Brian Stewart: As I'm sure, all of you know
a new release by Antony Beevor is a very big publishing event. A former British officer, Antony is a military
expert famed for a remarkable series of blockbuster books that exposes a great deal more than
we knew about the conflicts of the 20th century. Major works include Stalingrad, Berlin: The
Downfall, 1945, D-Day: The Battle of Normandy, and The Battle for Spain, about the Spanish
Civil War. Obviously, an historian who works on that
giant tapestry. But Antony Beevor not only excels at high
strategy and describing how that evolved, but also shows an extraordinary eye for detail,
by carrying an overlooked foreign archives, combing diaries and personal letters, he reveals
much that is astonishing, poignant and often chilling about our human natures in war. Just to quote one British review on the Second
World War, "This is as comprehensive and objective an account of the course of the war as we
are likely to get, and the most humanly moving to date." I'd like to introduce Antony Beevor. [applause] BS: Great to see you again, Antony, and I
wanna start right in with the vastness of the canvas you work upon. I probably, I worked it out today, had been
reading about the Second World War since I was 12, over half a century, yet I'm still
struck and stunned by the amazing, it's shock and awe. It's ability still to, say, have you shaking
your head and saying, "How was that possible?" Will we ever get out from under, historically,
the shadow of this war, do you think? Antony Beevor: To certain degree, no, and
I think one of the reasons for that and this is one of the great dangers today is that
the Second World War has become the dominant reference point for every crisis and every
conflict, and we've seen the dangers of that, whether it was, going back to 1956, Eden comparing
NASA to Suez, whether it was Kennedy, in fact almost blackmailed into involvement in Vietnam
because of his father's reputations in the [unrecognizable word]. George Bush comparing 9/11 to Pearl Harbour,
which of course implied immediately, a strategy of state-on-state war, on taking it purely
as a security problem. And then, the Department of Defense and the
Neocons, immediately assuming that shock and awe would create a totally subservient Iraq
and Iraqi populace, and comparing them in fact to the Germans and the Japanese in 1945,
well, it was was gonna be no comparison whatsoever. AB: So, there are huge dangers in this sort
of dominant reference point, but at the same time, and there is a lot still to learn and
to be reminded, I mean, for example, when we see developments in Europe at the moment,
as soon as we start to see threats against immigrants or Xenophobia, or whatever, there
certainly should be warning signals flashing quite loudly as we see a certain disintegration
of the centre in European politics at the moment. Due to these external pressures and should
we say memories of the Great Depression and the 1930s. BS: It seems to the moral aspects of that
war are going to fascinate, if not haunt us, almost forever, two things among many things,
come out in this book that really struck me. It's almost the question of the innocent and
the damned, one is the millions, the tens of millions of average people who got sucked
up into that war and had their lives blighted or changed forever. Almost everybody here probably knows somebody
who had that happened, or a family that went through it. The other is, and this really shocks me, we're
talking not thousands but millions who committed the most gross murders imaginable, the massacres
all over Eastern Europe, in Asia, what have you. Start with the innocent first and give us
a sense of the impact that did cause so many people to basically get swept up in this war,
and never be the same quite again. AB: Well I think, one of the most striking
aspects is the way that nobody really had any control over their own fate, and that's
one of the reasons why I start the book with the story of this Korean, who was forced at
the age of 18 to enter the Japanese army in Manchuria, then was captured by the Russians
at the Battle of Khalkhin-Gol, was then later forced into Red Army uniform and was then
later captured by the Germans and forced into German uniform, and he was finally captured
by the Americans in Normandy in 1944, came back to a British prison camp, was then moved
to a prison camp in the United States and at the end of the war, he was released and
settled in the United States and finally died in Illinois in 1992. AB: It was the most extraordinary story, but
in many ways, it for me, summed up the way that [A] People did not have any control over
their own fate, but also the global nature of the whole war, the way that it, in fact
inter-reacted in one of the reasons really for writing the book was 'cause I realized
