| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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That's why I'm here today. | |
| Answer questions all day, every day. | ||
| Sometimes I get to do fun things like go on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN is, I think, one of the very few places that Americans can still go. | ||
|
unidentified
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C-SPAN has such a distinguished and honorable and important mandate and mission in this country. | |
| I love this show. | ||
| This is my favorite show to do of all shows because I actually get to hear what the American people care about. | ||
| American people have access to their government in ways that they did not before the cable industry provided C-SPAN access. | ||
| That's why I like to come on C-SPAN is because this is one of the last places where people are actually having conversations, even people who disagree. | ||
| Shows that you can have a television network that can try to be objective. | ||
| Thank C-SPAN for all you do. | ||
| It's one of the reasons why this program is so valuable because it does bring people together where dissenting voices are heard, where hard questions are asked, and where people have to answer to them. | ||
| C-SPAN. | ||
| Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| Oh, you think this is just a community censor? | ||
| No, it's way more than that. | ||
| Comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create Wi-Fi-enabled lifts so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | ||
| This is Washington Journal for Monday, May 26. | ||
| It's Memorial Day, a day to honor and mourn the men and women of the U.S. military who died while fighting to protect and defend our country. | ||
| To start today's program, we're asking you, what does Memorial Day mean to you? | ||
| Here are the lines. | ||
| If you're in the Eastern or Central time zone, it's 202-748-8000. | ||
| Mountain or Pacific, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And if you are a member of the military or a military family, that includes veterans, those who are retired or active duty, you can call in at 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for being with us on this Memorial Day. | ||
| We'll get to your calls in just a few minutes, but wanted to start with this from Axios, the headline. | ||
| What does the meaning behind Memorial Day federal holiday? | ||
| It says that Memorial Day is about more than cookouts, travel, sales, and the unofficial kickoff to summer. | ||
| It says the federal holiday honors military personnel who lost their lives defending the country. | ||
| Says that Memorial Day is observed each year on the last Monday of May, which is May 26. | ||
| That's today. | ||
| The holiday used to be held on May 30th annually until 1971. | ||
| It also notes the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. | ||
| Veterans Day honors all who have served in the U.S. military and is considered a celebration of all veterans, living and dead. | ||
| Memorial Day is to recognize fallen military who have died in service. | ||
| Taking a look at the history, it says Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day and was recognized as early as the 1860s after the Civil War. | ||
| The history of Memorial Day is subject to a long-standing academic debate with dozens of cities in town claiming to be the holiday's birthplace. | ||
| After World War I, the focus of the holiday shifted to honor American soldiers who died in any war, not only the Civil War. | ||
| It also says that since Memorial Day is a solemn day to remember the fallen, the Wounded Warrior Project advises people to say, have a meaningful Memorial Day, not Happy Memorial Day. | ||
| The group says it's, quote, not appropriate to thank a service member for their service on this day, as it is a day to remember and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice. | ||
| It was last week on the House floor that those talks of Memorial Day began during the opening session. | ||
| On Friday, the House chaplain spoke about the importance of Memorial Day. | ||
| Here's that clip. | ||
|
unidentified
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Holy God, as we find ourselves looking forward to parades and picnics and pool openings this Memorial Day weekend, remind us that above all else, we are obliged to give the heroes of our country the honor of remembrance and sober reflection for their ultimate sacrifices. | |
| We lift our hearts in gratitude for those who chose to give their lives in the fight for right and freedom, for the integrity of this country, and for the preservation of its noble ideals. | ||
| May we never take for granted the countless sacrifices that were made to defend our liberties and uphold our democracy. | ||
| These noble men and women have stood firm. | ||
| In the face of war's alarms and exposed to the assaults of the adversary, they would not be moved. | ||
| May they rest knowing that they gave themselves fully to the work you, O Lord, set before them to accomplish. | ||
| Grant them peace in knowing that neither their labor nor their sacrifice was in vain. | ||
| We pray for those families, friends, and communities who sent their loved ones off to war and now lay flowers on a gravestone just to sustain the memory of the father, the mother, the son, the daughter, the loved one now taken from them. | ||
| In memory of our fallen and in the strength of your eternal name, we pray. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| We are starting today's program asking you, what does Memorial Day mean to you? | ||
| You can call in the lines again if you're Eastern or Central Time Zone. | ||
| It's 202-748-8000. | ||
| Mountain or Pacific, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And if you are a member of the military or a member of a military family, that includes veterans, retired, and those on active duty, you can call in at 202-748-8002. | ||
| We will start with Alfred in South Portland, Maine. | ||
| Good morning, Alfred. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Wow, I'm first. | ||
| What Memorial Day, excuse me, Memorial Day is really emotional for me because I do remember all those people who have fought in wars for our country and for the freedom that we're losing right now. | ||
| And all I could think right now is that all our heroes and loved ones who have died in wars to protect our democracy and our country must be turning in their graves at what we're experiencing right now. | ||
| Unfortunately, we have to have, we have to go through three more Memorial Days in this situation. | ||
| And I don't know what we're going to be remembering next year. | ||
| It's very scary. | ||
| I just hope that That we make it through this and that all those men and women haven't died in vain for our freedom, which we're losing right now. | ||
| I guess that's about it. | ||
| That was Alfred in Maine. | ||
| Thomas in Maryland. | ||
| Good morning, Thomas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm now 78 years old, and I was in the process of going some research on some of our classmates that had died during Vietnam. | ||
| And I came upon a name called Russell E. Millbury. | ||
| Now, I didn't know much from Union Bridge, Maryland. | ||
| I didn't know much about my grandmother on my mother's side with a Millbury from Union Bridge. | ||
| And our family reunion is now in Union Bridge every year. | ||
| And it's called the Diary, Millbury Family Reunion. | ||
| And I didn't know Russell. | ||
| I found out he died six weeks after he got to Vietnam and two days after his 20th birthday. | ||
| And all of a sudden, it's something that came up to me, and it really hit hard because although my brother and brother-in-law both spent over 25 years in the military and both of them got out of Vietnam got out directly after they got out of Vietnam and they couldn't retire, I never knew I had a family member that died in Vietnam. | ||
| And it hurts. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thomas, what do you do now to honor that family member? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's just a thing. | |
| You know, I've never visited his grave. | ||
| And like I said, he was born, he's buried in Union Bridge. | ||
