WWII Historian: 3 Decisions That Built The West and How We're Destroying It - James Holland

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0:38Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. Trading at Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade, bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills. Access new online courses, insightful webcasts, articles, engaging videos and more all curated just for traders plus guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests no sifting to find exactly what you need so you can spend your time learning to trade brilliantly learn more at schwab.com slash trading what america has and which no other country has ever had to the same extent is it has soft power this is partly through Hollywood, but it also has t-shirts and Nikes and Coca-Cola and chewing gum and McDonald's and everything else.

1:30And it's selling modernity and freedom. And if you work hard and if you graft, you can be like Americans and you can live the American dream. That's what they're selling. And that is what America has always sold. And as it has grown post-war, post-1945, Not everything has gone 100 % according to plan. Why it's so important is American can get rich through the combination of the threat of military dominance, but with the soft power of selling a dream that is irresistible to a vast number of people who are otherwise going to be oppressed. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci, a frequent guest on Open Book, a prolific author, James Holland.

2:15he's back with a new book the visionaries the making of the post-world war ii order in the west and i am delighted to have you back on james and you've become a personal friend of mine and i love your writing and i appreciate you giving me the opportunity to read this in advance and also comment on it you've been a great friend to me um but i want to go back to world war ii well first of all let me just say thank you anthony thank you for that lovely introduction And thank you for reading it and give me your thoughts and your notes and some pointers on stuff. Because, you know, you're an American.

2:50I'm not. I'm writing predominantly about the Americans in this book. And, you know, you don't want to take things for granted as a Brit writing about America. Well, you may be more objective as a result of not being American. But the book is a fascinating book. And what I have said to people, this should be a brief. This should be in the hands of every presidential candidate. This should be in the hands of anybody that's aspiring to think about leadership and the way that we should think about it, which is not even about us, but it's about future generations. What are our decisions going to do to future generations and how will that sit?

3:26I went with Alistair Campbell to Belfast and he took me to the castle and he regaled me with stories about the peace in Northern Ireland. And he said something to me, which I'll share with you, which is directly related to this brilliant book, is that good decision making, good political decision making has saved a generation of people in Northern Ireland from violence. And the decision making that was made here 80 short years ago, 81 short years ago, had really helped create this prosperous moment for the West. It didn't solve everybody's problems because we had the Iron Curtain, the rise of communists, China, et cetera.

4:10But it really did lay down the structure of what became the post-World War II world, the rules-based society, the Western democracies, and led to, frankly, the success that you've had in your life, success, frankly, I've had in my life. But I want to go to World War II because you had me in the back of a half track last June at the Chalk History Festival. I mean, I'm climbing into the back of a half track that I think was used by the British or the American military to carry infantrymen. And we were cruising around a field in southern England. And tell us a little bit about this love affair with the Second World War.

4:53What drew you to this period of time? Well, I guess I must have been in my late 20s around that time. And I'd been interested in World War II when I was a boy. And then I got a teenager and I got into sport and cricket and hanging out with my mates and chasing girls and whatever. And it kind of just disappeared from view, really. And although I studied history at school and then at university, I never did any 20th century history at all. And so World War II just wasn't really on my radar. and then I went to the 1995 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in London which was a massive deal it was like the biggest anniversary since 1945 it was a huge thing and that kind of sparked something and then funny enough I was playing cricket and um near home down in the country and um this amazing machine appeared over the cricket ground and I wasn't batting at the time I looked up and there was this thing sort of balletically pirouetting around the sky and I turned to the umpire and said what's that and he went that's a spitfire in sort of reverential times and that was that Anthony was my Damascene moment and literally the following weekend was um Flying Legends Airshow at Duxford which had been a battle of Britain airfield during the war uh was later at an American base as well at one point there's a brilliant American museum um to the U.S.

6:15Army Air Force as it was in the second world war there now and um that was it and what's maybe the spitfire suckered me in but but what really drew drew drew me to it and i'm sure it's the same for you and for anyone else is the immense human drama of world war ii this is a truly global conflict which is fought in the air on land and sea in the ice in the heat in the desert in the jungle in the mountains along the rivers and the lowlands the highlands everywhere and it's ordinary people doing the fighting doing extraordinary things these are honest you know ordinary people just going about their business and no ever intention of being in the military or wearing a uniform or anything like this suddenly find themselves imagine you're a kind of you know a small-time boy from arkansas and suddenly you're scrabbling up monte el tozzo on the gothic line in the apennines of italy and i don't know in the late summer of 1944 and you're thinking, what the hell am I doing here?

