Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…out World War II—the Fall of France, fascist sympathies of Spain, Italy as part of the Axis—Britain is in real trouble. What do you do about this? Britain has this big empire that it wants to protect. It's got a massive basing system, more bases than anybody else does in order to protect this empire. From this, which is a very resentful Germany. Doesn't much like the Versailles settlement of World War I. It's a divided country in that a Polish Corridor separates East Prussia. The Germans start trying to solve this problem. Initially they're taking Austria, the Sudeten German parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Then they take all of Czechoslovakia in 1939. They've already dealt with the Rhineland, which is supposed to be demilitarized per the terms of the Versailles Treaty. They ignore that and remilitarize in 1936. This is important because there are a lot of industrial resources and factories and things there. It turns out that Hitler's plans require—it's not optional— it requires the resources not only of the Rhineland, but also Czechoslovakia and Poland and Romania, which is going to have the oil for them. You get to 1939, when Russia and Germany are dividing up Poland between them. This is the part of the history that Russians don't like to talk about, but it's exactly what they were doing. This triggers World War II because the French and the British honor their alliance with the Poles to help deal with this. So in 1940, Britain's in a world of hurt. It faces this massive blue problem. Then there's this growing green disaster. It's facing two continental powers, Germany and Russia, that both have these expansive empires they want to create. They want to divide Europe and then the rest of the world. Bad news for Britain. But 1941, Hitler decides he needs Russia too. Then Russia decides, “Ah, the one that's attacking me is probably the major problem, not the other one.” So Stalin is going to swap sides and he's going to be coordinating with Britain. That's better from Britain's point of view than having two continental powers to deal with. So now it's down to one. Once the United States has gotten into the war, this is what the world looks like. You have a big cancer in Europe from the British point of view. But it's all surrounded by oceans that Britain can get to. A lot of allies are neutral states. So Britain has access to those places. Then there's a separate cancer in Asia where Japan's trying to work its magic. I say separate because the Axis never coordinated these two theaters. So this is looking at the world from a maritime perspective. What you're looking at are all the oceanic routes that connect everything. Britain's problem is how to leverage the miracle of sea transport that basically can access you the whole world, versus a logistical nightmare of land transport where you can only drive through countries that will let you drive through. The seas give you mobility, they give you access to theaters, markets, resources, allies, and. They also give you sanctuary at home. If you're surrounded by them, it makes it harder for people to invade. So Britain's trying to leverage all of that against the armies of the continental armies. . They also give you sanctuary at home. If you're surrounded by them, it makes it harder for people to invade. So Britain's trying to leverage all of that against the armies of the continental armies. It's going to try to strangle them economically, diplomatically and militarily. Now, the generation that led World War II in Britain—not just Britain but elsewhere—were the conscripts of World War I, which was supposed to end all wars. They knew full well, in the midst of World War II, that it did not remotely achieve that promise. They learned a whole series of lessons. I'm going to do a comparison of what was done in World War I versus World War II. They are the greatest generation, not their children who claim the title. Lesson number one is don't go beyond the culminating point of attack. What's that? The terminology comes from Carl von Clausewitz, who is the Western guru on conventional land warfare. It means if you're attacking in a battle, if you go too far you'll weaken yourself because the enemy will counterattack and send you further backwards than you would have otherwise been. In the case of World War I, you're sending young men over trenches into ongoing machine gun fire. What do you suppose is going to happen to them? This profligate waste of life in these assaults out of trenches… Maybe you took a little territory in the first two weeks, but after that, nothing. These offensives would go on for months and months, racking up hundreds of thousands of deaths. No more doing that in World War II. You can look at the death figures for World War I and II. In World War I, the British army gets the multi-million man army that they had coveted. They deploy it on the main front from start to finish and chalk up twice as many deaths as they did in World War II when they have a peripheral strategy. In World War II, they do make the mistake of landing the big army on the continent as an opening move, but it doesn't do well. Then they reassess and get that army off the continent immediately. This is what the Dunkirk evacuation is. The French are covering the British as they're decamping from the continent, saving the British army. This is why France has such large casualties, even though France isn't in the war that long. It's going to be a long wait before the British get back on the continent. It’s also a long wait also for the United States to get in the war. There's no more going beyond the culminating point of attack. The way diplomacy is run is also completely different. In World War I there were exactly two conferences trying to coordinate things among the Entente powers—the December 1915 and November 1916 Chantilly Conferences. All they are are the military heads. Well, the Russian Romanov dynasty is overthrown in early 1917. It is too late. What happened in World War I is that the Germans focused on the Western Front in 1914, Eastern Front in 1915, back to the Western Front in 1916. In World War II the idea is you want to squeeze them simultaneously from all fronts so they can't divert people back and forth. Front in 1914, Eastern Front in 1915, back to the Western Front in 1916. In World War II the idea is you want to squeeze them simultaneously from all fronts so they can't divert people back and forth. If you look at the coordination, it begins even before the United States is in the war with the ABC staff talks, then the Atlantic Conference which yields the Atlantic Charter, talking about what war objectives are: unconditional surrender of Germany and what the postwar situation is going to look like. There's coordination not only among military leaders, but among civil and military leaders as well. There's a combined command of US and British forces. We have offices in each other's capitals. We're also coordinating with the Russians so that you're setting up not only war termination but also what postwar institutions are going to be like to hold the peace. It's a completely different event from World War I when Russia falls out of the Entente because there are bread riots in St. Petersburg and Russia could not supply its troops with adequate armaments. Well, that's not going to happen in World War II. Russia comes with a really large army. Germany has another large army. You've got to have a big army to deal with Germany's army. In World War I, there is no Lend-Lease aid. No one would have thought of giving that much stuff to each other. It's like everybody first and then it's like okay, everybody last in that one. . The railways that had not been completed in World War I. The Trans-Siberian doesn't get completed until 1916, and the Murmansk railway isn't completed until early 1917. The Romanov dynasty is gone. It's too late. In World War II, three-quarters of Lend-Lease aid would go over those completed railway systems. Now, to the British credit, they did try to break the blockade on Russia. The way to get into Russia in those days and hook in with the railway system would be to get into the Black Sea at Odessa. Russia had all the men, but they didn't have all the war materiel to fight. This is where the Gallipoli campaign comes in. You can argue about whether you think it’s good strategy or not, but it was miserably executed. First of all, it wasn't a joint operation. What's joint? Joint means you're coordinating your different military services, in this case army and navy. What goes on? The British Navy tries to run the Dardanelles for two months. That does not work well. Do you suppose the Ottomans might think something was up? Yeah. When you get up there on the Dardanelles, it's a very steep place. The Ottomans are all busy sorting that all out, getting troops in place. Two months later, when the British, New Zealand, Australian and French troops all land on a given day, the Ottomans are there with a welcome party, essentially. That invasion stalemates in three days. But they keep at it for eight months, taking 190,000 casualties, 55,000 of whom are dead, totally miserably executed. It comes as collateral damage. As the British are trying to run the Dardanelles with their navy, this is when the Ottomans are terrified of their Christian subjects, the Armenians. They're starting to round them up, pulling them out of the army.…

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