>> host: author and also, was september 1, 1939 a surprise? spirit. >> guest: a surprise to everyone but nazi germany. the day hitler marched into poland and it was a surprise attack. i think most of the world expected but hoped it would not happen but it did. and that really it launched world war ii. >> host: was poland prepare? >> guest: it thought it was but it wasn't. nazi germany was the mightiest military up to that point. poland has a sizable army, small air force and navy. it is basically a poor country. it did not have the financial wherewithal that germany did. it did thing it could hold off germany for a while but the germans went right over them. >> host: you say it wasn't really a surprise. was the rest of your preparing for war at this point? >> they suspected war was coming. was countries hoped it wouldn't happen. at least half were neutral. some prepared for war to a certain extent. but none were ready for what was about to happen. they all hope somehow something would happen to prevent germany from embarking on what hitler have been preparing for. they're keeping their fingers crossed. that did not work. >> why were they prepared? if they were aware. >> you have to remember 1939 was only 20 years after world war i which was the greatest bloodbath in history to that point. many of those countries lost if not millions of people including the two biggest western allies, france and the u.k., england. they were not prepared, they don't want war emotionally, financially. the idea of doing that, as a result there is a sense of appeasement from the time world war i ended until world war ii broke out. they really wanted to keep or pay. >> host: you talk about half the country is being neutral, what were some of them? >> guest: the netherlands, belgium, norway, luxembourg, france and britain wanted to be neutral but they were pushed into an alliance. they started preparing for war and 37 or 38. but not the way in which you'll prepare for war. they didn't want war. the prime minister of england to make clear he would rather appease hitler them prepared to fight him. very few in britain were saying you can't do that. churchill knew that hitler was a threat not only to europe but the world and he kept saying we have to get ready. the government basically in norton. but nobody really paid much attention to him. france had lost 1.6 million of their young men. a huge percentage, and world war i. they had been invaded by germany and they suffered terribly. they lost much of their industry. a country that to not bounce back well. they were desperate to avoid war. there was a spirit throughout europe that we cannot have it happen again. >> host: in your book you write that more people died in warsaw alone during the war than did americans in both european and pacific combat. >> guest: that's correct. poland was hit terribly hard in world war ii. the first western country to be invaded by germany. at lost 6 million people i believe, 3 million jews, by far the highest loss per capita. more than 20 million people were killed in the soviet union. the polls lost about 20% of their population. >> your book, troublesome young men, what was going on? >> may 1940 was probably the most important month of the whole war. for europe, the u.s., for everybody. may 1940 was the culmination of the appeasement policy. it had a work. germany had invaded norway in april 1940. that had not been prepared. it was a huge defeat for chamberlain. some a 1940 was this amazing debate within the government particularly in parliament about do we continue to appease or do we finally stand up. that debate lasted two days i believe, at the end of that debate chamberlain wanted he won very narrowly and she knew his days as prime minister were done. he did not have the support of many members of his party. an incredibly traumatic debate. churchill was part of it but not leading the charge. he was in chamberlain's government was defending chamberlain in front of his fellow parliamentarians. meanwhile members of parliament who are anti- appeasement basically thought they had to get chamberlain out and bring churchill to power. this debate was dramatic and exciting. you have churchill arguing saying you have to get chamberlain out or you will lose. the upside is chamberlain was forced out and churchill became prime minister on may 10, 1940. the day that hitler launched in western europe. for drama, i don't think you can beat that day. once churchill took power he started to rally the british. but hillary was making mincemeat of the countries he was going through. his belgium, holland, luxembourg and then into france. once they got to france everyone thought he met his match. they were supposed have the best army of all in europe. but they were mowed down within several weeks. by june france was about to fall. now we have one small country standalone against this german behemoth. that was london and britain. it was an incredible month. >> host: when the british troops first enter mainland europe? >> guest: they came in before west creek started. once england and france declared war on september 3, 1939, the british did send to divisions into france in preparation for an event so eventual -- that time from september 309 until may of 1940 became known as the phony war. there is no fighting at all. supposedly france and britain declared war because of poland because germany invaded poland so than the allies declared war but they didn't do anything for poland. nothing happened. nothing really did happen until april 40 when hitler invaded norway and denmark. then it really took off in ma may 1940. by the end of that there's a few neutral countries in europe. the restaurant or german occupation. >> -- took place may 1940 in the first part of june. as the german troops are coming in they cut off british and belgian and french troops that were in belgium. they crossed into france. nobody was expecting them to do that. they were given free reign at that point. those troops 30s realized there they cut off and imprisoned and killed if they take it out. pretty early on churchill in the military started making plans for this. were talking less than 20 days from the time of may 10 when germany marched in to western europe until the evacuation started. is a very brief time. churchill did not tell them this was going to happen. they made plans but the french were not notified until the evacuations have begun. they made no provision in the beginning. the partnership between britain and france which already have been unraveled was totally gone by the time french realists their allies were leaving them. going back home. >> is a, to think that the germans had they pushed on the dunkirk invasion could change the course of the war? >> there's a lot of kudos. why hitler stopped tanks from advancing it's not really clear why that was true, but he did. historians believe if the germans had been more aggressive they could have cut off the evacuation more than 200,000 troops were evacuated, most were british. so the british army was saved. it will go.if germany managed to take them down. >> host: most of your books about world war ii or europe, how did you get into that? >> guest: and serendipity. i'm a journalist by training. spent 12 years as a journalist. advisement interested in history. i never thought i would write books of history and world war ii. it happen because i left journalism and i got tired of the deadlines. i like doing research i wanted to do more. my husband is also former journalists. they were looking for a book to do together. and so couple of biographies about -- have been written so we don't do that. we decided to do a book about the correspondence before and after world war ii. some of the research involved london because that's where he made his name in the 40s reporting the battle of britain back to cbs listeners in the united states. a foam over the place and the time, with everything about it. so one booklet to another network, going. i had no thought that would happen before it did. >> you wrote that i rely heavily on the human angle in writing. >> guest: yes, i do. part comes to my training as a journalist write about people. as a child i remember history classes of snowboarding. i remember memorizing dates, events and that's what you were tested on. it was so dry, i didn't like it. my husband work for "time" magazine in time was very big on writing about people as news anchors. my training is a feature write writer's much more interesting to write about people because people make history. i want to bring whatever i write about a live in a way i do it is to the people were making the history. and then why did they decide this and not the other, people like reading about other people. the human angle is important to me. when i decide on a book topic it has to have really interesting characters. >> host: who were the miller boys? >> guest: a group of extraordinary journalist that merle started to hire when he went over to london in 1937 for cbs. radio journalism had not been invented back then. it's basically commentators who are pontificating. cbs for example their idea of journalism was to record, they would do nature programs or choirs. that journalism the way we know it. tomorrow was sent over there to arrange talks. he had no training as a journalist but he wanted to be a journalist and hire others who could report the news from europe. europe was on fire them. it was clear hitler and mussolini was a threat. she hired the best journalists he could find. the first one was william scheier, before he did that he was hired as the cbs correspondent in berlin. ~ terrible voice. if you ever see a picture of scheier, he was a spectacular reporter but had a terrible voice. he wasn't looking for guys with great voices didn't matter what they look like because he could see them. they started out in paris was named that that resonate to people who watch television 50s and 60s. he was looking for the best. the best people who could report the war as it was going on. >> host: what was their impact on the worn u.s. policy? >> guest: they had tremendous impact on the or. he probably had, i'm going out on the limb, but probably the most prominent american war correspondent. yet a huge following. for example, he thought we needed to get into the war. we didn't until december 1941. britain was on the brink of disaster and defeat. it was the last country hold not against germany. so he was on the air over and over can say we had to get into the war. not so many words but it was clear from the tenor of his broadcasts. we cannot let britain go down. it had an enormous impact. a lot of people give him credit for the change in public mood in the u.s. from isolationism to at least sinking we had to come to the aid of great britain. that continue throughout the war. cbs was by far the best in terms of broadcast realism and war reporting. they had an amazing influence on what was going on. >> host: was the u.s. prepared at that point? >> guest: no. they were about as badly prepared, not as prepared as some of the european countries. in 1940 the american army ranks 17th in the world next to portugal and bulgaria. the army was pitiful. a few forces. the equipment, the aircraft was not the buildup that came later. we were in bad shape in terms of defenses in 1940. it began to gear up. by the time we got into the war is better. the big mobilization came after pearl harbor. >> in one of your books, those angry days you write about america firsters. this is a blog entry. john f. kennedy, joe four, potter stewart, sergeant schreiber, all household names in mid- and late 20th century america. earlier in their lives had something else in common. in the late 30s and 40s there passionately opposed to the idea