0:00:05 The following is a conversation with James Holland, a historian specializing in World
0:00:10 War II, who has written a lot of amazing books on the subject, especially covering the Western
0:00:17 Front, often providing fascinating details at multiple levels of analysis, including strategic,
0:00:23 operational, tactical, technological, and of course the human side, the personal accounts
0:00:31 from the war. He also co-hosts a great podcast on World War II called We Have Ways of Making
0:00:32 You Talk.
0:00:39 And now, a quick few-second mention of his sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfreedman.com
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0:01:06 the things I’m reading or thinking about. A little Bob Ross-like heart-to-heart between
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0:01:49 network of trade routes connecting east and west, spanning over 7,000 miles? In the upcoming episode
0:01:55 on Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, we touch on this. But of course, Silk Road spans much
0:02:03 wider in time than the rise and the fall of the Mongol Empire. It facilitated trade and cultural
0:02:14 exchange for over 1,500 years, roughly from 130 BC. It was spices, tea, paper, gunpowder moving west,
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0:02:42 This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix.
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0:03:06 Sweat is fascinating, isn’t it? But as you sweat, you’re losing sodium, potassium, magnesium,
0:03:12 and so you have to replenish it. I think about the ultramarathon runners and the events like the
0:03:19 Badwater Ultramarathon. I think it’s 135 miles through Death Valley. In my crazier moments,
0:03:27 I think about doing an ultramarathon like that. Some of the coolest people I know do ultramarathons.
0:03:33 And some of the especially coolest people I know have done the Badwater Ultramarathon.
0:03:39 What is it about the human mind and the human heart that pulls towards a challenge like that?
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0:03:57 This episode is also brought to you by AG1, an all-in-one daily drink that supports better health
0:04:02 and peak performance. Peak performance is such a fascinating concept to me because it doesn’t
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0:04:15 lowering stress, optimizing the number of hours in a day that you spend in flow,
0:04:21 focus doing something you’re passionate about. That’s a tricky one. That’s hard to articulate
0:04:28 explicitly. So we focus on things that are a little bit easier to articulate like sleep and diet and
0:04:35 exercise, but I think about Hunter S. Thompson. And sometimes I think the top priority for health
0:04:38 is hearing and accepting the call to adventure
0:04:43 and figuring out the rest of the bullshit along the way.
0:04:49 That said, I think sleep is really important. It’s one of the puzzles I’ve been trying to figure out.
0:04:55 But at the very least, it’s good to do the low-hanging fruit of health. Just do the basic bullshit.
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0:05:11 This episode is also brought to you by Notion, a note-taking and team collaboration tool.
0:05:17 They integrate AI into the note-taking and collaboration process incredibly well.
0:05:22 Probably better than any software service I’ve used to date.
0:05:27 And it’s funny because I just got a notebook for some basic note-taking,
0:05:33 like a physical notebook with a physical pen. And it feels so limiting.
0:05:39 And not limiting in a good way, like the constraints are a catalyst for creativity.
0:05:43 I mean, limiting, like I want to run some algorithms to summarize stuff,
0:05:46 to generate some more text, to give me ideas, all of that.
0:05:51 But I just need the notebook because sometimes I don’t have any electronic devices on me.
0:05:54 And specifically, that is one of the things I like to do for creativity,
0:05:59 is to remove electronic devices from my life for long stretches of time,
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0:06:08 And it just forces you to be creative in the way that devices somehow suffocate.
0:06:13 They too easily get you to be task-switching from one task to the next to the next to the next.
0:06:17 And that kills the kind of deep focus that’s required.
0:06:24 First of all, to be truly present for life, for thoughts, for ideas that you’re working through.
0:06:31 And also to just focus on solving difficult puzzles, whether they’re creative puzzles or engineering puzzles.
0:06:37 Sometimes I wish I could just use Notion and have everything else removed.
0:06:45 Yeah, this digital technological life that we’re thrust into is a real puzzle, isn’t it?
0:06:49 Try Notion AI for free when you go to notion.com slash lex.
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0:06:57 This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
0:07:03 To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors.
0:07:07 And now, dear friends, here’s James Holland.
0:07:31 In Volume 1 of The War in the West, your book series on World War II, you write,
0:07:39 The Second World War witnessed the deaths of more than 60 million people from over 60 different countries.
0:07:42 Entire cities were laid waste.
0:07:45 National borders were redrawn.
0:07:48 And many millions more people found themselves displaced.
0:07:54 Over the past couple of decades, many of those living in the Middle East or parts of Africa,
0:07:59 the Balkans, Afghanistan, and even the United States may feel justifiably
0:08:05 that these troubled times have already proved the most traumatic in their recent past.
0:08:13 Yet, globally, the Second World War was and remains the single biggest catastrophe of modern history.
0:08:17 In terms of human drama, it is unrivaled.
0:08:23 No other war has affected so many lives in such a large number of countries.
0:08:29 So, what to you makes World War II the biggest catastrophe in human drama in modern history?
0:08:34 And maybe from a historian perspective, the most fascinating subject to study?
0:08:37 The thing about World War II is it really is truly global.
0:08:39 You know, it’s fought in deserts.
0:08:40 It’s fought in the Arctic.
0:08:43 It’s fought across oceans.
0:08:44 It’s fought in the air.
0:08:45 It’s in jungle.
0:08:47 It’s in the hills.
0:08:49 It is on the beaches.
0:08:51 It’s also on the Russian steppe.
0:08:52 And it’s also in Ukraine.
0:08:57 So, it’s that global nature of it.
0:09:01 And I just think, you know, where there’s war, there is always incredible human drama.
0:09:07 And I think for most people, and certainly the true in my case, you get drawn to the human drama of it.
0:09:11 It’s that thought that, you know, gosh, if I’d been 20 years old, how would I have dealt with it?
0:09:12 You know, would I have been in the Army?
0:09:14 Would I have been in the Air Force?
0:09:17 Would I have been on a, you know, Royal Navy destroyer?
0:09:18 Or, you know, how would I have coped with it?
0:09:20 And how would I have dealt with that separation?
0:09:23 I mean, I’ve interviewed people who were away for four years.
0:09:29 I remember talking to a tank man from Liverpool in England called Sam Bradshaw.
0:09:31 And he went away for four years.
0:09:33 And when he came home, he’d been twice wounded.
0:09:36 He’d been very badly wounded in North Africa.
0:09:38 And then he was shot in the neck in Italy.
0:09:39 Eventually, he got home.
0:09:41 When he came home, his mother had turned gray.
0:09:48 His little baby sister, who had been, you know, 13 when he left, was now a young woman.
0:09:52 His old school had been destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs.
0:09:53 He didn’t recognize the place.
0:09:54 And do you know what he did?
0:09:56 He joined up again.
0:10:00 Went back out of Europe and was one of the first people in Belsen.
0:10:01 So, you know.
0:10:04 What was his justification for that, for joining right back?
0:10:07 He just felt completely disconnected to home.
0:10:13 He felt that the gulf of time, his experiences had separated him from all the normalities of life.
0:10:26 And he felt that the normalities of the life that he had known before he’d gone away to war had just been severed in a really kind of cruel way that he didn’t really feel he was able to confront at that particular point.
0:10:28 But he decided to rejoin.
0:10:30 Couldn’t go back to the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment.
0:10:31 So, it went back to a different unit.
0:10:35 Went from kind of the Italian campaign to European theatre.
0:10:38 Didn’t see so much action at the end.
0:10:44 But, you know, like a lot of British troops, if you were in a certain division at a certain time, you know, you ended up passing very close to Belsen.
0:10:48 And, you know, you suddenly realized, okay, this was the right thing to do.
0:10:50 You know, we did have to get rid of Nazism.
0:10:53 We did have to do this because this is the consequence.
0:10:54 It’s not just the oppression.
0:10:56 It’s just not just the secret police.
0:10:59 It’s not just the expansionism of Nazism.
0:11:02 It is also, you know, the Holocaust, which hadn’t been given its name at that point.
0:11:06 But, you know, you’re witnessing this kind of untold cruelty.
0:11:11 And I always, you know, I’ve always sort of, I think a lot about Sam.
0:11:12 I mean, he’s no longer with us.
0:11:15 But he was one of the kind of first people that I interviewed.
0:11:16 And I interviewed him at great length.
0:11:19 And I know you like a long interview, Lex.
0:11:22 And I totally, totally get that.
0:11:26 Because when you have a long interview, you really start getting to the nuts and bolts of it.
0:11:37 One of the frustrations for me when I’m looking at oral histories of Second World War vets is usually they’re kind of, you know, they’re put on YouTube or they’re put on a museum website.
0:11:40 They’re 30 minutes, you know, an hour if you’re lucky.
0:11:42 And they’re just scratching the surface.
0:11:44 You never really get to know it.
0:11:48 You feel that they’re just repeating kind of stuff they’ve read in books themselves after the war and stuff.
0:11:56 And, you know, I always kind of leave feeling frustrated that I haven’t had a chance to kind of grill them on the kind of stuff that I would grill them on if I was put in front of them.
0:12:04 So Tank Man, what was maybe the most epic, the most intense, or the most interesting story that he told you?
0:12:11 Well, I do remember him telling me, funny enough, it’s not really about the conflict.
0:12:14 I remember him telling me about the importance of letters.
0:12:22 And there was this guy who literally every few weeks, you know, post would arrive intermittently.
0:12:24 There was no kind of sort of regular post.
0:12:26 So it was supposed to be regular, but it didn’t come around regularly.
0:12:29 So you might suddenly get a flurry of five all in one day.
0:12:35 But he said there was this guy and his tank, a member of a different tank crew.
0:12:38 There was a good friend of his in the same squadron.
0:12:45 He had British have squadrons for their armor, which is Americans would have a company.
0:12:52 I should say that in your book, one of the wonderful things you do is you use the correct term in the language for the particular army involved.
0:12:54 It’s the German or the British or the American.
0:12:56 Well, that’s not to be pretentious.
0:13:01 That’s really just because you’re dealing with so many numbers and different units.
0:13:05 And it can go over your head and you can get sort of consumed by the detail if you’re not careful.
0:13:09 And as a reader, it can be very unsatisfying because you just can’t keep pace with everything.
0:13:26 So one of the things about writing in the vernacular German or in the American spelling, our more rather than our Mauer, as we Brits would spell it, is it just immediately tells the reader, okay, this is American.
0:13:27 Okay, I’ve got that.
0:13:27 Or this is German.
0:13:29 I’ve got that or Italian or whatever it might be.
0:13:30 But yeah, to go back to Sam.
0:13:37 So Sam, there was this guy in his squadron and he’d get his letters from his girlfriend, his wife.
0:13:40 And he said it was like a soap opera.
0:13:52 He said, we all just waited for his letters to come in so we could find out, you know, whether his daughter had, you know, got to school okay or something, you know, won the swimming contest or whatever it was.
0:13:59 Because, you know, the sort of details of this sort of day-to-day kind of banal life was just absolute catnip to these guys.
0:14:00 They absolutely loved it.
0:14:07 And then the letter arrived, the Dear John letter, saying, sorry, I found someone else and it’s over.
0:14:11 And his friend was just absolutely devastated.
0:14:21 It was the only thing that was keeping him going, this sort of sense of continuity of home, this sort of foundation of his life back at home.
0:14:27 And Sam said he could see it was in a really, really bad way.
0:14:30 And he thought, uh-uh, he’s going to do something stupid.
0:14:34 And he went up to him and he said, look, you know, I know it’s bad and I know it’s terrible.
0:14:36 I know you’re absolutely devastated, but you’ve got your mates here.
0:14:38 Just don’t do anything silly.
0:14:42 Just, you know, maybe, you know, when it’s all over, you can patch things up or sort things out.
0:14:44 And he said, you know, you’ve got to understand it from her point of view.
0:14:45 You know, it’s a long way.
0:14:48 I haven’t seen you for two years, this kind of stuff, you know.
0:14:50 So just don’t do anything rash.
0:14:54 And, of course, the next engagement, two days later, he was killed.
0:14:58 And he said it was just a kind of, he just knew that was going to happen.
0:15:01 So it was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
0:15:03 That’s something I’ve never forgotten, that story.
0:15:07 And I just thought, you know, it’s about human drama.
0:15:11 You know, that’s the truth of it.
0:15:16 And how people react to this totally alien situation.
0:15:23 You know, for the most part, the Second World War is fought by ordinary, everyday people doing extra ordinary things.
0:15:25 And I think that’s something that’s so fascinating.
0:15:30 I suspect, I think I, instinctively, I’m quite slapdash, I think.
0:15:33 So I think I would have, I’d have bought it, literally.
0:15:36 I don’t think it would have ended well for me.
0:15:37 I just, I’m just a bit careless.
0:15:50 I think I also have an element in me where I can believe in the idea of nation and fight for a nation, especially when the conflict is as grand.
0:15:51 That things worse than death.
0:15:57 Yes, as the propaganda would explain very clearly, but also in reality, yes.
0:16:06 So a nation, you know, France, Britain was, you know, maybe facing the prospect of being essentially enslaved.
0:16:11 The Soviet Union was facing the prospect of being enslaved, literally.
0:16:14 I mean, it was very, very clearly stated what they’re going to do.
0:16:18 They’re going to repopulate the land with Germanic people, so.
0:16:20 Well, they’re not just going to do that.
0:16:33 They’re also going to starve lots and lots of Soviet individuals to death by the Hunger Plan, for example, which is planned, you know, really very casually and not by the, you know, this is not SS units or anything like this.
0:16:34 This is the Wehrmacht.
0:16:42 This is the economic division of the Oberkommando de Wehrmacht, the German combined general staff.
0:16:52 General Georg Thomas comes up, you know, and Hermann Bakker, they come up with the, who’s the kind of minister for food.
0:16:53 They come up, you know, what are we going to do?
0:16:58 You know, we haven’t got enough food, you know, largely because German farming is inefficient.
0:17:03 They think, well, you know, this is part of Liebenstrom, we’ll go in and we’ll take the food.
0:17:08 And there’s been this colossal urbanization of the Soviet Union since the revolution in 1917.
0:17:14 So they’re just not going to get their food, you know, these people in these cities, because we’re going to take it all.
0:17:17 And that’s going to lead to, that’s going to lead to a lot of deaths, you know.
0:17:23 Umpteen millions is the phrase that Georg Thomas used.
0:17:25 So let’s talk about the hunger plan.
0:17:32 How important was the hunger plan and Liebenstrom to Nazi ideology and to the whole Nazi war machine?
0:17:34 Essential to the whole thing.
0:17:50 This is all about this notion that is embedded into Hitler’s mind and into the minds of the Nazi party, right from the word go, is there is a big sort of global conspiracy, the Jewish Bolshevik plot.
0:17:55 I mean, completely misplaced that Jews and Bolsheviks go hand in hand and somehow dovetail.
0:17:56 They don’t, obviously.
0:18:00 And the whole ideology is to crush this.
0:18:06 You know, part of the way the Nazis think, the way Hitler thinks, is there is a them and there’s us.
0:18:11 We are the whites, Northern European Aryans.
0:18:13 We should be the master race.
0:18:20 We’ve been threatened by a global Jewish Bolshevik plot.
0:18:24 We’ve been stabbed in the back in 1918 at the end of the First World War.
0:18:26 We need to have to overcome.
0:18:30 This is an existential battle for future survival.
0:18:34 It’s a terrible task that has befallen our generation, but we have to do this.
0:18:36 We have to overcome this or else we have no future.
0:18:37 We will be crushed.
0:18:39 It’s absolutely cut and dry.
0:18:47 And one of the things about Hitler is that he is a very kind of black and white, them or us, either or kind of person.
0:18:49 It’s always one thing or the other.
0:18:51 It’s a thousand-year Reich or it’s Armageddon.
0:18:53 There is no middle ground.
0:18:54 There’s no gray area.
0:18:55 It’s just one or the other.
0:18:57 And that’s his worldview.
0:19:10 And the reason he came to the fore was because of the crystal clear clarity of his message, which is, we’ve been stabbed in the back.
0:19:12 There is a global plot.
0:19:13 We have to overcome this.
0:19:17 We are naturally the master race.
0:19:19 We have to reassert ourselves.
0:19:21 We have to get rid of global Jewry.
0:19:23 We have to get rid of global Bolshevism.
0:19:25 And we have to prevail or else.
0:19:29 But if we do prevail, what an amazing world it’s going to be.
0:19:46 So he starts with this, you know, every speech he does always starts the same way, always starts from a kind of negative and always ends with an incredible positive, this sort of rabble-rousing, crescendo of, if you’re in the front row, spittle, halitosis, and gesticulation.
0:19:48 I mean, you’ve seen pictures of him.
0:19:49 I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen pictures of him.
0:19:54 He’s almost, he wants to grab the air and clutch it to him.
0:20:00 You know, you can see the kind of the venom coming out of his mouth just in a single still photograph.
0:20:03 I mean, it’s amazing.
0:20:07 There’s apps you can get now where you can translate his speeches.
0:20:13 And it just sounds, you know, by today’s standards, you would just think, what a load of absolute wibble.
0:20:15 I mean, just total nonsense.
0:20:27 But you have to kind of put yourself back in the shoes of people listening to him in 1922 or 23, or indeed 1933, and see how kind of captivating that is to a certain part of the population.
0:20:33 So, yeah, so to go back to your original point, Lebensraum is absolutely part of it.
0:20:42 So what you do is you crush the Bolsheviks, you crush world Jewry, then you expand, you know, Britain has had this incredible empire, global empire.
0:20:44 You know, Germany needs that too.
0:20:45 Germany is stuck in Europe.
0:20:47 It doesn’t have access to the world’s oceans.
0:20:49 So we’re not going to be a maritime empire.
0:20:54 We’re going to be a landmass empire, the whole of landmass of Europe and into Asia.
0:20:55 That’s going to be us.
0:20:57 And we’re going to take that land.
0:21:00 We’re going to take the breadbasket of Ukraine.
0:21:02 We’re going to use that for our own ends.
0:21:08 We’re going to spread our – we’re going to make ourselves rich, but we’re also going to spread our peoples.
0:21:15 We’re going to spread the Aryan northern master race throughout Europe and into the traditional Slavic areas.
0:21:18 And we will prevail and come out on top.
0:21:32 And so you have to understand that everything about Operation Barbarossa, the planned invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, is totally wrapped up in the Nazi ideology.
0:21:40 And people, you know, I’ve read it that historians sort of go, if only Hitler had realized that, you know, the Ukrainians had been quite happy to kind of fight on his side.
0:21:47 You know, if only he’d actually brought some of these Jewish scientists and kind of into the Nazi fold, then Germany might have prevailed in World War II.
0:21:49 And you kind of think, well, you’re missing the entire point.
0:21:53 That’s just never going to happen because this is an ideological war.
0:21:58 Yeah, this is not a pragmatic, rational leader.
0:21:58 No.
0:22:05 I mean, part of his effectiveness, we should say, is probably this singular belief in this ideology.
0:22:07 There’s pros and cons.
0:22:15 For an effective military machine, probably having that singular focus is effective.
0:22:36 Yes, except that when you’re making military decisions, if those decisions are always being bracketed by an ideology which is fundamentally flawed from a pragmatic point of view, as much as a kind of reasonable point of view, you’re kind of opening yourselves up for trouble.
0:22:38 I mean, this is a problem he has with Barbarossa.
0:22:46 You know, they realized very early on in 1941, when they’re wargaming this whole operation, that it’s not going to work.
0:22:52 And so, you know, there’s people like General Paulus, who’s on the general staff at the time.
0:22:56 You know, he’s given a kind of, you know, he’s in charge of kind of wargaming this.
0:22:57 And he goes, this isn’t going to work.
0:23:04 And Keitel, who is the chief of the OKW, goes, no, no, no, no, no, no.
0:23:06 Go back and make it work.
0:23:07 He goes, OK.
0:23:10 So he comes back to a plan that does work, but it’s focus.
0:23:15 I mean, it’s just, it doesn’t work because they don’t have enough.
0:23:16 They don’t have enough motorization.
0:23:20 You know, they go into Barbarossa with 2,000 different types of vehicle.
0:23:30 You know, every single one of those vehicles has to have, you know, different distributor caps and different leads and plugs and all sorts of different parts.
0:23:38 You know, there’s the interoperability of the German mechanized arm is super inefficient.
0:23:49 And so you’ve got huge problems because they kind of think, well, you know, we took France in 1940, and that’s kind of one of the most modern countries in the world with, you know, one of the greatest armies and armed forces in the world.
0:23:50 And we did that in six weeks.
0:23:55 So, you know, Soviet Union, look, they struggled against Finland, for goodness sake.
0:23:57 I mean, how hard can it be?
0:24:06 You know, but what you’re failing to understand is that attacking the Soviet Union is over a geographical landmass, 10 times the size of France, just on the frontage.
0:24:13 And you haven’t really got much more mechanization than you had in May 1940 when they attacked the low countries in France.
0:24:17 And you’ve actually got less Luftwaffe aircraft to support you.
0:24:22 And you just do not have the operational mechanics to make it work successfully.
0:24:30 I mean, it is largely down to incompetence of the Red Army and the Soviet leadership in the summer of 1941 that they get as far as they do.
0:24:36 I mean, you know, Barbarossa should never have come close to being a victory.
0:24:37 Let’s talk through it.
0:24:40 So Operation Barbarossa that you’re mentioning, and we’ll go back.
0:24:40 Yes.
0:24:42 We’ve jumped straight into 41.
0:24:43 Straight into it.
0:24:45 I’ve eaten off two years of war.
0:24:48 So this is June 1941.
0:24:57 Operation Barbarossa, when Hitler invades the Soviet Union with, I think, the largest invading force in history up to that point.
0:24:58 Collectively, yeah.
0:25:00 And there’s three prongs.
0:25:03 Army Group North, Army Group Center, Army Group South.
0:25:05 North is going to Leningrad.
0:25:10 Center is going, it’s the strongest group going directly towards Moscow.
0:25:14 And South is going and targeting Ukraine and the caucus.
0:25:18 So can you linger on that, on the details of this plan?
0:25:19 What was the thinking?
0:25:20 What was the strategy?
0:25:21 What was the tactics?
0:25:23 What was the logistics?
0:25:36 There’s so many things to say, but one of them is to say that you often emphasize the importance of three ways to analyze military conflict, the strategic, the operational, and the tactical.
0:25:47 And the operational is often not given enough time, attention, and it’s the logistics that make the war machine really work successfully or fail.
0:25:50 Yeah, that’s absolutely spot on.
0:26:01 And it’s interesting because the vast majority of general histories of World War II tend to focus on the strategic and the tactical.
0:26:02 So what do I mean by that?
0:26:07 Well, the strategic, just for those who don’t know, that’s your overall war aims.
0:26:09 You know, get to Moscow, whatever it might be.
0:26:10 Conquer the world.
0:26:11 That’s your strategy.
0:26:15 The tactical side of things is that’s the coalface of war.
0:26:16 That’s the attritional bit.
0:26:21 That’s the following his Spitfire, the tank crew, the soldier in his foxhole.
0:26:23 It’s the actual kinetic fighting bit.
0:26:30 The operational bit is the level of war that links the strategic to the tactical.
0:26:38 So it is absolutely factories, it’s economics, it’s shipping, it’s supply chains, it’s how you manage your war.
0:26:48 And one of the things where I think people have been guilty in the past, historians have been guilty in the past, is by judging warfare all on the same level.
0:26:56 But obviously, every competent nation has a different approach to war because of the nation they are, the size they are, their geographical location.
0:26:59 So Britain, for example, is an island nation.
0:27:04 Its priority is the Royal Navy, which is why the Royal Navy is known as the Senior Service.
0:27:09 And, you know, in 1939, it’s easy to forget it now when you see how depleted Britain is today.
0:27:14 But in 1939, it has comfortably the world’s largest navy.
0:27:17 There’s something like 194 destroyers.
0:27:24 I think it’s 15 battleships, seven aircraft carriers, and another kind of six on the way.
0:27:30 America, it’s got the Pacific Ocean, it’s got the Atlantic Ocean, it’s got two seaboarders.
0:27:32 You know, it has the second largest navy in the world.
0:27:34 But a tiny army.
0:27:42 I mean, the US army in September 1939 is the 19th largest in the world, sandwiched between Portugal and Uruguay.
0:27:44 You know, it’s just incredible.
0:27:51 It’s like 189,000 strong, which might seem reasonably large by today’s standards, but it’s absolutely tiny by 1939 standards.
0:27:57 You know, whereas, you know, Germany’s got an army of, you know, three and a half million in 1939.
0:28:00 So, you know, these are big, big, big differences.
0:28:03 But America’s coming at it from a different perspective.
0:28:04 Britain’s coming apart from a different perspective.
0:28:08 You know, Britain’s empire is all about, you know, it’s a shipping.
0:28:10 It’s a seaborne empire.
0:28:18 Whereas there’s also another point, which is having large armies is actually inherently impractical and inefficient.
0:28:25 Because the larger army, the more people you’ve got to feed, the more kind of barracks you’ve got to have, the more space you’ve got to have for training,
0:28:30 the more people you’re taking out of your workforce to produce tanks and shells and all the rest of it,
0:28:32 because they’re tramping around with rifles.
0:28:37 You know, so there’s an argument saying, actually, it’s really not a very good way of doing things.
0:28:48 So, you know, very much the British way and subsequently the United States way and way of Britain’s dominions and empire is to use kind of steel, not our flesh.
0:28:57 As a principle, the idea is that you use technology, mechanization, modernity, global reach to do a lot of your hard yards.
0:29:00 That’s the sort of basic principle behind the strategic air campaign.
0:29:07 When we talk about the strategic air campaign, we talk about strategic air forces which are operating in isolation from other armed forces.
0:29:13 So a tactical air force, for example, is an air force which is offering close air support for ground operations.
0:29:17 A strategic air force has got nothing to do with ground operations.
0:29:18 It’s just operating on its own.
0:29:20 So that’s your bomber force or whatever.
0:29:29 You know, that’s your B-17s and B-24s of the 8th Air Force flying out of East England, bombing the rural industrial complex of Germany or whatever it might be.
0:29:38 So it’s important to understand that when you compare, you have to have in the back of your mind that Britain, compared to Germany, for example, is coming at it from a completely different perspective.
0:29:48 And I would say one of the failures of Hitler is that he always views everybody through his own very narrow worldview, which is not particularly helpful.
0:29:49 You know, you want to get inside the head of your enemy.
0:29:53 And, you know, he’s sort of guilty of not doing that.
0:30:08 So when you’re talking about Operation Barbarossa, to go back to your original question next, you’re dealing with an operation on such a vast scale that that operational level of war is absolutely vital to its chances of success or failure.
0:30:11 It doesn’t matter how good your individual commanders are at the front.
0:30:14 If you haven’t got the backup, it’s not going to work.
0:30:24 And the problem that the Germans have is, yes, they’ve got their kind of, you know, three million men on the front, and they’ve got their kind of, you know, 3,000 aircraft and all the rest of it.
0:30:27 But actually, what you need to do is break it down.
0:30:29 And who is doing the hard yards of that?
0:30:35 And the way the German war machine works is that the machine bit is only the spearhead.
0:30:38 So people always talk about the Nazi war machine.
0:30:45 In a way, it’s a kind of misnomer because you’re sort of suggesting that it’s highly mechanized and industrialized and all the rest of it.
0:30:47 And nothing could be further from the truth.
0:30:50 The spearhead is, but the rest of it is not.
0:31:00 And this is the kind of fatal flaw of the German armed forces in the whole of World War II, really, but even in this early stage.
0:31:09 Because in Barbarossa, you’re talking about 17 panzer divisions out of, you know, the 100-odd that are involved in the initial attack.
0:31:14 Well, 17, and that panzer division is not a division full of panzers, tanks.
0:31:19 It is a combined arms motorized outfit.
0:31:33 So scouts on BMWs with sidecars, armored cars, infantry, grenadiers, panzer grenadiers, which are infantry in half tracks and trucks, mechanized.
0:31:35 It is motorized artillery.
0:31:37 It is motorized anti-aircraft artillery.
0:31:39 It is motorized anti-tank artillery.
0:31:42 And, of course, it is tanks as well, panzers.
0:31:52 But those are a really, really small proportion of, you know, you’re talking less than 20% of your attacking force are those spearhead forces.
0:31:56 And inevitably, they are going to be attrited as they go.
0:31:58 You know, you are going to take casualties.
0:32:00 And not only that, you’re not going to just take battlefield casualties.
0:32:04 You’re also going to have mechanical casualties because of the huge spaces involved.
0:32:05 You just simply can’t function.
0:32:11 So what you see is in the initial phases of Operation Barbarossa, they surge forward.
0:32:14 Red Army’s got absolutely no answers to anything.
0:32:19 Stalin weirdly hasn’t heeded all the warnings that this attack is brewing.
0:32:21 And there have been plenty, incidentally.
0:32:26 Smolensk falls on the 15th of July, you know, in less than four weeks.
0:32:26 It’s just incredible.
0:32:28 Three and a half weeks, Smolensk has gone.
0:32:31 You know, they’ve overwhelmed the rest of what had been Poland.
0:32:36 They’ve surged into what is now Belarus, taken Smolensk, all of, you know, this is Army Group
0:32:36 Center.
0:32:40 Army Group North is thrust up into the Baltic.
0:32:41 It’s all going swimmingly well.
0:32:45 But then, the next several months, they barely go 100 miles.
0:32:47 And that’s because they’re running out of steam.
0:32:54 And the 16th Panzer Division, for example, by the time it’s taken Smolensk, involved in
0:32:58 taking Smolensk on the 15th of July, 1941, the following day, it’s got 16 tanks left.
0:33:00 16.
0:33:03 Out of, you know, should have 180.
0:33:06 So, it’s just being attributed.
0:33:08 They can’t sustain it.
0:33:12 And they can’t sustain it because as the Russians fall back, as the Soviet Red Army falls back,
0:33:14 they do their own scorched earth policy.
0:33:18 They also discover that the railway line is kind of a different loading gauge, so they’ve
0:33:19 got to change it.
0:33:23 So, it’s slightly, the Russian loading gauge is slightly wider.
0:33:30 So, every single mile, every yard, every foot, every meter that they’re capturing of Russian
0:33:38 railway has to be moved a couple of inches to the left to make it fit the German Kriegsloch
0:33:42 in the standard train of locomotive of the Reichsbahn.
0:33:44 Just imagine what that’s like.
0:33:49 And also, Soviet trains are bigger, so they can take more water, which means the water stops
0:33:52 in between are fewer and far between.
0:33:55 So, they have to, the Germans, when they come in, their trains, their Kriegsloch are smaller,
0:33:58 so they have to be re-watered more often and re-colled more often.
0:34:06 So, they have to, I mean, it’s absolutely boggling just how complicated it is and how badly planned
0:34:08 it is because they haven’t reckoned on this.
0:34:10 They’re having to kind of think on their feet.
0:34:15 I love the logistical details of all of this because, yes, that’s a huge component of this,
0:34:17 especially when you’re covering that much territory.
0:34:26 But there is a notion that if Hitler didn’t stop Army Group Center, it could have pushed all
0:34:26 the way to Moscow.
0:34:30 It was only maybe 100 miles away from Moscow.
0:34:32 Is that a possibility?
0:34:37 Because it had so much success in the early days pushing forward.
0:34:45 Do you think it’s possible that if Hitler, as we mentioned from a military blunder perspective,
0:34:50 didn’t make that blunder, that they could have defeated the Soviet Union right there and then?
0:34:54 Well, my own view is that they should never have got close.
0:34:59 Red Army has plenty of men to be able to see off anything that the Germans can do.
0:35:07 The capture of Kiev, for example, in September 1941 was a catastrophe for the Soviet Union.
0:35:08 It should never have happened.
0:35:14 I mean, Zhukov is saying to Stalin, we’ve got to pull back across to the Dnieper.
0:35:17 And Stalin’s going, no, I can’t possibly do that.
0:35:19 You can’t abandon Kiev.
0:35:20 It’s like third city in the Soviet Union.
0:35:21 No way.
0:35:23 No, absolutely not.
0:35:25 And he goes, well, we are just going to be overwhelmed.
0:35:27 You know, we can’t hold this.
0:35:31 And he says, you know, either back me or far me.
0:35:32 Back me or sack me.
0:35:34 So Stalin sacks him.
0:35:39 Obviously, as we know, Zhukov gets rehabilitated from pretty quick order.
0:35:44 And Stalin does learn very quickly thereafter to learn the lessons.
0:35:48 But the opening phase of Barbarossa has been a catastrophe.
0:35:54 And so as a consequence of Stalin refusing to let his men retreat back across to Dnieper,
0:36:00 which is a substantial barrier and would be very difficult for the Germans to overwhelm
0:36:02 had they moved back in time.
0:36:07 You know, that’s another kind of 700,000 men put in the bag.
0:36:10 I mean, that’s just staggering numbers.
0:36:16 But yeah, I mean, there’s so many things wrong with the Barbarossa plan.
0:36:18 You know, too much over.
0:36:19 It’s just such a vast area.
0:36:25 I mean, you’re talking about kind of, you know, 2,500 miles or something, you know, of frontage.
0:36:30 You know, maybe if you kind of put your panzer groups, which are these spearheads,
0:36:34 and you put them all in one big thrust and just go hell for leather straight across on a kind of,
0:36:38 you know, much more narrow front of, let’s say, kind of 400 miles rather than 1,200,
0:36:44 then they might have got, you know, they might have just sort of burnt away straight through to Moscow.
0:36:48 They really caught the Red Army unprepared.
0:36:48 Yeah.
0:36:55 Is there something to be said about the strategic genius of that?
0:36:57 Or was it just luck?
0:36:59 No, I don’t think so.
0:37:05 I mean, I think what’s happened is you’ve had the Soviet purges of the second half of the 1930s,
0:37:10 where they’ve, you know, they have executed or imprisoned 22,500 officers,
0:37:13 of which, you know, three out of five marshals,
0:37:19 you know, God knows how many army commanders, et cetera, et cetera.
0:37:25 So, you know, you’ve completely decapitated the Red Army in terms of its command structure.
0:37:30 Before that, would it be fair to say it was one of, if not the greatest army in the world?
0:37:31 Well, there was a lot of experience.
0:37:33 There’s a lot of experience there.
0:37:36 But also technology, material.
0:37:36 Yeah.
0:37:40 The size of the army and the number of people that are mobilized.
0:37:40 Yeah.
0:37:44 And they’re the first people to kind of adapt, you know, create airborne troops, for example.
0:37:47 So, yes, I think there is an argument to say that.
0:37:51 But the decapitation is absolutely brutal.
0:37:53 If you’ve decapitated an army, you’ve then got to put new guys in charge.
0:38:01 And someone who looks on paper like a half-decent peacetime commander might not be a very good wartime commander.
0:38:04 They’re different disciplines and different skills.
0:38:07 And what comes to it, you don’t know that until you’re tested.
0:38:09 It’s very hard to kind of judge.
0:38:18 And, of course, you know, Stalin is existing in a sort of, you know, a vacuum of paranoia and suspicion all the time, which is unhelpful when you’re trying to develop strong-arm forces.
0:38:23 So, they go into Finland in the back end of 1939.
0:38:26 And they get there, you know, they get really badly hammered.
0:38:30 They do take about, you know, they get the Karelia Peninsula.
0:38:31 And they do take some ground.
0:38:32 But at huge cost.
0:38:35 I mean, the casualties are five times as bad as those of the Finns.
0:38:36 And it’s humiliation.
0:38:42 So, Hitler sees that and thinks, okay, they’re not up to much Cobb.
0:38:44 Then Hitler loses the Battle of Britain.
0:38:48 And he thinks, I can’t afford to fight a war on two fronts.
0:38:56 That’s one of the reasons why Germany loses the war in 1914 to 18 is fighting on the Eastern Front, but also fighting on, you know, the Western Front at the same time.
0:38:57 We’ve got to avoid that.
0:38:59 But I’ve got to get rid of Britain.
0:39:00 And Britain hasn’t come out of the fight.
0:39:04 Britain is still fighting in the back end of 1940, having won the Battle of Britain.
0:39:09 And so, maybe I’ll go into the Soviet Union now while the Red Army is still weak.
0:39:13 You know, we’re not 100% ready ourselves, but let’s hurry the whole thing forward.
0:39:17 Because originally, he’d been thinking of planning an operation in 1943 or 1944.
0:39:25 So, the idea is, you take Poland out, you take out France and the low countries, you conquer most of Western Europe, you knock out Britain.
0:39:29 So, therefore, you don’t have to worry so much about the United States because they’re over the other side of the Atlantic.
0:39:35 That then buys him the time to kind of rebuild up his strength for the all-out thrust on the Soviet Union.
0:39:43 The failure to subdue Britain in 1940 changes all those plans and makes him think, actually, I’m going to go in early.
0:39:49 And he’s also been kind of, you know, he’s hoisted by his own petard because he starts to believe his own genius.
0:39:55 You know, everyone told him that, you know, he wouldn’t be able to beat France and the low countries.
0:39:58 Everyone told him that, you know, it wouldn’t work out when he went into Poland.
0:40:00 Everyone was really nervous about it.
0:40:05 You know, well, go hang, you cautious, awful, aristocratic Prussian generals.
0:40:06 You know, I’m the best at this.
0:40:07 I’ve told you.
0:40:08 I’ve shown you.
0:40:09 I’m the genius.
0:40:10 I can do it.
0:40:11 He starts to believe his own hype.
0:40:12 And, of course, this is a problem.
0:40:16 You know, he’s surrounded by sycophants and people who are constantly telling him that he’s this incredible genius.
0:40:19 So he starts to believe it and he thinks everything is possible.
0:40:25 And he’s very much into this idea of the will of the German people.
0:40:26 You know, this is our destiny.
0:40:27 And I have a will.
0:40:30 As I say earlier on, you know, it’s the thousand-year Reich or Armageddon.
0:40:32 But momentum is with us and we need to strike it.
0:40:37 And only by gambling, only by being bold will the Germans prevail and all this kind of nonsense.
0:40:44 And so that’s why he goes into Soviet Union in June 1941 rather than, you know, a couple of or even three years later.
0:40:47 Yeah, he really hated the Prussian generals, huh?
0:40:49 Yeah, he hated them.
0:40:54 Is there a case to be made that there he was indeed at times a military genius?
0:40:55 No.
0:40:57 I don’t think so.
0:41:01 Because none of the plan, I mean, even the plan for the invasion of France and the low countries isn’t his.
0:41:08 The concept is von Manstein’s and the execution is Guderian’s, Heinz Guderian.
0:41:16 So Heinz Guderian is the kind of – he’s the pioneer of the panzer force, the panzer thrust.
0:41:23 This idea of the ultra-mechanized combined arms, panzer arms, spearhead, doing this kind of lightning-fast thrust.
0:41:26 It’s not Hitler’s idea.
0:41:32 He adopts it and takes it as his own because, you know, he’s a fury.
0:41:32 He can do what he likes.
0:41:35 But it isn’t his.
0:41:46 So it’s not – you know, and up until that point, until that comes into being, until that plan is put forward to Franz Halder, who is the chief of staff of the German army at that time.
0:41:49 Halder’s just thinking, how do we get out of this mess?
0:41:52 This is just a nightmare because they know that France has got a larger army.
0:41:54 They know that France has got more tanks.
0:41:56 They know that France has got double the number of artillery pieces.
0:41:59 It’s got parity in terms of air forces.
0:42:00 Then you add Holland.
0:42:00 Then you add Belgium.
0:42:02 Then you add Great Britain.
0:42:05 And that looks like a very, very tough nut to crack.
0:42:17 I mean, the reason why France is subdued in 1940 is 50% brilliance of the Germans and their operational art in that particular instance and 50% French failure, really, and incompetence.
0:42:39 I mean, there is a kind of genius to be able to see and take advantage and set up the world stage in such a way that you have the appeasement from France and Britain, keep the United States out of it, just set up the world stage where you could just plow through everybody with very little resistance.
0:42:43 I mean, there is a kind of geopolitical genius.
0:42:47 I don’t know if it works, but it doesn’t, you know, that’s a problem.
0:42:52 I mean, you know, I mean, he goes into Poland on the assumption that Britain and France will not declare war.
0:42:57 You know, he is not prepared for Britain and France declaring war on Germany.
0:42:59 He thinks they won’t.
0:42:59 That’s right.
0:43:01 So miscalculation, blunder.
0:43:04 But then France does, right?
0:43:13 And then that doesn’t, you know, France does not successfully do anything with this incredible army that it has.
0:43:17 It has a size, but one of the problems that France has is that it’s very, very top heavy.
0:43:21 It’s very cumbersome in the way it operates.
0:43:29 There’s no question that it’s got some brilliant young commanders, but at the top, the commander is very old.
0:43:32 Most of them are First World War veterans.
0:43:40 You know, whether, I mean, Wegan, Gamelan, General Georges, these people, they’re all well into their 60s.
0:43:44 General Georges is the youngest army commander, and he’s 60.
0:43:47 You know, it’s too old to be an army commander.
0:43:49 You need to be in your kind of late 40s, early 50s.
0:43:56 And they’re too just consumed by conservatism and the old ways.
0:44:00 And what they assume is that any future war will be much like the First World War.
0:44:06 It will be attritional, long, and drawn out, but static.
0:44:08 But actually, they’re right on two parts of it.
0:44:14 It is, as it turns out, it is going to be long and drawn out and attritional, but it’s going to be mobile rather than static.
0:44:16 And that’s a big miscalculation.
0:44:17 So here’s my question.
0:44:20 I think you’re being too nice on France here.
0:44:31 So when Germany invaded Poland, correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels like France could have just went straight to Berlin.
0:44:32 Yeah, they absolutely could have.
0:44:40 And I know you said it’s very top-heavy, and you’re saying all of these things, but they literally did basically nothing.
0:44:41 Yeah, they were pulling.
0:44:50 So, like, and I think a part of that, and I think you described this well, maybe you can speak to that,
0:45:01 is the insanity that is Hitler creating this psychological, with the propaganda, creating this feeling that there’s this Nazi force that’s unstoppable.
0:45:05 So France just didn’t want to, like, step into that.
0:45:12 Maybe they were, like, legitimately, I hesitate to say these words, but scared of war.
0:45:17 A hundred percent they are, you know, because France has been totally traumatized by the First World War.
0:45:19 It’s fought on their land.
0:45:21 It’s fought in their industrial heartland.
0:45:25 You know, they lose three times the amount of people killed that Britain does.
0:45:29 Britain’s traumatized by it, but not to the same degree that France is.
0:45:31 You know, there is just no stomach to do that again.
0:45:34 And so, that makes them risk-averse.
0:45:37 And by being risk-averse, you’re actually taking a far greater risk.
0:45:39 That’s the irony of it.
0:45:41 And the truth is also, there isn’t the political will.
0:45:47 And a successful military can only be successful if there is a political will at the top.
0:45:50 And the problem with France in the 1930s is it’s very politically divided.
0:46:05 It’s a time of multiple governments, multiple prime ministers, coalition governments, really very extreme coalition governments from the sort of drawn from the left and the right as well as the center.
0:46:09 And, you know, this is not a coalition of two parties.
0:46:11 This is a coalition of multiple parties.
0:46:13 No one can ever agree anything.
0:46:14 I mean, that’s the problem.
0:46:24 And it’s amazing that the Maginot line has even agreed, you know, this incredibly strong defensive position down the western side of France of border with Germany, which is kind of largely impregnable.
