History is full of moments where an incident, claim, or allegation was used as a pretext to justify actions that were likely planned or desired anyway.
A staged attack on a radio station near the border in 1939 was a pretext used by Hitler to portray Poland as the aggressor and justify his invasion of Poland.
The Reichstag fire in 1933 was a pretext used by the Nazis to justify emergency measures that suspended key civil liberties and enabled mass repression.
She didn’t need a pretext—she simply didn’t want to go.
They searched the car on the pretext of a routine check.
The complaint was just a pretext to start an argument.
He used a busy schedule as a pretext to avoid the meeting.
