j'accuse

Appeasement

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Jacques René Zammit

At 8pm on the 27th September 1938, Neville Chamberlain, UK Prime Minister broadcast to the nation:

“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing”.

The “people of whom we know nothing” were the Czechs, Slovaks and Germans in the Sudetenland. Chamberlain would go on to sign the Munich Agreement with “the German Chancellor Herr Hitler”. A year later he would be declaring war on Herr Hitler following the invasion of Poland.

Peace in our time? Go tell it to the rebels in Brega.

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5 responses to “Appeasement”

  1. Anthony Debono Avatar
    Anthony Debono

    kumbinazjoni I watched The King’s Speech yesterday and loved the way it touched on appeasement and politics of the time without using it as a tool for the plot. I was thinking about appeasement a lot lately, probably because of Gaddafi.

    The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, is an awesome book that uses appeasement as a sub-plot.

    I guess the whole situation was quite “British” in that Chamberlain thought that Hitler would stick to the Munich agreement, so there was an element of chivalry involved (albeit naive and unrealistic), the situation is quite different in 2011!

  3. danny attard Avatar
    danny attard

    ok so what follows is an easy target for x’ghandu x’jaqsam, but i think it is very relevant to current events and one may use to meditate and so i will indulge

    headlines from gov newspaperLe Moniteur Universel, on the progress of napoleon post elba:

    l’anthropophage est sorti de son repaire

    l’ogre de corse vient de debarquer au golfe juan

    le tigre est arrive’ a’ gap

    le monstre a couche’ a’ grenoble

    le tyran a traverse’ lyon

    l’usurpateur a e’te’ vu a’ soixante lieues de la capitale

    buonaparte s’avance a’ grand pas – mais il n’n’entrera jamais dans paris

    napoleon sera deain sous nos remparts

    l’empereur est arrive’ a fontainebleau

    sa majeste’ imperiale et royale a fait hier au soir son entree dans son chateau des tuliers au milieu de ses fideles sujets

    human nature has, of course, not changed one iota since…

      1. danny attard Avatar
        danny attard

        i thought u might…let us hope that is some kind of waterloo written in the script…