B (5:23)

That's going to leave a mark across many hundreds of years, isn't it?

C (5:29)

He is now today only remembered in that context. And I. I want to say a word about the Battle of Blenheim, because there are three chapters, if we read them over, we'll go through this. But three of the best chapters that ever wrote are the chapter before and the chapter describing and the chapter after this Battle of Blenheim. And he gets down there now, the. The French marshal Tillard is following him down the river 500 miles, and he thinks it's just some kind of maneuver. And Marlborough was a brilliant logistical general. Among other brilliances, he had. He had them all. He had boats and supplies at various port towns along the river, and the French couldn't really cross the river because that was cumbersome. And they never knew if he might not get in those boats and rush back up to the north and take a fort. So they shadow him all the way down. And he's met up with Eugene now, and they fight a little bit down there, get rid of the margrave. And then they know they're going to do the big battle. And on the. On the eve. On the morning of the big battle, Tillard is writing a dispatch to Louis xiv. Tell him what the situation is. And he says, I must go now, highness. He said the English are putting together a demonstration before they continue their retirement. Then the battle of. The battle of Blenheim happens. And that night, the next dispatch he sends to Louis xiv. He's a prisoner in Marlborough's coach, so it's really delicious. And in the battle, these two guys don't know each other very well, but they know each other very well in another way. They're on the west side of the river now, and there's a river, and there's an open place, and there's a hill, and they fight the opening of the battle in the open place between the river and the hill. And the French are getting the upper hand, and the allied line is giving way. And Eugene or Eugen is on the extreme right of theirs, that is to the east, facing north. And at one point, and you know, these two guys are in the battle, right? There's bullets flying around them, right? They're close to the line. And at one point, as the pressure is mounting on the extreme right of the British line, of the allied line, Marlborough gives an order to Eugene, and he sends a large part of his force in full retreat. And so he denudes himself of strength. And what that force does is it rides and runs around that hill, and there's a bunch of troops deposited behind that hill, and it joins them, and they come around the hill and attack the French in the flank. And Churchill makes the comment in describing this, what confidence they had in each other that Eugene, at a moment of great pressure, would send away prime troops to make this counterattack. And they drove the whole French army into the river and just destroyed it.

B (8:54)

I bring it up so that the audience understands Europe is a. Is a. Compared to the map of the world, is a pretty small place with a lot of history. And in the middle of that history, in 1604, there is this most important battle that is fought by Winston Churchill's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, John Churchill, who becomes the duke of Marlborough when he is gifted an estate at Blenheim as a result of this battle. And it's a battle where the English fought with the Austrians. And for the next 350 years, a lot of European history is fought around Germany and its bizarre structure. The first world war, obviously, But Austria, as you had pointed out had been an empire for a thousand years and it had been the center of the Holy Roman Empire. And Vienna was it. It was the city. Right. That was the reason Hitler wants it. So is that Hitler was born there, but it's also the city in the city in the middle of continental Europe. Is that fair to say?

C (10:06)

Yeah. And, you know, that's, you know, that's borne out through forever. Right. What long about 1680, Suleiman besieges Vienna and never took it. And if he had taken it, Europe would have been open to him, you know, the Ottoman army. And so it's a, it's prime real estate.

B (10:34)

Prime real estate is an understatement. It was the center of old Europe. Still a beautiful city. More coming up with Dr. Larry Arn as we continue. I think it's episode 13 in our survey of Winston Churchill's memoirs of World War II. Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back with Dr. Ahn except the hillsdale.edu or a cue for hillsdale.com station.

A (10:54)

Hey, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour and the Hillsdale College K12 Classical Education Podcast. I want to know, what do you think about the show you're listening to right now? Visit Podcast Hillsdale. Edu and click the survey Pop up to take our very first ever listener survey. Tell us what you like, what you don't like, and what you want to hear from us in the future. Visit Podcast hillsdale. Edu and click the pop up to take the survey and thank you for listening.

D (11:30)

When you think of America's founding, you might picture the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, or great figures like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. But those moments and those men didn't appear out of nowhere and they didn't succeed by chance. The ideas that shaped our nation were forged over more than a century of struggle and faith, tested and proven by the colonists who carved a civilization from the wilderness. These men and women escaped tyranny, defined self government and set the stage for history's greatest fight for freedom. In Hillsdale College's free six part documentary series on colonial America, you'll discover how the virtues of courage, faith, hard work and freedom defined our earliest Americans and why they still matter today. You'll hear their stories set against the backdrop of the Great Awakening, the Glorious Revolution and the French and Indian War, and see how the American character was forged long before 1776. Watch the series for free at Hillsdale. Edu Network. That's Hillsdale Edu Network.

