At the university of mississippi , and we have stayed in touch quite a bit as we both moved on. We have always had a set of shared interests. Mike, it is great to be here with you today and to have a conversation on a subject that is extremely timely, which is responding to crisis. What needs to be said to the audience, they have seen all the evidence they can of the Current Crisis the coronavirus the economic downturn that will , be the serious issue for leaders, for everyday people. And it seems a good time to talk about two major 20thcentury crises. At the end of two world wars and how leaders responded, and to raise an issue about the light that might throw on the present about a framework for comparison. Mike, youre one of the people to talk to about. There are too many of your books to list for the audience but i thought i would talk about the book, fighting the great war world war i, the blood of free men, the book about the liberation of paris in 1944. But two books for the audience that will be of great interest is your concise history of the treaty of versailles, and your and the endotts dam of world war ii and the remaking of europe. I thought we will start with world war i and take a chronological approach and talk with you about how leaders responded to these crises and if we have time at the end, we can raise issues about how that relates to the present. The place to begin is pretty straightforward, the world as it appeared to allied leaders in 19181919. The end of world war i, some 10 Million People had perished in that conflict as the american, french, british, italian leaders met, they are faced with pandemic, the great 1918 influenza. Looking at that world and looking back on it, how did these leaders respond to these crises . How did the world look to them, and how did they think about moving beyond the world work . Mike first of all, thank you, jason, thank you to the museum, to christie and kate for all the work they have done putting this together. Thank you to the viewers for signing in. I hope youre using this opportunity to use this time productively. For me, it has been a time to reflect about the ways in which the days that you live in changes the way about the past, and changes the way you think about these big questions, how you deal with a pandemic and how you deal with Great Power Competition in the era of crisis, which is certainly what was going on in 1919. I dont think anybody thought that whatever was decided that decided at the paris peace conference was going to end Great Power Competition. It is about what kind of world you are living in and what set of philosophies do you want Going Forward . One thing this crisis has done for me, it is made me realize how similar in broad respects they were thinking 100 years ago. What i mean is, this is simplifying things too much come things too much, but one is there are at least two , major groups of thinkers. One is represented by Woodrow Wilson who argues that the right solution is multilateral. That projects like pandemics, Great Power Competition, International Bolshevism they , are International Problems that need international solutions. And there are folks like the french Prime Minister who are not opposed to negotiating with countries, but they want to go strictly to a national model. And then there are americans like Theodore Roosevelt making the same argument in the u. S. What do you think is causing the problem and what do you think is the appropriate solution . There are people who were thinking internationally 100 years ago and people thinking nationally. Would be verysets familiar to people 100 years ago looking at our world. And they wouldve recognized a lot more about the situation then maybe we would expect. Jason that leads me to my next question. We were talking about the framework and different visions there from the beginning. These countries had fought together. Britain and france had been in u. S. Ight since 1914, the jumping in three years later. At what point did the tensions lemenceauilson and c to lloyd george about how begin to surface between an international and national framework, how to deal with germany germany is not occupied in 1918 and 1919. And how to deal with that we , will come back to the questions of the bolsheviks and case,ke, but in this there were already, very early on, tensions on how to respond at what vision would inform a piece. Could you say a bit about that . Michael Woodrow Wilson very famously said that when he saw said,s points, he thank god himself he was content to give us just 10. And george was asked to evaluate his own performance and he said i dont think i did too bad , seeing that i had napoleon on , one side and jesus christ himself on the other. There are tensions already. The First American president to go to europe in office. The First American president trying to take american ideals and provide them to the old world. A lot of it also depends on what you think fundamentally caused the war. Eau,u are george clemenc there is something inherent in the german character. He had argued for fighting on rather than giving up alsace lorraine. There is Something Different about germany that you have to deal with. Mind, itlloyd georges is simply that there is a balance of power problem. The lack of open markets, the lack of incentives for states to work together. So although they were allies during the war, they had very different definitions of what they thought they were doing there, and very difference y different and differentad very definitions of what they thought they were doing there. We can talk about this for world war ii as well. What do you think is the fundamental cause of the problem and until you have answered that, you cannot look for solutions. The american approach looks way too