Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 2/3

Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 2/3

Part 2: “Friend­ship with Ger­many” ,,,con­tin­ued from Part 1

Churchill’s crit­ics some­times quote sen­tences which they think came from his orig­i­nal Hitler arti­cle or Great Con­tem­po­rariesamong which this is the most common:

One may dis­like Hitler’s sys­tem and yet admire his patri­ot­ic achieve­ment. If our coun­try were defeat­ed, I hope we should find a cham­pi­on as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.

In fact this pas­sage is from Churchill’s arti­cle in the Evening Stan­dard, 17 Sep­tem­ber 1937: “Friend­ship with Ger­many” (Cohen C548), sub­se­quent­ly reprint­ed in Churchill’s book of for­eign affairs essays, Step by Step (Lon­don: Thorn­ton But­ter­worth, 1939, Cohen A111).

Joseph Goebbels
(1897-1945)

Churchill wrote: “I find myself pil­lo­ried by Dr. Goebbels’ Press as an ene­my of Ger­many. That descrip­tion is quite untrue.” He had made many efforts on Germany’s behalf in recent years, Churchill con­tin­ued, but it was his duty to warn against Ger­man rear­ma­ment: “I can quite under­stand that this action of mine would not be pop­u­lar in Ger­many. Indeed, it was not pop­u­lar any­where. I was told I was mak­ing ill-will between the two countries.”

Then Churchill adds some­thing that is per­haps rel­e­vant to present-day situations:

I drew atten­tion to a seri­ous dan­ger to Anglo-Ger­man rela­tions which aris­es out of the organ­i­sa­tion of Ger­man res­i­dents in Britain into a close­ly-knit, strict­ly dis­ci­plined body. We could nev­er allow for­eign vis­i­tors to pur­sue their nation­al feuds in the bosom of our coun­try, still less to be organ­ised in such a way as to effect our mil­i­tary secu­ri­ty. The Ger­mans would not tol­er­ate it for a moment in their coun­try, nor should they take it amiss because we do not like it in ours.

Con­clud­ed in Part 3…

 

 

3 thoughts on “Did Churchill Ever Admire Hitler? 2/3

  1. There were a lot of times where I woul­dover shoot a plat­form or get stuck on some­thing I could not see, plus it turned a
    five minute peri­od into a fif­teen minute stage because I can’t get passed among the jump­ing obstructions.
    If you do not have the time nor the patience to farm for sup­plies to
    assem­ble items you will like­ly only revert to buying
    from the cash store so that you do not have to grind the same phas­es over and
    over again (even though it does not feel like the same point
    because they ran­dom­ize) to obtain the items you need. A lot of the
    game­play mechan­ics are quite sim­i­lar to games like Max Payne, Gunz the
    dou­ble, or Jedi Acad­e­my, where play­ers can run side­ways or ver­ti­cal­ly upwards on walls, dive off of plat­forms while shoot­ing, or slide on the ground and use
    your sword to cut your ene­mies legs off.

  2. “Then Churchill adds some­thing that is per­haps rel­e­vant to present-day situations:

    I drew atten­tion to a seri­ous dan­ger to Anglo-Ger­man rela­tions which aris­es out of the organ­i­sa­tion of Ger­man res­i­dents in Britain into a close­ly-knit, strict­ly dis­ci­plined body.”

    I just thought that I would com­ment on this, since I see myself as one of the groups under dis­cus­sion (“present-day sit­u­a­tions”). I am an Ortho­dox Jew — ultra-Ortho­dox in some people’s eyes, I sup­pose; I wear clothes which most peo­ple con­sid­er odd, and I was shocked by the recent French law about the bur­ka, won­der­ing when my turn will come. 

    First of all, most of the ‘strange’ eth­nic groups in West­ern Europe and the US are in no way orga­nized, in no way dis­ci­plined, and much less close­ly knit than oth­ers may think. Each of ‘us’ is an indi­vid­ual, and each of ‘us’ has an indi­vid­ual agen­da, just like each of ‘you’. My per­son­al agen­da, for exam­ple, has noth­ing to do with politics.

    Sec­ond, in Britain and the US, it wouldn’t mat­ter if we were orga­nized, dis­ci­plined, and close­ly knit. The con­sti­tu­tion­al tra­di­tion in both of those places would for­bid the author­i­ties from inter­fer­ing in our cus­toms, feel­ings, etc., as long as we stay well with­in the law. Those gov­ern­ments may have more lee­way in wartime, but even then, ONLY TO THE EXTENT ALLOWED BY THEIR RESPECTIVE CONSTITUTIONS. Some­how, I have the feel­ing that gov­ern­men­tal tam­per­ing with the con­sti­tu­tion accord­ing to polit­i­cal mood rep­re­sents a much greater dan­ger to soci­ety than my wear­ing a suit with­out a tie and a fedo­ra on a hot sum­mer day.

    Thanks.
    D.

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