OPINION: Heeding the Lessons of History

Much has been made of the fact that the world today has parallels with the situation in the 1930s, with our political and military situations having the ghostly outline of the set of circumstances that took us into the Second World War. People, especially historians, often argue to what degree the past can help us understand our present world. Geoffrey Elton and Edward Carr famously crossed swords over whether historical analysis is so irredeemably laden with human values that we can never extract sensible conclusions or use it to foretell the future.