Denazification can be challenging work, encountering unexpected obstacles and leaving one’s forces bogged down. That is why Vladimir Putin’s special military operation to de-Nazify Ukraine has so far achieved only one Nazi-related goal, by lobbing a missile into the mass grave site where 33,000 Jews were murdered by Hitler’s forces in Kyiv, now a shrine to their memory.
History moves in stops and starts; after a protracted period of mediocre interest it can dramatically accelerate at breath-taking speed. The war in the Ukraine is that exam-paper cliché, a “watershed in history”. It is having an effect as profound as the experience of 9/11. If you doubt that, consider the transformations being effected all around us.
