Churchill’s The Second World War, Part Twenty-Seven

Summary

Hillsdale Dialogues Podcast

Episode: Churchill’s The Second World War, Part Twenty-Seven
Date: June 22, 2026
Hosts: Hugh Hewitt (radio host), Dr. Larry P. Arnn (President, Hillsdale College)
Main Focus: Discussion of Churchill’s memoir The Second World War, specifically "Their Finest Hour," chapters 6 and 7, exploring Churchill’s leadership during the fall of France, the complexities of alliance politics, and lessons for modern defense policy.

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Hugh Hewitt and Dr. Larry Arnn delve into the dramatic months of May and June 1940 as chronicled by Winston Churchill in Their Finest Hour, focusing on chapters "The Rush for Spoils" and "Back to France." They explore Churchill's personal courage, his negotiations with French leaders as France collapsed, relationships with figures like de Gaulle and Mussolini, the importance of public and private leadership, strategic naval concerns, and parallels for U.S. defense policy today.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Churchill’s Physical Courage and Personal Involvement

• Churchill's repeated, hazardous flights between Britain and France during the crisis are highlighted as marks of extraordinary courage, especially given his age and the conditions.
  • Dr. Arnn: "He traveled, you know, a multiple of the amount that Franklin Roosevelt and Stalin traveled combined. And he kept. He built the alliance and he kept it together." [01:49]
• Discussion contrasts Churchill’s willingness to face danger with modern political leaders’ approaches.
  • Hugh Hewitt: "It's kind of nuts. We don't do this anymore, do we?" [00:56]

The Fall of France: Leadership and Collapse

• Churchill’s efforts to keep the Anglo-French alliance alive are described as "magnificent," particularly his steadiness and resolve in the face of overwhelming disaster.
  • Dr. Arnn: "There's one kind of moral trial that comes when you're losing to the place of disaster, because how do you keep your head up and how do you keep arguing in fact after fact after fact arises against you. And the story of Churchill's actions in the months of May and June 1940 are just magnificent." [02:14]
• Churchill's style of memoir-writing is not self-glorifying, contrasting with some modern political figures.
  • Dr. Arnn: "But the way he goes about telling the story doesn't leave him open to a charge that certain politicians in America today are open to—that they talk about themselves all the time and congratulate themselves over much. And he...congrats himself under much." [03:25]

Key Meetings: French Surrender and Interpersonal Drama

• Churchill’s tense meetings with French leaders Petain, Reynaud, and de Gaulle highlight the tragic sense of impending French surrender.
  • Churchill argues passionately for continued resistance, famously advising:
  • Churchill (via Arnn): “Nations which die fighting rise up again, but those that surrender tamely are gone forever.” [07:55]
    • Hugh Hewitt adds: "Is gone forever because of what he did here. It will always be, that's right." [08:19]
  • An anecdote from Spears, Churchill's liaison, illustrates Churchill's gritty humor and determination when pressed on British plans:
  • Churchill (via Arnn): “I haven't thought about that very hard yet. But I imagine that the strategy will be to drown most of them on the way over and choke the rest of them to death on the beach.” [09:10]

The Power of Churchill’s Public Speeches

• Churchill’s speeches not only rallied the British public and ministers but also reassured President Franklin Roosevelt of Britain’s determination to continue fighting.
  • Dr. Arnn: “The most beautiful things he did are public speeches...They persuaded Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was going to fight, and America sent some help.” [04:32]

Sources & Historical Memory

• Spears and Ismay are highlighted as critical sources for understanding the internal conversations of 1940.
  • Spears provides eyewitness documentation (e.g., the Paris meeting with Petain).
  • Ismay, Churchill's chief of staff, left memoirs and provided input for Churchill's official biography. [12:54-14:33]

The British and American Efforts in the War

• The podcast highlights the relative strengths of the British Empire in the early years of the war, especially at D-Day, and America’s role in the Pacific.
  • Dr. Arnn: “There were more British and imperial soldiers going ashore on D-Day in June 1944 than there were American [soldiers].” [14:15]
• Roosevelt’s strategic thinking and naval philosophy are discussed in light of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s naval theories.

