A Funny Thing Happened in 2012

A Medal NOW?

This is just a quicky, whilst it’s still slightly topical.

It’s dedicated to all those decent, principled people who lost their jobs rather than submit to an unethical mandate or join in the eugenics in hospitals.

Remember, I’m not an expert on anything.

Recently I’ve seen two interesting discussions relating the events of World War 2 to today’s world. One was James Corbett, discussing with Keith Knight¹, Buchanan’s book “Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War” ² which was up to his usual excellent standard; the other was on a rather successful YouTube channel called “Feli from Germany” run by a young lady who largely seems to give talks shedding light on what it is like to live in Germany, advice on going to Germany, and differences between German culture and American (she currently lives in the US). The talk I saw was called “Do Germans Talk About World War II? What Do They Teach About the Holocaust?”. I thought it was intelligently, sensitively and diligently handled by Feli.

I recommend both of these videos, and Buchanan’s book. Lots of people have noticed recently how useful it has been to learn from history - including WW2.

1 Then and Now

Several times over the last couple of years I’ve wanted to bring up my own experience of WW2 to shed light on differences between then and now, and to start to give my view on some features of WW2 of which people are generally unaware.

Although the age of 70 looms nearer than I would like, I was certainly not around in WW2. However I do have personal experience of my parents, both of whom were adults by the end of WW2. My father was a medic in the RAF. But the experience I’d like to share is a conversation with my mother, which I was reminded of in 2012, when Bomber Command were awarded a “clasp” to supplement the “1939-1945 Star” which (as far as I understand) is one of those “campaign medals” meaning you were there and took part.

Why on Earth did it take from the end of WW2 in 1945 until 2012 to get round to giving Bomber Command a specific campaign medal, when those who had taken part were virtually all dead?

Well … before WW1, it had been well established - in the Napoleonic wars for example - that there were limits to what one should descend to, even in warfare. There were rules, laws, and conventions. One of those understandings – although not actual law until 1949 (after the war ended in 1945) - was that warfare should be conducted between the armed services of countries; you don’t attack civilians, in particular children, women and the elderly.

Well, it happens that my mother had explained to me years earlier, that unlike every other group in other so-called “theatres” of the war, Bomber Command had not received a specific campaign medal at the end of the war because the general public’s reaction to Churchill’s decision to deliberately bomb civilians in Germany was that it was an horrific atrocity. No government after that wanted to bring it up again, by awarding Bomber Command a specific medal and reminding people of the episode, risking extreme unpopularity. My mother was well aware that it was “we” who had started bombing civilians (not Germany).

By bombing German cities Churchill eventually goaded Hitler into bombing the London docklands, giving Churchill the excuse for his “Total War” approach (meaning “anything goes”, more or less) and temporarily boosting his popularity to that of a typical war-time leader (90% approval, when it had been very low).

“We” went on to firebomb many cities in Germany and Japan. It’s often thought that the nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima came as a great shock to the Japanese. It tallies with the story that they had been necessary in order to end the war. In fact the Japanese were already seeking terms for surrender, as is quite well known now, and as the American command knew well at the time; but they wanted to show off their two new toys to the Soviets– a plutonium bomb (“fat man”) and a uranium bomb (“little boy”). The conflagrations we had caused in other Japanese cities with firebombing were as bad as or even worse than the destruction in Nagasaki, and the exact technology used to devastate yet another city was not of immediate significance to the Japanese. As a city was firebombed, the fire would rage over the whole city, causing storm-force winds in towards the centre, and flames miles high. People would try and find shelter from the heat, in cellars e.g., but would suffocate as all the oxygen was used up by the fire. Others would be roasted alive. People would get stuck in the melted tarmac roads, and then burst into flames from the heat, standing like living torches. Such a holocaust, caused by Firebombing, was an atrocity in my view.

I can report what my mother said about public perception of bombing civilians. She is human and therefore could be wrong. She was only one person; but this was definitely her experience of what the general populace felt. It is confirmed by e.g. this 2018 story from the BBC (and you can find lots of other references confirming it).

“Campaigners have renewed calls for a dedicated medal to be awarded to Bomber Command veterans. Almost half of the 125,000 personnel serving with Bomber Command lost their lives in World War Two. Those supporting the campaign said it was time the government recognised those who served.

