Pod Insights American History Tellers FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1 About this episode Great Britain and the United States have always enjoyed a special bond, and nowhere has that been more evident than in the friendship between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Churchill went to stay at the White House, part of a charm offensive to secure American help in the fight against fascism. Today, Lindsay is joined by British historian Dan Snow, host of Dan Snow’s History Hit https://podfollow.com/dan-snows-history-hit/view podcast. They’ll discuss the importance of the friendship between the two leaders at a time when the free world hung in the balance, and how their cooperation helped orchestrate D-Day and the liberation of Europe.
You can read more about Churchill’s White House visit in the book inspired by this podcast, The Hidden History of the White House: Power Struggles, Scandals, and Defining Moments https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-White-House-Struggles/dp/006334338X?ref_=abptr_ptp_aht_sn_0508.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Lindsay Graham? Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
0:19 Lindsay Graham? From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American History Tellers: Our History, Your Story.
0:41 Lindsay Graham? Every once in a while, American History Tellers gets the chance to talk with someone who loves history as much as we do. And today, it's our good fortune to speak with British historian and TV presenter Dan Snow, host of Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast.
0:57 Lindsay Graham? So much of history is decided by large events, battles, explorations, colonization. But this show tries to also demonstrate the power of relationships in steering history. The United States and Great Britain have had their share of conflict, first in the American Revolutionary War and again in the War of 1812. But in the centuries since, these two countries enjoy a strong bond. And nowhere has that been more evident than in the friendship and working relationship between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. As they led their countries in the fight against fascism, one of the ways Churchill and Roosevelt came to know each other was during the visits Churchill made to the White House. And we have a chapter on the first visit in the book that was inspired
1:41 Lindsay Graham? by this podcast, The Hidden History of the White House: Power Struggles, Scandals, and Defining Moments. And here with me today to further explore the special relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt is Dan Snow. He spent his career presenting history programs for the BBC and PBS, including an in-depth series on D-Day. We'll discuss how the British dealt with Hitler before the US entry into World War II, Churchill's visit with Roosevelt at the White House, and then the culmination of their efforts, D-Day itself. My conversation with Dan Snow is coming up next.
2:17 Speaker 01 Alice, have you ever wondered why the Mini is so small?
2:21 Speaker 02 The skirt or the Magnum?
2:23 Speaker 01 Well, I meant the iconic British car, because in 1956, Britain's oil supply was suddenly cut off. Petrol rationing was brought in and the car industry was scrambling around for a vehicle that hardly used any fuel. Enter the Mini.
2:37 Speaker 02 Interesting, but actually not technically British Scandal series material.
2:42 Speaker 01 Well, the reason they had to save petrol is because the Prime Minister started a war and lied about why.
2:48 Speaker 02 Okay, scandal siren going off.
2:50 Speaker 01 I'm Matt Ford.
2:51 Speaker 02 And I'm Alice Levine.
2:52 Speaker 01 And our latest British Scandal series involves a secret meeting in a French villa, a Prime Minister running on amphetamines.
2:58 Speaker 02 An Egyptian president that everyone fancied, the end of the British Empire, and at the heart of it, a canal.
3:05 Speaker 01 This is the story of the Suez Plot.
3:08 Speaker 02 Follow British Scandal wherever you get your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Audible.
3:18 Speaker 03 In New Orleans, truckers kept getting sideswiped the exact same way. When a man is found murdered under questionable circumstances related to these accidents, the rubber hits the road. Listen to Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe wherever you get your podcasts.
3:44 Lindsay Graham? Dan Snow, welcome to American History Tellers.
3:46 Speaker 04 Thank you so much for having me. It's a great honour.
3:48 Lindsay Graham? The honour is all mine because you are a well-known champion of popular history, and your show, History Hit, covers a wide range of topics, but there's a special focus on the rich history of the UK, as one might imagine. One figure who looms large in the 20th century is Winston Churchill. So I'd love for you to take us back to the early days of World War II, to May 1940, when Winston Churchill had just become Prime Minister. What position was Churchill in, and the country, I suppose, at the time?
4:21 Speaker 04 You know what, Lindsay, you're totally right. I'm lucky enough to talk about and make shows about history straight From the Bronze Age all the way to the present day, really. But I do genuinely believe that there has never been a more dramatic week or fortnight in history than in May 1940, where Winston Churchill takes over the reins as Prime Minister of Britain on exactly the same day that Hitler launches what is probably the most successful military offensive in history, the Blitzkrieg through France and the Low Countries, which will see the complete destruction of French, British, Belgian allied armies in that theatre of war in a matter of days. And so Churchill becomes Prime Minister at this nadir of the British historical story.