0:46:36 But the problem is, is the bit that’s not impregnable, which is the hinge where the Maginot line ends and it sort of basically starts turning kind of towards and in a kind of north, northerly direction and the border with Belgium.
0:46:48 And, you know, what they should have done is built kind of border defenses all along the northern coast of Belgium because Belgium refused to kind of allow any allied troops into into its territory.
0:46:49 It was neutral.
0:46:56 And France should have said, OK, fine, well, then we’ll defend our, you know, we’re not going to come to your rescue if you get invaded.
0:46:59 That’s your, that’s your, that’s your, that’s, that’s the payoff.
0:47:06 And the consequence of that, we are going to stoppile everything that and we’re not going to be drawn into the neutral territory should Germany invade from the west.
0:47:13 But they don’t do that because of the psychological damage of having fought a war in exactly that area a generation earlier.
0:47:15 And that’s the problem.
0:47:22 So when they, you know, there is, Germany is so weakened by the invasion of Poland, there was literally nothing left.
0:47:26 You know, the back door from into Western Germany is completely open.
0:47:29 And so they do what they call the SAR offensive, but it’s not.
0:47:38 It’s a kind of reconnaissance in force where they kind of go across the border, kind of pick their noses for a few days and then kind of trundle back again.
0:47:39 And it’s just, it’s embarrassing.
0:47:57 And that is what you’re seeing there is, is a nation which is just not ready for this, which is scared, which is politically divided, which is then having a knock on effect on the decision making process, and which is just consumed by military complacency.
0:48:06 And that’s the big problem there is this, you know, the, the commanders at the very top of the French regime are, are complacent.
0:48:10 They, they, they haven’t bought into kind of modern ways.
0:48:14 They haven’t looked at how contemporary technology could help them.
0:48:27 I mean, it is absurd, for example, that there isn’t a single radio in the Chateau de Vincennes, which is, you know, it’s the headquarters of the commander in chief of the French armed forces, which is General Marshal Maurice Gamelan.
0:48:34 I mean, it’s just unbelievable, but, but that is the case and, and there’s no getting away from that.
0:48:40 And, and it is all the more ironic when you consider that France is actually the most automotive society in Europe.
0:48:49 It’s the second most automotive society in the world after the United States, by some margin, it has to be said as well, you know, has a fantastic transportation system.
0:48:50 Railway network is superb.
0:48:57 It’s it, it, there are, there are eight people for every motorized vehicle in France, which is way above Germany, which is in 1939.
0:49:02 That figure is 47, for example, it’s 106 in Italy.
0:49:03 So France is very mechanized.
0:49:04 Very mechanized.
0:49:07 So come on guys, pull your finger out, get it together.
0:49:10 And they just don’t, they’re, they’re incredibly slow and cumbersome.
0:49:19 And what they think is when, what will happen is the Germans won’t think of going, you know, they won’t do a pincer movement because you can’t possibly take motorized forces through, through the Ardenne.
0:49:29 That’s just, it’s not possible, which is the hinge area between the end of the Maginot, the northern part of the Maginot line, which runs down the western, sorry, the eastern border of France and the northern bit.
0:49:35 And so what we’ll do with that hinge around the town of Sedan, we’ll, we’ll move into, into Belgium.
0:49:38 We’ll meet the Germans before they get anywhere near France.
0:49:39 We’ll hold them.
0:49:44 And while we’re holding them, we will bring up our reserves and then we’ll, we’ll counterattack and crush them.
0:49:46 That, that’s the idea behind it.
0:49:53 But the problem is, is they don’t have a means of moving fast and their communication systems are dreadful, absolutely dreadful.
0:50:01 They’re dependent on conventional telephone lines, which, you know, dive bombers and whatever are just kind of absolutely wrecking.
0:50:04 Suddenly the streets are clogged with refugees and people can’t move.
0:50:07 So they’re then, you know, telephone lines are down.
0:50:08 There’s no radios.
0:50:18 So you’re then dependent on sending dispatch riders on little motorbikes, you know, general, uh, Maurice Gamelan sends out a dispatch rider at six o’clock in the morning.
0:50:20 Um, by 12 o’clock, he hasn’t come back.
0:50:22 So you then send another one.
0:50:28 Finally, the answer comes back, uh, kind of nine o’clock at night, by which time the kind of Germans advance another 15 miles.
0:50:33 And the original message that you sent at six o’clock that morning is completely redundant and has passed itself by day.
0:50:43 And that’s happening every step of the way, you know, so you’ve got, you’ve got overall commander, um, headquarters, then you’ve got army group, then you’ve got army, then you’ve got core, then you’ve got division.
0:50:46 So the consequence of all that is that French just can’t move.
0:50:47 They’re just stuck there.
0:50:52 They’re rabbits in headlights and the Germans are able to kind of move them, uh, destroy them in isolation.
0:50:59 Meanwhile, they’re able to use their excellent communications, um, it’s a very, very good effect.
0:51:01 And you were talking about the genius of, of war.
0:51:02 It’s not Hitler.
0:51:03 That’s a genius.
0:51:13 If anyone’s a genius, it’s Goebbels, the propaganda chief, and it is their ability to harness that they are the Kings of messaging.
0:51:28 You know, they don’t have, they don’t have X, they don’t have social media, um, but they do have new technology and that new technology, that new approach is flooding the airwaves with their singular message, which is always the same.
0:51:31 And it has been ever since the Nazis coming to power and it is using radios.
0:51:41 And I think radios are really, really key to the whole story because there is no denser radio network anywhere in the world, including the United States and Germany in 1939.
0:51:48 So while it’s really behind the times in terms of mechanization, it is absolutely on top of its game in terms of comms.
0:51:55 So 70% of households in Germany have radios by 1939, which is an unprecedented number.
0:51:59 That, that is only beaten by United States and only just.
0:52:03 So it is, it is greater than any other, other nation in Europe.
0:52:13 And in terms of flooding the airwaves, it is the densest because even for those who, the 30% who don’t have radios, that’s not a problem because we’ll put them in the stairwells of apartment blocks.
0:52:14 We’ll put them in squares.
0:52:16 We’ll put them in cafes and bars.
0:52:30 And the same stuff, the state, the, the, the, the Nazi state controls the radio airwaves as it does the movies, as it does newspapers, all aspects of the media are controlled by, by Goebbels and propaganda ministry.
0:52:35 And they are putting out the same message over and over again.
0:52:36 It’s not, it’s not all Hitler’s ranting.
0:52:40 It’s entertainment, light entertainment, some humorous shows.
0:52:44 It is also Wagner, of course, and Richard Strauss.
0:52:49 It’s, it’s a mixture, but the subliminal message is the same.
0:52:50 We’re the best.
0:52:51 We’re the top dogs.
0:52:54 Jewish Bolshevik plot is awful.
0:52:56 That needs to be, you know, that’s the existential threat to us.
0:52:58 We have to overcome that.
0:52:59 We’re the top dogs militarily.
0:53:00 We’re the best.
0:53:02 We should feel really good about ourselves.
0:53:04 We’re going to absolutely win and be the greatest nation in the world ever.
0:53:05 And Hitler’s the genius.
0:53:11 And that is just repeated over and over and over and over again.
0:53:17 And the, you know, for all the modernity of the world in which we live in today, most people
0:53:19 believe what they’re told repeatedly.
0:53:21 Yeah, they still do.
0:53:24 It’s if you just repeat, repeat, repeat over and over again, people will believe it.
0:53:31 You know, if you’re a, if you’re a diehard Trump supporter, you want to believe that you’ll
0:53:32 believe everything he says.
0:53:38 If you are a diehard Bernie Sanders, man, you know, you’re from the left, you’ll believe
0:53:42 everything he says because it’s reinforcing what you already want to, what you, what you
0:53:42 already want to believe.
0:53:48 But the scary thing is, uh, you know, radio is the technology of the day, the technology
0:53:55 of the day today, which is a terrifying one for me is, uh, uh, I would say AI on social
0:53:55 media.
0:54:02 So bots, you can have basically bot farms, which I assume is used by Ukraine, by Russia,
0:54:08 by U S I, I would love to read the history written about this era, about the information
0:54:14 wars, who has the biggest bot farms, who has the biggest propaganda machines.
0:54:22 And when I say bot, I mean, both automated AI bots and humans operating large number of
0:54:24 smartphones with SIM cards.
0:54:29 They’re just able to boost messages enough to where they become viral.
0:54:33 And then real humans with real opinions get excited.
0:54:36 Also, it’s like this vicious cycle.
0:54:40 So if you support your nation, all you need is a little boost and then everybody gets
0:54:41 real excited.
0:54:47 And then now you’re chanting and now you’re in this mass hysteria and now it’s the 1984,
0:54:48 two minutes of hate.
0:54:50 And the message is clear.
0:54:54 I mean, that’s what propaganda does is it really clarifies the mind.
0:55:00 That is exactly what, what Hitler and the Nazis and Goebbels are doing in the 1930s while they’re
0:55:02 doing it in the 1920s as well, but more effectively once they come into power, of course.
0:55:11 Hitler is so fortunate that he comes, he takes over the chancellorship in January, 1933 at
0:55:18 a time where the economy is just starting to turn and he’s able to make the most of that.
0:55:22 And, you know, if you’re Germans and you’ve been through hyperinflation in the early 1920s,
0:55:28 you’ve been through the humiliation of Versailles Treaty, which was terrible error in retrospect.
0:55:35 You’ve been through then having got through that, you’ve emerged into a kind of democratic
0:55:42 Weimar Republic, which is based on manufacturing, you know, Germany’s a traditional genius at
0:55:48 engineering and manufacturing and production of high quality items.
0:55:50 They’re merging through that.
0:55:55 Then you have the Wall Street crash and the loans that are coming in from America, which is
0:56:00 propping up the entire German economy, suddenly get cut off and you’ve suddenly got depression again
0:56:02 and, and massive unemployment.
0:56:10 And suddenly Hitler comes in and everyone’s got jobs and they’re rebuilding and they’re growing
0:56:10 their military.
0:56:16 And the message that’s coming out is we’re the greatest, we’re the best, we’re fantastic.
0:56:21 You know, I was telling you earlier on about, about Hitler’s speeches, starting with the
0:56:26 dark, starting dark and ending in, in hope and light and the sunlit uplands, you know,
0:56:26 that’s what you’re getting.
0:56:28 You’re suddenly getting this vision of hope.
0:56:31 This is sort of, you know, my God, actually this is really working, you know?
0:56:32 Okay.
0:56:37 So, you know, I’m not sure that I particularly buy into the kind of antisemitic thing, but,
0:56:39 you know, we’ll sweep that under the carpet.
0:56:43 Cause overall I’ve now got a job, I’ve got money, I’ve got my new radio, you know, and
0:56:45 then this is a genius about the radios, for example.
0:56:49 So they have the, uh, they have the, the, the German receiver to start off with the, the
0:56:54 Deutsche Fanger, and then they have the Deutsche Kleinem Fanger, which is the German little
0:56:55 receiver, little radio.
0:56:56 These are geniuses.
0:57:00 This is, this is as outrageous as the arrival of the iPod.
0:57:04 I mean, remember that, you know, suddenly you don’t have to have a Sony Walkman anymore.
0:57:08 You can have something really, really small and miniature and listen to thousands and
0:57:09 thousands and thousands of songs all at once.
0:57:10 What an, what an amazing thing.
0:57:15 And the Deutsche Kleinem Fanger is nine inches by four inches by four inches.
0:57:19 It’s made of Bakelite and everyone can have one cause it’s super cheap.
0:57:20 It’s just incredible.
0:57:25 And no one else said that because up until that point, radios, generally speaking are
0:57:26 aspirational.
0:57:29 You know, they’ve got sort of a walnut lacquer at the front and, you know, you have them if
0:57:33 you’re middle class and you show them off to your neighbors to show how kind of, you
0:57:35 know, affluent and well to do you are.
0:57:37 Um, but suddenly everyone can have one.
0:57:41 And if everyone can have one, then everyone can receive the same message.
0:57:44 And you can, and you can also, and this is the whole point about the Hitler youth as well.
0:57:47 You know, the young guys, that’s where they’re, they’re most impressionistic.
0:57:50 They’re, they’re least risk averse.
0:57:51 So they’re most gung ho.
0:57:55 They’re, they’re most full of excitement for the possibilities of life.
0:57:59 And they’re also, their minds are the most open to suggestion.
0:58:02 So you get the youth, you hang on, you get them.
0:58:07 And so a whole generation of young men are brought up thinking about the genius of Hitler and how
0:58:12 he’s delivering us this much better nation and returning our, um, over, overhauling the
0:58:17 humiliations of the first world war where overcoming the back, uh, the stab in the back that happened
0:58:19 in 1918, et cetera, et cetera.
0:58:25 And, you know, as a young 16, 17 year old German, you’re thinking, yeah, I want a piece of that.
0:58:27 And, and Hey, guess what?
0:58:32 They’ve got really cool uniforms and, and, you know, come and join the SS and, you know, get the fro line.
0:58:36 You know, what’s not to like, you know, you can see why, why it’s so clever.
0:58:44 Uh, and what’s so interesting is propaganda today is, is still using those, those tenets that Goebbels
0:58:47 was using back in the 1930s.
0:58:49 And this is why I would say, say that, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself.
0:58:50 Of course it doesn’t.
0:58:54 It can’t possibly repeat itself because we’re always living in a constantly evolving time,
0:58:56 but patterns of human behavior do.
0:59:00 And what you always get after economic crisis is political upheaval.
0:59:01 Always, always, always.
0:59:04 Because some people are in a worse off position than they were financially before.
0:59:07 They’re thinking, well, you know, the current system doesn’t work.
0:59:07 What’s the alternative?
0:59:13 So, you know, in the case of, of, of now we in the West, you know, we face, first of all,
0:59:16 we face the crisis of 2008, financial crisis of 2008.
0:59:18 Then we’ve had the kind of double whammy of COVID.
0:59:21 And that has been incredibly unsettling.
0:59:25 And so we’re now in a, a, a situation of, of political turmoil.
0:59:29 And whether you’re, whether you’re, uh, whether you’re pro-Trump or anti-Trump, what he’s
0:59:31 offering is something completely different.
0:59:36 And, you know, it’s say, you know, he, he’s saying the old ways don’t work.
0:59:38 You know, I’m going to be, I’m just going to say what I think.
0:59:39 I’m just going to, I’m going to come out.
0:59:43 I’m not going to bother with all the sheen of diplomacy and kind of, you know, mealy mouth
0:59:47 words that politicians always use, you know, which, where you can’t trust anyone.
0:59:48 I’m just going to tell you as it is.
0:59:50 And obviously people respond to that.
0:59:53 You know, you, you, you can understand why that has a, has an appeal.
0:59:58 And if the country already feels broken and here’s someone who is going to be a disruptor
1:00:03 and going to change the way you go about things, you can see why a, a, a reasonably large proportion
1:00:06 of the population is going to go, I’ll have a piece of that.
1:00:07 Thank you very much.
1:00:13 And especially, uh, when the country is in a economic crisis, like Germany was, I think
1:00:19 you’ve written that, uh, the treaty of Versailles created Hitler and the, uh, the wall street
1:00:23 crash and the great depression brought him to power.
1:00:29 And of course the propaganda machine that you describe is the thing that got everybody
1:00:30 else in Germany on board.
1:00:31 Yeah.
1:00:36 It’s, it’s, it’s amazing how he, he, cause he comes in with 33% of the vote.
1:00:40 He had 37% of the throat of the vote in July, 1932.
1:00:44 So again, this is another period of turmoil, just like it is in France where you’re having
1:00:48 constant different kind of coalitions and, you know, different chancellors, leaders of
1:00:49 Germany.
1:00:53 So it’s very possible he, he, he wouldn’t have come to power.
1:00:57 Well, he said, he said, I will only, uh, you know, the, we will only take our seats if,
1:01:00 if, if, if I can be chancellor, otherwise forget it, I’m not coming into any coalition.
1:01:07 So then the, uh, the government falls again in January, 1933, they have the, uh, they have
1:01:07 the election.
1:01:14 The Nazi vote is down from where it was the previous summer, but this time they go, okay,
1:01:18 Peter can be chancellor, but we’ll manipulate him wrong.
1:01:20 They were, you know, he’s manipulating everyone.
1:01:24 And then Hindenburg, who is the president dies the following summer.
1:01:29 And, uh, he’s able to get rid of the presidency.
1:01:30 There is no more president of Germany.
1:01:32 There is just the Fuhrer, him.
1:01:38 And he gets rid of, uh, he has a, in actually enabling act, which is where all other, uh, political
1:01:40 parties have, uh, disbanded.
1:01:42 And suddenly you’ve got a totalitarian state just like that.
1:01:44 I think there’s a lesson there.
1:01:52 Uh, there’s many lessons there, but one of them is don’t let an extremist into government
1:01:54 and assume you can control them.
1:01:54 Yes.
1:01:58 The arrogance of the existing politicians who just completely screwed it up.
1:02:01 I mean, there is a real power to an extremist.
1:02:07 Like there’s, uh, a person who sees the world in, in black and white.
1:02:15 Can really gain the attention and the support of the populace.
1:02:21 Especially when there’s a resentment about like treaty of Versailles, when there’s economic
1:02:29 hardship and if there’s effective modern technology that allows you to do propaganda and sell the
1:02:32 message, there’s something really compelling about the black and white message.
1:02:34 It is because it’s simple.
1:02:40 And what Hitler does throughout the 1920s is he sticks to this.
1:02:44 There, there is actually, when he comes out of prison in, so he, there’s the Bihl putsch in
1:02:45 November, 1923.
1:02:53 He gets, uh, charged with treason, which he has been because he’s attempting a coup and he gets
1:02:57 sentenced to five years, which is pretty lenient for what he’s done.
1:03:00 And he then gets let out after nine months.
1:03:07 The Nazi party is, is, is, is, is banned at that point, but then comes back into being.
1:03:13 And the year that follows, there is then a substantial debate about where the party should go.
1:03:19 And there are actually a large number of people who think that actually they should be looking at how
1:03:24 the Soviets are doing things and taking some of the, some of the things that they consider to be
1:03:28 positive out of the communist state and applying those to the Nazis.
1:03:30 And Hitler goes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
1:03:35 We, we, we, we’ve just got to stick to this kind of Jewish Bolshevik thing.
1:03:36 This is, this is how we’re going to do it.
1:03:37 This is what we’re going to do it.
1:03:41 Goebbels, for example, who is, who is very open.
1:03:46 He’s a, he’s very, very, Joseph Goebbels is a, he’s a, he’s a not very successful, um,
1:03:47 um, uh, journalist.
1:03:50 He is, uh, but he does have a PhD in German, German literature.
1:03:55 He’s very disaffected because he was born with talapes, which is, you know, more commonly known
1:03:56 as a club foot.
1:03:57 He’s disabled.
1:03:58 He can’t fight in the first world war.
1:04:00 He’s very frustrated by that.
1:04:05 He’s in a deep despair about, about the state of Germany in the first part of the early
1:04:05 1920s.
1:04:14 He’s looking for a, um, a, a, a political messiah, a sort of quasi-religious messiah, thinks it’s
1:04:20 Hitler, then discovers that Hitler’s not open to any ideas at all, uh, about any deviation,
1:04:22 but then sees the light.
1:04:26 Hitler recognizes that this guy is someone that he wants on his side.
1:04:29 And so then goes to him, makes a real special effort.
1:04:30 Come on, come to dinner.
1:04:31 I think you’re great.
1:04:35 You know, all this kind of stuff wins about over and Goebbels has this complete,
1:04:39 Walt Fass discards his earlier kind of, yeah, you know, Hitler’s right.
1:04:40 I was wrong.
1:04:43 Hitler is the kind of messiah figure that, that I want to follow.
1:04:45 I want to follow the hero, hero leader.
1:04:51 And they come on board and they absolutely work out and Hitler completely wins out of all dissenters
1:04:55 within the, what had been the German Workers’ Party to what becomes the German National Socialist
1:04:56 Party, becomes the Nazis.
1:05:05 Um, he comes out, emerges as the absolute undisputed Führer of that leader of that, that party and
1:05:06 what he says goes.
1:05:07 And everyone tows him behind it.
1:05:12 And part of the genius of that, you know, Hitler does have some genius.
1:05:14 I just don’t think it’s military, but he does have some genius.
1:05:18 And a question about it is the simplicity of message.
1:05:21 What he’s doing is, it’s that kind of us and them thing that we were talking about earlier on.
1:05:25 It’s a kind of either or, it’s kind of, it’s my way or the highway.
1:05:29 It’s kind of, this is the only way, this is how we get to the sunlit uplands.
1:05:37 This is how we, we create this amazing master race of the, this unification of German peoples,
1:05:42 which dominates the world, which is the preeminent power in the world for the next thousand years.
1:05:48 Or it’s decay and despair and being crushed by our enemies.
1:05:51 And our enemies are the Jews and the Bolsheviks, the communists.
1:05:58 And what he taps into as well is Front Gemeinschaft and Volksgemeinschaft.
1:06:05 And these are, there’s no direct English translation of Volksgemeinschaft or indeed Front Gemeinschaft.
1:06:13 But, but, but in its most basic form, it’s communities, it’s people community or Front Veterans community.
1:06:19 So the Front Gemeinschaft is, we are the guys, we’re bonded because we were in the trenches.
1:06:21 You know, we were in the First World War.
1:06:26 We were the people who bravely stuck it out, saw our friends being slaughtered and blown to pieces.
1:06:32 We, we did our duty as proud Germans, but we were let down by the elites.
1:06:36 And we were let down by the, by this Jewish Bolshevik plot.
1:06:39 You know, we were stabbed in the back.
1:06:42 The myth of the stabbing, stabbing in the back is very, very strong.
1:06:50 So we’re bound, we’re bonded by our experience of the First World War and the fact that we did what we should and what we could.
1:06:53 And we would, we didn’t fail in what we were doing.
1:06:57 We were failed by our leaders and by the elites.
1:07:00 So that’s, that’s Front Gemeinschaft.
1:07:05 Volksgemeinschaft is this sense of national unity.
1:07:13 It’s, it’s, it’s a cultural, ethnic bonding of people who speak German, who have a, have a similar outlook on life.
1:07:17 And again, that just reinforces the us and them.
1:07:18 Good and evil.
1:07:21 It reinforces the black and white worldview.
1:07:28 And then you add that to this very simple message, which Hitler is repeating over and over again.
1:07:30 Communists are a big threat.
1:07:32 Jews are a big threat.
1:07:33 They’re the, they’re the enemy.
1:07:39 You have to have a, you have to have an opposition in the them and us kind of process.
1:07:41 And that’s what he’s doing.
1:07:43 And people just buy into it.
1:07:44 They go, yeah, we’re together.
1:07:45 We’re Germans.
1:07:48 We’re, we’re, we’re, you know, we’re a brotherhood.
1:07:58 We’ve got a Volksgemeinschaft and so he cleverly ties into that and taps into that, but they’re an irrelevance by the late 1920s.
1:08:03 You know, by 1928, you know, the, the, he’s not going to get a deal for Mein Kampf part two.
1:08:06 You know, he, he’s, he’s, he’s impoverished.
1:08:07 The party’s impoverished.
1:08:08 Numbers are down.
1:08:11 They’re, they’re kind of, you know, a best and a, and a relevance.
1:08:14 We should say he wrote Mein Kampf at this time when he was in prison.
1:08:18 Well, he writes, he writes most of Mein Kampf in prison, in Landsberg prison.
1:08:25 And then he writes the rest of it in what becomes known as the Kampfhausel, which is this little wooden hut in the, in the Ober Salzburg.
1:08:27 And you can still see the remnants of that.
1:08:33 And unfortunately there’s still little candles there and stuff in the woods and, you know, by, by neo-Nazis and whatnot, what have you.
1:08:35 But that’s where he wrote, wrote the rest of it.
1:08:40 I mean, it was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who says man has his greatest force when surrounded by nature.
1:08:43 That was something that kind of Hitler took very much to heart.
1:08:46 There was a, there was a mentor of his called Dietrich Eckhart.
1:08:55 Dietrich Eckhart introduced him to the Ober Salzburg and the beauty of the Southwest, Southeast Bavarian Alps around Berkis Garden.
1:08:59 And, and that was his favorite place on the planet.
1:09:04 And that’s where he, that’s where he eventually bought the, the, the Berghof.
1:09:14 With the royalties, it has to be said from Mein Kampf, which went from being, you know, almost pulp to suddenly being a runaway bestseller, unfortunately.
1:09:16 Can you actually comment on that?
1:09:19 It’s a shitty manifesto as far as manifestos goes.
1:09:26 I think there’s a lot of values to understand from a first person perspective, the words of a dictator, of a person like Hitler.
1:09:30 But it just feels like that’s just such a shitty.
1:09:30 Yeah.
1:09:32 I mean, you know, it’s banned in a number of countries.
1:09:34 You don’t need to because no one’s going to read it because it’s unreadable.
1:09:38 I mean, it’s, it’s very untidy.
1:09:39 It’s, it’s very incoherent.
1:09:45 It’s, it’s got no, there’s no narrative arc to use the kind of, you know, right, a writer’s phrase.
1:09:55 I mean, it’s just, it’s, but, but, but it does give you a very clear, you know, the overall impression you get at the end of it is, is, is, is the kind of communists and the Jews are to blame for everything.
1:09:55 Yeah.
1:10:01 But there’s also the component of, you know, predicting basically World War II there.
1:10:03 So it’s not just there to blame for everything.
1:10:04 Oh, no, he’s, he’s hungry for war.
1:10:05 Right.
1:10:09 He, he thinks that this is, this is the natural state that we have to have this terrible conflict.
1:10:12 And once the conflict’s over, Germany will emerge victorious.
1:10:14 And then there will be the thousand year Reich.
1:10:17 I mean, I’m finding myself in, in talking to you.
1:10:20 I keep saying this kind of, you know, it’s, it’s Armageddon or the thousand year Reich.
1:10:26 It’s because it comes up, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s unavoidable because that’s how he’s speaking the whole time.
1:10:29 It’s just the same message over and over and over and over again.
1:10:41 It’s a pretty unique way of speaking, sort of allowing violence as a tool in this picture, that there’s a hierarchy, that there’s a superior race and inferior races.
1:10:44 And it’s okay to destroy the inferior ones.
1:10:46 Usually politicians will speak that way.
1:10:50 They just say, well, here’s good and evil.
1:10:51 We’re the good guys.
1:10:55 And yeah, maybe we’ll destroy the evil a little bit.
1:11:03 No, here is like, there’s a complete certainty about a very large number of people, the Slavic people.
1:11:05 They just need to be removed.
1:11:06 Well, they need to be made an irrelevance.
1:11:07 You know, we have to take it.
1:11:08 We have to take it.
1:11:12 And in fact, if that kills millions of them, fine, then they can sort of squish their way over to Siberia.
1:11:12 Right.
1:11:13 It doesn’t matter where they go.
1:11:14 Or Kamchatka, whatever they go.
1:11:14 I don’t care.
1:11:18 We just need to populate this land that belongs to German people.
1:11:18 Yeah.
1:11:20 Because they’re the superior people.
1:11:22 There’s no question that he glorified violence and war.
1:11:24 You know, he’s absolutely chomping at the bit.
1:11:32 And in a way, I think he’s a bit disappointed that in the 1930s, the conquests that he does undertake are also peaceful.
1:11:36 You know, March 1948 goes straight into Austria.
1:11:38 There’s the Anschluss, you know, not a shot is fired.
1:11:47 You know, 1936 goes into the Rhineland, reconquers that, retakes that over that from the occupying allies.
1:11:48 Not a shot is fired.
1:11:56 You know, he takes a sedation land, not a shot, barely a shot is fired, and then goes into the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.
1:11:58 And again, barely a shot is fired.
1:12:00 And, you know, it’s a bit disappointing.
1:12:02 You know, he wants to be tested.
1:12:05 He wants to kind of have the wartime triumph.
1:12:09 You can see him being frustrated about this in the Munich crisis in 1938.
1:12:10 He wants to fight.
1:12:11 He’s absolutely spoiling for it.
1:12:13 He’s desperate to go in.
1:12:14 He’s already in gung-ho.
1:12:15 He’s built his Luftwaffe.
1:12:18 He’s got his panzers now.
1:12:21 He’s got his massive armed forces.
1:12:23 You know, he wants to test them.
1:12:26 He wants to get this show on the road and prove it.
1:12:29 You know, he’s an arch gambler, Hitler.
1:12:44 You make it seem so clear, but all the while, to the rest of the world, to Chamberlain, to France, to Britain, to the rest of the world, he’s saying he doesn’t want that.
1:12:46 He’s making agreements.
1:12:48 Everything you just mentioned, you just went through it so quickly.
1:12:53 But those are agreements that were made that he’s not going to do that.
1:12:56 And he does it over and over.
1:12:57 He violates the Treaty of Versailles.
1:13:02 He violates every single treaty, but he still isn’t doing the meeting.
1:13:09 So maybe can you go through it, the lead-up to the war, 1939, September 1st?
1:13:10 What are the different agreements?
1:13:13 What is the signaling he’s doing?
1:13:18 What is he doing secretly in terms of building up the military force?
1:13:18 Yes.
1:13:26 So he, you know, part of the Treaty of Versailles, you’re not, you know, you’re allowed a very, very limited armed forces.
1:13:28 There’s restrictions on naval expansion.
1:13:31 There’s restrictions on the size of the army.
1:13:34 There’s restrictions on the weapons you can use.
1:13:38 There are, you’re not allowed an air force.
1:13:41 But he starts doing this all clandestinely.
1:13:51 You know, there are people in Krupp has got, for example, which is in the Ruhr, a sort of big armaments manufacturer.
1:14:00 They are producing tanks and elsewhere and parts elsewhere in, say, the Netherlands, for example, and then shipping them back into Germany.
1:14:05 They’re doing panzer training exercises, actually, in the Soviet Union at this time.
1:14:06 There’s all sorts of things going on.
1:14:13 The Luftwaffe is being announced to the world in 1935, but it’s obviously been in the process of developing long before that.
1:14:17 The Messerschmitt 109, single-engine fighter plane, for example, is created in 1934.
1:14:20 So they’re doing all these things against it.
1:14:24 And the truth is, is he’s just constantly pushing.
1:14:26 What can I get away with here?
1:14:35 What will probably, you know, and of course, Britain, France, the rest of the world, the rest of the allies, you know, they’re all reeling from the Wall Street crash and the depression as well.
1:14:38 So have they got the stomach for this?
1:14:43 Not really, you know, and perhaps actually on reflection, the terms of Versailles Treaty are a bit harsh anyway.
1:14:46 So, you know, maybe we don’t need to worry about it.
1:14:47 And there’s just no political will.
1:14:51 There’s no political will to kind of fight against what Germany’s doing.
1:14:52 Then he gets away with it.
1:15:08 So he suddenly starts realizing that actually he can push this quite a long way because no one’s going to stand up to him, which is why he makes a decision in 1936 to go back into the, you know, into the Rhineland, you know, which has been occupied by French, you know, allied troops.
1:15:12 At that point, he just walks in, just goes, do your worst.
1:15:15 And no one’s going to do anything because there isn’t the stomach to do anything.
1:15:19 That was a big step in 1936, remilitarizing the Rhineland.
1:15:27 I mean, that that’s a huge, huge step of like, oh, I don’t have to follow anybody’s rules and they’re going to do nothing.
1:15:31 And he’s looking at his military and he’s and and he’s also looking at response.
1:15:35 So one of the things they do is they, you know, it’s really very clever.
1:15:41 So they get over the head of the Army of the Air, Army de l’Air, which is the French Air Force.
1:15:48 And they invite him over and they have milk, who is the second command of the Luftwaffe, invites him over.
1:15:50 So come and see what we’re what we’re up to.
1:15:53 You know, we want to be you’re our European neighbors.
1:15:54 We’re all friends together.
1:15:54 This kind of stuff.
1:15:55 Come and see what we’ve got.
1:15:58 And he takes him to this airfield.
1:16:02 There’s a row of Messerschmitt 109s all lined up, like sort of 50 of them.
1:16:06 And the head of the Army of the Air sort of looks at him and goes, correct, that’s impressive.
1:16:09 And milk goes, well, let me go and take you to another airfield.
1:16:15 And they go off the sort of the back route out of the airfield and a long circuitous route in the Mercedes.
1:16:19 Meanwhile, all the Messerschmitts take off from that airfield, going to land on the next airfield.
1:16:20 Here’s another.
1:16:21 And they’re all the same aircraft.
1:16:26 And the commander in chief of the Army of the Air goes back to France and goes, we’re never going to be able to beat Germany.
1:16:30 So you would earlier you were you were alluding to this earlier on.
1:16:41 You know, how much is this sort of this this this justice chutzpah of this ability to kind of portray the mechanized moloch?
1:16:44 Yeah, it absolutely cows the enemy.
1:16:56 So they’re increasing the effectiveness of their armed forces purely by propaganda and by by mind games and by talking the talk.
1:17:03 And, you know, you look at we might all think these military parades that the Nazis have look rather silly by today’s standards.
1:17:05 But you look what that looks like.
1:17:11 If you’re the rest of the world, you’re in Britain and you’re still reeling from the depression and you see the triumph of the will.
1:17:22 You see some of that footage and you see these automatons in their steel helmets and you see the swastikas and you see hundreds of thousands of people all lined up and see Keiling and all the rest of it.
1:17:24 You’re going to think again before you go to war with people like that.
1:17:30 It’s also hard to put yourself in the in the mind of those leaders.
1:17:44 Now, now that we have nuclear weapons, so nuclear weapons have created this kind of cloak of a kind of safety from mutually shared destruction.
1:17:56 That you think surely you will not do, you know, a million or two million soldier army invading another land, right?
1:17:59 Just full on gigantic hot war.
1:18:03 But at that time, that’s the real possibility.
1:18:05 You remember World War I.
1:18:06 You remember all of that.
1:18:12 So, you know, okay, there’s a mad guy with a mustache.
1:18:20 He’s making statements that this land belongs to Germany anyway because it’s mostly German populated.
1:18:25 So, and like you said, Treaty of Versailles wasn’t really fair.
1:18:28 And you can start justifying all kinds of things to yourself.
1:18:32 And maybe they got a point about the Danzig Corridor, you know, the Armenian Germans, German speaking people there.
1:18:37 And, you know, it’s disconnected from East Prussia, which is this thing, you know, I can, I sort of get it.
1:18:38 You know, maybe they’ve got a point.
1:18:42 You know, and is Poland really a kind of thriving democracy anyway?
1:18:42 Not really.
1:18:45 By 1930, late 1930s, it’s not.
1:18:48 It’s, to all intents and purposes, a dictatorship in Poland at that time.
1:18:53 I mean, it’s not right that you just go and take someone else’s country.
1:18:55 Of course, you can’t do that.
1:19:01 But you can see why in Germany people are thinking they’ve got a point.
1:19:06 You can also see why in France and Britain they’re thinking, well, you know, do we really care about the Poles?
1:19:10 I mean, you know, is it worth going to war over?
1:19:13 But there’s kind of bigger things at play by this point.
1:19:14 That’s the point.
1:19:22 Yeah, but before we get to Poland, there is this meeting, September 1938.
1:19:26 So, Chamberlain made three trips to meet with Hitler.
1:19:26 Yeah.
1:19:29 Which culminated in the Munich Conference.
1:19:31 Yeah, on the 30th of September, yeah.
1:19:36 Where it was Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, and Delegere, Prime Minister of France.
1:19:43 They met to discuss, essentially, Czechoslovakia without any of the government officials of Czechoslovakia participating.
1:19:50 And Hitler promised to make no more territorial conquests and Chamberlain believed him.
1:19:54 He chose to believe him, I think is the point.
1:19:55 So, it’s very interesting.
1:19:57 So, Chamberlain gets a very bad press.
1:20:07 Well, no, I’m not, no, it’s not really, oh, it’s, it’s, it’s, I just think there’s too much retrospective view on this.
1:20:21 And that’s fine, because we, the whole point of history is you can look back and you can judge decisions that were made at a certain point through the prism of what subsequently happened, which, of course, the people that are making the decisions at the time can’t.
1:20:23 Because they’re in that particular moment.
1:20:32 So, I don’t think Chamberlain did trust Hitler, but he wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
1:20:35 Britain was not obliged to Czechoslovakia at all.
1:20:36 France was.
1:20:38 France had signed a treaty with Czechoslovakia in 1924.
1:20:41 But, but, but, but Britain had not.
1:20:43 So, there was no obligation at all for Britain to do this.
1:20:52 The only reason why Britain would go to war over Czechoslovakia is because of the threat of Nazism and what the ramifications of not going to war with him.
1:20:54 But the problem is, is that Chamberlain is interesting.
1:20:57 Because in 1935, he was, he was Chancellor of his Czechoslovakia.
1:21:00 And when they started to sort of think, okay, we really do need to rearm.
1:21:09 He was very much in favor of, of substantially expanding and rehabilitating the Navy.
1:21:12 So, updating existing battleships and so on.
1:21:15 And also developing the Air Force.
1:21:20 There’s not really much argument for having a large army.
1:21:22 Because if you have a large army, you’ve got to maintain it.
1:21:23 Britain is a small place.
1:21:24 Where do you put them?
1:21:25 You’ve also got to transport them.
1:21:26 That’s complicated.
1:21:28 You’ve got to train them.
1:21:29 You’ve got to put them in barracks.
1:21:30 You’ve got to feed them all this kind of stuff.
1:21:32 There’s a kind of sort of impracticality about having a large army.
1:21:34 Whereas navies are great.
1:21:37 Because you can keep them at sea and they can be, you know, on the water.
1:21:39 Air Force is slightly different.
1:21:42 Air power is viewed in very much the same way that naval power is viewed.
1:21:45 That this is, we’re an island nation.
1:21:47 We have a global, global assets.
1:21:50 And air power gives us the flexibility that an army doesn’t.
1:21:57 So, he is all for backing the expansion of the army, of the Air Force and the Navy in 1930.
1:21:59 Then he subsequently becomes prime minister and sticks to his guns on that.
1:22:06 It is he that enables the Air Force and the Air Ministry to develop the first fully coordinated
1:22:08 air defence system anywhere in the world.
1:22:13 There is not an air defence system in Poland, nor Norway, nor Denmark, nor the Netherlands,
1:22:14 nor Belgium, nor France.
1:22:15 There is in Britain.
1:22:16 Britain is the only one.
1:22:21 And frankly, it pays off big time in the summer of 1940.
1:22:23 So, you have to give him credit for that.
1:22:29 Britain, interestingly, is also the world’s leading armaments exporter in the 1930s.
1:22:34 Which is amazing, really, when you think everyone complains about the fact that we weren’t rearming
1:22:34 enough.
1:22:35 Actually, we were.
1:22:39 When we had all the infrastructure there and we were expanding that infrastructure dramatically.
1:22:41 I say we, I’m only saying that because I’m British.
1:22:44 So, they were doing that.
1:22:48 But in 1938, Britain wasn’t ready for war.
1:22:51 Now, you can argue that Germany wasn’t ready for war either.
1:22:59 But Chamberlain was prime minister in a democracy, a parliamentary democracy, when 92% of the population
1:23:01 were against going to war in 1938.
1:23:09 There is not a single democratic leader in the world that would go against the wishes of 92%
1:23:10 of the population.
1:23:15 Now, you could say, well, he should have just argued it better and presented his case better
1:23:16 and all the rest of it.
1:23:20 But at that point, there was no legal obligation to go to the defense of Czechoslovakia.
1:23:26 You know, Czechoslovakia was another of these new nations that had been created out of 1919
1:23:27 and the Versailles Treaty.
1:23:32 You know, who was to say, you know, we in Britain are able to judge the rights and wrongs of that.
1:23:39 You know, how fantastic it would be to go to war with a nation a long way away for people
1:23:41 whom we know very little, et cetera, et cetera.
1:23:42 I’m paraphrasing his quote.
1:23:45 But I’m not saying it was the right decision.
1:23:53 I’m just saying I can see why in September 1938, he is prepared to give him the chance.
1:23:54 Now, I do think he was a bit naive.
1:23:58 And what he also does is this really interesting thing.
1:24:05 He goes over to Hitler’s flat, completely ambushes him, goes to his flat on the afternoon of 30th
1:24:10 of September and says to Hitler, look, I’ve drawn up this agreement here.
1:24:14 And this is to continue the naval agreement that we’ve already made.
1:24:19 And by signing this, you are saying that Germany and Britain should never go to war with one another.
1:24:23 And he goes, yeah, whatever, you know, signs it.
1:24:30 Chamberlain comes back, lands at Henn and waves his little piece of paper, you know, and piece in our time
1:24:32 and all the rest of it, which obviously comes back to bite him in a very big way.
1:24:41 But it’s interesting that when Hitler then subsequently goes and moves in, you know, that France and Britain decide
1:24:48 in rather the same way that there’s been discussion about deciding that large portions of Ukraine
1:24:54 should just be handed back to, handed over to Russia without consulting Ukraine a few weeks ago.
1:25:02 It is incredible, I think, that France and Britain and Italy with Germany
1:25:06 deciding that, yes, it’s fine for Germany to go in and take the Sudetenland, you know,
1:25:08 without really consulting the Czechs.
1:25:10 It’s a sort of similar kind of scenario, really.
1:25:12 And it’s equally wrong.
1:25:19 But when Germany does then go and take over the whole of Czechoslovakia in March 1939,
1:25:21 that is, that’s the bottom line.
1:25:25 That is, that’s the point where Chamberlain goes, okay, I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt.
1:25:26 No more benefits of the doubt.
1:25:27 That’s it.
1:25:30 That is, he’s crossed the line.
1:25:32 And so you reinforce your agreement with Poland.
1:25:33 You do a formal agreement.
1:25:36 You go, okay, we will uphold your sovereignty.
1:25:39 You know, if you are invaded, we will go to war with you.
1:25:48 You know, and that is, that is a ratcheting up of diplomacy and politics in a very, very big way.
1:25:59 And it is that decision to make a treaty with the Poles is not heeded by Hitler, but it’s heeded by literally every one of his commanders.
1:26:14 And it’s also heeded by Goering, who is his number two and who is obviously the commander in chief of the, of, of the Luftwaffe and is president of Prussia and, you know, and all the rest of it.
1:26:19 And, you know, he’s the second most senior Nazi and, you know, he’s going, this is a catastrophe.
1:26:24 This is the last thing we want to be doing is going to war against Britain and indeed France.
1:26:41 The Munich conference is a pretty interesting moment, I would say in all of human history, because you got the leaders of these bigger than life nations and the most dramatic brewing conflict in human history.
1:26:44 Yeah, Chamberlain, Hitler, Mussolini, Dodger.
1:26:49 It’s interesting when these bigger than life leaders are in a room together.
1:26:55 Is there something that you know about, about their interactions?
1:27:01 Yeah, I think there’s, I think one of the things that’s interesting is, is that Hitler’s got home advantage because it’s on his turf.
1:27:07 And, you know, to start off with the first meeting is at the Berghof, his beloved place in the Ober Salzburg overlooking Berkusgaden in the Alps.
1:27:15 So he’s pretty confident because this is my manor, this is my turf, you know, I’m not going to be bossed around by these guys.
1:27:21 But Chamberlain, for example, is going there thinking, I’ve been around the blocks, no one can teach me anything.
1:27:27 I’ve been a politician for ages, you know, I’m not going to be kind of capped out by this, this sort of, you know, Austrian upstart.
1:27:34 So they’re both coming at it with a kind of sort of slight kind of superiority kind of complex.
