Dan Snow
Appearances
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Yeah, that's right. I mean, the Americans were very present in London, and I think the reports they were sending back, the stories of resistance, the stories of bravery, and the stories of the horror inflicted by Hitler's aircraft, those bombers, helped to move the American public towards a place where they were ready to support the British war effort, perhaps even join the British war effort.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
one of the most famous journalists in US history, Edward R. Murrow. Ed Murrow was here in London. He would broadcast for CBS from a basement below the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation's broadcasting house. And he would send daily updates, really, on the destruction and the death, but also on the lives of Londoners, the people carrying on trying to make the most of it.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So this is modern war correspondence that your listeners will be so familiar with. And He used to begin his broadcasts with the iconic, what is now the iconic phrase, this is London. And then he'd end them by saying, good night and good luck.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Well, Lindsay, now it's time for me to turn the tables on you, because I want to know more about the American side of this story. Because after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America is dragged into World War II. Hitler then declares war on the USA days later. For Churchill, he sees this as something like salvation. He's actually pleased about that. He doesn't make any bones about it.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And he jumps on a ship almost as soon as possible because he wants to be in the heart of the action. He wants to get to the White House and he wants to meet American decision makers, most of all the president. Tell me, how does that trip go and how do they start forging that special relationship?
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
When Churchill heard the news of Pearl Harbor, he didn't disguise the fact. He was ecstatic. He believed Britain was now saved.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And then Churchill, as you said, jumps on a ship almost immediately. And he arrives at the White House with all sorts of ideas, all sorts of solutions and a big shopping list as well. And he writes to his cabinet minister and says that he was treated like a member of the family. But he's clearly forging a very, very close personal relationship. Tell me some more about that.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Sounds to me from your book like he needs to charm Eleanor Roosevelt as well. He wasn't the easiest guest. He had a man of appetites.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And then I learned from your book, he drank a lot of booze, and some of that was before breakfast. Yeah.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And he also had an unexpected encounter when Roosevelt stumbled across Churchill completely naked.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
It's a fun story, but it does feel like the beginning of a very, very close relationship between two sovereign nations fighting alongside each other at war. Churchill and Roosevelt, they managed to keep things very tight between these two nations.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
What do you think was achieved across those three weeks that Churchill spent at the White House?
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And it's interesting is that there's a mix of good vibes and relationship building, but also very practical things like pooling, shipping and more arms and munitions heading over to Britain. So a successful trip and the start of a successful, well, you'd say friendship, wouldn't you? I mean, they spent a lot of time together during the Second World War.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
This is a great question, Lindsay, because Churchill was initially a bit reluctant to head back into the cockpit of violence that was Northwest Europe. Everyone who studies European military history realizes that Northwest Europe is where empires go to duke it out. That's where Napoleon, that's where the Kaiser, that's where Louis XIV, that is where the game of empires is settled. And
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And it's because of the geography, and it's because of the sea, and it's because of all kinds of interesting reasons. But Churchill didn't want to go back there. He'd been in the trenches on the Western Front in the First World War. He said, chewing barbed wire on the Western Front, there must be other alternatives to that. He was always looking for opportunities.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Attack in the Baltic, attack in the Balkans, attack up through Italy. He thought there must be other ways of cracking this tough battle. European problem, other than just going landing, marching across France and Belgium like his ancestor done, like he'd done in 1914 to 18, and dealing with those same casualties. And so he managed to get that so-called second front postponed.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
It would not happen in 1942, despite the Howls of the Soviet Union. Stalin going, please land in France. Please take the pressure off me. It would not happen in 1942. Churchill managed to get it postponed. It did not happen in 1943. Instead, Allied troops would advance up Italy. But it would happen in 1944.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And Churchill took a lot of persuading that the plan was in place and they would land with success. And even more important than the landing, they'd be able to deal with the vaunted German armoured divisions after they landed.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Well, I could talk about this all day because I've been so lucky to meet so many of these veterans. And one told me he was a commando, and he sailed down out of Southampton, round the Isle of Wight, and there were ships and boats, the biggest fleet ever assembled in history. Something like 7,000 ships and boats in all, and a good chunk of them were
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
in this stretch of water called the Solent behind the Isle of Wight very near where I am now actually and he said as they came down he was in the first wave and foghorns and horns were going off on the decks of these ships and ships whistles and there was this sound and he said it was like coming out of the tunnel at Wembley about to play a soccer match for England Wembley's our national stadium and he said it was so pumped up that at the exact moment if my own nan had walked past my own grandma had walked past in a
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
I'll never forget that. You know, this is a guy who's 19, 20 years old, and he's just sliding out from British shores, heading across to a very uncertain fate on the German-occupied French coast. But in the opening minutes, that unit, they did get ashore, and they got ashore reasonably safely with not so many casualties. On the beach, they landed.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
There had been very effective preparation, airstrikes, which had suppressed the Germans in their bunkers. There had been a massive naval bombardment, a huge gathering of battleships out to sea. We have a cruiser, we have a ship left called HMS Belfast, now a museum ship. And that cracked...
