The Front On The Volga
As alert Wings readers will know, we’re fond of a WW2 analogy from time to time. The conflict is so extensively documented, and so deeply embedded in British culture (for both good and ill), that it’s a reliable tool for getting points across concisely and clearly.
(It’s also one of the last major wars in which, overall, the good guys and the bad guys were pretty indisputably easy to identify.)
So let’s keep that in mind for a moment while we look at this.
And then let’s talk about Stalingrad.
Because those are some remarkable numbers. Off the top of our heads we can’t think of a single other “progressive” cause in human history that got LESS popular the more people heard about it. The story of human rights – whether in regard to slavery/racism, female emancipation, gay equality or whatever you care to mention – tends to follow the same trajectory every time.
Broadly speaking, prejudice and ill-treatment against the victim group starts off being acceptable and normal, then some people start to question it, then authorities clamp down brutally on those people, the injustices suffered by them focus more attention on the plight of the victim group, public sympathy and support starts to grow, political groups adopt the cause, and eventually – usually after several decades of struggle – change occurs.
But that isn’t how it went with transactivism. Most people had never even heard the word “transgender” in 2015, when Stonewall decided to start championing it alongside (or at the expense of) their advocacy for gay, lesbian and bisexual people.
Yet just a couple of years later it had comprehensively captured the vast bulk of the apparatus of Western society, whether political, commercial or third-sector. Parties of government, multinational corporations, animal charities and even police forces and fire engines were all suddenly draped in a new flag.
Almost overnight it was everywhere you turned, pushed right in your face in a way that made a lot of people – for whom the flag was an offensive, aggressive and hostile one – deeply uncomfortable and conjured up grim comparisons.
(If we’re keeping up with our analogy, the dizzying speed of conquest was akin to the early months of Operation Barbarossa, where the Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg advanced a thousand kilometres across a front 2000km wide in a matter of weeks, moving so fast their supply lines were stretched to breaking point. Total victory seemed inevitable.)
Ironically, anyone raising any sort of dissent about it was immediately labelled a “Nazi” and a bigot and hounded remorselessly, often losing their jobs and being abused or even physically assaulted. Simply stating that human beings couldn’t change sex got you instantly and permanently banned from Twitter – this site was itself banished for three years before Elon Musk bought the social media platform and restored some measure of free speech, since which time our account has added around 24,000 additional followers, many of whom are primarily interested in gender issues.
But oddly, the louder and more powerful the trans lobby got, the less the public bought into it. As today’s YouGov polls show, the more people learn about trans ideology, the more they oppose it. And some of the figures are spectacular.
In 2020 there was a net margin of 5 points or so in favour of letting transwomen use women’s changing rooms, and women were in favour by 20 points. By 2024, though, opinion had flipped to a huge margin of almost 40 points against, and women were now against by around 30 points – an incredible swing of 50 points in four years.
In other fields, such as transwomen competing in women’s sports, the British (and global) public had always been strongly opposed to the “inclusive” stance taken by the authorities, but even there the change was dramatic.
In 2018 the margin against transwomen in women’s sports was around 20 points. (Again, women were much more trans-supportive than men, almost in a dead heat while men were against by nearly 40 points.) But by 2024 that gap had rocketed to 62 points, with barely any difference of opinion between the sexes.
Just two years ago, a slim majority of British voters wanted trans people to be allowed to change their legal gender, but did NOT – by around 25 points – want the process to be made any less stringent. Now the margin against making it easier to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate has leapt to 44 points, while a clear majority of 14 points wants the Gender Reform Act to be abolished entirely.
For a further visual depiction of the battle map, these two YouGov graphics, just four years apart, are a quite striking sight, as all the green circles simply melt away.
(Click pic to enlarge. Most questions are identical across the two surveys but there are some changes, re-orderings and additions, though none affect the overall trend.)
And that brings us back to the Eastern Front. After capturing the wide-open spaces of the Great Steppe, the Nazi armies ground to a halt outside Moscow and Leningrad, but most woundingly inside the broken ruins of Stalingrad. The first two cities were largely subjected to remote siege, with little fighting within their borders, but Stalingrad was a bitter attritional war of hand-to-hand combat.
The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure.”
In late November 1942 Soviet troops surrounded the Sixth Army of General Paulus and in January 1943, facing hopeless conditions, he surrendered the remnant of his starved and freezing divisions. The war was still over two years, and millions of deaths, from its end, but from that point onwards the final outcome was never in any doubt.
