It
was during the fiercest repression of
the Greek people that Zionism formed an alliance with their fascist
oppressors
The Greek
Junta (1967-1974), whose coming to power was backed by the United States
and Henry Kissinger, set the scene for the coming to power of similar pro-American military
juntas, like that of Pinochet in Chile. Israel at the time was ruled by an
Israeli Labour government coalition, not Likud, not Religious Zionism not the
right-wing of the Zionist movement. It included Mapam, the so-called left
Zionist party which in 1969 formally joined what became the Israeli Labour
Alignment.
‘relationship blossomed during the dark days of the military junta that
ruled Greece from 1967 and 1974 — a period marked by the brutal repression,
imprisonment, torture, and murder of opponents of the regime, and a period that
was deliberately omitted from the celebratory narrative Israel promotes.’
Despite knowledge of the
torture, murder and disappearance of its political opponents, the Israeli
government had a closer relationship with the Junta than with previous civilian
governments. The Israeli government was concerned with winning the support of
the Junta for Israel in the United Nations and international forums.
From October 1968 onwards
close military and economic ties developed between Israel and the Greek Junta.
Israel’s only concern was with the fact that their budding relationship might
receive undue publicity.
The head of the office of
the Director General of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Hanan Bar-On, asked the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to “try
as much as possible to be modest in publicizing the progress of our practical
relations with Greece, be they in commerce or in other areas.”When members of the Junta’s air force
delegation later visited Israel for negotiations on the renovation and
maintenance of aircrafts, they arrived in civilian clothes.
Mack reports that the Junta
was becoming ever more oppressive inside its borders. On November 17, 1973, in
response to a student strike, an attack was made by the military on the
National Technical University of Athens with tanks, killing dozens of
civilians. Although news of the atrocity was reported all over the world,
including in Israeli newspapers, ‘the
State of Israel did not waver in its support of the junta or take a step back
in its economic relationship.’
Israel’s response was to
double down on its support for the Junta and its military and economic trading
relationships. As Mack notes:
The story of
Israel’s support for the military junta in Greece offers insight into the
nature and logic of Israel’s relations with dozens of dictatorships around the
world during the 1960s and ’70s. Israel was not interested in the fate of the
opposition and left-wing activists who were tortured and murdered by the
security forces, nor did it seem to care that its diplomacy, military, and
economy were directly aiding in the oppression of millions. This history
suggests that the State of Israel was not merely a passive player, following
only the will of the great powers; it was and remains a powerful and autonomous
promoter of its own interests first and foremost, willing to compromise on
values like democracy and human rights in order to gain international support
in its own oppression of the Palestinian people.
Nowhere was this more evident in Israel’s relationship
with the Argentinian Military Junta (1976-83) which tortured and ‘disappeared’
up to 3,000 Argentine Jews. Once again Israel’s own interest in supplying the
Junta with weapons and military training trumped any concern for Argentine’s
Jews.So much so that in the case of
Argentina Israel actually denied visas to Jews who were deemed subversive of
the Junta.See Jews targeted in
Argentina's dirty war
The leaders of the 1967 Greek coup d'état:
Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos, Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos and Colonel
Nikolaos Makarezos. (Unknown/CC BY-SA 4.0)
Greece is
one of the few countries in Europe today that openly embraces the Israeli army,
holding joint military exercises with Israel and acting as
an enthusiastic partner for Israeli arms and surveillance companies. Against
the background of Israel’s current constitutional and political crisis, Greece
has also reportedly been trying to attract more Israeli hi-tech companies, many of
which build military or dual-use products, by offering them extremely generous
incentives.
This close
relationship has also had a major impact on Greek domestic politics. Last year,
for example, it was revealed that an Israeli former intelligence general named Tal
Dilian, who runs a spyware company from
an office in Athens, was involved in a political and legal scandal over the
spyware’s use against Greek politicians and journalists; both
the head of intelligence and the adviser to the prime minister of Greece were
forced to resign.
George Papadopoloous
How did this
unique relationship form? Publicly, Israel and Greece trace their strong ties
back only to 1990, when full diplomatic relations were established and an
Israeli embassy opened in Athens. On May 21, 2015, the 25th anniversary of that
milestone, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a celebratory statement explaining its narrative of Greek-Israeli
diplomacy, according to which the period between 1952 and 1990 saw only
low-level relations between the two countries.
In recent
years, the statement continues,
“a strategic partnership has developed between the
two countries … based on democratic values and common interests shared by the
two countries, which face challenges in the Eastern Mediterranean region … The
two countries, Greece and Israel, are modern and democratic scions of ancient
nations … The bilateral cooperation between the two countries promotes common
values, progress and stability in the region. Both countries strive to continue
to promote peaceful and good neighborly relations with peoples and nations in
the region.”
This account
of the military relations between Israel and Greece is, however, untrue.
Telegrams in the files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Israel State
Archives, which were opened to the public between 2019-2020, show that the two
countries’ special relationship was in fact born much earlier than 1990, and
had nothing to do with the “democratic values” of either Greece or Israel. The
relationship blossomed during the dark days of the military junta that ruled
Greece from 1967 and 1974 — a period marked by the brutal repression,
imprisonment, torture, and murder of opponents of the regime, and a period that
was deliberately omitted from the celebratory narrative Israel promotes.
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos
Dendias at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, January 31, 2023. (Marc
Israel Sellem/POOL)
Before the
junta came to power, Greece’s relations with Israel were cold: it preferred to
build diplomatic and economic ties with Arab countries, and even voted against
the 1947 UN Partition Plan. Then, under the pretext of dealing with the
“communist threat,” a group of generals staged a military coup in Greece in
April 1967. Immediately upon seizing power, the military junta began a campaign
to eliminate its real and imagined opponents, an effort embraced or tacitly
supported by most Western European countries and the United States.
Although
there is disagreement regarding the exact number of victims of the junta, several
thousand activists, students, artists,
writers, actors, journalists, and even World War II veterans were arrested,
subjected to severe torture, and murdered. Some were held in detention and torture camps for many years,
with little food and water and no medical treatment. The torture practices included whipping the feet with sticks
and plastic tubes, inserting a tube into the detainee’s body and pouring water
inside, banging the head against the wall or the floor, the torturers jumping
on the detainee’s stomach, pulling out nails, causing burns and extinguishing
cigarettes on the body, electrocution, and even sexual torture.
Although
most of the files and documents of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs remain
classified, the telegrams in the archives that have been made available to the
public reveal that Israel was well aware of these human rights violations and
nevertheless continued its close military and political ties with the military
junta and even considered it more friendly to Israel than the civilian regimes
that preceded it. And yet, cognizant of diplomatic optics, Israel sought to
hide the nature of its relations with Greece — a practice that continues to
this day.
Establishing the relationship
A telegram
sent by the head of the Israeli mission in Athens, Yehoshua Nissim Shai, only
two months after the coup, demonstrates Israel’s awareness of the political
repression in Greece at the time. In June 1967, Shai complained that it was not
possible to carry out Israeli PR activities in Greece because the locals were
afraid to engage in any political matters:
“It is … absolutely forbidden for an individual to
engage in political matters in the severe military regime that prevails in this
country … It is enough for a person to express any political opinion without
the approval of the authorities for him to find himself arrested the next day.”
Despite
Shai’s awareness of these political crimes and apparent personal discomfort
with them, a series of communications and meetings that took place in the
immediate aftermath of the junta’s coup are indicative of the quickly warming
relations between the two countries.
A military tank seen on the street during the coup
that brought the Greek junta to power, 21 April 1967. (CC BY 2.0)
Less than
one month after sending the telegram, Shai reported in another telegram on his
meeting with the junta’s foreign minister and his effort to motivate the junta
to take a more sympathetic and understanding stance toward Israel. The foreign
minister responded that the junta, and even he personally, had a very positive
attitude toward Israel and “is happy
about the glorious victory of the IDF” in the 1967 war, which had ended
just a few weeks earlier. According to the minister, because of the junta’s
diplomatic interests in the Arab world, he could not take a public pro-Israel
line as he wanted, but he promised to do everything possible to soften the
position of the Greek representative at the UN toward Israel.
In another
telegram describing a subsequent meeting with General Nikolaos Makarezos, one
of the leaders of the coup, Shai reported:
“The conversation revolved around his visit to
Israel at the beginning of this year. The minister mentioned his contacts with
Mossad personnel and spoke highly of Israel’s achievements.”
