"Over the Edge"

Today we finished watching "Over the Edge".  This video is about the leading up to WWII.  It started out talking about the use of the Summer Olympics by the Germans.  With everyone watching their country, they tried to project an image of the new German, one who was successful and proud.  The only problem that Hitler encountered throughout the olympics was the winning of a black runner from America.  When he won, Hitler got up and left the arena.  This was because of his strong anti - semitism.  In Germany at the time, Hitler was using mass media to brainwash the people of Germany into thinking that Germany was a great place and that they should follow him and his ideas.  He did this by putting radios everywhere even in the streets so everyone would hear what was being broadcasted.  In 1938 Hitler was threatening to take over Czechoslovakia.  Chamberlin, the British prime minister, flew to Germany to have a meeting with Hitler.  He ended up making a deal with him that after Czech, he couldn't take over any other areas.  Chamberlin was celebrated greatly because of this since nobody wanted anther war.  But Hitler didn't carry through with this agreement.  Even so, other countries didn't take any military actions soon after because nobody wanted another war just 20 years after WWI.  So they kept giving Hitler what he wanted.  Eventually, war seemed inevitable. Soon after the people of America started to realize how big of a problem the anti-Jew attitude had become.  One Jewish boy shot a German official, and as a result the people of Germany lit on fire dozens of synagogues in Germany.  It was sort of like a wake up call to Americans, but it still wasn't motivation enough to get directly involved.  Though, America did lend and lease arms to the countries fighting Germany.  There was an incident the movie talked about where a ship called the Sy. Louis, filled with Jewish Germans, landed in America, but Roosevelt didn't let them come into America because he didn't want to spend money and time on them when he had bigger issues to deal with.  As a result they had to go back to Europe and 600 out of 900 were killed.   Finally, America made a peace time draft and started training soldiers to fight.  At the time though America's military was very weak and didn't have that much money so they trained with wooden guns and fake tanks. And that was where the documentary ended.  Do you think that the European nations should have appeased Hitler so much, or should they have taken military action?