"Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of communism… As Fascism sprang
from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot
those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world
into more hideous strife, which none can say has ended with their
destruction." - Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Volume 1, The Gathering Storm (1948)
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Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the greatest Briton
Today the United Nations is observing International Day of Democracy and the United Kingdom is observing Battle of Britain Day. It is fair to say if the British Democracy had not triumphed over Nazi Germany in that great battle, then we would not have an International Day of Democracy, and the past 80 years would be very different.
This double observance heightens the importance of remembering the
wisdom of Winston Churchill and honor the man who twice saved democracy
from Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism.
Today in 1940, the Battle of Britain's most decisive clash saw the Royal Air Force
repel the largest Luftwaffe air strike against the United Kingdom.
Months earlier on June 18, 1940 in a speech in The House of Commons
titled "Their Finest Hour" Prime Minister Churchill explained the stakes of World War II and the start of the existential clash for Great Britain:
I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”It is shocking in 2025 that some today claim that it was a mistake to go to war against Nazi Germany, and attempt to white wash the profound evil of Hitler's regime in Berlin.
At the same time the apologists for international communism like to extol their
so-called "antifascist"credentials while remaining silent or finding
bizarre revisionist explanations on the connections between fascism and
communism that Mr. Churchill succinctly outlined in the quote at the top
of the page.
Of equal concern is the attempt to deny the fact
that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin signed a pact in August of 1939, that secretly included the division of Central and Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, that started World War II.
This alliance lasted until the summer of 1941 when Hitler ordered the
invasion of the Soviet union. Consider for a moment that it was Britain
and France who honoring their alliance declared war on Nazi Germany on
September 1, 1939 when Poland was invaded by Hitler's Third Reich.
Churchill did not equivocate and in a radio address on October 1, 1939 described the Russian's role as invaders along with the Nazis days after.
"Poland has been again overrun by two of the great Powers which held her in bondage for 150 years, but were unable to quench the spirit of the Polish nation. The heroic defense of Warsaw shows that the soul of Poland is indestructible, and that she will rise again like a rock, which may for a spell be submerged by a tidal wave, but which remains a rock."Britain and France were convinced that Russia and Germany were allies and plans were drawn up to attack Russian oil fields in order to deny them to the Nazis in what became known in the planning stages as Operation Pike. Months later the reversals continued for Christendom. The Fall of France to the Nazi war machine took place between May 10 and June 25, 1940 over the span of 46 days ending in the evacuation of Dunkirk. This disaster is what led to Operation Pike being scrapped.
The British Empire was alone for almost a year between June 25, 1940
through June 22, 1941 as the sole main resistance to Nazi Germany. The
United States would remain neutral until Pearl Harbor on December 7,
1941 and the Soviet Union was a de facto ally of Nazi Germany
until Hitler invaded communist Russia on June 22, 1941 in Operation
Barbarossa. The United Kingdom was all that stood between the survival
of Christian civilization and a new Dark Age that Adolf Hitler called
the Thousand Year Reich. If one is truly Anti-Nazi then one must
celebrate and honor the legacy of Winston Churchill, who early on
identified the Nazi threat and issued calls to to resistance with one of the most important in a radio address to London and the United States on October 16, 1938.
"Dictatorship – the fetish worship of one man – is a passing phase. A state of society where men may not speak their minds, where children denounce their parents to the police, where a business man or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinions; such a state of society cannot long endure if brought into contact with the healthy outside world. The light of civilised progress with its tolerances and co-operation, with its dignities and joys, has often in the past been blotted out. But I hold the belief that we have now at last got far enough ahead of barbarism to control it, and to avert it, if only we realise what is afoot and make up our minds in time. We shall do it in the end. But how much harder our toil for every day’s delay! Is this a call to war? Does anyone pretend that preparation for resistance to aggression is unleashing war? I declare it to be the sole guarantee of peace. We need the swift gathering of forces to confront not only military but moral aggression; the resolute and sober acceptance of their duty by the English-speaking peoples and by all the nations, great and small, who wish to walk with them."Four years earlier on November 16, 1934, after the Nazis had just been in power a little over two years Winston Churchill warned of their threat to peace:
There is a nation which has abandoned all its liberties in order to augment its collective strength. There is a nation which, with all its strength and virtue, is in the grip of a group of ruthless men, preaching a gospel of intolerance and racial pride, unrestrained by law, by parliament, or by public opinion. In that country all pacifist speeches, all morbid war books are forbidden or suppressed, and their authors rigorously imprisoned. From their new table of commandments they have omitted “thou shall not kill.”Sadly the world did not listen to Churchill until it was too late to avoid a major conflict, but at least it was not too late to stop the Nazi war machine although it came at great cost and suffering. Churchill understood that to defeat Hitler the Soviet Union would have to change sides and when the Nazis invaded Russia the British Prime Minister joked, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” The price of ending Hitler was cozying up to Josef Stalin, another genocidal totalitarian monster.
Churchill was not blind to the nature of his wartime ally and understood the threat of Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union and thankfully his warnings on March 5, 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri were listened to this time and may have avoided World War III, albeit with a cold peace.
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow."He then went on to make a remarkable statement about the circumstances that led to World War II and how it was completely avoidable:
Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow-countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honoured to-day; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely must not let that happen again.
Churchill was not only an Anti-Nazi but also an Anti-Communist and a conservative who on May 24, 1948 observed: "Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy."
He also understood and celebrated the importance of free speech. In the midst of the war in 1943 he observed:
"Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage."
Today let us remember this great statesman, democrat, and conservative and call on all people of good will to learn form this greatest of Britons. His moral clarity, and the victory in the Battle of Britain 85 years ago, makes possible the celebration of the International Day of Democracy.
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