transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
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Speaker 4:
[01:58] At the present moment in world history, nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of a majority and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority, forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid, which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes. The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration. In helping free and independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. And that, of course, was Harry S. Truman, the president of the United States in a speech to Congress on the 12th of March 1947.

Speaker 1:
[03:53] Welcome everyone to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Me, Al Murray and James Holland, your second World War podcast, although as you, the sharpie and amongst you, the notice, that's from 1947. We've gone off piste, Jim.

Speaker 4:
[04:02] What?

Speaker 1:
[04:03] And in this series entitled The Visionaries, we want to look at two great figures of American history, of world history, Harry S. Truman and his predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and look at their thinking and their approach to world politics at the time of the Great World Crisis, the Second World War, in the time leading up to it and the time that follows it and the conclusions they drew and the action they took as a result of those conclusions. And what's interesting about that speech is, I was reminded of something the other day, Jim. I went to see my parents for lunch and they had Daniel Todman's, one of the volume of Daniel Todman's Britain's War on their Coffee Table, right?

Speaker 4:
[04:46] Fine book.

Speaker 1:
[04:46] Fine book. And he starts in 1937 and he ends in 1947 with his twin volumes, right? That's when the war kind of ends, starts and begins actually for Britain. And so that you have come here, come in with 1947, I will allow by the Todman rule because of course we only go to 1945. We've never landed further down the runway than that. But here we are in 1947.

Speaker 4:
[05:16] Well, I just think sometimes it's, what we've done for the first seven years of our existence, is to look at the Second World War within the boundaries of the Second World War. We very, very occasionally crept out of that with Japan and so on. We did look at the war in China, didn't we? Which started obviously in 1937. But I think it's really useful for us and for anyone who's listening to this and listens to the podcast regularly, to see the Second World War in its context, why it came about, some of the conditions which prompted and led to the road to war, and some of the consequences. I think one of the things that really has struck me is that the democracy that we've been enjoying since 1945 here in the West is a progressive form of democracy that was laid out first by Roosevelt and then by Truman, and which has been adopted by the West across the board. Obviously, all of this system which we've been living since 1945 here in the West has slightly been tested in recent years. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, has been talking about the rupturing of the world order and all the rest of it. What was that world order and how did it come about? I think this is a really good moment in our history to look at that and to consider this and to see the Second World War where it sits in that wider context. That's the point of this series. Actually, we'll start with 1947 because let's just set the store what's going on. Why is Truman making that speech on the 12th of March, 1947 and then we're going to go back to actually before the First World War, have a look at the First World War, have a look at the rise of politics and the political system in the United States. What follows the piece of the First World War and how the conditions for what becomes the Second World War come about and I think all of it is all really meaty, juicy stuff. Then we're going to have a look at the war itself and some of the big themes which we've touched on time and time again in the podcast. But let's lay it out in a kind of really clear way. Then we'll look at the immediate aftermath and how we've got to where we are today. So that's the plan. I'm hoping people will find this very interesting to have this kind of broad sweep and have this wider context for where we are now, and where the Second World War sits. That's the point of it, I think. So yes, to go back to 1947, the world is in a bad way despite the peace.

Speaker 1:
[07:45] Well, yes. I mean, everyone apart from the Americans is broke. Europe has been smashed to pieces and needs to be rebuilt. There's colossal political instability, particularly in the countries that have been conquered by the Germans and then liberated. Lots of them are in a sort of vacuum, aren't they? And I think part of the story of the first half of the 20th century is about the British Empire, its rise because it's bigger than it ever was at any point after the First World War. It's rise and then its precipitous decline, its collapse, its fall. Churchill, of course, said, I don't want to be the prime minister preside over the end of the British Empire, but newsflash, he was. And the decline in British power and it being eclipsed by the United States is the story of the first half of the 20th century, isn't it?

Speaker 4:
[08:32] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[08:32] And the consequences of the two world wars, is that change? And what's interesting is that Truman, in his speech, is facing up to that, is facing up to the fact that there is this new mantle of American responsibility, that there can be no more, just Monroe doctrine, just their backyard, the whole world is now their backyard, because of their predominant position as the new global hegemon. And Britain's broke, Turkey's, Greece and Turkey are butting up against each other because they're broke, even more broke than Britain.

Speaker 4:
[09:09] Well, they are, but they've also had this, Greece has had this terrible civil war, it's had the civil war from the moment the Germans leave in 1943.

Speaker 1:
[09:15] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[09:15] And then it's left over to the Italians. But this is going on with sort of, you know, communists and dartes, you know, partisans fighting against government, all the rest of the British come and intervene at the end of 1944 into 1945, and peace is declared and a new government set up, the King's restored and all the rest of it. But it then erupts again. And the problem is, is that financially by the spring of 1947, Greece is about to collapse completely and so is Turkey. And Britain has been trying to sort out Greece and it has been Britain that has been championing Greek efforts to kind of avoid the takeover of the Communists and getting it behind the Iron Curtain. But it can't anymore. It just doesn't have the money. It can't prop it up anymore. So Britain has appealed to the United States to say, you need to help or else Communists is going to spread, the Iron Curtain is going to spread. Churchill's done his Iron Curtain speech the previous year, previous March 1946, and we'll get on to that a little bit later on in the series. But they're about to collapse. And so what do you do? So Truman's saying, well, I think we should bail them out because if we can stabilize them and they'll be prospering, that will actually help us, but it will help stabilize global economics, which will stabilize global politics, which will help America in the long run. And we can afford to do it right now. So this is an investment effectively for future, for future income, for future riches. And, you know, so he makes this incredible speech and lays it out. And the interesting thing is, Truman has actually lost the midterms of previous November, you know, on paper, a lame duck president, but this is still an era of bipartisan politics. And actually the loss of the midterms means that he's, in a way, liberated because he's got nothing to lose anymore. And so he's just able to pursue things that he really believes in. And he really believes in this big order, which as we will see is origins really come from Roosevelt. But he asked lots of rhetorical questions in this speech. He points out that production and incomes are increasing, unemployment is at all time low, modern conveniences are increasingly accessible to ordinary Americans. They had been in the 1920s, the advent of the car and all the rest of it, but now it's fridges, televisions, telephones, central heating, all this stuff. And he goes, but why would you divert focus from domestic prosperity towards two countries that most Americans aren't connected to? And he explains, he says, I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation. So that's the point. That's what he's saying here. He's saying that our own security is absolutely now inextricably linked and bound up with the security of the wider Western world. I think that's really interesting. It takes a big man to recognize that because America is a vast place. It's 50 plus states. I remember traveling across it in 1993, zigzagging around in a Ford Ranger pickup truck. It's very clear once you get past Eastern Seaboard States and before you get to the Sierra Nevada again, that in that huge hinterland of the Midwest and the Deep South and Texas and Mexico and Arizona and Utah and all the rest of it, there is a world which is very adrift from international affairs and global politics and global economics. It's very easy for Americans to just think, well, why should I be worrying about Greece or Turkey or frankly, Iran in today's context? Of course, this is why you need a president who understands this, because he can explain why America's interests are connected to the international world and particularly so in 1947.