1:27:52 Interestingly, when you get to the actual meetings of the Bernabeu in Munich, a couple of weeks later, Chamberlain is cheered by the crowds when his car comes in, when he goes to his hotel, when he’s moving from his hotel to the Bernabeu.
1:27:56 You know, there are cars cheering him, you know, waving uni jacks, all this kind of stuff.
1:27:59 Hitler does not like that at all.
1:28:00 Not at all.
1:28:01 Puts him on the back foot.
1:28:06 And that’s because the German people don’t want war.
1:28:10 In the same way that the British people don’t want war, nor do the German people.
1:28:18 The difference is that Hitler is a dictator and an autocrat and has the devotion of the people.
1:28:21 So he can do what he wants in a way that Chamberlain can’t.
1:28:28 Chamberlain’s hands are tied because he is an elected prime minister, an elected leader, political leader, and he’s not head of state.
1:28:36 So there is no question that it is Hitler and Chamberlain that are the top dogs in this particular discussion.
1:28:38 You know, Deladio takes a back seat.
1:28:41 Even Mussolini, although he’s there, he doesn’t want war either.
1:28:45 You know, he wants to be left alone to do his own thing without anyone getting in the way.
1:28:49 But he doesn’t want, he doesn’t want to sort of, it’s not in his interest to have a European war.
1:28:50 So he’s trying to avoid it.
1:28:56 So it is really, you see that the kind of alpha males in the room are Chamberlain and Hitler.
1:29:07 And it’s really interesting because Hitler’s got this sort of slightly garrulous voice and very kind of pale blue eyes and such distinct features, quite a long nose.
1:29:12 You know, he always says this is why he has the moustaches to kind of, you know, disguise the big nose.
1:29:17 You know, so I was saying to you earlier on before we started recording, he does have a sense of humor.
1:29:20 It’s not maybe not one that you and I would kind of tap into, but he does have one.
1:29:33 Whereas Chamberlain is just sort of, you know, he sounds like a sort of, you know, a bit like an old man, you know, he’s sort of silver haired and he looks like you’re sort of archetypal kind of British gentleman with his rolled up umbrella and his, you know, and his Homburg hat and all the rest of it.
1:29:36 So they’re both sort of caricatures in a funny sort of way.
1:29:51 And yet the consequence of these discussions, you know, these, these great events happening, you know, you are, you’re absolutely going, even which way the Munich crisis comes out, you’re taking a step closer to war.
1:29:55 It’s just whether the war is going to happen kind of next week or whether it’s going to happen a year hence.
1:30:00 But it’s, you know, the Munich crisis obviously doesn’t stem the inevitability of war at all.
1:30:01 It just heightens it.
1:30:11 Do you think there are words that Chamberlain should have said, could have said that put more pressure on Hitler, intimidate Hitler more?
1:30:14 Yeah, it’s a really tricky one.
1:30:21 It’s such a difficult one because you’re always looking at it through, you know, the enemy has a vote and you don’t know what,
1:30:23 that vote is going to be and you don’t know what it’s going to look like.
1:30:35 There’s no question that the Europe, the rest of Europe is, is, is cowed by the kind of impression of military might that the Germans have put out.
1:30:38 They certainly fear they are stronger than they actually are.
1:30:45 And then on the other hand, they’re also going, yeah, but, you know, Germany doesn’t have natural resources, doesn’t have access to the world’s oceans.
1:30:49 You know, it, it, it’s kind of, you know, it shouldn’t be able to win a war.
1:31:00 And so, so they’re kind of contradicting themselves at the same time, you know, so one minute they’re sort of going, oh God, you don’t want to take on all those Nazis and all those swastikas and those automaton stormtroopers.
1:31:08 But on the other hand, they’re then saying, but actually Germany doesn’t have much and it’s kind of, you know, in its basket, you know, it’s got, it’s got actually quite a lot of weaknesses and we should be able to kind of prevail, blah, blah, blah.
1:31:11 We’ll just impose an economic blockade and then it’ll be stuffed.
1:31:16 And Britain is not ready to fight a war in, in 1948, but nor is Hitler, you know, nor is Germany.
1:31:21 So, you know, one is sort of striking out the other, but it’s very easy to say that in hindsight.
1:31:36 But at the time, you know, with people kind of digging trenches in Hyde Park in the center of London and barrage balloons going up over London and, you know, children being evacuated from the cities and 92% of the population not wanting to go to war, you can see why he takes the course he does.
1:31:38 I suppose that’s, that’s what I’m saying.
1:31:42 I’m not saying it’s necessarily the right decision, but I, I, I think it’s an understandable decision.
1:32:02 But what about even just in the human level, if I go into a room with a British gentleman versus going to a room with Trump, it feels like it’s so much easier to read and manipulate the British gentleman because Trump is like Trump-like characters.
1:32:03 It seems like Hitler is similar.
1:32:05 Churchill is similar.
1:32:07 It’s like this guy can do anything.
1:32:10 There’s something terrifying about the unpredictability.
1:32:11 Yeah.
1:32:14 It feels like there’s something very predictable about Chamberlain.
1:32:16 Yes, I think that’s true.
1:32:20 But also one has to take a step back and think about what Britain represents.
1:32:23 So therefore what Chamberlain represents in 1938.
1:32:27 Britain has the largest empire the world has ever known.
1:32:27 Yeah.
1:32:28 In 1938.
1:32:29 We shouldn’t forget that.
1:32:36 You know, the world of the world is pink, as the saying goes, you know, and that saying comes from the kind of atlas of the world where all British territories are kind of colored pink.
1:32:37 Yeah.
1:32:41 And on top of that, it has lots of extra imperial territories as well.
1:32:47 So, you know, if you look at this, there’s this incredible map of global shipping in 1937.
1:32:50 And there’s these little ant lines of ships going out.
1:32:55 And one of the strongest ant lines is going down to Argentina and South America from Britain.
1:32:59 So, down past West Africa and down the Southern Atlantic and there it is.
1:33:02 And that’s because Britain owns most of Argentina.
1:33:05 It owns huge, great farming estates and ranches.
1:33:07 It owns the railway system.
1:33:08 It owns many of the port facilities.
1:33:10 So, you don’t even need an empire.
1:33:16 You just need the, you know, you need the facilities that overseas trade and possessions can give you.
1:33:31 And Britain not only has the largest navy, it also has the largest merchant navy, has 33% of the world’s merchant shipping and access to a further 50%, you know, Greek, Norwegian, Canadian shipping that it can access.
1:33:39 So, if you’ve got access to more than, in excess of 80% of the world’s shipping, that puts you in an incredibly strong position.
1:33:42 And actually, all sorts of other things have been going on.
1:33:54 While they might not have been creating a huge army or producing enough spitfires that they might want to up until this point, what they have also been doing is stockpiling bauxite and copper and tungsten and huge reserves.
1:34:02 And because Britain has this huge global reach, because it has its empire and its extra imperial assets, it can strike bargains that no one else can strike.
1:34:11 So, it can go into various countries around the world and can go, okay, I want you to guarantee me for the next five years, every bit of your rubber supply.
1:34:15 I will pay over the asking price to secure that.
1:34:18 And it’s doing that in the 1930s.
1:34:21 So, when war comes, it’s got everything it possibly needs.
1:34:27 Now, you always need more, because it’s suddenly turning into a kind of, you know, a proper global, long, drawn-out war.
1:34:30 But that is a huge advantage.
1:34:37 So, it is with that mindset that Chamberlain is going into those talks and thinking, okay, well, I’m not going to get a war over the Czechoslovakian.
1:34:38 Who cares about them?
1:34:43 But I am going to show Hitler that I mean business.
1:34:46 Hitler’s going, who’s this stuffy guy with his white hair?
1:34:47 I don’t give a toss about him.
1:34:50 You know, and he’s coming at it from a completely different perspective.
1:35:03 And I think one of the things that’s so interesting from a dramatic point of view and from a historian’s point of view or even a novelist’s point of view in the case of Robert Harris writing his book about these negotiations, which I don’t know if you’ve read it, but it’s really, it’s terrifically good.
1:35:13 It’s the fact that you’ve got two men, two alpha males, who are going to those negotiations from totally different perspectives and vantage points.
1:35:21 And I think it’s very easy for people today to forget how elevated Britain was in the late 1930s.
1:35:25 You know, the gold standard was tied to the pound, not the dollar.
1:35:32 And so Britain was the number one nation in the world at that time, and it just was.
1:35:38 And it’s so diminished by comparison today that it’s hard to imagine it.
1:35:52 And I think one of the interesting things about the historiography, about the narrative of how we tell World War II, is that so much of it has been dictated by the shift in power that took place subsequent to 1945.
1:36:01 And when people were starting to write these sort of major narratives in the 1970s and 80s and into the 1990s, is through a prism of a very, very different world.
1:36:11 And so one of the reasons why you have this narrative that, you know, Britain was a bit rubbish and hanging on the shirt tails of the Americans and, you know, all the blood was spelt in Eastern Front.
1:36:16 And, you know, Germany had the best army in the world and was only defeated because Hitler was mad and blah, blah, blah.
1:36:31 You know, that kind of sort of traditional narrative, it’s that narrative emerges through the prism of what was going on in the 1970s and what was going on in the 1980s and the changing world rather than looking at it through the prism of the late 1930s or early 1940s.
1:36:33 So there is this moment of decision.
1:36:37 When do you think, what lesson do you take from that?
1:36:53 When is the right time for appeasement, to negotiate, for diplomacy, and when is the right time for military strength, offensive, attacking, for military conflict?
1:36:56 Where’s that line?
1:37:00 Well, I kind of think it probably was when it was.
1:37:03 I mean, Poland.
1:37:04 Yeah.
1:37:10 Honestly, I’m not sure it would have been the right decision to go to war in 1938.
1:37:19 I just, I think it would, I can’t predict because you can’t second guess how things are going to play out because you just don’t know.
1:37:23 But I’m not sure that Chamberlain made the wrong decision.
1:37:25 I’m not saying he made the right decision.
1:37:28 I’m just like, I’m not, I’m being a bit wishy-washy about this.
1:37:31 You could have threatened it more.
1:37:34 Imagine Churchill in those same meetings.
1:37:36 Yeah, but Churchill also appeases.
1:37:38 I mean, he appeases Stalin all the time.
1:37:43 I mean, you know, so the idea that Churchill’s this big, strong man and never appeases and, you know, he’s gung-ho for war.
1:37:46 Churchill’s out of the government at that time.
1:37:48 He recognizes you can’t trust Hitler.
1:37:50 He recognizes that Nazism is bad.
1:37:59 But he, because he’s out of the government, he doesn’t have a window on exactly where Britain is at that particular time in a way that Chamberlain does.
1:38:13 You know, so I suppose what I’m saying is Chamberlain is better placed to make those decisions than Churchill is, which again doesn’t mean that Chamberlain is right and Churchill is wrong.
1:38:27 It’s just, that’s a massive pump to go to war in 1938 when you still don’t have, you know, you’ve got a handful of Spitfires, you’ve got a handful of Hurricanes, you haven’t got enough, you know, your air defense system isn’t properly sorted at this point.
1:38:30 Your Navy is strong.
1:38:32 But, you know, what’s that going to look like?
1:38:39 I mean, if you do go to war, because there’s not going to be armies sweeping into Germany.
1:38:44 It’s just, it’s going to be accelerated industrialization for a year.
1:38:50 So, you know, even if you go to war in 1938 over Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovakia will not be saved.
1:38:54 You know, France and Britain will not be going and invading Germany.
1:38:56 You know, that is absolutely not going to happen.
1:38:58 So, sort of, what’s the point?
1:39:07 I mean, you know, if you’re not going to do that, why don’t you accelerate your rearmament thereafter, get your ducks in a row, and then you can consider it.
1:39:10 I mean, after all, you know, even in September 1939, they don’t really do anything.
1:39:17 I mean, we talked about the kind of, the SAR offensive, which isn’t really an offensive at all.
1:39:20 It’s firing one round of machine gun and scuttling back again.
1:39:23 But, I mean, they don’t even do that then.
1:39:25 They’re still buying time in 1939.
1:39:30 And, you know, Britain is only just about ready to take on the onslaught of the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940.
1:39:33 Well, nobody is ready for war.
1:39:37 No, and you always want more than you’ve got at any time, even when you’re winning.
1:39:40 But, like, really not ready.
1:39:47 Even, like you mentioned with Barbarossa, the Nazi Germany is really not ready.
1:39:47 Not ready.
1:39:50 Nobody’s really, except France.
1:39:51 I swear.
1:39:52 France?
1:39:53 Only France have radios.
1:39:54 Fine.
1:39:55 But, come on.
1:39:56 Come on.
1:40:01 When, when, when, when Nazi Germany invades Poland, I mean.
1:40:02 Yeah, it’s terrible.
1:40:03 It’s terrible.
1:40:16 Because I’m absolutely, I also do think that had France gone in, in some force, with some British troops as well, had they gone in, what would have happened is, is that would have, that easily could have brought down Hitler.
1:40:21 Because most of his commanders are, his senior commanders are just thinking, what the hell is going on?
1:40:22 This is a catastrophe.
1:40:24 I mean, to a man.
1:40:26 I mean, even Göring is thinking, this is a terrible idea.
1:40:29 They are absolutely not convinced.
1:40:36 And when Hitler does his big talk to his, his, he asks all his senior commanders to come to the Berghof to brief them about the invasion of Poland.
1:40:42 It’s just after the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of the 22nd of August.
1:40:46 He calls them all to Berghof and says, come in, you know, come in mufti, come in civilian suits.
1:40:49 They all turn up and he gives them this kind of huge, great speech.
1:40:51 And says, this is the moment.
1:40:52 This is, this is the time.
1:40:53 This is what we’re going to do.
1:40:54 And they’re all going, what?
1:40:56 You’re kidding me.
1:40:59 What, we’re going to Poland in, you know, on the 26th of August.
1:40:59 That’s the plan.
1:41:00 Like, two days time.
1:41:02 You know, where’s the plan?
1:41:12 Where’s the, you know, the whole point is that, you know, they’re emerging and growing militarily, but they were supposed to have all these exercises where they, you know, coordinating ground forces.
1:41:16 You know, the, you know, the panzer spearhead with operations in the air with the Luftwaffe.
1:41:18 None of that happens.
1:41:19 So Poland becomes the proving ground.
1:41:24 And actually they discover that there’s lots of things that don’t work and lots of things that are wrong.
1:41:32 But, but, but, you know, it’s flying in the face of all convention, military convention that, that they, you know, he does this without any kind of warning.
1:41:50 And even by the 1st of September, where there’s been this kind of sort of five-day delay, um, at those last minute negotiations, the last minute negotiations are thrust upon Hitler by people like Goering and by Mussolini and, and the Italians going, God, oh my God, don’t do this.
1:41:50 Don’t do this.
1:41:52 You know, there’s got to be a solution.
1:41:54 Hitler’s absolutely jumping at the bit.
1:42:01 So in that case, from a dark militaristic perspective, his bet paid off.
1:42:07 Well, except that it ended in ruins in May, 1945 with the total collapse of Germany.
1:42:11 So you could say the worst decision he ever made was going into Poland in September, 1939.
1:42:12 It depends on the way you look at it.
1:42:14 But I mean, yes, you know, it’s successful.
1:42:17 And that the, you know, Poland’s overrun in 18 days.
1:42:20 There’s, there’s so many counterfactuals here.
1:42:34 But I mean, if you would say to Hitler on the 30th of April, you know, as he’s sort of taking out the pistol from his holster on his sofa in the, in the Fuhrer bunk and going, you know, so out of 1st of September, 1939, still backing yourself on that one.
1:42:36 I mean, he might, might have a different view.
1:42:39 The guy’s insane and full of blunder.
1:42:41 So he probably would have said, yeah, do it all over again.
1:42:42 Yeah, I’m sure he would have done that as well.
1:42:44 Conquest.
1:42:46 Poland was not a mistake.
1:42:48 Soviet Union was not a mistake.
1:42:48 No.
1:42:49 It’s just some of the tactics.
1:42:51 Other people I was let down by, by people not being strong enough.
1:42:53 Yeah, the Prussian generals are all.
1:42:54 Yeah, yeah, of course.
1:42:55 That’s exactly what he’d say.
1:42:57 It wasn’t my fault.
1:43:02 He might have quietly done some different decisions about Barbarossa.
1:43:05 Maybe the timing would be different.
1:43:08 Maybe that all out central for us rather than kind of splitting it into three.
1:43:16 But he was very sure, it seems like, maybe you can correct me, that Britain and France would still carry on with appeasement,
1:43:18 even after he invaded Poland.
1:43:19 Absolutely.
1:43:21 He was completely convinced by it.
1:43:26 There was clearly a kind of sort of 10 to 15% level of doubt.
1:43:27 But what the heck?
1:43:28 I’m going to do it anyway.
1:43:36 He was just, he ratcheted himself up into such a laver of kind of, this is the moment.
1:43:37 I have to do it now.
1:43:38 This is fate.
1:43:38 I’m 50.
1:43:42 And, and, you know, I could be taken out by an assassin’s bullet.
1:43:44 I’ve got this important life work that I’ve got to do.
1:43:45 We’ve got to get on with it now.
1:43:47 There could be no more delay.
1:43:48 This is my mission.
1:43:50 You know, this is our mission of the German people.
1:43:54 And either the German people have got the will and the, and the spirit to be able to pull
1:43:57 it off or, you know, I was wrong.
1:44:00 And, and therefore, you know, we don’t deserve to be a thousand year, right?
1:44:02 We don’t deserve to be the master race.
1:44:07 Black or white, us or them, either or, it’s same all the time.
1:44:12 So can you tell the story of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939?
1:44:18 So they make an agreement, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and that leads us, just like
1:44:22 you were mentioning, in a matter of days, how compact everything is.
1:44:24 It’s just really, really fascinating.
1:44:27 It’s a beautiful summer in Europe, summer of 1939.
1:44:31 You know, it’s one of these sort of glorious summers that sort of never rains.
1:44:35 It’s just sunshine, sunny day after sunny day.
1:44:40 It’s kind of, you know, it’s like that sort of golden summer of 1914 as well, you know,
1:44:45 where sky always seems to be blue, fluffy white clouds, everyone’s sort of, you know,
1:44:49 but this sort of, the storm clouds of war, to use that cliche, are kind of brewing.
1:44:56 The Russians have reached out to Britain and France and said, come on, come on over, let’s
1:44:58 negotiate, you know, let’s see what we can do.
1:45:02 And there is just no stomach for that at all.
1:45:10 I mean, if ever there is a, I think, a mistake, that’s Britain and France should have been a
1:45:14 bit more into real politics than they were.
1:45:21 It’s such an opportunity to ensure that, to snooker the Third Reich, and they don’t take
1:45:28 it, because, you know, in many ways, they see the westward spread of communism in exactly
1:45:32 the same way that the Nazis see the threat of the westward spread of communism as something
1:45:37 that’s every bit as repellent as Nazism, and they don’t want to be getting into bed with
1:45:38 these guys.
1:45:46 And, of course, they kind of have to kind of change tack on that one in summer of 1941
1:45:48 in, you know, very quick order.
1:45:51 And that’s the whole point about Churchill appeasing Stalin.
1:45:54 I mean, you know, it’s all very well people saying, well, you know, Churchill wouldn’t have
1:45:56 appeased Hitler in the 1930s, but he does appease.
1:45:57 He appeases all the time.
1:46:01 And they miss that opportunity.
1:46:07 And the French and British delegation is third-tier commanders, generals going over.
1:46:10 It’s a, you know, it’s a shit show.
1:46:15 I mean, yeah, excuse my French, but I mean, it’s just, it’s a nonsense that they’re not
1:46:15 ready for it.
1:46:16 They’re not prepared.
1:46:21 The British guy, Admiral Drax, doesn’t have any authority.
1:46:23 The whole thing’s a complete joke.
1:46:25 It’s never going to get anywhere.
1:46:27 You tell the story of this quite beautifully, actually.
1:46:30 Uh, again, it’s such a human story.
1:46:33 I mean, the, it seems like the Stalin and Soviet.
1:46:35 They’ve already made up their mind.
1:46:37 But I don’t think they have.
1:46:37 I think what they.
1:46:38 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
1:46:42 I mean, you described quite well that they value in-person meeting.
1:46:43 Yes.
1:46:46 So like Chamberlain should have just gone to Moscow.
1:46:47 Yeah, get on a plane.
1:46:57 Like it, it’s such a, uh, maybe it’s a simplistic notion, but that could have changed the trajectory
1:46:58 of human history right there.
1:46:59 I really think it could have done.
1:47:04 I think that was, I think that’s, I think that’s much more grievous mistake than, than, than Munich.
1:47:08 Why are leaders so hesitant to meet?
1:47:14 I, I, I’m told now by a bunch of diplomats that no, no, no, no, there’s a process.
1:47:19 You know, at first you have to have these diplomats meet and they have to draft a bunch of stuff.
1:47:25 And I sometimes have this simplistic notion, like, why not, why not meet?
1:47:26 Why not meet?
1:47:29 Like, I think there is a human element there.
1:47:35 Um, of course, especially when there’s this force that is Hitler.
1:47:36 Well, yes.
1:47:43 And because we humans, we like to interact and, and you like to see people in three dimensions.
1:47:49 And, you know, I’m sure it’s why you always quite rightly insist on doing your podcast face
1:47:53 to face because you want to get the cut of someone’s jib and you want to be able to see them and you
1:47:58 want to see the intonation in the expression and the whites of their eyes and all that kind
1:47:58 of stuff.
1:48:02 And that just doesn’t make a difference, of course, because, you know, we’re fundamentally
1:48:07 animals and we kind of, we, we want to be sizing people up and it’s much easier to do that when
1:48:13 you’re a few feet away from each other than it is on a video screen or through the prism
1:48:13 of someone else.
1:48:14 Yeah.
1:48:18 But there’s also just, you see the, the humanity in, in others.
1:48:19 It’s so much easier.
1:48:21 You see this in social media.
1:48:25 It’s so much easier to talk shit about others when you’re not with them.
1:48:26 Yes.
1:48:29 And like military conflict is the extreme version of that.
1:48:30 Yeah.
1:48:35 You can construct these narratives that they’re not human, that they’re evil, that they’re,
1:48:41 you can construct a communist ideology, all of these, you can project onto them the worst
1:48:46 possible version of what, of a human.
1:48:49 But when you meet them, you’re like, oh, they are just a person.
1:48:50 They’re just a person.
1:48:53 Well, it’s the world’s great tragedy that, that, that it’s only a few people that want to
1:48:57 go to war and the vast majority want to live happily, contented lives, getting on with their
1:48:57 neighbors.
1:48:59 I mean, it has been ever thus.
1:49:04 It’s just, it is those few that kind of ruin it for everybody else.
1:49:10 But, but, but anyway, to go back to Leningrad, back in August, 1939, they go half cock.
1:49:14 They’re disrespectful to Soviet Union as a result of that.
1:49:16 It gets nowhere.
1:49:22 Had they been able to put on a really, really firm offer there and then to the Soviet Union,
1:49:26 Soviet Union would have, would have probably come in.
1:49:30 I mean, the big thing is, is that the Soviet Union said, this is a big stumbling block.
1:49:36 The Soviet Union said, yeah, but we want to be able to march through Poland if we get threatened
1:49:40 by Germany, but if the British and the French just smell a massive rat there, they’re basically
1:49:46 saying, you know, if they agree to that, what they’re, what they fear is that Soviet Union
1:49:50 will just march into Poland and go, yeah, but you said we could and take it, which they
1:49:54 unquestionably would have done, but it would have stopped the world war properly.
1:49:56 They’re willing to appease Hitler.
1:49:58 They’re not willing to appease Stalin in that situation.
1:50:00 Well, they’re not willing to appease anybody by that stage.
1:50:01 That’s the point.
1:50:03 Well, they appeased Hitler.
1:50:08 They did, but there’s a bottom line, you know, which is, which is Poland, you know,
1:50:09 so it’s changed.
1:50:10 That’s the point.
1:50:11 Right, right.
1:50:15 But anyway, the bottom line is they don’t, you know, there is a, there is a, a reluctance
1:50:19 on the part of French and British to negotiate with the Soviet Union because they’re communists,
1:50:24 don’t like them, don’t trust them, worry about what they’re going to do with Poland and
1:50:28 they’re going to be, you know, jumping out of the fire into the kind of water.
1:50:30 And it doesn’t come off.
1:50:36 And as a consequence of that, Soviet Union continued to pursue more hardly, you know,
1:50:43 more, more vociferously the opportunities that the, that the Germans are offering, which
1:50:51 is the split of Poland because Soviet Union wants that part of Poland back in its own sphere
1:50:54 of influence and it doesn’t want to go to war just yet.
1:50:58 And the agreement that they won’t attack each other, is that right?
1:50:58 Yeah.
1:51:01 Do you think Stalin actually believed that?
1:51:04 No, he believed it in the same way that Hitler believed it, that it was a cynical kind of,
1:51:07 you know, convenient bit of real politic for now.
1:51:13 I mean, I think, I think Soviet Union was as determined to get rid of the Nazis as the Nazis
1:51:14 were determined to get rid of the Soviet Union.
1:51:20 I think whoever fired first was not, not decided at that point.
1:51:23 But I do think that from the moment that Hitler takes power in 1933, a conflict between Soviet
1:51:25 Nazi Germany is inevitable.
1:51:25 Yeah.
1:51:28 So either direction, you think it’s inevitable.
1:51:28 Yeah.
1:51:31 I think, I think there’s, yeah, there’s a huge amount of evidence for that.
1:51:35 Stalin probably wanted it, what, like in 42, 43?
1:51:35 Yeah.
1:51:36 Something like that.
1:51:37 Yeah.
1:51:39 And, and, you know, they’re doing exercises and stuff and building out of it.
1:51:42 He’s not ready yet because he knows he’s done the purges and he’s got to get his, his army,
1:51:45 you know, he’s got to get his armed forces back into shape and all the rest of it.
1:51:48 But, you know, so they have this incredibly cynical agreement.
1:51:52 But at that point, you know, Hitler’s hands are untied.
1:51:56 You know, he no longer has to worry about, about the threat from Soviet Union.
1:52:00 He’s got carte blanche to go into Poland and he doesn’t believe that France and Britain are
1:52:01 going to go to war over Poland.
1:52:03 He’s wrong about that, obviously.
1:52:06 But, but, but France and Britain, despite going to war with him, still do nothing.
1:52:09 So, you know, he’s got a way of it.
1:52:14 Who was Churchill and how did Churchill come to power at this moment?
1:52:19 Well, Churchill is this absolutely towering figure in British politics, you know, who’s
1:52:24 been, you know, his first minister in the kind of noughties of the 20th century and the
1:52:26 first years of, of the 20th century.
1:52:29 Um, first of the liberals, then of the conservatives.
1:52:33 He’s a former chancellor, um, um, of the exchequer.
1:52:41 Um, he’s a towering figure, but he’s been in the wilderness because he’s out of favor with
1:52:43 the Stanley Baldwin government.
1:52:49 Um, he’s out of favor with, with, with Chamberlain, but he is this towering figure and he has been
1:52:53 very outspoken as a backbencher, which basically means, you know, you’re not a minister, you’re
1:52:57 not in the cabinet, you’re just an ordinary member of parliament, but obviously you’re an
1:53:00 ordinary member of parliament, but you’re also an ordinary member of parliament who has
1:53:03 had ministries of state and who is this towering figure.
1:53:06 So he’s listened to in a way that other backbenchers aren’t.
1:53:09 Um, and he has been saying, you know, we need to stand up to the dictators.
1:53:10 We need to do this.
1:53:14 Um, we need to rearm more, more heavily, uh, and blah, blah, blah.
1:53:20 So when war is declared, he’s brought back into the Admiralty, um, and charge of the Navy,
1:53:21 which is Britain’s senior service.
1:53:25 And, um, um, suddenly he’s there.
1:53:29 And what happens is Britain doesn’t really do anything.
1:53:33 It’s very difficult working with France because France is so politically fractured that they
1:53:34 can’t make any decisions.
1:53:37 When you can’t make any decisions, you’re just impotent.
1:53:42 Um, and so Churchill first mentions going into Norway, mining the leads.
1:53:45 So, um, the idea is that you’re making life very difficult for the Germans to get iron ore
1:53:46 out of Sweden.
1:53:50 Their main, their main source of iron ore is up in the Northern part of Sweden in the Arctic
1:53:50 circle.
1:53:56 It then goes on a railway through Northern tip of Norway and then gets shipped down the,
1:54:00 um, West coast of Norway into Germany, into the Baltic.
1:54:06 So, uh, Churchill suggests in September, 1939, why don’t we mine the leads, which are the leads
1:54:12 are these passageways, um, out of the fjords and the, in the North into the, uh, into the North
1:54:12 sea.
1:54:17 Why don’t we mine those and stop the Germans from, from, from, um, um, taking this?
1:54:19 Everyone goes, well, yeah, that’s quite a good idea, but they can’t decide.
1:54:23 And French are nervous that if they do that, the Germans retaliate and bomb France and all
1:54:24 this kind of stuff.
1:54:30 So no decision is made until kind of April, 19, 1940, they go up to start mining the leads
1:54:33 on exactly the same day that the Germans invade Denmark and Norway.
1:54:36 And so they’re, they’re caught off guards.
1:54:39 And at that moment, really, it’s seen as a failure of Chamberlain’s government.
1:54:45 And there is a kind of, uh, a mounting realization that no matter how good he was or competent
1:54:48 he was as a peacetime prime minister, he’s not a wartime prime minister.
1:54:50 You know, he’s not served in the armed forces himself.
1:54:52 He doesn’t really understand it.
1:54:57 It needs a different set of hands and, um, his government falls on the 9th of May.
1:54:59 It becomes inevitable that he’s going to have to resign.
1:55:05 And the obvious person to take his place is Lord Halifax, who is in the house of Lords,
1:55:06 but you can still be a prime minister.
1:55:11 And, um, he is without question, the most respected politician in the country.
1:55:15 He’s, um, um, former Viceroy of India.
1:55:23 He’s seen as incredibly safe pair of hands, man of resolute sound judgment, et cetera, et
1:55:23 cetera.
1:55:26 Um, but he doesn’t want to take it.
1:55:28 He feels physically ill at the prospect.
1:55:29 Doesn’t want this responsibility.
1:55:31 He’s also not really a military man.
1:55:34 He’s got a slightly sort of withered hand, which has prevented him from doing military
1:55:35 service.
1:55:38 And he just blanches at this moment.
1:55:43 And that really leaves only one other figure that could possibly take on this position.
1:55:43 And that’s Churchill.
1:55:51 So when Chamberlain resigns on the 9th of May and Halifax says, it’s, it’s not for me.
1:55:54 Um, the only person who’s going to slip into that position is Churchill.
1:55:57 And he becomes prime minister and he accepts it gladly.
1:56:00 He feels like it is his mission in life.
1:56:01 This is his moment.
1:56:04 Come of the outcome of the man, but he comes with a huge amount of baggage.
1:56:08 I mean, you know, he’s known as a man who drinks too much, who’s, whose judgment hasn’t
1:56:08 always been great.
1:56:12 You know, he was chancellor during the time of the general strike 1926.
1:56:17 You know, he backed Edward the eighth over the, uh, monarchy crisis when the King wanted
1:56:21 to marry Wallace Simpson, the divorcee, Catholic divorcee, et cetera, et cetera.
1:56:23 So, you know, his judgment has been brought into question.
1:56:27 You know, he is the man who was, he came up with the idea of the Gallipoli campaign.
1:56:30 Which was, you know, an ignominious failure, blah, blah, blah.
1:56:32 So there are issues over him.
1:56:37 You know, he is seen as a hothead and a man who doesn’t have the kind of sound judgment of
1:56:37 Halifax.
1:56:40 So the jury is, is very much out.
1:56:44 And I think it’s, again, it’s one of those things where you have to put yourself in.
1:56:48 You have to look at this through the prism of what people were thinking in May, 1940.
1:56:49 Yes.
1:56:56 He, he was considered a towering politician, but he is seen also as a loose cannon and by
1:57:00 no means the right person in this hour of darkness.
1:57:06 And it is coincidental that the 10th of May, 1940, when he takes over as prime minister, becomes
1:57:11 prime minister, not for an election, but by default of a new nationalist government.
1:57:17 So no longer a conservative government, but a nationalist cross-party coalition government
1:57:23 for the duration of the war, which includes, you know, members of, of the liberal party and
1:57:31 also the labor party, as well as conservatives, that it is by no means certain that, that he’s
1:57:32 going to be able to deliver the goods.
1:57:38 And it is also coincidentally the same day that the Germans launched Case Yellow, Operation
1:57:41 Yellow, the invasion of the low countries in France.
1:57:47 So these are tumultuous events, to put it mildly.
1:57:54 And it is also the case that, you know, only a couple of weeks before, Paul Reynaud has taken
1:57:59 over as prime minister of yet another coalition government in France from, from Deladier.
1:58:06 So political turmoil is very much the watchword at this time for the, for the Western democracies,
1:58:11 just at the moment that the Germans are making their kind of, you know, their hammer strike
1:58:11 into the West.
1:58:19 This might be a good moment to bring up this idea that has been circulating recently brought
1:58:26 up by Darrell Cooper, who hyperbolically stated that Churchill was the, quote, chief villain
1:58:28 of the Second World War.
1:58:34 To give a good faith interpretation of that, I believe he meant that Churchill forced Hitler
1:58:38 to escalate the expansion of Nazi Germany beyond Poland into a global war.
1:58:48 So Churchill is the one that turned this narrow war, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, into a
1:58:49 global one.
1:58:53 Is that accurate?
1:58:54 No, I don’t think it is.
1:58:58 I mean, not least because the decisions over Poland were made by Chamberlain’s government,
1:58:59 not when Churchill was out of government.
1:59:03 So, you know, Churchill wasn’t even involved in that decision-making process at the time.
1:59:05 No, I don’t think so.
1:59:11 I mean, again, I go back to kind of Britain’s position in the world in 1939.
1:59:20 If you say, we are going to defend the sovereignty of Poland, and then you don’t, that looks really
1:59:20 bad globally.
1:59:25 You know, Britain’s prestige would plummet, would lead to all sorts of problems.
1:59:30 You are saying that you’re giving carte blanche to dictators to just run amok and take whatever
1:59:31 territory they want.
1:59:39 You are risking a future upheaval of the global order away from democracies into the hands
1:59:40 of dictators.
1:59:47 You know, in the West, people believe in democracy and believe in advancement of freedoms of people.
1:59:56 To echo the words of Roosevelt in August 1941, you know, they’re responding to a world free
1:59:57 of want and fear.
2:00:06 Now, obviously, there’s still some issues with the form that democracy takes in the 1930s.
2:00:08 It’s not democratic for everyone.
2:00:15 You know, try saying that if you’re in Nigeria or India or whatever, or if you’re, you know,
2:00:19 in the black Southern states of the United States, but the aspirations are there.
2:00:22 And I think that’s, that’s, that’s an important distinction.
2:00:27 And I think by saying that, that Churchill is the chief warmonger of the Second World War,
2:00:28 I think is, is ludicrous.
2:00:33 You know, it’s the same thing about, about the bombing, you know, the, the, the detractors
2:00:37 of strategic air campaign always go, yeah, but you know, Germans had the Holocaust, but,
2:00:40 but weren’t the, weren’t the allies just as bad just killing all those civilians?
2:00:44 It’s like, no, because the moment Hitler stopped the war, the bombing would stop, you
2:00:49 know, the moment the war stopped in Hitler’s favor, the killing would continue and be accelerated.
2:00:55 So the, the thing you mentioned initially is the sort of the idealist perspective of, well,
2:01:05 Britain can’t allow sort of, uh, this warmonger to break all these pacts and be undemocratic,
2:01:15 you know, um, murder a large number of people and do conquest of territory.
2:01:16 Okay.
2:01:17 That’s idealistic.
2:01:26 But if we look at the realist perspective, what decisions would minimize the amount of suffering
2:01:28 on the continent in the next 50 years?
2:01:36 So one of the arguments that he’s making, I happen to disagree with it, to put it mildly,
2:01:42 is that Churchill increased the amount of suffering.
2:01:45 So Churchill, Churchill’s presence and decisions.
2:01:48 So we’re not talking about idealistic perspective.
2:01:55 We’re talking about realist, like the reality of the war, of Stalin, of, of Hitler, of Churchill,
2:02:04 of, uh, of France and FDR, did Churchill drag Hitler into a world war?
2:02:08 Did he force Hitler to invade Soviet Union?
2:02:15 Did he force Hitler to then invade, uh, attack Britain?
2:02:19 Well, no, because, because Hitler was always going to invade the Soviet Union if, unless,
2:02:22 unless the Soviet Union invaded Germany first.
2:02:23 So that was always going to happen.
2:02:32 Um, no one asked Hitler to invade the low countries and Norway and Denmark and attack Britain.
2:02:42 Um, he does that, of course, because he’s not given a free hand in Poland, but there’s
2:02:47 no question that Hitler would have also wanted to subdue France or certainly turn France from
2:02:50 a democracy into a totalitarian state as well.
2:02:51 I’m absolutely certain about that.
2:02:54 So I think there’s pretty definitive evidence.
2:02:57 I mean, it’s obvious from everything he said, from everything he’s written, from everything,
2:03:03 everywhere that he was going to invade the Soviet Union, uh, no matter what.
2:03:07 And France, most likely, yes.
2:03:09 Also, he would have done a deal with Britain.
2:03:10 Britain could have existed.
2:03:18 So, actually, there is a, is there, there is a possible reality, I don’t know, maybe you
2:03:22 can correct me on this, where Hitler basically takes all of Europe except Britain.
2:03:26 Yes, but then he would have got so strong that he would have then turned on Britain as well,
2:03:31 you know, because he, he would, you know, the fear is that if you let him do this and then,
2:03:34 then he gets greedy, he wants the next one, then he wants the next one, then he wants the
2:03:34 next one.
2:03:36 And, you know, then he wants to take over the whole world.
2:03:40 And, you know, that is, that is the fear of the British.
2:03:42 That is the fear of the Americans.
2:03:46 That’s the fear of President Roosevelt, who’s got a very, we haven’t even touched on this
2:03:53 yet, but he has a very difficult, uh, um, case on his hands because he’s come into power
2:04:00 also in January, 1933, um, as President of the United States on an isolationist ticket
2:04:05 with a retrenching, with a kind of sort of, you know, step away from the European old order.
2:04:06 It’s time for the Europeans to start on their own.
2:04:09 Um, it all sounds very familiar right now.
2:04:16 Um, and, and suddenly he’s got to do this gargantuan political vault fast, um, and prepare
2:04:21 the nation for war because he also fears, like Churchill fears, like most, like Chamberlain
2:04:29 feared as well, um, that, that Hitler’s designs are not purely on Eastern Europe and the Liebens
2:04:31 from there, but would get ever bigger.
2:04:34 And I don’t, I don’t doubt that they’re right.
2:04:38 I think if he’d prevailed in the Soviet Union, you know, he’d, he’d always wanted more, you
2:04:41 know, because his whole concept is the master race, you know?
2:04:42 Yeah.
2:04:48 I think, I think it should be said if we, if we measure human suffering, if there was not
2:04:55 Britain on the other side, if it was not a two front war, that the chances of Hitler succeeding
2:04:58 in the Soviet Union is much higher or at least a more prolonged war.
2:05:04 And there would be more dead and more enslaved and more tortured and all of this.
2:05:05 Yes.
2:05:09 And, and ditto, if you, you know, if the, if the allies hadn’t gone involved against Imperial
2:05:12 Japan, you know, it would have been, would have been catastrophic.
2:05:20 I mean, 20 to 30 million Chinese dead anyway, you know, with American and British intervention.
2:05:22 And it wasn’t going to be in China without that.
2:05:29 I mean, and elsewhere, you know, because, because the reason why Japan invades French,
2:05:38 Indo-China, now Vietnam, um, and Hong Kong and, um, and Malaya and Singapore and, uh, and so
2:05:44 on and Burma is because it’s not winning in China and it needs more resources because it’s
2:05:48 resource poor and America has cut off the tap.
2:05:52 So it’s going into these countries to, to get what it needs.
2:05:57 It’s rubber and oil and natural resources and oils, precious oils and all the rest of it.
2:06:01 And if it had been unchecked, it would have done so.
2:06:06 And then it would have absolutely built up its strength and overrun the whole of China with
2:06:07 even more deaths.
2:06:12 So, you know, I, I, I think there is, I think that one of the interesting things about the
2:06:16 second world war is, is lots of wars and why people get involved in them are extremely
2:06:23 questionable, but I think there is a moral crusade to, to the allies and what they’re
2:06:26 doing that I think is entirely justified.
2:06:33 What I think is interesting also is that as the war progresses, you know, if the allies
2:06:36 are supposed to be on the force of the good, how come they’re doing so much bad?
2:06:40 And at what point is doing bad, stopping you from doing good?
2:06:45 And at what point are you doing good, but also doing bad at the same time, such as destruction
2:06:52 of cities, um, destruction of monasteries on outcrops in Southern Italy, you know, destruction
2:06:56 of killing a lot of civilians, et cetera, et cetera.
2:07:02 You know, these are, these are difficult questions to, to answer sometimes.
2:07:05 They’re also incredibly interesting.
2:07:09 And I think that moral component starts to blur a little bit by kind of middle of the
2:07:10 war by 1943.
2:07:17 You know, it’s, it’s kind of easy to have a, a fairly, uh, cut and dry, uh, war in North
2:07:20 Africa and the deserts of North Africa, where, you know, the only people getting in the way
2:07:22 are, are a few sort of Bedouin tribesmen or something.
2:07:27 But, but once you start getting into Europe or getting into the kind of the, the meat of highly
2:07:32 dominated countries in the far East, um, for example, that’s a different kettle of fish
2:07:39 because the scale of destruction is absolutely immense, but it is also the job of, of political
2:07:44 leaders, um, to look after and defend their own peoples first and foremost.
2:07:48 And so what you’re doing is you’re trying to protect your own sovereignty, your own people
2:07:51 before you’re protecting other people.
2:07:58 And so that’s what leads to, you know, the whole way in which the allies are the Western
2:08:04 allies are protracting war is to try and minimize the number of deaths of their own young men as
2:08:07 much as they possibly can, whilst at the same time winning the war.
2:08:13 And that means bringing lots of destruction to your enemies, but also trying to minimize it.
2:08:16 And the way you bring lots of destruction by to your enemies is by using immense firepower
2:08:21 and this concept of steel, not our flesh, which I mentioned earlier on and technology,
2:08:26 um, so that you don’t have to bring to bear too many of your young men’s eyes.
2:08:29 You don’t have a repeat of the slaughter of the first world war.
2:08:34 So, you know, it is really interesting that, that in, in, in our mind’s eye, when we’re thinking
2:08:39 of, you know, the Western allies and the second world war, probably the first thing that comes
2:08:43 into mind is Americans jumping out of landing craft on Omaha beach on D-Day, for example,
2:08:48 those are infantrymen. They’re the frontline, they are the coal face of that. They’re the first people
2:08:55 going into the, into the fire of the enemy. And we tend to think about guys in tanks, um, infantrymen
2:09:01 with their Garand rifles or, you know, machine guns or whatever. That’s, that’s what springs to mind.