myself having focused on certain subjects before, that I just did not know enough about
the way the whole thing fitted together and I think that's one of the vital aspects of
that war. BS: Well, you brought in much more of the
whole Asian war that we've tended to ignore it quite a bit on this continent and we'll
get to that later. But that other element of the humanity that
was, it leaves one shaken, and that is the cruelty, the viciousness of human beings,
one towards the other, but in particular areas of the world, it's just beyond our, almost
comprehension today. What explains the fact, the Soviets and Germans
could kill on mega scale? AB: Yes, and the Japanese too. What one has to understand is, and it really
boils down to one thing and that's the de-humanization of your enemy. Goebbels was a diabolical genius, realized
that hatred alone was not enough, you had to combine hatred with fear to get that really
potent killing mentality. I suppose, that was as fascinating when working
on the Spanish Civil War and I realized that particularly in the sort of macho society,
like the Spanish society, it was the suppression of fear which actually produced that completely
unstable chemical reaction which exploded in such violence afterwards. And so, propaganda and a sort of psychological
preparation of soldiers to kill and not just other soldiers, but also civilians was I think
one of the most outstanding characteristics, most appalling characteristics of the Second
World War. It was also true of the Japanese, when you
have to remember that the average Japanese soldier came from a society which was conditioned
to respect militarism. AB: The mother stitched what were called thousand
stitch scarves, which they gave to their sons before they were sent off to war which they
wrapped around themselves, and somehow in a belief they would ward off bullets. But once they got to training then the sergeants,
the corporals would humiliate them completely, slap their faces and generally beat them up. Now this wasn't just to enforce conformity,
it was above all a question of the knock on theory of oppression that it meant that they
were going humiliate and take out all of their... Take out and humiliate... Sorry I'd got the microphone in wrong place. [laughter] Humiliate their enemies both civilian
and military. AB: So, you had a lot of programming in that
particular way. In the case of the Soviet-German War, the
Germans of course had been taught to see the Soviet soldiers and the Soviet civilians as
sort of below humans, sub-human and all the rest of it, rather as the Japanese reviewed
the Chinese ever since elementary school, they've been taught to believe in the divine
race of the Japanese and basically, the fact that, well, not the fact, sorry, basically
the idea that somehow the Chinese were below pigs. So, if you like, they were all psychologically
prepared. BS: Knowing the full scale of the horrors
I wonder if when you were researching the war, you ever kept asking yourself, which
I do every time I open a new book about the second world war, the question, "Could it
really have been avoided in the 1930s"? Was it the leaders or was it a lack of public
will? Was there any way do you think around 1938,
1939 either the US and Britain and France been more combining with the Soviet Union
in some way realistically could have been avoided that war? AB: Well, the standard rule for historians
is that nothing is inevitable, and I think that's absolutely true, but I would phrase
it in another way, I think it is very hard to imagine how the war could have been avoided
when Hitler was determined to have the war. So, really from the moment that he became
Chancellor and was able to manipulate events, so that he had complete control in Germany,
I don't see how it could have been avoided. The real turning point in a way I suppose,
was the very early spring of 1939 when Hitler occupied the remains of Czechoslovakia because
that indicated to the French and the British that in fact, he was determined to go in for
territorial expansion rather than just his claim of getting the Germans back in under
one roof. AB: So, from that point on, I think that it
was unthinkable that he could have been stopped, but even before then, when you have a leader
with a very very powerful and effective army as Hitler was, with a determination to reek
war on the whole of Europe. Let's face it, remember, Hitler was furious
that he'd been deprived of a war because the British and the French had caved in over Czechoslovakia
at the Munich conference. I mean, he was really frustrated by that. BS: And then, understandably given the Second
or the First World War, it happened like 19, 18 years earlier, the Western public were
horrified by... AB: Yes. BS: Imagine them standing up and going into
another war yet again. AB: Absolutely. I mean the French and the British were determined
