John LukacsReseñas

Fascinating read about the people involved in the early decision making in regard to Britain's role in WW2, and how Churchill prevailed over those prepared to consider terms with Germany.

Quite interesting but he tends to ramble a little. A lot of views presented from different historians and biographers of Hitler. I have less respect for John Toland now, and David Irving made up a lot of stuff out of his imagination ! Hitler was not a demon, but he sure was a hate-filled sort of genius that the Germans just loved at the time.

Ugye válogatni kétféleképpen lehet. Tematikusan, illetve minőségi kritériumok alapján. A kettő nem ugyanaz – hisz ha ugyanaz lenne, akkor most azt írtam volna, hogy „válogatni egyféleképpen lehet”. Ez a kötet az első módszert követi, összegereblyézve kábé mindent, amit John Lukacs, alias Lukács János, a talán legnívósabb magyar születésű (és a magyar nyelvben járatos) történész valaha Magyarországról (vagy Magyarországra) írt. Ennek következtében bizony van némi minőségi ingamozgás, a kevéssé jelentősnek tűnő szövegek váltakoznak az igazán potens esszékkel. De még ennél is feltűnőbb - és ami azt illeti, eléggé zavaró is -, milyen sokszor ismétli magát ez a kötet. Churchill azon aranyköpését, miszerint a szovjetek most ugyan felfalnak mindent, de az emésztés csak ezután jön, minimum ötször citálja, de konkrét okfejtések is újra és újra szinte változatlan formában felbukkannak. A jó svádájú angol lord amúgy is Lukacs mániája: nyugodtan neveztetek ki fölém egy Vidnyánszky vezette kuratóriumot, ha nem fordult meg a fejében, hogy az arcát a lapockájára tetováltassa. De hát ez nem újdonság annak, aki egy picit is ismeri Lukacs munkásságát.

Különben meg nem is baj az ismétlődés, legalább rögzülnek a dolgok. Meg aztán akárhogy is vesszük, így még nyilvánvalóbbá válnak azok a motívumok, amelyekből a szerző konzervativizmusa és patriotizmusa építkezik. Mert Lukacs konzervatív és patrióta („Magyarország a hazám, Amerika az otthonom”, mondja egy helyütt), következésképpen számos ponton eltér a véleményünk. Ilyen például Horthy megítélése, akivel kapcsolatban a szerző sokkal megengedőbb – bár nem természetesen nem elvakultan az –, mint én. Ám ezzel együtt a lukacsi konzervativizmus olyan eszme, amivel párbeszédet lehet folytatni, sőt: ami bizonyos aspektusaiban vonzó számomra. Ennek oka, hogy Lukacs konzervativizmusának (mint minden tisztességes konzervativizmusnak, megítélésem szerint) az alapja a független, döntéseiért felelősséget vállaló polgár. Az ő hagyományokból táplálkozó, szilárd törvényekre épülő szuverenitása Lukacs értelmezésében a jól működő állam kulcsa, és ez a szuverenitás nem lehet teljes egy autoriter államban, hisz ott a „szuperszuverén” vezér akarata folyton felülírja azt. Magyarán: a lukacsi konzervativizmus mindig demokráciapárti, ilyen értelemben pedig jóval szorosabb szálak kötik a liberalizmushoz, de akár a szociáldemokráciához is, mint a vezérelvű populizmusokhoz.

(A kötetnek ugyan túlnyomó részt történelmi esszéket tartalmaz, de nem kizárólagosan. Akadnak a személyesebb írások is – a legerősebbek közülük talán azok, amelyek az Alibi hat hónapra c. folyóirat számára írt. Ezek a szövegek egy teljesen új Lukacsot mutatnak, mégpedig olyat, aki meglepően erős szépírói vénával* van megáldva. Kifejezetten szimpatikus ez a Lukacs is nekem.)

* Mondjuk ez a szépírói véna igazából nem is meglepő, hisz Lukacs maga is többször leszögezi, hogy a történész mindig egyben író is.

3.5***

Historian John Lukacs has written over twenty books, several dealing with World War II. In this book he focuses specifically on Winston Churchill and the five days from May 24 to May 28, 1940. Churchill did not win the war in those five days, but his actions and leadership ensured that England would NOT lose the war.

