Your friends so they can join, too. Tonights meet the author Event Features a great friend of the museum, someone whos become very involved with us in the last year or so, james holland, who, last week, published the second book in his trilogy on world war ii in the west, the allies strike back. Before i get to the introductions, i do want to follow a tradition we have here at the museum. I dont know if we have any world war ii veterans with us tonight that i can recognize. If not, id like to recognize veterans from all eras of service. [applause] thank you for your service and sacrifices. This evening, well 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 or something, this would be like a payperview match or something that we would have on this stage tonight. So we have our own senior historian, rob citino, who published his 10th book this month and hell be interviewing james holland, a historian, broadcaster, author. James has written 19 books on world war ii, mostly nonfiction, but also historical novels and young adult titles. Youve probably read some of these books fortress malta, battle of britain, as well as the first volume on his trilogy titled the rise of germany 1939 to 1941. When not writing, james appears on television and radio, in addition to directing the chalk valley history festival and playing cricket. I find out tonight hes a rubbish bowler and a pretty good batsman. [laughter] always better to be a batsman than a bowler. Hes a fellow of the Royal Historical society and his own collection of world war ii interviews at the imperial war museum. James and our museum have a common goal of capturing and telling the stories behind the war. If youve read his books, you know his books are filled with rich anecdotes, personal details describing not just the battles, but the human experience. I know many of you in this room, though not all of you, have visited the museum know thats the same thing we strive to do. James has quickly become a great friend of the museum. In addition to stopping here tonight, hell be back in new orleans in november for our International World war ii conference giving two talks, one at the preconference symposium and one at the actual conference. Hes also a prominent speaker on our educational travel programs. Last month, he accompanied our easy company tour in normandy for a couple of days. Hell be leading our river cruise with Anthony Beaver next may and will be aboard our trip back to normandy for the 75th anniversary in 2019, so hes a busy guy, working for us all over the world, and we really greatly appreciate it. Without further ado, please help me welcome to the stage rob citino and james holland. [applause] thank you. Rob thats the nicest introduction ive ever had in my life. I enjoyed that. [laughter] james, thank you so much for being here tonight to discuss your new book, the allies strike back, part two of a trilogy. Let me tell the audience a bit. It follows part one, the rise of germany, a fine book and the new one is equally as good. As a matter of fact, i cannot recommend either one of these books highly enough for those in our audience. James knows the material cold. Hes a master writer. He can interweave stories as well as anyone in the world. We all try to do that in our books, to go from here to here to here, to keep the reader engaged and often it befuddled our readers but james has a touch. You go from high policy talks between roosevelt and churchill to individual stories, ordinary folk caught up in the struggle, just really good stuff. Buy the allies strike back and i promise you you wont be , sorry. Get multiple copies to get multiple copies to give to your friends. Well delve into the book in a moment but now i have you here, i have to ask you, dunkirk, the film, talk to me what did , you think . James i saw it being filmed last year. I was in dunkirk and watched it and saw smoke over the town and i was thinking, its great that theyve got all this smoke going over the town, but a little bit more. Because the smoke went up some 15,000 feet and that certainly wasnt over there. I thought it was a stunning film, in many ways. I thought it was beautifully acted. You know and i love the final bit on the train. Actually, i know that steam train very well. Its not anywhere near woking to endorse it. Rob i remember thinking that to myself. James the big problem for me with it is that it implies that 338,000 men who were evacuated, largely because of the little ships. And that wasnt the case. As i understand it, Christopher Nolan is not keen on c. G. I. And, of course, because of that, that meant he couldnt have lots of big ships because they dont exist anymore and, actually, the truth is, along that moor, it had nothing to do with tides. Four for 24 7, up until the first of june when the weather broke and it turned sunny again, there were double stacked ships all the time funneling these people off all the time. Thats one of the reasons why 338,000 people got away. The other reason was because of the incredibly stoic defense over the perimeter, not just by the 16 english infantry battalions, but also by the french, as well, and also the weather. Clouds most of the time and flatasaboard seas, which made it all possible, a series of factors as to why the evacuation wasnt over in 36 hours, but lasted over a week. Thats why they all got off and theres just one scene with ken branagh and james darcey talking about the tides saying theyll be lucky if they get more than 35,000 off and its about little ships. No. But i enjoyed it. As a movie, i enjoyed it. Rob i told myself, i have to ask him about this. To the book. I have a few questions, perhaps points of discussion. A really interesting portrait in the allies strike back of germany, a country ive studied my entire life. Im proud of my 10th book coming out until i meet a man on his 19th and youll be back in a few months no doubt with your 20th. You draw an interesting portrait of germany, different from the military giant that is usually posited in most other books on the war. Your germany has crucial and eventually fatal weaknesses. Can you tell us about this . 