Monday - June 22, 2009

There have been many complaints that Britain does not do enough to state its case to the world.

The Telegraph has opened it’s files (telegraph.co.uk/war) on events leading to WW2. And it’s brilliant.
There’s much you already know I’m sure.  But this caught my eye in the hard copy this morning. Under 100 days to war opposite the obit page.  It should have had a featured place on the front page. And it might have if I were running the Telegraph.

There are a couple of things here I had not read before, and I thought I’d read quite a bit.
For example, I had not read anywhere before that Hitler and Gobbels said Belgium invaded Germany in 1914.  Oh yeah. And no surprise. It was the Jews (again) who paid them to do it.  If they really claimed that, I can’t believe it would have been with a straight face.  Makes ya wanna scream out loud knowing there might be ppl today who really believe that.

So then, this is a brilliant piece that appeared in the Telegraph on this date June 22.  1939.

Germany’s use of tactics of encirclement - June 22, 1939
There have been many complaints that Britain does not do enough to state its case to the world. In the main that case states itself.

By the Right Hon Winston Churchill, MP
Published: 12:01AM BST 22 Jun 2009

When Herr Hitler and his mouthpiece Goebbels give us their version of how the late Great War began, they make statements which do not carry complete conviction. According to them, England, in the pay of the Jews, made Belgium invade Germany in order to rob her of her colonies on which she depended for her living-space and daily bread. The German people, unarmed and unsuspecting, were taken at a grievous disadvantage and the Belgian expeditionary force sustained by the whole might of Israel might easily have captured Berlin if Corporal Adolf Hitler had not stood in its path at the critical moment.

When stuff like this is put forth million-fold, it may have a good effect in Germany. It certainly has a very good effect outside Germany.

Democracies’ Benefit from Dr Goebbels

So far as the English-speaking people are concerned, there could be no better propaganda than that served out by Goebbels. Every facility should be given by the governments of the British Empire and the United States for the widest and most constant dissemination of his views. We must be very careful not to occupy the ether when he is speaking.

Nothing that we could do should be half as beneficial as a nightly half-hour from him. He is the supreme propagandist for the non-Nazi forces throughout the world. Every opportunity should be given to the wage-earning masses in Great Britain, the United States, France, Poland and the smaller countries to hear every word he says. He ought to be paid a very large retaining fee by World-Jewry to keep at it.

If he finds the personal strain too great, we could offer special opportunities to Nazi speakers from his department to come and lecture in Britain. I have no doubt that the United States would give full police protection to such missionaries in the discharge of their task. If anything happened to Herr Goebbels, we should all regard it as a disaster. His is a precious life, and his voice belongs to mankind.

Where truth appears “very dangerous”

What an odd thing it is in this grave hour that Nazi Germany, with all its aeroplanes and cannon, storm-troopers, political police and brave armies, is terrified of words. These resolute and ruthless people who are eager to stand up to a cannonade are frightened at a whisper. But our poor, degenerate unpatriotic democracies – as they tell us we are – not only do not mind what is said about, us but welcome and positively relish the fullest expression of the Nazi views. Bismarck said in a phrase which may well be remembered – “If the Austro-Hungarian Empire disappeared, it would have to be invented.” So it is with our loquacious friend Goebbels. The void would be ghastly.

Lord Perth, a well-trained Foreign Office official, who happens to be what is called in America a “Blood Peer”, and has been long Secretary of the League of Nations and British Ambassador in Italy, cannot hope to compete with Herr Goebbels. He will merely keep a stream of facts flowing as a kind of accompaniment to the great soloist. The reason why his appointment has been criticised and even scarified in Berlin is because, and only because, the truth is very dangerous there.

It is formidable indictment of a regime that it is afraid of foreign words. No government that is soundly based minds foreign criticism. If it is just they profit by it and amend their ways. When it is unjust it puts them is a good position with their own people.

If Germany wishes for guarantees

When the Hitler regime have to seize and destroy every foreign newspaper which contains some item they do not like, when spies are put in the streets to make sure no dutiful German is listening in to the British or French wireless, when even private letters have to be censored in the post, one may be sure that the system of government has misgivings about its own foundations.

It must be dreadful to live like that because not only do British, American, Scandinavian, Swiss and French ideas percolate through all the barriers but they are studied with particular attention by the very large number of Germans who receive them. The more they keep it out, the more it counts when it does get in.

At the present moment an intense effort is being made in Germany to convince the German people that they are being encircled. It is probable that with the vast resources of German internal propaganda by Press and wireless, this impression will be imparted to the German people. Moreover, there is a good deal of truth in it. And there is never any use in hiding truth.

An alliance of armed and arming nations is being brought into being to resist in concert further acts of Nazi aggression. We are trying to make it as large and as strong as possible. But this encirclement is directed only against a further act of Nazi aggression. It will never have any physical existence unless or until Nazi Germany attacks and invades one of her neighbours. It is only by her own act that Germany can be encircled.

If she is content to lead an ordinary, decent, humane life and leave her neighbours unmolested, no one is going to interfere with her or with the way she chooses to be governed. Britain and France ask nothing for themselves in security that they are not willing to accord to Germany. If Germany wishes for any guarantee, she can have it tomorrow on the collective assurance of half the world.

But how does Germany stand herself upon the encirclement of other countries? The Axis Powers strain every nerve, in conjunction with General Franco’s Spain, to encircle France. Germany and Italy have obviously encircled Jugoslavia. The position which Italy has so recently seized in Albania, if joined to a Bulgaria friendly to the Axis, would make the encirclement of Jugoslavia absolutely perfect.

As he wrote this before the war broke out, and as an MP of the day and a very knowledgeable one, I think he missed it re. Franco surrounding France.
I have only by chance recently come into a copy of Count Ciano’s diaries 1937-1943, thanks to the wife’s passion for car-boot sales where she found a copy for me.  Anyone interested in the history of the period should get their hands on a copy.  It’s most informative.  Franco exasperated his would be axis allies.
He knew Spain’s limitations and inability to fight a world war.  By 1940, even Ciano began to understand the grip Germany had on his own country and saw disaster ahead.  But all that’s off topic.
Read the rest of this article HERE

Posted by peiper     on 06/22/2009 at 02:54 AM   
Filed Under: • History • UK • War-Stories •  
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