The White Poppy and the Red

The white poppy was introduced in 1933 by the Co-op Women's Guild to remember those affected by war on all sides, all casualties and the refugees.  It also works for conflict resolution, diplomacy, and positive, practical peacemaking to be used so that war might become the last resort when all else has failed.  The white poppy works for talking with the adversary well before any killing starts.

The red poppy, introduced in 1921, remembers UK armed forces casualties and, through the British Legion, helps their families in many practical ways.  The red poppy does NOT indicate bloodshed.  It does not want, 'Lest we forget', to mean 'Lest we ever forget to wage war'.

2,000 years ago Jesus Christ rejected empire building when he was tempted by the devil to bow down to him and he would be given all the kingdoms of this world.  800 years ago our own country started empire building and collected its nearest country, Ireland first.  It then continued off and on until the First World War that saw the collapse of the German empire, the Austria-Hungary empire, the Russian empire and the beginnings of the end for the British and French empires.

Empire building is called colonialism or imperialism.  It was one reason for the start of the 1914 World War, together with militarism and nationalism according to Professor Niall Ferguson.

Nationalism was seen because it was a Serbian nationalist who assassinated the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne.  That led, four weeks later, to the 1914 World War.  Militarism was seen with the naval arms race between Britain and Germany up to 1914.

Britain was fighting the wronged party, Austria-Hungary, that had their heir to the throne killed.  In other words, we were on the wrong side and Germany was on the side of the victim, Austria-Hungary.  Hindsight now shows us that all out, total war between the European empires as punishment over two royal assassinations was way over the top.  It led to many millions killed and injured and, unfinished business that ended with the second half of the World War that caused more horrors and killings for nearly six years to 1945.

The first war had western European world empires fighting each other.  No empires, no imperialism, no colonialism would have meant a shorter, quicker war.  It would never have led to the second world war in 1939.

The stupidity of Britain so quickly and eagerly entering the war on the 4 August 1914, seems to have led to us waging war in many different countries in every single year up to the present day.  Astonishing but true!  It seems we have a penchant for killing foreigners in their own countries for over 100 years.

The only upside was that finally, after many centuries, the European nations were brought to their senses and ended warfare between themselves by working for a federal Europe with the Treaty of Rome and, eventually, the EU.

Was Hitler, uniquely, the epitomy of evil?

Was Hitler the most evil, demagogic, psychopathic leader of any nation that there has ever been?

Was he after world domination of every single country in the world?

Or, did he want Germany to be the new superpower of the 1940s to take over from the British Empire and to rival the USA?

Or, like Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1914 who, it seems, wanted German hegemony in Europe, is that what Hitler also wanted?

Was he wanting revenge for the surprise defeat of Germany in 1918?  A Germany that had come close to victory in the World War 1914-18, more than once and, that had defeated Russia in 1917.

Was he wanting Germany to become a Great Military Power, like France, UK and like USA, as AJP Taylor argued in 'The Origins of the Second World War'?

We now use Hitler as the benchmark to measure if any other of our present day enemies measure up to his pure evil.  For example, the Prince of Wales in May 2014 after Putin had taken back Crimea that had been given by Khrushchev to Ukraine, in 1954.  Saddam Hussein was also likened to Hitler to justify his removal from power by the West in 2003.

Yet, it was the British who were the first to use concentration camps and not Hitler.  Over 20,000 Boer women and children were killed by neglect and/or deliberate policy by the British in concentration camps.  And this was well before even the 1914-18 war in Europe.

It was the British who killed many more Germans than they did us, it seems, between 1939 and 1945.  Although, as we know, they killed millions of Jews, gypsies and other minorities in Germany.  Yet we, the Christian, democratic West after our success in 1945, carried on with the killing of unknown numbers but perhaps millions in far off countries of which we knew little.  Justified as fighting Communism, then militant, extremist Muslims to this day.

It was Churchill who knew about the concentration camps of the Germany of the 1930s and 40s. Yet, even when he was Prime Minister, he failed to order the precision targeting of the rail lines to the camps. Precision targeting of dams; yes. Revenge, saturation, fire bombing of people's homes in the closing months of the war; yes. Saving the millions in the minority groups of Germans; no.

According to the 'Guardian' spread in February 2014, it was us Brits who waged war for every single year over the last one hundred years in many countries around the world.  Finally, in 2015, we may be content to lay down our weapons for the first time since 1914.  Nearly 17,000 of our men and women in the armed forces were killed since 1945 but, that number must be multiplied by an unknown figure to get the numbers they killed around the world.

If Hitler was the most evil leader of any nation in the history of the world, then we have to say that all individual Germans were just as evil in carrying out his orders from 1933 to 1945.  Perhaps, that was how we justified the indiscriminate mass slaughter of German civilians and children in the closing months of the war, even when our victory was assured.  Revenge is sweet for Christians, Muslims and Jews - and, for us all.  We called our enemies evil then and, in recent years and today, we call them Communists, terrorists and Muslim radicals and extremists.

Since then, peace followed by co-operation and union between the countries of Europe has seen less desire to participate in the wars of the UK and the USA.  Only, perhaps, have those European countries membership of NATO compelled them to send troops in this century's Middle Eastern wars that had been started by the United States of Aggression, seconded by the UK ( UK = united killers with the USA?).

Is it universal human nature to be warlike and to kill their own for the sake of domination?

The 1st World War, that the Western ‘Christian’ nations were responsible for, was the bloodiest war the world has ever seen.  It was slaughter on an industrial scale and started over Belgian neutrality. 1m British lives. alone, were wiped out.

Is it the white man’s nature to fight, to dominate and to kill any old human, especially black foreigners in other lands?  Or, would the black man be just as bad if given half the chance?  If the American Indians had discovered the vast resources that the white supplanters/settlers discovered would they have turned out exactly like the Americans - the world’s Emperor nation?  Or, is there something innate in the black man’s tribal ancestry, in his DNA, that makes him less keen to conquer nature, to dominate people, to kill and to be top dog?

The wise words from Chief Seattle indicate that certainly, originally, their view of their place on the earth was totally different from that of the 'Christian' white man. They saw their existence as part of the web of life; the Christian nations saw their place on the earth as, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever." (Westminster Confessional). The biblical perspective is certainly not part of Nature but a cut above Nature. The American Indians, the Maoris and the Aborigines all saw themselves belonging to the earth. The white man, with his arrival on every continent, brought the Bible and the belief that the earth belonged to them and they could do exactly what they liked, as often as they liked with never any repercussions from the earth's life support systems. After all, we are a cut above the rest of Creation; we are made a little lower than the angels; and, certainly we are not the human animal.

In addition, the Muslims or the Arabs have had decades of vast oil wealth but have not turned out like the rampaging, destructive, warlike white man of the Christian West.  Our lot killed millions of humans between 1914 and 2014 and very nearly brought about nuclear holocaust eg the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The other lot did not.  The closest were the evil Communists whose killings we like to exaggerate to make us feel better and to justify our killing of them in SE Asia.  And all this war on the godless Communists from 1945 to 1975 after they had, perhaps, ensured the defeat of Hitler with Stalin’s rearguard action, to begin with as the Communists fought to protect their homeland from the Nazis! No public and frequent acknowledgement that they, the Communists had been decisive in winning the war, in defeating Hitler. Only condemnation for not being democratic and for being so jealous to keep the eastern European nations under their sway as a buffer from the western European nations frequent wars and expansionism.