The world is sleepwalking again
The story of Poland in the 20th century is tragic, heroic and redemptive.
It is a story of mass death, subjugation, epic suffering, and ultimately, freedom.
The winds of war are blowing through Europe again. They can always be felt in Poland.
Poland remembers what happened, and it is never far away.
Three years ago, I wrote that every American should know the name of Polish prime minister Donald Tusk. As reported in El País in March 2024, he said something that should be heard by all of us:
Donald Tusk, 66, has an image of his childhood etched in his memory. It is a photograph that was in his family home in Sopot, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, next to his hometown: a beach full of smiling, happy people.
The snapshot was taken on August 31, 1939.
“A dozen hours later, five kilometers away, the Second World War began,” he remembers.
The Polish prime minister warns that Europe is once again “in a pre-war era” and must get ready to defend itself.
“What is most worrying now is that literally any scenario is possible.
We have not had a situation like this since 1945. I know it sounds devastating, especially to people of the younger generation, but we have to mentally get used to a new era. We are in a pre-war era. I don’t exaggerate. This is becoming more and more apparent every day.”
I have written a few times about John F. Kennedy, and referenced the fantastic first volume of Frederick Logevall’s biography that opens with 22-year-old John Kennedy looking down on a Berlin street from a balcony at the Hotel Adlon.
“JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917 - 1956” recounts a 22-year-old Harvard senior processing the relentless propaganda that warned of imminent Polish aggression against the Reich. Logevall paints a vivid picture of John Kennedy looking at a mosaic of Nazi uniforms. They were olive, green, black, brown, blue, while the future president wondered if another August would yield to world war.
What we are witnessing in this moment — and the questions it raises — are not new, and our unease is not novel.
When 80 million people were dead around the world six years later Robert Jackson, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, a former US attorney general and solicitor general, rose before an international tribunal. He delivered the following words at the closing argument, as the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes trial:
It is common to think of our own time as standing at the apex of civilization, from which the deficiencies of preceding ages may patronizingly be viewed in the light of what is assumed to be "progress." The reality is that in the long perspective of history the present century will not hold an admirable position, unless its second half is to redeem its first.
These two-score years in the twentieth century will be recorded in the book of years as one of the most bloody in all annals. Two World Wars have left a legacy of dead which number more than all the armies engaged in any way that made ancient or medieval history.
No half-century ever witnessed slaughter on such a scale, such cruelties and inhumanities, such wholesale deportations of peoples into slavery, such annihilations of minorities.
The terror of Torquemada pales before the Nazi Inquisition. These deeds are the overshadowing historical facts by which generations to come will remember this decade.
If we cannot eliminate the causes and prevent the repetition of these barbaric events, it is not an irresponsible prophecy to say that this twentieth century may yet succeed in bringing the doom of civilization.
Incredibly, the amnesia has settled over much of the free world, while hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors and veterans of the Second World War are still alive, at the twilight of long human life spans. The greatest event in human history that shattered the world seems to have been forgotten.
Its lessons and warnings have been dismissed.
Donald Trump surrounded himself with fools and self-interested hacks, and they have begun a world war.
The elections in 93 days are the most important in American history because, unless a check is imposed on Trump, we will suffer pain like no generation of Americans has felt in an extremely long time.
We are living at the edge of a catastrophe that was chosen by the American people.
We will rue the day, and we are all out of time.
This is the list of belligerent nations in two combining theaters of war:
United States of America
Israel
Iran
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
Kuwait
Bahrain
Yemen
Lebanon
Iraq
United Kingdom
Turkey
Ukraine
Russia
China
North Korea
With at least a dozen non-state actors involved, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis
NATO hovering on the periphery, with Russian incursions now routine over Poland, Romania and the Baltics
I do wonder if people in this country understand things. Take Mississippi, for example. It has been electing Republicans for two generations now. What has it gotten? Last in education. Last in healthcare. Last in quality of life. Last in life expectancy.
But look no further than MAGA Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, who will be re-elected this Fall by a huge margin. You only need a few leaders around the world to look this way and say you’re a laughingstock.
I can see why ‘woke’ has been blasted so badly, the regime wants Americans to choose to roll over and stay asleep. Wake Up!