If you consider yourself among the vanguard of democracy’s defenders, a guru whose insights about the past can lead us to a fascism-free future, you might be invited to speak at conferences, appear on cable news programs, or land a book deal. Ukraine is the front line in a global war on democracy. The rules-based order is on the line. America is imperiled by rising fascism. This is our Weimar moment!
Before I go any further – I am not downplaying the serious, worldwide challenge to liberal democracy. In its annual report, Freedom House said “flawed elections and armed conflict contributed” to the eighteenth consecutive year of democratic decline. “Around the world, violent conflict – often driven by authoritarian aggression – caused death and destruction and imperiled freedom.”
Here in the United States, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee speaks about a possible return to the White House in a manner similar to the world’s authoritarian rulers. Donald Trump is not a fascist, but as the political journalist Damon Linker explains, Trump poses a threat to democracy no matter what we choose to call him. I’ve called for creating a new lexicon to define the deliberalizing forces at work in the world, because neither the term fascism nor comparisons to 1930s Europe are very helpful. Credit goes to historian Roger Griffin for introducing us to new ways to think about modern autocrats.
As for Trump, I may be more concerned with the sheer chaos and incompetence than any authoritarianism that would accompany a second term. Meanwhile, the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, after campaigning in 2020 on a promise to respect human rights and international law, scoffs at the International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for arrest warrants for Israel’s leaders who have waged a war of immense destruction on stateless Palestinians. This is the same prosecutor who wants to arrest Vladimir Putin and Hamas leaders.
We can recognize democracy and “world order” are under pressure without ransacking the past to advance an alarmist agenda. Speaking at a conference in Estonia, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder delivered one of the most irresponsible statements I’ve ever heard from a supposedly reputable historian. You can watch the clip here.
Snyder claimed that we are in a situation tantamount to 1938. Ukraine is playing the role of Czechoslovakia, and the West is facing a Munich-like do-or-die decision to either help Ukraine defeat Russia now or fight a world war against Russia tomorrow in, as Snyder analogized, our 1939.
“This is 1938 but Czechoslovakia has chosen to fight. Czechoslovakia has chosen to fight,” said Snyder, pausing a moment to allow his audience to understand that Ukraine is resisting the Russian invader the way he believes the Czechs should have resisted Hitler in 1938.
“You have an imperfect democracy. It’s the furthest democracy in Eastern Europe… but when threatened by a larger neighbor, it chooses to resist. In that world where Czechoslovakia resists, there’s no Second World War,” Snyder stated with calm confidence. “The Czechs had a good army. They could have held the Germans back. It was largely a bluff on the German side. If the Czechs resist, then the French, the British, and maybe the Americans eventually start to help. There would have been a conflict, but there wouldn’t have been a Second World War.”
Snyder pointed to the advantages the Wehrmacht gained by seizing the Czech armaments industry roughly a year before invading Poland. He made no mention of Poland and Hungary’s roles in carving up what was left of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39, but complexity is not Professor Snyder’s forte. “If the Ukrainians give up or if we give up Ukraine, then it’s a different Russia making war in the future. It’s a Russia making war with Ukrainian technology, Ukrainian soldiers, from a different geographical position. Then we are in 1939. We are in 1938 now,” Snyder concluded.
Let’s start by deconstructing Snyder’s historical claims. We can deal with the implications of his argument for Western policy a bit later.
Certainty about the unknowable
I sent the video clip of Snyder’s remarks to a major historian of twentieth-century Europe and Nazi Germany in particular. He responded:
“I don't think much of these easily overdrawn analogies, as you know. The counterfactual guessing games based upon hypothetical scenarios from the past are to my mind very dubious. The differences between Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Ukraine now seem to me enormous. Even allowing for the tardy and insufficient supply of arms to Ukraine by the West, the military support Ukraine has had and continues to receive to defend itself against a nuclear power makes comparison with Czechoslovakia in 1938 pointless.”
