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How the Allies won WW2
00:36:04
James Holland explores the final months of the greatest conflict in human history through the Axis surrenders that brought it to an end
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Jack Bateman
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- [02:04]
Jack Bateman
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine this summer, it's 80 years since the greatest conflict in human history came to an end. To mark the anniversary, the military historians and podcasters James Holland and Al Murray have written a new book that tells the story of the final moments of the Second World War through the access surrenders that brought the conflict to a close. In today's episode, James, who's also the creative director of the Chalk History Festival, which runs this year from the 23rd to the 29th of June, revisits these dramatic episodes in the company of Rob Attar.
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James Holland
James, we're approaching the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and in your new book, you and Al Murray have decided to focus specifically on the surrenders that concluded the conflict. Why do you think that this approach is a good way to illuminate our understanding of the period?
- [03:02]
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Well, I suppose in some ways it's an authorial trick. I mean, we are focusing on all the surrenders and it's called, you know, sort of end of the war in a surrender. But actually we're using each of those surrenders as a sort of entry point to broader themes. So, for example, the surrender in Italy, it is about the surrender in Italy, but it's not really about the last weeks of fighting in Italy. It's about the duel between Ernest Kaltenbrunner and Carl Wolf. And they were the two most senior SS officers in the Reich directly under Himmler, and they both hated each other's guts and both were trying to kind of get through the war with their necks intact, whilst at the same time trying to stitch up the other. And it is just the most extraordinary story of art theft, of high level VIP hostages, of barely comprehensible scales, of money laundering and just general skullduggery at every turn. I mean, it is absolutely remarkable. So that's how we're approaching it. And you know, when we're looking at the surrender of German forces in northern Germany to Montgomery, it is about the surrender, but it is also about the way Montgomery runs his tactical headquarters and the kind of flurry of ADCs have around him young captains who he likes and is very close to and who he completely trusts and who are all in their 20s and sort of beetling about Germany. And one of them gets killed, John Postman. And. And it's, it's about that. So, you know, the surrender in Japan, the final surrender in Japan, there was a surrender, the announced surrender on the 15th of August, but then there is the signing on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on the 2nd of September 1945. And that chapter, it's again, it is about that ceremony, but it is really about Jonathan Wainwright, who is the general that MacArthur leaves behind. When MacArthur gets off Corregidor in Manila Bay and, you know, heads to Australia, he leaves the command of the surviving Allied forces in the Philippines to Jonathan Wainwright. And it's about what happens to him, him having to surrender. You know, he is the only serving American commander that has to surrender in the field to an enemy force. And so it's about his story is as much as it is about the actual surrender on the USS Missouri. And, you know, just one other example I'll give you is that the VE Day in America on 8 May is not really about ticker tape and sailors snogging nurses in the streets, you know, on Broadway. It is really about President truman, who is 61st birthday that day and who has only taken hold of the presidency on 12 April in the evening following the aneurysm of Roosevelt and his death before the war's out. And it's about how a completely domestic politician from the Midwest with no university education and none of the kind of sort of refinery of the east coast or California, which is the sort of traditional benchmark for US Presidents, suddenly finds himself flung into a situation where he is commander in chief of the most powerful nation in the world at that time and confronted with the atomic bomb about which he knew nothing before he became president, even though he was vice president, about rapidly deteriorating relationships with the Soviet Union, with an incredibly complex end of the war and global new order about to emerge, all of which he had to kind of deal with at breakneck speed. And it's about how he deals with that, and it's why the starting point for that one particularly was that if you go and look at his speech that he gives on the morning In Washington of the 8th of May, 1945, it's incredibly downbeat. You know, it's like, we got a great victory, but, you know, we still got long yards ahead, you know, because he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders. And, you know, is it any wonder? And I was always being struck by that. I remember thinking, well, you know, why is it that he's so down and so sort of peeling back the layers of the onion, so to speak, and finding out all about Truman and reading up all about him. And what a remarkable man, by the way. Truman is someone who, with every fiber in his body, does what he does out of a profound sense of public duty, Christian duty, a moral coda which is unrecognizable in the current crop of most leading politicians in the United States. And, you know, you can't help but read about Truman in April to May 1945 and not be completely dazzled by the sharp contrast.
- [07:47]
James Holland
So I appreciate that your book isn't just specifically about the mechanics of surrenders, but I would be interested, and I think our listeners might be interested to know exactly what happened at a surrender. You know, could you take us inside the room? And I know it would have been different, different situations. But when the vanquished and victors are meeting, what did they actually do? What did they say? Who would be there?
