The Phoney Victory: The World War II Delusion

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This book, which is essentially broken down into a series of articles, argues that the great delusion of the traditional WWII narrative is that it has - ever since the victory of Allied forces in May 1945 - garnered a near mythical status as a war fought for all the right reasons. Hitchens has chosen with this work to challenge those assertions, which he argues have so thoroughly deceived the British people that they seek foreign military adventures in a modern age due to a misconceived notion of fighting good and moral wars - just as their ancestors did. Using Peter Hitchens’s inept metaphor, he might as well claim that Britain has, "like a hyena", “dismembered” Channel Islands by taking them from Nazi Germany. I heard Peter Hitchens talk about this book on the radio and thought it sounded interesting. My parents are Czech and Austrian and it was always something hinted at home about the nefariousness of Churchill, being betrayed at Yalta and, of course, the fire bombing of German civilians in cities - many more than just Dresden. Mr Hitchens claims that this extended operation was mostly a waste of time and money and just a propaganda exercise where French and British brave men and women, of which over a hundred parachuted to their brutal ends in France and Germany and were never heard of again, and that we pulled ‘romance’ out of the operation by romanticizing glamorous women and even making films about them. I would argue that it kept the Germans on their toes in France and used up no end of German troops and Gestapo agents, and was a good precursor for gaining intelligence in the run-up to D Day.

The Phoney Victory: The World War II Illusion: Peter Hitchens

Giovanni, Charles (14 January 2019). " "The Phoney Victory - Reviewed by Charles Giovanni, Vanzan Coutinho, New York" ". Peter Hitchens is, by his own admission, a “scribbler” and not a historian. He omits to broach the geopolitical implications that could have emerged from not declaring war against Nazi Germany in 1939. Giving Nazi Germany a free hand in continental Europe would have meant a larger demotion of the geopolitical position of the United Kingdom than the one that the country suffered as a result of the outcome of World War Two.Hitchens is, of course, a great writer. The thesis of this book was a little scattered though. It was strongest towards the end when discussing the bombing campaigns over Germany. Why am I not persuaded? This fine book (and you should buy and read it for the good debunking it does) reminds me of an early draft of my dissertation. I made a case for a particular reading of Plato . . .covering all my bases. The entire thing failed when my advisor asked in so many words: “Maybe. You have answered the objections, but why believe this to start?” I was born in 1948 -just after the end of World War II in which my parents' generation had fought and died in a battle against intolerance, monstrous extremism and an inhuman attempt to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe" The British were also almost bankrupt at the beginning of the WWII. They had defaulted on their WWI debts, had an old insufficient navy and the American would only deal with them on a cash or in kind basis giving away what was left of their Empire. After WWII, the British were no longer a big power as they thought. Churchill the bombastic and verbose Prime Minister managed to hide Britain's desperate straits but after WWII, rationing continued and while Germany rebuilt a new economy, British industry remained in the 19th century.

Peter Hitchensâ?Ts Eurosceptic take on the Second World War

History is complicated and people say a great many things while making it. People said what Hitchens says they said, but they also said many other things. This is a book pleading a case, but like any contrarian argument when one puts the book down one wonders. Perhaps Hitchens is right in all he says, yet still the Nazis are gone and Queen Elizabeth reigns. This may not be victory, but if so, it is one of the better defeats in human history. American governments may say and do cynical things, but the American people were changed by World War II, even if some of what changed us was a Hollywood and Churhillian myth. Britain matters to us more than her size would demand. He writes: “In 1939, it was not the martyred hero nation, champion of freedom, justice and democracy, of propaganda myth.”

To briefly summarise the book's thesis, while Mr Hitchens deplores the German National Socialist regime, he rejects the simplistic "goodies vs baddies" narrative, Britain did not join the war to fight tyranny and racism, nor is he convinced that we were at any real threat of invasion from Germany and that our bombing of German cities constituted a war crime. No, he is not saying that the Holocaust did not happen or that the bombing of Hamburg and Dresden was as bad as the former. Still, we cannot overlook the inhumane barbarity that was inflicted on the German population during the war and as a result of the Potsdam Agreement. Things did not have to turn out even this well for Britain. The United States might have let the Empire fall in much more Roman manner. Peter Hitchens believes that in Britain, myths about World War II infest policy making and cause bad decisions. World War II is the “good war,” appeasement is bad, and Churchillian rhetoric beyond reproach. Britain stood “shoulder-to-shoulder” with the United States of America in a “special relationship.” He also covers the errors of Churchill and Lindemann as well as questioning the efficacy of the RAF's bombing campaign where area bombing proved to have little effect on the wartime economy of Germany. What made the question difficult was not really the comparison. It wasn’t hard to conclude that foreign policy was, then as now, about national interest as seen by the government of the day and not about morality. It was clear from the documents Martin set me to read that public opinion in Britain in 1938 was vehemently opposed to war, making it impossible for the government to declare one. By September 1939 it was equally clear that British public opinion had swung round decisively in favour of a war with Germany, making it hard, to say the least, for the government not to.

The Phoney Victory: Contrarian Hitchens (The Other One) The Phoney Victory: Contrarian Hitchens (The Other One)

Peter Hitchens examines what I have long suspected to be true, but perception was obscured by prevailing narratives. Richard Evans is provost of Gresham College and former regius professor of history at Cambridge. His books include “The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914” (Penguin)

Hitchens questions whether the country was prepared to fight a war against Germany in 1939. He also states that there is no conclusive evidence that Germany was planning to invade the United Kingdom in 1940. Furthermore, Hitchens proceeds to demystify a number of commonly held assumptions regarding the British participation in World War Two. The author argues that the United Kingdom was not forced into war by Nazi Germany. At the same time, Hitchens rightly states that Poland was not a “bastion of democracy,” as it was governed by an authoritarian and anti-Semitic regime. Mr Hitchens is also unaware that in some cases, Czechoslovakian authorities actually insisted that the Polish Army enters Zaolzie (e.g. the date of annexing Bogumin was changed because Czechoslovakia was afraid that it will be taken by Germans), or that Poland was only annexing territories with ethnic Polish majority (that’s why after its annexation of Morawka village, Poland returned it to Czechoslovakia, having ensured that it would not be occupied by Nazi Germany). My dad would have agreed with Peter Hitchens revised view of Churchill. However, as far as I am aware my dad was always very much aware of Churchill's many flaws, failures and mistakes. My dad was far from alone, it's worth remembering that Churchill and the Conservative Party lost the 1945 general election. He argues that while the Allies were, indeed, fighting a radical evil, they sometimes used immoral methods, such as the Allies' carpet bombing of German civilians. He believes that Britain's entry into World War II led to its rapid decline after the war. This was because, among other things, it could not finance the war and was not prepared. As a result, it had to surrender much of its wealth and power to avoid bankruptcy. [1] However, Hitchens does not make a universal anti-war case because he believes that this position often leaves countries unprotected and defenceless in times of war. Instead, he argues that military power and the threat of war can be necessary deterrents against war. [2] Reception [ edit ]