Deep Dives on World War I and World War II - Megyn's History Mega-Episode

the least.

“Hey everyone on Megan Kelly, welcome to the Megan Kelly show and today's Sunday mega”

episode we are switching things up for a few weeks with a focus on our history shows from the archives. Today a deep dive on World War One and World War Two, you're going to love these. Enjoy and see you Monday. We focused today on World War One better known to some as the Great War.

The war began in 1914 and brought in global powers from across the world with the central powers facing off against the Allied powers which eventually included the United States.

By the end of the war over 20 million lives had been claimed, including more than 100,000 American

troops. The impact of the war changed the face of the world and it's felt even today. But the reasons behind the start of the war and even the rationale for continuing the fight are nuanced. Later we're going to be joined by Doug Brunt.

He is my husband.

“He hosts the podcast dedicated with Doug Brunt which is about authors but he's also a historian”

and he is neck deep in a tone he is writing that is amazing on this exact period. So he'll join us for a bit. First, we start with the historian on this period. American author, professor of history at Bard College, Sean McMeekin.

Sean, welcome to the show.

So glad to have you. Thanks for having me on Megan. It's really great to be here. My husband Doug is a huge fan of yours. He's read your books.

He's a self-taught student of World War One and that was very excited to hear that I was going to be speaking to you. I have to pass along his regards. Great. Thank you.

All right.

“So let's start big picture because I think a lot of people know a lot about World”

War Two and maybe less about World War One describe sort of the world as we approached World War One, turn of the century into the 1900s and like who are the top world powers at that time? Who is waning? Who was strong?

Well, the United States was certainly emerging as a world power but as far as the old world it was still I wouldn't say second rate exactly but but for diplomats it was not necessarily the prestige post that is to say if you were a diplomat your ambitions you probably wouldn't want to get posted to Washington because a lot of the action was still in Europe the European powers ruled over something like 85% of the surface of the globe the great empires Britain

was the largest and certainly the most diverse and global was often said the sun never

set famously on the British Empire. The France had a pretty enormous empire as well in both Asia and Africa Russia of course bestowed the continent of Eurasia the entire land mass stretching across as we might put it to something like 11 odd time zones Japan was starting to emerge as a power in Asia already occupying much of creating back to a series of wars in the 1890s and early 1900s

the US was certainly a power the US that already began to emerge as an empire in the Philippines and also in Cuba with interest stretching beyond her borders but as far as power politics the real center of gravity was in Europe and the alliance system which he alluded to we had a part of what made things so potentially dangerous was that you had two almost equal power blocks the core of the blocks for France and Russia they were essentially kind of

hostile to Germany ever since Germany had been unified in 1871 at the center of the continent and then Germany relied mostly on Austria hungrier the Habsburg Empire to try to see off the Franco-Russian threat Britain was somewhat eloof all the Britain did have agreements with both France and Russia they were largely colonial agreements that as to say they were about spheres of influence trying to respect each other's zones where core interests were

held whether in Africa or in Asia with France things are going a little bit further Britain had already started joint conversations regarding the possibility of naval cooperation and either thing was channeled possibly the Mediterranean in the case of war but Britain liked to remain eloof the British they were they were kind of the top dog the hedge them on and they they tended to look down their noses just a little bit at some of the other powers

so they didn't see a lot of people have these alliances where there's like all defend you if you get in trouble and you defend me and great Britain was like we're good that's right now the British were a little bit eloof but you're right it was often quite cynical Bismarck who had tried to keep France and Russia from teaming up against Germany until he was sacked in 1890 by Kaiser Wilhelm II he one did a lot of Bismarck's diplomatic design

he actually came up with something called the reinsurance treaty in 1887 so the idea of this was that the reinsurance business being the insurance that insurance companies take out on each other

so long as let's say Germany didn't invade France then Russia more or less had a free hand

but Russia would not cooperate if France invaded Germany and then the same thing was would

“take place in reverse with Austria hungry it was a lot of secret diplomacy and this is the kind”

of thing that the Americans like to rail against a Woodrow Wilson would have famously rail against it and some of his speeches and the 14 points that is that the powers were kind of drawing each other into some extent there's fears of influence but they had different interests and that's the thing they didn't necessarily see things the same way so there was a potential for conflict but let me ask about so great Britain was I mean this one we they talk about now

on the death of Queen Elizabeth people talked about you know the British Empire and colonialism and all that this is the time frame we're talking about it you know like this is when they really were the British Empire and they controlled India and all these vast land masses and they were at the very height of their power but their their isolationism was well-founded right as I understand

because they had this huge really powerful navy and that navy had served them very well and they

were kind of like we're good as long as we have our big navy and as we'll fast forward to in a little while once the Germany started to sort of come come at them right they were like okay hold on a second now if you're gonna if you're gonna mess with our with our shores with our waters you're gonna just do anything that threaten our navy and Germany was building up its navy it's on we're talking about a totally different ballgame now well that's right the British definitely saw the Germans

as an emerging threat for most of the 19th century Britain had seen rushes a greater threat over land the various routes to India there was this kind of almost fantasy that the Russians might eventually crash across the northwest frontier for Peshawar and into India but since the turn of a century the Germans had been building this high seas fleet and Kaiser Wilhelm II was one of his many alleged blunders again the Germans get a lot of bad press for this that he had been reading

apparently the work of Admiral Mohan the influence of sea power on history allegedly kept it next to his bedside table and was kind of obsessed with the idea that Germany too should have a high seas fleet just like the British did and and there were various aspects to this where they often built these ships without necessarily that much capacity for coal storage in part because they weren't necessarily going to go around the world rather they were going to go into the North Sea

the English shuttle to fight the British it was quite provocative the British though they really had seen off this threat I mean the thing is the the newer research on the war and particularly on spending shows the British were able to outspend the Germans on the navy and park as the Germans had to feel such a large army but 1911 or 1912 the British really had seen off the German

“threat so I think some of the arguments about the Anglo-German naval race is this prime”

causative factor of the first world war and we've heard a lot about that there are many books

about that subject I think they overdue it just a bit I think Britain was arrogant enough to see the Germans as a threat but I think by 1914 the threat had been largely contained at least the threat to British naval supremacy all right so let's go back so the war broke breaks out in 1914 the the world the great war world war one and officially we are told it is because some some group called the black hand some terrorist group in Serbia assassinated the arch Duke of Austria

Hungary which is basically an alliance between Austria and Hungary we refer to as Austria-Hungary and Austria-Hungary got very mad this is the official story they got very angry that their arch Duke had been assassinated and went back to Serbia and wrote this barn burner of a letter like you you will do the following things or it's war and as I understand it one of everybody's favorite characters Winston Churchill read this over in England it was like oh it's on I mean it's war

I mean clearly there's no way they're gonna meet these conditions they want war wars coming and Germany is over there behind it's friend Austria-Hungary like yes we want war two we got you we got your back Austria-Hungary and the alliance is wet this is my this is the way I talk history just to keep it simple I know you're way above me on this but like is that my is my dumb-down version essentially correct no there's a lot of truth in this I mean you're looting

I seem to the blank check that is the Germans give us assurance to Austria-Hungary that effectively we have your back in case Russian intervenes and we're ready to back you up to the hill and the

“blank check was certainly important so was the assassination and so was the Austro-Hungarian response”

to it it wasn't just a pretext though if you actually look at the details I'm not gonna get into the details of what actually happened in Serie A though although I just do discuss it in great detail and in several of my books what's fascinating about the dynamics surrounding it is it friends for a minute you think okay he's an archduke he's the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne the Habsburg throne of Austria-Hungary okay fine so you'd think he's not even really

sovereign he's not a politician why would it matter so much but in fact he was he wasn't just heir to the throne but Franz Joseph who had been emperor since 1848 was an octogenary and expected to die really almost like 85 yeah he was I mean well a lot of you this is the guy he was saying that

but but so Franz for it I was actually running military policy he was basically running almost

a shadow government out of the bell that year and what was significant about his assassination aside from the the kind of provocation of it was that he himself had been blocking the war party in

“Vienna uh Conrad von Hitsendorf the equivalent of the more famous mouth key in Berlin that the”

chief of staff effectively in charge of military planning he had actually advocated going to war with Serbia something like 25 times in 1913 alone and Franz Ferdinand had blocked him every single time in addition to this Kaiser Wilhelm the sexes away let me just stop you let me stop you because I know that keep a nice and simple yeah our listeners who are not experts so what you're saying is I mean the the average person would say well why would Serbia assassinate that guy if that's the guy who's

stopping the war but the question is well did did this Serbian terrorist group have an interest in stopping the war certainly sounds like maybe not and did Serbia itself have an interest in stopping the war because there's a real question about whether this terrorist group was the only one behind it or whether Serbia was actually itself behind the assassination. Well I don't think the terrorists were necessarily pacifists on the other hand the people backing them some of them may well have wanted

the war if you actually look at the organizer of the black hand Colonel Dmitry Drogutin Dmitry ovich as codename is apis little simply to call him apis he was actually the head of Serbian military intelligence now he himself was not necessarily in goods with the prime minister of Serbia but the hardliners definitely wanted war they thought they might actually win and they were not a verse to provoking Austria hungry so a lot of people overlook Serbia in 1914 but in fact we we have

very clear evidence that the Serbian government at least some rogue elements of the Serbian government were complicit in the plot and that the Serbian prime minister refused to renounce the plot or to warn Austria hungry about it and later on that Russia gave effectively her own version of the kind of what we might call a black check to Serbia that is to say we will back you so you can go ahead and reject the ultimatum so so the Russian itself if we if we zoom out if we zoom out

“on this region at the time because I think for some of our audience maybe like well why are they fighting”

to begin with like why why why why would there be these provocations mean as I understand it you got a situation here at the beginning of you know the turn of the century there where they're kind of like the Ottoman Empire is weaker and Austria hungry is weaker and they're kind of looking at the same territory all these countries like Russia and Serbia and Germany and Austria hunger they're all kind of looking at these countries in this region like well maybe I would like to take over some of

that space you know that the Ottoman Empire used to encompass maybe I would maybe so everyone's getting like a little provocative and then the Serbian's really poked the bear by this assassination and then it's on well I'm glad you brought up the Ottomans back it because in fact I've been

trying to popularize the idea of the first world war as the war of the Ottoman succession this

is in kind of emerged all those famous wars of the Austrian or Spanish or English succession dating

“back to early modern history that really is to me kind of what is centrally an issue that is to say”

the the decline of Ottoman power particularly in Ottoman Europe and then by the end of the war of course you have the great powers squabbling over the inheritance of the Ottoman Empire with the on top powers Russia, France and Britain all sticking their claims it's not quite as simple as just to say that everyone went to war in 1914 to try to carve up the Ottoman Empire in fact the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians ended up taking the side of the Ottomans effectively to try to

defend them against the predations of the other powers it's a little bit like what people say about slavery the civil war that you can't exactly say that the war broke out in 1861 specifically because of slavery but everyone knew that it was somehow the cause of the war and the same way you could say that the decline of Ottoman power is somehow the cause of World War I the precise sequence of events was not necessarily predetermined some of it was quite contingent and even accidental

like the assassination but the clash of interest was real that is to say that the Russians the Austro-Hungarian was getting a little bit more it was getting more complicated and people were starting to get a little bit more territorial and by the way just just so that nobody so the

Ottoman Empire is basically Turkey plus it's Turkey plus right just to put a label on it for people

used me much bigger than just Turkey okay so they're looking at each other they're nose and around they're looking at the territory around them and then Serbia does this provocative thing or a terrorist group called the black-hand within Serbia does this thing assess and hates the up-and-commer the next leader of Austria-Hungary this archduke and now everybody starts aligning and it's basically Germany Austria-Hungary they're like okay let's go and the rest of Europe as we know it kind of went

on the other side but there was a question about whether Great Britain was going to get involved America's way across the ocean what's Russia again is going to back up Serbia at this time but that would change in the middle of the war but what are they officially fighting over you know like

will war which is sparked by assassination and servivo seems to start with the Germans invading

Belgium it is a little bit hard to explain to be really honest a lot of that had to do with the factors in German military planning that the Germans had direct in on a two front war against Russia and France the interesting question about Britain one of the what ifs of July 1914 right before the war breaks out it's had Britain issued a warning sooner to the Germans that Britain did plan to back France and Russia might that have stayed the hand of Germany and back in Austria-Hungary

“there is actually a key moment on July 29 that I won't go into clinical forensic detail about it”

I'll just say that the British his Majesty's Foreign Secretary spread word gray his most famous for his line about the lamps in Europe are all going out and they will not be lit again in our lifetime which is not just metaphorically he was actually losing his eyesight at the time Sir Edward Gray was famously elliptical in the way that he would speak and interact with other

diplomats and so it was really hard to read him when the Germans finally got the first

slightly ambiguous warning from Britain this is when Sir Edward Gray again in his elliptical way says that you know if if events kind of proceeded towards war in the continent that it would not do to stand aside and wait which implied that Britain might actually intervene this actually forced the German chancellor betman Holveg at the last minute to try to send this note to Austria-Hungary rescinding the blank check it was about eight or 10 hours too late

because Austria-Hungary just started shelling Belgrade across the borders so effectively hostility said already broken out so had Gray gotten a warning across to and are some people even will go further and say maybe the U.S. could have done this perhaps if Theodore Roosevelt had been president instead of Woodrow Wilson he was kind of more of an interventionist who was probably more sympathetic to the British and French cause

maybe the U.S. could have played a role I think that's less plausible in part because the U.S. wasn't as directly engaged on the scene is Britain but the Germans again in part because of just the the ineptitude and kind of lack of imagination of their own military planning they really thought they had to secure these towns in Belgium on mobilization day plus three and it turned out

“they didn't even succeed anyway that's what brought Britain to the war the violation of Belgian”

neutrality but the British had not really let me jump it let me jump it let me jump it yeah we're going to keep us alone I keep it simple so I mean it's one thing to have Austria-Hungary slash Germany messing with France it's quite another to have them messing with England and Great Britain and Great Britain wasn't yet in and Great Britain and you're saying there's this guy this this top maybe guy who is saying maybe this isn't a good idea and the two countries might have

done well thanks to the invention of the telephone to have had a conversation Germany and Great Britain and as I understand it too Sean that Germany and Great Britain you know England they had they had a reason to kind of trust each other or to be allies I guess there was there was a familial relationship like everybody's related to Queen Victoria or descended from her and they should have been friends but they they were not friends no you're right and and there was a real sense of betrayal on

“the Germans part of him in with Betman Holveg the Chancellor's finally told that Britain is is has”

sent an ultimatum is about to go to war with Germany his own metaphor he said this is a little bit like a man who's already being attacked from two directions in a bar fight and then some other guy comes in and hits him on the head with a bottle you know which is perhaps a self-serving way of describing German foreign policy July 14 which is foolish in many ways but you made it really interesting point about the telephone because he right had Stradward Gray simply gotten on

the phone or really anyone in the cabinet with Betman Holveg or someone else in Berlin and simply said look here you're going too far and you better know that we're serious and we're not messing around maybe Betman Holveg would have ringed in the generals interestingly enough this is almost happened between Germany and Russia there was another moment it was on that same night

July 29 the night I was talking about where Gray finally got his semi warning across to Berlin

that same night the Russian Sarnick list the second received what he thought was actually a kind of real time telegraphic answer to a question that he had just posed to the German Kaiser Wilhelm II in fact it wasn't true in fact because it took so long to to transcribe and to code everything he was responding to another message for about 24 hours previously so that sorrow is completely mistaken but he was so moved he actually cold off general mobilization

and so it's a really fascinating what I've had they simply been able to talk to one another on the phone as you pointed out they were actually related uh the German Kaiser the Russian Sarnick the English king they were all actually related had they simply gotten together on the phone maybe they could it and the curis thing is the monarchs were not really the war bombers in nearly every

to the Tsar is the one who kept trying to tell his generals to back down the Kaiser despite his reputation for bellicosity was actually the one with the very last minute tried to call it off so it's kind of in the monarchs yet a bad rep but they were actually probably less guilty than a lot of the generals and politicians were in 1914 that is interesting and they're in the monarchies across this region would look very very different at the end of World War

one I mean then they did beforehand they would in many cases be no more soon thereafter so the plot one of the problems that Germany voiced it upon itself was it decided to attack France which which was weak and they understood that they could take out France very quickly same as World War II war France um they were like we got France we're going to go and and take France but they went through Belgium and this was a problem for England England was like no

you're not going through Belgium because even though we've been very isolationist and we're like hey we're great Britain we don't need to cut these deals with anybody Belgium was strategically

