There are not too many times in history where terror has formed a framework for rules. One marked exception is the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror which, we are apt to forget, was a formal though shortlived rule of law.
More often, terror is the tool of our enemy, the logical conclusion been the relatively recent Global War on Terrorism, better known as the War on Terror.
A curious legalism unfolded in World War II. Allied airmen with the assistance of the French Resistance donned civilian clothing and removed dog tags in an attempt to get back to England. Some were caught. Herr Hitler decided such men should be shot. The Foreign Office, alarmed at the idea of executing POWs, suggested that they should be denied that legal status. The Gestapo and the SS rose to the occasion and informed captives that they were spies and criminals; pilots of terror; “Terrorflieger”.
On 20 August 1944 and after five days in boxcars, 168 of these men arrived in Buchenwald. Fortunately, it appears that Luftwaffe officers visiting a nearby armaments factory succeeded in having the men transferred to Stalag Luft III, home of the Great Escape earlier in the year.
So were some few plucked from Hitler’s greatest terror. But 20 August is not uniformly a dark day for wartime pilots. On 20 August 1940 Churchill gave 50 minutes of Churchill to the Commons, including:
The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
