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- 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 assault craft, 12,500 aircraft, you know, 155,000 men landed and dropped from the air in a 24-hour period. It is phenomenal.

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It is absolutely phenomenal.

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- 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.

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He also co-hosts a great podcast on World War II called "We Have Ways of Making You Talk."

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This is the Lex Fridman Podcast.

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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description or at LexFridman. com/sponsors.

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And now, dear friends, here's James Holland.

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In Volume 1 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.

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Entire cities were laid waste, national borders were redrawn, and many millions more people found themselves displaced.

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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.

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Yet, globally, the Second World War was and remains the single biggest catastrophe of modern history.

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In terms of human drama, it is unrivaled.

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No other war has affected so many lives in such a large number of countries."

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So, what to you makes World War II the biggest catastrophe and human drama in modern history?

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And maybe from a historian perspective, the most fascinating subject to study?

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- The thing about World War II is it really is truly global.

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It's fought in deserts, it's fought in the Arctic, it's fought across oceans, it's fought in the air, it's in jungle, it's in the hills, it is on the beaches, it's also on the Russian steppe, and it's also in Ukraine.

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So, it's that global nature of it.

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And I just think where there's war, there is always incredible human drama.

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And I think for most people, and certainly true in my case, you get drawn to the human drama of it.

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It's that thought that, gosh, if I'd been 20 years old, how would I have dealt with it?

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Would I have been in the Army?

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Would I have been in the Air Force?

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Would I have been on a Royal Navy destroyer?

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How would I have coped with it?

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And how would I have dealt with that separation?

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I mean, I've interviewed people who were away for four years.

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I remember talking to a tank man from Liverpool in England called Sam Bradshaw.

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And he went away for four years.

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And when he came home, he'd been twice wounded.

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He'd been very badly wounded in North Africa.

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Then he was shot in the neck in Italy. Eventually he got home.

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When he came home, his mother had turned gray.

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His little baby sister, who had been, you know, 13 when he left, was now a young woman.

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His old school had been destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs.

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He didn't recognize the place.

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And do you know what he did? He joined up again.

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Went back out of Europe and was one of the first people in Belsen. So, you know?

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- What was his justification for that, for joining right back?

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- He just felt completely disconnected to home.

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He felt that the gulf of time, his experiences had separated him from all the normalities of life.

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And he felt that 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.

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But he decided to rejoin.

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Couldn't go back to the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment, so went back to a different unit.

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Went from kind of the Italian campaign to the European theater.

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Didn't see so much action at the end.

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But like a lot of British troops, if you were in a certain division at a certain time, you know, you ended up passing very close to Belsen, you suddenly realized, okay, this was the right thing to do.

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You know, we did have to get rid of Nazism.

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We did have to do this because this is the consequence.

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It's not just the oppression.

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It's just not just the secret police.

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It's not just the expansionism of Nazism.

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It is also the Holocaust, which hadn't been given its name at that point.

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But you're witnessing this kind of untold cruelty.

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And I always, you know, I've always sort of, I think a lot about Sam.

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I mean, he's no longer with us, but he was one of the first people that I interviewed.

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I interviewed him at great length.

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I know you like a long interview, Lex.

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I totally, totally get that because when you have a long interview, you really start getting to the nuts and bolts of it.

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One of the frustrations for me when I'm looking at oral histories of Second World War vets is usually they're put on YouTube or they're put on a museum website.

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They're 30 minutes, an hour if you're lucky.

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You're just scratching the surface.

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You never really get to know it.

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You feel that they're just repeating stuff they've read in books themselves after the war and stuff.

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And, you know, I was kind of feeling frustrated that I haven't had a chance to grill them on the kind of stuff that I would grill them on if I was put in front of them.

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- So tank man, what was maybe the most epic, the most intense, or the most interesting story that he told you?

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- Well, I do remember him telling me...

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Funny enough, it's not really about the conflict.

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I remember him telling me about the importance of letters.

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And there was this guy who literally every few weeks, you know, the post would arrive intermittently.

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There was no kind of regular post.

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It was supposed to be regular, but it didn't come out regularly.

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You might suddenly get a flurry of five all in one day.

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But he said it was this guy in his tank, a member of a different tank troop.

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He was a good friend of his in the same squadron.

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He had British half-squadrons for their armor, which Americans would have a company.

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- I should say that in your book, one of the wonderful things you do is you use the correct term in the language for the particular army involved, whether it's the German or the British or the American.

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- Well, that's not to be pretentious.

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That's really just so that it, because you're dealing with so many numbers and different units.

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It can go over your head, and you can get consumed by the detail if you're not careful.

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As a reader, it can be very unsatisfying because you just can't keep pace with everything.

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So one of the things about writing in the vernacular German or in the American spelling armor rather than armour as we Brits would spell it is it just immediately tells the reader, okay, this is American. I've got that. Or this is German. I've got that.

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Or Italian or whatever it might be.

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But yeah, to go back to Sam.

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So Sam, there was this guy in his squadron, and he'd get his letters from his girlfriend, his wife.

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And he said it was like a soap opera.

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He said, we all just waited for his letters to come in so we could find out whether his daughter, you know, got to school okay or won the swimming contest or whatever it was.

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The sort of details of this day-to-day banal life was just absolute catnip to these guys.

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They absolutely loved it.

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Then the letter arrived, the Dear John letter, saying, sorry, I found someone else, and it's over.

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And his friend was just absolutely devastated.

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It was the only thing that was keeping him going, this sort of sense of continuity of home, this sort of foundation of his life back at home.

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And Sam said he could see he was in a really, really bad way.

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And he thought, he's gonna do something stupid.

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And he went up to him and he said, look, I know it's bad, and I know it's terrible, and I know you're absolutely devastated, but you've got your mates here, just don't do anything silly.

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Just, maybe when it's all over, you can patch things up or sort things out.

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And he said, you've got to understand it from her point of view. It's a long way.

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Haven't seen you for two years, this kind of stuff. You know?

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So just don't do anything rash.

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Of course, the next engagement, two days later, he was killed.

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And he said it was just a kind of, he just knew that was gonna happen.

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So it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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That's something I've never forgotten, that story.

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And I just thought, you know, it's about human drama. That's the truth of it.

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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.

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I think that's something that's so fascinating. I suspect...

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I think, instinctively, I'm quite slapdash, I think, so I think I would have bought it literally.

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I don't think it would have ended well for me. I'm just a bit careless. - Yeah.

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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...

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- There are things worse than death.

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- Yes, as the propaganda would explain very clearly, but also in reality, yes.

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So a nation, France, Britain was maybe facing the prospect of being essentially enslaved.

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The Soviet Union was facing the prospect of being enslaved, literally.

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It was very clearly stated what they're going to do.

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They're going to repopulate the land with Germanic people. So...

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- Well, they're not just gonna do that.

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They're also gonna starve lots and lots of Soviet individuals to death by The Hunger Plan, for example, which is planned really very casually. And not by...

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You know, this is not SS units or anything like this. This is the Wehrmacht.

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This is the economic division of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the German combined general staff.

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General Georg Thomas comes up, and Herbert Backe, they come up with, who's the minister for food, they come up with, what are we gonna do?

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We haven't got enough food, largely because German farming is inefficient.

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And they think, well, this is part of Lebensraum.

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We'll go in and we'll take the food.

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There's been this colossal urbanization of the Soviet Union since the revolution in 1917.

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So they're just not gonna get their food, you know, these people in these cities, because we're gonna take it all.

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And that's gonna lead to...

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That's gonna lead to a lot of deaths. You know?

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Umpteen millions is the phrase that Georg Thomas used.

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- So let's talk about The Hunger Plan.

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How important was The Hunger Plan and Lebensraum to Nazi ideology and to the whole Nazi war machine?

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- It's central to the whole thing. This is all about...

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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-Bolshevik plot.

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I mean, completely misplaced that Jews and Bolsheviks go hand in hand and somehow dovetail, they don't, obviously.

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And the whole ideology is to crush this.

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Part of the way the Nazis think, the way Hitler thinks, is there is a them and there's us.

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We are the whites, Northern European Aryans.

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We should be the master race.

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We've been threatened by a global Jewish-Bolshevik plot.

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We've been stabbed in the back in 1918 at the end of the First World War.

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We need to have to overcome...

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This is an existential battle for future survival.

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It's a terrible task that has befallen our generation, but we have to do this.

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We have to overcome this or else we have no future. We will be crushed.

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It's absolutely cut and dry.

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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.

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It's always one thing or the other.

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It's a Thousand Year Reich or it's Armageddon.

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There's no middle ground. There's no grey area.

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It's just one or the other.

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And that's his world view.

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And the reason he came to the fore was because of the crystal clear clarity of his message, which is we've been stabbed in the back. There is a global plot.

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We have to overcome this.

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We are naturally the master race.

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We have to reassert ourselves.

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We have to get rid of global Jewry.

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We have to get rid of global Bolshevism.

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And we have to prevail or else.

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But if we do prevail, what an amazing world it's gonna be.

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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 rabble-rousing crescendo of, if you're in the front row, spittle, halitosis and gesticulation.

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I mean, you've seen pictures of him.

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I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of him.

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He almost, he wants to grab the air and clutch it to him.

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You can see the venom coming out of his mouth just in a single still photograph. I mean, it's amazing.

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There's apps you can get now where you can translate his speeches that just, and it just sounds, you know, by today's standards, you would just think, what a load of absolute wibble.

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I mean, just total nonsense.

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But you have to put yourself back in the shoes of people listening to him in 1922 or 1923 or indeed 1933 and see how captivating that is to a certain part of the population.

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So, to go back to your original point, Lebensraum is absolutely part of it.

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So, what you do is you crush the Bolsheviks, you crush world Jewry, then you expand.

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You know, Britain has had this incredible empire, global empire.

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You know, Germany needs that too.

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Germany is stuck in Europe.

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It doesn't have access to the world's oceans.

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So, we're not gonna be a maritime empire.

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We're gonna be a land mass empire, the whole land mass of Europe and into Asia. That's gonna be us.

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We're gonna take that land.

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We're gonna take the bread basket of Ukraine.

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We're gonna use that for our own ends. We're gonna spread...

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We're gonna make ourselves rich, but we're also gonna spread our peoples.

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We're gonna spread the Aryan northern master race throughout Europe and into the traditional Slavic areas.

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And we will prevail and come out on top.

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And so you have to understand that everything about Operation Barbarossa, the planned invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, is totally wrapped up in the Nazi ideology.

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You know, I've read it that historians will go, if only Hitler had realized that the Ukrainians have been quite happy to kind of fight on his side.

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If only he'd actually brought some of these Jewish scientists into kind of the Nazi fold, then Germany might have prevailed in World War II.

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You think, well, you're missing the entire point.

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That's just never gonna happen because this is an ideological war.

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- Yeah, this is not a pragmatic, rational leader. - No.

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- Part of his effectiveness, we should say, is probably the singular belief in this ideology. There's pros and cons.

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For an effective military machine, probably having that singular focus is effective.

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- 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, you're kind of opening yourselves up for trouble.

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I mean, this is a problem he has with Barbarossa.

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You know, they realized very early on in 1941 when they're war-gaming this whole operation that it's not gonna work.

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There's people like General Paulus, who was on the General Staff at the time.

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You know, he's given a kind of, you know, he's in charge of war-gaming this.

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He goes, this isn't gonna work.

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And Keitel, who is the chief of the OKW, goes, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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Go back and make it work. He goes, okay.

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So he comes back with a plan that does work, but it's bogus.

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I mean, it just, it doesn't work because they don't have enough.

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They don't have enough motorization.

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You know, they go into Barbarossa with 2,000 different types of vehicle.

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You know, every single one of those vehicles has to have different distributor caps and different leads and plugs and all sorts of different parts.

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You know, the interoperability of the German mechanized arm is super inefficient.

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And so you've got huge problems because they kind of think, well, we took France in 1940.

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And that's one of the most modern countries in the world with one of the greatest armies and armed forces in the world and we did that in six weeks.

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So, you know, the Soviet Union, look, they struggled against Finland for goodness sake.

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I mean, how hard can it be?

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What you're failing to understand is that attacking the Soviet Union is over a geographical landmass ten times the size of France, just on the frontage.

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And you haven't really got much more mechanization than you had in May 1940 when they attacked the Low Countries and France.

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You've actually got less Luftwaffe aircraft to support you.

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And you just do not have the operational mechanics to make it work successfully.

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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.

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I mean, you know, Barbarossa should never have come close to being a victory. - Let's talk through it.

18:24

So Operation Barbarossa that you're mentioning...

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We'll go back to '39 and '40.

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- We've jumped straight into '41. - Straight into it.

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- I've eaten off two years of war. - So this is June 1941.

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Operation Barbarossa when Hitler invades the Soviet Union with, I think, the largest invading force in history up to that point. - Collectively, yeah.

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- And there's three prongs.

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Army Group North, Army Group Center, Army Group South, North is going to Leningrad, Center is going, it's the strongest group going directly towards Moscow, and South is going and targeting Ukraine and the Caucasus.

19:02

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?

19:10

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, the strategic, the operational, and the tactical.

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And the operational is often not given enough time, attention, and it's the logistics that make the war machine really work successfully or fail.

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- Yeah, that's absolutely spot on.

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And it's interesting because the vast majority of general histories of World War II tend to focus on the strategic and the tactical.

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So what do I mean by that?

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Well, the strategic, just for those who don't know, that's your overall war aims.

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You know, get to Moscow, whatever it might be. Conquer the world. That's your strategy.

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The tactical side of things is that's the coalface of war.

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That's the attritional bit.

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That's the fellow in his Spitfire, the tank crew, the soldier in his foxhole.

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It's the actual kinetic fighting bit.

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The operational bit is the level of war that links the strategic to the tactical.

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So it is absolutely factories. It's economics. It's shipping. It's supply chains.

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It's how you manage your war.

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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.

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But obviously, every competent nation has a different approach to war because of the nation they are, the size they are, their geographical location.

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So Britain, for example, is an island nation.

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Its priority is the Royal Navy, which is why the Royal Navy is known as the senior service.

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And in 1939, it's easy to forget it now when you see how depleted Britain is today.

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But in 1939, it has comfortably the world's largest navy.

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There are some 194 destroyers.

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I think it's 15 battleships, seven aircraft carriers, and another kind of six on the way.

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America, it's got Pacific Ocean.

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It's got the Atlantic Ocean. It's got two seaboards.

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It has the second largest Navy in the world, but a tiny army.

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I mean, the Army, the US Army in September 1939 is the 19th largest in the world, sandwiched between Portugal and Uruguay.

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And it's just incredible.

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It's like 189,000 strong, which might seem reasonably large by today's standards, but it's absolutely tiny by 1939 standards.

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Whereas, Germany's got an army of three and a half million in 1939.

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So, you know, these are big, big, big differences.

21:48

But America is coming at it from a different perspective.

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Britain's coming at it from a different perspective. You know?

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Britain's empire is all about, you know, it's shipping. It's a seaborne empire.

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Whereas, there's also another point, which is having large armies, it's actually inherently impractical and inefficient because the larger army, the more people you've got to feed, the more 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 jumping around with rifles.

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There's an argument saying, actually, it's not a very good way of doing things.

22:24

So very much the British way, and subsequently the United States way, and the way of Britain's dominions and empire, is to use kind of steel, not our flesh, as a principle.

22:38

The idea is that you use technology, mechanization, modernity, global reach to do a lot of your hard yards.

22:44

That's the sort of basic principle behind the strategic air campaign.

22:48

When we talk about the strategic air campaign, we're talking about strategic air forces, which are operating in isolation from other armed forces.

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So a tactical air force, for example, is an air force which is offering close air support for ground operations.

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A strategic air force has got nothing to do with ground operations.

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It's just operating on its own.

23:06

So that's your bomber force or whatever.

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That's your B-17s and B-24s of the 8th Air Force flying out of East England, bombing the Ruhr industrial complex of Germany, whatever it might be.

23:17

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.

23:26

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.

23:35

You know, you wanna get inside the head of your enemy.

23:37

And, you know, he's guilty of not doing that.

23:41

So when you're talking about Operation Barbarossa, to go back to your original question, Lex, 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.

23:56

It doesn't matter how good your individual commanders are at the front.

23:59

If you haven't got the backup, it's not gonna work.

24:02

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 all the rest of it.

24:12

But actually, what you need to do is break it down.

24:15

And who is doing the hard yards of that?

24:17

The way the German war machine works is that the machine bit is only the spearhead.

24:23

So people always talk about the Nazi war machine.

24:25

In a way, it's a kind of misnomer because you're sort of suggesting that it's highly mechanized and industrialized and all the rest of it.

24:33

And nothing could be further from the truth.

24:34

The spearhead is, but the rest of it is not.

24:38

And this is the kind of fatal flaw of the German armed forces in the whole of World War II, really, but even in this early stage.

24:47

Because in Barbarossa, you're talking about 17 Panzer divisions out of, you know, the hundred involved in the initial attack. Well, 17...

24:58

A Panzer division is not a division full of Panzers, tanks.

25:02

It is a combined arms motorized outfit.

25:07

So, scouts on BMWs with sidecars, armored cars, infantry, grenadiers, Panzer grenadiers, which are infantry in half-tracks and trucks, mechanized.

25:21

It is motorized artillery.

25:23

It is motorized anti-aircraft artillery.

25:25

It is motorized anti-tank artillery.

25:27

And, of course, it is tanks as well, Panzers.

25:30

But those are a really, really small proportion of...

25:34

You know, you're talking less than 20% of your attacking force are those spearhead forces.

25:40

And inevitably, they are gonna be attrited as they go.

25:44

You know, you are gonna take casualties.

25:45

And not only that, you're not gonna just take battlefield casualties, you're also gonna have mechanical casualties because of the huge spaces involved.

25:52

You just simply can't function...

25:53

What you see is in the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, they surge forward.

25:59

Red Army has got absolutely no answers to anything.

26:01

Stalin weirdly hasn't heeded all the warnings that this attack is brewing.

26:06

And there have been plenty incidentally.

26:08

And Smolensk falls on the 15th of July, you know, in less than four weeks. It's just incredible.

26:14

Three and a half weeks, Smolensk has gone.

26:16

They've overwhelmed the rest of what had been Poland.

26:19

They surged into what is now Belarus, taken Smolensk.

26:22

This is Army Group Center.

26:24

Army Group North has thrust up into the Baltic.

26:28

It's all going swimmingly well.

26:29

But then, the next several months, they barely go 100 miles.

26:33

And that's because they're running out of steam.

26:35

And the 16th Panzer Division, for example, by the time it's taken Smolensk, involved in taking Smolensk on the 15th of July 1941, the following day, it's got 16 tanks left. 16 out of 180.

26:52

So it's just being attrited. They can't sustain it.

26:55

And they can't sustain it because as the Russians fall back, 'cause the Soviet Red Army falls back, they do their own scorched earth policy.

27:03

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...

27:08

The Russian loading gauge is slightly wider.

