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- [00:05]
Scott Bertram
Every week, Hillsdale College president Larry Arne joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss great books, great men and great ideas. This is Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast. Hillsdale. Edu or wherever you find your audio.
- [00:30]
Hugh Hewitt
And that music means the Hillsdale Dialogue is back. The last hour of the Hugh Hewitt show of the Week is always devoted to the Hillsdale Dialogue. This week, as we do most weeks, we're joined by Dr. Larry Arn, President of Hillsdale College. All things Hillsdale are found at hillsdale. Edu. And we're back in this book, The Gathering Storm, volume one of Winston Churchill's World War II history. It's part eight for us because we're on chapter seven, and we might get into chapters eight and nine as well. Chapter seven is entitled Air Parity Lost 1934-1935. Dr. ARN to remind everyone about how we got here. 1934. The Depression has crashed in on Great Britain. The Versailles Treaty has been not yet breached formally by Hitler, but he's getting pretty close. Hitler's in power since 1932, and Churchill writes on page 100, air power is the most difficult of all forms of military because you can disguise military power when it's air power by building airports and airplanes that can be converted. It's really kind of the obvious thing. But it wasn't obvious then.
- [01:41]
Dr. Larry Arne
Well, it was obvious to Churchill. He saw it. He took up aviation early, as soon as anybody did, had a couple of crashes. His wife finally made him stop. But he saw that these things are fast and they're not very heavy, can't be. And they don't build, they don't cost money like a battleship. And so that's, you know, you just think this whole thing, this, this, you know, Churchill said once in later years, what's the worst technological threat ever invented to Britain? And he said, the military airplane, because Britain had its navy, and that was its key to its whole regime. Its way of defending itself was at sea. And it was naturally good at that and had enormous advantages. And that also meant it didn't need a big old conscript army all the time in the hands of the king. So this all of a sudden shows up and negates that. And nobody knows until the middle of the Second World War how well it negated it, but very well it turned out. And so it wasn't just that, because something that everybody saw coming and feared was that you could put big bombs in these, in these little airplanes and blow up cities, terrorize whole populations and Everybody feared that and fear it today. And they're right to. Bombs are a lot stronger now than they were then. But what they didn't see was that naval ships would prove to be terribly vulnerable to these airplanes. And, you know, that's the thing about drones today. Drones is just an extension of this problem. And you mentioned the last show, hypersonic missiles, that's another one. And that means that in America we can come under heavy attack right away. And a particular thing is our aircraft carriers, which are our, you know, obvious. I think probably our greatest advantage militarily in the world today is submarines. But you're correct, it's apparent that aircraft carriers are big and mighty and ours are more and better than anybody's. But are they vulnerable now to little things that don't cost much money? And so this is a similar kind of problem. And Churchill sees that problem developing. And, you know, and if you, if you read this, this particular chapter and the next one, it's terribly like reading the papers today.
- [04:24]
Hugh Hewitt
Oh my goodness. Because it's just not one guy standing there saying everything has changed. And no one wanting to hear that because it requires changing everything about your military doctrine.
