Hitler's struggle with the Army
General Staff is one of the most
interesting features of Nazi his-
tory during the war, for the Gen-
eral Staff was the one centre of
opposition which Hitler, though
he succeeded in ruining it, was
never able to conquer.
The American President's great
struggle with the profession of
law, nicely revealed in the text
of the week, thrusts one back in
memory to the distinction raised
in a similar context, by one of
the gifted teacher-writers of our
time, the late Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Although a tremendous carnage, to
return the compliment, distinguish-
es the wake of the degenerate Pres-
ident, a conquest has not occurred.
One reads in Trevor-Roper, of in-
formation on events never seeming-
ly relevant to our wondrous age,
framed with such penetration of
their human constancy that it is
impossible to dismiss them from
the mind. It might have happened
in the European Witch Craze, or
in Oliver Cromwell's Parliaments,
even in the bunker of the suicid-
al Führer, but from the stunning
writing and scholarship of Trevor-
Roper, human conduct shows its un-
dying facets with the memorability
it deserves. It strikes one that
it is against this, that the Amer-
ican President's struggle with the
legal profession truly is defined:
in the recognition of what he does.
Hugh Trevor-Roper
Lord Dacre of Glanton
1914-2003
The Last Days of Hitler
1947
Sixth Edition
1987
Macmillan©
The Crisis of the Seven-
teenth Century
Religion, Reformation,
and Social Change
1967
Harper & Row©
