Before The Storm: The Phoney War Begins (Part 1)

0:02Al Murray: Thank you for listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Sign up to our Patreon to receive bonus content, live streams and our weekly newsletter with money off books and museum visits as well. Plus early access to all live show tickets. That's patreon.com slash we have ways.

0:36Al Murray: Hitler spoke for almost two hours and cited figure after figure without referring to a single note. What impressed me is his confidence in ultimate victory. Either he is bewitched or he really is a genius. He outlines plans of action and cites dates with an assurance that does not admit of contradiction. Will he be proved right? In my opinion, the game will not be as simple as he believes. I return from Germany with the strong convictions that the first months of the war will lead the Germans to believe in victory. But the longer it lasts, the harder it will be. And that was me there ventriloquizing Count Ciano in his diary from the 2nd, 3rd of October 1939.

1:14Al Murray: Ciano, of course, Mussolini's son-in-law, Mussolini's foreign minister, and a major power player in the Italian government and a witness to the beginning of the Second World War. and in fact, the phony war as it's become known. And welcome to We Have Ways Who Make You Talk with me, Al Murray, James Holland. And we are talking, aren't we, Jim, in this series about the bit of the war, sort of not before the war because there's obviously this stuff going on at sea, but we're trying to set the scene as things start to drift towards it all going majorly kinetic on the continent in May of April and May 1940.

1:52Al Murray: So welcome, everyone. It's a fascinating period. And I think, you know, one of the things that we thought would be good with this one is to sort of set up where the main players are. And the main players at this stage are, you know, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy to a certain extent, I suppose. but you know how much has sort of myth got in the way of of the reality what were their armed forces like what were their structures more of the point what was their kind of you know to coin a modern term what was their resilience like in terms of setting themselves up for the war that was to come i think one of the other things that i think is really really interesting about this period is it's a time where almost everybody wants the war to not really get underway.

2:37They want it to all go away. And I would say that literally the one person who is not in that camp is Adolf Hitler. Everyone else. I mean, Charno and Mussolini are in a complete state of gloom because they know they can't afford a long war and they can't see how they could possibly beat Britain and France. and they can't see how Germany can either, to be perfectly honest. Most of the German commanders can't either. You know, this is the time where Franz Halder, for example, who was the chief of staff of the army and who we talked a lot about in our Barbarossa series, was part of an assassination plot to get rid of Hitler to avoid the catastrophe that was inevitably going to come if it kicks off with the West.

3:20And so Halder took to keeping a pistol, and a loaded pistol in his pocket in case the opportunity arose where he could just shoot the Fuhrer on the spot, but he kind of chickens out and he never does it and moves away from all that. Then you have another assassination temp on Hitler beginning of November and Georg Elser, who on the anniversary of the Beer Hall push, Hitler does a speech and he's got it all primed. He's set up the bomb. It's on a timer switch. It's all going to go boom and all the rest of it. So Hitler unexpectedly cut short of his speech by 13 minutes. And 12 minutes after he's left the building, boom, it goes up and kills seven people and, you know, brings a whole load of others and all the rest of it.

4:03So there is quite a lot of feeling in Germany at this time that if it does kick off of Britain and France, it's going to end in disaster. And Hitler is also, at this time, as a backdrop to this post-Poland, is having a go at all his planners, and particularly the army, going, give me a plan to attack the West. We need to attack the West now before they've got too many factories or they've rearmed too much and got ready. We need to strike while the arms hop, all this kind of stuff. So this is all the stuff that's going on, and it's a pretty kind of mental time, to be honest.

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6:00Al Murray: And of course, the Soviet Union giving the Germans freedom of action with the Nazi-Soviet pact in August of 1939. The French government have enough problems in the form of internal political instability and the British government really, if it could possibly avoid it, because they know it's going to be ruinous, that a second global conflict that matches the last one they've had, that's basically game over for the British empire and for the status quo. And they don't want to disturb the equilibrium any further than they absolutely need to. Let's not forget, it's a conservative government in Britain who are trying by any outcome possible to avoid anything that might turf them out and cause a revolution, which is the thing that's been on conservative minds all this time.

6:45And so you have a real tension between the major players who are not interested in setting

6:51Al Murray: this off, but also preparing like mad. I mean, that's the other thing we have to remember is that the British have been preparing like mad for this eventuality, actually, building up their forces, laying down keels for warships and really peddling hard to get up to speed. But although that's been policy for a different form of deterrence the British are hoping to lay on the Germans, which of course hasn't worked. Because that's the other thing, is that the Germans have misread British intentions, just as the British have misread German intentions. British intentions are to rearm and be ready and fortress Britain and to create the impression that, and it's not an impression, to create a scenario where we are ready to fight a blockading war and do it all again if we got to.

7:32Al Murray: But we'd rather not, let's be honest, we'd rather not. And that That always strikes me as quite reasonable, but it's also based on a misapprehension of Germany again. There are so many currents flowing, and I think it's always rather unfair to call it the Sitzkrieg or the phony war. And of course, the Soviets are getting stuck into Finland too. So, you know, sort of offstage, there's another encounter and another player that, in our roundup there, Jim, we didn't include, fairly enough. The Soviets are not on the menu here because they're otherwise occupied. Yes, yes, they are. I mean, from Britain's point of view, there is a complete assurance of victory.

