By Tim Haydon.
Dominc Sandbrook nearly gets to the truth of the matter when he tells us (Daily Mail, 3rd June 2014) that he fears that the present generation of the British would be incapable of a vast project like D-Day and the invasion of Europe/.
The British, he says, have sheltered under the nuclear wing of the United States for so long and have been so repelled by the lies and military adventurism of leaders like Tony Blair and Cameron that they would be unwilling to fight.
More importantly though, Sandbrook identifies the decline of ‘the martial virtues’: courage, discipline , duty, responsibility, since the 1960’s. Those who fought their way across Europe and elsewhere suffered the privations and horrors they endured with stoicism . The present day British belonged to a culture of victimhood and compensation who wallow in self pity..
Sandbrook goes no further in his analysis, which is pity. Why does he not say why the ‘military virtues’, which are of course, not confined to military matters, declined?
Where Sandbrook goes wrong
A clue lies in his reasons as to why the British went out to fight so bravely. According to Sandbrook, they went willingly because they thought it was ‘ their duty to take up arms against Hitler’s perverted creed.’
That is false. It is a Politically Correct rewriting of history. The war time generation did not fight Nazism as such. Had you asked them, by far the majority would have told you that they were fighting for KIng and Country – their country, the land of their ancestors, the cradle of their culture and the nursery of their freedoms.
Yes, Nazism came into it. But the great banner on Nelson’s column on V E Day did not read; ‘Victory over Nazism’. It read, ‘Victory over Germany’. It was the Germans who were the enemy, not the ideology of their country.
Why the Spirit of the British has declined
The ‘martial virtues’ and every other virtue have declined in Britain because the very idea of virtue has been under attack from the real winner of the Second World War, Marxism in its latest guise, Cultural Marxism.
Cultural Marxism has tried to destroy the very idea of Britain as a country and the British as a people with its ideology of Multiculturalism and Mutiracialism. And in doing so, it is helping to destroy the spirit of the British. It has worked to transform the country into , not a society united in any real way, but the reverse:, a consumerist non-society; a mere crowd of alienated strangers inhabiting the same stretch of territory exhibiting nothing but selfishness and self-centredness glossed over with sentimentalised and unreal ‘caring’. The people of such a society are unlikely to be willing to fight for anything personally except bargains in a sale.
The World War Two Generation speaks of its Betrayal.
But what about those who fought for their country in the Second World War? Would they do it again? The answer is a resounding No. Nicholas Pringle conducted a survey of those who did. In his ‘The Unknown Warriors’ , he relates what those who replied thought of their struggles.
In spite of such pluses as a higher standard of living, better education opportunities and a reduction in class distinction, ‘They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It’s not our country any more, they say, in sorrow andanger.
[One lady] Sarah harks back to the days when ‘people kept the laws and were polite and courteous. We didn’t have much money, but we were contented and happy.
‘People whistled and sang. There was still the United Kingdom, our country, which we had fought for, our freedom, democracy. But where is it now?!’
‘I sing no song for the country thar spawned me’, said one sailor who fought the Japanese in the Far East. Another serviceman said, ‘My patriotism has gone out of the window.’
An ex-commando who took part in the disastrous Dieppe raid said, ‘Those comrades of mine who never made it back would be appalled if they could see the world as it is today. ‘They would wonder what happened to the Brave New World they fought so damned hard for.’
Immigration tops the list of complaints. ‘People come here, get everything they ask, for free, laughing at our expense,’ was a typical observation.
‘We old people struggle on pensions, not knowing how to make ends meet. If I had my time again, would we fight as before? Need you ask?’
Many of those quoted are bewildered and overwhelmed by a multicultural Britain that, they say bitterly, they were never consulted about nor feel comfortable with.
‘Our country has been given away to foreigners while we, the generation who fought for freedom, are having to sell our homes for care and are being refused medical services because incomers come first. Sarah Robinson said, ‘We are affronted by the appearance of Muslim and Sikh costumes on our streets.’
As a group, the WW” survivors feel furious at not being able to speak their minds. They see the lack of debate and the damning of dissenters as racists or Little Englanders as deeply upsetting affronts to freedom of speech.
‘Our British culture is draining away at an ever increasing pace,’ one ex-meber of the Durham Light Infantry said, ‘and we are almost forbidden to make any comment.’
A widow from Solihull blamed the Thatcher years ‘when we started to lose all our industry and profit became the only aim in life’.
Her husband, a veteran of Dunkirk and Burma, died a disappointed man, believing that his seven years in the Army were wasted. ‘It is 18 years since I lost him and as I look around parts of Birmingham today you would never know you were in England,’ she wrote.
