Transcript
Scott Bertram (0:04)
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.
Hugh Hewitt (0:30)
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.
Dr. Larry Arne (1:40)
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.