Kind: captions
Language: en
And you see that manifest itself on
D-Day where you've got
6,939 vessels of which there are 1,213
warships,
4,127 assaultcraft, 12 a half thousand
aircraft, you know, 155,000 men landed
and dropped from the air in 24-hour
period. It is phenomenal. It is
absolutely phenomenal.
The following is a conversation with
James Holland, a historian specializing
in World War II, who has written a lot
of amazing books on the subject,
especially covering the Western Front,
often providing fascinating details at
multiple levels of analysis, including
strategic, operational, tactical,
technological, and of course, the human
side, the personal accounts from the
war. He also co-hosts a great podcast on
World War II called We Have Ways of
Making You Talk. This is a Lex Freeman
podcast. To support it, please check out
our sponsors in the description or at
lexfreeman.com/sponsors. And now, dear
friends, here's James Holland.
In volume one of the war in the west,
your book series on World War II, you
write, "The Second World War witnessed
the deaths of more than 60 million
people from over 60 different countries.
Entire cities were laid waste. National
borders were redrawn. And many millions
more people found themselves displaced.
Over the past couple of decades, many of
those living in the Middle East or parts
of Africa, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and
even the United States may feel
justifiably that these troubled times
have already proved the most traumatic
in their recent past. Yet, globally, the
Second World War was and remains the
single biggest catastrophe of modern
history. In terms of human drama, it is
unrivaled. No other war has affected so
many lives in such a large number of
countries. So what to you makes World
War II the biggest catastrophe in human
drama in modern history and maybe from a
historian perspective the most
fascinating subject to study thing about
World War II is it really is truly
global. You know it's fought in deserts.
It's fought in in in the Arctic. Um it's
fought across oceans. It's fought in the
air. Um it's in jungle. It's in the
hills. It is on the beaches. Um it's
also on the Russian step and it's also
in Ukraine. Um so it's it's it's that
global nature of it. And I just think
you know where there's where there's war
there is always incredible human drama.
And I think for most people and
certainly the true in my case you get
drawn to the human drama of it. It's
that thought that you know gosh if I'd
been 20 years old how would I have dealt
with it? You know would I have been in
the army? Would I have been in the air
force? would I been on a you know Royal
Navy destroyer or you know how would I
have coped with it and how would I have
dealt with that separation? I mean I've
interviewed people who were away for
four years. I remember talking to a tank
man from uh from Liverpool in England
called Sam Bradshaw and he went away for
four years and when he came home he'd
been twice wounded. He'd been very badly
wounded in North Africa and then he was
shot in the neck in Italy. Eventually
got home when he came home his mother
had turned gray. his little baby sister
who had been, you know, 13 when he left,
was now a a young woman. His old school
had been destroyed by Luftwaffer bombs.
He didn't recognize the place. And do
you know what he did? He joined up
again, went back out of Europe and was
one of the first people in Bellson. So,
you know, what was his justification for
that for joining right back? He just
felt completely disconnected to home. He
felt that the the gulf of time, his
experiences had separated him from all
the normalities of life. And he felt
that the the the normalities of the life
that he had
known before he'd gone away to war had
just been severed in a really kind of
cruel way that he didn't really feel he
was able to confront at that particular
point, but he decided to rejoin.
Couldn't go back to the Third World
Royal Tank Regiment. So, it went back to
a different unit. Went from kind of the
Italian campaign to European theater. um
didn't see so much action at the end,
but you know uh like a lot of British
troops if if you were in a certain
division at a certain time you know you
ended up passing very close to Bellson
and you know you suddenly realized okay
this was the right thing to do you know
we did have to get rid of Nazism we did
have to do this because this is the
consequence it's not just the oppression
it's just not just the secret police
it's not just the expansionism of Nazism
it is also you know the Holocaust which
hadn't been given its name at that point
but but you know you're witnessing this
kind of untold or cruelty. Um, and I
always, you know, I've always sort of I
think a lot about Sam. I mean, he's no
longer with us, but um, he was one of
the kind of first people that I
interviewed and I interviewed him at
great length. Uh, and I know you like a
long interview, Lex. And, um, and I
totally totally get that because when
you have a when you have a long
interview, you really start getting to
the nuts and bolts of it. One of the
frustrations for me when I'm looking at
at oral histories of of Second World War
vets is usually they're kind of, you
know, they're put on YouTube or they're
put on a museum website, they're 30
minutes, you know, an hour if you're
lucky and there you're just scratching
the surface. You never you never really
get to know it and you feel that they're
just repeating kind of stuff they've
read in books themselves after the war
and stuff. And you know, I was kind of
leave feeling frustrated that that I
haven't had a chance to kind of grill
them on the kind of stuff that I would
grill them on if I was put in front of
them. So, Tank Man, what what was maybe
the most epic, the most intense or the
most interesting story that he told you?
Well, I do remember him telling me uh
funny enough, it's not really about
about the conflict. I remember him
telling me about the importance of
letters. And there was this there was
this guy
who literally every few weeks, you know,
post would arrive intermittently. There
was no kind of sort of regular post. So
it was supposed to be regular, but it it
didn't come around regularly. So you
might suddenly suddenly get a flurry of
five all in one day. But he said it was
this guy and um in his tank member of a
different tank troop. It was a good
friend of his in the in the same
squadron. get British Huff Squadrons for
for for their armor and uh which as
Americans would have a company. I should
say that in your book, one of the
wonderful things you do is you use the
correct term in the language. Yeah. For
the particular army involved whether
it's the German or the British or the
American. Well, that's not to be
pretentious. That's that's really just
so it because you you're dealing with so
many numbers and different units and it
can go over your head and you can get
sort of consumed by the detail if you're
not careful. And as a reader, it can be
very unsatisfying because you you just
can't keep pace of everything. Um, so
one of the things about writing in the
vernacular German or or in the American
spelling armore rather than ar maua as
we would Brits would um spell it is it
just immediately tells the reader, okay,
this is American, okay, I've got that or
this is German, I've got that or Italian
or whatever it might be. But yeah, to go
back to Sam. Sam, this there was this
guy in in in his squadron and he'd get
his letters from his from his
girlfriend, his wife, and he said it was
like it was like a soap opera. He he
said we all just waited for his letters
to come in so we could find out, you
know, whether his, you know, his
daughter had, you know, got to school,
okay, or something, you know, won the
swimming contest or whatever it was. You
know, the sort of details of this sort
of dayto-day kind of benile life was
just absolute catnip to these guys. They
absolutely loved it. And then the letter
arrived, the Dear John letter, saying,
"Sorry, I found someone else and and
it's over." And his friend was just
absolutely devastated. It was the only
thing that was keeping him going. This
sort of sense of this sort of continuity
of of home, this sort of this this
foundation of his life back at
home.
And Sam said he could see was in a
really really bad way. Mhm. and he
thought, uh, he's going to do something
stupid. And he went up to him and he
said, "Look, you know, I know it's bad
and I know it's terrible and I know
you're absolutely devastated, but you
got your mates here. Just don't do
anything silly. Just, you know, maybe,
you know, when it's all over, you can
patch things up or sort things out." And
he said, you know, you got to understand
it from her point of view. You know,
it's a long way. You haven't seen you
for 2 years. This kind of stuff, you
know, so just just don't do anything
rash. And of course, the next next
engagement, two days later, he was
killed. and he said it was just a kind
of he could he just knew that was going
to happen. He said it was a sort of
self-fulfilling prophecy. That's
something I've never forgotten that
story. And I just thought, you
know, it's about human drama. You know,
that's that's that's the truth of it.
And how people react to this totally
alien situation. You know, for the most
part, the Second World War is fought by
ordinary everyday people doing
extraordinary things. And I think that's
something that's so fascinating. I
suspect I I think I instinctively I'm
quite slap dash I think. So I think I
would have I'd have bought it
literally. I don't think it would have
ended well for me. I just I'm just a bit
careless. Yeah. I think I also have an
element in me where I can believe in the
idea of
nation and fight for a nation especially
when the conflict is as grand. There are
things worse than death. Yes. as as the
propaganda would explain very clearly
but also in reality. Yes. So a nation
you know
France, Britain was you know maybe
facing the prospect of being essentially
enslaved. The Soviet
Union was facing the prospect of being
enslaved literally. I mean it was very
very clearly stated what they're going
to do. They're going to repopulate the
land with Germanic people. So well
they're not just going to do that.
They're also going to starve lots and
lots of um Soviet individuals to
death by the hunger plan, for example,
which is planned, you know, really very
casually and not by the, you know, this
is not SS units or anything like this.
This is the Vermach. This is the
economic division of the Obert Commando
de Vermac, the German combined general
staff. General Gayorg Thomas comes up
with you know and Herman Baka they come
up with the uh who's the kind of
minister for food they come up you know
what are we going to do you know we
haven't got enough food you know largely
because German um farming is inefficient
and they think well you know this is
part of we'll go in and we'll take the
food and there's been this colossal
urbanization of the Soviet Union since
the revolution in
1917 so they're just not going to get
their food you know these these people
in these cities cuz we're going to take
it all and that's going to lead to
that's going to lead to a lot of deaths.
You
know, teen millions is the phrase that
Gail Thomas used. So, let's talk about
the hunger plan. How important was the
hunger plan and lab to Nazi ideology and
to the whole Nazi war machine? It's
central to the whole thing. This is all
about this notion that is embedded into
Hitler's mind and into the minds of the
Nazi party right from the word go is
there is a big sort of global conspiracy
the Jewish bolevik plot I mean
completely misplaced that Jews and
Bolsheviks go hand in hand somehow
dovetail they don't obviously and the
whole ideology is to crush this you know
part of the way the Nazis think the way
Hitler thinks is there is them and
there's us. We are the white northern
European Aryans. We should be the master
race. We've been we we've been
threatened by a
global Jewish bulvic plot. We've been
stabbed in the back in 1918 at the end
of the first world war. We need to have
to overcome. This is an existential
battle for future survival. It's a
terrible task that has befallen our
generation. But we have to do this. We
have to overcome this or else we have no
future. We will be crushed. It's
absolutely cut and dry. And one of the
things about Hitler is that he is a very
kind of black and white them or us,
either or kind of person. It's it's
always one thing or the other. It's a
thousand-y year Reich or it's
Armageddon. There is no there's no
middle ground. There's no gray area.
It's just one or the other. And that's
how that's his worldview. And the reason
he came to the four was was because of
the crystal
clear clarity of his message which is
we've been stabbed in the back. There is
a global plot. We have to overcome this.
We are naturally the master race. We
have to reassert ourselves. We have to
get rid of global jewelry. We have to
get rid of global bulsheism. And we have
to prevail or else. But if we do
prevail, what an amazing world it's
going to be. So, so he starts with this,
you know, every speech he does always
starts with the same way. Always starts
from a kind of negative and always ends
with an incredible positive, this sort
of rabble rousing crescendo of of
of if you're in the front row, spittle
halattosis and justiculation. I mean,
you've seen pictures of him. I mean, I
don't know if you've ever seen, but he's
he's he's almost he wants to grab the
air and clutch it to him. um you know,
you can see the kind of the venom coming
out of his mouth just in a single still
photograph. I mean, it it it's amazing.
There's um apps you can get now where
where you can translate his speeches,
you know, just and it just sounds, you
know, by today's standards, you would
just think what a load of absolute
wibble. I mean, just total nonsense. But
but you have to kind of put yourself
back in the shoes of people listening to
him in 1922 or 23 or indeed 1933 and see
how kind of captivating that is to a
certain part of the part of the
population. So yes so so the so to go
back to your original point Libans is
absolutely part of it. So what you do is
you crush the bolevixs you crush world
jewelry then you expand you know the
Britain has had this incredible empire
global empire you know Germany needs
that too. Germanyy's stuck in Europe. It
doesn't have access to the world's
oceans. So, we're not going to be a
maritime empire. We're going to be we're
going to be a land mass empire, the
whole of land mass of Europe and into
Asia. That's going to be us. And we're
going to take that land. We're going to
take the the bread basket of of Ukraine.
We're going to use that for our own own
ends. We're going to spread our our uh
we're going to make ourselves rich, but
we're also going to spread our peoples.
we're going to spread the Aryan northern
master race throughout um throughout
Europe and into the traditional Slavic
areas and and we will prevail and come
out on top. And so you have to
understand that that that everything
about Operation Barbarasa, the planned
invasion of the Soviet Union in June
is totally wrapped up
in the Nazi ideology. And people, you
know, I I' I've read it that historians
go, if only Hitler had realized that,
you know, the Ukrainians had been quite
happy to kind of fight on his side. You
know, if only he he'd actually brought
some of these Jewish scientists and kind
of into the Nazi fold, then Germany
might have prevailed in World War II.
And you kind of think, well, you're
missing the entire point. That's just
never going to happen because this is an
ideological war. Yeah. This is not a
pragmatic,
rational leader. No, I mean part of his
effectiveness, we should say, is
probably this singular belief in this
ideology. There's pros and
cons for for an effective military
machine, probably having that singular
focus is effective. Yes. Except that
when you're making military
decisions, if those decisions are always
being bracketed by an ideology which is
fundamentally flawed from a pragmatic
point of view as much as a kind of
ethical, you know, a kind of reasonable
point of view, um you're kind of opening
yourselves up for for trouble. I mean,
this is this is a problem he has with
Barbara Rossa. you know, they they
realize very early on in 1941 when
they're when they're wargaming this
whole operation that it's not going to
work. And so, you know, there people
like like General Pow who's on the uh
general staff at the time, you know,
he's he's given a kind of, you know,
he's in charge of kind of wargaming this
and he goes, "This isn't going to work."
And Kitel, who is the uh chief of the
OKW, goes, "No, no, no, no, no. Go back
and make it work." He goes, "Okay." So
he comes up with a plan that does work,
but it's bogus. I mean, it's just it
doesn't work because they don't have
enough. They don't have enough
motoriization. You know, they go into
Barbar Ross with 2,000 different types
of vehicle. You know, every single one
of those vehicles has to have, you know,
different distributor caps and
different leads and plugs and all sorts
of different parts. you know, there's
the the
interoperability of the of the German
mechanized arm is super inefficient. And
so you've got huge problems because they
kind of think, well, you know, we we
took France in 1940 and that's kind of
one of the most modern countries in the
world with, you know, one of the
greatest armies and armed forces in the
world and we did that in six weeks. So,
you know, Soviet Union, look, they
struggled against Finland for goodness
sake. I mean, how hard can it be, you
know, but what you're failing to
understand is is that attacking the
Soviet Union is over a geographical land
mass 10 times the size of France just on
the frontage and you haven't really got
much more mechanization than you had in
May 1940 when they attacked the low
countries in France and you've actually
got less Luftwaffer aircraft to support
you and you just do not have the
operational mechanics to make it work
successfully. I mean, it is largely down
to incompetence of the Red Army and the
Soviet leadership in the summer of 1941
that they get as far as they do. I mean,
you know, Barbarosa should never have
come close to being a a victory. Let's
talk through it. So, Operation Barbar
Roa that you're mentioning, and we'll go
back. Yes. We jump straight into it.
I've I've eaten eaten off two years of
war. So this is June
1941, Operation Barbar Roa, when Hitler
invades the Soviet Union with I think
the largest invading force in history up
to that point collectively. Yeah. And
there's three prongs. Army Group North,
Army Group Center, Army Group South.
North is going to Lennengrad. Center is
going uh it's the strongest group going
directly towards Moscow. And South is
going and targeting Ukraine and the
caucus. So can you linger on that on the
details of this plan? What was the
thinking? What was the strategy? What
was the tactics? What was the logistics?
Now we should there's so many things to
say but one of them is to say that you
often emphasize the importance of three
ways to analyze military conflict of the
strategic, the operational and the
tactical. and operation of those is
often not given enough time attention
and it's the
logistics that make the war machine
really work successfully or fail. Yeah,
that's absolutely um absolutely spot on.
And it's interesting because the vast
majority of uh general histories of
World War II tend to focus on the
strategic and the tactical. So what do I
mean by that? world strategic just for
the for those who don't know that's your
overall war aims you know get to Moscow
whatever it might be conquer the world
that's your strategy the tactical side
of things is that's the coalace of war
that's the attritional bit that's the
following his spitfire the tank crew the
the soldier in his foxhole it's the
actual kinetic fighting bit the
operational bit is the level of war that
that links the strategic to the tactical
so it is absolutely factory ries, it's
economics, it's shipping, it's supply
chains, it's how you manage your war.
And one of the things where I think
people have been guilty in the past,
historians have been guilty in the past
is by judging
warfare all on the same level. But
obviously every competent nation has a
different approach to war because of the
nation they are, the size they are,
their geographical location. So Britain
for example is an island nation. Its
priority is the Royal Navy, which is why
the Royal Navy is known as the senior
service. And you know, in 1939, it's
easy to forget it now when you see how
depleted Britain is today, but 1939, it
has comfortably the world's largest um
navy, something like 194 destroyers. Uh
um I think it's 15
battleships, seven aircraft carriers,
and another kind of six on the way.
America, it's got Pacific Ocean, it's
got the Atlantic Ocean, it's got two
seabboards, you know, it has the second
largest navy in the world, but a tiny
army. I mean, the army, the US army in
19 September 1949 is the 19th largest in
the in the world, sandwiched between
Portugal and Uruguay. And it's just
incredible. It's like 189,000 strong,
which might seem reasonably large by
today's standards, but is absolutely
tiny by 1939 standards, you know.
whereas you know Germany's got an army
of you know 3 and a half million in
1939. So you know these are big big big
differences but but America's coming at
it from a different perspective.
Britain's coming up about it from a
different perspective. You know
Britain's Britain's empire is all about
you know it's it's a shipping it's a
it's a it's a seaborn
empire. Whereas there's also another
point which which is having large armies
is actually inherently impractical and
inefficient because the larger army, the
more people you got to feed, the more
kind of barracks you've got to have, the
more space you've got to have for
training, the more people you're taking
out of your workforce to produce tanks
and shells and all the rest of it
because they're tramping around with
rifles, you know. So there's an argument
saying saying actually it's really not
not a very good way of doing things. So,
you know, very much the uh the British
way and and subsequently the United
States way and way of Britain's
dominions and and and empire is to use
kind of steel, not our flesh as a as a
principle. This is the idea is that you
use technology, mechanization,
modernity, global reach to do a lot of
your hard yards. That's the sort of
basic principle behind the the strategic
air campaign. When we talk about the
strategic air campaign, we're talking
about strategic air forces which are
operating in isolation from other armed
forces. So a tactical air force, for
example, is is an air force which is
offering close air support for ground
operations. A strategic air force has
got nothing to do with ground
operations. It's just operating on its
own. So that's your bomber force or
whatever, you know, that's your your
your B7s and B244s of the Aair force
flying out of East England bombing the
rural industrial complex of Germany or
whatever it might be. So it's important
to understand that when you compare you
have to have the back of your mind that
Britain compared to Germany for example
is coming at it from a completely
different perspective. And I would say
one of the failures of Hitler is that he
always views everybody through his own
very narrow worldview which is not
particularly helpful. You know you want
to get inside the head of your enemy and
you know he's he's sort of guilty of not
doing that. So when you're talking about
operation Barbarasa to go back back to
your original question next you're
dealing with an operation on such a vast
scale that that operational level of war
is absolutely vital to its chances of
success or failure. Doesn't matter how
good your individual commanders are at
the front. If you haven't got the backup
it's not going to work. And the problem
that the Germans have is yes, they've
got their kind of, you know, three
million men on the front and they've got
their kind of, you know, 3,000 aircraft
and and all the rest of it, but actually
what you need to do is break it down and
who is doing the hard yards of that and
way the German war machine works is that
the machine bit is only the spearhead.
So people always talk about the Nazi war
machine. In a way, it's a kind of
misnomer because you're you're sort of
suggesting that it's highly mechanized
and industrialized and all the rest of
it. And nothing could be further from
the truth. The spearhead is, but the
rest of it is not. And this is the kind
of fatal flaw of of the German armed
forces
in in the whole of World War II really,
but but even in this early stage because
in Barbarasa you're talking about 17
Panza divisions out of you know 100 odd
that are involved in the initial attack.
Well 17 that a Panza division is not a
division full of panzas tanks. It is a
combined arms motorized outfit.
