France's defeat in 1940 was not inevitable — it was caused by political division, traumatized risk-aversion from WWI, military complacency, and a catastrophic lack of modern communications, despite France being the most automotive society in Europe after the US.

(00:00:00) 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. (00:00:25) He also co-hosts a great podcast on World War II called We Have Ways of Making You Talk. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at letsfriedman.com/sponsors. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Shopify for selling stuff, Element for electrolytes, AG1 for multivitamins, and Notion for team collaboration. Choose wisely, my friends. (00:00:53) And now on to the full ad reads. I do them differently than most podcasts do. Usually I barely talk about the sponsors. Instead, just take this moment to talk about the things I'm reading or thinking about. A little Bob Ross like heart to heart between you and me. Also, unlike most podcasts, I don't do ads in the middle. (00:01:12) So they all are bunched up here in one place. You can skip them if you like. But if you do, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. If you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to alexfreeman.com slash contact. All right, let's go. This episode is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. Did you know that the legendary Silk Road was not actually a single rd? (00:01:42) but an extensive network of trade routes, connecting east and west, spanning over 7,000 miles. In the upcoming episode on Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, we touch on this, but of course silk growth spans much wider in time than the rise and the fall of the Mongol Empire. It facilitated trade and cultural exchange for over 1,500 years, roughly from 130 BC. (00:02:10) It was spices, tea, paper, gunpowder moving west, and gold, silver, glassware, and horses moving east. But I think the fascinating thing, again, is the exchange of culture and the exchange of ideas. Anyway, sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/lex, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. (00:02:36) This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix. Did you know that us humans can lose over two liters of sweat per hour during intense exercise, especially in hot conditions? I've gotten to study this particular physiological process across many, many years of my life when I had to cut a lot of weight. Sweat is fascinating, isn't it? (00:03:04) But as you sweat, you're losing sodium, potassium, magnesium, and so you have to replenish it. I think about the ultra marathon runners and the events like the Badwater Ultra Marathon. I think it's 135 miles from Death Valley. In my crazier moments, I think about doing an ultra marathon like that. Some of the coolest people I know do ultra marathons. And some of the especially coolest people I know have done the (00:03:32) Bad Water Ultra Marathon. What is it about the human mind and the human heart that pulls towards a challenge like that? It's absolutely nuts, isn't it? Anyway, get a sample pack of Element for free with any purchase. Try it at drinkelement.com slash lex. This episode is also brought to you by AG1, an all-in-one daily drink that supports better health and peak performance. Peak performance is such a fascinating concept to me. (00:04:02) Because it doesn't only entail the physical, the physiological, it also entails the psychological. Stress, lowering stress, optimizing the number of hours in a day that you spend in flow, focus doing something you're passionate about. That's a tricky one. That's hard to articulate explicitly. So we focus on things that are a little bit easier to articulate, like sleep and diet and exercise. (00:04:30) But I think about Hunter S. Thompson. And sometimes I think the top priority for health is hearing and accepting the call to adventure and figuring out the rest of the bullshit along the way. That said, I think sleep is really important. It's one of the puzzles I've been trying to figure out. But at the very least, it's good to do the low-hanging fruit of health, just do the basic bullshit, like a good multivitamin, (00:04:58) So that brings me to AG1. They'll give you one month's supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by Notion, a note-taking and team collaboration tool. They integrate AI into the note-taking and collaboration process incredibly well, probably better than any software service I've used to date. (00:05:24) And it's funny because I just got a notebook for some basic note taking, like a physical notebook with a physical pen. And it feels so limiting. And not limiting in a good way, like the constraints are a catalyst for creativity. I mean, limiting, like I want to run some algorithms to summarize stuff, to generate some more text to give me ideas, all of that. (00:05:47) but I just need the notebook because sometimes I don't have any electronic devices on me. And specifically, that is one of the things I like to do for creativity is to remove electronic devices from my life for long stretches of time, for many hours in a day, sometimes multiple days. And that just forces you to be creative in the way that devices somehow suffocate. They too easily get you to be task switching, one task to the next, to the next, to the next, and that kills (00:06:16) the kind of deep focus that's required, first of all, to be truly present for life, for thoughts, for ideas that you're working through, and also to just focus on solving difficult puzzles, whether they're creative puzzles or engineering puzzles. So sometimes I wish I could just use notion and have everything else removed. Yeah, this digital technological life that we're thrust into is a real puzzle, isn't it? (00:06:46) Try Notion AI for free when you go to notion.com slash flex. That's all lowercase notion.com slash flex to try the power of Notion AI today. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. And now, dear friends, here's James Holland. (00:07:26) 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. Entire cities were laid waste. National borders were redrawn. (00:07:46) and many millions more people found themselves displaced. Over the past couple of decades, many of those living in the Middle East or parts of Africa, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and even the United States may feel justifiably that these troubled times have already proved the most traumatic in their recent past. Yet, globally, the Second World War was and remains (00:08:11) the single biggest catastrophe of modern history. In terms of human drama, it is unrivaled. No other war has affected so many lives in such a large number of countries. So, what to you makes World War II the biggest catastrophe in human drama in modern history, and maybe from a historian perspective, the most fascinating subject to study? (00:08:35) The thing about World War II is it really is truly global. 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. So it's (00:08:56) It's that global nature of it. And I just think, where there's war, there is always incredible human drama. And I think for most people, and certainly the true in my case, you get drawn to the human drama of it. It's that thought that, you know, gosh, if I'd been 20 years old, how would I have dealt with it? You know, would I have been in the Army? Would I have been in the Air Force? Would I have been on a, you know, Royal Navy destroyer? Or, you know, how would I have coped with it? And how would I have dealt with that separation? I mean, I've interviewed people who were away for four years. (00:09:24) I remember talking to a tank man from Liverpool in England called Sam Bradshaw. And he went away for four years. And when he came home, he'd been twice wounded. He'd been very badly wounded in North Africa. And then he was shot in the neck in Italy, eventually got home. And when he came home, his mother had turned grey. His little baby sister, who had been, you know, 13 when he left, was now a young woman. (00:09:50) his old school of being destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs. He didn't recognize the place. And do you know what he did? He joined up again, went back out of Europe and was one of the first people in Belsen. So, you know. What was his justification for that, for joining right back? He just felt completely disconnected to home. He felt that the gulf of time, his experiences had separated him from all the normalities of life. And he felt that the normalities of the life that he had known (00:10:19) before he'd gone away to war, had just been severed in a really kind of cruel way that he didn't really feel he was able to confront at that particular point. But he decided to rejoin, couldn't go back to the Third Royal Tank Regiment, so it went back to a different unit. It went from kind of the Italian campaign to the European theater. Didn't see so much action at the end, but you know, 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, and you know, you suddenly realized, okay, (00:10:47) this was the right thing to do. we did have to get rid of Nazism. We did have to do this because this is the consequence. It's not just the oppression. It's just not just the secret police. It's not just the expansionism of Nazism. It is also, you know, the Holocaust, which hadn't been given its name at that point, but you know, you're witnessing this kind of untold cruelty. And I always, you know, I've always sort of, (00:11:10) I think a lot about Sam. I mean, he's no longer with us, but he was one of the kind of first people that I interviewed, and I interviewed him at great length. And I know you like a long interview, Lex, and I totally, totally get