Transcription
Do they implode, or do good people get together and force the implosion?
A democratic coalition, when it pulls together, when it pulls its resources together for a single common goal, is unbeatable by any autocrat because they're always going to be better. And the reason they're always going to be better is because they're better at harnessing stuff, and they've got more checks and balances on that ultimate power and that direction in which way something's happening. Because someone like Churchill or Roosevelt, they were their own men. They knew what they were thinking. They had their own mind, but they were surrounded by people who gave them advice, who could say, "Oh, I'm not sure about that," or, "That's a really bad idea," or, "Definitely not," or, "I think you might want to consider this." And they'd listen. Ultimately, they're making decisions, but they're still listening. An autocrat doesn't listen. An autocrat, surrounded by paranoia and suspicion at every single turn, so he's hearing what he wants to hear rather than reality. And that doesn't make you make good decisions.
Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining me now, um, my favorite historian. How about that? James Holland. My favorite historian.
Stop it.
Uh, because, you know, I'm a big World War II buff and I've read just about everything. I have a whole column of James Holland books, but the one we're going to talk about today, best-selling author and historian. The one we're going to talk about today is Victory '45. It's the 80th anniversary of VE Day, The End of the War in Eight Surrenders. What a great book. Uh, you know what, James? I will say this about you. You know, I'm a history buff, so I think I know everything. I'm a little bit smug about it, but every time I read one of your books, I learn something that I didn't know. So, I want to applaud you for that. And, uh,
Well, thank you.
And by the way, we're both part of the Gold Hanger family. See that? So, we can't get, you're stuck with me, James.
There's an unconditional family, as you know. So, you, you have no choice but to be with me. But, uh,
It's like, it's like joining in a kind of, you know, an Italian family, isn't it? All that around the kind of proverbial table.
Yes. You got to take all the kind of beautiful food.
Yep. You got to take all the bombass and all the dysfunction, but you have to, have to stay in love. Okay. So,
Do you think, do you think Tony is the mother?
Uh, he, yeah, he could have. He's a maternal. He has some maternal instinct. I think Caddy would be in disagreement with me on that, but that's what makes our podcast a good podcast. But I want to talk about love for a second, because where does this love of history, and for those of you that are listening, James is sitting there in front of this amazing bookshelf that I want to take a picture of, and I recognize a lot of those books that are actually on my bookshelf. But where does this love of history come from?
Well, I, I, I think it was as a, as a child, um, you know, my big bro is, um, is Tom, who's also part of the Gold Hanger staple and, uh, co-host of Rest is History with Dominic, of course. And, you know, he was, he's two and a half years older than me and he kind of, you know, he kind of sort of bossed the kind of the, the kind of fraternal thing a bit when we were kids. And we, we had loads of, you know, little Ladybird books on kind of Nelson, or we had a great one on the Big Horn, the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Had a kind of sort of picture of Custer in his buckskins on the front, you know, kind of shooting his pistol surrounded by, uh, surrounded by by Native Americans and, you know, about to go down. So, it was all kind of sort of part of, of, of, you know, growing up, really. And, and, you know, when we went on vacation, we didn't go to, you know, exotic ski holidays or anything like that. We went to Hadrian's Wall, or we did the castles of the Welsh Marches, or something like that. So, it would kind of, you know, it was just kind of in the blood a bit. And then I studied a lot of history at school, at high school, and then I went to university and I studied, you know, just like a single, um, um, bachelor's degree in history as well. So, you know, it's kind of there, right from the word go.
No, I mean, I mean this, you, to me, you are an inspiration and a role model because I tell my kids, you got to do something you love, because if you do something you love, you're never working. Okay. And I,
I find your love of history and your insatiable curiosity infectious. And I love hanging out with you for that reason. And I've learned a lot.
Thank you.
I've learned a lot about World War II from this book because you took a different angle than most historians. Of course, you wrote it with your podcast co-host, Al Murray, who you and I have had, uh, have had the great opportunity to be on your podcast, which I'm grateful for.
Uh, but you take us,
Well, you were fantastic on that. It was, thanks for coming on.
Well, listen, it's, it's great joy.
Well, we're mutual fans of Truman and Co., aren't we? And Roosevelt and,
Yeah, I want, and I want to talk about,
that era. I mean,
I want to talk about this because these were exceptional people. Uh, they were less focused on their own aggrandizement,
and more focused on what the hell was going to go on for the world.
