TRIBUNE — Since the beginning of this war which refuses to speak its name according to the strategy and the military and political doctrine of the Kremlin, a conceptual axiom has quickly been put in place in the West, relayed and fed by the mediasphere in a relentless way.
This axiom rests on an ideological base: the idea that Putin would be Hitler and that consequently, it is advisable to position oneself in 2022 as if we were in 1938 on the eve of the Munich agreements which signed the European capitulation to the Chancellor and which then culminated in the outbreak of World War II just a year later on September 1, 1939.
A little historical reminder
Signed between Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy represented respectively by Adolf Hitler, Édouard Daladier, Neville Chamberlain and Benito Mussolini at the end of the Munich conference from September 29 to 30, 1938, these agreements have intended to settle the Sudetenland crisis and allow Hitler to annex the Czechoslovak regions populated mainly by Germans.
Sudeten Germans referred to the majority German-speaking populations in the “Sudeten region”, the name of the German-speaking majority areas of the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, along the German and Austrian borders, in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia.
Historically, the name Sudeten comes from the name of the mountains in the northeast of the country, inhabited by predominantly German-speaking populations who have been called by metonymy the Sudeten Germans (or simply the “Sudeten”).
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Adherents to the axiom defended by the United States and the EU affirm that the current situation is identical to that which prevailed in 1938 and that consequently, it is essential not to repeat the error of the Munich agreements under penalty to suffer the same fate.
Everything that has been undertaken since February 24 stems from this axiom and this historical comparison, just as all Western propaganda is based on the elements of language of historical references relating to 1938.
However, as I have written several times, this comparison seems flawed to me, even if the temptation is great to make the two periods collide. I also observe that no credible, legitimate and serious historian or geopolitician has supported the relevance of such a comparison.
2022 is not 1938
Learning to observe the past to better understand the present and to try to anticipate the future is certainly a task made possible because sometimes history seems to repeat itself.
However, “the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce”said Karl Marx.
No, the Russian-speaking Ukrainians of the Donbass are not the Germans of the Sudetenland, even if this reference is used to make us believe through daily hypnosis that Putin has inclinations to reconquer the former Eastern bloc and that he would even intend to invade Western Europe by parading on the Champs-Élysées in his limousine Aurus Senat (Combination of “Aurum” and “Russia”) of a length of 6.62 m with under the hood , an engine developing between 600 hp and 650 hp essential to carry the 6.5 tons of this armored limousine.
See also: “From the death of debate to the designation of evil”.
There was an invasion of eastern Ukraine, of course, and there is clearly an intention and a desire to annex the Donbass after Crimea, of course again, and it is perfectly legitimate to reprove these acts, but let us remain seriously though.
Following the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye of 1919, which sanctioned the dislocation of Austria-Hungary at the end of the First World War, it is granted to the claim of the Czechs and Slovaks to acquire of a country: Czechoslovakia which is thus recognized. It includes the territories hitherto dependent on the crown of Austria, Slovakia and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia hitherto dependent on the crown of Hungary.
This state of affairs was immediately denounced by the German minorities included in the new State and in the majority in certain regions, which fueled demands for reunification with Germany until Hitler, very opportunistically, decided to invade the Czechoslovakia on September 29 and 30, 1938. Pursuing Germany’s Pan-German aims by becoming the « champion » of the principle of nationality, he declares that he wants “to liberate the Sudeten Germans” of the’« oppression » Czechoslovakia and stop there. The sequel is known.
Admittedly, Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism resemble each other and thrive on the same soil.
Except that the German minorities of Czechoslovakia were not victims of bombardments for eight years and that the German language did not suffer from any restriction at that time, which was not the case for the Russian-speaking populations of Donbass since 2014, since they have been harassed and bombarded by the kyiv regime (14,000 dead, it is still worth recalling).
Just as the Minsk agreements have never been respected, as everyone knows, and all the parties have let this process unravel.
Thus, the current “Marxian” farce consists of developing a warlike and hateful narrative towards Putin, Russia and the Russians in order to comfort, fuel and consolidate this war which could well continue for years without anyone being able to predict. neither the extension nor the mode (conventional or unconventional).
While I have no doubts about the cowardice of Europe in 1938 in the face of Chancellor Hitler’s warlike and hateful madness, which should have been fought and stopped by all means, including war, on the other hand, I the greatest reservations about the path chosen by the West.
This is all the more so since the exacerbated and unanimous defense of Ukrainian nationalism is curiously in total contradiction with the rejection, even the disgust, of any nationalist expression in the West (“Nationalism is war”declared François Mitterrand).
Sovereignty and its corollaries, nationalism and patriotism, therefore seem here to be a notion with a very variable political and ideological geometry.
Finally, readers who might be tempted to see in this unpretentious little text a pacifist, a Munich resident, a coward, a collaborator, a Poutinolâtre Putinist, a conspirator, a useful idiot from the Kremlin or one of its agents, calm down right away. following, it is not so.
The easy emotional two-bullet comparisons and hateful, aggressive impulses of too many adherents of the official pro-Ukrainian narrative who, before February 24, did not even know Mariupol existed and who thought the Sea of Azov was related to the mother Michel, bring absolutely nothing to the lighting of the scene of this war of which we do not know much, despite the satellite era of instantaneous digitized and reticular information in which we live.
Those who claim to know what is really going on by predicting the future and belching their anathemas are the real useful idiots in a conflict whose complex and major stakes are beyond us all.
The dictatorship of opinion and emotion as well as the ignorance of history are real poisons for the exercise of reason and can lead to even greater catastrophes than those we claim to foresee and avoid. .
See also: “An illegitimate legality”.
Michel Rosenzweig is a philosopher, author and essayist.