Critics argue a dedicated medal would be inappropriate due to the thousands of German civilians killed in large-scale bombing raids.

Heather Allsworth, who started a petition for a dedicated medal, said: "The veterans of Bomber Command have never received the recognition they deserve."

[Emphasis added.]

“inappropriate due to … civilians killed” tends to confirm my mother’s view that bombing German civilians had been unpopular; but the BBC misses the ethical point. (No suprise there)! The salient fact is not so much that appalling numbers of German civilians were killed, but that they were specifically targetted: they were killed deliberately. This was regarded at the time as an atrocity (even if the man in the street may not have known whether it was a war-crime). It is a war-crime since the 1949 amendment to the Geneva protocol.

How would it strike you if we prosecuted those responsible for the bombing, through a law that was made up after they committed it? That’s what we did to the Germans at the Nuremberg military tribunals.

My mother’s perception also seems to be confirmed to an extent by the simple fact that – uniquely – members of Bomber Command were not given a campaign medal particular to them.

My point in raising this is not to consider whether or not the brave men who put their lives in grave jeopardy by bombing German civilians deserved a medal. It was the highest casualty rate of any unit, at about 50%! By 1943, aircrew, some barely out of their teens, had only a 25% chance of surviving 30 missions! Only service in the infantry in the trenches of the First World War had a comparable fatality rate. It certainly took some courage to get into those planes. On the other hand we told German military at the Nuremberg military tribunals in 1946 that “just following orders” is no excuse: you are obliged to disobey illegal or immoral orders. Deliberately bombing civilians was widely regarded as immoral, if not actually illegal.

Decide for yourself about medals: I am not concerned about that here. I am interested in the general populace’s reaction: they recognised – even whilst at war with Germany - that targetting civilians was a despicable thing to do. Are people so ethically aware today? Do they have the same moral standards? Are they as aware of what their government is doing today - in their name (theoretically)?

For the government, a useful product of this campaign for the medal, would have been to gauge public opinion - (and influence it) - on ethics around bombing. It can hardly have escaped the attention of those who were adults at the time, that when it was exposed that the US were torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib and in secret sites around the World (one of the things we criticized the Nazis for) that there was a flood of TV programmes (which continues to this day) in which the protagonist or “hero” indulges in torture, normalising it, starting with the TV series “24”. A slight consolation is that at least they seem to care to some extent about public opinion.

It’s good to reflect that the government of 1946 did take some heed of public opinion (by deeming it unwise to give Bomber Command a medal). By contrast, you may be old enough to remember the millions of people who turned out in 2003 to oppose the UK’s participation in a war in Iraq.

Despite overwhelming popular opinion against going to war in a distant country that wasn’t a threat to us (which are the only legitimate grounds for going to war) Tony Blair (like Colin Powell) lied to the country in order to join the US in committing what was declared in the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazis “the ultimate crime” - of waging a war of aggression.

That sounds as if the balance of power between the government and the populace may have shifted. In the more recent incident (Iraq) they felt able to go to war despite what the populace wanted. And the feeling with which my mother expressed her own opinion that bombing civilians had been a war-crime or atrocity prompts me to wonder whether public awareness of ethical principles has diminished. I have written (in “What’s Wrong With “The Greater Good””) about how the current population, the World over, seemed almost completely unaware of the lessons we are supposed to have learned from the history of the twentieth century - particularly WW2 - just when it was needed: when it came to mandating vaccines. It seems that the powers that (shouldn’t) be have timed it well: the generation who had ethical principles pounded into them as the justification for WW2 have just died off, leaving a generation whose apathy (present company very much excepted) means that “they” have a good chance of bringing in their “Great Reset” in which they “Build Back Better” their population control.

I’m reminded again of that sinister quotation from that old advocate of what he called “The New World Order” - Adolf Hitler, illustrating their slow, Fabian approach:

“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already...What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community’.

Before COVID, ex-prime-minister Tony Blair campaigned for an ID card in the UK: but there was still enough of that WW2 attitude to get it chucked out. It is small consolation that Blair (and the WEF) must be unaware of what a despicable creep (and war-criminal) he is thought by the public, if he thinks that he could be a suitable person to make such a campaign successful). Do crawl back under your WEF stone, with the other parasites!

