So apparently Neville Chamberlain, all purpose symbol for anyone who disagrees with George Bush, didn't cause World War II after all. It was the Oxford Union. This claim has surfaced in the latest portentous 1930s analogy -- dug up for Iranian President Ahmadi-Nejad's visit to Columbia University yesterday. Arthur Herman in the NY Post writes --
"Abject, squalid, shameless" is how Winston Churchill described the resolution passed by Oxford University's prestigious Debating Union in 1933 - the year Adolf Hitler came to power - that "this House will under no circumstances fight for King and Country."
And Columbia's event, like the 1933 Oxford resolution, sent (to quote Churchill again) a "very disquieting and disgusting message" to friends and enemies alike.
Many American's won't see that; their blindness goes to the heart of the "red-blue" divide in our country - much like the one in '30s Britain that split men like Churchill from the exponents of appeasing Europe's dictators.
It's a strange argument, that Hitler would base his entire war strategy on one debate by the Dirty Fu**ing Hippies of the 1930s, apparently unaware that college students even in those days tended to say silly things. So of all the events of the 1930s, including Britain's actual policies from 1933-39, this was the one that stuck in Hitler's mind? And what made him invade the USSR?
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