In November 2024 Donald Trump was re-elected President of the United States, and in January 2025 he took office, immediately signing off a series of Executive Orders which will ultimately have the same impact on the gender war as Paulus’ signing of the capitulation document in Stalingrad 82 years earlier did on WW2.
There is much fighting yet to be done, and much blood (mostly metaphorical) still to be spilt. It will take many years to remove the poison of the trans cult from institutions worldwide, just as “De-Nazification” did in Germany in the 1940s and 50s. But there is no longer any reasonable doubt that it will happen.
A watershed has been reached, the tide has turned, and the voice of the public is at last being heard by those in power. (With LGB people the unlucky collateral damage.)
The dictators of “No Debate”, who buried dissent in flags and persecution, have been dashed against the stone walls of sanity and reality. The long and gruelling process of mopping up and rebuilding still awaits, but a brief period of rejoicing may be permitted.
Wasn’t it the nazis who shutdown the trannies though?
No, the nazis had nothing against trans. After all, the various groups that the nazis were opposed to were very clearly set out and marked, making it clear that any group not so marked was acceptable to them. Indeed, there is significant documentation of nazis enjoying transvestitism at the least, if not necessarily anything deeper.
Have you ever seen cabaret? Drag acts were massive in berlin.
The Nazis used the original cabaret club for their Berlin headquarters and the occupants were sent East. It was one of the first minority groups in Berlin to get liquidated.
yup
Indeed. They punished homosexuality severely, but transvestism was practised by the armed forces in their relaxation time, and transvestite performances by both sexes were enjoyed by both sexes.
Spike Milligan wrote that at the end of the campaign in North Africa, his unit found buried womens’ clothes in a former German army base. “It had been whispered that ‘Jerry’ indulged in drag activities” (from Monty: His Part in My Victory)
Did you ever see Goering’s wardrobe.
Did you ever see Hitler’s ball ?
aye it was in the albert hall
Can’t say I have.
weird notion : muriel spark (jean brodie etc etc) worked for the spooks during the war, presumably writing propaganda – but no details exist of her work. Just imagine if
Hitler – has only got one ball …
was one of hers. Literary giant. She was doing memes before the internet, debord, or people even had televisions.
Rommel has five or six I guess,
No one’s too sure ’bout Rudolf Hess
Schmeling is always yelling,
But Goebbels has no balls at all
It’s in the Albert Hall.
is it on ebay?
Auction
do “the battle for berlin” next
– let me offer a pic of the transenfuhrer getting down to some slick techno in the fuhrerbunkerdiscotek
FFS confused THAT made the bile rise , gonny no dae that
aye mibbe “ahve taken that too far”
didnay even tuck his balls
That looks a little like a doctor in the news just now.
UK State (mi5) and its allies are the neo-nazi –
Honest:
link to wingsoverscotland.com
I see James Kelly has been triggered by Wings again. That site is getting worse than WGD, no wonder he’s struggling to raise money for his polling ‘analysis’.
a compendium of all the comments he deletes would make a good read
WINGS-WATCH:
“Judging by his most recent blog Campbell really has lost the plot. The frothers are in overdrive
So, with a degree of trepidation, I donned my trusty Wings-Watch cloak and took a look.
The post is about Nicola Sturgeon and is entitled “The End of the Reich”, which probably tells you all you need to know, or as much as you’d ever wish to know…”:
link to archive.ph
Fake News tells people all that they need to know.
1984 provides everything that you wish to know.
Elated Judge Kelly does it all:
STUPID FROTHERS
The boy has spoken, the word has spread, “The king has no clothes”.
About time.
Now how do we get all those transapostles out of quangoes and govt?
That is, I think, going to be the long and hard bit. They are embedded so deep in many organisations that it will take time, and their employers losing lots of court cases, to dislodge them.
I suspect this will also be compounded by the sudden withdrawal of USAID funding from this and countless other sources of Globalist fuckery.
I’m sure there was funding from other US Federal agencies that was being used for this as well which DOGE will soon uncover.
The tech companies knows that taps are being taken off so they’re quitting while they’re ahead.
Around 91,000 Nazi troop surrendered to the Red Army at the end of the Battle of Stalingrad.
Most of these perished either through forced marches to prisoner of war camps and, post-war, labour camps, wounds, disease, cold, overwork, mistreatment and malnutrition.