of american involvement world war ii. >> guest: that's true. that was the most interesting things. i didn't know that when i started research about those angry days. there is a story of how america flew from a strong feeling of isolationism and started gradually thinking thinking that maybe this is our war. the book is about the fight in this country whether we would help britain are not. one thing that surprised me was to find that a lot of college students basically said, this is not our war. were supposed to make the world safer for democracy and we got hitler. why should we fight? all those men from john f. kennedy to schreiber were students. they were part of this. in fact many of the people you mention were founders of america first. it was yellow college students who founded this. all of them left by the time there were happens they had enlisted. virtually everyone you mention was fighting for the u.s. many with incredible war records. many of them realized it was going to be our fight. >> i want to play a clip in this is charles lindbergh. >> i come before you at this time to enter a plea for american independence. there's no division among us about the defense of our country. we have always been ready to fight against interference of foreign powers in our affairs. if need be, we are ready to dive for the independence of america as our forefathers have died before us when necessity arose. on an american issue we stand the united nation. it is only when asked to take part in the quarrels of foreign countries that we divide. >> host: that was in 1940, did he ever changed his mind? >> guest: no. he always thought we should stab of the war until december, 1941. and then with pearl harbor instantly stopped. now that war was upon us he backed roosevelt who he fiercely opposed up to that point and he said that now we're in the war. >> host: up until december, 1941, was see in the majority? >> guest: that's a complex question. in the beginning he was. and 39 he certainly was in the majority. americans as a whole felt the same way. this was not our war. we had fought it, it had not worked. americans have british tricked us into it. so they were determined it would not happen again. the mood in the country from 39 until the fall of 1940 was heavily isolationist. the two began to change, a number of factors one was that with some london, the constant bombing in the bottom of britain and the fact that the brits survived and said we're not going to give up and many people saw these incredible scenes of london and the british people trudging through the wreckage of their jobs. the courage of their people was extraordinary. also the prime minister for his defiance of hitler. so the reporting on the began to change people's minds. also there is a america first fighting for isolationism, their groups in the united states advocating interventionism. they started having an impact on the country. this back-and-forth was going on. by 1941, certainly by the time a pearl harbor nobody wants to go to war. most americans as we've seen in the polls were ready to go to if it meant as the only way germany would be defeated. they were resigned to the fact that we were going to go. there was a huge shift in american public opinion. >> host: between december 1, 1931 and december 7, 1941 rose the communication link between fdr and churchill? >> guest: they started writing letters to each other. roosevelt was president and once churchill became prime minister there was a regular exchange, sometimes phone calls between the two. churchill was pleading for roosevelt in the u.s. to get into the war. and roosevelt say will do what we can short of war. roosevelt was very wary about the mood in the country and particularly of congress. congress tend to be isolationist. he was concerned, he was a political guy. 1940 was a presidential election year. he was running for a third term which was unheard of. he was particularly concerned about the reaction of him doing what people thought was too much to help britain at the time. it was an interestingly.year, certainly in europe it was but also the u.s. for the allies to win, the u.s. had to get in to the war. for britain to survive the u.s. had to get in. the question was, are we going to get into the war it was extraordinary year. >> host: you're watching the tv on c-span2. invite one author on in this yeamonth it is lynn olson. here's a quick look at her books. freedom starter which we have not talked about yet, the unsung heroines of the civil rights movement in 2001, the question of honor in 2003. troublesome young men came out in oh seven, citizens of london the americans who stood with britain in its darkest finest hour. -- came out 2013 and her most recent book, last hope island. britain occupied europe and the brotherhood that help turn the tide of war. we will take your calls and social media comments. you can call area code 202, you live in the eastern central server -- [inaudible] we have set aside the third line this one for world war ii veterans. with like to hear your voices as well. if you cannot get through on the phone lines but want to make a, there's other ways. twitter, instagram, facebook, all have our handle for all of those is that book tv. we will school grow through those on the screen. finally you can send an e-mail will begin taking those calls and comments in just a few minutes. from your book, you write that by 1936 it was clear that hitler's propaganda campaign was wearing considerable fruit. in certain circles is considered the head of fashion to be pro- nazi. >> there's a large contingent of german aristocrats. the upper-class was heavily pro- german. very fashionable to go to germany and hobnob with the nazis, the famous -- one went to berlin and became an associate of hitler and killed her since, shot herself in the head when britain went to war against germany. he survived for a few more years. is very strong pro- german sentiment in the chattering classes in england. some of the royal family as well. >> what about the u.s. ambassador to britain. >> embassy in this? >> kennedy was loathed by the british government because he was also was a pro- german, he was a businessman and he thought germany was going to go to war against britain and britain could not possibly survive. it was clear that bring can stand up to the might of germany. he was a friend of chamberlains and he thought there is no way britain could survive. therefore, we had to appease hitler. and that's the way kennedy thought to. till he went home and 40 he was publicly espousing appeasement saying britain cannot survive. as you can imagine the british people went nuts. first of all, america was not helping to begin with. then he had the american ambassador espousing to the germans. >> and. >> fdr did not like joe kennedy. he was the one sent to england. she did not agree with what he was saying. fdr was a political animal was afraid of joe kennedy politically. afraid of his influence among american people. he wanted him to stay in london. he did everything he could to keep him there until joe kennedy left. he just left in october 1940. fdr was going crazy. he had these plans to stop him from speaking publicly until he met with fdr. then fdr persuaded him not to get involved into the election debate. so then he kept him quiet but he did not approve of him. it was not his finest hour to appoint joe kennedy as ambassador. when he was appointed it was clear europe was about to be on the verge of war. he was the wrong person to send. >> host: who was john gilbert wind it? that was kennedy's successor. total opposite in every way. kennedy was a millionaire. gilbert was a former politician opener of new hampshire. very much an idealist it was an ally of roosevelt's. they had been governors at the same time. in the 30s when social security access past roosevelt name -- of the first administrator he took the job then and 36 when the republicans were at social security from the beginning they made it a campaign issue and wine it quit his job as social security administrator giving up any hope of a political career. and basically denounced the republicans for their oppositions. he was an idealist and became head of the international labor organization and when roosevelt was looking around he chose gil to go to london. he went to london in march of 41 which is probably the worst time of the war. their shipping was being decimated in the atlantic, they're having a terrible time militarily. the u.s. was wondering what it was going to do and then this very shy guy with the stammer, arrived in london and said, there's no place i'd rather be the british people fell love with him. he bonded with them and cared with them. he would go out on the streets in london and walked the streets and asked people what he could do to help. the newspaper got a hold of it and he became the symbol to the british that maybe there was something good about to happen. he basically stood up for them. it is really important in many ways. then once we got into the war he helped create the american alliance then he put together. >> host: you say he bonded with the british people, he really bonded with the churchill family, didn't he? >> guest: he's one of my three main characters. in all three of them, gil is the least well know. and ava was the military aid program congress passed in 41 to help britain, he was very important as well. so i tell the story of the three men what they did. all three of the men did bond with members of the churchill family. they all had affairs with members of the churchill family. herman had a notorious fair with -- churchill. her husband was in egypt at that point. they did not keep this affair, and 43 was u.s. ambassador to the soviet union. and switched her attention and white had an affair with churchill who is the middle of favorite daughter. there was an incredible atmosphere within the family during that time. it's not surprising because churchill welcomed those three americans into his professional family and into his real family. . . . . american support and to pull us into the war, once into the war basically try to get his way with roosevelt. he basically did his best to know these guys and bring them in. so that obviously, they were, they spent a lot of time with the churchhill family. one thing led to another. cspan: well you focus on those citizens of london. but did they workeded together? did they collaborate in their efforts to get the u.s. more involved inet the war? >> guest: all three of them believed intensely, passionately that america had to go to war to help britain and they all worked to keep the alliance going. in terms of their own personal relationships with each other, they were very close friends very much the two of them were idealists. they were working to make sure a better world would come of this war and it woul they would leada coffee and justice and all the good things everybody wanted. he was a former businessman, millionaire who wanted to make his mark in government but he couldn't do it in the u.s. so he decided he was going to do it in england. churchill relied on him to a great extent and as a result of that experience in london and the soviet union in worldex wari he became a diplomat after the war but it was elbow to elbow in other words basically in london and they obviously didn't like that at all so they were at on. >> host: (202)484-8200 in east and central time zones. (202)748-8001 in the mountain and pacific and a third line set aside for world war ii veterans and people who were living during that time, (202)748-8202. i guess if you were living during that time, if you were in the wa war say born 1925 as the minimum you would be early '90s. >> guest: it is rapidly diminishing. our guest in