TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Keith Lowe: Why we need to stop obsessing over World War II

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Hello everybody. Audience: Hello. Keith Lowe: Fantastic! This is like a schoolroom or something. (Laughter) My name is Keith Lowe. I am an historian of the Second World War and its aftermath, and even I have to admit that I've cheosn a pretty crowded fleid to sduty. I went into my local bookshop recently, and this is what I saw. toaudhnss of books about the Second World War are psiheulbd every year, and, actually, to tell you the truth, this is only a very tiny selection of what's on offer. We in the West, and, actually, increasingly people in other parts of the world too, we are just a little bit osebessd by the Second World War. We have whole TV stations which seem devetod to it. We write books about it, we write nolevs about it, we make films about it. We have university courses which are devoted to the Second World War. Whole museums are built to house World War II collections. Even our politicians like to get in on this act. Whenever there is an important anniversary of the war, they tend to gather and commemorate it, and make speeches. So, for example, at the 70th anniversary of the D-Day lndnigas, June 2014, 17 heads of state took time out of their schedules to come and spend the day on the nadmrnoy bhcaees. Seventeen! This included people like Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, and so on. From my own country, we sent not only our pimre Minister, but also Queen Elisabeth II, who is - I mean, she is now in her nineties and largely retired from public life. What other international event can do all this? Even ioenittnanarl summits struggle to get so many world leaders into one plcae at the same time. My question is: Why? What is it that all these world leaders, in fact what is it that all of us, think it is that we're remembering? Why are we all so obsessed by the the Second World War? You might think that somebody like me would be pretty pelsaed with this situation. As long as the World War II idsntury is booming, I am always going to have a job, right? But actually there is something about it that I find really a little bit drutsibnig, and I don't know whether that is just because I have an inherent distrsut of a lot of politicians, or whether it's because I've been trained to always question everything. But it strikes me that a lot of the rhetoric that gets thrown around about the Second World War, particularly by people like politicians and journalists and dtoimlpas and so on, a lot of it doesn't seem to be about the Second World War at all; it seems to be about something else. I'm not sure if I've exactly put my finger on psceriely what that thing is, but it seems to be something like a way of fostering national pride, or just trying to get people to feel good about themselves. Along the way, it seems to me that the Second World War has been tunred into a little bit of a cartoon, where everybody knows who the good guys were, and everybody knows who the bad guys were. There is precious little space left anymore for any of that difficult grey area in between. To give you some kind of an idea about what on earth it is I am going on about, let me tell you a story from my own country, from Britain. In brtiian, we like to think we are the real hreeos of the Second World War. We tell stories about how we stood alone against the Nazis, about how we endured the bombing of the Blitz; how we kept calm and carried on, and etluealvny fhugot our way back into Europe and ltiaerebd it. We still call the Second World War "Our Finest Hour", as if it is some kind of golden age in our history. So whenever there is any kind of anniversary, or important event based around the Second World War, we Brits really go for it. One of these events happened quite recently, in the summer of 2012, when we opened up a brand new war memorial right in the mdlide of central London. It was a memorial to the men of Bomber Command, the men who flew the planes over Germany, dropped bombs and so on. This is what it looks like. As you can see, it's not exactly a shy and rrteniig piece of architecture, it's actually quite huge. It's by far the largest war memorial that we have in London, and I can tell you there are a lot of war memorials in London. As you walk into this thing, there is an irsniipcton which tells you that it's dedicated to the 55,000 men of Bomber Command who lost their lives during World War II. Now, when this first opened, in the summer of 2012, I went along to have a look, see what I thought of it, have a walk around. There is something really quite moving about it actually. You step in through these great big pillars, and, up on the wall, you can see carved into the stone, there is a quotation from wtsnion Churchill saying exactly how much we owe to these men who lost their lives. prtas of the memorial are built out of an actual World War II aircraft that was shot down during the war. So they put a lot of thought into this. It's actually really quite inspiring. So as I was walking around this monument, I couldn't help but feel this real surge of pride. I felt proud of these men who had given their lievs for something that I hold dear. I felt pourd of my