School of War - Ep 248: Marc Milner on D-Day and the US-UK Battle for Hegemony

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Marc Milner, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of New Brunswick and author of Second Front: Anglo-American Rivalry and the Hidden Story of the Normandy Campaign, joins the show to discuss the turbulent passing of the torch of Western hegemony during WWII.  ▪️ Times 02:50 1917 10:52 American Battle Monuments Commission 14:31 FDR and the British Empire 21:36 American views on the Nazis 30:40 FDR at the Tehran Conference 35:42 Plans Before the Invasion of France 40:48 The British Empire and National Strategy  50:25 Churchill and the Russians in 1944 56:00 A Sophisticated Understanding of Imperial Politics 01:00:18 Revisionist Views of WWII 01:06:00 Communist and Fascist Extremism Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find more content on our School of War Substack

Today, a really interesting conversation here on School of War about the tensions between American and British grand strategy during the first half of the 20th century. And now the argument over how and where to open a second front in Europe during the Second World War, culminating in 1944's Operation Overlord, reflected a deeper reality of Britain being forced by Roosevelt's clever statecraft and the hard realities of the costs of the war to give up its preeminence to the United States. My guest, the historian Mark Milner, offers a nuanced and occasionally contrary intake on the conduct of that terrible war, but somehow without being completely insane. Who knew that was possible? Let's get into it. It is the performance of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the rain, the situation in the ground. We shall fight on the beaches, which will fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, which will never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today, Mark Milner. Mark is a meritus professor of history at the University of New Brunswick. He's the former director of the Gregg Center for the study of War and society. He's a scholar of the Battle of the North Atlantic and many other aspects of warfare in the Second World War. He is the author most recently of Second Front, Anglo-American Rivalry and the hidden story of the Normandy campaign. Mark, thank you so much for joining the show. Thanks, Aaron. Thanks for the opportunity.

I thought your book was really, really interesting. And in particular, it's central theme, which is how this story of allied heroic cooperation and triumph in the special relationship masks a much more complicated and tense reality of the allied effort happening. I don't know if downstream is exactly the right word, but in the context of a passing of the torch from British to American hegemony and all of the complications that one might imagine. arose from that. Let's start at the start, or maybe not the very start, I guess the very start, we'd have to go back to at least 1776, but the more approximate 20th century start, which is American engagement or intervention into the First World War, where tensions immediately break out between the Americans on the one hand and the English and the French on the other. Give us a sense of the tensions as they began to manifest themselves in 1917.

Thanks for the opportunity. I was going to start at Genesis, but we didn't have. have time to do that. And I set out to write one chapter from 1918 to 1939 and ended up with five. So it's a complicated, an interesting story. By 1917, the Brits and the French in particular on the Western Front are into it up to their eyeballs. They've already had three years of brutal war. The French are in the summer of 1917 mutinous. The Americans have arguably shown indifference towards the allied cause towards the German invasion. From the point of view of the people who are already engaged against the Second Reich. This is a clearly, clearly an act of German aggression. Belgium is being despoiled by German exploitation. Northern France is being dispoiled by German

exploitation. The objective is to drive the Germans out. The French, almost in a frenzy, right from 1914, have gone mad trying to drive the Germans out. So when the Americans come in, the Brits and the French have a lot of experience, they suffered horrendous casualties. And And what they want to do, and they say it quite openly, is they want to absorb American manpower into their armies. And quite rightly, the U.S. says no if we're going to get into this war. And the United States comes in as an associated power. It's not an allied power. It's actually, it's almost like a plague on both your houses, but we dislike the Germans more.

So we're going to get in and get this thing sorted out. And we're going to put everybody back in their boxes. And then we can walk away from this. have the global trade and everything else disrupted by another European Great War. So there's tension right from the get-go. The Allies, Western Allies see the Americans as naive and inexperienced, and they are. I don't know where else you would have gotten that kind of experience that the Brits and the French have had on the Western Front. Chasing Pancho via through northern Mexico doesn't do it.

So there's a lot of pressure to just absorb the American units as they arrive, preferably division size. but the Brits just, in some cases, just want raw manpower. They can pour into British battalions. And the American draft quite naturally, no, we're not going to do that. Wilson has sent the expeditionary force off to Europe, ultimately to determine the outcome of the war so he can reshape the peace afterwards and put the Europeans back in boxes where they can be controlled.

So the big debate in 1917, 1918 is over, how will the American Expeditionary Force be used? And ultimately, if the war, last into 1918, the only people who are going to be left in the West, because the Russians are already in the tank by 1917, who will have any power left in terms of raw manpower they can commit, will be the United States. And the Brits and the French are very anxious that the United States not be seen as the victor of the Great War, that they already have so much sunk cost. They have issues that they want to resolve. And they don't want the war to reach 1918, where Willst be seen. And they're and dictates the peace. And ultimately, in the fall of 1918, that's precisely what he does with his 14 points and the Germans, the social revolution that takes place. The Germans basically throw themselves at the feet of Wilson and say, okay, whatever you want

us to do, we're out of here, just let us know. And so the debate then becomes over who won the war, who dictated the peace. And oh, by the way, since the Brits had borrowed an enormous amount of money at the time, $4 billion U.S. dollars between April of 1917 and the end of the war, we want that all back. So you have to actually pay your war debts. The Brits point out that it actually was a loan of money to finance American industry. So all the money was actually spent in the States. And a fair portion of that $4 billion was Britain acting.

as a banker for the French, the Belgians, and the Russians and the Italians. And so Britain is kind of carrying their debt, and they're supposed to pay Britain, and then Britain will pay the United States, and the whole thing comes crashing down. And what's left is this notion that the Brits had suckered us into a war. We'd lost over 100,000 men in this campaign, and the buggers won't pay their debt. So there's a lingering animus in the... alliance, as often happens coming out of the end of the First World War. So if the Americans had had their druthers built up their million-man army sort of trained

out in the outer reaches of France and then struck a decisive blow in 1919, there'd be no debate that the American intervention was decisive. On the other hand, if things had come to a conclusion substantially earlier than they did, there'd be no debate that the American role was paltry. No, I would never say the American role was paltry. If you're a German and you spent four years doing this and you've cut your way through the manpower of three, maybe four great empires. And then all of a sudden, this huge continental mass turns up on your front door. And now you're going to have to cut your way through how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans. The impact of America's presence in the war is enormous.

