Russia Prepared To Fight War Over Ukraine, Senior Government Official Admits
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Baldrick and the Left's cunning plan to twist our history to fit their deadly delusions
7 January 2014
Daily Mail
By historian Max "The First Man Into Stanley" Hastings
Daily Mail
By historian Max "The First Man Into Stanley" Hastings
Actor Tony Robinson, seen here as Baldrick in Blackadder
Related:
Why won't the left blame Germany for the First World War? Boris Johnson calls for Labour's Tristram Hunt to resign in Great War centenary row | Mail Online
Why won't the left blame Germany for the First World War? Boris Johnson calls for Labour's Tristram Hunt to resign in Great War centenary row | Mail Online
Last week in the Mail, Education Secretary Michael Gove declared the centenary of 1914 should be an occasion for recognising that Britain played a necessary and honourable part in resisting German militarism; that the ‘Blackadder view’ of World War I futility is a gross distortion of our history.
Of course he was pretty much right, but the party political roof fell in on him.
Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt delivered a blast of invective, denouncing Gove’s view and urging that the centenary should be used simply to celebrate Europe’s modern peace, rather than attribute blame for what happened in 1914.
Tony Robinson, the actor who played Baldrick in the Blackadder saga and has since sat on Labour’s National Executive Committee, delivered his own assault.
This was a sorry start to the commemoration. But it reflects the determination of Britain’s Left to make an ideological argument out of World War I, as it does out of almost everything else in history.
Margaret Thatcher’s funeral exposed the still dogged determination of many Socialists to deny the failure of their policies over half a century, culminating in the disastrous Seventies, which made possible Thatcher’s ascent to her role as national saviour.
Ed Miliband likewise refuses to acknowledge the bankruptcy of Gordon Brown’s economic stewardship, with which he and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls are inseparably identified.
Most of the Left, for the majority of the 20th century, went to their graves applauding the Soviet Union as the motherland of socialism.
Because Tony Benn has lived to a ripe age, many people who should know better treat him as a cuddly old pet. Yet he spent his political career promoting Marxist policies that would have brought doom on this country, if ever he had a chance to implement them.
He has never recanted, any more than did the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawn or Ed Miliband’s father Ralph. Hobsbawn was loaded with honours before his death in 2012, by people apparently happy to ignore the ideology with which he associated himself, together with the misery and bloodshed it brought upon the world.
And so back to 1914. There is a Left-wing template for the two World Wars, as for everything else.
World War II is seen as Britain’s ‘good’ struggle against Hitler, especially after 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and Stalin was obliged to abandon his earlier alliance with the Nazis.
World War II is seen as Britain’s ‘good’ struggle against Hitler, especially after 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and Stalin was obliged to abandon his earlier alliance with the Nazis.
But World War I is regarded by Socialists as our ‘bad’ conflict: morally quite distinct from World War II and the fault of aristocratic elites across Europe rather than of the Germans.
Michael Gove was right when he wrote last week that the history of the era was hijacked in the Sixties by Joan Littlewood and her satirical musical Oh! What A Lovely War, and more recently by Blackadder.
These brilliant productions propagated the vision of a futile struggle, conducted by imbecile generals.
These brilliant productions propagated the vision of a futile struggle, conducted by imbecile generals.
Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt (pictured) delivered a blast of invective, denouncing Gove's view and urging that the centenary should be used simply to celebrate Europe's modern peace
There was no cause at stake, the Socialist school claims, worth a single life.
Some of us, however, take a very different view. I have a special interest, because last year I published a book about 1914, Catastrophe, which told the story of the early months on the battlefield.
I argued that the British could not safely or responsibly have stayed neutral while Germany secured hegemony over the Continent.
Tristram Hunt mentioned my book dismissively in his weekend broadside against Michael Gove, but it seemed plain he had not read it — few Labour frontbenchers are big readers outside the party’s official condensed book list.
Hunt favours the notion that blame for World War I rests with Serbia — some of the army officers of this small Balkan nation supplied the guns and bombs used to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.
It is certainly true that Serbia behaved irresponsibly by promoting terrorism in the Austrian Empire.
Michael Gove declared the centenary of 1914 should be an occasion for recognising that Britain played a necessary and honourable part in resisting German militarism
But there remains no credible evidence that the Serbian government — or the Russians — were complicit in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
The Austrians nonetheless decided to use the outrage to justify eliminating Serbia from the map.
They sought, and received, Germany’s promise of unqualified support for smashing Serbia, even though they knew the country was under Russia’s protection.
Throughout the European crisis that followed, the Germans persistently lied, denying their complicity in the looming Austrian strike and Austria’s intention to eliminate Serbia as a state.
Throughout the month-long crisis that preceded war in July 1914, Germany was the one nation that could at any time have halted the descent to disaster, by telling the Austrians to abandon their invasion of Serbia.
Berlin did not do so because the Kaiser and his generals were bent upon securing a coup in the Balkans, even at the risk of triggering a European war — which they thought they could win.
The British had little sympathy for Serbia or Russia. It is highly doubtful Britain would have entered the 1914 continental clash but for the fact Germany set about implementing its vast war plan for smashing Russia and France by invading neutral Belgium.