On Sept. 17,
the relationship developed further. The deputy speaker of the Knesset at the
time, Yitzhak Navon, visited Greece and met with Constantine Kollias, the prime
minister appointed by the military junta. According to the summary of the
meeting, Navon tried to convince Kollias to vote with Israel in international
forums such as the United Nations. Kollias expressed appreciation and
admiration for the State of Israel, saying that he saw Greece and Israel as
fighting “against the common enemy —
communism” and added that “your hopes
[are] our hopes.” Kollias later explained that he was upset with “attacks … in the press by Jews on the Greek
government and police.”
Instead of
calling out Kollias’s complaint for being tinged with the antisemitic trope
that Jews control the media, Navon tacitly validated his concern and said,
“The government of Israel has no control over the
press in the world, not even in Israel itself. But it is possible to ‘soften’ this
attitude in certain cases. Greece’s support for Israel may bring it sympathy in
the free world.”
A market for modern and cheap weapons
A year
later, the nascent diplomatic ties between Greece and Israel crossed over into
military cooperation. In October 1968, Yaakov Ben-Sher, Israel’s commercial
attaché in Greece, wrote that he met with Makarezos to discuss a visit by a
delegation of Greek military officers to Israeli Military Industries, the
state-owned weapons manufacturer, at Israel’s invitation. It was agreed that
the delegation would not arrive in uniform and that the visit would not be
publicized. The next month, Ben-Sher wrote that among the goals of the visit
were “establishing a maintenance plant
for aircraft in Greece, Israel Aerospace Industries, [and] the presentation of
weapons and military equipment produced in Israel.”
Workers at
an IMI factory manufacturing gun barrels in 1955. (GPO)
The junta’s
air force delegation visited Israel between Nov. 25 and Dec. 3, 1968. A report
prepared by the Greek delegation after the trip outlined their activities in
Israel: the group visited Israeli Military Industries’ factory; was interested
in Uzi submachine guns, lighting bombs, and smoke grenades; and discussed the
possibility of Israel maintaining the junta’s air force aircrafts, and even
Israeli assistance in the establishment of an arms manufacturing industry in
Greece.
The Greek
military delegation wrote that
“due to the constant development of the Greek army
and due to the reduction of the U.S. military aid program, Greece is dependent
on the international arms markets, since the supply of the necessary equipment
and weapons would not be immediately resolved by establishing a national arms
industry. From this perspective, Israel is a market for modern and cheap
weapons and is a site for extensive commercial exchanges and close economic
cooperation for the benefit of both sides.”
On Jan. 30,
1969, Ben-Sher reported that he met again with the junta’s minister of
coordination, Makarezos, and talked with him about the purchase of Gabriel
missiles, land army communication equipment from Tadiran (an Israeli company),
and even Israeli assistance in building a nuclear reactor in Greece. According
to a telegram from June 5, 1969, sent by the Israeli mission in Athens, the
chairman of the Greek Atomic Energy Commission visited Israel during the
previous month, but it is not clear from Israeli Foreign Ministry documents
disclosed to the public if and how Israel aided Greece’s nuclear development.
‘The rulers of today will also be the rulers of tomorrow’
As
diplomatic relations between the State of Israel and the junta tightened, so
did their economic ties. On Feb. 8, 1969, a new commercial agreement was
signed, revealing the inextricable link between each country’s military and
economy. In a telling symbol of the increasingly close ties, Yaakov Cruz, the
former deputy head of the Mossad, was appointed to the position of head of the
Israeli mission in Athens in early 1968.
During May
1969, preparations began for a visit to Greece by an Israeli economic
delegation, including representatives of the arms manufacturers. For reasons of
political sensitivity, Israel decided to downgrade the level of participants
in, and the visibility of, the delegation. In response, Cruz sent a telegram to
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which he tried to reverse the decision to
downgrade. “Our relations with the
current government have improved a lot compared to our relations with its
predecessors,” wrote Cruz.
Protest
against the junta by Greek political exiles in Germany, April 30, 1967.
(Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-F0503-0204-005/CC-BY-SA 3.0)
“Many of the Greek exiles were our most prominent
opponents when they were in power, led by Andreas Papandreou,” he continued. “All
Western countries, without exception, make great efforts, and often without
limits, to succeed in as many economic transactions as possible with Greece,
including the supply of military equipment.” Cruz concluded his telegram by
writing that, in his opinion, Israel should not be ashamed of its relations
with the junta, since it was equally clear to all Western countries, and in
particular to the USA, that the “the
rulers of today will also be the rulers of tomorrow.”
On May 16,
1969, Cruz reported on a meeting he and the CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries,
Al Schwimmer, held with the head of the military junta in order to “present the possibilities and proposals of
Israel Aerospace Industries.” Cruz wrote that he reviewed with the head of
the junta the progress that had taken place since his last visit: “Three agreements have been signed between
us, two military delegations have already visited, and a third will leave next
week to Israel. A goodwill delegation to promote economic ties is about to come
to Greece at the beginning of June, and the visit of the CEO of Israel
Aerospace Industries is also part of the effort to develop these ties.” The
head of the junta thanked Cruz for the explanations he received and emphasized
the need for cooperation between the two countries.
Keeping it a secret
At the
beginning of June 1969, another Israeli economic delegation visited Greece. In
several telegrams around that time, Cruz wrote that the members of the Israeli
delegation received important proposals such as “establishing a maintenance plant for aircrafts, overhauling aircrafts’
engines and selling weapons”; that the delegation met with the Greek
military’s chief of staff, the junta’s officers, and other senior officials;
and that the Israeli company Tadiran had signed a deal with the regime worth $2
million.
In a
telegram sent by economic attaché Ben-Sher on Oct. 30 of the same year, he
wrote that
“the Greek army ordered communication equipment
from Tadiran in the amount of $2,316,500. The order was finally approved by the
Israeli prime minister and the minister of defense. The contract will be signed
within a week to 10 days. The contract is to be executed in 1970.”
The close
relations with a military junta that had become infamous for its human rights
violations raised some concerns, however. “In
my conversations with various people, they expressed their regret at the
publicizing of the strengthening of our ties with Greece during this particular
period,” the deputy head of the Israeli delegation in Brussels wrote to the
director of the European division at the foreign ministry in 1969. “Last night, two friends told me that they
understand the need for realpolitik in the special situation that Israel is in,
and especially in what concerns our economic relations, but they wondered if it
is not possible to prevent, or at least to moderate, the publicizing of this
matter.”
Demonstration
against the Greek military junta in front of the White House, April 21, 1974.
(Reading/Simpson/CC BY-NC 2.0)
In a
telegram sent by the head of the office of the director general of the Foreign
Ministry, Hanan Bar-On, to the leadership of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign
Affairs a short time later, he asked to “try
as much as possible to be modest in publicizing the progress of our practical
relations with Greece, be they in commerce or in other areas.” In
accordance with this request, the members of the junta’s air force delegation,
who visited Israel for negotiations on the renovation and maintenance of
aircrafts, arrived in civilian clothes.
According to
a report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1972, Israel sold
parachutes worth approximately $250,000 to the Greek military, and they
conducted negotiations regarding the sale of searchlights to the Air Force and
the Armored Corps. But the junta wanted more. “The Greek army is interested in buying other military equipment in
Israel, but we do not have political approval for this,” Dr. Yitzhak
Azouri, an Israeli diplomat stationed in Greece, wrote in 1972, “for example, rockets.”
The
following year, Israel went so far as to assist Greece in one of the most
sensitive areas of Israeli international relations. On Jan. 17, 1973, Azouri
reported that an agreement was signed with the junta to transport crude oil
from the Persian Gulf through the Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline, and from there
on to Piraeus, Greece. “A transport of
about 250,000 tons (in the amount of about $1.5 million) has already been
carried out,” Azouri reported. “It
was agreed in principle to transport around 1.5 million tons, that is, in the
amount of about $9 million.”
Azouri was
reprimanded for his reports on a sensitive issue like oil. “In your review of Israel-Greece economic relations, you mentioned the
matter of the oil pipeline, which is considered a top secret issue,” he was
told in a telegram sent by the economic department of the Foreign Ministry on
April 6 of that year. “Please inform the
recipients about the secret classification of the telegram.”
Undeterred by escalating brutality
As its
relations with Israel grew increasingly warm, Greece was becoming ever more
oppressive inside its borders. On Nov. 17, 1973, in response to a student
strike, junta forces raided the premises of the National Technical University
of Athens with tanks, killing dozens of civilians. Although news of the
atrocity was reported all over the world, including in Israeli newspapers, the
State of Israel did not waver in its support of the junta or take a step back
in its economic relationship.
