Transcripts For CSPAN3 Paul 20240706

Remarkable that i could certainly, i think, speak for both of us. We felt privileged to be able to tell those stories. So i would have one thing and i know we probably have to get out of here soon, but the sand tom mentioned in the men we write about and its all men because of the wars the grit in my almost two decades downrange in hellholes around the world, i see the same and the same grit in the men and now women who are fighting for us today and have fought for us since 2001. And we should all be very proud of that. So i guess that ends it. So thank you very much. Welcome to International Security studies at Yale Universitys Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Im ted whittenstein and i want to extend the special welcome to some of our zoom participants as well as cspan folks tuning in. Its wonderful to magnify the reach of everything exciting. Were doing here on the yale campus which of course includes professor kennedys wonderful new book victory at sea naval power and the transformation of the global order in world war two. Well introduce professor kennedy in just a moment along with our moderator professor westad. So as a reminder, you can silence your devices in the room if youre on zoom you can submit your q a using the q a feature. You have your volume and video muted, but were recording this session and well extend and circulate a copy for the benefit of everyone. So were delighted to kick it off. Im gonna hand it over. To professor arne westott, hes yales elehoo professor of Global Affairs and history. Hes the director of International Security studies and hes a very close colleague of ours and as well as pauls whos been a colleague and mentor to so many over the years at jackson and at yale. So thank you and over to you arnie. Thank you very much ted. Its wonderful to be sharing this session with my colleague and friend professor paul kennedy. Now of course here at yale pull doesnt need any introduction. He has been the mentor to many of us who are here to generations of undergraduate students and and graduate students. He built up an environment for International History and global history at yale. That is unrivaled. I think not used in this country, but but internationally he has gone out of his way to be to be kind and to help people who have been visiting here including me before i arrived at, you know, as as faculty and its i think this ability that professor kennedy has to reach out to people that is really helped us here at yale build the kind of environment that we now have for the kind of research that he will talk more about in presenting his book, but of course, its not just that at deal that professor hindi as well known to a whole series of books. This is his 20th written or edited volume. He has really helped to shape the field of International History. At no point more. I think it would be right to say then with his 1988 the ryerson full of the great powers, which is probably the most influential book on international and global history published for the last two generations. Had a tremendous impact for how other historians think and write about this field and many of the ideas that professor kennedy developed in that book and in the publications that came after that book, are now put into the volume that he is going to present on today victory at sea naval power and the transformation of the global order in world war two. So youre going to hear more about the book from the author himself in a moment, but let beers say that this is a book where the title for once. Promises less than what is actually in the book. Usually with those historians. Its the other way around because this is not just the book about victory at sea during the Second World War. It is a book about how forces change in great at great moments of historical change and historical transformation. What are the determining factors . For this kind of change. Thats what professor kennedy i think has been broken part with throughout his career. Thats what he wrote about in the ryerson full of the great powers, and thats what he brings together in this book for the crucial changes. Place in power constellations during the Second World War that really delivers the world that we live in today. So its a great pleasure for me to introduce professor kennedy. Please join me in welcoming him up to a stage that he knows very very well. But where we will be very interested in listening to what he has this. Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming out on a on a wet monday afternoon for this and for for looking in i want to say thank you immediately to to any westjet. A direct of International Security studies here to ted whittenstein and to others who helped so nicely behind the scenes to get me sliced together and to give me support in in the years in which i was doing this particular book the story of which i will try to unfold in a moment, but welcome to you all and thank you for coming. Let me begin with a story of what turned out to be a sort of rescue mission, which i didnt plan on doing but when i had stepped away from my last book and got a bit of a breather. I began to think of moving on to two different projects. This is about now seven years or so ago one was how would one take the rise and fall of a great powers to which professor west at eluded and try to bring it up to date in an extensive, you know, appendix given the fact that the world had changed so much especially in asia since 198889. How did one do that . So its beginning to collect materials and data for that project. I also had in my mind quite different project which has been in out of my mind for many many years more which is to try to do an intellectual study of the great english imperialist writer a rudyard kipling. How was it my it was behind my query. How was it that kipling switched from being the django assertive confident writer in many dimensions of the 1880s and 1890s to be the one who was fearful about the future of a British Empire and it began to be seen in his his many writings political writings, but also even in some of the the writings for children, so interested in that so thats what i was planning to do, but i was also enjoying the fact that i had been introduced by john hadend over the Naval War College to the paintings of a remarkable marine artist called ian marshall. Marshall was a im going to show him in a minute, but marsha was a an architecture and painter. He was preparing. His fourth or fifth book by encouragement of the uss Intrepid Museum in new york when the threeyear refurbishment would be done. Thered be a special gallery of his marine paintings, and he was really enjoying doing that as well as painting once a year and another picture which would be of the warship coming in and out of the river time side in the north of england where my father and my two uncles were Ship Builders boilermakers for about 50 55 years and had many sort of memories of my father describing worships coming into the china going out and he ended a painting for me once a year. That was my birthday present to myself. Um, so i was familiar with what he was doing and just really liked all of his paintings of smaller and large ships and i was so