Features a great friend. Someone is become very involved with us in the last year or so. James holland. Who last week published the second book in his trilogy. Before i get into the introductions, i want to follow a tradition we have here. I dont know if we have any world war ii veterans here with us tonight that i can recognize, do we have any veterans . If not i would like to recognize veterans from all eras of service. [applause] thank you for your service and sacrifice. This evening come we will have on stage together, two of the biggest names and most prolific writers in the world war ii field, i was just thinking to myself this afternoon, if this was like boxing, this ability paper view match we would have on the stage tonight. Historianr own senior who publishes his book this month and he will be interviewing james holland, a ,istorian, broadcaster, author he is written 19 books on world war ii. Mostly nonfiction but also historical novels and young adult titles. You probably read some of these books. Fortress malta come battle of britain, as well as the first volume in his trilogy on the war in the west titled the rise of germany, 1939 to 1941. When he is not writing come he regularly appears on television and radio and in addition to directing the chalk valley history festival and playing cricket. He is a rubbish bowler and a pretty good batsman. Always better to be a batsman than a bowler print is also fellow of the road Royal Historical society and a collection of world war ii interviews of the imperial war museum. We have a common goal of capturing and telling the stories behind the war. You know his books are filled with rich anecdotes, personal details describing not just the strategy of the battlefield in the human experience. I know many of you have been at the museum, but you know exactly the same thing we strive for. As i mentioned, he had quickly become a great friend of the museum. It will be back in new orleans in november for International World war ii College Giving two talks at the preconference symposium. A prominentbecome speaker on our educational travel program. Last month he accompanied our easy company tour in normandy for a couple of days. He will be leading our crew next may and is also going to be aboard our trip back to normandy for the 75th anniversary in 2019. He is a busy guy working all over the world and we appreciate it. Without any further ado, please help me welcome rob and tonights featured speaker, james holland. [applause] thats the nicest introduction ive ever had my life. Were gonna do that more often. Thanks so much for being here tonight to discuss the book. As stephen mentioned, if you dont mind let me tell at the audience a bit. It follows the rise of germany and a fine book in the new one is as equally as good. I cannot recommend these enough. James knows the material holds. Can a master writer, he integrate stories as well as anyone in the world. Going from here to here to get the audience engaged. Often it befuddles our readers but he really has the touch. Pogo from high policy talks with roosevelt and churchill to individual stories of ordinary folk in the struggle. Really good stuff. You wont be start you will not be sorry. Now that i have you here, alive and on stage, i have to ask you, what did dunkirk. You think . I saw this being filmed last year. I saw the smoke over the town and i was thinking its great they got all the smoke. Just a little bit more because the smoke cloud went up 15,000 feet. I thought it was a stunning and ibeautifully acted loved the final bit on the train. There was lots of bits. It big problem for me with had aimplies that three 30,000 men that were evacuated was largely because little ships. That wasnt the case. As i understand it, Christopher Nolan isnt keen on cgi. Because of that, that meant he couldnt have lots of big ships because they dont exist anymore. The truth is along that, has 24 7ng to do with tides, right up until the first of june, it turned sunny again. They double stacked ships all the time. Why. F the reasons the other reason is incredibly stoic defense of the perimeter not just by the infantry battalions also the french as well. Board sees which made it a whole series of factors as to why it wasnt all over in 36 hours. Thats why they all. Wheres this one scene they are talking about the tides saying we will be lucky, its all down to little ships. Really enjoyed it. I had to ask him about this. To the book. I have a few questions id like, maybe some discussion. Portrait oferesting germany. A country ive studied my entire life. In this book you draw an interesting portrait of germany, quite different from the military giant in most of the books on world war ii. Can you tell us something about this . In thes germany warmaking power of 1941. War in he goes into september 1939, its a war of annihilation. They have to completely win against everyone they take on or else its gonna drag. The moment a war drags for germany, they are in big trouble. The geographical situation is they are stuck in the heart of europe. You look at that coastline, its an absolute mast to get in and out of. Thats the network of little channels and islands. No access to the ocean. Theyve got a little bit of the north sea, but the moment they go to war, the royal navy blockades all german shipping. So where are they going to get these resources . They going to france in the low countries like a kid in the sweetshop rate the cupboard is bare within a matter of months. So where are they going to go . Eres only one place they can go . Theres only one source of resources for them and that is the soviet union. Suing for peace in the early part of 1941, they have no alternative but to go in in the summer of 1941 to the soviet union. They dont have enough oil, they dont have enough to do what they want to do. So everything is an currently frontloaded, which is why you have if you think of an oldfashioned spear with a wooden shaft and a shiny point, your grenadier divisions, your motor divisions, they are the shiny silver rivets. And the rest of the wooden shaft, who were kind of moving with horses and carts and on their own two feet. The way soldiers have always traditionally moved around. And it is one thing doing it in something, miles or and the maximum you can go is about 250 miles. Its another thing altogether when your army is actually only a little but bigger than it was when they invaded france in the low countries and your battle fund is 1200 miles and the distances are in terms of modern combat. Thats where it all starts. Darker i was really interested in this, you describe germany as one of the least automotive countries in europe. I think amongst the major powers, italy was less automotive. But with was the most radio friendly in the world. This is just amazing. One of the places you can find out this stuff, i love pursuing nontraditional sources. Where you can get the figures for the motor industry is from the whiskers almanac which we have in the u. K. , and they still produce every so year. It does. That you would never need to know. And what happens is you put it in your bathroom and when you got Nothing Better to do, you just sit there and flipped through it. Germany had 24. 