THE CHURCHILL INTERVIEW: Sir Antony Beevor, military historian and author

welcome to the national church a librarian center my name is Michael Bishop and I'm the director of the library and the executive director of the international Churchill society the international Churchill Society was founded fifty years ago and is dedicated to preserving and promoting the historic legacy and events such as our recent 35th international Churchill conference at Colonial Williamsburg to learn more about Churchill in the society please visit Winston Churchill org the national church a librarian Center is a partnership between the University and the Society and over the last few years we've welcomed many students and visitors and shared with them access to primary documents books and exhibits Churchill conversations series we've welcome to the library leaders such as ambassador Ron Dermer philanthropist David Rubenstein general david petraeus provides musharraf actor gary oldman and distinguished historians including Neil Ferguson and Andrew Roberts and many more to discuss not only the particulars of Churchill's life but their application to our present-day challenges Churchill himself observed the longer you can look back farther you can look forward but now let us turn to our main event Sir Anthony Beaver was educated at Winchester and Stan Hurst where he studied military history under John Keegan and where Winston Churchill learned the soldiers are a regular officer with the 11th hussars he left the army after five years to write he has published four novels and twelve books of nonfiction his work is appeared in 32 foreign languages and sold more than a million copies among his brilliant works are Stalingrad Berlin the downfall 1945 d-day the battle for Normandy and the Second World War his literary prizes include the Samuel Johnson prize the Wolfson Prize for history and the Hawthorne Dhin prize for literature not to mention orders and decorations from various European governments is married to the writer and biographer Artemus Cooper whose father John Julius Norwich was a distinguished and much-loved historian who sadly passed away this year ladies and gentlemen it is my great honor to introduce Sir Anthony beaver frankly I thought we begin by having you set the scene for us it's it's the end of August early September 1944 and something strange and unaccustomed is happening the Germans on the western front are in full and rather undignified retreat can you paint that picture for us and tell us how the planning for what Churchill later called the all-important forward bound in the north got underway it was not just on the western front that the Germans were in retreat it was also on the eastern front there had been operation Bagration where the Red Army had advanced right the way across better Russia always through the Vistula into the gates of Warsaw but on the Western Front the Allies the British and the Americans had rather misjudged the thing various things they saw their victory in Normandy this extraordinary charge forward all the way from the River Seine to Brussels to Antwerp sadly just to the port not to the closing the estuary not to opening that an entirely but also there they made a big mistake about the attempt to bomb Hitler on the 20th of July they assumed that any army which was trying to blow up its own commander-in-chief must be in a state of disintegration but what they failed to see it was of course the failure to kill Hitler meant that the Nazis the SS and of course Hitler himself was gonna make sure that the army fought on till the very end in fact until Hitler was dead say there was if you like a victory euphoria in all of the headquarters at that particular time those British and American and of course shaf to believing that it was just one more push and the war would come to an end now Montgomery was of course determined to try to get across the Rhine before General Patton and he felt that if he could use the first allied airborne army he could then drop these Airborne Division's in a line running north from the Belgian frontier all the way up to Arnhem as you say quite rightly in your opening that no plan survives contact with the enemy the trouble was that had already been 14 plans since d-day for different airborne operations now some of them were launched I mean some of them were planned in such a rush that they actually there would have been a disaster in those cases but they were all canceled now for the American Airborne Division's who had already fought with great bravery in Normandy and very effectively they were not something to put off by these cancellations but for the British 1st Airborne Division which have been held back from d-day and were waiting and ready to go time after time the effect have suddenly been pulled back off the aircraft and in two cases they had actually been on their aircraft ready to take off was very demoralizing and it didn't help at all I think in attitude and there was bitterness and frustration the American paratroopers attended a joke let Patton win the war and various other remarks like that but then they were already as I said proved themselves the real trouble was that Montgomery was determined to impose his own view on the Air Force he had a rather low opinion of both the RAF and of the US Air Force unjustifiably so I mean he'd actually been helped hugely in the desert by the desert air force of the RAF and in this particular case he was determined to impose his plan even though there's Eisenhower and the British Chiefs of Staff had told him that the Air Force had to have the final say in the planning of any airborne operation for obvious reasons but modern Montgomery was going to have none of that so when browning was called out from England on the 10th of September and this was the day the notorious day when Montgomery started sort of basically almost yelling at his supreme commander General Eisenhower a night in her actually had to put his hand on his knee and say steady on Monty but remember I'm your boss and anyway fortunately weren't enemy to problems in those days so putting and putting a hand on my knee or anything like that but anyway Montgomery was put back in his box slightly but the trouble was that he was determined that this was one way of getting ahead of the Americans because if