| And I never knew that he was, I never knew that much about my mother's side of the family, my grandmother's side of the family, until we had always had a diary reunion. | ||
| In the mid-70s, we had the Millbury side. | ||
| And that's how I found out about him. | ||
| Well, I found out about him when I was looking into my high school classmates that had passed away. | ||
| And I found him merely by accident. | ||
| That was Thomas in Maryland. | ||
| It was on the House floor last week that members of the House spoke about the significance of Memorial Day. | ||
| Here's a clip from Representative Ben Klein, Republican of Virginia, speaking on the issue. | ||
| Mr. Speaker, on this Memorial Day, we do more than remember, we honor the men and women who gave everything for this nation. | ||
| We remember the fallen, those still missing in action, those lost at sea, and the thousands who now rest beneath our flag, having paid the ultimate price for our freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
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These heroes answered the call to defend liberty, knowing it could cost them their lives. | |
| Because of them, we live in a country where freedom still rings and the American dream endures. | ||
|
unidentified
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Their sacrifice is not just a chapter in our history. | |
| It is the foundation of our republic. | ||
| We are duty bound to remember them, to honor them, and to ensure that their service is never forgotten. | ||
| May God bless the memory of our fallen warriors, and may he continue to bless the United States of America and all who wear the uniform in its defense. | ||
| Members of Congress, also posting on social media, this is from last week, Congressman Zach Nunn, Republican of Iowa, tweeting this. | ||
| This Memorial Day we serve together. | ||
| I joined the bipartisan vets this morning to wash the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, honoring the 58,000-plus Americans who gave their lives in service. | ||
| And this from Congressman Don Davis, also with bipartisan vets, saying that he claimed the Vietnam Veteran Wall Memorial ahead of Memorial Day. | ||
| We are standing united in service to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country. | ||
| For those who have served, we honor and remember our fallen. | ||
| Let's hear from Paul in Victorville, California. | ||
| Line for Veterans. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you for taking my call. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, I can, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I told the call screen, I was, if you can believe it, I was a missile commander under Reagan. | |
| I commanded the nuclear weapons during the 80s. | ||
| So I did my small part, hopefully, to have the Soviet Union collapse then. | ||
| And I just want people to realize how bad some of the men are in other parts of the world. | ||
| And that first caller kind of got to me. | ||
| He got kind of emotional because the country is in trouble. | ||
| And I remember when I was in there, they showed us the satellites. | ||
| That's when it was still the Soviet Union, the film. | ||
| And they came in there to the Afghan village and they just killed everybody, except the little boys with the blonde hair. | ||
| And they took them back to Russia. | ||
| And I don't know if you ever dropped a light bulb on the floor and the watch is shatter, but that's what a military-grade weapon does to a little kid's head. | ||
| And I don't mean to be dramatic, but I think our country's in trouble. | ||
| And I feel bad for the boys, most of all. | ||
| Seems like you women are smarter anyhow. | ||
| You seem like you're doing a little bit better going to college. | ||
| And the boys are just in. | ||
| And one last thing for the black boys. | ||
| If you want some inspiration, look up a man called Leroy Alfred Johnston. | ||
| This was a great man, a black man during World War I, who got the highest French medal for saving many lives, many French lives. | ||
| And when he came back, first of all, he couldn't even use the toilet with the white people. | ||
| And then to put the cherry on the cake, he went out fishing with his brothers and they murdered him. | ||
| They beat him to death. | ||
| And these are the great men that built this country. | ||
| So thank you very much. | ||
| I better go. | ||
| That's Paul in California. | ||
| Oliver, also in California and Oja. | ||
| Good morning, Oliver. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Yeah, that first caller, that really broke my heart. | ||
| And so if he's still listening, man, I'm sorry. | ||
| And I also feel the same. | ||
| I feel like we're in a lot of trouble. | ||
| And it's a scary time. | ||
| But I thought I'd call and mention my grandfather, who was an officer or pilot in the Naval Air Force, fought in the South Pacific. | ||
| Amazing guy in World War II. | ||
| And, you know, I've had these kind of talks with my Japanese and German friends who we love and respect each other and thinking about our grandparents who were just murdering each other as fast as they could. | ||
| And, you know, in a matter of a few generations, here we are. | ||
| And so a little word of hope that there can be reconciliation and peace. | ||
| And But yeah, I'm really worried that what's happening in our country and what I see, it's an absolute betrayal, total betrayal of everything these guys fought for. | ||
| And they fought the fascist dictators, and we got one right here. | ||
| And, you know, for old Donnie Bonesburgs to get up in front of all those young soldiers and talk about blood and guts and valor. | ||
| When he got his deferment and avoided going to war himself, he was happy to let everybody do the fighting and dying. | ||
| And I think he's an absolute coward. | ||
| And I think that he's enriching himself. | ||
| And, you know, he's got Paula White talking in tongues, telling him God's on his side. | ||
| So I hope we can all get together and really come to our senses and get this guy out of here as soon as possible. | ||
| So thanks, Z-SPAN. | ||
| Thank you, Brian Lamb. | ||
| And happy Memorial Day, everyone. | ||
| Oliver in California, Rick and Ira, Iowa, Lion 4 Veterans. | ||
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| For me, I guess it's a day of just reflection. | ||
| I remember years ago, my supervisor took me to an American cemetery in Luxembourg. | ||
| A bit over 5,000 soldiers are buried there along with General Patton. | ||
| And boy, what a just a somber experience, you know, to walk through there and see all the graves. | ||
| I wish I had a good way to explain that, but I can't. | ||
| But I can't forget it. | ||
| I remember it, and I'm thankful for all those folks also. | ||
| For me, I just say a prayer that all the folks who've lost loved ones during these wars and conflicts would be comforted, you know, by the Lord. | ||
| And that, you know, they got big holes in their hearts this weekend, and I just pray that the Lord would be able to fill those. | ||
| He's probably the only one who can. | ||
| The other thing is, I pray the nation would just take a moment to remember their sacrifice and that our leaders would do all they could not to get us into any more wars or conflicts, but if they have to, that they'd be a just one and that everybody could get behind them. | ||
| And then lastly, I would just pray that, you know, when we send those warfighters in, that they'd have a clear objective, that they'd get competent leaders, and that we provide them all the means necessary to quickly win the fight. | ||
| I guess that's my thoughts. | ||
| Rick, when did you serve in the military? | ||
| What branch? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was in the Air Force. | |
| And it would have been from, I served about 24 years from 80 to 90 or no, 2004. | ||
| And was over in Germany, what is it, Korea, stateside, Al-Kaharsh, Saudi Arabia. | ||
| So a lot of different places, but I never had to serve outside the fences. | ||
| As these folks that, like I said, that I was just when I was went to Luxembourg and saw them, I never had to go through that. | ||
| And it's just incredible that they could do that. | ||
| It's yeah. | ||
