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This is KZSU Stanford.
Welcome to entitled opinions.
My name is Robert Harrison,
and we're coming to you from the Stanford campus.
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I know we're all in a hopeful mood these days, friends.
Thanks to the outcome of the presidential elections.
Yet let me recall what often gets overlooked,
namely that our new president-elect is an outstanding writer.
Anyone who has read dreams of my father will agree with our friend and frequent guest-majory
purlov that as a literary work,
that book is worthy of being taught in literature
and creative writing courses.
To this, I would add that its author is not only a remarkable writer,
but also a very thoughtful reader.
I would go further and say that no one could achieve what he has achieved
and what he has yet to achieve
without being the beneficiary of the wisdom of a great number of great books.
The same kind of books that we'd like to talk about on this show, by the way.
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In the past couple of years, commentators have often remarked that Barack Obama was running as our first post-60s,
post-Vietnam, post-Cold War era candidate.
True enough, but it is more accurate to say that Barack Obama is about to become the first post-World War II president.
The Vietnam War was a chapter in the history of the Cold War.
The Cold War in turn was the icy aftermath and direct consequence of the Second World War.
The Second World War in its turn was the monstrous child of the First World War,
which, if for no other reason than that, remains the greatest calamity of world history.
Maybe not in terms of the scale of destruction and number of its casualties,
but certainly in terms of the catastrophic follow-up war,
for which it was largely responsible.
From the First World War to the killing fields of Cambodia,
the political history of the 20th century reads as one long saga of collective insanity.
How could the putatively most enlightened, rational,
and scientifically advanced nations on Earth commit such unthinkable suicide in the year 1914?
How could Germany, which boasted of the greatest thinkers, scientists, composers, and poets in Europe,
give birth from deep within its national soul to the monster of Nazism?
How could Europe not have found a way to avoid another far worse act of collective suicide in the lead-up to World War II?
60-70 million people died in the Second World War, the majority of them civilians.
25 million dead in the Soviet Union, 19 million in China, 5 million in Poland, 8 million in Germany, 6 million in the Holocaust.
It boggles the mind.
Fortunately, human beings lack the capacity to really conceive of,
let alone experience such a tragedy in all its magnitude.
We tend to experience the tragedy of war, one death or limb at a time,
or a few deaths at a time, at the very most the death of one select group at a time,
after which things start to become abstract and numerical.
The most hopeless writer of the post-war period was Samuel Beckett,
who had an almost superhuman capacity to look squarely into the eyes of what had taken place between 1939 and 1945,
and it nearly turned him to stone.
Certainly, we can't blame the madman whom Ham recalls in Beckett's play endgame.
I once knew a madman says Ham to clove, who thought the end of the world had come,
he was a painter, an engraver.
I had a great fondness for him.
I used to go and see him in the asylum.
I'd taken by the hand and dragged him to the window.
Look, there, all that rising corn,
and there, look, the sails of the herring fleet, all that loveliness.
He'd snatch away his hand and go back into his corner, appalled.
All he had seen was ashes.
He alone had been spared, forgotten.
It appears the case is, was not so unusual."
End quote.
That madman was not as lucky as the rest of us.
Most of us are able to look away from the gorgon head and still see that the corn grows,
that there is still much loveliness in the world.
The madman, poor soul, could only see the ashes of Auschwitz, of Dresden, of Hiroshima,
which were left behind by all the human smoke, if I may recall,
the title of Nicholson Baker's searing book on World War II,
which came out a few months ago.
Could it be that what makes us hopeful these days is that maybe,
this may be we are finally reached a point where we are ready to bury the 20th century's legacy of ashes,
its history of madness, that would certainly be cause for hope.
Of course, to bury the ashes of the 20th century does not mean to consign its history to oblivion.
It's only by constantly retrieving the past that we give historical density to the future.
We cannot transcend the past without forever taking stock of it, revisiting it,
reinterpreting it in all its human drama, heroism, and tragedy.
That is why today in this mood of great expectations,
we are going to go back in time to a specific and fateful day of the Second World War,
September 7, 1940, which marked the first day of the Nazis protracted bombing of Britain,
the so-called Blitzkrieg.
I have with me in the studio a highly distinguished historian, Peter Stansky,
who is Professor Emeritus at Stanford, and the author of many books,
the most recent of which was published this year under the title, The First Day of the Blitz.
