Don Wildman

Das ist alles, you know, FDR is working behind the scenes, of course, even with Congress about, you know, how do we get ready for this war that he sees as inevitable at this point. But it's going to get formalized in the spring of 1941 as the Lend-Lease Act, which is what we all know is the moment when it really tips towards us involving ourselves. Harry Hopkins was a big name here.

I did a real rabbit hole dive on this guy. Yeah. Really interested in his story, because I'd heard it a lot, but I didn't know who he was. He's as remarkable as Roosevelt, even health problems. He was his personal envoy to Churchill. He comes over and sees the bombed cities. He sees the naval base at Orkney all bombed.

He stays at Chequers, which is the home of the... Churchill treats him like royalty. Yeah, exactly. Er versteht, dass sie hier eine mordliche Gefahr befinden. Dan, mach ein bisschen historische Nachricht. Glaubst du, dass die FDR die Möglichkeit hat, mit Hitler zu handeln? Ich meine, wir wissen, wie Churchill sich fühlt, aber was ist mit der FDR?

Yeah, over 30 billion dollars worth of American goods are lent over and galvanized this war effort. What does FDR think of Churchill, though? I mean, they had their suspicions that this guy was not all there. I mean, he was old and he had a very indulgent personality, you know, likes to drink and likes to party.

They are not best friends. It's really Churchill coming to FDR in the way that he, there's almost a, I don't know, is the word unctuous correct? I mean, he steps into this world and says, I'm here now.

Yeah. I mean, his, FDR's discomfort with imperialism We'll add to the story between the three of them when Stalin comes into the picture. I mean, he really favors Stalin over Churchill in terms of, you know, what's the world going to be like? Because it's not going to be with empire. They're dismantling this as they speak. When did they first meet face to face? August 1941, right?

It's after Pearl Harbor, now we're in December 1941, that Churchill rushes to Washington. Obviously, critical moment here. This is the moment when Churchill knows he's got America with him fully.

Greetings all, welcome to American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman. The superlatives used to describe the British leader Winston Churchill, indomitable, resolute, tenacious, defender of the empire, are often followed by disparaging ones, arrogant, imperious, warmonger, autocrat. Es ist ein regelmäßiger Fassad der großen Figuren der Geschichte, zwei Seiten der selben Karte.

Right.

Right, and that plays out in FDR's messaging as well down the years. I mean, he articulates that vision. We will first defeat Germany and then we will defeat Japan.

As far as, you know, I was raised by a guy who signed up, you know, a month after Pearl Harbor. They saw it as the totality of Germany, you know, the Axis powers. Were they sold that bill of goods? I'm not sure. But it certainly was perceived by my father as a package deal. And so it made sense to them. Also, you have to remember, America was very Eurocentric in those days.

I mean, we were very much focused on what Europe was doing. And the Blitz was a terror. That whole period, that's why I went through those events of 1940, late 1940, are very important in shaping America's view of how this war is prioritized and fought.

Never mind, there's an evolution to the Pacific War, of course, that has to do with island hopping, which just takes a long time and is a very strange and remote world out there. And so Americans are much more... Er lebt in der White House, wie du sagst, drei Wochen in der White House. Das ist ein sehr seltsamer Teil der Geschichte. Churchill bewegt sich wie ein Hausgäste.

Er lebt im Blair-Haus. Ich kenne das sehr gut. Er lebte auf der Straße, was wirklich interessant ist. Es ist noch da, das Blair-Haus, das immer diplomatische Gäste sind. Aber er machte sich sehr, sehr komfortabel in der White House. Es gibt einen berühmten kleinen Episode. Ja, das ist mein besten Inventar. Das ist sehr gut.

Ja, naja, das ist, wo sie die innerliche Sicht auf diesen Mann bekommen, mit dem sie jetzt, weißt du, mit dem sie auf die Matte gehen. Es ist so. Aber sie machen Strategien, natürlich. Es ist ein riesiges Armament, die sich planen. Schreckliche Anzahl von Tanks und Flugzeugen.

Aber Churchill, der mit Welteventen intersektiert war, als ob Destinys Nummer sein musste, benötigte diese kontradiktorischen Träte, sicherlich als die Zweite Weltkrieg unvermeidbar wurde. Ohne Churchill gibt es keine Antwort auf Hitler. Die Briten verabschieden sich und kämpfen nicht. Without Churchill, a reluctant US is not drawn into the conflict.

Es wurde agreed that the British and American forces would always be, this is very important, under one supreme commander, a now tradition that continues to this day with NATO. Talk to me about that. That had to have been weird for the British military.

A special relationship, that's the term and it really is born of many things, but this relationship between these two men is fundamental. Between 1941 and FDR's death in 1945, these two guys would spend a total of 113 days together. That's a lot for these two political leaders in the middle of an incredible crisis, investing a lot of time and energy into this personal relationship. It's amazing.

It was Churchill's special relationship with the equally imperious Franklin Roosevelt that forged the alliance that finally dismantled the German war machine. And 80 years on, we would not be living in the free world we enjoy today without it. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt are still the rulers, against which all leaders in crisis are measured.

They really forged that special relationship between them.

Yeah. Nine conferences. They were in nine conferences together.

But their relationship, their personal relationship really does add to the strategy, you know, the strategic planning behind this war in terms of, you know, when we're going to do D-Day. We wanted to go right on with D-Day. Let's just go into France. It was Churchill holding back from this that really stayed us off until 1944, right?

Ja, es war die Teheran-Konferenz. Jemand, der sich nicht mit der Konferenz interessiert, weiß, dass es eine ganze Strecke dieser Konferenzen gibt, in denen wir von der Planung der Krieg zu der Planung der Nachfolge der Krieg gehen. Aber im November, Dezember 1943 ist die Teheran-Konferenz. In dieser Zeit hat die Dynamik eine große Veränderung.

Ich meine, du hast Stalin, jeder weiß, dass die Sowjets diese Krieg gegen Deutschland gewinnen werden. Vielen Dank.

There's a new limited series on Netflix these days that examines the mercurial and dynamic Winston Churchill, and it features prominently the voice of our guest today, a dynamic man himself, who also happens to have founded the streamer upon which this podcast is carried. He is the host of Dan Snow's History Hit and founder of HistoryHit.com. Dan Snow, welcome to American History Hit.

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It's great to be here. Happy to have you. No disparaging descriptors for you. We've done a number of interviews in the past on this podcast. People can go right back to the beginning and find them. But also recently we've been doing a lot on FDR. So this is about, we're right in the pocket of what we've been doing a lot of lately.

I invite listeners to track back to episode 243, FDR and the New Deal. But today we're lucky to have Dan, a living Englishman, to tell us about Winston Churchill in World War II. Take us back, Dan, if you will, to the midsummer months of 1940. France has surrendered. The Dutch fell a month earlier. Now it's Great Britain, alone against the Nazis. Grim days. How have events gone so badly?

Well, this is the time period that we're talking about, the darkest hour, the famous speech he makes in the fall. How does Churchill view America during all this? How does that sort of loom for him?

Isolationism is the dominant opinion among Americans. Gallup poll taken in 1940 says 93% of Americans opposed declaring war on Germany, which is amazing when we look back on it. Er erzählt mir über seine erste Reise in die Vereinigten Staaten. Er wird als Premierminister, wie Sie sagen, Neville Chamberlain, am 10. Mai 1940. Am 15. Mai kabelt er die FDR.

Am selben Tag hört er von dem französischen Premierminister, Renaud, wir werden gewonnen. Was sagt er in diesen ersten Kommunikationen?

You mentioned his ties to America and his familiarity with the culture. How familiar is he with and does he sympathize with Roosevelt's situation in terms of the isolationists? Is he aware of this tenuous position Roosevelt is in?

December 24th, 1943. Once more, we find President Franklin D. Roosevelt seated at his microphone. As we heard last week, the President had been meeting with Allied leaders across Europe and beyond. Among them was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, his steadfast partner in the war effort. Churchill hatte vor sechs Tagen im Dezember eine Fieber.

Right. I mean, you're touching on the very magical chemistry of this man. Same went for FDR. But they both have resumes that are very unique in that they have, in effect, fought wars and they've been ministers of war. In Churchill's case, he actually went to war in the Boer War and has a very famous hero from that time period.

But they're also playing this big stage of PR, which both these guys are amazing at. I would say Churchill even more so than Roosevelt. And that's the amazing story behind these guys, that they have to walk both these things. Churchill was a genius of media, you know, and a fierce, amazing writer. You know, he writes tons of stuff after the war, looking back at it.

He'd been a journalist before that. So they walk both lines, both of these guys. It's really interesting.

You mentioned this before, I just want to circle back. Why couldn't Britain take on Germany itself? I mean, it's a major industrial power at this time, large population. Couldn't they have beaten Germany?

It really is important to recognize 1940. Americans don't think of this. For us, usually, World War II begins on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. But the fact is, these events that happened 1939 until 1941 had a lot to do with Churchill and Roosevelt talking to each other and developing these programs that end up in Lend-Lease and so forth. Und das ist, wo wir hinkehren.

Aber du musst verstehen, in der britischen Welt, du sprichst über die Überzeugung, dass Deutschland hatte, dass sie sie invadieren könnten, so wie sie Frankreich und Deutschland und Holland und den Rest von ihnen hatten. Sie würden einfach in England gehen. Aber am 15. September, was der Krieg der Briten am Tag ist, finden sie heraus, dass das nicht möglich sein wird durch ihre Luftwaffe.

Aber die Konferenzen haben sich geplant und waren ein Erfolg. Die besondere Beziehung zwischen Roosevelt und Churchill, die in der Kriegsrunde geformt wurde, wurde wiedereröffnet. Sie setzten den Stand für ihre fortschrittliche Zusammenarbeit in der Kampf gegen die Tyrannie.

Also beginnen sie plötzlich den Blitz. Und der Blitz geht für 52 Tage weiter. This is the fall of 1940. I'm reviewing all of this to tell you that there's this enormous momentum to Winston Churchill that he's bringing to FDR that the American people are not really aware of. They see it in the news, but we don't have that kind of coverage that we, you know, Edward R. Murrow ends up going over.

So that's the first time we're in London. in effect on the radio. But all of these events are really important to understand what's about to happen in person in the White House as Churchill begins to come. There was a letter on December 8th, 1940, this was all to lead up to this question, that he says was the most important he ever wrote. I'm going to just quote what Churchill writes to FDR.

Finally, I need to discuss money. The more weapons and ships you send us, the faster our money is spent. We've already spent a lot so far. The moment approaches when we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies. This letter involves what issue exactly for Churchill?

And they meet them where they were camped, which, as we say, was the Shiloh. Shiloh is a name of a church. I want to make people understand it translates in Hebrew as a place of peace. So much for that. But the real key strategic point to make at this beginning is that it's not where the Federals plan to stage this. And so they are catching up on this thing real fast. Tell me about the first day.

The End

How does that go?

Dear listeners, glad you could join us. This is American History Hit and I'm Don Wildman. Well, today we resume our march. We started with the episodes on Fort Sumter and Bull Run, undertaking a chronological campaign telling the histories of the major battles of the American Civil War. Ought to take just about as long as it took to fight the war.

That's the key point here, isn't it? Taking note of the fact that you have now a general who's not only willing to stand and fight, which famously comes out of this, out of Lincoln's mouth, but also has the strategic mind to have chosen a field of battle. Well, it wasn't supposed to be a field of battle, but he's always looking at how to defend And so he's really playing chess as he falls back.

I mean, you watch the materials online and it looks like it's a terrible day. It's like, oh, my God, the Union line is just collapsing. But indeed, he was really playing a game of chess, wasn't he? He was waiting for those reinforcements to arrive.

You chomp enough cigars, you can get through anything. Sidney Johnson is a key casualty on the Confederate side. That general is shot in the knee, bleeds out and dies. Major loss for the Confederacy. They never replace him. He was one of those famous Mexican-American war generals, as was Grant. So many of them came out of that time, didn't they?

But it's worth it, considering the grave consequences and supreme sacrifices made. The Civil War would recreate the United States of America, continuing our great experiment. The war and its aftermath, often called the nation's second founding, shifted the very ground the nation stood upon, so we think it's vital to understand the very grounds those battles were fought upon and why they happened.

Just to put a cap on the Mexican, it's a very interesting perspective on the Civil War. 1865, Civil War ended. 1848, the Mexican-American War, that's a 20-year, not even 20-year time period between. So we're speaking in the end of 2024. I mean, that would be like 9-11, that time period. You know, that's as recent... as the Mexican-American War has been for these guys.

They were in their 20s when they were in that action. So that's really, they all know each other very well. You know, it's pretty fresh in their minds. By the end of April 6th, Beauregard, for one, assumes he's won. I mean, by nightfall, they have pushed the Federals way back. They think they've won this battle. It's in the night that going into April 7th when everything changes.

Buell's forces have arrived at night. I'm not sure when Wallace gets there, but the Union army just swells in numbers. By dawn, they're ready for an offensive and to take the ground right back.

He's also supported by the Navy, which is gunboats on the river, on the Tennessee River, which are a source of artillery.

For now, we find ourselves in the early days, spring of 1862, out in the Western Theater, where the Tennessee River wends its way south past Hardin County, Tennessee, about 100 miles east of Memphis and 20 miles north of Mississippi. These Western regions, they were called in those days because that was the West,

Well, maybe this podcast will settle this once and for all, for God's sakes.

You mentioned that April 7th is the mirror image of April 6th. The complete opposite happens. Predictably, when you consider the numbers, a Confederate retreat is forced by the Union by 3 p.m. that afternoon. It's over pretty much that afternoon. The Confederates all sort of head down to Corinth, Mississippi, to gather their forces and prepare for the next thing.

There is a counterattack by the Confederates. Forrest's charged into Union troops. There's a bunch of famous events here. But when all is said and done, this battle is a two-day battle, and it's done on April 7th, and we're on to take and count up the casualties.

were considered vital to both the Union and the Confederates, since occupying them meant controlling the vital water routes that ran through them, the Mississippi River, the Ohio, the Tennessee. So many supplies and troop movements would be delivered by these waterways. So, accordingly, a series of high-stakes battles would be fought at profound cost of men and treasure.

So the costs are enormous on both sides, but it's pretty equal. I mean, more so on the Union than the Confederate, but it's 13,000 Union casualties. When I say that, I mean 1,700 plus killed, 8,000 plus wounded, et cetera, missing and captured. On the other side, it's kind of the same thing. 1,728 killed on the Confederates, 8,012 wounded, less missing or captured.

But nonetheless, it's a pretty even battle, really, when it comes down to it. What's the key is the ground that is gained by the Union troops. Ground they didn't even expect to gain that day.

Exactly. And a year to get down to Vicksburg or so, and that will coincide with Gettysburg as when the whole war really turns. But you're right, this is when this becomes world history, and not just American history. This is a global event. Even Grant writes in his magnificent memoirs, I'll quote, "...up to the Battle of Shiloh, I, as well as thousands of others..."

believed that the rebellion against the government would collapse suddenly and soon if a decisive victory could be gained over its armies. Such was not the case, as he soon realized afterwards, as he's looking back. Johnston's death was a major strategic blow, as I mentioned before.

April 6th and 7th, 1862, was the Battle of Shiloh. And to help us understand this pivotal confrontation, we are joined by historian Dr. Timothy B. Smith, who teaches history at the University of Tennessee at Martin, author of a number of books, including Corinth 1862, Siege, Battle, Occupation, and Shiloh, Conquer or Perish, both from the University Press of Kansas. Hello, Professor Smith.

Jefferson Davis wrote after the war, when Sidney Johnston fell, it was a turning point of our fate, for we had no other hand to take up his work in the West. The irony, of course, is that Grant was vilified for being unprepared for this action, for the massive amounts of casualties and so forth. Where was this criticism? What was it based on?

Yeah. And those battles are yet to come in the chronology we are covering of Civil War battles. Dr. Timothy B. Smith teaches history at the University of Tennessee, Martin. And if you've wondered how this man knows this story so well, not only has he written multiple books on Civil War actions, but he was also a National Park Ranger at Shiloh National Military Park in western Tennessee.

There you go. That's a good summer job to get. Head on out there to the National Park. Get that hat. Proud positions to play. Thank you, sir. What's next on your horizon? Working on a new book?

All right, cool. Well, we'll get you back to talk about that soon enough. Thank you so much, Tim. Bye-bye. Thanks for having me. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays.

All kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.

Thanks so much.

Timothy, nice of you to do this. Hello. Thank you for having me. Greetings. Let's start with the macro viewpoint of the war to this point. Back east, as I mentioned, there had been the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, near the capital, a debacle for the Union. But since then, there's been improvements for them, most notably out west. Can you bring us up to date at this point in the war?

It's really about transportation, isn't it? It's the rivers and the railways that are out there. When I call it the West, I should really clarify this for some of the audience. We're talking about as far as Western Kentucky and Western Tennessee. That is the West as defined by the Mississippi River, really, in those days. How is my description of the stakes out there at that time?

Grant's memoirs, begun the previous fall in New York City, would grow into a two-volume, 360,000-word work, an astonishing feat completed in just 11 months. It was intended not only to detail his role in the war, but to explain the broader moral purpose of the conflict. Shiloh would be the battle that shattered Grant's illusions about the war.

Yeah. This will be the battle that gives rise to several people, but most notably Ulysses S. Grant. This is where he starts to really distinguish himself as a leader. He's under a man named General Henry Halleck. Can you talk about that man? Because he doesn't get much attention.

Mount McGregor, New York, 1885. At a quiet, rustic cottage nestled among pine trees, the late afternoon sun slants across the porch, catching the silver in Ulysses S. Grant's beard. A blanket covers his legs, a knit cap warms his head. In his right hand, a knife-sharpened pencil moves steadily across a sheet of paper as he writes, carefully recounting events from 40 years earlier.