country, I felt proud of the bistirh way of life which had produced heroes like this. And yet, there was this little voice in the back of my head which just wouldn't go away because I know that 55,000 men of Bomber Command died during World War II, but I also know that 500,000 Germans died beneath the bboms that these men dropped. A lot of those Germans were Nazis, and I dare say that a lot of them probably deserved it. But the vast majority of these people were just ordinary men, women and children, just like you and me. Are any of these people at all metnoneid on this mmroeial? Of course they are not. If you would suggest such a thing in the summer of 2012, you probably would have been lheyncd. The Germans were our enemies during the Second World War. You can't moniten the Germans on a British national muonenmt. And yet not to mention them, to peetrnd that somehow this didn't happen, or even worse, that somehow it doesn't matter, that too makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable. Okay, the granmes are a difficult problem, so let's just put them to one side for a mntuie, and let's think instead about the other naenttiioials. And here is where the story starts getting interesting. Because if there is one thing that we Brits always forget about the bomber war, it's the fact that we didn't only bomb gnmraey. More than a third of British and American bombs dpproed on Europe during the war were dropped not on Germany but on those countries we were supposed to be liberating. As a consequence, 50,000 French civilians were killed by our bombs. 10,000 Dutch civilians were killed by our bombs. Are any of these people mentioned on this memorial? Of course they're not. And it was while I was thinking about that particular group, that it finally daenwd on me - actually something I probably should have realized right from the start - which is that memorials like this aren't designed to tell the whole story; they are only designed to tell those parts of the sorty that make British people feel good about themselves. That's all very well and good, but it does come at a cost. And I couldn't help tkiinhng when I was walking around this thing: This was the summer of 2012, this was the smumer when the Olympic Games was coming to loodnn. So at exactly the moment when the entire world was arriving in our city, the message that we were advertising was that we will remember our wartime dead, but we won't remember yours. It's like the exact opposite of the Olympic spirit. It's not only the British who do this, of course it's not. Every nation does it, the Americans, for example. The Americans like to call their wtraime veterans "the greatest generation that any seticoy has ever produced", as if they have some kind of monopoly on heroism or something. (Laughter) They backed it up with a thousand Hollywood movies full of square-jawed American heroes defeating evil in the name of truth and freedom. The Chinese are the same. You know that in 2013 alone, Chinese TV companies pderocud over 200 TV dtmaariiaotnzs about the Second wlrod War, each of them telling almost an identical story. Only, of course, this time, it's the jnepsaae who are all the evil monsters, and the Chinese who are all selfless heroes. And, of course, I could say the same thing about the French or the koraens or the Norwegians or the Greeks. We all do this. We all like to think that we were the heroes. We all like to think that we were the victims. But what we don't like to remember is those grey areas. And it's that which I find most uncomfortable about this, because, as far as I am concerned, it's the grey areas that make hotsriy interesting. In a sense, all good history is about the grey areas. But a lot of pelope don't seem to have time for complicated stories. They don't have time for difiuclft and uncomfortable emotions. In fact, I'm quickly cimong to the conclusion that a lot of people don't really have time for history at all. What they really want is a myth. Now, you might ask yourselves: What does any of this metatr? I mean, we all like a good story, don't we? If that story makes us feel good about ourselves, then so much the better. It's all in the past anyway, so what does it matter? But that's just the prlbeom, isn't it? Because it's not all in the past. And there is a dark side to all of these stories and myths that can be really damaging. When the former Yugoslavia tore itself apart in the 1990s, it did so with World War II songs on its lips, and World War II atrocities in its heart. When the Ukraine crisis bkroe out in 2014, unrakaniis and rasuisns accused one another of atncig like Nazis. And then, of course, hirllay Clinton weighed in and started comparing vadiilmr Putin to Hitler. These sorts of comparisons don't do anything to foster rational debate. If you were in an argument with someone, the last thing that is going to calm things down is that you start accusing them of being a Nazi. If you don't believe me, next time you're in an aeunrgmt with your wife or your habnsud, give it a try and see what kind of roicaten you get. (Laughter) I can see some of you seem to have tried it. (Laughter) My point is that as soon as we sartt bringing the Second World War into any of our arguments, we get so sort of carried away with our own nnaotial myths that