大象传媒

Edward Stourton continues to revisit passionate broadcast debates of the 1960s and 70s exploring the ideas, the great minds behind them and echoes of the arguments in present-day politics.

This episode pitches AJP Taylor against Hugh Trevor-Roper, two big-name historians and the 'telly dons' of their time.

It's 1961 and the fall-out of world war two is still fresh in the minds of the British people. Taylor had just published his provocative revision of the orthodox view of the causes of the war in 1939 - that Britain had scuppered a lunatic dictator's plans of world domination. Taylor argued instead that Hitler was a rational statesman who carried out the expected foreign policies of any German leader, and that a war against Britain and France was unintended.

It caused outrage.

Also on the table is the question of Munich - were tweaks to Germany's frontiers to save another world war morally right? The inflation of the term 'appeasement' has many contemporary connotations.

In the studio dissecting the debate is Adam Sisman, biographer of both AJP Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper, and Richard Evans, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.

Producer: Dominic Byrne
A Blakeway production for 大象传媒 Radio 4.