thesixpennybook:

reelaroundthefountain:

“1941. Right now, not very far from here the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it. Nothing, until one tiny, damp little island says ‘no. No, not here.’ A mouse in front of a lion. You’re amazing, the lot of you. Don’t know what you do to Hitler. You frighten the hell out of me. Off you go, then. Do what you got to do. Save the world.”

— the Doctor (doctor who 109 / the empty child)

I would just like to add:

That is England’s empire during WWII.  It covered about a fourth of the world, and England’s severe exploitation of all those countries was what allowed it to survive the war.  So: not a tiny island.  Certainly not a tiny island saving the world.  Modern nationalism is dangerous and I don’t like it and I don’t like seeing this quote so here.  Just look at that map for a while.

It also needs to be pointed out that not only were troops from across the British Empire fighting in World War II from the very beginning, a not insubstantial amount of the war was fought in the colonies. British forces were fighting the Italians in North and East Africa and the Japanese in South-East Asia. This wasn’t just about the Blitz Spirit and Dunkirk and plucky British fighter pilots and all the other mythos we have about this war- this was a global conflict, much of it fought in the arenas where European powers had been staging their terrifically destructive squabbles for centuries.

I can’t deny the power of the cultural “sense” of WW2 that I have as a British person and a European- and it wouldn’t be sensible to try, when it’s a war that is still marked on our urban landscapes, when there’s an air raid shelter buried in my parents’ back garden, when my old workplace’s founding plaque is mounted under a large fragment of bomb casing from the destroyed airfield it was built on. The Blitz was horrific (as was our reciprocal bombing of German cities). The Battle of Britain was extremely tightly won. But pretending that all of it happened without the stolen resources and enlisted troops from places around the world that we had conquered is totally ridiculous and absolutely dangerous.

“but hitler, he killed people next door.  oh, stupid man.  after a couple of years, we won’t stand for that, will we!” — eddie izzard