Netflix film: MUNICH-At the Edge of War

Often, I reflect upon my childhood in the sunny post War boom years; I was born in November of 1945 and grew up in the 1950's during the Uion years when working men made comfortable wages and women who wanted to could stay home and raise their children. So my brother who is two years younger than I am, and I, had a very warm and comfortable childhood, except for our father's drinking and violence. What I mean is we had material comfort and a two parent home. My mother made oatmeal in the morning, and we ate dinner around a dining room table all togetehr in the evening - a full home cooked meal. My mother alwys said that my father worked hard in the cold outdoors and needed a hearty meal. It was true.

The war was over for us, in America, not so much for the people in Europe, the broken, raped, starving and persecuted women, children, and released POWs in Europe who had no place to go home to and no one to go home to. Their leaders had led them like the Pied Piper into fiery destruction. A mad man had come to rule over the German people, and hopeless adn helpless, they followed him into the fiery regions of hell. ,p/> We often forget, if we ever knew that not all the Germans supported the madman Hitler, but the peace loving, rational ones who saw him for what he was became increasingly powerless against the violent and domination crrazed mob, much like in America today. When we looked back a couple of weeks ago, on the January 6th insurrection, we saw the faces of the violence drunk racist and ignorant populace that puts men like Hitler into power.

Frequently, I gloss over the news of the world with only a cursory attention, but last night, I watched a very fine Netflix film which may have played in the theaters, called MUNICH: At the Edge of War. Mostly the plot was built around Neville Chamberlain's meetings adn treaties with Hitler. There is a sub plot about an official who comes into docuents from a meeting between Hitler and his generals that details his true aims, to lie and stall as long as possible while he picks off one weak neighbor after another to gain the "Living Room" his empire (his insane ego) needs. Like many another history buff whith a vague notion of World War II, I had contempt for Chamberlain's capitulation and naievite' and never realized that he had two aims, one to appease a peope weary after losing a generation of men to World War I, and the other to buy time because Britain was in no way ready for another war. He was buying time with other people's land.

But what struck me this time was the similarities with what is going on right now in Europe with Ruggia and Ukraine. Right after the movie I had watched the pbs newshour with Judy Woodruff, and a report on Russia massing troops and armaments at the border of Ukraine, where they have already seized Crimea. NATO has warned Russia but with all the refugee disasters of the wars in Syria and Afhghanistan, Europe doesn't want a war, and after just removing our troups from a ten year debacle in Afghanistan, we don't want a war to Putin has the perfect window to invade and get away with it.

Interestingly, to me, my sister, who works as a waiter, crosses paths with a great number of refugee workers and she works with a small group of Russian/Ukrainian men. Like Ireland with its Northern British/Irish citizenry, and its Republica of Ireland southern citizens, Ukraine has a sizeable population of Russians who dream of Russia returning to its (in their fantasy) Pre-Gorbachev EMPIRE days. They want to see all the Blakan repblics returned to Russian control. It surprises me that with all the economic deprivations and infrastructure woes of the current Russia, Putin would look elsewhere for trouble, but war has always been a good machine for driving industrial production and reducing the surplus poulation plus uniting the poulation and taking their attention away from current internal failures.

On top of that, I feel a "disturbance in the force" to use Star Wars terminology, a kind of masculine tumescence in the world at large, as though suddenly men are becoming more and more belligerant, and warlike. The masculine/domination culture of the Middle East seems to have spread like the corona virus, and men all over are growing beards as masculinity displays, driving big loud trucks in a kind of militaristic display, and forming militias and brotherhoods. It feels as though they are getting ready for something that is coming, another cataclysmic eruption in the human species. Maybe nature, having failed in reducing the cancer of humanity by virus has turned towards war. I am filled with foreboding and a sense that there is nowhere to run, no safe place, no safe future. I will have to do some meditation today to rid myself of this feeling. But like the peaceful German men in the movie MUNICH, I feel as though we are facing a tidal wave and I can't do anything to stop it. I did vote for Biden. In one scene in the movie, a good German has the chance to assassinate Hitler, but being a good man, he cannot summon the murderous impulse to pull the trigger and he knows he has missed his chance to rid the world of a madman and a global disaster by his very humanity. <[/> Things may look the same, but they are always different and this is a different world from the one in the 1930's so chances are just as good that there will be a different outcome this time around, and maybe a better one. Maybe the NATO group plus US, will be a strong enough force to persuade Russia to abandon, even in temporarily, its aggressive plans to invade Ukraine. Let's hope so.

Hopeful Trails (my real Motot is Hope for the Best and Cope with the Rest) Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com