The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe by Ian Kershaw

Episode Date: November 12, 2022

Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe by Ian Kershaw How far can a single leader alter the course of history? From one of the leading historians of twentieth-century Europe and the author of the definitive biography of Hitler, Personality and Power is a masterful reckoning with how character conspired with opportunity to create the modern age’s uniquely devastating despots—and how and why other countries found better paths. The modern era saw the emergence of individuals who had command over a terrifying array of instruments of control, persuasion and death. Whole societies were reshaped and wars were fought, often with a merciless contempt for the most basic norms. At the summit of these societies were leaders whose personalities somehow enabled them to do whatever they wished, regardless of the consequences for others. Ian Kershaw’s new book is a compelling, lucid and challenging attempt to understand these rulers, whether those operating on the widest stage (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini) or with a more national impact (Tito, Franco). What was it about these leaders, and the times in which they lived, that allowed them such untrammelled and murderous power? And what brought that era to an end? In a contrasting group of profiles—from Churchill to de Gaulle, Adenauer to Gorbachev and Thatcher to Kohl)—Kershaw uses his exceptional skills as an iconic historian to explore how strikingly different figures wielded power.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvoss.com. Hey, we've got an amazing author on the show today. Your mind's going to be blown on what you're going to learn today,

and you're going to learn so much stuff. You know, you're going to be more sexy to all the people in your life. They're just going to be like, you have this glow of intelligence and sexiness that just emulates off you. Does emulate the right word? I don't even know what I'm talking about. We improv the ramble every time, folks. You have been here for the last 13 years. That's what we do. We try and make something funny.

Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's stupid, and sometimes the stupid is funny. I don't know what I mean. Anyway, guys, welcome to the show. We have the newest book that's coming out November 15th, 2022, Personality and Power, Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe. We're going to be talking about this amazing book today, History. The most important thing you can learn about history is the, or let's see, what's my old saying? The one thing man can learn about his history is that man never learns about his history. Thereby, we just keep repeating it.

So you want to learn history so that you don't keep repeating it, people. Let's try and do that one of these decades, centuries, years, the folly of man, if you will. In the meantime, you know the drill. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, to see everything we're reading or reviewing over there. Go to our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss. You see everything that's going on there for the show to your family, friends, and relatives as well. Ian Kershaw is on the show with us today. He is the leading disciple of German historian Martin Rochette. And until his retirement, he was a professor at the University of Sheffield. He's also a Surrey. He's been knighted by the Queen. So we want to pay him some ultra respect just in case, I don't know, Britain decides to invade us.

We don't want that happening. Kershaw was named, or was called, or Kershaw has called Borchette an inspirational mentor who did much to shape his understanding of Nazi Germany. He served as a historical advisor on numerous BBC documentaries, notably The Nazis, A Warning from History, and War of the Century. He taught a module titled Germans Against Hitler. He was born in 1943. He's an English historian whose work has chiefly been focused on social history of the 20th century Germany. He's regarded as many of one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany,

and is particularly noted for his biographies of Hitler. Welcome to the show, Ian. How are you? Thank you. It's a great pleasure to be with you. Yes, I'm very well, thank you. There you go. It's wonderful to have you. And hey, America, we just voted over here, and we took a step away from fascism. Are you proud of us?

I thought it was a good result yes i don't like to comment too much on the internal politics of another country but we are very quietly pleased with what happened last night yeah yeah right all my friends have been writing me around the world going what the hell's going on over there what drugs are you on and of course it's fentanyl so that there you go uh so ian uh i i understand you don't have some uh placards on the internet but uh let's plug your book where can we find your book um i imagine it's available on amazon or wherever um should be an all good bookshop soon i suppose usual usual you sound like you're not really sure you don't trust those book publishers to put it on Amazon. Maybe you don't care.

Well, I'd leave it to them, yes. They won't. You're like, I got paid. If they want to sell it on Amazon, go ahead. Anyway, we're just being funny here. So, Ian, what motivated you to want to write this book? You've written a lot of books. How many books have you written, and what motivated you to write this book?

