 Our guest this weekend is in studio with me. He's Judge John Denson, a great war historian and a lawyer who helped Lou Rockwell found the Mises Institute right here in Auburn in the early 1980s. So in celebration of Christmas, Judge Denson and I discussed the infamous World War I truce that took place between British and German troops now just more than a hundred years ago in December of 1914 and also how the 20th century may have been radically different and radically less bloody if that truce had brought about an early end of the war. John and I also discussed the critical importance of historical revisionism and why a more peaceful future really depends on all of us questioning official history in state propaganda. So on this Christmas weekend, stay tuned for a great interview and a hopeful message with Judge John Denson. Well John Denson, welcome to Mises weekends and thanks so much for being here today. Glad to be you. Merry Christmas to you and Merry Christmas to our audience. It is Christmas weekend. So today we're talking about the now infamous Christmas truce, which is more than a hundred years ago in 1914, December fall of 1914 in France. You know John, there are varying accounts of what happened. It depends on who you read and you can't really say who you ask because none of the participants are alive today or very few. How widespread do you think it really was and do we make more of the Christmas truce than we ought to because it's so hopeful? In other words, it's something we want to believe it. Well, I do recognize that there are various accounts of it and one reason I like the book Silent Night by Stanley Wentrom, I think he goes to original sources. It's all from a British viewpoint because he went back to Letters home to the from the front to home to their mothers and fathers by soldiers who were actually there and diaries of our witnesses. There's a there's a movie, a French movie called Joe Noel, Joyous Noel, this from a French viewpoint. And I doubt his sources are as good because in one tribe who is a very well respected Historian, he is the emeritus professor of arts and humanities at Penn State. He's written a lot of military history and he goes to original sources and he says that the French and the and the Belgians were not as prone toward the truce as the English were. They were fighting this war on the French soil and Belgian soil and the British just came across the channel. So I think it was a different viewpoint. So you get different perspectives depending on who's telling the story. But I think this book Silent Night by Stanley Wentrom came out in 2001 as a very accurate source from what I can tell. Well, you mentioned that the German and British soldiers saw the war a little differently. It was not being fought in their homeland. It was not they weren't French. But that's something that's so significant to me as you mentioned in your article from which we excerpted our Mises Daily yesterday that you say the the British and French soldiers, however, saw a little meaning in the war as to them. After all, the British King and the German Kaiser were both grandsons of Queen Victoria. So this is such an astonishing fact that the threat that would be posed to the establishment, to the generals, to the politicians by having rank and file soldiers sort of awaken to the idea of the preposterousness of the war. And Lion's Drive also states that I include in my review that you're going to publish is that about 80,000 Germans went to England before World War I to get jobs as cab drivers working in restaurants as cooks and waiters and so forth. And they had well understood the English language. So that there was no language barrier between a lot of them because they spoke very good English. So when they had the truce and began to play football on Christmas Day and sing, they were singing the songs in English and reciting the 23rd Psalm in English. And so there was easy communication. And with all this commonality, why are we fighting might be a question, right? Well, let me ask you this. Obviously, the time we could understand why the brass would want to tamp this down and to stop this from spreading. But do you sense that even today, all these many years later, that there is an effort to sort of suppress the importance of the Christmas truce and what it meant? Do you think even today like this sort of war hungry neo-conservative types don't want the Christmas truce to be widely discussed? I think that's true. And I think that was exactly what they tried to do at the time of the truce. There was an actual order issued by on Christmas Eve by Brigadier General Forrester Walker. And he said to forbid any fraternization. He said for discourage is initiative in commanders and destroys offensive spirit in all ranks. Friendly and, of course, with the enemy, unofficial armistice in exchange of tobacco and other comforts. However, tempting and occasionally amusing, they may be are absolutely prohibited. And then he went on to threaten court martial, anybody that fraternized. And they just did it anyway. And the officers couldn't stop it. And then the officers participated. So you don't want to develop good feelings in the Christian spirit during wartime. One thing that's so remarkable about the Christmas truce is this whole question of what might have happened if the truce had spread and this had caused the war to end earlier or be somehow limited. And Weintraub addresses this in his book. You know, we may not have had the rise of communism, the Russian Revolution and Stalin and Lenin. We certainly would not have had Versailles as a result. We might not have had Hitler or Nazism or maybe even FDR. I mean, it's remarkable to think about, isn't it? And that's counterfactual history at its best. Weintraub asked this last chapter entitled What If? And he points out that there would not... He thinks there would not have been a... Well, of course, it's just speculation, counterfactual history, but there would be no Russian Revolution. We wouldn't have gotten to that point where the communism took over, no Lenin, no Stalin. There would be no treaty of Versailles that mistreated Germany. Therefore, Hitler would not have had his cause to rise. And no Hitler, no Nazism. And probably no World War II because what I have argued in the past is that World