Ukraine: What the Nazi Invasion of Poland Taught Us

I don’t want to be an alarmist, but the Russia/Ukraine faceoff is starting to sound like the German invasion of Poland that started WWII. One wrong step and things could go South quickly. There are lots of parallels:

Like Nazi Germany, Russia is led by an autocrat bent on restoring the former glory of his nation. Like Hitler, Putin has intimidated and gobbled up his neighbors where he can. He took the Crimea and Ukraine’s Eastern frontier claiming the people favored Russia.

Putin’s grounds for seizing Ukrainian territory were the same as Hitler used to grab the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler was basically given the Sudetenland by the Western allies, led by Neville Chamberlain, who justified his appeasement with “peace in our time”.

When Putin seized Crimea and threatened the rest of Ukraine, the West responded with sanctions and diplomatic expulsions. Putin was not intimidated. (OK, blame Obama for that.)

Enter Donald Trump. Trump’s world view didn’t allow him to value Ukraine’s continued existence as a fragile democracy. He bent over backwards to curry Putin’s favor. Was there election interference on Trump’s behalf or business opportunities that led to this? I know not.

Trump, a transactional person, who does nothing unless it benefits him personally, saw an opportunity to exploit Ukraine’s perilous situation and gain some political advantage.

Thus we saw the Ukraine extortion plot play out. Trump withheld vital weapons from Ukraine in order to get them to manufacture fake campaign dirt. He even sent his laughably incompetent attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to deal with pro-Russian Ukrainians to smear an opponent.

Even when caught, Trump continued to play into Putin’s hands with Ukraine. He refused to meet with Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the White House, making the latter seem less significant.

Enter today’s crisis. Putin gives the appearance that he is looking for an excuse to invade Ukraine. His alliance with his fellow dictator in Belarus is strikingly similar to the secret pact between Germany and Russia that preceded the invasion of Poland in 1939.

With Belarus a Russian ally and the Crimea in Russian hands, poor Ukraine is surrounded on 3 sides. Putin now looks for an excuse to invade. He claims Ukraine is a threat. He doesn’t want them joining NATO. He has done everything he can to destabilize the country.

Putin wants Ukraine to fire the first shot, giving him an excuse to invade. Like Poland in 1939, Ukraine isn’t biting. Today, we heard from the Pentagon, that Russia might fabricate an incident to give it a pretext for invasion. It has happened before.

In 1939 Hitler staged a phony incident to justify invading Poland. The Nazis executed Jewish prisoners who were dressed in Polish Army uniforms and staged a fake cross-border attack on a German radio station. They already had troops standing by to invade, like Russia today.

The rest is history. The Poles were no match for the mighty German military machine. Russia callously invaded Poland from the other direction. France and England declared war on Germany. It did not go well for them. They couldn’t help Poland and France would soon fall.

The Allies had waited too long to stand up to Hitler. He had gobbled up all of Czechoslovakia and Austria by that time. He would strengthen himself by looting national treasuries and taking over the arms of the nations he invaded.

Happening simultaneously, the new Russia China Pact is frighteningly similar to the Tripartite Pact between Nazi Germany and militarist Japan. In joint statement with China, Russia supports China’s position on Taiwan. “The Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle, confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan.”

I hope Putin blinks. Ukraine has its problems, but I would rather see them as a struggling democracy with too much internal corruption, than as a satellite of Putin’s Russia. Your thoughts?

LDT Feb 3, ’22

The Last Slave Ship

A little known clause in Article I of the US Constitution prevented the importation of slaves after 1807. In spite of this, smugglers continued to bring enslaved Africans to the Southern States up to the Civil War. The last of the ships used in this illicit slave trade was the Clotilda which arrived in Mobile Alabama in 1860 with a cargo of west African slaves. The wreck of this ship has recently been discovered. It is a stark reminder of the horrors of human bondage.

The Clotilda was an 86-foot two-masted schooner built and owned by Timothy Maeher of Mobile. Maeher sailed the ship to Africa in 1860 to take advantage of intertribal warfare that had left thousands of Africans imprisoned. Maeher bought 125 of them for $100 each. (In the South his cargo would have been worth nearly 4 Million Dollars in today’s money.) Fearing capture, he departed port quickly, leaving 15 behind.

Maeher went to great lengths during the voyage to avoid scrutiny by authorities. Upon reaching the US coast he re-rigged the Clotilda to make it look like a coastal vessel transporting legal southern slaves. He snuck into Mobile and had the ship towed up a river. There, he unloaded his human cargo. Then he burned and sank the ship to destroy the evidence. The crew, some of them apparently Northerners, was discharged and sent home.

The Africans, being undocumented property, were sold into slavery under Black Market conditions. Learning of the situation, US authorities took the the smugglers to court. Thanks to the cover-up and the Civil War, the perpetrators would not be prosecuted for their dastardly deed.

After the War, when all slaves were emancipated, the Clotilda passengers received their freedom. Many settled in a place called Africatown, which is now an impoverished Mobile suburb. There, they preserved their African heritage, language and traditions for many decades. They had all been young when enslaved. Many lived well into the 20th Century. The last survivor is said to have died in 1940.

The wreck of the Clotilda was discovered in 2018. Though it was burned to the waterline, the hull remains intact. It is no doubt full of artifacts, like chains and locks, stemming from its time in the slave trade. Legally, it belongs to the State of Alabama. There is talk of raising and preserving the ship. Thus far, Alabama is balking at the cost. Instead, the state has proposed putting a monument at the site of its sinking. This is unacceptable to the descendants of the ships enslaved cargo as the site is largely inaccessible.

Alabama, do the right thing!

LDT Feb 20, ’22

For more information see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clotilda_(slave_ship)

https://time.com/6148417/clotilda-preserve-americas-last-slave-ship/