‘He would have hated it. He also disliked the immoral way things are going. I don’t think people are really happy now, for all the modern, easy-living conveniences.
‘I disagree with same-sex marriages, schoolgirl mothers, rubbish TV programmes, so-called celebrities and, most of all, unlimited immigration.
‘I am very unhappy about the way this country is being transformed. I go nowhere after dark. I don’t even answer my doorbell then.’
A Desert Rat who battled his way through El Alamein, Sicily, Italy and Greece said desparingly, ‘This is not the country I fought for. Political correctness, lack of discipline, compensation madness, uncontrolled immigration – the “do-gooders” have a lot to answer for. ‘If you see youngsters doing something they shouldn’t and you say anything, you just get a mouthful of foul language.’
Undoubtedly, some of the complaints are ‘grumpy old man’ gripes, as the veterans themselves recognise. But it is the fundamental change in society’s values which they find hardest to come to terms with.
Bring back birching and hanging, the sanctions they grew up with, they say. Put more bobbies back on the beat.
‘We were rigidly taught good manners and respect for older people,’ said a wartime WAAF, ‘but the nanny state has ruined all that. Television programmes are full of violence and obscene language. This Land of Hope and Glory is in reality a land of yobs, drug addicts, drunkard youths and teenage mothers who think they are owed all for nothing.’ Aged 85, she has little wish to go on living.
For others, the strength of character that got them through the war is still helping them to survive the disappointments of peacetime. A crofter’s son from Scotland who served on the Arctic convoys taking supplies to Russia found the immediate post-war years hard.
‘In those days we had no welfare support from any source. It was as though we had served our country to the full and were then forgotten. ‘However, we were very resilient and determined to make a go of it, and many of us, including myself, succeeded.
‘How times have changed now, with the countless many clamouring to get welfare benefits for the asking.’
A medic who made it through Dunkirk and D-Day thought the fallen would be appalled by the lack of manners in modern life and the worship of celebrities, plus ‘the patent dishonesty of politicians’.
Another common issue was their bemusement at the idea anyone could live in constant debt. ‘We were brought up to believe that if you hadn’t the money, you waited till you had!’ one said.
She bemoaned the advent of the Pill and the collapse of sexual morality. ‘In my day, drugs were unknown, families remained together, divorce was a rarity and children felt secure.
The Coming Death of the Consumer Society
The consumer society is likely to survive just so long as there is plenty to consume. That is quite likely not to be the case indefinitely or even for very long. The world is becoming increasingly competitive and overcrowded while raw material resources are running out. Even soil. The soils of the USA Mid West which have supplied so much wheat to the world have thinned dramatically over the years.
What happens when standards of living begin to decline? Watch out for social tensions on a hitherto unimaginable scale, exacerbated in Britain by the emergence of a rapidly expanding group which, unlike the native British, continues to believe in itself: Islam laced with racial feeling.
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Tim’s article is painful reading, but the truth often hurts. It’s such a pity that the Daily Mail and other media outlets just can’t find the courage to write the truth. Maybe the very fat salaries of journalists like Dominc Sandbrook will console them when they realise what they have taken part in. The betrayal of the British people and our condemnation to soon becoming extinct as a distinct and unique race. I hope he and his ilk feel happy and smug with their nice big pay packets, although perhaps thirty pieces of silver would be more apt…
It may be a cliche but it is a true one and that is we won the war but lost the peace… and those brave souls were betrayed…. they fought purely and simply to stop a foreign invasion and to keep Britain British.
It is also a curiousity that many of those who these days would be in the ranks of uaf/hnh etc actually chose not to fight for Britain whilst many of those who were in right wing (and what some would have called nazi and fascist) movements did! The former makes something of a mockery out of that ‘taunt’ most nationalist paper sellers will have faced at one time or another “we fought against your lot in the 2nd world war”.
I always felt like saying whenever I heard it “WHAT????????? You fought against the British, for the Germans, you must be a Nazi”.
I believe I am correct in stating that one of the very first British servicemen who died in WW2 (in the first month I have read) had been a member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s BUF who campaigned against us going to war over Poland under the slogan, ‘Mind Britain’s Business’ and wanted a policy of heavily-armed neutrality instead.
You are correct Steven in fact it was on the second day of hostilities that the two pilots both members of the BUF lost there lives. The first of millions of unnecessary deaths.
What is rarely mentioned Stephen is, that many thousands of Nationalists who were members of the BUF fought against Hitler with courage and dedication. However, many of our fellow nationalists did not agree with declaring war on Germany over a peace treaty with Poland, then less than six months old. Hitler did not want a war with Britain and offered generous terms after the defeat of our massive army in Europe.
