Fine.

Yeah, no, I'm saying that.

I think that was a justified, but I'm not saying, what I'm saying is I'm not saying that, I'm saying that those who, those, I just want to sort of clarify the point you're making about sort of ideology and pragmatism or what point I'm making about ideology and pragmatism.

Of course, it's fine to be ideological.

But you need to be pragmatic.

Those who are ruled by ideology rather than pragmatism, it tends to kind of come undone.

Nazism, anti-Semitism, communism, it tends not to work eventually.

It's quite a different experience to reading the book because the book, I got the impression of you being more flattering of Wilson

So tell me, do you still believe that? Do you still think he was?

I think he's one of the very, very, very best we've ever had.

I think he's extraordinary.

I think on several levels, one of the most important levels is that before him, it was the duty of the people to serve the king.

And from then on, from his way, he changed kingship and the monarchy to it is the king's job to serve the people.

And I know that was sort of, you know, it was not worded as such in the past, but it was implicit, that balance, that you're the king and everyone else is beneath you and they've got to do a lot of sucking up and all the rest of it.

And your job is to just sort of be a figurehead or kind of drop heads off or raise taxes to go to war or whatever it might be.

Britain itself is a

so where does he go from there?

Well, one of his, one of his former officers takes, takes pity on him and asks him to help do some, um, some, some sort of propaganda courses to try and sort of bash Bolshevism out of young Germans.

Uh, and he finds out he's actually a really good orator, and he finds he's rather good at it, and he can just stand up and just deliver.

And as he's thinking about this and thinking about trying to sort of, you know, dissuade people from Bolshevism, his, his own thoughts starts to sort of coalesce.

And he's gravitated to Munich as well, 'cause although he's Austrian, he's, Munich is where he ends up.

And so he's living in Munich.

He's got a job.

And the interesting thing is you also have an Adolf Hitler who tried to gain power through physical force, but he also learned his lesson and thought to himself, "Let's go the legitimate route."

Laura Smith or Kelly Cox, Tiffany Johnston and Jessica Kane.

The Ranger had put pictures out basically to say if you want to, you know if you want to help yourself, I need to know.

who I need to go talk to.

And he was referring to basically the district attorneys in those different jurisdictions.

So when he laid all the pictures out of the girls, he asked him, who do I need to go speak to? The ranger's asking, Bill, who do I need to go speak to? And at first, he doesn't say anything.

He just kind of... puts his hand over all of them, and he says, what does that mean? And he says, all of them.

So we knew that night that he was acknowledging responsibility for all the girls that we had pictures there.

Reese began to show his frustration.

She was laughing while I was killing her.

With Sammy, there's indications of visualization of when he's thinking about a crime scene, he'll start stroking his face and as he's starting to picture a victim, you'll see him look out and up and you can tell he has this revolving carousel of victims and it's just spinning and he's waiting for it to stop at the one that he wants to talk about.

Little vented in the interview room for 30 minutes that he had been wrongly depicted as a rapist.

There was no doubt in my mind that Samuel Little was not a rapist.

But I told him he knew it and I knew it, that he was a killer.

And he stops and he kind of looks at me for a second.

He didn't seem to mind it.

And then you could see in his eyes as he's looking away and he falls back as I say the word killer.

Yeah.

This is the point at four thirty in the morning on Monday the fifth, where Eisenhower has to say, "Yes, we're gonna go on the sixth, or we're not," because everyone's got to start moving out sort of like now.

And he puts his head in his hands.

He sits in that seat, in that chair, armchair in the library at Southwark House, puts his head in his hands, thinks about it.Looks up and goes, "Okay, let's go." But again, I think your grandfather was really instrumental in that decision because he was all for it.

He was magnificent in that period.

The clarity of thought that he brings to a very complex operation.

We're committed, we've done it, we need to back ourselves, we've done everything we possibly can.

Yeah

So take us through some of that decision-making, and take us through the revolution or the evolution of his reputation as this is going on.

Well, he, he, he navigates the end of the war, first in Europe in, in May 1945, and then in, um, uh, against Japan in August brilliantly, I think.

You know, he threatens the atomic bomb.

He gives plenty of ...

He doesn't actually spell out what it is, but he says to the Japanese, you know, "This ...

We have got this, this absolutely terrible weapon.

It's coming your way if you don't play ball." Um, they don't.

... propping up-

Insurance underwritten by NJM Insurance Company and its subsidiaries.

What was the response? Well, the response was a massive strain on democratic politics.

And what you start to see is that when you have really major economic upheavals, you then have political upheavals in democracies.

