The Rest Is History - 247. Monty & Patton vs. the Nazis

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Do commanders matter? Were the British generals effective or "foppish"? How did the Allies rebound from huge losses such as the Battle of Dunkirk to victories like Alamein and D-Day? Tom and Dominic are joined by Al Murray to discuss all this and more, following the release of Al’s new book Command: How the Allies Learned to Win the Second World War.  If you want to buy Al's book, it is available at all good book stores or online. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. There's one thing you men will be able to say when this war is over and you get back home. 30 years from now, when you are sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks,

What did you do in the Great World War II? You won't have to cough and say, Well, your granddaddy shuffled shit in Louisiana. No, sir. You can look him straight in the eye and say, son, your granddaddy rode with a great third army and a son of a goddamn bitch named George Patton. All right, you sons of bitches. You know how I feel. I'll be proud to lead you wonderful guys in battle anytime, anywhere. That's all. Tom, that was George C. Scott as General Patton.

And George Patton, the great U.S. general in World War II, he's commonly remembered, isn't he, as one of these sort of titanic leaders, these larger-than-life commanders who who through the force of their personality, and indeed, their stirring rhetoric as beautifully rendered in that impersonation, they roused their men, they dragged their men through the hell of battle to victory. And you and i have only just been talking about another great commander in horatio nelson um so are you a great believer tom in individual leaders in history going you know think back to the romans and do you think they matter well i think it depends oh god what an evasive note on which to start well no but there are two different styles of war aren't there

there's the style of war that privileges dash um and and celerity and tactical acumen and all that kind of stuff. And then there's a style of war that privileges the grind, the heft, the remorselessness. So I'm thinking of comparing Alexander and Caesar, which is a contest that we have already discussed. We do public events. We're asked that all the time. So I would say that Alexander obviously had, he had his phalanx and he had his cavalry and that was very well honed. But I would say that it was, you know,

his conquest of the Persian empire wouldn't have happened without Alexander. Whereas the Romans, I think we were always going to conquer gaul because that's the way the legions functioned institutional machinery and so that's what and that that particularly became the case once augustus had established um uh the legionary system these this kind of essentially professional army which i think is why after the age of caesar there are no kind of box office roman generals that people remember because they don't need them because they don't need them

and so this is prompted by the publication of a brilliant new book called command how the allies learn to win the second world war by al murray co-host of we have ways our sister podcast and i was reading it and i thought you, coming off the back of our episodes on Trafalgar, Nelson is a titanic figure. Everyone in Britain has heard of Nelson, even if you know nothing about history. And Al has written a series of biographies of commanders in the Second World War. And I would say the only one I really know anything about is Montgomery. There are 10 of them.

And so Patton is included. I don't really know anything about Patton. Just lots of shouting, I think, Tom. That's basically my impression of Patton. Your impression of Patton was, of course, of George C. Scott. He famously had a high-pitched voice, so it would be more like, you sons of bitches!

Yeah. To be honest with you you to be brutally honest i've never i've never actually seen their film so that was just it was the impression of a poster so what i learned from it is that that um pattern had a voice like a neanderthal you goddamn son of a bitch that's how he spoke so you got it very wrong uh let's let's ask the big question right at the outset do commanders matter at all oh um i think they absolutely do and and i think your example of nelson speaks to uh in the end what a great commander can do which is that he he'll be he'll inherit a system he'll be gifted gifted a mechanism for waging war,

and then it's his ability to sort of, in vital eyes, a word, but to take hold of it and get it to work as efficiently as it possibly can. And when you talk about, you know, Monty being the only chap you've ever heard of out of this bag of people, Tom. That's not quite true. It's not quite true, but it is also completely one that I understand. It is also completely understandable. And Monty's sort of representative of this. One of the things I think that happens culturally after the Second World War is we sort of go,

God, that was horrible. And we shove it aside and try not to remember it as a society. We'll try to ditch, certainly the people that made us do terrible things to win the war. And Monty's peculiar in that he stands out as a figure that is remembered,

but is also vilified. And I think for that reason, that's sort of his function after the war. He becomes a sort of lightning rod for how objectionable the war was as an experience for a civilian population, because he's a citizen commander. But morale was his central thing. The one thing he wanted to concentrate on when he took over 8th Army in August of 1942 was fixing the morale. So taking the machine and getting it to function properly by grabbing people and improving their attitude to how they were going to go about fighting. That's his thing. That's his gift. In the way that Nelson, you know, would cause hussars everywhere he went, that was what Monty was going for but also al i learned from your book uh he was concerned to sort out um venereal

disease to the point of obsession i mean so let's be frank so he he writes this memo in which he talks about a man who has a woman in a beetroot field yes i mean what's the thing about beetroots the root vegetables what's going on there one of the things about montgomery is he actually has when you start to read read him i think are prepared to take him with a little bit of a pinch of salt rather than take him all appallingly seriously what a ghastly fellow he is he's this strangely imp he has this strangely impish sense of humor and i think that's in that memo this whole incident which i opened the book with is is really to try and sort of prod at the idea that the British army in 1939, 1940, like the British political establishment, has got itself into a war it's not particularly serious about.

And it thinks will probably fizzle out without having to do any fighting. And Monty writes to his division. He's in charge of the 3rd Infantry Division. He writes to his divisional officers saying, you know, our lads, because it's the phony war and they've got no kit to exercise and train with properly. And they're in France. La Belle France. And they're in France. Well, and their fathers were in France. It's the other thing to remember.