Eventually in 1955 circa 5000-6000 remaining survivors were repatriated to West Germany, meaning only 5%-6% died after surrendering.
I wonder what in the end will happen to those practising, and/or advocating for, the medicalisation and mutilation of human beings and to those in favour of imposing male participation in female sports and facilitating the presence of males in female safe spaces?
ALL joking aside the devastation and damage these deviants and perverts have rained down on societies weakest and most vulnerable cannot be overstated
Even now there is a court case ongoing costing tens of thousands of pounds by an institution against a person stating biological reality when that institution is SUPPOSED to be at the forefront of MEDICAL SCIENCE
The FACT that there has been ongoing overwhelming opposition to this biology denial orthodoxy by normal ordinary people which has constantly been ignored and denigrated by politicians who obviously have ulterior motives just highlights their unsuitability to hold public office or be involved in governance of ANY country
This article highlights compares the Trans ‘rights’ movement with other rights movements. Trans rights didn’t come from the ground up. It was accepted in England under a Tory government before I even knew what the term meant. It was accepted in the Civil service and the military before the public knew what Trans meant. Why did the politicians accept it and promote it, why did leaders of both public and private institutions and organsations accept it and promote it? It is obvious that the political class and elite people elsewhere work for people higher up the chain. Plans were formulated and disseminated. Inner party/Outer Party stuff. Anyone like a guess as to who belongs to the Inner p\rty. Obviously the outer party are the political wanks and their hingers on etc
Absolutely. Politicians are bought by elites. They buy politicians the way we buy toothpaste and washing up liquid in the supermarket.
I hope they feel disappointed when their bought and paid for trougher politicians are weighed and measured and found utterly wanting..
Victory for common sense seems to be fast approaching and reality will resettle itself, there will always be trans people and common sense will be in place just as laws for disabled people and not this forced doctrine that EVERYONE has to accept.
This paragraph is quite telling in the mentally of these Trans people forcing their “reality” on others to accept, taken from the current tribunal about a nurse being uncomfortable with a Man being a woman in the female dressing/changing room.
“The doctor said that the changing room would ideally have individual, lockable changing cubicles to give people more privacy.
The lawyer then suggested that Dr Upton could have requested a private changing space in the hospital.
However the doctor disagreed and said this could have potentially been “othering” for a trans woman and would have required a discussion, adding: “It’s not a decision I get to make.”
So the Doctor could have requested an individual changing room but he rathered making women uncomfortable.
I hope that the tribunal takes note of that and finds in favour of the nurse and insist the NHS have changing rooms for Trans people, if disabled people can have their own facilities so then can the trans folk, facilities fir Men, Women, Disabled and Trans.
Not too difficult to do really is it?
It’s impossible to do because the narcissists want it all. So many still don’t get what this is. They want, most of them, to force themselves into women’s spaces come hell or high water They are narcissists. Some are very likely to be sociopaths/psychopaths. Most of the adult males are either transvestites or autogynephiles, sexually-motivated.
Where have all the trannies gone? In my younger, more dissolute days I often visited certain bars in Amsterdam. Some male patrons used to wear women’s clothing; they were known as “Travesties”. Quite apt.
In 17th and 18th century London, “mollies” were slang terms for gay men who met in secret at molly houses. Molly houses were public houses, such as taverns, inns, and coffee houses, where men could socialize, flirt, and have sex.
‘So the Doctor could have requested an individual changing room but he rathered making women uncomfortable.’
That’s what they’ve always wanted from the very beginning. To force women to accept them in their spaces shut up & like it *no debate*. They were offered their own spaces way back at the very beginning but they didn’t want them. The bleeding hearts would start on about costs too – like that was our problem! It was always about coercive control. We’d to just ‘live & let live’ & suck it up. Biological women had to affirm & validate their feelings.
This whole farce has been narcissism on an industrial scale.
Hours of watching Teletubbies while munching on a family sized bar of E numbers obviously did a number on them LOL A generation of anti social spoilt brats that’s never been taught how to mix well with others..
Well said.
Careful Geri, that could be construed as you not liking young people.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
I read in a report of the proceedings that the employers suggested that the nurse could change in a closet if she felt uncomfortable. Why didn’t they suggest that the bloke changed in a closet?