5:05 Speaker 04 He's staring disaster in the face. And Churchill has got a big, big problem. He's got to win a war against Germany on the continent of Europe, but there are other threats. Italy is lurking in the Mediterranean, seemingly about to jump into the war against Britain. Japan is threatening the British Empire in the Pacific and in the Indian Ocean. And so Churchill is juggling this crisis. And the biggest problem he's got is he hasn't even really got the confidence of his own political party, let alone the nation, let alone the empire and the rest of the world. So he's got to go and build that up from scratch. And he has a very simple strategy. He projects absolutely unwavering strength and determination.
5:50 Speaker 04 He's going to fight the Germans no matter what the cost because he identifies that Nazism isn't like, you know, Napoleon Bonaparte, Kaiser Wilhelm, Louis XIV. Nazism is something that, as he sees it, is pretty much unique in a thousand years of history. Twisted science, the true dark heart of humanity. So he's going to project that resistance to Nazi domination and then he's going to get the Americans in. He says to his son in May 1940, he says to his son, "My plan is to drag the Americans in." That was it. So the first order of business is shore up the British front, shore up British politicians, shore up the British people to fight the Germans. The second order of business is to get the USA involved.
6:31 Lindsay Graham? Yeah, this projection of confidence does seem to be at odds with reality on the ground. Britain's only allies are occupied nations, and America is reluctant to enter the war. What do you know about this reluctance, this isolationism?
6:45 Speaker 04 It makes total sense. The Americans didn't want to get dragged into another horrific war on the European continent. When I go and visit cemeteries, as you've done, of young American men from Nebraska, from Washington State, and they've travelled thousands of miles away, they've crossed this mighty ocean to die in a muddy field outside Paris, France, it's completely understandable. The Americans didn't want to get involved, but Churchill needs them involved. He tells them, first of all, I need destroyers, I need ships. Secondly, I need aircraft. And then he goes to a few other things he needs. And then, by the way, he says to Roosevelt, very early on in his premiership, he goes, by the way, we'll go on paying for as long as we can, but soon we're going to run out
7:28 Speaker 04 of money, and I hope you won't make us pay at that point as well. So he lays it bare before the Americans. But the Americans, quite rightly, are thinking, we don't want to get involved in this war. This is Europe's war. This is a war of empires. This is a war of the old world. Here we are. We've just recovered from the Great Depression. We've recovered from the wounds of the First World War. America is on its way to building the greatest, most powerful economy the world's ever seen. They don't want to get dragged into the past in some squabble in the European continent. So Churchill has to make them believe, with his rhetoric, with his speeches, he has to make the Americans understand, this is their fight, because it's the fight of a free world against the horrors of Nazism. And he even says to Roosevelt, by the way, you're going to end up fighting Germany eventually.
8:12 Speaker 04 You'd be a lot better off fighting Germany when you've still got a free and independent Britain on your side.
8:16 Lindsay Graham? So this period of early and mid 1940s is certainly a fraught one. Churchill comes into office in May, but by July and through October of 1940, the Battle of Britain was raging. Now, this was an attempt by Hitler to control the skies over the UK before an eventual ground invasion. Today, it's kind of remembered, I suppose, as a bit of a David versus Goliath story. But I think it's understood That it's more complicated than that. How so?
