The Best Conversation About History You’ve Ever Heard - Dominic Sandbrook

20:14Dominic Sandbrook:The United States is obviously an empire, not merely a continental empire across its North America, but internationally. Having an empire is in itself, I think, not illegitimate. It's the way that most people have been ruled. It's the way that the Romans or the Persians or whoever the Ottomans organized their societies. One group dominating another, again, is not unnatural. It's the norm in human history. I think what makes the British Empire quite really interesting and really unusual is that right from the beginning, it has the seeds of its own dissolution in it. Because one of the things that it exports is the idea of the rule of law, liberal democracy, all of those kinds of things.

20:58Dominic Sandbrook:So from the beginning, the British Empire is kind of an internal argument. There are always people, lots of people in Britain who don't like the idea of colonization and of dominance and so on. There are always ferocious arguments about it. And some of the British Empire's most well-known, celebrated critics, Gandhi, a great example, these are people who are profoundly shaped by British institutions, British traditions, by the British idea of fairness and freedom and all of those kinds of things, the kind of rhetoric of liberty, if you like. That's not to say, of course, there's elements of hypocrisy and greed and all of these things in the British Empire, as there are in all human phenomena, all human institutions.

21:46Dominic Sandbrook:But, I mean, to go back to your point about, you know, the Belgians, the Portuguese, the Spanish, and so on, if you had, you know, it's a bit like the philosopher, kind of John Rawls' famous sort of conceit, which is, you know, if you could choose, if you had to make a blind choice, and you didn't know how rich you were going to be, you didn't know what you were going to look like, but where would you choose to kind of start again? And you had to choose an empire, a European colonial empire in which to do it. I think the British Empire would be a pretty good place to choose. I mean, it's definitely not the Belgian Congo, right?

22:18Dominic Sandbrook:It's not, you know, you're not in Mexico in the 1520s kind of ravaged by smallpox with Cortez and the conquistadors rampaging around what becomes Mexico City. So, yeah, I think the British Empire, it's clearly not the most evil empire in history. It's not dedicated to extermination or to violence in the way that the Third Reich is or whatever. So those comparisons that you see quite a lot nowadays, especially online, just strike me as utterly bonkers.

22:53Francis Foster:Well, they are. And one of the things that also bothers me about this, and you mentioned, you know, Central America, for example, there is this sort of idea that, you know, everyone's living peacefully and singing Kumbaya and holding hands. And then these evil Europeans arrived and like started being violent. Yeah. Like that's not entirely my reading of the Aztec Empire. Exactly. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the more I read about the Native Americans in North America, I suddenly figure out, oh, they're not really, they weren't really, you know, they weren't really that peaceful or loving.

23:29Francis Foster:No, no, no.

23:29Dominic Sandbrook:There are very simplistic ways of talking about this. So even the distinction between indigenous people and European colonizers is wrong because often, say, to give the example of the Aztecs, the Aztecs had come from somewhere else. They were armed migrants, or you might call them colonizers, themselves. They'd come probably from roughly what's now Colorado. They'd come south. They'd subjugated people around them. They ran this empire. They did sacrifice people to the gods. They did all these kinds of things. In huge numbers. They were no strangers. They were no strangers to violence. Now, that's not to say they're terrible villains and the Europeans are great saints.

24:07Dominic Sandbrook:they're both complicated societies, capable of all the extremes of human nature. I think that's my approach. It's not to say, because I've written about the Aztecs in a book for children. It's not to say... You probably have to sanitize that a fair bit, I'd imagine. Actually, no, no, not at all, because kids love the violence. Yeah, they do. When I taught the Aztecs at school, the kids loved it. Yeah, of course. Why would that be worrying? That's normal. Kids, if you're standing in front of 40 10-year-olds, and, you know, you've got 40 minutes, if you're not careful, they will be very bored very quickly.

24:41Dominic Sandbrook:And the best way to keep them interested is to, you know, every few moments, every few minutes, punctuate it with somebody having his heart ripped out, or, you know, Henry VIII having an enema, or any of these kinds of details. These kind of grim, gory details are sticking kids' minds. They love it. They love it. Of course they love it because people are fascinated. In many ways, kids are human beings at their most unseasoned, well, in not many ways. They're very obvious here. They're most raw and unseasoned. And kids are fast... Why do kids love gladiators? They're not really interested in Roman baths or in Roman law codes.

25:16Dominic Sandbrook:What they like is the Colosseum and basically people gouging each other's eyes out and whatnot. Because kids, like all of us, they're kind of voyeurs when they look at history, and they love the extremes. I think that's completely normal and natural and... You know, I'm not saying we should completely pander to it and sink into the kind of pornography of violence when we talk about history. But it's self-deluding, I think, to pretend that that's not why people are often interested in history in the first place. You know, when I fell in love with history when I was very small, it was knights, battles, kings and queens, executions, all of these kinds of things.

25:54Dominic Sandbrook:If you had said to me, no, actually, little Dominic, age seven or something, it's much better for you to learn about the suffragettes and the struggle for equal rights. How many people are really going to be that enthusiastic about history? That's not to completely dismiss those subjects and say don't do them later on. But what gets you into history is narrative conflict.

26:16Francis Foster:Imagine having a personalized health blueprint, a plan built just for you based on exactly what your body needs. That is what Superpower delivers. Their goal is to help you reach your full 100-year potential. Here's how it works. A licensed professional comes to your home or you visit a nearby lab for a single lab test that looks at over 100 biomarkers. Heart health, liver function, thyroid hormones, metabolism, vitamin and mineral levels, and even environmental toxins. Check it out at Superpower.com. Have you ever left a doctor's appointment feeling like you got nothing useful? Maybe they just said, you're fine, or told you to drink more water.

26:54Francis Foster:No real data, no game plan, just a pat on the back. That is where superpower comes in. The results are not just numbers on a page. Superpower turns them into a personalized action plan with targeted supplements, nutrition, and lifestyle changes you can start right away. You will even learn your true biological age and how to improve it. Each year, you build on your data, seeing exactly how your choices are shaping your long-term health. Normally, it's$499, but right now it's just$199 for the full test and plan, which is far less than what other services charge for less comprehensive results. Visit superpower.com to learn more and lock in the special$199 price while it's still available.

27:35Francis Foster:When you sign up, they will ask how you heard about them, so just say trigonometry. That site again is superpower.com. Give me one minute to tell you about Senalytics and why they're being called the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing your physical prime. As a middle-aged man, middle-aged man, who wrote this script? Look, we all have big goals, but let's be honest, the aging process isn't our friend when it comes to endless energy and productivity. That's why I use Qualiocenalytic. As we age, everyone accumulate senescent cells, also known as zombie cells. These old worn-out cells cause symptoms of aging like aches, slow recovery, and sluggish energy.

28:19They take up space and nutrients from healthy cells. Much like pruning dead leaves off a plant, Qualia Senolytic removes these senescent cells, allowing healthy cells to thrive, and you only need to take it two days a month. The formula is non-GMO, vegan, gluten-free, and designed to maximize the combined effects of its ingredients. Plus, it comes with a 100-day money-back guarantee. Since I've started using Qualia Senolytic, I've felt more energetic, more productive, and my girlfriend tells me I'm now somewhat mostly bearable. Just a little joke, don't have a girlfriend. Plus, those middle-aged aches and pains, virtually gone.

