[Osage Orange]

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies.

At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries.

Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, 'whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.'

He then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?'

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied 'Maybe it's because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'

You could have heard a pin drop

[heights]

The War to make the World safe for Stalin. Just another Sucker War. We’d have been better off staying out.

[granada]

Who are “We”?

[heights]

In the not too distant future, Europeans will look out their windows on an Islamic Europe, and wish Hitler had won.

[tallyhoe]

Right after WW2 we should have went to war against Communism!

[Spiridon]

I’m not sure why this is being posted, but I guess Hitchens may be someone who needs to be smeared as we appear to be on the verge of trouble in Syria, dead serious trouble.

Hitchens reminds everyone when the topic of Syria comes up that the admirers of Bin Laden as in Al-Qaeda are the opponents of Assad and those guys fighting the dictator Assad are a bunch of terrorists who butcher and kill but have a nice propaganda department called the “White Helmets”.

[Teacher317]

But the sad truth is that this country deliberately sought a war in the vain hope of preserving a Great Power status our rulers knew in their hearts it had already lost. The resulting war turned us into a second-rate power.

MYTH 1: WE WERE FORCED INTO WAR BY THE GERMANS

Britain actively sought a war with Germany from the moment Hitler invaded Prague in March 1939. Even before then, there were powerful voices in the Foreign Office urging the need to assert ourselves as a Great Power.

Nonsense.

[Pete Dovgan]

The author of this piece laments the loss of the British empire, and freely admits that it was failing before WWII. He tries to focus on WWII as the accelerator of this demise. Therefore, he states myths as facts, and facts as myths. This skewed view leads to a radically incorrect interpretation.

The British decline occurred primarily because it lost to many good men in WWI. It was devastating conflict for the empire. That explains the pre-war decline. The post war decline is far faster, and is solely due to the choice of the British people. Socialism. Britain choose not a competitive vibrant economy, it choose socialism. The decline over just a few decades almost mirrors the devastation of Argentina, who had the most vibrant South American economy until Socialism.

There is a clear historical lesson. Socialism destroyes economies, and destroyed economy cannot support an empire. Intellectual honesty could save those British colonies, whom protect a free world still. Unfortunately, the author lacks the vision of reality.

[Nextrush]

Hitchens can certainly shock folks with his views but I find them always refreshing.

He hits hard at political correctness every time and whatever he has to say about World War 2 in saying so he shows no disrespect to his father, who served in the Royal Navy as a career officer right through the war and beyond.

He is simply saying WW 2 was one more nail in the coffin of the UK.

Hitchens calls himself the scribe of his country’s “obituary” and he is just trying to describe the dying process during the Second World War.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"And our absorption into the EU – which is the continuation of Germany by other means – is not the fate of a dominant victor nation."

No truer words were ever spoken. Htiler's true goal was Germany hegemony on the Continent. This has been the German goal since the modern state was created out of the German confederation in 1871. The true war they should have fought would have been helping France in 1870. War is just conducting politics by another means. Germany has now achieved that goal thorugh the EU. For Britain, they should continue on with Brexit or accede to Germany hegemony. There is no third option. They have to think of the long game, it's hard now but necessary for their country.

[Real Cynic No More]

Peter Hitchens is talking about Britain not winning the war, as if he is resentful of the British empire not being able to go it alone. Yes, Britain did win the war, but did so with the help of its allies. Hitchens is actually resentful of the loss of the British empire ruling over the rest of the world, refusing to recognize, even acknowledge, that its policies of draining resources, subjugating citizens, its means of colonialism by placing wealthy “plantation-like” chieftains in charge with lityle accountability, was doomed to ultimate failure. If he longs for winning that war, he’s right. The American experiment proved that the people will rise up and throw off their shackles once they learn it can be done.

[jim_trent]

He says that Chamberlain rearmed England. Wrong. Chamberlain went along with what others insisted on. He did not originate the rearming and did not support it. He only went along because he knew he would lose if he opposed it too strongly.

[x]

That is a fashionable view in some British circles, and it's the sort of thing that some British intellectuals love.

They get so sick of the established historical narratives that they loudly and defiantly proclaim the opposite.

It's not any more true -- usually it's less true -- but it isn't boring and it does purge out all the tired orthodoxies people grew up with.

I don't think we have to take Peter's article very that seriously.