sarasota florida. >> thank you so much for the program. i got t so excited when i heard she was going to be on. i can't hold what i was supposed to be doing today that says do not disturb me unless it is an emergency until 3:00. >> host: what is it about her work you admire so much? >> guest: >> caller: what she said about history is so true. ie and 84 and even though i was a kid at the time i very much remember world war ii because my dad was the only civilian non- roosevelts field during the war and worked on lindbergh's plane and was upset during the war so even though i was a kid, i did get a lot of information about the war. i became an honorary and i just thank you so much. i think you are talking about a question of honor. i've read two of them and the rest are on my nightstand. which of your books has sold thd the best? >> citizens of one didn't. why do you think that is? >> it's interesting.o i'm still not quite sure. a lote of people come up and sy that is my favorite book you've written. i'm pretty sure nobody else had either, so i structured the book in a way that it wouldn't be just him. i think in this incredibly turbulent world that we live with the kind of empathy and encourage and ideals that he had and was able to do good i think that he appealed to people. it is also a romantic time, but it's very dramatic. i thinkhe people like the story not only as americans and london but how the citizen of london are obviously mostly great and how they reacted to the horrendous life that many of them had and yet with a lot of good humor. i am a romantic at heart and it's the story of americans coming theres and having lived n this country that they lived not having to deal with all this and what they wereed going through t the americans who were in london during the time had to deal with all that said there was a great bond between the americans and the british. i don't know if you want me to talk about this, but the citizens of london comes from a broadcast made before he came back home. he'd been in london, covering the london for cbs and then was sent back to washington but before he left he made his final broadcast very personal about how he had come to london in december 1940. he had been covering paris and was there for the fall of france and then stayed several months in london and at the end of the broadcast he was comparing paris to london like a beautiful woman who just gave up on life and then he came to london and said he hated the whole idea because they looked down on america and that he would never get along with the. then he found he fell in love with them. and at the end of the broadcast she was trying to keep himself together and he said in the years to come people will write i was a soldier, i was a sailor, i was a pilot and the others will say i was a citizen who wanted this. it was so heartfelt he was a citizen of london as were the other americans there. so going back to the way it is the most popular of my books because it was a time most of us wish we could have lived through in this incredibly difficult time we lived of the idea of upf people working together for the greateroo good i think is very appealing and people like that. >> host: when i asked you that question i have a preconceived answer and i thought it was going to be troublesome young men. every summer booktv travels up to ask members of congress what they are reading and over the years we have done this and we just want to show you a little bit of video. >> and author whose name escapes me but explores the conservative members of parliament who laid the foundation for winston churchill'sva replacement of neville chamberlain. >> i'm reading a book about troublesome young men about the members of the conservative party that were discussed in the appeasement of the neville chamberlain administration and it was believed last year i finished a good book the freedom caucus and we liked it and gave it to everybody and it was called trouble some young men and it was about the parliamentt and 38, 39 and 40 who knew they had to move chamberlain outs of power because he wasn't standing up to hitler and mussolini like they thought he needed to and we read this all at the same time we were involved in changing our leadership, so it's kind of an interesting book i read. trouble some young men had to do with the rise of a small band of conservatives in the parliament during the churchill period and kind of motivated by the freedom caucus trying to get the country back to solve the fiscal problems and just kind of represent the people more closely so i think this will give me a little motivation. >> vice president of the united states back in the day and majority leader. it has appealed not only american legislators. i've been to canada and britain. it's kind of a test they read it and see themselves, that's basically what's going on. and it's not just these are all republicans. democratthe democrats have saide thing. winston churchill is a hero to a lot of people including many legislatorsg and so i think they'll think that's been or at least they wish that were then. but in terms of the members of the house and the senate, i do think they put themselves in that situation. >> february 3 of this year in thehi guardian you wrote that among republican members of the congress there are no profiles in courage at all. ironically the cowardice applies to several current congressmen and senators have told me how much they love trouble some young men and seeing themselves in those wartime rebels yet not one of them is willingto to stad up to donald trump, an emotionally disturbe disturbed authoritarian president and he quits the criticisms ofy his policies. >> i did write that and believe everynd word. >> was winston churchill and even to criticism? >> he didn't like criticism, but she would take it. depending on who was offering the criticism, he certainly accepted. it. for example, in the war cabinet, people wouldha often argue with him about what they wanted to do and again he would grumble and come to the samebo conclusion. the generals constantly said you can'tt do that. he had a lot of ideas and again he would grumble but he would basically agree, so he did listen tdidn'tlisten to people s in charge. >> let's hear from clyde and can minnesota. thank younk and good afternoon r taking my call. i've always been very curious about this particular part of our involvement in the european campaign. and once hitler knew we were going to enter the war in europe and then especially after we were bombed by the japanese in pearl harbor, the collaboration between japan and germany and if hitler were to come to power in of war, the domination would have changed. was there any collaboration or unification or whether there have been a push between germany and japan after that point and then if i may i have a proud statement i would like to make. i am one of the few people that have the distinction of having a father that was in world war i questionld like that addressed. >> to answer the first question about collaboration between germany and japan, they were bound in an ally but japan didn't tell germany they were going to bomb pearl harbor. germany had no idea that was going to happen. so for the next three days, there was a discussion about what to do. hitler wanted to declare war immediately against the united states but many of them didn't want that because they knew america was the sleeping tiger and basically it was going to be very difficult to win so they said let's continue against the soviet union and not get involved. hitler was furious and he was the one thatan declared war thre days after they bombed pearl harbor. we didn't declare war immediately. most peoplet don't know or have forgotten that. we did nothing in terms of germany until hitler declared war against us and then we declared against hitler and germany. i think the lack of closeness proved to be a problem. they had not collaborated and that was one of the greatest mistakes. hitler made a lot of mistakes but the biggest war against the soviet union and then against us. >> it was a complete surprise to the germans. >> and they have absolutely no idea what was going to happen. >> b&c please go ahead with your question or comment. wondering your thoughts i will take my answer off the air. >> guest: that is a good question, and it's a complex question. lindbergh i said several times was the strangest person that i have ever written about. he was the real technocrats. he wasn't a great socializer, he loved technology and his interest in germany was basicallyy he admired what they were able to do scientifically and in terms of technology. he thought it was the most powerful air force in the world and therefore that it was foolish for france, britain and the united states to get involved so she was impressed and what they were doing militarily and also how they brought germany back from the bad economic state. she knew what was going on and he thought that was wrong but it didn't really matter that much to him and i think part of it is because the way he was put together, a very strange individual. so when you ask if he was a nazi sympathizer, he had spoken out against some of the things nazi germany had done. >> was there a strain of anti-semitism? >> certainly a speech that he made it basically shattered his image in the country and was seen as anti-semitic but i always say that he wasn't alone. he said what other people were thinking privately. one of the surprises in doing research for the book is how it wasn't covered up. jews were barred from many professions, either at universities or limited to a small quota, they were coming in too many cities saying they couldn't buy houses in certain areas and there was a strong strain in the other departments said he was anti-semitic but so were millions of others. >> host: barbara asks please ask her to comment on the conflict she experienced her and heit onher husband's america fit activities. >> guest: i write a lot about this in those early days. my favorite character maybe isn't the right word but she was married to charles and found thatwh whole period to be upsetting is putting it mildly. she was caught in the middle of thisis fight and came from a big international family. her father became a u.s. ambassador to mexico and became a senator and so their family was very much aligned to europe and england, as was she and then she met and mandated the most approachable man in the world who just a few years before had become the most famous person in the world by flooding across the atlantic. handsome, modest, charming, everything a lot of people wanted. it was the 1920s and a tie in of cynicism and then you have this god fly across the atlant atlantic. the biggest celebrity in the world and so being married to him, she was thrust into this and as bad as it is now in terms of not having any privacy, it was beyond the pale. she was a very shy woman that a womabut awoman with a mind of h. this wasn't the kind of lik life wantedry and when he thrust himself into the middle of debates about whether wadebate d get into the war and then became the spokesman of the isolation movement, she peeked down was loyal to her husband and went along with what he was doing. i don't think she ever recovered from it. it was truly damaging to her personally, damaging to her family, it ruined his reputation in many ways so it was really difficult. we haven't even talked about the kidnapping of the child. it was one of the most notorious events that happened in the early 1930s. a toddler was up from their home in new jersey and taken and murdered and neither of them recovered from god and i think that played a huge role in what happened to him later on. it was so revolting to him that he thought