WARTIME ILLUSIONS

There are many illusions about the cause of World War Two. One of them is that it was a war about democracy. Nonsense. How come the Stalin dictatorship in Russia was supporting democracy? Another illusion was that it was about persecution because of Germany's treatment of the Jews, but Germany was not alone in persecuting the Jews. Even now over 60 years later there is plenty of examples of Jewish persecution in Eastern Europe. "Vandals have desecrated a monument marking the spot in Poland where hundreds of Jews were burned alive during World War II. They defaced the stonework, scrawling 'they were flammable' and also daubing a swastika on the memorial. The monument in the eastern town of Jedwabne honors the victims of July 10, 1941, when about 40 Poles hunted down Jews, closed them in a barn and set it alight. It is estimated between 300 and 400 Jews were killed." (Daily Mail, 1 September) If the second world war was fought to protect democracy or to stop persecution then it failed badly. The truth of course is that the war was fought, like all wars are, over trade routes, markets, sources of raw materials and spheres of economic and political influence. RD