Before The Storm: Drumbeat Of War (Part 2)

What was the state of the French Army in 1939 ? Why was Belgium so against Britain and France reinforcing defences there? How did the press cover the beginning of the war? Join Al Murray and James Holland for part 2 of this new series on the 'Phoney War', and how complacency and hubris led to the shock fall of Western Europe to the Nazi German war machine in Spring 1940. Start your free trial at ⁠patreon.com/wehaveways⁠ and unlock exclusive content and more. Enjoy livestreams, early access, ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and a weekly newsletter packed with book deals and behind-the-scenes insights. Get your ticket for We Have Ways Fest 6 here! Get your WHW Merch here! Visit refundclub.co.uk/whw. Refund Club is a trading style of Sandsford Law Limited, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA no. 8008114). Checking is free. A fee is payable only if your claim is successful. Eligibility: car finance taken out in the UK between 2007 and 2021. The average claim is around £829 per agreement; this is an average and not a guarantee of the amount you will receive. You can also claim yourself for free by contacting your lender or the Financial Ombudsman Service. Download World of Warships here: https://wo.ws/wehaveways A Goalhanger Production Produced by James Regan Editor: James Clayden Assistant Producer: Alfie Norris Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Social: @WeHaveWaysPod Social Producer: Harry Balden Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 2:35Speaker 03

  At Château Thierry, the military policeman in the middle of the road looked at our press cards, shrugged his shoulders and said it wasn't his responsibility to stop us, but that we would probably not get through to Reims. At Reims, they shrugged their shoulders and said they'd probably stop us at Verdun. At Verdun, they said we would surely be stopped in Metz. And at Metz, nobody paid us any attention. All the photographs and books of boyhood came to life around me. I was living in the exact world of 1914. Camouflaged buses, the buses of Paris, were loaded with infantry and rived in long lines over the rolling hills, past the overgrown bunkers which had been the old trenches, past a rusted tank which

• 3:20Speaker 03

  had been left by the road as a souvenir of these 20 years. In the barrels of their old rifles, some of the French conscripts had stuck long-stemmed purple flowers. They had done that too before. Decrepit trucks bumped along pulling 75s, and plodding horses were still drawing the old-fashioned soup kitchens, the steam rising from the stew inside. It was all the same. The projector had stopped in 1918 and now was turning again. And that was the American war reporter Eric Severide, writing about his experience of visiting the front line in the autumn of 1939. And yes, if the French army looks a little

• 4:05Speaker 03

  bit old-fashioned, well, that's because it was. That's the long and short of it.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  That's what we're going to discuss in this episode. Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, for the second episode in our series called Before the Storm, about the phony war, the Sitzkrieg, the war with no war. In the last episode, we did the Germans, a German state of preparation, German resilience, to use a modern buzzword. And then we had a look at the British Army, the most modern mechanised army in the world, for sure, but also with its own sets of problems. And now it is the turn of La France. The thing is, Severide there has visited the French army, and he's saying it's just like the exact world of 1914. Interestingly, in our last episode,

• 4:50Speaker 00

  James, we talked about the Germans being horse-drawn. And, you know, in years gone by on this podcast, you've done that thing of getting a picture of German horses at a watering hole and saying, well, what year was this taken? Is this from, which war's this from? Is it from, is it for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870? Or is it the First World War? Or is it the Second World War? And inevitably, it's always the Second World War, because otherwise, what's the point of showing us the picture? But very often...

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Yes, balls.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Very often, we've looked at footage, though, of the British Army in 1939, and they're still in their tunics from the First World War. And I've watched that footage with you, and you've gone, oh, I don't like it. I don't like it. It makes it look old-fashioned.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Oh, I can't stand it. They should be in their battle dress.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  There's only one uniform for me, and that's the battle dress.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  But here we, here we do have genuinely an army that is living in the not-too-distant past. And this is the thing, is this is the army that, that held the line at Verdun, that in the end was part of the defeat of the Germans in, in, in the First World War, and that fought valiantly and gallantly against terrible odds and in terrible epic meat-grinder battles, the like of which, you know, Verdun is probably a complete one-off in military history, isn't it, in terms of blood spilt, the stalemate, you know, it makes everything else look like a little half-hearted, I think. Yet the French army for Severide is very

• 6:18Speaker 00

  much the same objet, the same thing it was in the previous war. So who, who is he, this guy Severide? What are the circumstances?

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Well, he's a fascinating man. He's a terrific writer. He's a, he's a great war reporter. I think he worked for CBS. You know, he's in the kind of Ed Murrow kind of fold. And these are, they're worldly, they're international, they're cosmopolitan, they're East Coast. And he's over here, right from the start of the war, making almost daily broadcasts of the, of the war news from Europe over to the United States. And he watches the, he's watched the arrival of British troops in Cherbourg, and then he reaches the Maginot Line with a number of other journalists, including the New Zealander Geoffrey Cox, who's a mate of his. And no journalists are technically allowed there,

• 7:07Speaker 03

  but as he kind of wrote in that opening quote, they managed to get through two checkpoints to reach Metz and then drive straight onto frontline, and no one's, no one's stopping them. And he sees these long lines of camouflaged Parisian buses and, and horses pulling soup kitchens and men wearing the same oval helmets of the First World War. And the rest of the uniform is now khaki, but it's still got those great coats with the kind of folded-back bits that you see of the Poilou in the First World War. They were then red, you know, start of the war, they were red trousers with blue trench coats. And by the end of the war, they were kind of like blue trench coats all the way through and trousers. But they're the same pattern. Nothing's changed at all. And they still have putties, you