27:11

So every single mile, every yard, every foot, every meter that they're capturing of Russian railway has to be moved a couple of inches to the left to make it fit the German Kriegslok and the standard train of locomotive of the Reichsbahn.

27:30

Just imagine what that's like.

27:31

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...

27:40

The Germans, when they come in their trains, their Kriegsloks are smaller, so they have to be rewatered more often and recoaled more often. So they have to...

27:47

I mean, it's absolutely boggling just how complicated it is and how badly planned it is because they haven't reckoned on this.

27:55

They're having to kind of think on their feet.

27:58

- A lot of the logistical details of all this because yes, that's a huge component of this, especially when you come in that much territory.

28:04

But there is a notion that if Hitler didn't stop Army Group Center, it could have pushed all the way to Moscow.

28:14

It was only maybe 100 miles away from Moscow. Is that a possibility?

28:20

Because it had so much success in the early days pushing forward.

28:25

Do you think it's possible that if Hitler, as we mentioned from a military blunder perspective, didn't make that blunder, that they could have defeated the Soviet Union right there and then?

28:38

- Well, my own view is that they should never have got close.

28:43

The Red Army has plenty of men to be able to see off anything that the Germans can do.

28:47

The capture of Kiev, for example, in September 1941, was a catastrophe for the Soviet Union and should never have happened.

28:56

I mean, Zhukov is saying to Stalin, we've got to pull back across the Dnieper.

29:03

Stalin was going, no, I can't possibly do that. You can't abandon Kiev.

29:06

It's like third city in the Soviet Union. No way. No, absolutely not.

29:11

And he goes, we are just gonna be overwhelmed.

29:13

You know, we can't hold this.

29:15

And he says, you know, either back me or fire me. Back me or sack me. So Stalin sacks him.

29:22

Obviously, as we know, Zhukov gets rehabilitated from, pretty quick order.

29:26

And Stalin does learn very quickly thereafter sort of learn the lessons.

29:32

But the opening phase of Barbarossa has been a catastrophe.

29:36

And so, as a consequence of Stalin refusing to let his men retreat back across the Dnieper, which is a substantial barrier and would be very difficult for the Germans to overwhelm, had they not, had they moved back in time.

29:51

You know, that's another kind of 700,000 men put in the back.

29:55

I mean, that's just staggering numbers.

30:00

But yeah, there's so many things wrong with the Barbarossa plan. Too much...

30:05

It's just such a vast area.

30:07

You're talking about kind of 2,500 miles or something of frontage.

30:13

You know, maybe if you kind of put your Panzer groups, which are these spearheads, and you put them all in one big thrust and just go hell for leather straight across on a kind of much more narrow front of, let's say, 400 miles rather than 1,200, then they might have just sort of burnt a way straight through to Moscow.

30:32

- They really caught the Red Army unprepared. - Yep.

30:35

- Is there something to be said about the strategic genius of that? Or was it just luck? - No, I don't think so.

30:46

I mean, I think, what's happened is you've had the Soviet purges of the second half of the 1930s where they have executed or imprisoned 22,500 officers of which three out of five marshals, God knows how many army commanders, et cetera, et cetera.

31:07

So, you know, you've completely decapitated the Red Army in terms of its command structure.

31:13

- Before that, would it be fair to say it was one of, if not the greatest army in the world?

31:18

- Well, there was a lot of experience.

31:18

There's a lot of experience there.

31:21

- But also technology and material, the size of the army, the number of people that are mobilized.

31:27

- Yeah, and they're the first people to kind of adapt, create airborne troops, for example.

31:32

So yes, I think there is an argument to say that.

31:36

But the decapitation is absolutely brutal.

31:38

If you've decapitated an army, you've then got to put new guys in charge.

31:42

And someone who looks on paper like a half-decent peacetime commander might not be a very good wartime commander.

31:49

They're different disciplines and different skills. And what comes to...

31:53

You don't know that until you're tested.

31:55

It's very hard to kind of judge.

31:57

And of course, Stalin is existing in a sort of a vacuum of paranoia and suspicion all the time, which is unhelpful when you're trying to develop strong armed forces.

32:06

So they go into Finland in the back end of 1939. And they get their...

32:12

They get really badly hammered.

32:14

They do take about, do get the Karelia Peninsula and they do take some ground. But at huge cost.

32:20

I mean, the casualties are five times as bad as those of the Finns. And it's a humiliation.

32:25

So Hitler sees that and thinks, okay, they're not up to much cop.

32:30

Then Hitler loses the Battle of Britain.

32:32

And he thinks, I can't afford to fight a war on two fronts.

32:35

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 the Western Front at the same time. We've got to avoid that.

32:43

But I've gotta get rid of Britain.

32:46

And Britain hasn't come out of the fight.

32:48

Britain is still fighting in the back end of 1940, having won the Battle of Britain.

32:52

And so maybe I'll go into Soviet Union now while the Red Army is still weak.

32:57

You know, we're not 100% ready ourselves, but let's hurry the whole thing forward.

33:00

Because originally he'd been thinking of planning an operation in 1943 or 1944.

33:05

So the idea is, you take Poland out, you take out France and the Low Countries, you conquer most of Western Europe, you knock out Britain.

33:12

So therefore you don't have to worry so much about the United States because they're over the other side of the Atlantic.

33:17

That then buys him the time to kind of rebuild up his strength for the all-out thrust on the Soviet Union.

33:23

The failure to subdue Britain in 1940 changes all those plans and makes him think, actually, I'm gonna go in early.

33:30

And he's also being, he's hoisted by his own petard because he starts to believe his own genius.

33:37

You know, everyone told him that he wouldn't be able to beat France and the Low Countries.

33:43

Everyone told him that it wouldn't work out when he went into Poland.

33:46

Everyone was really nervous about it. You know?

33:48

Well, go hang you, you cautious, awful, aristocratic, Prussian generals.

33:52

You know, I'm the best at this. I've told you. I've shown you. I'm the genius. I can do it.

33:57

He starts to believe his own hype.

33:59

Of course, this is a problem.

34:00

He's surrounded by sycophants and people who are constantly telling him that he's this incredible genius.

34:04

So he starts to believe it and he thinks everything is possible.

34:07

And he's very much into this idea of the will of the German people. This is our destiny.

34:14

I have a will, as I say earlier on, you know, it's the Thousand Year Reich or Armageddon.

34:17

But momentum is with us and we need to strike it.

34:19

And only by gambling, only by being bold will the Germans prevail and this kind of nonsense.

34:25

And so that's why he goes into Soviet Union in June 1941 rather than a couple of, or even three years later.

34:33

- Yeah, he really hated the Prussian generals. - Yeah, he hated them.

34:36

- Is there a case to be made that he was indeed at times a military genius? - No.

34:42

(laughs) I don't think so.

34:45

Because none of the plan, I mean, even the plan for the invasion of France and the Low Countries isn't his.

34:50

The concept is von Manstein's and the execution is Guderian's, Heinz Guderian.

34:57

Heinz Guderian is the kind of, he's the pioneer of the Panzer force, the Panzer thrust, this idea of the ultra mechanized combined arms, Panzer arms spearhead, doing this kind of lightning-fast thrust. It's not Hitler's idea.

35:14

He adopts it and takes it as own because, you know, he's a Fuhrer and he can do what he likes. But it isn't his. So it's not...

35:24

And up until that point, until that comes into being, until that plan is put forward to Franz Halder, who is the chief of staff of the German army at that time, Halder is just thinking, how do we get out of this mess?

35:37

This is just a nightmare.

35:38

Because they know that France has got a larger army, they know that France has got more tanks and they know that France has got double the number of artillery pieces.

35:44

It's got parity in terms of air forces.

35:46

Then you add Holland, then you add Belgium, then you add Great Britain.

35:49

And that looks like a very, very tough nut to crack.

35:53

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.

36:05

- 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 very little resistance.

36:28

There is a kind of geopolitical genius.

36:32

- If it works, but it doesn't. That's the problem.

36:34

He goes into Poland on the assumption that Britain and France will not declare war. You know?

36:40

He is not prepared for Britain and France declaring war on Germany. - Right. - He thinks they won't. - That's right.

36:47

So miscalculation, blunder.

36:47

But then France does, right?

36:51

And then France does not successfully do anything with this incredible army that it has.

37:00

- It has a size, but one of the problems that France has is that it's very, very top heavy.

37:06

It's very cumbersome in the way it operates.

37:10

There's no question that it's got some brilliant young commanders, but at the top, the commander is very old.

37:18

Most of them are First World War veterans.

37:21

I mean, Weygand, Gamelin, General Georges, these people, they're all well into their 60s.

37:29

General Georges is the youngest army commander and he's 60.

37:33

You know, it's too old to be an army commander.

37:35

You need to be in your kind of late 40s, early 50s.

37:37

And they're too just consumed by conservatism and the old ways.

37:44

And what they assume is that any future war will be much like the First World War.

37:48

It'll be attritional, long, and drawn out, but static.

37:54

But actually, they're right on two parts of it.

37:56

As it turns out, it is gonna be long and drawn out and attritional, but it's gonna be mobile rather than static.

38:02

And that's a big miscalculation. - Here's my question.

38:05

I think you're being too nice on France here.

38:08

So when Germany invaded Poland, correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like France could have just went straight to Poland.

38:18

- Yeah, they absolutely could have.

38:20

- And I know you said it's very top heavy, and you're saying all of these things, but they literally did basically nothing.

38:28

- Yeah, they were appalling. - So like that...

38:32

And I think a part of that, and I think you described this well, maybe you could speak to that, is the insanity that is Hitler creating this psychological, with the propaganda, creating this feeling that there's this Nazi force that's unstoppable.

38:49

So then France just didn't want to step into that.

38:53

Maybe they were legitimately, I hesitate to say these words, but scared of war. - 100% they are.

39:01

Because France has been totally traumatized by the First World War.

39:06

It's fought on their land.

39:07

It's fought in their industrial heartland.

39:09

You know, they lose three times the amount of people killed that Britain does.

39:13

Britain's traumatized by it, but not to the same degree that France is.

39:16

There is just no stomach to do that again.

39:20

And so that makes them risk averse.

39:22

And by being risk averse, you're actually taking a far greater risk. That's the irony of it.

39:27

And the truth is also there isn't the political will.

39:29

And a successful military can only be successful if there is a political will at the top.

39:34

And the problem with France in the 1930s is it's very politically divided.

39:38

It's a time of multiple governments, multiple prime ministers, coalition governments, really very extreme coalition governments from the sort of, drawn from the left and the right as well as the center.

39:53

And, you know, this is not a coalition of two parties.

39:57

This is a coalition of multiple parties.

39:59

No one can ever agree anything.

40:00

I mean, that's the problem.

40:01

It's amazing that the Maginot Line has even agreed, this incredibly strong defensive position down the western side of France, border with Germany, which is kind of largely impregnable.

40:12

But the problem is, there's a bit that's not impregnable, which is the hinge where the Maginot Line ends and it sort of basically starts turning kind of towards in a kind of north, northerly direction, and the border with Belgium.

40:24

And, you know, what they should have done is build kind of border defenses all along the northern coast with Belgium because Belgium refused to kind of allow any allied troops into its territory. It was neutral.

40:36

And France should have said, okay, fine.

40:40

Well, then we'll defend...

40:41

You know, we're not gonna come to your rescue if you get invaded. That's the payoff.

40:47

And the consequence of that, we are going to stockpile everything and we're not gonna be drawn into the neutral territory should Germany invade from the west.

40:54

But they don't do that because of the psychological damage of having fought a war in exactly that area a generation earlier. And that's the problem. So, when the...

41:05

Germany is so weakened by the invasion of Poland, there is literally nothing left.

41:10

The back door into western Germany is completely open.

41:14

And so they do what they call the Saar offensive, but it's not.

41:17

It's a kind of reconnaissance in force where they kind of go across the border, kind of pick their noses for a few days and then kind of trundle back again. And it's just... It's embarrassing. And that is...

41:28

What you're seeing there 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 the decision-making process, and which is just consumed by military complacency. That's the big problem.

41:47

There is this, you know, the commanders at the very top of the French regime are complacent.

41:53

They haven't bought into kind of modern ways.

41:57

They haven't looked at how contemporary technology could help them.

42:02

I mean it is absurd, for example, that there isn't a single radio in the Château de Vincennes, which is the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the French armed forces, to General Maurice Gamelin.

42:15

I mean, it's just unbelievable, but that is the case.

42:20

And there's no getting away from that.

42:22

And it is all the more ironic when you consider that France is actually the most automotive society in Europe.

42:27

It's the second most automotive society in the world after the United States.

42:31

By some margin, it has to be said as well.

42:34

It has a fantastic transportation system.

42:36

The railway network is superb.

42:38

There are eight people for every motorized vehicle in France, which is way above Germany, which is in 1939, that figure is 47, for example. It's 106 in Italy.

42:49

- So France is very mechanized... - Very mechanized. So come on, guys. Pull your finger out. Get it together. And they just don't.

42:56

They're incredibly slow and cumbersome.

42:58

And what they think is, when, what will happen is the Germans won't go, they won't do a pincer movement because you can't possibly take motorized forces through the Ardennes.

43:07

That just is not possible, which is the hinge area between the end of the Maginot, the northern part of the Maginot line, which runs down the western, sorry, the eastern border of France and the northern bit.

43:17

And so what we'll do with that hinge around the town of Sedan, we'll move into Belgium, we'll meet the Germans before they get anywhere near France, we'll hold them.

43:27

And while we're holding them, we will bring up our reserves and then we'll counter-attack and crush them.

43:32

That's the idea behind it.

43:33

But the problem is they don't have a means of moving fast and their communication systems are dreadful, absolutely dreadful.

43:40

They're dependent on conventional telephone lines, which, you know, dive bombers and whatever are just kind of absolutely wrecking.

43:49

Suddenly the streets are clogged with refugees and people can't move.

43:52

So then telephone lines are down, there's no radios.

43:55

So you're then dependent on sending dispatch riders on little motorbikes.

43:59

You know, General Maurice Gamelin sends out a dispatch rider at six o'clock in the morning...

44:06

By 12 o'clock, he hasn't come back, so you then send another one.

44:09

Finally, the answer comes back at nine o'clock at night, by which time the Germans advance another 15 miles and the original message that you sent at six o'clock that morning is completely redundant and has passed its sell-by date.

44:21

And that's happening at every step of the way.

44:22

You know, so you've got overall command headquarters, then you've got army group, then you've got army, then you've got corps, then you've got division.

44:30

So consequence of all that is that French just can't move. They're just stuck.

44:34

They're rabbits in headlights.

44:36

And the Germans are able to kind of move them, destroy them in isolation.

44:40

Meanwhile, they're able to use their excellent communications to very, very good effect.

44:47

And you were talking about the genius of war.

44:49

It's not Hitler that's a genius.

44:50

If anyone's a genius, it's Goebbels, the propaganda chief.

44:53

And it is their ability to harness that they are the kings of messaging.

45:01

They don't have X, they don't have social media, but they do have new technology.

45:09

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.

45:19

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, in Germany in 1939.

45:28

So while it's really behind the times in terms of mechanization, it is absolutely on top of its game in terms of comms.

45:36

So 70% of households in Germany have radios by 1939, which is an unprecedented number.

45:42

That is only beaten by United States and only just.

45:47

So it is greater than any other nation in Europe.

45:50

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.

46:04

And the same stuff, the state that the, the Nazi state controls the radio airwaves as it does the movies, as it does newspapers...

46:13

All aspects of the media are controlled by Goebbels and the propaganda ministry.

46:18

And they are putting out the same message over and over again.

46:22

It's not all Hitler's ranting.

46:24

It's entertainment, light entertainment, some humorous shows.

46:28

It is also Wagner, of course, and Richard Strauss.

46:32

It's a mixture, but the subliminal message is the same. We're the best. We're the top dogs.

46:39

Jewish-Bolshevik plot is awful and needs to be...

46:42

That's the existential threat to us.

46:44

We have to overcome that.

46:44

We're the top dogs militarily. We're the best.

46:47

We should feel really good about ourselves.

46:49

We're gonna absolutely win and be the greatest nation in the world ever and Hitler's a genius.

46:53

And that is just repeated over and over and over and over again.

47:00

And 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.

47:08

If you just repeat, repeat, repeat over and over again, people will believe it.

47:12

You know, if you're a die hard Trump supporter, you want to believe that.

47:18

You'll believe everything he says.

47:19

If you are a die hard Bernie Sanders man, you know, you're from the left, you'll believe everything he says because it's reinforcing what you already wanna believe.

47:30

- But the scary thing is radio is the technology of the day, the technology of the day today, which is a terrifying one for me is, 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...

47:51

I would love to read the history written about this era, about the information wars.

47:57

Who has the biggest bot farms?

48:00

Who has the biggest propaganda machines?

48:02

And when I say bot, I mean both automated AI bots and humans operating large number of smartphones with SIM cards, they're just able to boost messages enough to where they become viral.

48:17

And then real humans with real opinions get excited also.

48:21

It's like this vicious cycle.

48:24

So if you support your nation, all you need is a little boost and then everybody gets real excited.

48:29

And then now you're chanting and now you're in this mass hysteria.

48:33

And now it's the 1984 two minutes of hate.

48:36

And the message is clear.

48:37

I mean, that's what propaganda does is it really clarifies the mind.

48:41

- And that is exactly what Hitler and the Nazis and Goebbels are doing in the 1930s.

48:47

Well, they're doing it in the 1920s as well, but more effectively once they come into power, of course.

48:50

And Hitler is so fortunate that he comes, he takes over the chancellorship in January, 1933 at a time where the economy is just starting to turn.

49:03

And he's able to make the most of that.

49:05

And if you're Germans and you've been through hyperinflation in the early 1920s, you've been through the humiliation of Versailles Treaty, which was a terrible error, in retrospect.

49:16

And you've been through then having got through that, you've emerged into a democratic Weimar Republic, which is based on manufacturing...

49:26

You know, Germany's a traditional genius of engineering and manufacturing and production of high quality items.

49:36

They emerge through that.

49:38

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 massive unemployment.

49:51

And suddenly Hitler comes in and everyone's got jobs and they're rebuilding and they're growing their military.

49:58

And the message that's coming out is we're the greatest, we're the best, we're fantastic.

50:04

You know, I was telling you earlier on about Hitler's speeches, starting dark and ending in hope and light and the sunlit uplands.

50:13

That's what you're getting.

50:14

You're suddenly getting this vision of hope.

50:15

This is of, by God, actually, this is really working.

50:19

Okay, so, I'm not sure that I particularly buy into the kind of anti-Semitic thing, but 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.

50:30

You know, and then this is a genius about the radios, for example.

50:33

So they have the German receiver to start off with, the Deutscher Fänger.

50:37

And then they have the Deutscher Kleinempfänger, which is the German little receiver, little radio. This is genius.

50:44

This is as outrageous as the arrival of the iPod. I mean, remember that?