there was no individual freedom left so he took a van and the second son after that nothing, left for europe and in the 1930s that's when he started coming to germany and they used them for propaganda purposes to say they are unbeatable. >> wolfeboro new hampshire, hello, robert. >> i've enjoyed the citizens of london thank you for resurrecting-joy this enormously but the question i have is the relationship to a metal chamberlain inhabits contracted with stanley baldwin. in your research have you found out why they have such a deep animus? he was the prime minister that preceded that the chamberlain. that is a good question there was just personal animus between them. if you remember the king abdicated and churchill was very much a romantic and a loyalist said he supported the king and baldwin was very much against that so than in light of the worst threats they were very much opponents in that regard. it's a good question because he was loyal in the hand he opposed the appeasement policies until britain declared war and chamberlain invited him into the cabinet again so once churchill became part of the government he was constantly pressuring chamberlain to be more aggressive and publicly he very much supported chamberlain and what he did end up until the very end going after these men we talked about who said we have to get chamberlain out of their. if we don't, we are going to go down to defeat. in the end he was defending him. winston churchill was very loy loyal, not always loyal to the people who brought him into the government. he kept him in the government once he became prime minister and also ipt think because he ws afraid in the party and wanted to keep the leaders on his side and the foreign secretary because she was afraid they might try to oust him and it wasn't until several months later he starts making those great speeches and he became a symbol of resistance and only then did that for a party start lining up with him. did it have substance as well? an advisor. he may not have gone along with what he said but he did listen to him when he was in the cabinet. he supported churchill in those early days and months of the premiership. there is a movie about to come out about this period in 1941 in halifax and others in the government were pressuring him so there was a lot of pressure on him at that point and churchill faced this pressure and said finally, we are not going to do that. we are going to continue to fight. chamberlain died just a few months after and was already critically ill with cancer at that point. he died on toby and the end was publicly supportive of him. >> linda you are on booktv with lynne olson. >> i'm excited to have a conversation with joanne olson today. i never thought that would happen. [inaudible] i'm always interested in what the part of that was. this has nothing to do with the question earlier in the program she was talking about winston churchill's daughters into the affairs they had with the american journalists that were in england at the time and i was wondering if she thought that was a calculation of errors or if they were true from heart. >> that is a good question. it depends on what you are talking about. in that relationship there is a large part of calculation. it was more or less done by churchill to express their disapproval and even though basically he was a realist. if it meant sacrificing a personal relationships i won't say that he didn't care but the most important thing was brita britain. churchill thought he was encouraging her in this relationship because she learned a lot about what the americans were doing and churchill's wife wasn't so thrilled with that relationship but the prime minister certainly didn't put a kibosh on it. he went along with it. it was very much from the heart. i think each of them were very important to the other during the time they were together. >> when did they get married? >> it was well after the war. his wife never came to london and then he went to the soviet union and went back to new york after the war and did a number of other things. his wife died and she a went ono have fares to decode affairs with other men and then i think he was in his 70s and she was probably in her late 50s but they ran across each other in washington and went to a dinner party apparently the flame flickered uprt again and they we married shortly thereafter and stayed married until he died. >> next call from california, hello, victor. >> caller: think you very much for your contribution to histo history. recently i read a book whose name i cannot remember but it presents the idea that while it's true metal chamberlain did appease, it wasn't for the reason the later critics said. it highlights the fact he was constantly being told by the military people that they could not afford a assault on nazi germany because they were not prepared to engage in the war and that it wouldn't be wise to do so so therefore he appeased and later when the war turned against germany, they need somebody to blame and the opponents in politics basically said all that suffering we've had a long is because of the appeasement issues. he argues he got a bad rap. how do you see that? >> i don't think he got a bad rap. i know a number of historians who argue that. that certainly is a strain of history that has come up. he's certainly not totally responsible. baldwin was an appeaser as well. basically they were not preparing for war. churchill was talking in the 1930s about the need to have a stronger army and a stronger air force. there was some work done under chamberlain. it wasn't essentially built up in other words most of the money went to fighter planes to defend britain against a german attack rather than to look at what hitler was doing and say maybe we are going to have to go to war against them. you are right there is nothing in this that can be done. the bomber will always get through. they will destroy us and bomb us to smithereens if a war starts and then it's all over that happens, so we must do everything we can to stay out of it t. he was more warlike against his domestic opponents, those members of the parliament and others who were opposing him then he was against germany. he wasn't weak domestically. he was a tough guy who punished those who didn't agree with him but he and his government didn't do as much in terms of preparing the country for war. >> and the authors section you write i'm often asked how long it takes me to write a book. the length of time obviously varies but on average of just two to three years. not so with last hope island. >> it's different than my other books. i got the idea for last hope island after i wrote troublesome young men. if i had done it there it would have been my fourth book, but i got a contract from the publisher of troublesome young men to do this book and i did about a year's worth of research, and i've actually started writing two or three chapters and i got cold feet. i thought a couple things. i thought i didn't know enough about it. to do the kind of research i needeneed to do is a huge subje, seven different countries the size of england but i would have to go to and find out about in exile, so it was overwhelming to me at that point and also i didn't think that they paid me enough money to do it so i decided to put it aside and came up with citizens of london then i was talking to my wonderful agent so i went back and looked at the stuff. so many years have gone by and i felt like i learned so much more about europe, britain, world war ii >> what became your go to places? >> the national archives and their relationship with british officials but it's also the home of the exiled papers. at the end off the war they had no place to go and it would have been under communist rule. so that's basically in this wonderful old townhouse and it's still a treasure trove of information about world war ii and i went to most of the countries i write about as well. i didn't do any researchbe in berlin. all the primary research was about the alliedre government. >> we are going to talk about some of those characters in the stories after a short break. we ask the author to share his or her favorite authors, some of their inspirations. here are some of the answers. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ some of your favorite, persuasion by jane austen the great gatsby. gatsby. is there a common theme among the books? >> i don't know. several of them were written by women. i tend to read books by english writers and always have. i read a lot of american writers but i just can't explain why i've been in anglophile all my life. i just loved england even before i ever went there. >> inspired by professor donald carson, who is he? >> he was a professor of mine at the university of arizona, where i went to school. when i was a kid growing up, i didn't really have any idea of being a writer. i didn't know i wanted to go to washington he was one of my inspirations. when i was finishing my sophomore year in college i thought okay what are you going to do in washington? i thought about journalism and decided to take a class at the university of arizona and i fell in love with the whole idea of journalism and the reason i did is basically because of the professors they were just outstanding. you could go anywhere and ask questions and do that for a living. i thought that was fabulous and they encouraged me to and again it was largely due to those professors they wrote letters to friends of theirs in the newspaper business so they were and still are very important to me. >> where do you get your writing style for the books? >> i developed it somewhat myself but as i said my first job was with the wire service and if you know anything about the service if i did learn it's very important to attract the reader right away so not only do you want the most important facts in the first paragraph but the most interesting and i soon gravitated to being a feature writer but i still had this kind of not. it wasn't as fluid as i wanted to. they had to be in the good fortune of marrying a magazine reporter who is a brilliant writer and we wrote two books together and he did influence me into kind of open up and tell a story and i can't really explain what i learned, but i learned how to tell a story better than i have bee had been doing up tot point so it was a progression. i didn't start out as a fluid kind of centered at the scene. i grew into it. >> speaking of w grabbing the reader, this opens on april 9, 1940. what happened? >> we already talked about this, was invaded, but i -open-brace the actual invasion, the ships. it's cold up in norway, everybody is asleep except for a number of ships and all of a sudden he realized they are silently going up so they try to stop them and norway has a miserable navy, the extraordinarily, as well as the big ship goes by the fire and everybody thinks that they are relics and that they don't work so they sink a warship. that allowed a partial couple of hours of breathing room for the king of norway iking of norway t to escape. the whole fifth chapter is about the ships coming in, the sinking and then the king and his family and his government escaping from oslo just as the germans are about to capture him. >> host: but the escape is treacherous for a couple of weeks. >> guest: they originally went by train so they started driving in cars. it's not spring time so they were going on these mountain roads into beirut always behind them. the german fighter planes appeared over the village and a warning was sounded so they fled into the forest and unbelievably none of them were killed, they all survived. but basically we got rid of the king of norway and they didn't, they all escaped but it was an extraordinary experience for