He continued: “Specifically on the situation in 1938, Tim's presumption that, if Britain and France had not sold Czechoslovakia down the river, the Czechs' military resistance would have prevented a world war the following year is very questionable. The German military ran wargames in June 1938 and concluded that the Wehrmacht would overrun Czechoslovakia in eleven days. Of course, this optimism might have been mistaken, as Putin's was regarding the invasion of Ukraine. But the assumption that the Czechs would have held out, and that Britain and France, let alone the USA, would have come to their help militarily is highly doubtful.”
In her magisterial “The Triumph of the Dark: European International History 1933-1939,” the late historian Zara Steiner dedicated hundreds of pages to the 1938 Munich conference and its consequences. Steiner brought to life the hour-by-hour diplomatic maneuvering in late September 1938. What we know today about the intentions and capabilities of the major players was not apparent to everyone at the time. Snyder, however, erases the urgency and uncertainties that gripped decision-makers who, excepting war-hungry Hitler, were trying to avoid what they expected would be another major conflict they were not prepared to fight – or at least that is what they believed based on assessments of their military preparedness.
“On balance, it would have been possible for [Neville] Chamberlain to have stayed home and the British, along with the French, to have threatened Germany with war if Hitler sent his troops into Czechoslovakia. An alternative policy of firmness might have forced Hitler to reconsider. For such a policy to have carried weight, however, the British would have had to open staff talks with the French and, in doing so, would implicitly have threatened action. If Hitler had taken up the challenge, the probable result might have been a stalemate but not the obliteration of Britain’s cities nor the destruction of France. Like so many counter-factual scenarios, the arguments for war in 1938 seem much stronger in retrospect than they did at the time. It is possible that Czechoslovakia would have held out longer than anticipated; the proposed pincer movement had its critics, including Hitler. Much would have depended on the speed with which the French army could have launched an offensive against the German forces behind the West Wall. If the French, as seems probable, had been forced on to the defensive, a war of attrition might have ensued. No one could predict what its consequences would have been,” wrote Steiner, who noted that neither the British nor the Americans were in a position to offer any help to the Czechs.
“In many respects,” Steiner continued, “it was Germany rather than the Allied powers that gained most from the delay. But decisions for war are rarely the result of counting men, weapons, and aircraft. Statistics provide only part of the answer. Given their misperceptions of German power and the divided state of public opinion, one can understand why Britain and France chose to sacrifice Czechoslovakia to avoid what they believed would be the start of another war in Europe.”
It is also worth noting that the Czech president Edvard Benes believed his country would be destroyed if he had gone ahead with armed resistance rather than accept the transfer of the territory of the Sudetan Germans to the Third Reich – the unholy deal Chamberlain finalized with Hitler at Munich (where the Czechs were excluded from deliberations). Benes did not expect the British and French would come to his rescue. He also understood that Hitler could not be appeased and was bent on further conquest. “In the inevitable war that would have to be fought between Germany and the western democracies, Benes was sure that the former would be defeated and that he could then regain for his country what had been lost at Munich,” Steiner said.
As you now see, there were few certainties on either side at Munich. Thus, Snyder’s unqualified contention that the Second World War (which was fought also in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific) would have been avoided lies somewhere beyond preposterous. Adolph Hitler was determined to have war sooner or later, and while it is possible that a smaller, less destructive war might have ensued had the Czechs taken up arms in 1938, it is also possible that Nazi Germany would have quickly conquered Czechoslovakia without provoking a major response from the West, allowing Hitler to gather his forces for the invasion of Poland with the ultimate aim of destroying the USSR to create living space for his “master race.”
Snyder’s fascism fantasies
This brings us to the implications of Snyder’s analogy. If we are reliving 1938, this means Putin is Hitler. It means the West must do whatever is necessary to stop Russia now, lest we risk war with a more powerful Russia as it tries to swallow up Ukraine’s neighbors later.