“important to England for a whole bunch of reasons and there was a neutrality like they weren't”

allowed they they decided that they would defend Belgium and the Belgians as I understand it really fought too like they put up one hell of a fight when Germany invaded no that's absolutely right and it's it's a sign of again the the Ineptitude really of German military planning not understanding this strategic dimension if you can believe it the original so-called Schleifen plan which is actually significantly modified by Maltke the younger the original plan had the Germans

invading the Netherlands as well they were actually originally going to violate both the Netherlands and Belgium and it was a little bit of common sense told them that perhaps we should at least keep some country neutral maybe so we can trade in case it turns into a bomb war but it was so foolish the French on the other hand they originally had looked into the logistics because Belgium after all is kind of the the cockpit of Europe the low countries but the French

had realized its strategic importance that Britain had guaranteed Belgians integrity and independence by treaty and so for the British this was potentially a across this

“belly a cause for war and so the Germans really brought it to themselves the only thing I would”

say about this plan though it's not that they necessarily thought the defeating France would be easy it's that they thought the French were a more formidable and dangerous opponent that it would take the Russians longer to mobilize they failed of course they did not actually not France

out in six weeks as they'd expected to do they never actually did reach Paris and it was the

failure of the Germans with this Schlieffen multi plan to subdue France in six weeks that to some extent really turn the war into the terrific war of attrition particularly on the western front so England didn't want Belgium invaded because if they get control of Belgium then they're really close to England right I mean that's exactly what we're going to protect them because that's our skin yeah and and more broadly the English is not just that they didn't

want a hostile power along the English channel on the Belgian coastline but they also didn't want one single power to dominate Europe this kind of traditional precept of British foreign policy you could trace it all the way back to the wars of the sun king or Napoleon the British

never wanted one single power to dominate the continent because then they would be effectively

under its thumbs okay so you got England you got France you got Serbia you got over on the other side and ultimately the Russians and then on the other side you got Germany and Austria-Hungary and they're fighting and it's complex now let's spend some time at Russia and then we'll spend some time on the United States because they're also big players in all of this and things change

“things change for each country and it really profound and important way if you go up to Russia”

as you pointed out they decided they had they had they would back Serbia so they were going to be opposed to Germany and Austria-Hungary but what was happening in Russia at the time was fascinating and you know my husband's told me a little bit about the Zarr and the Zarrina at the time who at the beginning of the war were kind of wacky like she was obsessed with Rasputin her kid had hemophilia I'm going off of what Doug is told me for giving me this is memory but they had a

kid who had hemophilia and she was convinced that this guy Rasputin was like this charmer who could save the line in any event the Russians started to question the Zarrina as I understand it and before you know it you've got the revolution you've got the Bolsheviks Lenin coming in taking over

that was a big game changer in World War I and what the Russians were doing so what was happening

under the Zarrina the first couple of years of World War I well it's fascinating about Rasputin the reason you was important is just as you said that it wasn't just any child it was the sole male child the heir to the Romano throne dating back to 1801 although Russia had had Empresses in the past it was no longer allowed for a female to ascend to become Empress and so this was the only heir and he had hemophilia and and in part because the whole job of emperor you're

idea that an autocrat to be could not actually heal up from minor scrapes and bruises I suppose just

didn't really wash and so they never actually revealed this to the public which is quite interesting

“had they done so I think the Russian people would have actually been quite sympathetic instead”

they were just all these vague rumors and the rumors started swirling around not just about the heir Alexis but also about Rasputin and because he was so close to Alexander the reason this mattered politically was that Rasputin himself was actually if not an out now pacifist he was not pro-war in the years up to 1914 there had been a series of wars in the Balkans evolving Serbia Russia's client and although Russia had not in the end gone to war there were a lot of

a very strong pan-slavic voices with said Russia should intervene Rasputin had criticized them all quite bravely effectively saying that you know in the end it's it's a little people you know it's the peasants who were going to suffer and die for these silly abstractions like pan-slavism he probably would have counseled its arguments for had he actually been in St. Petersburg in July 1914 he however had gone to visit his hometown in Siberia and you're not going to believe him he

“was actually stabbed by a woman who cried out I have killed the anti-Christ he wasn't killed”

he was actually alive but he was in a hospital bed as as the powers were mobilizing for war and so he was unable to exert his his influence the other reason this mattered his reputation was already being if not a pacifist and vaguely anti-war may be pro-jerman again in the atmosphere of war being vaguely anti-war means you're suspected of being kind of a German spy well the Tsarina Aleksandra or as she was known originally Alex of Hessa was of course German

border actually she was born into territory later absorbed into the German Reich she was actually not pro-jerman she resented Bismarck and Prussia for having absorbed her former home of Hessa into the Reich however most Russians didn't know that they simply thought oh well because she's from Germany she must be kind of pro-jerman and so by let's say kind of 1915-1916 right on the eve of what we know as the Russian revolution rumors are swirling around petrograph there's

a kind of a spy mania there's this anti-jerman mania some of it's also anti-Jewish oddly enough Jews were seen as more pro-jermanian Austria-Hungary in the war in part is Russia had a traditional reputation for anti-Semitism so the anti-Semitism is anti-jerman sentiment and a lot of it centers around that Tsarina and Rasbutin and when that Tsar takes over personal command of the armies after Russia suffered the series of setbacks against central powers in summer 1915

that doesn't just mean that he's going to take kind of all the blame uh success or failure on the front but it also means he's no longer in petrograph and so the rumors swirl and it looks like that Tsarina and Rasbutin are kind of running the government and and there are these other really kind of almost obvious things that the conspiracy theorists settle on they appointed the guy called Boris Stardomarch chairman of this council of Minnesota he's got to even got as a German name right

and so you have a German name running uh running the government and then you have allegedly Rasbutin who's supposed to be a pacifist or pro-jerman and the German-born Empress or Tsarina unfortunately this is kind of what poisoned the political atmosphere quite fadily I think in in petrograph in 1916 heading into the winter of 1917 so but in the beginning I mean just to just to dumb it down in the in the beginning Rasha was backing the serves and on the opposite

“side of Germany in this war but then something really important happened over in Rasha”

in all that would change and really we'd set set the course for the the 20th and now 21st century and the way people were going to be living in Rasha that was the revolution and the Bolsheviks and the rise of Lenin and then these other countries looking at Lenin like well what's he going to do because it wasn't a foregone conclusion that Lenin was going to come in and just keep doing

what the Tsarina had been doing well right first of all because Lenin was actually in Switzerland

in fact when we talked about the revolution of 1917 you really have to bracket it out into two the February revolution which is the one that top old the Tsar initially seemed to anything at least from the perspective of France and Britain they were quite hopeful they thought it was more democratic right and they thought that again that Tsarina had been surrounded by these pro-german advisors so they thought they were kind of a cleaning out the Augustine stable and now Rasha

would re-dedicate herself to the war effort this is actually what the the US president Wilson I assume we'll talk about that as we go but he sees it the same way right now Rasha's a democracy so we're all in the same side and they're hoping that it's actually going to be a positive story for the war effort Lenin of course as we know is sent back to Rasha by the Germans you know had shall we say perhaps slightly to various purposes they knew about his political program

which was effectively to turn as he called it the imperialist war into a civil war basically to

at once it took him a number of months but the Bolsheviks flood the Rasha armies with propaganda and by the fall a opinion is started to turn against the war although the Bolsheviks they actually did not win the elections held in Rasha amazingly they held elections even after the Bolsheviks took power and the Bolsheviks got only 24% of the vote but in the army they did well that is they did make a decisive move to shift opinion in the army against the war and and this really was the

“key part of Lenin's program the peace platform that's what then allows Lenin to take Rasha out of the war”

effectively he sued the central powers for peace they needed breastletuffs the allies refused to go because they see Lenin as a German agent somewhat reasonably I mean he had been sent to Russia by Germany the Germans had provided funds for his operations even if there was a lot of controversy

about that and and the Russian provisional government was never able to produce the smoking gun in

court although they actually did they arrested the Bolsheviks and for a time Lenin was actually supposed to be arrested for treason obviously they cannot but I can I just ask you a quick question on that let me clear if I just a quick question I follow what you're saying how he would he had been in Germany but the Russians are on the other side at this point right there they're fighting against Germany so like I don't why would they be so distrustful because right now they've got

the Russians like I don't factor that in because I don't understand how they could be so suspicious

“of him when he's his I guess he came from from Germany but his country's fighting with the allies”

well he was actually he came from Switzerland but to get to Russia from Switzerland in in the time when you have these massive armies mobilized in both fronts the only really practical way for him to get there was through Germany so the Germans organized his trip and they paid for it and they sent Lenin to Russia and German diplomats were kind of told us to stay quiet about it but it was very much an operation of the German foreign office because the Germans wanted Lenin to go to Russia

wreak havoc with the war effort with his kind of anti war propaganda spreading muteness sentiment in the armies I mean literally they they would get together and have these meetings in the armies and denounced the war the Bolshevik sent it up printing massive amounts of anti war propaganda and as soon as he arrived in Petrograd I'll give an example in American historian called Frank Golder was there and he immediately was told oh yeah this guy Lenin has

showed up and he's he's preaching all these kind of gamable doctrines of propaganda and peace and pro- German sentiment it was it was quite widely discussed at the time that is the idea that Lenin was if not a German agent and somehow working on behalf of Germany in the sense of the Allies have got to be very unhappy about this development right because they did have Russia on their side and now suddenly you've got Lenin taking over with this Marxist revolution and he seems to be much

more sympathetic to the Germans the other side and ultimately winds up pulling Russia out.

Right the Russian armies they fall apart even before Lenin takes power they're beginning to disintegrate and by the winter of 1917 after the Bolshevik's take power and it's actually November by our calendar we usually call the October Revolution after the Bolshevik's take power they they just stop fighting. In fact the Germans at one point in early 1918 the Bolshevik's Trotsky comes up with this ingenious kind of a slogan when he goes to breastletovs he calls it

no war no peace what he means is we're not going to fight but we're demobilizing our army and so it's sort of like he's telling the Germans look if you really want to you can just go ahead and occupy Russia but you're going to have to explain to your own people in the world why you're at war with a country that no longer has in army now as you can imagine the allies are not happy about this a whole front is just collapsing in the war and so they're desperate to get

Russia back into the war but I whatever means they can and they they try a lot of different things

“in 1918 none of them quite work the only thing it does help them in the end is kind of unintentional”

is the Germans do get sucked into Russia they end up sending about a million troops into Russia including

into Ukraine where they have nearly 600 thousand troops occupying Russia as the war is being decided later that you're in the western front particularly after the arrival of U.S. troops the so-called doughboys all right so the the allied forces were not as not nearly as strong as they would become once they got England on on board that England with its navy and how strong it was that was a big that was a great development for the allied forces to get England and on this fight

it was not a great development for them to lose Russia from the from the world together but then there's this big country across the sea called the United States of America which as you point out is not yet the United States of America that we would be after World War II a superpower and it was more complicated for us you know we had fought a couple of wars with England in the past hundred years and you know they're kind of wanting us to come over and help them and join the allied forces

and we got the big ocean and what was the mood of the American people at this time and now what it would like 1914 to 1917 right around there and the war just again went from 14 to 18 so

to get involved in the European war I mean we could judge if by nothing else the result of the

“1916 election or Woodrow Wilson who really at that point was actually running more or less in a piece”

of a form of keeping the US out of the war against Charles Hughes the republicans oddly enough back then were far more the party of kind of the northeast and big business and a lot of ties to Europe and and they were much more pro interventionist and pro-Britin in France than Wilson's part of the democrats the base of which was still kind of a lot of it was either labor or agrarian populism in the south and Wilson himself had not wanted to get the US into the war in fact Wilson

gave his speeches late as January 1917 the so-called peace without victory speech trying to some extent to use the leverage the US now had over France and Britain because they're buying a lot of their arms in the US they're relying on Wall Street for the loans that are now paying for the war because they've effectively run out of gold their gold reserves are running down the US had leverage in fact there are a lot of ways in which the US might and this was kind of

“what Wilson was trying to do initially with the peace without victory speech was to step in as”

a broker as a mediator to to broker some type of a piece perhaps of mutual exhaustion. Britain and France didn't want that though in part because Germany was still occupying parts of Belgium and France and and Germany had also occupied part of what had been Russian Poland and so the Germans were at the time maybe more willing to partly than the Allies were but then the Germans shot themselves in the foot by unleashing what was called unrestricted submarine warfare effectively this meant

after the sinking of the loose detainee and other ships with Americans on board in 1915 the Germans had made the rules of engagement for their U-boat attacks on British merchant shipping and British naval vessels much stricter effectively kind of you'd have to give prior warning to give time for women and children to get to the lifeboats proverbially now the Germans was like

you know they basically the gloves were off and they were just going to go ahead and fire because

“the Germans themselves were suffering by that winter Berlin, Vienna all the cities and the central”

powers you know they're kind of slowly starving because of the British blockade and so they thought again it is kind of almost typical German self sabotage you know rather than accepting Wilson's professed aims of negotiating a compromise piece at face value the Germans said you know what we don't trust them we think the US is going to enter the war anyway so we're just going to speed things along so they did it first yeah they provoked us they provoked us both with unrestricted submarine warfare

and then with the Zimmerman telegram which is just an astonishing mistake by the time before we get to Zimmerman telegram before we get to Zimmerman telegram prior to them doing the unrestricted submarine warfare which I understand we I can understand why Americans were like no way that's too much you're taking out indiscriminately civilians on boats and so on prior to that what was the lure to the Americans in getting further involved right because again if you look at World War II

we're going to go fight Nazis we're going to defeat Hitler the Germans bomb doing my animal house line the Germans bomb her prior Germans no Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor right we had very clear reasons to get in and this war the way we're talking about it it's like still remains someone a more for me why it was starting even to be good with even amongst the powers over there now it's expanding and now they're asking us to get in and I just wonder like where we like we why are we

what why are people calling us before the submarine warfare the indiscriminate like before that

what was the reason ostensibly for us to get in well it's much more here than the second World War

not just the origins of the war as you're pointing out but why the U.S. gets involved on what pretenses for what purposes I mean these debates they didn't die of course in 1917 18 I mean they they continued to royal american politics on to the 20s and 30s when and retrospective come to seem like a mistake and people couldn't quite fathom why the U.S. had gotten into war now on on the moral side there had been a lot of criticism of the German invasion of Belgium a

lot of what was then called kind of atrocity propaganda obviously wasn't all on true a lot of atrocities were committed there was a famous library that burned down in in Luvann they they were these kind of a uh sharp shooters who would periodically take out civilians they were obviously some genuine crimes committed in the invasion of Belgium but that said the British and the French were just really good at kind of manipulating american public opinion in part because they had a long

experience of doing so and also by by 1916-1917 there were just a lot of american interests that were increasingly aligned with Britain and France but again these it was not a popular upwelling of a pro-war sentiment rather it was a lot of american arms manufacturers and a lot of american bankers particularly the House of J.P. Morgan and Wall Street had just gotten wrapped up in the war effort of Britain and France in large part because with the British blockade they couldn't

even trade with Germany in the central power so almost all that trade had been nullified and wiped

critique of the war that you know it was all kind of the U.S. got sucked in because of Wall Street

“the real story is much more complicated than that but there's a little bit of truth in that and”

that these interests were increasingly pushing the U.S. towards war. Wilson somewhat to his credit was actually resisting that and in fact for a while in the winter of 1916-17 the federal reserve actually intervened to try to discourage more of this kind of the war finance hanging on Britain and France because Wilson at the time was actually trying to broker a piece as I pointed out that the Germans kind of shot themselves in the foot so then I mean I guess it's

still hard to convince americans what they're fighting for the freedom of the seas was maybe an issue but again Britain's violating that too they're blockading Europe perhaps that's less egregious than the German U-boats actually syncing vessels with civilians on board but it's still a little bit murky so in the end part of what Wilson is able to come up with it's not just the Zimmerman telegram which I mentioned when the Germans actually promised

effectively the reconkeast of the american southwest of Mexico is she would keep the americans busy in case the U.S. entered the war which is just incredibly stupid because it effectively produces the very thing that the Germans should have most feared which was U.S. intervention once the U.S. government learned about this. On top of this end the federal revolution happens in Russia and as we're talking about this before this gives Wilson this argument will look Russia had been an

autocracy now she's a democracy and so the thing is phrased and emerges it's a war to make the world safe for democracy this at least is how Wilson sells it to congress in April 1917. Even that it's a little ambiguous though the U.S. declares war against Germany she doesn't

declare war against Austria-Hungry until almost eight months later and the U.S. never actually

did declare war on the Ottoman Empire which by then was closely allied to Germany in Austria-Hungry. One of the the the really interesting anomalies of the 14 points of Woodrow Wilson which he announced in January 1918 is that point twelve related to the autonomy of the minority peoples of the Ottoman Empire and particularly our Armenians Greeks and others a country or a power with which the United States was not at war. In fact by the end of 1918 the Ottoman it's actually tried to

surrender to the United States and the bases of the 14 points only to be told that they were not at war with the United States. Yeah sorry we have no contract with you. Right I mean it's it does raise the question of like you're out there fighting and you encounter a force that you haven't yet declared war on. What do you do? Put the arms down. Let's go back to you mentioned the Lusatania. That's a really interesting case story about the Germans bombing a British ship

and it would precede that unlimited submarine warfare thing that you were talking about so can you just talk about how how important the Lusatania was and what happened thereafter in terms of our involvement and the Germans really starting to unravel. Well so I mean the Lusatania we certainly exaggerated significant because it got a lot of press at the time because there were more

“than 100 I believe something about 128 Americans on board and because you know they were all”

almost by definition civilians and even most of of the members of the belligerent and that national's of the belligerent countries on board were also civilians. We don't certainly know now even though it was a long-assensitive subject that there were also at least some weapons on board.

