Echoes of Munich, or Аbout the Short Historical Memory of German «Intellectuals» and «Peacemakers»

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Two German citizens, journalist and writer Daniela Dan and musician Konstantin Wecker, addressed an open letter to German Chancellor Scholz. In the letter, they demand that the government stop supplying weapons to Ukraine and persuade President Zelensky to surrender.

«Despite reports of successes of the Ukrainian army, nevertheless: it is far inferior to the Russian army and has little chance of winning this war,» German «sofa military analysts» wrote confidently. — The price of prolonged military resistance, regardless of possible success, will be new cities and villages destroyed and heavy casualties among the Ukrainian population. NATO's arms deliveries and military support will prolong the war and delay a diplomatic solution.

Yes, they know how to stop the war: «just stop shooting,» in today's German sense.

«This is the only realistic and humane alternative to a long, debilitating war. The first and most important step would be to stop all arms shipments to Ukraine, combined with an immediate cease-fire that must be negotiated,» these fine-hearted people write.

I do not want to focus on the fact that this text, addressed to the government and deputies of the Bundestag, is nothing more than a repetition of Solovyov (¹) and Skabeeva (²) theses translated into German.  

I am not going to explain to them that stopping the Ukrainian resistance will not reduce the number of innocent victims, but will increase it a hundredfold. It makes no sense: for them the word «Bucha» probably already translates into German as «British special operation,» but for us it does not.

I want to dwell on something else.

Once, on September 29, 1938, exactly this «realistic and humane alternative» had already been enshrined in a treaty. It was signed in Munich by the leaders of Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy. The day after his return to London, the British prime minister joyfully declared, «I have brought peace for our time».

On that day, Chamberlain deceived himself, his people and his generation. Less than a year remained before the outbreak of World War II, in which Britain was the only country in the world to have fought from day one to the last.

The outcome of the Munich deal was not peace, but the greatest hardship for the British people, the greatest upheaval for the Italian people, the greatest defeat and disgrace for the French people. The German people also endured the hardest trials: millions of dead Germans, the sin of the Holocaust, decades of occupation and partition of the country.

«The idea that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here at home just because people have quarreled among themselves in a distant country about whom we know nothing», — said the intellectual Chamberlain two days before Munich, «is appalling, fantastic and unbelievable. — It seems even more impossible that a quarrel that has already been settled in principle could become the subject of war».

Today, 84 years after those events and two months of heroic Ukrainian resistance, people who for some reason call themselves intellectuals do not want to admit that Russia's war against Ukraine is not a «principled quarrel».

Chamberlain, the «peacemaker,» by the way, of all the participants in that deal, got off easier than anyone else. A year later he declared war on Germany, which went down in history forever as «strange». In May 1940, he resigned and gave way to Churchill, who became the leader of the entire free world in opposing the Nazi plague.

Edouard Daladier was less fortunate. He resigned in March 1940. Two months later, a «pacified» Hitler seized France. Paris, by the way, he took without a fight.

The «appeaser» fled to Morocco, where he was arrested and tried by his own, French collaborators. He sat first in a French prison, then — together with German intellectuals, French politicians, Polish generals and Ukrainian nationalists — in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen, then in Buchenwald. He even returned to politics after the war and died peacefully in his bed in 1970.

The others were not so lucky. Hitler shot himself, his wife drank a poison, and their bodies were burned. At least, that is the official version of the events of April 30, 1945. Mussolini and his mistress were shot and then hung from a gas station by their feet.

Had the leaders of France and Britain not been engaged in peacemaking in October 1938, but had supplied arms to Czechoslovakia, or simply fulfilled their allied obligations to that country — it is quite possible that the horrors of World War II could have been avoided by humanity.

History admits no subjunctive mood. But it teaches us that it teaches us nothing. German, I beg your pardon, intellectuals, who right now are demanding that the Ukrainian people be left to the mercy of the Russian Nazis — certainly not.

However, if one asks about the details of the biographies of the authors of the letter, there is not much to be surprised about.

The author — Sergiy Dibrov,
deputy editor-in-chief of «Dumskaya», Odesa, Ukraine

Notes

(¹) Vladimir Solovyov is a Russian television presenter, writer and propagandist. In 2022 the European Union, the US, Canada and the UK imposed personal sanctions against Solovyov.

(²) Olga Skabeeva is a Russian television presenter, political commentator and propagandist. Skabeeva received the nickname «Iron Doll of Putin TV» due to her criticism of the Russian opposition. She is under EU personal sanctions now.