8:09No one's quite sure how long it's going to take, but there is an assumption that it's all going to be OK. And the reason for that is because of that economic blockade, which is imposed on the 3rd of September 1939. And that means that, yes, surface vessels can run the blockade, they can get through it, but nothing meaningful. And the point is, there aren't ghost ships going through either. You know, this is not like sort of Russia in 2026. so the big problem is that Germany doesn't have a merchant fleet so it can't get the resources it needs no one has the resources in their own country that you need to fight a long protracted war yeah and this is Germany's fundamental problem so Britain Britain looking at it logically rather than ideologically and this is always a problem when you're assessing your enemy you need to assess it from their ideological point of view as well as their pragmatic point of view but from their pragmatic point of view you know Germany's got a massive problem on its hands because it It doesn't have many natural resources, doesn't have access to the world's oceans.

9:02It's stuck in the middle of Europe. It's got a little bit of narrow channels in the Baltic Sea, that little bit of North Sea. And in the North Sea, which is your access point to the Atlantic, is the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy is the world's largest. And so there's good reasons why the British would think, we've got this.

9:19Al Murray: And surely the Germans must know this. And surely the Germans don't want to suffer another defeat. And surely no one wants another one of these wars. I mean, I think what's really interesting is you can't forget that. And you can't forget the First World War is five minutes ago in real terms. It's 21 years ago, the end of the First World War. And that's the thing you have to remember about, you know, we need to see it from their point of view in those terms. Anyway, you wanted to talk about resilience, Jim, and states of preparation. So we should start with that. Well, I also think it's sort of relevant for now, as we're all sort of worrying about kind of what is the resilience for kind of any future conflict over here at the moment.

9:54All this stuff is quite relevant because you can see how people kind of manage their resources, manage their supplies and stuff in the 1930s and 40s. I thought it'd be fun to start with Eric Winkle Brown, you know, a guy that we've talked about on and off over the last seven years. Scottish pilot, fleet air arm, becomes the legendary test pilot in British aviation, in world aviation. I mean, no one has flown more types than him. 485, I think he's flown different types of aircraft in his career. But in the late 1930s, he is a Germanophile. His father is a former balloon observer and a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps.

10:34And he takes his son, Eric, to Germany for the 1936 Olympics. And he's been invited there by Göring and Ernst Udet. And Ernst Udet is this incredibly famous pilot. He's a sort of barnstormer in the 1920s. Great pals of Göring ends up being the kind of procurement chief in the Luftwaffe, which ends up him actually taking his life eventually in 1941. But anyway, they become friends. And he takes him up in a plane, UDET, and does an inverted flight over the airfield. And they're so low, he almost can sort of scrape his head on the grass strip. and it's absolutely terrifying and thrilling in equal measure.

11:19Anyway, you know, Eric Brand, he returns to Scotland for university. He's part of the University Air Squadron in Edinburgh and then goes back to Germany in the summer of 1938 to work for the Foreign Office. There's all sorts of stuff that doesn't quite add up here, I have to say. And there's sort of strong evidence to suggest he ended up fighting for Franco in the Civil War and all sorts of stuff. But anyway, be that as it may, he's still in Germany when war is declared on the 3rd of September. And he's in Saarland, Bavaria. And he's awoken by three SS officers who wake him up and go, and the Fed will have to come with us because our countries are now at war.

11:58And so they gather his belongings, including his car, which is a very nice little, one of those little MGs. You still see them around occasionally. Red or British racing green with the spoked tyre on the boot.

12:12Al Murray: The kind you park by your pond at your country house. If you need to have a pond outside. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, a friend of mine's uncle said to him, you'll know you're a gentleman when you have an MG parked by the pond out the front of your house. That's very good. Okay. It's empty. I think I've heard my Jeep, to be honest. Maybe. Anyway, so he's got his MG. and they take him and his car to a cell in Munich. And he's freed three days later and taken to the Swiss border. And he's told he can have his car back. And he's really confused. And he goes, you've taken my boots, my money, my clothes.

12:55Why are you giving me my car?

12:57Al Murray: And he's told, because we have no spares. Unbelievable. They can't get the spares for the MG, so the MG is no good to them. And this is the thing we've talked about several times. And particularly people know this in the Barbarossa episode. And this is a point of comparison that we keep coming back to, which I think is really important, which is that there are vehicle shortages in Germany because Germany isn't a car economy at all. Not at all. 1935, there's one vehicle per every 65 people in Germany. In 1939, they've made an effort, but there's one vehicle per 47 people, even though there are Autobahn.

13:32The whole point of the Autobahns is to have an east-west axis to transport troops at a future stage where they have got lots of vehicles. But there's the autobahs with nothing on them.

13:42Al Murray: I wonder what they're for then, Jim, if you're building these motorways that go from east to west. What could they possibly be for? Well, quite. It's a poser, isn't it? Whereas in Britain, in 1935, it's one vehicle per 23 people. In 1939, it's one vehicle per 14. So the British start from a higher base and are making up quicker. Oh, and by the way, in France, it's one to eight. And in Italy, it's 106 people for every vehicle. So they're way behind. So one of the things that always slightly bugs me about portrayals of Berlin and stuff in the 1930s and 1940s, there's always way too many vehicles.

14:17I mean, I don't know if you've seen Babylon Berlin, which is just a completely brilliant series. I have, yeah. There's too many cars. There's too many vehicles. It's absolutely pollulating with vehicles. Yeah. And it's the same with My Family's War or whatever it's called, Generation War. Again, there's just too many vehicles. you know they would have been lots of trams lots of s-bahn and u-bahn and all that kind of stuff lots of trains so lots of public transport but there wouldn't have been lots of cars and it is funny i think because you know there is this impression isn't there that that that germany is all about modernity it's all about you know this new germany with its shiny swastikas and its huge great parade grounds and automaton SS types and blah, blah, blah.

