Ethnic cleansing in Iraq - Call them what they are: Fascists

In the 1930s and 1940s bright, often educated and cultured young Europeans, many of whom loved Bach or Beethoven, were inspired by an evil but charismatic leader.

They committed themselves to a cause with utterly fantastic objectives. These included the eradication of one race and the conquest and enslavement of others. They beieved they would rule Europe and swathes of the Soviet Union and its fertile hinterlands. Opponents would be eradicated. Compromise and tolerance were dismissed as weaknesses, the kind they mistakenly imagined defined their enemies.

Their methods and efficiency, their brutality and seeming indomitability, initially at least, were terrifying. For a brief period — far too long for the hundreds of thousands they butchered — it seemed as if they could not be defeated. A civilisation that had endured for thousands of years seemed in jeopardy and that it might be swept away by wave after wave of motorised barbarians. However, their absolute defeat, even if it took nearly 50m lives and six long years, is one of the great comforts history has to offer.