Truth behind this lazy label

DURING a break in Prague last week my wife and I visited a remarkable museum. It is in the crypt of a church where a band of men made their last stand surrounded by German troops after being betrayed by one of their number. They had recently assassinated the evil Reinhard Heydrich, the SS monster Hitler had sent to run the then Czechoslovakia (and regarded by many as his eventual successor) on a mission organised from London by Churchill’s newly formed Special Operations Executive.

The men, all young Czech patriots, must have known from the moment they were parachuted back to their home country that they were likely to die and so it turned out, though they denied their foes the opportunity to inflict a bestial revenge by turning their weapons on themselves just before they were about to be captured. In true Nazi style the Germans made up for missing out by murdering not just all those who had helped or shielded Heydrich’s killers but also by wiping out their entire families.

I recommend a visit to that crypt to all the cretins who never miss an opportunity to criticise those whose opinions they disagree with by labelling them “Nazis” or priding themselves on making dismally unoriginal observations about “this is how Hitler’s Germany started”. They betray not just their own rotten grasp of history but the memory of the courageous souls who fought – and died – against the real thing.