It's a book that tells the story of that day from many points of view,
some of them official, some of them personal, some of them anecdotal, some of them journalistic.
Professor Stansky is drawn from a wide variety of sources to weave together his story about that day,
and as is the case with all good stories, it has a definite moral to impart.
Welcome to the program, Peter.
Thank you very much.
Well, let me first apologize for my ranting.
No, no, very eloquent.
But an interesting listeners of this show know that there's something about 20th century history
that really sets me off.
Before we go on to talk about your book, could I ask you to remind our listeners what exactly was the Blitz?
Yes, actually in connection with the bombing of London and something of a misnomer,
the Blitz was a word that a meaning of his lightning in German.
The Blitz was a word that arose as a German tactic to make a quick blow.
Frequently, of course, from the air, from the German air force of Luftwaffe,
that would, like an insect bite or a snake bite would stun the enemy and bring instant victory.
And that's what Blitz meant, and Blitzkrieg meaning lightning war.
And that had happened in Rotterdam.
It would happen in one of the earliest examples, of course, was Gernica during the Spanish Civil War, a single raid.
And in a way, it's sort of intriguing.
In some senses, it's a misnomer for the bombing of London.
There had been, we'll probably get into it.
I mean, there was the context of the Battle of Britain, which have been going on.
The Germans had been bombing England for some months, starting in the summer,
but not in such a concentrated way.
And the term Blitz was not actually used all that much about these other bombings, even though they were extremely serious.
But the Blitz of London starting on September 7th is its special event.
But as I say, the word is something of a misnomer in that London was bombed for 60 days with one exception,
and then continued to be bombed until the following May.
So it was hardly a lightning event.
They were hoping it would be a lightning event.
Am I correct in -- when I say that it was more than just London?
I mean, London took the brunt of it.
Yes, yes. In fact, I mean, there's still some resentment.
If that's quite the word.
Plymouth, Liverpool, of course, the famous bombing of Coventry, Bristol, many cities were badly bombed,
and heavily damaged.
But those bombings tended to be at the most three or four days,
or there would be a long pause, and the bombers might come back.
And in the Battle of Britain, of course, a lot of air bases were bombed, and factories were bombed.
But so there was a lot of destruction all over Britain.
And of course, Glasgow was bombed, Belfast was bombed.
London in being bombed was not unique.
But London was unique in being bombed for such a long period.
Many of the victims, most of them were civilians, of course.
Now, I take it that part of the objective, the part of the Nazis was to demoralize the British populace through this blitz.
Yes.
And that's why they targeted cities primarily rather than military facilities.
No, no, no. Yes, no. I mean, the thing is that the original Hitler's objects were Hitler had two objects.
The primary object was actually to try and get the British to sue for peace.
And then if they wouldn't do that to soften them up and prepare them for invasion.
In order to have invasion, he felt quite rightly that he needed supremacy in the air.
So the Battle of Britain, which started in July, I believe, I may have that taste slightly wrong.
But the Zugl Battle of Britain was to get factories and air bases.
And it was fairly successful, but the Germans never got air supremacy.
And then Berlin, a few British bombers very ineffectually bombed Berlin.
And guring the head of the Air Force persuaded Hitler that, of course,
guring had promised the German people that Germany would not be bombed.
And he was so furious, he persuaded Hitler to allow him to bomb London.
And there's an argument, again, it's a what-if of history,
that if the Germans had continued to bomb the air bases and the factories,
that they would have been successful in softening up Britain,
that they might have sued for peace, or they might have been invaded.
And invasion was a very real option up until Hitler decided to call it off and decide to invade Russia.
So guring had the idea of bombing London as retaliation on the one hand,
but also as a shock and awe.
Yes, demoralization.
Demorilization.
And Tara, to create Tara, and I think obviously he hoped that there would be an upsurge,
a popular upsurge, a demand for peace on the behalf of the population.
Right.
In fact, you say that your book, your decision to write this book on the first day of the blitz,
was actually inspired by the events of September 11, 2001 here in America.
In the sense.
To a certain degree where you found some parallels.
And in fact, you weren't the only one people were often reminiscing about the first day of the blitz.
In that the September 11 perpetrators were also hoping to terrorize through that act.
Yes, and actually I have to give credit to the New York Times.
And perhaps it was another newspaper as well.
But the New York Times in several spots had illusions to the blitz.
They had a column in which they had quotations from Constantine Fitzgibbons book about the blitz.