1941 to 1943, where is germany, as a war making power in the middle of 1941, in your view . James the thing about the thing about germany, when it goes into war in september 1939, its a war of annihilation. They have to completely win against everyone they take on or else whats going to happen is that going to war is going to drag. The moment a war drags for germany, theyre in big trouble because they dont have the resources and theyre stuck in the heart of europe. You look at that coastline, look at the baltic, its a mess to get in and out of, an absolute network of little channels and islands, theres no access to the oceans. They have a little bit of the north sea, but the moment they go to war, the royal naval which in 1939 is the worlds largest, blockades all german shipping and so where are they going to get these resources from and what happens in the blitzkrieg years, they go into france and the low country and theyre kids in a sweet shop and the cupboard is bare within a matter of months, so where are they going to go . Theres only one place they can go, only one source of resources for them, and that is the soviet union, so really, apart from throwing in the towel and suing for peace in the early part of 1941, they have no alternative but to go in, in the summer of 1941, into the soviet union and its just its really tough. Its getting harder and harder for them because they dont have enough oil. They dont have enough resources to do what they want to do, so everything is incredibly frontloaded, which is why you have this if you think of the wehrmacht as a spear with a wooden shaft and shiny, sharp point, your panzer divisions and motorized divisions, theyre the kind of the shiny, silvery bit and the rest is the wooden shaft who are kind of moving with , horses and cars and on their own two feet, the way soldiers have always traditionally moved around. And it is one thing doing it in france when your battlefront is 120 miles or something and the maximum you can go is 250 miles. Its another thing altogether when your army is actually only a little bit bigger than it was when they invaded france and the low countries and your battlefront is 1200 miles and the distances, in terms of modern combat, infinite. Thats where it all starts to rob you describe germany as one of the least automotive countries in europe. I think amongst the major powers, probably only italy was less automotive, but the country that was the most radio friendly in the world. James this is just amazing. One of the places where you can find the stuff, i love pursuing nontraditional sources. The way you can get the figures for the motor industry is from the whitakers almanac, which we have in the u. K. , and they are still produced every single year. It is full of stuff you would never need to know, but it is quite interesting. You put it in the downstairs loo or your bathroom and when you have Nothing Better to do, you flick through it and say, ok, germany had 12. 5 million pigs, fascinating. Full of all sorts of, on the face of it, inconsequential data. But from my point of view and for us historians, it is absolutely fascinating. This is where you get the figure about all the cars. Germany in 1939, there are 47 germans for every motorized vehicle, whereas that figure is 14 in the u. K. , nine in france, and three in the usa. Perhaps not surprisingly over here. But france is the most Automotive Society in europe. Germany is way down. You cannot just click your fingers and produce an Automotive Society, because you have not got factories. You havent got and when you havent got many vehicles in a country, they are more expensive. What you really need is someone to massproduce lots of mobile ts or chevrolets. Then the unit cost comes down and it becomes more affordable and everyone can have wondered you dont have that in germany. That is not the german way. The consequence of that is you dont have lots of gas stations. You dont have lots of mechanics. You dont have lots of people who know how to drive. You know it is a problem. , you cannot just suddenly transform that, which is why , when germany invades france in may 1940 with 135 divisions, a division is roughly 50,000 men, only 16 of those are mechanized. 16 out of 135. 119 are not mechanized. That is where the horses come into play. March off to war much as their forefathers or fathers had. Exactly the same. But the radio thing is really interesting. The rise of the nazis is handinhand with some of the most brilliant and fantastic spin doctoring or propaganda the world has ever seen. I dont think anyone can deny that the nazis were not absolute masters of propaganda. And what joseph goebbels, the propaganda chief, recognized was what you need to do to get your message across is just say the same thing over and over again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. What they realized is radio is a really good way of doing this, radio and film. This is where triumph of the will comes into it. It doesnt matter what you think of nazism or how repugnant hitler is. If you see that film, it is rightly considered a masterpiece because it is stunning to look at. You can see why anyone in germany would go, yeah, i should you can see why anyone in germany would go, yeah, i