How many books? Three of them. I you to write this book? How many books? 15 or 16. There you go. Anyway, why I decided to write this book was that I'd written two lengthy books in the preceding few years on the history of Europe in the 20th century. And all

the people who figure in, the characters who figure in this book, were, of course, in those two volumes. But those are sort of panoramic histories of Europe, and I didn't have that much time to deal with the individuals in sufficient depth. I decided in the end that I'd write a book which looked at the 20th century through the impact of these individuals. And I chose 12 European individuals to focus on.

And the book arose from that background, really. Nice. And so what can we learn from history? What was the scope of the book? Give us some in-depth story. You cover Churchill. Who are some of the other leaders that you cover in the book? Well, I take it really through the centuries. So

start with Lenin. Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and then on to the post-war era. Asner, the leader of West Germany in the immediate post-war era. Franco, the Spanish dictator.

Tito, the Yugoslavian leader, Martin Thatcher, the one woman in the book, then Gorbachev, and finally the German chancellor of the 1980s and 90s, Helmut Kohl. Wow. Now, the title of the book is Personally Empower Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe. In the scope of that and the leaders that you profiled, did you profile them as builders and destroyers? Or some of these folks were builders and some of these folks were destroyers?

Well, some were obviously destroyers. I think no further than Hitler in that regard. Some were builders, and you can speak of maybe the West German leader Adenauer in the same country, but Adenauer then built West Germany from scratch really after 1945. And some were builders and destroyers. So if you want, you can look at Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, the last Soviet leader, who was a builder of Europe in certain ways,

gave many millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe freedom, and yet destroyed his own country. So a builder and a destroyer. So each of the three categories, figures, I think, elders, destroyers, and both builders and destroyers. There you go. One thing I learned about leaders, whether it's a CEO, I learned a lot about leadership and CEOs and builders and destroyers. And one thing I learned is there were some leaders that they have a penchant to really build, grow things, and design things, but they also have a very destructive dark side.

Steve Jobs had a dark side. I imagine a lot of the people you talked about in the book, you know, there's kind of that light side where they're that great leader, great builder, but there's kind of a destruction that almost, a destructive sort of landscape or hurricane that rides behind them in the darkness of their personalities that almost sometimes seems to overtake them. They seem to stay one step ahead of it, or sometimes it does overtake them. Is that a good analogy?

Yes, I think it is. Obviously, in this book, I go a lot into the preconditions of leadership and crisis is the is a current that runs right through the book so each of these leaders is a crisis and crisis produces different sorts of leaders and some of them have um a dark side which is subordinate to a positive side you you might say. Someone like Churchill, for instance, we could put it that way. Others have obviously a prominent and totally comprehensive dark side, which is absolutely to the fore right from the beginning. But that's the way we see it historically.

At the time, of course, people with what you might call a dark side themselves might be very appealing to large numbers of people, given the nature of the crisis that they're facing. And so what works in one society doesn't work in the other. But what you can say is that each of these individuals has particular leadership characteristics which are

not common to every individual. And those characteristics, powerlessness, determination, and so on, many other characteristics which are common to every individual. And those characteristics, an insipid power, a lustful power, trepidation, and so on, many other characteristics which are often very negative ones, can be very positive in a particular set

of conditions for the audience that is being appealed to. There you go. So, did you find that a lot of these personalities had consistent traits? Were they, you know, did some people really think maybe at the beginning of their run they were trying to do the right thing? Say maybe Stalin or someone, they were like, you know, I'm trying to do the right thing, trying to build a better company and then, or better, you know, whatever their narcissism overwhelms them, or they think they're doing good, and they end up not, even though they think they're doing right.

