Putin: failing to spot the warning signs from WWII

For all our obsession with WWII, we have missed a raft of warning signs about Putin that we could have spotted from the history books.

Five points:

1. A discussion many school students will have had about WWII is whether the Treaty of Versailles after WWI made WWII more likely by humiliating Germany. One school of thought is that it was too tough and another was that if the victors were going to be tough, they needed to be much tougher or consistently tough, otherwise they would anger Germany but not mitigate against a response. With Russia, there is an (undemocratic) argument that the West unfairly did not agree a post-Cold War European settlement with Russia, instead enabling Eastern European countries to decide their futures for themselves. However, as the West did not engage Russia on this issue, and perhaps there was no one to engage with at the time anyway, the lesson from Versailles was that it was important to remain tough and not do what we did, which was to do nothing to challenge the Putin regime’s post-Cold War narrative and military preparation for anti-West aggression.

2. Parts of the British establishment got very close to the Nazis. Some thought they were an important bulwark against communism and others were simply seduced by their power or shared their antisemitism. As a result, a blind eye was turned to all the evidence that Hitler was preparing to start a war and commit genocide. It was assumed that, because these people were humans who enjoyed nice wine and food and who hated Stalin, they couldn’t mean a lot of the aggressive and maniacal things that they said. Putin had been talking about rebuilding the Russian empire for years while escalating repression internally, and yet parts of the British establishment have been content to ignore these warning signs in favour of taking the money of Putin’s people, allowing themselves to be seduced by their power and wealth.

3. Hitler began imposing anti-Jewish laws in 1933 and violated the Treaty of Versailles by invading the Rhineland in 1936. There was no response from the other European powers and Germany committed genocide and continued aggressive expansion over the following years until it invaded Poland and Britain declared war in response, marking the start of World War II. Putin’s aggression internally in Chechnya and externally in Georgia and Syria and in Ukraine, in 2014, has not been met with any response. The West similarly had no response towards repression within Russia. Now Russia has mounted a full and bloody invasion of Ukraine to destroy a sovereign country while imposing strict controls on media and social media internally, and the West has only begun to react. At least in the case of World War II, Britain took the opportunity of the years prior to the invasion of Poland to rearm. This time, we and others in NATO and in Europe divested from our militaries.

4. World War II started when Britain and France declared war in response to Germany’s invasion of Poland. Britain was not the aggressor but we decided when the red line had been crossed, that red line being the security guarantee we had given Poland. At the time, we were members of the League of Nations formed after WWI, but the League of Nations failed to prevent German rearmament and aggression. However, despite the League of Nations’ failure, Britain stepped in. Now, Ukraine is an ally and we are also members of NATO. NATO has failed to prevent Russia starting a major European war and the lesson from WWII is that that does not mean we lack agency. We can act. Whether we should or not is another question, but it’s wrong to state that our membership of NATO binds us against action.

5. Finally, in the build up to WWII, Europe and the US ignored Japan’s rearmament, aggressive ideology and the threat of its entry into a major war. We are now kicking ourselves that we did not react to Russia’s build up towards starting a European war, but we are not yet discussing how we can reduce the risk of an aggressive Europe-Asia alliance, this time in the form of Russia-China rather than Germany-Japan.

We have said ‘never again’ and yet failed to react to the most blatant signs that it was happening again. Ahead of WWII our sluggish response was due to fear of war after the devastation of WWI. This time, Russian money was free flowing, we became hooked on Russian energy exports and Russian aggression simply did not fit into the simple and inaccurate story the West had been telling itself since the end of the Cold War, which are much weaker excuses.

Of course, there are big differences, nuclear weapons hugely increase the costs of missteps, NATO is much stronger than Poland’s pre-WWII alliances with the UK and France, Europe’s economy is massively intertwined with Russia and China – for energy and manufacturing respectively, Putin potentially has a way back from this war even if he loses, unlike Hitler, and China can act with near impunity. However, for a country and continent obsessed with WWII, we do not seem to have learned a thing.