should be proud of being german. My chest is a little bit puffed out a bit more and my back is a little bit straighter. You can see how everyone is sort of getting into the whole kind of nazi, kind of we are proud germans, teutonic vibe thing that is going on. The radio, if you can mass produce radios, if you can get radios and make them really cheap, then everyone can have one. And if everyone can have one, you can control what everyone is listening to, and that is exactly what happens. Back in my study at home, ive got a kleinen deutsch empfaenger, the german little radio. It is nine inches by nine inches by four inches. In 1934 or 1935, whenever it was first invented, that is like the rival of the ipod in terms of changing everything. Because radios like the one you have in the show beyond all boundaries, that is what they look like. Because they are big, they are quite expensive. Not everyone can have one. Whereas the little deutsche radio is super basic. You are pumping out the same stuff all the time. It is not all hitler ranting and raving and spittle flying. It is a bit of that, of course. They even have humorous programs as well and obvious marches and wagner and all the rest of it. They have a whole range of stuff. But the subliminal message is all the same. Be proud to be german. Teutonic and aryans are best. We are really cool. Our soldiers look fantastic. We love leather. Whatever it is. It is the same thing. It is a message that comes across. The most Important Message is we are absolutely tops, and everyone just believes it. Because if you repeat it enough, the message will get through. It is not just germans who are believing this stuff. It is the rest of the world. There is that amazing story of a general. Do you know the story . He is the commander in chief of the french army of the air, and he gets invited by erhard milch, whos number two in the luftwaffe in 1938 to come see the luftwaffe. Erhard milch takes him off in his mercedes and they go to an airfield, and there is a whole row of shiny new messersmith 109 single engine fighters. He says, they are impressive. They watched them all take off one by one and loop around and come back down again. And erhard milch says, well, now im going to take you to the next airfield. While they are in transit to the next airfield, all the 109s take off and land at the next airfield. And when he gets back to paris, he says, we are never going to win. We must never go to war with germany because their air force is just aboslutely rob 10 million airplanes. James exactly. It is smoke and mirrors. The germany that starts the war is never actually as powerful. We always talk about the nazi war machine. But the spearhead is the luftwaffe and panzers. Rob you have an army that is in many ways oldstyle, a total unified homefront for the time being due to propaganda and the radio. What about things like quality of german equipment . I am a treadhead. That means i love tanks. I love to talk about tanks, i love to think about tanks. I dream about tanks. When i was brought up as a kid, german tanks are the ones you want. If you were playing soldier, those are the ones you wanted to be in. We dont really think that anymore, do we . About necessarily the superiority of german equipment . James well, i dont. The moment came from me when i was researching a series of novels. I had a hero i was going to write about, and he was a british infantryman. I realized i just did not know enough about the minutiae. I have to figure out more about the weaponry and what they are using. So i went to see this chap who ran this small arms unit. He has this room stuffed full of items, including weapons. I walked past an mg42, and it had an incredible rate of fire, 1400 rounds per minute. I casually tossed off a remark to show that i knew what i was talking about. I said, that was the preeminent small arms weapon of the Second World War, because i had read it in a book. I had read it in a book just recently at the time. And he said, says who . Says who . In the next five minutes, completely deconstructed what i thought i knew about german small arms. It was a lesson. He pointed out that the rate of fire comes with all sorts of problems. It was good in initial combat, but that rate of fire quickly caused the barrel to overheat if you did not observe perfect firing discipline. You had thousands of americans coming toward you and this sea was black with antiaircraft warships. The fact that you have to have six barrels and the whole thing. And the amount of ammunition you use. It was really fascinating. It opened up my eyes and led me down a whole line of research i had not thought about before. There is in our understanding of world war ii a huge amount of assumed knowledge, particularly on the operational level. If you accept that the war is understood to be fought on three levels the strategic, and that is the stuff we all write about. Montgomery, patton, eisenhower. The big level, highlevel stuff. The tactical level, which is the stuff we are all most interested in, the cold face of war. That is your pfc in his foxhole. The actual battle. The operational level is given pretty scant regard, frankly. The operational level is the glue that binds the strategic and tactical together. It is economics of war, it is supplying g. I. s with hershey bars and camel cigarettes and the rest of it, but there is a lot more than that. When you reinsert the operational level and dont assume your readers are going to be bored of it because youre talking about logistics and supplies, actually recognize it is as rich in human drama as every other bit of the Second World War, suddenly a completely different picture emerges and