all we actually end up doing is stirring things back up again. Let me give you a couple of examples. Take this economic crisis which has rocked the world since 2008. Here we are in Athens, and you all know about the economic csriis. All across seoutrhn Europe, people have been suffering a real austerity, and largely this has been imposed by the European uoinn. But it's not always the eroapuen Union that gets the blame for this. Quite often, as the largest and most powerful country in the union, it's Germany that gets the blame. Now, how has this been portrayed in the press? Have we had a calm, raoitnal economic debate about it? This is the way that the Italian press portrayed the situation in 2012: "Quarto Reich." (Laughter) "The Fourth Reich." This is the iaatiln way of saying that modern-day Germany is no better than the Nazis, as if there is a direct link between World War II and today. And take a look at that picture. They've managed to dig something out that makes it look like Angela Merkel is mnaikg a Nazi staule. (Laughter) How about the Greek press? (Laughter) How have the Greeks portrayed it? Well, here is a Greek newspaper. (Laughter) from the same year, 2012, and you will notice a photograph of Angela merekl once again, this time in a Nazi uonifrm. Obviously, it has been posohppeohtd. But what about that headline in red? "Memorandum macht frei." This is a dciret reference to the motto that was wtietrn above the gates of the concentration camps in places like Auschwitz and Dachau. The iimplotacin here is that the whole of Greece is going to become like one giant German concentration camp as a ceeucsqnnoe of the ecomnoic deal they've had to do. Now, this is the sort of thing that makes an htaroisin like me want to just give up and go and become a window cleaner or something. (Laughter) I mean, it's historical nonsense. None of these halnidees have anything to do with the Second World War at all. They are about a modern-day problem, a modern situation. The only reason to mention the Second World War is to provoke an emotional response. If I have one maessge that I want you to take away with you today, it is this: Whenever you hear a patiicloin, or a journalist, or a diplomat, mention the Second World War, I want alarm bells to ring. Because when public figures speak about the Second World War, they are not talking about what actually heaepnpd, they're invoking a myth. So whenever you hear a politician mention the war, I want you to ask yourselves what it is he is really trying to do. Is he trying to inspire you? - In which case that is relatively harmless. Or is he trying to fill you with fear? Is he trying to draw people together? In which case, again, that is relatively hesamrls. Or is he really trying to drive people apart? And above all, I want you to remind yourselves, and to rimend everybody you know, that the Second World War is over. (Laughter) We live in a different world, with different values and different problems. These problems will never be solved, and they certainly will never be solved plcleeuafy, if all we can think to do is to resurrect the Second World War. You know, history is a messy business, particularly the history of the Second World War. It's not there to make us feel good about ourselves; it's often ugly and uncomfortable, and desperately complicated. It's full of those grey aeras. If we could all just learn to accept that, then this world, our world, would be a much more peaceful place. Thank you. (Applause)

Open Cloze

Hello everybody. Audience: Hello. Keith Lowe: Fantastic! This is like a schoolroom or something. (Laughter) My name is Keith Lowe. I am an historian of the Second World War and its aftermath, and even I have to admit that I've ______ a pretty crowded _____ to _____. I went into my local bookshop recently, and this is what I saw. _________ of books about the Second World War are _________ every year, and, actually, to tell you the truth, this is only a very tiny selection of what's on offer. We in the West, and, actually, increasingly people in other parts of the world too, we are just a little bit ________ by the Second World War. We have whole TV stations which seem _______ to it. We write books about it, we write ______ about it, we make films about it. We have university courses which are devoted to the Second World War. Whole museums are built to house World War II collections. Even our politicians like to get in on this act. Whenever there is an important anniversary of the war, they tend to gather and commemorate it, and make speeches. So, for example, at the 70th anniversary of the D-Day ________, June 2014, 17 heads of state took time out of their schedules to come and spend the day on the ________ _______. Seventeen! This included people like Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, and so on. From my own country, we sent not only our _____ Minister, but also Queen Elisabeth II, who is - I mean, she is now in her nineties and largely retired from public life. What other international event can do all this? Even _____________ summits struggle to get so many world leaders into one _____ at the same time. My question is: Why? What is it that all these world leaders, in fact what is it that all of us, think it is that we're remembering? Why are we all so