The warnings from European leaders about what the coming months could bring are sounding increasingly alarming—and alarmed.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, for example, recently described this moment for Europe as a “pre-war era.” Speaking of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, he declared, “literally any scenario is possible. We haven’t seen a situation like this since 1945.”
World War II was also the analogy used by Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s military committee, when he noted wryly in an interview with a Dutch daily, “Nothing can happen to us, right? We thought that too in May of 1940.” That’s the month when Hitler’s forces invaded the Netherlands and much of Western Europe.