Well, someone like Stalin or Hitler, of course, they had ideals for what the new society was they were attempting to build. But the negative side was always built into that as well so right from the beginning the negativity the um the exclusion of enemies of that state or enemies of that people was very prominent in their appeal and it was a very successful part of their appeal given the nature of the crisis that they faced at the time people bought into that the fact that they wanted to destroy as well as to build yeah there's there's a real destruction quality and it's really interesting how they they seem to stay ahead of it like steve jobs was was you know most people found out about his dark side after he passed and and you know books are written about uh what a jerk he was. Some people kind of knew it, that worked with him as he was going. But there's this revereness that people have,

almost hero worship people have to some of these leaders, and they don't know the dark side. An example might be Hitler, where a lot of German people either turned a blind eye or didn't understand how much horror he was committing. And when we liberated Nazi Germany, you know, they made the German people watch the videos of the Holocaust and follow up from all the stuff they did, and made them be educated on what Hitler had done. And then some of the shine, I'm sure, came off their minds that maybe Hitler wasn't that great of a guy for them. Well, just a couple of remarks about Hitler, which your colleagues have just stirred in me.

One is that in free elections, before he came to power, Hitler never won the majority support of the German people. So the most that he won was in 1932, where just over a third of the German people supported him. So once he got into power then, of course, the scope was available for him to extend this hold on power by destroying his enemies, political enemies, first of all, first and foremost. And by repression and by monopoly control of the media,

he was able to create this image for himself of the supreme leader of the almost deified image. And the other dictators as well, that once they have power, they're able to have a monopoly control of the mass media to build up this glory image of themselves, which is a completely fabricated image. So we have to bear that in mind. And then also the process which develops,

a radicalizing process that people in the early 1930s in Germany were fully aware the Nazi party was an anti-Semitic party, but that didn't deter them from voting for it because they saw the Jews as part of the crisis, as part of the evil that they face in their own society. Completely, complete lunacy, of course. It was not that at all. But that image which they had, it didn't deter anybody from voting Nazis at that time, who supported what that government seem to stand for. Yeah, you think that we would have learned over time that politicians, you know, going back eons of time have always played that game with usually the immigrant.

You know, they're like that new person over there who just showed up. Yeah, they're the person who's stealing from you meanwhile they're you know they're picking the pockets of everybody who's looking over there uh and stealing from them and we we don't seem to learn this lesson you know the the the the thing you're talking about where people create this false image and the scourge leadership and it becomes this cult of personality it rings really true what's going on here in america um you write about uh you write about uh mussolini and one of the things that's been echoing through our brain over here in america is doing this voting in 2022 is um are people willing to give up capitalism for the trains to run on time because that was

the big thing about fascism well fascism people are bad and there's some grift but the trains run on time the economy works and that's i think with hitler you know they wanted the economy to work they were in but they were in a bad economy especially from the post-war uh world war one fallout uh same with mussolini and so you know people in these in these situations are willing to say well if you know if we can have jobs and we can have the trains run on time we'll give up some freedom and then it becomes a slippery slope that's exactly right and um they which we're seeing in of course, today with populist leaders today, that the readiness to give them support and to put them in positions of power without any possibility then of controlling what they do once they're in power.

So it's a very dangerous trend. And that's in the 1920s and 1930s when democracy was far flimsier than it is today, then it was even more dangerous. And you gave then scope. Hitler, one of his speeches, I remember, in 1932, 40,000 people there assembled for one of his open-air speeches. And he said very openly,

I'm going to destroy democracy. I'm going to sweep it away, sweep all the parties away. And the crowd cheered like mad. So a very popular message, you see. And as you said, the notion that somebody will put things right for you in the depths of a crisis. Some great hero will come along and put things right for you, will rescue the nation. It's a very dangerous message.

Definitely. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements,

if you'd like to hire me, training, training courses that we offer and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneur ism, uh, podcasting, corporate stuff, uh, with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as CEO. Uh, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show. And be sure to check out ChrisVossLeadershipInstitute.com. Now back to the show.