Thousands
march outside the Athens Polytechnic against the military junta, November 1973.
(Unknown/CC BY-SA 4.0)
On March 12,
1974, Azouri reported that “according to
the estimate, the payments of Greece for transporting crude oil from the
Persian Gulf through the oil pipeline will amount to about $8 million.”
According to the same report, two Greek military delegations visited Israel in
1973, with the junta’s air force signing an arms deal with Israel Aerospace
Industries for hundreds of weapons and other military technology, including 466
units of Uzi submachine guns, worth well over $1 million, with other deals in
the works worth millions more.
Azouri also
noted that after a visit to Israel by the Greek Air Force delegation, the
Greeks decided to purchase bombs from Israel, subject to budgetary approval.
Israel won a tender worth approximately $750,000 for the supply of 81 mm
mortars, submitted proposals for the supply of hand grenades and the
establishment of a factory for the production of hand grenades in Greece, and
Tadiran signed an agreement for the supply of communications equipment worth
$300,000.
Azouri did
not raise the possibility of canceling or freezing these deals in light of the
massacre in Athens and other human rights violations. It seems, in fact, that
Israel doubled down on its military relations with Greece: Azouri, alongside
another Israeli diplomat named Yael Vered, negotiated a deal in which the
junta’s air force decided to purchase bombs and aircraft armament accessories
worth $4–5 million dollars. It was also agreed that within a month bomb models
would be transferred to the junta for testing in their planes, pending
budgetary approval.
At the time
these deals were being negotiated, the junta was involved in the violent
destabilization of Cyprus and supported the Greek nationalists who wanted the
island to be annexed to Greece –– in opposition to the wishes of the elected
government in Cyprus and the Turkish minority on the island. According to
documents from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Israel was aware that the junta
was transferring military equipment to the forces it had stationed illegally on
Cypriot soil. For example, in discussing one of the recent arms deals between
Greece and Israel, Azouri said: “The
problem is more political, as some of the mortars are intended for the Greek
army in Cyprus.”
His solution
to the bad optics was to propose handing over the mortars without marking, and
he added that the Foreign Ministry “has
no objection to the Greek army in Cyprus receiving the mortars, and over time
this can be brought to the attention of [Cypriot President and Archbishop]
Makarios III, who has an interest in the Greek army’s activities on the
island.”
President
Makarios of Cyprus in Bonn during a state visit to West Germany, May 22, 1962.
(Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F012969-0006/Patzek, Renate/CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Learning the wrong lessons
It was the
junta’s intervention in Cyprus — supporting a military coup that took place on
July 15, 1974 — that ultimately led to its downfall. The leaders of the coup
deposed Makarios, and announced their intention to annex the island to Greece.
Five days later, Turkey invaded the island in the name of protecting its
Turkish minority and occupied the northeast. Two hundred thousand Greek
Cypriots living in this area were deported or fled from the Turks, leading the
island to be divided along ethnic lines, which has lasted to this day.
Israel was
well aware of the junta’s involvement in what was happening. According to a
situation assessment prepared by the Israeli ambassador in Nicosia on July 18,
three days after the military coup on the island:
“There is no dispute that the coup was carried out
by the Greek officers of the Cypriot National Guard, in accordance with
instructions from Athens. The assessment is that the ruling sect in Athens
acted out of a lack of understanding of international affairs and from a
provincial perspective.”
On July 22,
a week after the coup, the exiled president of Cyprus, Makarios, asked Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for assistance in preserving the island’s
independence. Instead of providing aid, however, the Rabin government simply
decided to send Makarios a nonchalant greeting from the former Israeli
ambassador to the island, Rachamim Timur, in which he hoped for his well-being,
wishing him health and all the best. Rage at the military junta’s intervention
in Cyprus led
to its collapse, and Greece
began the process of becoming a democracy once again.
Yael Vered,
the Israeli diplomat, prepared a summary of the lessons to be learned from the
recent Cyprus crisis. “Israeli conclusions: a. A minority of 18 percent can win
full political rights if it has military and political support fighting on its
behalf; b. 200,000 people can become refugees without the world being shocked;
c. The nullity of the guarantees of ‘world powers’ has been proven … d. The
impotence of the UN in finding an actual solution to crises has been proven
once again (if indeed this even needs to be proven).” In another telegram,
Vered wrote that “the Cyprus affair has
so far demonstrated the impotence of the UN and its inability to solve complex
problems such as the Cyprus problem (or, in the past, Vietnam, the Israeli-Arab
conflict, Kashmir, etc).”
Apparently,
Israel did not learn to be wary of future cooperation with other oppressive
military regimes, did not learn that using excessive force can cause a regime’s
downfall, and did not learn that upholding violent military rule is perhaps not
worth the devastation it inflicted on innumerable citizens. Israel did,
however, learn that refugees can be easily deported and that the UN is
powerless — though Israel likely knew this already.
The day that Churchill was booed by an election crowd
One
of the things that stuck with me since living in Wales as a child was the
hostility amongst Welsh workers to Churchill as a result of his sending the
troops and police into the valleys to help the coal owners defeat the striking
miners, some of whom were shot. Indeed during the General Election in 1945 Churchill was booed by workers. The myth of the much loved Winston is just that - a carefully crafted Tory myth.
Churchill’s
reputation was made primarily in imperial affairs. It is indisputable that
Churchill was primarily responsible for the slaughter at Gallipolli in 1915.
[See Winston
Churchill’s World War Disaster]
Previously
there was his period as Home Secretary when he took personal control of the
Sydney Street siege in January 1911. Two Latvian revolutionaries were holed up
there and they were besieged by police and troops. When the building caught
fire he ordered the fire brigade not to put the flames out and allowed those
inside to burn to death. As Colonial Secretary he presided over Partition in
Ireland and over the beginning of the Mandate in Palestine. In Palestine he
introduced the murderous Black and Tans who had seen bloody service in Ireland.
Adam Jones,
editor of the Journal of Genocide
Research, called Churchill "a genuine
genocidaire", noting that he called
Indians a "foul race" and said that the British air force
chief should "send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them."
[Jones, Adam (2016-12-16). "Chapter
2 State and Empire; War and Revolution". Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction.
Routledge]
Whether
it was sending in the army to protect the coal owners in Wales or
presiding over the famine in Bengal in 1942, Churchill was a mass murderer.Churchill’s whole career had been dedicated
to the preservation of the Empire and the privileges of his class.In January 1931 he resigned from the
Conservative Shadow Cabinet over self-government for India.
Churchill
made his reputation in the second world war, primarily through his fighting
speeches.However his opposition to
Hitler was not from an anti-fascist perspective.He saw Hitler as a threat to British
interests.Initially he had welcomed
Hitler as an anti-communist.During the
War Churchill was distinguished by his refusal to do anything to alleviate the
position of the Jews including the bombing of Auschwitz and the railway lines
leading up to it. He was however a die hard Zionist and that is why Zionist
supporters loved him despite his undoubted anti-Semitism.
During
the war he advocated the mass bombing of German cities like Dresden and
Nuremburg.Thousands died as a result
yet the end of the war was not advanced as a result. These were undoubtedly war
crimes.
When
Greece was liberated on October 12th by the Communist led resistance
British troops entered two days later with the prime aim of keeping out the
communists. Churchill put the local Nazi collaborators back in power as his
main goal was keeping the Greek Resistance (ELAM/ELAS) dominated by the Communists
out of power. He supported a bloodbath of Greek Resistance fighters who had
fought Hitler.His order to the troops
was:
Churchill’s
Gestapo Speech
You
are responsible for maintaining order in Athens and for neutralizing or
destroying all EAM-ELAS [National Liberation Front – Greek People’s Liberation
Army] bands approaching the city. You may make any regulations you like for the
strict control of the streets or for the rounding up of any number of truculent
persons…. It would be well of course if your command were reinforced by the
authority of some Greek Government…. Do not, however, hesitate to act as if you
were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress…. We have to
hold and dominate Athens. It would be a great thing for you to succeed in this
without bloodshed if possible, but also with bloodshed if necessary.
In December 1944: Nazi troops were
still resisting the Allies, who were making slow progress in Italy and being
pushed back in the Ardennes faced with the Wehrmacht’s final counter-offensive.
Yet the “bands” here targeted by Churchill were not groups of collaborators,
but the partisans of the great National Liberation
Front (EAM), which had for three years mounted mass resistance against the
German occupiers.
