The moral courage of P.J. O’Rourke

Was it Socrates who said that chaos was the natural state of mankind, and tyranny the usual remedy? Actually it was Santayana, and boy, did he ever get it right. My friend Christopher Mills has given me a terrific book, The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze, about the making and breaking of the Nazi economy. I thought I knew everything there is to know about that period, but I hadn’t thought of global economic realities, the ones that actually won the war. Germany’s limited territory and lack of natural resources led to war. Germans had been starving since the end of the Great War, and needed the corn of Ukraine and the oil deposits of Romania in order to feed themselves and keep warm. Once in power, all Hitler needed to do was deal; instead, well, you know the rest. Or do you?

Here are a few facts that had escaped me, as they also did many of our gloating historians: the global balance of economic and military power was heavily stacked against Hitler from the start, but the quick campaign against France blinded him to Germany’s weaknesses. At that time Germany’s economy was compared with that of Britain, the US and France. But its economic superiority was a myth. The combined GDP of the British and the French empires exceeded that of Germany and Italy by 60 per cent. In present-day terms — and read this carefully — Germany’s economy was comparable with that of Iran or South Africa. Two guesses as to why historians tend to overlook this. It shows the Wehrmacht as David and the Allies as Goliath. In view of the fact that Hitler’s crimes against Jews, Poles, homosexuals, gypsies and others were so egregious, why exaggerate our victories against an underpowered opponent.

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Rod Liddle

Sack the judges

What I find amazing is how history is twisted by so-called experts, the kind who had most of the world believe that Putin had Trump in his pocket due to embarrassing tapes and had helped the orange man win the White House.