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Some of the porcelain in the toilets, in the ship's heads, so great were the vibrations caused by the ship's guns firing again and again. So those shells were landing on the beach and they were suppressing those German positions. And then there was the floating tanks, these strange floating tanks championed by Churchill and others.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And they would go in and provide armoured support exactly as those troops, those commandos landed on the shore. So actually, on Sword Beach, where this one commando I mentioned, where he landed, they got ashore. There were some casualties, but they managed to break through Hitler's Atlantic Wall, and they were advancing into Normandy minutes after they landed.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
There was, of course, one exception to that, Omaha Beach, where the Americans fought a terrifically hard battle. against German positions. If anyone's been to Omar Beach, they'll know that there's cliffs there, there's bluffs. The Germans have the advantage of height. It is a terrifying place to land.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
The Germans, for various reasons, were a greater state of readiness, and the Americans there took terrible casualties as they fought heroically into and through those German positions.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
You're right. There's tactical readiness and then there's strategic readiness as well. And the Germans didn't think the Allies were going to land in Normandy. It's about 60 miles from where I am now on the coast of the UK to Normandy Beach. In fact, about 70 miles. At its closest, the channel is only 20 miles. So if you go from Dover in Kent across to Calais, it's only 20 miles away.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So of course, the assumption was they'd attack across the narrows. And Hitler was convinced. Hitler had a meeting with a Japanese military official in Berlin, and the Japanese official reported it back to Japan. And we were able to, we know this because the codebreakers at the time were able to decrypt and intercept this message.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
It's reported that Hitler was sure there'd be a diversionary attack in Normandy, but the main attack would come across the Narrows in Calais. And that's for several reasons. Double agents were feeding Hitler that information. There was something called Operation Fortitude, which was a massive deception campaign. There was a fake US Army group.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
The best general, the Allied best general, was thought to be General Patton. the American general who'd showed his excellence in North Africa and Italy. And he was stuck in Kent. He was furious about that. He was stuck in Kent with a fake army, issuing orders, making public appearances, inspecting dummy tanks made out of plastic and balsa wood and rubber, fake landing craft.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So he was making as much noise as he could in Kent while the real force left for from the area where I am now, around the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton, and went that further distance across the Channel. So the Allies just ran rings around the Germans. There was another fake army in Scotland, in fact, to make the Germans believe that actually the second front would be Norway.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
It would drive the Germans out of occupied Norway. So the Germans did not have a clue what was going on. And as a result, when even after D-Day landings had begun, Hitler was not convinced this was the main effort. Hitler wanted to keep elite units in and around Calais to wait for the Allied landings there that he was expecting at any time.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
This is a great moment because, in fact, Churchill was fierce. Churchill wanted to be present at D-Day. And, in fact, Eisenhower was furious at Churchill. Churchill wanted to go along on one of the battleships and watch the bombardment and be there as it was all happening. And in the end, King George VI said, you are absolutely not to go to D-Day.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So instead, Churchill was in the UK and he went to Parliament on the 6th of June, on the day of those D-Day landings. It's just a reminder that in parliamentary democracies, the business of being... accountable to parliament didn't come to an end. Just as the American elections went ahead, even though it was the time of war, so Churchill had to pay attention.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
He had to go to parliament and he had to inform MPs and via the MPs, their constituents, the British people, he had to inform them on the progress of the war. Churchill shares, this speech is so exciting, he shares the kind of intelligence that he's getting from the battlefield. He says, "'Reports are coming in in rapid succession.'"
