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Can the West Hold Together? Lessons from WWII with Tim Bouverie and Michael Gove (Part One)
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- [00:00]
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- [00:10]
Tim Bouverie
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- [01:44]
Tim Bouverie
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- [02:08]
Michael Gove
If they're faking it, they're not making it past us.
- [02:11]
Tim Bouverie
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- [02:12]
Mia Sorrenti
McAfee.com keep it real welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. In a world where geopolitical alliances are fraying and tensions are rising, what can the fragile coalition that defeated Hitler teach us about the challenges facing the west today? Today's episode is part one of our recent live event, can the West Hold Together? With historian Tim Bouvri and editor of the Spectator, Michael Gove, live in London in September, Bouvry drew on his new book, Allies at the Politics of Defeating Hitler to explore how Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin overcame deep ideological differences and strategic rivalries to form a fragile but ultimately victorious alliance against Nazi Germany. With Donald Trump threatening to abandon NATO, Vladimir Putin intent on exploiting Western fissures, and democratic nations questioning their own cohesion, the lessons of World War II's Grand alliance have never felt more relevant. If you'd like to listen to this episode in full and ad free, why not consider becoming an Intelligence squared member@intelligencesquared.com membership or you can tap the IQ2 Extra button on Apple. Now let's join our host, Michael Gove with more.
- [03:33]
Michael Gove
Tim's book Allies at War is the second in what's envisaged as a trilogy outlining the key events of the 20th century as they affected these islands and the world. Tim's first book, Appeasing Hitler, was a Sunday Times bestseller, and it reflected not just a deep immersion in the history of the 20th century, but also Tim's own background, because before he was a historian, he was also a journalist, covering events here in Westminster and globally for Channel 4 News and for others. It's a gripping read, fascinating character studies at times hilarious anecdotes, and also a reminder of just what high politics and war involves. Tim, in choosing to write this book, you're dealing with three of the biggest personalities of the 20th century Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. But you're also dealing with Britain's relationship with other allies and indeed some countries whom we attempted to entice to support us during the Second World War. When it comes to those other relationships, particularly Britain's relationship with France, what is it that those first months and years of the war tell us about how difficult it was for the west to stand against Hitler and what was motivating the French at that time?
- [05:05]
Tim Bouverie
Well, thank you very much, Michael. Well, it's wonderful to be here. I think that it's important to remember that the Anglo French alliance, which creaked into action on 3rd September 1939, was not in any way born of love or sense of mutual kinship, but of sheer necessity. This had been an alliance which had existed between 1914 and 1918, but it hadn't been a harmonious one. British and French soldiers each felt that the others had let them down at various stages, and there were numerous clashes at the ministerial and also at the general level. And it's summed up, I think, quite well by the poet Edmund Blunden, who left the trenches and came back in, I think, in 1920, said, no more wars for me ever again. Unless it's a war against the French. If there's ever a war with them, I'll Go like a shot. And the British treated the French pretty badly in the two immediate post war decades. France understandably has this great fear of Germany, the country which had defeated France in 1870 and proclaimed the unification of Germany from the hall of Mirrors in Versailles in 1871 and then had invaded Germany again. Germany had invaded France again in August of 1914. Germany has a significant advantage over France, both industrially and demographically. And the Treaty of Versailles gets a very bad press. And one of the reasons, I think justifiably so, is it falls between two stools. It is not as punitive a piece to keep the Germans down as the French want, but nor is it so generous a piece that it does not give the Germans a major cause for resentment. And the only way that the French agree to it is that they believe that they've been promised a security guarantee by the British, which is something that Lloyd George then welches on. And then in the 1930s, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain pretty much ignore France as they try and deal directly with with Hitler and try and appease Hitler. So there is not a lot of good feeling. And it is only after that Hitler proves finally that he has no interest in a peaceful scenario, that he has broken his word to Chamberlain and Daladier at the Munich Conference and he has invaded the rump of Czechoslovakia in March of 1939 that these two powers start to plan together. But it's very, very tentative. And the French have already decided that they are going to fight a static war of defence. They've built this huge chain of fortifications along the Franco German frontier, the famous Maginot Line, which hardly gets to fire its guns because the Germans dastardly go round the side of it. And at the same time the British don't provide the level of manpower support that the French demand. And the Germans exploit this. There are huge speakers along the Franco German frontier which play propaganda to the French soldiers for months and months during the so called phoney war, saying that the British will fight to the last Frenchman and that Britain will provide the money for this war, but France will provide the bodies. And although there are moments of collaboration, there is. The distrust and sense of betrayal is felt very acutely and plays out in many of the crucial meetings during the Battle of France between Churchill and his counterparts.
