Their Finest Hour
Purgatorial VE Day Dialogue for Beloved Leaders
ADOLF
Yoo-hoo! It's that time again ...
WINSTON
Conference of world leaders ... re-drawing the map of Europe ... keeping Britain great ...
ADOLF
Excuse me ...
WINSTON
Oh, it's you. Look, I've told you about forty times - why can't you just go around to the tradesmen's entrance where I could ignore you properly?
ADOLF
There is no tradesmen's entrance.
WINSTON
Nonsense. There must be one - this is Heaven, after all.
ADOLF
And as I've told you about forty times, it's nothing of the sort. This is Hell, though naturally much more so for you than for me.
WINSTON
And why naturally?
ADOLF
Because my reputation on Earth is so much worse than yours. Your name is still revered by millions as that of the man who made the world safe for Britishness, while mine is barely tolerated even among the few surviving souls who read that book of yours about me - Great Contemporaries, I believe it was called?
WINSTON
Don't start that again, please. It was not all about you. In any case, I compiled that book in 1937, long before you had shown yourself as the vicious, inhuman foreign hound we now know you to be.
ADOLF
Mein Kampf, two volumes, 1925 and 1926; Dachau 1933; Röhm purge 1934; Sachsenhausen 1936, Buchenwald 1937...
WINSTON
Get to the point, man. You always did engage chronically in the most excessive Teutonic verbosity.
ADOLF
The point is that, having no gross materialistic considerations to hold me back, I've progressed much further since my death than you have since yours, even granted the fact that I had a twenty-year lead. That's why I am sent here at this time each year, on the anniversary of your personal victory over Montgomery, to try and help you to leave these earthly matters behind. That, and the fact that we have so much in common, of course.
WINSTON
I have nothing in common with you. I am English and you are foreign.
ADOLF
But I've never held it against you. If you remember, I never even wanted to fight you. We both hated the French, the Russians, and assorted Middle Easterners; we could have become such good friends, if you hadn't been so racist.
WINSTON
The English-speaking peoples cannot in the opinion of this speaker be termed racist without some risk of terminological inexactitude.
ADOLF
But you will at least admit that National Socialism, as it was practised under my leadership, was far less exclusionary than your own beliefs.
WINSTON
My beliefs - exclusionary? Hardly. I believe in the British Empire. The British Empire at its peak spread over the whole earthly globe. There is nothing exclusionary about that.
ADOLF
But its rulers were solely the English-speaking peoples, and God help even them if they failed to speak English with the proper inflection. The Aryan race encompasses a far larger portion of humanity. It was a far more equitable distribution of mastery. You cannot avoid the fact - we were clearly more democratic.
WINSTON
Rubbish.
ADOLF
It's really too bad that you can't admit how much the two of us have in common, not only politically but personally. If you would only join hands in brotherhood with me, I wouldn't have to keep smashing your face in.
WINSTON
You never smashed my face in. You never could - my allies were bigger than yours.
ADOLF
Ah, yes. That'll be why my country failed to conquer Russia in 1943, while the British Empire failed to keep Egypt in line in 1957.
WINSTON
That is hardly a logical argument.
ADOLF
No; it's a rhetorical argument. We were both rather good at rhetoric, if you remember.
WINSTON
That is not something we have in common. It is merely a demonstration that I possessed a certain oratorical and stylistic talent and that the German people are somewhat easily led.
ADOLF
There are some other points on which we were remarkably close.
WINSTON
Rubbish.
ADOLF
To begin at the beginning: both our fathers were bad fathers - violent lunatics and loudmouthed drunks. The difference is that you in your turn grew up to be a loudmouthed drunk and a bad father, while I abstained from both alcohol and paternalism. And, of course, I was never a loudmouth.
WINSTON
Piffle. In staying unmarried you were merely indulging your miserable German superman complex - the strong man is mightiest alone, and all that. Then marrying that blonde of yours and committing suicide together, instead of standing up and taking your medicine like a man at Nuremberg. Playing at being a Wagnerian hero to compensate for the fact that you were only five feet eight inches tall.
ADOLF
While you were a towering five feet six.
WINSTON
I had presence.
ADOLF
You had girth.
WINSTON
At least I never resorted to ludicrous little moustaches.
ADOLF
At least I never resorted to changing sides whenever it suited me. I joined the National Socialists and I stayed there until I died. You bounced across the floor of the House of Commons like a brandy-soaked tennis ball.
WINSTON
It was necessary for the preservation of the Empire.
ADOLF
Precisely my own excuse. The fact that we have a party programme does not oblige us to act like fools, I said; or maybe it was Goebbels who said it, I can't remember at this juncture. Anyway, you can see that you took much the same attitude as I did.
WINSTON
I can't see anything of the sort. Everything in the English character rebels against that sort of chiselling Machiavellianism.
ADOLF
And then, of course, there is the matter of our artistic streak.
WINSTON
Artistic streak? I painted original watercolours. My works have been displayed in the best galleries in Christendom. You copied other people's work onto postcards and sold the results for pennies. Your human figures look like matchstick men.