And then the most telling moment I thought there's this iconic photograph of St. Paul's,
which was not slightly damaged, but was famously survived.
And the most serious days of the bombing, not the first day,
but December 29, 1940, was one of the three most heaviest raids by the Germans.
And there's a famous photograph of St. Paul's surviving, that particular bombing.
And the Times ran that photograph at the time of 9/11 with the caption, "A Ground Zero London."
So it was a very self-conscious parallel, but also the further parallel,
which I thought was quite important.
And quite important in terms of how terror operates is the ordinaryness.
I mean, these weren't military targets, though the qualifications in that,
since there were warehouses and factories on the London docks and transport,
but there were civilian targets.
It was very coincidental whether if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time you might be killed.
And the heroes were the ordinary population, these arbitrary people,
who, I mean, arbitrary in the sense that they were bombed,
but also the people who coped were the policemen and the firemen,
rather than a who in a sense of semi-military, but are not armed forces.
And the same thing, of course, was true in 9/11 with the firemen and the policemen of New York City,
and the others who came into hell.
So the event, at least part of the objective of the Blitz did not succeed
- No, no. - in the recording to your book.
On the contrary, you claim that there's something actually counterproductive
about an attempt to terrorize a populace through these means,
and that sometimes you can strengthen the will and the resolve of, to resist,
and to fight back and to say no.
Yes, but I think one has to be very careful.
I think it's too easy.
And there's this whole issue of the so-called myth of the Blitz,
and what is the myth of the Blitz?
It's too easy to fall into a sort of rather sentimental heroism.
And I have some wonderful quotations that I say so myself.
I have to write them from Eric Severeid, I think it is,
or one of the American reporters who were there saying,
"We're not necessarily saying that the British are more heroic than other people."
And we don't have to make excessive claims, but they're historical.
In the sense what choice do you have, you just have to carry,
whether famous English phrase, carry on,
but carry on should not be said in a sort of lifting heroic way,
but rather sort of quiet, resigned way.
But I think people unless they're hit, unless they're killed,
and I think on the first weekend, September 7th was the Saturday,
that I think demoralization came close,
and maybe they might have been panicked.
Maybe if the bombing had been somewhat worse,
they might have been panicked, but it didn't get to that point.
And it seems to me that this sort of attack doesn't work,
because what choice do you have?
I mean, you just have to carry on.
And I think that's what the British did.
And then, and this is a somewhat controversial point,
my view is that you get used to it.
You get used to the most horrible situation,
because otherwise, you're just going to disintegrate.
Well, I appreciate what you say that it might have worked
if the bombing had been more effective,
because after all, if I may say so myself,
it worked with Hiroshima, like a saki,
and it was in the same sort of even more brutal intent,
which is to bomb a nation into submission.
Yes, but of course this is again what if,
and we might not necessarily agree with this about this.
I wonder, I mean, what never knows.
If the emperor had said, we are not going to surrender,
or the powers that be, said we're not going to surrender,
that said we're not going to surrender.
Would there have been a uprising?
Would the populace have refused to go along?
I somehow doubt it.
I mean, I think that millions more both Americans and allies
and Japanese would have died if the war continued.
But it's not, even the atomic bomb,
a horrible and total as it is,
I'm not sure that it actually, in and of itself,
would have been the good decision to end the war, ended the war.
And if the emperor had said otherwise,
I wonder what would have happened.
I don't even want to contemplate what might have happened
because if we had continued using the bombs on other cities,
I mean, it's not very uplifting scenario for sure.
What do you tell the story about the first,
you chose to write your book really only about the first day?
Why was that?
Well, part of it was because I thought it was so important.
Part was, if I may say so, practicality.
And in terms of doing the blitz,
I mean, the documentation, the great source of the book
is the Imperial War Museum in London,
which has manuscript material, printed material, etc.
The number of bombings that took place in England
in the course of the war was manifest,
a huge subject.
And as a way of organizing it,
to try and find out as much as I possibly could,
as I say to students,
it seems to me that an object of a dissertation or whatever is depth,
it seems to me it's more important in my view,
of course others may disagree,
is more important than breath, particularly for historian,
that one wants to go as deep as one can possibly can.
And therefore, it's almost arbitrary to take a single day
and to look and to try and find,
in terms of unpublished material, published material,
as much as I possibly can about what happened on that day,
particularly as I consider that day is so extremely important.
