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Article: War Diaries, 1939-1945. (Books: prosecuting a war).
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- December 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke War Diaries, 1939-1945. University of California Press, 763 pages, $40
In 1980, in his valedictory lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History, Hugh Trevor-Roper discussed the events of 1940, when the world hung in a balance between very different futures. Drawing attention to the fallacy of historical determinism and Marxist historiography, he observed that
no one could rationally have assumed that at the precise moment of the fall
of France there would be, in Britain, a statesman able to unite all
parties, and the people, in the will and confidence to continue what could
easily have been represented as a ...