But it got a lot of press and so it basically seemed like this kind of again a war crime

of a crime against humanity one of the this long line of German atrocities. However the Germans as I pointed that earlier they did respond to it. They did actually tighten their rules of engagement to try to prevent similar accidents. There were one or two other accidents in 1915 that is involving American neutral Americans being on board being being sunk in various ships which had been shelved by the U-boats which didn't get as much press as Lusatania. But again

the Germans for a while they did strengthen their rules of engagement because they were worried about getting the U.S. into the war. The same thing actually is true between 1939 and Pearl Harbor. The Germans actually were quite careful about trying not to violate some of these kind of boundaries in order to draw the Americans into the war. It's one of the reasons why it was so astonishing how short sighted it was

when the Germans again switched things around in early 1917 and January when they moved towards unrestricted submarine warfare. It also marks the moment as far as internal German politics when the chancellor Betmann Holweg, the civilian chancellor effectively gives way to the generals who effectively kind of take over and over rule his opposition and a lot of people date really the unraveling of the kind of more genuine broad political front behind the

German war effort to January 1917. It's not the Germany became a military dictatorship exactly but it took on some of those characteristics. I kind of almost self-savotaging power that just couldn't

“get out of its own way. Which would wind up being very important to the way we viewed them,”

the way we wound up World War I and the way that World War II would ultimately start.

was going to get back Texas, Arizona, New Mexico if they attacked us and the Germans wanted them to have side with them and just explain it because why was it a telegram and how was it discovered, how did it play? It's a fascinating story aside from just the stupidity of the German sending this. I actually sent it through a U.S. diplomatic cable. Now it was encrypted so they thought hopefully the Americans wouldn't read it. Unbeknownst to them the British had this team of co-breakers

working under the Navy. This is kind of the World War I equivalent of the more famous bletchly park from World War II. Among other things they had actually captured a lot of German

“co-books including one used by a German secret agent in Persia or Iran of Old Places which helped”

them to decode this. The British though were then in something of a pickle because of course they were reading the U.S. diplomatic traffic between Berlin and Washington and they didn't want the Americans to know that they were reading the U.S. diplomatic cables. And so somehow the way I understand the story the British after discovering it they couldn't just alert the Americans because that would give away the fact that they were spying on the Americans too. And so they can drive the way to

resend it through another U.S. diplomatic cable in such a way that the Americans could decode it very easily and think that they themselves had discovered it. Which actually worked quite well. And of course it enraged American opinion. Even so it wasn't until really for like even five weeks later that the U.S. declared war. So even then Wilson still had to drum up a little bit more public support and kind of troll the halls of Congress to win support for the Declaration of War.

And again even then only on Germany, not yet on Austria-Hungary or the Ottoman Empire. So we get involved. The Russians are out. The Americans are in. And net net what are the consequences

“of that? I mean what are the unintended consequences of our doing that?”

I'm glad you asked that because of course the the intended consequence was supposed to be a award to make the world safer democracy and some type of more transparent world with collective security perhaps League of Nations with the powers disarming and no more secret diplomacy and all the rest of it. Unfortunately what actually happened was that the U.S. entered the war

effectively at the same time that Russia was falling out of the war. So in the first place

it prolonged the conflict. There might have been momentum in 1917 in favor of a negotiated peace with Russia falling out of the war. Britain and France were really desperate and they would have been much more likely to try to accept mediation. The Germans were obviously in a much stronger position. But frankly, Berlin as I pointed out was starving. Vienna was starving. Constantinople then the

“Ottoman capital was starving. A lot of the Ottoman Empire was even worse shaped because the”

British were blockade in eastern Mediterranean too and there had been a locus plague and they were blockading food and of course everyone was absolutely miserable, biblical misery. Unfortunately the U.S. intervening effectively prolong the war at least another year if not longer. And if you actually move into 1918 then it takes a while for the U.S. to rev up its mobilization. It really

not been a first, it was becoming a first-class naval power but as far as land forces it took the

U.S. a long time to really mobilize and train an army and then of course get them over to Europe. They were really only starting to arrive in strength and the late spring of 1918 after Germany had sort of wagered all her chips on one last offensive to try to break the back of the western allies, the so-called Ludendorf offensive launched in late March 1918, which in the end although they got pretty close to Paris, it petered out like most of the other offensive in the war,

they outrun their supply lines, they just get exhausted, the allies bring up reserves and then the U.S. starts arriving in force over the summer and it can military historians continue to debate just how decisive the U.S. role was it more about morale and the fact so many of them were coming wasn't really the fact that the British and the French had begun to master the use of early tanks, for example, which were now being introduced to the battlefield, the creeping barrage,

other innovations, I'm sure all of this factored in, but the arrival of the U.S. you simply can't discount, you know, if you have roughly equally matched forces on the western front where the lines have barely moved in some places, you know, meters or even a few kilometers or in our terms, not even really a mile in most places, well less than a mile for the last three and a half to

four years and then you have a force of ultimately nearly four million doughboys arriving, it's

obviously going to have a huge impact on morale. So it does in the end help tip the balance and favor of the allies on the western front, but I think more significantly for the consequences of

had distracted themselves, they get sucked in almost by this kind of poison chalice of defeated Russia with with Lenin again, just disintegrating deliberately forcing the Russian armies to disintegrate. They end up having so many troops in the east that they don't really have enough to hold off

the allies in the west. However, they still have a million troops in Russia. We shouldn't forget this.

The Bolsheviks, the first year they were in power after Lenin supposedly inaugurates the world's first proletarian dictatorship communism. They're effectively a kind of a German satellite state. When a few of the last remaining opposition forces to the Bolsheviks, this group called the left socialist revolutionaries, left SRs, when they tried to launch and uprising against the Bolsheviks in July 1918, they do so by assassinating the German ambassador because they see him as the real

ruler of the country. In fact, although it's little known except by specialist, the German general running the war, Eric von Ludendorf, in September 1918, just before the Germans collapse in the western front, he actually issued orders to the German army to go and topple the Bolsheviks in Petrograd, because by then the Germans had sort of had enough of Lenin and his government. They just saw the this crazy. So the Germans were actually about to topple and possibly overthrow the Bolsheviks

right when the Germans collapse of the western front. The Germans, by their own terms with the Bolsheviks, had restletuffs, had forbidden the Bolsheviks from even building an army. So they weren't even allowed to have the red army that they're eventually going to build. When the Germans collapse, now they can build a red army. Now they're sovereign for the first time. Now they can actually

begin to implement their policies in full, mobilize more than 3 million men under Trotsky in

the red armies. So effectively the US intervention makes the world safe for communists. Right, I'm following you and I'm kind of slightly horrified. We pause there.

“Unintentionally, honestly. Yeah. I mean, we're dealing with the fallout of that to this day,”

but pause there and go back to the German, just the Germans, because if we hadn't sure enough the British and the French and so on against the Germans and forced a surrender in which, well, I mean, obviously the Treaty of Versailles would leave Germany absolutely powerless, devastated and humiliated, which would then lead in part to World War II, or the rise of Hitler, and you know, this determination to restore Mother Germany to her former glory. Do you feel,

I mean, the humiliation of Germany might not have happened. We might have reached an more negotiated peace. You know, if the US had stayed out of it, because England and the Allies would have been forced to come to the table and negotiate with Germany, perhaps they wouldn't have been humiliated, perhaps Versailles would have been more fair. I mean, do you make the case that there might not have been a Hitler? There might not have been a World War II? Had we stayed out of World

“War I? I think had we stayed out of World War I? I think most of that is probably true. We don't”

know exactly what the World would have looked like, but you would not have had Germany kind of lying prostrate in 1918 with Hitler famously on the bed hearing about the humiliating terms of an November armistice and railing against the November criminals. I mean, there were a lot of different 11 points to get looked back to. I already alluded to the idea of Wilson possibly brokering a piece before the US entered the war. But even after the US entered the war, it took so long for the

US to get involved. The US still could have helped negotiate. Now, I talked about Breastly Trust. This is where Russia met the Central Powers to negotiate a piece on the eastern front, and this is

from basically about December history. The Central Powers are the opposite of the Allies,

right. So you have Germany, Austria-Hungarian Bulgaria, had been joined the war to along with the Ottoman Empire, and it was quite an interesting affair. It was actually the first peace treaty or peace conference ever caught on film, so you can actually watch some of it. So you have these kinds of who met with them, who met with the Central Powers? The Bolsheviks. So the Bolsheviks, and what's interesting also just socially is that the Central Powers and the Ottomans and the

Bulgarians, they're all sending these kind of old aristocratic diplomats. And the Bolsheviks are sending these kind of Bohemian scruffy revolutionaries. They were supposedly representing the

“workers and peasants' government. That's what they initially called it. They realized they didn't”

actually have a peasant, so at the last minute they just pulled over on the side of the road and they had picked up a drunk, and they said, "Hey, where are you from?" And he gave the name of some tiny little village, and they said, "You'll do," and so they bring them along. You know, there were elements of first to it. On the other hand, they were genuine in trying to invite the western allies there. I pointed out the reason they didn't go. It's understandable. They saw

Lenin as a German agent, which certainly made a kind of sense. But what's so fascinating about Brussels at the top is if you actually look at what the Germans did there, that is the German vision for Europe before Germany collapsed, you know, at least in part because of the US intervention. What they did was they broke Imperial Russia into a number of satellite states, many of which

Ukraine was invited to declare independence. Finland became independent. So Germany effectively

was kind of creating a Europe that actually bears a pretty close resemblance to the Europe that we actually have today, which is not to say that it necessarily would have lasted. It would have required the Germans to maintain these armies in the field. Now the thing is the war as we know ended at least in Europe in in fall of 1918. But the other thing to remember is that no one knew it at the time that it was going to end. The German collapse came as something of a surprise to

everyone and it happens even on the Ottoman fronts. Everything just starts to collapse since September 1918. And you can't describe all of that necessarily to the US intervention. A lot of these battles, you know, had had required all kinds of complicated interplay of material forces morale and so on. But the US entry into the war and particularly Wilson kind of entering the arena with the 14

“points in this idea of a new and a better world definitely played, I think a huge role. Again,”

it first in extending the war, but also then in helping to ensure that the Germans would lose it.

Oh, it's like so we won the war about we may have caused help cause the second. The second world world world world. On and on intentionally. I think absolutely on the intentionally that's the case. The US and again, most of this is unintentional. Woodrow Wilson obviously did not want Britain in France to impose these harsh peace terms on Germany. I mean, not that he was soft necessarily, but he obviously wouldn't have agreed with all of the terms

or the harsh terms they pose on Austria-Hungary and eventually on the Ottoman Empire and on Bulgaria. It's not just the Germans who resent all this by the way. I mean, if you talk to Hungarians today, they're still angry about the Treaty of Trenon. That was their version of Versailles or the Turks about the Treaty of Sever, that's their own version of Versailles, which truncates the

“Ottoman Empire. They eventually fought back in one back, some of the territory they had lost”

under Mustafa Kemal. Wilson and what's ironic is back in his peace without victory speech in January 1917. He had argued against intervention precisely for that reason. He wanted a peace without victory because, as he pointed out, victory would have left the defeated power or is angry and resentful and anxious to refight the war. And he wasn't wrong. It's just I suppose in the end, it was partly German blundering and maybe Wilson himself not

sticking to his guns, not sticking to his principles that in the end instead of the future. Man, make you wonder about like Ukraine today, whether there could be a peace without victory there, whether there's no utter humiliation for let's say the Russians, so that there's some face saving, so that, you know, I don't know, this is one of the things we're debating right now. But let's go back to Russia. And how you think Russia in the 20th and 21st century

would have been different if we hadn't stepped in and defeated Germany, which had its eyes on Russia, as you pointed out. Well, it's a great question. I do think Russia probably would have

“eventually recovered some of the territory she lost at breast the toughs. But I think it's entirely”

possible that those countries that became independent briefly in 1918, in our independent today, what have actually remained so? So we're not just talking about the countries of Eastern Europe I mentioned before, but the so-called trans-qualcation, Federative Republic, which sounds really complicated, but you're talking about countries like Azerbaijan and Armenia and Georgia, and eventually Dagestell, Dagestell is now in Russia, but a lot of these territories who kind of confederaated

together to become independent. So to something extent, again, the Russian Empire, which the Soviets later reconstituted, didn't even more virulent and aggressive form, might have actually ceased to exist in that form in 1918 when the Germans broke it apart. But that point about peace with that victory, it's so fascinating because, of course, you could draw entirely diametrically opposed lessons from this. FDR, for example, in the Second World War,

drew the lesson that the mistake that the U.S. and its allies had made in 1918 was not pursuing the war all the way to the end and getting unconditional surrender and marching all the way to Berlin and crushing Germany utterly, whereas obviously a lot of Americans disagreed and they thought, in fact, we shouldn't have thought at all, along some of the lines that we're talking about now that our intervention didn't actually produce a positive outcome. And obviously, you could

make some of these arguments about Russian Ukraine today. The problem is, of course, that if you

do want unconditional surrender and you want, let's say, I guess, in this case, that would mean Russia withdrawing entirely from the borders of Ukraine as of 2014, that would require Armageddon. But what would have happened with, you know, the Bolsheviks took over, you had Lenin, he had Stalin coming up and I know you just wrote a book about Stalin. You know, he was brutal, by the way, God, good God, Stalin was, I mean, truly the face of evil. That guy was a

with communism, you know, post World War I, if we hadn't gotten involved, if there had been an negotiated settlement earlier? Well, the thing about the Bolsheviks is they didn't expect to last in power very long. One of my earliest research projects, I actually went to Switzerland, it's kind of curious because we've all heard about the banking secrecy laws. I discovered, in fact, most of those laws weren't on the books of the 1930s. And when the Bolsheviks tried to

wander money there in 1918, the Swiss didn't let them, they actually kicked them out. The reason they were wandering money there was because they weren't expecting to last in Russia. They were trying to set up a crisis, but they're not a popular group, right? They've got very little problems. We're most people looking at the Bolsheviks, like, oh, no, we don't want anything to

do with them. But they did have, again, they had some sport and critical areas of the army,

they did have some sport and mosque on Twitter. But in the country at large, more than 75% of the people had voted against them. In fact, I mean, it's not for the peace platform. If they just been open about their economic policies, which were frankly pretty extreme, probably less than 10%

“of the public would have voted for them. And they knew this. That's why they deposed the”

constituent assembly. That is this body, which was elected in November 1917. It was actually the largest participation today, even larger than any US election, so like 44 million Russians voted. And again, more than 75% of them voted against the Bolsheviks, the verdict of which is one commented or put a kind of stuck like a bone in the throat. So what do they do? Of course, they deposed the parliament violently. I mean, they arrested some of the deputies that actually

shot and killed about eight of them. They just shut it down. So they made it quite clear, you know, that they had essentially no democratic mandate, and they didn't really intend to have one. They ruled effectively by force. You know, it took them a while to really secure and then re-conquer all all the other elements of the empire. But it was partly because of the collapse of Germany that we were talking about, they were able to do so. It was also part, they were also

fortunate in their enemies, even after the Germans collapsed while the Allies got involved in the

periphery of Russia's civil war. They never got involved very directly. They never really through

their support to the opponents of the Bolsheviks. The ones we normally call the whites. It's a bit of

“a misnomer of white, white, basically meant counter-revolutionary. That's what the reds called them.”

