This year is the diamond anniversary of much wickedness: the Spanish Civil War, the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the Berlin Olympic games, the annexation of Ethiopia by Fascist Italy, and the rise of the radically militarist Hirota government in Japan all happened within a few months of 1936. Another greater evil began on August 19, 1936: the Moscow Trials. Until then, totalitarianism had covered itself with a fig leaf of plausibility.
