Antony Beevor on Putin’s Stalin-like blunders, Lenin and Hitler | interview

talking to somebody who worked very closely with Putin in Petersburg back in the 80s and even then he was obsessed about Ukraine hello and welcome to Off Script my name is Steven Edgington following Vladimir Putin's monologue on Russian history in his interview with Tucker Carlson should our leaders learn from history to discuss I'm joined by the renowned historian Anthony Beaver thank you very much Anthony for joining us do you think that Vladimir Putin's monologue on Russian history was accurate and what can we learn from it uh Putin's version of history is scrambled self-contradictory uh and in many cases ridiculous I mean if one's going to be talking about Russia owning Ukraine from the start actually it's the other way around I mean fact Russia should be part of Ukraine uh if one's going to be talking about K and Rose and all the rest of it um it's like his essay before the year before his invasion of Ukraine um not any it scrambled and completely ridiculous in many ways uh it is sort of based on a curious fantasy which is not coming from the Soviet side it's actually coming from the whites in the Russian Civil War uh and it was their ideology of holy uh RSE um Slavic Rose uh which gives Russia the idea that they can actually occupy the whole of the Eurasian landmar um and it's it's a very different one I mean you've only got to look at the Kremlin or look at his Palace on the Black Sea uh there's hardly anything to do with the Soviet Union there it is actually zaris entirely so you've just written a book about um the Russian Civil War the period between 1917 and 1921 do you think that this idea of imperialism into Ukraine and perhaps even to other Eastern European countries the Baltic countries Poland and so on it comes from the zar IST imperialism or is there also a bit of leninist kind of expansionism in terms of his uh Wars that he tried to fight in the early 1920s but was famously stopped by the polls well I ironically of course it was um Lenin who Putin was criticizing for the whole of the problem in Ukraine which actually is slightly ridiculous um yes Lenin said oh um we mustn't be seen as Russian chauvinists and therefore uh we will have a certain amount of sort of you know independent uh self-determination and all rest of it um but the idea was of course that um they would then be retaken over uh from a purely communist bolic point of view um the real uh idea though I saying was coming from this sort of this white idea this is what duin Alexander Dugan is sort of believing you know that um it should be uh Russian Eurasian L Mass should be Russian from vladar all the way to Dublin um or Portugal I don't know uh it's it is preposterous but at the same time this idea that they have a moral superiority they don't have the corruption of the West and all the rest of it um for some reason sort of still has a link to the part but you know whether or not this is purely ideological or whether it is a justification for um the military expansionism for the uh reconstruction of the Russian Empire um is very much open today I I think part of it is this idea of Pride and humiliation that Putin obviously feels and he famously said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the worst tragedies or the worst tragedy of the 20th century so do you feel that he's trying to restore Russian honor oh yes very much so and Putin was acutely aware of this I mean it was interesting I was talking to somebody who worked very closely with Putin uh in Petersburg back in the uh uh back in the 80s um and even then he was obsessed about Ukraine so this one does go back a very long long way uh and it is true of the way that um he was uh obsessed about it but nobody really took it seriously and we made this mistake before we made it in the 1930s the British and the French couldn't imagine that anybody would want to have another war after the first world war um and again we thought nobody would ever really want to have in their right mind but this is the trouble about Democratic um confirmation bias we insist on looking uh at the world through our own boots or if you like through our own eyes um and fail to understand the mentality of dictators which often um doesn't work in their own self-interest Putin also made this absurb comment about Poland and that Poland started the second world war somehow which is absolutely ridiculous I'm sure you can talk about that in a moment um but this issue of Poland is fascinating and polish history and Poland's relationship with Russia obviously for um for entire almost I think 120 years it was under the Russian kind of Zar Zar rule until 1918 and as I said earlier in 1921 uh the polls defeated the the Red Army in the Battle of Warsaw and this humiliation was something that Stalin felt that he had to correct later on obviously and so I just wonder why you think Putin is do you think Putin is still obsessed in Poland in the same way that previous Russian leaders have been oh yes I mean there is an almost viscal hatred of the poles uh the memories going back to the Polish occupation of mosc go and uh that humiliation um without any real recognition of what Russia has done to Poland over the years uh Stalin at one moment at yelta actually acknowledged this uh but then of course was proceeding to crush Poland uh even in an even more humiliating fashion uh in 1945 which he certainly which he certainly did talking about the Russian Civil War obviously your book is is is your most recent book is about that what do you think the impact and Legacy of of that war is today on Russia and the rest of Europe it was huge I mean we have always thought as most first German and then also British historians recognize the first world war as the original catastrophe of the 20th century but in fact it was the Russian Civil War which was the most influential because of the destruction the brutality the cruelty I mean almost sadism in many uh aspects um it created a a vicious circle of fear throughout Europe and Beyond uh and this was the rise of fascism uh was to a very large degree accelerated by the horrors of the Russian Civil War so we see the Spanish Civil War and large degree even many aspects of the second world war which of course was a combination of different conflicts um it was a very much sort of a multi-polar uh conflict in in in many ways uh not in the sort of way we've tended to see if it's sort of Freedom versus um totalitarianism um but um it then influenced of course then the Cold War and in fact the second Cold War as one could describe it today is really just a change of axis and in in many ways it all goes back really to uh the Russian Civil War which really uh defined the pattern of the 20th