Oil, Trade, and Modern Strategic Concerns

• The conversation pivots to modern resource security, referencing current challenges around oil trade and refining capacity, tying it back to wartime strategy and the importance of maritime power. [17:58-18:51]

Churchill and Mussolini: Diplomacy and Disillusion

• Churchill’s personal appeals to Mussolini and Stalin early in the war are recounted:
  • He wrote personal letters hoping to keep them from joining the Axis, although ultimately Mussolini sided with Hitler.
  • Dr. Arnn: "He writes a personal appeal with reasons why they should not join the Axis..." [20:11]
• Mussolini’s image—his early orderliness versus eventual submission to Hitler—is analyzed.
  • Dr. Arnn: “Mussolini proved to be ultimately a weak man. We have that great letter in these chapters from his son-in-law, Count Chiano...who turned on Mussolini...” [26:56 - 29:16]
  • Chiano (via Hugh Hewitt): “...the misfortune of Italy was not the fault of her people, but due to the shameful behavior of one man.” [29:48]

Modern Parallels: U.S. Defense Preparedness

• The discussion turns to how America today measures up in mobilizing and inventorying its military assets, referencing how FDR and George Marshall responded rapidly to Churchill’s requests in 1940.
  • Hugh Hewitt: “48 hours to inventory everything that we did not need for a bare bones defense of America. Do you think we could do that today?” [32:06]
  • Dr. Arnn: “We’re short of weapons, right...but we, you know, we're in an emergency. Free peoples can do a lot.” [32:20]

Technological Change and the Future of War

• The episode closes on the challenges of modernizing the U.S. military, referencing advances like drones and the rapid evolution of naval warfare.
  • Dr. Arnn relates defense entrepreneur Palmer Luckey’s view: "It takes 10 years to revolutionize the American military industrial base. And for the next most, the next five, we're going to be building more of what we got." [35:14]
  • Discussion notes the potential risks and opportunities in the coming years as adversary navies become more formidable. [36:28]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Churchill’s Self-Presentation:

  • “The way he goes about telling the story doesn't leave him open to a charge that certain politicians in America today are open to—that they talk about themselves all the time and congratulate themselves over much. And he...congrats himself under much.”
    (Dr. Arnn, 03:25)

• On Leadership in Crisis:

  • “Nations which die fighting rise up again, but those that surrender tamely are gone forever.”
    (Churchill, relayed by Dr. Arnn, 07:55)

• On British Strategy (with characteristic wit):

  • “I imagine that the strategy will be to drown most of them on the way over and choke the rest of them to death on the beach.”
    (Churchill, relayed by Dr. Arnn, 09:10)

• On Modern Defense Challenges:

  • “There’s a moment of danger. Two or three or four year period of danger coming up right now...We should replenish the stocks of what we got. We should buy as much as we can of the more innovative things that should be cheaper.”
    (Dr. Arnn, 35:14–36:28)

---

Important Timestamps

• Physical courage of Churchill and his travels: 00:56–01:45
• Churchill’s leadership under collapse: 02:14–03:25
• Sources for Churchill’s private meetings: 04:32–07:00
• Eye-witness scenes at French leadership meetings: 07:00–09:52
• Significance of Churchill’s speeches and alliance building: 04:32–04:55
• Role of Ismay and British contribution to D-Day: 12:54–14:33
• Oil, trade, and modern strategic context: 17:58–18:51
• Churchill’s diplomacy with Mussolini: 20:11–22:19
• Modern military inventory and rapid response: 31:42–32:20
• Technological change in naval warfare: 35:14–36:28

---

Summary Table: Main Topics by Timestamp

| Time | Topic | |-------------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:56–04:00 | Churchill’s courage, travel, and alliance maintenance | | 04:32–09:52 | French surrender, leadership meetings, Churchill’s persuasion | | 12:54–14:33 | Ismay, D-Day, comparative contributions | | 17:58–18:51 | Strategic importance of oil (then & now) | | 20:11–22:19 | Churchill’s diplomatic overtures to Axis leaders | | 26:56–29:48 | Mussolini’s legacy, Chiano’s letter | | 31:42–32:20 | U.S. emergency mobilization (then & now) | | 35:14–36:28 | Modern defense innovation and risks |

---

Final Reflections

Dr. Arnn and Hugh Hewitt use Churchill’s narrative as a lens to explore timeless questions of leadership in crisis, the burden of free peoples in war, and the evolving demands of national defense. The episode wraps with pointed lessons relevant to the current geopolitical environment: the importance of readiness, adaptability, and clear-eyed appreciation of both technological change and enduring strategic realities.