5 million pigs, fascinating. [laughter] the face of the inconsequential data, but us come, for historians, its absolutely fascinating. This is where you get the figure about all the cars. In 1939, there are 47 to every motorized yokel where is that figure is 14 in the u. K. , nine in france and three in the usa. Perhaps not surprisingly over here. But friends of the most automotive at the start of the war in europe. And germany is way down. Is you cant snap your fingers and produce an Automotive Society because you havent got factories, you havent got and of course, when you havent got very many vehicles, they are more expensive. What you really need someone to massproduce lots of chevrolets or whatever, and in the unit cost comes down. But you dont have that in germany, that is not the german way. The consequence of that is you then dont have lots of gas stations, you dont have lots of mechanics, you dont have lots of people who know how to drive. Its a problem. You cant just suddenly transform that, which is why when germany invades france and the low countries, with 135 divisions, if you think of the division is roughly 50,000 men, only 16 of those are mechanized, which reads 119 of them are not mechanized. Marched off to work much other forefathers had. Exactly. But the radio thing is really interesting. It goes handinhand with some of the most brilliant and fantastic spin doctoring propaganda the world has ever seen. I dont think anyone can deny that the nazis were not absolute masters of propaganda. And with the propaganda chief recognized is that what you need to do to get your message across is just say the same thing over and over again, repeat, repeat. What they realized is that actually, radio was a really good way of doing this. Where triumph of the will, it doesnt matter what you think of them or how repugnant heckler is, if you see that film, it is rightly considered a masterpiece. It is stunning to look at. You can see why anyone in germany would read this and go i should be proud of being german. My chest is just a little bit puffed out a bit more in my back is a bit straighter. You can see how everyone is getting into the whole crowd german thing that is going on. Can masters radio, if you can get radios made really cheap, then everyone can have one. And if anyone can have one, you can control what everyone is listening to and at exactly what happens. Ivein my study at home, got a Little German radio and it is nine inches by nine inches by four inches. Whatever,4 or 1935 or that was like the arrival of the ipod. Because radios like the one you show up on stage, thats what radios look like. They are creeping wooden boxes. And because they are big and quite expensive, not everyone can have one. Radio islue german super cheap and super basic and everyone to have one. And you are just popping out the same old nonsense all the time. And its not all ranting and raving, its a bit of that, of course, but they even have humorous programs as well. A whole range of stuff. But the subliminal message is all the same. The proud to be german. Best, we are really cool. Our soldiers look fantastic. We love letter. Or whatever it might be, but its the same thing. And if the message that comes across. The most important messages you know what, we are absolutely tops. Enough, theepeat it method will get through. That aregermans believing this stuff, its the rest of the world. And there is that amazing story of the general, the commanderinchief of the french iny, and he gets invited 1938 to come see, so off he goes. They go to an airfield and there is a whole row of shiny, new singleengine fighters. And he goes got, they are impressive. And they watched them all take and he goes now on going to take you to the next airfield. While they are in transit to the next airfield, they all take off and land at the next airport. And when he gets there, he gets back to paris and he says we are never going to win, we must never go to war with germany hee their air force believes, is smoke and mirrors. Because the germany that starts the war is never actually quite as powerful. We always talk about the nazi war machine. The spearhead is the machine. Closer,ook a little bit but it really isnt. So you have an army that is in many ways oldstyle. Something that unifies for the time being due to propaganda. What about things like quality of german equipment . Treadhead, that means i love tanks. I like to talk about tanks, i think about tanks, i dream about tanks. And when i was a kid, german tanks are the ones that you want, if you are playing soldiers, those are the kind you wanted to be in. We dont really think that anymore. I dont think we do. Well, i dont. The damaging moment for me was when i was researching a series for a hero i was going to write about and he was a british infantryman, and i just didnt know enough. I thought i got to find out a bit more about the weaponry and the uniforms and the rest of it. Chat who to see this ran a small arms unit in the justand he has this room stuffed full of small arms all the way back, always up to today. Past and had an incredible rate of fire. And ilooked at it casually tossed off a remark to show that i knew what i was talking about. I said well, of course that was the small arms weapon of the Second World War, because i had read it in a book. And he went, says who . Says who . Minutesnext five proceeded to completely deconstruct everything that i thought i knew about german small arms. It was an absolute lesson and he pointed out that the rate of fire causes all sorts of problems, yes, it