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So far, the commanders who are engaged report that everything is proceeding according to plan. And what a plan! He calls it this vast operation, undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place. And I'm not sure he's wrong about that. I mean, it's always a little bit of Churchill overstatement.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
But actually, in June 1944, it's hard to think of anything that had ever taken place on a bigger scale. than D-Day, and he goes through some of the challenges that the troops faced. He talks about how tactical surprise has been attained, and we hope to furnish the enemy with a succession of surprises during the course of the fighting.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And then, as with all these Churchill speeches, he comes back to one of his central points, and that is the centrality of his alliance with the He says, "'Complete unity prevails through the Allied armies. There is a brotherhood in arms between us and our friends of the United States.'"
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
The quickest way to win World War II was the great powers working as closely as possible together, and that's particularly the United States and the British Empire. And Hitler's only chance of success, for example, by this stage, is to try and drive a wedge between the British and the Americans. And Churchill was just not going to let that happen.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
I'd love to ask you, Lindsay, is FDR under the same kind of pressures to talk to the American people on the 6th of June?
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Thank you so much for having me. It's a great honor.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Yeah, I think that's very interesting, Lindsay. I mean, clearly, look, we're all imperfect. They were both imperfect men. There's a huge debate here in the UK about Churchill, hero, villain. And actually, he's all those things. He's everything.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
He was the man who attempted to preserve the British Empire, who didn't want to give India its independence, and yet the man who also defended liberal democracy in Britain. You know, he was a bundle of contradictions, a truly extraordinary man, but clearly the right person at the right time for that particular job. Yeah. I'm fascinated by coalition warfare.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Those coalitions are capable of delivering such enormous resources, which in modern industrial total war is the key to success. And when you can harness a coalition, when you can bring together the intelligence gathering, the manpower, the industrial output, it's very, very hard to defeat those big coalitions. But they take a very particular kind of leader to make them work.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And Roosevelt and Churchill were prepared to compromise. They were prepared to give and take. And they were also prepared to accept that each of their nations, each of their publics had different agendas, and that was okay. And their job was to try and triangulate that. And that, I think, is the great lesson of leadership in a coalition.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
You don't get every single thing that you want, but my goodness, you're a lot more powerful when you fight with allies. I've heard about you, Lindsay. What are the lessons that you draw?
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Yeah, you're totally right. And keep your eye on the big prize. And you may have to swallow one or two things you don't like on the way there, but the prize is there.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Thanks so much. I feel I've learned a lot. Thank you, Lindsay, for that.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
You know what, Lindsay, you're totally right. I'm lucky enough to talk about and make shows about history stretching from the Bronze Age all the way to the present day, really.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
But I do genuinely believe that there has never been a more dramatic week or fortnight in history than in May 1940, where Winston Churchill takes over the reins as Prime Minister of Britain on exactly the same day that Hitler launches what is probably the most successful military offensive in history, the Blitzkrieg,
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
through France and the Low Countries, which will see the complete destruction of French, British, Belgian Allied armies in that theatre of war in a matter of days. And so Churchill becomes Prime Minister at this nadir of the British historical story. He's staring disaster in the face. And Churchill has got a big, big problem. He's got to win a war against Germany on the continent of Europe.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
But there are other threats. Italy is lurking in the Mediterranean, seemingly about to jump into the war against Britain. Japan is threatening the British Empire in the Pacific and in the Indian Ocean. And so Churchill is juggling this crisis.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And the biggest problem he's got is he hasn't even really got the confidence of his own political party, let alone the nation, let alone the empire in the rest of the world. So he's got to go and build that up from scratch. And he has a very simple strategy. He projects absolutely unwavering strength and determination.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
He's going to fight the Germans, no matter what the cost, because he identifies that Nazism isn't like Napoleon Bonaparte, Kaiser Wilhelm, Louis XIV. Nazism is something that, as he sees it, is pretty much unique in a thousand years of history. Twisted science, the true dark heart of humanity.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So he's going to project that resistance to Nazi domination, and then he's going to get the Americans involved. He says to his son in May 1940, he says to his son, my plan is to drag the Americans in. That was it. So the first order of business is shore up the British front, shore up British politicians, shore up the British people to fight the Germans.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
