Lives Of The Modern Historians – Hugh Trevor Roper

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Hugh Trevor Roper sees history as an art rather than a science, crediting historians for their imagination and expression as much as for their use of facts. He sees history as a study of individuality, choices and consequences of actions undertaken. While Alan Bullock saw Hitler as a charlatan who may not have believed all that he said but used it to secure power and influence anyway, Roper saw Hitler as totally fanatically committed to his ideologies. Historians are divided as to whether Hitler wanted to conquer just Europe or the entire World. Roper believes it was only his aim to capture Europe. I would go for the global conquest viewpoint, especially after the US entered the War, when Hitler could only have won by taking the whole planet. In 1983 Roper seriously ruined his reputation as an authority on the Nazis when he declared that the freshly dicovered Hitler Diaries were genuine right before they were proved fraudulent and not even very good forgeries, as the hand-writing never matched Hitler’s and the inks used were only available long after 1945. Arthur Chappell