• 7:50Speaker 03

  know, these strips of wool that you tie around your shins and all the way up to your knee. And the uniform retains a very, very strong 19th century feel. They've still got long tunics underneath. And you can't help but think this must be detrimental to the soldier's mindset, because, you know, a modern uniform is needed to instill confidence that you're in a modern army, right? I mean, that's, that's part of the point of the battle dress is, is it says, that was then, this is now, we're new, we've upgraded. The point about the battle dress is the first time ever that short jackets are employed en masse. I mean, okay, so cavalry tunics were short in the cavalry era of the 19th century. But, but

• 8:35Speaker 03

  uniforms are psychological as much as they're practical. I think that's the thing to bear in mind. And afterwards, he and Geoffrey Cox drive into the Low Countries, which are Belgium and the Netherlands are technically neutral. And Belgium won't allow Britain or France to build defensive lines along the, the German-Belgian border, due to their neutrality, which is exactly the same condition as it was in 1914. And King Leopold, who's the king of the Belgians, and the Belgian government assume that the Germans will honour their neutrality, just as they assumed they would honour their neutrality in 1914. No.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Given the last, the last time the Germans didn't, and this, this German government is of a completely different gravy to that one. I mean, honestly.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Yes, even less trustworthy, if such a thing were possible.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  Well, they've gone and invaded Poland, having said they wouldn't, you know, I mean, come on. The thing is, is this flies in the face of the military reality of what's actually going on here, because the Maginot Line, no one's going to try and take that on, because it's been designed to deter you.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  No one would do it.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's a deterrent, literally. It's to deter you from taking that particular course of action. You know, the Belgians have got that wrong. And anyway, you know, it's happened in Czechoslovakia. It's already happened, for God's sake. And you could say that you've been able to contain Germany defensively, at least, if the Sudetenland's defences hadn't been surrendered without a fight after Munich. If France or Britain had managed to talk the Low Countries and Scandinavia into reinforced their borders. And, you know, in early creation of mutual aid and defence, proper strategic coordinated deterrent action may well have deterred Germany, rather than the French acting unilaterally.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  I don't think there's any doubt about it. I don't think there's any doubt about it. If you've been allowed to move up and have a series of defences all along the Dutch-Belgian border, and they can still say, we're neutral, we're just, we're just, we're just defending, you know, we're just a deterrent, but we are neutral.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Is that the thing that's the failure of the 1930s? Or is it the failure of appeasement? That, I think, is the question, isn't it? Is the failure of deterrence, rather than a failure of an appeasement posture, so to speak? Those arguments are very hard to untangle. So Severide and Cox, they drive around the Low Countries, and they find it all very depressing. And of course, part of the view at the time is that the Ardennes, this dense area of forests, crisscrossed with tracks and valleys and, I mean, this is the thing, is when we went to the Ardennes, an awful lot of it is open space, actually. But it's pockets of woodland, roads with steep gradient, winding roads round river valleys and all this sort of stuff.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. And full credit to Severide, when he goes around, you know, he's saying at the time, oh, this is not very well defended, is it? What happens if the Germans come through here? Ah, it won't happen. They never do that.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  It's impossible. It is impossible there. It's impossible. Um, but and he goes to see a Belgian Colonel and it discovers that the Belgian Colonel says, yeah, half my regiment have gone AWOL, gone home.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Gone be ours, TVA.

• 11:31Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, because there is, because there's a war, but there's no war is the part of the other problem here. There's no strategic direction or intent. And they go to, when they visit Holland, it looks like normal life has reasserted itself. It's just continuing that state of mobilisation in Belgium and Holland is, seems to be invisible.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I mean, it's interesting. There's a, there's a, there's a one Dutch guy, I can't remember his name. He's called Gert something. He's in his thirties, but he's a reservist, of course, because you do national description, then you have to be on the reserve. So suddenly he gets mobilised and, you know, of all his mates and they have to kind of go and dig out their uniforms from the kind of attic. And it's, his is a bit moth eaten because he hasn't touched it in, you know, a dozen years. And he puts it on and waves the family goodbye. And he's sort of thinking, well, hopefully I'll just go over, do a bit refresher and then I'll be back in a few weeks. You know, that's the mindset, you know, that's the attitude that this can't possibly happen. This is not going to happen again. We'll be all right, you know, blah, blah, blah.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  So, I mean, that's an American's bird's eye view of, or worm's eye view of what's going on in, in Europe. But, um, uh, across the other side of the Atlantic, we, and, and those of you who have listened to our visionary series will, will be across some of this. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is looking at a basic problem, which is there's a war, but his country is just not interested.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  No. And, and there is, and there is this ongoing feeling that the merchants of death had been the kind of big business that had spoiled it, which is why you've only got six ordnance factories and only one factory in the whole United States making any kind of explosive whatsoever. You know, so they're, they're really horrendously behind. And, and polls in September 1939 show that only two and a half percent of the population think the US should enter the war. So, you know, put another way, that's 97 and a half percent don't. Getting on for 40%, 37 and a half percent think the US should take no sides, stay out of the war completely, offer goods on a cash and carry basis to anyone. And 29.9% don't want any US involvement at all, not even goods, just, uh,

• 13:36Speaker 00

  Forget about it. Yeah, incredible. But Roosevelt is pretty convinced that America may well have an unavoidable role to play. And I think it is this moment that I hand over to James Holland for his, I think, superlative FDR, uh, because he says,

• 13:56Speaker 03

  He says, "We in the Americas are no longer a faraway continent to which the eddies of controversies beyond the seas could bring no interest or no harm. The vast amount of our resources, the vigor of our commerce, and the strength of our men may have made us vital factors in world peace, whether we choose it or not." And of course, he's paying the money. And he's, he's a worst case scenario.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, which is the Nazis winning in Europe. And then they come over to target Latin America and they make their way up to the US, which then leaves him in real trouble in the Pacific, because Japan can strike in the Pacific, because he's, he's looking in two directions. America is a global player.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Whether or not.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  Expressions of isolationism are acknowledgements that there is a global order, aren't they?