Reflect on this: in WW1 90% of casualties were in the armed services; only about 10% were civilians - the sort of figures you would expect for accidental “collateral damage”. In WW2 about 50% of the casualties were civilians. In Iraq and Afghanistan about 90% of casualties were civilians (I gather).

My mother had no great reason for love of Germans, so her and her generation’s revulsion at “our” treatment of them is laudable … particularly when you consider …

Firstly she had had experience of being on the receiving end of German bombing herself. She was a nurse during and after WW2 in a London teaching hospital. She lived through the “Blitz”. One day when her shift of nurses were coming off duty, walking down one of those long corridors that hospitals have linking buildings, an unexploded bomb went off, and killed them all. Fortunately my mother was not on duty as she should have been with her friends and colleagues that day, but in bed, with what was soon diagnosed as polio. The price she paid for her life on that occasion was to be in bed for the next year, iron lung and all, and a permanent limp. (It was also fortunate for her future husband, their children - including me - and their offspring and grand-children).

Secondly, she could be expected to be biased against Germans because living in the UK she had been subjected to the relentless propaganda about WW2 from before the war until the end of her days. The trouble with winning a war is that you are not forced to review your own side’s propaganda, unlike what happened to Germany. You always have to lie a democracy into war. I don’t know of any exceptions. Normal people will not go to war - (they have some understanding of how terrible and destructive it is) – unless they are told lies about how terrible some other group is.

But she and her generation still believed that bombing civilians was out.

2 German Guilt

Talking of warfare propaganda brings me to Feli’s talk and her research into young Germans’ experience of being educated about WW2. One common theme (as you might expect) was that as pupils, many of them (not all) were induced to feel guilty about what their country had done. By co-incidence I happen to be already in the process of writing a more general refutation of this in my forthcoming article “The Last Refuge of Scoundrels? Patriotism - and other Prejudices”. But I wanted to get this article out while it is still vaguely topical. So I apologise for the complete lack of research, and writing only from my memory.

I feel very sorry for Germans who are induced to feel guilty about something that they are not responsible for; particularly since it seems that the more you find out about what really went on, the closer you get to the view that other countries were no better.

My comment under Feli’s video included the following:

“Germans today should not feel guilty nor be made to feel guilty: they took no part in WW2. I am from England, and I feel no guilt (nor should I) about the actions of other Englishmen for whom I cannot be responsible - Rhodes and Milner in South Africa; nor the destruction of civilisations in India³, including Partition (which falls under the definition of genocide); nor the "opium wars" “we” waged against China, in which "we" forced a whole nation to get hooked on opium [that we grew in India], making vast sums of money which most people think was made by selling tea; nor the holocaust in Ireland [that was the word used to describe it in 1847 in “The Cork Examiner” newspaper] when "we" removed food from a starving population at bayonet point [and shipped it to ports in England]; nor the fire-bombing of German cities in WW2; nor Eisenhower's death camps along the Rhine in 1946⁴; nor the expulsion of the Germans in the same year - the same genocidal crime for which we hanged Germans at Nuremberg …

My point is that people are people, and en masse [particularly in war] they behave stupidly and cruelly whatever country they come from. If you think I’m implying that I'm excusing the Nazis- that is not the case at all: I disapprove of things they did just like "everyone" else: but don't think that other countries were or are any better. The trouble with "winning" a war is that you don't have to come to terms with your own country's propaganda. ("The first casualty of war is the truth"). I expect that your education about WW2 was just as inaccurate and biased as in other countries.”

Exposing the lies and misleading ideas in the “Allies” propaganda is a rich vein which I am looking forward to getting my teeth into in a future article. It continues to this day. But unfortunately I can’t get onto that until I’ve first done a preliminary article in which I demonstrate, with clear reasons, that I am poles apart from being a fascist; not a “Holocaust Denier”; nor remotely “anti-Semitic”. The “live rail” indeed!

But here’s a prompt to encourage slightly more rigorous thinking. When you think about what the Nazi’s were like, what do you visualise? (Do think before you read on).

You need to take the necessary first step of defining your terms. What do you mean by “the Nazis”?

