Barmy Russia would rather forget Dunkirk

Christopher Booker’s great new column is now on the back page of the Sunday section

Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s depiction of the 1940 evacuation, has delighted critics and audiences in Britain, but not in every country. French writers observe (with some justice) that the role of their army is largely overlooked. A review in USA Today raised an eyebrow at “the fact that there are only a couple of women and no lead actors of colour”. But by far the strangest reaction has come from the Twitter account of Russia’s London embassy:

“Dunkirk was caused by the appeasement, opposed by Churchill. Phoney War was its last stage. What is your view of it?

– wait 4Hitler 2 invade USSR

– elite mad over bolshevism

– never heard of it”

It is worth remembering that, at the time of Dunkirk, Stalin and Hitler were effectively allies. Under the terms of the MolotovRibbentrop pact, they had carved up Poland, the Baltic states and Romania. When their armies met at BrestLitovsk, they staged a joint parade, at the end of which the Soviet commander invited the Germans to visit him in Moscow “after the defeat of capitalist Albion”.

The two autocracies traded oil and military supplies, and collaborated in what both hoped would be the downfall of Western liberalism. The first Briton executed for treason in 1940 was a Communist merchant seaman who, following instructions from Moscow, had passed intelligence to German agents in Boston.

You can see why the Russians want to forget the whole sorry business. But it’s odd that so many British people also fail to remember it. The Nazi-Soviet Pact was in place for 22 months. We remember that we stood alone against Hitler, but forget we were standing against Stalin, too.

We still don’t place Communism in the same moral category as Nazism, despite its murder of 100 million people. The most common response to the Russian Embassy’s Twitter poll, incidentally, was “never heard of it”. Perhaps that ignorance explains why, 75 years on, British politicians can call themselves Marxists and still win votes.