And you start to go to the fringes.

You go to the fringes of the left, political left and the political right, and you have mayhem.

And once you have political uncertainty combined with economic uncertainty, you're that much closer to war.

And so here we are in 2026 with economic mayhem and downturns, political mayhem, And what is the result? Well, we've got a European war.

quite appealing in today's world, isn't it? It's all

What is the message, James?

Well, it arrives the- the previous evening of the 4th of May, um, and he's handed it, um...

He's in this courtyard, in this- this farmyard, in this farm...

This beautiful little, um, village in the kind of sort of hinterland between Bremen and Hamburg.

Sort of farming, low level farming land, um, called Karlshöfen.

And he's overtaken...

You know, he's taken over this farmyard building as the regimental headquarters and suddenly this message is scrawled in sort of...

And John Semken lives to a ripe age of 2016 and you s- you visited with, uh, John Semken.

James, what was Operation Veritable?

Yeah, so this is the big, um, uh, Canadian Army push to cross, uh, through the Reichswald and, um, uh, take the towns of Kleve and Goch, in cahoots incidentally with, um, uh, General Bill Simpson's U.S. Ninth Army, uh, on their right-hand flank and, uh, Operation Grenade, and then close up to the River Rhine.

So this is clearing the Rhineland to the west of the River Rhine, the German, um, German territory west of the, of the River Rhine.

And, um, it's a major, major operation, although a lot of S- British Second Army units are transferred into the Canadian Army.

It is a Canadian Army-led operation of which the Sherwood Rangers are part.

And it's just, you know, it's just ...

What you get, John, is just this sort of mounting sense of the relentlessness of it.

Who are they, James?

So how does the disappointment of Market Garden lead into the winter battles for the Scheldt lead into slowing the charge into Germany down? How do they all fit together, James?

Well, the, the idea for Market Garden is not a bad one on paper because the idea is that, that the Siegfried Line, the West Wall, the German border defenses runs up alongside Belgium and, and France, but, um, and Luxembourg, but it doesn't really run up into kind of the northern stretch of Holland 'cause Holland stretches round into kind of Northern Germany and, and it, and there's no border defenses between northern Dutch border and Germany.

So the idea is to cross, get across the River Rhine which becomes very, very big further, further south, but, um, it is not so big, um, at Arnhem, um, in Northern Holland.

And so the idea is to kind of sort of punch a line, um, with 30 Corps, British 30 Corps, to secure this road, th- this, this sort of avenue up to Arnhem.

Um, but there's a precursor to that.

British and American and Polish airborne troops, paratroopers and glider troops, will land and secure various bridges so the 30 Corps, when it reaches it, can get across.

Um, so you can see the, the thought behind it, but, but it just doesn't quite...

They, they came together afterward.

What is the Long Tail and why is it part of the big war concept being practiced?

Yeah, well it's just, it's just a huge support in terms of maintenance and supply and, um, you know, they have tank crews being trained constantly over in the UK and they're just coming in and they're just sort of funneled in.

Um, but, you know, a tank regiment like the Sherwood Rangers is about 688 men of which, um, only about 329 are actually in tanks.

The rest of them are in what's called the A echelon and the B e- echelon, which is the support behind it.

So this is trucks, um, ah, ah, ah, and half tracks and, and what have you bringing up supplies and it's the armored recovery vehicles.

So, you know, at the end of the day if a tank's been left on the battlefield but hasn't been completely knocked out, they'll beetle around and whip it back and change an engine or repair the tracks or whatever and it'll be good to go the next day.

And that, that's, it's just extraordinary.

Is it a trap or does it just come upon him that the Germans are reinforcing?

What is Operation Tractable?

Well, this is in the sort of closing stages of the Normandy campaign.

Um, it's actually a Ca- it's a Canadian-led operation, uh, pushing down from, from Caen, the Bulgarous Ridge down into, to Falaise.

And the crossing of the Noireau is, is, uh, you know, again it's on a sort of flank action of Operation Tractable.

Um, yeah, so it's, it's...

So General Thomas is part...

He's the commander of the 43rd, um, um, 43rd Wessex division and he's known as von Thoma 'cause von Thoma was a German Afrika Korps commander who was captured at, um, um, at Alamein.

Yeah.

Did everybody recognize that? All the other tanks who were supposed to swim to shore, did they also run as close as they could?

Y- yeah.

And, and that's not really the, the choice of the tank so much.

That's more of a decision of the, of the, um, of the naval personnel.

