Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/14/1939-second-world-war-fascist-thundering-approach-hitler
In 1939, I didn’t hear war coming. Now its thundering approach can’t be
ignored
Author Harry Leslie Smith, 94, is a second world war RAF veteran
A chill of remembrance has come over me during this August month. It
feels as if the 2017 summer breeze is being scattered by the winds of
war blowing from across our world towards Britain, just like they were
in 1939.
In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia eviscerates Yemen with the same
ferocity as Mussolini did to Ethiopia when I was child in 1935. The
hypocrisy of Britain’s government and elite class ensures that innocent
blood still flows in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Theresa May’s
government insists that peace can only be achieved through the
proliferation of weapons of war in conflict zones. Venezuela teeters
towards anarchy and foreign intervention while in the Philippines,
Rodrigo Duterte – protected by his alliance with Britain and the US –
murders the vulnerable for the crime of trying to escape their poverty
through drug addiction.
Because I am old, now 94, I recognise these omens of doom. Chilling
signs are everywhere, perhaps the biggest being that the US allows
itself to be led by Donald Trump, a man deficient in honour, wisdom and
just simple human kindness. It is as foolish for Americans to believe
that their generals will save them from Trump as it was for liberal
Germans to believe the military would protect the nation from Hitler’s
excesses.
Britain also has nothing to be proud of. Since the Iraq war our country
has been on a downward decline, as successive governments have eroded
democracy and social justice, and savaged the welfare state with
austerity, leading us into the cul de sac of Brexit. Like Trump, Brexit
cannot be undone by liberal sanctimony – it can only be altered if the
neoliberal economic model is smashed, as if it were a statue of a
dictator, by a liberated people.
After years of Tory government, Britain is less equipped to change the
course of history for the good than we were under Neville Chamberlain,
when Nazism was appeased in the 1930s. In fact, no nation in Europe or
North America has anything to crow about. Each is rife with inequality,
massive corporate tax avoidance – which is just legitimised corruption –
and a neoliberalism that has eroded societies.
Summer should be comforting but it isn’t this year. Looking at the young
today, when I watch them in their leisure; I catch a fearful resemblance
with the faces of the young from my generation in the summer of 1939.
When I am out in town, I listen to their laughter, I watch them enjoying
a pint or wooing one another, and I am afraid for them.
This August resembles too much that of 1939; the last summer of peace
until 1945. Then aged 16 and still wet behind the ears, I’d go to
pictures with my mates and we’d laugh at the newsreels of Hitler and
other fascist monsters that lived beyond what we thought was our reach.
Little did we know in that August 1939, life without peace, without
carnage, without air raids, without the blitz, could be measured in
days. I did not hear the thundering approach of war, but as an old man I
hear it now for my grandchildren’s generation. I hope I am wrong. But I
am petrified for them.
• Harry Leslie Smith’s latest book Don’t Let My Past Be Your Future is
published by Little, Brown on 14 September
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