With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Invoking 'Appeasement,' Republican Candidates Blast Obama At Jewish Forum

WASHINGTON -- Though Wednesday marked the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, speeches by a series of U.S. presidential candidates at the Republican Jewish Coalition rang strongly with rhetoric that applied more to the European theater in the years before the outbreak of World War II.

In speech after speech, five of the six invited GOP candidates invoked the specter of "appeasement," the pre-WWII policy that many historians say emboldened Adolf Hitler to conquer Europe and carry out a full-scale genocide of its Jewish population. U.S. President Barack Obama, the Republicans said, was making a comparable mistake by "appeasing" Iran, "appeasing" Islamist extremists, even "appeasing" other countries who want to take America's place in the world.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum accused the Obama administration of the kind of "appeasement" of Iran that allowed Hitler to invade neighboring countries with impunity.

Michele Bachmann said, in reference to Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that "again a madman is speaking, and it seems the world is again not listening."...

Read entire article at Huffington Post