obsessed by the the Second World War? You might think that somebody like me would be pretty _______ with this situation. As long as the World War II ________ is booming, I am always going to have a job, right? But actually there is something about it that I find really a little bit __________, and I don't know whether that is just because I have an inherent ________ of a lot of politicians, or whether it's because I've been trained to always question everything. But it strikes me that a lot of the rhetoric that gets thrown around about the Second World War, particularly by people like politicians and journalists and _________ and so on, a lot of it doesn't seem to be about the Second World War at all; it seems to be about something else. I'm not sure if I've exactly put my finger on _________ what that thing is, but it seems to be something like a way of fostering national pride, or just trying to get people to feel good about themselves. Along the way, it seems to me that the Second World War has been ______ into a little bit of a cartoon, where everybody knows who the good guys were, and everybody knows who the bad guys were. There is precious little space left anymore for any of that difficult grey area in between. To give you some kind of an idea about what on earth it is I am going on about, let me tell you a story from my own country, from Britain. In _______, we like to think we are the real ______ of the Second World War. We tell stories about how we stood alone against the Nazis, about how we endured the bombing of the Blitz; how we kept calm and carried on, and __________ ______ our way back into Europe and _________ it. We still call the Second World War "Our Finest Hour", as if it is some kind of golden age in our history. So whenever there is any kind of anniversary, or important event based around the Second World War, we Brits really go for it. One of these events happened quite recently, in the summer of 2012, when we opened up a brand new war memorial right in the ______ of central London. It was a memorial to the men of Bomber Command, the men who flew the planes over Germany, dropped bombs and so on. This is what it looks like. As you can see, it's not exactly a shy and ________ piece of architecture, it's actually quite huge. It's by far the largest war memorial that we have in London, and I can tell you there are a lot of war memorials in London. As you walk into this thing, there is an ___________ which tells you that it's dedicated to the 55,000 men of Bomber Command who lost their lives during World War II. Now, when this first opened, in the summer of 2012, I went along to have a look, see what I thought of it, have a walk around. There is something really quite moving about it actually. You step in through these great big pillars, and, up on the wall, you can see carved into the stone, there is a quotation from _______ Churchill saying exactly how much we owe to these men who lost their lives. _____ of the memorial are built out of an actual World War II aircraft that was shot down during the war. So they put a lot of thought into this. It's actually really quite inspiring. So as I was walking around this monument, I couldn't help but feel this real surge of pride. I felt proud of these men who had given their _____ for something that I hold dear. I felt _____ of my country, I felt proud of the _______ way of life which had produced heroes like this. And yet, there was this little voice in the back of my head which just wouldn't go away because I know that 55,000 men of Bomber Command died during World War II, but I also know that 500,000 Germans died beneath the _____ that these men dropped. A lot of those Germans were Nazis, and I dare say that a lot of them probably deserved it. But the vast majority of these people were just ordinary men, women and children, just like you and me. Are any of these people at all _________ on this ________? Of course they are not. If you would suggest such a thing in the summer of 2012, you probably would have been _______. The Germans were our enemies during the Second World War. You can't _______ the Germans on a British national ________. And yet not to mention them, to _______ that somehow this didn't happen, or even worse, that somehow it doesn't matter, that too makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable. Okay, the _______ are a difficult problem, so let's just put them to one side for a ______, and let's think instead about the other _____________. And here is where the story starts getting interesting. Because if there is one thing that we Brits always forget about the bomber war, it's the fact that we didn't only bomb _______. More than a third of British and American bombs _______ on Europe during the war were dropped not on Germany but on those countries we were supposed to be liberating. As a consequence, 50,000 French civilians were killed by our bombs. 