2:09:07 Yet actually they’re a comparatively small proportion of the army. So no more than 14 to 15% of any army
2:09:14 allied army is infantry. 45% are service corps, service troops, driving trucks and cooks and
2:09:19 bottle washers and people lugging great big boxes of stuff. You know, and that’s because by that stage,
2:09:23 you know, the allies have worked out of the way of war, which is, is to, is to use is what I call big
2:09:30 war. This concept of, of a very long tail logistics, the operational art, making sure that people have
2:09:36 the absolute best you possibly can, great medical care, huge advances in, in, in first aid and medical
2:09:41 care of troops, getting them back onto the battlefield. And you’re using firepower and
2:09:48 technology and mechanization to do a lot of your hard yards. So, you know, that’s the principle behind
2:09:53 strategic bombing. You know, if you can, if you go over and bomb and you can destroy infrastructure
2:09:59 and civilians and households that makes it much harder for, for crop to make those pamphlet tanks
2:10:04 and tiger tanks or whatever it might be and guns, uh, and you know, you’re disrupting the
2:10:09 transportation system in Germany, you know, you’re making life difficult for them to do what they need
2:10:14 to do. Then that means it’s going to be easier for those 15, 14, 15% of infantry. And you’ve got to
2:10:19 jump out of landing craft to do their job. And you’re trying to keep that to a minimum. And you’d have to
2:10:23 say, broadly speaking, that’s a very sensible policy that makes an awful lot of sense.
2:10:31 consequence of that is a huge amount of destruction. And maybe that’s what Daryl Cooper’s
2:10:38 driving at, but no one asked Hitler to invade Poland. I mean, you know, that is the bottom line.
2:10:42 No one asked Germany to go to war. No one asked Hitler to come up with these ludicrous ideology.
2:10:49 Yeah. There’s complex ethical discussions here about, uh, uh, just as you described,
2:10:52 which are fascinating, which are fascinating. And, uh,
2:11:00 war is how, and there’s many ways in which it is how, uh, just for a little bit, the steel
2:11:10 man, what, uh, Daryl is where he might be coming from is since world war two, the simplistic
2:11:19 simplistic veneration of Churchill. So I was saying Churchill, good, Hitler, bad has been used as a
2:11:29 template to project under other conflicts to justify military, uh, intervention. And so his general,
2:11:37 his and other people like libertarians, for example, resistance to that overly simplistic veneration of
2:11:43 somebody like Churchill has to do with the fact that that seems to be by neocons and warmongers
2:11:50 in the military industrial complex in the United States and elsewhere, using Hitler way too much,
2:11:54 using Churchill way too much to justify invading everywhere and anywhere.
2:11:59 Well, I, I, I do agree with that. I think oversimplification of anything is a mistake.
2:12:06 You know, life is nuanced. The past is nuanced. It’s okay to be proud about certain things and it’s
2:12:09 okay to be disgusted by other things. That’s absolutely fine. You know, we have a complicated
2:12:15 relationship with our past. It doesn’t need to be black and white and, um, you know, life is not a
2:12:19 straight line. And of course there’s the, you know, the allies make plenty of mistakes in, in,
2:12:23 in world war two overall, I think they made the right calls. And I think one of the things that’s
2:12:30 really interesting is I think that the allies for the most part use their resources much more
2:12:40 judiciously and sensibly than the axis powers do. And, you know, good, um, because that means they
2:12:46 prevail. I think, you know, there are so many lessons, um, from world war two that could have
2:12:52 been brought into the last history of the last 30 years, which weren’t, you know, such as, you know,
2:12:57 if you have, if you, if you decapitate an incredibly strong leader, you get a power
2:13:01 vacuum. And if you don’t have a solution for that power vacuum, lots of bad elements are going to
2:13:05 sweep into that in very quick order, which of course is exactly what happens in, in, in Iraq.
2:13:10 So, you know, Dr. Ronson going, we don’t do reconstruction where you’ve freaking well should
2:13:15 do, you know, this, this, if you’re going to, if you’re going to take on this, this particular
2:13:19 challenge, you’ve got to see it through, you know, that’s, that’s simply not good enough.
2:13:22 You know, it’s not good enough to go into Afghanistan and go, okay, we’re going to change
2:13:26 things around. It’s going to be great. You know, all the women are going to have education. They won’t
2:13:33 have to wear kind of, you know, uh, um, won’t have to cover up their bodies anymore. Um, anything
2:13:38 goes, we love liberalism. It’s great. Um, let’s make Kabul into a thriving city once more and then
2:13:43 suddenly bug out, you know, cause what, what, what’s going to happen? You’re going to undo
2:13:48 everything. And, and I remember being in, you know, this is a bit of a segue legs, but I remember
2:13:54 being in, in Northern Helmand province back in, you know, when it was January, 2008 and, uh, British
2:14:02 troops had just taken over an absolute dump of a town called, um, Musakala. And I remember talking
2:14:07 to this Afghan guy, he just had all his willow trees chopped down to make room for a helipad that the
2:14:13 allies wanted, which said, you know, put that kind of surround, you know, those cages with kind
2:14:18 of rubble in the protective wall. Is it called Hescombe? I think it was called. Anyway, I said to
2:14:21 him, what do you, what do you think about, about the British being there? And he just went, shrugged
2:14:25 at me and lifted up his hands and said, well, you know, if they stay great, but they weren’t.
2:14:32 And, and he said, said, you know, if they stay, then brilliant. But he said, I’ll tell you what,
2:14:37 he said, Taliban weren’t great. They weren’t fantastic. He said, but I could leave my personal
2:14:40 wall and no one would touch it. I could leave it on a wall for a week. No one would touch it.
2:14:45 He said, said, will they bring that kind of order? You know, will, will we have, will we have peace
2:14:52 here? You know, they’ve just chopped down my, my willow trees. You know, thanks a lot. And you,
2:15:02 you know, you, you, you’re seeing a total lack of understanding of the culture, ethnic differences.
2:15:08 You’re trying to impose a kind of Western centric view onto something, which is just some, you know,
2:15:13 onto, onto, onto a, onto a nation, which isn’t, isn’t ready for that. Now there are ways in which,
2:15:19 you know, it looked like Afghanistan was starting to kind of emerge and there was a path. And then just
2:15:28 at the critical moment, the West moves out with catastrophic consequences. What you have to say,
2:15:35 though, is that in the West post-1945, the rehabilitation of Italy, of Japan, of Western
2:15:42 Germany was really good. You know, the consequence of, of all that destruction, all that turmoil was
2:15:52 thriving, high producing democracies, which burst forth into the kind of second half of the 20th
2:15:59 century and into the 21st century in pretty good order. Um, so the lessons of the previous generation
2:16:05 for the first world war had, had been, had been learned, even though the scale of destruction,
2:16:13 the displacement of people is unprecedented in 1945. In 1939, what was the state of the militaries?
2:16:18 What were the most powerful militaries on the world stage at that time? Well, um, in terms of naval
2:16:23 power, Britain, as we’ve already discussed and, and, and the United States, um, France has a pretty large
2:16:29 Navy. Uh, Japan has a pretty large Navy. Italy has a pretty large Navy, but Italy’s Navy is by far and
2:16:34 away. It’s most modern aspect of its three services, air, land, and sea. Um, but it doesn’t have any
2:16:39 aircraft carriers and it doesn’t have any radar. So, you know, it’s, it’s, they’ve got modern battleships
2:16:46 and battle cruisers, but without key modern bits of technology. So Italy is really not ready for.
2:16:54 Oh, it’s so not, it’s so not. It’s just, again, both Hitler and Mussolini, they, they lack geopolitical
2:17:00 understanding. You know, that’s because they’re so kind of focused on their narrow worldview and they
2:17:04 view everything through that prism, but they can’t see that bigger picture. And we should say that
2:17:10 Mussolini, maybe you can correct me, but I don’t think at any point he wants a war. He doesn’t want
2:17:15 a war. What he does want is he wants his own new kind of Roman empire, which extends over the
2:17:19 Mediterranean, the kind of certainly the Eastern part of the meta half of the Mediterranean, North
2:17:24 Africa, all the way down to kind of East Africa controlling the Suez canal. That, that’s, that’s
2:17:29 what he wants. And I think you made clear that he was, I mean, there’s always like this little brother
2:17:36 jealous of Hitler kind of situation because he, he wanted absolute power the way Hitler did, but
2:17:44 doesn’t have it. Doesn’t have it. Yeah. There’s a monarchy often forgotten. It’s amazing.
2:17:52 So there’s always this limit and Hitler quite brilliantly. Once he gets some power, he takes
2:17:54 it all complete.
2:18:00 He completely emasculates Mussolini and yeah, he likes him though. It’s really weird. Even
2:18:08 when Mussolini is about to fall in July, 1943 as a meeting at Feltre, um, just literally a few
2:18:14 days before Mussolini tumbles. And he does that because he likes Mussolini. He likes him as a man
2:18:19 and thinks he’s been his friend. And, you know, he respects him to a certain extent, even though he’s,
2:18:25 he, he definitely views himself as top dog. Hitler does that is. Um, so it’s kind of curious
2:18:29 because I don’t think Hitler particularly likes anyone really, but, but, but he does seem to like
2:18:34 Mussolini. But anyway, the problem with Mussolini is Mussolini, Mussolini’s Italy is, is very
2:18:39 impoverished from the first world war, you know, and that of course leads to the rise of fascism and
2:18:45 the overthrow of parliamentary democracy and, and why Mussolini takes place in the first place.
2:18:49 You know, again, it’s that kind of, there’s been this terrible disruption. There’s been financial
2:18:56 crisis. That leads to kind of people looking at an alternative, you know, what’s the alternative?
2:19:00 Well, Mussolini is going, you know, we can be proud Italians again, lots of chest thumping,
2:19:03 you know, wearing great uniforms, all the rest of it. And people kind of think, well, you know,
2:19:08 I’ll have a piece of that. And it kind of works. And, you know, proverbially the trains work on time
2:19:13 under him and so on and so forth, but he just gets ahead of himself, you know, and, and actually the
2:19:17 writings on the war in 1935, when he goes into Abyssinia and, and, you know, again, sort of what
2:19:23 effectively are kind of by first world European standards, primitive tribesmen in, in,
2:19:28 in Abyssinia, you know, they, they have quite a tough fight there. You know, they, they do prevail,
2:19:34 but, but it’s not a complete walkover and they get a bit of a bloody nose at times and they shouldn’t
2:19:39 have done. And they’re just not ready. They don’t have the industry. You know, they’re, they’re tied up
2:19:43 into the Mediterranean. They don’t have access to the world’s oceans. They do have some merchant shipping,
2:19:48 but not a huge amount. Um, you know, they just don’t have what is required. They don’t,
2:19:53 they’re dependent on Britain for coal. Britain is the leading coal exporter in the world in the 1930s.
2:20:01 universities. So Britain’s approach to fascist Spain and approach to fascist Italy has been very
2:20:06 much sort of stick and carrot. It’s like, you know, we’ll let you do what you do as long as you kind of
2:20:13 stay in your box and, and, you know, we’ll continue to provide you with supplies and coal and whatever
2:20:20 as long as you need, as long as you don’t kind of go too far. And so that’s why Mussolini is very
2:20:27 anxious in 1938. And again, in 1939 to kind of be the power broker and kind of not let Germany go to
2:20:33 war, but Germany’s just, you know, they, they signed the axis pact of steel in May, 1939, where they become
2:20:39 formal allies. This is Hitler and Mussolini, Italy and Germany, but it’s always a very, very unequal
2:20:44 partnership right from the word go. And one of the reasons Mussolini signs it is because he fears
2:20:46 that Germany has designs on Italy. Yeah.
2:20:51 It’s not because he thinks, oh, these guys are great. You know, there are natural bedfellows.
2:20:59 It’s so that he can, what it’s a mutually convenient pact whereby Germany gets on with whatever it wants
2:21:04 to do up in Northern Europe and Eastern Europe. Italy is given a free hand to do whatever it wants to do.
2:21:09 They’ll just kind of watch each other’s backs. They have borders, you know, Austria and Italy border
2:21:13 one another, and they’ll just do their own thing and they’ll kind of help each other out with supplies
2:21:20 and stuff. But, but basically they won’t, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll be their own. It’s a kind of marriage
2:21:24 of convenience. You know, they’re never expected to be fighting alongside each other on the battlefield.
2:21:30 Not really. There is a kind of obligation to do so, but, but it’s, it’s an obligation with no
2:21:35 expectation of ever actually happening. And so from Mussolini’s point of view, the pact of steel is,
2:21:40 is kind of, you know, it’s just sailing your flag to one particular mast and kind of trying to cover
2:21:46 your, cover your back. And so long as he plays his cards, right, you know, he can, he can still get
2:21:49 his coal supplies from Britain. He doesn’t have to worry about that. You know, the pact of steel doesn’t
2:21:57 make any difference to that. The problem for him is, is that in June, 1940, he thinks that France is
2:22:01 about to be defeated and the Britain will surely follow. And so he thinks, ah, I’ve got some rich
2:22:07 pickings. I can take Malta or I can take British possessions. I can overrun Egypt. And, you know,
2:22:11 now is my time, but I, I also need to kind of join the fight before France is completely out of the
2:22:15 fight. Otherwise it looks like I’m a Johnny come lately and I won’t, I won’t get those spoils because
2:22:19 the Germans will go, yeah, you can’t have all this stuff. You’ve turned up too late. You need to be in
2:22:23 the fight. So he does it. What he thinks is the perfect timing. And it turns out to be a
2:22:26 catastrophic timing because of course, Britain doesn’t exit the fight. You know, Britain is still
2:22:33 there. And, you know, by February, 1941, a very, very tiny British army in Egypt has overrun, you
2:22:38 know, two entire Italian armies and taken 133,000 prisoners in North Africa.
2:22:45 So you mentioned in the sea, uh, who were the dominant armies who were, who was dominant in the air?
2:22:49 Well, in the air, it has to be the Luftwaffe. Uh, and it is also the Imperial Japanese,
2:22:54 both in the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial Japanese army that they both have air forces.
2:23:00 And one of the reasons that is because the quality of the pilots in Japan is extremely high because
2:23:06 it’s so difficult to get, to get to the top position. You know, you are going to your frontline
2:23:11 squadrons with at least 500 hours in your log book. To put that into some perspective, you know,
2:23:17 a British RAF or Luftwaffe pilot would be joining their frontline squadrons with 150 to 170 hours in
2:23:25 a log book. So it is that these guys are disciplined to within an inch of their lives. Um, they are,
2:23:30 you know, there are academic tests as well as physical endurance tests. You know, they are the elite of
2:23:36 the elite and they are extremely good. The problem they have is that there is a good number of them,
2:23:43 but there’s not that many. The Luftwaffe is, is the largest air force in the world in 1939,
2:23:50 but it is already at a parity when in, in aircraft production with Britain. Um, and
2:23:54 the French have a kind of similar size army, but they’re very, very badly organized. So they’re also,
2:23:58 they’re organized into different regions and they, one region doesn’t really, is not really
2:24:03 talking to another. And one of the problems that when case yellow, the invasion of German invasion of
2:24:08 the West starts, France’s army of the air is spread throughout France and has its own little area.
2:24:14 So you have one bunch of, you know, fighters and bombers in that block in, you know, in the Marseille
2:24:18 area, you have another block in kind of, you know, on the Brittany coast, and you have another block in
2:24:22 around Sudan and you have another that. So, so consequently, they’re never be there. They’re
2:24:27 never able to kind of bring their full strength to bear. So it’s, although, although they’ve both got
2:24:32 about three and a half thousand aircraft on paper and about two and a half thousand that are fit to
2:24:39 fly on any one given day, the Luftwaffe, because they’re the aggressor, can choose how they mass
2:24:45 their aircraft and where they attack and at when. So in other words, you can send, the Luftwaffe can send
2:24:50 over overwhelming amounts of bombers and fighter planes and pulverize a French airfield and catch
2:24:55 them napping. And because the French don’t have a defense system, they can’t see whether they’re
2:24:59 coming. So their only hope is to kind of take off and just hope they stooge around the sky and hope
2:25:04 they bump into some Luftwaffe. And of course, that’s inherently inefficient and they get, you know,
2:25:10 they get destroyed and they get destroyed in penny packets rather than en masse. Difference with the
2:25:17 RAF is, is the RAF is not done on an air force basis where you have each air corps or air fleet has
2:25:24 a handful of bombers, a handful of fighters, a handful of reconnaissance planes. They have different
2:25:28 commands. So they have bomber command, fighter command, training command, cursor command, and they
2:25:32 all have very specific roles. So they’re, they’re structured in a completely different way. And the
2:25:39 other, and that’s because they’re an island nation, um, and because they see their role militarily in a,
2:25:44 in a, in a, in a different way. And because the rearming that Britain has done in the 1930s is all
2:25:49 about defense. It is not about aggression at this point, not about taking it to the enemy. It is,
2:25:54 it is showing your tough, but also first and foremost, getting your ducks in a row and making
2:25:59 sure that you don’t get defeated. So this is the principle behind the, the first, the world’s first
2:26:04 fully coordinated air defense system, which is the radar chain. It is the observer core. It is control
2:26:11 rooms. It is interesting technology, such as identification, friend or foe, IFF, which is where you have a little
2:26:17 pulse, which, so you have these control rooms and you have a map table and you have a tote board in front of
2:26:21 view where you can see what squadrons are airborne, what state of readiness they’re at, you know,
2:26:24 whether they’re engaging the enemy, little lights come on and show you, you can see weather maps, you
2:26:29 can see, see the cloud ceiling, you see all that at glance, then you’re on a dais. And then down in
2:26:35 front of you is a massive, great map of Southern England. You’ve got croupiers, got a moving plots.
2:26:40 So you can, through a combination of radar, which picks up a kind of a rough idea of what’s coming
2:26:46 towards you combined with the observer core. You have overlapping observer core stations all over
2:26:51 Britain, covering every single inch of airspace over Britain, looking up into the air and seeing
2:26:57 how many aircraft there are and at what height they are. And you have a little thing called a
2:27:03 pantograph, which is a piece of equipment, which helps you judge altitude. You then ring through that,
2:27:08 that all comes into the control room, along with the information from the radar stations,
2:27:13 which is going into a single filter room, fighter command headquarters, which is then being pushed
2:27:19 straight back out to the sector stations. So this information is being updated all the time. So you
2:27:26 have a plot and it looks like it might be, you know, enemy bombers, 30 plus, for example, that’s
2:27:30 constantly being adapted. So as more information comes in, you will change that. And then you can see
2:27:35 that actually it’s only 20 aircraft or 22 aircraft or whatever. So you’re updating that and that little
2:27:40 figure is put on the, on your little plot and moved across. And so you can see, and then because you can
2:27:48 identify your own aircraft, you can then see where they are moving. And you’re also on, um, the guys in the
2:27:54 air are on the radio to ground controllers who were in these control rooms and they’re saying, okay, well, if you
2:28:00 proceed at, you know, angels, 18, 18,000 feet, you know, on a vector of, you know, one five O degrees,
2:28:07 you should be seeing your enemy bombing formation any moment now. And what that means is that you’re
2:28:12 not on the ground when the enemy are coming towards you with their bombers to hit your airfield,
2:28:16 which means you’re in the air so that all they’re doing is hitting a grass airfield,
2:28:22 which you’ve already got bulldozers and diggers and graders and lots of scalpings and earth ready to
2:28:27 fill in the potholes. And it means you’re good to go. And it means as a consequence of all that,
2:28:33 when the Germans do, um, launch their all out assault on Adler tag Eagle day on the 13th of
2:28:38 August, 1940, the British are ready. You know, they’re, they can see them coming. They know what
2:28:43 to expect and they can anticipate. And it means that they’re not being caught with their trousers down
2:28:49 on the ground. And as a consequence of that, of the 138 airfields there are in, um, RAF airfields
2:28:54 there are in Britain, only one of them is knocked out for more than 48 hours in the entire summer of
2:29:00 1940. And that’s Manston on the tip of the Kent coast, uh, which is abandoned for the duration.
2:29:02 So these are the two biggest air forces.
2:29:04 So those are the two biggest air forces.
2:29:14 Luftwaffe, we should say German. I mean, they’re like the, uh, the legendary, the terrifying air force.
2:29:20 They are maybe, maybe they’re slightly believing their own hype. There’s no question about it.
2:29:23 Well, the rest of the world is also right. They’ve just had it too easy. So they don’t have,
2:29:27 they don’t have ground controllers. They don’t have an air defense system in, in, in Germany,
2:29:30 because why would you need an air defense system? We’re going to be the aggressor.
2:29:36 You know, there’s no scenario where we’ll have to defend the airspace of the third Reich because
2:29:39 we’re on the offensive. So they just haven’t prepared it.
2:29:45 So there’s that clash, the battle of Britain, the clash of air forces. What explains the
2:29:48 success of Britain in defending?
2:29:52 Well, it’s, I mean, you know, and everyone always says, you know, the, the few were the last,
2:29:56 you know, the last line of defense against the Nazi hordes and all this kind of stuff. And it’s just,
2:30:02 it’s all rubbish. Uh, they’re the first line of defense. Second line of defense is the Royal Navy,
2:30:07 which is the world’s largest. And there’s absolutely no chance on earth that a German
2:30:14 invasion force made up of Rhine river barges. One of, out of every three is motorized and the
2:30:19 other two aren’t is ever going to get successfully across the English channel. And even if they did,
2:30:24 they will be repulsed. I mean, they just, it’s just no chance. And it is often forgotten that while
2:30:29 the Luftwaffe is coming over and bombing Britain every single day, so is the RF going over and bombing
2:30:34 Germany. And one of the problems that the Germans have is, is that these bombers need
2:30:40 fighter protection. You know, fighter planes are there to protect the bombers and they don’t have
2:30:46 much fuel. And the Messerschmitt 109E, the Emil as a model is of 1940 is the mainstay of the German
2:30:54 fighter force in the summer of 1940. And they don’t have much fuel. So they need to conserve their fuel,
2:30:58 which means they need to be as close to Britain as they possibly can, which is why the majority of them
2:31:03 are all in airfields, which are hastily created in July, 1940, following the fall of France in the
2:31:07 Pas de Calais, which is the closest point, you know, that’s where the channel is, it’s narrowest and all
2:31:12 the rest of it. And also in the Northern Normandy. And that’s where they’re flying from. But what that means
2:31:18 is that even if you’re completely rubbish at bombing, which the British are in 1940, they haven’t developed
2:31:24 those navigational aids that create untold accuracy by the end, end of the war. 1940, they don’t,
2:31:29 they don’t have that luxury. It’s a target rich environment. I mean, you know, you can barely miss
2:31:33 if you go over to the Isle of, you know, over to the Palakala. I mean, it’s literally, it’s just like
2:31:38 one huge, great kind of hub of fighter airfields. And consequently, that means that every single
2:31:43 German squadron, which only is 12 airplanes strong on, on establishment, and very often even fewer
2:31:49 than that, always has to leave two airplanes behind to defend their own airfields. And it’s really
2:31:52 interesting when you look at kind of prisoner of war statements from, from Luftwaffe crown crew that
2:31:57 have been downed. They’re all bugs at a holding place called Trent Park. You can see the transcripts of
2:32:00 these conversations. They’re all going about how annoying it was that the RAF were over every night
2:32:04 and they can’t sleep. And, you know, when they, if only they’d just shut up and leave them alone and
2:32:08 not bomb them. And, you know, this is just part of the narrative of the Battle of Britain that’s
2:32:13 completely left out. It’s always the stocky, you know, the plucky few against the kind of the,
2:32:17 you know, the Nazi hordes and all the rest of it. And it’s just, it’s a complete misnomer. And by
2:32:24 that time, aircraft production in Britain is massively outpacing the Germans. And the best ratio that the
2:32:32 Germans achieve in 1940 is July 1940, when the British produced 496 new Hurricanes and Spitfires,
2:32:38 single engine fighters. And, um, the Germans only produced 240 single engine fighters. That’s the
2:32:42 best ratio. And of course, you know, that is the British outproducing the Germans two to one.
2:32:48 And what that means is by the end of October, 1940, when the Battle of Britain is sort of, you know,
2:32:54 officially designated as being over, um, the single engine fighter force of Luftwaffe is less than 200
2:33:02 from 750 or whatever it was in beginning of July. Whereas the British fighter force had been 650 or
2:33:09 whatever. The beginning of July is now well over 750. And Britain is outproducing. Yeah, but to a massive
2:33:15 degree. And that, that continues. And, you know, that is a ratio that just increases as the war
2:33:22 progresses. I mean, Britain produces 132 and a half thousand aircraft in the second world war. America
2:33:30 produces 315,000. So why is there this legend of the Luftwaffe? Well, because it’s the spearhead of the
2:33:36 Blitzkrieg. So it has to do with the Blitzkrieg. It sort of do with the Blitzkrieg. The Luftwaffe becomes
2:33:39 the kind of the, the, the bogeyman of the Third Reich, you know, they’re blamed for everything,
2:33:44 but that’s because they’re completely abused. They’re the only part of, of the Third Reich’s
2:33:49 armed services. The only part of the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht being the Navy, the army, and the air
2:33:59 force, um, that is in constant use the whole time or constant abuse, I should say. In Britain and America,
2:34:04 they rotate their, their pilots really, really carefully. By the time that, but the, the, that,
2:34:09 you know, you’ve got the eight fighter command, for example, part of the mighty eighth, the eighth
2:34:15 air force operating in Britain by the, by, by the end of 1943, you would have in a squadron that would
2:34:20 have 60, you would never have more than 16 airborne from a squadron at any one time. You would have 40 to
2:34:27 45 pilots to serve as 16 in the air and similar number of aircraft, which means you’re not overusing
2:34:32 these guys. And what would happen is by that stage of the war, by 1943, you know, a young fighter pilot
2:34:38 coming to a, to a Thunderbolt squadron or a Mustang squadron, for example, um, at the end of 1943,
2:34:45 beginning of 1944, he’d have 350 hours of consecutive flying because you can train in, in America, in
2:34:51 Florida or California or Texas or wherever you’ve got, you, you, you can process many, many more people
2:34:56 because the training is much more intense because you’ve got clear skies. So you’re not, it’s not a
2:35:00 question of, of, oh, we’d like to take you out, out Fritz this morning, but you know, it’s a bit
2:35:05 cloudy and, and, oh, the RAF are over or, you know, the air forces are over. So we can’t fly today.
2:35:11 So in Germany, pilot training is constant. Air crew training is constantly being interrupted by,
2:35:17 by the war, by shortage of fuel, by inclement weather, et cetera, et cetera. In America, you have
2:35:21 none of those problems. And Britain, because of its global reach, also has training bases in,
2:35:27 in what was Rhodesia and Zimbabwe and South Africa, um, in Canada as well. Uh, and so you’re
2:35:31 able to process these, these guys much better. You’re able to give them more training. So that
2:35:35 when they come there, the absolute, the finished article is pilots. What they’re not the finished
2:35:40 article as is say a bomber pilot or, uh, as a fighter pilot, but that’s okay because you join your
2:35:47 squadron of 40 other guys for 16 airborne and the old hands kind of take you up a few times. So you
2:35:54 arrive at, I don’t know, let’s say some airfield in, in Suffolk in East Anglia in England. And you know,
2:35:59 you’ll have 10 days to two weeks acclimatizing, getting used to it. The, you know, the old hands
2:36:04 will put you through your paces, give you some trips, tips. You can pick their brains during kind
2:36:09 of while you’re having some chow and listening on some briefings. Then the first mission you do will
2:36:14 be a milk run over to France where the danger is kind of pretty minimal, you know, and you can build
2:36:19 up your experience. So that by the time you’re actually sent over on a mission to Berlin or
2:36:25 Bremen or, you know, the Ruhr or whatever, you’re absolutely the business. So qualitatively and
2:36:31 quantitatively, you are just vastly superior to anything the Luftwaffe has got. The Luftwaffe by
2:36:38 that stage, in contrast, 1940 new pilots coming to frontline squadrons with 150, 170 hours on there,
2:36:43 in their log books, less than a hundred, hundred, 90, 92 hours, something like that.
2:36:47 It’s not enough. And, and they’re just being flung straight into battle and they’re getting
2:36:51 absolutely slaughtered. And they’re also, because their machines are quite complicated,
2:36:57 there’s no two-seaters really. So no two-seater trainers. So the first time you’re flying in your
2:37:04 Focke-Wulf 190 or your Messerschmitt 109, it’s this horrendous leap of faith, which you as a young,
2:37:11 bright Luftwaffe fighter pilot, know that you’re not ready for this. And it can bite you. And something
2:37:17 like a Messerschmitt 109 has a very high wing loading. So it’s very maneuverable in the air,
2:37:23 but it’s got these tiny wings. It’s got this incredible torque, this Daimler-Benz DB605 engine
2:37:27 with its huge amount of torque. And it just wants to flip you over. So if you’re not used to it,
2:37:31 and it’s got a narrow undercarriage as well, if you’re not used to it, you could just crash.
2:37:38 So in the first couple of months of 1944, they lose something like 2,400 aircraft in the air
2:37:44 and pilots, and about 3,400 are accidents. So it has to do with training, really?
2:37:45 Yeah.
2:37:46 Not training enough.
2:37:53 It’s training and resources and supply. And the Second World War, more than any other conflict,
2:38:01 is a war of numbers. There are differences, the decisions that generals can make. There are
2:38:10 moments where particular brilliance and bravery can seize the day, take the bridge, hold the enemy at bay
2:38:17 or whatever. But ultimately, you’re talking about differences which might make a month’s difference,
2:38:21 six months difference, maybe even several years difference. But ultimately, there was a certain
2:38:27 point in the Second World War where the outcome is absolutely inevitable, because the guys that lose
2:38:31 can’t compete with the numbers that the guys are going to win at half.
2:38:37 So in that sense, you could think of World War II as a battle of factories.
2:38:38 Yes.
2:38:46 What does it take to win in the battle of factories and out-manufacturing military equipment
2:38:48 against the Allies?
2:38:54 It’s efficiency, really. So I always think, let’s take the example of the Sherman tank,
2:38:59 for example, the mainstay of the Western Allied forces, and a fair number of them sent to the Soviet
2:39:00 Union as well, for that matter.
2:39:04 Uh, I think you’ve said it doesn’t get the respect it deserves, maybe?
2:39:09 It doesn’t get the respect it deserves. So the Sherman tank, the 75-millimeter main battle gun,
2:39:13 which is a sort of medium velocity, fire a shell around kind of 2,000 feet per second,
2:39:19 compared to the notorious, infamous German 88-millimeter, which can fire at kind of third
2:39:27 fast again, like 3,000 feet per second. But on paper, a Tiger tank coming around the corner,
2:39:34 and a Sherman tank coming around the corner, it should be no match at all. Tiger tank is 58 tons,
2:39:39 looks scary, is scary. It’s got a massive gun, got really thick armor. Sherman tank doesn’t have
2:39:44 as thick armor. It doesn’t have a gun that’s as big. It should be an absolute walkover. And yet,
2:39:51 at about 5:30 PM on Monday, the 26th of June, 1944, a Sherman tank came around the corner of a road
2:39:56 called a Rue Monsieur, a little village called Fontenay-la-Pesnel in Normandy, came face-to-face
2:40:01 of a Tiger tank and won. How does this happen? Well, I’ll tell you how it happened, because
2:40:07 the commander of the Sherman tank was experienced, had one up the spout. So what I mean by that is,
2:40:11 he had an armor-piercing round already in the breach. As soon as he saw the Tiger tank, he just
2:40:16 said, “Fire.” That armor-piercing round did not penetrate the Tiger tank. It was never going to.
2:40:21 But what it did do is it hit the gun mantlet, which is a bit of reinforced steel that you have
2:40:26 just as the barrel is entering the turret. And that caused spalling, which is the little
2:40:31 shards of little bits of molten metal, which then hit the driver of the Tiger tank in the head.
2:40:36 And he was screaming, you know, “Gotton Himmel” or whatever, and, you know, couldn’t really see.
2:40:43 The moment they got hit, the commander of the Tiger tank retreated into the turret of the Tiger.
2:40:48 The moment you retreat into a turret, you can’t see. You can see because you’ve got periscopes,
2:40:52 but your visibility is nothing like as good as it is when you’ve got your head above the turret.
2:41:00 Immediately after that, the armor-piercing round from the Sherman tank was repeated by a number of
2:41:04 high explosive rounds, which are rounds which kind of, you know, detonate, have a little minor charge.
2:41:09 Then there’s a second charge, which creates lots of smoke. And in moments, in the first 30 seconds,
2:41:15 10 rounds from that Sherman tank had hit the Tiger tank before the Tiger tank had unleashed a single
2:41:22 round itself. And the crew then surrendered. So you didn’t need to destroy the Tiger tank,
2:41:27 you just need to stop it operating. If it hasn’t got a crew, it’s just a chunk of metal that’s inoperable.
2:41:34 So that’s all you need to do. And what that tells you is that experience counts, training counts.
2:41:41 The agility of the Sherman tank also counts. It’s a smaller shelf, therefore it’s easier to manhandle,
2:41:46 which means you can put more in a breach quicker. There’s features on a Sherman tank, like it’s the
2:41:50 first tank to have a gun stabilizing gyro, which means it’s more effective on the move. There’s also
2:41:53 an override switch on the underside of the turret so that the commander, if he just sees something out
2:41:57 of the corner of his eye, can immediately start moving the turret before the gunner, who is down in
2:42:04 the belly of the turret, can react. There’s many different facts of it. But the main fact of all
2:42:10 is 1,347 Tigers built. There were 49,000 Shermans. So that means there’s 36 Shermans to every single
2:42:11 Tiger.
2:42:17 So you actually have an incredible video. You talk about this a lot from different angles,
2:42:24 about the top five tanks and then the bottom five tanks of World War II. I think, was it the Tiger
2:42:26 that made both the top five and the bottom five?
2:42:27 The problem with the Tiger tank is it’s really huge.
2:42:32 We should say that you keep saying the problem, but one of the pros of the Tiger tank…
2:42:33 It’s very huge.
2:42:37 It’s, I mean, the psychological warfare aspect of it, it’s terrifying.
2:42:37 Yes.
2:42:43 So I don’t know what the other pros, I mean, I guess, yeah, the 88 millimeter.
2:42:48 High velocity and all the rest of it. You know, it’s pretty fearsome, but there are pragmatic problems.
2:42:55 The big problem is the Germans are incapable of mass production on a scale that Americans can do.
2:42:58 In fact, even the British can do. I mean, they’re just not in that league. The reason they’re not
2:43:02 in that league is because they’re in the middle of Europe. They don’t have access to the world’s
2:43:05 oceans. They don’t have a merchant fleet. They can’t get this stuff. It hasn’t gone terribly
2:43:10 well in the Soviet Union. You know, they can’t process it and they’re being bombed 24 hours a day.
2:43:15 And so all their factories are, you know, having to split them all up. And that is inherently
2:43:19 inefficient because you’re then having to kind of move different parts around and, you know,
2:43:23 you’re then having the whole process of having to travel from one place to another to get stuff.
2:43:29 You haven’t got much fuel. So the consequence of that is that what you do is you think, okay,
2:43:34 well, we can’t mass produce. So let’s make really brilliant tanks. But they’ve lost sight of what
2:43:42 really brilliant is, you know, really brilliant to their eyes is big, scary, big gun, lots of armor.
2:43:49 But actually what conflict in World War II shows you is that you need more than that. You need
2:43:54 ease of maintenance. You need reliability. And the problem with having the bigger the tank,
2:44:00 the more complex the maintenance equipment is. You know, you need a bigger hoist, which then means you
2:44:05 need a bigger truck, which then uses more fuel. So for example, the Tiger tank is so big that it doesn’t
2:44:11 fit on the loading gauge of the European railway system. So they have to have different tracks
2:44:16 to roll onto the wagons that will then transport them from A to B, you know, take them from West
2:44:21 Germany to Normandy. Then they have to take them off. Then they have to take off the tracks, put on
2:44:26 combat tracks, then move them into battle and hope that they don’t break down. The problem is when you
2:44:32 start the war, it’s not very automotive and you’ve only got 47 people for every motorized vehicle in
2:44:38 Germany compared to three in the United States or eight in France, is that you’ve got lots of people
2:44:43 who don’t know how to drive. It also means you haven’t got lots of garages and mechanics and
2:44:51 gas stations and so on. And so you’re then creating an incredibly complex beast, but you want that complex
2:44:56 thing to be as simple as you possibly can be. And that’s the beauty of the Sherman tank. You know,
2:45:00 all those guys in America, they’re used to driving stick cars, you know, one of three people for every
2:45:04 automobile, you know, and that includes, you know, the old and children. So almost, you know,
2:45:09 every young man knows how to drive. And when you get into a Sherman tank, it’s got a clutch,
2:45:13 it’s got a throttle, the brakes are the steering mechanism. The clutch is where you would expect the
2:45:18 clutch to be. It’s got a manual shift. You put your foot on the clutch and you shove it into second
2:45:23 gear and off you go or reverse or whatever. And it literally can be easier. Anyone who could drive
2:45:29 a stick car could drive a Sherman tank. Seriously. Not everyone can drive a Tiger tank. It’s incredibly
2:45:36 complex. Really, really is. And that comes with a whole host of problems. And of course, you don’t have
2:45:43 the numbers. You don’t have the numbers. You know, you’ve got 1,347 of them. You’ve got 492 King
2:45:47 Tigers, which are even bigger. And, you know, at a time where you are really short of fuel,
2:45:52 you’re really short of absolutely everything. And those shells are huge and they’re harder to
2:45:57 manhandle and weird little things that the Germans do, you know, for all their design genius, the loader
2:46:04 is always on the right-hand side. Now, in the 1920s and 19 teens and 30s, children were taught to be
2:46:09 right-handed. You weren’t allowed to be left-handed. So you were right-handed. So you want to be on the
2:46:15 right-hand, left-hand side of the gun. So you can take the shell from your right and swivel it into
2:46:21 the breach with your, from your right side. But the loader in a, in a Yag Pamphor or Pamphor or Tiger
2:46:25 is always on the, on, on the right-hand side of the breach, which is ergonomically makes no sense
2:46:31 whatsoever. Why do they do this? I’ve never found an answer to this, but you know, so there’s all these
2:46:36 little things. And, and as a soldier coming up against, you know, you’re an American GI and you’re
2:46:40 coming up against a, a tiger tank. You don’t care about the fact that it’s difficult to maintain
2:46:46 or the problems of involved of trying to get it to the battlefield. All you care about is this monster
2:46:50 coming in front of you. It’s squeaking and clanking away and it’s incredibly scary and it’s about to
2:46:55 blow you to bits. That’s all you care about. And quite understandably so. But, but those who are
2:47:00 protracting the war at a higher level and historians that come subsequently and look at all this stuff,
2:47:06 they do need to worry about all these things. I remember the same Georg Thomas, the architect of
2:47:11 the hunger plan. Um, I found this, this, this minutes of this meeting, which I think was either
2:47:16 on the 4th of December or the 5th of December, 1941. So it’s just before the red army counterattacks
2:47:24 outside Moscow and the winter of 1941. And it’s a meeting about weaponry. And, and I, and this is a
2:47:30 verbatim quote, he says, we have to stop making such complete and aesthetic weapons.
2:47:37 In other words, we’ve consciously be building over-engineered and aesthetically pleasing weapons
2:47:42 up until this point. And they sort of half manage it, but don’t quite.
2:47:49 We could probably talk for many hours about each of these topics. We could, we could talk for 10 hours
2:47:57 about tanks and encourage people to, uh, to listen to your podcast, uh, world war two pod. We have ways
2:47:59 of making you talk. It’s great.
2:48:05 Yeah, we also do. We’ve got, um, got a new YouTube channel and, um, website called world war two
2:48:12 headquarters. There are lots of walking the ground and videos of that and all sorts of stuff and little
2:48:20 explainers of going around tanks and stuff and the weaponry and documents and photographic archives.
2:48:25 So the idea is to sort of turn it into a kind of real hub of anyone who’s interested in this subject.
2:48:29 It’s a place where they can go and find out just a whole load more.
2:48:33 I love it. So, like I said, we could probably talk for many hours at each of these topics,
2:48:38 but let’s look at some of the battles and maybe you can tell me which jumps out at you. I want to talk
2:48:46 to you about, uh, the Western front and definitely talk about Normandy, but so there was the battle
2:48:54 of Midway in, uh, 1942, which is a naval battle. There’s Eastern front Stalingrad, probably the,
2:49:01 the deadliest battle in human history. Then there’s the battle of Kursk, which is a tank battle,
2:49:09 the largest tank battle in history, probably the largest battle period in history, 6,000 tanks,
2:49:15 2 million troops, 4,000 aircraft. And then that takes us also to the battle of the bulge in Normandy,
2:49:20 the Italian campaign that you talk a lot about. So what do you think is interesting to, uh,
2:49:29 try to extract some wisdom from before we get to Normandy is, do you find as a historian,
2:49:35 the battle of Kursk or battle of Stalingrad more interesting? Stalingrad is often seen as the
2:49:35 attorney.
2:49:40 Well, I, I, yeah, I think so. Uh, I, I mean, it’s really interesting. Um,
2:49:47 so they get through, they get through 1941, Bob Ross doesn’t happen as, as the Germans hope it will.
2:49:51 You know, the whole point is to completely destroy the red army in three months and that just doesn’t
2:49:56 happen. And I think you can argue and argue convincingly that by, let’s say beginning of
2:50:06 December, 1941, Germany is just not going to win. It just can’t. And let me tell you what I mean by
2:50:11 that. So if you take an arbitrary date, let’s say the 15th of June, 1941, Germany at that moment has
2:50:17 one enemy, which is great Britain, albeit great Britain plus Dominion empire. Fast forward six
2:50:24 months to let’s say the 16th of December. It’s got three enemies. It’s got great Britain, Dominion
2:50:32 empire, USSR and the USA. It is just not going to win. You know, for all the talks of wonder weapons
2:50:37 and all the rest of it, it’s just not going to, you know, it is lost that, that battle. Having said
2:50:46 that Soviet union is still in a really, really bad, bad situation. It is being helped out a huge amount
2:50:52 by, um, supplies from the United States and from Britain, you know, just unprecedented amounts of
2:50:58 material being sent through the Arctic or across Alaska into, into the Soviet union at that time.
2:51:01 It is absolutely staggering.
