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Off to war, with James Holland
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What if Hitler was killed in 1923? Was Germany's defeat in WWII inevitable? How should we assess Churchill's legacy? And are the events unfolding in Gaza today a by-product of WWII?
All these questions, and more, are answered by arguably the pre-eminent living historian on the Second World War, James Holland.
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Buy 'The Savage Storm' here.
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Transcript
WWII Fascination and Middle East Connections
00:00:14
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia. I'm Will Kingston. I came across a meme on social media the other day. It showed a bloke blowing out the candles on his 30th birthday cake and then immediately walking into the bookshop and filling a wheelbarrow with World War II history books. My own experience was almost identical with a Kindle instead of a wheelbarrow.
00:00:38
Speaker
World War II continues to fascinate us in 2023, and as we are seeing in the Middle East right now, its consequences are still keenly felt, its wounds are still raw, and its lessons, well, they may or may not have been learned.
James Holland's New Book: 'The Savage Storm'
00:00:53
Speaker
To chat about World War II and its enduring importance, I'm joined by one of, if not the preeminent historian on the conflict alive today, James Holland. James's most recent book, The Savage Storm, has just been released. It tells the story of the hard, bloody fighting of the Italian campaign of 1943. James Holland, welcome to Australia. Ah, well, thank you very much for having me on, Will. Thank you.
00:01:17
Speaker
My pleasure. We recently had Dominic Sandbrook on the podcast. He answered my 10 favorite history questions and I've put together a similar list of 10 questions to you, but more specifically focused around World War II. Oh, great. Bring it on. Question one.
00:01:35
Speaker
Your brother was also on Australiana recently. This is a de facto rating show. The rest is history is very big in Australia. So big that they're actually about to head down your way to, well, I know you're in the US, but they're about to head down in November, I think. Yeah, they are. Well, don't worry. They're doing an Anzac tour because they're going to New Zealand as well.
00:01:58
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately so. It is very big in Australia. We have ways of making you talk. Your wonderful World War II podcast with our Murray is also big here, so don't worry. The question that I have to ask though is, he is an ancient historian. He has over a thousand years of history to play with.
00:02:16
Speaker
You, as a modern historian focusing in specifically on World War Two, have a much more narrow window to peer through. What drew you to that more narrow window and how do the skills of the modern historian and the ancient historian differ? Well, I was really into it when I was a nipper. And then, you know, like a lot of teenagers, I got kind of interested in other things. And I didn't really get back into the Second World War at all until
00:02:42
Speaker
In my twenties, because although I did history all the way through school and university, the most modern I think I got was reconstruction after the US Civil War. I didn't do any 20th century history at all. Now it's impossible to do history at school or whatever without doing 20th century history. It's nearly all 20th century history, but not in my day.
00:03:04
Speaker
So, I was playing cricket actually and a Spitfire suddenly kind of started pirouetting over mid-wicket and that was my Damacy moment. So that's how I got into it. In terms of different, well, you know, the problem is that my brother's sources are completely finite, albeit, you know, from an archaeological point of view, you know, there are still new discoveries being made. But in terms of sort of, you know, hard sources, it's pretty finite.
00:03:28
Speaker
Whereas i think the second award just isn't i mean it's just such a massive subject the summer you know i've done this i've done seven hundred episodes of with ways of making a tour of the still absolutely tons that we haven't haven't done and i really found a list of named battles involving british army just the british army not the rf not not the royal navy in in the second world war and it was like one thousand one hundred and twenty seven
00:03:55
Speaker
I think we've done about 12 of them. So, you know, it's kind of, it's an endlessly fascinating subject. And I'm sure we'll get onto this, but it's also one where the tentacles kind of absolutely still are being felt. I suppose you can say that about ancient Rome as well, to a certain extent, but not in quite the same way. And, you know, the challenge for me is, you know, the challenge for my brother is trying to find all the sources, whereas the challenge for me is trying to work out what to leave out.
00:04:22
Speaker
Well, you mentioned that the tentacles of that conflict still being felt. Let's get into it.
Middle East Historical Context and WWII Link
00:04:27
Speaker
For anyone actually who has found this episode belatedly, we are chatting less than a week after Hamas entered Israel and launched a series of brutal terrorist attacks. Israel are now in what are almost certainly the earlier stages of a response in the Gaza Strip. This is an almost unfairly broad question of itself, but can you help try and put a historical context around what we're seeing now?
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, well, during the Russian Civil War, there were kind of huge pogroms and anti-Semitism, and lots of Jews started fleeing, particularly from Ukraine, incidentally. And moving to Palestine, which was sort of a British mandate, which is a kind of sort of a euphemism for saying it's part of the British Empire. It wasn't strictly speaking. It's a bit like Egypt being a protectorate, which is another euphemism for saying that we can do whatever we like there. So basically, it was under British control.
00:05:22
Speaker
I'm more more juice started moving into Palestine which of course is the ancient the ancient kingdom of the jews judea before the romans came there and conquered the area and turned it into palestine the name comes from his name.
00:05:36
Speaker
And of course, before Judea had been being the ancient kingdom of Israel and the Old Testament and everything. So the Jews went back there and there was sort of growing tensions leading up to the Second World War because of the number of Jews now rubbing shoulders with Arabs and Muslims in the Palestine area and Transjordan area.
