Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Historian James Holland: What World War II Teaches Us About Today

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

James Holland is the author of Cassino ’44, The Savage Storm, Brothers in Arms, Sicily ’43, Normandy ’44, Big Week, The Rise of Germany, and The Allies Strike Back in the War in the West trilogy, Burma ’44, and Dam Busters. He has written and presented the BAFTA shortlisted documentaries Battle of Britain and Dam Busters for the BBC. He is also the co-host of the brilliant WW2 Pod with Al Murray. Get a copy of his brilliant book "Victory '45: The End of the War in Eight Surrenders", you won't regret it: https://amzn.to/3IlwaW3 Listen to the podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/34VlAepHmeloDD76RX4jtc?si=6695d3eef52944c0 Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com.

Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor.

Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Today I'm sitting down with historian James Holland, one of the best storytellers of World War II. His new book, Victory 45, co-authored with Al Murray, shows the second World War didn't just end with one neat headline. It unraveled through eight messy surrenders. We get into Eisenhower, Truman, Stalin, Carl Wolf. Who the hell is Carl Wolf? Well, you're going to find out.

Plus the ordinary soldiers who carried the weight of history showing why victory never comes as clean as we'd love. like to remember it. Okay, so looking back on the eight messy surrenders is such an important part of history. I think James brings us to life with Al Murray. Of course, I could have talked to James all day about this stuff because I'm so fascinated by World War II. And I'm also fascinated by James's writing Al Murray as well. But one gift that James has is not just understanding the historical facts and rendering them quite objectively. He's very good at understanding the psychology of the decision-making and what's going on in terms of the general population in the theaters of the wars in World War II. So whether it's in France, when he's writing about Normandy or Casino,

what's going on in Italy. So look out for part two of my conversation with James Holland as we go into other aspects of his books and his writing style. And I think you'll find him as fascinating as I do. Of course, I could talk to Jim Holland all day long. So go out and buy his books and please listen. Joining me now, my favorite historian. How about that, James Holland? My favorite historian. Because, you know, I'm a big World War II buff, and I read just about everything. I have a whole column of James Holland books, but the one we're going to talk about today,

best-selling author and historian, the one we're going to talk about today is Victory 45. It's the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the end of the war in eight surrenders. What a great book. You know what, James, I will say this about you. You know, I'm a history buff, so I think I know everything. I'm a little bit smug about it. But every time I read one of your books, I learned something that I didn't know. So I want to applaud you for that.

And by the way, we're both part of the Gollhanger family. See that? So we can't get, you're stuck with me, James. There's an unconditionality in the family, as you know. So you have no choice to be with me. But it's like joining in a kind of, you know, an Italian family. Yeah, exactly. You're all sat around the kind of proverbial table.

You've got to take all the dysfunction, eating kind of beautiful food. Yep, you've got to take all the bomb ass and all the dysfunction, but you have to have to stay in love. Okay, so. Do you think Tony is the mother? Yeah, he could have. He's a maternal. He has some maternal instinct.

I think Caddy would be in disagreement with me on that, but that's what makes our podcast a good podcast. But I want to talk about love for a second, because where does this love of history, For those of you that are listening, James is sitting there in front of this amazing bookshelf that I want to take a picture of. And I recognize a lot of those books that are actually on my bookshelf. But where does this love of history come from?

Well, I think it was as a child. You know, my big bro is Tom, who's also part of the Goldhanger staple. And co-hosts, rest his history with Dominic, of course. And, you know, he's two and a half years older than me. He kind of, you know, he kind of sort of boss the kind of fraternal thing a bit when we were kids. And we had loads of, you know, Little Lady Bird books on kind of Nelson or we had a great one on the Bighorn, the Battle of the Little Big Horn. I had a kind of sort of picture of Custer and his buckskins on the front, you know, kind of shooting his pistol surrounded by, surrounded by Native Americans and, you know, about to go down. So it was all kind of sort of part of, you know, of growing up really.