was good in combat but that rate of fire quickly caused the barrel to overheat if you didnt observe absolutely perfect firing discipline, and you didnt when you have thousands of americans coming toward you in warships. And it was at that point it was a fair point. Have that you had to the amount of ammunition used. Anyway, it was really fascinating, it opened up my eyes and let me down a whole line of research that i hadnt thought about before. I think in our understanding of world war ii, there is a huge amount of assumed knowledge, particularly on the operational level. That war is fought on three levels. , montgomery county, eisenhower, highlevel stuff. The tactical level, which is the stuff were almost interested foxhole and mustang, whatever it might be. The actual battle. The operational level is given pretty thin regard, frankly. It is the glue that binds strategical and tactical together. War,t is the economics of what it is a whole lot more than that. And when you observe the operational level and dont assume youre going to be bored of it because youre talking about logistics, you actually asize that it is this rich in human trauma as every other bit of a world war. You are suddenly starting to look at all sorts of stuff. And to go back to the original point about tanks, we are guilty because one of the reasons we war,about the second world the stories are based on firsthand testimony. I. If you are an american g and you are somewhere new normandy and there is a tank hedge,toward you from a you dont care that it took 75 manhours of machine guns or that the barrel might overheat, and you dont care that this tank has got a six speed semiautomatic gearbox, decently annot put into the hands of 18yearold recruit because it will break. All you care is you got a massive tank coming toward you that is big and scary and has a massive gun and that is fair enough. Testimony,l history that so youre going to talk about. For a phone else is sort of go yet, that does sound awesome. Why werent we going these kinds of things . Why, andell you actually its really interesting. One of the things im finding out in the second volume is in 1940 to come up with the germans and the british were having a complete rethink about their armored policy. What we want from our tanks . Tanks are all very small. The only people who have really it hasks are the french, a popgun. Tanks are quite small. Thegermans come up against t 34 anything we need something bigger. The british are also flailing around thinking these are not quite what we want. And they put down a series of criteria and for the germans, it is absolutely the number one priority the bigger the tanks, the more oil uses. Where the british are going number one priority is reliability. Gun and armor comes down later. And thats where the sherman is just fantastic. If you lined up a tiger tank and a sherman tank on a football pitch for example, clearly the tiger is going to win. But you know how mciver tanks were built . A few hundred . 1347. Do you know honey sherman portal . 50,000 . 49,000. And 74,000 holes. It is 30 tons. The moment the sherman comes into the battlefront, basically, the allies are back on the front. The axis forces are retreating. What happens when you retreat . You go across every kind of river you go across, every bridge. Youre going to blow the bridge. Is some meansneed of getting across that bridge. The best way in the Second World War to get across a bridge is to put down in class 40 bridge. Quickest and easiest and most simple way to do it. It can take 40 tons. You dont want 56 ton monster on tons sherman tank is 30 and even with chickens on the extra ballast longs and five guys and lots of ammunition, it is still under 40 tons. Thats pretty important. The other thing is that it is really, really easy to maintain and lots of really fantastic design features on the sherman tank by having the suspension bogeys on the outside, not on the inside. Gets damaged them or whatever, you can repair that little bit without having to take the whole thing to pieces. The track system is incredibly simple, you can just pull that repair it, and get it back together again. Have you ever looked at the wheels . Unbelievable. They are so complicated. Theyre incredibly complicated. In the field, that is not what you want. Where we lose 300 tanks. Montgomery was so awful, whole thing was a sham, a battle plan was terrible. What were they thinking . Forgetting that there were points in the british and canadian bit. That is the fundamental difference between the western when wend the germans, are building tanks, were building tanks wreckers and the restless, and they are equally simple. That with at do tiger. Pamphlethis wonderful written by the u. S. Army called german take maintenance. Lowight as well be called german tank maintenance. Its absolutely amazing. By the way, im disappointed in your lack of enthusiasm. Book, to started the everyone the audience, his second volume starts with the germans. That is seen as the time still of germany triumphant, and the opening month of operation is one victory after another, 4 million soviet casualties, prisoners taken. This is where i bought your book really shown, i would be like to. You see a germany that is already losing the war in 1941. Is that a correct assessment . The Tipping Point for the is probablypoint november, 1941. The moment were the armaments minister its not a good idea telling hitler what he doesnt want to hear, but he does. And he says you know, i think you really need to know were not going to win the war now. The wheels are literally falling off. In one of the reasons for this is because the soviet union is not france and although they , they havel these captured this vast number of red army troops, they are 500 miles in, and the red army is still fighting. They cant quite find a way through. Of course, the original three months is up, it has started to rain and it is starting to snow and temperatures are falling. They just cant operate. You have to remember because they are so under mechanized, theyve actually gone in with 2000 different types of vehicles. And the reason they got 2000 different types of vehicles is because a large proportion of them are captured vehicles from the french army, british army, belgian army, the rest of them. And thats fine while they are all working. Thathe moment that bedford was captured at dunkirk