15:06And when we talk about the Blitzkrieg, we always talk about the Nazi war machine, don't we? I mean, that's the phrase that always comes up.

15:12Al Murray: And it's not really the case. But this is propaganda, Jim. This is the point. This is how effective Nazi propaganda is. It's still working. When people talk in these terms, they think of Germany in terms of modernity and a war machine in terms of modernity. That's the propaganda of the time. And that's Goebbels still speaking to you and how effective his message was. Of course, there is something to be said for the Allies then reflecting that propaganda, because you don't want to admit to having been beaten by a horse-drawn army, do you, when you're trying to modernize. And you also need to make the case for modernization and mechanization.

15:49Al Murray: So you're going to go, well, what we need is more of what they've got. But you're quite right. Of 53 divisions in Poland, only 15 are mechanized in any way. The rest is horses. So that's 38 out of your 15 divisions. Yeah. And infantry, horses and infantry, rather than panzer thrusts and all that sort of stuff. It's interesting, isn't it? Because the invasion of Poland is ordered so suddenly, because after all, no one knows what Hitler's going to do next, least of all Hitler, because it's ordered so suddenly. Well, no, that's the, you know, you've someone making decisions like that, the flick of a coin, backing himself into having to do it, in fact, is the thing, you know, because he prevaricates like mad.

16:31Al Murray: You know, it's little wonder that the French and the British are caught on the hop by the invasion of Poland because so are the Germans. So is the Wehrmacht. Yes, so true. And, you know, Case White's ordered so suddenly that the test runs that they're going to do, the exercises they're going to do, the Germans are going to do, are simply flipped into being operations. And it becomes, the test run becomes the invasion. And of course, you know, Poland, God bless it, and it fights hard. And it's not right to say that Poland just capitulates in the face of the German war machine, because again, there we have Nazi propaganda sticking with us again.

17:09Al Murray: The Polans do what they can, but they can't be used as a yardstick for actually how good the Germans are, because it's not a fair fight. Well, yeah, and the big problem is that mechanization is going to be this huge, huge problem, because this is a modern age where mechanization is going to be key. And the truth is that the Germans just don't have enough. They don't have enough trucks. They don't have enough cars. They don't have enough anything. They just don't have enough mechanization. They don't have the wherewithal to be able to do this, to create this mechanization. You know, and that's because of the 1920s and wheelbarrows of money and hyperinflation.

17:42Then they start to recover. But, you know, they lose everything in 1919. Yeah. You know, the Versailles Treaty. So they've got to start from scratch. They've got to build up from scratch. And at the same time, they're building the Luftwaffe. And at the same time, they're building U-boats. And at the same time, they're building the Bismarck and the Scharnhorst and the Neisenau and the Aronhepa and blah, blah, blah, and the Graf Spee and so on and so forth, and creating this not big enough navy, but big enough to be able to pull, you know, to absorb a lot of resources. And they're having to build ammunition, and they're having to build guns, and they're having to build everything else.

18:16Al Murray: And run a normal economy as well. This is the other thing. This is why you end up with these guns or butter pinches in the German economy, isn't it? that you've also got to keep the consumer happy. You've got to make things tick over normally. And so their economy is necessarily out of shape by all of this. And it's really well illustrated with the simple business of vehicles, isn't it? Well, it is. But you have to think of the kind of domino effects of having an underdeveloped automobile industry. And the big problem is you don't have many factories making them. If you're not producing a lot or there's not as many as other nations, you don't have as many factories.

18:53And if you don't have as many factories, you don't have as much know-how. And if you don't have that many people driving cars, then there isn't that much need for petrol stations or gas stations. There's not that much need for garages and workshops that can repair your motor vehicle. So you don't have that many people who know how to do it. And you don't have that many people who know how to drive. So the problem is, when you want to suddenly up your game and massively increase your number of vehicles, you don't have the capacity on any level. You don't have the infrastructure. You don't have the know-how.

19:26You don't have the people you know how to repair them. You don't have the people who want to drive them. So you literally can't just click your fingers. And we touched on this character, Adolphe von Schell, in the Barbarossa series. But he's a really interesting guy because he's one of the guys who's absolutely at the heart of the military vehicle shortage problem in 1939 when he's 46, a career soldier, fought in the First World War, Belgium, big Western Front battles, blah, blah, blah. Eastern Front as well, wounded four times, awarded a Iron Cross first class twice, remains in the Reichswehr after the war, becomes a captain in 1930, which is not particularly advanced, ends up doing this weird instructing in the infantry school in Fort Benning in the US.

20:09I mean, it's just amazing. But anyway, from his experience in America, he gets very drawn into the automobile industry over there, what mechanization can do, recognizes that this is Germany's way forward. So, comes back to Germany and has this knowledge. He's seen it firsthand in the United States. And he spent time at the Ford motor plants in Detroit and all the rest of it. So, he's then appointed the undersecretary in the Ministry of Transport in 1938. and he's noticed not only by Goering, but also by Hitler himself. And then when Goering announces his massive increased rearmament rate in November 1938, that is when Shell is plucked out and appointed the General Plenipotentiary of Motor Vehicles, which basically is a euphemistic title for basically saying, you're in charge of running our pool of vehicles in the Wehrmacht.

21:05But, I mean, talk about poison chalices, you know, because his job is a simple one, to coordinate and oversee the mechanization of the vermont. Well, okay, how are you going to do that?