And I think it's ultimately decisive in the sense that it makes victory impossible for Germany. even from the decision? Because I was going to say, in reality, with the war coming to the conclusion in 1918 in the fall, the reality seems to be somewhere in the middle. Like there is actually enough gray area for the debate to have substance. Yeah, it is because the issue is, will Germany hang on? The Germans attempt to retreat and kind of build a defensive line to keep the allies out. And the debate then comes down to the stunning defeats inflicted on German armies in the West. in the fall of 1918.

And the Brits would tell you, and the Canadians would tell you, that what finally actually pushes them to defeat in 1918 are the victories that are achieved against their army in the field in August, September, and October. And the American contribution to that is the Muzar-Gon offensive, which is an important one, but it stalls well short of what Pershing thought was necessary to actually break the back of the German army,

although he claimed afterwards that it did. And the Brits, of course, said, no, no, no, no, no, we did it. And the French point out that, you know, we drove these guys to the brink of defeat, spent most of our manpower. And then you guys come in and kick the door open and claim victory. So, you know, victory has many fathers. And there is a tendency in the 1920s for Pershing and his men to claim that they were the people who actually defeated Germany. So that kind of gets the hackles of the Brits and the French and everybody else up.

Yeah, no, say more about how this debate actually plays out. the 1920s, this was one of my favorite parts of your of your account, just because it was all new information to me. In the, the ABMC, the American Battle Monuments Commission, plays a central role in this, as does Winston Churchill. I'll just, I'll just say, for the record, the ABMC is my favorite agency or component or whatever of the U.S. government. I've been lucky. It is, isn't it? And it's, I've been lucky to spend a fair amount of time at our overseas cemeteries, in particular in Europe, the United States is overseas cemeteries, that is. And they're wonderful. I mean, they're always immaculately kept. Yes. It's like the one part of the U.S.

government that seems to me to deliver and work kind of every time. And so I was fascinated to see that they had this highly politicized role in the 1920s. Well, it's complicated because the the ABMC wants to build quite a, quite an extensive memorialization. One of the best ways to conceive of is you've ever been to, I'm sure you have, been to Gettysburg. You drive along that ridge And there are monuments, you know, every few yards. There's monument to a regiment or to a division or some particular attack. And the ABMC had a concept of that kind of thing with a fancy four-lane highway driving through San Miguel and Chateau Gay and out to Mont Saint-Michel.

And along the way, as the French lamented, every time a logistics battalion stopped to do something, there would be a monument. So there was a lot of pushback actually from the Europeans about over memorializing and overdoing the monuments. And there was some resentment because the French wanted to actually charge import duty on the stone being brought in to build the monuments, as you read in the book. And the Americans insisted that there should be none. But then at the end of June, every year you get a bill from the United States for the debt from the Great War. And France was trying to actually build up its foreign currency so it could be. pay its debt. Anyway, so it gets kind of just a little bit bitter. The memorialization of the

of the Great War is, as you know, extensive, not just on the American Front, but through the French area and the British Front. And all of that is still immaculately maintained. It is really quite a remarkable legacy from that tragic event. Nothing in the Second World War approaches it that I'm aware of. And then Churchill's World Crisis, his sort of memoir slash history, history as memoir of the First World War in which the central figure is Winston Churchill also plays a big role in this debate. Yes, he does because from his perspective, the war was won by the British Empire, the actual final push.

And, you know, if you go back to Kitchener's plan for the mobilization of the British Expeditionary Force in the summer of 1914 and really in the fall of 1914, his plan was that by the time the Brits actually mobilized their army, which in the summer. the end's about five million men. It's a very substantial army. It's about the size the U.S. army was in 1945 in northwest Europe. The Brits would be there to dictate the peace. In other words, the French would be so exhausted and the Germans would be so exhausted that the British would dictate the peace. And he still has that in mind. Britain is the great player and the balance of power in Europe and the maker of peace. And so Churchill's very interested in the role that Britain plays

in managing the international politics of Europe. And the notion that the Americans somehow would do that, I think he finds anathema. So the 20s give way to the 30s. All of these dynamics sort of set in. No one's really happy with the legacy of the First World War. Everyone's unhappy in their own way. Talk about Anglo-American relations as this decade proceeds,

as the Brits are both appeasing but also arming and the Americans have committed themselves to hemispheric defense in the Pacific. What is the nature of, let me ask it this way. How does FDR view the British Empire and how does FDR think long term about the rise of American power? Well, FDR is a curious character because strangely enough, you actually holidays in the British Empire. His summer home is in the province I live in Campobello. And it's always intrigues me that American historians will go to any, lengths to avoid actually saying that the Roosevelt's holiday in Canada, you know, the Campobello

an island off the coast of Maine. Well, yeah, it is. It's in Canada. Anyway, Roosevelt's view, I think, fairly early on, is that he wants to get rid of empires. Certainly he wants to get rid of the British Empire. And partly that comes out of the experience of the 1930s. When the Great Depression strikes, many things happen, a great many things happen. American suddenly becomes protectionist, which starts a spiral in the world. We've seen evidence of that fairly recently. So America becomes protectionist. The British actually meet in Ottawa in 1932 and establish the sterling block. And so the British Empire, which is the world's largest trading block, becomes protectionist and puts tariffs up against everybody else, especially the Americans.

And then the Brits say, look, here's the deal. We're struggling, so we're not paying the debt. They just, and the French do the same thing. They just say, Sorry, chaps, it's not going to happen. We don't have the money to pay it. The United States will not take payment of the debt in anything other than gold or U.S. dollars. And the Brits can't earn enough U.S. dollars to pay the debt. So the economic crisis actually leads to a kind of fracturing, if you want, of trust between the British and the Americans over economic planning and global planning. The Brits are stuck into this business of trying to contain Germany and contain Japan and contained fascist Italy. The United States' response to the rise of extremism in the world is not uniformly, it's all right, but there's a very strong element in the United States that says, we're okay with the Nazis, we're okay with the fascists in Italy. We can trade with anybody. You know, like God, we trade with you, and you're all a bunch of imperialists.

