Before The Storm: Drumbeat Of War (Part 2)

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4:06At Shadow Thierry, the military policeman in the middle of the road looked at our press cards, shrugged his shoulders and said it wasn't his responsibility to stop us, but that we would probably not get through to Reims. At Reims, they shrugged their shoulders and said they'd probably stop us at Verdun. At Verdun, they said we would surely be stopped at Metz. And at Metz, nobody paid us any attention. All the photographs and books of boyhood came to life around me. I was living in the exact world of 1914. Camouflaged buses, the buses of Paris, were loaded with infantry and rived in long lines over the rolling hills, past the overgrown bunkers which had been the old trenches, past a rusted tank which had been left by the road as a souvenir these twenty years.

4:56In the barrels of their old rifles, some of the French conscripts had stuck long-stemmed purple flowers. They'd done that too before. Decrepit trucks bumped along pulling 75s, and plodding horses were still drawing the old-fashioned soup kitchens, the steam rising from the stew inside. It was all the same. The projector had stopped in 1918, and now was turning again. And that was the American war reporter Eric Severide, writing about his experience of visiting the front line in the autumn of 1939. And yes, if the French army looks a little bit old fashioned, well, that's because it was. It's the long and short of it.

5:41Al Murray: That's what we're going to discuss in this episode. Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland. For the second episode in our series called Before the Storm about the phony war, the Sitzkrieg, the war with no war. In the last episode, we looked at the Germans, a German state of preparation, German resilience, to use a modern buzzword. And then we had a look at the British army, the most modern mechanised army in the world, for sure, but also with its own sets of problems. And now it is the turn of La France. The thing is, Severed there has visited the French army and he's saying it's just like the exact world of 1914.

6:20Al Murray: Interestingly, in our last episode, James, we talked about the Germans being horse-drawn. And, you know, in years gone by in this podcast, you've done that thing of getting a picture of German horses at a watering hole and saying, well, what year was this taken? Is this from which war is this from? Is it from is it for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870? Or is it the First World War? Is it the Second World War? And inevitably, it's always the Second World War, because otherwise, what's the point of showing us the picture? But very often, we've looked at footage, though, of the British army in 1939, and they're still in their tunics from the First World War.

6:57Al Murray: I've watched that footage with you, and you've gone, oh, I don't like it. I don't like it. It makes it look old-fashioned.

7:05Oh, I can't stand it. They should be in their battle dress. There's only one uniform for me, and that's the battle dress.

7:09Al Murray: But here we do have genuinely an army that is living in the not too distant past. And this is the thing is, this is the army that held the line at Verdun, that in the end was part of the defeat of the Germans in the First World War, and that fought valiantly and gallantly against terrible odds and in terrible, epic meat grinder battles, the like of which, you know, Verdun is probably a complete one-off in military history, isn't it? in terms of blood spilt, the stalemate, you know, makes everything else look like a little half-hearted, I think. Yet the French army for Severide is very much the same objet, the same thing it was in the previous war.

7:54Al Murray: So who is he, this guy Severide? What are the circumstances? Well, he's a fascinating man. He's a terrific writer. He's a great war reporter. I think he works at CBS. Yes. You know, he's in the kind of Ed Murrow kind of bold. And these are, they're worldly, they're international, they're cosmopolitan, they're East Coast. And he's over here right from the start of the war, making almost daily broadcasts of the war news from Europe over to the United States. And he watches the, he's watched the arrival of British troops in Cherbourg. And then he reaches the Maginot line with a number of other journalists, including the New Zealander Geoffrey Cox, who's a mate of his.

8:37And no journalists are technically allowed there, but as he kind of wrote in that opening quote, they managed to get through two checkpoints to reach Mets and then drive straight onto the front line, and no one's stopping them. And he sees these long lines of camouflaged Parisian buses and horses pulling soup kitchens and men wearing the same oval helmets of the First World War, and the rest of the uniform is now khaki, but it's still got those great coats with the kind of folded back bits that you see of the poilu in the first world war they were then red you know start of the war they were red trousers with blue trench coats and by the end of the war they were kind of like blue trench coats all the way through and trousers but they're the same pattern nothing's changed at all and they still have puttees you know these strips of wool that you tie around your shins and all the way up to your knee and the uniform retains a very very strong 19th century feel they still got long tunics underneath and you can't help but think this must be detrimental to the soldier's mindset because you know a modern uniform is needed to instill confidence that you're in a modern army right i mean it's that's part of the point of the battle dress is it's it says that was then this is now we're new we've upgraded the point about the battle dress is the first time ever that short jackets are employed on mat i mean okay so cavalry tunics were short in the cavalry era of the 19th century but but uniforms are psychological as much as they're practical i think that's the thing to bear in mind and afterwards he and jeffrey cox drive into the low countries which are belgium and the netherlands are technically neutral and belgium won't allow britain or france to build defensive lines along the German-Belgian border due to their neutrality, which is exactly the same condition as it was in 1914.

