Challanging The British Historian

Originally posted by wang yun Originally posted by Patch Standing up to Nazi Germany and leading Britain to victory over one of the most evil and dangerous regimes ever makes him the greatest hero of the 20th century.  A lessor man would have made a deal with Hitler but he had the forsight and guts to see lead us to victory and the charisma to motivate the fainthearted. The last I heard Britiain was still some kind of democracry at the time-- wouldn't a deal with Hitler have immediately toppled Churchill from his position or at least resulted in in-fighting?   This is the kind of seriously "detached from reality" analytical mistake that the Japanese made when deciding to invade China-- they knew many leaders in China would cave, but many others wouldn't follow such leaders because China was also having some kind of democracy when full-scale war broke out.

Standing up to Nazi Germany and leading Britain to victory over one of the most evil and dangerous regimes ever makes him the greatest hero of the 20th century.  A lessor man would have made a deal with Hitler but he had the forsight and guts to see lead us to victory and the charisma to motivate the fainthearted.

Edited by Patch - 23-May-2007 at 16:09

Can anyone give a source about that poison gas/tear gas thing to settle it?  I always thought he was talking about poison gas, dropping it on kurds and arabs.

Originally posted by Brian J Checco If we left that war to the French we'd all be speaking German by now. But that's a different story.

That reminds me of my british great uncle who was in the RAF, once he was saying something to my father (here in Canada) to the effect of, "You'd better thank England, or you'd all be speaking French now!"   To which my father quickly replied, "But I do speak French!"

This is pointless.

There is nothing surprising about a British historian praising Churchill as a the greatest hero of the 20th century, and I'm sure that to this guy, and many other Brits, Churchill really is a hero. But let's ask ourselves; what is a hero? What defines "hero"? Any definition of hero will make it obvious that the term lends itself to little else than highly subjective and irrational reverence of whomever one fancies.

Originally posted by Brian J Checco If we left that war to the French we'd all be speaking German by now. But that's a different story.

That would rather be if you left the French to the Germans in that war, 'cause the US was manifestly absent in 1940 and the UK didn't have what it took to stop the Germans from overrunning France any more than the French did.

I can't see anyone has any real cause for complaint how it turned out in the end, so your comment seems a bit superflous.

If we left that war to the French we'd all be speaking German by now. But that's a different story.

History is a narrative story comprising of thousands of differing (and some might say 'isolated') series of events. But to try to understand it all is an impossibility. Thus, cultures, and the learn'ed men therein, portray it as a narrative in order to create a cultural perspective to give the common people some sense of their place in the world, their heritage, etc. History for the common man can only be understood from his national/ethnic/religious perspective. Us students of history really do more to confuse ourselves as to our place in the world than others. Afterall, we can't hope to perfectly perceive 'history.' If such a thing even exists.
Cheers.

"and also how he was able to defend his country while being the lone Allied Power in Europe during WWII."

Well, we read a lot of their histories too, since they also had Empires. German scholarship has always been considered remarkably fine here in the West, and the French Sorbonne University produces some of the finest scholarship in the world.
I guess more what I was shooting for (excuse my nationalistic outburst) is that we tend to understand our histories from our own cultural perspectives. Since the USA now, and Britain before, have been the most powerful countries in the world for the past few centuries, with the rest of Western Europe coming in close second, people at home and in the far flung colonies have looked towards their own country's historians and histories to produce their cultural understanding of world events. That being said, when Azerbaijan rises up and conquers an empire, Their historians will be the ones the world looks to for official, definitive portraits of history.

You're all missing the most drastically obvious point of all... Chruchill and FDR's nations won the damn war, and weren't Communists (who lost the next won). Thus, their histories are the ones that are celebrated, considering Britain and America are still two of the world's biggest powerhouses. Their recent invasion of Iraq should aptly demonstrate this.

Churchill and FDR were both hard men. They were both willing to send their boys to kill and be killed in a war of attrition that they knew that they must not lose. Every wartime leader does these things, and every war time leader faces set-backs, but the fact that these two tough, realistic men knew the score and decided to settle it with Germany and Japan, and won totally is the utmost of heroism. Churchill deftly rallied the British people during the Battle of Britain, and before that, he found a way to evacuate almost the entire British Army from Dunkirk, conscripting and enlisting civilian boats, along with military ships, to ensure that Britain would still have an army after the (French) disaster of the First Battle for France. Churchill was a damn hero, and if people don't like it, it's probably because their country was subjugated by his at some point.

FDR too was a hero. He ended Prohibition in America (thank God!), and rallied the country to fight a two front war against two major superpowers, without the aid of the Soviet Union in the Pacific Theatre (which really is unexcusable). American G.I.'s at the front constantly received 'letters' and addresses from the President, letting them know the country supported them and their heroic efforts. Hell, the man mobilized the war economy of the largest and most powerful military ever seen in human history. Depends where you're from, but to me, he was a gosh darn hero.

One last note: When your countries start winning World Wars, people will start listening to your historians. The reason British historians are still so influential today is because they're still a powerhouse. Same with the Americans. For some reason, the works of other, smaller nations seem to get overlooked. Shame, really.