Few people realise, perhaps because they have never been told, is that Hitler’s Germany never, before or during World War II, declared war on Britain or France or their overseas territories. On September 3, 1939 Britain and France disappointed their citizens by declaring war on Germany.

During what was dubbed ‘The Brothers War’, the Reich dropped many leaflets behind their enemies’ lines. Of these, one is worth reading in the context of hindsight.

‘In dying for Stalin your soldiers are not dying for democracy or the preservation of the democratic form of government, they are dying for the establishment of Communism and a form of Stalinist tyranny throughout the world. 

‘Furthermore, they are not dying for the preservation of the integrity of small nations, England’s old war cry, but are dying so that Poland shall become a Soviet state, so that the Baltic States shall be incorporated in the Soviet Union and so that Soviet influence shall extend from the Baltic to the Balkans.

Every British soldier who lays down his life in this war is not only a loss to his own country; he is a loss to the common cause of European civilisation. 

Germany and England’s quarrel is a form of traditional rivalry.  It is more in the nature of a private quarrel that Germany did not seek.  The Soviet Union’s quarrel, however, is a quarrel with the world.  It is a quarrel with our common heritage and with all those values, moral, spiritual, cultural and material which we have, all of us, Englishmen and German alike, recognised, cherished and striven to maintain.  To die for the destruction of these values is to die in vain.

Stalin, with all the diabolical power of Communism behind him, is seeking to profit from Britain and Germany’s preoccupation.  The amount of influence which Britain can exercise on Stalin can be measured by the latter’s undisputed claims to the sovereign territories of other nations.  The only controlling influence left on Stalin is the strength and tenacity of the German Wehrmacht and of the European volunteers who support Germany in her fight for the survival of Europe, and its opposition as the cradle of our common civilisation.

Every British soldier who dies for Stalin is another nail in the coffin of Britain’s hopes of maintaining a balance of power in Europe.  Should the equilibrium pass to Stalin then the equilibrium of the world is at an end. Those who are about to die think it over. EXCERPT: Witness to History by Michael Walsh.