Britain's wars with Germany a new perspective | Professor Brian Bond

[@ian_b]

What an excellent talk, and how lucky we are these days to have KZbin to watch things like this on.

[@R00365]

Monty himself contradicts this guy. You can find him interviewed on KZbin. His views on ww1 are more blackadder than I would have expected.

[@peterdollins3610]

Robert Graves details the great improvement in instruction manuals. He also suffered 20 years of walking nightmares after the First World War. At 81 I met & talked to many who fought in The First World, including Robert Graves, and was surrounded working on the Railways with those who fought & survived the Second World War alongside my many Uncles my Father & others. The horrors of The First World War almost reeked of the Veterans in comparison to the Second World War. Robert does claim in 'Goodbye To All That' there was a possibility of a truce in 1916. Yes, many campaigns in the Second World War were horrendous & the Home Front was battered. (Attlee I believe fought in the First World War.) My Driver on the Railways, Ron, was in the rear Guard at Dunkirk then escaped the Germans to walk across France with his mate to get out from the Med and fight in the Eighth Army through the desert into the final days. I never had from Ron that sense of horror I had from Robert or others nor in the many-many other Veterans I knew and worked with. I fear we know have a totally useless, corrupt blackards in charge of our Nation so these Revisionist are in part defending our present Leadership in defending the dire leaders--of the past which there were many--in the First World War. Rather less, from my impressions of veterans, in the Second. This is what gives spite to the Revisionist words and claims as in this guys personal attacks on those who have called out the horrors of the First even attacking Harry Patch.

[@0ldb1ll]

My mother served as a WAAF. The broadcast screams of burning Hurricane pilots, of which my uncle was one, totally gives the lie to the suggestion that WW2 was an easy war. Our nextdoor neighbour had a son who became a Squadron leader in 1940. He had to send a lot of young men of 19 years old upwards into the air with what was obviously not enough flying hours. He was 26 in 1941 and had a mental breakdown. He was institutionalised for the rest of his life. He died in 1965.

[@gandydancer9710]

"[T]he suggestion that WW2 was an easy war" is a strawman argument. No one says that. The actual claim is that the WWI Western Front was on average uniquely horrible. Which, despite Bond, it really was.

[@alexanderauersperg5149]

Look I understand what you’re saying but I would far preferred fight on the western front in world war 2 than in the First World War. I think the conditions were worse and the prospect of being ordered to charge a machine gun isn’t great.

[@gandydancer9710]

In WW2 spending months at a time circulating in and out of a muddy ditch surrounded by putrifying corpses and swarms of rats was comparatively rare, whatever the casualty rate in the battle for Normandy which Bond misleadingly compares, iirc, with an overall Western Front rate, including quiet periods and quiet sectors.

[@graemesydney38]

An excellent presentation. Unfortunately the lament about the misunderstanding, misinterpretation, misrepresentation, poor analysis and missed opportunity to truly learn from history can be applied to most histories. Humans are no where near as smart as we like to think or need to be. Emotion over rules the rational more than we ;like to admit.

[@Ensign_Cthulhu]

You are one of the people Brian Bond is railing against in the first six minutes. Not specifically, mind you, but the mindset you incorporate.

[@tommytorquemada2186]

Doesn't make him wrong though, mankind continues to be content bumbling along whose first thoughts and actions is to astablish dominance through sheer destruction and death against each other whilst over looking the rational of using our intelligence via communication, empathy and humility.... meanwhile its business as usual until the penny will eventually drops .

[@gandydancer9710]

@@Ensign_Cthulhu Where did THAT come from?

[@robred19]

A revisionist intervention which compares and contrasts the experience, strategies, conditions and outcomes of two wars within the 20th century. The revisionists are clearly frustrated at the dominant perception of WW1 and the negative portrayals of how, why and what happened in that conflict. As the lecturer states, Britain in 1914 was not prepared for continental warfare and you could lay a strong argument that Britain did not vigorously prosecute the war between 1914-1916. Concentrating mainly on trade blockade/ finance & seeking to knock away props, like Galipolli. The BEF by 1915 had certainly cease to be. Yet from 1939-42 Britain's war was a nightmare in WW2. Expelled from France, Scandinavia, hanging on to grim life in the Mediterranean and of course suffering near calamity in Singapore and Burma. After the economic collapse of 1929, the painful years of austerity in the 30s took its toll on British life at the outbreak of WW2. A painful subject that historians utterly refuse to confront. We know why? As it would put a very different gloss on Britain, its effort and of course, its myths, assisted by luck. That is the debate worth having....1914 & 1940, how prepared was we really?

