturday this proposal had the effect of delaying French and British action; but it also had the merit of demonstrating once again the democracies' desire not to neglect any possibility of a peaceful and honourable solution. But the Italian initiative broke down because Germany would not accept the Franco-British stipulation that the invading troops must be withdrawn.

...This was the beginning. What the end will be no man can tell...Hitler has proved that we cannot be indifferent to the ways in which other people govern themselves. He has convinced the easy-going, tolerant British democracy that it must go through another bout of agony if ever again Englishmen are to live in peace and wealth and contentment.

...Democracy and dictatorship cannot long exist side by side; if they do, the bad will drive out the good, either through a military conquest of the democracies or by forcing them, in self-defence, as we have been forced in recent years, not indeed to abandon democracy, but to divert it to evil purposes of organising for strength instead of for wealth. Many people have asked in these past years of straits what good a war would do. The answer is, of course, that a war does no good; but it has become the only way of preventing infinitely greater harm.

And why has it become the only way? That is a question that only history can finally answer. But one moral can be drawn now which history will not upset. We have had many chances of strangling in their infancy the forces of aggression and brutality which have now engulfed the world in war. As each issue has arisen, we have refused to meet the risks attached to the suppression of brute force. And, as issue has followed issue, we have seen the price of security rise, in a steady Sibylline progress, until now it has reached the most awful height that a nation ever had to face. Before we plunge into war, this lesson must be drawn from twenty-one years of uneasy peace: security cannot be attained by avoiding risks; a policy of limited commitments leads inevitably to the unlimited commitment of war; safety cannot be found without courage. Let us never again make the mistake of being involved in the maintenance of peace without being committed to its enforcement..."
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14338881&source=hptextfeature