28:59Resist aging at the cellular level and try Qualia Senolytic. Go to qualialife.com slash trig for up to 50 % off and use code trig at checkout for an additional 15 % off. That's Q-U-A-L-I-A life.com slash trig for an extra 15 % off your purchase. Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring today's episode. One thing nobody tells you about long-form conversations is how much disappears the moment they end. You spend an hour with someone sharp, come out with half a dozen things you need to act on, and by the time you're back at your desk, you're already reconstructing from memory. That's the problem Plaud solves.

29:44It's a compact device that captures conversations and turns them into searchable notes, summaries, and insights you can actually use later. You can ask it a specific question like, what were the actual points from that call? And it pulls the moment and the summary instantly. It also recognizes individual voices. So once you've labeled who's speaking, it tracks them across every future recording. It's about the size of a credit card, so it's easy to carry and always available when conversation matters. This thing has solved a real problem for me. I was skeptical at first, another AI gadget, but the case is straightforward enough that it actually works.

30:23You stop trying to document while you're thinking, and it turns out you think considerably better when you're not. Whether it's a meeting, interview, consultation or call, the notes are there when you need them without having to choose between listening and writing. Get up to 10 % off at plaud.ai using the code TRIGGER at checkout or click the link in the description. Thank you to Plaud for sponsoring today's episode.

30:46Francis Foster:So I interrupted you when you were saying you wrote the book about the Aztecs for kids. Yeah. Oh, yes, you did. Yeah. So I felt with that, that, you know, you have two sort of complicated societies.

31:01Dominic Sandbrook:You have a conquest that actually is, again, very nuanced and very complicated, because it's actually not the Spanish just conquering Mexico. The Spanish have loads of... They actually have far... There are far more... The Great Battles, there are far more indigenous Mesoamerican soldiers on the Spanish side, then there are Spaniards, right? There are internal struggles. There's internal dissension. This is a clash of empires, a clash of colonizers, if you like. So to see it really simplistically is these guys are the good guys. These guys are the bad guys. Now, that's obviously how people initially told the story when it was told from the European perspective.

31:39Dominic Sandbrook:Now the trend is to completely do it the other way and to say that everything about the Spanish or other European colonizers is terrible and they're greedy and they don't really care. of their Christianity is just a pretext for their sort of ruthless mercenary ambitions. I think that's just as simplistic as the old stories, where it was the kind of Aztec slavering, covered in blood, and the Spanish kind of noble Christian warriors. They're both really sort of silly ways to talk about history, I would say. And I always remember when I was in Venezuela, being pinned against the wall by what my uncle's friend, who told me, and in great detail, about how Francis Drake was a pirata.

32:21Oh, yeah. A pirate. And I was like, well, I'm kind of seven years old, mate. I don't really understand what you want me to do with this information. Yeah. But it was a very powerful lesson for me because it made me understand, oh, the way that I see Sir Francis Drake and I was taught in school, to a Latin American, he was a pirate, a plunderer, a thief on a mass scale.

32:44Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I think it's fascinating. These lessons are really good, actually. So you mentioned Cromwell. If I was Irish, I undoubtedly would have a very dim view of Oliver Cromwell. I'm not, so I don't. It's not that complicated. People always, you know, looking at historical characters, you always have to be conscious of where you're standing, right? Where I'm standing, where you're standing will always be different places. Just because, you know, not because of any differences between us, but nobody can be exactly where you are, coming to it with the baggage that you have. And I think actually, instead of, you know, these people get into really frenzied and fierce arguments, which to my mind are actually unnecessary.

33:23Dominic Sandbrook:It's completely reasonable that people have different views about characters in the past. And the idea that you, that one view must dominate, that it becomes intolerable for anybody to say, well, actually, I quite like Winston Churchill. I mean, that's obviously ridiculous. You know, Winston Churchill, sure, I understand, I completely get that if you're an Indian historian, you're going to look at different aspects of Churchill's life and career that will jump out to you. And, you know, you may regard him as objectionable. That's fine. I don't need to persuade you of silence. You say your own thing.

33:58Dominic Sandbrook:But I think it's completely reasonable that people in Britain see Churchill as the incarnation of the bulgark spirit, as the symbol of patriotism, as the symbol of winning the Second World War, all of those kinds of things. Why wouldn't we? I mean, it'd be weird if we didn't. And it's also as well acknowledging the fact that when you're dealing with these seismic figures who changed history in such a profound way, they're going to change history in ways that you perceive to be good, but also other people will perceive to be bad. Yeah, of course. And to take that on a little bit, it's mad to think that other to reward people in history purely because they agree with you.

34:35Dominic Sandbrook:In other words, to celebrate only the people who mirror your own prejudices and preconceptions, right? So in other words, to look back at the 18th century and to say, well, so-and-so is obviously a good person because they believed in equality like me. But this person, who appears to be very interesting and civilized and whatnot, is actually a terrible person because they invested in the slave trade or whatever it might be. we can be horrified by the slave trade and think that slavery is wrong and all those kinds of things but people you've got to grant people in the past their own agency their own space their own their difference i guess and and sort of and respect their difference i guess respect the fact that they their moral world their mental world the baggage they're carrying with them is completely different from ours.

35:29Dominic Sandbrook:And of course, what I always say, especially when I'm in schools, actually, and this always makes the children kind of go, is to say, you're not the end. There will be people who come after you who will say, you were bonkers and immoral and wrong, and why couldn't you see that eating meat is morally wrong or getting on an airplane is, you know, whatever. All these kinds of things that the kids will take for granted, right?

35:54Francis Foster:It's a bright picture of the future you're painting that, mate. You know, I really realized I was in Uzbekistan recently, and they have these giant statues of Timur. They call him Timur Khan. He's called Tamerlane. Tamerlane, right. But they don't like that because that's Timur the lame. Right, yeah. Basically making fun of a disabled person at this point, right? But if you actually look at what he did day to day, right? This is a guy that every time he had an opportunity, he'd go and invade somewhere, right? Kill all the men, the women, whatever, right? come back home and then he'd go and hunt and kill animals to chill out this is and that was basically what you did and that was the way that these people thought and when i thought about that i just went well this person's brain worked so differently to me and to anyone i am ever likely to me these are different people like they think differently the whole world view is different um but i guess where it leaves me dominic and it comes back to what you're saying is a question about the truth then because you go well you know everyone's everyone's got their own perspective everyone's standing in their own place and now you've got these morons on the internet going well actually winston churchill's the greatest villain of world war ii and that just isn't true yeah right and that's not because they're standing in a different place it's just because they're they're wrong yeah unless they are standing in adolf hitler's place at which point maybe they do

37:19Dominic Sandbrook:yeah i'm getting that yeah i do completely it's a really difficult one actually um And it's one that I kind of wrestle with a little bit. Like, is there such a thing as historical truth? I think to some extent, you know, the conversation that we've been having, you'll probably be appalled by this, but to some extent, all of us living in the 21st century are postmodernists, to the extent that we all recognize that there can be different accounts of something that are all equally correct or all equally flawed. Equally? Yeah, I think there can be. No, I don't recognize that. No, I think you probably do because I think you and I, I think you do without knowing it.

