Andrew Roberts is a British historian and political commentator and the author of 14 history books on such diverse topics as World War II, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the House of Windsor, as well as “The Aachen Memorandum,” a futuristic novel and political commentary, and edited “What Might Have Been,” a collection of 12 “what if?” essays by prominent historians. His most recent book, “ A Storm of War,” was one of the New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2011.” Born in London, he took a first class honors degree in modern history from Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge. After delivering his CCA lecture on “General William Slim and the Burma Campaign,” Roberts sat down with the Collegian to talk about his work, Hillsdale, and World War II.
You seem to have done quite a lot. Not only are you a historian, but you’re a journalist as well. How did you get to do that?
If you can’t fit quite a lot into half a century then you might as well give up right there. You see, I’ve just had my 50th birthday. Now my wife calls me a pentagenarian. I’m not sure if that’s a word, but it sounds like it should be, doesn’t it?. I’ve written for, I think, about 50 newspapers or journals or magazines in my time, and it’s an interesting job. It’s a bit pathetic now, maybe after a quarter century, but I still like to see my name in print, I still like to have the debate, still like to get emails from people who disagree with me. I suppose it’s just wonderful being actually argumentative.
How did you first get interested in history?
Well, I’ve always loved history as a subject. When I was six and everyone in the class was asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, and they said to be a farmer or what have you, I said I’d be the Lord High Protector of England, because I’d read about Oliver Cromwell. So I was always a pretentious little git, I was really.
I had an inspirational history master called Christopher Perry, who acted out all the various people in history. So, when he talked about the English Civil War, he would be Charles I and Oliver Cromwell and all the characters, so it always just worked for me.
After coming down from university, I tried to become an investment banker, and after about two years, I realized that I was functionally innumerate, and so it was quite sensible not to carry on working in the city in our version of Wall Street. So, I tried to think what else I could do, and there was literally nothing else, apart from writing history books. Unfortunately, the first couple of them were critical successes, but they weren’t financial successes by any means. I don’t think the advances from the publisher actually paid for the taxi fare home. But, nonetheless, they were encouraging. The books were out there and people were nice about them. And so, I decided that that was the thing to do.
How do you choose a topic for your books?
I never choose a topic. That’s probably a major weakness of mine in that the books that I’ve written, I’ve written and edited 12 or 13 books, something like that, and actually the topics have been thought up by my past publisher, my present publisher, my last literary agent, present literary agent, my last wife, my present wife, my father, everybody except me. I never seem to be able to come up with an idea for my books. It can be quite nerve-racking. You never know if your ex-wife is going to come up with an idea, but it’s generally a good system. I’d love to come up with an idea, but I often feel that if I do, I’ll make some kind of weird mistake.
What do you think of Hillsdale?
I love Hillsdale for three reasons. I love it personally, because I really like Larry, Penny, Tim Casper, Jeffery. The people here are incredibly sweet.
I also love it ideologically. I’m a conservative, and so anyone who pledges allegiance to the flag at mealtimes and puts up a statue of Reagan, and teaches the eternal civilizational varieties, there’s something there thats so, so unusual.And the last thing I love it for is that it’s small. I think that there are any number of universities around that have 30,000 people in them and where you frankly don’t recognize anyone and it’s just a giant place. There are very few that have 1200, and, therefore, you are really able to mold the education to the needs of the student rather than the university, and I think that’s a great thing too. I’m told that they turn away an awful lot of applicants, and that is the best possible argument for Hillsdale. They shouldn’t expand to be as big as they can be, they should stay turning people away, because I see nothing wrong with the words ‘exclusivity’ and ‘elite.’ I think both of those words are good words. There will always be somewhere for those other people to be educated if they need it, but you should only have the people that you want to make here.
To turn back to the topic of the CCA, how have films influenced our current perception of World War II?
Films are central to our perception of World War II. They shouldn’t be, memoirs should be, history books should be, and all the other forms of documentational history should be, but let’s not kid ourselves. Movies are central to our understanding of pretty much anything in our culture, and the great thing is that most of the best World War II movies were made at a time when the world was sane, and you had movies like “Dambusters,” like “Dunkirk,” like the “633 Squadron.” I’m talking about British movies here obviously. “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is an American and British film, but it is very much about British military. These movies are really central to my country’s national identity and sense of self.
The great thing is that these movies were made by some of the best directors and written by some of the geniuses of the screenwriting professions. These guys were absolutely first class, and I don’t see that many really good war movies coming out today that are anything like those old movies.
So, when the CCA shows these great old movies, my heart sings, and not just because I’ve been asked to come here and talk about them. My wife says that I can be objective and clear-eyed and serious and rational about most things, but when a Second World War movie gets put on, I become as emotional as a child. I don’t know what that says about me ,but I take it as a compliment
Do you think there’s anything in the general public’s perception of World War II that’s missing?
I think the American perception very much misses the Soviet contribution. Four out of every five Germans killed in combat in the Second World War—I don’t mean civilians killed from the air, I mean soldiers killed in battle—were killed on the Eastern Front. What America and Britain and the West did was to kill the fifth German. We don’t, I think, see that as the central truth of the Second World War. We don’t see it in England terribly much, but we certainly don’t see it over here. And so that, yes, I think that is a major issue. And why not? Because there’s no movie! What is the great Soviet-German struggle? What is the great movie about Stalingrad or Kursk, the Eastern Front, those great struggles? It doesn’t exist. And why not? You only have to look to Carl Foreman, who was blacklisted by McCarthy in the 1950s. There’s no way that Hollywood is going to put out a blockbuster telling the central truth of the Second World War, which is that the Russians won it. The Nazis are always going to be defeated by Colonel Hogan and all that fun D-Day stuff. D-Day was a total side-show when it came to killing Germans.
– Compiled by Chris
McCaffery
