Dec. 24, 2022 - Bannon's War Room
48:20
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unidentified
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🎵 Out on the feast of Stephen 🎵 | |
| 🎵 When the snow lay round about 🎵 | ||
| 🎵 Deep and crisp and even 🎵 | ||
| 🎵 Brightly shone the moon that night 🎵 | ||
| 🎵 How the frost was cruel 🎵 | ||
| 🎵 When the poor man came inside 🎵 | ||
| 🎵 Carrying winter fuel 🎵 | ||
| 🎵 Hither page and sand I went 🎵 | ||
| 🎵 My milk cow stood tearing 🎵 | ||
| Younger peasant, who is he? | ||
| Where? | ||
| What? | ||
| His where is? | ||
| I hear them talk goodly, can't they? | ||
| Do you need the mountain? | ||
| Right against the forest fence. | ||
| Why say it doesn't matter? | ||
| Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me pine logs thither. | ||
| Thou and I will see him dine when we bear and thither. | ||
| and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together, through the woodwinds while the mead and the bitter weather. | ||
| Sire, the night is dark. | ||
| OK, welcome. | ||
| It's Christmas Day. | ||
| Merry Christmas, 25th of December in the year of our Lord 2022. | ||
| We're here for the, uh, we don't have to cut that so hard, guys. | ||
|
unidentified
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You can just let that music down under my voice. | |
| Merry Christmas. | ||
| I want to thank the team in Denver, Real America's Voice, for helping us On our Christmas specials and we've got the War Room production team here. | ||
| Merry Christmas to everybody. | ||
| Larry Swickard is going to join us. | ||
| So first I was going to meet Larry Swickard, the historian in back of the Patriots history, the co-author of the Patriots history of the United States. | ||
| And then in the second hour we have the great combat historian Patrick K. O'Donnell. | ||
| We're going to do Trenton. | ||
| We're going to do the famous battle of the combat history. | ||
| And we're going to focus on the Battle of Trenton, which took place Christmas night. | ||
| Larry, Merry Christmas. | ||
| Thank you for joining us today. | ||
| Give us your overall about the American spirit and the Christmas spirit overall. | ||
| And then we're going to talk about a couple of Christmases where people, you know, we're in fairly trying times now. | ||
| We're going to really talk about trying times in 1814 and I think in 1941. | ||
| But give us your overall take. | ||
| Well, you know, early on, the Puritans didn't really celebrate Christmas a lot, and we didn't start celebrating Christmas until about the early 1800s. | ||
| And of course other groups did, but some of the Puritans did not. | ||
| And so as it started to be celebrated and recognized as a holiday, Americans kind of developed this move where Christmas brings all things new. | ||
| Yes, we have New Years, but really the day that sets everything new is the day that Jesus was born. | ||
| And so this is kind of the day that renews our whole year. | ||
| When they talk in songs about lifting spirits bright, things like that. | ||
| This is why. | ||
| Because Americans do celebrate Christmas almost as the beginning of the new year. | ||
| What is it, were the traditions that informed the American experience of Christmas, did they come from England or France, Germany? | ||
| Is it a blending of all of them? | ||
| We really started to celebrate Christmas as a As an event here, you're saying in what, the late 18th, early 19th, I guess early 19th century. | ||
| What was it that brought us, because the Puritans obviously were not the celebratory type. | ||
| Well, they began to lose their influence and of course we began to get a lot of immigrants from Germany and Holland and France and each brought their own, in Scandinavia, each brought their own Christmas traditions, you know, St. Nick and all this other stuff. | ||
| So we really, truly began to have an American Christmas where all of these Christmas celebrations were blended together. | ||
| It's the perfect melting pot that is America that we're willing to, okay, we'll take some of your celebration and some of your celebration, we're going to do it all here. | ||
| We're going to talk about, you know, we normally do the combat history Christmas or those Christmases for our... | ||
| I know you're going to talk about Trenton later, so I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on that one. | ||
| Obviously, Washington was being chased by the British. | ||
| still got to get on with the with the conflict. Talk to us about the trying times that America's had during the Christmas season. Which ones stand out? | ||
| I know you're going to talk about Trenton later, so I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on that one. Obviously, Washington was being chased by the British. He had seen an army of over 20,000 men, mostly militia, disappear. And he had lost every single battle that he had fought and he made up his mind. | ||
| He said victory or death to his lieutenants. | ||
| We're going to cross the river. | ||
| He gathered every boat that he could, not only so he would have them, but also to deprive the British from having any boats. | ||
| He transported about, historians are You know, debate this, but about 2,400 men across on Christmas night, and they crossed on icy water, which slowed down their approach. | ||