37:55Dominic Sandbrook:In other words, that you and I, you might have a take on history, right? And I might have a slightly different take on history, a slightly different take on history. And we would say, well, we're probably not going to agree on this, but I can see where you're coming from and where you say it. And they're probably both reasonable narrative accounts of what happened. In other words, just to give you a tiny, really petty and trivial example, if we were both writing accounts of this conversation afterwards, we might write different accounts, but they might both be right.

38:21Francis Foster:Okay, fine.

38:22Dominic Sandbrook:So, in other words, what's the true account of our conversation? Even the footage that you're doing right now, depending on the camera you choose, they might say, well, actually, the camera didn't pick up that bit of nuance. That was kind of lost on, you know what?

38:35Francis Foster:Or the conversation that happened before we started or whatever. Exactly. When you called me a dick.

38:38Dominic Sandbrook:So it's actually hard to, it's very hard to get at what the truth, yeah. That was a really exciting conversation. It's really hard to get at what that truth would be. However, at the same time as saying this, in other words, we can sort of see that you can have lots of competing accounts that all have some validity. So otherwise, you would be able to write the definitive history book on the Crusades, and nobody would ever write a book on the Crusades again because that person would have published the truth. That would clearly never happen. There will always be lots of different books on the Crusades.

39:11Dominic Sandbrook:People ask different questions. People see different things. It doesn't mean that the others are wrong and untrue, but you can have competing versions. But you can't then, what obviously I think most historians would say is, what you don't want to do is open the door and say, well, they're all equally valid or invalid.

39:27Francis Foster:That was the reason I disagree with you. Because obviously that's not... Because if I retold this conversation as, you know, a 644 black man came, sat down, and we started talking about geography. It's not true. That's just factually incorrect. Exactly. Right? Exactly.

39:41Dominic Sandbrook:So to give you an example of the Crusades of the Second World War, I think we could say there are many different accounts that are often wildly different, but they're all valid and they're all valuable. But then there are some accounts that are not valid and valuable. So there is a dividing line between truth and untruth, right? So in other words, the Second World War, there are lots of different books on the Second World War, seeing it from different perspectives. Some that say, I could write a book on the Second World War saying a tremendous victory for democracy and freedom, blah, blah, blah.

40:10Dominic Sandbrook:A Polish historian could write a book on the Second World War that says, well, hold on, we ended up being conquered by Stalin. Stalin's the big winner of the Second World War, not Churchill, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, you can have different accounts that you could say, yeah, I can understand where you're coming from. That's valid. That's also valid. It's good to have different opinions. Like people always do that about all kinds of things. But there has to be a dividing line. I think that's what most academic historians or scholars would say. There has to be a point where you say, hold on, you know, they didn't just sit there and talk about geography.

40:39Dominic Sandbrook:You know, there is right and there is wrong. And this is what obviously has become more and more slippery in the last 20 years or so. So the examples you're picking up, you know, people who are getting a lot of traction, sometimes going on shows like this or on podcasts or whatever, saying, actually, you know, Hitler is the great victim of the Second World War and Churchill is the villain, all of this kind of stuff. Right? I think historians clearly have a duty to say, no, you're just wrong. There is such a thing as fact. I guess truth is a very loaded word. I guess accuracy is maybe a more useful word in that context.

41:19Dominic Sandbrook:So that's just not accurate. It's just not correct. Churchill clearly is not the villain of the Second World War. Britain did not force Hitler into war, all of these kinds of things. So I think it's slightly more complicated than to say true, untrue. I think you can still have disagreements. You can still have competing versions. But what has happened, I think, because basically the technological change, it's a bit like the invention of the printing press in the 16th century. Technological change means that suddenly it's like the ground beneath your feet has become unstable. You don't know what to trust.

41:56There are loads of competing versions of reality, some of which are basically completely fraudulent and founded on nothing.

42:08Dominic Sandbrook:And, you know, historians are, I guess it's also a bit of a problem that as academic historians have slightly vacated the field, right, they're not quite as public-facing as they could be. They're not talking to the public. Often they're talking to each other. that allows opportunists and charlatans and whatnot to enter the conversation, dominate the conversation instead. And once you've left that arena, and if you're not very good at speaking to the public, then it becomes very hard to fight back against it. Donnie, I want to talk to you about the evil because a lot of people use that word, particularly to talk about events in history, whether it's the British Empire, whether it's Adolf Hitler.

42:50And Adolf Hitler, when we think about evil, we think about Adolf Hitler. And you look at these people and you go, in Hitler's mind, obviously what he did was horrendous and evil, but in his own mind, he thought he was doing good. And if you look at a lot of these figures from history, they believe that they were doing some type of good, whether it's the conquistadors, whether it's the Mayans who were praying to the God. Why wouldn't you rip the heart out of a child? You have to appease a god, otherwise we all die. How do we reconcile that?

43:26Dominic Sandbrook:Even Bridget Phillips thinks she's doing good. I think, how do you reconcile it? Do you need to reconcile it? Do you need to? In the sense that human beings never think they're the bad guys. You know, that scene, the famous scene from the Mitchell and Webb sketch, where they're looking at their Nazi soldiers and they're kind of looking at their badges and saying, are we actually the baddies? Yeah, the baddies, the skulls, like, really? Have you looked at our caps recently?

43:58Francis Foster:Our caps? The badges on our caps. Have you looked at them? What? No. A bit?

44:06Dominic Sandbrook:They've got skulls on them.

44:10Francis Foster:Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them? I don't, uh... Hands.

44:21Dominic Sandbrook:Are we the baddies? There's never a moment, I think, where people, you know, willfully, genuinely cast themselves as the villains. So to take your example of the Nazis, we did an episode of The Rest is History about Nazi ideology and about why they thought they were. You know, they were doing not God's work, but they were doing science's work, actually. They thought life was racial struggle. and they believed that they were, you know, operating in the cause of racial hygiene and that they would leave Germany a better place and the world a better place, right? That's what Nazi ideologists think.

45:01Dominic Sandbrook:It's what they tell their soldiers. Their soldiers, even as they're carrying out what would strike us as appalling atrocities on the Eastern Front, they sort of will write in their diaries and their letters, they'll say, well, it might sound grim, but it kind of had to be done and it's better that we've done it. I think it's very hard to find people in history who say, I know this is evil and I'm actually a terrible person. But does Stalin think he's a bad man? I would say not. All that we know about Stalin is that, you see, I don't think Stalin is an inverted commas, a monster. I think Stalin is a Marxist, which is slightly different.