I'm sure some of the fathers have taken the lads to one side and told them what a fantastic time they had with the locals. And so he's worried about, you you know the sexual health of his men and this is the age of syphilis after all this is pre pre-antibiotic cure for syphilis so this is a this is actually terribly serious but of course Monty in his own in his own style writes a sort of uh I don't know i mean by modern standards it's an entirely anodyne memo but but for the time a little bit cheeky well so and and the response is to alan brooke who's his commander worded in such obscene language that both the cov and rc senior chaplains complained to the adjutant general yep and the adjutant general will you know he he controls your career

um he'll fire you if he thinks you're not if you're not fitting in and the thing about montes he has had a career where because he regards himself as a professional soldier in a in the interwar era where people are quite determined not to do any professional soldiering and certainly not you know european i hate the word war fighting that's current but they're not interested in fighting a war in europe certainly they've no appetite for it and he's talking he wants to talk about that he wants to discuss how you might do that so he's he's very detroit during the interviewers in in the various messes he in you know that he that he finds himself in but basically by 1939 they've got themselves this guy he's super efficient he's excellent at his job he's open to ideas and he's

also got a sort of my way or the highway attitude and he comes close to being fired for caring about the health of his men which just strikes me as you know preposterous essentially the phrase is horizontal refreshment that's right that's um that alarms his superior but anyway let's pull back the camera a bit sorry and talking a sort of uh before we sort of disappear down lots of mon Monty-shaped rabbit holes. Yeah. So to be a general, to be a commander in the Second World War in the 1940s, so the examples that Tom and I talked about right at the beginning,

Nelson, Alexander, Julius Caesar, these are all people who are taking enormous physical risks. Yes. And who are in, you know, Nelson's case, he's killed. Alexander's, you know, he will lead the cavalry he will charge ahead all that sort of thing then the 1940s being a general is presumably completely different from being a military commander at most previous points in history maybe not the duke of wellington but before that so these are people who are managing so they have to be bureaucratic managers

as well as kind of football managers tacticians all these kinds of things yes i mean yes absolutely the stuff going over their desk one of the real things they have to really be good at is running a staff is having a staff that because we've moved away from you know wellington sort of sucking his teeth on a battlefield and calculating how fast the formations will all arrive in the same place and all that sort of... He knows how fast his light infantry can make their way across certain terrain and what his light cavalry can do and what his heavy cavalry can do.

And he's sort of running the numbers in his head as to where... We've come away from there and you have a staff. So it's about having a good chief of staff. So it's about having good people that you can manage. It's as crucial to it as anything else. Monty's chief of staff, so it's about having good people that you can manage. It's as crucial to it as anything else. Monty's chief of staff, Freddie de Ganga, was a brilliant man at managing his sort of mercurial general. But so it's about running a staff.

It's about being recognisable to your men becomes a very, very big part of Second World War generalship because you're entering the age of, you know, proper mass media and projecting an image becomes incredibly important. And of course, you know, we talked about Patton. The reason you were doing an impression of a poster, I think, tells you how successful Patton was in delivering his image to people that you know what he looks like, you know, and he, you know, he's, he wants to be a sort of an American Hannibal. He wanted you to think of him as in an iconic sense. So you've got, you've got lots of plates to spin. All of the British generals were First World War people or imperial people, so will have experienced physical danger.

And bravery was a part of who they were. You know, Montgomery was shot through the lung on a battlefield on 9-15 and left for dead overnight and all that sort of stuff. Who's the one who had the VC? Oh, that's Freyberg. Yes, Freyberg. Freyberg, who's known as the salamander churchill calls him the salamander

and i'm not going to wade in with a churchill impression on this podcast because that turf is firmly stamped out but he he is wounded scores of times in the first world war at gallipoli swims ashore and puts fake naked you say naked yes well yeah i mean rather than be dragged down by your tunic, I suppose. You'd be mental to be swimming around in all your kit, Tom. I would not go naked. I would insist on wearing full kit. Nelsonian decorum.

I'm a British officer. I die with my uniform on. But yes, he was phenomenally brave, Freyberg. And he's wounded again in the Second World War during the First Battle of Alamein. Does that give him a status? I mean does that give him an authority? It gives him a status and it gives him an authority but where the crossover between being phenomenally brave under fire and actually being able to run a battle. Well yes because you say he was thick. I may be paraphrasing. He wasn't very clever I I think you say, or something. Well, I think this is the problem is I've tried to handle that in a nuanced and subtle way.

He's handling it at the Battle of Crete, although it's pretty woeful because he knows what's going to happen. So just tell us about the Battle of Crete for those who may know nothing about it. So for those who know nothing about the Battle of Crete, the Battle of Crete falls into the, you know, the first three years of the Second World War until really August of 1942 for the British. And we have ways of making you talk. We call them the Duke Forces because it's Dominion's UK and Empire because we wanted a handy acronym. You're an inclusive podcast.

No, no, no. We're being imperial, Don. Okay, okay. Oh, that's a very different story. It's a very different kind of inclusion. Joseph Chamberlain's idea of inclusion. Well, there you go. Exactly.