At the very beginning I have this quotation from Ritchie Calder,
who was a science journalist at the time,
who's son, Justide, Angus Calder,
who wrote a wonderful, wonderful book about the Second World War
and Britain called the People's War,
that he says that September 7th in his view
is just as important as July 14th in the fall of the Bastille.
And so, and I felt that this day really hadn't gotten its due,
that its importance had not been fully recognized.
Well, one question I have about that decision is,
is one day, was that day decisive enough in itself
to tell a story,
or would one need more time in order to draw out the full implications
of what happened on that day?
Well, I mean, I hope that I put the day in context.
I mean, I just, I begin with a sort of background,
the whole issue of air power.
And of course you mentioned, I meant to pick up on that.
Of course, November 11th, 11 a.m.
European time, this November 11th,
is the 90th anniversary of the end of the Second of the First World War.
And of course, as you rightly said,
the legacy of the First World War is tremendously important.
And it's in the First World War that air power begins to become a factor.
And the development of air power,
and I think I'm saying subject to question,
that the British were the first to establish a separate air force,
apart from the army and the navy,
although they began as affiliated, I think, with the army.
And the importance of air power throughout the military developments
in the 1920s and 1930s is very important in building up to September 7th.
And then I hope I also have a certain sense of the other side of the significance of September 7th.
What I tried to argue is that September 7th was extremely important,
both for the course of the war.
And though it certainly didn't look likely,
considering the situation that Britain was alone,
the only country fighting the Axis, though she was getting support from the United States.
But the United States supported it and to the war until December 7th, 1941.
And so that September 7th was extremely important for the course of the war.
And also what I also tried to argue,
it was extremely important for the course of the future shape of British society.
The particular experiences of September 7th.
Yeah.
Where did you gather your materials, the unpublished?
Oh, mostly in the imperial war, mostly in the war.
Yeah.
Where there are various manuscripts, diaries.
Sometimes the rather surprising aspect of the material was some of them were quite hard to date.
And I came to a slightly, I think, heretical conclusion about source material.
I mean, I think the common cliche is of course the fresher it is,
the closer the time, the more accurate it is.
I'm not sure that's absolutely true.
I think memory, of course, it's instantly transformed by how the account that's told.
And I think frequently things that are written later may be as interesting.
And how people of course digest the experience, I think is quite interesting.
So I use as much manuscript material as I could.
And of course there's just innumerable.
And of course that was part of the problem.
There's so much material about the Blitz in general to concentrate on one day,
provide it, I thought, of valuable, I hope, valuable, organizing principle.
So when you're telling of the story the day after the Blitz, September 8th,
the citizens of England and of London especially woke up in what sort of state of mind?
Well, I think shake.
Shake and shake.
I mean, I think it was this was, as I say in the very beginning,
this, well, we'll possibly, whatever the figures are.
I mean, in the book there about 300 bombers, about 800 fighters.
It was, what was it, 20 square miles of airspace of this black horde?
It was the most constant, there was nothing comparable since the Armada.
And of course, you know, how many people saw the ships.
I mean, this, this was a totally terrifying,
what it made me not totally, but it was certainly a terrifying experience.
And I think that they, they were shocked.
But the British public for both good and bad reasons, I think is very historical.
I think, I think the working class is accustomed to, I hope no longer,
but certainly in the 30s, and you know, there's great depression,
period of the great depression, the working class of England,
I think are accustomed to being, were accustomed to being badly treated.
And so I think, as I say, they, they coped.
In fact, I think from Hitler's point of view, he would have been better.
He might have achieved his aim if he had, if he had concentrated more on the West End of London,
and, and bomb, bomb the more prosperous parts, which were, bomb to an extent,
but nothing like the East End, nothing like the poor part of London.
And Hitler claimed that it was a military bombing,
and to a degree had some justification for saying that in, in that, as I say,
the, the docks were very important, and the factories, those,
those, not the factories that were in the East End and so forth.
So it was to a degree of military target, but it was also where the, where the great majority of the poor lived.
Right.
You've mentioned the British character, national character more than once,
and you talked at tricky concept.
It's a tricky concept.
You, you address it also in your book, towards the end,
and you seem to embrace a, a, a, a rather widespread notion that the British character is
stoical, that it tends to suppress emotion and to not state or at the most, you know,
under state, it's, it's, it's traumas, and that this has a bad side,
so was exactly what was necessary in these circumstances, no?