that. Because when you have a long interview, you really start getting to the nuts and bolts of it. One of the frustrations for me when I'm looking at oral histories of Second World War vets is usually they're kind of, you know, they're put on YouTube or they're put on a museum website. They're 30 minutes. (00:11:39) an hour if you're lucky. And you're just scratching the surface. You never really get to know it. You feel that they're just repeating kind of stuff they've read in books themselves after the war and stuff. And, you know, I was kind of leave feeling frustrated that I haven't had a chance to kind of grill them on the kind of stuff that I would grill them on if I was put in front of them. So Tank Man, what was maybe the most epic, the most intense, or the most interesting story that he told you? (00:12:06) I do remember him telling me, funny enough, it's not really about the conflict. I remember him telling me about the importance of letters. And there was this guy who literally every few weeks, you know, post would arrive intermittently. There was no kind of regular post. So it was supposed to be regular, but it didn't come out regularly. So you might suddenly suddenly get a flurry of five all in one day. But he said there was this guy and (00:12:33) in his tank, a member of a different tank troop. He was a good friend of his in the same squadron. He had British have squadrons for their armor, and which is Americans would have a company. I should say that in your book, one of the wonderful things you do is you use the correct term in the language for the particular army involved, whether it's the German or the British or the American. Well, that's not to be pretentious. That's really just because you're dealing with so many numbers and different units, and it can go over your head and you (00:13:03) you can get sort of consumed by the detail if you're not careful. And as a reader, it can be very unsatisfying because you just can't keep pace of everything. So one of the things about writing in the vernacular German or in the American spelling are more rather than are Mauer as we Brits would spell it, is it just immediately tells the reader, okay, this is American, okay, I've got that, or this is German, I've got that, or Italian, or whatever it might be. But yeah, to go back to Sam. So Sam, this (00:13:32) There was this guy in his squadron and he'd get his letters from his girlfriend, his wife. And he said it was like a soap opera. He said, we all just waited for his letters to come in so we could find out whether his daughter had got to school okay or something, won the swimming contest or whatever it was. The sort of details of this sort of day-to-day kind of banal life was just absolute catnip to these guys. They absolutely loved it. (00:14:02) And then the letter arrived, the Dear John letter, saying, sorry, I found someone else and it's over. And his friend was just absolutely devastated. It was the only thing that was keeping him going, this sort of sense of, this sort of continuity of home, this sort of, this foundation of his life back at home. And Sam said he could see he was in a really, really bad way. And he thought, he's going to do something stupid. (00:14:31) 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. Just, you know, maybe, you know, when it's all over, you can patch things up or sort things out. And he said, you know, you've got to understand it from her point of view. You know, it's a long way. I haven't seen you for two years. This kind of stuff, you know, so just don't do anything rash. And of course, the next engagement, two days later, he was killed. And he said it was just a kind of, he could, he just knew that was going to happen. (00:14:59) So it was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. That's something I've never forgotten, that story. And I just thought, you know, it's about human drama. That's the truth of it. And how people react to this totally alien situation. You know, for the most part, the Second World War is fought by ordinary, everyday people doing extraordinary things. And I think that's (00:15:25) something that's so fascinating. I suspect, I think I instinctively, I'm quite slapdash, I think. So I think I would have bought it, literally. I don't think it would have ended well for me. I'm just a bit careless. Yeah. I think I also have an element in me where I can believe in the idea of nation. (00:15:46) and fight for a nation, especially when the conflict is as grand. There are things worse than death. Yes, as the propaganda would explain very clearly, but also in reality, yes. So a nation, you know, France, Britain was, you know, maybe facing the prospect of being essentially enslaved, the Soviet Union. (00:16:08) was facing the prospect of being enslaved literally. I mean, it was very, very clearly stated what they're going to do. They're going to repopulate the land of Germanic people, so. Well, they're not just going to do that. They're also going to starve lots and lots of Soviet individuals to death by the Hunger Plan, for example, which is planned, you know, really very casually and not by the, you know, this is not SS units or anything like this. is the Wehrmacht. This is the economic division. (00:16:38) of the Oberkommando de Wehrmacht, the German combined general staff. General Georg Thomas comes up with, you know, and Hermann Bakker, they come up with the, who's the kind of minister for food. They come up, you know, what are we going to do? You know, we haven't got enough food, you know, largely because German farming is inefficient. And they think, well, you know, this is part of Liebensrault, we'll go in and we'll take the food. And there's been this (00:17:04) colossal urbanization of the Soviet Union since the revolution in 1917. So they're just not going to get their food, these people in these cities, because we're going to take it all. And that's going to lead to that's going to lead to a lot of deaths, you know, umpteen millions is the phrase that Georg Thomas used. (00:17:24) So let's talk about the hunger plan. How important was the hunger plan and Leibenstraum to Nazi ideology and to the whole Nazi war machine? Essential to the whole thing. This is all about this notion that is embedded into Hitler's mind and into the minds of the Nazi Party right from the word go is there is a (00:17:47) big sort of global conspiracy, the Jewish-Bolshevik plot. I mean, completely misplaced that Jews and Bolsheviks go hand in hand and somehow dovetail. They don't, obviously. And the whole ideology is to crush this. You know, part of the way, the Nazis thing, the way Hitler thinks is there is a them and there's us. We are the whites, Northern European Aryans. We should be the master race. We've been threatened. (00:18:16) by a global Jewish-Bolshevik plot. We've been stabbed in the back in 1918 at the end of the First World War. We need to have to overcome. This is an existential battle for future survival. It's a terrible task that has befallen our generation, but we have to do this. We have to overcome this or else we have no future. We will be crushed. It's absolutely cut and dry. And one of the things about Hitler is that he is a very kind of black and white, them or us, (00:18:46) either or kind of person. It's always one thing or the other. It's 1000 year Reich or it's Armageddon. There is no, there's no middle ground. There's no gray area. It's just one or the other. And that's how, that's his worldview. And the reason he came to the 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. We have to overcome this. We are naturally (00:19:17) the master race. We have to reassert ourselves. We have to get rid of global jury. We have to get rid of global Bolshevism. And we have to prevail or else. But if we do prevail, what an amazing world it's going to be. So he starts with this, you know, every speech he does always starts the same way, always starts from a kind of negative and always ends with an incredible positive. (00:19:39) rabble-rousing, crescendo of, if you're in the front row, spittle, halitosis, and gesticulation. I mean, you've seen pictures of him. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of him. He's almost, he wants to grab the air and clutch it to him. You know, you can see the kind of, the venom coming out of his mouth just in a single still photograph. I mean, it's amazing. There's (00:20:05) apps you can get now where you can translate his speeches. (00:20:08) And it just sounds, by today's standards, you would just think, what a load of absolute wibble. (00:20:14) I mean, just total nonsense. (00:20:16) But you have to kind of put yourself back in the shoes of people listening to him in 1922 or 23, or indeed 1933, and see how kind of captivating that is to a certain part of the population. (00:20:28) So yes, so to go back to your original point, Lebensraum is absolutely part of it. (00:20:33) So what you do is you crush the Bolsheviks, you crush world jewelry, then you expand, you know, Britain has had this... (00:20:41) Incredible empire, global empire, Germany needs that too. (00:20:45) Germany's stuck in Europe. (00:20:46) It doesn't have access to the world's oceans. (00:20:48) So we're not going to be a maritime empire. (00:20:50) We're going to be a landmass empire, the whole of landmass of Europe and into Asia. (00:20:55) That's going to be us. (00:20:56) And we're going to take that land. (00:20:57) We're going to take the breadbasket of Ukraine. (00:21:00) We're going to use that for our own ends. (00:21:03) We're going to spread our, we're going to make ourselves rich, but we're also going to spread our peoples. (00:21:09) We're going to spread the Aryan Northern (00:21:11) a race throughout Europe and into the traditional