45:39Dominic Sandbrook:If I can say that a monster and a Marxist on this show are two different things. So Stalin thinks, he takes his Marxism very seriously, I think the recent scholarship on Stalin has really emphasized the extent to which he's a true believer in his own ideology. He thinks he's operating, again, not unlike the Nazis, following scientific laws that will lead to human progress and that the world will be a better place. And that collectivization or purges, getting rid of enemies, all of these kinds of things, that ultimately the world will be better afterwards. And he will have done tough work, you know, dirty work, but it had to be done.

46:17Dominic Sandbrook:That's what a lot of people think in history, that this was, you know, more interesting people. Of course, there are always people who are just sort of boringly greedy and venal and corrupt or whatever. But somebody like Stalin, I think, is interesting and chilling precisely because he thinks he's on the side of right. He's on the side of morality. And it's the capitalists who are the bad people. He's a good person. Now, Hitler undoubtedly thought of himself as a good person, as somebody who would be rewarded by posterity for having done what had to be done to make Germany safer, cleaner, happier, racially pure, all of those kinds of things.

46:57Dominic Sandbrook:It's very shocking for us to think that people could think that they were the good guys. But people in history always think they're the good guys. They're always the heroes of their own story.

47:05Francis Foster:It's one of the reasons I always, I've talked about this a lot. I don't fear evil people that much. One of the reasons they do exist, in my opinion, there are people who are just bad people, evil, genuinely evil, people who like torturing other people or killing other people for the sake of it. Right. But it's very difficult if you're evil to motivate millions of other people to join you.

47:28Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah.

47:28Francis Foster:However, if you have a very persuasive story about why certain evil things need to be done for the greater good. Yeah. That's when you can persuade yourself into ignoring rules conscience whatever and you can lead millions of people behind you which is why i i i am always very wary of people who have this uh very strong sense of certainty about the fact that they are leading us in the right direction and just this one time we just need to ignore the rules of normal behavior just to get to you know we just suspend democracy for a bit we just you would kill these people or we just those are the really dangerous people in history, aren't they?

48:07Dominic Sandbrook:The big killers, the biggest killers were utopian idealists. They were people who believed in a better world. Hitler undoubtedly, you know, it sounds weird to say it, but he's an idealist. Stalin is obviously an idealist. Mao is an idealist. Pol Pot, when Khmer Rouge came in in Cambodia in the 1970s, year zero, emptied the cities, start again on the land, they think they are going to make a better world. And you know, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. That is the classic thing, that's what the Jacobin thought in the French Revolution. it's funny because I was rereading The Handmaid's Tale the other day, you know, Margaret Atwood's sort of feminist sort of science speculative fiction book, which lots of people watching this will have seen the TV adaptation and she gave an interview about that when she said, you know, the real enemy here it's absolutely not an anti-religious book it's not an anti-male book the real enemy is, in that quote utopian idealism, because the people who are the oppressors, who run the regime think they are doing the right thing and that they will good and I think all greats you know dystopias 1984 brave new world whatever the villains as it were are people who think they're good people and I completely agree with you and this is probably because I'm a very reactionary person as well the enemy is certainty the enemy is people who say I know what should be done I know what right where right and wrong lie I know I'm a good person and that goes back to the point I was making earlier about, you know, losing the sense of the tragic.

49:36Dominic Sandbrook:And one of the things that I think the sense of the tragic makes you aware of is your own weakness and frailty and your own, you know, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we know that we could be greedy and corrupt and violent and sadistic. Because we know from history, by the way, that lots of unexpected people have that in them. They're kind of all those people who previously had been a boring bank clerk in Hanover, but actually suddenly for a few months in 1941 or 1942 turn out to be the most unbelievable sadistic killers and then go back and be a boring bank clerk again for the rest of their lives.

50:17Dominic Sandbrook:You know, there's a lot about bankers. But I think with all of us, knowledge of the beast is so important. But let me push back on the idea. So you talk about certainty and, you know, having that knowledge that we are all flawed and broken. And I agree with you. Yeah. But? But look at Churchill. Churchill was pretty certain. He was the one raising the alarm in the 1930s, banging the drum. He had made many mistakes, but he had that certainty. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Yeah, but what Churchill believes in is, first of all, Churchill is very aware of his own flaws and his own frailty precisely because he's made so many mistakes.

51:01Dominic Sandbrook:So Churchill knows that he has a terrible screw up in him at any given moment, you know, and his mad schemes, often they don't work. Churchill, I think, has a, the only reason I'm always slightly baffled by the intense antipathy to Churchill by sort of the more sort of woke element, is that I think Churchill, of all historical characters, has a very kind of generous human sense of his own frailties, the qualities and frailties of others, how complicated life is. You only have to read his memoir, My Early Life, when he's talking about serving in the northwest frontier in India. He's talking about the men he served with, Indians as well as British.

51:42Dominic Sandbrook:There's a kind of, there's a wryness to it and an awareness of kind of the complexity of human life and human nature. So sure, Churchill has things he really believes in. He really believes in the empire. He believes in Britain. He believes that Britain stands for freedom and that the Nazis are bad people and that Hitler is a threat to democracy and all of those kinds of things. But I don't think that flows from that sort of intensely moralistic, slightly self-promoting certainty that we're talking about, which is the sense of I'm a good person, I'm a really kind and generous person, and I'm on the side of the angels and all of that kind of thing.

52:23Dominic Sandbrook:I think Churchill absolutely did have the sense, what I would call the sense of the tragedy. So in other words, Churchill believes that life can be pretty brutal because he's seen war up front. He knows how tough it can be. And I don't think he thinks we're going to muddle through. His famous catchphrase, keep buggering on, KBO. You know, you just keep going and you'll get there eventually. But Churchill doesn't think, you know, I will lead the world into a place where everybody, you know, there'll be kind of lambs gambling in the fields and everybody will be singing Kambayar and all of that kind of thing.

52:59Dominic Sandbrook:Churchill's not an idealist in that sense, I think. His life, he is devoted, he's devoted his life to kind of quite concrete things, to Britain, to its empire, to its traditions, its history, all of that. but not to an abstract noun.

53:13Francis Foster:He's not trying to remake the world. And I think one of the other things, because I agree with Francis in the sense that I think quite often the people who really do make a difference in the world, the people who have very strong faith in things that they believe in, that they want to bring in, the changes they want to make, etc. I think the issue is quite often what you're willing to do. Yeah, of course. In the service of that. And if you're willing to violate particular standards and norms and rules about not hurting other people, not killing other people, not disenfranchising other people in order to achieve your goals, that's where I see the distinction.

53:52Francis Foster:Because if you firmly believe in a particular worldview, well, that's fine as long as you're not willing to use that to hurt other people.

54:01Dominic Sandbrook:So I think there's a couple of things. I think one of them is seeing other people as expendable, other human beings' lives as expendable. I mean, that's obviously what I'd say Stalin would have done. So Stalin's thinking is, you know, I will make this better world. Unfortunately, these X million people will have to go first. But I mean, you know, that's a price worth paying. I think once you're using that sort of language, politicians always, by definition, a political leader will have to make bad choices that would involve some people getting hurt, right? Even if it's in a very small way because they're going to lose a benefit or they're going to pay any tax or something, right?

