 Welcome everyone. Thank you for coming on this lovely day. This is Vermont for you. It's going to get real cold tomorrow. However, we're here and I thank you for coming. I just want to remind you to please turn off your cell phones. And I really don't have a lot of announcements today so I'm going to turn this right over to Sandy Baird who will introduce our speaker. This is Professor Andrew Buchanan who is a senior lecturer at the University of Vermont and he's been there quite a while. He received his undergraduate degrees at Oxford and then his PhD at Rutgers here in the United States. He has a lot of publications. The newest one is I believe a textbook on World War II. I think that it will be a wonderful thing to have him speak here. I've taken his classes at UVM and he provided such an interesting take on World War II that I invited him to speak about his global perspective on World War II. In that class I learned a great deal about, for instance, things I'd never really thought that much about in terms of where the war took place, when it really started, when it really ended. All around the world that would be different for different parts of the globe and I learned from him why the sectional or the regional conflicts actually became a world war which wasn't clear at first. So it was with great pleasure that I introduced Professor Buchanan for us to hear today. Thank you. Can you all hear me okay? Okay, great. It's nice to be introduced by my star pupil, but anyway. So I'm really not going to speak for very long today. What I'd like to do is make some comments and then maybe take some questions and contributions from you all and open this up to discussion. So I'm just going to start, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 minutes or so. We'll see. So I want to start by talking about the project that Sandy referred to, which is entitled World War II in Global Perspective. Its book is going to be coming out in March. It's a short book, just a couple of hundred pages and it tries to present a really global perspective on the history of World War II. I want to just say a little bit about how that came about because it's kind of an interesting segue into getting into the content. As Sandy said, this is kind of a perfect project for me. I've written extensively on World War II for many years. My doctoral thesis was on American strategy in the Mediterranean in World War II. I've really done a lot of studying in this area and I also teach global history at UVM. So starting in deep and prehistory, ending in the present day. So kind of putting these two things together was sort of like my dream job. In fact, when someone from Wiley, the textbook publisher, got in touch with me, they made the mistake of putting, would you like to write global history of World War II in the byline, in the message line, on the email, which I thought was so ridiculously good that I almost deleted it. I thought it must be a scam. Fortunately, I didn't and we got into some discussion and agreed to do the book and this is the consequence of it. So after I got over my excitement, I realized I'd actually agreed to do something fairly difficult. Not only in compressing it in the space that they wanted, which turned out to be a very different way of writing and an interesting process, but more importantly in terms of the content. What would a global history of World War II look like? Fairly obviously, as the name of this event suggests, it's a world event by definition. So why weren't all the other existing histories of World War II, of which there are literally tens of thousands, as you're well aware, why weren't they global histories? What could I bring to this that would be different, that would really try and globalize in conception and in how the book was written and presented that would present a global view? So as I got into thinking about that, it became obvious that there's an even bigger question kind of lurking in the background of that, which is what is World War II? What is it? What are its dates? Sandy was touching on this because I like to start my class like this and I'm going to try it out on you all. So we'll see. What are the dates of World War II? Can anyone tell me? All right, well, that's a good core verse. Yes. But is it true? 1939 to 1945 is, I think, what most people would. If you're Chinese, there's a very strong argument that the war begins in 1937 when Japan invades China. There's a pretty strong argument that it begins in 1931 when Japan invades Manchuria. If you're, yeah, if you're Czech 1938, if you're Spanish maybe, maybe 1936, maybe starts with the beginning of the Civil War. If you're Ethiopian, maybe 1935 when Italy invades, Italy invades Ethiopia. So as soon as you start thinking about it a little bit before the obvious surface numbers, you start to get some interesting answers. But at least I, and my publisher said this, when I started discussing with them, at least, surely, you can say definitively it ends in 1945, can't you? A couple of Atom bombs dropped on Japan, Japan's surrenders, war comes to an end. Well, maybe unless you're Indonesian, where the attempt to, or the attempt to reimpose Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia comes right out of the end of World War II and goes into the late 1940s. Malaya, Burma. What if you're Vietnamese? What if you're Vietnamese? Yeah? The Japanese get pushed out of, out of French Indochina in 1945, but not before the United States has helped to assist the British in reimposing French colonial rule in Indochina. It immediately leads to a renewed struggle for Vietnamese independence. And give or take, as you all know, that goes on more or less without a break until 1975, when the North Vietnamese tanks finally rolled through the gates of the palace and presidential palace in Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City as it is now. So even a little bit of discussion on this, you start to think like, my goodness, World War II really isn't a very neatly packaged thing. It's a slippery thing. Is it even a thing? It has different, it's not even called the same thing. World War II, the phrase World War II is an American name. In fact, one British civil servant grumbled when the British government agreed that the official history would be called the history of World War II, the British civil servant, another American victory. It's true. You win the war, you get the naming rights. But if you're Russian today, you don't call it World War II. You will still refer to it as the Great Patriotic War, a war against Nazi aggression. If you're Chinese, you probably refer to it as the war against Japanese aggression. If you're Japanese, you probably call it the war in the Pacific. They're all true names. They all describe something real, but different or a subsection of World War II. See, the language matters a great, great deal. If I say the Eastern Front to you, you automatically know what I'm