As a person who tries to advocate non-violent approaches to conflict of any kind, I have been inclined to grant an exemption to WW2 - the "good war". Hitchens has provided an alternative narrative to the good war story i was brought up with.It seems that WW2 has as much ambiguity, deceit, selfish greed and cruelty as all the other wars.

The Phoney Victory by Peter Hitchens | Waterstones The Phoney Victory by Peter Hitchens | Waterstones

I'd heard this book was somewhat controversial as it attempts to dispel some of the heroic myths the British have bestowed on WW2.Giovanni, Charles (14 January 2019). " "The Phoney Victory - Reviewed by Charles Giovanni, Vanzan Coutinho, New York" ". I’m not aware of any historian – Polish, British or any other – who claims that in 1939, Poland was such “champion of freedom, justice and democracy”; furthermore, it would appear that the more conservative Polish historians are, the more critical they are about Poland in the 1930s (e.g. during his public speech commemorating the centenary of the restoration of Polish independence, historian Leszek Żebrowski excoriated Józef Piƚsudski’s regime: “Unfortunately, this period of independence - independence of the state and freedom of citizens - lasted only a short time. In 1926, a very bloody coup took place, claiming lives of approximately 400 citizens, with over 800 injured. We didn't lose sovereignty, no foreign powers entered as a result of the civil war - but citizens lost their freedom”).

Review of the Controversial New WWII book: The Phoney Victory A Review of the Controversial New WWII book: The Phoney Victory

Christopher was not always right, but he was interesting and boldly opined. Brother Peter is more in my tribe (being a theist), but proves that theism does not prevent intellectual cussedness. Peter Hitchens always is worth reading whether arguing against thoughtless drug legalization or in defense of values now forgotten. Peter Hitchens is a journalist and commentator. He has a weekly column in the Mail on Sunday and is the author of several books, including The Abolition of Britain; The Cameron Delusion; The Rage Against God and The War We Never Fought. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta in February 1945 – Image link The title ‘Phony Victory’ is at times is a ‘tongue in cheek’ expression by Hitchens, though he makes his points strongly, the reader does not have to agree to his arguments. His main point is that the war was badly fought by Great Britain to the effect that it cost us greatly in men, materials, ships aircraft and the closing down of the British Empire, which in some of our colonies was to become quite a bloody affair If my dad, who was an eighteen year old British Army conscript in 1945, were still alive, I'd have bought this book for him or lent it to him.

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By 1945, the United Kingdom had many of the characteristics of a defeated nation, due to the significant human and material resources that were committed to the fight against the Axis. World War Two is framed within the narrative of the “Good War” against a terrible enemy. However, in Hitchens’ opinion, the declaration of war prompted the Nazi regime to engage in the policy of extermination in the countries that it conquered after 1939. Was Hitler ever going to invade Great Britain? Perhaps not. Did the RAF save England? Maybe less that we might want to believe. Historians, and I am not one, will debate this contrarian take. Peter Hitchens has been very brave to write this book. I have personally experienced the type arguments and reactions questioning the myths of WWII has amongst my country man. I consider myself a patriot, but like Peter Hitchens, I do not think that means 'my country right or wrong'. There are many things I disagree with Peter Hitchens but with this book he has risen even further in my already high estimation. The man is a national treasure. This leads him into one error after an-other. He suggests, for example, that Chamberlain had decided to bring about a world war in 1939. There is no evidence whatsoever to support this contention, and abundant evidence to the contrary; even at the beginning of the war the British prime minister was trying to arrange for the Italian dictator Mussolini to intervene to stop the fighting, and had to be overruled by his cabinet. The problem with arguing, as Hitchens does, that Britain should have waited to declare war until rearmament had created a military that was effective enough to defeat Nazi Germany is that Nazi Germany was rearming even faster than Britain was.

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

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. Condition: New. KlappentextrnrnChallenges commonly-held assumptions on World War II, A provocative, but considered narrative style, Major new book by leading columnist Peter Hitchens. 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. While the USSR were fighting for survival Hitchens remarks that ‘We in Britain knew nothing of the fighting on the Russian Front’ and that for almost four years of the war we did little and that the most of our army were training in England’ … REALLY!! I mention The Burma Campaign, the Desert War, Italy Sicily, Dieppe, Crete, the Malta Convoys, Murmansk Convoys, The War in the Atlantic…Also what few people know, is that eleven Royal Navy manned Carriers were placed with the US Fleet in the Pacific. The Yanks won’t tell you this, nor will they say that a total of 400 British and Australian fighter pilots took part in the battle for Iwo Jima (Britain withdrew Carriers from Europe after realising their vulnerability due to the Malta Convoys.

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The word “we” occurs innumerable times in this book, denoting the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, who apparently hold firm to the false memory of Britain standing alone, fighting a “good war” against Nazi Germany from 1939 to 1945, when the war was in fact morally ambiguous to say the least, and disastrous for British sovereignty in its outcome. Hitchens’s “we” in truth, I suspect, means mainly elderly readers of the newspaper he writes for, the Mail on Sunday, and this book is really only for them. 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). 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. I could not believe that Hitchens didn't take the threat of invasion of England seriously. The only explanation of Germany's aerial offensive in the summer of 1940 was to prepare the way for an invasion. Could it have succeeded? No. This has been war gamed and analyzed to death. At best, the Germans would have done a great deal of damage to the destroyer fleet which would have made the British victory a Pyric one.