No disrespect to many people of Britain & Allies who gave their lives to defeat Nazism My understanding is that 9/10 German soldiers were killed or wounded in WW2 on the Russian Front ?, my relatives living former Eastern Prussia having to retreat advance of Russians whilst senior male family members served in german army of the time Some people est 25 million Russians died in WW2 ? If any one 'won ' the war i believe it was Russia ,the Russian People who payed price made Allied Victory Possible Thankyou for your review.
What a sweet thing hindsight is, and how little it has to do with historical reality. So easy to say, long after the event, what "should have" happened. And so unrealistic. Hitchens is right about a few things. OF COURSE the Second World War was largely won by the USSR and the USA, with Britain eventually the very junior partner. But at the same time, his whiney tone is really that of somebody trying to uphold the idiotic idea of British exceptionalism. Britain was as deeply immersed in European affairs as the other countries of Europe. Yes, the USSR was a tyrannical totalitarian state, just as the tsar's state was a tyrannical autocracy in the First World War. But "my enemy's enemy is my friend" is a strategy of war as old as time. As for whinging about the loss of empire, doesn't it occur to him (and many of his readers) that much of the empire wanted be be "let go of"? I admire the courage of the British services in things like the Battle of Britain and other campaigns, but Britain was, on its own, simply incapable of winning the war. It had neither the manpower nor the resources. It needed more powerful allies. Even Churchill's "fight them on the beaches" speech has him blatantly begging for the assistance of the "New World" i.e. begging for Roosevelt's help.And now, eighty years later, somebody wants to imagine that it should have happened otherwise. Yep. Hindsight is a sweet thing for the self-delusional.
Thank-you for commenting. I think one of the main messages of the book is that from the perspective we have now, politicians should stop pretending that the propaganda of the war is the fact, the danger is that bad decisions are made in the present because politicians have failed to learn the lessons of the past.
@@lydiasmith-writerreviewer6183 Thank you Lydia for your reasoned response. In both works of fiction and of non-fiction, hindsight is one of the worst things writers commit. It is especially obnoxious when a 21st century mindset is imposed on people of past ages, and when, in the quiet and comfort of their studies, modern writers make judgements on the decisions made by people in stressful situations of war. Underlying Hitchens' book, all I'm hearing is "Boo-hoo, we lost our empire... and ooh, yuk, aren't those Americans horrid". I too am a "Writer and reviewer", my blog being called Reid's Reader. For the record, I am a New Zealander and can officially call myself Dr Reid, MA, MTheol, PhD. My PhD is , of course, in History.
@@nicholasreid1836 I think one of the problems is that many people in Britain don't know the things that the Government got wrong during WW2 (myself included), they don't know about the bombing campaigns conducted abroad, they know very little about the USSR, and they think the US joyfully joined in with the war because of Pearl Harbour. Most people in the UK have a vision of WW2 based on propaganda and films, because this is what we're told repeatedly.
@@nicholasreid1836 I believe Hitchens' essential claim is not a lament over losing the Empire - he's too intelligent a man to think that was anything but inevitable - it's to point out that Britain's involvement and motivations in WW2 were driven purely by national interest. In speeches and interviews about the book, he goes to pains to contrast those motivations with the, in his view, vacuous ones that yield involvement in increasingly-ludicrous wars of choice. He has spoken of Britain's recent campaign in Syria for instance, although a more apropos example, and one as a New Zealander you might find to be of more personal interest, is whether the US should protect Taiwan from a prospective invasion. Time will tell.
I don’t really agree with your characterisation of the book. You claim that Hitchens writes from the comfortable position of hindsight, whereas I see it as a review of the sorts of decisions that were made and how they were made and taking a (very necessary) critical perspective, in order to learn from the mistakes. He especially points out that the government’s preparation for the coming turbulent times was misguided and somewhat ad hoc, that there were too many delusions about Britain’s strengths, and that even after a long war where a considerable number of poor decisions continued to be made, and Britain was forced into even more desperate financial straights at the end of the war than they were at the beginning, they nevertheless continued to pump themselves up with self-congratulatory delusion. These maybe tough lessons to learn from, but they need to be learned if we are not to continue with similar delusions that continue to get us into trouble, which they continually seem to do. Wallowing in myth, no matter how good it makes us feel is not helpful if it leads to a lack of insight. The debacle of the alliance with Poland was a disaster, fraught with disgraceful betrayal at the end of the war when we were preening ourselves with accomplishments. Choosing our own timing for entering the war was an advantage which we just gave away, a strategic stupidity. Our preparations for war during the 30s were all defensive, yet any strategist could have seen that if we were to be of any use in a continental land war (helping France defend itself) we would need a strong, well-equipped land army, and the means to get it across the channel. Choosing when to enter the war may have allowed time to shift some spending towards achieving that aim. A point that Hitchens often insists on is that the myth we have made about our role in that war actually encourages British politicians, with support from large enough numbers of the population, to be incautious, or even precipitate when assessing our possible contribution to new wars. Iraq is an extremely obvious example, but it is one among many. Despite a million people marching against that war, despite the lack of clear war aims from Bush & Co., and Rumsfield’s ‘unknown unknowns’, the messianic Blair was able to sex-up dubious information about long-range WMD, lie to the public, and get the support he needed for one of the most egregious of modern war disasters. Heroic Britain to the rescue: only to be hopelessly unprepared, out of our depth, and bogged down in a war fighting a shifting enemy, and having no clear exit path.