Vested interested again took Britain into a war with Germany we should have avoided. The end result being the loss of the British Empire, the bankrupting of our country and the rise of the USA and Soviet Russia as superpowers.
It is a correct statement that the history of WWII has been largely rewritten by the Marxist/Liberal left.
When our fellow nationalists were marching to war, they sang a marching song to the tune of Lily Marlene with the following words
Onward into battle as we have marched before
In union with our comrades to fight with us once more
To fight we must never more we”ll fight again a brothers war
Europe awake unite Europe awake and fight.
Too right they didn’t fight against Hitler because they thought his regime was evil. The British Establishment before the war (including large sections of the Daily Mail’s beloved Tory Party) thought Hitler was a ‘good egg’ and a ‘bulwark against Communism’. Winston Churchill was constantly derided and hated by large sections of his own party and was nearly deselected as as a Tory MP and candidate! The Queen Mother and the Royal Family loved Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement so much that in 1938 after Chamberlain had come back from signing the Munich Agreement they deliberately broke Royal protocal by inviting him to appear before an adoring crowd on the balcony of Buckingham Palace!
The Daily Mail (infamous for its ‘Hurruh for the Blackshirts’ headline in 1934) was also fully in support of appeasement right up to as late as March 1939. Their foreign correspondent (Ward-Price I think his name was) was a particularly notorious appeaser.
Most of the ordinary population also agreed with Chamberlain and appeasement and they only changed their opinion because Hitler had broken the Munich Agreement and was thought to be untrustworthy. Most Britons couldn’t care less what Hitler was doing in Germany and the British government didn’t either.
We fought against Nazi Germany NOT as a heroic fight against Nazism but because Germany at that time was perceived to be a threat to our national security and our Empire.
I would suggest one possible reason why the Daily Mail loves to slander and throw around accusations (often completely baseless) about people with ‘Right-wing’ views on immigration and nationalist parties is because it is trying to earn PC brownie points with the rest of the media AND is also trying to make people forget about their own infamous support of Mosley’s BUF (for a few months at any rate) and appeasement of Adolf’s regime. It seems as if they have a bit of a guilty complex in this regard!
(Party Member) Great point B.Phillips. For the record the left were against fighting the war until Hitler broke his alliance with Russia and invaded them. Also the great Sir Oswald Mosely ordered his people to volunteer for the armed forces, as soon as war was declared. Also remember Hitler was a SOCIALIST. His Party was actually called the German National Socialist Workers Party. People can learn about these things by joining their local library. Personally I will never be any type of Socialist.
Yes, I believe the Communist Party was totally opposed to the war and called it a ‘war of imperialism’ until Hitler reneged upon his agreement with Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
As you say, Sir Oswald Mosley ordered all BUF members to do their duty fighting for their country even though the BUF wanted a negociated peace.
You can have a social conscience and not be a ‘socialist’. Socialists don’t have any kind of monopoly on fairness and never have had. Indeed, formal ‘socialists’ can be the most unfair people of all (ie their unpatriotic addiction to mass immigration to take just one example)
johnshaw….Also remember Hitler was a SOCIALIST. His Party was actually called the German National Socialist Workers Party. People can learn about these things by joining their local library. Personally I will never be any type of Socialist……. It must also be remembered that Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists were also socialists modeled more on the Italian Fascist party of Mussolini which was socialist with a capital S.You are you correct to call Sir Oswald Mosely great and he may have become the British prime minister but for the circumstances that were abroad at that time.
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(Party Member) A very good point regarding ‘ Socialist ‘ movements, Dave. The word and indeed practical meaning of Socialism was highjacked by the International Marxists, fighting a supposed class war, from the very beginning. This polluted some very noble ideas. Nationalism is classless. This point has never been understood by some, including Mr. Griffin who believes he is some sort of working class hero. Being a Nationalist I believe in SOCIAL JUSTICE which is one of the three pillars of NATIONALISM. This means we want to achieve the best for all our people, not just one section of our society. The other two are SELF PRESERVATION and NATIONAL FREEDOM. So it’s SOCIAL justice not the British Socialism,for us !
Yes Steven two of the first casualties were BUF members. Actually loads of BUF died or were injured, those that weren’t imprsioned without trial of course. Even a BUF member who took his boat and helped rescue our army from Dunkirk was arrested apparently on his return!!!
Sir Oswald Mosley had quite a bit of personal charisma which seems to be quite an important factor for the leader of a political party particularly for so-called ‘far right’ ones. Indeed, in this respect, you could say he was the one real asset the BUF ever had.
He was by no means universally reviled at the beginning of his political career. Indeed, some of his political contemporaries of the time praised him (for his bold ideas as to how to tackle mass unemployment and the misery it causes). I think David Lloyd George was amongst them.