- [04:36]
Dr. Larry Arne
Yeah. As we, as we record this, the government's shut down. Everybody's talking about that. Right. But what about the fact that China is very belligerent as Hitler was. Very belligerent. Belligerent in the same way. Time will tell, China has built a larger navy than we have and they are obviously and effectively producing weapons to negate our military advantages. Hitler was doing that. And Churchill's point in this chapter is we've got these enormous naval advantages. And he quotes which he got, of course, access to after the war, a German appraisal given to Hitler that they couldn't have their navy and their army ready for a major war until 1945 at the earliest. And Hitler comes into power in January of 1933. So that's a 13 year, 12 year deal. And you know, 12 years is a long time in the life of a tyrant. But the airplane gives him a way to move faster because you can build a lot of them. You know, you can develop your air force and other weapons. You know, it's very, it's a story that's in this chapter that there was an alliance. You know, Hitler hated communism and so did Mussolini, so did statesmen in France, including Laval, who was joined the Vichy regime after the conquest of France by Germany. He hated communism, but they were all mucking around with the communists. And so the Soviet Union was helping Hitler and Mussolini, who wasn't under the same strictures to develop weapons and military forces in breach of the Treaty of Versailles as early as 1923, Churchill writes in this book, and they had a plan for that. And when Hitler comes in in 1933, he just intensifies that plan. And for two years it was all sub rosa, secret and Britain even negotiated with him. And Churchill has a field day with that because you know what Churchill's view is. And you got to, you know, one of the charges against Churchill today is that he was a warmonger. He becomes alarmed about Germany in 1932 when Hitler is rising to power. He got there early in 33 and what he starts doing is calling not for war, but for weapons. Weapons to prevent war. And if they had built them, Churchill writes in this book, even as late as 1935. So that means they had three years to get going. And if they got going after three years even, and he's giving his warnings for four years, if they got going, then Germany was very weak and it gained strength very fast, especially with the airplanes, but also the other military equipment. And they let him do it. And from 1935 on, Hitler begins openly breaching the Treaty of Versailles, which is a treaty, you know, we had a big war, we lost it. We signed a deal. And you know, they provoked it too. Germany did in the first World War. But we people who think, by the way, the causes are all confused and entangling alliances and that then they have to, you know, because what you got to get around is the problem that Germany attacked countries that they had treaties not to attack.
- [08:24]
Hugh Hewitt
Right.
- [08:25]
Dr. Larry Arne
Did that first.
- [08:26]
Hugh Hewitt
That's really kind of a big problem to get around. Don't go anywhere, America. Get your arms around that Germany attacked people with whom they had alliances. That is a huge problem to get around with. I want to remind you everything hillsdalesdale. Edu all of the hillsdale dialogues@hughforhillsdale.com hey.
- [08:48]
Scott Bertram
There, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On this week's program, an in depth conversation with Kathryn Herridge. You've seen her on CBS and Fox. She's an award winning investigative journalist. She's now on her own, an independent journalist at Kathryn Herridge Reports. We discuss the state of modern journalism and importance of journalistic integrity, among other things with Kathryn Herridge and James Webb from the accounting department here at Hillsdale College. He tells us what's really fun about accounting. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast Hillsdale Edu or wherever you get your audio, including YouTube. You know the Robertson family from the hit TV show Duck Dynasty. Now Hillsdale College offers you the unique opportunity to learn alongside the Robertsons as they dive deep into Hillsdale's online course, the Genesis Story. Every Friday on the Unashamed podcast, the Robertsons will share their insights and perspectives. Learning from Hillsdale professor of English Justin Jackson. Take a trip down south to Louisiana for this one of a kind learning experience we call Unashamed Academy. Visit unashamedforhillsdale.com and enroll today. That's Unashamed. F O R hillsdale.com to experience the genesis story alongside the Robertsons.
- [10:29]
Hugh Hewitt
Foreign welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt with Dr. Larry Arn, President of Hillsdale College. All things hillsdale@hillsdale.edu all of our prior dialogues@hugh4hillsdale.com there's another problem as well. In this chapter, I want to pause on it and quote Churchill the passionate desire for peace which animated the uninformed, misinformed majority of the British people. It seemed to threaten with political extinction any party or politician who dared to take any other line. This, of course, is no excuse for political leaders who fall short of their duty. It is much better for parties or politicians to be turned out of office than to imperil the life of the nation. Well, right after the Soviet Union fell apart, we demanded, or our Congress demanded, a, quote, peace dividend, and we disarmed China got started. And so when you mention that, it's like reading the front pages today. It's like reading the front pages of the last 30 years. And Churchill's there pretty much all alone saying, we can't give in to the pacifist impulse, but it overwhelms everything. In fact, Baldwin denies the need for an increase in air armaments. Attlee denies an increase for the air force. Everybody is singing from the same page except Churchill. So I assume that that means democracies are inherently weaker, at least at the beginning, than tyranny, because people are afraid and they're broke and they don't want to spend what they don't want to spend.