Speaker 1:
[13:03] I mean, the other thing, and we're going to lay all this out, is also all the politicians kicking around at the end of the Second World War, are very, very aware of what happened after the First World War, which is that you put your economy into overdrive in order to meet the requirements of a war, and then after the war, there's going to be a bust because effectively you set up a boom and that there will be a bust. As well as getting the sort of peace treaties right in the aftermath right, which is the thing that they're all trying to not repeat the Versailles era.

Speaker 4:
[13:32] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[13:32] They're also trying to not repeat the economic errors of Versailles, because America looks back to itself after the First World War as we'll see, extends financial power around the world, but extremely like conditionally and in a fragile way, almost temperamental way as we'll see. Truman's clearly thinking we're much, much better off making sure we're financially integrated with each other, because when we tried it before and we weren't, it didn't work and it got us into this situation again. Yeah. I think the First World War and the Second World War are separated by the space of time between us and 9-11, right? I don't know about you, but 9-11 sometimes feels like a very long time ago and sometimes feels five minutes ago, right? I'm in the same office. I remember putting the telly on and going, Jesus Christ, what's happening, right? And the view out of my office window is exactly the same. So the view out of Truman, out of the White House window is exactly the same in 1947 as it was 25 years, in the aftermath of the First World War. They're thinking in the same terms, they're thinking, how do we avoid, we don't want rinse repeat and also the American economy, the uplift of the effect of the Second World War, of arming the world, of being the arsenal of democracy, is you do now have mass production and all sorts of consumer items. And what are you going to do with those factories? You don't want those factories going broke, falling into themselves in another bow wave of economic crisis, do you?

Speaker 4:
[15:02] No, you absolutely don't. But a key part of that is exports and your international markets. What Truman understands and what Roosevelt understands, as we shall see, is that financially prosperous democracies lead to politically stable democracies. And when you've got financially prosperous and politically stable democracies, there is a far higher chance of long-term global peace. That is the key to what Roosevelt is trying to do before the war and what Truman is trying to do after the war. And that's what this is.

Speaker 1:
[15:37] And this is why you want to talk about this, isn't it? Yes. This is why you want to talk about it, because we've had the crash in 2008, 2009.

Speaker 4:
[15:46] Well, and the Iraq War before that, which was financially disastrous.

Speaker 1:
[15:49] Well, yes. I mean, I would say that the Iraq War causes the 2008 crash, that they are not unrelated.

Speaker 4:
[15:56] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[15:56] In fact, 9-11 causes the Iraq War, causes the 2008 crash, causes the torrents of upheaval and populism. And of course, there will be people who say, oh, populism is a pejorative as a way of talking about politics in order to sort of blacken people. But basically, you end up with faster running currents of politics, and people worrying about social cohesion that goes with immigration and stuff like that. My bank manager says, how many once in a lifetime events have we had in the last five, six years? That's what he calls the once in a lifetime events. He said, we've had Brexit, which is, I think, people would agree generally that it's a result of political upheaval, post the crash. That, the pandemic, a war in Europe and a trade war initiated by the Americans, a tariff trade war, four once in a lifetime events in the last six years.

Speaker 4:
[16:55] So there you are.

Speaker 1:
[16:56] They're supposed to not come along in fours, right? And now a war in the Gulf, another war in the Gulf. Well, two wars in the Gulf. So there's six once in a lifetime events in six years. And this is the thing that it throws into stark relief Truman's conclusions. And obviously, it's a long time since Truman came to this conclusion. And things do change and political settlements unravel. And as he said in that speech, the status quo is not sacred, the world is not static. But what we're seeing here is the status quo falling apart and the proof that the world isn't static. And what is there in history to look at and go, oh, maybe we need to pay a bit more attention to what they thought, perhaps. Although, you know, the world is very different. I mean, but what we have here, though, is because the Nazis had to be defeated one way or another, you know, we made a deal with the devil, with the Soviet Union to do it. It is an opportunity to start again in 1945, 467, isn't it? Globally. Truman is all about grabbing it and all about seeing through what Roosevelt saw to make the world a, you know, a prosperous and free place as he saw it.

Speaker 4:
[18:11] So anyway, to get back to Truman's speech and his proposition that he puts to Congress, they give him a standing ovation. They applaud him to the rafters. It's a cross-party agreement. And they overwhelmingly approve the package for Greece and Turkey. And this is the Truman Doctrine, which then morphs into what becomes known as the Marshall Plan, which people may have heard of. And this is a huge aid package to help Europe rebuild and recover in the aftermath of the war. And it truly is unprecedented in its vision. I think it's really, really important to understand that this is the first time ever that when they help out Japan, when they help out Italy, when they help out Germany, this is the first time ever that the victors have financially bailed out the vanquished in world history. And we just accept it today because that's what happened. But at the time, this was truly sort of groundbreaking and ground shifting. And I think we are at an interesting time, as you've just been suggesting, Al. I think the other thing, of course, is that the collective memory of the brutality of the Second World War and the sacrifices that were made for freedom is receding. Now, it can't do anything other than that because of that generation that lived and fought through it have gone. I mean, if you think about how the Second World War was such a part of everyday vernacular when you and I were growing up in the 70s and 80s and how it just isn't now, it's still really popular and people are really interested in it. But it's not references to rationing, statements in the war dot dot dot, that used to be absolutely part of parcel of the weekly conversation, references to cul-de-its on a weekly basis. That's all gone. I think there's the slight danger of this. There was a recognition, I think, in the post-war decades. Let's say up to the 50th anniversary, we would say, there was a recognition that were fighting for, but also that you needed to make the most of the piece and be grateful for what you had. I think we're in danger, aren't we? A little bit of complacency today of just taking things for granted. Maybe that's all being shaken up a little bit in recent years. I don't know. But there's no question that democracy in the West is unstable, isn't it?

Speaker 1:
[20:49] Yeah. Although, I mean, this isn't the job of these episodes. You could argue that the Americans have done... The Iraq War did so much to destabilise public opinion about the use of force for diplomatic ends. And whose fault was that? The reason people don't want to take security defense seriously is the Iraq War. And I don't know how you turn that oil tank around myself. I don't know if you even can. Let's go back to New York City at the start of the early 20th century and look at what's happening in America. Because what's happening in America is the first hard marker that the British Empire is being eclipsed. Because in 1930, New York becomes the busiest port in the world.

