James Holland: World War II, Hitler, Churchill, Stalin & Biggest Battles | Lex Fridman Podcast #470

And you see that manifest itself

on D-Day where you've got

6,939 vessels of which there are 1,213

4,127 assaultcraft, 12 a half thousand

aircraft, you know, 155,000

men landed and dropped from the air in 24-hour period. It is phenomenal.

It is absolutely phenomenal.

The following is a conversation

with James Holland, a historian

specializing in World War II,

who has written a lot of amazing books on the subject,

especially covering the Western Front,

often providing fascinating details

at multiple levels of analysis,

including strategic, operational, tactical,

technological, and of course, the human side,

the personal accounts from the war.

He also co-hosts a great podcast

on World War II

called We Have Ways of Making You Talk.

This is a Lex Freeman podcast.

To support it, please check out our sponsors

in the description or at lexfreeman.com/sponsors.

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

In volume one of the war in the west,

your book series on World War II, you write,

"The Second World War

witnessed the deaths of more than 60 million people

from over 60 different countries.

Entire cities were laid waste.

National borders were redrawn.

And many millions more people found themselves displaced.

Over the past couple of decades,

many of those living in the Middle East or

parts of Africa, the Balkans,

Afghanistan, and even the United States may feel

justifiably that these troubled times have already proved

the most traumatic in their recent past.

Yet, globally, the Second World War was

and remains the single biggest catastrophe of modern history.

In terms of human drama, it is unrivaled.

No other war has affected

so many lives in such a large number of countries.

So what to you makes World War II the biggest catastrophe

in human drama in modern history

and maybe from a historian perspective

the most fascinating subject to study

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

You know it's fought in deserts.

It's fought in in in the Arctic.

Um it's fought across oceans.

It's fought in the air.

Um it's in jungle.

It's in the hills.

It is on the beaches.

Um it's also on the Russian step and it's also in Ukraine.

Um so it's it's it's

that global nature of it.

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

And I think for most people and certainly the true in my case

you get drawn to the human drama of it.

It's that thought that you know gosh if I'd been 20 years old how

would I have dealt with it?

You know would I have been in the army?

Would I have been in the air force?

would I been on a you know Royal Navy destroyer

or you know how would I have coped with it and how would I

have dealt with that separation?

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

I remember talking to a tank man from

uh from Liverpool in England called Sam

Bradshaw and he went away for four years and when he came home he'd been twice wounded.

He'd been very badly wounded

in North Africa and then he was shot in the neck in Italy.

Eventually got home when he came home his mother had turned gray.

his little baby sister who had been,

you know, 13 when he left, was now a a young woman.

His old school had been destroyed by Luftwaffer bombs.

He didn't recognize the place.

And do you know what he did?

He joined up again,

went back out of Europe

and was one of the first people in Bellson.

So, you know, what was his justification

for that for joining right back?

He just felt completely disconnected to home.

He felt that the the gulf of time, his experiences

had separated him from all the normalities of life.

And he felt that the the the

normalities of the life that he had

known before he'd gone away to war

had just been severed in a really kind of cruel way that he didn't

really feel he was able to confront at that particular point, but he decided to rejoin.

Couldn't go back to the Third World Royal Tank Regiment.

So, it went back to a different unit.

Went from kind of the Italian campaign to European theater.

um didn't see so much action at the end, but you know uh like

a lot of British troops if if you were in a certain division at

a certain time you know you ended up passing very close to Bellson and

you know you suddenly realized

okay this was the right thing to do you know we did have to

get rid of Nazism

we did have to do this because this is the consequence it's not just

the oppression it's just not just the secret police it's not

just the expansionism of Nazism

it is also you know the Holocaust which hadn't been given its name at

that point but but

you know you're witnessing

this kind of untold or cruelty.

Um, and I always, you know, I've always sort of

I think a lot about Sam.

I mean, he's no longer with us, but um, he was one of the

kind of first people that I interviewed and I interviewed him at great length.

Uh, and I know you like

a long interview, Lex.

And, um, and I totally totally get that because when you have a when

you have a long interview, you really start getting to the nuts and bolts of it.

One of the frustrations

for me when I'm looking at at

oral histories of of

Second World War vets is usually they're kind of,

you know, they're put on YouTube or they're put on a museum

website, they're 30 minutes,

you know, an hour if you're lucky and there you're just scratching the surface.

You never you never really get to know it and you feel that they're

just repeating kind of stuff they've read in books themselves after the war and stuff.

And you know, I was kind of

leave feeling frustrated that that I haven't had a chance to kind of grill

them on the kind of stuff that I would grill them on if I

was put in front of them.

So, Tank Man, what what was

maybe the most epic, the most

intense or the most interesting story that he told you?

Well, I do remember him telling me uh

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

I remember him telling me about

the importance of letters.

And there was this

there was this guy

who literally every few weeks, you know, post would arrive intermittently.

There was no kind of sort of regular post.

So it was supposed to be regular, but it it didn't come around regularly.

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

But he said it was this guy and um

in his tank member of a different tank troop.

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

get British Huff Squadrons for for for their armor

and uh which as Americans would have a company.

I should say that in your book, one of the wonderful things you do

is you use the correct term in the language. Yeah.

For the particular army involved whether it's the German or the British or the American.

Well, that's not to be pretentious.

That's that's really just

so it because you you're dealing with so many numbers

and different units and it can go over your head and you can get

sort of consumed by the detail if you're not careful.

And as a reader, it can be very unsatisfying

because you you just can't keep pace of everything.

Um, so one of the things about

writing in the vernacular

German or or in the American spelling

armore rather than ar maua

as we would Brits would

um spell it is it just immediately

tells the reader, okay, this is American,

okay, I've got that or this is German, I've got that or Italian or

whatever it might be.

But yeah, to go back to Sam.

Sam, this there was this guy in in in his squadron and he'd get

his letters from his from his girlfriend, his wife,

and he said it was like it was like a soap opera.

He he said we all just waited for his letters to come in so

we could find out, you know, whether his,

you know, his daughter had, you know,

got to school, okay, or something, you know, won the swimming contest or whatever it was.

You know, the sort of details of this sort of dayto-day

kind of benile life

was just absolute catnip to these guys.

They absolutely loved it.

And then the letter arrived, the Dear John letter,

saying, "Sorry, I found someone else and and it's over."

And his friend was just absolutely devastated.

It was the only thing that was keeping him going.

This sort of sense of

this sort of continuity

of of home, this sort of this this

foundation of his life

back at And Sam said he could see was in a really really bad way. Mhm.

and he thought, uh, he's going to do something stupid.