8:44 Speaker 04 Lindsay, this is one of my favorite stories because it's really one of the areas of history where there is a powerful myth and that myth just is not true. The idea was that the German air force was so massive and powerful and terrifying. It dwarfed the RAF, the British air force, and the British fought this plucky underdog battle to win and protect their skies from German domination. Now, that's a story that Brits quite like. It makes us sound kind of cool. It makes us sound plucky and exciting and tenacious. Actually, you know, the reality is completely the other way around. First of all, look at the aircraft. Sure, the German air force was a bit bigger, but lots of those aircraft were obsolete or they weren't fit for the purpose of resting air supremacy over southern England off the British. So actually, in terms of frontline fighters, in terms of the planes that are actually
9:28 Speaker 04 doing the fighting, fast interceptor fighter aircraft, single seater, armed with cannon and machine guns, state of the art, tight turning aircraft, actually, the Brits and the Germans had kind of equal numbers. People may have heard of the Spitfire and the Hurricane aircraft. Those are the two British frontline fighters. The Messerschmitt, famous Messerschmitt 109, a fantastic German fighter, they were pretty equally matched. In fact, in terms of the aircraft, the Spitfire, I'm obviously a bit biased. I'd say was slightly better, but really, the 109 and the Spitfire in particular were very, very evenly matched. But here's the true advantage the British had. They were fighting over home territory. So if a Hurricane or a Spitfire got shot down, the pilot could bail out. He'd pull open his canopy, he'd jump out, parachute to ground. He could be back on his base the
10:13 Speaker 04 next day, that afternoon. We have examples of people that landed in the pub, had a few beers and got a taxi back to their base. They were flying the following day. One pilot was shot down three times in three days. Each day, he managed to get back to base and flew again. So if a plane was shot out of the sky, it didn't mean you lost a pilot. Now, if the Germans are doing their fighting over southern England, say, when their pilots bail out, they're going straight into prisoner of war camps. So they're losing far more pilots than they can replace. On top of that, the British have got the secret weapon, really one of the most important weapons of the Second World War, and that's radar, radio direction finding, absolute top secret. In fact, it was so That initially, all those German Jewish refugee scientists that arrived escaping Hitler's
10:58 Speaker 04 Third Reich, they were put to work on the atomic programme because they were considered too dangerous to allow to work on the radar because radar was top, top, top secret. So these physicists are like, go away and see if you can split the atom. And so radar allowed the Brits to see German raids gathering over France and North France, coming across the channel. So the Brits could send up individual interceptors, individual squadrons, to shoot down those raids and take a terrible toll. Before that, aerial warfare was that you go up with your mates in the morning, you fly around a bit, you hope you bump into the enemy and then you land. Instead, now you stay on the ground till that bell rings, you climb up, you pounce on the German bomber force coming in, you land, you rearm, you get back up there. Incredibly efficient. So the Brits build the first ever 3D battle space for an aerial theatre of combat.
11:43 Speaker 04 And that is the deal breaker.
11:45 Lindsay Graham? Now, this was also a time in the UK known as the Blitz because along with military targets, increasingly civilian targets were bombed by the Germans. This is a relentless bombardment that went on for nine months, a terrible disruption of ordinary life. But I gather it wasn't all just huddling in shelters or bravely trying to ignore the risks and carry on. This is also a nuanced story.
12:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, this is very like the Battle of Britain. There's a useful myth here for the Brits is that we are people that could just carry on and take it no matter what was thrown at us. A story of social cohesion. So elements of that myth are correct. The German Luftwaffe had come across, they tried to destroy the RAF, they tried to wrest control of the air above southern England in particular. That's failed. So they turned to terror tactics. They turned to just smashing British cities in the hope that whilst they might not be able to knock the RAF out of the war, they can erode civilian morale, they can force the British people to their knees. They thought they could force Churchill out of office because he'd be so unpopular and then they could deal with a more planted British prime minister.
12:53 Speaker 04 And so London was attacked for months in a row. There were fires that were worse in terms of their scale than the legendary Great Fire of London in 16. Sixty six, the British did tolerate unspeakable hardship. They had to go down to the subway stations every night. They had to take shelter in makeshift bomb shelters in the backyard. They witnessed their streets, their cities destroyed, fires sweeping through. They pulled together. They volunteered to go and fight fires. They volunteered to patrol important buildings like hospitals. My great grandpa was on the roof of a hospital all night. He was one of the doctors in Hammersmith Hospital and he'd be up there with buckets of water and sand, putting out incendiary bombs. They landed on the roof to protect
13:34 Speaker 04 his patients. But there's another story about the Blitz, and that is that things did get a bit loose. There was an uptick in violence and all that. Street lights were put out. There was no light pollution, so the streets were very dark. There was certainly crime when houses were hit. People scavenged through the remains of the houses and pillaged what personal items they might be able to find there, food, valuables. There was a loosening of sexual behaviour, that the number of children born out of wedlock rocketed. It was a time both of people pulling together, but also of individuals looking out for themselves, taking advantage of dislocation, of crisis. There are stories that were suppressed at the time of people from poorer areas of London, industrial areas of London, where
14:17 Speaker 04 they didn't have adequate bomb shelters, hardly any bomb shelters in fact, and they would make their way to the west side of town, to the richer parts of town, where they knew that affluent people would be in nightclubs, drinking, partying, listening to jazz, in deep basements, protected from the bombing, and they would try and bust in and get access to those spaces. So were the signs of the social compact fraying, but the government in those days, there's no social media, they controlled the narrative. And the dominant narrative that was put out was of everyone doing their bit, pulling together, obeying the law, and keeping their heads down.