| Washington wanted to attack the town of Trenton around eight in the morning, and they were slow getting across the river, and the fishermen Did an amazing job of rowing some 40 boats worth of men back and forth and back and forth all night long and then went on to fight the battle. | ||
| That's the most amazing thing. | ||
| But this is the time that he actually used Christmas because he wanted to, in theory, what he wanted to do was attack Christmas morning. | ||
| He used Christmas and particularly the Hessians and the Germans They were fighting as mercenaries, would be observing the Christmas holiday. | ||
| He was actually using Christmas as a tactical weapon. | ||
| Now, he didn't get across until Christmas evening, but the holiday itself was one of the reasons. | ||
| He didn't just plan this because it happened to be on a Tuesday or whatever. | ||
| He was actually using the observance of Christmas as kind of shelter for himself, correct? | ||
| Or kind of to mask his attack. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, he thought, in fact, he knew that the Hessians would be partying pretty hardy, and he assumed that they would be drunk. | ||
| Well, like the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor, they assumed by attacking at that time in the morning, A, many of the men would be sleeping, and B, many of the men would be at church services, so they would catch us completely unawares. | ||
| To me, the most amazing thing about that whole story is not that Washington won, which was fascinating in itself. | ||
| But he took several hundred, maybe eight or 900 prisoners and marched them back and the guys had to row them back across the river in the middle of the night on the night of the 26th. | ||
| After rowing them all, the whole army were, you know, twenty-four hours earlier. | ||
| I mean, that's mind-boggling they did so in the most brutal cold. | ||
| Most of the men who died, died of frostbite and not battle injuries. | ||
| I think it was two or three died of frostbite. | ||
| The victory of death, what he told his men and officers was, and this is why it's so dramatic that he did it on Christmas, understanding they had a hard winner in front of them. | ||
| He needed a win. | ||
| He needed a victory, right? | ||
| Or the whole revolution. | ||
| It was in the Christmas of 1776, that incredibly powerful year of the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| You know, six months after the declaration, five months after the declaration, it's almost all over. | ||
| I mean, you've got the head of the army, really the commander-in-chief, understands that if he doesn't pull off this surprise attack and at least get back on offense and show the colonies we can win something here, you say Christmas Day is kind of rejuvenation and beginning of things, that This would start the next year of the conflict. | ||
| It was all going to be over no matter how many great documents you have, like the Declaration, no matter how many, you know, smart lawyers and great men of rhetoric can write something very moving and have people sign on for. | ||
| If you don't deliver on the battlefield, it's going to be over. | ||
| Larry Schweiker. | ||
| Well, you know, and to show you that he took that as we're going on offense now, Right after the Battle of Trenton, he then advanced back across the river again and attacked at Princeton. | ||
| And while this is not considered a great battle or there weren't significant losses on either side, what I find the most amazing thing is that the battle lines for the first time were drawn up against each other in open field. | ||
| Previously, Washington's men had fought behind embankments or used a surprise attack And the reason this is so significant is you've seen the movie The Patriot, I'm sure, a hundred times, like I have. | ||
| And Mel Gibson's character has this great line where he's with Heath Ledger looking at the Continentals and the British going, firing volleys at each other. | ||
| And he says, it's madness going muzzle to muzzle with the British in open field. | ||
| You know, Gates spent too much time in the British Army. | ||
| But the fact was, Washington knew the only way to win the war Was to get the Continentals to the point that they could stand up muzzle to muzzle against the British in open field because you weren't going to win it with militia. | ||
| Militia, kind of interesting, really are a range warfare type of military. | ||
| They're not built for hand-to-hand combat. | ||
| Yeah, they had tomahawks and knives, but they didn't have bayonets on their muskets. | ||
| That was crucially important, and it's why the militia run so much early, is because they're not built for stand-up bayonet fights. | ||
| They don't have bayonets. | ||
| So Washington knew it. | ||
| At Princeton, he needed an open field win to go with his surprise attack, and there's that great scene where the two armies are ready to fire at each other, and Washington, a guy who's about 6'4", on a big white horse, Gets out between the two armies and is riding, waving his hat, yelling, come parade with me, you fine fellows. | ||
| And both armies open up. | ||
| And bullets go through his jacket, through his hat. | ||
| Don't kill his horse. | ||
| Don't hit him. | ||
| How you get two armies firing at each other across a couple hundred yards and you don't hit this guy is just a miracle in and of itself. | ||
| And yes, we won the battle. | ||
