The Global Story:Was World War Two worth it? Some US conservatives have doubts

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The inside story of a dream to revolutionise how humanity sees the universe, told by the people who made it happen. Lift off of the space shuttle endeavor on an ambitious mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. All of those steps which I've done a bunch of times in the water, now they're for real. This is 30 minutes, travel with Hubble from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hey there, it's Asma Khalid from The Global Story. We're the podcast here at the BBC that focuses on where the world and America intersect. And today we're sharing an episode about a debate that we all found fascinating. It started with a remarkable exchange between Tucker Carlson and the British Conservative politician Jacob Riesmog for a question that many of us probably thought was long settled. We're Britain and America right to fight Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Now it might sound like an argument about history. But the thing is, this debate is playing out on parts of the American right in real time today. And it has some major implications for how the US thinks about its role in the world these days. And a reminder that if you'd like to hear more from us, you can always subscribe to the global story wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Now onto today's episode. It was hosted by my co-host Tristan Redmond. Hope you all enjoy. If you live in Europe or the United States, the chances are you thought the rights and wrongs of World War II were mostly settled. Which is why some of us were surprised to find out that the podcast at Tucker Carlson not only disagreed, but he'd been debating the question on his podcast with a British Conservative politician called Jacob Riesmog. If there did not want to go to war with the UK. He thought we wouldn't do anything about Poland as we'd done nothing. It was heatedly said, I do not want to go to war with the UK. As we know it's what? As we'd done nothing about Czechoslovakia, he thought we'd do nothing about that. We acknowledge that Hitler said repeatedly in public and through diplomacy. I do not want war with you. You're putting more trust in Hitler than I would. Now if you're British, the chances are you're surprised that Tucker Carlson had even heard of Jacob Riesmog, let alone faced off against him in a podcast. The conversation that resulted from this clash between two conservatives of contrasting views about ten days ago has been unsettling some people. And we've been mulling it over ever since. It's insane that we are having this conversation, isn't it? It's a completely childish, sothomoric series of questions. If ever there was a war that very clearly was a good war on our side, then it is the second world war. I didn't agree with everything that Tucker Carlson said, but the fundamental point is correct. I don't know how else to put this. Mug truly mugged, Tucker Carlson. Truly. So today we're making a podcast about that. From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. The day on the global story is World War II really up for debate again. And why conservatives on opposite sides of the Atlantic may not see eye to eye on this chapter of history. Later in the show, I'll be speaking to the British Conservative politician, Lord Daniel Finkelstein, whose parents were the survivors of a Nazi concentration camp and a Russian gulag. There's a very good reason why Tucker Carlson drives at the Second World War. It is precisely because the Second World War disproved the America first hypothesis. They basically made fools of themselves. First though, I want to speak to our colleague Adam Fleming. Adam hosts our sister show newscast. Can I give you some more of my credentials to justify why I'm here? Please. So I was the BBC's chief political correspondent in 2021 and 2022. And Jacob Riesmog was quite prominent in the government. And before that, I was reporting on the negotiations to get the UK out of the EU. And he was quite prominent in that as well. Well, it's great to have you with us, Adam. You're very well qualified to give us chapter in verse on Jacob Riesmog. I think we need to, for the benefit of our international listeners and viewers and American listeners and viewers, explain who is this guy, Jacob Riesmog? Jacob Riesmog was a conservative MP. He was elected in 2010 when David Cameron was the prime minister. And then he lost his seat at the last general election in the UK, which is in 2024. He made his name as a campaigner for Brexit for the UK's departure from the EU. The European Union produces its laws in a form of Golgegook, of Sten Torian, of Suscrit of Pedalian sentences, that nobody can ever understand. And he was a real thorn in the side of the next prime minister Theresa May, who was tasked with delivering Brexit. Mrs May may not be dreaming the Brexit dream, but we have to encourage her to change her policy and perhaps a bit more sleep and dream these beautiful dreams. So that's when he really became prominent. And one of the other reasons he became prominent is he's kind of like a cartoon figure. He's very eccentric. So he's very, your word, he's very tall. I think he wears his dad's old double-breasted suit, because it's so well tailored that it survived all these decades. He wears glasses, but you sort of feel like he wears a monocle, even though he's actually wearing glasses. He's got a very plummy voice. Explain plummy. Posh. Yeah. Almost a caricature of a very well-to-do English top. You