needs a new gasket, you got a problem. And of course that is not conducive to speed and all the rest of it. Maneuver that you always read about so brilliantly theour books is that usp, ability to maneuver and move and operate at such speed suddenly is gone and suddenly the germans are not quite so special after all. Hitler wee says to are not going to win, thats what hes talking about. The losses are catastrophic. The manpower is already on the way, theyve already taken the young men, theyre already having to pull people out of unmotivated,e unfed and all the rest of it. Im, . Hitler says to h what you think i should do . And so he keeps going. The interesting thing to me, one of the things i think its welly fascinating is that americaust assumed that was fully formed as the arsenal of democracy. What is the revolutionary to me in my research is that that was not assured whatsoever. However there is no getting away from the fact that america is a very large country and up until i can 41, they could be used in factories. Manpower, what they can achieve is better than anywhere else in the world. Theres a space and there is manufacturing already in the country that means in theory, you should be able to use small armaments when you need to. Lets think an arbitrary date. June 16, 1941. At the time, germany has one enemy, which is Great Britain. Canada, australia, new zealand. Fastforward six months. 16th of december, the day that himselfmakes commanderinchief of the army. They have Great Britain again plus the empire. It has the United States of was combined resources just want germany. And if you assume the journey can only win it wins quickly and already its not running quickly, suddenly that means it is not just about tactical flair, you can still have some moments, you can win a battle, but youre not going to win the war because resources are just not going to support it. I cannot see how theres a way back for germany when you look at the amount of forces and Global Forces against them. A dramatic change of fortune, as you pointed out. By itself oneonone and its empire. Suddenly is this great global coalition. Anything short of a Nuclear Weapons for a ray gun. It has to be some wonder weapon. This no way back. And people always talk about could germany ever have created an atomic bomb . And the answer is absolutely not a chance. Do you know how may people were involved in the Manhattan Project . What hundred 20,000 people, some of the finest brains. The space, the money, the resources to make it happen. In germany, that was not the case. There were rival factions, there were the kind of nazi scientists and then the not really nazi scientists, and they hated each others guts. In total about 150 people. It just was never, ever going to happen. And this is the device will parallel, such a feature of germany, comes to play. Ive investigated a site where a dirty bomb was exploded in 1945. ,ts in an Army Training place and there was definitely regime involved. It was a big, nasty bomb. It did a Mushroom Cloud and all the rest. It was absolutely not an atomic bomb and he not look anything like it. It was a small bomb. Ive often thought that 120,000 extra german personnel would have been ground up on the Eastern Front. They could spare the kind of manpower and woman power. And this is the thing about it that you have to understand, if you accept that the tactical flair and the quick nature of bomb and that it is about a kind of grinding down with your enemy, just think about the terrible pickle that the germans were in, because this is the think of vaste russian armies and soviet armies and german armies, 300 divisions as being a son of enormous strength. You can argue that as a sign of weakness, because the more who is you have on the ground, the more inherently inefficient you are. What britain and america are doing is saying we are going to use steel, not flesh. Britain never has more than 55 divisions, i can rather how many the United States has. Ani think we actually can in 89. That is a much better way to fight a war. If youre unfortunate enough to be a british or American Armored Division or infantry division, look out, because the chances of surviving are actually worse than 1940s. Arethe numbers at the front fewer, which is what ultimately, theres fewer casualties. That is a much more efficient way of fighting a war. Britain,manpower in 1943 was not the army or the navy or the air force, it was the military aircraft. That tells you what you need to know and you can argue it is also about morality, but it saved the lives of many Young Americans and many young british people. That has got to the irrefutable. Whereas germanys problem is that it doesnt have enough food. Food and Oil Shortages are the biggest. Food and oil are the biggest problems of all. And perhaps food is the greatest. And what happens is because they are soheavy on the ground and because they have somebody ,asualties on the Eastern Front the cream of the crop is already fading away. They are having to take out of the factories and replace them with prisoners of war and all the rest of it. The problem is they are already really short on food. Far more in germany is stringent than it ever was in the u. K. , for instance. With but so much butter on your toast. Britain wasg in about making sure there was an even spread of food. , anduld have got more in people could have had more, but we chose to have enough food so that everyone had a balanced diet, which meant that if you had a balanced, healthy diet, your working hours were greater, less sick people falling out with sick days and all the rest of it, which meant productivity went up. In germany, they are already short on food. People are going hungry. In germany, your superhuman is already getting hungry. Food thanan give more you are getting the german civilians, which weve of course that they already have absolutely no motivation, but they are also really struggling for food, they are dying and all the rest of it, which means your productivity is going down. Its just a mess. Its just getting into an ever decreasing cycle. Of which there is really no recovery. Germans, andthe there are less than they seem. The british, who i think are successfully navigating using steel instead of flesh, manpower to reduce casualties, those are interesting views of those armies. But here in new orleans we have the other question. How