Yes, I mean, I think it's the cliche of British character, but, but as we know, cliches are not necessarily untrue.
And the famous criticism of, of what EM forced to,
calls the undeveloped heart, and, and the coldness possible, the emotional suppression,
which I think we frequently, you could associate to some degree with British character of,
of the, you know, the cliche of the stiff upper lip of, of not showing your fear.
But on the other hand, I don't want to exaggerate.
I mean, I think most people probably don't like to show their fear,
but I think it's particularly significant for, for, for,
it's a particular cliche of, of the British character, and, you know,
was that a bomb? Oh, dear, you know, it's, it becomes a sort of joke,
and, and, and British irony, I think, comes into, into play.
So I think that the situation and the cliches of British character,
which shouldn't be exaggerated, but I think are important factors.
I do believe play to roll.
Yeah.
The, that character gets magnificent expression,
and boundless admiration in the novels of Joseph Conrad,
which is obviously before these events.
Conrad being a poll who enlisted in the merchant Marine,
and, and lived with, you know, British mariners,
and faced storms, typhoons, shipwrecks,
and found that in the most dire and extreme of circumstances,
there was something in, in the national character of, of, of the, of the, of the English,
that would, um, just rise to that occasion, and, and, and do what had to be done,
and cope in a magnificent manner.
And he was full of admiration.
He himself being rather a romantic and a passionate sort of character.
So, I think there, there's more than just the stiff upper lip,
because these, these sailors, these sea men were not just stiff upper lip types.
They were, of a different class like he was talking about the working class.
Could you, would you want to speculate about the difference between that English national character
in its, you know, vague general kind of cliched version,
versus the American national character, which was revealed, I think in a different light,
with September 11th, where far from any stoical suppression of emotion,
there was, you know, an outpouring of emotion,
and although there's heroism and bravery and anger and so forth at same time,
it was anything but British in, in, in its pathos, don't you agree?
Well, I, I could, I seek the, seek the escape cause, not my field.
And, and, and I don't know how much I know American.
I grew up in New York and, and, and, and in a sense, 9/11,
although I was, I wasn't there when the, the towers went up or went down,
but the, the, and, and to the, you know, the contrast between between the two national characters.
And, but there's also, I mean, I don't want to exaggerate the, the stoicism of the British.
I mean, there's a boisterousness and, you know, there were these famous scenes
where these, these cockney women would, would, will get you, Mr. Hitler, and, and, and, and fury.
And, and also there was tremendous outpouring, although again, this is a disputed question of,
of, of, of, of Churchill's popularity, but, but Churchill and the King and Queen went,
went, went, went, went, went, touring, went, touring, well, that's a bad word,
but they went to visit the East End.
And I think in their quiet way, perhaps one could say, there was, there was a outpouring of emotion.
I don't think that there's the, maybe there's not the American, in, what, what,
what, what, the unions, although on the other hand, not that I've been in pubs all that often,
but, but, but the, the British can be pretty rowdy.
And of course, in the, in the post-war world, there's, there's the llegantism of, of, of the soccer crowds and so forth.
So the, the, the British are not necessarily, well, it gets very complex.
And they're this mixture.
I mean, they're orderly up to a point.
But they also, and as I say, if they have been pushed too far.
And if they didn't, I think they did have on the whole sort of faith in their government
that it was doing the right thing.
And Churchill was, of course, you talked about Barack Obama as a writer.
And whatever, and I have mixed feelings.
I'm not necessarily a total admirer of Churchill.
And he did many things wrong.
But he was a great orator.
He was a great writer.
And it's one up for, I think, a statesmanship and writing skills.
And he gave voice to what a lot of people were feeling.
And of course, as you know, he became prime minister in May 1940.
And if Halifax, who was the alternative prime minister, had become prime minister, I doubt
whether they would have been, but there might have been an negotiated piece.
So these comparisons of national character are tricky.
They certainly are superficial, because--
That's fine.
--in the individuals.
They're such a diversity among individuals.
But it's not a concept I would be willing to throw out altogether.
Oh, no, no, no.
I don't know.
You mentioned Churchill.
You said that he gave voice to what a lot of the British people were feeling at the time.
Well, how should we put it?
He gave voice to the resistance.
I mean, he gave voice.
And he said--
I mean, Churchill was-- by the working class had been a very despised figure, because he had been
in his earliest days.