And he went up to him and he said, "Look, you know, I know

it's bad and I know it's terrible and I know you're absolutely devastated, but

you got your mates here.

Just don't do anything silly.

Just, you know, maybe,

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

And he said, you know, you got to understand it from her point of view.

You know, it's a long way.

You haven't seen you for 2 years.

This kind of stuff, you know, so just just don't do anything rash.

And of course, the next next engagement,

two days later, he was killed.

and he said it was just a kind of he could he just knew

that was going to happen.

He said it was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

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

And I just thought, you

know, it's about human drama.

You know, that's that's that's

the truth of it.

And how people react to this totally alien situation.

You know, for the most part, the Second World War is fought by ordinary

everyday people doing extraordinary things.

And I think that's

something that's so fascinating.

I suspect I I think I instinctively

I'm quite slap dash I think.

So I think I would have I'd have bought it literally.

I don't think it would have ended well for me.

I just I'm just a bit careless. Yeah.

I think I also have an element in me where

I can believe in the idea of

nation and fight for a nation especially when the conflict is as grand.

There are things worse than death. Yes.

as as the propaganda

would explain very clearly but also in reality. Yes.

So a nation you know

France, Britain was you know maybe facing the prospect of being essentially enslaved.

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

I mean it was very very clearly stated what they're going to do.

They're going to repopulate

the land with Germanic people.

So well they're not just going to do that.

They're also going to starve lots and lots of um

Soviet individuals to death

by the hunger plan, for example, which is planned, you know,

really very casually and not by the, you know, this is not SS units

or anything like this.

This is the Vermach.

This is the economic

division of the Obert Commando de Vermac, the

German combined general staff.

General Gayorg Thomas comes up with you know and Herman Baka

they come up with the uh who's the kind of minister for food they

come up you know what are we going to do you know we haven't

got enough food you know largely because

German um farming is

inefficient and they think well you know this is part of

we'll go in and we'll take the food and there's been this colossal

urbanization of the Soviet Union since the revolution in

1917 so they're just not going to get their food

you know these these people in these cities cuz we're going to take it

all and that's going to lead to that's going to lead to a lot of deaths.

know, teen millions is the

phrase that Gail Thomas used.

So, let's talk about the hunger plan.

How important was the hunger plan and lab

to Nazi ideology and to

the whole Nazi war machine?

It's central to the whole thing.

This is all about

this notion that is embedded

into Hitler's mind and into the minds of the Nazi party right from the

word go is there is

a big sort of global conspiracy

the Jewish bolevik plot I mean completely misplaced that Jews and Bolsheviks

go hand in hand

somehow dovetail they don't

obviously and the whole ideology

is to crush this you know part of the way

the Nazis think the way Hitler thinks is there is them and there's us.

We are the white northern European Aryans.

We should be the master race.

We've been we we've been

threatened by a global Jewish bulvic plot.

We've been stabbed in the back in 1918

at the end of the first world war.

We need to have to overcome.

This is an existential

battle for future survival.

It's a terrible task that has befallen our generation.

But we have to do this.

We have to overcome this or else we have no future.

We will be crushed.

It's absolutely cut and dry.

And one of the things about Hitler

is that he is a very kind of black and white

them or us, either or kind of person.

It's it's always one thing or the other.

It's a thousand-y year Reich or it's Armageddon.

There is no there's no middle ground.

There's no gray area.

It's just one or the other.

And that's how that's his worldview.

And the reason he came to the four was was

because of the crystal

clear clarity of his message

which is we've been stabbed in the back.

There is a global plot.

We have to overcome this.

We are naturally the master race.

We have to reassert ourselves.

We have to get rid of global jewelry.

We have to get rid of global bulsheism.

And we have to prevail or else.

But if we do prevail,

what an amazing world it's going to be.

So, so he starts with this, you know, every speech he does always starts

with the same way.

Always starts from a kind of negative

and always ends with an incredible positive, this sort of

rabble rousing crescendo of of

of if you're in the front row, spittle halattosis and justiculation.

I mean, you've seen pictures of him.

I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen, but

he's he's he's almost

he wants to grab the air and clutch it to him.

um you know, you can see the kind of the venom coming out of

his mouth just in a single still photograph.

I mean, it it it's amazing.

There's um apps you can get now where where you can translate his speeches,

you know, just and it just sounds, you know, by today's standards,

you would just think what a load of absolute wibble.

I mean, just total nonsense.

But but you have to kind of put yourself back in the shoes of

people listening to him in 1922

or 23 or indeed

1933 and see how kind of captivating

that is to a certain part of the part of the population.

So yes so so the so to go back to your original point Libans

is absolutely part of it.

So what you do is you crush the bolevixs

you crush world jewelry

then you expand you know the

Britain has had this

incredible empire global empire you know Germany needs that too.

Germanyy's stuck in Europe.

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

So, we're not going to be a maritime empire.

We're going to be we're going to be a land mass empire, the whole of

land mass of Europe and into Asia.

That's going to be us.

And we're going to take that land.

We're going to take the the bread basket of of Ukraine.

We're going to use that for our own own ends.

We're going to spread our our

uh we're going to make ourselves rich, but we're also going to spread our peoples.

we're going to spread the Aryan

northern master race throughout

um throughout Europe and into the traditional Slavic

areas and and we will prevail and come out on top.

And so you have to understand that that that

everything about Operation Barbarasa,

the planned invasion of the Soviet Union in June

is totally wrapped up

in the Nazi ideology.

And people, you know, I I' I've read it that

historians go, if only Hitler had realized that, you know, the Ukrainians had been

quite happy to kind of fight on his side.

You know, if only he he'd actually brought some of these Jewish

scientists and kind of into the Nazi fold, then Germany might have prevailed in World War II.

And you kind of think, well, you're missing the entire point.

That's just never going to happen because

this is an ideological war. Yeah.

This is not a rational leader.

No, I mean part of his effectiveness,

we should say, is probably this singular

belief in this ideology.

There's pros and cons

for for an effective

military machine, probably having that singular focus is effective. Yes.

Except that when you're making military

decisions, if those decisions are always being bracketed

by an ideology which is fundamentally

flawed from a pragmatic

point of view as much as a kind of

ethical, you know, a kind of

reasonable point of view,

um you're kind of opening yourselves up for for trouble.

I mean, this is this is a problem he has with Barbara Rossa.

you know, they they realize very early on in 1941

when they're when they're

wargaming this whole operation

that it's not going to work.

And so, you know, there people like like General Pow

who's on the uh general staff at the time, you know, he's he's given

a kind of, you know, he's in charge of kind of wargaming

this and he goes, "This isn't going to work."