• 14:42Speaker 03

  Because you're rejecting that.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  He wants to repeal the neutrality acts. He wants to adopt a cash and carry, which after all, there is political support for, as we said, he'd take nearly 40% of the electorate with him if he goes cash and carry. But, you know, which will exclusively benefit Britain and France.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  And that obviously, just to reiterate the point, that cash and carry favours Britain and France, because they've got the means of, they've got the cash and they've got the means of carrying it. They've got ships, which Germany doesn't. So, so cash and carry is very much an allied centric.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Yes. And the Royal Navy could, can after all blockade German ships, sink German ships, leaving an American army, can't they? There's the long and the short of it if they want to. But he still has to avoid aggravating the isolationists though, which is why he's, he frames all this in terms of they're just trying to stay out of the war. All I'm trying to do is keep us out of the war. But we've got to admit there is one and we've got to accept that there is one.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Our acts must be guided by one single hard-headed thought, keeping America out of this war.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  There we are. And luckily, Congress agrees with him, votes to repeal the arms embargo by the beginning of November. And this means that US.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. So this is a repeal of the neutrality acts, as they were called.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  And this means that American industry and manufacturing capacity is now at the disposal of Britain and France. And enormous orders go in, gigantic orders for aircraft and rifles and vehicles immediately, gigantic orders.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Well, the Nazi leadership know all this. You know, they know that they are up against France, which is a mighty industrial nation with a very, very large army and Atlantic frontage. They're up against Britain, which has the largest merchant navy in the world, the largest navy in the world, which has already imposed an economic blockade. And they now know from November onwards, with the repeal of the neutrality acts, that, that America has, has laid down its colours in favour of the Allies and has inordinate manufacturing capacity compared to anyone else in the world and is the most modern nation on the planet. So they also know that Poland, yes, they got away with it, but it was slightly squeaky bum time and lots and lots of shortcomings emerging. So

• 16:51Speaker 03

  the, the idea of taking on Britain and France together in a single strike in the West is, seems absolutely suicidal to almost everyone within the Wehrmacht.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  Um, not everyone.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  No, Hitler's up for it.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  But it also, Jim, you could say that it argues, that it argues for getting it done right now, that this change is set to success, argues for doing it now, doing it right now, before everyone else catches us up. If you're of Hitler's temperament, this is, this offers circumstances for, for pressurising the situation, saying we have to do this right this minute, before all that stuff starts to arrive. So you, you can almost see why he might think like this, almost. So the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, which is the supreme military commander of Nazi Germany, is, it has a war and economics office, which von Schelle, we talked about in the last episode, that plenty of potential for motor vehicles. He's part of the OKW. And what they really are,

• 17:47Speaker 00

  rather than, like, they're not really like the chiefs of imperial general staff in Britain, which is, their job is to, you know, cook up military strategy, satisfactory to the politicians and then filter it down to the people that have to enact it. They're basically doing what Hitler wants. They're, because Hitler is where that buck stops. And so the operational staff at OKW, which is includes Volta Volamont, who we met in the previous episode, they're really Hitler's personal military officers, rather than an operational outfit, making operational decisions. And everyone else regards them as Hitler's puppets. They think that, that OKW is a joke, really. And they just do what he wants.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  Yes. And Keitel is known as La Keitel, which means lackey.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah. And Volamont, he doesn't like the decision to attack the West. He's worried, "Such a lack of foresight seems almost incomprehensible." But there are, there are people who believe in Hitler and Hitler's, all the dice that Hitler have rolled so far have all come up double sixes. So there's the, that impetus of, of his political luck, isn't there? But there is a difficult relationship between the here, between the army and OKW. And this is made worse by the fact that these top OKW officials, they immediately, they're supporting Hitler's decisions. They're just, despite the private concerns, we, you know, we have that thing of people saying one thing in private, another thing in public, that underlined, well, I think underlines human affairs. Let's be honest now, we, we encountered a lot of it when we looked at Japan's road to war with, with America,

• 19:18Speaker 00

  where that was going on everywhere. And it, and it's happening here and it, you know.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Yes. What was it called?

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Honore Katane, wasn't it? And the army has to do all the planning for the OKW decision, which is only going to generate resentment, isn't it?

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  So Franz Halder, who's the army chief of staff, he's disgusted as much as Volamont is. And now we need to look at Franz Halder, because he's an incredibly important player.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  He certainly is in these early years of the war.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. And as a moment of opportunity. So my guess, Jim, is that he joins the army before the First World War. He does well in the First World War and then he stays in the, then he stays in the, in the army after the First World War, probably with an iron cross.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Well, amazing.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  Um, but he stays in the here and then he ends up, uh, gone through the staff college.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Catches the eye of key people as an excellent staff officer.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  Um, and by the way, if you want to know where that.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  With amazing attention to detail.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  If you're a new listener and you're wondering why we've adopted that tone, um, last year, before we have Ways Fest Funf, we did a roundup of the best and worst German officers and all of them had that biography. Every single one of them had that exact biography.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  To a man.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  To the man. Um, but he, he is an expert on training. He does have a great eye for detail. He doesn't really like the Nazis. He doesn't really like Hitler. Um, but, but he's good at his job. And so his plan for the Polish invasion, that, that was his plan that worked so well. And now he's got to plan an attack on the West.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Yes. Um, and just so you know, so you can picture him, he, he's got glasses. He's got a close crop hair. He doesn't have a brush and moustache. He's clean shaven, the most by. And, you know, that's what he looks like. So he, he looks like, he looks like a desk waller, which is what he is.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. He's really good at his job. And, um, he's one of those people, he's loyal to the army. So he's not going to produce a duff plan because he doesn't like Hitler. He's going to do his best for his blokes is the thing. So that's why he's producing good plans. And he's told in directive number six from Hitler, on the 6th of October, the aim is to defeat the French army and its allies and to win as much territory as possible in Holland, Belgium and Northern France to serve the base for the successful prosecution of the air and sea war against England.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  I'm glad you brought back some energy into this, some Hitlerian vim and vigour.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  That's the directive number six from the man himself. And I think that's very interesting, isn't it? Because that territory across the English Channel and the North Sea from Britain is the one thing that's going to make the British twitchy.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  But what's interesting about this is Haldur opposes the plan and to the point that he actually does want to sabotage it. He wants to make it so, so crap that Hitler will be...