If he had become Britain’s PM, he would have been the first ‘Old Wykehamist’ (ex-pupil) of one of Britain’s most prestigious public schools ie Winchester College to have that role.
http://www.winchestercollege.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_College
Stephen to say that Mosley “had quite a bit if personal Charisma” could be seen as a bit of an understatement. He was the last of the great statesmanlike politicians only Mosley could hold a crowd of tens of thousands spellbound with his superb speeches his love of his homeland shone through like a beacon for all decent people to see. He was always a British patriot a man so visionary that the career politicians around him feared not for this Nation but for there own pathetic careers. The treatment he and his comrades received was shameful and history will judge this giant of a man for what he was, not by the pathetic smears from the rotten establishment.
(Party Member) The purpose of my previous comment, trip down memory lane, is to remind retired nationalists and people in general, just HOW RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING US NATIONALISTS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN. I urge all to stop ‘sitting on the fence’ and JOIN the BRITISH DEMOCRATIC PARTY TODAY.
The historian Antony Beevor in his book D-Day deals with the question of British moral in Normandy and reports the reflections of the military analyst Basil Liddell Hart at that time. The situation was depressing. The Germans knew the British were stubborn in defence but British troops showed little initiative and determination in attack. Liddell Hart actually thought in terms of a ‘national decline in boldness and initiative’ (P. 323). Montgomery destroyed the career of one British officer who had reported a damning indictment of the moral of British troops in Sicily. That is not to say that British troops did not behave in soldierly manner but it does seem that the establishment noted the way the wind was blowing and may even at this early point have begun considering the policy of mass immigration to dilute the homogeneity of the British working class. A friend once recounted to me a story from his father that the very first thing the military police did to the British soldiers, when the ships returned to the UK’ was to relieve soldiers of their weapons. A reasonable proposition, but in 1945 maybe the motivation was based the idea that if the soldiers had retained their weapons on British soil they may have wanted to use those weapons in other more socially constructive ways.
You are quite right when you remind us that “…Montgomery destroyed the career of one British officer who had reported a damning indictment of the moral of British troops in Sicily.” Monty was uncompromising and puritanical like that: he expected every soldier to behave like a saint and read the Bible, not the Daily Mirror. Montgomery’s superior The Chief of the Imperial General Staff Alan Brooke (later Viscount Alanbrooke) has recorded that he “…saved Montgomery from the consequences of an indiscretion that might easily have brought his career to a premature end. It arose out of an unfortunately phrased divisional order about the health and morals of his men…” and that Montgomery had “…undermined his position as Commander through the issue of the document…” and: “…I therefore pointed out to Monty that his position as Commander of a Division had been seriously affected…” and that “… any further errors of this kind could certainly not be tolerated.” (Recorded in “The Turn Of The Tide”, the diaries of Field Marshal The Viscount Alanbrooke K.G., O.M. (Collins, Sons & Co. 1957)
I can recall, as a youth below call-up age, that the general British public was entirely unaware of the “final solution” and the death-camps until at least the closing 12 months of the War. The main hatred of Hitler amongst us plebs was “How dare this little twerp invade other countries and threaten us!”, not: “We must remove this mass-murderer of millions of innocent German and European non-Aryans!” Hitler was regarded by the general public and the troops as a sort of “mechanised Napoleon”.
I believe I am correct in saying that the vast majority of the British public and the British government before the war didn’t care at all what Hitler’s regime was doing inside of Germany with regard to his policies towards Jews ect. Indeed, some politicians like David Lloyd-George praised the German government for lowering unemployment substantially through a mass programme of public works and other radical economic measures, easing class divisions and generally producing a country that was happier and more at ease with itself than it had been for quite a few years.
Hitler had no intention of fighting Britain. The British had no interest in defending Poland (hence they never attacked Russia when it invaded Poland). Matters of historical record, buried beneath mountains of propaganda.
(Party Member) Yes ChrisN, Hitler and Stalin shared Poland between them. They kept to the map references exactly as they had agreed. Poor Poland became part Russian and part German.
(Party Member) Clement Attlee, Labour Prime, from the time when the Labour Party had noble ideals, said ” the East End is the soul of London “. Well, if he saw what the modern Labour Party had done to the soul of London, indeed Britain, he would turn in his grave ! To be fair they were aided and abetted by the misnamed ‘ Conservatives and the plague of our society that is Liberalism.
The sheer madness of the Versailles Treaty was the greatest factor in the rise of Hitler and all of the consequent loss of human life.
The real criminals were the madmen who ordered the reparations of the Germans to totally undermine their very existence.
Versailles was the most inept of decisions cobbled together by incompetents who should share the blame for the madness of all the subsequent mayhem.