7:16I mean, it's just incredible. So that's what drew me to it. And it's something, it's a bottomless pit. It's endlessly fascinating. And the more you get into it, the more you realize there's just so many lessons for us today. And one of the things that I think is really true about the study of history and why history is so important, and I know that you know this, is that history doesn't repeat itself, because of course it can't, because that was then and this is now. But patterns of human behavior most certainly do. People respond to similar situations that they get confronted with in pretty much the same way.

7:49That's why we still find Shakespeare's plays relevant, you know, because he's talking about human frailties, about love, about hate, about envy, about greed, about kindness, about laughter, about sorrow. We still feel all those same things in the same way that we did hundreds of centuries ago. And that's why these patterns of human behavior are so important. And that's why when we face troubles in the world today, it's always worth having an analog look at history and looking back, whether it be World War II or even deeper than that, to see how people responded to the kind of similar scenarios in which they found themselves today in the past.

8:28Thank you for tuning in to Open Book. And if you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week. We've got a lot more coming and now back to the show you know i uh i grew up in a family had two world war ii veterans you and i have talked about this my uncle anthony was on normandy beach uh and he wrote a beautiful book about normandy normandy 44 and that's why you're called anthony isn't it that's why i'm named after him he survived the war actually he was actually he survived the beach he got up the Hill. He made it for about four days and then he was wounded in a small town on the way to Paris.

9:09He was in an army field hospital for about three weeks. He had the opportunity to get discharged, James, but that was that generation. He said no. He went back into battle. He fought in the Ardennes and then he ended up in July of 1945 at Potsdam with Harry Truman, which is why Harry Truman, for all of us was an extremely fascinating figure when we were growing up as kids. He would talk about Patton and Truman, and he would talk about these American leaders, and he talked about them with reverence. He also talked about the army with some disdain too. He was a very honest guy about the bureaucracy of the army, and lots of his friends in his mind died unnecessarily due to decision-making and things like that.

9:54So we know nothing's perfect. We're not suggesting that. But there was a time in American history where there was a group of people that were generally trying to do the right thing. Roosevelt was planning for the peace prior to his departure. He died in April of 1945. But he was laying down the architecture of peace and he hired this guy. Harry Truman had no college education. From the Midwest. From the Midwest. Okay. There was a guy named Pendergast. It was a little bit of a corrupt political figure in the state of Missouri that he was tied to. He was a failed haberdasher. Very famously, we all know that about him.

10:36He had to wear glasses in the infantry in World War II. Imagine that today, right? He's in the American infantry wearing glasses. but here he is he's thrust into the top job he's in potsdam he's learning about the bomb he didn't know about the bomb before he took the job you know he met roosevelt twice since inauguration only met only met roosevelt twice uh there's a great there's a great scene in uh in uh in the truman book by uh david mccullough where he doesn't want the job he's in chicago he overhears the baritone voice of FDR where he's barking into the phone that this SOB better take the job at which point he says I'll take the job his wife was actually mad at him for doing it but but he's got the job and he's got these great men around him so set the scene for us uh the war is coming to an end Roosevelt puts out a blueprint and tell us about Harry Truman and tell us about the thought process to make these great institutions that you write about Bretton Woods, treaty there, the Marshall Plan, and where America is thinking about its role in the world.

11:49Well, he, I mean, just imagine him on the evening. It's about a little bit after seven o 'clock on the 12th of April, 1945. He gets the news, get to the White House ASAP. He gets in there, goes in the back door, comes in and says, you know, what's going on? And they say, you know, the president is dead. You're now the president. And he leans over to, he goes towards Eleanor Roosevelt, the president's widow, and says to her, you know, what can I do to help? And she says, no, how can I help you? You're the one in trouble now. And this is the most reluctant president probably we've ever had, or you've ever had, I should say.

