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

1. 0:00 – 0:26

   Episode highlight

   1. JHJames Holland0:00

      And you see that manifest itself on D-Day, where you've got 6,939 vessels of which there are 1,213 warships, (inhales deeply) 4,127 assault craft, 12 and 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.

2. 0:26 – 1:13

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:27

      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 Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description or at lexfridman.com/sponsors. And now, dear friends, here's James Holland.

3. 1:13 – 11:11

   World War II

   1. LFLex Fridman1:13

      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 and human drama in modern history? And maybe from a historian perspective, the most fascinating subject to study?

   2. JHJames Holland2:22

      The thing about World War II is it really is truly global. You know, it's fought in deserts, it's fought 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. (laughs) Um, it's also on the Russian Steppe and it's also in Ukraine. 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 their true in my case, you get drawn to the human drama of it. It's that thought that, you know, "Gosh, if I'd been 20 years old, how would I have dealt with it?" You know, "Would I have been in the Army? Would I have been in the Air Force? Would I have been on a, you know, Royal Navy destroyer? Or, you know, how would I have coped with it? And how would I have dealt with that separation?" I mean, I've interviewed people who were away for four years. 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 s- baby sister who had been, you know, 13 when he left, was now a, a young woman. His old school had been destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs. He didn't recognize the place. And do you know what he did? He joined up again. Went back outta Europe and was one of the first people in Belsen, so you know ...

   3. LFLex Fridman3:49

      What was his justification for that, for joining right back in?

   4. JHJames Holland3:52

      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 3rd Royal Tank Regiment, so 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're in a certain division at a certain time, you know, you ended up passing very close to Belsen, and, you know, you suddenly realize, "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 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, a, 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, 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 it's, you're just scratching the surface. You never, you never really get to know, 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 f- 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.

   5. LFLex Fridman5:44

      So tank man, what, what was maybe the most epic, the most intense or the most interesting story that he told you?

   6. JHJames Holland5:53

      Well, I do remember him telling me, uh... Uh, funny enough, it's not really about, about the conflict. I remember him telling me about the importance of letters.

   7. LFLex Fridman6:02

      Hmm.

   8. JHJames Holland6:02

      And it was this, there was this guy who-... literally every few weeks, you know. The 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 there was this guy and, um, in his tank, a member of a different tank crew, who was a good friend of his in the- in the same squadron. He had S- British have squadrons for- for- for their armor and, uh, which is Americans would have a company.

   9. LFLex Fridman6:32

      I should say that in your book one of the wonderful things you do is you use the correct term in the language-

   10. JHJames Holland6:38

       Yeah.

   11. LFLex Fridman6:38

       ... for the particular army invo- whether it's the German or the British or the American.

   12. JHJames Holland6:42

       Well, th- that's not to be pretentious, that's- that's really just so- so it... Because you're- you're dealing with so many numbers-

   13. LFLex Fridman6:47

       Yeah.

   14. JHJames Holland6:47

       ... 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 with everything. Um, so one of the things about writing in the vernacular German or- or in the American spelling Armour, rather than Arm- Armauer, as we would- Brits would, um, spell it, is it just immediately tells the reader, okay, th- this is American, yeah, okay, I've got that.

   15. LFLex Fridman7:14

       Yeah.

   16. JHJames Holland7:14

       Or this is German, I've got that, or Italian or whatever it might be. But yeah, to go back to Sam, so Sam, this- 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 s- 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 day-to-day kind of banal life was just absolute catnip to these guys. They absolutely loved it. And then the letter arrived, the Dear John letter saying, "Sorry, I've 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 home. And Sam said he could see he was in a really, really bad way.

   17. LFLex Fridman8:14

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JHJames Holland8:15

       And he thought, uh-oh, he's gonna do something stupid. And he went over 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've got your mates here, just don't do anything silly. Just, you know, maybe, you know, when it's all over, you can patch things up or sort things out." And he said, "You know, you've got to understand it from her point of view, you know, it's gonna be long way, haven't seen you for two years," this kind of stuff, you know, said, "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 s- he just knew that was gonna happen, so it was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. That's something I've never forgotten that story and I just thought, you know, it's about human drama (laughs) 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 slapdash I think, so I think I would have- I'd have bought it literally. (laughs) I don't think it would have ended well for me, I just- I'm just a bit careless.

   19. LFLex Fridman9:25

       Yeah. I think I also have an element of me where I can believe in the idea of nation-

   20. JHJames Holland9:33

       Yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman9:33

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

   22. JHJames Holland9:38

       There are things worse than death.

   23. LFLex Fridman9:39

       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.

   24. JHJames Holland10:06

       Well they're not just gonna do that, they're also gonna 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 Wehrmacht, this is the economic division of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the German combined general staff. General Georg Thomas comes up (laughs) with, you know, and Hermann Backe, they come up with the, uh, who's the kind of Minister for Food? They come up, you know, "What are we gonna do? You know, we haven't got enough food." You know, largely because German, um, farming is inefficient and they think, "Well, we'll g- you know, this is part of Lebensraum, we'll go in and we'll take the food and there's been this colossal urbanization of the Soviet Union since the, uh, revolution in 1917, so they're just not gonna get their food. You know, these- these people in these cities 'cause we're gonna take it all and that's gonna leave to- that's gonna lead to a lot of deaths, you know." Umpteen millions is the phrase that Georg Thomas used.