50:50

Suddenly you don't have to have a Sony Walkman anymore.

50:52

You can have something really, really small and miniature and listen to thousands and thousands and thousands of songs all at once. What an amazing thing.

50:58

And the Deutscher Kleinempfänger is nine inches by four inches by four inches. It's made of Bakelite.

51:04

And everyone can have one because it's super cheap. It's just incredible.

51:08

And no one has to set up because up until that point, radios, generally speaking, are aspirational.

51:13

You know, they've got sort of a walnut lacquer at the front and 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 well-to-do you are.

51:22

But suddenly everyone can have one.

51:25

And if everyone can have one, then everyone can receive the same message.

51:29

And you can also, and this is the whole point about the Hitler Youth as well, you know, the young guys, that's where they're most impressionistic.

51:35

They're least risk averse. So they're most gung-ho.

51:39

They're most full of excitement for the possibilities of life.

51:43

And they're also, their minds are the most open to suggestion. So you get the youth. You get them.

51:50

And so a whole generation of young men are brought up thinking about the genius of Hitler and how he's delivering this much better nation and overhauling the humiliations of the First World War, overcoming the stab in the back that happened in 1918, et cetera, et cetera.

52:07

And, you know, as a young 16, 17-year-old German, you think, yeah, I want a piece of that. And hey, guess what?

52:15

They've got really cool uniforms.

52:16

And, you know, come and join the SS and get the through line. What's not to like? You can see why... It's so clever.

52:24

And what's so interesting is propaganda today is still using those tenets that Goebbels was using back in the 1930s.

52:34

And this is why I would say that history doesn't repeat itself. Of course it doesn't.

52:37

It can't possibly repeat itself because we're always living in a constantly evolving time.

52:42

But patterns of human behavior do.

52:44

And what you always get after economic crisis is political upheaval. Always, always, always.

52:48

Because people are in a worse off position than they were financially before.

52:52

They're thinking, well, the current system doesn't work. What's the alternative?

52:55

So, you know, in the case of of now, we in the West, first of all, we face the crisis of 2008, the crisis of 2008, then we've had the kind of double whammy of COVID.

53:06

And that has been incredibly unsettling.

53:09

And so we're now in a situation of political turmoil.

53:13

And whether you're pro-Trump or anti-Trump, what he's offering is something completely different.

53:18

And, you know, he's saying, you know, he's saying, the old ways don't work.

53:24

You know, I'm just gonna be, I'm just gonna say what I think.

53:26

I'm just gonna, I'm gonna come out.

53:27

I'm not gonna bother with all the sheen of diplomacy and kind of mealy mouth words that politicians always use, you know, where you can't trust anyone.

53:35

I'm just gonna tell you as it is.

53:36

And obviously people respond to that.

53:38

You can understand why that has an appeal.

53:41

And if the country already feels broken and here's someone who is gonna be a disruptor and gonna change the way you go about things, you can see why a reasonably large proportion of the population is gonna go, I'll have a piece of that, thank you very much.

53:55

- And especially when the country's in an economic crisis, like Germany was, I think you've written that the Treaty of Versailles created Hitler and the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression brought him to power. - Yes.

54:10

- And of course, the propaganda machine that you describe is the thing that got everybody else in Germany on board. - Yeah.

54:19

It's amazing how he, because he comes in with 33% of the vote.

54:24

He had 37% of the vote in July, 1932.

54:28

So again, this is another period of turmoil, just like it is in France, where you're having constant different kind of coalitions and different chancellors, leaders of Germany.

54:36

- So it's very possible he wouldn't have come to power...

54:40

- Well, he said, I will only, you know, we will only take our seats if I can be Chancellor. Otherwise, forget it.

54:46

I'm not coming into any coalition.

54:48

So then the government falls again in January, 1933. They have the election.

54:57

The Nazi vote is down from where it was the previous summer, but this time they go, okay, Hitler can be Chancellor, but we'll manipulate him. How wrong they were.

55:05

You know, he's manipulating everyone.

55:08

And then Hindenburg, who is the president, dies the following summer.

55:12

And he's able to get rid of the presidency.

55:17

There is no more president of Germany.

55:18

There is just the Fuhrer, him.

55:20

And he gets rid of, he has an actually The Enabling Act, which is where all other political parties are disbanded, and suddenly you've got a totalitarian state, just like that.

55:31

- I think there's a lesson there.

55:34

There's many lessons there, but one of them is don't let an extremist into government and assume you can control them. - Yes.

55:42

The arrogance of the existing politicians who just completely screwed it up.

55:46

- I mean, there is a real power to an extremist.

55:50

Like there's a person who sees the world in black and white can really gain the attention and the support of the populace. - Yes.

56:03

- 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.

56:17

There's something really compelling about the black and white message.

56:20

- It is because it's simple.

56:22

And what Hitler does throughout the 1920s is he sticks to this. There's actually...

56:29

When he comes out of prison, so he, there's the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923.

56:34

He gets charged with treason, which he has been because he's attempting a coup.

56:40

And he gets sentenced to five years, which is pretty lenient for what he's done.

56:45

And he then gets let out after nine months.

56:50

The Nazi party is banned at that point, but then comes back into being.

56:55

And the year that follows, there is then a substantial debate about where the party should go.

57:01

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 things that they consider to be positive out of the communist state and applying those to the Nazis.

57:16

And Hitler goes, no, no, no, no, no.

57:18

We've just gotta stick to this kind of Jewish-Bolshevik thing.

57:22

This is how we're gonna do it.

57:24

This is how we're gonna do it.

57:25

Goebbels, for example, who is very open. He's very, very...

57:30

Joseph Goebbels, he's a not very successful journalist, but he does have a PhD in German literature.

57:38

He's very disaffected because he was born with talipes, which is more commonly known as a clubfoot. He's disabled.

57:44

He can't fight in the First World War.

57:46

He's very frustrated by that.

57:48

He's in a deep despair about the state of Germany in the first part of the early 1920s.

57:53

He's looking for a political messiah, a quasi-religious messiah, thinks it's Hitler, then discovers that Hitler's not open to any ideas at all about any deviation, but then sees the light.

58:10

Hitler recognizes that this guy is someone that he wants on his side.

58:14

And so then goes to him, makes a real special effort. Come on, come to dinner. I think you're great.

58:19

You know, all this kind of stuff. Wins the man over.

58:21

Goebbels has this complete volte-face, discards his earlier kind of, yeah, Hitler's right, I was wrong.

58:27

Hitler is the kind of messiah figure that I want to follow.

58:30

I want to follow the hero, hero leader.

58:33

And they come aboard and they absolutely work out.

58:36

Hitler completely wins out of all dissenters within what had been the German Workers' Party, becomes the German National Socialist Party, becomes the Nazis.

58:45

He comes out, emerges as the absolute undisputed Fuhrer of that, leader of that party.

58:52

And what he says goes, and everyone toes, behind it.

58:55

And part of the genius of that, Hitler does have some genius, I just don't think it's military, but he does have some genius.

59:02

And the question about it is this simplicity of message.

59:06

What he's doing is that kind of us and them thing that we were talking about earlier on.

59:09

It's the kind of either or.

59:10

It's the kind of my way or the highway.

59:13

It's kind of this is the only way.

59:14

This is how we get to the sunlit uplands.

59:17

This is how we create this amazing master race of this unification of German peoples, which dominates the world, which is the preeminent power in the world for the next thousand years.

59:31

Or it's decay and despair and being crushed by our enemies.

59:35

And our enemies are the Jews and the Bolsheviks, the communists.

59:39

And what he taps into as well is Frontgemeinschaft and Volksgemeinschaft. And these are...

59:48

There's no direct English translation of Volksgemeinschaft or indeed Frontgemeinschaft.

59:53

But in its most basic form, it's communities, it's people community or front veterans community.

1:00:01

So the Frontgemeinschaft is we are the guys, we're bonded because we were in the trenches.

1:00:07

You know, we were in the First World War.

1:00:09

We were the people who bravely stuck it out, saw our friends being slaughtered and blown to pieces.

1:00:14

We did our duty as proud Germans, but we were let down by the elites, and we were let down by this Jewish-Bolshevik plot.

1:00:24

You know, we were stabbed in the back.

1:00:26

The myth of the stabbing in the back is very, very strong. So we're bound.

1:00:31

We're bonded by our experience of the First World War and the fact that we did what we should and what we could, and we were...

1:00:38

We didn't fail in what we were doing, we were failed by our leaders and by the elites.

1:00:45

So that's Frontgemeinschaft.

1:00:47

Volkskommenchaft is this sense of national unity.

1:00:53

It's a cultural, ethnic bonding of people who speak German who have a similar outlook on life.

1:01:02

And again, that just reinforces the us and them. - Good and evil.

1:01:06

- It reinforces the black and white worldview.

1:01:08

Then you add that to this very simple message, which Hitler is repeating over and over again.

1:01:16

Communists are a big threat. Jews are a big threat. They're the enemy.

1:01:21

You have to have an opposition in the them and us kind of process.

1:01:27

And that's what he's doing.

1:01:27

And people just buy into it.

1:01:30

They go, yeah, we're together. We're Germans.

1:01:33

You know, we're a brotherhood.

1:01:36

We've got our Volkskommenschaft.

1:01:38

And so he cleverly ties into that and taps into that.

1:01:42

But they're an irrelevance by the late 1920s.

1:01:46

By 1928, he's not gonna get a deal for "Mein Kampf Part II". He's impoverished.

1:01:54

The party's impoverished. The numbers are down.

1:01:56

They're a kind of at best an irrelevance.

1:01:59

- We should say he wrote "Mein Kampf" at this time when he was in prison.

1:02:02

- He writes most of "Mein Kampf" in prison, in Landsberg prison.

1:02:06

And then he writes the rest of it in what becomes known as the Kampfhäusl, which is this little wooden hut in the Obersalzberg.

1:02:13

And you can still see the remnants of that.

1:02:15

And unfortunately, there's still little candles there and stuff in the woods by neo-Nazis and what have you.

1:02:21

But that's where he wrote the rest of it.

1:02:24

I mean, it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who says, "Man has his greatest force when surrounded by nature."

1:02:28

That was something that Hitler took very much to heart.

1:02:30

There was a mentor of his called Dietrich Eckart.

1:02:34

Dietrich Eckart introduced him to the Obersalzberg and the beauty of the southeast Bavarian Alps around Berchtesgaden.

1:02:45

And that was his favorite place on the planet.

1:02:47

That's where he eventually bought the Berghof.

1:02:52

With the royalties, it has to be said, from "Mein Kampf", which went from being almost pulp to suddenly being a runaway bestseller, unfortunately.

1:03:02

- Can you actually comment on that?

1:03:04

It's a shitty manifesto as far as manifestos goes.

1:03:06

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...

1:03:17

- Yeah, I mean, you know, it's banned in a number of countries.

1:03:19

You don't need to because no one's gonna read it because it's unreadable.

1:03:24

I mean, it's very untidy. It's very incoherent.

1:03:29

There's no narrative arc, to use a writer's phrase.

1:03:34

But it does give you a very clear...

1:03:36

You know, the overall impression you get at the end of it is that communists and the Jews are to blame for everything.

1:03:43

- Yeah, but there's also the component of predicting basically World War II there.

1:03:49

So it's not just to blame for everything.

1:03:51

- Oh, no, he's hungry for war.

1:03:52

He thinks that this is the natural state, that we have to have this terrible conflict.

1:03:57

And once the conflict's over, Germany will emerge victorious, and then there will be the Thousand Year Reich. I mean...

1:04:03

I'm finding myself, in talking to you, I keep saying this, kind of, you know, it's Armageddon or the Thousand Year Reich.

1:04:08

It's because it comes up...

1:04:09

It's unavoidable because that's how he's speaking the whole time.

1:04:13

It's just this same message over and over and over and over again.

1:04:17

- It's a pretty unique way of speaking, sort of allowing 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.

1:04:32

Usually politicians don't speak that way.

1:04:34

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.

1:04:42

No, here is like there's a complete certainty about a very large number of people. The Slavic people.

1:04:49

They just need to be removed.

1:04:52

- Well, they need to be made an irrelevance.

1:04:53

You know, we have to take it, we have to take it, and if that kills millions of them, fine, then they can sort of squish their way over to Siberia.

1:04:59

- [Lex] It doesn't matter where they go.

1:05:00

- Or Kamchatka, whatever they go, I don't care.

1:05:01

- We just need to populate this land that belongs to the German people, because they're the superior people.

1:05:07

- There's no question that he glorified violence and war.

1:05:10

He's absolutely chomping at the bit.

1:05:12

And in a way, I think he's a bit disappointed that in the 1930s, the conquests that he does undertake are all so peaceful.

1:05:22

March 1938, he goes straight into Austria.

1:05:24

There's the Anschluss, not a shot is fired.

1:05:26

1936, he goes into Rhineland, reconquers that, retakes over that from the occupying allies. Not a shot is fired.

1:05:37

He takes Sudetenland, barely a shot is fired.

1:05:40

And then goes into the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and again, barely a shot is fired.

1:05:46

It's a bit disappointing. He wants to be tested.

1:05:49

He wants to kind of have the wartime triumph.

1:05:53

You can see him being frustrated about this in the Munich crisis in 1938. He wants a fight.

1:05:56

He's absolutely spoiling for it. He's desperate to go in.

1:05:59

He's all ready in gung ho.

1:06:02

He's built his Luftwaffe.

1:06:04

He's got his Panzers now.

1:06:04

He's got his massive armed forces. He wants to test them.

1:06:10

He wants to get this show on the road and prove it.

1:06:14

He's an arch-gambler, Hitler.

1:06:17

- You make it seem so clear, but 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.

1:06:34

Everything you just mentioned, you just went through it so quickly.

1:06:36

But those are agreements that were made that he's not going to do that.

1:06:41

And he does it over and over.

1:06:43

He violates the Treaty of Versailles, he violates every single treaty, but he still is doing the meeting.

1:06:49

So maybe can you go through it?

1:06:52

The lead up to the war, 1939, September 1st, what are the different agreements?

1:06:58

What is the signaling he's doing?

1:07:01

What is he doing secretly in terms of building up the military force? - Yes.

1:07:06

So part of the Treaty of Versailles is you're allowed a very, very limited armed forces.

1:07:14

There's restrictions on naval expansion.

1:07:16

There's restrictions on the size of the army.

1:07:18

There's restrictions on the weapons you can use.

1:07:22

There are, you're not allowed an air force.

1:07:26

But he starts doing this all clandestinely.

1:07:30

There are people in, Krupp's got, for example, which is in the Ruhr, a big armaments manufacturer.

1:07:38

They are producing tanks elsewhere and parts elsewhere in, say, the Netherlands, for example, and then shipping them back into Germany.

1:07:48

They're doing Panzer training exercises actually in the Soviet Union at this time.

1:07:52

There's all sorts of things going on.

1:07:54

The Luftwaffe is being announced to the world in 1935, but it's obviously been in the process of developing long before that.

1:08:01

The Messerschmitt 109, single-engine fighter plane, for example, is created in 1934.

1:08:05

So they're doing all these things against it.

1:08:08

And the truth is he's just constantly pushing.

1:08:12

What can I get away with here? What can I...

1:08:15

And of course, Britain, France, the rest of the world, the rest of the allies, they're all reeling from the Wall Street crash and the Depression as well.

1:08:24

So have they got the stomach for this? Not really. You know?

1:08:27

And perhaps actually on reflection, the terms of Versailles Treaty are a bit harsh anyway.

1:08:31

So, you know, maybe we don't need to worry about it.

1:08:33

There's no political will.

1:08:35

There's no political will to fight against what Germany's doing.

1:08:38

Then he gets away with it.

1:08:40

So he suddenly starts realizing that actually he can push this quite a long way because no one's gonna stand up to him, which is why he makes a decision in 1936 to go back into the Rhineland, which has been occupied by French, you know, allied troops at that point, he just walks in, just goes, do your worst, and no one's gonna do anything because there isn't the stomach to do anything.

1:09:02

- That was a big step in 1936, remilitarizing the Rhineland.

1:09:07

I mean, that's a huge, huge step of like, oh, I don't have to follow anybody's rules and they're gonna do nothing.

1:09:15

- And he's looking at his military and he's also looking at response.

1:09:19

So one of the things they do is, you know, it's really very clever.

1:09:23

So they get over the head of the Armée de l'air, which is the French Air Force, and they invite him over and they, Erhard Milch who is the second command of the Luftwaffe, invites him over.

1:09:36

So come and see what we're up to.

1:09:38

You know, we wanna be, you're our European neighbors.

1:09:40

We're all friends together, this kind of stuff.

1:09:42

Come and see what we've got.

1:09:43

And he takes him to this airfield.

1:09:45

There's a row of Messerschmitt 109s all lined up, like sort of 50 of them.

1:09:49

And the head of the Army of the Air sort of looks at him and goes, crikey, that's impressive.

1:09:54

And Milch goes, well, let me go and take you to another airfield.

1:09:57

And they go off the sort of the back route out of the airfield and that long circuitous route in the Mercedes.

1:10:03

Meanwhile, all the Messerschmitts take off from that airfield, go and land on the next airfield.

1:10:07

Here's another, and they're all the same aircraft.

1:10:10

And the commander in chief of the Army of the Air goes back to France and goes, we're never gonna be able to beat Germany.

1:10:15

So you were earlier, you were alluding to this earlier on, you know, how much is this sort of this, just this chutzpah of this ability to kind of portray the mechanized Moloch.

1:10:29

Yeah, it absolutely cows the enemy.

1:10:31

So they're increasing the effectiveness of their armed forces purely by propaganda and by mind games and by talking the talk.

1:10:43

And, you know, you look at, we might all think these military parades that the Nazis have look rather silly by today's standards, but you look what that looks like if you're the rest of the world.

1:10:54

You're in Britain and you're still reeling from the Depression and you see the "Triumph of the Will".

1:10:59

You see some of that footage and you see these automatons in their steel helmets and you see the swastikas and you see hundreds of thousands of people all lined up and Sieg Heiling and all the rest of it.

1:11:09

You're gonna think again for you going to war with people like that.

1:11:13

- It's also hard to put yourself in the mind of those leaders.

1:11:17

Now that we have nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons have created this kind of cloak of a kind of safety from mutually shared destruction.

1:11:32

That you think, surely you will not do a million or two million soldier army invading another land, right?

1:11:43

Just full on gigantic hot war.

1:11:48

But at that time, that's the real possibility.

1:11:51

You remember World War I, you remember all of that.

1:11:54

So, you know, okay, there's a mad guy with a mustache.

1:12:01

He's making statements that this land belongs to Germany anyway because it's mostly German populated. So...

1:12:10

And like you said, Treaty of Versailles wasn't really fair.

1:12:13

You can start justifying all kinds of things to yourself.

1:12:15

- And maybe they got a point about the Danzig corridor.

1:12:17

You know, they are mainly Germans, German speaking people there and, you know, it's disconnected from East Prussia, which is this thing. You know? I kinda sort of get it.

