Joe Biden, VE Day and the politics of nostalgia

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the Apartment Bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:43BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Nick, I think today's podcast is going to be slightly different in tone, in a good way, because I've been thinking a bit about something that happened on Monday, bank holiday Monday, when I was stationed outside Buckingham Palace, and I went to see some of the crowds in the mall. We were presenting the Today programme from there. There's always that slightly scary moment at the 10 past 8. You don't know what they're going to say. They could say something absolutely off. But I met a man called Boyd, and he said something that was so interesting on the week that would mark the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

1:20This is Boyd. The sacrifices everybody made 80-plus years ago. That's why we wanted to come today, because I don't think we're ever going to see anything like this again. Why do you say we're never going to see anything like it's just because of the age of the veterans? Yeah, the age of the veterans and obviously, you know, the Queens passing, etc. They've always used to do it every year. I don't think it's going to be as big as this. I think there's some real wisdom in what Boyd was saying there. And what he's getting at is this idea that the past is fading, that the wartime generation is disappearing, frankly, because they're dying.

1:52And this feeling that we might have to change how we remember the Second World War in the future and that a new generation is going to have a very different connection to Britain's past. I listened to that and I felt an echo, weirdly, when meeting Joe Biden, which I did for an interview this week in Delaware. We'd invited him to speak about VE Day. That's why he did the interview. He didn't come on to have a pop at Donald Trump, although he did have a pop. But above all, he wanted to talk about that word he just heard from Boyd, sacrifice. that idea that his generation of Americans, and many after, realised that there was something worth sacrificing for what he would say would be freedom, democracy, and that the alliance between the United States and Europe, which was so important in World War II, had been crucial ever since, but that he felt it was under threat.

2:49So what we're exploring on the podcast today is not just history and how we live it and remember it, but what history rightly or wrongly tells us about the future. Yeah, exactly. And the role of nostalgia in politics. Let's do it.

3:15Hello, it's Amol in the Today Podcast studio. And it's Nick. Here too. and I've often said in this studio, on this podcast, that I've deep concerns, ongoing concerns about your work ethic. I think you're not putting in the hours. I don't think you travel enough. I don't think you bring in big enough interviews and I was really disappointed that you went straight from the Pope's funeral. You'd been in Berlin recently. I think it was Ukraine before then, then the Middle East. And there you go, texting me on, was it Friday, saying I have landed an interview. Don't tell anyone, but it's with a minor figure from recent history.

3:47Who is it again? Joseph R. Biden. Don't forget the Joseph R. The second. Tell us about this global scoop. We should say, well, the first thing to say is, and we do occasionally remember to say this, and we should always do it, let's give credit where it's due. A producer called Kirstie, Kirstie McKenzie at the Today programme, came up with the idea that for our coverage of VE Day, we wanted to hear from people who would reflect, as we're about to reflect, on what we learn from history and what it can teach us. And there's no better person to do that than Joe Biden. Why? Last president born during the war, still to be alive, of course.

4:23A president himself, vice president to Barack Obama before that. And 50 years, 50 years a senator as well, in which foreign affairs were a crucial part of his life. So the pitch from the Today programme was, come talk to us on this important anniversary. And I have to say, we were somewhat surprised he said yes. Yeah, of course, as you know, I'm instinctively against being sycophantic towards you in your presence. But it's worth it. I mean, he's obviously a monumental world historical figure, but it's quite a big deal that Joe Biden would give his first post-presidency interview to the BBC. Obviously, if the main thing go through his mind was it's Nick Robinson, and how can you say Nick Robinson?

5:00I think the main thing that was his mind was V-Day. Yeah, exactly. So why did he give, which is an issue that all the networks in America would have wanted, every podcast in the world wanted, why did he give it to you and the BBC? Well, I think what attracted him was the ability to talk to a global audience about the thing that has defined his life, which is the Atlantic Alliance. It was an opportunity to say what he wanted to say. In other words, to warn that the Atlantic Alliance could be dying under Donald Trump. but without doing an interview, which was 27 things I'm finding annoying about Donald Trump because there is a convention in American politics that former presidents don't launch attacks on their success.

5:44Of course, you know, they say things they believe that other people who've succeeded them don't believe, but you don't do the direct attack. And if you listen to the interview, when I put a direct question, you know, what do you think of his 100 days? What do you think of him? He makes clear he doesn't want to answer. What you have to do is read the interview. And also, it's not that hard to read, is it? He doesn't use the name Trump, but he does talk about this administration. He does talk about that guy at one point. We kind of know what he's talking about. Yeah, but it's interesting you mentioned that.