idealistic, way too pieinthesky. Wilsonclemenceau solution appears to be the same. Jason you understand the differences of germany and how they understood the conflict and clemenceausiews idealism. That is one thing people always bring up about the wilsonian perspective. On the french and british side, is there any real sense that there is democracy, the fact that the kaiser had been forced out, is there any sense in 191819 that germany is becoming a republic . You think that might be a signal for wilson that the german people are trying to step up and move past authoritarianism. The british and the french side andthe british and the french side have been in the war much earlier, northern france, much of it devastated that the , wariness and the suspicion would be deeper than germany. That weat all convinced have someone running germany instead of wilhelm the second and ludendorff, that there really hasnt been much change. That is something i wanted to add. On the british and french side, is there much interest at all in the fact that germany seems to be transitioning to some type of democratic system . Whereas for wilson that may be , confirmation that his point of view is correct. Mike i think you are right about both of those points. Not all frenchmen see the world the way clemenceau does. There are plenty of french people, intellectuals, argue, germanyo will need time to figure out how democracy, what its about time to figure out what its democracy is going to look like. There are youth movements and socialist Party Movements trying to build these bridges across the rhine river. Say,not to say, lest to lets just kiss and makeup, the fundamental problem of germany was kaiser, it wasnt germany, it was prussia. That comes up at the end of world war ii. Their kids had gone through world war ii and day number of bavarians were like, it wasnt us, it was those guys. There are people who are sympathetic. It is what they call the two germanys movement. There was this germany of beethoven and others that was crushed by this prussian autocracy, and now that the prussian autocracy has been removed, there is a chance to move forward. But it doesnt mean that everybody in france and britain trusts that but it means they say if we are looking for a postwar strategy it is better to leverage that than it is to continue the hatred and the enmity. This works better at the end of the Second World War, at least until the 1960s and 1970s, but you are a you are at a point now its an expression that you can do this under different historical circumstances. To me, its a story every time that i cross that border. I know it has been a while now, but shared currency, consultation on foreign policy. Of people are lot envisioning in 1919 and into the 1920s, that you might eventually get to Something Like that. So they are not all wildly optimistic or too idealistic, but they are hoping that if you can build bridges between them, you increase that chance for cooperation rather than competition. And again, that is very similar to the debate we are having now. So whats the best way to deal with this crisis . Is it to build those bridges between governments that do not trust each other governments , that know they have Different Things they are trying to accomplish, or is it best to wall yourself off and deal with it from a National Perspective . There is no obvious answer to that question, but to me it resonates with the kind of stuff i studied at the end of the two world wars. Jason those are important points. To two followups on that. One is that youre noting that we should not be monolithic in the way that we understand the responses of these three countries to how to build a new order after world war i. So the first question would be what kind of popular pressures do you see . Like lloyd george had just had , an election in 1918. Woodrow wilson, there had a Congressional Election and he now has republicans in congress who are not terribly excited about a lot of the internationalist side of this peacemaking process. Clemenceau does not have an election so much to deal with, but there are popular pressures that he has to respond to. And a lot of people, the sacrifice and casualties that france undergoes, the destruction in significant parts of the country that he has to , listen to these pressures, he cant just simply ignore them. I think we can get so focused on the big three and what is going on with them as they are trying to figure out a treaty that everyone can agree to, but they also have to as democracies, they are a republic, britain with its long tradition, they all have to deal with pressures from below. Could you Say Something about that . Mike the easiest way to study the treaty of verseilles is with those big three. Answers no one british to the covid crisis. There is no one american answer to the covid crisis. These are determined by things like middleclass versus , workingclass, where you live all kinds of things will , determine your response. The debates reach across national lines. And the big one is do you want , to solve these things at the theonal level, or at 19181919 imperial level . If you are british do you want to open up to International Trade . Or do you want to increase those imperial ties . In other words increasing , tariffs, keeping americans out of those markets, and trying the best that you can to reinforce the strength of the empire . Both of those arguments are out there. The imperial argument wins at the end of world war i. It doesnt win at the end of world war ii. Two completely different concepts, where the americans were able to force open the British Empire. The argument about the league of nations is interesting there is , a group of senators that say i dont care whats in it, im not signing it. And there is another group