Joe Biden is Having His Neville Chamberlain Moment

For those of you not up to date on Hitler’s early years, he had supporters in Europe as well as America. Charles Lindbergh was one, Henry Ford another and der Führer was a master of radical dialog and stagecraft. His rise in German politics was the direct effect of the 1918 peace treaty ending the First World War, which was so deliberately punitive that Germans lost all hope of a future. Hitler gave them hope and a measure of forgiveness.

As Hitler weaponized Germany and threatened Czechoslovakia, Great Britain’s then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich, met with Hitler and agreed to his occupation of Czechoslovakia as an end to his further threats in Europe. Chamberlain called the outcome "peace for our time", following which Hitler was selected Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1938.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine doesn’t so much repeat history, but it rhymes

Opening the Guardian Newspaper here in Prague, eighty-four years after Time’s Man of the Year and a week …