After selling out Czechoslovakia, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to England a hero. Holding aloft a copy of the worthless agreement he had signed with Germany’s dictator, Adolf Hitler, he told cheering crowds in London: “I believe it is peace for our time.”
Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill knew better, predicting: “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.”
Hitler—still planning more conquests—also knew better. Speaking of the British and French leaders he had intimidated at Munich, he later asserted: “Our enemies are little worms. I saw them at Munich.”
In March, 1939, the German army occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia.
Chamberlain would soon be seen as a naive weakling—even before bombs started falling on London.
Hitler next turned his attention—and demands—to Poland. But, this time, France and Britain refused to be intimidated—and pledged to go to war if Hitler invaded Poland.
Adolf Hitler and his generals
Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939—unintentionally triggering World War II.
In time, historians and statesmen would regard Munich as an object lesson in the futility—and danger—in appeasing evil and aggression.
But for the postwar Republican party, Hitler’s my-way-or-else “negotiating” methods would become standard operating procedure.
President Donald J. Trump used precisely the same “negotiating” style during his December 11, 2018 Oval Office meeting with then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY).
And, true to his love of publicity, Trump made sure the meeting was televised live.
Nancy Pelosi
Trump opened with on a positive note: “We’ve actually worked very hard on a couple of things that are happening. Criminal justice reform…[Republican Kentucky U.S. Senator] Mitch McConnell and the group, we’re going to be putting it up for a vote. We have great Democrat support, great Republican support.”
But he soon moved to the matter he truly cared about: Demanding $5.6 billion to create a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border: “And one way or the other, it’s going to get built. I’d like not to see a government closing, a shutdown. We will see what happens over the next short period of time.”
“One way or the other”—“so doer so”—was a favorite phrase of Adolf Hitler’s, meaning: If he couldn’t bully his opponents into surrendering, he would use violence.
PELOSI: “I think the American people recognize that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything, and that you should not have a Trump shutdown. You have the Senate. You have the House of Representatives. You have the votes. You should pass it right now.”
Trump claimed he could get “Wall” legislation passed in the House but admitted he didn’t have the 60 votes he needed in the Senate.
PELOSI: “Well, the fact is you can get it started that way.”
Trump then contradicted himself: “The House we can get passed very easily, and we do.”
PELOSI: “Okay, then do it.”
Trump kept insisting that “the House would give me the vote if I wanted it.”
PELOSI: “Well, let’s take the vote and we’ll find out.”
SCHUMER: “We do not want to shut down the government. You have called 20 times to shut down the government….We want to come to an agreement. If we can’t come to an agreement, we have solutions that will pass the House and Senate right now, and will not shut down the government. And that’s what we’re urging you to do. Not threaten to shut down the government because you can’t get your way.”
Charles Schumer
TRUMP: “We need border security. And I think we all agree that we need border security.”
SCHUMER: “Yes, we do.”
TRUMP: “The wall is a part of border security. You can’t have very good border security without the wall.”
PELOSI: “That’s simply not true. That is a political promise. Border security is a way to effectively honor our responsibilities.”
By “political promise,” Pelosi meant this is was an appeal Trump had made to his hardcore base. which he expected to re-elect him.
SCHUMER: “And the experts say you can do border security without a wall, which is wasteful and doesn’t solve the problem.”
TRUMP: “It totally solves the problem.”
Schumer then goaded Trump into taking responsibility for closing down the government if he didn’t get funding for his border wall.
TRUMP: “I’ll take it. You know what I’ll say: Yes, if we don’t get what we want, one way or the other…I will shut down the government. Absolutely.”
Thus, Schumer guaranteed that any government shutdown during the Christmas season would be blamed on Trump.
But Republican leaders in Congress didn’t want to be blamed for shutting down the government. They seemed to persuade him to back away from his threat. The Senate passed a short-term funding measure without Trump’s wall money.
Vice President Mike Pence told lawmakers that Trump was open to approving it
Then the Fox News Network stepped in.