Historian James Holland: What World War II Teaches Us About Today

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1:23Today, I'm sitting down with historian James Holland, one of the best storytellers of World War II. His new book, Victory 45, co-authored with Al Murray, shows the Second World War didn't just end with one neat headline. It unraveled through eight messy surrenders. We get into Eisenhower, Truman, Stalin, Carl Wolf. Who the hell is Carl Wolf? Well, you're going to find out. Plus the ordinary soldiers who carried the weight of history, showing why victory never comes as clean as we'd like to remember it. Okay, so looking back on the eight messy surrenders is such an important part of history. I think James brings this to life with Al Murray.

2:02Of course, I could have talked to James all day about this stuff because I'm so fascinated by World War II, and I'm also fascinated by James' writing, Al Murray as well. But one gift that James has is not just understanding the historical facts and rendering them quite objectively. He's very good at understanding the psychology of the decision-making and what's going on in terms of the general population in the theaters of the wars in World War II. So whether it's in France when he's writing about Normandy or casino, what's going on in Italy. So look out for part two of my conversation with James Holland as we go into other aspects of his books and his writing style.

2:40And I think you'll find him as fascinating as I do. Of course, I could talk to Jim Holland all day long. So go out and buy his books and please listen in. Joining me now, my favorite historian. How about that, James Holland? My favorite historian, because I'm a big World War II buff and I've read just about everything. I have a whole column of James Holland books, but the one we're going to talk about today, bestselling author and historian, the one we're going to talk about today is Victory 45. It's the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the end of the war in eight surrenders. What a great book. You know what, James, I will say this about you.

3:21you know i'm a history buff so i think i know everything i'm a little bit smug about it but every time i read one of your books i learned something that i didn't know so i want to applaud you for that and uh well thank you and by the way we're both part of the goal hanger family see that so we can't get yes we're stuck with me james there's an unconditionality as you know so you you have no choice to be with me but uh it's like it's like joining in a kind of a you know an Italian family. Yeah, exactly. You've got to take all the - You're all sat around the kind of proverbial table. Yes, you've got to take all the dysfunction.

3:52Drinking wine, eating kind of beautiful food. Yep, you've got to take all the bombast and all the dysfunction, but you have to stay in love. Okay, so let's - Do you think Tony is the mother? Yeah, he could have. He's a maternal. He has some maternal instinct. I think Caddy would be in disagreement with me on that, but that's what makes our podcast a good podcast. But I want to talk about love for a second because where does this love - of history. And for those of you that are listening, James is sitting there in front of this amazing bookshelf that I want to take a picture of. And I recognize a lot of those books that are actually on my bookshelf, but where does this love of history come from?

4:31Well, I think it was as a, as a child, um, you know, my big bro is, um, is Tom, who's also part of the Goldhanger staple and co-hosts Rest His History with Dominic, of course. and you know he was he's two and a half years older than me and he kind of you know he kind of sort of bossed the kind of the the kind of fraternal thing a bit when we were kids and we we had loads of you know little ladybird books on kind of nelson or we had a great one on the bighorn the battle of the little bighorn i kind of sort of picture of of custer and his butt skins on the front you know kind of shooting his pistol surrounded by uh surrounded by by native americans and about to go down.

5:09So it was all kind of sort of part of growing up, really. And when we went on vacation, we didn't go to exotic ski holidays or anything like that. We went to Hadrian's Wall or we did the castles of the Welsh Marches or something like that. So it was just kind of in the blood of it. And then I studied a lot of history of school, high school, and then I went to university and I studied just like a single bachelor's degree in history as well. So, you know, it's kind of there. Right from where we go. I mean, to me, you are a inspiration and a role model because I tell my kids, you got to do something you love.

5:47Because if you do something you love, you're never working. Okay. And I find your love of history and your insatiable curiosity infectious. And I love hanging out with you for that reason. And I've learned a lot. Well, thank you. I've learned a lot about World War II from this book because you took a different angle than most historians. Of course, you wrote it with your podcast co-host, Al Murray, who you and I have had the great opportunity to be on your podcast, which I'm grateful for. But you take us - Well, you were fantastic on that. It was thanks for coming on. Well, listen, it's a great joy from me.