century and that war started in 1917 following the February Revolution as a result of the first world war and the first world War's impact on Russia now it may be too optimistic to say that the war in Ukraine could lead to a similar style Revolution but I'd like you to comment on those comparisons potentially well I think that it was not so much it wasn't the February revolution of course it was the Communist K of October uh which really triggered the Russian the Russian Civil War um there was going to be conflict of some form and some sort of chaos but uh that was going to really uh lead to the horrors that uh that followed there's no doubt um but the way that um all of these other conflicts sort of followed on um across Europe um was hard to Define in terms of uh when one gets to the Second World War I mean there one sees that the effects of the uh redrawing of Frontiers at Versa during that particular period were bound to lead to certain ethnic conflicts or um the the problems over Frontiers which would have been a some form of European conflict but nothing like what we saw but that came about purely because of uh Hitler having an obsessive uh hatred and determination to create a race war um against the Soviet Union um which was really what gave it its uh its character and it's totally destructive character but in terms of the impact of the first world war on Russia and that leading to a revolution toppling the Zar is there a comparison to be made between the current war in Ukraine the impact that that's having on Russia and whether there could be aent potentially a similar style Revolution against Putin because of a result of that war I don't think so um certainly not the present State I mean things would have to get a lot lot worse in Russia uh before you get it but also when has remember that a revolution only comes about largely because of the collapse of confidence of the ruling party the ruling class uh and the Kremlin is not in any position or any um frame of mind um to concede in any way uh and if Putin is overthrown in the palace Revolution or Palace coup uh we're much more likely to see a great a harder hardliner patf or whoever certainly not now prian as we know um but one of the dangers for Putin of course is that he's created so many different security organizations I'm 27 altogether um that there is a chance um that they too might be feeling fairly nervous you know we about to be next um so to predict the future is very very hard but one thing I I'm fairly confident of it's not going to come through a street Revolution like in February 1917 now you have written uh military history books about various different conflicts and wars and I Wonder What conflict or War you think this current one in Ukraine most reflects in terms of the style of battle all uh Wars are certain hybrids I mean you know you take the Spanish Civil War which almost started off like something like out of something out of the Mexican Revolution um and was like the second world war by the end uh having passed through sort of first world war and all the rest of it um and what we've been seeing in Ukraine is also fascinating that it starts off with a an armored thrust on K uh and um people predicting that's the end of the tank and what do we see we now you know the ukrainians desperate for tanks because they're the only things the modern tanks are the only things which perhaps might be proof against uh drones or most of the drones and so forth um but at the same time you know uh we are seeing huge developments uh and changes it's very hard to make a comparison uh and anyway um I've always feel that sort of you know political parallels or uh historic perils are very dangerous indeed I mean people always make comparisons instinctively particularly politicians and the media uh to the second world war to emphasize the importance or the scale of a crisis uh but also for leaders to make sound either churchillian or restian um and sort of you know slightly get themselves on a pedestal but uh um it's usually very very dangerous because look at the effects of comparing 911 to Pearl Harbor uh puts you into a mentality of State on state Warfare rather than dealing with something which was essentially a security problem um so one has to be careful but in Ukraine uh yes we've seen even elements of the first world war we've seen elements of Star Wars I mean one can see the whole sort of panop playay of the 20th 20th and 21st centuries are there any lessons that Putin or even zalinski can learn from previous Russian Ukrainian polish leaders such as Lenin the pki I'm thinking of well the trouble about Putin is of course no country is as much a prisoner of their past as Russia and we see Putin making all of the mistakes that they made in the second world war whether it was like the way they sent their tanks into Berlin um thinking that um that would be easy but I mean had huge losses um one seen the way that they um of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 where uh the Ambassador in Prague said oh they're waiting to welcome you as liberators and all the rest of it uh and they were soon out of fuel and um being spat at and hated by the local population so Russia has often repeated its own mistakes it sometimes learns rapidly from them as it did in the second world war and I'm afraid we certainly seeing the way that the Russian army has started to learn from some of its appalling mistakes um in the earlier fighting in Ukraine uh how far this goes whether this will be enough to improve the morale of Russian troops uh certainly won't do much to improve the behavior of Russian troops which is simply terrifying um but we are seeing Evolution uh during the course of the fighting now you have written many books about the second world war what do you think the impact of what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War is today on their sense of national identity well it's still very large there's no doubt about it but much more for the older generation rather than for the young um yes there are obviously sort of fascist elements amongst the young in part terms of the way that sort of you know Putin Youth and uh other organization and groups like that still take it quite seriously uh but the way one saw a vast Exodus of the young educated Young from the cities particularly from Petersburg and Moscow uh and other C cities wanting to get out and have nothing to do with this war um that there's one thing one can never do and that's generalize about Russia um there's no way the the different nationalities the different classes and all the rest of it uh Russia cannot be described in simple terms but Putin seems to be obsessed with this issue of Nazis neo-nazis fascists and everyone in Russia seems to be an anti-fascist