4. 11:11 – 18:23

   Lebensraum and Hitler ideology

   1. JHJames Holland11:11

   2. LFLex Fridman11:11

      So le- let's talk about the Hunger Plan. How important was the Hunger Plan and Lebensraum to Nazi ideology and to the whole Nazi war machine?

   3. JHJames Holland11:20

      Essential to the whole thing. This is all about this notion that is embedded into Hitler's mind and into the minds of the Nazi Party right from the word go, is there is a big sort of con- global conspiracy that Jewish Bolshevik plot, I mean completely misplaced that Jews and Bolsheviks go hand-in-hand and sort of 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 a them and there's us. We are the whites, Northern European Aryans-We should be the master race. We've been s- we're, we're, we've been threatened by a global Jewish Bolshevik plot. We've been stabbed in the back in 1918 at the end of the First World War. We need to have to overcome. This is an existential battle for future survival. It's a terrible task that has befallen our generation, but we have to do this. We have to overcome this or else we have no future. We will be crushed. It's absolutely cut and dry. Now 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 year Reich or it's Armageddon. There is no, there's no middle ground. There's no gray area. It's just one or the other. And that's how, that's his worldview. And the reason he came to the fore was, 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 Jewry. We have to get rid of global Bolshevism and we have to prevail or else. But if we do prevail, (exhales) what an amazing world it's gonna 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, a sort of rabble-rousing crescendo of, of, of, of, if you're in the front row, spittle, halitosis and gesticulation. I mean, you've seen pictures of him. I mean, I dunno if you've ever seen pictures he's r- you know, he's gr- 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.

   4. LFLex Fridman13:55

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JHJames Holland13:55

      No, just, uh, and it just sounds, you know, by today's standards, you would just think what a load of absolutely 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 yeah, so, so the, so to go back to your original point, Lebensraum is absolutely part of it. So what you do is you crush the Bolsheviks, you crush world Jewry, then you expand, you know, the Britain has had this incredible empire, global empire. You know, Germany needs that too. Germany's stuck in Europe. It doesn't have access to the world's oceans. So we are not gonna be a maritime empire. We're gonna be a, we're gonna be a landmass empire, the whole of landmass of Europe and into Asia. That's gonna be us. And we're gonna take that land. We're gonna take the, the bread basket of, of Ukraine. We're gonna use that for our own, own ends. We're gonna spread our, our, uh, we're, we're, we're gonna make ourselves rich, but we're also gonna spread our peoples. We're gonna 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 Barbarossa, the planned invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, is totally wrapped up in the Nazi ideology. And people, you know, I, I, I've read it that historians sort of go, "Well, if only Hitler had realized that, you know, the Ukrainians have been quite happy to kind of fight on his side. You know, if only he'd, he'd actually brought some of these Jewish scientists and, uh, 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 gonna happen because this is an ideological war.

   6. LFLex Fridman15:41

      Yeah. This is not a pragmatic, rational leader.

   7. JHJames Holland15:46

      No.

   8. LFLex Fridman15:46

      I mean, part of his effectiveness, we should say, is probably the singular belief in this ideology. There's pros and cons. (laughs) For, for an effective military machine, probably having that singular focus is effective.

   9. JHJames Holland16:04

      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-

   10. LFLex Fridman16:17

       Yeah. Ethical.

   11. JHJames Holland16:18

       (laughs) ... you know, a kind of reasonable point of view, um, you're, you're kind of opening yourselves up for, for trouble. I mean, and this is, this is a problem he has with Barbarossa, you know, that they realize very early on in 1941 when they're, when they're war gaming this whole operation, that it's not gonna work. (laughs) And so, you know, there's very, people like, like General Paulus, 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 war gaming this, and he goes, "This isn't gonna work." And Keitel, who is the, uh, chief of the OKW goes, "No, no, no, no, no, no. Go back and make it work." He goes, "Okay." So he comes back 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 motorization. You know, they go into the Barbarossa with 2000 different types of vehicle. (laughs) You know, 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, (laughs) 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 landmass 10 times the size of France just on the frontage, and you haven't really got much more mechanization than you had in ni- May 1940 when they attacked the low countries in France. And you've actually got less Luftwaffe 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, Barbarossa should never have come close to being a,

5. 18:23 – 34:36

   Operation Barbarossa

   1. JHJames Holland18:23

      a, a victory.

   2. LFLex Fridman18:24

      Let's talk through it. So Operation Barbarossa that you're mentioning, and we'll go back-

   3. JHJames Holland18:28

      Yes.

   4. LFLex Fridman18:28

      ... to '39 and '40.

   5. JHJames Holland18:28

      We, we, we jump straight into '41.

   6. LFLex Fridman18:30

      Straight into it. Uh-

   7. JHJames Holland18:31

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

   8. LFLex Fridman18:33

      So this is June 1941, Operation Barbarossa when Hitler invades the Soviet Union with, I think, the largest invading force in history up to that point.