So scouts on BMWs with side cars, uh um
armored cars, infantry, grenaders,
panzer grenaders, which are infantry in
halftracks and trucks, mechanized, um it
is motorized artillery, it is motorized
anti-aircraft artillery. It is motorized
anti-tank artillery. And of course, it
is tanks as well, panzas. But those are
a really really small proportion of you
know you're talking less than 20% of
your of your attacking force are those
spearhead forces and inevitably they are
going to be attritted as they go you
know you are going to take casualties
and not only that you're not going to
just take battlefield casualties you're
also going to have mechanical casualties
because of the huge spaces involved you
just simply can't function so what you
see is in the initial phases of of
operation Barbarasa they surge forward
red army's absolutely no answers to
anything. Stalin weirdly hasn't heeded
the all the warnings that this this
attack is brewing and there have been
plenty incidentally halinsk falls on the
15th of July you know in less than four
weeks it's just incredible three and a
half weeks has gone you know they've
done overwhelmed the rest of what had
been Poland they surged into what is now
barus taken all you know this is army
group center uh army group north is
thrust up into the into the Baltic it's
all going swimmingly well but then the
next several months They barely go 100
miles and that's because they're running
out of steam. And and the 16th Panza
division, for example, by the time it's
taken Smealinsk involved in taking
Smelinsk on the 15th of July 1941, the
following day it's got 16 tanks left
16 out of you know should have 180. So
it's just being a TR. They can't sustain
it. and they can't sustain it because as
the Russians fall back, as the Soviet
Red Army falls back, they do their own
scorched earth policy. They also
discover that the railway line is kind
of a different loading gauge. So,
they've got to change it. So, it's
slightly the Russian loading gauge is
slightly wider. So, every single mile,
every yard, every foot, every meter of
that they're they're capturing of of
Russian railway has to be moved a couple
of inches to the left to make it fit the
German criggs lock in the standard train
of locomotive of the of the Reichkes
bar. Just imagine what that's like. And
also, Soviet trains are bigger, so they
can take more water, which means the
water stops in between are fewer and far
between. So they have to the Germans
when they come in their trains their
creeks lock are smaller so they have to
have be rewatered more often and
recalled more often. So they have to I
mean it's it's absolutely boggling just
how complicated it is and how badly
planned it is because they haven't
reckoned on this. They're having to kind
of think on their feet. I love the the
logistical details of all this because
yes that's a huge component of this
especially when you cover that much
territory. But there is a notion that if
Hitler didn't stop uh army group center,
it could have pushed all the way to
Moscow. It was it was only maybe a 100
miles away from Moscow. Is that is that
is that a possibility? Cuz it had so
much success in the early days pushing
forward. Do you think it's possible that
if Hitler, as we mentioned from a
military blunder perspective, didn't
make that blunder that uh they could
have defeated the Soviet Union right
there and then. Well, my my own view is
that they should never have got close.
You Red Army has plenty of men to be
able to see off anything that the the
Germans can do. The capture of Keev, for
example, in September
1941 was a catastrophe for for the
Soviet Union and should never have
happened. I mean, Zukov is saying to
saying to Stalin, we got to pull back
across the
Denipo. St can't possibly do that. You
can't abandon Kee. It's like third city
in Soviet Union. No way. No, absolutely
not. And he goes, well, we just we are
just going to be overwhelmed. You know,
we we can't hold this. and and he says,
you know, either back me or or farm me.
Back me or sack me. So Stalin sacks him.
Uh uh yeah, obviously as we know, Zukov
gets um rehabilitated in pretty quick
order and Stalin does learn very quickly
after thereafter to learn the lessons,
but the opening phase of Bar Ross has
been a catastrophe. And so as a
consequence of Stalin refusing to let
his men retreat back across the Dunipa,
which is a substantial barrier and would
have been very difficult for the Germans
to overwhelm had they not had they moved
back in time. Um, you know, that's
another kind of 700,000 men put in the
bag. I mean, that's just staggering
numbers.
Um, but yeah, I mean, there's so many
things wrong with the Barbarasa plan.
you know, too much over. It's just such
a vast area. I mean, you're talking
about kind of, you know, 2,500 miles or
something, you know, of frontage, you
know, maybe if you kind of put your your
your Panza groups, which are these
spearheads, and you put them all in one
big
frustr straight across on a kind of, you
know, much more narrow front of, let's
say, kind of 400 miles rather than
1,200, then they might have got, you
know, they might have just sort of burnt
away straight through to Moscow. They
really caught the Red Army unprepared.
Yeah. Is there um something to be said
about the the strategic genius of that
or was it just luck? No, I don't think
so. I I mean I think think what's
happened is you've had the you've had
the the Soviet purges of the of the
second half of the 1930s where they've
you know they have executed or
imprisoned 22 and a half thousand
officers of which you know three out of
five marshals
um you know god knows how many army
commanders um etc etc. So so you know
you've completely
decapitated the Red Army in terms of its
command structure. So before that, would
it be fair to say it was one of, if not
the greatest army in the world? Well,
there was a lot of experience. There's a
lot of experience there that but also
technology material. Yeah. The size of
the army, the number of people that
they're mobilized. Yeah. And they're the
first people to kind of adapt, you know,
create airborne troops, for example. So
yes, I think there is an argument to say
that. But the decapitation is is is
absolutely brutal. If you've decapitated
an army, you've then got to put new guys
in charge. And someone who who looks on
paper like a a halfdecent peace time
commander might not be a very good
wartime commander. They're different
disciplines and different skills. And
what comes to you don't know that until
you're tested. It's very hard to kind of
judge. And of course, you know, Stalin
is existing in a sort of, you know, a
vacuum of of paranoia and suspicion all
the time, which is unhelpful when you're
trying to develop a strong armed forces.
So they go into Finland in in back end
of 1939 and they get there, you know,
they get really badly hammered. They do
take about, you know, they get the
Corellia um peninsula and they do take
some ground, but at huge cost. I mean,
the casualties are five times as bad as
those of the Fins and it's a
humiliation. So Hitler sees that and
thinks, okay, we're not up to much cop.
Then Hitler loses the battle of Britain
and he thinks I can't afford to fight a
war on two fronts. That's one of the
reasons why Germany loses the war in
1914 to 18 is fighting on the eastern
front but also fighting on, you know,
the western front at the same time.
We've got to avoid that. But I've got to
get rid of Britain. And Britain hasn't
come out of the fight. Britain is still
fighting in the back end of 1940 having
won the Battle of Britain. And so maybe
I'll go into the Soviet Union now while
the Red Army is still weak. You know,
we're not 100% ready ourselves, but but
let's hurry the whole thing forward
because originally he'd been thinking of
planning an operation in 1943 or 1944.
So the idea is you take Poland out, you
take out France and the low countries,
you conquer most of Western Europe, you
you knock out Britain. So therefore, you
don't have to worry so much about the
United States because they're over the
other side of the Atlantic. That then
gives it buys him the time to kind of
rebuild up his strength for the allout
thrust on the Soviet Union. The failure
to subdue Britain in 1940 changes all
those plans and makes him think actually
I'm going to go in early. And he's also
been kind of, you know, he's hoisted by
Zopetard because he he starts to believe
his own
genius. You know, he everyone told him
that, you know, he wouldn't be able to,
you know, he wouldn't be able to beat
France and the low countries. Everyone
told him that, you know, it wouldn't
work out when he went into Poland.
Everyone was really nervous about it.
You know, well, go hang you, you
cautious, awful aristocratic Prussian
generals. You know, I'm I'm the best at
this. I've told you. I've shown you. I'm
the genius. Um, I can do it. He starts
to believe his own hype. And of course,
this is a problem. you know, he's
surrounded by sick of fans and people
who constantly telling him this he's
this incredible genius. So, he starts to
believe it and he thinks everything is
possible and and he's very much into
this idea of of the will of the German
people. You know, this is our destiny
and either will, as I say earlier on,
you know, it's the thousand-y year Reich
of Armageddon, but momentum is with us
and we need to strike it and only by by
gambling, only by being bold will will
the Germans prevail and all this kind of
nonsense. And so that's why he goes into
into Soviet Union in June 1941 rather
than you know a couple of or even three
years later. Yeah. He really hated the
Prussian generals. Huh. Yeah. He hated
them. Is there a case to be made that
there he was indeed at times a military
genius?
No, I don't think so. Cuz none of the
plan I mean even the plan for the
invasion of France and the low countries
isn't his. It's a the the concept is is
von Mannstein's and the execution is
Gerian Hines Gadderian. So heiscoded is
is a kind of he's the pioneer of of of
the panza force the panzer thrust this
idea of the ultra mechanized combined
arms panzer arm spearhead doing this
kind of lightning fast thrust um it's
not Hiller's idea he adopts it and and
takes it as his own because you know
he's a fury he can do what he likes um
but but it isn't his so it's not you
know and up until that point until that
comes into
being till that that plan is put forward
to France Halder who is the chief of
staff of the German army at that time
you know how is just thinking how do we
get out of this mess this is just a
nightmare because they know that France
has got a larger army they know that
France has got more tanks and know that
France has got double the number of
artillery pieces it's got par in terms
of air forces then you add Holland then
you add Belgium then you add Great
Britain and that looks like a very very
tough nut to crack I mean the reason why
France is subdued in 1940 is
50% brilliance of the Germans and their
operational art in that particular
instance and 50% French failure really
and incompetence. I mean there is a kind
of genius to be able to see and take
advantage and set up the world stage in
such a way that you have the appeasement
from France and
Britain. Keep the United States out of
it. just set up the world stage where
you could just plow through everybody
with no with very little resistance. I
mean there is a kind of well yes if
geopolitical genius if it works but it
doesn't you know that's that's a
problem. I mean you know I mean he goes
into Poland on the assumption that
Britain and France will not declare war.
You know he he
he is not prepared for Britain and
France declaring war on Germany. Right.
He thinks they won't. That's right. So
miscalculation blunder. But then France
does, right? And
then that doesn't, you know, France does
not successfully do anything with this
incredible army that it has. It has a
size, but one of the problems that
France has is that it's very very
topheavy. It's it's very cumbersome in
the way it operates. Um there's no
question that that it's got some
brilliant young commanders, but but at
the lot the top the commanders are very
old. Most of them are first world war
veterans, you know, whether you I mean
Vegan Gamlan, General George. Um these
people, they're all well into their 60s.
Um General George is the youngest army
commander and he's 60. You know, it's
too old to be an army commander. You
need to be in your kind of late 40s,
early 50s. And they're too just consumed
by conservatism and the old ways. And
what what they assume is that any future
war will be much like the first world
war. It'll
be attritional, long and drawn out, but
static. But actually, they're right on
two parts of it. It is, as it turns out,
it is going to be long and drawn out and
attritional, but it's going to be mobile
rather than static. And that's a big
miscalculation. So, here's here's my
question. I think you're you're being
too nice on France here. So when when
when Germany invaded Poland,
it correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels
like France could have just went
straight to Berlin. Yeah, they
absolutely could have and they and I
know you said it's very topheavy and
you're saying all of these things, but
they literally did basically nothing.
Yeah, they were pulling. So like that uh
and I think a part of that and I think
you described as well maybe you can
speak to that is the insanity that is
Hitler creating this psycholog with the
propaganda creating this feeling that
there's this Nazi force that's
unstoppable. So they're they're France
just didn't want to like step into that.
Maybe they were like legitimately I I I
hesitate to say these words, but scared
of war. 100% they are. That, you know,
because France has been totally
traumatized by the First World War. It's
fought on their land. It's fought in
their industrial heartland. You know,
they lose three times the amount of
people killed that that Britain does.
Britain's traumatized by it, but but but
not to the same degree that France is.
France, you know, there is just no
stomach to do that again. And so that
makes them risk averse. And by being
riskaverse, you're actually taking a far
greater risk. That that that that's the
irony of it. And the truth is also there
isn't the political will. And a a
successful military can only be
successful if there is a political will
at the top. And the problem with France
in the 1930s is it's very politically
divided. It's uh it's it's a time of
multiple governments, multiple prime
ministers, um uh
coalition
governments really extreme coalition
governments from the sort of drawn from
the left and the right as well as the
center and you know this is not a
coalition of of two parties. This is a
coalition of multiple parties and no one
can ever agree anything. I mean that's
the problem. It's amazing that the MNO
line is even agreed you know this
incredibly strong defensive position
down the western side of France of
border with um with Germany which is
kind of largely impregnable but the
problem is the bit that's not
impregnable which is the hinge where the
Mno line ends and it sort of basically
starts turning kind of towards in a kind
of north noy direction and the border
with Belgium
and you know what they should have done
is built kind of border defenses all
along the northern coast with Belgium
cuz Belgium refused used to kind of uh
allow any Allied troops into into his
territory. It was neutral. And France
should have said, "Okay, fine. Well,
then we'll defend our, you know, we're
not going to come to your rescue if you
get invaded. That's your that's your
what that that's that's the payoff." And
and a consequence of that, we are going
to stockpile everything that we're not
going to be drawn into the neutral
territory should Germany invade from the
West. But they don't do that because of
the psychological damage of having
fought a war in exactly that area a
generation earlier. And and that's the
problem. So when the you know there is
Germany is so weakened by the invasion
of Poland there is literally nothing
left. You know the back door from into
western Germany is completely open. And
so they do what they call the SAR
offensive but it's not. It's a kind of
reconnaissance in force where they kind
of go across the border, kind of pick
their noses for for a few days and then
kind of trundle back again. And it's
just it's embarrassing. And and that is
what you're seeing there is is a nation
which is just not ready for this, which
is scared, which is politically divided,
which is then having a knock-on effect
on on the decision-m process, and which
is just consumed by military
complacency. And that's the big problem.
There is this, you know, the the
commanders at the very top of the French
regime are are complacent. They they
they haven't bought into kind of modern
ways. They haven't looked at how
contemporary technology could help them.
I mean it is absurd for example that
there isn't a single radio in the chat
Devalsen which is you know the
headquarters of the commander-in-chief
of the French armed forces which is
General Marshall Morris Gamalan I mean
it's just
unbelievable but but that is the case
and and there's no getting away from
that and and it is all the more ironic
when you consider that France is
actually the most automotive society in
Europe it's the second most automotive
society in the world after the United
States by some margin it has to be said
as well you know has a fantastic
transportation system railway network is
superb it's it it there are there are
eight people for every motorized vehicle
in France which is way above Germany
which is in 1949 that figure is 47 for
example it's 106 in Italy so France is
very mechanized like very mechanized so
come on guys put your finger out get it
together and they just don't they're
they're incredibly slow and cumbersome
and what they think is when what will
happen is the Germans won't think of
going, you know, they won't do a pinser
movement because you can't possibly take
motorized forces through through the
Arden. That just is not possible, which
is the hinge area between the end of the
Majinow, the northern part of the Majino
line, which runs down the western,
sorry, the eastern border of of France
and and the northern bit. And so what
we'll do with that hinge around the town
of Sedan, we'll we'll move into into
Belgium. We'll meet the Germans before
they get anywhere near France. we'll
hold them and while we're holding them,
we will bring up our reserves and then
we'll we'll counterattack and crush
them. That that's the idea behind it.
But the problem is is they don't have a
means of moving fast and their
communication systems are dreadful.
Absolutely dreadful. They're dependent
on conventional telephone lines which
you
know dive bombers and whatever are just
kind of absolutely wrecking. Suddenly
the streets are clogged with refugees
and people can't move. So they're then
you know telephone lines are down.
There's no radios. So, you're then
dependent on sending dispatch riders on
little motorbikes. You know, General uh
Morris Gamalan sends out a a dispatch
rider at 6:00 in the morning. Um by
12:00 he hasn't come back. So, you then
send another one. Finally, the answer
comes back kind of 9:00 at night, by
which time the kind of Germans advance
another 15 miles and the original
message that you sent at 6:00 that
morning is completely redundant and has
passed it sell by date. And that's
happening at every step of the way, you
know. So you've got you've got overall
commander um headquarters, then you've
got army group, then you've got army,
then you've got core, then you've got
division. So the consequence of all that
is that French just can't move. They're
just stuck. They're they're rabbits in
headlights and the Germans are able to
kind of move them uh destroy them in
isolation. Meanwhile, they're able to
use their excellent communications
um to very very good effect. And you
were talking about the genius of of war.
It's not Hitler that's a genius. If
anyone's a genius, it's Gerbles, the
propaganda chief. And it is their
ability to
harness that they are the kings of
messaging. You know, they don't have
they don't have X, they don't have
social media. Um, but they do have new
technology. And that new technology,
that new approach is flooding the
airwaves with their singular message,
which is always the same and has been
ever since the Nazis come into power.
And it is using radios. And I think
radios are really really key to the
whole story because there is no denser
radio network anywhere in the world
including the United States than Germany
in 1939. So while it's really behind the
times in terms of mechanization, it is
absolutely on top of its game in terms
of coms. So 70% of households in Germany
have radios by 1939 which is an
unprecedented number that that is only
beaten by United States and only just.
So it is it is greater than any other
other nation in Europe. And in terms of
flooding the airwaves, it is the densest
because even for those who the 30% who
don't have radios, that's not a problem
because we'll put them in the stairwells
of apartment blocks. We'll put them in
squares. We'll put them in cafes and
bars. And the same stuff the state the
the the Nazi state controls the radio
airwaves as it does the movies as it
does newspapers. All aspects of the
media are controlled by by Gerbles and
the propaganda ministry and they are
putting out the same message over and
over again. It's not it's not all
Hitler's ranting. It's entertainment,
light entertainment, some humorous
shows. Um it is also Vagner of course
and Richard Strauss. Um it it's it's a
mixture but the subliminal message is
the same. We're the best. We're the top
dogs. Jewish Bolevik plot is awful. That
needs to be, you know, that's the
existential threat to us. We have to
overcome that. We're the top dogs
militarily. We're the best. We should
feel really good about ourselves. We're
going to absolutely win and be the
greatest nation in the world ever. And
Hitler's a genius. And and that is just
repeated over and over and over and over
again. And the, you know, for all the
modernity of the world in which we live
in today, most people believe what
they're told repeatedly. Yeah. They
still do. If you just repeat repeat
repeat over and over again, people will
believe it. You know, if you're a if
you're a diehard Trump supporter, you
you want to believe that and you'll
believe everything he says. If you are a
diehard Bernie Sanders man, you know,
you're from the left, you'll believe
everything he says because it's
reinforcing what you already want to
what what you already want to believe.
But the scary thing is uh you know radio
is the technology of the day. The
technology of the day today which is a
terrifying one for me is uh um I would
say AI on social media. So bots you can
have basically bot farms which I assume
is used by Ukraine, by Russia, by US I I
would love to read the history written
about this era about the information
wars. Who has the biggest bot farms? Who
has the biggest propaganda machines? And
when I say bot, I mean both automated AI
bots and humans operating large number
of smartphones with SIM cards that are
just able to boost messages enough to
where they become viral and then real
humans with real opinions get excited.
Also, it's like this vicious cycle. So
if you support your nation, all you need
is a little boost and then everybody
gets real excited and then now you're
chanting and now you're in this mass
hysteria and now it's the 1984 2 minutes
of hate and the message is clear. I mean
that's what propaganda does is it really
clarifies the mind and that is exactly
what what Hitler and the Nazis and
Gerbles are doing in the 1930s. Well,
they're doing in the 1920s as well, but
more effectively once they come into
power, of course.
And Hitler is so fortunate that he comes
he takes over the chancellorship in
January 1943 at a time where the economy
is just starting to turn and he's able
to make the most of that. And you know
if you're Germans and you've been
through hyperinflation in the early
1920s, you've been through the
humiliation of Versail treaty which was
terrible error in in
retrospect and you've been through then
having got through that you've emerged
into a kind of democratic VHimar
Republic which is based on manufacturing
you know Germany's traditional genius at
engineering and manufacturing and
production of of high quality um items.
they're merging through that. Then you
have the Wall Street crash and the loans
that are coming in from America, which
is propping up the entire German
economy, suddenly get cut off and you've
suddenly got depression again and and
massive
unemployment. And suddenly Hitler comes
in and everyone's got jobs and they're
rebuilding and they're growing their
military and the message that's coming
out is we're the greatest, we're the
best, we're fantastic. You know, I was
telling you earlier on about about
pillar speeches starting with the dark,
starting dark and ending in in hope and
light and the sunlit uplands. You know,
that's what you're getting. You're
suddenly getting this vision of hope.
This sort of, you know, by God,
actually, this is really working. You
know, okay, so, you know, I'm not sure
that I particularly buy into the kind of
anti-semitic thing, but, you know, we'll
sweep that under the carpet because
overall, I've now got a job, I've got
money, I've got my new radio, you know,
and then this is the genius about the
radios, for example. So they have the uh
they have the the German receiver to
start off with the the Deutsche Fanger
and then they have the the Deutsche
Klein and Fanger which is the German
little receiver little radio. These are
genius. This is this is as outrageous as
the arrival of the iPod. I mean remember
that you know suddenly you don't have to
have a Sony Walkman anymore. You can
have something really really small and
miniature and listen to thousands and
thousands and thousands of songs all at
once. What a what an amazing thing. And
the Deutsche Klein Fanger is 9 in x 4 in
x 4 in. It's made of bake light and
everyone can have one cuz it's super
cheap. It's just incredible. And no one
else said that because up until that
point, radios generally speaking are
aspirational. You know, they've got sort
of walnut lacquer at the front and you
know, you have them if you're middle
class and you show them off to your
neighbors to show how kind of, you know,
affluent and wellto-do you are. Um but
suddenly everyone can have one and if
everyone can have one then everyone can
receive the same message and you can and
you can also this is the whole point
about the Hitler youth as well you know
the young guys that's where they're
they're most impressionistic they're
they're least risk averse so they're
most gung-ho they're they're most full
of excitement for the possibilities of
life and they're also their minds are
the most open to suggestion so you get
the youth you hang on you get them and
so a whole generation of young men are
brought up thinking about the genius of
Hitler and how he's delivering us this
much better nation and returning our um
over overhauling the humiliations of the
first world war where overcoming the
back the stab in the back that happened
in 1918 etc etc and you know as a young
16year-old German you're thinking yeah I
want a piece of that and and hey guess
what they got really cool uniforms and
and you know come and join the SS and
you know get the throw line what's not
to like you You know, you can see why
why it it's so clever. And what's so
interesting is propaganda today is is
still using those those tenets that
Gerbles was using back in the 1930s. And
this is why I was say say that, you
know, history doesn't repeat itself. Of
course, it doesn't. It it can't possibly
repeat itself because we're always
living in a a constantly evolving time.