would you rate the u. S. Army in this period . Think of Something Like cap serene pass, which you write about in this book, which is still a touchstone for what we think of u. S. Fighting ability as of early 1943. James i think the u. S. Of a was absolutely incredible in the Second World War. I see americas war and i hope the message comes across loud and clear. Starting in may or june of 1940. This is ground zero for the usa, having this tiny army, 74 fighter planes, 52 heavy bombers. You have more horses. It is hard to imagine just how small the American Armed forces are in the summer of 1940. Which is at the moment where france gets defeated. The speed with which the u. S. Armed forces grows is just unbelievable, but it is not just speed. It is the way the lessons of war are learned. It is incredible. What is absolutely the case, again i am guilty of fast forwarding, but at the beginning of 1945 the American Armed forces are the best in the world, bar none. They absolutely are tops. And the speed at which they absorbed the lessons of war is just incredible. You have to remember, you have this incredibly small army. Really tiny. I have this wonderful photograph of a load of sherman tanks being loaded onto a series of landing ships just before operation husky. That is early july 1942. The invasion of sicily. Early july 1943, the start of volume three. If you think about that and think three years. That is nothing. It is a pinprick in time. What a huge change that is. That growth is unbelievable. It is mindboggling. You simply cannot get your head around it. That only happens because of the brilliant geopolitical understanding of roosevelt, the very canny political path taken. He does one of the greatest move in the history of politics, by turning america from a very small Armed Services isolationist and inward looking to the state of the free world. The growth of the civilian army, the speed with which rubbish generals are discarded, out of date officers are discarded and replaced, the speed of procurement, the way in which weapons are absorbed, developed, advanced. It is just unbelievable. You will have seen the spitfire in the foyer of the louisiana pavilion. The spitfire is a wondrous thing of beauty. But that is a generational it is incredible. I know that was an initial british procurement, but the slickness of it, the smoothness of it, everything about it. The bubble canopy. It is a machine completely fit for purpose. There are so many instances of the americans absolutely nailing it. Throughout history, you will find and you would know this, rob that sometimes you need defeats. Defeats, you can learn more from a defeat than from a victory. It is how you take that defeat. Lets admit, it is a setback. It is a bloody nose. Rob it is a core size u. S. Force. James and they recover. It is not like they are completely annihilated. There are some sticky moments. Rob our commander went to pieces a bit. I think you called him a lunatic. [laughter] james he was digging this huge bunker system. Absolutely mad. But someone who looks quite good in peacetime, you dont know how they are going to be in war. The point is britain and america are always seen as being a little soft. They are not. They are ruthless and tough. America is always incredibly hard. If someone is not up to it, even a whiff, out they go. John lucas at anzio. Terry allen. People like this. Terry allen, you could argue he was pretty good. Rob he came back and got another Division Later in the war. James the speed of which you assimilate these lessons. I think alexander plays a big part of this. He is a british general, but when he takes over in february 1943, he gets attrition pretty quickly. He sends them off to battle school, where they are training with live ammunition, and puts them back in. It is one of the toughest battles for the division, which is new to battle, but they are still tough and disciplined. They lead them to victory in may of 1943. I remember interviewing a Company Sergeant major from new jersey rather than the midwest. When he got to algiers, he had never seen a tank. The training he had done in louisiana with maneuvers had been with wooden rifles. He said, we were having to learn incredibly quickly. Rob i often thought that after the germans attack and the americans are unprepared, they realize you can kill these guys just like everyone else. They had been prisoners of propaganda as much as anyone else. You see rommel sweeping in and, it is the point of the spear, and what they are looking at is panzers and the rest of it. These are high velocity guns. There antitake antitank guns ish. Little popgun the dreaded 88 millimeter. They were obviously unbelievably disciplined. They are not going to run away or anything like that. The point is german troops, there is capital punishment, but there is only one person executed and he murdered someone as well. In germany, they execute 40 48 people in the First World War for cowardice and running away. But that is a conservative estimate. 30,000 in the second war. Rob an entire army corps essentially executed. James you have a choice. You stay at the front and keep fighting and if you are lucky you get captured or you get through it. Or run away and if you get caught, youre definitely dead. So a lot of people prefer to fight. Rob we are coming towards the point in the evening where we will throw you to the wolves and ask questions from the floor. Before i get there, let me ask you a question. Consider it a professional opinion. It was a gamble from the german perspective. I am not high on german chances of winning the war. Can you handicap the german victory in world war ii . Give us a percentage . 10 chance of winning . 20 . 