Downright mad
Sir: Might I respond to Richard Lamb's considered, and Lindsey Platt's somewhat hysterical, criticisms of my 26 October article (Danger! New myth ahead') in which I expressed concern at the belief, held by some Britons as well as Germans, that the British government was to blame for Hitler's survival in power because it did not aid anti-Hitler German conspira- tors?
Lamb's assumption that because I do not agree with him I therefore cannot have vis- ited the archives and read the relevant papers fails to take into account the foot- notes to the chapter of my biography of Lord Halifax, The Holy Fox, which deals with the peace issue. For there I cite the Foreign Office papers, Prime Minister's papers and Cabinet minutes in the Public Records Office, as well as the Chamberlain Papers, Harvey Papers, Butler Papers, Churchill Papers, and six interviews, several books and quotations from unpublished sources.
I consulted no fewer that 76 sets of pri- vate papers in the course of my researches, including most of those Mr Lamb did for his own book; the only difference was that I came to different conclusions. The only `secondary source' I used in my article was a 1947 book by Hugh Trevor-Roper, whose position as an intelligence officer in 1945 makes him arguably a more primary than secondary source anyhow.
As for Mr Platt, if he is really willing to believe, because a German colonel once told him so, that the July conspirators were in a position to defeat Himmler's SS in 1944, and British-backed murderers of the Fiihrer were genuinely likely to be popular with the Wehrmacht as it fought for the Fatherland on two fronts, that is entirely up to him. Your readers can make their own choice as to which one of us, in Mr Platt's words, is 'downright mad' on the issue.
Andrew Roberts
2 Tite Street, London SW3
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