Explore historic episodes and find all Hillsdale Dialogues at Q4Hillsdale.com.

Transcript

[Podcast Narrator]

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]

Morning Glory and Evening Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. That music means we are in the last broadcast hour of the week on the Salem News Channel, the Salem Radio Network, all of our radio affiliates, and this means the Hillsdale Dialogue is upon us. All things Hillsdale. Hillsdale College in Michigan can be found at hillsdale. Edu, including all their online courses, including your opportunity to sign up for imprimis for free, and of course, all of the Hillsdale Dialogues with me and my guest, Dr. Larry Arn and his colleagues. And they're all collected at Kew for Hillsdale. They're also on the Hillsdale Dialogue Bar when you find it on the hillsdale.edu site. Dr. Orme. We are back in Winston Churchill's memoir of World War II, his second book, Their Finest Hour, chapters six and seven, the Rush for Spoils, and Back to France. I want to begin on a small point that struck me when I was reading these two chapters. He went back and forth to France in this not so great airplane, sometimes surrounded by Spitfire, sometimes alone four times, and the last time to deal with a defeated baton, a young, eager fellow by the name of de Gaulle. But it's just his physical courage. It's kind of nuts. We don't do this anymore, do we?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Yeah, well, I don't know. We don't do it. And we do it in greater comfort than he knew. Treasure was an old man, you know, he was 68 when the war broke out. No, he's 65 when the war broke out or when he became prime minister. But he traveled. Andrew Roberts goes through the numbers in his Walking with Destiny book, a very good biography of Churchill. And he traveled, you know, a multiple of the amount that Franklin Roosevelt and Stalin traveled combined. And he kept. He built the alliance and he kept it together. And what he's doing in these two chapters in 1940, as Francis falling is he's trying to keep it together there. He's going to talk to them. And these two chapters are very dramatic because it's what collapse looks like. And, you know, it's, there's one kind of moral trial that comes when you're losing to the place of disaster, because how do you keep your head up and how do you keep arguing in fact after fact after fact arises against you. And the story of Churchill's actions in the months of May and June 1940 are just magnificent. But he doesn't tell it all because he's not. He doesn't. What. He doesn't. He doesn't glorify himself.

[Hugh Hewitt]

He is not a modest man, but he's also not a vain man. It's a moderate.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Yeah, I like to say that he's pretty good at, you know, he's. He's a very assertive human being. Right. But the way he goes about telling the story doesn't leave him open to a charge that certain politicians in America today are open to that they talk about themselves all the time. Time and. And congratulate themselves over much. And he. In these chapters, he congrats himself under much. And I will tell you some of the sources we have for the things that happened in some of these rooms, because it's very remarkable.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Well, let's do that now before I move to. For example, we have this meeting with Patan at which he speak. He spots a young de Gaulle, and he says about de Gaulle that he had a lot of dash about him and a lot of resolution. He didn't know that he would end up working with de Gaulle. He talks about talking to Admiral Darlan and saying to him, you must never let the French. You must never let the Nazis get the French fleet. And Darlon promised that he wouldn't. But what are the sources we have about what he does in these days that he does not tell us about?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Well, the most beautiful things he did are public speeches which we can simply read. And we have evidence in one of the chapters of the effect of these speeches, because they persuaded Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was going to fight, and America sent some help. That's. That's from Fulton, Missouri. And I gave a talk from that very podium in that.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Oh, did you really?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