The Belgians appealed for aid to Britain, a guarantor of their inviolability under an 1839 Treaty. The British government sent an ultimatum to Berlin, demanding Germany should withdraw from Belgium — which it did not.
Thus, in defence of international law and the rights of a small state faced with aggression, Britain went to war on August 4, 1914.
Tristram Hunt, the Labour Party and some Leftist novelists and historians stick with the view that Britain had nothing to be proud of here, and that Germany had little to be ashamed of.
I, and many other British people, disagree. Those who think we should have stayed out of the continental war in 1914 must address a vital question: if the Kaiser had won, what sort of peace would he have imposed on Europe?
Captain Coward: Tony Robinson as Private Baldrick, left, and Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder in the titular sit-com, which Education Secretary Michael Gove blames for distorting attitudes about the First World War
A brutal and draconian one is the answer. We know this, because Berlin in September 1914 prepared a secret ‘shopping list’ — its terms for granting peace to the Allies, and these fell little short of Hitler’s a generation later, save there was no plan for a Jewish genocide.
The Kaiser and his generals were bent upon European domination.
After defeating Russia, in March 1918 they imposed a treaty as harsh as they intended for Britain and France, had Germany also been victorious in the West.
A distinguished historian of the era mused aloud to me recently: ‘Why is it that while the world will never forgive Hitler for having been mad, it seems willing to forgive the Kaiser for having been mad?’
Why, indeed?
Yet it is not the world that is so eager to excuse Germany for its decisive role in starting World War I, but the Left, which propagates a shamelessly distorted vision of the past.
If Tristram Hunt was writing the national history curriculum for our schools, Labour would think it safer not to teach children anything remotely controversial about how one of the largest and most terrible events of history came about — less still anything that might distress modern Germans.
‘Don’t mention the war!’ said Basil Fawlty. The Shadow Education Secretary obviously agrees, which is a good reason for hoping he never attains power over our schools.
Saw that.... It doesn't speak well for Ukranian solidarity. I see the nation splitting on traditional lines
word origin NAZI NA= national socialist ZI= zionism
The Nazi,s won the second world war and now control the murdering butchering thieving half of the planet.
Or possibly "NAZIonal Sozialismus."
Why the f*** would the Nazis have their party name in English?
It also has nothing to do with Zionsim. It's the first two syllables of Nazional Sozialismus exactly as spelt and pronounced in German. That's the standard German way of abbreviating long names, taking the first couple of syllables, where Americans would usually go with initials.
No it isn't, I'll dig around and post the agreement between Adolf Rothschild/Bauer and the German Zionists if you like. The Surname Hitler comes form where?
WWI was everyone's fault. Europe was a powderkeg waiting to explode. Everyone knew one side or another was going to attack. Germany panicked first, and the rest is history.
To be fair it was only his second day on the job. Can you imagine if he defected in the middle of the war-games they just came from? Would NATO have folded the the US Airfarce did one fateful September morn. All Kaptains and Krews doing a collective , "What??" is the ship changes flags and does a 180 at high speed, leaving the others flipping through the script to make sure they are on the right page. Sorry but NATO is starting to look like the keystone cops. Being the biggest military prick is so last century, even from behind a curtain.
Prussia. Hitler was born of Alois Schicklgruber - a civil servant who changed his name to the more authoritarian Prussian surname.
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They were on the ropes after so how did they build such a big military without anybody noticing?
WWI was also the last war where it was military against military. WWII used tactics that had the military against civilians and that trend has only escalated in the decades since. The Korean war is the last one I can think of that was a military face off (using hand tools)
Not saying Germany is that way at the present but she is the one who calls the most shots in the EU (again). If the G8 just became the G7 (Russia kicked out) then it could be the G5 once Germany and Italy leave and join Russia for economic reasons. The US and Canada and Japan can play with their nuclear toys that are melting down. GB and France would join the collective while we actually become the G3 who are exiled more or less. Turkey has said their contracts with Russia won't be affected (I think I can find the link again)
Do you really talk like that??
I read someplace that Hitler was expecting to build a 'retreat' next to the Rothschilds, I wonder if his stomach dropped and he turned a little paler when he realized that wasn't going to happen?
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World War One started with an assassination of Duke Ferdinand and the Alliances
kicked in due to hysterical reaction. WWII really had its roots in the west trading
away nation after nation to protect their own butt. In the end the enemy looked to
those who sold out others.
We are like it or not heading in the direction of another war in Europe if we are not
careful. Those who in fact shout naked aggression do so with unclean hands.
It matters not what names we call each other choosing sides, the fact is the governments
of the day have piled up debt and the best way to get out of debt is through war.
People better stop watching entertainment tonight and pay attention to what is happening.
No one should take this lightly
kicked in due to hysterical reaction. WWII really had its roots in the west trading
away nation after nation to protect their own butt. In the end the enemy looked to
those who sold out others.
We are like it or not heading in the direction of another war in Europe if we are not
careful. Those who in fact shout naked aggression do so with unclean hands.
It matters not what names we call each other choosing sides, the fact is the governments
of the day have piled up debt and the best way to get out of debt is through war.
People better stop watching entertainment tonight and pay attention to what is happening.
No one should take this lightly