B (12:37)

Welcome back America, I'm Hugh Hewitt. Dr. Larry Orne is in the House. The last broadcast hour of the week, it's the Hillsdale Dialogue. We're talking right now about Winston Churchill and his reaction to news of the Anschluss when Hitler announced he was basically invading Austria. And we knew what it meant now, but not quite sure Americans grasp the centrality of Austria at that point.

C (13:02)

There are two general points worth making. One is the founders of our country knew a lot of European history and they didn't want all that for us. They didn't want lots of little publics, cheek by jowl on a continent, you know, maneuvering against each other constantly, which is the story of Europe. It's what it's like still. And, and that's one point. And another point is in relating these events, there's just a million proofs that the charge that Churchill was a warmonger is wrong, made by Daryl Cooper and others. But one of them is the whole way he writes this book that we're reading, right, because he won his glory in this war. And all, Volume one is all about his efforts to prevent the war again.

B (13:55)

And again and again, again and again.

C (13:58)

He's always calling it the unnecessary war, you know, and when we read the later volumes, we'll see that he's always trying to find a way to win it as cheaply as possible once it came upon them. And so, you know, in other words, he may be foolish and he may be wrong headed about a lot of things, but the idea that he wanted that war is just silly.

B (14:23)

And now I also, in order to prepare for this, I went back and listened to your colleague Wilfred Maclay's Land of Hope, his summary of World War I and the treaty of Versailles. And why did, why in the world. Because I couldn't figure out why did they leave Germans everywhere? They left Germans in Poland, they left Germans in Czechoslovakia, they left Germans in Austria. And Hitler wanted to collect all the Germans. If we, if we have to say the first objective of this furious demon man Hitler, it's to collect all the people to whom he feels racial kinship. But the Germans are everywhere. And I guess that was the point of World War I, is to divide the Germans up.

C (15:10)

Partly that's true. They certainly wanted to weaken Germany. It's also true that it's like gerrymandering in the United States, right? You have to draw really wiggly lines to make people who have harmonious interest and outlooks united, right? And really in the end, you can't draw those lines, you know, when we get to Czechoslovakia, we're doing Austria right now, so.

B (15:36)

Right.

C (15:37)

And Austria is, as you began by saying correctly, the route to these other countries. And when you go south and east in Europe, you get into a world where there's a competition between the German speaking Habsburg Empire and the Russian, well, Cyrillic Alphabet, Slavic peoples that have an affinity to Russia and, and so. And you know, there's Germans all over the place and there's Slavs all over the place and they're in intermingled a lot. We have seen and you know, anybody as old as you and me, and younger too, has seen all the troubles when, when the Yugoslavia broke up.

B (16:25)

Yeah.

C (16:26)

In Serbia and Croatia, who are neighbors and who can understand each other's speech, but one of them uses the Cyrillic and the other uses the Latin Alphabet. One of them is Eastern Orthodox and one of them is Catholic. And apparently that's a ground for them to hate each other and commit genocide. Mostly the Serbians on the Croats. So these troubles are everywhere and Hitler is exploiting them.

B (16:54)

And to give people a little idea of where we're going, we're only doing Austria today and it may stretch into next week. But there are five critical dates between where we are. The Anschluss, which occurs on March 12th, 13th, 1938, and the invasion of Poland, which is a year and a half later, September 1, 1939, which starts World War II. So the Anschluss, which we're going to talk about March 12, 1938. A month later, the Anglo Italian agreement between England and Italy, and then a year later, The Munich Agreement, September 30, 1938. And then a few months later you've got the Molotov Ribbentrop pact in August of 1939, and a few days after that, the invasion of Poland. Things move very quick is what I'm pointing out, Dr. Arndt. It's as though the world is holding its breath and it can't stop. I wonder what it would have been like to have been alive then. Churchill gives us a pretty good sense of the urgency of every day that passes, which is his gift as a, as a writer. But it must have been remarkable.