The second order of business is to get the USA involved.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
It makes total sense. The Americans didn't want to get dragged into another horrific war on the European continent. When I go and visit cemeteries, as you've done, of young American men from Nebraska, from Washington State, And they've traveled thousands of miles away. They've crossed this mighty ocean to die in a muddy field outside Paris, France.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
It's completely understandable the Americans didn't want to get involved. But Churchill needs them involved. He tells them, first of all, I need destroyers. I need ships. Secondly, I need aircraft. And then he goes through a few other things he needs. And then, by the way, he says to Roosevelt very early on in his premiership, he goes, by the way, we'll go on paying for as long as we can.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
But soon we're going to run out of money, and I hope you won't make us pay at that point as well. So he lays it bare before the Americans. But the Americans, quite rightly, are thinking, we don't want to get involved in this war. This is Europe's war. This is a war of empires. It's a war of the old world. Here we are. We've just recovered from the Great Depression.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
We've recovered from the wounds of the First World War. America is on its way to building the greatest, most powerful economy the world's ever seen. They don't want to get dragged into the past in some squabble in the European continent.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So Churchill has to make them believe, with his rhetoric, with his speeches, he has to make the Americans understand this is their fight because it's the fight of a free world against the horrors of Nazism. And he even says to Roosevelt, by the way, you're going to end up fighting Germany eventually.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
You'd be a lot better off fighting Germany when you've still got a free and independent Britain on your side.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Lindsay, this is one of my favourite stories because it's really one of the areas of history where there is a powerful myth and that myth just is not true. The idea was that the German Air Force was so massive and powerful and terrifying, it dwarfed the RAF, the British Air Force, and the British fought this plucky underdog battle to win and protect their skies from German domination.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Now, that's a story that Brits quite like. It makes us sound kind of cool. It makes us sound plucky and exciting and tenacious. Actually, you know, the reality is completely the other way around. First of all, look at the aircraft.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Sure, the German air force was a bit bigger, but lots of those aircraft were obsolete or they weren't fit for the purpose of wresting air supremacy over southern England off the British.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So actually, in terms of frontline fighters, in terms of the planes that are actually doing the fighting, fast interceptor fighter aircraft, single-seater, armed with cannon and machine guns, state-of-the-art, tight-turning aircraft. Actually, the Brits and the Germans had kind of equal numbers. People may have heard of the Spitfire and the Hurricane aircraft.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Those are the two British frontline fighters. And the Messerschmitt, the famous Messerschmitt 109, a fantastic German fighter. they were pretty equally matched. In fact, in terms of the aircraft, the Spitfire, I'm obviously a bit biased here, I'd say it was slightly better, but really the 109 and the Spitfire in particular were very, very evenly matched.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
But here's the true advantage the British had. They were fighting over home territory. So if... a hurricane or a spitfire got shot down, the pilot could bail out. He'd pull open his canopy. He'd jump out, parachute to ground. He could be back on his base the next day, that afternoon. We have examples of people that landed in the pub, had a few beers and got a taxi back to their base.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
They were flying the following day. One pilot was shot down three times in three days. Each day he managed to get back to base and flew again. So if a plane was shot out of the sky, it didn't mean you lost a pilot. Now, if the Germans are doing their fighting over southern England, say, when their pilots bail out, they're going straight into prisoner of war camps.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So they're losing far more pilots than they can replace. On top of that, the British have got the secret weapon, really one of the most important weapons of the Second World War, and that's radar, radio direction finding.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
absolute top secret in fact it was so secret that initially all those german jewish refugee scientists that arrive escaping hitler's third reich they were put to work on the atomic program because they were considered too dangerous to allow to work on the radar because radar was top top top secret so these physicists are like go away and see if you can split the atom