could picture him wearing like a top hat and tails, like the monopoly logo. I'm a man of the people. Vogue's popular, Vogue's day. He's got six children. Yes, he talks about his nanny quite a lot. And allegedly, his nanny stayed with him long after he needed a nanny. Yeah, and then raised his own children, his own six children, one of whom is called Sixthus. So there's a lot of mug mythology around him. He's a very definable, recognizable character. But he's out of politics now, and his main gig is he presents on a TV channel here called GB News, which is sometimes referred to as the British Fox News. It's not quite that, but it's provided at home for lots of people who lost their seats or lost their jobs when the conservatives were kicked out of office in 2024. And I should say he's independently very wealthy because before he went into politics, he ran a hedge fund and he made millions and millions and millions, sometimes based in Hong Kong. So he's teed up in the podcast, Carlson's podcast, as Britain's most pro-war advocate and the episode is called Prepare for War. Is all of this a fair description of Jacob Riesmog? It's quite hard to work out what this podcast was meant to be about because the conversation they have weaves through a lot of things, but I think the reason Tucker Carlson had booked Jacob Riesmog for this debate was because Jacob Riesmog has been calling for an increase in defense spending in the UK and making the argument that you spend money on defense so that you never have to use it because it just deters your enemies. But I think Tucker Carlson has interpreted that as Jacob Riesmog wanting to have a war with Russia because he's also tied in the fact that Jacob Riesmog is a strong supporter of Ukraine. But what I'd say is being a strong supporter of Ukraine and saying that the UK should be giving their money in material and also saying that the UK should be spending more on defense to deter a hostile Russia are actually very mainstream British political opinions now. Well, let's get to the actual content of the interview because there's quite a lot of it. There were some moments that really popped out to me. The unexpected is relitigating of whether World War II was a good thing or a bad thing. What were yours at them? The bits that has basically gone viral because that's how I first saw this interview where Tucker says some things about Hitler and World War II and Jacob Riesmog says. I'm very surprised you're verging on defending Hitler. I think this is not really what you want to be doing. Yeah, I guess I'm just a secret Nazi. I'm actually not a secret Nazi. And I just thought that is the Jacob Riesmog I know from my dealings with him as a political journalist because he's exceptionally polite. And quite often that type of British person can use that politeness as a weapon and actually not to make you feel comfortable and not to defuse tension but actually to highlight that you've just done a very stupid thing. I think maybe some of our American listeners might think of that as passive aggressive. Yes, passive aggressive Englishness. That's the vibe in this interview is of Tucker Carlson seems to take him down a lot of kind of tangential paths and the points that he's looking to actually have answered don't seem to resolve themselves. Well, yeah, when I wanted to go back and listen to the World War II bit in particular, you realize there isn't a World War II bit because the references to World War II are scattered throughout it because Tucker Carlson keeps coming back to it in the midst of discussing other things. Yeah. Well, should we listen to a bit of World War II? I think it's very difficult to afford the Second World War without innocent people being killed. I don't know if you haven't tried, but maybe I never understood why fight the Second World War in the first place. Well, that's a very fundamental question. How about the first world war? war. Well, let's stick to the second world. No, let's start with the first one. We were all the second. The second world war Hitler would have taken as much as he could have done, as he was shaving. And did you really want him? Well, Hitler said that 15% of Poland was once Germany, and it was given to Poland at the Treaty of Versailles. That was German territory with Germans. That was his case. And by the way, that was true. Except, except the Polish borders had been cut off. I'm not sure if it was real or not sure. I'm just saying the idea that Hitler just randomly rolled into Poland as a lie, and everyone believes it because they know nothing about the actual facts. But the truth is Germany had big pieces of it carved off, including part of Prussia, and it was given to this other country to free the Germans. Maybe it shouldn't have, but it did, and that was a justification for it. The UK had nothing to do with it at all, and they destroyed their empire and their country, fighting the war that they still pretend was a good idea, but it wasn't. It was fundamental. It was the classic good versus evil. Has the UK benefited from it? We did the right thing. Is it a better country than it was? To have defeated Hitler, yes. I mean, there's a lot going on there. You don't say there is a lot going on. So I mean, the stuff about Poland is fascinating, and the Polish embassy in the United States has published a letter demanding an apology and a retraction from Tucker Carlson. But in the way that so much of the kind of political trend in the way political conversations unfold these days have established themselves in the United States, and have then been adopted in plenty of