- [08:05]
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so let me give you the example of the surrender of the Germans in May 1945. So the unconditional surrender. There's a surrender of major forces on the 4th of May, and that's the one on Luna Berg heath to Montgomery's 21st Army Group. There's another one in southern Bavaria, the 6th Army Group, which is Jacob, General Jacob Divers, American General Jacob Divas, who've sort of often forgotten in the narrative, but played an absolutely crucial part on the 5th of May. And it's absolutely clear that it's all over. You know, Berlin itself has surrendered on 2 May. So the capital is gone. And the reason why, Donitz, who has taken over from Hitler as the, you know, commander in chief of Germans, he's not the Fuhrer, he, he's the head of state. It's not the same thing. The reason he's saying we can't just surrender immediately once Hitler dies is because he wants to try and get as many of the 3 million German troops, which are on the wrong side of River Elbe, which looks very likely to be the dividing line between east and west, back across the Elbe into the hands of the Americans and the Western Allies. This by the way, is totally absurd because there is no way 3 million troops are going to get across the Elbe. First of all, they're nowhere near the Elbe, a lot of them. Secondly, there's only one bridge left and that's broken and you can only do sort of single file, kind of picking your way over. I mean, the whole thing is so delusional and speaks volumes of the grand delusion, not just of Hitler and his immediate circle down in the bunker, in the ruins of Berlin, as that particular Gotterdammerung is sort of playing out at the end of April, but in the kind of higher command of senior to Nazis, I mean, what are people like Wilhelm Keitel and Donitz is now the head of state, Admiral Donitz. I mean, what the hell are they thinking? I mean, how could they possibly think that 3 million Germans are going to get across the Elbe? It's absolute nonsense. And they're saying, you know, we just want to save German lives. Well, if you want to save German lives, stop the war. I mean, it's just completely obvious, you know, Dernitz does not come out. Well, there's a sort of slight feeling that I Think with Dernitz, he gets off pretty lightly. He doesn't serve that much time in the big scheme of things.
- [10:11]
James Holland
He's.
- [10:11]
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He's not seen exactly as a good German, but he's, you know, he's not seen as one of the really awful ones, but he's terrible. He's an absolutely despicable human being and deserves to be completely condemned, not only for his role in the wider war, but particularly how he behaves at the end. Anyway, be that as it may, they're trying to hold out and get the best conditions they possibly can. So they start sort of negotiating with. With reams, which is Shafe, which is Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. This is Eisenhower, who's the supreme Allied commander in the west, and he has his headquarters in this building in Reims in northern France. And they get approached and negotiations begin. And initially the German negotiators say, well, you know, this is just an early foray. You know, you can't really kind of, you know, we can't sign any. And, you know, Eisenhower has absolutely no truck with this whatsoever. And he says, you know, basically, get lost until you're ready to talk. And, you know, unconditional surrender means unconditional surrender. It means surrender without conditions. And negotiating team come back on the 6th of May. There's sort of talks into the night. Eisenhower is not present. He doesn't want to go anywhere near kind of people like General Yodel, Alfred Yodel, who is kind of number two at the okw, which is the Overkommando de Wehrmacht, which is the German General staff combined General staff. And eventually, in the kind of early hours, it's sort of 2:47 or whatever it is in the morning, they sign the surrender, and that's it. That is the surrender. But the Soviet Union, Stalin is not happy about this at all. You know, he wanted to have the surrender. And he goes, well, you can't surrender now until, you know, we say so. So the Arabs go, okay, fine, but we'll have a sort of ceasefire and we'll announce it, you know, at a time that is convenient to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union said, well, we want to do it on the 9th of May. And they're like, what? You know, it's like two days time. But they sort of go, okay, well, you know, maybe we should. Churchill's outraged by this talks to President Truman. Truman is kind of, you know, anxious not to rock the boat with the Soviets at this delicate time. So I said, well, I think, you know, we should probably kind of play along with Stalin, it's agreed that it's going to be kept secret until the night of May when the Russians are ready, and they're going to have a ceremony in Berlin and that will be the formal end of the Second World War. The problem is, is German radio then announces it on the afternoon of the 7th, and immediately there's an American journalist from AP News who reveals it and suddenly it's out and everyone knows that the war's over. So celebration starts happening in New York and Washington and London and all the rest of it and everyone starts cheering. And Churchill quite rightly points out that this is just absurd, that everyone knows and they're kind of having to go, you know, no comment, no comment. I mean, you know, clearly it's all happening. So Churchill and Truman agree that they will announce VE Day Victory in Europe Day on the 8th of May. And that is what we in the west consider the final war. Stalin is absolutely seething about this. But on the other hand, he's still got this great victory. Keitel is. Is brought down from Flensburg, which is where the new