Historians From England

"Communists have no principle or belief except the seizure of power by their party."

"American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself."

"The worker is by nature less imaginative, more level-headed than the capitalist. This is what prevents his becoming one. He is content with small gains. Trade Union officials think about the petty cash; the employer speculates in millions. You can see the difference in their representative institutions. There is no scheme too wild, no rumour too absurd, to be without repercussions on the Stock Exchange. The public house is the home of common sense."

"The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round."

"In my opinion we learn nothing from history except the infinite variety of men’s behaviour. We study it, as we listen to music or read poetry, for pleasure, not for instruction"

"Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves."

"Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else."

"In the last resort the national question is not a question of schools or of government officials—these are mere preliminaries. It is a question of power. Men wish to decide their own destinies. In a national State this leads them to resist kings and emperors and to demand democracy. In a multinational State they resist the rule of other nationalities as well."

"From Luther to Hitler the Germans have always wanted an iron framework of discipline to keep them in reasonable order; when they lose this, they go mad, as Nietzsche did, and it was only to be expected that the Germans would follow his example rather than his teaching."

"The traditional "liberties of England" rested on law and custom, not on rational dogma; and the man who maintained them, as in Poland or Hungary, was the country squire. He maintained them no doubt for his own profit and advantage, a point which Feiling is inclined to slide over; still England would not be a free country without him. The unique feature of our history is that the conservative defender of liberty had to take other classes into partnership, and finally indeed found himself in the position of a tolerated minority."

"In essence, Toryism rests on doubt in human nature; it distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions, prefers the past to the future. It is a sentiment rather than a principle."

"In my experience Communism is intellectual alcohol – nasty and harmful if taken neat, but an essential ingredient of every stimulating drink."

"The massacre of Peterloo shook the moral prestige of the old order as nothing else had done; and English democracy owes a lasting debt to the eleven martyrs of St. Peter's Fields."

"I am not a philosophic historian. I have no system, no moral interpretation. I write to clear my mind, to discover how things happened and how men behaved. If the result is shocking or provocative, this is not from intent, but solely because I try to judge from the evidence without being influenced by the judgements of others."

"Maxton's failure was more than the failure of a man. It was the failure of a movement – the movement of romantic revolutionary socialism. Keir Hardie, Maxton's predecessor, could combine romance and reality... Revolutionary Socialism turned into the Bolshevik dictatorship; parliamentary Socialism achieved the practical gains of the Welfare State. There was no third way between Lenin and Arthur Henderson."

"The things that really matter have nothing to do with politics. Love between friends. Good books. The beauties of nature."

"Once hitch yourself to the Establishment and you must become the supporter of injustice sooner or later."

"Quakerism has always been in danger of smugness, and is redeemed from it only by an obstinate radicalism."

"War must come into the record of history, whatever else is left out. It has been the greatest single factor in the shaping of human history."

"The United States remains a country where there is trial by jury and more freedom of expression of every sort of opinion than anywhere else in the world – including England."

"I am against inequality of the sexes, as much as I am against class privilege or colour prejudice."

"National freedom is as important as economic freedom or the freedom of the individual."

"The Communist Party is not concerned with peace or with better conditions; it is only concerned with power. It exploits everyone, including its own members, for this purpose."

"Human reason is the only saviour we have... We need more education, not less; more science, not less; more hope for the future, and more confidence in it."

"It is the theme which has run through European history since the French Revolution—the search for stability in an unstable world. The great revolution destroyed tradition as the basis for society; ever since men have been seeking for something to take its place."

"This is the explanation of the paradox of the "Third Reich." It was a system founded on terror, unworkable without the secret police and the concentration camp; but it was also a system which represented the deepest wishes of the German people. In fact it was the only system of German government ever created by German initiative. The old empire had been imposed by the arms of Austria and France; the German Confederation by the armies of Austria and Prussia. The Hohenzollern empire was made by the victories of Prussia, the Weimar republic by the victories of the Allies. But the "Third Reich" rested solely on German force and German impulse; it owed nothing to alien forces. It was a tyranny imposed upon the German people by themselves."

