Category: Britain

US Civil War history book – “Ambivalent Nation” (Louisiana State University Press, 2018) – Hugh Dubrulle interview

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Dr. Hugh Dubrulle is a Professor in the Department of History at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. He has studied British history and US Civil War history extensively and has written a new book about British attitudes towards the US Civil War. I interviewed Dr. Dubrulle about the book and his findings.

2:00 – Dr. Dubrulle’s family grew up in France during WWII. The stories they told of that time inspired him to study history. When he grew up in the US, his family took trips including one to Vicksburg when he was a small child that inspired him. He then began studying British history and eventually became interested in studying British history alongside the American Civil War.

5:00 – He wrote a dissertation on this subject some time ago and that began to turn into the book.

7:17 – Past scholars have divided the British into two factions – pro-North and pro-South. Dr. Dubrulle wanted to write about the complexities of British attitudes towards Americans and the war. During the war, America was still heavily dependent on Britain economically and in other ways. The war was very disruptive to British trade.

10:47 – John Bright, pro-North, was one of the few British leaders who were whole-heartedly behind one side. But most leaders were of two minds during the war.

13:38 – Some British thought that middle-class Yankees would just pay Irish and Germans to do their fighting for them. They thought that the American middle class reflected their own middle class.

16:25 – Many British people thought New York was the financial and cultural capital of the US.

18:52 – The British were very concerned with Canadian security during the Civil War. They worried that if the North lost, they would turn north and attack Canada.

20:44 – Several British military missions traveled to the US during the war to observe. These were overwhelming Army officers and few Navy officers.

22:52 – The UK contemplated getting involved in the war on the side of the South at various times.

25:23 – After the war, the British were worried about what the US would do next. The US had raised an army larger than any that could be sent to protect Canada. But some British also worried the US would become a military dictatorship. They wondered if it would pay its debts and so on.

27:04 – Many British people were critical of Lincoln. But many lower class British people liked that a working man could become President. The British press liked Jefferson Davis. They saw a Northern middle class attacking a government of gentlemen in the South.

29:37 – British people were ambivalent about Sherman’s campaigns. They admired the military maneuvers but they were also appalled by the material destruction of the campaign. Sherman was liked more than Grant was.

31:32 – Dr. Dubrulle read many books and newspapers that were contemporary to that period. He also read personal correspondence. He found materials all over Britain for documents. The British Library has a huge collection of historic newspapers.

33:40 – The London Times was the most important newspaper at the time right before the war. But then paper became cheap and then a number of newspapers for the middle and working class rose up during the war. The Illustrated London News was the pioneer newspaper in the UK for illustrated news. Their artist worked in the North at first and then in the South afterwards. Emory University has a lot of his work.

38:48 – Dr. Dubrulle found a number of Southern newspapers and a diary of a British person who visited New York during the war.

40:49 – Dr. Dubrulle was surprised at how divergent British opinions were in public and in private.

42:31 – Frank Lolley was a very pro-South British person in public but in private he was very troubled about the Confederacy.

48:37 – The British had a problem with Northern nationalism. They didn’t believe there was a basis for American unity. They thought it was all based on the size of the country.

51:45 – He’s hoping that the discussion of British attitudes towards the US Civil War will focus more on the bigger picture than on who thought what.

Links

http://iln.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Dr. Hugh Dubrulle

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, US, Civil War, Grant, Lincoln, Sherman, Davis, North, South, London, New York, antebellum

WWII history book – “Advocating Overlord” (Potomac Books, 2018) – Phil Padgett interview

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Phil Padgett has worked as a political scientist in the field of security studies for much of his career. He turned his skills to writing a book on the WWII Operation Overlord, the atomic bomb, and the relationship between the US and UK during the war.

2:21 – Phil Padgett is a political scientist and has long been fascinated by a meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt during WWII.

4:30 – Phil found a letter by a Naval officer who said big things were being discussed by Roosevelt on a small boat on a lake in Canada during WWII.

6:15 – The book goes over Overlord more than on the discussions for cooperation between the US and UK on the Manhattan Project.

8:10 – The crux of the book is about the UK and the US reestablishing trust during the war.

10:00 – The US Joint Chiefs of Staff had to deal with many military leaders turning against Overlord in favor of a Mediterranean strategy.

12:45 – The US wanted a quick war and a quick strike in order to then move against Japan.

14:48 – Phil talks about the secrecy and knowledge of all parties about atomic bomb research.

19:53 – Both the US and UK knew the atomic bomb was a very powerful weapon and both were concerned about who would control atomic bombs after the war. Nations also felt that strategic bombing could have strong political effect on warring nations.

22:42 – Churchill liked to feed information to Roosevelt before the US joined the war that British bombing was having an effect on Germany.