30 . James my goodness me. The thing about it is everything has to go completely according to plan, and how often does that happen . Rob so you have to roll snake eyes. Or you have to roll sevens. But just keep doing it over and over and over again. James yeah. For me, the fatal mistake is hitler has this incredibly narrow worldview. He judges everyone by his own standards. He is a continentalist because germany is a continental power. He thinks in terms of land power. He doesnt understand naval power. But naval power is key. And he does not recognize that when britain loses her army at dunkirk, it is a very small army. We also have the raf. We have an awful lot in our favor. The key moment is the failure to knock out britain quickly in the summer of 1940, where it all starts to go horribly wrong. The moment they dont do that, and i just cannot see how they ever could. I think their chances of actually winning the war are less than 10 . Rob by late 1940, failure to prosecute or win the battle. James and who cares about the balkans . The people in the balkans care about the balkans, but in terms of that being decisive in the overall outcome of the work, it is not at all. Crete is a peer at victory. They are shooting themselves in the foot. The third week of may, four weeks before barbarossa, which is the biggest clash of arms the world has ever seen. Why are you dissipating your forces . It is quite useful to have crete, but when you think about your strategy, you have to prioritize. That is one of the problems the germans have. To go into crete at that point is strategic insanity. But because they win, we think, the british are terrible. Rob there is the view that the germans can do no wrong. What we are doing is repeating the same phrases. Germans using their own propaganda about various campaigns. James i think it is really important sometimes to take a step back and go, ok, this is assumed knowledge, but why is it assumed that and is everybody right . Sometimes you have to take a step back, look at it and say, that doesnt make any sense. As a historian, what i am always trained to do is question everything. When i read a book and it tells me i learned the lesson on the mg42. If something says x, you have to go, why are you saying that . What is your evidence . Show me your proof. As a historian, that is what we are trying to do, to analyze things and get as much proof as we possibly can. Rob you do that extremely well in this book and all your books. We have come to that time in the evening. If there are any questions from the floor that you would like to ask our speaker, james holland, i think what we have is jeremy collins. Raise your hand and he will bring a microphone to you. Let me thank you for a wonderfully engaging conversation. [applause] a very difficult interview to conduct. We have some questions from the audience and some from those online watching as well. You focused on germany, but the germans did have help from the italians and the japanese. That would have obviously extended the war and their resources would have helped with the whole axis. James one of the responses to america getting into the war is almost the same from Winston Churchill and adolf hitler. Thank goodness, we cant lose now. It is an issue of geopolitical understanding. In the case of hitler, what he thinks is what this means is america is going to put all her efforts into the fight against japan, which means i no longer have to worry about the United States. Whereas churchill was thinking great, all their resources. Now we have got proper help. The italians are just rob be kind. James there are lots of brilliant italians, lots of very brave people. They dont all run away. But the truth of the matter is in terms of first world superpowers, france, britain, america, germany are it. Italy is languishing. It is just behind. It is behind the eight ball. If germany is under resourced, italy also. The worlds resources move around the world by ship, by sea. And the roman era, in the time of the roman empire, the world was the mediterranean. Mussolini dreams of a kind of new roman empire. The mediterranean is no longer enough. Shipping, notugh enough access to resources. The army is out of date. The Army Commanders are spectacularly complacent. They are over elaborate. Their uniforms are over elaborate. [laughter] they look great, but they have no efficient. Just mention this, this 1942 british gas mask case. It is canvassed, it is cheap. It was designed in 1937 with amazing foresight. In here is your ipad [laughter] while thats, moleskine. They were thinking ahead. What the british army discovered 19141915, if you are talking about yearround campaigning, that doesnt cover it. It isnt so good in winter. It gets wet. When it gets wet, it starts to curl, it rots easy. Leather segments appear canvas is cheap as chips and minute break you just get a new one. Germans have leather everywhere. What is the point of the jackbooted . Its just leather. The point is it looks cool. It was about tapping into an marshallsnness,in a militaristic society. They are saying yeah, we are going back to that. Which you could argue was bogus in the first place. Nancy their own nazi slant. Ive got one of these doublebreasted things, it fits me like a glove. As soon as you put it on, you look like a nazi. [laughter] ive got no swastikas, its not something i wear in public, or even in private. This is only being streamed to a couple hundred thousand people [laughter]. It must have taken four cows to make it. By contrast, look at the german gas mask case. It is stressed. It has got this amazing hinge. You can put it down like that. It is extraordinary, the craftsmanship. This was made in 1942 and it still works perfectly. You open appear, and look. It has got this in here. You open that up, its got gossamer wire. A spare set of lenses just in case the lenses in your gas mask get broken. They are manufacturing these still in 1945. It is expensive, cumbersome, heavy. And utterly pointless. Its got these straps which were leather. It sits on your back like that. It is iconic. When you look at german uniforms and gas mask cases, it is just what the germans look like. Dont know anything about it out of than the fact that thats with the germans have. We think about it, you realize this epitomizes everything that was rubbish about the germans in the Second World War. An expensive pointless waste of time and resources. Why are you wasting resources on this . It makes absolutely no sense. I think i have finally broken the spring. [laughter] why arent you putting that towards more tanks or more machine guns or anything . We have a question from the from nick online. You were mentioning Radio Technology plus propaganda, which brings up another critical aspect of technology in the war, cryptography and cryptology. What can you share of the early allied efforts during this time period to crack the enigma code, and the successes and failures of this crucial time of the war . One example, churchills apparent foreknowledge that the luftwaffe was planning to target coventry came from