Speaker 4:
[21:40] I know. Isn't that amazing?

Speaker 1:
[21:42] Yeah, it is amazing. We've talked on previous podcasts about how when London is bombed, when the docks in London are bombed, it's an attack on one of the greatest trading hubs in the world, but not the greatest because in 1913 it's been surpassed. Wall Street is the country's financial center and becoming the world's financial center. Of course, the dollar is not yet a proper challenge to the pound. But imagine if there are a great big world crisis not long after 1913 and the pound has put under enormous pressure. Whether the dollar might emerge very strong compared to the pound, it's a possibility, right? You've 900 cinemas, there's motor cars, there's massive advertising billboards, they're lit by electricity, there's civic buildings, art galleries, skyscrapers, philanthropic multimillionaires. A millionaire meant something back then. It's the 24th of April, 1913. Woodrow Wilson hits a button in the White House to light up the Woolworth building. This is designed by Cass Gilbert, commissioned by the entrepreneur, Frank Winfield Woolworth, who's the creator and owner of nearly 605 and dime stores nationwide. It's a 792 foot tall building, the Woolworth building. It's a symbol of how America is on the up, literally. It's literally on the up and it's shining for the rest of the world to see.

Speaker 4:
[23:02] It absolutely is. I think the point about the visitor to New York from Europe, arriving in New York in 1913 would see a city of just dazzling modernity. All the things that we just take for granted now in New York City, and Manhattan, and all the skyscrapers stuff, they're there in 1913 or they're starting to be there. Obviously, the skyscrapers aren't quite as tall as they are now, but the Empire State is only 15 years away or something. It really does shine. The neon glows. It really is a city of bright lights, and fast moving, and modern, and shiny, and sleek, and all the rest of it. Totally different to anything that has come before. I think that's why it feels so futuristic, but it also feels like the coming nation. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, London is still at the heart of a huge global empire. The world's largest empire ever. It's the center of the world's economy. The Economist magazine in January 1913 noted that, free trade and a free gold market are two of the key different advantages which we enjoy over all our competitors, and the chief means by which London maintains itself as the banker and financier of the universe. I think one of the things that's really interesting about London is that there's this, many people would have heard of John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, and he's writing after the First World War. He points out that in 1914, in the early summer of 1914, that a reasonably well-to-do gentleman living in London can travel further and more quickly than any man has ever done before. He can eat and drink better, and more varied food and drink from around the world than he's ever done before. And if he's so minded, he can telephone his friends and make social arrangements. And as he points out, in the spring of 1914, no one assumed that this gentle progression of modernity and progress would ever, ever be challenged. And of course, just around the corner is the First World War.

Speaker 1:
[25:16] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[25:17] Europe, of course, has officially been at peace since Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in June, 1850. Although there were still colonial conflicts, there's been revolutions in Europe. There was, of course, the Franco-Prussian War and so on. There's the Prussian War against Austria, there's the Prussian War against Denmark.

Speaker 1:
[25:37] Crimean War, I mean.

Speaker 4:
[25:39] But Britain has been out of this. And so while it's been out of all these wars, it's been able to kind of make the most of its own peaceful growth. Where at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, of course, Britannia rules the ways and it has this huge fleet which no one else can touch, which means it has this unprecedented access to the globe. It's laid down all the foundations in the 18th century. And so it can progress and become this huge sort of center of global finance and free trade and all the rest of it. And there was also a Golden Age in Europe, which is roughly from the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 until 1914 as well. In which the rest of Europe sort of prospers and so on.

Speaker 1:
[26:20] Yeah, although, I mean, it's built on colonial expansion and competition, which is where the tension arises between the European imperiums. And I think Keynes is right to an extent that, you know, you might not notice what's coming. But if you, I don't know, there are people who pay attention to foreign policy now, aren't they, who are going, hang on a minute, look what's going on here.

Speaker 4:
[26:41] But the vast majority of people pay attention, that's the point.

Speaker 1:
[26:44] Yeah, I know, I know, I know. But it's there to be seen, the escalation, the constant, there's a pattern of constant saber rattling in the last 20 years running up to the First World War. So what happens is in the end, is the sabers get rattled to the point where they're then drawn.

Speaker 4:
[27:00] They're clashing, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[27:01] Yeah, but Germany's modernizing fast, you know, and there's a sense in Britain, isn't it, that they're being caught up by the rest of the world, and that can always tinge people's sort of feelings with the idea that they're declining rather than being caught up with. But I mean, Keynes says in 1919, and he's saying this kind of mournfully, isn't he? What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of Band That Was, which came to an end in August 1914. Although of course the war is what it is, but who knows where the threads of, because like as we're saying, America is challenging Britain economically, Germany is challenging Britain economically, France isn't doing badly either, let's be honest. Then you get this gigantic disaster in the form of the First World War and industrialization, which is of course key to the growth of all of these economies and the sort of center point, the thing that you need markets abroad to propel your factories. This is what then changes warfare and that war is the machine gun and barbed wire and the industrialization of weapons and weaponry and uniforms and the whole thing is then turns conflict into something new and ghastly and populations are chewed up, which of course the population of Europe has doubled in the last century, but the scale of death is four times bigger than the Napoleonic Wars. So the impact of the war on the world as it stands at the start of the 20th century is completely unprecedented. And clearly, because things were changing anyway, it's going to accelerate and throw up new problems for people to grapple with. I mean, I think it's interesting, isn't it, that there is this tendency to say, peace is taken for granted. You kind of think, fine, but get on with solving the problem now, which is that Cain's being wistful about 1940. Yeah, right. Okay, fine. But what's the problem now? And this is what he does, isn't it? Is in 1919, he publishes his incredibly influential document called The Economic Consequences of Peace.

Speaker 4:
[29:08] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[29:08] And I think it's quite interesting that this is an era where you can write an economic tract called The Economic Consequences of Peace and it's a massive commercial success. It's a bestseller.