- [12:06]
Dr. Larry Arne
Yeah. You know, first of all, China has much greater manufacturing capacity than we have now. And weapons are made through manufacturing. And they dominate drone production and they dominate batteries for electric stuff and all kinds of things that are. And they build ships, including warships, massively faster than we do. And Britain was fallen behind in war production. And Churchill, who knew a lot about that because he'd been administering munitions in the first World War he's calling for, we got to get going here. We got to start building the stuff that we will need to defend ourselves and if possible, overawe Hitler. So he can't go forward because Hitler, you know, he goes through the steps. The chapter is very good in the next one, too, because, you know, Hitler, he. He. He had to win a lot of battles. You know, you don't come to be from nobody, from street bomb. And how long did it take him? 30, about 20 years. He went from being a street drum to being the master of Germany. Well, he had to win a lot of battles to do that, and a lot of them were narrowly decided, and a lot of them were assisted by the supine politics of the nations. Hitler was going out to attack, and they could have stopped it, if they'd stopped it early would have been easier, a lot.
- [13:34]
Hugh Hewitt
Now we don't have a counterpart to Baldwin, I don't think. And we talked about Baldwin before. He's not well known in America because he quits before high appeasement reaches its inevitable end of disaster in World War II. But Baldwin is afraid of pacifism, and he stands up in the House and he guarantees that the Great Britain will never fall behind in air power. And he dismisses the idea that Germany has even half of the air power that Great Britain does. And he's just wrong, wrong, wrong. And he's not turned out. So one of the arguments in favor of parliamentary democracy is that you can throw aside people in an instant. Like Margaret Thatcher was thrown overboard, or the Conservatives went through Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak one after the other. And I missed one in there. I can't remember Theresa May. They went through prime ministers like we go through baloney at lunchtime in an elementary school. And it doesn't matter. We have one president for four years, but it doesn't matter, it seems to me, if your prime minister is as wrong as wrong can be.
- [14:41]
Dr. Larry Arne
Well, it's a combination of wrong also. He was very artful. He was a sublime political maneuver. He was, in some major sense, a good man. One of the reasons he was lethal was because he understood Churchill and understanding him, he had some sympathy for him. And so Churchill records in these chapters, for example, that although he was fighting them tooth and nail and basically forced them, you know, when they had an overwhelming majority and Churchill had few friends in the Parliament, he forced them to change their policy from disarmament to rearmament. And then he forced them, by debate and writing and public exposure, to rearm faster than they would have left to their own devices, although not fast enough. Well, at the time, all that's going.
- [15:36]
Hugh Hewitt
On.
- [15:39]
Dr. Larry Arne
Stanley Baldwin, he does try to suppress information going to Churchill in some cases, but in others he welcomed into what was called the Air Defense Research Technical Committee. And that was a kind of. That turned into as much a scientist. And Churchill was on it, and scientists and politicians. And Churchill is on it and his sidekick, Professor Lindemann from Oxford, a physicist, is on it. And they're put on that, and they got all the information and they used it hard eventually. But it's also a kind of microcosm, that committee of the war that went on in the Parliament.
- [16:20]
Hugh Hewitt
It's also interesting to me that Samuel Hoare, who's in and out of this story because he keeps getting fired because he keeps growing up in different jobs, but he's at the Admiralty at one point and he invites Churchill to talk to all the First Sea Lords. Of course, Churchill's been the First Lord of the Admiralty before, so Churchill does. It is, though it occurred to me for the first time reading the Gathering Storm for the first time that Baldwin and his troopers were preparing Churchill just in case they were wrong. They were making sure that he was well up to speed on everything in the event that they were wrong about Hitler. Is that too charitable?