| It wasn't a crucial battle, but it showed you that we were now on offense. | ||
| How much of the myth, we'll get into this with Patrick O'Donnell in the second hour, but the myth that the Hessians were actually, had actually imbibed too much on Christmas. | ||
| Obviously they might do a church service in the morning, but the rest of it was a feast and drinking. | ||
| How much of that is true? | ||
| Well, some of it's true, but it's totally wrong that they didn't expect an attack. | ||
| In fact, Colonel Rall had been apprised that there had been a raid at his outpost, which Washington didn't authorize. | ||
| And Washington chastised the guys, saying, you almost gave away the whole operation. | ||
| But Rall thought that that was the attack itself. | ||
| And he literally said something, in fact, that we're done for the day. | ||
| They're not going to attack today. | ||
| So whether they were drunk or not, they were certainly not ready for an attack. | ||
| Larry, we're going to go to a short commercial break in a second. | ||
| We're going to have some of our Christmas music. | ||
| I really want to thank you for doing this. | ||
| You're going to be with us for the entire hour. | ||
| We're going to talk about some of the trying times. | ||
| Of course not. | ||
| So one of the reasons we do that is to make sure people understand no matter how tough you think you have it or how tough and sometimes the odds are long on the fights that we fight here in the war room, that America's been through some very, very tough times before. | ||
| It's one of the powers of the United States is the resilience Of its people and the resilience of the country, the country has been very resilient and able to come back. | ||
| And I realize now every day we talk about, you know, is this the end of the country? | ||
| Some of the radical things, whether it's invasion on the southern border, things they're doing, you're seeing them doing in the classroom, trying to go after the American family, what they're doing to the kids. | ||
| And then the big overall arching things of not just the debt and in the financial situation of the country and geopolitically with the Chinese Communist Party, but also things like transhumanism, where there you actually say, hey, could we be seeing the replacement theory here is not about Americans or it's not about whites, Hispanics or blacks, but they're trying to replace the entire, you know, all homo sapiens. | ||
| The country has been through some very, very, very tough times before and has gotten through it with the American spirit. | ||
| And so today we're talking about the Christmas spirit and the American spirit. | ||
| I want to thank Real America's Voice and also our sponsor, MyPillow.com. | ||
| Go to MyPillow.com, promo code WAROOM. | ||
| Particularly if you've got any Christmas cash or you've got to take something back, make sure you go check out MyPillow. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| We're gonna be back. | ||
| We got Larry Schweikert, the co-author of the Patriots' History of the United States. | ||
| Next hour, Patrick K. O'Donnell, the combat historian. | ||
| We're going through the American spirit and the Christmas spirit here on The War Room. | ||
| Be back in a moment. | ||
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unidentified
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Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's With heart and soul and voice Now we hear of endless bliss, joy, and joy. | |
| Jesus Christ is born for this. | ||
| He that knows the heavenly law and man is blessed evermore. | ||
| Christ is born for this. | ||
| He that knows the heavenly door and man is blessed evermore, Christ is born for this. | ||
| Christ is born for this. | ||
| The King whence hath lost the fount on the feast of Stephen, When the snow lay round about deep and crisp and even, Brightly shone the moon that night, how the frost was cruel, When the poor man came inside, gathering winter fuel. | ||
| Okay, welcome back. | ||
| One. | ||
| I want to thank our team. | ||
| Boy, we're actually going to get that right one time. | ||
| It's just to bring it down soft. | ||
| Christmas team. | ||
| Denver, thank you very much. | ||
| Merry Christmas. | ||
| Merry Christmas to everybody. | ||
| I got Larry Swiker. | ||
| I want to thank Larry for taking time away to do our Christmas special here. | ||
| It's Saturday, 25 December, the year of our Lord. | ||
| Larry, let's talk about, I think, 18. | ||
| We got time this morning to do two. | ||
| I think we'll do 1814 and then the year 1941. | ||
| Talk to me about Christmas of 1814. | ||
| We wanted to pick out particular times that the country's been under stress and people have really been kind of down or it looks like we've had long odds. | ||
| Why do you pick the year 1814? | ||
| Okay, I've got a comment on you and your team. | ||
| Having played in a rock band, you know, I can't always remember my singer. | ||
| Turn up the monitors! | ||
| Turn up the monitors! | ||
| So anyway, actually, I want to start the story of Christmas in 1813, because the War of 1812, as we call it, had not been going well. | ||
| Of course, they didn't call it that at the time. | ||
| It had not been going well. | ||
| We had lost a lot of battles. | ||
| Not all of them, but we lost a lot of them. | ||