In
December 1944, taking away troops from the Italian front, Churchill ordered the
Military Governor Scobie to crush the rebels. Arms, planes and
ever more troops (up to 75,000 men) were diverted from the Italian front to
Greece. The EAM’s proposals for negotiations were rejected. Churchill relied on
the very same forces that had collaborated with the Nazis. See also Athens
1944: Britain’s dirty secret
In
a demonstration held in Athen’s Syntagma Square 24 peaceful demonstrators were
killed with hundreds wounded. Ed Vulliamy and Helen Smith wrote:
This was the day, those 70 years ago this week,
when the British army, still at war with Germany, opened fire upon – and gave
locals who had collaborated with the Nazis the guns to fire upon – a civilian
crowd demonstrating in support of the partisans with whom Britain had been
allied for three years.
December 3, 1944, saw a monster demonstration in Syntagma Square
to demand Papandreou’s resignation and the constitution of a new government.
The massacre that followed — the police opened fire on unarmed civilians,
leaving over twenty dead and more than a hundred wounded — triggered the
insurrection of the people of Athens. This was the pretext that Churchill had
sought in order to be able to break the Resistance.
HMS Ajax in Greece Churchill
It was contended that
the British army hadn’t opened fire but the Greek Police, who were under their
direction, had. SeeGuardian
Reader’s Editor. Regardless the fact is that the then Greek
government under George Papandreou had integrated the Nazi-controlled Security
Battalions into the National Guard.
Historian
André Gerolymatos held a conference in British Columbia on the question of the
role of British troops and concluded that:
“Under the best of circumstances the integration of the security
battalions into the national guard and later in the new Greek army, both being
trained by the British until 1947, was grotesque and has coloured the memory of
the participants and what recollections they passed on to their descendants.”
Churchill saw very early the potential of Zionism as an antidote to Communism amongst Jews
Churchill’s
famous tract Zionism andBolshevism
was published in the Illustrated Sunday Herald on 8 February 1920.Suffice to say Churchill was not overfond of
revolutionary Jews!He wrote of the
‘International Jew’ as being responsible for all the ills his class suffered
from, including the French Revolution! The Zionists had no problem with this as
they were of the same opinion. Churchill wrote:
Churchill
enjoying himself at the Sydney Street siege
‘The
adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the
unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their
race.... This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of
Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela
Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States),
this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the
reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious
malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. ... It has
been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth
Century;...
There
is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in
the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and
for the most part atheistical Jews.. ...
Zionism
offers the third sphere to the political conceptions of the Jewish race. In
violent contrast to international communism, it presents to the Jew a national
idea of a commanding character.’
Churchill
like most of his class saw Zionism as an alternative to the attractions of
revolution for Jews. Those who argue that the origins of Zionism were
progressive are very much mistaken.
Churchill's
Police confront the miners in South Wales
Below
are 3 essays. Nu'man Abd al-Wahid tells the real story of Dunkirk and how
Britain stabbed in the back its two partners, France and Belgium. Shashi Tharoor
writes about how, in the wake of Hollywood’s hagiographical film ‘Churchill’
Hollywood was rewarding a mass murderer.
The Independent’s former columnist Johan Hari, writes in the same vein
about the dark side of Churchill, the man for whom we face a 10 year prison
sentence if we damage his statue.
Tony
Greenstein
Painting of young Churchill by Edwin Arthur Ward (1859-1933)
“[Hitler]
is only the ghost of our own past rising against us. He stands for the
extenuation and perpetuation of our own methods…”[1]
George Orwell
Hollywood’s “Dunkirk” movie, released to rave
reviews in the midst of the Trump presidential era and a year after the UK
Brexit vote, clocked in more than $500 million at the box office worldwide. The
so-called ‘World War Two’ blockbuster depicted retreating British troops in the
French coastal city of Dunkirk evading the German air force as they attempted
to safely board boats back to England. But how exactly did this desperate state
of affairs arise? This essay provides a general overview of the military
developments which led to the retreat at Dunkirk and identifies the
similarities in the world view of the main belligerent parties.
No one kissed their loved one’s goodbye and then
embarked on the journey to fight in the Hundred Years’ War or the Thirty Years’
War for that matter. Likewise, when war was declared many centuries later in
Europe in September 1939 no one absurdly tempted fate to announce World War Two
had began. Actually, in 1939 there was then no such conflict known as World War
One. The war that is now known as World War One, was then known as the ‘Great
War’. Yet as the cold European autumn and winter of 1939 naturally seasoned
into the following year’s spring, the latest round of European warfare pitched
two white supremacist camps against each other.
On one side were the imperialist nations of
Britain, France, Belgium, Holland and their allies. Western historians possess
an empirically-lacking fascination to refer to the imperialist nations in their
literature as “democracies” or “allies” rather than for what they actually
were, white supremacist nations who denied democracy to hundreds of millions of
non-white inhabitants in their colonial territories while plundering them.[2]
These four imperial powers had prided themselves on conquering and plundering
colonial territories for the last 300 years.
On the other side, was Nazi Germany and its allies.
Nazi Germany was led by Mr. Adolf Hitler, a dictator with strong racial
prejudices similar to those held by the leaders of the imperialist camp. The
British had become affluent and powerful through the trans-Atlantic slave trade
and then largely by gorging itself on plundering and impoverishing India.
The French had also profited from enslaving
Africans and then established rule over Western parts of Africa and some
territories in Far East Asia, the Belgians had plundered the Congo, the Dutch
had colonial territories in South America and Far East Asia.[3]
Germany was relatively late to this manner of European material enrichment on
the backs of the darker peoples of the world and as we shall see Mr. Hitler was
determined to establish his Empire, the Third Reich, in Europe rather than in
Africa and Asia.
This account of the war between the west European
imperialist camp and Nazi Germany in May 1940 mainly takes its lead from
Nicholas Harman’s “Dunkirk: Necessary
Myth”, Clive Ponting’s “1940: Myth
and Reality” and Len Deighton’s “Blood,
Tears and Folly”.
Between Hitler launching the war by invading Poland
in 1939 and the commencement of land hostilities with the imperialist forces
there was a war initiated by the British against Norway. Winston Churchill, who
at the outbreak of the war held the ministerial position of the First Lord of
the Admiralty (i.e. the Minister responsible for the British Navy) conjured an
idea to drag neutral Norway into the war in April 1940 by mining its ports with
a view to cut off raw materials destined for Germany ports.[4]
The Germans got a whiff of this idea and decided to invade Norway, easily
securing the ports and making short shrift of the British and French forces.[5]
Having failed at Norway, the then British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed the buck stopped with him, accepted
responsibility for the defeat and had the decency to resign. This ironically,
propelled Mr. Churchill into the hot seat even though it was his idea which
culminated in the Norway fiasco.[6]
This was a far cry from one of the pivotal moments
during the Great War of 1914-1918, when another Churchill idea to send the
British Empire’s forces through the Dardanelles straits to capture
Constantinople from the Ottomans led to the Empire’s resounding defeat at the
hands of the Ottoman Turks at Gallipoli in 1915. Then he resigned and left the
war cabinet. This time, he was rewarded for his failure and became Prime
Minister on the 10th May 1940, the very day Germany initiated its
land war on the Low Countries. As
Britain had violated Norway’s neutrality, Germany violated the neutrality of
Holland and Belgium.
The imperialist camp had assumed the war was to be
a complete action replay of the Great War. The major battles of this war were
fought in the north of France and the Franco-Belgian border. Hitler had another
idea. Although he led the imperialists to believe there would be a replay of
the Great War, he simultaneously sent well equipped German divisions south to
the Ardennes forest which mostly separates Germany and France.
At the Ardennes some of Germany’s best troops
easily faced off against the weaker French forces. France had sent its well
equipped and best trained troops north because no one in the imperialist
military hierarchy was convinced the Nazis would possess the audacity to cross
the seemingly insurmountable Ardennes.
Holland was the first to surrender after putting up
a short fight for about 72 hours.[7]
Hitherto, these Dutch white supremacists had simply wanted to be left in peace
with their imperialist loot in South America and more profitably in the Far
East. As one sympathetic historian notes:
“The
Dutch stood apart from other Europeans…Their worldwide colonies provided oil
and raw materials: Indonesia (at that time the Dutch East Indies of Java and
Sumatra) was the ‘spice islands’ so many early explorers [i.e. European
pirates] had sought. Neutrality in the First World War had further enriched the
Dutch, who had hoped to remain neutral in the Second World War.”[8]
Note the word “provided” as if these colonies had a
choice. The Dutch handed in their official surrender notice to the German Nazis
on the 14th May. Three days before on the 11th, the
British and French forces countered German forces in Belgium. Herein, at the
Battle of Gembloux, the French Army was composed mainly of Moroccans[9]
and although the Moroccans were up against the German Panzer divisions
supported by far superior air force, they successfully fended off the German
attack with “incredible bravery”[10].