6:17I mean, I listen to the 810, and people can listen in full, by the way. It's on Political Thinking, a brilliant podcast, which I see has been expanded. You've got one hell of a scoop to launch a new series. We ran a bit in the 810 on Wednesday's Today programme. And the bit that struck me was, yeah, he did actually say that that scene with Zelensky was beneath America, but he did try to uphold certain conventions at a time when, I think it's fair to say, Donald Trump has been ripping some of those conventions up. What I found most fascinating, though, was not, as it were, his commentary on that, what he called modern day appeasement, was his prediction.

6:51And this is a prediction coming from a man who, as he says, knows virtually every world leader, Knew them as president, knew them as vice president, often knew them as a senator. He said that was the one good thing about being old. Yeah, exactly. It's funny. He said, and I don't think he's been picked up enough, that his fear was that Europe's leaders would now think we can't rely on America. He recalled a moment that Emmanuel Macron said to him, the president of France, when he was president and was boasting, in effect, that NATO is back, American leadership is back. Macron said to him, yeah, but for how long?

7:30And his fear now is that with Trump getting a second term, European leaders, particularly younger ones coming along, will now think, forget it, that's the past. That really is history. But his prediction of what that would mean was stark. He said for leaders of countries on the border with Russia, and I remember the word used, they'll make an accommodation with the Kremlin. So in other words, the politics of Europe will be shaped by leaders thinking, we know America aren't there anymore for us, or we think they're not there for us. Therefore, we make a calculus about what the Kremlin will and won't tolerate if we are close to the Kremlin.

8:13Now, when I was growing up, that was known by a word, Finlandization. It's sort of got out of fashion now because Finland has changed. But the idea that Finland, who were not occupied by the Soviet Union after the war, but were effectively cowed, all of their politics was defined by what they could, as it were, get away with. And that forecast that that could happen in countries bordering the whole of the Russian border, which is thousands of bars long, is chilling and means that we're really not just talking about history. It was interesting that he invited you to Delaware, which is where he's from.

8:52And there's a wonderful scene. I mean, people can listen to the whole thing on political thinking. But I think it's a rather beautiful kind of atmosphere that you guys create in the place that you're in together. I've got to ask you, because we should do this head on, because quite a large corner of the Internet is devoted to this idea. Did he strike you as a man fully compos mentis? Did he strike you as a man? I mean, look, on the internet, a lot of people say Joe Biden's got dementia and he was allowed to continue imposed by the Democrats disgracefully. There's no evidence for that. No one's ever produced any evidence for that.

9:21I thought his speech was very halting. But then this is a man in his 80s talking about serious stuff. How did you find him? Yeah, I agonise about what words you should use and what words you should not because I want to cover up the truth. And there is a whole now bookshelf of literature being written in the United States about whether there was a cover up. Which is why I ask you. in that way. What did I think? He is warm, charismatic, energetic. He came with a purpose. He got to the end of that interview. He'd done what he wanted. He'd said what he wanted to say. But on the other hand, is he like some people of that age?

9:59Plenty not, by the way, I hasten to add, but tempted to go to anecdote, tempted to drift off at times from the central point. Yes. is he you know pick your percentage number some percentage short of joe biden at peak intellectual power absolutely yes but look the idea that some people have which is he can't be trusted to end a sentence or a paragraph without sort of talking nonsense that there's evidence when you meet him that he's got kind of advanced dementia or something there was no evidence of that But I came away with a very clear impression. It would have been completely unthinkable for him to have done another four years in office.

10:42He would have been closer to his 90s than his 80s at the end of that term. And he would have struggled now to deal with the criticism that he was, as it were, to put it in vertical. If it was up to it, give it a year or two, those voices would have got louder and louder and louder. And it's so interesting that someone in their early 80s, what we're talking about today, which is how we think about the Second World War, for them, the Second World War is part of living history. And I think this clip we're about to hear, which we heard on the Today programme, Nick, captures that. And it begins with you, Nick, putting to Biden a quote of something he himself has said about that S word, sacrifice.

11:21Do you fear that that message is being forgotten in America right now? I do fear a little bit. I don't think it's been forgotten by the people. I think it's been forgotten by the leadership a little bit. Excuse my cough. The fact is that my father and mother's generation knew what was at stake. They knew that democracy was literally hanging in the balance. Adolf Hitler, had he won? had there been no United Europe and United with the United States. You know, the United States has never been able to avoid a war in Europe. And so one of the smartest things we did after World War II was we formed NATO because alliances provide security.

