May 8th saw the final surrender of Nazi Germany, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. Eighty years on, we're taking a look at the final months of fighting in 1945. What were the experiences of US troops like on the ground? And what motivated the strategies of its political leaders?Don's guest is James Holland, co-host of the podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk. His new book, Victory ‘45: The End of the War in Eight Surrenders, is out on April 24th.Edited and produced by Tom Delargy. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast.
Chapter 1: What events led to the end of World War II in Europe?
Glad you're here. May 8th, 2025 will mark 80 years since the end of the war in Europe, what is called VE Day, Victory in Europe, when the Nazis unconditionally surrendered after six brutal years of total war.
We're going to be taking a look at America's experience of those final months of the war from the beginning of 1945 to the German capitulation in May, touching on the experiences of troops on the ground, as well as the movements and calculations of political leaders in charge and how Americans generally took it all in back home.
James Holland is the esteemed British World War II historian, someone I've followed closely for years, both in print and visual media. He has a new book coming out on April 24th, co-authored by Al Murray, with whom James also hosts the podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Greetings, James Holland. It is a great honor to have you. Oh, Don, thank you for having me on.
I think many Americans are left confused by the endgame of World War II, right? We surely know how it starts. Poland, the Blitzkrieg, Dunkirk, all the big events, D-Day, the bombing of Dresden, the Battle of the Bulge. It all happened in a great rush of events in those last months. There are tremendous losses of life.
The Battle of the Bulge is the biggest loss of Americans in World War II in one battle, 19,000. And we are now on our way to Berlin. What is Germany holding out for at this point of the war?
Well, that's an extremely good question. It's really down to the control that Hitler has over the Third Reich and over the German people, which is total and complete. You know, he's an absolute autocrat. Yeah. And... Hitler's always been very clear. I mean, the one thing you can say about him is he never speaks in grey areas at all. It's always one thing or the other.
He's a complete either-or kind of person. Always has been. Either the Aryan race will rise up or will be consumed by Bolsheviks and Jews. Yeah. Either we'll have the thousand year Reich or it'll be Armageddon. You know, you are the German people. You know, you have to have the will in this struggle for survival.
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Chapter 2: How did the Battle of the Bulge impact the Allies' strategy?
You know, and if we if our generation gets over this terrible struggle and burden now, then there will be a thousand years of glorious Aryan peace, blah, blah, blah. And the German people had bought into this completely. Well, they have, because in the 1930s, Hitler comes into power in January 1933, just at the moment that the economy is starting to change. He's able to capitalize on that.
And suddenly, you know, they're feeling good about themselves again. You know, he's creating jobs. He's building up the military again. And that's sort of very much part of the kind of the old Prussian imperial German kind of... way of thinking. So that's a big tick. Then he takes back the Rhine land without a shot being fired. Then he takes the Sudetenland without a shot being fired.
Austria is morphed into the Third Reich with the Anschluss. Then he takes the rest of Czechoslovakia and not a shot's been fired ever again. This guy's a genius. It's great. We're top dogs again in the centre of Europe. What's not to like?
And then, of course, it all goes pear-shaped when he invades Poland and Britain and France kind of hold out on their pledges and they do go to war with Germany as a result of that and it's the start of the Second World War. But to start off with, it all seems to go quite well.
You know, they've overrun Poland and there's lots of people in Germany who kind of think, yeah, well, you know, we should be there because lots of German speakers. And, you know, the Baltic coast, you know, we need to link East Prussia, which is this little sort of isolated pocket around Königsberg, the ancient Hanseatic port of Königsberg. You know, so let's link that up again.
You know, so they're all feeling quite good about that. And then there's, you know, enormous victories of the low countries of Scandinavia and mighty France subdued and everything. And it looks like Hitler's this genius. Beginning of July 1940, everyone's going, hooray. Swastikas lining the streets, have ticker tape in Berlin and all the rest of it. Seems like he's got all the answers.
But of course, he overreaches himself. And like a lot of autocrats, he surrounds himself by people, yes men and sycophants and state of paranoia and all the rest of it, none of which is conducive to making good decisions. And the absolute catastrophic decision he makes is going to the Soviet Union in 1941. And he only does that because he's lost the Battle of Britain.
So he's got Britain still hovering in the wings, doesn't want to have a war on two fronts, Hovering on the other side of the Atlantic is the brilliant and mighty America with all its huge potential, manpower, resources, access to the world's oceans, and all the rest of it. So those are two pretty big, big enemies.
So the problem is the cupboard is already clear from all the gains that he's got in the Blitzkrieg stage. Yeah. He's nicked all the cars from France and trucks and factories and oil and food reserves and all the rest of it. And the cupboard's bare again. I mean, they've been like kids in a sweet shop. So he thinks, well, what do we do?
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Chapter 3: What was the significance of the Yalta Conference?
Chapter 4: How did media control influence public perception in Nazi Germany?
Chapter 5: What were the factors leading to Hitler's downfall?
And then, of course, it all goes pear-shaped when he invades Poland and Britain and France kind of hold out on their pledges and they do go to war with Germany as a result of that and it's the start of the Second World War. But to start off with, it all seems to go quite well.
You know, they've overrun Poland and there's lots of people in Germany who kind of think, yeah, well, you know, we should be there because lots of German speakers. And, you know, the Baltic coast, you know, we need to link East Prussia, which is this little sort of isolated pocket around Königsberg, the ancient Hanseatic port of Königsberg. You know, so let's link that up again.