And Kitel, who is the uh chief of the

OKW, goes, "No, no, no, no, no.

Go back and make it work." He goes, "Okay."

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

I mean, it's just

it doesn't work because

they don't have enough.

They don't have enough motoriization.

You know, they go into Barbar Ross with 2,000

different types of vehicle.

You know, every single one of those vehicles has to have,

you know, different distributor caps and

different leads and plugs and all sorts of different parts.

you know, there's the the

interoperability of the of the German

mechanized arm is super inefficient.

And so you've got huge problems

because they kind of think, well, you know, we we took France in 1940

and that's kind of one of the most modern countries in the world with,

you know, one of the greatest armies and armed forces in the world and

we did that in six weeks.

So, you know, Soviet Union,

look, they struggled against Finland for goodness sake.

I mean, how hard can it be, you know, but what you're failing to

understand is is that

attacking the Soviet Union is over a geographical

land mass 10 times the size of France just on the frontage

and you haven't really got much more mechanization

than you had in

May 1940 when they attacked the low countries in France

and you've actually got less Luftwaffer

aircraft to support you

and you just do not have the operational

mechanics to make it work successfully.

I mean, it is

largely down to incompetence

of the Red Army and the Soviet leadership in the summer of 1941

that they get as far as they do.

I mean, you know, Barbarosa

should never have come close

to being a a victory.

Let's talk through it.

So, Operation Barbar Roa that you're mentioning, and we'll go back. Yes.

We jump straight into it.

I've I've eaten eaten off two years of war.

So this is June

1941, Operation Barbar Roa, when Hitler invades the Soviet

Union with I think the largest invading force in history up to that point collectively. Yeah.

And there's three prongs.

Army Group North, Army Group Center, Army Group South.

North is going to Lennengrad.

Center is going uh it's the strongest group going directly towards Moscow.

And South is going and targeting

Ukraine and the caucus.

So can you linger on that on the details of this plan?

What was the thinking?

What was the strategy?

What was the tactics?

What was the logistics?

Now we should there's so many things to say but one of them is

to say that you often emphasize

the importance of three ways to analyze

military conflict of the strategic, the operational and the tactical.

and operation of those is often

not given enough time

attention and it's the

logistics that make the war machine really work successfully or fail.

Yeah, that's absolutely um absolutely spot on.

And it's interesting because the vast majority

of uh general histories

of World War II

tend to focus on the strategic and the tactical.

So what do I mean by that?

world strategic just for the for those who don't know

that's your overall war aims you know

get to Moscow whatever it might be conquer the world that's your strategy

the tactical side of things is that's the coalace of war that's the attritional

bit that's the following his spitfire

the tank crew the the soldier in his foxhole

it's the actual kinetic

fighting bit the operational

bit is the level of war that that links the strategic to the tactical

so it is absolutely

factory ries, it's economics,

it's shipping, it's supply chains,

it's how you manage your war.

And one of the things where I think people have been guilty in the past,

historians have been guilty in the past

is by judging warfare

all on the same level.

But obviously every competent

nation has a different approach to war because of the nation they are, the

size they are, their geographical location.

So Britain for example

is an island nation.

Its priority is the Royal Navy, which is why the Royal Navy is known

as the senior service.

And you know, in 1939,

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

but 1939, it has comfortably

the world's largest um navy,

something like 194 destroyers.

Uh um I think it's 15

battleships, seven aircraft carriers, and another kind of six on the way.

America, it's got Pacific Ocean, it's got the Atlantic Ocean, it's got two seabboards,

you know, it has the second largest navy in the world, but a tiny army.

I mean, the army, the US army in 19 September 1949

is the 19th largest in the in the world, sandwiched between Portugal and Uruguay.

And it's just incredible.

It's like 189,000 strong, which might seem reasonably large by today's standards, but is

absolutely tiny by 1939 standards, you know.

whereas you know Germany's got an army of

you know 3 and a half million in 1939.

So you know these are big big big

differences but but America's coming at it from a different perspective.

Britain's coming up about it from a different perspective.

You know Britain's Britain's empire is all about you know it's it's a shipping

it's a it's a it's a seaborn empire.

Whereas there's also another point which which is having large armies is actually inherently

impractical and inefficient because

the larger army, the more people you got to feed,

the more kind of barracks you've got to have, the more space you've got

to have for training,

the more people you're taking out of your workforce to produce

tanks and shells and all the rest of it because they're

tramping around with rifles, you know.

So there's an argument saying saying actually it's really

not not a very good way of doing things.

So, you know, very much the uh the British way and and

subsequently the United States way and

way of Britain's dominions and and and empire

is to use kind of steel, not our flesh

as a as a principle.

This is the idea is that you use

technology, mechanization, modernity, global reach

to do a lot of your hard yards.

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

When we talk about the strategic air campaign, we're talking about strategic air forces

which are operating in isolation

from other armed forces.

So a tactical air force, for example, is is an air force which is

offering close air support for ground operations.

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

It's just operating on its own.

So that's your bomber force or whatever, you know, that's your your your B7s

and B244s of the Aair force flying out of East England

bombing the rural industrial complex of Germany or whatever it might be.

So it's important to understand that when you compare you have to have the

back of your mind that

Britain compared to Germany for example is coming at it from a completely different perspective.

And I would say one of the failures of Hitler

is that he always views everybody through his own very narrow

worldview which is not particularly helpful.

You know you want to get inside the head of your enemy

and you know he's he's sort of guilty of not doing that.

So when you're talking about operation Barbarasa

to go back back to your original question next

you're dealing with an operation on such a vast scale that that operational

level of war is absolutely

vital to its chances of success or failure.

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

If you haven't got the backup

it's not going to work.

And the problem that the Germans have is yes, they've got their kind of,

you know, three million men

on the front and they've got their kind of, you know, 3,000

aircraft and and all the rest of it,

but actually what you need to do is break it down and who is

doing the hard yards of that

and way the German war machine works

is that the machine bit is only the spearhead.

So people always talk about the Nazi war machine.

In a way, it's a kind of misnomer because you're you're sort of suggesting

that it's highly mechanized

and industrialized and all the rest of it.

And nothing could be further from the truth.

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

And this is the kind of fatal flaw of of the German armed

in in the whole of World War II really, but but even in this

early stage because in Barbarasa

you're talking about 17

Panza divisions out of you know 100 odd that are involved in the initial attack.

Well 17 that a Panza division

is not a division full of panzas tanks.

It is a combined arms motorized outfit.