14:50 Lindsay Graham? During this time of persistent bombardment, Churchill and his staff were forced to keep operations running in reinforced war rooms beneath the streets of London. And I know in one of your episodes, you visit these war rooms. What were they like?
15:02 Speaker 04 The government air raid bunkers underneath Whitehall, which is the administrative heart of the British state, they're some of the most special places in the UK today. They are a network of tunnels, of bunkers, that were dug out before the war and in the early months of the war, because it was clear that air power was going to play a critical part in the next war. And Churchill actually famously liked going up on the roof. He loved watching the bombs fall from the roof of Downing Street in the Foreign Office. He had to be persuaded to get down below for his own personal safety. So on the occasions when he was down there, there were bedrooms. You can still go and see his cot, his camp bed. There's a cigar in the ashtray next to it, his desk. Churchill loved maps. There are maps all over the place.
15:45 Speaker 04 He needed to be able to visualise where the fighting was and what strength allied and Axis units were at. So there's wonderful graphics and illustrations down there on all the walls. There was a secure line to Roosevelt down there. You can still see the tiny little room, like a little phone booth. If any of your listeners are old enough, like I am, to remember the days of payphones, there's a little booth where he would go and have very, very intimate conversations with Roosevelt through a secure cable underneath the Atlantic. The air conditioning's been reconstructed, the typing pools, where the various liaison officers were at. Those were just locked up after the end of the Second World War, and only pretty recently really were they declassified and turned into a museum. You can walk in and see them as they were at the height of the Blitz,
16:30 Speaker 04 at the height of the Second World War. And I think it's one of the most special experiences you can have in Britain. I thoroughly recommend it.
16:37 Lindsay Graham? But it wasn't actually just the British government and military command that was operating underground, because the American media was too. How did news from the UK reach the United States?
16:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's right. I mean, the Americans were very present in London. And I think the reports they were sending back, the stories of resistance, the stories of bravery, and the stories of the horror inflicted by Hitler's aircraft, those bombers, helped to move the American public towards a place where they were ready to support the British war effort, perhaps even join the British war effort.
17:12 Speaker 04 In US history, Edward R. Murrow, Ed Murrow was here in London. He would broadcast for CBS from a basement below the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation's Broadcasting House, and he would send daily updates, really, on the destruction and the death, but also on the lives of Londoners, the people carrying on trying to make the most of it. So this is modern war correspondence that your listeners will be so familiar with. And he used to begin his broadcasts with the iconic, what is now the iconic phrase, "This is London." And then he'd end them by saying, "Good night and good luck."
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19:22 Speaker 04 Well, Lindsay, now it's time for me to turn the tables on you because I want to know more about the American side of this story because after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America is dragged into World War II. Hitler then declares war on the USA days later. For Churchill, he sees this as something like salvation. He's actually pleased about that. He doesn't make any bones about it. And he jumps on a ship almost as soon as possible because he wants to be in the heart of the action. He wants to get to the White House and he wants to meet American decision makers, most of all the president. Tell me, how does that trip go? And how do they start forging that special relationship?
19:58 Lindsay Graham? So with the Japanese attack and Germany declaring war on the US shortly after, America was finally a full participant in the war. But Churchill made this visit, 10 rough days at sea, apparently, because he worried that the US might focus its efforts on Japan rather than Germany. So he essentially invited himself to the White House to shore up this special relationship between the US and Britain and between himself and FDR. But there is this fascinating chapter in the American History Teller's book, The Hidden History of the White House, that does detail Churchill's visit to the White House and these two men's time together, which was rather long, many days and stretching into weeks, full of big dinners and long cocktail hours, not exactly wartime deprivation. But
20:42 Lindsay Graham? he was also very political. Their strategy talks went very late into the night and Churchill, who's always described as a bit of a bulldog of a man, seems to go to great lengths to show deference to Roosevelt. One story I liked was that Churchill apparently took to chauffeuring FDR around in his wheelchair. I guess simultaneously staying very close and intimate while also kind of subordinating himself. Churchill was a man leading a country in need, and he was smart enough to know how to develop a bond.
21:14 Speaker 04 When Churchill heard the news of Pearl Harbor, he didn't disguise the fact. He was ecstatic. He believed Britain was now saved.