European countries, if not Latin American countries, do you think, based on this conversation, that kind of cat has out of the bag in terms of rethinking about how the Second World War was fought and why it should have been fought at all? Will this the virality of this encounter give some people who want to question the whole basis of the Second World War and excuse to do that? Yeah, it probably will. Because people like jumping on to a viral clip that's controversial, and so I'm sure you'll be able to go online and find British people kind of agreeing with Tucker Carlson and having a bit of a pop. But I don't see that becoming a thing that snowballs into the new normal to discuss in British politics. Adam, thanks so much for talking us through all of this. Thank you very much. Well, after I sat down with Adam, I wanted to understand what all this means to somebody whose memory of World War II is not all that distant. So I called up Daniel Finkelstein. He's a politician, a colonist with the Times of London Newspaper, and he's written a book about the impact of the Second World War on his family. I asked him if that debate on Tucker Carlson's show proved that the transatlantic consensus about World War II was starting to crumble. Well, it certainly is and he's been very much responsible for the beginning of that crumbling and has obtained a kind of a performative bewilderment about things that I can't really believe he's genuinely bewildered by. And what he thinks is that it was ridiculous for Britain to involve itself in the Second World War because Hitler repeatedly said he didn't want to fight Britain. And Sir Richard Evans in his books on this has demonstrated very fully that the conspiracy theory which Tucker Carlson not just text tested Jacob Ruse Morgh with, but it also done with the historian so called Darryl Cooper. I thought Churchill was the chief villain of the Second World War. Now, he didn't kill the most people. He didn't commit the most atrocities, but I believe, and I don't really think, I think when you really get into it and tell the story, right, and don't leave anything out, you see that he was primarily responsible for that war, becoming what it did, becoming something other than an invasion of Poland. This whole idea that Britain had nothing to fear from Hitler because he wouldn't have this war is taken apart by Evans. He shows that Hitler basically wanted to conquer all of Europe that undoubtedly from that Britain would not have been saved if Hitler had done that. And clearly, at some point in his wars of a grandisement, we had to stop him and we didn't do it over Czechoslovakia, learn that lesson and then did decide we were going to try and do it over Poland. How surprised are you to see a reassessment of this history? Did you see it coming at all? Not really. So interestingly, when I went to, my mother was a survivor of Belsen concentration camp. Her mother had died on leaving Belsen. She basically staffed to death as a result of the treatment there. And my mother talked about that in schools. And I remember going to what I realized when I saw it was going to be her last appearance. And I ended up writing a book which in the states is called Two Roves Himes here in Britain is called Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad about her experiences, partly because when I saw Mum, I realized that was going to be the last time she was going to be able to do it. And I was going to have to do it for her. And part of that was an appreciation that that generation was going. The bit that I missed was that the audience was going to change as well, that for a lot of younger people, this is going to become ancient history. And some of the arguments, which were made before the Second World War, for example, the argument that Hitler wasn't dangerous or the argument that America could stand by itself and be isolating the America first argument, that these would reassert themselves. And to a new generation would seem as persuasive as it had done at the time before this war had happened because that the war was then history. So there's a very good reason why Tchaikovsky drives at the Second World War. And they made fools themselves because they argued that something that clearly became a massive threat to the security of the United States, dragged it into a war that it had hoped to avoid, killed many of the young people in the United States because that war was not avoidable by the America first technique. And so therefore it undermined America first deeply. And he knows that if he's going to reassert this isolationist philosophy, what he has to do is to suggest that whole thing was a mistake. And the problem he has to get over it is it so patently was not a mistake. But Daniel, what you're saying is that you're not that surprised that this argument should be revived now because there is a through line between the America first movement in the late 30s and early 40s and the America first movement that exists. And these two movements are mirroring each other. They're essentially arguing the same thing about American isolationism. I completely understand where it comes from. You can see it. And in American terms, you can see it's a pit. Why are we being dragged into wars that are taking place a long way away? And the reason why this was very strong, you know, maybe even a majority view in the 1930s and then the war came along and was a massive contradiction. So what there is now a political opportunity to do and it's happening on Israel which talking to Carlson is also interested in and is now happening on this issue as well on the issue of America first and isolationism. The political opportunity exists because a new generation is wondering what was the Second World War? Why were you involved in it? It exists to try and rewrite the history in which we didn't need to go to war with Hitler. Because if you don't even need to go to war with Hitler, even if Hitler's aggression was not enough to make going to war worthwhile, then nobody's aggression is worth it. Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From Gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find the Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. The inside story of a dream to revolutionize how humanity sees the universe, told by the people who made it happen. This is 30 minutes trouble with Hubble from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. So a quick summer recap. Heat waves, data leaks, AI hacks, holding phones, and a viral spinally challenge record. I think that covers it right. I'm Thomas Germain. I'm Just Maddox and the Interface is back from its summer break. New season, new co-host, same deep dived into the tech that's shaping our world and our lives. So before AI wipes out all of humanity, allegedly, join us for the Interface. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Daniel, you've had your own run-in with this whole sphere. You made a cameo on an interview between Pears Morgan, the British TV presenter, and then Nick Fuentes, who's somebody who's roughly in the same sphere as Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson has interviewed him on his own show, what actually happened when you made this cameo? Yeah, first of all, let me explain who Nick Fuentes is, you know, he does a show, streaming shows primarily on YouTube. He's quite witty, he does phone-ins, he often attacks the people who are phoning in and quite a sort of funny way, but part of his stick is that Hitler is cool. You regret saying that? Saying a fact? No, no, that's absolutely true. And we should celebrate the birthday of Stalin. He's December 18th, I remember, because that's an important date to me. And as Joseph Stalin's birthday, I'm a fan, you're a fan of Stalin's. This has got a cult following among young Republicans, so therefore it's not something that can be simply dismissed. So Tucker Carlson invited him on his show. Nick Fuentes, thank you for doing this. Yeah, thank you for having me. I wanted to meet you. I've heard about you. I've heard about you, so thank you. And then proceeded not to ask him about either Hitler or Stalin. Once he appeared on this show, infuriatingly, only our softball questions by Tucker Carlson quite deliberately, and an attempt to rehabilitate somebody who's fundamentally quite dangerous to Jewish people worldwide and certainly in the United States. Here's Morgan, challenged Nick Fuentes to appear on his show. And Nick Fuentes? George, no, Nick Fuentes, welcome to Uncensored. I agree to be with you. When he appeared and Pierce challenged him on these things, he was not going to say you're quite right, Pierce, and it's have some anti-Semitism training. He was going to wrap back, which is indeed what he did. So I then offered to do and did a video. If you're a Jewish person watching this, what are they thinking? I tell you what they're thinking, because I've got a friend of mine called Danny Finkelstein. Let's just take what Danny said here. I peers, it's Danny Finkelstein here, since he says he's on team Hitler. You might like to ask him about the fact that Hitler arrested my mum, tried to starve my mum to death, did starve my grandmother to death, sent my great aunt to the gas chamber, my great uncle, my cousin, my grandmother on my father's side ended up being one out of seven children, the only one that survived the war, so he might ask him whether he wouldn't rather be on team mum rather than team Hitler. And when this was put to Nick Fuentes, he was dismissive. I don't even know who this person is. Why is this person talking to me? This old British guy is saying me mum got killed by Hitler and he doesn't find it funny, I don't care. That's fine, you don't have to care. He does care. Does that guy care about America? Does that guy care about me in my country and my family? He then used another one of his phone in programs to attack me personally, imitated my British accent, if I was Dick Van Dyke, and ultimately to send up with a meme, me mum died in the Holy, which is pretty repulsive, combined with tens of thousands of people on X with things like songs about the Holocaust involving my parents, pictures of my mum or my dad on lampshades or shoes or bars or soap, really quite repulsive. And of course, some of it was designed to say we don't care about the Holocaust anymore, so we can say anything we like, and we're going to treat your horror as a joke in order to get over this barrier, because don't forget, it's really important that people don't accept the Holocaust as the disaster for Europe and civilization that it was, because it undermines so fundamentally the argument they're trying to make. I still regard that as a successful episode, even though I have to admit that it was extremely hard to deal with, emotion is a tough one. Yeah, what did it feel like for you all of this? Well, I'm pretty resilient about most of it, but the bits that attack my parents personally, even though they're both no longer alive, and my mum certainly would have regarded with Ray amusement, the idea that she could be wounded after she died, but she is still quite upsetting. But what I was trying to do was precisely used that earlier