[@gandydancer9710]

Britain was prepared to blockade Germany in 1914. That the Donkeys then insisted on bloody pointless attacks in the mud is a measure of their determined stupidity, not their level of preparation.

[@roddixon368]

history on this channel, I would agree from 1917 the British, Canadian and ANZAC divisions started to get they act together. The bull ring method of training was effective (if unpopular) and it allowed sick and wounded troops selected as instructors more time to recover before returning to the fighting. At least this was the case in my family.

[@eddievangundy4510]

I suppose one can debate the global results for Britain of the two respective wars. On the other hand the loss of British life on the battlefield was much greater in World War 1. And Versailles did help lead to Hitler.

[@willhovell9019]

Don't forget that Major Atlee deputy wartime Prime Minister served in WW1 too. Why don't the Labour coalition ministers get enough credit for WW2 , not only Atlee, but Morrison, and of course Ernie Bevin

[@joeblow9657]

It's what happens when you have a toff give a lecture

[@phildyrtt6433]

ah...their ,,popular front" intrigue, eh? Most clever how the bolshevik war enthusiasm changed so suddenly after mid-June 1941. And those feverishly scribbled red-hued ,,Second Front Now" graffiti slathered over London as of 23rdJune of that same year. Most intriguing, eh?

[@nledaig]

They got it in the post-war election.

[@steveelliott8640]

Got to ask, who gained from these wars, afterall wars are big money for some people ?

[@GESUNDHEITINSTITUTE2]

Oy Vey..!

[@nledaig]

You mentioned that certain regiments suffered for their success in the Great War. I wonder if you would name them as I believe the same. The two wars were just the same war with a short time-out. Hitler was not an aberration of German Nationalism - just a shoutier version.

[@gandydancer9710]

Did he really compare a casualty average over the entire front , including quiet sectors, and over periods of time that included "All Quiet on the Western Front" intervals, with losses in the battle for Normandy in WW2 to demonstrate the comparative bloodiness of the latter? Apples and oranges, that is. I won't atm listen again to this to find out for sure, but that was my impression.

[@1733Athalia]

It's always interesting to hear dcholars, who pretend to have every detail in their specialty down pat, criticize non scholarly opinion. The thing they do is pick and choose quotes in order to illustrate popular opinion and take that as a given, a real thing, prevalent and malignant, something that would be anathema in their field to try to establish a fact. I'm sure deep down they know they are creating a straw man, but evidently the need to exclude lay opinion from their area of specialty is so strong that they will overestimate a strawman to show their own significance.

[@joeblow9657]

Well the straw man is what pays and gets you tenure. IMO most but not all revisionist historians gaslight the public and their students into making them think they (the scholar) is somehow right.

[@Mr.Thermistor7228]

I agree with both of these comments above. While I can understand how and why he is so upset by these quotes, for him to then recite each and everyone going down a list for an exaggerated long period of time honestly doesn’t make him anymore right then the quotes he’s reading. He is literally stooping down to their level by doing that. If he feels they are so wrong in their statements about it he shouldn’t then shine a light on it. I thought it was really pointless and arrogant for him to do that and I say that respectfully

[@nledaig]

@@Mr.Thermistor7228 The quotes he reads out are fairly common and are an infantile view. They might be straw men but they are worth mentioning because they are so common.

[@johnwightman7549]

the main points are : the main war aim of 1914 was achieved 4 years later, the restoration of belgian independence : after six years of ww2 both the boundaries and political complexion of poland were decided by the red army. looking at the two expeditionary forces the men of 1914 almost certainly prevented the success of the schlieffen plan. the bef of 1939 might as well have never crossed the channel, france and the low countries could hardly have fallen quicker. it was also the case that a huge amount of the british war effort in ww2 was devoted to the mass murder of civiians. within 20 years of the war's end we'd lost the empire and were no longer a world power. ww2 was a terrible war for britain. ww1 was tough but we finished in a strong position. ah, but what about the death camps? how many people were saved from nazi death camps by the british armed forces? as regards the camps in the east, none at all.