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Just incredible.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  It's amazing, this, isn't it? Given the job he did in Poland, he thinks, he thinks, I'm going to come up with something that stinks so that Hitler will go, you know what, we'll have to do something else. We'll have to find another turn of action. So what he wants to do is thrust through Belgium to the coast and Hitler says, no, it's a terrible idea. Come up with something else.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  No, but what does Hitler really say? Hitler says, "Gott al leber, it's a terrible idea, this is schalter."

• 22:28Speaker 00

  "This is not the plan, so the Third Reich requires at this moment a destiny."

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Essentially.

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Exactly. That's much more like it. I think every time we're paraphrasing Hitler, we should just go into full on.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Okay, fine. I'm happy to do that for you. And what's really interesting though is Haldur at this point, he does dislike Hitler to the point where he's going to, he's involved in a plot to assassinate him. This is absolutely amazing, isn't it?

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Yes. This is with von Leib and Ritter von Leib, who was at the time the commander of Army Group C, Karl Heinrich von Sturtenegger, who was Haldur's deputy at the OKH, and Ludwig Beck, who'd been Haldur's predecessor at the army, chief of the army.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Who'd resigned because of the...

• 23:08Speaker 03

  And resigned in opposition to the war back in August. Yes, and who's then in Valkyrie and is played in the film by Terence Stamp.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  It is, however, quite difficult to get support for the plot. And amazingly, Haldur's going around with a loaded pistol in his pocket in case he gets the chance to kill Hitler himself. I mean...

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. But there's this brilliant moment where Haldur kind of throws in the towel of the whole assassination idea. Because von Brauchich, who is the head, the chief, you know, commander in chief of the OKH, the army, he presents Haldur's second plan to Hitler in November, and it's basically the same as the first, but includes a second simultaneous frost south. And von Brauchich tells Hitler, the armies just aren't ready for a major offensive like this.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  "What do you mean they are not ready? What do you mean they are not ready? My army is ready. This defeated the Poles already. Crushed Poland, we will now crush the French."

• 24:03Speaker 03

  "It's Weill will get us through."

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  And every time Hitler lets rip at von Brauchich, he sits there like this and shakes, basically. And he comes back and he needs 24 hours to recover from this, this kind of tongue lashing that he has from Hitler. I mean, he's absolutely incredible.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  And, and he admits to Haldur, he just couldn't stand up to it. He just, he had no words to say to this, this invective that had come his way. And he offers his resignation, but Hitler refuses it. And obviously, you know, Hitler wants a controller. He wants yes men and people that are going to be pliable.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  So then Hitler makes this comment and sort of goes, you know, I know what the problem is. It's the spirit of Zossen, you know, which is where the, so Zossen is south east of Berlin, and it's the big base where the army has its headquarters. And when Haldur hears this, he assumes that Hitler has somehow got wind of the assassination plot. And that is what he's referring to, on the spirit of Zossen. Or at any rate, he doesn't want to test this and doesn't want to risk it. So he rushes around burning any incriminating pieces of paper and removes the pistol from his pocket every time he, from henceforth, sees the Führer. And that's the end of it.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and eventually, in fact, comes properly into his orbit, doesn't he? It's the thing. The tragedy of Haldur goes from being a man ready to slot the guy to being completely complicit.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  Well, his strategy is now is to not rush it. He thinks, okay, well, I'm going to have to come up with a plan, but let's try and give ourselves some breathing space. Let's try and kick this can down the road until the spring at the very earliest, is basically his strategy, which it has to be said works.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  Um, in the last, we looked at what, what was in the British inventory in the last episode, and we looked at the Bren gun, didn't we, James? So let's, let's just take a glance at what, what they've got on the other side of the hill.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  Everything about the German military is geared up for a short war.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  From the uniforms to everything. And really, if you want to look at one weapon that is seen as fearsome and representative of, of the blitzkrieg and the efficiency of the Germans in the early part of the war, is probably the MG34.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Which we're going to talk about after the break.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by World of Warships by Wargaming.