War II was simply a continuation of World War I with a truce. And World War I was to see if you could remake the world to the benefit of the English, the British and the Russian, and so on. And World War II was to see if you could keep it that way, what they'd done in World War I. So it would have changed the whole history, in my opinion, of the 20th century. And we are still, in the Middle East, suffering the results of the treaties that ended World War I. I mean, the treaties created Iraq, tried to... Gave Syria to the French, and Israel was created in the middle of an Arab world. And it's still a problem that was created by the World War I treaties. So all of that, the whole 20th century, I think, would have been completely different. If it could have ended, say, with a truce or a stop at the Christmas of 1914. It's amazing to think about that. Well, you mentioned counterfactual history. Let me ask you, how did you, as a practicing lawyer, later a judge here in Alabama, become interested in historical revisionism and begin to study the history of war? Well, I started out with really no particular interest in war. I do remember being in high school and thinking about being in the Cold War in the 50s. And I was surprised to hear Senator Robert Taft, when he was running for the Republican nomination. So it was an unconstitutional war. And I thought to myself, you know, am I going... I may have to fight in this war and it violates the Constitution. But I sort of, that all died out. And it wasn't until I got to graduate law school in NYU, and I heard Kenneth Galbraith, John Kenneth Galbraith give a speech to the student body there. And it was during the Kennedy Nixon campaign and debates and so forth. And I got really interested in all that in 1960. And he made a statement that, you know, there are still Neanderthals that believe that you should have a balanced budget. And everybody laughed. And I thought, whoa, wait a minute, I must be a Neanderthal. So your time at NYU did not turn you into a Galbraithian? No, and an odd thing occurred. I had a lot of relatives there, too, from Alabama practicing law and a brother that lived there. And I discovered that I was introduced to a new cousin named John Denson, who was editor of the New York Herald Tribune. And I had lunch with him. And I told him about the speech of Galbraith. And I said, I took economics. But it taught me that free market caused the failure, caused great depression. And that's why we needed government regulation. And he says this, he said, I've got a close personal friend who wrote the best book that's ever been written by Henry Haslett. And John had been an editor of Newsweek and he had hired Haslett and Walter Lippman to give you different viewpoints. So economics in one lesson started me off. And then I got to the Iran Group and they were recommending Henry Haslett and Mises. And that's how I got to Mises. And then through Mises I got to the Foundation of Economic Education fee. And the thing that really got me into the military history was an organization called Rampox College. And it sounded like Gulch Gulch in Colorado. And they had university programs much like Mises Institute. You go there for a week or two weeks and they bring in speakers. They brought in Murray Rothman. They brought in Mises himself, taught there. And they had these tapes on a whole book on history. And if I recall correctly, the first military history I read on visionism was by Percy Greaves. And he had been hired after the end of World War II to do the research for the Republicans on Pearl Harbor. They had been a fixed thing to blame the commanders. Roosevelt created this commission to see how the commanders messed up, prohibited any investigation of what was going on in Washington. So he gave this speech that the thing was provoked by Roosevelt's actions. And it just blew my mind. I thought, my gosh, why have I never heard this before? And so then I went back and got some of the other history courses at Rampox. And that introduced me to what I would say the golden age of revisionism was after World War I. Harry Oma Bonds and Charles Tansell and Charles Beard just did a devastating attack on why America should not have been at World War I. And why World War I was a horrible thing. And it just blew my mind. I said, why have I never been taught this in college? I took history. It taught me that the Civil War was for the purpose of abolishing slavery. World War I was for purpose of setting up the League of Nations and ending all war. And Americans destroyed that by not adopting. And World War II was to wipe out the world threat of Hitler. And, you know, I just began to say, you know, this is a whole new world. And so military revisionism or revisionism is a very, very important subject. And the theme of my book, A Century of War, is that I think it is the key to future peace. If people begin to learn the truth about why we go to war and learn what the true effects are and how horrible it is. Things are hidden from the most American people about the horror walkers. They didn't drop atomic bombs on us. They didn't bomb all the cities, you know, like they did in Germany and Japan. So I think revisionism, especially as to war, is a key element for the future of peace. Well, John, one of the things you say in the preface to your book, A Century of War, is that we tend to think of history as the static set of facts. But in truth, history is constantly being revealed to us because we don't always have accurate information from the time. And sometimes what develops is that what we thought was the truth is not necessarily the truth. That's exactly right. I've told people, given this example, that much of history is like, so you've got a trial, two lawyers, you've got a murder. You've got one event, a murder. And you've got the prosecution is telling you that his was my interpretation of men's guilt. You got the defense and no, he's innocent. And it goes to a jury verdict. The jury decides for one way or the other. But it's the winning side that gets to tell the story. And it may not be the truth. It may. All jury verdicts are not exactly accurate. And you don't hear the other side. So that's the way history gets written is the winners tell the results. And that's why I think you've got so much falsehood about the American Civil War, World War I, World War II from American perspective. We won it and we got to justify it. But when you say the winners, you tend to mean the winning political class, right? The states involved. And so perhaps, you know, a lot of what we know as history is actually false state propaganda of a sort. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, there's an interesting quote in here from the British history officially came out in 1926 and indicated Christmas truce was just a minor insignificant event. But there was during the House of Commons debate in March 31, 1930. And Sir H. Kindley Wood, a cabinet minister, got up and made a speech and he said he had been in the trenches. He said in the front trenches in Christmas 1914, he said, I took part in what was well known at the time as a truce. We went over in front of the trenches and shook hands with many of our German enemies. A great number of people now think we did something that was degrading or wrong and refusing to stop. He said, the fact is we did it. And I then came to the conclusion that I had held very firmly ever since that if we had been left to ourselves, there never would have been another shot fired. For fortnight, the truce went on and we were on the most friendly terms. And it was only the fact that we were being controlled by others that made it necessary for us to start trying to shoot one another again. And he blamed the resumption of war on the quote, the grip of the political system, which is bad. And I and others who were there at the time determined there and then never to rest until we had seen whether we could change it. And then he concludes, but we could not. There are people that thrive on war, the military industrial complex. And one of the results of the World War One revisionism was to show that the people that do the armaments and make money off that help cause war. There are people that thank us that have an interest. JP Morgan had a big interest in America getting into World War One. And he had helped finance the British army. And that led to the passage of the Neutrality Acts, which tried to keep America out of future wars. And Roosevelt kept trying to knock that down. And to me, the most revealing book about Pearl Harbor, in addition to Percy Reeves starting it, is the book Day of the Seat by Robert Stinnett. Because it shows that the hearings that were held right after Pearl Harbor contained much perjury. Witnesses were told do not testify under oath that we broke the military code. We actually knew where the Japanese were and when they were going to attack in Washington. And they were told to lie about that. And they did under oath. And he found out all about that through the Freedom of Information Act. So there are people that are in control and certainly elites that make money out of war that have great influence on getting us into war, keeping us there. Well, it's interesting how so often it seems by the time the truth comes out, the perpetrators are long gone and we don't know whether they get their just desserts or not. Yeah, I mean, look at the Iraq war. I mean, everybody knows that it was a fabrication of the intelligence that said that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And we now know that was a complete lie. And yet, George W. Bush has not been held accountable. His advisors, the people at Furnish Falls Intelligence, nobody's held accountable for the errors that are made that kill thousands and thousands, even millions of people. Well, in fact, many of those same people are still appearing every night on CNN and Fox, etc. John, one last question for you. You wrote your book, A Century of War, obviously looking back about the 20th century and the tremendous horrors of World War One and World War Two. Are you hopeful about the 21st century or do you think it will likewise be a century of total war? Well, I did a podcast with Lou Rockwell where I quoted this wounded soldier of World War Two saying that we've got to think about war in a different way. He said, look, we've always had, we always had slavery for thousands of years. It was accepted by everybody. We've always had war. But then 19th century comes along and slavery gets abolished. And it was partly because of looking back at the Declaration of Independence that everybody had equal rights to life and liberty. And the Industrial Revolution came along. So there was a big change in circumstance and viewpoint. And only war that was fought that even in the name of slavery was America. So there was a big change. He says, now let's look at war in a different way. And the big change that has occurred is nuclear weapons. We've got to see what nuclear weapons can do. We've got the ability to destroy Western civilization or even all life. We've got enough weapons now. So it's time to start thinking about war the way people saw that you needed to change about slavery. And so I think we've got a chance because if people realize the ultimate threat of nuclear war, then they've got to realize you can't just commit suicide. You've got to take another look. So, you know, I think it's a possibility and the internet allows people to get past the barriers that have prevented knowledge in the past. Council on Foreign Relations, one of its purposes was to keep from having revisionism after Roosevelt and World War II, the way that they revealed all the problems about Woodrow Wilson and so forth. So I think that the truth can be there and there is a change in circumstance. War is no longer where, you know, when the Civil War started, people went out in their carriages to get on a hill so they could see the battle. And it didn't involve the civilians, they thought. And I read recently where there were 50,000 civilians in the South murdered and killed in the Civil War. And you look at the bombing of Germany and Japan and, you know, we didn't see that. And those people have been through it. So it's a different kind of war now. Well, John Denson, thank you so much for your time and for a great interview and for everything you do in writing for the cause of peace. Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you had a great and wonderful Christmas and we hope that you take some hopeful thought forward with you when we think about the Christmas truce now 100 years later. Have a great weekend.