Tag Archives: Poland

If Only “The War” Had Never Happened

I happened to see the second tweet below, the one showcasing an opinion poll from November 1947:

You see, here we are 73 years later, and the Jewish lobby with the compliant msm are constantly putting forward the idea that the 1930s were backward, poor, basically terrible, but that “the war” changed all that. In reality, the latter part of the 1930s was a time of general economic and social advance.

Looking mainly at the UK, the second part of the 1930s was a time when, at least in the South and Midlands, there were job opportunities, new towns and roads being constructed, air routes being laid out, both across Europe and, via Imperial Airways etc, worldwide, using safe and comfortable flying boats.

Across the South of England, people were moving into the detached and semi-detached suburban housing still considered desirable property today, 80-90 years later.

More than that. Advanced thinkers were already laying the intellectual foundations for the Welfare State: decent public housing, a National Health Service etc.

Then came the war. It has been said that, under strict WW2 rationing, perhaps as much as a quarter of the UK population was actually better-fed than it had been in the 1930s, an indication of the social inequality rampant before the war. However, in general, the war impoverished the whole nation (how could it not?). Britain suffered under rationing of various types until the mid-1950s! There is no doubt that poverty and indeed inequality would overall have been ameliorated quicker had the war not “frozen” the social situation.

Before 1939, Britain was taking steps to grant independence to the colonies. The White colonies had already achieved Dominion status. The colonies of black Africa and elsewhere might have been given independence later but on a more secure basis, after sufficient Africans (etc) had achieved the stature capable of running advanced societies and economies. Sadly, that never happened.

“The War”, as UK people still call WW2, was disastrous for most of the peoples, animals, birds etc of the world. Environmental degradation today continues apace, a result, ultimately, of the corruption and inefficiency of the “independent” states formed after WW2.

The peoples of the former colonies have suffered wars, civil wars, banditry, rapacious officialdom, you name it. All because of premature decolonization. Not only in the former British Empire, which attained its greatest territorial extent after the First World War, in 1918. About a third of the world was under British control at that time. Also, there were the colonies of the other European states in Africa and elsewhere, those of France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and the former German colonies (South West Africa, Tanganyika).

How much better a world would we now have were those formerly colonized lands still under European rule, or ruled in collaboration with a large enough and cultured enough African elite built up by the colonial powers over time …Look at Rhodesia up to 1979, and then its decrepit successor-state, Zimbabwe…

This is not just a question for the UK. It is a problem, historical and contemporary, for the world.

In Europe, the UK (and France) might have not given the Poles the worthless “guarantees” of 1939, which led the Poles to imagine that Britain and France would actually fight for Poland. Never happened.

Likewise, after the Fall of France in 1940, Britain might have secured an honourable armistice with the German Reich, so saving the peoples of Western and Central Europe from the massive destruction caused, mainly, by the Allied and Soviet forces during, again mainly, 1941-45. It would also have meant no Soviet takeover of the East and most of the Centre of Europe by Stalin’s Soviet Union in the mid-1940s.

We hear much (much too much) of the Jews, who were, prior to WW2, being allowed to emigrate from Germany and its allied or vassal states. Indeed, the Germans were glad to be rid of them. Well, had there been an armistice in 1940, that emigration would have continued: to the USA, Australia, Palestine etc.

Terrorism after WW2 was a product of the terrorists or “guerrillas” during that war, both those trained and funded by the shambolic British organization, SOE, and by the Soviet Union (the “partisans”). Most postwar “terrorism” from 1945 through to recent times can be traced back readily enough to British, American and Soviet sources.

Had “the War” (in the West) never happened, or been stopped in its tracks in 1940, the Soviet Union would probably have collapsed by 1942, there would have been no massive destruction by Soviet forces (or by the UK/USA air fleets) in the Europe of 1941-45, no Cold War, no Berlin Wall, no East-West proxy wars. The Israeli state and the arrogant Arab and Iranian oil states would have all either been strangled at birth, or kept on a tight rein.

In Britain itself, the neglected historian Correlli Barnett [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlli_Barnett] has made the point that, because of Britain’s having been bled dry by the War, it could not do more than one, or at most two, of its three main policy aims after 1945:

  • keep the Empire;
  • regenerate UK industry and commerce;
  • introduce a Welfare state.

In the end, Britain tried to do all three, but could not fully succeed in any, eventually almost abandoning the Empire and its remnants.

If only there had been no “War”, or a war lasting only a year…

If only.

The 20th of July 2019: thoughts

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Today is the 75th anniversary of the attempt made to assassinate Adolf Hitler at his headquarters in East Prussia, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair), now situated within the borders of post-1945 Poland.

I blogged last year about matters around the event and around those times more generally:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/the-20th-of-july/

What is there to add? Perhaps a reminder that human manifestations on this Earth do not last forever. The film, below, shows what the sprawling headquarters of 1944 is like today: as abandoned and lost as the cities of the Aztecs or the Mayans.

On the other hand, the devastated cities of the Germany of 1944 and 1945 are today thriving governmental, commercial, cultural and residential centres, with populations again in the hundreds of thousands or even millions.

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[above, Dresden in 1945]

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[above, Berlin in 1945; area shown is the Unter den Linden boulevard in central Berlin]

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[above, Berlin in 1945; area shown is the Reichskanzlei or Reich Chancellery]

The above photographs show the devastation resulting from war. Today, those same areas are prosperous, busy, thronged with inhabitants. Some of the old has been replaced, some kept, adapted to contemporary usage.

The same is true of ideas. Both the practical and the spiritual-cultural achievements of National Socialism were huge, enormous, particularly when it is considered that they were achieved within only 6 years of peace, the years 1933-1939. SIX YEARS!

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We do not need to copy or indeed defend everything that was done by, or in the name of, the Reich. Indeed, many of the flaws of the Reich, or supposed flaws, existed and in fact were even more glaring in both the West and the Soviet Union of the 1930s. The Zeitgeist streamed over the world as a whole, like the jetstream.

In 2019, we honour what was good in the Reich, what worked for the German people and the peoples of all Europe. The rest, we do not need. Times move on. Some challenges remain; others, newly emerged, have to be faced for the first time.

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We honour the past and stand ready to create the future.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf%27s_Lair

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gier%C5%82o%C5%BC,_K%C4%99trzyn_County

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Prussia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%99trzyn

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/