pleased that he would have this exhibition in manhattan and then caramba the news came through that that theres a new director a new president of the board of a museum in new york a very very rich gentleman with a lady with a wife would new what things needed to be done and what didnt and she decided that this this gallery for ian marshalls and other paintings would be set aside for guess what ladies and gentlemen a childrens playroom. Children would come on board a museum and hell be play around with you know, model ships and stuff and that would be it so ian was really really badly hurt by that i had myself got to encouraging him in the Previous Year and offered to write the forward to his collection of paintings when when it came closer to fruition, so i began to write that forward and encourage ian because hed written a nice book on on ahmed warships before 19th century warships because hed written a book on flying boats and another one on passages to india to try to put together his paintings of maybe more than carriers, maybe different sorts of warships and tried to produce a nice coffee table book. On warships of the Second World War and do a bit of a narrative to suggest that this he started off doing but as ian was former or happy just doing the paintings when the narrative of a thing so at a certain stage, i believe it was when i was getting a couple of hips replaced and i was to be sitting at home on the sofa recovering from that i agreed to do a basic text of of this of this book and we would try to approach a publisher who would integrate the paintings into the flow of it takes rather than as the biggies in new york like simon and schuston others. Wanted to do just collect them together put them together at page 246 or whatever. So yeah University Press turned out to be an incredible choice for us. We high quality of what theyve done now just really staggers and impresses me if you see the book itself there oblige ian by bringing some of the paintings right to the edge of the of the page rather than margin say he did a very wonderful job on this, but that was now i was this spring it was not like that. Seven years ago. So as i was beginning i was putting kipling to one side putting a rise and fall over great powers to one side beginning to draft a chapter or two and courage by a couple of friends in england who thought this would be good provided. I described the difference between a frigate and a destroyer and other things like that in a chapter called warships and navies of 1939. I got to work on this and then alas in was about 82 years old had a massive heart attack and died in his kitchen just before christmas of 2016 a long time ago so after going backwards and forwards and thinking what would happen . I decided that i would take it and if you like run with it, but i also try to insert in the story in this book some other ideas of mine, which has been referred to by professor wester trying to look at how this story of a changing naval power. Thats the if you like the title and the subtitle here how the story of a shifting naval power reflected some bigger change or some sort of really large epic transformation of the great powers in the 19th into the 20th century, especially so that meant that i needed to go back into an awful lot of investigative writing researchers some drafts trying it out on one or two audiences. I did a talk here i think about four years ago to the history faculty on what i was up to and slowly and slowly push this one forward. Then along came covid just two years of slowing down further. It was no use trying to rush this when yale University Pressed rightly wanted to get copies of this at the front of of you know, barnes and noble bookstores and that was impossible so we held on and that gave me the chance to go back to the manuscript and go through its sentence by sentence and try to trim it down. Its a very large narrative in any case and to try to get official sufficient and wonderful number of statistical. Tables and data and the maps by mapmaker down in maryland mr. Wilson all put into this complicated book. I was trying to do if you like. What historians might call a broad delian approach to the naval history of the Second World War brodell and his magnificent books on the mediterranean in the age of philip ii said there was an underlying or basic level of causation geography the climate and everything else. There was a middle level of technical technical and technological trading change which affected things. And theres a top level the history of events lee strava anymore, which was that of you know battle of lepanto or the spanish armada. Could you try and do broad dell in the mid 20th century . I was going to have a crack at this. So thats the backdrop to this complicated book. Let me see now if this control works better than it did 15 minutes ago, and we see what i mean . There is ian wonderful gentle scotsman coming from alolans of of scotland. There is a number of his lovely paintings of different warships that see japanese merchant ship a higher limping with its oil into malta at the end of the pedestal operation 1942 and so on it was so wonderful to work with him and years that i was able to do so i would i had to start going back to the basic works basic official history on the Second World War. See the one on the left is the fourvolume massive cabin roskill british official history. The one on the right is the 15 volume of the United States navy history of operations in the Second World War years ago, you know, ladies and gentlemen, i thought that these were just simplistic narratives who could read or pass on or see them second hand in book stores. I got to admire the authorship in both of these and the sustained amount of of detail which they supplied and brought them out really as early as in 1950s. I duff my hat these official naval histories. He has broadale and a mediterranean world. I wont do anything further. Ive described what i thought i was doing with this mastermind who evolved his notion of three levels of causation and change while in a german prisoner war camp outside lubeck between 1944 and 1945. What a story. There is a sort of staggered three levels of a broadelion approach. I will not try to detail them now. Im not in a you know, Political Science lecture class, but this is what i really thought i was doing. Here is the battle of the biggest battle of the war. The one that gave churchill such an enormous amount of concern. He said if we lose this we lose everything if we lose this we cannot get the american troops or all supplies or tanks or anything across the atlantic to turn Great Britain into a gigantic Takeoff Point for the eventual invasion of france in 1944 and what it hard tough battle. That was i i really do like that novel by nicholas monstera the cruel sea, he was a destroyer captain by the way as well as a novelist and i really do like the black and white movie version starring jack hogans in the cruel sea, but it wasnt indeed a very cruel sea and from end of 1939 into 40 and 41 losses in the atlantic of merchants. Especially all tankers went up and up and up. To the distress of chamberlain later on fdr and to the british admiral what were you going to do about this . This is the