Andrew Roberts

He has specifically proclaimed that the victorious powers of the Entente alliance should have broken up Germany into component sub-national territories akin to the disorganised situation prior to the unification of Germany in the mid-1800s.

Ultranationalism was eventually "burned out of the German soul", in Roberts' opinion, at a truly devastating cost.

Roberts' analysis of the Second World War has convinced him that the Nazi German government had significant advantages in military organisation and economic power early in the war.

He has argued that, if someone other than the dictator Adolf Hitler had control of the nation's military strategy, the country would likely have forgone a costly direct invasion of Soviet territory, which occurred through Operation Barbarossa, and instead would have swept through Mediterranean territories before trying to seal off British-controlled Middle East areas.

Roberts has concluded that the likely morale-building victories against the comparatively weak forces to the southeast could have allowed Hitler to essentially win the war.

According to Roberts, the other key strategic mistake was the German declaration of war against the United States, which was announced only four days after the Pearl Harbor attacks despite the fact that the Nazi regime had no legal obligation to take such an action.

Roberts has stated that, after the declaration, Germany could not keep the U.S. war-making economic machine at bay.

Thus, in his view, the mistakes, delusions, and exaggerated self-confidence complexes that the fascist government fostered proved its undoing.

Roberts has additionally stated that he views Joseph Stalin's control of the Soviet Armed Forces as having been disastrous to the allied efforts against the Axis powers.

He has commented that Stalin's obsessive tactics of killing his own men for ideological reasons cost him thousands upon thousands of troops.

In the Battle of Stalingrad alone, Soviet forces killed the equivalent of two full divisions of their own personnel.

In terms of more recent history, Roberts has whole-heartedly embraced Thatcherism.

He has remained a staunch backer of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her socio-political legacy.

In Roberts' opinion, Thatcher's insight to push the U.K. into a path in which it kept out of the euro currency concept, while still having strong ties to various European economies and otherwise engaging in international trade, has been validated by the Eurozone crisis in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

After the British Prime Minister Tony Blair of the Labour Party resigned, Roberts assessed him as an "exemplary war leader" with his "vigorous prosecution of the War against Terror", which would leave him regarded as a "highly successful prime minister".

Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia, (born 13 January 1963), is an English popular historian, journalist and member of the House of Lords.

He is the Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Lehrman Institute Distinguished Lecturer at the New-York Historical Society.

Roberts began his career in corporate finance as an investment banker and private company director with the London merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., where he worked from 1985 to 1988.

He published his first historical book in 1991.

In the context of the First World War, Roberts determines that the treaty obligations imposed on the German Empire should have been significantly tougher.

In 2006, The Economist described his book A History of the English Speaking Peoples since 1900 as "a giant political pamphlet larded with its author's prejudices, with sneers at those who do not share them", while also critiquing him for writing "with errors."

Roberts was born in Hammersmith, London, the son of Kathleen and business executive Simon Roberts.

Simon Roberts, from Cobham, Surrey, inherited the Job's Dairy milk business and also owned the United Kingdom franchise of Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets.

A prolific reader as a child, Andrew Roberts soon gained a passion for history, particularly for dramatic works relating to "battles, wars, assassinations and death".

Roberts attended Cranleigh School in Surrey, before going up to read modern history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was elected chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association.

He graduated with a first class honours B.A. degree before taking a Ph.D. in modern history.

As an author, Roberts is well-known internationally for his 2009 non-fiction work The Storm of War, which covers socio-political factors of the Second World War such as Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the administrative organisation of Nazi Germany.

The work received the British Army Military Book of the Year Award for 2010 as well.

It achieved commercial success, reaching the No. 2 slot on The Sunday Times best-seller list.

Roberts' public commentary has additionally appeared in several UK-based publications such as The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, with his support for Atlanticist views in terms of international relations.

He served as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 2013 to 2021.

Roberts' historical research has focused mostly on English-speaking nations, particularly those closely tied socially to the United Kingdom such as the United States.

Much of Roberts' later work, including his 2014 and 2018 biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte and of Winston Churchill, has been widely praised.

Elsewhere, his work has sometimes been criticised.

In the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, Roberts backed the "Leave" vote.

Roberts supports a strong American military and has generally argued in favour of close relations between the Anglosphere nations.

As an advocate for the general principle of democratic pluralism, he has argued that "[s]neered at for being 'simplistic' in his reaction to 9/11, Bush's visceral responses to the attacks of a fascistic, totalitarian death cult will be seen as having been substantially the right ones" in the long run.

In many writings, he has come out in support of neo-conservative influenced socio-political viewpoints.

During the buildup to the Iraq War, Roberts supported the proposed invasion, arguing that anything less would be tantamount to appeasement, comparing Tony Blair to Winston Churchill in his "astonishing leadership".

He additionally argued that acting against Saddam Hussein was in line with the "Pax Americana realpolitik that has kept the Great Powers at peace since the Second World War, despite the collapse of Communism".