A World At War?

No this is not a blog about the the so-called "War on Terror". This blog is about a real war that fortunately is long over but still fascinates many people including yours truly. World War Two was the largest conflict in human history and recent enough for it's effects to be still unfolding. I started this blog for the reason I suspect most people blog on any serious subject; you've read 'the experts' and now you want to have your own say. I named it after the classic BBC series on the subject (shows my age).

Now is a particularly good time for this particular topic because paradoxically the further we get from WW2 and the more that's written about it the worse it gets. The recent trend in 'pop' history has encouraged this with so-called history books selling on their emotional appeal of a by-gone age of heroes. The more the US and Britain get bogged down in the disasters that are Iraq and Afghanistan the more the public clamour for tales of victory from the good old days of WWII. There is little appetite for real history so little real history gets told. Germans have been forced to come to terms with some of the truth of their WW2 but as the old saw has it history is written by the victors so the standard history of WW2 has a very US and British look to it.

It could be argued that pop history isn't what counts but academia is little better. You don't get a chair of history in Harvard or Oxford by writing a brilliant book on Allied war crimes in the War or by an unflattering comparison of US and British armies with their Japanese (or even Soviet) compatriots.