I can't remember verse and chapter, but I like these ideas of his:
We usually draw the wrong lessons from history: I think he was talking about Anthony Eden and Suez crisis, and how he acted on the belief that Nasser was 'the new Hitler'.
I think that is so relevant given the way the neo-cons imagined that Iraq would be like Germany 1945 all over again.
I also think he felt on one level that history was simply storytelling. He said in some languages the words 'history' and 'story' are the same, though I dont know which languages this applies to, perhaps someone on CFC can enlighten me.
You mean, you had different opinions to him, don't forget he lived through the times he wrote about.
His book Origins of the Second World War was semantic, though I have not yet read it, in portraying Hitler as an opportunist, rather than a schemer who had everything worked out from the start. At the time this view was hetrodoxical and controversial as most people belived the latter view, a kind of victors account. Personally I think his view is more reasonable and logical on the face of it. AJP Taylor recognised that there was no such thing as objectivity in history and was prepared to recognise his own values when formulating his ideas. I wish more academics in the arts would drop their pretence of objectivity when approaching history.
I think there is alot of truth in the idea that history is shaped by the politics of the present. For example, after the war he was asked to write a booklet explaining the rise of Hitler for the benefit of Allied servicemen. The idea was to portray the rise of the Nazis as an abboration or anomally of German history. This was an is an important concept because it serves to reinforce Germanys integration into Europe as a modern and progressive state. However, as he looked into the subject hed found that far from being an anomally the Nazis were a confluence of many different strands of German history. The booklet was rejected, but he expanded it into The Course of German History a very thought provoking book. Remember also that Taylor was initially a scholar of the Hapsburgs, so I don't think we should just dismiss his opinions out of hand as mere polemic.