00:05:58
Speaker
was an Arab revolt against the British, and against this influx of Jews just before the Second World War, which was put down pretty quickly, but still sort of festering away. And actually, a regiment that I've done a lot of work on was the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, who were sent out to Palestine in January 1940 with their horses, and their first action was a saber's drawn charge against Arab insurrectionists. So there you go. I mean, right in the middle of the Second World War, and it's easy to forget that
00:06:24
Speaker
Once hostilities opened, it wasn't just all fighting against Germany and Italy and what have you, and the Axis. There were other Empire colonial police duties still being done. After the war, Britain was obviously much denuded financially by the Second World War and was basically trying to get rid of the Empire.
00:06:43
Speaker
and although it still had a kind of stake in Palestine, it was sort of getting out of Palestine. And there was a declaration and a suggestion by the United Nations that the old era of Palestine should be split into an era that was Jewish and an era which was Arab. And that led to the Arab-Israeli War.
00:07:03
Speaker
And the armistice was signed in 1949 between the new state of Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, and Syria. And this established what we now know as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the rest of it as Israel, the kingdom, or rather the state of Israel, not kingdom anymore, but the state of Israel.
00:07:24
Speaker
And you know it was a fudge and it was a compromise that didn't really, I mean it's never really been solved, it's never really been sorted and there's been subsequent wars and
00:07:41
Speaker
Israel's always come out on top, so it's still there. But the latest, the kind of festering problems of cramming too many people into Gaza Strip, obviously, when you've got people that feel like they're basically being shat on, there's going to be trouble. And out of that comes groups like Hamas. Now, I think it's very important that you
00:08:03
Speaker
you don't tar all Palestinians with the same brush, because the vast majority of Palestinians are peace-loving, just want to get on with their lives. And Hamas are deeply murderous. There is absolutely no question. I mean, Britain and the United States label them as a terrorist organization, and it's hard to kind of argue against that, to be perfectly honest. But it's a horrendous situation.
00:08:21
Speaker
But of course, the tentacles of the first world war, the two great world wars that took place in the first half of the 20th century. That's the background to all this. How much? Because it hadn't been the first world war. You wouldn't have had the kind of Russian revolution. You wouldn't have had the pogroms. You wouldn't have had the Jews moving out in the first place. You wouldn't have then had the, you know, if you had the first world war, you wouldn't have had the Nazis. You wouldn't have then had the Holocaust. You wouldn't have then had the kind of, you know,
00:08:42
Speaker
a growing desire, you know, all throughout the war, you know, a lot more and more, but more Jews were moving to Israel. So so it was it was, you know, they were just absolutely homing in there. And you can understand why. And it's the ancient place and a very historic place. And they feel they have a right to that area as much as the Arabs do. And it's a mess. You know, it just it just is, you know, it's a terrible situation. And it's just absolutely horrendous looking at what's going on at the moment. I mean, I can't see how this is going to end well.
Complexity of Historical Events
00:09:12
Speaker
How much of what we're seeing now do you see as just an intractable historical problem as old as time itself, and how much do you think about and put down to the consequences of the decisions that were made in the immediate aftermath of World War II? Well, I don't want to sound like I'm sitting on the fence here, but I do really do think it's better both.
00:09:35
Speaker
One thing leads to another thing, leads to another thing, leads to another thing. I mean, the First World War leads to the Russian Revolution, the Russian Revolution leads to the pogroms, the pogroms lead to the exodus of Jews. Growing anti-Semitism in Europe leads to more exodus of Jews, Nazi anti-Semitic laws introduced from 1933 onwards, increase even more exodus, all coming into Palestine.
00:09:57
Speaker
That is the ancient that is the ancient home of of the jews and you know you can see they've got a claim as long as you kind of you accept that something that happened thousands of years earlier has a connection to something thousands of years forever on.
00:10:13
Speaker
The end of the Second World War causes a massive dislocation, huge migrations of people, the biggest migration of people ever that the world has known, at least a breakup of empires, at least a breakup of countries, at least a breakup of borders. And you end up with the Arab-Israeli war and you end up with the Israeli state and the problems never really being solved. You know, that's the problem. And of course, people could have behaved better, better decisions could have been made, but ultimately,
00:10:43
Speaker
I think this was an issue that was unsolvable. It was always going to come to a head. I remember talking to someone the other day who was saying that their father had been involved in the British exodus from Palestine in 1947, and had said, this is just never, ever going to work, not for Sundays. And here we are. It's really grim. It's really, really, really depressing. And it's depressing that they're still fighting over Ukraine. I mean, Ukraine, where there was
00:11:13
Speaker
at least 3 million people starved to death in the 1930s at the hands of Stalin. So the history between Russia and Ukraine, it's got a long form and going obviously much earlier than that. Parts of Ukraine, Western Ukraine, Lviv as it now is, was Lemberg. It switched from being Austrian to Polish to back to Austrian, back to Nazi to Soviet, back to Ukraine. And so it goes on. It's just an absolute melting pot, isn't it?