At one end of the spectrum you might mean

• all Germans who lived in the Nazi regime; or

• all Germans who lived in the Nazi regime and fought for their country; or

• those who lived in the Nazi regime and had a largely supportive attitude to the regime; or

• the masses who were actual members of the political party; or

• people who were activists or officials in the party; or

• those who witnessed atrocities but said nothing; or

• the relatively small number who committed actual atrocities, like eugenics, human experimentation, or killing prisoners of war; or you might mean

• the small number of actual architects of Nazi policy, at the other end of the spectrum.

I think one should have a very different judgement of each of these groups.

Ever since the phenomenon of the Nazis, and the propaganda around them, people have asked themselves if they would have gone along with the regime. Well, if you opposed the recent “vaccine mandates”, you could still have fallen into the first group. If you dutifully went and got your “vaccine” you are roughly equivalent to the second tier. If you vocally advocated mandating the “vaccine” you would fall into the third. (If you still don’t know why this is unethical, you really must read “What’s Wrong with “The Greater Good””). If you were in a position that required you to enforce “vaccine” mandates on others – you were in the penultimate group. Sorry. The ethical situation in a lot of hospitals seems to have been remarkably similar, then and now.

(I appreciate that telling people that they are as bad as “the Nazis” is unlikely to win people over! Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking)!

Here are one or two teasers which may arouse your interest.

1 Check out this gentleman’s exposure of the distortions in the movie “Lawrence of Arabia”.

The film is a wonderful tale, but historically highly misleading, and for clear reasons. At the end of WW1 (from memory remember – please correct if you can cite sources) at the haggling in Versailles, culminating in The Treaty of - , Russia didn’t get the tract of land she had been promised beforehand, on the grounds that she hadn’t been there at the end of the war in 1918. (She had got fed up and gone off to have her revolution in 1917, remember). So in a fit of pique Russia spilt the beans about the secret Sykes Picot agreement e.g., and Europeans discovered that the “Great War” that they had just suffered through - and had their fathers and sons gassed and mown down by machine guns - was not for a principle, as they had been told, but for grubby corporations to make a lot of money, and for other political reasons. And that it had gone on for two years longer than necessary. As you might imagine, people were somewhat bitter about this in the twenties. (That’s British understatement, if you are unfamiliar with it). The gist of “Lawrence of Arabia” is that “it wasn’t the British government that made promises to the Arabs, on which they reneged in favour of the Zionists, but an unhinged and out of control Lawrence. (Oh, and by the way, the Arabs are too primitive and disorganised to cope without supervision).”

So at the end of act II of the World War the powers that (shouldn't) be – after the mismanagement at the end of act I - were better prepared for handling the public perception. They were pushed into the theatre of the Nuremberg Trials. They made up new laws, that Germany had apparently “broken”, (upending a fundamental legal principle) in order to convince everyone that “we” had been the virtuous ones against unbridled evil.

2 I was going to refer you to what the son of Oscar Schindler’s colleague said about the distortions in Spielberg’s film; but it had better wait until after the preliminary article.

Instead have a look at this talk which not only exposes the lies in the movies “Tora, Tora, Tora” and “Pearl Harbour”, but does a quick run through a long list of lies that have been told to get the US into wars. Make sure you listen as far as mention of Admiral Chester Ward, when you should bear in mind that this talk wasn’t recent, it was in 2013.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3.

3 If you still haven’t watched either of the fascinating interviews with Norman Dodd on YouTube (here and here), that would be a simple way of informing yourself on a how powerful people plan future wars for their benefit.

4 There may be more insight to be gained from “historical” context by checking out this intriguing story:

https://drrichardday.wordpress.com/introduction/

3 My Takeaways

1. There are important lessons to learn from history.

2. All power corrupts. Don’t underestimate this effect.

3. “The Good War” (as WW2 is sometimes called in the US) is an obscene oxymoron: there is no such thing as a good war: all sides lose. Only the profiteers and power-seekers gain.

4. Although in warfare there are some splendid individuals who exhibit enormous bravery (on both sides) thinking of “our side” in WW2 as heroic knights of righteousness, and the Nazis as unalloyed evil is naïve.

5. You are not responsible for the iniquitous acts of others;

6. … and you can’t take the credit for the good deeds of others, even if they are in the same family, village or country!

7. Take government propaganda into account, but don’t assume it is true. Especially war movies!

8. Finding an ethical stance on current events can be tricky, like whether you should follow orders or not; or whether “the greater good” is ever a justification for mandating anything. It requires being well informed, on what is going on now, and on what has happened in similar circumstances in the past. Do see “What’s Wrong with “The Greater Good””, if you haven’t.