6:20Well, we're mutual fans of Truman and Co., aren't we? And Roosevelt. Yeah. And I want to talk about - That era. I mean - I want to talk about this because these were exceptional people. they were less focused on their own aggrandizement and more focused on what the hell was going to go on for the world and I also think that as I just say this to you they got a lot right they got a lot right and they did a lot of things that made our world the one you and I were born into in the 1950s and 60s they made our world a better world but you talk about eight surrenders, which is interesting because we learn about it as a one single VE day, but tell us why you chose eight surrenders.

7:09What was the thought there? Well, actually, the whole thing was quite funny because years ago, like literally 20 years ago, I did a little TV program. It was my first little bit of ever I'd done of telly. And I did a little documentary about the end of the war in Europe. And what we realized when we were kind of researching that was that actually the one day where there weren't any surrenders was victory in Europe day, which is the 8th of May, 1945. You know, the surrender actually happened kind of in the early hours of the 7th of May. And then it was kind of signed off by the, with the Russians, the Soviet Union in the early hours of the 9th of May, but actually nothing happened on the, on the 8th.

7:47And I always thought that was kind of curious. And then you sort of think, well, okay. So if the, if the allies laid down in January, 1943, the Casablanca conference, If FDR, President Roosevelt, comes up and suddenly announces to the world's press that the only unconditional surrender is going to do, then when is the first unconditional surrender? And the first unconditional surrender is in Italy. Well, actually, strictly speaking, it's Italy, but they don't really realize they've signed up to unconditional surrender because there's kind of short terms and long terms. And that's back in September 1943.

8:16But, you know, to end the actual war, the first unconditional surrender is in Italy on the 2nd of May. It comes into being on the 2nd of May. And then you've got the huge number of German troops surrendering to Field Marshal Montgomery, British commander in northern Germany, on the afternoon of the 4th of May, coming into being on the 5th of May. By the way, also, you've got the surrender of Berlin to the Red Army on the 2nd of May. Then you've got the surrender of German forces in Bavaria and Austria to 6th Army Group. Everyone forgets them on the 5th of May. So suddenly it's quite a lot. And then you've got two for Japan because you've got actually the kind of, okay, we're going to throw in the towel on the 15th of August.

9:02But then you've got the actual surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on the 2nd of September. So we originally thought, well, we'll do six. And then we totted it up and realized we miscounted because we're rubbish at math. and then realized it was eight. So that's why it's the surrender in eight surrenders. I know we've had the chance to be on the USS Missouri, but when I went to Hawaii, I took my wife to Hawaii. I said, I'm sorry, we got to stop at the Pearl Harbor Memorial. And I had to go to the USS Missouri. And of course, I stood on the deck where the signing was. And they've got the, have you been to this?

9:38Have you seen this? I haven't. It's absolutely on my massive to-do list, which is to go to. But I do insist that you make it to Hawaii, stop in Honolulu and go visit this war memorial. But what would always impress me about it is the ship, we see it as this massive magisterial thing, but it's actually quite small. And when you think about what happened on the ship and the significance of the ship, and of course, whatever the Picadillos were of General MacArthur and the vanity of him and some of the foibles of him, the Japanese government still has lots of elements of the constitution that he put in place in the 1940s and 1945 and six and seven.

10:29And he had a lot of respect for that culture, which has led to great long-term legacy of success for the country in the post-World War II era. So it's just phenomenal vectors that come off all of these surrenders. I want to go to Carl Wolf, who's the SS general, who is obviously famous in your book for art theft. He's famous for money laundering. He's got - He's also smooth as glass. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this guy is a really smooth operator. Yeah, I mean - He's charming. In this part of your book, he's kind of like the ladies. A hundred percent. I mean - And this reads like a fiction thriller. So tell us about Carl Wolf and tell us about him at the end of the Second World War.