But patterns of human behavior do. And
what you always get after economic
crisis is political upheaval. Always,
always, always. because some people are
in a worse off position than they were
financially before. They're thinking h
well, you know, the current system
doesn't work. What's the alternative?
So, you know, in the case of of now, we
in the west, you know, we face, first of
all, we faced the crisis of 2008,
financial crisis 2008. Then we've had
the kind of double whammy of COVID and
that has been incredibly unsettling. And
so, we're now in a a situation of of
political turmoil. And whether you're
whether you're whether you're proTrump
or anti-Trump, what he's offering is
something completely different.
And you know, it's say, you know, he
he's saying the old ways don't work. You
know, I'm going to be I'm just going to
say what I think. I'm just going to I'm
going to come out. I'm not going to
bother with all the sheen of diplomacy
and kind of, you know, meymouth words
that politicians always use, you know,
which where you can't trust anyone. I'm
just going to tell you as it is. And
obviously people respond to that. You
know, you you can understand why that
has a has an appeal. And if the country
already feels broken and here's someone
who is going to be a disruptor and going
to change the the way you go about
things, you can see why a a reasonably
large proportion of the population is
going to go, I'll have a piece of that.
Thank you very much. And especially uh
when the country is in a economic crisis
like Germany was, I think you've written
that the the Treaty of Versailles
created Hitler and the uh the Wall
Street crash and the great depression
brought him to power. Yes. And of course
the propaganda machine that you describe
is the thing that got everybody else in
Germany on board. Yeah. It's it's it's
amazing how he cuz he comes in with 33%
of the vote. He had 37% of the vote of
the vote in July 1942. So again, this is
another period of of turmoil just like
it is in France where you're having
constant different kind of coalitions
and you know different chancellors
leaders of Germany. So, it's very
possible he he he wouldn't have come to
power. Well, he said he he said, "I will
only, you know, we will only take our
seats if if if I can be chanced.
Otherwise, forget it. I'm not coming
into any coalition." So,
then the uh the government falls again
in January 1943. They have the they have
the
election. The Nazi vote is down from
where it was the previous summer. But
this time, they go, "Okay, Heather can
be chancellor, but we'll manipulate
him." how wrong they were. You know,
he's manipulating everyone and then
Hinderberg who is the president dies the
following summer and uh he's able to get
rid of the presidency. There is no more
president of Germany. There is just the
furer him and he gets rid of uh he has a
enabling act which is where all other uh
political parties have disbanded and
suddenly you've got a total inherent
state just like that. I think there's a
lesson there. Uh there's many lessons
there, but one of them is don't let an
extremist into government. Yes. And
assume you can control them. Yes. The
arrogance of the existing politicians
who just completely screwed it up. I
mean, there is a real power to an
extremist. Like there's uh a person who
sees the world in in black and
white can really gain the attention and
the support of the populace. Yes,
especially when there's a resentment
about like Treaty of Versailles, when
there's economic
hardship and if there's effective modern
technology that allows you to do
propaganda and sell the message. There's
something really compelling about the
black and white message. It is because
it's simple and and what Hitler does
throughout the 1920s is he sticks to
this there there is actually when he
comes out of prison in so he there's the
bhole p in November
1923 he gets uh charged with treason
which he has been because he's
attempting a coup and he gets sentenced
to 5 years which is pretty lenient for
what he's done and he then gets let out
after 9 months.
The Nazi party is is is is banned at
that point, but then comes back into
being. And the year that follows, there
is then a substantial debate about where
the party should go. And there are
actually a large number of people who
think that actually they should be
looking at how the Soviets are doing
things and taking some of the some of
the things that they consider to be
positive out of the communist state and
applying those to the Nazis. and Hitler
goes, "No, no, no, no, no, no. We we
we've just got to stick to this kind of
Jewish bosshit thing. This is this is
how we're going to do it. This we're
going to do it." Gerbles, for example,
who is who is very open. He's he's very
very Joseph Gerbles is a he's a he's a
not very successful um journalist. He is
uh but he does have a PhD in German
literature. He's very disaffected
because he was born with talipes, which
is, you know, more commonly known as a
club foot. He's disabled. can't fight in
the First World War. He's very
frustrated by that. He's in a deep
despair about about the state of Germany
in the first part of the early 1920s.
He's looking for a uh um a a political
messiah as a sort of quai religious
messiah. Thinks it's Hitler, then
discovers that Hitler's not open to any
ideas at all uh about any deviation, but
then sees the light. Hitler recognizes
that this guy is someone that he wants
on his side. And so then goes to him,
makes a real special effort. Come on,
come to dinner. I think you're great.
You know, all this kind of stuff. Wins
him about over and girls has this
complete vault fast. Discards his
earlier kind of yeah, you know, Hitler's
right. I was wrong. Hitler is the kind
of messiah figure that that I want to
follow. I want to follow the hero hero
leader. And they come on board and they
absolutely work out. Hitler completely
wins out. All dissenters within the what
had been the German Workers Party drop
becomes the German National Socialist
Party becomes the Nazis. Um he comes out
emerges as the absolute undisputed furer
of that leader of that that party and
what he says goes and everyone toes him
behind it and part of the genius of that
you know Hitler does have some genius. I
just don't think it's military, but he
does have some genius. There's no
question about it. Is this the
simplicity of message what he's doing is
it's that kind of us and them thing that
we were talking about earlier on. It's
the kind of either or. It's kind of it's
my way or the highway. It's kind of this
is the only way. This is how we get to
the sunlet uplands. This is how we we
create this
amazing master race of the this
unification of German peoples which
dominates the world which is the
preeminent power in the world for the
next thousand years or it's decay and
despair and being crushed by our enemies
and our enemies are the Jews and and the
bolevixs the
communists and what he taps into as well
is front ginehaft and vultmine shaft
And these are there's no direct English
translation of Volska shaft or indeed
France shaft but but but in its most
basic form it's community it's people
community or front veterans community.
So the front mine shaft is we are the
guys we're bonded because we were in the
trenches you know we were in the first
world war. We were the people who
bravely stuck it out saw our friends
being slaughtered and blown to pieces.
We we did our duty as proud Germans, but
we were let down by the elites and we
were let down by the by this Jewish
Bolevik plot. You know, we were stabbed
in the back. The myth of the stab
stabbing in the back is very very
strong. So, we're bound we're bonded by
our experiences of the First World War
and the fact that we did what we should
and what we could and we were we didn't
fail in what we were doing. we were
failed by our leaders um and by the
elites. So that's that's front commine
shaft. Volkine shaft is this sense of
national unity. It's it's it's a
cultural ethnic bonding of people who
speak German who have a have a similar
outlook on life. And again that just
reinforces the us and them good and
evil. It reinforces the black and white
worldview. And then you add that to this
very simple message which Hitler is
repeating over and over again.
Communists are a big threat. Jews are a
big threat. They're the they're the
enemy. You have to have a you have to
have an opposition in the them and us
kind
of process. And that's what he's doing.
And and people just buy into it. They
go, "Yeah, we're together. We're
Germans. We're, you know, we're a
brotherhood.
we've got our Volskar mine shaft and so
he cleverly ties into that and taps into
that but they're an irrelevance by the
late 1920s you know by 1928 you know the
the he's not going to get a deal for
Mine Camp part two you know he he's he's
he's impoverished the party's
impoverished you know numbers are down
there they're a kind of you know a best
and and a relevance we should say he
wrote minecom at this time when he was
in prison he writes he writes most of
mine in prison in Lansburg prison And
then he writes the rest of it in what
becomes known as the campfousel which is
this little wooden hut in the in the
Oberalssburg and you can still see the
remnants of that and unfortunately
there's still little candles there and
stuff in the woods and you know by by
neo-Nazis and what what have you but
that's where he wrote wrote the rest of
it. Um I mean it was John Jacqu Russo
who says man has his greatest force when
surrounded by nature. That was something
that kind of Hitler took very much to
heart. Um there was a there was a mentor
of his called Dietrich Echart. Dri
Echart introduced him to the Obisalsburg
and the beauty of the southwest
southeast Bavarian Alps around Burkis
Garden and um and that was his favorite
place on the planet and um that's where
he that's where he eventually bought the
um the uh the Burhoff with the royalties
it has to be said from Mine Camp which
went from being you know almost pulp to
suddenly being a runaway bestseller
unfortunately. Can you actually comment
on that? It's a shitty manifesto as far
as manifestos goes. I think there's a
lot of values to
understand from a first-person
perspective the words of a dictator of a
person like Hitler, but it just feels
like that's just such a shitty Yeah. I
mean, you know, it's banned in a number
of countries. You don't need to cuz no
one's going to read it because it's
unreadable, you know. Um I mean, it's
it's very untidy. It's it's very
incoherent. It's it's got no um there's
no narrative arc to use a kind of, you
know, a writer's phrase. I mean it's
just it's but but but it does give you a
very clear you know the overall
impression you get at the end of it is
is the kind of communists and the Jews
are to blame for everything. Yeah. But
there's also the component of you know
predicting basically World War II there.
So it's not just they're to blame. He's
he's hungry for war. He he thinks that
this is this is the natural state that
we have to have this terrible conflict
and once the conflict's over Germany
will emerge victorious and then there
will be the thousand-y year Reich. I
mean you
I I'm finding myself in in talking to
you. I keep saying this kind of, you
know, it's Armageddon all the thousand
year, right? It's because it comes up.
It's it's it's unavoidable because
that's how he's speaking the whole time.
It's just this same message over and
over and over and over again. It's a
pretty unique way of speaking, sort of
allowing uh violence as a tool in this
picture that there's a hierarchy, that
there's a superior race and inferior
races, and it's okay to destroy the
inferior ones. Yeah, usually politicians
don't speak that way. They just say,
"Well, here's good and evil. We're the
good guys." And yeah, maybe we'll
destroy the evil a little bit. No, here
is like there's a
complete certainty about a very large
number of people, the Slavic people,
they just need to be removed. Well, they
need to be made an irrelevance. You
know, we have to take it we have to take
it and if that if that kills millions of
them, fine. Then then they can sort of
squish their way over to Siberia. It
doesn't matter where they go or whatever
they go. I don't care. We just need to
populate this land that belongs to the
German people. Yeah. Cuz they're the
superior people. There's no question
that he glorifies violence and war. You
know, he's absolutely chomping at the
bit. And in a way, I think he's a bit
disappointed that that in the
1930s the the conquests that he does
undertake are also peaceful. You know,
March 1948 goes straight into Austria.
There's the Angelus. You know, not a
shot is fired. You know, 1946 goes into
Rhineland. reconquers that, retakes that
over that from from uh from the
occupying allies, not a shot is fired.
You know, he takes the Sudan land, not a
shot, barely a shot is fired. Um and
then goes into into the rest of
Czechosvaka in March 193039 and again,
barely a shot is fired. And you know,
it's a bit disappointing. You know, he
wants to be wants to wants to be tested.
He wants to kind of have the have the
the wartime triumph. You could see him
being frustrated about this in in the
Munich crisis in 1948. He wants to
fight. He's absolutely spoiling for it.
He's desperate to go in. He's all ready
and gung-ho. He's built his luftwaffer.
He's he's got his his his panzas now.
He's got his his his massive armed
forces. You know, he wants to test them.
He wants to wants to get this show on
the road and prove it. You know, he is a
he's an arch gambler. Hiller, you you
make it seem so clear.
But uh all the while to the rest of the
world, to Chamberlain, to France, to
Britain, to the rest of the world, he's
saying he doesn't want that. He's making
agreements. Everything you just
mentioned, you just went through it so
quickly. But those are agreements that
were made that he's not going to do
that. Uh and he does it over and over.
He violates the Treaty of Versailles. He
violates every single treaty, but he
still is doing the meeting. So may maybe
can you go through it the leadup to the
war 1939 September 1st like what are the
different agreements what is the
signaling he's doing what is he doing
secretly in terms of building up the
military force yes so he you know part
of the treaty of size you're not you
know you're allowed a very very limited
um uh armed forces there's restrictions
on naval expansion there's restrictions
on the size of the army there's
restrictions on the weapons you you can
use. There are um you're not allowed an
air force. But he starts doing this all
clandestinely. Um you know there are
people in um crop has got for example
which is in the rur a sort of big um
armous manufacturer they are producing
tanks in elsewhere and parts elsewhere
in in say the Netherlands for example
and then shipping them back into back
into Germany. They're doing Panza
training exercises actually in the
Soviet Union at this time. There's all
sorts of things going on. The Luftwaffer
is being announced to the world in 1935,
but it's obviously been in the process
of of developing long before that. The
Meshmit 109 single engine fighter plane,
for example, is created in 1934. So that
they're doing all these things against
it. And and the and the truth is is he's
just constantly pushing what what can I
get away with here? what what what will
pro you know and and of course Britain,
France, the rest of rest of the world,
rest of the allies, you know, they're
all reeling from from the Wall Street
crash and and the depression as well.
So, have they got the stomach for this?
Not really. You know, and perhaps
actually on reflection the terms of
Versail are a bit harsh anyway. So, you
know, maybe we don't need to worry about
it. And this just no political will.
There's no political will to kind of
fight against what Germany's doing. Then
he gets away of it. So he suddenly
starts realizing that that that that
actually he can push this quite a long
way because no one's going to stand up
to him which is why he makes a decision
in 1946 to go back into the you know
into the rhin land you know which has
been occupied by by French you know um
um allied troops at that point he just
walks in do your worst and no one's
going to do anything cuz there isn't the
stomach to do anything that was a big
step in 1936 remilitarizing the Ryland I
mean that that's a huge huge step of
like, oh, I don't have to follow
anybody's rules and they're gonna do
nothing. And and he's looking at his
military and he's and and he's also
looking at response. So, one of the
things they do is they, you know, it's
really it's very clever. So, they get
over the head of the uh army of the air,
army dea, which is the um French air
force, and they invite him over and
they milk, who is the uh second command
of the Luftwaffer, invites him over. So,
come and see what we're what we're up
to. you know, we want to be, you're our
European neighbors. We're all friends
together, this kind of stuff. Come and
see what we've got. And he takes him to
this airfield. There's a row of measures
109's all lined up, like sort of 50 of
them. And the the head of the army of
the air sort of looks at him and goes,
"G, that's impressive." And and Mil
goes, "Well, let me go and take you to
another airfield." And they they go off
the sort of the bat route out of the
airfield and a long securitous route in
the Mercedes. Meanwhile, all the
measurements take off from that
airfield, going to land in the next
airfield. Here's another. and they're
all the same
aircraft and the commander and chief of
the army of the aircraft goes back to
France and goes we're never going to be
able to eat Germany. So you would
earlier you were you were alluding to
this earlier on you know how much is
this sort of this this this just this
hutzbar of this ability to kind
of portray the the the the mechanized
mollock. Um yeah it absolutely cows the
enemy. So, so they're they're they're
increasing the effectiveness of their
armed forces purely by propaganda and by
by mind games and by talking the talk.
And you know, you look at we might all
think these military parades that the
Nazis have looked rather silly by
today's standards, but you look what
that looks like if you're the rest of
the world. You're in Britain and you're
still reading from the depression and
you see the triumph of the will. You see
some of that footage and you see these
automatons in their steel helmets and
you see the swastikers and you see
hundreds of thousands of people all
lined up and see Kyling and all the rest
of it. You're going to think again
before you go to war with people like
that. It's also hard to put yourself in
the in the mind of those leaders now now
that we have nuclear weapons. So nuclear
weapons have
created this kind of
uh cloak of a kind of safety from
mutually assured destruction. They that
you think surely you will not do you
know a million or two million uh soldier
army invading another land, right? Just
fullon gigantic hot war. Uh but at that
time that's the real possibility. you
you remember World War I. You remember
all of that. So, you know, yeah, okay,
there's a mad
uh guy with a mustache. Uh he's making
statements that this land belongs to
Germany anyway cuz it's mostly German
uh populated. So, and like you said,
treaty versile wasn't really fair. And
you can start justifying all kinds of
things yourself. And maybe they got a
point about the dancing corridor. You
know, they are mainly Germans, German
speaking people there. And you know,
it's disconnected from East Prussia,
which is just saying, you know, I can I
I sort of get it, you know, maybe
they've got a point, you know, and is
Poland really a kind of thriving
democracy anyway? Not really. By 1930,
late 1930s, it's not. It's to all
intents and purposes a dictatorship in
Poland at that time. I
mean, it it's not right that you just go
and take someone else's country. Of
course, you you can't do that. But but
you can see why in Germany people are
thinking they've got a point. You can
also see why in France and Britain,
they're thinking, well, you know, do we
really care about the polls? I mean, you
know, is it worth going to to war over?
Um, but there's kind of bigger things at
play by this point. That that's the
point. Yeah. But before we get to
Poland, there
is this meeting September
1938. Uh, so Chamberlain made three
trips to meet with Hitler. Yeah. Uh,
which culminated in the Munich
conference. Yeah. On the 30th of
September. Yeah. Where was Chamberlain,
Hitler, Mussolini and Delej, prime
minister of France. They met to discuss
a century Czechoslovakia without any of
the government officials of
Czechoslovakia
participating. And Hitler promised to
make no more territorial conquest. And
Chamberlain believed him. He chose to
believe him, I think, is the thing is
the point. So, so it's very interesting.
So, so Chamberlain gets a very bad
press. Um. Uh-oh. Well, no, I'm not. No,
it's not really. Uh oh. It's it's
it's I I I just think there's too much
retrospective view on this. And and
that's fine
because we the whole point of history is
you can look back and you can judge
decisions that were made at a certain
point through the prism of what
subsequently happened, which of course
the people that are making the decisions
at the time can't because they're in
that particular moment.
So I don't think Chamberlain did trust
Hitler, but he wanted to give him the
benefit of the doubt. Britain was not
obliged to Czechoslovakia at all. France
was. France had signed a treaty with
with Czechoslovakia in 1924, but but but
Britain had not. So there was no
obligation at all for Britain to do
this. The only reason why Britain would
go to war over Czechoslovakia is because
of the threat of Nazism and what the
ramifications of not going to war with
him. But the problem is is that
Chamberlain's interesting because in
1935 he was he was chances checker and
when they started to sort of think okay
we really do need to rearm um he was
very much in favor of of substantially
um expanding and rehabilitating the navy
so updating existing battleships um and
so on and also developing the air force.
Mhm. There's not really much argument
for having a large army because if you
have a large army, you've got to
maintain it. Britain is a small place.
Where do you put them? You've also got
to transport them. That's complicated.
Um, you've got to train them. You got to
embarrass. You got to feed them. All
this kind of stuff. It's there's a kind
of sort of impracticality about having a
large army. Whereas navies are great
because you can keep them at sea and
they can be, you know, on the water. Air
Force is slightly different. Air power
is viewed in very much the same way that
that naval power is viewed. that this is
we're an island nation. We have a global
global assets and airpower gives us a
flexibility that an army doesn't. So he
is all for backing the expansion of the
of the army of the air force and the
navy in 1930s. Then he subsequently
becomes prime minister and sticks his
guns on that. It is he that enables the
air force and and the air ministry to
develop the first fully coordinated air
defense system anywhere in the world.
There is not an air event system in
Poland, nor Norway, nor Denmark, nor the
Netherlands, nor Belgium, nor France.
There is in Britain. Britain is the only
one. And frankly, it pays off big time
in the summer of 1940. So you have to
give him credit for that. Britain intro,
interestingly, is also the world's
leading armaments exporter in the 1930s,
which is amazing really when you think
everyone complains about the fact that
we weren't rearming enough. actually we
were when we had all the infrastructure
there and and we were expanding that
infrastructure dramatically. I say we
I'm only saying that because I'm
British. Uh um so they were doing that
but in
1938 Britain wasn't ready for war. Now
you can argue that Germany wasn't ready
for war either. But Chamberlain was
prime minister in a democracy, a
parliamentary democracy where 92% of the
population were against going to war in
1938. There is there is not a
single democratic leader in the world
that would go against the wishes of 92%
of the population. Now you could say
well he should have just argued it
better and presented his case better and
all the rest of it but at that point
there was no legal obligation to go to
the defense of
Czechoslovakia. You know Czechoslovakia
been was a number of these new nations
have been created out of out of 1919 in
the Versail treaty. You know, who was to
say, you know, we in Britain are able to
judge the rights and wrongs of that. You
know, how fantastic it would be to go to
war with uh a nation a long way away for
people whom we know very little, etc.,
etc. I'm paraphrasing his quote, but but
I'm not saying it was the right
decision. I'm just saying I can see why
in September 1948, he is prepared to
give him the chance. Now I do think he
was a bit naive and it and and what he
also does is this really interesting
thing is he goes over to Hitler's flat
completely ambushes him goes to his flat
on the afternoon of 30th September and
says to says to Hitler look I've got
this I've drawn up this this agreement
here um and this is to continue the um
the naval agreement that we've already
made and and by signing this you are
saying that Germany and Britain should
never go to war with one another and it
goes yeah whatever you know signs it.