10:31And King Leopold, who is the king of the Belgians, and the Belgian government assumed that the Germans will honour their neutrality, just as they assumed they would honour their neutrality in 1914.

10:43Al Murray: No! Given the last time the Germans didn't, and this German government is of a completely different gravy to that one, I mean, honestly... Yes, even less trustworthy, if such a thing were possible. Well, they've gone and invaded Poland, having said they wouldn't. I mean, come on. The thing is, this flies in the face of the military reality of what's actually going on here. Because the Maginot Line, no one's going to try and take that on because it's been designed to deter you. No one would do it. Exactly. It's a deterrent, literally, to deter you from taking that particular course of action. You know, the Belgians have got that wrong.

11:17Al Murray: And anyway, you know, it's happened in Czechoslovakia. It's already happened, for God's sake. and you could say that you've been able to contain germany defensively at least if the sudayton lands defenses hadn't been surrendered without a fight after munich if france and britain had managed to talk the low countries and scandinavia to reinforce their borders and you know an early creation of mutual aid and defense proper strategic coordinated deterrent action may well have deterred germany rather than the french acting unilaterally i don't think there's any doubt about it i don't think there's any doubt about it if you've been allowed to move up and but have a series of defences all along the Dutch-Belgian border.

11:53And they can still say we're neutral. We're just, you know, we're just a deterrence, but we are neutral.

11:58Al Murray: Is that the thing that's the failure of the 1930s, or is it the failure of appeasement? That, I think, is the question, isn't it? Is it the failure of deterrence rather than a failure of an appeasement posture, so to speak? Those arguments are very hard to untangle. So Severide and Cox, they drive around the Low Countries, and they find it all very depressing. And, of course, part of the view at the time is that the Ardennes, this dense area of forests crisscrossed with tracks and valleys and i mean this is the thing is where we went to the ardennes an awful lot of it is open space actually but it's pockets of woodland roads with steep gradient winding roads around river valleys and all this sort of stuff yeah and full credit to severide when he goes around you know he's saying at the time oh this is not very well defended is it what happens if the germans come through here that won't happen they never do that it's impossible it is impossible they're impossible um but and he goes to see a belgian colonel and it discovers that the belgian colonel says yeah half my regiment had gone awol gone home can't be asked cba well yeah because there is because there's a war but there's no war is that part of the other problem here there's no strategic direction or intent and they go to when they visit holland it looks like normal life has reasserted itself it's just continuing that state of mobilization in belgium and holland is seems to be invisible yeah and i mean it's interesting there's a there's a there's a one dutch guy i can't remember his name he's called gert something he's in his 30s but he's a reservist of course because you do national description then you have to be on the reserve so suddenly he gets mobilized and you know of all his mates and they have to kind of go and dig out their uniforms from the kind of attic and it's his is a bit moth-eaten because he hasn't touched it in you know a dozen years and he puts it on and waves the family goodbye and he's sort of thinking well hopefully i'll just go over do a bit refresher and then i'll be back in a few weeks you know that's the mindset you know that's the attitude that this can't possibly happen this is not gonna happen again we'll be all right you know blah blah blah so i mean that's an american's bird's eye view of what worm's eye view of what's going on in in europe but um yeah across the other side of the atlantic we and and those of you have listened to our visionary series will will be a be across some of this president franklin delano roosevelt is looking at a basic problem which is there's a war but his country is just not interested no and and there is and there is this ongoing feeling that the merchants of death had been the kind of big business that spoiled it which is why you've only got six ordnance factories and only one factory in the whole United States making any kind of explosive whatsoever.

14:41So they're really horrendously behind. And polls in September 1939 show that only 2.5 % of the population think the US should enter the war. So put it another way, that's 97.5 % don't. Getting on for 40%, 37.5 % think the US should take no sight, stay out of the war completely, offer goods on a cash-and-carry basis to anyone. and 29.9 % don't want any US involvement at all, not even goods, just uh-uh.

15:08Al Murray: Forget about it. Yeah, incredible. But Roosevelt is pretty convinced that America may well have an unavoidable role to play. And I think it is at this moment that I hand over to James Holland for his, I think, superlative FDR. Because he says... He says, we in the americas are no longer a faraway continent to which the eddies of controversies beyond the seas could bring no interest or no harm the vast amount of our resources the vigor of our commerce and the strength of our men made have made us vital factors in world peace whether we choose it or not and of course he's buying money um and he sees a worst case scenario which to the Nazis winning in Europe.

15:55Al Murray: And then they come over to target Latin America and they make their way up to the US, which then leaves him in real trouble in the Pacific because Japan can strike in the Pacific because he's looking in two directions. America is a global player. Were it light or not? Expressions of isolationism are acknowledgements that there is a global order, aren't they? Because you're rejecting that. He wants to repeal the Neutrality Act. He wants to adopt a cash and carry, which after all, there is political support for, as we said. He'd take nearly 40 % of the electorate with him if he goes cash and carry but you know which will exclusively benefit britain and france and that obviously just just to reiterate the point that cash and carry favors britain and france because they've got the means of they've got the cash and they've got the means of carrying it they've got ships which germany doesn't so so cash and carry is very much an allied centric yes and the royal navy could can after all blockade german ships sink german ships leaving an american harbor can't they there's the long and the short of it if they want to but he still has to avoid at aggravating the isolationists though, which is why he frames all this in terms of they're just trying to stay out of the war.