C (18:11)

Well, Churchill is, you know, if you, you know, if you go through the Churchill archive or read the big biography by Martin Gilbert, you will see Churchill regards these as extremely urgent days. The British people don't really. And the British statesmen are increasingly concerned about this and, and they're appalled by the prospect of a war. They. To remind the readers of where we've come from January, January 1933, Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. Churchill has always been given warnings about this. For a year, 1935, Germany violates the Treaty of Versailles and occupies with military force the Rhineland, the area along that river, which is a big industrial area. And Germany was not ready for war at that time. Churchill believes that that was the time when resistance would have toppled Hitler, but certainly made Germany recoil and they put up with it, the French and the Germans. Then Churchill is surprised in this book that it's two and a half years now until the next step, which, which is Austria, which he predicted would be the next step. And in this chapter, Churchill describes how Italy, if you just think of the map of Europe, Italy has, you know, it goes up to the Alps and so does Austria. And so they're sort of neighbors with a pass in between them that leads to Vienna. And Italy might take a hostile view to German intrusion into Austria, and Mussolini did not. And what's going on with Mussolini in this time is that he's playing footsie with both sides. Italy is a solid and longstanding ally of Great Britain.

B (20:14)

And that's what's so shocking about. Hold it right there, Dr. Arne. What's so shocking is Italy goes to the other side of the division of Europe. They were with the Allies in World War I. They were with Hitler and Turkey and ally in World War II. We will bring you more. Don't go anywhere. A lot more of the Hillsdale Dialogue ahead today. All things hillsdale@hillsdale.edu. all prior of the dialogues collected@hughforhillsdale.com Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Dr. Larry Ahren is in the house with us today for the Hillsdale Dialogue. We're focusing in on the Anschluss and what Italy didn't. Didn't do when Hitler marched into Vienna.

C (20:54)

When, when Italy. When Italy abides and blesses. Even Hitler's taking over of Austria, which he did by political maneuvering and military force. And it's important that happens in 1938. And it's important that the Germans rolling into Austria uncontested on their way to Vienna, that the trip didn't go very well. The tanks broke down and big traffic jams. They had to put them on railway cars to get them there to the thing without being in a battle. Right. And so if 1935 was an obvious time when Hitler wasn't strong enough to do something, he did, 38 is also like that because the general said, look, our Siegfried line that we're building in the Rhineland, which we've taken in 1935, is not ready yet. And we got no way where we could oppose the French if they invaded us. When we invade Czechoslovakia, I was going.

B (21:57)

To say that most boomers will have become acquainted with Austria and the Anschluss, which is this invasion of Austria by Hitler's Germany via the movie the Sound of Music, which came out in 1965. And I would even venture to say that Americans our age probably got their initial and very negative view of Nazis by watching the Sound of music in 1965 when they were. Whether they were 12 or whether they were 8 or whether they were 4. The Nazis don't come off very well because of course they shouldn't. But it's the takeover of an independent country, Austria, which has pride. Captain von Trapp has pride in his military. They don't want to be taken over and enrolled the Germans, after a series of ridiculous demands that can't be met by Hitler upon the Austrian authorities for breathing space. And what you point out reminded me it was a very bad invasion. It didn't go very well. Remember when Putin invaded Ukraine the second time and he had that long line of tanks that stalled out and Zelensky rallied the people of Ukraine and they just crushed that invasion from Byelorussia. It strikes me like that they really didn't know what they were doing.

C (23:24)

Yeah. And that's sobering when you think the German army got better pretty quick after this. And the German army was not really. I mean, Victor Hansen, in his very good book the Second World wars, makes the point that by the time Hitler had picked out all his enemies, you know, which was, you know, everybody else in the world except Italy and Japan, they just had overwhelming force against them. And the, the German army, which was the first mechanized blitzkrieg army to make that successful, the British and the French had a little bit of it in the First World War. It's still true that apart from those mechanized divisions, the German army right through to the end of the Second World War was a horse drawn army. And one of the ways we simply overwhelmed them and the Soviets was trucks. We just produced an incredible amount of trucks.

B (24:24)

Trucks and jeeps.

C (24:26)

Yeah. And probably the most valuable thing we gave Soviets was that trucks and jeeps and they could move, move now in all weathers and they could keep up a relentless attack against people who. It took them a week to get anywhere. And then the horses were all exhausted and it was hard to find enough horses and they worked them to death.

B (24:51)

And.

