The Drumbeat of War: No Real Attention To Devastating Consequences

ChatChat - Claudia Cragg

In this repost of a previous interview, Professor Antony Beevor speaks here with Claudia Cragg about his book ''. It is, horribly, more relevant today than it should be. Why do 'those in power' constantly push for war, and what about the aftermath, the 'cleanup' with the so-called 'Win'. History ALWAYS repeats itself. The Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The scale of the undertaking was simply awesome. What followed them was some of the most cunning and ferocious fighting of the war, at times as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front. As casualties mounted, so too did the tensions between the principal commanders on both sides. Meanwhile, French civilians caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing endured terrible suffering. The most vivid and well-researched account yet of the battle of Normandy. As with and , Antony Beevor's gripping narrative conveys the true experience of war. His best known works prior to this include the best-selling and and recount the battles between the and . They have been praised for their vivid, compelling style, their treatment of the ordinary lives of combatants and civilians and the use of newly disclosed documents from Soviet archives.Beevor's works have been used as sources and credited as such in many recent about . Another one of his best known works is for which he won the , administered by the for stimulating interest in and culture. Beevor is descended from a long line of women writers, being a son of (born Carinthia Jane Waterfield, 22 December 1911 – 29 August 1995), herself the daughter of Lina Waterfield, and a descendant of (author of a travelogue on ). Kinta Beevor wrote A Tuscan Childhood. Antony Beevor is married to Hon. , daughter of Duff Cooper, granddaughter of . He was educated at and . He studied under the famous military historian . Beevor is a former officer with the who served in and for five years before resigning his commission. He has published several popular histories on and the 20th century in general. Professor Beevor has encountered criticism on his work in . The Russian ambassador to the UK denounced the book as "lies" and "slander against the people who saved the world from Nazism". , a professor and President of the , has charged that Beevor is merely resurrecting the discredited and racist views of historians, who depicted Soviet troops as subhuman "Asiatic hordes"In an interview with , Rzheshevsky admitted that he had only read excerpts from Berlin: The Downfall 1945 and had not seen the book's source notes. He claimed that Beevor's use of phrases such as "Berliners remember" and "the experiences of the raped German women" were better suited "for pulp fiction, than scientific research." Rzheshevsky also defended Soviet reprisals against Germans, stating that the Germans could have expected an "avalanche of revenge". Beevor responded to Russian criticism on his book . This criticism centres on the book's discussion of atrocities committed by the Red Army against German civilians – in particular, the extremely widespread rape of German women and female Russian forced labourers, both before and after the end of the war. Beevor stated however that German women were part of a society that supported Hitler and thus can't be seen as victims in the same way than Jews, Poles and Russians. Beevor, though, stated that he was accused by the Russian media of being the "chief slanderer of the Red Army" for describing repeated and relentless rape by the of young women taken from the Soviet Union by the Nazis for slave labor. Beevor states that he used excerpts from the report of General Tsigankov, the chief of the political department of the , to cite the incident. He responded to Rzheshevsky by saying, "Professor O.A. Rzheshevsky even accused me of repeating Nazi propaganda, when in fact the bulk of the evidence on the subject came from Soviet sources, especially the NKVD reports in GARF (), and a wide range of reliable personal accounts." Beevor hopes Russian historians will take a more objective approach to material in their own archives which are at odds to the heroic myth of the Red Army as "liberators" in 1945. "Other historians such as , (see here also an interview with Richard Overy on his latest book) a historian from , have criticised Russian "outrage" at the book and defended Beevor. Overy accused the Russians of refusing to acknowledge , "Partly this is because they felt that much of it was justified vengeance against an enemy who committed much worse, and partly it was because they were writing the victors' history.