ultra decrypts. James in the case of coventry, you have to put that in context. We knew they were talking about all sorts of places. We had as many antiaircraft guns as you could put around these places and you had to judiciously use your resources. You can only do what you can do. There is the battle of the beams going on at that particular time. The british are starting to make great inroads in that and cracking it. The enigma codes are really interesting, and we do not give enough credit to the poles and the french before the war, most of which britain was able to benefit from. I would also say the incredible , work of the code breakers is crucial, but i also think we possibly have gone a little bit too far the other way in our admiration of it. The intelligence picture you need to see in the whole. It is not just the code breaking, it is the wireless service. It is reconnaissance. It is the fact that there are different units. There is naval intelligence, army intelligence, air intelligence. Because we are a democracy in britain and indeed in the u. S. , we are quite happy to share our intelligence, where in nazi germany in terms of power, you tend to hold onto it. You have an absurd situation in the luftwaffe where you have a general who is in charge of one part of the luftwaffe intelligence, whereas a colonel schmidt is in charge of another, but is also at the same time going with personal staff. So the colonel is more influential than martini. Martini and schmidt hate each others guts. Schmidt is a good nazi man and a good party man. He loves the ladies, loves to drink, and is good mates with goehring. But he has no qualifications. The bill she gives goering is miserable. If the gets cut down in britain, you might have 40 different units. That would all come together very quickly to give us a clear picture, whereas in nazi germany the only time it comes together is at the very top. Throughout the Second World War, goehring has his own intelligence system. It is as extraordinary to think this is going on. Sometimes he shares some of that with hitler and sometimes he doesnt. The main purpose is not to provide intelligence for the luftwaffe, it is to keep himself one step ahead of his nazi rivals. The whole thing is rotten to the core. In the front here . A couple of questions. You are engaging in a little speculation, so i will ask to speculate on two things. Suppose hitler had not invaded russia in 1941 and just sat tight, consolidated his gains, because he occupied all of mainland europe at the time. He had allies like romania and hungary. How long do you think the third reich would have lasted . That is the first one. The second one is, there has been a lot of writing about hitlers decision to split his forces in what was it september 1941, instead of concentrating on the attack on moscow, diverting some to the southern front. If you would have concentrated the forces on moscow, would we have had a different result . James onto to your first question, i think if they sat tight, they would have just run out of everything. There was an economic blockade on the germans. They cannot get to the oceans. The only way they can get to the oceans is with the uboats. But Service Vessels cannot so no merchant ships can come in. A few are coming down the norwegian coast. So they are running out. They are like kids in a sweets shop. The comparison, if you think of france is the most Automotive Society in europe in 1940, by the end of 1940 there are 8 of the vehicles that were there in the beginning of 1940 in france. 92 of the vehicles have been stolen by the germans. They dont have enough fuel. The whole thing is grinding to a halt. That is why they go into the soviet union because they know that if they dont they are stuffed because they dont have enough supplies. That is the whole point of it. They could have kept going, but also their manpower would have been too stretched because they would have not been able to maintain the army as it was. It is very manpower intensive. They need feeding and all the rest of it. They just run into trouble. James just a minute, nobody can hear. Just a minute, please. I am taking issue in this regard. Wouldnt there have been a great desire or at least pressure on the United States and britain if germany had stopped attacking and said, lets make a deal. We will keep europe the way it is and we will make a deal with you. We wont attack you, you wont attack us. What about it . James the original plans for the british and french before the war is they would hold whatever aggressive moves that germany made to build up strength the. They found narcissism intolerable and a cancer that needed to be expunged from the world. I think you would have to reckon with it that at some point britain would have to counterattack. The United States was not in the war at that point. How long that would take, i dont know. But what britain would have hoped if germany had no longer done any battles, not gone into the soviet union, i think britain would have tied the noose around them. They would have continued bombing, bombing german cities and trying to get them to submission, tying the noose around them in terms of the economic blockade, trying to make sure as little as possible when into germany and hoped it was an internal combustion. The second point is that right from the word go, the soviet is moving its industry to the urals. There is an argument that even if they had gone to moscow in 1941 that might not have been the end because the industry ability to manufacture was growing, and the roots from the arctic were in the clear and through the persian gulf. Not the persian gulf, but through iran and the rest of the southern soviet union. They were still open at that point. The part about the southern thrust, and this is the thing i find really hard to get my head around, what were they going to do when they got to the caucuses . When they get to one oil well it , is already burning because the red army has a scorched earth policy as they are retrieving. Even if they get to the Third Largest oil producer in the world in 1940, what are they going to do . Just assuming the russians have not burned those oil wells, which i assume they would have done, even if the germans had gotten their hands on the oil what are they going to do with it . How are they going to find it or move it around . Oil moves around the world by ship