The Daily Signal - How April 1945 Proved to Be 'Hinge of History'

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

A single month determined the course of the 20th century. That’s what historian Craig Shirley writes about in his newest book, “April 1945: The Hinge of History.” It’s Shirley’s follow-up to “December 1941,” in which the author and political consultant recounted stories from the lives of leaders and everyday Americans during the attack on Pearl Harbor and the days that followed. The events of April 1945 are the bookend to the greatest war in human history, as Shirley outlines on this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast.” President Franklin Roosevelt died, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was captured and executed by his angry countrymen, and Adolf Hitler shot himself in a Berlin bunker alongside his mistress, Eva Braun, as the Red Army and Western armies closed in. Discovery of Nazi death camps at Dachau and Auschwitz revealed the depth of evil committed by the Nazi regime. “What’s really interesting,” Shirley says, “is that The New York Times and The Washington Post rarely if ever reported that it was Jews who were primarily being exterminated by the Nazis.” What followed was a world wholly changed. As the German Reich crumbled and the war drew down to its last days, the United States found itself in a new position as the unquestioned leader of the free world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or nissan.ca for details. Conditions apply. Hey there, Daily Signal listeners, Doug Blair here. Happy President's Day to all of you. We are here for a bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast featuring Fred Lucas and his interview with author Craig Shirley. They talk about his new book April 1945, a hugely significant month in the history of the world. Hope you all enjoy.

We are here with New York Times bestseller and historian, author of many books on Ronald Reagan, Craig Shirley. His newest book is April 1945, about the month, April 1945, a hugely significant month in the history of the world and as came as World War II was coming to an end. Welcome to the show, Craig. Thank you, Fred. Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be with you. If we could talk a little bit about the book, this was a month that the world lost three hugely important world leaders. FDR died.

Hitler committed suicide, Mussolini was executed. Could you just talk about that a little bit in terms of what impact has had on America and the world and the outlook people had? Franklin Roosevelt's death was one of those events. There are times in America's life where you remember where you were. You remember where you were on December 7th, 1941. You remember where you were on September 11th, 2001. You remember where you were on November 22nd, 1963. And you remember where you were when I certain,

my mother, God bless her, is still alive. And she remembers where she was when she heard that Franklin Roosevelt died. Franklin Roosevelt had been omnipresent in the, in Americans' lives for 13 years, going back to the beginning of 1933. You saw them in the newsreels. You heard him on the radio. You saw them in the newspapers. He defeated Republican presidential candidates, Alton and Herbert Hoover and Wendell

Wilkie and Tom Dewey. He defeated them easily. and everybody knew. You know, Bob Dole wrote in his book, a soldier story about being in a dugout. What do you call it? A foxhole. Thank you. In Italy, in April of 1944,

and trying to sleep there in the cold dirt at night and hearing the sound of soldiers around him weeping, as the news spread of Franklin Roosevelt's death. His death touched everybody in America, and in fact, everybody in the world. Churchill mourned him, Degal mourned him, Chenkyshek mourned him, Stalin mourned him. They lowered the flags to half-staffed in Moscow for an American president, if you can imagine that. Flags were lowered around the world.

The war stuff kept going on, but it was burdened by the knowledge that Roosevelt wouldn't be there to see the final victory over Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. Hitler's suicide was something else is that even though he committed suicide, interestingly enough, a lot of people didn't believe it. They thought he'd gone underground. They thought it was a body double that had committed suicide. There was a lot of disbelief surrounding the suicide of this cowardly and odious man. And, of course, for years, mysteries surrounded him and conspiracy theories surrounded him about that he was still alive, is that body remains, of course, when he left instructions that his body was being deburbed after he committed suicide in the most cowardly fashion.

He took a suicide pill and shot himself in the head. And Ava Braun, who he married in the last few minutes of his life, she also committed suicide. Their bodies were taken outside the bunker where he was in Berlin and doused and gasoline and burned. They were later identified and taken back to the Soviet Union where they were kept in refrigeration, the bodies were kept in refrigeration for many, many years.

