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JERUSALEM
v. DANZIG
–-
PALESTINE
v. SUDETENLAND
By Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry (ret'd)
CurryforAmerica.com
Artificially cobbled together cities and nation states usually fail to maintain
historical cohesion. Forced reconciliatory attempts result in temporary,
unstable arrangements which do more harm than good in the long run.
Poland’s
“Free City of
Danzig”
and
Czechoslovakia’s
“Sudetenland”
are two examples which Obama and the United Nations would do well to remember as
they draw up artificial boundaries for
Jerusalem
and
Palestine.
Hopefully they will avoid copying the League of Nations-style weaknesses which
in the past so encouraged aggressors and radicalized their supporters.
One
result of WWI was that in 1920, the
League of Nations
declared the
port
of Danzig
to be a “Free City” – free from the control of either
Germany
or
Poland
-- and placed it under the League’s protection. The Free City included roughly
about two hundred smaller Polish towns and villages and guarded the mouth of the
Vistula
River,
Poland’s
only waterway access to the
Baltic Sea.
Danzig’s
inner city population was mostly German; but the farther out from the center one
traveled the more Polish the population became. From time to time this forced
mixing of ethnic groups, languages and religions often caused national tensions
within Danzig to escalate
Coincident with Hitler’s invasion of
Poland
in 1938, Danzig’s
German population took advantage of the situation and declared that The Free
City of Danzig
had become part of
Germany.
In 1945, Soviet military forces overran
Poland,
defeated the German occupying armies and forced them to withdraw. The German
name “Danzig”
was then discarded and the Polish name “Gdansk”
was adopted.
For
several hundred years the
Sudetenland,
which consisted of the western crescent of
Czechoslovakia,
was part of
Germany
and the Austro-Hungarian Empire – at least until 1866.
After WWI, however, the 1918 Treaty of
Versailles
mandated that the
Sudetenland become
part of
Czechoslovakia.
The
Sudetenland’s
German population strenuously objected. They demanded the right of
self-determination, declared themselves to be German and petitioned the
League of Nations
to let them unite with their German brothers and sisters. The League felt it
knew better, though, and so forced
Sudetenland’s
Germans to become part of
Czechoslovakia
and to speak a language they knew not. As a result, the
Sudetenland
was never able to form itself into a single historic region on which to build a
future, independent of
Czechoslovakia.
Years
passed and discontent festered. Finally, in a meeting in
Munich
in September, 1938,
Great Britain
and
France
ceded the ten thousand square miles of western
Czechoslovakia,
known as the
Sudetenland, to
Nazi
Germany.
The excuse was that this was not just another territorial power grab by Hitler,
but that Hitler was only trying to protect the German population of the
Sudetenland.
In
return for this “favor,” Hitler promised not to make any further territorial
claims on
Europe. This was
just about as believable as
Iran’s
claims that its nuclear development program is only for peaceful purposes. A
month later the German Army marched in and took de facto possession of the
Sudetenland.
The League of
Nations did
nothing but talk, just as Obama and the UN are doing now.
Ignoring
the benefit of hindsight, Obama and the UN are trying to come up with some
seemingly great original solution for
Jerusalem
and
Palestine.
But history warns us that forcing religious and ethnic mixings never end up
amicable and fair with all parties equally satisfied.
In fact,
the situation that
Jerusalem
finds itself in today is much like the situation that
Danzig
faced just prior to WWII; the Palestinian situation of today eerily resembles
the conditions that prevailed in pre-WWII
Sudetenland.
Just as the League failed to recognize that Danzig’s and Sudetenland’s
situations were irreconcilable, Obama and the UN seem unable to see that the
Jerusalem and Palestine situations of today may be equally irreconcilable.
Instead, they are trying to blackmail
Israel
into giving up the
West Bank and into
making
Jerusalem
a kind of “Free City” under U.N. sponsorship and protection.
This
artificially created and forcibly imposed solution did not work with
Danzig
and the Sudetenland
prior to WWII, and it won’t work with
Jerusalem
and
Palestine
today. Synthetically created cities and nation states inevitably end up
disasters. The Obama Administration needs to rethink what they are about in
trying to manufacture and manipulate into existence a “Free City of
Jerusalem”
from
Israel’s
diverse populations of Arabs, Druze, Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Throughout history, artificially created cities and nation states have failed to
coalesce into cohesive historical entities. The Free City of
Danzig
and
Czechoslovakia’s
Sudetenland
are perfect examples worthy of careful consideration and conscientious study.
Unfortunately, by their inept and shortsighted handling of today’s
Jerusalem
and Palestinian problems, it seems that Obama and the UN are determined to
repeat histories’ past failures.
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