Yeah.
And I also think that, uh, I just say this to you, uh, they got a lot right. They got a lot right, you know, and they,
and they did a, they did a lot of things that made our world, the one you and I were born into, uh, in the 1950s and '60s. They made our world a better world. But you talk about eight surrenders, um, which is interesting because, uh, you know, we learn about it as a one single VE Day, but tell us why you chose eight surrenders. What was the thought there?
Well, actually, the whole thing was quite funny because years ago, like literally 20 years ago, um, I did a, I did a little TV program. It's my first little bit of ever, ever I'd done of telly, and I did a little documentary about the end of the war in Europe. And, and what we realized when we were kind of researching that was that actually the one day where there weren't any surrenders was Victory in Europe Day, which is the 8th of May, 1945. You know, the surrender actually happened kind of in the early hours of the 7th of May, and then it was kind of signed off by, with the Russians, the Soviet Union, um, in the early hours of the 9th of May. But actually, nothing happened on, on the, on the 8th. And I always thought that was kind of curious. And then you sort of think, well, okay, so if the, if the allies laid down in January 1943 at the Casablanca conference, if FDR, President Roosevelt, comes up and suddenly announces to the world's press that the only unconditional surrender is going to do, then when is the first unconditional surrender? And the first unconditional surrender is in Italy. Well, actually, strictly speaking, it's, it's, it's Italy, but they don't really realize they've signed up to unconditional surrender because there's kind of short terms and long terms. And that's back in September 1943. But, you know, to end the actual war, the first unconditional surrender is in Italy on the 2nd of May. Comes into being on the 2nd of May. And then, and then you've got the huge number of German troops surrendering to Field Marshal Montgomery, British, um, commander in northern Germany, um, on the afternoon of the, of the 4th of May, coming into act, um, coming into being on the, on the 5th of May. By the way, also, you've got the surrender of, of Berlin, um, to the So, to the Red Army on the 2nd of May. Then you've got another, you've got the, the surrender of German forces in Bavaria and Austria to Sixth Army Group, you know, everyone forgets them, you know, on the 5th of May. So, suddenly, it's quite a lot. And then you've got two for, for, for Japan because you've got actually the kind of, okay, look, we're going to throw in the towel on the 15th of August, but then you've got the actual surrender ceremony on the, on the USS Missouri and Tokyo Bay on the 2nd of September. So, we, we originally thought, well, we'll do six, and then we toted it up and realized we miscounted because we're rubbish at math, and then, and then realized there was eight.
So that's why it's the surrender in eight, eight, in eight surrendered. I don't, I don't know if we've had the chance to be on the USS Missouri, but when I went to, um, Hawaii, I took my wife to Hawaii. I said, "I'm sorry, we got to stop at the Pearl Harbor Memorial." And I had to go to the USS Missouri. And of course, I stood on the deck where the signing was, and they've got the, have you been to this? Have you seen this?
I haven't. It's, it's absolutely on my massive to-do list, which is go to, go to Hawaii. I, I do, in sales. You make it to Hawaii, stop in Honolulu and go visit this war memorial. But,
but what, what, what always impressed me about it,
is the ship, you know, we see it as this massive, magisterial thing, but it's actually quite small. And when you think about what happened on the ship, and the significance of the ship, and of course, you know, whatever the, uh, picadillos were of, uh, General MacArthur and the vanity of him, and some of the foibles of him, uh, the Japanese government still has lots of elements of the constitution that he put in place, uh, in the 1940s, in 1945 and '6 and '7. Uh, and he had a lot of respect for that culture, which has led to great long-term legacy of success for the country in the post-World War II era. So, so it's just, it's just phenomenal, uh, vectors that come off all of these surrenders. I want to go to Carl Wolf, who's the SS general, uh, who is obviously famous in your book for art theft. He's famous for money laundering. Uh, he's got,
he's also smooth as glass, by the way. Yeah, he's this guy is a really smooth operator in this part of your book.
He's kind of likes a lady, you know?
100%. And this reads like a fiction thriller. So tell us about Carl Wolf and tell us about him at the end of the Second World War.