Lukacs did extensive research, pouring over diaries, letters, journals, official memoranda and newspaper reports of the time, to illuminate and reconstruct the thought-processes and leadership that ultimately ensured the Allies’ success. We obviously know the outcome already, but Lukacs manages to convey the sense of urgency and tension and uncertainty of this moment in history.

This is a slim volume, but very dense and I had to remind myself a few times that the timespan was a mere five days.½

This book is the work of a scholar but it is not a work of scholarship. It succeeds as a brief if repetitive narrative of the origins and consequences of the second world war, but is marred by Lukacs' idiosyncratic views about Hitler's motives. Most scholarship would not support the view that Germany invaded the Soviet Union to deprive Britain-- Hitler's ultimate objective-- of an ally. Nor does this book persuade this reader that the Nazis sought domination of much of Eastern Europe but not Russia itself.

Presumably the reader must turn to other of Lukacs' works for evidence on these points. He won't get it here.

political and literary commentary--not at all Austen like

Detailed behind-the-scenes look at London's reaction to this critical period early during WW II. Germany had already taken Poland in a matter of days, and effectively eliminated Belgium and France from the war. With a treaty in force with Russia, England was the sole force facing Germany, and it's forces were trapped and under seige in France, and had not yet been evacuated from Dunkirk. England could have and might have sought terms with Germany, or fought on alone against the mighty German army. This book shows Churchill's determination, leadership, and strength of his convictions as he led the fight to continue the struggle during this critical time.

An excellent little primer.

The late John Lukacs (d. 2019) was an opinionated cuss, so he rubs some folks the wrong way. But, I respect immensely his depth of knowledge on the Second World War, Churchill, and Hitler in particular. (Aside from maybe Ian Kershaw, Richard Evans, or Richard Overy, nobody could touch him on the historiography of Hitler.) Reaching back a bit and forward a bit, Lukacs details the events of May 24 to May 28, five days, in London.

His thesis is that it was in those days that Churchill, through his steadfastness and gumption, won the Second World War, or, rather did not lose it. (Lukacs says only the USA and USSR won the war, but the UK could have lost it. Lukacs also said that Hitler could have come out with a win or draw if he, perhaps, took Moscow and collapsed the USSR or defeated the Western allies at D-Day. But, (p. 189), Hitler could have won HIS war, Lukacs states, if Churchill had capitulated or Halifax had taken over and capitulated. (Dubious, perhaps, as Hitler, even with a defeated UK, probably would have rushed headlong into Russia. Perhaps without US and UK help the Soviet Union may have been defeated. But that's a big if. Ask Napoleon.)

I disagree with Lukacs, though, and wholeheartedly when he says this (p. 217): "The greatest threat to Western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism." First, I consider National Socialism and Communist Socialism to be step-brothers, and equally evil. I see not a spit-worth of difference between Hitler controlling Europe and Stalin controlling Europe. Both are totalitarian, statist, and purveyors of executions galore. Both are evil, none more evil than the other. He continues a theme he picks up in The Hitler of History, that (pp. 217-218) Hitler was "the greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century... merging nationalism and socialism into one tremendous force...." On that he may have a point.

But, kudos to Churchill, who was resolute, determined, dogged, and an instrument of Providence. "At best," Lukacs sums up, "civilization may survive, at least in some small part due to Churchill in 1940" (p. 219).

Photos, extensive footnotes (many discursive), bibliography, index.

Slightly mixed portrait of the great Hungarian city. In spite of its title, the book does go quite a bit into developments in the last decades of the 19th century. I would say that the first half of the book is the better of the two halves; the later chapters on literary and artistic matters can get a bit dull. As with many books, some of the gems of commentary are to be found in the footnotes! Recommended, largely because you'll probably not find the information here anywhere else.½

Refers to Irving and Toland far too much to be considered seriously.

I wanted to liket this a lot more than I actually did. For some reason I've got in my head that Lukacs is an author I should really enjoy, but this is the fourth book of his that I've tried and I remain somewhat underwhelmed. You never really get the sense of urgency that he clearly wants to convey in this story - I very much found myself wondering what all the fuss was about. The writing is sometimes oddly infelicitous, too, though perhaps that's an English-as-a-second-language thing?