So the absolute ignominium of what happens in france in 1940 is then followed by there's a great victory against the italians in late 1940 operation compass when uh general o'connor rounds up the italians hundreds of thousands of italians captured that goes terribly well and then the british get involved in in greece and it goes terribly, terribly wrong. And as they're scuttling out of Greece, come May 1941, Crete is the last bit of Greece left. Churchill has tangled himself up in the idea that you need to defend Greece, because it's a monarchy, because it's where democracy came from, because they are our sole noble ally left on the continent of Europe and sort of Churchillian reasons. The army goes, oh, Christ, all right, and is then soundly defeated again. And so when you come to Crete, Crete's the last bit left

between, you know, the continent of Europe and the continent of Africa that's up for grabs, basically. And the Germans decide, and this is, you know, with Barbarossa very firmly in their mind for June, July that year, the Germans decided what they're going to do is capture Crete. And there's an assemblage of Duke forces on Crete isn't they're not really designed to defend the island but there's tons of them and they crack the Luftwaffe ciphers because the Luftwaffe are very lax at disciplining because they send weather forecasts every day and all that sort of stuff so you get you get the same stuff over and over again which is what code breakers want and they pop open the Luftwaffe cipher and they know that the Germans are planning to capture Crete using parachute soldiers they're going to land on Crete here's where they're going to do it here's how they're going

to do it and the British had made a great study of what the Germans had done in 1940 with their parachutists, which is to capture an airfield and reinforce. So they know exactly what's going to happen. They know exactly when it's going to happen. They have the timetable, they have the objectives, they know everything about what's going to happen. Freyberg knows everything about what's going to happen, but he doesn't really grip how he deals with the threat. He also is desperate to protect that he has ultra clearance and that he knows that he's been forewarned. So he sort of doesn't make a big thing of defending the airfields,

although that's obviously what you would do. Because he doesn't want to give away that they know, basically. Yeah, exactly. Well, although that's one of the arguments that sort of defends him a little. Let the Germans win this one so they don't know a broken neck. Exactly, exactly.

And the thing is, people do get themselves in tangles around the Enigma story because it's one of the compelling Second World War stories that emerged a lot later that sort of clean, doesn't involve firebombing cities,

you know, clever boffins in a vicarage figuring out the fiendish German code. It sits more comfortably with a more contemporary sensibility. And so you look at the Enigma and you think, oh, well, you know, that code's obviously, that's what's going on there. They're protecting it. But it may be that actually he just simply mishandled things because he wasn't up to it.

He also did inherit, however, like I said earlier, a sort of ragtag thing. Their radios weren't up to scratch and their internal communications didn't work and they didn't have very much artillery but but what you do if you've got an airfield you've got a hill overlooking it is you don't leave the hill overlooking it it's um fairly straightforward and i you know i'm a comedian i can tell that this thing about this thing about him mishandling it so the the perception I would say among people I mean I know your listeners on the we have ways podcast to know everything about the second world war but the perception among those of us who don't know everything about it

and you'll probably think this is an absolutely ludicrous stereotype but I would guess this is what most people think is that the British generals, certainly at the beginning of the war, were sort of slightly feckless, foppish, massive trousers, you know, out of their depth amateurs. And I guess the perception, especially among our overseas listeners, would also be then the Americans come in and they've got kind of square heads and they are unbelievably ruthless and hard-nosed and modern. Yeah. They smoked cigars and the British wore jumpers and smoked pipes.

Thin moustaches. I'm guessing that this is a preposterous and indeed utterly inaccurate. But is there an element of truth in it? Yeah, there's definitely a grain of truth in the second half of that. The Americans very self-consciously create a brand new army and embrace it in the sort of spirit of New Deal modernity. second half of that that the americans very self-consciously create a brand new army um and embrace it in the sort of spirit of new deal modernity and um it's no coincidence that the american army that emerges in 39 40 41 is is the product of the rooseveltian new deal it's it's

fascinating for that their uniform james always goes on and on about how their uniforms are their uniforms are designed to be democratic and look like work clothes and not make you look like a soldier. And the Americans are very much going for this thing that it is a modern army, but that's where they've got to culturally. It's sort of, you know, the armies as expressions of their culture, of the cultures that produce them. You know, you want to know what a society is like, have a look at its army. It's sort of there immediately. And the Americans very much do fall into this. They bring modernity.

They bring a sort of, they bring a sort of Tyro efficiency to it. There's lots of industrialists, mass production people and car manufacturers advising Roosevelt on how to run his war economy and therefore how to run his operation. Then that feeds into how they run their operational level and then the you know strategic and tactical but what the americans are really

really good at is learning that they learn really really fast and they're completely open to ideas in a way that perhaps british are not quite so good at but al i i know from listening to we have ways i know from listening to my brother who talks about it a great deal yes that actually the british were very very good at killing people on an industrial level oh yeah that that in fact the idea that they were all kind of tweedy ineffectual pipe smokers is incredibly wrong and that um they are you know they win the battle of the atlantic and they you know they they inflict untold carnage on the cities of Germany. And isn't this actually one of the reasons why perhaps the profile of generals in the army is so low, is that actually the key campaigns in the war are being fought in the air and on the sea. And it's on such a kind of level

that there isn't really much space for the kind of Nelsonian figure, the individual commander, because it's all about munitions and that kind of stuff. And yet when you do get an electrifying figure, he's able to grasp the reins and turn things around. And completely, you know, this is the Phillips, Pace and O'Brien's big war sort of theory, that basically the Allies win the Second World War at land and it's in the air. The Allies win the Second World War in the air and at sea, and the land battles are sort of incidental. You know, and he runs an economic argument

because he's an economist, economic historian. He says, well, basically, if you look at, for instance, tank production, the percentage of German industrial production that goes to tanks is 5%, yet we think of the Great Land War on the Eastern Front as the climactic place on the Eastern Front as the climactic place where the blood is spilt and the battle occurs. But he says if this is a war of factories, then actually the Germans aren't spending much of their industrial output on

