What the brigadier wrote was so disturbing, however, that a senior MOD official stamped the words ‘UK Eyes Only’ at the top and bottom of each page of his report and decreed that it should remain classified for at least 100 years.
The émigré German scholar Klaus Epstein spoke for many when he pointed out that ‘Shirer’s book presented an ‘unbelievably crude’ account of German history, making it all seem to lead up inevitably to the Nazi seizure of power.
Allow me four years, and I swear to you, as truly as I have now undertaken my duties, I will depart. It is not for any reward or benefit that I have taken office, but only for your sake. It has been the greatest decision of my whole life.
If one puts a question to Hitler, he gives an immediate, brilliant, clear answer. There is no human being living whose promise on important matters I would trust more readily.
During Germany’s preemptive occupation of France, which had declared war on the Worker’s reich on September 3, 1939, more French civilians died at the hands of their own countrymen and the allies than were killed by the Germans.
Official reports never mentioned that they were slaughtered in cold blood; only that they perished. Royal Navy sources claim that Commander Meir’s logbook of that patrol admits that the crew did machine-gun survivors.
A priceless example of this was when he correctly wrote that, ‘The evacuation from Greece had not been another Dunkirk; the Greece evacuation had been much worse.’
The censor simply put a line through the second section of the sentence, leaving it to read, ‘The evacuation from Greece had not been another Dunkirk.’
Often, atrocities read about are quoted from former Axis servicemen being tortured, deprived of food or threats being made against their families if they did not write or speak as required.
Keeping his nerve, the U-boat commander reloaded his tubes and triggered another salvo. Two torpedoes released were to lethally strike their intended prey. Within 13 minutes, HMS Royal Oak capsized with massive loss of life.
This may go some way to explain why Churchill expressed no regrets over the carnage of World War II. Why would he regret having so successfully accomplished all he had set out to achieve? Such was the appalling misery heaped upon mankind, it would have been perfectly natural for any government leader, regardless of political persuasion, to express remorse.
Michael Walsh Stories and Books 
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