German government is under Donitz, and brought down to Berlin and driven down to Karlshorst, which is a former barracks in southeast Berlin, where they have the surrender ceremony. And that takes place in the early hours of the 9th of May. And that is it. That's the end of the war. So it's kind of. It's a sort of slightly bizarre end to the war because it's a surrender of two surrenders with a Victory in Europe Day on the day that isn't a surrender at all. So it's sort of, frankly, all a bit of a mashup. But that's how it happens. The Germans, what they're fighting for, they understand that they've got to lay down their arms and they've got to sort of prostrate themselves at the feet of their victors. What they're holding out for is the terms of that, laying down of arms. So in the case of the negotiations with SHAEF headquarters in Reims, it's about trying to allow German troops to the west beforehand. They're trying to buy time, although, you know, as we've already discussed completely pointlessly and to no end. So that's what that's really about. It's not that the Germans are trying to sort of get a better deal, it's the terms of actually laying down the arms that is the point of debate. And, you know, the Allies are very good at just going, no, you know, Monty does the same. He just goes, nope, you know, I'm not interested. It's unconditional surrender or nothing at all. You know, when you're ready, come back. Otherwise we'll just carry on killing all your men. And you know, they see the light pretty quickly, to be honest, because of course they're absolutely stuffed and have been really since February. Well, you know, you could argue they've been stuffed since the end of 1941, but there's certainly stuff by February 1945. And I think February 1945 is a sort of key moment really. You know, the Battle of Bulge has been gone in the west. This huge large scale German counterattack launched on the 16th of December 1944, you know, it's completely failed. It's got the maps that you know where. Then in January, you know, there's another offensive on the Eastern Front as well. And they've got nowhere to go. But February's really is where the Reichsbahn, which is the glue that's been keeping the kind of fragile Wehrmacht together that really starts to kind of just sort of disintegrate. And the Reichsbahn is the German railway network. They don't have much oil, so they're dependent on coal driven steam locomotives to sort of get troops and supplies from A to B. And that's so badly bombed by this stage because, you know, the ability of the Luftwaffe to defend the Reich is getting ever more lessened and ever more numbers of bombers are coming over around the clock. You know, it's not just sort of 1,200 B17s and B24s from the 8th Air Force and the 15th Air Force in Italy attacking by day. It's also kind of, you know, a thousand bombers of Bomber Command coming over and that relentless sort of 2002 and a half thousand bombers on a kind of 24 hour cycle just pummeling Germany and mainly aiming for marshalling guards. I should should hasten to add more than kind of almost any other target. It just brings about the complete collapse of Germany. This is this sort of attack on the oil network and the transportation system. So they've got no means of sort of moving anything and moving anything from A to B. And so the whole thing just sort of crumbles to a halt really, albeit that there is still some extremely violent fighting going on right up to the very end.
- [16:12]
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- [17:48]
James Holland
Times this phrase, unconditional surrender, which the Allies demanded in the Second World War. How much was that response, do you think, to what happened after the First World War?
- [17:56]
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Yeah, I think it is that, but I think it's more about the unconditional surrender comes from Roosevelt, President Roosevelt, who sort of kicks that off. Churchill's kind of goes along with it, but it is definitely Roosevelt's brainchild and him that is driving it. Above all, it is partly the First World War, but I think it's more that he doesn't want there to be any ambiguity. He wants to know what they're fighting for. He doesn't want any wiggling out. He wants to know that the only way this war is going to end is by totally, totally crushing their enemies and then they can start to shape the New World Order. And the New World Order in Roosevelt's eyes is one of creating a society free of want and fear, creating a global commercial order of free trade and capitalism and democracy. You know that isn't going to happen because of communism and the Soviet Union and revolutions that then happen in China as well, of course. But that's his aim. And it's about clearing the decks. I think it's about going right, no more fascism, no more dictators. This is how it's going to be. We're, you know, we are going to completely crush Nazism, we are going to completely crush fascism in Italy, and we're going to completely crush this autocratic Imperial Japanese means of doing things. Now, the interesting thing about the unconditional surrender in Japan is it is, it is unconditional except for the condition that the, the Emperor stays in place, which he does until 1989 or something, when Hirohito finally dies. I mean, it is absolutely extraordinary. But by that point, you know, everyone's so exhausted, and also the Americans especially, but also the, the British and Western Allies are so nervous about what happen if they ever have to invade the Japanese home Islands that they are prepared to kind of twist the unconditional surrender to an unconditional surrender, but with the one condition that the Emperor survives because they understand that he is key in Japanese culture to allowing the surrender to happen and for Japan to continue functioning as a state post war.