in that sense rather than what you just said well it's true but I mean um at the same time they W recognize these similarities um I mean had took vas grman in his great novel of life and fate uh to point out the real similarities between Nazism and uh and stalinism um for which of course you know it that was the end of his career not surprisingly but um it's it's something which in Russia they refuse to they are the goodies from the second world war we are the ones who liberated Europe um and anything which contradicts that uh is completely crushed I mean one of medinsky Who is the the great ideolog of vising um Putin who's an absolute idiot of the worst order um he was the one where a few years ago Putin spent this vast fortune on this um movie called piloff and his 28 men uh to sort of create a myth about these kazaks uh helping to defend Moscow and a general uh and that 28 of them managed to destroy uh a whole Nazi paner division uh and yet it was known and it was actually the head of the Russian State archives was sacked uh because he said yes but we know that this was completely invented by a journalist I mean with CA with the red star U paper um well he was sacked um but the movie still went ahead and of course it was regarded by some as holy RIT and medinsky said anybody who doubts this story even if it's not true is below slime I mean you know this is this is the act you cannot disbelieve uh official Orthodox uh belief and this use of the Orthodox Church um is simply astonishing I mean dur allies there are now there there are now icons showing pin as a saint uh holding the sledgehammer with which um they regarded as their method of uh discipline to kill anybody who deserted it's so interesting that the impact of the Orthodox Church on on war in Russia and as as we know the Soviets tried to destroy destroy the church and you know they're very hardcore atheists and then when they were invaded in operation Barbarosa um those rules became a bit more LAX and I think Stalin recognized that he had to there were other things that he had to sort of tap into in terms of patriotism people's um relationship with God in order to motivate them to fight in order to help them morale so how have how do you assess this this idea of using the church in Russia to try and sort of boost people's morale well this is what Putin is doing and I mean you know you have uh the the priests blessing nuclear missiles you have the priests uh you know blessing recruits going away but I mean for many of them um religion in Russia um is very intense in sort of certain uh groups and among certain uh in certain parts um sometimes in the countryside it's there but this is in many ways I think a reaction to the Past um but I mean I don't think this isn't this isn't going to make any of the soldiers fight any better uh than when one sees photographs of them kneeling in front of the Zar before going off to battle with the Zar holding up an icon um things have not changed very much in that particular way how has the war impacted you as an historian studying Russia in terms of access to historical archives and so on and I know that you've um written your you know excellent book about Stalingrad and and you had a brilliant access in in the 1990s sort of to the Russian archives then just after the collapse of the Soviet Union so I just wonder if you can assess some of sort of um those differences and changes in in accessibility to Russian documents and so on throughout the last I don't know 30 or 40 years well my great fear two years ago as um Russian tanks uh were heading for K was the Ukrainian archives because they are absolute gold mine for any uh historians who may be thwarted in the Russian archives okay that's a very selfish um attitude if you like in a way but I was horrified by the fear that you know the one of the first things they' do would be not necessarily they could destroy quite a bit but also just to basically take them away and make sure that they weren't accessible anymore um but this is the way that of course they want to control history they also wanted to and the way we've seen them loot looting uh so many of the uh historic um not just archives but of course uh uh symbols um even whether it's the body of pin or uh anything like that um there has been the most appalling uh um basically sort of cultural rape of the country one last question on the Civil War just a sort of more sort of nerdy question but is it possible for the whites to have won that war no I don't think so um partly for a whole range of reasons one with the whites had no coherent ideology they were uh a strange mix of uh of cacs white imperialists uh from the maist Army uh and some uh basically sort of you know Central right-wing um socialists um and a they couldn't get the act together uh they were incredibly incompetent and corrupt uh but above all they also managed to put off their potential allies of the poles the estonians and the fins um simply because of their imperialist Russian imperialist attitudes so I don't think there was any chance and also of course they didn't have uh internal lines which was a great advantage of the uh Soviets they had a coherent um organization they also had a coherent um area of defense and potential for Counterattack which is what they did and was that because of trosky well trosky and the Red Army yes but it was also geographically that they had that great mass of um Central Russia um and the North and the main country main cities so they had the manpow and the factories uh but also when for example they were able to concentrate their armies against kak in Siberia uh and then bring them back to defeat denikin coming up from the south in 199 let's talk about the impact that the second world war has on British identity we've talked about how it's impacted Russian identity how do you think we view that war today um I think and I hope with a lot more open-mindedness rather than uh if you like the Patriotic myth of the 1950 movies and so forth I mean they weren't that bad there 1950 movies in comparison to some of them and in comparison to some of the distortions of History we've seen in um recent uh movies coming out of Hollywood um but I think that our knowledge of the past and of certainly of the second world war um is so bad amongst sort of the general population uh and especially amongst the young today it's terrifying I mean even a number of years ago when the BBC did a series on um aitz An important series on aitz by Lawrence Reed um they were finding that many many people thought that aitz was a brand of beer I mean they had no idea a about even about the Holocaust and yet people say that there's sort of too much emphasis on the Holocaust in history um but B about who was who and on which side and