Well, I mean, he's an absolute SOB. I just want to kind of put that right down there now. You know, he's, he's, he's an evil Nazi bastard, and, you know, he should have had it coming, but he also happens to be a, a kind of, um, you know, credit where credit is due, he's, he's an incredible manipulator. He's an incredible political operator. Uh, um, and he is number two, joint number two, because this is the way the Nazis do things. They, they never have kind of single standouts because the only standout can be Hitler. So, everyone else is on a, some kind of sort of warped parallel command structure. And this is how it works all the way down. So you have Himmler, who is head of the SS, but under him are two equal standing subordinate SS guys, Carl Wolf and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and they hate each other's guts, as is the way with, with, uh, this kind of setup, because everyone's constantly pitched against each other. Um, and they're rivals for attention and positioning and all the rest of it. So, of course, they hate each other, but they're also very different. Gina Kaltenbrunner is German, um, and a kind of sort of jackbooted thug. Carl Wolf is a Viennese lawyer and kind of, you know, slightly humongous, and he's kind of 6'6 or 6'5 or something, and got dueling scars and all the rest. But, but, but Carl Wolf has slightly mildly disgraced himself by being morally corrupt. And he's morally corrupt in the Nazi state by divorcing his wife. I mean, can you imagine the Nazi regime, anything quite as awful as divorce? I mean, really. So, anyway, so he's been banished from Hitler's headquarters to, to run the show in Italy. And, and although Mussolini has been sprung for, he was deposed in July 1943, then imprisoned by his, by, by the Italians, he's then sprung, um, in September 1943, um, and put in charge of a puppet government in the north, the RSI, the Socialist Republic of Italy. Um, it is Wolf running the show. Kesselring, Field Marshal Kesselring, is running the show on the ground in terms of the military stuff. Wolf is doing everything else. And he realizes pretty quickly that, uh, you know, well into 1944, um, that they're not going to win. And so suddenly all that kind of Nazi ideology that they've been really into, he's suddenly chucking that out with the dishwater and thinking, how am I going to save my neck? So he starts being very, very, um, slack on partisans. Um, he starts letting people strike in Milan and all the rest of it, not being too harsh, and showing what a lovely, decent, fair-minded guy he is, who kind of, you know, at his heart, he just loves being decent, and all he wants to do is save lives and end the war. What he really wants to do, of course, is save his neck. So he pursues a, he pursues peace feelers with Alan Dulles, who I'm sure any, um, upstanding American will have heard of, but he, at the time, was the OSS man in, in Bern, in Switzerland.
OSS, later the CIA director, was head of the Warren Commission. Yep.
Right. All of that. Yeah. So he's a, so he's, you know, he's, he's not, he's in the middle of his career, but he hasn't reached the dizzy heights he's going to, to reach, but he's still the main man. He's the same main US guy in Switzerland. And Wolf actually does, again, credit where credit is due, put his neck on the line. He, he does some pretty brave stuff, and, and stuff that's very, very high risk, very high risk. But he also puts up various kind of sort of insurance policies, such as, um, stealing all the, uh, all, all Italy's art treasures and, and keeping them for safekeeping. I mean, you understand, you know, what he's going to do is, he's going to keep them from Hitler, but he's also going to keep them as a bargaining chip as well. And, um, and doing various other measures to ensure that he gives himself the best possible chance of getting out of this horrible mess that the Nazis have got themselves into at the end of the war. It's just the most ridiculous story. And you're right about Hollywood. I always kind of thought, I always could imagine sort of Quentin Tarantino making a film about this.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, look at the ugliness of it. You know, there's a, you know, listen, I, I want to test this on you. Feel like there are, we al, we often talk about the single man theory of history.
Yeah.
But, but I think that there's like a great man and a really bad man theories. Let me hear me out for a second. The revolution, the American Revolution, lots of enlightened philosophers framed the constitution. It's a set of very good men trying to come up with an idyllic protocol to prevent tyranny. At the flip side is Nazi Germany. You have these homicidal maniacs that get together, actually take over a sovereign nation, and they work together to corrupt each other. You know, I always tell my kids, hey, you know, you're, you're the weighted average of the five people you hang out with. Think of who Hitler was hanging out with. Okay, evil personified, but he's hanging out with guys like this, and he's hanging out with Göring and Himmler and, uh, all these different characters, uh, that we see on the stage, you know, Goebbels, etc. So, so I guess, I guess the point I'm making though, is do they implode, or do we good people get together and force the implosion? Meaning,
I,
good people get together and force the implosion.