A few months ago, yeah. And there's Harry Truman off to the left. So those are public things. Right. And those were very important. They. They persuaded his colleagues in the Cabinet, they persuaded Franklin Roosevelt, they persuaded the British people. And then there are two main private things that are relevant to these chapters. One is his May 28, 1940, meeting with the cabinet, which we have notes from two different people about what he said there, and we've talked about that on the show. And the other is these meetings in France, and there are two. And the translator, Churchill, spoke some French, and most of the French spoke English, so a lot of it was in English. But there was a man named Edward Lewis Spears I mentioned before on the show, and he was a very close friend of Churchill's, and he grew up in Paris, and he was the officer as I assigned to liaison between the British French armies in 1914 and again in 3940. So he was there coordinating through this collapse, and he was already experienced at it. He was later ambassador in France, he member of parliament. And he was a brilliant man. And he wrote two great books. One of them, if you're interested in the First World War, Liaison 1914 in the Second World War, is about the same events, what 26 years later called assignment to Catastrophe. Spears is in the room when these negotiations are going on with the French and Payton and have come in. They're World War I heroes. Pan was the general in charge of the battle of Verdun in the First World War, one of the worst battles in human history. Churchill says in this chapter that Petan was a defeatist in the First World War II. I didn't know that. But Churchill is encouraging them at this. At the first meeting in Paris. They actually meet in Petain's home, an apartment in Paris. And the nightgown of his mistress is on, Draped across one of the chairs in the room. People notice that anyway, Reno was a. He was the saltiest of the bunch outside Deaul. But Pan and Vagon are beaten, and they could see that. And then Churchill relates a conversation where he says, churchill's trying to get them to keep resisting, form a front fight, unit by unit. And he says, to come through Paris and attack you, the German army is going to have to disorganize itself, and there'll be an opportunity. You can consume a German army corps in the streets of Paris. And Petain says, we've already given the order to evacuate Paris. And Churchill says, nations which die fighting rise up again, but those that surrender tamely are gone forever. And that's very solemn.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Is gone forever because of what he did here. It will always be, that's right.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

And then Reyno replies to that, but you must give us the rest of your fighters if we're to fight on. And then Spears records, because he knew Churchill very well, he said, I knew the prime minister was a generous man, and I did not think he would resist that appeal. And Churchill recounts this part of it in this chapter. He says, this is not the decisive battle. They must destroy us in our island or we can come and win this back. And. And Payton says, and so that's, you know, that's very tense moment. Right. And Churchill, by the way, says in this chapter that by the time they were pressing him for the rest of his fighters. Peyton and Vagon had already decided that they were going to surrender, take the British down, see with them anyway. Then Reynolds, who was sympathetic, says to Churchill, how do you hope to fight them alone? And Churchill says, I haven't thought about that very hard yet. But I imagine that the strategy will be to drown most of them on the way over and choke the rest of them to death on the beach.

[Hugh Hewitt]

But he's also he dangles FDR to them because Churchill always nurses this belief that eventually the new world will come to the assistance of the old. He will say that in a speech, eventually. But in this meeting he also dangles fdr. And FDR is keeping track. He's not encouraging. He's not given up on the English in the way that Petain and the other generals have. He has not given up on them. And we will come back to that immediately. Don't go anywhere. Back with Dr. Larian after the break. As we continue diving into to their finest hour, stay tuned to the Hugh Hewitt Show All Things [e-mail].

[Podcast Narrator]