that he was in Tucker Carlson's fear. What I was really trying to do was to point out there is actually this still is gap between Tucker Carlson trying to pretend that it would have been fine if Hitler had conquered the rest of Europe, because he didn't want to attack Britain. And Nick Fuentes actually saying Hitler was cool, and I wanted to isolate Nick Fuentes precisely from even from Darryl Cooper, the historian, and Tucker Carlson. And actually, fun of it has done that. There was, after Pierce Morgan's show, and Tucker Carlson's quite a big rower about the extent to which the right could accommodate Nick Fuentes, which he basically lost. Well, that was your running with Nick Fuentes, the Tucker Carlson Jacob Rieksmog interview, the Holocaust doesn't really come up. I don't think it's mentioned at all. Nonetheless, you know, Tucker Carlson, as we discussed, is somebody who sat down with Nick Fuentes for quite a detailed, very long interview. Tucker Carlson hasn't let us know what his future ambitions might be, but there is a lot of speculation that he might one day get involved in politics, that he might run for high office. What would it mean for the US relationship with Europe, with the UK if someone with his views were to ever exceed to the White House? If he were to gain the upper hand in a Republican party, or as I think is more likely to become a kind of guru for the Vance view, the JD Vance Vice President view, and that would obviously very serious for those of us who need and want the United States to engage internationally. Partly, we'll have to solve that problem ourselves by spending enough on defense that we're not as reliant on the United States, but it's still a disaster for the world of the United States, with all of its resources and also moral power were to withdraw from the role it's played in the last hundred years. Well, Tucker Carlson might say where he hear that the world might be a more peaceful place if he were in charge of the White House. He's laid out his stall pretty firmly. He says he believes in peace. He believes in fewer wars. The United States shouldn't be waging war anywhere in the world. Is that fair enough? There's a big incoherence at the bottom of this, and the reason why it's an incoherence is his vision of the world, like a pacifist view, will be fine if everyone behaved in that way. And I would never want an aggressive war against anybody, but sometimes you have to fight defensive wars, and he thinks, you know, we almost never have to do that, and he's just wrong, unfortunately. To what extent, Daniel, is it not normal that there should be a reassessment, a new scrutiny on the way things were conducted by the allies in the Second World War? I mean, Tucker Carlson expresses revulsion for the killing of innocents in Nagasaki and Hiroshima with the atom bomb. We also have 10,000 of children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And you're saying it's okay. Well, I think it was justified. I think the new use of nuclear weapons at the end of these. What you're saying is a Christian is, yes, it is okay. It was a poor children who did nothing for a proportional response. He talks in this interview with Jacob Riesmorg about, you know, the fire bombing of Tokyo, but there are other things like the bombing of Dresden in Europe. Is it fair enough that a new generation is looking at these events with a different eye? Yes, as long as you don't do that anachronistically or in an attempt to prove something that's not true. Anybody who is really interested in this can watch the final episodes of Tom Hanks' brilliant Second World War series. And the reason why Harry Truman decided to use the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima is pretty clearly set out, and I'm afraid I don't think this terrible horrible war would have ended without it. And I'm pretty sure less people died as a result. But of course, historical investigation and questioning the whole time, and just because sometimes the answer when we look at it again is a bit uncomfortable. That shouldn't track from doing it, but a proper historical rigorous view of it certainly does not justify the ridiculous assertion that we shouldn't have done anything about it, that because you didn't want to attack the United Kingdom, it's miserable. Daniel Fungstein, thank you so much for joining us, it's been great talking this through with you. Thank you so much for what privilege to be able to talk to you about these fascinating and important matters. That was the conservative politician and times of London newspaper colonist Daniel Finkelstein, and earlier we heard from the BBC's Adam Fleming host of our sister show newscast. As always, we're on the global story at BBC.com, don't be strangers, we love hearing from you. And please rate us wherever you're listening, it really does help others find us. And if you want to catch up on the latest news from around the world, then look out for our sister show, the global news podcast, wherever you get shows. And that's it from us for today. Today's episode was produced by Aron Keller and Cat Farnsworth. It was edited by James Shield and Mixed By Travis Evans. Our studio managers were Mike Regarde and Ben Andrews. Our digital producer was Charlie Firth. Our senior news editor is China Collins and I'm Tristan Redman. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back again tomorrow. See you then. Cheerio. From Gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls. Join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find the Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts.