Antony Beevor's Blog, page 7

Tuesday 19 June

The Eurocrats have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the EU Commission, said at the G20 summit: ‘Frankly we are not coming here to receive lessons in terms of democracy and in terms of how to run an economy because the European Union has a model that we may be very proud of.’  Democracy and a model to be proud of? The man is totally shameless. He even tried to blame the Euro crisis on North America. I am astonished that nobody has yet called for the impeachment of the European leaders responsible for pushing through the whole Euro project when they had been warned of the consequences, especially with countries like Greece which had blatantly falsified their figures to gain entry with the tacit agreement of EU commissioners.

New York is about to get very hot, so I dread the humidity in Washington DC tomorrow. Nice news from London. The Second World War is again going to be at No 1 on the bestseller list this weekend.  It is a relief to have happy publishers at such a desperate time for bookselling.

Appel Salon – Part 1

Monday 18 June

So, on this anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo and General de Gaulle’s appeal to France in 1940, Francois Hollande has a pretty clear majority. How adding 60,000 teachers to the government payroll is supposed to boost the country’s growth in the short term is hard to imagine. It will, on the other hand, strengthen his electoral constituency of government employees. Meanwhile European leaders hail the very narrow victory of New Democracy in Greece, as if it signifies that the crisis is over. It has not, of course, even really started. My instinct still points to France being the real flashpoint, once it comes under pressure after Spain and Italy. Every single bail-out so far has bought a little time, but no more, and by the time France become the chief target for the bond markets, there will be no more funds available, short of a massive euro devaluation and the rampant inflation which the Germans so fear. It is quite clear that Hollande and his ministers passionately refuse to live in the real world of today. They somehow think that they can turn the clock back to the corporate socialism of the past and insulate their country and Europe from outside forces. It is the same old story. Intellectual honesty is the first casualty of moral outrage.

I reached Toronto last night, and it will be interesting to gauge North American reactions to the crisis in Europe, which threatens to pull down the world economy. Even those who suspected all along that the euro, in the manner in which it was set up,  would prove to be disastrous, never imagined such a potential to devastate.  Anyway, it is strange at five in the morning here to look out over the Toronto skyline. Such a contrast to yesterday morning, when the view from the window was the park at Althorp where Artemis and I were staying for Charles Spencer’s literary festival. Today Toronto, tomorrow New York.

I have just noticed that the BBC have put Niall Ferguson’s first Reith lecture up on their site. His basic arguments are irrefutable – the decline of institutions, the utterly dishonest methods of government accounting which conceal future liabilities, and above all the appalling debts which the babyboom generation are passing on to the young and those not yet born. But Niall always manages to damage his own arguments with smart-ass remarks and unnecessary provocations. Here he achieves it with: ‘If young Americans knew what was good for them, they would all be in the Tea Party.’ Definitely a case of how to lose friends and irritate people.

 

 

Monday, 11 June

An early start to get to Broadcasting House for ‘Start the Week’ with Andrew Marr. The four of us, Juliet Gardiner, Max Hastings, Niall Ferguson and I all gathered in reception just before 8.30.  The programme was most enjoyable and also unexpectedly combative. After a good discussion on changing attitudes to the history of the Second World War and its relevance today, especially in the light of the Euro crisis, Niall suddenly launched his attack on Max and me. According to him, emphasis on the often terrible experiences of the individual led to what he called ‘warnography’ and he accused us of ‘sensationalism’. I thought that this was a bit rich coming from a historian who has not exactly avoided controversy over the years. After the programme was over, Niall said to Max and me, as if to justify his attack on us: ‘Neither of you mentioned my book.’ Oh, dear. Hell hath no fury like a historian unquoted.

Thursday 7 June

Today is publication day. I returned from Finland last night. The programme in Helsinki became even more hectic yesterday because of an unexpected development. The evening before General Nikolai Makarov, the chief of the Russian general staff had made an extraordinary speech in Finland. He warned Finland against closer ties with NATO, complained about Finnish military exercises, implying that they were aimed at Russia, and he even produced a map from just before the war indicating that Finland belonged to the Russian sphere of influence. Finnish politicians wisely did not rise to this extraordinary provocation. I found myself being interviewed as a result on the national TV news. I said that Russia’s paranoid fear of encirclement went back far beyond the Communist past, and that Stalin’s own determination to occupy neighbouring countries and turn them into Soviet satellites in 1945 came from the traumatic shock of the German invasion in 1941. Today, Russia feels increasingly isolated over Syria, and Putin, shaken by the size of the demonstrations against electoral corruption at home, was bound to be tempted to create tensions with the outside world to justify domestic repression. There was also, I was sure, an element of resentment at the way the United States had ignored Russia in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and once again aggressive signals were being made that the West must treat Russia again as a great power. I was amazed and disappointed on my return to London last night to find how little had been reported of this whole episode in the British media.

Anne Applebaum did not agree with what I had said above. She pointed out that the Kremlin is constantly making aggressive noises towards Poland, and enjoys moving around their missiles in Kaliningrad to increase the tension, but the Polish government remains determined not to react. She rightly adds that the US has made great efforts to improve relations, but Putin seems to find it useful to portray America as the enemy. And the Soviet Union’s pressure on neighbours of the ’near abroad’ began much earlier. I stand corrected.

On D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

Antony discusses his winning book ‘D-Day: The Battle for Normandy’.

On War Movies

Antony Beevor on war movies