12:07You were telling me when I first met you about the veterans that you've met last year in Normandy when you went for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. They're an incredible generation, and they're fading out. The men and women I met knew when they got off those landing craft, when they came into those gliders, that they were as likely to die as live. And they did it. They did it anyway, because they felt it was worth dying for if need be. They had to stop this maniac, Hitler. They had to maintain democracy. They're willing to give their lives to do it. an incredible, incredible, incredible generation.

12:50They're an incredible generation and they're fading out. That was basically what Boyd said to me on the mail. It's so interesting that Biden should say that. Yeah, what I'm glad we're doing, and I hope other people will do, is say, what was he actually saying? I mean this with total respect to the guy. Forget Joe Biden. You know, forget the expert. What is he saying? What he is saying, and he's particularly, by the way, I think saying to the young, which is going to be an interesting part of our conversation, I think, look, we only defeated fascism. We only defeated the Nazis because we stood together.

13:26And that is true for the future. Democracy is under threat is what he's saying. If you just think, let's look after ourselves, let's put, he didn't use the phrase I did in a question to America first. there is a consequence of that. And that is what he, and I think quite a lot of the people you spoke to outside Buckingham Palace, they're pleading with people, aren't they? They're saying, please don't forget once we're gone, the lesson we learned. And yet, what does the data show? So polling for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission last year suggested the following. A, most young people can't tell you when D-Day was.

14:02One in five believe there's no longer any need to commemorate events like it. among people aged 18 to 24, 22 % of respondents said that enough time had passed and that there was no need to hold commemorative events for the two world wars. And one in 10 of the young people polled said that they were boring and repetitive, while a third said that the money spent on commemorations would be better used supporting other charitable endeavours and needs of today. Having said that, 61 % of respondents to the survey as a whole said that the anniversary would be an opportunity for reflection. And a chance for us to reflect now with the historian, Professor Lucy Noakes, who's president of the Royal Historical Society, author of The People's Victory, VE Day, through the eyes of those who were there.

14:45And she's alongside in the Today podcast studio, Professor Jason Arday, one of Cambridge University's youngest professor, most importantly of all, a former guest editor of the Today programme. His work focuses on inequality, race and education. Lucy, Jason, welcome to the Today podcast. Thank you. Welcome to you both. It's nicer than the Today podcast, isn't it, Jason? Oh, it is plush here. Absolutely. Nick describes it as like the one show meets Today, which I think is about right. Would you just, to start off with that polling, Jason, what do you make of it? The fact that there is, I mean, there's obviously a big generation of divides on attitudes, lots of things, but it's quite striking the number of young people who feel that maybe we might be overdoing it a bit on the commemoration.

15:26Yeah, I think it's an interesting one because I guess the criticism that might come with young people is kind of things around attention span and kind of deference to, you know, those who came before. I wouldn't say that's a lazy argument, but what I would say is that there is an argument there. But I think most importantly, young people have so much in front of them in terms of the turbulent society that we find ourselves in, that it is understandable how that might occupy their absolute attention right now in terms of navigating the terrain, that thorny terrain. So it's almost like this is our generation's kind of young people.

16:05This is our thing to deal with now. You know, we need to come through this. And that's interesting, Jason, because there'll be some people shouting at their radio or their phone going, don't they get it? You're saying it's not that they don't care. It is because the present is so absorbing for people and anxiety is so great. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. The present is so absorbing, but it's also paralyzing for a lot of people. It's crippling. And I think, you know, that their attention is caught with that immediate thing right in front of them at the moment. I don't think it's that they don't care about the past.

16:41I just think the present is such a turbulent, you know, visceral thing that they're trying to navigate that. Lucy, how did you come to, you've quite literally written the book about VE Day. How did you come to decide as a historian that should be one of your top concerns and interests? Well I've been writing about the experience and memory of the Second World War for ages, ages now So I was already there in a way But I think I wanted, one of the things that really strikes me Is the way that we collectively in Britain remember both those wars Is I suppose probably unavoidably, it's really, really partial Okay, so you've got the First World War, and that's remembered as your death, sacrifice, horror, loss, tragedy.

