Leadership Quote by John Amery

A small sentence doing big, grubby work: it turns defection into a metric and propaganda into a ledger entry. John Amery isn’t marveling at some spontaneous crisis of conscience among RAF crews; he’s auditing loyalty like a supply chain. “So far” is the tell. It implies a running total, a trendline, a future in which surrender becomes routine. The phrase “come over to us” is equally loaded, smoothing the brutal reality of wartime betrayal into the language of recruitment, as if the Luftwaffe is a club you simply switch to when the benefits look better.

The tag “with their arms and equipment” sharpens the intent. Amery is selling usefulness, not just symbolism: not merely bodies, but hardware, intelligence, proof. It’s an answer to a problem every collaborationist faces: you have to demonstrate momentum to your sponsors and plausibility to your audience. A lone deserter is a freak; three, with kit, starts to sound like a pattern.

Context does the rest. Amery, a British fascist who worked with Nazi Germany and was later executed for treason, spent the war trying to manufacture the idea of an anti-Bolshevik, pro-German “respectable” alternative for Britons. This line is pitched to erode morale at home and to impress handlers abroad: Britain is cracking; the professionals are already choosing the winning side. The subtext is simple and poisonous: your pilots, the glamorous core of the national myth, are negotiating their exit.