So scouts on BMWs

with side cars, uh um armored cars,

infantry, grenaders, panzer grenaders,

which are infantry in halftracks

and trucks, mechanized, um it is motorized

artillery, it is motorized anti-aircraft artillery.

It is motorized anti-tank artillery.

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

But those are a really really small

proportion of you know you're talking less than 20%

of your of your attacking force are those spearhead

forces and inevitably they are going to be attritted as they go you know

you are going to take casualties

and not only that you're not going to just take battlefield casualties you're also

going to have mechanical casualties

because of the huge spaces involved you just simply can't function so what you

see is in the initial phases of of operation

Barbarasa they surge forward

red army's absolutely no answers to anything.

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

and there have been plenty

incidentally halinsk falls on the 15th of July you know in less than four

weeks it's just incredible three and a half weeks

has gone you know they've done overwhelmed

the rest of what had been Poland they

surged into what is now barus

taken all you know this is army group center

uh army group north is thrust up into the into the Baltic it's all

going swimmingly well but then

the next several months They barely go 100 miles

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

And and the 16th Panza division, for example,

by the time it's taken

Smealinsk involved in taking Smelinsk

on the 15th of July 1941,

the following day it's got 16 tanks

left 16 out of

you know should have 180.

So it's just being a TR.

They can't sustain it.

and they can't sustain it because as the Russians fall back, as the Soviet

Red Army falls back, they do their own scorched earth policy.

They also discover that the railway line is kind of a different loading gauge.

So, they've got to change it.

So, it's slightly the Russian

loading gauge is slightly wider.

So, every single mile,

every yard, every foot, every meter of that they're they're capturing of of Russian

railway has to be

moved a couple of inches

to the left to make it fit

the German criggs lock

in the standard train of locomotive

of the of the Reichkes bar.

Just imagine what that's like.

And also, Soviet trains are bigger,

so they can take more water,

which means the water stops in between are

fewer and far between.

So they have to the Germans when they come in their trains their creeks

lock are smaller so they have to have be rewatered

more often and recalled more often.

So they have to

I mean it's it's absolutely

boggling just how complicated it is and how badly

planned it is because they haven't reckoned on this.

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

I love the the logistical

details of all this because yes that's a huge component of this especially when

you cover that much territory.

But there is a notion that

if Hitler didn't stop

uh army group center,

it could have pushed all the way to Moscow.

It was it was only maybe a 100 miles away from Moscow.

Is that is that is that a possibility?

Cuz it had so much success

in the early days pushing forward.

Do you think it's possible

that if Hitler, as we mentioned from a military

blunder perspective, didn't make that

blunder that uh they could have defeated the Soviet Union right there and then.

Well, my my own view is that

they should never have got close.

You Red Army has plenty of men to be able to see off anything

that the the Germans can do.

The capture of Keev, for example, in September

1941 was a catastrophe

for for the Soviet Union and should never have happened.

I mean, Zukov is saying to

saying to Stalin, we got to pull back across the Denipo.

St can't possibly do that.

You can't abandon Kee.

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

And he goes, well, we just we are just going to be overwhelmed.

You know, we we can't hold this.

and and he says, you know, either back me or or farm me.

Back me or sack me.

So Stalin sacks him.

Uh uh yeah, obviously as we know, Zukov

gets um rehabilitated in pretty quick order

and Stalin does learn very quickly

after thereafter to learn the lessons,

but the opening phase of Bar Ross has been a catastrophe.

And so as a consequence

of Stalin refusing to let his men retreat back across the Dunipa,

which is a substantial barrier and would have been very difficult for the Germans

to overwhelm had they not

had they moved back in time.

Um, you know, that's another kind of

700,000 men put in the bag.

I mean, that's just

staggering Um, but yeah, I mean,

there's so many things wrong with the Barbarasa plan.

you know, too much over.

It's just such a vast area.

I mean, you're talking about kind of, you know, 2,500

miles or something, you know,

of frontage, you know, maybe if you kind of put your your your Panza

groups, which are these spearheads, and you put them all in one

frustr straight across on a kind of, you know, much more narrow front of,

let's say, kind of 400 miles rather than

1,200, then they might have got, you know, they might have just sort of

burnt away straight through to Moscow.

They really caught the Red Army unprepared. Yeah.

Is there um something to be said about

the the strategic genius of that

or was it just luck?

No, I don't think so.

I I mean I think think what's happened is you've had the you've had

the the Soviet purges of the of the second half of the 1930s

where they've you know they have

executed or imprisoned 22 and a half thousand officers of which you know three out

of five marshals um

you know god knows how many

army commanders um etc etc.

So so you know you've completely

decapitated the Red Army in terms of its command structure.

So before that, would it be fair to say it was one of, if

not the greatest army in the world?

Well, there was a lot of experience.

There's a lot of experience there that but also technology material. Yeah.

The size of the army, the number of people that they're mobilized. Yeah.

And they're the first people to kind of adapt, you know, create airborne troops, for example.

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

But the decapitation is is is absolutely brutal.

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

And someone who who looks on paper like a a halfdecent

peace time commander might not be a very good wartime commander.

They're different disciplines and different skills.

And what comes to you don't know that until you're tested.

It's very hard to kind of judge.

And of course, you know, Stalin is existing in a sort of, you know,

a vacuum of of paranoia

and suspicion all the time, which is unhelpful

when you're trying to develop

a strong armed forces.

So they go into Finland in

in back end of 1939

and they get there, you know, they get really badly hammered.

They do take about, you know, they get the Corellia

um peninsula and they do take some ground, but at huge cost.

I mean, the casualties are five times as bad as those of the Fins

and it's a humiliation.

So Hitler sees that

and thinks, okay, we're not up to much cop.

Then Hitler loses the battle of Britain

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

That's one of the reasons why Germany loses the war in

1914 to 18 is fighting on the eastern front but also fighting on,

you know, the western front at the same time.

We've got to avoid that.

But I've got to get rid of Britain.

And Britain hasn't come out of the fight.

Britain is still fighting in the back end of 1940

having won the Battle of Britain.

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

You know, we're not 100% ready ourselves,

but but let's hurry the whole thing forward because originally he'd been thinking of

planning an operation in 1943 or 1944.

So the idea is

you take Poland out,

you take out France and the low countries, you conquer most of Western Europe,

you you knock out Britain.

So therefore, you don't have to worry so much about the United States because

they're over the other side of the Atlantic.

That then gives it buys him the time to kind of rebuild up his

strength for the allout thrust on the Soviet Union.

The failure to subdue Britain in 1940

changes all those plans

and makes him think

actually I'm going to go in early.

