Why is it important?

My father's ashes have probably been rotating in their urn occasionally in recent years since I moved full time to Germany.

I grow up in England in the 1950s and 1960s hearing from my father's generation the phrase "I hate Germans". Asked why came back the standard answer "They started two world wars". I would question the first, the second is undeniable, but hating the leaders who started that second war is different from hating an entire people. Differentiation is a very important criterion.

My father was a quiet, very private, very sensitive man. And modest, and a great believer in work ethic - work was its own reward in many respects. Property, wealth? Come on! When I was 13 we owned absolutely nothing - no house, no car - we weren't the likes of Romney and Ryan coming from inherited wealth and despising, or at least offering simplistic unworkable solutions to, those people who were without.

He and my uncle, who besides being his brother-in-law was also his closest friend, both were involved in the Second World War. My father was a ground-crew mechanic in the Royal Air Force in Scotland. The role of a ground-crew mechanic was to help fit out a plane ready to go into combat, repair any problems when the plane returned from action, and generally ensure that everything with the war machine ran smoothly.

So when a plane came back from a sortie they had to deal with it so that it was ready to go out again when needed, and given the volume of activity in 1944, imagine what that involved. Were there  casualties on the plane when it came back from a raid? There must have been. If there were, my father must have seen the casualties of war close up. Do I know for certain? No. He never spoke about such things apart from one comment that he made when I was already 20 years old about how awful war was and that it should be avoided at all costs.

My uncle meanwhile was in a ground unit in the British Army. Unlike virtually every other member of my family, this meant that he had actually set foot outside the UK. He was a great raconteur in his own quiet way and would recount some of the amusing cultural differences that he had found in his time in Belgium. Action, war, guns blazing, death you name it - that again never came up in discussion.

I grew up in the era when Adenauer had brought Germany back into fold of democratic nations. Over the years I came to admire the political lions of that era, not just Adenauer, but also Erhard, Schumacher, Brandt. Sadly the days have gone when such personalities arose. Kohl, Schröder, Merkel, not one has known how to create full employment or raise the standard of living of the people as a whole.

Move on.

When I comment on Fascism rearing its ugly head again, and pan the likes of Michael Fischer, who seem to glorify all the nonsense involved, there are good reasons. The history of the Fascist era and the 1,000 year Reich is not just a series of stories taken from books and old newsreels. If I did not experience the events and the war that it produced first-hand, I know and have met people who did experience it.

In hospital in 2008 I met an 85-year-old German guy who had served on the Eastern Front. Not one kind word for Hitler from him (he had supported the resistance, tacitly at least) - and the stories he could tell. Tough old guy. His wife described him a "stubborn old cuss", but to survive the Eastern Front during the war and 3 heart attacks, he had to be stubborn - and more besides!  In a few short days I learned a great deal from him. Personal experience is often more interesting, if potentially more coloured and biased, than what you can read or see.

 But then he had the advantage over the Michael Fischers of this world, or the various Fascist and neo-Fascist parties round Europe and their supporters. He had seen the sheer awfulness that that thinking and intolerance produced. The brutality that arises from ignorance, the whipped-up nationalism and the instilled need to hate in a stereotypical fashion - if not measured and brought under control.

There are many understandable reasons for the insecurity and unhappiness (and justifiable anger) across the continent at the moment. The easy solution though of running to national borders, national ethnicity, national economic solutions, the "national interest", national sovereignty usw DOES NOT WORK!

For the simple reason the factors that control economies are international. The breakdown of capitalism in 2008 was international, the ramifications are international. Suddenly you can close your doors and everything will work? Don't kid yourselves. International speculators will see to that.

And what are the chances of buying products exclusively made in your own country?  You don't want to wear goods made in China? Prepare yourself to walk naked down the street when your current wardrobe wears out!

Which does not mean that we do not need to change how things work (limiting the ability of speculators to control our lives is IMHO absolutely essential, and breaking the stranglehold that the Chinese have on production is also essential - see other pieces that I have written on this blog). Simply looking to nationalist solutions, and the brutalised version of the caste system that they often entail will though take us nowhere positive.

The lessons of history indicate clearly that extreme political or economic or religious agendas create more problems than they resolve. The 45 million people who died in Europe in the Second World War are testimony to that (and check out the barbarism under which some of those people died - what do you say to anyone who wants to see a repeat of that?).

And ask the people of Eastern Germany if they want the barbed wire fences and the Stasi back, for all the difficulties that they have experienced in the past 23 years.

And ask the people who live in a spirit of religious tolerance how Sharia Law or its potential Christian or Judaic equivalents could possibly improve their lives.

I am an old man, I have a clearer image what Fascism entailed than those who foolishly embrace it now. It was a horrendous creed based upon our lowest, most ignorant instincts. We do not need it back in any way shape or form! And it is important to recognise that, and take every action possible to ensure that the return of such or similar creeds and practices never again happens.