There are two pleasures on Sunday morning: not reading the Sunday papers, and reading The Spectator.
First I was drawn to Peter Brown’s pictures. I think there may be a small space for one in Barons Court. Then I realised I have never read Chronicles of Narnia, and it’s a bit late now. I enjoyed comments by a couple of reviewers: “ Why does the Bush (theatre) promote this sort of xenophobic twaddle?” And, reviewing Jonathan Sumption’s Law in a Time of Crisis, “ … there would be a good book to be written about law in a time of crisis. Sadly it isn’t this one”.
Now Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Napoleon’, The Greatest Movie Never Made. Instead he made Barry Lyndon, a great movie. MGM was right to steer clear of a Kubrick realisation of Napoleon. Stanley’s first choice to play the Emperor was David Hemmings; from Bertie Wooster to Napoleon?
Stalin’s War, by Sean McMeekin, £40, 848 pages, posits that Stalin got the better of the western Allies in WW II and was able to invade and rule Eastern Europe. I thought about something else. What would have happened if Hitler had been killed in July 1944? Stalin was already on the march but would a negotiated peace even as late as 1944 have stopped Stalin in his tracks and thwarted, to some extent, the expansionism of Russia in the second half of the 20th century?
And why did Hitler invade Russia in June 1941? He hadn’t quite wrapped up the war in the west, yet he committed more than three million German troops, nineteen panzer divisions, 3,000 tanks, 2,500 aircraft, and 7,000 artillery pieces across a thousand-mile eastern front. He thought he had the Allies beat and saw that when he controlled all of Western Europe he would need to make sure he held his eastern territories – the ones he first invaded. He did not envisage the United States entering the war in December 1941 (Pearl Harbour). Crucially he believed the Allies would prefer German rule to Russian rule – big mistake, but he was encouraged by British appeasers. It’s ironic that as Russia created an empire at the end of the war, Britain simultaneously dismantled an empire. There you go!
I should point out that Hitler declared war on the United States, not vice-versa. He was under no obligation to do so–the Japanese did not resume their fight with the USSR after Hitler invaded it. No doubt the US would have come in, but Hitler made it easier on FDR, and cut the ground from under the America Firsters’ feet.
“got the better of the western Allies in WW II and was able to invade and rule Eastern Europe”. He was able to invade Eastern Europe because he got the better of the western Axis. From 1941 on, the number of German divisions engaged by the Russians was always considerably in excess of the number engaged by the western Allies.