And the fact is they're still there. There were a lot of Germans who went through a period of remorse, like, you know, children being caught doing very naughty things and then being caught. And the German people, in fact, I think still today, even to this day, there's a lot of remorse on the part of Germans, And of course, you know, the mere fact, no German emblem, no German swastika is you can't, you're not allowed to print those in Germany. That's their form of retribution, is to almost deny the existence of the Nazi state.

Mussolini less so, he was a nasty, mean-spirited, evil man. He was over, he was overthrown in Naples by the, by the, by the, by the mob, was dragged through the streets, was shot, was clubbed, was killed, was urinated on, had his jaw broken all while he was dead. The mob did this to himself, to him and to his, to his mistress. But I mean, Hitler, we know he committed side. We're glad he, I mean, to be frank, we're glad he committed suicide. If only committed suicide years before, a lot of lives could have been saved. 14 million maybe more could have been saved. But the one who's the longest lasting, whose legacy is the longest lasting and had the longest

impact in terms of the mourning of him, but also his impact on national, international politics and national politics is Franklin Roosevelt. The New Deal has, for better or worse, become the extension of today to build back better, which is a macabre interpretation of the New Deal and fortunately has died in the Senate. But he made the Democratic Party, the modern Democratic Party, what it is today, which is the party of, as Harry Hopkins said, tax and tax, spend and elect. And that is the mantra of the Democratic Party and has been ever since the New Deal. His stamp is all over the modern Democratic Party.

And in some degree, the Republican Party too, is that he made both parties, and not consciously, but by the act of December 7th and the acts of December 10th of Germany and Italy declaring war in the United States. he then made America, then the Democratic Party, then the Republican Party, internationalist, and we have been ever since. Following up on a point that you made a little earlier about, for a lot of Americans, FDR was the only president they knew in their lifetime. Was there a lot of trepidation in America when Harry Truman stepped in this role, whether he was ready for this person? Fred, that's a great question. It is amazing how Americans can seamlessly move from one era to the other.

You know, before 1962, we hadn't launched a man in space. And in 1962, we launched John Glenn in space. This is an astonishing thing, a man in space, a man outside the Earth's gravitational pull. and yet we move seamlessly from we were men of the earth to being men of the outside the earth to being galactic men and yet we went about our lives as if nothing ever happened you know people went to work they took road buses they cooked meals they raised babies and it was the same thing with with FDR dying and Truman becoming president there was a period of mourning on the part of all Americans, and they listened to it on the radio and looked at it in the newspapers and things

like this, and they went to church and that. But there was, but the, the, the American experiment is astonishing and miraculous because tanks don't roll in the streets. Troops aren't deployed. There are no house-to-house searches. We move seamlessly from one president to another and take it as simply as a matter of course, that this is the way things happen. This is the way things are done in the United States. So there was speculation. Well, Truman will be more conservative, or Truman will be less isolationists, or Truman will be more anti-communists. All of which are true. Truman was more anti-communist, but because the communists at Potsdam and other places acted like Royal Souls. And of course, they tried to invade Greece right after the war, and Truman was forced

to send the eighth fleet to the Mediterranean to repulse them. So there was the idle change. added to the parlor game about what kind of president was going to be. But the mere fact that he had become president was an accepted fact. In this book, I write about how the Holocaust was really discovered how the horror of all this out there. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how that was a shock to some of the people? You know what's interesting? The Russians discovered Auschwitz. Dachau was discovered, I believe, by the Americans. But, There were all over Western, Eastern Europe, two or 300 death camps. It wasn't just Auschwitz.