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And so, radar allowed the Brits to see German raids gathering over France and North France, coming across the channel, so the Brits could send up individual interceptors, individual squadrons, to shoot down those raids and take a terrible toll. Before that, aerial warfare was just, you go up with your mates in the morning, you fly around a bit, you hope you bump into the enemy, and then you land.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Instead, now, you stay on the ground until that bell rings, you climb up, you pounce on a German bomber force coming in, you land, you rearm, you get back up there. Incredible Incredibly efficient. So the Brits build the first ever 3D battle space for an aerial theater of combat. And that is the deal breaker.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Yeah, this is very like the Battle of Britain. There's a useful myth here for the Brits, is that we are people that could just carry on and take it no matter what was thrown at us. A story of social cohesion. So elements of that myth are correct. The German Luftwaffe had come across, they tried to destroy the RAF, they tried to wrest control of the air above southern England in particular.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
That's failed. So they turned to terror tactics. They turned to just smashing British cities in the hope that whilst they might not be able to knock the RAF out of the war, they can erode civilian morale. They can force the British people to their knees. They thought they could force Churchill out of office because he'd be so unpopular.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
and then they could deal with a more pliant British Prime Minister. And so London was attacked for months in a row. There were fires that were worse in terms of their scale than the legendary Great Fire of London in 1666. The British did tolerate unspeakable hardship. They had to go down to the subway stations every night. They had to take shelter in makeshift bomb shelters in the backyard.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
They witnessed their streets, their cities destroyed, fires sweeping through, and they pulled together. They... volunteered to go and fight fires. They volunteered to patrol important buildings like hospitals. My great-grandpa was on the roof of a hospital all night.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
He was one of the doctors in Hammersmith Hospital, and he'd be up there with buckets of water and sand, putting out injury bombs as they landed on the roof to protect his patients. But there's another story about the Blitz, and that is that things did get a bit loose. There was an uptick in violence and all the streetlights were put out. There was no light pollution, so the streets were very dark.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
There was certainly crime when houses were hit. People scavenged through the remains of the houses and pillaged what personal items they might be able to find there, food, valuables. There was a loosening of sexual behaviour. The number of children born out of wedlock rocketed. It was a time both of people pulling together, but also of
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
individuals looking out for themselves, taking advantage of dislocation, of crisis.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
There are stories that were suppressed at the time of people from poorer areas of London, industrial areas of London, where they didn't have adequate bomb shelters, hardly any bomb shelters in fact, and they would make their way to the west side of town, to the richer parts of town, where they knew that affluent people would be in nightclubs, drinking, partying, listening to jazz in deep basements protected from the
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
So with the signs of the social compact fraying, but the government in those days, there's no social media, they controlled the narrative. And the dominant narrative that was put out was of everyone doing their bit, pulling together, obeying the law and keeping their heads down.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
The government air raid bunkers underneath Whitehall, which is the administrative heart of the British state, they're some of the most special places in the UK today. They are a network of tunnels, of bunkers that were dug out before the war and in the early months of the war, because it was clear that air power was going to play a critical part in the next war.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
And Churchill actually famously liked going up on the roof. He loved watching the bombs fall from the roof of Downing Street in the Foreign Office. He had to be persuaded to get down below for his own personal safety. So on the occasions when he was down there, there were bedrooms, you can still go and see his cot, his camp bed, there's a cigar in the ashtray next to it, his desk.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
Churchill loved maps. There are maps all over the place. He needed to be able to visualise where the fighting was and what strength Allied and Axis units were at. So there's wonderful graphics and illustrations down there on all the walls. There was a secure line to Roosevelt down there.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
You can still see the tiny little room, like a little phone booth, if any of your listeners are old enough like I am to remember the days of pay phones. It's a little booth where you would go and have very, very intimate conversations with Roosevelt through a secure cable underneath the Atlantic.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
The air conditioning's been reconstructed, the typing pools where the various liaison officers were at. Those were just locked up after the end of the Second World War, and only pretty recently, really, were they declassified and turned into a museum.
American History Tellers
FDR & Churchill: A Friendship For the Ages with History Hit's Dan Snow | 1
You can walk in and see them as they were at the height of the Blitz, at the height of the Second World War, and I think it's one of the most special experiences you can have in Britain. I thoroughly recommend it.