he got across the Rhine first then the I don't know how he felt would be obliged give him the bulk of the supplies and even command over American formations which is what he wanted so you mentioned Monty's knees but I learned from your book that it was Ikes knees that may have been the problem because he kept hurting himself exactly and I wonder is that just I mean is that just a relatively trivial point or perhaps was he was he so distracted by that that perhaps he allowed a plan to go ahead that he might otherwise have realized was a bad idea or were the political issues really the problem well I think it's it's an interesting point I don't actually think it would have made a huge difference because when I just remember that the American method of proceeding was different to the British in the sense that a commander would allocate a mission it was much closer to the German army notion of out odds tactic ie you gave somebody a job and then it's up to them to work out how they got on with it and he had decided to give Monty the first allied airborne army and at that meeting on the 10th of September he didn't really inquire about the plan at all it was entirely up to Montgomery he basically felt perhaps he should have grabbed or exerted too much control but I think you're right the the problem of having twisted his knee very very badly which meant that he was out of action and then also the fact that his headquarters were still back at Grand ville in Normandy you know several hundreds kilometers behind the lines and this I think probably was a mistake as he recognized he would have actually been in better touch if he'd stayed in England had the sort of rear headquarters at the rear headquarters there but I mean again this is sort of you know one can have a little bit about counterfactual debate on it but I don't think it's in the end it made a huge difference Monti was given them the Airborne Division's he had now suddenly asked for having the American Airborne Division's to operation comet which was the precursor to Operation Market Garden was planning to do the whole thing that Market Garden was gonna do but with just the British Airborne Division and the position dependent parachute Brigade Monty had then been persuaded by Dempsey but who had also been to persuade nearby general Horrocks the commander of 30 Corps that this was an insufficient that resistance was hardening they needed more and that's when Monty was thrilled with the idea of having American formations under his command so he said right let's have the hundred and first and the ages second as well and say that was how Market Garden was if you like upgunned from Operation Comet hmm so you've said elsewhere that you're not particularly fond of counterfactuals and one of your main points in this book is that there's no point looking at Market Garden and saying well if only this had been different is that different your fundamental belief of what she I think you proved in the book is that it was a lousy plan in the first place but a lot of intelligent people got swept along by it and of course a lot of people paid the price for it can you talk about personalities like Montgomery general browning and the motivations that drove them forward even though it was a fundamentally misconceived plan I think you're absolutely right on this I think first version would actually start in the States interestingly both general Marshall and general HAP Arnold of the US Army Air Force were very keen on making use of the first Allied airborne army they'd invested a lot of money in it they were invested a lot of effort and resources in creating this new organization and as one person rightly said you know it was burnt burning a hole in their pocket they were just going to use it Monty had come up with this plan unfortunately people didn't actually look at the plan that closely and again as I say there was this sort of general atmosphere of victory euphoria they were making that terrible mistake of historical parallel they saw the situation in early September 1944 as the same as the August 1918 and seeing that the German army was on the point of collapse and this was desperately under estimating the German capacity to recover from a disaster but so anyway that covers on the American side Churchill was of course much involved with so many other things at that particular time but he was keen on the idea that Monty's plan even though it was incredibly optimistic was a chance anyway for the British somehow to get back ahead and have more influence in Allied counsels he was we'll aware as was Montgomery that the British were running out of manpower we were obviously a bankrupt country by that stage the Americans were providing all of the fuel weapons almost everything and and also the manpower and Britain was feeding very much the junior partner which was why was that ridiculous thing of Montgomery being made a field-marshal village was waged British press who felt somehow he was being insulted when Eisenhower arrived US supreme commander on the continent I'm afraid the British press played a very bad role in all of this and he did right up to the end of the war encouraging Monty to behave badly frankly and this was one of the problems we face now the trouble with Monty as I said in my ardent book I think he had high functioning Asperges and I was the BBC put me in to discuss this with Monty's step grandson who lived with him for quite a long time and here yet - my future lief didn't sort of say this was a load of rubbish he said actually I think there's best explanation and of course you always think you've come up with something a rich when somebody then pointed out well actually there was a professor of psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin who'd written a large paper on Montgomery and Asperges 15 or 20 years before say you know you're never there you're never that you're not really gonna be first in that particular way but I do think it explains a lot about Montgomery's problems about not being able to listen to other people and only filtering out anything which didn't agree with his own particular views which is a major major mistake in senior commanders you know confirmation bias as it's rightly called and Monti suffered from it in a big way so that was one of the problems there also is actually