| And Attorney General Richard Rush at Christmastime in 1813 wrote his old friend John Adams about the mood in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And I'll just quote you a little bit of his letter. | ||
| The nation was fighting, Rush said, but, quote, it seems to fight for nothing but disaster and defeat and disgrace. | ||
| What, sir, should be done? | ||
| The prospect looks black. | ||
| It is awful. | ||
| Is not another torrent rolling too fiercely upon us to be turned back? | ||
| Where shall we find leaders? | ||
| And may we not be doomed to pass yet another and another and another campaign in the school of affliction and disgrace? | ||
| I am sick at heart at our view of public affairs. | ||
| Have we, sir, ever faced worse times than survived them? | ||
| And how? | ||
| And the ex-president John Adams wrote him back and he said, the times are pretty bad. | ||
| He said, Adam said, this is one year, eight months before it happened. | ||
| He said, I don't know what will prevent the White House. | ||
| They didn't call it that yet. | ||
| I don't know what will prevent the White House or the proud Capitol from becoming the headquarters of the British. | ||
| We must have a winnowing. | ||
| And yet he said in the revolution, we saw infinitely more difficult and dangerous times. | ||
| So, eight months later, what happens? | ||
| The British walk into Washington having destroyed, just chased away, without a lot of deaths. | ||
| The much larger American forces at Bladensburg, Maryland, they threw down their weapons and ran. | ||
| It's called the Bladensburg Races. | ||
| And literally, James Madison was just a few miles ahead of the British Army pursuing them into Washington. | ||
| And Madison gets into Washington, goes to, again, the White House, which wasn't called that then, and Dolly Madison had left dinner on the table and they fled. | ||
| She left carrying papers and the full portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stewart and other leaving me sorts of other valuables including silver and several thousand dollars worth of fine wines. | ||
| So Madison yells, gets everybody out, the British are right behind him, he heads off for the ferry only to find Dolly has already gone. | ||
| Madison and his companions Rush and Mason hop on horses and they're trying to catch up to Dolly, but they're trying to catch up to the army as well because John Armstrong, whose Secretary of War can't be found anywhere. | ||
| Madison literally is in the saddle for 18 hours until he finally comes to a place where he can catch up with Dolly. | ||
| She had been turned away from a tavern because of her husband's war policies. | ||
| And another time when she was let in, a cook refused to give her coffee because, quote, I done heard Mr. Madison gave the country to the British. | ||
| And so it was bleak. | ||
| This is August. | ||
| But by Christmas, things look bad. | ||
| Nothing had happened to really change a thing. | ||
| Our capital was in shambles, had been burned. | ||
| Madison had a poor reputation. | ||
| And then the Christmas miracle. | ||
| Hang on, before we get to the miracle part, why is, and maybe it's self-evident, why is, because I'm sure for our audience, even the people that know history and are history buffs, a lot of this is revelatory, why is the War of 1812 not taught? | ||
| Because we lost the Capitol and they burned it? | ||
| I mean, of all the major—and this conflict was so huge and so really—we'll get to the punchline—it really ended the revolution a year or so later. | ||
| But why—or six months later—why was, particularly the year 1814, when the Capitol's taken The Executive Mansion, I think they called it at the time, is burned to the ground. | ||
| Why is this not taught? | ||
| As poorly as we teach history, you almost never hear any mention of the War of 1812. | ||
| Well, I think one of the reasons is it isn't a war where, like in World War II, we take it on the chin for a year, then we have the incredible flip of Midway that I'll talk about a little bit later, and then from there on out, although it's very, very bloody, incredibly difficult, it's a steady march to victory. | ||
| Same thing kind of in Europe, right? | ||
| Where after the first year, really after England survives the Battle of Britain, and after America comes into the war, once we land in France, it's all over. | ||
| The Nazis know it every minute. | ||
| But this war, War of 1812, It is not very well defined. | ||
| We invade Canada twice with very bad results, but we do knock out all of the Indian resistance in the old Northwest, and that's kind of something you don't want to talk about these days. | ||
| Gee, here we took out the Native Americans, who were considered a major threat at the time. | ||
| Some of our biggest victories are really... Oh, by the way, by the way, I don't mind talking about it. | ||
| They were very sophisticated and had an alliance with the British. | ||
| They were an ally of the British. | ||
| That's why we took them on, right? | ||
| And they were very sophisticated. | ||
| They had a very smart alliance amongst themselves, the Confederation they fought for. | ||
| So you're saying in the Northwest we took on the Indians, we invaded Canada with terrible results. | ||
| What else? | ||
| And a lot of the battles that take place, that are very memorable, take place on the Great Lakes with fairly small ships. | ||