that says there are ways in which this is unconstitutional, there is a way that the league of nations can turn the United States into a war, and the obligation to declare war belongs to the u. S. Congress. That is unconstitutional. You cant do that. There are some people making the argument that the league of nations is one nation, one vote. Why would americans accept the same level of power in an International Organization that ecuador would have . Why would we do that . It makes power basis no sense. Which is why in world war ii, the u. S. Comes with the Security Council and the veto. There are arguments that are sothere are arguments that are perfectly legitimate. To paint opponents of the league as backward looking dinosaurs is unfair. They had legitimate grievances. There are things we still talk about today. The world health organization. Do you want to be part of an organization in which you cede some of your sovereignty, and you pay money into the organization know you are not getting as much out of it as a smaller state would, because you believe in helping International Organizations. If you accept that, the who makes perfect sense. If you dont, that you are not going to do that. And again, the same exact debate was happening 100 years ago. The french case is more complicated because of the immediacy of the german threat. It is more complicated. Jason you already set me up for this second question which is , the issue of democracy, and coming back to it for a second. You pointed out about popular pressures. There are a range of different views coming forward. And we should take these seriously, these different should there be a league of nations, what kind of authority should have, should it intervene . Is it only there to arbitrate . There are a lot of perspectives in there, and because of the 1930s, the league is so badly people that it is difficult to have a serious conversation about what things looked like in 1918 when people were trying to envision it. The u. S. Is fighting world war i with a segregated military. American women at the National Level dont get the right to vote until 1920. British women, during the 1920s they will get it, french women not until the end of world war ii. And then, the whole issue of the colonies where the british and , the french had used colonial respective those countries, part of the british and french empires were like, what about democracy . So much of this is being fought in the name of democracy and against german militarism and german autocracy, what is this going to mean . And obviously in versailles, ande become real issues, about what do we do about opening things up . Just in the sense of what time should we grant more autonomy . These movements for independence, those obviously become quite violent in 1919. Massacre you have in india in 1919 or so. What should we do with bad about the issue of democracy and how that rhetoric had been there late in the war, and how these big three then have to confront that . That will be for our viewers a segway into addressing the bolshevik revolution and challenge that that has. But these three countries have real issues of democratization that they have to address. Mike they have enormous issues. the imperial question is an enormous one. My canadian friends are fond of the anecdote the first time , canada ever signed a document in its own right was the treaty of versailles. The original one, they signed on the wrong line. So they had to put an addendum on the treaty of versailles document. My canadian friends like to point that out, how ambiguous this leap onto the world stage was for canada. In india, when the First World War began, gandhi was a supporter of the war. He thought the british were doing the right thing but by the right thing by standing up to german aggression. But by the end of the war, he realized this is not a war about democracy, or poverty this is , about freedom and all the things the allies had talked about. A supremely talented historian harvard wrote about a wilsonian moment, in which he argues where they read of Woodrow Wilson and said the americans are going to fight for democracy. The 14 points can be read as antiimperial. He is serious about this. And the point that he makes is that by the middle of the paris peace conference, wilson doesnt have that in mind at all. What he has in mind is america s rights to to trade in those empires. So this book is about the dissolution that people start to sense in american rhetoric. And president roosevelt is going to try to bring that back in the Second World War with the atlantic charter, hes going to try to put more teeth behind it than wilson did. There are a couple of parts in the world, the peninsula standoff controversy in china, where these interests and values come in conflict with each other. Armenia is another example and the United States doesnt know what to do because we are still , trying to figure this out. The end of the First World War creates a lot of these legacy conflicts, palestine, vietnam, that are going to come back and bite people before the 20th century is over. We talk at the Army War College about some of the wars we are fighting now as the wars of ottoman succession. We are still trying to figure out how you govern a complicated place like the middle east in the absence of a centralized Authority Like the ottoman empire. 