let's face it as field marshal brookmont is boss once said nothing brings out the worst in people in the high command interesting you know the photographer on the great wall time and photographer says were beaten actually added to that also charity and amateur dramatics but I do Monty certainly I'm afraid did not behave well in these circumstances he was not listening to what certainly admiral ramsay the naval that sort of naval chief for shaf kept on arguing saying you've got to do something about antwerp but Monty thought if I can get across the Rhine you know I'll get all the bulk of the supplies it doesn't matter we can sort out where Antwerp later and again I think that was a major mistake and even Montgomery who was not keen on admitting any of his mistakes later on in life had to admit had been a major thought Browning was a man of considerable vanity he'd been very brave in the First World War - no doubt about it but he had no airborne experience and one of his problems of course was that General Matthew B Ridgeway had plenty of airborne experience now in the whole eisenhower idea of balancing the Allies between the British and the Americans as the commander of the 1st Allied airborne army it was general Lewis Brereton he therefore wanted to have a deputy bridge British commander as deputy commander and that's when that's when general boy Browning was chosen and boy Browning was rather sort of matinee idol God's officer married to Daphne du Maurier's a novelist and frankly a pretty arrogant and pleased with himself in many ways and managed to put up the backs of all of the Americans that he was working with so it shouldn't exactly help in the circumstances anyway he then was the one who was sent back by as I say Montgomery and general Dempsey the commander of the second British Army to deliver Monte's plan to the first Allied airborne army on the evening of the 10th of September and browning outlines the plan and Brigadier General Williams the head of transport command troop carrier command is asked by Brereton to reply now not surprisingly the American airborne commanders were pretty miffed at the way that Montgomery had tried to have bypassed them had not consulted them at all so they weren't exactly terribly receptive to this plan anyway but they proceeded to point out that all of the planning had been based on earlier operations but now the days were short I said that they would not be able to get two lifts in on the first day and that had a catastrophic consequence because it meant that in each case each division would have to leave back half of their forces simply to defend the landing zones and the drop sent so that was a major problem before it importantly before you've even started the other one was that because the now the distances were greater they could only tow one glider behind each tug plane and not two as had been the planning for some of the earlier operations so again there been a major mistake in the planning back in bold Belgium by the British because because of Monty's refusal to consult the Air Force third one was that the British were going to be had to be dropped eight miles according to the Americans eight miles to the west of Arnhem which meant that they had a huge distance to cover and they had to cross a major city with ten hundred thousand inhabitants to get to their major objective the bridge which went they lost all surprise the moment they and for airborne troops who were basically lightly armed this was a huge fundamental mistake also the American Air Force refused to consider any of the Kodama glider attacks on the bridges themselves which the British a managed to carry out so brilliantly in Normandy on Pegasus Bridge but Brereton and the others and teeka Williams absolutely put their foot down and a vice marshal Hollingsworth of Britain the British commander was certainly prepared to take in the gliders to the bridges but the Americans refused point-blank saying that the flak defenses around the bridges were too strong and they refuses to drop anybody on the south bank of the River Rhine which actually have been much closer to the bridge and they said that that was impossible territory but I think most people today would agree with that hmm I mean I know that there were concerns about that the flak defenses but eight miles it's extraordinary to think about dropping I don't know when you lose all and this of course was exactly what went wrong when he came to the afternoon of the 17th of September hmm another figure who's very prominent in your book and who was very badly treated during and after the operation was the pole Sousa basket nobody could talk absolutely well general sosabowski right from the beginning had even on operation Comics the predecessor to Market Garden had warned that this was completely under estimating the Germans you know this British and American assumption that they were in a state of collapse Sasa Volsky knew by his own experience and he was a very experienced soldier and a very intelligent one but he was not a very diplomatic one it has to be said he kept on saying but the Germans general or the Germans because browning was simply not listening and not surprisingly I suppose rather predictably I should say when he came to the latter stage of the battle when finding the poles the poles had been delayed and delayed and then finally they were dropped it sort of odd ski was put in an import position ordered to send his troops across the River Rhine to reinforce the British besieged in Osterberg without even had to quit boats to cross the Rhine and they'd never done on a run they didn't ever done River crossings or anything like that and then Horrocks the commander of 30 Corps browning and worst of all Montgomery then basically tried to blame sauce the Bosque not to make him necessary scapegoat but basically trying to say that his total lack of enthusiasm of the whole operation and all the rest of it almost implied cowardice now this was outrageous I'm afraid his British generals were more concerned with preserving their own reputation and the idea that so svorski had made these serious charges against the whole planning process and then had been proved right afterwards was I think something too much for them to swallow and that's why he was treated so abominably Montgomery even said I didn't