The world awakened on Saturday, February 26, to amazement: Vladimir Putin’s professional battalions had failed to conquer Ukraine’s citizen soldiers.
My mind went back to one of Winston Churchill’s great speeches. On June 4, 1940, after the Dunkirk evacuation, he spoke to Parliament about Britain’s defense against German invasion:
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air,
we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender . . . .
Ukraine’s president has adopted this defense. As Churchill would have said, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s courage is sublime.
Germany did not invade Britain. In September 1940, Britain defeated the German Luftwaffe (air force) in the Battle of Britain.

The dictator Adolph Hitler then turned his aggression to Russia.
Almost alone among members of NATO, Germany refused to provide weapons to Ukraine’s defense. That came 80 years after Germany pulled one of the great double-crosses of all time – the invasion of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, on June 22, 1942. The Germans killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians until the war ended in 1945. A responsible Germany should have provided all of Ukraine’s military needs. For shame.

The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had entered a non-aggression pact in 1939. That allowed the Germans and the Russians to carve up Poland after the German invasion of September 1, 1939 – the beginning of World War II.
The Russians then murdered hundreds of captive Polish officers. Everyone knows about the millions of German atrocities.
Let us hope the members of NATO, including the United States, support Ukraine’s defense without flinching.