[@gandydancer9710]

Most of what you say is right, but "the men of 1914 almost certainly prevented the success of the schlieffen plan" is wrong. Almost certainly not.

[@nledaig]

@@gandydancer9710 Well it failed , that plan; didn't it.

[@willhovell9019]

First rate historical analysis and mentioning Prof David Reynolds. Keep getting distracted by the comb-over.

[@roddixon368]

While I think there is a fair bit of rewritten

[@babayaga66]

"Germany saw Britain as the main obstacle to her global ambitions"? Bullshit. It was exactly the reverse. It was powerful British imperialists like Cecil Rhodes who saw Germany as Britain's main rival for imperial/global domination. And he instilled this hatred for Germany in the members of the enormously influential secret society which he founded. One of whose members was none other than Asquith, the Prime Minister who played a decisive role in bringing Britain into WWI. Germany's "naval armaments" race with Britain -- which was occasioned by Britain's contemptuous treatment of Germany's interests --- was already over well before WWI, with Britain well in the lead in terms of navy size.

[@arpitakodagu9854]

LOL is it not possible that Britain and Germany saw each other as major obstacles? Are those viewpoints mutually exclusive?

[@willhovell9019]

Very articulate response to clear pan Germanism and the Kaiser's autocratic regime. Insults are not augments

[@richardgrosvenor5084]

I seem to have missed the New Perspective.

[@gandydancer9710]

It's all over this channel, where denying that Haig was a donkey is dogma. Gary Sheffield gets a couple mentions in this talk, but what I know of him is the claim in another of these lectures that the Somme was a strategic victory... a conclusion he defends by claiming the Germans lost 600,000 men, because, hey, when attacking established high ground positions with machine gun nests over open ground with no cover plausibly produces as much loss for defenders as for the foot infantry that fails in such attacks, right?

[@thelastaustralian7583]

lest we forget

[@skysky7250]

A new perspective? I waited 44 minutes for his first "new perspective" Poland was not liberated. If he mentioned any other "new perspectives" I missed them. Maybe in another 75 years we will see the truth. By 1918 Great Britain had become a debtor nation.Great Britain would not have been able to fight ww2 with out American lend lease. 75 years after ww2 Great Britain has still not recovered from these 2 wars. When will people look at both wars with a "new perspective"?

[@arpitakodagu9854]

How are you able to justify the statement that Britain would not have been able to fight without American lend lease, you ignorant buffoon? GB outproduced the Germans on her own and was never under serious threat of invasion once the BoB was won. The Soviets were far more reliant on American AND British production.

[@Phantomrasberryblowe]

skysky7250 America supplied about 11% of British needs.

[@davidchardon1303]

@@arpitakodagu9854 The Lend-lease represented around 3 % of the soviet production of war so stfu

[@gandydancer9710]

@@Phantomrasberryblowe Nonsense. Alone, Britain was toast.

[@caratacus6204]

And the US retreated into isolationism and so didn’t capitalise on their geopolitical gains. They would have to wait until 1943-45 for their global ascendancy.

[@davidtrindle6473]

This is biased toward British, who were hardly the “victim” of WWI. Better to read something less propaganda-like.

[@nledaig]

It's in the title. Give your own talk on whatever country you wish.

[@rsaranha]

What a waste of 44 minutes!! Nothing new, no new perspectives. Is this what passes off as a lecture nowadays???

I don't think either war was justified for Britain or canada. Fighting to stop a dominant european power was not good enough for dying/killing of british soldiers. It did not justify breaking gods laws against unjustified killing which to god is murder. only later in WWii was the killings of Jews etc found out and while innocent people should be defended still many of these jews were enemies in the first war, male and female, and so risking ones life for them would be stupid. For the others, well for foreigners its up to everyone to decide if thier life is worth them. I'm Canadian and think these wars can't be justified unless saving lives.

[@nledaig]

In both wars Canadian soldiers participated on behalf of the UK with great bravery and cost almost from the start. The Canadian troops often viewed the UK as their homeland which for tens of thousands it was.

[@haroldkerrii6085]

One word: BORING