The Moroccans lost 2000 men, 27% of the total division.[11]
Another mostly Moroccan division “along the Dyle Defence line” to the north of
Gembloux fended off another German attack.[12]
But this was all to no avail as by the 13th May the Germans had
blazed through the Ardennes and were already in France.
By the 15th May the Germans had occupied
the French fortress at Sedan. At this point the “allies” didn’t know which
direction the German forces would progress. Were they to continue straight
across towards Paris or move north to confront the imperialist forces in the
North? If they were to send their forces south to confront the Germans flowing
out of the Ardennes, then this would make the German advance through the Low
Countries easier.
Lo and behold the imperialist forces of Britain,
France and Belgium were found wanting, out-witted and out-flanked as they were
finely and valiantly assembled in anticipation of the Great War replay. They
had thrown all their eggs into one basket in Belgium and the Franco-Belgian
border and were now caught in a pincer movement. They were very much not unlike
the proverbial deer caught in headlights. The Germans turned their attention
northwards.
Meanwhile, after the fall of Sedan, the French
sacked the supreme Allied Commander of the imperialist forces, General Maurice
Gamelin. He was replaced by General Maxime Weygand who was flown from France’s
colonial territory of Lebanon where he had settled after spending many years
administering another colonial territory, Syria, where no doubt, he had engaged
in keeping the natives in check as France lorded it over them.[13]
The leader of the British forces was General Lord
John Gort who commanded five British regular divisions as well as other
territorial divisions aka British Expeditionary Force (BEF). In theory, Gort
took orders from the supreme Allied Commander, first Gameline and then Weygand.
Weygand’s immediate junior was the head of the French First Group of Armies,
General Billotte.
Panic ensued in the imperialist camp. As the
British, French and Belgians began to entertain different military objectives:
the Belgians to defend Belgium, the French to counter-attack the Germans, the
British to do a scurry to the French coast and back to England.[14]
Imperialism and colonialism are forms of state sanctioned theft of other
nations’ resources and the European battlefield of May 1940 was to glowingly
illustrate there is no honour among thieves. All British forces were now in
full retreat looking to avoid the Nazi military pincer and entrapment.[15]
As the British scurried from the fight in Belgium
they helped themselves to the resources of the local civilian population or as
Harman writes, “stealing from civilians
soon became official policy.” As such they stole meat, chickens, ducks,
eggs and milk to help maintain their heroic retreat to the coast moving
forward. Belgian civilians who resisted British looting of their stock were
summarily executed, ‘Nazi style’. The legendary British Major General, Bernard
Montgomery stole a herd of cattle as he retreated.[16]
It was one thing for Montgomery to earn his stripes crushing indigenous
Palestinians resisting the British Zionist-colonial project in Palestine in the
late 1930s, but in May 1940 he was just another thieving imperialist white
supremacist on the run for his life.[17]
Alternatively, it could be argued the British army compensated for their
unwillingness to fight the advancing Nazis in Belgium by showcasing their
martial qualities on defenceless civilians who they were supposedly there to
protect from Nazi occupation! How ironic or as Harman writes,
“It
is small wonder if local civilians were anxious only to see the back of them
[British Army] – even if the replacement was to be the German army whose
propaganda had plenty of material to work with.”[18]
Let’s also keep in mind that if the British army
behaved this unscrupulously towards their fellow white supremacist Europeans
and allies in the midst of war against a common foe, what more cruelty and
exploitation had they inflicted on Africa and Asia in the previous 300 years?
Two days after the fall of Sedan to Nazi forces,
Lord Gort began to exert his unwillingness to comply with orders from his
immediate French superiors and specifically from General Billotte. The
Frenchman had wanted the leader of the British forces to “make a stand” and fight but Gort clearly was already thinking of
dashing for the French coast.[19]
From the 18th May onwards, the BEF
leadership had begun discussing actual plans for withdrawal back to England via
the coastal town of Dunkirk.[20]
General Oliver Lees is credited with initiating this idea. On the 19th
May, at Lord Gort’s Headquarters, “it was
privately agreed that Leese’s plan of withdrawal to Dunkirk would be adopted if
necessary…Nothing was said to the French on the matter.”[21]
On the 20th May, Churchill instructed that “a large number of small vessels” to be assembled on the French
coast.[22]
The British were laying the foundations for their skullduggery against their
allies. In effect, within ten days of
actual land hostilities commencing, the white supremacists of Nazi Germany had
the imperialist white supremacists on the run and was in the process of wiping
the battlefield floor with them.
So as the imperialist nations were being hemmed
into a pocket of north eastern Europe from two different directions by the
Nazis, Dunkirk took on a multi-layered meaning and purpose, one for each of the
remaining imperialist nations. For the Belgians, it was a launch pad to defend
Belgium after the lightening quick Nazi advances into their territory; for the
French it was a stronghold to stage counter-attacks against the Germans and for
the British imperialists it was a charming coastal destination for an “I’m
alright Jack” escape back to England.[23]
According to Harman, this divergence came to the
fore when a conference was convened in the Belgian city, Ypres, on 21st
May among the imperialists. The overall allied commander, Weygand arrived at
3.30pm to be greeted by King Leopold of Belgium. The commander of the First
French Group of Armies General Billote was also present. The head of British
forces, Lord Gort didn’t arrive until 9pm. By this time, Weygand had already
returned to Paris to resume charge of the war. “Then and later the French believed” writes Harman, “that Gort deliberately missed this vital
conference.”[24]
This belief is reasonable as Gort was already thinking of fleeing at this
point. Furthermore, at this meeting, Gort and the British advisor to King
Leopold, Roger Keyes, also convinced the Belgian King not to surrender.[25]
When the conference ended and as Billotte was
driving back to his base in the dusky evening, his vehicle crashed and he
succumbed to his injuries the following day and died. This death can be
attributed to Lord Gort’s lateness the previous day. If Gort had shown a
modicum of respect to his “allies” and turned up on time Billotte would most
likely have left the meeting in daylight and not crashed.[26]
So once again, the French found themselves looking for a successor to an
important military position who wasn’t confirmed until the 25th May.
All during this time, the Germans were advancing and the British intention and
conviction to head for the sands of Dunkirk became more resolute.
British disgracefulness reached new heights on the
23rd May in the French city of Boulogne where the British and French
imperialist forces were supposedly trying to fend off a German advance into the
city. The first act of disgrace was when some British troops, having looted
liquor from local shops began fighting French forces. The French returned fire
and killed British soldiers. Secondly, once composure was restored in the
ranks, the British moved from fighting a rear guard action to hopping onto
waiting ships without informing the French who were left “in the dark as to British intentions”.[27]
As the British boarded the ships, they vandalised the harbour preventing their
French allies from either being militarily supplied so they could continue the
fight or be rescued from the sea.[28]
In Boulogne, British forces ultimately played a role to the detriment of French
forces and to the advantage of the Nazis.
Luckily for the retreating Britons and to the
dismay of his generals, Hitler’s enchantment and admiration of the British
Empire got the better of him. He ordered the German advance to stop on the 24th
May and a golden opportunity was missed to capture the British Army which
would’ve inevitably, at the very least, forced another crisis in the British
government and potentially Churchill’s resignation.[29]
According to the current British Prime Minister,
Boris Johnson, if
“Hitler
had listened to his generals, he could have smashed us [the British Army]…He
could have killed or captured the bulk of Britain’s fighting forces, and deprived
this country of the physical ability to resist.”[30]
Much argumentation and “mystery” (this is also
Johnson’s opinion) has ensued on why Hitler ordered a halt to the German war
machine when they clearly had the upper hand. The fact is the main political
reason Hitler put halt on the German advance was because he admired the British
Empire which he saw as “the solid
achievement of his ideas of racial domination.”[31]
According to the historian Niall Ferguson, Hitler “repeatedly expressed his admiration of British imperialism.”[32]
Hitler’s vision was not only of emulating the British Empire but of a future
alliance with Britain to co-manage the affairs of mankind.[33]
Hitler’s ultimate aim was to establish a German Empire by ‘enslaving’ Russians
on the basis of how the British Empire had ‘enslaved’ Indians for the previous
200 years.