00:11:43
Speaker
And it's amazing how these historical debates and discussions and dislocations just keep coming back. I mean, you know, things are still bubbling away in the Balkans, aren't they? That's hardly, hardly a kind of, now it's a place to watch as well. So, you know, down in Australia, it's all a bit more clear cut. Well, you say that we've got kind of... You say that, but then you've got sort of Aboriginal issues and so on, and now the Solomon Islands and whatnot. So, you know, the world has always been a state of flux, hasn't it?
00:12:13
Speaker
it has. My third question goes to both what we're seeing now in the Middle East as well as in Russia and Ukraine, but also in World War II. I've been thinking a lot about just war theory, looking at what's going on in the Middle East at the moment, particularly as you see the response of Israel to the initial Hamas attacks.
Justifiable vs. Unjustifiable Military Force
00:12:33
Speaker
As a World War II historian watching these events,
00:12:37
Speaker
What are your reflections on the distinction between the justifiable and the unjustifiable use of military force?
00:12:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's really hard, isn't it, when you look at the levels of destruction on Gaza, that doesn't feel like it's proportionate, does it really, compared to all those innocent people that are now homeless. I mean, it's just a horror story. But they would argue that it is the Palestinian people that are holding, that are responsible for Hamas, and they could flush them out and expose them and get rid of them if they wanted to.
00:13:13
Speaker
I don't know the answer to that. I mean, it's really difficult, isn't it? I mean, the bottom line is that you can have ideals about warfare. But what you discover with warfare is that the Geneva Convention might be held, but what is sort of proportionate, that doesn't really happen. And as long as there are wars, there will be innocents killed and caught up in it. I mean, that's just as sure as nightfall as day. It really is.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the levels of destruction are absolutely hideous. And you see this in Ukraine as well, don't you? And you see it wherever there's war. You know, people say they're going to kind of abide by this, but they never do. I mean, look at the the ruins of Syria, for example. You say, oh, yeah, but, you know, Assad's a despot and an autocrat, all the rest of it. But but I know how much was just war and these types of principles taken into account with Truman's decision in 1945?
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, by today's standards, that's a really tricky one, isn't it? I think the background to this is that the war has been going on a long time. A lot of people are getting killed. There's this mounting frustration. By any normal standards of warfare, the Nazi Germany would have surrendered well before it did in May 1945, and Imperial Japan would have surrendered way before it did in
00:14:34
Speaker
in August 1945. I mean, it was absolutely insane. By 1944, 88% of the economy is being diverted to defence in
00:14:42
Speaker
In Japan, I mean, you know, Britain spends 2% on defense, you know, so 88%. I mean, that's insane. Absolutely insane. They are beaten. So it's just like throwing the towel. What's the alternative? What the Americans discover is that the closer they get to the Japanese, the harder they get to Japan home islands, the harder the Japanese fight. You know, when you look at Peleliu, you look at the fighting even in the Philippines, for that matter, and Manila, kind of slaughter of innocents.
00:15:08
Speaker
slaughter of innocents in Manila at the hands of Japanese, for example. And then you look at, of course, Iwo Jima, and ultimately then at Okinawa, which was a kind of original Japanese island since the 19th century. But it got tougher and tougher and tougher, and the Allies are intending to invade in the first part of 1946. And they're expecting truly horrific amounts of
00:15:33
Speaker
I mean, millions dead is what they're expecting. And they don't want to go through that. They're tired of it. And just throw in the towel. And don't forget that there's not one atomic bomb that's dropped on Japan. It's two before the Japanese throw in the towel. It's incredible. You'd have thought one would be enough. Frankly, you'd have thought the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 would have been enough.
00:15:56
Speaker
What's the alternative to that? What's the alternative to invasion or an atomic bomb? Well, you starve them out. You literally just put a siege around it and stop anything coming into Japan, which was actually the plan of Admiral Leahy. But potentially way more people could have died as a result of that.
00:16:13
Speaker
I think there was an acknowledgement that the moment you drop an atomic bomb, you've crossed a line, you know, you've crossed, you know, you've crossed a Rubicon on which there can be no turning back and that the world has changed forever. But of course, you know, you can also argue that the torrents of nuclear attack has held.
00:16:28
Speaker
Ever since now, there are still conventional wars, obviously, in still conventional wars in Europe, whether it be kind of, you know, the Balkans or Ukraine, Latvia, or, you know, what's going on in the Middle East, of course, but, and of course, elsewhere from Africa and South America and all sorts of other places, Central America. But certainly in Europe, you know, the nuclear deterrent has unquestionably worked, I'd say. Question four, wouldn't be a history nerd conversation without a what if.
Hypotheticals: What if Hitler Had Died Early?
00:16:54
Speaker
What if Hitler was killed in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923?
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah, I just don't think they'd have ever been the Nazis. I don't think they'd have done it because they got to power by really, really clever manipulation. And I don't think Goebbels on his own would have done it. There was no spokesman who had that kind of oratorial skill that Hitler had. So I think if he had, I think that that would have been toast. I mean, you know, everyone sort of looks at the Weimar Republic as being this sort of epitome of decadence and, you know,
00:17:22
Speaker
drug abuse and people, you know, salon kitty and all the rest of it. And that's a really, really unfair assessment. Because before the Wall Street Crash, actually, Weimar was doing really quite well, you know, and they were doing that they were doing exactly what West Germany did post Second World War, which was building themselves up as a as a as a nation of manufacturing and engineering brilliance and scientific brilliance. And it was actually going quite well. I mean, the world barrows of money were a long time in the past.
