The only thing that the First World War does for Britain is it stops a civil war in Ireland. Most of the cabinet in 1914 did not think that if Germany won the skies would fall in. In 1871 when Germany did win the skies did not fall in. There was no domination over the hold of you. The rest of 20th century Europe was a sad threnity on that theme and showed how wrong he was. And Britain had the choice of staying out and politicians got it wrong. Since then politicians and historians have united to give you this myth. I ask you tonight to repudiate a century of myth making and to vote in favour of the fact that Britain should have stayed out
For this week's Sunday Debate, we're dipping back into the archive to 2014, when we gathered a panel of expert historians to debate whether Britain was right to fight in the First World War, a tragedy that laid the foundations for decades of destructive upheaval and violence across Europe. To debate the issue, we invited leading historians Margaret MacMillan, Max Hastings, John Charmley and Dominic Sandbrook to an event hosted by journalist, columnist and national security expert, Edward Lucas.
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