23:55 – Canada is involved heavily in Overlord. General thinking about the[n] war was that a major amphibious assault would not work.

29:49 – His quid pro quo idea is very controversial. He used primary records at the US National Archives and at the British National Archives.

31:54 – Phil found one of Churchill’s papers with a scorch mark from a cigar burn and it brought him to the moment when history was happening. He also enjoyed going to the war rooms, Hyde Park and being on the battleship Texas.

34:45 – Phil was surprised by the amount that WWI influenced WWII. Especially with air power and a fear of repeating trench warfare.

36:16 – There didn’t seem to be a contingency plan if D-Day didn’t go well. If it failed, they probably would only have been able to conduct a Mediterranean operation afterwards. In late 1943, there was a US threat of a railroad strike over wages and hours. If it occurred, D-Day would have been delayed six months.

39:33 – Roosevelt was pretty much his own Secretary of State on these issues. The Secretary of State ran day-to-day diplomatic operations.

43:33 – Transcripts of the phone calls between Churchill and Roosevelt would be useful to historians. The Germans had cracked the allied system from 1940 to 1943 and kept transcripts of the calls. The records were kept in Berlin and appear to have been destroyed during the bombing of Berlin.

46:42 – Phil is happy he’s started the conversation about the quid pro quo idea.

48:44 – Phil has a website at www.philpadgett.com for the book. The website also has answers to frequently asked questions plus it has more photos.

Links

www.philpadgett.com

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

Guests: Phil Padgett

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, WWII, world war 2, D-Day, Normandy, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, US, UK, Soviet Union, Berlin, scientists, Joint Chiefs of Staff, war plans

19th C Warfare book – “British Battleships of the Victorian Era” (Naval Institute Press, 2018) – Norman Friedman interview

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Norman Friedman is a physicist and historian who has written extensively on naval matters especially the US and UK navies. I interviewed him about his latest book.

1:27- Mr. Friedman has been interested and writing about navies for some time. He’s written about 40 books, 30 of them in history.

3:29 – He had written on later battleships and became interested in the ships that came before the world wars. One of the themes in technological surprise.

5:14 – The French tried to beat the British with technological change but the British simply didn’t want to spend money. Steam propulsion is an early technological race between the French and British.

7:29 – For much of this period, British statesman didn’t believe war would happen. But the Franco-Prussian war shocks them. In 1877, the British think they have to fight the Russians when Russia goes to war with Turkey.

9:14 – The British find they can’t man the fleet properly and that their intelligence service is weak.   But they still scare the Russians by sailing into the Black Sea in a storm. But the British are unable to keep a fleet in the Baltic Sea.

12:32 – The British financial sector had great sway over British politics. Their influence affected the British Navy. They wanted parts of China, Argentina and the United States protected by the British Navy for trade reasons.

16:44 – Underwater weapons have a great effect on worldwide naval strategy in this period. They’re cheap weapons that can destroy expensive ships. In 1885, people begin to wonder if the sea can be controlled by anyone. These weapons help fleets escape from their own ports easier and it’s harder for big fleets to control smaller fleets. The British try to tabulate information and learn their fleet isn’t big enough for sea control.

19:29 – Steel comes in between 1870 and 1880. The French build new ships in 1875. Sails disappeared in the 1880s.

21:36 – British engineers say that sails should be discarded but many people fear that coal won’t be available in sufficient quantities abroad at coaling stations to get rid of sails.

23:15 – The British made their own steel. But the French made better steel at the time. Most countries bought British steel for armor and guns. Krupp in Germany made excellent steel and excellent guns.

26:14 – He extensively used documents from the British Archives. The National Maritime Museum has ship covers.

31:04 – In 1882, the US formed a naval intelligence organization that wrote about information from abroad and that included UK material.

33:44 – reading technology books contemporary to that period was helpful.

35:08 – The French held a World’s Fair where naval capabilities were one thing showcased.

37:43 – He was most surprised about the effect of underwater weapons on how worried naval thinkers were about them. He also didn’t feel he fully understood the development of heavy guns and on the effects of exports. He’d like to know who was buying British heavy guns and why.

48:31 – His works can be found on Amazon and Seaforth publishes his books in the UK.

49:32 – The Victorian period is an interesting time that a lot of people have forgotten. There are a lot of parallels between that period and now. It also tells us about where the modern world came from.

 

For more “Military History Inside Out” please follow me on Facebook at warscholar, on twitter at Warscholar, on youtube at warscholar1945 and on Instagram @crisalvarezswarscholar

 

Guests: Norman Friedman

Host: Cris Alvarez

Tags: military, history, military history, conflict, war, interview, non-fiction book, victorian era, UK, Germany, Russia, France, steel, armored hulls, steam, coaling stations, coal, Franco-Prussian war – Russo-Turkish war, trade