Should knowledge of history make us optimistic or pessimistic?

I was interviewed on the Today programme on Radio 4 this week, and the closing words I spoke seem to have troubled a few of my friends. I was asked by the presenter, John Humphrys, whether I felt knowing history should make us optimistic or pessimistic about events in Greece. I replied that I did not think there was a lot of optimism in history.

Some of my friends were shocked at this. They see a huge amount to be optimistic about in history. ‘History is a catalogue of progress,’ one of them said to me. ‘From cancer drugs to computers to smart phones – things get better all the time.’

Really? What about the fact that there is example after example in history that demonstrates that the human race can go backwards as easily as it can go forwards. After the fall of Rome there came the accurately named ‘Dark Ages’. What about the Black Death in the fourteenth century? It took hundreds of years for Britain to recover from that catastrophic and sudden population loss. What about the civilizations that vanished in South America – even today no one really knows why the Mayans disappeared.

I actually think we only exist at all today because of one piece of extraordinary luck. If the Nazis had waited say fifteen years or so to release their aggression on the world then they would most likely have possessed powerful nuclear weapons. And having studied the mentality of this regime I believe that given the smallest provocation the Nazis would have chosen to let loose the nukes indiscriminately and at whatever cost.

Nihilism was deep, deep within Hitler – witness his ‘nero’ destruction order at the end of the war – and his solipsism was such that as he contemplated suicide, on 30 April 1945, if he could have blown up the world along with him, I believe he would have.

Where is the optimism in that? If one Hitler can be born into the world – why not other much like him?

Statue of Karl Lueger in Karl Lueger Platz, Vienna

I was in Vienna a few days ago, filming for my next TV series, and witnessed Austrians wrestling with a dilemma about history that affects us all. The city authorities have just decided that a stretch of the historic inner road around the centre of Vienna which has for nearly 80 years been called the ‘Karl Lueger Ring’ will be renamed ‘University Ring’.

Why? Well, because Lueger was not only a brilliant city administrator – he was mayor of Vienna from 1897 until 1910 and introduced social benefits like an outstanding sewage system and fresh water – he was also an outspoken anti-Semite. So outspoken, indeed, that Adolf Hitler almost hero-worshiped him.

The stretch of road currently called the ‘Karl Lueger Ring’ runs past the University of Vienna, and many in the university have long been embarrassed by their address. So, now, it is to be changed. But there are many other places in Vienna that still bear Lueger’s name. Not least ‘Karl Lueger Platz’ in the city centre which also contains an epic statue of Lueger  (I was there 10 days ago and took the photo above of it). And there are no plans to remove this statue or rename this square.

This debate raises, of course, a huge question about how we see the past. To what extent can we judge the past by today’s standards? Lueger was a massive anti-Semite – absolutely – but so were millions at the time, and they wanted to commemorate not necessarily his antisemitism but his ‘good’ works for the city. If we condemn them and remove traces of this man, then what about all the statues in London to ‘heroes’ of the British Empire? Most of these 19th century worthies were racists – and a number, no doubt, anti-Semites. Equally, what about Stalin’s statue that still stands in Red Square by the Kremlin wall. Shouldn’t we be campaigning to make the Russians remove it?

I was just watching archive footage of the Nazi take over in Austria in 1938, and the swiftness with which Austrians renamed many of their squares ‘Adolf Hitler Platz’ is breathtaking. Just as swiftly, of course, they renamed their streets and squares something else when they lost the war.

To a degree, it’s about proportionality. Germans today do not want to celebrate Adolf Hitler. Nobody – well, only perhaps a small bunch of Neo-Nazis – wants to live on a road called Adolf Hitler Strasse. His reputation is pure black. But most others are shades of grey – like Lueger. About the shades of grey there will likely be debate and indecision – hence removing Luger’s name from one street, but keeping his statue in a square. (Mind you, I wouldn’t want to live somewhere called Karl Lueger Square – rather like the University authorities, I would be embarrassed to give out my address.)

But, what’s important, I think, is that you have to accept that people in the past were not like us – but there is a good chance we would have been like them had we been born into their world. It doesn’t mean we should necessarily celebrate today those who were celebrated then – thankfully most of us now condemn racism and antisemitism – but only that we need to be careful about imposing on people in history the values we now hold dear.