Was Pinochet a consideration for this book? It seems like he would be a good addition. But, you know, you only have so much time to write and size. Would Pinochet have been a good add to this book? Yes, he could have been. And so would other non-European leaders. We wrestle with these thoughts

for quite some time, and one of them that I particularly concern me with is whether or not I shouldn't include Roosevelt in this, because he obviously played a significant part in the Second World War in Europe, concern me was whether or not I shouldn't include Roosevelt in this because it obviously played a significant part in the Second World War in Europe

and the reshaping of Europe after the Second World War. I thought about it and I decided in the end that I would have to concentrate really on European leaders. So my criterion was that they should be leaders of european leaders of

government or the state and i just well if i then started putting pinochet or roosevelt or anybody else that onto mausi kong and so on the book would become will become endless i was gonna say you can save this for book two and three but no that makes sense uh i mean europe has been the central uh format for a lot of this stuff and the shaping of the world, especially in the 20th century and everything that's gone on there. What were some – was there any stories or any things that you learned that you didn't know about that are in the book that we can tease out

that you were kind of surprised by? You were like, wow, I didn't know about that are in the book that we can tease out that you were kind of surprised by? You were like, wow, I didn't know about that. Well, I've worked on this stuff for a long time, so there was no sort of earth-shattering thing that I thought, I've never occurred to me before. But I did learn new things about,

I think, about each of the leaders that I was dealing with. Maybe about the other ones. I've got Hitler I'd written specialized works on. Oh, yeah. On the others, I think I learned dealing with, maybe the other ones. I've got Hitler I'd written specialized works on. Oh, yeah. On the others, I think I learned something new. The one who I think I learned most about was Tito,

apart from giving lectures in universities, so I'd never done anything on Tito before. Intriguing character who fought during World War II, fought as a war leader and also a civil war leader because he was up against enemies within his own state. And then his exploits as a war leader brought him to power in Yugoslavia. He almost single-handedly held that regime together

for the next 30 odd years. And when he died in 1980, the thing was already starting to crumble, and then crumbled within 10 years of his death into this state where Yugoslavia ceased to exist and where it fell apart in warfare. So his legacy was extremely short, but the shortness of his legacy demonstrates the importance of his individual contribution to history. So I think probably I learned most that was new about Tito. Is there something, as you wrote about these leaders, is there personality, the glorification personality, the worshipping, the cult of personality sort of image that these people put on themselves. Do you find that most of these leaders are narcissists?

And then are there things that voters should watch out for? Yes, they are. Ego-centrism, sporing on narcissism, is a characteristic feature of practically critical of everything that they read that political leaders say. Be actually critical and cynical about it and disbelieve most things that are said. And especially now in the age of fake news and social media, I think it's more than ever important that people are critical about the stuff that they read and what politicians say, especially if they're offering what seems to be panacea solutions

for really complex problems that we all face in our societies. Now, we saw that over here. Just inject bleach and everything will be fine. You know, it was crazy. You know, you really got to see what happens when fascist sort of grift and corruption are able to run rampant. Is the you know, as you study these folks, we have a lot of great journalists that come on the show. They've written books and, you know, they they go to the White House and they they interview, you know, the press and everything over there. Is one of the big core elements really true for America that the press and the protection of the press that's given under our First Amendment is one of the things that has kept our thing going as opposed to some of these other countries that you wrote about?

The protection of the press and the freedom of speech are absolutely essential parts of democracy. Where they start to become a problem is in the extremes of free speech, which you can find now in social media,

which can be very harmful. So it's a moral question as to where then, if at all, you draw the line with free speech. Is any sort of speech permissible? Well, it isn't, is it? Even though, because we prevent certain forms of hate speech, even as we speak. And so that is really one of the big ethical problems of today's society, I think, where we actually draw the line, especially on social media.