17:31Second World War, finest hour, all in it together. Everybody's kind of singing and happy. We should fight them on the beaches. Exactly, all of that, all of that. I just want to kind of show that it's actually much more complex and people always hate historians because we don't have a pat answer, but, yeah, it's much more nuanced. There's as many experiences and opinions and thoughts about that, both those wars from the people that lived through them as there are people. It's not just a one-person thing. Do you think it would be easier in a way to connect with people who are much younger if there wasn't such a sort of glossy view of World War II, if it didn't feel like young people were being told, it was all great then, you know, we loved each other, we brought tea and sugar around to each other's houses, etc., etc.?

18:16Yeah, definitely. I just want to go back to what Jason was saying earlier because I've got the really, really interesting points. And it often gets used, doesn't it, by some people as a stick to beat younger people with that kind of, well, they wouldn't. Look at what we did. They wouldn't be able to do that now. They wouldn't, you know, they're a bunch of snowflakes. They're this, they're that, they're the other. So that's really, really unhelpful. So, yeah, absolutely. But also, I was thinking while you were talking that some of the work, so for this book I used a brilliant archive and it was a kind of really, well it still is we still exist really eccentric social survey organization mass observation but they were asking people and collecting people's kind of thoughts and and opinions and really importantly feelings from the late 1930s so for what was then armistice day in 37 and 38 they asked people to keep diaries so we i think now looking back now we imagine that in between the wars everybody's really united like everybody is grieving everybody takes this really seriously and a mass observation for people who don't know it i mean it's a joy isn't it because it's it's i hate using this word but it is ordinary people writing diaries of their ordinary lives it's not an invitation to uh you know let's find the cleverest person let's forgive me find the two professors to tell us what's going on no it's it's it's everybody right and and and still working today people want to write for mass observation but but 37 38 what you actually find is loads of people saying why are we still doing this why are we still marking the first world war that was nearly 20 years ago or it's embarrassing or i hate this and trying to avoid it so it's not do you know what i mean that's so what you're talking about now is not new people felt the same way then but also jason we're talking at a time when i mean the past has always been hugely political if you think about the yeah the books that marx and engels wrote when they wrote about, you know, when Lenin wrote about how imperialism is the highest form of capitalism, they came to their understanding of what was wrong with a particular economic system through how it had been applied in history.

20:18And yet we are living in this cultural moment where there is a fight over history, accentuated, accelerated by social media, as there perhaps hasn't been. There's moves to decolonize the curriculum. There's lots of people who say that we're teaching the wrong thing in schools. And the Second World War has become a bit of a political dividing line because if we're honest one of the reasons people are divided over it is because a lot of people who feel like Britain's going the wrong way uncomfortable about demographic change feel it harks back to an earlier simpler time and this is the power of nostalgia in politics yeah I think look nostalgia is a powerful powerful elixir you know to be consumed with caution I think in these trying times and I say that because there is a historical amnesia that ensues when people think about you know history and i think there is that there's a romanticized version you know through through rose-tinted glasses which is which is important but you can't kind of eradicate history so i guess you know when i think about the second world war what i think about in particular apart from all those brave individuals that sacrificed there today for our tomorrow is i also think about post-war britain and the rebuilding of britain and I think about the contribution of the Windrush generation who helped to build, rebuild, you know, the kind of infrastructure of Britain, you know, whether it be economic or whether it be structural.

21:46And there's always this narrative that, you know, they came, you know, they were asked to come and rebuild post-war Britain. And I think those narratives become important because it's all situated within the context of British identity. And, you know, it's this kind of polemic that is existed for the best part of a century. What is British identity? How do people define that? And there is an exclusionary context to that, which does become problematic when we're trying to think about history in the round. If you're selective with that history and, you know, you engage in that historical amnesia, I think that that's where problems occur.

22:22And that's where people don't see themselves reflected in British identity. And there is a membership to British identity as well. I imagine that the coverage now is really quite different from the coverage you would have got for the 50th anniversary, not least because in the coverage, you now routinely see people from Afro-Caribbean communities in Britain, from Asian communities in Britain, whose relatives fought, often volunteered to fight in the Second World War. That part of the story of the war, it seems to me, has been broadly embraced. Perhaps more controversial is the sort of idea that can Can you talk about Churchill as a hero or do you have to always, every time you mention him, say, ah, but remember what he did in India or remember what he said about this?