   9. JHJames Holland18:45

      Collectively, yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman18:46

       And there's three prongs, Army Group North, Army Group Center, Army Group South. North is going to Leningrad. Center is going, uh, it's the strongest group going directly towards Moscow.

   11. JHJames Holland18:57

       Mm-hmm.

   12. LFLex Fridman18:58

       And South is going, 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?

   13. JHJames Holland19:09

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman19:09

       What was the logistics? You know, we should... There's so many things to say, but one of them is to say that-

   15. JHJames Holland19:15

       Yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman19:15

       ... you often emphasize the importance of three ways to analyze military conflict, of the strategic, the operational, and the tactical. And the operational is often not given enough time, attention. And it's the logistics that make the war machine really work-

   17. JHJames Holland19:33

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman19:33

       ... successfully or fail.

   19. JHJames Holland19:35

       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? Well, the 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 coal face 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 factories. 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 in 1939 it has comfortably the world's largest, um, navy. It's 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 seaboards. 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 1939 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, three 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 apart from a different perspective. You know, Britain's, Britain's empire is all about, you know, it's, it's, it's a shipping, it's a, it's a, it's a seaborne 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've gotta feed, the more kind of barracks you've gotta have, the more space you've gotta 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, 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 the way of Britain's dominions and, and, and empire is to use kind of steel, not our flesh, uh, as a, as a principle. It's just 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 a, 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 B-17s and B-24s of the Eighth Air 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 in 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 wanna 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 Barbarossa, to go back, back to your original question, Lex, 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. It doesn't matter how good your individual commanders are at the front. If you haven't got the backup, it's not gonna 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 all w- 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 forces in, in the whole of World War II really. But, but even in this early stage, because in Barbarossa you're talking about 17 Panzer divisions out of, you know, the 100 odd that are involved in the initial attack. Well, 17 and that a Panzer division is not a division full of Panzers, tanks. It is a combined arms motorized outfit. So scouts on BMWs with sidecars, uh, um, armored cars, infantry, grenadiers, Panzer grenadiers, which are infantry in half tracks 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, Panzers. 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, 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 Barbarossa, they surge forward. Red Army's got absolutely no answers to anything. Stalin weirdly hasn't heeded the, all the warnings that this, this attack is brewing of, and there have been plenty incidentally. Uh, Smolensk falls on the 15th of July, you know, in j- less than four weeks. It's just incredible. Three and a half weeks Smolensk has gone, you know, they've done overwhelmed the rest of what had been Poland. They surged into what is now Belarus, taken Smolensk all the, 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 Panzer Division, for example, by the time it's taken Smolensk, involved in taking Smolensk on the 15th of July 1941, the following day it's got 16 tanks left. 16 out of, you know, should have 180. So it's just being attritted. 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 (laughs) 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 ev- (laughs) 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 Kriegslok and the standard train of locomotive of the, of, of the Reichsbahn. 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 have, the Germans when they come in, their trains, their Kriegslok are smaller, so they have to have, be rewatered more often and re-cooled more often. So they have to f- (laughs) I mean, just it's, it's absolutely boggling at 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.

   20. LFLex Fridman27:57

       I love the, (laughs) the logistical details of all of this because yes, that's a huge component of this, especially when you're covering 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 100 miles away from Moscow. Is that, is that, is that a possibility? 'Cause it wa- had so much success in the early days pushing forward. Do, 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?

   21. JHJames Holland28:38

       Well my, my own view is that they should never have got close. You know, Red Army has plenty of men to be able to see off anything that the, the Germans can do. The capture of Kyiv, for example, in September 1941 was a catastrophe for, for the Soviet Union and should never have happened. I mean Zhukov is saying to, saying to Stalin, "We've got to pull back across the Dnieper." Stalin's going, "No. Can't, can't possibly do that. You can't abandon Kyiv." It's like third city in Soviet Union. "You can't. No way. No, absolutely not." And he goes, "Well, we're just, we are just going to be overwhelmed. You know, we're, we, we can't hold this." He, and e- and he says, you know, "Either back me or, or fire me. Back me or sack me." So Stalin (laughs) sacks him. Uh, uh, you know, obviously as we know, Zhukov gets, um, rehabilitated from pretty quick order. A- and Stalin does learn very quickly after, thereafter sort of learned the lessons. But the opening phase of Barbarossa has been a catastrophe. And so as a consequence of Stalin refusing to let his men retreat back across the Dnieper, which is a substantial barrier and would have been very difficult for the Germans to overwhelm had they not, had they moved back in time. Um, you know, that's another kind of 700,000 men put in the bag. I mean, that's just staggering numbers. Um, but yeah, I mean, y- you, there's so many things wrong with the Barbarossa plan, you know, too much over... Y- it's just such a vast area. I mean, you're talking about kind of, you know, 2,500 miles or something (laughs) you know, of, of frontage. You know, maybe if you kind of put your, your, your Panzer groups, which are these spearheads and you put them all in one big thrust and just go hell for leather straight across on a kind of, you know, much more narrow front of let's say kind of 400 miles rather than 1200.... then they might have got, got, you know, they might have just sort of burnt away straight through to Moscow.

   22. LFLex Fridman30:32

       They really caught the Red Army un- unprepared.

   23. JHJames Holland30:36

       Yeah.

   24. LFLex Fridman30:36

       Is there, um, something to be said about the, the strategic genius of that? Or was it just luck?

   25. JHJames Holland30:46

       (sighs) No, I don't think so. I, I mean, I think, I 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 22,500 officers of which, you know, three out of five marshals, um, you know, God knows how many army commanders, um, et cetera, et cetera. So, so you know, you've completely decapitated the Red Army in terms of its command structure.

   26. LFLex Fridman31:12

       So before that, would it be fair to say, it was one of, if not the greatest army in the world?

   27. JHJames Holland31:18

       Well, there was a lot of experience, there was a lot of experience there, that-

   28. LFLex Fridman31:21

       But also-

   29. JHJames Holland31:22

       ... that, that's for sure.

   30. LFLex Fridman31:22

       ... tech- technology, material-
6. 34:36 – 56:22

   Hitler vs Europe

   1. JHJames Holland34:36

      He hated them.

   2. LFLex Fridman34:36

      Is there a case to be made that there, he was indeed, at times, a military genius?

   3. JHJames Holland34:42

      No. (laughs) I don't think so, because none of the plan, I mean, even the plan for the invasion of France and the Low Countries isn't his. It's a, the, the concept is, is von Manstein's and the execution is Guderian's, Heinz Guderian. So he, Heinz Guderian is, is a kind of, he's the pioneer of, of the, of the Panzer force, the, the Panzer thrust, this idea of the ultra-mechanized combined arms Panzer army spearhead doing this kind of lightning fast thrust. Um, it's not Hitler's idea. He adopts it and, and takes it as his own because, you know, he's a Fuhrer and he can do what he likes. Um, but, but it isn't his, so it's not... You know, but, and up until that point, until that comes into being, till that, that plan is put forward to Franz Halder who is the Chief of Staff of the German Army at that time, you know, Halder's 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 then France has got double the number of artillery pieces, it's got parity in terms of air forces, then you add Holland, then you add Belgium, then you add Great Britain and that looks like a very, very tough nut to crack. I mean, the reason why France is subdued in 1940 is 50% brilliance of the Germans and their operational art in that particular instance and 50% French failure really and incompetence.

   4. LFLex Fridman36:05

      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-

   5. JHJames Holland36:29

      Well, yes, if it works.

   6. LFLex Fridman36:30

      ... geopolitical genius.

   7. JHJames Holland36:32

      (laughs) If it works-

   8. LFLex Fridman36:32

      Right.

   9. JHJames Holland36:32

      ... but it doesn't, you know, that's, that's the 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.

   10. LFLex Fridman36:45

       Right.

   11. JHJames Holland36:45

       He thinks they won't.

   12. LFLex Fridman36:47

       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.

   13. JHJames Holland37:00

       It has the size, but one of the problems that France has is that it's very, very top-heavy. 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 lo- uh, the top, the commander's very old. Most of 'em are First World War veterans, you know, whether you... I mean, Weygand, Gamelin, General Georges, um, these people, they're all well into their 60s. Um, General Georges is the youngest army commander, and he's 60. You know, it's, it's too old to be a- an army commander. You need to be in your kinda 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 gonna be long and drawn out and attritional, but it's gonna be mobile rather than static. And that's a big miscalculation.

   14. LFLex Fridman38:03

       So here's my, here's my question. I think you're (laughs) you're being too nice on France here. So when, (laughs) when, when Germany invaded Poland, it... Correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like France could have just went straight to Berlin.

   15. JHJames Holland38:18

       Yeah, they absolutely could have.

   16. LFLex Fridman38:20

       And they... And, uh, I know you said it's very top-heavy and you're saying all of these things, but they literally did basically nothing.

   17. JHJames Holland38:28

       Yeah, they were appalling.

   18. LFLex Fridman38:29

       So, like, th- (laughs) uh, and I think a part of that, and I think you described this well, maybe you can speak to that, is the insanity that is Hitler creating this psychologi- with the propaganda, creating this feeling that there's this Nazi force that's unstoppable. So they, they're... France just didn't want to, like, step into that. Maybe they were like, legitimately, and I, I hesitate to say these words, but scared of war.

   19. JHJames Holland39:00

       100% they are. They, you know, because France has been totally traumatized-

   20. LFLex Fridman39:04

       From World War I.

   21. JHJames Holland39:04

       ... 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 risk-averse, 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, 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, coalition governments, really very 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. No one can ever agree anything. I mean, that's the problem. It's amazing that the Maginot 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, this is the bit that's not impregnable, which is the hinge where the Maginot Line ends and it sort of basically starts turning kind of towards an, uh, in a kind of north, northerly 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, because Belgium refused to kind of, uh, allow any Allied troops into, into its territory. It was neutral. And France should have said, "Okay, fine. Well, then we'll defend our..." You know, "We're not gonna come to your rescue if you get invaded." That's your, that's your w- that, that's, that's the payoff. And, and consequence of that, we are going to stop (...) that and we're not gonna 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 they, when, you know, there is a... 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 Saar 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-making 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 Chateau de Vincennes, which is the com- you know, it's the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces, which is General, uh, Marshal, uh, Maurice Gamelin. 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 United States by some margin, it has to be said as well. You know, it 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 1939 that figure is 47, for example. It's 106 in Italy.