1:12:25

You know, maybe they've got a point.

1:12:25

You know, and is Poland really a kind of thriving democracy anyway?

1:12:29

Not really by 1930s, late 1930s. It's not.

1:12:32

It's to all intents and purposes a dictatorship in Poland at that time.

1:12:36

I mean, it's not right that you just go and take someone else's country.

1:12:41

Of course, you can't do that.

1:12:42

But you can see why in Germany people are thinking they've got a point.

1:12:48

You can also see why in France and Britain they're thinking, do we really care about the Poles?

1:12:53

I mean, is it worth going to war over?

1:12:58

But there's kind of bigger things at play by this point. That's the point.

1:13:02

- Yeah, but before we get to Poland, there is this meeting, September 1938.

1:13:10

So Chamberlain made three trips to meet with Hitler, which culminated in the Munich Conference.

1:13:17

- [James] Yeah, on the 30th of September. Yeah.

1:13:18

- It was Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, and Daladier, Prime Minister of France.

1:13:24

They met to discuss essentially Czechoslovakia without any of the government officials of Czechoslovakia participating.

1:13:32

And Hitler promised to make no more territorial conquest and Chamberlain believed him.

1:13:37

- He chose to believe him, I think is the point. It's very interesting.

1:13:41

So Chamberlain gets a very bad press. - Uh-oh.

1:13:46

- Well, no, no, it's not really uh-oh. It's...

1:13:52

I just think there's too much retrospective view on this.

1:13:55

And that's fine because 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.

1:14:11

So I don't think Chamberlain did trust Hitler, but he wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

1:14:20

Britain was not obliged to Czechoslovakia at all. France was.

1:14:23

France had signed a treaty with Czechoslovakia in 1924, but Britain had not.

1:14:28

So there was no obligation at all for Britain to do this.

1:14:31

The only reason why Britain would go to war over Czechoslovakia is because of the threat of Nazism and the ramifications of not going to war with him.

1:14:40

But the problem is is that Chamberlain is interesting because in 1935 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

1:14:45

When they started to sort of think, okay, we really do need to rearm, he was very much in favor of substantially expanding and rehabilitating the Navy, so updating existing battleships and so on.

1:15:01

And also developing the air force.

1:15:04

There's not really much argument for having a large army because if you have a large army, you've got to maintain it.

1:15:10

Britain is a small place. Where do you put them?

1:15:11

You've also got to transport them. That's complicated.

1:15:15

You've got to train them.

1:15:16

You've got to put them in barracks. You've got to feed them. All this kind of stuff.

1:15:17

There's a kind of sort of impracticality about having a large army, whereas Navy is great because you can keep them at sea and they can be on the water.

1:15:25

Air force is slightly different.

1:15:26

Air power is viewed in very much the same way that the naval power is viewed.

1:15:30

That this is, we're an island nation.

1:15:33

We have global assets and air power gives us the flexibility that an army doesn't.

1:15:38

So he is all for backing the expansion of the Air Force and the Navy in 1930.

1:15:44

Then he subsequently becomes prime minister and sticks to his guns on that.

1:15:47

It is he that enables the Air Force and the Air Ministry to develop the first fully coordinated air defense system anywhere in the world.

1:15:56

There is not an air defense system in Poland, nor Norway, nor Denmark, nor the Netherlands, nor Belgium, nor France. There is in Britain. Britain is the only one.

1:16:04

And frankly, it pays off big time in the summer of 1940.

1:16:09

So you have to give him credit for that.

1:16:11

Britain, 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.

1:16:23

And we had all the infrastructure there and we were expanding that infrastructure dramatically.

1:16:27

I say we, I'm only saying that because I'm British. So they were doing that.

1:16:33

In 1938, Britain wasn't ready for war.

1:16:36

Now, you can argue that Germany wasn't ready for war either.

1:16:39

But Chamberlain was prime minister in a democracy, a parliamentary democracy where 92% of the population were against going to war in 1938.

1:16:50

There is not a single democratic leader in the world that would go against the wishes of 92% of the population.

1:16:59

Now, you could say, well, he should have just argued it better and presented his case better and all the rest of it.

1:17:03

But at that point, there was no legal obligation to go to the defense of Czechoslovakia.

1:17:08

You know, Czechoslovakia was another of these new nations that have been created out of 1919 and the Versailles Treaty.

1:17:15

Who was to say, we in Britain are able to judge the rights and wrongs of that? You know?

1:17:21

How fantastic it would be to go to war with a nation a long way away for people whom we know very little, et cetera, et cetera.

1:17:29

I'm paraphrasing his quote.

1:17:30

But I'm not saying it was the right decision.

1:17:33

I'm just saying I can see why in September 1938, he is prepared to give him a chance.

1:17:40

Now, I do think he was a bit naive.

1:17:42

And what he also does is a really interesting thing.

1:17:46

He goes over to Hitler's flat, completely ambushes him, goes to his flat on the afternoon of the 30th of September and says to Hitler, look, I've drawn up this agreement here.

1:17:58

And this is to continue the naval agreement that we've already made.

1:18:02

And by signing this, you are saying that Germany and Britain should never go to war with one another.

1:18:07

And he goes, yeah, whatever. You know, signs it.

1:18:12

Chamberlain comes back, lands, in hand, and 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.

1:18:20

But it's interesting that when Hitler then subsequently goes and moves in, you know, that 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,

1:18:37

handed over to Russia without consulting Ukraine a few weeks ago, it is incredible, I think, that France and Britain and Italy with Germany are deciding that, yes, it's fine for Germany to go in and take the Sudetenland, you know, without really consulting the Czechs. It's a sort of similar kind of scenario, really.

1:18:56

It's a sort of similar kind of scenario, really. And it's equally wrong.

1:19:00

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...

1:19:09

That's the point where Chamberlain goes, okay, I've given him the benefit of the doubt.

1:19:13

No more benefits of the doubt. That's it.

1:19:14

That is, he's crossed the line.

1:19:18

And so you reinforce your agreement with Poland and you do a formal agreement.

1:19:21

You go, okay, we will uphold your sovereignty.

1:19:24

You know, if you are invaded, we will go to war with you.

1:19:27

You know, that is a ratcheting up of diplomacy and politics in a very, very big way.

1:19:35

And it is that decision to make a treaty with the Poles is not heeded by Hitler, but it's heeded by literally every one of his commanders.

1:19:48

And it's also heeded by Göring, who is his number two and who is obviously the commander in chief of the Luftwaffe and is president of the Prussia and, you know, all the rest of it, and is the second most senior Nazi.

1:20:05

And, you know, he's going, this is a catastrophe.

1:20:07

This is the last thing we wanna be doing is going to war against Britain. And indeed, France.

1:20:13

- The Munich Conference is a pretty interesting moment, I would say, in all of human history, because you've got the leaders of these bigger-than-life nations in the most dramatic, brewing conflict in human history.

1:20:29

Yeah, Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, and Daladier.

1:20:33

It's interesting when these bigger-than-life leaders are in a room together.

1:20:38

Is there something that you know about, about their interactions?

1:20:43

- Yeah, I think this, I think one of the things that's interesting is that Hitler's got home advantage, because it's on his turf.

1:20:49

And to start off with, the first meeting is at the Berghof, his beloved place in the Obersalzberg overlooking Berchtesgaden in the Alps.

1:20:55

So he's pretty confident, because this is my manor, this is my turf.

1:21:00

You know, I'm not gonna be bossed around by these guys.

1:21:03

But Chamberlain, for example, is going there thinking, I've been around the blocks.

1:21:06

No one can teach me anything.

1:21:09

I've been a politician for ages.

1:21:10

I'm not gonna be kind of capped out by this sort of, you know, Austrian upstart.

1:21:15

So they're both coming at it with a kind of sort of slight kind of superiority kind of complex.

1:21:23

Interestingly, when you get to the actual meetings of the Bernabeu in Munich 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 Bernabeu.

1:21:40

There are crowds cheering him, waving Union Jacks, all this kind of stuff.

1:21:44

Hitler does not like that at all, not at all.

1:21:48

Puts him on the back foot.

1:21:49

That's because the German people don't want war.

1:21:54

In the same way that the British people don't want war, nor do the German people.

1:21:58

The difference is that Hitler is a dictator and an autocrat and has the devotion of the people.

1:22:06

So he can do what he wants in a way that Chamberlain can't.

1:22:09

Chamberlain's hands are tied because he is an elected prime minister, an elected leader, political leader, and he's not head of state.

1:22:16

So there is no question that it is Hitler and Chamberlain that are the top dogs in this particular discussion.

1:22:24

Daladier takes a back seat.

1:22:25

Even Mussolini, although he's there, he doesn't want war either.

1:22:29

He wants to be left alone to do his own thing without anyone getting in the way, but he doesn't want, it's not in his interest to have a European war.

1:22:36

So he's trying to avoid it.

1:22:37

So really, you see that the kind of alpha males in the room are Chamberlain and Hitler.

1:22:43

It's really interesting because Hitler's got this sort of slightly garrulous voice and very kind of pale blue eyes and such distinct features, quite a long nose.

1:22:54

And he always says this is why he has the moustaches, to kind of, you know, disguise the big nose.

1:23:00

As I was saying to you earlier on before we started recording, he does have a sense of humor.

1:23:04

It's not maybe not one that you and I would tap into, but he does have one.

1:23:08

Whereas Chamberlain is just sort of, you know, he sounds like a sort of, you know, bit like an old man.

1:23:13

You know, he's sort of silver-haired and he looks like a sort of archetypal kind of British gentleman with his rolled up umbrella and his, you know, and his Homburg hat and all the rest of it.

1:23:21

So they're both sort of caricatures in a funny sort of way.

1:23:24

And yet the consequence of these discussions, these great events happening, you are absolutely going, even which way the Munich crisis comes out, you're taking a step closer to war.

1:23:39

It's just whether the war is gonna happen kind of next week or whether it's gonna happen a year hence.

1:23:43

But it's, the Munich crisis obviously doesn't stem the inevitability of war at all. It just heightens it.

1:23:49

- Do you think there are words that Chamberlain should have said, could have said, that put more pressure on Hitler, intimidate Hitler more?

1:24:00

- Yeah, it's a really tricky one.

1:24:02

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 gonna be and you don't know what it's gonna look like.

1:24:11

There's no question that the rest of Europe is cowed by the kind of impression of military might that the Germans have put out.

1:24:23

They certainly fear they are stronger than they actually are.

1:24:27

And then on the other hand, they're also going, yeah, but Germany doesn't have natural resources, doesn't have access to the world's oceans.

1:24:32

You know, it's kind of, you know, it shouldn't be able to win a war.

1:24:37

And so they're kind of contradicting themselves at the same time. You know?

1:24:42

So one minute they're going, oh, God, you don't wanna take on all those Nazis and all those swastikas and those automaton stormtroopers.

1:24:48

But on the other hand, they're then saying, but actually Germany doesn't have much in its, kind of, in its basket.

1:24:52

You know, it's got actually quite a lot of weaknesses and we should be able to kind of prevail, blah, blah, blah.

1:24:56

We'll just impose an economic blockade and then they'll be stuffed.

1:24:59

And Britain is not ready to fight a war in 1938, but nor is Hitler. You know? Nor is Germany.

1:25:03

So, you know, one is sort of striking out the other.

1:25:07

But it's very easy to say that in hindsight.

1:25:09

But at the time, you know, with people kind of digging trenches in Hyde Park in central London and barrage 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.

1:25:25

I suppose that's what I'm saying.

1:25:26

I'm not saying it's necessarily the right decision, but I think it's an understandable decision.

1:25:30

- But what about even just on the human level?

1:25:32

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.

1:25:49

It seems like Hitler is similar. Churchill is similar.

1:25:51

It's like this guy can do anything.

1:25:55

There's something terrifying about him. - Unpredictability. - Yeah.

1:25:59

It feels like there's something very predictable about Chamberlain.

1:26:02

- Yes, I think that's true.

1:26:03

But also one has to take a step back and think about what Britain represents, so therefore what Chamberlain represents in 1938.

1:26:11

Britain has the largest empire the world has ever known in 1938. - [Lex] Yeah.

1:26:16

We shouldn't forget that.

1:26:17

- A third of the world is pink, as the saying goes. You know?

1:26:20

And that saying comes from the kind of atlas of the world where all British territories are kind of colored pink.

1:26:24

And on top of that, it has lots of extra imperial territories as well.

1:26:29

So if you look at this incredible map of global shipping in 1937.

1:26:34

And this is little ant lines of ships going out.

1:26:38

And one of the strongest ant lines is going down to Argentina and South America from Britain.

1:26:43

So down past West Africa and down the southern Atlantic and there it is.

1:26:47

And that's because Britain owns most of Argentina.

1:26:50

It owns huge great farming estates and ranches.

1:26:53

It owns the railway system.

1:26:54

It owns many of the port facilities.

1:26:56

So you don't even need an empire.

1:26:58

You just need the, you know, you need the facilities that overseas trade and possessions can give you.

1:27:04

And Britain not only has the largest navy, it also has the largest merchant navy.

1:27:09

It has 33% of the world's merchant shipping and access to a further 50%.

1:27:15

You know, Greek, Norwegian, Canadian, shipping that it can access.

1:27:19

So if you've got access to in excess of 80% of the world's shipping, that puts you in an incredibly strong position.

1:27:27

And actually all sorts of other things have been going on.

1:27:29

While they might not have been quite creating a huge army or quite producing enough Spitfires that they might want to up until this point, what they have also been doing is stockpiling bauxite and copper and tungsten and huge reserves.

1:27:42

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.

1:27:50

So it can go into various countries around the world and can go, okay, I want you to guarantee me for the next five years every bit of your rubber supply.

1:27:59

I will pay over the asking price to secure that.

1:28:03

And it's doing that in the 1930s.

1:28:06

So when war comes, it's got everything it possibly needs.

1:28:09

Now, you always need more because it's suddenly turning into a kind of, you know, a proper global long drawn out war.

1:28:15

But that is a huge advantage.

1:28:18

So it is with that mindset that Chamberlain is going into those talks and thinking, okay, well, I'm not gonna get into a war over Czechoslovakia, and who cares about them.

1:28:26

But I am gonna show Hitler that I mean business.

1:28:30

Hitler's going, who's this stuffy guy with his white hair?

1:28:33

I don't give a toss about him.

1:28:35

You know, and he's coming at it from a completely different perspective.

1:28:37

And I think one of the things that's so interesting from a dramatic point of view and from a historian's point of view or even a novelist's 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 terrifically good.

1:28:51

It's the fact you've got two men, two alpha males who are going to those negotiations from totally different perspectives and vantage points.

1:29:01

And I think it's very easy for people today to forget how elevated Britain was in the late 1930s.

1:29:09

You know, the gold standard was tied to the pound, not the dollar.

1:29:13

And so Britain was the number one nation in the world at that time, and it just was.

1:29:20

And it's so diminished by comparison today that it's hard to imagine it.

1:29:26

And I think one of the interesting things about the historiography, 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.

1:29:39

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.

1:29:49

And so one of the reasons why you have this narrative that, you know, Britain was a bit rubbish and hanging on the shirttails of the Americans and, you know, all the blood was spilt 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.

1:30:03

You know, that kind of traditional narrative.

1:30:07

That narrative emerges through the prism 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.

1:30:19

- So there is this moment of decision.

1:30:21

When do you think, what lesson do you take from that?

1:30:25

When is the right time for appeasement, to negotiate, for diplomacy, and when is the right time for military strength, offensive?

1:30:37

Attacking, for military conflict. Where's that line?

1:30:43

Where's that- - Well, I kind of think it probably was when it was. (laughs) I mean... - Poland? - Yeah.

1:30:52

Honestly, I'm not sure it would have been the right decision to go to war in 1938.

1:30:59

I just, I think it would...

1:31:01

I can't predict because you can't second guess how things are gonna play out because you just don't know.

1:31:07

But I'm not sure that Chamberlain made the wrong decision.

1:31:12

I'm not saying he made the right decision.

1:31:13

I'm just like, I'm not, I'm being a bit wishy-washy about this.

1:31:16

- You could have threatened it more.

1:31:19

Imagine Churchill in those same meetings.

1:31:22

- Yeah, but Churchill also appeases.

1:31:24

I mean, he appeases Stalin all the time.

1:31:26

I mean, you know, so the idea that Churchill's this big strong man and never appeases and, you know, he's gung ho over war.

1:31:31

Churchill's out of the government at that time.

1:31:33

He recognizes you can't trust Hitler.

1:31:35

He recognizes that Nazism is bad.

1:31:38

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 a way that Chamberlain does.

1:31:48

You know, so I suppose what I'm saying is Chamberlain is better placed to make those decisions than Churchill is, which again doesn't mean that Chamberlain is right and Churchill is wrong.

1:32:01

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.

1:32:09

You've got a handful of Hurricanes.

1:32:10

You haven't got enough, you know, your air defense system isn't properly sorted at this point. Your Navy is strong.

1:32:18

But, you know, what's that gonna look like?

1:32:20

I mean, if you do go to war?

1:32:24

Because there's not gonna be armies sweeping into Germany.

1:32:28

It's just, it's gonna be accelerated industrialization for a year.

1:32:32

So, you know, even if you go to war in 1938 over Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovakia will not be saved.

1:32:38

You know, France and Britain will not be going and invading Germany.

1:32:41

That, you know, that is absolutely not gonna happen.

1:32:44

So sort of what's the point?

1:32:46

I mean, you know, if you're not gonna do that, why didn't you accelerate your rearmament thereafter? Get your ducks in a row.

1:32:52

And then you can consider it.

1:32:55

I mean, after all, you know, even in September 1939, they don't really do anything.

1:33:00

I mean, we talked about the kind of the Saar offensive, which isn't really an offensive at all.

1:33:05

It's firing a one-rounded machine gun and scuttling back again.

1:33:08

But I mean, they don't even do that then.

1:33:11

They're still buying time in 1939.

1:33:13

And, you know, Britain is only just about ready to take on the onslaught of the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940.

1:33:19

- Well, nobody's ready for war.

1:33:21

- No, and you always want more than you've got at any time, even when you're winning.

1:33:25

- But like, really not ready.

1:33:27

Even, like you mentioned with Barbarossa, Nazi Germany is really not ready. - Not ready.

1:33:34

- Nobody's really, except France, I swear.

1:33:39

- France doesn't has radios. - Fine. But come on, come on.

1:33:44

When Nazi Germany invades Poland, I mean... - Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible.

1:33:51

Because 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 that would have, that easily could have brought down Hitler.

1:34:04

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.

1:34:12

I mean, even Göring is thinking this is a terrible idea.

1:34:15

They are absolutely not convinced.

1:34:17

And when Hitler does his big talk to his, he asked all his senior commanders to come to the Berghof to brief them about the invasion of Poland.

1:34:25

It's just after the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of the 22nd of August.