I said the same thing to my wife about the napkins last night at dinner. It's important to have discipline. So let's talk about Shiloh as a location. As I mentioned earlier, there's a push down from the north. Fort Donaldson, those battles in the days earlier are about the Union pushing down what will eventually become Vicksburg.

I mean, the idea here is to take control primarily of the Mississippi River, but many other places as well, and the railroads. What made Shiloh an important location or Pittsburgh Landing just north of it?

It's an interesting, very specific contrast because you have the Union bringing in troops via the river, you know, through ferry boats coming down the Tennessee. The Confederates, on the other hand, have the railroad lines. And that, as we say, is a big hub in Corinth. So that's where the Federals are heading towards. But that's the difference in their abilities to supply these troops.

Grant is camped, as you say, at Pittsburgh Landing, which is sort of north-ish of where the fight will take place. He's about 40,000 troops. As I say, an eye on Corinth, Mississippi. He awaits reinforcements from the east under a guy named General Don Carlos Buell. Well, this will figure in prominently in this thing.

The notion they have is what's very colorfully called the Anaconda Plan, this strangling of the South. How far are they from making that happen?

Like so many in the North, Grant had expected a swift Union victory. But in that wide clearing in western Tennessee, hemmed in by trees, he witnessed relentless close-quarters combat from dawn until dark, as Confederate troops hurled themselves against Union lines.

And it's another one of the advantages that they have a better Navy. Lots more boats to do this with. Hundreds of ferry boats will be required. I mean, that's the kind of scale we're talking about with these troops. Meanwhile, Southern forces are commanded by General Albert Sidney Johnson, who they are, as we say, concentrated in Corinth, regrouping after a number of Union victories to the north.

He's seeking a strike attack before Grant's reinforcements arrive. That's key to this timing, isn't it?

I got one more question before we talk about this battle. William Tecumseh Sherman figures into this team here. This is the beginning of what will play out to be Sherman's march on Atlanta. That's a ways away. But I mean, this is how these chess pieces are putting into play. How much does Grant rely on Sherman at this point?

Sherman does not get the attention he deserves, in my opinion. I mean, people do not talk enough. He's got a lot of statues, nice ones, and a tank that's named after him. But he is critical to all of this. It always surprises me he wasn't running for president one day.

I hope we've established that the stakes are high here. There's no out plan for Grant. That's key here. You know, he's backed up by the rivers, the Snake Creek to the north and the Tennessee to the east. This has to work out. Or he spent a lot of his army on this thing. So let's talk about this battle. It happens over a period of two days, primarily, as we say, April 6th and 7th, 1862.

Sidney Johnson has brought his troops within four miles southwest of Pittsburgh landing on the Tennessee, but his idea of a surprise has been delayed by the weather. There's been a lot of rain, slogging the roads. Still, he launches an attack on April 6th. How much of a surprise was this, or is that a myth?

Who are they led by?

While on board, they're living in this five foot, you know, their headspace is five feet high. It's tiny. And they're splitting up the space with blankets. You can imagine the scene living on the bare minimum of nutrition, you know, and doled out bits of water and so forth. This is a long, long haul. There is a birth on board. A woman named Elizabeth Hopkins gives birth to a son.

In our previous episode, we covered the first half of the story, where in 1608, a persecuted people left England, crossed the English Channel to Amsterdam, settled in Leiden. A decade later, many of those folks opted to uproot and make the greater journey to the promised land of the New World. So now, as we rejoin our pilgrim's progress, picture a scene few today would have the guts to try.

They appropriately named Oceanus. Tell me about some of the other personalities that emerge on this voyage and how do they get through it together? Do they describe that in the diaries and the record?

Explain to me the day-to-day life of this kind of voyage. I mean, we just skip past this. It's always a very quick thing, but I imagine this is really where relationships are formed and locked in. I mean, this is really a building block experience for this community, isn't it? This voyage.

What did they eat?

Crossing an ocean in a vessel only 100 feet in length, designed to carry cargo, not passengers, and there are more than 120 of you on board, including the crew. Rough passage, no matter what the weather. We are in Plymouth, England, as we begin the story, leaving the harbour, the wind filling the sails.

It's really important to underscore the fact that these folks have no clue what they're doing in terms of, you know, sailing. It's one thing for adventurers and discoverers and explorers to go off and stake a flag in a strange land who have lots of experience at sea and so forth. That's what's so extraordinary about this story. It really is.

And why it has come down the ages as a fundamental building block of the American culture, really. This is the ultimate team building experience. They go to the edge of terror together. They face death, essentially, every single day together. And they are delivered. And for these folks, these hardcore Christians, they would have seen this as a salvation, what they had gone through.

And to arrive on these shores, mostly safe, as you say, not much death has accompanied them, which is extraordinary. This would have been a huge message from God, wasn't it?

When they arrive, Anna, they have arrived at a place they didn't mean to get to. Their eventual destination is not where they had planned to go. Obviously, the first place they wanted to go to was Hudson Bay, right? I mean, that was what anyone would have known, certainly back in Holland, because Henry Hudson had gone there in 1609. So they knew that that place was a good harbor.

They were shooting for that, but they ended up going north of that. Can you explain how they got things wrong?

And here to helm this historical voyage is once more Anna Scott, researcher from the University of Lincoln in England. She has written extensively on the Pilgrims and features prominently in a history hit project, the TV documentary Mayflower 400, the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage. Anna, welcome back. Part two, are you ready? Absolutely.

So they create what is famously now known as the Mayflower Compact. Can you explain this? What is basically a contract, right?

Well, it's a long strip of land. They arrive at Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, November 11th. They're not going to land until later in December, the 21st of December, 1620. So that whole more than a month is about finding out where they're going to land. You had mentioned the settlement there was already on the map. Would they have known that?

Exactly. No wonder they didn't want to leave. I mean, they were in basically the Cape Cod Sound in the bay there. And it would have been so much calmer than all these months before as they were going on the ocean. You can just it comes down to just human discomfort, really. Let's stay put. And this becomes the fateful choice to stay put.

At PwC, we don't just deliver ideas. We make them work. With the expertise and tech you need to outthink and outperform. And we work with you, alongside you, from start to finish. So you can stay ahead. So you can protect what you built. So you can create new value. We build for what's next. So you can get there now. PwC. So you can.

So where we are right now is we've arrived in Southampton. It's the summer of 1620, around July. And this group of pilgrims is going to become part of an economic enterprise, which is run by a group called the Merchant Adventurers, which is an English firm. And they are basically hiring this group of religious sojourners to become laborers in this company that will land in the New World.

PwC refers to the PwC network and or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity.

I want to understand better why the Mayflower Compact had to be made.

Because was the idea that they would be dropped off, you know, according to the original schedule, they would essentially have been dropped off, some time would have been taken, and then that ship would have headed back to England, right?

Because of the weather?

So at that point, these very unhappy crew members who had no desire to live in the New World, they were making a buck, suddenly have to live with these people that they've been on this ship for for two months. And they have to create this thing. How many of those crewmen actually stayed and became part of the community?

And I want to understand what's especially significant about the Mayflower Compact, because that's often overlooked by people as we go screaming towards the big Thanksgiving dinner, which was apocryphal. The Mayflower Compact is important for what reason?

At PWC, we build for what's next, so you can get there now, so you can protect what you built, so you can create new value. PWC, so you can. PWC refers to the PWC network and or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity.

Okay.

Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean, it's taking this essential event, this struggle and this creation of this settlement as the building block of a great mythology, a very useful mythology. True in many regards, but definitely inflated to create the story of a nation built by God, by people worshiping God, but ultimately creating something together that is of an economic nature, you know.

These are early days. I mean, there's not too much happening in this land afar. Plenty for the indigenous people, of course, but not this new European crowd that's arriving. We basically got Jamestown and St. Augustine and a few other things have been tried, but that's about it. So they're going to go off into the great unknown. First, they start with two ships. Let's talk about how that happens.

It's a very interesting moment when a real essential aspect of the American civilization, the American society, has been laid down.

Well, Plymouth then becomes part of, or Patuxent becomes part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Dutch come and settle all the Hudson Valley, and all of this early founding of the European New World takes place. But the Pilgrims were really one of the first, this and Jamestown. And we need to give them the credit due for the sheer courage and determination involved in this.

But then the upshot of it is such an interesting storytelling process, isn't it? That's what really comes out of this. I mean, right down to my generation, certainly, where we're hearing about the Native Americans sitting down with these colonists, having a peaceful meal. All of this stuff is used by future generations to kind of hone the storytelling.

Yeah, sure. Well, it's certainly a story told from one dimension. You know, I'm recounting my childhood. life as a white American and being taught in a primarily white school, all of this stuff. And other sectors of society have their own view of this, for sure. And that's important to consider.

But Anna Scott is a researcher at the University of Lincoln, England, who has written extensively on the Pilgrims and knows a lot about them. As we have found out in these two episodes, I invite you, please, to listen to them together.

This episode and also the previous one cover what is usually ignored, how these people even got on boats and came across the ocean, let alone what they did afterwards. Thank you so much, Anna. Nice to meet you. Happy Thanksgiving.

Hello, folks. Thanks for listening to American History Hit. Each week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of great content like mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode.

By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Bye for now.

November 11th, 1620. The Mayflower arrives off the shores of Cape Cod, anchoring in what is today Provincetown Harbor in Massachusetts. For the next five weeks, it will remain anchored here as search parties are dispatched ashore to scout sites for settlement all along the Cape.

They'll finally choose a location about 30 miles across the bay, a place previously mapped by an earlier English expedition, and coincidentally, named for the harbor town these pilgrims had seen before leaving England for the last time, Plymouth. Plymouth Hello, and nice you're here. We're American History Hit, and I'm Don Wildman. Happy holidays.

Right. This is a critical part of the story to understand. The timing of this was professionally planned by seamen who knew what they were doing to leave in the summer so that they would arrive in plenty of warm weather to get settled. They depart in plenty of time, August 15th. But the speedwell does not match its name. So they have to come back. And this is going to happen several times.

I think this is a good moment to talk about the physical experience of this journey. The Mayflower, as I mentioned in the opening, is about 100 feet long. It's a cargo ship that was actually designed for transporting wine and cloth, I believe. It's not made for passengers. Can you explain the sort of physical parameters of what they're about to go through?

Well, at first they had a more practical plan, which is to have two vessels, so less people on each one of those things. But what happens next seals the fate in that regard. They end up on one boat. Why is that?

Yeah. I mean, just to explain this, that second attempt when they leave Dartmouth on those two ships and then the Speedwell fails, the decision to turn back is 300 miles at sea. Like they've been sailing for a long time, struggling. I mean, they're on their way and then suddenly they're turning back again. So when you talk about discontent, I mean, you can only imagine.

We complain when the train's late. This is their entire existences and their children. There are pregnant people on board. It's an extraordinarily dire circumstance as far as they're concerned. And when they turn back this time, they turn back not to Dartmouth, but to the harbor of Plymouth. And that's the beginning of the whole Plymouth story, right?

I have to go back and correct my fifth grade teacher in that case because she told me it was because they left Plymouth and they named it because they were so grateful they got there. Complete fabrication. Total coincidence. That's interesting.

This week, in the Thanksgiving spirit, we are covering the voyage of the Pilgrims, from England to the Dutch Netherlands, and finally to the windswept shores of New England, where in 1620, they settled and struggled and somehow made a home.

I want to understand who's on board here, but let's mark the time here. They have now tried to leave responsibly in the middle of summer, but they are now leaving from Plymouth in the middle of September. September 16th, 1620 is when they famously depart. That is real late in the year to be making a transatlantic voyage.

It sort of seals the fate that they're going to end up in very bad conditions when they get there.

Yes, exactly.

And they would have known this. I mean, that was common knowledge. Certainly the seamen would have understood this, that it was going to take a couple of months and they were going to end up in the winter. That's how determined these people really were, though. I mean, they couldn't go back. They had cut their ties to the homeland. Take me through some of the personalities on board.

This now one ship they have given up to Speedwell. The captain of this was a guy named Christopher Jones. And that's only important to recognize that there are those who are religious on this voyage and there are those who are not. And yet they're all in this together.

And according to popular legend, dined festively in the company of Native American friends, everyone celebrating a plentiful harvest of corn and ample poultry, anticipating snuggly times ahead in winter, and yeah, that was the story doled out to us as kids. The truer history of the pilgrim voyage to America is a lot more involved.

I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter we should be looking at, send us an email at ahh at historyhit.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Ich weiß nicht, ob sie das erwartet hätten, so blutig. Also Februar 16, 17, 1945, das ist, als der Führungssport beginnt. Das ist, als diese Schiffsschiffe aufsteigen und anfangen, dafür zu gehen. Wie viele Tage tun sie das letztendlich?

It's the US Fifth Fleet that comes down. It's a really fascinating episode people don't know much about. The first thing that happens really in the battle for Iwo Jima is actually an attack on the Japanese home islands, on Tokyo, right? There is a part of the fleet or a fleet is up there and they actually launch the first attack on Tokyo itself. This is the fire bombing that happens.

Danach werden die selben Männer die Szene für einen anderen Schuss restagen, dieses Mal mit einer größeren Flagge. Es ist ein Wassermoment, eine ikonische Geschichte durch die Kamera. Aber es sind noch 30 Tage vor diesem gefährlichen Angriff auf Iwo Jima. Am Ende werden drei der fotografierten Männer tot. Hello there, great to have you listening.

Tell me about that episode. How long does that last and why is it happening? Well, it's happening partially to keep the Japanese's head down, right?

Mhm. Erst Wave of Attack, Februar 19, 1945, they land on the southwestern coast. Tell me what that was like for them when they caught on shore. The general idea I've learned from the movies, thank you Clint Eastwood, the Japanese were hunkering down, they were taking, they sort of moved themselves to Mount Suribachi and they were going to hunker down until the right moment came.

I did a show years ago in Okinawa, a history show, and it was extraordinary how deep those tunnels are, how solid in rock they are. They had a long time to prepare this whole infrastructure for themselves and they did a great job at it. Therefore, you know, they weren't easily affected by firepower, as you say.

This is American History Hit and I'm your host, Don Wildman. Eighty years ago, in February 1945, one of the most torturous battles of the war in the Pacific was undertaken. Die US-Force landete auf den Schoßen eines kleinen, vulkanisch geformten Islands, mehr als 6.000 Meilen von den USA, aber nur 760 Meilen von Japan.

Just a last note on the beaches, the volcanic sand is different than sand we know, you know, usually the silicate sand. The black volcanic sand doesn't behave the same way, so they get bogged down.

I mean, it is a terrible place to be a foot soldier. Tell me about the Marine Commander Howland Mad Smith.

Es ist ein wirklich interessantes Dilemma, ist es nicht? Weil du diese Kommandstruktur hast, die wirklich, wie du sagst, aus der Weltkriegszeit ausgeboren ist. Und das war die Zeit der Artillerie.

Das wurde diese ganze Strategie, wie man eine Kriegspflicht kämpfen kann und wie man über einen Kriegsfeld fliegt, aus den Trennungen in diesen Tagen, wurde von der Eröffnung der Artilleriewahrzeuge erschaffen. send up a sheet of fire and then the men follow and then do the same and you sort of move across that way.

Add to this, A, it's in the middle of the ocean, so you have to move your artillery on a battleship and you have this whole other dynamic, not to mention command structure, as we already mentioned. It's a whole different kind of conversation as to how this is going to happen.

Iwo Jima wäre einer der letzten Steppensteine in der Insel-Hopping-Strategie, die die amerikanische Kommande vor zwei Jahren vorgelegt hat.

It's a really interesting subplot of those we don't have time for, but it was the subplot of the entire Pacific War that people don't really consider too much about. Iwo Jima defended by 21,000 Japanese soldiers. Had they been there the whole time? Like, I've always wondered about these island fortresses.

Were these Japanese soldiers just brought in for this battle or had they been there for months and years before?

By leapfrogging Japanese occupied islands, which had been heavily fortified, and instead concentrating on capturing more lightly defended ones, the US could advance more steadily across the Pacific, avoiding and isolating Japanese strongholds, and then starving them of supplies.

We shall defend this place with all our strength to the end. We shall fling ourselves against the enemy tanks, clutching explosives to destroy them. So, this was a sheet of paper, printed and passed out. They had to memorize this. Das wurde in ihrem gesamten Verhalten gebacken, bevor dieser Kampf beginnt.

Eventually, so went the strategy, the Americans would occupy islands close enough to Japan to support a full-scale invasion, which until mid-1945 was still assumed to be inevitable, the only means to achieve complete victory. But some considered Iwo Jima a target without enough strategic value to justify the tremendous cost of American lives. The Japanese were dug in.

So Tim, tell me how this campaign unfolds over a month long period of time, because they basically have to extract these guys from the tunnels, you know, and go in and get them and use flamethrowers on the tanks and so forth. Tell me about the general strategy to find these guys and kill them.

American forces would be attacking soldiers fighting from tunnels and bunkers. In so many ways, Iwo Jima would be a preview of the horrors to come on Okinawa later that spring. Here to explain the rationale behind Iwo Jima and how the battle unfolded is naval historian Timothy Heck. Timothy is an artillery officer in the U.S.

Das ist das Newsreel-Footage, das wir von den letzten Inseln sehen, die wir genommen haben. Ich meine, sie mussten Taktiken adaptieren zu diesen unglaublichen Infrastrukturen, die gebaut wurden. Sprechen wir über die Navajo Code Talkers. War das das erste Mal, dass sie auf Iwo Jima benutzt wurden?