And, you know, when we went on vacation, we didn't go to, you know, exotic ski holidays or anything like that. We went to Hadrian's Wall or we did the castles of the Welsh marches or something like that. So it would kind of, you know, it was just kind of in the blood a bit. And then I studied a lot of history of school at high school. And then I went to university and I studied, you know, just like a single bachelor's degree in history as well. So, you know, it's kind of there. Right from a world girl. I mean, to me, you are a inspiration of.

a role model because I tell my kids, you got to do something you love. Because if you do something you love, you're never working. Okay. And I find your love of history and your insatiable curiosity, infectious. And I love hanging out with you for that reason. And I've learned a lot. Well, thank you. I've learned a lot about World War II from this book because you took a different angle than most historians. Of course, you wrote it with your podcast co-host Al Murray, who you and I have I've had the great opportunity to be on your podcast, which I'm grateful for. But you take us to the... Well, you were fantastic on that.

It was thanks for coming on. Well, listen, it's a great joy from deep. Well, we're mutual fans of Truman and Co, aren't we? And Roosevelt. Yeah, and I want to talk about that era. I mean... I want to talk about this because these are exceptional people. They were less focused on their own angrendizement and more focused on what the hell was going

to go on for the world. And I also think that as I just say this to you, they got a lot right. They got a lot right, you know, and they did a lot of things that made our world, the one you and I were born into in the 1950s and 60s. They made our world a better world. But you talk about eight surrenders, which is interesting because, you know, we learn about it as a one single VE day. But tell us why you chose eight surrenders. What was the thought there? Actually, the whole thing was quite funny because years ago, like literally 20 years ago,

I did a little TV programs, my first little bit of ever done of tele. And I did a little documentary about the end of the war in Europe. And what we realized when we were kind of researching that was that actually the one date where there weren't any surrenders was victory in Europe date, which is the 8th of May, in 1945. You know, the surrender actually happened kind of in the early hours of the 7th of May, and then it was kind of signed off by the with the Russians, the Soviet Union, in the early hours of the 9th of May, but actually nothing happened on the 8th. And I always thought that was kind of curious. And then you sort of thinking, well, okay, so if the Allies laid down in January

1943 at the Casabankan conference, if FDR, President Roosevelt comes up and suddenly announces to the world's press that the only unconditional surrender is going to do, then when is the first first unconditional surrender. And the first unconditional surrender is in Italy. Well, actually, strictly speaking, it's Italy, but they don't really realize they've signed up to unconditional surrender because there's kind of short terms and long terms, and that's back in September 1943. But, you know, to end the actual war, the first unconditional surrender is in Italy on the 2nd of May, comes into being on the 2nd May. And then you've got the huge number of German troops surrendering to Phil Marshall Montgomery, British commander in northern Germany, on the

afternoon of the 4th of May coming into being on the 5th of May. By the way, also, you've got the surrender of Berlin to the Red Army on the 2nd of May. Then you've got the surrender of German forces in Bavaria and Austria to 6th Army Group, you know, everyone forgets them, you know, on the 5th of May. So suddenly it's quite a lot. And then you've got two for Japan, because you've got actually the kind of, okay, we're going to throw in the towel on the 15th of August, But then you've got the actual surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri and Tokyo Bay on the second of September. So we originally thought, well, we'll do six. And then we totted it out and realized we miscounted because we're rubbish in math and then realized it was eight.

So that's why it's the surrender in eight surrendered. I know we've had the chance to be on the USS Missouri. But when I went to Hawaii, I took my wife to Hawaii. I said, I'm sorry, we got to stop at the Pearl Harbor Memorial and I had to go to the USS. Missouri, and of course I stood on the deck where the signing was and they've got the, have you been to this? Have you seen this? I haven't. It's absolutely on my massive to-do list, which is going to go to Hawaii. If you make it to Hawaii, stop in Honolulu and go visit this war memorial. But what would always impress me about it is the ship, you know, we see it as

this massive, magisterial thing, but it's actually quite small. And when you think about what happened on the ship and the significance of the ship, and of course, you know, whatever the piccadillos were of General MacArthur and the vanity of him and some of the foibles of him, the Japanese government still has lots of elements of the Constitution that he put in place in the 1940s, in 1945 and six and seven. And he had a lot of respect for that culture, which has led to great long-term legacy of success for the country in the post-war War II era. So it's just phenomenal vectors that come off all of these surrenders. I want to go to Carl Wolf, who's the SS General, who is obviously famous in your book for art theft.

