It's All in a Meme

There's a popular meme that has been doing the rounds for a while now.

My reaction on first seeing it was a smile; however, further reflection on the meme shows that, for Britain at least, the facts don't bear it out.

The common belief is that Britain was fighting fascism but, in reality, Britain were no more fighting fascism than Henry V was fighting monarchism at Agincourt (yes, I know the soldiers in the meme are American).

In the Spanish Civil War Britan was tacitly supporting Franco's fascists, firmly believing that Spain was threatened by communism. France had wanted to provide materiel to the Republican movement, but was persuaded by the right wing Conservative government of the time to pull back from the offer as it wanted Franco to prevail.

The British aristocracy of the 30s was notoriously sympathetic to Nazism (including, allegedly, Edward VIII as the Duke of Windsor) and the number of fascist parties that sprung up was legion - Sir Oswald Mosely's British Union of Fascists being the most famous. A number of British newspaper magnates were overtly sympathetic to Hitler - The Daily Mail's Viscount Rothermere being a prime example, to his eternal shame. The reason fascist parties never succeeded in Britain was not due to an antipathy to fascism itself, but because they were hideously undisciplined and the various factions spent more time attacking each other over small points of ideological doctrine than working together in the pursuit of power.

Anti-semitism, while not as high as in some other European countries, was nevertheless present in Britain in the interwar period, especially in terms of media attacks. Delegates from 32 countries met in the French resort town of Evian-les-Bains in July 1938 to discuss ways to help Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi Third Reich. In the months following Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938, Nazi persecution of Jews reached horrifying dimensions. Germany had offered its Jews to the world. Many delegates attending the Evian Conference publicly professed their sympathies for the Jewish refugees. However, most countries, including the USA, Great Britain, and Australia, offered excuses for why they could not accept more refugees. The official delegates from Romania, Hungary, and Poland proposed that their countries also be relieved of their Jews. Only the representatives of the Dominican Republic, and later Costa Rica, agreed to increase their quotas.

During WWI, British intelligence subsidised Benito Mussolini's activism. After he rose to power on a fascist agenda, Mussolini was initially accommodated by Britain, with the Hoare-Laval Pact accepting the expansion of Italian Eritrea's sphere of influence over all of Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia). However, the treaty's unpopularity forced Hoare's resignation and future British governments showed more opposition. It was not Mussolini's fascism that was the problem, but popular opinion concerning Italy's invasion of Abyssinia and the League of Nations' support for Abyssinia. It was Mussolini's pact with Germany that did for him.

So, anti-fascism appeared to play little or no part whatsoever in the decision to go to war with Germany. It was more the fact that Germany was becoming a major imperial power that threatened Britain's hegemony and authority within the world order and its Empire. That could not be countenanced.

Makes you think how the narrative changed during and after the war and it was turned into a war against fascism when fascism was initially incidental. So, while the meme is amusing, it's not strictly accurate - even for the Americans, who are notorious for having propped up tin-pot dictators in their war against communism.