No myth
Sir: Lindsey Platt (Letters, 7 December) has wilfully misrepresented what I original- ly wrote in a pathetic attempt to score a cheap point. My question about whether `British-backed murderers of the Hiner were genuinely likely to be popular with the Wehrmacht' of course presupposed that the Churchill government had gone down the route proposed by Joachim Fest, Richard Lamb and Mr Platt, and had given logistical support to the July Plotters. To call my question 'nonsense' because the conspirators were not in fact British-backed implies an ignorance of the conditional tense only just this side of the moronic.
As for the Dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the- back myth), far from being 'significantly silent' about it I repeat that the horrors vis- ited upon Germany in 1945 — including the bombing of their cities — were absolute prerequisites for the peace-loving, demo- cratic Germany we know today. If Germany had been forced to leave the field through internal treachery in 1944, before final mili- tary defeat proved beyond doubt the failure of Nazism, there would undoubtedly be revanchist noises emanating from modern- day Germany. Unlike in 1918, the stab-in- the-back myth would have been no myth.
Andrew Roberts
2 Tite Street, London SW3
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