all the rest of it so um uh the idea of the sort of the chance of two world wars and one World Cup and you know things like that uh which we had say in the 70s and ' 80s when uh Britain was suffering from a severe inferiority complex Visa Germany um even that I think has gone and certainly uh more recently I think that um there is a tremendous sort of doubt in or a decline if you like in National self-confidence um and I didn't we're not hearing we had a bit of during brexit or whatever about sort of you know our role and the second world war we saved Europe which is all rubbish but uh uh yes certainly if we had not held on in 1940 it's true Hitler it's one moment when Hitler could have won the war completely um but you know apart from that um our um was was not bad that's certainly true um but you know there were some dark marks too but uh some dark passages as well but um on the whole it was yes it was good but that doesn't mean that um you know that's a justification for us today and we can't rely on History um anymore than and uh Putin saying that it was the Red Army which liberated Europe but actually also enslaved Europe just on that latter Point um generally that leaders should learn from history or obsess over history in the same way that Putin has is there a way that our politicians should should interact with history and from the past well they should certainly learn the lessons of the past but I mean let's face it bismar rightly said you know uh the only thing we learn from history is that nobody learns from history and I'm afraid leaders don't learn from history uh they unfortunately will tend to use history um simply to justify a particular policy uh and when we hear Echoes of the second World War uh going back to what I was saying you know this is when they are trying to sound a bit churchillian uh or to emphasize how um important something is or a crisis is but actually um it's not and the second world war was not like any other war and so it's about the worst thing to start comparing things to there's a famous poll I think from a few years ago from the BBC in which they asked young people who was Winston Church on so was he a fictional character and many of them genuinely belied that he he was a he was a fictional character which is just incredible really yes we are the about the any country in Europe apart from Albania and Iceland I think I think Neil Ferguson pointed it out um where we gave up the um compulsory teaching of history from the age of 13 or 14 or whatever it was um so I'm afraid that's rather bound to be the kids do you think in terms of teaching history we obsess too much particularly in in Secondary School over histography and sources and analyzing that sort of thing rather than I don't know more kind of um I suppose popular history or kind of thinking about the myths in a way that perhaps in the 80s and 70s and 60s in terms of Education we would have done um I mean just from my own personal experience of studying history in school um I know that we it just seemed to be endless analysis of like know this Source a and Source B and compare them and so on well I think that's sort of if you like playing at history I mean giving the idea to children that sort of somehow they could be historian too um without any context without any background I mean the problem is that they will jump from the tutors to the second world war without any idea of what happened in between um I know it was sort of regarded as sort of rather uh top down approach and oldfashioned and all the rest of it but I mean I remember as a child where you had those sort of panels going all around the um class uh you know showing the kings and queens all the way through well it was regarded the kings and queens so that's elitist um but the trouble about Kings and or the advantage about kings and queens is rather like say architectural periods or whatever uh one can see how things have developed over time and particularly uh the way that periods were often associated with monarchs in the past and they were of course influential in that way I mean the way that of Henry VII or whoever it might be uh and you also saw sort of the way that things changed in terms of dress and therefore culture um over that period of time nowadays nobody knows what a century is what is a decade um they cannot understand the passage of time uh over the last Thousand Years um to realize you know where something is ancient history for them the Battle of alaman is ancient history um but have got no idea sort of what what is sort of modern what is what is past let's talk again about um the relationship between Britain and the second world war and how it's changed Through the Ages since the war ended now you mentioned in the 1950s there were these kind of patriotic Films idealizing Heroes from from that war particularly British films I mean I my dad was always showing them when I was growing up and I loved some of them um but but as you say more perhaps more recently people have become more ignorant of the war as second World War veterans are dying out I suspect there are a couple of them left right but but but really sort of are becoming more rare um so how how have attitudes changed throughout let's say the ' 50s 60s 70s ' 80s and I know that particularly in let's say the 60s I think younger people weren't really interested in the second world war in the same way that the people who' lived through it were well I think there was sort of genuine pride in sort of the late 40s or whatever but there was also a feeling of depression and exhaustion I mean let's face it as the Duke of Wellington said you know the um only only a battle one is sort of close to the horror of battle defeated and I mean we won and we were bankrupt after the end of the second world war um so therefore we tended to rely that much more on pride and therefore on our reputation as a result of the second world war um but uh our history therefore was one whereby I think that we sort of tended to cling to the Past uh more than we needed to during that particular period it was sort of a mental crutch um and I don't think that it changed hugely until one got say to the 60s when of course you started get sort of counterculture and that uh development and then the Vietnam War and so forth that the whole idea that you know America was a Force for good and had say helped saved Europe or did save Europe in the process its Liberation um so politics and um basically sort of uh cultural change are going to start making huge differences and we saw that during that particular period And I mean in fact then history became an absolute joke for some um let's say the carnaby street idea of sort of wearing um wearing uniform forms as a joke rather than as a sort of um element of