So there's a kind of hands off. I think America felt that it got its fingers burned in the Great War. It tried. It got involved in what the founding fathers. said it should never do. And not only did get a large number of people killed, it got no gratitude for it. And then the principal debtors of that war actually walked away from the debt. So why would you want to get involved with those guys again? So there's a real, probably the simplest way to put it, there's a real collapse of trust between the British and the Americans.

And despite the four freedoms of what Roosevelt talks about, and I can still see those paintings. We actually had them on my center wall for a great Norman Rockwell paintings for a great many years, the four freedoms, because that's what democracy stands for. It doesn't extend everywhere. Not everybody gets freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom from fear, and so on. So there's a sense that Europe will have to sort out its own problems this time because we're not going back. And they get hamstrung by the Johnson Act, which says you can't trade with the combatants either. You're not allowed to help them out. You can't give them stuff. You can't give them alone. You can't let them walk away with stuff and pay later. We're just going to, you know, that's isolationism

for one of a better word. But that, at the bedrock of that is, I think, a breakdown of trust between the British and the Americans over what's going to happen in the world. And don't forget, Britain is, although we tend to think of it as kind of, in some ways, the modern sick man of Europe, The British Empire is at its zenith in the 1930s. It's never bigger, but it is a bit of a shell economically. The Great War has hollowed out all its returns from investments overseas. It's had to sell off virtually all of its investments in Latin America, all its railway systems around the world. And the collapse of international trade, or more importantly, the shift of international global trade from coal fire to oil fire.

it actually cuts the rug from underneath British foreign exchange returns because they sold an enormous amount of coal. And so Britain is an enormous, very influential power, but it's a bit of a shell. And I don't know whether Roosevelt really appreciates that, but it's from his perspective, Britain is the big, I mean, let's face it, if you're an American, anywhere you go in the world, the Brits are there already. And that's something that we can, I think the political science term is free ride, but we can use that. And also the French Empire to maintain order. So I guess the general view, right, is World War I didn't really pay the dividends, we hoped. If anything, we feel a little bamboozled. Wilson, a bit of a disappointment. But these guys can, I mean, unlike the post-4,

post-45 situation, these guys can handle themselves. They'll be okay and will America derive some benefit from letting them do it. Is that fair? Yeah, I think that's fair. Absolutely. You know, America still has to trade, still has to trade internationally. But it's surprising how much American wealth is generated by internal trade within the United States and within the hemisphere. I tried to track that down. I didn't find a good account of America's trade with Europe. But by modern standards, it's actually fairly small.

It's not insignificant, but fairly small. So then obviously, you know, September 39 comes this lack of trust between the United States and Britain, especially beginning the spring of 40. when France falls starts to be something, I imagine the Brits begin to regret and realizes an enormous problem. The rhetoric in the United States about Britain, Britain's war, the war with Nazi Germany, etc. It reminds, I mean, you can go back and read, this is a bit of a political observation,

you know, feel free to weigh in to the extent that you want, but you can go back and read commentary about Britain in the year 1940, 1941 before December 7th, and you could replace Britain, depending on the individual sentence with Ukraine or replace Britain, even with Israel, depending on the context. And the sentences would work just fine in 2025. The debates are so similar. I mean, the substance of the debates are importantly different. The strategic context is different. But the nature of the rhetoric, the nature of the disgust, the sense that we're being, you know, the anti-interventionist view that we're being manipulated by foreign elites who want us to fight their wars for them, et cetera, et cetera. It's the same kinds of arguments then and now.

Well, I think the Ukrainian argument is very similar. I'm not going to touch the modern Middle East. I have a colleague who spent a career studying the modern Middle East, and the first thing he would tell you is if you think you understand it, you just haven't read enough. But I think the Ukrainian situation is, you know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and this one rhymes pretty good. There was an expectation in Britain that the Americans would see the Germans

as, not the German, excuse me, the Nazis, as particularly bad. And there's some contemporary evidence that I put in the book, which I found quite alarming, but there was a strong element in the United States that says the Nazis, they're not so bad. They don't like people of color, but we don't. They don't like Jews. We don't like Jews. Yeah, some of them are getting kind of roughed up. But hey, the Jim Crow laws are still infecting the American South. People are still getting lynched in the American South. There are certain elements of American society which are not treated particularly well. Not excusing Canada because it happens all over the world. And Canada has its own anti-Semitic problems in the Second World War.

And there's a sense of, yeah, okay, the Nazis are not the kind of guys you want to bring home to meet Mum. But, you know, the British are oppressing people in India. The French are doing it all over Africa. The Belgians are worse in the Belgian Congo. Where do you want us to drive? out of the line. So we're not going to get stuck in. The British view is actually kind of just flips it right around and says, we're actually fighting for those liberal democratic values that you profess to support. And, you know, if we go down, you're next. Who actually fights for democracy, who fights for at least the notion of, you know, peace and freedom? And that's the question they're asking in 1939 and more particularly in 1940 it's like whose side are you on

if the Nazis win it's quite a different world and I think Roosevelt understands that but it's it's really tough to motivate America in 39 and even in 1940 when France collapses it's kind of like me and all the no we don't want to get involved we still want to buy fridges and stoves and and go to the beach and do all the kind of normal things that one would do. Well, I think America's big enough that it could be insulated that way. Sorry. No, no, not at all. Well, that's, I mean, that's got to be, I don't know if they would have put it in these exact terms in 1940,

but the capstone of the British argument has to be in good luck with hemispheric defense when it's the consolidated warmaking potential of Eurasia under German and Japanese control that you are trying to hold off with your single Northern American, you know, remaining bastion. The economic network. Small wonder that Roosevelt invests in the Navy. Right, right. So this is what I want to get to is FDR's thinking because it's quite the, and this, now we move really to the heart of what you're exploring and unpacking is how FDR