00:17:49
Speaker
and they were getting themselves back on a pretty even keel. What changed everything was the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which meant the support from the United States that was propping them up, that went, and they went down the barrel again. Then there was a host of wrong turns made by German politicians that led to Hitler taking power as a fudge in January 1933.
00:18:19
Speaker
You know, they thought they could manipulate him. They were putting him in to kind of, you know, so that they could, the puppet that they would be on the strings. And of course it was the other way around. I just didn't realize it. I mean, it's fascinating, isn't it, to look at how, for example, how Hitler used the law courts and failed law cases to increase his popularity. I mean, look, he's doing that now. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's absolutely amazing. And, you know, history doesn't repeat itself, but patterns of human babies only do.
00:18:43
Speaker
You said there wouldn't be Nazis without Hitler, but obviously there were still these undercurrents in Europe, starting with the Versailles Treaty, a lot of cultural resentments within Germany, but there still have been some sort of large scale conflict in continental Europe, a World War II without Hitler and the Nazis.
00:19:03
Speaker
I don't know, I suspect not. I think there's lots of political upheaval, there's no question about it, and politics was very, very disjointed, as it has been since 2008, incidentally. I think it's more that the way history, the way the days roll out is
00:19:23
Speaker
It's a series of forks in the road, and it depends which fork you take. And ultimately, that's down to individuals and whether they say the words that spark that kind of people to take that particular fork. I mean, if you didn't know Trump, you might still have a huge split in America, but you wouldn't have the kind of politics that Trump has brought. So I think it's not like everything's inevitable at all. I think individuals really, really do play a massive part.
00:19:53
Speaker
And this is really interesting because that almost nods at the great man theory of history, which gets poo poo'd by a lot of historians these days. Do you still think it holds some weight?
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, but I'm reluctant to kind of tar Hitler and Trump as great man status. I think sort of significant people who are of their moment that somehow have it within them to kind of strike a chord and articulate things that an undercurrent of people want to hear. But I don't think everyone has that. Not everyone has that kind of moment in time where they're sufficiently different and iconoclastic and oratorily
00:20:35
Speaker
I'm proficient to pull that off that's where things are not guaranteed i mean. There is just no one in the in the in the nazi party that could have.
00:20:48
Speaker
other than Hitler that could have taken them to where they were in 1933, beginning of 1933. Just no one. There's no one with the combination of oratory vision and charisma to do that. I mean, I don't know if you've looked at the other Nazis or around him at that time. I mean, they're pretty sorry bunch. I mean, Göring may be, but he was too self-indulgent and too narcissistic. His ideology was Luke War.
00:21:15
Speaker
For him, it was all about the power and the money and the wealth and the kind of, you know, the sort of anti-Semitism and all the rest of it. They were kind of, you know, he wasn't particularly anti-Semitic. I mean, he was anti-Semitic, but not virulent, he said. It wasn't an absolute cornerstone of what he was thinking. He doesn't think that, you know, Leibn's Roam is the answer to everything. He's just a, you know, he's a chancellor, really. Goebbels is absolutely ideological, but he doesn't have that. He has charisma, but he doesn't have leadership charisma.
00:21:42
Speaker
Nor does Hess or any of these other people or Rosenberg or any of them. They just don't have it. And there's no character like Trump who combines that sort of brash, unspeakable narcissism and self-interest and just ability to just lie all the time. And what he's realized is that you can say whatever you like.
00:22:04
Speaker
He can say whatever he like and he's untouchable because he can just say, I mean, he was saying the other day, wasn't he? That, you know, when we win in 20, you know, in 2024, obviously everyone will say that we haven't, you know, she's already planting that and it hasn't even happened. I mean, that's just terrible. Question five, and I'm leading the witness attack because I've heard you riff on this before. From the moment that Germany invaded Poland, was there eventual defeat inevitable?
Germany's Defeat: Strategic Overreach
00:22:32
Speaker
No, I don't think it was I think it was eventual defeat was inevitable the moment they went into the Soviet Union. I think that people don't know that was in the third week of June 1941. I mean, the problem that Germany has,
00:22:48
Speaker
is that it is not entirely landlocked, but almost landlocked. It's got a little bit of the Baltic Sea, which is a sort of mess of narrow channels and islands, and it's got a little stretch of the North Sea. But the Royal Navy at the time is the world's largest and the best. And at the moment they go into Poland, the Germans go into Poland, Britain imposes an economic blockade. So it just can't get stuff. It's only source of real oil is from Romania.
00:23:14
Speaker
in the whole war. I mean, in 1944, Britain's domestic use is 22.5 million gallons of fuel in that year. Germany's entire use of fuel is 4.5 million gallons. It's just not competing, and it's running out of stuff. The whole way that Germany has always fought its war is short, sharp wars.
