Peaky Blinders has had a lot of fun playing with historical figures ranging from Jesse Eden to Winston Churchill. In Season 5 the writers take on Oswald Mosley, perhaps one of the most notorious Britons of the 20th century, as he started the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, largely in response to the stock market collapse that he ascribed to Jewish money laundering.
Mosley is portrayed as being insidiously evil in the television series, a sexual predator who not only fucked his wife, but her sister and his mother-in-law too. He inherited a sizable fortune and married into an even greater fortune, allowing him to not only play with any woman he liked but to fund his own fascist movement, modeled after Mussolini, eventually becoming close chums with Hitler as well.
The salute Perish Judah apparently comes from Hitler, a reference to the death of Jews, who the Nazis and like-minded ilk were convinced were responsible for the economic depression that fell across the American and European continents in the 1930s. Jews were long seen as the principal money-lenders of the world, and the fact that the financial crash emanated from New York reinforced this false impression in their addled minds.
The show reminds us how prevalent anti-Semitism was around the world. The writers go out of their way to establish a link between Tommy Shelby and Alfie Solomons, who leads a notorious Jewish gang in London, which Tommy uses to shake up things at one of Mosley's rallies. For his part, Mosley relies on a Glasgow razor gang, the so-called Billy Boys, to serve as his blackshirts. The season all comes down to this one defining moment where Mosley has assembled a fascist rally replete with noxious symbols. Tommy has a sniper placed to take out the would-be British fuhrer.
The writers have taken a lot of liberties with historical figures, but they pretty much keep to the timeline, so it is a foregone conclusion that Tommy's "strategy" doesn't go off as planned. We have to wait till next season to see how all this plays out.
The war was inevitable after the collapse of the stock market, despite Tommy's seemingly heroic effort to avert it by arranging for the assassination of Mosley. Europe was ravaged financially, especially Germany, which was no longer able to pay its wartime reparations. This economic uncertainty led to the rise of Hitler, which I'm sure Season 6 will show. However, Britain remained relatively stable economically and was able to withstand the autocratic wave that swept Europe.
As for Mosley, he became a thorn in the side of government throughout the 30s but couldn't be really described as evil. Notorious cad would be more like it. Given the civil liberties of Great Britain, Mosley was allowed to vent his brand of fascism much like Nigel Farage is today. This appears to be the parallel the PB writers are drawing. However, Fascism never really took hold in Britain, and Mosley had to content himself with fiery rallies. Just to be safe, the British Security Service had infiltrated his fascist party and was monitoring virtually all his activities. However, by the late 30s his star had waned. By 1940 his party was officially disbanded and Mosley placed under house arrest for the duration of the war.
Surprisingly, dear Oswald survived the war, no doubt influencing Farage, as he continued to remain a threat throughout his long life. He had numerous children by different marriages and relationships. The youngest Max became a race car driver and was president of the International Federation of Automobiles for a long time. He dabbled in politics but never became as deeply involved as his father. Max was a supporter of the Labour Party under Tony Blair.
As for Oswald himself he resurfaced in novels, comics and even video games that imagined Britain held under a Fascist grip during the war. The most humorous of which was probably Superman: War of the Worlds that never went beyond an initial edition in 1998.
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