History Geek Stuff. You've been warned.

I always want to blog after my Britain and the World class. I have, in fact, done so on at least one other occasion. Professor Miller can 'bring it', lecture-wise.

When he was talking about World War II today I actually got chills. He started out by talking about the British retreat at Dunkirk (when the Nazis had them trapped between their tanks and the Atlantic and there was a massive British effort, employing a lot of civilian boats, to get their infantry out of there) and then he talked about the Battle of Britain, quoting Churchill a couple of times. I'm a sucker for the whole victorious underdog thing and for London. I really have to read more about the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.

Present day patriotic rhetoric doesn't do much for me (Bush). I love Canada, but I'm not going to go fight a war against anybody on its behalf. I am, however, a sucker for historical patriotic rhetoric and Churchill was the master of it. I love the famous quote from after the Battle of Britain when Churchill was talking about the Royal Air Force pilots: "Never has so much been owed by so many to so few." Chills people, chills.

But Professor Miller was just toying with our emotions. The last twenty minutes of the lecture was devoted to telling us all the horrible things that the Allies did in pursuit of victory. The fact that Churchill cut off foods supplies to Bengal in anticipation of a Japanese attack and the indiscriminate bombing of civillian targets in Germany (especially Dresden) were just a couple of the highlights.

It's never simple. He said it was our responsibility as historians to look at all sides of an issue (or as many as we can). Sometimes I think I'd just prefer to think "Yay! Britain won! Democracy triumphed over the fascist machine!" But, I guess that sort of unilateral thinking is where we run into trouble, Bush.