“What India was for
England” declared the German
Nazi dictator, “the territories of Russia
will be for us.”[34]
For Hitler, the British occupation of India was the blueprint for his evil, the
Third Reich. As such, Hitler believed the wealth of Britain was “the result…of the capitalist exploitation of
the three hundred and fifty million slaves.”[35]
In the words of author Sven Lindqvist from his masterpiece Exterminate All
The Brutes, Hitler wanted to create a “continental
equivalent of the British Empire.”[36]
Hitler had not yet reached British levels of
barbarity which according to the Indian politician, Shashi Tharoor, led to
between 30 and 35 million Indians perishing in the “British Colonial
Holocaust”, as a direct result of British colonial policy.[37]
Before British colonialism India produced 24% of the world’s GDP, almost 200
years later it was less than 5%. Average life expectancy was reduced to less than
30 years.[38]
The economist, Professor Utsa Patnaik, argues that Britain looted India to the
tune of $43 trillion over this period.
By halting and allowing the British Army to escape,
Hitler was clearly hoping this goodwill gesture would be appreciated by
Imperial Britain in any future peace talks. In effect, this brief German
military halt helped to allow British forces retreat to Dunkirk and establish a
perimeter around the town.
Also, on the 24th May, the French were
given a strong impression the British planned to desert the fight and evacuate.
A French General, Maurice Blanchard who had replaced Billotte went to visit
Gort but only found Gort’s chief of staff, Henry Pownall who denied the rumour.[39]
When it was brought to the French leadership’s knowledge that the British were
planning to evacuate, Churchill’s personal liaison officer to the French
government totally denied it and even referred to the Frenchman who had brought
the news to the leadership as out of his mind and a ‘broken man’.[40]
Surreptitiously, the British had wanted to keep
their allies fighting for as long as possible as they retreated and evacuated.
On the 26th May British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden instructed
Gort to keep the French and Belgians in the dark about British evacuation
plans. On the same day, after Sunday church service at Westminster Abbey, Churchill
lunched with the French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud and reassured him of “Britain’s absolute commitment to victory”
knowing British troops had already began to depart from Dunkirk.[41]
As Reynaud left for France, Churchill gave the
order for the abscondment to officially commence. The name given to this
skullduggery was “Operation Dynamo”. Not knowing British plans, Weygand
continued to advise imperialist forces as though the British were still in the
fight. He instructed French troops to resist at Dunkirk “to the limit” because the French army was preparing Dunkirk as a
springboard for an imperialist counter-attack. But as the French planned to
fight, Britain was disengaging.[42]
In effect, Churchill stabbed Reynaud in the back in the midst of an existential
war after attending Church service which no doubt had invoked the teachings of the
Messiah, Jesus Christ. To be fair to Churchill, if France was Britain and
Britain was France, Reynaud would have probably done the same to Churchill
because there is no honour among imperialist thieves.
Coincidently on the same day as ‘Operation Dynamo’
officially began, Hitler resumed the fight against the remaining imperialist
forces. Belgium soon surrendered on the 27th May and a Belgian
government in exile was established in London. This exiled government was
entirely funded by the Belgian exploitation of the Congo, or as the Colonial
Secretary of the exiled government acknowledged:
“During
the war, the Congo was able to finance all the expenditure of the Belgian
government in London, including the diplomatic service as well as the cost of
our armed forces in Europe and Africa…In fact, thanks to the resources of the
Congo, the Belgian government in London had not to borrow a shilling or a
dollar, and the Belgian gold reserve could be left intact.”[43]
Imperialist Belgium capitulated and was now fully
occupied by the Nazis but on the ‘bright side’ they could still plunder the
Congo even in exile.
Great Britain through its ambassador squeamishly
admitted to the French leadership on 30th May that they had been
deserting since the 26th May. After this admittance, Frenchman were
allowed in large numbers to board ships and other vessels to England. The
deception had officially lasted four days.[44]
On the 28th May, Lord Gort conjured another jolly idea on how to
manage the retreat. He requested that Canadian forces stationed in England
cross over to Dunkirk to protect the British army as they boarded on ships back
to England. This idea reached the head of the Canadian army, who no doubt a
very loyal subject to His Majesty the King of England, declined the request and
unfortunately Gort was denied the opportunity to stab the Canadians in the back
as well as the front.[45]
About 338,000 imperialist “soldiers” were
successfully evacuated back to England but all the BEF’s main weaponry was left
behind on the beaches for the Germans. The “gallant”
(Churchill’s characterisation) Lord Gort kindly left behind his clothes and
personal belongings.[46]
The retreat was completed on the 4th
June. Mr. Churchill in his humbug speech to the British parliament on this day
partly pins the blame of the British Army’s defeat and Belgium’s occupation on
the latter’s “fatal neutrality” at
the beginning of the war. The truth is the Belgians asked the British to
counter-attack five times in late May 1940, but the British chose to scurry to
the coast.[47]
Also, when specifically Churchill took the initiative to violate Norway’s
neutrality in April 1940, the German Nazis reacted and still routed the French
and British imperialists. Churchill then claims that in Calais a “memorable resistance” took place but he
doesn’t mention the main reason some fighting happened was because the French
had complained about the British scurry at Boulogne the previous day and out of
shame Churchill ordered a political decision not to disengage, even though the
“British Brigadier” on the spot was all set to embark back to England.[48]
Churchill claimed the Dunkirk evacuation was a “miracle of deliverance” but it was also
Hitler’s political decision to halt the advance of the German Army on the 24th
May that played no small part in making this “miracle” manifest. The most
memorable and remarkable line of Churchill’s speech is when he posits the
future proposition that Britain,
“shall
fight in France, shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with
growing confidence and growing strength in the air shall fight on the
beaches,…on the landing grounds,…fight in the fields and in the streets,…in the
hills.”
Putting aside that Britain had already shown no
interest whatsoever in fighting in France the previous month, that the British
had left their best weapons on the beaches of Dunkirk and taking into account
Churchill’s history of military failure this future intent may be considered,
at that moment, a touch tenuous or even fabulous. (Over 90% of the European
land battles in what became World War Two was eventually fought between the
German Army and the Soviet Union.) Naturally, his speech ends with laying the
foundations for a future scapegoat, namely hoping the “New World” (i.e. the
United States) voluntarily steps in to “rescue” the imperialist white
supremacist nations from the German Nazis. Ultimately, if Churchill was totally
confident in British potential resistance in a splendid range of geographical
terrains, both urban and rural, why did he end his speech pining to be rescued
by the “New World”?
Behind the political scene, the director of British
intelligence in the British Army, Major-General Mason-Macfarlane invented an
enduring myth claiming the reason the British needed to leave France was
because the French had failed to fight when in fact it was the British forces
which had spent most of May 1940 stabbing their allies in the back and
retreating.[49]
This lie continues to this day and was famously reiterated during the build up
to the Iraq War of 2003 when the American Defence secretary categorised French
opposition to the upcoming war as “cheese-eating
surrender monkeys”.
One of the consequences of the British retreat at
Dunkirk was that it weakened the imperialist camp’s alliance. Having chased the
British imperialists into the English channel, the Nazis turned their attention
towards Paris and occupying France. One of the excuses brandished for France’s defeat
is because its “best soldiers and the
best fighting units were abroad, scattered through the French Empire in Africa,
the Levant and Indo-China.”[50]
Apparently, French nobility to establish the rule
of law in Africa and Asia had domestically made them military vulnerable! The
French signed the armistice with the Nazis on the 22nd June 1940
which in effect heralded what in British historical mythology the
aforementioned “finest hour”. This supposed “hour” was the year in which all
that remained in the slugfest for the crown to be the leading European white
supremacist nation were Imperial Britain and Nazi Germany.
Almost a year later on the 22nd June 1941 Nazi
Germany and its allies invaded Soviet Russia. Whereas, the British imperialist
occupation of India occurred in stages beginning with taking over the ruling of
the Bengal region in 1750s and then moving west. So the Punjab province in
western India wasn’t brought under British rule until 1849. The British had
annexed Awadh region in 1856.
On the other side of the world, the American
republic began as 13 colonies on the east coast in the 1770s but fuelled with profits
from enslaved Africans working on plantations, the attendant ethnic cleansing
and genocides of the indigenous population, the republic encompassed 48 states
by 1900.