16:59Al Murray: All I'm trying to do is keep us out of the war. Yeah. But we've got to admit there is one and we've got to accept that there is one. Our acts must be guided by one single hard-headed thought, keeping America out of this war. There we are. And luckily, Congress agrees with him, votes to repeal the arms embargo by the beginning of November. and this means that u.s yeah so this is a repeal of the neutrality act as they were called and this means that american industry and manufacturing capacity is um now um the disposal of britain and france and enormous orders go in gigantic orders for aircraft and rifles and vehicles immediately gigantic orders well the the nazi leadership know all this you know they know that they are up against France, which is a mighty industrial nation with a very, very large army and Atlantic frontage.

17:50They're up against Britain, which has the largest merchant navy in the world, the largest navy in the world, which has already imposed an economic blockade. And they now know from November onwards with the repeal of the New Trinity Acts that America has laid down its colours in favour of the Allies and has inordinate manufacturing capacity compared to anyone else in the world and is the most modern nation on the planet. So they also know that Poland, yes, they got away with it, but it was slightly squeaky bum time and lots and lots of shortcomings emerging. So the idea of taking on Britain and France together in a single strike in the West seems absolutely suicidal to almost everyone within the Wehrmacht.

18:35Al Murray: Not everyone. No, it is up for it. But it also, Jim, you could say that it argues for getting it done right now. That this changes set of circumstances, argues for doing it now, doing it right now, before everyone else catches us up. If you're of Hitler's temperament, this offers circumstances for pressurising the situation, saying we have to do this right this minute, before all that stuff starts to arrive. So you can almost see why he might think like this, almost. So the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, which is the supreme military command of Nazi Germany, it has a war and economics office, which von Schell, who we talked about in the last episode, the plenipotentiary for motor vehicles, he's part of the OKW.

19:17Al Murray: And what they really are, rather than, like, they're not really like the chiefs, imperial general staff in Britain, which is, their job is to, you know, cook up military strategy, satisfactory to the politicians, and then filter it down to the people that have to enact it. They're basically doing what Hitler wants. Because Hitler is where that buck stops. And so the operational staff at OKW, which includes Volta Volomont, who we met at the end of the previous episode, they're really Hitler's personal military officers rather than an operational outfit making operational decisions. And everyone else regards them as Hitler's puppets.

19:56Al Murray: They think that OKW is a joke, really. And they just do what he wants. Yes, and Keitel is known as Lachitel, which means lackey. Exactly, yeah. And Wollerman, he doesn't like the decision to attack the West. He's worried. Such a lack of foresight seems almost incomprehensible. But there are people who believe in Hitler and Hitler's... All the dice that Hitler have rolled so far have all come up double sixes. So there's that impetus of his political luck, isn't there? But there is a difficult relationship between the here, between the army and OKW. you and this is made worse by the fact that these top okay double officials they immediately they're supporting hitler's decisions they just despite the private concerns that we you know we have that thing of people saying one thing in private another thing in public that underlined well i think underlines human affairs let's be honest now we we encountered a lot of it when we looked at japan's road to war with with america where that was going on everywhere and it and it's happening here and it you know yes what was it called on a cutter name wasn't it and the army has to do all the planning for the okw decision which is only going to generate resentment isn't it yeah of course so franz halder who's the army chief of staff he's disgusted as much as volimont is now we need to look at franz halder because he's an incredibly important player he certainly is in these early years of the war yeah and as a moment of opportunity so my guess jim is that he joins the army before the first world war he does well in the first world war and then he stays in the very much that he stays in the um in the army after the first world war with probably with an iron cross well amazing um but he stays in the here and then he ends up uh gone through the staff college catches the eye of key people as an excellent staff officer um by the way if you want to know where that with an amazing attention if you're a new listener and you're wondering why we've adopted that tone um last year before we have waste fest funf we did a a roundup of the best and worst German officers and all of them had that biography.