But in essence, free speech, as you quite rightly say, is pivotal to the sort of power that a modern democracy has and has kept those modern democracies in business. Whereas if you look at when a dictatorship comes to power and authoritarian rule, the first thing they do is to block free speech and to prevent opponents of that regime from having their say. So free speech is absolutely essential as a basis of democracy. And in the protection of that and the Constitution, we saw the same sort of thing that I believe Hitler was up to or Goebbels was up to where we started

getting called fake news and, you know, don't believe, don't trust what's going on in the media. We've got, of course, some state media with Fox News and stuff. One thing that was interesting you brought up is how, you know, we should limit certain amounts of hate speech or certain amounts of really, there is a point where free speech is free and there's a point where we need to say, hey, we can't have that. And that's kind of an argument that's going on here in America with the advent of Twitter, if you've been following that, and how Elon Musk has taken that over and he believes in free speech and that anyone should be able to say anything. And then when you study, and I'm sure you have with your study of Germany and Hitler, you know, over in Germany, you can't say certain things. You can't even raise your hand and do the

Hitler sign. You know, they've banned that, you know, there's free speech, but there's certain elements of hate speech that go too far. And one thing I was recently, and so this discussion has been going on in America, and I'm sure it plays into the study of what you wrote about. But I was exposed recently to this thing from Karl Popper, if you're familiar with him, the paradox of tolerance. And I thought it was interesting, and he talks about how unlimited tolerance can lead to the disappearance of tolerance, and that we need to have, as a tolerant society, we can have free speech, but we cannot tolerate the intolerant people.

What are some of your thoughts on that from what you wrote about in the book, and does that need to be an important thing that we say, hey, it's great that we have free speech, but once we start being intolerant, once we start saying, you know, ugly things, you know, this person is the problem, that person is the problem, you know, we start saying we can't have these people around, et cetera, et cetera, that becomes intolerant and dangerous. I think the question of where you draw the line in free speech has become one of the major ethical problems in every functioning liberal democracy today. And it's one which is very difficult to define in an abstract sense. But we have to have a level of intolerance towards the unspeakable, really. And I think in practice we do that already. There are certain things that we wouldn't want to have said

on whatever media in front of our children or grandchildren or something, certain things which we would draw the line at with personal attacks on other individuals, on minorities, on women, on ethnic minorities, and so on. So we have that already implicit in our own minds. The question is, why do you draw the line in any legislation on that? You don't want to prevent people from speaking out and the freedom of speech, which, as we just said, is absolutely essential for the functioning of a democracy. On the other hand, we can't have that giving rise to such intolerable expressions that they are really then creating, destroying the very thing we want to preserve. So it is really a thorny issue, but one which the prevalence of social media is as given rise to in a way which didn't really exist to anything like the same extent beforehand.

Yeah. And we've learned that through, you know, what you've written about in the study of Europe, Hitler, Mussolini and other things, that how dangerous this speech can be because it spreads and it infects. And, you know, we recently saw with kanye west where he made some comments about jewish people that were hateful and anti-semitic and within 24 hours we saw people putting up hate speech against jewish people on freeways and so it you see how immediately it spreads and infectious and it gives people license to be hateful. But I like the Karl Popper thing that I just recently was exposed to because I'm like, that seems to be the level of where when we say you're being intolerant of someone else and you want to destroy them or remove them, then that's probably a problem. In America, we've had this thing called cancel culture where almost any idea or trying to debate an idea has become deemed intolerable sometimes by our blue left-wing class of the Democrats. And I think part of, you know, they get shouted down at college.

And I mean, there are certain elements that need for debate. But then there's certain times where you're just pointing at someone and going, I hate you. And here's some old speech and stuff um what uh what are what are the lessons or tease outs do you think people learn from the book the lessons that well sorry whether lessons or little tease out tidbits any any stories that you want to share from the book that entice people to go by it well i i think you're you've hit upon a number of issues there which arise from working on the 20th century, which have a different salience than the 21st century.

There was no central media then. But they, thank goodness, but the notion on what goals would have made a central media, I've got no way it would be in a help or even certain ways, a handicap in other ways, I suppose. But then the monopoly control of the press then highlighted some of the issues you've just been talking about. But what issues can we, what points can we draw from this book about the 21st century?

Well, I think I've already alluded to them. The need to be very careful and critical in understanding, so in reading social media, using social media, both in terms of tolerance of speech, but also in terms of understanding the political messages which have been distributed through social media. And it was bad enough when you had a normal print media that were telling lies and so on all the time.