Speaker 4:
[29:19] You know, it's actually very readable. It's much more readable than you might think. I wouldn't say it's like a sort of number one bestseller kind of read. You can read it, understand it. And I mean, what's amazing about reading that book that he writes in the spring of 1919, you know, having attended the Paris Peace Talks and been disgusted by what he hears, is just how many of the sort of, you know, the axioms he comes out with, the truisms he comes out with are still relevant to this day. I mean, you know, and again, this is all about the patterns of human behaviour. The point is for anyone thinking about parallels today, you know, history is there to help us. I mean, you know, history doesn't repeat itself, but as we've discussed many times, patterns of human behaviour do, because fundamentally we're the same people. I mean, you know, the reason why Shakespeare's plays still have relevance is because people still respond to the situations in which they find themselves in a similar way. We still love, we still feel envy, we feel resentment, we feel happiness, we feel generosity and kindness and all these sort of things, all of which feature centuries before in day-to-day life. And they still do in the early part of the 20th century. And, for and behold, they still do in the early part of the 21st century as well. Which is why it's still kind of amazingly pertinent, I think. But anyway, I mean, the strong argument is that the Treaty of Versailles, which is what comes out of the Paris Peace Talks, are too punitive against Germany. They're too harsh, and especially so from the French, you know, who've clearly been blinded by a desire for revenge.

Speaker 1:
[31:00] Well, this is Keynes' opinion, right? I think there is a school of thought that says what you do is you camp an army in Berlin and you show the Germans they've been defeated. Because part of the issue that's going to arise is that the Germans don't think they've been defeated. And their politicians, or some of them, are going to lie about that pretty quickly. The people responsible for the war are going to claim they weren't defeated. And Keynes is arguing this, I think, from a sort of, he's an intellectual who isn't involved in the cost of it, is able to rationalize an awful lot of things, rather than thinking, you know, the Parisian peace that lasts 100 years in Europe, that's settled after Waterloo, is because the armies of Russia, Prussia, Britain, and the German states involved in fighter-departure camp on the Champs-Élysées. This is Keynes' argument. I don't know that I agree with it, right? Is the thing.

Speaker 4:
[31:56] But having lots of troops in Berlin is a really good idea, which they don't actually really do. What is a really bad idea, I think, is imposing reparations that simply cannot be paid. So therefore, basically making the entire country completely collapse because what Keynes is talking about is patterns of human behavior, which is, as I say, as old as the trees. But the problem is, if you grind the working classes of a nation into the dust, at some point they're going to go, I've had enough of this, and then they'll rise up, and then you'll have political instability, and then you'll have a whole host of problems on your hands. So that's his beef. It's not having troops on the streets of Berlin. That's not the issue. The issue is the scale of the reparations. And it's on top of the Spanish flu.

Speaker 1:
[32:48] But that's him being an economist, isn't it, rather than a politician?

Speaker 4:
[32:51] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[32:52] And I think what's interesting here is these things, politics and economics and these things interact. They don't sit in isolation from one another. And I think what's interesting is the politicians have wanted a political piece. You're using economics for political as their political marker of defeat to Germany. The economist is going, that won't work. And no one has the sense to synthesize or consider the possibilities that they're setting in motion, which I think is really, really interesting, because the piece of 1815 is the thing that supposedly delivers Europe a 100 years piece. And they're not looking at doing that. They're not looking at the lessons of last time.

Speaker 4:
[33:30] And what is really interesting is that in 1945, they do look at the lessons of 1815. And they get it broadly right. And there aren't any of the kind of revolutions in the West, Democratic West, that there were in the 1920s and 30s. But I mean, you know, Keynes' big argument is that there's no plan for economic rehabilitation at all. There's just the reparations and grinding them into the dust. And although there's lots of nations that representing a broad wave of people and political thoughts and interest from across the world, it is basically four countries which are ruling the roots. And those are France, Britain, Italy and the United States. And as Keynes writes, he writes, It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic problems of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of the four. I mean, he's got a point. And he fears the political indifference to widespread suffering will forment discontent, instability, political upheaval that could then consequently lead to more war. And he's right, as it turns out.

Speaker 1:
[34:39] Yeah. Well, but he's steeped in the American Civil War, Reconstruction, the lessons that the Americans think they've learned from that. Right. Interestingly, that's his frame of reference is, well, what you do is you accommodate the defeated party. And kind of like give them, kind of give them what they want, which is the supposed, well, that's the political outcome of the Civil War. Which, of course, again, is much, much closer to him than it is to us now, or it was to the Second World War. Wilson's playing a complicated hand though, isn't he? Because American involvement in the war, where they come in late, they really don't want to get involved. There's a feeling that they've been tricked into it by the British. But also they've been doing very nicely out of the war. So they've been making, taking lots of contracts, but also then lending money to the British in order to propel those contracts. His pitch or his position is quite sticky and has lots of things in it all at once. And through this, he basically tries to then be idealistic at the same time as having quite a mixed bag politically in the US. And his idea is self-determination, isn't it? He's got a vision of a world with free trade, low tariffs, democracy, self-determination. So what we were talking about with Truman earlier on. But the problem is, is he doesn't actually really have the political foundations to pull this off. And of course, his commitment to self-determination is pretty, well, it's not universal, is it? It's pretty selective because we talked about American Reconstruction, you know, Jim Crow Law, segregation, lynching in the South, the racism growing in the North, the success of the Klu Klux Klan in mobilizing people around these issues, you know, is very much part of the picture of American politics. And Wilson is, he's the president. So he's obviously, you know, what's he done about this? Well, he's allowed segregation of federal agencies. He screened Birth of a Nation at the White House in 1915, which is the film that, you know, makes the KKK look incredibly glamorous.

Speaker 4:
[36:43] This is the Ku Klux Klan, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[36:46] Yeah, pure straight up racism. And so whatever, whatever Wilson's liberal worldview might be in it, there are these racist double standards. Although I think it's quite interesting, you know, this is us holding to account for that at the time. I don't think it's a thing where anyone particularly says, well, hold on a minute, you're up to your neck in it with the KKK, you know.

Speaker 4:
[37:07] Well, Wilson is a really interesting character, I think, because he's an intellectual, you know, he's an academic in background. I can't remember which university he's been president of. It's either Yale or Harvard or one of these ones. And you know, so he's, but he's also, he's a southerner. I mean, that's the truth of it. He is racist. But he does have this kind of utopian world view. He is a liberal internationalist, it's known as Wilsonianism. And he's very different to any other president that's ever come before. But I don't know, he's kind of almost too idealistic. He's in his idealism, as you point out, is too straight jacketed by his very patrician kind of privileged world view, I would say. But you know, the combination of Germany supporting Mexico, and this is in the context of US-Mexican border disputes and wars, and the U-boat war particularly against American ships in the Atlantic, which are applying their trade on behalf of the British and the French. You know, he feels his hand is forced. So war is, you know, he declares war in April of 1970 with fairly universal backing, it has to be said, from Congress. And it's worth pointing out that he does get the backing of Congress for this. He doesn't just do it unilaterally. And on the public premise of newly established duty to protect the rights and liberties of small nations. And to fight for a universal dominion of rights by such a concert of free peoples, and shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. You know, so what he's saying is if we can win this war now, then we, the democracies, can come out on top. And then we can create a global order that will be democratic. And we can create a world, you know, the globe throughout the globe. And we shall return to the sum that uplands of a new kind of progressive form of utopian democracy. That's basically what you say, except mainly for white people and privileged people. I mean, that's the bit he doesn't say, but that's basically what he's saying.

