It is easy today to look back on the 1930s and marvel at Britain’s failure to take action to escape the calamity that was brewing in Europe. To think that if you were alive in the 1930s you would have read the signs and responded differently.

If this is the case, then you don’t understand human nature.

As each year passed in the 1930s, evidence showing that a massive catastrophe was inevitable became ever more plenteous and irrefutable. There were Hitler’s munitions factories; his steadily growing army; his rejection of Versailles and the invasion of the Rhineland, then Austria, then Czechoslovakia; the regular and public persecution of Jews and, lastly, the führer’s own promises.

Despite the evidence, Britain slumbered.

In March 1935, Hitler formally rejected the Treaty of Versailles. That same month he officially announced the formation of the German Luftwaffe (air force) and the implementation of conscription for all German youth. Writing in the Strand about the “full terror of this revelation,” Winston Churchill warned the West that Hitler was putting Germany on a war footing.

The British slept.

A few weeks after announcing the existence of the Luftwaffe, Hitler invited British government officials to Berlin. Here, he told British politicians face to face that the Reich had “reached parity with Great Britain as far as their respective air forces were concerned.” In fact, Hitler at the time had been misinformed about the strength of the Royal Air Force and had overestimated its size by about 50 percent. In reality, Germany’s air force was much larger than Britain’s!

Surely such a significant disparity awoke slumbering Britain, right? “As summer approached and the days grew warmer,” wrote William Manchester in The Last Lion, “it was often difficult to find any movement at all in Whitehall.” The British government, together with the people, remained apathetic, doing remarkably little to close the growing gap between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force.

A year later, on March 7, 1936, 22,000 German soldiers, impeccably dressed, their newly minted weapons cocked, marched under the cover of fog and darkness into the Rhineland. By noon the military coup was complete and Hitler, standing before the Reichstag, announced that he had “reestablished … the absolute and unrestricted sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland.”

Britain cringed, but unfazed by the menace on the Rhine soon fell back to sleep.

In March 1938, the Reich army was once again on the march. On March 11, while the German foreign minister was having lunch with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in London, German soldiers closed the border at Salzburg and began amassing battalions of troops along the frontier between the two countries. Three days later, Hitler swallowed Austria, giving the expanding German Reich an added 7 million subjects and control of valuable strategic territory.

In Britain, the government, the media and the people cringed—but then fell back to sleep!

Later that year, during the night of Nov. 9, 1938, the world and German Jews in particular were given another taste of what Hitler had in store for the future. There is no official tally of the number of acts of pillaging, rape and murder of Jews the night of Kristallnacht, but it was at the time the greatest pogrom in history.

Germany’s Jews were terrified, but most chose to continue living in the jaws of the beast that would eventually devour them!

Weeks after Hitler gobbled up Austria, it was apparent that, driven by an insatiable appetite for Lebensraum (living space), he had set his gaze on Czechoslovakia. By the end of 1938, the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia had fallen to the German maw. Still not content, Hitler amassed troops and continued to impose his demands on weak-willed Britain and France. By March 1939, he had successfully devoured the entire nation of Czechoslovakia.

Finally in the spring of 1939, years after Hitler had begun churning out weapons and soldiers, breaking treaties, invading neighbors, and killing Jews, Britain began to muster a meaningful response to the inevitable disaster brewing in Europe. Even then, it wasn’t until Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 that all of Britain was convinced beyond question that war was upon them!

It wasn’t till the calamity became reality that Britain finally woke up!

Years later, we look back on this history and marvel at the stunning failure of Britain and the West to recognize and respond to the menace of Nazi Germany. Looking back, we wonder at the German Jews who endured persecution throughout the 1930s yet chose not to flee Nazi Germany. We think it remarkable how Britain, France and the German Jews for years watched the actions of the German Reich, and even occasionally tasted life under the German jackboot, yet never took the threat seriously enough to respond with vigorous, meaningful actions—actions that might have helped prevent, or at least mitigate, the inevitable calamity!

We marvel.

But we are no different.

Consider the U.S. economy, for example. America stands on the threshold of the greatest depression in history. The U.S. dollar is plunging in value. America’s national debt is almost 100 percent of gross domestic product. S&P, Moody’s and Fitch are for the first time in history threatening to downgrade its credit rating. Its biggest creditors are threatening to call in its loans and the Federal Reserve is creating fiat money out of thin air because America can’t find enough people to lend it money. Russia, China, India, France and Germany all want a new reserve currency not based on the dollar. Meanwhile, the economy is dangerously close to stall speed. Unemployment is stuck above 9 percent. Foreclosures are at or near historic highs, and banks are still taking people’s homes. Possible credit crunch looms. Solvency questions imperil America’s most prestigious financial institutions. Back on Main Street, one in seven Americans rely on food stamps to keep their children fed! Forty-three percent of American households are so broke they spend more than they earn each year—relying on dwindling savings to make up the difference.

These are signs that America is headed for a financial collapse of historic magnitude!

Yet how many people do you know who are responding in a meaningful way?

It’s not just America that is in trouble. Across the world, commodity prices are rocketing; oil is up more than 50 percent from a year ago, silver more than 100 percent, as is coffee and cotton. Oats and wheat are up more than 70 percent. Food prices have increased 40 percent over the past year and are expected to rise by as much as 30 percent over the next 10 years. Today more than 1 billion people, one sixth of humanity, are undernourished.

Added to this, large-scale nature-related disasters are increasing. Across the planet, weather-related disasters are unleashing devastating violence on populated cities and key agricultural regions. It doesn’t matter where you live, you’ve more than likely been affected lately by floods, droughts, earthquakes, wildfires or tornadoes!

And we’re not even scratching the surface of our problems. We live in a world filled with political unrest and upheaval, with government corruption and incompetence, with religious tension and wars between nations, and peoples, and races, and cultures. Inside our nations, daily news feeds reveal that our once-stable societies are falling into lawlessness, disarray and violence. Gangs of rampaging teenagers are terrorizing neighborhoods across America. Horrible and unthinkable crimes are increasingly common. Racial and ethnic tensions are intensifying. The instability and tension is intensifying, you can feel it.

These are signs that our world is in a desperate state—that a calamity is looming!

Yet how many see these problems and are responding in a meaningful way?

In 1935 Winston Churchill, troubled by the widespread apathy in Britain, stood before the House of Commons and attempted to shake the nation from its stupor. “When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now it is thoroughly out of hand,” he warned. “There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It falls into that long dismal catalog of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind.”

Seventy-six years later, Churchill’s warning is just as prescient as it was in 1935!

He continued, “Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” In other words, the failure to recognize and respond to impending calamity before it strikes is a fundamental flaw of human nature!

Chances are, you are making the same mistake that Britain made during the 1930s!

But you can learn from this history and escape the inevitable disasters. There are specific actions—practical, achievable steps—that you can take to avoid the many and inevitable calamities that the evidence, and Bible prophecy, prove are coming upon this world. “Watch ye therefore, and pray always,” Christ says in Luke 21, “that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” Jesus Christ promises divine protection from these terrible disasters!

To receive that protection, to escape the impending world crisis, you must be vigilantly seeking God, continually watching the fulfillment of Bible prophecy and faithfully seeking to draw close to God through prayer and Bible study. God says if you do this—if you put Him, His law and His work first—then He will provide a way of escape!