Yeah. Chamberlain comes back, lands a
hand and waves his waves his little
piece of paper, you know, peace in our
time and all the rest of it, which
obviously comes back to bite him in a
very big way. But it's interesting that
that that when Hitler then subsequently
goes and moves in, you know, that they
France and Britain decide in rather the
same way that there's been discussion
about deciding that large portions of
Ukraine should just be handed back to
handed over to Russia without consulting
Ukraine a few weeks ago.
Um it is incredible I think that that
France and
and Britain and Italy with Germany are
deciding that yes it's fine for Germany
to go in and take the Sudatan land you
know without really consulting the
checks. It's a sort of similar kind of
scenario really and and it's equally
wrong. Um, but when Germany does then go
and take over the whole of
Czechoslovakia in March 1939, that is
that's the bottom line. That is that's
the point where Chamberlain goes, "Okay,
I've given him the benefit of the doubt.
No more benefits of doubt. That's it.
That is he's he's crossed the line." And
so you reinforce your agreement with
Poland. You do a formal agreement. You
go, "Okay, we will uphold your
sovereignty. You know, if you are
invaded, we will go to war with you."
You know, and that is that is a a
ratcheting up of diplomacy and politics
in a very very big way. And it is a it
is that decision
to make a a treaty with the Poles is not
heeded by Hitler, but it's heeded by
literally every one of his commanders.
And it's also h heeded by Guring who is
his number two and who is obviously the
commander-in-chief of the um of the
Luftwaffer and
is president of Prussia and you know and
all the rest of it and you know is the
second most senior Nazi and you know
he's going this is a catastrophe. This
is the last thing we want to be doing is
going to war against Britain and indeed
France.
The Munich conference is a pretty
interesting moment I would say in all of
human history because you got the
leaders of
these bigger than life nations and the
most dramatic brewing conflict in human
history. Yeah. Chamberlain, Hitler,
Mussolini, Dier. It's interesting when
these bigger than life leaders are in
the room together. M uh is there
something that you know about about
their interactions? Yeah, I think
there's I think one of the things that's
interesting is is that Hitler's got home
advantage cuz it's on his turf and you
know to start off with the first meeting
is at the burg his beloved place in the
Oasisburg overlooking Burkus garden in
the Alps. So he's pretty confident
because this is my mana this is my turf
you know uh I'm not going to be bossed
around by these guys. But Chamberlain,
for example, is going there thinking,
I've been around the blocks. No one can
teach me anything. I've been a
politician for ages. You know, I'm not
going to be kind of capped out by this
this sort of, you know, Austrian
upstart. So, they're both coming at it
with a kind of sort
of slight kind of superiority kind of
conflict.
Um, interestingly, when you get to the
actual meetings at the Bernabau in in
Munich, um, a couple of weeks
later, Chamberlain is cheered by the
crowds when his car comes in, when he
goes to his hotel, when he's moving from
his hotel to the burnabout, you know,
there are cows cheering him, we know,
waving uni jacks, all this kind of
stuff. Hillary does not like that at
all. Not at all. Puts him on the back
foot. And that's
because the German people don't want
war. In the same way that the British
people don't want war, nor do the German
people. The difference is that Hitler is
a dictator and an autocrat and has the
devotion of the people. So he can do
what he wants in a way that Chamberlain
can't. Chamberlain's hands are tied
because he is an elected prime minister,
an elected leader, political leader, and
he's not head of state. So there is no
question that it it is Hitler and
Chamberlain that are the top dogs in
this particular discussion. You know,
Delier takes a backseat. Even Mussolini,
although he's there, he doesn't want war
either. You know, he wants to be left
alone to do his own thing without anyone
getting in the way, but he doesn't want
he doesn't want to sort of it's not in
his interest to have a European war. So,
he's trying to avoid it. So, it is
really you you see that the kind of
alpha males in the room are are
Chamberlain and and Hitler. And it's
really interesting because Hitler's got
this sort of slightly
geralous voice and
and very kind of pale blue eyes and such
distinct things. Quite a long nose and
you know he always says this is why he
has mustache to kind of you know
disguise the big nose you know. So I was
saying to you earlier on before we
started recording he does have a sense
of humor. It's not maybe not one that
you and I would kind of tap into but but
he does have one. Whereas Chamberlain is
just sort of, you know, he sounds like a
sort of, you know, bit like an old man,
you know, he's sort of silverhead and he
looks like your sort of archetypal kind
of British gentleman with his rolled up
umbrella and his, you know, and his
homberg hat and all the rest of it. So
they they're both sort of caricatures in
a funny sort of way. And yet the
consequence of that these discussions
you know these these great events
happening you know you are you're
absolutely
going even which way the Munich crisis
comes out you're taking a step closer to
war it's just whether the war is going
to happen kind of next week or whether
it's going to happen a year hence but
it's you know the Munich crisis
obviously doesn't stem the inevitability
of war at all it just heightens it. Do
you think uh there are words that
Chamberlain should have said, could have
said that uh put more pressure on
Hitler, intimidate Hitler
more? Yeah, it's a really tricky one.
It's such a difficult one because you're
always looking at it through, you know,
the enemy has a vote and you don't know
what that vote is going to be and you
don't know what it's going to look like.
There's no question that that Europe,
the rest of Europe is is is cowed by the
um kind of impression of military might
that the Germans have put out that they
they certainly fear they are stronger
than they actually are. And then on the
other hand, they're also going, "Yeah,
but you know, Germany doesn't have
natural resources, doesn't have access
to the world's oceans. You know, it's
it's it's kind of, you know, it
shouldn't be able to win a war." And so
so they're kind of contradicting
themselves at the same time, you know.
So on one minute they're sort of, oh
god, you don't want to take on those all
those Nazis and all those swastikas and
those automatan stormtroopers. But on
the other hand, they're then saying, but
actually Germany doesn't have much in
its kind of, you know, in its basket.
You know, it's it's got actually quite a
lot of weaknesses and we should be able
to kind of prevail blah blah blah. We'll
just impose an economic blockade and
then it'll be stuffed. And Britain is
not ready to fight a war in in 1948, but
nor is Hitler, you know, nor is Germany.
So, you know, one is sort of striking
out the other, but it's very easy to say
that in hindsight, but at the time, you
know, with people kind of digging
trenches in High Park in the central
London and barish balloons going up over
London and, you know, children being
evacuated from the cities and 92% of the
population not wanting to go to war. You
can see why he takes the course he does.
I suppose that's that's what I'm saying.
I'm not saying it's necessarily the
right decision, but I I think it's an
understandable decision. But what about
even just on the human level? If I go
into a room with a British
gentleman versus go into a room with
Trump, it feels like it's so much easier
to read and manipulate the British
gentleman because Trump is like
Trump-like characters. It seems like
Hitler is similar. Churchill is similar.
It's like this guy can do anything.
There's something terrifying about the
unpredictability. Yeah. Yeah. It feels
like there's something very predictable
about Chamberlain. Yes, I think that's
true. But also, one has to take a step
back and think about what Britain
represents. So therefore, what
Chamberlain represents in 1938. Britain
has the largest empire the world has
ever known in 1938. You know, third of
the world is pink as the saying goes,
you know, and that saying comes from the
kind of atlas of the world where all
British territories are kind of colored
pink. Yeah. And on top of that, it has
lots of extra imperial territories as
well. So, you know, if you look at
there's there's this incredible map of
global shipping in
1937. And there's these little ant lines
of of ships going out and and one of the
strongest antlines is going down to
Argentina and South America from
Britain. So, down past West Africa and
down the southern Atlantic and there it
is. And that's because Britain owns most
of Argentina. It owns huge great farming
estates and ranches. It owns the railway
system. It owns many of the port
facilities. So, you didn't even need an
empire. You just need the the, you know,
you need the the facilities that
overseas trade and possessions can give
you. And Britain not only has the
largest navy, it also has the largest
merchant navy, has 33% of the world's
merchant shipping and access to a
further 50%, you know, Greek, Norwegian,
Canadian shipping that it can can
access. So if you've got if you got
access to 80 more than in in excess of
80% of the world shipping that puts you
in an incredibly strong position and
actually all sorts of other things have
been going on. While they might not have
been creating a huge army or producing
enough Spitfires that they might want to
up until this point what they have also
been doing is stockpiling bulk site and
copper and tungsten and huge reserves.
And because Britain has this huge global
reach, because it has its empire and its
extra imperial assets, it can strike
bargains that no one else can strike. So
it can go into various countries around
the world and can go, "Okay, I want you
to guarantee me for the next 5 years
every bit of your rubber supply. I will
pay over the over the asking price to
secure that." And it's doing that in the
1930s. So when war comes, it's got
everything it possibly needs. Now you
always need more because it's suddenly
turning into a kind of you know a proper
global long drawn out war. But but that
is a huge advantage. So it is with that
mindset that Chamberlain is going into
those talks and thinking okay well I'm
not going to get a war over the Czechov
and who cares about them but
but I am going to show Hitler that I
mean business. Hitler's going who's this
stuffy guy with his white hair? I don't
give a toss about him. You know and it's
he's coming at it from a completely
different perspective. And I think one
of the things that's so interesting from
a dramatic point of view and from a from
a historian's point of view or even a
novelist point of view in the case of
Robert Harris writing his book about
these negotiations which I don't know if
you've read it but it's really it's
terrifically good um is the fact you've
got two men two alpha males who are
going to those negotiations from totally
different perspectives and vantage
points. And I think it's very easy for
people today to forget how elevated
Britain was in the late late 1930s. You
know, the gold standard was tied to the
pound, not the dollar. Um, and
so Britain was the number one nation in
the world at that time and and it just
was. And it's so diminished by
comparison today that it's hard to
imagine it. And I think one of the
interesting things about the
historioggraphy about the narrative of
how we tell World War II is that so much
of it has been dictated by the shift in
power that took place subsequent to
1945. And when people were starting to
write these sort of major narratives in
the 1970s and 80s and into the 1990s is
through a prism of a very very different
world. And so one of the reasons why you
have this narrative that that you know
Britain was a bit rubbish and hanging on
the shirt tells of the Americans and you
know all the blood was spelt in in
Eastern front and you know Germany had
the best army in the world and was only
defeated because Hitler was mad and blah
blah blah. You know that that kind of
sort of traditional narrative. It's it's
that narrative emerges through the prism
of of what was going on in the 1970s and
what was going on in the 1980s and the
changing world rather than looking at it
through the prism of the late 1930s or
early 1940s. So there is this moment of
decision. When do you think what lesson
do you take from that? When is the right
time for appeasement to negotiate for
diplomacy and when is the right time
for military strength
offensive attacking
uh for military
conflict? Where's that where's that
line? Where's that thing? Well, I kind
of think it probably was when it was. I
I mean Poland. Yeah. Honestly, I I'm not
sure it would have been the right
decision to go to war in 1948. I just I
I think it would I I'm I can't predict
because you can't second guess how
things are going to play out because you
just don't know. But but I I I'm not
sure that Chamberlain made the wrong
decision. I'm not saying he made the
right decision. I'm just like I'm not
I'm being a bit wishy-washy about this.
You could have threatened it more.
Imagine Churchill in those same
meetings. Yeah, but but Churchill also
appeases. I mean, he appeases Stalin all
the time. I mean, you know, so the idea
that Churchill's this big strong man and
never appeases and, you know, he's gung
over war. Churchill's out of the
government at that time, he he he
recognizes that you can't trust Hitler,
he recognizes that Nazism is bad, but he
because he's out of the government, he
doesn't have a window on exactly where
Britain is at that particular time in
the way that Chamberlain does, you know.
So, so I suppose what I'm saying
is Chamberlain is better placed to make
those
decisions than than Churchill is. Which
again doesn't mean that Church that
Chamberlain is right and Churchill is
wrong. It's just that's a massive pump
to go to war in 1938 when you still
don't have, you know, you've got a
handful of Spitfires, you've got a
handful of huracans, you haven't got
enough, you know, your air defense
system isn't properly properly sorted at
this point. Um, your navy is strong.
But you know what's that going to look
like? I
mean, if you do go to war, there's not
going to be armies sweeping into
Germany. It's just it's going to be
accelerated industrialization for a
year. So, no, you know, even if you go
to war in 1938 over Czechoslovakia,
Czechosaka will not be saved that, you
know, France and Britain will not be
going and invading Germany. That, you
know, that is absolutely not going to
happen. So, sort of what's the point? I
mean, you know, if you're not going to
do that, why didn't you accelerate your
rearmament thereafter? Get your ducks in
a row and then you can consider it. I
mean, after all, you know, even in se
September 1949, they don't really do
anything. I mean, we talked about the
kind of the SAR offensive, which isn't
really an offensive at all. It's firing
a one round of machine gun and scuttling
back again. But, I mean, they don't even
do that then, though. They're still
buying time in 1949. And you know,
Britain is only just about ready to take
on the onslaught of the Luftwaffer in
summer of 1940. Well, nobody's ready for
war. No. And you always want more than
you've got at any time, even when you're
winning. But like really not ready. Even
like like you mentioned with with Barbar
Roa, Dasi Germany's really not ready.
Not ready. Nobody's really except
France. I swear. France. France have
radios. Fine. But come on. Come on. When
when uh when Nazi Germany invades
Poland, I mean, yeah, it's terrible.
It's terrible because I'm absolutely I I
also do think that had France gone in in
some force with some British troops as
well, had they gone in, what would have
happened is is that would have just that
easily could have brought down Hitler
because most of his commanders are his
senior commanders are just thinking,
"What the hell is going on? This is a
catastrophe." I mean to a man I mean
even Guring is thinking this is a
terrible
idea they are absolutely not convinced
and when Hitler does his big talk to his
his um he asked all his senior
commanders to come to the burgov to
brief them about the invasion of
Poland it's just after the ribbon trough
molotov pact of the 22nd of August go he
he calls them all to Burgoff and says
come in you know come in mufty come in
civilian suits they all turn up and he
gives them this kind of huge great
speech and says this is the moment this
is this is the time this what we're
going to do and they're all going what?
You're kidding me. What? We're going to
Poland in, you know, on the 26th of
August. That's the plan. Like two days
time, you know, where's the plan?
Where's the, you know, the whole point
is that, you know, they're they're
emerging and growing militarily, but
they were supposed to have all these
exercises where they, you know,
coordinating ground forces, you know,
the Panza spearhead with operations in
the air with the Luftwaffer. None of
that happens. So Poland becomes the
proving ground. And actually they
discover that there's lots of things
that don't work and lots of things that
are wrong. Um but but but you know it
it's flying in the face of all
convention military convention that that
they you know he does this without any
kind of warning and even by the first of
September where there's been this kind
of sort of 5-day delay
um at the last minute negotiations. the
last minute negotiations are thrust upon
Hitler by people like Guring and by
Mussolini and and the Italians going oh
my god don't do this don't do this you
know there's got to be a
solution's absolutely chomping at the
bit well in that case from a dark
militaristic
perspective his bet paid off well except
that it ended in ruins in May 1945 with
total collapse of Germany so you could
say the worst decision he ever made was
going into Poland and September 1939.
Depends where you look at it. But I
mean, yes, you know, it's successful in
that, you know, Poland's overrun in 18
days. And there's there's so many
counterfactuals here. But I mean, if you
would say to Hitler on the 30th of
April, you know, is he's sort of taking
out the pistol from his holster on his
sofa in the in the fur bunk and going,
you know, so Adolf 1st of September
1949. Still backing himself on that one?
I mean, he might might have a different
view. The guy's insane and full of
blunder. So, he probably would have
said, "Yeah, do it all over again."
Yeah, I'm sure he would have done as
well.
Conquest. Poland was not a mistake.
Soviet Union was not a mistake. It's
just some of the other people I was let
down by by people not being strong
enough. Yeah. The Prussian generals are
all Yeah. Yeah. Of course. That's
exactly what he'd say. Wasn't my fault.
He might have uh quietly done some
different decisions about Barbar Roa.
Maybe the timing would be different.
Maybe that all out central for us rather
than kind of splitting into three. Yeah.
Yeah. But he was very sure it seems like
maybe you can correct me that Britain
and France would still carry on with
appeasement even after he invaded
Poland. Absolutely. He he was completely
convinced by it. There was clearly a
kind of sort of 10 to 15% level of
doubt, but what the heck, I'm gonna do
it anyway. He was just he ratcheted
himself up into such a lav of of kind of
this is the moment. I have to do it now.
This is fate. I'm 50 and and you know I
could be taken out by an assassin's
bullet. I've got this important life's
work that I've got to do. We've got to
get on with it now. There could be no
more delay. This is my mission. You
know, this is our mission of the German
people. And either the German people
have got the will and the and the spirit
to be able to pull it off or you know I
was wrong and and therefore you know we
don't deserve to be a thousand right we
don't deserve to be the master race
black or white us or them either or it's
same all the time so can you tell the
story of the moltov ribbon trope pact
1939 so they make an agreement Nazi
Germany the Soviet Union and that leads
us just like you mentioned in a matter
of days. Yeah. How compact everything
is. It's just really, really
fascinating. It's a beautiful summer in
Europe. Summer of 1949, you know, it's
one of these glorious summers that sort
of never rains. It's
just sunshine, sunny day after sunny
day. It's kind of, you know, it's like
that sort of golden summer of 1914 as
well, you know, where sky always seems
to be blue, fluffy white clouds,
everyone's sort of, you know, but this
sort of the storm clouds of war, to use
that cliche, are kind of
brewing. The Russians have have reached
out to Britain and France and said,
"Come, come on over. Let's negotiate,
you know, let's see what we can do." Um,
and there is just no stomach for that at
all. I I mean if ever there is a I think
a mistake that's Britain and France
should have been a bit more into real
politics
and than they were that it's such an
opportunity to to ensure that you to
snooker the Third Reich and and they
don't take it. Um because you know in
many ways they see the westward spread
of communism in exactly the same way
that the Nazis see the threat of the
westward spread of communism as
something that's every bit as repellent
as Nazism and and they don't want to be
getting into bed with these guys. Um of
course they kind of have to kind of
change tack on that one in summer of
1941 in you know very quick order. Um
and that's the whole point about
Churchill appeasing Stalin. I mean, you
know, it's all very well people saying,
well, you know, Churchill wouldn't have
appeased Hitler in the 1930s, but he
does appease. He appeases all the time.
Um, and they miss that opportunity. And
the and the the French and British
delegation is third tier commanders,
generals going over. It's it's a it's a
you know, it's a shit show. I mean, it
Yeah, excuse my French, but I mean, it's
just it's it's it's a nonsense that
they're not ready for it. They're not
prepared. the British guy, um, Admiral
Drax, doesn't have any authority. Um,
the whole thing is a complete joke. It's
it's never going to get anywhere. You
tell the story of this quite
beautifully, actually. Uh, again, it's
such a human story. I mean, the it seems
like the Stalin and Soviet, they've
already made up their mind. But I don't
think they have. I think what they Wait,
wait, wait. I mean, you described quite
well that that they value in-person
meeting. Yes. So, like Chamberlain
should have just gone to Moscow. Yeah.
Get on a plane. Like it I it's such a
uh maybe it's a simplistic notion, but
that could have changed the trajectory
of human history right there. I really
think it could have done. I think that
was I think that's I think that's much
more grievous mistake than than than
Munich. Why are leaders so hesitant to
meet? I I I'm told now by a bunch of
diplomats that no no no no no there's a
process you know first you have to have
these diplomats meet and they have to
draft a bunch of stuff and I sometimes
have this simplistic notion
like why not why not meet why not meet
like I think there is a human element
there um of course especially when
there's
this force that is Hitler well yes and
because we humans we like to interact
and and you like to see people in three
dimensions and you know I'm sure it's
why you always quite rightly insist on
doing your podcast face to face cuz you
want to get the cut of someone's chip
and you want to be able to see them and
and you want to see the intonation in
their expression and the whites of their
eyes and all that kind of stuff. And
that that just does make a difference of
course because you know we're
fundamentally animals and we kind of we
we want to be sizing people up and it's
much easier to do that when you're a few
feet away from each other than it is on
a video screen or through the prism of
someone else. Yeah. But there's also
just you see the the humanity in in
others. It's so much easier this you see
this in social media. It's so much
easier to talk shit about others when
you're not with them. Yes. and and like
military conflict is the extreme version
of that. You can construct these
narratives that they're not human, that
they're evil, that they're you can
construct a communist ideology, all
these you can project onto them the
worst possible
uh version
what of a human. But when you meet them,
you're like, "Oh, they are just a
person. They're just a person." Well,
it's the world's great tragedy that that
that it's only a few people that want to
go to war and the vast majority want to
live happily contented lives getting on
with their neighbors. I mean, it has
been ever thus. It's just it is those
few that kind of ruin it for everybody
else. But but but anyway, to go back to
Leningrad um back in August 1939, they
go halfcock. They're disrespectful to
Soviet Union as a result of that. Um it
gets nowhere. Had they been able to put
on a really really firm offer there and
then to the Soviet Union, Soviet Union
would have would have probably come in.