1:34:30

He calls them all to the Berghof and says, come in mufti, come in civilian suits.

1:34:34

They all turn up and he gives them this kind of huge, great speech and says, this is the moment. This is the time.

1:34:39

This is what we're gonna do.

1:34:41

And they're all going, what? You're kidding me.

1:34:43

What, we're going to Poland on the 26th of August. That's the plan? Like two days time? Where's the plan?

1:34:50

You know, the whole point is that, you know, they're emerging and growing militarily, but they were supposed to have all these exercises where they, you know, coordinating ground forces.

1:34:59

You know, the Panzer spearhead with operations in the air with the Luftwaffe. None of that happens.

1:35:04

So Poland becomes the proving ground.

1:35:07

And actually they discovered that there's lots of things that don't work and lots of things that are wrong.

1:35:11

But, you know, it's flying in the face of all convention, military convention that they, you know, he does this without any kind of warning.

1:35:21

And even by the 1st of September, where there's been this kind of sort of five day delay, at those last minute negotiations, the last minute negotiations are thrust upon Hitler by people like Göring and by Mussolini and the Italians going, oh my God, don't do this. Don't do this.

1:35:37

You know, there's got to be a solution.

1:35:40

Hitler's absolutely jumping at the bit.

1:35:42

- Well, in that case, from a dark militaristic perspective, his bet paid off.

1:35:49

- Well, except that it ended in ruins in May 1945 with the total collapse of Germany.

1:35:54

So you could say worst decision he ever made was going into Poland in September 1939.

1:35:59

It depends on the way you look at it.

1:36:00

But I mean, yes, you know, it's successful in that, you know, Poland's overrun in 18 days.

1:36:05

- And there's so many counterfactuals here.

1:36:08

- But I mean, if you would say to Hitler on the 30th of April, you know, as he's sort of taking out the pistol from his holster on his sofa in the in the Führerbunker and going, you know, so Adolf, 1st of September, 1939, still backing yourself on that one?

1:36:22

He might have a different view.

1:36:24

- The guy's insane and full of blunders.

1:36:26

So he probably would have said, yeah, do it all over again.

1:36:29

- [James] Yeah, I'm sure he would have done as well. - It's conquest.

1:36:32

Poland was not a mistake.

1:36:32

Soviet Union was not a mistake. - [James] No.

1:36:36

- It's just some of the tactics...

1:36:37

- I was let down by people not being strong enough.

1:36:39

- Yeah, the Prussian generals are all...

1:36:41

- Yeah, of course, that's exactly what he'd say. Wasn't my fault.

1:36:45

- He might have quietly done some different decisions about Barbarossa.

1:36:51

Maybe the timing would be different.

1:36:53

- Maybe that all out central thrust rather than kind of spreading it into three... - Yeah.

1:36:56

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.

1:37:06

He was completely convinced by it.

1:37:09

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...

1:37:18

He ratcheted himself up into such a lather of kind of, this is the moment! I have to do it now! This is fate! I'm 50!

1:37:26

And, you know, I could be taken out by an assassin's bullet.

1:37:30

I've got this important life's work that I've got to do.

1:37:32

We've got to get on with it now.

1:37:33

There could be no more delay. This is my mission.

1:37:36

You know, this is our mission of the German people.

1:37:38

And either the German people have got the will and the spirit to be able to pull it off.

1:37:42

Or, you know, I was wrong and therefore, you know, we don't deserve to be a Thousand Year Reich.

1:37:48

We don't deserve to be the master race. Black or white. Us or them. Either or.

1:37:52

It's the same all the time.

1:37:55

- So can you tell the story of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939?

1:37:59

So they make an agreement, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union.

1:38:03

And that leads us, just like you were mentioning, in a matter of days, how compact everything is.

1:38:09

It's just really, really fascinating.

1:38:11

- It's a beautiful summer in Europe. Summer of 1939.

1:38:15

You know, it's one of these sort of glorious summers that sort of never rains.

1:38:18

It's just sunshine, sunny day after sunny day.

1:38:22

It's kind of, you know, it's like that sort of golden summer of 1914 as well.

1:38:27

You know, where sky always seems to be blue, fluffy white clouds.

1:38:31

Everyone's sort of, you know, but this sort of, the storm clouds of war, to use that cliche, are kind of brewing.

1:38:39

The Russians have reached out to Britain and France and said, come on over, let's negotiate, you know, let's see what we can do.

1:38:47

And there is just no stomach for that at all.

1:38:50

I mean, if ever there is a, I think, a mistake, that's Britain and France should have been a bit more into Realpolitiks than they were.

1:39:02

It's such an opportunity to ensure that, to snooker the Third Reich and they don't take it.

1:39:10

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.

1:39:19

As something that's every bit as repellent as Nazism.

1:39:22

And they don't wanna be getting into bed with these guys.

1:39:26

Of course, they kind of have to kind of change tack on that one in summer of 1941 in very quick order.

1:39:36

And that's the whole point about Churchill appeasing Stalin.

1:39:39

I mean, you know, it's all very well people saying, well, you know, Churchill wouldn't have appeased Hitler in the 1930s.

1:39:43

But he does appease, he appeases all the time.

1:39:46

And they miss that opportunity.

1:39:48

And the French and British delegation is third tier commanders, generals going over... It's a shit show.

1:39:58

I mean, excuse my French, but I mean, it's just... It's a nonsense.

1:40:02

They're not ready for it. They're not prepared.

1:40:04

The British guy, Admiral Drax, doesn't have any authority.

1:40:09

The whole thing's a complete joke.

1:40:12

It's never gonna get anywhere.

1:40:13

- You tell the story of this quite beautifully, actually.

1:40:16

Again, it's such a human story.

1:40:18

It seems like Stalin and the Soviet...

1:40:22

- They've already made up their mind.

1:40:23

I don't think they have, I think what they- - Wait, wait, wait.

1:40:26

I mean, you describe it quite well that they value in-person meeting. - Yes.

1:40:31

- So, like, Chamberlain should have just gone to Moscow. - Yeah, get on a plane. - Like it's such a...

1:40:40

Maybe it's a simplistic notion, but that could have changed the trajectory of human history right there.

1:40:46

- I really think it could have done. I think that was...

1:40:49

I think that's a much more grievous mistake than the Munich.

1:40:51

- Why are leaders so hesitant to meet?

1:40:56

I'm told now by a bunch of diplomats that, no, no, no, no. There's a process.

1:41:02

You know, at first, you have to have these diplomats meet and they have to draft a bunch of stuff.

1:41:07

I sometimes have this simplistic notion like, why not meet? Why not meet?

1:41:13

I think there is a human element there.

1:41:17

And of course, especially when there's this force that is Hitler.

1:41:23

- Well, yes, and because we humans, we like to interact.

1:41:26

And you like to see people in three dimensions.

1:41:31

And, you know, I'm sure that's why you always quite rightly insist on doing your podcast face-to-face.

1:41:37

Because you wanna get the cut of someone's jib and you wanna be able to see them.

1:41:40

You wanna see the intonation in their expression and the whites of their eyes and all that kind of stuff.

1:41:46

That just does make a difference, of course, because, you know, we're fundamentally animals and we wanna be sizing people up.

1:41:53

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.

1:42:02

- Yeah, but there's also just...

1:42:03

You see the humanity in others. It's so much easier.

1:42:07

You see this in social media.

1:42:08

It's so much easier to talk shit about others when you're not with them. - Yes.

1:42:13

- And like military conflict is the extreme version of that. - [James] Yeah.

1:42:18

- You can construct these narratives that they're not human, that they're evil.

1:42:22

You can construct a communist ideology...

1:42:26

You can project onto them the worst possible version of a human.

1:42:33

But when you meet them, you're like, oh.

1:42:36

- They are just a person.

1:42:36

- They are just a person.

1:42:38

- Well, it's the world's great tragedy 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.

1:42:45

I mean, it has been ever thus. It's just...

1:42:48

It is those few that kind of ruin it for everybody else.

1:42:52

But anyway, to go back to Leningrad, back in August 1939, they go half-cock.

1:42:58

They're disrespectful to Soviet Union as a result of that. It gets nowhere.

1:43:04

Had they been able to put on a really, really firm offer there and then to the Soviet Union, Soviet Union would have probably come in.

1:43:13

I mean, the big thing is is that the Soviet Union said, this is a big stumbling block.

1:43:18

The Soviet Union said, yeah, but we want to be able to march through Poland if we get threatened by Germany.

1:43:25

But the British and the French just smell a massive rat there.

1:43:28

They're basically saying, if they agree to that, 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.

1:43:40

But it would have stopped the World War, probably.

1:43:42

- They're willing to appease Hitler.

1:43:44

They're not willing to appease Stalin in that situation.

1:43:46

- Well, they're not willing to appease anybody by that stage. That's the point.

1:43:49

- Well, they appeased Hitler, because he took Czechoslovakia.

1:43:52

- Yeah, but there's a bottom line, you know, which is Poland. So it's changed. That's the point. - Right. Right.

1:43:59

- But anyway, the bottom line is they don't, there is a reluctance on the part of French and British to negotiate with the Soviet Union because they're communists don't like them, don't trust them, worry about what they're gonna do with Poland, they're gonna be jumping out of the fire into the kind of water, and it doesn't come off.

1:44:18

As a consequence of that, the Soviet Union continued to pursue more hardly, you know, more vociferously the opportunities that the Germans are offering, which is the split of Poland.

1:44:34

Because the Soviet Union wants that part of Poland back in its own sphere of influence, and it doesn't want to get a war just yet.

1:44:42

- And the agreement that they won't attack each other, essentially. - Yeah.

1:44:46

- Do you think Stalin actually believed that?

1:44:49

- No, he believed it in the same way that Hitler believed it, that it was a cynical, kind of, convenient bit of realpolitik for now.

1:44:56

I mean, I think the Soviet Union was as determined to get rid of the Nazis as the Nazis were determined to get rid of the Soviet Union.

1:45:02

I think whoever fired first was not decided at that point.

1:45:07

But I do think from the moment that Hitler takes power in 1933, a conflict between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany is inevitable.

1:45:13

- Yeah, so either direction you think is inevitable? - Yeah.

1:45:16

- I think there's a huge amount of evidence for that.

1:45:18

Stalin probably wanted it, what, like in '42, '43? - Yeah. - Something like that.

1:45:24

- Yeah, and, you know, they're doing exercises and stuff and building...

1:45:26

He's not ready yet because he knows he's done the purges and he's gotta get his army, he's gotta get his armed forces back into shape and all the rest of it. But, you know...

1:45:34

So they have this incredibly cynical agreement, but at that point, you know, Hitler's hands are untied.

1:45:39

You know, he no longer has to worry about the threat from the Soviet Union.

1:45:44

He's got carte blanche to go into Poland, and he doesn't believe that France and Britain are gonna go to war over Poland.

1:45:49

He's wrong about that, obviously.

1:45:51

But France and Britain, despite going to war with them, still do nothing.

1:45:54

So, you know, he's got away with it.

1:45:57

- Who was Churchill, and how did Churchill come to power at this moment?

1:46:02

- Well, Churchill is this absolutely towering figure in British politics.

1:46:06

You know, he's been, he's first a minister in the noughties of the 20th century, and the first years of the 20th century.

1:46:15

First of the Liberals, then of the Conservatives.

1:46:17

He's a former Chancellor of the Exchequer.

1:46:22

He's a towering figure, but he's been in the wilderness because he's out of favor with the Stanley Baldwin government.

1:46:32

He's out of favor 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.

1:46:43

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 towering figure.

1:46:51

So he's listened to in a way that other backbenchers aren't.

1:46:54

And he has been saying, you know, we need to stand up to the dictators. We need to do this.

1:46:58

We need to rearm more heavily, and blah, blah, blah.

1:47:02

So when war is declared, he's brought back into the admiralty, in charge of the Navy, which is Britain's senior service.

1:47:09

And suddenly, he's there.

1:47:13

And what happens is Britain doesn't really do anything.

1:47:17

It's very difficult working with France because France is so politically fractured that they can't make any decisions.

1:47:22

When you can't make any decisions, you're just impotent.

1:47:25

And so Churchill first mentions going into Norway and mining the leads.

1:47:29

So the idea is that you're making life very difficult for the Germans to get iron ore out of Sweden.

1:47:34

Their main source of iron ore is up in the northern part of Sweden in the Arctic Circle.

1:47:38

It then goes on a railway through the northern tip of Norway and then gets shipped down the west coast of Norway into Germany, into the Baltic.

1:47:48

So Churchill suggests in September 1939, why don't we mine the leads, which are the leads of these passageways out of the fjords in the north, into the North Sea.

1:47:59

Why don't we mine those and stop the Germans from taking this?

1:48:04

Everyone goes, well, yeah, that's quite a good idea.

1:48:06

But they can't decide, and French are nervous that if they do that, the Germans will retaliate and bomb France and all this kind of stuff.

1:48:11

So no decision is made until April 1940.

1:48:16

They go up to start mining the leads on exactly the same day that the Germans invade Denmark and Norway.

1:48:21

And so they're caught off guard.

1:48:23

So at that moment, really, it's seen as a failure of Chamberlain's government.

1:48:27

And there is a mounting realization that no matter how good he was or competent he was as a peacetime prime minister, he's not a wartime prime minister.

1:48:36

You know, he's not served in the armed forces himself.

1:48:38

He doesn't really understand it.

1:48:39

It needs a different set of hands.

1:48:41

His government falls on the 9th of May.

1:48:44

It becomes inevitable that he's gonna have to resign.

1:48:47

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.

1:48:56

He is, without question, the most respected politician in the country.

1:48:59

He's a former viceroy of India.

1:49:03

He's seen as an incredibly safe pair of hands, man of resolute sound judgment, et cetera, et cetera.

1:49:12

But he doesn't want to take it.

1:49:14

He feels physically ill at the prospect, doesn't want this responsibility.

1:49:17

He's also not really a military man.

1:49:19

He's got a slightly withered hand, which has prevented him from doing military service.

1:49:23

And he just blanches at this moment.

1:49:26

That really leads only one other figure that could possibly take on this position, and that's Churchill.

1:49:32

So, when Chamberlain resigns on the 9th of May and Halifax says, it's not for me, the only person who's gonna slip into that position is Churchill, and he becomes prime minister and he accepts it gladly.

1:49:45

He feels like it is his mission in life. This is his moment.

1:49:49

Cometh the hour cometh the man.

1:49:50

But he comes with a huge amount of baggage.

1:49:51

I mean, he's known as a man who drinks too much, whose judgment hasn't always been great.

1:49:56

He was chancellor during the time of the general strike in 1926.

1:50:00

You know, he backed Edward VIII over the monarchy crisis when the king wanted to marry Wallis Simpson, the Catholic divorcee, et cetera, et cetera.

1:50:08

So, you know, his judgment has been brought into question.

1:50:11

You know, he is the man who came up with the idea of the Gallipoli campaign, which was, you know, an ignominious failure, blah, blah, blah.

1:50:18

So, there are issues over him.

1:50:19

You know, he is seen as a hothead and a man who doesn't have the kind of sound judgment of Halifax.

1:50:25

So, the jury is very much out.

1:50:27

And I think, 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.

1:50:36

Yes, he was considered a towering politician, but he is seen also as a loose cannon and by no means the right person in this hour of darkness.

1:50:48

And it is coincidental that the 10th of May 1940, when he takes over as prime minister, he becomes prime minister, not for an election, but by default of a new nationalist government.

1:50:59

So, no longer a Conservative government, but a nationalist cross-party coalition government for the duration of the war, which includes, you know, members of the Liberal Party and also the Labor Party, as well as Conservatives.

1:51:15

That it is by no means certain that he's going to be able to deliver the goods.

1:51:20

And it is also coincidentally the same day that the Germans launch Case Yellow, Operation Yellow, the invasion of the Low Countries and France.

1:51:29

So, these are tumultuous events, to put it mildly.

1:51:35

And it is also the case, you know, that only a couple of weeks before, Paul Reynaud has taken over as prime minister of yet another coalition government in France from Daladier.

1:51:47

So, political turmoil is very much the watchword at this time for the Western democracies, just at the moment that the Germans are making their kind of, you know, the hammer strike into the West.

1:52:00

- This might be a good moment to bring up this idea that has been circulating recently, brought up by Darryl Cooper, who hyperbolically stated that Churchill was, the quote, "Chief villain of the Second World War."

1:52:17

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.

1:52:26

So, Churchill is the one that turned this narrow war, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, into a global one. Is that accurate?

1:52:41

- No, I don't think it is.

1:52:42

I mean, not least because the decisions over Poland were made by Chamberlain's government, not when Churchill was out of government.

1:52:47

So, you know, Churchill wasn't even involved in that decision-making process at the time. No, I don't think so.

1:52:53

I mean, again, I go back to kind of Britain's position in the world in 1939.

1:53:01

If you say, we're gonna defend the sovereignty of Poland and then you don't, that is, that looks really bad globally.

1:53:08

You know, Britain's prestige would plummet, would lead to all sorts of problems.

1:53:13

You are saying that you're giving carte blanche to dictators to just run amok and take whatever territory they want.

1:53:19

You are risking a future upheaval of the global order away from democracies into the hands of dictators.

1:53:28

You know, in the West, people believe in democracy and believe in the advancement and freedoms of people.

1:53:37

To echo the words of Roosevelt in August 1941, you know, they're responding to a world free of want and fear.

1:53:44

Now, obviously, there's still some issues with the form that democracy takes in the 1930s.

1:53:54

It's not democratic for everyone.

1:53:55

You know, try saying that if you're in Nigeria or India or whatever.

1:54:00

Or if you're, you know, in the black southern states of the United States.

1:54:05

But the aspirations are there.

1:54:07

And I think that's an important distinction.

1:54:10

And I think by saying that Churchill is the chief warmonger of the Second World War, I think is ludicrous.

1:54:17

You know, it's the same thing about the bombing.

1:54:18

The detractors of strategic air campaign always go, yeah, but, you know, Germans had the Holocaust, but weren't the Allies just as bad to killing all those civilians?

1:54:28

It's like, no, because the moment Hitler stopped the war, the bombing would stop.

1:54:31

You know, the moment the war stopped in Hitler's favor, the killing would continue and be accelerated.

1:54:37

- So the thing you mentioned initially is this sort of the idealist perspective of, well, Britain can't allow sort of this warmonger to break all these pacts and be undemocratic, you know, murder a large number of people and do conquest of territory.

1:55:02

Okay, that's idealistic, but if we look at the realist perspective, what decisions would minimize the amount of suffering on the continent in the next 50 years?

1:55:17

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.

1:55:30

So Churchill's presence and decisions.

1:55:33

So we're not talking about idealistic perspective.

1:55:36

We're talking about realists, like the reality of the war, of Stalin, of Hitler, of Churchill, of France and FDR.

1:55:48

Did Churchill drag Hitler into a world war?

1:55:52

Did he force Hitler to invade the Soviet Union?

1:55:56

Did he force Hitler to then invade, attack Britain?