There is little evidence that Vladimir Putin intends (or that Russia has the capability) to conquer all or most of Europe after prevailing in Ukraine — if his armies ever prevail in Ukraine, where they suffered an intractable strategic defeat by failing to take Kyiv in 2022. Putin is a tyrant and a war criminal, but he is not Hitler. Even if Snyder’s historical speculations are true, his analogy is still useless for this fact alone. The Russian army is not Hitler’s Wehrmacht, and most of Europe is protected by the NATO alliance and the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Yet we’re back in 1938?
Of course, I cannot be sure what Putin’s long-term plans are – or what unforeseen events may provoke him to act one way or the other. My point is, it’s possible to support the defense of Ukraine against Russian conquest without drawing irresponsible comparisons to Europe’s darkest era. Timothy Snyder is abusing history rather than helping us understand it. Read his latest Twitter thread on fascism. Does this Yale professor know what he’s talking about?
Professor Snyder has been pushing his Munich stuff for a while now. In 2022 I spoke to military historian Cathal Nolan about the many problems with his argument.
A more responsible comparison
On Thursday’s episode of the podcast, the political scientist Andreas Umland discussed his working paper on the conditions for democratic collapse and the rise of fascist dictatorship. Umland and his co-author Steffen Kailitz are studying a comparison between Weimar Germany and post-Soviet Russia. In both countries democratic norms and institutions had shallow roots. Economic calamity rocked the political establishment and fueled polarization. The Weimar Republic gave way to Nazi dictatorship in 1933 – although we must remember conservative nationalists and monarchists had undermined democracy for years before they chose Hitler to be chancellor in 1933. Is post-Soviet Russia headed for fascist dictatorship? Is Putin a fascist? Listen to Andreas Umland and I discuss these questions and more.
How the British broke Palestine
I continued to explore the origins of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in Tuesday’s episode with the esteemed Israeli historian Tom Segev. You may also read his superb essay for Foreign Affairs (no paywall) Israel’s Forever War. Segev contends there is no solution to the conflict. Peaceful coexistence isn’t possible given the incompatible religious and nationalist visions of the two peoples competing for the same small piece of land.
The seeds of conflict were planted before the British occupied Palestine in the First World War, but they blossomed into communal bloodshed and ethnic rancor in the ensuing three decades of British mandatory rule in the Holy Land.
Segev cites David Ben-Burion from 1919: “There is no solution to this question. There is an abyss between us, and nothing can fill that abyss.” The past century has proven Ben-Gurion correct. But it’s still incumbent upon us to understand why. History rarely operates along a straight line. On the long road from 1919 to October 7, 2023, politicians, generals, and ordinary citizens made choices – there are always choices, whatever the constraints – that influenced the course of history.
From the start of the mandate in 1920 (San Remo Conference) the British chose to facilitate Zionist immigration to Israel while trying (and failing) to placate Arab anger at the waves of newcomers. In Segev’s view, the British should have listened to the Arabs rather than the Zionists. If they had, there may have been no independent state of Israel in 1948. Would there have been an independent Palestine instead? Listen to our conversation.
What’s next?
Coming up on Tuesday’s (5/28) episode, historians Gregory Brew and John Ghazvinian will discuss the death of Ebrahim Raisi. Iran’s president was killed in a helicopter crash, leaving a power vacuum that will be filled in snap elections in less than 50 days. What will it mean for U.S.-Iran relations? That is hard to say right now. Of more immediate importance to ordinary Iranians is whether they’ll have a real choice at the ballot box. In recent elections, Iran’s conservative hard-liners have culled reformers and moderates from the list of potential candidates.
On Thursday’s (5/30) episode, historian Kevin Levin of the Civil War Memory Substack, will discuss a disturbing trend. Some school districts are restoring Confederate place names, and in Tennessee a new memorial to Confederate soldiers was erected on the Franklin battlefield. The Lost Cause has yet to fully lose its grip on the American mind.