Anyway, I'll probably try one more by him. Maybe.½

Lukacs is an opinionated cuss, and doesn't care if you think so. This book about Hitler is good, this is bad; that historian is horrible, that historian is intelligent. Etc. This, Lukacs makes clear, is NOT a biography of Hitler, but a historiography of biographies of Hitler and other secondary sources on Hitler, Hitlerism, and Nazi Germany. Though he sometime talks of the minutiae of the sources for Hitler's biography, he mostly talks about major themes in Hitler's life and Hitler's place in the wider context of the telling of history. So, for instance, there are chapters on when did he become a convinced anti-Semite (ch. 2), was he a reactionary or a revolutionary (ch. 3), was the Third Reich an anomaly in German history or a culmination of German history (ch. 7), etc. The writing is sometimes hard and the reasoning sometimes dense, but it is well worth the effort if you've read enough about World War II, the Nazis, and/or Hitler. The work is copiously footnoted with long discursive footnotes, and sometimes the stuff in the footnotes is more interesting than the main text. The only problem I have with this (normally I LOVE proper footnotes) is that Lucaks uses a weird system of abbreviations for the works he writes about. Thus "JH" stands for Jäckel's Hitler in History and "GR" for Giesler's Ein anderer Hitler, etc. Why not use proper full citations and shortened citations? I don't know. Lukacs claims that the best overall biography of Hitler is Joachim Fest's. However, this book was written in 1997, one year before the first volume of Ian Kershaw's two-volume biography came out. Lukacs said mostly nice things about Kershaw in this book, so I wonder what he thinks of Kershaw's biography. (I know nothing of Volker Ullrich's new biography, the first volume of which has just been published in English.)

The title of this book refers to the period from May 24 through May 28, 1940 and concerns itself primarily with the deliberations of the British War Cabinet during the darkest days of World War II as the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) retreated to the Channel ports and ultimately the evacuation of over 300,000 troops from Dunkirk. The history textbook accounts of World War II tell us that Churchill's assumption of the prime minister's role two weeks earlier was evidence that support for his hardline opposition to Hitler and the Nazis was now settled British policy and that it was a given that the British would "fight them on the beaches", etc.

Lukacs' narrative makes it clear that it was not a foregone conclusion that Britain would fight on to the bitter end come what may. The War Cabinet consisted of Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and Labor representatives Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood. The discussions among this group included nine formal meetings during the five days with the collapse of Belgium and the rout of the French forces as a backdrop. In the middle of this week the decision was made to evacuate the BEF from Dunkirk. Churchill was essentially unchanged in his policy though acknowledging the desperation of their situation. Halifax favored an approach to Mussolini prior to Italy's entry into the war to facilitate an armistice and negotiations based on Britain's willingness to cede some undefined portion of its overseas territories to Germany and potentially Gibraltar and Malta to Mussolini as payment for services rendered. In return Britain's independence and autonomy would be recognized and observed. At the same time Paul Reynaud, the French premier encouraged the contacts with Mussolini and also urged the British to contact Roosevelt as the leader of a still neutral United Stated to broker a negotiated settlement that would recognize Hitler's conquests but give the French and the British a way out of the war if they were offered reasonable terms.

Churchill generally received the lukewarm support of Attlee and Greenwood. Chamberlain was supportive and played a critical role in mediating between the positions of Churchill and Halifax. As Lukacs makes clear it was not generally believed at this point that Churchill's leadership was for the duration. He was not favored by the king and was not the clear cut favorite at any time of his own Conservative Party many of whom expected a "restoration" of Chamberlain or perhaps Halifax's accession to the prime minister position. By the end of the week it was clear that the Mussolini gambit in particular and generally speaking the likelihood of an armistice leading to Britain's withdrawal from the war were put to rest. Regardless of whether or not the French signed a separate peace the British would carry on alone.

In parallel with the political narrative Lukacs reviews the state of British public opinion and public awareness in the latter part of each chapter, day by day. The newspapers were never really on top of the real state of affairs in France which may have been a positive thing for Britain's morale. A public opinion operation known as M.O. for Mass Observation was comprised of non-scientific day to day accounts comparing opinion by region, class and sex. Generally the greater the status the more pessimistic the outlook. Also, opinion in London was far more worried than in the rural areas. And women in general were more depressed about events than their men.

