Michael Gove, our esteemed Secretary of State for Education recently shot his mouth off over World War I in a confused and clueless attempt to rebrand World War I as a heroic fight of British Heroes against the Evils of Germany instead of a staggering human tragedy.
The smack down he's received in response is quite telling, this piece from Richard Evans is delightfully damning, I particularly like the closing section
Even Margaret MacMillan, who Gove himself froths about dismissed his failed grasp of history
It's frankly embarrassing that this man can hold such an important position in our government.
The smack down he's received in response is quite telling, this piece from Richard Evans is delightfully damning, I particularly like the closing section
And who are these people who are peddling "leftwing versions of the past designed to belittle Britain and its leaders"? Step forward, please, Professor Niall Ferguson, a self-styled right-winger whose book The Pity of War argues that it was wrong for Britain to enter the war in 1914 and claims that the British government of the day should have left the continental powers to slug it out among themselves. Step forward, please, Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, whose trenchant criticisms of British generals such as Sir John French in his latest book Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 yield nothing in their severity to the coruscating attacks levelled at Sir Douglas Haig and other leaders of the British army by the late Conservative MP Alan Clark in his book The Donkeys, a term used to describe the British military performance in the war ("lions led by donkeys", was a phrase he attributed to a German commentator but later admitted he had invented himself).
None of these men could remotely be described as leftwing, yet all of them convicted Britain and its leaders either of making the wrong decision in 1914 or of turning the war effort into a "misbegotten shambles" – the words Gove uses to describe the portrayal of the conflict by the likes of Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder. The arguments that will rage about the war over the coming months and years have nothing to do with left versus right; anyone who wants proof of this has only to read the comments thread on Gove's article in the Mail Online, where the newspaper's readers, few of whom I would guess would describe themselves as leftwingers, overwhelmingly reject his views.
None of these men could remotely be described as leftwing, yet all of them convicted Britain and its leaders either of making the wrong decision in 1914 or of turning the war effort into a "misbegotten shambles" – the words Gove uses to describe the portrayal of the conflict by the likes of Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder. The arguments that will rage about the war over the coming months and years have nothing to do with left versus right; anyone who wants proof of this has only to read the comments thread on Gove's article in the Mail Online, where the newspaper's readers, few of whom I would guess would describe themselves as leftwingers, overwhelmingly reject his views.
Even Margaret MacMillan, who Gove himself froths about dismissed his failed grasp of history
The historian Margaret MacMillan, warden of St Antony's College, Oxford, whose views of the war were, according to the Daily Mail, supported by Gove, also took issue with much of the education secretary's approach.
"You take your fans where you get them, I guess," she said. "I agree with some of what Mr Gove says, but he is mistaking myths for rival interpretations of history. I did not say, as Mr Gove suggests, that British soldiers in the first world war were consciously fighting for western liberal order. They were just defending their homeland and fighting what they saw as German militarism."
She added: "I wish we could see understanding the first world war as a European issue, or even a global one, and not a nationalistic one."
"You take your fans where you get them, I guess," she said. "I agree with some of what Mr Gove says, but he is mistaking myths for rival interpretations of history. I did not say, as Mr Gove suggests, that British soldiers in the first world war were consciously fighting for western liberal order. They were just defending their homeland and fighting what they saw as German militarism."
She added: "I wish we could see understanding the first world war as a European issue, or even a global one, and not a nationalistic one."
It's frankly embarrassing that this man can hold such an important position in our government.
