Lynn olson, author of seven books, many on world war ii. Including troublesome young men, those angry days, and the recently published last hope island, britain, the brotherhood that helped turn the tide of war. Guest poland thought it was prepared but it wasnt. Nazi germany was the mightiest military behemoth in World History up to that point and poland was, had a, sizable army. Small air force, small navy. It was basically a poor country. It didnt have the sense and financial wherewithal germany did. They thought they could hold off germany at least for a while but germans rolled over them. Cspan you say it wasnt a surprise. The date was maybe a surprise but was the rest of europe preparing for war at this point . Guest they expected war was coming. Most European Countries hoped it wouldnt happen. Half the European Countries were neutral. They declared neutrality. Some prepared for war to a certain extent but none of them were really ready for what was about to happen to them. They hoped somehow something would happen to prevent germany from embarking on what, you know, hitler had been really preparing for a number of years. So they were basically keeping their fingered crossed. Obviously that didnt work. Cspan why werent they prepared . If they were aware of what hitler wanted . Part of the reason, you have to remember, 1939, was only 20 years after the end of world war i which was the greatest bloodbath in history up to that point. Many of those countries in europe had lost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people including the two biggest western allies. France and uk, england. And so they were not prepared in any way, i mean they didnt want war. Nally, financially emotionally, financially, going through another cataclysm like that was anathema to them. There was essentially appeasement from the time world war i ended until world war ii broke out. All those countries really desperately wanted to keep war at bay. Most of them were readily to do whatever it took it didnt happen again. Cspan lynne olson, you talked about half the countries being neutral. Guest guest yes. Cspan what were some of those countries . Guest netherlands holland, norway, luxembourg. France and britain wanted to be neutral. They were basically pushed into an alliance. They started preparing for war in 37, 38, not really the way you prepared for war in germany against hitler you needed to mobilize. They didnt. They didnt want war. Neville chamberlain, Prime Minister of england, made it clear rather appease hitler than prepare to fight him. Very few in britain were not saying you cant do that. Win ton churchhill the foremost opponent of appeasement. He knew hitler was a tremendous threat, not only to europe but to the world. He kept saying weve got to get ready, weve got to get ready. Basically the government ignored him. He was in parliament at that point, he was in parliament and was a backbencher. Nobody paid attention to him. Same with france. France lost 1. 6 million of its young men, huge percentage of its young men. Cspan in world war i. Guest in world war i. They had invaded by germany. England was notinvaded. They were invaded and suffered terribly. They lost much of their industry. They were a country that really didnt bounce back very well. So they were just desperate to avoid war too. There was that spirit throughout europe, that we really cant have it happen again. Well pretend like it will not happen again. Cspan in your book, a question of honor, you write more people died in warsaw alone during the war then did americans in both european and Pacific Combat theaters . Guest thats correct. Poland was hit terribly, terribly hard in world war ii. The First Western country to be, country in europe to be invaded by germany. It lost 6 Million People i believe. 3 million of them jews in world war ii. By far the highest loss per capita. I mean the soviet union obviously had more than 20 Million People were killed but they have a huge population. The pols lost almost 20 of their population in world war ii. Cspan your book, troublesome young men, may 1940. What was going on . Guest may 1940 was probably the most important month in some ways of the whole war, for europe, for the u. S. , for everybody. May 1940 was the kind of the, cull minutetation of culmination of Neville Chamberlains appeasement policy. It hadnt work. Germany invaded poland in 1940, mildly to the dismay of the brits. They had not been prepared. They didnt know this was about to happen, this surprise invasion of norway and denmark, and it did. It was a huge defeat for Neville Chamberlain. So may 1940 was this amazing debate within the government, particularly in parliament, do we continue to appease or do we finally stand up . The, that debate in parliament lasted two days i believe. At the end of that debate basically, there was a vote. Neville chamberlain won it very, very narrowly. He knew his days as Prime Minister were done. He really did not have the support of many members of his party in parliament. It was an incredibly dramatic debate. Winston churchill was part of it, but he was not leading the charge of the antiappeasement members of parliament. He was in chamber rapes government at that point. He was defending chamberlain in front of his fellow parliamentarians of the meanwhile this group, troublesome young men i gave to the group, members of parliament who were antiappeasement, who were rebels, who basically thought they had to get chamberlain out and bring churchhill to power. So this debate was extraordinarily dramatic and exciting. These guys saying we have to get chamberlain out or were going to lose. He have to do something. The upside chamberlain was forced out and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, may 10th, 1940, the very day hitler launched the blitzkrieg of western europe. For drama, i dont think you can beat that day. Once churchhill took power, he rallied, started to the rally the british to fight. Meanwhile, hitler was just making mincemeat of all the countries he was going through. Starting, it was belgium, it