Defiance: The Prison Memoirs of Savitri Devi (The Centennial Edition of Savitri Devi's Works, Volume 4) by Savitri Devi

Author:Savitri Devi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: iron_pill_short
ISBN: 9780974626468
Publisher: The Savitri Devi Archive
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The woman did not come back. But she left me a few issues of

Life, one of which contained a long extract from Winston Churchill’s

War Memoirs. In it, the British ex-Premier tried his best to explain

that the Führer’s orders to stop the rush of the German armoured

divisions to Dunkirk — the orders that resulted in “clearing the way

for the British Army,” — were taken on the initiative of General

Runstedt, and inspired by anything but the desire to show generosity

to England as I had somewhere stated in the third chapter of my Gold

in the Furnace. He buttressed his deductions, — he said — upon the

“actual diary of General Runstedt’s Headquarters, written at the

time.” But as I read that, I suddenly recalled what Miss Taylor had

told me of the privileges granted by the British authorities to the so-

called “war criminal” General Runstedt, in particular, his leave from

prison on parole. And I also recalled Colonel Vickers’ statement to

me, on Wednesday morning, the 6th of April, 1949: “Political

prisoners are the last people to whom we grant special privileges . . .

save in the case they write for us or do some secret work for us, in

one way or another” (sic). I could not help . . . “putting two and two

together”

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and wondering whether General Runstedt’s alleged “diary,” supposed

to be “written at the time,” were not just another piece of “secret

work” in the interest of the British thesis about the events, written in

confinement after the war — “secret work” of the kind Colonel

Vickers had had in mind on that morning of the 6th of April. That

would no doubt justify all sorts of privileges (if what Miss Taylor had

told me were true), thought I, without wishing to be unnecessarily

malignant, or even suspicious. And I added a footnote to the page in

my Chapter 3 in which I had mentioned Dunkirk.

In another issue of the same magazine, I found an account of

the disgraceful manner in which the American Police had recently

forced Walter Gieseking, the great German pianist, to leave the U.S.A.

on account of his allegiance to National Socialism. Public

demonstrations, headed, as could be expected, by Jews, had taken

place in front of the hall in which he was to play. And the authorities

had abruptly postponed the musical performance until an

“investigation into his case” would give satisfactory assurances as to

the artist’s “de-Nazification” — which, of course, might have taken a

month or more. In answer to which, Herr Gieseking had departed

from the U.S.A. by the first plane, utterly disgusted with American

behaviour. “And rightly so,” thought I; “for all this fuss, now, nearly

four years after the end of the war, in a country alleged to have fought

for “individual liberties,” “human rights,” and what not, is enough to

make one sick! From the very point of view of those who boast of

democratic liberalism, had not the German artist every right to be a

Nazi, if such were his convictions?” And for the millionth time, I

pondered over the irreducible inconsistency of the Democrats’

position: in accordance with their loudly professed principles, these

people simply

303

have to acknowledge our

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