Hitler wanted to occupy, dismantle and de facto
enslave Russia in one foul swoop in a matter of months, even weeks. What the
British Empire ‘accumulated’ over a period of almost 200 years, Hitler wanted
to achieve within a matter of weeks. Buoyed by the speed of his victory against
the imperialists, the Germans (and many others) thought they’ll be victorious
over Moscow no easier than they had over Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and for
what it’s worth, the British Army.[51]
According to one military historian, Hitler saw Russia’s defeat as “the preliminary to a final settlement with
Britain.”[52]
Once Hitler turned the Nazi German war machine
east, to use Orwell’s words in the epigraph of this essay, the “extenuation and perpetuation of our own
methods” were brutally applied. The genocide against the Jewish people was
ordered to go ahead in late 1941 and eventually killed 6 million people of the
Jewish faith. Millions of other minorities perished. Genocide was nothing new
to the imperialist Europeans. They each had committed their genocides in
Africa, Asia or the Americas but in 1940 Hitler was yet to commit the genocides
most of the world now know he committed.
Britain’s record in India has already been touched
upon. The Belgians had killed 10 million people in the Congo.[53]
The French had killed a third of the Algerian population between 1830 and 1871.[54]
As African-Guyanese academic-activist, Walter Rodney wrote in his seminal, How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa:
“When
Europeans put millions of their brothers (Jews) into ovens under the Nazis, the
chickens were coming home to roost. Such behaviour inside of “democratic”
Europe was not as strange as it is sometimes made out to be.”[55]
Indeed, Mr. Churchill was an unabashed apologist
for ethnic cleansing and genocide. As late as 1937 he had told a parliamentary
enquiry on the indigenous uprising against the British-Zionist colonial project
in Palestine (which culminated in the creation of Israel in 1948) that,
“I
do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians
of America, or the black people of Australia…I do not think the Red Indians had
any right to say, ‘The American Continent belongs to us and we are not going to
have any of these European settlers coming in here’. They had not the right,
nor had they the power.”[56]
Churchill was clearly boasting that like the
indigenous populations of America and Australia, the Palestinian Arabs lacked
power to resist the inevitable ethnic cleansing the British were laying the
foundations for in Palestine.[57]
Unlike the Red Indians, black people of Australia or the future Palestinians,
the Russians had the power to resist the Nazi war machine at great cost with
the killing of at least 20 million Russians and the devastation of its main
cities.
In conclusion, the desperate British military
retreat at Dunkirk was a result of the British leaderships’ complete
unwillingness to fight the Germans, backstabbing its so-called allies,
barefaced deception and Mr. Hitler’s vision to partner with the British Empire.
The war in 1939 and 1940 was a war among western European white supremacists,
genocidists and imperialists.
In the last half of 1940 and stretching well into
1941, Western European civilisation and culture culminated into two genocidal
monsters, Churchill and Hitler, each as genocidally racist as the other,
battling it out for the blood-soaked crown of European white supremacist
leadership. The main distinguishing feature between these pair of real life
ogres was one believed in Empire and its attendant genocides in Africa and
Asia, while the other wanted to establish his variation of Empire and its attendant
genocides in Europe. As the Indian leader, Mohandas Gandhi remarked, “Hitlerism and Churchillism are in fact the
same thing…the difference is only one of degree.”[58]
Fortunately, Hitler failed in his genocidal enterprise to establish a Third
Reich but to assess whether the British Army’s shenanigans and desertion to
Dunkirk in May 1940 was the most cowardly behaviour in military history is
beyond the scope of this essay.
Nu’man Abd al-Wahid is the author of “Debunking
the Myth of America’s Poodle” which conclusively shows that
British militaristic foreign policy in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ is rooted
in the history of British imperialism and not because of any subservience to
United States foreign policy. A book Professor Gerald Horne, author of White Supremacy Confronted has called an
“illuminating, scalding and scorching takedown of British imperialism.”
Also, if you want to support my work then click here.
[1]George
Orwell ‘Notes on the Way’, Time and Tide, 30 March and 6 April 1940 in Peter
Davison (ed.), The Complete Works of George Orwell, Vol.12, (London: Secker
& Warburg, 2000), pg.123
[2]For a basic
outline of the absurdity of imperialists nations referring to themselves as
“democracies” begin with George Orwell, “Not Counting Ni**ers”, Adelphi, July
1939. https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/niggers/english/e_ncn (accessed
25th September 2021)
[54]Professor
Joseph Massad in conversation with Rania Khalek, “Zionism, Imperialism and Why
the Arab Uprisings Failed”, Breakthrough News, 1st June 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBwMLAATCBk (accessed
25th September 2021). According to the current Algerian Presidency
at least 5.6 million Algerians perished at the hands of the 132 year French
colonial rule. See Algerian Presidency, 2nd October 2021, https://twitter.com/AlgPresidency/status/1444418735230656514.
[55]Rodney, op.
cit., pg.89 and see also Lindqvist, op, cit., pg.158-159
[56]Quoted in
Angela Clifford “Serfdom or Ethnic Cleansing? – A British Discussion on
Palestine – Churchill’s Evidence to the Peel Commission (1937), Athol Books,
Belfast and London, 2003, pg. 34
A statue of former British prime minister Winston
Churchill is silhouetted in front of the Houses of Parliament in London in
2015., Luke MacGregor/Reuters
“History,”
Winston Churchill said,
“will be kind to me, for I intend to write it myself.” He needn’t have
bothered. He was one of the great mass murderers of the 20th century, yet is
the only one, unlike Hitler and Stalin, to have escaped historical odium in the
West. He has been crowned with a Nobel Prize (for literature, no less), and
now, an actor portraying him (Gary Oldman) has been awarded an Oscar.
As
Hollywood confirms, Churchill’s reputation (as what Harold Evans has called “the British Lionheart on the
ramparts of civilization”) rests almost entirely on his stirring rhetoric
and his talent for a fine phrase during World War II. “We shall not flag nor
fail. We shall go on to the end. … We shall fight on the beaches, we shall
fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets.
… We shall never surrender.” (The revisionist British historian John
Charmley dismissed this as “sublime nonsense.”)
Words,
in the end, are all that Churchill admirers can point to. His actions are another
matter altogether.
Blenheim
Palace where Churchill was born
During
World War II, Churchill declared himself in favor of “terror
bombing.” He wrote that he wanted “absolutely devastating, exterminating
attacks by very heavy bombers.” Horrors such as the firebombing of Dresden
were the result.
In
the fight for Irish independence, Churchill, in his capacity as secretary of
state for war and air, was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing
Irish protesters, suggesting in 1920 that airplanes should use “machine-gun fire or bombs”
to scatter them.
Dealing
with unrest in Mesopotamia in 1921, as secretary of state for the colonies,
Churchill acted as a war criminal: “I am strongly
in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes; it would spread a lively terror.”
He ordered large-scale bombing of Mesopotamia, with an entire village wiped out
in 45 minutes.
In
Afghanistan, Churchill declared that the Pashtuns “needed to
recognise the superiority of [the British] race” and that “all who
resist will be killed without quarter.” He wrote: “We proceeded systematically,
village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down
the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the
reservoirs in punitive devastation. … Every tribesman caught was speared or cut
down at once.”
In
Kenya, Churchill either directed or was complicit in policies involving the
forced relocation of local people from the fertile highlands to make way for
white colonial settlers and the forcing of more than 150,000 people into
concentration camps. Rape, castration, lit cigarettes on
tender spots, and electric shocks were all used by the British authorities to torture Kenyans under Churchill’s rule.
But
the principal victims of Winston Churchill were the Indians — “a beastly
people with a beastly religion,” as he charmingly called them. He wanted to use
chemical weapons in India but was shot down by his cabinet colleagues, whom he
criticized for their “squeamishness,” declaring that “the objections
of the India Office to the use of gas against natives are unreasonable.”
Churchill’s
beatification as an apostle of freedom seems all the more preposterous given
his 1941 declaration that the Atlantic Charter’s principles would not apply to
India and the colored colonies. He refused to see people of
color as entitled to the same rights as himself. “Gandhi-ism and all it
stands for,” he declared, “will, sooner or
later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed.”
In
such matters, Churchill was the most reactionary of Englishmen, with views so
extreme they cannot be excused as being reflective of their times. Even his own
secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery, confessed that he could see very
little difference between Churchill’s attitude and Adolf Hitler’s.
As
a dedicated racist Churchill was a
strong believer in racial purity and selective breeding - eugenics
Thanks
to Churchill, some 4 million Bengalis starved to death in a 1943 famine.
Churchill ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to
well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles in Greece
and elsewhere. When reminded of the suffering of his Indian victims, his
response was that the famine was their own fault, he said, for “breeding
like rabbits.”