"The failure of the "good Germans," not the ranting of the "bad" ones, was the real crime of Germany against European civilization."

"British history has been made by a series of true compromises. The landed classes compromised with the merchants at the beginning of the eighteenth century; this coalition compromised with the industrial capitalists in the time of Peel; and Peel's coalition has compromised with the industrial workers in our own day. Since the days of Cromwell there has never been in England a class or a party determined to force through its extreme claims, whatever the cost; the terrible exception was in the early months of 1914. No such compromise took place in Germany. The Bismarckian Reich was a dictatorship imposed on the conflicting forces, not an agreement between them."

"1848 was the decisive year of German, and so of European, history: it recapitulated Germany's past and anticipated Germany's future. Echoes of the Holy Roman Empire merged into a prelude of the Nazi "New Order"; the doctrines of Rousseau and the doctrines of Marx, the shade of Luther and the shadow of Hitler, jostled each other in bewildering succession. Never has there been a revolution so inspired by a limitless faith in the power of ideas; never has a revolution so discredited the power of ideas in its result. The success of the revolution discredited conservative ideas; the failure of the revolution discredited liberal ideas. After it, nothing remained but the idea of Force, and this idea stood at the helm of German history from then on. For the first time since 1521, the German people stepped on to the centre of the German stage only to miss their cues once more. German history reached its turning-point and failed to turn. This was the fateful essence of 1848."

"The history of the Germans is a history of extremes. It contains everything except moderation, and in the course of a thousand years the Germans have experienced everything except normality."

"The object of policy is not to prove one's moral worth, but to succeed."

"The details of diplomatic history do indeed seem of irredeemable triviality; but in fact, diplomatic history deals with the greatest of themes – with the relations of States, with peace and war, with the existence and destruction of communities and civilization."

"The only danger to history today is that historians are sometimes too modest and try to find excuses for their task. It is safer as well as sounder to be confident. Men write history for the same reason that they write poetry, study the properties of numbers, or play football—for the joy of creation; men read history for the same reason that they listen to music or watch cricket—for the joy of appreciation. Once abandon that firm ground, once plead that history has a "message" or that history has a "social responsibility" (to produce good Marxists or good Imperialists or good citizens) and there is no logical escape from the censor and the Index, the O.G.P.U. and the Gestapo."

"Anglo-German relations between 1884 and 1914 abound in these private letters and unofficial visits, culminating in another British surrender and renewed protestations of friendship. But in the last years before 1914 British politicians were beginning to realise that only one thing could end these quarrels and secure German friendship for ever—the adoption of a policy which would give the Germans what they called security, but what to others appeared as German hegemony over the entire continent of Europe. Even Gladstone and Granville would have been unwilling to buy German friendship at this price."

"The average Englishman was ashamed of the British Empire and believed (quite wrongly) that it had been acquired in some wicked fashion... This sense of sin placed British governments at a disadvantage in their negotiations with Germany: they were convinced of the justice of German grievances even before the grievances were expressed. British governments had spent most of the nineteenth century trying to prevent the growth of the British Empire, and still it had grown; German governments had done their utmost to encourage colonial enterprise, and yet their empire was a failure; clearly it was the fault of British governments and they must put it right... there they stood, ears anxiously cocked for the next German complaint. Moreover, British politicians have always been peculiarly sensitive to the charge of "unfriendliness" towards other politicians or other countries... Granville's letters to Herbert Bismarck—my dear fellow, what can be wrong?—are not unique in the record of British policy, and if the dear fellow insists on this or that as the price of renewing eternal friendship, of course he must have it."

"Injustice occurs in free states as in despotic states; and the attempt to right the wrong is as unpopular and dangerous in the one as in the other – as the case of Zola shows. The difference between free and unfree countries is that in the free country there are always men who will champion the unpopular cause at whatever the cost. It is this stage army of the good, with its slightly ridiculous reappearances which alone keeps our liberties alive. The Dreyfus case, at its outset, was a disgrace for France; but because of the struggles of a small minority it ended in bringing France more glory than all the campaigns of Napoleon."

