Winston Churchill, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira and the origins of the Second World War
By Roberto de Mattei | 11 September 2024
In the Fatima message of 13 July 1917, Our Lady said:
“The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.”
World War II officially began on 1 September 1939, with the German invasion of Poland. Within two days, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and the Polish-German conflict turned into a European war.
Two years before, on the evening of 25 January 1938, a very bright aurora borealis had lit up the sky of central and southern Europe and of North Africa, as far as North America and Canada. Sister Lucia, living at the time at the institute of Saint Dorothy in Tuy, Spain, seemed to identify this aurora borealis with the “great sign” that Our Lady had prophesied: “God used it to let me know that his justice was about to fall upon the guilty nations, and I then began to ask insistently for the Communion of reparation on the first Saturdays and the consecration of Russia.”1
In 1938, the Church was under the reign of Pius XI, a name unknown to the shepherds of Fatima in 1917. Pius XI died on 10 February 1939, and was succeeded on 2 March of the same year by Pius XII. According to the message of Fatima, the war did not break out in 1939 under Pius XII, but one year earlier, under his predecessor. Since no errors can be attributed to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, this apparent historical slip leads us to reflect on the origin of the conflict. Between the aurora borealis of January 1938 and the death of Pius XI a year later, what event could be identified as the precipitating cause of World War II?
1938 was characterised by the Anglo-French policy of appeasement towards Hitler’s Germany, which with the Anschluss of 13 March had annexed Austria to the Third Reich. The main concern of British prime minister Chamberlain was to avoid a war against Germany. To keep the international situation from falling apart, on 29 and 30 September, the four Western powers of France, Britain, Germany and Italy held a conference in Munich, with the participation of their respective political leaders: Edouard Daladier, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. At the end of the meeting, Britain and France accepted the German annexation of Austria and gave the go-ahead for that of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain returned triumphantly to London, deluding himself that he had averted war by supporting Hitler’s expansionism, but Winston Churchill (1874–1965), in his speech to the House of Commons on 5 October, said, “we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat … We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude. … all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi Power … And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning …”2
Among the most lucid observers of the international situation was Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908–1995), the director of the Brazilian magazine O Legionário, who commented, on 2 October 1938, “In terms of humiliation, France and England will not be able to go any further. They have drunk the cup to the last drop. And when it was announced to them that with the ingestion of a few more drops they could perhaps achieve peace, they wept with joy.”
The year 1939, after the German annexation of the Sudetenland, opened with a surprising prediction by the Brazilian thinker, which appeared in that year’s first issue of O Legionário: “While all the battlefields are being delineated, an increasingly clear process is taking place: that of the doctrinal fusion of Nazism and Communism. In our view, 1939 will witness the completion of this fusion.” A few months later, in August 1939, the announcement of what was called the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact had a truly bomb-like effect on European public opinion. The “non-aggression” pact was valid for ten years and committed the two parties to desist from any “reciprocal” attack. To it was added a “secret protocol” that gave Hitler the go-ahead to attack Poland, leaving the USSR in control of the three Baltic countries, Finland, Poland and Bessarabia.
On 1 September 1939, the German army invaded Poland. In his Nota internacional of 3 September, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira commented on the event in these words: “Everything leads us to believe that the war has been determined not by a simple non-aggression pact, but by a secret agreement between Russia and the Reich, which probably envisaged the partition of Poland.”
On 3 September, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. It was the official start of the Second World War, which Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, in an article in O Legionário, called “the most enigmatic war of our century” (31 December 1939). The enigma was represented by the veil of apparent contradictions with which “the dark forces of evil” shrouded their manoeuvres to destroy what still survived of Christian civilisation.
The first months of the conflict saw a lightning advance of the German army, which after occupying Poland advanced westwards until reaching the Atlantic coast. On 10 May 1940, the day Hitler opened the western offensive, Winston Churchill took office as prime minister of the United Kingdom, finding himself facing the greatest threat in all of England’s history. The panzers of the Wehrmacht were 25 kilometres south of Dunkirk, where the entire British Expeditionary Force and most of the French soldiers were pinned between the sea and the German front. France was on the verge of collapse, an intervention by the United States was not foreseeable and defeat seemed to be around the corner.
In his speech to Parliament on 13 May 1940, the new head of the government promised the British people “blood, toil, tears and sweat” until final victory, declaring at Admiralty House:
“You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us…. You ask, What is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory — victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.”3
At the end of June, after having rejected all proposals to negotiate with the enemy, Churchill faced the “Battle of Britain” unleashed by the Führer. The stubbornness of the British resistance forced Hitler to abandon his plan. Among the decisions that changed the history of the world in the last century, the British historian Ian Kershaw indicates Great Britain’s decision, in the spring of 1940, to fight to the bitter end.4
Winston Churchill, accused of being a warmonger, showed himself a realistic and courageous statesman. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira appears today as one of the most profound interpreters of the historical events of his time. On the basis of their examples, we must say that the policy of compromise with the enemy has never succeeded in averting wars but, on the contrary, has often caused them. Those who believe they can avoid war by meeting the demands of the aggressors are committing not only an injustice, but a serious psychological and political error. The Munich Agreement, which brought about the Second World War, is a perennial lesson in this regard.
In a lucid article from the 1970s, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira recalled the event as follows:
“Munich was not only a great episode in the history of this century. It is a symbolic event in the history of all time: whenever there is, at any time and in any place, a diplomatic confrontation between delirious warmongers and delirious pacifists, advantage will smile on the former and frustration on the latter. And if there is a lucid man, he will censure the Chamberlains and Daladiers of the future with Churchill’s words: ‘You had to choose between shame and war: you chose shame, and you will have war.’”5
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