A lesson of history

The Holocaust, the massacre of Europe's Jews during the war, is a terrible example of what happens when intolerance and racism are allowed to flourish inside a country. The worst atrocities committed by the Nazis took place during the war. The massacre in Rome in 1944 of 335 civilians is just one of hundreds of such incidents. But the evil nature of Hitler's rule in Germany was clear well before the outbreak of war and so there was a moral element to the Second World War. It would be wrong to suggest that Britain went to war in 1939 just because Nazism was evil. Britain's interests were at stake and her empire threatened, but ridding the world of Nazism was a good cause and justified the war in moral terms.

There were also Germans who opposed Hitler - Communists, liberals and religious people. Many of them, like Colonel Count Stauffenberg, paid with their lives for this opposition. There is nothing in the German character which makes them more likely to commit war crimes. Britain committed war crimes against the Boers in the Boer War (1899-1902) and created the world's first concentration camps in which 20,000 Boer men, women and children died. The United States committed war crimes against the Vietnamese during their role in the Vietnam War (1965-73).

The circumstances which allowed the hatred of Jews to develop in Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s could be repeated in another country at another time with another group as its victims. By making people aware of those circumstances and their consequences, future generations stand a better chance of making sure it does not happen again.

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 70