| Rick, we want to let you know that we have a guest coming up later in the program who will be talking about his new book that looks at an overseas military cemetery there in the Netherlands. | ||
| That might be something that you're interested in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it would be. | |
| That's another, I've been through there, so I'll make sure to take a peek at that. | ||
| Appreciate that. | ||
| Let's hear from Brian in Colorado Springs, Line for Veterans. | ||
| Good morning, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just wanted to say, like, today is a great day for everybody to most people have a day off. | |
| So if you could go down, take 20 minutes, a half hour of your day. | ||
| Every town has usually some kind of local war memorial or something by their VFW or their city hall. | ||
| And just to take, you know, 20 minutes, half hour, go down and say thank you. | ||
| That's really what Memorial Day is all about. | ||
| And I hope people take that opportunity to do it. | ||
| That was Brian in Colorado. | ||
| And Brian mentioning the commemorations and observances that are happening across the country today. | ||
| If you were to go on to the Veterans Association or the Veterans Administration website, you'll be able to find a list of those observances and see if there's one close to you. | ||
| We have been showing you live shots of the World War II Memorial here in Washington, D.C. this morning. | ||
| It's one location that will be holding observances today. | ||
| There's another happening on the mall on the National Mall today. | ||
| This is from the Washington Times. | ||
| It says that the headline is Poppies and Patriotism. | ||
| And it says, one side of the 133-foot-long exhibit set up near the base of the Lincoln Memorial tells the stories of decades of American soldiers killed in action around the globe. | ||
| The other side is a blazing red wall of 600,000 poppies, the flowers forever linked by the World War I poem in Flanders Fields to those who have died fighting for freedom. | ||
| The somber display, which features thousands of distinctive red flowers pressed against protective panes of glass, is known as the Poppy Wall of Honor, the visually stunning tribute to America's war dead returned to the National Mall over Memorial Day weekend to honor the sacrifices of military men and women. | ||
| It goes on to say that displaying a red poppy to honor its to honor war dead is a tradition long associated with the British. | ||
| It can be traced back to the creation of the poem written by Canadian Army Dr. John McRae when he saw a field of poppies churned up by fighting and shelling on the Western Front in 1915. | ||
| The article also says the first national observance of Memorial Day, thing called Decoration Day, was May 30th, 1868 to honor Union soldiers killed during the Civil War after two World Wars broadened its scope to honor all U.S. war dead. | ||
| Congress in 1968 changed its observance to the last Monday in May in 1971. | ||
| The name was standardized as Memorial Day. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Ronald, Covington, Texas. | ||
| Good morning, Ronald. | ||
| Or I'm sorry, Covington, Tennessee. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I don't have any good feelings about today. | ||
| My great-great-grandfather was one of the Tuskegee Institute studies, syphilis studies that gave him syphilis after he came back from overseas and didn't treat him. | ||
| He ended up dying and also passed it on to his wife. | ||
| And, you know, he fought in the U.S. military. | ||
| That's what he got for fighting. | ||
| And I just have bad feelings about any person of color going into the military. | ||
| Also, I just feel that no person of color had bad experiences going into the military. | ||
| And, you know, they should just, you know, it's up to them. | ||
| But I just pray that in the future, you know, that people be treated better in the military. | ||
| Also, you know, we swear allegiance to the flag, swear allegiance to the country. | ||
| And even the Bible says you shouldn't swear to nothing but God. | ||
| So, you know, even though I forgive the country for doing what they did to my great-grandfather, I refuse to pledge allegiance to anything but God. | ||
| And now that I know it's a CN to pledge allegiance to anything but God, I don't do it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Ronald in Tennessee. | ||
| Becky, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning, Becky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| When I think about Memorial Day, I automatically think about my grandmother. | ||
| I'm 71, so she's been gone for a while. | ||
| But her youngest son was 17 or 18 years old when he boarded a submarine in, I believe, San Diego, somewhere in California. | ||
| And on his first trip out into the ocean, someone sunk the submarine he was on. | ||
| It was a USS Snook. | ||
| There's been a book written about it, but they've never found the sub. | ||
| And I often think, as a mother myself, how did my grandmother go to sleep every night knowing that her youngest son is lying in the bottom of the sea of Japan and they never found him? | ||
| And it just, it breaks my heart. | ||
| And I think about my mom losing her youngest brother. | ||
| My mom had polio as a child. | ||
| And so much that's happening with this current administration makes me reflect that how sad it would be for my mom and dad who my dad was in the military and what they would think about what was happening to this country. | ||
| And with, you know, Kennedy talking about getting rid of vaccinations, my mother had us first in line to get polio vaccines. | ||
| She lived her whole life with one leg shorter than the other and could never wear regular shoes because she had polio. | ||
| So it just makes me very sad. | ||
| It's a day of, you know, you try to remember and try to hopefully think of some good things, but it's pretty sad. | ||
| So that's it. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| That was Becky in Pennsylvania, Slossi in Rayford, North Carolina, line for veterans. | ||
| Good morning, Slossi. | ||
| Slossi, are you there? | ||
| Am I saying it correctly? | ||
| Rayford, North Carolina. | ||
| Slossi, we'll give you one more try. | ||
| All right, Slossi, if we lost you, go ahead and give us a call back. | ||
| A programming note. | ||
| We have just a few minutes left in this first portion of today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We'll have a guest joining us in just a few minutes. | ||
| And also wanted to note that later today, it's at 11 a.m. Eastern this morning. | ||
| President Trump will visit Arlington National Cemetery to participate in a wreath lane ceremony at the tomb of the unknown soldier. | ||
| You'll be able to watch that live right here on C-SPAN. | ||
| You can also find it on our app, C-SPANNOW, and on our website, c-span.org. | ||
| It was yesterday on the program that Travis Pardington, who is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and host of the Oscar Mike Radio podcast, joined us on Washington Journal and shared his thoughts on Memorial Day. | ||
| Here's a clip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So personally, I think about the Marines that I buried when I was in the Marine Corps. | |
| It comes very much to the focus. | ||
| People talk to me. | ||
| I had the distinct honor of talking to two Gold Star family members a couple weeks ago. | ||
| And the thing that is the same between them is the loss never really goes away. | ||
| These family members feel this loss always, every day. | ||
| But there's also hope. | ||
| They see people enjoying life. | ||
| You know, it's graduation time in this country. | ||
| So they're seeing kids graduate and people in their prom dresses and weddings are starting. | ||
| And what one member told me is she's like, when I see this stuff going on and I see the t-ball games, I see a little bit of my son in all these things. | ||
| And I'm reminded that this is why he served and what his sacrifice means to people. | ||
| So it's a time of loss. | ||
| It's a time of remembrance, but it's also a time of hope and happiness. | ||
| We have Flossie and Ray for North Carolina. | ||
| Flossie, not Flossy. | ||