- [08:55]
Michael Gove
Because of course, at the beginning of the Second World War it's Britain and France who are pledged to defend Poland. And it is the case, isn't it, that the Anglo French forces are more or less matched, you know, man for man, tank for tank to the Germans at the beginning of the war. And yet almost nothing happens. Just as a footnote to that, obviously, in the First World War, Britain entered in order to defend Belgian neutrality when it was violated by the Germans. Then one of the things that I did not know about, which is fascinating in the book, is how unreliable the Belgians were right at the beginning of the conflict. Can you tell us just a little bit about the Belgian dance, as it were? And then linked to that, why is it that France collapsed quite so quickly? And what dilemmas did that create for Winston Churchill?
- [09:50]
Tim Bouverie
Well, the answer to your two questions is pretty much the same. The French and the British expected the Germans to repeat the same plan that they had enacted in 1914, the famous Schliefflam plan. They were going to cut through northern France, Belgium, potentially Holland, and descend and then attack Paris from the rear, as it were. And that was the German plan in 1940. The reason it was not the plan that was finally enacted was that an aeroplane carrying copies of the plan fall Gelb was the name of the plan, crash landed in Belgium. And an inquiring Belgian, John Darmeri and his colleague, came to find out what a mess Schmidt was doing in someone's garden. And then the Belgians were absolutely convinced that they got the real German war plans because the Germans at that time were trying to burn them in a not very successful bonfire. So the plan was there's this huge chain of fortifications along the Franco German frontier, and that's fine, because the cream of the French army and the British Expeditionary Force, the moment war is declared, are meant to go charging into Belgium to fight the battle in Belgium. And this is very good from the French perspective, because it means that the fighting won't occur on the sacred soil of France. It will add some 20 Belgian divisions to the Allied total, potentially another 10, if Hitler, as he does indeed do, invades Holland. But the Belgians and the Dutch are neutral, and this does therefore not allow the British and the French to prepare for this onslaught as they expect. They then have to go charging in. And what is absolutely astonishing is, despite the fact that the German war plans have been captured by the Allies, it never occurs to the French commander in chief, General Maurice Gamelin, that the Germans might just change their minds now that their plans and the plans might change, and the plans do change. And so now what was the main German thrust coming through Belgium is shifted to, that is a diversion, and the main thrust is coming through the supposedly impenetrable forest of the Ardennes. So as the cream of the British Expeditionary Force and the French army go charging into Belgium. The main Speerpunt, the spearhead of the German Wehrmacht is cutting through this forest. And once they break through at Sedan, which is where the Prussians had quite decisively defeated the French in 1870, there is no strategic reserve behind them because all of the Allied forces are there. And then so it is a military defeat. But at the same time there is a complete crumbling of French morale. After this defeat, which occurs five days after the battle. Churchill is called on the 15th of May 1940. He's only been Prime Minister for five days. The battle is five days old. And the French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud says, we have lost, we've lost the war. And Churchill cannot possibly believe it. It's inconceivable that this could have happened so soon. The French and British had held the Germans for three and a half years on the Western Front between 14 and 18. The idea that it could the whole of France, and you're completely right, Michael, the French army is. The Allies had a numerical advantage to the Germans in 1940 and the French army was actually better, more mobile than the Germans. It was a French myth after the fall of France to say, well, we were greatly outnumbered and they had lots of tanks and we didn't have lots of tanks to explain this great humiliating military disaster.