want to have the pose under my command and things like that and sort of husky was he then and the Polish military authorities were then forced basically to sack sosabowski which as I say was outrageous anyway in my polish publishers snack I'm getting there in January to launch the Polish tradition they sent me the jacket which they have designed and needless to say there is sosabowski in the middle and just pair of paratroopers so I think that in Poland is gonna be marking a finish operation I don't blame ya well the the the American and the British suffered many casualties the Polish suffered casualties and damage to their unfair damage to their reputation but according to your book it was the Dutch civilians who really suffered the most in large numbers and in many terrible ways you talk you write very movingly about their capacity for forgiveness and the fact that they had much to forgive absolutely I think that the military history has changed thank God in the last 20 years was there it's now much more what professor Sir Michael Hogg would say it's the history of war ie one has to look the suffering of the civilians caught up in between and particularly and this is one of the things and one of the reasons for writing the book was that I have to be honest that I was pretty irritated by earlier books on the subject because there was very little about the consequences for the Dodge not any did they suffer during the fighting some 3600 altogether died but when he came to German revenge afterwards because the Dutch had rushed out to help the British and the Americans the boys had cut boys had come out wanting to dig their foxholes for them farmers arrived with carts and horses to tow that and to carry their supplies and so forth I mean the Dutch showed incredible bravery and above all the women who worked in the improvised hospitals caring for the wounded and they used to pull them into their houses in the middle of street battles and things like that to look after them the German response was brutal to say the least I mean as far as the Germans were concerned the Dutch were fellow Aryans their language was very close to German they believed that they should have been on the German side the fact that they had invaded a neutral country in 1944 needless in 1940 seemed to go out of the window in this particular logic not surprisingly there was always a certain confusion of cause and effect in the Nazi mentality to put it mildly and as a result they sealed off the major cities they everybody was pushed out of Arnhem and all of the north bank of the Rhine the houses were either looted and set on fire or destroyed everybody was forced off Abraham hundred and twenty thousand or so as refugees and in the hunger winter as it was called in 1944 to 1945 they were they sealed off the cities and didn't allow food to get through over 20,000 died of starvation German troops behaved abominably because they exploited the situation they I came across this in secret recordings in the British rock is made by German Jews secretly recording the conversations from German off and the German officers have been boasting that they didn't even need to pair to brothel because with half and loaf of bread they could force Dutch women to do what they wanted I mean it was so abominable way that the Dutch were treated in a particular way and I'm afraid it was a direct consequence of operation Market Garden Prince Bernhard a Dutch commander in chief said that his country when Monti claimed that he had been a success Bernhardt then sort of said his country could not afford another Montgomery victory and our chief marshal Ted a monk who was Eisenhower's deputy then said when Monty claimed that had been a 90% success because they've got 90 percent of the way to Arnhem said one jumps off a cliff with more success except for the last three inches say or should we say there was a lot of skating reactions to that what about and you'll understand I'm obligated to ask this what about Churchill's response to all this his role and then what he had to say later Churchill I obviously knew I think what what had gone wrong I didn't he was indeed out of that that but I quote in the book an interesting conversation of Harold Nicolson had with Churchill beforehand but also the way that Churchill handled it in the House of Commons the British establishment has always been rather reluctant shall we say to admit that it's made an appalling mistake and Churchill knew that they couldn't criticize Montgomery because apart from anything else it was questioned in the British press again who would who would have defended Montgomery and he could not be held to hang out to dry or basically face the consequences of what he'd done I'm trettel felt obliged to new circumstances I think quite right there too in his thing saying never in vain not in vain or whatever to justify the operation I'm sure in his heart of hearts he knew perfectly well that the operation probably should not have been launched but Churchill was always very sensitive and quite rightly so to the feelings of the families of those who had lost loved ones in an operation as you know he emphasized to military leaders that they shouldn't come up with sort of ridiculous operational lanes like sort of operational Flopsy or something like that they've got to be sound reasonably sort of you know military and all the rest of it because you know parents do not want to lose a son who's being killed in something which sounds ridiculous there were many who actually exactly objected to the operation Market Garden I'm thinking it was a very serious serious name but the important what saying was that they these the families should not feel that the sort of the son had died in vain which did mean I'm afraid covering up what a disaster it would be and in a typical British way Browning was sort of sent off as chief of staff to Mountbatten in their in the in the Pacific or rather in sort of Southeast Asia and actually interestingly general Irkut who was the British commander his daughter told me and she was a friend of Browning's daughters that browning had never mentioned on and for the rest of his life and actually died of drink rather I mean tragic but frankly you know I'm afraid the consequence of his desperation I think still to command that come core in war before