It wasn't just Dachau. It wasn't just Dachau. There were hundreds of factories for killing all over Europe. And, of course, the Jews of Europe, but also anybody who was the political opponent of the Third Reich, anybody who opposed Russians, homosexuals, gypsies. They also, it was six million Jews, but it was also four a million people in the other categories who were put to death in these factories for killing. What's really interesting, Fred, is that the New York Times and the Washington Post rarely,

if ever, reported that it was Jews who were primarily being exterminated by the Nazis. They would say, well, these people died at Auschwitz, or this people died, you know, news report, DACA, blah, blah, blah, blah, but they never reported there was Jews. It's a really tragic thing that they chose to ignore this faith and these people and this creed. And it's almost like killing them second time by denying their existence as a people, but just merely reporting them as numbers. It was a terrible thing done by the New York Times and the Washington Post. Of course, The Washington Post was a, at the time, was a Jim Crow newspaper, was a paper of the South. And when a black person was arrested or died or became a firefighter, any other thousand ways they were reported in the newspaper, it would say, John Pop, comma, Negro, comma, today was arrested for breaking and entering or today was hailed as great hero in Europe.

But for a white person, they would simply say, John Pop, today was hailed for his breakthrough discovery in cancer medicine. So they didn't report that a white person was white, but they reported that an African-American was a Negro. And that, of course, is a holdover of its Jim Crow passed. And it was a terrible thing. Yeah, right. And there have been books about the New York Times, their treatment of the Holocaust and other things. things as well. So, yes. If you can talk about a little bit, I think all, you've always been a great storyteller and it's gotten into. I don't know about that, but thank you, Fred. Well, the, kind of the

next layer of history, which is kind of how it affects real people. Can you talk a little bit about that beyond just the politicians, how this book really gets into the story of America during that time? Oh, well, you know, it talks about marriages and divorces of, you know, women, you know, record keeping was a lot more specious, a lot more dubious in those days. We didn't have computers. It was all on card files. So a woman might marry a man who was getting overseas and then get his military pay. And then she'd go on to marry a second man. And then he'd go overseas and she'd get his pay. And then she'd marry a third man and they'd get married and he'd go overseas and then she'd give his pay. And she might marry up to 10 different men and get the overseas military pay of 10 different men. And then only to be later discovered.

The Japanese internment camps, I always wondered what happened. You know, when they were sent to internment camps, all recording devices, anything was deemed, Fred, of being of danger to the state was collected in archives. So if you were Japanese and you had a modest income and you were working in the fields in California and you were sent to an internment camp in Montana or Nevada or New Mexico, they would confiscate anything you had like a camera or a wire recorder, not tape recorder, but they had wire recorders then or any material. Maybe like maybe had a little tiny newspaper and you used to print it. That would be confiscated. All cameras would be, were especially popular to be confiscated by local police, by the state police, or by the FBI.

And, of course, something like they didn't keep accurate records at the time, but maybe 100,000, maybe about 150,000 Japanese Americans were sent to these internment camps under Herbert, who, under Franklin Roosevelt, and Earl Warren. And I always wondered at the end of the war, after they were released from the internment camps, did they think? get back their cameras and wire recorders, printing presses and things like that. What happened? I mean, can you imagine? Now, they don't know how many went to the internment camps because sometimes the FBI had jurisdiction, sometimes state police had jurisdiction, sometimes the local law authority organization and jurisdiction.

So it wasn't always coordinated. It wasn't always kept, it was never kept on computer. files. So they don't know accurately, but they estimate about 150,000 were sent to internment camps. And I always wonder what happened if did they ever get back to their cameras. Last question. I think we were still a few months away, of course, from the atomic bomb and Japan. Yes. Could you kind of talk about, in this book, what do we have in terms of the story that's where they're building up to that point? Well, Roosevelt had appointed McCarrow.

