R E V IE WS
REVI EWS
BOOKS
A World to Gain
By Thomas Toughill
Clairview Books
Revised edition (July 30, 2004)
£15.50.
T
he general consensus is, of course,
that American intervention in
World War Two was inevitable.
That the evil forces of Nazi Germany had
to be taken down for the most egregious
of crimes.
Halting the murderers of Jews,
‘slanderers’, Christians, blacks, gays, the
disabled (the list was endless), was a truly
righteous action. But there is one man
who claims that this is only partly true.
And the evidence he offers is compelling.
Thomas Toughill is a man who until
now has remained a disinterested
spectator ‘under the radar’ of public
affairs and politics. But he has provided
an interesting yet disturbing new outlook
on the war against Nazi Germany.
Born in Glasgow in 1943, Mr Toughill
was educated at a local grammar school
and completed his degree at the University
of Glasgow where he read history, politics
and German. After his degree he became a
qualified teacher in history and German. Mr.
FILMS
That Awkward Moment
(15)
Treehouse Pictures
Director: Tom Gormican
Starring: Zac Efron, Michael B.
Jordan, Miles Teller,
Imogen Poots
8•FANFA R E JUNE 20 1 4
Toughill says: “Seeking to do something
‘different’, I joined the Royal Hong Kong
Police where I was attached to Special
Branch. There I served for a while in the
VIP Protection Unit, where I looked after
visiting dignitaries to Hong Kong.”
During his time serving as an intelligence
officer in Hong Kong he met and served as
the bodyguard for Henry Kissinger, and
the 37th President of the United States
Richard Nixon.
With his experience as an intelligence
officer and through a keen interest in Nazi
I
t’s been a while since we’ve seen Zac
Efron at the movies. And this time
around, we see a lot of him. Without
a shirt on. Having sex. Peeing horizontally
over a toilet. He’s so charming, so goodlooking, that we can almost forget his fivemonth stint in rehab for cocaine addiction,
a far cry from his golden boy status.
When Mikey (Michael B. Jordan) gets
dumped by his wife, his two best friends,
Jason (Efron) and
Daniel (Miles Teller),
vow to stay single
with
him.
This
shouldn’t be difficult,
but this being a romcom, they fall in love
within the next 20
minutes.
Daniel’s
friends-with-benefits
becomes something
more, while Jason
falls for the quirkiest
blonde at the bar. I
was sceptical as to
whether Efron could
do chemistry with
quirky. In his last few
Germany, Mr. Toughill seems to have
uncovered a much more sinister aspect
to American participation in the war. And
suggests a real motive that seems to have
escaped many historians, as he explains in
his ground-breaking book.
“I wrote ‘A World to Gain’ because I
wanted to understand better the world into
which I was born. I am one of Roosevelt’s
children,” he explains.
“That is to say that I was born into the
world which Roosevelt created through
this decisive intervention in the Second
World War.”
In his book he argues that Nazi Germany
and the United States of America were
on an inevitable collision course after
Hitler’s rise to power. But, he suggests,
the real bone of contention between the
two nations was economic rivalry rather
than ideological opposi ѥ