A British soldier stumbles exhausted across a desolate landscape, his right arm in a sling, his forehead bandaged. In his left hand he carries laurel leaves with the label: “victory and peace in Europe”.
“Here you are,” he says grimly. “Don’t lose it again.” By drawing this image for the Daily Mirror, the artist Philip Zec proved that a cartoon is worth a thousand words. The British people could enjoy what Churchill called a “brief period of rejoicing”, but after all their loss and suffering, heaven forbid that a future leader might squander their triumph.
Yet here we are, 80 years later, and bandaged Ukrainian soldiers are fighting an invader on the blasted landscapes of Europe’s biggest country. If Vladimir Putin manages to subjugate their homeland, his all-searching eye will look to every part of Europe for new conquests.
On this anniversary of VE Day the catastrophe foreshadowed by Zec’s image has really happened in one European state. And Putin may yet inflict it upon others. If the curse spreads to a Nato ally, then Britain too will be at war. Today the precious laurels of “peace and victory” are in greater danger of being lost again than for generations.
How has it come to this? How can we even contemplate a Europe engulfed by war? There is no mystery about the method for avoiding such a calamity. History shows what you must do. When a dictator threatens to invade European countries, believe him. And never ever cut your military strength so far that he thinks he might get away with it.
We have peace when our leaders understand these lessons; we risk war when they do not. It is as simple as that.
In the years after VE Day, when Stalin imposed Communist regimes on half of Europe and blockaded West Berlin in 1948, the Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, and his foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, needed no persuading of the Soviet threat. Nor did President Harry Truman in Washington and his greatest secretary of state, George Marshall.
Even as Attlee and Bevin were creating the NHS and facing huge public pressure for swift demobilisation, they resisted cutting defence below safe levels. Instead they decided to build a British nuclear deterrent. They joined America to break Stalin’s siege of West Berlin by mounting the biggest humanitarian airlift in history. They oversaw the birth of Nato and a permanent American security guarantee for Europe.
As they bound America to the defence of Europe, Attlee and Bevin demonstrated that the burden would be shared. They sent British forces to fight alongside the US in Korea. Six years after VE Day, they were still spending nearly 10 per cent of GDP on defence. These far-sighted leaders, American and British, devised the strategy and built the alliance that would contain Soviet aggression, keep the peace in Europe, and eventually deliver bloodless victory in the Cold War in 1989-91. They lived and breathed the lessons of history.
What of their post-Cold War successors? Back in 2007 Putin disclosed his ambitions when he addressed the Munich Security Conference and pledged to overthrow the entire “architecture of global security”. The following year, 2008, Putin removed any doubt by invading the sovereign European country of Georgia, seizing 20 per cent of its territory in a lightning war.
Somewhere high above, the spirits of Attlee and Bevin would have been imploring their successors: take this aggression seriously. A tough response today will spare you infinite bloodshed and misery tomorrow.
How did their successors respond? Gordon Brown and David Miliband did nothing except verbally condemn Putin. The West did not impose a single economic sanction after Russia dismembered Georgia, which remains a divided country today.
Incredibly, the only counter-measure was that the EU suspended talks with Russia on a new “Partnership and Cooperation Agreement”. Even that restriction was lifted after a few months. Brown and Miliband betrayed the tradition of Attlee and Bevin. Along with their Western contemporaries, they allowed Putin’s first act of aggression to succeed, thus paving the way for today’s catastrophe in Ukraine.
What happened next was equally irresponsible. A Conservative-Lib Dem coalition decided that the Army could do without 40 per cent of its main battle tanks and 35 per cent of its heavy artillery. The defence review of 2010 effectively dismantled the Army’s ability to wage high intensity warfare while also decimating the RAF and the Royal Navy.
Was this enforced by austerity? Well the same Government found almost £9 billion for the London Olympics, which Putin attended as an honoured guest. In 2013 the Department for International Development (DFID) received the single biggest budget increase in peacetime history – 30 per cent – allowing Britain to hit the target of spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on international aid. Our leaders made a conscious choice to go all-in for soft power and downgrade the hard variety.
How does that decision look now? After we cut the Armed Forces to pay for DFID and the Olympics, Putin launched his first invasion of Ukraine and grabbed Crimea in 2014. Robert Gates, then US defence secretary, foreshadowed Donald Trump by warning in 2011 that European defence cuts were jeopardising America’s commitment to the alliance.
Today DFID has disappeared, probably forever, and the last Government eviscerated the aid budget. This Labour government has cut it even further. Meanwhile we are trying to rebuild the Army and reverse the 2010 cuts. We could have given far more weapons to Ukraine after Putin’s second invasion if our Army had possessed 40 per cent more tanks and 35 per cent more artillery.
And it bears repeating: the decision to prioritise soft power and shred the Armed Forces came after Putin had invaded a European country.
Primary responsibility must rest with the leaders of the day: David Cameron, Nick Clegg and William Hague. But what about the national security officials of the era? They are paid to remind their masters of the hard truths of history. Unless they warned formally against what was happening, they too should accept a share of the blame.
We will probably still avoid the desolation of Europe, but it will be a close run thing, closer than it needed to be. Britain will face these dangers weaker than we needed to be. And all because a generation of politicians and officials wilfully lost sight of the lessons of history. Don’t lose it again.