21:54Al Murray: Every single one of them had that exact biography. To the man. To the man. But he is an expert on training. He does have a great eye for detail. He doesn't really like the Nazis. He doesn't really like Hitler. But he's good at his job. And so his plan for the Polish invasion, that was his plan that worked so well. And now he's got to plan an attack on the west yes um and it just so you know so you can picture him he's got glasses he's got a close crop hair he doesn't have a prussian mustache he's clean shaven for the most part and you know that's what he looks like so he looks he looks like he looks like a desk waller which is what he is yeah yeah he's really good at his job and um he's one of those people he's loyal to the army so he's not going to produce a tough plan because he doesn't like hitler he's going to do his best for his blokes is the thing so that's why he's producing good plans and he's told in directive number six from hitler on the 6th of october the aim is to defeat the french army and its allies and to win as much territory as possible in holland belgium and northern france to serve as a base for the successful prosecution of the air and sea war against england i'm glad you brought back some energy into this some hit hitlerian that's the directive number six from the man himself and the and i think that's very interesting isn't it because that territory across the english channel and the north sea from britain is the one thing that's going to make the british twitchy yes but what's interesting about this is halder opposes the plan and and to the point that he actually does want to sabotage it he wants to make it so yeah so uh crap that hitler will be just incredible amazing this isn't it given the job he did in poland he thinks he thinks i'm going to come up with something that that stinks so that the hitler will go oh you know what we'll have to do something else we'll have to find another turn of action so he what he wants to do is a thrust through belgium to the coast and hitler says no it's a terrible idea um come up with something else no but what does hitler really say hitler says this is not a plan to decide right requires at this moment of destiny essentially exactly that that's much more like it i think every time we're paraphrasing hitler We should just go into...

24:11OK, fine.

24:11Al Murray: I'm happy to do that for you. And what's really interesting, though, is Halder, at this point, he does dislike Hitler to the point where he's involved in a plot to assassinate him. This is absolutely amazing, isn't it? Yes. This is with von Lieb and Ritter von Lieb, who is, at the time, the commander of Army Group C. Karl Heinrich von Stultzegel, who is Halder's deputy at the OKH, and Ludwig Beck, who had been Halder's predecessor at the Army. who'd resigned because of the and resigned in opposition to the war back in august yes and who's then in valkyrie and is played in the film by terence stamp it is however quite difficult to get support for the plot and amazingly he was going around with a loaded pistol in his pocket in case he gets the chance to kill hitler himself i mean yes yes yes yes but there's this brilliant moment where where halder kind of froze in the towel of the whole assassination idea.

25:06Because von Brauchitsch, who is the head, the chief, you know, commander in chief of the OKH, the army, he presents Halder's second plan to Hitler in November. And it's basically the same as the first, but includes the second simultaneous Frost South. And von Brauchitsch tells Hitler, the army's just aren't ready for a major offensive like this.

25:26Al Murray: What do you mean they are not ready? What do you mean they are not ready? My army is ready. It has defeated the Poles already. Crushed Poland. We will now crush the French. It's will, will get us through. And every time Hitler lets rip at von Brauchitsch, he sits there like this and shakes, basically. And he comes back and he needs 24 hours to recover from this kind of tongue lashing that he has from Hitler. I mean, it's absolutely incredible. And he admits to how he just couldn't stand up to him. He had no words to say to this invective that had come his way. and he offers his resignation but Hitler refuses it and obviously Hitler wants to control it he wants yes men and people that are going to be pliable so then Hitler makes this comment and sort of goes you know I know what the problem is it's the spirit of Zossen you know which is where the Zossen is south east of Berlin and it's the big base where the army has its headquarters and when Halder hears this he assumes that Hitler has somehow got wind of the assassination plot and that is what he's referring to on the spirit of Zossen.

26:37Or at any rate, he doesn't want to test this and doesn't want to risk it. So he rushes around burning any incriminating pieces of paper and removes the pistol from his pocket every time he from henceforth sees the Fuhrer, and that's the end of it.

26:53Al Murray: Yeah, and eventually, in fact, comes properly into his orbit, doesn't he? It's the thing. The tragedy of Haldur goes from being a man ready to slot the guy to being completely complicit. Well, his strategy now is to not rush it. He thinks, okay, well, I'm going to have to come up with a plan, but let's try and give ourselves some breathing space. Let's try and kick this can down the road until the spring at the very earliest. It's basically his strategy, which it has to be said works. In the last, we looked at what was in the British inventory in the last episode, and we looked at the Bren gun, didn't we, James?

27:27Al Murray: So let's just take a glance at what they've got on the other side of the hill. everything about the german military is geared up for a short war yeah from the uniforms to everything and really if you want to look at one weapon yeah that is seen as fearsome and representative of of the blitzkrieg and the efficiency of the germans in the early part of war is probably the mg34 which we're going to talk about after the break

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30:54Al Murray: right welcome back to we have ways of making you talk with me i'm i'm james holland uh and our series about the phony war and uh we're looking at some of the sort of stuff available to the germans and the fact that the germans are wedded to a quick war knock them over knock them out carry on with the new political status quo way of doing things which after all is how bismarck united germany in the 19th century it's by knocking out his rival states knocking them over quickly and then and then subsuming them into greater germany so but we offered people we dangled people the prospect of a look at the mg34 gym in the previous half so take us through this i think it's fair to say legendary weapon it's developed by the the firm rheinmetall in in the 1930s obviously gets adopted in 34 in 1934 which is what's called the mg34 and it is designed as a kind of all encompassing light machine gun that can be used in multiple different roles so it's It's an infantry weapon.

