“[Hitler] is only the ghost of our own past rising against us. He stands for the extenuation and perpetuation of our own methods…”[1] George Orwell

Hollywood’s “Dunkirk” movie, released to rave reviews in the midst of the Trump presidential era and a year after the UK Brexit vote, clocked in more than $500 million at the box office worldwide. The so-called ‘World War Two’ blockbuster depicted retreating British troops in the French coastal city of Dunkirk evading the German air force as they attempted to safely board boats back to England. But how exactly did this desperate state of affairs arise? This essay provides a general overview of the military developments which led to the retreat at Dunkirk and identifies the similarities in the world view of the main belligerent parties.     

No one kissed their loved one’s goodbye and then embarked on the journey to fight in the Hundred Years’ War or the Thirty Years’ War for that matter. Likewise, when war was declared many centuries later in Europe in September 1939 no one absurdly tempted fate to announce World War Two had began. Actually, in 1939 there was then no such conflict known as World War One. The war that is now known as World War One, was then known as the ‘Great War’. Yet as the cold European autumn and winter of 1939 naturally seasoned into the following year’s spring, the latest round of European warfare pitched two white supremacist camps against each other.

On one side were the imperialist nations of Britain, France, Belgium, Holland and their allies. Western historians possess an empirically-lacking fascination to refer to the imperialist nations in their literature as “democracies” or “allies” rather than for what they actually were, white supremacist nations who denied democracy to hundreds of millions of non-white inhabitants in their colonial territories while plundering them.[2] These four imperial powers had prided themselves on conquering and plundering colonial territories for the last 300 years. On the other side, was Nazi Germany and its allies. Nazi Germany was led by Mr. Adolf Hitler, a dictator with strong racial prejudices similar to those held by the leaders of the imperialist camp. Continue reading →