A day for plastic patriots yesterday, the day that many, possibly most people now don’t know, with people who wrap themselves in the flag and bang on about the war first and foremost. In 1945, yesterday was the last day of the Second World War. It was supposed to be May 7th, not May 8th, but Stalin wasn’t up for sharing a peace deal with anyone else, so far as I understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was, according to an US fighter pilot I used to know, the first day of massive drinking that lasted weeks, and an immediate two weeks of leave granted to pilots as suddenly the US Army Airforce didn’t have much use for their services, at least in Europe. A lot of the drinking, he said, was because the war was over so they wouldn’t get killed. A lot more of the drinking, he said, was because they thought they’d all be sent to the Pacific to fly ground-attack for the invasion of Japan, so they’d all get killed anyway. Meanwhile, there was drinking to be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The date probably accounts for an Instagram post I saw today, bizarrely put up by an account called IamSophieScholl, by someone who is demonstrably and easily proved not to be Sophie Scholl<\/a>, given that she was beheaded in 1943. I thought maybe it was her anniversary too, but no, she died in February. Her name is next to unknown in Britain, chiefly, I think, because it interferes with the accepted narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My step-brother in law came out with this idiotic statement years ago. It’s stuck in my mind ever since. I asked him if he saw his neighbours being beaten up by the police, the street full of marked police vans, people in police uniforms kicking the door down next door, dragging the neighbours into the street then putting them in a marked police van, never to be seen again, what he would have done. Called the police?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it became a handy trope to justify the behaviour of the Allies, and handier still to justify the deliberate destruction of every German town of any size. I used to know, as it were, a woman who was born long after 1945 in a place called Hildesheim. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThey all knew what was going on<\/h2>\n\n\n\n