talking about. Right? I'm talking about a war between Germany and the Soviet Union. But think about that phrase. If you're sitting in Moscow, the front is to the west of you. Russians just refer to it as the front. Even when we talk about the Eastern Front, we're assuming without any intention to do so, a Western European or a German perspective that's looking east onto this battle. I mean, I could go on and on about this. I'm not going to, I'm not going to, you get the idea that words matter, descriptions matter, dates matter, their relationship to each other matters. And none of it is simple. None of it is simple. So I'm going to try in just a few minutes to give some of the sort of basic, I don't know, what should I say, building blocks of what are really a series of wars that kind of at a certain point overlap and interconnect with each other. Actually, not in, not in 1939, but actually in December 1941. What are some of those wars? There's essentially three, I'm going to call them, and I'll explain what I mean by this. There were three autarchic colonial projects. Autarchy is a notion of economic self-sufficiency. And this is a notion of conquering space that's geographically contiguous with your own state that you can exploit the resources of. One, in, in, from Germany, from the expansion of Germany, in Western Europe and then in the Soviet Union, that could over a period of time, and I'm talking of generations, not a few years, that over a period of time could give Germany the material resources to rate, to challenge for global domination. Hitler never thought that he was going to achieve global, I mean, whatever they, whatever else you said, he was not actually mad. Incidentally, it's kind of an interesting fact that Hitler, Hitler takes as his model from us, or he says it several times, the conquest of the American West with Jews and Slavs standing in the Native Americans as the population that can be removed in order to establish your colonial dominance over this area. Japan has a similar project. First of all, in Manchuria, in Northeastern China, tremendously resource-rich area, coal, iron ore that could solve the Japanese homeland's lack of resources. It's not literally contiguous, but the Korean Strait is very, very narrow, easily dominated by the Japanese Navy. And from there, Japan would expand further into what it referred to as the co-prosperity sphere, which we always think of as a sort of propaganda joke, that Japan would think of liberating the peoples of Burma, Malaya, Indochina, Indonesia, Philippines. It didn't necessarily appear quite as jokey to people living in those countries in 1941 and early 1942, many of whom actually did welcome the Japanese as liberators, at least initially. But this area would be annexed to Japan and its colonial resources used by the Japanese again over a period of time to strengthen their own economy, to develop their predominance in East Asia and particularly in China. Well, of course, there were a couple of problems with that, not only from the point of view of China itself, but also from the point of view of the United States, which since the opening of the 20th century had regarded itself as the one that should walk through the open door into the vast, unlimited markets of China. Thirdly, the attempt by Italy, fascist Italy, to create, again, we always think this is funny, for some reason, a new Roman empire around the shores of the Mediterranean, not again, not directly linked territorially to Italy, but narrow sea crossings easily dominated. You got to remember that in the 1930s, the entirety of the Mediterranean literal, the Mediterranean coastline, is ruled by colonial powers. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, ruled by France, Libya, already ruled by Italy since 1911, Egypt, ruled by the British, Palestine slash Israel by the British, Syria by the French. So this vision of overturning these empires and establishing Italian predominance didn't quite seem so wacky as maybe it does to us now. So there were those, there's three projects that, and they were sort of broadly an alliance that becomes the so-called Axis Alliance. But they never, none of them individually ever anticipated that they would become the world superpower. What they thought they could do was collaborate together to prevent somebody else becoming the world superpower, and the person they all had in mind was the United States. Their alliance is fundamentally an alliance against the United States. For the British, the war is a war to defend the empire, to hold on to the empire against Japan in Asia, to hold on to the British colonies in Burma, Malaya, Borneo, the jewel of the crown in India, to prevent, if possible, Germany dominating Western Europe, opposing an enormous challenge to Britain in Western Europe. And later in the war, although this is not so commonly recognized, it's a British wager war to prevent the losing the colonies, not only to the Japanese, but losing the colonies to the Burmese, the Malay, the Indians, in other words, to fight a war against the dangers of self-determination within the British Empire. One could go on Dutch, French, Dutch fight to defend their Dutch colonial rule in the Netherlands, East Indies, modern day Indonesia, enormously oil rich territory, French in Indochina. But see, here's the question. Those are fairly palatable to most of you, I'm sure. What does the US fight for? What does the United States go into this war to fight for? Why does it get involved in the war? I think it's the most mythologized question in modern history. And I literally mean that. Because it's been presented to many of us at the time in the immediate postwar and ever since as a war of absolute moral clarity, a war of good and evil, black and white, two clear sides, America on the side of the angels. I mean, you're very familiar with this. I mean, I was born in 1958, so I'm close enough. Some of you may be a bit more, but we have lived through this. It's our life, right? It's the life story. United States gets involved in the war to prevent the German domination of Western Europe because Roosevelt and other leaders of the United States knew that if the Germany dominates Western Europe, the next war is going to be a war between between a German dominated Western Europe and the United States in which the Germany is enormously stronger than it currently is. So let's deal with it now. That's the fundamental. And of course, even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the great problem for Roosevelt was how to get into the damn war when the majority of the American people were opposed to going to war. I mean, he is as close. I mean, they are fighting an undeclared naval war against German submarines in the in the in the in the mid Atlantic. I shouldn't get too deeply into that. And secondly, to prevent the Japanese challenge in Asia, precisely for the reasons I've outlined about the importance of