10,000 Dutch civilians were killed by our bombs. Are any of these people mentioned on this memorial? Of course they're not. And it was while I was thinking about that particular group, that it finally ______ on me - actually something I probably should have realized right from the start - which is that memorials like this aren't designed to tell the whole story; they are only designed to tell those parts of the _____ that make British people feel good about themselves. That's all very well and good, but it does come at a cost. And I couldn't help ________ when I was walking around this thing: This was the summer of 2012, this was the ______ when the Olympic Games was coming to ______. So at exactly the moment when the entire world was arriving in our city, the message that we were advertising was that we will remember our wartime dead, but we won't remember yours. It's like the exact opposite of the Olympic spirit. It's not only the British who do this, of course it's not. Every nation does it, the Americans, for example. The Americans like to call their _______ veterans "the greatest generation that any _______ has ever produced", as if they have some kind of monopoly on heroism or something. (Laughter) They backed it up with a thousand Hollywood movies full of square-jawed American heroes defeating evil in the name of truth and freedom. The Chinese are the same. You know that in 2013 alone, Chinese TV companies ________ over 200 TV ______________ about the Second _____ War, each of them telling almost an identical story. Only, of course, this time, it's the ________ who are all the evil monsters, and the Chinese who are all selfless heroes. And, of course, I could say the same thing about the French or the _______ or the Norwegians or the Greeks. We all do this. We all like to think that we were the heroes. We all like to think that we were the victims. But what we don't like to remember is those grey areas. And it's that which I find most uncomfortable about this, because, as far as I am concerned, it's the grey areas that make _______ interesting. In a sense, all good history is about the grey areas. But a lot of ______ don't seem to have time for complicated stories. They don't have time for _________ and uncomfortable emotions. In fact, I'm quickly ______ to the conclusion that a lot of people don't really have time for history at all. What they really want is a myth. Now, you might ask yourselves: What does any of this ______? I mean, we all like a good story, don't we? If that story makes us feel good about ourselves, then so much the better. It's all in the past anyway, so what does it matter? But that's just the _______, isn't it? Because it's not all in the past. And there is a dark side to all of these stories and myths that can be really damaging. When the former Yugoslavia tore itself apart in the 1990s, it did so with World War II songs on its lips, and World War II atrocities in its heart. When the Ukraine crisis _____ out in 2014, __________ and ________ accused one another of ______ like Nazis. And then, of course, _______ Clinton weighed in and started comparing ________ Putin to Hitler. These sorts of comparisons don't do anything to foster rational debate. If you were in an argument with someone, the last thing that is going to calm things down is that you start accusing them of being a Nazi. If you don't believe me, next time you're in an ________ with your wife or your _______, give it a try and see what kind of ________ you get. (Laughter) I can see some of you seem to have tried it. (Laughter) My point is that as soon as we _____ bringing the Second World War into any of our arguments, we get so sort of carried away with our own ________ myths that all we actually end up doing is stirring things back up again. Let me give you a couple of examples. Take this economic crisis which has rocked the world since 2008. Here we are in Athens, and you all know about the economic ______. All across ________ Europe, people have been suffering a real austerity, and largely this has been imposed by the European _____. But it's not always the ________ Union that gets the blame for this. Quite often, as the largest and most powerful country in the union, it's Germany that gets the blame. Now, how has this been portrayed in the press? Have we had a calm, ________ economic debate about it? This is the way that the Italian press portrayed the situation in 2012: "Quarto Reich." (Laughter) "The Fourth Reich." This is the _______ way of saying that modern-day Germany is no better than the Nazis, as if there is a direct link between World War II and today. And take a look at that picture. They've managed to dig something out that makes it look like Angela Merkel is ______ a Nazi ______. (Laughter) How about the Greek press? (Laughter) How have the Greeks portrayed it? Well, here is a Greek newspaper. (Laughter) from the same year, 2012, and you will notice a photograph of Angela ______ once again, this time in a Nazi _______. Obviously, it has been ____________. But what about that headline in red? "Memorandum macht frei." This is a ______ reference to the motto that was _______ above the gates of the concentration camps in places like Auschwitz and Dachau. The ___________ here is that the whole of Greece is going to become like one giant German concentration camp as a ___________ of the ________ deal they've had to do. Now, this is the sort of thing that makes an _________ like me want to just give up and go and become a window cleaner or something. (Laughter) I mean, it's historical nonsense. None of these _________ have anything to do with the Second World War at all. They are about a modern-day problem, a