- [16:57]
Dr. Larry Arne
I'd say Baldwin did some of that. Not so much horror. Horror. You know, one of my favorite stories, Churchill didn't come in to power when he came into power. He came into power in an emergency on May 10, 1940. We'll get there. And he changed many things. He didn't really punish people too much, but he did send Sam Hoare and Lord Halifax out of the country and sent Sam Moore to Spain and he sent Halifax to Washington. And both of them appealed to come back and he wouldn't have it now a Baldwin. And Churchill was much quicker to forgive. Neville Chamberlain, by the way. Yes, whom he admired rather more, but also Chamberlain died of cancer in November 1940, that is to say, May, June, 6, 6, 7 months after Churchill, after he lost his job to Churchill, he died of cancer. And he declined for a couple months before that. So that might have made him easier to forgive. Who knows? But Baldwin and I should look it up. I always forget which birthday it was. But during the war, after Churchill had become the greatest man in the world, which we'll see in this book as we go through it, friends of Baldwin said, you know, he's having a big birthday. He'd love to have a card from you and Churchill Replied to that person just speaking, he said, be better if the man had never lived. Then he repented, which he often did, and invited him to lunch at 10 Downing street to celebrate his birthday.
- [18:35]
Hugh Hewitt
Okay, see the two sides of Churchill. He just had to think about it for a little bit. Don't go anywhere except to Hillsdale Edu for your application for all of the online courses, and to you for hillsdale.com for every single Hillsdale dialogue. Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. We're deep into the first volume of Churchill's World War II history with Dr. Larry Arn, President of Hillsdale College. And we're looking around the parliaments of the 30s. There is one guy who's rising in parliament that Churchill likes, and even though he's with the appeasers, and it's Anthony Eden, who is sort of a foreign secretary, but not a foreign secretary. And by the way, Churchill says it's a very bad thing to divide a job into two, which you have taught me. He refused to do with the Ministry of Defense and the Prime Ministership during the war. He had to have both or neither. But Eden is sort of half of a foreign secretary, and Churchill likes him. And I can't really. I cannot discern what is different about Eden from the others. You want to fill me in on that?
- [19:38]
Dr. Larry Arne
Yeah. Well, first of all, Eden is very beautiful. He's very handsome. Later, you know, Churchill. Eden is the one who would succeed Churchill in 1955 and made a mess of the job immediately. But he was great on television just arriving, and he's. There's a wonderful picture of Churchill and Eden on the front cover of the. Of the kind of social slash political magazine called the Tatler. And Eden just looks like a million bucks. You know, he's awesome, and he was a tough guy and a good guy. He eventually married one of Churchill's cousins, and they were close. They got on very well. Now, there was tension between them. Later, we won't get to that because it's not in this book. But Churchill came under pressure to retire in 1954. Three and four eventually retired in 55, and Eden was going to be his successor. But what Eden did in these years, and Churchill writes very delicately about this, people who interested in the Ukraine war. The current one should read the chapters about Italy, the passages about this chapter and the next, and the one after that about Italy and Abyssinia. See, because in some ways, of course, the situation not exactly the same, but it's similar. And here's how Italy had been an old ally of the United States, of Britain. Sorry. And the United States, and it has ambitions in Africa. And the League of Nations is thought to be a weapon to try to build an alliance. Grand. Grand enough to curb Hitler. And Abyssinia was a member of the League of Nations. And so what are we going to do about that? And Churchill writes very delicately because it presents all the same complications as. And others too, as the Ukraine war. Because if we oppose them, are we going to drive them into the hands of Hitler? Which is in the end, by the way, what happened. And if we're going to oppose them, then we better kill them. And what they did was they, the United League of Nations passed a whole suite a very severe sanctions against Italy, exempting everything that Italy couldn't do without, especially oil.
