It is one of the great turning points in history that a lot of people didn’t see it coming – or didn’t want to see it coming. Most residents of the “proud tower”, as US historian Barbara Tuchman called mighty Europe before the First World War in 1914, were convinced that this tower would never collapse. The catastrophe of the Great Depression was less than a year away when President Herbert Hoover declared at his inauguration in 1929: “In no country on earth are the fruits of progress so certain” as in the United States. And in September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain shouted to an enthusiastic public that he was in the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler peace for our time created: “Go home and get a good night’s sleep.” A year later, the awakening was even more terrible.
Europe must learn to defend itself alone – opinion