China. I mean, since the 1890s, American business had been had seen its future in China. Since the closing of the frontier and all that good stuff. So that's easy. In a sense, you can see what you're opposed to in a sense, and it can get ideologically dressed up in I'm not trying my job here is not to try and pretty fight a Nazi regime or Japanese military aggression. That's not my purpose here at all. You can see how that's just becomes. But it's something beyond that, which is it's not just a war against something. It's a war for something. And what is a war for is to create a new American led global order to replace the British Empire as the world had demonic power to become what in politics and in military affairs, what the United States had been economically since the instance, the early part of the 19th century, it's predominant power. It take this stuff takes time. You don't believe me. Watch China. It's not done overnight. So think about some of the aspects of this one, the transformation of the American economy during the during the years of wartime production, phenomenal transformation, almost double depends exactly how you measure it, but almost doubles gross domestic product during the war. And you know all this. I mean, I'm talking about the production of real stuff, not Facebook. You think I'm joking? The production of an aircraft plant at willow run that's capable of producing a bomber every 63 minutes, rolling off the production line like all put all done without us all calculated, worked out, planned, organized without a single computer. You remember slide rules? That's how I mean gigantic economic transformation that made the United States the number one manufacturing power on a global scale, connected to markets, that's what a lot of what Len least was about connected to global markets for the first time. Second, so transformation of the economy, secondly, the transformation of American military power. United States goes into World War Two depends exactly how you count it, but less than 20 overseas bases. And most of them are on territory claimed by the United States in in Hawaii or in the Philippines. It comes out of the war again depends exactly how you how you with over 3000 overseas military bases and military facilities of one kind or another, the capacity to base entire fleets, six fleet in the Mediterranean seventh fleet in Japan, military forces, and circling the globe. I mean, even at its height, the British Empire had never achieved this level of military predominance. The number one air force in the world. And as I mentioned earlier, of course, equipped with nuclear weapons. United States planners naively at the time believe they would have what they call the nuclear monopoly for at least another quarter century. So we've got economic power, we've got military power. Even before the war ends, this is amazing, even before the war. By the way, this from the United States point of view, this wars over 41 to 45 is over in four years, right? The world is transformed. We could draw some comparisons with what's happened in the in the in the early opening part of the 21st century. Very short, very rapid, very, very massive transformations. Even before the war ends in the summer of 1944, the American government calls everybody all of all of the free world and the Russians actually together in Bretton Woods over in New Hampshire. And they sit down the war's still going on. They still haven't won but they're gonna win. It's obvious by that point. And they set up a new global economic system, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank. They don't actually set up the general agreement on tariffs and trades comes a couple of years later but the basic work to do that is done a global system based on free trade, which is always the trade policy of the strongest world power. Always protectionism is always the policy of either people who are growing in power and want to protect their growing industries or people who are losing their power and want to desperately hang you can take your pick on where we're going now. And global currency, the dollar replaces the pound sterling, redeemable in gold at $35 an ounce. Fort Knox is bulging with gold. Well, it takes actually takes a few years after the war for the pound to finally be beaten to death, but it's coming. The dollar, this is the structure of a post war. This is the economic beginnings of the economic structure of a post war order. It's put together even even before they finish fighting. Okay. So to do this, you had to that in order to put all this in place, you had to defeat the autarkic colonial challenges of Germany, Japan and Italy, utterly defeat them. In Italy's case, you start to rehabilitate Italy even before the war's over through the occupation policies, the Americans pursue very clever, very smart. I shouldn't say clever. You have to strengthen your predominance. There's a whole part of my book, which is about Latin America. There's very little fighting in Latin America. German warship takes refuge there in 1939. It's about it. The Brazilian send good important hidden chapter, the Brazilian center, send a division to fight with the American First Army in Italy. But the war transforms Latin America. Because before Latin America, you had a lot of British and a lot of German investment there. Brazil, Argentina, particularly, but a whole bunch of other countries. And, and basically what happens during the war is the United is very conscious. The United States is able to push all those other people basically out. They have a little problem with the Argentina. It's why they dislike Argentina. It's why they dislike one poron so badly, that's a whole other story. But there's what happens in Latin America is an important piece of this story. Really important piece of this story. You have to so you have to defeat Germany, Japan and Italy, you have to consolidate your position over in Latin America. You have to make sure that France is going to accept that it's not going to be a great power again. Thank you. Which, of course, is the actual reason for the tremendous hostility between de Gaulle and Roosevelt. It's nothing. I mean, they probably didn't like each other very much, but world leaders get over the fact they don't like each other. There was real politics behind it, real big politics behind it. And you've got to push the British aside. No hegemonic power in history has just said, Okay, we're done. Your turn. No one says that, nor is the United States going to say that in the next few years. You got to. So here's the thing. You would think that that challenge might take place as a war between Britain and the United States, which to us now seems unthinkable. But but in the 1920s was by no means unthinkable. One of the one of the war war plans developed by the American wasn't the joint chiefs of staff at that time. But it was war plan red, which was a plan for war against against Britain and