| Incredible tactics. | ||
| One called, in which they turn the ship by placing anchors at each end and pulling on ropes so they could fire a broadside, then immediately turn the ship and fire another broadside while the other side was reloading. | ||
| Battles on Lake Champlain, for example. | ||
| A lot of smaller victories that were highly symbolic but didn't accomplish a lot in terms of defeating huge armies, right? | ||
| And the last reason that it's not taught much is that the biggest battle of the war in historians' eyes occurs After this miracle, and what happens after Christmas, is that we get word... Hang on, we'll get to that in a second. | ||
| We'll finish with the punchline. | ||
| But that doesn't get to the point of why it's not taught. | ||
| You're saying because there were smaller battles, or it's just the process of the war? | ||
| It's not an easy war to teach. | ||
| You have to really get into the nuts and bolts. | ||
| You can't focus on One or two battles like Saratoga and Yorktown and Trenton or Iwo Jima. | ||
| It's not something that lends itself easily to teaching. | ||
| And then you alluded to a really important fact. | ||
| This kind of ends the revolution. | ||
| And historian Paul Johnson has argued that this war really cemented The Anglo-American alliance forever. | ||
| Because A, the British recognize us now for the first time as equals. | ||
| And I think it's sometime during this correspondence that for the first time a British foreign minister refers to the United States as a nation. | ||
| And when you finish the war, we go back to this boundary status quo antebellum. | ||
| We go back to the way things were before the war. | ||
| And so neither side can lord it over the other that, yeah, you really took it on the chin there. | ||
| What tends to happen, for example, in the wars between France and Germany, Where they go back and forth, they're constantly, there's a winner and there's a loser, and the loser is always anxious to get back land or territory. | ||
|
unidentified
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That doesn't happen with the War of 1812. | |
| So the White House is burned to the ground, or burned in August. | ||
| Hold on, it's not burned to the ground. | ||
| No, it's not burned to the ground. | ||
| Congress is burned fairly significantly. | ||
| White House structure was standing, but it was blackened. | ||
| So when they repainted it white, it becomes known as the White House. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Tell me about the Christmas miracle then. | ||
| How do we go from the Capitol being desecrated in August to a Christmas miracle? | ||
| What happened and what is the miracle? | ||
| Well, what's so great about this is it happens on two fronts. | ||
| One, it happens in the front of negotiations. | ||
| And diplomacy, where our negotiators had been in Europe and they get a treaty by Christmas time, but because of the length of time it takes to send something back and forth across the ocean, we didn't know about it at the time that the war had already been settled with status quo ante bellum. | ||
| So the British send a major army under Pakenham to take the city of New Orleans, which again Had they won that battle, that would have been extremely significant, because we may never have been able to fully take... | ||
| Larry, hang on for one second. | ||
| The Miracle of the Christmas of 1814. | ||
| We've got Larry Swickard, the co-author of The Patriot's History of the United States. | ||
| We're taking a short commercial break. | ||
| Christmas Day special here in the War Room. | ||
| Be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good Christian men rejoice with heart and soul and voice. | |
| Now we hear of endless bliss, joy, and joy. | ||
| Jesus Christ is born for this. | ||
| He hath wrought a heavenly law, and man is blessed evermore. | ||
| Christ is born for this. | ||
| This joy, joy of Jesus Christ is born for this. | ||
| He hath brought the heavenly dawn, and man is blessed evermore. | ||
| Christ is born for this. | ||
| Christ is born for this. | ||
| He wends the spas, the clouds on the feast of Stephen, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even. | ||
| It's Christmas Day, 25th of December, the year of our Lord, 2022. | ||
| By the way, perfect. | ||
| Merry Christmas! | ||
| Team in Denver, we want to thank everybody for putting these specials together and helping us out here. | ||
| Real America's Voice is what you're listening to, the war room, or watching. | ||
| I want to thank everybody for joining us here on Christmas morning as you maybe have opened the gifts already, gotten back from church and having a cup of coffee. | ||
| Larry Schweiker is our guest. | ||
| So we're at Christmas 1814. | ||
| We're about to have something that nobody expected, this battle in New Orleans. | ||
| But talk to us about the Christmas, over the Christmas season, were people thinking that things were getting better, that we were getting through this horrible, since the Capitol's still in disarray and the country's been humiliated? | ||
| Well, we had won some very important battles and the fact that the British were going to New Orleans kind of signified their last hope because they had not been able to follow up on their seizure of Washington, D.C. | ||
| They hadn't been able to capture the president. | ||
