Europe’s wars long since over, move on

I AM always a tad concerned that those of the anti-European persuasion are losing the plot whne they make reference to two world wars and somehow try to link this awful event with the country’s current relation- ship with Europe. Every sane person across the continent has rightly moved on and the wars are rightly viewed there as something in which their grandparents were directly involved.

Only in Britain, it seems, is there an army of Colonel Blimps fighting on through the letter columns of newspapers – invariably using such terms as ‘the French’ or ‘the Nazis’, with a tone bearing a nasty undercurrent similar to just the sort of thing that this nation was actuallly fighting against at the time!

So in a way, I was really orry to see Mr C Darlington take such a stance in his recent letter (Letters, Sept 12). We can all like and dislike different things about the European Union, but, without exception we should all try to examine the facts rather than simply spout off in a Mr Angry fashion or akin to an edition of Boy’s Own promoting the British as the highest achievement of civilisation.

Firstly, Mr Darlington, this country did not stand alone during the Second World War.

Yes, the French (and later the Italians) did capitulate, but only because of overwhelming strength of the German forces.

And exactly the same would have happened to the British too had it not been firstly for the French Army holding back the Wehrmacht sufficiently long enough to allow an evacuation of Britian’s forces at Dunkirk, and secondly 30km of sea across the English Channel.

Furthermore, without aircrews from the Free French, Poles, Czechs and West Indies this country could never have won the Battle of Britain, leaving the door wide open for invasion, capitulation and collaboration with Lord Haw-Haw, Lord Rothermere (of Daily Mail fame), Oswald Moseley and others on the far right- some of whom ironically wouldn’t look that out of place in today’s EDL and Ukip.

It is plainly wrong for anyone to imply that it was this country which liberated Europe from Nazism. By 1942 the war had takien such a huge toll on Britian both economically and militarily that we were a broken nation, surviving only because

of US aid and The Red Army pinning down Nazi manpower in the East. Britian could never have undertaken D-Day without their help and , it might be argued, Churchhill merely pigg-backed on the back of overwhelming superior US military capacity and Soviet losses on the Eastern Front because he saw this as a way to rebuild the British Empire. Fortunately a combination of the 1945 General Election and US President Harry Truman kicked that fantasy into touch. Timothy Taylor, Drewsteignton