THE WEST HAS NOT LEARNED THE LESSONS OF WWII: We need a Churchill in the White House, not a Chamberlain

By: Joseph Puder 

Sunday, March 6, 2022

The scenes of the Russian invasion into Ukraine are reminiscent of 81 years ago when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in what was called “Operation Barbarossa.” Nazi troops stormed the Ukraine fields with thousands of tanks and Stuka dive bombers. Behind them was Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen, SS murderers set out to murder every Jew in the territories of Ukraine that the Nazi army occupied.   

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President, has copied the same tactics. Claiming his armies were merely on military maneuvers and that he had no intention of invading Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, he ordered his armies with thousands of soldiers, tanks, and jets to invade Ukraine. In 1939, Adolf Hitler, who had committed Germany not to attack the Soviet Union under the Treaty of Non-Aggression known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement, broke the treaty and invaded the Soviet Union with massive force. And, like the murderous Nazi Einsatzgruppen, Putin sent a similar group of Chechen murderers to assassinate Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, and members of his government.    

Hitler, in the summer of 1941, already had Europe almost entirely under his brutal boot, but his “lebensraum” or living space concept, which he specified in his book, “Mein Kampf,” and speeches, required him, in his demented mind, to remove the Slavic and other so-called non-Aryan peoples in Eastern Europe from their land, and populate them with German people. So naturally, Hitler was not going to stop anywhere ‘while the going was good.’     

Let us be clear, Putin is not Hitler, he is not the sadist, and antisemitic murderer that Hitler was. Nevertheless, he too has a dream of restoring to Russia the title of the super-power that the Soviet Union became after World War II. He is a Russian nationalist whose formative years in the Soviet Union were spent absorbing Soviet propaganda, and subsequently becoming a KGB officer. It made him a staunch believer in Russian power. His father fought with the Red Army in WWII, and his native Leningrad suffered enormously during World War II. He also learned from the example that Hitler had provided, that when your potential enemies are weak, it is time to strike.   

Hitler had British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to deal with. An appeaser who desperately wanted to avoid war at all costs, and indeed, the costs were much higher for Britain and the world for not recognizing that evil can only be stopped by force and not by appeasement. Had the allies stopped Hitler early on in 1936 when he occupied the Rhineland, World War II would not have occurred. Even in 1938, before Hitler annexed by force the Czechoslovakian territory of the Sudetenland under the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which Chamberlain sold out the Czechs, and got in return World War II. Had the western powers used the military option, the German military High Command (the Wehrmacht) would have removed Hitler from power, as was revealed in later years.    

Putin views US President Joe Biden as weak and feeble, a person who refuses to use the military option with the radical regime of the Ayatollahs in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and would certainly not dare to challenge Russia’s military might. Putin figures that Biden and the Western leaders would scream ‘bloody murder,’ but will not challenge him militarily, not even using a ‘no-fly zone’ over the Ukrainian civilian population, for fear of entanglement with Russia. President Biden could mobilize US forces just as President Johnson did in 1967.  He can also coordinate with NATO states an imposition of a 'no fly zone' in Western Ukraine, next to the Polish-Ukrainian border.  Putin doesn’t want a nuclear war any more than Biden, Johnson, or Macron.  But he knows that he is dealing with Chamberlains, not with Churchills.   

It is apparent to Putin that President Biden and the other major western leaders fear him enough not to challenge his actions other than with words and economic sanctions that hitherto have had little impact on Putin and his regime. He took Crimea in March, 2014 from Ukraine, and the Obama administration’s reaction was so anemic that it only encouraged him to go further and initiate the separatist violent rebellion against the Ukrainian government in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts of Ukraine), less than a month later. As the case of the US imposed sanctions on Iran has proven, sanctions cannot alter the behavior of a radical authoritarian regime, and only the unpleasant choice of a credible threat of Military action will make Russia or Iran change its course.    

There was a time when the US did just that - used the military option. President John F. Kennedy did it during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, He took military action after diplomacy failed. True, the Soviet missiles in Cuba posed an existential threat to the US… And yet, President Lyndon Johnson did it in the Middle East, when the Soviet Union threatened to send its troops to aid Syria against Israel during the Six Day War of June 1967.   

Uri Bar-Noi, in a report for the Wilson Center dealing with the Soviet Union and the Six Day War had written his article based on revelations from the Polish government archives, “The Soviet Union military took practical steps to assist Syria in stopping the advance of Israeli troops into Syrian territory toward the end of the war. These steps included a naval landing, airborne reinforcement, and air support for ground operations. Military operations were, however, eventually aborted for fear of American retaliation.” President Johnson responded by putting American forces on standby, ready to respond to the Soviet’s moves.   

In today’s climate of near pacifism in the US and the western world, there are no Churchills to be found. There is however one inspiring Churchill-like person and that is the leader of Ukraine – President Volodymyr Zelensky. He alone has stood up to the bullying of Vladimir Putin with the determination of David facing Goliath, and that in spite of the odds facing him. He inspired his people and the world by taking on a nuclear superpower with its enormous military machine and an abundance of natural resources, particularly oil and gas. He alone put into deeds what it means to fight for freedom, and human dignity.  

While President Biden and others filled the airwaves with platitudes, they seem however, to fear facing the Russian bear. Fortunately for Winston Churchill, he was able after Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) in particular, to enjoy the benefits of the “Arsenal of Democracy,” Zelensky and Ukraine remain alone in fighting an unrestrained aggressor.  While acknowledging Joe Biden's desire for world peace, warning Putin with a credible military option against further Russian expansion is essential. Sadly, America needs a Churchill in the White House right now. Instead, it seems, we have a Chamberlain.