I mean, the big thing is is that the
Soviet Union said, "This is a big
stumbling block." The Soviet Union said,
"Yeah, but we want to be able to march
through Poland if we get threatened by
Germany." Mhm. Both the British and the
French just smell a massive rat there.
They're basically saying, you know, if
they agree to that, what they're what
they fear is that Soviet Union will just
march into Poland and go, "Yeah, but you
said we could and take it." Which they
unquestionably would have done, but it
would have stopped the World War
probably. They're willing to appease
Hitler. They're not willing to appease
Stalin in that situation. Well, they're
not willing to appease anybody by that
stage. That's the point. Well, they
appeased Hitler because they did for the
year before, but there now there's a
bottom line, you know, which is which is
Poland, you know. So, it's changed.
That's why right but anyway the bottom
line is they don't you know there is a
there is a a reluctance on the part of
French and the British to negotiate with
the Soviet Union because they're
communists don't like them don't trust
them worry about what they're going to
do with Poland and they're going to be
you know jumping out of the fire into
the kind of water and it doesn't come
off and as a consequence of that Soviet
Union continue to pursue more hardly you
know um more more viciferously
the opportunities that the um that the
Germans are offering which is this split
of
Poland cuz Soviet Union wants that part
of Poland back in its own sphere of
influence and it doesn't want to go to
war just yet and the agreement that they
won't attack each other essentially.
Yeah. Do you think Stalin actually
believed that? No, he believed it in the
same way that Hitler believed it that it
was a cynical kind of, you know,
convenient bit of real politic for now.
I mean, I I think Soviet Union was as
determined to get rid of the Nazis as
the Nazis were determined to get rid of
the Soviet Union. I think whoever fired
first was not not decided at that point.
But I do think from the moment that
Hiller takes power in 1943, a conflict
between Soviet Union, Nazi Germany is
inevitable. Yeah. So either direction
you think it's inevitable. Yeah, I think
I think there's Yeah, there's a huge
amount of evidence for that. Stalin
probably wanted it what, like in 42 43?
Yeah, something like that. Yeah. And you
know, they're doing exercises and stuff
and building out. He's not ready yet
because he knows he's done the purges
and he's got to get his his army, you
know, he's got to get his armed forces
back into shape and all the rest of it,
but you know, so they have this
incredibly cynical agreement, but at
that point, you know, Hitler's hands are
untied. You know, he no longer has to
worry about about the threat from the
Soviet Union. um he's got car plans to
go into Poland and he doesn't believe
that France and Britain are going to go
to war over Poland. He's wrong about
that obviously but but but France and
Britain despite going to war with him
still do nothing. So you know he's got
away with it. Who was Churchill and how
did Churchill come to power at this
moment? Well Churchill is this
absolutely towering figure in British
politics. you know, who's been, you
know, first a minister in the kind of
naughties of the 20th century and the
first years of of the 20th century. Um,
first of the Liberals, then of the
Conservatives. He's a former chancellor
um um of the Jacka. Um he's a towering
figure, but he's been in the wilderness
because he's out of favor with the
Stanley Baldwin government. um he's out
of favor with with with Chamberlain, but
he is this towering figure and he has
been very outspoken as a backbencher,
which basically means, you know, you're
not a minister, you're not in the
cabinet, you're just an ordinary member
of parliament, but obviously you're an
ordinary member of parliament, but
you're also an ordinary member of
parliament who has had ministries of
state and who is this tyran figure. So,
he's listened to in a way that other
backbenches aren't. Um, and he has been
saying, you know, we need to stand up to
the dictators. We need to do this. um we
need to rearm more more heavily uh and
blah blah blah. So when war is declared
he's brought back into the admiral um in
charge of the navy which is Britain's
senior service and um suddenly he's
there and what happens is Britain
doesn't really do anything. It's very
difficult working with France because
France is so politically fractured that
they can't make any decisions and when
you can't make any decisions you're just
impotent. Um and so Churchill first
mentions going into Norway mining the
leads. So um the idea is that you're
making life very difficult for the
Germans to get iron ore out of Sweden.
Their main their main source of iron ore
is up in the northern part of Sweden in
the Arctic Circle. It then goes on a
railway through northern tip of Norway
and then gets shipped down the um west
coast of Norway into Germany into the
Baltic. So, uh, Churchill suggests in
September 1949, why don't we mine the
leads, which are the leads are these
passageways, um, out of the fjords and
the in the north into the, uh, into the
North Sea. Why don't we mine those and
stop the Germans from from from, um,
taking this. Everyone goes, "Well, yeah,
that's quite a good idea, but they can't
decide." And French are nervous that if
they do that, the Germans retaliate and
bomb France and all this kind of stuff.
So, no decision is made until kind of
April 19 1940.
They go up to start mining the leads on
exactly the same day that the Germans
invade Denmark and and Norway and and so
they're they're caught off guards. And
at that moment really it's seen as a
failure of Chamberlain's government. And
there is a kind of a mounting
realization that no matter how good he
was or competent he was as a peaceime
prime minister. He's not a wartime prime
minister. You know, he's not served in
the armed forces himself. He doesn't
really understand it. It needs a
different set of hands. And um his
government falls on the 9th of May. it
becomes inevitable that he's going to
have to resign and the obvious person to
take his place is Lord Halifax who is in
the House of Lords but you can still be
a prime minister and um he is without
question the most respected politician
in the country he's um u former viceroy
of India he's seen as incredibly safe
pair of hands man of resolute sound
judgment etc etc um but he doesn't want
to take it he feels physically ill at
the prospect, doesn't want this
responsibility. He's also not really a
military man. He's got a slightly sort
of withered hand which has prevented him
from doing military service and he just
blanches at this moment. And that really
leaves only one other figure that could
possibly take on this position and
that's Churchill. So
when Chamberlain resigns on the 9th of
May and Halifax says it's it's not for
me, um the only person who's going to
slip into that position is Churchill and
he becomes prime minister and he accepts
it gladly. He feels like it is his
mission in life. This is his moment
cometh the outcome of the man. But he
comes with a huge amount of baggage. I
mean, you know, he's known as a man who
drinks too much who's whose judgment
hasn't always been great. You know, he
was chancellor during the time of the
general strike 1926. you know he backed
Edward VII over the uh monarchy crisis
when the king wanted to marry Wallace
Simpson the divorcee Catholic divorcee
etc etc so you know his judgment has
been brought into question you know he
is the man who was he who came up with
the idea of the Gallipoli campaign which
was you know an ignominious failure blah
blah blah so there are issues over him
you know he is seen as a hotthead and a
man who doesn't have the kind of sound
judgment of Halifax so the jury is is
very much out and I think it's again
it's one of those things where you have
to put yourself
in you have to look at this through the
prism of what people were thinking in
May 1940. Yes, he he was considered a
taran politician, but he is seen also as
a loose cannon and by no means the right
person in this hour of darkness. And it
is coincidental that the 10th of May
1940 when he takes over as prime
minister, becomes prime minister, not
through an election but by default of a
new nationalist government. And so no
longer a conservative comp government
but a nationalist cross party coalition
government for the duration of the war.
Um which includes you know members of of
the Liberal Party and also the Labor
Party as well as
Conservatives that it is by no means
certain that that he's going to be able
to deliver the goods. And it is also
coincidentally the same day that the
Germans launched case yellow, operation
yellow, the invasion of the low
countries in France. So these are
tumultuous events to put it mildly. And
it is also the case that you know only a
couple of weeks before um Paul Reo has
taken over as prime minister of yet
another coalition government in France
from from Dadier.
So political turmoil is very much the
watch word at this time for the uh for
the western democracies just at the
moment that the Germans are making their
kind of you know their hammer strike
into the west.
This might be a good moment to bring up
this idea that has been circulating
recently brought up by Daryl
Cooper who hyperbolically stated that
Churchill was the quote chief villain of
uh the Second World War. To give a good
faith interpretation of that, I believe
he meant that Churchill forced Hitler to
escalate the expansion of Nazi Germany
beyond Poland into a global war. So
Churchill is the one that
turned this narrow war Czechoslovakia,
Austria, Poland into a global
one.
Um, is that accurate? No, I don't think
it is. I mean, not least because the
decisions over Poland were made by
Chamberlain's government, not when
Churchill was out of government. So, you
know, Churchill wasn't even involved in
that decision-making process at the
time. No, I I don't think so. I mean
again I I go back to kind of Britain's
position in in the world in
1939. If you say we are going to defend
the sovereignty of Poland and then you
don't that is that looks really bad
globally. You know Britain's prestige
would plummet would lead to all sorts of
problems. Um you are saying that you're
giving car blanch to dictators to just
run a mock and take whatever territory
they want. you are risking a future
upheaval of the global order um away
from democracies into the hands of
dictators. You know in the west people
believe in democracy and believe in
advancement of of and freedoms of
people. This is you know to to echo the
words of Roosevelt in August 1941. You
know that they're aspiring to a world um
free of want and fear. Now,
obviously, there's still some issues
with the form that democracy takes in
the 1930s. It's not democratic for
everyone. You know, try saying that if
you're in Nigeria or uh or or India or
whatever. Um or if you're, you know, in
the black southern states of the United
States. But the aspirations are there.
And I think that's that's that's an
important distinction. And I think by
saying that that Churchill is the chief
wararmonger of the Second World War, I
think is is ludicrous. You know, it's
the same thing about about the bombing,
you know, the the the detractors of
strategic air campaign always go, "Yeah,
but you know, Germans had the Holocaust,
but but weren't the weren't the allies
just as bad killing all those
civilians?" It's like, "No, because the
moment Hitler stopped the war, the
bombing would stop." You know, the
moment the war stopped in Hitler's
favor, the killing would continue and be
accelerated. So the the thing you
mentioned initially is the sort of the
idealist perspective of well Britain
can't
allow sort of uh this wararmonger to
break all these pacts and be
undemocratic you know um murder a large
number of people and do conquest of
territory okay that's idealistic but if
we look at a realist
perspective, what
decisions would minimize the amount of
suffering on the continent in the next
years? So, one of the arguments that
he's making, I happen to disagree with
it, to put it mildly, is that
Churchill increased the amount of
suffering. So, Churchill Church
Churchill's presence and decisions. So,
we're not talking about idealistic
perspective. We're talking about realist
like the the reality of the war of
Stalin of of Hitler of Churchill of uh
of France and
FDR. Did Churchill drag Hitler into a
world war? Did he force Hitler to invade
the Soviet Union? Did he force Hitler to
then in invade uh attack Britain? Well,
no, because because Hitler was always
going to invade the Soviet Union if
unless unless the Soviet Union invaded
Germany first. So, that was always going
to happen. Um, no one asked Hitler to
invade the low countries and Norway and
Denmark and attack Britain.
Um he does that of course because he's
not given a free hand in Poland but
there's no question that Hiller would
have also wanted to subdue France or
certainly turn France from a democracy
into a totalitarian state as well. I'm
absolutely certain about that. So I
think there's pretty definitive
evidence. I mean it's obvious from
everything he's said from everything
he's written from everything everywhere
that he was going to invade the Soviet
Union. uh no matter what. Yeah. And
France most likely. Yes. Also he would
have done a deal with Britain. Britain
could have coexisted. So actually there
is a is there there is a possible
reality. I don't know maybe you can
correct me on this where Hitler
basically takes all of Europe except
Britain. Yes. But then he would have got
so strong that he would have then turned
on Britain as well. You know, because he
he would, you know, the fear is that if
you let him do this and then then he he
gets greedy, he wants the next one, then
he wants the next one, then he wants the
next one and, you know, then he wants to
take over the whole world. And, you
know, that is that is the fear of the
British. That is the fear of the
Americans. That's a fear of President
Roosevelt who's got a very we haven't
even touched on this yet, but he has a
very difficult uh um case on his hands
because he's come into power also in
January 1933
um as president of the United States on
an isolationist ticket with a
retrenching with a kind of sort of you
know step away from the European old
order. It's time for the Europeans on
their own. Um it all sounds very
familiar right now. um and and suddenly
he's got to do this gargantuan political
vault
um and prepare the nation for war
because he also fears like Churchill
fears like most like Chamberlain feared
as well um that that Hitler's designs
are not purely on Eastern Europe and the
Lebanon's there but would get ever
bigger and I don't I don't doubt that
they're right. I think if he'd prevailed
in the Soviet Union, you know, he he'd
always wanted more, you know, because
his whole concept is the master race,
you know. Yeah. I I think I think it
should be said if we if we measure human
suffering, if there was not Britain on
the other side, if it was not a two-f
frontont war that the chances of Hitler
succeeding in the Soviet Union is much
higher or at least a more prolonged war
and there would be more dead, more
enslaved and more tortured and all of
this. Yes. and and ditto if you you know
if the if the allies hadn't got involved
against Imperial Japan you know it would
have been would have been catastrophic I
mean 20 to 30 million Chinese dead
anyway you know with American and
British intervention you know was it
going to be in China without that I mean
and elsewhere you know because because
the reason why Japan invades French
Indo-China now Vietnam
um and Hong Kong and um and Malaya and
Singapore and and so on and Burma is
because it's not winning in China and it
needs more resources because it's
resource poor and America has cut off
the tap. So is going into these
countries to to get what it needs its
rubber and oil and natural resources and
ores precious ores and all the rest of
it. And if it had been unchecked, it
would have done so. And then it would
have
absolutely built up its strength and
overrun the whole of China with even
more deaths. So, you know, I I I think
there is I think the one of the
interesting things about the Second
World War is is lots of wars and why
people get involved in them are
extremely questionable. But I think
there is a moral crusade to to the
Allies and what they're doing that I
think is entirely justified. What I
think is interesting also is that as the
war
progresses, you know, if the allies are
supposed to be on the force of the good,
how come they're doing so much bad? And
at what point is doing bad stopping you
from doing good? And at what point are
you doing good but also doing bad at the
same time? Such as destruction of
cities, um destruction of monasteries on
outcrops in southern Italy, you know,
destruction of killing of loss of
civilians, etc., etc. you know that
these are these are difficult questions
to to answer
sometimes they're also incredibly
interesting and I think that moral
component starts to blur a little bit by
kind of middle of the war by 1943 you
know it's it's kind of easy to have a a
fairly uh cut and dry um war in North
Africa in the deserts of North Africa
where you know the only people getting
in the way are a few sort of Bedwin
tribesmen or something but but once you
start getting into Europe or getting
into the kind of the the meat of highly
populated countries in the Far East um
for example, that's a different kind of
fish because the scale of destruction is
absolutely immense. But it is also the
job of of political leaders
um to look after and defend their own
peoples first and foremost. And so what
you're doing is you're trying to protect
your own sovereignty, your own people
before you're protecting other people.
And
so that's what leads to, you know, the
whole way in which the allies are, the
western allies are protracting war is to
try and minimize the number of deaths of
their own young men as much as they
possibly can whilst at the same time
winning the war. And that means bringing
lots of destruction to your enemies, but
also trying to minimize it. And the way
you bring lots of destruction by to your
enemies is by using immense firepower.
and this concept of steal not our flesh
which I mentioned earlier on and
technology um so that you don't have to
bring to bear too many of your young
men's eyes and you don't have a repeat
of the slaughter of the first world war.
So, you know, it is really interesting
that that in in our mind's eye when
we're thinking of, you know, the Western
Allies in in the Second World War,
probably the first thing that comes into
mind is Americans jumping out of landing
craft on Omaha Beach on D-Day, for
example. Those are infantrymen. They're
the front line. They are the coldface of
that. They're the first people going
into the into the fire of the enemy. and
we tend to think about guys in tanks,
um, infantrymen with their garand rifles
or, you know, machine guns or whatever.
That's that's what springs to mind. Yet,
actually, they're a comparatively small
proportion of the army. So, no more than
14 to 15% of any army, allied army, is
infantry. 45% are service corps service
troops driving trucks and cooks and
bottle washers and people lugging great
big boxes of stuff you know and that's
because by that stage you know the
allies have worked out the way of war
which is is to is to use is what I call
big war this concept of of a very long
tale logistics the operational art
making sure that people have the
absolute best you possibly can great
medical care huge advances in in in
first aid and and medical care of troops
getting them back onto the battlefield
and for using firepower and technology
and mechanization to do a lot of your
hard yards.
So, you know, that's the principle
behind strategic bombing. You know, if
you can if you go over and bomb and you
can destroy infrastructure and civilians
and households, that makes it much
harder for for corrupt to make those
panther tanks and Tiger tanks or
whatever it might be and guns. And, you
know, you're disrupting the
transportation system in Germany. you
know, you're making life difficult for
them to do what they need to do, then
that means it's going to be easier for
those 15, 14, 15% of infantrymen who've
got to jump out of anticcraft to do
their job. And you're trying to keep
that to a minimum. And you'd have to
say, broadly speaking, that's a very
sensible policy that makes an awful lot
of sense.
Um, consequence of that is a huge amount
of destruction. And maybe that's what
Daryl Cooper's driving at, but no one
asked Hitler to invade Poland. I mean,
you know, that is the bottom line. No
one asked Germany to go to war. No one
asked Hitler to come up with these
ludicrous ideology. Yeah. There's
complex ethical discussions here about
uh uh just like as you describe which
are fascinating which are fascinating
and
uh war is hell and there's many ways in
which it is hell.
uh just for a little bit the steel man
what uh Daryl is where he might be
coming from is since World War
II
the simplistic veneration of
Churchill sort of saying Churchill good
Hitler bad has been used as a template
to project under other
conflicts to justify military uh
intervention and so his general his and
other people like libertarians for
example resistance to that overly
simplistic veneration of somebody like
Churchill has to do with the fact that
that seems to be by neocons and wararm
mongers in the military-industrial
complex in the United States and
elsewhere using Hitler way too much
using Churchill way too much to justify
invading everywhere and anywhere. I well
I I do agree with that. I I think
oversimplification of anything is a
mistake. You know, life is
nuanced. The past is nuanced. It's okay
to be proud about certain things and
it's okay to be disgusted by other
things. That's absolutely fine. You
know, we have a complicated relationship
with our past. It doesn't need to be
black and white. And um you know, life
is not a straight line. And of course,
as you know, the allies make plenty of
mistakes in in in World War II. Overall,
I think they made the right calls. And I
think one of the things that's really
interesting is I think that that the
Allies for the most part use their
resources much more judiciously and
sensibly
than the Axis powers do and you know
good um because that means they prevail.
I think you know there are so many
lessons um from World War II that could
have been brought into the last the
history of the last 30 years which
weren't you know such
as you know if you have if you if you
decapitate an incredibly strong leader
you get a power vacuum and if you don't
have a solution for that power vacuum
lots of bad elements are going to sweep
into that in very quick order which of
course is exactly what happens in in in
Iraq so you know Donald Ronson going we
don't do reconstruction well you
freaking well should do. You know, this
this if you're going to if you're going
to take on this this particular
challenge, you've got to see it through.
You know, that's that's simply not good
enough. You know, it's not good enough
to go into Afghanistan and go, "Okay,
we're going to change things around.
It's going to be great. You know, all
the women are going to have education.
They won't have to wear kind of, you
know, uh um won't have to cover up their
bodies anymore. Um anything goes. We
love liberalism. It's great. Um let's
make cobble into a thriving city once
more." and then suddenly bug out, you
know, because what what what's going to
happen? You're going to undo everything.
And and I remember being in, you know,
this is a bit of a segue, Lex, but I I
remember being in in Northern Helman
province back in, you know, when was it
January 2008, and uh British troops had
just taken over an absolute dump of a
town called um
Musakala. And I remember talking to this
Afghan guy. He he just had all his
willow trees chopped down to make room
for a helipad that the allies wanted
which
they you know they put their kind of sur
you know those cages with kind of rubble
in the protective wall is it called
Hesco I think it was called anyway I
said to him what do what do you think
about about the British being there and
he just went shrugged at me lifted up
his hands and said well you know if they
stay great but they
won't and and he said said you know if
they stay then brilliant but he said I
tell you what he said, "Taliban went
great. They weren't fantastic." He said,
"But I could leave my personal wall and
no one would touch it. I could leave it
on a wall for a week. No one would touch
it." Said said, "Will they bring that
kind of order?" You know, "Will will we
have will we have peace here?" You know,
they've just chopped down my my willow
trees. You know, thanks a lot. And you
you know you you you're seeing a total
lack of understanding of the
culture, ethnic differences, you're
trying to impose a kind of western
centric view onto something which is
just some, you know, onto onto a onto a
nation which isn't isn't ready for that.