21:14Al Murray: Yeah, well, and as you pointed out, Jim, they don't have the factories or the sort of skill set, the knowledge base. I mean, the other thing is the motor industry is atomized, it's privatized, isn't it? So how are you bringing about a national effort? Because after all, Germany itself was atomized. The idea of a unified Germany is really quite recent politically. So Germany in itself is still kind of crazy paving, isn't it, in terms of the economic picture? And they're short on iron ore. Very much so. They've lowered a quota. Von Schell warns Göring in March that only 50 % of truck orders will be able to be delivered by the beginning of 1940.

21:51Al Murray: They'll then have to lay people off because there's a lack of work. Because they'll be needed in the war. Yeah, because they're going to be needed for the war. Well, there's a lack of work, but also because they're needed as soldiers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So here's your core problem of running a military economy alongside a so-called normal one. And he says, once this has happened and an increase in production is unimaginable for several years, this would damage the motorization of the Wehrmacht, the Reich and Commerce, from which it would hardly be able to recover. So this is for a matter of years, he's saying.

22:19Years. So he's saying this in the spring of 1939. And he's saying, once this happens in 1940, and we haven't delivered enough, we're going to be stuffed for several years. this is why so many people in the upper echelons of of of the wehrmacht are going don't go to war this is all smoke and mirrors it all looks very impressive we've got away with it so far in the sedate and land then czechoslovakia before that austria before that the rhineland let's not push our luck because we don't have the capacity for this and he puts together this shell

22:54Al Murray: plan and the idea is is you know this is what you're going to need to do you're going to need to reduce the number of vehicle types from 131 trucks to 23. 131 to 23. I mean, I would say 23 is probably 20 too many, isn't it? Well, you could argue that. And certainly when we look at what the Allies end up doing, where there are more or fewer types, as it were, you increase the number of vehicles to work with gas generators and solid fuel instead of petrol, because you're going to have fuel shortages, and you need the petrol for basically the frontline combat vehicles, encourage production of the militarized Volkswagen.

23:32But can you see a scenario in 1939 where you're going to have more and more vehicles in your ultra-modern new army operating with gas generators?

23:44Al Murray: Yeah, I'd stick with the horses if I were you. It's not going to happen, is it? No, it's not. The Volkswagen Beetle is seen as the Hitler car, isn't it? But that's a Ponzi scheme that the Germans... People's car. Yeah, but it's a Ponzi scheme. No one gets one. They pay into the pot for one, but no one gets one before the war. There is no VW Beetle. There's a prototype that gets... Or show models that get shown off. But no one actually ever ends up with one because it's a con. And so you're then going to militarize this thing that doesn't really exist. I mean, the bucket car, the Kublerwagen, is what we end up seeing in...

24:20Al Murray: They're the cars that, of course, explode the minute they fall in a ditch in Where Eagles Dare or whatever. They're made of dynamite, Kubelwagens. But here's the thing. There aren't enough of these anyway. He wants to improve maintenance, so that's the creation of a home motor pool organisation, which is, again, repair shops and garages are still privately owned, but they're under Wehrmacht control. I mean, this also requires a massive extension of state control, if nothing else, although war always does. Compulsory requisitioning. So 50 % of civilian trucks need to be taken in for military use.

24:53Al Murray: And this is all to come to fruition for 1942. So Von Schell will be having a good conversation with Admiral Raider, who's embarked on his Z plan for the Navy, which is going to come to fruition in 1944. I mean, this is the whole problem with going into war in September 1939. They're not ready. And the comparatively cheap victory of Poland is papering over huge amounts of cracks, many of which have become apparent during the Polish campaign. Yeah, and what's interesting about this is that this part of Prussia, the part of Prussia bordering Poland, because after all this, the lump of East Prussia inside Poland, as it were anyway, that's theoretically, you know, for want of a better word, the most backward part of Germany anyway.

25:36Al Murray: So there aren't the vehicles, there aren't the workshops. The roads in Poland itself are really bad. So you're straining your vehicles, and inexperienced drivers don't know how to handle that kind of terrain. That's one of the biggest problems that no one ever thinks about, is that these guys are not used to driving this stuff because they're not used to driving vehicles, because they just don't exist. Yeah, it's a real problem. You just have this escalating, one thing leads to the next thing, which leads to the next problem, which leads to the next problem. The example of Seyfried Knapper is really interesting.

26:11So he's an artilleryman, and he joins the German artillery as a 19-year-old in October 1936. His father had been a naval gunnery officer in the First World War, and he'd always been compelled by an image of a modern, mechanized, formidable Wehrmacht. This is what he was. And he's absolutely shocked when he joins the artillery boat because he's told first day, you know, what's the first job? Are you going to go and clean out those stables, please? And he's like, what? I'm not expecting stable blocks. What do you mean you're still using horses? What about all the kind of vehicles I see in the newsreels and in the Wehrmacht magazines and stuff of the day?

26:47And he says to them, you mean they still pulled the artillery with horses? Yes, I'm afraid so, replies his companion. I mean, you know, so instead of kind of, you know, speeding along the highways or the autobahns with kind of modern trucks and gun tractors, instead his job is to kind of muck out the stables every other day. And he says, I still could not believe it. I was actually in the horse-drawn artillery. It all seems so backfired in this modern age.

27:17Al Murray: Are they ever going to have enough horses, though? It's the other thing. That in itself. I mean, the main advantage of a horse is if your lorry breaks down, you can't eat it, can you? Whereas if the horse has had it, you can at least eat the horse. I suppose so. For when things aren't going as well. Silver clouds. Yeah. At the start of the war, Germany has 684 ,000 fully trained regular troops, another 410 ,000 reservists who are fully trained, then 709 ,000 reservists with rudimentary training, so probably know which end of the rifle's which. And then there's the older reserve pool, which is 1.7 million people, which includes First World War veterans.

