Attitudes and Platitudes

During the first World War H.G. Wells coined the phrase “a war to end war” was very upset at the fact that nobody stopped laughing until 1939. He felt that whatever the first world war was about, the liberal propagandists ought to be given credit for the fact that they tried to give it some aims and some excuse, never quite appreciating the sick laughter was at the false aims and false excuses which they gave it.

Nobody could ever pretend today that the First World War was “anti-monarchist” or “anti-militarist” though these were the aims ascribed to it by the Allied propagandists (it was understood that the Kaiser represented monarchism and imperialism, and not of course, his Britannic cousin).

If there was anyone who by 1939 still thought it a war to end war – that is to say an anti-militarist war – poor old Wells would have been delighted to hear from them. As to Lloyd George, or butcher Haig, or bungling Kitchener, or Winston Churchill being described as “anti-militarists” – together with the French politicians and generals – the mind boggles. After all everyone knew that wars weren’t fought for ideological motives and even if by some reversal of nature they were, it didn’t follow that you automatically adopted the position your opponent was not.

By 1939 there were many on both left and right who wanted a new war or felt it inevitable. But though the left played with the word “anti-fascism” nobody on the right did. No Tory MP approved of “anti-fascism” even in the rare exceptions where they were not pro-fascists. It might be necessary to fight the Germans. But their internal system was their own affair. “We did not mind Hitler being a Nazi inside Germany. The trouble is he would not stay inside Germany,” one explained when the war began.

The liberal propagandists of 1939-45 were certainly no more clever or adept than those of 1914-39. But they had past mistakes to draw on. So the recent Churchill centenary shows how World War II myths are almost as potent as ever. There are still people who think “Churchill won the Second World War … he was an anti-fascist … it was an anti-Nazi war …” Not a positive war to end war – at which everyone laughed afterwards – nor one after which one would build homes fit for heroes – what a laugh this would be now … but a negative “anti-fascist” war. Well, Hitler was a fascist, wasn’t he, and the war was against him?

The lies of World War II grow for two reasons. The Left likes them. It need not talk about revolution but bathe in the glow of nationalism and “anti-fascism”. The right can be described as Fascist. Ergo, it is somehow illegal, unconstitutional, “not what we fought for” (amazing what people will now say “they fought for” when in reality they were too bemused to resist their call-up papers). No need to be “revolutionary” one can be patriotic and constitutional in one’s fervent protest that this is what “we went to war against in 1939 …” (though nobody knew it at the time).

But the Right also likes the lies. “Me a fascist?” demands an ultra-right-winger indignantly. “Why, I was in the Army in 1939!” That answers everything … If he was in the Forces, and preferably as an officer – and a more fascist bunch of morons than British officers in W.W.II it would be hard to find – he has an “alibi”. He could not possibly be a fascist. Fascist yourself! Why he fought against fascism, didn’t he?

And the extremists of the Centre also like the lies. The war was their utopia – one of (internal) non-violence! They were not so much enamoured of the fighting as the regimentation, the rationing, the orderliness. There was no rebelliousness, no militancy – or if there was, it was illegal and anyway the press never reported it. Certainly as they never mind reminding one, there was none that they told of in the fascist states. So they usually alter the lie a little. We didn’t exactly fight against fascism, we fought against almost anything, the Centre did not approve of, and had it not been for either Churchill on his own or sometimes Our Fathers, we would all have been subject to the Nazi heel heiling Hitler and marching orderly-like in mass parades or else marched off to concentration camps. That we might have been a damn sight more rebellious than we are never occurs to them for the simple reason that they themselves would have conformed overnight.

Anon but Albert Meltzer

Black Flag v3, n18, March 1975