He had-- when he was a liberal, he was very much in favor of-- you know, he began as a
Tory, and then he went to became a liberal, and then he went back to being a Tory.
He said he made the remarks that took-- to rap was perhaps a dubious thing to do.
But to re-rat, show genius.
And he had suppressed strikes.
He had been the vehement leader against the workers at the time of the general strike
of 1926.
The working class regarded him with profound suspicion.
But yet, when he began these broadcasts, he gave voice to a determination.
If you listen-- I find it maybe I'm being somewhat sentimental, but if you listen to those
broadcasts, they're incredibly-- you know, we will fight on the beaches.
We will fight from the empire.
We will never surrender.
In a sense, he was-- I don't know if you quite say he was listening in the door, but
there was an emotional power that-- and at the beginning of his broadcast, when he gave
them, they weren't necessarily all that popular, but they became increasingly popular.
And as he said, with somewhat, well, in a mock-modest way, he might not have been the lion,
but he was privileged to give the lions roar.
And also, say, the king and queen, when Buckingham Palace on September 13th, received a few
bombs.
And the queen said, we now can look at the east end in the face.
And also, there was talk of the king and queen going to the queen in the princesses, Elizabeth
Margaret, going to Canada.
And she said, they won't go-- the children won't go without me.
I won't go without the king and the king won't go.
And so they were going to stay there.
So there was-- well, you know, one can get into a sort of riffo most on the nature of British
society, that it's both intensely hierarchical, the monarchy of whatever it might be now,
and the political leaders, and the middle class of working class, and so forth and so on.
There's also the class relationships.
There's a sense of deference and responsibility, which are not necessarily always good things,
but I think in this particular situation, they work rather well and help-- well, helpful.
Yeah, a sense of being all one family on a note.
Well, family again is too strong.
But it's a-- if you think of a family as a patriarch, he has an old fashioned family.
I have to confess I'm extremely conflicted about the hero's Churchill, for example.
I hear what you're saying.
You listen to those speeches, and they're so inspiring.
And he was a voice in retrospect.
He sounds like a voice in the wilderness when he was talking about the need to rearm
in the '30s, early '30s of Germany.
He saw it all coming.
On the other hand, from another point of view, he looks like someone who is looking
for a fight all the time.
And that's the kind of moment in which he thrives.
And he comes into his own when he has someone to combat his behavior in the First World
War, it's not glorious in many respects.
But it's not so much Churchill.
It's Europe as a whole.
And in my introduction, I speak about this collective loss of sanity.
How is it possible?
I still ask.
How is it possible that Europe could not have avoided going straight headlong into this
second unspeakable catastrophe that was a Second World War?
I know that we're not here to talk about the complex historical causes, you know, the
Treaty of Versailles, the causes of the First World War.
I mean, everything is kind of interconnected.
But at a certain point, you say, couldn't...
And there were many people at the time who were warning about this kind of insanity.
And there were pacifists.
And of course, the pacifists are very hard to...
It's very hard to embrace their position.
And finally, you have a monster like Hitler on the other side of the channel.
But how Germany could have even gotten to that point is also something.
Oh, there's no question that French and British policy.
Of course, alas, it's not necessarily easy, but you can see what went wrong.
I mean, if you could say the French were the villains.
Because you know, it's not something that I'm expert on, but at all.
But the French determination to strip Germany of to read Germany very badly.
If Germany had been well-created after the war, maybe it wouldn't have happened.
And Hitler comes into power.
It's very hard to see other than the use of force how war might have been stopped.
I think pre-Hitler, tremendous mistakes were made by the Allies and America is, again,
this is not anything I know.
We have an expert knowledge of whatsoever.
But the America is sort of abdicating its responsibilities, that a lot of things could have happened between 1918 and 1933,
that might have prevented the Second World War.
Other than stopping Hitler by force, I don't know how he could have been stopped other than other than war.
I was reading, however, in that book by Nicholson Baker that you and I talked about before coming on air.
And we have some varying assessments of it.
I haven't read it yet.
Oh, you haven't read it yet.
But it's full of quotes and newspaper things and ambassadors and other people.
And I remember someone saying that nations do not prepare for war.
They do not make themselves war-ready.
They prepare for a war, that they know well in advance who the enemy is going to be.
And they plan strategically for that enemy and that particular war.
We know that the First World War was planned way in advance and people knew what side and who their enemy is going to be.
And it also--
Oh, it's not all that long.