• 26:35Speaker 00

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• 26:44Speaker 03

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• 28:11Speaker 00

  Right. Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Almayr and James Holland, and our series about the phony war. And we're looking at some of the sort of stuff available to the Germans and the fact that the Germans are wedded to a quick war, knock them over, knock them out, carry on with the new political status quo way of doing things. Which after all, is how Bismarck united Germany in the 19th century. It's by knocking out his rival states, knocking them over quickly, and then, and then subsuming them into greater Germany. So, but we offered people, we dangled people the prospect of a look at the MG34, Jim, in the previous half. So take us through this, I think it's fair to say, legendary weapon.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  It's developed by the firm Rheinmetall in, in the 1930s. Obviously gets adopted in 1934, which is why it's called the MG34. And it is designed as a kind of all encompassing light machine gun that can be used in a multiple different roles. So it's an infantry weapon, it's an anti-aircraft gun, also to be mounted on vehicles. And because of its anti-aircraft gun nature, and because it wants to be put on vehicles, it is considered that a rapid rate of fire is a huge advantage. Because that means you can get a lot of bullets in an arc very, very quickly. And it is rolled steel, it has multiple touches on it, the

• 29:30Speaker 03

  attention to detail on it is incredible, has detachable stock, various accoutrements. So it comes with a kind of a leather case with, which is wood lined to keep the leather case sturdy. And in it, it's got a little oiler with a little chain, which is sort of gossamer thin, but, but very precise and beautiful. Even the screw tap has got little grooves in it so that you can grip it easier, more easily. This is the Rolls Royce of, of machine guns. And I, as you know, I've, I've got one here in my office just over there. And it's amazing. It's got 13 different inspection stamps on it. So each bit of that has got a little stamp on it, which means that each bit of it has been, been checked out by someone.

• 30:14Speaker 03

  And you would have to say, surely just one stamp at the end is probably enough. But, but that's not the German way. So it's, it's the most elaborate machine gun that's ever been built. It's got more than 100 individual parts on it. And it is amazing, because when you do take it to pieces, and you look at the firing mechanism in the breech and everything, it is, it's an absolute masterpiece of engineering. It is so beautifully constructed. So every single barrel comes out of a single block of steel, which then has to be bored out. You know, so it's, it's not, you know, it is, it is incredibly expensive. It uses 50 kilograms of, of steel and iron is used for each gun. And the, and the end product weighs,

• 30:57Speaker 03

  you know, 11 kg, so it's like 22 pounds, something like that, and takes 150 man hours. So that's more than three times the man hours required to produce a Bren gun, for example, the British Bren gun. So you can have three Bren guns for every one MG34. It is incredibly prone to overheating, despite the beautifully engineered barrel, because you're firing 15 bullets a second. And sometimes it gets so hot, the barrel starts to melt and it goes red hot and then it goes white hot. And that, that's a problem. And unlike the Bren gun, which has got a wooden handle on the, and obviously wood doesn't conduct heat in the same way that metal does, on the barrel, or on the outside of the barrel, the casing

• 31:41Speaker 03

  around the barrel, the MG34 doesn't. So when it gets really, really hot, you've got to put on a massive Ager oven mitt. And you have to pull a switch, which pulls the whole breech mechanism to one side so that you can expose the barrel. And then you have to basically unclip something and the barrel just plops out. But it's obviously something you can get used to. But you can't help thinking a wooden, a wooden handle or a grip on the barrel would have been quite handy. And the problem is that because of this, the instruction, instructions in the training manual say that shooting more than 250 shots in one continuous

• 32:19Speaker 03

  burst from one barrel is verboten, is forbidden. So that equates to, you know, a very limited amount of, of shooting. And, and the truth is, the practical rate of fire is not 990 rounds a minute, it's 120, which coincidentally is the practical rate of fire of the Bren gun.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  And obviously for a Bren gun firing at 500 rounds a minute rather than 900 rounds a minute, you've basically got double the shooting time.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  I mean, the thing is, the thing is, Jim, you described a moment ago, the MG34 as a masterpiece of engineering. It doesn't sound like one. It sounds like a masterpiece of machine, of machining, and of the business of producing an object, of manufacture, masterpiece of manufacture, but not of engineering.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a fair point.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  Because if it takes three times as long to make, and if it's wasteful in its steel production, and if actually in its handling, it's more difficult to handle than a Bren gun in that, in those respects, then the Bren is the masterpiece of engineering. The solutions to the same problem, aren't they?

• 33:22Speaker 03

  They are, but they, they're doing different, different things. So, so there is, you know, obviously the other thing about the Bren is the Bren is incredibly accurate, which is great, but sometimes you don't, you know, accuracy is not actually what, it's not that you don't want accuracy, of course, you always want accuracy, but, but it's not necessarily to be on an end all. That 900 rounds per minute, that rate of fire gives you an incredible

• 33:46Speaker 03

  amount of lead in, in a, in a, in an arc, and, and is obviously terrifying to come up against. And it's incredibly powerful. So, so listen, I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm not massively down on the MG34. I'm just saying, you can't say that the MG34 and its, and it's, its successor, the MG42, as one very well-known historian wrote in one of his books, you know, he wrote, he wrote that MG34 was the preeminent small light machine gun of the Second World War. It's like, well, you know, says who? And on what are you judging this? And this is the point. The, the guy who's facing the MG34 doesn't care that it takes 150 man hours, which is incredibly expensive, um, and is very, you know, and, and uses a huge amount of steel to produce one, um, which, much of which is wasted, blah,

• 34:29Speaker 03

  blah, blah. Doesn't give a damn about that. But, but as a historian, you're looking back on it, you, you have to look at these weapons in the round, and they're indicative of a mindset which is producing these incredibly aesthetically pleasing, beautiful, you know, works of art, uh, which are designed for giving the fighting force a psychological lift of superiority. Because you think, huh, look at that rough piece of rubbish, that Soviet machine gun, or that Sten gun later on in the war, or, or whatever, by me, compared to our perfect weapons. So, that's, that's part of it. It is part of this kind of multi-role

• 35:10Speaker 03

  briefing that it, it gets when it's been developed in the early 1930s. But it is symptomatic of a mindset of, of this sort of Prussian military aristocracy, that, which goes all the way back to Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War. Uh, and, you know, just think of all those big Voms, you know, von Clausewitz, von Molka, von Schlieffen, von Hindenburg, von Ludlumbur, and now von Brauchich. That, that's the heritage. And actually, for all the, the sort of supposed modernity of the Germans, actually, their army looks