theoretical backdrop to what i was trying to do. Im sorry, ladies and gentleman if you think im zigzagging in my and a narrative as i try to describe the three or four purposes put within you know, the covers of this book. This is this is a Political Science ir book on the theories of long cycles and World Politics going back to the to reporting ease in spanish time coming forward trying to link them up to contradiff curves. I wouldnt bother you with all of this this however, theres a key work for me in the theory of all of his sea power in World Politics. So i was trying to do something about that and you see that when you get if you cant get through the narrative chapters to the very important chapter 8 where i stop there thats modellskis long cycles who ill come back and give a sixhour lecture on all of us if you want. Ladies and gentlemen. This is a destroyer First World War destroyer modified. Im going to talk about in a few minutes time one of the heroines if you like of my story if you refer to ships in the female gender. This is the Aircraft Carrier essex stacked with not already done now. If they did the essex class carrier, which is going to be important part of my narrative stacked with all of these all of these new aircraft designed at the beginning of the Second World War tested and then ready to go to the pacific to turn the tide in the pacific in the year of 1943. This is another aspect of the book ladies and gentlemen, naval historians will disagree with me and saying that it was the battle of midway june 1942 was the loss of the four japanese fleet carriers, which turned a tide. I dont think it was for reason. Ill try to to explain to you. By a beginning of 1943 in fact in the battle of the pacific almost all of those Aircraft Carriers, which had been in the us fleet at the beginning of the war had been destroyed not just a sunk at bale of a coral sea one at midway the wasp on escort duty pretty well everything except the very old uss saratoga converted battle cruiser was there under halseys command in the southwest pacific by in the First Six Months of 1943. There was nothing else nothing else such that the admiral king who really did not like to beg anything from a royal navy reached and sent a message across asking if the admiralty could send one of their brand new victorious class carriers to to reinforce halsey and and turn it into an american vessel for that critical, you know gap time in the pacific until a new ones were ready. The the hms victorious actually disappears from history professor westad. This is a this is a afterdinner question for you for about three or four months because the us navy using secrecy decides to give it an american name. So while it goes through the panama canal and gets all sorts of new american attack fighters hellcats avengers and everything else. It becomes the uss robin i kid you not for a while of victorious disappears a robin is there and they Work Together sharing operations in the southwest pacific until this magic time when transformation occurs. Id like to get you know there but when the uss essex arrives with its panoply of aircraft having come through the panama canal it arrives on the first day of june 1943 with our guest anonymous looking out of his headquarters into pearl harbor itself as it advances to to the Aircraft Carriers slots fear. It arrives in the beginning of 1943 june the second Aircraft Carriers of same class arrives in july the third in august and some fleet carries and another carrying and some light fleet carriers such that. By the end of 1943 when the Us Pacific Fleet and the carrier admirals under spruance and others are ready to go on the offensive at last. The us navy has 10 to 12 new Aircraft Carriers and thousands of of aircraft to carry the fight forward. Its an astonishing transformation, and i really wanted to discover. Why and how it would happen . Yes, this is about the fifth or sixth of ss class carriers arriving in the pacific and there is the wonderful hellcat the tough grumman based fighter Fighter Bomber which was constructed in in such a wonderful way between 1941 and 1943 and comes to the pacific then. The between the two of them rider and horse you have the explanation for the domination of the naval air war in the pacific after late 1943. My shot is not very good. I also wanted to tell a different story forgive me as i said for jigging backwards and forwards you will see an appendix in to this book appendix a which my three kennedy boys sarcastically described as the sausage chain when i put it together trying to describe to you something which we are now very much aware of which is production change from beginning to end of a product something which as the trade with china now diminishes those and put into a question mark, we all become experts of you. Can i either take these as cards and run them backwards and forwards ladies and gentlemen, but the balloons the other description of this and the sausage pain goes like this. It starts with a bauxite when necessary or which makes aluminum in the dutch colony of suriname and sudden america or in in british guiana, which is is being minded a rapid pace after 1941 is been guarded. I didnt learn this until late got it by a whole battalion of us marines to make sure that it is protected put in this is before the beginning of war put into all carriers escorted across the caribbean by british destroyers because admiral king did not believe in destroy escort. So anything else like that put into bargers taking up and mississippi taken to the gigantic alcoa alumin cope Aluminum Corporation of america processing plants turn into all sorts of slabs of aluminum and sent off to the next stage in the products such as like the outer casing of the of the of the engine or the or the propellers all made of aluminum so that the lighter weight put constructed in in connecticut sent down to cross over to long island to the gigantic grumman factory there which before the war had been about 900 people and the sleepy Little Village by 1943. This is really an american studies challenge for people to describe by 1943 had more than 30,000 employees. During a lot of women in that and probably a significant number of minorities brought up from the south to work in this. When the engine is assembled, its put into the grumman fighter the grumman fighter flown across the continent put on board the uss essex or so in in san diego and flown and carrier taken to to pearl harbor. Theres a chain here, which i got rather fascinating about how do you do and detector original invention of the thing the improvement of the thing the pieces you need to put the thing together as a lancaster bomber whatever it is a p51 fighter and it comes out at the other end. Naval historians i fear to say dont especially those describing actions in atlantic or pacific dont really bother with that background story. You look at sentences which used to either drive me mad, or make my Research Assistants life as we stuck them on the wall. With the coming of the advent of with the approach of with the new this with the new that on and on and on and ladies and gentlemen, you stop and say there is a story. With the coming of miniaturized radar in the in the british frigates and