The First World War

    "The Second World War was, like the First, the product of great power politics. Yet it, unlike the First, has been recast as a great crusade. For the British, partly because they have been influenced by the Americans, it has now become unequivocally the 'good' war fought by what America now calls the 'greatest generation'. It has become our benchmark for 'existencial' war, the sort of war that has to be fought because it is necessary, that must be fought whatever the outcome and regardless of the cost. (...). This is an overwhelmingly retrospective judgement, and one that has grown with the telling. It is fed by the Holocaust, despite the fact that none of the powers that declared war on Germany did so to save de Jews."

Hew Strachan