tanks. They're spending 45% of it on aircraft to try and defend their skies, to defend their factories. That's where they're under pressure. So that's the bit of the war effort that's working. But in the end, boots on the ground are the only, you know, Stalin knew this. You had to have Red Army soldiers in Berlin to end the thing. So just to press you on that, because I was going to ask about Philip Sobrian's argument. So his book, I can't remember if it's called How the Allies Won

or Why They Won or something like that. And he basically starts that book by saying, you know, the fighting is neither here nor there there the battles don't really matter what matters as exactly as you're saying kind of the graphs of you know shell production or you al you you quote a stalin don't you this is a war of engines it is impossible to have too many of them and the side having the largest number of engines is bound to win yeah i mean could you not argue that in some could you not if i was being really brutal could i not say this is a bit like arguing that football managers matter in the grand scheme of things because obviously a given manager will change the the fortunes of a

team but in the grand scheme of things i over a 10-year period it's actually how much you pay the players it's actually your budget that will affect how many trophies you win it's actually how much you pay the players it's actually your budget that will affect how many trophies you win it's the quality of the kleptocratic autocrat in the background the oligarch do the commanders and do the battles i mean persuade me that they're the land battles that a given land battle or given land campaign and the given commander makes a difference to the course of the war. Yeah, I think I can do that for you. I mean, it's 1942 in the desert that really is the sort of where everything goes wrong and then everything goes right.

And, you know, it's the sort of thing in, James and I are quite fond of the sort of acrid stench of cordite type cliches. We are no strangers to cliches on the rest of history. Dominic has literally used the phrase clouds of war on this podcast. Yes, the gathering storm clouds of war. I mean, it's still there, isn't it? The woodpecker knock-knock of the brain gun and all that.

1942 is the Janus-faced year of fortune for the Allies, because you have this absolutely diabolical situation in May 1942, the Gazala Line battle where Tobruk falls on Midsummer's Day, June the 21st, and absolutely everything that can go wrong is going wrong for the British. And yes, in the end, their material preponderance will out. But you've still got, I mean, I think, I don't think this is even a great man theory of history. This is a sort of reasonably useful man theory of history. You know, because when change comes at the top in North Africa in 1942, when Alexander, when Orkinlek is fired, because he's out of ideas and he's exhausted, and he's fired and he brings in montgomery's this sort of emissary on earth because alex is sort of rather grand terribly experienced guards officer who is very beguiling

smooth chap british establishment chap and then monty's this sort of annoying irish bishop's son you know that the you know you've got all the all the fruits of the brit British establishment present. I mean, and fruits is probably the right word. You know, they do have an effect. The fact is, is Monty's the sub anyway, because there's another chap, Strafer Gott, who gets the job of running Eighth Army, who's shot down the day he gets the job and is killed. Because the Germans think it's Churchill in his aeroplane.

It's one version of events. He's killed. So Monty's brought in his airplane, is one version of events, that he's killed. So Monty's brought in as a sort of sub. And Gott was exhausted, wasn't up to the job, was part of the old establishment in 8th Army, but didn't want the gig either. So I think he would have made a different difference. He would not have had the electrifying effect that Montgomery, working with Alexander, had in the desert in 1942.

And I really do. I really, really do think that individuals are still are doing that, are able to make that difference. You know, because one of the things about, for instance, cracking the Enigma secret is that there's one argument. Oh, it took years off the Second World War. How on earth do we quantify that? I mean, maybe Montgomery shaved a fortnight off the thing i don't know but because after all phillips would argue it's going to end somehow anyway with an allied victory of one shape or form and the fighting is incidental but part of the point of my book is the fighting still has to happen you still have to persuade someone to fix the bayonet put a round up the spout take their rifle off safety and go and kill people you still have to persuade them

to do that and how do you do that that's my question you know how if you were parachuted in i mean it's an implausible scenario but let's run with it how how do you as a general persuade you know young men well spike milligan how do you persuade spike milligan because you begin with him don't you yes famous comic uh in the 50s and 60s who wrote a brilliant series of books about what it was like to be a not very enthusiastic fighter in these wars. Yes. Yes. I mean, he's not a keen gunner. I mean, what it comes down to, Dominic, I think is if men have a sense that they're being looked after, in the British army, certainly, the army develops the notion that what the men need is a sense that they're cared about,

a sense that they aren't spending their lives cheaply. And you engender that by training them well, so they think at least they've got confidence in their officers, they've got confidence in the way they're going to go about doing battle. Their mail comes on time. And then you enter the quasi-political uh thing where until the beverage report comes along there is a morale malaise within the british army because people don't really know what they're fighting for and you know there's been a lot of scholarship about this lately about where where the beverage report fits into how the army mobilized its men

because after all you know there's the british army in 1939 BEF, which is the old professional army plus some territorials. That army gets routed. Then there's an army, a professional army in the desert in 1940, because Churchill sends soldiers during the invasion scare, which I think indicates actually how seriously he takes the invasion scare. He sends them to North Africa. Then there's the army that's gathered in the meantime. And first army goes to Tunisia, which is the army Spike Milligan's part of, and then spends sort of essentially fights in the Mediterranean. Then there's the army that fights in Normandy with incidental stuff going on in Burma, where the British contribution is actually smaller than it appears.