navigates all of this. The man who, as you've just laid out, spends much of the 30s, much of his life, the great deal of contempt for the British Empire, begins to maneuver America into a position of robust support for Britain. And then after the Soviet, or sorry, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the summer 41 support for the for the for the communists as well so to tell us about fDR's evolution how does how does he calculate not only what the correct strategy is but also how to sell it well selling it is really difficult but i don't think i wouldn't use the term contempt for the british empire i think roosevelt

is a you know classic liberal he just thinks the whole idea of empire of of oppressing people and keeping them under some kind of political military economic regime so you can exploit it for your own benefits is actually wrong. I think he has great admiration for the British as a people. Geez, even Hitler does for that matter. You know, there's much to be admired in Great Britain. And they are the founders of the liberal democratic tradition that America follows. So contempt is too strong. Roosevelt needs to navigate a way to support the Brits, to undermine the Nazis, and to bring America into the world in a way that gives it some kind of control. control. Because ultimately, I think Roosevelt's objective is not to go back to 1918 and not go back to

the Senate's rejection of Versailles and the rejection of the League of Nations. His objective is a new League of Nations in which America will have the whip end. And what's really fascinating for me, and this gets a little ahead of your question, is the extent to which American isolationism by 1944 has flipped completely from isolationism to interventionism. And I think I said in the book, the attitude is, well, if we can't actually stay out of this, we might as well run it. So let's get stuck in. Let's control the world.

Let's control the world's trade. Let's control the world's orders. Let's reduce Britain and France to manageable proportions. India needs to be set free. It's curious that there's no discussion. And I couldn't find any discussion anywhere in the stuff I looked at about black Africa. There is a kind of sense that maybe there is a bit of a white man's burden going on there. But India needs to be set free.

China needs to be fully manifest as a great power. So Roosevelt has a vision of how the world's going to go down. One of his problems, and it's endlessly fascinating for people who are non-Americans, is how do I get this done at home? How do I control Congress? How do I control the Senate? Where does this fall in the electoral cycle? What happens if I lose control of Congress?

Because he's worried about that stuff. You know, American politics baffled the British completely. When the Brits appeal in early August of 1940 for the destroyers for bases deal, they need the destroyers now. It's August. The Germans have about a month before they could invade, and then it's going to be too late. it takes the United States three months to get that sorted out.

By the time the destroyers arrive, they're useful, but the crisis of invasion is gone. Now they're going to be used in the Battle of the Atlantic and in the war at sea. So there's a cycle and a pattern which you know better than I do, of American politics, which is just really time-consuming. And Churchill's always bewildered that Roosevelt as the president can't just snap tap his fingers and do whatever he wants. That president couldn't. You know, after he wins the 1940 election,

Churchill expects America to declare war. And can't understand why Roosevelt is still lumbered by what they think of him in the Congress, in part because the Southern Democrats control that. They don't control Congress, but they're big enough to make a difference. So you're going to handle them very carefully. the Brits just can't quite figure this one out. And the extent to which American politics is carried out in public through not just meetings of committees of Congress and the Senate, but in the media.

The only person I think who understood that was Lord Lothian and his untimely death in late 1940, I think was catastrophic for the Anglo-American relationship. So Roosevelt's a complicated character. And somebody told me afterwards that after reading my book, they're going to have to reevaluate Roosevelt as the, the great war leader. But he has an agenda. And his agenda, the worst you could say about him, I suppose, is that he naively assumed that he could control Stalin. Yeah. So this is, I wanted this, you, you took me to my next question. We had Sean McMeekin on the show. We had him on a couple times now, but very early in the life of the show, we had him on to discuss his book, Stalin's war. As you'll know, he's a bit of a, interesting guy, a bit of a revisionist, very hostile to the

Roosevelt's, the Roosevelt administrations and FDR personally. these attitudes towards and treatment of the U.S. Russia relationship. How does that intersect with your main subject, which is the U.S. Anglo relationship through this period? Well, I think it intersects in a couple of ways. One is that Roosevelt increasingly sees the future as one that he and Stalin will control. So, you know, in some ways the best demonstration of that, maybe the penultimate or ultimate demonstration is the Tain Rhone Conference, where Roosevelt basically throws Churchill under the bus. He refuses to develop a joint angle American position before he goes. And he goes and he meets Stalin privately. And then his treatment of Churchill at the conference is actually abysmal. And he allows

Stalin and others to ridicule Churchill at the conference. And, you know, at that point, Churchill's still trying to keep the Russians as far east as possible. And he's hoping that they can do something about Poland. And Roosevelt basically throws Poland to the wolves, says, Tell Stalin that, you know, it's okay. And you can occupy Poland if you want and, you know, the Baltic countries. And that'll all be fine. And we'll sort all this out in the New League of Nations after the war. And he expects when Stalin talks about democratic rhetoric,

that his democracy is the same as Roosevelt's democracy. The other bit is having made a commitment to Stalin to land in the south of France. At the same time as the D-Day landings, The Americans cling very tenaciously to the land of Anvil, which then becomes Operation Dragoon, in ways that just befuddled the Brits. Because it threatens to split, not only split the allied effort in the West, but it effectively prevents the British from moving into the Balkans or the allies from moving into the Balkans if they have a chance. Now, I think a Balkan campaign, by the way, would have been a hideous nightmare. But there's a little moment there in the fall of 1943 when the brass ring is there. There's like maybe 80 Italian divisions that could switch sides, probably 65 field divisions.

There's 20 divisions in Bulgaria that might switch sides. If you can get into the Balkans, the Turks have 40 divisions. They might come along and help you out. And you could keep the Russians out of the Balkans and you could open the Dardanelles. And then you wouldn't have to send those abysmal arctic convoysos all the way. a random romance, so you could just go up through the Black Sea. And at that point, I didn't put it in the book, but Stimson was reading somebody's biography of Churchill about the fiasco in the Dardanelles in 1915.