C (24:52)

And so it just was that thing, you know, the Germans had better tanks, except prone to break down and had to be shipped back to Berlin to be fixed in the case of a serious breakdown. We just had many, many more of them and we came at them hard and they didn't see. They had not quite understood, even though they launched this war and even though Rommel and Guderian, their two greatest commanders, tank commanders, did understand what the tank was doing to war, they didn't understand about the rest of it, about the trucks, about the supplies, about the logistics.

B (25:40)

They did not understand exactly what Putin didn't understand when he invaded Ukraine and they had that long column of tank. More coming up on Hitler's invasion of Austria in 1938. Don't go anywhere except over to Hillsdale. EDU or if you want all the the episodes in this particular series on Churchill's World War II memoirs, CueForHillsdale.com come right back.

A (26:03)

Hey, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour and the Hillsdale College K12 Classical Education Podcast. I want to know what do you think about the show you're listening to right now? Visit Podcast Hillsdale. Edu and click the survey pop up to to take our very first ever listener survey. Tell us what you like, what you don't like, and what you want to hear from us in the future. Visit podcast hillsdale.edu and click the pop up to take the survey and thank you for listening.

D (26:39)

When you think of America's founding, you might picture the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, or great figures like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. But those moments and those men didn't appear out of nowhere and they didn't succeed. By chance. The ideas that shaped our nation were forged over more than a century of struggle and faith. Tested and proven by the colonists who carved a civilization from the wilderness, these men and women escaped tyranny, defined self government and set the stage for history's greatest fight for freedom. In Hillsdale College's Free six part documentary series on colonial America, you'll discover how the virtues of courage, faith, hard work and freedom defined our earliest Americans and why they still matter today. You'll hear their stories set against the backdrop of the Great Awakening, the Glorious Revolution and the French and Indian War, and see how the American character was forged long before 1776. Watch the series for free at Hillsdale. Edu Network. That's Hillsdale Edu Network.

B (27:56)

Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. The Hillsdale dialogue underway about World War II, Churchill's memoir. We're just talking about Putin's invasion of Ukraine looking a lot like the first few weeks, looking a lot like Hitler's invasion of Austria. Not going well.

C (28:11)

You know, today, one of the things that seems to be being revealed in the Ukraine war is that tanks are not safe. It's drones now, and that's involving a major rethinking of everything about war.

B (28:27)

Not merely tanks, but ships. They have sunk ships with drones that are, are hard to recognize and impossible almost to defend against. I wanted to point out on page 233. And again, I am using this edition, if you're watching on the Sulam news channel, it's the paperback edition of the Second World War memoirs. Churchill writes at length about how his generals and his diplomats did not want him to march into Austria. They wanted to let the military grow stronger. And Churchill writes, but Hitler was not sure of this. His genius. I want to come back to that word. His genius taught him that victory would not be achieved by the processes of certainty. Risks had to be run, the leap had to be made. He was flushed with his success, first in rearmament, second in conscription, third in the Rhineland, fourth by the accession of Mussolini's Italy. Hitler was resolved to hurry and to have the war while he was in his prime. So there are two words there. Hitler calls him a genius, but that is not a compliment. It's an objective assessment. And prime. Churchill, 65. When he becomes prime minister, Hitler is 50, so he's 15 years past his prime by that. What do you make of both those words, genius and prime, Dr. Arne?

C (29:48)

Well, the prime is easier and the genius is more profound. By the end of the war, Hitler was a wreck. He'd been wounded in two assassination attempts. He was shaky and half demented. There's a really good movie called Downfall that's worth watching. It's a movie made, made from the diaries of Hitler's secretaries who were with him in the bunker, you know, when the whole world had closed in on him and they give an account of what went on there. Right. And it's just in one way, it's entirely beneath contempt. Hitler was always threatening to execute generals for not moving armies that had not existed for months. And, you know, Goebbels killed his family, then his wife and then himself. He had five beautiful children who would sing for Uncle Adolf. And he poisoned them. He sedated them first and then poisoned them. And then he shot his wife and then himself. Now this. These guys are nuts. You said that people got their impression from Sound of Music. You know, if you want to Understand about the Nazis. Just read them, right? Just read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. That's inside Auschwitz, right? Then you'll see what they're like, right? And that's. Anyway, but Hitler had down, fallen down by now, right? He was beaten. But in his prime he was daring and fast and bold. Now, genius that, you know, comes word for gene, genius just means of a special kind, right? Hitler was a genius. He was a special, certain kind of guy. And that doesn't mean a good guy necessarily and may mean a very. But if it means an evil guy, it means a really evil guy.