But basically, there are all these armies running at once. And by the middle of the war, the British army just knows it's got to offer as well as good training, as well as good food. And, you know, Milligan's books are interesting because he never goes hungry the entire time he's in the army, even when they're fighting proper, full-on artillery engagements, which is what he used to do. And he'd go forward into the forward observation post, and he was a signaler, so he really saw action up close. But he never, ever goes hungry, and he never goes out without his fags, and he never a signaler so he really saw action up close but he never ever goes hungry he never goes out without his fags and he never goes without his friends and so this is sort of this is sort of

mosaic of things that persuade people that they want that they want to fight but you need the complete mosaic and the minute the bit different parts of the picture fall away motivation crumbles and fades and and the reason the book's about officers is because it's down to the officers to make sure the men feel like it's worth doing it is amazing how this dovetails with what we were talking about nelson and his campaigns you know to get to get the men on the ships yeah healthy well-fed and feeling happy and nelson is loved because he loves his men and they know it. Okay, I think we should take a break here.

And when we come back, you mentioned Burma. Perhaps we could talk about General Slim, who is one of the Second World War generals who has a statue outside the Ministry of Defence on Whitehall. So he must be a top general. So maybe we could talk about him and some of your others. So don't go. We're going to be talking about top generals when we come back i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of

entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of the entertainment dot com that's the rest is entertainment dot com welcome back to the rest is history we are with al murray the author of command how the allies learn to win the second world war and al you give us these wonderful pen portraits of these different generals. And Tom suggested we focus in on Bill Slim. And I think that's a brilliant choice.

Tom and I did a podcast about statues in Whitehall. And we had a little chat, didn't we, about Slim. And in that chat, we said that we knew that you and Tom's brother James on your podcast have strong views about General Slim, who's probably not really terribly well-known to most people who are not Second World War aficionados. So, A, tell us who he was, and B, give us your verdict on the great man. Well, Bill Slim is the chap who wins the war for the British Empire,

and that's really key, for the British Empire in Burma. The Burmese battlefield is so gigantic. In the retreat in 1942, when the British are caught completely with their trousers down by the Japanese, have absolutely no answers to whether the Japanese are going to fight. They retreat 1,000 miles. So they retreat, you know, a London to Moscow sort of distance. You know, the scale of this place is gigantic.

Through jungle. Through jungle and on mud tracks and with a Japanese enemy that prizes mobility and does this thing of getting around behind you and cutting you off so that they can steal your supplies because they haven't got any of their own. And there's a terrible disaster on the Sitang River. The Sitang River Bridge is blown while half of one of the big British formations is on the wrong side of the river. It's an absolutely disastrous, chaotic campaign.

So the scale of defeat in Burma, and, you know, this is all at the same time as Singapore's going horribly wrong as well. In the East, the British have the Indian Army at their disposal, but that's run by British officers. And Bill Slim is an Indian Army lifer to the point where he's written some sort of sub-Kipling fiction about snake charmers and stuff. And, you know, he's a Raj soldier, an Indian army soldier. And the Indian army is a shadow army to the British army. It gets the same budget, the Indian army, Indian government has to spend it. And it's a gendarmerie really.

And its job is putting down tribesmen in, you know, disputations areas. And they call the expeditions punitive expeditions when they go. So it's like Churchill and his Malacan field force kind of army. Exactly, exactly. And I think one of the things about the Second World War is we see it as the sort of hop-off point for the modern world. But actually, within the army, there's an awful lot of, you know,

essentially 19th century thinking still kicking around, especially imperially, especially in how you deal with the cookie tribe or whatever who've risen up against you in the Assam Hills. What you do is you go and burn their villages down. It's all terrible what goes on. But Slim is, he's a First World War veteran. He used to be a teacher.

He's from the Midlands. And he's, so he's not a gentleman. He's a player, to use a cr World War veteran. He used to be a teacher. He's from the Midlands. And he's, so he's not a gentleman. He's a player, to use a cricketing analogy. And he is the fellow who figures out how to win in Burma. And Burma's at the back of the queue in terms of resources. So they're not getting the snazzy tanks. They're not getting the snazzy Spitfires. They get their spitfires last

essentially in terms of the the theaters the british fighting so aren't able to enforce espirit until quite late in the day but slim figures out how to run a an inclusive army you know the indian army is broken down into its different uh constituent battalions and companies so that you you don't have a preponderance of any one ethnicity in a battalion. And this is legacy of the Indian Rebellion. You don't want groupings who could rise up against you within the army. So you've got different ration scales per unit. So all the different dietary requirements, faintly Shoreditch all this, and different languages, and, and different languages. And, and you also have,

um, uh, you know, quit India going on. So we were talking in the first half about how the, you know, the beverage report comes into the, into the deal for fighting soldiers in, in the Indian army, what comes into the deal is independence. And what, what Slim knows he needs to do is create a, as well as, you know, figure out how much armour he needs, how his supply lines work, how to integrate with air power. He needs to figure out that what he's got to do is offer his Indian soldiers the fact, if they fight this one and defeat the Japanese, who are a terrible imperial threat, then come out the other end of it, there will be independence. And Slim is party to that, that sort of, you know, is part of that creation of an understanding for,

for, you know, Indian soldiers, because they need educated men to be officers. And that's what, that's who, you know, and if you're an educated man,

you tend to be, you're sympathetic to independence is the way it's crumbled. And Slim figures out how to beat the Japanese by bringing allied material preponderance to bear, which is the thing we talked about in the first half, that's the thing that means you inevitably win. But you've still got to figure out how to get the Japanese to sort of dash themselves on the rocks of that preponderance. And he's very fortunate that the Japanese

tend not to change the way they do things, aren't particularly good at learning from their errors. And you end up with these extraordinary battles where the Japanese will put in a massed infantry attack sort of at the same time every day. And they gather in the same place and they shout, we're coming to get you, Tommy. We'll see you in a minute.

And so they get shelled remorselessly and killed. And Slim is able to bring the Japanese to waste themselves upon 14th Army, which is fascinating. Because you quote him on this. You say, if the Japanese are allowed to hold the initiative, they're formidable. When we have it, they're confused and easy to kill. Yeah.

And that seems to be the essence of, in military terms, his achievement. Yes. He seizes the initiative. Yes, he seizes the initiative yes he seizes the initiative and he and and but has the you know has figured out the means to do so it has the means at his disposal in you know in terms of air power and stuff stuff is that that's a technical military term well it's better than this you know the french word materiel always gets wheeled out yeah to this point like kind of like like, can we not just say material?

Do we have to say materiel? You know, it's sort of a Napoleonic hangover. So stuff is the Anglo-Saxon word for this. But yes, he figures out how to, but you've got to learn how to coordinate stuff, motivate your chaps to do it, and then get the enemy to do what you want. Although what's striking about Slim is he fights these sort of peculiar, offensive, defensive actions in 1944 uh in phalacohema really in india he gets the japanese to waste themselves on there and then the next

year in 1945 he takes it to them and fights this incredible mobile battle that's like um like the sort of thing of german panzer general would pride themselves obviously sweeping formations around the the open bit of the burmese countryside and runs runs a sort of conventional almost a sort of conventional european style battle in the jungle which is which is fascinating he's he's got the adaptability to to do that but al the other thing that really comes home in your chapter on him is that actually the japanese are obviously a terrible a terrifying enemy but the real enemy, you say, is disease. You have this in the jungle where mosquitoes, mites, flies, brackets, important mechanical carriers of intestinal diseases, lice, fleas, blood sucking leeches, rats, chiggers, brackets, carriers of scrub typhus, centipedes, cockroaches, scorpions, poisonous snakes and crocodiles.

And just for good measure, you say that elephants occasionally crash into them as well so that sense that and maybe this is why slim seems to be the um the second world war aficionados you know he's a he's their man whereas most people haven't heard of him is that actually you have to be an aficionado to appreciate the full scale because really what he's fighting is bacteria and flies and mosquitoes and stuff yeah yeah yes he's running he's and in that sense it's very like an old in you know an old imperial campaign sort of thing like when the french conquer madagascar in the 1890s whatever two-thirds of them die malaria or something it's it's in that it's in that sort of imperial vein i mean the other thing slim never has to deal with is the politics that that that

emerges in the northwest european theater where everything's close to home he's not got churchill breathing down his neck going there are v2s falling on london could you hurry up and win this please he never has to deal with that in fact he's right at the end of the sort of command chain and when he wins his big battles in 1944 brooke and the chiefs of imperial general staff don't really have a grasp on what he's pulled off. It isn't clear to them what he's been trying to do and how he's achieved it. He is the sort of military aficionado.

And very often in the generals general, Slim gets wheeled out, but he never really has to deal with the very intense politics that comes in the last two years of the war in Europe. And he's fought, I think, incredibly fortunate in that respect because he eyes down on what he's doing.

So you've got somebody like Slim slim who's obviously conscious of the conditions and who's performed this extraordinary task of retreating and then managing his army and stuff yeah we talked about montgomery montgomery made himself a media personality in montgomery knew how important it was to rebuild morale in the desert and so on. And you were saying before the break about the, you know, how you rouse your men to fight and all that kind of thing. And thinking about, so your book is about the British and the Americans, but I'm thinking about contrast with the Russians, for example. So the Russians, they don't appear to be terribly interested

in kind of, you know, the morale of their men, it's fair to say. I mean, or am I being harsh? Because you get the impression, certainly, you know, the morale of their men. It's fair to say. I mean, or am I being harsh? Because you get the impression, certainly, you know, I've read Anthony Beaver's books about Stalingrad or the Battle for Berlin, and you have a sense of these Russian generals just hurling enormous numbers of men into the kind of meat grinder. Yeah. Believing that the preponderance of human material will out, as it were.

Is that harsh? I mean, because you haven't got the Russians in the book, and I wondered whether that was because their generals are perhaps less interesting because they're basically just... Sukov is. Well, I think they are interesting, but I'm interested in what Al... Well, no, I think it's... Well, it's because I find it's, you know,

we're into riddle inside an enigma or whatever it is, territory. The main difference, though, that the Russians have for motivating their men, as opposed to British and Americans, is the Nazis are in Russia. Yeah. And they've turned up and they've delivered they've delivered red hot Nazism in their area. And and, you know, you don't need to explain to people what you're fighting that war for. And that's the tremendous advantage the Soviet state has in 1941, you know, for the rest of the war, is that it's perfectly clear why you have to defeat Nazism. And the reason is Nazism, the Nazis showing up in Belarus and Ukraine and all those places.

And the Germans, in a way, have a similar problem with the British, is that how do you actually motivate to fight against the British? And the area bombing that we touched on earlier, the RAF bomber commands efforts, firebombing Hamburg, is a fantastic way of motivating German land to fight the British. And in the same way that Coventry is a fantastic way to motivate Tommies. You know, those bigger pictures of what the strategic campaign is doing motivate people on the ground. But the Russians have this thing that's the actual have a general election coming at the end of this war. The Americans have one during it. The Russian Soviet government has a date with history, doesn't it, with a capital H rather than anything else.