Pride uh all of these reflected the the changes um and then you have other eras I mean one has to remember that sort of attitudes towards the Armed Forces changed largely as a result of uh Northern Ireland because of course um no soldiers therefore or no servicemen could actually wear uniforms on the street um and it looked as if sort of the Armed Forces had disappeared and therefore at that stage there was also a separation between the civilian population um and and the armed forces and of course the armed forces in many ways represented history uh in their own in their own particular way so um all all of these changes are going to have a a huge effect over time let's talk about some of the myths that have formed in Britain particularly around the second world war and also perhaps this is a question you you won't know too much about but I hope you do um could you also compare us to France and how France's reaction to that war changed over the years because they obviously had a very different experience to us so yeah the first idea of myths and then perhaps a bit about France well um our myths um have always been uh should we say powerful ones like every country uh we didn't have an international version of course of the history of the Second World War and that's only come much more recently A lot of it came which was a good thing when the way that for example we got many German historians coming to British universities and so for and we had therefore had had much more of a sort of multinational approach uh towards the history in terms of myths one of the great myths that people talk about is that um we we say that the war was fought originally for moral reasons whereas there is an argument from some historians that it was fought for more practical reasons in terms of saving the Empire or more sort of geopolitical reasons and so on um whereas you know there is this idea that we fought that war because we we were there to save the the Jews or something like that whereas perhaps that that isn't true um the other myths people talk about around Dunkirk and the small boats and the impact that that had and so on um perhaps the impact of Britain more generally on the war um maybe we're more of a minor player in terms of the other roles of the other countries so those are few of the myths that people talk about well I think that the reason why we declared war um had at that stage nothing to do with Empire um and once of course the war then developed and particularly when it became a World War um then it did have much more to do with Empire and defensive Empire and so forth um but when one looks at the circumstances once you had the Nazi Soviet pact uh War became almost impossible to avoid I mean there the old historians argument that nothing is inevitable but in fact it's it is very very hard to imagine how you could have avoided it at that particular Point uh and in fact that would have gone certainly from the moment that the uh Nazis occupied Prague and obviously broke their um declarations at and agreements at Munich uh in 1938 so uh we find ourselves actually fighting a a a European War at that particular stage um we obviously get Empire the rest of the dominions and the other dominions and so forth in the British Empire at that particular stage to declare war as well so it does therefore tend towards a World War even at that particular even at that particular point but I mean in terms of myths and the way that we saw it uh of course we were going to look at it in in more moral or we're going to describe it in more moral terms uh no we didn't go to war uh to save the Jews but at the same time um one of our feelings that I think in in Fairly general terms um was that um the Nazis were uniquely evil because of their persecution but we had no no idea of course of the mass uh killings until really 1941 um and then 1942 and the inter Allied declaration uh on um the Holocaust um all of that was were were developments from the uh original War started in Europe um for the French of course it was different because their humiliation in 1940 uh was um profound National shock to the whole psyche to the whole um mentality and they tried to convince themselves that actually it was unfair and it was then it was the British who pushed us into the war um again I'm generalizing of course there were um uh those the brave ones and the uh really patriotic ones who believed that we they should still fight on and all the rest of it who wanted to have nothing to do with Peta and vishi and all the rest of it but what is much more interesting is the way way that after the second world war when you have such deep wounds in the National psyche you have to bind them up with M myths and of course the great myth was of La resistant and all of the girls speeches in this particular uh in this particular way but as Anthony Eden rightly pointed out in that great film of shagan La um he said we the British have no grounds or justification in trying to judge the French we were not occupied and we don't know how we would behaved and that is certainly true I mean I didn't I'm sure that Britain would have not not been able really to go on fighting um churel if he'd still been in power assuming that we had been overrun yes would have wanted to continue the fight from the dominions um to get the fleet to Canada and and so forth uh and to carry on but uh you know you cannot predict what would have happened in a totally hypothetical situation no you can't but but it is interesting that in France in the 1930s they did seem to have have far more political chaos than we had in Britain um they had the popular front and and I know that patan and others were very worried about Communists taking over and and um saw the kind of Nazis coming in and or collaboration with the Nazis as perhaps a solution to that or sort of you know better of two evil so perhaps there is a bit of a distinction between um the way that British politicians felt in the 1930s in terms of confidence and so on in their nation and they didn't feel that we were heading towards the same kind of political crisis as um they did in France well some certainly did I mean there were um a number of within the conservative party a number of sort of sympathizers uh with um Hitler and with M musolini and so forth um you know um my grandmother who is the Observer correspondent in Italy was sacked by Garin because she'd criticized musolini um you know so one can't be um predict uh things automatically along the lines of political loyalties uh and I think this is one of the greatest examples of the second world war that in fact the one thing you must never do uh is automatically to assume um standards of behavior entirely by people's uh either political or social or any other form religious