destroyers, but the war was transformed in the battle of the atlantic. Well, wait a minute. Where did that come from . Where did it come from . Come on sausages getaway. This is this is something i will not stop for more in a minute to talk about in 1943 in neap atlantic as well because of the coming of miniaturized radar invented by two postdoctoral fellows in physics and astrophysics at the university of birmingham early during the battle of britain. They occurred the most critical convoy battle in the atlantic wars almost the same as the essex is arriving in pearl harbor. The combination was just dramatic to me. This is the return convoys empty, but its its got all of the holes on the ship. You need to fill up and understand send back again, but dernance was just determined to destroy it and destroy the atlantic change so he sends no more than no less than four significant wolf packs to hover off the Atlantic Coast to be able to tear this convoy to pieces. And what happens in that night of may the fifth is again truly transformative. The newly equipped rather small frigates and slopes and the rest of them encounter as theyre with the convoy vessels with the merchanterships and counter the mist dire thick midst of a newfoundland coast which reduces visibility down to about 500 meters or less. Precisely at the time in the middle of the night when the wolf packs are about to attack. And for the first time in the battle of the atlantic the small escort ships like that hmsv did are able to see in the dark. And the german ubirds operating on the surface cannot this is the debt as i mentioned. You go back. This is the report of the of the commander of the escort vessels at the end of that night reporting on what happens in the middle of the night. I feel ted like a framing this and putting it at the at the entrance to what were going to have and in national Security Studies a small study center maritime and naval affairs. It lists. I think you can see the reading better than i appear, but it lists minute by minute in the dark. The approach of some object out there. And the way in which the dead will lose strife and all the others go after that object go over it as is diving under the waves drop their depth charges over it and destroy it. In the course of that Early Morning of fifth of may 1943 the return convoy ons5 does does a battle change just in a course of 12, you know 12 hours on the battlefield destroys five uboots. And damages another seven. At the end of that day donets himself, if you go to look at the german admiral stabbed daily account of whats happening turners enters the following sentence. I fear that we have lost the battle of the atlantic. If you want to time in history, ladies and gentlemen are many more of them if we are willing to go and dig them up and prove it a time in history when it seems to me me theres a turning point. And you can show it i can show it to my you know, my Political Science and i are buddies here is when maybe that hegemonic war that transformation can be seen to be occurring. And this is the little thing about the size of a soup plate. Which is at the center at the core at least of what happens in convoy ons five. It was in 19441 was on a desperate to find some way of turning the gigantic radar sets which were up on their pylons along the white cliffs of dover into something so much smaller, which you could put in a nose of an aircraft or you could put in a small warship, but it was difficult to do it was hard. I mean the university of california and berkeley was spending tens of millions of dollars trying to figure out how to how to how to get a smaller cavity magnetron with the power of the pulse are to send out as a radar being was without destroying the the casing around it. And one of us to birmingham postdocs one of my one of my heroes a guy called Harry Randall had actually studied physics and astrophysics at the university of gerdingen. Thy not abbass dance clarem on gates who gertigen and physique and they always went to germany to the german german universities to study physics and and chemistry and after chemistry and and randall had read a report a hypothetical piece by hurts the great astrophysicist in germany, not the herds of hers and higher cars, but the guy who put postulated in about radio waves and how it could be made more powerful in the future. And what casing could you put around it and the two billed boys and i two heroes and university of birmingham figured that after reading hertzs suggestive article, they would encase it with copper and surrounded with with bess. Steel, which we got from a local scrap yard. Put together and then tried this experiment out it looking at something across the bay of offers of a seven river near near bristol. I wont go into the funny story of what happens there. Ladies and gentlemen, but by the time that his heart had taken this experimental piece over to show once van eva bush and the american scientism engineers and someone from bell lab said if you give it it to us and it works. We will produce a million in two years again. I go back to whats happening in the transformative underpinnings of productive power a million and we put them on our small warships so they will be able to see in the dark. Man a man. These are im not going to go back belgrade. Yes. I will. These are the longrange Patrol Vessels the liberate on the one and the wellington bomb. I put that photograph in its a favorite of mine because its become a gigantic acoustical machine. Look at the number of of aerial mass on the outside of the lancaster. It can fly across the bay of biscay in the most in the darkest circumstances and pick out german submarines on the surface, maybe up to 15 miles away. What is the biggest invention a transforms the the allies chances of getting victory at sea in the Second World War . I think it is this thing. This is something i put together in my earlier book engineers of victory it is you can see the transformation and the fate of you birds versus merchant ship losses in the atlantic on a month by month basis. In march of 1943 the losses there was such that the british admirally thought it was going to just stop using convoys. Just let the ships go one by one and take their chances. Its there the churchill says we are in the most dire part of the war. How can we get a transformation and yet by may of 1943 two months later as you see in my narrative the changes come because of the invention of the cavity magnetron, which was then produced in large numbers to go on a little ships and in patrol aircraft. This is the power shift of 1943. Recovery magnetron going into the long range aircraft the transformation in the pacific with the essex class carriers in this year. The war at sea is very definitely one. Its already one at the beginning of the year in the in the fights through the mediterranean in the convoys there, but the great battles of the pacific and the great battle of the atlantic were victory is not achieved until the middle or so of the end of 1943 in the pacific. This is you but losses. Did you see that . I didnt i missed it. Go back. Im going to ask for better clicker next time i go to harvard tomorrow. Theyll kill me. You put losses year by year. This is denniss fate the