Armistice day - history

As today is a very special Armistice day – the centenary of the first world war, I thought I might include the short essay I wrote for the programme of the production of my play, Mr And Mrs Schultz for the Watermill Theatre in Newbury.  The play was set at the end of the conflict of the second world war and concerned major figures in that conflict, including Mengele – the so called ‘angel of death’ whose evil experiments on Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz are beyond human comprehension.  But the son of a bitch bastard escaped capture and lived out his days in freedom in Argentina.  The play as you might expect from me proved somewhat controversial, and some people even tried to get it banned.  But the reviews were great and the audiences (although sometimes reduced to tears) seemed to love it.  Below is my programme notes from the time about why I feel it is important that we should never forget these conflicts.

HISTORY

What dark stuff stirs within the human heart that will urge a man to evil?

Throughout history, dictators and despots have emerged to lead entire nations on the barbarous journey to genocide, and ordinary people too will sometimes join the slaughter; seemingly oblivious of the cruelty they inflict on their victims: the industrious clerk, the schoolteacher, the factory-worker, the next-door neighbor; the common crowd of everyday citizens will somehow commit horrendous crimes when called upon to do so.

To kill a whole race of people takes determination; but one man can't do it alone.  It's a task that requires the approval and capitulation of a great number of accomplices.  It's happened before, it's happening now and will probably happen again.

Over 60 years have passed since Nazi Germany plunged the world into a war that devastated the planet and ended with the creation of the very first weapon of mass destruction - the atom bomb.  One of the most brutal dictator's that has ever been known, somehow inspired a nation to follow his mad dream of world domination.  Along the way six million Jews were systematically murdered in the most horrific ways imaginable.  At the end of it all many Nazi war criminals escaped retribution and fled to Argentina, assisted by a network of people in Scandinavia, Switzerland and Italy; they even had tacit support from the Vatican, and Argentina's president Juan Perón welcomed them with open arms.

Some crimes are so great; they demand swift and immediate justice.  The horrors that were perpetrated in Belsen, Auschwitz and the rest of the Nazi extermination camps should not have gone unpunished.  Yet an astonishingly large number of Hitler's henchmen have lived out their lives in relative comfort and prosperity.  It seemed the world was all too ready to abandon the past and call it history.

But history is our teacher, our example; and to ignore its lesson will only lead us further into chaos and calumny.  War is still with us; and as a consequence it now to some extent seems to affect our daily life.  We constantly invent new terms to coin our dilemma: acts of terrorism, pre-emptive strikes, ethnic-cleansing - it's still murder as far as I can see, and since the second world war, genocide has occurred with fearsome regularity all over the globe: Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Croatia, Iraq - the list goes on.  And behind it all there always appears to be one charismatic leader; someone who inspires a country to wage war against their neighbors, stir up enough hatred for the clerks, the schoolteachers, the factory-workers to rape, maim and kill...  History is important.

Alex Jones - February 2004.