- [13:42]
Michael Gove
There was one French tank commander who actually managed in the collapse of France to at least show a degree of Elain and actually won the conflict in which he was involved all too briefly, and that was Charles de Gaulle. And when France fell, he made his way to the United Kingdom. He became the leader of the Free French. We remember de Gaulle now as a titanic figure of the 20th century. But as your book relates, he was actually a bit of a pill when it came to relations with the uk. And it was also the case that the Free French faced a real difficulty because the apparently legitimate government of France in Vichy was a complicated additional factor inhibiting the capacity of Britain to do what it wanted to do, and also leading Churchill into perhaps one of the most controversial early acts of his premiership. Do you want to see just a little bit about de Gaulle and a little bit about what happened in French North Africa to their fleet?
- [14:48]
Tim Bouverie
Well, de Gaulle is really an accident. And that's what's so amazing, that this man is catapulted from relative obscurity to becoming the youngest member of the most disastrous government in French history, the very, very short lived second Renault government, which includes Marshal Petain, the man who is going to become the great collaborator of Germany. And the only reason that he then becomes leader of the Free French is he is the most senior member of the French administration that comes to England and says that he wishes to rally the forces of resistance. And the English know absolutely nothing about him. Sir Alexander Cadogan, the permanent head of the Foreign Office, writes a note to his colleague saying, I know nothing of de Gaulle except he's got a head like a pineapple and hips like a woman. This is not very detailed analysis of the man. Churchill claims in his memoirs that at the final meeting of the supreme Allied war cabinets in Tours, that as he was leaving, he took de Gaulle by the hand and said, l' homme de diste. And whether he did or not, I don't know. But he certainly saw a man who was not prepared to give up and a man who shared certain resilience with him and who he was prepared to back. But at that stage, Churchill viewed the de Gaulle Free French operation in much less grandiose terms than de Gaulle himself did. Churchill thought that de Gaulle would be a sort of Scarlet Pimpernel figure who would help get other notable Frenchmen out of France who could then deliver what was really important, which is the existent French empire. France could have continued fighting in 1940. France could probably not have continued fighting within metropolitan France, but the French empire of Morocco, Algeria, Indochina, this, Syria, Lebanon. It is a significant empire, and it has the fourth largest fleet in the world, which becomes a little less large when the British sink quite a lot of it. But de Gaulle is an accident. But he is also an extraordinary figure who creates a myth of France, a myth of resistance, a myth about himself, which, like all myths, isn't all falsehood, through his extraordinary personality. But he is a very, very difficult colleague to work with. And as British military strategists often noted in their diaries, Joan of Arc must have been a damned nuisance to her allies.
- [17:26]
Michael Gove
So we have de Gaulle in London, we have the remainder of the French fleet sunk in order to send a signal to the world that we fight on, or the United Kingdom fights on, but Britain is alone. You tell the story, however, of early in his premiership, Churchill's son Randolph finding Churchill shaving. And Churchill explains how he's going to win the war. Can you explain what it was he said and what it was he did?
- [17:55]
Tim Bouverie
Churchill is shaving at Downing street and he's sort of talking to himself. And Randolph wrote this relatively contemporaneously. So we're pretty sure that this is what he said. He said I think I can see my way through. And Randolph Churchill said, do you mean we can survive or beat the buggers? And Churchill said, of course I mean we can beat them. And Randolph Churchill said, well, I just don't see how you're going to do it. Churchill said, I shall drag in the United States.
- [18:26]
Michael Gove
And it was the case, of course, that it was more than a year from uttering those words before America entered the war. During that period, can you say a little bit about attitudes in America? Why was it that the country that we think of still as our sister nation was so reluctant to come to our aid in a war for democracy?