They didn't call themselves whites. So the Allies didn't really intervene very decisively and rushes civil war. The Bolsheviks, some of it was a stube diplomacy, some of it was a lock, some of it was good fortune. But effectively, it was a series of accidents. The largest of which was again that the US intervention in the war destroyed the power of imperial Germany. Imperial Germany had been both the sponsor and effectively the almost the mandatory power overseeing the Bolshevik

dictatorship. The Germans could have toppled the Bolsheviks at any point in 1918. How they simply chosen to do so. They wanted the Bolsheviks there because they thought they were weakening Russia,

that they thought they were going to weaken Russia's power for the long term. And curiously

enough, the Allies didn't completely disagree. That's part of the reason why Britain and France and the United States and also Japan, which briefly intervened, did not intervene more decisively and did not really back the whites because they also kind of thought, look, we don't really really want the Russian Empire back. Unfortunately, they didn't realize was that the Bolsheviks looked weak at the time. But once they had begun to reconquer the old

Russian Empire and they could absorb its population base and its resources, they were just about the most ruthless rulers that it ever existed on planet earth. That's the word. And so they were able to leverage this power in the end and create an even more menacing and aggressive power than the Russian Empire had ever been. Alright, so we talked a bit about a treaty of Versailles and the end of World War I. And the position as you put it, Germany in a prostrate position exactly right.

“Can you just expand on the League of Nations, which would ultimately become the United Nations?”

There are a lot of people in our country now who have mixed feelings about that group. Certainly the Republicans aren't big fans of the UN and the sort of globalist approach to well foreign policy and other things. And they think they're rather feckless when it comes to things like human rights, though they claim to be these moral arbiters of assault and so on. So, I mean, that was a Wilson thing at the end of World War I. Can you talk about it?

Well, sure. I mean, it was not his original idea. He glummed onto this idea originally proposed by some kind of British quasi-assophistic intellectuals. But then he kind of made it his idea of Versailles. He started backing it more and more strongly. The idea that rather than this alliance system with the powers constantly arming instead you would have this League of Nations and some type of collective security arrangement, they didn't have a security council

like the UN would later have. So in some ways, it wasn't entirely practical. But the idea was supposed to be that the member states that they would kind of guarantee their territorial integrity and there would be some type of a collective will in the part of the great powers to enforce the settlement and adjudicate disputes and so on. The great irony, of course, is that Wilson ended up forefitting a lot of his other objectives in order to back the League of Nations at Versailles.

in the U.S. Senate, which fails to ratify the treaty. And by then Wilson, I mean, he also, I think

“some of the mistakes he made, simply going across to Paris and Versailles was the first U.S. president”

at the visit Europe in that official capacity. And he exhausted himself and he may have even forfeited some of his leverage. You know, he stayed behind, maybe he could have just kind of ruled on disputed points using his vast leverage almost because of the mystery of distance. Instead, he started just squabbling along with everyone else. And he wasn't particularly good at it. You know, he often got manipulated. Great example of this is when the British tell him that Italy

is making a claim on Turkey, what is no until you're the Southern coast of Turkey. And their only claim is that he used to belong to the Roman Empire, and because Wilson believes in self-determination.

And there aren't a lot of Italians there. The Brits tell him, "Oh, but there are Greeks living

there, and so we should have Greece invade Turkey." And Wilson says, "Okay, and this actually leads Greece to invade Turkey in 1919." And there's a brutal war for three years between Greece and Turkey,

“and what is now Anatolia. So he kind of gets, he gets, he gets really just rolled by everyone.”

He doesn't really quite understand the nature of geopolitics. His principles of self-determination they're very difficult to apply to the map of Europe. And practice, because the peoples are all mixed together, and in the end he kind of largely just gives up and allows the more experienced diplomats to negotiate. But so the US, to some extent, backs the idea of the League of Nations, and then doesn't even join it. So effectively that just kind of rendered it superfluous and impotent from

the get-go. So I mean, how would this, how would this wind up playing out like if Wilson hadn't done this, if that hadn't been one of the terms, do you think we'd have united nations today? Do you think we'd have any of that? That's a really good question. If you look at the Republican opposition to Wilson in the Senate in 1919 and 1920, that is as they were debating the Versailles treaty and the League of Nations, there were some amendments proposed, Henry Cavillage, in particular,

had this vision of a slightly more practical and less grandiose idea, effectively that the US would simply have treaties with some of its allied powers, perhaps a little bit like this Security Council, but not officially so that the League of Nations was not necessarily practical or if it was to be created, and at the very least Congress needed to retain its authority over the deployment of troops that is to say that the League of Nations would not have the ability

“to override the US Congress. It is quite interesting that those debates really did I think”

were downed on down for the 20th century. Congress after the Declaration of War on Japan and Germany

in December 1941, all the German actually declared war first on the United States then. After

those declarations, Congress has not declared war again, so far as I know, Congress has effectively abdicated its own power, the war powers, and it narrated the Constitution. And I think to some extent again, even though Wilson failed to get the US to enter the League of Nations, he already injected out the idea that some type of supernatural body might in the end be able to as you're pointing out this kind of globalist idea, that in the end they can make the decisions that will be binding

on the United States, a little bit like let's say the European Union does today, or perhaps NATO does another context. I think had the US ratified the League of Nations in 1919, and we probably would have ended up with something like the United Nations. But in the end I suppose both the promise and the tragedy of Woodrow Wilson, he did have a lot of big and grand ideas, but in the end they all failed. Some of it was because again he had a stroke. He came back from Paris and Versailles,

and he actually traveled back and forth once or twice while he was there. He was utterly exhausted and broken, and he kind of had a stroke out in the hostings as he was trying to promote the treaty. The end he was on a hospital bed, as the Senate was debating it, largely invalid. And effectively incapacitated, at least according to some accounts, so that he would allow himself to be declared in incompetent. And so in the end you also had a very ineffective, just not impotent, US president.

Not for the last time either, in the 20th century. There's some interesting comparisons made, let's say Nixon during Watergate, that you had a US president, effectively unable to even exercise his own constitutional authority. You know, Woodrow Benz, sometimes you had an instrument, so when you look at, yeah, go ahead. When you look at at World War I, who are the heroes? You know, you look at World War II,

and it seems kind of clear, you know, who the heroes were and who the villains were. You look at World War I, who are the heroes? Well, it's really hard to say. I sometimes ask my students which countries they think won this to that conflict. Great examples of Vietnam and my usual answer is who won the Vietnam War Thailand because Thailand didn't fight in it. Thailand did it up doing really well economically because everyone would go there for R and R and

Dubai supplies and this sort of thing. The countries that stayed out of World War I did really well for themselves. Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, they all did fine even if Spain had some

moral side who's here. It's really hard to say which countries did well for themselves. You could

“say, well, Serbia in the end of the war was given this miniature empire we call Yugoslavia.”

Some emerging nation states like Poland which haven't existed before arrive on the map of a Czechoslovakia. You got a few countries in Middle East emerging out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire. But as far as heroes, it's really difficult to say. In the allies, obviously, try to make themselves out to be the protagonist and the story standing up against German aggression, putting forward this idea German war guilt. But it was really hard to convince people.

The Bolsheviks obviously tried to make a claim in the same way Wilson had tried to make the war about principles. The Bolsheviks also denounced secret diplomacy and Trotsky embarrassed the allies by publishing their secret treaties regarding things like the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire between France, Britain and Russia. And that did embarrass the allies. But again, it's hard to make the Bolsheviks out to be here about, no, they did it for their own reasons, I suppose. You could say some

of the principles anti-war activists, many of whom went to jail, opposing the war, maybe in

“retrospect, should be traded with more respect than they were treated at the time. And I think in the”

end, you might say, if you're looking at the United States, perhaps you could say there was some good sense of those Americans who were wary of getting drawn into this conflict, which didn't actually turn out well. You know, where most wars, they tend to get denounced. And in fact, a lot of them were actually arrested. We forget that the Woodrow Wilson administration put through the Alien and Sedition Acts. And they actually arrested a lot of political prisoners. Perhaps we

should give them a little bit of belated respect for raising questions about the U.S. intervention in the war. So fast, and you've written so much on World War I and World War II too, as well. So you know about, you know, the respective roles and so on. I mean, I think, well, do you agree with me that we have a more clear and heroic role in World War II that the United States would clearly emerge as a hero of that conflict? People like Winston Churchill would emerge as, you know, having

great respect, and people believe that he saved the future of the Western world, of the free

world, that he had a major hand in any event. I never really stopped to think about how clear

the morality and the lines around it were drawn in World War II versus the first war. I've seen the t-shirts and the sort of the back-to-back world champion memes. And I like it. It makes me feel pro-America. And if you start drilling down a little deeper, it gets more complicated. Well, it's clearer. I would say comparatively speaking the second world war. We obviously have a very clear ability in Hitler and even to some extent, although he was on our side, Stalin is something

of a villain. It's hard to make Roosevelt and Churchill out to be villains, certainly. They have a much clearer case for heroism and leadership in the war. But some of what I actually do in Stalin's war is to make the story a little bit more complicated. And even to some extent, again, to revisit some of the critiques made at the time of things like the Lendley Sacts, which really did help to draw the U.S. into the work before the U.S. was ready when a lot of the U.S. public

was still quite wary of intervention. And even some of the arguments, I know it's the kind of

explosive subject these days. The America First Movement were usually just dismissed as kind of

fascist or Nazi sympathizers, Charles Lindberg for antisemitism and all this. We shouldn't forget it was actually a very broad movement. And even if in the end, they did largely dissolve themselves after Pearl Harbor and after most of the country got behind the war effort. Some of the questions that they raised were not without merit. That is to say about the consequences of the U.S. intervention on the positive side, yes, in the end, Nazi Germany was defeated utterly. So it was imperial

Japan. But perhaps in the negative side of the ledger, Stalin massively expanded his empire in Eurasia. There were a lot of unintended consequences of the U.S. intervention. And another point that those critics made at the time was that once the U.S. would enter the war, the U.S. itself would change. The U.S. government and particularly the executive branch of the U.S. government would assume massive new powers. Civil rights and civil liberties would be suspended. And to some extent,

we're still kind of living in the legacy of both of the world wars. There are some laws that actually date all the way back to 1917, some of the presidents and emergency powers date all the way back to 1917. For example. That's fascinating. Because the executive ranchers meant to be very small. I'm solely, but surely, especially over the course of the 20th century, we expanded it to a place where

“I think a lot of us are having real questions about whether we're comfortable with its size now.”

It was never meant to be this big, but fascinating to look at it to the eyes of the world wars and how

it happened then. And again, unintended consequences. Of course, yes, we liberated Europe. We got Hitler

of our intervention and be still lingering affects its hat on the United States. It's amazing to

“think about. And you know what? I mean, it's very timely. Because again, back to the fact that”

right now, we're in this kind of proxy war with Russia. And there's a lot of Saber rattling from Vladimir Putin right now that may turn really problematic for us very soon. And we're going to have big decisions to make. And the country's divided right now on just how interventionalists we should be over there, just how appropriate our past interventions in Ukraine have been. What role of any we had in setting up this conflict. Right? I mean, there are a lot of layers

to this. And right now in the country, there's sort of a shut up if you're not completely pro-Ukrainian and money and arms and anti-Pudin, no one here is pro-Pudin. But it's more complex because these wars as you've outlined so well, have real consequences and they can last centuries. They absolutely can. There's even new discussion of the lengthy fact as one of the many ways in which the U.S. might get involved without getting directly involved that is on the side of Ukraine. We're once again,

again, the critics are, just as you point out, they're all being kind of tart and feathered to some extent in public, his Putin apologists. But the questions they're raising, they're real ones. Not just about the consequences for Ukraine and possibly prolonging the war. I mean, we talked

about that with the U.S. intervention in 1917 and 1918, almost certainly prolonging the first

world war along with the agony for so many of the people swept up in it. So you have that angle to it. But you also have, of course, the long-term economic consequences. And we barely scratched the surface of those. But you know, the great depression, for example, cannot really be understood without the legacy of the first world war and the way that it's simply destroyed so many of the webs of the international trade and finance. And right now, what we're seeing in Ukraine,

of course, is economic devastation, not just in Ukraine, but across Europe. So I do think it's important to raise these questions to study the lessons of history, not because they tell us exactly

“what to do. But rather, because I think they help to add context and enrich our discussions of”

these vital questions of national security and foreign policy. I've been reading a book on Churchill, and he's a good figure through which to learn a lot about the 20th century in the wars, because he appears in both. He was a young, he was head of the Navy in World War I over and Great Britain, and then, of course, would wind it wind up being the prime minister. But, you know, such a, such a towering figure to take you through these massive conflicts, and he was very

Belikos, both in his language and in his actual approach to these situations. You've studied it all. Now, listen, I want people to understand, you've got eight award-winning books. The most recent one is Stalin's War, a new history of World War II published last year. What's your best book on World War I? If people want to read about all of this in more detail? Well, I have done a number of them. I would say the origins of the war, the book that I would

recommend is July 1914, Countdown to War. I did a book on the Ottoman front of the Middle East, called the Ottoman Endgame, and the more recent study of the Russian Revolution, which despite its title, which makes it sound like it's just about a political revolution is actually at route

about the First World War, and its consequences. And so, I would, I would recommend, really,

that depending on Richard's interest, they would choose one of those, although obviously Stalin's War is a great choice for the Second World War as well. Spencer Cleveland is one of my favorite commentators. He's only 31 years old, but he's brilliant, and has read everything, and he's the son of Andrew Cleveland. He's an expert in the classics, and he's just written a new book, and it talks about how, if you study, the classics, and you

read Plato, you read Socrates, you read all these great thinkers that came before. There are a lot of answers in there for modern-day problems. I would submit that your hard look at World History and these wars has the same conclusion. You can help, you can, as you point out, the exact answer may not be in there, but the tools to come to a smart opinion on today's problems, those are in

“there. And so, that's why it's so helpful reading your stuff and talking to you. Thank you so much”

for coming on and sharing your expertise with us. Thanks for having me on Megan. It was really great fun, great pleasure to be here for me too. All the best to you. Hope I get to be a fly on the wall, one of those classes, one of these days. Coming up, my pal and husband, father of my children, Doug Brunt, comes on to continue the conversation. You won't want to miss that. My next guest is Doug Brunt. He is author of Bestselling Books. He is the host of dedicated

with Doug Brunt, where he interviews top authors, fascinating is doing really well. And he is one self-taught expert on World War I in which a period in which he has found himself immersed for years now as he works on a non-fiction book that is coming out soon. You can't reveal much more

So the reason I wanted you to come on is because you've become your own World War I expert, World War II, too, but also World War I. And this line of what happened with the Russians is very

“interesting to me. And I think it does really, very much show what's going on today.”

And so let's go back to the Zarr and Zarrina and just set the scene for us because you and I recently saw an episode of the Crown in which that whole situation was featured. And the Zarr and Zarr, you know, were in Russia. They wanted help from England, England, gave him back of the hand, and things went downhill from there. So put it in perspective for us how what went down and why it's important. It's important because that chaos of World War I

and the internal chaos in Russia in that period, that period of years, 1916-17 is the whole reason that we got Lenin and Stalin and communism in the 20th century at all. At the outside of the war, nobody wanted Lenin or the Bolsheviks. He was basically arguing for a violent worker's revolution. And he envisioned that as a global thing. He wanted a Bolshevik uprising for each nation. And so in the war around 1917, Lenin has already been an exile. In 1917, there are two

revolutions, only eight months apart. In February, there's the initial revolution in which the Zarr is overthrown in early March. He advocates, first in favor of his son who's just a boy, 12-year-old,

boy with hemophilia. And then he decides, you know, what if I leave and he takes over, he'll never

survive it. So then he advocates in favor of his younger brother. And the other brother is like, "I don't want anything to do with this." And so he says, "No." So basically, this provisional government is in charge. And they are still in favor of staying in the war against the Germans, which the allies are thinking, "That's great. We need this eastern front to occupy Germany." And the government looks more democratic, so also great. And Germany is thinking, "Well, we need to get Russia out of

the war." And they know that Lenin is over in Switzerland. And Lenin was campaigning basically on three things, saying, "I'll give you peace, land, and bread." The first thing he wants to do

“upon taking power is pull Russia out of the war. And so Germany, I think Sean mentioned this,”

there's a train that they put Lenin on in Switzerland. And it's Lenin in about 20 other of his

revolutionary friends. And the train drops them off in Russia. And this is an April of 17.