• 35:49Speaker 03

  quite antiquated too. It's just that we have become totally used to seeing those Nuremberg rallies and the rows of the helmets and all the rest of it. But just step back from that a little bit, and you realise that actually there's quite a lot about their uniforms, which are not very modern at all. And I think it's really interesting to do that. It's just, we, we've become so used to it for Mark Commando comics and movies and all the rest of it.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it's all the leather.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Tons of leather.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  And jackboots, which aren't a practical item. Those baggy thigh breeches, high collared tunics.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Well, they're not because, because leather is incredibly expensive. And when it gets wet, unless you kind of constantly polish it within an inch of its live-in cover and dubbing every two minutes, what happens when it gets wet is it changes shape. And when it dries again, it becomes brittle and it rots. Because after all, it is a bit of an animal. So it's going to. Whereas canvas obviously is super cheap. And it doesn't rot. And if it does break, who cares? Just have another one because it's so cheap. You know, it's, it's cheap in a way that leather is not cheap. You know, and they have the, you know, the officers have those baggy thigh breeches, which just look ridiculous. You know, they look from a completely different era. And then you have the high collared tunics. And, you know, what, what the German uniforms are doing is they're harking back

• 37:10Speaker 03

  to a, an earlier, pre-1914 military tradition of Prussian military excellence, which after all has been the foundation of the German state of 1871. And if you look at, there's a, there's a very famous painting in the Hall of Mirrors in, in Versailles, where the foundation of the German state is being declared. And there's lots of German officers there. And lots of the kit they're wearing has been carried over into the Nazi era, even down to the eagle. It's just the eagle's head is facing a different way under the Nazis. I would also argue that this kind of notion of Prussian military brilliance is kind of slightly mythical. You know, it's, it's kind of a bit like the Great Patriotic War in,

• 37:54Speaker 03

  in Russia. You know, because they only fought a few, Prussia only fought a few wars in, between the Napoleonic Wars and First World War, and they were small affairs against Denmark and Austria and things. And they're all over in a matter of days. Inception, of course, was the one against France, but, but, you know.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Winning though, um, has its own quality, doesn't it? And can produce a legend. Um, uh, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? If you're Winston Churchill, you believe in Prussian militarism, don't you?

• 38:25Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  It, it's a received opinion, isn't it? That Prussian militarism is a thing. And in fact, Prussian militarism is a bad thing and a dangerous thing and a destabilising force within Europe. But I think that's a, definitely a thing people, people believe. And, you know, there is no Prussia anymore. Don't forget that. Prussia was abolished as a state. It was evaporated. It doesn't exist anymore because the idea was regarded as too sort of magnetic for Germans, too, too threatening to European stability.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  But, but, but just think about it, you know, Frederick the Great and stuff. I mean, you know, he, he's kind of 18th century. So that doesn't really count because that's so far away that it's, the moment's passed. Yes, you, you, you beat the French in, in 1878, 1871, uh, uh, and very effectively so. But other than that, you know, you've got a few little spats here and there, but it, there's nothing that makes you a great military power. And then you've got 1914 where they lose. You know, they lose to the same enemy they're fighting again now. You know, they lose to France who they beat in 1870. So if you're looking at your most sort of recent, um, um, kind of track record, it's not a great one, is it?

• 39:28Speaker 00

  Well, yes, but that's a defeat that must be avenged because of the stab in the back and the, you know, yada, yada, yada. That there's, there's, there's, the myth is so powerful, people are prepared to make excuses for it even. But that's what I think's really, really interesting about it. I think we've talked about this before. It's a thing I've, I've wondered about aloud, that if, if Britain had lost the war, would, would Dartmouth be seen as the sort of, the Royal Navy, the, you know, the, the Naval Academy, would that be seen in the same sort of, um, the danger of British maritime power and the, the mythos of British maritime, uh, uh, aggression and all that? You, you know what I mean? I think this is, this so tangled up in, in German self-image. And if something's integral

• 40:12Speaker 00

  to self-image, it doesn't need to be true, does it? If it's part of your identity, often, of, no, no.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  No, no, not at all.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  It can be, it can be a mimicry of a thing, or a mimicry of an idea of a thing, which is what you've got in these uniforms. They're wearing these baggy thigh breeches and hat, high jackboots and high collars and deathheads because they're mimicking a thing of the, from their imaginations that they've remembered from their imaginations of this idea of Prussian militarism.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  For the imagination, but from their past, the Nazi look is very considered. And the reason they have lots of, of, of leather is because it looks cool. And it makes you stand a bit taller, and it makes you puff your chest out and, and you look sharp and, you know, come on in, the water's warm, look amazing, get the fro line. I mean, that, that's the subliminal message. It's not even the subliminal message. That is the message. And, you know, I want to be a part of this gang. I want to be a part of this rehabilitation of our traditional, um, magic, this militarism. And, you know, because being part of this is going to help us make Germany great again, you know, so that kind of stuff. It's, it's,

• 41:24Speaker 03

  and it's an opportunity, isn't it, to displace the painful memories of, of, of Germans' more recent past with a, with a new kind of German Nazi glory. I mean, you know, so, so, you know, the, the tension to detail on these, these uniforms is just incredible.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  Well, no, I have to say, this is what's amazing, is that this attention to detail, you know, buttons on cuffs, belt loops, aluminium buttons, and the fact that each soldier is given not one uniform, not two, but seven. It's, it's, it's crackers.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Isn't it? If, if you.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  Yep. So you get field, uniform, service, uniform, watch, uniform, parade, uniform, report, water, uniform, walking out, uniform, a sports uniform. A- a- and it is absolutely amazing because if you, if you look at, uh, buttons on a battle dress, for example, or on American uniforms, Americans are plastic buttons, they're just stamped, you know, the super mass production. British ones are also, some of them are plastic, but some of them are just sort of stamped metal buttons, like super, super cheap. Someone has designed the German button. It looks like the head of a thimble. It's got these little dots on it, little, little pimples all over the front of it and they're