And they want nothing to do with going east. They just want to go to France and win the war. There's a bit of a cultural phenomenon there of, which I think is present in the way American officers are trained to think, you know, find out where the decisive point is, pile everybody in and attack. And that's France. That's not going to be Bulgaria or Yugoslavia. Well, let's step back and go through some of these things you've just identified in order. You know, the Balkans gambit that never was or never was significantly.

Yes, it has this sort of classic Trichilian character of an idea which is creative and interesting at the political, grand strategic level. And then as you go from that to the strategic to the operational level, things get much nicer. I mean, if you've just if you've ever, you know, seen those hills, it's just much like southern Italy. but bigger. So, but back to, back to 41 into 42, all of these various trends that you've just taken us through, that is to say, the military argument that the, you know, if you want to, if you, if you want to take Berlin, take Berlin. That is to say, you know, in good Germany, West Point fashion, draw a line from where you can bus to your forces, draw to Berlin, go down that line, that line goes through northwest France. You have the military argument for a second front and a drive

through Northwest Europe, you have the political grand strategic dimension of the Soviets demanding, demanding a second front on the European continent. But then this is all opposed to, it's just sort of British military strategic tradition in which the Mediterranean plays a role, maritime operations plays a role. And of course, the legacy of the First World War and how it didn't go great in 1914. And by the way, it also didn't go great just now in 1940. So fear that that a Northwest European operation will be militarily disastrous. But then, of course, as you were just talking about this political dimension, like, how much help do we really want to give Stalin?

Or can we design this in a way that's going to be problematic for him? You'll put in your own words, what I just laid out is sort of the basic forces. But these forces start to collide in American British conferences. I mean, as early as the summer of 41, but certainly by, what, Arcadia in December 41, January, January 42, these arguments start to work themselves out in the first main product, right, is we start to delay the invasion of Northwest Europe and do other things. Help us understand how that dynamic plays out. Yeah, it's a very complicated geopolitical, strategic, military capability issue.

The first thing that Marshall wants to do is land on the coast of France. And so one of the debates that pops up fairly early on at Arcadia is, let's just create a bastion. Let's occupy the Sherberg Peninsula or the Brittany Peninsula, build a little front across it and engage the Germans. And he calls this a sacrifice for the common good. Well, the problem is that from the British and Canadian perspective, the only people were in a position to do that early 1942

who are the Brits and the Canadians, and it would be a sacrifice. I tried to track a little bit of the lift capability for an operation like that. And in early 42, it's really minuscule. They're casting around for something that's plausible. And Roosevelt has already ordered George Marshall to plan to land in French North Africa because he doesn't like what's going on in Dakar. He's always been fearful of what's called the Southern Ark,

the early destroyers for bases deal with people focus on Newfoundland and Bermuda. But the bases that Roosevelt really wants are in the Southern Caribbean. and they're in Trinidad and the southern part of the Caribbean. Because he wants to ensure that there's no jumping across from Dakar to Brazil and then coming in the south of boats. So he's already ordered Marshall once to prepare a landing in French North Africa, and Marshall didn't do it. And then in early 42, he orders Marshall to prepare for another landing in French North Africa.

And they, you know, gymnast. And that doesn't come off. And then finally in July, they decide on the landing in French, North Africa. And Roosevelt's insistence is driven in part by the American electoral cycle, as they said in the book. He tells Eisenhower that I want this landing before the midterms. It's got to be in late October. It's got to be far enough ahead of the 5th of November that you can actually get the news back. So we have to attack somebody somewhere in 42.

And the British solution to that is to adopt a raiding strategy, which ultimately culminates in the raid on Dieppe, which is supposed to kind of slake the bloodlust for a major assault on northwest Europe. Roosevelt's solution is to land in French, North Africa, get something done. And the Brits are working to actually reinforce the Eighth Army, the Western Desert Force, which has oscillated back and forth in strength over a period of two years. and finally they put some umph in it. And so there's a kind of resolution. Well, we'll get North Africa done because that's what we can do. If you look at any other attempt to land on the French coast in 1942, there isn't the lift to get enough troops ashore quickly.

There isn't the air support to get enough troops ashore safely and support them. And there isn't the air support to allow naval forces to linger, to support and resupply. It's a potentially catastrophic situation. And fortunately, it didn't happen. And even after the war, George Marshall said, you know, thank God we didn't do that because it just been a disaster. So that period of 41, 42 is all about, we know what we want to do, but what can we actually do? And it comes down to French, North Africa. Well, can I ask, you know, this is the dynamic that's most interesting to me and kind of a focus of yours in the book is to what extent the military arguments are sort of stalking horses for political motivations.

So we have, as you just point out, it's just not possible, really, to invade Northwest Europe in 1942. It's a bit of a joke. Even 43 turns out to be a stretch under the best of circumstances. Had we not gone to Italy, it still would have been a stretch. But 42 is just a joke. And that's true on the one level. There's just a good military argument. You can't do it.

On the other hand, it's convenient because the Brits don't want to, even if they could have done it, I presume, and this is the question will begin. I presume they really wouldn't have wanted to. Like the delay serves a series of political purposes, one of which is, again, this traditional British mindset that emphasizes the Mediterranean access to the empire through Suez. And then this concern about how does this all affect the fortunes of the Soviet Union? Do we kind of want to work our way over to the east a bit more to have leverage there as opposed to just blundering into the bloodbath of France one more time? You know, to what extent is there sort of conscious, I don't want to say disingenuousness exactly, but there's a consciousness of this, the political level and the military level interacting like that? Well, I think in the British case, it's very conscious.

I think one of the things the British learned from the First World War, and I put it in the book, and I believe it firmly because I spent years teaching courses on the First World War, is the Brits discover in the First World War that there has to be a national strategy. There has to be, whatever they're doing has to be led by politics. What the hell is that we're trying to do? In the First World War, the tendency was, not the tendency, the actual practice was, okay, the war started, you're the general, I'm the politician. You go in the war, it's Germanian, right?