By October, you have the second revolution. So eight months after the first one, in which basically Lenin takes over. The Bolsheviks take over. And as Sean mentioned, they had only minority support about 20% of the people were voting for a Bolshevik takeover. There were three other socialists. There were three total socialist factions. There were the menchiviks who had more support than the Bolsheviks. And the socialist revolutionaries. But the Bolsheviks were the most

extreme and the most violent. The menchiviks were thinking, "Well, we can do this in sort of a legal way. We'll have trade unions and things like that." And the Bolsheviks were far more brutal in their tactics. And started gaining more popular support. Even Trotsky was initially a menchiviks and he came over to be one of the top tenants of Lenin by 1917. And so the Tsar at this point is a prisoner. And initially, after he

advocated back in March, he was offered amnesty by Great Britain. And he's cousins with King George I of Great Britain. He writes from a letter saying, "You know, this is where we need to go." And that initial provisional government was thinking exile might be the way. But he's imprisoned at this time. And then the Bolsheviks-- - And he can't George a fifth is Queen Elizabeth's grandpa, right? - That's right. Yeah. So then there's King George a fifth. Then the sixth,

who was the Confer from the King's speech, and then Elizabeth. So it's Elizabeth's grandfather. And you know, everyone's worried about this sort of Bolshevik anti-monarchy sentiment that's really a global thing. And so he has a conversation with his ministers and they're a little skiddish. You know, if the Tsar comes over here, that could lead to popular unrest. And his favorite line from Braveheart. That could be my head in a basket. So King George a fifth is like,

let's not say they withdraw their invitation for him to live in exile back in Great Britain in April. So in March, he's invited in April. The invitation is pulled and he's stuck in Russia.

“And then when the Bolshevik movement-- - That was an important invitation to seize”

in the moment. - He needed to get out of there. But that was the crazy thing. All of the industrialists, all the capitalists in Russia were thinking, "We're good." This Lenin guy is a flash in the pan. He's crazy. He's not going to have popular support. He already doesn't have popular support. And it's not going to grow. They'll get rid of this guy. Because he's also fighting the Japanese. In the East, he's fighting the Czech Legion, the Poles. He's fighting the Meshavix,

the Socialist Republics. And there's the White Army, which is loyal to the Tsar, which is a

still a very powerful army. So Lenin's fighting on like six different fronts at this point.

and Lenin is worried that he's sort of a rallying point for the White Army that's loyal to the Tsar. And by July of 1918, he and his family are executed in a really gruesome way, bullets and bayonets. The Tsar and his whole family, wife and kids. - And Lenin's off to the races. And the relationship is you described it between Lenin and Stalin. It's like Stalin. He was looking at Lenin and Lenin was looking at Stalin. And you know, when you talk about these two,

you talk about Stalin as possibly one of the worst people who ever walked the face of the earth. And Lenin saw it. And he knew it wasn't like Lenin was all that great, but Stalin was uniquely evil. So talk about that and sort of what happened between the two of them. - Stalin is one of the worst

“figures of the 20th century. I think there's some stat on who has, who's responsible for the”

most deaths in the 20th century and Hitler's up there at around 6 or 7 million. Mal is that is

number one. Stalin was like 2025 and Mal is like 40 million people they're responsible for killing in the 20th century. It's just insane. Stalin's about eight years younger than Lenin and was a real disciple from afar. He was born in Georgia and Southern Russia. It's been a lot of time around the Caspian Sea and the oil regions in Azerbaijan of Southern Russia. And he was sort of thug for Lenin down there raising money for the Bolshevik cause. So he was basically a gangster.

And he would have extortion brackets going on. He was a bank robber. It was almost like the Wells Fargo train in the wild west of America that would be hijacked. He staged huge bank robberies robbing wagons full of payroll cash and then he'd sent it up to Lenin to support the Bolshevik

“cause. And he became one of Lenin's top lutenants and military advisors and leaders. And then”

after so that there's the red terror from, you know, in the years immediately after the Great War

when the Bolshevik's finally secure power and this bloody Russian Civil War ends. And in 1922,

Lenin has his first stroke and he's a little bit incapacitated from that. But he's still this heroic figure to the Russian people. And then in 1924, he has his third and final stroke in which he dies. Only some people believe that he didn't die of a stroke. He may have been poisoned by Stalin because in the weeks prior to Lenin finally dying of this alleged stroke, he wrote a letter to the Soviet, basically the political body beneath him, saying that it cannot be Stalin who succeeds

me, he's a madman. It should be somebody else. And most people thought it'd be Trotsky or one of the others are about four or five guys who were in that level down. Stalin was one of those five,

“but most people thought it would be Trotsky. But as soon as Lenin dies, Trotsky, it happens wind”

Trotsky's away, suspiciously. And by the time Trotsky gets back, Stalin has already solidified all of his alliances and threatened those who were not initially with him. So when Trotsky gets back, it's kind of a done deal. And Stalin is in charge. He promotes the cult of personality around Lenin. And he knows Lenin is this very popular figure who's a very charismatic figure. He's only about five foot five, but he was a huge personality. And so Stalin is saying all great things about Lenin.

They rename St. Peter'sburg, Lenin grad, and promote this cult because he's dancing. Well, if people behind Lenin, I'm going to say I'm behind Lenin, and that will all continue. But by the 30s, he changes his tune. And he selectively releases some things from Soviet archives that show all the bad things that Lenin did in those years and immediately after World War I, and sort of dinged Lenin up a little bit, and his legacy because now Ston is firmly in charge

and is more concerned about building the cult of Stalin, which he does, and you know, named the city Stalin grad, and sort of fibs a little bit about the heroic things that he did in those early years, too. We only know this because after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s, many of these countries opened up their own archives. We just recently, in the last 20 years, learned a lot more about the early years of Stalin. So was there an opportunity for us to

avoid Lenin and avoid Stalin and avoid the Bolsheviks in a way that could have changed the entire trajectory of the 20th century in 21st? Absolutely. Even in the absence of Western intervention in the years 1819, Stalin and Lenin and the Bolsheviks movement almost collapsed. They almost lost to the white army and to other forces. In February or March of 1919, Great Britain pulled out its final troops. They only had a small force there in the Americans got out too. They were

interested in some of the oil regions and other resources around Russia. But Churchill, among others,

was in Great Britain saying we have got to deal with this problem right now. It's amazing.

Churchill said this after World War I and World War II. But he said this Lenin guy and these Bolsheviks

and establish a more democratic form of government. But after the four and a half years of slaughter

“of Great War, nobody had the appetite to do that in America or Great Britain. And they also took”

that non-interventionist land of, like if this is who the Russian people have selected to be in charge, they should do it because not only is it going to be difficult to send troops in there and fight this war, but then we're going to have to fight the peace. We're going to stick around and help these people establish a more democratic form of government and nobody wanted to get involved in that. And so Lenin was able to thread the needle because during the war, the Germans hated

this guy too is only that he wanted to pull Russia out of the war that they sent him in there. They weren't looking for some workers' revolution either. Monarchs and democratic forms of government wanted nothing to do with Lenin and the Bolsheviks. But they had to deal with the primary threat and for the central powers and the Allied powers, that was each other. And so the Germans thinking even if he pulls out of the war, he's got all these resources too. And the Allies were thinking,

well, if we go get rid of Lenin, and this is back during the war years, if we go fight Lenin and get rid of him, try to get rid of him, we could push him into the arms of the Germans. And even if he doesn't declare war against us, he has all these guns, oil, wheat, copper that he could offer up to the German war machine. So everyone kind of treated him with kid gloves, even though he was viewed and identified as a threat early on, no one could really take him on. So he was able to

kind of thread the needle through those post-war years. Let me ask you about Churchill because he's this crazy figure who's played a big role in the World War One and not just World War which we all know from World War Two, but he was very present during World War One and sort of trying to become the military leader that we would later know him as, not with total success as you just alluded to, but talk about Churchill during World War One. He was, he was put into the post

of first Lord of the Admiralty in 1911 and it was young then, he was like a 37-year-old guy,

and that's the top post in the British Navy, which, you know, for the Brits, the Navy is a bigger deal in the Army. So he was a huge figure in the pre-war military apparatus and he brought in as his first Seelor Jackie Fisher, who was this legendary Admiral and he was much older, he was more like 70. So he's two-old guy, two guys got along with this one-old Admiral and the young Churchill. And he was very aware of the German threat early on, more so than most. And so he was

working very hard to update the military and the technology of the ship. So he's sort of a technophile. So he was like, because you told me before, at this point, England had, had the, has the Navy, so that was extremely important for them to have a strong Navy, but most of the other powers didn't really have a strong Navy, but then Germany was like, we're going to have one. We, we we want one, and Churchill saw it coming. He did, that set off this naval arms race. So Britain

controlled the seas at that point. Ever since defeating Napoleon in the early 1800s, they were the dominant sea power, and they controlled the sea lanes for merchant shipping and for military purposes as well. And Germany, they were expanding, but they were really a continental power.

They had the largest, and most powerful army and land-based force. But in order to grow,

Kaiser Wilhelm II thought, we need an international system of colonies and an empire in the way that Britain does so that we can bring natural resources in and from the corners of the globe

“and fuel our industrial growth. But the only way to have an international empire and colonies”

around the world is to have a strong Navy so that we can protect it, protect our sea lanes. So he starts building a Navy, and then Britain starts getting very nervous about the strength of the German Navy, and that set off this big arms race between the two. Hmm. Okay, so back to Churchill. So he's there. He's working on building up, well, and preserving the strength of the, of the British Navy,

staving off anybody else from getting too strong. And in World War I, he's got this partnership with this older guy, but it doesn't actually work out very well. Right. So he's, he's got this idea. He, by the way, he's done a ton of work to update the military and the naval ships from cold oil, and he secures access to oil from the, from the Middle East, which was sort of the founding of the British petroleum and things like that. But he has this idea,

and this, this ended up being his downfall. But he, he had an idea to end the work quickly,

because Russia had basically been capped off. They, they have their only warm water port

“in the Black Sea. That's how they get wheat and natural resources out and how they get guns and”

worse supplies in. But in order to get the Black Sea, you have to go through this long straight, called the Darden Elves, that goes right by Constantinople and Turkey, and it's all controlled by the Ottoman Empire, which is with Germany. So they control access to Russia's warm water port. Churchill has this thought that we can send a big force, not only naval ships, but ground troops as well. And it's not that well protected at the moment. We can storm in there.

We can take the straight, and we can open up Russia, and then basically hit Germany right in the belly from beneath and win the war quickly. And they have this whole back and forth. Lord Kitchener

Britain, it was a poster of Lord Kitchener basically doing the same thing. You know, we want you in the military.

“So they're back and forth on how to do that. They end up splitting the baby, and they send”

only some naval ships and no ground troops. So when they get there, this is in 15, 1915. And so the ships go and they're fighting. It's like this ancient straight, you know, it's like where the Persians and the Greeks used to fight. So there's ancient fortifications up there, and there are some Turkish troops there, but they're very poorly supplied. They've mined the straight a little bit, but the British ships are making some progress. And as we found out later,

the Turks were almost at a bullet. There were very few troops, almost no ammunition. The English had basically gotten through, but it stalled a little bit. And they thought, well, maybe we better stop, we've just lost a couple battleships to some sea mines. Let's wait and see what goes on, and maybe we'll get another ship up here. So they stalled out. And in that time, more Turks come down, and the Germans think this could be a disaster. And they send troops down there and

“resupply it. By the time the Brits gets the more ships and some land troops in there,”

now it's on. Like it's a full-on battle. Both sides are supplied in the whole thing bogs down. And it turns into this very bloody mess that is prolonged lots of people die. It was made into a movie with Mel Gibson sort of betraying what an ugly, grizzly disaster it was. And Churchill's playing for the whole thing. But had they gone in with his initial plan, with ground troops, with more ships? It would have easily taken this. You know, his story is sort of gone back to

resurrect Churchill's reputation in the disaster, which ended up getting him fired from the Admiralty. And he spent a couple decades sort of out to pasture until he came back to power. Closer World War II. You know, I mean, not to reduce it to, you know, life lessons, and a self-help therapy session. But it is a good reminder that you can have a massive failure like I prevented World War I. I failed to prevent World War I. And you can still come back. I mean,

think about Churchill, we, I know we both admire him so much, but the opportunities that he had,

that he sees that he tried for, and that he did have some failure, achieving only to never give up,

to never give up. That's right. I mean, if you have the talent, if you have the goods, you can always come back, which he, he clearly does. And he, you know, took him some time, but he rose to the top again. So what do you think? Is World War I more interesting than World War II or the other way around? It's funny. I used to think World War II was more interesting. And I watch all those, as you know, the videos in color and, and that sort of weird

mysticism that the Nazis got into. Only thing on our television, if it has to do with the World Wars, Doug is into it. And if you sprinkle an alien in there, so much the better. But they were, they were, they were absolutely response for almost everything. Pyramids, Nazis all of it. But I, I was sprinkling those sprinkling necessary. They were everywhere. They're there. Yeah. I really look right in the, right in the surface. I find World War I

more interesting, actually. It's more nuanced. It's this incredible, crazy battle. And then at

the end of it, we were all like, why, why did we even do that? It seemed like these petty things between monarchs and shifting alliances. And it's just way more complex and nuanced than World War II, which is more of this good and evil story. Mm-hmm. So in Doug's other life, because you may know him as a podcast host now, host of dedicated with Doug Brunt in which he goes in depth with the best and best known authors of our time. Go ahead and download it now and follow

and subscribe and you'll be glad you did. But in his other life, he writes books and he's working on a non-fiction piece right now, which is amazing. It's got this big mystery in it, but it's

“based on its historical, but it's like unearths a big mystery and I think solves it. And that is”

one of the reasons. That is really the main reason why you became such an expert. How many books do you think you read in preparation for this book? He doesn't want to talk about the name. He's like keeping it under wraps. It'll come out soon. Soon. Yeah. I'll have a fan's got this in a couple months. Okay. Oh my gosh. 100. And that's not counting the small articles and weird journals and things from the air. So as you mentioned, the book that I wrote, 90% of it takes place in the 25 years

leading up to World War I. 1890 to 1915 is really the time for this book. And it's a great era of it's like, I was actually talking to an archivist in Germany to get some things out. I'm like, you know, I need something, I'm looking for something on this guy and he's like, this is the golden age of letter writing. Everybody wrote, unlike today, where things are happening in tweets and texts of six or nine words or something. And that era, everybody wrote letters. And the whole period

is documented. It's amazing. It's really fun to read through it. But I do worry. I was talking to

Anna Quinlan about this in our episode coming up. We're not really documenting our time. You know, what are the archives going to have in them? You know, 100 years from now, when people look back on the year 2022, there are nobody's writing letters, anybody.

Well, I'm excited. I'm excited for the book. That's going to be huge. It's amazing. And the podcast,

“everybody should go and download now. Because Doug has this wealth of expertise. This is not what”

he brings to you on the podcast occasionally. Occasionally, but he makes it about the other person, which is what is so enjoyable about the show. You get to know big big authors who you know and love. And sometimes big big stars like David Dukeuthney. And well, I love the one with pen teller. That was that was fascinating. And you know, Paulina Portzkov, but we could go on. So in any minute, check it out. Dedicated with Doug Brunt. And we'll bring you more on the book

at a later date when Doug's ready to talk about it. Thanks, honey. Thank you, honey. Perhaps no event defined the 20th century more than World War II, a battle of good versus evil.

A story of atrocities we hope will never happen again. Of the 16 million Americans who

served our nation around the globe during that war, only about 167,000 are still alive today. 180 of these heroes are dying every single day. And with them go countless stories of heroism, of depravity that they witnessed and of honor in which they participated, perhaps unmatched at any other time in history. Today, we're going to talk about their stories and the lessons we can all take from them as we walk through the arc of World War II with the filmmaker who has made

it his life's mission to make sure the brave souls who fought and won that war for us are never forgotten. He's interviewed so many members of the greatest generation he's lost count. His dozens of documentaries have taken him to the battlefields of Europe, the Pacific, and here at home in Hawaii, where a Sunday morning attack propelled America into World War II. Tim Gray is the founder and president of the World War II Foundation and a documentary filmmaker. Tim Gray, welcome to the show,

so great to have you here. Thank you, Megan. It's a pleasure to meet you. Oh, the pleasure is all mine. I've enjoyed your work for a long, long time, and I appreciate the personal touch you put on everything you do, going right to the guys who fought this battle and getting their take on it before that's no longer possible. It's hard to imagine, right, that there will be a time on this earth where there are no more members of the greatest generation

to walk us through this history. These are precious souls still walking amongst us.