several weeks. he made it to london but it was an incredible story. >> chapter two. >> so that was in april and then name may, she's sound asleep and gets awakened. she wakes her daughter and so it doesn't take as long but she is several days ohasseveral days oe germans and leaves. she really didn't want to do this. >> how related were all of the families at this point? splenic this was the uncle of king parents wanted him to marry queen and he didn't want to. he wanted to marry mod but they knew each other. >> he wasn't even norwegian and didn't speak it until his 30s. >> he is one of the great stories of this book. unfortunately, he happened to be the grand son of the king of norway in sweden. they were alive and part of a confederation until the early 20th century and norway in 1905 decided it did not want to be part of that confederation. it wanted to be an independent country and didn't go to war against sweden. they told sweden we want to be independent but we will take a member of your family, of the royal family as our king. they didn't have a king at that point. so the king of sweden and norway decided that the only person to fit that bill was prince charles, a danish prince. that was the last thing he wanted. he wanted to remain with the navy. his wife mod that was the last thing she wanted. either wanted to be on the thrown but they were prevailed upon to. so he became king of the country that he knew very little about. he could not speak the language until becoming king and had to change his name from carl to hawkis and queen mod refused to. he was considered an outsider and felt like an outsider until world war ii. the government of norway is liberal and socialist and never accepted him as queen. they didn't like the idea of monarchy to begin with. he knew right from the beginning hitler was going to be a problem. he read mind comp and kept warning the government you better pay attention. he refused to give into hitler's demands he accept a norwegian nazi as the prime minister. he said if the government wanted to do that he would advocate and no longer be the royal family. a lot of government ministers wanted to give into hitler but because the king was so insistent they went along with him and the country resisted. he was really the centerpiece of norway's resistance throughout the war. this guy who was considered an outsider after the war was the most beloved person in norway. you know, he had totally changed his life as a result of world war ii. >> and queen will meana, didn't she give a house to the kaiser from world war one in germany and he was living in holland? >> she became queen when she was ten years old. her elderly father died. the king of holland. and she didn't act as queen until 18 but was very strong wild from the beginning and refused to often listen to what people thought her government thought was the right thing to do it. he gave haven to the kaiser and they were furious at her and she did. >> terribly sad story when they wanted to go ice skating and they cleared off the canal and she wanted to skate by herself. >> there is another wonderful story. she hated what she called the cage which was the very straight laced formal stiff court that she grew up in. she hated it. she wasn't allowed to state with other people and had to skate alone. my favorite story about that time is she was once overheard as a little girl scolding one of her dolls and said to one of them if you continue to be naughty i will make you a queen and where you will have no other children to play with. that is heart rendering. much of my story of here during world war ii is her struggle to break open that cage that she was in. once she went to london, she was no longer surrounded by this court and she had power. she made, you know, great use of it. i say it wasn't churchill and the british who had their finest hour during world war ii. >> what you write in last hope island is why have the contributions by allies other than the u.s., britain, and soviet union been neglected by historians. you see churchill bears much of the responsibility for the omission. >> yes, he did. we haven't talked too much about the contributions these countries did make to not only help britain survive but in terms of over all alied victory. and i think one of the main reasons is churchill p-- he sai that during the war, he said that the day the war ended, and he said that through, you know, after the war. they had all these other governments from these occupied countries who were contributing a lot. i think that is one reason why what you read is true. i think people look at it as the big three who were really the ones who made all the contributions. >> lynne olson is our guest on booktv. we have another hour to go. i will put the numbers up. in case you can't get through on the phone numbers we have some social media sites where you can make a comment and we will look at those as well. but i want to point out we have set aside a third line just in case there are any world war ii era veterans or people who lived through that era out there who would like to call in and talk. 202-748-8202 is the number for you to call. bruce in chesterton, indiana you have been very patient and thank for holding. >> caller: i want to thank ms. olsen for her insight. it has been helpful looking at the origin of world war ii and intrigues that happened at the time. my understanding is that winston churchill was a very strong proponent of the british empire and besides sitting with himself or england itself he was interested in reestablishing, maintaining the british empire after the war. that probably didn't have much effect until the end of the war until it was obvious the germans were going to lose. i always understand that president roosevelt wasn't enclined that way and was kind of anti-clonalist. i was wondering the relationship between the two and after the war. he was determined not to give up the empire as a result of the war. he was saying the days of the empire were over and this is a huge poipt of controversy between the two men. it occurred at the same time the united states and the soviet union were taking over more responsibility for the car. the u.s. and soviet union were clearly the big boys in the war stating in 1943. they had been close churchill and together a lot from pearl harbor onwards starting loosing interest in churchill and england. it was obvious he was siteing with him on a number of issues and the two of them making fun of churchill and it was painful he was doing this. he thought he was friends and close to roosevelt and when this started happening and roosevelt made it clear he was against the british empire and thought it should be dissolved. it was difficult for churchill to accept. he fled too much work but a lot of people including -- i share the belief that he basically had been soheart by what roosevelt did to him he didn't want to go. .... they both were added the spy novels so they came to believe that it was this all powerful organization. so that is the background. the reality was very different. it was underfunded, it did not to have the brightest in the universe and its ranks. it had really messed up a lot in the prewar years. then the blitzkrieg happened and they had nothing basically. so they had nothing when the war began.so thanks to the occupied countries who brought european countries that brought their intelligence services with them to london, mi6 appropriated their work. they were giving them the money and their spies continue to spite in their country. so in france, poland, holland. there were spies from those countries. intelligence from those countries picking up information about the journeys, sending it to london. so it was not mi6 but they took credit for it.they have all of these great intelligence clues like the v1 and the v to bombs and rockets. they came from the french but mi6 took credit for it. and then they had placements on the shores of normandy, all the things that they needed to know in order to keep the pumps from coming. all of that information came from european. they came from european intelligence services and not from mi6 but again they took credit for it. :>> john is coming in from laurel, new york. hi >> thank you, sir. the citizens of london and i read last hope island. in fact, you kind enough i did send you an email after last hope island and he was very kind to respond to my email. i want to thank you for that. you were just talking, and i did ask you about by the way. and the channel islands. you had said you know you writing about london so i think you for that. but you were talking about the suspicion, i guess, that the united states, fdr in particular, had with respect to churchill with regard to reestablishing an empire. and i just finished reading two books by hastings. british, right? and he wrote retribution about the war in japan and also wrote armageddon about the last year of the war in europe. it points out, and i met it's what you already said, he points out that fdr and the government in general, dissuaded britain from becoming more involved in the last year in the war on the pacific because they saw that as an intent -- attempt by him towards having legitimacy. in the pacific. so i thought that was very interesting. i just came across that in the hastings book. >> john, why your seemingly large interest in the world war ii era? >> why is it? >> yes, sir. >> that is a very interesting question. i guess i started, i was when pearl harbor was attacked, i was four years old. but i am amazed at the recollection that i have and the war was over, i was eight years old and i had such vivid recollections which is hard for me to explain. the only thing i can attribute it to is that the war permeated everything in our lives. it was not like today. when the war is being fought by somebody over there in some country we understand very little about. it was so personal because everyone had someone who was involved in the war. and i lost an uncle. he was on the aircraft carrier when he was killed.i had -- i remember the days that the family was notified. we went to visit my grandmother, it happened to be mother's day. i had a cousin that was in the campaign and i went to italy and found when he went to. it was so much a personal thing in our lives that it was very vivid to me. so i started to develop an interest and read more about it.>> will leave it there and let lynn olson respond to you. >> thank you so much, that was fascinating. i really cannot and must we sit. you're absolutely right. i do not know that. i've not done much research about the specifics because my interest is always been in the european theater but there is no question that the us tried very hard to keep britain from being heavily involved in the pacific. we considered the war that we had done the lion's share of the fighting and they were very much against having britain command at the end and they were thinking about the future. thinking about postwar. >> you talked about death. john talked about death. 