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Marine Corps Reserve and an accomplished writer who has produced two books on amphibious warfare. Greetings, Timothy Heck. Boy, Iwo Jima is in your wheelhouse.

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Sie werden hier offiziell ausgesprochen. Okay, die Battle of Iwo Jima kommt nur vier Monate vor VE-Tag. Ich möchte das nur in Kontext für den Publikum stellen. We're at the end of the European war. I mean, V-Day is May 8th, 1945. Here in the Pacific, it seems the end is in sight as well. The U.S. has won back the Philippines, Palau, the Marshall Islands. We own the South Pacific at this point.

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And it's really an impossible situation for Japan. Why are they holding out this long and what is their strategy? Das zu halten, ist eine große Frage.

It's interesting and speculative to compare, but, you know, World War II battles and what happened on those battlefields compared to today, you know, and the way mechanized warfare has evolved, it's apples and oranges in so many ways, isn't it? It is and it isn't, right?

Timothy Heck ist ein erfolgreicher Kriegshistoriker, auch ein Artillerieoffizier in der US-Marine-Korps-Reserve. Er hat mehrere Bücher über Amphibious Warfare produziert. Tim, vielen Dank. Vielen Dank, Don. Habe einen guten Tag.

Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on.

Es ist Februar 23, 1945. Associated Press Fotograf Joe Rosenthal hiked to the peak of Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. At 554 feet, it is the highest point on this island 750 watery miles from the shores of mainland Japan. Durch tiefen, vulkanischen Teufel, hört Rosenthal den ungewöhnlichen, unbekannten Schrecken von den Feuertruppen.

Das ist so wichtig, um aus diesem Punkt zu kommen, weil wirklich die, die, die Impression ist, sicherlich aus den Filmen, dass das nur ein paar Soldaten auf ein paar Inseln sind und wir nur nach Japan fliegen, aber in der Tat, Japan hat das seit Jahrhunderten gemacht, sie waren eine sehr, sehr gut gebaut, große militärische Maschine und viel davon war noch in den Hohen Inseln.

Ich meine, sie waren bereit, diesen Ort zu verteidigen. Before and during this war, I mean, it was a big part of their strategy. But for the US, why Iwo Jima? What was important about this particular place?

Okay. So they already, they've already done the groundwork, so to speak. Let's talk about the pork chop shape of this island is basically, it's got a huge volcano, as all those islands do out there. That's how they were created. And then there's a lot of flatness beyond that. And that's really useful for the purpose of landing big planes on it.

I mean, this is generally speaking, just compressing the distance from the islands of the home islands all the way across. But it's also kind of strategic about how they measure from each other. Okinawa ist nicht zu weit weg und das wird der nächste sein. Also setzen sie immer noch diese Basis.

Aber ich glaube, das war der, ich habe in der Eröffnung die Fragen, die Gedanken über diese Strategie, weil Okinawa so viel für die Home Islands passiert, dass es so viel für die Home Islands passiert, dass es so viel für die Home Islands passiert, dass es so viel für die Home Islands passiert, dass es so viel für die Home Islands passiert. Es gab.

Und ich bewege mich in diesem Klappern-Pattern. Hier ist die Strategie des Eilendrückens so aufwändig in dieser Geschichte, aber ich habe es gerade wiederholt, als ich alles über diese Vorbereitung lesen musste. Und es war eine ziemlich ungewöhnliche Pläne. Es war eine sehr, sehr klare Idee, die großen Eilenden zu verlassen, die wirklich gut verteidigt wurden.

Es beginnt mit der New Guinea und Papua New Guinea und all das da unten. Und es wird eine sehr klare Art, sich über den Pazifik zu bewegen. We should mention also that part of the strategy is also to protect the flank of all this attack that will go on, because they do have these airfields, so they can launch off things to go after our planes and so forth in this attack.

Er ist auf hohem Wettbewerb für Landmine, als er die verletzten Angriffspositionen auf dem Weg übernimmt. Er folgt einem kleinen Gruppe US-Marine vor ihm. Though Rosenthal may not realize it now, this is a once-in-a-lifetime photographic opportunity. The soldiers are carrying an American flag to the heights of Suribachi, and Rosenthal intends to capture it all on film.

The whole thing is called Operation Detachment. Die Erzeugung von Iwo Jima und wie du sagst, eventuell drei Hauptflugzeuge dort. Das würde dann die Invasion der japanischen Inseln ermöglichen, die wir in einem vorherigen Episode erwähnt haben, dass ich wirklich Menschen ermutigt habe, zu hören, über die Doolittle-Invasion, was ein wirklich faszinierendes Anfangsevent ist.

Ich meine, Jahre vor dem, was wir heute sprechen, aber es ist wirklich alle Teil der gleichen Denkweise. Aber es ist auch wirklich interessant, was zwischen Nimitz und MacArthur passiert. Du weißt, diese ganze Idee des zweifachigen Ansatzes, das jetzt unifiziert wird. Iwo Jima markiert das, nicht wahr?

The eventual victory belies all the struggle internally that was happening, you know, among the command, especially famously between MacArthur and Nimitz, who was Navy versus Army. In there you have the Marines, of course, who are going to be the ones landing on those shores. They're not even consulted in this situation, are they?

Oh my goodness.

At the top, the photographer composes his frame. Six men throw their combined weight into lifting the flagpole upright upon the jagged ground. None of the soldiers' faces are visible, but that doesn't matter. Indeed, it's the point. Der Schuss symbolisiert den selbstlosen Geist, der für Krieg und Kampf benötigt wird.

How anybody emerged from this with any nights of sleep amazes me. There is going to be 70,000 Marines landed on the shores of Iwo Jima. 70,000 on this tiny island. How many Japanese are they going to be fighting against? Do they know when they're coming? They've got a pretty good idea, right?

Das ist interessant.

By golly, that's me, Truman reportedly said, hearing his name called out on the convention floor. A minute earlier, he had been standing in a concession line buying a hot dog.

Ich meine, es ist wirklich fair zu sagen, dass in meiner Meinung Truman der erste moderne US-Präsident der Zeit ist. because he really does have to turn the wheel and change direction completely on major issues that have been taken for granted, for better or worse, by many Americans.

You mentioned already something I want to say before we get into the heavy-duty international stuff, obviously in the summer. The reconversion is the term that I wasn't even familiar with before getting ready for this. Reconverting the economy from war to peacetime is the whole process of sort of reabsorbing all these soldiers who are coming home.

Ja, und die Inflation ist ein riesiges Problem. Ich meine, es steigen die Preise überall. Er kreiert das, was die Fair Deal heißt. Ich meine, er ist ein solcher Neudealer. Er trägt die gleiche Agenda wie sein Vorgänger, aber er übernimmt es als das, was die Fair Deal heißt. Was war das generell, was sich verändert hat?

If you want to understand the stability of the US governance on the federal level, it really is a one hand to the next from the FDR to Truman to even Eisenhower straight through to LBJ with Kennedy in there. It's amazing. In July, Truman is now the third of the big three. He meets at Potsdam, as we've mentioned, in Germany with Stalin and Churchill.

Churchill is then replaced by Attlee halfway through. And this is all about finalizing the terms of the close of World War II, in particular the fate of Poland. Everything was really about Poland to start with, wasn't it?

Und dieser Fehler, diese Wahlen zu schaffen, die Selbstdeterminierung von Polen, ist wirklich der erste Moment für Truman über den Kolden Krieg, ist es nicht? Er erkennt, mit wem er handelt, und es wird kein Kompromiss sein.

Maybe it's his logistical mindset, the mind of an artillery man, strategizing the future and how far his firing will go. He is such a methodical guy, Harry Truman. You can kind of backtrack hindsight and see where all of these big themes come from. And then they sort of move forward. I guess that's true of most presidencies, but especially so with Truman.

Vielen Dank.

Let's talk about that. In August comes, of course, the fateful decision to use the atomic bomb to end the war with Japan. Referring listeners to our past episode number 99, entitled Oppenheimer, What if America never dropped the atomic bomb? And our first episode of the entire series in September 22 was the atomic bomb in the secret city. There's a lot to talk about here, of course.

But as far as Truman is concerned, what is his basic reasoning? Haben wir alles gelernt, was wir wissen werden, warum er die Waffe benutzt hat?

It was my father's favorite lesson to me. He was in the Philippines waiting for that attack on the home islands. And he said, you wouldn't be here without Harry Truman. That was what he always talked it up to, whether that was correct or not. That was my dad's version of things.

Er schreibt in seinem Journal, das ist ein Quote aus den Potsdamer Zeiten, dass wir die schlimmste Bombe in der Geschichte der Welt entdeckt haben. Es kann sein, dass die Feuerdestruktion in der Euphrates-Wall-Ära nach Noah und seinem faszinierenden Arsch propheziert wurde. Er war wissenswert, wie groß das war, sicher militärisch, aber auch wissenschaftlich, glaube ich, oder?

Hallo alle, willkommen zu American History Hit. Ich bin Don Wildman. Harry S. Truman arbeitete als Präsident von April 12, 1945 bis Januar 20, 1953. Acht Jahre, die die Post-World War II-Agenda für die Vereinigten Staaten und für die kommende Cold War einstellen würden.

Wie vorhin erwähnt, ist es nützlich, dass die Präsidentschaft von Truman in zwei Teilen stattfindet. Offensichtlich definiert von seiner Wahl im Jahr 1948. Vor diesem Jahr steigt er in die Rolle. Aber auch vor diesem Jahr, im Mai 1948, gibt es die Eröffnung von Israel, die, ich darf sagen, die meisten Amerikaner vergessen, auf Harry Trumans Wagen war. All das ist passiert.

Und er war ein großer Advokat von Israel. Er hat sie 11 Minuten nach der Eröffnung der Nation erkannt, gegen die Wünsche seiner nahesten Aide.

Der Monat, in dem Truman mit dem FDR erfolgreich war, April 1945, wurde Mussolini in einem italienischen Dorf getötet und Hitler verurteilte sich in seinem Berlin-Bunker. Drei Monate später wurde die erste atomische Bombe erfolgreich im Neue-Mexiko-Desert getestet.

Es spart sofort eine Krieg mit den Arabern. Ich meine, es ist eine unglaublich vertraute Entscheidung. Richtig, am nächsten Tag, ja. Er hat es nicht verraten, in der Lage dieser Krieg?

Es wäre Truman, der die furchtbare Entscheidung gemacht hat, sie zu verwandeln, in die Nuklear-Welt zu schlagen, als die Iron Curtain über die oberste Europa des Baltischen Sees nach der Adriatik herunterging. Hier zu Hause fand der moderne Zivilrechts-Movement Trägung gegenüber der südlichen Segregation und racialen Gewalt.

Not too long after, June 1948, the Berlin Airlift begins. Now, understand this is to anyone who's not familiar, Berlin is actually surprisingly in East Germany. So when the divide happens as a result of various circumstances, West Berlin, which we're taking care of, is in the middle of East Germany. So at that point, Stalin wants to sort of take over West Berlin.

Truman stand up to this and begins what's called the Berlin Airlift, which just goes on for a very long time, more than a year from June 48 to September 49. They do 277,000 flights into Tempelhof Airport, making it forever a shrine of this Western rescue effort. It's an incredibly interesting moment that Harris Truman really is the architect of, isn't he?

Und in amerikanischen Häusern überall brachte die TV-Welt Programme in die Wohnzimmer, wie die Ed Sullivan Show und I Love Lucy. Singin' in the Rain machte Spaß mit den Talkies, während Orwells 1984 eine dystopische Zukunft bemerkte und Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man 16 Wochen auf den Bestsellerlisten verbrachte.

It defines that the overall Cold War mission of the West, and certainly the US, to contain and address Soviet expansion becomes the cause for decades to come. It starts really with the Berlin Airlift.

Es wird das Anfang der Truman-Doktrin werden, um die Domino-Theorie auszuschließen. Für mich ist es so interessant, Harry Trumans Präsidenten zu sehen, weil alles so gepackt ist, so viel passiert. Ich meine, wir sind noch nicht mal zu seinem gewählten Termin. Und all diese unglaublichen Dinge sind passiert.

Wenn nicht für jemanden wie diesen Mann, der in den tiefen Ende des Pooles springen könnte und einfach schwimmen würde, Es ist schwer zu glauben, dass es so eine erfolgreiche Einführung des amerikanischen Jahrhunderts sein würde.

Das ist der generelle Kontext für eine Präsidentschaft, die wir heute diskutieren werden, in der Firma von Mark Adams, der Direktor des Harry S. Truman-Libraries und Museums in Independence, Missouri. Willkommen, Mark, zu American History Hit. Schön, dich zu haben. Danke, Don.

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Ja.

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Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020 Vielen Dank.

Oh, that's a fantastic place. I did an interview with Harry Truman's grandson there not too many years ago. So let's begin at the beginning, the famously humble beginnings of Harry S. Truman. You couldn't find a more complete antithesis to the aristocratic upbringing of, say, Franklin Roosevelt. Truman was reared on a Missouri farm, or a couple of them, born in Lahar, Missouri.

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The Trumans eventually settled in Independence, where you are today. Farming is a life he doesn't particularly like, but he works for the family farm until he's in his 30s. By the way, what does the S stand for?

There are an awful lot of iconic photographs taken of Harry S. Truman. The man was unusually photogenic, with a flair for the dramatic. Here's one taken in July 1945. Truman sitting confidently in a wicker chair with Churchill and Stalin by his side. All three men at the Potsdam Conference, poised at the brink of the Cold War.

Ich sehe. The family finances are as rocky as the fields they plow. This prevents Truman from the education he dearly wanted. And I just want to underscore a fact I just blew past there. He worked on this farm until he was in his 30s. A man who will be president just a few decades later. It's amazing. Let's talk about the early years of Harry's education and so forth.

He had wanted to go to West Point, but couldn't because of poor eyesight.

That's right.

Interessant. Er wurde ein sehr talentierter Artillerie-Mann in der Infanterie und servierte in Frankreich mit viel Distinktion. Es ist eine Erfahrung da, die ihn wirklich verändert, nicht wahr?

He comes under intense fire. I mean, this man really did see combat several times in very famous battles there. You can't help but wonder how much that will come into play later on when he makes certain other decisions in his life. When he returns to the States, he is in Kansas City with big ideas of not returning to farming.

This is a guy now in his 30s at this point, starts a store, a haberdashery with an army buddy, which does well at first and then ultimately fails because of the economy, right?

Wie kommt er endlich in die Politik?

1922.

Er sieht nicht wirklich eine große Zukunft für sich. Das ist so ironisch.

Ja, 1934, ich skippe jetzt etwa eine Dekade, er spielt für einen Senator. Und das ist aus der gleichen demokratischen Maschinerie, die von Tom Pendergrass gespielt wurde. Er gewinnt, aber er würde ohne Pendergrass nicht da sein, würde er?

Hier ist Truman, auch auf seinem Oval Office-Desk, mit dem Namenblatt, der berühmt sagt, dass der Buck hier aufhört. Und dann dieser, mit dem Lied, Dewey verliert Truman. Klassiker. Aber ein weniger bekanntes Bild ist mein Lieblingsbild. Es kommt aus der demokratischen Nationalkonvention im Chicago-Sommer von 1944.

Das wird später auf der Straße für ihn ein bisschen kontrovers werden. In 1944, mehr als halbwegs durch seinen zweiten senatorialen Termin, wird er nominiert, Henry Wallace als Vizepräsident von Roosevelt zu ersetzen. 1944, wir sind in der Mitte der 2. Weltkriege. Wir sind durch die Depression gekommen. Das ist ein enormer Teil der Geschichte, die Truman durchgekommen ist.

Wie wurde er für diese Position entschieden? Ich meine, Wallace, ich weiß, war eine gewaltige Figur.

Eines der Aspekte dieser Geschichte, das nie die Aufmerksamkeit bekommt, ist, wie viel die Leute wussten, dass die FDR wirklich tot ist. Ich meine, er sah aus wie ein Mann auf der Ecke. Wäre Truman und sein Volk darüber gewusst, hätte sie es erwartet, das zu passieren?

Ja, nur der Grundsatz hätte viel gesagt, glaube ich. Und Truman hätte deshalb gewusst, dass er in eine sehr mögliche Verwendungsrolle steigen würde. None the less, these two men barely knew each other, FDR and Truman. They'd only met twice during his vice presidency. And Truman did what vice presidents usually do, the Senate duties and official greetings and parties.

But very famously, FDR did not instruct him of anything that was going on as far as the war was concerned. I mean, FDR was in his fourth term at this point, so people just kind of gave over to him, didn't they?

Also war er völlig unvorbereitet. Die Zuhörer müssen das in Erinnerung halten, als wir diese Events in den Sommern 1945 beobachten, wie unvorbereitet Truman für diese Rolle des Präsidenten war. Keine Erfahrung in internationalen Verhältnissen zu sprechen. Und yet he handles this incredibly resourcefully, incredibly professionally. It's amazing.

Es erzeugt den Moment, kurz nachdem Truman als Franklin-Roosevelts Vise-Präsidential-Running-Mate ausgewählt wurde. Seine Hand wird von der Konvention-Vorsitzenden als Kamera-Bulbenflasche gehalten. It's funny when you look closer. It's almost as if Truman is dangling from the man's arm. His expression conveying a genuine sense of startled surprise.

Yeah, I mean, he's had two senatorial terms to get used to federal governance and he's a big presence on the hill. But nonetheless, this is another level altogether. Let's talk about the story of the moment when Truman finds out he is president. This is April 12th, 1945. He is about to start a poker game when the phone rings and he's asked to come to the White House.

Yeah.

Yes. And so begins this amazing journey that he is about to undertake. He not only has to, of course, step into the official duties, but he has to emotionally carry the nation forward. A nation that has for 12 years, I suppose, been handled by FDR through the Depression and through World War II. It's an incredible time. Whole generations have been born into this time.