It's amazing when you think about the fact that you can talk to people who actually

save the world. I mean, I can't remember. I mean, I can't talk to George Washington. I can't talk Benjamin Franklin. I can't talk to a lot of those people, but I can actually talk to people

“who were involved in World War II and actually played a role in saving the world, which I think is”

extraordinary, but it is also a very short window that we have to talk to these people. And I think, you know, it's just amazing that we have that opportunity. Let's just start there because you think of the greatest generation and in particular those who fought in World War II, there are some seam lines that pull them together and that describe most of them. And you've spent more time with them than anyone. How would you describe these guys?

I mean, what is it about them? What are some of the adjectives that jump out of you? Humble? You know, they could be going around to your local mall or they could be going around to your local place and saying, "Hey, look at me. I saved the world. I want the likes on my Instagram page. I want the likes on my Facebook page." But they don't do that. It just blows my mind that there's such a generation that is so humble about the fact that they really dictated where we are today.

“And so, you know, when I look at that generation, I think, you know, if there's any generation”

that really deserves the fact to want that attention, it's that generation, but they don't want it at all. That's the thing. Is that, I mean, they are literally the opposite of selfie culture that's defined everywhere around us today. And there's the quiet dignity about these guys. I've interviewed a fair amount of them. I'm happy to say over my years. As a journalist, there's a quiet dignity. There's a deep patriotism, deep deep love of America,

hard earned and hard fought. And there's just some sort of a bond between them and between them in the country. They survived the Great Depression. They fought World War II like it was a job.

their job and their family. And that was it. I mean, they didn't want the accolades. They felt the accolades belong with those who were buried in American cemeteries in Manila, in Normandy, in Holland, in Belgium, in other places. There was almost this survivor's guilt that they had. So when they came home, they took the lessons of World War II and they applied them to their own daily lives. And some of them dealt with them better than others. I mean, some of

them came home and they were fine. Some of them came home and they had a problem with alcoholism. Or some of them came home and they had a problem with committing suicide. Or they had a problem with their families in some way, where they would wake up their mom or their wife or their children in the middle of the night and be screaming about a Japanese bonsai attack. And the families at home couldn't understand. But they came home and they rebuilt America

“to what it is today. And when I when I think about that generation, any time I go to a mall or any”

time I log on to Amazon or any time I want to travel to Ohio or Montana or another state, I don't need papers. I don't need someone to check in with me. I don't need someone to authorize my, you know, daily activities. And that's all because of that generation. But it's just so funny that they're kind of like the anti Kardashian generation that they just went on with their lives and they saved the world. And they just didn't want any credit for it. And they felt all the credit belong

with those who who never had an opportunity to to live a full life or to have kids or grandkids

or to be someone who solved cancer or solved the dilemma of autism or dementia or all, you know, Alzheimer's or something. So it to me, they lived their lives and honor of those who never came home and have the opportunity to do great things. And that's it. It's a unspiring. You're so right. I mean, that the juxtaposition is stark when you think about someone like Kardashian, who is famous for being famous for doing absolutely nothing. All she wants is for us to

celebrate her, the way she looks, her money, her vanity. And these guys were were famous for doing

something extraordinary, but wanted no fame is chewed the spotlight and would never have wanted

a celebration of anything around them that they would have deflected the credit onto the country and

“to others. Exactly. And I think that's kind of what's lacking in America is to understand”

the sacrifice, you know, that was made to preserve everything that that we are today are our ability to believe in a God and to believe in a religion and to believe in in whatever we want to accomplish. And and I think that generation humbly did that and they they left us a blueprint in which to follow. And I think we've gotten away from that blueprint in a lot of ways. And so when I look back

at that generation, I always say, you know, I always tell you the younger generation that, you know,

these men have left us a blueprint, I'm how to be better Americans and how to be better people. And and we've kind of gotten away from that and I think that's unfortunate in a lot of ways. Yeah, and now we need to follow it. Now we just need to know it and follow it. So let's talk about the war and go through the arc of it so people have a better understanding of it.

“I think to understand how we got in a World War II, you need a basic understanding of how World”

War I ended. You know, most of us on tourist trips, if we've ever had the privilege to go through Europe through France, if you're lucky, you get to go through the Palace of Versailles and we know that word Versailles and what happened there was directly related to the Second World War in a way many people may not understand. So let's start there. Yeah, I mean, Versailles, the Treaty of Versailles I ended World War I and a lot of people, especially over the last, I say, 30 years or so have decided

historians have decided that World War I was really a continuation of World War II and it was. And I think World War I directly led to World War II and a lot of that dealt back with the Treaty of Versailles and how Hitler utilized the Treaty of Versailles to really emphasize how the German people were mistreated and blamed for World War I. And there are some lessons there. I mean, my understanding of the Treaty of Versailles that essentially humiliated Germany and it basically dismantled

them unable to really function in many key ways and they became predictably resentful over those

“terms and up up rose. It all Hitler. It was no accident. Those things were connected and he decided”

probably to play the victim and play Germany as the victim. And surely thereafter decided that the villain would be Jewish people. Yeah, I mean, he was the right guy at the right time in history,

like Mussolini was in Italy. He was a flamboyant leader who basically blamed all of their

problems, Italy's problems, and then on Hitler's side, Germany's problems on World War I. When he blamed him, he blamed it on the Jewish people. He blamed Man on the Communists. And he was elected on the fact that he was that person who could take the results of World War I, which was the economic depression that Germany was in. The fact that Germany's military had been decimated and deactivated and that he would restore that aura to Germany. And we've

talked to German soldiers who said basically that Hitler was that person who said, you know, we were wrong in World War I. And this is what we need to do now. And then again, by the time he was in power and his directives were known that it was too late to have former resistance or to object to what he was doing. So even before World War II, I mean, that's the thing that a lot

of people sort of miss. In the 1930s, he built Dacau, one of the, you know, the first concentration camp,

“and it was crystal knock was in 1938, I think. So, Hitler was doing this before the war was actually”

launched targeting Jewish people, but obviously then his eyes became more territorial and he started grabbing territory. And that's when the war actually broke out in earnest. Yeah, he started looking at Czechoslovakia. He started looking at the expansion of Germany, that Germany needed more room. And because of World War I, that Germany was, was do this, this more room. And he looked at Czechoslovakia and the brits and the French gave him Czechoslovakia. And then he started to look at Russia.

And he started to look at the Soviet Union. And that, of course, led to the start of World War II, and it's just one of those situations where you look at it, that Hitler really did a great job of appealing to the common man in Germany and World War II that the government has forgotten about you, and that we need to get back to, you know, being able to honor you and to help you, but then again, he had no plan that would ever succeed in doing that. But he wanted an expansion

of the German Empire following what happened after World War II, which basically ruined German's economy and ruined German's after World War I, which ruined German's economy after World War I, and then an expansion. So it was just a situation where Hitler took advantage of the treaty of Versailles and said, you know, German Germans were do more land. And we, we need more land. And we were treated so poorly that we were, we were, we were due to this expansion in Europe.

Yeah, and we now know, of course, he was not abiding by the rules in the treaty of Versailles saying no more militarization to the contrary. So just, for the timeline, World War I ended November 11, the 1918, 15 years later, January 30th, 33, Hitler was appointed the German leader, and September first 1939 is when World War II is considered to have begun. Germany invaded Poland, a couple weeks later, so he, so he uninvated Poland. And the beginning of the war, the Soviets,

“were friendly with Germany. I mean, with people forget that that's how it began. I mean,”

one of Hitler's greatest mistakes, I think, was going after the Soviet Union, just getting so

power hungry and land hungry. He thought he could take the Soviets as well, which would be a critical

moment for the world, right? Because he couldn't. And the Soviets decided to fight with the allied powers and soon thereafter, the war ended. But in any event, in the beginning, he took Poland, he invaded Poland, so he uninvated Poland. And there was fighting going on for quite some time, 1940, Norway was invaded by Germany, same year, when some Churchill becomes prime minister. And the war is underway. Now, the United States at this point is isolationist. We, we've been

through a world war. We don't want another world war. The American people are not, not in the mood at all. But we are helping our friends. Are we not? Yes, we are. We're helping them through what's

I mean, there's a point on December 6, 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor, where there's about 88% of the United States that has no interest in helping what's going on in Europe. There's just no interest in getting involved in another world war. And that all changes on December 7, 1941. So 88% of the United States is against getting involved in the war in Europe, despite the fact that England is alone. France is already conceded. The Netherlands have already conceded. Belgium,

everybody's already conceded. But the United States having been through World War I or at least the last year of World War I once know part of the war in Europe until the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, which I find interesting is that it's such a high percentage, 88%, 87, 88% that once know part of that war in Europe until we're attacked. And I think that's the way the United States is. In general, is that we're not a waring nation. But when we are attacked,

like a December 7, or September 11, 2001, that we respond. So history doesn't repeat itself,

“but it certainly rhymes. And that's what was the case in 1941.”

You have a great documentary among many. This one called Remembering Pearl Harbor. And I recommend it to everybody. It sets the stage with the actual greatest generation with the actual veterans. But it sets the stage in Pearl Harbor quite nicely about how it was going that day. How is a rather peaceful day? No one anticipated this to the contrary.

There had been a bulletin not long before suggesting this would never happen. It was just too long

or a reach of stretch for the Japanese. They didn't really need to worry about getting attacked at Pearl Harbor. I mean, a war was underway. So we were watching it. But we didn't think it could happen. So here's this is from Remembering Pearl Harbor on the day before Tom Salak narrating, South III. Some sailors and soldiers that Sunday morning were already a church service by the beach. Others were up early playing a little toss and catch on the docks before reporting for duty

if they had to work on December 7. Chowbell sounded for breakfast, always peaceful and serene on a wall. From Pearl Harbor to the nearby airfields. Can we just take a step back and talk about the Japanese? Because we said it up, I talked about

“Germany and a little bit about the Soviet Union. What the Japanese? What are they doing there?”

How are they doing there? Go back. Yeah, go back and talk about their participation, their interests and their start in this war. Japanese were on the Japan as a country of zero natural resources. And they'd even natural resources. And so they had already invaded China. They had already invaded Korea. They had already invaded French Indo-China, which is now Vietnam today because they wanted to expand, but they needed natural resources. So the United States decided at

that point that they would start to cut off supplies to Japan, whether that be oil or steel.

So Japan always felt as though they were back into a corner. And their expansion was dependent on

these resources, these natural resources. So if the United States was not going to supply these natural resources that they would have to disable the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. And that's exactly what they tried to do on December 7, 1941. But they did not understand that the American aircraft carriers were not there. And be they never launched the third wave, which attacked the oil refineries at Pearl Harbor. So Japan was trying to expand their

empire in the Pacific while Hitler was trying to expand his empire in Europe. And they thought that they-- And it wasn't totally unrelated. They'd been talking. There was an agreement. This wasn't just two separate wars happening at once. No. I mean, they had formed an alliance called the Axis Powers between Italy, Japan, and Germany. So they were talking about what the situation was in the Pacific. So what they needed to do was eliminate the American Pacific fleet for six

months or a year, but they did not figure on the resolve of the United States. The United States

wants a fair fight. I mean, that's always how Americans are. They want to fair fight. They don't

want to be attacked without notice or be attacked by surprise. And that's the slogan of remember Pearl Harbor. And that was the rally in cry of World War II. It was remember Pearl Harbor. We were attacked without notice by the Japanese and the Japanese had their intentions.

“But that became the rally in cry. And that's why so many millions of Americans signed up”

for the fight in World War II because it was a soccer blow. And Americans don't like soccer blows.

want to drag us into the war of all powers? It's not like we were not known for our military

might. We had just won World War I. Like, why drag the United States into this conflict that we'd

“been rejecting thus far? It's so funny because, you know, Emerald Yamamoto, who was the was the key”

arcade architect of the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the attack at Pearl Harbor, and also the Battle of Midway, told the Japanese military. He said, you know, you only have a certain amount of time here to put the United States at bay. Yamamoto had studied at Harvard. He had been a naval attache in Washington. He had dented out into the American Heartland and seen the industrial power of the

United States. So he basically was against the strike against the United States, but the,

but the Japanese military, the Japanese army was in control of what the decisions would be in World War II. So, you know, Yamamoto at certain points voiced his concern and said, this is not going to work. We're going to awaken his sleeping giant. And then he meant by a sleeping giant. He meant American industry. He meant by the, the, the, the ability to convert the, the, the Ford plants and Detroit from cars to tanks and airplanes and everything else. He said,

we cannot win a war with the United States. But nobody listened to him, especially the army, and there were temps on his life. And so, you know, Japan did not listen to the voice of reason. The army was was was held bent on attacking the United States because they felt they were inferior in many ways, inferior as soldiers, inferior as navy, inferior in, in, in, in, in, in, in militaristic ways. But Yamamoto was the voice of reason. And they did not like that. And they still

attacked Pearl Harbor. And they still had Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor and planned the attack on Midway. But he was a voice who just said, we cannot win a war. We can only buy time.

“And how much time we could buy is is is negotiable. And I think they were looking at some”

point to say, okay, we're going to buy time. We're going to be able to occupy Guam and the Philippines. And those will be our islands. And then we'll settle for peace. But Yamamoto was really the only one who understood the industrial might and the capability of the United States. The element of surprise is still hard to understand, given radar and satellite and all the gifts that we have today. But I didn't realize this actually prior to preparing for this interview

that there was an alert operator of an army radar station at 7 o'clock that morning. We got hit

at around 8 a.m. But at 7 o'clock that morning, who spotted the approaching first wave of the

Japanese attack force? Exactly. And sounded the alarm. And what happened? Well, the problem was is that radar was so new at that time. What the Joe Lockhart and his colleague decided at the Opponna radar site on Hawaii was, you know, they reported this to the authorities in Hawaii. And they thought, well, this is a crew of B-17 planes coming in from California. radar was not being utilized that effectively by the United States at that time. So they thought it

was a B-17 squadron coming in from from the west coast of the United States. And Tyler the man at Hawaii said, don't worry about it. Those are famous last words. Don't worry about it. It's just a group of B-17s coming in from California and they said, okay, we're going to go for lunch now then.

“And that's what happened. And so it's almost like 9/11 in terms of things are building up”

and things are presenting themselves. And we're saying it's something else. It's not what is actually happening. radar was so new at the time, Megan, that we didn't trust it enough to to say we assumed. Kermit Tyler was a guy and I hate to single him out. But he was the guy in the famous movie, Tora Tora Tora who said, don't worry about it. It's a squadron to B-17s coming in from California. It wasn't. It was Japanese planes coming in the sink the Arizona and Oklahoma and everybody else.

Yeah, the Arizona took the worst of the damage and the Oklahoma and all 21 ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet were sunk or damaged aircraft losses, 188 destroyed, 159 damage, the majority hit before they had a chance to even take off. And the Japanese success was, it was overwhelming. I mean,

completely caught by surprise as documented again in remembering Pearl Harbor. This is a clip from it in which several of the survivors on the U.S. S. Arizona described the explosion that destroyed their ship. It's 6. It's 9 minutes after 8. One of the bombers came over the lucky bomb. And then the big

bomb hit the number two terror dropped from maybe 8,000 feet. And we're right into a million rounds of

“ammunition and fuel oil and aviation gas lean. And when an air exploded, that's what exploded.”

