depressed. it was completely black out. right after 1945, not a light shone in the city. that was terribly depressing, especially in the winter when the darkness went on for a long time and people found the longer they were here, it ate at their spirits. if you share the light in any form, you would have a warden jumping out of at you and you were sent to court and find $100, which in that case was a lot of money. for shining a light especially. a lot of accidents and so on. more people died in accidents. because it is very dangerous.

everything from the blast, everything that they could clear up from the bombings of 1940 and 1941 -- that layer of dust hung over the city. shattered windows, there were no blast around to replace it. nobody starved, but the food was unbelievably dreary. a lot of americans complained bitterly about the food. the rationing worked. the poorer a better during the war than they had before the war. because it forced a balanced diet on them. but they did not enjoy the food much. people got really depressed.

if you want rich, then you played by the rules. and it was a dreary life. you can go dancing at nightclubs and with americans -- americans looked so thick and well. years ago i saw an american officer who had been over here in 1941. he said one of the things that i couldn't get over about the british is that their teeth were so terrible. of course, everyone's teeth were terrible because they had been neglected due to the depression. the first thing that reddish girls noticed about american men as they all had such wonderful teeth. >> max hastings, how do you feel

about the war overall? >> it is the one thing that we feel that we did well overall. it was right to be proud. we have to realize that we need to live in the 21st century and we cannot go on living backwards. some of the mistakes that some british statement make is a lot of nonsense about the special relationship. we do have a huge amount shared values with united states and a sort of shared language and so on. even in the second world war, they constructed this great legend. we had the bases of the nations, we each had our own perceptions of interest.

especially because we hated the british empire. nowadays you do still need some politicians in the united states. because americans are so polite, including of the white house. they get the wrong idea. the idea that we can expect the united states to do us any favors because we are on the same side of the war, i am often name, forget it, it is not like that. everyone will be incredibly polite to in washington, but do not be fooled. >> what you call your book on the war with japan retribution? >> well, i think that retribution was what many if not most americans saw it as a hatred in the united states and japan.

so it seems that the amount of american soldiers in germany. many of them are finding it difficult to know why they were there and why they were fighting the germans at all. so americans even before that, even before paul harper had been tremendously exercised about the ghastly doings of the japanese, china, the kings and all the others. in 1944 and 1945, the great american campaign, most americans thought this as a great exercise in retribution.

>> we dominated asia and a specific region. today it is rather scary even now. some of the japanese apologize for what it is. in the united states we have done our fair share of terrible things in britain as well. and we do try these days to confront the honesty in our history books with our politicians and those who apologize for things we got wrong.

they just look blankly at you. even russia is in denial about that as well. >> what about german scholars in world war ii? three the germans had been it is an masterpiece. i remember when i was reviewing

this. the fact that they designed this into the starvation of about 30 million people in new prey, but it should be diverted. the germans are faced their past. by contrast, france remains only purchase one in the world. >> what happened to the country in world war ii? >> it was occupied by 1940 and 1945. it remains a statistic that the french are not proud of. more people. on in france.

the collaborationist regime. they thought the resistance. and they sometimes forget that most of the french soldiers were re-patch rated, i'm sorry, were evacuated from france with the british. the british said, well, they are occupying france, the germans are. and fighting for freedom. in 1941, the british go into syria in the french fight. there was a french fighter pilot that became like this in 1941. he was a quite well-known british author, wrote many

well-known children's books, trickier. when eventually the french prisoners were offered a chance to leave, they were offered to fight with the allies. maybe we have been occupied, maybe we would have behaved the same way. there might have been the same reaction. >> booktv on c-span2, we are in london. several books on world war ii he has written, we are talking with max hastings. he has a new book called "catastrophe 1914: europe goes to war." was world war i an option? >> an amazing number of

historians, including some british ones wrote this. it didn't matter who won world war i. up up up up up up up up up up when it comes to germany, you cannot say that it was as evil as germany because there was nothing that took place under this regime. nothing that resembled the holocaust. i will never say it was a plan for global dominance.

but the germans have incredibly ambitious plans for taking over europe, for forcing a custom that would give germany a vice like grip on europe. the idea is that germany would have won and taken over europe, up we are talking about world war i and we are talking morally about world war ii. there was this evil force in the japanese were much more confused. i think the united states as well, about what world war i was about.

what basically happened is they were talking about in july of 1914, the austrians decided that they were going to extinguish serviette. which something that was heavily weighted with the war. the war against them was for real. but germany, they became known as what is the blank check. the german side, okay, you have to have your war. when the russians come and, we will deal with the russians.

at the very least this was fantastically responsible. the russians indeed the germans came in with the russians. but the big question obviously was for the british. up up up up up russia was still up rule by desire. the british had democrats that felt very uneasy about getting mixed up with this.

they were very much like the russians anyway. so even in the last stages of 1914 in july, they were very unsure. he was always up for a fight. the foreign secretary was also up for a fight. what happened is that elgin has always been guaranteed as a neutral power. whereby the british law agreed that belgium was permanently neutral. then it was announced that the german army would attack france through belgium. the government said they would send a formal note notifying

them to send the army through them. so why do they have not done so? when the german army nonetheless on august the second, 1914, when they marched into belgium, they came to belgium and he said, here we are, we are neutral with the makeup and the german army is watching them. belgium changed everything. they say if we care anything about international law, stability of europe, just stand there and watch. watch while the germans rape elgin. i believe that this is the right course. now, what changed in the years that followed?

well, the first world war became such a dreadful experience for everyone. a huge number of people began to say up up up, up what became known as this takeover. and this was something that they took the view that something was happening so dreadful. almost anything was better up up up up up but how do you pack it in? not it is a diplomatic process. i think it was much more difficult. one of the veterans who up it was in this book, who i think tells it well was up henry

miller. and he wrote a memoir in 1978. he said in a memoir that he was fed up with reading all this stuff about how the first world war had never been allowed to go on and so forth. he said that mean my generation, they still believe passionately in the rights of our course. and i think that they were right. especially in the justice of their cause. i think it was necessary for the cause of democracy and freedom. because of germany winning, i think it would be very

important. .. wear what they war in the war of 1817. they marched n to battle in the same way as the officers in that poll -- flags flying. bands playing. they went no to action. they went in to action by bands

playing. tens of thousands of them in the early campaigns of august 1914 up against the artillery, and machine guns. the consequences were devastating. everybody thinks that the worst slaughter in the world took place in 1915, '16, 17. the bloodiest day of the whole war was august 23rd, 194 when the french lost 27,000 dead on the battle field. that was more than the british lost the first day of the battle. the united states lost the battle of -- 20,000 some dead in one day. it was on an unspeakable business. it says to be the germans weren't wearing the red trousers. they attacked in gr