12:25And he does what he does out of a profound sense of Christian and moral duty. He's not doing this for the plaudits. He's doing it because he has been asked to do it. This is a task. This is a moment of national crisis. He's been asked to step up. He does. And he makes this incredible speech the following Monday to Congress. And everyone's thinking, who is this guy? You know, he's a complete no-hoper. He's completely unsuited to this. He's a kind of backwards guy from the Midwest. You know, what does he know? He hasn't got a college education, all the rest of it. He stands up and delivers this tour de force, which is full of moral courage, moral strength, profound Christian values.

13:08And he says, I'm going to continue the work. I need your help. But America has this global role now. We have to step up. I'm going to step up. I'm going to do everything I possibly can with your help to kind of, you know, steer the ship in the right direction. He says all the right things. And it's a real marker. and then he has this incredible learning curve between then April middle of April and the end of the war on which is announced on the 8th of May his 61st birthday incidentally and one of the things that always struck me about Truman is when you see the film footage of that that press conference where he's announcing VE day it's really muted and he's going you know the job's not done yet boy it isn't because you know this is the middle of the Okinawa campaign one of the most brutal bloody battles in the Pacific War going on at that time.

13:56And he also knows by this point that there's an atomic bomb in the offing, which may or may not work, but he had no idea of this, as he pointed out before he became president. And he's also realizing that the Soviet Union and Stalin are not coming over onto the Allied side. They might be for the duration of the war, but But problems are clearly appearing. And the USSR is going to be the next enemy. How do you navigate through these waters? Then there's going to be the kind of the post-Europe peace conference of Potsdam in July. And just as that's happening is the test of the atomic bomb. And it works, which suddenly means he's got this other weight on his shoulders, which is if they're going to drop it, it's going to be his call.

14:42I mean, just imagine, you know, a few weeks, a few months ago, you'd just been this kind of, you know, minding your P's and Q's as a kind of domestic vice president. And suddenly you've got all this incredible responsibility on his shoulders. And boy, is there ever a man who steps up and deals with it and takes it on the chin. But the power doesn't corrupt him. He's not trying to get rich on this. He is just trying to do the very best job he can. Now, that's not to say he doesn't make some mistakes. He does. But as a kind of example of how seriously to take this job, this greatest job of all, as president of the leading nation in the free world, he is an astonishing example and deserves far greater recognition i think um as a man as a politician and for his achievements which are still to come for the most part um at that point in july 1945 i think he i think he's an absolutely amazing guy i i mean i am i my admiration for fdr is limitless but but my admiration for truman is of a different caliber because he does what he does you know roosevelt is patrician he's east coast he's privileged he's kind of sort of born to it in a certain way truman's um achievements have to be judged against the limitations of his background his upbringing and who he is and he and he steps up and i think it's just remarkable i think i think the uh the thing that's the most fascinating about him is the reputation that he has prior to the job as president and then tell us about the reputation he's garnering six months into the presidency as he's making these decisions and of course he's making a decision about the deployment of the atomic bomb he's making a decision about the ideas around the marshall plan and how they're going to implement the breton woods treaty so take us through some of that decision making and take us through the revolution or the evolution of his reputation as this is going on well he he navigates the end of the war first in europe in may 1945 and then in um against japan in august brilliantly i think you know he threatens the atomic bomb he gives plenty of he doesn't actually spell out what it is but he says to the japanese you know this we have got this this absolutely terrible weapon it's coming your way if you don't play ball um they don't the decision to do it you know everyone knows at the moment you drop an atomic bomb a rubicon has been crossed the world will never be the same again because you're going from a traditional uh um martial uh um era to the atomic era and the nuclear era and you know everything has changed as a result of that and he knows he's going to be responsible for that and he also knows that he is going to be responsible directly for the deaths of untold thousands of japanese civilians as well as military types and that is a burden he has to has to hold and someone says you know later on says to him mr president you know how did you how did you justify that and he said i knew when i had a weapon that could end the war i couldn't look into the eyes of a widow or the mother of a killed american serviceman in japan knowing that i had the means of saving his life and i didn't use it so it is the perfect answer to which there is no further response i mean you you can argue whether it's the right one but it but it's a reason and it's a valid reason and and he has the moral courage to go through with it and do it and it works and it brings about the end of the war so that's a massive tick then you've got the whole potential problems of of the fact that american industry is geared up as as a massive war machine is the arsenal of democracy etc um and everyone's been planning with their orders for war going on into 1946 and suddenly it isn't so you know because the invasion of japan is being planned for november of 1945 before the atomic bomb gets dropped so suddenly you've got the threat of loss of orders and potential recession, but it doesn't happen.

