Who do you think is the single person that had the most effect on world history from the 20th Century? To me, it's Neville Chamberlain.

Everyone knows Neville Chamberlain as "The Great Appeaser" but not too many people understand why his failure to act at several critical moments in world history in the 1930s directly led to the deaths of millions of human beings. This makes him, a single solitary man, one of the pivotal figures of world history in the 20th Century.

In 1936, Germans marched into the demilitarized Rhine-land and were given express orders that if the French showed any resistance whatsoever there would be a full German retreat. Chamberlain, along with the French, refused to act and therefore encouraged future Nazi conquest by threat of aggression.

In 1938, Germany seized Austria in the atrocious Anschluss where the greedy little European piggy nations lined up at the trough and allowed Hitler to rape the country while France, Russia and England sat by and ignored their pacts to defend the continent against that exact type of aggression. Also in 1938, Hitler took the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia by the threat of another war.

Great Britain, France and Russia could have allied together against Germany at any point during these three key aggressive moves and would have easily defeated the Nazi military and leadership but Chamberlain foolishly convinced his fellow politicians of a peace with Germany that was never to be.

And beyond that, he helped Hitler in every way he could. Chamberlain didn't do jack shit to save Austria and he worked with Hitler to dismantle Czechoslovakia which was the only democracy east of Germany's border and was also a member of the League of Nations which turned out to be the worst costume party in civilized history. The Czechs had a standing army and fortifications that, when combined with the other Allies, would have obliterated the Nazi government from the face of the earth before they even got started on the shameful acts which ended up defining terror in the 20th century.

But the weirdest mystery of Chamberlain is why he suddenly decided to grow balls on the issue of Germany's demands on Poland that they immediately relinquish Danzig to German control in April of 1939. Chamberlain recklessly resisted Hitler's intrusive demands on Poland by unilaterally guaranteeing Britain's support for Poland should Hitler invade their sovereign territory (which, of course, they did).

Poland at the time was a nation run by a bunch of idiot "colonels" who had previously conspired with Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia only to have him turn on them shortly afterwards (there truly is no honor among thieves). There was little worth to the western world in defending Poland, not like there would have been in defending Czechoslovakia. Yet Chamberlain chose this awkwardly placed country carved in two by a treaty so hated in the Weimar Republic that it essentially ushered in the Nazi reign of power.

And Russia offered to side with Britain several times to combat Nazi aggression in Europe and was turned down by Chamberlain every time (twice in early 1939 alone). But Chamberlain didn't even consult Stalin before he guaranteed British support of Poland in the event of a Nazi invasion (which, of course, they did).

As William L. Shirer says in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

Finally, [Chamberlain] had done exactly what for more than a year he had stoutly asserted that Britain would never do: he had left to another nation the decision whether his country would go to war.

From this point forward, when Chamberlain made his stand on Poland; world history was set into motion like a sad dance timed to the death screams of millions.

I can't help but try to extrapolate these vital lessons of the past when considering the current state of affairs today with the War on Terror.

On the one hand, we have another world leader of the strongest nation at the time who has essentially put his country on a unilateral course of war by calling out other countries as "evil" and is now being put in a position of acting when those countries take actions deemed hostile (i.e. acquiring and detonating nuclear arms).

We're not quite at the horrible point of another nation deciding when we'll go to war (instead of Congress) but we're not all that far away from that point either.

And on the other hand, we have a leader who isn't sitting back and crying for peace while other nations slap us in the face and take by force that which we are entrusted by treaty and integrity to protect--individual human freedom. We have someone who, instead, realizes that sometimes you have to kick a little ass before dickheads in the world perk their ears up and look up from the mutilated carcass of the weak they go through life chewing on.

History is a strange thing as it's not quite a mirror and it's not quite a window but rather; history is like an old woman standing on the side of a highway whispering directions to drivers trying to get to the land of peace and plenty while they drive by at 100 MPH. Only those who slow down and take the time to listen carefully are going to have any shot at all in getting to their destination.

Everyone else is just along for the ride and waiting for the inevitable crash.

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TAGS:
Neville Chamberlain, History, Nazi, Hitler, Politics, war on terror

Everyone knows the soundbite. Kennedy's sharp New England accent peaking crisp--"Ask NOT what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

This is one of the most deceptively evil sound bytes in history because it has gone down in popular history as a statement of social duty for the individual living in a free society when it is actually something that would have been far more appropriate for a Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao or Adolf Hitler to say to their country.

This country was founded on the concept that government is a necessary evil and the most beneficent government is the smallest one with the dullest teeth. Of course, this noble precept was pretty much aborted once the Federalists got hold of the shaping of the country during the period of the Constitutional Convention when the Articles of Confederation started getting holes in their knees. Instead of patching the holes, the Federalists opted for changing clothes altogether.

Isn't it ironic that our Emperor has given up clothes altogether and continues to strut bare ass naked through the ridiculous news parade each day?

So what does it mean when you tell a country of individuals not to ask what their government does for them but rather what they can do for their government? I think it's complete fucking nonsense because governments and countries are not tangible, flesh and blood objects that take up space in the real world.

You might as well say, "Ask not your imaginary girlfriend to give you a hand job. Ask if you can see her invisible boobs."

Sure, the buildings the government inhabits take up space and the ridiculous waste a government produces takes up space in terms of paperwork and mountain high piles of bullshit exuding from all the chicanery and backstabbing which goes on to supposedly secure a government--but government itself is a fictitious collective delusion enforced upon innocent biological creatures upon entrance into this Class-M atmosphere.

I would counter our righteously dead ex-President by saying that when compared to the discarded skin flakes of one of the lowliest individuals who compose it, the idea of a country is worth less than the feces of a slave working the deepest diamond mine;

it's worth less than a ripped up back page in a fifty year old hymnal in the back row of a one room Amish church in the backwoods of Pennsylvania;

it's worth less than the ridiculous notion that peace can be secured through war when death is obviously the only thing secured through war;

it's worth less than the I love you of a rapist as he seizes and grunts over the quiet woman who was walking alone under the stale sodium lights of Anytown college U.S.A.

I don't buy the notion that any government, no matter how grand, is worth protecting over a single law-abiding individual constituent (meaning one who doesn't infringe upon the lives or property of his fellow citizens).

I guess I'm old fashioned in that I believe that the only use for laws is to protect the lives and property of individuals and that the definition of a just law is one where a collective group of individuals have simultaneously deferred their innate right to defense of life and property to a governing body which polices to ensure the protection of their life and property. And I believe that this act of deference, which creates government, gives it charter, is a two way street and this power should always flow back home--to the individual--and not to the governing body.

Call me simple minded but I think President Kennedy was full of shit about a great many things and especially this little do gooder sound byte anthem that barked the death charge of thousands of soldiers who died pointlessly in the Vietnam conflict and the War against radical Islam which began soon after.

I say, "Demand your country protect your life and property and piss on all the rest of the beauracratic bullshit."


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