I am a little over halfway through this biography, and am now just to the events of summer 1938 to August 1939--those leading to the very edge of what would become the most destructive war in human history. I am struck by Hitler's success in essentially blackmailing the world, in order to annex first Austria, then the German-Czechoslovakian territory of the Sudetenland, and then Czechoslovakia itself, all in the space of less than a year. The European nations were so afraid of another war, such as what they endured in 1914-18, that they sought appeasement at nearly all costs. The result, of course, was only to strengthen Germany's position and truly set the stage for the next conflict.
I think there's a lesson there.
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