2:51:08 Howe much is committed by Roosevelt and Churchill to, to try and stem the flow in, in the Soviet
2:51:14 union, because for all the, all the announcements and the pride that the Soviet union has about
2:51:19 moving factories to the other side of the Urals and stuff, which they do in 1941, huge amounts
2:51:25 are overrun intact by the Germans in the opening stages of Barbarossa. I mean, really, you know,
2:51:31 colossal losses, huge amounts. So, you know, the grain has gone, coal has gone, um, entire
2:51:37 factories have gone. Steel production goes down by kind of, you know, 80% in the Soviet union in 1941
2:51:43 and into 1942. So in 1942, despite the vast amount of numbers of men that they have at their hands,
2:51:48 I mean, they, they create 80 new divisions in the second half of 1941, for example. I mean,
2:51:53 Britain never has 80 divisions in the entire second world war division being about rule of thumb,
2:52:01 15,000 men. So, you know, despite that, and that is because Stalin’s meddling, the woeful state of
2:52:07 the Red Army in 1941, et cetera, et cetera, which we’ve already sort of touched upon. So 1942, it’s,
2:52:12 it’s still in a really bad way, but Germany’s in a really bad way too. It’s the, the, the trition it’s,
2:52:18 it suffered in 1941. It’s winning itself to death in 1941. So it’s having these huge great
2:52:23 encirclements like the encirclement of Kiev in September, 1941, you know, capturing the further
2:52:28 kind of best part of 700,000 Red Army troops, et cetera, et cetera. But in the process of doing
2:52:33 that, it is constantly being attrited, you know, both, both in battle casualties, but in also mechanical
2:52:41 casualties too. Just can’t cope. It’s just too, the scale is just too big. And what happens is with
2:52:51 every moment that the German forces, that ultimate victory slips away, so Hitler’s personal handling of
2:52:58 the battle increases. And, you know, you can say what you like about him, but he just hasn’t had the
2:53:02 military training to do that. He might have amazing attention to detail. He might be able to understand,
2:53:09 you know, have an enormous capacity to remember units and where they are on a map, but he was only a
2:53:13 half corporal in the First World War. He’s never been to staff college. You know, he might have read
2:53:17 lots about Frederick the Great. I mean, I’ve read lots of history, but that doesn’t mean to say I’d be
2:53:24 a competent field marshal. So he is not the right person for the job at all. And he micromanages and
2:53:28 he looks at stickers and figures and doesn’t understand what it’s like at the actual front,
2:53:35 the coalface. So he’s stifling the very thing that made the German army effective, which is the ability
2:53:40 to give commanders at the front the freedom on their leash to be able to make decisions and battle
2:53:44 command decisions. And he’s taken that away from them. So he’s basically making them go into battle
2:53:52 with decreasing amounts of supplies and firepower and with one hand behind their back in terms of
2:53:56 decision-making process. And that is not a good combination. The other problem is that he decides
2:54:01 rather than going for Moscow in 1942, because basically there’s a kind of cooling off period in the winter
2:54:06 because of the conditions. But everyone knows the Soviet Union, the Red Army knows that the moment
2:54:10 springs comes, there’s going to be another offensive, but another major offensive in the summer.
2:54:14 That is absolutely as certain as, you know, day following night, et cetera.
2:54:19 The problem that the Germans have is they just don’t have enough. They have less than they had
2:54:25 when they launched Barbarossa the previous year. The Soviet Union has more. It is better prepared.
2:54:29 It knows what’s coming now. It’s kind of learning some of the lessons, starting to absorb the lessons.
2:54:36 Stalin, coincidentally, is pulling back from his very tight leash in the way that Hitler is doing
2:54:43 the opposite and increasing his micromanagement and control for recovery. And what Hitler decides
2:54:47 is rather than going for Moscow, he’s going to go for the oil fields. And this is absolutely insane
2:54:53 because what’s going to happen when they get to the oil fields? I mean, does he think really that the
2:54:59 Soviet Union are going to let those oil fields come into German hands intact? Even if he does let them
2:55:06 get in intact, what are they going to do with that oil? I mean, oil needs to be refined. Where are you
2:55:12 going to refine it? You know, they don’t have many oil refineries. How are you going to ship that oil
2:55:18 to where you need it to be in the factories and the Third Reich and into your, you know, process it into
2:55:24 into gasoline and then get it and diesel and get it to your U-boats, get it to your tanks, get it to your
2:55:29 armoured units? How are you going to do that? How do you transport it from the Caucasus, which is a long,
2:55:35 long way away from Berlin? How are you going to do that? There’s no pipelines. There’s only some pipelines.
2:55:39 They’ve been built by American money and American engineering, and they’re going backwards towards the
2:55:45 Urals, not forwards. They have no more rail capacity whatsoever. They just don’t have the oil tankers.
2:55:52 So it’s just, it’s, it is absolute la la land. It is incredible that when you look at the detailed
2:55:58 literature that the Germans have, no one is asking this question in the, in the spring and early summer
2:56:03 of 1942. The logistics question in part. No one is saying, okay, it’s great that we’re going to go to
2:56:08 the Caucasus and get all this oil, but then what? No one is asking that question. Nor how do you
2:56:12 provide resources and feed and the soldiers and all that kind of stuff? I mean, it’s.
2:56:16 So, so the case blew, first of all, they get distracted by going into Crimea and they go,
2:56:22 well, we’ve got to do that first. So they have to get Sevastopol and the Crimea, which they do.
2:56:28 And then they have to push on. And at this point, suddenly looming in front of them is Stalingrad
2:56:34 on the banks of the Volga, this, this city, this industrial city, which has Stalin’s name.
2:56:39 And Hitler goes, okay, what I’m going to do now is I’m going to split my forces. So half
2:56:43 of you can go south towards the Caucasus and the rest of you can confront Stalingrad.
2:56:49 And on box, just who’s the commando just goes, that’s nuts. That makes no sense whatsoever.
2:56:55 You know, you’re, you’re, you’re splitting the mission. So Hitler fires him. So suddenly they get,
2:57:02 get into this assault for Stalingrad. And it becomes this sort of street fight. Street fighting
2:57:06 is the worst kind of fighting. I mean, the reason why the Israelis have just blown everything
2:57:10 up in, in Gaza is because otherwise you can’t see, you know, you need a field of fire. This
2:57:13 is a fighting up in a fighting in a buildup area is, is horrendous.
2:57:17 Yeah. To clarify, we’re talking about urban warfare, door to door, building to building.
2:57:23 It’s incredibly difficult. And home advantage is colossal in this, this instance. And of
2:57:26 course it’s piping hot when they attack in kind of August into early September, and then
2:57:32 it suddenly gets very, very cold. And at the same time, American mechanization and slightly
2:57:39 a British mechanization, but primarily American trucks are enabling Zhukov to plan this great
2:57:45 pincer movement. So it is, you know, and, and Russians will hate me for saying this. Um,
2:57:48 and I probably will get a whole load of bots on the back of it, but, but, but the truth
2:57:57 is, is it is not the street fighting that destroys sixth army. It is encirclement, the subsequent
2:58:02 encirclement. So they’ve, the Germans have been sucked into this street battle in Stalingrad.
2:58:06 Cannot give up. We cannot give up. We cannot back down. We cannot pull out. We’ve got to,
2:58:11 we’ve got to destroy this city. Meanwhile, while their backs are turned and while most of their
2:58:16 forces are going off to the Caucasus on a wild goose chase for absolutely zero oil, incidentally,
2:58:23 um, and they never get remotely close to Baku, this huge great pincer movement is, is, is being
2:58:28 planned. And it is only possible through mechanization from the United States.
2:58:36 And that is the big turning point because from that moment onwards, the Germans are on the back
2:58:40 foot. They’re basically going backwards. There are little small counterattacks. There is obviously the
2:58:47 cursed salient, for example. Um, but it, it, it’s game over, you know, the, the catastrophe of the
2:58:52 surrender of the final. So I mean, the writing is on the wall at the end of 1942, but by November
2:58:58 1942, when, when the, when the, uh, the two, um, Soviet fronts meet up, then, then, you know,
2:59:06 there is no possible chance of escape for Sikfami. They are consigned. They are toast. And their final
2:59:09 surrender obviously happens at the very beginning of February, 1943, but that’s all over. And then
2:59:16 at the same time that that is happening, disaster is unfolding in North Africa because Hitler has
2:59:23 insisted on massively resupplying the Mediterranean theater. And the problem there is the amount of
2:59:28 equipment that is lost in North Africa is greater than it is at Stalingrad. I don’t think you could
2:59:35 argue that psychologically. Tunisia is a greater loss than Stalingrad. It absolutely isn’t, but you have
2:59:42 to see them in tandem as this is two fronts. This is Eastern front, Southern Western front. And this is
2:59:47 the first time that the Americans have been on the ground against access forces and they lose big
2:59:52 time. The allies become masters of the North African shores on the 13th of May, 1943. And it is a
2:59:58 catastrophe. And in that time, 2,700 aircraft have been Luftwaffe aircraft have been destroyed over North
3:00:05 Africa between November 1942 and May 1943. And overall, there’s a subsequent that summer as well.
3:00:13 It’s really interesting. The Luftwaffe loses between June and October 1943. So this is including the
3:00:20 Kursk battle, which takes place in July 1943. In that period, the Luftwaffe loses 702 aircraft over the
3:00:28 Eastern front, but 3,704 aircraft over the Mediterranean. So I think one has to also, one of the lessons about
3:00:32 the study in the Second World War is one has to be careful not to assign strategic importance to
3:00:39 boots on the ground. It can be of great strategic importance, but not necessarily. You know, no one
3:00:46 would argue, for example, that the Guadalcanal is not an absolutely game-changing battle in the Pacific
3:00:49 War. And yet the number of troops compared to, you know, what’s going on in the Eastern front or even,
3:00:58 you know, the Western front is tiny in comparison. So it is absolutely true that the most German blood is
3:01:03 on the Eastern front. But that doesn’t mean to say that it’s more strategically important than
3:01:06 the Western front. It’s a, it’s, it’s, and it’s not saying that the Western front is more strategic
3:01:12 either. It’s just, you have to kind of be balanced about this. The psychological blovo of Stalingrad is
3:01:14 immense and you, you cannot belittle that.
3:01:19 I mean, there’s the, we went over it really fast, but there is a human drama element.
3:01:20 Yes.
3:01:27 But yes, when we’re talking about the operational side, the material loss of a battle is also extremely
3:01:34 important to the big picture of the war. And we often don’t talk about that because of course,
3:01:38 with war, the thing to focus on is the human drama of it.
3:01:38 Yes.
3:01:44 And I also think that what’s interesting is the, is the Nazi high command’s response to
3:01:51 Stalingrad, which is not to go, we’re screwed. It’s to double down. It’s, you know, then so,
3:01:55 so Goebbels, for example, gives his infamous speech in the sports palace and third week of February,
3:02:01 1943, where he goes, are you ready for this? You know, this is now total war. The war is coming.
3:02:07 This is a fight for survival. We’re all in it together. You are in this as well. You know,
3:02:14 every single one, every single German is now, this is a fight for survival. And we are now in total war
3:02:21 and, and everyone is just so depressed by this. I mean, they realize that there is, that they have,
3:02:27 they, they will, are going to reap what they have sown, you know, because everyone knows what’s been
3:02:31 going on in the Eastern front because first part of the war, Germans have loads and loads of cameras.
3:02:35 They’re really into photographing everything, taking Sydney footage of everything. So part of
3:02:39 recording the greatness of the Reich and the triumphs of the Reich, they want it recorded. So all this
3:02:43 stuff is a bit like the radios is made very, very cheap. So lots of having, and people are sending it
3:02:47 all back. And, you know, the people that are developing this stuff are all seeing it and people
3:02:50 are talking about it. And then it’s been sent to families and they’re all seeing it and they’re seeing
3:02:59 pictures of Jews being rounded up and beaten and they’re seeing, um, Ukrainian partisans being
3:03:08 executed and they’re seeing villages being torched and everyone knows. They all know. Yeah. This whole idea
3:03:13 is, you know, do they really know what was going on? Yeah, they do. They do know what’s going on, you know,
3:03:19 to lesser or greater detail. Of course, you know, there’s some people who don’t and, you know, a bit like
3:03:22 people know about the news today. Some people do, some people don’t. Oh, I never read the newspaper.
3:03:28 I never listen to the news. You know, so you have that of course, but, but, but it is widely understood
3:03:35 and widely known that really brutal things have been going on in the Eastern and troops coming back
3:03:41 utterly traumatized by what they have taken part in, what they have witnessed, the kind of unspeakable
3:03:46 brutality. This is war on a completely different level to anything that’s been kind of seen in recent
3:03:51 years. Yeah. We should, we should mention that, you know, the Western front and the Eastern front
3:03:56 are very different in this regard. Yes. So a lot of the Holocaust by bullets, the Holocaust with the
3:04:03 concentration camps and extermination camps is not in Germany. It’s not in the Western front. It’s in
3:04:09 Poland. It’s in the Soviet Union. Yeah. But don’t forget that even Auschwitz, for example, is part of
3:04:14 the new Reich. It is part of, you know, it is part of an area which has been absorbed into
3:04:19 Germany. So as far as they’re concerned, this has now got, you know, it’s now no longer got the
3:04:23 Polish name. It’s now called Auschwitz, which is a German name. It is part of Germany. And there are
3:04:29 German people moving there into this, you know, air comma model town and they all know exactly what’s
3:04:36 going on. Yeah. You, by the way, have a nice podcast, uh, series of four episodes on Auschwitz,
3:04:47 um, the evolution of the dream world town that becomes a camp, a work camp, then becomes an
3:04:53 extermination camp and a big booner factory for IG Farben, which never produces a single bit of rubber.
3:05:02 So this for sure is, uh, something I would have to dive deep in. There’s a book you recommended KL.
3:05:08 Yes. It’s just called KL. It’s about the whole concentration camp system. Um, cause K is
3:05:16 concentration, um, in German. Lager is a, is a camp. Um, it’s a, it’s an exhaustive book and I’m,
3:05:21 I’m full of admiration for him for, for writing it just because jeepers, it must’ve been sort of,
3:05:26 I mean, I, I was very depressed doing that work on Auschwitz, that deep dive. I just found the whole
3:05:32 thing utterly dispiriting. Um, and I’ve been there a few times and it’s ghastly. Um, so how he wrote a
3:05:39 whole book on it, I don’t know. I think in the details, there’s, there’s two ways I think to look
3:05:46 at the Holocaust. One is, uh, man’s search for meaning, but Viktor Frankl sort of this philosophical
3:05:52 thing about how a human being can confront that and find meaning and what it means. What,
3:05:59 what, what does the human condition look like in the context of such, uh, evil? And then there is
3:06:07 the more sort of detailed, okay, well, how, how do you actually implement something like the final
3:06:14 solution? So you have this ideology of evil implemented. Yes. And at the fine detail of
3:06:21 what, what are the different technologies used? What are the different humans and the hierarchy of
3:06:27 humans in a camp? How do they, what’s the actual experience of the individual person who shows up
3:06:33 at a camp? Yeah. Just get in the details. And in those details, I think there’s some deep, profound
3:06:40 human truth that can emerge that the, the, the mundane, um, one step at a time is how you can achieve
3:06:48 evil. Yep. So yeah, you can get lost in the mundane. It’s yes. The banality of evil. It’s, um,
3:06:55 it’s incredible. I, I think, I think what, what is so, so completely horrific is, is that, you know,
3:06:59 you know, half the 6 million were killed by kind of bullets to the back of the head.
3:07:03 And the reason they stopped doing that and they wanted to stop doing that was because
3:07:09 the guys who, the perpetrators were finding it so traumatic, you know, Himmler goes and visits, uh,
3:07:14 um, uh, an execution in Ukraine and, or maybe he’s in the Baltic States. I can’t remember where he goes,
3:07:17 but he, but he, we witnessed some in the, you know, in the summer of 1941, he thinks, oh, that’s
3:07:21 horrible. You know, I don’t have to do that. I don’t want my men having to do that. I’ve got to find a
3:07:24 more humane way of doing it. When he’s talking about more humane way of doing it, humane for the,
3:07:32 for the executors, executioners, not, not for the victims because just me, cyclone B is not a nice
3:07:36 way to go. You know, it basically, basically it’s bursting all the capillaries in your lungs. It’s
3:07:42 extremely painful and you, you can no longer breathe and it can take up to 20, 25 minutes. You know,
3:07:47 some people that can take a couple of minutes, but all of those who are standing naked in that gas
3:07:53 chamber, first of all, extremely humiliated by this process in the first place. Then there’s a sudden
3:07:57 realization of the, the, they’re not having a shower. They’re actually being gas and they’re
3:08:02 all going to die. Imagine what you’re thinking as that processes you, because you might be the first,
3:08:06 but you’re still going to, even the first person is going to know that I can’t breathe and I’m,
3:08:11 I’m dying. Everyone else is going to see the first few dying and then going to realize that is what’s
3:08:17 going to happen to them. And you’ve got those minutes, sometimes many minutes where you’ve got to
3:08:25 contemplate that, that, and, and that’s, that’s in extreme pain and panic. And just think about how cruel
3:08:32 that is while being humiliated all the way through, while being humiliated all the way through. And so
3:08:42 the inverted commas humanity of, of, of the gas chambers is anything, but it’s disgusting. And the fact that
3:08:47 people could do this is just beyond horrific. And then the fact that you are taking your Jewish
3:08:55 prisoners and getting them to cut off all the hair, pull out the teeth of the dead before you put them
3:09:01 on a lift and incinerate them. If you go to Auschwitz now and you go to the collapse, the blown up gas
3:09:06 chambers, which the Germans destroyed before the Russians overran them in January 45, you can still see
3:09:11 some of the ash ponds and there are bits of bone there, but still there from the ash. It’s just,
3:09:19 it is utterly repulsive. And imagine arriving from that train on that incredibly long journey where
3:09:22 you’ve had no comforts whatsoever. You’ve had, again, you’ve had humiliations and privation,
3:09:27 you know, the privations you’ve had to suffer as a result of that, you know, having to kind of
3:09:32 defecate in a bucket in the corner in front of other people. It’s just horrendous. And then you get
3:09:36 there bewildered and immediately your kids are taken away from you or your, you know, husband and
3:09:40 wife who’ve been married 20 years, they’re separated just like that, sent off into different groups,
3:09:47 straight to the gas chambers. I mean, you know, it is, the scale of cruelty is so immense. It’s hard
3:09:52 to fathom. And the thing that I find really difficult to reconcile, and this is where I think the, you know,
3:09:58 the warning from history is important, is that Germany is such an amazing nation. You know,
3:10:05 it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the, it’s the country of Beethoven and Strauss and, and of Goethe and
3:10:12 incredible art and culture and, and, and some of the greatest engineers and scientists have ever lived.
3:10:22 And look how quickly it flipped into the descent of unspeakable inhumanity, which manifests itself in
3:10:30 the Holocaust and the gas chambers, um, and those executions into pits and tiny places and creeks in
3:10:38 Lithuania or Ukraine or whatever. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s just horrendous. And, you know, this is from a
3:10:41 nation which a decade earlier had been a democracy.
3:10:46 It seems like as a human civilization, we walked that soldier in instant line between good and evil.
3:10:51 Uh, it’s, it’s a thin line and we have to walk it carefully.
3:10:52 Yes.
3:11:02 So I, one of the great battles in, uh, in World War II on the Western front is Normandy.
3:11:11 I have to talk to you about Normandy, uh, D-Day, the Normandy landings, the famous on June 6th, 1944.
3:11:18 This was a allied invasion of Nazi occupied Western Europe. What was the planning? And it was lengthy
3:11:22 planning. What was the planning? What was the execution of the Normandy landings?
3:11:27 Well, the decision to finally go in, when the Americans joined the war in December, 1941,
3:11:32 there’s the Arcadia conference. A few days later, a week later between the British chiefs of staff and
3:11:38 political leaders, Churchill and Roosevelt and his own chiefs of staff about what the policy should
3:11:42 be. And the policy is to get American troops over to Europe as quickly as possible, get them over to
3:11:49 Britain, get them training, um, and get them across the channel ASAP and, and start the liberation of
3:11:54 Europe. But the reality is that, that, that in 1942, the Americans just aren’t ready. You know,
3:11:59 they’ve gone from this incredibly tiny army. They’re still growing. They’ve got no battlefield experience.
3:12:02 The British are still recovering the, you know, they’re, they’re good on the naval power. They’re kind of
3:12:09 good on air power. Um, but, but, but land power, they’ve had to kind of make up from the loss of
3:12:15 their ally France and, and expand as well. So kind of ground zero for both America and Britain has been
3:12:22 kind of June 1940, 1940 when France is out and suddenly that’s the strategic earthquake. And that’s the,
3:12:26 the issue that needs settling. And they need to just completely realign everything that they’d,
3:12:31 they’d fought in 1939. They’ve got to start again, but it’s also becomes clear that it’s,
3:12:36 they’re not really ready in 1943 either. And one of the problems is, is that Molotov,
3:12:40 who is the Soviet foreign minister has come over to Britain in May, 1942 and said, you know,
3:12:45 we need you to kind of do your bit and get on the, get on the, on the campaign trail against
3:12:48 the Germans and fight on the ground. And the British sort of go, well, yeah, but you know,
3:12:51 across the elevation is not really going to happen. We know we’re doing that in North Africa at the
3:12:55 moment. And then he goes over to Washington and, and, um, and the Americans go, you know,
3:12:59 we’re definitely going to go and take on the attack to the, uh, the Germans in 1942. They’ve
3:13:04 made this promise. So the summer of 1942, it becomes clear that they can’t keep that. So
3:13:07 Churchill says, well, look, I’ve got, here’s an idea. You know, we’re in, we’ve already got an
3:13:12 army in, in Egypt. Why don’t we land another one in Northwest Europe? We can Northwest Africa. We
3:13:19 can, that’s run by Vichy France, which is pro axis French, um, colonies. Um, why don’t we take
3:13:22 that? And we can do that. And then we can meet in the middle. We can pincer out and we can conquer
3:13:26 the whole of North Africa. You can kill with two birds with one stone because you can get some
3:13:31 experience fighting against axis troops, you know, test some of your, your, your, your equipment and
3:13:35 commanders, you know, what’s not to like, and then we can sort of see how it goes. So this is a kind
3:13:40 of opportunistic strategy. Whereas Americans are very much sort of, you know, we, we want to draw a
3:13:43 straight line to Berlin and that’s the quickest way. And let’s do, do it that way. So it’s kind of a
3:13:49 different viewpoint. And, but Roosevelt kind of gets that and agrees to that. So that’s where the
3:13:54 whole North Africa Mediterranean campaign comes from. And as a consequence of the huge commitment
3:13:59 to Tunisia, you know, three and a half thousand aircraft, huge navies, you know, two army allied
3:14:05 armies, um, in North Africa, by the time Tunisia is won in mid May, 1943, they think, well, we’ve got
3:14:09 all this here. We might as well kind of really try and get, put the nail into the coffin of Italy’s war,
3:14:13 get them out of the battle. You know, Sicily is an obvious one. Let’s go in there and then we can
3:14:19 take a view. But between Sicily happening and the fall of North Africa is the Trident conference in
3:14:23 Washington. And that is where the decisions made the Americans go, okay, enough of this opportunistic
3:14:31 stuff. Let’s just, okay, we get it. We buy it, but no more faffing around, you know, May, 1944,
3:14:36 one year hence, we are going to cross the Atlantic and the British go, okay, fair cop, we’ll do that.
3:14:41 So, so that is where Operation Overlord, as it becomes, gets given its code name,
3:14:46 its operational name. That’s when the planning starts. Serious planning starts at the beginning
3:14:53 of 1944. And one of the lessons from Sicily to Normandy is that you can’t have commanders
3:14:58 fighting one battle whilst preparing for the next one. So you have to have a separate, um, uh,
3:15:02 command structure. And that’s okay because by this time we’ve got enough people that have got
3:15:06 experience of battlefield command that you can actually split it. There are very good reasons
3:15:10 for going into Italy, not least getting the Foggia airfields so that you can further tighten
3:15:15 the noose around, around Nazi Germany. And one of the great prerequisites for the Normandy invasion
3:15:21 is total control of air power of the air, of the airspace, not just over Normandy, but over a large
3:15:28 swathe of Northwest Europe. Why is that? Because the moment you land in Normandy, the cat is out of the bag
3:15:33 and it’s then a race between which side can build up men and material quickest. Is it going to be
3:15:38 the allies? You’ve got to come from Southern England, which is a distance of a slow journey
3:15:44 across seas and the distance between kind of 80 and 130 miles away. Or is it going to be the Germans
3:15:48 that are already on the continent? Well, clearly on paper, it’s the Germans. So you have to slow up
3:15:52 the Germans. Well, how do you do that? We do that by destroying their means of getting there.
3:15:57 So bridges, destroy all the bridges over the Seine, destroy all the bridges over the Lovar,
3:16:02 hit the marshalling yards. The German, the glue that keeps the German war machine together is the
3:16:07 Reichsbahn, the German railway network. So destroy the railway as much as you possibly can and make it
3:16:13 difficult for the Germans to reinforce the Normandy British head as and when it comes. But the way you do
3:16:18 that in turn is by very low level precision bombing. And that has to be done by twin engine, faster,
3:16:25 smaller bombers going in low. But the problem is, is you can’t go low and destroy those bridges if
3:16:28 you’ve got Fokker, Walser, Messerschmitts hovering above you. So you’ve got to destroy those, which is
3:16:34 why you need to have air superiority over this large wave of Northwest Europe to do that. The problem is
3:16:40 that while the industrial heartland of Nazi Germany is in the West, is in the Ruhr era, which is very
3:16:47 convenient for bombers coming out of Lincolnshire or East Anglia on the east flat east side of Great
3:16:53 Britain, the aircraft industry is much deeper into the Reich and it is beyond the range of fighter
3:16:59 escorts for the bombers. And the American daylight bombers who are going over are discovering that despite
3:17:05 being called flying fortresses, they’re not fortresses, they’re actually getting decimated. And whenever their
3:17:11 bombers go in strength over to try and hit the aircraft industry in Germany, beyond fighter range, they get
3:17:17 decimated. First, infamously on the Schweinfeld Reckenburgs raid on the 17th of August 1943, coincidentally the
3:17:22 same day that Sicily falls to the Allies, and also coincidentally the same day that face-to-face
3:17:28 negotiations begin with the Italians for an armistice in Lisbon. But on that day, of the 324 heavy
3:17:33 bombers that the Americans send over to hit Schweinfeld and Reckenburg, where there are a Messerschmitt plant
3:17:39 and also a ball bearing plant, which is essential for aircraft manufacturing, they lose 60 shot down and a
3:17:47 further 130 odd, really, really badly damaged. And even for the vast numbers of manpower and bombers that are coming out of
3:17:53 America, this is too much. So, they can’t sustain it. So, they’ve got to find a fighter escort that’s going to be able to
3:18:00 escort them all the way into the Reich and the race is on. Because basically, if they haven’t got one airspace by April
3:18:06 1944, it’s game over. You can’t do a cross-channel invasion. You have to have that control of the airspace
3:18:11 beforehand. So, the race is on. Unfortunately, they come up with a solution, which is the P-51 Mustang, which has
3:18:18 originally been commissioned in May 1940 by the British, developed from sketches to reality in 117 days. It’s
3:18:22 a work of absolute genius. But start off its harness with a really bad engine. The Allison engine is just
3:18:28 not right for that aircraft. And it’s not until a Rolls-Royce Merlin, which is the same one that powers
3:18:33 the Lancaster, the Mosquito and Spitfire and Hurricane, is put into the P-51 Mustang that suddenly you’ve got
3:18:40 your solution. Because that means it can now fly with extra drop tanks and fuel tanks. It’s so aerodynamic
3:18:45 and it’s so good, the higher it goes with this engine, the more fuel efficient it becomes. It can actually fly
3:18:50 over 1,400 miles, which gets you not just to Berlin and back, but to Warsaw and back. So, suddenly, you’ve got
3:18:56 that solution. And actually, by April 1944, they have cleared airspace. And by the end of May 1944, just on the
3:19:06 eve of the invasion, Operation Overlord, the closest German aircraft that is seen fighting allied aircraft
3:19:13 is 500 miles from the beachhead. So, it is absolutely job done. Meanwhile, new fighter, comparatively new
3:19:20 ground attack fighter planes like Typhoons and Tempests and adapted P-47 Thunderbolts are attacking
3:19:25 the German radar stations all along the coastline, because they now do have an air defense system.
3:19:32 They’re destroying kind of 90% of their effectiveness. And in the intelligence game,
3:19:37 they’re winning that one as well. They’re just much better because in Germany, intelligence is power. So,
3:19:41 people tend to, you know, and Hitler always has this kind of divide and rule thing going on. So,
3:19:45 you have parallel command structures, which is not conducive to bringing together of intelligence.
3:19:49 And while much play has been made about the successes of Bletchley and code breaking and all
3:19:54 the rest of it, actually, what you have to do is you have to see the kind of the decrypts that the
3:20:01 Bletchley cryptanalysts do as just a cog. And those various cogs together from listening services to
3:20:07 photo reconnaissance to agents on the ground, the cogs collectively add up to more than some of their
3:20:11 individual parts. And so, the intelligence picture is a broad picture rather than just
3:20:17 code breaking. But anyway, they win that particular battle as well. And what you see really with D-Day is,
3:20:23 I think, is the zenith of coalition warfare. What you’ve got is you’ve got multiple nations who have
3:20:29 different overall aims, different cultures, different attitudes, different start points,
3:20:35 but they have all coalesced into one common goal. And until they’ve achieved that common goal,
3:20:40 they’re going to put differences to one side. Much play has been made about kind of anglophobia amongst
3:20:47 American commanders and America phobia amongst British commanders. But actually, it’s nothing.
3:20:52 It’s a marriage made in heaven compared to the way Germany looks after its own allies, for example.
3:20:58 And what is remarkable about the allies is they’re not actually allies, they’re coalition partners.
3:21:05 So, there’s no formal alliance at all. And there is a subtle difference there. But what you see them is
3:21:12 you see them really, really pulling together. And you see that manifest itself on D-Day, I think,
3:21:22 where you’ve got, you know, 6,939 vessels, of which there are 1,213 warships, 4,127 assault craft,
3:21:32 12,500 aircraft, you know, 155,000 men landed and dropped from the air in 24-hour period. It is
3:21:38 phenomenal. It is absolutely phenomenal. And while it is still seen as a predominantly American show,
3:21:45 all three service commanders are British, it is most of the aircraft, two-thirds of the aircraft are
3:21:49 British. Two-thirds of the men landed are British in Dominion. You never forget the Canadians who
3:21:55 consistently punch massively above their weight in the Second World War. In all aspects, it has to be
3:22:01 said, air, land, and sea. They’re key in the Battle of the Atlantic. They’re key in air power. They’re key
3:22:05 at D-Day and indeed in the Battle for Italy as well. So, the Canadians should never be forgotten.
3:22:14 But one of the reasons it is the British Navy that dominates in D-Day is because, of course,
3:22:20 the incredibly enormous strength of the Royal Navy in the first place, but partly because most of the
3:22:25 U.S. Navy is by this stage in the Pacific fighting its own fight. So, it’s not slacking by any stretch
3:22:30 of the imagination. It is because it’s elsewhere doing its bit for the kind of overall ally cause.
3:22:35 But D-Day is just extraordinary, you know, and despite the terrible weather,
3:22:40 which is such a debilitating factor in the whole thing. I mean, it puts people off course. It means
3:22:44 many more people get killed on Omaha Beach than they might have done and on other beaches besides,
3:22:49 incidentally. And actually, in terms of lives lost, proportionally, it is the Canadians that suffer the
3:22:57 worst, more so than the Americans. It’s just there’s fewer of them overall. D-Day has to be seen as an
3:23:01 unqualified success. I mean, it is absolutely extraordinary what they achieve. And while they
3:23:06 don’t 100% achieve their overall D-Day objectives, you know, the objectives are always going to be
3:23:14 the outer reach of what can be achieved. And you’d need absolutely perfect conditions for that to
3:23:18 happen. And they don’t get perfect conditions. But they’re so balanced. They’re so thought of
3:23:23 absolutely everything. And their logistics apply. And I mean, even things like the minesweeping
3:23:27 operations, the biggest single minesweeping operation of the entire war, because there’s
3:23:32 huge minefields off the Normandy coast and ahead of the invasion force, the minesweepers, which amount
3:23:38 to, I think, something like 242 different minesweepers in five different operations opposite every single
3:23:44 beach, creating lanes through these minefields through which the invasion force can go. Not a single
3:23:50 ship is lost to a mine in the actual invasion. That is phenomenal and can only be done with the
3:23:55 greatest of skill and planning. And all in a period where, you know, there are no computers,
3:23:59 there’s no GPS, there’s nothing. I mean, it is absolutely astonishing. And the scale of it
3:24:07 is just, frankly, mind-boggling. Yeah. And that was really the nail in the coffin,
3:24:15 the beginning of the end for Hitler, for the European theater. Yeah. Once you get the only cause for doubt is,
3:24:21 will they be able to secure that bridgehead? The moment they get that bridgehead, it is game over.
3:24:26 There’s only, you know, there is, there is no other way it’s going to be because of the overwhelming
3:24:30 amount of men and material that the allies have compared to the Germans at this stage of the war.
3:24:34 And of course, you know, you’re being attacked on three fronts because there’s the Italian front to the
3:24:39 south. And of course, in a very major way, you’ve also got the Eastern front and Operation Begratian,
3:24:44 which has launched that, that summer as well is enormous.
3:24:49 So let’s go to the very end. The Battle of Berlin. Yeah.
3:24:57 Hitler sitting in his bunker, his suicide, Germany’s surrender. You actually said that
3:25:01 Downfall, the movie, was a very accurate representation.
3:25:04 I think it is really. Except that Goebbels took Son, I didn’t shoot himself.
3:25:13 Oh, details. But I think it’s probably, it might be my favorite World War II movie,
3:25:16 which is strange to say, because it’s not really about World War II.
3:25:18 It’s about Hitler in a bunker, but.
3:25:23 I think it was in a Bruno Gantz, wasn’t it? I think, I think he, he nailed him.
3:25:24 Yeah.
3:25:31 That’s, there’s so many accounts of that. There’s so much written about Hitler. There’s so many of,
3:25:35 there’s millions and millions of Hitler’s words that you can read. You know, there, there are
3:25:41 translations of many of his conferences. You can see what he’s saying. You can get inside his head in a
3:25:48 very clear way, much more clearly than you can Stalin or just about any other leader, really. And
3:25:50 so
3:25:55 one has a very, very strong impression of what Hitler was like in the bunker in those last,
3:26:00 last days. There’s just, there’s so many accounts of it. And
3:26:06 it just feels like they nailed it. It just feels like they’ve got it spot on to me.
3:26:15 I mean, it’s a fascinating story of, uh, evil maniac. And then, and this, this certainty,
3:26:23 you know, crumbling, right? Like realizing that this vision of the third thousand year Reich
3:26:24 is, uh,
3:26:27 and Hitler says, says, you know, my reputation won’t be good to start off with, but I hope in
3:26:30 a few years time that people will start to realize that kind of all the good I was trying to bring.
3:26:37 And that sort of, they’re all the same, aren’t they? You always believe you’re doing good and
3:26:44 there’s so many deep lessons there. So now you have written so much, you have said so much,
3:26:51 you have studied this so much. What do you look in a world war two is, uh, the lessons we should take
3:27:00 away? Well, I suppose it’s, it’s, it’s what happens when you allow these individuals to take hold of
3:27:04 great power and great authority and make these terrible decisions. If you allow that to happen,
3:27:09 you know, there are consequences and you have to be, you have to recognize the moments of,
3:27:15 of trouble when they arise. So when there are financial crisis, you know, that political unrest
3:27:21 is going to come and you need to be prepared for that. You know, you need to be able to see the
3:27:28 writing on the wall. You, you can’t, you can’t be complacent. You know, complacency is such a dirty
3:27:33 word, isn’t it? You know, you’ve got, you’ve got to keep your wits in and you can’t take things for
3:27:40 granted. You’ve got to recognize, I think, um, that the freedoms we enjoy in the West are,
3:27:44 you know, they’re not necessarily permanent and
3:27:52 you need to make the most of them while you’ve got them and cherish them and consider what happens
3:27:59 if the milk turns sour and what the consequences of that are. I mean, that’s the overriding thing,
3:28:03 because although I don’t think there’ll ever be a war on the scale of the second world war,
3:28:08 you’ve only got to look at pictures of those opening days of the war in Ukraine and see sort of knocked
3:28:14 out Russian tanks and dead bodies, bloated bodies all over the place, put that into black and white.
3:28:20 And, you know, it could be the road out of Falais in 1944. It could be, you know, any number of
3:28:27 German battlefields and in the, in World War II and, and the similarities and the trenches and the kind of
3:28:33 people hiding in foxholes. And, you know, that, that’s, that’s horribly reminiscent as are the huge
3:28:37 casualties that they’re suffering on both sides, whether they’d be Russian or Ukrainian. And, you know,
3:28:44 it’s a shock, it’s a shock to see that. Um, and it reminds you of just how quickly I think things
3:28:48 can descend. I mean, that’s, that’s, uh, that’s the other thing, you know, at that point I was making
3:28:54 about how quickly Germany descended from this amazing nation of arts and culture and science and
3:29:03 development and engineering into one of the Holocaust. I mean, life is fragile and, and peace is
3:29:12 fragile. And, you know, it’s, you take it for granted at your peril and you take for granted at
3:29:19 our peril that nobody will use nuclear weapons ever again. And that’s not a thing we should take for
3:29:26 granted. No, sir. What gives you hope about the future of human civilization? We’ve been talking about
3:29:33 all of this darkness in the 20th century. What’s the source of light?
3:29:40 is that I think the vast majority of people are good people who want to live peacefully and want to
3:29:48 live happily and are not filled with hate. And there are some brilliant minds out there. And I think
3:29:54 the capacity for the human brain to come up with new developments and new answers to problems and
3:30:00 is, is infinite. And I think that’s what gives me hope.
3:30:07 James, this is, uh, I’m a big fan. This was an honor to talk to you and please keep
3:30:14 putting incredible history out there. Um, I can’t wait to see what you do next. Thank you so much for
3:30:17 talking today. Well, thank you, Lex. It’s been a heart of privilege to talk to you.
3:30:22 Thanks for listening to this conversation with James Holland. To support this podcast,
3:30:29 please check out our sponsors in the description or at lexfreedman.com slash sponsors. And now let
3:30:36 me leave you some words from Winston Churchill. If you’re going through hell, keep going. Thank you
3:30:39 for listening and hope to see you next time.

0:00:05 The following is a conversation with Oliver Anthony, singer-songwriter from Virginia,
0:00:11 who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit, Rich Men North of Richmond.
0:00:18 He became a voice for many who are voiceless, with his songs speaking to the struggle of
0:00:24 the working class in modern American life. His legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford.
0:00:31 Oliver Anthony was his grandfather’s name. So Chris used this name as a dedication to his
0:00:36 grandfather and to 1930s Appalachia, where his grandfather was born and raised.
0:00:44 Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times, as Chris says. He’s happy to be called either one, by the way.
0:00:50 I’ve gotten to know Chris more since the recording of this conversation. He truly is, as he appears
0:00:57 online and in his songs. Down to earth, humble, and a good man who deeply feels the pain of the
0:01:02 downtrodden. And now, a quick few-second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description
0:01:09 or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. It’s the best way to support this podcast. We’ve got Masterclass
0:01:16 for learning, Shopify for selling stuff, Oracle for computing, Tax Network USA for taxes, and
0:01:22 Element for electrolytes. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, on to the full ad reads. I do them
0:01:27 differently than most podcasts do. Usually, I barely talk about the sponsor and instead, just
0:01:34 take this quiet moment to talk about things I’m reading or thinking about. A little Bob Ross-like
0:01:40 heart to heart between you and me. Also, unlike most podcasts, I don’t do ads in the middle.
0:01:46 So, uh, they’re all bunched up here in one place. You can skip if you like, but if you do,
0:01:51 please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. If you want to get in
0:01:58 touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfriedman.com slash contact. All right, on to the ethereal
0:02:04 realm of sponsorland. Let’s go. This episode is brought to you by Masterclass, where you can
0:02:08 watch over 200 classes from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines.
0:02:16 You know, I know so little about filmmaking. The Scorsese Masterclass was instructive. Scorsese
0:02:26 himself, his approach, his, uh, deliberate, passionate, almost bipolar approach to, uh, filmmaking and to
0:02:34 editing. It’s inspiring to watch madness manifest into genius. I think about the hand-drawn storyboards
0:02:42 for Taxi Driver. I haven’t seen them, heard about them. And that, I think, is the birthplace of great
0:02:48 films, is the storyboards, right? Really, it’s the vision in the mind of somebody like Scorsese
0:02:54 that then is projected onto the storyboards. So the storyboards is just a slice, but that’s the first
0:03:03 time they take shape in a visual, physical reality. I should do that more. I should think in the space,
0:03:08 in the realm of storyboards, especially when I try to do sort of vlog, documentary, filmmaking type of
0:03:14 stuff. Really inspiring. Anyway, get unlimited access to every Masterclass and get an additional 15%
0:03:19 off an annual membership at masterclass.com slash lexpod. That’s masterclass.com slash lexpod.
0:03:26 This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with
0:03:32 a great looking online store. I got a chance to talk to DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, for many,
0:03:41 many, many hours. What a wonderful human being. Genius, but also fun and aggressive in his opinions.
0:03:49 And holding those opinions, not in a personal kind of way, but in an almost backyard football
0:03:56 kind of way. Just seeing who wins with a particular idea, just for the explicit purpose of learning
0:04:02 something from the interaction, from the tension between the ideas, from the debate. Such a fun
0:04:08 person to talk to. Anyway, I mentioned it because I think about 10,000 or 100,000 times we give a shout
0:04:20 out to Shopify because Shopify is really an exemplary execution of a system used by a very large number
0:04:27 of people that is built on Ruby on Rails. That conversation, by the way, is just an homage to
0:04:33 programming period. And you can think of Shopify as an homage to Ruby on Rails, which DHH really explains
0:04:38 as well why it’s such a beautiful programming language. Anyway, a lot of love for Shopify to go
0:04:45 around. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/lex, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/lex
0:04:50 to take your business to take your business to the next level today. This episode was also brought
0:04:57 to you by Oracle, a company providing fully integrated stack of cloud applications and cloud platform services.
0:05:08 I was just talking to a friend yesterday about the weather in a way that’s the most generic of topics, but talked about in the least generic of ways.
0:05:13 And the discussion centered around how much computational power would be required to simulate
0:05:21 the weather sufficiently to be able to predict it. And I’ve gotten a chance to talk to a few people who chase storms.
0:05:27 They’re storm chasers. And they actually have to do this kind of weather prediction.
0:05:34 Obviously, with simulation, you have to always choose a level of abstraction. You can’t get down to the sort of quantum mechanical simulation.
0:05:42 Or if you do, you’re going to need a large computer, probably as large or larger than the size of the universe if you want to perfectly simulate a thing.
0:05:45 But sometimes a laptop with a nice GPU will do.
0:05:54 Anyway, cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, I believe that stands for.
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0:06:04 That’s oracle.com/lex.
0:06:12 This episode is also brought to you by Tax Network USA, a full service tax firm focused on solving tax problems for individuals
0:06:19 in small businesses. I think this is the right place to mention Oliver Anthony’s, Chris’s song, “Rich Men, North of Richmond.”
0:06:25 Boy, does the tax law really fuck over the blue collar worker, the everyday man.
0:06:41 The more complexity there is, the more loopholes there are for people with many lawyers and accountants and expert explorers of the loopholes, finders of the loopholes.
0:06:48 It’s nuanced, of course, pros and cons. But really, at the end of the day, I think a simpler tax law is better.
0:06:50 I don’t know.
0:07:00 That song hit me hard, hit a lot of people hard. And a lot of Chris’s songs do. Sometimes it feels hopeless.
0:07:09 But I would say more than probably any country on earth, the United States really puts a lot of power in the hands of individuals.
0:07:17 But we live in the system we live in. So here we are. That’s why you need these guys. Talk with one of their strategies for free today.
0:07:25 Call 1-800-958-1000 or go to tnusa.com/lex
0:07:32 This episode is also brought to you by Element, my daily zero-sugar and delicious electrolyte mix.
0:07:40 Whenever I think about thirst. Whenever I think about water. Whenever I think about electrolytes.