modern situation. The only reason to mention the Second World War is to provoke an emotional response. If I have one _______ that I want you to take away with you today, it is this: Whenever you hear a __________, or a journalist, or a diplomat, mention the Second World War, I want alarm bells to ring. Because when public figures speak about the Second World War, they are not talking about what actually ________, they're invoking a myth. So whenever you hear a politician mention the war, I want you to ask yourselves what it is he is really trying to do. Is he trying to inspire you? - In which case that is relatively harmless. Or is he trying to fill you with fear? Is he trying to draw people together? In which case, again, that is relatively ________. Or is he really trying to drive people apart? And above all, I want you to remind yourselves, and to ______ everybody you know, that the Second World War is over. (Laughter) We live in a different world, with different values and different problems. These problems will never be solved, and they certainly will never be solved __________, if all we can think to do is to resurrect the Second World War. You know, history is a messy business, particularly the history of the Second World War. It's not there to make us feel good about ourselves; it's often ugly and uncomfortable, and desperately complicated. It's full of those grey _____. If we could all just learn to accept that, then this world, our world, would be a much more peaceful place. Thank you. (Applause)

Solution

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Original Text

Hello everybody. Audience: Hello. Keith Lowe: Fantastic! This is like a schoolroom or something. (Laughter) My name is Keith Lowe. I am an historian of the Second World War and its aftermath, and even I have to admit that I've chosen a pretty crowded field to study. I went into my local bookshop recently, and this is what I saw. Thousands of books about the Second World War are published every year, and, actually, to tell you the truth, this is only a very tiny selection of what's on offer. We in the West, and, actually, increasingly people in other parts of the world too, we are just a little bit obsessed by the Second World War. We have whole TV stations which seem devoted to it. We write books about it, we write novels about it, we make films about it. We have university courses which are devoted to the Second World War. Whole museums are built to house World War II collections. Even our politicians like to get in on this act. Whenever there is an important anniversary of the war, they tend to gather and commemorate it, and make speeches. So, for example, at the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, June 2014, 17 heads of state took time out of their schedules to come and spend the day on the Normandy beaches. Seventeen! This included people like Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, and so on. From my own country, we sent not only our Prime Minister, but also Queen Elisabeth II, who is - I mean, she is now in her nineties and largely retired from public life. What other international event can do all this? Even international summits struggle to get so many world leaders into one place at the same time. My question is: Why? What is it that all these world leaders, in fact what is it that all of us, think it is that we're remembering? Why are we all so obsessed by the the Second World War? You might think that somebody like me would be pretty pleased with this situation. As long as the World War II industry is booming, I am always going to have a job, right? But actually there is something about it that I find really a little bit disturbing, and I don't know whether that is just because I have an inherent distrust of a lot of politicians, or whether it's because I've been trained to always question everything. But it strikes me that a lot of the rhetoric that gets thrown around about the Second World War, particularly by people like politicians and journalists and diplomats and so on, a lot of it doesn't seem to be about the Second World War at all; it seems to be about something else. I'm not sure if I've exactly put my finger on precisely what that thing is, but it seems to be something like a way of fostering national pride, or just trying to get people to feel good about themselves. Along the way, it seems to me that the Second World War has been turned into a little bit of a cartoon, where everybody knows who the good guys were, and everybody knows who the bad guys were. There is precious little space left anymore for any of that difficult grey area in between. To give you some kind of an idea about what on earth it is I am going on about, let me tell you a story from my own country, from Britain. In Britain, we like to think we are the real heroes of the Second World War. We tell stories about how we stood alone against the Nazis, about how we endured the bombing of the Blitz; how we kept calm and carried on, and eventually fought our way back into Europe and liberated it. We still call the Second World War "Our Finest Hour", as if it is some kind of golden age in our history. So whenever there is any kind of anniversary, or important event based around the Second World War, we Brits really go for it. One