• 42:40Speaker 03

  completely standardized, but it's more complicated to make. It's more expensive to make. It's and, and they're all made of aluminium and if you look at the, uh, uh, of the, the jet, the standard Feld bluza, for example, it's absolutely beautiful. It's got sort of ray on lining and, and the buttons on the bottom of the cuffs come undone. So you can roll up the sleeves and then, and then, you know, it's got multiple buttons around the collar. It's got little buttons on the lining of the collar so that you can fix a kind of a stiff smart collar onto it should you need to. And you know, it's got pleats in all the buttons and in the pockets and it's so elaborate, you know, you compare that to a battle dress.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  It, it is literally Savile Row versus, you know, Bangladeshi sweat house. The difference is so marked and that's because the look is really important, but it's really expensive to make all these, this stuff because it is very, very well tailored. And there are no, there's no adherence to the principles of mass production at all. So there are 323 different companies producing one particular type of military linen. Yeah. And I know this because I went through all the records and in the archives and, and looked into all this. There's loads of stuff on uniforms and things in the, in the archives down in Froberg and it's just amazing, you know, and, and Germany's problem is it doesn't

• 44:07Speaker 03

  have much iron ore at all, which is why it has to get it from Sweden, has no tungsten, no oil, no bauxite, no copper. The only offering is the coal industry, which is tiny compared to Britain's and the quality of the coal is pretty bad. That's quite a problem.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  To put it mildly.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  One of the things they got that works though, aside from the, the fact that the standard treat, training in the army is good and it instills rigid discipline is they have an excellent pipeline for indoctrination and militarization, basically, that they are well set for grabbing lads when they're 14, when they join the Hitler Youth and then they go into the Reichsarbeitstätte, which is a sort of work body, the Reich's work, uh, organization.

• 44:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Which means by the time they're in the army, they're being well conditioned and particularly ideologically for fighting for the Reich. And I think that, that's one of the things they, they've definitely got right. And he's in, in a way, one of the sort of, you know, ghost in the machine answers to how are the Germans able to hang on for so long when the moment comes is that from their point of view, fighting to the last ditch moment or pushing on when things are bad, their soldiers are well primed for that. That's where Germany is a militarized society where, you know, you can't argue about the extent of militarization like you can about Prussia militarization. They've got that right from their point of view, which means that when you, when you get into the army, when you're 18, you're brimful of wanting to do your bit and everyone's trying to stop the Reich

• 45:38Speaker 00

  from having what it wants. And I think, you know, that there's that, there's that, there's those lads in night, there's that amazing conversation in, in Arnhem in 1944, where one of the Padres talks to some German boys who were 17 or something and he get, takes them on a body burying detail. And he says, why on earth are you fighting? You know, the war's over. Look, you're losing. And they go, no, well, we need an empire. You, you've got one. We haven't got one. We need an empire. We need to, we need, the, the world needs to be balanced in a more fair pitch for us. And those are boys who would have been 14 in 1940, 41.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Seeing the war pan out and they still think that. And I think that's the thing that Germans absolutely get right. And also they've got experience because of Poland, haven't they? Everyone's had a taste. Everyone knows what the sort of tumble of combat might be like. And they're really, really, they're really forward thinking. They're looking ahead and, and the, you know, there is this thing, and in our Bob Ross series recently, we looked at how they end up believing their own hype. But at this point they are, their thinking is about moving forward and about probing and finding solutions rather than, oh, we can do this. We know what we're doing. We're the experts. So you have people like Guderian.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  Well, yes. And the other, the other thing is everything about their, their history, their situation, their lack of resources leads them to conclude and has led them to conclude. And this is where going back in time is, has, is useful.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  That it leads them to the belief that they need to win their wars very, very quickly. And so what they do instead is they, they are, are training their men and producing equipment and all the rest of it for a war that's not going to last very long. And if it was not going to last very long, you could have fantastic weaponry that's over engineered and you can have lots of leather webbing and stuff because it isn't going to last very long. So it's fine. You know, you're not expecting it to go through the winter, um, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, and so this is, this is very much the model. There is nothing new about the blitzkrieg concept at all is, is what they've always been doing, which is, you know, the Kessel Schlack, the cauldron war, the huge Schwerpunkt, the kind of, you know, huge mass of force at the point of impact.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  And you envelop and defeat your enemy very, very quickly. That is because of their geographical situation and lack of resources. It's the only way they can do it. And in the past, it's proved very, very successful. And, you know, what they do in the 19th century is exactly that. And it, and sometimes it works. And, and what they do in 1914, that's exactly the same plan and it doesn't work. And what they're planning now, what Haldor is trying to work out is how to, how to do it again. Um, so that they can win quickly or give themselves the best chance of, of winning quickly. But, but the point is if you are going to win quickly, having super engineered weapons is fine. It's, it's when you're in a long drawn out campaign that the, those problems of over engineering come to the fore.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  There's, so there's a, a plan evolving because after all Hitler has already said he wants to go west. So the army is having to grasp the nettle of how to do this. Um, so towards the end of 1939, Oberkommandant is here. So their army headquarters in Zossen, they're still dragging their heels and really trying not to deliver anything that will work. And how does, as a result, he's not making much progress, but the chief of staff of army group A, Eric von Manstein, Manstein sends Haldes seven drafts of an attack plan, all about surprise through the Ardennes. The idea is you do a big thrust in the north through Holland into Belgium that the Allies will then assume is the main attack because of last time. They'll move troops to respond to that, um, in, in Belgium to meet the thrust.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  And then the Germans' real attack will come punching through the Ardennes, using the thick forests and hills of the Ardennes, although they're not that thick, the thicker forest, as Eric Severide had noted, and that that will do the trick. You know, the Allies turn one way and you come in the other way is the idea. Then they force their way over the Meuse.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Main French line of defense and then swing up towards the channel. You, you encircle them. The French, Belgian and British armies. So faint in the north.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Um, and at the main Schwerpunkt, the punch, heavy punch where it's least expected. And, and of course there's this sense for Manstein says, you know, if the Germans can cross the Meuse in a surprise operation, we can blaze through France with mechanized troops before the Allies have a chance to react. How does this now, you're pinning it on too many, too many things that are unlikely to happen, too many unpredictable factors. So the Allied air force is not seeing that attack, the French not predicting it. And can our Panzers actually pull this off? Is any of this possible? How do those, again, he's no fool because he doesn't like the plan, but he knows this is exactly the sort of thing, thing Hitler go, yes, this is the solution. Finally someone understands the kind of daring dash that the Reich requires in this situation, this moment of destiny.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  And so he can't risk Hitler seeing it. So it doesn't pass it on.