losses 1942. He regarded as containable because german German Shipyards despite bomber harriss claims were constructing about 10 to 15 new ubirds every month. They had to be sunk at a higher rate. And so they were in 43 and 44. This is a power shift of 1943. This is is the photograph a us navy photograph, which i goggle out and goggle out somebody with you know, a was sharper eyes and mine or somebody with a magnifying glass could just sit and look at this one, but it is in the in the in the protective base of noema. It is fleet carrier after fleet carry carrier going as far. As the eye can tell where have they come from . What is the story of the Shipyard Production there . How do they get so many flyers . How did they get the millions of mars of electrical wiring my goodness . This is a story for the historian of economics of warfare. We dont have very many of them around in the academy. The naval historians as i say always talk about the action at the top brodells, you know history of events the economic historians talk about in our surgeon production of what of United States economy between 1941 and 44, but they dont jump the gap. They dont move from one part of a a story to the other. This is totally us aircraft production something a statistic. I did put in my previous book engineers of victory is still staggers me. How we go from about you know, 13,000 aircraft produced to about 22,000 aircraft to about 44,000 aircraft to 86,000 aircraft in one year. I know they had different sorts of aircraft. But how many could we produce if we went all out this year probably about 220 or so . I know ted is going to have a heart attack. This is a statistic put together by a Research Assistant of minded war studies at london who came across and managed to be employed by yale university, which is really sniffy about allowing to pay for anybody who comes from another institution to try to do a Research Work with the professors here my eyes like trying to get in the country in the age of covid. It is enormously difficult and the paperwork is daunting. This is the overall worship tonnages of the powers. You have never seen as graph before ladies and gentlemen, because we put it together just in two years time from a Political Science analysis, which did look at the overall worship tonnage production of major navies from the 1930s through until the cold war and when you turn that into a graph form you can see what happens as im trying to argue throughout in 1943 to 1944. It is just theres no competition. Theres no way even even with the attempts of japanese production or german aircraft production to get very close. What is behind this . This is the most amazing statistic perhaps of them all the armaments production of the powers from 1940 to 1943 when the figures are in brackets. It means that particular power is still not yet in the war like in 1941 40 1941. Everybodys in the war. Theres a comparative almonds production and you see the usa is still behind. What on earth happens in this country across this country in the year of 1941 42 and into 43 to allow it to have an armament production equal to that of all of the other side. Equal to everybodys i notes there and selling in there. When do hegemonic power shifts occur as professor kennedy. This has been long asked by greater historians and myself. , this is a this was the battle of recoi the decisive battle in in the 30 years war when the spanish infantry at last after having performed so well for about 20 to 25 years is defeated at rock roy at the end of the battle of croix the great female historian cv wedgwood says, this is where you might mark on the battlefield marker. This was youre awesome marking the end of spanish hegemony in europe. This is in a way. Its own transformative. She is there is a wonderful final sentence of this person who always called herself cv wedgwood in the 1930s because she feared with anybody new. It was a woman military historian cecily veronica wedgwood. She would be scorned instead of being regarded as try amazing because she knew at least 11 european languages and and was quite quite terrific in her in her pros as well as everything else. When does it transformative . A transformation occur in the rise and fall of a great powers there you have ians paintings of of german new birds in Northern Ireland harbor there behind as a loveliest painting of his im sorry. Its covered a bit. It is the allied fleets. In tokyo bay in september 1945 great battleships great Aircraft Carriers the british battleship on the far right in the distance. This is when the change has occurred victory has come its all over with the access powers now because they could not take on a power which had such enormous productive potential but it needed time. It needed six years of war in the oceans nicely described and painted by that loan artist up in bar harbor 90 in between 19. 2008 i guess the beginning ones are until almost today. There is an overall statistic the overall warship tonnage of afaros. I think im going to stop at this particular statistical table. Ladies and gentlemen what ive tried to throw you this afternoon or some of the lovely paintings of ian marshall under tell a story of how i got involved and eventually writing a book called victory at sea how the book is a may large of statistical tables of of maps of his wonderful of his wonderful drawings and then of the the narrative of this work, honey, and ted, excuse me for my sloppy hand as i tried to get these illustrations onto the screen. However, i do understand iss. Once again, thank you all for coming and im ready to take q a if that is what is going to happen. Next day. Is that is that the plan . Thank you. Thank you very much. Well also those are wonderful presentation that you learn the great deal from. So i think the way were gonna play this is im gonna come up with a few questions, which im sure professor kennedy will back the way way immediately when i try to and then we will turn to the audience for voicer and more insightful questions and in a minute, but i just wanted to start for with the brazilian theme. Because as you were working your way through this book, it became clearer and clearer to me how much that actually meant for you in terms of figuring out what happened during this time. And i was wondering about this in one particular context. So and this goes back to many of the themes that you grew up in the rise of fall of the great powers. Not quite a few years ago. In terms of the significance or productive power, right, which is also where you start this book. So thats in a way the the more fundamental levels of the prodelion triad. But then you also emphasize in this book. I think in many ways more than what you did. In rice and fall the significance of technological change right, so im wondering how that plays together here. Is this war . Including the war at sea in reality over when you United States joins the war at the end of 194. A course of the tremendous productive power of this country or are these very fundamental technological shifts that you also described that come later during the war or they also are very significant part for understanding. Maybe not the full outcome of the war, but certainly the trajectory that you that you