he thought that the war was going to end I asked this question with some trepidation because I know that your wife will not watch war films with you always angry and grumbling and I've taken down all my darkest hour posters and everything before you arrived it but to the extent that most people know anything about art omits through the film a bridge too far you know I've seen more than once and I'm sure many people here have as well as far as that film goes specifically what does it get right and what does it get wrong oh it gets quite a lot of things right I mean it's a lot better than many other films no on the subject darkest I let me quickly do that I think Gary Oldman's performance definitely deserved an Oscar was brilliant but frankly the director and the scriptwriter should have been shot for offenses against history you know it was outrageous the way that it was implied that Chamberlain had teamed up with against Halifax turn because in fact Churchill had behaved with such I think sensitivity towards Chamberlain he'd allowed him to stay in Downing Street he hadn't young moved out of the Admiralty hole reasons in fact Chamberlain had supported Churchill yes at the crucial thing and I think that was an outrageous manipulation I'm afraid British and American filmmakers have very little respect for history I think actually Continental filmmakers have a much better I have a much better treatment of history in that particular way now as far as bridge too far is concerned they're in it's a lot better than many other war movies I think in that particular way there are a number of things you can you can criticize I think Cornelius Ryan didn't want to criticize the British too much or Monty too much in it I've been he all say we must remember in fact he was actually dying of cancer when he wrote that book and I don't think that sort of necessarily helped in many ways he had a brilliant research team and I hope will admit freely that actually I have sort of profited because there was so much of the stuff which was never even used and this sitting there in this extraordinary archive in Athens Ohio and there are some some wonderful bits in the film interesting now found in the archive at Athens Ohio there was a letter from a Trojan cook who was played by Robert Redford in the that incredibly brave crossing of the river Val and afar I felt surprised to find this letter from and from well later Colonel cook complaining bitterly about being played by Robert Redford I thought this men would have been rather flattered by Bob Hansen in the movie but anyway but it was I think very good but he did not show enough in any way about the suffering of the civilians I mean it showed the bravery and Kate Kate Horst played by Liv Ullmann was made into quite rightly into a hero for the film but that was about as far as I think I think there should have been a lot more about the real consequences ready for the doctor at the end but no it was it was a lot better than most you have in the course of your scholarly and writing career dealt with some of the darkest chapters ever in human history and I'm wondering what if any is the emotional toll say with your your berlin book for example which dealt with some exceptionally horrific things the emotional toll that that takes if any and how ultimately or whether it colors your view of human nature I think one is doing taking the last moment first I think one of the most important things is that you can never generalize and the duty of historians I think is to emphasize that you cannot categorize you cannot generalize for example you know you're also looking for moments of compassion as well if you like slightly to lighten it to show that there are moments of hope as well because war brings out sometimes the best in people as well as bringing out the worst I remember with the Stalingrad book I mean looking at a plate of food from a years afterwards and it still occasionally hits me that you know you look at the plate of food and think what that would have meant to 12 a dozen people you know at the time it's very hard to distance yourself in that way when he came to the Berlin book and especially working with Luba my wonderful Russian colleague she was often in tears at the material will come across in the archives especially about the mass rapes I would find it would sort of the important thing is you've got to keep your mind absolutely clear to make sure you get the stuff down from the archive material get it down accurately but it'll hit you you hear a couple of nights later or whatever it might be and I did have a bit of a nervous collapse at the end of that but partly because a pressure up finishing the book on time and all the rest of it but also because of the sheer horror of the material I didn't you can just well I mean you can you've got to try and distance yourself a little bit while you're getting the stuff done but obviously it's gonna get you in the end well ladies and gentleman this is a conversation I could continue on indefinitely but I think it's your turn to open this up for questions you do have a microphone Aaron there in the back has it and this gentleman here in the tie we'll get things started thank you uh Sir Anthony for coming today my name is Paul Duke and wom a professor at the American University of Beirut and peacefull Beirut Lebanon and teach the world war two of course there so one of the things I've always wondered being more of a Russia and sort of Eastern Europe specialist myself is why wasn't matzah just fired so in your own work in the works of other scholars he always comes off badly he comes off worse and worse it seems as time goes on and why would I remember from your deed a book I think it was your due date book was that one of the problems the American generals had with the British counterparts was that they were too polite to each other and you're absolutely right interestingly George Patton in his diary a bomb point says that sometimes the Americans were too rough on their sacking sacking of commanders he felt that sort of you know you had to at least allow a divisional commander to make one or two mistakes before you started sacking them just I suppose depending on how big the mistake was but there was certainly a truth about that you know the British did not face up to the failings of a number