Diplomacy can be worse than bombing

IT is all very well for Jeremy Corbyn to say “diplomacy not bombing”, much the same as Neville Chamberlain said in the Munich Agreement of 1938.

What happens when diplomacy is used as a delaying tactic while more innocents are exterminated? Do we condone atrocity while the perpetrators clear their decks and hide the evidence, as Germany “sanitised” Germany prior to the 1936 Olympic Games and afterwards, resumed concentration camp detentions for Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and political dissidents?

Not only that, but Germany went on to commence a programme of euthanasia against the physically and mentally infirm. Should we have debated the moral high ground regarding these actions?

Actually, we did – in the Munich Agreement – a worthless piece of paper. Diplomacy only served to protect Germany’s evil actions.

I am condemning 1930s Germany for these actions because, guess what, Germany voted the National Socialist Party to power to act in the name of the German people.

Throughout the 1930s the majority of German people supported Hitler and voted him into power. OK, in 1919 the Versailles Treaty’s punishing conditions thrust ruin upon Germany, creating an atmosphere ripe for the cult of a nationalist saviour – but guess what, the Versailles Treaty was a supreme act of catastrophic diplomacy which was directly responsible for World War II.

Sometimes diplomacy does more harm than bombing. Vance Broad Port Talbot