| I think it was General Coburn who said he wanted to send Madison back to England as a present. | ||
| They hadn't been able to do that. | ||
| They had to evacuate again. | ||
| The same things they saw in the American Revolution. | ||
| They could control the big cities for a very short time, but they couldn't control the countryside at all. | ||
| And so this was kind of a last gasp attempt by Pakenham to take New Orleans and at least salvage the great port of New Orleans at that time. | ||
| And of course, Andrew Jackson was ready for him and had dug trenches and everything. | ||
| And like We were. | ||
| We didn't mention this, but Washington was saved by a miracle on Long Island when he was trying to evacuate his troops. | ||
| They could have been surrounded and destroyed, and he had to move them back to Manhattan in boats. | ||
| But the British Navy was right there, and we're going to blow those boats out of the water until a miraculous fog came in. | ||
| And concealed the movement of several thousand men across from Long Island to New York. | ||
| Same thing happens here. | ||
| In reverse. | ||
| The British are all drawn up in a giant fog. | ||
| And so they're a little lackadaisical. | ||
| And all of a sudden the fog just lifts like that. | ||
| And Jackson's gunners had pre-sighted all these positions and just wiped them out. | ||
| It was a horrific slaughter. | ||
| I think the British lost something like a thousand Men killed or wounded in the American's Laws 9? | ||
| I mean, it was really an amazing victory. | ||
| In fact, this army was an army that had fought in the Peninsular Campaign. | ||
| I think it had the brother-in-law of actually Wellington was there. | ||
| The only time in British history, military history, they lost three major generals in a conflict, in a battle. | ||
| And three senior officers. | ||
| It was an absolute slaughter. | ||
| And it really, you agree with me, that basically ended the revolution. | ||
| The revolution essentially ended, I think it was January 2nd or 3rd. | ||
| Of 1815, right? | ||
| I think we're still within the 12 days of Christmas when the battle takes place in New Orleans, and Larry, you would agree that that brought the curtain down on the American Revolution? | ||
| Yes, and I think even more important, it solidified our relationship with the British, this special relationship that basically defined us for the next almost 200 years. | ||
| We may have lost a little of that now that they've gotten so woke, but It carried us really through a couple of world wars and through leadership of the world for quite a while. | ||
| So talk to us about, and by the way, that was a very dark time. | ||
| Think about it. | ||
| We'd lost the Capitol. | ||
| You know, Madison, that story about Dolly Madison being turned away at taverns because of the policy and some about the people being angry about how the conflict was being conducted. | ||
| And then to do that, And the turnaround in six months is pretty extraordinary. | ||
| Also, it shows you, you know, General Jackson, the first real populist, eventually ran and became president after being defeated, or having it stolen from him, like President Trump the first time, became really a president that about how dark things were. | ||
| define much of the 19th century, right? Just an extraordinary, extraordinary individual. | ||
| Let's talk about 1941. Yeah, go ahead. | ||
| Let me add one thing about how dark things were, because people forget that right before Christmas, a group of New England, you know, where else? | ||
| A group of New England states were so unhappy with the war, and the fact Madison, of course, is a Republican small r, and they are Federalists, that they are talking secession. | ||
| They are actually meeting and discussing having several of the Northeastern states secede in the middle of a war! | ||
| I mean, how treasonous is that? | ||
| And, of course, what else happens is that once we win the war, in essence, That goes away, and so does the Federalist Party. | ||
| That basically killed the Federalists once and for all. | ||
| Yeah, and like you said, that victory sealed, was able to lock in the Louisiana Purchase, make sure we could explore it, and then all the great, everything that came out of that, the really opening of the West, it was extraordinary. | ||
| One of the most important battles in world history is the Battle of New Orleans. | ||
| Doesn't get enough Attention, because technically it was a few days after the treaty, but quite frankly, this was actually more powerful than a treaty, because winning on a battlefield is much more powerful than what's written in a term, particularly when people will interpret those contracts as they were interpreted. | ||
| Let's go to 1941. | ||
| Why did you pick 1941, sir? | ||
| Why did you pick 1941, sir? | ||
| Well I found 1941 interesting because the mood of the country, of course, was horrible. | ||
| We had lost every single, there weren't a lot, but we had lost, of course, at Pearl Harbor. | ||
| Devastating defeat, and we were extremely fortunate that our three aircraft carriers were not in Pearl Harbor at that time, or that Halsey went the wrong way, not his fault, that he only had two ways he might go, and so he was He was heading the wrong direction. | ||
| Had he caught up with the Japanese fleet, he probably would have lost and lost a carrier. | ||