100,000 or so americans lost their lives during the world war ii era. maybe half of those being soldiers. and the rest, somewhere else. but the 400,000 compared to 25 million soviets. >> yeah. there is no question that the loss of life world war ii was unbelievable! in the soviet union certainly for the front. but we got off fairly lightly. i mean, 400,000 is not light! that is a lot of people! but compared to, you know, poland and the soviet union and other countries in eastern europe. just overall. you know not even military, so many civilians died in europe and asia. it is astonishing how many. we did not have, you know pearl harbor and other places people lost their lives but nothing, nothing like what happened. >> i think i read that china and russia were the two transport with the losses in world war ii. >> i am not saying that because of my fixation on europe. i do not know that much about that but i do know obviously that is so true and people, friendly people begin to focus more on the soviet union and what happens and met hastings being one of them. i mean they did bear the brunt, there's no question! one of the reasons why roosevelt and churchill were willing, if not willing or if not eager, certainly churchill was not eager to turn over poland in eastern europe to stalin at the end of the war. the reason that they did it was because they wanted to keep stalin in the war. they wanted to keep the soviets as the main force you know if was the brits taken the brunt from the germans. it was all political. :>> interviewed met hastings in london a couple of years ago. i believe he told me that more citizens during the battle of britain during the war years were killed crossing the street in london because of -- them by the bombings or the v2's. :>> i didn't know that but certainly there were a lot and they were killed in accidents. yeah. but i mean, there are tens of thousands who were killed in the blitz and b1 and b2. he is more of an expert than i am. there a lot of sentences that lost our lives however, in world war ii. >> dan, bridgewater, new jersey. please go ahead. >> i'm sorry that i did not read the works but on the issue -- i wonder if i continue to comment. i was a child during world war ii and had many memories that are vivid. i came from eastern europe and now in europe and for many years in europe, the bad guys was churchill. and the british manipulating the situation in europe and there were a lot of people that were faithful to -- they wrote extensively on this. kind of leaves a question as to who interest, england just like germany operated through the 20th century. and raises also the issue of maybe that has a lot to do with why now, a lot of people are saying good riddance to england coming out of the eu even though it may hurt them economically. i wonder if you would comment with this act and the anti-english feeling that is so prominent in york particularly related to the world war ii in particular because no one is left to remember world war i. :>> where were you during world war ii? :>> i was a child in eastern europe. :>> where in eastern europe? >> when mcgovern had bombed -- in romania. they were told to drop the leftover bombs in the field so that they can get across the mediterranean but they decided that it would be a shame to do that so they dropped it on the capital city of romania which had absolutely no military targets. >> thank you, sir. >> it's funny that my war was vietnam and it's funny how we felt about vietnam and you did not feel about world war ii. history is a funny thing, that is my point. >> are totally agree with you. history is a funny thing. i can speak about certainly about britain in terms of we were told about anti-british feeling. toward the end of the war, is very obvious why there would be anti-british feeling and in poland and much of the rest of eastern europe because of what churchill and his government did. which was basically agree to hand over poland to the soviet union. after poland -- poland and czechoslovakia were important allies but pulling particularly. the contributions to the victory were enormous in so many ways in terms of espionage and in terms of the code and the battle of britain or polish pilots helped to win that battle. and many many other ways. poland, there were 200,000 in british uniforms fighting across europe. the fourth largest military force in allies good health win. they were on every european front. and then to have that rewarded at the end, it didn't, they did not get the country back. they did not get back and i certainly can understand that. i also have to point out that for much of the war britain was also a symbol of hope for much of europe. because it was resisting, because it was holding out against germany. it provided a refuge for all of these governments and military forces from europe. where they would not have been able to keep up the fight if it had not been for england. if they could not have gone to london and stay there for the rest of the war. i talk a lot about one particular important source of hope for europe and that was the bbc. the bbc broadcast to all of these countries in their own languages during the war. millions of people in occupied europe listened to the bbc even though it was outlawed by the germans in every single country. and in some countries the punishment for listening to the radio's death. but they did. they hid their radio sets during the day and they took them out at night and turned it on to listen to the bbc. and for many many europeans it was their lifeline to freedom. it was the only place that they could turn to and here was actually going on in the war, i know that there were countries still fighting against hitler. and so, it did offer more than a flicker of hope and inspiration for all of those countries. so britain did play an important role not only in terms of the actual fights but in terms of providing inspirations of the country but it also did some really really bad things as well. and you have a very important point. >> question of honor by the battle of britain and, 303rd squadron, a.k.a. -- was credited with downing more german aircraft than any other squadron attached to the royal air force. none pilots were formally designated as aces. the squadron because it was made up of poles was not allowed to take part in british celebrations following the article the brits do not want to offend. :>> that's right. we begin the book question of honor, with this absolutely heart rendering seen. it is after the war. 1946. britain is hosting a huge victory parade that consisted of the countries that fought for the allies during world war ii and so there was this huge parade down the streets of london. obviously, british and americans from all over, brazil, it just went on and on and on. but the poles were not there. they were not invited because again, the country was turned over to stalin, it was now a communist country and so the poles who contributed so much, particularly in pilots had to stand on the sidewalks and watch all of this people go by. in their country was gone and they were not honored in this parade. it was really tragic. >> lynne olson, your book was laura boyd, the second is freedom's daughter. it is unlike any other book. >> that is an outlier. after we wrote -- we were looking for something to do. i've not gone on the path of becoming expert in britain in world war ii. i was reading a wonderful book called parting the waters. it is magisterial. if the biography the first of a three volume biography of martin luther king but what it really was is history of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s in the country. it is a brilliant book. i was reading it and kept running across names of women who played a role in the civil rights movement. and taylor road really well about them but in my opinion is not include enough.i mean i want to know more about them. it was rosa parks obviously but many more women that i never heard of. so i went looking for a book about them. and i cannot find one. i could not find a book about women in the civil rights movement so i decided to write it myself. that turned out to be freedom's daughters. >> we have video of one of the women. we will play it and have you talk. [video] you have to go back out and picked up to your neighbors who do not speak to you and you have to reach out to your friends that think they are making it good and get them to understand that they, as well as you and i, cannot be free in america or anywhere else where there is capitalism and imperialism. [applause] until, until, until we can get people to recognize that they themselves have to make the struggle and the fight for freedom every year until they win. thank you. >> who was that? >> ella baker. that is so interesting! it is very embarrassing for me but ella baker was really a behind the scenes woman. i had not really seen much footage of her. everybody has seen rosa parks and some of the others but that is so fascinating! ella baker is one of those forgotten heroines i had never heard of. i mean she, she was kind of this thread that ran through the civil rights movement. she connected all of these groups together. she was basically the woman behind the throne with martin luther king in terms of setting up the leadership conference. she was really the person who did it. martin luther king was the leader but she was one that created this and he treated her as a woman and then they often detained the inspiration -- it was the student movement. these were the kids that went down to the south and were organizing for voter registration etc. ella baker was there inspiration. she was the one who is behind that helps the commitment but i swear, that is the first time i've ever seen that! there is so little, probably a lot more for this i know it but i had not ever seen that.:>> she is so incredibly important to the civil rights movement. she was just one of many that will behind the scenes doing all of the work and they never got the credit for it. >> and that, freedom's daughter came in 2001. i'm not even sure if it was you to but now you write about ella baker that from her earliest years she counts out to no one. she was always protesting something and that martin luther king was not fond of any criticism but baker's complaints were particularly -- old enough to be his mother he felt no awe. >> yes! you can see that she doesn't take anything from anybody. she was really an extraordinary person. >> we wanted to make sure that we touched on freedom's daughter as well as the world war ii book. it is part of your collection. charles in tacoma washington. :>> i am a big fan since a young man. did not know anything about that. in my mind churchill just appeared at the right moment. and the polish book, i knew they had flown in the battle of britain. i did not know about the huge accomplishment that they performed during the war or that they had the fourth largest force in the war. i got an autograph. and i don't do autographs. i do not understand that. but i got an autograph at an air show it's a museum in washington. i get a little choked up sometimes. there were two polished pilots there and the younger one had flew in the war. but the other one actually thought in the battle of britain. and this was just a few years ago. there was this little incredibly frail little man. anna had to shake his hand and get his name. i loved -- in the citizens of london. and later when i read david mccullough's parents book, a section about washburn i think it is who was the ambassador to france during the war and the siege and in the horrors of the community. i really put those two men together. if you have not read it, it is a wonderful book. and a great story. just want to thank c-span for continually putting on this show. thank you very much. >> thank you for your comments, thank you for watching. are you retired and from what? >> i was just a working guy. i did a lot of things. i sold cars and did not have anything, an important career but i was like -- i did world war ii. when i was four years old, during the war, we lived near the air force base and they had when i found out later was a group of p 47 is there. i had my own private air show. as they did their maneuvers over our barn. >> that's great! >> it was just incredible. looking straight up, a big wow! >> that is great. i would choke up to, i do also when i talk about the pilots. we got to know a number of them doing the book. and there are still a fair number