Now there are ways in which you know it
looked like Afghanistan was starting to
kind of emerge and there was a path and
then just at the critical moment the
west moves out with
catastrophic
consequences. What you have to say
though is that in the west post 1945 the
rehabilitation of Italy of Japan of
western Germany was really good. You
know, the consequence of of all that
destruction, all that turmoil
was thriving,
high-proucing
democracies which burst forth into the
kind of second half of the 20 20th
century and into the 21st century in
pretty good order.
Um so the lessons of the previous
generation from the first world war had
had been had been learned even though
the scale of destruction the
displacement of people is unprecedented
in 1945
in
1939 what was the state of the
militaries? What were the most powerful
militaries on the world stage at that
time? Well um in terms of naval power
Britain as we've already discussed and
and and the United States. France has a
pretty large navy. Uh, Japan has a
pretty large navy. Italy has a pretty
large navy. But Italy's navy is by far
and away its most modern aspect of its
three services, airland and sea. Um, but
it doesn't have any aircraft carriers
and doesn't have any radar. So, you
know, it's it's they've got modern
battleships and battle cruisers, but
without key modern bits of technology.
So, Italy is really not ready for war.
Oh, it's so not. It's so not. It's just
again both Hitler and Mussolini, they
they lack geopolitical understanding,
you know, that's because they're so kind
of focused on their narrow worldview and
they view everything through that
prison, but they can't see that bigger
picture. And we should say that
Mussolini, maybe you can correct me, but
I don't think at any point he wants a
war. He doesn't want a war. What he does
want is he wants his own new kind of
Roman Empire which extends over the
Mediterranean, the kind of certainly the
eastern part of the Med half of the
Mediterranean, North Africa all the way
down to kind of East Africa controlling
the Sewish Canal. That that's that's
what he wants. And I think he made clear
that he was I mean there's always like
this little brother jealous of Hitler
kind of situation because he he wanted
absolute power the way Hitler did but
doesn't have it. Doesn't have it. And
describe Yeah. There's a monarchy often
forgotten. It's amazing. So there's
always this limit and Hitler quite
brilliantly once he gets some power he
takes it all complete. He completely
emasculates Mussolini. And yeah, he
likes him though. It's really weird.
Even when Muslim is about to fall in
July 1943, he has a meeting at Feltree
um just literally a few days
before Muslini tumbles and he does that
because he likes Mussolini. He likes him
as a man and thinks he's being his
friend and you know he respects him to a
certain extent even though he's he he
definitely views himself as top dog.
Hitler does that is. Um, so it's kind of
curious because I don't think Hitler
particularly likes anyone really but but
but he does seem to like Mussolini. But
anyway, the problem with Mussolini is
Muslim Muslim Italy is is very
impoverished from the first world war,
you know, and that of course leads to
the rise of fascism and the overthrow of
parliamentary democracy and and why
Muslim takes place in the first place,
you know, again, it's that kind of
there's been this terrible disruption,
there's been financial
crisis that leads to kind of people
looking at an alternative. You know,
what's the alternative? Well, Mussolini
is going, you know, we can be proud
Italians again. lots of chess thumping,
you know, wearing great uniforms, all
the rest of it. People kind of think,
well, you know, I have a piece of that
and it kind of works and, you know,
preferably the trains work on time under
him and and so on and so forth. But he
just gets ahead of himself, you know,
and and actually the writings on the war
in 1945 when he goes into Abiscinia and
and you know, again, sort of what
effectively are kind
of by first world European standards
privitive tribesmen in in in Abbiscinia.
You know, they they have quite a tough
fight there. you know, they they do
prevail, but but it's not a complete
walkover, and they get a bit of a bloody
nose at times, and they shouldn't have
done, and they're just not ready. They
don't have the industry, you know,
they're they're tied up into the
Mediterranean. They don't have access to
the world's oceans. They do have some
merchant shipping, but not a huge
amount. Um, you know, they just don't
have what is required. They don't
they're dependent on Britain for coal.
Britain is the leading coal exporter in
the world in the 1930s.
So Britain's approach to fascist Spain
and approach to fascist Italy has been
very much sort of stick and carrot. It's
like, you know, we'll let you do what
you do as long as you kind of stay in
your box and and you know, we'll
continue to provide you with supplies
and coal and whatever is you need as
long as you
don't kind of go too far. And so that's
why Mussolini is very anxious in 1938
and again in 1939 to kind of be the
power broker and kind of not let Germany
go to war. But Germany's just, you know,
they they signed the the Axis Pact of
Steel in May 1939 where they become
formal allies. This is Hitler and um
Mussolini, Italy and Germany. But it's
always a very very unequal partnership
right from the word go. One of the
reasons Mussolini signs it is because he
fears that Germany has designs on Italy.
Yeah. It's not because he thinks, "Oh,
these guys are great. You know, they're
our natural bedfellows." It's so that he
can what what it's a mutually convenient
pact whereby Germany gets on with
whatever it wants to do up in Northern
Europe and Eastern Europe. Italy is
given a free hand to do whatever it
wants to do. They'll just kind of watch
each other's backs. They have borders,
you know, Austria and and Italy border
one another. Um, and they'll just do
their own thing and they'll kind of help
each other out with supplies and stuff.
Um but but basically they won't they'll
they'll be their own it's it's a kind of
marriage of convenience. You know
they're never expecting to be fighting
alongside each other on the battlefield.
Not really. There is a kind of
obligation to do so but but it's it's an
obligation with no expectation of ever
actually happening. And so from
Muslimini's point of view the pact still
is is kind of you know it's just sailing
your flag to one particular mass and
kind of trying to cover your cover your
back. And so long as he plays his cards
right, you know, he can he can still get
his coal supplies from Britain. He
doesn't have to worry about that. You
know, the pctor still doesn't make any
difference to that. The the problem for
him is is that in June 1940, he thinks
that France is about to be defeated and
that Britain will surely follow. And so
he thinks, "Ah, I've got some rich
pickings. I can take Malta. I can take
British possessions. I can overrun
Egypt. And you know, now is my time. But
I I also need to kind of join the fight
before France is completely out of the
fight. Otherwise, it looks like I'm a
Johnny come lately and I won't I won't
get those spoils because the Germans
will go, "Yeah, you can't have all this
stuff. You've turned up too late. You
need to be in the fight." So, he does it
what he thinks is the perfect timing.
And it turns out to be a catastrophic
timing because, of course, Britain
doesn't exit the fight. You know,
Britain is still there. And you know by
February 1941 a very very tiny British
army in Egypt has overrun you know two
entire Italian armies and taken 133,000
prisoners in North Africa. So you
mentioned in the sea uh who were the
dominant armies who were who was
dominant in the air? Well in the air it
has to be the Luftwaffer uh and it is
also the Imperial Japanese both in the
Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial
Japanese Army. They both have air forces
and one of the reasons that is because
the quality of the pilots in Japan is
extremely high because it's so difficult
to get to get to the top position. You
know, you are going to your frontline
squadrons with at least 500 hours in
your log book. To put that into some
perspective, you know, a British RAF or
Luftwaffer pilot would be joining their
frontline squadrons with 150 to 170
hours in the log book. So it is that
these guys are disciplined to within an
inch of their lives. Um they are you
know there are academic tests as well as
physical endurance tests. You know they
are the elite of the elite and they are
extremely good. The problem they have is
that there is a good number of them but
there's not that many. The Luftwaffer is
is the largest air force in the world in
1939, but it is already at a parity when
in in aircraft production with Britain.
Um,
and the French have a kind of similar
size army, but they're very very badly
organized. So, they're also they're
organized into different regions and
they one region doesn't re is not really
talking to another. And one of the
problems that when case yellow, the
invasion of German invasion of the west
starts, France's army of the air is
spread throughout France and has its own
little area. You have one bunch of, you
know, fighters and bombers in that block
in, you know, in the Marseilles area.
You have another block in kind of, you
know, on the Britany coast and you have
another block in around Sudan and you
have another that. So, so consequently,
they're never be they're never able to
kind of bring their full strength to
bear. So it's although although they've
both got about three and a half thousand
aircraft on paper and about two and a
half thousand that are fit to fly on any
one given day, the Luftwaffer because
they're the aggressor can choose how
they mass their aircraft and where they
attack and and at when. So in other
words, you can send Luwaff can send
overwhelming amounts of bombers and
fighter planes and pulverize a French
airfield and catch them napping. Because
the French don't have a defense system,
they can't see whether they're coming.
So their only hope is to kind of take
off and just hope they stoogge around
the sky and hope they bump into some
Luftwuffer. And of course that's
inherently inefficient and they get, you
know, they get destroyed. They get
destroyed in in penny packets rather
than on mass. difference with the RAF is
is the RAF is not done on an air force
basis where you have each air core or
air fleet has a handful of bombers, a
handful of um fighters, a handful of
reconnaissance planes. They have
different commands. So they have bomber
command, fighter command, training
command, cursal command, and they all
have very specific roles. So they're
they're structured in a completely
different way. and the other and that's
because they're an island nation um and
because they see their role militarily
in a in a in a different way and because
the rearming that Britain has done in
the 1930s is all about defense. It is
not about aggression at this point, not
about taking it to the enemy. It is it
is showing you're tough but also first
and foremost getting your ducks in a row
and making sure that you don't get
defeated. So this is the principle
behind the the first the world's first
fully coordinated air defense system
which is the radar chain it is the
observer core it is control rooms it is
interesting technology such as
identification friend or foe IFFF which
is where you have a little pulse which
so you have these control rooms and you
have a map table and you have a tote
board in front of you where you can see
what squadrons are airborne what state
of readiness they're at you know whether
they're engaging the enemy little lights
come on and show you you can see weather
maps you can see see the cloud ceiling.
You see all of that at a glance. Then
you're on a dis and then down in front
of you is a massive great map of
southern England. You've got crooious
sort of moving plots. So you can through
a combination of radar which picks up a
kind of a rough idea of what's coming
towards you combined with the observer
core you have overlapping observer core
stations all over Britain covering every
single inch of airspace over Britain
looking up into the air and seeing how
many aircraft there are a and at what
height they are and you have little um
thing called a panagramraph which is a a
piece of equipment which helps you judge
um altitude. You then ring through that
that all comes into the control room
along with the information from the
radar stations which is going into a
single filter room at at fighter command
headquarters which is then being pushed
straight back out to the sector
stations. So this information is being
updated all the time. So you have a plot
and it looks like it might be you know
enemy bombers 30 plus for example that's
constantly being adapted. So as more
information comes in, you will change
that and then you can see that actually
it's only 20 aircraft or 22 aircraft or
whatever. So you're updating that and
that little figure is put on the on your
little plot and moved across and so you
can see and then because you can
identify your own aircraft, you can then
see where they are moving and you're
also on um the guys in the air are on
the radio to ground controllers who are
in these control rooms and they're
saying okay well if you proceed at you
know angels 18 18,000 ft you know on a
vector of you know
150° you should be seeing your enemy
enemy bombing formation any moment now.
And what that means is that you're not
on the ground when the enemy are coming
towards you with their bombers to hit
your airfield, which means you're in the
air. So that all they're doing is
hitting a grass airfield, which you've
already got bulldozers and diggers and
graders and lots of scalpings and earth
ready to fill in the potholes and it
means you're good to go. And it means as
a consequence of all that when the
Germans do um launch their all-out
assault on Adler Eagle Day on the 13th
of August 1940, the British are ready.
You know, they're they can see them
coming. They know what to expect and
they can anticipate. And it means that
they're not being caught with their
trousers down on the ground. And as a
consequence of that, of the 138
airfields there are in um RAF airfields
there are in Britain, only one of them
is knocked out for more than 48 hours in
the entire summer of 1940. And that's
Manston on the tip of the Kent coast uh
which is abandoned for the duration. So
these are the two biggest air forces. So
those are the two biggest air force. So
Lufafa we should say German I mean
they're like the
uh the legendary the
terrifying air force. They are maybe
maybe they're slightly believing their
own hype. There's no question about it.
Well the rest of the world is also
right. They've just had it too easy. So
they don't have they don't have ground
controllers. They don't have an air
defense system in in in Germany because
why would you need an air defense
system? We're going to be the aggressor.
You know, there's no scenario where
we'll have to defend the airspace of the
Third Reich because we're on the
offensive. So they just haven't prepared
it. So there's that clash, the Battle of
Britain, the clash of air forces. What
explains the success of Britain in
defending? Well, it's I mean you and
everyone always says, you know, the the
few were the last, you know, the last
line of defense against the Nazi hordes
and all this kind of stuff, and it's
just it's all rubbish. They're the first
line of defense. Second line of defense
is the Royal Navy, which is the world's
largest. And there is absolutely no
chance on earth that a German invasion
force made up of Ryan river
barges, one of out of every three is
motorized and the other two aren't, is
ever going to get successfully across
the English Channel. And even if they
did, they will be repulsed. I mean, they
just it's just no chance. And it is
often forgotten that while the Lufra is
coming over and bombing Britain every
single day, so is the RAF going over and
bombing Germany. And one of the problems
that the Germans have is is that these
bombers need fighter protection. You
know, fighter planes are there to
protect the bombers. And they don't have
much fuel. And the Mesimmit 109E, the ME
as a model is of of 1940 is the main
stay of the German fighter force in the
summer of 1940. And they don't have much
fuel. So they need to conserve their
fuel which means they need to be as
close to Britain as they possibly can
which is why the majority of them are
all in airfields which are hastily
created in July 1940 following the fall
of France in the Padacall which is the
closest point you know that's where the
channel is its narrowest and all the
rest of it and also in the northern
Normandy and that's where they're flying
from but what that means is that even if
you're completely rubbish bombing which
the British are in 1940 they haven't
developed those navigational aids that
create untold accuracy by the end end of
the war 1940 they don't they don't have
that luxury it's a target-rich
environment I mean you know you can
barely miss if you go over to the aisle
of you know the over to the paddala I
mean it's literally it's just like one
huge great kind of hub of of fighter
airfields and consequently that means
that every single German squadron which
only is 12 airplanes strong on on
establishment and very often even fewer
than that always has to leave two
airplanes behind to defend their own
airfield and it's really interesting
when you look at kind of prison of war
statements from from Lufka at Crown Crew
that have been downed. They're all
bugged at a holding place called Trent
Park. You can see the transcripts of
these conversations. They're all going
about how annoying it was that the RAF
were over every night and they can't
sleep and you know when they if only
they just shut up and leave them alone
and not bomb them. You know, this is
just part of the narrative of the battle
of Britain that's completely left out.
It's always the stocky, you know, the
plucky few against the kind of the, you
know, the Nazi hordes and all the rest
of it. And it's just, it's a complete
misnomer. And by that time, aircraft
production in Britain is massively
outpacing the Germans. Um, and the best
ratio that the Germans achieve in 1940
is July 1940 when the British produced
496 new Huracans and Spitfire single
engine fighters and um the Germans only
produced 240 single engine fighters.
That's the best ratio. And of course,
you know, that is the British
outproducing the Germans 2 to1. And what
that means is by the end of October 1940
when the battle of Britain is sort of,
you know, officially designated as being
over. Um the single engine fighter force
of Luwaffer is less than 200 from 750 or
whatever it was in beginning of July.
Whereas the British fighter force had
been 650 or whatever at the beginning of
July is now well over 750. And Britain
is out producing. Yeah. by to a massive
degree and that that continues and you
know that is a a ratio that just
increases as the war progresses. I mean
Britain produces 132 and a half thousand
aircraft in the Second World War.
America produces 315,000.
So why is there this legend of the
Luftwafa? Well because it's the
spearhead of the Blitz Creek. So it has
to do with the Blitz Creek. It's to do
with the Blitz Creek. the the the Lufa
becomes the kind of the bogeymen of the
Third Reich. You know, they're blamed
for everything, but that's because
they're completely abused. They're the
only part of of the Third Reich's armed
services. The only part of the Vermach,
the Vermac being the Navy, the Army, and
the Air Force. Um, that is in
constant use the whole time or constant
abuse, I should say. In Britain and
America, they rotate their their pilots
really really carefully. By the time
that but the that that you know you got
the eighth fighter command, for example,
part of the mighty eighth, the eighth
air force operating in Britain. By the
by by the end of 1943, you would have in
a squadron that would have 16. You would
never have more than 16 airborne from a
squadron at any one time.
you would have 40 to 45 pilots for to
service 16 in the air and similar number
of aircraft which means you're not
overusing these guys and what would
happen by that stage of the war by 1943
you know a young fighter pilot coming to
a to a thunderbolt squadron or a Mustang
squadron for example um at the end of
1943 beginning of 1944 he'd have 350
hours of of consecutive flying because
you can train in in America in Florida
or California or Texas or or wherever
However, you've got you you you can
process many many more people because
the training is much more intense
because you've got clear skies. So,
you're not it's not a question of of oh,
we'd like to take you out out Fritz this
morning, but you know, it's a bit cloudy
and and oh, the RAF are over or you
know, Y Air Force are over so we can't
fly today. So, in Germany, pilot
training is constant, air crew train is
constantly being interrupted by by the
war, by shortage of fuel, by inclement
weather, etc., etc. In America, you have
none of those problems. And Britain,
because of his global reach, also has
training bases in in what was Rhodesia,
now Zimbabwe, in South Africa, um, in
Canada as well. And so, you're able to
process these these guys much better.
You're able to give them more training.
So, when they come, they're the absolute
the finished article as pilots. What
they're not the finished article as is,
say, a bomber pilot or as a fighter
pilot. But that's okay because you join
your squadron of 40 other guys for 16
airborne. and the old hands kind of take
you up a few times. So you arrive at I
don't know let's say some airfield in in
Suffukk in East Angler in England and
you know you'll have 10 days to two
weeks acclimatizing getting used to it
the you know the old hands will put you
through your paces give you some trip
tips you can pick their brains during
kind of while you're having some cow and
and listen in on some briefings then the
first mission you do will be a milk run
over to France where the danger is kind
of pretty minimal you know and and you
can build up your experience so by the
time you're actually sent over on a
mission to Berlin or or Bremen or you
know the RU or whatever you're
absolutely the business so qualitatively
and quantitatively you are just vastly
superior to anything the Luftwaffer has
got the Luftwaffer by that stage in
contrast 1940 new pilots coming to
frontline squadrons with you 150 170
hours on their in their log books less
than 100 90 92 hours something like that
it's not enough and and they're just
being flung straight into battle and
they're getting absolutely slaughtered
and they're also because their machines
are quite complicated, there's no
two-seeers really. So, no two-seater
trainers. So, the first time you flying
in your FAWolf 190 or your Mess 109,
it's this horrendous leap of faith which
you as a young bright Luftwuffer fighter
pilot know that you're not ready for
this and it can bite you. And something
like a
um a meshesmith 109 has a very high wing
loading. So it's very maneuverable in
the air, but it's got this tiny wings.
It's got this incredible torque. This
deep Ben's DB 605 engine with this huge
amount of torque and it just wants to
flip you over. So if you're not used to
it, and it's got a narrow undercarriage
as well. If you're not used to it, you
you could just crash. So, in the first
couple of months of 1944, they lose
something like 2,400 aircraft in the air
and and pilots and about 3,400 are
accidents. So, it has to do with
training really. Yeah. Not training
enough. It's training and resources and
supply. And the Second World War, more
than any other conflict, is a war of
numbers. There are differences that
decisions that generals can make. There
are um moments where particular
brilliance and bravery can seize the
day, take the bridge, you know, hold the
enemy at bay or whatever. But
ultimately, you know, you're talking
about differences which might make a
month's difference, 6 months difference,
maybe even several years difference. But
ultimately there's a certain point in
the Second World War where the outcome
is absolutely inevitable
because the guys that lose can't compete
with the numbers that the guys are going
to win at. So in that sense, you could
think of World War II as uh as a battle
of factories. Yes. What does it take to
win in the battle of factories in out
manufacturing military
equipment against the Allies? It's it's
efficiency really. So I always kind of
you know I I was think let's take the
example of the Sherman tank for example
the mainstay of the Western Allied
forces and a fair number of them sent to
the Soviet Union as well for that
matter. Uh I think you've said it
doesn't get the respect it deserves.
Maybe doesn't get the respect it
deserves. So, the Sherman tank, the 75
mm main battle gun, which a sort of
medium velocity, fire a shell around
kind of 2,000 ft pers compared to the
notorious, infamous German 88 mm, which
can fire at kind of third fast again,
like 3,000 ft pers. But on paper, a
Tiger tank coming around the corner and
a Sherman tank coming around the corner,
it should be no match at all. Tiger tank
is 58 tons. Looks scary. is scary. It's
got a massive gun. It's got really thick
armor. Sherman tank doesn't have as
thick armor. It doesn't have a gun
that's as as big. It should it should be
an absolute walkover. And yet, at about
5:30 p.m. on Monday the 26th of June
1944, a Sherman tank came around the
corner of a road called a Rumu, little
village called Fontine Lanol in
Normandy, came face to face of a Tiger
tank and won. How does this happen?
Well, I tell you how it happened.