| So that was extremely important. | ||
| We lost Wake Island, you know, Plucky Wake Island, which kind of held out. | ||
| MacArthur's men were being creamed in the Philippines. | ||
| It was only a matter of time before they surrendered. | ||
| So the mood of the country was extremely dark. | ||
| And then I want to focus on two things. | ||
| First, There was a song written in the summer of 1941, and I think this is interesting because it's the summertime when he writes his song, by Irving Berlin, and it's called White Christmas. | ||
| And he was thinking back to the death of his son in 1928 at Christmastime when he writes White Christmas in the middle of summer. | ||
| So that song becomes kind of a staple. | ||
| But it's not till early 1942 that a guy named Bing Crosby records it. | ||
| Crosby then goes on all of these USO tours. | ||
| And this is his biggest song. | ||
| And he's trying to avoid singing this song. | ||
| Because he thought it was a downer, and he thought it was kind of gloomy. | ||
| And he found that every time he would go to sing before the troops, they would demand, you know, sort of like, free bird, man! | ||
| It's like, white Christmas, man! | ||
| And so he ended up having to sing White Christmas every single time. | ||
| So he ends up right before Christmas in 1944, At a USO show in front of 100,000 GIs, airmen, others, in France. | ||
| And he said, it was the hardest thing I ever did in my life was to sing White Christmas to those 100,000 men, all of them streaming tears and not choke up. | ||
| And he's finishing that song. | ||
| He said it was the hardest thing of his life. | ||
| So I just found that an incredible Christmas story related to the kind of hardships of World War II. | ||
| What got, in the summer of 1941, walk me through, what was it about, why was Irving Berlin, how did he end up writing White Christmas, and how did it happen in 1941? | ||
| Well as I said, he's in a warm climate, he's in, I think he was vacationing in California And he's feeling this warmth and this heat. | ||
| And for some reason, he was taken back to the Christmas, the ice and snow of 1928 when his son died. | ||
| And many speculate that the lyrics of White Christmas are really written to his son. | ||
| Now, there's another aspect of this that I wanted to get to. | ||
| So let's go back to the Christmas of 41. | ||
| And one of my ongoing themes in Patriot's History of the United States, and by the way, for all of your viewers, in response to that great response that we had from the Thanksgiving show, we have created at wildworldofhistory.com a master class in U.S. | ||
| history and in world history. | ||
| And I teach all 22 chapters of Patriot's History of the United States in video form and 15 units of world history in video form. | ||
| So you can check that out on our website at wildworldofhistory.com. | ||
| So anyway, we're at Christmas time, 1941. | ||
| Things are tough. | ||
| We have, we've been cream every place we went. | ||
| The Japanese were on the move. | ||
| It didn't look like we were going to be doing anything. | ||
| And one of the ongoing messages that I think comes out of history is how quickly history changes. | ||
| And we saw that, did we not, just here in 1814, when all was bleak, all was black, as Richard Rush said. | ||
| And yet, within just a few days, everything turned 180 degrees the opposite. | ||
| Well, the same thing happens in In 1942, after this dark, dark Christmas of 1941, in May, due to a single submarine, kind of a miracle of the Nautilus, as I call it, the small change that affects everything, we're in the middle of this battle over Midway. | ||
| And we've sent out already over a hundred planes to attack the Japanese fleet. | ||
| Now we knew roughly where they were, but you're a Navy man, you know that roughly in the Pacific you can be off by a few thousand miles, right? | ||
| We'd sent out over 100 planes. | ||
| They failed to score a single hit. | ||
| All of the torpedo planes from the first two aircraft carriers had gone out, and over 50 had gone out. | ||
|
unidentified
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Only three came back, and they didn't score a single hit. | |
| And here's this submarine, the Nautilus, that sneaks inside Japanese defenses and fires three torpedoes at a Japanese carrier, and none of them Hit. | ||
| And so at this time, if you're looking at this submarine, you're thinking, man, we failed. | ||
| And, you know, I just want to speak to people out there. | ||
| How many times have you thought I failed? | ||
| I, I just didn't do it. | ||
| You know, this was, this was a total loss, a total failure. | ||
| Had to be what Madison was thinking in 1814, right? | ||
| This, this has been a total failure, but that submarine was being attacked by Japanese destroyer and it ran. | ||
| Hang on one second. | ||
| I want to hold that. | ||
| We're going to finish this segment. | ||
| I want to bring back for the punchline Larry Swickert. | ||
| Hang on one second. I want to hold that. We're going to finish this segment. | ||
| I want to bring back for the punchline Larry Schweikert. | ||
| Let's go ahead and take us out with For Christmas. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm dreaming. | |
| Christmas. | ||
| And may all your Christmases be well. | ||
| Good King Wenceslas, the proud, on the feast of Stephen, When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even, Okay, welcome back. | ||