the British Empire. Or war plan orange and red, which was, which was, was the sort of nightmare scenario, which was a plan for war against Britain in alliance with Japan. And that would have been an interesting. So they're thinking about this. By the end of the by the middle of the 1930s, it's obvious to them, that's not how the world's you're going to, that's not how it's going to play out, you're going to play out that you're going to be you're going to be with the British against these regional challenges that I've been describing. But at the same time, you've got a your American power is going to rise, British power is going to decline out of British don't like that very much. Church ill famously said he didn't, he didn't go into the water to give away the British Empire, and he's not going to give it away, not to Germans, not to Japanese, not to Italians, and he sure as hell isn't going to give it away to Yankees. But and there's a movie on this now, you can see in the summer of 1940, they have a big decision to make. They've just been driven out or they're in the course of being driven out of Europe, Dunkirk, all that stuff. And a big chunk of the British government says, okay, let's, let's go with Hitler, including some of the royal family. And let's go with Hitler. Well, maybe we've got to give him, you know, we don't need you going to that much anyway. Give him a few chunks of the British Empire. I mean, this is how they think. We can get out from under, we can use our long term relationship with Mussolini to smooth the deal and stuff. This is what Lord Halifax argues in the Cabinet. And Churchill has a different view. Churchill's view is fight on. It's not exactly the Churchill of history, because of course, his actual view is fight on now, and we can negotiate on better terms later. That's his actual view. But if we negotiate now, we're going to we're in very poor position, we got and they get 350,000 troops out of Dunkirk, they get them back. And suddenly the picture is not quite so desperate. And Halifax loses that argument. Churchill wins. But there's no allies. Remember the Soviet Union and the Germans are allied at this point. So Churchill has to turn to the United States in the summer of 1940. Take some and and and and Churchill's I mean, the great, great, great illusion of all the British elites. Many of them from my dear alma mater. The great illusion of the British elites is that we're basically the smart Greeks. We're clever. We've run the world for a couple hundred years. We're suave and sophisticated. We go to the right schools. We know what and here are the Americans. They're kind of like the Romans. They're big, tough muscle bound. Good guys to have on your side, but kind of stupid. So what we want to try and we can work this alliance that will be the ones calling the shots. They really believe this. 4041, 42. They believe it. By 43, get in a little sticky. By 44, they realize it's a that actually the Americans are calling the shots. Including in the Mediterranean, which have been where the British really thought they had the. It's the reason, by the way, why Churchill but I'm going to say Churchill has a nervous breakdown in the summer of 1944. I can't totally prove that. But he certainly is his drinking habit, which was already monumental becomes overwhelming for a few weeks there. And they really have to dry him out and stuff. Because the realization becomes unbearable that we're losing the damn empire to up to our allies. The English speaking world, brothers in arms, all that you've heard all that stuff. So you have to do be able to you have to there's a war within a war which is between Britain and the United States. Not a shooting war, obviously, but it but a but an alternation of possession in global in the global order that that ends up with the United States coming out of the war as indisputably the global hegemonic power and Britain is indisputably on the way down and in decline and already second ranked power. That happens in a very short period of time. To my mind, it's the it's on it when you look at the war on a global scale that is the not that is the biggest single conclusion of the war on a global scale. It lays the basis for what becomes known as the American well, Henry loose had already written the article in 1940 is February 1941 called the American century where he sketched out this whole vision of the world under American leadership and essentially what comes to be known as liberal internationalism. The United States is if I'd assigned reading that would be it. His article on the American century makes brilliant reading still to this day. I mean, I don't agree with it, obviously, but but but brilliant reading. Okay, I'm going to conclude by looking at something slightly looking a little bit at the other side of the question. I've already said gone on more than I had planned. But anyway, here's the problem. Or I don't know whether it's a problem. Here's the thing. Right from the beginning. American hegemony is very powerful for all the reasons I outlined. But it's already compromised in three critical areas. One, the United States and Roosevelt's very smart on this as soon as Germany invades the Soviet Union. And June 1940, 41. A lot of people in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I'm talking about George, I'm in the top guys George Marshall and Truman has the same opinion, basically say the very best thing that could happen is that the Germans and the Russians ex or fight each other to the death and exhaust each other and destroy each other. That's the very best possible solution. And Roosevelt says no. The only way we're going to beat Germany is by allowing with the with the Soviets. And from the get go they start. It's it's not it's not called least Len least to start off with by the fall. Lenly it's the Soviet Union is becoming a major recipient of American land lease American war supplies. And the idea and it's a brilliant idea from the American point of view is the is we get the Soviets to do most of the fighting in the war. Most of the dying. Most of the 20 million Russians are gonna start Soviet citizens are gonna I have to not say Russians because it's not just Russia. 