23:09Which is in danger of giving some older people, I think, the impression that kind of every young person wants to go and spray paint a statue of Churchill, which is clearly nonsense. People are intelligent. People understand that people are complicated, that Churchill was not just one thing. I think he was the right person. He was the right man for 1940 and from 1940 to 1945. Clearly he wasn't the right person immediately after the war because you've got VE Day and then a month later he's out on his ear. And Clement Attlee is prime minister. They elected by a landline, elected a Labour government which they wanted to help them.

23:49The people wanted to help build the kind of society that they wanted after the war and which the war had been fought for in Britain alongside the defeat of fascism. it is possible to hold competing thoughts in your head at the same time, right? It is possible to argue, not that I'm arguing it here, but that, for instance, Churchill got one big thing right, which is that he said, you know, after Chamberlain, we need to take on Hitler. But also you've got other things wrong. Called Gandhi, a middle temple lawyer striding half naked. He called him a seditious fakir. It's spelled F-A-K-I-R, by the way, so you don't need to cut it out.

24:23And other people, this is obviously very, very contestant, other people say he got things wrong over the Bengal famine and so on and so forth. You can hold those different thoughts at the same time. And yet, for some reason, Lucy, it seems that people who want to tell a story about politics today and get your vote today for where they want to take Britain in the future feel that they have to tell a very particular story. And I just wonder if we could be honest enough to say that there is a conflict between the historical imperative of embracing complexity and the political imperative of narrowing history down to tell a particular story to get people's vote.

24:56Yeah, I think that's a really, really important point. And I think that and that shows why we need history. Right. And people are hungry for history. People want that complexity. If you look at the if you look at the audience for historical documentaries, dramas, novels, all the rest of it, there's a big hunger for good history and complex histories out there. if we can continue to research history if we can continue to teach history and communicate history alongside all the other disciplines as well we have a more educated and more informed population and that makes it harder for some of those politicians who might want to use our past to divide us to do so i think that's such a good point lucy i think that investment in history i think that's for a lot of younger people like apart from seeing themselves in history it's almost like making a deposit in the bank they want to be able to draw that out and to be able to say actually there's some currency in this for me and that becomes hugely hugely important there's something you said emma which i think is a really good point and kind of mentioned as well you know someone said to me two things can be right and i think including about the same person yeah yeah exactly and i think churchill is a massively divisive character but i think as as Lucy mentioned, you know, that, that critical period between 1940 and 1945, where he arguably safely navigated Britain and a large portion of Europe through a world war.

26:20It, it's not the kind of thing one can oversee, but I also think, you know, none of these kinds of leaders are perfect. And you have to talk about, you know, Churchill is eulogized, you know, and he's immortalized in bronze in, you know, outside Whitehall. And it's kind of thinking about, you know, these people, you can think of them in a particular way where you can, you know, lord their achievements, of course. But also, I think there are those other parts of their, their personalities, their professional endeavours that we also need to critique because they have been problematic and they have placed, historically, ethnic minorities at risk of violence.

26:58You're a professor, you're not a politician, and you're not someone who can, as it were, foresee the future. But as you're discussing this, it makes me think, well, how do you capture both thoughts? Because part of the reason there is a backlash, which is then exploited by certain politicians, is they think that what's being said is, stop talking about, don't talk about the war, don't talk about Churchill, don't talk about the sacrifice, talk about us, what really bothers us now. in this period. And what they're saying is it's not just that we are offended by that. We actually think it's dangerous.

27:35We think that we must hold on to the central insight about how fascism was defeated. And they're fearful, Lucy, aren't they, that that might be forgotten. But the fact that what happened was the defeat of fascism, in some of those narratives, that almost disappears. It becomes a kind of like, you know, Britain alone, Britain together, finest out. And we almost forget that what I'm using the term we, none of us were there. But what Britain alongside a whole bunch of other countries, including Commonwealth countries, did was they defeated fascism in Europe. OK, and I think that is often almost absent from some of the narratives and some of the politicians here and elsewhere who are very happy to wrap themselves in national flags and to claim some of the kind of the glory and the sacrifice from those years who are actually actively working to undermine or to dismantle a lot of what that war, I would say, was fought for.

28:38and just going back to mass observation, where people are writing on the 7th and 8th of May, 9th of May, about their experiences of VE Day in Britain. But what a lot of them are also doing is they're really, really interested in what's happening in the San Francisco conference, in the foundation of the United Nations. And they want to see a different kind of, both a different kind of Britain, but a different kind of world coming out of that war. What do you do about this mobilisation of simplistic historical narratives for political ends? I mean, obviously, you need to get more professors onto podcasts with microphones in front of them, reaching lots of people.