| We apologize for that. | ||
| Line for veterans. | ||
| Good morning, Flossie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I just wanted to comment on today. | ||
| I am a generational person who has served in the military to include all the way back to my great-grandfather and my brother, family members. | ||
| And I do not agree with the gentleman that called earlier. | ||
| I am a black retired captain. | ||
| I am an author of Rise and Conquer. | ||
| It is the story of my military life. | ||
| I came in the Army during the early 90s where females were then transitioning over to work in combat arms support. | ||
| And I spent the majority of my career from a private to a senior enlisted officer to going over to be officer intelligence officer and then working up to the White House staff as a congressional delegate escort under the four-star generals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I don't understand why he would say that people of color should not be in the military. | |
| I am a black female officer. | ||
| My family have served proudly, as does many other black families. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And today is a tradition of people who have fallen, who have fought for this country, who have been native born to this country, whose ancestors have, along with black and white and Native Americans, have built this country. | |
| So it's a day to be proud of. | ||
| Yes, our loved ones have fallen, but that is a proud thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't celebrate our country just for today. | |
| I wear the flag constantly on anything that I wear because I'm proud of this country. | ||
| I'm proud that we have fought and I'm proud of the ones who have fought for our country and who have died. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I just hope that resonates to all the veterans and to all of us of color and to all of us, period, who have served and who have had loved ones that have served because it's not about us of black, white, or whatever color. | |
| It's about today and how our country was established under the people who gave their lives for today. | ||
| Flossy, you said that you wrote a book about your time in the military? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did. | |
| It is called Rise and Conquer. | ||
| It was published through Mr. T.C. Bradley, who is a famed publisher and author himself. | ||
| And we did it out at Oral Roberts University. | ||
| It was published January 2021. | ||
| Actually, it was debuted December 3rd of 2020. | ||
| And 2021, we actually published the book. | ||
| So I think that it displays from the time of me coming in. | ||
| And of course, I tell everyone year by year of my triumph, even when I became a single soldier parent, always being deployed. | ||
| I deployed twice to Kuwait at the height of the war when it first began. | ||
| I spent one whole year in Korea as one of the female enlisted soldiers who was 12 miles from the DMZ at that time. | ||
| So with the evolving of military from all of that time and our sacrifices, I think it is much noted that people learn and they understand what it is to give yourself to the country. | ||
| And if they read the book, it is very interesting. | ||
| It is called Rise and Conquer. | ||
| Flossy, we're showing it on the screen right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I can't see it. | |
| On Amazon, if people are interested, that's the name of it. | ||
| It is available on Amazon. | ||
| We do need to end it there, but we appreciate your call. | ||
| Still ahead this morning on Washington Journal, Robert Edsel, author of The Monuments Men, will join us to discuss his new book, Remember Us, that looks at the history and role the Dutch have played in honoring and taking care of the graves of Allied soldiers. | ||
| But next, we'll talk with author and historian Tim Bouverie about his book, Allies at War, that examines the relationships between Allied Powers During World War II. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| It isn't just an idea. | ||
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| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss his new book, Allies at War, how the struggles between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World is author and historian Tim Bouvery. | ||
| Tim, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
| We were talking a little bit before the interview started, and there are a lot of books about World War II. | ||
| Why did you write this specific book and what did you focus on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think, Tammy, that everyone is very aware of how the Allies won the Second World War militarily. | |
| But what is far less well understood is how the politics of that war works and how the Allies collaborated and often disagreed over the best way to prosecute the war and over the sort of world that would emerge at the end of the war. | ||
| So the idea behind the book was to fill a gap in the market by showing how the British, and it was the British originally, searched for allies after the fall of France in June 1940. | ||
| Most importantly of all, the United States of America, but also the Soviet Union and relations with nationalist China and smaller powers such as Greece, Yugoslavia, how that came about, and then the real challenges of working together in a coalition that was united in its desire to defeat the Axis, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, | ||
| but was really divided about ideological reasons, the sort of world that should emerge in the aftermath of war about economics, finance, imperialism, the future of empires, and security arrangements that would be put in place once the Axis had disappeared. | ||
| So it is an attempt to look at both the elements of cooperation among the Allies, but also the struggles and the conflict and how that conflict has shaped the world which we still inhabit today. | ||
| Your book does include, it does talk about the well-known battles, Dunkirk, Pearl Harbor, the Normandy landing, the German invasion of Soviet Union, both history buffs and people who just maybe have a lesser understanding of World War II history are familiar with those names. | ||
| Your book includes the thoughts and work of foreign ministers, ambassadors, emissaries. | ||
| What does bringing in those facts, that kind of behind-the-scenes look add to what we already know about these events? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it adds a whole new layer of complexity, really, because as I've mentioned, these powers, the British, the Americans, and the Soviets, the big three Allied powers, were united in a shared military goal, but they were divided on most other things. | |
| Even the British and the Americans, who were both liberal democracies, Soviet Union was, of course, a communist dictatorship, were bitterly divided about the best way to win the war, over operational planning, over grand strategy, but also about what sort of world they wanted to create in its aftermath. | ||
| And by looking at the level, looking at the battles that the diplomats and the foreign ministers, as well as the main Allied leaders, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin participated in, I think it reveals that there was an awful lot of behind-the-scenes argument, frustration, compromise that went on behind those battles that you've just mentioned. | ||
| And that without those arguments, without those discussions, without those debates, many errors would have been made, but also some errors might not have been made. | ||
| It was the German military theorist Klausevitz who said, and I paraphrase here, but war is politics by other means. | ||
| And that is really true. | ||
| We can all debate whether it's good to send your tanks further forward in this particular battle or what time or what tide or all sorts of elements of military strategy that come into those main battles. | ||
| But before you even get to any boots on the ground, you have to have a coalition and there has to be an agreed strategy. | ||
| And that strategy is not just how the war is going to be prosecuted, but what it's about. | ||
| What is it that the Allies were actually fighting for? | ||
| And even that question was surprisingly contentious. | ||