And suddenly this man has this unenviable task to help them understand this and to make this transition with him.

So it doesn't come out of nowhere. So in 1774, a lot of tensions are going on and they're beginning to realize that there might be some sort of conflict coming down the road. I mean, shots have been fired. We're talking about the Boston Massacre and things like that have happened in the years prior.

So one of the aspects of this organization is to have a central location where you have your ammunition and your powder. And so this was a very important and protected place. So the British have realized this, and since they've occupied Boston as a result of so much that has gone on over these years, they are sending out patrols to go and locate this stuff and take it home and destroy it.

So this happens in 1774 in September, the Powder Alarm. And it kind of ignites, no pun intended, this this fire under the forces here. They realize they have to get better at what they're doing. And so the the communications are made are ramped up and the whole system gets more intelligent because of some spying that's going on.

And this whole system becomes part of the game that was not being previously played as intensely. And now it is. So they've had this whole experience prior and they want to protect their powder this time. So when word comes through the intelligence networks, by the way, Thomas Gage is the military governor of Boston sent over by the monarchy in 1774. His wife is American.

She was born in New Jersey, what becomes New Jersey. And she has a fondness for this cause. And word is, I mean, this is a rumor even today that she may have been in touch with the Boston Intelligence Network, specifically Joseph Warren, who becomes very important in the story, that these things were happening. So they may have had warning through the wife of the governor.

Anybody who wants to look for this information, it's all over the place. I mean, there are lists everywhere about 10 causes of the American Revolution. Just read them for a very pithy example of what I'm about to blabber about. Let's jump in anywhere. 1773, most famously, the Boston Tea Party. That is in response to the Tea Act, to the tax put on tea.

It was also a response to various problems that were going on with the ships there and so forth. And so it was a queue for the Provincial Congress, I believe they're called, in Boston, headed up by John Hancock. to do something about this. Sam Adams also has a lot to do with this, and they dumped the tea.

In basic American history, that sort of sticks out as another flashpoint and the cause of things. But you have to understand that that has its own cause. And so there are all these other acts dating back into the 1600s, which is so interesting to me. As a result of having this sprawled out empire, Great Britain has to have a whole kind of economic approach to managing this thing.

They're the first empire to really deal on a worldwide basis with a shipping industry. And so they have laws that make it certain that they will get paid by these ships that are coming back. Exports that are sent to Great Britain have to come in on British ships. And all of these things are sort of developed as policies over the 1600s, which are fascinating. The Navigation Acts, they're called.

And a quick check on any of this will give you all the information you need to know. But you'll see them layered and layered up over the period from probably 1660, which is all the way through to 1763. There is what's called the Declaratory Act, 1766. So here we are 10 years before Lexington conquered. The Declaratory Act is really important.

And that's where Parliament says to all the colonies, we're in charge. We'll tell you what to do. You are under our thumbs. And that's the complete change from what was before, which was this salutary neglect that took place. You know, we learned taxation without representation, but all these other terms are as pithy as that and make it easier to understand that there was a process going on here.

And the result would be the friction that would eventually end in gunfire. I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter we should be looking at, send us an email at ahh at historyhit.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Exactly. And it's several points. You know, it's the Boston Massacre, which is a result of the occupation of Boston and all the quartering of troops that are throughout that place. And, you know, you can understand Boston itself is a small town. Even today, I say as a New Yorker, as a snobby New Yorker, Boston's a pretty small geographical area. And so in those days, a very small place.

And so you suddenly have these kind of worldwide events happening within these streets that is amazing. And people are dealing with a whole new population of thousands of British troops that have come into town and are all living everywhere around town. These red-coated guys are running the place. And it's an occupation.

So tensions are really high within Boston, never mind all the seditious people outside of town meeting in secret in their pubs and so forth. It's really a 10-year period that really starts with the declaratory act back in the 60s.

Yeah, I mean, it's not even a metaphor. That really is the problem. There's powder. But you mentioned something very important that's a critical backdrop to all of this. The British have occupied Boston, which is a very small city. I mean, it's small today compared to New York. You know, it's a small geographical area. It's just kind of a peninsula into the Boston Harbor.

Into that, you throw, I think, some 7,000 people. British troops eventually are occupying Boston during this period of time. That's an extraordinary balance that's been tipped over. And it leads to things like the Boston Massacre and friction points all over the place, fights.

And, you know, we probably aren't even aware of how much friction there really was because it just happened every day, I imagine. But it most famously happens with the Boston Massacre in 1770 and then all the things that happened since then. But yeah, this is a time of great tension and enormous suspicions have been confirmed. The British monarchy is against us. We are under their thumb.

This is evidence of tyranny, a complete change of the relationship that... That we were our generation, you know, generations of American colonists had been used to. That's a really important fact to really consider. This is a long time that these people have been living under and with an understanding of this relationship in an entirely different paradigm.

It's within a short period of time, relatively speaking, since the end of the French and Indian War in the 1760s, that things begin to change a lot and then ramp up as we get into the 70s, 70s.

Well, there's three very famous names that come down to us as lore, really, which is to say Sam Adams, who's a critically important person and all that. He's really the rabble rouser of the group. He helps create the committees of correspondence, as I mentioned before. They are the ones that start... communicating more frequently. And John Hancock is a very, very rich merchant in that area.

He's the head of the Provincial Congress there. He's the one who really is sitting in the chair for the Boston Tea Party. Joseph Warren is a very... famous name because he was kind of the head of an intelligence network in town. He's the one that hangs the lanterns in the Old North Church, one if by land, two if by sea, all of that.

There's a long list of names that have to do with the Provincial Congress, which has been dissolved and then reunites. You know, this has been sort of boiling up for a long time, both inside of Boston and outside.

More precisely than the history would even suggest. There was actually a system in place for this alarm, and he is part of that. It's sort of what results as a result of the powder alarm. On the night of April 18th,

They're aware of the fact that there's going to be a patrol that's leaving Boston through either the harbor or through the neck, it's called, the land bridge that goes into Massachusetts. And they're used to these things happening or at least rumors of things happening.

And so they have a system in place to prepare the communities that will be affected where they're marching to, those British troops. So they hear that some 700 British troops are going to be leaving Boston in some means. And it's important that they warn those communities. Where they're heading is going to be Concord. Concord is the place where the provincial Congress has been meeting.

It's probably where Hancock and Adams are, who are on the list of most wanted at this point. It's also a center, as the British know, a center of storage for the powder and the guns. And so when Revere, who is William Dawes' partner, leave Boston on the night of April 18th, they're heading out to Lexington and Concord to warn those communities that the British are coming. Now, that's the phrase.

It's really funny when you read about this because you realize it's not the British who are coming because they're all British. So he was not saying the British are coming, the British are coming. Fascinating sidebar. That phrase comes from a legendary poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1860.

And that poem was meant to be more about the Civil War, was a suggestion of the Civil War and the Southerners coming than it really was about the Revolutionary. It was meant to sort of be a metaphor. So that phrase was really fabricated. He would have gone from house to house very quietly running around saying, hey, this is what's going on. We're used to this. They're coming. Get ready.

Get your guns. Everybody's in the militia. Start gathering.

The day begins very early. It's 5 a.m. when the British embark off on their patrol. And there's a lot of them. There's about 700 British soldiers who are going to transport. The American colonists... The Ride of Paul Revere. Revere and Dawes understand where they're going because of the signal, the famous signal that has been prearranged. One if by land, two if by sea.

These are lanterns that are going to be hung in the windows of the old North Church Tower, which I have stood in. It's very interesting. It's not the same steeple that was there back then. It's been rebuilt, but it is very visible from all parts of Boston, especially in those days. It would have been a very, very high spire. So when they see... Two if by sea, you know, the two lanterns go up.

They know that the British will be taking boats to go across Boston Harbor. And and that determines the direction they're heading in, which is going to be Lexington and Concord. So in anticipation of that arrival, Revere sets out. Dawes has already set out on the land bridge, which is the neck of Boston, which is heading out that way. So. They're going to meet up later on on that that route.

But in the meantime, Revere is telling he gets there a little earlier and he's riding along telling these villagers in the various villages along that road that these British troops are coming. He does not famously say the British are coming because he is British. So he wouldn't say that. It's just a warning that the troops are coming.

And remember, this is a system that has been in place for a while now. I mean, the militias have been organized and the alarm systems have been going on for a while. This is not a one-off that Paul Revere is doing by himself. It's not at all.

So you can take the Lexington and Concord battles as one. That's traditionally how it's explained. And that's because the British troops are marching from Boston. And that's a long parade of troops, as you can imagine. There's 700 British troops marching along a dirt road into the suburbs of Boston. You can imagine what that looks like.

Hello, everyone. Don here. Welcome to American History It. The battles of Lexington and Concord are among the most iconic in American history, marking the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of joining Matt Lewis, host of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit.

By the time the British arrive early in the morning on April 19th, they are confronted by a gathering of American militia. And this is to say some 77 militia have gathered at this point. Understand, to send out the call into the rural lands of Massachusetts, hey, come on, they're coming, is going to take time for these militia to gather.

So this is a building process over the period of both Lexington and Concord. So at first, it's a small gathering. Needless to say, the British have come prepared for this. They set up in their rank and files and they're ready to shoot volley after volley. They do what a professional army does and they win the day, you know, as far as Lexington's concerned. And they march onward.

At that point, they break this whole force up into parties and they go off looking for all these things they came looking for, the stores of arms and who they're trying to arrest and so forth. And so this... broken-up force marches onward to Concord. They're going to win, obviously. There's a lot more of them than the militia.

When the British forces march on Concord, they find the American militia set up at the North Bridge, the famous North Bridge. And it is this point that the shot heard round the world is fired. At least according to the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who coined the phrase in 1837. And that is to say, everything before this might have been a skirmish and who knows who fired on who.

And it really was kind of the British doing what the British do. And they weren't really looking for a battle. They were going out there to find something. Now it's a battle. The militia have dug in, they're ready, they're positioned for their arrival, and they take a great toll on those forces.

Enough so that the British, who have succeeded in what they came to do, those parties have gone out and found the cannon, they found the powder, they have done what this patrol was meant to do. They turn around and start marching back to Boston. That's where everything turns in the Americans' favor. This is where it becomes a so-called victory, which it really wasn't until this point.

During the course of that retreat, which takes a long time to get back to Boston, the American militia just pick them off. They start shooting from the trees and moving around this very organized bunch of British troops. And this is where the real toll is taken on those troops. I mean, there's a lot of casualties at that point.

Yeah, it's a metaphor. You know, yes, a shot was fired. We can say that. But it was really the idea that finally what had been building up for really 100 years was shaping up into an actual war.

And at that point, you know, the mythology is told in such a way that you really have the beginning of what becomes an enormous change in the world, in the British Empire at first, and then the emergence of an American nation. So you have to, in the storytelling of that process, you have to find the beginning. And that shot is the beginning. It wasn't physically one.

I mean, yes, there was a shot fired, but it was really the idea of this whole rebalancing of the universe as far as these people were concerned. Yeah. The world was upside down. That's the way they say it.

They won. I mean, this is important to take away from this. There were a lot more casualties as a result of that retreat on the British side than the Americans. The estimated casualties of this entire event, I don't mean just Lexington, just Concord, or the retreat, the whole thing, is that there were some 393 casualties in total. On the American side, that's 93. On the British, 300 casualties.

Put yourself in that time period. 300 people in the town of Boston, 300 British soldiers have died as a result of what was supposed to be a fairly normal patrol drill. That blows out of the water anything that had happened before at this point. All the arguments, all the massacre or whatever you want to call these events that had happened in Boston to that point, forget about it.

Lexington and Concord really starts the whole thing off.

It's a dam breaking, to mix our metaphors. And what's behind that dam is not just the animosities that have been growing and the resentments and the hurt that has happened with these so-called, you know, these formerly British colonists are feeling betrayed by their mother country and, frankly, vice versa. But it's also the emergence of new ideas politically, socially.

Philosophically, we're in the age of enlightenment. All of this is behind that dam, as I say. And once those shots are fired, that shot fired, you end up with all of that pouring forth. And that becomes Thomas Paine writing Common Sense, the pamphlet that really talks about freedom and liberty.

And it becomes all these different ideas being talked about, which find their way into the Declaration of Independence. It's really an extraordinary tip of an iceberg of what much of which has been happening in Europe in those days and has found its way over to America and that certain thinkers and philosophers have really put into words and published words about them.

I would agree with you, except for the fact that it's very surprising when you look into how much organization had been done to this point. The Continental Congress had met the previous summer. It would meet again very soon. And there was a lot of thinking being done already about this becoming a revolution.

And so those militiamen in Boston, remember, all of this is happening up in New England at this point. The revolution is going to spread south from this, you know, after Boston. And so these guys have been in the heat of not only battle, but also of thinking about this for a long time. Some of those guys are not, you know, older than 20s and 30s.

So imagine their entire lifetimes, their adulthoods have been, you know, amidst this thinking. And these are revolutionaries. You know, you can think about Cuba and all kinds of places around the world where there have been revolutions. And these young people who are part of that, that's the Sam Adams. That's the John Hancocks. Those guys are in the midst of it all.

Every American boy, I mean, just speaking for myself, thinks of being Paul Revere at that moment, that magical moment when that real thing happened, which is what's so cool about it. I've stood in that tower in North Boston and imagined what that looked like and what a dramatic moment that would be. We know they're coming.

The intelligence has told us, but how are they coming and what's going to happen? And that guy... You know, this silversmith from Boston gets on his horse and starts charging in the night, knowing that he has the secret information that's going to tip the balance. And he begins to get these guys organized. I mean, it's so dramatic and largely true.

I mean, of course, all of this has been mythologized over time. But that's the moment, the tipping point. That's why the great poem is written. You know, that's why it's such a famous moment, because everybody can imagine how dramatic that would have felt.

I think so. I think it's really important, if I may say, a personal note about this. You know, when you're my age and I was raised in the 60s and 70s, we were taught a very, very distilled version of this, of these events. And so we carry forth that kind of simplistic idea of what happened.

One of the great gratifications of my life, and largely because of doing American History Hit, is immersing myself in the more subtle factors of what created this revolution. And when you do, when you understand it on a deeper level, you end up with a greater appreciation of what created this country.

It really was a bunch of ideas that really were new and interesting and, you know, weren't original. They were happening all over the world at the time. But they really found an incredible platform here in this in this conflict. And really, the modern world, as we know it, is a direct result of so much that got fought over in those days.

There you go. Thank you for the plug. I will say I can't wait to play this Assassin's Creed game. It might be the first time I ever play a video game, but I'm going to do it because now I've talked about it. Who needs a reenactment when you can do it in your own living room?

Likewise. I hope your listeners will go looking for their own information. Hello, folks. Thanks for listening to American History Hit. Each week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of great content like mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode.

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I'm really glad to be here. Nice to talk to you. Yeah, it's great. I don't think we've ever talked before. Have we done? We have not talked, Matt. They keep us all apart. We podcast hosts. But this is one of my favorite subjects. I am, like all Americans, schooled in the very basics of the fundamentals of the American Revolution. And we have a 250th anniversary coming up in 2026.

So we're all scurrying and scrambling to understand the subject better.

Well, eventually 13. And at the time of the Lexington and Concord battles, that's indeed how many there are. They all have their own relationships with the mother country. And that was really the point when they were created. You know, you have all of the colonies of New England, the states of what become the states of New England, which are New Hampshire, not Vermont.

Stay tuned as Matt and I explore how these quiet rural villages outside of Boston suddenly became the unlikely setting for the famous shots heard round the world as history was about to change forever. Hope you enjoy. Music

Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York. That's kind of New England at the time. And remember, New England was, I mean, New York was originally Dutch. And so all this has been cobbled together over the past, you know, century, the 1600s and so forth. The Mid-Atlantic are different. You've got the Pennsylvania, which is really Quaker, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New

down to Virginia and all the way down to Georgia. Each one of these colonies is set up, you know, kind of autonomously to have its own relationship with the mother country. New England's different. And that's a really fundamental part of this to talk about. New England is really its own world because it has its own relationship based on very different values than otherwise.

Remember, this is the Puritan colony. This comes, the pilgrims come in 1620. And over the course of the 1600s, a lot of what is the general English policy towards all colonies especially affects New England. It is a very autonomous culture, certainly based on its religious values and all the governance that comes from that, very strict.

But it's also a different kind of mercantile relationship than the other colonies have, all the way down into the Caribbean, which are much more plantation-driven, much more lucrative to England. New England is a much more about the shipping and the export business coming back and forth. It's the closest one to England. And so it has its own sort of relationship.

And until 1763, that's a very, very autonomous one. And and that's kind of where we have the tipping point that leads to Lexington Concord.

So what we're talking about when we're leading up to the revolution is a sort of continuum towards tyranny. That's how the colonists see it, because as far as they were concerned, they were English citizens who were running their own world over here in the colonies and for that matter elsewhere in other parts of the world as well. But especially in New England, they felt very much on their own.

And so they were trusted. The term was salutary neglect, which was said in 1775 by Edmund Burke. This was a sense that the kingdom of England trusted its colonies to work out things on their own. All that changes with the Seven Years' War, the French and Indian War. Once that war takes place and a huge amount of debt is suddenly saddled by the monarchy, they need to pay this off.

And the colonies, especially New England, especially the American colonies, are the source of that income. That's what really changes things. The other aspect of that period is that the king who was in charge for all those previous years, King George II, dies in 1760. And a new king, George III, who we will be burning in effigy very soon. takes over. He's the grandson of George II.

