"Not _a month ago, anyone who had suggested that the Reich would today be at war with Soviet Russia would have been regarded as. suffering from delusions. For it then appeared that nothing could be less likely to accrue to Hiter's advantage than' sucha conflict, He might not have been securing all "the raw materials and food which he had hoped from the USSR. but he was free to concentrate all "his malevolent energies against the British Empire, Had he not just persuaded Soviet Russia and Japan fo sign a non-aggression pact, which excluded Japan. from any obligation to come to Germany's assistance if she attacked the USSR.?
"Yet in the very early hours of Sunday June 22 (it is curious to note how Hitter and Mussolini invariably select a Sunday or a Chris tian. festival for each new act of aggression), without demands warning, without an ultimatum, Nazi forees along a 1,500 mile front started "an. unprovoked attack upon Soviet Russia. The Nazie have since then been boasting that they took the Russlans—with whom they had signed a ten-year Non-Aggression Pact on August 23, 1999—completely by surprise, Whether that Is s0 or not, the fiot remains that it was only some hours after the onslaught had begun that the Soviet Ambassador was aroused from his slumber to be informed that Germany and the USSR wore at war. This treacherous attack has since been represented az a Crusade against Bol-Fheviem—as a struggle between Christianity and Atheism. That is the cynical claim of the greatest Pagan of all time. Hitler evidently expected this move to split the Democracies and probably to lead to offers of peace and cooperation in the attack upon the USSR. The response of the leading Democracies, however, was immediate and eategorieah As "Mr. Winston Chur-eho put it:
"We have but one. aim and one single irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hiller and every vestige of the Nazi regime'
~Repugnant System "And so we find ourselves support-Ing one form of dictatorship which we dislike against another which we now hate with all our being. It may Hbe of some interest to give a brief background to the curious situation:
Mr. Woodhead then spoke of the Inauguration of the Bolshevik regime fu Russia and the part Germany had played mit, Claiming. that the Bolshevik system was and is repugpant to all. real democracies, the [speaker nevertheless stressed the fact that from 1920 to 1999, the Soviets entered into alliances and other commitments designed to. check sion, the only: thing in its fa The exclusion of Soviet representatives at the meeting in Munich—Jan affront that Stalin was not ikely to forget and which in 1999 render-}ed al} attempts to conclude an Anglo-Franco-Russian defensive alliance a Hfailure—was also. recalled bythe speaker since, the said, the Soviet letator took the view that Britain and France were endeavouring {0 embroil him with the Reich, while dodging their own commitments,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.