this show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to your favorite. You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device and you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to Podcast Hill. Hillsdale. Edu subscribe. That's Podcast Hillsdale. Edu subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On this week's program, legendary pollster and political analyst Scott Rasmussen is with us. His new book, out of the elite 1% and the battle for America's Soul. Who are the elite and why do they have outsized influence? We'll talk with Scott Rasmussen. Also, Richard Samuelson From Hillsdale in D.C. joins us once again as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States and the Declaration. This time we talk about those events directly leading up to to the writing of the Declaration with Richard Samuelson. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. The Hillsdale dialogue underway with Dr. Larry Arn, President of Hillsdale College. All things Hillsdale. Edu remember as well all prior Hillsdale dialogues, including all those episodes on this book, Their Finest Hour, Volume two and The Churchill memoirs are found over at hugh for hilltale.com changing subjects just a little bit. Dr. Arne, let me ask you about the Pugisme, because I learned this week had to go back and forth to California. I'm listening to a book I read years ago called Freedom at Midnight about Mountbatten and the division of India into Pakistan. And it turns out Pug Ismay was his chief of staff for that. That Ismay keep notes. Does he have a memoir?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Yeah, yeah, he published a book and he was the first commanding general of NATO Supreme. What a shape. Supreme Headquarters, Allied Allied Forces Europe. Yeah. And he was. Yeah, he was very close to Churchill. He was a very good source in interviews with Martin Gilbert. There's a lot of his thoughts in the. In the official biography, which is the best biography. And. Yeah, and he was a very tight crowd, right, like one of the reasons I mentioned before. But Vicar Hansen, in his very good book the Second World wars, explains how effective the British were. You know, what they got out of themselves through this war because not just here where they stood up alone and managed to stay, stave them off by the skin of their teeth. But then later they were strategists, right, and they helped to make the strategy that won the Second World War. And they invented much of it and they contributed very much beyond their resources, their relative size. To us, there were more British and imperial soldiers going ashore on d day in June 1944 than there were American. And we overtook them by the end of that 1940, by the end of the summer of 1944. But up until then, and remember, the war ends in May of 1945. So most of the war, most of the soldiers on the Western Front were British and British Empire and Commonwealth.

[Hugh Hewitt]

And Churchill makes that point. But he does make the point. America is carrying the burden in the Pacific and he very, very liberal and is praised about that. But he wants to make sure the marker is down that the Brits held the west and Stalin did his job.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

We should say something about this because there's a lot of criticism, you know, because we live in the age of America first, and I'm very glad about it. And Roosevelt was a liberal imperialist. That is to say, he followed an argument that I don't believe can be made to work, and that is that the whole world has to be free or nobody's safe. And so our mission is to make the whole world free. And Churchill never subscribed to that, but Franklin Roosevelt did. On the other hand, you have to see that there's another reason why we might be involved in this. Franklin Roosevelt had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy and he and Churchill corresponded the whole war under the title. But they both had the same title former naval person because Churchill was first ordered the admiralty twice. And Roosevelt knew Alfred Thayer Mahan and he was a late 19th, early 20th century scholar at the Naval Institute. And he wrote the Influence of Sea Power upon History. And it's a fundamentally important book. And it was the rage in the British and American navies and in strategically still is today strategic thinking. Right. And his thought was that sea power matters very much in the modern world because the cheapest way to make mean to move goods and services about the world is by sea keepers and fastest and because airplanes don't carry that much. So he, he's absorbed, Roosevelt has absorbed all that and he's very concerned about what happens to the French navy because they had a big navy. And then if Britain is defeated, what about the British navy? And, and you know, so, so the point is there, what, what people have to think through today, what we Americans have to think through today in the context of these wars that we're fighting all over the place is how do you secure yourself when the world is much smaller at the least possible cost of life and treasure and the greatest possible expansion of ordinary peacetime pursuits? That's always the challenge in war, but especially for a free commercial republic, it is the challenge. And the thing to absorb is that's more difficult now because we are subject to immediate attack all over the world and at home.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Growing strength of other naval powers is also a problem to us and of the weaponry. As the Ukrainians have demonstrated in the Black Sea, the weapons necessary to destroy a fleet have changed. As they change between World War I and World War II, they've changed again. The airplane came along, now we have drones. Now drones can sink. And the Ukrainians sunk the Moscow, the lead ship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea using drones. That's the kind of thing that people look back in 50 years and say people ought to have woken up at that point to the. The fundamental changes at sea going underwater.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