of their generals that is absolutely true the problem with Montgomery's especially it was that he'd been turned into a hero because of North Africa and the British did not have many Kirov generals in the Second World War and that was one of the problems that Churchill faced of not being able to get rid of him Churchill I think had mixed feelings about Montgomery there's no doubt about it he did make his famous remark about what was it invincible in victory or whatever it was and in advance and insufferable if that's right insufferable in victory yes and Monti was insufferable laid out about it but they couldn't really for him as I was saying earlier about that the support from the British press I mean it would have been such a blow and this was one of the problems that Churchill also faced if you like with bomber Harris he had been built up in such a way and this is the trouble we really with wartime propaganda I was always intrigued by the way when you look at how different generals reacted you have to remember of course at the beginning of the war nobody had ever heard of them and then soon find them being treated like some stars and that was partly because the journalists were correspondents and the movie neutral teams were all at their headquarters now they weren't embedded or anything like that as in modern day all they could report on in fact really was the character of the commander because they couldn't report on operation so that was giving away information to the enemy and as a result to where a number of unfortunately not all by any means but there were a number of generals whose head was completely turned by this attention I mean Mark Clark actually was that one of the worst in a way he had a team of 50 public relations people to make sure that the photographers could any changes photographed from his best profile and all the rest of it and because he was rather proud of his Raymond profile and was determined to capture Ren his staff officers were started referred to him to mark as Marcus Aurelius Clark as' but anyway Monty I'm afraid was also obsessed with his own view and I think that there was a mistake that they started to feel that you know charisma was the new form of leadership and McArthur of course was one of the one of the worst examples but the word generals and I mean like for example in the Far East general bill slim who was a very modest man loved by his soldiers did everything that he possibly could for them and was actually a very good commander but I'm afraid of course Burma was a backwater and we didn't hear very much of him and Monty was prepared to take the credit trim anything that anybody else did and that's one of the reasons why the Royal Air Force hated him because he never gave any credit to our marshal cunning and the New Zealand commander of the desert Air Force who deserved huge praise because actually you know his contribution to victory in North Africa was just as big as Monty's frankly so there are those particular problems if you like of which the British authorities certainly faced and I think that's one of the reasons why Monty and wasn't actually it's but I mean there were a number of British commanders not just American who wanted to have Monty as a result of Normandy and here's misunderstanding and miss reading if you like of the way things were and the way that he handled part of the battle there could you say a word or two about general model and his performance during the battle yes general Marshall Moodle it was should we say a very effective thug and thoroughly liked by Anna barred by Hitler he was always known as Hitler sort of fabricated because of his way of sorting out problems he made a phenomenal mistake in the course of the battle for armament operation Market Garden because he refused to blow up the bridge at nine may now the bridge at Nijmegen was a was abs in a way a just as important obviously as the bridge at Arnhem and modal felt that Hitler would accuse him of defeatism and in fact actually modal was one of the few generals who get away with disagreeing with him one of the very few but he still refused to blow up the bridge even though we treat the SS commander of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps and all of the other generals were desperate to have the bridge at night Megan blown up now this is one other reason why in fact the whole operation should never have been allowed to get ahead but Ziff model had blown up that bridge there is no way that 30 Corps the British guards armored division could ever have got to Arnhem on time if it had been blown up so I mean that's I think one of the other reasons why the operation should never have been allowed to go forward but that was using main that was his main mistake apart from that was that I think that he handled the the battle extremely well especially the logistic side the way that he had the Laureus the trucks coming straight from the from the factories right up to the front line there was no question of wasting time by transmitting them over transshipping stuff or anything like that the way that they had the Blitz transports bringing in tanks on that very first night from all across Germany to the Dutch border all of those things he handled very well but he did that make that one fundamental mistake about not burying the bridge at night Megan well thank you very much for this and all of your many superb works and you're clearly preaching to the choir here we all love the history of World War two what have you found in your career is the most effective way of transmitting enthusiasm for the lessons that World War two when these charismatic leaders that you've just mentioned what are the most effective ways of transmitting those lessons to the current generation of emerging leaders preparing a university well how do we get Millennials to care about yes well I think one of the interesting questions is which funny enough and all the Dutch journalists were posing to me when I was when the book was being launched in Holland why is it that the Second World War is the more fascinating today than say 20 years ago why is it still creating so much interest and I think the reason for that actually is quite simple the Second World War had more moral choices than almost any other period in history and as a result actually moral