Published today 11:06
“Thank God, our attitude towards the war changed,” says Antony Beevor. “Today, it would be the government commissions of the invasion of Normandy, not least because so many own troops shelled’s.”
Antony Beevor speak like an educated British gentleman historian of the last century. No other serious popular historian has got so large global impact as Beevor. Boklördags Henrik Berggren has met him.
Antony Beevor speak like an educated British gentleman historian of the last century. No other serious popular historian has got so large global impact as Beevor. Boklördags Henrik Berggren has met him.
There is a massive push when Antony Beevor gives interviews in the bar of the Grand Hotel. Publishers people hovering benevolently in the background and journalists and photographers are relentless. The day before the seventy anniversary of the Second World War all want to talk to the former British army officer who made military history literary respectability.
He is so far from Colonel Blimp – caricature of the dryge, översittaraktige British officer – one can imagine . He speaks softly and British nasally, maybe not so academically, but as an educated gentleman historian of the last century. What good is exactly what he is.
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His first military historical works came in the early 1980s and was about the Spanish Civil War. But the big international breakthrough occurred around the turn of the millennium with two epic broad depictions of the Battle of Stalingrad and the final battle for Berlin.
Reviewers spoke Tolstoy and the general public flocked to. Then followed a brick on the invasion of Normandy (2009) and the critically acclaimed reference works throughout the Second World War (2012). Behind this success is thorough research, a feeling of individual destiny and an ability to bring to life pincer movements and tactical retreats so that even we who went astray during nattmanövrarna in a shabby understand.
But if one is to believe himself was the whole quite unplanned.
– I was LOUSY in English and history in school, he explains cheerfully over a giant shrimp sandwich. I went on one of England’s best schools but did not exercise the option. There was some kind of stupid teenage rebellion. But since I spent five years as an officer in the British army thought my publisher that I would give me on military history.
He makes it sound as publishers is something one assigned at birth. And to some extent it was perhaps so. He was born in 1946 into a wealthy family and stems from several generations of writers on the mother’s side. When he took leave from the army – which incidentally he read in the most of it, he cheated away on the prestigious private school Winchester – he began writing thrillers. There were four published works before he threw in the towel.
– The day my career would be unthinkable. It’s all about sales figures. If you fail a book is man’s death as a writer. But at that time, my publisher steer me on a new path.
The literary writing probably had some bearing on his later successes. Like Hemingway and García Márquez, he argues that the start is crucial.
– It determines the rest of the book. If it has rhythm and fluency, then you get confidence. But if it does not work, if you constantly revises and writes about the beginning, then it will be as follows bad. Therefore, I begin to never write until I’m finished with my research. The exception is the book that covers the entire Second World War. There, the subject was too big, I had to start writing without having done any research.
What about the chronology? It feels very important in your books.
– Absolutely. Take my new book about the Battle of the Bulge in autumn 1944. Those who have written about the past has been based on a geographical division that makes everything make sense. I have had to reconstruct what happened day by day for yourself to understand the fighting. And basically it’s what we historians do: try to understand ourselves so that we can tell you what has happened to others. In all cases in the UK, narrative tradition. I find it hard for the heavy, tesdrivande German historical research.
I tell him that I found his portrayal of the invasion of Normandy “D-Day” heavy. The mass killing of the young men in my sons’ age disgusted me.
– Thank God, our attitude to the war has changed. Today it would be the government commissions of Normandy, not least because they bombed and shelled so many of their own soldiers. But while it took a tremendous force to gain a foothold in France and fight down the German resistance.
I think I would be deserted. In any case, if I had a chance to read your book.
– Some did it. The pattern is the same in almost all armies. A small group of soldiers are actively involved in the battle, even enthusiastically, a large middle group squats and some flee at the first opportunity. But it is also affected by how long you have been in combat. There are estimates of how long a person stand out. American paratroopers who proved very courageous eventually broke up and commit even suicide.
But why did the Germans so hard resistance? They did not understand that the war was lost?
– Since 1933, the German soldiers prepared for war, unlike the American and British soldiers. Moreover, Hitler was rather willing to let Germany perish than surrender. His great fear was to be brought to Moscow in a cage, where he committed suicide rather … Jeez, caviar.
Beevor has discovered black lumpfish roe for prawns.
You are also quite critical of the part of the allied generals.
– I do not like caviar … Yes, I am critical. The Second World War brought with it a new media situation. The journalists and newsreel people could not report on the military plans so they focused on the generals’ personalities instead. And some of them began to believe the media image and became quite deranged.
But is it new? Think of Julius Caesar’s triumphal …
– I do not believe the propaganda Step Caesar head. But perhaps some of Napoleon’s marshals.
Speaking of the media, we devote ourselves not a little too much about the Second World War days?
– Well, in a dangerous manner. World War II has become the reference point for too many of today’s international conflicts: Bush described the 11 September as a new Pearl Harbor, Ukraine will become a new Czechoslovakia, Putin is a new Hitler. Politicians love to let as Churchill and Roosevelt. The idea that we can use history to predict the future is tempting but misleading.
I tell Beevor about the debate on the Soviet Union’s role under way in Swedish newspapers.
– I’ve heard it. And certainly one can tell that the Western powers had a blood debt to the USSR, which lost 20 million people during the war. But behind that figure was also a ruthless policy of Stalin, which he himself must have been aware of since he wrote down the Soviet casualty figures to 7.5 million after the war. It was, as my colleague David Reynolds has put it, a becoming heroic figure, unlike the real criminal murderous.
The next book?
– The battle for Arnheim. It would actually have been included in the book of the Ardennes, but the story is so remarkable that it deserves their own works. It was a British disaster that led to a massive suffering for the Dutch. In the UK, described it as a heroic failure, much like the light Brigade at Balaklava. We Brits are a bit too fond of the idea of heroic failures, I think.
You are thinking not to write about any subject other than military history?
– Ten years ago I wrote a book about the actress Olga Tjechova, nephew of Anton. But then told my American publishers (Beevor passes to a broad American accent): “Antony, you destroy your brand!”
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