you are looking at all sorts of stuff. To go back to your original point about tanks, we are lucky because one of the reasons we know the stories we know about the Second World War are based on firsthand testimonies. If you are an american g. I. And you are in a hedge row somewhere near normandy and there is a tiger tank coming toward you, and from a hedge germans are firing an mg 42, you dont care that it took 75 man hours to make the machine gun or that the barrel might overheat. You dont care this tank has got a six speed, semi automatic preselected gearbox, which you simply cannot put into the hands of an 18yearold raw recruit because they will break. You dont care that the tank is the biggest gas guzzler. All you care about is you have this big tank coming toward you. That is completely fair enough. In your postwar memoir and in your oral history testimony, that is what you are going to talk about. For everyone else, that tank does sound awesome. Why werent we building those things . I will tell you why we werent. And actually, it is really interesting. One of the things i am finding out in this second volume is in 1942, the germans and british were having a complete rethink about their armored policy. What do we want from our tanks . The only people who had really big tanks were the french. Panzer one has machine guns, panzer two has a shotgun. The germans come up against t34 and, we need something bigger. Hitler says, i want big armor. The british are also flailing around. And he puts down a series of criteria. For germans, big gun armor is a priority. Whereas the british are going number one priority is reliability and ease of maintenance. Gun and armor comes down. That is where the sherman is fantastic. For me, overall. If you line up them on the football pitch, clearly the tiger is going to win. But you know how many tiger tanks were built in world war ii . Rob a few hundred . James 1347. Do you know how many shermans were built . Rob 50,000. James yes. 49,000. The great thing about the sherman tank is it is 30 tons. The moment the sherman comes into the battlefront, basically the allies are back on the front foot and driving the axis forces away. The axis forces are retreating. But what happens when you retreat . Every river you go across, you are going to blow the bridge. Every dike, you are going to blow the bridge. You need some means to get across the bridge. The best way in the Second World War to get across a bridge is to put down a class 40 bailey bridge, the easiest and most simple way to do it. It is called that because it can take 40 tons. You dont want a 56 ton monster on it. You want something under 40 tons. The sherman tanks are 30 tons. Even with the blocks and five guys and lots of ammunition, it is still under 40 tons. That is really important. The other thing is it is really easy to maintain, and lots of really fantastic design features on the sherman tank, like having the suspension bogies on the outside and not on the inside. So if one of them gets damaged 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 pull it out, repair the little bit segment of the track, put it back together again. Have you ever looked at the wheel sequences on a tiger tank or a panzer . They are unbelievable. Rob yes, i have. [laughter] james they are so complicated. I know you have. They are incredibly complicated. And in the field, that is not what you want. A black day for the british army is the 18th july, 1944, where we lose 300 tanks or 400 tanks in one day. The whole thing was such a shame, the whole battle plan was terrible. 400 tanks in one day . What were they thinking . Forgetting there were three and a half thousand tanks in the british and canadian bid by that stage. Three days later, 303 of those were back in action. That is the fundamental difference between the western allies and germans because when we are building sherman tanks, we are building mobile workshops, all the rest of it, and they are incredibly simple and you can take from peter and add to paul. You just cannot do that with a tiger. There is this wonderful what do you call it . A pamphlet written by the u. S. Army War Department called german tank maintenance. They might as well be called no german tank maintenance. [laughter] it is amazing. Rob by the way, i am really disappointed in your lack of enthusiasm. [laughter] i really am. So when i started the book, 1941, james second volume starts off with the germans on the verge of operation barbarossa. Normally that is seen as a time of germany triumphant. It is one victory after the other. 4 million soviet casualties, 3 million of whom are prisoners taken in these large encirclement battles. This is where your book really shone. You see a germany that is already losing the war in july 1941. I am not reading that in. Was that a correct assessment . James i think the Tipping Point or the culmination point is probably november 1941. There is a moment where fritz todt, the armaments minister, it is not a good idea telling hitler what he doesnt want to hear. In this case, fritz todt does. He says, mein fuehrer, we are not going to win the war now. You can see that the wheels are literally falling off. One of the reasons for this is because the soviet is not france. Because they had all these settlements, they have captured this vast number of red army troops. They are 500 miles in and the russians are still fighting, and they cannot quite find a way through. The three months is up, the original three months of operation barbarossa is up. You have to remember, because it is so underrecognized, they have gone into barbarossa with 2000 different vehicles. 