1917, george is talking about british operations in mesopotamia and palestine and he says we are focused on where our troops are fighting. And he says, when we looked down the road, mesopotamia and palestine are the problems we are going to have to deal with. Jason there is so much more that we can say about that, the uprising in presentday iraq, and the issue of palestine would be a whole other weapon. So these are big ones. China, you mentioned the may 4 movement that starts in 1919. This is a huge question, and it connects directly to the particular challenge that the bolshevik revolution posed to the big three. This is a subject im very onceested in and how lenin, trotsky, and the bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they published all of the secret treaties that imperial russia had signed with britain and france, expecting a victory, and who would get what in terms of ottoman territory, they were very glad to show countries around the world that this is what this war is being fought over. And lenin gives his overriding vision to revolutionaries, that the world war was not a tragedy, it was not an aberration, it wasnt that europe went crazy, this is a necessary outgrowth of what he called imperialism. Imperialism is a worldwide system, so there is no desire to go back to the status quo, which a lot of socialists during the war say, we should go back to what we had prior to june 28, 1914. Mike that is like now january 2020. Trying to turn the clock back. Jason and lenin says the only beyond are going to move the sources of the world war is revolution, so he saw the revolution in russia is the beginning of a worldwide revolution that would not only take place at the capitalist countries themselves but in the , colonized world. It was really global, a global vision. Three, we can even bring in italy in place of orlando, because there will be so much turmoil in italy, that would be mussolini coming next. Mike mike, how do you think that the three leaders of the western allies, how did they make sense of this and what did they think they should respond to this . Mike there is a way to interpret the treaty of versailles and the paris peace understandingthe that the western power has not shifted, that germany is no longer the great power competitor but it is the soviet union stop the treaty of versailles itself can be a response to that. The treaty of versailles, if you want to read it, it includes a lot about protection of labor and the right of women to vote in plea besides in s, even if they are not allowed to vote in the states in which they live. It talks about guaranteeing minimum wages and the rights of people if they move from one country to another that their wages cannot be cut. They talk about all that stuff. And one way to understand that is that they are trying to undercut the bolshevik argument. They are trying to say dont , throw the baby out with the bathwater. And then there is a way to understand the treaty of versailles and the paris peace conference as saying to the imperial world, to africa, to china, there is a way to get what you want without going down that bolshevik road. Which we cany in understand this. As you mentioned, one of the things that is so great is that it is a national award, but by the time you get into the 1920s and 1930s and i would argue to world war ii, there is an ideological dimension where countries are seeing similarities and bolsheviks in all countries are seeing similarities. You get this multidimensional war that you see starting to begin intellectually, in this process that you are describing. For wilson, for clemenceau, for lloyd george, the obvious question is should we invite them to the conference, and the answer to that is no. If you are not going to do that, what are you going to do about them . We know wilson will make the decision to send american troops to siberia, they will have to work hard with japan to get japans support. That is the reason they give a peninsula that is 100 chinese, they give it to japan at the end of world war i, which causes tremendous dissolution as a sellout of every principle that wilson had. But it is a way to get japanese japanese to get japanese support for this war they think they will have to fight in russia. The interlocking pieces for the engineers out there, when you push on one part of the system it will produce weird outcomes in another part of the system. So in order to prevent the bolshevism from taking over in germany, you have to give a peninsula of china to the japanese. Jason that is a fascinating point. One of the things the bolshevik present as an alternative is instead of the parliamentary democracy model, they will say those models are directly tied to this war. They are kind of a mask for bourgeois class power and they mentioned the soviets, these councils that emerged in radicalized soldiers and 1917, peasants, a model of working in a workers democracy. This is before this turns into a oneparty state the bolshevik , are governing with another jason wilson is crafting a response that he hopes will sap some of the energy coming out of the war that the bolsheviks are directly trying to appeal to. Germany, austria, hungary, italy statesria, the baltic all over they are trying to mobilize that, but they are not the only ones trying to mobilize discontent. In 1919, they have another stats all over they are trying to player, mussolinis fascist movement. 