I mean, it's not really until 1904 that well, I don't know if you will call it 10 years before.
That Britain pledges itself to France.
And Germany was really more--
the France had been up to that point and quote, "natural enemy" and Germany the natural ally.
Well, the point being that oftentimes wars when they erupt are not events that come out of nowhere.
They've had a rather long or more medium term preparation for them.
And that means that you wonder how many occasions were missed to avert that outcome.
And of course, the other side of it is, well, since the Cold War began, how many occasions have we actually seized to avoid going to war that will never be aware of because nuclear war was averted.
So I don't want to say it's been all only a history of insanity, but the Second World War when you just look at the figures, the casualties,
the immensity of its catastrophe.
It's hard to believe that the nations that were engaged were among the most civilized--
Yes, well, of course.
--as the Florida Paradox, yes.
So can we talk about how you went about turning this day into a story?
Because your book does read as a narrative of sorts and the kind of moral that you want the reader to come away with at the end of it.
Well, yes.
Well, I think the, as you say, I guess a story in tell stories that do have morals either implied or explicit.
And I guess the broadest moral, which is so sort of maybe it's too anodine in human capacity to survive and to resist terror.
But the more immediate point, I think, is as I indicated somewhat earlier, but didn't say that much about,
is to put this story into a larger context of the course of the war that Hitler was not going to be able to invade Britain,
though it became-- it was a damn close thing in my view.
And as I talk about Sal and Brok, later Lord Alan Brok, you know, fully expecting, who was head of the army,
fully expecting Britain, England to be invaded. But then the part that we haven't really touched on all that much is,
and I don't want to make the British government all that heroic because they were incredible failures.
And there was incredible, you say, you know, people plan and people know what to expect.
They didn't actually know what to expect.
And the British government had totally misjudged and what the bombing would do.
The figure, you know, the astronomical figures that you cited earlier, the millions and millions who were killed,
in a sense, the British figures in terms of civilian deaths are though serious, and obviously very important for those who were killed.
But yet in some sense, we're minuscule.
We see 60,000 British civilians.
But the government expected.
And you think it's rather amazing because obviously they were in busy inventing radar.
They were breaking the German code.
I mean, there were great scientific triumphs taking place.
Oh, thank God on the British side.
But they totally, for whatever various reasons, misjudged what was going to happen.
And they expected 60,000 deaths in London in the first two weeks.
And in fact, there was probably a thousand or so who were killed on the first night of the Blitz.
400 were killed.
But what they didn't plan for was that there were going to be so many homeless.
And in fact, the number of houses that were destroyed in Britain during the Second World War was something something like a million and a half.
And that's how many deaths they expected.
But to cope, the British government had not thought out how to cope with the people who were much easier.
And they had stockpiled shrouds and corphins.
It would have been much easier to cope with the dead than to cope with the homeless living.
But then they adapted quickly.
And the argument that's not original with me, it's made by the great social scientist, Richard Titmus, that the idea that the state has an obligation.
The state obviously did so it had some social services before.
But they were done in a sort of patronizing way.
And the lady in the manner sort of style, this is a favor that the state does for you.
But now that the state has an obligation to help its citizens.
And it's not something done out of grace.
David Kennedy has done this column where he rejects the comparison between the Great Depression and the financial situation now.
In that now there's no question that the state has an obligation to do something.
That was not true in 1929, even the Roosevelt ultimately did.
But that was the change.
That change of the state's obligation towards all its citizens.
I think was really shaped by the events of September 7th and emerged in the Beverage Report of what did in 1942 if that was the date.
And the birth of the welfare state.
There were origins of the welfare state before.
But this idea of an obligation and that the public, the individual citizen had no obligation to feel grateful.
It was something that you just had by right of citizenship.
And I think coping with the homeless, those who made homeless through no fault of their own because of bombing.
I think played an important part in that.
And streets were closed off because of unexploded bombs and this was all considerable social problems.
Yeah, and that's since the consequences were quite important and socially and economically.
And by laying the foundations for what you call the welfare state in the sense that the government had an obligation to citizens that had endured this.
But the fact that there were so many fewer casualties and had been anticipated meant that the government had been anticipating.
Oh, yes, we have all the time.
It does confirm the point that wars rarely come at that level of warfare.
They rarely come as surprises to the other thing.
But they hadn't done enough.
I mean, the old cliche that Britain was unprepared and didn't, in the early 30s, the planning was based on the idea that Germany would be the enemy.