- [18:54]
Tim Bouverie
America was overwhelmingly isolationist following the First World War. Americans couldn't really understand why they had been in the First World War and certainly didn't respect its ending. Franklin D. Roosevelt's great hero, Woodrow Wilson, the President at the time, got appallingly ahead of US public and congressional opinion and therefore had the Treaty of Versailles, which he had been one of the three major architects of, repudiated by the U.S. congress. And his most idealistic invention of that particular post war period, the League of Nations. America didn't join. So imagine today the United nations without America. It's a much more toothless body because of the lack of American participation. And that had remained American policy thereafter. And there grew up this increasing republican myth that the Americans had been conned into the First World War, that it was all the fault of British propaganda. The British had not repaid their First World War loans to the Americans. There was great resentment against that. America and Britain were the greatest commercial powers in the decades before the Second World War, but they were rivals and there was great resentment against this. And in an extraordinarily ironic reversal of the current time, it was the British who were protectionist, putting tariffs on goods which were coming outside the British Empire. And the Americans who were passionate free traders and deeply resented this policy known as imperial preference, and wanted to break it down. The British were considered supercilious, arrogant, hidebound, class riddled. There was very little sympathy for Britain in all public opinion polls taken before the fall of France. So between the beginning of the Second World War in September 39 to the fall of France, Britain came sixth among the list of nations which Americans most sympathized with. Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, all of these nations came higher and then that reverted to type. That continued in the later stages of the war. It was. The most popular ally of the United States throughout the war was not the British, it was the Chinese. So there are a lot of reasons. Roosevelt was determined that he couldn't get ahead of U.S. congressional opinion and was very, very cautious and had to be pushed very hard by both his Cabinet and interventionists in the United States under various bodies, the Committee to Aid the Allies, et cetera. He was reactive rather than proactive in that if you've shopped online, chances are you've bought from a business powered by Shopify. You know that purple shop pay button you see at checkout? The one that makes buying so incredibly easy? That's Shopify. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it, because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all e commerce in the U.S. sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today@shopify.com promo. Go to shopify.com, so you're about to make a trade based on a friend's text, but which u do you listen to? Is it we could buy a house.
- [22:25]
Michael Gove
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- [22:28]
Tim Bouverie
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- [23:17]
Mia Sorrenti
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- [23:48]
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- [24:22]
Michael Gove
Britain's other ally was to become the Soviet Union and that of course was provoked by Hitler's invasion in 1941. Just how big a leap was it for Churchill to find himself an ally of Communist Russia?
- [24:44]
Tim Bouverie
Well, it would seem like it's a massive leap to begin with. Churchill is the ultimate anti Bolshevik. He has invaded against what he calls the foul baboonery of Bolshevism for 20 years. He is the man who wished to strangle the Russian Revolution at birth and dispatch British troops alongside American and other Allied troops to intervene in the Russian Civil War. But actually in the time itself, it's not so surprising. One of the most interesting things is how pragmatic Churchill can be. And Churchill goes from being the most militant anti Bolshevik to being the leading advocate of an Anglo Soviet alliance in the 1930s to contain Germany. The only way you could contain Germany is to threaten her with a war on two fronts. That was the plan before 1914 and that was the plan, Churchill's plan, certainly in the 1930s. And it's the other Soviet phobes in the Conservative Party, Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, who are not prepared to negotiate with Stalin and his, by Soviet standards, relatively pro Western foreign commissar Maximin Litvinov. So it is not that surprising. And then what is actually more surprising is that there's this huge amount of outrage in the west when Stalin invades neutral Finland in November of 1940, a country which had done absolutely nothing to provoke it. Very much like the current Russian Ukrainian conflicts. And Churchill is the person in the cabinet who says, actually this is a good thing. Russia being on the Baltic is better than Germany on the Baltic. And he tells the Soviet ambassador to London, Ivan Maisky, he says, we don't mind your imperialism in Eastern Europe, we consider that to be a British interest. And Maisky, very cheekily, but showing how parlous Britain's state was, dares to quip to Churchill, we don't mind if you do mind, we didn't ask your permission.
- [26:52]
Michael Gove
And in that sense, as you say, Churchill was arguably in the 1930s more visionary and had a firmer grasp of what might be in Britain's long term or the West's long term strategic interests at that time time. But of course, before 1941, Stalin and Hitler are allies. How did Stalin and the Soviet system take that attack? And in the weeks and months afterwards, how did it change Stalin's view of the world?