21:21 Lindsay Graham? Well, I think Britain was saved. This was the moment that Churchill was hoping for, and though it was a dark hope, but he was the necessary push for the American nation to get over its isolationism and recognize that the world was on fire and America was needed.
21:37 Speaker 04 And then Churchill, as you said, jumps on a ship almost immediately. And he arrives at the White House with all sorts of ideas, all sorts of solutions, and a big shopping list as well. And he writes to his cabinet minister and says that he was treated like a member of the family, but he's clearly forging a very, very close personal relationship. Tell me some more about that.
21:59 Lindsay Graham? Yeah, well, the trip starts pretty much with a press conference. This is Churchill's introduction to America, and I think he knows that he has an act to play. There's a good scene in the book of this first press conference. The room is filled with both cigar and cigarette smoke, as both leaders were inveterate smokers. But the reporters are clicking their cameras and anxious to get information from FDR and Churchill. And FDR knows that this is his opportunity to sell the British predicament to the American public and wants to show off Churchill to Americans. In fact, he does show him off. He tells Churchill to show himself to the cameras, to the reporters, and Churchill, in typical bluster, gets up on a chair and waves his cigar around as cameras click.
22:44 Lindsay Graham? Then one of the reporters asks Churchill in another humorous moment, "Mr. Minister, can you tell us when you think we may lick these boys?" And a slightly befuddled Churchill has to be told what the American colloquial lick means. And once he finally grasps it means to defeat, he retorts in a very Churchill way. "If we manage it well, then it will only take half as long as if we manage it badly." Right from the start, Churchill is on a charm offensive. He needs to charm Roosevelt, he needs to charm Congress, he needs to charm the press, and ultimately, the American people.
23:18 Speaker 04 It sounds to me from your book like he needs to charm Eleanor Roosevelt as well. He wasn't the easiest guest. He had a man of appetites.
23:25 Lindsay Graham? A man of appetites, for sure. But Eleanor, I'm glad you bring her up. She was not especially pleased with her husband because it was only upon Churchill's arrival that she discovered he was visiting. Franklin had told Eleanor that there was a guest coming and that they should prepare for copious amounts of food, cognac and champagne. But for national security, he did not tell his own wife that it was the prime minister who was visiting.
23:54 Speaker 04 And then I learned from your book, he drank a lot of booze and some of that was before breakfast.
23:59 Lindsay Graham? Yeah, Churchill's tastes were peculiar and copious. So he demanded, or I guess requested, that he have a glass of sherry before his breakfast. And for breakfast, he wanted something hot and something cold. And well, the Americans obliged. They gave him bacon and eggs, certainly more eggs than Churchill was probably accustomed to with rationing back home.
24:22 Speaker 04 And he also had an unexpected encounter when Roosevelt stumbled across Churchill completely naked?
24:29 Lindsay Graham? Yeah, apparently the president wanted to have a meeting right then, and he was told that Churchill was in the bath, and that didn't bother Franklin. And it didn't bother Churchill either. And I think that says a great deal about the two men, that maybe perhaps FDR was intent on catching Churchill at a fragile moment, but Churchill was intent on turning it to his advantage. He leapt out of the bath, showed his full naked body and said, see, Mr. President, I have nothing to hide.
24:59 Speaker 04 It's a fun story, but it does feel like the beginning of a very, very close relationship between two sovereign nations fighting alongside each other at war. Churchill and Roosevelt, they managed to keep things very tight between these two nations.
25:12 Lindsay Graham? Yeah, I think they had to. The bathroom story is probably indicative of the relationship as a whole. It is one of shared needs and ideals, but one of testing each other's strengths and weaknesses. These are two very strong men, leading in dire times, and they need to be absolutely certain that each one of them is trustworthy. It's an allegory for their relationship, but I think this is a moment in which these men personify their nations.
25:42 Speaker 04 What do you think was achieved across those three weeks that Churchill spent at the White House?
25:47 Lindsay Graham? Well, I think, as we hinted at, it cemented the special bond between these two leaders. They agreed on a number of crucial strategies. One thing that Churchill did acquiesce to was Roosevelt's demand for a single command center in Washington and having these supreme Allied commanders in Europe and Asia, one source of direction for the military operations. And this might have been in response to America's position in World War I, in which her troops, you know, fought under British and French command and chafed a bit at it. But I think crucially, Churchill got from FDR what he wanted, a promise that the United States would fight Germany first, because I think Roosevelt and his military advisers had already determined
26:29 Lindsay Graham? that Germany was the more dangerous foe with more resources and industrial capacity.
26:34 Speaker 04 And it's interesting is that there's a mix of good vibes and relationship building, but also very practical things like pooling shipping and more arms and munitions heading over to Britain. So a successful trip and the start of a successful, well, you'd say friendship, wouldn't you? I mean, they spent a lot of time together during the Second World War.
26:52 Lindsay Graham? They spent a lot of time together. Of course, they communicated hundreds, if not thousands of times by letter, telegram, and phone call. These were by necessity, probably the two closest people on the planet separated by thousands of miles.
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29:04 Lindsay Graham? So if Churchill's visit to the White House was perhaps the beginning of the special relationship, it was probably all leading to one shared and daring plan, and that was D-Day. History Hit has covered D-Day in vivid detail, and I can imagine that this was a plan that went through several iterations. What were Churchill's early thoughts about striking back against Germany?
29:27 Speaker 04 This is a great question, Lindsay, because Churchill was initially a bit reluctant to head back into the cockpit of violence that was Northwest Europe. Everyone who studies European military history realizes that Northwest Europe is where empires go to juke it out. That's where Napoleon, that's where the Kaiser, that's where Louis XIV, that is where the game of empires is settled. And it's because of the geography, and it's because of the sea, and it's because of all kinds of interesting reasons. But Churchill didn't want to go back there. He'd been in the trenches on the Western Front in the First World War. He said, chewing barbed wire on the Western Front, there must be other alternatives to that. He was always
30:08 Speaker 04 looking for opportunities. Attack in the Baltic, attack in the Balkans, attack up through Italy. He thought there must be other ways of cracking this tough European problem other than just going landing, marching across France and Belgium like his ancestor done, like he'd done in 1914 to 18, and dealing with those same casualties. And so he managed to get that so-called second front postponed. It would not happen in 1942, despite the howls of the Soviet Union, Stalin going, please land in France, please take the pressure off me. It would not happen in 1942. Churchill managed to get it postponed. It did not happen in 1943. Instead, Allied troops would advance up Italy. But it would happen in
30:49 Speaker 04 1944, and Churchill took a lot of persuading that the plan was in place, and they would land with success. And even more important than the landing, they'd be able to deal with the vaunted German armored divisions after they landed.
31:04 Lindsay Graham? One of your history hit episodes goes through the very first 90 minutes of D-Day as if it was in real time. And in preparing for it, you talked to people who were there as the Armada left the British shores as witnesses and combatants. What was the departure scene like as troops headed out to Normandy?
31:23 Speaker 04 Well, I could talk about this all day because I've been so lucky to meet so many of these veterans. And one told me he was a commando and he sailed down out of Southampton, round the Isle of Wight, and there were ships and boats, the biggest fleet ever assembled in history, something like 7,000 ships and boats in all, and a good chunk of them were in this stretch of water called the Solent behind the Isle of Wight, very near where I am now, actually. And he said, as they came down, he was in the first wave, and foghorns and horns were going off on the decks of these ships, and ships' whistles, and there was this sound, and he said, it was like coming out of the tunnel at Wembley about to play a soccer match for England. Wembley's our national stadium. And he said it was so pumped up that at that exact moment, if my own nan had walked past, my own grandma
32:08 Speaker 04 had walked past in a German uniform, I'd have slotted her on the spot. And I'll never forget that, you know, this is a guy who's 19, 20 years old, and he's just sliding out from British shores, heading across to a very uncertain fate on the German occupied French coast. But in the opening minutes, that unit, they did get ashore, and they got ashore reasonably safely with not so many casualties. On the beach they landed, there had been very effective preparation, airstrikes which had suppressed the Germans in their bunkers, there had been a massive naval bombardment, a huge gathering of battleships out to sea. We have a cruiser, we have a ship left called HMS Belfast, now a museum ship, and that cracked some of the porcelain in the toilets in the ship's heads. So great
32:52 Speaker 04 were the vibrations caused by the ship's guns firing again and again. So those shells were landing on the beach, and they were suppressing those German positions. And then there was the floating tanks, these strange floating tanks, championed by Churchill and others, and they would go in and provide armored support exactly as those troops, those commandos landed on the shore. So actually, on Swordbeak, where this one commando I mentioned, where he landed, they got On a shore, there were some casualties, but they managed to break through Hitler's Atlantic Wall and they were advancing into Normandy, you know, minutes after they landed. There was, of course, one exception to that, Omaha Beach, where the Americans fought a terrifically hard battle against German positions. If anyone's been to Omaha Beach, they'll know that there's cliffs there, there's bluffs. The Germans have the advantage of
33:35 Speaker 04 height. It is a terrifying place to land. The Germans, for various reasons, were at a greater state of readiness and the Americans there took terrible casualties as they fought heroically into and through those German positions.