Speaker 1:
[39:14] Yeah. Well, should we take a quick break here? And then we'll come back with Wilson's, what he called his 14 points and then see exactly how those go down. We'll see you in a tick.

Speaker 5:
[39:31] K-pop Demon Hunter's Saja Boys Breakfast Meal and Huntrix Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

Speaker 3:
[39:45] It is an honor to share.

Speaker 1:
[39:47] No, it's our honor.

Speaker 2:
[39:49] It is our larger honor.

Speaker 1:
[39:51] No, really, stop.

Speaker 3:
[39:53] You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. I participate in McDonald's while supplies last.

Speaker 1:
[40:05] Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland and our series about The Visionaries as we've called them, FDR and Harry S. Truman. Basically, we've laid out Woodrow Wilson's position, which is quite a mixed bag. The wiki he's on is quite sticky politically, but that hasn't stopped him drawing up a utopian 14 points, which delivers to Congress in a speech in January 1918, because he's got to carry on persuading people. He's gone to war successfully with Congress's backing, but now he's going to have to go to peace with Congress's backing, and that's possibly more difficult.

Speaker 4:
[40:46] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[40:46] After all, starting a war or getting into a war is kind of relatively straightforward. You tell the generals to get cracking, and they do, don't they? It's finding your way back out of it that's more difficult. Are we drawing more modern parallels, Jim? I don't know. Anyway, so his 14 principles are for maintaining peace and security, freedom of the seas, removal of trade tariffs, reduction of arms production, very sensible of course, self-determination of all peoples, restoration of territories gained by German and Hungary, Austria-Hungary in the world.

Speaker 4:
[41:20] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[41:20] Exactly. Re-establishment of Poland, which has not existed as a country since 1795, and it was divvied up between Prussia, Russia and Austria. It's interesting because there's a direct clash here, because the British don't want their naval supremacy to be threatened by freedom of the seas. France thinks this is all a bit like-

Speaker 4:
[41:38] La-di-da, fancy stuff.

Speaker 1:
[41:39] If the French think that of you, then you've really got a problem, right? Russia is the Soviet Union now and is committed to the common turn, only believes in the global vision of Bolshevism and nothing else. Three of the major players are going to be quite hard to convince. Interestingly, Germany accepts these points on the 5th of October, 1918.

Speaker 4:
[42:05] Because it's losing really badly.

Speaker 1:
[42:07] The US, because basically it hasn't been involved in the war for so long that it's had a massively deleterious effect on it. The US shoulders its way in and says, well, we're going to do the peace brokering here because we're the power that's intact basically still. Britain and France owe the US over $10 billion, so they've got to do what the Americans want. Austria-Hungary is on the 3rd of November, Germany on the 11th of November, of course, as we all know, 11 AM. This means Wilson now comes to Europe to broker their peace, and he's the first sitting American president to come to Europe. He comes in December 19, so straight away, soon as the war ends, and he goes on a hand-waving tour of Europe.

Speaker 4:
[43:00] He's loving it, by the way.

Speaker 1:
[43:02] He likes it a bit too much, I think. Rather than thinking, hang on a minute, we've got some hard yards ahead of us. He rather enjoys it. Margaret Macmillan's book about this is very, very good, very gossipy about what the people were like. The thing is, in Europe, the politicians are not interested in this adulation. They're thinking, oh God, we've got to sort this out, we've got to bend Germany to our will, we've got to fix all this. The last thing they need is someone showing up with all these bright ideas and lofty principles.

Speaker 4:
[43:33] And these lardy da fancy ways.

Speaker 1:
[43:35] Well, exactly. Lloyd George is a hardcore political operator.

Speaker 4:
[43:39] Yes, he's the new Prime Minister of Britain.

Speaker 1:
[43:42] He basically made sure that he got in the middle of a war, did the hard scrabble to displace Herbert Asquith. So we're talking about tough operators. Georges Clemenceau, the French Premier, again, these are not people who are lofty and idealistic. They want realpolitik.

Speaker 4:
[44:03] Yes, they do.

Speaker 1:
[44:04] Wilson in the meantime has excluded the Senate from negotiations in Paris. He's going to do it. He takes a commission with him made up of similar dreamers. Former President William Howard Taft calls them a bunch of cheap cheapskates.

Speaker 4:
[44:17] It's not cross-party. It's not a bipartisan bunch of people. So he's a Democrat, we should say. He doesn't take any Republicans with him. The people he does take are sort of B and C list. So he's not getting that sort of cross-party consensus for what he's doing. It's the truth. He's operating in isolation and he's robbing people in the wrong way.

Speaker 1:
[44:38] And Britain and France have their own interests in terms of their imperial ambitions. They want, they think, a good recompense for the war is German overseas territory. And that will also damage the German economy as well, because you have those colonies so you have external markets, so you can export, so your economy, you know, blah, blah, blah. And also, self-determination is a principle in the, you know, Central Europe, Middle Europa is basically a fruitcake ethnically. There are, in terms of its consistency, in terms of its peoples, you know, there are a bunches of raisins here and bits of cherry there, and there's patches of rum at the bottom.

Speaker 4:
[45:21] And the old hazelnut, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[45:23] And we need to create new countries out of the former empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and what's left of Germany.

Speaker 4:
[45:30] Uh-oh.

Speaker 1:
[45:31] And that means hard and fast lines. And inevitably, what that's going to mean is you're going to end up with one raisin, one side of the cake that previously was part of a bigger, nice cake. I mean, the analogy has collapsed. But basically.

Speaker 4:
[45:46] Well, I don't know what you mean.

Speaker 1:
[45:47] So he says, right, well, we need a new Poland. So in general, Poles are in favour of that. There's not been a Poland since 1795. There's a new country of Czechoslovakia, which is fashioned out of Bohemia and Moravia.

Speaker 4:
[45:59] And it never existed before.

Speaker 1:
[46:01] No, although Prague is one of the great cities of Europe. There's never, it's never been the capital of Czech, of Czechoslovakia or Czechia or Czech Republic. Bohemia is what we're talking about here. You know, and in creating these new countries, he dissolves the ideas of the old localities, which I think is possibly an error.

Speaker 4:
[46:19] Problematic.