   22. LFLex Fridman42:49

       So France is very mechanized, like...

   23. JHJames Holland42:51

       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 pincer movement because you can't possibly take motorized forces through- through the Ardennes. That's just, it's not possible, which is the hinge area between the end of the Maginot, the northern part of the Maginot Line, which runs down the western... Sorry, the eastern border of- 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, you 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 they are then dependent on sending dispatch riders on little motorbikes. You know, General, uh, um, Maurice Gamelin 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 at- at kind of 9:00 at night, by which time the (laughs) kind of Germans advanced another 15 miles and the original message that you sent at 6:00 that morning is completely redundant and has passed its sell-by date. And that's happening 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 corps, then you've got division. So the consequence of all that is that the French just can't move. They're just stuck. They're- they're rabbits in headlights. And the Germans were able to kind of move them, uh, destroy them in isolation. Meanwhile, they're able to use their excellent communications-

   24. LFLex Fridman44:44

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JHJames Holland44:46

       ... um, uh, i- i- 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 Goebbels, the propaganda chief. And it is their ability to harness... Th- 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 came 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 and Germany in 1939. So while it's really behind the times in terms of mechanization, it is absolutely on top of its game in terms of comms. So 70% of households in Germany have radios by 1939, which is an unprecedented number that- th- 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 Goebbels and the Propaganda Ministry and they are putting out the same message over and over again. It's not, it's not all Hitlers ranting. It's entertainment, light entertainment, some humorous shows. Um, it is also Wagner, 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 Bolshevik plot is awful, it 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 gonna 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 die-hard Trump supporter, you- you want to believe that and you'll believe everything he says. If you are a die-hard Bernie Sanders man, you know, you're from the left, you'll believe everything he says because it's reinforcing what you already want to... What, what you already want to believe.

   26. LFLex Fridman47:30

       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 wi- (laughs) I would love to read the history written about this era about the information wars.

   27. JHJames Holland47:57

       Mm.

   28. LFLex Fridman47:57

       Who has the biggest bot farms?

   29. JHJames Holland48:00

       Yes.

   30. LFLex Fridman48:00

       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-
7. 56:22 – 1:06:17

   Joseph Goebbels

   1. JHJames Holland56:22

      And, 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, it was the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, he gets, uh, charged with treason, which he has been 'cause he's attempting a coup. And he gets sentenced to five years, which is pretty lenient for what he's done. And he then gets let out after nine 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 were doing things and taking some of the, some of the things that they considered 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, we've just got to stick to this kind of Jewish Bolshevik thing. This is, this is how we're gonna do it. This is how we're gonna do it." Goebbels, for example, who is, who is very open, he's, he's very, very... Joseph Goebbels is a, he's a, he's a, not very successful, um, um, journalist. He is, uh, but he does have a PhD in German, 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. He 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 re- a political messiah, a sort of quasi-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 the bat over, and Goebbels has this complete volte-face, 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, and Hitler completely wins out of all dissenters within the, what had been the German Workers' Party to what becomes the German National Socialist Party, becomes the Nazis. Um, he comes out, emerges as the absolute undisputed fuhrer of that leader of that, that party and what he says goes, and everyone toes in 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 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 a 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 sunlit 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 Bolsheviks, the communists. And what he taps into as well is Frontgemeinschaft and Volksgemeinschaft. And these are, there's no direct English translation of Volksgemeinschaft or, indeed, Frontsgemeinschaft, but, but, but in its most basic form it's communities, it's people community or front veterans community. So the Frontgemeinschaft is we are the guys and 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 Bolshevik plot, you know? We, we were stabbed in the back. The myth of the stab, b- of stabbing in the back is very, very strong. So we're bound, we're, we're bonded by our experience of the First World War and the fact that we did what we should and what we could and we were, we didn't fail in what we were doing, we were failed by our leaders, um, a- and by the elites. So that's, that's Frontgemeinschaft. Volksgemeinschaft 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.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:01:05

      Good and evil.

   3. JHJames Holland1:01:05

      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 kind 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, we're, we're, you know, w- we're a brotherhood. W- we've got a Volksgemeinschaft." A- and so he cleverly ties into that and, and taps into that. But they're an irrelevance by the late 1920s. You know, by 1928, you know, the, the, uh, he's not gonna get a deal for Mein Kampf Part Two. You know, he, he's, he's, he's impoverished. The party's impoverished. You know, numbers are down. They're, they're a kind of, you know, at best, an irre- uh, an irrelevance.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:01:59

      Which is it he wrote Mein Kampf at this time when he was in prison?