THIS is NOT common sense THIS is pandering to deviants, perverts and mentally unstable people , THIS is what the SCUM thatcher the milk snatcher started with her care in the community bullshit, how many of our innocent children have to be SLAUGHTERED and BUTCHERED before the greedy bastard red and blue tories realise that SOCIAL care was there for a reason
While the US are behind us on this at the ground level, their politics are out ahead of us now. European countries are well behind & we’ll probably see a continued uptick in kids destroying their bodies in those countries while the numbers go down here. Can’t help but fearing the SNP & Labour will find a way to keep this alive.
Will the SNP even be here?
I certainly hope not.
Even decades ago in my younger working life it was apparent and commented on that the “UK”(sic) always took in the region of 10 years to adopt A meri can fads, trends and business approaches; yet, never have the wit to see how so very many of those had crashed and burnt by that time.
Nothings new.
As for the TRAs intent on indoctrinating our youth, money will still flow to them from across the Atlantic as before, just this time without using the White House as a middle man/ glorified money launderer.
Follow the money; the power of the pink dollar.
Yes they’ll keep it going. It’s a satanic cult. The mega rich & greedy will still fund & push for it as a means of population control & removing undesirables from the gene pool – to the sicko Drs with a God complex who require live human guinea pigs to experiment & perfect their craft on for maga bucks.
To big pharma who see £ signs & life long patients on their 50th operation to correct the other 49 that went wrong – ouch!
Every parliament throughout the world needs to reject millionaires & billionaires from standing in elections. Those ppl are not there cause they need the money. They’re there to push shite like this onto everyone else whether they vote for it or not.
Do they include white people as undesirable?
Aye. Globalists only care about ruling the world. You’ll own nothing, eat bugs & do as yer telt via yer bank account which can be instantly zapped if you don’t comply. People are ruining the planet for them & taking up precious resources that belong to them. This comes to you from the more money than sense billionaires at the WEF LOL
Those millionaires/billionaires, Trump and Musk do not seem to be following your “reasoning”. Thank goodness.
As far as I’m aware Trump has only banned transexual women from womens sports.
Call me a cynic but that’ll only be because they’re the host nation for the Olympics in a few yrs.
A far better executive order would’ve been banning children from surgery until the age of consent, banning trans women from all female spaces & getting the indoctrination out of schools & universities .
Unless I missed it – he didn’t do any of that.
Field Marshal Paulus.
Only on the last day, in a desperate attempt to stop Paulus surrendering.
Not surrendering but to encourage him to commit suicide as no Field Marshal had ever been captured alive.
The thinking being German Field Marshalls never surrendered. Paulus became a hero of the Soviets.
Well here’s looking forward to the battle of Kursk.
Hooray! Well done, Rev. You have battled to keep the truth in front of people and at last it is being reflected in a reputable poll.
Fingers crossed that when the Trump presidency ends, the USA sticks with the truth. Because, if it doesn’t, then the rest of us will get battered with the same abhorrent, wicked guff all over again.
Well thank fuck for that.
a downfall parody on the trans issue is sorely needed
Turning point it may be, but it served its purpose well as just another divide and rule tool rolled out to keep the masses distracted and busy bickering amongst themselves whilst folk on both sides of the matter continue to get evermore shafted by corporate interests.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
Guess some dumb fucks will never learn, but until folk snap the fuck out of their ADD-like existence in a bubble and consider the bigger longer term societal picture then we will continue to get reamed…
“Can I interest you in fitting some “planet saving” solar panels on the north side of your roof in Scotland, and also reintroduce the beaver in a totally unsuitable place to damage your property and flood our food producing farmland” and all the muppets said yes…
Humans, the mammals with the big brains they don’t use at least manage to produce the comedy that jist keeps on giving.
Did you do those feral pigs?
More seriously, went for a walk today and did see (only one thankfuck) north facing solar install.
OTOH saw a few really good looking south facing units with around 30 sq metres. Dunno what it produces a year, will ask the fella if I see him around.
This is about the most hopeful article I remember seeing on Wings in a long while.
Now can we have some equally good news on the Independence front please?
Thank you Mr Trump
I never thought I would say that
Let’s be careful about praising Donald Trump to the skies. The crusade against militant transgenderism is merely the headline. Have you noticed that DEI is now being referred to by the new administration as DEIA? The A stands for accessibility. My fear is that this will end up as an attack on the disabled, much like North Carolina’s “Bathroom Bill” rollback about a decade ago was used to target disability rights.