And he's also been kind of, you know, he's hoisted by Zopetard

because he he starts to believe his own genius.

You know, he everyone told him that, you know, he wouldn't be able to, you

know, he wouldn't be able to beat France and the low countries.

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

Everyone was really nervous about it.

You know, well, go hang you, you cautious,

awful aristocratic Prussian generals.

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

Um, I can do it.

He starts to believe his own hype.

And of course, this is a problem.

you know, he's surrounded by sick of fans and people who constantly telling him

this he's this incredible genius.

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

and and he's very much into this idea of of the will of the German people.

You know, this is our destiny and either will, as I say earlier on,

you know, it's the thousand-y year Reich of Armageddon,

but momentum is with us and we need to strike it and only by

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

And so that's why he goes into into

Soviet Union in June 1941

rather than you know a couple of or even three years later. Yeah.

He really hated the Prussian generals. Huh. Yeah. He hated them.

Is there a case to be made that there he was indeed

at times a military

No, I don't think so.

Cuz none of the plan I mean even the plan for the invasion of

France and the low countries isn't his.

It's a the the concept is is

von Mannstein's and the execution is Gerian Hines Gadderian.

So heiscoded is is a kind of he's the pioneer of of of

the panza force the panzer thrust this idea of the

ultra mechanized combined arms

panzer arm spearhead doing this kind of lightning fast thrust

um it's not Hiller's idea

he adopts it and and

takes it as his own because

you know he's a fury he can do what he likes

um but but it isn't his so it's

not you know and up until that point until that comes into

being till that that plan is put forward to France Halder who is the

chief of staff of the German army at that time

you know how is just thinking how do we get out of this mess

this is just a nightmare

because they know that France has got a larger army they know that France

has got more tanks and know that France has got double the number of

artillery pieces it's got par in terms of air forces then you add Holland

then you add Belgium

then you add Great Britain

and that looks like a very very tough nut to crack I mean the

reason why France is subdued in 1940

is 50% brilliance of the Germans

and their operational art in that particular instance

and 50% French failure really and incompetence.

I mean there is a kind

of genius to be able to see and take advantage

and set up the world stage

in such a way that

you have the appeasement

from France and Britain.

Keep the United States out of it.

just set up the world stage where you could just

plow through everybody with no with very little resistance.

I mean there is a kind of well yes if geopolitical

genius if it works but it doesn't you know that's that's a problem.

I mean you know I mean he goes into Poland on the assumption that

Britain and France will not declare war.

You know he he

he is not prepared for Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Right.

He thinks they won't. That's right. So miscalculation blunder.

But then France does, right?

And then that doesn't, you know, France

does not successfully do anything

with this incredible army that it has.

It has a size, but one of the problems that France has is that

it's very very topheavy.

It's it's very cumbersome in the way it operates.

Um there's no question that that

it's got some brilliant young commanders,

but but at the lot

the top the commanders are very old.

Most of them are first world war veterans,

you know, whether you I mean Vegan Gamlan, General George.

Um these people, they're all well into their 60s.

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

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

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

And they're too just consumed

by conservatism and the old ways.

And what what they assume is that any future war will be much like

the first world war.

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

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

It is, as it turns out, it is going to be long and drawn

out and attritional, but it's going to be mobile rather than static.

And that's a big miscalculation.

So, here's here's my question.

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

So when when when Germany invaded Poland,

it correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like France could have just

went straight to Berlin.

Yeah, they absolutely could have and they and

I know you said it's very topheavy

and you're saying all of these things, but they literally did basically nothing.

Yeah, they were pulling.

So like that uh

and I think a part of that

and I think you described as well maybe you can speak to

that is the insanity

that is Hitler creating this psycholog

with the propaganda creating this feeling

that there's this Nazi force that's unstoppable.

So they're they're France just didn't want to like step into that.

Maybe they were like legitimately

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

That, you know, because France has been totally

traumatized by the First World War.

It's fought on their land.

It's fought in their industrial heartland.

You know, they lose

three times the amount of people killed that that Britain does.

Britain's traumatized by it, but but but

not to the same degree that France is.

France, you know, there is just no stomach to do that again.

And so that makes them risk averse.

And by being riskaverse,

you're actually taking a far greater risk.

That that that that's the irony of it.

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

And a a successful military can only be successful if there is a political

will at the top.

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

It's uh it's it's a time of multiple governments, multiple prime ministers,

um uh governments really

extreme coalition governments from the sort of drawn from the left and the right

as well as the center

and you know this is not a coalition of of two parties.

This is a coalition of multiple

parties and no one can ever agree anything.

I mean that's the problem.

It's amazing that the MNO line is even

agreed you know this incredibly strong defensive position down the western side of France

of border with um with Germany

which is kind of largely impregnable

but the problem is the bit that's not impregnable

which is the hinge

where the Mno line ends and it sort of basically starts turning kind of

towards in a kind of north

noy direction and the border with Belgium

and you know what they should have done is built kind of border defenses

all along the northern coast with Belgium cuz Belgium refused used to kind of

uh allow any Allied troops into into his territory. It was neutral.

And France should have said, "Okay, fine.

Well, then we'll defend our, you know, we're not going to come to your

rescue if you get invaded.

That's your that's your what that that's that's the payoff."

And and a consequence of that, we are going to stockpile everything that we're

not going to be drawn into the neutral territory should

Germany invade from the West.

But they don't do that because of the psychological

damage of having fought a war in exactly that area a generation earlier.

And and that's the problem.

So when the you know there is

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

You know the back door

from into western Germany is completely open.

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

It's a kind of reconnaissance

in force where they kind of

go across the border, kind of pick their noses for for a few days

and then kind of trundle back again.

And it's just it's embarrassing.

And and that is what you're seeing there is

is a nation which is just

not ready for this, which is scared,

which is politically divided,

which is then having a knock-on effect on on the decision-m

process, and which is just

consumed by military complacency.

And that's the big problem.

There is this, you know, the the commanders at the very top of the

French regime are are complacent.

They they they haven't

bought into kind of modern ways.

They haven't looked at

how contemporary technology could help them.

I mean it is absurd

for example that there isn't a single radio in the chat Devalsen

which is you know the headquarters of the commander-in-chief

of the French armed forces

which is General Marshall

Morris Gamalan I mean it's just

unbelievable but but that is the case

and and there's no getting away from that and and it is all the

more ironic when you consider that France is actually

the most automotive society in Europe it's the second most automotive

society in the world after the United States

by some margin it has to be said as well you know has a

fantastic transportation system railway network is superb

it's it it there are there are eight people for every motorized vehicle in France

which is way above Germany which is in 1949

that figure is 47

for example it's 106

in Italy so France is very mechanized like very mechanized so come on guys

put your finger out get it together and they just don't they're they're incredibly

slow and cumbersome and what they think is

when what will happen is the Germans won't think of going, you know, they

won't do a pinser movement because you can't possibly take motorized forces through through the Arden.

