The best service Hitler did humanity was blowing his brains out.
His regime lasted but a dozen years and was thoroughly evil. But can we honestly say that no other regime rivalled or surpassed it in wickedness?
Nearly thirty years ago my wife and I made our first visit to Rome, seat of the greatest Empire in European antiquity, We packed a couple of tents in our car which we put on a train which carried us to Bologna where we took the wrong road and arrived at Lake Trasamene, where, on 21 June 217 BC, the Carthaginian General Hannibal slaughtered some Roman legions. In 149 BC the Romans destroyed Carthage completely. Neither Romans nor Carthaginians were signatories to the Geneva Conventions, nor had they heard of the Ten Commandments which Jews, Christians and Moslems profess to believe in.
Anyhow we found a campsite and set up a little pup tent. Then the Heavens opened and we found shelter in the camp restaurant and got seated at a table opposite a Dutch Lutheran minister and his wife. As the rain poured down outside we dined and talked and poured generous measures of wine down our throats. The minister had been a chaplain with the Dutch forces in Indonesia, following Holland’s liberation from the Nazis, and the Japanese evacuation of Indonesia. The Indonesian people had declared their independence and the Dutch had replied with ferocity. Our new friend had supported Dutch Imperialism but could not in conscience continue to do so, The Dutch Empire was as savage in Indonesia as the Nazis were in Poland and Russia. The current King of the Netherlands has’ just recently apologised for his country’s misconduct there,
Vichy France, supported by most of the French people, collaborated with the Nazis to the extent that they rounded up Jews to be murdered in NAZI concentration camps.
With Germany crushed, largely by the Soviets, France waged savage wars in North Africa. And Japan atom-bombed by the American, France resumed its tyrannical rule in Indo China. Among those holding DIENBIENPHU were members of the Foreign Legion who had served with Hitler’s SS.
In 1961 a key figure in the round-up of French Jews for the slaughter led Paris police who murdered Moslem North Africans by the hundreds and threw them into the Seine. Charles de Gaulle was President of France at the time,
At the time Algeria was deemed to be part of Metropolitan France -not a French colony – and Algerian Moslems were legally entitled to live in Calais, enjoying “The Rights Of Man and of The Citizen”. Rather like the people of Crossmaglen are deemed to be as British as the people of Finchley.
I drafted the first paragraph of this blog a year or two ago. But it might still give food for thought for today.
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