describe in here. Where would you put the emphasis with regard to these two . You know thinking both about what you conclude in this book, but also use scholarship and a sort of protons. It would be wrong to think that right. I just believe it. But if you can collect the Historical Data of the shifts in the productive base. Karl marx would love me in the way i go on here in the shifts in the productive base, then the war is over or you just look at the figures and they say what the conclusion is. It is not inevitable. It was not inevitable that theres two young postdocs would discover in time that transformative cavity magnetron a miniaturized radar. It was not inevitable that one came to figure out how to do a very very longrange fighter like the p51. So technologic Technology Figures a lot in my narratives here technology transformed to put it in the context of the fighting of the war at sea some of you in the audience who have read a number of books on the controversy of what caused the american victory, especially in the atlantic in the Second World War will be familiar with certain works, which say once the liberty ships the standard Standard Commercial vessel was produced in very very large numbers by 1943 44 the war is over in the bible. It doesnt matter about the story or doesnt matter about the earlier losses for example in this seems to me is a naval historian truly not right. Alternatives you birds really been able to terrify and singulars the new escorts from may 1943 onwards we would have had an incredible crisis in the atlantic. In fact, they might have forced admiral king to pull a large number of units of the us navy from the pacific realm to try to preserve the lines of communication across the atlantic. So leadership Technological Breakthroughs but recognizing where the technologies work. Encouragement of a what i call it a culture of creativity to get these one through to for Junior Officers to figure out the best way to run convoy for example. So i think that this what fascinates me on is that you can look at this as a history of whats happening at the basic level at the middle level of a transforming of a technologies and at that top level of history of events brodell was quite quite right. I was a young doctoral student at oxford when brodells books first came out and then the magnificent translations into english, and i wondered if it ever could if you ever could track from that lower level to the middle level to the top level and if he was doing it so successfully then could we do the same for wars of modern industrialized times Jeffrey Parker who did the original most brilliant assessment of brodell was not sure that would happen. But yet if you go to back to broadale where he says at the end of his his great book on the mediterranean world at the at the end of the 16th century that center of power in the mediterranean was already shifting to the atlantic western powers. And if you look in detail at the story of the spanish armada, you will see that gigantic slowmoving a martyr was pursued and harried by about 35 newer warships, which john hawkins had transformed into fighting gallions of Queen Elizabeths navy. You actually could see the technical transformation coming even in the age of sail. Why not in the in the history of the Second World War why not point to that history is greater all the Different Levels whether it is the heroism my story of ernest five in the heroism one of those cluster of relationships about five or six in the fogs where you cant see anything breaks away with a very small flower class corvette called get what guess what hms pink not the color, but the funny Little Flower hms pink and the left tenant commander in in hms pink who suffered a sea sickness almost as much as nelson did in his voyages managed to escort and guide these five vessels through the fog into newfoundland harbor because he had he had a radar system which could allow them to avoid the german ubooks so leadership leadership at the end heroism at the bottom level transformative technologies and shifts in the power balances. Why not . Look at the complexities of the naval war in pacific and atlantic has been something. Where theres history at so many levels. And that is truly fascinating in terms of how it goes together. I mean, this is one of the great successes i think of this book is to show how these various aspects come together to produce the outcome not just the final outcome of this but the timing of it, i mean how we develops over time and i think the book is is really really good at doing that. And its fascinating to see how you have picked up a lot of issues in terms of discussion from the earlier treatments of this the earlier discussion among historians. So which always reminds me of this old saying certainly among historians that im not sure we are able to learn from history, but historians can certainly learn from each other and i think that is that has happened in this case in a wonderful way. I used to one more one more question paul before we move off to the audience and thats sort of the other. End of this which is not so much about the internal composition of the elements that produce the victory. But also about the other fronts in which the war was fought and the relationship that that has to the victory that you that you just were the victories that you described in in this book. So i was wondering if i could tempt you to talk a little bit about that. So the relationship between the other ways in which this war ended the battles on the eastern from the landings in mediterranean the chinese ability to hold out against the japanese in the in the war on the on the asian asian mainland. When you look at the victory that you described the victory at sea both in the atlantic in the pacific. What is the significance do you think of that for this or Overall Development towards the defeat of the of the axis powers during during the war. I mean you clearly you wonderful conclusion. You see how these things pull together, but i wonder if you could explain to us a little bit more about how you see them pulling together introducing the outcome. Let me give if i made two examples and very briefly here. Im sorry. I may have overshot in my excitement about the story ladies and gentlemen the red army after 1941 and the barbarossa attack what once supplies all sorts in order, of course to fight on an largest land battle of history and ever seen and one of the two things that really needed was trucks reliable chrysler trucks to carry its troops and long cries a wheelbase staff cause it took off and rosa coffee he loved because they were so reliable and didnt fall down in war time. And well, how are you to get them from the production plant in the east coast of the United States to the red army and that could only be done by carrying these Vital Products at sea through the arctic ocean around months around. The artic ocean and north cape to mom and archangel. This was another very very difficult convoy duty of the royal navy the arctic convoys have a story in themselves the uboat and focke wolf attacks on them are pretty terrifying. So are the attacks of german heavy surface ships and yet it prevails. So tens of thousands of these particular products