Mark Karlin: Ukraine is Putin's Sudetenland
March 16, 2022
Mark Karlin — Editor of BuzzFlash
The Soviet Union allied itself with Hitler in the beginning of WWII. Initially, the alliance allowed the USSR to expand because in September of 1939 Hitler invaded western Poland and the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland.
This came about after a catastrophic capitulation to Hitler in 1938, when he annexed Austria (the Anschluss) in March and the Sudetenland on October 1. Unlike Austria, the Czechoslovakia was opposed to the invasion of the Sudetenland, which was a community of German speakers primarily in the northwest of Czechoslavakia. Like Zelensky today, the leaders of Czechoslovakia pleaded with European leaders to stop Hitler from annexing Sudetenland.
But Neville Chamberlain, at a conference in Munich, signed off on the incursion and declared “peace in our time.” Thereafter, Hitler took control of all of Czechoslovakia and approximately a year later, in 1939 split up Poland with Stalin, who engaged in the Katyn massacre of some 22,000 top Polish military officials and intellectuals to ensure there was no opposition to the Russian presence.
In a CNN article, foreign policy expert Fiona Hill refers to:
“Russkiy Mir.” Hill also points to Putin's belief in a "Russkiy Mir" or Russian World.
"He's saying Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same," Hill said. "This idea of a Russian World means re-gathering all the Russian-speakers in different places that belonged at some point to the Russian tsardom."
Putin is making a similar claim about Ukraine, even though the vast majority of citizens think of themselves as Ukrainian and not Russian.
Hitler assured Chamberlain and some other European envoys that he would not extend Germany beyond the Sudetenland. A few days before the invasion of the Sudetenland, Hitler promised before one of his mass gatherings that the Sudetenland was "the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe." A few months later, Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia.
As Germany strengthened its army, in the spring of 1940 England and France fruitlessly tried to beat back Hitler, but it was too late.
The democratic European powers should have stopped Hitler before he began his brutal expansion. There’s a lesson there in dealing with Putin. Zelensky is correct in forewarning that Putin won’t stop with Ukraine. It’s just one step in rebuilding a kleptocratic, merciless version of the Soviet Union.
David Corn notes how a Putin-favored media figure predicts the future of Putin’s bloodletting:
On Monday, a top Putin propagandist said the Ukraine war is just the beginning. As I report, Vladimir Solovyov, a prominent TV host and a fanatical and bombastic cheerleader for the Kremlin and the war, said on his show this week that "if you think we’re going to stop with Ukraine, think 300 times, I will remind you that Ukraine is merely an intermediate stage in the provision of the safety of the Russian Federation.” He noted that Putin wants to beat back NATO to its 1997 borders, and then, he said, Russia will deploy nuclear weapons—presumably controlled by Russia—into former Soviet bloc nations. The grand plan is to restore Russia as a nuclear superpower dominating much of Europe.
Shortly into the war, Hitler broke his agreement and attacked Stalin’s forces, savagely murdering civilians and setting sieges to cities and villages.
Putin has learned well from Hitler.
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