54:32Dominic Sandbrook:You're always going to make choices. If you're a sensible politician, I mean, obviously, if you're like Keir Starmer or somebody, you don't like making choices at all. But most effective politicians know that they're always going to be losers. There's always going to be people whose lives are worse. And you hope that there'll be as few of those as possible. But once you're getting into the game of constantly saying, well, there's a price worth paying. Unfortunately, those people had to die or whatever.

54:56Francis Foster:I think that's very dangerous. I think the dying part is where I'm aiming my...

54:59Dominic Sandbrook:And I think the corollary of that, to go back to your point about certainty. I think there's a difference between believing something strongly and being suffocatingly certain about it. So in other words, I would say, I mean, you obviously believe something strongly, right? You have strong views. But I would assume or I would hope that you're aware that not everybody has those views and other views are available, right? Of course we all are. So I think it's being aware of the contingency of your position that if you were somebody else, you might believe something different and that that's kind of fine, right?

55:33Dominic Sandbrook:I don't expect, I don't think I have a hotline to God or to the truth and that therefore everybody should fall into line with me and they're just wrong and I'm just right. I think that's the issue, isn't it? Someone like Stalin or Hitler, they thought, well, I'm just right because in both cases, actually, they were kind of scientific materialists to some degree. They thought the laws of nature and the world, I know them, you know? Karl Marx or whoever told me them. And I'm just following those laws. So the other opinions are by definition illegitimate. They are totally wrong. And the people who are promoting them are liars.

56:11Dominic Sandbrook:And basically, I need to get rid of them. Whereas in an imperialistic society, you're aware that there's lots of valid viewpoints. And let's say Churchill. Churchill doesn't like Bolshevism, doesn't like socialism. But he's perfectly happy to work with socialists in his war cabinet. Clement Attlee gets on brilliantly with them. And Churchill himself is ideologically complicated. He's changed parties. He was once very radical. He ends up becoming much more conservative. You know, he's conscious of the complexity of a kind of pluralistic worldview. And that's what makes him ultimately, I think, a very attractive figure, because I think what he's representing there is a kind of breadth that these monsters don't have.

56:53Dominic Sandbrook:They're narrow. There's something claustrophobic, I think, about their worldview because they exclude everything outside of it.

57:00Francis Foster:All right, people, it's trivia time. Financial trivia, to be exact. Do you know what retirement asset grew the most in the first six months of President Trump's second term? Many of you probably guessed the stock market was the best since what's backing the most retirement accounts in America today is that. But from January 21st through July 21st, the Dow Jones grew less than 1%. What about Bitcoin? President Trump loves Bitcoin, so it must have performed well, right? Well, it did. It grew nearly 15%, an impressive six-month investment. But it's not the number one. The heavyweight champion was, wait for it, gold and silver.

57:38Francis Foster:Gold and silver are considered to be safe haven investments, so many of you will be surprised to learn they both grew by a whopping 25 % in President Trump's first six months. 25 % in six months. Not bad for safe haven investments. Our partner, Augusta Precious Metals, specializes in helping Americans move wealth and retirement into self-directed IRAs backed by physical precious metals like gold and silver. They are consistently scored as the most trusted gold IRA company by major financial publications, and they enjoy an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. In a world where governments print money and rack up debt like it's going out of fashion, I like assets you can hold in your hand.

58:19Francis Foster:That's why I've always taken steps to secure my family's future with gold. If you have over$100 ,000 in your current IRA, 401k, or other retirement account, visit TriggerGold.com, that's TriggerGold.com, to learn how Augusta Precious Metals can become your lifelong self-directed IRA partner. This episode is brought to you by Master Chips. Here's something you might not know. All chips and fries used to be cooked in beef tallow. That is until the 1990s when big food companies swapped it out for cheap ultra-processed seed oils. Now, seed oils make up about 20 % of the average American calories, and they've been linked to inflammation, metabolic problems, and energy crashes.

59:08Master Chips decided to go back to the good stuff. Their tortilla chips are made from just three ingredients, organic nixtamalized corn, sea salt, and 100 % grass-fed beef tallow. That's it. No seed oils, no nonsense. They don't just leave out the bad stuff, they taste incredible. Crunchier than the usual junk, strong enough to scoop without snapping, and you don't feel bloated or sluggish after eating them. In fact, thanks to the tallow, they're actually satisfying. You eat a handful, feel good, and move on. Massa's got a serious fan base. Tens of thousands of happy customers. Plus endorsement from guys like Ben Greenfield and Gary Brecker.

59:56Ready to try them? Go to massachips.com slash trigger and use code trigger for 25 % off your first order. That's massachips.com slash trigger and use code trigger.

1:00:36Dominic Sandbrook:We'll be right back. Last visit, store for full terms. And when we think about Hitler, we think about the most evil man that has ever lived. And I think, look, obviously he's not. Is that true? No, no, no. Sorry, no, I was checking myself. I was saying, I was going to say, I don't know whether he is. But the fact that it's in my head is partly a result of education. Yeah. And we think about him as the most evil man that ever lived, even though Stalin killed more people, Mao killed more people, and yet you talk to the average person, and if someone says they're a communist, we just go, okay, he's communist.

1:01:18When someone says they're a Nazi... Yeah. How many conversations with Nazis are you having? Yeah. Quite a lot, mate, with our fan base. No, but genuinely, do you know what I mean?

1:01:29Dominic Sandbrook:No, I do know what you mean. I think it's a really funny thing. You know, I often tell this story. I was backpacking in Bulgaria with some student friends in the 1990s. And we were in this village, and there was a bloke there. He was, like, selling old communist memorabilia. And we were looking through it because, yeah, we were interested in history. We were kind of looking through it. Oh, look, there's a Medal of Stalin. There's all this kind of thing. And this bloke said, they have other tray. And he kind of pulled out this other tray underneath it. This is, like, the real tray. And the real tray was full of, like, SS stuff.

1:02:01Dominic Sandbrook:And we're like, oh, no, put it away, put it away, terrible. I'm not interested in that. But afterwards, we were talking about it, how our reactions were different, right? The communist stuff to a Brit in the 1990s was kind of slightly comical, right? You could have a hammer and sickle T-shirt as a student and people would kind of, you know, or CCCP or whatever, and no one's going to think anything of it, really. You know, it's a bit of an affectation. You're sort of showing off a little bit, but it's an aesthetic thing as much as anything. Obviously, you know, a swastika T-shirt, walking into a studio with a swastika T-shirt is pretty punchy and you're going to get a very different kind of reaction.

1:02:42Dominic Sandbrook:And I think obviously to some degree that reflects the fact that for us in Britain, Nazism was the real enemy. We're very conscious of the death toll. It seems nihilistic and horrendous and utterly beyond the pale, right? If somebody wears a swastika t-shirt, I think you pretty much say, okay, that's it. It's inconceivable to me that one of my friends would come in with a swastika t-shirt. Unless they're Hindu. Right, well, you're trying quite hard there. Or a famous rapper. You're wearing that hammer and sickle t-shirt in Poland or in the former occupied Eastern Europe. or you're walking around with a Khmer Rouge t-shirt in Cambodia or something.