20 million Soviet citizens at least. At least they're gonna die in the course of the war. But out of every 10 Wehrmacht soldiers German soldiers who are killed. At least eight of them are gonna be killed by Ruskies. At least they maybe nine depends exactly on how you look at the majority of the Germans are gonna be killed fighting in the on the on the Ost front on Germany's Eastern front. They're gonna carry that they're gonna carry the burden of the of the land war. I'm not talking about the strategic borrowing campaign and and all the other stuff which is important stuff. But of the ground kept of the ground war. But if that happens then Russia is not going to emerge from the war. It's exhausted by it's going to emerge from the war very powerful. With German with Russian troops half of Soviet troops halfway across into Western Europe. And this reality is recognized by by by Rosa Veldt and Stalin at the Tehran conference which we're about to celebrate the the the whatever anniversary we're coming up to 75th anniversary of the Tehran conference. At the Tehran conference Rosa Veldt and Churchill Rosa Veldt and Stalin sit down and basically come to an agreement that the Russians are going to Soviets are going to get Eastern Europe. United States is going to get Western Europe give or take. And the poor old Brits are gonna it's it's one of the points where you could I mean I should have shown the photos and brilliant photos of Churchill kind of slumped in his chair as he realizes the true horror from his point of view of what's unfolding. So the reality is you're going to come out of the war with a big chunk of the world it's whatever you think about it and I I whatever you might call communism in the Soviet Union in my opinion ended in the early 1920s with the rise of Stalin but that's a whole other question. But what it was was it was not capitalism whatever it was whatever you want to call everybody doesn't care whether you like it you don't like it I don't care. But you got to recognize that it wasn't capitalism. From the point of view of American business you couldn't go and sell stuff there you couldn't invest there. If Russians are Soviets own you own you money good luck collecting it. The same laws of didn't apply there was they so that was a big problem from the get go and someone said earlier of course you get it drives the Cold War right coming there's no there's no there's no gap between World War two and the Cold War. That's an optical illusion created by historians who like to separate the glorious from the not so glorious. But it's not true. The second dilemma they have is in China. See the Pacific War. Which which which we all think about we're educated to think about this and the TV and this movies and shows and on and on and on is the great amazing overwhelming hundred percent perfect American victory in the Pacific. It's true against Japan. Japan is completely eliminated. But it's not true. If you think that this was at least to some degree a war about China. It's not true. They're still fighting in China in 1945. There's about 20,000 U.S. troops in China very few virtually nothing. In China in China. You've got a massive communist insurgency in the north why because the Chinese government was so corrupt. Brutal to its own citizens that the mouse they don't looked attractive to Chinese peasants. They try and get American troops into China in 1945 1946. But the G.I.s won't go. It's one of the great unremembered chapters of American military history. When in the summer of in the fall of 1945 and into the spring of 1946 bases across the Philippines, Hawaii all kinds of other outposts on in the Pacific American G.I. said we've done the job we signed up to do. We signed up to defeat Japan. We've done it. We're going home. They have a massive lobbying campaign of Congress massive family members writing in and stuff. They organize huge wonderful photographs huge process of American G.I.s in full uniform marching through the streets of Manila to demand immediate demobilization. There was no way on God's green earth that they could get those guys into China. So they try and negotiate they try and put together they try and put together a coalition government in China between the Kuomintang the Chiang Kai-shek government nationalist government on the one hand the communist on the communist say yes yes yes please would love to do it. I'm not making this up. George C. Marshall is there for an entire year in 1946 trying to put this thing together. Every time he thinks it's about it's a painful read. There's a new book on it which is worth reading. It's painful stuff every time he thinks he's got the mall to sit down in a room and they find Chiang Kai-shek says no we can't there's some other reason we can't make a deal with them. And it ends up of course Chiang Kai-shek actually launches a new attack on the China on the Chinese communists in northern in northern China. The civil by 1946 the civil war restarts by 1949 the Chinese revolution is there's not a damn thing that Washington can do about it. When they talked about who lost China some of you might who lost China China was China retakes itself and there's nothing they can do about it. So by 1949 you've got the Soviet Union clearly non capitalist you've got China not let's at least very very minimal say not under American control and you also have third dilemma is that the war shook up colonial rule everywhere. The Japanese did come sweeping through and destroyed British colonial rule in Burma and Malaya and little threatened India and in Dutch rule in Indonesia. This was finished. The superiority of the white man in Asia was finished. Of course the Americans had already said had always said we're the great champions of self-determination we hate empires and all that stuff. But by 1945 pretty much in the last couple of weeks of his life Roosevelt decides that it would actually we really do need the French back in Indochina. We really do need the Dutch back in Indonesia. We do need the British in control in Burma and Malaya because the danger if we don't is these nationalists are going to get more and more radical and go over to Uncle Joe. And so right from the beginning from 1945 the United States repositions itself anyway to support these colonial to support these colonial empires. And I think that's World War two from a global perspective. I didn't put the I didn't put the dates on the on this is the front cover sort of. I mean it's my picture that they're going to use on the front cover but I had my I gave my students a range of photos to vote on and they chose this one. They said nothing says global like an elephant. So I went with it. I think it's a great photo. But the bit that's going to be added to that is nineteen thirty one to nineteen fifty three. So it's going to stop from from from from Manchuria to to the Korean to Korea. That that is the real framework of the global World War World War two. I think. You know like most of these books this will probably sing without trace you can all go and buy what could buy one and judge for yourself but but but but but but but but but but whatever happens that this particular book is I don't I mean I do care but I don't care. This is stuff. What we're talking about here today. This is not just interest in history reformulating history and I mean it is that I love it. But this is also about today and tomorrow. This is about thinking about what was put together at the end of World War two. Thinking about its reality as well as its illusions and thinking about what it means in a world went to when this is actually unwrapped before your very eyes my friends. That this is on this is this