The Price of Temporizing.

With regard to the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s refusal to allow inspections of his nuclear program supplied the reasons for our invasion, which could be called a preventive war. Now, it is a curious fact that a preventive war against Hitler during the 1930s could have prevented the slaughter of the White Rose students, about 6 million Jews, and millions of others. That window of opportunity opened in March 1936, when Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded the Rhineland. Under the terms of the World War I armistice, that area was to remain a demilitarized zone, like the DMZ that separates North and South Korea today. Against the advice of his generals, who knew they didn’t yet have the forces to fight neighboring France, Hitler marched his troops into the Rhineland anyway. Had the French intervened – which they were legally entitled to do - they would have beaten the Germans, and that would probably have been the end of Hitler. But the French government, dominated by leftist pacifists, had decreed that the French armed forces must only be used defensively. So they talked themselves into doing nothing. Hitler’s successful bluff emboldened him to swallow Austria next, then Czecho-Slovakia, and finally Poland. And this is how World War II started: a lot of the blame can be placed on the anti-war movements of the time.

Letter to Oregon's "The World": "'The White Rose' -- Misconstruing Nazi History," republished in John Ray's Of Interest, 10/21/05 (emphasis added).