Slavic areas, and we will prevail and come out on top. (00:21:19) 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 (00:21:32) the Nazi ideology. (00:21:33) And people, I've read it that historians sort of go, if only Hitler had realized that, the Ukrainians have been quite happy to kind of fight on his side, if only he'd actually brought some of these Jewish scientists and kind of into the Nazi fold, then Germany might have prevailed in World War Two. (00:21:48) And you kind of think, well, you're missing the entire point. (00:21:50) That's just never going to happen because this is an ideological war. (00:21:54) Yeah, this is not a pragmatic, rational... (00:21:58) leader. (00:21:59) No. (00:21:59) I mean, part of his effectiveness, we should say, is probably the singular belief in this ideology. (00:22:06) There's pros and cons. (00:22:09) For an effective military machine, probably having that singular focus is effective. (00:22:16) Yes, except that when you're making military decisions, if those decisions are always being bracketed by an ideology which is fundamentally flawed, (00:22:27) from a pragmatic point of view, as much as a kind of, a kind of reasonable point of view, you're kind of opening yourselves up for trouble. (00:22:37) I mean, this is a problem he has with Barbarossa. (00:22:39) You know, they realized very early on in 1941, when they're wargaming this whole operation, that it's not going to work. (00:22:47) And so, you know, there's people like General Paulus, who's on the general staff at the time. (00:22:53) You know, he's given a kind of, (00:22:55) he's in charge of kind of wargaming this. (00:22:57) And he goes, This isn't going to work. (00:22:58) And Keitel, who is the chief of the OKW, goes, No, no, no, no, no. (00:23:05) Go back and make it work. (00:23:06) He goes, Okay. (00:23:08) So he comes back with a plan that does work, but it's focus. (00:23:11) I mean, it's just, it doesn't work because they don't have enough. (00:23:15) They don't have enough motorization. (00:23:17) You know, they go into the Barbarossa with 2,000 different types of vehicle. (00:23:21) You know, but every single one of those vehicles has to have, (00:23:24) different distributor caps and different leads and plugs and all sorts of different parts. (00:23:31) there's the interoperability of the German mechanized arm is super inefficient. (00:23:39) And so you've got huge problems because (00:23:42) And they kind of think, we took France in 1940, and that's kind of one of the most modern countries in the world with one of the greatest armies and armed forces in the world. (00:23:49) And we did that in six weeks. (00:23:51) So, Soviet Union, look, they struggled against Finland, for goodness sake. (00:23:56) I mean, how hard can it be? (00:23:57) But what you're failing to understand is that attacking the Soviet Union is over a geographical landmass 10 times the size of France, just on the frontage. (00:24:07) And you haven't really got much more mechanization than you had in May 1940 when they attacked the low countries in France. (00:24:14) And you've actually got less Luftwaffe aircraft to support you. (00:24:18) And you just do not have the operational mechanics to make it work successfully. (00:24:23) 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. (00:24:31) I mean, you know, Barbarossa should never have come close (00:24:35) to being a victory. (00:24:36) Let's talk through it. (00:24:37) So Operation Barbarossa that you're mentioning, and we'll go back. (00:24:40) Yes, we jumped straight into 41. (00:24:43) Straight into it. (00:24:44) I've eaten off two years of war. (00:24:46) So this is June, 1941, Operation Barbarossa, when Hitler invades the Soviet Union with, I think, the largest invading force in history up to that point. (00:24:58) Collectively, yeah. (00:24:59) And there's three prongs, 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 Caucus. (00:25:15) So can you linger on that, on the details of this plan? (00:25:19) What was the thinking? (00:25:20) What was the strategy? (00:25:20) What was the tactics? (00:25:22) What was the logistics? (00:25:24) There's so many things to say, but one of them is to say that you often emphasize the importance of three ways to analyze military conflict of the strategic, the operational, and tactical. (00:25:37) And operational is often not given enough time, attention. (00:25:41) And it's the logistics that make the war machine really work successfully or fail. (00:25:48) Yeah, that's absolutely, absolutely spot on. (00:25:50) And (00:25:51) It's interesting because the vast majority of general histories of World War II tend to focus on the strategic and the tactical. (00:26:02) So what do I mean by that? (00:26:03) Well, the strategic, just for those who don't know, that's your overall war aims. (00:26:08) Get to Moscow, whatever it might be. (00:26:10) Conquer the world. (00:26:11) That's your strategy. (00:26:12) The tactical side of things is that's the coal face of war. (00:26:15) That's the attritional bit. (00:26:16) That's the (00:26:18) follow in his Spitfire, the tank crew, the soldier in his foxhole. (00:26:21) It's the actual kinetic fighting bit. (00:26:24) The operational bit is the level of war that links the strategic to the tactical. (00:26:31) So it is absolutely factories, it's economics, it's shipping, it's supply chains, it's how you manage your war. (00:26:39) 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, (00:26:48) all on the same level. (00:26:49) But obviously, every competent nation has a different approach to war because of the nation they are, the size they are, their geographical location. (00:26:57) So Britain, for example, is an island nation. (00:27:00) Its priority is the Royal Navy, which is why the Royal Navy is known as the senior service. (00:27:05) And you know, in 1939, it's easy to forget it now when you see how depleted Britain is today, but 1939, it has comfortably the world's largest navy. (00:27:15) something like 194 destroyers. (00:27:19) I think it's 15 battleships, seven aircraft carriers and another kind of six on the way. (00:27:26) America, it's got Pacific Ocean, it's got the Atlantic Ocean, it's got two seaboards. (00:27:31) It has the second largest navy in the world, but a tiny army. (00:27:34) I mean, the army of the US Army in September 1939 is the 19th largest in the world, sandwiched between Portugal and Uruguay. (00:27:43) And it's just incredible. (00:27:44) It's like 189,000 strong, which might seem reasonably large by today's standards, but it's absolutely tiny by 1939 standards. (00:27:52) whereas, Germany's got an army of, three and a half million in 1939. (00:27:58) So, these are big, big, big differences. (00:28:01) But America's coming at it from a different perspective. (00:28:03) Britain's coming apart from a different perspective. (00:28:05) You know, Britain's Britain's empire is all about, you know, it's a shipping, it's a seaborne empire. (00:28:12) Whereas, (00:28:13) There's also another point, which is having large armies is actually inherently impractical and inefficient. (00:28:19) Because the larger army, the more people you've got to feed, the more kind of barracks you've got to have, the more space you've got to have for training, the more people you're taking out of your workforce to produce tanks and shells and all the rest of it, because they're tramping around with rifles. (00:28:33) So there's an argument saying, saying actually it's really not a very good way of doing things. (00:28:37) So, very much the British way and subsequently the United States way and... (00:28:44) the way of Britain's dominions and empire, is to use kind of steel, not our flesh, as a principle. (00:28:51) The idea is that you use technology, mechanization, modernity, global reach, to do a lot of your hard yards. (00:28:58) That's the sort of basic principle behind the strategic air campaign. (00:29:01) When we talk about the strategic air campaign, we talk about strategic air forces which are operating in isolation from other armed forces. (00:29:07) So A tactical air force, for example, is an air force which is offering close air support for ground operations. (00:29:15) a strategic air force has got nothing to do with ground operations. (00:29:18) It's just operating on its own. (00:29:19) So that's your bomber force or whatever. (00:29:21) 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 or whatever it might be. (00:29:30) 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. (00:29:39) And I would say one of the failures of Hitler (00:29:42) is that he always views everybody through his own very narrow worldview, which is not particularly helpful. (00:29:48) You want to get inside the head of your enemy. (00:29:50) And he's sort of guilty of not doing that. (00:29:54) So when you're talking about Operation Barbarossa, to go back to your original question next, you're dealing with an operation on such a vast scale that operational level of war is absolutely vital to its chances of success or failure. (00:30:08) It doesn't matter how good (00:30:10) Your individual commanders are at the front. (00:30:12) If you haven't got the backup, it's not going to work. (00:30:15) And the problem that the Germans have is, yes, they've got their kind of 3 million men on the front and they've got their kind of 3,000 aircraft and all the rest of it. (00:30:26) But actually, what you need to do is break it down. (00:30:28) And who is doing the hard yards of that? (00:30:31) And the way the German war machine works is that the machine bit is only the spearhead. (00:30:36) So people always talk about the Nazi war machine. (00:30:39) 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. (00:30:46) And nothing could