0:07:47 Once, I think about my time in the Amazon jungle, I record a bunch of different videos from that time and
0:07:53 I need to put together a little, like a mini documentary of that time to celebrate really
0:08:01 the jungle and to celebrate the human being of Paul Rosely. This earth, this civilization creates some
0:08:10 special humans and he’s one. But anyway, I remember thinking about Element, like a, like a cold,
0:08:17 a drink of water with some element in it. I remember thinking about that when going through the jungle,
0:08:23 deeply dehydrated. It’s the little things in life. Anyway, get a sample
0:08:28 pack for free with any purchase. Try it to drink element.com/lex.
0:08:34 This is a Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
0:08:51 And now, dear friends, here’s Christopher Lunsford, or as many of you know him as Oliver Anthony.
0:09:06 So I was texting you, uh, last night, uh, sitting at an open mic, listening to a guy perform Great
0:09:12 Balls of Fire. Uh, like I told you, he was giving everything he got for like five people in the audience,
0:09:15 plus me. Well, you were there. I’d been, I’d have been doing it too, if you were out there. Like, oh,
0:09:23 that’s Lex Friedman. No, man. He was, uh, this big dude on a keyboard, just everything. Sweaty, long hair. You could
0:09:28 tell, like, he was there in his own little world. I love the courage of that, of just giving it
0:09:33 everything. I don’t think he wants to be famous. I don’t think he wants anything in life except to be
0:09:39 there and to play like his heart out. That’s why I love open mics. Like some people still aspire to be
0:09:45 famous when they play open mics, but some people, maybe they’ve given up or maybe they never wanted
0:09:50 to be famous. They’re just there for the pure artistry of it. So yeah. And you said you started
0:09:54 out playing open mics at shitty bars. What was that like? Well, yeah, real quick,
0:09:59 before I forget too, a great example of a, of a guy who had that same mindset and was able to
0:10:04 maintain it really well as this mandolin player named Johnny Stats in West Virginia. To me,
0:10:09 he’s one of the best and he’s won all these awards and stuff. And he still works for UPS full time.
0:10:14 And like, he could go out and tour with it, play mandolin for anybody he wanted to. But he,
0:10:18 but man, when you meet Johnny, like you can tell he’s just got this, um,
0:10:26 this joy in him that I don’t think he would have if he, but as far as me with the open mics, um,
0:10:33 yeah, it was just, it was a lot of them were really, a lot of them were embarrassing. There
0:10:36 was a couple, I remember there was times where I’d go up and try to do, I do like one song.
0:10:41 I get like halfway through the next song and I’d be so nervous by that point. I didn’t,
0:10:43 I couldn’t remember any of the words. And there’s a couple of times I’ve,
0:10:49 I remember there was one time in particular that I just, I just walked off halfway through the song,
0:10:53 put my guitar in the case and just, well, I just left. I didn’t even like, couldn’t even stay in
0:10:58 there. Just total, you know, just total freak out. Just embarrassment. And I never drank in bars
0:11:03 either. Like I’m not a, I wasn’t really a social drinker. So I was just there to try to do the mic.
0:11:07 So it was kind of, I was a little out of place anyway. I feel kind of out of place in a bar to
0:11:11 start with. So yeah, it was back when you could smoke in bars. There’s a whole vibe to it. People
0:11:17 smoke and drinking and yeah, definitely, you know, bombing in a place like that when the audience
0:11:24 there’s like five people and they’re bored. Yeah. There was one like that. It was in Motoka. It
0:11:29 wasn’t that far from where I lived. The place is gone now, but, uh, it was about as big as the room
0:11:34 we’re in here. If that, you know, like the, the ceiling tiles were yellow from where everybody
0:11:38 had smoked in it since the beginning of time. And, but like, yeah, that was my little spot.
0:11:42 Those little type of spots. You did covers. What’d you play? What was your go-to?
0:11:47 Back then it was like, uh, I don’t know, fishing in the dark, nitty gritty band, or like, um,
0:11:54 any of those old Hank, like Hank Jr songs, like any of those bar type, um, David Allen Co.,
0:11:57 like you never call me by my name, any of that kind of stuff. And I haven’t even played any
0:12:02 of those in forever now, but that was any of those ones where you get people singing along
0:12:04 and stuff. That’s what I’d always try to do. You know?
0:12:09 Yeah. That song you performed, take me home, uh, country road and how’s that go? West Virginia.
0:12:16 Yeah. John Denver was just, uh, one of those guys that it’s who knows where he would have went
0:12:21 long-term if he wouldn’t have passed, but you know, it’s a fun song that I love. I shouldn’t,
0:12:25 but I love is, uh, what is it? Uh, like, thank God I’m a country boy.
0:12:32 I think that’s what I liked about John Denver was he was a little bit like he let himself be a little
0:12:38 bit corny in the spirit of like having fun with it. Like, um, great example. There’s this old older
0:12:43 guy that not a lot of people have heard of named Roy Clark, but, um, my farm’s like a mile down the road
0:12:47 from Roy Clark’s old farm, but he, he used to be on he-haw. I don’t know if you ever heard of that old
0:12:53 show from like the sixties or whatever, but crazy dude, he could pick any instrument up. Like there’s
0:12:56 videos on YouTube of them, but he would just sit there and just pick anything up and just rip it to
0:13:01 death. But he would always just be real silly about it. He never had, he never took it to never took
0:13:06 himself too seriously. You know, some people go to the fun place. Some people go to the dark place.
0:13:11 Yeah. There’s a, you know, country can do both. You, you, you more often go to the dark place
0:13:18 to the, to the pain. Yeah. Well, especially some of the new songs that are coming out that they’ll be
0:13:24 probably not. I mean, I don’t know what they’ll be. I don’t know what is country anymore. Anyway,
0:13:28 I don’t know that many people who listen to the type of music that I grew up listening to and probably
0:13:33 listen to country radio anymore. Anyway, like, I think there’s, there’s quite a lot of people who don’t,
0:13:39 who’ve sort of disowned that space, you know, in commercialized country, you only really get what
0:13:45 sells, which in a lot of what sells, isn’t necessarily what matters. Well, you had that
0:13:50 whole experience where they take what you recorded and polish it, quote unquote, try to make it perfect.
0:13:55 And then so doing destroy the soul of the thing. And so probably that happens with these big artists.
0:14:03 They’re so famous. It’s like a machine. And so what the machine does is it over polishes things.
0:14:10 And so the raw, like power of the person, the uniqueness of the person, the soul of the person
0:14:14 is gone if you do that. Yeah. Well, I think professionalism in general, like
0:14:23 applying the tactics of corporate America to anything that is baseline artistic is not going to end well.
0:14:28 They’re all individually brilliant. But together, this corporate speak comes out.
0:14:36 Yeah. Just the soul of the people dissipates, it disappears. Why are you all pretending that
0:14:45 like life is not terrible and beautiful and like, you’re both scared, shitless and excited. And
0:14:52 this guy’s going through a divorce. This person just fell in love. Like you’re getting the intensity
0:15:00 of life with this corporate, like nine to five, like, hi, John. It’s great to see you today.
0:15:08 Oh, you too. You as well. You as well. But when I look at it, I’m like, why am I whining? I feel like
0:15:14 a Bukowski type character because like, they’re all really nice. They’re all good people. But like,
0:15:19 something is gone when you have this corporate machine. Well, they’re there to fill a role
0:15:24 contractually. And if they, I think if they bring too many of their human elements into that, then
0:15:29 they jeopardize losing their sense of security. And it’s all just out of fear. It’s out of fear of losing
0:15:34 your job. I mean, it’s the reason why all the songs say Oliver Anthony and not Christopher Lunsford on
0:15:39 them. You know, like it’s fear of, it’s so difficult to, especially now it seems, I mean, who knows?
0:15:43 I didn’t, I was never around in the forties or fifties to work a job. I’m sure they were probably
0:15:48 pretty miserable back then, but you know, they talk about now, like how difficult it is,
0:15:53 like the, the impossibility of having a single family household or anything else. But like,
0:15:59 when you find a decent paying job that you can do without it, just torturing you every day, that’s,
0:16:05 that’s a pretty important thing now, you know, like, and so it, it’s pretty easy to just,
0:16:10 it’s pretty easy to kind of turn yourself into a robot for eight or 10 hours a day out of fear of,
0:16:15 it’s like, you don’t want to be yourself too much because maybe part of yourself isn’t something
0:16:21 that’s accepted in this like dystopian nightmare that you go to work at every day. And so you just
0:16:26 got to do your best to just not step on any toes or do anything that, that makes you stand out too much,
0:16:31 you know? And now it’s like, now, like when you scroll through some of these videos of people,
0:16:35 like the big, even when I was still like, when I was still working my lame job,
0:16:40 it was like, there was this whole big thing of people talking about quiet quitting or something
0:16:44 like that, where they were just going to go to work, but not really do anything. But that hurts me so
0:16:51 much. That hurts me when you just stop when you’re there, but you’re not really there. That makes me so
0:16:55 sad. Yeah. So then they wonder, these companies just slowly kind of fall apart and disintegrate
0:17:00 because they’re so worried about structure and, you know, like, I mean, God, man, even in,
0:17:06 even in America today, our culture has become, because so many big corporations own and manage
0:17:11 everything that we live under, like food, agriculture, healthcare, like social media,
0:17:16 it’s all in corporate structures that it’s almost like a lot of the problems we find ourselves in now
0:17:23 with society, I think are like, it’s just because of, it’s almost like corporate HR has been implemented
0:17:28 into our whole thought process of everything. You know, it’s like, um, I think that’s kind of what
0:17:34 you’re touching on though. It’s like, it’s, it’s hard to be, it’s hard to be a human and be a good
0:17:41 little corporate employee at the same time. Um, and as our whole society moves more into like becoming
0:17:46 a, like basically one big corporation, it’s like, you don’t want to piss the HR lady off. So it’s a lot
0:17:51 easier for me to just beep boop. We’re all sort of just turning, we’re all turning into robots,
0:17:56 you know, and that’s, uh, I’ve talked to great engineers about this. Uh, Jim Keller’s a legendary
0:18:03 engineer, Elon, Elon Musk is another example that you need that. I don’t know what’s a nice term for,
0:18:09 but you need the because you want to get to the ground truth of things to the first principle of
0:18:13 things. Like how do we simplify? How do we make it more efficient? How do we move faster? How do we get
0:18:21 shit done? And that has no place for this kind of polite speak? And then, you know, other great
0:18:26 team members swoop in and like repair the damage that the tornado has done.
0:18:31 Do you think that’s cause I’m not, I’m not super well versed about all this. So I’m probably dumb
0:18:36 to even mention it, but, um, this guy who’s been helping me with doing a documentary, uh, he’s been
0:18:43 following me around since the very first show at the August of 23, he, his background was doing,
0:18:48 um, promotional videos for Boeing, like for on their new spacecraft to pitch it to whoever.
0:18:53 And so he was, we touched, we touched base a little bit on Boeing. And of course they’re having a lot of
0:19:00 problems now. It sounds like, and he was comparing that with SpaceX or with, you know, like that,
0:19:05 that I think it’s that exactly what we touched on with that thought process of that sort of
0:19:09 dehumanization within companies. I think that’s what ultimately causes maybe, I don’t know if
0:19:13 there’s a connection there or not, but it seems like Boeing is a very, would be more of that.
0:19:18 They don’t have that tornado. They’re very like H like he was telling me, even just with his protocols
0:19:22 and some of the people he worked with, like, everything’s just very, you know, lightly touch
0:19:25 everything. No one don’t touch anything too hard.
0:19:32 So it’s not just HR. It’s also, it’s just this managerial class where it’s like Bob from this
0:19:37 department has to schedule a meeting with John from this department and Debbie, like they have
0:19:43 to have a meeting two and a half weeks from now. And then there’s paperwork and that, that bureaucracy
0:19:50 that’s created in the managerial class just slows everything down. And one of the things that slowing
0:19:57 everything down does is it really demotivates the people that are actually doing the shit. Like the
0:20:04 people on the ground, the engineers that are building stuff, it’s again, so drenching to like,
0:20:12 be excited, show up. And now you hit this wall of paperwork. Like you can’t, you have to wait for John and
0:20:19 Debbie and I forgot the third guy’s name that I imagined in my head to have a meeting. It just,
0:20:27 and then you kind of slow down and you disappear in terms of that fire, that passion that’s required
0:20:28 to create big things.
0:20:31 Yeah. Cause they don’t believe there’s a lack of leadership. And if they don’t believe in,
0:20:37 if they don’t believe in that leadership, then why the hell would they be motivated? I mean,
0:20:44 I remember, um, a while back watching a Jocko Wilnick talk about a, um, talk about that when
0:20:49 he was in leadership, when he was leading his guys, I think he mentions it in his book is probably where
0:20:56 I remember seeing it. Um, one of his books and he talks about like how important it was for the people
0:21:01 under him in rank to believe in what he was, the actions he was giving them, even if he necessarily
0:21:07 didn’t agree with him himself. It was like there, it’s really hard to take orders and go and like to,
0:21:12 to have human spirit and especially in something that’s innovative and not if you, if you’re working
0:21:16 for a company where you just think everybody’s dumb. I mean, I can certainly relate with that.
0:21:20 I mean, God, that’s all at my old job. That’s all we did was we spent half our day just talking about
0:21:26 how, how dumb we thought everybody was that was above, you know, it’s like, it’s easy to fall into that
0:21:31 and a corporate world. And so, yeah, the morale gets terrible and, and, and everyone suffers as
0:21:36 a result of it, you know, like the, the people at the top who are implementing all that dysfunction
0:21:40 suffer and the people at the bottom, it’s like, it’s not good for anybody. I had thought now that
0:21:47 I’m doing this, that I could escape away from that, but that exact same mentality and that dysfunction and
0:21:53 that, um, that inefficiency, like I still battle it every day.
0:21:58 That’s why it takes, it takes unique characters to lead the way. Such unique characters are very
0:22:02 much needed in the music industry to revolutionize everything, cut through the bureaucracy, the
0:22:08 bullshit that ultimately is just a machine that steals money and doesn’t get any, anything done.
0:22:13 really. Uh, we’ll talk about it. By the way, all the love in the world to Jocko. He’s great. I’ve been
0:22:20 going through lots of ups and downs in life, lots of low points for myself over the past, uh,
0:22:29 shit, three years really. But, um, uh, recently, especially, and he always texts in this, in this
0:22:37 very high testosterone way of like, of like, you good, bro. Just checking in. I mean, he’s a good man.
0:22:41 He’s a good man. He’s a good man. He’s obviously an inspiration to millions of people, but also just,
0:22:48 um, he’s a good human being himself. So maybe one, one thing that we felt similarly, I’m just,
0:22:54 I would imagine you way more than me is just feeling like, like, wow, I have the ability to
0:23:02 influence or the ability to, to, to, to either bring truth or to improve people’s lives or, or,
0:23:07 you know, every word that you say sometimes matters so much. And you’re just like, man,
0:23:11 I’m an idiot. Like, I don’t, like, I don’t know, you know, like I would have never guessed.
0:23:14 I mean, I, we were kind of talking about that, but before about like, it would have never guessed
0:23:17 that it would have turned that this would have turned into all this, but it’s, it is a,
0:23:22 it is a, it is a weight that you bear, whether you really even acknowledge it or not, you know,
0:23:29 like, um, yeah. And I think it’s like, you know, the, the songs you’ve created,
0:23:36 they, uh, speak to the human condition, to the struggle of, uh, everyday working people
0:23:41 in a society that has the elites that tried to take advantage of those working people.
0:23:52 And you’re just speaking through your music, those truths of how life is. And then that has a huge
0:23:58 impact on a lot of people. That’s really positive. But then you also get attacked and misrepresented and
0:24:07 lied about from different angles and just the turmoil, the intense chaos of that. It disorients,
0:24:16 it disorients me like to be attacked by very large number of people to be lied about, to be just the,
0:24:24 because I love people and just have, I have a general optimism about humanity. It just disorients me.
0:24:31 Like, um, it gives me this feeling like I generally, just like you said, think of myself as kind of an
0:24:39 idiot, not really knowing what I’m doing. And when a lot of people tell you that you’re correct,
0:24:44 you don’t know what you’re doing. You start to like, want to hide, you want to hide from the world,
0:24:50 hide from yourself. And then there’s also just the chemistry of the brain. It’s like you shake up the
0:24:55 brain a little bit. It starts getting, it starts getting weird. And it’s so you can get how many
0:25:01 fronts. You can get real lonely when getting attacked, when you’re kind of fucking things up
0:25:10 in many ways and get lonely. Yeah. So it’s been, so you get a text from Jocko, like you good.
0:25:16 Yeah. Yeah. And then I may have good friends. Andrew Huberman’s been great. Rogan’s been great.
0:25:25 Well, you know, you, Lex, however many years ago was in a different place in society than Lex is now.
0:25:29 And so it’s like every conversation you have or every relationship you have is inherently different,
0:25:34 even if you aren’t any different friends that you had from before maybe, or even just new people you
0:25:38 meet, your interactions with them are going to be a lot different than if this wasn’t a thing.
0:25:42 And so it’s like that, that can be tricky too. When you’ve spent your whole life,
0:25:46 you know, from the time you’re three years old and you’re starting to play with other kids and like
0:25:51 developmentally learning, like how to share and how to interact. And you’re on the, you’re playing,
0:25:57 you know, you’re playing on the playground with kids and learning how to like set rules and boundaries and
0:26:02 how to like basically fit into society. And like, so you have this whole learning pattern up until whatever
0:26:09 point in time when, when success happens and then it’s like all that shifts pretty dramatically all,
0:26:14 you know, in a relatively short period of time. And so like, how do you, how do you think like managing
0:26:19 your previous, like previous friendships or your like, like, you know, how has that been tricky for
0:26:27 you or like, yeah, it’s been tough. I, you know, I value deep, close, long-term friendships and yeah,
0:26:32 but I mean, I have amazing friends, but they certainly do treat me a little different. They,
0:26:39 they bust my balls noticeably less. Yeah. And you need, you need that. So I need, I not sometimes,
0:26:47 all the time. First of all, it’s how dudes show love is making fun of each other. At least my friends.
0:26:53 Yeah. Like, you know, we, when you watch, man, I’m going to get in trouble, but when you watch,
0:26:58 like women interact, they’re often like really positive towards each other. Like, oh, you look
0:27:06 great. Yeah. We watch dudes interact like close friends. They’re just like, I mean, busting each
0:27:14 other’s balls. I’ll stop making fun of each other. And so, yes, that has been a little bit harder.
0:27:20 Or I try, I try to break those walls. Like, but that’s why with the famous friends,
0:27:23 it’s a little bit easier. Cause they can still like Rogan roast me nonstop.
0:27:29 So it’s a, and it just feels good. I just sit there and get made fun of. And it’s great.
0:27:30 Yeah. It’s great.
0:27:34 And I still do it all the time. I just, it’s just a different experience now, but I,
0:27:40 I’m like a Goodwill junkie. Like, um, most of, like most of even my clothes were from
0:27:45 Goodwill, but like, I have this, I have this like addiction with buying paintings from Goodwill,
0:27:50 like the $8 paintings where it looks like somebody was following along with like a Bob Ross video,
0:27:54 and it didn’t work out quite right. Like I look, like I buy every one of those. I’ll go in there
0:27:58 and buy like 10. And so just even, you know, anytime you got into public now, it’s just like,
0:28:01 you know, it’s going to be a little different than it was, you know, I don’t know if that makes sense
0:28:05 or not, but yeah, for sure. I mean, I, you know, I’m trying to deal with it, but all of it, when you
0:28:11 talk to world leaders, when you step into politics a little bit and you apparently stepped into politics,
0:28:16 even though you never meant to, you’re not a political person that, that world is like,
0:28:25 what the fuck? It’s very intense, especially at an intense moment in history and in an extremely
0:28:30 divided country. So. Yeah. Like saying that I’m not in politics, people like, well, of course you’re
0:28:36 in politics and I don’t know whether I am or not, but just, um, I do think a lot of people in politics,
0:28:44 politics, like as far as the people who sit on the internet all day and argue about stuff on X or on
0:28:48 whatever, you know, Facebook and all, like, I do think their heart is in it for the right reasons.
0:28:53 They observe that there’s a lot of things wrong in the world that they’d like to see different. It’s just,
0:28:59 how do you get those people out of a, how do you get those people out of this four by four square?
0:29:05 And like, really like they’re, they’re entrapped in a, in a same kind of box that the people at Boeing
0:29:11 might be with that struck, you know, it’s too, it’s the tornado metaphor. I mean, it’s a bureau,
0:29:16 but it applies in politics too. Like there needs to just be a tornado through politics and we need
0:29:20 to figure, we need to just like lay all this other stuff aside and just figure out what’s really
0:29:26 pissing everybody off. What’s really affecting our quality of life. A lot of times we’re arguing over
0:29:30 the symptoms of problems instead of identifying the problems, if that makes any sense. I mean,
0:29:35 if Jordan Peterson were here, he would tell us about fire and how important that is and burning.
0:29:39 And like, but it is all the same. Water and fire and ice metaphor. And there would definitely
0:29:43 be a connection to the Bible and then we would receive a three hour lecture and it would be
0:29:47 profound. But it’s true, but it’s all true. Like that’s all true. It is all, it’s all a hundred
0:29:50 percent accurate. Yeah. That’s the crazy thing, but it all ties into that same thing. Like you,
0:29:56 um, yeah, in politics now, it’s almost like there’s a rule book that you have to follow. And if you,
0:30:00 you can’t agree with this unless you also agree with that, you know, it’s like,
0:30:06 and maybe it’s like the places, the way that we receive information about what’s going on in the
0:30:12 political landscape is always so biased. And it’s like the, well, it’s, it’s contingent upon this
0:30:18 algorithm, this like algorithmic system that we live under where we’re fed. It’s like, we’re almost fed
0:30:22 certain subcategories and it’s, and it’s easy to fall into that because you don’t like hearing things
0:30:27 you disagree with. And so it’s a lot easier to just turn the TV on or go on Facebook and look at
0:30:30 whatever page posts, things that, you know, you’re going to consistently agree with every day. And
0:30:35 that’s not going to challenge the way you think in any little way, you know, or, or like expand your
0:30:41 thinking at all. It’s, it’s easy to just, it’s kind of like a, it’s a cult-like type of thing. It’s like,
0:30:47 you know, here’s, this is what we all agree with. And if you don’t, then go and get, you know, like,
0:30:52 but it, it doesn’t, it, we’re far too complicated for it to really work that way.
0:30:55 Well, this actually relates to one of my favorite things in your conversation with Jordan,
0:31:02 where you’re just, where you’re just shooting the shit about like, uh, playing live music and he goes
0:31:11 to Kierkegaard. She’s like Soren Kierkegaard, the philosopher. I love Jordan so much. He just goes
0:31:18 to Carl Jung and Nietzsche. Um, and there, this idea from Kierkegaard that the crowd is untruth.
0:31:28 So when you, there’s elements to the crowd that loses the humanity and the honesty of an individual
0:31:35 that makes up the crowd, because the default incentive of the crowd is to conform to some
0:31:42 kind of narrative. It’s like, uh, it’s like a distributed system that arrives at a narrative
0:31:47 and the narrative holds control over that crowd as opposed to the individual humans who are thinking
0:31:53 for themselves and being honest with their own thoughts and realities and so on. And so that
0:32:01 he was saying that as a reason from a communication perspective, to speak to individuals in the crowd,
0:32:07 not to the crowd. So from the performer perspective, the moment you speak to the crowd, you’re speaking
0:32:12 to the lie that is the crowd according to Soren Kierkegaard. It’s pretty hardcore. Kierkegaard is
0:32:18 pretty hardcore. Jordan’s pretty hardcore. But that is true. I mean, but specifically in my case,
0:32:24 I mean, really it applies more than it probably does in a lot of cases with crowds and music,
0:32:31 you know, talking about Richmond, I wasn’t necessarily even excited that Richmond did as
0:32:36 well as it did. It was like, in a way it was almost like alarming that it did so well, you know? And so
0:32:42 those crowds that show up, like maybe they do like my music, but I also think they’re there for
0:32:48 something. There is something bigger about it. I mean, I, I wish I would have done a better job of
0:32:54 having people there at shows to capture some of those crowds I had in 24 man. You mean the size,
0:33:02 the intensity, the intensity, like it was revolutionary almost song of revolution. Yeah. I think a redemption
0:33:08 song from Bob Marley, like that song, it just connected with people. There’s something there.
0:33:13 Well, and so many people identified different elements. Like I said, it goes back to when we
0:33:17 were kind of talking, we first got here, but it was, it was crazy. How it was almost like at the
0:33:21 beginning with, along with the scrutiny and some of the other things, it was a lot of different people,
0:33:26 like almost fighting over me or fighting over it. Like, cause it resonated with different,
0:33:32 it resonated with people who voted differently than each other, which is, which is probably a
0:33:37 pretty terrifying thing. If you’re, if you’re in the business of keeping people divided and angry at
0:33:45 each other. So it was, you know, it was a, it was one of the first, one of the only times that I can
0:33:51 think where there was that, that much of a sense of unity among people who otherwise wouldn’t. I mean,
0:33:55 like, I mean, I think about nine 11, when I was a kid, I was in fourth grade, but God, man,
0:34:01 people were just like, people just put everything aside there for a little while. And it was kind of,
0:34:06 it was kind of like, there’s bigger problems that just aren’t in our face. And if man, if they’re in
0:34:13 your face for just for a second or two, you realize like it’s, it’s hard to, it’s hard in your mind to
0:34:17 create a graph. That’s got like all these, but you know, we argue about a lot of these problems,
0:34:22 but if you were to really look at them, like if you really just stand back and look at all the
0:34:27 problems we spend time focusing about on the internet versus all the things that are affecting
0:34:32 us, like that really, and probably at our core even piss us off. It’s, it’s gotta be very
0:34:37 disproportionate. And like the reason it got the reaction it did is because we all like, no matter
0:34:41 what it is that we’re upset about or what we think needs to be different in the world or our opinions of
0:34:46 things or how we’re raised or what our parents taught us. It’s like, I think we all feel a little bit
0:34:51 out of control in this new society. We all feel like we’re probably, we probably all feel like
0:34:55 we’re falling into this kind of like corporate power structure where none of us, where we all,
0:35:02 we all are just robots. We’re all just, we’re not allowed to be ourselves and be human almost,
0:35:02 you know?
0:35:09 And there was enough people feeling that. I mean, people on the left feeling like the people in
0:35:15 power fucking over the working class, people on the right feeling the exact same with different words
0:35:22 assigned to it, the deep state, you know, fucking over middle America, whatever the narratives are.
0:35:29 And they’re just, when enough of that is happening, again, with the corporate polite speak, there’s
0:35:35 something about politeness that’s really dangerous. I feel like there was a lot of politeness in the
0:35:43 Soviet union underneath that. It’s like Chernobyl, uh, which is this nuclear power plant and melted
0:35:54 down. Um, I feel like the bureaucracy needs politeness and civility and paperwork to function.
0:36:01 And then atrocities can happen underneath that. So everybody, people in power with a smile on their
0:36:10 face can just do horrific things and then give propaganda that look, you know, it’s rainbows and
0:36:17 sunshine and, and unicorns. Yeah. So people that are rude, I mean, I’m starting to awaken to this a little
0:36:24 bit. Like you need a little, like Tom way says, uh, I like my Tom little drop of poison. You need some,
0:36:34 like some poison, some, some swearing, some meanness, some bullshit, some like intensity to shake up a
0:36:42 system because when it, uh, sort of converges towards this polite bureaucracy, the atrocities can happen
0:36:48 and hidden away. And what’s probably the most terrifying to me is that that politeness is just
0:36:53 theatrical. Whereas it, it emulates the respect that we would normally give each other in society
0:37:00 if we were healthy and functional. What was the process of writing that song? I mean, it really spoke
0:37:08 to the pain of an anger of millions of people. So there’s magic there. It was a, well, how many,
0:37:14 how many edits, how many like lines did you write? Were there any lines that you were like
0:37:19 tormented by haunted by come back? Should I do it this way or this way or that? Do you, do you have a,
0:37:25 I don’t know. Do you, can you pull tick tock up on this? So if you go to my page, so if you go down
0:37:32 chickens, go, yeah, go down pre Richmond. You can see the original version of Richmond where I put it up.
0:37:37 This is so cool to see the evolution. There it is. Okay. So that’s, that’s, if you play that,
0:37:41 that’s. I have too many unfinished songs. Yeah. Play that, click that and play it.
0:37:48 I’ve been selling my soul. 724. Oh, wow.
0:37:50 Bullshit. Wow.
0:38:00 And if you read through this, it’s so funny. Everybody’s like, you’re about to blow up.
0:38:13 That’s all I had. So I had, I had just that. You should probably finish this one. Might be real
0:38:20 popular. That’s a post from a few days later. That was in, that was in July.
0:38:23 Oh, fuck. That’s so inspiring, man. So that’s what I had.
0:38:30 That’s so inspiring. That’s what, like a couple of weeks before, uh, you posted the final.
0:38:34 Well, that’s all I had. Yeah. That’s all I had written at that point. Like that in my mind,
0:38:38 that’s what, that’s the inspiration for the song was that little bit. And I wrote that just because
0:38:46 I was on job sites all day and, um, you know, going into like all these just terrible places to work,
0:38:50 like dealing with different contractors and stuff. You were talking about wanting to go and talk to blue
0:38:55 collar people and all. It’s like, that’s what I did for work basically for eight years was build
0:38:59 long-term relationships with people in blue collar. I was in the industrial space. So I would talk
0:39:04 sometimes I’d talk to 20 different people a day, you know, when you sit in a job site trailer and talk
0:39:09 to, and talk to a group of dudes, like, and you’re not there with some news camera, you’re just there
0:39:14 as like a random dude. Like you hear so much about what really goes on behind the scenes of, of the
0:39:20 structure of what builds, um, what builds this country and keeps it going. And, um, I think that’s
0:39:25 probably what it was. It was just, uh, it was how I felt, but also how, I guess a lot of other,
0:39:29 like, you know, it was just, I don’t know. It just seemed like the truth. So.
0:39:34 So you jotted down even to the details, like in a notebook, like those words.
0:39:38 No, it’s always just on my phone. I would just keep recording the, I would just keep,
0:39:46 you know, like, so if you were to go back to Tik TOK, like, and look at any of those original videos,
0:39:55 um, so like the songs that ended up charting, let’s say, like the ones that were on there that
0:40:00 charted with Richmond, like this, I’ve got to get sober. So literally, so literally what I did was
0:40:05 this video, I took it my property. This is my carport where my camper was. And, uh,
0:40:13 I took this video, I went to some sketchy virus written MP3 to wave file or MP4 to wave file
0:40:19 transfer thing. I would rip the audio off of this video, put this on Tik TOK and then put that on
0:40:23 distro kid. And that’s the, that was the song. But basically like this would, this would have been the
0:40:28 first time I played. I’ve got to get sober all the way through. Like I would just keep writing it and
0:40:32 working on it and writing it and record myself. And maybe I would record myself 30 times over the
0:40:36 period of like two months. You know what I mean? Oh, but it’s, when you say writing, you mean in
0:40:41 your head, not actually typed out or written. Right. It was just mostly just video over and
0:40:46 over. It’s just videos. I’m just trying to figure out how to make it. Yeah. But that’s what all these,
0:40:52 all these are like the audio file from all these videos is what’s is what ended up on Spotify and all
0:40:56 that. You know what I mean? This is, it’s cool to see these videos before you blew up. So this is a
0:41:03 good song and you’re playing. So what is this at the end? Yeah. Yeah. These were all
0:41:08 don’t sell your soul brother. This is the best music I’ve heard in a long time.
0:41:17 That’s a comment before you blew up. Yeah. Yeah. I think I had about 10,000 followers or something.
0:41:26 What a fucking song. That’s a good one. And you gotta think like this was like, that was my
0:41:31 that was when I quit drinking. You know what I mean? Like, so that
0:41:51 that’s coming from, from, from your heart right there. I just imagine the thousands of people you
0:41:59 helped with that. I don’t know how it’s gonna go. Yeah. But it ain’t gonna happen tonight. So pour
0:42:14 them down strong. Till I drown. And if I wake up tomorrow. When that sun comes back around. I’ll be
0:42:26 wishing I was sober. It’s so crazy how those cicadas and stuff come in. Like, I just felt like it was a
0:42:31 God. I don’t know how to burn. Like, that’s just off my phone. All that stuff’s just there, you know?
0:43:01 That’s a genius of a song. That’s genius, brother. That’s genius.
0:43:03 It’s just crazy to think about.
0:43:13 Yeah. And what’s this one right before? What is this? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that’s like the private.
0:43:22 And this is a nice recording. Got it. Yeah. So this video got uploaded and then Draven from Radio WV
0:43:29 would have gotten ahold of me in between this and that. He watched this and was like, dude, you got,
0:43:33 he said, we got to record that one. And that like, so I didn’t have it all. I just had whatever was in
0:43:38 that video is all I had written. It was, I think it was just the chorus in the first verse. Draven
0:43:43 saw that video. And said, we got to do this one. Reach out to me to record. And he’s like, yeah,
0:43:48 he’s like, no, we got to do that one. And I was like, dude, that’s all I got. Tell me about that guy.
0:43:53 Draven. He probably is like, you know, he’s probably like my best friend now. We,
0:43:57 we hit it off with this and we’re like, we’re like brothers now, I guess.
0:44:01 Can you talk about like what he’s doing for country, for music in general, for country music,
0:44:07 for discovering talent, for like, I mean, he’s clearly sees something in people.
0:44:12 Yeah. He’s just this, he’s a little bit younger than I am. And he’s, he wrote music and played,
0:44:16 and he’s got some of his, if you look up Draven Rife, he’s going to kill me for even saying this,
0:44:21 but he’s got some pretty, dude, he can, if he was like a pop singer, he would be like,
0:44:28 he can write the most catchy stuff ever. Um, let’s go. Yeah. So click on like, I don’t know,
0:44:32 like, yeah, there you go. All right. That’s him. Yeah.
0:44:41 Where’s this from? Five years ago.
0:44:51 I was feeling on my way. I was 10 years old walking underneath the blanket of West Virginia snow.
0:45:01 Then I walked right by no trespass. I need a grass look green across property line. Bye. Bye. Bye.
0:45:08 You know, he could probably do, if he does like, he could, he could probably be real famous.
0:45:12 Well, he’s got a certain look that dude. We’ll sit there and he’ll just like,
0:45:16 we’ll just be sitting there at like two in the morning and he’ll just all of a sudden do this
0:45:20 little thing. And he’s got like the most amazing first part of this like song or we just started
0:45:25 to co-write together, like in the last few months. So I’m really excited for that. But if you go to
0:45:30 his, this is really funny too. I’m sorry, Draven. I love you, man. So go to videos and go to oldest
0:45:36 first. This is what’s so awesome about Draven. He was originally working for this lady who was trying
0:45:40 to develop different types of hair care products, but he thought the market was too saturated. So he was
0:45:49 going to get into beard oil. So he created Radio WV as like a fake plug page for his burly boy beard
0:45:54 brand he was working with. So like, like if you look at, um, yeah, like that very first video. Yeah.
0:46:00 It’s like, it’s got all his beard products. And if you look, there’s a, there’s multiple ones like
0:46:05 that. So he started it just to do this beard thing with, and then like, I don’t know, he just kind of
0:46:10 felt called to like, keep going with it. And it, and it just sort of naturally progressed.
0:46:15 That too is inspiring. Like you start out one way and then you discover something real special. I mean,
0:46:22 he’s got a, he’s got an eye for how to bring out, I don’t know what it is. Like the, both the audio
0:46:27 side and the video side, how to bring out the best. He says, he just wants it to sound like the way he
0:46:31 likes hearing it, which kind of makes sense. You know, like it’s kind of in the same way talking
0:46:35 about when we were talking about setting the cameras up and a professional would tell you,
0:46:38 you needed three lights. And you’re like, well, I think it would work with the, he’s just kind of
0:46:43 like, well, it’ll just work like this. And do it in a way where he likes it. Yeah. Just do it for
0:46:47 yourself. He does it cause he loves it. And that, and you can see it shows, you know, you can see it
0:46:51 in there. Um, and there’s some good talent. Like you were showing me this new lady, Gabriel. Yeah.
0:46:56 She’s got it, but not a lot of people would, uh, record her doing that song. But he’s like,
0:46:59 I don’t know. It just was different. I just thought people ought to hear it, but he’s man. It was a
0:47:05 blessing that he came along when he did. It was like, um, it really changed both of our lives.
0:47:12 We’ve got to talk about that. So you posted the, the song Richmond North of Richmond on August 8th,
0:47:19 2023. I remember I was at work that day when it went up. Yeah. So it blew the fuck up straight to
0:47:27 number one on the charts, tens of millions of views and listens. Uh, and a few days later on August 17th,
0:47:34 he made a post that I thought was pretty gangster. It was beautiful and gangster. Uh, so one, one of
0:47:40 the things he said is it’s been difficult as I browsed through the 50,000 plus messages and emails I’ve
0:47:45 received in the last week, the stories that have been shared, paint a brutally honest picture,
0:47:51 suicide, addiction, unemployment, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and the list goes on.
0:47:58 And then you went on to write people in the music industry. Give me blank stares when I brush off
0:48:05 $8 million offers. I don’t want six tour buses, 15 tractor trailers, and a jet. I don’t want to play
0:48:12 stadium shows. I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with
0:48:17 mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep
0:48:25 level because they’ve been sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung.
0:48:32 No editing, no agent, no bullshit, just some idiot and his guitar. The style of music that we should
0:48:39 have never gotten away from in the first place. So huge props for that, for walking away from lucrative
0:48:44 multimillion dollar record deals. And I’m sure the money that was just coming your way,
0:48:52 huge props, you know, moments happen where, you know, the world tests you and integrity
0:49:00 is what you do in those moments. So huge props for that. What was your philosophy? What was your
0:49:01 thinking behind that?
0:49:05 It was all those messages I got. I mean, you can see it in the comment sections of a lot of the videos
0:49:11 after everything happened, but people just like felt this spark, like, like, wow, like maybe we
0:49:16 actually have a chance to like, maybe we actually do have some kind of power, you know, like those
0:49:22 people put that song there, nobody else. And like gave me the opportunity to make, even without sign
0:49:27 anything, I was still able to make millions of dollars and have financial freedom. And like, I just,
0:49:36 I just felt like, I felt like if I was going to do anything like that, that I’d be, I’d be betraying,
0:49:42 like I would be taking those people and, and almost betraying them somehow, you know, like, uh,
0:49:49 like they, I hate the big machine just like everybody else. And I, the last thing I’d want to do is be,
0:49:55 is ever supported or be a part of it. Like, I want to watch it crash and burn, you know, like,
0:50:01 see, this is the really important thing is whether it was betrayal or not, we’ll never know,
0:50:06 but you felt like that it was. And to have the integrity to walk away from the bag of money
0:50:13 when you felt that way, that’s fucking epic.
0:50:19 It was also, you got to think a couple of months before this, like, of course I had, you know, I had a wife
0:50:23 and kids that I loved and like, I had a lot of really important things to live for, but I didn’t have a
0:50:29 whole lot to lose. Like, like none of this was even really real. Like it, I didn’t care about that.
0:50:33 Like, I didn’t care to lose this just as quick as I got it. Like this didn’t, this was, this didn’t mean
0:50:39 anything to me. It just meant something to me that like, that I could do something for like, you know,
0:50:45 you, it’s like, even if I’m not smart enough to figure out how to fix some of my own problems in
0:50:49 my life, the fact that I felt like I could help fix somebody else is like, that meant a hell of a lot
0:50:54 more to me than any. That’s what I didn’t want to lose. I didn’t want to lose those people’s trust or
0:51:00 like feel, you know what I mean? Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I’ve just tried to make every decision
0:51:05 around like as best as I can, like what I think the right thing is to do and who knows what the hell the
0:51:10 right thing is to do. But I just try to follow, you know, we all have that little voice in us like
0:51:16 that. We all have some what, and, and I think sometimes we mask, it’s hard for us to listen to
0:51:22 that little voice, whether, whether it’s like, you know, whether it’s our gluttony or our lust or our,
0:51:31 or our, you know, we, we numb ourselves with medications or with alcohol or we, we scroll on
0:51:36 YouTube for four hours a night. And instead of, cause we don’t want to listen to our conscience,
0:51:40 but there is this like very intelligent discerning thing inside of us. It’s able to tell us what’s
0:51:47 right and wrong. And it’s, it’s a spiritual thing, I guess. And I just try to, I just try to listen to
0:51:51 that when I can. I don’t know. I just still feel like I haven’t done enough. I think you, I think you
0:51:58 did a lot. I think you did a lot. I think you’re an inspiration. You’ve helped a huge number of people
0:52:03 and you’re also an inspiration to the other side of it, which is the artists and just to humans to
0:52:12 have integrity. I don’t think people realize how much of a test of integrity, fame, money,
0:52:21 you know, power also is, you know, uh, Rogan and I talk about this quite a bit. We’ll get to see,
0:52:26 I mean, Joe, especially, but I haven’t, I’ve had a bit of the same. You get to
0:52:35 see people become famous and you get to see how they deal with that. And it’s not easy. A lot of
0:52:42 people will sell themselves a bit, sell the soul a bit, give away a bit of their integrity of the
0:52:48 spirit that made them who they are. You get caught up in the wave of it, you know? And so to, to keep
0:52:53 holding onto that, that’s a powerful thing. That’s a really, that’s all I got though. You
0:52:59 know, when you lose that, what the hell are you like? And you see it, like you see these celebrity
0:53:04 people that just like fall off the, they fall off this, you know, they go off the deep end. It’s like,
0:53:10 you got to have, you have to have something in your life to, and to keep you centered and to keep you,
0:53:15 um, you know, your whole perception of reality and like your just existence in reality as all
0:53:21 contention upon this sort of like the center that you exist in. And you have to, if you don’t have
0:53:25 that, then you’re just flying through space, through space. I mean, we’re all just riding on this rock
0:53:32 that’s going, who knows how fast. You said something, uh, I think to Jocko that I really liked
0:53:36 everything that has purpose behind it comes with risk.
0:53:41 So there in that moment, I mean, you’re taking a hell of a risk.