Supreme Commander for the Southeast area of Asia, and Nimitz was appointed Supreme Commander of the Pacific Fleet. And so you can see the two of them together, moving their forces slowly, slowly, using the C-Bs, using island hopping, moving toward an eventual invasion of Japan. And you cannot underestimate the work of the C-Bs at all, what they did in all these hundreds of little tiny islands that we needed to have landing bases. So they would go, you know, an island would be taken for the Japanese and then the C-Bs would come in and, you know, think of these islands down in the Pacific. They're hot, they're humid, they're infested with poisonous snakes and mosquitoes and bugs and things like that. And they would go in and they

chop down trees and they dig out roots. And they would. would level the field and pave it over with dirt, smooth it over with machinery and bare hands and equipment and, you know, axes and hammers and things like that, and make a rudimentary airfield for big and small plane to land. And then they'd finish their work and then they move on to the next island that the American, that MacArthur or Nimitz captured. and proceeding across the Pacific up the southeast, up the southeast, southeast peninsula. And every island is taken as then an airfield and a base was put in there,

you know, and maybe just a few weeks. And the C-Bs were interesting because, you know, they were made up of mostly older men, men who were maybe, maybe they've been a school teacher for 20 years. years, but they had, they wore glasses. They couldn't go into active service because they were either too old or they had bad eyesight or they had a limp or something, but they could work in the C-Bs. And this, there have been lots of books written about them and thank God because what they did, their model, their unofficial motto was can do, did, done. They're just a marvelous brand. of the U.S. Navy and the invasion across the Pacific and up the coast was impossible

without their work. And I guess one of the things that really sticks in my craw, many things stick in my craw, how the Japanese treated Americans, the monstrous ways they treated Americans in the Batan death march, the horrible monstrous ways, they might take an American prisoner and tie him down and throw little seeds of bamboo sprouts under his body, knowing the bamboo sprouts would grow overnight, and they would literally grow through a man who was staked out. They would grow through and kill him, and deprivations of water and the beatings and the killings. There's one story where they had a detachment of Marines as POWs, and they made him dig a whole, a large trench in the sand and told them to get down in.

And then when they got down in, they threw gasoline on them and burned them to death. There was an island of peaceful Polynesian people who were very friendly to the Americans, but they weren't really involved in the war. I mean, they might pass a message along or something like this or a cocaine or something, but they were pretty primitive people. but the Japanese came in and one day it was in the down in the Fijian island chain and machine gunned them all to death the entire lot there was of course you know the one thing too Fred is I'd like this book to clear up is the Germans have always gotten a better

treatment of POW camps especially of American and British Fliers than they deserved. They were just as monstrous to their P.O.Ws as the Japanese were. I remember, I recall one story that the what was called the Malady France, where a group of 75, and about 75 American flyers were trotted out in the open ground and then, and then for no reason, machine gun to death by the Germans. And then the Germans went the dead men or the dying men. went through and they shot them. And then they went through their pockets and pickpocketed, looking for money and pocket knives and pocket watches, things like that. So don't think for a minute that the Germans were kind to their POWs. They weren't. They were monsters, just

the Japanese were monsters. Really appreciate you joining us today. And I'm sure, Fred. I hate to end on a down note. Well, we're talking about World War, so there's not a great way to end it. No, I'll tell you one thing. Let me just tell you one thing, is that your readers will like, or your listeners like to hear, is that this is a fun fact. Lou Gehrig died in April of 1945, and he left his estate. When he died, his estate, he left his widow, Eleanor Twitchell Gerrig, was only 100,

$171,000. That's all. And interestingly enough, there was some trophies, obviously, that he got, they were left, and they went up for auction. And for instance, the trophy he got when he announced to the people Yankee Stadium that he was the luckiest man ever born when he, when people knew that he had Lou Gehrig's disease and was going to die, that statue only went for $5. And his most valuable player trophy, which you got several years earlier, only went for $1. Those things must be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars now, maybe even millions of dollars. And they went for $1 and $5 in April in 1945. Wow, that's amazing.

Okay, all right, wow. It's like a great book. It's April 1945 by Craig Shirley. Thank you. Good talking with you. And that'll be all from us today. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. As always, you can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio.

If you haven't already, please leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage your friends and family to subscribe. We'll be back with you all tomorrow. our regular programming. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Virginia Allen and Kate Trinko, sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visit DailySignal.com.