Eastern Europeans aren’t happy with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Russian policy, and they’re taking to one of the most public platforms to show it—Twitter.

Donald Tusk, former prime minister of Poland and current president of the European Council, implied Merkel was guilty of “appeasement” in a tweet last month.

https://twitter.com/eucopresident/status/559072566577754114

Then on February 7, one day after Ms. Merkel and French President François Hollande met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevičius tweeted “‘Sudetenland’ in 1938 was supposed to appease aggressor. We know the results,” in another thinly veiled criticism of Ms. Merkel.

https://twitter.com/LinkeviciusL/status/563960427340914688

United States Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain made the comparison more explicit in his speech at the Munich Security Conference last weekend. “History shows us that dictators will always take more if you let them,” he said, adding, “They will not be dissuaded from their brutal behavior when you fly to meet them to Moscow—just as leaders once flew to this city.”

Most direct was the chess-grandmaster-turned-anti-Putin-advocate Garry Kasparov, who said toward the end of last year, “My problem is today you have so many politicians lining up to become a new Chamberlain. Where are the Churchills?”

Several more hawkish writers and thinkers have labeled Putin as this generation’s Hitler. As Angela Merkel returned from Minsk on February 12 with a piece of paper guaranteeing peace after negotiating all night with Putin, it is worth asking the question: Is she this generation’s Chamberlain?

Germany’s Strength and Weakness

The fact that this question is being asked at all is, by itself, significant. For the past few decades, no German leader could have been called “a new Chamberlain” simply because no one looked to Germany to lead the free world in negotiating with a dictator.

In the 1930s, the West looked to Neville Chamberlain to take the lead in negotiations with Adolf Hitler. America was too self-absorbed and had no interest in leading anything; and France, with its decades-long enmity with Germany, was seen as incapable of being impartial.

Today, Merkel is in Chamberlain’s position. As the de facto leader of Europe the world looks to her to take the lead in any negotiation with Putin, and Europe looks to her to lead its response. The fact that it is Merkel in the Chamberlain-like role, not President Hollande or Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron speaks to Germany’s newfound strength.

“In Europe, Germany is playing a leading but aggressive role,” wrote Stratfor’s George Friedman earlier in the week. “In Ukraine, it is playing a leading but conciliatory role. What is most important is that in both cases, Germany has been forced—more by circumstance than by policy—to play leading roles. This is not comfortable for Germany and certainly not for the rest of Europe.”

But how valid is the comparison between Putin and Hitler? First it’s important to see that, though there are similarities to the 1930s, the situation is not identical. Hitler was a brutal dictator; Putin may be an authoritarian dictator, but he is not a genocidal maniac like Hitler was. While his ambitions in Ukraine do have some roots in a belief in pan-Slavic unity and perhaps even in an inherent superiority of the Russian race, they are more firmly grounded in more rational concepts of strategic necessity—the heartlands of Russia are simply indefensible without Ukraine. That’s not to justify Russia’s actions—the morality of the situation is a separate discussion. But it does make them more understandable than Hitler’s ideological and irrational pursuit of lebensraum.

The Advantages of Appeasement

The comparison between Merkel and Chamberlain is similar—they have their parallels, along with some important differences. Like Chamberlain, Merkel’s relatively soft treatment of Russia is very popular at home. The approval ratings of Ms. Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier are higher than that of almost any other leaders in the Western world, 70 and 71 percent respectively.

But this time there is a strong case that Merkel’s policy of negotiation is more than just the popular course of action, but actually the correct one, at least for Germany. One argument often made by apologists for Chamberlain is that his appeasement bought time for Britain to rearm. In Chamberlain’s case, this argument is easy to dismiss. When he returned from Munich in 1938, he spoke of “Peace in our time,” not “I bought us some time.” And even if this had been Chamberlain’s policy, it was not a good one—it would have been far easier to confront Hitler sooner, rather than later.

But Merkel’s case is different. Time is against Russia. Its population is in decline and its working-age population is forecast to fall 25 percent by 2050. Its economy relies on oil and gas that will at some point run out, or at least become harder and more expensive to extract. Its military relies heavily on aging Soviet hardware—the bulk of Russia’s large ocean-going warships, for example, are Soviet vessels soon due for decommissioning, with few new ships in the pipeline to replace them.

In other words, if Russia wants to conquer a few Eastern European countries to give itself some strategic depth, now is the time to do it.

For Germany, the situation is reversed. It too has its demographic problems, but nowhere near the scale of Russia’s. Europe has spent the last 20 years since the Cold War disarming. Only now is it starting to turn that around.

The further east you go, the faster that process is happening. Poland bought over 100 used tanks from Germany in late 2013 and is overhauling its current armored vehicles, giving it one of Europe’s most impressive tank forces.