00:23:38
Speaker
that could be won in very quick order because they don't have the natural resources to sustain a long war. And it's what they've always done. It's what they do in 1914. It's just it doesn't work. It starts to work and then it doesn't. And so they get bogged down in a long kind of attritional war that they can't win and they don't. You know, it's the same in 1939, 1940. You know, they have the Blitzkrieg age where they kind of smash into Poland and then go into Scandinavia and then go into the low countries in France and beat France in six weeks. And it all looks all very peachy, but they don't knock out Britain.
00:24:07
Speaker
and Britain has no intention of being knocked out, nor do the rest of the Duke forces, the dominions, UK, and an empire.
00:24:14
Speaker
And so it's got a problem on its hand. So where is it going to get its horses? Because within a matter of months, the cupboard is bare on all these places that they've already pilfered from. I mean, France is bare. So France has the most number of vehicles of any country in Europe in 1939. And by the end of 1940, there are 92% less vehicles in France than there were on the 1st of January, 1940.
00:24:39
Speaker
That's because the Germans have half-inch them all. They've knit the whole lot. Then France, which is this sort of leading manufacturing state, can't function because the Germans have nicked everything. It can no longer manufacture effectively.
00:24:53
Speaker
The workers can't get to work. There isn't enough coal because the Germans have nicked it all, et cetera, et cetera. It's just in a spiral. What one has to understand about Nazi Germany is that, basically, it's a fantasy world. It's a fantasy world of the leading Nazis making. And it's built on the absolute flimsy of foundations for all the kind of Nuremberg rallies and frog marching and sea of automaton SS types and all the rest of it, and tanks, et cetera, et cetera, and Stuka dive bombers.
00:25:20
Speaker
The whole thing is really, really flimsy. And the moment it extends too long without being replenished, they can't function properly. And that's what happens. And that's what happens in the Soviet Union. I mean, it's absolutely game over when Barbarossa doesn't work. I mean, there is no way back. And to kind of prove the point, really.
00:25:39
Speaker
I mean, you know, think about this, middle of June 1941, Germany's got one enemy, which is sort of Great Britain and Great Britain's Empire and Dominions. By the middle of December, six months later, it's got three, it's got Britain and Empire and Dominions, it's got the USSR, and it's got the United States. I mean, with that, absolutely unparalleled access to manpower and resources, Germany isn't gonna win. It's just never gonna happen in a million years.
00:26:07
Speaker
No, that makes sense. And as an aside to anyone listening, strongly recommend the We Have Ways episodes on Barbarossa, which are fascinating and just go to the bizarre calamitous thinking that underpinned that. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. The hubristic approach.
00:26:25
Speaker
You know, this sort of, you know, they do all these, you know, they do all these plans for it. And, and, you know, they say, well, you know, this isn't actually going to go quite as well as everyone thinks. And this is our combination point. The combination point being the point at which you extend your, your, your supply lines are so far that you can no longer operate in the way that you want to operate. And, um, you know, the, the plan is looking at, you know, Hitler looks at it and goes, goes, no, that won't do at all. And they go, okay, well, we'll change it then they sort of change it. So it's more optimistic.
00:26:48
Speaker
I mean, it's just bonkers, absolutely bonkers. And this is one of the things that sort of gives me some kind of source of comfort when I kind of think about the world's autocrats. It's a world where autocrats live in a fantasy world. They just do. They live in a world of deep suspicion and paranoia. Deep suspicion and paranoia is not a good condition by which to make sound and rational judgments.
00:27:11
Speaker
But also the people around them and then encouraged to tell them what they want to hear rather than reality so you're then making decisions based on. Unreality rather than reality which again is is it doesn't really kind of all go well so you know that gives me hope for someone like putin and to a certain extent present she or chairman she as well but i mean who knows but yeah it's scary stuff.
00:27:33
Speaker
Question 6. For many years after World War II, Churchill's reputation was simple and relatively universal. Saviour of Britain, later, Great Britain of the 20th century.
00:27:44
Speaker
The rise of identity politics and some other cultural forces of more than more recent times has complicated this picture somewhat. How do you reflect on Churchill's legacy? He's still one of the greatest Britons ever to have lived and the fact that we're able to have these discussions and argue the toss and accuse him of racism and even think about cancelling him is largely down to him helping us win the war in 1945.
00:28:10
Speaker
Good answer you got any arguments for me and and what an interesting line is I really like that as well the fact we can have these conversations is a byproduct of the success and the the character of the man it's a lovely way of putting it. Question seven what is the greatest myth associated with world war two.
Myth of German Military Brilliance
00:28:30
Speaker
Oh, I think that's the brilliance of the German military. I think it's just that it needs to be knocked into touch. If they were so brilliant, why did they lose? I mean, it's absolutely nonsense. I think this all goes back to the Blitzkrieg years and it's this sort of putting them on a pedestal from France in 1940 and winning in six weeks and all that kind of stuff and the kind of way they seem to appear to effortlessly sweep into Poland and to Scandinavia.
00:28:57
Speaker
But you would agree they were brilliant military tactics? Yeah, Spearhead was. And the organization, the operational skill was exemplary. Absolutely. But even then, only about 30% of the troops that were employed were actually kind of fully trained.