And there was talk about expanding the air force and so forth and expanding the military.
But the thing is that there wasn't in the political spectrum, the right was opposed to the right obviously naturally would be more sympathetic to military preparedness, but they also didn't want to spend the money.
So they were opposed to preparedness for financial reasons and the left was opposed to preparedness because they thought, as you suggested, or possibly, that preparing for war is one way of bringing war about.
I think that's a great paradox. I mean, do you prevent war by building things up to fight wars or do you prevent war by building things down so you can't fight them?
And of course, if everybody built things, didn't have military machines, that would be good.
But that's very hard to achieve.
Well, the covert role, or it's not even covert, but I think that arms dealers in the last century have been the biggest villains in world history because they know neither nation nor ideology, they know only customers, and they will sell and did sell massively to both sides, air
It still does, to instill do, and the flood of weaponry. And of course, the nations involved are producers in, or at least industries that are associated with those nations are producers of arms that that,
The market.
It made the Barbara, of course, has elements of ambiguity and were under shaft in, you know, who's arms manufacturer, but I've forgotten exactly how he puts it, but he puts it to wonderful play.
But the munitions, there's great awareness of this, and I think they were seen as villains and public villains in terms of the First World War.
Sure.
Well, I remember a, my uncle years ago had someone over who was an arms dealer, had made a lot of money, and my sister was older than me,
was kind of moral outrage, and she knew about it, and asked him, how can you live with yourself, and what kind of honor do you presume to have, sir?
And he said he was speaking in French, but he said one has to first sell one's honor and then buy it back.
And as long as we allow these people to buy back their honor by having sold it through the selling of arms to any kind of group or subgroup in completely unstable situations like in Africa or elsewhere, it's just unbelievable that it's the most unregulated market of all,
with the most destructive possibilities associated with it.
So, if we get back to the moral, I mean, I know that you don't, it's not a kind of fable, which one goes away with the moral, but it certainly does in the final analysis reading your book, it gives you a certain admiration for a people,
what people can endure. Yes. And that there is a kind of everyday heroism that is not the heroism of being on the front lines or shooting down an enemy plane like the RF, RAF pilots and so forth, but it's just a popular heroism.
Oh, yes, very much so. And of course there were more civilian deaths, the military deaths, until sometime later when the African campaign started.
And so the civilian was on the first bit of the war for the British. This civilians were on the front line.
And you know, there was such a different situation from the First World War where Robert Graves is autobiography and Siegfried's as soon and so forth and so on.
But there was a split between the war front and the home front. And in this case, at least for the early day, I mean, well, for quite a while, that the home front was where the war was taking place.
And these people who had not enlisted, who had not chosen to be soldiers were tagging the brunt of the war.
And most of them, a lot of them, somewhat to the shelters, of course, went into the tubes. They took over the tubes against the wishes of the government and the government was powerless. Couldn't stop them.
But a lot of people stayed home. They were these things called Morrison shelters. And they were also shelters in the gardens and so forth.
Well, we've come to the end of our hour and I suppose I would like to just conclude by reminding everyone how many countless thousands upon thousands upon thousands of stories were generated by World War II.
And it's still the source of so many of our novels, films, our imagination, it's probably going to continue to generate stories for a long time.
And this is another paradox I suppose of the human condition is that our suffering and our tragedies is what we remember.
And the kids, you know, particularly the young boys, it's captured in that film, "Hoping Glory," which is reminiscent, so who's the director of John Borman? I think.
You know, in many ways, of course, it was the high point of one's life. And I think that's both the fascination and the terror or the problem in the horror of war is that it's exciting.
And that's the last. And that it makes you wonder whether the Greeks were onto something when they said that the gods are tragedies in history or the gods' entertainment.
And they're looking down on us and taking sides and they for them it's a movie for us, it's real.
But it's also due to we are in exactly the time of the horrible sense.
Well, thanks Peter. It's been a very interesting discussion.
Thanks for coming on. I want to remind our listeners we've been speaking with Professor Peter Stansky from the history department here at Stanford.
My name is Robert Harrison's for entitled "Pinions." We have our shows archived on our web page.
Just log on to the French and Italian departments homepage and click on entitled "Pinions."
You can also look for us on iTunes searching for entitled "Pinions" and you can access all of our previous shows over 70 hours of them.
We'll be with you again next week. Bye-bye.
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