TOM Seale makes a comparison of the alleged necessary role being played by British troops in Afghanistan and the failure to stand up to Hitler in the Thirties (HAS, Oct 22). Such a comparison is, frankly, nonsense.

The Afghan Taliban is a small, nationalist movement with widespread support among sections of the people of the south of that country. They use improvised weapons and have little access to money and there are no industries in poverty-stricken Afghanistan.

Moreover, they enjoy little support internationally.

By contrast, Hitler’s Nazis controlled the second largest economy in the world and had access to a huge industrial complex. Hitler had smashed the German labour and trade union movement, banned the German Labour Party, lowered wages and reduced the working class to the status of wage slaves.

Profits of big business soared and he won great admiration from industrialists both at home and abroad – for example, the von Krupp family in Germany, Henry Ford, of America, and the British newspaper baron, Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail.

The Nazi regime and its big business supporters were a threat to every worker, every socialist, trade unionist and all religious and ethnic minorities.

The Taliban are no such threat and the troops should be brought home.

John Gilmore, Bishop Auckland.