31:50It's an anti-aircraft gun, also to be mounted on vehicles. And because of its anti-aircraft gun nature and because it wants to be put on vehicles, it is considered that a rapid rate of fire is a huge advantage because that means you can get a lot of bullets in an arc very, very quickly. And it is rolled steel. It has multiple touches on it. The attention to detail on it is incredible. It has detachable stock, various accoutrements. So it comes with a kind of a leather case, which is wood lined to keep the leather case sturdy. And in it, it's got a little oiler with a little chain, which is sort of gossamer thin, but very precise and beautiful.

32:32Even the screw tap has got little grooves in it so that you can grip it more easily. This is the Rolls Royce of machine guns. As you know, I've got one here in my office just over there. And it's amazing. It's got 13 different inspection stamps on it. So each bit of that has got a little stamp on it, which means that each bit of it has been checked out by someone. And you would have to say, surely just one stamp at the end is probably enough. But that's not the German way. So it's the most elaborate machine gun that's ever been built. It's got more than 100 individual parts on it. And it is amazing because when you do take it to pieces and you look at the firing mechanism and the breach and everything, it's an absolute masterpiece of engineering.

33:19It is so beautifully constructed. So every single barrel comes out of a single block of steel, which then has to be bored out. You know, so it's not, you know, it is incredibly expensive. It uses 50 kilograms of steel and iron is used for each gun. and the end product weighs 11 kg, so it's like 22 pounds, something like that, and takes 150 man-hours. So that's more than three times the man-hours required to produce a Bren gun, for example, the British Bren gun. So you can have three Bren guns for every one MG34. It is incredibly prone to overheating, despite the beautifully engineered barrel, because you're firing 15 bullets a second.

34:09and sometimes it gets so hot the barrel starts to melt, and it goes red hot, and then it goes white hot. And that's a problem. And unlike the Bren gun, which has got a wooden handle on the, and obviously wood doesn't conduct heat in the same way that metal does, on the barrel, or on the outside of the barrel, the casing around the barrel, the MZ34 doesn't. So when it gets really, really hot, you've got to put on a massive Arga oven mitt, and you have to pull a switch, which pulls the whole breach mechanism to one side so that you can expose the barrel and then you have to basically unclip something and the barrel just plops out.

34:44But it's obviously something you can get used to, but you can't help thinking a wooden handle or a grip on the barrel would have been quite handy. And the problem is that because of this, the instructions in the training manual say that shooting more than 250 shots in one continuous burst from one barrel is the botan yeah it's forbidden so that acquire equates to you know a very limited amount of of shooting and and the truth is the practical rate of fire is not 9900 rounds a minute it's 120 which coincidentally is the practical rate of fire of the brengan yeah and obviously for a brengan firing at 500 rounds a minute rather than 900 rounds a minute you've

35:28Al Murray: basically got double the shooting time i mean the thing is the 120 is jim you described a moment ago the mg34 is a masterpiece of engineering it doesn't sound like one it sounds like a masterpiece of machine of machining and of the business of producing an object of manufacture masterpiece of manufacture but not of engineering yeah that's a fair point because if it takes three times as long to make and if it's wasteful in its steel production and if actually in its handling it's more difficult to handle than a Bren gun in that in in those respects then the Bren is the masterpiece of engineering they're solutions to the same problem aren't they and they are but they they're doing different different things so so there is you know obviously the other thing about the Bren is the Bren is incredibly accurate which is great but sometimes you don't you know accuracy is not actually what it's not that you don't want accuracy of course you always want accuracy but but it's not necessarily the being on end all that 900 rounds per minute that rate of fire gives you an incredible amount of lead in an arc and is obviously terrifying to come up against and it's incredibly powerful.

36:38So listen, I'm not massively down on the MG34. I'm just saying you can't say that the MG34 and its successor, the MG42, is one very well-known historian wrote in one of his books. He wrote that MG34 was the preeminent small light machine gun of the Second World War. It's like, well, you know, says who? And on what are you judging this? And this is the point. The guy who's facing the MG34 doesn't care that it takes 150 man-hours, or it's incredibly expensive, and uses a huge amount of steel to produce one, much of which is wasted, blah, blah, blah. He doesn't give a damn about that. But as a historian, you're looking back on it.

37:17You have to look at these weapons in the round and they're indicative of a mindset which is producing these incredibly aesthetically pleasing beautiful you know works of art which are designed for giving the fighting force a psychological lift of superiority because you think ah look at that rough piece of rubbish that soviet machine gun or that sten gun later on in the war or whatever of Miami, compared to our perfect weapons. So that's part of it. It is part of this kind of multi-role briefing that it gets when it's been developed in the early 1930s. But it is symptomatic of a mindset of this sort of Prussian military aristocracy, which goes all the way back to Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War.