| Your book is out here in the US next month, beginning of next month, but it's already gotten some write-ups there in the UK. | ||
| And this was from an excerpt from something that The Spectator wrote about it. | ||
| It says, Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's friend and emissary, whose chronic ill health had made him very thin, was described by one British diplomat as looking like an animated piece of shredded wheat. | ||
| Paul Raynard, the French prime minister, with his narrow eyes and natural smirk, was said to have had the countersence of a samurai educated at Cambridge, while the Soviet foreign minister, Javislaw Malatalvo, had small, deep-set eyes and the smile of a Siberian winter. | ||
| Anthony Eden was a satirical symphony. | ||
| Those are some of the observations that you include in this book. | ||
| A lot of some of what you wrote is also the first time that it's been shared, that it's been documented. | ||
| How did you come about these records? | ||
| And what were some of the challenges you had in finding and gathering them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the challenge for any historian dealing with the whole of the Second World War, even if it's just the whole of the anti-Axis Allied side, is the sheer volume of material. | |
| I went through over 100 different archives in Britain and the United States, and it's boxes within boxes. | ||
| It's like Russian dolls. | ||
| I spent weeks at the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library in upstate New York, and it's not just FDR's papers that are there, but most of the papers of his leading associates. | ||
| And it's fascinating, Tammy, how even an archive such as FDR's, which has been so trawled by historians, there are still documents in it which haven't been published before or whose significance haven't been realized before. | ||
| For instance, I write in the book about the time when the British Royal Navy, tragically, but in my view necessarily, decided to sink a significant proportion of the French fleet off the North African coast on the 3rd of July 1940. | ||
| And it's often been speculated that one of the reasons that Churchill wanted to do this was to show the Americans, to show the Roosevelt administration, that Britain was determined to continue the war no matter what, and that Britain was prepared to act ruthlessly, even on the fringes of morality. | ||
| These people, these sailors, had been Britain's allies but two weeks earlier. | ||
| And yet it's never been proven before that the British corresponded or discussed the planned operation against their former ally in North Africa with the White House before it took place. | ||
| And yes, in Franklin Roosevelt's papers, I came across a one-line telegram from the British ambassador, Lord Lothian, to Franklin Roosevelt dated the 4th of July, 1940. | ||
| And it simply said, Mr. President, you will see that Winston Churchill has taken the action that you and I discussed the other day and which you approved. | ||
| So the British, even at that stage, a whole year and a half before Pearl Harbor, was asking the United States for their blessing, as it were, to undertake a very, very significant and yet highly controversial military operation. | ||
| Our guest for the next 45 minutes or so is Tim Bouvery, author of the new book, Allies at War, How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World. | ||
| If you have a question or comment from him, you can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines for this segment are broken down by region. | ||
| If you are in the Eastern or Central time zone, you can call in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you are in the Mountain or Pacific, you can call in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| And also want to note that we have that line up still for military and military families. | ||
| Again, that is veterans, retired, and active duty. | ||
| You can call in at 202-748-8002. | ||
| Tim, wanted to ask you about going back to challenges of collecting information. | ||
| You did have access to a lot. | ||
| The exception is information regarding Russia. | ||
| What does lack of still having not access or information about Soviet wartime diplomacy, what does that, what impact did that have on your writing of this book? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's not quite true to say that we don't have original Soviet material because the Stalin archive is online and the archive of the Molotov Secretariat, that is Vashaliev Molotov, who was the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, the Soviet foreign minister, that's also online. | |
| And there are, in addition to that, great volumes of published documents of Soviet material, as well as the published diaries of the Soviet ambassador to Britain, Ivan Meisky. | ||
| There are, I'm sure, papers relating to the Second World War in Moscow or elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, which have yet to see the light of day. | ||
| But I do think that it is not the same as expecting or discovering a great cachet of material in the West, certainly in relation to diplomacy. | ||
| The Soviet Union was an extremely centralized, highly autocratic, punitive, coercive dictatorship. | ||
| And why does that affect the quality of the material? | ||
| Well, it affects the quality of the material because all of the apparatus of the Soviet Union, down to the quite junior levels of diplomat, but right all the way up to the foreign minister at the top, are always guessing what it is that their boss, and the ultimate boss is Joseph Stalin, wants to hear. | ||
| There is very little honest reporting there for. | ||
| And in addition to that, there are very few private diaries and there are hardly any memoirs. | ||
| To keep a private diary was an enormous risk in the Soviet Union. | ||
| Even Meisky, who kept a private diary in London, knew that his diary was being read each night by the NKVD, members of the Soviet secret police. | ||
| And so it's not an honest diary. | ||
| It is all praising Stalin and praising Molotov and suggesting that their foreign policy is as shrewd and foresight visionary as could possibly be. | ||
| And so the reports that the Soviet diplomats provided the Kremlin with are far less insightful and in many ways less interesting than the dispatches that British and American diplomats and free French diplomats were sending back to their governments. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We will start with Roberta in Washington, D.C. Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Roberta. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call. | |
| And happy Memorial Day to everybody. | ||
| I think it's my comment: it amazes me how the talk shows are talking, and older women are being raped, kids are being killed, and all we want to do is have a format and talk about it. | ||
| We need to get together and help these people. | ||
| I mean, and had these. | ||
| Roberta, we're talking with author Tim Bouveri about his new book. | ||
| Do you have a question for him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, you said I could talk about the veterans as well. | |
| Memorial Day, the ones that died. | ||
| I'm not thinking about that man's book. | ||
| We have, no, Roberta, I think you misunderstood. | ||
| We have a line for members, people who are veterans, but our topic is still Memorial Day. | ||
| We'll go on to Randy in Lost Nation, Iowa, member of the military family. | ||
| Hi, Randy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I'm Jimmy Colin Tay. | ||
| My great-grandpa served during World War I. | ||
| And so just four brothers. | ||
| One died in World One. | ||
| And the other two came home. | ||
| And my great-grandpa and my great-uncle served, were BFW members for years in Clarence and Lauder, Iowa. | ||
| And I'm very proud of their service. | ||
| My great-uncle served in Africa, World War II, and then he served in, he was in Paris. | ||
| He was a clear party guy. | ||
| My great uncle was. | ||
| He was a hyper man. | ||
| He had a hard time breathing a lot. | ||
| He had asthma. | ||
| And Tim, any response for our caller? | ||