It blowed 110 foot of the ship. Plurled. And everything from the main mess forward is on to fire. The bowless ship came out of the water about 30 feet. We were in water. When the fireball went off and it went about 500 feet in the air and just didn't go up to us up there and the sky control platform. Hmm. A couple of things there to pick up on. It wasn't just Pearl Harbor. This hell was unleashed

in more places than Pearl Harbor. And you mentioned it before. It was an overwhelming success, but it wasn't a complete success because we did not have our aircraft carriers in Pearl

Harbor that day. So can you first explain that the vast amount of areas and locations attacked

and then talk about why our aircraft carriers were not there? Yeah, I mean, our aircraft carriers were delivering planes to midway. First of all, the enterprise was delivering planes to midway. The Saratoga was undergoing repairs. So the Japanese decided that, you know, this based on local intelligence given by spies and Hawaii that, you know, this the Pacific fleet was there for the taking and they were the the Saratoga's were there and the battleships were there,

but the aircraft carriers were either a delivering planes to midway or out on other missions or being repaired in Remerton, Washington or other places. And the Japanese also made a huge mistake and the fact that they did not attack the oil refineries in Pearl Harbor. That would have

been the third wave of the Japanese attack. So they they missed their opportunity to really

“inflict a lot of damage on the United States at Pearl Harbor. And I think the Japanese also,”

you know, Admiral Yamamoto, I go back to him because we've been to Nagahoka, which is his home town and we've been to places where we've interviewed his grandson. He was the only one who really had a clear understanding of the industrial might of the United States and that you had to knock it all off at once if you wanted to to sever the head of the snake and they they accomplished two of the three goals and and that third part of the goal, which is the aircraft carriers and not attacking

the oil refineries at Pearl Harbor was a major, major mistake on the part of the Japanese. And Yamamoto was a realist and he was also one of those people who said, you know, we have about six months that run rampant in the Pacific before the United States and just to real might catches up with us. And so but the army didn't want to hear that. Tojo and the others didn't want to hear that. And but he was he was a realist. And to hear guys like Don Stratton who passed

away a couple of years ago in Luke Hunter who was one of only two survivors still alive from the USS Arizona in that piece you just ran to to hear them describe what it was like to me,

“it's just incredible because there were a witness to history. The worst thing the Japanese could have”

done was launch a sneak attack. They could have notified us beforehand that we were going to attack, but Americans don't again. Was that done? Was that done? I mean, you know, was that done? Was that is that how it used to be done? Like an attack is coming? Yeah, I mean it's the Japanese because there are so many issues with the Japanese with transmissions and everything else on December 7, 1941. Their goal was to announce to us that they were going to attack Pearl Harbor. But because of delays

in Washington and transcribing documents and telegrams and everything else, it became a surprise attack. And for the record, the number of military personnel killed on Pearl Harbor was 2,335. That actually includes 68 civilians, I think. So yeah, I guess when the total is

there now, you can see the memorial to the USS Arizona. The other ships, almost all of them were

repaired and sent back out into service. The only other two that weren't besides the Arizona were just too old and too out of, you know, commissioned to really care about. But the Arizona is the one that took the front of it. And I will tell you, a couple years ago, I interviewed Jim Downing, who I saw in your piece. Yes. Was such a special man, such a special man. So I flew out and I met him in California with his family. He was an on the actual ship when it got hit. But then

he ran there and held the bodies of many men who were dying and said prayers of them and continued

to do so. We have a sound bite actually from Jim on the role of God for him during the attack.

“I'll play it now. It's sat 12. What role did God play for you that fateful day?”

Now, I thought I was going to be blowing up. And my conversation with God is, I'll be with the end of minute. But minute went by for about 30 minutes and I wasn't taken. But I experienced the greatest piece I've ever had in my life, knowing that God was in charge. He was 104 during that interview. And the lovelyest thing happened to him. We talked about God, my connection to him, his connection. And Jim wrote me the most thoughtful letter after that interview,

thanking me. Of course, I was I who needed to thank him. He wrote me this long letter thanking me and encouraging me to do a couple of things to renew my relationship with my faith and so on. I wrote back to an Appengpal relationship developed. He would die not long thereafter in 2018. But what a special, special, dear man. Jim was in the mail office in the post office on the USS West Virginia. So he read a lot of the letters that were sent home in the West Virginia was attacked on December

7, 1941. And to me, so he got to know personally the stories of the man on that, on that battleship. And there has been a lot written about Jim and Jim to me represents the best of America. And

“you know, I think you were very fortunate to know somebody like him. And I think if we could”

somehow get back to the mindset of men like Jim, you know, we'd be such a better country for that. And he was a hero, but he didn't think himself of a hero as himself as a hero. And he read the letters home and he was kind of connected to everybody on the USS West Virginia. And Pearl Harbor was such a turning point in the history of this world that he was on that battleship and was reading

the personal letters home of the people on that battleship. And to me, he's one of those people. I always

admired and thought, wow, you know, here's the guy who knew the inner thinking of the people on the battleship and how they were scared and how are they were looking forward to their own futures of being doctors and lawyers and maybe carrying cancer or Alzheimer's or dementia. I mean, they had so many, they had so much potential the men on at West Virginia and Arizona and Oklahoma and Maryland and

“Nevada and everybody else. I think what could they have done post war that would have changed the”

world? And Jim is one of those guys. That's the thing is there were almost 3,000 Jim downings killed that, you know, they were all men like that. They were built differently back then. It's like the quality of person that we lost in each one of those guys is just it's hard to match and makes you miss them all the more and it makes you all the angrier. Though, by the way, Jim was not angry. Of course, he was full of grace. I did ask him a question. Here's a follow-up

between the two of us. This is shot 13. You seem like you're a happy person. Are you? I am very happy. I'm a realist. I can't do anything about what happened yesterday. I can't do much about what happens tomorrow. Living today is so much fun. So I live it up every day. It's lost bad. We all need a little guy who's been downing in our lives. He's one of those guys Megan who understands that he represents the guys who are buried in

cemeteries in Hawaii, at the punch full, or Normandy, or Manila, or Holland, or Belgium, or other places that, you know, he survived and was able to carry on with his life. But that he also

survive when the guy and left to me died and the guy on the right of me died? I mean, what is my

“mission in life? My mission in life is to carry on to represent the qualities that my buddies”

who died, who had. And I think a lot of the times, I joke with people. I said, you know, when you're Normandy and you're jumping into a foxhole, you're not asking if that guy's a Republican or a Democrat. You're just jumping in that foxhole knowing that that guy's an American and that that guy is going to help you survive and you're going to help him survive. So why can't we get back

to that time where we're looking at it as America first? America is, you know, not a party. It's an idea.

It's an evolution of what the founding fathers discussed. The day after Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941, the president of the United States,

“FDR, addressed the nation in the speech that would become known for a century plus. Here's a bit of”

that. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America, was suddenly in deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. It's, I mean, that's some 80 years ago and people still know that phrase, a day that will live in infamy. I can only imagine what that did to the United States at the time, you know, his address, rousing the same president who'd been with the country and we're not going to

get into this. The 88% saying we're not going to get into this. And boy, as they say, what a difference of day makes. We rallied behind the president as we rallied behind W on September 11, 2001 and it just seems as though what I learned the most from World War II is that we're like an old Irish family where they're like seven brothers and all we do is beat up on each other but a God forbid someone from outside the family beats up on one of the brothers. We all to come together and we respond.

And that means like it's like why are we so divided now when we could all just find a medium like Eisenhower talked about as a president and come together and figure out what's best for America. Not what's best for a Republican party or it's best for the Democratic Party or the Independent Party. What is best for America? Why does it take us being attacked to come together as a nation? And Roosevelt's speech. I mean, they detested Roosevelt. The Republicans detested

Roosevelt. A lot of the country detested Roosevelt because of the New Deal and because of everything else he was he was pushing and a lot of the country despised W Bush because of what he was pushing but all of a sudden because of them because America was attacked. All the sudden we came together and said here is our common goal. Our common goal is to do what's best for

America and I always find that fascinating. You know, I have to say though I feel lucky to

“remember those times. I feel lucky to be one of the citizens who felt that and remembers”

that America first feeling like this is we love our country and we love each other and you amess with the family. You're going to pay. You're going to pay. Well, back to World War II, pay they did. We and Great Britain declared war on Japan. Hitler decided to join in and declared war on us and it was off to the races. He believed in accurately that we would be too distracted with the Japanese to fight him and he again unlike the Japanese leader who mentioned Hitler

underestimated us in a way that would be profound. He didn't think that we had the resolve. He didn't think we had the military and he didn't think that despite our booming economy, we had the resources to fight on two fronts and he was wrong. He was wrong. I mean, most of these people, the Japanese and the Germans looked at the Americans as soft that they didn't want war. They didn't want to fight in a war and that they would not use all of their resources

and initiative and everything else to fight in a war and they were wrong. The Japanese were wrong.

The Germans were wrong and they paid the price for that and so I always look at it as interesting

the United States. But Hitler's two main errors in World War II were declaring war on the Soviet

“Union and declaring war on the United States. The British were major players, of course as well,”

and we're in a precarious position for quite some time during the war not knowing whether they were going to face the same fate as France. Winston Churchill was the prime minister and in probably the best known speech ever. I mean, it's got to be at least one of them rallied his country to the cause but also with the note of caution about the enemy that they faced. Here's Winston Churchill addressing the House of Commons June 4, 1940.

We're still fighting France, but we'll fight on those needs and oceans. We should fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We should depend on our islands, whatever they start

“maybe. We should fight on the beaches. We should fight on the landing grounds. We should fight in the fields”

and in the streets. We should fight in the hills. We should never surrender. Yeah, and if

we can do not for a moment believe, this island or large part of it was subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seeds, tombed and guarded by the British feet would carry on the struggle until in God's good time. The new world with all its power in mind steps past the rest you handle the parade of the old. That was June 4, 1940 to the House of Commons. The thing about Winston Churchill was I just recently read a biography on him. If there was one thing he was great at,

it was wordsmithing. If you could take that to the next level with Winston Churchill,

“it was wordsmithing when it came to war, which was his particular area of expertise. It was a”

scale he'd worked on his entire life. He was built for that moment and he was ready for it when it came. That was before the attack to us at Pearl Harbor. Great Britain was in it. They were dealing with Hitler. They were dealing with everything and he was the man who got great Britain through it. That was genuinely the fact that they would throw him out of office as soon as they won the war. There's that classic scene from the King's speech, where they were following the British

story during World War II and the king is watching Adolf Hitler speak and the little girl who is the future Queen of England Queen Elizabeth as a little girl looks at her father and says, what is he saying? What is he saying that? "Masses of uniform men's to be vying to the eye

and incredible to the imagination as students spell bond on the end of the field."

This is a guy with a speech impediment who's observing how effective a communicator Hitler was. There's a reason there's a reason so many Germans followed this lunatic down the incredible murderous hole that they did. Yes. And we've interviewed German soldiers and those German soldiers have told us is that Hitler delivered us from the Treaty of Versailles. Our economy was devastated. Our military did not exist. We had no morale. By the time Hitler delivered his artillery, his ability

to motivate us. He had control the media. He had control everything he needed to control in order to be in charge of that country. So it's almost like an apology when we've interviewed German Germans veterans and they're not assessed. They're not fanatical. They're not the guys on the cusp of the concentration camps and everything else. These are just just general German soldiers based that he motivated us enough to both leave him. His artillery motivated us enough to

believe in him. And he also controlled the media at that time. And so the media message was his message. And by the time they discovered or they found out about the concentration camps and they found out about the Jews and they found out about the the obsession with controlling more territory,

There would always be resistance within the community, but the resistance would never be strong enough

“to overthrow what had already been done. Let's talk about it because the numbers are just stunning,”

you know June 6, 1944 was a Tuesday, more than 156,000 American British and Canadian troops stormed 50 miles of Normandy's fiercely defended beaches in northern France. And if you look back at how the battle was fought with the men running out of the ships onto beaches that were riddled with mines, taking fire from above. You can't help but as a layperson but to feel like they were they were sacrificed. There was how on earth could we not lose some 50% of our forces

undergoing that kind of an assault, which we knew was going to happen. You know, we knew is going to happen and we had laid traps so they would think that we weren't going to storm Normandy and so on. And they felt for our traps, but they were also prepared at Normandy as I understand it. And I just wonder as a as a historian when you look at that, did we know the extent to the

casualties we were likely to take storming those beaches? We always believed as a country,

we were going to we were going to expect more casualties than we actually that we actually attained on that day. The paratroopers, the addition of the paratroopers, the 80-second airborne and

“100-first airborne was something that was important to Eisenhower, not so much as as the British,”

but we we sustained so much less casualties than we expected that day. Eisenhower had written in note taking total blame for the failure of D-Day. Can you imagine that one person writing a note saying I have accepted the failure of the landings on the coast of Normandy? And he did that. He wrote two notes and and one of them was because he did not know which way the battle would go. And Normandy was a defining moment in the history of World War II and all of the plans that were

laid out and and we we talk about this a lot and it's interesting because we talk about this with corporations as well, a big corporation that you know you every plan looks great on paper

until that first shot is fired and that is a quote from from General Patton. Every plan looks

good until the first firing you know first grand and one grand is fired and then all plans go

“to hell and then it's the initiative of the Americans at that point. And I think it was the initiative”

of the Americans at that point compared to the Germans that was the ultimate success of D-Day in terms of knowing the plans of the divisions around you, the companies around you, knowing the plans of everybody around you. So if something went wrong you had the training to pick up the the rifle and move forward whereas the Germans were reliant on on Hitler and Von Roodstatt and in reliant on rommels orders and things like that it was initiative that one D-Day for the Americans

as opposed to what the Germans were were defending. How much prepped did we put into that effort before we actually launched the attack on tons of prepped tons of maps. Everything again looked great on paper and you know this is where we're going to land this is where the first infantry is going to land this is where the 29th infantry is going to land this is where the 82nd airborne is going to land this is where the hundred and first is going to land this is where the British

are going to land this is where the Canadians are going to land this is where the French are going to land everything went to hell in a hand basket as soon as D-Day began but but the thing is is that the Americans and the allies were also connected with the plans of D-Day that they knew that if something failed in this area that we'd be able to accommodate it in this area. The Germans also had the disadvantage of Hitler having decided he would be commander in chief and he was

a terrible military commander by taking a map. He was taking a map, he was sleeping and they were waiting for him to wake up before they waited for him to make the decision whether to move the tanks forward towards the beaches of Normandy and everything else whereas the Americans are saying okay this isn't working but but the captains and the latinants and the and the corporals

America is that is that we recognize that if something's not working we take the initiative to make sure once we lead the leader ourselves yes the the toughest fighting was said to be on

Omaha Beach first waves of American fighters were cut down in droves by the German machine gun fire

as they scrambled across the mine riddled beach but U.S. forces persisted all day pushing forward to a fortified sea wall up steep bluffs to take out the Nazi artillery by nightfall and they say all told around 2400 American troops were killed wounded or unaccounted for at Omaha Beach the Canadians were over at Juno Beach having an equally if not even tougher time the your you have a documentary on D-Day as well and it has an extraordinary segment of

survivors talking about that moment this this moment of storming the beach at Normandy

I mean it's it's a phrase now that people use to try to describe courage in a few words or less but you think about having to be one of those guys and actually do it understanding it's not wasn't a mystery to them the mines and the machine gun fire that was about to come their way and here is a couple minutes from tennis documentary on what that was like I was going into the beach I got here to pull it down the side of the ship I had a side of my boat and

“then that's what I realized as well this isn't going to be a piece of cake this is for real”

I looked into the well at the boat and it was 35 soldiers in there and I don't think there was an

atheist in yet because every one of us was making a sign of the process we were going in and I happen to look I looked at her right and I seen a boat and it's very realized what we were wanting to our job was to pull up these opt-through obstacles they had what they called hedgehogs and then they had these telephone poles with a ramp and I top of the telephone pole was a mine that was for it when our tight came in the boats had just slide up there and mine would explode and our

job was to blow up fifty-eyed gaps so the infantry could land I carried out a rifle now or what boat we can't see in an ammunition on a rifle

“and I forgot how many pounds of explosives I had in my back I believe they called it touch at all”

and I said go to the ramp or the small boat that was in to land it was I just as I jumped into water there was this explosion and while I was on the water maybe a couple of seconds some of them pulled me out and I couldn't find anything I couldn't find anything to prove that I was attached to they were all killed

I'm assuming he won't be left well I'm American hero and god bless you Tim for for interviewing these guys and getting

“their stories on camera that was day of days by Tim Gray and you should definitely wash that one too”

they're just humans you know they really they seem super human but they're just men and they and they were young men asked to do the most extraordinary things and they did it without complaint and with fallor when he called they see who he just heard from I said you know what did you do after the war he said I went back to high school I mean can you imagine that going through the fact that your naval combat demolition unit guy

like today they're called frog men or navy seals and seeing all of your guys killed

and I said you know when I was in high school Megan I would think I was still sucking my thumb

you know I looked at that guy and I'm like thinking myself what what an incredible American you

are to be able to accomplish that and and and then go back to high school and finish high school and Richard Fazio the guy behind him who lived the first half hour of saving private Ryan and I and Richard still live very passed away this year unfortunately but I but I look at them and I and I and I talked to young people today who are 17 or 18 years old and I go you know you this is what you're capable of I said whether you know it or not you're capable of this you're capable of being

the next greatest generation you know and and and and they look at me like I'm like I'm a alien from

Austin space or something like that and I said these guys didn't think they were capable of doing that

themselves at 17 or 18 but they did it well think of the sad obsession now with identity and you know skin color and gender and patriarchy it's like oh my god you could be devoting your energies to something so much bigger than just you and these these immutable characteristics that we've decided to obsess over right now think of what you could accomplish if you would take all of that time and energy and devoted to something greater than yourself if not a war

innovation solve the problem of the closure of those steel mines and the people looking for a new career identity find a way to help America find it's it's new footing in the age of electronics

“and those super computers and so I like that's what we need all the energies devoted to not”

naval gazing selfies and hysterical focus on things over which we will never have any control.