He's famous for money laundering. He's got hot. He's also as smooth as gloss by the way. This guy is a really smooth operator. He's charming. This part of your book literally reads like the ladies. 100%. And this reads like a fiction thriller.

So tell us about Carl Wolf and tell us about him at the end of the Second World War. Well, I mean, he's an absolute SOB. I just want to kind of put that right down there. Now, you know, he's an evil Nazi bastard and, you know, he should have had it coming. But he also happens to be a kind of, you know, credit where credit is Jew. He's an incredible manipulator. he's an incredible political operator. And he is number two,

joint number two, because this is the way the Nazis do things. They never have kind of single standouts because the only standout can be Hitler. So everyone else is on some kind of sort of warped parallel command structure. And this is how it works all the way down. So you have Himmler, who is head of the SS,

but under him are two equal-standing subordinate SS guys, Karl Wolf and Ernst Kaltuner. And they hate each other's guts, as is the way with this kind of setup, because everyone's constantly pitched against each other. And they're rivals for attention and positioning and all the rest of it. Of course, they hate each other. But they're also very different.

You know, Carl Wolf is German and a kind of sort of jackabout town. Carlton Bruner is a, as a Viennese lawyer and kind of, you know, slightly humorless and he's kind of six foot six or six or five or something. I mean, got duelling scars, all the rest of it. But Carl Wolf has. slightly mildly disgraced himself by being morally corrupt. And he's morally corrupt in the Nazi state by divorcing his wife. I mean, can you imagine the Nazi regime anything quite as awful as divorce? I mean, really. So anyway, so he's been banished from Hitler's headquarters to run the

show in Italy. And although Mussolini has been sprung for, he was deposed in July 1943, then imprisoned by the Italians. He's then sprung in September, 1943, and put in charge of a puppet government in the north, the RSI, the Socialist Republic of Italy. It is Wolf running the show. Kesselring, Miffel Marshall Kesslering is running the show on the ground in terms of the military stuff.

Wolf is doing everything else. And he realizes pretty quickly that, you know, well into 1944, that they're not going to win. And so suddenly all that kind of Nazi ideology bullshit that they've been really into, he's suddenly chucking that out with the dishwater and thinking, how am I going to save my neck? So he starts being very, very slack on partisans. He starts letting people strike in Milan and all the rest of it, not being too harsh,

and showing what a lovely, decent, fair-minded guy he is who kind of, you know, at his heart, he just loves being decent and all he wants to do is save lives and end the war. What he really wants to do, of course, is save his neck. So he pursues a, he pursues peace feelers with Alan Dulles, who I'm sure any, um, upstanding American will have heard of, but he at the time was, was the OSS man in, in Bern and Switzerland. OSS. The CIA director was the head of the Warren Commission. Yep.

Right. All of that. Yeah. So he's a, so he's, you know, he's, he's not in, he's in the middle of his career, but he hasn't reached the dizzy heights. He's going to, to reach, but he's still the main man. He's the same main U.S. guy in Switzerland. And Wolf actually does, again, credit where credit is do, put his neck

on the line. He does some pretty brave stuff and stuff that's very, very high risk, very high risk. But he also puts up various kind of sort of insurance policies, such as stealing all the, or Italy's art treasures and keeping them for safekeeping. I mean, you understand, you know, what he's going to do is he's going to keep them from Hitler, but he's also going to keep them as a bargaining chip as well, and doing various other measures to ensure that he gives himself the best possible chance of getting out of this horrible mess that the Nazis have got themselves into at the end of the war. It's just the most ridiculous story.

And you're right about Hollywood. I always kind of thought, I always could imagine sort of Quentin Tarantino making a film about this. I mean, look at the ugliness of it. You know, there's a, you know, listen, I want to test this on you. I feel like there are, we often talk about the single man theory of his. history. But I think that there's like a great man and a really bad man theories. Hear me out for a second. The revolution, the American Revolution, lots of light philosophers

frame the Constitution. It's a set of very good men trying to come up with an idyllic protocol to prevent tyranny. The flip side is Nazi Germany. You have these homicidal maniacs that get together, actually take over a sovereign nation, and they work together to corrupt each other. You know, I always tell my kids, hey, you know, you're the weighted average of the five people you hang out with. Think of who Hitler was hanging out with, okay, evil personified, but he's hanging out with guys like this. And he's hanging out with Gering and Himmler and all these different characters that we see on the stage, you know, gerbils, et cetera. So I guess the point I'm making, though is do they implode or do we good people get together and force the implosion?

