WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.800 Only two or three months ago I had lunch with a reporter from Time magazine and he took me out to lunch in Manhattan and he said, 00:00:07.800 --> 00:00:13.000 Mr. Irving, you know, before I came out for this luncheon engagement with you, he's writing a book and he wanted to pick my brains, 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:19.000 he said, I went through our archives, just to see what there is in our clippings archives in Time magazine on you, 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:26.000 and one thing that struck me is until you published your book Hitler's War in 1977, you came up roses, you couldn't put a foot wrong. 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:34.000 And then ever since 1977 you've had buckets of slime poured on you. And I'm the same author, I write the same books, I do the same kind of research. 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:40.930 But the trouble is that they don't want to read the books that I write anymore. 00:00:40.930 --> 00:00:46.930 My publisher in London, Macmillan's, wonderful publishers, full of courage, until I wrote the book about Winston Churchill. 00:00:46.930 --> 00:00:52.930 And then suddenly they became very shifty, very nervous, and Harold Macmillan said this book would be, 00:00:52.930 --> 00:00:56.930 unfortunately I can only show you my beautiful leather-bound edition, 00:00:56.930 --> 00:01:00.930 I don't want to show anyone I've got left with me now because I've sold all the others out, 00:01:00.930 --> 00:01:04.930 but Harold Macmillan said this book will be published over my dead body. 00:01:04.930 --> 00:01:11.260 So I waited until he died. 00:01:11.260 --> 00:01:19.420 This was one of the basic problems that Churchill had in the war years, persuading the Americans to come in and fight his war for him. 00:01:19.420 --> 00:01:26.420 Because by 1940 it had become Churchill's war, it was no longer concerned with Poland, Poland was forgotten as soon as Poland was defeated. 00:01:26.420 --> 00:01:30.420 The war by 1940 had become a matter of self-prolongation. 00:01:30.420 --> 00:01:34.420 It had become important for Churchill's own political reign that the war continue. 00:01:34.420 --> 00:01:43.020 Churchill's great nightmare throughout 1941 was that he was going to find himself blundering into war with Japan alone. 00:01:43.020 --> 00:01:47.150 And that the United States would hang out until the last minute and then not come in. 00:01:47.150 --> 00:01:53.440 This is written very large in all of Churchill's deliberations both inside his cabinet and in private. 00:01:53.440 --> 00:01:57.600 Not of course that Churchill's deliberations inside his cabinet mean very much because 00:01:57.600 --> 00:02:01.600 Churchill's cabinet had about as much brains as the band in the Johnny Carter. 00:02:01.600 --> 00:02:13.490 You see, Churchill knew that Roosevelt wanted war. 00:02:13.490 --> 00:02:16.490 But Churchill was familiar with Roosevelt's basic problem. 00:02:16.490 --> 00:02:20.100 Namely that the American people did not want war. 00:02:20.100 --> 00:02:24.420 Churchill did all he could to help Roosevelt out of this dilemma. 00:02:24.420 --> 00:02:26.420 We were reading the German submarine codes. 00:02:26.420 --> 00:02:29.420 We knew where the German submarines were in the Atlantic. 00:02:29.420 --> 00:02:35.420 So Churchill took pains to ensure that our convoys coming across the Atlantic, escorted by American ships, 00:02:35.420 --> 00:02:38.420 would head directly for where the German U-boats were. 00:02:38.420 --> 00:02:41.450 In the hope that the U-boats would sink an American ship. 00:02:41.450 --> 00:02:47.450 This was the kind of thing that we can see going on now that we're gradually getting access to all the files. 00:02:47.450 --> 00:02:50.450 You now begin to understand what the British national interest is. 00:02:50.450 --> 00:02:52.670 That these things should not be released. 