The Dolphin Christ no, she’s a horrible old lefty.

@@MrCameronian I wasn't talking about her political leanings. I was talking about her intelligence, attitude, mental and emotional maturity, incisive technique in conversation with a great thinker like PH. If you dismiss her simply because she's "a horrible old lefty" that says more about the kind of "lovely young righties" you would prefer to see in that role, and also what a rabid bigot you are to think someone of a different political leaning to you must somehow automatically be inferior. She is a massively respected journalist and historian, (how else do you think she got the gig, you fuckwit). And, interestingly, Hitchens showed her a lot of respect, which just shows how much of a greater man he is than you! You're an ignoramous and a twat.

The Dolphin A respected historian 🤣 If she’s any kind of historian her work must have escaped me, nor is she a deep or profound thinker, she’s an old leftist hack, that’s why she’s chairing the meeting. You don’t know much about the Edinburgh literary bubble do you ... and try to refrain from ruderies, just makes you sound a bit common.

@@MrCameronian You are indeed a curiously deluded person -- who insists on stating and then restating your political opinions and prejudices at any juncture when (1) the substance of the video interview above was intended to provide insight into Hitchen's mind and book, which I think it did extremely well, (2) Hirchen's book was about political and military history, not about present day political issues, as you have unnecessarily steered it, (3) the interviewer was incredibly erudite and well read, which made her a good choice of anchorperson. And all I did was to state her intelligence and clearheadedness (read unbiased) in her role. And then out you burst from behind the bushes to lambast me and the interviewer. You obviously have an incredibly high opinion of yourself, such that you are unable to sort the objective from the subjective ... exactly the point I made in my first reply to you. Now good day and fuck off.

The Dolphin I live here, I suspect you do not, Ruth Wishart and her kind have instigated or supported the economic, industrial and societal decline of Scotland, she might look like your granny but she’s poison (and a big fan of Tommy Sheridan before that mask slipped). I will refrain from a parting obscenity but wish you very happy Christmas instead 🎄

Has there been a war of Kings where they laid waste to each others kingdoms ? As we all saw, the plutocracies were all too willing to smash up europe, hell people say if Germany defeated the USSR then the plutocracies would have just nuked europe too until Germany surrendered.

@@AFGuidesHD Not plutocracies, more like progressives(commies) would have destroyed Europe to achieve world domination, which they did and we are still living in the new deal nightmare

it's an absolutely enormous oversimplification of history though, as the deadliness of war in the 20th century was due far more to scientific advancement than it was failures of democracy. The wars started because of the main weaknesses of democratic systems, but technology is what made it brutal, hence why many of the monarchies that also participated in both world wars were every bit as brutal as their democratic counterparts.

True. It killed me to see an adult say "oh just stop being negative", what an asinine statement. I wonder if the lad had to take LSD and watch children morning shows after this rare check-in with reality.

Make the UK great again.

@@NickAlekseyevich We Happy Few

Yeah I'm glad the interviewer glossed over him. Peter hitchens on britain: "I love every field and hedgerow"

Fw. vewgdsq|

Yes I've read the lot Plus those of his brother

How wonderful would that be? His Audible readings of his own books give such great pleasure.

Hitler gambled a lot on Britain not fighting against it's own interests. It did.

@@mrh9635 simply tragic when you read "Wagner: memoirs of a confidant". Resisting Germany in an area where Britain had no interests simply to appease warmongers on the opposite side of the House of Commons was the most ludicrous episode in history.

@@witssen9954 Now that's not simply true. All Germany was doing was reversing the effects of the treaty of versailles, which was giving people unacceptable standards of living. The invasion of Poland, like Hitchens noted, was a result of Poland nullifying a Germany-Poland non-aggression pact because Poland created a pact with the Western powers against Germany, which implicitly violated the agreement. Germany thus declared it null. Poland had begun drafting war plans against Germany (before Germany did), and begged France/UK to start a war with them. Poland then fully mobilized their army, and many higher ups were starting to think they should launch an invasion against Germany now while the agreements with the Western powers were still fresh. None of Germany's demands are materially odious to the war-making capabilities of Poland. Danzig isn't materially odious. The corridors aren't materially odious. Neither of these reduced Poland's combat power, nor do these lands were ever as big as the lands that Poland have taken from Germany after WW1 in the first place.

@@witssen9954 He doesn't. David Irving stated that Churchill's denial of Hitlers 'peace-offer' was the most stupid blunder to make.