11:13Well, I mean, he's an absolute SOB. I just want to kind of put that down there now. He's an evil Nazi bastard and he should have had it coming. But he also happens to be a kind of, credit where credit is due, he's an incredible manipulator, he's an incredible political operator. and he is number two, joint number two, because this is the way the Nazis do things. They never have kind of single standouts because the only standout can be Hitler. So everyone else is on some kind of sort of warped parallel command structure. And this is how it works all the way down. So you have Himmler, who is head of the SS, but under him are two equal standing subordinate SS guys, Karl Wolf and Ernst Carlton Brunner.

11:57And they hate each other's guts, as is the way with this kind of setup because everyone's constantly pitched against each other and they're rivals for attention and positioning and all the rest of it. So of course they hate each other, but they're also very different. You know, Carl Wolf is German and a kind of sort of jack about town. Carlton Brunner is a Viennese lawyer and kind of, you know, slightly humorless and he's kind of six foot six or six foot five or something and got dueling scars and all the rest of it. But Karl Wolf has slight mildly disgraced himself by being morally corrupt. And he's morally corrupt in the Nazi state by divorcing his wife.

12:36I mean, can you imagine the Nazi regime anything quite as awful as divorce? I mean, really? So anyway, so he's been banished from Hitler's headquarters to run the show in Italy. And although Mussolini has been sprung for, he was deposed in July 1943, then imprisoned by the Italians. He's then sprung in September 1943 and put in charge of a puppet government in the north, the RSI, the Socialist Republic of Italy. It is Wolfe running the show. Kesselring, the Field Marshal Kesselring is running the show on the ground in terms of the military stuff. Wolfe is doing everything else. and he realizes pretty quickly that uh you know well into 1944 um that they're not gonna win and so suddenly all that kind of nazi ideology bullshit that they've been really into he's suddenly chucking that out with a dishwater and thinking how am i going to save my neck so he starts being very very um slack on partisans um he starts letting people strike in milan and all the rest of it, not being too harsh, and showing what a lovely, decent, fair-minded guy he is, who kind of, you know, at his heart, he just loves being decent.

13:50And all he wants to do is save lives and end the war. What he really wants to do, of course, is save his neck. So he pursues peace feelers with Alan Dulles, who I'm sure any upstanding American will have heard of. But he at the time was the OSS man in Bern in Switzerland. He became the CIA director, was head of the Warren Commission. Yep. Right. Right. All of that. Yeah. So he's in the middle of his career, but he hasn't reached the dizzy heights he's going to reach, but he's still the main man. He's the same main US guy in Switzerland. And Wolf actually does, again, credit where credit is due, put his neck on the line.

14:29He does some pretty brave stuff and stuff that's very, very high risk, very high risk. But he also puts up various kind of sort of insurance policies, such as stealing all Italy's art treasures and keeping them for safekeeping. I mean, you understand, you know, what he's going to do is he's going to keep them from Hitler, but he's also going to keep them as a bargaining chip as well, and doing various other measures to ensure that he gives himself the best possible chance of getting out of this horrible mess that the Nazis have got themselves into at the end of story. And you're right about Hollywood.

15:06I always kind of thought, I always could imagine sort of Quentin Tarantino making a film about this. Well, I mean, look at the ugliness of it. Listen, I want to test this on you. I feel like there are, we often talk about the single man theory of history, but I think that there's like a great man and a really bad man theories. Hear me out for a second. The revolution, the American revolution, lots of enlightened You have philosophers frame the constitution. It's a set of very good men trying to come up with an idyllic protocol to prevent tyranny. The flip side is Nazi Germany. You have these homicidal maniacs that get together, actually take over a sovereign nation, and they work together to corrupt each other.

