February 4, 2004
SAY "HELLO" TO WINSTON:
Bullock, visionary historian, dies aged 89 (Rebecca Smithers, February 3, 2004, The Guardian)
The historian Lord Bullock, author of what is widely regarded as the definitive biography of Adolf Hitler, died in a an Oxfordshire nursing home yesterday at the age of 89.The founder of St Catherine's College, Oxford, he was hailed as an intellectual giant, but also as one of the country's most engaging and admired public figures in the latter half of the 20th century. [...]
He worked briefly for Winston Churchill, on his History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
When war broke out he was declared unfit to serve in the armed forces because of his severe asthma, and he joined the European Service of the BBC, eventually becoming the corporation's diplomatic correspondent.
After the war he was elected fellow and tutor in history at New College, Oxford, where, crucially, he influenced an entire generation of undergraduates who had returned from active service.
Asked by the publishers Odhams to write the first biography of Hitler, he produced Hitler: a Study in Tyranny, which was published in 1952 and soon became the standard text on the German dictator.
Even better than Study in Tyranny is his Hitler and Stalin : Parallel Lives--which, as the title suggests, links Hitler and Stalin and their careers so tightly as to make it impossible to justify choosing one over the other as we did in WWII. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 4, 2004 12:59 PM
I guess you rank Churchill as another failed, naive liberal then.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at February 4, 2004 3:58 PMhttp://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/143/Churchill:%20A.htm
Posted by: oj at February 4, 2004 5:13 PMAfter reading your review of Jenkin's biography, I assume your answer is "yes."
Posted by: Chris Durnell at February 4, 2004 5:46 PMMaybe not, but under the circumstances it would have been difficult to attack both, wouldn't it?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at February 4, 2004 8:49 PMChris:
Yes.
Harry:
Why attack either--let them bleed each other dry and then collapse.
Posted by: oj at February 4, 2004 9:18 PMBecause they were doing a lot of damage where it hurt us. And because there had been several revolutions in Russia and Germany and there might have been yet one more that would have been bad news for everybody.
And because we don't any longer ignore gangsters just because they don't rob houses in the upscale neighborhoods.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at February 5, 2004 12:20 AMHarry:
Don't be silly--we ignored Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam, Castro, Idi Amin, etc., etc., etc.
Posted by: oj at February 5, 2004 8:45 AMMaybe we shouldn't have.
As for Germany-USSR, it sort of depends upon where you think they were coming from.
If, like Vansittart and Pipes, you believe that Hitlerism was fundamentally just a baroque phase of German militarism, and that Bolshevik government adopted all of the methods and outlooks of tsarism, then you have to worry about a German-Russian alliance, because the two countries have always been natural allies.
I know you dismiss Vansittart.
I personally think Hitlerism was something more than mere German militarism, but the potential for rapprochement seems obvious enough. Israelis and Germans get along famously these days.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at February 5, 2004 4:34 PM