Speaker 1:
[46:20] It's got three million people who speak German in it. And you can say they're Germans if you want, but they speak German. And here we run into the problem of their ethnicity expressed through languages. After all, part of the current Russian Cassus Belli, as they see it with Ukraine, those people speak Russian, they must be Russians, which would be like me saying, everyone in Ireland speaks English, they must be English. The logic is pretty wonky. And there's, you know, Poland is reinstated, Austro-Hungary is dissolved. And if you're an Austro-Hungarian prince or whatever, you're then busted down to a regular citizen. The Baltic States gain independence. But let's be honest now, it's one rule for me, another rule for thee. So Wilsonian self-determination does not extend beyond Europe. So, you know, the Ottoman Empire is another ancient empire. It was on its very much on its last legs before the First World War, but it's now done. And so you get this British and French civil servants with a ruler drawing straight lines all over the Middle East. You know, you get these new French republics of Syria and Lebanon, which are created out of the Ottoman Empire. The British mandate in Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq.

Speaker 4:
[47:34] This is when they all come into being as they are today. Transjordan is no longer exist, of course. But yeah, I mean, it's amazing, isn't it? Britain also proclaims support for a Jewish state in Palestine. This is a Balfour Declaration, people of November 1917. You know, if you want to understand what's going on now, there you go. These are all the answers and it's all very easy sitting in comfortable hotel rooms and boardrooms in Paris, thinking, well, we'll just do that and we'll do a line here and we'll do that and Britain can get control of that bit and France can take control of this bit. So, you know, all sorted and of course it isn't. And why anyone thinks it's ever going to be sorted is insane because again, these ethnic border disputes are as old as the hills and they've only been kept in the way they have been kept by huge despotic empires kind of ruling the race. You know, so when you have this sudden breakup, you have this power vacuum and that's what's coming about.

Speaker 1:
[48:32] I mean, it has to be said, though, it has to be said, what on earth do you do, right? They do get this wrong.

Speaker 4:
[48:38] Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1:
[48:38] But what on earth do you do? What on earth do you do? What the hell do you do in this situation?

Speaker 4:
[48:44] I know.

Speaker 1:
[48:44] And this looks like a solution and they're sincere in believing it's a solution. But what on earth do you, I mean, for Christ's sake.

Speaker 4:
[48:51] Yes, I agree. It's not quite as casual as I'm making out.

Speaker 1:
[48:54] No, no, no. And I'm glad I'm not one of those people who now you can point at and go, ah, yeah, bow for declaration. They were the idiots that drew that up. They were a source of the people that, or Sykes, Pico, what a pair of idiots, right? I'm glad I'm neither Sykes nor Pico because what on earth do you do in that situation? How actually did you deliver a result that satisfies anybody?

Speaker 4:
[49:17] Well, yes, but the other problem, the other problem is that the utopian world and vision and principles that Woodrow Wilson has been talking about seem universal. They seem global and they're not. They're white and privileged. So you get people like Nguyen Tat Tan, who later becomes Ho Chi Minh. He comes on behalf of Vietnam, but he doesn't cover way of any guarantee of sovereignty at all. He's even capitulating on China, the Shandong province, which is Confucius' birthplace incident. He's considered the cradle of civilization. That had been taken by Germany in 1898, then by Japan in 1914. Wilson promises to return it to the Chinese, but the Treaty of Versailles requires Japan's verbal assurance it would give up the territory in the next three years. And as Mao Zedong, who's also been watching on all this, he goes, you know, so much for self-determination. I think it is really shameless. I mean, you know, again, so many of the problems which are around the corner in the next 20, 30 years are being laid out here at the Paris Treaty, you know.

Speaker 1:
[50:24] Well, then another bright idea of Wilson's, which, interestingly, is then tried again after the Second World War, is the League of Nations.

Speaker 4:
[50:31] Which becomes the United Nations, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[50:33] It's interesting. They go back to the League of Nations after the Second World War. They try again, don't they? You know, the idea is that it's an intergovernmental organisation. Everyone collaborates and it will make sure that global peace is a thing that people are committed to. And so an Article 10 of the League of Nations governance says, to respect and preserve, as against external aggression, the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League. In other words, war is impossible. And well, you know, we're talking about after the First World War, we have a Second World War podcast. So I think we all know, I don't think it's a spoiler to tell people how successful the League of Nations might have turned out to be. Let's put it that way. But Germany, Germany is on the sort of receiving end of the biggest kicking as a result of this treaty. We've talked about the different imperial wash of this, but Germany has to pay 132 billion gold marks.

Speaker 4:
[51:27] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[51:28] It loses 13 percent of its pre-war territory, including Alsace-Lorraine, which is the border with France, which is taken during the 1871 Franco-Prussian War. And so that's 10 million of its pre-war population of 65 million have basically been snaffled away.

Speaker 4:
[51:45] Switched.

Speaker 1:
[51:46] Yeah. So the Rhineland, which is Germany's industrial heartland, where its coal is dug and its steel production is organized, and its trade runs up and down the river. Rhineland, of course, that is demilitarized. So they're not allowed an army there. And the army, if you want to really, really, really piss the Germans off at this stage in their history, you cap their army and they're only allowed 100,000 soldiers. And then if you really, really, really want to piss off the Germans who believe that they were fighting the First World War defensively, and they absolutely believe they're fighting to preserve Germany, to defend Germany from the threats around it. They believe before the First World War, they're surrounded, they absolutely have to strike at their enemies. There's a war guilt clause inserted, Article 231 of the treaty, which is that Germany is to accept full responsible for catalyzing the war and for all the loss and damage that followed. And I mean, I think for me, it's the reparations are one thing, because after all, there is an economic solution down the track for the reparations. It's the army, capping the army and the war guilt clause. If you want to really, really, really, really, really, really upset the Germany that exists at this time, those are the two things, I think.

Speaker 4:
[53:02] Anyway, it's signed on the 28th of June, 1919. There's mass protests around the world in India, Korea, Egypt, China, because they feel they've been completely sidelined and all those utopian promises of Wilson have been ignored, which they have. They signed on the 5th anniversary of Franz Ferdinand's assassination, which prompts the First World War and the First Praise.