27:59Al Murray: So blokes in their 40s. So the field army is 2.5 million men. the replacement army is 1.2 million. So just at a glance, they can only really afford to do one thing at a time, the German army. They can't afford to be dealing with more than one emergency. And they're divided up as follows. So the division is the main unit of scale for the German army and for all armies, isn't it? Yes, the division is very much the unit by which we judge the scale of armies from the Second World War. Yeah. And so in a German division, There's 14 ,000 to 17 ,000 men. And this is before the big reorganization that happens later on in the war, where they rationalize it all.

28:40Al Murray: And that's roughly the same for everyone else, the British, the French, the American, the Italian armies. And two divisions make a corps. Two corps make an army. So a corps is a body, isn't it? A body of men, so to speak. Two divisions make a corps. A corps is an army. Two armies are an army group. Yes. I mean, we should also add that you can have more than one. You have to have at least two. And you have to have at least two corps to make an army. but you could have five corps and an army. Or three and things that can be triangular often, yeah. Yeah, and you could have six divisions in a corps, but you've got to have at least two.

29:12Al Murray: Divisions are made up of their corps regiments, typically. So you'd have a panzer division, which its corps regiment is armoured, panzer grenadier, which is motorised, which means fellows in half-tracks and trucks, and infantry, which means foot slogging, PBI. And then there's three regiments in a division, three battalions in a regiment, roughly speaking. There's 3 ,250 men in a regiment, 800 or so in a battalion. I mean, all of these figures are subject to variance. Ballpark figures, ballpark figures. This is to give people a sense of kind of, you know, the scale of this stuff. We always talk about all these corps and divisions and regiments and stuff, and I know we've talked about how they're made up in the past, but I think it's always good to kind of recap so that people got a sense of how it all works.

29:57But as I say, divisions are very much the unit of size currency at this time.

30:01Al Murray: Yeah, so the German army in September 1939 is 106 divisions, but only half of these are what they call first-wave troops to the people sent to Poland, who, after all, are doing their rehearsal for real in Poland. And Gnapper, our artilleryman, he becomes a keen horseman. So, you know... By this time, he's a lieutenant, by the way, by this point. He's an officer. Yeah, yeah. And he comes to love his horses. Him and the remainder of his regiment stay in their base at Plauen in Southeast Germany, waiting for their replacements. They then move over to the Luxembourg border and begin an intense training program.

30:36Al Murray: But there's still no Allied attack by the end of September. And Knapper and his mates, they joke that after the invasion of Poland, the whole war is now over. And, you know, I think, fingers crossed, lots of Germans think that, don't they? Yeah, a lot of them do. An awful lot of them do. And understandably, because they also know what a calamity of the First War was. And lots of Germans are sold on the idea that you need to reverse Versailles, but that doesn't mean you need to reverse Versailles by fighting a great big bloody war all over the continent. Hans von Luch, who's... Great friend of the show.

31:09Al Murray: Yeah, I suppose so, yeah. I mean, the man who offered the odd tall tale, he doesn't share these thoughts, really. He's a soldier fought in Poland, and he wants the war to be ended politically now that the Polish campaign is over. And Gerhard von Voloment, who's the deputy chief of operations, of staff at the Oberkommander der Wehrmacht. So, you know, basically right up at the top of things. He is really, he wants to negotiate. He wants to get on the phone to the British and the French and go, you know what, Poland crumbled. You aren't doing anything to protect Poland. Let's just call the whole thing off.

31:43Al Murray: However, after the break, we will find out exactly how hard, uphill Wollemont's point of view would be pushed and whether he's got any chance of getting what he wants. As we look at the plans to strike West, We'll see you in a moment.

32:27was Russian.

32:29Al Murray: Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. You've got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

32:47Al Murray: We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an Operation Order, or FRAGO. A frago that says to kill the president of Russia Yes New from Goalhanger Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy An audio drama journey like no other Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller We have two times friendly key Where Britain plays its strongest hand He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Nuffie!

33:32Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

33:50Al Murray: Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland. Now, Jim, we ended the first half with General Volteborn Wollemont, who's the deputy chief of operations staff at OKW. So, you know, kind of as high up as you possibly can be within the army structure. Yeah, he's part of the plannings at the OKW. The OKW, just a reminder, is Obercomando de Verma, which is the general staff, so it's a tri-service. An inherently good idea, but not used that way, but basically used as Hitler's mouthpiece for the most part. And Wollemont, of course, is one of those stars of The World at War, the 1970s Granada TV series.

34:25So he appears on that and wrote a great book, memoir called Inside Hitler's Headquarters. So we get a lot from him, and he's very interesting about it all. But yes, so they have this, you know, immediately after Poland, everyone's sort of thinking, good, we got that done. Hopefully we can all just sue for peace. We can negotiate, sit back. That's the end of the war.

34:45Al Murray: Yeah, surely they're scared of us. Look at what we've just done. Surely they must be thinking, crikey, this is too big a prospect. However. But then General Keitel, who is the chief of staff of the OKW, informs them all that Hitler wants to launch an attack on the West immediately, which is what we were touching on right at the top of this series. And Wollemont is absolutely dumbstruck by this. I mean, he just thinks this is insane. Yeah. Because Poland has exposed all these shortcomings in the Wehrmacht. And they're just not ready. They don't have enough to take on mighty France and mighty Britain.

