Until March 1, Dr. Andrei Zubov was professor of Russian philosophy at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations, where he had been a teacher since 2001. He was forced to resign for publishing this column in the Russian newspaper Vedomosti. Dr. Zubov, in an impassioned plea, begs President Putin and the Russian people to pull back from the brink in Crimea, and avoid the fate of Nazi Germany.
For Vedomosti, Dr. Andrei Zubov begins his fateful warning this way:
Friends. We are on the brink. We are not on the brink of introducing a new subject into the Russian Federation. We are on the brink of complete destruction of the system of international treaties, economic chaos and political dictatorship. We are on the brink of war with our closest, kindred people of Ukraine, and a sharp decline in relations with Europe and America. We are on the brink of a cold, or possibly hot – war with them.
After all, this happened before. In Austria, starting in March 1938. The Nazis want to round off the Reich at the expense of another German-speaking state. The people aren’t especially eager for this – no one is oppressing them, no one is discriminating against them. But the idea of a greater Germany fills the heads of radicals – the local Nazis. To put an end to the dispute over the fate of Austria, her Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg calls a referendum for March 13th. That doesn’t suit the Nazis in Berlin and Vienna, however. What happens if the people suddenly vote against Anschluss [Nazi annexation]? Chancellor Schuschnigg is forced to resign on March 10, and in his place the president appoints local Nazi leader Arthur Seyss-Inquart. In the mean time, German divisions were already entering Austrian cities at the invitation of the new chancellor, which the president later learns from a newspaper. Austrian soldiers capitulate. The people either rapturously greet Hitler’s troops, stay at home holed up in exasperation, or hurriedly flee to Switzerland. Cardinal Innitzer of Austria welcomes and gives his blessing to the Anschluss.
From March 13th, the arrests begin. Chancellor Schuschnigg was arrested the day before. A plebiscite was held on April 10. In Germany 99.08 percent of the population voted in favor of union with Austria, while in Austria (now the Ostmark Province of the German Empire), the figure was 99.75 percent. On October 1, 1938, the Czech Sudetenland was also unified with its German brothers, and then overnight on March 22, 1939, the Lithuanian Oblast of Klaipeda became German-held Memel. In all these lands, German speakers were genuinely in the majority, and throughout, many people really wanted to unite with Hitler’s Riech. Overall this reunion was carried out amid much fanfare and shouts of jubilation from frenzied jingoistic crowds – and all with the connivance of the West.
Adolf Hitler drew a thoroughly different picture when on March 23, 1939, he spoke from the balcony of Theaterplatz in recently annexed Memel. Two hours after he so theatrically arrived at the port of Memel aboard his newest battleship Germany, he said “Germans are not here to harm the people of the world, but to put an end to the suffering Germans have had to endure at the world’s hands for the past 20 years. … The Memel Germans were left to their fates once before by Germany, when it succumbed to dishonor and humiliation. Today, Memel’s Germans are reinstated as citizens of the mighty Reich, decisively taking their destiny back into their hands, even if half the world doesn’t like it.”
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