People don't understand one thing like why, for example of the great powers, we need the Straits of Hormuz the least because we have. We're an oil net oil exporting country. That's true. We're also the largest user of the of oil in the world. And there's very much oil that we don't have that we have to use heavy crude and we don't have the refinery capacity to use a lot of the oil that we have. So what we really are is a net exporter, but also the heaviest trader of oil in the world. And so oil matters to us very much, even though we got a lot of it. I mean, we should build a lot more refineries, by the way, to be more secure just using our own. It's probably not possible for us to be completely independent of foreign oil.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Yeah. One of the reasons that digression, one of the reasons Steve Hilton appears to have got through to the finals is that a major refinery, another one left in California. And I was out there a few weeks ago, gas was $6.50 more than $2 a gallon, more expensive than it is on the east coast in the middle of the war because of their ridiculous regulations and they've driven the refining capacity away and they won't explore for their own oil. It's crazy, it's self defeating, but that's the reality. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. The Hillsdale dialogue, last broadcast hour of the week, is underway with Dr. Larry Arn, President of Hillsdale College. All things Hillsdale at hugh for hillsdale.com the dialogues at least, all the online courses in primus, the opportunity to find out about the college at Hillsdale. Edu. We're going to switch topics now to a different part of the war. Dr. Arne, let me ask you now about Italy. Churchill has an unusual relationship with Mussolini. Not unlike Donald Trump, he believes in personal diplomacy. So he writes Duce a letter in which he says, is it too late to stop a river of blood from flowing between the British and the Italian peoples? In fact, it was too late. Mussolini had decided to throw in with the jackals.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Yeah. And see that correspond. There are three things like this in the Second World War that are parallel in this chapters. He talks about a letter he wrote to Stalin, who's allied with Hitler at the time. And then later he will write, he will get a letter delivered to the Japanese ambassador who's in Moscow dealing with the Russians. That comes up in the next few chapters. And in all three of them, he writes a personal appeal with reasons why they should not join the Axis, which you remember, the Soviet Union was part of the Axis at this moment. Well, in the case of Italy, he talks about the old alliance and friendship in the First World War and before between Italy and Britain. They'd always been friends or they'd mostly been friends. What does Mussolini reply with except the very thing that Churchill anticipated and that was we went to Abyssinia not threatening any British interest. And you organize the world against us. And Churchill was reluctant about that back in 36 when that happened because he thought, you know, we may need these Italians, right? And how does it affect us? Exactly. And, and then, you know, we put, we got the League of Nations to put sanctions on Italy, but they were heavily lobbied against. And so exempted from sanctions was oil. And Churchill writes of that back then when that was happening. Willing to strike, but afraid to wound is what we are. So, so the point is that this, you know, this, these disasters that are unfolding have been prepared by what we read in the gathering storm. The years that the locust has eaten, right? The failure to rearm, the antagonizing of Germany. But you know. But that's earlier, right? That's more generous people.

[Hugh Hewitt]

I want to remind everyone you worked with Sir Martin Gilbert for years. What did you and he. Or what did he tell you about Mussolini? Because he's a very shadowy figure in the American imagination. We know him as a strutting, thumping Fascist. But for a time there in the 20s and the 30s, he and Churchill got along, as did some of the civilized world. What did Sir Martin think of him?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Well, what do you think of him? Well, he didn't think anything about him. It's not in the documents. There's an interesting tidbit. Clementine Churchill met Mussolini and wrote to her husband about what he was like. And she was very taken with his galvanizing, powerful eyes, thought he was a force. It's not a letter of approval of his politics. The impression that British people had, first of all, Italy was, you know, kind of a joke, right? You know, it's. Italy has been a mess for a very long time. Had been a mess for a long time. And the going concerns in Europe, the powers in Europe were Britain and France and Germany and. And so Italy was a junior partner, right? And so then some people thought that kind of good, what Mussolini is saying. He wants to recover the strength of Italy, the Rome, the Romans of Italy, right? And fascism that comes from some bound together sticks that the Romans would carry called fasces in their ceremonies, right? To be a Fascist in Italy was to be for the resurrection of the glory of Rome, the power of Rome. And so she wouldn't be entirely unsympathetic with that. Especially when Italy, you know, like what they say. Well, the famous thing they said about Mussolini was he made the trains run on time, you know, because if you live in a country and things don't

[Hugh Hewitt]

work like in la, I know what you're going to say. You're going to accept a minimum. And for a while, Mussolini did bring order, but then he brought fascism and its awfulness. We'll come back and talk more about that. I want to remind you all things hillsdalesdale. Edu, including their online courses on World War II and on Churchill and on the revolution as we approach 1776. I also want to remind you that all the prior conversations with Dr. Arne about this book, Winston Churchill, Volume 2, and his world war memoirs, the Finest Hour, Their Finest hour, available at q4hillsdale.com Stay tuned.

