Evelyn Waugh: Gentleman in Battle.

the free hand she desired in Poland and the Baltic states, in return for an alliance against Nazi Germany. Hitler was not above such a concession. It is a familiar argument frequently espoused by Soviet apologists.

This moral obtuseness which cannot distinguish between a Hitler and a Schuschnigg, between a Chamberlain and a Stalin; which makes a topsy-turvy of responsibility and guilt in the period between the wars; which can describe this period as “without heroes; and perhaps even without villains,” is not simply the result of moral insensitivity and childish iconoclasm. It can only be explained in terms of Taylor’s political orientation.

JD

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Joan Didion

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the free hand she desired in Poland and the Baltic states, in return for an alliance against Nazi Germany. Hitler was not above such a concession. It is a familiar argument frequently espoused by Soviet apologists.

This moral obtuseness which cannot distinguish between a Hitler and a Schuschnigg, between a Chamberlain and a Stalin; which makes a topsy-turvy of responsibility and guilt in the period between the wars; which can describe this period as “without heroes; and perhaps even without villains,” is not simply the result of moral insensitivity and childish iconoclasm. It can only be explained in terms of Taylor’s political orientation.