- [20:05]
James Holland
And I suppose the Allied leaders had an acceptance that unconditional surrender meant the war may last longer, may mean more casualties, because, you know, the Axis powers might have been more willing to negotiate some kind of ceasefire armistice earlier had there not been such stringent conditions.
- [20:22]
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Yeah, I mean, this is one. You know, there is simply no answer to this particular argument because it was unconditional surrender and so it was never tested. I'm not sure if I'm honest. I don't think conditional surrender would have made any difference because particularly the Nazis, you know, where they're fighting, it's about, and, you know, it's about their own warped version of the New world order. Either they, you know, either Nazi Germany will be the Thousand Year Reich or it will descend into Armageddon. I mean, you know, Hitler's already made that condition absolutely clear and painted it in a black and white. So I think, I think unconditional surrender just gives clarity of thinking really, to the Allies rather than making the Germans more likely to surrender. And the truth is, if the Germans had surrendered in July 1944, as Rommel and some of the senior generals in Normandy were plotting before he was so badly wounded, it just wouldn't have come to anything at all. Even if there had been conditional surrender, I mean, you know, Hitler would have refused it and they'd have just carried on, I think. So I'm not sure that it makes a huge amount of difference. I think, you know, my own view is I think it was the right call and the right decision. And to be tough and uncompromising is important when you're in a global struggle of the nature that the Second World War was.
- [21:33]
James Holland
So you had these people that been fighting bitter wars against each other. What was the kind of mood like in the atmosphere, like when they had to meet, you know, in person, sign agreements? How did they kind of interact with each other?
- [21:46]
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Well, Eisenhower didn't want anything to do with them whatsoever. They were given pretty short shrift, to be honest. You know, there was no shaking of hands. You know, they saluted, the Germans saluted and did all their kind of heel clicking and all the rest of it. You know, one of the most impressive of all is Monty's one where, you know, he's literally just been waiting kind of, you know, five years for this moment and he absolutely sa. He gives him nothing but incredibly short shrift and contempt. You know, it's a master class of how to be just, firm and uncompromising and not give your enemy an inch at all. Yeah. The truth is, by this stage, the camps have been un. You know, they've been into Belson, they've been into Dao, they've been into Ravens, Brook, etc. Etc. And they've seen the handiwork of the Nazi regime and all these generals have been wearing the swastika on their uniforms. They've been fighting for it, you know, even sort of inverted commas. Good Germans like von Senger or Fritz Bayerlein, I mean, you know, generally by, by most people's standards, decent fellows, they don't have to fight for Nazi Germany. By fighting by commanding troops, they're. They're supporting a truly despicable regime. So, you know, they don't deserve anything other than cold shoulder and cold treatment. I mean, you know, it never fails to stagger me that, that a nation such as Germany so rich culturally in terms of his arts, literature, music, it's. It's incredible engineering. It's incredible scientific minds. What it is brought to the world in terms of invention, science and. Yeah, and arts, music. How quickly it descended into this totally, totally despicable regime in which millions are murdered so callously and in cold blood. And the idea that any of those surrendering deserve any kind of. Kind of respect is frankly ridiculous.
- [23:47]
James Holland
Now, you talked earlier a little bit about the V Day picture in America. What can you tell us about what it was like here in Britain when VE Day was announced.