One more item worth highlighting is the role or lack thereof played by David Lloyd George, Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister during the victory over Germany in 1918. Churchill approached Lloyd George on a couple of occasions about joining the Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture. He was turned down twice ostensibly due to Lloyd George's hatred of Chamberlain. Lukacs believes that in the worst case scenario if Britain was defeated Lloyd George might have been the leader best placed to obtain terms from Hiller. He doesn't explicitly compare Lloyd George to Marshall Petain but the reader is invited to make the comparison for himself.

Five Days in London is an exceptionally fine deep dive into a brief time slice that in the author's opinion was the real "Hinge of Fate" of the war in that it was the closest Hitler would ever come to winning "his war".

The days from May 24 to May 28, 1940 altered the course of the history of this century, as the members of the British War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue the war. The decisive importance of these five days is the focus of John Lukacs’s magisterial new book. Lukacs takes us hour by hour into the critical unfolding of events at 10 Downing Street, where Churchill and the members of his cabinet were painfully considering their war responsibilities. We see how the military disasters taking place on the Continent-particularly the plight of the nearly 400,000 British soldiers bottled up in Dunkirk-affected Churchill’s fragile political situation, for he had been prime minister only a fortnight and was regarded as impetuous and hotheaded even by many of his own party. Lukacs also investigates the mood of the British people, drawing on newspaper and Mass-Observation reports that show how the citizenry, though only partly informed about the dangers that faced them, nevertheless began to support Churchill’s determination to stand fast.Other historians have dealt with Churchill’s difficulties during this period, using the partial revelations of certain memoirs and private and public papers. But Lukacs is the first to convey the drama and importance of these days, and he does so in a compelling narrative that combines deep knowledge with high literary style.

On 13 May 1940, Winston Churchill stood before the House of Parliament to deliver his first speech as prime minister. German troops were advancing across Europe; Neville Chamberlain's government had fallen three days earlier. Churchill needed to prove himself an able leader, and he also needed to convince an unwilling nation to support his stand against Hitler.
In this taut meditation on a great leader under great pressure, Lukacs demonstrates that Churchill delivered his triumphant speech despite his own sense that England might soon fall to Hitler's armies. A riveting portrait of leadership in its confrontation with radical evil, Lukacs's book is essential reading for WWII buffs, Churchill aficionadi, and anyone interested in leadership.

An interesting examination of what Lukacs contends as being a period of time when Hitler was never closer to winning his war in Europe. In May 1940, a number of key factors were at play: Hitler’s driving forces had France on the verge of defeat; Belgium surrender to Germany and the British Expeditionary Forces found themselves holed up on the coast of Dunkirk with no allied assistance to back them up. Compounding the situation was the fact that the current majority in the British Parliament, was currently tolerating Hitler’s growing presence on the continent. Lukacs arrives at his conclusion through a myriad of information gleaned from the memoirs and public/private papers of various key players such as Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain. The fact that Churchill was still new in his role as Prime Minister (he was appointed by King George V to the role only on May 10th) is of note, as is the criticism (unknown to Churchill at the time) American President Franklin D. Roosevelt held of Churchill’s abilities. The fact that Churchill remained resolute that any accommodation with Hitler would lead to the eventual demise of Britain and Europe, shows a strength of character deserving of praise. While there is a fair bit of focus on the debate going on in the British War Cabinet of how best to proceed, this is important as Lukacs is able to demonstrate how Churchill used personal diplomacy and moral persuasion to bring the War Cabinet to his line of thinking and to overcome Lord Halifax and the distrust Churchill faced from a number of his colleagues. Lukacs also provides the reader with interesting public opinion barometric pressure readings gleaned from various newspaper polls, giving the book a more “point in time” of the British feelings at the time, and how calm British stoicism was at play, even during those uncertain days.

Whether Lukacs is correct in his premise – that those last days in May of 1940 were the closest Hitler ever came to winning his war against Europe – is anyone’s personal opinion. Either way, Lukacs writes in an informative manner. As a fond observer of human behaviour, I really enjoyed the inclusion of the personal opinions of various key players as they really helped shape the developments for me. On a possible downside, I listened to the audiobook version and found that some of the footnotes tended to interrupt the rhythmic flow of Lukacs’ writing.