1919 is the same year that we have the first version of what would become the nazi party in bavaria that hitley will get involved in right away. There is a lot to pack in but the way that you look at this history, how do you relate the beginnings of fascism to the process. How did mussolini and hitlers not only is there anger about the territorial remapping. Here is a larger mike one student complained i was trying to turn them into fastest. That is not what im trying to do. There is an intellectual model of fascism that made the argument that marxism and communism cannot be right. Because if class conflict was the engine of world changes marx argued, the workers of france would not have killed the workers of germany and the workers of germany would not have killed the workers of russia, etc. In effect, marks had to be wrong. What mussolini and the intellectuals around him concluded is it must be the nationstate and it must be irrationality of peoples identification with the nationstate that drove them forward. As you pointed out what that does is it taps into this febrile environment of all of these land claims and everybody that is disaffected by the war and the way the war ends. You get this kind of identification so that fascism becomes identified by the ways it is not bolshevism and bolsheviks become identified by the way they are not fascists. You get polarization in these societies that occurs all across europe. It occurs in france. There is a civil war in spain that is partly informed by this, so the center comes under pressure. The way i described it to students is both of these systems are real challenges to the democratic capitalist system that, in the Anglo American and British Empire world, they are trying to hold onto. They are trying to hold this in control. The Second World War is the story of how that doesnt happen and two of those systems fight the third. So the Anglo American capitalist system and bolshevik system and up as temporary allies. You can see the cold war as the final, in some versions of history, the final competition of the First World War when the bolshevik system is defeated, at least the soviet model of it. You can take a broad picture of the First World War and argue that is what this is. It is a competition of ideologies as you are moving forward. It is also instructive to think about the ways in which fascism as an ideology is more nationalistic than bolshevism, so it is more difficult in some cases for fascists to think across national orders. For bolsheviks, it is easy. It is international. Jason workers of all lands, unite. Mike right, so you end up with a different way of thinking about the world. That is as quick as i can do it. I did this for 50 minutes once, depicting these two ideologies in class, and i got reported to the dean. I dont want to make the case. There is a way in which you have to explain why people in europe are so disaffected by the world that they see, that they are moving to these extremes rather than reinforcing the center. The Great Depression only fuels that further. Jason you have already raised the Second World War. Watching our time, i think we should transfer over. We have a very good basis for thinking about the versailles moment at the end of the First World War and how we can compare that, looking at the world in 1945. Walter lefeber used the term there is a shotgun marriage between the Anglo American, liberal democratic capitalist states and the soviet union under joseph stalin, and they have to come together to cooperate to defeat mussolini, hitler, imperial japan. How does the world look, if we are going to work out this framework of comparison at potsdam . What is the choices they are faced with making then . Instead of having clemenceau, lloyd george, and wilson, you have churchill, Harry Truman Churchill is actually going to leave in the middle of the potsdam hearings. Then you have joseph stalin. It is a different big three, and in fact it is really two when you come down to the emerging superpowers. How do we make sense of that 1945 perspective . Mike i argued in the potsdam book that every issue except what to do with the atomic bomb that they discuss in potsdam, they also discuss in versailles. What do you think caused these wars . What do you want to do with germany . How do you want to rebuild the economies . For the americans, the answer is hold to the principles of internationalism, but not rely on faith and love and the trust of man. We are going to come in with serious instruments of power behind us. The way i described this is truman was a poker player. He did not want to go to potsdam until he had chips in his pocket. Before he left, the senate had approved u. S. Membership in the u. N. , the International Monetary fund, the Bretton Woods agreement, all the instruments of power the u. S. Would have economically. He knew once he got to potsdam, the atomic bomb had succeeded. Truman took the oath of office for president under a portrait of Woodrow Wilson, but we are not doing this by persuasion anymore, of the wilsonian rhetoric. This time we say, if you dont want to play the game our way, here are the ways we can hurt you. The atomic bomb is the most extreme version. Even the terms of the British Empire at the end of the war are the things you can use. Part of lend lease is, we are going to trade inside your empire. Those days of imperial preference are done. Potsdam is the americans coming in, with similar ideals but different ways they want to achieve it. The fundamental questions that still remain, what do you think caused this war . If you think it is germany, something wrong with german people, then you argue for an occupation, Something Like what the american treasury secretary argued, to break germany up to its 1648 borders, remove it from having a central government. If you think it is balance of power issue, you want to put resources into germany so germany can balance the soviet union, which looks like an emerging threat. If not an enemy quite yet. And these guys know it. They all remember versailles. The treaty of versailles is not something that happened hundreds of years ago. They know it. They come in and say, we have another bite of this apple. If we do as badly as they did 25 years ago, we are going to screw it up and create a third world war. The american decision is theres not going to be a single treaty that comes out of it, because they dont want to do what wilson had to do. There is going to be no set reparations so we can adjust whatever we have to do economically as we go, and we are going to have three