Because the commander of the Sherman
tank was experienced, had one up the
spout. So what I mean by that is he had
an armorpiercing round already in the
breach. Soon as he saw the the Tiger
tank, he just said fire. That armor
piercing round did not penetrate the
Tiger tank. It was never going to. But
what it did do was it created a it hit
the gun mantlet, which is a bit of
reinforced steel that you have just as
the barrel is entering the turret. And
that caused spalling which is a little
shards of little bits of molten metal
which then hit the driver of the Tiger
tank in the head. And he was screaming
you know gone himl or whatever and and
you know was couldn't really see. The
moment they got hit the commander of the
Tiger tank retreated into the turret of
the Tiger. The moment you retreat into
the tig into a turret you can't see. You
can see because you've got periscopes
but your visibility is nothing like as
good as it is when you've got your head
above the turret.
Immediately after that the armor
piercing round from the Sherman tank was
repeated by by a number of high
explosive rounds which are rounds which
kind of you know detonate have a little
minor charge. Then there was a second
charge which creates lots of smoke and
and and in moments in the first 30
seconds 10 rounds from that Sherman tank
had hit the Tiger tank before the Tiger
tank had had unleashed a single round
itself
and the crew then surrendered. So, you
didn't need to destroy the Tiger tank.
You just need to stop it operating. If
it hasn't got a crew, it's it's a it's a
it's just a chunk of metal that's
inoperable. So, that's all you need to
do. And what that tells you is that
experience counts, training counts. Um,
the agility of the Sherman tank also
counts. It's a smaller shelf, therefore
it's easy to manhandle, which means you
can put more in a brereech quicker. Um,
there's features on a Sherman tank, like
it's the first tank to have a gun
stabilizing gyro, which means it's more
effective on the move. There's also an
override switch on the underside of the
turret so that the commander, if he just
sees something out of the corner of his
eye, can immediately start moving the
the turret before the gunner who is down
in the belly of the turret can can
react. There's many different factors of
it, but the main fact of all is there
1,347 Tigers built. There were 49,000
Sherman. So that means there's 36
Shermans to every single Tiger. So you
actually have an incredible uh uh video.
You talk about this a lot from different
angles about the the top five tanks and
and then the bottom five tanks of World
War II. I think was it the Tiger that
made both the top five and the bottom
five? The problem with a Tiger tank is
it's really huge. We should say that you
keep saying the problem but the one of
the pros of the Tiger tank it's very
huge. It it's I mean the psychological
warfare aspect of it is terrifying. Yes.
So I I don't know what the other pros I
mean I guess yeah the the 88 mm high
velocity and all the rest of it you know
it's pretty fearsome but but there are
there are pragmatic problems the the big
problems is the Germans are are
incapable of mass production on a scale
that Americans could do. Frankly even
the British can do. I mean they're just
they're just not in that league. The
reason they're not in that league is
because they're in the middle of Europe.
They don't have access to the world's
oceans. They don't have a merchant
fleet. They can't get this stuff. It
hasn't gone terribly well in the Soviet
Union. um you know they can't process it
and they're being bombed 24 hours a day
and so all their factories are you know
having to split them all up and that is
inherently inefficient because you're
then having to kind of move different
parts around and you know you're then
having the whole process of having to
travel from one place to another to get
stuff you haven't got much
fuel. So the consequence of that is that
what you do is you think okay we can't
massproduce so let's make really
brilliant tanks but they've lost sight
of what a really brilliant is you know
really brilliant to their eyes is big
scary big gun lots of armor but actually
what conflict in World War II shows you
is is that that you need more than that
you need ease of maintenance you need
reliability and the problem with having
the bigger the
tank the more complex like the
maintenance equipment is, you know, you
need a bigger hoist, which then means
you need a bigger truck, which then uses
more fuel. So, for example, the Tiger
tank is so big that it doesn't fit on
the loading gauge of the European
railway system. So, they have to have
different tracks to roll onto the wagons
that will then transport them from A to
B, you know, take them from West Germany
to Normandy. Then they have to take them
off, then they have to take off the
tracks, put on combat tracks, then move
them into into battle and hope that they
don't break down. The problem is when
you have you start the war that's not
very automotive and you've only got 47
people for every motorized vehicle in
Germany compared to three in the United
States or eight in France is that you've
got lots of people who don't know how to
drive. You've also means you haven't got
lots of garages and mechanics and gas
stations and and and so on. And so
you're then creating an incredibly
complex beast, but you want that complex
thing to be as simple as you possibly
can be. And that's the beauty of the
Sherman tank, you know, all those guys
in America, they're used to driving
stick cars, you know, one of there's
three people for every automobile, you
know, and that includes, you know, the
old and children. So almost, you know,
every young man knows how to drive. And
when you get into a Sherman tank, it's
got a clutch, it's got a throttle, the
brakes are the steering mechanism. Um,
the clutch is where you would expect the
clutch to be. It's got a manual shift.
You put your foot on the clutch and you
shove it into second gear and off you
go, or reverse or whatever. And it
literally couldn't be easier. Anyone who
can drive a stick car could drive a
Sherman tank. Seriously, not everyone
can drive a Tiger tank. It's incredibly
complex. Really, really is. And that
comes with a whole host of of problems.
And of course, you don't have the
numbers. You don't have the numbers. You
know, you've got 1,347 of them. You've
got 492 King Tigers, which are even
bigger. And, you know, at a time where
you are really short of fuel and you're
really short of absolutely everything.
And those shells are huge and they're
harder to manhandle. And weird little
things that the Germans do, you know,
for all their design genius, the loader
is always on the right hand side. Now,
in the 1920s and 19s and and 30s,
children were taught to be right-handed.
You weren't allowed to be left-handed.
So, you were right-handed. So, you want
to be on the right hand left hand side
of the gun. So, you can take the shell
from your right and swivel it into the
brereech with your from your right side.
But the loader in a in a Yag Per or
Pamper or a Tiger is always on the on on
the right hand side of the bridge, which
is ergonomically makes no sense
whatsoever. Why do they do this? I've
never found an answer to this, but you
know, so there's all these little things
and and as a soldier coming up against,
you know, you're an American GI and
you're coming up against a a Tiger tank,
you don't care about the fact that it's
difficult to maintain or the problems
involved of trying to get it to the
battlefield. All you care about is is
this monster coming in front of you.
It's squeaking and clanking away and
it's incredibly scary and it's about to
blow you to bits. That's all you care
about and quite understandably so. But
but those who are protracting the war at
a higher level and historians that come
subsequently and and look at all this
stuff, they do need to worry about all
these things. I remember the same Georg
Thomas, the architect of the hunger
plan. Um, I found this this this minutes
of this meeting which I think was either
on the 4th of December or the 5th of
December 1941. So, it's just before the
Red Army counterattacks outside Moscow
in the winter of 1941. And it's a
meeting about weaponry. And and I and
this is a verbatim quote. He says, "We
have to stop making such complete and
aesthetic weapons."
In other words, we've consciously been
building overengineered and
aesthetically pleasing weapons up until
this point. And they sort of half manage
it, but don't
quite. We could probably talk for many
hours about each of these topics. We
could we we could talk for 10 hours
about tanks. I encourage people to uh to
listen to your
podcast World War II pod. We have ways
of making you talk. It's great. Oh,
yeah. But we also do we got um got a new
YouTube channel and um website called
World War II headquarters. There are
lots of walking the ground and videos of
that and all sorts of stuff and little
explainers of going around tanks and
stuff and the weaponry and documents and
photographic archives. So the idea is to
sort of turn it into a kind of real hub
of anyone who's interested in this
subject. It's a place where they can go
and find out just a whole load more. I
love it. So, like I said, we could
probably talk for many hours on each of
these topics, but let's look at some of
the battles and maybe you can tell me
which jumps out at you. I want to talk
to you about
uh the Western Front and definitely talk
about Normandy. But so, there was the
Battle of Midway. Yep. In uh 1942, which
is a naval battle. There's Eastern Front
Stalingrad, probably the the
deadliest battle in human history. Then
there's the Battle of Kursk. Yeah. Which
is a tank battle. The largest tank
battle in history. Probably the largest
battle period in history. 6,000 tanks, 2
million troops, 4,000 aircraft. Mhm. And
then that takes us also to the Battle of
the Bulge in Normandy, the Italian
campaign that you talk a lot about. So
what do you think is interesting to uh
try to extract some wisdom
from before we get to Normandy?
Is do you find as a historian the battle
of Kursk or battle of Stalingrad more
interesting? Stalenrad is often seen as
the turning point. Well, I I yeah, I
think so. Uh I I mean it's really
interesting.
Um so they get through they get through
1941. Barb Rosa doesn't happen as as the
Germans hope it will. You know, the
whole point is to completely destroy the
Red Army in 3 months and that just
doesn't happen. And I think you can
argue and argue convincingly that by
let's say the beginning of December
1941, Germany is
just not going to win. It it it just
can't. And and let me tell you what I
mean by that. So if you take an
arbitrary date, let's say the 15th of
June 1941, Germany at that moment has
one enemy, which is Great Britain,
albeit Great Britain plus Dominion
Empire. Fast forward 6 months to let's
say the 16th of
December. It's got three enemies. It's
got Great Britain Dominion
Empire,
USSR and the USA. It is just not going
to win. You know, for all the talks of
wonder weapons and all the rest of it's
just not going to, you know, it it has
lost that that battle. Having said
that, Soviet Union is still in a really
really bad bad situation. it is being
helped out a huge amount by
um supplies from the United States and
from Britain. You know, just
unprecedented amounts of material being
sent through the Arctic or across Alaska
into into the Soviet Union at that time.
It is absolutely staggering how much is
committed by Roosevelt and Churchill to
to try and stem the flow in in the
Soviet Union because for all the all the
announcements and and pride that the
Soviet Union has about moving factories
to the other side of the Eurals and
stuff which they do in 1941, huge
amounts are overrun intact by the
Germans in the opening stages of
Barbarasa. I mean really, you know,
colossal losses, huge amounts. So you
know the grain has gone, coal has gone,
um entire factories have gone, steel
production goes down by kind of you know
80% in the Soviet Union in 1941 and into
1942. So in 1942 despite the vast amount
of numbers of men that they have at
their hands. I mean they they create 80
new divisions in the second half of 1941
for example. I mean Britain never has 80
divisions in the entire Second World
War. Division being about rule of thumb
15,000 men. So, you know, despite that,
and that is because Stalin's meddling,
the wful state of the Red Army in 1941,
etc., etc., which we've already sort of
touched upon. So, 1942, it's is still in
a really bad way, but Germany's in a
really bad way, too. It's the the the
attrition it's it suffered in 1941, it's
winning itself to death in 1941. So it's
having these huge great encircumments
like the encirclement of KEF in
September 1941 you know capturing a
further kind of best part of 700,000 Red
Army troops etc etc but in the process
of doing that it is constantly being
attitted you know both both in battle
casualties but in also mechanical
casualties too just can't cope it's too
the scale is just too
big and what happens is with every
moment that the German forces that
ultimate victory slips away. So Hitler's
personal handling of the battle
increases. And you know, you can say
what you like about him, but he just
hasn't had the military training to do
that. He might have amazing attention to
detail. He might be able to understand,
you know, have an enormous capacity to
remember units and where they are on a
map. But he was only a half corporal in
the First World War. He's never been to
staff college. You know, he might have
read lots about Frederick the Great. I
mean, I've read lots of history, but
that doesn't mean to say I'd be a
competent field marshal. Um, so he is
not the right person for the job at all.
And he micromanages and and he looks at
and and figures and doesn't understand
what it's like at the actual front, the
coldface. So he's he's stifling the very
thing that made the German army
effective, which is the ability to give
commanders at the front the freedom on
their leash to be able to make decisions
and battle command decisions. And he's
taken that away from them. So he's
basically making them go into battle
with decreasing amounts of supplies and
and
firepower and with one hand behind their
back in terms of decision-m process and
that is not a good combination. The
other problem is that he decides rather
than going for Moscow in 1942 because
basically there's a kind of cooling off
period in the in the winter because of
the conditions. But everyone know the
Soviet Union know the Red Army knows
that the moment spring's come there's
going to be another offensive be another
major offensive in the summer. That is
absolutely as certain as you know day
following night
etc. The problem that the Germans have
is they just don't have enough. They
have less than they had when they
launched Barbarasa the previous year.
The Soviet Union has more. It is better
prepared. It knows what's coming now.
It's kind of learning some of the
lessons, starting to absorb the lessons.
Stalin, coincidentally, is pulling back
from his very tight leash. And the way
that Hitler is doing the opposite and
increasing his micromanagement and
control
freaky. And what Hitler decides is
rather than going for Moscow, he's going
to go for the oil fields. And this is
absolutely insane because what's going
to happen when they get to the oil
fields? I mean, does he think really
that the Soviet Union are going to let
those oil fields come into German hands
intact? Even if he does let them get in
intact, what are they going to do with
that oil? I
mean, oil needs to be refined. Where are
you going to refine it? You know, they
don't have any or they don't have many
oil refineries. How are you going to
ship that oil to where you need it to be
in the factories in the Third Reich and
into your, you know, process into into
gasoline and then get it and diesel and
get it to your Yubos, get it to your
tanks, get it to your armored units. How
are you going to do that? How do you
transport it from from the uh from the
Caucuses, which is a long long way away
from from Berlin? How you going to do
that? There's no pipelines. There's only
some pipelines. They've been built by
American money and American engineering
and they're going backwards towards the
eurals, not forwards. They have no more
rail capacity whatsoever. They just
don't have the oil tankers. So, it's
just it's it is absolute la la land. It
is incredible that when you look at the
detailed literature that the Germans
have. No one is asking this question in
the in the spring and summer early
summer of 1942. the logistics question
in part. No one is saying, "Okay, it's
great that we're going to go to the
caucuses and get all this oil, but then
what?" No one is asking that question,
nor how do you provide resources and
feed and the soldiers and all that kind
of stuff. I mean, it's so so the case
prove first of all, they get distracted
by going into the Crimea and they go,
"Well, we got to do that first." So,
they have to get Sevastapole and the
Crimea, which they do. And then they
have to push on and and and at this
point suddenly looming in front of them
is Stalingrad on the banks of the Vular.
This this city this industrial city
which has Stalin's name and Hitler goes
okay what I'm going to do now is I'm
going to split my forces so half of you
can go south towards the Caucuses and
the rest of you can confront
Stalenrad. And on Boach just who's the
commander just goes that's nuts. That
makes no sense whatsoever. you know,
you're you're you're you're splitting
the mission. So, he fires him. So,
suddenly they get get into this assault
for
Stalinrad and it becomes this sort of
street fight. Street fighting is the
worst kind of fighting. I mean, the
reason why the Israelis have just blown
everything up in in Gaza is because
otherwise you can't see. You know, you
need a field of fire. This is fighting
up in a fighting in a buildup area is is
horrendous. Yeah. To clarify, we're
talking about urban warfare, doortodoor,
building to building. It's incredibly
difficult and home advantage is colossal
in this this instance and of course it's
piping hot when they attack in kind of
August into early September and then it
suddenly gets very very cold and at the
same time American mechanization and
slightly a British mechanization but
primarily American trucks are enabling
Zukov to plan this great Pinser
movement. So it is, you know, and and
Russians will hate me for saying this.
Um, and I probably will get a whole load
of bots on the back of it, but but but
the truth is is it is not the street
fighting that destroys sick army. It is
the encirclement, the subsequent
encirclement. So they the Germans have
been sucked into this street battle in
in Stalingrad. Cannot give up. We cannot
give up. We cannot back down. We cannot
pull out. We've got to we've got to
destroy this city. Meanwhile, while
their backs are turned and while most of
their forces are going off to the
caucuses on a wild goose chase for
absolutely zero oil incidentally um and
they never get remotely close to Baku,
this huge great penser movement is is is
being planned and it is only possible
through mechanization from the United
States. And that is the big turning
point because from that moment onwards
the Germans are on the back foot.
They're basically going backwards. There
are little small character attacks.
There is obviously the cursed salient
for example. Um but it it it's game
over. you know, the the catastrophe of
the surrender of the final. I mean, the
writing's on the wall at the end of 1942
by by November 1942 when when the when
the uh the two um Soviet fronts meet up
then then you know there is no possible
chance of escape for Sig Farmy. They are
consigned. They are toast. And their
final strand obviously happens at the
very beginning of February 1943. But
that's all over. Then at the same time
that that is happening, disaster is
unfolding in North Africa because Hitler
has insisted on massively resupplying
the Mediterranean theater. And the
problem there is the amount of equipment
that is lost in North Africa is greater
than it is at Stalingrad. I don't think
you could argue that
psychologically Tunis is a greater loss
than Stalingrad. It absolutely isn't.
But you have to see them in tandem as
this is two fronts. This is eastern
front, southern western front and this
is the first time that the Americans
have been on the ground against access
forces and they lose big time. The
allies become masters of the North
African shores on the 13th of May 1943
and it is a catastrophe and in that time
2,700 aircraft have been Luftwaffer
aircraft have been destroyed over North
Africa between November 1942 and May
1943 and overall the subsequent that
summer as well. Um it's really
interesting the Luftwaffer loses between
June and October
1943. So this is including the Kursk
battle which that takes place in July
1943. In that period the Luftwaffer
loses 702 aircraft over the Eastern
Front but
3,74 aircraft over the
Mediterranean. So I think one has to
also one of the lessons about studying
the Second World War is one has to be
careful not to assign strategic
importance to to boots on the ground. It
can be of great strategic importance,
but not necessarily. You know, no one
would argue, for example, that the
Guadal Canal is not an absolutely
game-changing battle in the in the
Pacific War, and yet the number of
troops compared to, you know, what's
going on in the Eastern Front or even,
you know, the Western Front is is is
tiny in comparison.
So, it is absolutely true that the most
German blood is lost on the Eastern
Front, but that doesn't mean to say that
it's more strategically important than
the Western Front. It's a it's it's and
it's not saying that the western front
is more strategic either. It's just you
have to kind of be balanced about this.
The psychological blow of Stalingrad is
immense and you you cannot belittle
that. I mean there's the we went over it
really fast but there is a human drama
element. Yes. But yes, when we're
talking about the operational side, the
material loss of a battle is also
extremely important to the big picture
of the war. And we often don't talk
about that because of course with war
the thing to focus on is the human drama
of it. Yes. Because we're humans. And I
also think that what's interesting is
that is the Nazi high command's response
to Stalinrad which is not to go we're
screwed. It's to double down. It's you
know then so so Gerbles for example
gives his infamous speech in the sports
palace in third week of February 1943
where he goes are you ready for this?
You know, this is now total war. The war
is coming. This is a fight for survival.
We're all in it together. You are in
this as well. You know, every single
one, every single German is now this is
a fight for survival and we are now in
total war. And
and everyone is just so depressed by
this. I mean, yeah, they realize that
there is that they have they they will
are going to reap what they have sown,
you know, because everyone knows what's
been going on in the Eastern Front
because first part of the war, Germans
have loads and loads of cameras. They're
really into photographing everything,
taking cine footage of everything. It's
all part of recording the greatness of
the Reich and the triumphs of the Reich.
They want it recorded. So, all this
stuff is bit like the radios is made
very very cheap. So, lots of havoc and
people are sending it all back and you
know the people that are developing the
stuff are all seeing it and people are
talking about it and then it's being
sent to families and they're all seeing
it and they're seeing pictures of Jews
being rounded up and beaten and they're
seeing um Ukrainian partisans being
executed and they're seeing villages
being torched and everyone
knows. They all know. Yeah. This whole
idea is, you know, did they really know
what was going on? Yeah, they do. They
do know what's going on, you know, to
lesser or greater detail. Of course, you
know, there's some people who don't.
And, you know, a bit like people know
about the news today. Some people do,
some people don't. I never read a
newspaper. I never listen to the news,
you know. So you you have that of course
but but but it is widely understood and
widely known
that really brutal things have been
going on in the east and and and troops
are coming back utterly traumatized by
what they have taken part in what they
have witnessed the kind of unspeakable
brutality. This is war on a completely
different level to anything that's been
kind of seen in recent years. Yeah. We
should we should mention that you know
the western front and the eastern front
are very different in this regard. Yes.
So a lot of the Holocaust by bullets.
The Holocaust with the concentration
camps and the extermination camps is not
in Germany is not in the Western Front
is in Poland is it's in the Soviet
Union. Yeah. But don't forget that even
Achvitz for example is part of the new
Reich. It is part of you know it is part
of an area which has been absorbed into
Germany. So as far as they're concerned
this has now got you know it's now no
longer got the Polish name. It's now
called Ashvitz which is a German name.
It is part of Germany and there are
German people moving there into this,
you know, aircom model town and they all
know exactly what's going on. Yeah. You,
by the way, have a nice podcast uh
series of four episodes on Ashwitz.
um the evolution of the dream world
town that becomes a a camp, a work camp,
then becomes an extermination camp and a
big boona factory for IG Farbin, which
never produces a single bit of rubber.
So th this for sure is uh something I
would have to dive deep in. There's a
book you've recommended, KL.