That, that's what it is ultimately, right? Because, because look,
look what's going on in Russia. Look at what's going on in other authoritarian states. You know,
I, okay, this is, this is my, and you, I'll be interested to see your take on this. This is my theory. So I, I slightly believe in big man period because I think, I think without Hitler, I don't think there would have been the Nazi regime. I, I don't think that was inevitable.
There might have been a communist regime in Germany. Could have been any number of different scenarios. It could have become a dictatorship effectively. They could have canceled democracy.
But, but, but Hitler is absolutely the motivating icon around the Nazi movement, and I, I can't see it happening without him. But with him, suddenly all these other weasels come out of the, out of the, um, out of the out of the shadows. Uh, um, in terms of the allies' ability, I, okay, this is my theory. I think a, a, a democratic coalition, when it pulls together, when it pulls its resources together for a single common goal, is unbeatable by any autocrat because they're always going to be better. And the reason they're always going to be better is because they're better at harnessing stuff, and they've got more checks and balances on that ultimate power and that direction in which way something's happening. Because, you know, someone like Churchill or Roosevelt, they, they were their own men. They knew what they were thinking. They had their own mind, but they were surrounded by people who gave them advice, who could say, "I'm not sure about that," or, "That's a really bad idea," or, "Definitely not," or, "I think you might want to consider this," and they'd listen. Ultimately, they're making decisions, but they're still listening. An autocrat doesn't listen. An autocrat, surrounded by paranoia and suspicion at every single turn. So, he's hearing what, what he wants to hear rather than the reality. And that doesn't make you make good decisions. Yeah. Now, you can be strong enough to cowtow your enemies, but when you pull together, you're going to be stronger. I mean, this is, you know, this is, you know, cf the situation right now. If Europe pulls itself together, there's 780 million people in Europe. You know, we got some of the greatest minds. We've got huge amounts of money. Um, we've got all the resources. We've got access to the world's oceans. We've got everything you could possibly, possibly want at our fingertips. All we need is a bit of charisma, a bit of leadership, a bit of pulling together, a bit of glue, a bit of shared vision, and, and, and to snap the kind of people of Europe out of their complacency that everything's going to be fine, because it's not. It's not if we don't do something about it. But it will be if we,
Why does it take us so long though? Why does it take us so long?
Because it always does. Because we're complacent. You know, this is that great line from Maynard Keynes, you know, who's writing about the economic consequences of the, uh, of the Versailles Treaty. He's writing this book in 1919. He's just despairing at the kind of peace treaty that's being pulled together following the catastrophic First World War. And he goes back and he goes, "Just consider, you know, you're a reasonably well-to-do guy living in London. You can telephone your mates. You can get, you can eat pretty much anything you want from all around the world. You can travel in a way that's more simple and quicker than it's ever been, um, um, ever before in mankind. You know, the world just seems full of possibilities, and you cannot imagine for a minute that this progress is, this, this steady progress is ever going to end." And then suddenly it's August 1914, and the catastrophe hits the world, and you know, all the rest of it. You have the First World War, and you know, millions are dead, and the catastrophe of the early part of the 1920s, and wheelbarrows of money and all the rest of it. And that's the point, you know, we, we, we have reached that point now where we're just being a bit complacent. You know, we're, we're taking things for granted. We're feeling entitled. You know, we're in the West, we can do what we like. You know, we all, we're worried about is sort of what's going on on reality TV shows, and, you know, what the next blockbuster set is going to be on Netflix and stuff, and, you know, who's trending on TikTok, rather than kind of looking at that bigger world around us, which is actually starting to corrupt in a very, very bad way. You know, wake up, everybody. You know, that's the bottom line, right?
I, I think it, I think it's so well said. You know, and it always, it stumps me. You know, I remember, uh, you know, we had Nazi sympathizers in the United States, Nazi sympathizers in the UK, and yet people get around her. I mean, we both remember Ambassador Joe Kennedy.
Yeah.
What a, what a Scotty whack he was.
Yeah. I mean, I, we remember. I mean, he was literally, I mean, it's surprising to me, given what Joe Kennedy did, that it didn't cost his son, Jack Kennedy, that election. Do you know what?
Yeah. Amazing. You're surprised.
And he, and he's cut from a different kind of sort of cloth, isn't it? Because I've just been, I've just been relooking at his, um, inauguration speech in 1960. And what does he say? He says, "Don't think what America can do for me. Think what you can do for America." And, "Citizens of the world, don't think what America can do for you. Think what you can do for the world."