1:56:03

- Well, no, because Hitler was always gonna invade the Soviet Union unless the Soviet Union invaded Germany first.

1:56:09

So that was always gonna happen.

1:56:13

No one asked Hitler to invade the low countries and Norway and Denmark and attack Britain.

1:56:23

He does that, of course, because he's not given a free hand in Poland, but there's no question that Hitler would have also wanted to subdue France or certainly turn France from a democracy into a totalitarian state as well.

1:56:38

I'm absolutely certain about that.

1:56:39

- I think there's pretty definitive evidence, I mean, it's obvious, from everything he said, from everything he's written, from everything, everywhere that he was going to invade the Soviet Union, no matter what.

1:56:52

And France, most likely, yes, also.

1:56:55

- He would have done a deal with Britain, Britain could have coexisted.

1:56:58

- So actually, 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.

1:57:10

- Yes, but then he would have got so strong that he would have then turned on Britain as well.

1:57:13

You know, because he would...

1:57:15

The fear is that if you let him do this, then 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.

1:57:24

You know, that is the fear of the British, that is the fear of the Americans, that's the fear of President Roosevelt, who's got a very, we haven't even touched on this yet, but he has a very difficult case on his hands because he's come into power, also in January 1933, as President of the United States, on an isolationist ticket with a retrenching, with a kind of, you know, step away from the European old order.

1:57:52

It's time for the Europeans to start on their own.

1:57:55

It all sounds very familiar right now.

1:57:57

And suddenly, he's got to do this gargantuan political volte-face and prepare the nation for war because he also fears, like Churchill fears, like Chamberlain feared as well, that Hitler's designs are not purely on Eastern Europe and the Lebensraum there, but would get ever bigger.

1:58:19

And I don't doubt that they're right.

1:58:22

I think if he'd prevailed in the Soviet Union, you know, he'd always wanted more because his whole concept is the master race... You know?

1:58:29

- Yeah, I think it should be said, if we measure human suffering, if there was not Britain on the other side, if it was not a two-front 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.

1:58:53

And ditto if the Allies hadn't gotten involved against Imperial Japan.

1:58:57

You know, it would have been catastrophic.

1:59:00

I mean, 20 to 30 million Chinese dead anyway, you know, with American and British intervention.

1:59:08

And what's it gonna be in China without that? I mean, and elsewhere.

1:59:12

You know, because the reason why Japan invades French Indochina, now Vietnam, and Hong Kong, and Malaya, and Singapore, and so on, and Burma is because it's not winning in China and it needs more resources because it's resource poor.

1:59:33

And America has cut off the tap.

1:59:35

So it's going into these countries to get what it needs.

1:59:40

It's rubber, and oil, and natural resources, and ores, precious ores and all the rest of it.

1:59:46

And if it had been unchecked, it would have done so.

1:59:48

And then it would have absolutely built up its strength and overrun the whole of China with even more deaths.

1:59:55

So, you know, I think there is, I think one of the interesting things about the Second World War is lots of wars and why people get involved in them are extremely questionable.

2:00:05

But I think there is a moral crusade to the allies and what they're doing that I think is entirely justified.

2:00:14

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?

2:00:24

And at what point is doing bad stopping you from doing good?

2:00:28

And at what point are you doing good but also doing bad at the same time?

2:00:32

Such as destruction of cities, destruction of monasteries on outcrops in Southern Italy, you know, destruction of, killing of lots of civilians, et cetera, et cetera.

2:00:43

You know, these are difficult questions to answer sometimes.

2:00:51

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.

2:00:58

You know, it's kinda easy to have a fairly cut and dry war in North Africa, in the deserts of North Africa where, you know, the only people getting in the way are a few Bedouin tribesmen or something.

2:01:10

But once you start getting into Europe or getting into kind of the meat of highly populated countries in the Far East, for example, that's a different kettle of fish because the scale of destruction is absolutely immense.

2:01:23

But it is also the job of political leaders to look after and defend their own peoples first and foremost.

2:01:33

And so what you're doing is you're trying to protect your own sovereignty, your own people before you're protecting other people.

2:01:39

And so that's what leads to the whole way in which the allies, 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.

2:01:56

And that means bringing lots of destruction to your enemies but also trying to minimize it.

2:02:00

And the way you bring lots of destruction to your enemies is by using immense firepower and this concept of steel not our flesh, which I mentioned earlier on, and technology, so that you don't have to bring to bear too many of your young men's lives, you don't have a repeat of the slaughter of the First World War.

2:02:17

So it is really interesting that in our mind's eye when we're thinking of the Western allies and 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 frontline.

2:02:34

They are the coalface, they're the first people going into the fire of the enemy.

2:02:39

And we tend to think about guys in tanks, infantrymen with their Garand rifles or, you know, machine guns or whatever.

2:02:47

That's what springs to mind.

2:02:48

Yet actually they're a comparatively small proportion of the army.

2:02:51

So no more than 14% to 15% of any army, allied army is infantry.

2:02:57

45% are service corps, service troops driving trucks and cooks and bottle washers and people lugging great big boxes of stuff.

2:03:05

And that's because by that stage, you know, the allies have worked out of the way of war, which is to use what I call big war, this concept of a very long tail, logistics, the operational art, making sure that people have the absolute best you possibly can, great medical care, huge advances in first aid and medical care of troops, getting them back onto the battlefield.

2:03:26

And you're using firepower and technology and mechanization to do a lot of your hard yards.

2:03:32

So, you know, that's the principle behind strategic bombing.

2:03:36

You know, if you go over and bomb and you can destroy infrastructure and civilians and households, that makes it much harder for Krupp to make those Panther tanks and Tiger tanks or whatever it might be, and guns.

2:03:49

And, you know, you're disrupting the transportation system in Germany.

2:03:53

You know, you're making life difficult for them to do what they need to do.

2:03:58

Then that means it's going to be easier for those 15%, 14%, 15% of infantrymen who've got to jump out of a landing craft to do their job.

2:04:05

And you're trying to keep that to a minimum.

2:04:06

And you have to say, broadly speaking, that's a very sensible policy that makes an awful lot of sense.

2:04:13

Consequence of that is a huge amount of destruction.

2:04:17

And maybe that's what Daryl Cooper's driving at.

2:04:20

But no one asked Hitler to invade Poland.

2:04:23

I mean, you know, that is the bottom line.

2:04:25

No one asked Germany to go to war.

2:04:27

No one asked Hitler to come up with these ludicrous ideology.

2:04:30

- Yeah, there's complex ethical discussions here about, just as you described... - Which are fascinating. - Which are fascinating. And war is hell.

2:04:43

And there's many ways in which it is hell.

2:04:47

Just for a little bit, to steelman what Darryl, 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 intervention.

2:05:14

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 neo-cons and warmongers 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.

2:05:42

- Well, I do agree with that.

2:05:44

I think oversimplification of anything is a mistake.

2:05:47

You know, life is nuanced. The past is nuanced.

2:05:52

It's okay to be proud about certain things, and it's okay to be disgusted by other things. That's absolutely fine.

2:05:56

You know, we have a complicated relationship with our past.

2:05:58

It doesn't need to be black and white.

2:06:00

And life is not a straight line.

2:06:03

And of course, the Allies made plenty of mistakes in World War II.

2:06:08

Overall, I think they made the right calls.

2:06:10

And I think one of the things that's really interesting is I think that the Allies, for the most part, use their resources much more judiciously and sensibly than the Axis powers do.

2:06:23

And, you know, good, because that means they prevail.

2:06:28

I think, you know, there are so many lessons from World War II that could have been brought into the history of the last 30 years which weren't, such as, you know, if you decapitate an incredibly strong leader, you get a power vacuum.

2:06:45

And if you don't have a solution for that power vacuum, lots of bad elements are gonna sweep into that in very quick order, which of course is exactly what happens in Iraq.

2:06:53

So, you know, Donald Rumsfeld, again, we don't do reconstruction.

2:06:56

Well, you freaking well should do.

2:06:58

You know, if you're gonna take on this particular challenge, you've gotta see it through.

2:07:04

You know, that's simply not good enough.

2:07:07

You know, it's not good enough to go into Afghanistan and go, okay, we're gonna change things around. It's gonna be great.

2:07:10

All the women are gonna have education.

2:07:13

They won't have to wear kind of, you know, won't have to cover up their bodies any more. Anything goes. We love liberalism. It's great.

2:07:22

Let's make Kabul into a thriving city once more.

2:07:26

And then suddenly bug out.

2:07:27

You know, because what's gonna happen?

2:07:29

You're gonna undo everything.

2:07:31

And I remember being in, you know, this is a bit of a segue, Lex, but I remember being in Northern Helmand Province back in, you know, what it was, in January 2008.

2:07:41

And British troops had just taken over an absolute dump of a town called Musa Qala.

2:07:48

And I remember talking to this Afghan guy.

2:07:50

He just had all his willow trees chopped down to make room for a helipad that the Allies wanted, which said, they put those cages with kind of rubble in, the protective wall.

2:08:02

Is it called Hesco, I think it was called.

2:08:04

Anyway, I said to him, what do you think about the British being there?

2:08:08

And he just went, he shrugged at me and lifted up his hands and said, well, you know, if they stay, great, but they won't.

2:08:14

And he said, you know, if they stay, then brilliant.

2:08:19

But he said, I'll tell you what, he said, Taliban weren't great.

2:08:22

They weren't fantastic, he said, but I could leave my purse on a wall and no one would touch it.

2:08:25

I could leave it on a wall for a week and no one would touch it.

2:08:27

He said, will they bring that kind of order?

2:08:31

You know, will we have peace here?

2:08:34

You know, they've just chopped down my willow trees. You know, thanks a lot.

2:08:39

And, you know, you're seeing a total lack of understanding of the culture, the ethnic differences.

2:08:50

You're trying to impose a kind of Western centric view onto something, which is just, onto a nation, which isn't ready for that.

2:08:59

Now, there are ways in which, you know, it looked like Afghanistan was starting to kind of emerge and there was a path.

2:09:06

And then just at the critical moment, the West moves out with catastrophic consequences.

2:09:14

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.

2:09:25

You know, the consequence of all that destruction, all that turmoil was thriving, high producing democracies, which burst forth into the kind of second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century in pretty good order.

2:09:45

So the lessons of the previous generation for the First World War had been learned, even though the scale of destruction, the displacement of people is unprecedented in 1945.

2:09:57

- In 1939, what was the state of the militaries?

2:10:00

What were the most powerful militaries on the world stage at that time?

2:10:04

- Well, in terms of naval power, it's Britain, as we've already discussed, and the United States, France has a pretty large navy, 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, air, land, and sea.

2:10:21

But it doesn't have any aircraft carriers and doesn't have any radar.

2:10:24

So, you know, they've got modern battleships and battle cruisers, but without key modern bits of technology.

2:10:32

- So Italy is really not ready for war? - Oh, it's so not. It's so not.

2:10:37

It's just, again, both Hitler and Mussolini, they lack geopolitical understanding.

2:10:43

You know, that's because they're so kind of focused on their narrow worldview, and they view everything through that prism, but they can't see that bigger picture.

2:10:51

- 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.

2:10:58

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 half of the Mediterranean, North Africa, all the way down to kind of East Africa, controlling the Suez Canal. That's what he wants.

2:11:13

- And I think you made clear that he was, I mean, there's always like this little brother jealous of Hitler kind of situation because he wanted absolute power the way Hitler did. - But doesn't have it. - Doesn't have it. It's described...

2:11:26

Yeah, there's a- - Monarchy. Often forgotten. It's amazing.

2:11:31

- So there's always this limit, and Hitler quite brilliantly, once he gets some power, he takes it all, complete.

2:11:41

- He completely emasculates Mussolini, and... He likes him, though. It's really weird.

2:11:47

Even when Mussolini is about to fall in July 1943, he has a meeting at Feltre just literally a few days before Mussolini tumbles, and he does that because he likes Mussolini.

2:12:00

He likes him as a man and thinks he's been his friend, and, you know, he respects him to a certain extent, even though he definitely views himself as top dog. Hitler does, that is.

2:12:11

So it's kind of curious, because I don't think Hitler particularly likes any one, really, but he does seem to like Mussolini.

2:12:17

But anyway, the problem with Mussolini is, Mussolini's Italy 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 why Mussolini takes place in the first place.

2:12:33

You know, again, there's been this terrible disruption.

2:12:36

There's been financial crisis.

2:12:39

That leads to kind of people looking at an alternative.

2:12:42

And what's the alternative?

2:12:43

Well, Mussolini is going, you know, we can be proud Italians again, lots of chest thumping, you know, wearing great uniforms, all the rest of it.

2:12:50

People kind of think, well, you know, I'll have a piece of that.

2:12:52

And it kind of works, and proverbially the trains work on time under him, and so on and so forth.

2:12:57

But he just gets ahead of himself. You know?

2:12:59

And actually, the writing's on the wall in 1935 when he goes into Abyssinia, and, you know, again, sort of what effectively are kind of by First World European standards primitive tribesmen in Abyssinia, you know, they have quite a tough fight there.

2:13:15

You know, they do prevail, but it's not a complete walkover, and they get a bit of a bloody nose at times, and they shouldn't have done.

2:13:22

And they're just not ready.

2:13:22

They don't have the industry.

2:13:26

You know, they're tied up into the Mediterranean.

2:13:28

They don't have access to the world's oceans.

2:13:29

They do have some merchant shipping, but not a huge amount.

2:13:33

You know, they just don't have what is required.

2:13:36

They're dependent on Britain for coal.

2:13:38

Britain is the leading coal exporter in the world in the 1930s.

2:13:41

So Britain's approach to fascist Spain and approach to fascist Italy has been very much sort of stick and carrot.

2:13:50

It's like, you know, we'll let you do what you do as long as you kind of stay in your box, and, you know, we'll continue to provide you with supplies and coal and whatever it is you need as long as you don't kind of go too far.

2:14:05

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.

2:14:15

But Germany, you know, they signed the Axis Pact of Steel in May 1939 where they become formal allies.

2:14:21

This is Hitler and Mussolini, Italy and Germany.

2:14:25

But it's always a very, very unequal partnership right from the word go.

2:14:28

One of the reasons Mussolini signs it is because he fears that Germany has designs on Italy. - Yeah.

2:14:35

- It's not because he thinks, oh, these guys are great.

2:14:37

They're our natural bedfellows. It's so that he can...

2:14:40

It's a mutually convenient pact whereby Germany gets on with whatever it wants to do up in Northern Europe and Eastern Europe.

2:14:49

Italy is given a free hand to do whatever it wants to do.

2:14:51

They'll just kind of watch each other's backs. They have borders.

2:14:54

You know, Austria and Italy border one another, and they'll just do their own thing.

2:14:59

And they'll kind of help each other out with supplies and stuff.

2:15:02

But basically, they won't, they'll be their own, it's a kind of marriage of convenience.

2:15:08

You know, they're never expecting to be fighting alongside each other on the battlefield. Not really.

2:15:12

There is a kind of obligation to do so, but it's an obligation with no expectation of ever actually happening.

2:15:20

And so from Mussolini's point of view, the Pact of Steel is just kind of, you know, it's just sailing your flag to one particular mast and kind of trying to cover your back.

2:15:29

And so as long as he plays his cards right, you know, he can still get his coal supplies from Britain.

2:15:34

He doesn't have to worry about that.

2:15:35

You know, the Pact of Steel doesn't make any difference to that.

2:15:39

The problem for him is that in June 1940, he thinks that France is about to be defeated and that Britain will surely follow.

2:15:47

And so he thinks, ah, I've got some rich pickings.

2:15:49

I can take Malta or I can take British possessions. I can overrun Egypt.

2:15:54

And now is my time, but I also need to kind of join the fight before France is completely out of the fight.

2:15:59

Otherwise, it looks like I'm a Johnny-come-lately, and I won't get those spoils because the Germans will go, yeah, you can't have all this stuff.

2:16:05

You've turned up too late.

2:16:05

You need to be in the fight.

2:16:07

So he does it what he thinks is the perfect timing.

2:16:09

And it turns out to be a catastrophic timing because of course, Britain doesn't exit the fight.

2:16:13

You know, Britain is still there.

2:16:14

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.

2:16:26

- So, you mentioned in the sea who were the dominant armies.

2:16:30

Who was dominant in the air?

2:16:32

- Well, in the air, it has to be the Luftwaffe, and it is also the Imperial Japanese, both in the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial Japanese Army.

2:16:41

They both have air forces.

2:16:42

And one of the reasons of that is because the quality of the pilots in Japan is extremely high because it's so difficult to get to the top position.

2:16:50

You know, you are going to your frontline squadrons with at least 500 hours in your logbook.

2:16:56

To put that into some perspective, you know, a British RAF or Luftwaffe pilot would be joining their frontline squadrons with 150 to 170 hours in the logbook.

2:17:06

So it is, these guys are disciplined to within an inch of their lives.

2:17:11

There are academic tests as well as physical endurance tests.

2:17:16

You know, they are the elite of the elite, and they are extremely good.

2:17:20

The problem they have is that there is a good number of them, but there's not that many.

2:17:27

The Luftwaffe is the largest air force in the world in 1939, but it is already at a parity in aircraft production with Britain.

2:17:36

And the French have a kind of similar-sized army, but they're very, very badly organized.

2:17:41

So they are also, they're organized into different regions, and one region is not really talking to another.

2:17:47

And one of the problems is that when Case Yellow, the invasion, the German invasion of the West starts, France's army of the air is spread throughout France and has its own little area.

2:17:56

So you have one bunch of fighters and bombers in that bloc in the Marseille area, you have another bloc on kind of, you know, the Brittany coast, and you have another bloc around Sedan, and you have another that...

2:18:07

So consequently, they're never able to kind of bring their full strength to bear.

2:18:12

So 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 Luftwaffe, because they're the aggressor, can choose how they mass their aircraft and where they attack at and when.

2:18:30

So in other words you can send, the Luftwaffe can send over overwhelming amounts of bombers and fighter planes and pulverize a French airfield and catch them napping.

2:18:39

Because the French don't have a defense system, they can't see whether they're coming.

2:18:43

So their only hope is to take off and just hope, they stooge around the sky and hope they bump into some Luftwaffe.

2:18:48

And of course, that's inherently inefficient and they can all, they get destroyed in penny packets rather than en masse.

2:18:56

The difference with the RAF is the RAF is not done on an Air Force basis where each air corps or air fleet has a handful of bombers, a handful of fighters, a handful of reconnaissance planes.

2:19:11

They have different commands.

2:19:12

So they have bomber command, fighter command, training command, coastal command, and they all have very specific roles.

2:19:17

So they're structured in a completely different way. And the other...

2:19:20

And that's because they're an island nation.

2:19:23

And because they see their role militarily in a different way.

2:19:28

And because the rearming that Britain has done in the 1930s is all about defense.

2:19:33

It is not about aggression at this point, not about taking it to the enemy.

2:19:36

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.