The rights that we have (I have cerebral palsy) are essential to allow us, for instance, to access places of public accommodation. Without access to a handicapped parking space I would find it much more difficult to get to my office each day. Working from home is not an option.
Yes, the steps the Trump administration has taken are a good thing, but let’s not kid ourselves that this is the end. It is the beginning and I fear that rights that are essential to disabled people being able to contribute to society will be eroded.
Then the trials. There is no doubt who supported this abomination, we have all the receipts. There must be a price. Except for those who were kids, the gender clergy must ironically take legal shafting. Politicians first, won’t be many left TBH, good, we can start afresh.
It needs to end before all the different and emergent trans ideologies take off. Thans-abled is a thing so that’s why on some disability forms you’re asked if you ‘identify’ as disabled then there’s trans-aged and yes, that one is full of exactly the sort of people you think it is.
The nazi/fascist mindset hasn’t gone away in the west, it skulks in the wings anticipating an invitation to step into the spotlight.
As in the historic cases it will be public disillusion and the corruption of «politics» at the hands of the self styled professionals that will write the invitation.
In this matter there can be no forgiveness, for those involved know exactly what they are doing.
They got cocky & went after kids & that opened up a whole load of people’s eyes. It’s one thing for an adult to wear a dress but pushing hormones and surgery on kids as young as seven fired people up. Trans also crossed from being a middle class thing to something that affects everyone else. Sending kids home with books that discuss trans issues (which often barely disguise the fact they’re helping groom the child) was not a winning move.
I think the election last year helped push trans ideology into where we are. Wes Streeting seems to be set against trans ideology after actually listening to women. Labour of course are still locked into the trans cult but the trans groups no longer have the power they used to. I think the increasing amount of legal cases is helping break tge cult down but I also think when doctors start facing prosecution is when people are going to get very worried, including those who’ve transed their underage children.
It’s still years before the last breath of trans ideology but all the orgs doubling back from trans issues and the rapid dumping of pronouns shows the smarter people are getting out now before it does get nasty for some TRAs. Of course it might be impossible to get TRAs out of our institutions but they’ll never have the power they once had. It feels as if all it needs one big push or a case that breaks the bank that’s holding trans ideology in place.
Most of all I’d love to see a public enquiry into all of this. There’s a lot of people I want in prison, including doctors operating on kids and people like Owen Jones and Nicola Sturgeon need to face the music too.
kids know what is right
That shit is where it all started. Since when was cavorting the streets half naked ruled no longer indecent exposure & the police join in?
And the dumb parents taking kids to those events.
FFS 48% follow for transgender. When are we going to get of this subject and get back on Independence.
2026 is coming up we need to formulate a plan to rid ourselves of the SNP or we’ll be looking at another chance missed.
I’m guessing Scotland still has 24 official genders though.
I’m also guessing that no date has been set for when they will be pruned back to 2. (I like the verb “to prune” in this context
)
I’m also guessing that no Scottish politician has even stood up yet to say that maybe this needs looked at.
As Rev Stu writes:
“It will take many years to remove the poison of the trans cult from institutions”
Fizz will stay on ice meantime. And then we still have the Hate Crime act in force in Scotland too.
Don’t you mean the front on the Vulva?
Then I’d have had to change the word “front”
The Holyrood colonial administration long since dumped the national saltire for the imperial rainbow flag and its woke fascist laws, i.e. force. Lets hope mair voters figure it oot by next year. Excellent analogy Rev.
From what I’ve seen the (actual) female nurse in an open courtroom has been required to discuss extremely personal details of menstrual blood loss.
Shocking.
Ok, evens Stevens; why hasn’t the (pretendy) female “medic/doctor” been required to define what it finds sexually arousing and how that manifests itself on his person physically, and what practices it undertakes to satisfy those urges?
Get back to basics that the woo woo hate..
Elon Musk:
“NATO needs an overhaul.”:
link to x.com
Libs of TikTok
@libsoftiktok:
“BREAKING: The U.S. confirms U***ine will NOT join NATO and NO U.S. troops will be deployed to U***ine.”:
link to x.com
the old hard drive memes folder pays off yet again
talking of poundshop mosley fuhrer wannabes
“there goes the no claims bonus”
odd fact – the pilot blamed farage for not getting his insurance payout and made death threats to him (farage), but was later found dead, at 46, because he was sad and it was not suspicious.
Makes you think, eh? Is Farage “heavy”? Is he like BrickTop in “Snatch”?