That just is not possible, which is the hinge area between the end of

the Majinow, the northern part of the Majino line, which runs down the western,

sorry, the eastern border of of France

and and the northern bit.

And so what we'll do with that hinge around the town of Sedan,

we'll we'll move into into Belgium.

We'll meet the Germans before they get anywhere near France.

we'll hold them and while we're holding them,

we will bring up our reserves and then we'll we'll counterattack and crush them.

That that's the idea behind it.

But the problem is is they don't have a means of moving fast

and their communication systems are dreadful. Absolutely dreadful.

They're dependent on conventional

telephone lines which know

dive bombers and whatever are just kind of absolutely wrecking.

Suddenly the streets are clogged with refugees

and people can't move.

So they're then you know telephone lines are down. There's no radios.

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

You know, General uh Morris Gamalan

sends out a a dispatch rider at 6:00 in the morning.

Um by 12:00 he hasn't come back.

So, you then send another one.

Finally, the answer comes back

kind of 9:00 at night, by which time the kind of Germans advance another

15 miles and the original message that you sent at 6:00 that morning is

completely redundant and has passed it sell by date.

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

So you've got you've got overall commander

um headquarters, then you've got army group,

then you've got army,

then you've got core, then you've got division.

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

They're they're rabbits in headlights and the Germans are able to kind of move

them uh destroy them in isolation.

Meanwhile, they're able to use their excellent

communications um to very very good effect.

And you were talking about the genius of of war.

It's not Hitler that's a genius.

If anyone's a genius,

it's Gerbles, the propaganda chief.

And it is their ability

to harness that they are the kings of messaging.

You know, they don't have

they don't have X,

they don't have social media.

Um, but they do have new technology.

And that new technology,

that new approach is flooding

the airwaves with their singular

message, which is always the same and has been ever since the Nazis come into power.

And it is using radios.

And I think radios are really really key to the whole story

because there is no denser

radio network anywhere in the world including the United States than Germany in 1939.

So while it's really behind the times in terms of mechanization,

it is absolutely on top of its game

in terms of coms.

So 70% of households in Germany have radios by 1939

which is an unprecedented

number that that is only beaten by United States and only just.

So it is it is greater than any other other nation in Europe.

And in terms of flooding the airwaves, it is the densest because

even for those who

the 30% who don't have radios,

that's not a problem because we'll put them in the stairwells of apartment blocks.

We'll put them in squares.

We'll put them in cafes and bars.

And the same stuff the state the the the

Nazi state controls the radio airwaves as it does the movies

as it does newspapers.

All aspects of the media are controlled by by Gerbles

and the propaganda ministry

and they are putting out the same message

over and over again.

It's not it's not all Hitler's ranting.

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

Um it is also Vagner

of course and Richard Strauss.

Um it it's it's a mixture

but the subliminal message is the same. We're the best.

We're the top dogs.

Jewish Bolevik plot is awful.

That needs to be, you know, that's the existential threat to us.

We have to overcome that.

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

We should feel really good about ourselves.

We're going to absolutely win and be the greatest nation in the world ever.

And Hitler's a genius.

And and that is just

repeated over and over and over and over again.

And the, you know, for all

the modernity of the world in which we live in today, most people

believe what they're told repeatedly. Yeah. They still do.

If you just repeat

repeat repeat over and over again, people will believe it.

You know, if you're a if you're a

diehard Trump supporter, you you want to believe that and you'll believe everything he says.

If you are a

diehard Bernie Sanders man,

you know, you're from the left,

you'll believe everything he says because

it's reinforcing what you already want to what what you already want to believe.

But the scary thing is

uh you know radio

is the technology of the day.

The technology of the day today

which is a terrifying one for me

is uh um I would say AI on social media.

So bots you can have

basically bot farms which I assume is used by Ukraine,

by Russia, by US

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

Who has the biggest bot farms?

Who has the biggest propaganda machines?

And when I say bot, I mean both

automated AI bots and humans

operating large number of smartphones

with SIM cards that are just able to boost messages

enough to where they become viral

and then real humans with real opinions get excited.

Also, it's like this vicious cycle.

So if you support your nation,

all you need is a little boost

and then everybody gets real excited

and then now you're chanting

and now you're in this mass hysteria

and now it's the 1984

2 minutes of hate

and the message is clear.

I mean that's what propaganda

does is it really clarifies

the mind and that is

exactly what what Hitler and the Nazis and Gerbles are doing in the 1930s.

Well, they're doing in the 1920s as well, but more effectively once they come

into power, of course.

And Hitler is so fortunate

that he comes he takes over the chancellorship

in January 1943 at a time where

the economy is just

starting to turn and he's able to

make the most of that.

And you know if you're Germans and you've been through hyperinflation

in the early 1920s,

you've been through the humiliation of Versail treaty

which was terrible error in in

retrospect and you've been through

then having got through that you've emerged into a kind of democratic

VHimar Republic which is based on

manufacturing you know Germany's

traditional genius at engineering

and manufacturing and production of of

high quality um items.

they're merging through that.

Then you have the Wall Street

crash and the loans that are coming in from America, which is propping up

the entire German economy, suddenly get cut off and you've suddenly got

depression again and and unemployment.

And suddenly Hitler comes in

and everyone's got jobs

and they're rebuilding and they're growing their military

and the message that's coming out is

we're the greatest, we're the best, we're fantastic.

You know, I was telling you earlier on about about

pillar speeches starting with the dark, starting dark and ending in in hope and

light and the sunlit uplands.

You know, that's what you're getting.

You're suddenly getting this vision of hope.

This sort of, you know, by God, actually,

this is really working.

You know, okay, so, you know, I'm not sure that I

particularly buy into the kind of anti-semitic

thing, but, you know, we'll sweep that under the carpet because overall, I've now

got a job, I've got money, I've got my new radio,

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

So they have the uh they have the the

German receiver to start off with the the Deutsche Fanger and then they have

the the Deutsche Klein and Fanger

which is the German little receiver little radio. These are genius.

This is this is as

outrageous as the arrival of the iPod.

I mean remember that

you know suddenly you don't have to have a Sony Walkman anymore.

You can have something really really small and miniature and listen to thousands and

thousands and thousands of songs all at once.

What a what an amazing thing.