- [27:27]
Tim Bouverie
Stalin was completely flummoxed by the German attack. It's not that he'd never thought that the Germans would try and attack the Soviet Union, that he was that naive. Later, in retirement, his right hand man, Vashlev Molotov was asked by a journalist, is it really true that Stalin trusted Hitler and Molotov, I think correctly, he told a lot of lies in later life and not in later life said, of course not. Stalin didn't trust his own people. Stalin trusted nobody. Why would he trust Hitler? But Stalin thought he was this great master manipulator of forces. He thought that firstly, one thing to note is that there's very little difference in Stalin's mind between Nazi Germany and capitalist Britain, capitalist America, capitalist France. They're all capitalists. They're all the enemies of the Soviet Union. And back to our friend Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to this country. He famously quipped that he liked to keep the tally of German and Allied war dead in the same column because it's all to the good, it's all deaths of capitalists. So Stalin thinks that the west has the natural advantage to begin with. The democracies are going to win. Therefore let's lean on one side, he says to his colleagues, and we will support Germany and then we will lean on the other. And hopefully this will be a long drawn out war and capitalism will be greatly weakened. These great imperialist powers will bleed themselves white and then communism will triumph over Europe and the Soviet Union will be able to expand very easily. This is upended by the fall of France. Nobody expects France to collapse in six weeks, certainly not Stalin. And he's furious about it. And it severely colors his relationship with his soon to be French allies. Once he comes in on the anti Axis side and he looks at the German military buildup and he thinks that Hitler is not going to attack without demanding concessions. He's going to demand Bessarabia, this area of Eastern Romania which Stalin had taken as part of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact. He's going to demand Ukraine, he'll demand the Baltic states. It never crosses his mind that it will just invade for invasion's sake, for conquest's sake. And all of the rumors that he receives about the German plans, he believes are British and sometimes American, but mainly British misinformation to cause him to come into the war, to do something provocative and start that war on the eastern front.
- [30:03]
Michael Gove
And of course it's Stalin who's brought into the war by Hitler's actions. America is eventually brought into the war by Imperial Japan's actions, by the attack on Pearl Harbor. But then America decides, even though it's the Pacific coast that's been attacked, that it will concentrate on the Atlantic and on defeating Hitler before defeating Japan. Why was that and to what extent was it Churchill's guile and diplomacy?
- [30:33]
Tim Bouverie
Well, just before I answer that, just on the point of Soviet Union coming in after they've been attacked and America coming in after they've been attacked, I think we can. It's an interesting fact that by the end of the war, Britain was the only country which had entered the war voluntarily. Every other country that had entered the war on the Allied side had been attacked and therefore entered the war involuntarily. On ground strategy. The British and the Americans meet before Pearl harbor and in highly, highly secret staff talks, they have decided that it is going to be Germany first, Japan second, if there is to be a war in both the Pacific and and in Europe. They view Germany as the main enemy and for various reasons, including blatant racism, believe that Japan will collapse the moment her Teutonic allies have crumbled to the dust. To give you an idea of quite how much and how much race has to do with it, the British and the Americans underestimated the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. A very strong rumor throughout the United States was that these were Japanese planes, but German pilots. It was not believed that an Asiatic race could have both hoodwinked and brought such carnage to the American Pacific Fleet. So it's not easy though, because an awful lot of Roosevelt's top men, including Admiral King, the man in charge of the Navy, and to a large extent his chief of staff, General George Marshall, would far rather go into the Pacific and American public opinion would far rather go into the Pacific. And until Hitler declares war on America five days after Pearl harbor, that's the only option because Roosevelt doesn't mention Germany in his day of Infamy speech to Congress. So it is certainly politically fortuitous that Hitler creates another great blunder by declaring.
- [32:35]
Mia Sorrenti
War on the US thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Ginny Hooker and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future live events, head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Square Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [33:21]
Tim Bouverie
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Mia Sorrenti
Nice.
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