A British soldier stumbles exhausted across a desolate landscape, his right arm in a sling, his forehead bandaged. In his left hand he carries laurel leaves with the label: “victory and peace in Europe”.
“Here you are,” he says grimly. “Don’t lose it again.” By drawing this image for the Daily Mirror, the artist Philip Zec proved that a cartoon is worth a thousand words. The British people could enjoy what Churchill called a “brief period of rejoicing”, but after all their loss and suffering, heaven forbid that a future leader might squander their triumph.
Yet here we are, 80 years later, and bandaged Ukrainian soldiers are fighting an invader on the blasted landscapes of Europe’s biggest country. If Vladimir Putin manages to subjugate their homeland, his all-searching eye will look to every part of Europe for new conquests.
On this anniversary of VE Day the catastrophe foreshadowed by Zec’s image has really happened in one European state. And Putin may yet inflict it upon others. If the curse spreads to a Nato ally, then Britain too will be at war. Today the precious laurels of “peace and victory” are in greater danger of being lost again than for generations.
How has it come to this? How can we even contemplate a Europe engulfed by war? There is no mystery about the method for avoiding such a calamity. History shows what you must do. When a dictator threatens to invade European countries, believe him. And never ever cut your military strength so far that he thinks he might get away with it.
We have peace when our leaders understand these lessons; we risk war when they do not. It is as simple as that.
In the years after VE Day, when Stalin imposed Communist regimes on half of Europe and blockaded West Berlin in 1948, the Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, and his foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, needed no persuading of the Soviet threat. Nor did President Harry Truman in Washington and his greatest secretary of state, George Marshall.
Even as Attlee and Bevin were creating the NHS and facing huge public pressure for swift demobilisation, they resisted cutting defence below safe levels. Instead they decided to build a British nuclear deterrent. They joined America to break Stalin’s siege of West Berlin by mounting the biggest humanitarian airlift in history. They oversaw the birth of Nato and a permanent American security guarantee for Europe.
As they bound America to the defence of Europe, Attlee and Bevin demonstrated that the burden would be shared. They sent British forces to fight alongside the US in Korea. Six years after VE Day, they were still spending nearly 10 per cent of GDP on defence. These far-sighted leaders, American and British, devised the strategy and built the alliance that would contain Soviet aggression, keep the peace in Europe, and eventually deliver bloodless victory in the Cold War in 1989-91. They lived and breathed the lessons of history.
What of their post-Cold War successors? Back in 2007 Putin disclosed his ambitions when he addressed the Munich Security Conference and pledged to overthrow the entire “architecture of global security”. The following year, 2008, Putin removed any doubt by invading the sovereign European country of Georgia, seizing 20 per cent of its territory in a lightning war.
Somewhere high above, the spirits of Attlee and Bevin would have been imploring their successors: take this aggression seriously. A tough response today will spare you infinite bloodshed and misery tomorrow.
How did their successors respond? Gordon Brown and David Miliband did nothing except verbally condemn Putin. The West did not impose a single economic sanction after Russia dismembered Georgia, which remains a divided country today.
Incredibly, the only counter-measure was that the EU suspended talks with Russia on a new “Partnership and Cooperation Agreement”. Even that restriction was lifted after a few months. Brown and Miliband betrayed the tradition of Attlee and Bevin. Along with their Western contemporaries, they allowed Putin’s first act of aggression to succeed, thus paving the way for today’s catastrophe in Ukraine.
What happened next was equally irresponsible. A Conservative-Lib Dem coalition decided that the Army could do without 40 per cent of its main battle tanks and 35 per cent of its heavy artillery. The defence review of 2010 effectively dismantled the Army’s ability to wage high intensity warfare while also decimating the RAF and the Royal Navy.
Was this enforced by austerity? Well the same Government found almost £9 billion for the London Olympics, which Putin attended as an honoured guest. In 2013 the Department for International Development (DFID) received the single biggest budget increase in peacetime history – 30 per cent – allowing Britain to hit the target of spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on international aid. Our leaders made a conscious choice to go all-in for soft power and downgrade the hard variety.
How does that decision look now? After we cut the Armed Forces to pay for DFID and the Olympics, Putin launched his first invasion of Ukraine and grabbed Crimea in 2014. Robert Gates, then US defence secretary, foreshadowed Donald Trump by warning in 2011 that European defence cuts were jeopardising America’s commitment to the alliance.
Today DFID has disappeared, probably forever, and the last Government eviscerated the aid budget. This Labour government has cut it even further. Meanwhile we are trying to rebuild the Army and reverse the 2010 cuts. We could have given far more weapons to Ukraine after Putin’s second invasion if our Army had possessed 40 per cent more tanks and 35 per cent more artillery.
And it bears repeating: the decision to prioritise soft power and shred the Armed Forces came after Putin had invaded a European country.
Primary responsibility must rest with the leaders of the day: David Cameron, Nick Clegg and William Hague. But what about the national security officials of the era? They are paid to remind their masters of the hard truths of history. Unless they warned formally against what was happening, they too should accept a share of the blame.
We will probably still avoid the desolation of Europe, but it will be a close run thing, closer than it needed to be. Britain will face these dangers weaker than we needed to be. And all because a generation of politicians and officials wilfully lost sight of the lessons of history. Don’t lose it again.