After watching the full talk, I agree with you.

my god yes ! if he fades away the collective intelligence of the nation will drop through the floor !!

Germany modernised and adapted its culture. The UK didn't. It's as simple as that.

Explain just how Poland was responsible for starting the Second World War?

@Eric Hamilton nothing to do with Hitler's policy of Lebensraum and forcibly taking territory in the East, staging an incident involving concentration camp inmates dressed in Polish army uniforms then?

​@@simonholyoak8869 you should read the book peter mentioned "March 1939: The British guarantee to Poland" also, even more interesting is "documents on british foreign policy" there you will find hardly anyone defending the actions of Poland apart from the British ambassador to Poland, during the summer of 1939. With its aggressions against Danzig. Particularly you should read the reports by M. Shepherd, the British consul general in Danzig. For example on his report 3 days after the German invasion ""It will be remembered that Gauleiter Forster made certain suggestions to the League of Nations High Commissioner on the 19th July designed to lead to a détente over the Danzig question. Even before this there had been signs that a détente was desired. It seems in retrospect as if the détente might have been achieved had it not been for the action of the Polish government in sending what amounted to an ultimatum on the night of 4th August" Did you know Poland threatened to bomb Danzig? Did you know Poland issued an ultimatum to Danzig? Did you know Poland blocked food exports from Danzig? No of course not because the Poland-Danzig issue is totally ignored in Western Historiography for obvious reasons, because when you actually take these issues into account suddenly "mustache man's war of conquest" merely becomes allied propaganda.

@@simonholyoak8869 The British Ultimatium gave the Polish government great confidence leading to a very aggressive foreign policy towards Germany. Only a few years earlier, the two nations had excellent relations.

'It would be foolish to have a large amount of well-educated unemployed people living in our cities.' Margaret Thatcher.

jaye see And Tony Blair implemented Thatchers Policy,.

No Mr. hitchens is not right. He has a point of view, a perspective, an angle. Faulting others for doing the same is not the same as making a case.

jaye see - re your quote from Margaret Thatcher, it beggars belief that people with such an attitude can get in to positions of power. I presume she said that in private and did not mean for it to become public?

Correction - If you are (you're) well read and not your well read!!!!!!

Voltaire died in 1778, that's 111 years before Hitler was born.

I think he's joking.

lol you stupid fuck

An appalling war monger. Disgraceful man.

Europe to be demographically non-european by the end of the century, but at least we aren't speaking German!

@Stevie0445 Stalin was responsible for the exact same crimes, and we gave him half of Europe when it was all said and done. We declared war on Germany for our own interests, don't pretend the world leaders at the time gave a shit about European countries being invaded, thats a poor excuse.

This guy knows.

@@AleXoEx0 You wont need cheap labor if you develop ai and robots.

I don't think anyone who is Russian, or claiming to be, can criticise Churchill when the Russian war was overseen by a homicidal maniac called Stalin. Stalin made Hitler look like an amateur.

@AL AL exactly

@AL AL and Caspian sea Navy. And Archangel

Do remember the timeline. Britian fought against the germans in 1939 although the actual fighting with them largely began in 1940. Germany then attacked the soviets in 1941. We didnt exactly pick between them, we were already fighting germany and then found ourselves fighting the same enemy as the soviets.

@@andrewshaw1571 !!! Wow. Your history knowledge is appalling. Read my message again. The words "1939" & "Already" might help.

@@jonesalex565 I didnt contradict the claim of the soviet (particularly under stalin) mass murder/neglect. I am also more than aware of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. You'll have to forgive me if the statement that we fought with the soviets was taken as an implication that we chose to side with one as opposed to finding ourselves fighting the same enemy 2 years later and choosing to join forces. Or were you implying we should have either fought both at the same time or attacked the soviets, who were considered a lesser threat at time and abandoned poland to the germans? Otherwise, i cant think what the point of your original comment was or what its relevance was.

Pat Butcher. Lovely woman.

True, to those of similar ages to ourselves, the assertion that Britain fought to save Jews is palpable nonsense. Trouble is, the generations that have followed us are more remote from the historical facts of the day, and are therefore much more susceptible to the rebranding of WWII to suit various political agendas that have sprung up comparatively recently. And to which the organisers thereof will consider a co opting of a false interpretation of the actual aims of the time to be helpful. Clearly, if even the Prince of Wales sees fit to parrot such nonsense then one might be forgiven for thinking that such a bogus reinterpretation has taken root to the point of becoming an accepted fact in minds of many.