00:02:52.670 --> 00:02:56.670 Back in 1938, Churchill's biggest problem was the ambassador. 00:02:56.670 --> 00:02:58.670 Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy. 00:02:58.670 --> 00:03:01.900 The American ambassador in the court of St. James. 00:03:01.900 --> 00:03:04.900 Joseph P. Kennedy, one of my favorite characters of World War II. 00:03:04.900 --> 00:03:07.900 The father of President Kennedy, who was probably not one of my favorite characters. 00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:14.120 Joseph Kennedy was a glorious Irish Catholic bigot. 00:03:14.120 --> 00:03:17.570 Roosevelt had a sense of humor in appointing him to London. 00:03:17.570 --> 00:03:20.570 And he admitted that he'd only done it as a bit of a joke. 00:03:20.570 --> 00:03:24.050 Churchill found it anything but a joke when he became Prime Minister. 00:03:24.050 --> 00:03:27.050 Kennedy had a habit of reporting back to Washington the truth. 00:03:27.050 --> 00:03:32.050 When Kennedy went to ask Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, why he wouldn't have Churchill in his cabinet, 00:03:32.050 --> 00:03:38.050 Kennedy's reply was, the man is very unstable and he's become a fine two-fisted drinker. 00:03:38.050 --> 00:03:40.620 Churchill knew what Kennedy was reporting. 00:03:40.620 --> 00:03:43.620 I think because we were reading the American diplomatic codes as well. 00:03:43.620 --> 00:03:47.620 And Churchill did everything he could to get rid of Kennedy. 00:03:47.620 --> 00:03:48.620 By fair means or foul. 00:03:48.620 --> 00:03:51.620 In fact, Kennedy, as his diaries make plain, 00:03:51.620 --> 00:03:56.660 we've got certain fragments of Kennedy's diaries which are quite interesting because he was viciously anti-Semitic. 00:03:56.660 --> 00:04:00.660 The Kennedy family won't release the diaries, but certain fragments have become known. 00:04:00.660 --> 00:04:05.070 They're held in the Kennedy archives in Boston. 00:04:05.070 --> 00:04:11.070 Kennedy believed that Churchill was capable of stooping to anything to bring the United States in. 00:04:11.070 --> 00:04:17.070 In one telegram, he reports back to Washington that he thinks that Churchill is on the point of bombing the U.S. Embassy in London. 00:04:17.070 --> 00:04:22.440 A hundred yards or so away from where I live. 00:04:22.440 --> 00:04:29.440 And he believed that Churchill, in 1940, was about to bomb the American Embassy in London and claimed that the Americans had done it. 00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:35.700 And then later on in 1940, when Kennedy decides to go back to Florida for a vacation, 00:04:35.700 --> 00:04:41.700 he takes the plane down to Lisbon and he boards for the USS Manhattan to sail back across the Atlantic. 00:04:41.700 --> 00:04:42.700 And in a bit of a panic, because you know who he's dealing with. 00:04:42.700 --> 00:04:43.700 And in a bit of a panic, because you know who he's dealing with. 00:04:43.700 --> 00:04:44.700 He's dealing with Churchill. 00:04:44.700 --> 00:04:47.700 He sends a telegram to the State Department saying, 00:04:47.700 --> 00:04:51.700 Please will you announce that if the USS Manhattan is torpedoed and sunk, 00:04:51.700 --> 00:04:53.700 it will not be considered a casus belli, 00:04:53.700 --> 00:04:56.700 that the United States will not declare war over this, 00:04:56.700 --> 00:05:01.700 because I have reason to believe that Churchill is planning to torpedo the USS Manhattan, 00:05:01.700 --> 00:05:05.400 knowing that I am on board. 00:05:05.400 --> 00:05:10.530 Now, these telegrams are not contained in the published volumes of the Foreign Relations of the United States. 00:05:10.530 --> 00:05:11.530 I found them in the archives. 00:05:11.530 --> 00:05:12.530 They're in Suitland, Maryland. 00:05:12.530 --> 00:05:13.530 And I've quoted them in books. 00:05:13.530 --> 00:05:15.530 I've quoted them in this volume on Churchill. 