And that king has a different idea. He needs to shape things up and pay for the debts that were incurred protecting, as he sees it, these colonists.

The French and Indian War, from the American perspective, has everything to do with setting up the circumstances of taxation without representation and all the changes in laws that start to create this, what we view as a tyrannical regime overseeing our lives when previously we hadn't had that.

Well, by the time of Lexington and Concord, you're talking about the First Continental Congress, which has met in 1774 in Philadelphia at Carpenters Hall. That's the result of a whole increasing communication between the colonies that they previously...

to all of these acts of parliament and all this tension hadn't really had, they had had communications, but they really were far apart in those days and didn't really have the ability. It's the emergencies caused by these new acts of parliament in the 17, you know, fifties and sixties that leading up to the seventies that create this need for the, for, uh, for these colonies to communicate.

They're called the Committee of Correspondence, Committees of Correspondence. Samuel Adams, figures like him, are everything to do with sort of tying up these colonies. Another figure who starts to become very important is Paul Revere, who we will talk about later. He and his like are all about communicating between these different governing bodies in these different colonies.

So as I say, over time, they end up creating finally a Congress that represents all of them, the Continental Congress.

Well, today we talk about Lexington and Concord as suburbs of Boston. They very much are. I mean, people drive in and out of town. It's that close. Of course, in those days they were, you know, they were distant because of the Charles River and Boston Harbor and then a good horse's ride from there. But it can be done in the nighttime, which is what

you know, we find out with Paul Revere and William Dawes. It's not that far away. They're directly west. The first one you'll hit is Lexington, and then the second one you'll hit is Concord. But they're very much like all those small communities outside of Boston. These are, you know, agricultural villages. In England, it's the same way. You have all these farming villages, and they all

sort of service themselves to a market economy, which is happening in the market town. The same thing is true here, where Boston is the centerpiece of all of these different settlements. It's more extensive than you would think. And that's important for people who don't understand early America or the colonies in those days. These villages were way out there.

When you hear about the Salem witch trials and so forth, they're way up there in the north. And it's remarkable huge distances between these things in those days. Nowadays, you can do it in a half an hour.

Well, these were nice places. I mean, of course, they were small places because everything's small in those days. But you have these well-built houses by this time. The merchants who have been working and lawyers and all those sorts of people are living in nice houses on the main street. But that's kind of it. And then beyond that, you have farmland.

I've been inside these houses and explored inside of them for other shows that I've done. And they're wonderful. Well-built two-story houses, House of Seven Gables, these kinds of famous houses that people have heard of in this area are all of that kind of early American style.

I guess for the purposes of the game, you'd want to understand that there's a main drag, you know, one street going through that town and then maybe small alleyways off of that or small little roads off of that. But everything's very, very rural otherwise.

I'm smiling because this is the point where every American either gets on the train or not. There is a tremendous amount of history that leads up to this moment. When we go to school as elementary school students, we learn that taxation without representation led to a The shot heard round the world and the war began and we won and we were a country. That's kind of how it goes for us.

And that's almost understandable given the fact that when you get into it, the history is very complex, very interesting, but very complex. And it's really 150 years that press down on this moment in 1775 where when these forces meet each other on a bridge in Lexington. I remember when I was a kid, my dad was a historian and he took me all over the Eastern seaboard.

And one of the big ones, of course, was to go to Lexington and you stand on this rebuilt, built bridge there. In the middle of the battlefield where it all happened. And you can't really picture it. It's so small and so sort of minor. And in my case, my father instructed me, well, this is guerrilla tactics. You know, the militia are gathering here.

The Redcoats are coming in their ranked files and they're walking up this way and we have the battle. But in fact, that is very much a skirmish. certainly the one in Lexington, and then again in Concord, where really this action takes place is in the retreat. So that 150 years must be considered, but it gets into a very long conversation.

What you're asking me about is why here, why now, what's happening in Lexington? Well, that really dates back to 1774, September of 1774, what is called the Powder Alarm. Now, at this point, as I've said, a lot is going on that has led to great tensions and friction between England and this colony. The upshot of that is that through these committees of correspondence, militias have been gathered.

It was a law to have a militia, by the way, an English law. Because it dates back to the French and Indian War. All these communities had to gather. It was kind of like having a reserve for the English army, for the British army, for them to call upon when the time was needed.

So that idea of organizing into a militia, which eventually in New England becomes the Minutemen, is already a foundation laid. So it's not a far cry for someone to call out and say, hey, we gotta get together. Let's get your guns, get your ammunition, let's do this. That's a pretty ordinary thing. They've drilled, they've worked this system. They know how to call the alarm and all that stuff.

They have both houses and the White House Nach der 52-Elektion, es verändert sich nach der 54-Elektion. Aber das ist ein sehr wichtiger Punkt, dass das beginnt, dieses Ding, das wir wirklich noch Teil davon sind, was Teil 2 des 20. Jahrhunderts ist, das in den 21. Jahrhundert gespült wurde. Deshalb ist es wichtig, Nixon zu verstehen.

Yeah, right. So he's chosen as Eisenhowers vice presidential candidate. In those days it was less of a side by side thing as it is today. You know, it wasn't really a reflection of the president. It was just this guy that they needed. And nonetheless, he becomes a little drama within that campaign because of a slush fund. They called it a slush fund.

Because of this account that was used for expenses, he suddenly has to defend himself and thus maintain his candidacy. And this is the famous Checkers speech, which people may or may not have heard of. It's an early moment of television politics. It's quite dramatic, in my opinion.

He sits down in his living room, maybe it was a set, I don't know, but his living room with his wife, Pat, and his dog named Checkers. And he proves himself quite adept at using television politically and persuasively. Can you describe what happened there?

The whole country goes, aww, he's not so bad.

Er arbeitet ehrfurchtbar unter Eich. Er wird als der erste moderne US-Vizepräsident bekannt. Er ist viel aktiver als all die, die vor ihm kamen. Aber vor allem wird er der Präsidenten-Ambassadeure im Ausland. Er ist sehr involviert mit freien Dignitaren und besucht freie Länder, insbesondere Saigon und sehr wichtige Orte auf dem Weg.

Natürlich ist der große Teil, er hat den Kitchendebat mit Khrushchev. Das ist im zweiten Termin der Eisenhower-Administration. Tell me how his vice presidency affected his larger career. What did he learn as a VP?

Sure. He is an internationalist. He is a globalist by today's definition. Very much so. He believes in our role and our place because he was a big Marshall Plan guy. He voted for it, just like everybody else did in those days. He saw the responsibility of the United States post-World War II as being, you know, straightening things out.

And we were going to have to thrust ourselves onto that world stage to do it.

But you said the key point, fighting communism. It wasn't a good, you know, he wouldn't want to sidle up with people until he does. That's what's going to be weird about it. He's going to sit down and have tea with Mao and it's going to be weird in 1972. But anyway, backing up. So he runs against Kennedy in 1960. This is a good moment to discuss his psychology. Haha. How it has evolved.

Willkommen zurück zu unserer Präsidenten-Serie, als wir heute Nummer 37 erreichen, Richard Milhouse Nixon aus Kalifornien, der zweimal in der Office gewählt wurde, von 1969 bis 1974, als er infamöserweise verabschiedet wurde, den White House an seinen Vizepräsidenten Gerald Ford übergeben hat. These were the late 60s, early 70s. Heady times in America. NASA landing on the moon.

I mentioned the outsider and the grievance as he's refused entry. If there is an icon of this world, it would be John Kennedy. And he's learned that certainly on the floor of the House and in the Senate. This guy is everything that Nixon probably secretly wants. I'm totally projecting, but that's the suspicion, isn't it?

Seine Navy-Erfahrung, Nixons Navy-Erfahrung war sehr administrativ. Er rannte herum, was nichts schlecht zu sagen ist. Er hat einen guten Job gemacht, viel Administration zu machen. running around the South Pacific. Meanwhile, Jack Kennedy becomes a war hero. And not by his own doing. His boat gets sliced in half. They make a movie about the guy.

I mean, he has to save his, you know, we've done a whole piece on this. He has to save his men and all this sort of thing. And that's the kind of comparison that Nixon has to be making in his mind all the way along. How does this guy do it?

Ja, genau. Und sie schließen Ränke auf ihn. Ich meine, das ist der Moment, wenn das Gruppe zu Nixon sagt Nein. Und in den nächsten paar Jahren werden wir ein paar Events durchgehen, die jetzt wirklich den Deal auf sein Gefühl schließen, dass sich das in seinem Leben verändert wird.

If he made it, I mean, this is a very close election, he loses against Kennedy, thanks to other reasons, but he could have very easily been the president in 1960. And you wonder what would have happened at that point for Nixon. It's a counterfactual, we can't go into it, but I mean, it's a remarkable moment of pivot for this guy.

Well, it's only reinforced by the fact that he runs for the governorship of his own state and loses there, you know, to another sort of cabal, the Browns, all of that world. And that's when he makes his famous declaration, you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.

Er sagt, nach diesem Kalifornien-Verlust, November 11, 1962, ich erinnere mich an meine Eltern, die darüber gesprochen haben. Das ist, als die Leute gesagt haben, dieser Kerl ist einfach bitter. Er hat eine ganze dunkle Qualität zu seiner Persönlichkeit, die ein bisschen seltsam ist.

Hippies tuning in and dropping out in Haight-Ashbury. Vietnam and Woodstock and Charles Manson. Draft cards being burned along with women's brassieres as soldiers marched on Kent State University firing real bullets. In New York, the twin towers of the World Trade Center rose up as the city teetered toward financial collapse.

He enters into the wilderness years of his career, 62 to 67-ish, during which time he travels more. He goes to Europe, Asia, Latin America, Middle East. He's got to be playing chess here. This is a fascinating period I don't know much about because it's just not publicly discussed very often what happened to him between 62 and 67.

A big moment is, of course, Goldwater, you know, and the election or the non-election of Barry Goldwater, which had to have been a school unto itself.

Oh, for Goldwater.

Marvin Gaye crooned What's Going On, while Walt Disney conjured a new fantasy land in Florida. And the Supreme Court decided in favor of a woman's right to choose, if only temporarily. This was the age of the movie blockbusters, at once sublime, terrifying and absurd. The Godfather, The Exorcist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And against this boggling backdrop was the Nixon presidency.

But at that point he would be imagining himself going against Lyndon Johnson, who's kind of another Senate buddy, you know. But he would be doing it in the anti-government stance, which is the part of Goldwater that he adhered to, right?

Yes.

He is a chess player. I mean, let's get it straight. Richard Nixon is a very smart man. I mean, really smart guy. And so he can see things other people can't. And he's a chess player at this point in American politics because of all the different movements that are happening here. And I just really want to point out the fact that he sees the importance of the center.

more than, say, today's conservatives do. I mean, you can see such an opposition between the two approaches. Nixon understands that electorally he has to win some of that, it turns out to be the southern vote. He has to grab from the Democrats what they have alienated in his mind. A lot of that, sadly, comes from the Republicans' anti-civil rights stance.

They're going to disaffect that whole crowd.

Strom Thurmond aus Südamerika wird sich zentral in all dem befinden, der ein Demokrat war, switcht zu Republikaner, er ist Teil dieser ganzen Switchover. Und das beginnt wirklich eine Basis für Unterstützung, die bis heute weitergeht. Durch Reagan bis zu Trump. Startet mit Nixon, startet mit Goldwater wirklich.

Und dann nimmt Nixon das Mantel und adoptiert es für sich selbst, was für einen Quaker ironisch ist, muss ich sagen. You know, this guy who has these social justice values that he's raised with suddenly is going to turn against that particular avenue in life politically. I mean, that's how it was seen.

Genau.

So, Nikki, as we approach 68, the election of 68, he's decided to run either privately or publicly. How does he have to reshape himself? It's called the new Nixon, isn't it?

Those of us alive at the time have very personal feelings about the man, given the length and breadth of his very public career. The arms jutted up in victory, his consternation under duress, the famously sweaty upper lip. His love of country, his sense of duty was so clear, yet at the same time it seemed obscured by behavior that was grandiose and sometimes paranoid.

Yeah, there had obviously been many third-party candidates in the past in American politics, obviously, but this was a new and very specific challenge to the Republicans, wasn't it?

Well, he has the advantage also. He was the former Vice President. Ike loved him. It's all good. You know, he definitely appeals to the wider American spectrum. So he frames his campaign, as he said, on law and order in a society which was coping with a lot of unrest, you know, through certainly into 68.

And as he's campaigning, things are happening that are only reinforcing the fact for many people that things need to calm down. We need to get a handle on this. He also is starting to shape his message about Vietnam, which will become Peace with Honor later on in the peace talks. But his idea is, I can get you out of this war and we're still going to have our reputation intact.

who were in their second and third presidential campaigns or voting at that point. It's a very close election. He wins over LBJ's Vice President, Hubert Humphrey. Wallace plays a big factor, as we heard. I mean, it's a definite electoral win, but it's a very close election in the polls. Which brings us to his presidency.

Richard Nixon ist wirklich wichtig, nicht nur politisch, sondern psychologisch.

Who was Richard Nixon is a question we'll attempt to answer today with Professor Nicole Hemmer, political historian at Vanderbilt University, host of the This Day podcast, whose latest book is Partisans, the conservative revolutionaries who remade American politics in the 1990s. Greetings, Nikki. Welcome to American History Hit.

Boy, is that going to play a big factor in the early 1970s. But there's a lot before that, certainly in the 60s, and there's a lot about his presidency that's really important and very inclusive of lots of people that surprise a lot of people, including the creation of the EPA. We'll talk about all of that in our next episode about the presidency and the fall of Richard Nixon.

Professor Nicole Hemmer ist politische Historikerin an der Vanderbilt University und Host. Ich empfehle es hartlich. Der This Day Podcast. Ihr neuestes Buch ist Partisans, die konservative Revolutionäre, die die amerikanische Politik in den 90er-Jahren wiederentwickelt haben. Und wir werden von ihr viel mehr hören in der nächsten Zukunft. Vielen Dank, Nikki. Es war ein Vergnügen.

Musik

I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Hit. Please remember to like, review and subscribe. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you next time.

So you have gone with the flow here. We're going to do this Nixon podcast in two parts. We're doing the rise and then his presidency and the fall in a separate episode. My call entirely because there's so much about Nixon that is so important and relevant to today's politics, certainly in the presidency. Is that true?

Genau. Sie sprechen über den amerikanischen Century. Es war viel von Richard Nixon, der amerikanische Century war. Das ist richtig. Er war groß. Er war eine definierende Figur, sowohl für diejenigen, die ihn unterstützten, als auch für diejenigen, die ihn opposierten, was der Fall ist mit allen großen Figuren der Geschichte.

In Los Angeles one day, I used to live out there, I went to the Nixon homestead in Yorba Linda, drove myself down there to come to terms with the guy, because I grew up with this man. I remember walking through that impossibly modest kit house that he was born in. I mean, it's tiny, a postage stamp house. And then you come out and there's the plot with Pat Nixon right there.

Es ist der 27. April 1994 in Yorba Linda, Kalifornien, tief in Orange County. Präsident Bill Clinton spricht an den Memorial Services seines Voraussetzungsvorsitzenden, dem alten Präsidenten Richard M. Nixon. Er beantwortet eine begründete Begründung von Dignitarien, verehrten Gästen und Medien, außerhalb der modesten Heimat, in der Richard Nixon und seine Brüder geboren wurden.

And the helicopter that carried him out of the White House at the end. It's hard to conceive that such a life and career could possibly sprout from such simple roots.

He grows up in a, we say Yorba Linda, in those days, this is Orange County for a reason. This is citrus country in those days. His dad was a lemon farmer to start with, ends up owning a gas station and all of that. But This was very much a rural countryside place that he grows up in and how he identifies himself. Whittier is right nearby. It's the Quaker College down the road.

He goes there and then he goes on to Duke and that's when his life starts to grow up. But it's really important to register the fact that he comes from this modesty.

We're going to touch on this many times, so we might as well get it right out of the way. There's this moment in his life at various stages when he feels excluded from things. That's a theme. He wants in to an inner circle, but he's outside of it.

And that's why I make the point of saying he's in this rural countryside looking east to the northeast intelligentsia, you know, which is going to come forward in the relationships with the press. with the Kennedys, all of these major, major moments in his career will have something to do with this theme of trying to get into this group that he's outside of.

It's in the fraternity world of Whittier, which is weird because it's a Quaker college, they don't usually have fraternities, but he couldn't get into the one he wanted to, so he goes and creates his own.

I know, exactly. This is the irony. When we get to the end of these two episodes, I promise you, you'll say, how would a guy with that resume feel any sense of bitterness or exclusion for that matter? He did everything he wanted to do.

He, like so many of his age, serves in the U.S. Navy, or in World War II, in his case the U.S. Navy, returns home and he enters politics because a local businessman had recognized him. He'd gone to Duke and got his law degree. He was an up-and-coming kid in the area. People knew him as, you know, one of the smart guys. He is recommended to run for the U.S. House of Representatives.

1946, he gets in, kicks out the Democrat, which is interesting. Sort of the end of that FDR period in Orange County, for sure. Not even two terms in the House before he's elected senator from California in 1950. And then it's two years before he's the vice presidential pick for Eisenhower. I mean, this is a rocket ship the guy's on. He's the J.D. Vance of the times.

A small, white, wooden kidhouse, ordered by mail from a catalog, built by his father, who assembled it piece by piece on their lemon farm. One can imagine the scene. Richard Nixon as a young boy, his face gazing out of the tiny window of the attic loft bedroom he shared with his brothers, now a short distance from where his casket rests today, draped with an American flag.

Drill down a bit with this whole period of time, because this is pre McCarthy. Nixon is Cold War 1.0, you know, versus McCarthy, who comes along later on and kind of picks that, takes the baton in a way. How did he become such a fervent anti-communist? What triggered all that off?

