2019-10-01 BBC World Histories Magazine

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Helen Fry is a historian and author. Her latest book is The Walls Have

Ears: The Greatest Intelligence Operation of World War II (Yale, 2019)

Britain’s decision to leave the European

Union is arguably the most dramatic

political and economic change since the

Second World War, making life in the

UK increasingly turbulent since 2016.

But looking back across history, there is

hope of a positive outcome.

During the Second World War, MI9,

a branch of British military intelligence,

ran clandestine escape lines across Nazi-occupied western Eu-

rope (and elsewhere) to bring A llied airmen and soldiers back

to Britain. MI9 could succeed only because of the thousands

of Belgian, Dutch and French citizens who risked their own

lives. These helpers ran the escape lines, acting as couriers or

guides taking escapees into neutral Spain and Portugal. It was

a dangerous game, rife with betrayal and Gestapo informers.

These men and women fought a clandestine war for liberation

and democracy and, in so doing, established pan-European

links that have become a positive legacy of the conflict.

The world can’t escape the grip of the Second World War

precisely because today we are witnessing power struggles

that have their roots in the reshaping of Europe’s borders

in 1945. Tensions have arisen in recent years in countries

that were once part of the Soviet Union and which became

democracies at the end of the Cold War. Russia’s present-day

designs on Ukraine and its former satellite states – specifically

its annexation of Crimea – are examples of an ideological

power struggle between democracy and a totalitarian regime

that threatens to recast the borders of Europe. And, recently,

instability has wracked Hong Kong (once under British rule)

over fears of Beijing-imposed restrictions on democracy.

The history of MI9 teaches us, though, that all is not lost.

Britain has not abandoned Europe. Ties remain: the same ties

forged in the fight for freedom during the Second World War.

Below the surface, MI9’s legacy is etched into the conscious-

ness of those countries occupied by the Nazis before and

during that conflict. Britain’s new independence could enable

her to be the guardian of democracy should the unthinkable

ever happen again.

BRITAIN

“Britain hasn’t abandoned

Europe; ties run deep –

the ties forged in the fight

for freedom during the

Second World War”

Helen Fry

British economist John Maynard Keynes addresses the 1944 Bretton

Woods conference, at which he promoted the idea of a “brotherhood

of man”. Outcomes included the creation of the World Bank

The Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against

Japanese Aggression in Beijing. “Reviving memories of the wartime

experience is a way of creating a new nationalism,” says Rana Mitter