ABSTRACT
The traditional power-politics view which dominated the analysis of international relations before World War I was indeed not quite so un-sympathetic to the needs of preemption. A preemption or preventive war is typically regarded as too degrading to be admitted as the possible or likely action of a democracy. The Fuhrer was trying to confuse and win some of the world's sympathy, not by claiming that he was preempting an imminent Polish attack, but actually rebuffing an attack. An act of preemption or preventive war will thus always be judged in context, and not just in the abstract. Given how odious the German occupation of Poland and Western Europe was to be, and given how the war expanded in 1941, with Adolf Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union and the Japanese attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, almost no one would later condemn Churchill's initiative.
