"Barnett is no Thatcherite: he does not suppose that a return to laissez-faire in 1945 would have wrought an economic miracle. On the contrary, he believes the Churchill coalition ought to have developed a coherent industrial strategy... Barnett is a joyful debunker of patriotic myth, but not, of course, from a left-wing standpoint. He is probably the only modern British historian whose creed is Bismarckian nationalism. His admiration for the German nation-state, through every stage of its development from 1870 to the present day, is the most prominent theme in the book. There are glowing passages, which make one pause, on the productivity of German industry under the Nazis. No trade-union agitators there, no socialists or liberal softies putting a spanner in the works! The occasional admiring references to the United States do little to modify the teutonic feel of the book. Barnett is, in fact, the heir of Sir John Seeley, the Late Victorian prophet of a federal British Empire, whose admiration for Prussia led him to the conviction that Britain must develop along the same lines or perish as a great power."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Historians from EnglandBiographers from the United KingdomPeople from LondonUniversity of Oxford alumniFellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Paul Addison, 'Warfare and Welfare', London Review of Books, Vol. 8, No. 13 (24 July 1986)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Correlli_Barnett
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Correlli Barnett
Correlli Douglas Barnett (28 June 1927 – 10 July 2022) was an English military historian, who also wrote works of economic history, particularly on the United Kingdom's post-war "industrial decline".
106 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Correlli Barnett →
Related Quotes
"For the British...Jutland has a much deeper significance, for it was in fact a defeat for British technology. More th…"
"Two things caused the decadence of British maritime power: the long peaceful supremacy after Trafalgar and the captur…"
"The war embraced infinitely complex elements and motives. The most important single one of those elements was the str…"
"[I]t was the inner elite (the general staff) of one of the most caste-bound and privileged officer corps in Europe—th…"
"The new German conception of organizing and planning opened the modern epoch of war. Nothing like the minutely doveta…"
"[T]he essential and constant factor common to all three national academies [in Britain, France and America] is the in…"
"The importance of war and military institutions has been generally neglected in British historical writing, whose ton…"
"Of course I entirely agree...that the British plight consists in a low-wage, low-investment, low-productivity economy…"
"It is noteworthy that neither the Labour Party's plans for "reconstructing and regenerating" Britain nor the so-calle…"
"The mistake was enshrined in the preamble to the first German Navy Bill of 1900, by which the new High Seas Fleet was…"