0:53:46 I was terrified. I talked about this a little bit with him too, but I was terrified to even put the
0:53:50 song out. Like I knew I was going to be the subject of scrutiny and judgment. And I knew people were
0:53:55 going to like, you know, I kind of knew all that was going to happen. I was like going back to that,
0:54:02 talking about crowds, like to stand in front of thousands of people and everybody be in some sense
0:54:09 unity. Like a lot of times when I end the shows, I’ll always, I’ll always end with this statement
0:54:16 that just says, you know, no matter what, like no matter how you feel when you go online, you know,
0:54:23 everyone feels so small and insignificant and, and powerless. But I just say, no matter how they make
0:54:28 you feel online or when you turn on the TV or when you look at polling numbers or whatever, like when you
0:54:36 just look at all this trash that we digest every day, like you’re, there’s always, there will always be
0:54:42 more of us than them and, and all that. And, but like to see the, like, just to see the light in people’s
0:54:48 eyes when you say that, but the truth is like, and it’s like, who is us and who is them? And it’s like, us just
0:54:57 represents humanity and like, and, and all the things we talked about so far, like just, you know, the fire and the
0:55:03 chaos and, but also the, like the love and just, just life. Life is just such a crazy, complicated, beautiful,
0:55:11 disastrous thing. And then them is like, it is, it’s the power structure. It’s the, it’s that same terrible side of us
0:55:18 that created things like the Soviet union and, and, and is ultimately what’s created this monster, this like monster
0:55:23 that we all live under today, which now is not just, doesn’t just exist within the confines of the Soviet union, but
0:55:31 seems to almost be a global epidemic. And then that song became the rebel call against that,
0:55:36 against the power structures that creates that. Yeah. It’s like, how much fire am I willing to play
0:55:41 with? Cause I know at some point I am going to get burned from it. I just pray a lot that God,
0:55:46 I don’t have a lot of self-worth in myself anyway. So I don’t really care what they say or do to me,
0:55:52 or I don’t care. Like, I don’t even care if I die, whatever, just don’t let, just, just protect the
0:55:57 people I love is all, that’s all I ask of God. I have this dream of just creating this parallel
0:56:02 system that sits beside all of these stupid systems that we live under that are all sort of engulfed in
0:56:08 this, this thing that we talked about at the beginning, this, this type of structure, you know,
0:56:14 we’re none of us where we’re all just robots. And it’s like, if we hate, you know, if we hate the
0:56:19 way music is and all these artists are complaining about the way the venues are monopolized and the
0:56:23 ticket sales are monopolized and let’s just go find other places to play music. Cause there’s so many
0:56:28 people hungry for music and places that don’t ever get it. And if you look at it, there’s so many
0:56:33 passionate people that are fighting all these different causes, like, like just in food, it’s the
0:56:38 word they use for bait for more or less starvation. It’s a more polite, it’s called food insecurity.
0:56:42 But if you look up just in Virginia, just where I live in Virginia, in the rural areas, how much food
0:56:50 insecurity there is and how many empty vacant farms there are. It’s like, this is an obvious problem
0:56:54 that we should be on Twitter talking about nonstop. Like, this is like, everyone has to eat, you know,
0:56:59 it don’t matter what you vote for or what, like what you look like or any of that crap you can,
0:57:07 you know, like, so like, let’s just like, why, why are we living in a country where we have, why are we
0:57:12 living in a country where half of us are obese and eating shit food and don’t know any better? And then
0:57:16 the other half of us don’t have like how just, it’s just, it’s lack of leadership that’s caused
0:57:22 dysfunction. And so if we’re tired of that, then, then let’s just fix it. Like, we don’t need anybody’s
0:57:26 permission. Like, that’s the whole beauty. Like, that’s the whole beauty of what America is, is like,
0:57:31 we don’t, we don’t need some greasy haired corporate schmuck to give us permission to go
0:57:35 fix all these things that are wrong. Let’s just go do it. And if they don’t like it, fuck them,
0:57:44 you know, in all domains of life from, from food to the music industry, honestly, to education,
0:57:54 also to government itself, all of it. And that, you know, your music is also just the soundtrack to
0:58:03 that spirit that makes America great of just constantly trying to revitalize itself. When the
0:58:08 bullshit piles up a little too high, there’s that revolutionary spirit that says like, we need to
0:58:13 fix this shit. And, and that inspiration that created this country was from years of people
0:58:18 living under tyranny. Like we forget the story of the people who really created this country. Like,
0:58:23 it’s funny. I, one of the statements I made at the very beginning, they got taken way out of context,
0:58:28 but I wasn’t in a position to like, even begin to have a conversation about, as I made this comment
0:58:34 early on at one of the shows about, about how, about how our diversity is a strength. But that term
0:58:38 has been hijacked now to mean something a lot different than what it really means. But it’s
0:58:42 like, think about how many different people came together just at the founding of this country. Like
0:58:47 people who spoke different languages, different cultures, religions, ways of thinking, so many
0:58:51 different people came together to even create this place now. And like, we’ve just forgotten about all
0:58:57 that. They didn’t all come here because they wanted to ride on some miserable boat ride and risk their
0:59:01 whole lives to go to live in some crazy jungle, essentially. They had no structure, like no
0:59:07 infrastructure, no medicine, no, like they didn’t come here for like some glorified camping trip. It’s
0:59:12 because they were tired of like generations of being persecuted and living under tyranny and not
0:59:16 being allowed to practice there. You know, it’s not like they wanted freedom of religion and they didn’t
0:59:19 want separation of church and state because they were a bunch of goody two shoes and they love going to
0:59:23 church every Sunday. It’s because they weren’t allowed to believe in what they believed in because
0:59:27 some asshole King or some hierarchy told them they couldn’t and they were just tired of it.
0:59:31 That’s what we’re losing now. It’s like, we’ve forgotten that we’re those people like the same
0:59:37 structures that have plagued this country are their multinational corporations and their, and it’s just
0:59:41 the ideology behind them and their, and their structure is what the problem is.
0:59:50 Yeah. I mean, it’s a multinational corporations, it’s nation states that, uh, are deeply corrupt and are
0:59:59 authoritarian and ultimately abused power and yes, create, uh, elements of tyranny. And from that,
1:00:08 the, the human spirit rises, uh, like I said, with, with, with songs like the ones you write or at the
1:00:14 founding in this country, you know, that’s why all this diverse outcasts come together and write
1:00:23 something as crazy as all men are created equal. What a gangster line. I guess not an easy thing to take
1:00:29 a lot of that stuff for granted now, but that’s not an easy thing to come up with. That’s a really gutsy
1:00:39 thing to, to see, to see the value in all people equally. And of course they also were, uh, suffering from
1:00:48 delusion, you know, they didn’t see black people as equal. They didn’t see women as equal, but even that
1:00:53 first leap of like all men are created equal, that’s like a gigantic fuck you to the past.
1:00:59 Taking that leap forward really took a lot in an age and a time when, when it probably sounded
1:01:03 correct. And it’s not like they just made a statement and put it on Twitter. Like they,
1:01:10 they like, think about how much, just think about the insanity. Like I can’t even conceptualize the
1:01:16 insanity of what took place from the time that like, even from the revolutionary war until now to try to
1:01:21 preserve that idea, you know, so like so much has happened and so much sacrifice has been made in just
1:01:27 so many hours of labor and thought and intensity. Even in the 20th century has got two world wars.
1:01:33 And, uh, you know, especially in the second world war, the United States played a very crucial role
1:01:40 and there was a lot of ideological, like battle of ideas going on at that time of the role of war
1:01:49 and peace of the role of the United States as the, um, as the center place for the ideal of human freedom
1:01:56 and human rights. Yeah. We continue to innovate. So I’d love to get back to talking to blue collar
1:02:01 people. You mentioned, um, those are some of my favorite people. So it was actually really cool to
1:02:09 find out that for many years of your life, basically the way you made a living is talking to blue collar
1:02:15 people and getting their story. So I’m traveling across the world for a bit, but of course the world
1:02:23 that I love the most and I’m most curious about is the different subcultures and towns of the United
1:02:31 States. So I, I took a road trip across the U S in my early twenties for, for several months. And that was like
1:02:40 a transformative experience for me. And that’s something, um, one of the luxuries I have is to, to, to have the
1:02:46 freedom to do whatever the hell I want now. And so, uh, I want to take a road trip across the United States for
1:02:53 several months. And one of the things I wanted to do is to just, to, to talk to, to people in, in small
1:03:00 towns and middle America. I don’t know what words to put on it, but to talk to the very people that you
1:03:11 talked about that, that, uh, you know, construction workers, plumbers, waitresses, oil rig workers, just
1:03:21 people that do something real people that are real, that don’t make much money that struggle,
1:03:29 but have a, as you talked about, have like a richness to them. That’s not often revealed. That’s not often
1:03:35 talked about. So maybe can you speak to that, to your, to your time with blue collar folk?
1:03:40 When I got all those messages at the, we were talking about early on, earlier in this, like so
1:03:46 many of them. And even now it’s even since I, even like in the last couple of days, I’ve gotten some
1:03:53 where they start with, Hey, I’m a nobody, but like, that’s how a lot of those start, you know, like the
1:03:58 nobodies of the world, if you want to call them like that’s, it’s, it’s frustrating that the people who
1:04:08 literally have, have, have built and preserve and maintain the structure of society that we all
1:04:14 comfortably live in, those people have the least amount of representation. They’re ignored just
1:04:20 because of the way the social hierarchy exists, but the, some of the most dimwitted, irrelevant,
1:04:28 terrible people are put here and are idolized and spotlighted and they’re all over television and
1:04:33 they’re all over the internet. And we act like they’re, like they’re Kings and Queens and like
1:04:40 that they’re royalty. And then all these people who do jobs that most of us will be too tariff, either,
1:04:48 either wouldn’t have the, even the ability to do, we’d be like, like how many people are going to go
1:04:53 underwater and weld. But if we didn’t have underwater welders, like one of my best friends,
1:04:57 whose name is also Jocko, funny enough, the dude worked 70, 80 hours every week. He’s on the
1:05:04 Chesapeake Bay, uh, tunnel job now, but the dude’s gotten up on, gotten on heights that I couldn’t get
1:05:09 on. He’s went, he’s went underground places. I wouldn’t go. And nobody will ever know, like nobody
1:05:14 even knows those people’s stories or what they went through or like the kind of lives they lived in.
1:05:18 And, and they’re the, they’re like the, the people who create the fabric of society and
1:05:23 even the waitresses and the waiters and like all these factory jobs that I worked in, all those
1:05:27 people, like the talk about the craziest place I ever worked. And the craziest people ever met was
1:05:32 this little place called perfect air and Marion, North Carolina. And it was this commercial air
1:05:36 conditioning factory, which is I think closed now, but they didn’t pay very well. And so everyone they
1:05:43 hired was either people that had criminal backgrounds who couldn’t get jobs elsewhere or idiots who dropped out of
1:05:48 and couldn’t work elsewhere like me. And so I was 18 years old working in this place with people who
1:05:53 are mostly in their fifties and sixties, but you want to talk about being exposed to just a whole
1:05:58 nother world of people, like, and just the stories and the, just those people are far more interesting
1:06:03 than, than many of the people that we consider to be celebrities. Like most people who are celebrities
1:06:07 are just pretty boring and airheaded and don’t really even know what real life is about. They’re pretty
1:06:11 unrelatable to the rest of the world. And so it would be really cool. I mean, that’s the whole reason
1:06:14 that I want to go out and do these shows in places that haven’t had music in them in 10 years,
1:06:19 because those people like that is America to me, you know, how many people in Pittsburgh have been
1:06:24 an hour outside of Pittsburgh. And even in Virginia, if you lived in Northern Virginia and you drive two
1:06:29 and a half hours Southwest, you’re in a whole nother planet, like the people, the accents, the culture.
1:06:35 And so I feel driven in the same way. Like I would love to, I would love to find a way to,
1:06:41 to try to bridge that cultural gap, to make those people relevant and to make, because they are like
1:06:45 some of the most, and like, and it’s funny because we emulate a lot of those people, like, you know,
1:06:51 modern country music is a bunch of people emulating those people, you know?
1:06:58 And there’s also like, uh, I love people that have a skill and become masters of that skill also.
1:07:05 So that element is also there, even if it’s like insanely difficult work, like being a minor, like there’s
1:07:11 skill to that. There’s stories there. There’s like what it takes to do that. So, I mean, some of my
1:07:17 favorite humans are engineers and all they do is solve really hard problems. So they develop, I mean,
1:07:19 it’s a pain in the ass job. Yeah.
1:07:26 Anything in the factories is extremely difficult, but that you learn so much about what it takes to solve
1:07:34 intricate, like nuanced problems in the physical world. So coal mining, oil rigs, like you mentioned,
1:07:39 welding, that’s a fascinating line of work. And, and those are trades that are in many cases dying
1:07:45 because we don’t, because they aren’t popular in culture anymore for everything from agricultural to
1:07:50 plumbing and electrical. It’s like, those are all areas. I think if you were to go out and talk to some
1:07:56 of those people and shed light on it, it would like, you could change the, you could change the
1:08:01 entire landscape in America of how, of how it’s perceived and like, and make it cool, you know?
1:08:06 Yeah. So thank you for what you’re doing on that front. I want to say, I wrote it down. Please,
1:08:12 if you know people that would be willing to talk, reach out to me. A good way to do that is
1:08:14 lexfriedman.com slash contact.
1:08:19 This was another one of the things early on that I had an idea about, and I thought was getting done and
1:08:26 it wasn’t that I, I’ve got to go back and try to figure out is doing prison shows and, uh, doing
1:08:33 rehab shows and all that. But I am really intrigued with like going into those places and trying to
1:08:41 immerse myself and just the, the mental state that those people are in. And like, it’s not talked about
1:08:49 a whole lot, but also people who get out ex-convicts. I mean, that, that’s a hard life. That’s just a
1:08:51 hard life to try to reintegrate back into society.
1:08:57 Yeah. And a lot of those people at Perfect Air that I worked with, they almost all were in some
1:09:02 form of legal trouble. Like there was a lady that worked on the assembly line, Maasai, me named Denise
1:09:08 and, uh, her and her husband had been manufacturing methamphetamine and he took the fall for most of it.
1:09:13 She only had to go on probation. He was still in prison, but man, like Denise was a very sweet lady.
1:09:19 And like, aside from the meth manufacturing, like she was like great, you know, like, and just such a
1:09:24 character, like in such a good way. And so it’s like, yeah, just Denise lexfreeman.com.
1:09:34 Let’s talk. I mean, yeah, you know, like both, both sort of the plumbers and the coal miners and, uh,
1:09:43 Denise with the old meth habits. I mean, they’re walking the line of like, you know, surviving is
1:09:51 hard. Yeah. So you have to do a real hard job. And then you also have to live life, which is in
1:10:00 general hard, you know, divorce kids, people die, you lose like the medical issues and that, that can
1:10:06 destroy you completely. All of a sudden something happens. You can’t afford it. The, the, the insurance
1:10:13 system destroys people, all of that. So you have to somehow navigate life while working your ass off
1:10:20 and a real hard job. And those people, they have stories. That’s a real pain. And from that pain,
1:10:27 from that anger, that’s where, uh, Richmond, North of Richmond, that was that, that you could just feel
1:10:34 their pain come through with that song and with your other work. So that like, there is a landscape of
1:10:41 suffering. Yeah. It doesn’t have to be that. We don’t all have to be that decentralized either.
1:10:45 Like if all, if there is that much commonality among people, which I do believe there is
1:10:52 like just innately in suffering and, and, and, and yeah, like there’s a guy, there’s a guy in West
1:10:57 Virginia that I talked to that he’s got a piece of property beside a mine that he was interested in
1:11:03 selling. But the reason he’s, he’s got this dream of opening a, um, like putting some cabins there and
1:11:07 renting them out for people to come Airbnb. He works at Lowe’s full time, but he’s, his son’s got this,
1:11:12 his son’s like 19 and has got this heart surgery he’s got to have. And so he’s trying to sell the
1:11:17 place for that. And just like, just that guy and all, and all you’d ever see him as is the guy that
1:11:23 works at Lowe’s like pulling lumber or whatever, but he’s got this very insanely complex life.
1:11:26 He’s trying to manage. He doesn’t want to lose his son. Like he’s just going to sell everything.
1:11:31 And like at one point in time, maybe the church served that role of like when people really fell
1:11:35 off track and they didn’t have a support system and they were like on this tiny boat out in the ocean,
1:11:39 and they figured out some kind of way to rally it. In my mind, that’s like the dream of all this.
1:11:45 If I, if I die and there’s any like legacy left or anything done, it’s like finding a way to take
1:11:50 all the people that fill that role and organizing them and empowering them and protecting them.
1:11:54 It’s rebuilding the community, but in a real way, not in like this fairytale bullshit.
1:11:58 Everybody’s going to love each other and we’re all just going to be one big happy family. Like
1:12:01 everybody’s still going to get mad and hate each other in certain ways. And
1:12:06 that’s good. Like we, we need those tornadoes. Like you said, we need people pissed off and angry
1:12:11 and we need people to feel like they can be angry and open about things that are wrong. Like people
1:12:14 should be able to speak their mind and we shouldn’t all just kiss each other’s ass. And we shouldn’t
1:12:19 all just pretend to be overly polite and say, Hey Debbie, you have a good weekend. Like you said,
1:12:24 like we need all this controversy and this turmoil. And like, we need the hell of what that side that,
1:12:28 that the internet brings out in people, but it just needs to be in real life. And it needs to be in a way
1:12:33 where we’re all like, we all are at least chasing the same common goal, which is probably that we
1:12:38 don’t want to starve and we want to have decent health. And, and we want to be able to like provide
1:12:42 a decent life for our kids, or at least we just don’t, you know, we just want to live a decent life.
1:12:51 Like, um, I think it’s somehow that, that fixes like, that fixes what you describe, like the people
1:12:56 who, who fall in despair and are isolated and get it, it’s a terrifying world to live in.
1:13:00 It’s that principle. Again, this is, I need a phone, a friend thing where we can just keep calling
1:13:05 Jordan for all these things. But like he explains, there’s this principle in the Bible about, about
1:13:09 those who, about the more you have, the more you’ll receive. And the less you have, the less you’ll,
1:13:14 the less you’ll receive kind of a thing. And it’s a, it’s just a universal law in society where
1:13:19 it seems like the lower you get to the bottom, it’s almost like the more, like the less resources you
1:13:24 have available and the less, the less friends you have. And it’s like, you just, the, the further
1:13:29 you go snowballs into where it’s like people just hit rock bottom. And then, and then what it’s like,
1:13:33 when you get out of prison, what do you, what are you supposed to do? Or when you’re a veteran with
1:13:37 mental health, like, what are you supposed to do? Like, in my mind, that’s what the church is supposed
1:13:42 to be there for is like, but obviously it doesn’t fill that role anymore.
1:13:50 To some people, at least religion does a little bit. It gives, uh, it’s at least a foundation of
1:13:56 community, a foundation of hope for people. And when they’re really struggling.
1:14:03 Yeah. You got thousands of messages, like you talked about from people, you gotten to talk
1:14:08 to thousands of people about their pain through your work, through your music. You’ve been an
1:14:14 inspiration to those people to find a way out of the pain. Can you tell the full story of your own
1:14:24 lowest point before, before all of this, before the, before the music, before you blew up, uh,
1:14:32 can you take me through the story of the depression, the drinking, and just the roughest times in your
1:14:39 life? It’s sometimes it’s not even, you know, it’s funny, but it’s almost not even where you’re at in
1:14:44 life. It’s where you perceive yourself at in life and what your, what your goals are moving forward.
1:14:51 And I think like, you know, I was, I dropped out of high school at 17, basically ran away from
1:14:56 home. I just, I couldn’t, I have always had this authority problem. And so I just didn’t want to
1:15:01 listen to my parents. I didn’t want to go to college. I just wanted to go moving to the mountains.
1:15:06 I was running away from responsibility, I guess, is what I was doing, you know? And so got this girl
1:15:13 pregnant, had my first kid when I was 18 or just about to turn 19. And like I said, I’m working in an air
1:15:18 conditioning factory with a bunch of convicted felons. And so from there, everything was just
1:15:22 reactionary. I never really had a plan. I would jump from job to job, just like most everybody else.
1:15:27 I don’t know. I just, I just got to a point where I guess I just quit believing in myself. And I knew
1:15:33 that I wasn’t doing, I just knew I wasn’t doing, I wasn’t feeling my purpose and I wasn’t being the
1:15:38 best version of myself I could be. And so the alternative to like facing yourself in the mirror and accepting
1:15:45 that, that I’m not a shitty person. I’ve just let myself fall. You know, it’s like, it’s so hard to
1:15:52 accept when you’ve had that fall that it’s just easier to just, just to get drunk and, you know,
1:15:58 just do the bare minimum you can to keep everything sort of kind of moving along. But you don’t really
1:16:01 care if you live or die. You don’t, you don’t really care about much anything like your whole,
1:16:05 you know, I don’t know. Life is just so beautiful when you’re a child, you’re so imaginative and
1:16:09 exploratory and you’re learning all these things and you just, you just can’t wait to be an adult
1:16:15 because you’re just going to go out and do all these incredible, you know, and then you face the
1:16:20 reality of it. Yeah. And the pressure and the fear of failure. Like I think maybe even my own fear of
1:16:25 failure is what drew is what drove me. And, uh, but yeah, you just, and you, you think negatively
1:16:30 about yourself for so many days and weeks and months and you like, you don’t even have a real
1:16:35 self-awareness of like what you’re doing or how destructive you’ve become, but you always have
1:16:42 that, that discernment in you that like, that conscious, you know, that little voice in your,
1:16:48 and your spirit that is letting you know you’re messing up. You know, I was almost like, you know,
1:16:53 I was wrestling with myself, you know? And so I don’t know. I just got to a point where it was just
1:17:05 like, yeah, just, just a very, just a very overwhelming sense of numbness. Like, like,
1:17:10 I don’t like nothing really, nothing that mattered before really matters anymore. Like, I guess
1:17:14 that’s, that’s probably to me, the definition of depression is when all the things you love and
1:17:20 care about are just meaningless and you can’t find, you really can’t find meaning or purpose
1:17:29 or excitement in anything, you know? Like, like, I think, especially with men that commit suicide,
1:17:36 it’s a, it’s a prolonged period of that. It’s not like they just wake up one day and they have a
1:17:41 bad day and they kill themselves. It’s like you self-reflect negatively about yourself and your
1:17:45 life and you don’t do the things that you’re supposed to do every day for a long enough period of time.
1:17:54 And it’s like, pretty soon you’ve built this whole mountain of, of, of, of mismanaged,
1:18:01 neglected stuff, for lack of a better word, like this mountain that you have to climb back up in
1:18:06 order to fix all these things that you should have been doing all along. And then the, and then on
1:18:10 the other side of it, it’s like, well, I could just die. Like, that seems a lot, like, it’s almost
1:18:15 like for, I think from a man’s perspective, maybe the friends that I’ve had that I’ve lost,
1:18:20 it seems like a lot of times you think, you know, you’d never see it coming, you know? Like, I don’t
1:18:24 know, maybe that’s a general thing with, it seems like a lot of times men mask that better and you
1:18:31 don’t pick up on it as much. But, um, I think it’s like, you just dig yourself into a point to where
1:18:36 it’s like, you have a mountain of responsibility in front of you that you haven’t faced that you
1:18:41 don’t know how to face. And you ha you haven’t been able to do so for a long time, but there’s
1:18:47 this really easy detour and it’s just, you know, putting your big toe on the trigger. And it’s like,
1:18:50 which one of those are, I don’t know, like they’re both seen, but at that point, your,
1:18:58 your perception of reality is so distorted that like, you don’t, all the things that can,
1:19:04 that would normally compel you to, to move along, like your, like love and joy and like your,
1:19:11 your draw, you know, your drive to, to be that none of that really, it’s not there for you to even
1:19:16 contemplate. If that makes sense. It’s like that part is almost like, at least for a little while
1:19:24 invisible and all you see is fear and responsibility. And just this, like I said, I just, I just envision
1:19:28 it like a mountain that you don’t, you don’t really know if you’re even able to climb. And then the other
1:19:36 option is just, so I, I think that’s probably where, that’s probably where a lot of people go. And that’s
1:19:42 probably where I was, was just like, you know? Yeah. I mean, there is the, it’s not just
1:19:49 responsibilities to the immensity of it, the mountain. And I think you’re accurately describing
1:19:54 how it happens, which is gradually. Yeah. Seeing yourself in a negative light over time
1:20:05 slowly suffocates you. And then the burden of the responsibility that piles up. And unfortunately,
1:20:13 of course, one of the ways out is to pull the trigger. And the other way out is the Jordan
1:20:21 Peterson back to Jordan, sort of one gradual step at a time, like make your bed. It’s like,
1:20:27 start climbing out. Like the responsibilities before you, one at a time, every single day,
1:20:31 just climbing out and have faith that it will work out.
1:20:37 That was what was so powerful for me about just beginning to open my mind back up to reading just
1:20:41 a little bit of stuff, like a little bit of stuff from the new Testament that Jesus said and some
1:20:48 different perspectives and teachings. But like, you know, an apostle would be in prison, like basically
1:20:54 being tortured and facing death, but like just overjoyed in writing about talking about, it’s all
1:20:58 about your perspective of things. Like I said, like, that’s why I never could understand why,
1:21:04 you know, like celebrities or professional, I mean, giving one example of many, like a Kurt Cobain
1:21:10 type scenario where you have a guy that’s just immensely talented, just will always be loved by plenty of
1:21:13 people. Like I never could understand why that guy.
1:21:22 There’s a ocean of quiet suffering in, uh, in a lot of, and I think it is disproportionately in men,
1:21:28 in a lot of men and they hide it. Well, that’s why blue collar workers have such a high suicide rate
1:21:33 and all to, and why it is so important to talk to those people. And yeah, it’s a, no, you could see
1:21:40 it in the eyes and there, there, there is, there, there is a lot of pain there without like trying to
1:21:45 get, without like trying to open up too many doors. I think that’s probably the best way I would describe
1:21:52 it is just a series of really, there’s a series of negligent decisions and also just misperceptions.
1:21:57 You know, like I think this was an Andrew Huberman thing where he talks about medications and how
1:22:05 it’s a lot more likely for somebody to keep their dog on their medication schedule, but not themselves.
1:22:11 You know, you love your dog and your dog, like it’s just this great little thing. And you just, you don’t see
1:22:19 the flaws and the faults and the sin and the disgust in your dog that you do yourself. So it’s much more
1:22:23 likely for people to make sure their dog has their medication every day. But like, there’s this alarming
1:22:29 statistic with just the amount of people that don’t even fill their prescriptions they need filled or take care of
1:22:33 themselves the way they do. And, and then that also like over time, you know, like if you quit
1:22:39 taking care of yourself and you’re not in good health and you’re, and you’re, you’re not in a good
1:22:45 routine, you’re not doing, you’re not like a series, a long series of doing enough of those things. Like
1:22:49 you do, it’s easier for you to just think that your self-worth is zero. Cause if you’re not even
1:22:55 willing to like, if you’re not even willing to like have basic hygiene and, and eat decent food and try to
1:23:01 take care of yourself, it’s like, why, how, like, how on earth are you going to go face all these
1:23:05 things that you need to face to get your life better? If you can’t, you don’t even care enough
1:23:10 to do that. It’s just like, Hey, but it is, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a long tragic road to get to
1:23:15 that point. I think, at least in my case, the idea that there was something bigger than me that loved
1:23:20 me, even despite I had all these flaws and problems and just that I was just such a wretched person.
1:23:25 That’s what, at least in my situation, that’s what I think helped put, you know,
1:23:29 more than anything. Like I said, that’s certainly where the motivation to quit the,
1:23:34 once I quit the drinking, it helped a lot. Cause I was able to, even though it was a pain,
1:23:38 it was difficult. I was able to actually be able to be honest with myself and reflect on a lot of
1:23:42 things that were, and you know, you got to think, like I said, I, we watched the, I mean, it was like
1:23:46 with, of course, in my case, it was a little unfair of an example. Cause within a month, all this stuff
1:23:53 happened, like after I quit, but you know, um, I see it in my friends that have quit and have tried
1:23:57 to turn things around and it, you know, it’s like, it’s, it’s, it is the most beautiful thing in the
1:24:03 world to see somebody like come to life again, after being in one of those, you’re able to like,
1:24:08 sort of like escape this shell of, of all those terrible things. And even if you are still in a
1:24:12 bad position and you’re still, you got 30 grand worth of credit card debt and you’re working some
1:24:17 shit job and your car doesn’t start half the time. And like, you know, your girlfriend left you for
1:24:22 some other dude and like, don’t matter what it is. Like if at least that little glimmer of hope that
1:24:28 like that faith that there is a chance, it’s something greater. Like that can, that’ll push
1:24:32 people. You can put, you can push, you can push them out on the side with that, you know, like you
1:24:37 can do anything with that. And I think it’s also good. I think it is important to have a good
1:24:40 support structure. Like when you get to that point, I don’t think you should, I don’t think
1:24:45 anybody should have to face that stuff by themselves. And there’s plenty of other people
1:24:49 out there that are in the same position. And I think that’s, again, I think that’s why it’s so
1:24:54 important for us to try to get reconnected on a personal level and not just through digital
1:24:58 communication, because like we don’t really, we don’t, all we see of each other online is the good
1:25:04 stuff. Very rarely are people posting on Facebook talking about, you know, how could you even,
1:25:08 it’s like, all you see is the best of people, but I don’t think we realize that we’re all going
1:25:11 through a lot of the same things anyway, you know, the low points and stuff.
1:25:16 Guess what happens when you either lose your job or can’t quite figure out a good job and you’re
1:25:22 not making that much money or you’re basically broke and you have a girlfriend that’s not happy
1:25:28 about you being broke. She’s going to leave you. And if it’s a wife that could face divorce and like
1:25:34 the, um, breakups and divorce can break a lot of people, even when they’re doing well.
1:25:41 And now when they’re not doing well, that’s a rough one. And that basically your support system
1:25:46 for a lot of people is the relationship is the, what is the wife and the, and so like that’s taken
1:25:52 the support system from underneath you. And I’ve had good friends of mine. I’ve seen get in destructive
1:25:56 relationships and like, they’ll start to date a girl. And then like within a year, they’re just
1:26:02 like a shell of what they were. Because sometimes I do think it’s, I do think you have to be careful
1:26:06 with like your self validation and the way you perceive yourself and making sure that it’s you
1:26:11 giving yourself that and not somebody else. Cause I do think too, it’s like, yeah, like you’re,
1:26:17 you know, how are you supposed to, if you can’t even, if you can’t even keep a woman around to love
1:26:21 you, right? Like, how are you supposed to love yourself? It’s easy to think about that. Like
1:26:25 I’ve seen a lot of men get wrecked in bad relationships and stuff too. That’s it’s a, it’s tough,
1:26:32 you know? Yeah. Ultimately I think maybe dark to say, but there is, there is a base layer at which
1:26:41 we’re, we’re alone in this world. Like you need to be strong by yourself first and foremost,
1:26:47 sometimes there’ll be times in life where everybody leaves you. Yeah. The wife leaves
1:26:53 you, the job leaves you. And for some people might even people you thought are friends will backstab
1:27:00 you. And even then you have to have the strength to find your footing again. Like that, that ultimately
1:27:05 comes from you. Right. I mean, man, of course, like I said, in all the experiences I’ve been through,
1:27:11 just, I can’t, I’d be a fool to deny it. But like, I do think there is God there that’s always there if
1:27:16 you’re, but you certainly can self-isolate yourself too, even from that. If you can find faith in
1:27:24 yourself, I’ve seen it do wonderful things for human beings. You and God, faith in something bigger than
1:27:32 you. Yeah. That can give strength to a lot of people, but, uh, allowing yourself to derive strength
1:27:40 solely from other people can be a dangerous thing because people are complicated and they can betray,
1:27:47 they can, um, just like they can fill your life with love. They could also destroy you.
1:27:53 That’s also the beautiful thing about life. Yeah, it is. You make yourself vulnerable to other people,
1:28:01 you form deep relationships. That means they can also destroy you. So that’s life.
1:28:06 Beth, that’s what makes this whole thing. That’s what, and then you write really great heartbreak
1:28:13 songs. Yeah. You know, people, you know, there’s something valuable about people fucking you over and,
1:28:21 and hardship and all that kind of stuff. Even the best of us have terrible parts of us. Like we are all
1:28:31 flawed inherently because we’re human. And so there, there’ll never be a, there’ll never be another garden
1:28:36 of Eden on earth. Like figuratively where, where we all just live harmoniously and everything’s great
1:28:41 and happy and wonderful, but it is, it’s those basic principles that you talk about, like love and our,
1:28:44 and those relationships and those connections that we have, they, they make it all. Cause the thing about,
1:28:48 I mean, like in a lot of cases, it’s like, what even, that’s the position you get in when you get to,
1:28:52 when you get so depressed and you get so low, it’s like, what’s the point in even doing all this?
1:28:58 Like it is, it is just for anyone. It’s just so crazy, overly complicated and exhausting to live.
1:29:04 Isn’t it like, even in this modern society where we have all these wonderful little conveniences and we
1:29:08 can just have food delivered right to our door if we want and all this kind of crap. It’s like,
1:29:14 people are still like more depressed now than they’ve ever been. And like all the mental anxiety and all
1:29:21 the mental health stuff is just probably just as prevalent as it’s ever been. It’s, it’s people talk
1:29:26 about money, not making you happy. And you know, it’s like easy when you’re, it’s easy when you’re broke
1:29:30 to think, man, if I had some money, I’ve, and of course, financial freedom is what you’re really
1:29:34 looking for. Not like an abundance of wealth, but the things that we talk about that make life worth
1:29:38 living, aren’t things that you can buy. They are things that you obtain through relationships and love
1:29:49 and life. And so it’s a, it is just an infinitely complex and crazy thing to think about, but it’s
1:29:58 like, uh, that human component of us is what, is what we, is what’s so important to our, to our long-term
1:30:04 existence, like our, our ability to, to have connection with each other. And the joy we find in that,
1:30:10 the purpose we find in that is it’s not, it’s not anything that’s replaceable by with anything,
1:30:18 you know? Yeah. I’ve seen that with, uh, just seeing the effects of war on the people and
1:30:27 basically war strips away everything. You lose your home, you, you lose everything and, uh, you get to
1:30:32 see what’s actually really important. And that’s the other people in your life, uh, friends, family.
1:30:40 And it’s almost cliche to say, but it’s, uh, it’s the people you love in your life that make up
1:30:48 the essence of what makes life worth living. It’s not the homes, the material possessions, the,
1:30:56 even the job and whatever else it’s the, the, the humans. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s important to
1:31:01 remember a lot of us, especially in the United States under a capital system or chasing money.
1:31:08 Yeah. It’s important to remember what you’re doing it all for. I got to talk to you about your, um,
1:31:16 your writing process. You’ve written just a bunch of really incredible songs. You say you’re not good at,
1:31:21 you’re not a good musician, which is hilarious. Dude, I have no, so I have like zero self-confidence
1:31:26 about any, I mean, just about anything, but I just, when I say that I’m not being funny. Like I’m like,
1:31:35 you get nervous when you like get on stage. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like I can think about shows coming up
1:31:41 and my hands will sweat thinking about them. Yeah. You told me that you like, haven’t really played
1:31:46 the songs for like a couple months, like old songs. Since September. Yeah. Since September.
1:31:53 Well, dude, like think about how, like, you know, I can’t, I’m not going to sit around and play. I’ve
1:32:00 got to get sober for fun. Like, and like, you know. So you feel, you feel the songs when you play them.
1:32:07 Yeah. Yeah, man. That’s rough. That’s, that’s rough. A lot of musicians talk about that kind
1:32:11 of thing there. Right. Like about this. I don’t know. I’ve heard about that with people like about
1:32:18 hating to play songs because of that side of it, but. Well, yeah, I’ve, um, uh, become close
1:32:23 friends with, uh, Dan Reynolds, who’s, uh, the lead singer for Imagine Dragons. Yeah. And he says,
1:32:27 every time he performs a song, I mean, he has songs that have depression in them and all that kind of
1:32:34 stuff. And he says like, the only real way to do it is to feel it. You, you, you have to, you can’t
1:32:40 just fake it. You have to like be in it. You have to like really feel the song as if you’re singing it,
1:32:46 as if you’re writing it for the first time. So as a performer that, that he says that that’s his duty.
1:32:53 He has to, to the, to the audience, but then that takes a toll. That’s not easy to do. That’s like,
1:32:58 that, uh, especially with the songs that you write. I mean, there’s a lot of darkness there
1:33:05 in your songs. Yeah. And I do have some, I do have some whiter hearted ones too, that, uh,
1:33:08 that I’ll, you know, I mean, I’ve, the thing is, it’s like, I’ve only put out,
1:33:11 I I’m a little funny about like, really like,
1:33:16 God, I don’t know how many songs I have written that I will probably never do anything with.
1:33:20 Like, I mean, probably at least 20 or 30 of them that are just like,
1:33:23 they’re just not, I just don’t know why I don’t want to put them out, but just.
1:33:29 What does it look like? What do you have? Like a notebook with ideas or do you mean you have like
1:33:35 literal videos of half-baked songs? Yeah. I’ve got my old phone. Well, like even just that old phone
1:33:39 that I recorded all the stuff for Tik TOK and all on, it’s got loads of like little,
1:33:44 just like the way that Richmond one was where it was like in the bathroom facing this. And I had
1:33:48 like that, you know, that’s all that. Even that one I showed you on there, it had been sitting on my
1:33:52 phone probably a couple months before it. That’s why I said I have too many unfinished songs. It’s
1:33:57 exactly what I meant. I’ve got all these little snippets of things like a little blip here or there,
1:34:03 but the writing process is, well, it’s a lot different than I thought most people write. Cause
1:34:09 like in the, there’s a lot of people that do these writing rooms and stuff and they’ll have,
1:34:13 or, you know, these co-writes where they’ll have people sit down and they like sit on the couch and
1:34:17 smoke a joint and they’re like, all right, let’s write this song. And they just like start plugging
1:34:25 away. And they, to me, that’s like, I can’t do that. I have to just, it’s like almost the, it’s like
1:34:30 a lot of times the songs come when I’m not prepared for them. You like to be alone.
1:34:37 Well, alone in my head, I could be out and I could be anywhere in it. Right. You know,
1:34:41 some of them I’ll just be in the shower and they’ll just like, and I’m like scram because
1:34:47 the thing is, is like, Hmm, it’s a certain part of your brain, I guess, that creates that stuff or
1:34:52 picks it up or does whatever, but they come just, they come and they go just as quick as they come.
1:34:57 It’s like when you wake up, it’s exactly like when you wake up, you’ve had this crazy vivid dream in
1:35:02 your head and you wake up and it’s all right there. And then you stop thinking about it for like half a
1:35:06 second and then it all goes away and you’ll never remember it again. You know, like you can’t remember
1:35:10 your dreams like that. It’s exactly like that. It’s like, it’ll be there. It’s like, perfect.
1:35:14 Like it’s all right. It’s like, it’s, it’s almost like given to you, like just perfect,
1:35:19 like parts of it or the whole thing or whatever. And then you get into this flow state to where you just
1:35:22 like, it’s all there in front of you and you just figure it all out. And it’s like,
1:35:26 you’ve, it’s like somehow you’ve like unlocked this little part of your brain that you don’t
1:35:29 even really know how to get to, but you just get to, and it’s all there and you figure it out. But
1:35:34 man, if you don’t get it, it’s gone. Like you’ll never, you’ll never get it again. Like you’ll never
1:35:38 even be able to replicate that song ever again. It’s like, it’ll just go away. And typically it’s
1:35:44 like, it’s only maybe the first half of the first verse is what I’ll get, or it’ll be like the chorus
1:35:48 line I’ll get. And then I’ll build the rest of the song around that, if that makes sense,
1:35:52 well, the words or the music or the melody, like what, what pops into your head?
1:35:57 The emotion, I guess the words, sometimes it’s a phrase like, um,
1:36:03 like one thing I will do is like, especially out in the country, people say the craziest
1:36:08 people say the craziest things. And so sometimes I’ll like jot down a little bit of some,
1:36:12 like I will sometimes on my phone, take a little note. If somebody says something real crazy that I’ve
1:36:16 never heard before. And then maybe one day it’ll just pop in my head. Like, Oh yeah. You know,
1:36:21 I don’t know. It’s very random though. Like I don’t sit and just try to write songs. That’s
1:36:25 why I haven’t put out, like, that’s why I haven’t just been dumping out. Even though I have been
1:36:29 writing a lot of songs, I haven’t just been like dumping out all this crazy music. I don’t want
1:36:33 to force it. I don’t want to do truck beer girl songs or like, I, you know, I don’t want to force
1:36:39 song. I don’t want to like, do you have any truck beer girl songs? Cause that, that would be an
1:36:43 interesting. Yeah. I’ve got the silly one about this guy in West Virginia that, um,
1:36:49 he’s like the most, he’s the most laid back. Cause I always get in my head and go over
1:36:53 analytical about stuff and get real serious sometimes about things. And he’s like, buddy,
1:36:57 you just got to take a drag off this thing. And he’ll, you know, he was the one he’d always like,
1:37:02 like peer pressure me into taking a hit off a joint or something and like, just try to cheer.
1:37:06 And he just didn’t take life so seriously. So I’ve written this song about, it’s called Dr. Dan.
1:37:10 And it’s about, you know, he’s a doctor, but he’s not like a, he’s not like a conventional doctor.
1:37:16 That’s a silly one that I’ll put out. So I do have some silly ones like that. Um, I have a couple
1:37:20 of funny ones that I’ll, that I’ll never, ever, ever probably play to the public, but I did, I played
1:37:27 him at the mothership. Um, only cause nobody has their phones in there. But, uh, when after, right
1:37:32 after we did Rogan, I had, I got a chance. I got, somehow I got connected with Tom Segura right after
1:37:37 Rogan. And we went over to the mothership and I got to meet him. And I love Adam again, you know,
1:37:41 he, he was on the thing with Norm Macdonald is how I got introduced to him. That show Norm
1:37:46 Macdonald had, but he’s just, he’s an awesome dude. And so we, we ended up at the mothership.
1:37:52 Uh, I think it was the evening after the Rogan podcast. And, um, Tom’s like, well, they’ve never
1:37:56 had, they’ve never had live music in here. He’s like, you could be the first one. And I was
1:38:03 like, whatever. And so, uh, we only had one guitar and I had my guitarist, Joey with me.
1:38:09 So Ron White was there. It was Tom Segura and then Ron White that night. And Ron took
1:38:15 Joey in his car, drove him across town to his, uh, to his house and grabbed another guitar
1:38:20 and came back. And we got up there and we did like two really silly songs. And then Richmond
1:38:27 in between, um, in between Tom set and Ron set. And I was like, again, that was one of those
1:38:31 moments in my life where I was like, what, like, what, what is this? Like, what is this crazy
1:38:36 reality I’m in? But I do have some funny, I used to, cause a lot of, when I wasn’t playing
1:38:41 the open mics, you know, the, well, like, you know, Brian that you met, a lot of my guitar
1:38:44 playing was spent at places like his house and we were all heavy drinkers and we were just
1:38:48 sitting around at a party playing or whatever, you know? And so I definitely liked the silly
1:38:53 stuff too, but I was really in my head when we were talking about being low and what I would
1:38:57 suggest people to do if they’re in that point. But if I was just to like, not to flip this,
1:39:01 but just, it just popped in my head, but probably what I would tell anybody to do if
1:39:05 they’re like suicidal and thinking about, like, if they’re to that point is just to go find
1:39:12 some, go find somewhere outside, like in nature and go, that’s what, you know, that’s, I kind
1:39:17 of missed this step when we were talking about things, but like selling my house and buying
1:39:20 that property and putting a camper on it and trying to go into this whole off grid thing
1:39:25 really like, I don’t know. It, it does a lot of good for you being reconnected to nature
1:39:31 cause we are a part of it, but. Oh yeah. That’s, I’ve been to the junk. I went to the jungle
1:39:35 for that reason. Yeah. Being out of nature in every way is just, is beautiful. I saw you
1:39:40 got some, maybe, maybe that’s what I need to do is get some goats. I saw. I got two. I can
1:39:46 give you. I have more questions. Why are you giving them so easily? Are there issues I need
1:39:51 to know about? Well, they’re goats. Yeah. There’s no, there’s no free lunch, man. Hey, what,
1:39:56 how many, you got goats, you got, you got all kinds of animals. What’s the, so what’s the
1:40:00 story of you out in the woods? What are you doing out there? Uh, no comment. I’m just kidding.