But now with social media where, as you just said, an issue can be raised, and then within seconds or minutes of the latest, they can be spreading like wildfire on social media. And it poses real problems for today's politicians and also, as you say, the council culture, which has cropped the pond, as with us here in Britain too, is really a very dangerous notion there that you have difficulties in expressing views which are rejected by some people and therefore they want to stop you expressing those views at all. On the other hand, there have to be certain things where, again, you have to draw the line. We're back to the issue

of speech and what it means. And then you have politicians that use that as a weapon. They weaponize it and spread the lies around the world. And there you go. Mark Twain, the famous quote, a lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its

boots. I think there's another version that attributed to churchill but uh but it is mark twain uh winston churchill like it's halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on as attributed to churchill um but uh yeah it's it's amazing i'm well how fast hate can spread on these social media forums how fast lies can spread you know we media forums, how fast lies can spread. You know, we've seen, we've seen, we've even seen gunmen that have gone and shot up places in terrorist activities and broadcast on social media. And there's, by the time the, the social media companies can, you know, stop it, squelch it, censor it so that, that,

that sort of ugliness isn't shared. it's too late. It's already gone around the world a million times. Everyone's seen it and been exposed to it. And I think your point is really important. We have to be, each of us, the best arbitrators of history and what's come before us and understand what the angles are. I mean, I grew up in religion. So to me, when you come at me with anything, I go, what's your angle? What are you selling? What's your motivation?

What are we up to here? That's kind of how my whole build is with my brain. But most people don't have that. They seem to be more just open vessels of whatever politicians want to dump it in their brain. They go, okay. Well, people, generally speaking, want to have their own daily problems solved, don't they?

And if the problems are severe and it seems as if our democratic society is not providing answers for those daily problems that they face, then they will look for someone or something which does offer the seeming solution. And often solutions are very simplistic ones which don't last the test of time and will then fade as soon as they come up against reality. But they attract large swathes of support, as you've just been saying,

through social media now in particular. Well, as you see from these historical examples that we've been talking about, really, in the case of the rise to power of the Nazi Party in Germany, then even without social media, there was a possibility then of attracting large numbers of people

by hate speech, by political hate speech, because the problems that people faced in their daily lives were acute. And they wanted a solution. They were prepared then to trust that solution to Hitler with devastating, catastrophic effects. One of the most extraordinary things about Hitler was that a lot of the Nazi people knew what was going on. And one of the historians that we had come on you you probably have covered it the german people would have the ash fall into their cities from the

um from from the uh holocaust ovens and they knew what was going on they knew that was ash of of jews and they would they would keep the children home for the day they would sweep it up and and the that And that's just one thing that's always stuck with me when I heard about that. I was like, my God, the inhumanity and the horror of that. And I can't remember if they would call it a certain, there was a term they had for it when the ash would fall. I'm sorry, just a little bit careful about that though because the concentration camps were set up in Germany. They were meant to be known about.

They were to incarcerate enemies of the state and so on within Germany. The death camps were placed out mainly in Poland. And so in Germany a conquered part of Poland, of course, parts that were taken over by the Soviet Union. So there were places there, such

as the town that comes to Auschwitz, where they were, they could not have been but aware of the numbers of prisoners that were going to Auschwitz. But Auschwitz was a long way from somewhere like Cologne, for example. So when they from Cologne said they had no idea what was going on in Auschwitz, they might have been telling the truth.