35:24and Hitler has never discussed any of this with his senior generals, not even Gero, who is obviously the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, but also, effectively, his number two. Yeah. And it's worrying from the vehicle standpoint, the shortages are already accumulating. The Polish campaign has exposed a terrible lack of training amongst many of the divisions, but just not good enough. Hitler completely has failed to understand that the Wehrmacht needs time to build up its strength again in the same way that he wanted to strike Britain and France before they'd had the opportunity to do the same.

35:55So he's kind of sort of saying, we need to be careful and make sure that Britain and France don't get too strong, so we need to strike while the island's hot. But he needs to allow Germany to get efficient and strong, because they're not. Also, winter's coming, so that has a massive impact on the efficiency and, of course, operational capacity of all forces, because, as we know, winters in the 1940s were particularly bad. so what this exposes is hitler's fundamental misunderstanding of the operational art of war he's just looking at numbers and he's seeing it from you know purely his own perspective and this is one of hitler's great failings that he does always view everything through the prism of his own narrow worldview and they're just not ready to go to war against the west in any shape or form in October, November 1939.

36:54Al Murray: It's interesting, this, isn't it? That Wollemont, he then takes things into his own hands, doesn't he? He tells the army general staff what Hitler wants to do. And despite being sworn to confidence, and the army does nothing with the tip-off, that amounts to nothing for Wollemont. And a week later, on the 27th of September, Hitler assembles the commander-in-chief at Keitel and Wollemont and the Reich Chancellor in Berlin to announce this is what he's planning. And I think it's quite well known this now, that Hitler's attention turns to the Soviet Union way before you might think it might. That he's in June, he's already, June of 1940, he's already going, right, that's what's next.

37:27Al Murray: This is certainly the way he operates, isn't it? His imagination completely outruns the people around him. He's always so far down the line with what he wants to do next that it catches everybody out. So we should go and look at the state of the British, right? Because if he's going to attack the West, let's see what exactly that might amount to. So the British army has always aspired to be fully mechanised, hasn't it? Since the end of the First World War, the future is mechanisation. And obviously, there's been some kicking and screaming about that from cavalry people, but that's the direction of travel.

38:01By September 1939, it is the only fully mechanised regular army in the world. So that doesn't include the non-regular army. So the yeomanries, for example, like the Sherwood Rangers, they're still on their horses. But the regular army is 100 % mechanised. It's the only army in the world that is.

38:16Al Murray: and also undergoing massive expansion, though. This is the other thing, is that the huge expansion that the government lays on it brings its own problems. The territorial army doubles from 13 to 26 divisions in March of 1939. This is all part of the grim expectation there's a war coming. There's the National Service Act, which is passed after the outbreak of the war, which is full conscription. And the aim is to equip 55 divisions by the end of the second year of the war, which is 1941, including divisions from the Dominions because they've got this other man pool they can draw on but they know that's going to take time.

38:51I think one of the things that's quite interesting, Al, is everyone's hoping and praying that it can come to a negotiated peace and they're not in for the long haul and this will all filter out. But at the same time, they're having to plan for a long haul. Yeah. And very much part of Britain's strategy is the longer the war continues, the harder it will be for Germany to fight. Yeah. the more we will win because economically we'll be able to sustain it in a way that Germany won't. And so therefore, we will win. So they're planning for a long-term war, hoping for a short war.

39:25Al Murray: Yeah, yeah. Whereas the Germans are hoping for a short war because that's all they could do. And there's the field force, which is going to go to France, is going to be renamed the British Expeditionary Force in homage to the army of 1914. and by the end of September, you have 160 ,000 army personnel have been shipped to France with 22 ,000 vehicles, 10 ,000 people from the Royal Air Force, 36 ,000 tons of ammunition, 25 ,000 tons of fuel. And although this expansion means there is a shortage of kit, and you know, my grandfather's letters home from this period because he went, he shipped to France, you know, in the autumn of 1939 are all about how they're out.

40:03Al Murray: They haven't got the stuff and the uniforms are old and also how bad the winter is. His letters are full of how cold it is. Notwithstanding these things, the British Army is still the most modern in the world, but it is kind of drawing. It is writing checks it can't quite draw yet, but it has no horse-drawn artillery. Infantry are taken from A to B in lorries and trucks. You've got lorries manufactured by Bedford and Morris because there is a motor industry in Britain. Artillery's good, and it ought to be because artillery is one of the things that was really perfected in the First World War. and the guns have pneumatic tires and are towed by low loaders and heavy tractors rather than horses.

40:45Al Murray: And we touched on this earlier. German propaganda, which some people are still under the influence of today, has been so successful. It's one of the reasons the British Army mechanizes and modernizes so rapidly is they're thinking, Christ, we've got to keep up with the Germans. Even though the Germans have all they've had on display is the shop window rather than the full inventory. And it's that display that's encouraged the British to modernise. So, I mean, you're a big fan of the battle dress, Jim, of course. Goes without saying. Well, it goes without saying. But a lot of the guys who are going over in September, October 1939 to France, they still haven't, you know, it takes time to change over your uniform.

41:25It doesn't just happen overnight. But the army is changing and the battle dress has been designed in 1938 and it's hard-wearing, cocky wool shirt jacket, the short. It comes up to your navel, to your belly button, and there are buttons which attach it to the trousers. And the trousers in those days come up to your stomach. So the point is that they meet with a very, very small overlap. And the reason for this is because they're going to be mechanized, so you don't want lots of flappy bits getting in the way as you're jumping, leaping in and out of vehicles. The whole point about the back of the dress is it's very tight and neat and serviceable.

