In reviewing John Lukacs, The Duel, I noticed that the author has other intentions in thoughts in addition to the facts. Lukacs gives a very precise account of the actualy events throughout these eighty days but in my opinion he wants the reader to grab the bigger ideas. A single of these concepts is that Lukacs wants the reader to honestly look at just how close the Allies came to losing the war. One more of these notions is the notion that the main distinction in between Churchill and Hitler concerned nationalism versus patriotism and a third thought is just how significantly history can be effected by the courageous choices of a handful of people.
Lukacs tends to make sturdy mention of how close Hitler came to victory. Hitler got all the things he wanted for so extended, without the need of even obtaining to resort to force. Lukacs describes Hitler as ”being an amateur at generalship, but he posessed the good specialist talent applicable to all human affairs: an understanding of human nature and the understanding of the weaknesses of his opponents. That was enough to carry him quite far”(three). Lukacs wants to make that a point in all of his readers’ minds that Hitler could manipulate persons so he could get what he wanted with no resorting to violence. Of course, the threat of violence was constantly present but Hitler was smart adequate that he could scare his enemies enough that they would not want to engage in combat. When basically forced to fight, Hitler nonetheless dominated and he could have pretty possibly won the war if not for that a single fatal mistake he produced by hesitating in his plans against the English. I believe it is critical that Lukacs makes confident to get this message across simply because some people decide on to ignore this truth due to the devastating outcomes that would have resulted if Hitler succeeded.