Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy and right hand man, flew to Scotland on a mysterious peace mission in 1941, which has never been convincingly explained, to meet unidentified politicians who wanted to end the war. The truth has been covered up for generations because to reveal it would somehow undermine the honour and constitutional fabric of the United Kingdom. Who was plotting against Churchill? What were the peace terms on offer? What happened to Hess? Was he killed in the War? Was the prisoner in Spandau a double?
There are many questions to which in the modern day one man, Saul Benedict has all the answers, because his parents were players in the drama involving Churchill, Hitler, leading politicians and an important Royal. Saul is an author and declares his intention to write a book to reveal all, but he is shot dead, apparently accidentally by a poacher. But was it an accident? Rick Coleman an investigative journalist determines to find out and in doing so to uncover the mystery.
Taking place in the modern day but with flashback chapters which gradually unfold the hidden secrets, the novel is a fast moving and compelling read based on the family knowledge of the author whose parents had connections to both Hess and Hitler and to British Intelligence.  

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As  new wave of dispossessed thousands in flight from the fighting around Aleppo arrive on the Turkish border in desperation and despair, we may well ask ourselves if this can ever end? The answer is yes it will, but we do not know when and it would have ended already, or even not begun, had the West not continued with its serial misjudgment of strategic foreign policy. The cardinal rule is that the fabric of the State must initially be preserved in order that it may then be reformed. If the State is destroyed, chaos follows. We discovered this in Afghanistan and Iraq. We refused to believe it would happen in Libya and blundered in, gleeful at the fall of Gaddafi. The State collapsed into banditry and chaos.

So when militant Sunnis in Syria misjudged the West’s resolve and imagined that air support would be given if they began a violent uprising against Assad, western politicians were caught out. The hawks among them and their military knew that their people had had enough and would not back them. Instead of altering their tactics to ensure that civil war did not break out, they encouraged the insurrection but withheld military aid, supposing that Assad would fall. Yes, well…

The worst possible things then happened. An armed uprising which lacked the cohesion and strength to overthrow Assad, a regime too strong to fall but not strong enough to prevail and the arrival in the mayhem of first Al Qaeda and then Islamic State. The suffering of the innocent in this raging fight is so appalling as to represent a grand war crime for which the West holds joint responsibility at the very least.

Now Russia is involved and its aim is clear cut and unambiguous. The State must stand, and until the fighting ends there can be no meaningful plan for the future. Anyone still fighting who opposes the state is a terrorist and therefore an enemy. Anyone who stops fighting will be included in the settlement. Talks are organised and suspended in which there are two fundamental positions and a good deal of soft centre out of which some kind of compromise might be molded. The two positions can be summed up as Assad must go and the Regime or State must remain intact. That is quite a gap. It is not surprising that the only thing going anywhere is a new wave of refugees.