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STEFAN KANFER'S GADFLIGHTS |
History Lessons
by Stefan Kanfer
Poor Prince Harry. So young, and already a boob.
And also a pariah.
And, sad to say, a victim as well.
On a recent Saturday night party, he got himself up in German Nazi regalia, a la World War II, complete with swastika armband. Someone at the party brought along a camera, snapped the 20-year-old, and sold the photo to the Sun, a British tabloid with an insatiable appetite for vulgarity and scandal. Predictably, explosions followed, with demands for Harry’s resignation from Sandhurst, the select military academy where he’s scheduled to begin officer training later this year. His father, Prince Charles, was rumored to be livid.
Scathing commentary issued from Britain’s Jewish community, including a remark from a member of the House of Lords who accurately called Harry’s party costume “stupid, thoughtless, tactless.” This, however, was followed by demands for Harry to attend one of the Holocaust memorial events, perhaps even to visit Auschwitz.
In this, the community got it exactly wrong. The Prince’s gaffe is not a Jewish problem. It is a British problem.
For one thing, there’s the business of family. Harry’s great-uncle, Edward VII, left the throne for a woman who gave new meaning to the word “commoner.” The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as they then became, were great fans of Hitler. Many cringe-making photos of the royals were taken with Nazi officials, to the everlasting embarrassment of the nation.
For another, there’s the business of history. France, after making a meaching effort at resistance, totally capitulated to Hitler in June of 1940. That left Britain all alone in its fight with Nazi Germany. Russia was not to enter the fray for months, the U.S., not for another year and a half.
The German navy was insufficient to battle the British one. But the Luftwaffe was all-powerful. The Royal Air Force was all that lay between England and the invasion of the Nazis. On August 12, 1940, the German air force began its assault on British radar stations and airfields. Then came daily air attacks on British soil. The Brits counterattacked with Spitfires, and after numerous skirmishes and heavy losses, turned back the German Messerschmitts and Stukas on August 30 and 31st. Adolf Hitler changed his tactics and went after civilian targets. Britain retaliated by bombing Berlin. The tide of the war had turned, although at a prohibitive price: The RAF had lost 792 planes and more than 500 of its finest pilots.
This information is not a secret. If Prince Harry knows none of it, if Winston Churchill’s name is unfamiliar to the young royal, if he believes that “This was their finest hour” refers to the Sunday night comedies on the telly, a little tutorial might be in order. But there is no need for him to go to Auschwitz. That’s in Poland. All he has to do is go to the Imperial War Museum. That’s in London. Maps are available.
Those Americans who regard the British Royal family as a bunch of inbreds whose collective IQ’s would not reach triple figures, should stop smirking. Right here in America there’s a place called the Virginia Military Institute. Second only to West Point, this place of higher learning, this prep school for officers, was the scene of a party last Halloween featuring cadets dressed as Nazi soldiers. For lagniappe, a few guys were also caparisoned as drag queens and a starving African. When the scandal erupted, replete with photos, a VMI cadet offered a defense: “We, the Corps of Cadets, were apalled [sic] at the Abu Ghraib incident, but seeing as how we’re going to be in the midst of death and inhumanity and other such facts of life we need to be able to keep a sense of humor.”
Yeah, well, seeing as how military comedy has saved many a soldier from combat fatigue, the kid might have a point. On the other hand, so does his head. There is nothing funny about the Nazis and their cult of death. Poland: 6, 850, 000 mortalities. Yugoslavia: 1, 706,000. USSR, 21, 300,000. US, 500,000. Great Britain, 388,000. Czechoslovakia, 400,000. Hungary, 750,000. And Germany itself, 7. 060,000. Und so weiter. If this is comical, then there is something deeply, deeply wrong with the education system of the U.S. and Britain, and beyond. But it has nothing to do with Auschwitz.
Jewish feelings had best concentrate on the present, and let the educators and administrators worry about the past tense. For Jews, these past few years have been the worst in Europe since the conclusion of World War II. According to the conservative site, Jewish World Review, “Why anti-Semitism is growing is open to debate.”
This may be the most fatuous statement since Harry’s abject apology for his insensitivity. Everyone knows why anti-Semitism is rife in France, the Netherlands and many other European nations.
Everyone.
It’s called Islam.
Radical Muslims, and many (some would say most) of their co-religionists resent Christians and Jews and of course, cannot abide Israel’s very presence in the Middle East. There are now millions of such people in Europe, legally and illegally. The Jewish state is useful to them as a cover for hate-mongering, from the Kryloned Mort Aux Juifs signs in Paris to the hypocritical condemnations of Israel at the UN. Those Europeans who also hate Hebrews, (“How odd of God to choose the Jews” as one sneering couplet says), now have the excuse of Sharon, or Likud, or the Fence, or any other Israeli person or thing as their cover.
Everyone knows this. Why pretend otherwise? You don’t have to wear Nazi uniforms to promulgate the Hitlerian ideal. In fact, Harry and the VMI plebes are doing nothing of the kind. They’re just kids with the sensitivity of a toilet seat. Louts, but harmless. The trouble lies elsewhere, and until it is recognized and prosecuted, we can expect nothing but more atrocities, noise, condemnations, tabloid shockeroos and, of course, the kind of abject apologies written by PR folk and spun like drehdels.