There you go. That's, that's the mantra that everyone needs to get a grip of right now.
Right?
We need to move out of our selfish, isolationist bubble just in front of our nose, and, you know, and see the bigger picture.
The irony is that Churchill despised his father, but Jack Kennedy loved Winston Churchill. You know, he took a lot of those ideas from Churchill's speeches, right? I mean, about,
you know, the world, you remember Churchill's theories about the United States of Europe and unifying Europe,
and so forth. I want to, I want to go to something in the book that really struck me. I mean, it has so many striking stories, but, uh, I want to talk about Alan Moskin. He's a private, of course, from New Jersey. Gonna mispronounce this because I'm an Italian from Long Island, so forgive me, but he stumbles into Gurskirchen camp, I guess it's called.
Gurskirchen.
What, what is this camp? Tell us about this, and how important was it for you to pick some ordinary soldiers in this story? Because, yeah, I thought that was a brilliant part of the story because,
you know, my uncle, my uncles were ordinary soldiers,
and they saw atrocities that they never liked to talk about. Tell us about this private, this young man.
Yeah. Well, well, the whole thing came about because Al and I were discussing how we, you know, you can't do a book about the end of the war and not confront the Holocaust and the camps and all the rest of them, the liberation, the camps. And, you know, like all these things in the Second World War, there's the kind of sort of, there's the kind of the key names, aren't there? The kind of star names, you know, Dachau, um, Belsen, Auschwitz, obviously, um, and so on, Ravensbrück, you know, these are the names that people, ever, you know, most people who know anything about the Second World War, know anything about the Holocaust, have heard of those names. No one's heard of Gurskirchen. No one. And the point is this, that what we wanted to show was, rather than trying to kind of cover the whole thing, we wanted to to illustrate the liberation of the camps through the eyes of one victim and one liberator, and we wanted them to have a connection. So, we didn't want the liberator to be at a different camp. We wanted them to be at the same camp. We wanted to be one of the forgotten camps. So, all these main camps had, like Mauthausen or whatever, had satellite camps, and Gurskirchen was a, was a satellite camp, and all of them were horrific. I mean, you know, particularly by April 1945, May 1945, you know, because Germany's run out of food, run out of supplies, you know, and, and the last people to get, get looked after are your slave labor, of course. So, we also then I started thought, wouldn't it be interesting to have also have an American, um, who was not from, you know, a superstar division? You know, the big ones are the Third Infantry Division, which had more days of combat than any other, had Audie Murphy in it, most decorated US serviceman of this, of World War II, you know, or the Big Red One, the First Infantry Division, that landed on Omaha Beach, whatever it might be. We don't, we, you know, or the Second Armored Division, Hell on Wheels. We don't want the kind of the celebrity divisions. But I wanted a forgotten division, no one's ever heard of. So, we chose the 71st, because they only arrived in Europe in February 1945, for goodness sake. And, and my guy, Alan Moskin, only comes into action in March. But that doesn't belittle his experiences. Those, those kind of three months of combat that he sees are absolutely awful. That's enough to keep you going for a lifetime, frankly, what he saw. So, we wanted a division that wasn't well-known. And I also wanted a Jewish American soldier. So, suddenly, there's this guy from, from, from New Jersey, um, um, you know, who's a Jew, who's in an unknown, you know, he's an unknown bloke. He's just one of the hundreds of thousands, one of the millions in uniform who just ends up being in this place at this particular moment. And he comes into contact with a Hungarian Jew, um, called Hugo Grin, who, by a miracle, has managed to survive, you know, Auschwitz and Hungarian, um, roundups and unspeakable privations and hardships and cruelty, um, and, and makes it through. And so, there was a kind of beautiful bit of synergy there that, that when, when I, so, so basically, I had to, I thought about an unknown camp. Then I found Hugo Grin. Then I thought, okay, well, I want to find someone from the 71st. So, I started looking, researching the 71st Infantry Division because they liberated it. And then I just found, bingo. I found Alan Moskin. And, you know, the fact that he was Jewish was just perfect. And sometimes, you know, when you're researching, these little, little bits of jigsaw just, just slot together, just absolutely beautifully. It was like they were all kind of sort of made for one another. And, you know, as a storyteller, you've, you've hit gold. And I think because all those three, the camp, and the division, and the liberator, and the liberated, are all completely unknown, I think it's much more powerful as a result.
