1940: Myth and Reality

by Clive Ponting

Book Overview

Britain's Finest Hour revealed as a muddle of ineptitude and propaganda. Thoroughly researched and well written, Clive Ponting's book stands just about every preconceived notion concerning Britain's role in World War II on its head.-William L. O'Neill.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566630363
• ISBN13: 9781566630368
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
• Length: 273 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

If true, illuminating

I read Mitford's "Best of Enemies" and realized it was based on this book (among others) for crucial assumptions. So I purchased this, and then I realized I already had Ponting's "World History", which I had read in 2002 or whereabouts and forgotten. So I reread it and then the one I'm reviewing. Well, this product reinforced the impression I had of P. as an 'angry young man' (irrespective of his age). But, unlike the other one, I found this to be truly illuminating. I know (or better, have read) a lot, but really a lot, about WW1, WW2 and European history, and didn't find a single mistake in what P. wrote. What I can't vouch for are the accuracy of the quotations and their lack of bias. It seems to me, for example, that P.'s out to cut Churchill ("Ch.") back to size. That Ch. in his war memoirs wrote for his historic persona is undeniable, and indeed unavoidable: I doubt that anybody can write impartially of himself. But that goes for Chamberlain and Halifax too. As 'pacifists', no doubt they wouldn't have wanted to be alone and thus would have tended to depict Ch. as hesitating in the grim moments of French defeat in the spring of 1940. So their memories and notes are apt to be embellished, too. I can't believe that Ch., the arch-imperialist, would have accepted, as P. in p. 107 implies without stating it explicitly, to cede Gibraltar, Malta and Suez, three of the four keys to India, or said, as stated (?) in Chamberlain's diary that "if we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar and some African colonies, he would jump at it". Well, why didn't he? Surely Hitler, to bring about peace with England, would have restrained Mussolini, as he did in the case of the French (which had been after all utterly defeated) and their colonies. So I don't find that part of the book clinches P.'s case. Also, I find he equivocates. Thus in p. 108 he writes: "Ch. argued in favour, not of continuing the war until victory, but to try to get through the next two or three months before making a decision on whether or not to ask for peace". But what of what he is claimed to have said in p. 107? It's a fact that, after Dunkirk, Hitler offered peace in his Reichstag speech, although obviously without mentioning terms. I don't believe the British Government, if willing, would have been unable to find a circuitous enough route to ask whether Germany and Italy were willing to offer terms, without compromising itself. P. is sometimes also repetitive. But, as he says in p. 97, we'll have to wait "until well into the 21st C" for some Government papers to be available and thus settle the matter. Good book. Read it if you are interested in 20th C European history.

Exciting history

I seek out this book as I enjoy reading books by the historian Clive Ponting, the author of "World History: A New Perspectives" among other works. As the other reviewers have already given the gist of how Clive Ponting tries to de-bunk the British war-time propaganda that have persisted more or less unquestioned till today. What I want to add are two points: 1. With all that is said by Ponting regarding how Churchill was not as much of a hero as his memoirs suggested, Ponting gave credit to Churchill's appointment of a non civil servant to be in charge of Aircraft Production, an appointment with such phenomenal success in accelerating production which turned out to be critical to Britain's war efforts against the Germans. So Ponting's narrative is not as one-sided as some of the prior reviews may suggest. 2. As I read this book, I cannot help seeing how UK near WWII fits with the "hegemonic decline" model as described by those "World System Theorists" such as Wallestein, Arrighi & Frank. As such, I would recommend this book to those of us who are interested not only in "history-as-happened" but also in "history-as-social-science." Enjoy!

Fascinating debunking of British war propaganda

This is a gripping history detailing the disconnect between the actual events of 1940 and the officially promulgated British government mythology which has persisted to this day in the popular mind and in the accounts of transatlantic court historians. Of particular interest to me were the U.K.'s horrific financial straits and its inability to prosecute the war without American aid, the low level of British morale, and the debates in the cabinet about how and when to seek peace terms with Germany after the fall of France. Despite the fact that Churchill claimed in his useless memoirs that the British government never considered a negotiated peace, Ponting shows that it was a consensus in the British cabinet that a negotiated peace was almost a foregone conclusion after the fall of France. Some ministers wanted to seek terms immediately but Mr. "Never Surrender" Churchill wanted to fight on for a few more months only in order to get better terms from Germany. In exchange for British independence, Churchill was willing to hand over Gibraltar, Malta and the Suez Canal to Italy and recognize German domination of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Another interesting indicator of British desperation was Churchill's willingness to cede the Falklands to Argentina and Ulster to the Irish State in order to gain certain marginal military benefits. This is a great book. My only criticism is that it was too short. The myriad half-truths, distortions and lies surrounding the Second World War would have afforded Mr. Ponting sufficient material for multiple volumes.

"Finest Hour" or Milepost on the Route to Oblivion?

British journalist Clive Ponting squares off against Winston Churchill's version of the Second World War and, on balance, gives a credible portrayal of an island nation under siege. Where Churcill depicted Britain's survival from the onslaught of mechanized warfare and the blitz in terms of sheer heroism, Ponting describes a second-rate power simply muddling through in the expectation of deliverance from abroad. On balance, Ponting's account seems more consistent with human nature and thus, more authentic. Churchill's heroes are larger than life, suitably draped with the Union Jack, while the actors in "1940 Myth and Reality" are real people, exhibiting occasional vanity, pettiness and pigheadedness. Those who history has later villified (such as Chamberlain, Halifax, Joseph P. Kennedy and others) appear in his pages as ordinary public servants serving in extraordinary times under impossible economic and political constraints.Those whose leadership is immortalized by statutory found everywhere in contemporary London (Roosevelt, DeGaulle, George VI, and of course, Sir Winston)were of no greater character. They were, however, far luckier. And their timing was better. Those left standing after the ordeal of 1940-42 were not "heroes"; they were simply "survivors". And of the two, they (like most people under similar circumstances) would have preferred the latter. While Ponting finds few heroes in Britain in 1940, the most revealing aspect of his book is his description of the pre-Pearl Harbor financial dealings between Washington and London by which the former intentionally sought to subjugate the latter. Mr Ponting's 235 pages of lucid reporting ought to be required reading in both countries.