Brendan Peter Simms (born 1967, Dublin) is a Professor of the history of international relations in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Early life

Brendan Simms is the son of Anngret and David Simms, a professor of mathematics. He is also a grand-nephew of Brian Goold-Verschoyle, a member of the Communist Party of Ireland, who became a Soviet spy and died in a Soviet gulag in 1942. before completing his doctoral dissertation, Anglo-Prussian relations, 1804–1806: The Napoleonic Threat, at Peterhouse, Cambridge, under the supervision of Tim Blanning in 1993.

In addition to his academic work, Simms also serves as the president of the Henry Jackson Society, which advocates the view that supporting and promoting liberal democracy and liberal interventionism should be an integral part of Western foreign policy, and as President of the Project for Democratic Union, a Munich-based student-organised think tank.

He has advocated that the Eurozone should create a United States of Europe, and also that this should continue the traditions of the Holy Roman Empire, appointing an elected Emperor.

Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy

Norman Stone praised Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy as "lively and erudite". He also praised the book for the focus on Germany and Simms's knowledge of it though he qualifies it by saying Simms is stronger on the 18th century than the 20th century due to the volume of material to be covered in the latter. Evans described the book as a "one-sided picture", adding that even Simms has to acknowledge that there were periods of cooperation. On the whole Malcolm praised the book, though regarding Simms' emphasis on the primacy of foreign policy in European affairs, Malcolm did wonder if there may be counterexamples, such as those where the foreign/domestic distinction is less clear.

British historian Richard Overy described Hitler: Only the World Was Enough as a "thoroughly thought-provoking and stimulating biography which all historians of the Third Reich will have to take seriously," but also criticized the book for downplaying Hitler's imperial ambitions in Eastern Europe and for giving Hitler too much credit for creating outcomes.

Bibliography

Books

  • The Struggle for Mastery in Germany, 1779–1850 (Palgrave MacMillan, 1998)
  • Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia (Penguin, 2001)
  • Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714–1783 (Penguin, 2007)
  • Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present (Allen Lane, 2013)
  • Britain's Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation (Penguin, 2017)
  • (with Charlie Laderman) Donald Trump: The Making of a Worldview (I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2017)
  • Hitler: A Global Biography (Basic Books, 2019)
  • (with Charlie Laderman) Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and the German March to Global War (Penguin, 2021)
  • (with Steven McGregor and David DeVries) The Silver Waterfall: How America Won the War in the Pacific at Midway (Hachette, 2022)
  • The Return of the Great Powers (Basic Boosk, 2026)

Critical studies and reviews of Simms' work

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See also

  • European History
  • Bosnian War
  • British Empire
  • T. C. W. Blanning

References

  • Biography
  • Brady Lecture, London 2018