Meaning, I sometimes feel good people get together and force the implosion. That's what it is ultimately, right? Because look at what's going on in Russia. Look at what's going on in other authoritarian states, you know. Okay, this is, this is my, and I'll be interested to see your take on this. This is my theory. So I slightly believe in Big Man Theory because I think, I think without Hitler, I don't think there would have been the Nazi regime.

I don't think that was inevitable. There might have been a communist regime in Germany. It could have been any number of different scenarios. It could have become a dictatorship effectively. They could have cancelled democracy. But Hitler is absolutely the motivating icon around the Nazi movement. And I can't see it happening without him. But with him, suddenly all these other weasels come out of the, out of the,

out of the shadows. In terms of the allies' ability, okay, this is my theory, I think a democratic coalition, when it pulls together, when it pulls its resources together for a single common goal is unbeatable by any autocrat

because they're always going to be better. And the reason they're always going to be better is because they're better at harnessing stuff and they've got more checks and balances on that ultimate power and that direction in which way something's happening. Because, you know, someone like Churchill,

Roosevelt. They were their own men. They knew what they were thinking. They had their own mind, but they were surrounded by people who gave them advice, who could say, oh, I'm not sure about that, or that's a really bad idea, or definitely not, or I think you might want to consider this. And they'd listen. Ultimately, they're making decisions, but they're still listening. An autocrat doesn't listen. An autocrat surrounded by paranoia and suspicion at every single turn. So he's hearing what he wants to hear rather than the reality, and that doesn't make you make good decisions. Now, you can be strong enough to kowtow your enemies, but when you pull together, you're going to be stronger. And this is, you know, this is, you know, CF, the situation right now.

If Europe pulls itself together, there's 780 million people in Europe. You know, we've got some of the greatest minds, we've got huge amounts of money, we've got all the resources, we've got access to the world's oceans, we've got everything possibly, possibly want at our fingertips. All we need is a bit of charisma, a bit of leadership, a bit of pulling together, a bit of glue, a bit of shared vision and to snap the kind of people of Europe out of their complacency, but everything's going to be fine because it's not if we don't do something about it. But it will be. Why does it take us so long, though?

Why does it take us so long? Because it always says, because we're complacent. You know, this is that great line from Maynard Keynes, you know, who's writing about the economic consequences of the Versailles Treaty. He's writing this book in 1990s. He's just despairing the kind of peace treaty that's being pulled together following the catastrophic First World War. And he goes back and he goes, just consider, you know, you're a reasonably well-to-do guy living in London. You can telephone your mates.

You can get, you can eat pretty much anything you want from all around the world. You can travel in a way that's more simple and quicker than it's ever been ever before in mankind. You know, the world just seems full of possibilities. You cannot imagine for a minute that this progress is this steady progress. progress is ever going to end. And then suddenly it's August 1914 and the catastrophe heads the world and all the rest of it. You have the First World War and, you know, the miller's dead and the catastrophe of the early part of the 1920s and wheelbarrows of money and all the rest of it. And that's the point. You know, we have reached that point now where we're just

being a bit complacent. You know, we're taking things for granted. We're feeling entitled. You know, we're in the West. We can do what we like. You know, all we're worried about is sort of what's going on on reality TV shows and, you know, what the next blockbuster set is going to be on Netflix and stuff. And, you know, who's trending on TikTok rather than kind of looking that bigger world around us, which is actually starting to corrupt in a very, very bad way. You know, wake up everybody. You know, that's the bottom line. I think it's so well said, you know, and it always, it stumps me.

You know, I remember, you know, we had Nazi sympathizers in the United States, Nazi sympathizers in the U.K., and yet people get around her. I mean, we both remember Ambassador Joe Kennedy. What a, what a scallywack he was. I mean, we remember, I mean, he was literally, I mean, it's surprising to me, given what Joe Kennedy did, that it didn't cost his son Jack Kennedy that election. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, amazing. You're surprised.