00:29:13
Speaker
So this idea that you can tie them all with one brush and they have this huge sort of tactical advantage over everybody else. The brilliance of the Tiger Tang, the brilliance of the speed of which they can turn themselves into camp group and these sort of all-arms battle groups. I mean, what one has to understand is that a camp group and a battle group is fundamentally a sign of weakness. The fact that you can cobble together troops very quickly means you haven't got very many of them, because if you had a lot, it would take a lot longer to organize.
00:29:40
Speaker
When you've got offshore naval guns and you've got huge amounts of artillery and you've got close air support as well, that's quite a lot to organize. You can't just click your fingers and it all happens in five minutes. That's why it seems that the Allies are quite often a bit more ponderous. There are many, many examples where you find Soviet troops or Allied troops taking on German troops on a kind of sort of...
00:30:03
Speaker
numerical parity, and they win. And that tells you that the Germans aren't as good as they're meant to be. And also, you know, they change. I mean, so the cream of the German army, which are very, very good in 1940, are largely gone by the end of 1941, because they've been destroyed and, you know, endless conflicts and not least in the Soviet Union. So the the German army of the of the second half of the war is is
00:30:29
Speaker
very well disciplined and still has some half decent kit. But the idea that they're all superbly well trained is just absolutely nonsense. And what you do find is that you find the original officer class that you have in the first half of the first Second World War, which is pre war properly trained, vetted, you know, incredibly tough and difficult to become an officer, that's all gone.
00:30:48
Speaker
by the second half of the war, because A, there isn't the time to train them properly, but B, they're replacing them with good Nazis rather than with sound soldiers. So they're very good at keeping troops in the front line and shooting them if they desert, but that doesn't mean say that they're military geniuses or tactically brilliant or anything, just means that they're very good at being disciplined and doing what they're told. That's not the same thing at all. I mean, anyone can fire a machine gun at something.
00:31:10
Speaker
Following up from that line, being disciplined, doing what they're told, how much of the failures of the German military do you put down to the Messiah complex and the continuous meddling of Hitler in military affairs? A huge amount. I'm questioning being a hell of a lot. I mean, you know, in the Soviet Union, they'd been far better off just taking Ukraine.
00:31:27
Speaker
and stopping at the Dnipa, for example, and Milensk and having that, and that's it, that's the new border. I mean, you know, Russia would have had, would have been able to answer that any time soon. You know, it's over extension, it's over ambition, but why are they going further? Because they want to get the oil fields of the Caucasus, but you know, when they get there, they haven't got enough, even if they do get there, they're not going to be able to transport that oil, because they haven't got any means of transporting it. There's no oil pipelines, there's no ships, which is how oil goes around the world today.
00:31:54
Speaker
The right spot on the railway system is absolutely capacity already safe, you know, the idea that they can that's going to transform their fortunes is ridiculous. So just stop, you know, there's plenty of resources in Ukraine and the Baltic and everything and come to a subtle piece. You know, if you hadn't got hit, you hadn't got the ideology that that all of that could have been possible. The problem is, is that everything that happens to Germany in the Second World War is laced with a with a with a Nazi and Hitlerian ideology, which is grotesque. And that takes it to a different level. It's not like a conventional war.
00:32:24
Speaker
Question 8. Tell me your favourite World War 2 story.
00:32:29
Speaker
Well, my favorite World War II story always sort of depends on what I'm doing at any one time, but one of my favorite World War II stories was told to me by Roland B. Montt. B. B. Montt, who was an amazing guy, and he joined the RAF before the war, so he was flying biplanes and stuff. Then was flying hurricanes with, I think, it was an AD 85 or AD 7 squadron, I can't remember, in northern France. Then was back in England for the Battle of Britain and all the rest of it. And in 1941, he had a girlfriend, and he was very fond of this girlfriend, and the girlfriend had invited to some party.
00:32:59
Speaker
And he had forgotten all about it. And so she rang up that morning and said, So how are we going to get to the party this morning? And he was thinking, Oh, Christ, what am I going to do? So he said, Oh, don't worry about it. Just just just get get yourself here for six o'clock. And I'll surprise you. And he got off the phone and thought, you know, what am I going to do? And then he said, I'll take her in the hurricane. So he primed his fit in his rigor, which is his ground crew. I said, Look, don't tell anyone, but I'm going to take my girlfriend so I won't go out of the parachute and I'll sit on her lap and we'll get that way.
00:33:28
Speaker
So I know his girlfriend turns up at six o'clock and she goes, so where's, you know, where, how are we going to get there? And he goes, and for the points of the hurricane, she goes, you have got to be joking. And he goes, no, come on. You wouldn't you love to go over in a hurricane? She goes, well, yeah, I suppose I would. So they fly off to the party and have the party and then take off again afterwards and fly back. But unfortunately the station commander spots him and spots her getting out. So he gets court-martialed and, um,
00:33:53
Speaker
Basically, he's just told off, it's a tower's disgrace. Do you know how much it costs to train someone up? This is an absolutely dereliction of your duty and appalling waste of high risk. You've got to be more responsible. Anyway, don't do it again. Then he passes over.
00:34:12
Speaker
The envelope goes, right, you can open that now. And it's an award of a second DFC and his promotion to be commander. A few of the old boys are quietly just going, well played, young fella. I love that because, you know, obviously we live in a world of kind of sort of incredible nanny state-ness now, don't we? And, you know, and I know a lot of it is justified, but a lot of it you kind of think really, you know, everyone's sort of watching over your shoulder every two minutes and you can't do this and you can't do that.