background now I know you mentioned before we filmed this interview that macron is thinking of doing these huge celebrations around um the 80th anniversary of D-Day how do contemporary French politicians think about D-Day do they see it as them being rescued by the British and the Americans and I know that uh if you go to um lesim vedes in France in Paris and and look at their Museum around the second world war they're very insistent on saying um you know we were we were involved in D-Day dul was there um there was this really funny chart about um how many troops were in in D-Day and where they all came from and I think it's like 100,000 British Americans and so on and then it says in the tiny little barart 177 French or something like that I can't remember the exact numbers um but so how how how is dday viewed in France today well of course dday uh when one sees uh French the history of that particular period it was vital for their myth of national regeneration um that they had to be there and take part in it um that is why you know theair de the second armor division had to be brought back especially from North Africa uh to take part and that was allowed by Eisenhower to lead the liberation of Paris um and I think that that was absolutely right if it hadn't been that um then there would have been the Communist Takeover in France and one has to remember quite how close France was to Civil War in the summer of 1944 um so I think those decisions were entirely true in fact uh General Patton at one particular point was asked by journalists you know what did he how did he rate the French Resistance and uh for once Patton actually came up with quite a subtle reply which was um uh better than expected but less than advertised um and I think that was probably overall true you know but I think they still played a major part in Britany uh in one or two other areas in the way that they delayed the sort of reinforcements coming from the south towards the uh Invasion area but for the French overall um there is I think General um genuine um gratitude uh for the allies and you know even the Americans where the French have a very very mixed view of the Americans you know that's a real LoveHate relationship um when it's anything to do with D-Day um then the French are sort of entirely pro-american there's no doubt about it uh there are pockets of course which aren't where they suffered very badly I mean in Normandy because of the bombing campaign uh which was needed in a way where they actually destroyed uh towns what called putting this putting the city in the street um so as to block the roads so that German un reinforcements couldn't come in but I mean you know this was part of an essential plan to make sure that the uh invasion was not crushed before we' got sufficient troops ashore but all all in all MCR though interestingly wants to make a big effort this particular year in the 80th anniversary uh as a symbol in fact over Ukraine um it is to show that the unity of the Allies in 1944 prevailed and it will prevail again and all the rest of it uh which of course is quite useful because um sort of macron has been rather uh unpredictable when it's come to uh relations with Russia and how well he can persuade Putin to do things uh in a slightly less aggressive way but um you know one should only sort of you know welcome this um that he is making a plans to make a big effort this year in terms of Britain's role in the second world war you mentioned 1940s being that very crucial year probably our greatest contribution to that war and of course we broke the Enigma codes and and that had a huge impact as well um the bombing campaign in Germany and so on but there is this accusation or this stereotype I suppose that British generals were pretty useless at fighting battles and and and and things like that do you think that that's accurate and if so why I think that there was a large element still of amateurishness in the British army uh the Royal Navy was tended to be much more professional the West parts of the British army uh artillery Engineers which were uh very professional but the old sort of regimental system was still um a a descendant if you like of the the gentlemanly way of making war in the past um and therefore generals quite often needed to be sacked um the Americans were far more ruthless about sacking generals uh that's certainly true um and but even Patton said afterwards that actually they were overzealous in sacking generals quite often before they'd even had a chance ready to prove themselves sort of sought out the initial problems um and it's true I think in in in many armies um but we did not have the professionalism obviously of um the German Army um and it took a long time to even learn lessons from the Germans in their way of uh um preparing um ncos and others you know to take command at a moment of Crisis because our rather class-ridden system um meant that you know ncos had kept the soldiers um well disciplined um but they were never in a position really to sort of take over uh an officer's job at a moment of Crisis and that was that was one of the weaknesses I know that Alan Brook says in his diaries that um perhaps the quality of BR of British generals declined because so many good men were killed in the first World War war and that's one argument that he comes up with maybe you could comment on that and also this issue of morale was that one of the things was that one of our disadvantages in the second world war as it were that sort of Afflicted Britain perhaps more than Germany and other nations when you look look to Egypt or look to Singapore I'm thinking where our morale just really was on a different level to to the axis um yes it certainly was on a different level to a larger degree and there were reasons for that one has to remember that um the whole question of Dunkirk and abandoning the meant qu quantity of weapons and so forth had a disastrous knock-on effect uh it meant we were so short of weapons that none of the uh factories could actually change retool or bring in new uh and better uh equipment uh and this is especially true of the tanks and this is why uh in North Africa we were always outgunned um the Germans had much better tanks you know it was real technique of its period um and as I say we were outgunned and out fought uh and that of course had a desperate effect on uh morale and it was only really towards the end of the war uh that we we we managed to get Iraq together so it took a long time but that was that funny enough largely a knock on effect from Dunkirk who in your view were some of our better and more competent generals I know that a lot of people say that Alan Brook himself was an excellent strategist and uh Bill slim is someone else who come comes to