- [23:56]
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Well, you know, they got wind of what was going on on the afternoon of the 7th. So there was major partying in all the major cities and, you know, the 8th of May was a public holiday and it was just. It was party central. I mean, I remember some years ago making a documentary. It was like literally the first bit of telly I ever did back for the anniversary in. In 2005, and talking to loads of people who've been around in London and Bradford and, you know, all sorts of places, we went to interview people who remembered it. And, you know, there just seemed to be an awful lot of dancing, singing, getting drunk and snogging, as far as I can make out. I remember there was a brilliant guy called Tom Pocock, who was. Who I think was an intelligence officer in the army, and later on was biographer of Nelson, amongst others, and a terrific fellow. He was absolutely lovely, he said. And I remember lying on my back in Green park with a beautiful lady kind of pouring champagne down my throat and just thinking, oh, this is marvelous, the war's over. But then I also remember talking to an absolutely gorgeous lady called Bobby Brown who. Who lived in my village here in Wiltshire. And, you know, she would. She'd been in British Secret Intelligence as well, and she'd been engaged to a Belgian bomber pilot who'd gone missing. And she just felt utter despair all day, you know, that it was over. If it was over, why did they have to start? And, you know, what about her fiance? So, you know, very, very mixed, mixed emotions. British troops out in Burma barely batted an eye because, you know, still a job to do against the Japanese in. In 1945. So the. The emotions are very mixed. And, you know, you see this again with the troops out in Germany, it's kind of sort of, well, you know, thank God we've got through it, we're still alive. But, you know, before you've seen. I mean, you can't unsee what you've seen and what you've witnessed and the mates you've lost. And I remember kind of, you know, reading the account of Stanley Christopherson, who was the commanding officer of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, ended up in a kind of tiny, beautiful little village, sort of somewhere between Bremen and Hamburg. When he got the news, and he said, you know, I felt so one of mixed emotions, one of you know, utter relief that I'd got through it, but also deep sadness of all these fellows, great friends of mine, who weren't with me now, who'd been killed along the way. So, you know, very, very mixed emotions, I think. But, you know, obviously all the photos that you see are all of sort of sailors snogging, people in Times Square and ticker tape falling down and everyone cheering and all the rest of it. So, you know, it must have been such a sort of curious time. And then, of course, you've got, well, kind of. Okay, now the reality of, of it, you know, we're, we've survived, we're back, but we've got a job on our hands because, you know, most of Europe's ruins, this kind of, you know, the greatest crisis of refugees and, and immigrants, you know, the world has ever known, you've got a hell of a rebuilding job on your hand. You've got a, A world in debt. You know, how on earth do you recover? And I think one of the things that's just remarkable about it is if you kind of look at Italy by the 1950s and 60s, you look at Japan, you look at, look at West Germany, how quickly they recover, how quickly France recovers, you know, all these nations which suffered so much in the Second World War, crikey, you know, the healing process is, is so quick. It's absolutely remarkable. But 1945, you know, during the war, and then for the second half of that year is, yes, boy, it's tough, Tough, tough, tough.
- [27:03]
James Holland
And then what was kind of the mood like in places like Germany and Japan? Was it a sense of despair or was there almost a relief that this war was over that had been going badly for so long?
- [27:12]
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Yeah, I think, you know, all of the above. I mean, it's interesting. You know, of course, everyone's experience is different. In fact, actually, you know, you might be facing the worst moments of your entire life by some margin, once the peace has come. So it depends on your circumstances, depends where you are. You know, if you're a German prisoner of the Western Allies, you know, you're kind of going to be okay. If you're a German prisoner of the Soviet Union, you know, look out because you're heading to a Gulag somewhere, and your chance of coming back, you know, after your 10 years of incarceration, are considerably less than if you were in the, in the West. So it just depends. But I think there is a palpable sense of extreme exhaustion even outside of the ruins. You know, these times are tired. You know, they have licks of paint for six years. You know, supplies are short, clothes are threadbare. Devastating effect of the Second World War on all those competent nations. And nations where the fighting took place. We're still reading from that, that to this day, because, you know, look at the center of Plymouth, for example, blitzed in March 1941. 46 acres completely destroyed in the center of the city. Look at Cologne, you know, completely rebuilt. This sort of beautiful medieval city, just gone. So many German cities just sort of absolutely decimated by the war. And the rebuilding process is. Is, you know, is a long and hard one. I mean, you know, if you go out to Italy now and you go to sort of Casino and any of those outlying villages, they're lacking their pre war charm, to put it mildly. I mean, all completely destroyed, completely rebuilt. The only thing that was sort of rebuilt with any kind of pre war accuracy in that area was the monastery of Monte Cassino itself. But the rest of it, absolutely devastated. And Casino Town is just. Just not the beautiful place it was before the war. You know, the legacy continues.