is this is unraveling on a world on a world scale. With very unpredictable very unpredictable consequences. I think me. I don't want to put too firm a date on it but. Either the American century is ending or it has already ended you can take your you can take your pick and that's what we're really that's what we're really talking about. In thinking about the kind of forces that have been put in play here so anyway let's take a few questions and. Comments and stuff. So in your view was the Soviet Union. Truly a challenge to. United States domination. Was it what sorry. Was the Soviet Union. Ever true challenge. To the U. S. That's a great question. The question was whether the Soviet Union was a true challenge to the United States is a great question. Okay I. I think you can I want to answer into to there's two components to it. Okay one as conceived by Stalin and the leadership of Stalin. I think the answer is unequivocally no. I think Stalin was interested. In a very nationalist very inward looking circle the wagons make sure this can never happen to us again dominate Eastern Europe have a lot of buffer states between us and the Germans. Consolidate. So I don't think that there was ever I don't think Stalin or the Soviet leadership ever envisaged Soviet tanks rolling across the Rhine or something like that. However. However what was set in motion by the war and I refer to this in terms of the in terms of the fights for national liberation in all kinds of park places around the world including in the Middle East. Southeast Asia. There's no question that the that the Soviet Union. What shall I call it still had the sort of red glow. Of the early years of the Russian revolution and the internationalism of the early years and the enthusiasm that generated in various other parts of the world. So when the Americans were worried about radical nationalists in Indonesia or Burma or Malaya turning towards the Soviet Union they were that was not a that was not a fake thing. That was a real I mean there was real possibilities that those countries could as they became independent and needed aid who were they gonna who were they gonna turn to to build their economies and so if you look at it from that point of view and I get I'm I'm placing no moral value on any of this right you can make your own judgments about that whether that's a legitimate concern or not. I think that was their concern so they were concerned that this I mean when when they decide to draw the line in Indochina in Vietnam. I mean they really mean they mean it they see their interest the United States sees its interest threatened not just in Vietnam. And that old argument over the United States never understood they were just nationalists. You know the argument right. If only the Americans that understood that they were nationalists and not communist everything would be better. But it's not true. Because their problem was nationalists. Their problem was people who were going to establish independent countries and exercise self-determination and maybe in that context turns out a Soviet Union or to China for economic aid development that was their problem it seems to me. So I can only give a kind of it can't be a yes or no answer to it you got to look at both sides of that question it seems to me. Yes I have a question of the Ottoman Empire was a extremely important ally of the Japanese. And I wonder obviously the order of the Ottoman Empire now is front and center in our world. We're talking about Turkey. Yes and how they helped the Japanese or what their contribution was there wasn't during World War two. Okay. I wouldn't say that Turkey was a major ally of Japan's in the war. I would say that Turkey and basically the Ottoman Empire we were talking about someone was talking with someone about this before the talk right. In the end of World War one the Ottoman Empire basically disintegrates. The British take Palestine trans Jordan Iraq the French get Lebanon and Syria. The bit that's always forgotten is they also try and carve up Anatolia and the Turks resist and the Turks wage a war of independence which however you want to and become an independent nation state and it more or less ethnically homogenous nation state. Turkey had traditionally sided with Germany in World War one so there's a sort of pro act central powers kind of leaning there and that's their leaning in World War two. But they remain neutral until 1940 and the 45 or middle of 45 when they join the war against Germany. I mean Churchill's making massive effort but one of the unknown things Churchill does after the Castle Blanker conference in January 1943. Churchill I mean this is amazing these guys. I carry no torch for Churchill but I cannot help but admire a guy. I mean he goes from Castle Blanker to Turkey which is a neutral country. This is the prime and imagine if Churchill had been killed at this point in the war to hold meetings with the Turkish government in a rail car outside some little rail siding in the south of Turkey to try and persuade the Turkish government to break their neutrality pact with the Germans and come in on the side of the British. And the Turks aren't having it. They're worried that if they come in with the British the Germans will invade through Bulgaria and they'll be in a big problem. And Churchill's kind of bs-ing anyway because he knows he can't really convey what you really did was the Americans to move into the eastern Mediterranean. But the Americans they've been basically kicking and screaming into the western Mediterranean. They sure as hell don't want to go into the eastern Mediterranean so it's not really going to work until it becomes obvious the allies are going to win. And then Turkey does come in on the side of the, on the side of the allies. But it, I mean a whole bunch of countries declare war on Germany in March and April 1945. Most of Latin America in fact included and Turkey. So I don't have that totally. Yes, hello. We're coming up on to the armistice day in less than a month. And I guess my question is, do you think if the United States had not entered World War I, but instead offered a mediation that, that would have obviated World War II? Or, I guess. That's a small question. But it's really a great question. And, and, and I kind of got to back up a little bit to a nine on World War I to answer. Okay. Because the, as you will know, the proximate cause, the given cause for the United States entry into the war was the German, Germany resumes on unrestricted U-boat warfare in the Atlantic in February 1917. Oh, and they promised that they'll give the Mexicans all that was taken from them, which is, that's a pretty attractive promise. But anyway, but that's just the given cause. It wasn't the rows of the Wilson suddenly like in April 97. Oh my God, these U-boats. We've got to get into the, they've been thinking about getting into the war in Europe for the previous two or three years, for precisely