Virtual History

Last night I was watching an episide of 'Virtual History', the one on the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler in 1944. The show is based on a book with the same title by British historian Niall Ferguson. Ferguson, by the way, is a major empire-phile. Indeed he is one of the few intellectuals that the Neocons in Washington DC actually listen to. He's also a very intelligent man and a good writer, so his work is definitely worth checking out for a number of reasons - it's a good read, he does know his history, and you can bet powerful people listen to what he says.

The documentary on the whole was very good. I liked the way they personalised the decision makers. Basically they showed the daily routines of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin and Hitler. Humanising people like that is important because it helps to demystify them. You begin to realise that they were merely human beings... for the most part.

If there was one complaint I had with the show it was its one-dimensional portrayal of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Every time the narrator spoke about Stalin or the Soviet Union, he could not resist noting that the regime was the most monstrous of the 20th century (presumably, more monstrious than the Nazis!). Some instances of his monstrous decisions were given, like his Army purges and the way he treated Poland after its capture from the Nazis, and they were the type of things no sane person could say were not indeed horrible.

At another point in the show, we saw how Winston Churchill seriously contemplated using poison gas on the Germans, much to the horror of his generals. The narrator explained that this strange request must have had something to do with the pressures of leadership that Churchill bore on his old shoulders. The implication being that Churchill was not the sort to 'normally' make such requests. Whereas Stalin was a monolithic tyrant, Churchill was a human being complete with strengths and weaknesses like any of us.

Yet there was no mention of Churchill's decades long love affair with chemical weapons. For example, Churchill fully supported the use of poison gas in Iraq to put down the rebellion against British occupation. In fact, one of the places where gas was used was Halabja, the predominantly Kurdish city in Iraq where Saddam Hussein was to use poison gas in the 1980s. Interesting how one man has statutes, while the other has been hanged.

Churchill is also the man who sent 1000s of young men to their deaths in Gallipoli on an ill conceived belief that this maneuver could knock Turkey out of the war.

What these episodes indicate is that Churchill was nothing more or less than any other powerful, despotic ruler. Perhaps living conditions were better in the British Isles than the Soviet Union. But that has perhaps more to do with socioeconomics and history than the virtues of the rulers of each country.

That a distinction is maintained between Churchill and Stalin even after all these years is significant, because it shows the enduring power of history. For when we forget inconvenient truths it enables us to repeat the same mistakes time and time again.