[Podcast Narrator]

Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On this week's program, legendary pollster and political analyst Scott Rasmussen is with us. His new book, out of the elite 1% and the battle for America's Soul. Who are the elite and why do they have outsized influence? We'll talk with Scott Rasmussen. Also, Richard Samuelson From Hillsdale in D.C. joins us once again as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States and the Declaration. This time we talk about those events directly leading up to the writing of the Declaration with Richard Samuelson. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio. 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.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Welcome back, America. Hugh Hewitt with Dr. Larry Ahron. Hilltail dialogue underway. The last broadcast hour of the week, all things Hilltail at hilltail. Edu. Dr. Arn, you said you had a bit of a frolic and a detour.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

I once had a galvanizing discussion. I went down to Guatemala to an academic conference and the conference was staffed by some students at Francisco American University, a little Catholic school there. That's kind of nice. And so I, I was taken with the students. That's my kind of people, you know. So I took about half a dozen of them out to dinner one night and we talked and I wanted to find out about them. What do they think? What's the world like? Right? And this one particular young woman who was the daughter of one of the organizers of the conference, a very good guy, she'd been to America. And I said, what do you make of it? And she said, everything works and everything is clean. That's Spencer Pratt and the governor candidate, both, right? They're saying, look, we're falling apart here, and you don't want to live in a society like that. Well, Mussolini was cleaning some of that up and people liked it. And you know, and remember Hitler, who's, you know, let's just say Hitler was a very bad man, Right. On the other hand, what had Germany been through? I mean, it's their fault that they got hammered in the First World War. They hammered everybody else first, but then after that there's this terrible inflation and disorganization and violence in the streets and. And Hitler gets him going again, right? And he was very popular for a while. And Mussolini is sort of similar. You know, let's straighten this place out, get it going, get some bigger back, right? And Mussolini proved to be ultimately a weak man. We have that great letter in these chapters from his son in law, Count Chano, whom he executed, who it caused to be executed and who turned on Mussolini. That's why he had him executed at the hands of Germany. He was in Berlin and he writes what. What's true, and that is Mussolini was eventually completely mastered by Hitler. When is it? When Hitler took Austria 36. That affected Italian interests because Austria's over the hills from Italy. And Hitler was nervous about what Mussolini would think, and Mussolini let him do it. And when he did that, Hitler called him Duce. He said, duce, I pledge eternal loyalty to you. But then within a year, Mussolini goes to see Hitler and wonders if he's going to be executed before he leaves the house.

[Hugh Hewitt]

