The "Sunday Express" is very much to be congratulated on publishing a most instructive and objective article by General Kurt Student, Commander of German Paratroops, in which he gives very significant information on the reason why Hitler did not invade Britain after the fiasco of Dunkirk.
General Student states that he was informed by Goering as early as 2 September, 1940, before the Battle of Britain reached its height, that Hitler had no intention of invading Britain.
He recalls how shocked and surprised he was at the time, and points out that, contrary to most British opinion, it was not the outcome of the Battle of Britain that decided the issue.
Admiration for Empire
Later he was to get an inkling, at least, of Hitler's reason for calling off the "Operation Sealion" by which the invasion of Britain was known to the High Command. On 25 January, 1941, he accompanied Goering to Berchtesgaden, to have a discussion with Hitler, when the latter expressed the following opinions about Britain:
"The Empire has shown in its long and stormy colonial history that it is not only the biggest but the best administered colonial Reich. The British are better colonial administrators than Germans and other peoples. If I destroy this Empire, 500 million yellow, brown, and black natives become leaderless. Murder and death will stalk and the whole world will go to pieces. So I must proceed very carefully."Here we have confirmation of the opinion expressed by Captain Liddel-Hart and others that Hitler deliberately refrained both from annihilating the British armies at Dunkirk and from invading this country. Indeed General Student goes on at the end of his article to give as his opinion: "When there's a will there's a way. But Hitler had no determined will towards Britain."
A Fateful Tragedy
It is indeed a tragedy that although Britain was spared on this occasion, the Empire was subsequently thrown away by politicians who refused clemency in this hour of disaster by the destruction of Europe. For this, rule over "500 million yellow, brown and black natives" have nevertheless been lost. Like two noble beasts Britain and Germany each destroyed the other, and Britain had far more to lose than Germany.
The moral, that Hitler would not proceed to force by invasion an "unconditioned surrender" on Britain because of the resultant damage to white prestige throughout the world, was strangely repaid by the enforced "unconditional surrender" of Germany without thought on the part of British politicians of the consequent damage to all Europe through the menace of Communism.
The "Sunday Express" is certainly to be thanked for bringing home this lesson to the British people, even if it comes a little late to save our people from the folly of their wartime leaders, who certainly do not measure up to the man they pilloried as - "the enemy of civilisation."
