The failure of governments to respond in time was etched even more strongly in memory by the events of the 1930s. The year 1956 marked the twentieth anniversary of Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, in violation of treaty obligations. The British and French could have stopped the German dictator in 1936. Hitler would have lost his momentum and his prestige, he might even have been toppled, and then tens of millions of people would not have died. But the Western powers did not act. Again in 1938, the Western nations failed to back Czechoslovakia, and instead appeased Hitler at Munich.
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