41:59And what it's got is it's very, very roughly made. so you know this is this is not something to you know an excite a savile rotator or anything but but it's very generous under the arm so you can crawl on the ground very easy you can lift your rifle up very easily and so on so it's got contingency of room where it needs to it's also generously supplied with pockets so it's got two big breast pockets and then it's got two big inside pockets as well, which are on the inside of the chest. And the trousers have got two normal pockets and then they've got one on the side of the leg, which is also very, very generous.

42:36So you've got the pocket space that you would normally have from a longer tunic, but without having a longer tunic. And the point about the longer tunic is you can be saving yourself 20 to 24 inches of wool just by not having a thigh length tunic. because if you think about how what that distance is between you know your navel and halfway down your thigh you know but certainly a good foot if not two feet and so it's incredibly pragmatic and it makes lots of sense and of course because we associate it with dad's army and ineptitude and a whole kind of sort of narrative that suggests that sort of the British are old-fashioned and all the rest of it.

43:23The modernity of the battle dress has been completely ignored. But, you know, as the war progressed, more and more people adopted it. I mean, like the Germans, Ike, Americans.

43:34Al Murray: Yeah, but you've so many complaints about it being itchy and it not fitting and also people hate being in the army. So they hate the uniform. It's where so much of that comes from. But it's no more itchy than the First World War uniform. I mean, wool has far resistance tendons. It is far resistant to a certain extent. It has, because of the sort of natural oils in it, it can also be slightly waterproof. It's warm. And even when it's wet, it can be warm. It's uncomfortable, but it can still be warm. So there are lots of sort of pragmatic reasons for using wool serge rather than another material.

44:10The other one, of course, is because there's lots of sheep. And, you know, that's what we have lots of. So, you know, it makes sense, you know. Yeah.

44:19Al Murray: I think so much of what's thought about battle dress comes from the interaction of conscripts with the army, full stop. They're not thinking this is a pragmatic piece of kit. They're thinking, I hate being in the bloody army. I've had to give up my life. I hate wearing this itchy shit. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That extends to all equipment all soldiers are ever issued with. It's never good enough. It's never, you know, in the modern parlance, it's never alley enough, you know. What is quite good, though, is the new light machine gun that they've got, which is the Bren gun. In the First World War, the Lewis gun, which is not light by any stretch of the imagination, was the section infantry manoeuvre weapon.

44:55Al Murray: Because after all, the idea is it's down in every infantry section is there is a Bren gun. And, you know, cynics would also say that the British army in the end ends up, the infantry section's job is to manoeuvre the Bren gun forward. That's what the other riflemen are actually for, is moving the Bren gun around. That's a cracking piece of kit. It's 500 rounds per minute theoretically, but it's a magazine clip. So there's no way that's ever going to happen. Its optimal rate is that rate because otherwise it might overheat. And also you don't want to churn through ammunition. British Army has always been concerned about conserving ammunition.

45:29Al Murray: It's got a thick barrel. It's got a wooden grip. Well, and the advantage of the thick barrel is that it doesn't then melt very quickly. It doesn't lose its shape because it's thicker. Exactly. It's got that wooden grip on the top of it which you can lift it up. So you can change it really easy as well. Yeah. It's a light machine gun operated by just one man. I mean, it's also, you know, let's not forget the British Army is also thinking, what's a good machine gun for the Hindu Kush? Right? They have other fish to fry the British Army at this period of history. They need a properly manned portable piece of light kit.

45:59Al Murray: And this is taken from a Czech design in Brno in Czechoslovakia, and it's modified in Enfield, which is why it's called a Br-N, isn't it? Every schoolboy knows that. and rearmament is focused on the Royal Air Force and the Navy, there is this feeling where you can't have another massive man-intensive meat grinder campaign like before. And you can't for lots of reasons. You can't because, you know, straight-up humanitarian thing, you don't want to get a lot of your fellow citizens killed. Secondly, you want your workforce intact after the disaster, don't you? And if you're chewing through young men, then you're reducing your economic possibilities after the war.

46:39Al Murray: And thirdly, if you could possibly avoid getting lots of people killed, your society will be probably more stable afterwards. Because after all, the great era of revolution follows the First World War. It's a direct result of the calamity of those wars. And the British have managed to avoid their revolution and they don't want another again. So you end up with this steel, not flesh. But fifthly, Britain can't have a large army because there's nowhere to put it. If you've got a large army, you've got to base it somewhere and you've got to be able to transport it. How are you going to transport it?

47:11Because we're an island. We're a small island. So practically, you can't really have a very large army. You know, you can have a million or whatever, but there is a sound, pragmatic reason for not having a large standing army. And also, we've renewed our military alliance with France and started in 1939. and France has got a huge army and it's on the continent already and they can do the army bit. That's the point. So there are no plans at all to increase the army size by more than 55 divisions, despite Germany having 100 divisions by September 1939 and France having a similar number. And everyone is in agreement with this.

47:51And so the priority for defense spending in the 1930s is the Navy and the Air Force. And the consequence of this is by 1939, We have the world's own fully coordinated air defence system. No one else has an air defence system that is even remotely comparable to that of Great Britain. And we've got the largest navy in the world and one of the most modern ones as well. So the army is small and modern and mechanised, but it is small.

48:22Al Murray: And its actual task is policing the empire, not fighting a continental encounter. because after all, that threat's gone away, isn't it? It's been decided against and it's been ruled out. And as you say, Jim, the thing we can do is blockade with the Navy. That's what we're blockade with the Navy and the extension of the blockade through a putative strategic bombing campaign is the thinking, should it come to it. And obviously, the army has this fantastic system of regimental culture, which is, I think, when you start to look at it, Obviously, this means that you've got hard pockets of loyalty within the army.