I mean, I should just, uh, just say for your, uh, for American listeners that, that a, a squadron, a, a tank squadron in the British Army is the same as a tank company in a, you know, in an armored battalion, armored regiment in, in, in the US Army.

So obviously the...

You know, when they're thinking about this, this invasion, you know, what everyone's imagining is it's summer, um, the seas are calm, there's no wind, just like a mill pond and it's all gonna be fine.

What was his mission that day and for the next months? How did he see himself helping?

Did everybody recognize that? All the other tanks who were supposed to swim to shore, did they also run as close as they could?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and that's not really the, the choice of the tank so much.

That's more the decision of the, of the, um, of the naval personnel.

I mean, I should just, uh, just say for your, uh, for American listeners that, that a, a squadron, a, a, a tank squadron in the British army is the same as a tank company in a, you know, in an armored battalion, armored regiment in, in, in the US Army.

So obviously, the ...

What was his mission that day and for the next months? How did he see himself helping?

Good evening to you.

Well, good evening to you, John, and thank you very much for that and, and for having me on.

Um, yeah, the Sherwood Rangers are extraordinary.

I mean, the British Army in 19- 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War is actually 100% mechanized.

It's the only army in the world that is.

Um, but, but (laughs) they could, that sounds more impressive than it actually is, and it's largely because the British Army's incredibly small in 1939.

It's allied with France, and France is gonna do the army bit and Britain's gonna provide naval power and burgeoning air power.

What is the message, James?

Well, it arrives the, the previous evening of the 4th of May, um, and he's handed it, um, he's in this courtyard in this, this farmyard, this farm, this beautiful little, um, village in the coastal hinterland between Bremen and Hamburg.

Some farming, low-level farming land, um, called Karlshöfen and he's overtaken, you know, he's taken over this farmyard and building as the regimental headquarters, and suddenly this message is scrawled and sort of on, on a used message pad, um, i- in pencil and he's rather irritated that, why haven't you used a clean sheet of paper? A- and the guy says, "I just, I had to take this down immediately on the first thing I could find.

It was so important." And basically it says, "No further advance.

No further firing.

Um, BBC reports that the Germans will surrender at 8:00 tomorrow morning.

Um, stay where you are." And they realized that this is the end of the war, um, and it was amazing because in October 2020, in a gap in the pandemic, um, I went over to, um, I went over to Karlshöfen, uh, on a pilgrimage really, a kind of, sort of following the footsteps of the Sherwood Rangers all through Germany, through Dunkirk and through, uh, the route through Operation Veritable, through Kleve, Goch, Issum up to the River Rhine, across the River Rhine all, all the way through that l- single road through the woods and forests and stuff, uh, up to Bremen.

And John Samkin lives to a ripe age of 2016 and you s- you visited with, uh, John Samkin?

James, what was Operation Veritable?

Yeah, so this is the big, um, uh, Canadian Army push to cross, uh, through the Reichswald and, and, uh, take the towns of Kleve and Goch, in cahoots incidentally with, um, uh, General Bill Simpson's U.S. Ninth Army, uh, on their right-hand flank and, uh, Operation Grenade.

And then close up to the River Rhine.

So this is clearing the Rhineland to the west of the River Rhine, of the German, um, German territory west of the, of the River Rhine.

And, um, it's a major, major operation, although a lot of S- British Second Army units are transferred into the Canadian Army.

It is a Canadian Army-led operation of which the Sherwood Rangers are part.

And it's just, you know, it's just...

Who are they, James?

So, how does the disappointment of Market Garden lead into the winter battles for the Scheldt lead into slowing the charge into Germany down? How do they all fit together, James?

Well, the, the idea for Market Garden is not a bad one on paper because the idea is that- that the Siegfried Line, the West Wall, the German border defenses runs up alongside Belgium and, and France but, um, and Luxembourg, but it doesn't really run up into kinda the northern stretch of Holland 'cause Holland stretches round into kind of northern Germany and, and i- and there's no border defenses between northern Dutch border and Germany.

So, the idea is to cross, get across the River Rhine which becomes very, very big further, further south but, um, i- is not so big, um, at Arnhem, um, in northern Holland.

And so the idea is to kind of sort of punch a line, um, with 30 Corps, British 30 Corps, to secure this road, th- this, this sort of avenue up to Arnhem.

Um, but there's a precursor to that.

British and American and Polish airborne troops, paratroopers and glider troops, will land and secure various bridges so that 30 Corps when it reaches it can get across.

Um, so you can see the, the thought behind it but, but it just doesn't quite, it just, they don't pull it off.

They, they came together afterward.

What is the Long Tail and why is it part of the big war concept being practiced?