of these events happened quite recently, in the summer of 2012, when we opened up a brand new war memorial right in the middle of central London. It was a memorial to the men of Bomber Command, the men who flew the planes over Germany, dropped bombs and so on. This is what it looks like. As you can see, it's not exactly a shy and retiring piece of architecture, it's actually quite huge. It's by far the largest war memorial that we have in London, and I can tell you there are a lot of war memorials in London. As you walk into this thing, there is an inscription which tells you that it's dedicated to the 55,000 men of Bomber Command who lost their lives during World War II. Now, when this first opened, in the summer of 2012, I went along to have a look, see what I thought of it, have a walk around. There is something really quite moving about it actually. You step in through these great big pillars, and, up on the wall, you can see carved into the stone, there is a quotation from Winston Churchill saying exactly how much we owe to these men who lost their lives. Parts of the memorial are built out of an actual World War II aircraft that was shot down during the war. So they put a lot of thought into this. It's actually really quite inspiring. So as I was walking around this monument, I couldn't help but feel this real surge of pride. I felt proud of these men who had given their lives for something that I hold dear. I felt proud of my country, I felt proud of the British way of life which had produced heroes like this. And yet, there was this little voice in the back of my head which just wouldn't go away because I know that 55,000 men of Bomber Command died during World War II, but I also know that 500,000 Germans died beneath the bombs that these men dropped. A lot of those Germans were Nazis, and I dare say that a lot of them probably deserved it. But the vast majority of these people were just ordinary men, women and children, just like you and me. Are any of these people at all mentioned on this memorial? Of course they are not. If you would suggest such a thing in the summer of 2012, you probably would have been lynched. The Germans were our enemies during the Second World War. You can't mention the Germans on a British national monument. And yet not to mention them, to pretend that somehow this didn't happen, or even worse, that somehow it doesn't matter, that too makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable. Okay, the Germans are a difficult problem, so let's just put them to one side for a minute, and let's think instead about the other nationalities. And here is where the story starts getting interesting. Because if there is one thing that we Brits always forget about the bomber war, it's the fact that we didn't only bomb Germany. More than a third of British and American bombs dropped on Europe during the war were dropped not on Germany but on those countries we were supposed to be liberating. As a consequence, 50,000 French civilians were killed by our bombs. 10,000 Dutch civilians were killed by our bombs. Are any of these people mentioned on this memorial? Of course they're not. And it was while I was thinking about that particular group, that it finally dawned on me - actually something I probably should have realized right from the start - which is that memorials like this aren't designed to tell the whole story; they are only designed to tell those parts of the story that make British people feel good about themselves. That's all very well and good, but it does come at a cost. And I couldn't help thinking when I was walking around this thing: This was the summer of 2012, this was the summer when the Olympic Games was coming to London. So at exactly the moment when the entire world was arriving in our city, the message that we were advertising was that we will remember our wartime dead, but we won't remember yours. It's like the exact opposite of the Olympic spirit. It's not only the British who do this, of course it's not. Every nation does it, the Americans, for example. The Americans like to call their wartime veterans "the greatest generation that any society has ever produced", as if they have some kind of monopoly on heroism or something. (Laughter) They backed it up with a thousand Hollywood movies full of square-jawed American heroes defeating evil in the name of truth and freedom. The Chinese are the same. You know that in 2013 alone, Chinese TV companies produced over 200 TV dramatizations about the Second World War, each of them telling almost an identical story. Only, of course, this time, it's the Japanese who are all the evil monsters, and the Chinese who are all selfless heroes. And, of course, I could say the same thing about the French or the Koreans or the Norwegians or the Greeks. We all do this. We all like to think that we were the heroes. We all like to think that we were the victims. But what we don't like to remember is those grey areas. And it's that which I find most uncomfortable about this, because, as far as I am concerned, it's the grey areas that make history interesting. In a sense, all good history is about the grey areas. But a lot of people don't seem to have time for complicated stories. They don't have time for difficult and uncomfortable emotions. In