00:05:15.530 --> 00:05:20.530 And I quote even more hilarious telegrams in the subsequent volume, in volume two. 00:05:20.530 --> 00:05:25.620 But they do show that Kennedy had correctly assessed what Churchill was up to. 00:05:25.620 --> 00:05:30.620 He was trying to drag in the United States into the war by hook or by crook. 00:05:30.620 --> 00:05:37.690 Churchill finally hit on the idea in the middle of 1940 of buying from the United States 50 destroyers, 00:05:37.690 --> 00:05:41.690 World War I destroyers, which were completely useless, 00:05:41.690 --> 00:05:46.690 and exchanging them, in fact, for valuable pieces of British Empire real estate. 00:05:46.690 --> 00:05:51.880 He gave to the United States bits of the Caribbean islands that were our colonies. 00:05:51.880 --> 00:05:55.880 He gave bits of Newfoundland and bits of British Guiana, 00:05:55.880 --> 00:06:00.880 in return for 50 destroyers that were so useless, in fact, that not one saw action in World War II, 00:06:00.880 --> 00:06:05.880 except, I think, for the Campbelltown, which was only fit to be towed across the English Channel, 00:06:05.880 --> 00:06:10.880 laden with dynamite and blown up in the French dock gates in Saint-Nazaire in March 1942. 00:06:11.880 --> 00:06:15.880 It was a very good bargain, in other words. 00:06:15.880 --> 00:06:20.880 Some, not some New World, Adolf Burley, the American undersecretary of state, 00:06:20.880 --> 00:06:26.880 wrote in his diary, with one single gulp, we have managed to obtain a large part of the British Empire, 00:06:26.880 --> 00:06:30.330 in return for nothing, namely these 50 destroyers. 00:06:30.330 --> 00:06:37.460 This was one of the methods that Churchill was using in an attempt to drag the United States closer and closer to the brink of war. 00:06:37.460 --> 00:06:40.460 Another method that he used was far more cynical. 00:06:40.460 --> 00:06:42.460 As he said to Ambassador Kennedy, 00:06:42.460 --> 00:06:44.460 in June or July 1942, 00:06:44.460 --> 00:06:49.460 you watch, 1940 rather, at the time of the fall of France, 00:06:49.460 --> 00:06:51.460 Churchill said to Kennedy, 00:06:51.460 --> 00:06:56.460 you watch when Adolf Hitler begins bombing London and bombing towns in Britain, 00:06:56.460 --> 00:06:58.460 like Boston and Lincoln, 00:06:58.460 --> 00:07:01.460 towns with their counterparts in the United States, 00:07:01.460 --> 00:07:03.460 you Americans will have to come in, won't you? 00:07:03.460 --> 00:07:07.460 You can't just stand aside and watch us suffering. 00:07:07.460 --> 00:07:11.840 But he knew from code-breaking, he knew from reading the German air force signals, 00:07:12.840 --> 00:07:15.840 written on March, on May 26, 1940, 00:07:15.840 --> 00:07:18.900 that Hitler had given orders that no British town was to be bombed. 00:07:18.900 --> 00:07:20.900 London was completely embargoed. 00:07:20.900 --> 00:07:24.940 The German air force was allowed to bomb ports and harbors and dockyards, 00:07:24.940 --> 00:07:26.940 but not towns as such. 00:07:26.940 --> 00:07:30.190 And Churchill was greatly aggrieved by this. 00:07:30.190 --> 00:07:34.190 And he wondered how much longer Hitler could avoid carrying on war like this. 00:07:34.190 --> 00:07:39.190 But Hitler, as we know, carried on until September 1940, without bombing any English towns. 00:07:39.190 --> 00:07:41.190 The embargo stayed in force. 00:07:41.190 --> 00:07:44.190 You can see it in the German archives now, 00:07:44.190 --> 00:07:47.190 and we know from the code-breaking of the German signals 00:07:47.190 --> 00:07:50.190 that Churchill was reading Hitler's orders to the German air force, 00:07:50.190 --> 00:07:53.580 not on any account, to bomb these towns. 00:07:53.580 --> 00:07:56.580 So there was no way that we could drag in the Americans that way, 00:07:56.580 --> 00:07:58.580 unless we could provoke Hitler to do it. 00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:02.800 Which is why on August 25, 1940, 00:08:02.800 --> 00:08:06.930 Churchill gave the order to the British air force to go and bomb Berlin. 