mind who who would you who would you say well um slim um I mean you know in the the very very top I mean M Montgomery Montgomery was very good as a trainer of troops um but he was totally or he was self overrated if you like uh in terms of what he achieved I mean at alamain um the back of uh rl's armies had more or less already been broken largely by the RAF and the uh Navy um stopping the supplies coming coming in um and so you know the victory at alamain Ms okay for propaganda reasons had to be exaggerated and uh greatly sort of blown up but by the end of course with the combination of the Americans coming in and Operation Torch um then there was a real effect and uh in fact more prisoners were sort of taken at tunus than so-called at Stalingrad actually that that actually does that figure which has often being quoted doesn't take into effect all the other ones who been captured before Stalingrad actually fell so um it was one of the examples of misleading propaganda uh of which there are let's face it quite a few yes talking again about Britain's contribution in the second world war what where do you think that we contributed most compared to the other Allied Nations um well the Navy was of course vital from the point of view of the battle of the Atlantic because without winning the battle of the Atlantic uh we wouldn't really have been able to mount dday um if the submarines have been able to attack The Invasion Fleet and all the rest of it um the the bombing War well that's a very still a very very controversial area um in many ways it was a second front as far as um Stalin was concerned and I think Stalin knew because it forced the uh Germans to bring back uh all of their anti-aircraft guns really from the Russian front and they were also the best anti-tank guns the 88 mm uh to bring them back to uh German so that actually had an extraordinary effect funny enough many of our greatest contributions actually were not necessarily intended in the way they were planned at the time but um the fact was they worked in in that particular um in that particular way but I think churcher was well aware of this and so it was Stalin um even if it had not been the original um idea uh we also I think um you know certainly I mean in the Far East we didn't have such a obviously a very uh great part to play except Burma which was an appalling fight and battle um one would never have wanted to have volunteered to be there I don't think um but was I didn't think did show really the genius in a way uh of Slim's um leadership and one of the best examples going but we also well aware that there's um the second world war had a curious effect on senior commanders that uh many of them were still perfectly modest and all the rest of it but some of them like General Mark Clark or um or certainly Douglas MacArthur but also Montgomery um became obsessed with u uh public figure and Public Image I mean Mark Clark had more uh than 50 people in his public relations department uh and they were all instructed to make sure that they only took one side his profile his left profile was uh uh of which he was very proud uh and um he felt that um this made him look rather Imperial and Roman or whatever and he was known as Marcus aelius clarus by his officers um because also of his determination to conquer Rome but it was very strange that here were these characters who in 1939 or in the case the American 1941 nobody had heard of any of them and suddenly they became almost film stars and major figures because the news reals and the uh journalists could only interview the commanders uh and focus on the commander because other anything else would be giving away um secrets to the enemy again coming back to this issue of of changing attitudes towards history you mentioned Churchill uh and Stalin for example um recently there have been questions over Churchill's um role in the Bengal famine um although you know I'm sure that those that those questions have been around for a long time as well to be fair um even since I think Leo Leo amyy at the time who's not not a great friend of Churchill was very critical of him for example but ALS also more contemporary attitudes to Churchill have I think become more pertinent particularly around this idea that he was a racist he was a colonialist and so on and actually many younger people think that he was more of an enemy and an evil person than a sort of hero and that really has been a shift I think in the last 20 years perhaps um can you comment on that yes um I think one of the problems here of course is that uh the younger generation um cannot accept context um and I mean let's face it churcher was an Edwardian figure and he hadn't changed in that particular way uh many believed in Eugenics of that particular period they were racist I me there's no doubt about it they did believe in British superiority um and you know churcher was a racist but I mean so were many of um his contempor contempories um uh that was the way things were um I'm not suggesting trying to defend it or anything like that but you have to understand what the m M ality was at the time so were they were in America so were they were throughout Europe as well so there was nothing particularly um uniquely evil in that particular way about the individual character uh the trouble with chura was that he had this totally romantic vision of the British Raj in India um and then felt that sort of any attempt to create Independence or obain Independence uh was sort of treason in one particular way without in any way putting himself into the shoes boots or whatever of Indians um who even though uh you know the British uh occupation or the British Conquest uh brought um some advantages it also brought uh huge disadvantages and above all uh they would prefer to have their own leaders however badly LED they might have been um rather than a totally foreign culture um taking them over which is Perfectly Natural we would have felt the same way and certainly the the Saxons felt that um you know when the Normans took over took over England but I mean the trouble was as I say Churchill was a child of his particular generation what do you make of the movement to So-Cal decolonize history now I know that you write about um you know sort of old white men that's the kind of activist phrase today you second world war and all your books Russian Civil War and so on focus on very much on Western SL Russian history um and there there is an argument from some academics and so on contemporary arent that says well no no you should really be focusing on um other parts of the world and you know our cont contributions of straight white men and so on have been far overplayed and so and things like that so what do you make of that movement to decolonize well I