Anger At Government Grows In Bombings' Wake

LONDON (Routers) Anger At Government Grows In Bombings' Wake
The new government of Winston Churchill, in office for a few scant months, came under fire today, after the seemingly senseless destruction of property and lives in the city by German bombers yesterday. Many are blaming the new Prime Minister for the bombings, which they view as a result of his stubborn support of an illegal war against Vichy France, and inappropriately aggressive policies against the misunderstood Germans.

"Under Chamberlain," said one Labour backbencher, "we had peace for our time."

"Now," he went on, "under this new brutal and dictatorial Tory rule, Churchill, along with his poodle Franklin "Delanodamngood" Roosevelt, has brought this wretched war home to Whitehall itself, and ordinary Londoners."

The bombing began around four o'clock yesterday afternoon, with squadrons of German bombers blackening the skies over London, dropping many thousands of pounds of bombs on the city for two hours. A couple hours later, a second wave of bombings commenced, with the bombers' navigators guided by the fires from the first attack, with no cessation until early this morning. The fires still burn, and the total casualties have yet to be properly assessed.

It is widely believed that the lamentable attacks have their root cause in the government's unwillingness to recognize the new Pétain government in Paris, established over two months ago, following the liberation of France by German troops in late June, or to even negotiate respectfully with the German government. Instead, it has been undermining the French government, and its German ally, with supplies and moral support for its enemies, despite the "withdrawal" of British forces at Dunkirk three months ago. Churchill has in fact defiantly supported the illegitimate "Free" French government established by "General" Charles de Gaulle, while making blustery and bellicose speeches, filled with obvious disdain and hatred for the Germans and their elected leader and head of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler.

The German's understandable sense of beleaguerment is further fed by the British alliance with Roosevelt's America, via the Lend-Lease program among other things, creating a spectre of an Anglo-American conspiracy against them. ...
Some scholars in Northern European studies think that in fact, ultimately, these acts of violence have a deeper cause--the years of poverty brought on by imperialistic policies against Germany. The tragic Treaty of Versailles after the Great War kept Germany on its economic back for years, and the resulting deprivation has fueled the anger of young bomber crews brought up in the depths of the long depression.

Under these circumstances, most think it little wonder that the Germans have been driven to such desperate measures as bombing innocents, in the wake of such unremitting animosity and economic scarcity. It no doubt adds to their fury that many of their bombers were shot down in the raid by British anti-aircraft fire and RAF aircraft (weapons that many think should be outlawed, or at least renounced, in the interest of international stability), at the cost of hundreds of brave German lives.

More shockingly, many even believe, with some justification, that the German bombers were deliberately targeted, while the gunners attempted to miss British aircraft, a government policy that some properly view as a particularly cruel form of ethnic profiling.

Given such policies, they say, Britain should prepare for more such attacks in the future, until the government can understand why the Germans hate us, and act on that understanding with more rational and humane policies.

The government, of course, attempts to claim that this is nonsense.
"The Nazis have declared their intention and right to conquer and rule the world--it's right there in Hitler's own book, Mein Kampf," said one outraged assistant in the Defense ministry. "One doesn't have to indulge in sociological analyses to know why they bomb us--they do so because we are now the bulwark for the still-free world against Hitler's totalitarian ambitions. Why not simply take them at their word?"

"They've violated the Munich agreement, and the von Ribbentropp Pact is unlikely to hold up for long. They cannot be trusted or negotiated with. They've invaded our allies Poland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and other places. The notion that, if we would simply listen to them and hear out their grievances and give them what they want, they'll leave us alone, is infantile."

Of course, it seems common sentiment now that, sadly, such simple-minded analyses are the problem, not the solution--that an entire people should not be judged by selected words from a single book. In the wake of such hopeless policies, and an apparently blind and brutal government, the British people are seemingly settling in for a long, bloody and hopeless reign of carnage, that no one can hope to win.

[Copyright 2005, by Rand Simberg]

-p (No blood for Poland!)