They might not. It's difficult to know, of course, because after the war, people told very apologetic stories about what was going on. But it's also, we can't just presume that these death counts were necessarily widely known amongst the entirety of the German population. That's the only point. There's the old saying by Dennis Miller,

no one finds Christ on prom night in the back of the car. It's only when you've been found out as committing a crime that you go, you know, been found out as committing a crime that people, you go, Oh, I apologize. You know, the earlier you're to your earlier point, you bring up that people want their daily problems solved. They want their, they want, you know, uh, I, I'm always reminded by that scene from the movie network where I just want my, my lazy boy recliner and I want my TV and I want my beer and I want you to leave me alone. I want my radial tires just for the love of God, please give me some space, you know? Uh, and there, there comes a point where people break, but you know, we, we just went through that moment as a, as a, if you're, if you're looking at what we're going through, you know, the Republicans were

talking about pulling back from, uh, Ukraine, the Ukraine and our funding of it. I'm sure that Putin was sitting there going, and we were sitting here as a democracy going, are people going to vote for the trains to run on time in a fascist government? Or are they going to say, we're going to tighten our belt, we're going to take some gas prices, we're going to take some inflation, and we're going to tighten our belt, we're going to take some gas prices, we're going to take some inflation, and we're going to vote for the Constitution. And it appears that they largely did across the board.

The Republicans are stunned. And it was interesting to me that the day after, Putin says he's retreating and has also been signaling, you know, negotiating. And, you much, whatever that is, you know, you can put stock in whatever. But it was interesting to me that that was his announcement the day after. And I don't think it would have been the same announcement if things had gone with the huge red wave that we were anticipating. But it speaks to what you were saying, you know, people will sometimes be willing to sell out their freedoms for a good paycheck.

Yes, well, so't we, in every country with what people will tolerate in the long run in regard to energy prices and the rest of it. But so far, anyway, resilience has been very strong and the readiness to support Ukraine. And as you said, the implications for the war and for the outcome of the war can be seen. Let's hope for the best in that.

At the minute, it's still impossible to say how this will war how this war will come to an end but wars normally end through some sort of settlement or negotiated um truce or peace and i'll be surprised if this one doesn't end in the same way eventually you know i'm sure you wrote in the book about or you've you've talked about in your prior books about how they had they tried to appease hitler by going well you know give him what was it czechoslovakia or use gosovia or they there was a you know initially with countries they're like well you know let him have that one just let him appease him and as you mentioned earlier we've done a very different approach with ukraine where we've said no no moss no quarter um we're not giving you that country and we we we saw and i believe there was data and intelligence

that laid out that he he intended to continue if he if he took ukraine yes it's it yeah i think the use of these um historical terms to describe what's going on in today's world is sometimes a problem. We see that along the line that we're always very anxious. Putin and Hitler are the same. It may be best just to say, well,

history shows us how we've got where we are. History can show to some extent it can help us to understand where Putin is coming from and what his own views are on this and how he's going to proceed. But to use jobs like appeasement with regard to today's dealings with Putin might be misleading because, after all, we've just been talking about the differences between the 20th and 21st century when it comes to social media and media in general.

But if we look at weapons, the obvious difference is that Putin has got nuclear weapons. So it seems to me that the line that the West has been taking, which is offering a lot of support for Zelensky and for Ukraine, but falling short of any intervention within Russia itself, which might provoke a disastrous response, has been, although, a very rational and sensible one. And I hope that we can keep that up,

and signs that it's paying some some dividends and let's hope that ukraine prevails in this in this war against putin but i think um i'm just a little bit against these uh anachronistic comparisons or something happened in the 20th century let's just extrapolate from that and say this is what we need to do today what we don't need to do today or what we don't need to do today. There you go. Different place now. There you go. What do you think about Italy? You've heard about Mussolini. What do you think about Italy returning to Mussolini's party 50, what is it, 50, 70, 100 years later?

Well, it's not exactly doing. Giorgia Meloni has a neo-fascist past. Everybody's aware of that. But she is now taken over as the head of government in Italy. Some difficulty in forming a coalition. In itself, that may be a good thing to prevent some really pro-fascist tendencies from taking over. Governments in Italy tend to be of short duration, but it may be that Giorgio Maloney is also able to form a government only of brief duration.

Also, Italy today, like Italy in Mussolini's time, is part of the European Union, which offers its own constraints on the exercise of power. So, and Giorgia Melania is now actually, she was very anti-European Union at one time, but she's now actually backtracked a little bit on that and is making compromises there too. So, it's not a very appealing development in Italy, that's putting it very mildly.