   5. JHJames Holland1:02:02

      Well, he writes, he writes most of, uh, Mein Kampf in prison, in Landsberg Prison. And then he writes the rest of it in what becomes known as the Kampfhaus, which is this little wooden hut in the, in the Obersalzberg. 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 whatnot, what have you. But that's where he wrote, wrote the rest of it. Um, I mean, it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who says, "Man has his greatest thoughts when surrounded by nature." That was something that kind of Hitler took very much to heart.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:02:30

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JHJames Holland1:02:31

      Um, there was a, uh, there was a mentor of his called Dietrich Eckart. Dietrich Eckart introduced him to the Obersalzberg and the beauty of the Southwest, Southeast Bavarian Alps around Berchtesgaden. And, um, uh, and that was his favorite place in the planet. And, um, that's where he, that's where he eventually bought the, um, the, uh, the Berghof, with the royalties it has to be said, from Mein Kampf, which went from, um, being, you know, almost pulp to suddenly being a (laughs) runaway bestseller, unfortunately.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:03:02

      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, uh, 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, uh-

   9. JHJames Holland1:03:18

      Yeah. I mean, you know, it's banned in a number of countries. You don't need to 'cause no one's gonna read it because it's unreadable (laughs) , you know. Um, I mean, it's, it's very untidy. It's, it's very incoherent. It's, it's got no... (laughs) Um, there's no narrative arc to use a kind of, you know, write-, 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 that, is the kind of communists and the Jews are to blame for everything.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:03:43

       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 for every-

   11. JHJames Holland1:03:50

       Oh, no. He's, he's, he's hungry for war.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:03:52

       Right.

   13. JHJames Holland1:03:52

       He, 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-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, it's Armageddon or the Thousand-Year Reich. It's because it comes up, it, it's, it's, it's unavoidable because that's how he's speaking the whole time. It's just the same message over and over and over and over again.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:04:17

       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.

   15. JHJames Holland1:04:32

       Yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:04:32

       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.

   17. JHJames Holland1:04:52

       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-

   18. LFLex Fridman1:04:58

       Yeah.

   19. JHJames Holland1:04:58

       ... their way over to Siberia or-

   20. LFLex Fridman1:04:59

       Right, it doesn't matter where they go.

   21. JHJames Holland1:05:00

       ... or Oświęcim or whatever, wherever they go. I don't care, but they-

   22. LFLex Fridman1:05:01

       We just need to populate this land-

   23. JHJames Holland1:05:03

       Right.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:05:04

       ... that belongs to the German people.

   25. JHJames Holland1:05:06

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:05:06

       'Cause they're the superior people.

   27. JHJames Holland1:05:07

       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 1938 goes, goes straight into Austria. There's the Anschluss, you know, not a shot is fired, you know. 1936 goes into Rhineland, reconquers that, retakes that, over that from, from, uh, from, from the occupying allies, not a shot is fired. You know, he takes the Sudetenland, not a shot, barely a shot is fired. Um, and then goes into, into the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1930, '39, and again, barely a shot is fired and, you know, it's a bit disappointing. You know, he wants to be, he wants to, wants to be tested. He wants to kind of have the, have the, the wartime triumph. And you can see him being frustrated about this in, in the Munich crisis in 1938. 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 Luftwaffe. He's, he's got his, his, his Panzers now. He's got his, his, his massive armed forces. You know, he wants to test them. He wants to, wants to get the show on the road, uh, and prove it. You know, he is a, he's an arch gambler, Hitler.

8. 1:06:17 – 1:11:12

   Hitler before WW2

   1. JHJames Holland1:06:17

   2. LFLex Fridman1:06:17

      You, you make it seem so clear, but (laughs) 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 isn't doing the meeting. So may- maybe can you go through it, the lead up to the war, 1939, September 1st, like what are the different agreements? What is the signaling he's doing?

   3. JHJames Holland1:07:01

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:07:01

      You know, uh, and what is he doing secretly in terms of building up the military force?

   5. JHJames Holland1:07:06

      Yes. So he, you know, part of the Treaty of Versailles is 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 r- restrictions on the weapons you, you can use. There are, um, you're not allowed a, an air force. But he starts doing this all clandestinely. Um, you know, there are people in, um, Krupp has got, for example, which is in the Ruhr, a sort of big, um, armored vehicles 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 panzer training exercises actually in the Soviet Union at this time. There's all sorts of things going on. The Luftwaffe is being announced to the world in 1935, but it's obviously been in the process of, of developing l- long before that. The Messerschmitt 109 single-engine fighter plane, for example, is created in 1934. So they, they, they're doing all these things against it. And, and the, and the truth is, is he's just constantly pushing, "What, what can I get away with here? What, what, what, what will pro-" You know, and, and of course Britain, France, the rest of, rest of the world, rest of the Allies, you know, they're all s- reeling from, from the Wall Street crash and the, and the Depression as well. So have they got the stomach for this? Not really. You know, and perhaps actually on reflection, the terms of Versailles Treaty were a bit harsh anyway, so, you know, maybe we don't need to worry about it. And there's just, there's just no political will. If there's no political will to kind of fight against what Germany's doing, then he gets away with it. So he suddenly starts realizing that, that, that, that actually he can push this quite a long way, because no one's gonna stand up to him, which is why he makes the decision in 1936 to go back into the, you know, into the Rhineland, you know, which has been occupied by, by French, um, uh, um, you know, um, um, allied troops at that point. And he just walks in and just goes, "Do your worst," and no one's gonna do anything (laughs) 'cause there isn't the stomach to do anything.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:09:03

      That was a big step in 1936, r- remilitarizing the Rhineland. I mean, that, that's a huge, huge step of like, "Oh, I don't have to follow anybody's rules and they're gonna do nothing."

