5 February—In 1934, Hitler’s Germany signed (in Berlin, of course) a non-aggression pact with Poland in which both countries agreed to resolve their problems through bilateral negotiations and to forgo armed conflict for a decade. The agreement effectively normalized relations between Poland and Germany, which had been strained by border disputes arising from the Treaty of Versailles. Germany allegedly recognized Poland’s borders and moved to end a customs war between the two countries that had been hurting Germany over the previous decade.

Fast forward to 1938, when the Sudetenland was annexed to Germany from Czechoslovakia (which had received it as part of the Treaty of Versailles and naturally was not included in the 1938 negotiations, primarily between Germany and Britain) because some three million ethnic Germans living there allegedly weren’t too happy about it. Poland also got a part of the Sudeten borderland, but nothing to write home about. Remember British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s naïvely hopeful “Peace for our time” declaration when he returned to London from Munich? How would Joe Biden put it?

Skipping now to 1939, Hitler knew precisely what he wanted and it was everything. The whole world, although there’s no evidence he ever actually wrote or uttered “Heute Deutschland, Morgen die ganze Welt.” And Poland was merely another step in his power putsch. So he set up the Poles as the bad guys.

Nazi propagandists accused Poland of persecuting ethnic Germans living there and falsely claimed that Poland, along with Britain and France, was planning to dismember Germany. And, colluding with the Wehrmacht—the Nazi military—the paramilitary SS, in Polish uniform, staged a phony attack on a German radio station.

Thus, the world was to believe, Hitler was entirely justified in launching a “retaliatory” campaign against Poland. And that came as a surprise attack at dawn on 1 September 1939 on all fronts. And, of course, Poland fell.

So now triple-fast forward to 2022, when Vladimir Putin, in his self-serving crusade to rebuild the Soviet Union—and probably take over the whole world (Сегодня Украина, завтра весь мир)–appears to be setting up Ukraine just like Hitler had set up Poland.

A couple of days ago, the White House publicized what our intelligence, security, and military agencies maintain are or were the Kremlin’s plans to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The alleged plot, as explained, would start with a video using corpses, footage of blown-up buildings, fake Ukrainian military hardware, Turkish-made drones and actors playing the part of Russian-speaking mourners.

The Pentagon said the video would have purported to show a Ukrainian attack on Russian territory or Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine (and presumably Russian-occupied Crimea) and would be very graphic. And Turkish-made drones taking part in the phony attack would serve to implicate nasty NATO as aggressors. Since this sort of underhanded activity is usually approved at the highest levels of the Russian government, the plan almost certainly was approved by Putin himself. And Putin just happens to be a master of the underhand.

Pretext was all it took Hitler to invade Poland. If Biden and NATO think their pussyfooting, posturing, and idle threats scare Putin, they should think again. And if they believe sacrificing Ukraine (which, after all, no one has any contractual obligation to defend) will appease him, they should consider that he planned all along for his pretext to be “uncovered” by our intelligence people . . .