Yeah people base their self worth today on how many likes they get and that generation did not they base their life on coming onto the depression and surviving the depression when their parents were went from lawyer to selling apples and they fought world war two as a war and they thought it as a job and they came home and they raised their kids on the values that they learned during the war and and the attributes that they brought home and there's just there's too much there's

too much that's that's going by the wayside to to make America a great country there too many there's too much divisiveness and this is what these guys thought about you know they they they thought about they fought against Mussolini they fought against Hitler they fought against all these

“things that were trying to tear America apart and and and and I think of when I walked through”

the the cemetery and Normandy I look at the names from Connecticut and Montana and California and other places and I said you know this this kid who was 18 or 19 could have could have cured autism or cancer dementia or Alzheimer's or all of these things that were battling today if he had the chance if he wasn't killed on June 6th or June 15th or something like that and I think to myself boy oh boy you know what a wasted opportunity that that this young man

buried in the cemetery under this white cross or star of David could have changed the world but instead you know was killed on June 6th, 1944 and and I I just think what if what if what would this country be and and I look at that I've been to cemeteries all over the world in Manila where there are 35,000 missing and action buried you know and the wall of the missing there are the punch bone in Hawaii or or Holland or Belgium I said cheese what is there what

“would have been their destiny and I think we think that today with soldiers who were killed in”

Afghanistan or Iraq or or other places their families feel as though what would have they've been had there been their destiny what would they have grown to do and those poor families though have a different such a different outcome yeah at least we did at least we got to declare victory in World War II and there was zero doubt about whether who were the bad guys who were the good guys and whether it was worth it yeah and we don't know that today and today these soldiers go through

a situation where when they're fighting they don't know who I mean in World War II the Germans were helmets where we could identify them the Japanese were helmets and uniforms where we could identify them and today in Iraq and Afghanistan and other countries we don't know if that 12 year old is

that I just can't imagine yeah you can imagine well you you were not the only one

“a floored by the sacrifices made by our troops you had mentioned rommel the German field”

Marshall Irwin Rommel well you've got a sound bite from his son manford rommel and his dad had left the front lines to attend his wife's 50th birthday party on D-Day and he you actually got sound from his son which is pretty extraordinary listen to how he reacted. It was very surprised because of the light on the expert you were off the German mixed mind that nobody could land on the such weather conditions. It was a very courageous decision of generalizing our

and the real successful and further was away from the theater and some others as well they said

this is a really painful, they are learning while I'm not there. It's a vision that

“America's been more courageous and just him is concerning the better. Put that in a context a little”

tough to understand and for the for the listening audience what was he saying there? Well his father had gone home to Germany because he did not feel as though that the allies would be landing under such weather conditions as were you know as were the case on June 6, 1944 he believed that the allies would land in better weather conditions. So manford rommel's rommel's father had gone home for his wife's Lucy his wife Lucy's 50th birthday and bought her shoes and Paris. So manford

was home as the 1314 year old who witnessed his father getting the call back and hurling in Germany that the Allied invasion had begun in Normandy and and Irland rommel's headquarters

“at La Roche Guillaume which is outside of Paris was unoccupied by rommel on D-Day. Rommel should”

have been there on D-Day to direct the forces to direct the German forces and here he is in Germany because he did not think that the allies would land under such weather conditions whereas Eisenhower had said the conditions are marginal but will go and so manford was home watching his father's reaction getting the telephone call back in hurling in Germany that the allies had landed in Normandy and Irri is in Germany and manford you know articulated

that manford rommel was an outstanding human being he was the mayor of Stukar Germany for 23 years he also became very good friends with the family of general Montgomery after the war and he was the humanitarian but he was also witnessed to a momentous time in history when his father got a phone call in Germany that the allies were landing on D-Day in France and manford was also there when his father was taken away to be forced to commit suicide by Hitler because of the failures

of Normandy and because Rommel had been the not spoken critic of Hitler during World War II so manford rommel who passed away several years ago gave us this perspective of what it was like to be a 13 or 14 year old in the German army but to witness his father's reaction to these moments of an extraordinary in him it's a really laying his father saying the Americans and the Canadians the brits they were just more courageous that's they were you but your job must have dropped

when you got that sound bite what I did it was one of those things whereas a filmmaker you say there are certain people you want to interview who had a first row seat to World War II and manford rommel was one of those people and and after he passed away you know we were very devastated in his passing but he was a benevolent and he was a kind mayor in Stukar, Gemini but he was also an observer to some of the most momentous events in World War II and to have him in

some of our films was just one of those things where you just it's just dumb luck that we got him

when he was alive and and filmmakers are always a dumb luck is always part of being the good

filmmaker whether your camera or anybody else but but to have his perspective yeah to have his perspective on that was was incredible and you know he was firmly in the belief that the allies

within a year Hitler would surrender the Japanese would be another story it would take two

“Adam bombs to make them finally surrender and that I want to get to the USS Missouri”

which was the ship on which the surrender papers were signed and just an aside as to John McCain Senator John McCain's father and father who was on the ship reluctantly he had wanted to get back home he knew they won he he was ready to get it back home to his family and tell us what happened well you know it was just a situation where we had dropped two bombs on Japan and um the Japanese military the army especially still did not want to surrender so we dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

and the Japanese army did not want to surrender even after two times bombs which is absolutely nuts but then they the emperor Hiroshima decided you know enough as enough so when Hiroshima decides enough as enough the Japanese military the army decides they want to assassinate Hiroshima Hiroshima

“so we had planned to to invade Japan in November of that year of 1945 and the casualties would”

have been in the millions and Japan probably would have been wiped off the face of the earth so it goes to show you that when the surrender was officially signed by the Japanese Hirahito was the was the emperor and decided enough was enough the Japanese military still after two atomic bombs wanted to continue the fight so when we knew at that point Truman knew at that point that the Japanese were willing to defend their homeland to the last

whether that be children with spears and women and men and everybody else with with with everything else he decided we would drop two atomic bombs and um those who served in the Pacific

totally agreed and those who had served in Europe totally agreed we've never come across a

“world war two veteran who said that we should not have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan”

now we're looking at this at a 20th century lens we're not looking at this at a 21st century lens atomic bombs today are devastating we do not want them we do not want Russia to drop an atomic bomb on the Ukraine we we feel as though that would be just you know but in 1945 and the lens that we're looking at in the 21st in the 20th century that was the appropriate thing to do to save lives so the surrender and Tokyo bay on the USS Missouri was attended by you know the navy and marines

in the Japanese and they finally decided to surrender but at that point the Japanese army still did

not want the surrender so that tells you the fanaticism of what the Americans were going to face or the allies the Russians everybody else were going to face if they invaded Japan in 1945 in November of 1945 so Japan would have been wiped off the face of the earth we would have suffered another million plus casualties we'd already printed another million purple hearts in anticipation of the fight in Japan so Truman decided enough as enough this world war needs

to end and it eventually did end but only because Emperor Hiro decided that enough was enough

and that the Japanese were defeated and even then Japanese did not apologize and have never

apologized for Pearl Harbor or are starting World War II in the Pacific and that has always been a sticking point for the United States that Japan has never apologized for that and Japan always felt that they were in the Pacific was a legitimate legitimate and that it was caused by the oil embargo and the embargo of natural resources and that they were forced to do what they did so Japan has never officially apologized for Pearl Harbor or starting World War II in the Pacific and that's

always been a little sticking point with Pacific veterans I know one veteran who who was at home one day and Meghan his son came home with a Honda motorcycle and his son was washing his hands and the kitchen sink and looked outside and his dad who was a survivor Pearl Harbor at Schofield barracks was pouring gasoline on this Honda motorcycle and about ready to to light it on fire and this son came running out and saying what are you doing and he said I'm not going to let you drive this

this Japanese motorcycle and his son said why not and his dad had to explain to him why and

Pacific War and the European War were two different wars they were two specific wars they were totally

“they were totally different wars the savagery of the Pacific War was no comparison to what was going”

on in Europe and and the Geneva Convention was not observed by the Japanese and they they treated prisoners as cowards and the fight in the Pacific beginning with Guadalcanal and moving on to the other islands was a totally different war and the veterans in Europe had such a respect for the veterans who fought in the Pacific because there were no rules in the Pacific War it was a free for all it was just a total absolutely bloody free for all compared to what was going on in Europe

we've only touched briefly on the Holocaust and what happened there the Hitler's atrocities were discovered in full he took his own life on April 30th, 1945 about a week before his country surrendered as I pointed out lit Japan would come later the story about the Missouri that I thought was kind of interesting just because people know the name John McCain so it's a modern day reference that they can relate to is his granddad was on the Missouri when the surrender papers were

or signed he didn't want to be there he wanted to go home to his wife he then got his

commanding officers said you will stay here because you were critical to all of this we want you to

be there so he stayed he went home to his wife and this is again John McCain's granddad and

“I think it was four days later while celebrating his coming home party with his wife”

he dropped dead of a heart attack yeah a death that was on the front page of the paper that's how important he was to us and it explained so much about how John McCain wound up in military service and he of course would be tortured and endured terrible things during and just you know his legacy and his family's legacy of sacrifice for country it was only I think 61 it was a young man but just the stresses of the war would take lives well beyond the end date of the surrender

yeah I just had the opportunity about a month ago to visit John McCain's grave at the Naval Academy in anapolis and also Steve Bellachak who was the father of Bill Bellachak and others at the Naval Academy and there are others who were buried at Arlington who are who are in

“the same boat you know just just men who who served and in our mission as a foundation is that we never”

forget that generation and unfortunately it takes December 7th or September 11th for us to all of a sudden discover the American flag and I wish it wasn't that way but history but history shows us that unfortunately the only times that we come together as a country is during those times who are attacked but we do have the potential and I underline that word potential to come together for causes that can help America as a whole I would love to think that we'll do it

I mean the problem is now hanging the flag is considered a partisan act I mean it is now

in here times if you put the flag out in front of your house it means you're a Republican which is absurd that's absurd there's still a lot of Democrats who love the flag it's being made it's being made into a partisan symbol can I just spend a minute on this and I'll wrap it up but I read a story about how back to Pearl Harbor the guys who are on the ships who are dying now who survived and are dying now if they so desire they can have their ashes placed on the ships

yeah if you were on the USS Arizona and and you were on the Arizona on December 7th 1941 you can have your earned brought back to the battleship and in turret and turret number four and that's the only situation if you were on the Arizona let's say you spent the night in Honolulu on the 9th December 7th you're not eligible but if you were on the Arizona on December 7th 1941 and you would like to go and rejoin your your crannates the the folks at Pearl Harbor in the United

States Navy will make that happen so your earned will be taken by divers down to turret number four and placed among the 42 or so irons who have been placed in turret number four since this all started in the early 1980s if you're a Pearl Harbor survivor and you want your ashes brought back to Pearl Harbor they can be spread in the harbor as well or brought back to the USS Utah which was a battleship I'm also at Pearl Harbor it was on an active battleship but it's it's interesting because we've

have had their irons returned to their crew to the to the crew so they're about 900 plus

“who are still in tombed on the USS Arizona who never left the battleship after December 7th 1941”

of the 1177 who died and at some point in their life they decide that they want to rejoin their

crewmates and one guy Raymond Harry who is from the state of Rhode Island never talked about the USS

Arizona after after Pearl Harbor he never mentioned the fact that he had a strong connection but on his deathbed he decided that he wanted to rejoin his crewmates so it was left up to his granddaughter to carry the iron back through New Jersey and Dallas and Honolulu now hear this master chief Raymond Harry effective immediately sure duty is canceled report back to USS Arizona to your point in place of duty and to soon the watch as we bring Raymond Harry to his final resting place here on earth we

“pray that your blessings and your peace will be up on all those who rest here for Raymond's remains”

will now rest alongside many of his former shipmates even as his spirit reunites with them and your heavenly kingdom is your most holy name that I pray Amen

it's always an honor to dive the Arizona and the ultimate honors to be able to bring one of the

sailors back home the last thing that the family sees is the iron passing into the water and into the ship and to have divers at the USS Arizona in a ceremony take his arm and bring his arm back to turret number four on the Arizona and put it in there with about 42 other arms

“and to me it's probably one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed as a man who never”

ever talked about pararber who never ever wanted to go back to visit pararber post world war two

was offered the chance to go back and see the memorial that was built and to see the oil that was leaking from the battleship to smell the oil that was leaking from the battleship he never wanted anything to do with it never wanted to talk about it but on his death bed he decided I want to rejoin my crewmates one of the the navy diver who is responsible for lowering the remains in said as follows in one one report quote it's a large hole we place the iron through and then you can kind of

feel it release yeah I tell the family when I feel that pull it's the ship accepting back one of its own oh my goodness I mean it's to to be on the Arizona memorial when that flag is presented to a grand daughter and then to watch the divers bring the iron down to deter it number four and placed in with the rest of the guys who wanted to go back after I mean that that to me tells me that the finding moment of their lives happened when they were 17 or 18 years old the defining moment of their life

didn't happen when they were 40 or 50 or 60 or 30 it happened when they were a teenager it happened when they were 18 or 20 years old and and that to me is an incredible thing to have the defining moment of your life happen when you're a teenager and to know that anything else you did in the rest of your life would be insignificant to what happened during your time in World War II and a lot of these guys took such risks after the war they started their own businesses they became

cab drivers or plumbers or Jack Taylor found an enterprise rent a car or the men who came back found that you haul because they had been through the worst of their life they had been through the ultimate risk in their life that anything else after that was just gravy and and yet find that fascinating they never except the word hero they'll kick you and they won't allow it you've documented that as well and this is one of the soundbites that jumped out of us so beautiful from

this is again from your second up piece on on D Day remembered sought 22 I'm not the hero I'm not

that you all know and their brothers and their brothers and their sisters and even their children

“and some of those people those are the heroes of this war where the survivors now and I've got”

you feel that way but and I hope you always do because democracy and liberty are two pressures

that until I came over here I didn't realize how the pressure was yeah that was Chris Highsler Chris was in the 507 parachute infantry regiment and he was landed on D Day and was taken prisoner on June 7, 1944 and and if you call these men heroes they will cut you off right away and they will say the heroes are buried in these sanitaries and they're just there's that

“survivor's guilt I think that any veteran faces that why why the guy in the left of me was killed”

and why the guy in the right of me was killed and why I was spared and that generation is really in tune with that and so when when I I make them to stay every blue moon of saying you know hey you're real hero I know and then I brace for the kick in the knee and and and I say these guys

are going to beat me up because they're always to a man or a woman they're going to say that

the heroes are buried in the American cemeteries and I said god how humble is that before we go

“I'm going to end it on this on D Day yeah FDR who was president he died in office that's why”

Truman took over by the time we dropped the bomb offered remarks to the country which was unaware that this battle was underway and concerned for their loved ones who were over there fighting

this treacherous fight and in part he offered the following prayer listen

Almighty God our sons pride of our nation this day of set up on a mighty endeavor a struggle to preserve our public our religion and our civilization and to separate a suffering humanity lead them straight and cruel give strength to their arms stopness to their hearts steadfastness in their faith they will need their blessings their role will be long and hard for the enemy is strong he may hold back our forces success may not come with rushing

speed but we shall return again and again and we know that by thy grace and by the righteousness of our course our sons will triumph those words from FDR a mighty endeavor a struggle to preserve our republic our religion and our civilization and to set free a suffering humanity our sons will triumph and they did they did triumph and we they have the the gratitude of generations after generations here in America and beyond Tim thank you so much it's been a pleasure

getting to meet you and getting to watch your work keep it up all the best to you thank you Megan it's it's been great to watch your career as well and keep up your great work as well God bless America yes everybody thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show no BS no agenda and no fear