38:12and you know just think of all those big vons you know von klauschwitz von molke von schlieffen von hindenburg von ludenburg and now von braukic that that's the heritage and actually for all the the sort of supposed modernity of the germans actually their army looks quite antiquated too it's just that we have become totally used to seeing those nuremberg rallies and the rows of the helmets and all the rest of it but just step back from that a little bit and you realize that actually there's quite a lot about their uniforms which are not very modern at all and i think it's really interesting to do that it's just we've become so used to it for markimondo comics and movies and

38:59Al Murray: yeah well it's all the leather tons of leather and jack boots which aren't a practical item those baggy thigh breeches high collared tunics well they're not because they're because leather is incredibly expensive and when it gets wet unless you kind of constantly polish it within an inch of its life and cover and dub in every two minutes what happens when it gets wet is it changes shape and when it dries again it becomes brittle and it rots because after all it is a bit of an animal so it's going to whereas canvas obviously is super cheap and it doesn't rot and if it does break who cares just have another one because it's so cheap you know it's cheap in away the lever is not cheap you know and they have the you know the officers have those baggy five breeches which just look ridiculous you know they look from a completely different era and then you have the high collar tunics and you know what what the german uniforms are doing is they're harking back to a an earlier pre-1914 military tradition of prussian military excellence which after all has been the foundation of the German state of 1871.

40:09And if you look, there's a very famous painting in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles where the foundation of the German state is being declared. There's lots of German officers there. And lots of the kit they're wearing has been carried over into the Nazi era, even down to the eagle. It's just the eagle's head is facing a different way under the Nazis. I would also argue that this kind of notion of Prussian military brilliance is kind of slightly mythical. You know, it's kind of a bit like the Great Patriotic War in Russia. You know, because they only fought a few, Prussia only fought a few wars between the Napoleonic Wars and First World War, and they were small affairs against Denmark and Austria and things, and they're all over in a matter of days.

40:53Inception, of course, was the one against France, but, you know.

40:56Al Murray: Winning, though, has its own quality, doesn't it? Can produce a legend. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? If you're Winston Churchill, you believe in Prussian militarism, don't you? It's a received opinion, isn't it? That Prussian militarism is a thing. And in fact, Prussian militarism is a bad thing and a dangerous thing and a destabilizing force within Europe. I think that's definitely a thing people believe. And, you know, there is no Prussia anymore. Don't forget that. Prussia was abolished as a state. It was evaporated. It doesn't exist anymore because the idea was regarded as two sort of magnetic for germans and too too threatening to european stability but but just think about it you know frederick the great and stuff i mean you know he he's kind of 18th century so that doesn't really count because that's so far away that it's the moments past yes you you beat the french in in 1878 and 71 and very effectively so but other than that you know you've got a few little spats here and there but there's nothing that makes you a great military power and then you've got 1914 where they lose you know they lose to the same enemy they're fighting again now you know they lose to france if they beat in 1870 so if you're looking at your most sort of recent um um kind of track record it's not a great one is it well yes but that's a defeat that must be avenged because of the stab in the back and they you know yeah of course that there's there's there's the myth is so powerful people are prepared to make excuses for it even but that's what i think's really really really interesting about it.

42:25Al Murray: I think we've talked about this before. It's a thing I've wondered about aloud. If Britain had lost the war, would Dartmouth be seen as the sort of the Royal Navy, the Naval Academy? Would that be seen in the same sort of the danger of British maritime power and the mythos of British maritime aggression and all that? You know what I mean? I think this is so tangled up in German self-image. and if something's integral to self-image it doesn't need to be true does it if it's part of your identity often no no no not at all it can be it can be a mimicry of a thing or a mimicry of an idea of a thing which is what you've got in these uniforms they're wearing these baggy thigh breeches and high jack boots and high collars and death heads because they're mimicking a thing of the from their imaginations that they've remembered from their imaginations of this idea of pressure militarism for the imagination but from their past the nazi look is very considered and the reason they have lots of of of leather is because it looks cool and it makes you stand a bit taller and it makes you puff your chest out and and you look sharp and you know come on in the water's warm look amazing get the fro line i mean that that's the subliminal message it's not even the subliminal message that is the message and you know i want to be a part of this gang i want to be part of this rehabilitation of our traditional um magic this militarism and you know because being part of this is going to help us make germany great again you know it's all that kind of stuff it's it's and it's an opportunity isn't it to displace the painful memories of of of germans more recent past with a with a new kind of german nazi glory i mean you know so so you know the the attention to detail on these these uniforms is just incredible i have to say that this is what's amazing is that this attention to detail you know buttons on cuffs belt loops aluminium buttons and the fact that each soldier is given not one uniform not two but seven it's it's it's it's crackers isn't it if if you yeah so you get field uniform service uniform watch uniform parade uniform report water uniform walking out uniform a sports uniform and it is absolutely amazing because if you if you look at uh buttons on a battle dress, for example, or an American uniform.