think it's absolutely right and we have seen this change that um we look at the world and look at history uh in a far more Global uh way and I mean it was it was wrong the way that we were or that I was sort of brought up when I say wrong I'm not saying necessarily morally wrong I think that it was historically wrong the way that we were always brought up with just the emphasis on British history and what Britain had achieved uh in the world um and I think it's far more important that one does understand it I mean been huge books which are all now world history you know whether it's uh seabag or um Peter frankopan and all these they're looking at things very much more uh in a purely in a in a sort of global global way one realizes and from that point of view you know what a very small part Europe really played I mean Europe actually played a huge part but in in the great scheme of things we were a very small part of the world and I think that it's corrected now sometimes the correction can go too far or it's overcorrect or whatever and we have to understand uh British history as well and Britain's uh place in the world during that particular period what we did right and what we did wrong and many of the things were wrong there's no doubt about it but I mean in comparison say to uh other Colonial histories um you know there some some were quite probably a lot worse um but that's not necessarily the point the point is actually try to understand things from on a much wider basis than we have in the past um and actually see in a way how uh the West actually um is may have had a disproportion effect on world history in the past but it's now we are seeing should we say the decline of the West in terms of not the way necessary that spangla uh predicted of the decline of the west but we are very much seeing the decline of the West and the way that our role is going to diminish very rapidly not just Britain but obviously the whole of Europe as well um in proportion to uh China the United States and um other parts of the world now I suspect that there are some particularly Telegraph readers who would say that um these some of these academics lack nuance and certainly when they say that Britain had a unique evil role in history compared to other let's say Empires and so on you know we're uniquely responsible for the slave trade for example they might say or again they'll talk about the Bengal famine and other other sort of supposed atrocities that we committed um you know there's even some historians who say today that the British Empire was the equivalent of the Nazis morally um what do you think of that do you think there is some do you think there's a tendency by some to lack Nuance because perhaps they're sort of they've got another lens of morality or politics when looking at history well it's ridiculous to start making comparisons with the Nazis and I mean this is always one of the worst distortions of uh distortions of history I mean you know that I mean you know it's it's I can't remember what the name of the thing is or whatever the lore on the internet that sort of as soon as an argument goes goes beyond beyond sort of four exchanges then um somebody's going to bring in Hitler um I mean all of that of course is is is is is ludicrous yes of course there going to be a lack of nuance when you allow politics um to take over history by that I mean the duty of the historian is to understand it's not to use it as a political football weapon whatever um and to with any lack pass on that understanding now the trouble is that um obviously history can never be as certain European countries in particularly sort of Germany and so forth um have tried to argue that you know that history is a science history cannot be a science it's a branch of literature uh so it cannot be completely objective now historians should try and be as objective as as they possibly can and as I say they should just try to understand and then to pass on that understanding now that's always not going not necessarily going to be objective um but I think that one should make a very very big effort to do so uh and I always find actually the most encouraging thing um is when I've had a fixed idea about a subject I'm going to write on um that in the archives I then find that I'm totally wrong that means I've actually found something quite interesting in the archives and it is it is worrying the way that many uh sort of historians have moved into particular uh areas um because they've got a particular um acts to grind and um military history not surprising is a very uh controversial area um and it's attracted uh many out from outside who perhaps have uh see things in or they have a particular sort of political moral grid which they want to impose on the subject without actually trying to understand it properly first um you know if one's get to understand armies You' got to understand how they work psychologically how uh why they do things in particular ways um you know what is the point of bernet train training you know um it may look sort of you know ferocious and dehumanizing and so forth um actually the reason and the only reason for the burn it basically is so that uh you say if a soldier runs out of M ammunition he's not automatically going to panic because he's still got sort of something left well I mean we knew from the second world war how few uh bits uh were responsible for killing um the enemy very very few indeed uh but was still an important part of training but some historians will leap on that and try and sort of say oh that's purely sort of because it's a uh a sort of uh form of mind washing or brainwashing you know uh you know one's got to I think one's got to as I say try to understand and um then convey that understanding was it Napoleon who said something like history is just a tale we tell ourselves or a story that's that's basically being invented well no it's more than that but I mean you know that's uh that's sort of uh an aonic sweep sweeping sweeping statement but there is an element of the truth of course uh but it's not the whole truth thank you very much Anthony Bieber for joining us I really appreciate your time Steph thanks so much

Channel: The Telegraph

Views: 363,319

Keywords: Telegraph, News, putin, antony beevor, ukraine, history, ww2, vladimir putin, ukraine war, russia ukraine war, russia ukraine, military history, war in ukraine, ukraine news, wwii history, russia, russia ukraine news, russia ukraine conflict, world war 2, world war ii, ww2 documentary, putin interview, putin ukraine, the great war, nato, second world war, tucker carlson vladimir putin, putin tucker carlson, vladimir putin interview

Id: DFW5V4IB_PA

Length: 57min 13sec (3433 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024