   7. JHJames Holland1:09:15

      A- and he's looking at his military and he's, and, and he's also looking at response. So one of the things they do is they, you know, it's really, he's very clever. So they get over the head of the, uh, army of the air, Armée de l'Air, which is the, um, French Air Force. And they invite him over and they, uh, uh, Erhard Milch, who is the, uh, second in command of the Luftwaffe, invites him over, says, "Oh, come and see what we're, what we're up to. You know, we wanna be, y- you know, you're our European neighbors, we're all friends together," this kind of stuff. "Come and see what we've got." And he takes him to this airfield. There's a row of Messerschmitt 109s all lined up, like sort of 50 of them. And the, the head of the army of the air sort of looks at him and goes, "Crikey, that's impressive." And, and Milch goes, "Well, let me go and take you to another airfield." And they, they go off a sort of the d- uh, the back route out of the airfield and that's a long circuitous route in the Mercedes. Meanwhile, all the Messerschmitts take off from that airfield, go and land at the next airfield. "Here's another one." And they're all the same aircraft. And the commander in chief of the army of the air, uh, goes back to France and goes, "We're never gonna be able to beat Germany." So you were, earlier, you were, you were alluding to this earlier on, you know, how much is this sort of this, this, this just this chutzpah of, of this ability to kind of portray the, the, the, the mechanized moloch. Um, yeah, it absolutely cows the enemy. So, so they're, they're, they're increasing the effectiveness of their armed forces purely by propaganda and by, by mind games and by talking the talk. And, you know, you look at, we might all think these military parades that the Nazis have look rather silly by today's standards, but you look what that looks like if you're the rest of the world. You're in Britain and you're still reeling from the Depression, and you see the triumph of the will. You see some of that footage and you see these automatons in their steel helmets and you see the swastikas and you see hundreds of thousands of people all lined up and sieg-heiling and all the rest of it. You're gonna think again before you're going to war with people

9. 1:11:12 – 1:33:18

   Hitler vs Chamberlain

   1. JHJames Holland1:11:12

      like that.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:11:13

      It's also hard to put yourself in the, in the mind of those leaders now, now that we have nuclear weapons.

   3. JHJames Holland1:11:21

      Mm-hmm.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:11:21

      So d- nuclear weapons have created this kind of, uh, cloak of a kind of safety from mutually shared destruction.

   5. JHJames Holland1:11:32

      Yes.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:11:32

      They, they, you think surely you will not do, you know, a million or two million, uh, soldier army invading another land, right? Just full-on, gigantic hot war. Uh, but at that time, that's a real possibility. You reme-

   7. JHJames Holland1:11:51

      Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:11:51

      You remember World War I.

   9. JHJames Holland1:11:52

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:11:52

       You remember all of that. So, you know, yeah, okay, there's a mad, uh, guy with a mustache. Uh, he's making statements that this land belongs to Germany anyway 'cause it's mostly German, uh, populated. So, uh, and, uh, l- like you said, Treaty of Versailles wasn't really fair. And you can start justifying all kinds of things to yourself.

   11. JHJames Holland1:12:14

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe they got a point about the Danzig corridor. You know, they are mainly Germans, uh, German-speaking people there. And, you know, it's disconnected from East Prussia, which is this thing, you know. I can, I, I sort of get it, you know, maybe they've got a point. You know, and is Poland really a kind of thriving democracy anyway? Not really by 1930, late 1930s. It's not. It's, to all intents and purposes, a dictatorship in Poland at that time. I mean, it, it's not right that you just go and take someone else's country. Of course you, you can't do that. But, but you can see why in Germany people are thinking they've got a point. You can also see why in France and Britain they're thinking, "Well, you know, do we really care about the Poles? I mean, you know, is it worth going to, to war over?" Um, but there's kind of bigger things at play by this point. That, that's the point.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:13:02

       Yeah, but before we get to Poland, there is this meeting, September 19- 1938. Uh, so Chamberlain made three trips to meet with Hitler-

   13. JHJames Holland1:13:13

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:13:14

       ... uh, which culminated in the Munich Conference.

   15. JHJames Holland1:13:17

       Yeah. On the 30th of September. Yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:13:18

       Where it was Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, and Daladier, prime minister of France. They met to discuss, essentially, Czechoslovakia without any of the government officials of Czechoslovakia participating. And Hitler promised to make no more territorial conquests, and Chamberlain believed him.

   17. JHJames Holland1:13:38

       He chose to believe him, I think, is the thing, is the point. And so, so it's very interesting. So, so Chamberlain gets a very bad press. Um-

   18. LFLex Fridman1:13:46

       Uh-oh. (laughs)

   19. JHJames Holland1:13:47

       Well, no, I'm not... (laughs) No, it's not really uh-oh. It's, it's, it's... I, I, I just think there's too much retrospective view on this.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:13:55

       Right.