45:02Americans are plastic. Buttons are just stamped, you know, they're super mass production. British ones are also, some of them are plastic, but some of them are just sort of stamped metal buttons, like super, super cheap. Someone has designed the German button. It looks like the head of a thimble. It's got these little dots on it, little pimples all over the front of it. And they're completely standardized, but it's more complicated to make. it's more expensive to make it's and and they're all made of aluminium and if you look at the of the the standard feld bluzer for example it's absolutely beautiful it's got sort of rayon lining and and the buttons on the bottom of the cuffs come undone so you can roll up the sleeves and then and then you know it's got multiple buttons around the collar it's got little buttons on the lining of the collar so that you can fix a kind of a stiff smart collar onto it should you need to.

45:57And, you know, it's got pleats in all the buttons and in the pockets. And it's so elaborate. You know, you compare that to a battle dress. It is literally Savile Row versus, you know, Bangladeshi's Sweathouse. The difference is so marked. And that's because the look is really important. But it's really expensive to make all this stuff because it is very, very well tailored. and there are no there's no adherence to the principles of mass production at all so there are 323 different companies producing one particular type of military linen you know and i know this because i went through all the records and in the archives and looked into all this there's loads of stuff on uniforms and things in the in the archives down in froeburg and it's just amazing you know and and germany's problem is it doesn't have much iron ore at all which is why i has to get it from sweden has no tungsten no oil no bauxite no copper the only offering is the coal industry which is tiny compared to britain's and the quality of the coal is pretty bad that's quite a problem yeah to put it mildly one of the things they got that

47:11Al Murray: works though aside from the fact that the standard training in the army is good and it instills rigid discipline is they have an excellent pipeline for indoctrination and militarization basically that they are well set for grabbing lads when they're 14 when they join the hitler youth and then they go to the reichsarbeitsdienst which is a sort of work body the reich's work uh organization yeah which means by the time they're in the army they're being well conditioned and particularly ideologically for fighting for the reich and i think that that's one of the things they have they've definitely got right and is in a way one of the sort of you know ghost in the machine answers to how are the germans able to hang on for so long when the moment comes is that from their point of view fighting to the last ditch moment or pushing on when things are bad their soldiers are well primed for that that's where germany is a militarized society where you know you can't argue about the extent of militarization like you can about prussia militarization they've got that right from their point of view which means that when you when you get into the army when you're 18 you're brimful of wanting to do your bit and everyone's trying to stop the reich from having what it wants and i think you know that there's that there's that there's those lads in night there's that amazing conversation in in arnhem in 1944 where one of the padres talks to some german boys who are 17 or something and he gets takes them on a body burying detail and he says why on earth are you fighting you know the war's over look you're losing they go no well we need an empire you you've got one we haven't got one we need an empire we need to we need the world needs to be balanced in a more fair pitch for us and those are boys who would have been 14 in 1940 41 yeah seeing the war pan out and they still think that i think that's the thing that germans absolutely get right and also they've got experience because of poland haven't they everyone's had a taste everyone knows what the sort of tumble of combat might be like and they're really really they're really forward thinking they're looking ahead and and the you know there is this thing and in our Bob Rosser series recently we looked at how they end up believing their own hype but at this point they are their thinking is about moving forward and about probing and finding solutions rather than oh we can do this we know what we're doing we're the experts so you have people like Guderian well yes and the other the other thing is everything about their their history their situation their lack of resources leads them to conclude and has led them to conclusion this is where going back in time is as is useful that it leads them to the belief that they need to win their wars very very quickly and so what they do instead is they they are are training their men and producing equipment and all the rest of it for a war that's not going to last very long and if it was not going to last very long you can have fantastic weaponry that's over-engineered and you can have lots of leather webbing and stuff because it isn't going to last so that's fine.

50:06You're not expecting it to go through the winter, etc. And so this is very much the model. There is nothing new about the Blitzkrieg concept at all as what they've always been doing, which is the Kessel Schlack, the Cauldron War, the huge Schwerpunk, the huge mass of force at the point of impact. You envelop and defeat your enemy very, very quickly. That is because of their geographical situation and lack of resources. It's the only way they can do it. And in the past, it's proved very, very successful. And what they do in the 19th century is exactly that, and sometimes it works. And what they do in 1914, that's exactly the same plan, and it doesn't work.

50:51And what they're planning now, what Hulda is trying to work out, is how to do it again so that they can win quickly or give themselves the best chance of winning quickly. But the point is, if you are going to win quickly having super engineered weapons is fine it's it's when you're in a long drawn out campaign that the those problems of over engineering come to the fore there's so

51:14Al Murray: there's a plan evolving because after all hitler has already said he wants to go west so the army is having to grasp the nettle of how to do this um so towards the end of 1939 the overcommander this here's so their army headquarters in zossen they're still dragging their heels and really trying not to deliver anything that will work. And Helder, as a result, he's not making much progress. But the chief of staff of Army Group A, Eric von Manstein, Manstein since Helder, seven drafts of an attack plan, all about surprise through the Ardennes. The idea is you do a big thrust in the north through Holland and into Belgium that the Allies will then assume is the main attack because of last time.