arrive in more months and archangel and a sense south to be part at least of the red armies story of recovery and advance all the way to berlin manchukov and rossikowski arrive in berlin in 1945. What do you think they are sitting in ladies and gentlemen, chrysler produced reliable trucks . In in the pacific it goes differently it is it is a naval war parks. The last it is a war of long range carriers to begin with. Its only later on a submarine war when the us navy finds at last in 1943 reliable torpedoes after years of failure. In the in the invasion of north africa as early as november 1942 you get a whole bunch of also newer technologies of landing of communications and again of radar to ensure that the allies are able to get there into casablanca and algiers and then on to sicily and then on to italy for the steady encroachment of the third reich from all sorts of ways. But it isnt that easy mission gentlemen, and i just do dislike people who say with the conquest of north africa. You could move on because the conquest of north africa is a very detailed story with with at last the domination of the air over western europe by february 1944. You could allow the normandy landings. So its all of it fits together if youre willing to try to fit it together. And those are of course very often the best form of historical explanations is where you take a great deal of historical material and you take the events in within the bardelian framework and you try to explain them at all the Different Levels on which they operate. Yes it is. However rejoicing to historian ladies and gentlemen when you find Something Like that report of a commander of the ons5 convoy or when you find a report of a report of the us marine saying that the Landing Craft in the pacific now work beautifully, whereas there hadnt done in previous bloody campaigns six months earlier begin to see where it works and where advances occur and that is individuals figuring out the problem. I think we will turn to some questions from the audience at that point and i think we have to use the microphone over here. Is that correct . Yeah. So please yes. You so im very taken by your browardelli and analysis and i wonder if theres a parallel story that might be developed of failure threepartelian story of failure at the command level but also at lower levels in the nazi regime and the Japanese Imperial regime and the fact whether there are to failure stories alongside your success story, which would merit attention and development. Well, thank you, and im sorry ladies and gentlemen that we dont have a portable mic. But this i hope will do the question for me to repeated down to the back end of the room is is there parallel to a broad alien story of failure to make the connectedness from the lower levels up to the transformative levels at the top and then to victory in battles rather than failure in battles. It is clear that early on in the history of the Second World War the germans and the japanese managed to do things which which have have victories at the top which you need to explain by transformative technologies, which they did and perfected down for down below the japanese at that middle level of explanation turned out to be the first in the world to gather to gather three or four Aircraft Carriers to form Aircraft Carrier group and to attack in very very large numbers of aircraft hence as you well know is sinking of the british battleships hms prince of wales and the repulse of the malay coast in in december 1941. They are transformative battles, which were germans believe that they can get onto the battlefield to transform the war on the Eastern Front and in many respects they do but that war turns out to be rather much of a slogging war within the and this soviet union with great resources of its own but with resources coming via persia via a Trans Siberian Railway and the convoys able to to change the battle there. So in the case of japan in the case of germany, yes their efforts and yes, theyre very clever people who see that if we can push this Technology Forward and get it to the front. We will be able able there to transform a battlefield in the air in particular. The problem is that has many of you can guess the problem is adolf hitler and 1941 after all in the history of the war after the fall of france. Nazi. Germany was its newly arrived buddy mussolinis italy are too powers against one churchills britain. Its standing alone in western europe. That was could probably have led only to a stalemate because the german navy could not cross the north sea, but why in the middle of 1941 does this almost crazy dem . Figure decide to swing around and attack the soviet union was 200 Army Divisions pouring all sorts of resources in that direction. No wonder churchill felt relieved and news about barbarossa and offered to give stalin as much help as possible. And then of course after the after the japanese had attacked in pearl harbor six days after that five days after that hitler declares, hes had enough of roosevelts nigging and nigging at him and decides to declare war on the United States the german declaration of war in the us comes before the Congress Declares war on germany and therefore at the end of 1941. No wonder churchill was jubilant. No wonder he was Walking Around a white house hoff naked in a sort of flannel long flannel shirt of being hes just punches. He said germans had it. To Service Union and had attacked germany and now is three big powers. Against to one and a half two and a half and the odds were on the side of the productive power churchill recognize that you need a time and fighting leadership to carry it through. So there was a story there of a broad deleon attempt which went failed because of a hubris of the Political Leadership in japan and in germany, there might be some lessons for our own time in that very point that you just made people. Yes, please the back. It gives you questions too that again. Yeah, but if we do that after this one, peace, yeah, so im curious when the United States. Could you please identify yourself for this audience . Sure. My names will toomey. Im an undergraduate senior here at the college and im curious when the United States had the massive spike in the production of ships and the production of aircraft. Did they also have any sort of advantage over the access powers when it came to producing capable captains for those ships or capable pilots for those planes, or was it more of a question of then sheer number of the these new technologies instead of the skill of their operators. This is incredibly important question. Ladies and gentlemen, which is was there a a relative also great rise in a number of recruits into pilot school merchant marine into into all sorts of other parts of the american war machine which required very very large numbers of Trained Personnel is itself is a wonderful, you know warfare and Society Story to be told us Unemployment Rate is still high at the end of the 1930s. Even the new deal stuff is not hardly shifted that very large Unemployment Rate and it is indeed the transformation coming from the enormous increases in the budgetary allowances made by the us congress and percolating through this entire society. So i really