I guess my question is that he is so, you know, when you look back on Nixon, so opportunistic. He so understands the lay of the land. He so sniffs these things out. That I always wondered if he saw this as a way of finding a fast track with the Republican Party. He saw this whole developing wave coming.

And I always wondered if there was one person that he, a relationship that was his mentor in all of this.

Yeah, remember, this all happens in the first term of his, you know, he doesn't even serve his full second term. In his first term at the House of Representatives, he becomes quite famous. And this is without the advantage of television news and all that sort of thing. He's just coming through the papers this way as a big voice against communism. And he really shoves himself out there.

Bezüglich der Beratungen, die du erwähnt hast, der Alger-Hiss-Beratung. Alger-Hiss war einer dieser Intelligenzen, einer dieser Leute in der Staatsbibliothek, der in der Washington-Kreise war, der existierte als jemand, den Nixon als ein Kabal sah, als Teil eines Kabals. Er hatte diese fragwürdigen Aspekte zu seinem Resümee, sicher. Aber war er tatsächlich ein Kommunist?

Clinton, die Haus, der Kaskett, alle verkleidet von einem mächtigen Ochtree, der sich an die enormen Reise des Jungen im Fenster erinnert. Was würde Richard Nixon in diesen vielen Jahren passieren, als die Leber auf diesem Tiefen geflogen und geflogen und wieder geflogen?

Yeah, a weird guy. Whitaker Chambers was a spooky man in many ways.

Right. And as you mentioned before, there are these very scandalous moments, the most famous of which is the pumpkin papers where he hid this microfilm, right? It was something that was kept in a pumpkin in a patch so no one could find it, but he outs it and it's a big deal. There's a very famous Nixon quote regarding the Hiss case, which has echoes into the future.

If you're going to cover up, he says, you're going to get caught. And if you lie, you're going to be guilty of perjury. Basically, that's the whole story of the Hiss case. It's not the issue that will harm you. It's the cover up that will be damaging, which is so much the case with Nixon's career that things resonate forward, don't they?

Die vielen Saisonen, als er alt wurde, dann in der Krieg, in der Kampagne für den Kongress, in die Welt geflogen und dann in die höchste Office in der Welt geraten, nur um in Schmerzen zu fallen. What do we make of the man that boy became, now that he's gone? Who was, after all, the real Richard Nixon? Hallo alle, ich bin Don Wildman und ihr hört sich zu American History Hit an.

I'm going to keep repeating this throughout this conversation. Nixon is so much a part of bigger themes that we are still experiencing today. He is part of the famous resurgence of conservatives in the 1950s. After decades of FDR, New Dealism has been in charge through the war and all the rest of it. Now, in the 1952 election, famously, the conservatives come forward.

I'll be back with more American History after this short break.

The dynamic plays out quite interestingly at Tehran, because they end up actually as housemates, don't they? I don't mean that in the casual sense, of course, but rather than staying elsewhere at the U.S. Embassy and so forth, they share a domicile during this period. I guess that would have been a practical matter as well, because you've got a man with polio.

FDR is dealing with his condition all the way, and so it's difficult for him to move around.

Unglaublich. Wie lange dauert die Konferenz?

Und auf der Agenda ist was genau?

And this has all of course been pre-planned. They know these decisions are in the wind. They've got to do this now.

These iconic meetings, you know, we know from great photographs and so forth and these sort of scattered moments, but these are long days. Is there a record of these men sitting and casually talking and having drinks and so forth? It must have happened, especially if they're living together.

One of the tipping points in all of this, in the big picture and more contained here, is the fate of Poland. And one of the important things to consider, the difference between FDR's pressures and Stalin's, is he's dealing with a lot of Polish Americans back home, gigantic amounts in Chicago and so forth.

This has to be a pressure on him as he's realizing, yikes, you know, this guy wants Poland for sure, he's already in it. And how are we going to deal with this down the road?

Yeah. So that's November 1943, the Tehran Conference in Iran. The next time they meet is Yalta, February 1945, quite a different set of circumstances. It's clear the Allies are marching towards victory. It's a ways off yet still, but a D-Day was a big success. All these things have happened now. So they are now basically figuring out the aftermath.

These big three are meeting again, but the men are in totally different conditions, especially FDR.

Punkt genommen, ja, genau.

Ja.

Ja.

They're meeting on his terms. I mean, again, they're close to Russia. They're in Russia at this point.

Yeah, in the Soviet Union. Yalta is on the Crimea Peninsula. Tell me about how they're dealing with Poland. That is the critical issue.

How much of the discussion is about the United Nations? Because that's a new idea to Stalin at this point? Or does he know this is happening?

Stalin wants to stay neutral on Japan or is he willing to wage war against them?

It will play out in a very interesting way because, of course, Truman doesn't want them to come into Japan at that point, at the end of the war. And that's all kinds of theories about the atomic bomb and so forth, you know. It's incredible. The pathos of this whole thing, of course, looming over all of this is a couple of months from now, FDR will die of a stroke.

It's an incredible timing of all of this stuff. It doesn't get any more dramatic than all of these events. You do wonder about the counterfactual of whether, if he had not died, how the world would have looked, you know, based on the relationship between these two men.

A lot of what happens in the 50s has a result of this lack of a baton being passed. This whole strange tension between these two presidents and one having to take over in a completely naive way. I mean, relatively speaking, it's amazing. There's nothing about the atomic bomb. One of those tipping points of American history that get ignored a lot because we just celebrate FDR so much.

for the grandeur of his four terms, but it was three terms in a week or a month anyway. Professor Phillips O'Brien teaches history and strategic studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland. I am jealous. He's the author of The Strategists, Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler, How the War Made Them and How They Made War. Fascinating. Er ist ein well-known figure on social media.

Where can we find you in that regard? There's a big substack with you, right?

Hello, this is American History Hit. Glad you're with us. I'm Don Wildman. Nach einer Serie von internen Machtschrecken und dann der große Verlust der Mitte der 1930er-Jahre, hat Stalin mit absoluter Macht über sowjetische Verhältnisse, domestische und internationale, erfolgt.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Hit. Please remember to like, review and subscribe. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you next time.

Im August 1939 hat er einen Non-Aggression-Treaty mit Deutschland geschlossen, den Molotow-Ribbentrop-Pakt, nicht zehn Tage bevor die Nazis Polen auf September 1, 1939, die Krieg triggerten. Stalin hatte erwartet, dass dieser Vertrag die Sicherheit seines kommunistischen Staates gewährleisten würde, während die Kapitalisten im Westen sich zerstören.

Dies wäre ein strategischer Verlust von titanischen Bedingungen, als Hitler diesen Vertrag 1941 verabschiedete, Operation Barbarossa und Russland invadierte. Suddenly, Stalin would need to join with those capitalists and forge critical relationships with their leaders, including and especially Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States.

This high-stakes alliance and the unlikely relationship between these two leaders is our subject today, in the company of a man who authored the book entitled The Strategists – Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler – How the War Made Them and How They Made War –

A well-known figure on the socials for his commentary on the war in Ukraine, Philipps O'Brien teaches history and strategic studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Philipps, welcome to American History Hit. Nice to have you.

Philipps, when FDR and Stalin first meet, it's November 1943. We're deep in the war in Tehran at this point, the Tehran Conference. Many communications have gone back and forth over the years by this time. And I want to quote one of these messages. I won't date it. This is from FDR to Stalin, and it really captures an interesting tone between them. I hope to talk over many things with you.

We understand each other's problems and, you know, I like to keep discussions informal. No reason for formal agenda. The you know really strikes me. It's a very interesting chemistry that's going on here.

Und das war es. How much would FDR have known about the purges and all the controversy of the 1930s? I mean, it was terrible stuff happened there.

Weihnachtsabend 1943. Franklin Delano Roosevelt saß vor seinem Radio-Mikrofon, bereit, die Nation zu beantworten. Es war ein arduöser Weg, die letzten Monate November und Dezember, in Algerien, Tunesien, Iran, Ägypten, Malta, Sizilien und Senegal zu reisen. Now, with his thinning gray hair neatly groomed, Roosevelt began to recount the pivotal meetings of the past weeks.

And that's the difference. The other thing is, I mean, through these years, the 1930s United States, there's a lot of people who empathize with Russia, who are interested in those kinds of politics, at least socialism, but certainly lots of communists in the United States. All that will play out, of course, over the 20th century.

But that was a big pressure going on internally here that Roosevelt had to recognize and had to sort of account for, right?

Ich meine, das sind Männer, und das geht für, you know, all kinds of ages and eras. These are men who are going to send massive amounts of people to their death. I mean, the people that... Wage Wars have to come to terms with the idea of the practicality of this kind of thing.

So understanding why Stalin would have done what he did in the middle 1930s and to define it for anyone who doesn't understand, these are these enormous show trials. It's a result of the internal power struggles within the Soviet Union, starting with Trotsky and all these guys. Stalin has to win out over these people and he does it in the most extraordinary way.

In 1937, there's very, very famous show trials that And just up to a million and a half people are killed or put into gulags in this time period. Anybody with a spy in Moscow would have known this is happening. So we certainly did. But to take that into account when you're trying to forge a relationship with somebody is a pretty amazing dynamic to go with.

Exactly. Yeah, he's the first American president to do that. I mean, there are four, right, before him. Go down the list. Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. None of those guys recognize the Soviet Union. 1933, FDR does, for all the reasons we're talking about.

Er hat natürlich auch den Riss erkannt. Ich weiß nicht, wie FDR so viel über den Weltkrieg wusste. In diesen Tagen, wir glauben, dass wir viel wissen, und das ist einfach, weil es uns jeden Morgen auf den Telefon rutscht. Ich meine, er hat den Riss des Faschismus verstanden, wie ich glaube, niemand anderes hat es wirklich in Amerika.

In Cairo, he and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had conferred separately with Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Turkish President İsmet İnönü. In Teheran, the pair had sat down with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. For Roosevelt, this marked a momentous occasion. His first face-to-face meeting with the man who held Russia in his iron grip.

At the same time, he is dealing with enormous pressures at home. I mean, the Great Depression is going on. I mean, this is a terrible time in the United States. And yet somehow he has to look beyond this and keep a perspective that we are still a powerful country that is able to provide... Also in 1943 und wir sprechen über die Teheran-Konferenz, die wir in einem Moment definieren werden.

Of course, we have the Pacific War raging at that point, 1941 onward. So all of this has come to pass and is being brought to bear on this meeting that is going to happen between these two men. So let's talk about Tehran. There is going to be another one called Yalta later on. But what happens during this first conference?

Vor diesem Zeitpunkt hat die Vereinigten Staaten Russland durch ein ähnliches Programm unterstützt, das für die UK vor uns in der Kriegspolitik involviert war, das Lend-Lease-Programm. War es das gleiche? Wurden sie die ganze Idee über Russland übertragen?

They were demonstrating that they were serving the Constitution, a number one. That was the top of the list. Yeah, and I find myself sort of smiling, you know, remembering this time. It wasn't smiling at all. I mean, this was hardcore grim events going on. That was real brinkmanship as far as our national politics go and territory no one had been into before.

This was really scary stuff for my parents. I was all of 10 years old at the time, but... It was really hardcore stuff. Interesting sidelight, Gerald Ford and Betty Ford were meant to be the first VP couple to live in the new vice presidential residence, which had been getting made and renovated on the naval base there up until this point where people live now.

But they were not going to live there, it turned out, because it was a week later or something that they were told that this is going to happen. So August 7th, 1974, Richard Nixon announces a famous speech. Watch it on YouTube. Incredible moments. Effective noon tomorrow, he'll step down. How did Ford feel about Nixon resigning?

Did he had he supported his president in standing up to this or was he one of those who was advising him otherwise?

Unfortunately concurrent with a stagnant economy and generally diminished morale, thanks to Vietnam and a public hangover from Nixon and Watergate. All this was the backdrop for the Ford presidency. Ford was a moderate Republican, a respected, long-serving member of the House of Representatives for 12 terms, 24 years.

So let's state this outright. Ford has nothing to do with Watergate, but he's going to find it hard to escape its shadow. That's the problem. Simply because it was hard to believe that there wasn't some kind of deal behind the scenes, that this healer of the nation would also be a partner of a crook. On August 8th, 1974, he is inaugurated and he announces our long national nightmare is over.

Many of us rolled our eyes. No, it's not. It just started. But thank you, Gerald Ford. He has done what he came to do. He's bridging us back to normalcy. That's how he sort of saw himself.

During the previous two years, but he's dealing with disillusionment. He's dealing with hostility, the political and well, the media environment is just a completely new, you know, can of worms after after The Washington Post is breaking all this stuff and it just gets kind of worse and worse. He's the guy who's really sort of standing there going, whoa, whoa, whoa.

This all used to work because we kind of got together, you know, over the Congress. But now the executive branch has just become the star of the show like never. Well, not like never before. It used to be under FDR. It's reemerged as a huge focus of Washington politics that hadn't been in my lifetime at the time. It was really a brand new game.

Ford is most famously, of course, known as the man who replaced Nixon's vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, and then the president himself after Nixon resigned. Thus, Ford becomes the only U.S. president to serve unelected by the American people.

Just wait till the U.S. Supreme Court lets the cameras in because they're bound to do it because that's exactly what happens. All this press and all this attention has tilted these branches against each other in ways the Constitution could never have predicted, of course. One month after he takes office, September 8th, 1974, he makes the fateful decision.

or at least the announcement of the decision, he grants Nixon, quote, full, free and absolute pardon for all offenses. He is motivated to do so, he says, trying to move on from Watergate. Boy, does that backfire.

He is an enigmatic figure in the presidential pantheon, for reasons we'll decipher today with Professor Catherine Brownell of Purdue University, who is the director of the Center for American Political History and Technology, author of the book 24-7 Politics, Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.

Yeah, he's handed a poison chalice, really. I mean, his major problem becomes this image problem that is in this media environment that's new to him and to us. Extremely hostile post-Nixon. I mean, really, Nixon kind of released the hounds as far as the press is concerned. How is it that Ford can't manage that well? Is he just bad at that or has he chosen to close off?

What's his strategy that fails so badly? Because all I remember is Chevy Chase, you know, fumbling with a, you know, rolling a joint on an SNL.

But then you have the tail wagging the dog problem of media becoming its own big mess. You've written about this in your book. I'll plug you, 24-7 Cable. It's an important book because that is really such a huge theme in our society even today. I should point out, I mentioned Chevy Chase. This is the Saturday Night Live for audiences elsewhere who might not understand this.

At the same time as Gerald Ford comes along, this amazing show that's on today, 50 years later, is Saturday Night Live. And the star of that show is Chevy Chase. And Ford was just crosshairs for these guys because he was this nice guy president who was trying to do everything right but doing everything wrong at the same time somehow. A perfect foil, a perfect target for mockery.

Professor Brownell was the guest for our Watergate episode number 139. Invite you to listen to that. And greetings, Katie. Welcome back to American History Hit.

And they make hay with him and do all sorts of things. This is what I mentioned in the beginning. He was characterized as this klutzy guy who was just sort of falling up and down stairs all the time and doing everything wrong. He was none of those things. He was a very, you know, poised individual, but it was the times. And so he was really getting the fray from what Nixon started.

Tell me how they portray him. What does he look like on that show?

There is a fascinating biographical fact from Gerald Ford's earliest youth that I alluded to in the opening. And I just want to state it up front because I think it strikes a chord, a theme that is resonant throughout his entire life. Ford was born... Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska, July 14th, 1913. But his parents separated weeks later and then divorced.

They get a lot of attention and it becomes exactly what Saturday Night Live does for the next 50 years to a lot of presidents. Exactly. This is the story with General Farr. We haven't even talked about him being president. We just talk about him getting to be president, what he does immediately. That's the problem with understanding this particular U.S. president. Let's discuss this.

So he he does pretty good things as president. They don't get a lot of attention historically, but he sets the course for a recovery for the economy. He continues the detente for international relations to move towards what happens under Reagan and the handshakes with Gorbachev later on.

All that begins kind of taking hold with Ford, even the Israeli-Egyptian stuff that happens under Carter later on. Ford has a lot to do with all of that stuff.

Well, this is the emergence of what you mentioned before, this hard right, which becomes Ronald Reagan, really. And they start to undermine his centrist attitudes and policies at this time. And there's some real bad early debate stuff happening in New Hampshire between Reagan and Ford in that in that election. But the damage is done.

And but it's important to recognize that it comes from within his party as much as it comes from the outsider Jimmy Carter calling him out.

His mom and him moved back to Grand Rapids. And very soon afterwards in her life, his mom meets a guy named Gerald R. Ford. who is a very respectable guy with a wonderful painting business. And he gives that name to his newly or soon to be adopted son, Gerald R. Ford. And that's how Ford becomes his name. It's a fascinating thing.

Well, Carter's also running against Nixon. I mean, that's really Nixon is still the Ford Nixon thing. And so it's easier for someone like Carter, who had never served in federal office. He was the governor of Georgia to sort of point the finger and say, you know, we got to clean this place up. It's the old traditional thing to say, you know, I got to come from outside the beltway.

And Carter plays that to the hilt. Ford plays a role. He gaffes a bit. He's, you know, making mistakes in his debates. But they have that first big debate that's on. It sort of harkens back to the Kennedy-Nixon thing, doesn't it?

And it was the League of Women Voters, right? I mean, they were sponsoring the debates. That sounded so good in the ERA days.

And I think it's important only to understand at the outset that Gerald Ford always played a role in accommodating disruption. That's my point. And when that is imprinted early on in life, it sticks with you.

So the classic bio question, what do you make of Gerald Ford's legacy as a president? It's so short lived.