And Georgina Meloni and her government can do some damage, doubtless, to a number of policies in Italy. But I'm sort of slightly optimistic, nonetheless, that the democratic constraints will prevail and prevent her from entertaining particularly harmful policies. That's weird. Yeah. I mean, I was just about to add that we have the example in Central Europe of Hungary,

which claims to be an illiberal democracy and very populist and some very unattractive tendencies indeed, and is a thorn in the side of the European Union. But I think, with luck anyway, the Maloney experiment will come and go, and no lasting or massive damage will have been incurred. But that's my hope rather than any prognosis. Yeah. I mean, Brazil and us, we just dodged a bullet by the thinnest of margins, and hopefully we can maintain that. And I think the youth finally stepped in to vote,

which is important because it's their future, and they see things very differently than the older generation, my generation does. A lot of my generation still came up in that kind of racist era. And, and, uh, I, I washed myself of it years, decades ago, but it's really like some of my other folks in my age range didn't. So there you go. Well, this has been very insightful.

I really encourage people to read your book because the one thing man can learn from his history is the man never learns from his history. And thereby we just go around and around. That's my favorite quote that I run off. any, anything more you want to tease out or touch on about the book well i'm very grateful for this chance to talk to you about it and talk about other things and i have to say as regards the midterm elections that i think europeans in general um are very um very glad that the results came out in the direction that they did. And that offers good hope for democracy in the USA,

and that's the most important democracy in the world. So crucial that the American Constitution survives and thrives and that democracy continues to be a model for the rest of the world rather than a possible horror story. So I'm cautious and optimistic now about the developments in America. There you go. What do you think about what's going on there, you know, where you guys have been using 10 Downing Street as an Airbnb?

What's going on over there in Europe? Is it going to settle down or what? The surest is that there won't be a chapter on any subsequent bottomless struts. It's been a political pantomime and

a great political sport no doubt, but it's creating a country that's being ruined in the process. That's the thing. We need some stability. We need some sensible grown-up politicians to do some grown-up things, I think, and get away from all this nonsense.

There you go. Maybe the Brexit thing was a bad idea at this point. Maybe that's the call. Not just at this point, in my view. Deciding what are the negative consequences of Brexit has been difficult to establish because since then

we've had Covid, we've had the pandemic and we've now had the war in Ukraine so both of those have very negative impacts upon British and European politics and economics and so trying to decipher precisely for when that what the impact of Brexit has been has been quite difficult.

But I was a very staunch opponent of Brexit at the time. It remains of this day. Yeah. Well, it seems like a lot of the players are starting to fall out that were the proponents of it. They're starting to fail out.

And hopefully, I mean, it's been a very bad few years, so hopefully we'll survive them. Knock on wood. It's been a big crisis for the last 15 years. Well, we want to give you more books you can write, so we'll make more history.

How's that sound? Well, Ian, it's been an honor to have you on the show, sir. We certainly appreciate you coming on and your insightful mind. I really encourage people to read the book. I learn so much from historians. I love reading history books, and we've had a lot of historians on the show. And it's so important to understand what's going on in your world today

and what politicians are up to, what power is up to, what leaders of business are up to, you know, by studying the past, by studying leaders of the past and what they've done. Of course, you profiled Churchill in my book, which is a big favorite of mine. Love Churchill. Anyway, thank you very much for coming on, Ian. We really appreciate it. Great pleasure. I enjoyed talking to you.

There you go. And be sure to order up the book, guys, wherever fine books are sold. Stay on those alleyway bookstores. They're a bit dangerous. But, wherever fine books are sold. Stay on those alleyway bookstores. They're a bit dangerous. But go wherever fine books are sold. Order up the book, Personality and Power, Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe by Ian Kershaw. Sir Ian Kershaw, that is, to those of you in the British realm. And thank you for coming by, everybody.

We certainly appreciate it. Go to youtube.com, Fortress Crispus, goodreads.com, Fortress Crispus, all those crazy places we are on the internets. Be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out.