51:53Al Murray: They'll move troops to respond to that in Belgium to meet the thrust. And then the Germans' real attack will come punching through the Ardennes using the thick forest and hills of the Ardennes. Although they're not that thick, the thick of forest, as Eric Severi had noted. And that that will do the trick. You know, the Allies turn one way and you come in the other way is the idea. Then they force their way over the Meuse, main French line of defence, and then swing up towards the channel. You encircle them. The French, Belgian and British army. So feint in the north. Yeah. And at the main schwerpunkt, the punch, heavy punch, where it's least expected.

52:31Al Murray: And of course, there's this sense, von Manstein says, you know, if the Germans can cross the Mers in a surprise operation, we can blaze through France with mechanised troops before the Allies have a chance to react. How does this now? You're pinning it on too many things that are unlikely to happen, too many unpredictable factors. So the Allied Air Force is not seeing that attack. The French not predicting it. and can our panzers actually pull this off is any of this possible how do those that again he's no fool because he doesn't like the plan but he knows this is exactly the sort of thing thing yes this is a solution finally someone understands the kind of daring dash that the requires in this situation this moment of destiny and so he can't risk hitler seeing it so it doesn't pass it on but then fate intervenes in the new year yes it does this story is very very interesting so howler has to reconsider because on the 10th of january um and a german aircraft makes a forced landing in belgium now belgium's neutral of course and on board that aircraft is a luftoffer ops officer who's carrying copies of this latest plan still saying that the countries will be a main point of attack.

53:42Al Murray: When the plane lands, the officers try to bury the plans in a panic, but they're captured and the plans are seized. They've been rumbled. And this creates a massive opportunity for deception, though, because these plans prompt a big response from the Allies who go, gosh, that's what they're going to do. And they start moving their chess pieces around on the board. And so a few weeks later, two generals give Manstein's plan directly to Hitler's aid general schmund they're doing this because they're loyal to manstein and want his plan to be seen properly and hitler goes finally someone who understands what i want to do someone has read my mind and my brilliance and he embraces the plan immediately of course he does because basically it looks like it might work and it involves sort of dash and vim and a gamble which is his style and also months have passed since mid you know it's mid-february now they're Denmark are in a better situation.

54:39Al Murray: They've replenished their stocks. They've figured out things from Poland that will go directly into how the Schwerpunkt operates. And of course... Mentally, they're in a better place. In a much better place mentally, man. And also Hitler's thinking about it. But again, here we go. Hitler's imagination running ahead of things. You know, he's now already thinking about Denmark and Norway going there before France to get secure passage of iron ore from Sweden. And so, again, they may have come up with the plan for the last thing he wanted, but he's got the next thing as well. It's interesting, this, though, because Halder, and this must be fear of the hairdryer treatment he gets if he disagrees.

55:16Al Murray: He now thinks actually Manstein's plan might work. And by the end of February, he has completed this completely dramatic vault fast and he starts submitting plans based on the Manstein plan. I mean, I'm going to say it, fucking Franz Halder, right? the opportunities that man had to stop this whole thing in his tracks and a pistol in his pocket come on without hitler there is no there is no wall yeah and franz halder could have i mean he's one of the most consequential people in the history of the world by doing nothing rather than doing something exactly the latest plans are jim well i'm a group b i'm a grouper b with thrust through holland and northern belgium that would kick off first so it would come sweeping in, and the British and the French and the now non-neutral Dutch and Belgian would move forward to meet that thrust.

56:09And while they're doing that, the main strike force, which will have the mass of the very limited number of panzer divisions, will sweep through the Ardennes, through the forest, cross over the River Meuse, and get in round the back door. And that's going the plan you know the allies would then end up completely encircled and the operation code name is given to it uh is fall geld or case yellow or operation yellow that is then the plan that starts to shake take shape it's agreed in in february 1940 and it is going to be launched at some point in the spring but of course there is all the shenanigans in scandinavia to come first but That's the evolution of the plan, from stalling in October and November 1939 to what Halder realizes is that Falgel offers the only chance of success.

57:08It might be a slim chance of success, but the traditional method of going through the low countries, they will be beaten back eventually by the weight. and the only possible means of victory is to go through this back door and hope that the whole deception operation and the speed and operation of the strike force manages to sufficiently discombobulate the Allies, particularly the French, that that gives them their glimmer of victory. It's long odds, but it's the only chance they've got. That's how he sees it.

57:39Al Murray: So we'll be laying more of that out in more phony war stuff if you want to hear those. And all the other panoply of treats that we have on offer as a Patreon. Then go to our Patreon page, become aware of ways of making you talk Patreon. And it gets stuck into the back catalogue, gets stuck into the audio books and of course the live casts that we do. The next episode, I should just say, is we are going to be looking at the home front. Not just in the UK, but in Germany and France as well. What does everyone make of all these shenanigans? Will Manstein's plan work? There's a question. Who knows?

58:14Al Murray: Nobody knows. Who knows? Nobody knows, Jim, do they? But we'll see you soon. Thanks for listening and cheerio. Cheerio.