18:46The transition back to consumer manufacture is pretty smooth. But there is then the fallout. And there is the kind of fallout in 1946 as everyone's coming back. There is the reduction of the size of the armed forces. There is loss of servicemen coming back. There is a certain amount of unemployment again. There is all that transition from wartime to peacetime. He loses the midterms. you know, in 1946. And he looks like a lame duck. And everyone's thinking, oh, well, Truman's finished. Not a bit of it. This liberates him. It liberates him because then he just says, right, OK, I'm a one-term president.

19:25This is my chance. I'm just going to do things because they're the right things to do. And by the spring of 1947, Britain is completely broke. It's been in the war since the 3rd of September 1939. It spent all its cash, most of it in America, it has to be said um and and it can't bail out these nations which are hovering between turning behind communism and staying behind the iron curtain or or those who want to see democracy and freedom and america is starting to see itself as the beacon of that new progressive democracy which has been outlined by Roosevelt and which Truman completely adheres to, completely buys into, and wants to see that continuation of America's role, expansion of America's role.

20:16Oh, and by the way, let America get wealthy and rich on the back of it, but there's nothing wrong with that. That's absolutely fine. But be this kind of beacon of the champion of sound economics, progressive democracy, uh freedom of speech freedom from fear freedom from one freedom of religion the land of free the land of hope the american dream and spreading that message around the free world and greece is going to collapse in in the spring of 1947 and it looks like it's all going to be over and the communists are going to rule and and it's going to fall in behind the iron curtain same too with Turkey.

21:01And Britain appeals to Americans, says we can't bail them out. We literally, the coffers are there. We don't have anything left. The only people that can help is Americans. And Truman thinks that is what we need to do. It's going to cost us now, but the benefits are going to be great because that means you're going to have progressive democracy elsewhere in Greece and Turkey and so on. And that means that they're going to be successful because a free democratic, economic sound country is going to be more prosperous than one that is run by an autocracy of communism behind the iron curtain where people are not free where they're oppressed they are going to be an economic decline we are going to be an economic uptick you know rise and so therefore in the long term we'll be able to trade with them and partner with them and so in the long term whatever we spend on these these countries that need our desperately need our help they are going to, that is going to come back and we're going to get richer as a result.

21:56But that requires a lot of vision and a lot of salesmanship to sell and get that across the line with, not only with Congress, but with the American people, who after all are answerable to the American people. And he makes this astoundingly good speech at the beginning of March, 1947, where he stands up, don't forget, he's a lame duck president in name. And he stands up and does the speech and says, there are two types of world. There is the world where the majority are governed by the minority in oppression without freedoms. And then there is the other view, which is where the majority get to choose the minority that govern them and are completely free.

22:36And that is the world we need to champion. And we need to step up here and be the world's banker, but savior and have this bigger role and everyone cheers and gets a standing ovation all the rest of it and it goes through congress and it happens and out of that this is the truman doctrine and out of this comes the marshall plan because suddenly they're thinking well hang on a minute you know west germany is on its knees east germany is now falling behind the iron curtain we can showcase the benefits of being free and liberal and and a manufacturing country an industrial country where people have the choices to make their own decisions etc etc we'll bail out japan we'll bail out italy our former enemies.

23:14We'll bail out West Germany, our former enemy. We will be the first country ever where the victor is financially bailing out and helping the vanquished. This has never happened before. And this is completely progressive and amazing and innovative. We completely take it for granted now. He's got a brilliant new Secretary of State who has been the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces in the US in World War II. This is General George C. Marshall, who is kind of politically neutral. Everyone likes him. So he says, right, you can have the, it can be called the Marshall Plan because you're the Secretary of State and everyone will buy this.

