From Preparedness to Appeasement by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

From Preparedness to Appeasement by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online: "By 1930 Verdun had been transmogrified almost into a dirty word in French schools. Throughout the late 1920s, the First World War was increasingly reinterpreted in the West as a futile bloodletting. International “Merchants of Death” and greedy capitalists, not the Kaiser’s aggressive Prussian militarism, were now seen as the true causes of that recent horrific war. A punitive Versailles Treaty — and not the failure to invade, occupy, democratize, monitor, and transform a defeated Germany — was seen as the real mistake on the part of the victors.

Britain and France all but disarmed. The Maginot defensive line, England’s island status, the new and welcomed art of appeasement (originally, lest we forget, a suitably liberal and humane idea), growing socialist movements, the League of Nations, and a new pacifism were all seen as substitutes for Neanderthal notions like deterrence and military preparedness. Perpetual peace was supposed to follow — and not another war with Germany a mere 20 years after the last one. Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and the rest begged to differ."