How interesting, how ironic that someone like Gerald Forge should be the one who, as I say, releases those hounds.

Right. And we live in that landscape today. I mean, in both the entertainment and the news aspect of media, it is a whole different world than the one I was born into. Professor Catherine Brownell teaches history at Purdue University, where she's also the director of CAPT, Center for American Political History and Technology on the Purdue campus.

She is author of, as we've mentioned several times, a book, 24-7 Politics, Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. We're going to have you back, Katie, to talk about that. And for anyone curious, please do have a listen to her expertise about Watergate on the American History Hit episode 139 I mentioned.

Go to American History Hit page and hit all episodes and nearly 300 will scroll forth. But listen to hers first. Thank you very much, Katie. Really appreciate it. See you soon.

Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. As you've made it this far, why not like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts? American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.

Right. We'll get to all that in detail, but it's important to understand. I mentioned he is an enigma. People sort of never quite understood who he was because he was always kind of in the background of American politics. But that's kind of where it comes from, this psychology. He had three stepbrothers as a result of that remarriage.

He attended University of Michigan and was a star athlete, big time. Wolverine's MVP two years in a row, 1934 and 35. And this becomes important to me. I don't know why, but... Later on, he is incorrectly identified as a klutz, when in fact, this man was an astonishing footballer who almost went pro with the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions. They were vying for him.

Cut to NBC Studio 8H, where a young Chevy Chase, the breakout star of SNL, launched into his impersonation of President Ford as a klutz, who, if he wasn't falling over or fumbling a glass of water onto himself, was just about to. Real-life President meets exaggerated parody, the Commander-in-Chief deciding, if you can't beat a joke, then join it. Well, for one line at least. Hello, listeners.

He went the path of law instead. He passes the bar in Michigan after he studied law at Yale, then joins the Navy in World War II, sees a lot of action in the South Pacific on an aircraft carrier called the USS Monterey. I just think it's important to understand this guy had a heck of a life early on and was very celebrated, even had a New York City model for a girlfriend.

I mean, it's so contrary to... to the reputation he has later on. He runs for Congress out of Grand Rapids, 1948. He beats the isolationist incumbent, Bartel Jonkman. Give me an idea of this time after World War II. What is the national politics in terms of the Republican Party?

The 1970s weren't all bad news. At least there was usually something decent on TV. And on April 17, 1976, surprised late-night viewers tuned into NBC and saw President Gerald Ford standing in the Oval Office in front of the flag, staring gun barrels straight into the camera, wearing a somewhat glazed expression as he announced, "'Live from New York! It's Saturday night!'

It's so interesting. I mean, I so value this series that we've done because it's given me perspective on the whole 20th century, really. But what happens after Truman, after World War II and his desegregation of the military, et cetera, right up until Brown versus Board of Education under Eisenhower, that whole period is really the engine of such discord, isn't it? It really splits everything.

Both parties, really. And it begins to set you up for Goldwater in 64 and then Nixon later on. And everything that kind of ripples through even to modern day starts at that period.

Nixon is going to drive this thing. And Ford had a very tight relationship with Nixon in the Congress. They were good pals. So it's that that really drives the interest and the Congress, as you say, Carl Albert, in choosing Ford as this replacement for Agnew. Can we talk about that that episode and how it works?

Yeah, there's a big controversy brewing, of course, as if it's important to recognize these are two separate scandals. Agnew's whole corruption scandal really dates back to being governor of Maryland and all that stuff that happened then. It's later that Watergate really bubbles up and becomes what it is. But those are two separate things.

It just feels like they're together because it's the same time period of 72 to 74. In light of those controversies, Nixon also picks Ford because he knows Congress is just going to approve him. Right. I mean, that's it's really important that this just happens quickly.

Great to have you with us. I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit. Today, we progress onward with our President series as we now reach number 38. President Gerald R. Ford of Grand Rapids, Michigan. R is for Rudolph, something central to understanding the boy who became the man. More on that later. Ford's abbreviated presidency lasted from 1974 to 1977.

Right. But I want to underscore that this reputation that he has had has been developing for 20 years. He's always been that guy in between. He's been a very respected member of that inner circle of people. Lots of big committees, I think appropriations he was on or something. There were major committees he was the head of.

Not to mention he's from a major democratic state, which is in Michigan, big union territory, the auto workers and so forth. So He's really right in there in the strategy of that idea. He was frustrated, as I understand, because Nixon's landslide in 72 actually didn't give them the kind of majority that he was expecting would happen, right?

It's still so divided because the Congress is really democratic.

You know, what's interesting is that this is under done under the 25th Amendment. Of course, the articles of the Constitution have originally ideas of the vice president stepping in, but they really changed the Constitution or sharpened it, I guess, with the 25th Amendment in light of the Kennedy assassination. 1967, this happened.

Right. This has not been attended to before. And this sets him up, as I said in the opening, to become the only unelected president in our entire history. So fascinating. From the moment Ford is inaugurated as vice president, December 6th, 1973, hardly approved by his congressional colleagues, as we said, Watergate then continues to unfold over the next year. Nixon won't resign until August 1974.

So that's 10 months after he's been named to vice president. We're going to run into the moment that Nixon gives up the office. He is called secretly on August 1st, 1974, by Alexander Haig, who was Nixon's chief of staff, who tells him to prepare. How does Ford go about this? Give me the whole experience that he's going through at this point.

During these years, Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run was released. Remember that well because I'm from New Jersey. Blockbuster movies, The Godfather Part II, Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It was America's 200th birthday, the bicentennial in 1976.

It's Christmas Day 1921. At a federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, a burst of cheers rises from the inmates. Convict number 9653 is being released just three years into his 10-year sentence. The 64-year-old Eugene V. Debs raises his hat and cane in response to the ovation.

What happens to Florence after he's gone?

We took a pause for election histories this last month with a certain presidential contest hanging in our balance. But today we're back with a tale of our 29th chief executive, President Warren G. Harding of Ohio. In the election of 1920, Harding would be the man to return the American people to normalcy, or so his slogan proclaimed.

All of this speaks to a kind of quality of this man that is an important thing to keep in the background because we're now going to move towards the more serious subjects of politics. But understand that this guy has an extraordinary personality. And I do think it's kind of fair to compare him a bit to Bill Clinton in that regard, where women are such a big part of his life, obviously.

And he proclaims his feelings about this. So it's just an interesting psychological aspect of this man to keep in mind.

Now, this was the 1920s we're talking about. We're coming out of World War I, post-war moment. Return to normalcy is really what Americans want for real. That's not just a campaign slogan. Is he the right man for the times? Is that why he's so popular?

Harding was a pro-business, conservative values Republican who had a winning demeanor and refined good looks that presented well. He was also, by most accounts, very concerned with his own popularity. He liked to be liked.

Yeah, we don't really understand that coming out of World War I, this place was a hotbed of social unrest, really, especially in the labor world, as a result of all of these different contracts being canceled and emerging unions and so forth.

America was really a hotbed of all sorts of problems, really, that were now being voiced quite openly in the press, which was much more widespread in those days. So it might have been the obvious thing for Harding to say, Let me put you back in order here. But it was also a calculated move, wasn't it?

Yeah, it's a zero sum game nowadays. And he was not wanting to play that. This was typical of his political career from before, wasn't it? I mean, let's not forget he was a Ohio state senator, 1904 lieutenant governor in Ohio, 1904 to 1906 U.S. senator from 15 to 21. It's out of that that he runs for president. So he had a political career, lest we just chalk him up as a newspaper man.

But the quality of the man as a manager, which is different than being a senator or a lieutenant governor, you know, this is a different kind of job he steps into. And he very famously, very openly says, I'm out of my depth. You know, he says to a reporter, I believe it is. It made him nervous how to how to operate in this world. I would call him a delegator.

That would be the label I would have to him in terms of how he operates an office. Free hand to the members of the cabinet. And some of these cabinet members, as you explain, are unique. They're into this for their own good. Let's talk about that because that's really what emerges in the end. Importantly, it's after Harding is gone. I mean, this is what's unique about this.

Nonetheless, historians generally view his administration poorly, rife with scandal and corruption, and featuring a loss of public trust that prompted the president to hit the road in a doomed endeavor to try to win back the people's goodwill. But as we learn on every episode on this podcast, about presidents or otherwise, history is never as simple as we may choose to believe.

We're about to talk about an administration that ends prematurely. Warren Harding dies in 1923 before the end of his first term. What makes it most famous are these scandals that happened during his presidency but didn't come out until long afterwards in trials and so forth.

And so the Harding presidency is judged in those terms, which is a very interesting, you know, we said at the top, multidimensional view of this. So let's talk about these scandals. But everyone keep in mind, this never comes out until after he's gone. The Teapot Dome scandal is the headline. When and why and how does this happen?

All right. So he's purveying leases, basically. Albert Fall, Secretary of the Interior. There's a lot of machinations. When you read about it, it's very complicated. There's a lot of little backroom dealings going on. This was not necessarily his purview as the Secretary of Interior. He had to have this sort of taken over into his role. So it shows great intent.

Everything that they kind of track that this man knew what he was doing. And then he's accepting these bribes from two sources for these oil leases and then just collecting on the revenues for a long time. Makes a lot of money doing it, right?

Right. It's a different kind of corruption. It's old fashioned corruption is what it is. It's like, how do I get, you know, take a little money on the side here in order to do something good for the American people? They may see it as such. The Veterans Bureau scandal is a little creepier, in my opinion.

This is involving Charles Forbes, who is the head of a new organization, which is the Veterans Bureau. Again, to put in context, we're at the end of this terrible period where so many American soldiers have come back from World War I, many of them in need of treatment. And there's really not the system to service them at this point. We've never been in a war like this.

And so the Veterans Bureau is created. It eventually becomes the Veterans Administration that we have today. And Charles Forbes is head of that bureau. The bureau's chief counsel is Charles Kramer. And then there's a guy named Charles Hurley who was in construction. There's three Charleses in this story.

There is much about Harding's abbreviated term in the White House that deserves reconsideration, if not revision. Indeed, he was a man beloved by those around him. That much worked out for him, at least. He was mourned by millions when he died in office. Spoiler alert.

And this is all about a complex scheme to inflate costs and then skim profits to the different parties, but in different areas, in hospital construction, in land and in supplies. All of this created these cash streams that were distributed. How does this come out and when does that happen?

Yeah, proactive moves would have been the thing, and he didn't do that. In fact, it's suspected that he effectuated Forbes' escape, didn't he? He made it possible for him to get away.

And importantly, Harding demonstrated and publicly expressed profound and meaningful values that challenged norms and had a real impact on a modernizing American society. So let's understand this complicated man, this president, guided by Professor Jason Roberts. who teaches history at Quincy College in Massachusetts. An expert in U.S.

I'll say. And it's, you know, particularly this subject matter, you know, servicing the war wounded. That's what's going on here. And remember, we're talking about two years, really. This is all happening between 1921 and 23. All of this is contributing to this scandal and corruption. But at the same time, this is where the revisionism comes in.

And I want to point out that there's been a lot of discussion and we're even having it as we started this conversation about about how Harding's presidency was more than just this. He was a strong advocate for racial equality. He appointed Black Americans to federal positions at a very, very sensitive time for this.

I mean, remember, we're coming out of the man who segregated D.C., which was Woodrow Wilson. And suddenly Harding is coming along with an entirely different attitude. He also importantly and strategically promoted women's suffrage. He was the first president who was voted in with the women's vote, right?

Yeah. And, you know, for being a pro-business president, he was also wanting to improve labor rights. He tried to become that president, sort of embrace this new reality in America that you're going to have these unions are really very influential. But all of this is sort of crumbles against all of that scandal and corruption.

Meanwhile, you have a booming economy. And this is a big deal, of course, as we know, even in our old times, we judge presidents, you know, day by day by the economy when it, in fact, is a much bigger picture. But in his case, that really happens. And it goes on for a long time beyond him. He is really the one that unleashes the roaring 20s, isn't he?

politics of the 1920s, he is currently working on the foreign policies of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, as pertains especially to Lenin's Russia. Great stuff. Hello, Jason. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. The rankings typically put Warren Harding at bottom, scathing reviews, worst chief executive in U.S. history, New York Times. But for me, it's not so simple.

Yeah, exactly.

And there's one really interesting episode that stands out for me in terms of, you know, his sort of healing quality. Which was that one of the people he ran against was Eugene Debs, the socialist candidate who was at that time imprisoned for his protest movement. And he was running for president from prison where he got a considerable amount of votes. And he was in prison for a 10 year sentence.

I mean, this was serious stuff back then. And Harding, one of the first things he does really is release Eugene Debs, who then comes to visit him in the White House.

Hmm. That's nice to know. And they petted his dog and everybody was happy. So in the midst of all of this, I mean, again, I keep reminding people it was only a 24 month period of time we're talking about, really, where all this stuff comes out about the teapot dome and. As they say, it was in the papers. The trials and so forth happen after Harding's death.

But he needs to repair his reputation with the people. He wants to get out among them. And so he and his wife take a train trip. Explain the motivation behind this and how they chose to go where they went, which was the Upper Northwest.

When you have that quality as a person, that effect on people, you know it and you understand its power and its influence. And he was wanting to get out and prove to people that he was this real guy that they didn't know but from the papers now. And the papers were filled with all kinds of negatives. You're mentioning something very important, the 1922 election.

Typically, presidents are beaten up in that midterm election. That happened, right? It was a bad election for the Republican Party.

Yeah. So he has to get out and do some hard work trying to to win back things in time for this next election. So as they're taking this train ride, he basically has what's called apoplexy, right?

I mean, there seems to be a sort of tragic tone to his presidency. Do you agree? There's many dimensions to this conversation, aren't there?

Right. In a very sort of peaceful, lovely scene where he's lying in bed and they're reading and suddenly he just goes to sleep is what happens. He didn't have a good heart. We should have mentioned this from the beginning. I mean, he was not a well man in terms of the heart. He had an enlarged heart condition, they called it. Still happens to people. And it comes upon him in this way.

He's only 57 years old when he dies. It's a shame.

Yeah, exactly. It's a layered irony. I mean, a man runs for president based on making everything normal again and ends up, because of his personality and his instincts, making a presidency that's anything but normal. Unless you see scandal and corruption as the norm in politics, and many do. But certainly Warren Harding didn't.

He didn't want to have that kind of legacy, and yet here we are discussing it yet again. That's what gets discussed when you discuss Warren Harding. So in the end, his race to heal the wounds of the nation were not all that successful, except that you had a good 10 years after him. How much of Harding do we see in Calvin Coolidge?

Then he turns, setting off through the prison gates, towards a gaggle of reporters, photographers, and newsreel cameras, and the freedom, he says, to continue a fight for his principles, conviction, and ideals. But before all that can start, he'll need to stop off in Washington, D.C. He's been summoned to the White House.

Yeah, right. Well, attached at the hip, I think, is the key point to make, not to mention Secretary of State Herbert Hoover. I mean, really, out of the Harding presidency, you get his vice president takes over, Calvin Coolidge, and then comes Herbert Hoover, who basically runs us into the Great Depression.

But prior to that, there are 10 fabulous years, the roaring 20s, when America is in the jazz age, and it's quite something to talk about and write plays about and everything else about for the rest of time. It's an extraordinary time and much of it has to do with Warren Harding.

Thank you very much, Jason Roberts, professor of history at Quincy College in Massachusetts, where he focuses on the history of the 1920s, including the presidencies of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Thank you so much, Jason. Nice to meet you.

Thank you for listening to American History Hit. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Thanks so much.

This is one of these conversations, I think, that a podcast like this was made for because there really is a lot of stuff that people don't really understand where there's a lot of headlines as well that sort of make it, you know, filter down through history as the things that happened, and indeed they did.

I mean, this is a White House full of cronyism, cabinet corruption, scandal we will soon discuss, people go to prison. Then there's his personal life, which is a crazy mess. So before we dive in, give me your take on who this man was psychologically.

Yeah, well, he is a newspaper man. That's a big key point in his resume. Before politics comes along, right out of the gate, as a young man, he gets a hold of a newspaper in his hometown, right? The Marion newspaper there. And he begins this career, which becomes quite successful as a newspaper publisher in Ohio.

And he has that natural affinity, of course, as you're saying, psychologically, just he's a glad-handing kind of guy there. But he also has a feeling for the news. And this is a very important aspect of this period of time in America, as media has been for the last 50 years before, pretty much taking hold in this country as a defining element of the culture, never mind politics.

We're doing it already. We're falling into this, which is you start to project onto Harding the psychological analysis because so much of his administration goes counter to how he was perceived and maybe how he really was. But they're undeniable, the facts of his time in office. But so much of it has to do with how he put together his cabinet, isn't it?

Having won 3.5% of the vote in the recent election, Debs, who ran a presidential campaign from his prison cell, has been invited to the Capitol to greet his victorious opponent, a man who has commuted not just Debs' sentence, but those as well of 23 other prisoners convicted under the Sedition Act.

He was so hands off in the way that he staffed his cabinet, his administration, that these people felt very empowered to do whatever they wanted to do.

And some real achievements as well that we'll discuss. Let's circle back to that in a moment, but let's get something out of the way right away. His sex life, which is such a big headline of this man's life. He was married, first of all, for 32 years to Florence Kling, a woman named Florence Kling, made him name.

A woman five years older than him, he married her at 26, remained so until his death 32 years later at the age of 57. So a lifelong marriage, pretty much. Florence dominated the relationship and in many ways called the shots in his career even before he goes into the higher echelons of politics.

Little did she know, Warren had started an affair with her friend, Carrie Fulton Phillips, that would last about 15 years, ending just before the presidency. Tell me about the evidence that came out later, an extraordinary collection of love letters that really illustrated his emotional qualities.

Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. Hopefully we felt these feelings, you know, but he is quite high up on the spectrum. Here's a quote from one of the many letters. Wouldn't you like to get sopping wet out on Superior, not the lake? for the joy of fevered fondling and melting kisses. Wouldn't you like to make the suspected occupant of the next room jealous of the joys?

So begins his journey from prison to the Oval Office to meet a man Debs will later call a kind gentleman with humane impulses. Warren G. Hardy, the 28th President of the United States. The Oval Office Hello there. This is American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman, and thanks for joining us. It has been a while since we've revisited our sequential series on the American presidents.

Oh, I'm just getting embarrassed even reading this. But you get the flavor. You know, he's really out there, very expressive, which might have been his, frankly, his attractiveness to many women who found this guy very emotionally available. And yet, of course, this was all being done behind the scenes. You know, this was 15 years behind his wife's back.

He also had another affair with a woman named Nan Britton, a woman who is 30 years younger than him. This comes after Kerry, and with whom it was rumored that she'd produced a daughter out of wedlock. And in 1927, Britton published a memoir called The President's Daughter, outing the affair and his support of the child.

She claimed the affair had continued scandalously right into the White House, rather previewing another president to come many, many years later. For a long time, people did not believe in this woman, which is so often the case, Nan Britton, and whether she was telling the truth about her child and Warren Harding's paternity of that. How did that all resolve itself?

Right. But that's the blood oath of those guys. You know, that's an old story. It just astonishes me that anyone could manage to do that. You know, you're in the job, especially in his case, because he's so insecure about the job. Here you are trying to figure out how to do this amazingly important job while at the same time managing these love affairs.

It's just incredible that these people have the capacity to do this.

We have mentioned, of course, Florence Harding, a complicated person of her own in her own right. But how did she feel about the was there any proof of how she felt about these affairs?

Hello everybody, I'm Don Wildman. Welcome back to American History Hit. Thanks for listening. Today we are in the realm of the counterfactual, asking the burning question, what if President John Kennedy had lived? What if Dallas never happened? What if those shots had missed? Of all the forks in the road that appear on that fateful day, one of the big questions seems to be this.

Negotiating with whom?

JFK trifft Khrushchev. Ich war überrascht und musste mich daran erinnern. 1961 in Wien. Was passiert in dieser Konferenz?

Summer of 1963. Between 61 and 63, their advisors have been sent in. There is a beginning of an American presence there. The war is not going well. There's been a worldwide condemnation based on very famously these monks who've been self-immolating in the streets there. Those pictures were horrifying.

A lot of protest has been going on about what is happening here as the United States inflicts itself on this land. Kennedy comes up with a withdrawal plan or not?

Would Kennedy have started a war in Vietnam? Many people argue this point, questioning whether he would have or would have not. But we have an excellent guest today to discuss this interesting question in the person of Frederick Logevall, historian at Harvard, a leading authority on JFK and the Vietnam War,

November 1963 ist natürlich der kritische Moment. Wir erinnern uns daran, als die Verurteilung stattfand, aber etwas anderes passierte dort, eine andere Verurteilung in Südvietnam. Der Leiter wurde getötet. Wie viel, ich meine, jetzt beginnst du, in die Konspirationstheorie zu schweigen.

It seems pretty incredible that these two major events of two world leaders being killed in the same month are not related in some way. That's where you can take off. So let's discuss first of all, what is that assassination, the real facts of it.

His 2013 book, Embers of War, The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, won the Pulitzer Prize. Wow. He is currently working on a three-volume biography of JFK. The first volume, JFK, Coming of Age in the American Century, published in 2020. Volume 2 is out next year. Dr. Logevall is a former guest on American History Hit back in 2023. And here back again.

Es macht dich schmerzen, es tut es wirklich. Es ist so seltsam und Ironie ist das schwächste Wort überhaupt, aber es ist eine unglaubliche Reihe von Events. So now we move into this counterfactual land. As you say, three weeks later, JFK himself is killed.

There are many, as I mentioned at the top of the show, who draw a direct link between his position and decisions about Vietnam, where it's all heading. und seines Tötens. Woher denken Sie, dass JFK an der Frage war, ob er die Kriegskrise an dieser Stelle auslösen kann, genau als er gestorben ist?

That quote is from an interview with Walter Cronkite, as I understand it, which is three months earlier in September 63. He says, actually, in the final analysis, it is their war. If we withdrew, they are the ones who have to win it or lose it. But I skipped to the next part of the quote, which is, if we withdrew from Vietnam, the communists would control Vietnam pretty soon.

Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaya would go. I mean, he is as on the fence as the entire nation is. This is the problem for America. As you thrust yourself forward as the superpower we've now become, we're caught in the middle of a lot of stuff. And this is the problem.

Thank you very much for joining us. Oh, I'm pleased to be with you, Don. Counterfactuals, I know, can bother established historians, so thank you for indulging us today.

I think it really kind of boils down to what would happen in 1965, JFK versus LBJ. You know, that's kind of the moment. Would he have gone the way LBJ does, which is to send in more troops or not, is the question. And it really dates back to 64, the election at that point. You know, once he wins the election, he's going to have more political momentum to do what he needs to do.

It'll be a second term, all that.

Ja, das andere, was ich sagen würde, und das ist ein faszinierendes Teil davon, und es gibt gute Beweise dafür, Don.

If listeners are waiting for us to talk about the counterfactual of the assassination, that's not what we're on today. We're talking about the counterfactual of JFK and his outlook on Vietnam. Why do you think JFK is such a good subject for counterfactual? I mean, I'll answer my own question.

A young man still, you know, at that time, still forming opinions, still in a sort of dynamic moment in his life.

Yeah, it's very interesting to imagine that this president, who had been through such a torturous moment with the Cuban Missile Crisis, never mind the Bay of Pigs, as he came into office, sees the futility of all of this. The negotiation is necessary and a relationship with the Soviet Union as opposed to traditional domino theory.

Hindsight is 2020. I mean, we see how it really worked out. Yes, we did develop a, you know, detente under Nixon presidents, you know, who probably learned a lot from how he remembered JFK. All of that happens. We end up with a failure in Vietnam that ends up being a relationship with Vietnam. It's incredibly, we can be very wise looking back at all. Let's talk about JFK himself.

Well, it's very poignant, actually, in the case of JFK, because he was so young. And it's interesting to question what he would have done with the second half of his life, never mind with these critical decisions.

What was the power of Camelot? Had it been realized already? Where would he have gone had he lived onward?

For the purpose of this discussion, which is all about Vietnam, let's walk through a bit of the timeline that many Americans, even our listeners, are unfamiliar with or forget about, which is that the American war in Vietnam was really part two of a conflict that had been going on since really the 40s.

Vielen Dank. Untertitelung. BR 2018 Untertitelung. BR 2018

Untertitelung. BR 2018

Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020

Das beginnt wirklich von 1946 bis 1954, als Frankreich, die kolonisierende Macht in Vietnam war, die Viet Minh kämpfte, lediglich von Ho Chi Minh, für die Kontrolle von Vietnam. Das ist, wo es beginnt. Können Sie uns durch die echten Headlines an diesem Punkt gehen?

Untertitelung. BR 2018 Vielen Dank. Vielen Dank. Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020

Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020 As the film spools forth, the motorcade is seen gliding around the corner, slowly. And the young president, John Kennedy, side by side with his wife in the rear seat of the limousine, bathed in sepia tones, in the last flush of a more hopeful era, smiles and begins to wave. We all know what happened next.

Die Domino-Theorie wurde als der Grund für diesen Stand genannt, den wir dort machen. Ja. Das geht wirklich zurück zu Truman. Vietnam wurde als das Domino gesehen, das fallen würde. Und dann gehen wir nach den Philippinen und so weiter. Und es war wichtig, dass wir unseren Stand hier machen. Faithful, was ist die Unterschiede zwischen Viet Minh und Viet Cong?

That's really interesting. It's very important to sort of see this in three parts, I guess. You have the French War there and then the American sort of in-between-ness from 1960 onward until really 1965, which is when LBJ commits new troops to this thing and everything gets escalated right through the later part of the 60s into the 70s.

Das ist wirklich wichtig zu verstehen, weil dieses Zeitraum, über das wir sprechen werden, das Konterfaktional, das wir vorgestellt haben, wirklich entscheidet, ob wir gehen oder nicht, basierend auf JFKs Ausdruck von Dingen.

So what were JFK's views of this issue in real life? In 1951, he goes to Vietnam, doesn't he?

Was ist der eigentliche Grund für diese Reise? Ich meine, er geht da auf eine Faktenfinding-Mission, glaube ich, oder?

It's pretty extraordinary to think that, especially John Kennedy, a famous war hero from World War II, at this time of supreme American power would have questioned whether or not we could win against a small country like this. How did he find this out? How did he develop this feeling? Were the French failing so badly at that point?

Wir wissen alle, wie sich die Welt an dem Tag verändert hat, wie die Geschichte einen neuen Kurs nach dem anderen und für immer mehr folgte. Aber was, wenn es anders war, an dem tragischen Tag im November 1963? Was, wenn Lee Harvey Oswald verpasst hätte, oder seine Waffe verpasst hätte, oder ein Dutzend andere Möglichkeiten? Was dann? Was, wenn JFK nicht gestorben wäre?

There are those, even today, who consider Vietnam not the disaster that everyone thinks of it as. That this was a chess game being played and that we contained them one way or the other from spreading onward. Did JFK subscribe to the idea of this strategy or not?

Ich denke, er hat sich zu einem gewissen Grad darauf eingelassen, zumindest für einen Zeitraum.

Ich bin begeistert, dass er einer gewesen wäre, der die Unterschiede zwischen einer Weltkriegs-Zufriedenheit, in der ein ungewöhnliches Zufrieden ist, und dieser Art von Polizistenaktion, die ich vermute, was die amerikanische Militärin gesehen hat, unsere Rolle in der Welt zu werden, mit einer dominanten Theorie, dass wir in kleineren Kriegen anderswo teilnehmen würden und sie nicht selbst bezeichnen würden.

So is it fair to say he comes home from this more than month long trip with a negative view of the US presence or possible presence in Vietnam?

Well, he's certainly right about the French. And by 1961, when he is in office, he's faced with that fateful decision over whether or not to go to war in a Southeast Asian country. Falling on the brink of communism. Tell us about Laos. You know, we talk about Vietnam as if it's an isolated thing. We have Laos and Cambodia and all the rest of it. But that really played a role in it, didn't it?

Ja, er war erfolgreich. And he comes back and he creates two maps, as I understand, which were sent back to London, but those maps were lost.

But meanwhile, across the Atlantic, many of their compatriots, who set sail from this very stretch of the Thames over the past two decades, struggle to survive. Numbering barely a thousand, they face constant threats. Reprisals from Native Americans whose land they occupy. Disease bred from a lack of infrastructure. And the ever-present risk of starvation. Musik

It's communism pretty much, isn't it? Those maps make it to London or are they just lost into time?

Oh my goodness.

I'm harping on this only because I want to know, did he understand that he was part, where they were was part of this greater continent, aside from that even went further west or not?

Who were these settlers? They were all men at first. How were they chosen and how did they operate when they got there?

Hallo und willkommen, ich bin Don Wildman und das ist American History Hit. In diesem dritten Episode unserer Jamestown-Serie, schauen wir uns näher an, was es eigentlich war, in Jamestown zu leben. Wer war in Kontrolle? Wie haben sie die Frieden in der Forte behalten können? Und wie haben sie den ever-presenten Herausforderung, eine Arbeitsstätte zu kreieren und dann zu behalten, entschlossen?

I mean, it was a reasonable thought that they were going to find it.

Ja, sie fanden Leute, die schon das Gold gefunden haben. Ja. Yeah, yeah. But that, again, there are societies at this point, we're very well aware nowadays, huge societies that have gone up through the middle of the nation, what we call the United States today, the Cahokia Mounds and so forth. I mean, really, they weren't that far away from really big civilizations.

Aber hatten sie das gemacht, was die Spanier gemacht haben, brachten ihre Armeen oder was auch immer. Es war eine andere Geschichte.

Ja, genau. Wie viele Siedler waren da zu Beginn? Ich versuche nur, den Skopel der Dinge zu bekommen.

Shooting his deer and geese.

Um herauszufinden, bin ich bei Willie Ballerson, Direktor von Leben, Geschichte und historischen Verträgen bei Jamestown Rediscovery. Grüße, Willie. Schön, mit dir zu sein. So glücklich, mit dir zu sein. In den vorigen zwei Episoden haben wir die Geburt von Jamestown besprochen und dann haben wir die Beziehungen mit indigenen Bevölkerungen diskutiert.

And that's how they make it through that first winter and even the second one.

It's the third one, the famous starving time, 1609 into 10, right? That's when things are really bad. Before that, I want to understand, when did the women arrive? 1608, as I understand.

My God. Lord Bacon, a member of the Council for Virginia, states about 1620, this is sometime later, but it's an interesting quote, that when a plantation grows to strength, then it is time to plant with women as well as men, that the plantation may spread into generations and not be forever pieced from without.

Was ich interessant finde, ist das, was wir in Episode 2 besprochen haben, was das Anfang der Idee der Pflanzung war. Die Routen des amerikanischen Südens, was direkt in den 19. Jahrhundert und weiter geht, beginnt wirklich mit Jamestown, mit der Idee, diese agro-faktorische Fabrik zu erschaffen.

Wir werden in diesem Episode mehr über die Tag-zu-Tag-Operationen des Places sprechen. Wie haben sie es angefangen? Wie haben sie es gestartet? Und dann, was ist am Ende passiert? This all happens, what I'm talking about, over what period of time exactly?

I mean, it's very natural. It's the straight line you can draw from feudalism, you know, where you have the town and the market and so forth, all the way through to the plantations of the South, differs from what happens in the North dramatically. It's a fascinating dichotomy of American culture, really, and that which eventually leads to all sorts of trouble.

But it all kind of has its seeds in this first iteration in Jamestown. You talked about Christopher Newport going back to England. How much back and forth was going on with the home country?

Wow. What happened to him?

Ja. Aber diese ersten drei Jahre sind die Hölle auf der Erde für diese Menschen. Ich meine, es ist eine furchtbare Erfahrung und führt zu echter Tod und Zerstörung. Und ein Teil davon ist auch die Krankheit allein, großzügig wegen schlechter Wasser, richtig?

And

Oh, I like that better than diarrhea for sure.

Combined with a siege in the winter of 1609 and 10, that leads to the starvation, which of course takes out so many more people. 300 Einwohner wurden in den Fort eingeklemmt, als die Native Amerikaner diese Begegnung gegründet haben. Am Ende des Winters verbrachten sie ihre Schuhe, sie tun alles, was sie können, um zu überleben, insbesondere Kannibalismus.

And the entity that actually founds it is called the Virginia Company of London, which is chartered under King James I, hence Jamestown. But the existence of this particular enterprise lasts, I guess, from 1607 to 1624. Is that fair?

Untertitelung. BR 2018

So let's talk about the founding of this. Who's in charge of the Virginia Company?

Untertitelung. BR 2018

Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020

Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020

BR 2018

Und das ist berühmt, weil wir hier viele Jahre übergehen. Wir sind jetzt 1619. Das ist das berühmte Anfang der amerikanischen Entschlossene. Das sind die 400 Jahre der Entschlossene in Amerika. Das ist das Anfang. I'm just wanting to underscore the fact that this was not necessarily a system at this point, as far as let's procure this. This has just sort of happened.

The original deal was, we'll give you these people for food, as I understand, right? That's correct. This was a barter situation.

And this system, which was a system, had been going on for a hundred years already, down in Central and South America areas in New Spain.

Aber ich sage auch, dass das willkommen war, weil sie diese neue Geldgröße hatten, die sie viel mehr mit einer größeren Arbeitskraft größen konnten. So wurden diese Verschlossenen in die Welt genommen und Teil der Jamestown-Welt geworden.

Sure. I mean, it's the beginning of a horror show that eventually ends up in the American Civil War, 230 years later, and it starts in Jamestown. But circumstances are a little more complicated than it's usually given credit for.

Ja. So many seeds are planted here. You know, the seeds of the Virginia colony soon to come in the timeline, but also the seeds of how this southern way of life will really propagate. And part of that, if you're going to use this feudal system that's been brought over from England, then you need a servant class. You need an enslaved class in this case.

And that becomes a very good way to make a profit down the road. I'm not putting that on Jamestown necessarily, although that is the beginning of things. But you're right, this becomes a very, very convenient way to make a lot of money.

dass das ein Alien-Welt ist, in das sie reisen. Sie müssen also eine komfortable Struktur für sich selbst erstellen, die sich an die alten Tage erinnert. Das erste, was passiert, ist, dass sie diese Orte öffnen, als sie angekommen sind. Ein pivoter Moment, wie man es sich vorstellen kann. War es typisch für all diese Art von Unternehmensveranstaltungen mit Spanisch und Deutsch und so weiter?

In our next episode, we will be covering the downfall of James Downer, or at least the transition, as you corrected me at the beginning, that many people don't understand. So we'll get to that, but I just want to cap this off by explaining where you come from, Willie, and where people can find out more about what we just talked about.

Amazing. That's the rediscovery of Jamestown. That's literally the name, isn't it?

But we have one more episode to do, and we'll cover the last part of the Jamestown story. Thank you, Willie Baldwin. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much, Don. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on.

Hattest du diese Orte bis du angekommen bist?

I'm going to run through the names just because I have them written down. Bartholomew Gosnold, Christopher Newport, John Martin, John Ratcliffe, George Kendall and John Smith, the famous John Smith. This was the initial council, which they would have read about in these orders, right? Correct.