You go in the war, and when the war's over, bring me the peace and I'll make something out of it. And the Brits realized that we can't do that. It's just not going to work. So the Brits do a lot of serious development of staff capabilities in the 20s and 30s, including working out scenarios at their Imperial Defense College at the political general officer level. How are we going to deal with a war in the Mediterranean if the Italians are in or out or the French are in or out or what's going to happen? And yeah, they do default to a British way of war. If you look at 1940, it's very reminiscent.

of 1805. And the Brits have always found that it's best if you have, if you're strong and sea power and militarily weak, to tinker with the soft underbelly of Europe, to whittle away economically at who's ever there and try to peel off some of their allies and their strength. It's kind of death by a thousand cuts. But as long as you have the economic power to do that and the money to pay other people to fight for you, which is what the Brits did traditionally, in the 18th century, it's a winning strategy. And there's always a problem, whether you're talking to Polyonic warfare or the 19th century, is how far into Europe do you allow the Russians to come? You know, Poland is far enough by most standards. They would like to have them further back.

They like to have Poland in Europe rather than in the Russian Empire. So there is a default to a kind of reflex, a muscle memory approach to strategy. But the British are fighting a war on their back foot. They don't have much of an army. They're developing their air force, and all they can do is develop a nibbling strategy. This is where something like the SOE becomes important, because if you believe Churchill's strategy,

set Europe on fire, and then as it starts to burn, you land a small army of invasion, highly mechanized and very fast, and you drive on Berlin. And I've been meaning to put that into several things that are written recently. It's like FOCO theory, right?

It's like Castro advancing on Havana. You come down out of the hills and you hope that the people will rally around you. And by the time you get to the Capitol, you have an overwhelming force, which the bad guys can't stop. So the British thinking in some ways predates Che Guevara. The idea is you foment rebellion, you make it difficult economically, you bomb the hell out of them. And then when, particularly when the Russians come in and international. communism will help you raise rebellion when it looks like the Nazis who are a really nasty bunch of buggers, you know, the Brits understand that right from the get-go. When the rest of Europe begins to

rise in rebellion, you don't really need a big invasion army. You don't need to take them on full strength. You need to get ashore safely with probably a million men, highly mechanized, well-supported by air power. And you move on Berlin and all the French and the Belgians and the Dutch and everybody, and even the Germans will rally to your cause. So the Brits are never, and I tried to make it clear in the book, the Brits are never opposed to a landing in Europe. It's just how are you going to do it? And if your objective is to take the German army on, main force, mano, mano,

the Brits aren't going to go until they're ready. And that's not until 1940. Well, let's go to the main event then in this moment that seems to signify the passing of the torch. Let me ask the question in kind of a playful way. If Overlord and D-Day really is the passing of the torch from American to British egemony, it sort of doesn't look like it superficially. I mean, sure, you've got an American commander-in-chief and a lot of American stuff and troops there. But you've got a lot of British stuff, Canadian stuff, Canadian troops there, British troops.

You have a British ground commander, Montgomery. You have a British sea commander, Ramsey. I mean, this is not. Indeed, indeed. For the moment when America takes charge, it's pretty. pretty Anglo-commonwealth in appearance. Well, that moment is on the 6th of June. But the chapter I wrote in Second Front called Breakout,

it's meant to be a double-ontan or maybe actually not a double entend. It's meant to mean several things. And you can, to me, you can almost date the switch from British agenda to American in the last week of July because three things happen. one is first U.S. Army breaks out of the Bacaj and starts to move. And once Bradley starts to move, Montgomery's command of him is always being light. But once the U.S. Army begins to deploy and begins to move, then all that Montgomery can really do is support them. It's not like he's going to steer him.

He's down the back of the tiger. They can grab him by the ears and, you know, try to steer, but the U.S. Army's going to go where the U.S. Army goes. Second thing is the decision that's taken in Hawaii when Roosevelt meets with Nimitz and with MacArthur on how the Pacific War is going to go. It's going to be an American conclusion. There's going to be no main allied thrust through Indonesia to Singapore and up to the Philippines or up to Taiwan. It's going to be straight across the Philippines, maybe, but maybe not. So he throws that to MacArthur. But when he's asked afterwards, having announced, remember the date, it's the 28th or 29th of July in Hawaii, there's a press conference.

And somebody in the press conference, after announcing how this is all going to go down, we're going back to the Philippines, and then we're going on to Japan. Someone says, what do the British think about this? And Roosevelt basically says, who cares? I haven't spoken to the British. This is how we're going to do it. So the Pacific War is going to go America's way. The Brits are going to continue to fight, but the United States is. the only power that's in a position to drive on Tokyo.

And Roosevelt has determined to do that. The third one, of course, is Bretton Woods. And that's where America puts its stamp on the post-war economic order. The deal is already done before they signed the general agreement at Bretton Woods at the end of July. I can sign on the 22nd of July, but it's late July. But it's basically going to be a post-war economy based on the American dollar run along American lines. and the British pound sterling will become just an ordinary currency. When the news is announced in Britain, it's seen as a vast capitulation.

One senior British banking expert says, this is the greatest disaster since the war itself. So America breaks out at the end of July. And it's at that point, arguably, late July, early August, that the figures for combat troops in Normandy begin to favor the Americans. until that point, they're pretty well balanced. About 18 Anglo-Canadian divisions and about 18 American divisions. And then the American divisions, particularly initially American service of supply troops, begin to land in huge numbers in Normandy. And American power begins to take over the campaign.

So that by the time you get to the end of August, when Montgomery says, you know, we always plan to go northeast, to go to Belgium, go through that gap across the rivers into northern Germany. I like says, no, sorry, we can't do that because we just can't have American troops under British command anymore. We're going east. We're going through the old battlefields of the Great War and we're going straight into Germany. So I think you can date it from that moment. And for me, the breakout at the end of July is not just Normandy, it's the United States itself.

As the war comes to a conclusion, you have Yalta, that of course after the end of the European War, you have Potsdam. And, you know, you have all these various elements of the post-war order coming into reality. You know, you have Bretton Woods, you have discussions about the United Nations, the structure of post-war occupation forces beginning to get designed and implemented. How does, I mean, I guess Churchill's out pretty quick. So we can we can date it up to him from office, but then maybe also just he comes back. So his thinking in between is relevant. How does Churchill adapt, reconcile himself to this? this or not, you know, to what extent does he just sort of accept this as a fait accompli?