be further from the truth. (00:30:47) The spearhead is, but the rest of it is not. (00:30:51) 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, because in Barbarossa, you're talking about 17 Panzer divisions. (00:31:05) out of, the 100 odd that are involved in the initial attack. (00:31:10) Well, 17 and that Panzer division is not a division full of Panzers, tanks. (00:31:15) It is a combined arms motorized outfit. (00:31:20) So scouts on (00:31:24) BMWs with sidecars, armored cars, infantry, grenadiers, panzer grenadiers, which are infantry in half tracks and trucks, mechanized. (00:31:34) It is motorized artillery. (00:31:36) It is motorized anti-aircraft artillery. (00:31:38) It is motorized anti-tank artillery. (00:31:40) And of course, it is tanks as well, panzers. (00:31:43) But those are a really, really small proportion of, you know, you're talking less than 20% of your attacking force are those spearhead forces. (00:31:54) And inevitably, they are going to be attrited as they go. (00:31:57) you are going to take casualties. (00:31:58) And not only that, you're not going to just take battlefield casualties. (00:32:01) You're also going to have mechanical casualties because of the huge spaces involved. (00:32:05) You just simply can't function. (00:32:06) So what you see is in the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, they surge forward. (00:32:12) Red Army's got absolutely no answers to anything. (00:32:15) Stalin weirdly hasn't heeded all the warnings that this attack is brewing, and there have been plenty, incidentally. (00:32:22) Smolensk falls on the 15th of July, in less than four weeks. (00:32:26) It's just incredible. (00:32:27) 3 1/2 weeks, Smolensk has gone. (00:32:28) You know, they've done, overwhelmed the rest of what had been Poland. (00:32:32) They've surged into what is now Belarus, taken Smolensk, all of, you know, this is Army Group Centre. (00:32:38) Army Group North is thrust up into the Baltic. (00:32:41) It's all going swimmingly well. (00:32:42) But then the next several months, they barely go 100 miles. (00:32:46) And that's because they're running out of steam. (00:32:48) 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. (00:33:00) 16 out of, you know, should have 180. (00:33:04) So it's just being attrition. (00:33:07) They can't sustain it. (00:33:08) And they can't sustain it because as the Russians fall back, as the Soviet Red Army falls back, they do their own scorched earth policy. (00:33:16) They also discover that the railway line is kind of a different loading gauge, so they've got to change it. (00:33:20) So it's slightly, the Russian loading gauge is slightly wider. (00:33:24) 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 in the standard (00:33:40) train of locomotive of the Reichsbahn. (00:33:43) Just imagine what that's like. (00:33:44) And also Soviet trains are bigger, so they can take more water, which means the water stops in between are fewer and far between. (00:33:52) So they have to, the Germans, when they come in, their trains, their Kriegslock are smaller, so they have to be re-watered more often and re-cold more often. (00:33:59) So they have to, I mean, it's absolutely (00:34:03) squiggling at just how complicated it is and how badly planned it is because they haven't reckoned on this. (00:34:08) They're having to kind of think on their feet. (00:34:10) I love the logistical details of all of this because yes, that's a huge component of this, especially when you're covering that much territory. (00:34:18) But there is a notion that if Hitler didn't stop Army Group Center, it could have pushed all the way to Moscow. (00:34:27) It was only maybe 100 miles away from Moscow. (00:34:31) Is that a possibility? (00:34:33) Because it had so much success in the early days pushing forward. (00:34:37) 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? (00:34:51) Well, my own view is that they should never have got close. (00:34:55) you know Red Army has plenty of men to be able to see off anything that the the Germans can do the capture of Kiev for example in September 1941 was a catastrophe for for the Soviet Union and should never have happened I mean zukov is saying to saying to Stalin we got to pull back across the Dnieper so I was going no I can't can't possibly do that you can't abandon Kiev it's like third city in Soviet Union you can't no way (00:35:22) No, absolutely not. (00:35:24) And he goes, we are just going to be overwhelmed. (00:35:26) we can't hold this. (00:35:29) And he says, either back me or fire me, back me or sack me. (00:35:33) So Stalin sacks him. (00:35:35) Obviously, as we know, Zhukov gets rehabilitated in pretty quick order. (00:35:40) And Stalin does learn very quickly thereafter to learn the lessons. (00:35:45) But the opening phase of Barbarossa has been a catastrophe. (00:35:49) And so as a consequence of (00:35:52) Stalin refusing to let his men retreat back across the Dnieper, which is a substantial barrier and would have been very difficult for the Germans to overwhelm had they not, had they moved back in time. (00:36:04) You know, that's another kind of 700,000 men put in the bag. (00:36:08) I mean, that's just staggering numbers. (00:36:13) But I mean, there's so many things wrong with the Barbarossa plan, too much over. (00:36:18) It's just such a vast area. (00:36:20) I mean, you're talking about kind of, 2500 miles or something, of frontage. (00:36:26) 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 the lever straight across on a kind of, you know, much more narrow front of, let's say, kind of 400 miles rather than 1200, then they might have got, they might have just sort of (00:36:43) burnt a way straight through to Moscow. (00:36:45) They really caught the Red Army unprepared. (00:36:48) Yeah. (00:36:49) Is there something to be said about the strategic genius of that? (00:36:56) Or was it just luck? (00:36:58) No, I don't think so. (00:36:59) 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 and a half thousand officers, of which three out of five (00:37:13) marshals, God knows how many army commanders, et cetera, et cetera. (00:37:20) So you've completely decapitated the Red Army in terms of its command structure. (00:37:25) So before that, would it be fair to say it was one of, if not the greatest army in the world? (00:37:31) Well, there was a lot of experience. (00:37:32) There's a lot of experience there. (00:37:34) But also technology material, the size of the army, the number of people that are mobilized. (00:37:40) Yeah, and they're the first people to kind of adapt, create airborne troops, for example. (00:37:45) So yes, I think there is an argument to say that. (00:37:48) But the decapitation is absolutely brutal. (00:37:51) If you decapitate an army, you've then got to put new guys in charge. (00:37:55) And someone who looks on paper like a half-decent peacetime commander might not be a very good wartime commander. (00:38:02) They're different disciplines and different skills. (00:38:05) And what comes to it, you don't know that until you're tested. (00:38:08) It's very hard to kind of judge. (00:38:10) 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 a strong armed forces. (00:38:19) So they go into Finland in (00:38:22) back end of 1939, and they get their, they get really badly hammered. (00:38:27) They do take about, they get the Corellia Peninsula, and they do take some ground, but at huge cost. (00:38:33) I mean, the casualties are five times as bad as those of the Finns, and it's humiliation. (00:38:38) So Hitler sees that and thinks, okay, they're not up to much cop. (00:38:43) Then Hitler loses the Battle of Britain, and he thinks, I can't afford to fight a war on two fronts. (00:38:48) That's one of the reasons why Germany loses the war in (00:38:51) 1914 to 18 is fighting on the Eastern Front, but also fighting on the Western Front at the same time. (00:38:56) We've got to avoid that. (00:38:58) But I've got to get rid of Britain and Britain hasn't come out of the fight. (00:39:00) Britain is still fighting in the back end of 1940, having won the Battle of Britain. (00:39:05) And so maybe I'll go into the Soviet Union now while the Red Army is still weak. (00:39:10) You know, we're not 100% ready ourselves, but let's hurry the whole thing forward. (00:39:13) Because originally he'd been thinking of planning an operation in 1943 or 1944. (00:39:18) So the idea is you take Poland out, (00:39:21) You take out France and the Low Countries. (00:39:23) You can't compose to Western Europe. (00:39:24) You knock out Britain. (00:39:25) So therefore, you don't have to worry so much about the United States because they're over the other side of the Atlantic. (00:39:30) That then gives and buys him the time to kind of rebuild up his strength for the all-out thrust on the Soviet Union. (00:39:36) The failure to subdue Britain in 1940 changes all those plans and makes him think, actually, I'm going to go in early. (00:39:43) And he's also been kind of, you know, he's hoisted by his own petard because he starts to believe his own genius. (00:39:51) he, everyone told him that, he wouldn't be able to, he wouldn't be able to beat France and the low countries. (00:39:56) Everyone told him that, it wouldn't work out when he went into Poland. (00:39:59) Everyone was really nervous about it. (00:40:01) go hang, you cautious, awful, aristocratic, Prussian generals. You know, I'm the best at this. I've told you. I've shown you. I'm the genius. I can do it. He starts to believe his own hype. And of course, this is a problem. You know, he's surrounded by sycophants and people who are constantly telling him that he's this incredible genius. So he starts to believe it and he thinks everything is possible. And (00:40:21) He's very much into this idea of the will of the German people. this is our destiny and either will, as I say earlier on, you know, it's the thousand-year Reiker Armageddon, but momentum is with us and we need to strike it and only by gambling, only by being bold will the Germans prevail and all this kind of nonsense. And so that's why he goes into Soviet Union in June 1941 rather than a couple of or even three years later. Yeah, he really hated the Prussian generals, Yeah, he hated them. (00:40:49) Is there a case to be made that he was indeed, at times, a military genius? No. I don't think so. Because none of the plan, I mean, even the plan for the invasion of France and the low countries isn't his. (00:41:03) It's the concept is von Manstein's and the execution is Guderian's, Heinz Guderian. So 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 arm spearhead doing this kind of lightning fast thrust. It's not Hitler's idea. He adopts it and takes it as his own because (00:41:32) he's a fury, he can do what he likes, but it isn't his. So it's not, and up until that point, until that comes into being, till that plan is put forward to Franz Halder, who is the chief of staff of the German army at that time, you know, Halder is just thinking, how do we get out of this mess? This is just a nightmare because (00:41:51) They know that France has got a larger army, they know that France has got more tanks, they know that France has got double the number of artillery pieces, it's got parity in terms of air forces. Then you add Holland, then you add Belgium, then you add Great Britain. And that looks like a very, very tough nut to crack. I mean, the reason why France is subdued in 1940 is 50% brilliance of the Germans and their operational art in that particular instance, and 50% French failure, really, and incompetence. I mean, there is a kind of... (00:42:21) 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. (00:42:41) I mean, there is a kind of geopolitical genius. If it works, but it doesn't, that's a problem. I mean, I mean, he goes into Poland on the assumption that Britain and France will not declare war. You know, he is not prepared for Britain and France declaring war on Germany. He thinks they won't. That's right. So miscalculation, blunder. But then France does, right? And then that doesn't, you know, France (00:43:09) does not successfully do anything with this incredible army that it has. It has a size, but one of the problems that France has is that it's very, very top-heavy. It's very cumbersome in the way it operates. There's no question that it's got some brilliant young commanders, but at the top, the commanders are very old. Most of them are First World War veterans. You know, whether you, I mean, Wegan, Gamelin, General Georges, (00:43:38) These people, they're all well into their 60s. General George is the youngest army commander and he's 60. You know, it's too old to be an army commander. You need to be in your kind of late 40s, early 50s. And they're too just consumed by conservatism and the old ways. And what they assume is that any future war will be much like the First World War. It'll be attritional, (00:44:04) long and drawn out, but static, but actually they're right on two parts of it. is, as it turns out, it is going to be long and drawn out and attritional, but it's going to be mobile rather than static. And that's a big miscalculation. So here's my question. I think you're being too nice on France here. So when Germany invaded Poland, it (00:44:27) Correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like France could have just went straight to Berlin. Yeah, they absolutely could have. And I know you said it's very top-heavy, and you're saying all of these things, but they literally did basically nothing. Yeah, they were appalling. So like, and I think a part of that, and I think you described this well, maybe you could speak to that, (00:44:51) is the insanity that is Hitler creating this psychology with the propaganda, creating this feeling that there's this Nazi force that's unstoppable. So their friends just didn't want to like step into that. Maybe they were like legitimately, I hesitate to say these words, but scared. (00:45:12) of war. 100% they are. Because France has been totally traumatized by the First World War. It's fought on their land. It's fought in their industrial heartland. You know, they lose three times the amount of people killed that Britain does. Britain's traumatized by it, but not to the same degree that France is. You know, there is just no stomach to do that again. And so that makes them risk averse. And by being risk averse, you're actually taking a far greater risk. That's the irony of it. (00:45:40) And the truth is also there isn't the political will. And a successful military can only be successful if there is a political will at the top. And the problem with France in the 1930s is it's very politically divided. It's 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. And (00:46:07) this is not a coalition of two parties. This is a coalition of multiple parties. No one can ever agree anything. I mean, that's the problem. And it's amazing that the Maginot Line has even agreed, you know, this incredibly strong defensive position down the western side of France of border with Germany, which is kind of largely impregnable. 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 northerly direction. (00:46:36) and the border with Belgium. And what they should have done is built kind of border defenses all along the northern coast of Belgium, because Belgium refused to kind of allow any allied troops into its territory. It was neutral. And France should have said, okay, fine. Well, then we'll defend our, you know, we're not going to come to your rescue if you get invaded. That's your, that's your, that's the payoff. (00:47:00) And the consequence of that, we are going to stop parliving that and we're not going to be drawn into the neutral territory should Germany invade from the West. But they don't do that because of the psychological damage of having fought a war in exactly that area a generation earlier. And that's the problem. So when the, you know, there is a... (00:47:18) Germany is so weakened by the invasion of Poland. There is literally nothing left. You know, the back door into Western Germany is completely open. And so they do what they call the SAR offensive, but it's not. It's a kind of reconnaissance in force where they kind of go across the border, kind of pick their noses for a few days, and then kind of trundle back again. And it's just, it's embarrassing. And that is, what you're seeing there is a nation which is just (00:47:45) 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. And that's the big problem. There is this, you know, the commanders at the very top of the French regime are complacent. They haven't bought into kind of modern ways. They haven't looked at (00:48:12) how contemporary technology could help them. I mean, it is absurd, for example, that there isn't a single radio in the Chateau de Vincennes, which is, you know, the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the French Armed Forces, which is General Marshal Morris Gamelin. I mean, it's just unbelievable. (00:48:32) But that is the case. And there's no getting away from that. And it is all the more ironic when you consider that France is actually the most automotive society in Europe. It's the second most automotive society in the world after the United States. (00:48:44) By some margin, it has to be said as well. has a fantastic transportation system. Railway network is superb. 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. So France is very mechanized. Very mechanized. So come on, guys, put your finger out, get it together. And they just don't. They're incredibly slow and cumbersome. And what they think is, (00:49:12) When, what will happen is the Germans won't think of going, they won't do a pincer movement because you can't possibly take motorized forces through the Ardennes. 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. And so what we'll do with that hinge around the town of Sedan, (00:49:34) We'll move into Belgium. We'll meet the Germans before they get anywhere near France. We'll hold them. And while we're holding them, we will bring up our reserves and then we'll counter-attack and crush them. That's the idea behind it. But the problem is, they don't have a means of moving fast. And their communication systems are dreadful, absolutely dreadful. They're dependent on conventional telephone lines, which, you know, (00:49:59) dive bombers and whatever are just kind of absolutely wrecking. Suddenly the streets are clogged with refugees and people can't move. So they're then, you know, telephone lines are down. There's no radios. So you're then dependent on sending dispatch riders on little motorbikes. You know, General Maurice Gamelin sends out a dispatch rider at 6 o'clock in the morning. By 12 o'clock he hasn't come back. So you then send another one. (00:50:23) Finally, the answer comes back at kind of 9:00 at night, by which time the kind of Germans advance another 15 miles, and the original message that you sent at 6:00 that morning is completely redundant and has passed its sell-by day. And that's happening every step of the way. 