• 50:33Speaker 03

  No.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  But then fate intervenes in the new year.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Yes, it does.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  This story is very, very interesting. So Haldes has to reconsider because on the 10th of January, um, and a German aircraft makes a forced landing in Belgium, now Belgium's neutral of course, and onboard that aircraft is a Luftwaffe ops officer who's carrying copies of this latest plan, still saying that the Low Countries will be a main point of attack. And when the plane lands, the officers try to bury the plans in a panic, but they're captured and the plans are seized. They've been rumbled and this creates a massive opportunity for deception though, because plans, these, these plans prompt a big response from the Allies who go, gosh, that's what they're going to do. Um, and they start moving

• 51:18Speaker 00

  their chess pieces around on the board. And so a few weeks later, two generals give Manstein's plan directly to Hitler's aide, General Schmunt. They're doing this because they're loyal to Manstein and want his plan to be seen properly. And Hitler goes, finally someone who understands what I want to do. Someone has read my mind and my brilliance. And he embraces the plan immediately.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  Of course he does.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Because basically it looks like it might work and it involves sort of dash and vim and a gamble, which is his style. And also months have passed since mid, you know, it's mid February now, they're, they're much in a better situation. They've replenished their stocks. They've figured out things from Poland that will go directly into how the Schwerpunkt operates. And of course.

• 52:05Speaker 03

  Mentally, they're in a better place.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  In a much better place mentally, man. And also Hitler's thinking about it, but again, here we go. Hitler's imagination running ahead of things. You know, he's now already thinking about Denmark and Norway, going there before France to get secure passage of iron ore from Sweden. So again, they may have come up with the plan for the last thing he wanted, but he's got the next thing as well. It's interesting this though, because Halder, and this must be fear of the hairdryer treatment he gets if he disagrees. He now thinks actually Manstein's plan might work. And by the end of February, he has completed this completely dramatic Voltfasst and he starts submitting plans based on the Manstein plan. I mean, I gotta say it, fucking Franz Halder, right? The opportunities that man had to stop this whole thing in his tracks.

• 52:52Speaker 03

  And a pistol in his pocket, come on. Without Hitler, there is no, there is no war.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, and Franz Halder could have, I mean, he's one of the most consequential people in the history of the world by doing nothing, rather than doing something.

• 53:04Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  The latest plans are, Jim?

• 53:07Speaker 03

  Well, Army Group B, Army Gruppe B, would thrust through Holland and Northern Belgium. That would kick off first, so it would come, you know, sweeping in. And the British and the French and the now non-neutral Dutch and Belgian would move forward to meet that thrust. And while they're doing that, the main strike force, which will have the mass of the very limited number of Panzer divisions, will sweep through the Ardennes, through the Vörres, cross over the River Merz and get in round the back door. And that's going to be Army Group A. And that is the plan. You know, the Allies would then end up completely encircled and the operation code name is given

• 53:50Speaker 03

  to it is Falgelb or Case Yellow or Operation Yellow. That is then the plan that starts to shake, take shape. It's agreed in, in February 1940 and it is going to be launched at some point in the spring, but of course there is all the shenanigans in Scandinavia to come first. But that's how, that's the evolution of the plan from kind of stalling in October and November 1939 to a kind of, you know, what Halder realizes as a Falgelb offers the only chance of success. It might be a slim chance of success, but the traditional method of going through the Low Countries, they will be beaten back eventually by the, by the weight.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  And the only possible means of victory is to go through this back door and hope that the whole deception operation and the speed and operation of the strike force manages to sufficiently discombobulate the Allies, particularly the French, that that gives them their glimmer of victory. It's long odds, but it's the only chance they've got.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:55Speaker 03

  That's how he sees it.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  So we'll be laying more of that out in more phony war stuff. If you want to hear those or, and all the other panoply of treats that we have on offer as a Patreon, then go to our Patreon page, become a We Have Ways Of Making You Talk Patreon.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  And get stuck into the back catalogue, get stuck into the audiobooks and of course the live casts that we do.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  The next episode, I should just say, is we are going to be looking at the home front, not just in UK, but in Germany and France as well. What does everyone make of all these shenanigans?

• 55:27Speaker 00

  Will Manstein's plan work? There's a question. Who knows?

• 55:30Speaker 03

  Who knows?

• 55:31Speaker 00

  Nobody knows.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Who knows?

• 55:33Speaker 00

  Nobody knows, Jim, do they? But we'll see you soon. Thanks for listening and cheerio.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  Cheerio.