| Well, she had a question there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, just to say that I entirely understand why he is so proud of what his grandfather did. | |
| And it's not just he, but everyone in the West and everyone who believes in freedom and the right to make your own choices and decide your own government and to live in a liberal democracy should be deeply grateful for the service that his grandfather gave. | ||
| Let's hear from Merle and Winston. | ||
| I'm sorry, Wilson, North Carolina, member of the military. | ||
| Good morning, Merle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I serve and I'm so proud of all the people that have served. | |
| But I want to ask him, what do he think? | ||
| You know, a lot of people died for NATO and to build up that alliance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it has been, well, his kid kept the peace. | |
| And I noticed the new president here, he hasn't been over there at all. | ||
| He don't support Ukraine. | ||
| It seemed like he's trying to break NATO up. | ||
| And this is so many people have died for that, sir. | ||
| And I want to get your opinion on that. | ||
| And the other thing I want to say is I have a son in the military now. | ||
| Someone had called earlier. | ||
| And they were saying that they don't think black people or whatever should serve in the military. | ||
| But it's just not black people. | ||
| A lot of people probably don't want to serve. | ||
| If I was in today, we might be deployed to support genocide. | ||
| This country is moving toward authoritarian way. | ||
| A lot of the generals have been replaced. | ||
| So many generals, good ones, have just been fired. | ||
| And how long? | ||
| Am I still there? | ||
| Yes, you are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you. | |
| A lot of generals have been fired. | ||
| And that concerns me. | ||
| Because when you fire all these generals that have this knowledge and everything, then you got other generals up there that was put in by this president. | ||
| And there's no telling what their orders that they will give you. | ||
| And you will have to do that. | ||
| And that's what I fear for my son being in the military. | ||
| I wanted him to be in there. | ||
| I'm so proud of him. | ||
| But it's terrible today. | ||
| And a lot of people is called in. | ||
| And I feel like crying, and I really do, because I don't know if we're going to really have another Remoria Day to really celebrate our freedom. | ||
| It's been taken. | ||
| All things, all kinds of things. | ||
| It's not just America, but it seemed like people follow America. | ||
| And now you look into the other part of the world, and everybody is not everyone, but a lot of them, except Europe, are moving toward authoritarian and everything. | ||
| And I look at the people that's in power today. | ||
| You've got Netanyahu been in 20 years. | ||
| You got Putin been in 30 years. | ||
| And it's no good. | ||
| Merle, we'll get a response from Tim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Merle, the first part of your question was on NATO, and I couldn't agree with you more. | |
| I think NATO is extremely important. | ||
| NATO came out of the Second World War and the early challenges of the Cold War and is based, was based on the experiences that the Western nations, Britain and America, had had before, which is that isolation doesn't work. | ||
| Isolationism did not protect the United States on the 7th of December 1941 against the Japanese. | ||
| Isolationism in the 1930s did not protect Western Europe. | ||
| And therefore, if we cherish our democracy, if we believe in liberal values, if we believe that everyone has the right to live with freedom without fear of aggression, which was one of the fundamental points Franklin Roosevelt made in his 1941 State of the Union address, then it is important to have alliances that deter. | ||
| It is important for would-be aggressors to know that democracies are not going to fracture, they are not going to splinter and allow that to happen. | ||
| They are going to club together and they are going to provide a united response. | ||
| And the United States is critical to NATO, and yet the United States is also a beneficiary of NATO. | ||
| There has only been one time in history when Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which says that an attack on one member state is an attack on all member states, has been invoked. | ||
| And that was after 9-11. | ||
| And lots of European, including British, soldiers went and fought unhesitatingly in Afghanistan as part of an American-led coalition following that appalling terrorist attack. | ||
| So NATO was important in the 1940s. | ||
| It was important throughout the Cold War. | ||
| And it's more important now than ever when we are looking at renewed Russian aggression in Europe. | ||
| Tim, I wanted to share a quote that you start your book with. | ||
| It's early on. | ||
| It says that the difficulties inherent in maintaining a global alliance between great powers with different strategic goals, combat priorities, governmental systems, ideologies, and economies were immense. | ||
| Only Hitler could have brought them together. | ||
| The Allies were united in their desire to defeat the Nazi dictator and rid the world of German, Japanese, and Italian militarism. | ||
| In this quest, they cooperated successfully and to an unprecedented degree, yet they were at odds about the best way to win the war and about the world they hoped to construct from its ashes. | ||
| You talked a little bit earlier about an incident or a quote that you found in a book while writing or in a diary while writing this. | ||
| But remind us where the relationships between the Allies stood at the beginning of the war in 1939 and then when the U.S. entered at the end of 1941. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Tammy, I say in the book that the Grand Alliance, Britain, America, the Soviet Union, was improbable and incongruous. | |
| And it was deeply improbable. | ||
| In 1939, the Soviet Union, of which Russia was the largest constituent, was the ally of Nazi Germany. | ||
| The Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 had divided Eastern Europe between the totalitarians. | ||
| It was Stalin's cynical deal with Hitler that had unleashed the Second World War. | ||
| And then in late October, November of 1939, the Soviet Union committed fresh aggression against neutral Finland. | ||
| So the idea of the West cooperating with the Soviet Union seemed extremely far-fetched and indeed only came about because Hitler turned on his former partner in crime, Joseph Stalin, and invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941. | ||
| Equally from the British perspective, America did not seem anywhere near joining the war. | ||
| The neutrality acts which had been passed in the 1930s were all invoked by Franklin Roosevelt, as he had to at the start of the war. | ||
| And indeed, the British government at that stage when the French alliance was still in being before the fall of France in June of 1940, the British didn't even necessarily want the Americans to fight for them because they worried about what demands the US government would make of Britain and particularly of the British Empire at the peace conference. | ||
| So it would have been a very, very, very far-sighted, if not clairvoyant, observer in 1939 who could have said, this is how the war is going to pan out. | ||
| The British, the Americans, and the Soviets are going to come together to defeat Nazism. | ||
| I don't think anyone was predicting that then. | ||
| You also note there's a quote at the beginning of your book from Winston Churchill that says, There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them. | ||
| Talk about what happened as the war progressed, the overall general relationship between the Allies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there is a honeymoon period at the start of the Anglo-American relationship after Pearl Harbor and Churchill comes to Washington and spends a lot of time with FDR. | |
| He addresses a joint session of Congress. | ||
| Churchill remains an extremely popular figure in the United States throughout the Second World War. | ||
| And it should be said that British and American servicemen collaborated to an extraordinary and completely unprecedented degree right up to 1945 and the fall of the Third Reich. | ||
