Kindertransport: A Fantastic Act of Love

Trump Heads for the Golf Course as Leaders Gather to Mark Start of WW2

THE OBSERVER: Dominic Raab leads British delegation to the Polish capital, while Vladimir Putin is not invited

European leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, will mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the second world war in Warsaw on Sunday. But Donald Trump – who cancelled on his Polish hosts at the last-minute last week, citing concerns over a hurricane barrelling towards Florida – was due to spend the day at his golf club in Virginia.

The conflict began in the early hours of 1 September 1939, when a Nazi battleship attacked a garrison of Polish soldiers at Westerplatte. Poland’s government had moved this year’s commemorations from Westerplatte, near the Baltic port city of Gdańsk, to Warsaw, in anticipation of a visit from the US president, who was to give the keynote speech. But Trump cancelled, citing Hurricane Dorian , and sent vice-president Mike Pence in his stead. » | Shaun Walker | Sunday, September 1, 2019

Lessons of the Second World War Are At Risk of Being Forgotten, or Even Rewritten

THE OBSERVER: As we mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the second world war, with liberal democracies again under siege, Britain should be leading the fight against extremism

Eighty years ago, the start of the second world war saw Nazi Germany invading Poland. Six years later, up to 85 million people were dead. I’m in Poland this weekend to commemorate the start of the bloodiest war in human history.

An entire generation of brave men and women around the globe sacrificed everything to defeat the singular evil of Nazism and fascism.

We should be proud of Britain’s role in winning the war, but also in helping to build the peace that followed. A whole generation – both here and around the world – were determined that never again must we repeat the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. This laid the foundations in the years after 1945 for more than seven decades without another world war. And it is now to today’s generations – inheriting the better, safer world envisaged in 1945 – that future peace and prosperity is entrusted.

With the numbers of those who remember that dark period dwindling by the day, fewer survive to tell their story and to warn current generations of the lessons from history. Worryingly, these warnings are increasingly pertinent. For the first time in more than 70 years, it seems the lessons of the second world war are genuinely at risk of being forgotten or, worse still, being rewritten. » | Sadiq Khan | Saturday, August 31, 2019

THE OBSERVER: Rise of Donald Trump is ‘obscuring lessons of the second world war’, says Sadiq Khan »

Greece to Ask Germany for Billions in War Reparations

THE GUARDIAN: MPs vote to put pressure on Berlin as European parliamentary elections loom

Greece is poised to send Germany a formal diplomatic note detailing its demand for billions of euros in wartime reparations after MPs voted overwhelmingly for the emotive issue to be raised officially.

In a move bound to stir sentiment ahead of crucial European parliament elections, Athens vowed to pile pressure on Berlin, taking legal and diplomatic steps that will throw the spotlight on crimes committed during the brutal Nazi occupation.

“It is an open issue that must be resolved,” Greece’s deputy foreign minister, Markos Bolaris, told the Guardian, hitting back at German insistence that compensation claims had been conclusively settled.

“For matters of this kind there is international justice,” he said on Friday. “In all disputes the EU abides by it, on principle. Germany may say it has been resolved but what counts is international law.” » | Helena Smith in Athens | Sunday, April 21, 2019

Blitz: London’s Firestorm
On 29 December 1940 Hitler hoped his Luftwaffe would create a firestorm to destroy central London and break the spirit of the British people. Tens of thousands of incendiary bombs were dropped on the heart of the city.

The story of that awe-inspiring night is told in a feature-length documentary that brings eyewitness accounts to life using dramatic reconstructions and CGI.

Firemen and heavy rescue workers fought desperately all night to control the burning buildings as the fire raged out of control. And in its path was the symbolic form of St Paul's, which Churchill demanded was protected at any cost.

Londoners had come to expect nightly raids, but this was on a different scale and they fled for the protection of shelters, uncertain if their home would still stand after the bombing. Many were to die.

The following morning the survivors emerged after a terrifying and sleepless night to face the smoking ruins of the city.

Watch the Channel 4 documentary here

We Should Listen When Germany Says the EU Is the Answer to Its War Guilt

TELEGRAPH BLOGS – BENEDICT BROGAN: There was a striking moment during William Hague's joint press conference with Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, who stopped off in London to soothe relations after that euro ding-dong that so exercised the French. Indeed, the Quai d'Orsay will be anxious – or possibly narked – by their collegiate display. Mr Westerwelle, playing Garfunkel to Mr Hague's Simon, said he wanted to "build bridges over troubled waters" and praised Britain as "an indispensable partner in the EU." Germany, he said, wanted to make the next steps on the EU "together" with the UK, which is why the UK have been pressed to attend the talks. We can add this occasion to the mounting evidence (such as the PM's successful conversation with Angela Merkel) that Germany is keen to have the UK around in the negotiations as a counterweight to the excitability of France. Read on and comment » | Benedict Brogan | Monday, December 19, 2011

Gaza Flotilla Attack: Israeli Ambassador Compares Raid to Second World War
THE TELEGRAPH: Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, has compared the Gaza flotilla attack with America's fight against Nazi Germany in the Second World War.