was holland, it was luxembourg. Then into france. He toppled them like nine pins. Once they got to france, everybody thought, he met his match. The french were supposed to have the best army in europe. They were mowed down within several weeks. By june, it was clear france was about to fall. So therefore, who do we have . We have one small country, standing alone against, you know this mighty germanbehemoth. Of course that was london, and britain. And so, it was an incredible month. Cspan when did british troops first enter mainland europe . Guest they came in before the blitzkrieg started. Once the war, once england and france declared war against germany, that was on september 3rd, 1939. The british did send two divisions into france, to you know, in preparation for an eventual offensive by germany. But, that period from September September 1939 till may 1940 what became known as the phony war. There was no combat. There was no fighting at all. Supposedly france and, france and britain declared against germany because of poland t was to, because germany had invaded poland, then the allies declared war but they didnt do anything for poland. They made all these high sounding speeches but nothing happened. Nothing really did happen until april 1940 when hitler invaded norway and denmark. That was really the beginning of the german offensive. Then it really took off with the blitzkrieg in may 19 who and by the end of that blitzkrieg, as i said, only the countries that there were a couple of neutral countries in europe, switzerland and sweden being among them, but the rest of the countries were under german occupation. Only england was still standing. Cspan when did dunkirk take place . Guest dunkirk took place at end of may 1940, first part of june. As the german troops were coming in, basically they cut off british and belgian and french troops that were in belgium. And then they crossed into france and nobody was expecting them to do that. And so they basically were given a free rein at that point. And those troops in belgium and france, the british troops, british authorities realized they were going to be basically cut off and in prisoned and some killed if they didnt get out. So pretty early on churchhill and British Military started making plans for that evacuation of british troops from dunkirk. Really only talking about less than 20 days from the time of may 10th when hitler, when germany marched in to western europe until the dunkirk evacuation started t was a very, very brief time and churchhill did not tell the french this is going to happen. They made plans for the ships to start to come over to evacuate british troops but the french were not notified until actually the evacuation had actually begun and they had made no provision in the beginning to take out french troops. Only british troops. So the alliance, that partnership between britain and france which already unraveled tremendously was basically totally gone by the time the french realized their allies were leaving them and going back home. Cspan is it common to think that the germans had they pushed on the dunkirk invasion could have changed the course of the war . Guest there are a lot of could haves, and one that could have happened. Why hitler stopped, he stopped his tanks for advancing on dunkirk for some reason. It was not really clear why that was true but he did. I think if there had been a lot of historians if germans had been much more aggressive they could have, you know, basically cut off that evacuation and not, you know, more than 200,000 troops, 300,000 troops, were evacuated, most of them british. And so, the british army was saved. It would not have been saved. Obviously it would have gone down if germany had managed to cut it off but they didnt. Cspan lynne olson, most of your books are about world war ii and europe but that is not your background or training. How did you get interested . Guest by happenstance. Serendipity. I was, im a journalist by training. I spent 12 years as a journalist. I have always been interested in history. Then ive been anglophile all my life but i never really thought that i would write, much of my life would be devoted to writing books of history about england and world war ii. It happened because i left daily journalism. I got tired of deadlines and i wanted to do longer work, more extensive work. I like doing reserve. I wanted to be able to do more. And so, my husband is also, stan cloud, is also a journalist. Cspan with time. Guest with time magazine. We were looking around for a book to do together, decided, edward r. Murrow, one of the great journalists is one of my alltime heroes. Couple of biographies were written about him, very good biographies so we didnt want to do that. We decided to do a work about correspondents he hired to create cws news before world war ii. Some of the research we did involved london because that is where he made his name in 1940, reporting the blitz and battle of britain back to listeners, cbs listeners back in the United States. I did a lot of research. I fell in love with the place. I fell in love with the period. I fell in love with everything about it. As is often true i think with historians and writers, one book led to another. That really got knee going on it. I had absolutely no thought it would happen. Cspan a blog entry last year you wrote, i rely heavily on the human angle in writing history. Guest yeah, i do. Part of that comes from my training as journalist to write about people, focus on people. I remember as a child history classes especially in grade school and high school, they were so boring. I remember mem liesing dates, e memorizing dates and events, i didnt enjoy it, i didnt like it. Once i got in, my husband as you said worked for time magazine, and time was very, very big, or writing about people, as newsmakers. Really on Human Interest stuff and im by training as journalist a feature writer. I was, that was focused that way too and so much interesting writing about people. People make history. History is obviously made by people. So i want to be able