Transcript
Scott Bertram (0:04)
Every week Hillsdale College president Larry Arn 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 (0:32)
Morning Glory and Evening Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. That music means the Hillsdale Dialogue is here. It's the last broadcast hour of the week and for the past couple of months, say for a week where we plunged into current affairs. Dr. Larry Arn, President of Hillsdale College and I have been focused on this book, the gathering storm. The first of six volume Churchill history of World War II that Winston Churchill put out beginning in 1948, extending through I think 1953 or four. Chapter six, part seven of our series is entitled the Darkening Scene 1934. And it begins with Churchill noting that Hitler was not at all subtle or secretive about his plan. The first page of Mein Kampf contains the sentence German Austria must return to the great German motherland. And that's on page 81 of the gathering storm. So Dr. Arne, Hitler is being as unsubtle as possible and Great Britain has got its head in the sand.
Dr. Larry Arnn (1:31)
Yeah, it, and you know, you know Neville Chamberlain wrote, you know, he him about Czechoslovakia. See when Austria goes into union with Germany and that was a put up job, right? They agitated in Germany. You know, they killed the prime minister, they, and they got a vote to come in with Germany and but that flanked Czechoslovakia. If you look at a map you'll see how that works. And, and so he's extending his influence now and it also goes down toward Italy and Italy assistive about that because you know, Mussolini had his own ambitions, right? And Hitler, and when Mussolini agreed, well, we'll get there. But when Mussolini agreed to the anslush, to the taking of Austria, Hitler pledged his eternal friendship to Mussolini.
Hugh Hewitt (2:35)
Well, you're, you're there. We're there now. It's in this chapter. I didn't know much about Mussolini. I, I had very little knowledge of him. I didn't realize he was very suspicious of Hitler at the beginning. I didn't realize he was a failed socialist pundit, that he'd marched on Rome in 1922, become the dictator with the help of the king. But what struck me is he really wasn't sold on Hitler. He was in with Dollfuss in Austria. And the Hungarian political class, they were not sold on him at all. They thought he was going to be a tyrant. What happened?
Dr. Larry Arnn (3:13)
Well, you know, in the end Mussolini was weak and he, he didn't the, the Italy never commanded the force that Germany commanded and what, what Mussolini was doing, you know, that the Austria was a key element in the Habsburg Empire and that was much of southeastern Europe. And it was a whole bunch of countries that many of them didn't like each other very much. Some of them were Slavic and some of them were. Were Latin. You know, they used the Latin Alphabet, the others use the Cyrillic Alphabet. Some of them were close to Russia, some of them were close to Italy, which borders over the mountains. And so Mussolini was mucking around in all that and, you know, trying to grow Italian influence and. And Hitler was just bolder and stronger than Mussolini, and Mussolini decided at some point to go along. Italy, by the way, was an ally of the Britain and France in the First World War against Germany. But Hitler manages to reverse that also. Italy, as in, you know, the, the nations that lost the First World War, at least Germany, and they wanted an empire. They come late to the empire deal because, you know, there wasn't really a Germany, a unified Germany until almost the 20th century. And so Britain had a big empire by then and they wanted one. And Italy, you know, wanted to revive the glory of Rome. That's sort of Mussolini's politics around that. We get the name Fascist from the fasces, the bundles of sticks that were carried in certain official Roman ceremonies when the emperor or the. Or the console was parading, right? And so Mussolini would do that when he was building his fascist movement, recovering Rome. And Rome had a big empire, right? And so he's off over there in Abyssinia in Northern Africa fighting to get an empire. And they don't fight very well. It doesn't go very well. And, and Germany supports them and Britain opposed them. And you know, if you look at Ukraine today, right, there's some people who think that it's. And by the way, we can't tell right now who's right about this. We won't know for a long time. But there's. Some people think that if we oppose Russia with all our might right here and back them off, then we can get along with Russia. And some people think we should have been compromising more with Russia all along, especially when they were weak, because then we'd get along better with them. I don't think either one of those is necessarily true, but Churchill is rather more standoffish about the condemnations of Italy then his eventual successor, his prime minister, Anthony Eden, who took out hard after Italy. And Churchill wondered if that was wise because, you know, we've been allies with him, with Italy. They're there in the Mediterranean. We have a fleet down there. It's the Italian fleet, which is not as big as ours, but it's there. If it joins Germany, we'll lose flexibility and strength. And so Churchill is cautious about that. Right. And what Anthony Eden and the conservative government and people in France and other places too, they get a League of nations sanctions against Italy over Abyssinia. Well, that helps to estrange Italy from them. And the sanctions, Churchill wrote it, great line about that. The sanctions exempted the one thing Italy could not do without at this time, which was oil. And Churchill says of that, willing to strike but afraid to wound. And so the. The sanctions were toothless and. And it helped to estrange Italy from. And strengthen Hitler. And Italy, in the midst of all this, endorsed Hitler's takeover of Austria.