In an interview with Fox News, he described the operation, in which nine people died, as "perfectly legal, perfectly humane – and very responsible".

He defending the attack in open waters, saying: "Israel acted in accord with international law. Any state has the right to protect itself, certainly from a terrorist threat such as Hamas, including on the open seas.

"The US acted under similar international law when it fought the Germans and the Japanese in World War Two."

His comments came as Israel began deporting hundreds of activists seized from the flotilla, including more than 120 activists from Muslim countries who were taken to the border with Jordan early this morning.

There is no immediate word on the fate of 42 British nationals who were on the convoy of ships.

US President Barack Obama has spoken to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey, which had branded the attack a "bloody massacre", the White House said.

The President expressed "deep condolences" over the deaths on board a Turkish flagged ship that was part of the flotilla and said Washington was working with Israel on the release of impounded vessels and passengers.

In his television interview, Mr Oren said Israel "has to make some hard choices sometimes," adding: "We live in a rough neighbourhood." >>> Alastair Jamieson | Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Israeli Ambassador to U.S. Michael Oren

Greece: Bail-out Money Is 'Reparation' for Second World War
THE TELEGRAPH: While high-finance will – or maybe not – save Greece, it is the low-ground that people both there and in Germany are scrabbling over to play the blame game.

Greece is already into a boycott of German goods and services, ranging from Miele fridges to VW cars to pharmaceutical products.

But it is the war, and the brutal German occupation of Greece, that really gets up the noses of Teutons whose leader pledged 22 billion euros this week to save them from themselves.

An altered picture from the 'Eleftheros Typos' newspaper showing the statue of Victoria in Berlin holding a swastika was the forerunner for Greeks to mention the war.

The mayor of Athens, Nikitas Kaklamanis, led the call for Germany to pay reparations for the conquest and occupation, saying; "You owe us 70 billion euros for the ruins you left behind."

Greece's deputy prime minister, Theodoros Pangalos, also dragged up the war, stating; "The Nazis took away the Greek gold that was in the Bank of Greece, they took away the Greek money and they never gave it back."

A Greek magazine also last month carried a 10-page article detailing for its readers Germany's Nazi past. >>> | Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Nick Clegg: Britain Bears Cross 'Bigger Than Germany's Nazi Past'
THE TELEGRAPH: Britain has a more insidious “cross to bear” than Germany does over its Nazi history, according to Nick Clegg.

The Liberal Democrat leader said the British have “a misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur”.

In an article written in 2002, Mr Clegg, who was then MEP for the East Midlands, described the shame he felt over an incident on a school exchange trip to Germany.

“A boy called Adrian started it,” Mr Clegg wrote. “He shouted from the back of the coach, 'We own your country, we won the war’.”

The future Lib Dem leader said this was an example of what he described as a “warped” British obsession with Germans and the Second World War. “It is easy enough to explain the mixture of arrogance and insecurity that fuels this peculiar British obsession,” he wrote. “Watching Germany rise from its knees after the war and become a vastly more prosperous nation has not been easy on the febrile British psyche.” >>> Jon Swaine | Thursday, April 22, 2010

Don't Mention the War. Grow Up
THE GUARDIAN: Britain is still stuck in a childish rut of anti-German prejudice, argues Nick Clegg MEP

I still cringe when I remember what happened on the school bus. The shame of it still lingers.

We were all travelling together - a class of 17-year-olds from my school and our German "exchange" partners - on an excursion to the Bavarian mountains. The German teenagers had already endured a month at our school in central London. Now it was our turn to spend a month in Munich, living with our "exchange" families and attending the local school.

A boy called Adrian started it. He shouted from the back of the coach, "we own your country, we won the war". Other boys tittered. One put a finger to his upper lip - the traditional British schoolyard designation for Hitler's moustache - threw his arm out in a Nazi salute, and goose-stepped down the bus aisle. Soon there was a cascade of sneering jokes, most delivered in 'Allo 'Allo German accents.

I remember two things vividly. First, none of the girls in my class joined in. It seemed to be a male thing. Second, the German schoolchildren did not appear angry, or even offended. That was what was so heart wrenching. They just looked confused, utterly bewildered. To a generation of young Germans, raised under the crushing, introspective guilt of postwar Germany, the sight of such facile antics was simply incomprehensible. >>> Nick Clegg MEP | Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Nazi Victims' Mass Graves Found in Austria Under Football Pitch
THE TELEGRAPH: Two mass graves containing scores of people murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War have been found underneath an army football pitch in Austria, government officials said on Friday.

Some of the remains may be the bodies of US pilots shot down and imprisoned during the war.

Police Col. Rudolf Gollia, an interior ministry spokesman, said his ministry plans talks with the owners of the site to discuss exhumation.