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. So the consequence of all that is that French just can't move. They're just stuck. They're rabbits in headlights, and the Germans are able to kind of move them, destroy them in isolation. (00:50:53) Meanwhile, they're able to use their excellent communications to very, very good effect. And you were talking about the genius of war. It's not Hitler that's a genius. If anyone's a genius, it's Goebbels, the propaganda chief. And it is their ability to harness, that they are the kings of messaging. You know, they don't have X. They don't have social media. (00:51:20) But they do have new technology. And that new technology, that new approach is flooding the airwaves with their singular message, which is always the same and has been ever since the Nazis come into power. (00:51:31) And it is using radios. And I think radios are really, really key to the whole story because there is no denser radio network anywhere in the world, including the United States than Germany in 1939. So while it's really behind the times in terms of mechanization, it is absolutely on top of its game in terms of comms. So 70% of households in Germany have radios by 1939, which is an unprecedented number. That is only beaten by United States and only just. (00:52:00) So it is greater than any other nation in Europe. And in terms of flooding the airwaves, it is the densest, because even for those who, the 30% who don't have radios, that's not a problem, because we'll put them in the stairwells of apartment blocks, we'll put them in squares, we'll put them in cafes and bars. And the same stuff, the state, the Nazi state controls the radio airwaves, as it does the movies, as it does newspapers, all aspects of the media are controlled by Goebbels. (00:52:30) the propaganda ministry, and they are putting out the same message over and over again. It's not all Hitler's ranting. It's entertainment, light entertainment, some humorous shows. It is also Wagner, of course, and Richard Strauss. It's a mixture, but the subliminal message is the same. We're the best. We're the top dogs. (00:52:53) Jewish Bolshevik plot is awful and needs to be, that's the existential threat to us. We have to overcome that. We're the top dogs militarily. We're the best. We should feel really good about ourselves. We're going to absolutely win and be the greatest nation in the world ever. And Hitler's a genius. And that is just repeated over and over and over and over again. And the, you know, for all the modernity of the world in which we live in today, most people believe what they're told repeatedly. Yeah, they still do. (00:53:22) If you just repeat, repeat, repeat over and over again, people will believe it. You know, if you're a die-hard Trump supporter, you want to believe that. You'll believe everything he says. 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 want to believe. But the scary thing is, you know, radio is the technology of the day, the technology of the day today, which is a terrifying one for me. (00:53:52) 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. I would love to read the history written about this era, about the information wars. Who has the biggest bot farms? Who has the biggest propaganda machines? And when I say bot, I mean both automated AI (00:54:19) Bots and humans operating a large number of smartphones with SIM cards that are just able to boost messages enough to where they become viral, and then... (00:54:31) Real humans with real opinions get excited also. It's like this vicious cycle. So if you support your nation, all you need is a little boost. And then everybody gets real excited. And then now you're chanting. And now you're in this mass hysteria. And now it's the 1984, 2 minutes of hate. And the message is clear. (00:54:51) I mean, that's what propaganda does. It really clarifies the mind. That is exactly what Hitler and the Nazis and girls are doing in the 1930s. Well, they're doing it in the 1920s as well, but more effectively once they come into power, of course. And Hitler is so fortunate that he comes, he takes over the chancellorship in January 1933 at a time where the economy is just starting to turn. And he's able to (00:55:17) made the most of that. And if you're Germans and you've been through hyperinflation in the early 1920s, you've been through the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty, which was a terrible error in retrospect. And you've been through then, having got through that, you've emerged into a kind of democratic Weimar Republic, which is based on manufacturing. Germany's traditional (00:55:42) genius at engineering and manufacturing and production of high quality items. They're merging through that. Then you have the Wall Street crash. And the loans that are coming in from America, which is propping up the entire German economy, suddenly get cut off and you've suddenly got depression again and massive unemployment. And suddenly Hitler comes in and everyone's got jobs. (00:56:08) And they're rebuilding and they're growing their military. And the message that's coming out is, we're the greatest, we're the best, we're fantastic. You know, I was telling you earlier on about the speeches starting with the dark, starting dark and ending in hope and light and the sunlit uplands. You know, that's what you're getting. You're suddenly getting this vision of hope. This is sort of, you know, my God, actually, this is really working, you know. Okay, so, you know, I'm not sure that I... (00:56:35) 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, and then this is a genius about the radios, for example. So they have the German receiver to start off with, the Deutsche Fanger, and then they have the Deutsche Kleine Fanger, which is the German little receiver, little radio. (00:56:56) This is genius. This is as outrageous as the arrival of the iPod. I mean, remember that. You know, suddenly you don't have to have a Sony Walkman anymore. You can have something really, really small and miniature and listen to thousands and thousands and thousands of songs all at once. What an amazing thing. And the Deutsche Kleinenfanger is 9 inches by 4 inches by 4 inches. It's made of Bakelite. And everyone can have one because it's super cheap. It's just incredible. (00:57:21) And no one else said that because up until that point, radios, generally speaking, are aspirational. 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, affluent and well-to-do you are. But suddenly, everyone can have one. And if everyone can have one, then everyone can receive the same message. 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, they're least risk averse. (00:57:51) So they're most gung-ho, they're most full of excitement for the possibilities of life, and they're also, their minds are the most open to suggestion. So you get the youth, you hang on, you get them. And so a whole generation of young men are brought up thinking about the genius of Hitler and how he's delivering this much better nation and returning our, overhauling the humiliations of the First World War, we're overcoming the stab in the back that happened in 1918, et cetera, et cetera. And (00:58:21) as a young 16, 17 year old German, you're thinking, yeah, I want a piece of that. And hey, guess what? They've got really cool uniforms and, come and join the SS and, get the throw line. What's not to like? You know, you can see why it's so clever. And what's so interesting is propaganda today is still using those (00:58:43) those tenets that Goebbels was using back in the 1930s. And this is what I always say, that history doesn't repeat itself. Of course it doesn't. It can't possibly repeat itself because we're always living in a constantly evolving time. But patterns of human behavior do. And what you always get after economic crisis is political upheaval. Always, always, always. Because some people are in a worse off position than they were financially before. They're thinking, well, you know, the current system doesn't work. What's the alternative? So, you know, in the case of (00:59:11) of now, we in the West, we face, first of all, we face the crisis of 2008, financial crisis of 2008, then we've had the kind of double whammy of COVID. And that has been incredibly unsettling. And so we're now in a situation of political turmoil. And whether you're pro-Trump or anti-Trump, what he's offering is something completely different. And (00:59:34) it's a, he's saying the other ways don't work. I'm going to be, I'm just going to say what I think. I'm just going to, I'm going to come out. I'm not going to bother with all the sheen of diplomacy and kind of, you know, mealy mouth words that politicians always use, you know, which where you can't trust anyone. I'm just going to tell you as it is. And obviously people respond to that. You know, you can understand why that has an appeal. And if the country already feels broken and here's someone who is going to be a disruptor and going to change the way you go about things, you can see why a reasonably large proportion (01:00:04) portion of the population is going to go, I'll have a piece of that, thank you very much. (01:00:08) And especially when the country's in the 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. (01:00:24) And of course, the propaganda machine that you describe is the thing that got everybody else in Germany on board. (01:00:31) Yeah. (01:00:32) It's amazing how he, because he comes in with 33% of the vote. (01:00:37) He had 37% of the vote in July 1932. (01:00:41) So again, this is another period of turmoil, just like it is in France, where you're having constant different kind of coalitions and, you know, different chancellors, leaders of Germany. (01:00:49) So it's very possible he wouldn't have come to power. (01:00:53) Well, he said, he said, I will only, you know, we will only take our seats if, I can be chancellor, otherwise forget it. (01:01:00) I'm not coming into any coalition. (01:01:01) So then the government falls again in January 1943. (01:01:07) They have the election. (01:01:10) The Nazi vote is down from where it was the previous summer. (01:01:14) But this time they