“talking of poundshop mosley fuhrer wannabes”
I don’t think anybody was, Confused.
If you thought you heard somebody, it would have been the echoes of your own voice.
this thread heavily featured hitler you fucking dumbass moron diving in both feet ret4rd fucking prick
do you ever get the context before you post
are you raging because I dissed your hero thats going to make england great again
Whassa matter, Confused?
Are you raging cos I bagged the “Hatey” moniker first?
You want to read the latest Robin McAlpine – “My top Eight Indy Myths”. On reading a representative sample of your posts, alert readers won’t be surprised to find you have the complete set of eight.
Well done you.
I am running deepseek right now locally on my computer
– it said this about you :
main, you are a unionist ret4rd who makes up stuff, doesn’t do research, posts shite, claims to be a nationalist but fools no one, gets red-numbered to fuck, spams the forum and adds nothing positive to the cause.
Your basic reading comprehension also seems at fault as you seem to just – miss the point, in several directions at once – ranting away about fuck knows what of peripheral importance at best. You remind me of the old craig ferguson standup persona “bing hitler”.
your basic arguments are often stupid – remember “higher” and “lower” from last time? This is not advanced physics.
7 billion parameters say you are a twat and cried out in pain as I fed them your shitpostings
everyone hates you because you are a cunt, but you seem to roll in the ire like some masochist
but the worst thing for me is your “nationalism” which seems to be about EVERY OTHER COUNTRY EXCEPT SCOTLAND.
– fuck all these countries, let them burn. Not my problem.
We have our own problems.
– the Anglo, and cunts like you.
Give me all the p4kis if only we can get rid of these 2 groups, the anglos and the “mains”
– the thing about the p4kistanis, at least you get something out of them (if you can ignore the islam) – good quality at reasonable prices, or that some are quite excellent surgeons (working hard in the NHS), while the anglo is just a parasite, with a soft job, which he propagates with smooth mediocrity, a block to talented Scots.
you may as well make some coin for spewing your bullshit, try this (lie about your age)
link to jobs.army.mod.uk
“olivers army are on their way …”
you are either/or or possibly and – a filthy hasbarist or a filthier little englander
we see you and your kind
‘7 billion parameters say you are a twat and cried out in pain as I fed them your shitpostings’
LMAO!
Deep seek is the bomb! It has him bang to rights..
Aye, I’ll take a Navid over a Nigel anyday.
It’s defo a stellar post from Confused, Geri.
The people of Scotland will all be feeling a wee bit closer to Indy tonight.
But enough of that. Loving the cheeky wee “..” on the end of your penultimate.
The devil, as they say, is in the detail.
IF bastard tax MOAN had a brain he’d probably think you are insulting him but we ALL know he”s the bottom feeder
Bill Clinton is supposed to have said of his wife, Hillary :
“she’s had more pussy than I’ve had … “
WilliamO
@Billo366x:
“Wait till you see the Anthony Weiner laptop.”:
link to x.com
one more – is this the origin of our current day problems?
this is the guy they let rewrite the entirety of western philosophy in the 60s from the ground up; liked it savage, frequented the leather bars “exploring power relations”
– died of AIDS. Which no one could have predicted.
there’s more – this is a horror show …
the idea of harming men, of turning them into trannies as part of a misandrist feminist revenge fantasy, was pioneered by valerie solanas and her SCUM manifesto – society for cutting up men (she shot andy warhol, probably the only good thing she ever did)
I cleaned a holiday home in Scotland for many years which was owned by a German artist who lived in Germany. This is many years ago now. He told me his father was still alive and very robust for his 90 plus years. I asked my German artist friend why he never brought his father to his Scottish holiday home. He gave a wry smile and, after hesitating at first, told me his father only went on holidays to ‘really hot places’ so not Scotland! Why so? I asked. He advised me that his father took the last seat on the last German plane out of Stalingrad before the German army surrendered. One of his father’s officers, already on board the plane, saw the young private being turned away (along with many others) with frost bite in both bandaged feet (and no boots) and this officer got up and ordered my friend’s father onto the plane, to his seat instead. Apparently the officer who gave up his seat either died in the last days of fighting in Stalingrad or died in Russia in a POW camp. My German friend said that if that had not happened, he would not be alive as his father would not have survived. This conversation took place on a Scottish beach watching the red sun sink down into the Irish sea.