00:34:41
Speaker
You know, it just reminds you of a time where, um, you know, obviously no one would want to live in their right mind. We want to live through the second world war, but, but, but a time where there was a sort of maybe a greater proportionality about, about things. Yeah, absolutely. And also isn't just those, those stories so wonderfully poignant given that you know, the horror that's happening around that just wonderful moment of cheekiness and humanity, it just makes it more powerful.
00:35:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I said, so what happened to your girlfriend? He said, oh, I did marry her. That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great.
The Italian Campaign and Human Experiences
00:35:17
Speaker
Question nine. Uh, your most recent book is on the first months of the Italian campaign in 1943. Why'd you write it? And perhaps give listeners the broad brushstrokes of that campaign and why it matters.
00:35:28
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So yeah, so I'm ages ago, I wrote a book about the kind of last last year of the war in Italy, because no one had ever done it. And then a couple of years back, I did a book on Sicily. So I thought, well, the bit I haven't ever written about is actually is from the invasion of Italy right through to the kind of fall of Rome.
00:35:44
Speaker
So i thought i'd do that and i was gonna call it casino forty four it was but you know casino is gonna be the kind of the main main bit of it because that was the most significant it's the most remembered it's much attrition of the most brutal battle i suppose of the talent campaign.
00:36:00
Speaker
And but anyway i started writing this book and i was really getting into it because i sort of after i read a book about the show rangers i mentioned earlier on and one of the things i really enjoyed about that and i found really particularly moving was i was using a lot of letters and diaries so it was kind of absolutely in the moment.
00:36:18
Speaker
You know i was really struck when i was reading these letters particularly, some of the more detailed ones that you know these guys don't know when the was going to end i don't know where they're going to survive you as a reader don't know where they're going to survive because obviously if you're talking to someone. Six years off the event then self-evidently they survive because they're talking to you so that kind of takes away some of the kind of reading jeopardy so i was ready but really it was this kind of absolutely being in the moment this kind of sort of no for projection.
00:36:42
Speaker
seeing it as it was at that time, and I felt that that gave me a much stronger feeling for what it had been like at that moment on any given day. So I tried it with the Italy book, I deliberately tried to kind of focus on that and use contemporary sources as much as I possibly can. And I did, you know, I think 80% of it is drawn from contemporary sources.
00:37:03
Speaker
And I'm fascinating it's been too, because for all those reasons, you know, you see, you see people what they're thinking on that particular day in October or November or September or whenever it might be.
00:37:14
Speaker
But the other thing is, by doing all that, I also completely realized, I just realized that people just don't really know about that part of the Italian campaign. Um, you know, no one really knows about crossing the, there's been a little bit about the landings at Salerno maybe, but no one knows about the kind of capture of the Fodger airfields and no one knows about the Battle of Tourmalie or crossing the Sangro or particularly the Battle for Autona, which was absolutely awful. Known at the time as the sort of starling grad of the Adriatic. I mean, it's a horrible kind of, you know, meat grinder of a battle.
00:37:42
Speaker
And they don't know much about San Pietro and crossing the Volturno and all these kind of things, and Monty Samutcro and Camino, and hitting the Bernhard line, or the Winter line is also known.
00:37:51
Speaker
And so I thought, actually, no, I'm going to split this into two. I'm going to do two books. I'm going to do one that just focuses just on 1943 and this kind of spiral of kind of awfulness and violence and brutality. And how that came to be, you know, what the hell are they doing in Casino by the beginning of 1940? Why are they there? And usually in books, this is really skirted over. And I just felt that all the people that have fought there deserved a better kind of a better showing, they deserve to kind of have their story told. But also that it was a
00:38:19
Speaker
actually fascinating story so so that's why i read the book and and you know it's a grim old tale but it but it's grimly fascinating i mean really really is interesting and it's interesting because it also you know from a from a from a topographical point of view from from a from a seasonal point of view starts off under the broiling son of kind of early september 1943 and by the end of december 1943 it's kind of short days is dark it's sort of windy it's
00:38:45
Speaker
raining all the time if it's not raining is freezing cold snow and hail you know it goes from one extreme to the other you got this incredible backdrop which is the itself mountains rivers settlements and towns and villages and what have you.
00:38:59
Speaker
When you got this sort of huge civilian population so you know you put all that together and it's a I find it incredibly compelling story. When this is what's back to me in the face reading the book is a lot of the time I think the military history you can just fall into the abstract and think about this you know series of tactics into a grand strategy.
00:39:18
Speaker
Forget how bloody awful and brutal war is nothing that approach that you took of focusing on primary sources really does humanize it and and gives the reader a feeling of the realities of war in a way i can't experience before.