of them around. actually in seattle washington, when we were there, one time a very tall distinguished looking gentleman came up to us. he said, you know you remember in your book in the beginning what you write about the parade and the talk about a pilot standing on the sidewalk and a woman says he starts walking away and the woman says to him why are you crying young man? and we said yes. and he said i am the pilot. and you know, i had a lot of tears that night also. thank you so much. >> ann from portland oregon. >> as a norwegian american would often much of sweden but i was wondered why were sweden and switzerland able to sit out both world wars? >> i think the answer is because it was strategically important for both the allies in germany. they both particularly the beginning of the war was important for germany. both of those countries that they be mutual. in terms of money, laundering money, sending money to switzerland, sweden provided germany early on with some important elements like iron ore. if it wasn't important to stay neutral they would have been taken over by germany. the neutral countries, they were fascinating places.all of them, they were others like portugal and spain. but they were seething with spies from all of the countries who were fighting and whether was japan, germany, britain, the united states. they were all they are spying on each other. so a lot was going on. a lot of very underhanded stuff was going on in these officially neutral countries. :>> was anyone in the 1930s, lynn olson, putting all of these.together and saying that the sky is going to fall? was there a group out there saying this? >> there were various people i mean the king in norway was saying that. and in holland there were people. winston churchill was saying. in britain, they were people, there were groups but the overall attitude as i said before was because we absolutely don't want another war we will close their eyes and pretend like it can't happen. and that was the prevailing attitude. and in the united states as well. >> king leopold the third. what happened to >> this is one of the sad stories of this book. that was the third. i read about the two others that left. hawkins and wilhelmina left and made names for themselves. they went to london, stayed there and became heroes. leopold was the king who did not leave. he was considerably younger in his late30s or early 40s . his situation was different from the other two. he actually had some power where they did not really. he was the commander-in-chief of the belgian armed forces. he also, part of the reason history is sad is that he wanted to be very much like his father. king albert who had decided over belgium during world war i. he was also the commander-in-chief of the belgian forces and when germany invaded belgium, belgium was the first european country invaded by germany.and he said he was not going to leave. and he was going to remain in charge of the forces despite the fact that everybody in belgium was overrun by germany. but he managed, he and his forces managed to win one crucial battle early on which meant that they kept, belgium had a small part of its territory thanks to the victory in this battle. when the king albert state and so was able as a result of keeping the territory france was able to keep her number of their ports as well. that was very important. and he was a very popular figure in world war i. a hero. so his son grew up hero worshiping his father and wanted to be exactly like him. his father died young in a mountaineering accident and leopold became king. so in world war ii, he thought i'm going to do exactly what my father did. he took charge of the troops and when it was clear the germans were going to win, they were he said he was not going to leave. he was going to bed his father and stay with his troops. his father said he would never leave belgium, leopold said i will never leave belgium. so a state which ended up being a huge mistake and he surrendered. and so he became the subject of total i mean -- the opposite, the opposition to him in britain and france was extraordinary. basically, churchill and the french laid all of the blame for the defeat of all of these countries at the foot of leopold. leopold had not given up then everything would have been fine. we would've been able to continue on and we could have fought the germans, we could have beat them, it was all leopold's fault. so he was being guarded by the germans in cannot say anything. and so, he stayed in belgium for the rest of the war. he met with hitler to try and get better treatment for his people and that was seen as collaboration with hitler. he made a very grave mistake. he should have left. but you know he stayed for honorable reasons. and his troops were overwhelmed. churchill and the french, the head of the french government said that because they surrendered, because of belgium surrendered, it was the reason why the germans were able to sweep and so quickly into france, etc. but in fact, the belgian forces were allowed, the british forces to lead at dunkirk. they were holding up the german forces and if that had not been true, dunkirk probably would not have happened. so he became kind of the boy for the guilt of the defeat in western europe. :>> and other thing i learned is that the us recognized -- not the free french. >> no! the government was actually the legitimate government of france. the premier turned over and turned the government over to -- legally it still was the government and the only french official who went to britain was the lowly brigadier general. almost nobody had heard of him at that point. the brits did not recognize the government there winston churchill recognized them as the unofficial head of free france. so was not official position at all. the us, brendan roosevelt thought he could get them to come over to the allies side. so the us government did officially recognize them as the legitimate french government. we had an ambassador, and embassy, and that continued until the germans invaded all of france in 1942. so yes, he tried very hard to get the officials to come over and they never did obviously. :>> skin from doug and massachusetts. >> hi, someone once said that history is an agreed-upon set of myths. i just have a question for you. i am sure she was following trial in london for --. i was wonder whether or not she had any opinions. thank you so much! >> that trial was over david irving as being a holocaust denier and three denver who was a historian basically wrote that he was a holocaust survivor which indeed he was. yeah, i mean -- that was the end of the holocaust did not exist. it did not happen. it is beyond belief. i mean you know, anyone knows anything about world war ii and what went on in poland and the soviet union and eastern europe knows that it happened. i mean we have so much evidence around us it is astonishing that he managed to carve out all he did. >> you can call us at 201-748-8200 or 201-748-8201. you can also call 201-748-8202. lynne olson, churchill and roosevelt and the other leaders, were they aware of the concentration camps and what was going on in germany? did they bury that a little bit? >> i mean, germany had set up concentration camps by the late 30s but they were not really for jews. they were for opponents of germany. that was the establishment in the 30s . then some of the others were also but it wasn't really until the 40s, it was not until 42, early 42 that the final solution was actually decided upon. and the extermination camps. there's a difference between concentration camps and extermination camps. many of them were horrible in which hundreds of thousands if not millions of people died. but they were not set up deliberately to kill people. many, many people died as a result. they were murdered there but it was not a, a systematic thing to murder as many people as you could. extermination camps were. and almost all of them were impulsive. and the reason for that is because it was a way, it was hard to get information from poland because the germans had you known it was obviously so much control. but yes, churchill and roosevelt both knew about the extermination camps by the end of 1942. the polish government in exile, polish couriers from you know within occupied poland managed to get out and bring a lot of this information to london and elsewhere. and jewish organizations were getting information as well and passing it on. so the polish government in exile published a report in 1942 talking about at least a million people have already died in these extermination camps in poland. and that was actually published and there was, the government spoke out, british government spoke out very forcefully. americans didn't do all that much but roosevelt was aware. the thing is that nothing was done about it. and then the question becomes what could have been done? i do not know. but certainly, it could have been a much more forceful reaction than what churchill or roosevelt mounted. they did not come again, that was -- it was not something they wanted to deal with for whatever reason. they did not want to deal with it. they kept saying the important way was winning the war to help the jews. that is what negates everybody. why aren't you doing this, why are you saving them when they were starving in the last winter of the war? why weren't you doing anything? it was the best thing to help us win the war. and so yes, the answer is yes, they did know about it. >> john is in west palm beach, florida. >> just give me a few minutes if you would please. in world war ii you need to learn world war i. people forget what we went through in world war i. it is the 100th anniversary and we really did not get there until april 1918. one year after we declared war. emeryville did not fighting until the summertime. and we lost. this is 53,000, we lost more than that actually, 63,000 because of injuries from the war and disease. so the total was more but the point i'm trying to make is, the british in one day lost 65,000 men and when people look back, they do not see with the english peoplesoft.which was horrendous deaths and horrendous personal tragedies from world war i. this is a poor analogy but it is like a football team. the winning team serves a lot of injuries but they win. the losing team suffers injuries and they lose. they want revenge and hitler was the revenge. the winning team in world war i just wanted to move on and the last thing that they want was a war. but i do have a question as far as winston churchill's citizenship. his mother was an american citizen if i'm not mistaken. could he have been president of the united states? >> well, he was not born here. i think you have to be born here in order to be president of the united states. i think he would have loved the idea of being president of the united states! you know, he was very proud of his american heritage. he really was. and i think he was not all that popular before he became prime minister within london. especially he came from an upper-class background. he was the grandson of the duke and he was always regarded as not quite proper. among the people that he grew up with. and they laid a large part of the blame on that he was half american. he was emotional, outspoken and ambitious, all of the things that you're not supposed to be when you are british. but he was! and so, he really did, he took great pride in being half american. and i tend to say he appeared before the house of representatives during the war and he said, if i'd been born, i don't remember how he phrased it but he basically said you know, i can be appear as president of the united states rather than as prime minister. you know, i think -- things had been different he could have been president. >> he was unemployed after 1945. he had plenty of time to come over here and be president! [laughter] >> well, he was voted out of the conservative party, they were voted out of power which was stunning to virtually everybody, especially churchill. everybody thought that he was going to win. or most people thought he was. he had won the war. there is no question that winston churchill, without winston churchill, i think we might be speaking german. i mean i'm exaggerating but he was extremely important. and so, because of that everyone thought that he would win in 1945. with the british people were tired of war. they had been on the front lines also. their houses were bombed. you know they have suffered tremendous deprivation. they wanted a different life. they wanted a better life. especially those in the working classes. they wanted more. they had put out for their country and they wanted something in return. they did not think that churchill was up to the task. to be a peacetime prime minister and they were right. he was old, he was tired. i think he would not have been a very good peacetime premier. he did come back a few years later as a prime minister but i think that was a mistake. he probably should not have. :>> we have a call from fredericksburg, virginia. >> i wanted to ask ms. olson if she can relate why the germans -- after the disasters of the spring of 1945, why it would take an admiral eight days to surrender after the suicide of hitler on 30 april. thank you and i will read a lot of her books.