You know, so they're all feeling quite good about that. And then there's, you know, enormous victories of the low countries of Scandinavia and mighty France subdued and everything. And it looks like Hitler's this genius. Beginning of July 1940, everyone's going, hooray. Swastikas lining the streets, have ticker tape in Berlin and all the rest of it. Seems like he's got all the answers.
But of course, he overreaches himself. And like a lot of autocrats, he surrounds himself by people, yes men and sycophants and state of paranoia and all the rest of it, none of which is conducive to making good decisions. And the absolute catastrophic decision he makes is going to the Soviet Union in 1941. And he only does that because he's lost the Battle of Britain.
So he's got Britain still hovering in the wings, doesn't want to have a war on two fronts, Hovering on the other side of the Atlantic is the brilliant and mighty America with all its huge potential, manpower, resources, access to the world's oceans, and all the rest of it. So those are two pretty big, big enemies.
So the problem is the cupboard is already clear from all the gains that he's got in the Blitzkrieg stage. Yeah. He's nicked all the cars from France and trucks and factories and oil and food reserves and all the rest of it. And the cupboard's bare again. I mean, they've been like kids in a sweet shop. So he thinks, well, what do we do?
And he says, well, the only way we're going to get all the supplies we need is to go into the Soviet Union. You know, he's originally planning that for kind of 43, 44. But he goes and said in June 1941, it's a terrible plan. You know, they kid themselves that they're doing quite well because the Red Army is so...
unspeakably awful and terrible and so they do get very close to Berlin by the end of the year but consider this take an arbitrary date like let's say the 16th of June 1941 at that point Nazi Germany has got one enemy in the world Great Britain albeit Great Britain plus dominions and empire yeah And then fast forward it six months to, say, the 16th of December 1941.
Suddenly Nazi Germany has got three enemies. It's got the USSR, it's got the United States of America, and it's got Britain plus Dominions and Empire. And I would argue that you're never going to win from that point.
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Chapter 6: How did the Allies plan to handle Japan post-Germany's surrender?
Chapter 7: What were the major losses for Americans during the war?
unspeakably awful and terrible and so they do get very close to Berlin by the end of the year but consider this take an arbitrary date like let's say the 16th of June 1941 at that point Nazi Germany has got one enemy in the world Great Britain albeit Great Britain plus dominions and empire yeah And then fast forward it six months to, say, the 16th of December 1941.
Suddenly Nazi Germany has got three enemies. It's got the USSR, it's got the United States of America, and it's got Britain plus Dominions and Empire. And I would argue that you're never going to win from that point.
So much of this is about control of information. The German people just didn't know what was going on.
Yeah, and they're brilliant at this. So it's really, really interesting because they're actually nothing like as automotive as most people think they are. Everyone talks about the Nazi war machine of the Blitzkrieg years. Actually, they weren't very automotive at all. And they're quite down the pecking order.
I mean, it will be no surprise to anyone listening in the US that America is the most automotive society in the world in 1939. They're off three people for every motorized vehicle in the United States in 1939. That figure is eight in France. So France is comfortably the most automotive. It's 14 in the UK. It is 47 in Germany.
And so that's a problem because what that means is you haven't got that many people who know how to drive. You haven't got many You know, gas stations. You haven't got many factories churning out this stuff. So if you suddenly want to kind of escalate that into kind of war, you've got a problem because you can't mass produce because you don't have the capacity to do so.
But where they have the most, they have the densest radio network of any nation on the planet by 1939. And they've been really, really cunning. So in the early 1930s, for example, they create the Deutsche Fanger, which is a German radio. And then they create the Deutsche Kleinen Fanger.
Hmm.
Which is the German little radio. And this is about as revolutionary when it comes in in 1935 as the arrival of the iPod. Up until that point, radios are aspirational and they kind of come with a sort of walnut veneer and, you know, you only get them if you're middle class. But what Germany realizes is if they control the whole media, then they can start to really... warp people's minds.
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Chapter 8: How did Eisenhower's strategy shape the final months of the war?
You know, it's one thing going to war and you have kind of sort of basic notions of kind of Geneva Convention and all that kind of stuff. Then you see that. Off the charts. I mean, how can you contemplate that? How can you process that? Of course, they're absolutely devastated. They're completely shocked. And of course, it's why they've been doing it.
If ever you want to kind of raison d'etre for going to war, it's that. And for all the kind of moral ambiguity of the war, the bombing of cities and towns, mostly by allied guns or by allied bombs, when you get to Buchenwald and you see this pitiful example of human deprivation and misery...
then you realize what it is you've been fighting that you are on the on the moral side of righteousness yeah it's mild to say so but it is a symbol of what you say before i mean many americans don't realize germany was our model you know in the late 19th century into the 20th even it was the model for high culture it was the model for innovation and technology and and goodness really we wanted to be like the germans in so many ways of course world war one's right there in the middle but
It's really unexpected that this could possibly happen within that culture. It's so bizarre.
It's so bizarre. And I think it's a really, you know, history never repeats itself. Of course it doesn't because this is now and that was then. Yeah. But patterns of human behavior do. And I think one of the things that's so fascinating about it and so alarming is the fragility of democracy.
You know, how can a nation as advanced and sophisticated and a kind of foundation of high culture like Germany descend into this monstrous, despicable regime so quickly?
Modern themes as well. And media has a lot to do with it. Yes. It's amazing. Let's talk, though, more in detail about the division of Berlin. How were those decisions made, basically? What moment did that happen? Was it Yalta?
Yes, it was. And by then, it's a foregone conclusion. It's only a matter of time. So yes, it was worked out that it was going to be split up.
So when we roll into town, this is how it's going to be.
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