 My name is Chris Bambry among other things I've written a book in a history of the Civil War looking at Second World War largely from below from the ordinary people fighting back and in terms of their memory I was brought up with really two narratives about the second world war one was the official British narrative and secondly what my parents told me so my parents for instance my father told me The Winston Churchill was a bastard, but we needed a bastard to fight the bigger bastard hit what? And I was told some of my dad's experiences He was in the Royal Navy for instance visiting India where he was shocked at the racism against Indian people by the British And he understood that there was a war yes against fascism But the British were also fighting to preserve a British Empire and so there was two different narratives there which I was brought up with But he examined this book as well I'm trying to look at the fact that the Second World War was yes It was a war Involving the major powers fighting each other But it was also a people's war in the sense that across much of southern Europe in particular and in Asia powerful resistance movements emerged against the occupation by the German by the Germans in Europe most significant Yugoslavia which liberated itself in Italy were all the great cities of northern Italy to rain floor at Milan General of Venice were liberated by the resistance not by the British of the Americans and Paris for instance, which was liberated by an insurrection in August 1944 This is a history which is largely not being told in the Anglo-Saxon narrative of the set of the this the second second war And I think it's important to remember the fact there was Popular resistance to fascism inside those countries and in the context of today's discussion about the impact of Spanish Civil War also to remember that People who'd fought in Spain Spanish, Catalan or others played a very important role in those resistance movements That was particularly the case actually in France for so many of The exiles had been people who fled had been jailed and then were kept in the camps until the Germans Eventually arrived and they managed to flee join the resistance and played a very important role in the French resistance That was largely ignored after the war by de Gaulle Who wanted to destroy a vision of it just simply being front the French against the Nazi occupation and the role of the Spanish Who played a cutting edge of this was very very important and indeed of people who fought in Spain the very first Killing in Paris by Colonel Fabian Colonel Fabian had fought in the International Brigade So there's a continuity between what happened in Spain and what happened in the second world war particularly in France and Tragically so many of those people had fought in the resistance in France. So the Catalan Spanish Basque resistance believed that in 1945 they would return across the Pyrenees and Carry out a similar grower war backed up by the British and Americans They believed the parachutes would keep coming with the weapons and of course that never happened because the British and Americans made The peace with Franco very very very very quickly. So the the tragedy of that is something again I think we need to remember all the different elements of that The memories of course the direct memories are beginning to die as the generations who fought in the second world die But they've left behind much, you know, maybe just the level of folklore in my case family pictures Medals various things like that Stories they've passed on but also there's quite a wealth of reminiscence people's memoirs of reminiscence Various things that and I think it's important. We try and bring that together from across across I'll say Europe, but I should say as well of Asia as well We shouldn't forget again powerful resistance movements right across Asia into China Indonesia Malaysia and China China itself. I'd like to see that come together And bring together that common memory of a people's war against fascism and that's it It's why I say my book very beginning with both my parents volunteered in 1939 My father left the Communist Party because of the Hitler-Stalin pact. He wanted to fight fascism And for them that war was against fascism and what they saw in 1945 the newsreel from Belsen Confirmed that what they'd done had been right They knew the war was different from Winston Churchill Winston Churchill was fighting for the British Empire Joseph Stalin was fighting for the interests of Russia, you know, they knew that but they still get and I think we need to Keep that memory alive that people saw it as a war against fascism and there's that popularity And at the end of the war in this country, there was a huge thirst for change And that's why in 1945 a Labour government to the shock of Winston Churchill was elected Which created the National Health Service the welfare state things we still enjoy in Britain today They were the gift of that generation that people would fought in the second war fought fascism And they handed down to us something that I think today we need to cherish I think that it's been left largely unofficial But we have had memories of that for instance the way that the home guard, which is almost a militia formed in 1940 in case of German invasion the way it was portrayed was very much as an auxiliary of the regular army It's since come out that for instance the man who initially trained the home guard in the west of West of London was a man called Tom Winteringham who'd fought in the International Brigades and He wanted to give them a spirit of guerrilla warfare as a way of resisting at any possible German attack It was teaching them grow warfare at that stage the British officer Corps and Churchill got very nervous about this It's not something to particularly wanted so they changed that but a biography of him has appeared and There's an interest as well. I think in some of the other resistance movements I think I'm very pleased that one of the definitive histories of the Italian resistance by Guardia Pavone Has been published now in English which opens up for an English audience There's been a number of other books a friend of mine Tom being published a book called a talent resistance there's been a number of other books which have emerged about that and indeed there are memoirs of British British prisoners who were released in 1943 with Mussolini fell who then joined the Italian resistance and There are memoirs of British SOE soldiers sent into Italy to work with the resistance that should have been published Which now become available which give people here in this country a sense of what was happening in Italy There's a huge resistance movement which mushroomed after 1943 against that against their Fascism and we still don't know enough about what happened in Yugoslavia And we certainly don't know enough what happened in the Philippines Indonesia much of that unknown But there are huge resistance movements to Japanese occupation