ADOLF
I was a better architect than painter, it's true. Your colleague Mr Harris and his airborne urban clearance programme afforded me lots of opportunity for planning my real artistic triumphs.
WINSTON
You were a dauber. You couldn't even get into art school.
ADOLF
Your academic record wasn't the shiniest either, if I remember right.
WINSTON
That was not my fault. The teachers were awful and my parents failed to support me.
ADOLF
Precisely my own problem.
WINSTON
You always were a miserable little failure, weren't you? Even in your young days, when you got a decent war, you couldn't rise above corporal.
ADOLF
I was awarded the Iron Cross; and not just for writing propaganda for the press, as I believe was the extent of your duties in South Africa. Nor was I careless enough to get myself captured, despite being wounded in the cause of duty.
WINSTON
I was captured, it's true; but I escaped. Escape is the sacred duty of every English-speaking officer of good breeding. My bravery and cunning were written about in numerous publications, not all of them by me.
ADOLF
Using another prisoner's escape plan and leaving him behind? Cunning perhaps, but brave?
WINSTON
War is like politics. It's every man for himself.
ADOLF
Precisely my own opinion.
WINSTON
I doubt it. You are a notorious liar.
ADOLF
Only for tactical purposes. On the big questions I never wavered. The use of poison gas against uncivilised tribes, for example. The forced sterilisation of the socially useless was another. I advocated those things in Mein Kampf, I practised them when I came to power, and I recommended them in my last testament.
WINSTON
I don't believe you. You and your Socialist party were an outpouring of irrational hatred, worse than Ramsey Macdonald and almost as bad as Clement Attlee. You could never have arrived at policies of such vision and uncompromising depth of Britishness.
ADOLF
I've had about enough of this. Are you going to pull yourself together or not?
WINSTON
I don't know what you're talking about.
ADOLF
I mean, do you intend to sit here for the whole of eternity, mumbling to yourself about the good old days? I realise that you're handicapped by all those idiots on Earth singing your praises, but you really ought to have moved on a little by now. Even Max Aitken has made more progress, and he worked in the mass media.
WINSTON
Oh, go away. Otherwise I shall find some Americans and ask them for the tools to finish you.
ADOLF
It wouldn't help. You don't have a country to mortgage any more.
WINSTON
Ah yes, good old Lend-Lease ... entirely my own idea, of course ... conference of world leaders ... re-drawing the map of Europe ... keeping Britain great ... extensive use of tanks ... soft underbelly of Europe ... entirely my own idea ... never was so much owed by so many to Winston Churchill ... iron curtain ... riddle inside an enigma wrapped in ...
ADOLF
Rhetoric.
ADOLF
Yoo-hoo! It's that time again ...
WINSTON
Conference of world leaders ... re-drawing the map of Europe ... keeping Britain great ...
ADOLF
Excuse me ...
WINSTON
Oh, it's you. Look, I've told you about forty times - why can't you just go around to the tradesmen's entrance where I could ignore you properly?
ADOLF
There is no tradesmen's entrance.
WINSTON
Nonsense. There must be one - this is Heaven, after all.
ADOLF
And as I've told you about forty times, it's nothing of the sort. This is Hell, though naturally much more so for you than for me.
WINSTON
And why naturally?
ADOLF
Because my reputation on Earth is so much worse than yours. Your name is still revered by millions as that of the man who made the world safe for Britishness, while mine is barely tolerated even among the few surviving souls who read that book of yours about me - Great Contemporaries, I believe it was called?
WINSTON
Don't start that again, please. It was not all about you. In any case, I compiled that book in 1937, long before you had shown yourself as the vicious, inhuman foreign hound we now know you to be.
ADOLF
Mein Kampf, two volumes, 1925 and 1926; Dachau 1933; Röhm purge 1934; Sachsenhausen 1936, Buchenwald 1937...
WINSTON
Get to the point, man. You always did engage chronically in the most excessive Teutonic verbosity.
ADOLF
The point is that, having no gross materialistic considerations to hold me back, I've progressed much further since my death than you have since yours, even granted the fact that I had a twenty-year lead. That's why I am sent here at this time each year, on the anniversary of your personal victory over Montgomery, to try and help you to leave these earthly matters behind. That, and the fact that we have so much in common, of course.
WINSTON
I have nothing in common with you. I am English and you are foreign.
ADOLF
But I've never held it against you. If you remember, I never even wanted to fight you. We both hated the French, the Russians, and assorted Middle Easterners; we could have become such good friends, if you hadn't been so racist.
WINSTON
The English-speaking peoples cannot in the opinion of this speaker be termed racist without some risk of terminological inexactitude.
ADOLF
But you will at least admit that National Socialism, as it was practised under my leadership, was far less exclusionary than your own beliefs.
WINSTON
My beliefs - exclusionary? Hardly. I believe in the British Empire. The British Empire at its peak spread over the whole earthly globe. There is nothing exclusionary about that.
ADOLF
But its rulers were solely the English-speaking peoples, and God help even them if they failed to speak English with the proper inflection. The Aryan race encompasses a far larger portion of humanity. It was a far more equitable distribution of mastery. You cannot avoid the fact - we were clearly more democratic.