to avoid the war and they assumed, this is always the mistake when you judge another
country or another person if you like by your own feelings. They assumed that the Germans would also want
to avoid war, and so, that was why they believed that say, Hitler might well back down and
that he was really only interested in the German minority populations in the fringe
areas or on the near abroad of Germany at that particular stage. BS: You deal with an interesting detail that
one of the reasons Hitler was in such a rush, was he was convinced he was gonna die early. I wonder if he had a better doctor and less
indigestion, maybe we might've been spared that. I mean, he was convinced, he was gonna die
a young man. AB: Yes, he was. But he also had such a form of intense narcissism
that he felt nobody else could achieve what he was going to achieve, and he told his generals. Unfortunately, none of them have actually
left any record of what they thought when he told them that, "Nobody else is capable
of achieving what I will achieve and I have got to do all of this. I'm 51 years old," or whatever he was at the
time when he said it. So that, "We must go to war now." AB: I was always very, very disturbed, if
you like in a way, of the whole debate, does evil exist? And I remember asking a very distinguished
psychiatrist in Britain who is also a passionate student of history. I said, "Tell me. I know you can't obviously analyze somebody
you've never really met or who has never been on your couch. But you know, after all you've read about
them, how would you rate Stalin and how would you rate Hitler?" AB: And he said, "Well, with Stalin, I think
it's fairly straightforward. I think one would probably classify him as
a paranoid schizophrenic." But he said, "When it comes to Hitler, I think
all one can say is that he had a severe personality disorder." [laughter] I felt I hadn't quite solved any
problems as far as I'm concerned on hearing that. BS: We usually date the start of the Second
World War, September the 1st, 1939, German Invasion of Poland, the 3rd, Britain comes
into the war. But your book brings out in a way I haven't
seen before the degree to which major war was already occurring in Asia involving not
just Japanese and Chinese, but the Russians and the Japanese. A war which we... Sorry, the Soviet-Union and the Japanese. A war which we've heard very, very little
still in the West. AB: Well, that's certainly true. I mean, I think it underlines the fact also
that every country has their own vision, their own memory of the Second World War because
of their experiences at the time. I mean, for the Americans, the war started
in December 1941. For the Russians, it was June 1941. For most of Europe, it was September 1939,
and then, also obviously, the Canada are declaring war at that particular stage. For the Chinese, of course, it was 1937 or
even 1931 if you include Japan's invasion of Manchuria. AB: So, all of these times really underlines
the fact that the Second World War was actually a conglomeration of different conflicts. Both state-on-state clash, major powers fighting
each other, but also an element of the international civil war. But when one looks at... I start the book, in fact, in August 1939,
and this is not just to be controversial or different or anything like that. I mean I genuinely believe the way that the
Battle of Khalkhin-Gol, which was a major border conflict between the Japanese and the
Russians in the far East, it was on the border of Manchuria or Mongolia. Mongolia was more or less Soviet protectorate,
while Manchuria being completely occupied by the Japanese. AB: And the Japanese were being very, very
provocative at the time, and there were many senior Japanese officers and generals whose
real objective, they wanted to attack the Soviet Union, they were obsessed about Bolshevism. And they wanted to attack the Soviet Union,
and they thought, they could take a huge chunk out of Siberia and Vladivostok and all the
rest of it. But by getting a very bloody nose at Khalkhin-Gol
because General Zhukov and his first combat command inflicted a very heavy defeat. AB: It was not a very big battle, but my God,
it was an influential one, because it had the knock-on effect of persuading the Japanese
that it was against their interest to attack North against Russia. And, in fact, they would do better to attack
South later against the British, French, Dutch possessions and of course, the American bases
around the Pacific. But it also had a huge knock-on effect on
what was basically the geopolitical turning point of the war, I.e. The battle before Moscow because although
the Germans requested help that the Japanese should tie down the Russian divisions, particularly
the Siberian divisions in the far East. When they realized that the Japanese were