welcome that question. How could you take you know 10 million farm boys and train them to eat gis. How could you send a large number of college boys about the age of 1920 and 21 like yourself to flying school at san diego down and pensacola. The other side was not producing anywhere like the number of flyers to get into the war by 1942 1943 when the most of the equipped and talented japanese aircraft and and landbased naval air pilots and crew were shot down at the great marianas turkey. Shoot that final balloon in professor. Kennedys addendum. Number one. There was no way of replacing them the level of quality in the training on this country was significant because we had the time to spare and we had enormous resources to do that. Thanks for the lovely question ted. Have question here on zoom professor kennedy about that the extent to which code breaking enabled the transformation of the naval power and some of the hegemonic change. So whether its the the breaking of the Japanese Naval code in the battle of the midway and in the pacific or the breaking of the german enigma code with the german uboats in the atlantic, does this accelerate the transformation that youre talking about or are there broader factors than just this intelligence advantage . Does the fact that the allied forces had both in the atlantic with the breakthrough of code breaking and bletchery park and in the pacific with the american code breakers being able to read both the diplomatic code and the naval code to an extent did that accelerate and fit in to the story we have of the allied victory in both areas . It was true. It is true that code breaking was a great contributor to the victory perhaps not as great as was advanced in the in the historical arguments and the books about codebreakers when it was last possible after about 1970 or so to release the news, which was really not known to the official historians or others that the allies had been reading german codes and that the American Navy in the pacific had been reading Japanese Naval codes. Sometimes for example, the japanese went on radio silence as they did, of course in the approach to pearl harbor. Sometimes they were not there. We couldnt pick them up and particular parts of the ocean before at last we detected them 200 miles away because of their messages if you kept quiet. Nobody would know where you were going. So codebreaking was limited to where you could see an enemy message and be able to respond to it the value of atlantic one code breaking ted is really interesting because each side especially turners be deemed was almost as smart as the allied codebreakers and therefore as a particular convoy was sent out from the north american ports the wireless traffic they would tell dernance what was happening. He would then order the uber tax to go and be in a certain part of the vast north atlantic. If his instructions of his wireless messages were picked up by the naval hut at bletchley park, then they would figure out what the german navy was doing and they would order the convoy commodore to go in a different direction if he went in a different direction, you might escape the wolf packs indeed many of the convoys do that because codebreaking helps them but in some stages, especially by march april may of 1943, the germans were reading the codes all the time it did seem to churchill and to admiral pound and to others that you could only force your way through the wolf parks. So on certain occasions code breaking works an enormously clever way to quicken the possibility of the allied victory on land in the air and especially at sea at other times. Its just an ancillary ancillary factor of explanation in the allied victories do we have another online question . Ill ask the final question then and come back well, which is to what degree was the miracle of Us Naval Construction and arms production generally the product of new sources of production and new factories, or is it simply expanding the existing capacity . So how do you understand this capacity question . And the us navy the the office of almonds orders had during 20s and 30s tried to keep alive American Ship building when they were no demands for anything any merchant ships or oil tankers or whatever it tried to keep alive. The four stateowned fact ship building factories and also try to keep alive for large commercial Shipbuilding Companies both of which are all of which were capable of laying down and constructing battleships sized craft. One of the joys i had is an amateur historian going back to my wicked time as a school boy when i was skip away from homework and go up to wallsend Public Library was to go flicking through the pages of the wonderful annual james fighting ships and if i would get to the to the 1942 of the 1943 annual of james fighting ships and go to the pages on american battleships and go down to this small print. You would see that a battleship was built here in pennsylvania. Naval rock yard. Another one was built in the brooklyn naval yard another two were build on on the on the western coast of there were distributing this to keep price to prices down but to keep a big employment source there for when the war would demand an increase in the tempo, but that never was enough. So the story of new new american production for war time is really astonishing the b17 factories which are created in cornfields west of chicago. For example a submarine submarine Production Facility on the great lakes. How on earth did it do it . Well, this was a shipyard which offered to build new american submarines and it was going to build them on the great lakes and then put them to to get them over on rollers from place to place to get them down to the mississippi and ship them down in mississippi. And so one new Production Facility built about 19 new submarines, theres law as not as many as a groton yards here in connecticut, which were boosted, but you could see the production occurring in newer places all over the country as well as in the already existing facilities. It is quite remarkable to think about the production lines that produce this victory in the end in the sausage chain at professor. Kennedy introduced us to it says something about the study of history and how you can use that not used to understand the outcome of what youre studying but also to suggest to people and i think polter professor kennedy and myself its more important to think about general readers here and and other historians or even students to suggest ways of thinking about what produces the kind of outcomes that we would like to see i mean there is a there is a set of lessons in that i think for whatever you engage in life, which is of enormous enormous significance. Its not about what happens in one particular moment. Its about everything that goes before that that produces that outcome which usually is very complex and much more dependent on ordinary men and women than the generally so professor kennedy this has been as it always is wonderful in terms of the presentation in terms of the discussion. Its been a magnificent discussion about a magnificent book, which is for sale out here in in the hallway. Join me in in thanking professor kennedy for the presentation center. Thank you. Thank you and