23:51They won't want the Truman Plan. And someone says to him, but Mr. President, you know, it's your, it's your idea, it's your name. You should, it should be, it should be the Truman Plan. And he goes, I'm not doing this for credit. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. Now, whether you're a Trump fan or not, or whether you think he's the spawn of Satan. You can't ever imagine President Donald J. Trump saying that, can you? No. I mean, this is the, I guess, the central point of your book, which I love, which is why I want to get it in the hands of everybody. A nation that is prosperous and powerful and arguably has the best military industrial complex in the world.

24:33And again, And I'm talking about America in 1945, but also America today, James. And I want you to think about it for a second. What is the best diplomatic approach? What makes the most sense? And you can take it right back to middle school. Is it the benevolent superpower that's trying to help others? Or does a caustic bully do better than a benevolent superpower? The benevolent superpower is going to win every single time. And history has told you that. But I want you to give us a few more sentences as to why. Okay, why is this such a brilliant strategy? Because America, when you have a superpower like this, you can go to Rome, Spain, even times in British imperialism.

25:20It's very hard for the superpower to have allies. But this strategy allows America to have an endless number of allies. So explain to us the counterintuition of why this works. it works because what you're doing is you're you're you're selling a dream you're selling a golden land you're selling you're saying america's got the military threat we we've got atomic bombs we've got we've got we've got a huge air force we've got a huge army we've got absolutely everything we we can hammer you and boy by the way we just have okay and and by the away, Soviet Union, you know, an inconvenient truth for you in your kind of great patriotic war myth, but you only did that sort of that encirclement at Stalingrad, your greatest victory, which turned the tide of the war, thanks to 70 ,000 American trucks that we shipped over you for nothing.

26:12So we can do military. But as everyone knows, military browbeats people, it kowtows people, but it doesn't sell a dream. It sells quite the opposite. and what America has and which no other country has ever had to the same extent is it has soft power and this is partly through Hollywood because it was the the birthplace of the movies which are an international export and can be seen globally but it also has t-shirts and Nikes and Coca-Cola and chewing gum and McDonald's and everything else and it has all the a lot of most of those things not mcdonald's and nikes at that time but it has a lot of these features in world war ii and in the 1930s and it's selling modernity and freedom and if you work hard and if you graft you can come over you can be like americans and you can live the american dream and you can have a big cadillac and you can go to the movie house three times a week and you can you can drink soda and you can eat popcorn and have a have a picket face out the front of the and a porch with a with a swing seat on and you can have beautiful little Muppets that go to school and get educated and are happy and free and don't have to worry about a dime, you know, and that's what they're selling.

27:28And that is what America has always sold. And as it has grown post-war, post-1945, it, okay, so, you know, not everything has gone, gone, gone a hundred percent according to plan, but I, I mean, talk to the South Koreans and the North Koreans and see who's having the better life. So, you know, I would say that the intervention in Korea was pretty successful and pretty good. And Vietnam, I mean, you know, no one quite knew how communism was going to kind of shape up at this point. But, you know, communism is for the oppressed. It's not for the free. And why it's so important is American can get rich through the combination of the threat of military dominance, but with the soft power of selling a dream that is irresistible to a vast number of people who are otherwise going to be oppressed.

28:16If you just go around hammering people with bombs and wrecking their lives and wrecking the infrastructure around them, what do you think those people are going to be, those people in Iran, for example, who are against the regime, who, okay, so just take you, you're an Iranian in December, you've been out on the streets, You're out in the streets in January. You want to end the the rule of of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. You want to kind of stop oppression. You want to have freedom. And the Americans are kind of encouraging. And you're thinking, great, this is good.

28:55The Americans are coming with their huge military. They're going to knock these guys out. It's going to be great. The threat of it. They are the strongest nation in the world. And once we've overcome this terrible regime, we can be free like them and we can wander the streets and do whatever we want and eat McDonald's and so on and so forth and wear T-shirts and Nikes. Then America comes in and doesn't do that, doesn't follow up, doesn't send any support whatsoever, changes its mind every two minutes. Then suddenly comes in and is blitzing the place to hell, changing its mind every two seconds.

