“In all the immense literature about the 1939-1945 war, one may observe a legend in process of being shaped. Gradually, authentic memories of the war — of its boredom, its futility, the sense it gave of being part of a process of decomposition — fade in favor of the legendary version, embodied in Churchill‘s rhetoric and all the other narratives by field marshals, air marshals and admirals, creating the same impression of a titanic and forever memorable struggle in defense of civilization. In fact, of course, the war’s ostensible aims — the defense of a defunct Empire, a spent Revolution, and bogus Freedoms — were meaningless in the context of the times. They will probably rate in the end no more than a footnote on the last page of the last chapter of the story of our civilization.”Malcolm Muggeridge, Esquire Magazine, February 1968