15:53I always tell my kids, hey, you're the weighted average of the five people you hang out with. Think of who Hitler was hanging out with, okay? evil personified, but he's hanging out with guys like this. And he's hanging out with Goering and Himmler and all these different characters that we see on the stage, Goebbels, et cetera. So I guess the point I'm making though is, do they implode or do we good people get together and force the implosion? Meaning I sometimes feel - Good people get together and force the implosion. That's what it is ultimately, right? Because look at what's going on in Russia.

16:32Look at what's going on in other authoritarian states.

16:38I'll be interested to see your take on this. This is my theory. So I slightly believe in big man theory because I think without Hitler, I don't think there would have been the Nazi regime. I don't think that was inevitable. There might've been a communist regime in Germany. Could have been any number of different scenarios. It could have become a dictatorship effectively they could have canceled democracy but but but hitler is absolutely the motivating icon around the nazi movement and i i can't see it happening without him but with him suddenly all these other weasels come out of the out of the um out of the out of the shadows uh um in terms of the allies ability i okay this is my theory i think a a democratic coalition, when it pulls together, when it pulls its resources together for a single common goal, is unbeatable by any autocrat.

17:31Because they're always going to be better. And the reason they're always going to be better is because they're better at harnessing stuff and they've got more checks and balances on that ultimate power and that direction in which way something's happening. Because someone like Churchill or Roosevelt, they're their own men. They knew what they were thinking. They had their own mind, but they were surrounded by people who gave them advice, who could say, oh, I'm not sure about that, or that's a really bad idea, or definitely not, or I think you might want to consider this. And they'd listen. Ultimately, they're making decisions, but they're still listening.

17:59An autocrat doesn't listen. An autocrat is surrounded by paranoia and suspicion at every single turn. So he's hearing what he wants to hear rather than the reality. And that doesn't make you make good decisions. Now, you can be strong enough to kowtow your enemies. But when you pull together, you're going to be stronger. And this is CF, the situation right now. If Europe pulls itself together, there's 780 million people in Europe. We've got some of the greatest minds. We've got huge amounts of money. We've got all the resources. We've got access to the world's oceans. We've got everything you possibly, possibly want at our fingertips.

18:36All we need is a bit of charisma, a bit of leadership, a bit of pulling together, a bit of glue, a bit of shared vision and to snap the kind of people of Europe out of their complacency, that everything's going to be fine because it's not if we don't do something about it, but it will be. Why does it take us so long though? Why does it take us so long? Because it always does, because we're complacent. There's that great line from Maynard Keynes, who's writing about the economic consequences of the Versailles Treaty. He's writing this book in 1990s. He's just despairing at the kind of peace treaty that's being pulled together following the catastrophic First World War.

19:15And he goes back and he goes, just consider, you know, you're a reasonably well-to-do guy living in London. You can telephone your mates. You can eat pretty much anything you want from all around the world. You can travel in a way that's more simple and quicker than it's ever been ever before in mankind. You know, the world just seems full of possibilities. You cannot imagine for a minute that this progress is this steady progress is ever going to end. And then suddenly it's August 1914 and the catastrophe heads the world and all the rest of it. You have the First World War and Millen's dead and the catastrophe of the early part of the 1920s and wheelbarrows of money and all the rest of it.

19:52And that's the point. We have reached that point now where we're just being a bit complacent. We're taking things for granted. We're feeling entitled. We're in the West. We can do what we like you know we all we're worried about is sort of what's going on on on reality tv shows and you know what the next blockbuster set is going to be on netflix and stuff and you know who's trending on tiktok rather than kind of looking that bigger world around us which is actually starting to corrupt in a very very bad way you know wake up everybody you know that's the bottom line i i think i think it's so well said you know and it always it stumps me you know i remember uh you We had Nazi sympathizers in the United States, Nazi sympathizers in the UK, and yet people get around her.

20:37I mean, we both remember Ambassador Joe Kennedy. What a scatty-whack he was. I mean, we remember, I mean, he was literally, I mean, it's surprising to me, given what Joe Kennedy did, that it didn't cost his son Jack Kennedy that election. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, amazing. It's surprising. Well, and he's cut from a different set of cloth, isn't it? Because I've just been re-looking at his inauguration speech in 1960. And what does he say? He says, don't think what America can do for me. Think what you can do for America. And citizens of the world, don't think what America can do for you. Think what you can do for the world.