00:08:06.930 --> 00:08:10.930 Although the chief of the bomber command and the chief of staff of the British air force warned him 00:08:10.930 --> 00:08:14.930 that if we bomb Berlin, Hitler may very well lift the embargo on bombing British towns. 00:08:14.930 --> 00:08:17.060 And Churchill just twinkled. 00:08:17.060 --> 00:08:19.060 Because it was what he wanted, of course. 00:08:19.060 --> 00:08:23.060 At 9.15 that morning, he telephoned the personal bomber command, himself, 00:08:23.060 --> 00:08:25.060 to order the bombing of Berlin. 00:08:25.060 --> 00:08:27.060 A hundred bombers to go and bomb Berlin. 00:08:27.060 --> 00:08:30.060 And they went out and bombed Berlin that night, and Hitler still didn't move. 00:08:30.060 --> 00:08:33.060 Hitler ordered another raid on Berlin, and so it went on for the next seven or ten days, 00:08:33.060 --> 00:08:36.060 until finally on September 4, Hitler lost his patience 00:08:36.060 --> 00:08:38.060 and made that famous speech in the sport palace in Berlin 00:08:38.060 --> 00:08:39.060 in which he said, 00:08:39.060 --> 00:08:40.060 This madman has bombed Berlin now seven times. 00:08:40.060 --> 00:08:45.060 If he bombs Berlin once more, then I shall not only just attack their towns, 00:08:45.060 --> 00:08:46.060 I shall wipe them out. 00:08:46.060 --> 00:08:50.060 A very famous speech. 00:08:50.060 --> 00:08:53.090 Of course, German schoolchildren are now told about the Hitler speech. 00:08:53.090 --> 00:08:55.090 They're not told about what went first. 00:08:55.090 --> 00:09:00.090 They're not told how Churchill sent out deliberately to provoke the bombing of his own capital. 00:09:00.090 --> 00:09:04.280 And on the following day, Churchill ordered Berlin bombed again. 00:09:04.280 --> 00:09:08.460 Sir William Stephenson, remember the man called Intrepid, 00:09:08.460 --> 00:09:10.460 the head of the British Secret Service in the United States? 00:09:10.460 --> 00:09:14.460 Sir William Stephenson had been feeding fake documents to Roosevelt 00:09:14.460 --> 00:09:16.460 through the intelligence service of the OSS. 00:09:16.460 --> 00:09:18.620 William Donovan. 00:09:18.620 --> 00:09:19.620 Big Bill. 00:09:19.620 --> 00:09:21.620 Wild Bill Donovan, the head of the OSS. 00:09:21.620 --> 00:09:25.620 A man who we ourselves had appointed as the head of the American Secret Service. 00:09:25.620 --> 00:09:28.620 An extraordinary coincidence, you might think. 00:09:28.620 --> 00:09:31.620 And we were feeding documents to him to feed on to Roosevelt, 00:09:31.620 --> 00:09:37.100 proving that Hitler was about to invade South America. 00:09:37.100 --> 00:09:42.960 For example, an unfortunate major Elias, 00:09:42.960 --> 00:09:49.700 that's Belmonti, who was the Bolivian military attache in Berlin, 00:09:49.700 --> 00:09:53.700 found his signature at the foot of a letter that he'd written to his government in La Paz, 00:09:53.700 --> 00:09:58.270 describing German plans to invade Bolivia. 00:09:58.270 --> 00:10:03.820 Unfortunately, Belmonti was recalled immediately to La Paz and cashiered and dismissed. 00:10:03.820 --> 00:10:06.820 Bolivia declared war on Germany. 00:10:06.820 --> 00:10:08.820 All the result of this letter that we ourselves had paid. 00:10:08.820 --> 00:10:10.820 The British Secret Service. 00:10:10.820 --> 00:10:13.820 All this came out a few years ago when it came out in about 1972. 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:17.820 Belmonti, who was still alive, was reinstated in full honors, 00:10:17.820 --> 00:10:20.820 promoted to general, and there was a grand parade in his honor in La Paz. 00:10:20.820 --> 00:10:25.820 This was one of the extraordinary episodes of what happened in World War II. 00:10:25.820 --> 00:10:30.200 A British intelligence agent duped the governor of Dutch Guiana 00:10:30.200 --> 00:10:33.200 into believing that a German raider was busy in their waters. 