June 6th is the anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944. American, British and Canadian troops began the liberation of France and attacked the German- fortified beaches of Normandy. The initial landings were aimed to establish a beachhead through which a great invasion force could begin the liberation of the whole of Europe. Many thousands of Allied troops died in this action, and although the invasion was completely successful, the liberation of much of Europe was ultimately beyond reach due to the Communist Soviet Union and its traitorous agents in the West.
Today some older people and young ones in uniform will remember those who perished bravely on the Normandy beaches, though I doubt that the Hollywood Leftists, the Media Class in general and the elites of Academia will waste much time in gratitude. Indeed, Leftist intellectuals (of which there are many in our educational establishment) have been busy over the years deconstructing the Allies record in defeating Nazi Germany and the Axis forces. Sadly, a few Rightwing intellectuals have also decided that the 1939-45 war was unnecessary. I doubt they lived through it, for none who did ever considered it an unnecessary war and certainly those who died knew that the war was a war of ideologies and not a war engineered by Big Business, Jews or other conspiratorial groups.
All the adult men in my family served their country from September 1939 onwards, on airfields, in the infantry and on minesweepers in the North Atlantic. After the war, I do not recall any one of them expressing regret, and neither did their womenfolk. My family’s men of an earlier generation like nearly every other British family’s men also served in a war with Germany. Some came back from Canada to serve and some died in the trenches of Belgium and Northern France. No-one in our family ever thought that their sacrifice was in vain and none sided with the enemy or did anything to undermine morale.
I suppose the cancer of Internationalist Leftism really took root in the 1930’s, for the First World War had not been about ideologies so much as trade, minority grievances and redrawing the map of Europe. The Second World War was really rooted in a struggle between the competing socialist ideologies of International Marxism and Darwinian Racialism. The Western nations were unwillingly drawn into this struggle between two totalitarian ideologies. They fought not only for their own freedom but for that of occupied formerly free peoples and for persecuted peoples like the Jews of Europe. It is easy with the hindsight that so many Leftist smart-asses of Academia possess to find fault with the muddled motives and the strategic and tactical mistakes of the Allies, but I believe we have to say of the Western politicians and their peoples that in the end they tried to do the right things and mostly succeeded.
In remembering D Day and its dead and wounded we should also remember the way that the people and politicians of that era arose to the occasion. In Parliament and Congress the politicians united. None paraded through the streets of our cities chanting support for the enemy, none turned their backs on the men in uniform, the military were not shunned in Universities, colleges and schools and none tried to sabotage the war effort. On Britain’s BBC and in its newspapers, everything was said to support the men who were fighting and victims of bombing never complained about their sacrifices and losses. Even Hollywood’s bosses, despite the efforts of embedded Leftists, did not try to stab their armed forces in the back.
What has happened to Western confidence and unity since that war? Well, the Soviet Union emerged stronger and had its Communist Fifth Column in the West. That Fifth Column was always able to manipulate Socialist politicians and to undermine the resolve of the West, especially in Europe.
I have been reading a book given to me recently by Mr. Radical who is something of an expert on military history. It is not a pleasant book to read, but surprisingly relevant to D Day. I strongly recommend Martin Windrow’s ‘The Last Valley’ to visitors to this website. It is the story of the French defeat in Vietnam that resulted from the fall of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. I remember the shock that this defeat generated in the West and I remember the newsreels at the cinema showing French paratroopers, Legionaires and Vietnam fighters dying under the continuous artillery fire of Communist General Giap’s big guns. In subsequent years, as a newly recruited Marxist (and experiencing the rebelliousness of a generation adrift) I welcomed the defeats of the West in far off places such as Korea, the African continent, South Vietnam and Cuba and the ‘liberation’ struggles in Cyprus, Algeria, Kenya, Malaya and elsewhere. Many years ago, I realized that I had been on the wrong side and that whatever the shortcomings of the Christian West, the totalitarian enemies in their various disguises inflicted human misery on their own peoples beyond anything that Western Imperialism could envisage.