The mass graves are located in bomb craters underneath the army sports field in the southern city of Graz. Officials said they contain about 70 bodies of victims killed by the SS to eliminate witnesses to Nazi atrocities shortly before Soviet troops arrived. >>> | Friday, March 12, 2010

France Finally Acknowledges Its War Children
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: The offspring of German soldiers and French women born during the occupation were cruelly shunned

When Jean-Jacques Delorme was growing up in Lisieux in Normandy in the 1940s, schoolmates called him a "bastard" or "son of a Boche" – a slur word for German. He didn't really know what it meant, but it made him feel like an outcast.

Life had been different from the outset. After his birth in October 1944 it had been his grandmother who cared for him until he was five years old. But it was only decades later that he learnt why his mother was absent at that time: she had been sentenced to one year in prison, for so-called collaboration horizontale. She had also been given five years of dégradation nationale – essentially, a loss of certain rights – for her crime of indignité nationale, sleeping with the enemy.

Mr Delorme was not alone. He is one of 200,000 children who grew up in France the offspring of German soldiers who occupied the country during the war. After the war ended, supposed collaborators were executed, while women who had been "collaborating horizontally" had their hair shaved, were paraded through jeering crowds and jailed. Mr Delorme's mother was one of those "shaven women".

Mr Delorme faced silence and secrecy when he tried to find out who his father was. His suspicions had first been raised when he was 12 years old. "My sister was born and my mother gave me the livre de famille – or 'family book' – to register her birth," he remembers. "I noticed a note in the margin by my name, saying I was illegitimate by my father.

"My mother had married when I was four, and I had taken her husband's name as he officially recognised me as his son. I asked my mother, but she wouldn't tell me. Nobody would tell me. I sensed I was different from my brothers and sisters, so I asked my mother again when I was 17. She was enraged, and walked out slamming the door behind her."

It was only when he was 21, had completed his military service and gone to work in Paris that Mr Delorme found the truth out about who his real father was. "I asked my grandmother. She pulled out an envelope, yellowed with age, from her wardrobe. 'Your mother asked me to destroy its contents, but I didn't in case you ever wanted to know,' she told me. I opened the envelope and there were a good number of photos of my mother with a German soldier."

Then his mother, who had been a kitchen servant during the occupation, finally revealed his birth father's name: Hans Hoffmann. >>> Geneviève Roberts in Paris | Sunday, March 07, 2010

Stephen Fry's Slur Against Polish Catholics: 'Remember Which Side of the Border Auschwitz Was On'
THE TELEGRAPH – BLOG: Stephen Fry (he is the bore that is a permanent fixture on your television screen but is not Jonathan Ross or David Attenborough) has delivered an insulting attack on Catholics and Poles which grotesquely misrepresents historical fact and which, if levelled at almost any other targets, would probably be characterised as a “hate crime”.

Fry, who joined Labour luvvies in signing an open letter protesting against the Tories’ alliance in the European Parliament with the Polish Law and Justice Party, said on Channel 4 News: “There’s been a history, let’s face it, in Poland of a right-wing Catholicism which has been deeply disturbing for those of us who know a little history and remember which side of the border Auschwitz was on”…

That is beyond outrageous. It slanderously suggests that Auschwitz was run by Polish Catholics, not by German Nazis. “A little history” is right. Just how very little history Fry knows is demonstrated by that crassly ignorant statement. Auschwitz was on Polish soil, ergo it was a Polish institution? As for which side of the border Auschwitz was on, it was actually in Upper Silesia which had been annexed to Germany in 1939. It might, of course, be argued that the Poles built Auschwitz – if slave labour counts.

The first prisoners in Auschwitz were Polish intellectuals and members of the resistance. Altogether, 150,000 Catholic Poles were murdered in Auschwitz, including Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Between two and three million Catholic Poles were killed in the Second World War. Polish pilots fought in the RAF in the Battle of Britain. Note Fry’s insidious use of the dog-whistle term “right-wing Catholicism”: >>> Gerald Warner | Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Britain at War

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

Queen to Meet ‘Britain’s Schindler’ in Second Stage of Tour [of the Former Yugoslavia]
Photo of Nicholas Winton, "Britain’s Schindler", courtesy of The Telegraph
THE TELEGRAPH: The Queen is to meet a man known as "Britain's Schindler" because of his work saving Jews from the Nazis as she continues her tour of the former Yugoslavia.

The monarch will meet Sir Nicholas Winton, 99, as she travels to the Slovakian capital Bratislava.

The Nobel Peace Prize nominee rescued around 670 Jewish Czech children in the run up to the Second World War.

In 1938, Winton, then a young stockbroker, cancelled a skiing holiday to Switzerland and went instead to Czechoslovakia on a friend's recommendation.

There he found camps full of Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi-occupied Sudetenland, and set about trying to help them.

He transported 669 youngsters to Britain before World War II broke out and, without his intervention they would almost certainly have died. >>> By Charlotte Bailey | October 23, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>