33:49 Lindsay Graham? I'm glad you bring up the German state of readiness because the success of D-Day pretty much hinged on the element of surprise. Why were the Germans not expecting the Allies to land in Normandy?
34:00 Speaker 04 You're right, there's tactical readiness and then the strategic readiness as well. And the Germans didn't think the Allies were going to land in Normandy. It's about 60 miles from where I am now on the coast of the UK to Normandy Beach, in fact about 70 miles. At its closest, the Channel is only 20 miles. So if you go from Dover in Kent across to Calais, it's only 20 miles. So of course, the assumption was they'd attack across the Narrows. And Hitler was convinced. Hitler had a meeting with a Japanese military official in Berlin and the Japanese official reported it back to Japan and we were able to, we know this because the code breakers at the time were able to decrypt and intercept this message. It's reported that Hitler was sure there'd be a diversionary attack in Normandy, but the main attack would come across the Narrows in Calais. And that's for several
34:44 Speaker 04 reasons. Double agents were feeding Hitler that information. There was something called Operation Fortitude, which was a massive deception campaign. There was a fake US Army group. The best general, the Allied best general, was thought to be General Patton, the American general who'd showed his excellence in North Africa and Italy. And he was stuck in Kent, he was furious about that. He was stuck in Kent with a fake army issuing orders, making public appearances, inspecting dummy tanks made out of plastic and balsa wood and rubber, fake landing craft. So he was making as much noise as he could in Kent while the real force left from the area where I am now, around the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton, and went that further distance. Across the channel. So the Allies just ran rings around the Germans. There was another
35:29 Speaker 04 fake army in Scotland, in fact, to make the Germans believe that actually the second front would be Norway. It would drive the Germans out of occupied Norway. So the Germans did not have a clue what was going on. And as a result, when even after D-Day landings had begun, Hitler was not convinced this was the main effort. Hitler wanted to keep elite units in and around Calais to wait for the Allied landings there that he was expecting at any time.
35:54 Lindsay Graham? So as this operation goes on, minutes turn to hours. I assume it is a tense time with Churchill and Roosevelt in London and Washington, closely monitoring events but far away from the action. What did Churchill say to the House of Commons?
36:10 Speaker 04 This is a great moment because in fact Churchill was fierce. Churchill wanted to be present at D-Day. And in fact Eisenhower was furious at Churchill. Churchill wanted to go along on one of the battleships and watch the bombardment and be there as it was all happening. And in the end, King George VI said, you are absolutely not to go to D-Day. So instead Churchill was in the UK and he went to Parliament on the 6th of June, on the day of those D-Day landings. It's just a reminder that in parliamentary democracies, the business of being accountable to Parliament didn't come to an end. Just as the American elections went ahead, even though it was the time of war. So Churchill had to pay attention. He had to go to Parliament and he had to inform MPs and via the MPs, their
36:55 Speaker 04 constituents, the British people, he had to inform them on the progress of the war. Churchill shares, this speech is so exciting, he shares the kind of intelligence that he's getting from the battlefield. He says reports are coming in in rapid succession. So far, the commanders who are engaged report that everything is proceeding according to plan. And what a plan. He calls it this vast operation, undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place. And I'm not sure he's wrong about that. I mean, it's always a little bit a Churchill overstatement. But actually, in June 1944, it's hard to think of anything that had ever taken place on a bigger scale than D-Day. And he goes through some of the challenges that the troops faced. He talks about how tactical surprise has
37:38 Speaker 04 been attained. And we hope to furnish the enemy with a succession of surprises during the course of the fighting. And then, as with all these Churchill speeches, comes back to one of his central points, and that is the centrality of his alliance with the United States of America. He says, "Complete unity prevails through the allied armies. There is a brotherhood in arms between us and our friends of the United States." The quickest way to win World War II was the great powers working as closely as possible together, and that's particularly the United States and the British Empire. And Hitler's only chance of success, for example, by this stage, is to try and drive a wedge between the British and the Americans, and Churchill was just not going to let that happen.