the reason that they want to get into the war in 19, in 19, second time around because the danger of a German dominated Europe. As long as Britain and France on one side and the Germans on the other are slugging it out on the Western front, the United States can very happily keep supplying, supplying the British in the French with war material, loans, keep the whole thing going. British will win in the end, they hope. But see what happens is when the Russian revolution happens, the Germans switch troops from the Eastern front to the Western front, it looks like the Germans could actually win in the Western front. That's when the United States gets really concerned about it. And it's also when the Germans not coincidentally reintroduce the submarine warfare because they know the Americans are coming in and they want the submarine warfare designed to keep them out, actually, backfires rather badly. And lo and behold, spring 1918, the German, all those extra German troops that have come over from the Eastern front do launch a massive attack on the Western front. The British collapse in the face of it in spring 1918, my poor granddad's gas in the course of it. Germans are on the road to Paris again. And it's precisely at that moment that the American troops start arriving. Now, you can, there's a big debate, some military historians will tell you the Americans saved the day and other military ones now it would have been, doesn't really matter. What matters is the offensive runs out of steam and everybody knows there's millions of doughboys are on their way. I mean, they've recruited three million soldiers since April 1990. It's an amazing thing since April 1917. By conscription, they get about 75,000 volunteers. Not so many. So America gets in. So it wasn't really, it wasn't really should they or shouldn't they? From Wilson's point of view, there was very urgent and big reasons to get involved in the war by the spring of 1917. And they do make a huge difference, no question. I'm not at all sure that any kind of American intervention to brokus, I mean, all of that stuff would ever have any possibility of really working. But it's undoubtedly true that the outcome of World War 1 helps to set up World War 2. No question. I will say one of the often unremarked outcomes of World War 1, which I think you really have to factor into it, is the economic transfer. I talked about the economic transformation of the United States in World War 2. But is the economic transformation of the United States in World War 1? Excuse me. World War 1 goes into World War 1. United States goes into World War 1 as a detonation. It owes money to the British and basically to the British. Bank of England. United States comes out of World War 1 as a major creditor power. In fact, it's American capital in the doors plan that really gets the European economy going again after World War 1. I don't know if that totally answers your question, but I think there's a definitely thinking about the relationship between World War 1 and World War 2 and the reasons for US, the reasons for US entry. If I was doing the book about World War 1, by the way, if I was doing a similar project about World War 1, I'd be very, very tempted to include the American invasion of Mexico in 1916 amongst the sort of broader framework of the Great War. Thinking about how these wars kind of fit together. But anyway, that's a whole other, I shouldn't have even said that. That could go in a hole. OK. Anyone else? I don't really have a question, but I'd like to say that having been coming to these lectures since I retired in 2001, this is one of the most fascinating talks I've ever heard. I love your method of delivery and your humor. Thank you. Do you think there's another similar unfinished event, if you will, in our current environment? I was hoping someone would ask. OK. That's the big question. In my mind, that's the big. I mean, I was talking about the contemporary. I mean, if you just look at it on an economic level, United States becomes the number one manufacturing power in the world by about 1900, becomes the number one financial power by the end of World War by 1918, 1919. It does not become the number one political slash military slash hegemonic power until the end of World War II, which is what I've just been talking about. Now, it really depends how you do the figures. There's various different ways that economists use to calculate gross domestic product, whether or not the Chinese economy has already surpassed the American economy or is simply on the course of surpassing. It actually doesn't matter very much. What matters is the trajectories. And the trajectory is that whether or not it's already happened, the Chinese economy is going to surpass the American economy at some point in the next decade or decade or the half, even if you decide it hasn't already happened. All of history, and I'm talking about the rise of Dutch power, the rise of British power, the rise of American power, all of history would lead one to conclude that there's a relationship between economic and military political hegemonic power. And it's not one to one, that you could become the global economic powerhouse before you become predominant in other spheres. If that's true, that would tell you that there's big trouble coming. I should leave it at that, really, shouldn't I? But I won't. OK, I'm going to say some really unpopular. You've been laughing. You love what I'm saying. So I'm going to really piss you off now. The current president of the United States of America. No, no, no, you don't know I'm going with this. You don't know I'm going with this. You got to think about his slogan, make America great again. Now, maybe I'm just have an excessively literary turn of mind. If I just doesn't the slogan imply the United States is no longer great. Isn't he the first person to recognize that in the presidency? That fact, if what we've been saying is true, that is a real fact. Now, what you do about it, of course, that's a whole other question. He is acting. It seems to me, and I don't like Trump anymore than anybody else, but he is acting on the premise that that's true. And you are starting to see the withdrawal of American military power from various critical parts of the world. What he said about the Korean Peninsula was literally mind-boggling that Trump said, and I personally, 100% endorse him in this. I'll tell you that, that Trump said that American military maneuvers in South Korea were provocative to the North. And of course, everybody, VPR and everybody, New York Times, everybody hates Trump so badly, they can't see what that means. That for the first time since the end of World War II, the most militarized frontier in the entire world, the only major unresolved military frontier from World War II, the partition of the Korean Peninsula on the 38th parallel, starts to crumble before our very eyes. I don't say it's going to happen tomorrow. I