1:03:29Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, that's obviously going to have a very, very difference. So it does slightly depend where you're standing.

1:03:35Francis Foster:Is that because there's also a perception of intentionality? There's the sense, I think most people fundamentally don't understand the thing we've been talking about in this conversation, which is the Nazis were also well-intentioned. They think the Nazis were just evil, whereas the communists were well-intentioned. I think you're right. And the things that they did were kind of like, well, they were trying to make they were trying to do good. But then they just put these people in camps. And also, I think the other thing as well, the difference is communists killed millions of people, Mao and Stalin.

1:04:07Francis Foster:A lot of the deaths were actually through incompetence and the inability of the economic model that they were applying to actually feed people. basically yeah right so that they do kill people deliberately of course they do stalin's purges the great terror yeah um you know but that doesn't compare to marching seven million people if you include all the different groups into yeah exactly you know i mean exactly there's not this sort of

1:04:31Dominic Sandbrook:there's not quite the same industrialized deliberate yeah uh methodical apparatus of

1:04:38Francis Foster:extermination but the really controversial thing i wanted to ask you is when francis said hitler's the most evil man, blah, blah, blah. Basically the most evil man. From my reading of World War II, like, I know this will be controversial. I'm not sure what the Japanese did in World War II wasn't worse than what the Germans did.

1:04:55Dominic Sandbrook:I think the death toll of... The Japanese don't have an exterminatory program in the same way that the Germans do. The Japanese... So if you're... Imagine you had a Japanese guest, right? A sort of nationalistic Japanese guest. That guest would say to you, I can't believe I've degenerated to impersonating a guy. I hope you don't do the accent, because that really would take us out of the line. He would presumably say, look, we're doing what European colonializes. I'll do it again.

1:05:22Francis Foster:We're butchering millions of people with shovels and bayonets and...

1:05:26Dominic Sandbrook:He would say violence happens, people. But he'd say, did not Dominic say earlier in the show that violence happens and bad things happen in all empires and so on and so forth? Why are you judging us by different standards? Yeah. He would probably say that. But wouldn't that have Hitler say that too? No, because I think Hitler, I mean Hitler might, but Hitler has an exterminatory program which very few other empires do. That's fair. So to give you an example that you mentioned, which is the Spanish in the Americas. The Spanish, a lot of people die when the Spanish arrive. Loads of people die. And they die through disease, they die through massacres, all of those kinds of things.

1:06:03Dominic Sandbrook:But the Spanish really don't want to kill a lot of people. What they really want is workers. and they're gutted when all these people start dying in the Caribbean or whatever. So the so-called genocide that the Spanish carry out in the Caribbean, the Taino people, when there are none of them left, right, within a couple of decades. And the Spanish were really disappointed because they'd wanted these people to be working the gold mines and whatnot for them. They don't want to go to the Americas and kill loads of people. It's not part of their program. They want to make loads of money, and if they have to kill a few people, fair enough.

1:06:33Dominic Sandbrook:As they say, that's part of the game. but they don't have a genocidal program. The Third Reich is unusual in having a deliberate genocidal program.

1:06:43Francis Foster:Even the Mongols weren't really genocidal. They were like, either surrender or we'll kill you. Right, exactly. Sacking your city is just far for the course, right? That's what they think. So that's what makes the Nazis kind of different.

1:06:53Dominic Sandbrook:I think it makes them really chilling and unsettling. and there is a sort of this application of the apparatus of industrial modernity to killing people. I think that's what a lot of people, it's like, you know, you think about some of the most chilling films about the Holocaust. There's the film Conspiracy, which is about the Van Zee Conference, and it's literally just people sitting around a table like this talking about, you know, how they're going to organize the infrastructure. Yeah. Or the film, I can't remember the title now, where you never see it, but you hear it, where it's set just over there.

1:07:29Dominic Sandbrook:It's the camp commandant at Auschwitz. Very recent film, did really well. And, again, you don't see what's happening in the camp, but you see the banality and the ordered, methodical, almost sort of humdrum nature of the apparatus of killing. I think that's what we find really terrifying about the Nazis. And that's different, I think, from, let's say, Stalin's great terror. I mean, it's not unlike other terrorists in history. There's a sort of an ad hoc nature to it. It's a regime trying to purge people within it. We've seen it many times in history. It's on a much bigger scale, of course. But it doesn't have that kind of, quite have that cold.

1:08:12Francis Foster:It's kind of like the French Revolution and what happened after it. Because basically, you've got a bunch of these like crazy lunatic revolutionaries. revolutionaries and you can't really run a country like that so you have to kill them off and then you kill off the people who kill them off and you until you you you really it's the idea of the

1:08:26Dominic Sandbrook:enemy within yeah i think the idea of the enemy within um is a very the traitor within is a is a really dangerous one once you go down that road so it almost always happens with revolutionary regimes they're in battle from the very beginning because they've got the the old regime they're worried they're going to come back or they've got foreign adversaries they've got foreign adversaries as they did in the French Revolution. So I'm getting so excited talking about the French Revolution that I can't even speak. And then when you start looking at your kind of, you look in internally and you look at domestic opposition, you say, well, these people are not just critics or opponents, they're traitors.

1:09:07Dominic Sandbrook:And they're a threat to our revolution, then they've got to go. And you see that again and again. And what's really interesting and worrying at the same time is you look at our economy, which is faltering, to put it mildly. People are getting poorer. People aren't going to be able to... I'm intrigued about where you're going to go with it. Are you going to ask the key question, which is basically, is Keir Starmer Stalin? Yes, exactly. I don't think he's that competent, if I'm going to be honest with you, or has the courage of his convictions either. But I guess my point is, do you get concerned when you see us enter these kind of economic times where richer and richer and poorer gap is getting ever wider, people are struggling economically, that we're going to enter more turbulent times.

1:09:53And these are the times where utopianism, socialism, you know, these people are bad. That's going to start to creep in as people look quite naturally for someone to play. Am I concerned about it?

1:10:07Dominic Sandbrook:I think it will happen, but I'm not concerned about it because I think that's history right that's just what happens that's a really reason not to be concerned about

1:10:15Francis Foster:it no offense uh my entire family is going to get wiped out but that's history mate you know don't worry about it what i think that is what i think what do you mean that's what you think

1:10:24Dominic Sandbrook:i think that's what i i think that's what you have children right yeah so what if they all get killed and you're not concerned about this what i will say to my son you know the lesson of history is your neighbors will probably try to kill and eat you so make sure you kill them first He is right wing. I think that's like complaining, are you not concerned that very soon, you know, the summer will be over and winter will come. I'm like, of course I'm not concerned about it. I mean, I know it's going to happen. It'd be a waste of time to lie awake worrying about it. I think people who, like us, you know, born in the post-war period, grew up in the years of affluence sort of came of age in the post-Cold War era, end of history, you know, liberal democracy, we still, even though we intellectually maybe think, oh, yeah, I know that's not the norm and I know history is much darker.