And the Deutsche Klein Fanger is 9 in x 4 in x 4 in.

It's made of bake light

and everyone can have one cuz it's super cheap. It's just incredible.

And no one else said that because up until that point,

radios generally speaking are aspirational.

You know, they've got sort of walnut lacquer at the front and you know,

you have them if you're middle class and you show them off to your

neighbors to show how kind of, you know, affluent and wellto-do you are.

Um but suddenly everyone can have one

and if everyone can have one then everyone can receive the same message and

you can and you can also this is the whole point about the Hitler

youth as well you know the young guys that's where they're they're most impressionistic

they're they're least risk averse

so they're most gung-ho

they're they're most full of excitement for the possibilities

of life and they're also their minds are the most open to suggestion

so you get the youth

you hang on you get them and so a whole generation

of young men are brought up thinking about the genius of Hitler and how

he's delivering us this much better nation and returning

our um over overhauling

the humiliations of the first world war

where overcoming the back the stab in the back that happened in 1918

etc etc and you know as a

young 16year-old German you're thinking yeah I want a piece of that and and

hey guess what they got really cool uniforms

and and you know come and join the SS and you know get the

throw line what's not to like

you You know, you can see why why it it's so clever.

And what's so interesting is

propaganda today is is still using

those those tenets that Gerbles

was using back in the 1930s.

And this is why I was say say that, you know, history doesn't repeat itself.

Of course, it doesn't.

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

But patterns of human behavior do.

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

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

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

So, you know, in the case of

of now, we in the west, you know, we face, first of all, we

faced the crisis of 2008, financial crisis 2008.

Then we've had the kind of double whammy of COVID

and that has been incredibly unsettling.

And so, we're now in a a

situation of of political turmoil.

And whether you're whether you're

whether you're proTrump or anti-Trump,

what he's offering is something completely different.

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

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

I'm just going to I'm going to come out.

I'm not going to bother with all the sheen of diplomacy

and kind of, you know, meymouth

words that politicians always use,

you know, which where you can't trust anyone.

I'm just going to tell you as it is.

And obviously people respond to that.

You know, you you can understand why that has a has an appeal.

And if the country already feels broken and here's someone who is going to

be a disruptor and going to change the the way you go about things,

you can see why

a a reasonably large proportion of the population is going to go,

I'll have a piece of that.

Thank you very much.

And especially uh when the country is in a economic crisis

like Germany was, I think you've written that the the Treaty of Versailles

created Hitler and the

uh the Wall Street crash and the great depression

brought him to power. Yes.

And of course the propaganda

machine that you describe

is the thing that got everybody else in Germany on board. Yeah.

It's it's it's amazing

how he cuz he comes in with 33% of the vote.

He had 37% of the vote

of the vote in July 1942.

So again, this is another period of of turmoil just like it is in

France where you're having constant different kind of coalitions

and you know different chancellors leaders of Germany.

So, it's very possible he he he

wouldn't have come to power.

Well, he said he he said, "I will only,

you know, we will only take our seats if if if

I can be chanced. Otherwise, forget it.

I'm not coming into any coalition."

So, then the uh the government falls again in January 1943.

They have the they have election.

The Nazi vote is down

from where it was the previous summer.

But this time, they go, "Okay,

Heather can be chancellor, but we'll manipulate him."

how wrong they were.

You know, he's manipulating

everyone and then Hinderberg

who is the president

dies the following summer

and uh he's able to

get rid of the presidency.

There is no more president of Germany.

There is just the furer

him and he gets rid of uh he has a

enabling act which is where

all other uh political parties have disbanded

and suddenly you've got a total inherent state just like that.

I think there's a lesson there.

Uh there's many lessons there, but one of them is

don't let an extremist into government. Yes.

And assume you can control them. Yes.

The arrogance of the existing

politicians who just completely screwed it up.

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

Like there's uh a person who sees the world in in black and

white can really gain

the attention and the support of the populace.

Yes, especially when there's a resentment

about like Treaty of Versailles,

when there's economic hardship

and if there's effective

modern technology that allows you to do propaganda

and sell the message.

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

It is because it's

simple and and what Hitler does throughout the 1920s

is he sticks to this there there is actually

when he comes out of prison in so he there's the bhole p in

November 1923 he gets

uh charged with treason which he has been because he's attempting a coup

and he gets sentenced to 5 years which is pretty lenient

for what he's done

and he then gets let out after 9 months.

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

And the year that follows, there is then a substantial

debate about where the party should go.

And there are actually

a large number of people who think that actually they should be looking at

how the Soviets are doing things and taking some of the

some of the things that they consider to be positive out of the communist

state and applying those to the Nazis.

and Hitler goes, "No, no, no, no, no, no.

We we we've just got to

stick to this kind of Jewish bosshit thing.

This is this is how we're going to do it.

This we're going to do it."

Gerbles, for example, who is who is very open.

He's he's very very Joseph Gerbles is a he's a he's a not very successful um journalist.

He is uh but he does have a PhD in German literature.

He's very disaffected because he was born with talipes,

which is, you know, more commonly known as a club foot. He's disabled.

can't fight in the First World War.

He's very frustrated by that.

He's in a deep despair about about

the state of Germany in the first part of the early 1920s.

He's looking for a uh um a a political messiah

as a sort of quai religious messiah.

Thinks it's Hitler, then discovers that Hitler's not open to any ideas at all

uh about any deviation,

but then sees the light.

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

And so then goes to him, makes a real special effort.

Come on, come to dinner.

I think you're great.

You know, all this kind of stuff.

Wins him about over and girls has this complete vault fast.

Discards his earlier kind of yeah, you know, Hitler's right. I was wrong.

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

I want to follow the hero hero leader.

And they come on board and they absolutely work out.

Hitler completely wins out.

All dissenters within the what had been the German Workers Party drop becomes the

German National Socialist Party becomes the Nazis.

Um he comes out

emerges as the absolute

undisputed furer of that leader of that that party and what he says goes

and everyone toes him behind it and part of the genius of that

you know Hitler does have some genius.

I just don't think it's military,

but he does have some genius.

There's no question about it.

Is this the simplicity of message

what he's doing is it's that kind of us and them thing that we

were talking about earlier on.

It's the kind of either or.

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

It's kind of this is the only way.

This is how we get to the sunlet uplands.

This is how we we

create this amazing master race of the this

unification of German peoples which dominates the world which is the preeminent

power in the world for the next thousand years

or it's decay and despair

and being crushed by our enemies and our enemies are the Jews and and

the bolevixs the communists

and what he taps into as well is front

ginehaft and vultmine shaft

And these are there's no

direct English translation of Volska

shaft or indeed France

shaft but but but in its

most basic form it's community

it's people community or front veterans community.