- [22:09]
Hugh Hewitt
And so also is the guy who brings back or Laval and Eden bring back from Stalin. I did not know the origin of the term. How many divisions has the Pope got? And it's from an in Laval meeting with Stalin where they're trying to figure out how to keep Hitler in the cage and they bring up the Pope or Eden or Laval does. And Solomon, the Pope, how many divisions has he got? Laval, by the way, you just mentioned him. He seems to be something of a simpering dope. He goes everywhere begging for help and ends up with the Vichyites.
- [22:42]
Dr. Larry Arne
Well, there aren't, you know, you were asking questions last time about the greatness of Donald Trump. He has a quality that so many of these guys in Britain and France did not have. He's not just a silly goose, you know, he hasn't, he said, you know, so, you know, they go over there to talk to Stalin and Stalin is the arch conspirator. And if anyone is ever more cruel than Adolf Hitler, that would be Joe Stalin. Mao too, but. And they sort of made fools of themselves because they didn't seem like serious people. And everybody. That's the thing. Apart from the fact that the way you seem like a serious person is you develop the means to harm somebody who uses force to get his way. And the British were not doing that and the French were not doing that. Indeed, into 1934, the British were carrying on a two pronged diplomacy with France. And in one prong, they were encouraging France to resist Hitler and agreeing to join them in doing that. And in the other prong, they were encouraging France to disarm.
- [23:57]
Hugh Hewitt
It was incredible. It's incoherent.
- [23:59]
Dr. Larry Arne
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
- [24:01]
Hugh Hewitt
Actually, incoherence is too kind of a word because it was crazy. It was insane. Don't go anywhere. More with Dr. Arne coming up. Except thehillsville. Edu for your application, the online courses, or you for Hillsville. Edu for all the Hilltale dialogue station.
- [24:19]
Mark Levin
Hello America. I'm thrilled, thrilled to announce my new 10 part podcast series, Liberty and Learning with Mark Levin and Larry Arne. Join me and my dear friend Dr. Larry Arne, President of Hillsdale College, as we dive deep into the founding principles of our great nation. In these challenging times, understanding our history and the ideals of self government is more crucial than ever. We'll explore the core of America's current crises, the changes in our government and what it means for our lives and liberties. From education to borders, citizenship to the separation of powers, we'll cover it all. Tune into Liberty and Learning with Mark Levin and Larry Arne of Hillsdale College. So subscribe now and join us on this wonderful journey to rediscover the principles that made America the freest, most prosperous nation in history. Don't miss it.
- [25:07]
Scott Bertram
Listen right now to Liberty and Learning with Mark Levin and Larry Arn@podcast.com that's podcast Hillsdale. Edu or wherever you find your audio. Hey there. It's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour on this week's program, an in depth conversation with Kathryn Herridge. You've seen her on CBS and Fox. She's an award winning investigative journalist. She's now on her own, an independent journalist at Kathryn Herridge Reports. We discuss the state of modern journals and the importance of journalistic integrity, among other things with Kathryn Herridge and James Webb from the accounting department here at Hillsdale College. He tells us what's really fun about accounting. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio, including YouTube.
- [26:15]
Hugh Hewitt
Welcome back, America. It's not just the leaders of Great Britain who are confused in the 30s. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Hillsdale dialogue underway. All things Hillsdale at hillsdale.edu. Dr. Larry Ahron, President of Hillsdale College is my guest. You also have the admirals at the admiralty supporting a deal with Germany and It's on page 124. That effectively allowed Germany to build as many ships as it possibly could. It could use all of its capacity to and as many U boats as it needed. And they got to build the Bismarck and the Tripitz even though or the Tirpitz even though. Those boats were bigger than anything. Those weapons of war, those ships were vast. They're not quite aircraft carriers of Today, but they were killer battleships and they were bigger than anything than Britain and the United States or Japan were allowed to build. It's crazy what they were doing.