Well, and he's cut from a different sort of cloth, isn't it? Because I've just been re-looking at his inauguration speech. in 1960. And what does he say? He says, don't think what America can do for me, think what you can do for America. And citizens of the world, don't think what America can do for you, think what you can do for the world. There you go. That's the mantra that everyone needs to get a grip of right now. Amen. You know, we need to move out of our selfish, isolationist bubble, looking just in front of our nose and, you know, see the bigger picture. The irony is that Churchill, despised his father, but Jack Kennedy loved Winston Churchill. He took a lot of those ideas from

Churchill's speeches, right? I mean, about the world. Remember in Churchill's theories about the United States of Europe and unifying Europe and so forth? I want to go to something in the book that really struck me. I mean, it's so many striking stories, but I'm going to talk about Alan Moskin. He's a private, of course, from New Jersey. I'm going to mispronounce this because I'm a Italian from Long Island, so forgive me, but he stumbles into Gerskirchen camp, I guess it's called? How do you say? Gunskerkin.

Yeah. Gunskerkin. What is this camp? Tell us about this. And how important was it for you to pick some ordinary soldiers in this story? Because I thought that was a brilliant part of this story because, you know, my uncles, my uncle's, sir, were ordinary soldiers. Yeah.

And they saw atrocities that they never liked to talk about. But tell us about this private. just young men. Yeah, well, the whole thing came about because Alan and I were discussing how we, you know, you can't do a book about the end of the war and not confront the Holocaust and the camps and all the rest of the liberation of the camps. And, you know, like all these things in the Second World War, there's the kind of sort of, there's the kind of the key names, aren't there, the kind of star names, you know,

Deccal, Belsen, Auschwitz, obviously, and so on, Ravensbrook. You know, these are the names that people are every, you know, most people who know anything about the Second World War, know anything about the Holocaust, have heard of those names. No one's heard of guns going. No one. And the point is this, that what we wanted to show was, rather than trying to kind of cover the whole thing, we wanted to illustrate the liberation of the camps through the eyes of one victim and one liberator. And we wanted them to be, we wanted them to have a connection. So we didn't want the Liberator to be at a different camp. We wanted them to be at the same camp. We wanted to be one of the forgotten camps. So all these,

These main camps had like Madhausen or whatever, had satellite camps. And Gunzgaken was a satellite camp. And all of them were horrific. I mean, you know, particularly by April, 24, May, 1945, you know, because Germany's run out food, run out of supplies, you know, and the last people to get looked after are your slave labor, of course. So we also, then I'll start off all, wouldn't it be interesting to have, also have an American who was not from, you know, a superstar division. You know, the big ones are the third

infantry division, which had more days of combat than any other, had Aldi Murphy and it, the decorated U.S. servicemen of World War II, you know, or the big red one, the first infantry division that landed on Amar Beach, whatever it might be. You know, all the second armoured division, hell on wheels. We don't want the kind of the celebrity divisions. I wanted a forgotten division no one's ever heard of. So we chose the 71st because they only arrive in Europe in February 45 for goodness sake. And my guy, Alan Moskin, only comes into action in March, but that doesn't belittle his experiences. Those kind of three months of combat that he sees are absolutely awful. That's enough to keep you going for a lifetime times 10, frankly, what he saw. So we wanted a division

that wasn't well known, and I also wanted a Jewish American soldier. So suddenly there's this guy from New Jersey. You know, who's a Jew who's in an unknown, you know, he's an unknown bloke. He's to one of the hundreds of thousands, one of the millions in uniform, who just ends up being in this place at this particular moment, and he comes in contact with a Hungarian Jew called Hugo Grin, who, by a miracle, has managed to survive, you know, Auschwitz and the Hungarian roundups and unspeakable privations and hardships and cruelty, and makes it through. And so there was a kind of beautiful bit of synergy there that when I

so basically I had I thought about an unknown camp then I found Hugo Grin then I thought okay well I want to find someone from the 71st so I started looking researching the 71st infantry division because they liberated it and then I just found bingo I found

Alan Moskin and you know the fact that he was Jewish was just perfect and sometimes you know when you're researching these little little bits of jigsaw just slot together just absolutely beautifully It was like they were all kind of sort of made for one another. And you know as a storyteller that you've hit gold. And I think because all those three, the camp and the division and the Liberator and the Liberated are all completely unknown, I think it's much more powerful as a result. Yeah, listen, it's an amazing part of this story.