38:23 Speaker 04 I'd love to ask you, Lindsay, is FDR under the same kind of pressures to talk to the American people on the 6th of June?
38:29 Lindsay Graham? Well, Roosevelt was. He was a leader of a nation who was actively involved in D-Day just as much as the British, and by this point, had committed much of the nation's treasure and their young men to the effort. So he too had to face the American public and apprise them of what's going on. He did so via radio. He asked them to join him in prayer, saying about the men fighting on the continent, "That they will need thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard, for the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again. And we know that by thy grace and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph."
39:12 Lindsay Graham? So I think he took the same tack, that success is assured. We have been talking about two leaders from 80 years ago, though. While both very smart and cunning men, they face great challenges. It makes me think to ask what lessons we can draw from their relationship that we might apply today in a very different world.
39:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think that's very interesting, Lindsay. I mean, clearly, well, look, we're all imperfect. They were both imperfect men. There's a huge debate here in the UK about Churchill, hero, villain, and actually, he's all those things. He's everything. He was the man who attempted to preserve the British Empire, who didn't want to give India its independence, and yet the man who also defended liberal democracy in Britain. You know, he was a bundle of contradictions, a truly extraordinary man, but clearly the right person at the right time for that particular job. I'm fascinated by coalition warfare. Those coalitions are capable of delivering such enormous resources, which in modern industrial total war is the key to success. And when you can harness a coalition, when you can bring together the intelligence gathering,
40:17 Speaker 04 the manpower, the industrial output, it's very, very hard to defeat those big coalitions. But they take a very particular kind of leader to make them work. And Roosevelt and Churchill were prepared to compromise. They were prepared to give and take. And they were also prepared to accept that each of their nations, each of their publics had different agendas, and that was okay. And their job was to try and triangulate that. And that, I think, is the great lesson of leadership in a coalition. You don't get every single thing that you want, but my goodness, you're a lot more powerful when you fight with allies. I've heard about you, Lindsay. What are the lessons that you draw?
40:55 Lindsay Graham? The lessons of coalition, the strength of coalition is an obvious one. But one of the larger lessons from Churchill and Roosevelt in particular is the importance of relationships, building relationships, understanding what trust means, understanding that loyalty is a give and take, that there are compromises always to be made, that ego is always to be put aside. I think from Churchill and Roosevelt and many, many other great leaders, this is the lesson you will always learn.
41:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, you're totally right. And keep your eye on the big prize. And you may have to swallow one or two things you don't like on the way there, but the prize is there.
41:31 Lindsay Graham? Dan, this has been an enormous amount of fun, a bit different than we normally do, but I enjoyed it so much. I am a big fan of your history hit podcasts and videos, especially the most recent one I watched on D-Day. Thank you for talking to me today on American History Tellers.
41:45 Speaker 04 Thanks so much. I feel I've learned a lot. Thank you, Lindsay, for that.
41:48 Lindsay Graham? That was my conversation with historian and broadcaster Dan Snow. Check out his podcast, Dan Snow's History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.
41:59 Lindsay Graham? From Wondery, this has been a special episode of American History Tellers. For more on Churchill's visit to the White House, check out the book inspired by this podcast, The Hidden History of the White House: Power Struggles, Scandals, and Defining Moments. You can find more information about the book in our show notes. On the next episode, we'll be wrapping up our series on the transcontinental railroad with an interview with Su Li, historian and former executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America. She joins me to talk about the experience of Chinese railroad workers, the dangers they faced, and the legacy they left.
42:38 Lindsay Graham? American History Tellers is only possible because of listeners like you, so thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure to follow American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts, my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all sorts of other things, go to historyishuman.com. That's historyishuman.com.
43:15 Lindsay Graham? American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham for Airship. Sound design by Molly Bach. Music by Lindsay Graham. This episode was produced by Polly Stryker and Alida Rozansky. Our senior interview producer is Peter Arcuni. Managing producer Desi Blalow. Senior managing producer Callum Cluse. Senior producer Andy Herman. And executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Marshall Louie, and Aaron O'Flaherty for Wondery.
43:46 Speaker 05 You stepped out for your morning jog. Except it's not your usual morning jog. You started listening to an epic sci-fi book on Audible. Thirty chapters later, you've accidentally run a half marathon. You've lost track of how far you've run, somewhere just past the city limits. You can't stop. You have to find out what happens next. Then it's over. The universe seems bigger. You feel different. You feel like you have no idea where you are. Audible. Stories that speak to you.
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