To what extent does he resist? Just help us understand that. I think Churchill realizes certainly by late 1944, if not sooner at Tehran, that the way this is going to go down is going to go the way the Americans want it to happen. Churchill's view had always been that the boundary of Europe will stand where the armies meet, by which he meant the Western allies and the Russian army. So from his perspective, the sooner you get to Berlin, if you can get to the odor, that would be really great. But wherever you get to, for God's sakes, don't give it up to the Russians because you're not going to be able to get them out. And Churchill has experience with the Russians.

He likes them as allies, but he really doesn't like the Russians. And he certainly doesn't like the Bolsheviks and Stalin. He doesn't trust them, and rightfully so. So I think Churchill is the best of you could say probably about Churchill in the spring of, of 1945 is that he's quietly hopeful that Roosevelt is right, but I don't think he believes it. I really don't. The way he's treated at Yalta and Potsdam, Yalta in particular, is pretty embarrassing. I think it was Dan Croswell, but it may have been Dan Todman, who said basically, by the time

we get to Yalta, the British Empire is a bit of a joke. India is going to go. Canada has been a problematic member of the Empire and Commonwealth. it's pretty clear that British power is rapidly waning. And so Roosevelt's not really talking to him at Yaltz. He's talking to Stalin about how it'll all go down. And they're drawing lines of control and occupation. And I think Churchill's probably just shaking his head and pulling his hair

about the fact that the Americans are going to let the Russians into Germany and further maybe into Europe than they've earned in their campaign. And at one point, I couldn't find the quote, but I recall reading years ago, and damned if I could find the quote. Somebody asked George Marshall if he was going to drive on Berlin to try to get to Berlin before the Russians got there because it was politically important to be as far into Europe as possible when the war ended. And Marshall is alleged to have said he would not have an American soldier die for a political purpose, which if you're a Klausvitzian, kind of you just go, wow. Wow, interesting. What are they dying for then? Well, exactly.

Yeah, I mean, I get what he means, but it seems, yes, I share incredulity. Yeah. So the Brits are always one of them going through the Lubiana gap because they want to save the Balkans. They're restoring constitutional monarchies in Greece and Rome, not because I think the British are, well, you know, their constitutional monarchy works for them. But the Brits are trying to find a way to preclude communists and fascist. from power and to do it in the most expeditious way. And it just makes the hair of American diplomats curl the idea that there would now be a king of Italy again and the king of Greece. So the British approach, I think, to power is fairly pragmatic. You can claim it's ideological or maybe driven by

some political ideals about constitutional monarchies. But I think it's more practical than that. it's get these places secure away from Stalinism and out from under fascism, which means that they're prepared to stick handle with some pretty nasty people in order to make that happen. And that makes Americans feel uncomfortable. Yeah, the British position, whether articulated by Churchill or other senior leaders here in 1945, and for that matter before, it does seem more politically sophisticated to me than that of Roosevelt and his senior leaders. But as a ever, there's this Churchillian dynamic of occasional military zaniness in the thinking, which his own chiefs know, they're constantly trying to resist. And of course, just increasing relative weakness to the

Americans. In terms of Churchill's attitude towards the post-world order, I recently, I went back and read the, you know, the famous Iron Curtain speech from Fulton, Missouri. And I guess that's 46, if I'm not mistaken. And, you know, I read, I studied it as a student like everybody, maybe not like everybody anymore. But when I was a student, I learned about it and you learned, well, this is where the phrase the Iron Curtain comes from. And that's kind of what I remembered about it. I had forgotten that's also where the phrase the special relationship at least takes on, takes on force. And I had no conception of the way in which the argument worked, which to read it now, I was kind of laughing, actually, at the sort of rhetorical games Churchill was playing in

the speech where it opens up with all this praise for the United Nations, love the United Nations, nine nations, is great, wonderful, great American idea. I don't even say that exactly, but that's the implication. You guys are great. U.N.'s great. Maybe let's not give them an Air Force to nuclear weapons. Maybe that would be a bad idea. Let's hold off on giving, let's hold off on having a U.N. Air Force with nukes. And also, you know, there may be some issues going forward with cooperation amongst the members of the Security Council. So this union of English or, you know, community of English-speaking nations, maybe that's a kind of backstop to some problems that might be coming down the road. It's almost playful, actually, to read it now.

And it's extremely sophisticated and extremely clever. Well, you know, one of the things that I think the book tries to do, and I don't mean this as an insult to Americans, is that, and the Americans always said, well, the British have 300 years or 600 years of practice as an imperial power. They do. Their understanding of the world is far. more sophisticated than most American diplomats and politicians, except for the very best of them who get it. But the infrastructure is not there to do that kind of stuff that the Brits are

able to do. The Brits understand areas in the way that the Americans, arguably in some ways, don't even today. So there's a sophisticated level of understanding. And it becomes kind of manipulative and it looks dark. And I think the initial reaction of many Americans is we're not doing that bullshit. Only Jesus, that's devious stuff. And the British Armed Forces, I think, in the 20s and 30s developed the same kind of complex, sophisticated understanding in a way that they're able to manifest in the Second World War. And I say that because when you then look at what does the United States have in comparison, there is no U.S. joint. staff college. There's an Army staff college and there's a Navy staff college. But there's

been no national defense agency. There's been no national formulation of American policy for Southeast Asia that integrates naval policy, air policy, army policy, foreign policy, economic policy, industrial policy, all that kind of stuff. So the stuff that the Brits have come naturally to do, America is just learning how to do it. As a great empire, America is still pretty pretty naive and still learning, still drinking from the big end of the fire hose in the, geez, even through the Second World War. And the Brits see this and they get frustrated and realize that they don't have the power, they don't have the control, the economic club, to do the things they want to do, but the Americans do. So it comes down often to try to manipulating the United States into