Now Germany is working on its tanks. In December, it received its first updated Leopard 2A7 tanks. Here, the upgrades are based mainly on the experience of other nations in Afghanistan. But the German Army is planning on another upgrade. Toward the end of last year the German parliament’s budget committee called for an increase in military spending, an increase in the number of tanks and armored vehicles owned by the German Army, and even for the development of a whole new battle tank, a Leopard 3 program. The army’s previous targets of operating 225 Leopard 2 tanks and 190 Boxer armored vehicles were no longer sufficient, it said.

Though still in the early stages, the call for a Leopard 3 is significant. Work on the Leopard 2 began in 1974, and the first tanks entered service in 1979. Over 25 years later, and after numerous upgrades, it is regarded as one of the best tanks in the world. By talking about a new tank program, it’s clear that German lawmakers do not regard the Ukraine crisis as a passing threat that will blow over in six months.

This new demand for tanks is quite a turnaround. As recently as January last year, the United States Army said that tanks aren’t really effective for modern warfare, and that it doesn’t need them. Around the same time, the Dutch agreed to sell the last of their tanks to Finland. Now the Dutch are having second thoughts.

In some ways the U.S. Army was right—tanks aren’t great at hunting down individual terrorists across hundreds of miles of desert or mountains. The fact that Europe is reconsidering the need for tanks shows that it no longer thinks this is the only type of war it has to prepare for. The main reason for owning tanks in Europe is to fight, or deter, Russia.

Europe’s Unique Vulnerability

Perhaps an even bigger reason Germany may be right to play for time is the euro crisis. The unity of the eurozone is especially vulnerable right now. A bit of cash from Russia, in the right place, could fracture the whole currency union and buy Russia some key allies embedded in the heart of Europe.

Greece is openly threatening Germany that if its demands are not met, it will turn to Russia. “We want a deal. But if there is no deal, and if we see that Germany remains rigid and wants to blow Europe apart, then we will have to go to Plan B,” Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said on February 10.

“We have other ways of finding money. It could be the United States at best, it could be Russia, it could be China or other countries,” he said.

“There have been proposals, offers I would say, from Russia, recently after the election, for economic support, as well as from China regarding help, investment possibilities,” Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Nikos Chountis said the same day. “We have not asked for it,” he continued. “It’s on the table. We’re discussing it”

Cyprus, meanwhile, is offering to allow Russia expanded access to its military bases, though it denies the rumors that surfaced earlier in the week that it would allow Russian bases on its territory.

If Greece or Cyprus quit the eurozone and, with Russian help, made a successful recovery, not only would it give Russia a significant new ally, but it would prompt a slew of southern European countries to follow suit. The eurozone, so vital for Germany’s export-based economy, could collapse.

The financial sanctions on Russia mean it has less spare cash to use for such an economic assault, which could be why Germany supported the sanctions in the first place. But if it can find the money, Russia has the opportunity to do irreparable damage to Germany. Now, of all times, Germany does not want to make Russia an enemy.

There is another World War ii parallel here. Currently, Germany does not want Russia to disrupt the economic union it heads in Europe—more out of economic self-interest than out of a desire to dominate other nations. At the same time, Russia does not want Germany to disrupt its attempts to regain influence in Ukraine and other Eastern European nations.

Prior to World War ii, the two nations were in a roughly similar predicament. Germany wanted to take Poland and other Central and Eastern European nations. It knew Russia could stop or at least heavily disrupt this. So both nations signed the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

Appeasing a Bully

If Merkel is right in her course of action, what about those who say that appeasing a bully only makes him more aggressive.

They too are probably right. The West’s response to Russia’s invasion of a sovereign country and unilaterally changing Europe’s postwar borders, something usually regarded as sacrosanct, has been mild to say the least. Britain, America and France are even bound by treaty to defend Ukraine.

As noted earlier, time is against Russia. No matter how hard it is for Russia to expand now, it will be much harder in five or 10 years’ time. Putin has every reason to go all-out to give Russia a defensible frontier now, while he still can.

This sets Germany up for another potential parallel with 1930s Britain. During the ’30s, Winston Churchill was very unpopular. When he spoke out against Chamberlain’s Munich agreement with Hitler, he was booed down in the House of Commons. He struggled to get newspapers to print his warnings. That changed dramatically once he was proven right; to this day, he is one of Britain’s most-loved leaders.

A similar dynamic is possible in Germany. A conciliatory approach may be very popular now, but if and when that does not stop Putin, public opinion would swing rapidly behind someone more aggressive.

Here lies the biggest danger in Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. The result will not simply be a more aggressive Russia, but a similarly assertive Europe.

Europe is a mess right now. Some nations’ militaries are barely better than a joke. The eurozone seems so fragile that at times it looks like a robust sneeze from Putin would destroy it. But Putin’s actions in Ukraine have put Europe on notice. This can’t continue much longer. In negotiating with Putin, Merkel may have just bought the Continent the time it needs to get its act together. For more on how this could happen, read our article “Russia: Triggering Europe to Unite.”