9. If you are German, of course you should not feel any guilt about things done by other people who were born within the same arbitrary geographical boundaries, especially ones born a long time ago.

10. On the other hand, if your politicians - whatever country you are from – are engaged in fomenting wars anywhere, and you are not lobbying your MP, you should feel guilty.

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P.S. Some phrase I read or wrote in this article reminded me of this popular poem by Rudyard Kipling. So I looked it up to read it, and was struck by how remarkably apt it all is for those of us who feel opposed to the recent “medical martial law” coup ⁵ especially those who have lost jobs and/or loved one, or estranged themselves from their family. Every word seems germane, despite being written about 125 years ago. See if you agree!

This has always been good advice for a son, to whom it’s addressed, or equally a daughter of course.

If you’re listening to the podcast rather than reading this, my reading of it may not be to your taste, as it’s more fashionable to read it as if it were blank verse; poetry with a meter is out of fashion. I have nothing against poetry without a meter; I don’t mind that most modern poetry is free-form; but this poem was written at a time when most did have a meter, and it does have one. So I feel you should at least be able to discern that meter, as long as you try not to distort the natural way of saying it more than you can help. Perhaps that’s because as a schoolboy I spent nine years having to study Latin and Greek. (Yes, I really am that old).

So you might prefer Michael Caine’s YouTube rendition,

which seems very popular, although he seems to be doing it from memory, as he gets a word wrong 5 times; the worst mistake being his minute curiously having only 40 seconds rather than 60!

This version might appeal more to American speakers.

Kipling imagined a father talking to his son; but today it feels appropriate for all those decent people who have lost their jobs or made themselves unpopular by sticking to their principles.

1
If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

2
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

3
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

4
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

“If” by Rudyard Kipling

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P.P.S

The meter in the poem “If” is a very simple one, and obvious when you hear it rather than read it. It’s a very old pattern. It’s one that feels natural if you are walking or marching. The ancient Greeks liked their stories, poems and histories told with rhythm. For a people accustomed to having to remember things orally, rhythm and rhyme help:

“Red sky at night – shepherd’s delight;
red sky at morning – shepherd’s warning”.

The rhythm and rhyme improve the mnemonic.

The meter in “If” is called an “iambic pentameter”. A unit of rhythm called an “iamb” sounds “lub-dub”, like a heartbeat - the first rhythm we all listen to for months in the womb. Being a pentameter means there are 5 in a line -

“lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub;
lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub”.

The silent “two three four” at the end of the line gives you time to take a breath.

An extra unstressed syllable can be added at the end of the line, like this:

“lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dubby;
lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub”.

Now this may be too esoteric to be of general interest, but the first (American) website that appeared when I searched for the text of this poem said that the rhyme pattern in each eight-line verse was

ABABCDCD

i.e. that the first line rhymes with the third; the second with the fourth, and so on.

But they said “except for the first verse which starts AAAA”, i.e. all four first lines rhyming.

I think they are mistaken: I think it is the same pattern as all the other verses. You can jump to that conclusion if you only read the last word of the first four lines, which are “you”, “you”, “you” and “too”; but there’s a clue in the first and third line which end “about you” and “doubt you”. The emphasis is on the “out” syllable, not the “you”: the first and third lines are lines ending “lub-dubby”. Whereas on the second and fourth line the emphasis is on the final word - “you”: it’s a line ending “lub-dub”. I think this becomes obvious if you listen to it, rather than read it.

If you can keep your head when all about you   [2, 3, 4]
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
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P.P.P.S.

OK, it turned out not to be such a quickie as I was expecting!

1. https://substack.com/inbox/post/117516726 and https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1800-james-corbett-and-keith-knight-tackle-churchill-hitler-and-the-unnecessary-war/

2. https://archive.org/details/ChurchillHitlerAndTheUnnecessaryWar (listen)
https://archive.org/details/churchillhitlert00patr_0 (read online or borrow)

3. See Churchill's Secret War - Madhusree Mukerjee

4. https://www.amazon.com/Other-Losses-Investigation-Prisoners-Americans/dp/0889226652
https://archive.org/details/other-losses_hd (video)
and another -

5. … as James Corbett called it when he foretold it in 2009