   21. JHJames Holland1:13:56

       And, and, and that's fine because we, uh, the whole point of history is you can look back and you can judge decisions that were made at a certain point through the prism of what subsequently happened, which of course, the people that are making the decisions at the time can't, 'cause they're in that particular moment. So I don't think Chamberlain did trust Hitler, but he wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Britain was not obliged to Czechoslovakia at all. France was. France had signed a treaty with, with Czechoslovakia in 1924. But, but, but Britain had not. So there was no obligation at all for Britain to do this. The only reason why Britain would go to war over Czechoslovakia is because of the threat of Nazism and what the ramifications of not going to war with him. But the problem is, is that Chamberlain's interesting because in 1935 he was, he was Chancellor of Czechia, and when they started to sort of think, "Okay, we really do need to re-arm," um, he was very much in favor of, of substantially, um, expanding and rehabilitating the Navy, so updating existing battleships, um, and so on, and also developing the Air Force.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:15:03

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JHJames Holland1:15:04

       There's not really much argument for having a large army, because if you have a large army, you've got to maintain it. Britain is a small place. Where do you put them? You've also got to transport them. That's complicated. Um, you've got to train them. You've got to put them in barracks, you've got to feed them, all this kind of stuff. It's, there's a kind of sort of impracticality about having a large army. Whereas navy is great because you can keep them at sea and they can be, you know, on the water. Air Force is slightly different. Air power is viewed in very much the same way that, that naval power is viewed, that this is, "We're an island nation. We have, uh, global, global assets and air power gives us the flexibility that an army doesn't." So he is all for backing the expansion of the ar- of the army, of the Air Force and the Navy in 1930s. Then he subsequently becomes prime minister and sticks to his guns on that. It is he that enables the Air Force and, and the Air Ministry to develop the first fully coordinated air defense system anywhere in the world. There is not an air defense system in Poland, nor Norway, nor Denmark, nor the Netherlands, nor Belgium, nor France. There is in Britain. Britain is the only one. And frankly, it pays off big time in the summer of 1940. So you have to give him credit for that. Britain inter- interestingly is also the world's leading armaments exporter in the 1930s, which is amazing really when you think everyone complains about the fact that we weren't rearming enough. Actually, we were. When we had all the infrastructure there and, and we were expanding that infrastructure dramatically. I say we, I'm, uh, certainly saying that because I'm British. Uh, um, so they were doing that. But in 1938, Britain wasn't ready for war. Now you can argue that Germany wasn't ready for war either. But Chamberlain was prime minister in a democracy, a parliamentary democracy, where 92% of the population were against going to war in 1938. There is, there is not a single democratic leader in the world that would go against the wishes of 92% of the population. Now you could say, "Well, he should have just argued it better and presented his case better," and all the rest of it. But at that point, there was no legal obligation to go to the defense of Czechoslovakia. You know, Czechoslovakia had been, it was another of these new nations that had been created out of, out of 1919 in the Versailles Treaty. You know, who was to say, you know, we in Britain are able to judge the rights and wrongs of that, you know, how fantastic it would be to go to war with, uh, um, a nation a long way away about, um, for people whom we know very little, et cetera, et cetera? I'm paraphrasing his quote. But, but I, I'm not saying it was the right decision. I'm just saying I can see why in September 1938 he is prepared to give him the chance. Now, I do think he was a bit naive, and it, and, and what he also does is really interesting thing. So he goes over to Hitler's flat, completely ambushes him, goes to his flat on the afternoon of 30th September, and says to, says to Hitler, "Look, I've got this... I've drawn up this, this agreement here. Um, and this is to continue the, um, the naval agreement that we've already made and, and by signing this, you are saying that Germany and Britain should never go to war with one another." And Hitler goes, "Yeah, fine, whatever." You know, signs it.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:18:11

       Yeah.

   25. JHJames Holland1:18:12

       Chamberlain comes back, lands at Hendon and waves his, waves this little piece of paper, you know, peace in our time and all the rest of it, which obviously comes back to bite him in a very big way. But it's interesting that, that, that when Hitler then subsequently goes and moves in, you know, that, that they, France and Britain decide in rather the same way that there's been discussion about deciding that large portions of Ukraine should just be handed back to, handed over to Russia without consulting Ukraine a few weeks ago. Um, it is incredible, I think, that, that France and, and Britain and Italy with Germany are deciding that yes, it's fine for Germany to go in and take the Sudetenland, you know, without really consulting the Czechs. It's a s- sort of similar kind of scenario, really. And, and it's equally (laughs) wrong. Um, but when Germany does then go and take over the whole of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, that is, that's the bottom line. That is, that's the point where Chamberlain goes, "Okay, I've given him the benefit of the doubt. No more benefits of the doubt, that's it." That, that is...... he's, he's crossed a line. And so you reinforce your agreement with Poland. You do a formal agreement. You go, "Okay, we will uphold your sovereignty, you know. If you are invaded, we will go to war with you." You know, and that is, that is a, a ratcheting up of diplomacy and politics in a very, very big way, and it is a, it is that decision to make a, a treaty with the Poles is not heeded by Hitler. But it's heeded by literally every one of his commanders, and it's also he- heeded by Goering, who is his number two and who is obviously the commander-in-chief of the, um, of, of the Luftwaffe and is, um, president of Prussia and, you know, and all the rest of it, and you know, is the second most senior Nazi. And you know, he's going, "This is a catastrophe. This is the last thing (laughs) we wanna be doing is going to war against Britain." And indeed, France.

Episode duration: 3:24:35