1:11:17Dominic Sandbrook:But I think still instinctively we kind of think, it'd be nice if it was like that all the time, you know? It'd be nice if it was just economic growth and everybody was happy. It would be nice. It would be nice, but it's never going to happen. The 21st century will see loads of wars and disasters. There'll be a lot of, you know, am I worried about people being scapegoated or whatever? I mean, I guess it's sad that it happens. It is sad that it happens for the avoidance of Tappi. It is sad that it happens, but it's going to happen. Like, history's not going to stop. There will be people who are tremendous villains who will come to power, and there will be, you know, massacres and stuff.

1:11:55Dominic Sandbrook:because human nature is never going to change. People will always keep behaving badly, and stuff will keep happening, and there will be migrant crises, and there will be coups, and there will be a revolution somewhere, and all of those things will happen. Am I concerned about it? Not really, because I spent all my life reading about it, about it happening in the past, and I know that history is not suddenly going to stop. You know, I'm not Tony Blair or Bill Clinton thinking that, brilliant, the world is perfect, We're in 1999 and let's hope that nothing ever happens.

1:12:27Francis Foster:The world was pretty good in 1999, don't you think? It really was. It was a great time.

1:12:35Dominic Sandbrook:It was a great time. I guess it kind of was, but obviously we think that for very contingent reasons. There are lots of places where it wasn't great. Yeah, we don't care about them.

1:12:43Francis Foster:I'm talking about for us.

1:12:45Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, it was great for us. I think this is precisely the problem, right? This is the problem about us having a slightly starry-eyed view of humanity and how history works and what the future will bring. You know, that sort of sense that people have now where they sort of, you know, talk about, oh, Britain's in such a mess, the Western world tearing itself apart. We live in an age of populism and polarization. Isn't that a terrible shame and blah, blah, blah, blah. And often I'm like, you know what? When we talk about how terrible everything is, most people in history would say, well, A, those things are completely normal.

1:13:17Dominic Sandbrook:I mean, that's just life. And B, you've got all those things that we always had, but also you're living until you're 80 and you have central heating and you get to go on holiday all the time and all this kind of thing.

1:13:28Francis Foster:And your children survive into adulthood and all of that.

1:13:30Dominic Sandbrook:What are you whinging about?

1:13:31Francis Foster:I think what people are whinging about, and I don't blame them, is that things are moving in a downward direction. Right. That's what people are whinging about. Because objectively speaking, I completely agree with you. Life's f***ing great. Right. And my pinned thing on my Twitter is the West is brilliant. There's a clip of me talking about why we're all lucky. And we are lucky to live here. But I'd quite like my children and grandchildren to also feel lucky to live where we live. And that's what people are concerned about. Of course.

1:13:58Dominic Sandbrook:I understand why they're concerned about that. But your point is that there's nothing you can do about it. I don't necessarily think that. There'll be lots of winners. There always are. The nature of being a parent is you want your children to be among the winners and not the losers. Indeed. But ultimately the nature of being a parent is also realizing that you can't control your child's destiny. So to some degree you do your best, but there's no much point worrying about it. I just always think, you know, a thing that always plays on my mind, I think about this a lot, is what it would have been like to have been a German in 1910.

1:14:33Dominic Sandbrook:You live in a newly unified country where life really has got a lot better in the last few decades. You live in one of the most sophisticated, civilized...

1:14:42Francis Foster:The German people were amazing. This is the thing that we all lose because of everything that happened after 1910, quite rightly. They were an amazing people. Right. So advanced in so many different... Yeah. Like reading about the... They were... You kind of read it and you go, Hitler kind of had a bit of a point. This was like a superior race to some extent in terms of all the industrial development. Right, scientific... I'm joking, obviously, but you know what I mean. They were incredible.

1:15:08Dominic Sandbrook:Right, of course. And so that's 1910. If someone says to you then, well, how do you think the future will play out? You'd be like, well, it'll probably be like this. Yeah, it's going to be great. And actually, you know what? You could not conceive of how terrible it's going to be. So looking forward, do I worry? Looking forward to the future? I just think it's unknowable. And there are societies right now that seem sophisticated, safe, united, that may well, you know, in 2050 you'll be talking about it and saying, my God, who knew that Belgium would have a civil war that would last 20 years or whatever.

1:15:43Dominic Sandbrook:Silly example, but you just simply cannot predict what will happen. And do I worry about it? I don't really worry because I just think that really is a waste of time.

1:15:52Francis Foster:That's a really interesting way of looking at it. Maybe as we wrap up, the one thing it's probably worth asking as well is, you've delivered a masterclass of presenting the tragic vision. Thomas Sowell talks about this kind of being the core of the more right of center, the more conservative worldview, really, which is human nature is what it is. Technology changes, therefore we express human nature in different ways. Yes, exactly. Oh, before we get to that, actually, something else I was going to ask you, which ties into this. Do you think that nuclear weapons fundamentally changed the course of human history because this peace dividend that we've had is actually because of nuclear weapons.

1:16:32Francis Foster:Yes, I do. Is that why? I do.

1:16:34Dominic Sandbrook:I think there would have been a third world war with that nuclear weapon. That makes sense to me. There's no question in my mind. I think there would have been a war. Maybe not immediately. Well, we'd be in one now, right?

1:16:42Francis Foster:I mean, Russia, Ukraine probably would have become...

1:16:45Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, it could be. It could be. I think there would definitely have been a war probably over Berlin. Maybe it would have been delayed until 1960, 61 or something like that. Right. But it would have come. Then human missile crisis, obviously, what holds them back is the fear of nuclear annihilation. Again, in the early 1980s, you could have had multiple world wars during the Cold War. And every time they're held back by nuclear weapons.

1:17:11Francis Foster:It's so fascinating. It's almost like human nature in that way, where the worst thing is also the best thing, because nuclear weapons probably will lead to the annihilation of all humanity at some point. It's very possible, in my opinion. But also it's why we've avoided a global war. Yeah, I agree. It's so weird. But anyway, coming back to this tragic vision which you presented, I feel like the way we talk about modern things that are going on, conflict in Russia and Ukraine, in Israel and Gaza, is partly because we've lost that. Do you get where I'm going with this?

1:17:47Dominic Sandbrook:I do. Yeah, I do. Sorry, I was distracted by the fact that I was resting my foot on your foot and I thought it would pass the table. I quite enjoyed it. And actually, there's quite a lot that happens under the table. It's unbelievable.

1:17:57Francis Foster:You don't get that on every podcast, do you? You go and tell Rogan, you're not going to get that. Yeah, people always go, why haven't you got enough female guests? It's because of him. Listen, I can't help you. Women aren't into that sort of shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:18:10Dominic Sandbrook:Sad. It doesn't often happen on podcasts where the host is playing footsie with you under the table. But, yeah, you know, something happens every day. We give you the special treatment. So in the sense that we're talking about those wars and we're surprised by them, we're surprised what happened and we're very moralistic in the way we interpret it.

1:18:23Francis Foster:And the way we talk about them, you know, genocide, like everything's a genocide now. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? I do.

