James Holland

@james-holland · 27 positions · On ppll ↗

British historian and writer specialising in the Second World War, author of the War in the West series and co-host of the podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk.

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What James Holland says most about

war 23

From the moment Hitler took power in 1933 a war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was inevitable; only which of them would fire first was undecided.
France was so traumatised by the First World War that it became risk averse, and by being risk averse it took a far greater risk.

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Europe 5

France was so traumatised by the First World War that it became risk averse, and by being risk averse it took a far greater risk.
Britain and France's refusal to negotiate seriously with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939 was the great missed opportunity to snooker the Third Reich.

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Russia 4

From the moment Hitler took power in 1933 a war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was inevitable; only which of them would fire first was undecided.
Operation Barbarossa should never have come close to being a victory; the Germans got as far as they did because of Red Army and Soviet incompetence, not German prowess.

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America 3

The familiar narrative of the war — useless Britain, the world's best German army beaten only because Hitler was mad — is an artefact of how the world looked in the 1970s and 1980s, not of how it looked in 1939.
D-Day is remembered as a predominantly American show, but all three service commanders were British and two-thirds of the aircraft and of the men landed were British and Dominion.

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government 2

Chamberlain's choice at Munich was understandable rather than craven: no democratic leader in 1938 could have taken his country to war against 92% of its population.
Decapitate a strong leader without a solution for the power vacuum and bad elements sweep in very quickly — a lesson of the Second World War that Iraq ignored.

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