B (31:49)

And it means, I think to me a lot of energy and the ability to focus, even if it's on a demon inspired mission. So I was making a list, I sent you a list of people who've had that. It's been Caesar, Napoleon had this kind of energy. Hitler clearly, but people like Tecumseh had this kind of energy. And I think Xi and Putin and Khomeini are enemies in the modern world, have this kind of energy. And Churchill had this kind of energy. It's a, it's an ability to take everything in and process it and act. And now what Hitler did was to act malevolently. What Churchill did was to act in defense of freedom. But it still is that. It's really a remarkable quality that comes through in these pages that he sees in Churchill, Churchill sees in Hitler. And he's not afraid to say we're up against a fanatic possessed of incredible energy and daring. I guess you used the word daring. That would also have to come in. He took the leap at one point. Churchill writes about him.

C (32:58)

Yeah. Well, let's digress into Aristotle for just a second. Aristotle says that people who get strong characters, he says you get your character through making choices. And if you make them consistently and relentlessly, well, you will get a very good character. And if you make them consistently evil or wickedly, you'll get a really strong bad one. And Aristotle says most people don't really get a really strong character. They sort of lean over toward the good, but they blow with the wind quite a lot. It's particularly willful people who become extraordinary. And Hitler and Churchill were examples of very willful people. But Aristotle's point that your choices form your character. That word character comes from a Greek word that means to etch or engrave. So you're etching or engraving into your soul by the choices that you make. And, and if you see two people of very strong character of different inclinations they'll be dramatically different by the end of their lives.

B (34:08)

Welcome back, America. Hugh Hewitt is the final segment of this week's Hillsdale dialogue. Everything Hillsdale at Hillsdale. Eduardo all of the prior dialogues, hundreds of them at hugh for hillsdale.com we were going out of the last segment. Doctor on you brought up character. When you're teaching young people, you get to see that character early while it's being formed. When you've hit 50, can you change it much, do you think?

C (34:33)

Well, it takes some special effort, but sure. Never say never. Yeah, I admire, you know, I love young people. Erica Kirk, who's my buddy after Charlie has been killed, at his memorial service, she read from his journals and she'd not seen them before. And what, what the, the things that she read were mostly class notes on Aristotle, and they were about this character formation question. I, I said to her, I said, erica, did you know that those were notes on Aristotle class? And she said, oh, yeah. She said, your name is at the top of the page as me. But that, you know, in other words, think what Charlie did. See what we should all do. 50, age, 70, age whatever, age 18 for sure. What Charlie did was he made a decision and a determination to learn the, the things he needed to know to be the best possible human being. And because he was really busy and he was building a great enterprise, he did that at night. And that's just determination. Right? That's what you're talking about. That's a genie as a genius. And he is a special kind of.

B (35:53)

Guy because it reminds me of Alexander Hamilton at Valley Forge copying out Plutarch. Not many people may remember that. We've talked about this before, but he's freezing. There's, there's nothing to eat. Everybody's cold. And he's got his old Plutarch, which Dr. Arnold and I have spent many, many hours talking about. Plutarch. It's among my favorite series in the Hillsdale dialogue. And he would copy it out. Now, what does the act of copying out something suggest you? Dr. ARN it tells me an attempt to memorize.

C (36:25)

That's how you internalize it, right? There's more than one way to do that. Some people can just do that by close reading. Some people can do that by listening. But it does, in my experience, always involve taking notes. And sometimes, I mean, you know, the way Churchill took notes, by the way, was he wrote books. He wrote a lot of them. His notes got published. It's not fair.

B (36:55)

What he did isn't fair.

C (36:56)

It's not fair.

B (36:57)

I've always been a compulsive note taker when I was in law school undergraduate. Anytime I'm at any seminar, I have to take notes. No matter whether you're a note taker or not, you ought to be taking note of hillsdale.edu. go sign up for imprimis if you want to hear all these dialogues, especially the Churchill series on World War II. Q for hillsdale.com thank you Dr. Arnold.

A (37:22)

Thanks for listening to the Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast Hillsdale. Edu or wherever you find your audio. For more information about Hillsdale College, head to hillsdale. Edu.