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 and the rest of it. That is fine while they were working. But the moment that bedford that was captured needs a new gasket, you have a problem because someone has to make it a spoke. That is not conducive to speed and all the rest of it. The whole thing, the speed of maneuver, which you have written about so brilliantly in your books, it makes the ability to maneuver at such speeds is suddenly gone and suddenly the germans are not so special after all. When fritz todt says to hitler, we are not going to win, that is what he is talking about. The losses are starting to be catastrophic. By autumn 1941, the manpower is already on the way. They have taken the cream of the young men. They are already having to pull people out of factories and place them with soviet prisoners of war who are unmotivated, underfed, and the rest of it. Hitler says to him, what do you think i should do . Todt says, sue for peace. Hitler being hitler says, nothing doing, mate. One of the things i think is really fascinating is you have got this great exhibition here. We assumed america enters the war in 1941 fully formed. What has been revelatory to me was that was not assured whatsoever. However, there was no getting away from the fact that america is a very large country, has a very large workforce. Its young men was not involved in the war and could be used in the factories. They were fed, healthy, able. Their manpower, what they can achieve per man hour is better than anywhere else in the world because there are no blackouts there. There is a space and manufacturing already and infrastructure in the country that means in theory you should be able to produce a lot of armaments. Lets look at an arbitrary date. 16 june, 1941, at the time, germany has one enemy, which is Great Britain. Albeit Great Britain and her empire, canada, australia, new zealand. Fast forward to six months. 16th of december, which is the day hitler sacks von brauchitsch, the commander of chief in the army, and makes himself commander in chief of the army. Suddenly nazi germany has three enemies. Great britain again, it has the United States of america, and the ussr, whose combined resources just dwarfed germanys. If you assumed that germany can only win if it wins quickly, and already it is not winning quickly, suddenly that means it is not just about tactical flare. It is about resources, ultimately. You can still have moments of brilliance, you can win a battle, but you will not win a war. Then i think germany is stuffed by that. I cannot see how there is a way back from germany when you look at the amount of forces and Global Forces that are against them. Rob a dramatic change of fortune, as you pointed out. It is a tough one. Germany is having trouble with britain itself. Now it is facing this Global Coalition that will eventually grind it into power. Anything short of a Nuclear Weapon james it has to be some Wonder Weapon that will change it. There is no way back. People still talk about, could nazi germany have ever created an atomic bomb . I have looked into this in some detail, and the answer is absolutely not a chance. Do you know how money people were involved in the Manhattan Project . About 120,000 people. The finest brains, the space, the money, the resources chucked at it to make it happen. In nazi germany, that was not the case. There were rival factions, the nazi scientists and the not nazi scientists, and they hated each others guts and were operating on different purposes. In total, about 150 people. It was never, ever going to happen. This is a divide and role parallel. Structure but such a feature of nazi germany comes to play in this. I have investigated a site where a dirty bomb was exploded on the fourth of march, 1945. Rob was this the famous explosion . James a different one. They got a lot of concentration camp fixtures to measure the blast. There was definitely uranium involved, but it was a nasty bomb and a big flash and it did a mushroom cloud. It was absolutely not an atomic bomb, and it did not create anything like it. It was a small dirty bomb. Rob i often thought 120,000 extra german personnel probably would have been formed into eight infantry divisions, which would have been ground up in the Eastern Front. They could not spare the man and woman power for the project. James this is the kind of thing one has to understand. If you accept that the tactical flare and the quick victory have gone and that it is about an attritional kind of grinding down of your enemy, just about the terrible pickle the germans are in. This is the other thing. We think of vast russian armies, serbian armies, 300 divisions, as being a sign of enormous strength. You cannot argue that as a sign of weakness because the more boots you have in 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 50 divisions in its army. I cant remember how many the United States has. Rob i think we came in at 95. James that is a much better way to fight a war. If you are unfortunate enough to be in a british or American Armored Division or infantry division, look out because the chances of survival are actually worse than they were in 1918. But the numbers on the front of war is fewer, which is why there are fewer casualties. It is a more efficient way of fighting a war. Right up until the end of 1943, it was not the army or navy or air force, it was the military of aircraft production. That tells you what you need to know. You can argue the toss about morality. But it saved the lives of many young americans, many young british people. That has got to be irrefutable. Whereas germany has got a problem in that it does not have enough food. Oil and Food Shortages are the biggest problems of all. Perhaps