1:18:29Dominic Sandbrook:I do know what you mean. There's the language of, we're sort of, we're horrified, we're surprised. We reach for extreme language to describe what we're saying. Yeah. And I think maybe the war in Ukraine is a really good example of this because Putin, if he was here now, would say, and he said it himself, you know, I'm doing what Peter the Great did. I'm doing what Catherine the Great did. I want to make Russia strong, and that's my job. And I really would like an outlet on the Black Sea. You know, I'd like Crimea. And actually, I'd really like Ukraine to be a puppet state. And that's what empires do.

1:19:03Dominic Sandbrook:We want puppets to bring back puppet states.

1:19:05Francis Foster:And this is our sphere of influence, and we'll do whatever the hell we want.

1:19:07Dominic Sandbrook:We'll do what we want because that's what big powers do. That's exactly what he would say. And he would say, look at you having your hissy fit about it. Now, I think Putin's a terrible man, very committed to the defense of Ukraine. But I think pretending that Putin is something abnormal is a weird way of thinking about it.

1:19:25Francis Foster:I've been very, very pro-Ukraine, but on the basis of exactly what you're saying, which is, of course he's going to do that. That's why he can't be allowed to do it. Yeah, exactly. Do you know what I mean? It's the most obvious thing in the world. He wants to conquer that country, and it's not in our interest to let him.

1:19:39Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, that's exactly my... I wrote this column, actually, before the war happened, just as he was gearing up. And there were people saying, oh, he's not going to do it. He's not going to do it. it or is he going to do it? And I said, I wrote to Gollum saying, I think he is going to do it because thinking about Putin, the way he sees the world, why wouldn't you do it? He thinks the West is really divided and weak. It was about the point where I get the example at the time, there was a massive hullabaloo about Boris Johnson having a cake or something to do with COVID. And I was like, he looks at the West right now.

1:20:07Dominic Sandbrook:Joe Biden is 3 ,000 years old. Boris Johnson is battling with a cake or whatever. Why wouldn't you, if you're him and you have that ruthless, cold-blooded, amoral view of human relations and all you care about is basically old-fashioned Russian imperialism, why wouldn't you do it? Totally. And that's, so I think, so when people are, is Putin mad? What? He's not mad. He would say, I'm doing exactly what empire builders have done all through history. Now, I don't want his empire to succeed. I don't like it, so I think we should stop him. Right. But I don't delude myself about what the nature of the game is.

1:20:40Francis Foster:It's why I never used all this bullshit language about, like, it's an illegal war. What do you mean?

1:20:44Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, I agree with you about that.

1:20:46Francis Foster:What does that even mean?

1:20:47Dominic Sandbrook:I think I agree with you completely, and I think most people who... I don't want to completely go down the road of saying might is right, but most wars that have ever been fought were, in averted commas, illegal wars, right? A hundred years war, a legal war. I mean, maybe Edward III would have said it was because of his claim to the throne of France, but come on. You know, this is the point about the conservative view of human nature, I suppose, right? that people will try to do what they can to maximize their own power and their own stability and security. And we shouldn't be surprised when somebody who is not our friend tries to do that, you know, when tries to benefit his own country at the expense of others.

1:21:26Dominic Sandbrook:Putin would say, you've misunderstood the game. You don't understand the rules. I'm playing the game properly, and you clowns in the West, you know, preening yourselves about your principles, have misunderstood what we're all doing. And it's also as well, like you use the word amoral, I imagine Putin would push back on that and go, I'm not amoral. I am doing something very moral, which is the best for my country. Yeah, he would. And that's a fair point. I think one thing that's, I think, really interesting that we have lost is a sense of national interest. There's a famous interview of the story often told, somebody sitting next to the then cabinet secretary, I think it was Sir Gus O'Donnell.

1:22:04Dominic Sandbrook:And they asked him, what's more important, in your view, for you to do as the British cabinet secretary? Is it Britain's interest or the world's interest. And he said, I'd like to think it's the world's interest. I'm like, well, I think it should be Britain's interests. I think, again, you're misunderstanding the nature of the game you're playing because let me tell you, the Chinese aren't thinking, oh, I'll do what's in Britain's interest. If you're not thinking it, nobody else is. And I think we have, partly as a result of the understandable revulsion at the excesses of nationalism in the first half of the 20th century, partly because we built this kind of liberal rules-based international order and so on that so many people are very committed to, we have actually lost sense of the fact that there is a competitive element to world affairs in which basically, you know, you do what you can for your team and that that means another team will lose out.

1:22:56Dominic Sandbrook:And that's, again, that's the nature of the game.

1:22:58Francis Foster:Dominic, it's been great having you on. We're going to head over to Substack where our audience get to ask you their questions. But before we do, the last question we always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

1:23:08Dominic Sandbrook:So it's something that you've actually alluded to already. So I was gutted when you brought it up because I was freeing and priding myself on having thought of this. It's actually nuclear annihilation. I think it's interesting how much for me growing up in the early 1980s, this was a constant threat. You know, it was on TV. There were dramas about it. There were people protesting about nuclear weapons. You know, it was Ronald Reagan going to press the button, all of this kind of thing. And now, of course, we live in an age where we don't really talk about it very much at all. As an omnipresent fear, it has vanished.

1:23:43Dominic Sandbrook:Yet there are more countries with nuclear capability. And to go back to the whole argument about human nature, nuclear weapons I do think probably have saved lives since the Second World War and prevented wars. But human nature being as it is, one day people will use them. And they'll use them, I think, out of fear because I think that's how war starts. They will use them not because they are mad or because they're evil, but because they're frightened and they feel they have no alternative. And especially in a world where AI will be running a lot of these defense programs, I think once that process starts, it will be very difficult to stop.

1:24:24Dominic Sandbrook:And it's a bit like, you know, if you're a sort of existentialist philosopher or something, you think to yourself, how can people walk around knowing that they're all going to die? Like, why are they bothering buying a sandwich from Pret-a-Manger and making plans for Sunday when actually their own inevitable extinction is coming? And the reason is, of course, your own inevitable extinction is too big a thing to think about, and it would paralyze you. And I sometimes wonder, you know, will our descendants living in their kind of irradiated ruins say, how could they walk around saying how brilliant life is, you know, knowing that they're sitting on all this stuff, that one day probably it will go off and it'll kill everybody and destroy civilization?

1:25:03Dominic Sandbrook:And the answer is, I guess, that we're mugs. We're blind. We're willfully blind to the potential that this stuff has. And also there's no one inventing it, right? Never going to go away. We're just stuck with it now. So, yeah, that's a cheery thought. You really are an optimist. Yeah, we're all going to die in a nuclear holocaust.

1:25:20Francis Foster:But you seem to believe that there will be people who live after that, which makes you an optimist.

1:25:25Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, sort of mutant half-crab, half-human, scuttling in the ruins. And on that, no.

1:25:31Francis Foster:On that happy note, head on over to Substack where Dominic's going to answer your questions. Are there any key moments in history of what-if scenarios that you believe could have dramatically altered the outcome of a particular battle and in turn changed the course of a war?

1:25:58We'll be right back.