And, you know, and I know I've told you about my uncles and their assault on Normandy Beach, also one of my uncles thought to my uncles. Two of my uncles actually fought in the Battle of the Bulge. And they were common infantry men. And my cousin actually took his GI suit and had it dry clean recently. He has it hung up in his store. How amazing. And I just think about these men. I mean, they were, you know, running their lives, ordinary people.

They got thrust into the war. Answering the cool. Yeah. And also to see the horror, you know, I mean, and by the way, you know, we don't talk about it, James, but Joseph Stalin had high levels of horror going on as well. But we referred to him because he was one of our allies, frankly, as Uncle Joe. But, I mean, he killed millions of people. He was treacherous. And, you know, in many ways was Hitler-like, but we don't see him in the same way.

yeah i mean i'm i most certainly do i've just been sanctioned by the russians this last week oh is that right yeah for speaking out against them i mean i you know not only were they were they cruel and corrupt um you know they were just unspeakably profligate with people's lives i mean you know it's it's interesting but you know you think about the kind of final battle for berlin um it's it starts on 16th of april finishes on the second of may with the defeat of surrender of berlin in that time the Red Army, which is totally overwhelming compared to the pretty feeble German defenses, which is, yes, there's a handful of old hands and old Vermont veterans and Waffeness S-tides, but the vast majority are kind of teenage boys and old men.

The Red Army loses 800,000 casualties in that time, a little over two weeks. I mean, what the heck? What are you doing? How can you be that bad in your generalship? I'm not complaining about the individual soldiers. They're doing it again in the Ukraine, though. Yeah, right. Exactly nothing has changed.

They did then. Exactly. Throw the people out there, cannon fodder, obliterate the people. Yeah, the cruelty is unspeakable. It's unspeakable. It's horrific. But I just find, listen,

I'm always learning something in your writing. Unfortunately, I only, you know, this is a gollhanger podcast now, by the way. I don't know if you know that, but Open Books, Goalhanger. I didn't know that. We have it limited to 30 minutes. So I've got to afford to, I got to stop.

I got to push ourselves at the end here. But I want to, I want to bring up five words that Holly and I, my producer, put together from the book. And what we'd like you to do, James, I'm going to say the word. And I want you to come up with your first impression and give me a few sentences. Okay, you ready? Go ahead. I say the word Germany. You say what?

What, in terms of 1945? Yes, 1945. I say absolute delusion. I mean, the delusion of the high command at the end. is a tragedy. You know, I found it just breathtaking how stupid, deluded, cruel that the leadership

that took over once Hitler shot himself was. I mean, have these guys not learned anything over the previous six years? I mean, Dernitz, Kytle, all these guys, they're just... Well, I mean, what are they doing, keeping it going till the 8th of May. I mean, 7th of May.

I mean, it's crazy. But also the people, sir, you know, I mean, if you look Hitler's approval rating in April of 1945, still in the mid-40s. You know, I mean, it's just sort of crazy, right? I mean, it's incredible. Well, that's brainwashing for you. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, the world is littered with instances of large numbers of people falling for complete bullshit.

I'm believing stuff. I'm well aware of that, sir, and the contemporary aspects of that as well. Okay. Right. And this is why the study of history is so important because it can teach us stuff about today. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let's go to Japan.

Right. I say the word Japan. You say what? Fuck. I say yet more delusion. I say delusion and tragedy. I'm cheating by having two words. Again, you know, these guys at the top, they've just got themselves into a God almighty mess that they're not willing to confront.

You know, they're not willing to have a realistic exit clause. It's kind of all or nothing. You know, and this kind of warped nonsense that somehow suicide is better than defeat or, you know, this sort of warped notion of honor is just bonkers. And, you know, even after the first atomic bomb on Oroshima, you know, they're still faffing around kind of refusing to throw in the towel and not even believing it's an atomic bomb. I mean, it's just crazy. And the amazing thing about it at the very end, of course, is it's the only unconditional surrender that has a condition. which is the emperor stage. And I think he stays until 1989 or something.