Yeah. Listen, it's an amazing part of the story. And, uh, you know, and I know I've told you about my, uh, my uncles and their, you know, assault on Normandy Beach. Also, one of my uncles fought, two of my uncles, actually, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And,
Wow.
and they were common infantry men. And, uh, my, my cousin actually took the, uh, his GI suit and had it dry cleaned recently. He has it hung up in his, uh, in his store.
How amazing.
And, uh, and I just think about these men. I mean, they were, uh, you know, running their lives, ordinary people.
They got thrust.
Yeah. And, and also to see the horror, you know. I mean, and by the way, you know, we don't talk about it, James, but Joseph Stalin had high levels of horror going on as well, but we referred to him, because he was one of our allies, frankly, as Uncle Joe. But I mean, he killed millions of people. He was, uh, treacherous, and, uh,
you know, in many ways was Hitler-like, but we don't see him in the same way.
Yeah. I mean, I, I most certainly do. I, I've just been sanctioned by the Russians this last week.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah. For speaking out against them. I mean, I, you know, not only were they, were they cruel and corrupt, um, you know, they were just unspeakably profligate with people's lives. I mean,
you know, it's interesting, but, you know, you, you think about the kind of final battle for Berlin. Um, it's, uh, it starts on the 16th of April, finishes on the 2nd of May with the defeat of surrender of Berlin. In that time, the Red Army, which is totally overwhelming compared to the pretty feeble German defenses, you know, which is, yes, there's a handful of old hands and, and old Wehrmacht veterans and, and Waffen-SS, but the vast majority are kind of teenage boys and old men. The Red Army loses 800,000 casualties in that time, a little over two weeks. I mean, what the heck? What are you doing? How, how can you be that bad that your, your generalship? I'm not complaining about the individual soldiers. Ukraine. Exactly. Nothing that they did then. Just throw the people out there, cannon fodder, obliterate the people.
Yeah. The cruelty is unspeakable. It's unspeakable.
It's horrific. But I just find, I just find, listen, you're, I'm always learning something in your writing. Um, unfortunately, I only, we, you know, this is a Gold Hanger podcast now, by the way. I don't know if you know that, but Open Book, we have it limited to 30 minutes. So, I've got to, unfort,
I got to push ourselves to the end here. But I want to,
I want to bring up five words that Holly and I, my producer, put together from the book. And what we'd like you to do, James, I'm going to say the word, and I want you to come up with your first impression and give me a few sentences. Okay? You ready?
Go. Yeah.
I say the word Germany. You say what?
What in terms of 1945?
Yes. 1945.
I say absolute delusion. I mean, the delusion of the high command at the end is a tragedy. You know, I, I found it just breathtaking how stupid, deluded, uh, um, cruel that the, the leadership that took over once Hitler shot himself was. I mean, have these guys not learned anything over the previous six years? I mean, Dönitz, Keitel, all these guys, they're just,
I mean, what are they doing keeping it going till the 8th of May? I mean, 7th of May. I mean, it's it's crazy. But also the people, sir, you know, I mean, if you, if you look at Hitler's approval rating in April of 1945, still in the mid-40s, you know, I mean, it's just sort of crazy, right? I mean, just,
it's incredible. Well, that's brainwashing for you. I mean, exactly. You know, the, the world is littered with instances of large numbers of people falling for complete,
I'm, I'm well aware of that, sir, and the contemporary aspects of that as well. Okay.
And this is, this is why the study of history is so important because it can teach us stuff about today.
Exactly. Exactly. Let's go to Japan.
Right.
I say the word Japan. You say what?
I say yet more delusion. I, I say delusion and tragedy. I'm cheating by having two words. Again, you know, these guys at the top, they've just got themselves into a God almighty mess that they're not willing to confront,
you know, they're not willing to have a, a, a realistic exit clause. It's kind of all or nothing, you know, and this, this kind of what nonsense that somehow suicide is better than than defeat, or, you know, this sort of warped notion of honor is, is just bonkers. No, you know, even after the, the, the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, you know, they're still faffing around, kind of refusing to throw in the towel and not even believing it's an atomic bomb. I mean, it's just crazy. And the amazing thing about it, at the very end, of course, is it's the only unconditional surrender that has a condition, which is that the Emperor stays. And I think he stays till 1989 or something. I mean, yeah. No, he was George Herbert Walker Bush in 1989. But MacArthur saw that though, he understood the cultural tenant of that,
and the need for that. And again, all of MacArthur's complexity, all of his vanity.