2:19:43

So this is the principle behind the first, world's first fully coordinated air defense system, which is the radar chain, it is the observer corps, it is control rooms, it is interesting technology such as identification friend-or-foe, IFF, which is where you have a little pulse which...

2:20:00

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 engaged in the enemy, little lights come on and show you.

2:20:10

You can see weather maps.

2:20:10

You can see the cloud ceiling.

2:20:13

You see all that at a glance.

2:20:15

Then you're on a dais and then down in front of you is a massive great map of southern England.

2:20:19

You've got croupiers sort of moving plots.

2:20:22

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 corps...

2:20:31

You have overlapping observer corps stations all over Britain covering every single inch of airspace over Britain, looking up into the air and seeing how many aircraft there are and at what height they are.

2:20:43

And you have little things called a pantograph, which is a piece of equipment which helps you judge altitude.

2:20:49

You then ring through that.

2:20:51

That all comes into the control room along with the information from the radar stations, which is going into a single filter room at Fighter Command headquarters, which is then being pushed straight back out to the sector stations.

2:21:04

So, this information is being updated all the time.

2:21:06

So, you have a plot and it looks like it might be, you know, enemy bombers 30 plus, for example.

2:21:13

That's constantly being adapted.

2:21:15

So, as more information comes in, you will change that.

2:21:17

And then you can see that actually it's only 20 aircraft or 22 aircraft or whatever.

2:21:21

So, you're updating that and that little figure is put on your little plot and moved across. And so you can see...

2:21:27

And then because you can identify your own aircraft, you can then see where they are moving...

2:21:32

And you're also on, the guys in the air are on the radio to ground controllers who are in these control rooms.

2:21:40

And they're saying, okay, well, if you proceed at, you know, angel's 18, 18,000 feet, you know, on a vector of, you know, 150 degrees, you should be seeing your enemy bombing formation any moment now.

2:21:53

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.

2:21:59

Which means you're in the air so that all they're doing is hitting a grass airfield.

2:22:03

Which you've already got bulldozers and diggers and graders and lots of scalpings and earth ready to fill in the potholes.

2:22:11

And it means you're good to go.

2:22:13

And it means, as a consequence of all that, when the Germans do launch their all-out assault on Adlertag, Eagle Day on the 13th of August 1940, the British are ready.

2:22:23

You know, they can see them coming.

2:22:25

They know what to expect. And they can anticipate.

2:22:28

And it means that they're caught with their trousers down on the ground.

2:22:32

And as a consequence of that, of the 138 airfields there are in, RAF airfields there are in Britain, only one of them is knocked out for more than 48 hours in the entire summer of 1940.

2:22:42

And that's Manston on the tip of the Kent Coast, which is abandoned for the duration.

2:22:48

- So these are the two biggest air forces.

2:22:50

- So those are the two biggest air forces.

2:22:52

- The Luftwaffe, we should say, the German, I mean they're like the legendary, the terrifying air force. - They are.

2:23:04

They're slightly believing their own hype.

2:23:07

There's no question about it.

2:23:08

- Well, the rest of the world is also, right?

2:23:09

- They've just had it too easy.

2:23:10

So they don't have ground controllers.

2:23:12

They don't have an air defense system in Germany because why would you need an air defense system?

2:23:16

We're gonna be the aggressor. You know?

2:23:18

There's no scenario where we'll have to defend the airspace of the Third Reich because we're on the offensive.

2:23:26

So they just haven't prepared it.

2:23:27

- So there's that clash, the Battle of Britain, the clash of air forces.

2:23:31

What explains the success of Britain in defending?

2:23:36

- Well, it's, I mean, and everyone always says, the few were the last line of defense against the Nazi hordes and all this kind of stuff.

2:23:43

And it's just, it's all rubbish.

2:23:46

They're the first line of defense.

2:23:47

The second line of defense is the Royal Navy, which is the world's largest.

2:23:50

And there's absolutely no chance on Earth that a German invasion force made up of Rhine river barges, one out of every three is motorized and the other two aren't, is ever gonna get successfully across the English Channel.

2:24:05

And even if they did, they will be repulsed.

2:24:07

I mean, it's just no chance.

2:24:09

And it is often forgotten that while the Luftwaffe is coming over and bombing Britain every single day, so is the RAF going over and bombing Germany.

2:24:17

And one of the problems that the Germans have is that these bombers need fighter protection.

2:24:22

Fighter planes are there to protect the bombers.

2:24:25

And they don't have much fuel.

2:24:28

And the Messerschmitt 109E, the Emil, as the model is of 1940, is the mainstay of the German fighter force in the summer of 1940.

2:24:36

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 Pas de Calais, which is the closest point.

2:24:52

That's where the channel is, it's narrowest and all the rest of it.

2:24:55

And also in the north of Normandy.

2:24:57

And that's where they're flying from.

2:24:59

But what that means is that even if you're completely rubbish at bombing, which the British are in 1940, they haven't developed those navigational aids that create untold accuracy by the end of the war.

2:25:10

In 1940, they don't have that luxury.

2:25:13

It's a target rich environment.

2:25:15

I mean, you can barely miss if you go over to the Pas de Calais.

2:25:19

I mean, it's literally just like one huge great kind of hub of fighter airfields.

2:25:24

And consequently, that means that every single German squadron, which only is 12 airplanes strong on establishment and very often even fewer than that, always has to leave two airplanes behind to defend their own airfields.

2:25:36

And it's really interesting when you look at prisoner war statements from Luftwaffe ground crew that have been downed, they're all bugged in a holding place called Trent Park.

2:25:43

You can see the transcripts of these conversations.

2:25:44

They're all going about how annoying it was that the RAF are over every night and they can't sleep.

2:25:49

And if only they just shut up and leave them alone and not bomb them.

2:25:53

And this is just part of the narrative of the Battle of Britain that's completely left out.

2:25:57

It's always the stocky, the plucky few against the kind of the Nazi hordes and all the rest of it. And it's just...

2:26:03

It's a complete misnomer.

2:26:04

And by that time, aircraft production in Britain is massively outpacing the Germans.

2:26:09

And the best ratio that the Germans achieve in 1940 is July 1940, when the British produce 496 new Hurricanes and Spitfires, single engine fighters, and the Germans only produce 240 single engine fighters. That's the best ratio.

2:26:26

And of course, you know, that is the British outproducing the Germans two to one.

2:26:30

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, the single engine fighter force of Luftwaffe is less than 200 from 750 or whatever it was in the beginning of July.

2:26:46

Whereas the British fighter force had been 650 or whatever at the beginning of July is now well over 750.

2:26:53

- And Britain is outproducing...

2:26:55

- Yeah, but to a massive degree. And that continues.

2:26:58

And that is a ratio that just increases as the war progresses.

2:27:03

I mean, Britain produces 132,500 aircraft in the Second World War.

2:27:09

America produces 315,000.

2:27:12

- [Lex] So why is there this legend of the Luftwaffe?

2:27:16

- Well, because it's the spearhead of the Blitzkrieg.

2:27:19

- So it has to do with the Blitzkrieg.

2:27:20

- It's all to do with the Blitzkrieg.

2:27:21

The Luftwaffe becomes the kind of the bogeyman of the Third Reich.

2:27:26

You know, they're blamed for everything.

2:27:27

But that's because they're completely abused.

2:27:29

They're the only part of the Third Reich's armed services, only part of the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht being the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force, that is in constant use the whole time, or constant abuse, I should say.

2:27:45

In Britain and America, they rotate their pilots really, really carefully.

2:27:50

By the time that, you know, you've got the Eighth Fighter Command, for example, part of the mighty Eighth Air Force operating in Britain, by the end of 1943, you would have in a squadron that would have 60, you would never have more than 16 airborne from a squadron at any one time.

2:28:07

You would have 40 to 45 pilots to serve as 16 in the air and a similar number of aircraft, which means you're not overusing these guys.

2:28:15

And what would happen is by that stage of the war, by 1943, you know, a young fighter pilot coming to a Thunderbolt squadron or a Mustang squadron, for example, at the end of 1943, beginning of 1944, he'd have 350 hours of consecutive flying.

2:28:30

Because you can train in America, in Florida, or California, or Texas, or wherever, you can process many, many more people because the training is much more intense because you've got clear skies.

2:28:42

So you're not, it's not a question of, oh, we'd like to take you out, Fritz, this morning, but you know, it's a bit cloudy and oh, the RAF are over or, you know, the Eighth Air Force are over, so we can't fly today.

2:28:53

So in Germany, pilot training is constantly, air crew training is constantly being interrupted by the war, by shortage of fuel, by inclement weather, et cetera, et cetera.

2:29:03

In America, you have none of those problems.

2:29:06

And Britain, because of its global reach, also has training bases in what was Rhodesia and now Zimbabwe and South Africa, in Canada as well.

2:29:13

And so you're able to process these guys much better.

2:29:17

You're able to give them more training.

2:29:18

So when they come, they're absolutely the finished article as pilots.

2:29:21

What they're not the finished article as is, say, a bomber pilot or as a fighter pilot.

2:29:26

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.

2:29:34

So you arrive at, I don't know, let's say, some airfield in Suffolk, in East Anglia, in England.

2:29:41

And, you know, you'll have 10 days to two weeks, acclimatizing, getting used to it.

2:29:45

The old hands will put you through your paces, give you some tips.

2:29:50

You can pick their brains during, kind of while you're having some chow and listening on some briefings.

2:29:56

Then the first mission you do will be a milk run over to France where the danger is kind of pretty minimal.

2:30:00

You know, you can build up your experience.

2:30:03

So by the time you're actually sent over on a mission to Berlin or Bremen or, you know, the Ruhr or whatever, you're absolutely the business.

2:30:11

So qualitatively and quantitatively, you are just vastly superior to anything the Luftwaffe has got.

2:30:17

The Luftwaffe by that stage, in contrast, 1940, new pilots coming to frontline squadrons with 150, 170 hours in their logbooks.

2:30:27

Less than 100, 100, 90, 92 hours, something like that. It's not enough.

2:30:32

And they're just being flung straight into battle and they're getting absolutely slaughtered.

2:30:37

And there's also, because their machines are quite complicated, there's no two-seaters really.

2:30:41

So no two-seater trainers.

2:30:43

So the first time you're flying in your Focke-Wulf 190 or your Messerschmitt 109, it's this horrendous leap of faith for which you as a young, bright Luftwaffe fighter pilot know that you're not ready for this. And it can bite you.

2:30:58

Something like a Messerschmitt 109 has a very high wing loading.

2:31:04

So it's very maneuverable in the air, but it's got these tiny wings.

2:31:06

It's got this incredible torque.

2:31:08

It's Daimler-Benz DB 605 engine with its huge amount of torque.

2:31:11

And it just wants to flip you over.

2:31:13

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 could just crash.

2:31:18

So in the first couple of months of 1944, they lose something like 2,400 aircraft in the air and pilots, and about 3,400 are accidents.

2:31:30

- So it has to do with training, really. - Yeah. - Not training enough.

2:31:33

- It's training and resources and supply.

2:31:37

And the Second World War, more than any other conflict, is a war of numbers.

2:31:43

There are differences, the decisions that generals can make...

2:31:47

There are moments where particular brilliance and bravery can seize the day, take the bridge, you know, hold the enemy at bay or whatever.

2:31:58

But ultimately, you're talking about differences which might make a month's difference, six months difference, maybe even several years difference.

2:32:07

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 gonna win are at.

2:32:18

- So in that sense, you could think of World War II as a battle of factories. - Yes.

2:32:26

- What does it take to win in the battle of factories, in out-manufacturing military equipment against the Allies?

2:32:36

- It's efficiency, really.

2:32:38

So I always kind of, you know, I always think.

2:32:40

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.

2:32:48

- I think you've said it doesn't get the respect it deserves, maybe?

2:32:52

- It doesn't get the respect it deserves.

2:32:53

So the Sherman tank, the 75-millimeter main battle gun, which has a medium velocity, can fire a shell around 2,000 feet per second, compared to the notorious infamous German 88-millimeter, which can fire at third fast again, like 3,000 feet per second.

2:33:09

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.

2:33:19

Tiger tank is 58 tons, looks scary, is scary, it's got a massive gun, got really thick armor.

2:33:25

Sherman tank doesn't have as thick armor, doesn't have a gun that's as big, it should be an absolute walkover.

2:33:31

And yet, at about 5:30 p. m.

2:33:33

on Monday the 26th of June 1944, a Sherman tank came around the corner of a road called Rue Massieux, a little village called Fontenay-le-Pesnel in Normandy, came face to face with a Tiger tank and won. How does this happen?

2:33:47

Well, I'll tell you how it happened, because the commander of the Sherman tank was experienced, had one up the spout.

2:33:53

What I mean by that is he had an armor-piercing round already in the breach.

2:33:56

As soon as he saw the Tiger tank, he just said, fire.

2:33:59

That armor-piercing round did not penetrate the Tiger tank, it was never going to.

2:34:03

But what it did do is 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.

2:34:11

And that caused spalling, which is the little shards of, little bits of molten metal, which then hit the driver of the Tiger tank in the head.

2:34:19

And he was screaming, you know, gotten him or whatever, and you know, couldn't really see.

2:34:24

The moment they got hit, the commander of the Tiger tank retreated into the turret of the Tiger.

2:34:30

The moment you retreat into a turret, you can't see.

2:34:34

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.

2:34:42

Immediately after that, the armor-piercing round from the Sherman tank was repeated by a number of high-explosive rounds, which are rounds which kind of, you know, detonate, have a little minor charge.

2:34:52

Then there's a second charge, which creates lots of smoke.

2:34:54

And in moments, in the first 30 seconds, 10 rounds from that Sherman tank had hit the Tiger tank before the Tiger tank had unleashed a single round itself.

2:35:04

And the crew then surrendered.

2:35:08

So you didn't need to destroy the Tiger tank, you just need to stop it operating.

2:35:11

If it hasn't got a crew, it's just a chunk of metal that's inoperable.

2:35:15

So that's all you need to do.

2:35:17

And what that tells you is that experience counts, training counts, the agility of the Sherman tank also counts.

2:35:26

It's a smaller shell, therefore it's easy to manhandle, which means you can put more in a breach quicker.

2:35:31

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.

2:35:37

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 turret before the gunner, who is down in the belly of the turret, can react.

2:35:48

There's many different factors of it, but the main fact of all is that of 1,347 Tigers built, there were 49,000 Shermans.

2:35:56

So that means there's 36 Shermans to every single Tiger.

2:35:59

- So you actually have an incredible video, you talk about this a lot from different angles, about the top five tanks and the bottom five tanks of World War II. I think...

2:36:11

Was it the Tiger that made both the top five and the bottom five?

2:36:13

- [James] The problem with the Tiger tanks is it's really huge.

2:36:15

- We should say though...

2:36:16

You keep saying the problem, but one of the pros of the Tiger tank... - It's really huge. - It's...

2:36:22

I mean the psychological warfare aspect of it, it's terrifying. - Yes.

2:36:26

- So I don't know what the other pros are...

2:36:28

I guess, yeah, the 88mm...

2:36:30

- The high velocity and all the rest of it.

2:36:32

You know, it's pretty fearsome, but there are pragmatic problems.

2:36:35

The big problem is the Germans are incapable of mass production on a scale that Americans can do, frankly, even the British can do.

2:36:43

They're just not in that league.

2:36:45

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.

2:36:51

They can't get this stuff.

2:36:52

It hasn't gone terribly well in the Soviet Union.

2:36:54

They can't process it and they're being bombed 24 hours a day.

2:36:58

And so all their factories are, having to split them all up and that is inherently inefficient because they're having to move different parts around...

2:37:06

And, you know, you're then having the whole process of having to travel from one place to another to get stuff.

2:37:10

You haven't got much fuel.

2:37:14

So the consequence of that is that what you do is you think, okay, we can't mass produce, so let's make really brilliant tanks.

2:37:20

But they've lost sight of what really brilliant is.

2:37:23

You know, really brilliant to their eyes is big, scary, big gun, lots of armor.

2:37:30

But actually what conflict in World War II shows you is that you need more than that.

2:37:36

You need ease of maintenance, you need reliability.

2:37:39

And the problem with having the bigger the tank, the more complex the maintenance equipment is.

2:37:46

You know, you need a bigger hoist, which then means you need a bigger truck, which then uses more fuel.

2:37:50

So for example, the Tiger tank is so big that it doesn't fit on the loading gauge of the European railway system.

2:37:57

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.

2:38:06

Then you have to take them off, then you have to take off the tracks, put on combat tracks, then move them into battle and hope that they don't break down.

2:38:12

The problem is when you have, you start the war, it'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...

2:38:24

Is you've got lots of people who don't know how to drive.

2:38:26

It also means you haven't got lots of garages and mechanics and gas stations and so on.

2:38:33

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.

2:38:41

And that's the beauty of the Sherman tank.

2:38:43

You know, all those guys in America, they're used to driving stick cars.

2:38:46

You know, there's three people for every automobile, you know, and that includes, you know, the old and children.

2:38:51

So almost every young man knows how to drive.

2:38:54

And when you get into a Sherman tank, it's got a clutch, it's got a throttle, the brakes are the steering mechanism, the clutch is where you would expect the clutch to be, it's got a manual shift.

2:39:04

You put your foot on the clutch and you shove it into second gear and off you go or reverse or whatever.

2:39:08

And it literally couldn't be easier.

2:39:10

Anyone who can drive a stick car could drive a Sherman tank. Seriously.

2:39:12

Not everyone can drive a Tiger tank. It's incredibly complex. Really, really is.

2:39:18

That comes with a whole host of problems.

2:39:21

And of course, you don't have the numbers.

2:39:24

You don't have the numbers.

2:39:26

You know, you've got 1,347 of them.

2:39:29

You've got 492 King Tigers, which are even bigger.

2:39:32

And, you know, at a time where you are really short of fuel, you're really short of absolutely everything.

2:39:37

And those shells are huge and they're harder to manhandle.

2:39:40

And weird little things that the Germans do, you know, for all their design genius, the loader is always on the right hand side.

2:39:46

Now, in the 1920s and 1910s and '30s, children were taught to be right handed.

2:39:52

You weren't allowed to be left handed.

2:39:54

So you were right handed.

2:39:55

So you wanna be on the left hand side of the gun so you can take the shell from your right and swivel it into the breach from your right side.

2:40:05

But the loader in a Jagdpanther or a Panther or a Tiger is always on the right hand side of the breach, which is, ergonomically, makes no sense whatsoever. Why do they do this?

2:40:15

I've never found an answer to this, but, you know, so there's all these little things.

2:40:19

And as a soldier coming up against, you know, you are an American GI and you're coming up against a Tiger tank.

2:40:25

You don't care about the fact that it's difficult to maintain or the problems involved in trying to get it to the battlefield.

2:40:31

All you care about is there's 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.

2:40:38

That's all you care about.

2:40:38

And quite understandably so.

2:40:41

But those who are protracting the war at a higher level and historians that come subsequently and look at all this stuff, they do need to worry about all these things.