Kudos for the obscure floyd reference. I suspect the Hitchens family always ate their meat before their pudding.

That’s quite silly given the context - grow up.

@@123prestolee Ooooeeewww. Calm down, love.

Deep Zepp indeed. I quite enjoyed imagining him to be dressed as a hipster. It rather adds a new vibe to his address.

123prestolee Life is silly - grow up.

Actually Peter is not wearing trainers 23:47 - Ruth is one wearing them.

@James Dowds kulaks,gulags, rape of East Germany, ethnic cleansing of many groups, expansionist etc

@James Dowds Hitler was a sentimental amateur compared to Stalin. Read up on the biographies of the two. Hitler cannot even begin to compare. Also, the level of state tyranny was incomparable. While Hitler did target many groups based on race and ethnicity to absolutely terrible degree, the "master race" populations were largely left alone (relatively speaking of course). Stalin's USSR was total terror, all the time for everyone and in addition to this he deliberately genocided whole particular nations and peoples just like Hitler did. Historical bias made us skew our perception, and while both were excerable human beings leading horrible dystopias, Stalin was the worse one. When you read up on Hitler you can't escape the impression that he was somehow playacting this role of the Great Dictator and Superman, like something he picked up from books, a deeply childish personality - a twisted Peter Pan reliving his childhood historical fantasies of total power. Stalin, on the other hand... he was a natural, the sheer matter-of-hand brutality of the way he conducted his daily life of mass murderer is in a stark contrast to Hitler who went to inordinate lengths never to directly face the results of his orders or to sign a single execution order (except in, again, a childish fit of rage regarding British commando units)

@James Dowds I wasn't talking about the absolute scale of the holocausts, but the proportion of people who were impacted, as well as the totality of tyranny. Also, when asking who was worse, are we talking about the regime or the person? Imho, Stalin was "worse" than Hitler both as a person and in the impact of his actions on the population under his rule at large. We might talk about "what ifs" but this is mere speculation. Hitler could have well cooled off after WWII, or got removed or.. whatever, just like Stalin mysteriously and suddenly died and got replaced by a much milder and (relatively) more humane Khruschev. Coulda, woulda, shoulda... And while we're at the subject of awful people in power, no one in the 20th century holds candle to Pol Pot. Both Hitler and Stalin look like paragons of enlightened humanity compared to that deranged monster even though he managed to kill less people in absolute terms than either of them.

@@electricdreams8237 Nobody really cares about Hitler, the man, or Stalin, the man. What can one man do? What is being compared here is the ideology of the Nazis on the one hand and that of the Bolsheviks/Communists on the other. The National Socialist Party had full control over Germany for only 12 years, yet the evil they perpetrated was far worse than anything the USSR did in any 12-year-period. Stalin was in power for FAR longer. Moreover, Stalin did NOT attempt genocide: if he had done, he would have had plenty of time to see it through. Yet the Ukrainian people are still here, as are every other ethnic group that suffered under his rule. He (or rather, his ideology, since there is every reason to suppose that history would have been pretty much the same with a different leader of the USSR, even if Stalin had died young) targeted only certain TYPES of people (middle class, intellectuals, and anyone who outspokenly opposed communism, etc.). The Nazis, on the other hand, planned (and went a long way toward achieving their plans in only a few years) to exterminate whole ethnic groups - Jews, Romani, and eventually the Poles and other Slavs -- whom they regarded as inferior classes of human being. What they would have done if they had managed to grab hold of a part of Africa does not bear thinking about. The Russian communists, like the Chinese communists, were motivated by an evil ideology, but most decent ordinary people recognise that the evil of Nazism was on a unique and higher level. Normally, one does not have to explain such things to people, with the exception of those suffering from that particularly disgusting (and apparently incurable) form of mental illness known as "anti-Semitism."

@@DieFlabbergast A note: Stalin did not target people only on the basis of class. He did plenty of ethnic cleansings of his own. There are many ethnic groups in former USSR who you have never heard of, and why is that? Because Stalin was uniquely successful in wiping them out completely, unlike Hitler who, it might be argued, never got enough time to finish the job. And as for which ideology is "intrinsically" worse.. I'm not really interested in that, intentions do not equal results - some of the worst crimes in humanity were made in the name of Love or Peace. Who cares if Pol Pot wanted utopia on Earth? And besides we're not talking about that, the ideologies or even regimes. We were talking about particular persons - Hitler and Stalin and which one was "worse". My personal opinion, based on reading histories and biographies is that Stalin was "worse" and that, for example, Himmler was a much "worse" person than Hitler who, in my view, was a bit of a dunderhead and a patsy who really, really wanted to play the role of a super-villain (or super-man in his mind) but never had the stomach, for example, to face the consequences of his actions or even sign an execution order. He left these "distasteful details" to others, unlike Stalin who relished in personally signing off whole families, peoples and nations to oblivion with his treasured colored pencils. Let me put it in another way - what is worse, a person who professes to be bad and does exactly that, or a person who claims to be good and does even worse?