food is the greatest. What happens is because they are so boot heavy on the ground and they are getting so many casualties on the Eastern Front in barbarossa by the end of 1941, the cream of their crop is already fading away. They are having to take out of their factories and replace them with prisoners of war and jews and poles and the rest of it. The problem is they are already short of food. Rationing in germany is far more stringent than it ever was in the the u. K. , for example. I grew up on dont put so much butter on your toast. Do you know what it was like . Yeah, whatever. [laughter] but actually rationing in britain was about making sure there was an even spread of food. We could have gotten more food in and people could have had more, but we chose to have enough food so everyone had a balanced diet, which meant if you had a balanced, healthy diet, you are less likely to get ill, which means your working hours were greater. There were less sick people falling out for sick days. In germany, they are already short of food. Your aryan superhuman is already getting hungry. You cannot give your slavic untermenschen more food than you are giving a german civilian. Which means they already have absolutely no motivation. But they are really struggling for food. They are getting ill and dying, which means your productivity is going down. Rob what a mess. James it is a mess. It is getting into an ever decreasing circle of inefficiency of which there is really no recovery. Rob james, we have got the germans and they are less than they seem. They have the tip of the spear, but the rest is oldschool army. 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. 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. 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. James 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. 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 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 stand 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. 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. Both think, we cannot 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 japan is thinking, great, all their resources. 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. 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. But its of an empire not enough. They are not. May, this is a 1942 british gas mask case. It was designed in 1937 with amazing foresight. This is a compartment for your ipad and your wallet. [laughter] and even some pens in the back. They were obviously thinking ahead. But a very basic design. What the british army discovered is if you are now talking about yearround campaigning, it doesnt really cut it because it is fine in summer in the old campaigning season, but not in winter because it gets wet. When leather gets wet, it is very brittle, starts to curl, rots very easily. And it is very expensive. When this breaks, you just get a new one, because who cares . It is really cheap and easy to manufacture. The germans have leather everywhere. The jackboot is like an ankle boot. It looks cool. It is all about tapping in to an earlier belief in their martialness, the militaristic society that the nazis are tapping into that early motorist excited he. We will get back to that stage, which you could argue is quite bogus in the first place. But with their own nasty slot, hence the doublebreasted coat. I have one of these things. It fits me like a glove. The minute you put it on, you look like a nazi. It doesnt have swastikas on it. It is not something i wear publicly or even privately. Rob this was streamed to 100,000 people. Your secret is safe with us. James thank you. But it must have taken four cows to make it. I contrast, look at the german gas mask. It is steel, stressed. It has the ribs to make it extra strong. It has this amazing hinge. It is absolutely extraordinary, the craftsmanship of that. This was made in 1942, and it still works perfectly. You open up here, and it has got this little lid. You open that up, and it has this gossamer wire. It is perfect. That is for holding a spare set of lenses in case the lens in your gas mask get broken. They are still manufacturing these in april 1945. It is expensive, cumbersome, heavy, a real bind to bring across the atlantic. As you can see, it has these straps, which were leather, and it sits on the backside like this. When you feel this stuff, when you look at german uniforms and gas mask cases like this, that is just what the germans look like. We dont think about it, anything about it other than that is what germans have. But when you do think about it, you realize this epitomizes everything that was rotten about the germans in the war. It was an utter waste of resources. Why are you wasting resources on this . It makes absolutely no sense. I think i have finally broken the spring. Rob [laughter] and it happened here. James [laughter] yeah. Why arent you putting that towards more tanks or more machine guns or anything . We have a question from the 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. New 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. 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 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. He loves the ladies, loves to drink, and is good mates with goehring. If it 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 nazi germany, so 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 trust, 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 . 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] this is American History tv. The cspan cities tour travels the country. We have
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