And so it's been motivating its people along those lines anyway. So I think, I mean, you know, the culture within the Soviet Union of, you know, generals, if they go and see Stalin and they haven't got high enough casualty rates, you're accused of not trying. So you've got that going on, too, that the blood, the spillage of blood is part of how you do it. Whereas the Allies have got this steel, not flesh philosophy where what you're trying to do is use the technology, not expend people. And the British are very sensitive to this idea. You don't want to lose a million people again because you've got factories to fill. You've got an economy to save after the war and all that sort of stuff. And so would you say that the, I mean, I guess the most famous Second World War general is Rommel, who's German.

Yes, of course. So would you say the fact that, say, relative to Rommel, the fact that the British and the Americans don't have incredibly famous and glamorous generals is perhaps a reflection of the essentially democratic culture that has produced these armies? Yes, I think so. I think it's healthy that we don't know who these people are. I think that we don't have, that we don't, you know, Nelson on his column is sort of

that's that's as as high as it'll ever go this thing i sort of the adulation of military commanders and i think that's that's really really healthy i mean as i said earlier on you know part of what happens to montgomery after the war is and bob harris in particular you know these people are regarded with revulsion because look at what we had to do to win and you get you use those people to represent that and then you can you can hang it all on them and not on ourselves for you know i mean ronald is ronald is a fascinating case in point because he's actually it kind of not that he's got great dash and great verve but he's terrible at the considering his logistic position he's terrible at knowing when to stop and lick his wounds and sort himself out. And that's really partly what gets him defeated in the desert.

But he seems like a kind of chivalrous opponent, doesn't he? And so perhaps that's why he's famous, is that it enables the British to feel that they're back in some kind of tournament. Yes, but it's also that thing. I mean, in that phase of the war, after all, in the desert, there's no civilians around, so you're not smashing up people's homes. You're just fighting each other. And so you can tell yourself it's a clean war. It's like a naval war or something. But Wellington, when he was asked who the greatest general in the world

had ever been was Napoleon, and he said that because he defeated Napoleon. Exactly. So Rommel being brilliant is all very well but we defeated rumble yeah that's of course so al the americans because we started with pattern so you've got omar bradley you've got pattern is who's is pattern the best past the most famous is he the best well he is a brilliant brilliant soldier and he's such a peculiar man because he he really wants to be the american hannibal he is absolutely what lose well anyway but then again you see this is the thing this is the thing tom is is that you you know when when people pick and choose generals

from history they don't you know napoleon's a case in point napoleon does in the end lose doesn't he i mean for all why don't they pick well, Napoleon's a case in point. Napoleon does in the end lose, doesn't he? I mean, for all... Why don't they pick Wellington? Madness. It's craziness. But then, you know, it's that kind of it's the heats that don't count,

the finals what matters sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. What I love about, or I'm fascinated about Patton is he got off reservation, you know, as a historical topic. Things escape, you know,

he's escaped military history. He's escaped sort of serious academic history. He's escaped, he's escaped military history. He's escaped sort of serious academic history. He's escaped, he's present and buzzed off into the, into the cultural world via, you know, partly because he died to sort of absent himself. Yeah. So you say he's, that he's, he's, he's the, the Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix of American generals. Yeah, I think so. I really do think that. Yeah. You know, and he killed before he did anything rubbish. You know, the records Hendrix would have made in the eighties would have been horrible. So he,

he, he sort of, he, he, and he occupies a cultural space because there's a film about him. That's part of America, you know, trying to lay down its martial culture during the Vietnam war,

you know, and all that. So he, he's off reservation. That's what's so interesting about him. I don't think he's the best or the worst. I think he's, he's fascinating for this position, but that largely exists because of the American listeners, we were really interested in military history.

The vast majority of people listening to this podcast can probably tell you nothing about Omar Bradley. Many of them will literally never have heard those words. Yep. So tell us who he was. Character from The Wire, he sounds like. Yeah. Omar Bradley commanded the US forces on land in Northwest Europe

when the Normandy invasion came. I think his army was something like one and a half, two million people. So is he in charge of Leclerc, the Free French? I think, yes, Leclerc did come under him. But, you know, he ran D-Day. Omaha Beach is, although there's another podcast for dismantling mythos, but Omaha Beach was, you know, part of his responsibility. Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, the American landings are Bradley, the American component. The American army was tiny in between the wars, this sort of think tank, really.

And tasked with all sorts of sort of extracurricular things like the Civilian Conservation Corps, which is know new deal project for doing up the landscape build building national parks and stuff a bit like the arbeit steens but we're trying to dwell on that or a sort of soviet work camp which was if you're an american left american right that's how you characterize it but bradley had come through that and was one of marshall's men george marshall's man george marshall was put in charge of the you know uh it was made chief of staff in September, September 1st, 1939. So he's brought in basically to invigorate the army because Roosevelt sees the gathering storm clouds of war. Of course he does. And he, so Bradley's part of this new establishment and this democratized american army they they're not interested in fancy southern

colonels raising their own regiments which is what was still happening in the first world war he wants a democratic army the best people in the officer corps he wants to reward initiative he wants to you know treat everyone as an equal which is how he's been treated by the army because he's dirt poor teacher's son comes in on a scholarship to west point and he's in the same class as eisenhower and a bunch of other people so bradley is this very sort of ordinary chap you know and that's why i got him and him and um pattern in the book together because bradley's you know it's the two sides of of america isn't it it's the sort of the bradley's the american dream chap and then pattern is the sort of gilded youth uh soldier is it simplistic to say that bradley is the future and pattern is

the past to some extent well that's a i think had pattern perhaps not been so sort of brilliant at casting a shadow yes but pattern has cast an extremely long shadow and sort of generals in that kind of you know cigar chomping, you know, mode. Storming Norman Schwarzkopf. Yeah. That's all,