go, okay, Pella can be chancellor, but we'll manipulate him. (01:01:18) Oh, how wrong they were. (01:01:19) You know, he's manipulating everyone. (01:01:21) And then Hindenburg, who is the president, dies the following summer. (01:01:26) And he's able to (01:01:28) get rid of the presidency, there is no more president of Germany, there is just the Fuhrer, him. (01:01:34) And he gets rid of, he has an actually enabling act, which is where all other political parties are disbanded, and suddenly you've got a total of her and state, just like that. (01:01:44) I think there's a lesson there. (01:01:46) There's many lessons there, but one of them is don't let an extremist (01:01:51) into government and assume you can control them. (01:01:54) Yes, the arrogance of the existing politicians who just completely screwed it up. (01:01:59) I mean, there is a real power to an extremist. (01:02:03) Like there's a person who sees the world in black and white can really gain the attention and the support of the populace. (01:02:15) Yes. (01:02:17) 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. (01:02:30) There's something really compelling about the black and white message. (01:02:33) It is because it's simple. (01:02:36) And what Hitler does throughout the 1920s is he sticks to this. (01:02:40) There is actually, when he comes out of prison, so he, there's the Bill Hall Putsch in November 1923. (01:02:47) He gets charged with treason, which he has been because he's attempting A coup. (01:02:53) And he gets sentenced to five years, which is pretty lenient for what he's done. (01:02:58) And he then gets let out after nine months. (01:03:03) The Nazi Party is banned at that point, but then comes back into being. (01:03:07) And the year that follows, there is then a substantial debate about where the party should go. (01:03:14) And there are actually (01:03:16) 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. (01:03:29) And Hitler goes, no, We've just got to stick to this kind of Jewish Bolshevik thing. (01:03:35) This is how we're going to do it. (01:03:37) This is how we're going to do it. (01:03:38) Goebbels, for example, who is very open, he's very, very, Joseph Goebbels, (01:03:44) He's a not very successful journalist. (01:03:47) He is, but he does have a PhD in German, German literature. (01:03:51) He's very disaffected because he was born with Talopes, which is, you know, more commonly known as a clubfoot. (01:03:57) He's disabled. (01:03:58) He can't fight in the First World War. (01:03:59) He's very frustrated by that. (01:04:01) He's in a deep despair about the state of Germany in the first part of the early 1920s. (01:04:06) He's looking for a political messiah, a sort of quasi religious messiah. (01:04:14) thinks it's Hitler, then discovers that Hitler's not open to any ideas at all about any deviation, but then sees the light. (01:04:23) Hitler recognizes that this guy is someone that he wants on his side. (01:04:27) And so then goes to him, makes a real special effort, come on, come to dinner, I think you're great, you know, all this kind of stuff, wins the bat over and Goebbels has this complete vault fast, discards his earlier kind of, yeah, you know, Hitler's right, I was wrong. (01:04:40) Hitler is the kind of messiah figure that I want to follow. (01:04:43) I want to follow the hero leader. (01:04:46) And they come on board and they absolutely work out. (01:04:48) And Hitler completely wins out. (01:04:50) Of all dissenters within what had been the German Workers' Party, Drop becomes the German National Socialist Party, becomes the Nazis. (01:04:58) He comes out, emerges as the absolute undisputed fuhrer of that leader of that party. (01:05:05) And what he says goes, and everyone toes him behind it. (01:05:08) Part of the genius of that, Hitler does have some genius. (01:05:12) I just don't think it's military, but he does have some genius. (01:05:14) And no question about it is the simplicity of message. (01:05:19) What he's doing, it's that kind of us and them thing that we were talking about earlier on. (01:05:22) It's the kind of either or. (01:05:23) It's kind of, it's my way or the highway. (01:05:26) It's kind of, this is the only way. (01:05:27) This is how we get to the sunlit uplands. (01:05:30) This is how we create this amazing (01:05:34) 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. (01:05:44) Or it's decay and despair and being crushed by our enemies and our enemies are the Jews and the Bolsheviks, the communists. (01:05:52) And what he taps into as well is Frontgemeinschaft and Volksgemeinschaft. (01:06:00) And these are, there's no direct English translation of Walsgemeinschaft or indeed Franzgemeinschaft, but in its most basic form it's community, it's people community or front veterans community. (01:06:14) So the frontgemeinschaft is... (01:06:16) We are the guys, we're bonded because we were in the trenches. (01:06:20) we were in the First World War. (01:06:21) We were the people who bravely stuck it out, saw our friends being slaughtered and blown to pieces. (01:06:27) We did our duty as proud Germans, but we were let down by the elites and we were let down by this Jewish (01:06:36) Bolshevik plot. (01:06:37) You know, we were stabbed in the back. (01:06:39) The myth of the stabbing in the back is very, very strong. (01:06:43) So we're bound, 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 didn't fail in what we were doing. (01:06:53) We were failed by our leaders and by the elites. (01:06:58) So that's Frontgemeinschaft. (01:07:01) Volksgemeinschaft is this sense of national unity. (01:07:06) It's a cultural, ethnic bonding of people who speak Germany, who have a similar outlook on life. (01:07:15) And again, that just reinforces the us and them. (01:07:18) Good and evil. (01:07:18) It reinforces the black and white worldview. (01:07:21) And then you add that to this (01:07:25) very simple message, which Hitler is repeating over and over again. (01:07:30) Communists are a big threat. (01:07:31) Jews are a big threat. (01:07:32) They're the enemy. (01:07:34) You have to have an opposition in the them and us kind of process. (01:07:40) And that's what he's doing. (01:07:42) And people just buy into it. (01:07:43) They go, yeah, we're together. (01:07:45) We're Germans. (01:07:46) You know, we're a brotherhood. (01:07:49) We've got our Volzke mine shaft, and so he cleverly ties into that and taps into that, but they're in irrelevance by the late 1920s, you know, by 19 twenty-eight, you know, the (01:08:02) He's not going to get a deal for Mein Kampf Part 2. (01:08:05) he's impoverished. (01:08:06) The party's impoverished. (01:08:07) Numbers are down. (01:08:08) They're kind of, you know, a best and irrelevance. (01:08:12) We should say he wrote Mein Kampf at this time when he was in prison. (01:08:15) Well, he writes most of Mein Kampf in prison, in Landsberg prison, and then he writes the rest of it in what becomes known as the Kampfhausel, which is this little wooden hut in the Obersalzberg. (01:08:26) And you can still see the remnants of that. (01:08:28) And unfortunately, there's still little candles there and stuff in the woods. (01:08:32) by neo-Nazis and what have you. (01:08:34) But that's where he wrote the rest of it. (01:08:37) I mean, it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who says, man has his greatest thoughts when surrounded by nature. (01:08:41) That was something that kind of Hitler took very much to heart. (01:08:44) There was a mentor of his called Dietrich Eckhart. (01:08:47) Dietrich Eckhart introduced him to the Opus Alzberg and the beauty of the Southeast Bavarian Alps around Berchis Garden. (01:08:56) And (01:08:58) And that was his favorite place on the planet. (01:09:00) And that's where he eventually bought the Berghof. (01:09:05) With the royalties, it has to be said, from Mein Kampf, which went from being almost pulped to suddenly being a runaway bestseller, unfortunately. (01:09:15) Can you actually comment on that? (01:09:17) It's a shitty manifesto as far as manifestos goes. (01:09:19) I think there's a lot of values to understand. (01:09:22) from a first-person perspective, the words of a dictator of a person like Hitler. (01:09:27) But it just feels like that's just such a shitty... (01:09:30) Yeah, I mean, you know, it's banned in a number of countries. (01:09:32) You don't need to because no one's going to read it because it's unreadable. (01:09:37) I mean, it's very untidy. (01:09:39) It's very incoherent. (01:09:40) It's got no, there's no narrative arc, to use the kind of... (01:09:45) a writer's phrase. (01:09:46) I mean, it's just, it's, but it does give you a very clear, the overall impression you get at the end of it is the kind of communists and the Jews are to blame for everything. (01:09:56) Yeah, but there's also the component of, you know, predicting basically World War II. (01:10:02) no, he's hungry for war. (01:10:05) He thinks that this is the natural state, that we have to have this terrible conflict. (01:10:10) And once the conflict's over, Germany will emerge victorious, and then there will be the thousand-year Reich. (01:10:15) I mean, (01:10:16) I'm finding myself in talking to you, I keep saying this kind of, it's Armageddon, all the thousand yet right. (01:10:21) It's because it comes, it's unavoidable because that's how he's speaking the whole time. (01:10:27) It's just the same message over and over and over and over again. (01:10:30) 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. (01:10:42) It's okay to destroy the inferior ones. (01:10:45) Yeah. (01:10:45) Usually politicians don't speak that way. (01:10:47) They just say, well, here's good and evil. (01:10:51) We're the good guys. (01:10:53) And yeah, maybe we'll destroy