choice is the essence in all human drama really and that's why I move is why novels and television series and so forth do focus on it so much and also because I think we all feel even today we were very fortunate not to have been involved in that particular war and he places the question how would I have behaved in those circumstances especially those in occupied countries would I have betrayed would I be enforceable trade people would I have had the courage to shelter Jews or help the resistance or whatever when that would put my family at risk so all of these questions I think are sort of key elements in the nation even for the young today in in what I think you one could describe as a post military environment and a sort of health and safety environment and also a non-judgmental one and I think the non-judgmental element is important when people are intrigued by the idea of moral choice the lessons for politicians men statesmen and so forth is we should never never never go in for historical parallels because they are deeply misleading I mean I'm afraid President Bush comparison of 9/11 to Pearl Harbor basically corrupted strategy in the sense that it implied state-on-state warfare rather than dealing with 9/11 as a terrorist and therefore a security issue the British had been just as bad we had at the time of serious Anthony Eden comparing NASA to Hitler Tony Blair doing the same with Southern insane and so forth I'm afraid there's always a problem with specially British and American politicians wanting to sound out the Churchillian or Roosevelt Ian and getting up on a pedestal says to emphasize the importance of the crisis or whatever it may be and this is the danger that the second world war is nearly always you supposed by the media and politicians in a knee-jerk way to emphasize as I say the importance or the seriousness of a particular issue and as a result there is a tremendous I think confusion of thinking about from a strategic point of view but also also from a moral point of view I think there is a great danger in the future and the fact that this discussion has been coming out very much this summer and autumn when sort of touring in Europe I mean we had the elections in Sweden and whole lot and people are making comparisons between the 1930s and today again that is a big mistake but that doesn't mean that the politicians and the leaders in Europe are not going to face and in the United States they're going to face huge moral problems in the future when it is a question of climate change and the effect that that is going to have on refugee swarms coming up from Africa from Central America when genuinely starving refugees are gonna start to arrive not just economic migrants and I think that this is something where they're going to have to start making decisions about who you let in who you keep out and all the rest of it and this actually will be almost worse than many of the decisions made in the Second World War and I think that leaders need to be well aware of this particular problem which they're going to be facing I think in the not-too-distant future this gentleman here in the third row thank you very much we're in your opinion might the forces at issue have been better deployed at that time obviously with the imperative to press the advantage and prêt to press the offensive against a retreating German army you briefly mentioned Antwerp where might they have been better to play it at that time well antrum straightaway oh absolutely right by that Monty did have a plan funny enough this is partly because he was under pressure from Admiral Ramsey for dropping our doing an airborne drop on voltaren which was Cecil Island at the end was an island then it's no longer an island at the end of what's called the beylin Peninsula and this was the north bank of the river shoulder through which the ships would have to come to get into the port of antwerp on the 3rd and the 4th of September this fantastic charge forward by the British 11th Armored Division had actually captured the Port of Antwerp with the help of the Belgian resistance but they just sat there they didn't push on I mean obviously after such a huge charge war when you do need to sort out your logistics and your maintenance and all the rest of it on all the tanks but Monty and Horrocks and also to 7 degree Eisenhower were responsible for not having immediately tried to push them forward over the Albert canal and to seal off that particular Peninsula and that was a major major mistake now Monte did sort of cover himself by asking for this parachute drop on vulture but the problem was you know you could imagine the dangers we saw what happened in Sicily with the airborne operations there which went badly wrong with gliders dropping in the sea and all the rest of it and of aircraft being shot up either inside and of course a danger with this island of trying to drop paratroopers on it many of them would have ended up in the sea so the first Allied airborne army flatly refused to go ahead with any plan there but actually what they should have done was to have pushed on with ground troops and focused them on that particular flank on the western flank in Holland round north of just north of antwerp because this allowed basically the bulk the remnants of the hold of the 15th german army which had been in the paddock Calais had retreated up the channel coast they would have all been cut off and you can imagine how angry the American Airborne Division's were when they were defending what was called hell's highway which was the the road north going up towards Arnhem with German attacks coming in on both sides because most of the attacks come in from the West where all of those who slipped through and across the the shoulder by night and were now are able to when it came to Operation Market Garden were then able to attack the flanks of the two American Airborne Division's so another reason why should we say Monte was not the flavor of the month as far as the US forces were concerned sir thank you for talking to us at the risk of violating your rule about not drawing historical parallels this past summer I was part of an exercise sponsored by US Army Europe called saber strike and part of that there was something called swift response where paratroopers from the US Army Poland and British Army jumped