The tyrant who threatens Europe.
August 8, 1939.
War will break out in Europe in four weeks.
And America, the behemoth, stands aloof, wrapped in the lazy slumber of isolationism.
Willfully blind to the threat fascism’s spread poses to its own democracy.
So, Winston Churchill, the visionary, spoke to the American people by radio on the gathering storm.
He begins with a lament for China, who stands alone against Japanese territorial aggression, defending the same principles of sovereignty which are enshrined in the American constitution.
Meanwhile, Churchill notes that Nazi Germany, fresh from the annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, has placed its army of two million men on maneuvers.
Hitler claims that Germany is being encircled.
But, Churchill says, the truth is “they have encircled themselves with a ring of neighbors who have to keep on guessing who will be struck down next.”
The danger has come from a tyrant given control of the levers of his nation’s power.
This, says Churchill, is a mode of governance which has been rejected by English-speaking nations.
“[T]he English-speaking peoples have always had this horror of one-man power.
“They are quite ready to follow a leader for a time, as long as he is serviceable to them; but the idea of handing themselves over, lock, stock and barrel, body and soul, to one man, and worshiping him as if he were an idol?
“That has always been odious to the whole theme and nature of our civilization.
“But in Germany,” Churchill says, “on a mountain peak, there sits one man who in a single day can release the world from the fear which now oppresses it;
“or, in a single day, can plunge all that we have and are into a volcano of smoke and flame.
“If Herr Hitler does not make war, there will be no war..
“But whether it be peace or war… we must strive to frame some system of human relations in the future… which will no longer leave the whole life of mankind dependent upon the virtues, the caprice, or the wickedness of a single man.”
In 1939, the wicked man was Hitler.
Today, the fate of millions hinges on the caprice of Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine’s struggle against him will require unflinching, open-ended American support.
The November election will determine whether Ukraine receives it.
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I’ll see you on Monday.
— Brenda
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