Regarding the war in Ukraine, understanding and learning from history has always been important, especially now. Sadly, some disregard the study of history. “It’s the past. We can’t live in the past.” Nonsense!
Although an English major, I am a fanatical reader of history, having read over 300 books in the past 30 years, mostly about World War II and the roughly 15 years before and after, to study causes and effects. Like many historians, which does not include this amateur, I am interested in events from my childhood and infancy. Where was I when Pearl Harbor was attacked? I was waiting patiently in the womb, one of the few times I’ve been patient over many years. The Berlin airlift? First grade.
Sometimes, I am bothered by ignorance of history, especially by politicians involved in national policy and foreign affairs. Early in 2024, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene asserted that Vladimir Putin has never said that he would target other European nations if he took Ukraine. Since Ms. Greene is a public figure, I had no qualms about googling her background. When Ronald Reagan used his actor’s talent and proclaimed, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” Greene was likely in middle school. Congresswoman, we old hardliners will need more than your words to convince us of Putin’s trustworthiness.
It doesn’t take a scholar to know that Russia has had the ambition to expand, even as far back as Peter the Great, who ruled between 1682 and 1725. For example, he sought control of the Baltic Sea and controlled Estonia, among other territories. The latter is one of current Baltic countries concerned about Putin’s ambitions beyond Ukraine. My question since reading a Peter the Great biography is simple: Is there something in the Russian psyche that desires a buffer around their borders?
Besides Rep. Greene, I wonder how much politicians under the age of 55 know of the former Soviet Union and its ambitions. As World War II moved toward a European conclusion, Josef Stalin emphasized his desire for security in Eastern Europe. Security? Let’s try hegemony.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) consisted, for example, of Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, among others. Among supposedly “independent” countries were Poland, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Hungary, East Germany and others. Hungary and Czechoslovakia tried to separate from Soviet control in 1956 and 1968, respectively, and were brutally vanquished
What also bothers me is the flirtation with isolationism. It didn’t work in the late 1930s and into 1941.Isolationists changed their minds quickly, of course, after the Pearl Harbor attack. Now, we have leaving NATO and even the United Nations floating in the “politisphere.”
President Donald Trump has displayed a lack of historical knowledge in the recent past. One is his view that Adolf Hitler’s generals were more loyal than America’s current generals. German generals, including Erwin “Desert Fox” Rommel, attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler at his Wolf’s Lair meeting place on July 20, 1944. Loyal generals?
Trump compounded the error by claiming that the Ukraine war is “far more important to Europe than it is to us, and that there’s a very big, beautiful ocean as separation.” How about people along East Coast shores in 1940 and 1941 watching after dark as Nazi submarines torpedoed U.S. merchant ships taking weaponry and supplies to Great Britain?
Shakespeare’s character Antonio in “The Tempest” says, “What’s past is prologue.” Learn from history or suffer from the ignorance of it.
Bob Sheridan is a retired English teacher and amateur historian living in Lyndhurst.
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