the evil a little bit. (01:10:55) No, here is like, there's a complete certainty about a very large number of people. (01:11:02) The Slavic people, they just need to be (01:11:05) Removed. (01:11:05) they need to be made in irrelevance. (01:11:07) we have to take it, we have to take it. (01:11:08) And if that kills millions of them, fine, then they can sort of squish their way over to Siberia. (01:11:13) It doesn't matter whether you go. (01:11:14) We just need to populate this land that belongs to the German people. (01:11:18) Yeah. (01:11:19) Because they're the superior people. (01:11:20) There's no question that he glorifies violence and war. (01:11:23) You know, he's absolutely chomping at the bit. (01:11:25) 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, you know. (01:11:35) March 19th, go straight into Austria, there's the Angelus, you know, not a shot is fired, you know, goes into the Rhineland, reconquers that, retakes that over that from (01:11:46) from the occupying allies, not a shot is fired. (01:11:50) he takes a sedation land, not a shot, barely a shot is fired. (01:11:53) And then goes into the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and again, barely a shot is fired. (01:11:59) And it's a bit disappointing. (01:12:01) You know, he wants to be tested. (01:12:02) He wants to kind of have the wartime triumph. (01:12:06) You can see him being frustrated about this in the Munich crisis in 1938. (01:12:09) He wants to fight. (01:12:11) He's absolutely spoiling for it. (01:12:12) He's desperate to go in. (01:12:13) He's all ready and gung-ho. (01:12:15) build his Luftwaffe. (01:12:16) He's got his panzers now. (01:12:19) He's got his massive armed forces. (01:12:22) You know, he wants to test them. (01:12:23) He wants to get this show on the road and prove it. (01:12:27) You know, he is a he's an arch gambler, Hitler. (01:12:30) You make it seem so clear, but all the while to the rest of the world, to Chamberlain, (01:12:40) to France, to Britain, to the rest of the world, he's saying he doesn't want that. (01:12:45) He's making agreements. (01:12:47) Everything you just mentioned, you just went through it so quickly. (01:12:49) But those are agreements that were made that he's not going to do that. (01:12:54) And he does it over and over. (01:12:56) He violates the Treaty of Versailles. (01:12:58) He violates every single treaty, but he still isn't doing the meeting. (01:13:02) So maybe can you go through it, the lead up to the war? (01:13:07) 1939, September 1st. (01:13:09) What are the different agreements? (01:13:11) What is the signaling he's doing? (01:13:15) What is he doing secretly in terms of building up the military force? (01:13:18) Yes, so he, you know, part of the Treaty of Versailles, you're not, you know, you're allowed a very, very limited armed forces. (01:13:27) There's restrictions on naval expansion. (01:13:29) There's restrictions on the size of the army. (01:13:32) There's restrictions on the weapons you can use. (01:13:35) There are, you're not allowed an air force, but he starts doing this all clandestinely. (01:13:43) There are people in Kruppers, for example, which is in the Ruhr, a sort of big armament manufacturer. (01:13:52) They are producing tanks elsewhere and parts elsewhere in, say, the Netherlands, for example, and then shipping them back into Germany. (01:14:01) They're doing panzer training exercises actually in the Soviet Union. (01:14:05) at this time. (01:14:06) There's all sorts of things going on. (01:14:07) The Luftwaffe is being announced to the world in 1935, but it's obviously been in the process of developing long before that. (01:14:14) The Messerschmitt 109, single engine fighter plane, for example, is created in 1934. (01:14:18) So they're doing all these things against it. (01:14:21) And the truth is, he's just constantly pushing. (01:14:25) What can I get away with here? (01:14:27) What will probably, you know, and of course, (01:14:30) Britain, France, the rest of the rest of the world, the rest of the allies, they're all reeling from the Wall Street crash and the depression as well. (01:14:37) So have they got the stomach for this? (01:14:38) Not really. (01:14:39) and perhaps actually on reflection, the terms of Versailles treat are a bit harsh anyway. (01:14:44) So, you know, maybe we don't need to worry about it. (01:14:46) There's just no political will. (01:14:48) There's no political will to kind of fight against what Germany's doing. (01:14:51) Then (01:14:52) He gets away of it. (01:14:53) So he suddenly starts realizing that actually he can push this quite a long way because no one's going to stand up to him, which is why he makes a decision in 1936 to go back into the Rhineland, which has been occupied by French Allied troops. (01:15:08) At that point, he just walks in, just goes, (01:15:12) your worst and no one's going to do anything because there isn't a stomach to do anything. (01:15:15) That was a big step in 1936, re-militarizing the Rhineland. (01:15:20) I mean, that's a huge, huge step of like, oh, I don't have to follow anybody's rules and they're going to do nothing. (01:15:28) And he's looking at his military and he's also looking at response. (01:15:32) So one of the things they do is they, it's really very clever. (01:15:36) So they get over the head of the Army of the Air, Army de l'Air, which is the (01:15:41) French Air Force. (01:15:42) And they invite him over and they, Erhard Milk, who is the second command of the Luftwaffe, invites him over, so come and see what we're up to. (01:15:51) You know, we want to be, you're our European neighbors, we're all friends together, this kind of stuff. (01:15:55) Come and see what we've got. (01:15:56) And he takes him to this airfield. (01:15:58) There's a row of Messerschmitt 109s all lined up, like sort of 50 of them. (01:16:03) And the head of the Army of the Air sort of looks at it and goes, correct, that's impressive. (01:16:07) And Milk goes, well, let me go and take you to another airfield. (01:16:10) And they go off the sort of the back route out of the airfield in a long security route in the Mercedes. (01:16:16) Meanwhile, all the Messerschmitts take off from that airfield, going to land on the next airfield. (01:16:20) Here's another, and they're all the same aircraft. (01:16:23) And the commander-in-chief of the Army of the Air goes back to France and goes, we're never going to be able to beat Germany. (01:16:28) So you would earlier, you were alluding to this earlier on, how much is this sort of this just this chutzpah of this ability to kind of portray the mechanized Moloch? (01:16:43) Yeah, it absolutely cows the enemy. (01:16:44) So they're increasing the effectiveness of their armed forces purely by propaganda and by mind games and by talking the talk. (01:16:57) And 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. (01:17:06) You're in Britain and you're still reeling from the depression and you see the triumph of the will. (01:17:12) 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 zekeiling and all the rest of it. (01:17:22) You're going to think again before you go into war with people like that. (01:17:26) It's also hard to put yourself in the mind of those leaders now, now that we have nuclear weapons. (01:17:34) So nuclear weapons have created this kind of cloak of a kind of safety from mutually shared destruction that you think surely you will not do a million or 2 million soldier (01:17:54) army invading another land, right? (01:17:56) Just full on gigantic hot war. (01:18:01) But at that time, that's a real possibility. (01:18:03) You remember World War One, you remember all of that. (01:18:07) So, you know, okay, there's a mad guy with a mustache. (01:18:14) He's making statements that this land belongs to Germany anyway, because it's mostly German populated. (01:18:21) So (01:18:23) And like you said, Treaty of Versailles wasn't really fair. (01:18:25) And you can start justifying all kinds of things to yourself. (01:18:28) Maybe they got a point about the Danzig corridor. (01:18:30) You know, they are mainly Germans, German-speaking people there. (01:18:33) And you know, it's disconnected from East Prussia, which is this thing, you know, I can, I sort of get it. (01:18:38) You know, maybe they've got a point, you know, and is Poland really a kind of thriving democracy anyway? (01:18:42) Not really by 1930, late 1930s. (01:18:45) It's not. (01:18:45) It's to all intents and purposes a dictatorship in Poland at that time. (01:18:49) I mean, (01:18:51) It's not right that you just go and take someone else's country. (01:18:54) Of course, you can't do that. (01:18:55) But you can see why in Germany, people are thinking they've got a point. (01:19:01) You can also see why in France and Britain, they're thinking, well, you know, do we really care about the Poles? (01:19:06) I mean, you know, is it worth going to war over? (01:19:11) But there's kind of bigger things at play by this point. (01:19:14) That's the point. (01:19:15) Yeah, but before we get to Poland, there is this meeting, (01:19:21) September 1938. (01:19:23) So Chamberlain made three trips to meet with Hitler, which culminated in the Munich Conference. (01:19:30) Yeah, on the 30th of September, yeah. (01:19:31) Where it was Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, and Delagier, Prime Minister of France. (01:19:37) They met to discuss essentially Czechoslovakia without any of the government officials of Czechoslovakia participating. (01:19:45) And Hitler promised to make no more territorial conquests, and Chamberlain believed him. (01:19:50) He chose to believe him, I think is the point. (01:19:54) So it's very interesting. (01:19:56) So Chamberlain gets a very bad press. (01:19:59) Uh-oh.