parties represented. The whole world is not going to come. France doesnt come, poland doesnt come. Just three countries. Thats it. So it is done differently than the way they did it at versailles. With very differed outcomes. We know now it is a more positive outcome, though i think we sometimes underestimate how chaotic the world was in 1945 and how lucky europe got at the end of the war. Jason we were just talking about there is really three that are just there. We could easily simply focus on truman and stalin, and they are hugely important. In the british case, if we think about lloyd george just faced with an election in 1918 when he was at versailles and what he thought was expected of him, in the british case, they have an election in the summer of 1945 where churchill is out and labour is in. Britain had been a world power for so long, and is now faced with a situation where it is number three, at best, a distant third, given where the americans and soviets were at. What should we do with the british . What was going on there in the way britain understood itself at potsdam, from churchill to attlee, and understanding this is a different landscape than 25 years earlier . Mike the british are going through the same question. What you want to do . Do you want to reinforce the empire, draw resources out of the empire, or do you need to think about radical changes to the way you organize society . John maynard keynes, who was the British Economic advisor at both conferences, paris east and potsdam was perfectly aware. , he argued as often as he could, we cannot go back to the way we had things before. It is just not going to work. We have to be subservient to the americans, whether we want to or not. Our political and economic success will be tied to the americans, whether we want it or not. The empire is going to be a and money loser because it is going to be too hard to do things the way we had done it before. So, he is a voice arguing for a complete change on the way britain thinks about everything it organizes. As with many visionaries, a lot of people dont like listening to him because they think it is , too radical. One executive said, the only thing worse than losing the war is winning with americans by our side, meaning that the americans price for victory is too high. A lot of the rhetoric about the special relationship is meant to mask an awful lot of that. The americans understood, we are not going back to what we had. We are now clearly going to be top dog and set things the way we want to set them. This is what the United States did. It is the post world war for the United States. For britain, it is an awareness you are going to come out of this much the way the french came out of the First World War, victorious but weak. You need time to build back up and you are going to face difficult questions Going Forward, especially given the british want to put in National Health insurance. A good friend of mine has just written a book arguing that this is what british soldiers believed they were fighting for. The defeat of germany, but a yesthe defeat of germany, but a britain that will provide the , working classes with some of the rewards that citizens of a great country should have. Those things are expected and those things are expensive and they are difficult to deal with. One of the British Air Force museums has one of the first British Nuclear missiles there. There is a sign on it from the foreign minister at potsdam, in which he says, britain is going to have an independent Nuclear Force with a great big, bloody union jack on it. In other words, we are going to be independent. Other people realized, no. You may have those things, but the americans will never let you use them independently. Jason that is interesting and good for everyone to remember, the fact that the United States and soviet union are the real powerbrokers in the postwar world. In this case, we have harry truman, who has only been in office three months after fdrs death. We have the changeover from churchill. He had been such a presence. To attlee. The big change, of course, is the soviets are there. They had not been in 1919. So much then had been about positioning the western world against the spread of the bolshevik revolution. Here, stalin is there. How did the americans and british deal with that . We have joseph stalin. We have the red army that played such a decisive role in defeating hitler. How do we have them at the table and at the same time not letting them have their way . How did the americans and british respond . Mike that is the Great Power Competition question of 1945, how do you read the russians . There are folks that argue the soviets came out victorious but are not celebrating like we did. They are going to come out even more paranoid. Whatever strength you push them with, they push back twice as hard. So if you try to take poland or move closer to their border, they will push back at you. The question becomes, very quickly, there are three different ways of looking at the russians. The first, which it does not matter what their ideology is. They want what those are wanted in 1914, control of poland, border security. There is a more aggressive voice in washington, that says this is an ideological problem this is a , global, worldwide, bolshevik communist problem that we are going to deal with all over the world. Better to deal with these guys now than let that grow. There is a third argument that becomes the containment argument. It says you cant stop them from , expanding. What you can do is keep you cant stop them from being a world power. You can stop them from expanding until the internal contradiction of their system make it collapse from inside. That is the way this eventually works, though it takes almost 50 years. The