He was absolutely extraordinary. George Herbert Walker Bush in 1989. But MacArthur saw that, though. He understood the cultural tenet of that and the need for that. And again, all of MacArthur's complexity, all of his vanity. And you know, if you go to Japan today, they don't even talk about MacArthur. He's been deleted from their history books. But he is a seminal figure in the foundation.

He's a gray man. of a prosperous Japan. Let's go to Italy. Yep. I say Italy, you say what? I say, oh, well, Italy, I say, I get, but that is where tragedy really, really needs to play its part. I mean, I've done so much work on the Italian campaign. I've spent so much time with Italian veterans.

Italy at the end of the war is, is that there is a glimmer of hope for Italy, I think. But the tragedy that befalls Italy, I read a book about the last year of Italy's war some years ago, and I called it Italy's sorrow. And it's this place of, you know, the birthplace of the Renaissance. It's this place of high culture, this place of incredible history, of incredible landscape beauty,

of incredible urban construction, you know, Pontevideo in Florence, or, you know, some Peters in Rome, Rome or, you know, the cathedral, the Duomo in Milan. I mean, you know, this is stuff that, you know, an opera and Puccini and, you know, and let's face it, Ferrari too. You know, it's this amazing country. And yet what befellate in the Second World War was this sort of terrible, terrible tragedy.

And it makes my heart bleed every time I think about it because I'm a massive atalphal. I love it. Yeah, well, listen, I mean, it's my ancestry, you know, my grandparents were broken. brokenhearted about where Italy landed in that war. And obviously you and I know the foibles there. And again, deranged leadership leads to horrific outcomes. But again, look what happens to Italy by the second off of the 1950s into the 1960s. It's just had his second renaissance.

And it's kind of emerged of this really pretty well-functioning modern state where it's kind of returned to his heritage. Yeah, yeah, right. You know, and today, you know, I know it has its shortcomings, but it's still just a fabulous, fabulous place to be. Yeah, no question. You know, you know, which city has the lowest suicide rate and any in the whole of Europe? I believe it's Naples. Yeah, which also coincidentally is that is the heaviest populated. I was going to say Naples, you know, because my family's from there and we'll let me tell you something.

We're all crazy, but we do love life. You know what I mean? There's a sense of love of life and a respect to life. The White. La Vita Revella. Exactly. So, all right, two last words. Surrender. I say the word surrender, James Holland. What do you say? Victory for the Allies. And what about victory? Well, actually, I mean, I'm actually doing a book, right, a small kind of, a small polemic about this right now, about that post-world view. There was two views. There was the, there was the cruel and corrupt one, which was behind the Iron Curtain. Or there was the one that had first been kind of put forward by Wilson. in his utopian dream in 1918, and which was picked up, the baton,

which was picked up and evolved by Roosevelt and delivered by Truman. And it's the one that's lasted 80 years, pretty much, and brought peace and prosperity to the developed world and the developed democracies in the Western world.

And you and I have grown up in that world and are better people and happier people as a result of that. Amazing and amazingly blessed beneficiary of that world, which is why, I look back on that. That's what victory means to me. I look back on that era and I look back on the bravery of my grandparents who arrive here in America. And I say this very humbly, James, my life could have never happened without the political leadership or even the courageous leadership of my immigrant grandparents who literally came here with nothing but had this wildly unconditional love affair with the country.

You know, my grandmother was so proud that her two sons went to war for America. You know, just to think about the time, you know, she prayed for them. She prayed for their safety. And thankfully, one came back wounded, but okay. And obviously one survived the war, but unwounded, but both psychologically traumatized. But the point being, it was just this unconditional love affair with the country. And I grew up with that. And I grew up with that spirit.

and also the intellectual curiosity to understand what happened, you know, which is why I so enjoy my relationship with you and love your books. So the title of this book is Victory 45, The End of the War and Eight Surrenders. It's written by James Holland and his podcast co-host Al Murray. But thank you so much for joining us on Open Book today. And James, you can't get rid of me, James. So I'm going to be in your life, brother. You know, I'm going to be in your life. You know, I'm going to be in your life. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

I really appreciate it. Well, God bless her. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions,

It's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country?

Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CGs' national series on the Canadian Standard of Living, productivity and innovation. Learn what's driving, Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it.