- [27:06]
Dr. Larry Arne
Well and they see what they thought and you know, remember there's a, we're being governed by pygmies now in Britain and France and therefore when the admirals. And see, there were more serious people earlier in, you know, in the British Admiralty, I mean Nelson was pretty serious.
- [27:30]
Hugh Hewitt
Serious, yeah.
- [27:31]
Dr. Larry Arne
Admiral Beatty in the First World War was pretty serious. Right. But what these guys did is they read that thing and they said, Germany is agreeing that they will never have more than one third the warships that we have. And that looks really great to people who grew up with the Kaiser threatening to get equal and surpass the British number. And what they didn't see, it's a detail. It's only a detail. What they didn't see is that this would for the foreseeable future permit Germany to build all the ships that had the capacity to build. And so they're going to get a lot bigger fast. And they didn't see that then once they got a lot bigger fast, why would they stop? And they didn't agree to the size of the Bismarck and the Tirpitz and the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. But Hitler didn't care and it wasn't addressed.
- [28:30]
Hugh Hewitt
It's just so amazing to me and I hope we're not doing this with the Chinese to be indifferent to the obvious because it was obvious to what Germany was doing, but nobody wanted to hear about it. I want to make sure we close. Chapter 8 ends on the importance of demographics and a condensed version. Wars are fought by babies who are born 16 to 21 years before they begin because you got to have the 21 year old, the 18 to 21 year old to be the infantry and then you need the 16 to 17 year olds to fill up the trenches after the first clash. So demographics is everything in European war and no one is paying attention to the demographics except Churchill in 1934 and 35. And the demographics favor Germany.
- [29:19]
Dr. Larry Arne
Yeah, well, and, and that's, you know, that's a. They should have seen that, by the way. They didn't see it. They were trying to cope with it. But that was the problem leading up to the First World War. Everybody was counting, how many young men have you got? And, and this time the problem is in Germany's got more going to keep growing. And this time the problem is more acute because France is not growing much. It was growing back then and before the First World War. And Germany is growing, and then Germany is, you know, it. Another thing about, you know, when you look at all of these things, these big wars, first of all, it's one of the reasons it's such a great idea not to get into them if you can help it. They're fought by everybody, and how well they're fought then depends on the quality of everybody, Right? And so one of the reasons, you know, we talked last time about there's some signs of a revival in America. There needs to be a revival of work in America, and there is being, but there needs to be more, right? We need to get up in the morning thinking we're supposed to work. And, you know, we Americans do. And that goes along with entrepreneurship, too. But the German people, they got, you know, first of all, they're. Churchill thought that, you know, he had a characteristic of the Germans because they're serious, right? Maybe they still are, I don't know. But they. They killed two and a half to one fighting the whole world in the First World War and in the 19th century wars, they did that, too. And he calls them brave, loyal, brave, loyal, obedient German people at your throat or at your feet. So they're a little too ready to put up with stuff out of their government. And that means that they were workers, they were great fighters, and they suffered. You know, I mean, that war, their leaders led them into a terrible thing that cost everybody untold, unprecedented amounts in the First World War. And then they, you know, they suffered after that. They were hungry for a while and. And. And then, you know, to revive and get your pride back. Hitler taps into that. And, you know, in 1936, Germany was rolling and the people were pretty happy, you know, and they. They were putting up with stuff they shouldn't have. And, you know, Hitler murdered, what, 35, 34? He murdered many of the leading Nazis.
- [32:03]
Hugh Hewitt
Night of the Long Knives people had to do it. Our Steelers fans are going to confuse Night of the Long Knives with Kristallnacht. They're different. Kristallnacht is where he begins to go after the Jews. Night of the Long Knives comes years before that, and he kills all of his political opponents in the Nazi Party. I do want to add before this program ends, Ribbentrop, who becomes famous to Americans for the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact, when he was foreign minister, was before that the ambassador to England, and he asked Churchill to come over. And Ribbentrop tries to hammer Churchill into submission. That Germany should be England's friend and England should be Germany's friend or there will be a war. And Churchill said, do not underestimate the British people. We don't look like much, but don't underestimate, he says, like three times. And it was the last time he saw Ribbentrop and he never met Hitler because Churchill wasn't for turning.