A solid read for anyone interested in Churchill, the early period of WWII or political diplomacy in general.½

Well written book by a historian about the short time from Churchill's first days as Prime Minister to the evacuation of Dunkirk. Unfortunately, most of the book is spent on rehabilitating Halifax and Chamberlain. This rehabiliation moves from the two being Nazi appeasers to English defeatists. Lots of logical but ultimately futile gymnastics to argue that Churchill did not lose the war in Europe as England saw itself alone after Belgium and France surrendered. Nevertheless, a few interesting points on the historical events from the perspective of the United States. Not worth the effort to read unless it were used as supplemental reading for a graduate history course.

Advance copy - Uncorrected Page Proof; excellent book; Lukacs remains a strong and vital link to our Mid-20th Century history.

I took this one along on our river cruise/trip that started in Budapest and ended in Prague. I knew little about Budapest or Hungary other than the outlines of events in the 1956 uprising against the Communist government. Budapest 1900 was a splendid introduction and goes beyond the turn of the century era of the title, both into history and the 20th century. The chapter titles give some idea of the scope of the book: "Colors, Words and Sounds;" "The City;" "The People;" "Politics and Powers;" "The Generation of 1900;" "Seeds of Troubles;" and "Since Then."

The turn of the century was a period of cultural flowering in Budapest, as it was in many European cities, and artists, writers and musicians flourished. Lukacs, a native of Budapest who settled in the US in 1946, a professor of history, revels in the period.

Published in 1988, the book obviously doesn't address the post-Communist era, and at least one of Lukacs' predictions, that American influence was fading and that German influence would supercede it, does not seem to have come to pass. English-language influence was far more prevalent in Budapest than any of the other cities we visited -- even the street signs were marked in both Hungarian and English.

We loved Budapest, and Lukacs was a wonderful guide.

A highly detailed yet often fascinating account of the crucial five days in May 1940 that decieded the fate of Britain as France and most of Western Europe was falling to Hitler. I'm not sure how much of the editorializing at the end I agree with but the actual information was all very interesting.

Of all the books written about Churchill's part in WWII this one zooms in on the few days when he became Prime Minister. It makes one think of what might have happened had someone else got the job. Not for a casual reader, this is a close examination of a political microcosm.

Lukacs comes off as an ill-tempered ol’ coot in this tepid 2012 rehash of the nineties’ History Wars. There are many books on historiography and the Idea of History that are better than this one. The future of history will be fine without him.

The title pretty much tells you what you’re getting with this one. Lukacs drilled into a short time frame after Winston Churchill became prime minister and some of his cabinet members wanted avoid war with Hitler at all costs. The subject matter is interesting, but his writing style is a bit stale. It feels a lot like he’s defending his dissertation instead of just writing a book. He keeps circling back on a point and explaining why he made it, which was distracting. The actually history was interesting, but the writing style didn’t work for me.

He would cite a letter or speech word-for-word as if he’s trying to prove that the point he was making was based on fact. If I’m reading nonfiction books on a historical event I tend to trust that the author has done their research. There’s also usually a biography full of the cited works at the end of the book that people can check if they want to.

BOTTOM LINE: I won’t be searching out any more work by this author, but I enjoyed learning more about this short window in history. It was interesting to see how much can hinge upon what seems like a small decision.

Deep history, that's to say history at a level of detail that is almost forensic. The author is fortunate both in his choice of topic, and in his sense of what makes history. For five days in 1940 the fate of the world turned on a hairs breadth, in a debate between Churchill and forces within his own Conservative Party that were sympathetic to the cause of Naziism, and an even greater number who believed that defeat was inevitable (including the US) and that Britain had better surrender and ask for the best possible conditions. I wouldn't put the fact that Churchill carried the day in the end down to any nobility in the character of many of those politicians, as a breed they are contemptible and have destroyed their own country many times over since then, far more effectively than Hitler ever could have. But perhaps there was a flicker of something back then, some notion of self respect, but it's surely deserted us now.