| Never before have two mighty nations cooperated so successfully in such an integrated, collegiate, and generally fraternal manner as the British and the Americans did. | ||
| And I should say the British Commonwealth, because a huge amount of Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and South Africans were fighting alongside the Americans and the British at that time. | ||
| But at the same time, we can't allow ourselves to think that there was a romantic idea of what Churchill called the special relationship operating at all levels. | ||
| And as the war went on, the British and the Americans disagreed increasingly over the coming peace. | ||
| They disagreed over Grand Strategy. | ||
| The British favored a Mediterranean strategy. | ||
| The Americans wanted to cross the Channel into France at the earliest possible date. | ||
| And they also disagreed about how to handle that other member of the alliance, the Soviet Union, and what potential threat Joseph Stalin was constituted to European security and indeed global security. | ||
| Let's talk with John from Naples, Florida. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm a veteran, U.S. Navy. | ||
| I just want to talk a little bit about, I hope we're learning from this war. | ||
| I hear a lot of virtue signaling about what we're doing now, maybe aligning with certain people or countries that other people aren't comfortable with. | ||
| Well, we aligned with some people back then that weren't very virtuous. | ||
| We aligned with Joe Stalin, a massive executioner. | ||
| We aligned with Bao Sedong, another massive executioner. | ||
| I mean, they both helped us win World War II against the Japanese and the Nazis. | ||
| So I think when you compare that war to what's going on now, I mean, you need to figure out who your friends are going to be. | ||
| Our next big enemy is going to be China, and we're going to need Russia, whether people like it or not. | ||
| Whether they like it or not. | ||
| And I think if you look at World War II, you can see that's exactly what's happening. | ||
| As far as England is concerned, it's just a tremendous country, great empire. | ||
| People are just an unbelievable group of people. | ||
| I would hope that they get their immigration problem taken care of now, so those people that fought in World War II shouldn't be embarrassed and ashamed in their graves by what's happening to their country. | ||
| Because I believe right now it's turning into a third world country with all of the Middle Eastern immigration. | ||
| I'd like to hear what he's got to say about that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Tim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, John, Firstly, to your point, it is completely true that the British and the Americans had to make major political and ideological compromises in the Second World War in order to win it. | |
| And you're completely right. | ||
| They aligned with some extremely unsavoury characters and unsavoury powers, most notably the Soviet Union, a nation and a regime, rather, which had murdered many more people than the Nazis had by the time that the war broke out in 1939. | ||
| The only thing I would say is that this was a moment of extraordinary circumstance. | ||
| This was an existential war. | ||
| It was a war for the very survival of Western liberal democracy. | ||
| And it was put quite neatly, if colloquially, by the British ambassador to Washington, Lord Halifax, who was asked by a Republican congressman at the time, how could Britain justify allying herself with Soviet Russia? | ||
| And this was just before Pearl Harbor, so America wasn't yet in the war. | ||
| And the ambassador replied, when a man is at the bottom of a hole, he will accept the hand of a guerrilla if it's his only way out. | ||
| And the Republican congressman replied, well, what if the guerrilla turns on you when you get out of the hole? | ||
| And Lord Halifax gave the reply, which really did sum up Anglo-American policy thereafter, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. | ||
| I'm sure that you are right that China presents a fundamental challenge to the West, not least economically and environmentally. | ||
| But it is not of the same nature of aggression and global hegemonic potential as the Nazis were at least touting in the late 1930s. | ||
| And we are still in a far more unipolar world than we were then. | ||
| The United States is still by far and away the strongest military and economic power. | ||
| And the rest of the world, what Republican and Democratic presidents showed throughout the Cold War was that if they wanted to win the Cold War, they had to have on their side as many countries as possible, however small, however parochial, however poor these countries were. | ||
| And one of the ways that the United States won the Cold War was clinging to the ideals of democracy, liberalism, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and a lack of tolerance for unprovoked aggression against democratic nations. | ||
| And so I think that the United States can continue to lead the world in that way when it stands up for the fundamental principles of American democracy enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution. | ||
| And that is something that shouldn't be lost sight of. | ||
| It's very easy to lose principles. | ||
| There are other democracies in the world which have lost their principles at moments. | ||
| And it's much easier to lose them than to regain them. | ||
| But the United States has been a shining example of democracy and freedom of expression and freedom from fear, freedom from aggression for many, many years. | ||
| And it can continue to wield great influence in the world by being that shining example. | ||
| Tim, you talked earlier about an incident that took place between the British and French navies. | ||
| There was also fighting between countries and France, the Vichy versus free France. | ||
| What impact did that have on Allied efforts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It had an enormous impact, Tammy. | |
| And I think this is an area of the book which I hope also sets the book out from what is on the shelves at the moment, is that it looks at far less explored areas of the war. | ||
| Far too few people know that the Allies fought a two-month war against the Vichy French in Syria and Lebanon in the summer of 1941. | ||
| And it caused, obviously, an enormous amount of resources to be expended in this fight at a time when the British and not quite the Americans, but the British Commonwealth was still fighting the Germans in North Africa and the Italians. | ||
| But it also caused great diplomatic and political problems because the Vichy government was recognized by Washington, by the United States, and continued to be recognized by the United States right up until Vichy disappeared when the Germans invaded the whole of France, the southern part of France, following Operation Torch in the late autumn of 1942. | ||
| Whereas the British were supporting General de Gaulle and the Free French. | ||
| And this caused some very serious diplomatic ruckuses, such as when the Free French seized the small collection of islands known as Saint-Pierre et Miquelon off the Canadian coast. | ||
| And at the time, Churchill was in the White House. | ||
| He was the guest of the American president. | ||
| But the U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, rather than applauding this seizure of Vichy-controlled islands by the Free French, who were nominally fighting the Axis alongside the British and the Americans, tried to insist that the Free French give the islands back to the Vichy authorities. | ||
| And this caused an enormous amount of controversy within Allied capitals. | ||
| Let's talk with Michael in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call and a fascinating subject. | ||
| I do not know, I'm embarrassed to say that much about the World War II before America became involved. | ||
| But I had two questions for your guests. | ||
| And number one, was that a common, is there something unique in your book, something new in your book about this British attack on the French Navy, which I was not aware, that they had sunk the French Navy off of North Africa? | ||