core argument on the containment theory is the system is a house of cards. They have enough military if you push against it strength , to push you back. They have shown that over the past 150 years. The best way to do it is let but them stew in their own juices until the politics of the corrupt system comes apart. It is a question of, how do you think the soviets got there, and what do you think they are up to, that conditioned the american response. Potsdam, most people go into that conference believing the United States and soviet union can have a constructive relationship in the postwar period. There is a photograph i love to show when i talk about potsdam. It is molotov, the soviet foreign minister, and the new american secretary of state, arm in arm and smiling. The notion is, we have beaten the germans and are not yet enemies. That will develop after the conference, but it is not the mood at the conference itself. Jason it is worth pointing out, as we are wrapping up and about to take questions, i think the western allies, whether they were aware of it or not, did not want to see it. It is interesting that stalin shared much of their suspicion about revolution, that he was himself very wary about workers and peasants moving out of the resistance, the fascist powers against imperial japan. He is very wary of them. He wants to keep a tight lid on movements in his own sphere of influence. It is interesting that one of the things they share, even though it is not shared overtly, is a wariness of anything too radical coming from below. Mike this is the argument for seeing stalin as another czar. He wants, geopolitically, the same thing the romanovs wanted. Dont read too much ideology into it. He is a dictator trying to control the borders of his own country, just as any dictator would. In 1945, we are just not sure what to do with the soviets. Jason mike, i want to thank you for a great conversation. We covered a lot of ground in 45 minutes. Mike yes we did. [laughter] we obviously should open things up and see what kinds of questions our viewers have. We already had one here, so i am going to jump in and take us through a few of these. We have got from dan in michigan. He wanted to know, can you help me understand why the u. S. Allowed berlin to be divided . Mike if you are a university of michigan fan, i will. That is where i went. The argument is eisenhower called berlin a prestige objective. In other words, there is nothing militarily necessary about the occupation up or than, because the yalta agreement said there would be shared occupation of germany. Eisenhowers argument is, we still have a war with the japanese to deal with. I am not going to let my soldiers get killed for something we have to give back to the soviets. The argument was, physically the occupation of it is the responsibility of the soviet union, but the postwar political arrangement is some level of cooperation in the occupation of germany. In eisenhowers mind, it makes no sense to see american soldiers get killed for something you have to hand back. I think that is perfectly defensible from the perspective of 19441945, especially given eisenhowers assumption that many of those troops have to be rotated back to asia. That is the basic thinking. Jason yes, thank you. That leads to the next point, which you mentioned about the atomic bomb is its own thing. A fundamentally new development in world history. Truman announces it to stalin there. Where do we fit the atom bomb into this, you know, idea about, we need a new world order . We should not repeat the mistakes of 19181919, yet there is this hugely complicating factor, the splitting of the atom and the weaponization of that. How does that fit in the way we think about the resolution of the world war ii crisis . Mike one of my favorite anecdotes out of potsdam. As soon as reports come that the trinity test has succeeded, they are in potsdam when this happens. Truman talks to the british delegation, basically saying this is the end of all our problems. This is a cheap way to keep military power. Any time the soviets push us around, we can do this. Destroy this city. Alan bruck the british chief of , staff writes in his diary Something Like, i had to calm winston down and he did not like it. I had to explain this is not like other weapons. Alan brooke understood in july 1945, the only way, once world war ii is over, the only way you war ii is over, the only way you can use Nuclear Weapons is for deterrence. Weapons you invested a lot of money in and never use. He saw that right away. There is another question, what do you do with these weapons . We have followed the alan brooke method. There are other things we could have done. That is another dark cloud hanging over it. I also cite in the potsdam book and i like to recite it for my students here at the war college most Senior Leaders other than , churchill, virtually all of them, were incredibly depressed that the trinity test had worked. It meant either war was going to be separated from its strategic dimension and be about raw killing, or you were going to end up with whatever war you fought killing hundreds of millions of people every time you did any military action. So they are very dark, very morose, very upset about it. I love to point that out to people. This is not a moment of triumph. In their eyes this is a moment , of something we may have to do, and it is better we get it before the soviets or germans, but this is a giant step backwards in the way people are thinking about military strategy. Jason you noted about the soviet union being in, this is a different thing. How does that affect the whole framework of negotiations . France is out, as opposed to 1918. We have a viewer who wanted to know about charles de gaulle. The big three are going to