To some extent the UK tried to do that thro' a succession of goverments.First there was the E.C.S.C. & EFTA, with UK belonging to the latter. The US supported the E.C.S.C and despite a great resistance from UK, which pro free trade, UK & the other 6 members of EFTA eventually joined up with the 6 Common Market countries which was not about free trade in a common market but one with a customs union limiting free trade to members only.This of course affected the Commonwealth. It also showed that "free market US "was nothing of the kind.

Your right WW1 was almost 100% certainly a mistake for the UK. It really ended the UK. As Hitchens says the UK in effect defaulted on its WW1 debts in the 1930's. The UK went from being the world's banker in 1914 to a bankrupt 1918. Its youth was decimated but most importantly a lot of its intelligentsia had lost faith in the Imperial experiment. And indeed the ending of the whole Age Of European Empires happened because of WW1.

This is Peter?

I cannot un-hear it now

I have endured this for countless hours through my headphones, for years. I thought it was my pet peeve alone.

I think Hitchens' concern is the importance of the empire...

I agree. Some lecturers in US military schools give Tobruk as much strategic importance as Stalingrad. Then, there is Al-Alamein.

@@1969cmp lol both utterly irrelevant

@@lewistaylor2858 ....because?

the major point and debate is that there might not have been a German invasion without the British guarantee, strengthening Poland's resolve to resist German demands, which up until March 31st were certainly pretty modest (and in the German view, very generous). Evidence to support this view is to look at what actually happened, weimar Germany was far more anti-Polish than Mustache man's Germany, Mustache man began his pro-Polish policy with the non-aggression pact and it culminated with addressing Polish issues in Czechoslovakia. However the major obstacle of a proper rapprochement between Germany and Poland was Danzig where Poland refused to relinquish it, even though Mustache man offered to protect Poland's special rights in the city and even recognizing post-Versailles Polish Borders in his much wanted Treaty of Friendship with Poland. However, instead Britain got involved and stiffened Poland's will to resist the Germans, and since March 31st German-Polish relations went downhill somewhat. Weather malice or incompetance, Britain did have a large part in starting the war, as Noel Mason-MacFarlane would argue to the foreign secretary "without war our desired results may never be achieved" .... "war, and war now with a near eastern front". The eastern front of course being Poland.

To which one should add Ponting's 1940 Myth and Reality. A volume that progressed to the remaindered trade with surprising swiftness, sadly.

sounds like Peter wouldn't have got britain entangled in a russo-german conflict

@@AFGuidesHD that UK & US funded & set up so they cld come in & claim Europe for themselves. Centuries old Russian:German power was too much of a threat.

The English ruling class acts like that. Regular English people below age 25 couldn't point out the USA on a map.

Scott Burns completely agree with you but I absolutely think it’s a bigger problem in England and it seems to stem from a distinct lack of an English identity which I think Hitchens has touched on himself in other interviews. The reason I think it’s less of problem in Scotland is that Scotland has a strong national identity with traditions and customs that bond the nation. England only ever seems to unite over a football match or a royal wedding. Other than that the north / south divide is as wide as ever. England needs to develop and nurture its own culture, not copy every single thing the Americans do.

I agree we shouldn't worship America, but it's nonsense that US forces don't respect us Brits. In desert storm, " yea, the brits are here" was a common shout. We paid them back by stealing their vastly superior food and kit whenever we could

Sam Dunn I certainly didn’t suggest they don’t respect us, am just arguing as Hitchens does there is a one sided romance, a love that simply isn’t shared both ways between the two countries. I agree with peter there is no special relationship but there is a powerful strategic relationship. The difference here has to be distinguished and understood.

@@D97mgtow yea, at the diplomatic levels, we are not important. They need us as an unsinkable air base, but even that need is becoming less relevant to them. The USA is pulling away from Europe, it has nothing to do with trump. The game has changed, govt moves slowly, but blocking a Soviet invasion has been unnecessary for 30 yrs now... Germany will suffer more than us

No, he's just Scottish.