that's all part of your patterned bow wave through American martial culture. Although, you know, as we say on, we have ways of making talk if it's after 1945, I'm just not interested. Okay. So I'll,

on that. So I'll just on that, just coming to an end. It's a question that hung over the whole time i was reading the book is any any lessons for what's going on in ukraine at the moment do you think in the study of the second world war and the command and that kind of well i mean you could argue that it's flipped isn't it is ukraine is the lendlease ally rather than the soviet union rather than russia and the the dyspeptic um uh sclerotic dictatorship is that is russia lashing out unable you know doing things it's

unable to follow through because it does seem i mean one of the one of the abiding themes is that you have to make your men happy and this is what all the generals in your book are good at and that's presumably why they're in the book and that seems to be where the russians are really badly failing is that their men have you know their morale is shot to pieces and and nobody cares about them yeah but i said you know if you want to look at a society look at its army if you want a reflection of a society look at its army you know the british army's tiny because we we've told ourselves we don't like fighting anymore it's also incredibly right on generally Generally, you know, a woman passed parachute regiment selection yesterday, P Company selection, a medic, which is very unusual

because it's extremely physically demanding. You have to be very strong and have incredible endurance. So it's an amazing thing that that happened yesterday in the British Army. A thing that 20 years ago I don't think would have been possible is completely unthinkable 30, 40 years ago because that's where our society is going. And the army reflects that. The Russian army seems to reflect a corrupt society that doesn't care about the people at the bottom, you know, that you can buy your way out of if you're well connected and all that stuff.

And that seems to be, I mean, I don't, you know, loathe to generalise, but that seems to be my impression of what Russia's like. And so the army's a simple reflection of that, whereas Ukraine... And the other thing the Russians have succeeded in doing is absolutely galvanising a sense of what it is to be Ukrainian. There's nothing like being invaded to do that for people. Of course, it creates the very thing that they most dreaded, an independent, non-Russian Ukraine. Well, thanks so much.

So your book, Command, and the subtitle, I think, you know, I'm sure it's come out through this episode, How the Allies Learned to Win the Second World War. I mean, that's the, it's so interesting how, you know, armies that are not particularly geared up for war, as you were saying, become very geared up for war. So it's such a fascinating book. I suppose that, that you know the thing is maybe the russians will you know maybe this is the russians 1940 where it's all going terribly wrong and they'll figure it out but i don't know because the striking thing is the striking thing about the second world war is essentially the open cultures the western the more open cultures win and the

most closed of the cultures loses and maybe that Maybe that's something to do with it. It's also a fascinating thing. It's something we talk about so much on The Rest Is History. It's the interplay of the individual and the institutional. That sort of tension that is never really resolved. How much do

individual characters matter and make a difference? Nelson in our Trafalgar episode or Alexander in the episodes we did about him. How much are things determined by institutions characters matter and make a difference you know nelson in our trafalgar episode or alexander in the episodes we did about him and how much are things determined by institutions and structures talking of which having having plugged al's book i'm now being told by dorm our producer that al has to plug we have ways so do you know what we never did we never talked about the leadership on these podcasts did we the generalship of our producers. Well. I mean, they could. Have you not given them copies of this book, Al?

Because, I mean. They've been sent them. Whether they've read them or not is a different question. So, I mean. Read and learn. That's all we should say. They need to keep their troops happy. That's the thing.

So, Dom is now swearing at us. Because you still, Al, you still haven't given the plug. So, you've got to give the plug. This is your direct order or you'll be shot. Well, I mean, you know, in Normandy during a morale dip, showers and beer were sent to the front to cheer the men up. So maybe that's what they need to do for us. I think they do, yes.

On We Have Ways, it's the anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein, the second Battle of El Alamein, of course, if you're an aficionado. And James and I have done a week of podcasts about that running through the, running through the setting, the scene, and then running through the climactic first great British victory, the second world war.

And we were also talking to John McManus, an American historian about where the Americans fit into that picture, which is all quite interesting. So we've a week of that. And then we've, we've a week of, we've also our Patreon, which similar to your Wangs, we've our, our week of we've also our patreon which similar to your wangs

we've our patreon and they call themselves the independent company and we have audio books where i've been reading out of print memoirs and stuff as a side project and one of the commanders in this book is this fellow peter white who was a lieutenant in the king's own scottish border at the very end of the war and his memoir with the jocks of his experience of going from Walker and to Hamburg, I'm reading that. And he's the last of your commanders in command, isn't he? Yeah. So that's up now and that'll run till Christmas because it's an

enormous book. Wonderful. And Tom, for our listeners, we have coming soon two special episodes about treason from the national archives that's brilliant i that was amazing privilege wasn't it we we saw the charge sheet against amberlynn and the court records for charles the first trial it's brilliant yeah fantastic popish plots um excellent lord hawthorne uh bills of attainder from richard iii and all this wasn't a british citizen though was he no he had a passport he fraudulently obtained a british passport and that was what damned him

they'll always get you with the bureaucracy won't they in the end yeah they will so we've got that and then we've got another epic tale coming up the week after that which is uh king alfred's battles against the vikings and that i believe Tom is also rather like the podcast about Al's book. That's also a tie in with a, an absolutely tip top spectacularly good book, isn't it? I don't know. Is it?

Yes, it is darling. Your new, your new children's book. I can't plug my book. I know. I know. I'm the only one who hasn't plugged the book.

So I think I, so I think, I think, I think we need to end it now. So thanks very much for listening. Pip pip. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

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