(smacks lips) Yeah, well it's just, it's just a huge support in terms of maintenance and supply and, um, you know, they have tank crews being trained constantly over in the UK and they're just coming in and they're just sort of funneled in.

Um, but, you know, a tank regiment like the Sherwood Rangers is about 688 men of which, um, (smacks lips) only about 329 are actually in tanks.

The rest of them are in what's called the A echelon and the B-ish echelon, which is the support behind it.

So this is trucks, um, (smacks lips) uh, uh, uh, and halftracks and, and what have you bringing up supplies and it's the armored recovery vehicles so, you know, at the end of the day if a tank's been left on the battlefield but hasn't been completely knocked out, they'll beetle around and whisp it back and change an engine or repair the tracks or whatever, and it'll be good to go the next day.

And that, that's, it's just extraordinary.

I mean obviously after something as long as, as, you know, sort of 300 miles up to, up into Belgium in, in kind of no time at all, um, the maintenance required on a lot of the tanks is, is quite extreme.

Is it a trap or does it just come upon him that the Germans are reinforcing?

What is Operation Trac-

Well, this is in the sort of closing stages of the Normandy campaign.

Um, it's actually a Ca- it's a Canadian-led operation, uh, pushing down from, from Caen, the Bourgoyne Ridge, down into, to Falaise.

And the crossing of the Noireau is, is, uh, you know, again it's on a sort of flank action of Operation Tractable.

Um, yeah, so it's, it's...

So General Thomas is part...

He's the commander of the 43rd, um, um, 43rd Wessex division, and he's known as von Thoma 'cause von Thoma was a German Afrika Korps commander who was captured at, um, um, at El Alamein.

Yeah.

What is the big picture of why it's important to pay attention to Point 103 and the battle over Fontenay?

(smacks lips) Yeah, well, so- so Caen is- is- is, you know, normally sort of sticks out on a limb in north- north, um, west France and Caen is the hinge because it's a- it's a key nodal point.

It's got rivers going through it, it's got a railway line, it's got main roads and all the rest of it.

And when you s- from- from Caen, you can sweep eastwards up towards Paris, up towards Belgium, cross, um, eastwards to the German border and so on.

So obviously the- the French, uh, from the German point of view, as they're moving their- their mobile units, their Panzer units, their armored units up into the, into the battlefront, Caen is the kind of sort of first port of call.

That- that's your kind of blocking position.

And it's from there that there- the Germans are intending to knock the Allies back into the sea.

How is that a 75 millimeter that can't penetrate the armor of a Panzer straight on actually defeats Panzers? How do they do that?

Did everybody recognize that? All the other tanks who were supposed to swim to shore, did they also run as close as they could?

Yeah, yeah.

And, and that's not really the, the choice of the tank so much.

That's more of a decision of the, of the, um, of the naval personnel.

I mean, I should just, uh, just say for your, for, for American listeners that, that a, a squadron, a, a tank squadron in the British army is the same as a tank company in a, you know, in an armored battalion, armored regiment in, in, in the US Army.

So obviously the, you know, when they're thinking about this, this invasion, you know, what everyone's imagining is it's summer, um, the seas are calm, there's no wind, it's like a mill pond and it's all gonna be fine.

So at that point, 7,000 yards in the swimming tank, a, a duplex drive tank.

What was his mission that day and for the next months? How did he see himself helping?

Good evening to you.

Well, good evening to you, John, and thank you very much for that and, and for having me on.

Um, yeah, the Sherwood Rangers are extraordinary.

I mean, the British Army in 19- 1939 at the outbreak of the Second World War is actually 100% mechanized.

It's the only army in the world that is.

Um, but (laughs) they could, that sounds more impressive than it actually is and it's largely because the British Army's incredibly small in 1939.

It's allied with France and France is gonna do the army bit and Britain's gonna provide naval power and burgeoning air power.

All right.

Oh, if you think it's a little bit more nuanced.

So, um, uh, down the, uh, down the, the, the, the eastern border of France, uh, the western border of Germany, um, that is where the Maginot Line is, and that is this incredibly expensive series of defense projects.

You know, the idea, the principle behind it is that it'll be just like the First World War if there's another, another, uh, uh, a- another conflict.

Um, i.e. long, drawn out and static, uh, and he who has the best defenses and, and best build up of armaments and supplies will win.

They'll just grind down the enemy.

And this is certainly true in case of, you know, the whole principle of war that, um, that dictates how Germany fights its war, first Prussia and then Germany, is this understanding that-Germany lies in the center of Europe.

And was there a concern about-