don't say it's going to happen in six, I don't know. I don't say it could all go into reverse. I don't know. But I say when the space opens up for Koreans to talk to each other, to enter the stadium of the Olympics as a unified... I say, my God, the world is changing in unpredictable ways. If he was Obama, he would have got a second Nobel Peace Prize. And actually, this one would have been deserved. I'm just trying to throw it out. I'm doing it provocatively. Because we're so... Because everyone, oh, we don't know about a nuclear weapon. They're still building it. We don't... That's not what matters. What matters is someone says, well, we've got to stop. Because once those words are out, they can never be retaken. And they're out. I don't know what's going to happen in the South China Sea. I know that the Chinese are going to push their territorial claims. Again, you can't help from a certain sort of historical ironic perspective. And so maybe it helps being a Brit in all of this. I don't know. I don't know. One, we do irony. Two, we've already lost our empire. The Chinese start turning some little reefs into military bases in the South China Sea, right? In the United States. Oh, my God. We're the only people allowed to have overseas military bases. What do you mean you're going to build a base in the... You've got to think about it. I mean, I'm not so... I'm trying to not take a judgment of what I'm not. I don't like military bases any place very much. But it seems to me that China has an equal right to build them in the United States. Chinese investment in Africa. The so-called Belt and Road Initiative. The new silk, the Maritime Silk Road Initiative. Trillions of dollars in investment. When the United States, I'm afraid, can't help but appear in Africa as a sort of adjunct of the European old colonial empires. And China, whether you like it or not, appears as something, as a country that defeated imperialism and has tremendous in from that point of view. I mean, these are things you've got to consider. I made the point that a constellation of allies in World War II could not really have been predicted too far before the war. Whose side was Italy going to go on? I don't know. The British were very invested on hovering Mussolini on our side. Up till about 1937 or 1938, Mussolini had a fabulous press in the United States. I think he makes Time Magazine Man of the Year several times, three or four times. I forget. I mean, a point I'm making is I don't know who's going to line up with China. I don't know who's going to line up with the United States. You know, once you once once you're declined, because this is why Trump goes to and again, I'm not defending Trump. This is why when Trump goes to Europe and said, you people have got to start paying for your own defense now. Right, NATO. He really means it because the U.S. can't carry on doing this. The U.S. cannot carry on doing global hegemony like it's been doing it since 1945. That's the point. Maybe I've gone a little beyond the purview of your question. But I mean, I try not to get too predictive about stuff because, you know, it's looking at dynamic. It's looking at direction. It's looking at tendency and capacity. It's not making a precise prediction about any of this. But thinking about, I mean, thinking about the utter incapacity of the United States to impose peace in the Middle East. And by peace, I don't necessarily mean something pleasant. I just mean something peaceful. Right? I don't mean democracy and freedom and all that stuff. I just mean not killing each other. Good. Otherwise, I'm going to go rambling on. What you're describing is kind of a return to spheres of influence. And yet, we're in a global economy. We're working against ourselves as a planet, especially when we have global issues. And I'm thinking environmental is one of the big ones that is probably going to ultimately destroy the earth. Next. Next. All right. I mean, I totally OK. But here's the thing and I don't want to get too political, but but but. But see, see, here's the thing about capitalism. I mean, capitalism is a has always to its entire history. I'm talking about from the 1500s onwards, being a globalizing system economically, it always is pushing for new markets and new places, new products, new raw materials, more out out. But the political that the archetypal political form of the of capitalists of the capitalist governance is the nation state. So those two things you've got, you've got a system that's driving, constantly driving to globalize itself. And you've got a political form of of of nation of nation states. And there's a tremendous tension between those things. And as the economic situation gets more crisis-ridden, the tension gets sharper. I raise that because if I'd have been standing here five years ago, someone would say, yeah, but what about the European Union? And now you said and people start laughing. What about the European Union? Britain, Italy, maybe next. But I mean, the things come in a part between you. So these attempts under capitalism. I mean, everybody, everybody knows I shouldn't say that. It's widely perceived in Europe that the European Union is is is is Deutsche Mark Uwe Uwe allies. By by by is the predominance of the Bundesbank by by by different means. And with the help of the French. And it's a mighty it's a mighty mechanism for siphoning cheap labor from Eastern Europe and pumping it into Western Europe. I mean, it's all of these things. And you know, I could I mean, I mean, all my friends, oh, Britain's going to leave the Brexit. How do you feel about Brexit? Like I'm supposed to be heartbroken about it. I mean, I I love the fact that people can travel in Europe without. But it's not even true. If you're a Syrian refugee, try it. Right. I mean, the the the the reality is that these tensions are deepening. And so, yes, on the one hand, we're we're much more. And that's that's really the end of my I I I I should look back to this because that's the end of my thought on China. You can see when when when the United States was rising and against Britain, Britain did not have the the the the weight that the United States has today militarily. Economically, so China has and that's it's a different proposition in that sense. And so the question of the well, you're fairly obviously I said I wasn't going to get too too political. But I don't think any of these problems are soluble without transcending capitalism in some form. I don't think I don't think that a little bit more cap and trade to incentivize people not to pollute so badly is or, you know, a little bit more incentivizing companies to buy a big chunk of the rainforest or something to preserve. I mean, I'm not saying they're bad things. I'm just saying they're going to do the job. And unless you can, unless humanity can transcend the nation's state. I think I think we're going to have the point to end on, right? Thank you for the question.