Churchill and Hitler: Two Europeans

By Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service

Who wrote this?

“The Aryan stock is bound to triumph”.

“The Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd)–all Jews”

“The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews–in Hungary”

“The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany–preying”

“-the schemes of the international Jews /against/ spiritual hopes”

“-this worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization”

“-it played recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution”

“-the mainspring in every subversive movement in the 19th century”

Churchill did. (from Robert Barsocchini, countercurrents.org 02-02-15). His point was not that Jews were active in many places, the point is that for Churchill they were the cause of all the revolutions, the root of evil, not, for instance, feudalism gone mad.

What does Churchill, a top politician, believe in? (same source):

“-the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years”

“-100,000 degenerate Britons sterilized /to save the/ British race”

“-the increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded insane classes”

“Two fifths of Cubans fighting Spanish are negroes–a black republic”

“Gandhi ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and trampled upon by an enormous elephant with the Viceroy seated”

Three million starved to death due to Empire policy. Churchill:

“why isn’t Gandhi dead yet?”

“I love this war. I know it is smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment, and yet–I enjoy every second of it (1916)”

Churchill’s approach to the Kenyan uprising in the 1950s, to preserve the fertile highlands for the whites, was internment of hundreds of thousands in concentration camps, torture, sterilization, public castration with pliers used on cattle, rape.

On the Kurds revolting in Iraq in the early 1920s, Churchill:

“I am strongly in favor of poison gas against uncivilized tribes”.

Churchill on a German submarine sinking the Lusitania going from New York to Liverpool on May 7, 1915 (loaded with arms for England)–1,200 died: “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling United States with Germany”. And, after the tragedy: “The poor babies who perished in the ocean struck a blow at German power more deadly than could have been achieved by the sacrifice of a hundred thousand fighting men” (INYT, 7/8 Mar 15).

Maybe nobody pushed so hard for the nuclear bomb–for Britain’s status as Great Power–as Churchill, but it came to joint production under US leadership; see Freeman Dyson’s review of Graham Farmelo, Churchill’s Bomb: How the United States Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear Arms Race, in The New York Review of Books, 24 Apr 14. Dyson points out, “Churchill was in love with war and weapons, ever since he was a small boy playing with a historic collection of toy soldiers”.

Enough. We find the same deep anti-semitism against Jews as such, as the source of evil, in the Western world in general and England-Germany in particular. We find the focus on race as a predominant factor in human reality, with a steep slope from the Aryan summit–used by both–to the degenerate, inferior. We find the contempt for the handicapped, and the urge for their elimination, by killing or sterilization. And the shared dream of one thousand years supremacy.

Hitler was short on upper class manners; what else was different? Dictatorship, Führer-principle, collectivism–Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer. For Hitler, welding Germans together in one entity–liberated from the debilitating influence of Jews, Cinta-Roma and handicapped.

And class, his socialism: liberated from the rule of “good” over “not so good families”, the former being born into leading positions all over. Different from Churchill. But we find the same enthusiasm for war and the supreme power’s right and duty to impose itself. Colonialism follows for both of them from their racism and ‘might is right.’

Two articulations of Europe.  They think they are each other’s negations, and yet so similar.  These similarities tell us something about Europe, just like similarities between liberalism and marxism tell us something about the West.

What do we find?

1. Anti-Semitism, as a catch-all explanation of all wrongs.
2. Racism, convinced of white supremacy, with rights and duties.
3. Colonialism, the right and duty of the superior over the inferior.
4. War as a legitimate, even necessary instrument
5. Anti-Russianism, as the perennial enemy to be fought (also Jewish)

Deeply similar, they had the same goal in Europe: to be On Top.

Except that on top there was space for only one of them. Hence, one war after the other; Germany humiliated, England less so. Now, take note: Germany has given up, rejected all the five points; England has not.

Germany has become philo-semitic, fights racism, no residual colonialism, rejection of war as instrument (except defensive), and seeks cooperation with Russia. England, with the USA, challenges Russia. Anglo-America is the most belligerent party in today’s world, residual colonialism survives in the Commonwealth and in the use of English for conquest; racism is rampant inside England. Anti-Semitism? As export of Jews to Israel from the 1917 Balfour Declaration onwards.

Who will fare best out of this, even on top? Germany.

I belong to a generation trained in “Churchill good, Hitler bad”. Maybe our position was essentially racist?

Hitler’s atrocities hit White people: Jews, Roma, handicapped, brutalizing occupied countries, 26 million or so Russians–all white.

Churchill’s atrocities hit the Brown in India–millions–the Black in Africa; and before him the Yellow in China, Red in North America–hundreds of millions.

This tells much about us Europeans. And should make us very grateful to those who stood up nonviolently: a brown Gandhi, a black Luther King Jr., a Mandela. Do we deserve that?

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Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU. He is author of over 160 books on peace and related issues, including ‘50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives,’ published by the TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.