| Merry Christmas. | ||
| It's Christmas morning. | ||
| I want to thank everybody. | ||
| In the next hour, Patrick K. O'Donnell, the great combat historian, is going to join us. | ||
| We're going to go through Trenton in detail. | ||
| As we traditionally do here on Christmas Day. | ||
| Larry Schweikert is the co-author of the Patriot's History of the U.S. | ||
| Got a new science I'll tell you about. | ||
| But Larry, we're on tenterhooks about people fail all the time. | ||
| You're saying we failed so many times, and even in the Battle of Midway in May after that dark Christmas of 1941, we're still failing. | ||
| But it's all down to one submarine, sir. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So having sent out all the planes from from Midway without scoring a single hit, having sent out all the torpedo planes from the carriers. | ||
| And out of 50, only three came back and didn't score a single hit. | ||
| And the Nautilus slips inside Japanese defenses of the destroyers, fires three torpedoes, doesn't score a single hit. | ||
| The Nautilus runs, is chased by a Japanese submarine for several miles. | ||
| Finally, the Japanese submarine gives up, goes to rejoin the fleet. | ||
| Meanwhile, our dive bombers have been above. | ||
| As I said, the Pacific's a big place. | ||
| They knew roughly where the fleet was. | ||
| They didn't know exactly. | ||
| And they see a single destroyer heading someplace. | ||
| And they figure it's got to be joining the fleet. | ||
| So they follow it back. | ||
| And lo and behold, there is the Japanese fleet. | ||
| And the carriers have no fighter cover. | ||
| And they have decks full of planes and bombs. | ||
| And all it takes is a few bombs each and the Japanese Navy is finished for the rest of the war. | ||
| And literally within a space of, I know that there's other things, but literally within a space of 15 minutes, the whole world changed. | ||
| Just like at New Orleans, within a space of a couple of hours, the whole world changed. | ||
| And so it's a message of hope that even when you think maybe you failed, Maybe your failure was permitted so God can succeed someplace else. | ||
| Larry, tell people, I want to make sure people get access to your site. | ||
| In fact, a great way to start the new year and to finish off this is you can't learn too much history, right? | ||
| It's exciting, it's interesting, but it also informs people of making decisions in their own life. | ||
| And one of the things you say, hey, people have been through these kind of tough times before. | ||
| So walk us through, how do they get to what you're making available, which is to teach this type of history? | ||
| Well, if you go to wildworldofhistory.com, wildworldofhistory.com, you'll see we have a brand new master class in American history that's 22 lessons, 22 videos, tracks perfectly with the book Patriot History of the United States. | ||
| We have a master class in world history since 1775. | ||
| These are bigger lessons because you're dealing with India, China, Africa. | ||
| So there's 15 lessons and 15 videos and you can get them separately, you can get them together, and of course we always have our special of Patriot's History of the United States available there on sale. | ||
| So take a look at the wildworldofhistory.com. | ||
| You're going to love how I teach history. | ||
| Larry, you've got about a minute left. | ||
| What should people over this holiday, one of the most sacred days of the year in the Christian calendar, is Christmas Day, the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. | ||
| What message of hope do you have for the American people? | ||
| Well, I think it is that we've been in dark times before. | ||
| And relatively speaking, I know this is hard today because everything's very presentist, but we've been in worse times before. | ||
| I mean, you know, the American Civil War was far worse. | ||
| So you've got to keep hope, faith, hope, and love. | ||
| And there's a reason why you go through dark times, because not only does it make us better, but it reminds you who's in control of all this, and it ain't us. | ||
| Larry Sweikart, the co-author of The Patriot's History of the United States. | ||
| Merry Christmas, sir. | ||
| Thank you for joining the War Room Posse and helping us get through Christmas morning with maybe a cup of coffee, hot tea, or a hot toddy. | ||
| I want to thank everybody. | ||
| We're going to come back for the second hour. | ||
| We're going to end this with a song written in the summer of 1941 that became an inspiration in World War II. | ||
| Bing Crosby, White Christmas. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know | |
| Where the tree tops glisten And children laugh Listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow. | ||
| I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. | ||
| With every Christmas card I write, May your days be merry and bright. | ||
| And may all your Christmases be white. | ||
| I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know, | ||
| where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow. | ||
| I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know, Merry Christmas with every Christmas card I write. | ||
| May your days be merry and bright. |
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