doing what they think is the right thing to do. This has been a really, really interesting conversation. Mark, I want to ask you one last question that connects everything we're talking. about more to current debates. You know, I have the, what I think has long been the conventional view. I hope it sort of still is the conventional view because it seems right to me that FDR was naive about Stalin, that he did allow himself to be manipulated on some level. And even if the Americans kind of had the upper hand in some of the arguments about military capability and military strategy that the Brits and Churchill were more sophisticated

in their thinking about the Soviet Union. And American decisions left the Truman administration in the West and the world. at a relative disadvantage to the Soviets compared to how they might have been, had a harder line been taken at various points. That said, there's a much more aggressive, I would go as far as a darker argument that's revived itself in the American conversation

in the last couple of years that goes well beyond that and goes as far as to say, to quote, or to paraphrase a couple of prominent right-wing American podcasters. The United States fought the war on the wrong side. That is to say that the Soviet Union was always the great threat and your characterization of the sort of American anti-interventionist view in 3940 that, yeah, sure, the Nazis are a bit rough and tumble, wouldn't bring them home to mom, but look at the Brits in India. It's basically morally equivalent. That that's not, that that's basically deeply true. And, you know, this has all sorts of other iterations. Churchill as actually responsible for the war. I mean, it goes to sort of points that are sort of historically impossible, I think, to defend as matters of fact. But I want to ask you to address the sort of this basic. issue of, you know, we were just on the wrong side. America should have weighed in and compelled Britain to seek a separate peace slash realize that the true enemy throughout was Stalin and fought

accordingly. How do you respond to that? I think it's really quite improbable. I really do. You know, if you go back to what in theory, in me in practice are fundamental American beliefs about justice, about democracy, about liberty and all that kind of stuff. It would have been difficult once the truth came out about what the Nazis were actually doing to have sustained a war against the British on the side of the Nazis and against the Russians, assuming that the Brits and the Russians were allied and America decided, well, the hell with it, we're going to support the Germans because we hate the Russians more. I think it would have been, extremely difficult to have sustained that.

I don't think Americans in the 30s and the, in fact, I said in the book, Roosevelt actually, for whatever reason, prevents Americans from hating the Germans. He masks the Holocaust. He doesn't want people to get alarmed. I'm always amazed when I hear the rhetoric around the 6th of June about how, you know, this is when Americans came to Europe. to liberate them from the evils of Nazism. But if you read American news magazines and newspapers,

which I did extensively to write the book, one of the big problems in the spring of 1944 is that Americans still don't know why they're fighting the Germans. They don't understand it. And the concern echoed in a great many of the news magazines, and I can't name the two, you can find them in the book, is how do we expect American soldiers to go to France and fight the Germans, when they don't know why we're fighting Germany.

So the troops that are actually waiting in England, if you believe the American reporters, are going off to fight somebody they don't hate for reasons they don't understand. So I think there's a real, and actually part of the problem is, and it's there in the book, and gee, who's the lady who, oh goodness sake, works for CNN.

Rachel Maddow has written a book recently about the prelude. There's an enormously successful role. German public relations campaign that's carried on in the United States throughout the whole course of the Second World War. And if you believe Meadow and some others, it's enormously successful. It actually effectively attacks, you know, the myth of the bad German and the Nazi and attacks the British Empire as evil. And if you believe the public relations people in the spring of 44, a huge number of Americans buy into that. I think America's, the original debt for America's war against Germany becomes clear as the combat in Northwest Europe unfolds, but more particularly when the camp start getting overrun. There's a, there's a revelation and a discovery that, geez, the Brits were right. These guys really are awful. They're evil. And they needed to be fought. And I think it takes almost five years for America to realize that. You can, in fact, hate both Nazis and communists and, you know, think carefully and analytically about the complex strategic tradeoffs required when you have a problem set that involves them both.

Well, as Churchill did, right? Of course. Of course. I mean, the war in the East is a war between the forces of darkness and the forces of evil. And you got to pick aside. And the Brits did. And Churchill was not happy about it, but he embraced it because he knew what the Nazis really stood. Speaking as the son of somebody, a man who participated in the liberation of Dachau, as a young American officer, I think your point about the camp's discovery heavily affecting not only American opinion at the time, but the whole legacy of the war sends.

Absolutely. It reshapes the legacy of the war. It changes the meaning of D-Day from what it was at the time to what it has become. I was there in 2004 for the commemoration, and he talked about how D-Day was the beginning of German liberation. My dad, who was a man of the right and had no love in his heart for communists, or for that matter, even people further to the right on the spectrum than communists. One of my first memory is being on vacation with him and my mother in what was then West Germany. And my dad wanted to take my mom and me to Dachau, where there was a memorial and everything else. And he asked for directions at the desk from this young German guy, who to me, I'm like six or seven years old in this story. This is a German adult. And the German guy gives the directions to my dad.

but then he says, yeah, but why do you want to go there? You know, it's all just Jewish propaganda these days. And I remember my dad, who was a big guy and had a quick temper, he turned white and then he turned red. And he leaned over, and I'm going to clean up my language here. But he said, I saw what happened there with my own two eyes. Don't you dare tell me that it's all just Jewish propaganda. I mean, it changed him for life. Yeah, absolutely. It did for a lot of people. people. They just didn't think people could be that beastly to other people. I often told students that, you know, one of the differences between communist extremism and fascist extremism is that if you, as long as you drink the Kool-Aid and agree to participate, anybody can be a communist extremist.

You can be Jewish. You can be black. You can be gay. Doesn't really matter. As long as you drink the Kool-Aid, read the book, on. I'm in. Good. I'm a believer. We're okay. Fascists, if you're the wrong color, wrong religion, it doesn't matter. You're out. You have to be like us. And I think Churchill saw that fundamental difference that he didn't like communism because it was a form of extremism. That was brutal. And Stalin had killed millions of people. But Nazi extremism was a, was a virulent form of genocidal maniac behavior and just didn't fit. Mark Milder, the book is called Second Front Anglo-American Rivalry in the Hidden Story of the Normandy campaign. Don't apologize. I've let this run kind of long because I'm totally fascinated by this

conversation and by your own take on it. So thank you, thank you, thank you for coming on the show. Entirely my pleasure, Aaron, thank you.