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:36.200 So that country also declared war on Germany. 00:10:36.200 --> 00:10:41.580 August the 2nd, 1941, we passed fake documents to Bogota, 00:10:41.580 --> 00:10:45.580 claiming evidence of plans to invade Bolivia. 00:10:45.580 --> 00:10:50.580 In fact, in 1942, the Colombians didn't play along. 00:10:50.580 --> 00:10:53.580 In 1942, we went a stage further. 00:10:53.580 --> 00:10:57.580 In May 1942, if you look in the State Department archives, 00:10:57.580 --> 00:11:03.450 this is a rather shaky post-war memory, 40 years later, speaking on 60 Minutes. 00:11:03.450 --> 00:11:06.450 This is a document in the State Department archives. 00:11:06.450 --> 00:11:12.450 May 1942, the American ambassador in Bogota sends a rather worried telegram to the State Department, 00:11:12.450 --> 00:11:15.450 saying, I've been approached by our British counterpart, 00:11:15.450 --> 00:11:19.450 saying that the head of their SIS section, the British Secret Intelligence Service section, 00:11:19.450 --> 00:11:24.450 attached to the embassy in Bogota, STAG, S-T-A-G-G, 00:11:24.450 --> 00:11:29.450 has received orders from his headquarters to assassinate the Colombian foreign minister. 00:11:29.450 --> 00:11:34.730 Are we, and has he requested the American embassy for technical assistance in carrying out this mission, 00:11:34.730 --> 00:11:36.730 are we to go ahead with this? 00:11:36.730 --> 00:11:40.730 The State Department wrote back a message saying, no, you are not to go ahead with this. 00:11:40.730 --> 00:11:43.730 We thoroughly disapprove of this kind of operation, 00:11:43.730 --> 00:11:46.730 and we are getting rather fed up with what the British Secret Service is getting up to do. 00:11:46.730 --> 00:11:48.890 We are going down in South America. 00:11:48.890 --> 00:11:49.890 And I was a bit puzzled about this. 00:11:49.890 --> 00:11:51.890 I thought, had this unfortunate Colombian foreign minister, 00:11:51.890 --> 00:11:55.950 had he got a record of neo-Nazi activities perhaps? 00:11:55.950 --> 00:11:59.980 Was he a disbeliever of the Holocaust or something? 00:11:59.980 --> 00:12:02.980 Was there some reason that justified his being terminated, 00:12:02.980 --> 00:12:05.980 I think that's the modern phrase, by the British Secret Service? 00:12:05.980 --> 00:12:09.780 So I went to great trouble, and I checked all the diplomatic books, 00:12:09.780 --> 00:12:13.780 and I checked up all the STAGs, and eventually I found a STAG, a Louis STAG in fact, 00:12:13.780 --> 00:12:16.780 who had been honorary consul in a kind of grey and greenish fashion, 00:12:16.780 --> 00:12:21.780 down in Cuba, in Havana, and then eventually had been posted further to South America. 00:12:21.780 --> 00:12:23.780 And he was alive and well and living in Paris. 00:12:23.780 --> 00:12:26.780 And I went and interviewed him, and yes, it was true. 00:12:26.780 --> 00:12:29.780 He had been instructed to assassinate Lopez de Mesa, 00:12:29.780 --> 00:12:31.780 who was the name of the unfortunate Colombian foreign minister. 00:12:31.780 --> 00:12:33.780 And I contacted the Colombian authorities. 00:12:33.780 --> 00:12:37.780 Could they give me a small cameo of this foreign minister? 00:12:37.780 --> 00:12:39.780 Was he particularly a pro-German? 00:12:39.780 --> 00:12:42.780 Oh no, he was very pro-British. 00:12:42.780 --> 00:12:44.620 Plot seconds. 00:12:44.620 --> 00:12:47.620 Why would we want to assassinate a pro-British Colombian foreign minister? 00:12:47.620 --> 00:12:50.710 Why would we want to assassinate a Colombian foreign minister in May 1942? 00:12:50.710 --> 00:12:55.580 Answer is, he was due to retire anyway at the end of that month. 00:12:55.580 --> 00:13:00.500 And the blame was going to be put on the Germans for carrying out the assassination. 00:13:00.500 --> 00:13:02.500 This is all in volume two. 00:13:02.500 --> 00:13:08.270 Needless to say, Macmillan's are probably not going to publish this one either. 