to bring whatever i write about, the period, et cetera, alive in the way, i do it is through the people who are making that history. Then talking about them. What makes them, what made them tick . Why did they decide to do this and not the other . Why did Neville Chamberlain decide to be an appeaser . I think that people like reading about other people. So and, so the human angle is incredibly important to me. It, when i decide on a book, topic, it has to have really, really interesting characters, at least characters interesting to me before i will, write about it. Cspan who were the murrow boys . Guest the murrow boys were a group of extraordinary journalist that murrow started to hire when he went over to london in 1937 for cbs. Cbs is, radio journalism had not been invented back then, not in the way we think of broadcast journalism now. It was basically commentators who were kind of pontificating. You know, cbs, for example, i mean, i think their idea of journalism back then was to record night tin gale not in Barclay Square but something else. They would donate ture programs programs or requires, not journalism the way we know it. Murder row was sent to london for talks for cbs he would arrange talks. He didnt want to do it. He had no training as journalist up to that point. He basically wanted to be a journalist and wanted to hire other journalists to report news from europe. Europe was on fire then. It was clear hitler was a threat. Mussolini was a threat. Sew went around hiring the best journalists he could find. His first hire william shire a correspondent in germany at the time. Cspan rise and fall of the third reich. Guest rise and fall of the third reich. Before he did that he was correspondent in berlin by murrow. He had a terrible voice. If you have seen a picture of william shire, short and dumpy and balding a little moustache, terrible, terrible voice but he was spectacular reporter. That is what murrow was looking for. He wasnt looking for guys with really great voices. Didnt matter what they looked like. You didnt see them. It was radio at the time. He wanted really, really good journalists. It was shire. Eric severide young reporter starting in paris. Charles whoinggood, howard k. Smith, people that watched television in the 1950s and 60s, they were incredible correspondents. He wanted people in the coming war and on going war as it was coming on. Cspan what was their impact on the war and u. S. Policy . Guest they had tremendous impact on the war. Murrow having the most impact. Murrow was probably, im going out on a limb, he was, probably the most prominent american war correspondent during the war. He had amazing impact. He had a huge following. Just giving you one example. He really thought we needed to get into the war. We didnt get into the war obviously until december 1941. Britain was on the brink of disaster, on the brink of defeat. It was the last Country Holding out against germany from june 1940 until december 1941. So murrow was on the airbaseally over and over again, we have to get into the war. He didnt say it in some words but that was clear from the tenor of his broadcast. We have to get into the war. We can not let britain go down and it had an enormous impact on public opinion. In fact a lot of people give him a change in public mood in the u. S. From isolationism, to if not interventionism, thinking we had to come to the aid of britain. That continued throughout the war. Cbs was by far the best in terms of broadcast journalism, in terms of war reporting and, throughout. They had an amazing influence on what was going on. Cspan was the u. S. Prepared at that point . Goodness, no. The u. S. Was about as badly prepared as in fact, not as prepared as many of the European Countries. You know in 1940 i think the American Army ranked 17th in the world next to portugal and you know, bulgaria. I mean we had, the army was pitiful. Very, very few forces. You know, they had no equipment. Our aircraft was, they were, it was really, you know, nonexistent. Certainly was an air force but it was, there was not a buildup that came later. If we were in a very bad shape in terms of defenses in 1940 and really it began to gear up. So by the time we got into the war it was better but still the big mobilization came after pearl harbor. Cspan lynne olson, one of your books, those angry days you write about american firsters. This is blog entry in 2015. John kennedy, gerald ford, curt vonnegut, gore vidal, kingman brewster, all household names in mid to late 20th 20th century america. Late in their lives, they had something in common, in late 30s, 40s, they were passionately involved in american involvement in world war ii. True. I did not know about that in research of those angry days. It was a story how america moved from the very strong feeling of isolationism in 1939, 1940, then started gradually thinking that maybe this is our war. And the book is really about the fight in this country about, about what we would do about the war. Whether we would help britain or not. Whether we would enter the war. It was a really brutal fight, and, as i said, one of the things really surprised me, to find on the side of isolationist, were a lot of College Students who basically said, you know, this is not our war. Look what happened in world war i . We were supposed to make the world safe for democracy and we got hitler . Why should we obviously they were going to be ones on the front lines . Why should we fight in it is not our war. It is not our fight. All those men, john f. Kennedy, sergeant shriver, they were College Students. They were part of this group called America First, which is the prominent, preeminent isolationist organization in the country. Many of those people you mentioned were founders of America First. It was yale College Students who founded this incredible isolationist organization. I have to add that all of them left, and by the time the war happened, they had enlisted. Virtually everybody that you mentioned was fighting for the u. S. Many of them win credible war records and a number of them left