today, as it did in the 1940s. There are hardly any oil pipelines. It is going eastward to the urals. And they are very small. The only possible way they could have moved it is by train. The reichsbahn is bursting at the seams. No one in germany seems to think, what happens when we get there . We have to get the oil. Rob that is the kinetic military. As long as we are in motion, we are moving toward something and we will worry about it when we get there. One final question. You mentioned the german tank production and American Tank production and the different philosophies that seem to be at play. Is it possible the difference could have been a cultural element, since today we see the same philosophies being played out in the german car industry . It will take a specialist to maintain and fix up, whereas the american car industry put out a bunch of basic moving machines that anybody with a garage can fix. James yes. We were in a situation. My own personal wheels was a citroen, and i love it. But my wife is not so interested in driving around in a nearly 70yearold car. We looked at an audi estate car. Rob you need a phd to maintain it. James you need to take off the entire wing to change the lightbulb. That seems insane. As soon i heard that, i was thinking, it is like a tank. We are not getting this car. [laughter] it is not going to happen. But i think what you are touching on is a larger point, and that is what i am trying to make by bringing this down. You can apply this to uniforms and all the rest of it. It might be possible when i am over here in november to do another session on uniforms, and informal session. Yes, culture really does come into all this stuff. This is my point. We take objects from world war ii for granted. A german looks like he does. An american looks like he does. That is just how they are. But when you deconstruct this stuff and start looking into it in great detail, you realize whether it be a jacket, a tank, a modernday car, it tells you a huge amount about the culture, the people, the attitudes, so many other things about the different nations involved. I would completely agree with your assessment. Rob jeremy . I think that will end our questioning for the evening. [applause] james holland, ladies and gentlemen. James thank you. Thank you for coming. Rob we went a little over time and i think we could have gone on for another three hours. Before we end the evening and have james sign his allies strike back, his first volume in the trilogy, that will be done right over here so please line up. Take note of our next program this thursday, three days from now, in the louisiana pavilion. We will host an important event on the 70th anniversary of the Marshall Plan that rebuilt europe after the war, in partnership with our friends at the university of new orleans, featuring a good friend of the museum. We will also have the panorama jazz band playing before the event. That is always something to hear in new orleans. One last time, please thanks james holland. Good night. James thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer exploring our nations past every weekend on cspan3. This sunday, the National Constitution center hosts a discussion on congress, Political Parties and polarization. Heres a preview. [video clip] one important theme you raised in the civil war era, and is now relevant today to polarization is technology. Some contributing to our current polarization to a world as joel levin argues people are more eager to play to their base on twitter than to serve to the institutional interests of the white house, the presidency or the media. Talk about the role of technology and polarization throughout history, especially beginning in the civil war period. The moment that i find myself thinking about often these days is the telegraph. The rise of the telegraph as a form of technology. Before the telegraph, there was a certain amount of wiggle room in congress that if you said something and you are sorry you said it, or you did something you are sorry you did, you could go to the news office or the reporter and change what you set a little bit. There was rigell there was a wiggle room and it was easier to keep things away from the public because there was a limited number of reporters. Telegraph changes everything. It takes away the wiggle room. 45 minutes and Everybody Knows about something. All of a sudden there are all of these reporters in washington from all over the nation who can travel a far distance to stay there and telegraph home what it is they are seeing. Congress and congressman lose control of the spin. Congress,nk about ideally speaking, it is supposed to be an ongoing conversation between the public and their representative in one way or another. The public says with a want, representatives respond in some way. Technology changes the conversation. Right moments like now we are in a social media pseudoequivalent of the technology age. We no one quite understands the absolute give and take of that form of technology and everyone is trying to manipulated and take advantage, every now and again something happens and you can tell that no one expected that. Removed wiggleh room, i imagine now if someone says something goofy at a private dinner and someone has their phone and puts it on facebook, the entire world hears it. Oft is a generation politicos and politicians who lose control of the conversation to a certain degree and now they are doing that at hyperspeed. At this moment where the conversation has changed fundamentally, and a time when it is highly polarized, and everyone is othering. And you are evil others who cannot be dealt with. That is a dangerous time to be in this moment of hyperspeed. It is made worse by the fact that we have the first president who is a tweeting president. A couple of years ago, people are trying to figure out what that meant. Is a tweet formally . It is mind boggling a think we take it for granted the degree to which technology can fundamentally scramble the workings of democracy. That is some of what we are feeling our way through right now. Aboutcer learn more congress and polarization this sunday at 7 00 p. M. Eastern, 4 00 p. M. Pacific on American History tv. Professor david farber teaches a class on the 1960s Vietnam Antiwar Movement and how in his view, helped to expand the nations democratic process. Americans three tv taped this in philadelphia