decide, really the americans and soviets, and other countries are going to have to accept that. In the case of de gaulle, how does he respond to this new thing being proposed at potsdam . Mike he aint happy. De gaulle is technically the leader of the provisional government of france. He is not the head of government. So he is excluded on those grounds, also because truman and churchill had had enough of him. Truman makes a comment to james burns assistant, which i happened to come across, where he says, if i want to talk to de gaulle, i will send for him as i would the head of any other small power. They are not sure what they want to do with france. Do we treat it as a liberated country or an occupied country . The first time the americans go into combat in europe is against french troops, against vichy. De gaulle represents a different kind of france. The United States more or less had determined by this point that they dont have a choice, that de gaulle is going to be the leader of france when this is over, but that doesnt mean they have to let him sit around the table with truman, churchill, and the leader of the soviet union. De gaulle is not at that level yet. De gaulle is furious. Churchill snubs him. Before potsdam, churchill went inside france. Neither on the way there nor on the way back to paris did churchill meet with de gaulle. There were intentional snubs aimed at him. De gaulle will get his revenge, but it will be a few years in the making. Jason he is thinking about it the whole time. Mike no doubt. Jason i just want to close with one question that has been posed. It is not exactly a small one, but maybe you can say briefly about it. Is there any unity among the leaders of the u. S. , britain, and the soviet union about the colonial issue, at potsdam . Is there anything they can come together on with respect to, here we are, another world war has been fought, is there anything that they can agree on about what to do about that coming out of potsdam . Mike maybe my brain has been conditioned by the de gaulle question, but the one thing they agree on is the french empire in asia is done. Indochina, that is done. It is not going to go back to france. There is some backpedaling on that after the war, but the general sense is that the United Nations is going to be the instrument to handle this. I think there was an expectation on the soviet side that there is no way the british and french could walk back into those places and exercise authority. I think there was some expectation on the american side that something similar would happen. The british, even with a labour leader and fairly far to the left, wanted india to stay inside the British Empire. So, the major big issues about what to do are wide open. The issue of palestine will become a major Sticking Point between the british and americans in the late 1940s. I dont think there is much agreement, except the states that were not represented are the ones whose empires may go away. Jason there is so much to say about that question and all the other ones we have covered today. Let me thank you very much for a great discussion. I hope our viewers got something out of it. Please consult if you want more on mikes two books, the concise history of the treaty of versailles and his book on potsdam and the remaking of europe. Let me thank you for joining us today. It has been a real pleasure for me. It is great to see you, as always, mike. Mike thank you. Be safe, everybody. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] drum] d Thomas Jeffersons monticello and charlottesville, virginia, is temporarily closed to the public, what is hosting weekly live streams and virtual tours. This sunday we feature to recitations by their resident jefferson interpreter, on gardening and the declaration of independence. Heres a preview. Adams and ihen john years later, had a conversation, about when the American Revolution actually began. Mr. Adams said, he recalled it began for him, by bearing witness to the protests of his cousin, sam adams, there in boston. It was in protest of the stamp act in march, 1765. I replied, mr. Adams, i read member at the same time in march of 1765, in williamsburg, 1765, in williamsburg, virginia, the protests of patrick henry. In opposition to the stamp act. Looked at me, as i looked at him, and we realized , the American Revolution had begun 10 years before lexington and concorde. It began in the minds of americans. We had a question from benjamin, asking what your favorite plant was . My favorite plant. I do not thinkng i can give an immediate or ready answer. Areuch of natures wonders my favorite plants and flowers. I continue to enjoy the hollyhock. I enjoy the snowball bush you see the hymie, the viburnum. That you see the hymie. The digitalis is the hymie, the foxglove. Digitaliserly the is behind me, named the foxglove that can be used to slow down rapid heartbeats. I wish i had known that in my younger years when i was first caught here. Joint Thomas Jefferson at monticello this sunday here on American History tv. You are watching American History tv, all weekend every weekend, on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. On lectures in history university of Tennessee College , of law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds taught a class about free speech and legal cases that have impacted the courts interpretation of this part of the first amendment. The class was taught online due to the coronavirus pandemic. Prof. Reynolds hello and welcome to a second episode of lot 2020, Global Pandemic edition. The first class went pretty well. Law 2020. We are being recorded for cspan. Am the folks at cspan, i university of Tennessee College of law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds. This is our introductory