- [32:59]
Dr. Larry Arne
Yeah, yeah. They attribute I've never been able to track down if it's true or not. But in a very good film about Churchill called the Wilderness Years, Churchill says to Ribbentrop, why does the British bulldog have a stubby nose? And Ribbentrop says he doesn't know. And he says, so he can breathe without letting go.
- [33:20]
Hugh Hewitt
That's not in the book. I would remember that if it's it's very good for it. We want it to be true.
- [33:28]
Dr. Larry Arne
It's stupid. He ought to have said it.
- [33:30]
Hugh Hewitt
We wanted to be true. Indeed. And we want you to come back for the next segment. Don't go anywhere except Hillsdale Edu or over to hugh for hillsdale.com Hillsdale, great sponsor of these Hillsdale dialogues and may they go on for a long time. Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. All things hillsdale@hillsdale.edu. this is, of course, the Hillsdale Dialogue with Dr. Larry Arne. We're talking about the interwar years. A lot went wrong. Something did, however, go right. Last thing, the good news of these years, they build radar facilities. And the radar facilities are hidden away from Germany. And I didn't know this until I read the Gathering Storm. And the Germans send over their big blimp to look for whatever America or what Great Britain is doing. And they hide the radar facility somehow, and the blimp doesn't find anything out. The key is we let the Chinese spy balloon go across our country. It's hard to miss the parallel.
- [34:26]
Dr. Larry Arne
Dr. Arne yeah, isn't it something? And the Germans see, this is a, you know, there were bright spots. Churchill and the British got a lot done because it's just like, you know, the famous Battle of Midway in the Second World War, which happened a few months after Pearl Harbor. And the truth is we won that with the navy that we had built and they missed the aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor. In other words, a lot of work had been done and thank God for it. It's how we got through the first year of the war. Same thing was true in Britain. They didn't do enough and they didn't do it early enough. But they did a lot. And this particular story about this invention of radar. But what's more, he says in the book, he says the Germans were actually a bit ahead of the British on radar, but the British got it deployed. They had a system set up and they could. You got to build a bunch of radio stations and you got to build them of various kinds. The longer the waves, the farther out it can see a plane. But the long waves can't see low planes. So they had to build a short term set of radar stations, antennas to broadcast short waves. And then the other thing is they only point in one direction. So they had to develop a system for tracking the planes after they got over Britain. And they got most of that done by the time the war broke out. And it was useful. As a matter of fact, my wife's mother, Jocelyn, was a plotter. P L O T T E R for the Air Force. You can see them in the great British war movies. Everybody should watch Sink to Bismarck, but it's a really great movie. And also the Battle of Britain is another one. And they've got this big table and it's got a big map of Europe and it's got where the planes are, where the ships are, and they move them around. They got little flags on them to show who they belong to. Well, they were using radar information to do that. They could track ships with the radar too. Well, my wife's mother had the job of moving the things around on the board in response to the information that came from the radar. And here's a funny little thing. The officer in charge of the installation where she worked down in the south of England was the actor Rex Harrison.
- [36:45]
Hugh Hewitt
Really? From My Fair Lady?
- [36:47]
Dr. Larry Arne
Yeah.
- [36:48]
Hugh Hewitt
Oh, that is fun. I wonder if he sang much then. We're going to come back next week and talk about the technical problems of air and sea, as well as chapter 10, the Italian sanctions that Dr. Ahren referred to, and chapter 11, Hitler strike. So do not miss the next edition of the Hillsdale Dialogue.
- [37:11]
Scott Bertram
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. Eduardo.