So the front mine shaft

is we are the guys we're bonded

because we were in the trenches

you know we were in the first world war.

We were the people

who bravely stuck it out saw our friends being slaughtered and blown to pieces.

We we did our duty as proud Germans,

but we were let down by the elites

and we were let down by the by this Jewish Bolevik plot.

You know, we were stabbed in the back.

The myth of the stab

stabbing in the back is very very strong.

So, we're bound we're bonded

by our experiences of the First World War and the fact that we did what

we should and what we could and we were

we didn't fail in what we were doing.

we were failed by our leaders

um and by the elites.

So that's that's front commine shaft.

Volkine shaft is this sense of national unity.

It's it's it's a

cultural ethnic bonding of people who speak German who have a have a similar outlook on life.

And again that just reinforces

the us and them good and evil.

It reinforces the black and white worldview.

And then you add that

to this very simple message which Hitler is repeating over and over again.

Communists are a big threat.

Jews are a big threat.

They're the they're the enemy.

You have to have a you have to have an opposition in the them

and us of process.

And that's what he's doing.

And and people just buy into it.

They go, "Yeah, we're together. We're Germans.

We're, you know, we're a

we've got our Volskar mine shaft

and so he cleverly

ties into that and taps into that

but they're an irrelevance

by the late 1920s

you know by 1928

you know the the

he's not going to get a deal for Mine Camp part two

you know he he's he's he's

impoverished the party's impoverished

you know numbers are down there they're a kind of

you know a best and

and a relevance we should say he wrote minecom

at this time when he was in prison he writes he writes most of

mine in prison in Lansburg prison And then he writes the rest of it

in what becomes known as the campfousel

which is this little wooden hut in the in the Oberalssburg

and you can still see the remnants of that and unfortunately

there's still little candles there and stuff in the woods and

you know by by neo-Nazis

and what what have you but that's where he wrote wrote the rest of it.

Um I mean it was John Jacqu Russo who says man has his greatest

force when surrounded by nature.

That was something that kind of Hitler took very much to heart.

Um there was a there was a mentor of his called Dietrich Echart.

Dri Echart introduced him to the Obisalsburg

and the beauty of the southwest

southeast Bavarian Alps around Burkis

Garden and um and that was his favorite place on the planet and

um that's where he that's where he eventually bought the um

the uh the Burhoff

with the royalties it has to be said from

Mine Camp which went from

being you know almost pulp to suddenly being a runaway bestseller unfortunately.

Can you actually comment on that?

It's a shitty manifesto

as far as manifestos goes.

I think there's a lot of values to

understand from a first-person

perspective the words of a dictator

of a person like Hitler, but it just feels like that's just

such a shitty Yeah.

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

You don't need to cuz no one's going to read it because it's unreadable, you know.

Um I mean, it's it's very untidy.

It's it's very incoherent.

It's it's got no

um there's no narrative arc to use a kind of, you know, a writer's phrase.

I mean it's just it's but but but it does give you a very

clear you know the overall impression you get at the end of it is

is the kind of

communists and the Jews are

to blame for everything. Yeah.

But there's also the component

of you know predicting basically World War II there.

So it's not just they're to blame.

He's he's hungry for war.

He he thinks that this is this is the natural state that we have

to have this terrible conflict and once the conflict's over

Germany will emerge victorious

and then there will be the thousand-y year Reich.

I mean you I I'm finding myself in in talking to you.

I keep saying this kind of, you know, it's Armageddon all the thousand year, right?

It's because it comes up.

It's it's it's unavoidable

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

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

It's a pretty unique way of speaking,

sort of allowing uh violence

as a tool in this picture that there's a hierarchy,

that there's a superior

race and inferior races, and

it's okay to destroy the inferior ones.

Yeah, usually politicians don't speak that way.

They just say, "Well,

here's good and evil.

We're the good guys."

And yeah, maybe we'll destroy the evil a little bit.

No, here is like there's a

complete certainty about a very large number of people,

the Slavic people, they just need to be removed.

Well, they need to be made an irrelevance.

You know, we have to take it we have to take it and if

that if that kills millions of them, fine.

Then then they can sort of squish their way over to Siberia.

It doesn't matter where they go or whatever they go. I don't care.

We just need to populate this land

that belongs to the German people. Yeah.

Cuz they're the superior people.

There's no question that he glorifies violence and war.

You know, he's absolutely chomping at the bit.

And in a way, I think he's a bit disappointed

that that in the

1930s the the conquests that he does undertake are also peaceful.

You know, March 1948

goes straight into Austria. There's the Angelus.

You know, not a shot is fired.

You know, 1946 goes into Rhineland.

reconquers that, retakes that over that from from

uh from the occupying

allies, not a shot is fired.

You know, he takes the Sudan land, not a shot, barely a shot is fired.

Um and then goes into into the rest of Czechosvaka

in March 193039 and again, barely a shot is fired.

And you know, it's a bit disappointing.

You know, he wants to be wants to wants to be tested.

He wants to kind of have the have the the wartime triumph.

You could see him being frustrated about this in in the Munich crisis in 1948.

He wants to fight.

He's absolutely spoiling for it.

He's desperate to go in.

He's all ready and gung-ho.

He's built his luftwaffer.

He's he's got his his his panzas now.

He's got his his his massive armed forces.

You know, he wants to test them.

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

You know, he is a he's an arch gambler.

Hiller, you you make it seem so clear.

But uh all the while to the rest of the world,

to Chamberlain, to France, to Britain, to the rest of the world, he's saying

he doesn't want that. He's making agreements.

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

But those are agreements

that were made that he's not going to do that.

Uh and he does it over and over.

He violates the Treaty of Versailles.

He violates every single treaty,

but he still is doing the meeting.

So may maybe can you go through it

the leadup to the

war 1939 September 1st like what are the different

agreements what is the signaling

he's doing what is he doing secretly

in terms of building up the military force

yes so he you know part of the treaty of size you're not you

know you're allowed a very very limited

um uh armed forces

there's restrictions on naval expansion

there's restrictions on the size of the army

there's restrictions on the weapons

you you can use.

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

But he starts doing this all clandestinely.

Um you know there are

people in um crop has got for example

which is in the rur

a sort of big um armous

manufacturer they are producing

tanks in elsewhere and parts elsewhere

in in say the Netherlands for example and then shipping them back into back into Germany.

They're doing Panza training exercises

actually in the Soviet Union at this time.

There's all sorts of things going on.