Andrew Roberts on how the secrets of the Combined Chiefs of Staff worked their way into the historical record: (British Gen. Alan) Brooke seems to have taken a strangely inconsistent attitude toward security; he would severely admonish anyone giving classified information over non-scrambler telephones, yet he posted his diaries to his wife by Royal Mail. Whether the many journals kept by senior British officials would have helped the Third Reich much had it successfully invaded Britain might be doubted, but they undoubtedly help historians. When the American historian Forrest C. Pogue was researching for his official biography of (US Gen. George C.) Marshall, no fewer than four British officers allowed him to use materials from their diaries, each on the condition that he never revealed the fact that he had kept them. (Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders (Harper: New York, NY, 2008, 2009), 22-23).
Posted on: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 19:58:58 +0000
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