1:40:06 Just trying to escape this dystopian nightmare that we’re all living under. Like just, it was
1:40:11 just a form of escapism, I guess. But you know, my, well, yeah, I think in such a short period
1:40:17 of time, my grandfather grew up like, you know, they were in a survival estate, like trying to
1:40:23 make enough money to pay the tax on their land, growing tobacco. And then here I am like in this
1:40:27 digital world, two generations later. And I’m just like, something’s not, you know, I’ve just felt,
1:40:32 just felt called to try to figure out, figure all that out and how to get back into that.
1:40:39 There’s just a, there’s such a purity to, man, if you raise an animal and kill it and eat it,
1:40:44 like, and I’m not talking about like, like Ted Nugent style, but just like, you know,
1:40:49 raising meat birds and pigs and stuff and being, having the ability to put those in the freezer
1:40:53 and cook them for dinner. Like they taste so much better, but it’s just, it feels, it’s just,
1:40:58 I don’t know how to describe it, but it just brings me joy. Um, being able to grow stuff and
1:41:04 even just flowers and everything else, just watching stuff that’s alive like that is just
1:41:09 such a, you know, my, what we’re doing now is I’ve bought this permaculture farm that hadn’t
1:41:15 been operational in like six or seven years. And, um, they did a lot of herbs. They had a big orchard,
1:41:22 blueberries, you know, but, um, my dream there is to create this space that, um, it’s like the optimal
1:41:28 place for humans to go to fix their mind. So like, like what’s the animals and the food that I can
1:41:32 have there and the trees that I can plant and the certain types of wildlife that I can bring in and
1:41:37 attract, like the noises and the sounds and the smells that are optimal for a human to be in,
1:41:43 in order to like fix whatever it is, you know, like, um, I had the opportunity to meet Robert Kennedy
1:41:48 Jr. Early on with all this. And, um, you know, he actually came out to my property and all we taught
1:41:53 and we’re still, I think the idea is that we’re going to launch this kind of like healing center thing
1:41:58 out there. Um, once he gets, once they get through all the mess that like they got their hands full,
1:42:03 a little bit right now with things, but whether I go that route or not, it’s like, that’s my goal
1:42:07 is to basically create a place that people can go and like, and fix their mind and find the optimal
1:42:13 thing. You know, we’ve got laying birds and meat birds. So we have, we get our eggs and meat and
1:42:18 then, um, we’ve done pigs and sheep and goats. And then I’m going to start with cat. I’m going to get
1:42:24 cattle in the spring. Um, so we’ll start doing like Wagyu and Angus and playing around with,
1:42:28 and I want to get some funny stuff too. Like, um, I just large animals have a lot of,
1:42:32 you know, there’s all these like large animal therapies out there for mental health, like
1:42:37 with vets and stuff. It’s just something, it’s something really relaxing and rewarding about
1:42:39 being in that space.
1:42:44 What do you, uh, what do you find out there in nature that you can’t find anywhere else?
1:42:50 You can’t find in the, in the, uh, quote civilized world.
1:42:55 Well, everything in civilization seems so like everything we’ve talked about, it seems so like
1:43:03 there’s such a level of despair and unorganization and chaos and just like, and all, and all these
1:43:10 like terrible parts of life that seem like so unstructured and just so uncertain, but in nature,
1:43:15 everything is certain. Everything has a system. Like even on the microbial level of soil, there’s
1:43:22 this like intricate system and, you know, soil, soil fixes it. Like the bacteria fixes the soil and like,
1:43:27 and you can grow certain types of plants to restore certain types of nutrients. And then that can grow
1:43:31 certain types of trees. And then that can bring in certain types of birds. And it’s like this whole
1:43:36 big nature is just this whole big, beautiful system. You know, like earth is just such an
1:43:42 intricate, complex system that is structured. And although there is chaos, there’s literal tornadoes,
1:43:46 you know, like the metaphor we were using earlier, like there are literal tornadoes in nature and
1:43:52 other things, but there’s, there’s a piece about observing the structure there. And to me, it like,
1:43:58 it just helps, it helps remind and restore my faith that there is something bigger than me that
1:44:04 like, yeah. And there’s a spiritual side to it that I don’t know that I can really correctly
1:44:10 articulate, but man, sitting out in the woods with some Creek flowing by you and just sitting in
1:44:15 stillness, like where you, you don’t hear anything. There’s no traffic from a road. There’s no,
1:44:18 you know, you’re just, you’re just there in stillness and just watching,
1:44:24 watching the earth do its things. Just I’ve gotten a chance to spend a day and a night
1:44:29 alone in deep in the Amazon jungle. That’s like my dream, man.
1:44:37 You basically take the woods and the Creek and the quiet, let’s put that like a three on a scale of
1:44:42 one to 10. The Amazon jungle is like an 11 because you’re not just listening to the Creek. You’re
1:44:50 listening to like a lot of different species of animal having sex or, or trying to kill each other.
1:44:58 And you’re just like birds, monkeys, just everything. And the, the, the, the floor full of insects,
1:45:05 bigger kinds of ants, murdering smaller kinds of ants. It’s an orchestra of, of insects, but there,
1:45:11 it’s quiet in the sense that there’s no machinery. The, the really dark thing about the Amazon reinforce
1:45:18 that sometimes depending on where you are, you’ll sometimes hear in the distance, the sound of a
1:45:26 chainsaw. You’ll hear like, yeah. And it pierces the day because like, there’s just no machinery
1:45:36 anywhere around. But once you hear it, it’s, you know, it is like this undeniable symbol of, uh, what
1:45:43 human civilization does to nature. It pains me seeing woods getting knocked down and residential,
1:45:50 residential subdivisions taking their place. Like this, like the monkey part of my brain wants to
1:45:54 just go burn it all down. Like, it’s just like, not good. Like, I don’t know. I just instinctually
1:45:59 observe it as being not good. And I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but I’m with you.
1:46:04 Like I, um, that was, like I said, that’s why I felt so compelled. I mean, we had, I had this little
1:46:10 house that I had maybe a little bit of equity in and I, it was in 2019 and the housing market was up.
1:46:15 And I was like, I sold our little house and got that. I was able to find 92 acres for like 1100 an
1:46:20 acre. And so I still had to finance it, but it was at least like within my, barely within my.
1:46:26 And so that’s what we did. We had a, you know, I was paying 600 a month on the land and I bought a
1:46:33 little camper for, for $750 off this hunt club in Waverly, Virginia and drug it up there. And that’s,
1:46:40 that’s what we had. And like went and bought a little, I got a little Kubota tractor for 0%
1:46:45 financing and was like cutting, like this property was a mile off the road. So I had to cut basically
1:46:50 like recut in old logging road and stuff. And you want to talk about putting a strain on your marriage?
1:46:56 That’ll do it, buddy is selling your, selling your modest little rancher and doing that. But
1:47:00 man, I was, that’s when I really started to live. And I think probably my, that was like the beginning
1:47:06 point of the restoration of, of, of me, you know, and I feel bad that a lot of people just don’t even
1:47:12 know what that’s like to be on a farm or be out in nature. And I can’t imagine just living in a
1:47:16 suburb or a city your whole life and never getting to experience that, you know, it’s good that we have
1:47:20 all this technology is great. And like the, the science and the innovation is important. And
1:47:25 even the fact that you can go on YouTube and look how, look up how to do almost anything is important.
1:47:32 It’s just that there isn’t a clear definitive line between what’s beneficial and educational and what’s
1:47:38 predatory and harmful. And so it’s like, it happens to me all the time, but I could go on YouTube and
1:47:44 look up how to change the brake shoes on my truck or something. And if I click on a short of somebody
1:47:49 doing it, I automatically, like I automatically go to the next video and I may be three or four
1:47:54 videos deep before I catch, I’m watching like, you know, some lady throw a pie at somebody. And then
1:47:57 pretty soon I’m like, wait, I’m changing my brake. That’s the only issue.
1:48:04 And then you’re just doom scrolling. And it, it, it does something to your mind. It just completely
1:48:06 takes the humanity away.
1:48:06 Yeah.
1:48:12 It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really horrible. Like that dopamine thing does something to my mind
1:48:18 that I hate, which really is the opposite of nature. Like the feeling I remember being out
1:48:24 in nature and not just a hike hike is good, but like for prolonged periods of time, several
1:48:28 days away from the internet, away from all that. What is that? I don’t know what that is, but
1:48:35 I don’t like what X Twitter are doing. I don’t like what Instagram is doing, whatever that
1:48:37 is. I don’t think that’s good for the soul.
1:48:44 Yeah. It’s emulating things that we need to be healthy humans, but it’s just like feeding
1:48:51 it visually and audibly to us, but it’s not giving us the, it’s giving us the instant gratification
1:48:55 of it, but it’s not giving us the long-term pleasure or fulfillment of it. Like I said, like,
1:49:01 and the beauty is we’re in this weird period in time. Like it’s a breath of time that we’re in
1:49:09 where, where we are able to conceptualize and observe what life was like. And that transition
1:49:14 point that’s got us up till now. And we also have the, because in order for all this to,
1:49:20 to continue to evolve, like in order, like even with AI, like it needs us more than we need it right
1:49:25 now still for a very short period of time. But we have access to nearly all the information that
1:49:32 the world has theoretically, but we also still have the perception and the, the memory of what
1:49:38 life was like before it. And so this is like a very short window of time, like a breath of time where
1:49:45 I think we can find a way to like incorporate this into normal life. But I think like, if that breath
1:49:50 leaves us, like, I don’t know, I think it’s irreversible, you know, I believe that I truly believe it is
1:49:55 irreversible. And I think like, and that’s just going to be the end of us. And it, and it could take two or
1:50:00 three more generations to get to that point. But like, I, I think like, why don’t we find people
1:50:06 that are way smarter than me and, and look at all the things that trend on social media, like the
1:50:11 videos that everybody watches, like, I don’t know what it is, if it’s wood splitting and plumbing and
1:50:17 blacksmithing and doing something with like, let’s find all the things that people are attracted to
1:50:23 online that they obviously are like interested in and just figure out a way to have them in real life
1:50:26 for people to immerse themselves in. Yeah. I mean, it’s the transitionary state. And I,
1:50:32 one of the responsibilities I take very seriously, because I agree with you is I tried to pierce the
1:50:36 bubble that is San Francisco, that is the Silicon Valley, that is the people that build these
1:50:42 technologies. They, they often live a bit in a bubble. Yeah. That said, the people that criticize
1:50:48 tech folks also live in a bubble. Yeah. And to sort of, first of all, piercing bubbles in general is,
1:50:53 is good for people to get along to understand each other because, uh, people that say all technology is
1:51:01 evil, unfortunately technology, even if that’s true, which I don’t think it is, uh, you it’s coming,
1:51:07 uh, it’s going to be built. And so you have to figure out how to do it in a way that preserves our humanity,
1:51:15 that, that doesn’t drag us into this black hole of like just maximizing engagement, maximizing this
1:51:20 dopamine thing, or, where instead of reading Dostoevsky, which I should be doing, I’m looking at
1:51:24 some girl doing the shaking her ass on Instagram and then feeling horrible about myself five minutes
1:51:31 later, uh, that at scale seems to be happening. And so like reminding ourselves that this is not
1:51:36 the way to steer human civilization to progress, to flourishing.
1:51:42 The problem is, is I think we’re wasting a lot of our, our bandwidth, like a lot of the,
1:51:46 like we only have so many minutes in a day to even use our brains and our brains can only do,
1:51:53 but so much in a day anyway. And when we’re wasting any of it on just that, it’s like the,
1:52:00 it’s like, I, I see it in my own professional opinion as the world is becoming just a little more
1:52:06 in the last decade or two, as the world becomes a little more dreary and dark and more problems
1:52:12 happen and city streets become more littered and jobs are like all these kinds of problems that we’ve,
1:52:17 that we all argue about all the time as they become more prevalent. It’s like the internet and,
1:52:22 and just the visuals of the internet become so much more immersive and video games are so much more,
1:52:26 everything’s so much better here. Everything’s improving at lightning speed and technology
1:52:32 and it’s degrading in society and in the real world. And somehow there’s gotta, there’s gotta be
1:52:35 a way to find a balance there. But right now it seems like as technology becomes more immersive
1:52:40 and addictive and, and interactive, you know, like the way these algorithms like feed us exactly what
1:52:45 we want. And there’s so much psychology and just so much research that goes into making them as
1:52:50 addictive as possible. It’s like the real world kind of sucks. Like, you know, cities that were
1:52:56 beautiful and thriving are now falling apart, like, and, and, and have all kinds of problems that are
1:53:00 being unaddressed and lack of leader. It’s like, there’s gotta be some kind of way, but it’s, and so
1:53:06 it’s easy for us to feel more and more inclined to escape into the digital realm because the digital
1:53:10 realm is becoming more fun while real life is becoming less fun. And there’s gotta be some kind of
1:53:15 way to balance between the two. I’m with you. I’m not against technology at all. I think evil most
1:53:20 certainly existed long before there were computers, like, and, and in even more treacherous ways, like
1:53:26 now we have the ability to do, we’re, like I said, we’re in a very, we’re in a very temporary state
1:53:32 right now in 2025 where we have access, where the general public has access to basically all the
1:53:38 information there is and artificial intelligence and just immense, and the ability that like a guy can
1:53:42 just set a bunch of cameras up and start doing podcasts and have just the, like, even just the
1:53:47 fact that this, that your platform could be created is like immensely powerful. It never, probably never
1:53:52 existed in world history up until now, but we also still have, the problem is, is if we just keep going
1:54:00 without being careful about, about losing the real world aspect of it, is that like, at some point, we’re just
1:54:04 going to get so lost and so immersed in this space. We’re not even going to know what we’re, we’re not even
1:54:08 going to know what we’re missing out on. You know, all there’s going to be is girls on Instagram, like
1:54:13 all there’s going to be is that. Yeah, I’ve been trying to figure it all out. I just did a super
1:54:20 long podcast with, uh, Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games who created Fortnite and created Unreal Engine,
1:54:25 a lot of interesting video games, like revolutionary video games. So I don’t know if you know, but Fortnite
1:54:32 is this gigantic video game where people go into, uh, into an online world and they shoot stuff. It’s
1:54:39 fun. It’s, it’s not like Call of Duty intense, militaristic, like raw, real kind of shooting.
1:54:44 It’s more fun shooting at each other. But, you know, at first I was skeptical, like, is that a good way to
1:54:51 have, to hang out with friends? But then I got to do it with people that I’m actually friends with in
1:54:58 physical reality and you get to hear each other’s voice and you just talk and talk shit about each
1:55:05 other together. It’s basically a phone call, honestly, with some visuals. You’re not, it’s not
1:55:09 about the visuals. It’s about the phone call and it just makes it a little more convenient to connect
1:55:15 regularly. Yeah. But I think you do need to remember that all of that only works if you’re
1:55:22 consistently returning to physical reality. You know, um, in this case, like taking the quote
1:55:29 unquote, uh, guy trip, not the Brokeback Mountain style, but just friends, you know, just friends
1:55:35 trip out in nature together, like, like dudes on a hunting trip or, or just fishing or just hanging
1:55:40 out in physical reality together. It’s really a fun, like we should not forget the importance of that.
1:55:44 You talked earlier about loneliness. I think that got brought up at some point, but I do think
1:55:49 that’s like a big, that’s a problem that’s caused a lot of our symptoms is that we are all like very
1:55:55 lonely, even though we are all, we all seem to be so well connected digitally. We are all so lonely.
1:56:00 You got to think, I mean, modern warfare too, was a big thing. I was, I was supposed to be in class of
1:56:06 2010. So you can think like when I was in whatever grade, eighth grade or whatever, call of duty was like
1:56:12 the thing, you know, I, I’ve certainly like, trust me, I’m not saying that I, I’m right in this space
1:56:17 of digital immersion with anybody else. Like I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been there and seen it and done, you know,
1:56:21 like, but I, I’ve wasted who knows how many hundreds of hours on modern warfare too. And like,
1:56:28 I really built some great friendships from it. You know, I like, I, there’s, there’s a place for all
1:56:35 that stuff. It’s just like, we ha like, there is just this, we have this innate responsibility to
1:56:42 like, to, again, it just goes back to this, goes back to talking about our founding fathers and the
1:56:47 way this country was created and the importance and the, like the importance of, of what it did for
1:56:53 the world. Um, you know, and my, my understanding is that it was the first, it was the first time ever
1:56:57 that people got together and agreed that, like you said, every man was equal because they were created
1:57:01 in the image of God. They had unalienable rights that no government could take away from them. And
1:57:06 that’s really important. Like we, there won’t be fortnight if we don’t worry about that. And it,
1:57:11 and honestly, like just the collapsing in our structure with the mental health, with our youth
1:57:15 and the suicide rates with our blue collar workers and all these kinds of things we’ve touched and
1:57:19 talked about, like the, those are all just things. We just need more time together in real life to fix
1:57:25 those problems. Those are just things, like I said, I make the joke, but like, like there’s never been
1:57:29 one argument that I’ve, there’s never been one dispute with my wife that I’ve been able to
1:57:34 figure out how to fix through a text message or like it takes, it takes being in person with people
1:57:40 and, and like having human connection to fix any problem and heal anything, you know? And so it’s
1:57:44 difficult. It’s like, I don’t, it’s not anybody’s fault that we’re like that. We’re not even able to
1:57:48 really get to know each other and understand each other through the internet. Like we almost have to
1:57:53 be together in person to even just get each other’s point of view and perspectives on things. And
1:57:59 you know, yeah. Fuck the division that the internet creates, honestly, like the left and the right is,
1:58:04 it’s been, it’s been, it’s been kind of a nightmare for me just to watch. Cause I see the very simple
1:58:10 reality that we’re in it together and that there’s a lot more commonality between people. It seems cliche
1:58:18 to say, but it’s like, no, that needs to be said more than ever. Cause it, when you look on X, it feels
1:58:20 like everybody’s divided, but we’re not.
1:58:25 Well, and people are always going to think differently too. Like just in our structure and the way we, you know,
1:58:29 again, it’s like that, it goes back to that Jordan Peterson lecture about, I think in maps of meaning
1:58:34 where he talks about people who think more conservatively or more liberally about things like it’s been
1:58:40 applied to politics, but it is more, it’s based more in psychology than anything. Like some
1:58:44 people are going to have, some people are going to think more inside the box and some
1:58:47 people are going to think more outside the box, but we have to have both in order to have a healthy
1:58:55 society. Like, oh, and also the thing that bothers me, your song, Richmond, North of Richmond, a lot of
1:59:02 people, so a pretty even split people on the left and the right in terms of, uh, friends of mine.
1:59:10 And sadly they’ve drifted towards the extremes a bit. Uh, those on the left definitely
1:59:15 have developed a case of, uh, Trump derangement syndrome. Uh, those on the right seem to think
1:59:21 that every person on the left is a kind of radical leftist. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s like hilarious
1:59:28 to listen to, to people talk. It’s like everybody’s lost their mind. It feels like, but also on top of
1:59:37 on top of that, people on the right see Trump as, uh, as a savior, as this figure who is, who could do no
1:59:43 wrong, who’s going to restore freedom in America and all, you know, continue, you can do a full list of
1:59:50 really positive things. And to me, he’s yet another rich man, North of Richmond, Biden, Trump, it’s all the
1:59:56 same thing. Now, some might be able to do more good than others, but ultimately they’re in positions
2:00:05 of power and power corrupts. And those in, in those positions often forget about the everyday person,
2:00:11 the working class, and they leave them behind. Ultimately, uh, serve the people that are close to
2:00:18 them and sometimes serve themselves to maintain power, to grow their power. I think the good thing you can say
2:00:25 about them is they, I, and I could say that about both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, uh, is that they
2:00:32 really love their family. As I get, I could say that one of the things that I love about both people
2:00:40 is that they genuinely love their family. And like, it was always heartwarming to me to see how much
2:00:46 Joe Biden loves his family. Like, and, and honestly, like just do anything for his family. And this,
2:00:51 the same is true for Trump. And that just reminds you that they’re human beings. And yeah, all that
2:00:59 to say is like, we need to see the humanity in each of us. Uh, and to some degree, always distrust the
2:01:00 people in power.
2:01:05 The power that people have only exists because we allow it, whether willingly or just through our
2:01:11 own negligence. But I think that’s the important thing is like, like I said, there’s always more of
2:01:15 us than there will be a them. There’s always more, there’s always more nobodies than there ever will
2:01:20 be people at the top. And we just have to figure out what to do with that and how to, and I think
2:01:25 this is, like I said, a short window of time to, to where we can still figure that out. You know,
2:01:31 I got to ask you about something before I forget. I think I saw on Instagram, you talked about a
2:01:36 three-legged cat. Is that a real thing? What’s the story behind the three-legged cat? The reason
2:01:40 I want to ask you that, first of all, I want to hear this story. And second of all, I want to read
2:01:45 to you, uh, one of my favorite Bukowski poems afterwards about another cat. All right. What’s
2:01:54 the story? I had this cat lady neighbor who’s a real sweet lady, but, um, older lady lives in a
2:02:01 trail, single wide trailer has probably got, I don’t know, 30 or 40 cats that she feeds at her house.
2:02:05 Nice. It was a rainy Saturday morning. It was pouring down rain. It was going to be like, it was
2:02:08 like eight o’clock in the morning on Saturday. It was going to be a great day. I was going to,
2:02:14 and then I hear this lady yelling, there’s this cat stuck in my car. She’s all freaking out and don’t
2:02:18 know what to do. And like I said, my wife’s a veterinary technician or whatever. So she’s got
2:02:22 a little bit more sense about animals than any of us, but we go over there and the ladies tried to
2:02:28 start her car and there’s this kitten that was up under the hood and she started the car and the cat.
2:02:34 Basically it, it, it basically almost ripped its whole front leg off already. There was just a
2:02:39 little bit still attached, like some tendon or whatever, but the, the leg was like wrapped up
2:02:43 under the water pump, like the pulley, the water pump, knock the bell off. There was no way to
2:02:49 get, there was no way to save this leg on this guy. It was like, and, but the cat was like pinned
2:02:55 upside down. And so we ended up grabbing a, we asked the lady if she had like a knife in the house.
2:02:59 So she gave us this like terrible looking knife, but it’s all that we had. You know, I was like,
2:03:04 we were trying to get this done. So yeah, my wife was the one that did it, but we like got the rest of
2:03:11 the stuff cut and got the cat out and I’m, and I don’t know. I just like to spend like,
2:03:18 however, I was like over a grand we spent given like getting this cat’s likes getting it properly
2:03:23 sutured or whatever to where the cat could have a healthy recovery and all. But I’m one of those
2:03:26 type of people. Like I’m not going to, I couldn’t just let this little, I’m not going to go. They
2:03:31 were going to just go put the cat down or whatever the lady, you know? So yeah, it’s my,
2:03:37 I named her hop. So that’s my little cat and it hops around. And, but it was one of those things
2:03:42 where, uh, yeah, I don’t know. I just, great example with animals. Uh, I guess it’s the same
2:03:45 way with people. I just always see the best and I just couldn’t.
2:03:52 Yeah. I mean, that’s one of the most amazing things about humans. It’s, it’s irrational to
2:03:57 spend that much money on this cat, right? Because there’s so many other cats that are suffering and
2:04:02 dying and so on, but that’s what makes humans really special. We see that the, the, the, the,
2:04:08 the, the person or the creature suffering in front of us and the, we’re, we’re willing to move
2:04:15 mountains to save that person. Like it’s irrational. Maybe it doesn’t make sense because the
2:04:20 allocation of money and effort might not be correct, whatever. Uh, we just don’t give a
2:04:24 shit. The reason that we’re willing to do it for a cat, like I said, it’s just like the thing with
2:04:29 the dogs about giving the dogs your medication, but not yourself. So we see all the flaws and all the
2:04:33 problems and all the disagreements and all the anger we have with each other. Just like you said,
2:04:37 your friends on the right and the left and stuff. And like, we could show that kind of compassion
2:04:41 and we do. I mean, humanity does from time to time show that kind of compassion, but we could show
2:04:49 that kind of like just undeserved, just, just love, you know, to each other too. Like, and
2:04:57 love is like, it’s funny, you know, you talked about how both of those presidents, you could say
2:05:03 they at least love their family, but love is like, I think everyone’s capable of love. It’s probably the
2:05:09 most powerful thing there is even beyond hate, I think is, you know, like, but it is crazy with animals.
2:05:13 So it comes out of us so easily with animals because they, to us, they’re in there, there’s
2:05:18 these innocent little lives. We don’t have anything against them, you know, like they don’t have,
2:05:24 they don’t, they don’t, they don’t talk. They don’t have political views. They don’t,
2:05:29 they’re just little creatures, but the reality is we’re all just, we’re all just creatures like that.
2:05:35 We do that with human children. Yeah. But we don’t do it enough with adults who are also kinds of
2:05:42 children. They’re still, we’re still like, we’re still fucking lost in this world. So I gotta, I gotta
2:05:47 read you, I gotta read you this. It’s gotta be one of my favorite poems. It’s called the history of one
2:05:54 tough motherfucker by Charles Bukowski. And people should go look at videos. There’s videos of Bukowski doing
2:06:01 interviews with a cat by his side. And that’s the cat he’s talking about. All right. It goes like this.
2:06:08 He came to the door one night, wet, thin, beaten, and terrorized. A white, cross-eyed,
2:06:17 tailless cat. I took him in and fed him and he stayed. Grew to trust me until a friend drove up
2:06:24 the driveway and ran him over. I took what was left to a vet who said, not much chance. Give him these
2:06:31 pills. His backbone is crushed, but it was crushed before and somehow mended. If he lives, he’ll never
2:06:38 walk. Look at these x-rays. He’s been shot. Look here. The pellets are still there. Also, he once had a
2:06:46 tail. Somebody cut it off. I took the cat back. It was a hot summer, one of the hottest in decades.
2:06:52 I put him on the bathroom floor, gave him water and pills. He wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t touch the water.
2:06:58 I dipped my finger into it and wet his mouth and I talked to him. I didn’t go anywhere. I put in a lot
2:07:04 of bathroom time and talked to him and gently touched him and he looked back at me with those
2:07:12 pale blue crossed eyes. And as the days went by, he made his first move, dragging himself forward by his
2:07:19 front legs. The rear ones wouldn’t work. He made it to the litter box, crawled over and in. It was like
2:07:25 the trumpet of possible victory blowing in that bathroom and into the city. I related to that cat.
2:07:34 I had it bad. Not that bad, but bad enough. One morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and just
2:07:44 looked at me. You can make it, I said to him. He kept trying. Getting up, falling down. Finally, he walked a few
2:07:50 steps. He was like a drunk. The rear legs just didn’t want to do it and he fell again, rested,
2:07:58 then got up. You know the rest. Now he’s better than ever. Cross-eyed, almost toothless, but the grace is
2:08:05 back. And that look in his eyes never left. And now sometimes I’m interviewed. They want to hear about
2:08:14 life and literature. And I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed shot, run over a detailed cat. And I say,
2:08:22 look, look at this. But they don’t understand. They say something like, you say you’ve been influenced by
2:08:32 Celine. No. I hold the cat up, influenced by what happens, by things like this, by this, by this. I shake the
2:08:40 cat, hold him up in the smoky and drunken light. He’s relaxed. He knows. It’s then that the interviews
2:08:48 end. Although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures later and there I am and there’s the cat
2:08:56 and we are photographed together. He too knows it’s bullshit, but that somehow it all helps.
2:09:06 So when you posted about the three-legged cat, there you go. And I think of your music and
2:09:12 your life story in the same way. It’s just been through some shit, just like Bukowski. Neither of
2:09:17 you two have been through what that cat’s been through. But you know, that’s kind of life. That’s
2:09:24 what it’s all about. Uh, I was wondering if you could play a couple songs. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Cool.
2:09:28 Do you want to take a break or no? Um, no, I’m good. Am I, we might have to take a break just,
2:09:39 just for me to get this figured out. But of course. Yeah. Where’s, where is the guitar? Like
2:09:42 where, no, like positionally. I think, yeah, I think this will be fine.
2:09:45 So ghetto.
2:09:51 Call Draven and be like, who?
2:10:02 Well, if you, I guess I’ll do, um, if I was going to do anything on here from the older songs,
2:10:07 it, that was related both to everything we’ve talked about. It’d probably be, I want to go home.
2:10:08 So it’s good.
2:10:34 If you want for my old dogs and the good Lord, they’d have me strung up in the sideboard.
2:10:45 Cause every day living in this new world is one too many days to me. Son, we’re on the brink
2:10:56 of the next world war. And I don’t think nobody’s praying no more. And I ain’t saying I know it for
2:11:07 sure. I’m just down on my knees begging the Lord, take me home. I want to go home.
2:11:21 I don’t know which road to go. It’s been so long. I just know I didn’t used to wake up feeling this way.
2:11:32 I just do what the TV say. I want to go home.
2:11:39 I want to go home.
2:11:50 I want to go home.
2:11:51 I want to go home.
2:12:01 I want to go home.
2:12:02 I want to go home.
2:12:02 I want to go home.
2:12:02 I want to go home.
2:12:05 The trees go down
2:12:09 Only got concrete growing around
2:12:11 And I wanna go home
2:12:16 I wanna go home
2:12:21 I don’t know which road to go
2:12:24 It’s been so long
2:12:28 I just know I didn’t used to wake up
2:12:30 Feeling this way
2:12:34 Cussing myself every damn day
2:12:38 There’s always some kind of bill to pay
2:12:43 People just doing what the rich man say
2:12:45 I wanna go home
2:13:18 If it weren’t for my old dogs and the good Lord
2:13:23 They’d have me strung up in the sideboard
2:13:29 That’s probably one of the first
2:13:31 I don’t know, it’s not the first song I wrote, but one of them.
2:13:35 What a song, man, what a song, what a song
2:13:37 What’s the story of that guitar?
2:13:49 Well, the guy who made this like saved my butt because everything blew up and I was playing that little Gretsch resonator that’s in all the original videos and my wife had got me that off of Amazon, I think, or something.
2:13:57 Like three or four hundred bucks, it’s like three or four hundred bucks, it’s like three or four hundred bucks, it’s like a just an entry level like import little Gretsch and the pickup never would work right in it.
2:14:00 So this string would wouldn’t work when you plug it in.
2:14:03 So here we are, everything happens all at once.
2:14:08 And we’re trying to do these shows and like, you know, I think the biggest one I did.
2:14:17 So basically what I ended up having to do was go, I bought one of these suction cup rigs that sticks right here and the mic goes down under here to pick that string up.
2:14:28 And I played like, we played like a, I think the biggest show I did with it was like 10,000 people, but it was enough to where I couldn’t be doing a $300 guitar with a, with a rigged up thing on it anymore.
2:14:29 It just wasn’t going to work.
2:14:38 So this guy reached out and, um, Gretsch wouldn’t help me with my Gret, like, you know, there’s no way to really get ahold of them because they’re such a big company at the, I,
2:14:41 I finally did get ahold of Diane Gretsch and she’s like really nice.
2:14:44 And so it’s nothing personal against Gretsch.
2:14:45 It’s just at the time I couldn’t get ahold of them.
2:14:55 I figured I would have been able to, cause like everywhere sold out of those, that Gretsch model when the song blew up, you know, like it was a real pop, but that couldn’t get ahold of them.
2:15:03 So this guy, Beard Guitar, Paul Beard in Maryland, he reached out, fixed my Gretsch and then, um, gave me one of these and made it with the, but it’s all handmade and all.
2:15:10 It’s like, yeah, you can like whack somebody over the head with it pretty good.
2:15:11 Yeah, nice and heavy.
2:15:15 But yeah, he makes them all by hand, uh, a little family owned place.
2:15:19 And I know nothing about resonating guitars.
2:15:23 Is that like, uh, do you play regular acoustic?
2:15:24 Yeah.
2:15:25 It’s just basically a regular acoustic.
2:15:27 It’s just a full step down.
2:15:27 It’s the only difference.
2:15:29 I’ve just got it tuned all the way down.
2:15:29 Is that it?
2:15:33 Cause there’s also like the, this whole vibe to it.
2:15:33 Oh yeah.
2:15:34 Well, the body’s different.
2:15:40 So you can see it’s got like a, it’s got like a solid core, you know, instead of it being a hollow body, like an acoustic, it’s got that.
2:15:42 It almost looks like a hubcap, that black.
2:15:42 And they call the court.
2:15:44 That’s all the same.
2:15:45 Yeah.
2:15:45 It’s just the same.
2:15:46 Yeah.
2:15:48 I wouldn’t be smart enough to play anything special.
2:15:50 Like it’s just a regular old guitar.
2:15:50 I don’t know.
2:15:51 There’s a different vibe to it.
2:15:52 Yeah.
2:15:53 Well, I like that.
2:15:53 Cooler.
2:16:04 Well, the old, I’m real, I’m real fond of like the older music, like, um, so like where all my family’s from, so my dad was adopted.
2:16:05 So I don’t have any family.
2:16:07 Like Lunsford’s not really even a real last name to me.
2:16:11 They’re all just, it was just my grandparents that adopted my dad.
2:16:16 So all of my family’s Engel is like I-N-G-L-E.
2:16:18 That’s like my real, that’s all my mom’s side of my family.
2:16:25 And, um, they’re all from this place about 20 miles from where like the Carter family was from.
2:16:31 So all that old Virginia, like kind of bluegrass folk music and stuff.
2:16:33 And so I, I was just always attracted to that.
2:16:37 And so that’s, I like the, I like the resonator a full step down.
2:16:40 Cause it, to me, it kind of gives it that old sound.
2:16:47 Like, um, you know, a lot of the instruments back then had like bad dull strings and they were older and they were out of tune a little bit and stuff.
2:16:49 And I just, I listened to a lot of that type of music.
2:16:53 So I like, I like the strings being a little out of tune and dull and not everything.
2:16:54 And just that.
2:16:55 Yeah.
2:16:57 That’s why I was so attracted to it.
2:17:00 Plus like some of the old blues players, like, you know.
2:17:03 Playing the dobro and stuff.
2:17:07 But that was my, that’s why I wanted to get the resonator was just because of that old.
2:17:23 I mean, that’s even why, like, you know, I had to use my grandpa’s name as an alias, but that Oliver Anthony music is really supposed to represent like old music from like 1930s Virginia or something like, you know, like it’s kind of got that type of feel to it, or at least in its core, you know.
2:17:27 It feels like from another time, but it also feels timeless.
2:17:41 It’s also that my music catalog is so limited, like of what I listened to that a lot of what’s in my head, like, cause you think about when you’re writing songs and like coming up with chord progressions and stuff, you’re really, whether you realize it or not, it’s all being influenced off of other songs.
2:17:48 So when you only have a lot of older music and like some, a little bit of metal and stuff in there, it’s like, there’s not really a whole lot.
2:17:54 It’s like that, you know, it’s kind of going to sound that way, I guess, just in any way, cause that’s what’s in your head already.
2:17:57 So you’re going to go out there a little bit this year.
2:18:02 Well, what, uh, what are some things you’re looking forward to?
2:18:03 You’re going to travel a bit.
2:18:04 You’re going to play a bit.
2:18:18 The idea is, is to go to a town, like let’s just use Iowa as an example, instead of, instead of the big city in Iowa playing at the venue where everybody books, let’s find a farm field, 45 minutes outside of that big city.
2:18:36 Figure out the ingress, egress, the security, find a good promoter that can like a show organizer, basically that has experience to where it’s still, it’s still professional and it’s done correctly, but establish like a new venue space that can’t be, that can’t be put under contract by a monopoly that any artist can go play.
2:18:48 Like without, like if, if all these musicians are sick of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, then let’s just, let’s just start playing in fields and on main streets and set these venues up and establish them correctly.
2:18:50 And professionally to where they exist as their own space.
2:19:04 And then, and then imagine the economic impact that would provide to a town that otherwise would never have, like, and imagine what you, you want to talk about trying to give blue collar people like some hope or give them some relatability or do anything for them.
2:19:11 Like bring a big band to their town that they would otherwise have to drive an hour and a half somewhere to see and couldn’t even afford the tickets to start with.
2:19:17 Like my tour last year, pretty much every show we did that was mine had a $25 ticket option and everybody scoffed at that.
2:19:22 And I just, I was basically like made fun of for that by people in the professional space.
2:19:26 Even people I was working with, they just thought it was so stupid, but you know what?
2:19:33 There were people at my shows that came up and the kids were wearing hand-me-down clothes and, and like, you could tell they didn’t have any money.
2:19:37 And they, and they said it meant a lot to them that they could come and that there was a $25 option.
2:19:44 And so, and I’ll continue to do these shows like this to where any band that wants to come play the show, all their expenses are covered.
2:19:52 And I’m sure there’s some kind of tax write-off component to them for them, but basically they can come in, do the show, help bring in a crowd.
2:19:56 Like I’m taking the risk, setting the venue up and establishing it.
2:20:02 The venue will be owned or managed by either the town or the farm or whatever, but it’s, it’s, it’ll be in a nonprofit.
2:20:05 And then that, that space will always exist for people to rent.
2:20:16 And the idea is, it’s like, man, imagine if I did, if I could do 20 of these a year, even if that’s, even if that’s all I can get done, like that’s 20 places that will always have music.
2:20:20 And we’ll always have a center where people can go like, and build this sense of community.
2:20:29 We talked about, like, it’s almost like a sanctuary if you want to call it that, but it’s like a, it’s just a space that can’t be perverted by, by corporate America.
2:20:33 And just a place where people can go and like, do all these things that we want to do.
2:20:35 Um, what are you excited for this year?
2:20:41 Obviously you’re going to travel overseas and you got, sounds like you got some, some other cool stuff you’re going to do.
2:20:41 Yeah.
2:20:47 I’m going to see, uh, I’m going to see some world leaders, hopefully not end up in prison anywhere.
2:20:57 Um, part, part of that, honestly, I’m excited, you know, like India to see the same humans, but in very different parts of the world.
2:21:12 I’m not a travel guy, but I love seeing humans that there’s like a lot of us humans all over the place and they’re very different and they have funny accents and just funny way of being, you know, so I’m excited to take it all in.
2:21:14 Cause I fundamentally love people.
2:21:15 Yeah, man.
2:21:24 Like I, I, uh, I would definitely say if you’re ever up, if you’re ever over towards Virginia or West Virginia, either one there, like, yeah.
2:21:37 It’d be cool to spend a couple of days out in the woods or a day out in the woods and do, I, I haven’t really, I was, I’m really new to the whole psilocybin thing, but I have tried a few smaller doses of it actually to help with being up on stage and all.
2:21:40 Um, it’s an interesting thing, but it’s great.
2:21:40 Yeah.
2:21:43 The dog, definitely the dogs in the woods part.
2:21:44 I got you on that.
2:21:46 Uh, I would love to join in.
2:21:53 I mean, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve taken mushrooms a few times and listen, I usually just love everything anyway, but with mushrooms, you just love it a little bit more.
2:22:01 Like, especially out of nature, when I’m look out in nature, I’m just in awe of how incredibly beautiful it is.
2:22:05 And just like a stare at a tree for hours.
2:22:13 And then you take mushrooms and like that tree starts like having some more dynamism to it.
2:22:18 So it’s just a little boost, but like, yeah, I get into this crazy, like I said, it’s only been a handful of times.
2:22:38 Cause I’ve, I don’t know, it’s one of those things where it’s, I’m, it’s still a little unfamiliar to me, but like, like talking about trees and psilocybin, you know, you think about, you start to look in those trees and you think like, in their relative perspective of time, you know, cause they’re constantly moving around and growing and doing all these things.
2:22:44 And you think about like, in their perspective, maybe we’re just, we’re just moving way faster than their perception.
2:22:46 And they’re, they’re moving at just a normal speed.
2:22:51 I don’t, it’s just that you get into all these crazy trains of thought when you sit out in the woods on that stuff, but.
2:22:52 A hundred percent, man.
2:22:55 I mean, like maybe that’s the history of, uh, life.
2:23:11 I mean, humans have some chance of destroying 95, 99% of the population with nuclear weapons and the trees will remain and they will reconstruct the environment of earth and help the few humans that remain to survive.
2:23:16 And it’ll be the fucking trees that we’d be grateful for their actual deep life.
2:23:19 ancient, uh, wisdom.
2:23:22 So maybe they’re the intelligent ones.
2:23:23 Maybe we’re the idiots.
2:23:32 When you’re out in nature like that and just reading, but we’re just looking at and studying the way all those systems work with soil and trees and animals and how it all just integrates in together.
2:23:42 It does give you some sense of peace that maybe there is some, there is some system at place that’s out of our hands that can just help us with our fault, our faults and our repercussions.
2:23:52 And again, like for me, just, um, yeah, I think just being out there, especially now that now looking at it through the lens of, of God, of their, you know, of, of God, it helps.
2:24:02 There’s, I’ve found no greater peace than just being out in the woods and, and praying or just, just trying to focus my mind on, on that.
2:24:04 Like I, but yeah, I would love for you to come out there sometime and.
2:24:06 I’m 100% will.
2:24:07 That is it.
2:24:13 Um, see, like feeling peaceful out in Virginia, in the woods is easy.
2:24:15 Try doing it in the Amazon jungle when a giant.
2:24:16 Oh, I’d love, dude.
2:24:16 I.
2:24:18 And just bites you.
2:24:19 Dude, I would do anything to go to the Amazon.
2:24:21 And all of the peace is, is, is gone.
2:24:29 You’re like, motherfucker, what do you, what is, and then like a second one joins in, kills the first one and bites you again.
2:24:32 And then you’re like, okay, nature is not all.
2:24:33 Yeah, it’s not.
2:24:39 I mean, there is, uh, there is harmony to it, but part of the harmony is the violence.
2:24:40 Yeah.
2:24:42 It’s just the reality of it.
2:24:45 It’s, um, sex and violence.
2:24:49 Like, I guess that’s the thing about it though, is like, it has all the same components of humanity.
2:24:53 Just almost, you know, like almost to a comical level.
2:24:56 I mean, the real comedy is the monkeys up in the trees.
2:25:03 They’re just, it’s like, it’s like little humans and they’re arguing, screaming at each other, throwing stuff, getting into fights.
2:25:11 It’s like, it’s like reality TV, but like more pure, more real, more distilled down to his fundamentals.
2:25:19 Like we, we are that, you know, we, we put on clothes these days and have a fancy.
2:25:25 Words that we say to each other and look all sexy on Instagram, but we’re the same monkeys, apes.
2:25:30 It’s like the old lobsters, you know, but it really is true.
2:25:38 Like, like, uh, we all, we all, yeah, we’re all on that same kind of same operating system in a way.
2:25:40 Brother, this was a huge honor.
2:25:44 I can’t, I don’t have the words to describe how incredible this was.
2:25:48 And I think, uh, it was just fun.
2:25:49 It was really fun talking to you.
2:25:52 Total honor to be able to come on here for me as well.
2:26:02 And, um, especially just to get to meet you in real life and see like, you know, you are what I, you are what I expected you to be like in a good way.
2:26:05 Like, you know, you just don’t ever like, yeah, you’re just, you’re a good dude.
2:26:07 So I appreciate what you’re doing.
2:26:12 I got to show you the sex dungeon downstairs where I keep sex slaves.
2:26:13 It’s very different.
2:26:14 No.
2:26:15 Yeah, man.
2:26:16 All right.
2:26:16 Time to wake up.
2:26:17 Let’s go back to reality.
2:26:22 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Oliver Anthony.
2:26:25 To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
2:26:29 And now, let me leave you with some words from George Orwell.
2:26:36 Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.
2:26:40 And to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
2:26:45 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
2:26:50 Bye.