not going to take part in that particular fighting, but they were gonna attack South
against the Americans, then Stalin was able to bring in all those Siberian divisions at
that really crucial moment, and I really do think December 1941, as many historians have
rightly argued, was the geopolitical turning point of the war. BS: So many of these events hang on this thread,
like a battle few people have perhaps even heard of here, dissuades the Japanese from,
as you say, attacking, stabbing the Soviet Union in the back when Hitler invades would've
changed the whole course of the war, go South instead, change the whole history of the Pacific. Turning to back to the West again, I wanted
to ask you about the big drama we all know about. Dunkirk, the threatened invasion of Britain. How serious do you think was Hitler in actually
wanting to invade Britain? That tends to be still debated to some extent. AB: Well, I think that Hitler had a fairly
open mind, I think he was actually rather realistic in this particular case. Curiously, those who were most obsessed with
the invasion of Britain was the SS and particularly, the Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, who'd even
compiled lists of all the British who should be rounded up and arrested and all the rest
of it. BS: About 2000, I believe. AB: Yes. Something like that. Yes. Well, of course, it was a badge of honour
to be on that list, I think anybody who wasn't was deeply offended. [laughter] But as far as the Wehrmacht was
concerned, their position was quite straightforward. The Royal Navy was still incredibly powerful,
and unless they could establish supremacy or certainly at least air superiority over
the Channel, unless the Luftwaffe could achieve that, then as far as they were concerned,
there was no question of attempting that cross channel invasion. AB: So that's why the Battle of Britain was
not just symbolic but it was also important. But one mustn't overlook the fact that of
course at the end of May, we have one of the first turning points of the war and this was
the only moment really when Hitler could have won the war when Churchill stood up to Halifax. One has to remember how vulnerable Churchill
was, he was Prime Minister, he'd only been Prime Minister since the 10th of May, I.e. Only about two weeks, just over two weeks. And he was hated by much of the Conservative
Party. He did not have the support in the House of
Commons. He was, thank God, very clever and but maybe
it was also genuine as well, so I mustn't be too cynical in the way that he'd been very
respectful to Chamberlain, even though Chamberlain had been humiliated by the exit. AB: Churchill showed him every respect, insisted
that he stayed in the official residence in number 10 Downing Street and he, Churchill
would just take up lodgings in the Admiralty and so forth. So, Chamberlain was there to support him when
they came to the key debate, if Britain was to see what terms Hitler would demand in the
case of negotiations, and Halifax thought, "One mad, not two." Because we could get good terms now. But if we lose the whole of the army in France
and this was the point where the navy estimated they could only probably get off about 20,000
of the troops in Dunkirk, nobody expected the miracle to happen, and it was, as you
say, hanging by a thread in a way, and that's the one moment when Hitler could have won
the war because if he'd managed to force Britain into a completely subservient position through
negotiation, the handing over of the fleet and basically disarming Britain even if he
hadn't actually occupied it fully, then there would have been very little chance of the
liberation of Europe with American, Canadian troops and so forth, coming to Britain to
re-invade the continent. BS: One interesting option discussed was British
fleet sailing, leaving Britain and moving into Canada. AB: Well, that was one of Churchill's major
mistakes psychologically and I think he realized it very soon after he sent that message to
Roosevelt, I mean, he sent this message to Roosevelt basically trying to convince him
of how desperate the situation was. And in fact, he'd had a contrary effect. Roosevelt read it as Churchill vacillating
and even considering the possibility of surrender, which was particularly the opposite of what
Churchill wanted to do. And this of course led to one of the great
tragedies of the war because it pushed Churchill into ordering Admiral Somerville to attack
on the French fleet at Mers El-Kebir because this is the one way that Churchill had to
signal to the world that Britain was ruthless, that Britain was gonna fight to the end whatever
it took. AB: The French were given the option of sailing
to the New World to United States or even to French possessions in the West Indies,
in the Antilles. But the Admiral refused and that was when
much of the fleet or part of the fleet was sunk.