Madhusree
Mukerjee’s searing account of Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine, “Churchill’s
Secret War,” documents that while Indians starved, prices for foodgrains
were inflated by British purchases and India’s own surplus grains were
exported, while Australian ships laden with wheat were not allowed to unload
their cargo at Calcutta (where the bodies of those who had died of starvation
littered the streets). Instead, Churchill ordered that grain be shipped to
storage depots in the Mediterranean and the Balkans to increase the buffer
stocks for a possible future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. European
warehouses filled up as Bengalis died.
This
week’s Oscar rewards yet another hagiography of this odious man. To the Iraqis
whom Churchill advocated gassing, the Greek protesters on the streets of Athens who were mowed down on Churchill’s orders
in 1944, sundry Pashtuns and Irish, as well as to Indians like myself, it will
always be a mystery why a few bombastic speeches have been enough to wash the
bloodstains off Churchill’s racist hands.
Many
of us will remember Churchill as a war criminal and an enemy of decency and
humanity, a blinkered imperialist untroubled by the oppression of non-white
peoples. Ultimately, his great failure — his long darkest hour — was his
constant effort to deny us freedom.
Winston Churchill is rightly remembered for leading
Britain through her finest hour – but what if he also led the country through her
most shameful hour? What if, in addition to rousing a nation to save the world
from the Nazis, he fought for a raw white supremacism and a concentration camp
network of his own? This question burns through Richard Toye's new history, Churchill's Empire, and is even seeping
into the Oval Office.
George W Bush left a bust of Churchill near his
desk in the White House, in an attempt to associate himself with the war
leader's heroic stand against fascism. Barack Obama had it returned to Britain.
It's not hard to guess why: his Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was
imprisoned without trial for two years and was tortured on Churchill's watch,
for resisting Churchill's empire.
Can these clashing Churchills be reconciled? Do we
live, at the same time, in the world he helped to save, and the world he helped
to trash? Toye, one of Britain's smartest young historians, has tried to pick
through these questions dispassionately – and he should lead us, at last and at
least, to a more mature conversation about our greatest national icon.
Churchill was born in 1874 into a Britain that was
washing the map pink, at the cost of washing distant nations blood red.
Victoria had just been crowned Empress of India, and the scramble for Africa
was only a few years away. At Harrow School and then Sandhurst, he was told a
simple story: the superior white man was conquering the primitive, dark-skinned
natives, and bringing them the benefits of civilisation. As soon as he could,
Churchill charged off to take his part in "a lot of jolly little wars
against barbarous peoples". In the Swat valley, now part of Pakistan,
he experienced, fleetingly, a crack of doubt. He realised that the local
population was fighting back because of "the presence of British troops
in lands the local people considered their own," just as Britain would
if she were invaded. But Churchill soon suppressed this thought, deciding
instead they were merely deranged jihadists whose violence was explained by a
"strong aboriginal propensity to
kill".
He gladly took part in raids that laid waste to
whole valleys, destroying houses and burning crops. He then sped off to help
reconquer the Sudan, where he bragged that he personally shot at least three
"savages".
The young Churchill charged through imperial
atrocities, defending each in turn. When concentration camps were built in
South Africa, for white Boers, he said they produced "the minimum of
suffering". The death toll was almost 28,000, and when at least
115,000 black Africans were likewise swept into British camps, where 14,000
died, he wrote only of his "irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed
to fire on white men". Later, he boasted of his experiences there:
"That was before war degenerated. It was great fun galloping
about."
Then as an MP he demanded a rolling programme of
more conquests, based on his belief that "the Aryan stock is bound to
triumph". There seems to have been an odd cognitive dissonance in his
view of the "natives". In some of his private correspondence, he
appears to really believe they are helpless children who will "willingly,
naturally, gratefully include themselves within the golden circle of an ancient
crown".
But when they defied this script, Churchill
demanded they be crushed with extreme force. As Colonial Secretary in the
1920s, he unleashed the notorious Black and Tan thugs on Ireland's Catholic
civilians, and when the Kurds rebelled against British rule, he said: "I
am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes...[It]
would spread a lively terror."
Of course, it's easy to dismiss any criticism of
these actions as anachronistic. Didn't everybody think that way then? One of
the most striking findings of Toye's research is that they really didn't: even
at the time, Churchill was seen as at the most brutal and brutish end of the
British imperialist spectrum. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was warned by
Cabinet colleagues not to appoint him because his views were so antedeluvian.
Even his startled doctor, Lord Moran, said of other races: "Winston
thinks only of the colour of their skin."
Many of his colleagues
thought Churchill was driven by a deep loathing of democracy for anyone other
than the British and a tiny clique of supposedly superior races. This was
clearest in his attitude to India. When Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of
peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that he "ought to be lain bound
hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous
elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back." As the resistance
swelled, he announced: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with
a beastly religion." This hatred killed. To give just one, major,
example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel
Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of
the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials
begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He
raged that it was their own fault for "breeding like rabbits".
At other times, he said the plague was "merrily" culling the
population.
Skeletal, half-dead people were streaming into the
cities and dying on the streets, but Churchill – to the astonishment of his
staff – had only jeers for them. This rather undermines the claims that
Churchill's imperialism was motivated only by an altruistic desire to elevate
the putatively lower races.
Hussein Onyango Obama is unusual among Churchill's
victims only in one respect: his story has been rescued from the slipstream of
history, because his grandson ended up as President of the US. Churchill
believed that Kenya's fertile highlands should be the preserve of the white
settlers, and approved the clearing out of the local "blackamoors".
He saw the local Kikuyu as "brutish children". When they
rebelled under Churchill's post-war premiership, some 150,000 of them were
forced at gunpoint into detention camps – later dubbed "Britain's
gulag" by Pulitzer-prize winning historian, Professor Caroline Elkins. She
studied the detention camps for five years for her remarkable book Britain's
Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, explains the tactics adopted under
Churchill to crush the local drive for independence. "Electric shock
was widely used, as well as cigarettes and fire," she writes. "The
screening teams whipped, shot, burned, and mutilated Mau Mau suspects."
Hussein Onyango Obama never truly recovered from the torture he endured.
Many of the wounds Churchill inflicted have still
not healed: you can find them on the front pages any day of the week. He is the
man who invented Iraq, locking together three conflicting peoples behind
arbitrary borders that have been bleeding ever since. He is the Colonial
Secretary who offered the Over-Promised Land to both the Jews and the Arabs –
although he seems to have privately felt racist contempt for both. He jeered at
the Palestinians as "barbaric hoards who ate little but camel dung,"
while he was appalled that the Israelis "take it for granted that the
local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience".
True, occasionally Churchill did become queasy
about some of the most extreme acts of the Empire. He fretted at the slaughter
of women and children, and cavilled at the Amritsar massacre of 1919. Toye
tries to present these doubts as evidence of moderation – yet they almost never
seem to have led Churchill to change his actions. If you are determined to rule
people by force against their will, you can hardly be surprised when atrocities
occur. Rule Britannia would inexorably produce a Cruel Britannia.
So how can the two be reconciled? Was Churchill's
moral opposition to Nazism a charade, masking the fact he was merely trying to
defend the British Empire from a rival?
The US civil rights leader Richard B. Moore, quoted
by Toye, said it was "a rare and fortunate coincidence" that
at that moment "the vital interests of the British Empire [coincided]
with those of the great overwhelming majority of mankind". But this
might be too soft in its praise. If Churchill had only been interested in
saving the Empire, he could probably have cut a deal with Hitler. No: he had a
deeper repugnance for Nazism than that. He may have been a thug, but he knew a
greater thug when he saw one – and we may owe our freedom today to this wrinkle
in history.
This, in turn, led to the great irony of
Churchill's life. In resisting the Nazis, he produced some of the richest
prose-poetry in defence of freedom and democracy ever written. It was a cheque
he didn't want black or Asian people to cash – but they refused to accept that
the Bank of Justice was empty. As the Ghanaian nationalist Kwame Nkrumah wrote:
"All the fair, brave words spoken about freedom that had been broadcast
to the four corners of the earth took seed and grew where they had not been
intended." Churchill lived to see democrats across Britain's dominions
and colonies – from nationalist leader Aung San in Burma to Jawarlal Nehru in
India – use his own intoxicating words against him.
Ultimately, the words of the great and glorious
Churchill who resisted dictatorship overwhelmed the works of the cruel and
cramped Churchill who tried to impose it on the darker-skinned peoples of the
world. The fact that we now live in a world where a free and independent India
is a superpower eclipsing Britain, and a grandson of the "savages"
is the most powerful man in the world, is a repudiation of Churchill at his
ugliest – and a sweet, ironic victory for Churchill at his best.
.jpg)