>> thank you! i think part of that came from hitler. you know we will not surrender enough basically i will see germany ruined before i surrender. i think they feared what was going to happen to them afterwards.what was going to happen to them especially the soviet union. what would be there, certainly the fate of those top officials was not going to be good regardless. and so they held out. but i mean hitler, germany was just being decimated by american and british bombing campaigns but hitler just said he was not going to surrender. he was not going to give up. >> is there another book coming out? >> my next book is about the french resistance. the focus of that is the french resistance. >> is it safe to say the free french and the french resistance are two different things? >> yes. i am writing a book about somebody that was the head of an intelligence network in france and the relationship of that network with england. so it will be a lot more what was going on in france during the war. :>> to several of your world war ii books build on each other? did you get an idea from one and then say okay i will go this way? >> yes, the book has been a building block. for example, when we did -- we watch an old british movie called the battle of britain which was made in the 60s. all the british doctors known to man were in there. but there was one scene in the movie which shows a squadron of polish pilots flying or just speaking polish and the british were really upset because they were speaking polish beard and nativist, neither of us at that point knew that there were any british pilots flying in the battle of britain when it turns out 20 percent of them were not british. they were from occupied europe. but that was the spark for the question of honor and then one thing led to another and some question of honor, i cannot do what it was but that led to troublesome young man and then troublesome young man doing research i found out other stuff and so that all led to that. :>> in citizens of london, you write that eight days after the surrender of japan in august 1945, harry truman canceled shipments to britain without any warning to the british government.>> that was devastated. >> why? the war had been over four months. >> what they were going through is not over. harry truman came to power, came to the presidency after the death of franklin roosevelt.he had not been prepared by roosevelt at all to become president. he was not in terms of policymaking, he did not know anything about what was going on in terms of the bombs, there was all sorts of stuff he did not know and one thing he did not know was how bad off the brits were at the end of the war. they were basically bankrupt. they have no money. and he got a lot of pressure from people in congress. republicans then, democrats stopped this program was benefiting the british. so he did again, not knowing really what he was doing. and it was devastating. the british needed the money to live. rationing in britain became worse after the war ended than it did during the war. rationing did not end until 1954. they won the war and yet, they were worse off. they were worse off than much of occupied europe with recovery was faster in many ways than the british. so it was really, it was really kind of a horrific thing that the americans did. what truman did was not really knowing what he was doing and the consequences. >> patrick, baton rouge. >> hello. my comment and question to ms. olson is, i'm very disturbed at what i see as present minded history. i am also a child of world war ii. and in fact, i was at fort benning with my father who was a professional soldier when the japanese bombed pearl harbor. what i think people cannot understand today is that absolutely terror was struck in the heart of this country. you see things like the twin towers, i have the feeling that people watching that, that is a special effects in the movies or television. they do not really get it. and just the atmosphere of complete unity, everyone involved in this, it was just it had to be done. it was just a wonderful thing in many ways. and it to me has been lost and again, to go back to the concept of viewing history by present day standards let the gentleman from romania. crying, the fact that bombs were dropped on cities and towns but nobody cared about that because we were scared to death. :>> i think we get the point patrick. let's hear from lynne olson. >> i think there is a problem as you say with the present day. looking at history from the present day. i mean -- it is one thing that we try to avoid as historians and we tried to spell out that yes we can, to give you an example, world war ii is now known as the good work. the greatest generation, we had to do it, it was a fight against the worst evil ever. and all of that is true looking back on it but when americans come in and talk about americans now, americans were going through the two years leading up to augmenting into the world. they did not know all of that. i think the isolationists were wrong looking back on it. they were not doing it. most of them were not doing it for bad motives. i mean they actually did believe it was not good for us to get involved in this war. you can understand, the young men we were talking earlier on, john kennedy and jerry ford and the ones that created america first. they did not know they were going to be as great generation in a couple of years, they did not know what was going to happen to them. they did not know what was going to happen in the extermination camps in poland. from their point of view at that point they thought they were doing the right thing. i think is really important to people to keep them on one reads about what happened and another example is people saying about occupied europe. and france and poland, people did not resist enough. there is a myth about widespread resistance. and it is ms because most people in those countries did not resist. and why didn't they? were they corroborated? if i were there i would have resisted. well, hello! quite frankly, i think you had to have lived in one of those countries before you can say that. you cannot pass judgment on something that happened 60 or 70 years ago under circumstances that you cannot possibly imagine how perfect they were. so one has to guard against that. one has to guard against judging what happened by the standards of today. i think they were real problems in doing that. >> ed from lakewood florida. >> good afternoon! i would like to make a viewpoint which is probably the prevailing viewpoint today about the queen. i lived in amsterdam, i lived in holland, i was born there i am 100 percent dutch. i can tell you for sure that queen was elitist, totally -- even though she made a grandstanding statement i'm going to defend the netherlands. when they found out that she left for england they consider her a traitor. unlike the king of belgium who really got in the crosshairs of the population because of the statements for germany, the queen said nothing or did absolutely zero to help the netherlands in fact probably -- she moved to canada eventually. i think that is the prevailing viewpoint and no matter how you say i stand by what i say. thank you. >> thank you for calling in. >> i think parts of what you are saying is correct. there is no doubt she was looked at as an elitist and aloof before world war ii. i think that is the way most people saw her in the netherlands. absolutely correct.and she was not popular when she left. that is what she feared. she did not want to leave but she thought people regard her. but from all accounts i have done a lot of research, the people from london, she did become the heart and soul. she made many broadcasts over the bbc encouraging her people to stand and resist and she spoke out constantly about war against the germans and hitler and using swearwords that nobody in holland ever heard her use. and so for my understanding, i respect your viewpoint but from what i understand, the majority of people in holland really came to love her. she did not move to canada. her daughter and granddaughters went there. during the war. she visited the united states and canada but she lived in london throughout the war and went back to holland the instant that she could. and the response from the dutch when she came back was just overwhelmingly positive. so, you know there is some truth in what you have to say but i think overall is not true. >> i cannot find what you recount her flight back into holland and her greeting that she got etc. and that she would not eat strawberries because none of her subjects could eat strawberries. >> she can back before holland was totally liberated. and she felt she was gone long enough so she came back and she brought back with her a royal -- to young dutchmen that were military aides and a secretary. and they set up shop in a small house in one of the provinces in holland. as soon she got there, thousands of people toward invite but to greet her. and every night she would have, she would kind of hold court in the sense that she and her daughter hit came back with her came out in this house and lines and lines of people would stand and go by her and shake her hand and tell her they were happy that she was there.

Related Keywords

United States , United Kingdom , Paris , France General , France , Brazil , California , Russia , Amsterdam , Noord Holland , Netherlands , Mexico , Arizona , Egypt , Poland , Switzerland , Spain , Norway , New York , Japan , New Hampshire , Washington , Vietnam , Republic Of , Florida , Luxembourg , Indiana , Virginia , Canada , London , City Of , Denver , Colorado , Germany , Beirut , Beyrouth , Lebanon , Wolfeboro , Denmark , New Jersey , Bridgewater , Somerset , Belgium , Sweden , Bulgaria , Romania , Berlin , Channel Islands , Polish , Americans , America , Norwegian , Holland , Soviets , Germans , Britain , Belgian , French , Soviet , Danish , Dutch , German , British , Japanese , American , Winston Churchill , Luther King , Martin Luther King , King Leopold , Jerry Ford , Jane Austen , Joe Kennedy , Harry Truman , Lynn Olson , Lynne Olson , Potter Stewart , Ella Baker , Stanley Baldwin , King Albert , John Kennedy , Charles Lindbergh , John F Kennedy ,