Uh, and, you know, if you go to Japan today, they don't even talk about MacArthur. He's been deleted from their history books,
but he is a seminal figure in the foundation.
He's a great man,
of a prosperous Japan. Let's go to Italy.
Yep.
I say Italy. You say?
I say, oh, well, Italy, I, I say, um, uh, I get, I, but that is where tragedy really, really needs to play its part. I mean, I've done so much work on the Italian campaign. I've spent so much time with Italian veterans. Italy at the end of the war is, is that, there is a glimmer of hope for Italy, I think. But, but, but the tragedy that befalls Italy. I, I wrote a book about the last year of Italy's war some years ago, and I called it Italy's Sorrow. And, um, it's this, this place of, you know, the birthplace of the Renaissance. It's this place of high culture, this place of incredible history, of incredible landscape beauty, of, of incredible urban construction. You know, Ponte Vecchio in Florence, or, you know, St. Peter's in Rome, or, you know, the cathedral, the Duomo in Milan. I mean, you know, this is stuff that, you know, and, and opera, and Puccini, and, and, you know, and, and let's face it, Ferrari too. You know, it's this, this amazing country, and yet what befell it in the Second World War was this, this sort of terrible, terrible tragedy, and it makes my heart bleed every time I think about it because I'm a massive Italophile. I love Italy.
Listen, I mean, it's,
it's my ancestry. You know, my, my grandparents were brokenhearted
about where Italy landed in that war. And, uh, and obviously, you and I know, uh, the foibles there. And again, deranged leadership leads to horrific outcomes.
But again, look, look what happens to Italy by the second half of the 1950s, into the 1960s. It's just had this, it's had its second Renaissance, and it's kind of emerged as this really pretty well-functioning modern state where heritage.
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
You know, it's, and, and today, you know, I know it has its shortcomings, but it, but it's still just a fabulous, fabulous place to be.
And, you know, you know which city has the lowest suicide rate in any, in the whole of Europe?
Is Naples, which also coincidentally is the, is the heaviest populated. I was going to say Naples, you know, because my family's from there, and we're, let me tell you something, we're all crazy, but we do love life. You know what I mean? There's a, there's a sense of love of life and a respect.
Exactly. So, all right. Two last words. Uh, uh, surrender. I say the word surrender. James Holland, what do you say?
Victory for the allies.
And what about victory?
Well, actually, I mean, I'm, I'm actually doing a book right, a small kind of, uh, small polemic about this right now, about that post-war view. There was, there was two views. There was the, there was the cruel and corrupt one, which was behind the Iron Curtain, or there was the one that had first been kind of put forward by, by Wilson in his utopian dream in 1918, um, and which was picked up, the baton which was picked up and and evolved by Roosevelt and delivered by Truman. And it's the one that's lasted 80 years, pretty much, and brought peace and prosperity to the developed world, and the developed democracies, and the Western world. And you and I have grown up in that world, and, and are better people and happier people as a result.
Being an amazingly blessed beneficiary of that world, which is why, you know, I look back,
that's what victory means to me. I look back on that era, and I look back on the bravery of my grandparents who arrived here in America, and my life, and I say this very humbly, James, my life could have never happened without the political leadership or even the courageous leadership of my immigrant grandparents who literally came here with nothing, but had this wildly unconditional love affair with the country. You know, my grandmother was so proud that her two sons went to war for America. You know, just to think about the time, you know, she prayed for them, and she prayed for their safety, and thankfully, uh, one came back wounded but okay, and obviously one survived the war but unwounded, but both psychologically traumatized. But the point being, it was just this unconditional love affair with the country. And I grew up with that. You know, I grew up with that spirit, and also the intellectual curiosity to understand what happened, you know, which is why I so enjoy my relationship with you and love your books. So, the title of this book is, uh, Victory '45, The End of the War and Eight Surrenders. It's written by James Holland and his podcast co-host, uh, uh, We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast, uh, co-host Al Murray. But thank you so much for joining us on Open Book today. And, uh, James, you can't get rid of me, James. So,
Oh, thank you. Actually, listen. I'm going to be in your life, brother. You know, I'm going to be,
It's been such, it's, it's been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.