Yes, it's just called KL. It's about the
the whole concentration camp system. Um
cuz K is concentration
um in German. Laga is a is a camp. Um
it's a it's an exhaustive book and I'm
I'm full of admiration for him for for
writing it just
because cheap as it must have been. So I
mean I I was very depressed doing that
work on Ashvitz that deep dive. I just
found the whole thing utterly
dispiriting. Um and I've been there a
few times and it's ghastly. Um so how he
wrote a whole book on it I don't know. I
think in the
details there's a there's two ways I
think to look at the holocaust. One is
uh man's search for meaning about Victor
Franco sort of this philosophical thing
about how a human being can confront
that and find meaning and what it mean
what what does the human condition look
like in the context of such uh evil. And
then there is the more sort of detailed
okay well how how do you actually
implement something like the final
solution? So you have this ideology of
evil implemented. Yes. And at the fine
detail of what what are the different
technologies used? What are the
different humans in the hierarchy of
humans in a camp? How do they what's the
actual experience of the individual
person who shows up at a camp? Just get
in the details and in those details I
think there's some deep profound human
truth that can emerge that the the the
mundane
um one step at a time is how you can
achieve evil. Yeah. So you can get lost
in the mundane. It's Yes. The benality
of evil. It's
um it's incredible. I I I think I think
what what is so so completely horrific
is is that you know, you know, half the
six million were killed by kind of
bullets at the back of the
head. And the reason they stopped doing
that and they wanted to stop doing that
was because the guys said, the
perpetrators were finding it so
traumatic. You know, him goes and visits
um an execution in Ukraine and or maybe
he's in the Baltic States. I can't
remember where he goes, but he but he
witnessed some in, you know, in the
summer of 1941. He thinks, "Oh, that's
horrible." You know, they don't have to
do that. I don't want my men having to
do that. Got to find a more humane way
of doing it. When you talk about more
humane way of doing it, humane for the
for the executors, executioners, not not
for the victims because trust me,
cyclone B is not a nice way to go. You
know, it basic basically it's bursting
all the capillaries in your lungs. It's
extremely painful and and you you can no
longer breathe and it can take up to 20
25 minutes. You know, some people it can
take a couple of minutes. But all of
those who are standing naked in that gas
chamber, first of all, extremely
humiliated by this process in the first
place, then there's a sudden realization
of that that they're not having a
shower. They're actually being gassed
and they're all going to die. Imagine
what you're thinking as that process is
you because you might be the first, but
you're still going to even the first
person is going to know that I can't
breathe and I'm I'm dying. Everyone else
is going to see the first few dying and
then going to realize that is what's
going to happen to them. And you've got
those
minutes, sometimes many minutes where
you've got to contemplate that that and
and that's that's in extreme pain and
panic. And just think about how cruel
that is while being humiliated all the
way through. While being humiliated all
the way through. And
so the inverted commas humanity of of of
the gas chambers is anything but. It's
disgusting. A and the fact that people
could do this is just beyond terrific.
And then the fact that you are taking
your Jewish prisoners and getting them
to cut off all the hair, pull out the
teeth of the dead before you put them on
a lift and incinerate them. If you go to
Avitz now and you go to the collapse,
the blown up gas chambers which the
Germans destroyed before the Russians
overran them in January 45, you can
still see some of the ash ponds. And
there are bits of bone there but still
there from the ash. It's just it is
utterly repulsive. And imagine arriving
from that train on that incredibly long
journey where you've had no comforts
whatsoever. You've had again you've had
humiliations and privation you know the
privations you've had to suffer as a
result of that you know of having to
kind of defecate in a bucket in the
corner in front of other people. It's
just horrendous. And then you get there
bewildered and immediately your kids are
taken away from you or your you know
husband and wife who've been married 20
years. They're separated just like that,
sent off into different groups, straight
to the gas chambers. I mean, you know,
it is it the the the scale of cruelty is
so immense. It's it's hard to fathom.
And the thing that I find really
difficult to
reconcile and this is where I think the,
you know, the warning from history is
important is that Germany is such an
amazing nation. You know, it's it's it's
the it's the country of Beethovven and
Strauss and and and of Gerta and
incredible art and culture and and and
some of the greatest engineers and
scientists have ever lived. And look how
quickly it flipped into the descent of
unspeakable
inhumity which manifested itself in the
Holocaust and the gas chambers um and
the executions into pits
and tiny places and creeks
in Lithuania or Ukraine or whatever. I
mean it's it's it's just horrendous. And
you know this is from a nation which a
decade earlier had been a democracy. It
seems like as a human civilization, we
walk that soldier in line between good
and evil. Uh it's a thin line and we we
have to walk it carefully. Yes.
So I one of the great
battles in uh in World War
II on the Western Front is Normandy. I
have to talk to you about Normandy.
D-Day, the Normandy landings, the famous
on June 6th,
1944. This was a Allied invasion of Nazi
occupied Western Europe. What was the
planning? And it was lengthy planning.
What was the planning? What was the
execution of the Normandy landings?
Well, the decision to finally go into
when the Americans joined the war in
December 1941, there's the Arcadia
conference few days later, week later
between the British chiefs of staff and
political leader Churchill and Roosevelt
and his own chiefs of staff about what
the policy should be. And the policy is
to get American troops over to Europe as
quickly as possible, get them over to
Britain, get them training um and get
them across the channel ASAP and and
start the liberation of Europe. But the
reality is that that that in 1942 the
Americans just aren't ready. You know,
they've gone from this incredibly tiny
army. They're still growing. They've got
no battlefield experience. The British
are still recovering. You know, they're
good on the naval power. They're kind of
increasingly good on air power. Um but
but but land power, they've had to kind
of make up from the loss of their ally
France and and expand as well. So kind
of ground zero for both America and
Britain has been kind of June 1940 1940
when France is out and suddenly that's
the strategic earthquake and that's the
the issue that needs settling and and
they need to just completely realign
everything that they they'd fought in
1949. They've got to start again but
it's also becomes clear that it's
they're not really ready in 1943 either.
And one of the problems is is that
Molotov, who is the Soviet foreign
minister, has come over to Britain in
May 1942 and said, you know, we need you
to kind of do your bit and get on the
get on the on the campaign trail against
the Germans and fight on the ground. And
the British sort of going, well, yeah,
but you know, cross channel invasion is
not really going to happen. We know
we're doing that in North Africa at the
moment. Then he goes over to Washington
and and um and the Americans go, you
know, we are definitely going to go and
take on the attack to the uh the Germans
in 1942. They've made this promise. So
in the summer of 1942 it becomes clear
that they can't keep that. So Churchill
says, "Well, look, I've got here's an
idea. You know, we're in we've got
already got an army in in Egypt. Why
don't we land another one in Northwest
Europe? We can Northwest Africa. We can
that's run by Vichy France, which is
pro-ac French um colonies. Um why don't
we take that? We can do that and then we
can meet in the middle. We can pinch
around. We can conquer the whole of
North Africa. You can kill with two
birds and one stones because you can get
some experience fighting against Axis
troops. you know, test some of your your
your equipment and commanders, you know,
what's not to like and then we can sort
of see how it goes. So, this is a kind
of opportunistic strategy, whereas the
Americans are very much sort of, you
know, we we want to draw a straight line
to Berlin and that's the quickest way
and let's do do it that way. So, it's a
kind of a different viewpoint and but
Roosevelt kind of gets that and agrees
to that. So that's where the whole North
Africa Mediterranean campaign comes
from. And as a consequence of the huge
commitment to Tunisia, you know, three
and a half thousand aircraft, huge
navies, you know, two army allied armies
um in North Africa by the time Tunisa is
won in midmay 1943. They think, well, we
got all this here. We might as well kind
of really try and get put the nail into
the coffin of Italy's war, get them out
of the battle. You know, Sicily is an
obvious one. Let's go in there and then
we can take a view. But between Sicily
happening and the fall of North Africa
is the Trident Conference in Washington.
And that is where the decisions made.
The Americans go, "Okay, enough of this
opportunistic stuff. Let's just okay, we
get it. We buy it. But no more faffing
around. You know, May 1944, one year
hence, we are going to cross the
Atlantic." And the British go, "Okay,
fair fair cop. We'll we'll do that." So
So that is where Operation Overlord, as
it becomes, gets given its code name,
its operational name. That's when the
planning starts. Serious planning starts
at the beginning of 1944. And one of the
lessons from Sicily to Normandy is that
you can't have commanders fighting one
battle whilst preparing for the next
one. So you have to have a separate um
uh command structure. And that's okay
because by this time you got enough
people that have got experience with
battlefield command that you can
actually split it. There are very good
reasons for going into Italy, not least
getting the fodger airfields so that you
can further tighten the noose around
around Nazi Germany. And one of the
great prerequisites for the Normandy
invasion is total control of air of the
air of the airspace, not just over
Normandy, but over a large swave of
northwest Europe. Why is that? Because
the moment you land in Normandy, the cat
is out of the bag. And it's then a race
between which side can build up meta
material quickest. Is it going to be the
Allies who've got to come from southern
England, which is a distance of a slow
journey across seas and a distance
between kind of 80 and 130 mi away, or
is it going to be the Germans that are
already on the continent? Well, clearly
on paper it's the Germans. So, you have
to slow up the Germans. Well, how do you
do that? You do that by destroying their
means of getting there. So, bridges,
destroy all the bridges over the sane,
destroy all the bridges over the RVI,
hit the marshalling yards. the German
the glue that keeps the German war
machine together is the Reichkes barn
the German railway network. So destroy
the railway as much as you possibly can
and make it difficult for the Germans to
reinforce the the the Normandy British
head as and when it comes. But the way
you do that in turn is by very low-level
precision bombing and that has to be
done by by twin engine faster smaller
bombers going in low. But the problem is
is you can't go low and and and destroy
those bridges if you've got fucker
wolves and measure smmiths hovering
above you. So you've got to destroy
those, which is why you need to have air
superiority over this large wave of
Northwest Europe to do that. The problem
is that while the industrial heartland
of Nazi Germany is in the west is in the
rural era, which is very convenient for
bombers coming out of Lincolnshire or
East Anglia on the east flat east side
of of Great Britain. the aircraft
industry is much deeper into the Reich
and it is beyond the the range of
fighter escorts for the bombers and the
American daylight bombers who are going
over are discovering that despite being
called flying fortresses they're not
fortresses they're actually getting
decimated and whenever their bombers go
in strength over to try and hit the
aircraft industry in Germany beyond
fighter range they get decimated first
infamously on the Schwin Reagers raid on
the 17th of August 1943 coincidentally
the same day that Sicily falls to the
allies. Um, and also coincidentally the
same day that face-to-face negotiations
begin with the Italians for an armistice
in Lisbon. But on that day of the 324
heavy bombers that the Americans send
over to hit Schweinford and Regensburg
where there are mesh plant and and also
a ball bearing plant which is essential
for aircraft manufacturing. Um, they
lose 60 shot down and a further 130 odd
really badly damaged. And even for the
vast numbers of manpower and and bombers
that are coming out of America, this is
too much. So they can't sustain it. So
they've got to find a fighter escort
that's going to be able to escort them
all the way into the into the Reich. And
the race is on because basically if they
haven't got one airspace by April
1944, it's game over. You can't do a
cross channel invasion. You have to have
that control of the airspace beforehand.
So the race is on. Unfortunately, they
come with a solution, which is the P-51
Mustang, which has originally been
commissioned in May 1940 by the British,
developed from sketches to reality in
117 days. It's a work of absolute
genius. But Stal is harnessed with a
really bad engine. The Allison engine is
just not not right for that aircraft.
And it's not until a Rolls-Royce Merlin,
which is the same one that powers the
Lancaster, the Mosquito, and Spitfire
and Huracan is put into the P-51 Mustang
that suddenly you've got your solution
because that means it can now fly with
extra drop tanks and fuel tanks, it can
um it's it's so aerodynamic and it's so
good. The higher it goes with this
engine, the more fuel efficient it
becomes, it can actually fly, you know,
over,400 miles, which gets you not just
to Berlin and back, but to Warsaw and
back. So, suddenly you've got that
solution. Uh a and actually by April
1944 they have cleared airspace and by
the end of May 1944 just on the eve of
the invasion uh operation overlord the
closest German aircraft that is seen
fighting um allied aircraft is 500 miles
from the beach head. So it is absolutely
job done.
Meanwhile, new fighter, comparatively
new um ground attack fighter planes like
Typhoons and Tempests and adapted um uh
um P-47 Thunderbolts are attacking the
German radar stations all along the the
coastline. They now do have an air
defense system. Um they're destroying
kind of uh um 90% of their
effectiveness. And in the intelligence
game, they're winning that one as well.
They're just much better because in
Germany, intelligence is power. So
people tend to you know and Hitler
always has this kind of divide and rule
thing going on. So you have parallel
command structures which is not
conducive to bringing together of
intelligence and while much play has
been made about the successes of
Bletchley and code breaking and all the
rest of it. Actually what you have to do
is you have to see the kind of the
decrypts that the Bletchley cryp
analysts do as just a cog and that those
various cogs together from listening
services to photo reconnaissance to
agents on the ground to say the cogs
collectively add up to more than some of
their individual parts. So the
intelligence picture is a broad picture
rather than a than just codereing. But
anyway they they win that particular
battle as well. And what you see really
with D-Day is, I think, is the zenith of
coal coalition warfare. What you've got
is you've got multiple nations who have
different uh overall aims, different
cultures, um different attitudes,
different start points, but they have
all coalesed into one common goal. And
for until they've achieved that common
goal, they're kind of put differences to
one side. you know, much play has been
made about kind of anglophobia amongst
American um commanders and and America
phobia amongst ally, you know, British
commanders, but actually it's nothing.
It's a marriage made in heaven compared
to the way Germany teach looks after its
own allies, for example. And what is
remarkable about the um about the allies
is they're not actually allies. They're
coalition partners. So there's no formal
alliance at all. And uh and there is a
subtle difference there, but what you
see them is you see
them really really pulling together. And
you see that manifest itself on D-Day, I
think, where you've got, you know,
6,939 vessels of which there are 1,213
warships,
4,127 assaultcraft, 12,000 aircraft, you
know, 155,000 men landed and dropped
from the air in 24-hour period.
It is phenomenal. It is absolutely
phenomenal. And while it is still seen
as a predominantly American show, all
three service commanders are British. Um
it is um most of the aircraft are
twothirds of the aircraft are British.
Uh twothirds of the men landed are
British in Dominion. You never forget
the Canadians who consistently punch
massively above their weight in the
Second World War. Um in all aspects, it
has to be said, air, land, and sea. Um
they're key in the Battle of the
Atlantic. They're key um in air power.
their key D-Day and indeed in the battle
for Italy as well. So the Canadians
should never be forgotten. Um but but
one of the reasons it is that the the
that it is the British Navy that
dominates in in D-Day is because of
course the the
incredibly enormous strength of the
Royal Navy in the first place. But
partly because most of the US Navy is by
this stage in the Pacific fighting its
own own fight. So it's not slacking by
any stretch of the imagination. It is it
is because it's elsewhere doing its bit
for the kind of overall Allied cause.
But D-Day is just extraordinary, you
know, and despite the terrible weather,
uh, which is a such a debilitating
factor in the whole thing. I mean, it
puts people off course, means many more
people get killed on Omaha Beach than
they might have done and on other
beaches besides incidentally. And
actually, in terms of lives lost
proportionally, it is the Canadians that
suffer the worst, more so than the
Americans. It's just as fewer of them
um, overall. um D-Day has to be seen as
an unqualified success. I mean it is
absolutely extraordinary what they
achieve and while they don't 100%
achieve their overall D-Day objectives
you know the objectives are always going
to be the outer reach of what is is can
be can be achieved and you'd need
absolutely perfect conditions for that
to happen and they don't get perfect
conditions but they're so balanced
they're so thought of absolutely
everything and and their logistic supply
and and I mean even things like the mind
sweeping operation it's the biggest
single mind sweeping operation of the
entire war because there's huge
minefields off the Normandy coast and
ahead of the invasion force, the mind
sweepers, which amount to I think
something like 242 different mine
sweepers in in five different operations
AC opposite every single beach, creating
lanes through these minefields through
which the invasion force can go. Not a
single ship is lost to a mine in the
actual invasion. That is phenomenal and
and and can only be done with the
greatest of skill and planning and all
in a period where you know there are no
computers, there's no GPS, there's
nothing. I mean it is it is absolutely
astonishing and the scale of it is just
frankly mind-boggling. Yeah. And that
was really the the nail in the coffin
the beginning of the end. Yeah. For for
Hitler for the European theater. Yeah.
Once you get the the only cause for
doubt is will they be able to secure
that bridge head. The moment they get
that bridge head it is game over.
There's only, you know, there is there
is no other way it's going to be because
of the overwhelming amount of men and
material that the allies have compared
to the Germans at this stage of the war.
And of course, you know, you're being
attacked on three fronts because there's
the Italian front to the south and of
course in a very major way, you've also
got the Eastern front and operation
which is launched that that summer as
well
is enormous. So, let's go to the very
end. Uh the battle of Berlin. Yeah.
Uh Hitler sitting in his bunker, his
suicide, Germany's surrender. You
actually said that Downfall, the movie
was a very accurate representation. I
think it is really except that Gerbles
took Sonide and shoot himself.
Details, but I think it's probably it
might be my favorite
uh World War II movie, which is strange
to say because it's not really about
World War II. It's about Hitler in a
bunker. But I think uh was it Bruno
Gance, wasn't there? I think I think he
he nailed him. Yeah, that's there's so
many accounts of that. There's so much
written about Hitler. There's so many of
there's millions and millions of
Hitler's words that you can read. You
know, there are translations of many of
his conferences. You can see what he's
saying. He can get inside his head in a
very clear way and much more clearly
than you can Stalin or just about any
other leader really.
And
so what has a very very strong
impression of what Hitler was like in
the bunker in those last last days that
just there's so many accounts of it
and it just feels like they nailed it.
It just feels like they've got it spot
on to me. I mean it's a fascinating
story of a
evil maniac and then and this this
certainty you know crumbling right like
realizing that this vision of the
thousand-year Reich is uh and Hitler
says says you know my reputation won't
be good to start off with but I hope in
a few years time that people start to
realize that kind of all the good I was
trying to bring. Yeah that sort of
they're all the same aren't they? You
always believe you're doing good. Yeah.
And there's so many deep lessons there.
So now you have written so much, you
have said so much, you have studied this
so much. What to you looking at World
War II is uh the lessons we should take
away. Well, I suppose it's it's it's
what happens when you allow these
individuals to take hold of great power
and great authority and make these
terrible decisions. If you allow that to
happen, you know, there are consequences
and you have to be you have to recognize
the moments of of trouble when they
arise. So when there are financial
crisis, you know that political unrest
is going to come and you need to be
prepared for that. You know, you need to
be able to see the writing on the wall.
You you
can't you can't be complacent. You know,
complacency is such a dirty word, isn't
it? you know, you've got you've got to
keep your wits and and you can't take
things for granted. You've got to
recognize, I think, um, that the
freedoms we enjoy in the West
are, you know, they're not necessarily
permanent
and you need to make the most of them
while you've got them and cherish them
and consider what happens if the milk
turns sour and what the consequences of
that are. I mean, actually overriding
because although I don't think it'll
ever be a a war on the scale of the
Second World War, you've only got to
look at pictures of those opening days
of the war in Ukraine and see sort of
knocked out Russian tanks and dead
bodies, bloated bodies all over the
place, put that into black and white
and, you know, it could be the road out
of fal in 1944. It could be, you know,
any number of German battlefields
in in the in World War II and and the
similarities and the trenches and the
kind of people hiding in foxholes and,
you know, that that's that's horribly
reminiscent as are the huge casualties
that they're suffering on both sides,
whether they be Russian or Ukrainian.
And, you know, it's a shock. It's a
shock to see that. Um,
and it reminds you of just how quickly I
think things can descend. So that's
that's uh that's the other thing you
know that point I was making about how
quickly Germany descended from this
amazing nation of arts and culture and
science and development and engineering
into one of the Holocaust. I
mean life is fragile and and peace is
fragile and you know
it's you take it for granted at your
peril and you take for granted at our
peril that nobody will use nuclear
weapons ever again and that's not a
thing we should take for granted. No
sir. What gives you hope about the
future of human civilization? We've been
talking about all this darkness in the
20th century. What's the source of
light? The source of light is that I
think the vast majority of people are
good people who want to live peacefully
and want to live happily and are not
filled with hate. And there are some
brilliant minds out there. And I think
the capacity for the human brain to come
up with new developments and new answers
to problems and challenges
is infinite. And I think that's what
gives me
hope. James, this is uh I'm a big fan.
This was an honor to talk to you and
please keep putting incredible history
out there. Um I can't wait to see what
you do next. Thank you so much for
talking today. Well, thank you, Lex.
It's been a It's a privilege to talk to
you. Thanks for listening to this
conversation with James Holland. To
support this podcast, please check out
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lexfreeman.com/sponsors. And now, let me
leave you with some words from Winston
Churchill. If you're going through hell,
keep
going. Thank you for listening and hope
to see you next time.