Speaker 1:
[53:22] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[53:23] In the palace of Versailles Hall of Mirrors, which is exactly where the Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871, and is of course the epitome of the Ancien Regime, that Wilson has been so keen to overthrow. He returns to the US in July after seven months away. But of course now needs Congress to ratify the treaty, and he's faced with a whole host of problems because now there's labor strikes and race riots across the country. There's resentment that big business have been profiting from the war, whilst young men have been sent off to die, and a not insignificant amount of Americans were killed in France and Flanders. Progressive internationalists from both parties are upset with the Wilsonian compromises to the 14 points, and the 14 Republican irreconcilables in Congress categorically are against joining the league. Wilson has completely misread this one, because he's taken his eye off the ball domestically, and he's exhausted, and he's quite ill. In September, he gives a speech, he goes on this speaking tour around the country to try and persuade the people, which he then thinks will rub off onto Congress. In September, he gives a speech in Colorado and then collapses, and he makes it back to the White House a week later, and he suffered a stroke that leaves him paralysed down, it leaves him completely paralysed down one side, and partially blinded. Basically, he's screwed, he's stuffed. I mean, his political career is over at this point, even though his presidency isn't quite. And of course, this completely shatters his ability to advocate for the treaty, albeit any kind of political leader at all. And when Congress vote on entry into the league, which after all was Wilson's idea, it is defeated 53 votes to 38. And the Wilsonian vision for world peace is completely crumbling.

Speaker 1:
[55:08] It is amazing that he can't get it through Congress. There's something...

Speaker 4:
[55:13] It is on paper, but it isn't in analysis.

Speaker 1:
[55:16] It's just truly amazing that you get that far up and then you can't pull that off.

Speaker 4:
[55:22] It's just...

Speaker 1:
[55:23] He's bad at politics, isn't he? That's what it comes down to.

Speaker 4:
[55:26] Yes, but he's creating utopian visions. He's just a bit too early. He's a bit too early. He's a bit too grandstanding. He's a bit too self-righteous, and he doesn't take people with him. That's the point. But meanwhile, of course, the rest of the world is in economic mire. It's worth just mentioning the gold standard, because the gold standard just comes into it all the time. Lots of people might have heard this phrase and heard about the gold standard, but don't actually know what it is. The de facto gold standard is introduced in Britain in the early 18th century. This is when paper money is issued later in the 18th century. But during the Napoleonic Wars, convertibility of notes into gold is suspended. These banknotes are always supposed to be convertible, that you could go to a bank or handover and get your block of gold or whatever or gold coins or whatever. But now in the Napoleonic Wars, because the economic crisis caused by the cost of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain has suspended that saying, no, we're just going to print banknotes and banknotes on their own is going to be valued. For the first time ever, you've got a currency which is a paper currency rather than a hard nosed gold currency. Economics instability plus inflation, so the rising cost of goods means you've suddenly got a need to stabilize the currency once the war is over. Then you have the Coinage Act in the UK of 1816, which once again formalizes gold as a standard of value and does it formally. The convertibility of banknotes into gold is restored formally in 1822. Britain has the world's first formal gold standard. It's just been it's been precedential before that rather than actual, if you so tell me. Yeah. Then other countries don't join the gold standard until really quite 50 years later into the 1870s really. This coincides with the big expansion in international trade and international investment and the growth of a modern global trans-oceanic economy and one which is heightened by the arrival of the telegraph machine and under the ocean cables and all the rest of it, which means that transactions can happen much, much quicker. Of course, this stable currency of Britain post the Napoleonic War then helps to sustain a rapid technological progress because you need economic stability to be able to have a technical progression, and a parliamentary system that limits the authority of the monarch, and so encourages financial independence and a confident economic environment that rewards long-term investment and financial risk-taking. So you have rapid industrialization, strong currency, expanding global economy, and this leads to unprecedented growth, the rise in wealth in the developed world in the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries. Which doesn't mean to say you don't get slumps, panics, and crashes, which are interspersed in this period because in 1847, for example, there's panic in Britain where markets collapse at the end of the railway boom. There's the American Long Depression of the 1870s following the Civil War. Then there is the American Banking Crisis of 1907, which then leads to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. There is a point where JP Morgan, for example, calls all the richest Americans into a single room and says, come on, fellas, we've got to sort this out. We're going to have to bail out the US economy. And they do. And that leads to the Federal Reserve, which in guarantees deposits, as it has the ability to print more money if necessary, and so provide emergency funding during crises and prevent financial collapses. So the Federal Reserve in the United States, and in fact, in global economics, is really important for fostering trust in banks, which then leads to trust in money, which then leads to economic stability. And economic stability and political stability go hand in hand. And I think that's a really important point to make here.

Speaker 1:
[59:39] Yeah. Well, interesting, though, this kind of free trade, there's always winners and losers, aren't there? Always. You know, British farming, of course, has problems competing with cheap North American grain and South American meat.

Speaker 4:
[59:51] Yeah. And this is the background to all those Thomas Hardy novels, you know, of rural decline and so on.

Speaker 1:
[59:57] This is the economic picture that precedes, you know, the time John Maynard Keynes was talking about before the First World War, of sort of unprecedented economic stability. This is what's going on under the bonnet, as it were. During the First World War, no one can stay on the gold standard. The US stays on, but everyone else just abandons it. You know, cost too high. You print more money to meet the inflation that comes with the way your economy has to run hot when you're arming very rapidly. And this means that, I mean, heaven for fend, you end up with more paper money in circulation than its value in gold in the nation's banks. And after the war, the British try and get this back under control. And they put their interest rates up to 7 percent, but this nobbles anyone borrowing in the middle classes, essentially. And they try taking paper money out of the economy, which results in cash shortages, which results in wages being cut. I mean, you know, we all we ever hear about nowadays is wages going up. We never hear about wages being cut, but they're cutting wages. And this means living standards drop. There's no more economic growth. And no one will take, you know, politicians are wedded to this idea that you've got to somehow get back to the equilibrium of the gold standard.

Speaker 4:
[61:22] Worth pointing out that this is the time of the end of, you know, this is all the Downton Abbey backdrop for those who've watched Downton Abbey. You know, we've suddenly massively increased taxes on the rich and property classes, which is why all these country houses are being pulled down, why people are having to sell up and all the rest of it. This is because of the war, because of the First World War, because everyone's cash strapped, you know, and because of all these economic policies which were being imposed at that time. So, yeah, sorry, you were talking about Churchill.