And Ciano wrote in that letter, he said he wanted to tell people he's the only foreigner who was at close quarters with Hitler, that the world should not be ignorant of the fact that the misfortune of Italy was not the fault of her people, but due to the shameful behavior of one man. Which brings me to the last point of this hour. Fdr, after Italy stabs France in the back, FDR goes on radio in America, gives a great speech denouncing Mussolini as the hand that held the dagger that has stuck it into the back of its neighbor. Churchill thought this was a great speech, especially as five months before an election in which FDR needed the Italian vote and he said FDR was, quote, never afraid to run risk for the sake of his resolves. And one of those resolves was Great Britain should endure. Do you, do you think that Trump has resolves the way that FDR had resolved lines that he will not allow to be crossed?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, first of all, he's very tough, right? Look what, look what's happened to him, right? They were going to put him in jail and take his money and he got run. He's very tough. He's, I think, you know, Trump, you know, I don't, you know, I don't know Donald Trump. Well, I know a bit. I do know that Trump is not slow to return a blow because he's, he's, you know, what's this thing that's going on right now about the weapon, about the Justice Department Defense Fund for people who have weaponized government against them. He, you know, he wants to protect his people and also he wants to hit back. And that's natural. And you know, history will judge whether he goes too far with that or not. But he's, he is certainly like that. He's.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Now, the last thing I want to say is that when Churchill made a request of the United States, George Marshall, who's beginning to enter into this book took 48 hours to inventory everything that America could give. Great Britain and Steny US got it done and FDR said do it. It's sort of like when Nixon send every plane that can fly to Israel in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War. I didn't know about this until this book. 48 hours to inventory everything that we did not need for a bare bones defense of America. Do you think we could do that today?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Well, we're short of weapons, right. So yeah, but we, you know, we're in an emergency. Free peoples can do a lot. And, and it's, you know, just remember that like in if you read the story of the Russian Revolution and Solzhenitsyn is publishing these five volumes called the Red Wheel that are awesome to read. They're really good. And if you read that, you find out that the place Russia's fallen apart in the last days, right. And orders are not carried out and stuff like that. Well, we reacted fast and we were united and we fought very well in that war and we did a lot through a lot of setbacks. So yeah. And you know, we could move.

[Hugh Hewitt]

We can move and we chose to move. And we will talk more about how Great Britain actually did mobilize quite well. They did actually move very fast. And in fact, Churchill rode that train at an ever accelerating pace until victory was assured. We'll come back and we'll talk about all of that and more. A reminder, everything Hillsdale is at Hillsdale Edu, including those of you who are maybe sophomore juniors gonna be rising seniors. You wanna make your application to Hillsdale and you wanna do it right now. That application is available at Hillsdale, Eduardo, not your ordinary application. You want to study it, you want to send it in. It's a great place to learn, a great place to prepare. My goodness, the network effects of that college now are amazing. Or if you just want to listen to all of the Churchill dialogue about World War II, head to HughForHillsdale.com they're all collected there over at HughForHillsdale.com stay tuned. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. I wanna take a moment before we close out this week's broadcast to ask Dr. Larry Aharon about where we are in defense spending, where we are in preparing not for the war that's currently paused, but for the next war and the war after that, as of course, Britain didn't prepare in the 30s and they barely survived the 40s. What say you, Dr. Arne?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

You know, this big bill that they're talking about, you know, a billion. What, a trillion and a half for defense?

[Hugh Hewitt]

Yeah. A trillion five.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Yeah, that's, that's big restocking and we need that.

[Hugh Hewitt]

We need to build the right things. It's the big challenge about that. And you know some of these tech people better than I do. There's a generational chump in weaponry and we talked about it earlier as to World War I and battleships, World War II and aircraft carriers. And now in the Persian and Arabian Gulf and in the Black Sea, we're learning it's just a brand new world at sea. We better be building the right stuff. Do you think we are?

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Well, I heard the Sage Palmer Lucky talk about that.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Oh.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

And he says it takes 10 years to revolutionize the American military industrial base. And for the next most, the next five, we're going to be building more of what we got. And we can add a lot too. But like we need to replenish the stocks of the stuff that we have invented and know how to use and have. So, so it'll be a transition. Right. You know, I even think that the Chinese Navy's getting so big and the thing's going to, the advantage is going to grow. There's a, there's a moment of danger. Two or three or four year period of danger coming up right now. And so we should replenish the stocks of what we got. We should buy as much as we can of the more innovative things that should be cheaper. Palmer Luckey said that he would be disappointed if in 10 years the defense budget was not half or less what it is in a normal year now, and that we're not more lethal after it too.

[Hugh Hewitt]

Well, you know, it may be what maybe it was Churchill who said God loves the United States and drunks. It may be that The Chinese spent 25 years building ships that are not useful to the next war because of what we're seeing with the revolution underneath the water and above the water, we shall see. Dr. Larry Ahren all things Hillsdale can be found at Hillsdale Eduardo all of the prior Hillsdale dialogues are [e-mail] thank you for listening. We'll be back next week, same time, the last broadcast hour of the week. Until then,

[Podcast Narrator]

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.

[Dr. Larry Arnn]

Eduardo.