"A revolution cannot be judged by the ordinary standards of academic morality."

"Irving does have a rounded and developed theory of Fascism, which is to say that he has studied it a lot and thinks it’s had a bum rap. He’s even been quoted as calling himself a “mild Fascist” or “a moderate Fascist”—oxymoronic if true."

"Mr. Irving's constant references to archives, diaries and letters, and the overwhelming amount of detail in his work, suggest objectivity. In fact they put a screen behind which a very different agenda is transacted… Mr. Irving is a great obfuscator ... Distortions affect every important aspect of this book to the point of obfuscation… It is unfortunate that Mr Irving wastes his extraordinary talents as a researcher and writer on trivializing the greatest crimes in German history, on manipulating historical sources and on highlighting the theatrics of the Nazi era."

"A man for whom Hitler is something of a hero and almost everything of an innocent, and for whom Auschwitz is a Jewish deception."

"I am a Baby Aryan, Not Jewish or Sectarian. I have no plans to marry-an Ape or Rastafarian."

"I am not anti-coloured, take it from me; nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at an airport, or a station, or a seaport, and I see a coloured family there — the black father, the black wife and the black children… When I see these families arriving at the airport I am happy, and when I see them leaving at London airport I am happy. But if there is one thing that gets up my nose, I must admit, it is this — the way… the thing is when I am down in Torquay and I switch on my television and I see one of them reading our news to us. It is our news and they’re reading it to me. If I was a chauvinist I would say I object even to seeing women reading our news to us. But now we have women reading our news to us. If they could perhaps have their own news which they were reading to us, I suppose [laughter], it would be very interesting. For the time being, for a transitional period I'd be prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman reading the important news to us, following by a lady reading all the less important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving us all the latest news about the muggings and the drug busts…"

"The interesting questions are what did Hitler know, did Himmler conceal it, did he keep it from Hitler, where was the killing done, was it Auschwitz, was it the Reinhard camps and that's what people are frightened to research, because they go to prison for it."

"The Nazis quite clearly killed millions of Jews..."

"What you're saying is 'Has a historian the right to offend?' and the answer is very definitely, yes."

"The defendants will find it very hard to prove it was a Third Reich decision and an Adolf Hitler decision. There were multiple shootings but it was not pursuant to any programme."

"I deny that millions died in the gas chambers because of the logistical problems for a start."

"When I get to Australia in January I know what is going to happen. They are going to wheel out all the so-called eyewitnesses. One in particular, Mrs. Altman, I've clashed with once or twice. She is very convincing. They can be very convincing. Because they have to do it so often over the years. They've had a free run. We're going to meet because she has that tattoo. I am going to say, "You have that tattoo, we all have the utmost sympathy for you. But how much money have you made on it! In the last 45 years! Can I estimate! Quarter of a million! Half million! Certainly not less. That's how much you've made from the German taxpayers and the American taxpayers." Ladies and gentlemen, you're paying $3 billion a year to the State of Israel. Compensation to people like Mrs. Altman. She'll say, "Why not, I suffered." I'll say you didn't. You survived. By definition you didn't suffer. Not half as much as those who died.... They suffered. You didn't. You're the one making the money. Explain to me this. Why have you people made all the money, but Australian soldiers who suffered for five years in Japanese prison camps haven't got a bent nickel out of it!"

"Until the end of this tragic century there will always be incorrigible historians, statesmen, and publicists who are content to believe, or have no economically viable alternative but to believe, that the Nazis used "gas chambers" at Auschwitz to kill human beings. But it is now up to them to explain to me as an intelligent and critical student of modern history why there is no significant trace of any cyanide compound in the building which they have always identified as the former gas chambers."

"I don't think there was any overall Reich policy to kill the Jews. If there was, they would have been killed and there would not be now so many millions of survivors. And believe me, I am glad for every survivor that there was."