00:13:08.270 --> 00:13:11.270 On Navy Day, October the 27th, 1941, 00:13:11.270 --> 00:13:14.270 Roosevelt issued a statement on American ship sinkings. 00:13:14.270 --> 00:13:18.270 History has recorded who fired the first shot, he said. 00:13:18.270 --> 00:13:20.270 Hitler has often protested. 00:13:20.270 --> 00:13:25.270 He protested that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean. 00:13:25.270 --> 00:13:29.270 His submarines and radars prove otherwise. 00:13:29.270 --> 00:13:34.270 So does the entire design of his New World Order. 00:13:34.270 --> 00:13:39.270 For example, says Roosevelt in his broadcast, October the 27th, Navy Day, 00:13:39.270 --> 00:13:44.460 for example, I have in my possession a secret map made in Germany by Hitler's government, 00:13:44.460 --> 00:13:48.460 by the planners of the New World Order, printed by Her Majesty's stationery office in London. 00:13:48.460 --> 00:13:49.460 Laughter. 00:13:49.460 --> 00:13:56.850 It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to organize it. 00:13:56.850 --> 00:14:00.850 Today, in this little area, there are 14 separate countries. 00:14:00.850 --> 00:14:06.850 The geographical experts of Berlin, however, have ruthlessly obliterated all existing boundary lines 00:14:06.850 --> 00:14:10.850 and have divided South America into five vassal states, 00:14:10.850 --> 00:14:13.850 bringing the whole continent under their domination. 00:14:13.850 --> 00:14:17.850 This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America, 00:14:17.850 --> 00:14:21.650 but against the United States itself. 00:14:21.650 --> 00:14:25.650 I must say that as an Englishman, we must take credit for this kind of thing. 00:14:25.650 --> 00:14:28.580 Laughter. 00:14:28.580 --> 00:14:33.580 We printed that map and we gave it to Stevenson, the man called Intrepid, 00:14:33.580 --> 00:14:36.580 who gave it to Donovan, who gave it to the OSS, who gave it to the White House, 00:14:36.580 --> 00:14:39.580 who gave it to the President, who gave it eventually to the Roosevelt Archives, 00:14:39.580 --> 00:14:45.120 where it is now to be seen in the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park in New York. 00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:48.120 A genuine fake Nazi map proving that Hitler... 00:14:48.120 --> 00:14:49.120 Laughter. 00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:50.120 ...was planning to invade... 00:14:50.120 --> 00:14:53.120 I mean, as though Hitler hadn't got enough on his plate, for Christ's sake. 00:14:53.120 --> 00:14:57.150 I mean, here he is, here he is having a lot of trouble outside Moscow, 00:14:57.150 --> 00:15:01.150 and he's apparently planning simultaneously with his left hand to invade South America 00:15:01.150 --> 00:15:05.150 and then march on up US 1 to Washington. 00:15:05.150 --> 00:15:11.260 Schmitt has said that only Hitler would benefit if a US-Japanese war broke out. 00:15:11.260 --> 00:15:14.260 If Japan made the first move, the war would be popular in America. 00:15:14.260 --> 00:15:16.260 Frankfurter, however, said, 00:15:16.260 --> 00:15:20.360 Germany has been smart in that she has consistently done everything possible 00:15:20.360 --> 00:15:24.360 to prevent a rousing United States. 00:15:24.360 --> 00:15:28.360 Therefore, regardless of how much the President tries to fan the anti-German flame, 00:15:28.360 --> 00:15:31.360 he cannot make the desired headway. 00:15:31.360 --> 00:15:33.780 Now, what a scandalous statement that is. 00:15:33.780 --> 00:15:36.780 Here's the one country, Germany, trying to prevent a war, 00:15:36.780 --> 00:15:39.780 and the other country, Roosevelt, neutral, 00:15:39.780 --> 00:15:43.780 trying to fan the flame of anti-German feeling in order to create a war. 00:15:43.780 --> 00:15:45.940 And yet it's the Germans who are called the criminals, 00:15:45.940 --> 00:15:47.940 and the Americans who do the prosecuting.