- [28:56]
James Holland
Now, James, you have spent 20 more than that years working on the Second World War, writing, researching, and then obviously, Al spent a long time studying it too. Was there anything that came up in your research for this book that was new to you or that surprised you and Al?
- [29:10]
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Oh, absolutely, lots. Yeah. Because, you know, as soon as you go into a deep dive on something, you're looking at stuff with completely new and fresh eyes. I'd researched the Wolf Kaltenbruner story a few years ago, but, I mean, that is just remarkable. It's an incredible story. I mean, it reads like a novel. It's just amazing. I suppose, you know, it was good to go into. Have a deep dive on the death of Hitler. But I mean, there's no dispute at all about. I don't know what the conspiracy theorists say, but there's no dispute at all about how he died. The dispute is over what happened to his body. So to. To go on a deep dive onto that and, and see what happened to him, what happened to his remains. And no, he didn't go to South America and nor was he flown out by Hannah Reich. You know, that was really interesting. I think the details of the Japanese surrender and how they came about, the sort of double entendre of Japanese word meanings, which was sort of going around in the kind of final days between the dropping of the first atomic bomb and the final, you know, acceptance that there's going to be a surrender is. That was revelatory. I didn't know anything about that. And it was just completely fascinating. So the whole thing has just been a fascinating episode. I mean, you know what I'D say, Rob, is that there were bits of it that I was more familiar with than others. But to go into a deep dive on this stuff, I suppose. I suppose the thing that's really struck me more than anything else has been the presidency of Harry S. Truman. How he came to be President on 12th April, 1945, how he stepped up to this, to deal and confront this huge albatross that had been placed around his neck. He didn't want the vice presidency, he didn't want the presidency, and yet he kind of did what he had to do, I found, was just remarkable. And all the more remarkable because of the current climate in which we're living in at the moment, you know, and I was doing all that research just as the, you know, I was writing that one up just as the American election was happening, you know, so it's been really, really, really interesting. And I suppose, you know, what I've learned from sort of 20 plus years of studying this subject is it is literally inexhaustible. Here I am as well, Having done nearly 900 episodes of we have ways of making you talk podcast. And people go, oh, you're ever going to run out? Absolutely not. As long as people want to listen to us. And Al and I are happy to keep chatting to each other, which I think we are. You know, we'll keep going because it's just there's so much stuff. It's such a massive, massive subject. You'll never, ever get to grips of it. There's always stones to unturn and new things to find out and new fascinating stuff. I mean, you know, just talking to Philippe Sands about, you know, all these archives that were, that have just been sold to Stanford University on Walter Ralph and Carl Wolf, who I was writing about in this book that have just been unearthed and are now kind of available to access. You know, new stuff keeps appearing, you know, and a couple of weeks ago, I was sort of wandering around the Arden battlefield and finding foxholes and all sorts of stuff. You know, not in the Bock, which is the famous bit where Easy Company were in Band of Brothers, you know, but in really quite remote places. You sort of go, oh, my God, there's a massive bomb crater. Oh, my God, look at that. There's a rectangular split trench or mortar pit or whatever. I mean, you know, it's just incredible. There it all is. Or shrapnel on the wall, or, you know, it's. There's still tons to learn. I mean, just a few, you know, a week and a Half ago I was in a place called Noville, which is just north of Bastogne, and I was walking around all the great the three blocking places of Team Desobry, which was one of the kind of blocking teams north of Bastogne before the kind of main siege began. And I was working out why they were placed where they were. And when you walk the land and you walk the ground, you can, you can see it. It's absolutely blindingly obvious. And you can also get a sense of how far it is from the village and how long it would have taken troops to walk there. So there's so much to find out, always on so many different levels, from an archival point of view, from a kind of walking the ground point of view, from understanding how the lay of the land, from unearthing new new diaries and documents and letters of participants, from just kind of, you know, doing a deep dive onto a subject that you haven't, you know, yet, you haven't had a chance to look at yet. So, yeah, it's inexhaustible.
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Jack Bateman
That was historian, broadcaster and writer James Holland speaking to Rob Attar. Victory 45, the End of the War in Eight Surrenders, co authored by Al Murray, is out now. And as I mentioned earlier, James is also the co founder and creative director of the Chalk History Festival, of which we are a media partner. It's taking place this year from the 23rd to the 29th of June, and you can find out more details at Chalk Festival. That's Chalk with an e.festival.com. thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.