05/03/2024
Great talk given by Bertrand Russell in 1952 (the year of my birth).
HI**ER DEAD, 30 April 1945. 79 years today. Bertrand Russell concerning Adolf Hi**er and the Second World War —
“I found Adolf Hi**er and his N***s utterly revolting – cruel, bigoted, and stupid. Morally and intellectually they were all odious. Although I clung to my pacifist convictions, I did so with increasing difficulty. When, in 1940, England was threatened with invasion, I realized that, throughout the First War, we had never seriously envisaged the possibility of utter defeat and conquest under the German boot. I found this possibility absolutely unbearable, and at last consciously and definitely decided that I must support what was necessary for victory in the Second World War, however difficult victory might be to achieve, and however painful in its consequences.“
— Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Ch. XII: Later Years of Telegraph House, p. 430
As a prominent anti-war activist and a pacifist, Bertrand Russell initially opposed rearmament against N**i Germany. However, by 1940, almost two years before the United States and a year and half before the Soviet Union's entry in the war against Germany (the Soviet Union and N**i Germany were under a non-aggression pact with a secret protocol that partitioned Eastern Europe between them), Russell's position dramatically changed. With Hi**er's armies overrunning most of Europe, Russell no longer held that avoiding the horrors another world war was more important than defeating the so-called “Third Reich“. He came to believe that Adolf Hi**er ruling most of Europe would be a permanent threat to world peace and civilization itself and that war was now “the lesser of two evils“. In 1943, Russell adopted a stance toward large-scale warfare in the essay “Relative Political Pacifism“.
Bertrand Russell's conclusion:
“War is always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances, it is the lesser of two evils.“
Russell continues with his pacifist position, which contrary to popular belief and Russell detractors is NOT absolute pacifism:
“I have never been a complete pacifist and have at no time maintained that all who wage war are to be condemned. I have held the view, which I should have thought was that of common sense, that some wars have been justified and others not.“
— Bertrand Russell, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare (1959), Appendix II: Inconsistency?, p. 186
Russell continues:
“I was against the First World War. I was not against the second. Some people think that this is an inconsistency, but it isn't. I never during the first war said that I was against all war. I said I was against that war and I still hold that view. I think the first war was a mistake and I think England's participation in it was a mistake. I think if that war hadn't happened we would not have had the communists, we would not have had the n***s, we would have not had the Second World War, we would not had the threat of a third. The world would have been a very much better place I think.“
— Bertrand Russell, A Conversation with Bertrand Russell (1952) NBC Wisdom Series (9m40s BR)
Image: Front page of the US Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes on 2 May 1945.