49:00Al Murray: People are loyal to their regiment. The regiments then all come with their etiquette, their traditions, their standards. If you're in an officer's mess, that probably means you have to be good at cricket. You probably have to be good at polo. If you're pig sticking. Pig sticking. Exactly, pig sticking. Exactly, all that sort of stuff. And drinking gin. And the cavalry is still massive social cachet within the army, doesn't it? still looks down on the tank core as a novelty and a bit grubby and lacking the sort of finesse. And lots of cavalry people are very, very, very unhappy about how they have to mechanise.

49:36Al Murray: Drag kicking and screaming, really. I mean, to the point where members of the Royal Scots, they lobby parliament against mechanisation in 1938 and write angry letters to the Times. That's just amazing, isn't it? It is incredible. But it also shows that the regimental tradition has its pluses and its minuses. And that's one of its minuses, isn't it? Is that they can't see the wood for the trees in that instance. But tanks are really important. And I think the thing is, again, German propaganda credits the Germans with all the tank thinking. But that's just not the case. And there's been an awful lot of thought and debate in Britain, and particularly within the Royal Armoured Corps, who have no money.

50:17Al Murray: and yet have been doing the thinking and working really hard on what they want and come up with a doctrine. And it's interesting because the infantry tank, cruiser tank doctrine is also an industrial policy. That's the other thing to remember about is that you're leaning into the fact different factories will be good at different things and should specialize in different things rather than trying to get everyone to do the same thing. So, you know, the infantry tank, you know, the Matilda II, which we end up with, has the thickest armor of any tank in the world. which means German gunnery can't deal with it when the crunch comes and the two pounder is the most advanced anti-tank weapon at the start of the war in the world as well the field version is a brilliant bit of kit the gun carriage on that is absolutely fantastic that allows you to traverse the gun through 360 degrees super portable the cruiser tank they haven't quite got right yet but the idea is you've got different people specialising so different people working on it rather than relying everyone to get the same thing right It's not just a doctrine in terms of military doctrine.

51:18Al Murray: It's an industrial policy. And by the beginning of the war, they've got the Matilda II, the cruiser tanks on their way, and the two-pounder gun, which is a really awesome piece of kit. And the field artillery is really good. You know, the 25-pounder, there's nothing wrong with that at all. I mean, it's arguably the best field gun of the war. So, you know, they're in good feffal. It's just they haven't got a lot of stuff. That's the point. And so by August 1939, it is literally only the yeomanry regiments that are still using lots of leather and horses. Regiments like the Sherwood Rangers yeomanry, they do feel a bit archaic.

51:51They're certainly not representative of the rest of the armed forces as a whole, I'd say.

51:55Al Murray: They're in Palestine, aren't they? Where, you know, do you need tanks or is being able to zip up out on a horse probably as useful, given their possible role there? Well, yeah, they just don't have enough tanks anyway. So, you know, I mean, it's kind of irrelevant. But, so, there's no panic in this part of the war and no real impetus to do anything because the French army is enormous. British sovereignty isn't under threat. And, in fact, it's German maritime sovereignty that's under threat, really, in this stage of the war, quite comprehensively. There are also 16 new ordnance factories that were authorised in March.

52:30Al Murray: There's 29 more authorised in December. Just to reiterate the point, on the 1st of September 1939, there are only six ordnance factories in the entire United States. Yes, in Sleeping Giant news, yeah. But half of all government expenditure is planned for arms in the crossover from 1939 into 1940. So we've gone from defence spending, this is really interesting, so it's 3 % in 1935, goes up to 3.54%, I think, in 1936, 38. And by 1940, it's 42%. Yeah, amazing. And we're talking about the largest global economy in the world at that point. That's doing that. That's the, you know, not Britain now. Don't think of it as Britain now.

53:16Al Murray: Think of it as this gigantic global order at our disposal. Anyway, that's a look at Germany and a look at the British as the phony war sort of beds in. Join us for our next episode as we'll move on. We're going to have to look at the French, aren't we, Jim? Going to have to. We're going to have to, I'm afraid. We hope you've enjoyed this. If you want to hear the next episode immediately, then become a Patreon. Go to the We Have Ways of Making You Talk Patreon. Become a member where there's tons of stuff up. Loads of audio books lately. I've been recording a ton of stuff to go with our recent series about Udna disaster.

53:47Al Murray: Yeah, a lot of it, very illuminating. And even the poems of Richard Spender, Lieutenant Richard Spender, the Rupert Brooke of the Second World War has been described as. I recorded some of those too, which are worth listening to. We will see you for our next episode as the phony war continues in its phony fashion. Cheerio. Cheerio.

54:16hello goalhanger history listeners this is marina hyde and richard osmond from the rest is entertainment hello everybody every thursday and friday we are reacting to the pop culture phenomenon that is the celebrity traitors we'll be on youtube and wherever you get your podcasts and marina and i are digging into all the castles twists and turns giving our expert opinion on what should happen next. Now, which historical figure do we think would be the greatest traitor? It's tempting to think of an actual traitor. Yeah. A Guy Fawkes or a Kim Philby. But then all of those are traitors who got caught.

54:46Philby had a great run, though. He did have a great run. I think he could probably see off, you know, Joanne. Yes, maybe. And probably sort of where he ended up in Moscow is probably roughly like where the contestants have to spend every night as well. So maybe there's some sort of equivalence. So if you're watching Celebrity Traitors, don't forget to tune into our reaction episodes every Thursday and Friday night at 10pm. Find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.