into Poland Lithuania and Latvia and and any historian can look at that and kind of draw a parallel between that and the operations at Market Garden my question is what kind of advice would you offer to national planners as they look at those kind of operations moving forward well I think that the main lesson coming out of Market Garden as an interesting point you make is that the idea of dropping paratroopers or airborne forces well in advance of the main bulk of ground troops is while they risky to put it mildly general Bradley was horrified by the whole idea of Market Garden as he had been horrified when people had suggested in Normandy that they should do drop a parachute forces well forward of Operation Cobra he knew perfectly well though that actually affects your end strategy in terms of or rather your in tactics as far as the ground forces of concern it also puts the airborne forces at risk so there was a double reason not to do it now I can understand in the present situation of the Baltics and the threats there that one needs to have a tripwire and airborne forces dropped forward is one way of providing it but I mean we are into a pretty dangerous area there where should we say Russian forces are far stronger on the ground than any NATO forces I had some interesting conversations at the Swedish Minister Ministry of Defense a few weeks ago on the whole subject as you I'm sure you're well aware the great operation I mean the great sorry exercises of Trident juncture which have just been taking place and the Swedes and the Finns of course very bravely were risking Russian reprisals and by taking part in a in a Article five scenario of this NATO large NATO exercise but I think that one sort of certainly needs support on that northern flank and with the Finns able to deploy anything up to a quarter of a million troops this reads much fewer I'm afraid could have deployed 160,000 before but they can now still deploy about 80,000 and you know if they can be brought in that's fine but they're on the wrong side of the Baltic as far as the Baltic states are concerned but there is going to have to be some form of immediate trip Wow now that could be strengthened by the use of airborne forces but to drop our borne forces on there in far ahead would be fed Arash I mean my old regiment is out there at the moment as part of that sort of forward troops with base the poles and the others interestingly there game back to general sosabowski of course the Polish parachute Brigade of course has been called quite right there the source of most ski Brigade and named named in his honor but I'll be I'm sure hearing quite a bit more about that when I get to Pelham in January Wow I just wanted to just make a quick comment for people who are interested in seeing the actual sites and Arnhem has a very great a very good Museum and also an ikemen has a very good Museum and you can walk the bridge it and a little note of interest for Americans Walter Cronkite flew in a glider pilot in a glider he was the pilot he was in with the other men inside the glider plane in into Naga man I think it was so any it was always dangerous at that time of course he's right in the middle of a war the bridge that between Arnhem and Neyman is that called the Arnhem bridge of the night then you know that's the Brigid over the Val at Nijmegen which is the biggest bridge of the lot and that is still more or less as it was before the one at Arnhem is completely different and it's in a different place but it's actually the great irony was that it was the British who then destroyed that bridge a couple of months a month or so later after the operation because the Germans were using it for reinforcing and supplying their troops just around that particular area so things have changed I mean it's always interesting to go back I mean I was very very lucky because I had a Dutch friend whose father was the head of the Arnhem resistance or one of the heads of the armed resistance and he had been absent Allen was there as a charge and say he could sort of say right now this is not changed and from here the trees have now grown up and you can't see what you could have seen before then I mean all of these things are terribly important when you go back to revisit but your name again you can see very clearly particularly the terrible fighting that the the grenadiers as the British guards division were involved in of capturing yields sharla mines old fortress on just by the bridge at my Magan and you can see what a difficult task that was and the tasks which the American paratroopers had are fighting through the city to try to clear it so that they could then push on from yeah thank you ladies and gentlemen I have a few quick announcements I hope you will all join us here on Wednesday December 5th at 6 p.m. when Nigel West will discuss his new book about Churchill and mi5 should be a very interesting evening and you're all welcome now I realize this is this hardly makes up for the absence of books but we do as it happens have book plates and you can have Sir Anthony sign one as long as you give your song that you will immediately go and buy order the book as soon as you leave here today and then finally before we close I have a great scoop for everybody the subject of Sir Anthony's next book it's gonna be the Russian Revolution and Civil War I have written about the Spanish Civil War and I thought that it was rather important at some point was there write about the Russian Civil War but although I'm not allowed back into or at least rather I would be unwise to get back to Russia because in Syria I didn't you would happen in Syria an avid fighters imprisonment as a result of the Berlin book a lot of the of the research has already been has already been done rather quietly I hope by various friends so I hope that that will be coming out in three years time it might possibly before but it's quite a large project ladies and gentlemen thank you for being here today Sir Anthony thank you for joining you

Channel: The International Churchill Society

Views: 35,935

Rating: 4.7341771 out of 5

Keywords: Winston Churchill, Prime Minister, Great Britain, Allies, National Churchill Library and Center, Sir Anthony Beevor

Id: CsPV9MCfu8w

Length: 55min 33sec (3333 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 13 2019