29:26All around it, you just see destruction. that person who was completely pro the u.s do you think in 20 years time when he's grown up and he realizes that his parents were killed by an american bomb do you think he's going to be well disposed to the u.s i mean no so yeah but he's also got the history of the u.s formalizing coup in 1973 and it goes back to 1953 and and and their involvement with the british trying to kind of you know denationalize bp and all the you know iranian iranian oil and all the rest of it. So what is just so completely horrendous about the current administration and their lack of planning is Venezuela is not Iran.

30:07Iran is not Venezuela. And it is imbecilic to kind of think that what works in one place works in another. And I would also argue that that approach is kind of incredibly 19th century anyway. I mean, you know, when Roosevelt comes in in 1933 in his inauguration speech, he says, you know, we're not going to go around bullying our neighbors anymore. We're not going to go around and sort of telling people who can be head of state in Mexico or Panama or wherever or Nicaragua or South America. We're actually just going to help these guys and we're going to bail them out financially. They're going to get more prosperous.

30:42Then they're going to want to do more trade with us, which is going to make us richer. It's going to make them more stable. And the whole of the Americas, North and South and Central, is going to be more peaceful what's not to like with that policy and and since since the current administration has come in we've bullied we've cajoled we've threatened we're going to take over cuba we're going to launch a coup in venezuela you know that might have been successful on one level but it's but it's it's bullying it's against international law and america has been the the great bullock of international law and order and selling a dream, selling a vision of progression and democracy and freedom.

31:23The moment you start kind of bullying people around and hammering them, that goes out the window and you cancel your aid budget in Africa and all the rest of it. It's a tragedy. And the whole point of the book is really to show that when you have, what happens in democracies is that when you have economic mayhem and economic instability you then have political instability too because the ordinary working people in the middle classes who are who are the first people to lose out when there's a major economic crisis whether it's a calamitous crash like like the wall street crash of 1929 or whether it's the kind of the debt that's built up as a result of the Iraq and Afghan wars, followed by the 2008 crash, or the kind of loss of contracts to the Chinese because of the WTO in 1999, whatever it is.

32:16But when you have that, they're the people that lose the most always. I mean, the rich are fine, because if you've got 5 billion and you lose a billion, you've still got 4 billion and you're doing okay. So it's those that lose out. And then they kind of think, well, the current system isn't working. So this is when a wrecking ball comes in the problem is is wrecking balls always always always make you even poorer i mean always um because autocrats and people who want to do things different that might sound attractive because the current situation isn't working but if the wrecking ball approach had worked the ordinary conservative types have already have tried it um so it just doesn't doesn't work so it's going to make them poorer and and you know you have to learn history and realize that there is a way of of of responding to financial crises which is keynesian if you if you go down that route but but there are means of of riding that storm which after all is one of the reasons for the breton woods conference in 1944 at the height of the Normandy campaign at the height of Operation Begratian, the Soviet Red Army campaign in the summer, at the time of major battles going on in the Pacific.

33:33There was an economic conference to plan what legislation can be put in place internationally in the democratic world that will ensure that you don't have these huge swings and peaks and troughs that you had as a result of the Wall Street crash and the Smoot-Hawley tariff that followed in May 1930 to try and prevent that. And out of that comes, of course, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which is there to stabilize failing economies and all the rest. It's an inherently really, really good idea. And they're still in place to this day. So these people are, you know, people like Roosevelt and the people around him and having an excellent team of amazingly competent, capable people around them and also truman and he does exactly the same ensures that you can start to really plan ahead and think ahead and come up with sound sensible ideas but but framed within an ideology that is inherently attractive and that's where the kind of you know the rooseveltian four freedoms for example come in i mean what's not to like about the four freedoms i mean it's a great it's a great mantra isn't it so it's having the it's having the hard-nosed pragmatism with the vision about how you're going to implement that with an attractive kind of proposition which makes people feel warm and gooey inside and and gives them hope where's the hope at the moment well that's the reason why i want to get this book out there and get it to as many people as possible so you are familiar with our format so we have five words we've picked from your book or phrases and i'm going to say the word and then i want you to give me your reaction to be a sentence or two okay you ready yep so if i say the marshall plan you say what truman world war one shared opportunities okay world war ii