WINSTON
Rubbish.
ADOLF
It's really too bad that you can't admit how much the two of us have in common, not only politically but personally. If you would only join hands in brotherhood with me, I wouldn't have to keep smashing your face in.
WINSTON
You never smashed my face in. You never could - my allies were bigger than yours.
ADOLF
Ah, yes. That'll be why my country failed to conquer Russia in 1943, while the British Empire failed to keep Egypt in line in 1957.
WINSTON
That is hardly a logical argument.
ADOLF
No; it's a rhetorical argument. We were both rather good at rhetoric, if you remember.
WINSTON
That is not something we have in common. It is merely a demonstration that I possessed a certain oratorical and stylistic talent and that the German people are somewhat easily led.
ADOLF
There are some other points on which we were remarkably close.
WINSTON
Rubbish.
ADOLF
To begin at the beginning: both our fathers were bad fathers - violent lunatics and loudmouthed drunks. The difference is that you in your turn grew up to be a loudmouthed drunk and a bad father, while I abstained from both alcohol and paternalism. And, of course, I was never a loudmouth.
WINSTON
Piffle. In staying unmarried you were merely indulging your miserable German superman complex - the strong man is mightiest alone, and all that. Then marrying that blonde of yours and committing suicide together, instead of standing up and taking your medicine like a man at Nuremberg. Playing at being a Wagnerian hero to compensate for the fact that you were only five feet eight inches tall.
ADOLF
While you were a towering five feet six.
WINSTON
I had presence.
ADOLF
You had girth.
WINSTON
At least I never resorted to ludicrous little moustaches.
ADOLF
At least I never resorted to changing sides whenever it suited me. I joined the National Socialists and I stayed there until I died. You bounced across the floor of the House of Commons like a brandy-soaked tennis ball.
WINSTON
It was necessary for the preservation of the Empire.
ADOLF
Precisely my own excuse. The fact that we have a party programme does not oblige us to act like fools, I said; or maybe it was Goebbels who said it, I can't remember at this juncture. Anyway, you can see that you took much the same attitude as I did.
WINSTON
I can't see anything of the sort. Everything in the English character rebels against that sort of chiselling Machiavellianism.
ADOLF
And then, of course, there is the matter of our artistic streak.
WINSTON
Artistic streak? I painted original watercolours. My works have been displayed in the best galleries in Christendom. You copied other people's work onto postcards and sold the results for pennies. Your human figures look like matchstick men.
ADOLF
I was a better architect than painter, it's true. Your colleague Mr Harris and his airborne urban clearance programme afforded me lots of opportunity for planning my real artistic triumphs.
WINSTON
You were a dauber. You couldn't even get into art school.
ADOLF
Your academic record wasn't the shiniest either, if I remember right.
WINSTON
That was not my fault. The teachers were awful and my parents failed to support me.
ADOLF
Precisely my own problem.
WINSTON
You always were a miserable little failure, weren't you? Even in your young days, when you got a decent war, you couldn't rise above corporal.
ADOLF
I was awarded the Iron Cross; and not just for writing propaganda for the press, as I believe was the extent of your duties in South Africa. Nor was I careless enough to get myself captured, despite being wounded in the cause of duty.
WINSTON
I was captured, it's true; but I escaped. Escape is the sacred duty of every English-speaking officer of good breeding. My bravery and cunning were written about in numerous publications, not all of them by me.
ADOLF
Using another prisoner's escape plan and leaving him behind? Cunning perhaps, but brave?
WINSTON
War is like politics. It's every man for himself.
ADOLF
Precisely my own opinion.
WINSTON
I doubt it. You are a notorious liar.
ADOLF
Only for tactical purposes. On the big questions I never wavered. The use of poison gas against uncivilised tribes, for example. The forced sterilisation of the socially useless was another. I advocated those things in Mein Kampf, I practised them when I came to power, and I recommended them in my last testament.
WINSTON
I don't believe you. You and your Socialist party were an outpouring of irrational hatred, worse than Ramsey Macdonald and almost as bad as Clement Attlee. You could never have arrived at policies of such vision and uncompromising depth of Britishness.
ADOLF
I've had about enough of this. Are you going to pull yourself together or not?
WINSTON
I don't know what you're talking about.
ADOLF
I mean, do you intend to sit here for the whole of eternity, mumbling to yourself about the good old days? I realise that you're handicapped by all those idiots on Earth singing your praises, but you really ought to have moved on a little by now. Even Max Aitken has made more progress, and he worked in the mass media.
WINSTON
Oh, go away. Otherwise I shall find some Americans and ask them for the tools to finish you.
ADOLF
It wouldn't help. You don't have a country to mortgage any more.
WINSTON
Ah yes, good old Lend-Lease ... entirely my own idea, of course ... conference of world leaders ... re-drawing the map of Europe ... keeping Britain great ... extensive use of tanks ... soft underbelly of Europe ... entirely my own idea ... never was so much owed by so many to Winston Churchill ... iron curtain ... riddle inside an enigma wrapped in ...
ADOLF
Rhetoric.
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