2:40:50

I remember the same Georg Thomas, the architect of the Hunger Plan, I found these 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 counter attacks outside Moscow in the winter of 1941.

2:41:07

And it's a meeting about weaponry, and this is a verbatim quote.

2:41:13

He says, "We have to stop making such complete and aesthetic weapons."

2:41:19

In other words, we've consciously been building over-engineered and aesthetically pleasing weapons up until this point.

2:41:26

And they sort of half manage it, but don't quite.

2:41:31

- We could probably talk for many hours about each of these topics.

2:41:35

We could talk for 10 hours about tanks.

2:41:37

I encourage people to listen to your podcast, World War II pod, "We Have Ways of Making You Talk". It's great. - Yeah, we also do...

2:41:48

We've got a new YouTube channel and website called World War II Headquarters.

2:41:54

There are lots of walking the ground and videos of that and all sorts of stuff and little explainers of getting around tanks and stuff and the weaponry and documents and photographic archives.

2:42:08

So, the idea is to sort of turn it into a kind of real hub of...

2:42:11

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.

2:42:18

So, like I said, we could probably talk for many hours about each of these topics, but let's look at some of the battles and maybe you can tell me which jumps out at you.

2:42:25

I wanna talk to you about the Western Front and definitely talk about Normandy.

2:42:32

But, so, there was the Battle of Midway in 1942, which is a naval battle.

2:42:37

There's Eastern Front Stalingrad, probably the deadliest battle in human history.

2:42:45

Then there's the Battle of Kursk, which is a tank battle, the largest tank battle in history, probably the largest battle, period, in history.

2:42:55

6,000 tanks, 2 million troops, 4,000 aircraft.

2:42:59

And then that takes us also to the Battle of the Bulge in Normandy, the Italian campaign that you talk a lot about.

2:43:06

So, what do you think is interesting to try to extract some wisdom from before we get to Normandy?

2:43:15

Do you find, as a historian, the Battle of Kursk or the Battle of Stalingrad more interesting?

2:43:21

Stalingrad is often seen as the turning point.

2:43:23

- Well, yeah, I think so.

2:43:24

I mean, it's really interesting.

2:43:29

So, they get through 1941.

2:43:31

Barbarosa doesn't happen as the Germans hope it will.

2:43:35

The whole point is to completely destroy the Red Army in three months and that just doesn't happen.

2:43:40

And I think you can argue and argue convincingly that by, let's say, beginning of December 1941, Germany is just not gonna win. It just can't.

2:43:51

And let me tell you what I mean by that.

2:43:53

So, if you take an arbitrary date, let's say the 15th of June 1941, Germany at that moment had one enemy, which is Great Britain, albeit Great Britain plus dominion empire.

2:44:04

Fast forward six months to let's say the 16th of December, it's got three enemies.

2:44:10

It's got Great Britain, dominion empire, USSR, and the USA.

2:44:16

It is just not going to win.

2:44:18

You know, for all the talks of wonder weapons and all the rest of it, it's just not going to.

2:44:21

You know, it has lost that battle.

2:44:24

Having said that, the Soviet Union is still in a really, really bad situation.

2:44:30

It is being helped out a huge amount by supplies from the United States and from Britain.

2:44:38

Just unprecedented amounts of material being sent through the Arctic or across Alaska into the Soviet Union at that time.

2:44:46

It is absolutely staggering how much is committed by Roosevelt and Churchill to try and stem the flow in the Soviet Union.

2:44:56

Because for all the announcements and the pride that the Soviet Union has about moving factories to the other side of the Urals and stuff, which they do in 1941, huge amounts are overrun intact by the Germans in the opening stages of Barbarossa.

2:45:11

I mean, really, you know, colossal losses, huge amounts.

2:45:15

The grain is gone, coal is gone, entire factories have gone, steel production goes down by 80% in the Soviet Union in 1941 and in 1942.

2:45:25

In 1942, despite the vast amount of numbers of men that they have at their hands, they create 80 new divisions in the second half of 1941, for example.

2:45:36

I mean, Britain never has 80 divisions in the entire Second World War, division being about, rule of thumb, 15,000 men.

2:45:42

So, you know, despite that, and that is because Stalin's meddling, the woeful state of the Red Army in 1941, et cetera, et cetera, which we've already sort of touched upon.

2:45:53

So, 1942 is still in a really bad way, but Germany is in a really bad way too.

2:45:58

The attrition it suffered in 1941, it's winning itself to death in 1941.

2:46:05

So, it's having these huge great encirclements like the encirclement of Kiev in September 1941, you know, capturing the further best part of 700,000 Red Army troops, et cetera, et cetera.

2:46:15

But in the process of doing that, it is constantly being attrited, both in battle casualties, but in also mechanical casualties too. Just can't cope.

2:46:22

The scale is just too big.

2:46:27

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.

2:46:40

And, you know, you can say what you like about him, but he just hasn't had the military training to do that.

2:46:47

He might have amazing attention to detail.

2:46:48

He might be able to understand 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.

2:46:58

He's never been to staff college.

2:47:00

You know, he might have read lots about Frederick the Great.

2:47:03

I mean, I've read lots of history, but that doesn't mean to say I'd be a competent field marshal.

2:47:07

So, he is not the right person for the job at all, and he micromanages, and he looks at figures and figures and doesn't understand what it's like at the actual front, the coalface.

2:47:17

So, 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.

2:47:30

So he's basically making them go into battle with decreasing amounts of supplies and firepower and with one hand behind their back in terms of decision-making process, and that is not a good combination.

2:47:42

The other problem is that he decides rather than going from Moscow in 1942, because basically there's a kind of cooling off period in the winter because of the conditions, but everyone knows the Soviet Union, the Red Army knows that the moment spring comes, there's gonna be another offensive, there'd be another major offensive in the summer.

2:47:58

That is absolutely as certain as, you know, day following night, et cetera.

2:48:03

The problem that the Germans have is they just don't have enough.

2:48:05

They have less than they had when they launched Barbarossa the previous year.

2:48:09

The Soviet Union has more. It is better prepared.

2:48:13

It knows what's coming now.

2:48:13

It's kind of learning some of the lessons, starting to absorb the lessons.

2:48:17

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 freakery.

2:48:29

What Hitler decides is rather than going from Moscow, he's gonna go for the oil fields.

2:48:33

And this is absolutely insane because what's gonna happen when they get to the oil fields?

2:48:38

Does he think really that the Soviet Union are gonna let those oil fields come into German hands intact?

2:48:45

Even if he does let them get in intact, what are they gonna do with that oil?

2:48:50

I mean, oil needs to be refined.

2:48:53

Where are you gonna refine it?

2:48:53

They don't have any oil...

2:48:56

They don't have many oil refineries.

2:48:57

How are you gonna ship that oil to where you need it to be in the factories and the Third Reich and into your, you know, process into gasoline and then get it into diesel and get it to your U-boats, get it to your tanks, get it to your armored units?

2:49:12

How are you gonna do that?

2:49:12

How do you transport it from the Caucasus, which is a long, long way away from Berlin?

2:49:19

How are you gonna do that? There's no pipelines.

2:49:21

There's only some pipelines, they've been built by American money and American engineering and they're going backwards towards the Urals, not forwards.

2:49:28

They have no more rail capacity whatsoever.

2:49:31

They just don't have the oil tankers.

2:49:33

So it's just, it is absolute la-la land.

2:49:36

It is incredible that when you look at the detailed literature that the Germans have, no one is asking this question in the spring and early summer of 1942.

2:49:46

- The logistics question in part.

2:49:48

- No one is saying, okay, it's great that we're gonna go to the Caucasus and get all this oil, but then what?

2:49:53

No one is asking that question.

2:49:55

- Nor how you provide resources and feed the soldiers and all that kind of stuff. I mean it's...

2:50:00

- So the Case Blue, first of all, they get distracted by going into Crimea and they go, well, we've got to do that first.

2:50:05

So they have to get Sevastopol and the Crimea, which they do.

2:50:09

And then they have to push on.

2:50:11

And at this point, suddenly looming in front of them is Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga, this city, this industrial city, which has Stalin's name.

2:50:22

And Hitler goes, okay, what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna split my forces, so half of you can go south towards the Caucasus and the rest of you can confront Stalingrad.

2:50:31

And Bock, who's the commander, just goes, that's nuts.

2:50:35

That makes no sense whatsoever.

2:50:37

You're splitting the mission. So Hitler fires him.

2:50:42

So suddenly they get into this assault for Stalingrad and it becomes this sort of street fight.

2:50:49

Street fighting is the worst kind of fighting.

2:50:51

I mean, the reason why the Israelis have just blown everything up in Gaza is because otherwise you can't see.

2:50:56

You know, you need a field of fire.

2:50:57

This is, fighting in a build-up area is horrendous. - Yeah.

2:51:01

To clarify, we're talking about urban warfare, door to door, building to building.

2:51:05

- It's incredibly difficult.

2:51:07

And home advantage is colossal in this instance.

2:51:10

And of course, it's piping hot when they attack in kind of August into early September.

2:51:14

And then it suddenly gets very, very cold.

2:51:15

And at the same time, American mechanization, and slightly a British mechanization, but primarily American trucks are enabling Zhukov to plan this great pincer movement.

2:51:28

So it is, you know, and Russians will hate me for saying this and I probably will get a whole load of bots on the back of it, but the truth is is it is not the street fighting that destroys 6th army.

2:51:42

It is the encirclement, the subsequent encirclement.

2:51:45

So the Germans have been sucked into this street battle in Stalingrad. We cannot give up. We cannot give up. We cannot back down. We cannot pull out.

2:51:53

We've gotta destroy this city.

2:51:56

Meanwhile, while their backs are turned and while most of their forces are going off to the Caucasus on a wild goose chase for absolutely zero oil, incidentally, and they never get remotely close to Baku, this huge great pincer movement is being planned.

2:52:11

And it is only possible through mechanization from the United States.

2:52:18

And that is the big turning point because from that moment onwards, the Germans are on the back foot.

2:52:23

They're basically going backwards.

2:52:25

There are little small counter attacks.

2:52:27

There is obviously the Kursk salient, for example, but it's game over.

2:52:33

You know, the catastrophe of the surrender of... The final...

2:52:37

I mean, the writing's on the wall at the end of 1942, by November 1942, when the two Soviet fronts meet up, then, you know, there is no possible chance of escape for 6th army. They are consigned. They are toast.

2:52:52

And their final surrender obviously happens at the very beginning of February 1943, but that's all over.

2:52:56

And 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.

2:53:08

And the problem there is the amount of equipment that is lost in North Africa is greater than it is at Stalingrad.

2:53:14

I don't think you could argue that psychologically Tunisia is a greater loss than Stalingrad. It absolutely isn't.

2:53:22

But you have to see them in tandem as this is two fronts.

2:53:25

This is Eastern front, Southern Western front.

2:53:29

And this is the first time that the Americans have been on the ground against Axis forces, and they lose big time.

2:53:35

The Allies become masters of the North African shores on the 13th of May 1943. And it is a catastrophe.

2:53:41

And in that time, 2,700 aircraft have been...

2:53:44

Luftwaffe aircraft have been destroyed over North Africa between November 1942 and May 1943.

2:53:50

And overall, there's a subsequent that summer as well. It's really interesting.

2:53:54

The Luftwaffe loses between June and October 1943, so this is including the Kursk battle, which that takes place in July 1943.

2:54:03

In that period, the Luftwaffe loses 702 aircraft over the Eastern front, but 3,704 aircraft over the Mediterranean.

2:54:13

So I think one has to also...

2:54:15

One of the lessons about studying the Second World War is one has to be careful not to assign strategic importance to boots on the ground.

2:54:22

It can be of great strategic importance, but not necessarily.

2:54:25

You know, no one would argue, for example, that the Guadalcanal is not an absolutely game-changing battle 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 tiny in comparison.

2:54:40

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.

2:54:52

And it's not saying that the Western front is more strategic either.

2:54:54

It's just you have to kind of be balanced about this.

2:54:57

The psychological blow though of Stalingrad is immense, and you cannot belittle that.

2:55:02

- I mean there's, we went over it really fast, but there is a human drama element.

2:55:08

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.

2:55:18

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.

2:55:28

- And I also think that what's interesting is the Nazi high command's response to Stalingrad, which is not to go, we're screwed. It's to double down. It's... You know...

2:55:38

So Goebbels, for example, gives his infamous speech in the Sportpalast in the third week of February 1943, where he goes, are you ready for this, you know? This is now total war. The war is coming.

2:55:49

This is a fight for survival.

2:55:49

We're all in it together. You are in this as well.

2:55:55

You know, every single one, every single German is now.

2:55:57

This is a fight for survival.

2:55:57

And we are now in total war.

2:56:02

And everyone is just so depressed by this.

2:56:06

I mean, they realize that they are going to reap what they have sown.

2:56:13

Because everyone knows what's been going on in the Eastern Front.

2:56:15

Because the first part of the war, Germans have loads and loads of cameras.

2:56:19

They're really into photographing everything, taking silly footage of everything.

2:56:22

It's all part of the recording the greatness of the Reich and the triumphs of the Reich. They want to record it.

2:56:26

So all this stuff is a bit like the radios, it's made very, very cheap, so lots will have it.

2:56:29

And people are sending it all back.

2:56:31

And the people that are developing this stuff are all seeing it and people are talking about it.

2:56:35

And then it's been sent to families and they're all seeing it.

2:56:37

And they're seeing pictures of Jews being rounded up and beaten.

2:56:42

And they're seeing Ukrainian partisans being executed.

2:56:47

And they're seeing villages being torched. And everyone knows. They all know. - Yeah...

2:56:54

- This whole idea is, do they really know what was going on? Yeah, they do.

2:56:57

They do know what's going on.

2:57:00

You know, to lesser or greater detail, of course. Some people who don't.

2:57:05

And a bit like people know about the news today, some people do, some people don't.

2:57:09

Oh, I never read the newspaper.

2:57:09

I never listen to the news.

2:57:11

So, you have that, of course.

2:57:13

But it is widely understood and widely known that really brutal things have been going on in the East...

2:57:21

And troops are coming back utterly traumatized by what they have taken part in, what they have witnessed, the kind of unspeakable brutality.

2:57:29

This is war on a completely different level to anything that's been kind of seen in recent years.

2:57:35

- Yeah, we should mention that the Western Front and the Eastern Front are very different in this regard.

2:57:41

So a lot of the Holocaust by bullets, the Holocaust with the concentration camps, extermination camps is not in Germany, is not in the Western Front, is in Poland, it's in the Soviet Union.

2:57:53

- Yeah, but don't forget that even Auschwitz, for example, is part of the new Reich.

2:57:58

It is part of, you know, it is part of an area which has been absorbed into Germany.

2:58:03

So as far as they're concerned, this has now got, it's now no longer got the Polish name, it's now called Auschwitz, which is a German name. It is part of Germany.

2:58:10

And there are German people moving there into this, you know, kind of, model town.

2:58:15

And they all know exactly what's going on.

2:58:17

- Yeah, you, by the way, have a nice podcast series of four episodes on Auschwitz, the evolution of the dream world town that becomes a camp, a work camp, then becomes an extermination camp...

2:58:35

- And a big Buna factory for IG Farben, which never produces a single bit of rubber.

2:58:41

- So this for sure is something I would have to dive deep in.

2:58:48

There's a book you recommended, "KL".

2:58:50

- Yes, it's just called "KL".

2:58:52

It's about the whole concentration camp system, because K is konzentration in German, lager is a camp.

2:59:01

It's an exhaustive book, and I'm full of admiration for him for writing it, just because, jeepers, it must have been so...

2:59:09

I mean, I was very depressed doing that work on Auschwitz, that deep dive.

2:59:13

I just found the whole thing utterly dispiriting.

2:59:16

And I've been there a few times, and it's ghastly.

2:59:18

So how he wrote a whole book on it, I don't know.

2:59:21

- I think in the details, there's two ways, I think, to look at the Holocaust.

2:59:27

One is "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl, sort of this philosophical thing about how a human being can confront that and find meaning. And what it means...

2:59:40

What does the human condition look like in the context of such evil?

2:59:45

And then there's the more sort of detailed, okay, well, how do you actually implement something like the Final Solution?

2:59:55

So you have this ideology of evil implemented. - Yes.

2:59:59

- And at the fine detail of what are the different technologies used, what are the different humans and 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.

3:00:16

Just get into the details.

3:00:17

And in those details I think there's some deep, profound human truth that can emerge.

3:00:22

That the mundane, one step at a time is how you can achieve evil. - Yeah.

3:00:30

- And you can get lost in the mundane.

3:00:33

- Yes, the banality of evil. It's... It's incredible.

3:00:38

I think what is so completely horrific is that half of the six million were killed by kind of bullets in the back of the head.

3:00:48

And the reason they stopped doing that and they wanted to stop doing that was because the guys, the perpetrators were finding it so traumatic.

3:00:54

You know, Himmler goes and visits an execution in Ukraine and...

3:00:59

Or maybe he's in the Baltic States, I can't remember where he goes.

3:01:01

But he witnessed some in the summer of 1941.

3:01:04

He thinks, oh, that's horrible.

3:01:04

They don't have to do that.

3:01:06

I don't want my men having to do that.

3:01:08

Gotta find a more humane way of doing it.

3:01:09

When he's talking about a more humane way of doing it, humane for the executors, executioners, not for the victims.

3:01:16

Because, trust me, Zyklon B is not a nice way to go.

3:01:20

You know, basically, it's bursting all the capillaries in your lungs, it's extremely painful and you can no longer breathe and it can take up to 20, 25 minutes.

3:01:29

You know, some people, it can take a couple of minutes.

3:01:31

But all of those who are standing naked in that gas chamber, first of all, extremely humiliated by this process in the first place.

3:01:39

Then there's a sudden realization that they're not having a shower.

3:01:43

They're actually being gassed and they're all going to die.

3:01:45

Imagine what you're thinking as that process is used.

3:01:48

Because you might be the first, but you're still gonna, even the first person is gonna know that I can't breathe and I'm dying.

3:01:54

Everyone else is gonna see the first few dying and then gonna realize that is what's gonna happen to them.

3:01:59

You've got those minutes, sometimes many minutes where you've got to contemplate that.

3:02:07

That's in extreme pain and panic.

3:02:10

Just think about how cruel that is.

3:02:14

- While being humiliated all the way through.

3:02:17

- While being humiliated all the way through.

3:02:19

And so, the inverted commas, humanity of the gas chambers is anything but. It's disgusting.

3:02:28

And the fact that people could do this is just beyond horrific.

3:02:33

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.

3:02:45

If you go to Auschwitz now and you go to the collapse of the blown-up gas chambers, which the Germans destroyed before the Russians overran them in January 1945, you can still see some of the ash ponds.

3:02:56

There are bits of bone there, they're still there from the ash.

3:02:58

It's just, it is utterly repulsive.

3:03:02