This is John Bachelor, conversation with historian and author Nick Lloyd,

author of the Western Front, a history of the Great War in 1914, 1918.

The catastrophe of the war makes the 20th century an endless contest between the losers, the

winners, the participants at the edge, goes on for a hundred years, begins at the turn of the century and doesn't

end until the fall of the Soviet Union, and it still continues.

Russia is enlivened again to challenge the results of the second war now.

To say that the Nazis are not all dead, but in any event it begins here.

And it begins in France, Belgium in France. So much of the war is fought in France.

And Professor Lloyd here characterizes the French challenge, how they handled the war, at least the first half of the war.

It led to catastrophe for France, it led to the quick surrender, the defeat in the second

war. It's all wrapped up in mistaken understanding of

history and of war. This is the French, Nick Lloyd, describing what the conditions were in the first part of the war that made

it so damaging to all the cultures.

More of this later.

But I think what you see in certainly the first half of the war in France is that sort of

realization that, you know, they have not worn, they might not have been defeated, but

they have come close and moreover that they need to do

things differently they need to re-mobilize they need to also from a political

perspective they need to start to claw Joffra in because essentially for the first

least four months of the war Joffra is basically a most dictator almost every decision related

to that war goes through him.

And the politicians have gone to Bordeaux and they come back and they try and rein him in and

...