Windrow, has little sympathy with French Imperialism, but his book about Dien Bien Phu is objectively fair, hugely researched and depressing. The French, smarting from the humiliation of American/British liberation from Germany, bumbled into attempting to reclaim the Indochinese territory it had held in 1940, when the Japanese army arrived. French politicians and Generals did not realize that the imminent victory of Communism in neighboring China was about to change the balance of power in the region. Ho Chi Minh and General Giap, long-time Communists, had found refuge with the Chinese Communists over the northern border and harnessing Vietnam nationalism and the yearnings of many Vietnamese for independence, they successfully imposed totalitarian communism on to the nationalist movement. With Chinese and Russian support and the ruthlessness that characterizes Marxism everywhere, Giap was able to increasingly dominate the rural areas of northern Vietnam.
History was almost certainly not on the side of the French, but French politicians back in France remained as petty, vainglorious and divided as they had been in the 1930’s. Coveting an Empire and world importance, but unwilling to sacrifice and unite, the Paris politicians gave their soldiers and airmen an impossible task-that of pacifying Vietnam on a shoe-string budget and with political indecision and disunity. The French military in Vietnam believed that if they could lure Giap away from guerilla warfare and into an outright battle, he could be defeated. At Dien Bien Phu, near the border with Laos, the French military leaders selected an isolated valley surrounded by jungle-clad mountains and fever-ridden swamps and created a giant military camp of 10,000 men. It was believed that this stronghold would impede the Communist advance into Laos and also lure Giap into a head-on assault that he would lose to superior firepower. The French also believed that they could support this base from the air.
They underestimated the ability of totalitarian movements to mobilize the masses by a combination of exhortations of a great future, of being on the side of history and if that was not enough, to terrorize the uncommitted. Thus, with plentiful supplies of guns and ammunition from China and the Soviet Union and a huge army of Chinese-trained infantrymen and artillery, all transported to this remote inaccessible area by mobilized civilian masses, Giap was able to place dominating artillery on overlooking mountain tops and overwhelm the camp with huge forces of infantry. The human cost to the Communist infantry and sappers and their supporting masses meant nothing to Giap but the loss of 10,000 men was a mortal shock to the French. The French and their multi-racial force (including many Vietnamese and some Algerian and African recruits) fought bravely until death but they had been placed in a trap. The air power to defend and supply the camp was never available and there was no way that reinforcements could be injected once the battle had begun. The French Governments and politicians who willed the ends but not the means threw away the lives of 10,000 brave men and betrayed their Vietnamese allies, of whom there were many, for not all of the masses welcomed the Communist menace. Giap and Ho Chi Minh, having won the north then set about conquering the South from the USA, but that is another story.
Today, I heard Rush Limbaugh say that he never looks back but only forward. I prefer the old saying about he who never learns from the past will lose the future. When we engage in a war, we should fight it with everything we have, for to do less is to sacrifice brave men in uniform and our allies. This was true for the British in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s and 1980’s, it is true for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and it will prove to be true in the coming fight with Islamic Imperialism. In this future struggle, our opponents again have the suicidal ‘masses’ and governments willing to supply money and arms. Those patriotic political leaders who take us into wars that cannot be safely avoided(such as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan) should not only employ every weapon we have and supply whatever resources are required, but should also fight our internal dissenters with 24/7 energy. This is the great criticism of George Bush. He correctly saw that after 9/11 the US (and the West) had no alternative but to take the war to the enemy, but ever since he has failed to recognize that the Leftist unpatriotic Media Class which now dominates politics has to be confronted every hour, every day. Bush has sulked in his tent or been paralyzed into inactivity when he should have been continuously engaged in a nationwide and worldwide campaign against the wars opponents. He should also have been willing to pursue our enemies wherever they have found safe havens. Because of the internal dissenters and Bush’s lethargy, many US soldiers and Iraqi allies have needlessly died. June 6th is as good a time as any to remember our recent fallen heroes too.