“Europe – your name is appeasement!” wrote Henryk M. Broder a few days ago in Der Welt. It’s a sentence that one cannot forget, because it’s so terribly correct. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives. The allies in England and France put off action too long, until they realized that one can’t contain Adolf Hitler. One must fight him. Appeasement stabilized Soviet Communism and the German Democratic Republic, in that a large segment of Europe explained away state oppression as the result of ideological differences.

Appeasement lamed Europe, as genocide ravaged Bosnia and Kosovo. One debated for as long as it took, until the Americans did our work there. European appeasement, tarnished by the concept of equidistance, relativized the suicide-bombing fundamentalist Palestinians in Israel, instead of supporting the only democracy in the Middle East.

Appeasement ruled the day, when Europe looked away from the 300,000 murdered victims of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and in peaceful self-righteousness gave President Bush bad grades. And it is, in the end, appeasement, in its most grotesque form, when the escalating violence of fundamentalists in Holland and elsewhere is met in Germany with the idea to introduce a Muslim holiday to the calendar, after all.

What must happen for the European public and the political leaders to realize: A form of crusade is being waged, an especially perfidious one, against civilians, and against our free, open, Western society. There is under way a total attack on our entire system by fanatical Muslims.

It is a conflict that, based on all indications, will last longer than the military conflicts of the last 100 years and is waged by an adversary that won’t restrain itself in reaction to tolerance and accommodation, but instead interprets such gestures as signs of weakness, which spurs it on.

Two American presidents of the recent past had the courage to be decidedly anti-appeasement: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Reagan ended the Cold War. Mr. Bush recognized – with the support only of the Social Democrat, Prime Minister Blair – the danger of Islamicist fighters against democracy. His historical role will be valued in less time than one might think.

Europe, meanwhile, makes itself comfortable in its multicultural corner, instead of defending the values of liberal society with confidence and acting in the area of conflict as a center of power among the world powers – America and Communist China.

We profile ourselves as the world masters of tolerance against the intolerant, as Otto Schily rightly said. Why? Because we’re so moral? Instead, I fear, it’s because we’re so materialistic.

Mr. Bush is risking for his politics a currency devaluation, a too-high deficit, and a massive burden on the domestic economy – because it’s a question of losing everything.

Indeed, while the allegedly so materialistic “robber capitalists” in America know their priorities, we protect only the fruits of our social welfare system. Just don’t get mixed up in that; it could get expensive. Wouldn’t we all rather discuss the 35-hour week, the cost of dental insurance, and listen to the television pastors who want to reach out their hands to the murderers?

Europe reminds one sometimes of an elderly aunt who lays a shaky hand on her last jewels while a robber breaks into the neighbor’s house. Europe, your name is cowardice.

Mr. Döpfner is chief executive officer of Axel Springer AG, Germany’s largest newspaper publisher.