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Left wings over Europe;: Or, How to make a war about nothing
First edition, Uncorrected Proof in pre-publication form. The book was published in 1936 with only 1500 copies printed. A political diatribe that advocated siding with fascism in general and Hitler in particular. He later dismissed this book as quite unimportant.
Paperback
Published January 1, 1972
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About the author
Wyndham Lewis
118 books161 followers(Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a novelist, painter, essayist, polemicist and one of the truly dynamic forces of the early 20th century and a central figure in the history of modernism. He was the founder of Vorticism, the only original movement in 20th century English painting. His Vorticist paintings from 1913 are the first abstract works produced in England, and influenced the development of Suprematism in Russia. Tarr (published in 1918), initiated his career as a satirical novelist, earning the praise of his contemporaries: "the most distinguished living novelist" (T.S. Eliot), "the only English writer who can be compared to Dostoevsky" (Ezra Pound).
After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.
The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.
After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.
The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.
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November 6, 2021
Staggering. A must-read. This book was written several years before the war started. I have some quotes ...
As far as Great Britain is concerned, there is, in 1936, not a shadow of a reason for a war with anybody. It is because that there is no concrete reason that abstract reasons have had to be thought up and trotted out.
Nationalism may be superseded by the issue between different forms of political structure, between parliamentarism, fascism, and Bolshevism. .... Parliamentarism and Bolshevism seem to feel a remarkable affinity for one another, if for no other reason than that they are both consumed with an equal hatred of fascism.
....
No British statesman has ever desired a war with Germany. But they have apparently come to regard themselves as committed to a policy which is violently determined to rid Europe of Hitler. And they are well aware that that cannot be affected without the risk of another world war. It is not so much ‘fascist dictatorship’ that excites them — for after all they left Mussolini in complete peace for a decade. Neither does Dictatorship, in itself, excite them so much as all that — even accompanied by a permanent Reign of Terror and the massacre of millions of people. For Soviet Russia has been left undisturbed. No, it can only be something about the internal regime of Adolf Hitler that excites in them this implacable mood.
....
The Franco-Soviet pact has been ratified and it is highly probable that a Rumano-Soviet pact, on the lines of the military pact between the Soviet and Czechoslovakia, will be signed in the near future. The Austrian Government (which represents a fantastically small fraction of the people of Austria) seems to be moving towards an entente with the Little Entente. So the game of ‘encirclement’ goes on: and all these arrangements — carried on in every case over the heads and usually in contradiction to the wishes of the people — are made possible, and constantly stimulated by British and French gold. The remarks which I have quoted from the Morning Post mean, in plain language, that Great Britain is about to arm the Soviets against Germany. (Marshal Tukachevski stopped behind in England after the funeral of King George to go round the British armament factories to pick his tanks and guns.) There have constantly been rumours of a fifty million pounds British loan to France. That, too, in plain language, is Great Britain arming France against ‘the Hun’
....
There is one country where the Englishman is certain of a warm welcome: there is one country whose government never ceases to proffer friendship, and to be accommodating and polite, and that is Germany. Year in and year out, like a love-sick supplicant, Herr Hitler pays his court to the haughty Britannia. Every insult that can be invented even by the resourceful Mr. Churchill is tamely swallowed, every rebuff of Mr. Baldwin’s, every sneer of Mr. Eden, is meekly accepted, by this pertinacious suitor!
As far as Great Britain is concerned, there is, in 1936, not a shadow of a reason for a war with anybody. It is because that there is no concrete reason that abstract reasons have had to be thought up and trotted out.
Nationalism may be superseded by the issue between different forms of political structure, between parliamentarism, fascism, and Bolshevism. .... Parliamentarism and Bolshevism seem to feel a remarkable affinity for one another, if for no other reason than that they are both consumed with an equal hatred of fascism.
....
No British statesman has ever desired a war with Germany. But they have apparently come to regard themselves as committed to a policy which is violently determined to rid Europe of Hitler. And they are well aware that that cannot be affected without the risk of another world war. It is not so much ‘fascist dictatorship’ that excites them — for after all they left Mussolini in complete peace for a decade. Neither does Dictatorship, in itself, excite them so much as all that — even accompanied by a permanent Reign of Terror and the massacre of millions of people. For Soviet Russia has been left undisturbed. No, it can only be something about the internal regime of Adolf Hitler that excites in them this implacable mood.
....
The Franco-Soviet pact has been ratified and it is highly probable that a Rumano-Soviet pact, on the lines of the military pact between the Soviet and Czechoslovakia, will be signed in the near future. The Austrian Government (which represents a fantastically small fraction of the people of Austria) seems to be moving towards an entente with the Little Entente. So the game of ‘encirclement’ goes on: and all these arrangements — carried on in every case over the heads and usually in contradiction to the wishes of the people — are made possible, and constantly stimulated by British and French gold. The remarks which I have quoted from the Morning Post mean, in plain language, that Great Britain is about to arm the Soviets against Germany. (Marshal Tukachevski stopped behind in England after the funeral of King George to go round the British armament factories to pick his tanks and guns.) There have constantly been rumours of a fifty million pounds British loan to France. That, too, in plain language, is Great Britain arming France against ‘the Hun’
....
There is one country where the Englishman is certain of a warm welcome: there is one country whose government never ceases to proffer friendship, and to be accommodating and polite, and that is Germany. Year in and year out, like a love-sick supplicant, Herr Hitler pays his court to the haughty Britannia. Every insult that can be invented even by the resourceful Mr. Churchill is tamely swallowed, every rebuff of Mr. Baldwin’s, every sneer of Mr. Eden, is meekly accepted, by this pertinacious suitor!
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