Speaker 1:
[61:49] You're right. Well, and then Winston Churchill. I mean, the interesting thing is Churchill's into war history is incredibly consequential in terms of, you know, some of the circumstances that lead to the Second World War. You know, when he's charged with exchequer, he tries to, he goes back on to the gold standard. He sets the rate of the pound at $4.86. Keynes tells him not to. And this results further in lower wages and higher costs. And you end up with the great general strike of 1926 of unionized workers walking out en masse all over the country, absolutely everywhere. And Churchill going back on, trying to go back on the gold standard and the 10 year rule, the two very sort of, you know, when you're squaring off his entire political career, they're things that rather stick out. Yes. But the French, they decide also, they're going to reduce the money supply. They're going to, and they devalue the franc. But what they don't do is slash wages. And this combination of policies means they have avoid runaway inflation. But France is very unhappy place after the First World War. We've had 1.2 million French men killed and millions more wounded. I mean, three million men wounded. Verdun is the sort of emblematic part of the French First World War, the meat grinder at Verdun. There are only, I think this is the most amazing fact. There are only six towns or villages in the entire country that don't have to put up a war memorial to the dead. And you consider how enormous France is, that is really something. And although they keep their economy kind of on track, French governments find it very hard to stay in office. And there are five French governments between 1919 and 1923. So even the people who signed the Versailles Treaty and involved in the carve up of the world, they're gone, or they're on sort of a fast spin cycle, aren't they? Yep. Germany's response to the economic strictures of the piece, the economic consequences of the piece, they quadruple the amount of money they're printing. They've already quadrupled the amount of money they printed during the war. And after the war, they carry on doing this because they have these reparations to deal with. And also, they've got in 1922 because they aren't paying the reparations because it's impossible. The French and the Belgians occupy the Ruhr because she was meant to be demilitarized and now they occupy it, they move in. And then there are German strikes in protest. So then they print more money. I mean, the cycle here, national debt rises by 30 percent, which is sort of in its own way, meaningless, isn't it? Right? When it rises that much, it's sort of whatever. Right? Circulating money, paper money rises by 20 times. The cost of living rises five times. All these things, it's like they're circling the drain economically, aren't they? It's a downward spiral. And the worse the situation gets, the more money the government prints, the worse hyperinflation becomes. It's absolutely vicious cycle in Germany. And in November 1923, I mean, everyone knows these stories, you know, at least from doing GCSE Nazis, right? The US dollar is worth 4.2 trillion marks. You've got wheelbarrows of cash, which is the sort of absolute cheaper to burn piles of cash than to buy wood for a fire. And, you know, the value of a loaf of bread will be completely different in the morning to the afternoon. And no one, obviously, you can't keep up, can you? Your mortgage disappears overnight, doesn't it? Well, like that, if you had a 2000 Deutschmark mortgage on your house, at least that's gone, right?

Speaker 4:
[65:26] Yeah. And nor is the peace. That's the point, you know, because they're still fighting on the continent. Six border wars in Poland between 1918 to 1921. Well, you know, you ever feel all that coming.

Speaker 1:
[65:38] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[65:39] Civil war in Russia post-revolution. The now independent Baltic states are fighting with the USSR.

Speaker 1:
[65:46] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[65:46] There's the birth of fascism in 1922 under Mussolini in Italy. But compared to Europe, the US is doing absolutely fine and dandy because there's a new age of prosperity under the new Republican president, Warren G Harding. And, you know, the 1920s in the United States, this is the boom time. It's the jazz age. You know, this is characterized by modernism and consumerism. And this all really comes from the advent of the cheap, affordable motor car. And this is, of course, thanks to Henry Ford and his production line of Model T. There's fridges and other modern appliances, which raise the living standards for normal people. Hollywood is expanding. It's a very lucrative industry. Movie theaters opening all across the country. There's gold flooding in. The United States has to withdraw from the gold standard to stave off inflation in the US because it has now become the undisputed economic powerhouse of the world. And I think, you know, what you get with this huge consumerism is that suddenly everyone can afford cars. So then that means you can travel further, which means roads need to be built, which means buildings need to be built, which means you need a new thing called a motel, a motor hotel, where you can park your car overnight and travel and all the rest of it, which creates a huge building boom.

Speaker 1:
[67:02] Imagine.

Speaker 4:
[67:03] And this is boom comes from the automobile and of course from oil. And America is by far and away the largest oil producer in the planet. So, you know, this is all good stuff for America. But as it happens and Europe does start to recover by 1924 and a new currency, completely new currency is introduced in Germany in 1920 feet. And this is the Rentenmark. It's a temporary currency. It's only ever conceived as a temporary currency and limited amounts are printed. But it helps regain public confidence, which is of course is the all important ingredient in the currency. And the prices start to stabilize. And it's also true that the United States plays a massive role in this German recovery because the Doors Committee is established in the autumn of 1923 and overseas a dramatic reduction of German reparation payments. And it is getting this is providing its money from the loans that are being repaid by Britain and France to the United States, which it is then siphoning back to Germany. So it's going right in a nice circle, which then ushers in higher foreign investment in Germany, which helps reintroduce the old Reichsmark and then puts Germany back on the gold standard at its pre-war level. JP Morgan Bank in the United States lends Germany $100 million, which is a huge sum in the 1920s.

Speaker 1:
[68:20] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[68:21] The Wall Street financier Parker Gilbert becomes a reparations agent, and has the power to call off any German reparations if they're likely to destabilize the German economy. So this is all a good thing. Suddenly, the flow of foreign capital is rising into Germany as a result, particularly in terms of dollars and companies like Ford, General Motors, and General Electric all start planning building to build new factories in Germany. The Germans are able to make solid reparation payments to Britain and France at long last, and money that, as I say, has been recycled back from the debts that France and Britain is paying to America and America is then paying back to Germany. Germany is emerging from its devastated post-war abyss as a modern industrial and high-quality production economy, which of course is exactly what it does post-1945 in West Germany. France is also recovering well, exports 50 percent higher than before the war by 1929, and the USSR and Japan is also rapidly industrializing. There is a broad picture of the world slowly rebuilding, I think, after the trauma and destruction of the war, and democracy is holding on too. Of course, there are exceptions, and not least Italy, which has succumbed to fascism by 1929. But communism has been restricted to the USSR, hasn't it?

Speaker 1:
[69:46] Yeah. Well, they've given up as well, haven't they? They've decided, Stalin has decided, can I go enough on my plate really, without trying to spread it worldwide?

Speaker 4:
[69:55] Yeah. He's got a point.

Speaker 1:
[69:57] The Geneva Convention is drawn up and agreed by the League of Nations. Although the US is not involved in the Geneva Convention because the US is looking inward. But the world is moving forward. What could possibly go wrong? I think it's three short words, Wall Street crash. Because the American economy for all of its apparent strength and its largesse in lending the Germans $100 million is nevertheless a house of cards actually. And in our next episode, we'll look at the Wall Street crash and we'll look at its consequences and the way then sets about upsetting the Apple cart all over the world. We'll see you in our next episode. If you want, however, to listen to all these in one torrid rush of information, then what you need to do is become a Patreon. We Have Ways of Making You Talk Patreon where you can listen to these ad free in your own time and enjoy the process. Also, you can watch live cast of me and Jim doing War Waffle live on your screen of an evening, as well as ticket offers and other stuff coming your way. Anyway, thanks very much for listening. We'll see you very soon. Cheerio.

Speaker 5:
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