Shortly after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, I noted in this column and elsewhere that the entire episode—including the fouling of the public space by the aggressor’s genocidal threats and endless disinformation—suggested something of what the 1930s must have been like. A brazen dictator with a talent for rabble-rousing bewitches his own people and paralyzes the political will of those who might be able to deter him. Well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) souls make excuses for the aggressor, while his slick propagandists tell lie after lie about his intentions and the purported wickedness of those in the aggressor’s crosshairs. “It couldn’t happen again,” too many say; “the world learned its lesson in the Great War.”

Of course, it did happen again. And the world bled more profusely because of the myopia of those who could not see what was right in front of them.