00:39:33
Speaker
Oh, great. Well, I'm thrilled to hear it. I mean, that's exactly the aim. So I'm thrilled to hit the spot for you, Will. I mean, I get really annoyed by if people refer to me as a military historian. I suddenly come over all prickly. I don't really think of it. I think a military historian is someone who does that kind of abstract stuff. It's sort of, you know,
00:39:51
Speaker
thirteen brigade moved up and they can i have crossed the river and a six four five and what's gonna cry i'm where i feel i'm a i'm a war historian cuz i think warfare is partly about military but it's also economic political social history as well you know what about the poor old italian school up in the middle of this i mean the problem is it is very mountainous it's got a population of forty million is a lot,
00:40:14
Speaker
And of course, most of those 40 million are in exactly the areas where the Allies are trying to move forward and the Germans are trying to retreat. So you've got a kind of perfect storm where they're all kind of screwed up together. I mean, I kind of sort of liken the campaign a bit like a sort of a twister. You know, you've seen those sort of pictures, how many of them sort of going over the Midwest of America or something, and it's just sort of causing this absolute mayhem everywhere it goes. It's just ripping everything up. And I kind of see that sort of storm of steel, kind of what it was like in Italy, really.
00:40:44
Speaker
And all those towns and villages, which is just destroyed. I mean, even if you go down to kind of Salerno area now, you look at sort of Batapelia or out of Villa or these kinds of towns. I mean, they're gopping. I mean, absolutely gopping. That's because they all got completely destroyed and had really bad, bad 1950s and 60s architecture on them. And they're still horrid. And those scars are still there. You can go to San Pietro, which is only kind of eight miles or so south of Casino.
00:41:13
Speaker
Which in turn is kind of you know seventy five miles south of rome and it's still in ruins i mean it's it's it was abandoned and they never lived in it again in the whole village is there with some ivy growing all over trees and what have you and you can you can peer into someone's kitchen.
00:41:28
Speaker
The paint is still peeling from the wall and you can see the old sink and all this sort of stuff and the pattern tiles on the floor, still seeing through the leaves and the dirt and just about. It's incredibly moving. It really is profoundly moving because you think, Jesus, this is one of those legacies.
00:41:51
Speaker
I also use a lot of sun petra you need these places this place in italy will seriously broke so it might be in kind of ninety nine point. One percent catholic or something as a country but but they had more regional patois in italy than any other country in europe if not the world for one but it's only in europe and that tells you that there's lots of very isolated communities and you know even when you go to some of these places today you think jesus is off the off the beaten track.
00:42:20
Speaker
You know it's like going to going to some sort of village in the bush on the outback of australia and you know these these these communities live in their own little bubble don't they you know that they might they might sort of abide by kind of rules and laws that are kind of created in camera.
00:42:37
Speaker
What the heck, I mean, you know, their own little community, their own little bubble, they're sort of cut off from a lot of the kind of modern world, even today. Well, you know, imagine what that's like in Italy, and imagine what that's like in the 1940s. I mean, these guys are seriously provincial. And someone like San Pietro is just untouched. I mean, you know, the rhythms and seasons of life have just been going on for centuries, largely untouched, you know.
00:42:59
Speaker
son to father to grandfather to great-father, great-grandfather to great-great-grandfather, they've all farmed the same bit of land, they've all lived in the same house, it's all exactly the same. And then suddenly, in a matter of a couple of weeks, in December 1943, all of that is destroyed. Only the hardest hard would not be moved by that.
00:43:22
Speaker
We're just about at time, but if you'll indulge me in my tenth and
Learning from WWII for Future Peace
00:43:25
Speaker
final question. You bet. Sometimes I think we feel we're more evolved than the people that have come before us, and we're better, we're more progressed, we're more sophisticated, and yet we are, as we've talked about, seeing echoes of some of the conflicts of the past in today. What are the lesson or the major lessons for you when you think about World War II that society should keep in mind today?
00:43:49
Speaker
Well, I remember the Balkan Wars erupting in the 1990s and just being horrible. I just can't believe it that here we were in the kind of, you know, the end of the 20th century and when people were behaving in the same way that they were. You know, let me just think about some massacres of Srebrenica and so on. You just, just, it's unbelievable. I think already we've become sort of completely inured to that. I mean, you know, the scale of the horror, the kind of sort of
00:44:10
Speaker
casual beheadings and stuff in the Middle East and so on. It's so shocking, and yet it's become sort of part and parcel, isn't it? We're definitely becoming a much more violent world again, and I think that's really, really troubling. The Second World War really should be enough to kind of stop anyone ever going to war again, and the tragedy is that that hasn't proved the case. I'm reeling a bit from what's happened in the last couple of years. I really, really am. I just can't believe what's
00:44:40
Speaker
going on in Ukraine, I can't believe what's going on in the Middle East at the moment. It's absolutely horrific. But all the lessons are there in the Second World War. Warped ideology, power of autocrats, misguided aims and hopes, terrors of extreme nationalism, the violence of conventional conflict, there it all is. And it's terrifying that you're seeing scenes of streets destroyed and burnt out tanks and blackened corpses, just like you were in the Second World War.
00:45:10
Speaker
Well, it makes it more important than ever that we engage with history. We understand history and we learn from history. That's a not so subtle segue. James, thank you so much for your time. The Savage Storm is out in Australia now. Couldn't recommend it more highly to everyone who is listening. Also, as an aside, strongly suggest everyone goes out and follows. We have ways of making you talk with our Murray, which is just fantastic podcast. Thank you for coming on, Australiana. Thanks for having me, Will. Good to see you.
00:45:38
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.