Tetelestai is a greek word meaning, literally, “it is finished”.

It is not without a sense of achievement that I now have finished reading all six volumes of Churchill’s memoirs. In a way, it feels as though I have myself been a witness to all the workings and dealings of the British Government during the fateful years of 1939-1945. I have been a close follower of the agony of the War Office in containing the U-boat threat in the Atlantic; I have seen the Home Guard prepare for defence in their homeland; and I have partaken in the efforts of Generals Alexander, Montgomery, Wavell and many more in battles all over the world. I have followed military engagements in France, Belgium and the Netherlands; from there over to North Africa including Egypt, Tunis, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Iraq; and then Hong Kong, Singapore, the Dutch Indies and Burma; from there far over the raging seas of the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the North Sea and the Mediterranean. And then back to England and France again, the liberation of Europe, and Germany and Japan itself.

“It is finished”, then, may very well have been something that the victors of World War II said to themselves. When Churchill, Stalin and Truman stood in the heap and rubble of Potsdam in 1945, they may have looked out over defeated Germany and rested on their achievements, proclaiming peace and goodwill to man in the future. Unfortunately, it was not to be so, for now an iron curtain descended over Europe, and tore her in two; one with free and newly liberated nations; and the other under a new form of oppression – communism.

And for the next fifty years, Moscow would rule with an iron fist not only over the land of the Rodina, but over Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Roumania and many other nations trapped by the Red Army’s advancing forces. They would continue to pay their penalties and dues from the war in full, under the oppression of their own puppet dictators, disguised in the form of communist party doctrine.

Being Swedish, it is difficult to imagine that so little of Europe and the world has been able to live in times of peace and liberty. For uncertain reasons (and I glance with remorseful eyes towards the Finnish border), Sweden has been spared the heavy blows of war for nearly 200 years. It is a cherished mercy to be able to grow up without war. Nevertheless, war will come, sooner or later, in this fallen world. I hope we may be ready to rise to our duties, when our time will come, and accomplish them with as much grace and dignity as did the British and Americans, in those days.