| Is that something new? | ||
| And the second question I had is there's also a question. | ||
| I read the book at Dawn We Schlept, which was about FDR's, America was so isolationist before World War II that FDR was willing to go to any lengths to get us into the war. | ||
| And there was some question about whether we left our Navy unprotected for Pearl Harbor. | ||
| Well, Michael, on your first point, yes, I think that there I have new material relating to the British decision to sink the French fleet off Maurzel Kabir, French North Africa, in July of 1940. | ||
| I have the diaries of the British naval attaché, who I actually didn't realize this at the time until I began researching my book, is actually an ancestor of mine. | ||
| Would have been my great-great-uncle, as well as the contemporary diaries of the chief negotiator, the British officer, who was sent in to try and stop the French from having their fleet destroyed. | ||
| The British offered the French four alternatives. | ||
| They could join the Royal Navy and continue the war. | ||
| They could sail their ships to North America or the French West Indies and keep them there for the duration of the war. | ||
| They could scuttle their ships. | ||
| That is to say, they could sink them themselves. | ||
| Or they could face, as was made plain, destruction at the hands of the Royal Navy. | ||
| And it was their failure to take one of the honorable options which was put forward to them that led to the tragedy of the 3rd of July, 1940. | ||
| And it's, I think, a fascinating episode, not just because it's so important, and it really did have a huge impact in America. | ||
| The Americans, I think before the sinking of the French fleet, felt that Britain was quite likely going to sue for peace as the French had just done. | ||
| This extremely aggressive, rigorous, and, as I say, an action which is on the bounds of morality really convinced American public opinion and the White House that Britain was not going to surrender, that Britain would continue the war even without allies. | ||
| It's also a scenario which brings together the two elements of my book, which is the constant dilemma and relationship between military expediency on the one hand. | ||
| The British did not want under any circumstances the Germans to get hold of the French fleet. | ||
| That's why they offered the French Navy these options and ultimately sank it. | ||
| But at the other stage, there was a political element to this, which is what I've just mentioned, the desire to show the world that Britain would carry on the war no matter what. | ||
| As to your question about Pearl Harbor, there are an awful lot of conspiracy theories on the internet about what Roosevelt and what Churchill knew or did not know about Japanese intentions before the 7th of December 1941. | ||
| But I can quite categorically say that neither Churchill nor Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor before it happened. | ||
| There was a strong amount of intelligence suggesting that the Japanese were going to attack somewhere, that the Japanese were preparing for war, but it wasn't even clear whether the Japanese were going to attack the Americans in the Pacific or the British in Southeast Asia. | ||
| And the smart money was actually on the Japanese attacking the British in Malaysia and Singapore, which indeed did happen completely contemporaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor. | ||
| Of course, there was missed intelligence. | ||
| There were moments whereby the Americans could have found out about the attack on Pearl Harbor even a few hours before it happened, which would have saved hundreds of lives and, I'm sure, some of the major capsule ships which were sunk. | ||
| But there was no deliberate attempt to not warn the naval base at Pearl Harbor that this attack was coming. | ||
| Let's talk with Ted in Raymond, New Hampshire, Line 4 veterans. | ||
| Good morning, Ted. | ||
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Yes, I have a question for the gentleman. | |
| Dunkirk, a lot of the civilians brought ships to help evacuate the soldiers that were, they had their backs to the sea and were being scraped by German planes and that. | ||
| Do you know the amount of how many that perished during that by the civilians? | ||
| And is there a memorial for them in England for what they've done to help save the troops? | ||
| It's a very good question. | ||
| Certainly there were dozens, if not hundreds of small boats that took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk. | ||
| But I'm afraid I don't know the exact number of how many civilians took part or whether there is a memorial. | ||
| I would suspect that there is. | ||
| It was very much the focus of remembering Dunkirk from the immediacy of the evacuation. | ||
| J.B. Priestley, the playwright, spoke about the small boats, the little boats, and this became a hugely romanticized element of the Dunkirk story. | ||
| But one must acknowledge the fact that far, far, far more troops were evacuated in a more traditional fashion by the Royal Navy from Dunkirk. | ||
| But it was an extraordinary deliverance. | ||
| At the beginning of the evacuation, the British Chiefs of Staff thought that they would only manage to rescue 50,000 British and French soldiers, sailors, and airmen. | ||
| But by the end of the five and a half day evacuation, over 350,000 had been evacuated, including nearly 100,000 French, who, I'm afraid, a few days later, almost, or certainly months, a couple of months later when they were offered the chance to join the Free French and General de Gaulle, chose instead to be repatriated to France and to live under German occupation. | ||
| Tim, wanted to talk a little bit more about troops. | ||
| Your book focuses on the alliance's leaders and key advisors, but certainly it was also the troops who had thoughts about their allied counterparts. | ||
| What did sentiment among troops look like and how did they promote unity within them? | ||
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Well, there was a friendly invasion of the British Isles from 1942 onwards as hundreds of thousands of American servicemen came to Britain to prepare for operations in North Africa, in Italy, and finally across the Channel with D-Day and the invasion of Normandy. | |
| The Americans were not always popular, but nor were the British always popular. | ||
| There were various stories of British and American forces clashing. | ||
| The British resented the Americans for being better paid. | ||
| The American army was the best paid army in the world. | ||
| And the Americans had better rations than the British. | ||
| The Americans similarly didn't really, weren't really prepared, I think, for the level of poverty and the poverty of luxury that existed in Britain. | ||
| Because of the very large Atlantic Ocean, almost none of the United States suffered a blackout during the war. | ||
| But in Britain, you couldn't show lights after dark for fear of guiding enemy bombers towards their targets. | ||
| Very, very strict rationing was taking place in Britain from the earliest stages of the war. | ||
| And a vast amount of the British Isles had been destroyed by German bombs. | ||
| And I think a lot of American soldiers, coming from comparative bounty and munificence in the United States, found this difficult. | ||
| But there was very, very good cooperation in battle. | ||
| And among the leading generals, I mean, there's a story that Eisenhower was a superb supreme Allied commander and would not allow petty jealousies and old national antagonisms to get in the way of real proper inter-allied cooperation. | ||
| There's a story whereby he heard that one of his subordinates had called a British officer with whom he was working a son of a female dog. | ||
| And he dismissed the officer and sent him back to America. | ||
| And the British officer went to Eisenhower to plead for this man to have a stay of execution. | ||
| And he said, We over here in Britain have learnt recently that to be called a son of a female dog is actually a term of endearment, really, as far as American soldiers go. | ||
| And this is all part of the camaraderie of war. | ||
| And I really think that you might give this man a reprieve. |