21:21There you go. That's the mantra that everyone needs to get a grip of right now. Amen. We need to move out of our selfish isolationist bubble looking just in front of our nose and see the bigger picture. The irony is that Churchill despised his father, but Jack Kennedy loved Winston Churchill. He took a lot of those ideas from Churchill's speeches, right? I mean, about the world. Remember in Churchill's theories about the United States of Europe and unifying Europe and so forth. I want to go to something in the book that really struck me. I mean, he has so many striking stories, but I'm going to talk about Alan Moskin.

21:57He's a private, of course, from New Jersey. I'm going to mispronounce this because I'm an Italian from Long Island, so forgive me. But he stumbles into Gerskirchen Camp, I guess it's called. How do you say it? Gerskirchen. Yeah. Gerskirchen. What is this camp? Tell us about this. And how important was it for you to pick some ordinary soldiers in this story? because I thought that was a brilliant part of this story because my uncles, sir, were ordinary soldiers and they saw atrocities that they never liked to talk about. But tell us about this private, this young man. Yeah, well, the whole thing came about because Al and I were discussing how you can't do a book about the end of the war and not confront the Holocaust and the camps and all the rest of the liberation of the camps.

22:42And like all these things in the Second World War, there's the kind of key names, aren't there? the kind of star names, you know, Dachau, Belsen, Auschwitz, obviously, and so on, Ravensbrück. You know, these are the names that people, you know, most people who know anything about the Second World War, know anything about the Holocaust, have heard of those names. No one's heard of Gunsgöten, no one. And the point is this, that what we wanted to show was, rather than trying to kind of cover the whole thing, we wanted to illustrate the liberation of the camps through the eyes of one victim and one liberator.

23:21And we wanted them to have a connection. So we didn't want the liberator to be at a different camp. We wanted them to be at the same camp. We wanted it to be one of the forgotten camps. So all these main camps had, like, Mannhausen or whatever, had satellite camps. And Gunskirchen was a satellite camp. And all of them were horrific, particularly by April, May 1945, because Germany's run out of food, run out of supplies, and the last people to get looked after are your slave labor, of course. So we also, then I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to have, also have an American who was not from a superstar division?

24:03The big ones are the 3rd Infantry Division, which had more days of combat than any other, had Aldi Murphy in it, the most decorated US servicemen of World War II, or the big red one, the 1st Infantry Division that landed on Omaha Beach, whatever it might be. All the second armored division, hell on wheels. We don't want the celebrity divisions. I wanted a forgotten division no one's ever heard of. So we chose the 71st because they only arrived in Europe in February 1945, for goodness sake. And my guy, Alan Moskin, only comes into action in March, but that doesn't belittle his experiences. Those three months of combat that he sees are absolutely awful.

24:38That's enough to keep you going for a lifetime times 10, frankly, what he saw. So we wanted a division that wasn't well known. And I also wanted a Jewish American soldier. So suddenly there's this guy from New Jersey, who's a Jew who's an unknown bloke. He's just one of the hundreds of thousands, one of the millions in uniform, who just ends up being in this place at this particular moment. And he comes in contact with a Hungarian Jew called Hugo Grin, who by a miracle has managed to survive Auschwitz and the Hungarian roundups and unspeakable privations and hardships and cruelty, and makes it through.

25:25And so there was a kind of beautiful bit of synergy there. So basically, I thought about an unknown camp. Then I found Hugo Grin. Then I thought, okay, well, I want to find someone from the 71st. So I started researching the 71st Infantry Division because they liberated it. And then I just found Bingo. I found Alan Moskin. And the fact that he was Jewish was just perfect. And sometimes when you're researching, these little bits of jigsaw just slot together just absolutely beautifully. It was like they were all kind of sort of made for one another. And you know as a storyteller that you've hit gold.