Markos Troulis
As if one day had not passed.
The timing of the events until the outbreak of World War II is really a tough lesson on how sedation leads with mathematical precision to the discouragement and ultimately to the war. As today, on March 15, 1939, Adolf Hitler addresses the German people and announces the substantial annexation of Czechoslovakia on the occasion of the claim of Sudetenland, a region with large iron deposits and a powerhouse on the border with Germany inhabited by German speakers.
Under the Locarno Treaty, France had made commitments to the territorial integrity of Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union had signed a military co-operation agreement.
Everyone was silent when Hitler made his decisions in the hope of satisfying his appetite.
They were preceded by the re-ratification of Rhineland in 1936, the military support to Franco’s fascists in Spain during the civil war (1936-1939), the annexation of Austria in March 1938, followed by the Ribbentrop ultimatum to Lithuania on March 20, 1939. The culmination of the soothing strategy against Nazi Germany was the previous Munich Agreement in 1938. Pantille silence until the British, the French and the Soviets with the decisive contribution of the Americans (I refer to those who could prevent course of events) had to fight without having any choice.

The results of the appeasement policy were the tens of millions of dead, the complete leveling of the European continent and beyond, and of course the definitive loss of the strategic autonomy of the Great Powers of Western Europe.

Today, March 15, 2018, history is repeated as a farce.

Repeat Tayyip Erdogan is progressively implementing a nuclear technology acquisition program, strengthens the Turkish defense industry in pursuing its autonomy, acts as a patron of countries such as Albania, fyrom, Bosnia and Azerbaijan, or minorities such as the Bulgarian Caucasian Muslims, invades Syria, “enters & exits” in Iraq, persecutes dissidents, articulates anti-Semitic rhetoric, goes on ethnic cleansing against minorities, recalls the imperial past, expresses great a sense of the injustice of history towards his country, stating that Turkey does not hold its position on the world map.

Observing Erdogan’s argument for the invasion of Syria, let us remember what Hitler was saying, justifying the intervention in Czechoslovakia: “Germany had to extend its protection to German-speaking people living in enclosed areas of Czechoslovakia and to deal with unacceptable aggressione (sic) of their terrorist regime against them […]. Permanent calls for help arrive to us every hour from those affected and persecuted. Yet another wave of immigrants, who have been deprived of their own, are heading to the Reich from the crowded German-speaking regions […]. In order to eliminate the threat to general peace (sic) and to cultivate the conditions for the necessary new order within the vital …
These are unfolding in Syria, in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the Aegean while we are under sleep.
 Everyone must realize that abandoning lethargy and setting a credible deterrent strategy is a duty for those who want peace and stability. When one is arrested for stealing, he is jailed. You do not expect that he will not do it again by believing that his appetites were satisfied.
So simple.