fact, I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that a lot of people don't really have time for history at all. What they really want is a myth. Now, you might ask yourselves: What does any of this matter? I mean, we all like a good story, don't we? If that story makes us feel good about ourselves, then so much the better. It's all in the past anyway, so what does it matter? But that's just the problem, isn't it? Because it's not all in the past. And there is a dark side to all of these stories and myths that can be really damaging. When the former Yugoslavia tore itself apart in the 1990s, it did so with World War II songs on its lips, and World War II atrocities in its heart. When the Ukraine crisis broke out in 2014, Ukrainians and Russians accused one another of acting like Nazis. And then, of course, Hillary Clinton weighed in and started comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler. These sorts of comparisons don't do anything to foster rational debate. If you were in an argument with someone, the last thing that is going to calm things down is that you start accusing them of being a Nazi. If you don't believe me, next time you're in an argument with your wife or your husband, give it a try and see what kind of reaction you get. (Laughter) I can see some of you seem to have tried it. (Laughter) My point is that as soon as we start bringing the Second World War into any of our arguments, we get so sort of carried away with our own national myths that all we actually end up doing is stirring things back up again. Let me give you a couple of examples. Take this economic crisis which has rocked the world since 2008. Here we are in Athens, and you all know about the economic crisis. All across Southern Europe, people have been suffering a real austerity, and largely this has been imposed by the European Union. But it's not always the European Union that gets the blame for this. Quite often, as the largest and most powerful country in the union, it's Germany that gets the blame. Now, how has this been portrayed in the press? Have we had a calm, rational economic debate about it? This is the way that the Italian press portrayed the situation in 2012: "Quarto Reich." (Laughter) "The Fourth Reich." This is the Italian way of saying that modern-day Germany is no better than the Nazis, as if there is a direct link between World War II and today. And take a look at that picture. They've managed to dig something out that makes it look like Angela Merkel is making a Nazi salute. (Laughter) How about the Greek press? (Laughter) How have the Greeks portrayed it? Well, here is a Greek newspaper. (Laughter) from the same year, 2012, and you will notice a photograph of Angela Merkel once again, this time in a Nazi uniform. Obviously, it has been photoshopped. But what about that headline in red? "Memorandum macht frei." This is a direct reference to the motto that was written above the gates of the concentration camps in places like Auschwitz and Dachau. The implication here is that the whole of Greece is going to become like one giant German concentration camp as a consequence of the economic deal they've had to do. Now, this is the sort of thing that makes an historian like me want to just give up and go and become a window cleaner or something. (Laughter) I mean, it's historical nonsense. None of these headlines have anything to do with the Second World War at all. They are about a modern-day problem, a modern situation. The only reason to mention the Second World War is to provoke an emotional response. If I have one message that I want you to take away with you today, it is this: Whenever you hear a politician, or a journalist, or a diplomat, mention the Second World War, I want alarm bells to ring. Because when public figures speak about the Second World War, they are not talking about what actually happened, they're invoking a myth. So whenever you hear a politician mention the war, I want you to ask yourselves what it is he is really trying to do. Is he trying to inspire you? - In which case that is relatively harmless. Or is he trying to fill you with fear? Is he trying to draw people together? In which case, again, that is relatively harmless. Or is he really trying to drive people apart? And above all, I want you to remind yourselves, and to remind everybody you know, that the Second World War is over. (Laughter) We live in a different world, with different values and different problems. These problems will never be solved, and they certainly will never be solved peacefully, if all we can think to do is to resurrect the Second World War. You know, history is a messy business, particularly the history of the Second World War. It's not there to make us feel good about ourselves; it's often ugly and uncomfortable, and desperately complicated. It's full of those grey areas. If we could all just learn to accept that, then this world, our world, would be a much more peaceful place. Thank you. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
world war	23
war ii	7
feel good	4
grey areas	4
felt proud	3
war memorial	2
bomber command	2
economic crisis	2
european union	2
angela merkel	2

ngrams of length 3

collocation	frequency
world war ii	7

Important Words

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