americans in the 1930s wanted light, sparkling entertainment, films with charlie chan, dr. killdare, ginger rogers, and the marks brothers, but starting in 1939, there were darker films too, films that informed american audiences about the nazi terror spreading around the world. one of the first anti-nazi films was "confessions of a nazi spy," and it was followed by others like the mortal storm starring jimmy stuart and robert young. murder in the air with ronald reagan, sergeant york with gary cooper, charlie chaplain's the great dictator, and let's not forget casa blanca. some isolationists in congress

were convinced there was a hollywood conspiracy to win up war hysteria and propel the united states into war. since many of the heads of the hollywood studios were jewish, those isolationists decided that it it to be a jewish conspiracy. two passionate isolationists, democratic senator wheeler of montana and republican senator general nye of north dakota demanded and got congressional investigations and hearings. the hollywood studio heads needed an attorney to defend them. they hired, as their lead council, none other than wilkie. just a few months before pearl harbor, the subcommittee hearings were a nasty side show.

fortunately, wilkie provided a healthy dose of sanity and realism. he told the senators that the motion picture industry was happy to plead guilty to being a hundred percent opposed to fascism. i wish to put on the record this simple truth, wilkie declared. we make no pretense of friendliness to the ruthless dictatorship of nazi germany. we abhor everything that hitler represents. we plead guilty to sharing with our fellow citizens a horror of hitler's nazis, and the industry desires to plead guilty to doing everything within its power to help the united states defend itself and the world against fascism. so, in conclusion, i personally

would like to thank americans in 1940 for voting for franklin roosevelt or for wilkie, and i thank them for having watched, and i thank you for still watching great movies like foreign correspondent and the mortal storm and casa blanca to remind us of the night fair of fascism and what was really at stake during the terrifying election year of 1940. thank you. [applause]

>> joining booktv in london, mr. johnson, how many books have you now written? >> well, i'm not exactly sure. it's somewhere in the high 50s. not yet 60, but i hope before i pop off, i will have written and published 60. >> host: what book are you working on now? >> guest: well, strictly speaking, i'm writing my

memoirs. though, they only cover part of my life, so that's what i'm doing at the moment, but i've just finished a short life of stalin aimed at young people because i find that young people don't know anything about him. i think they ought to know about him. >> host: what should they know about him? >> guest: they should know that he was an unmitigated villain who murdered, at any rate, at least 20 million people. he imprisoned many more of them, and they should know that he put the russia on a course from which it still not reestablished itself so i think young people should know this. >> one of the best known books at least in the united states is the history of the american people, and in that book, you

write that america still is the best hope for the human race. >> yes. i think that is still true, though since i published that book, other countries have been catching up on the united states in terms of economic output, particularly communist china, and in my opinion, america will remain the top nation for the indefinite future, and the reason i say that is because of the united states is a very free country. in many wayings, the freest country in the world, and freedom means that you can interchange ideas and develop ideas and create ideas and it's ideas in the long run that keep one nation ahead of another. the ability to produce striking new ideas. i think the united states still

has that capacity, and therefore, will survive as the world's top nation. >> host: well, recently, two books you published on darwin and socrates. how did darwin become charles darwin? >> guest: well, he was a man who could be his own master were the simple reason he inherited a lot of money. he came from a distinguished family of doctors and other people. his father was a very successful doctor, so he never had to work. that is to say he worked very hard all his life, but he never had to work for a living. he this that living already because he inherited it, and he is, in fact, a great argument in favor of inherited wealth because he used his wealth, not merely to subsidize his own

researches, but to create the atmosphere to take place. he had, for instance, a large garden of which he grew plants and things which he needed for his research, and so he was able to do this because he was a rich man. >> host: was his research beneficial to understanding who and what we are? >> guest: oh, very much so. one of the points i make in my book is that he was very, very good at researching small creatures and plants, of course, but insects, small creatures of every kind was his specialty. he was less good on human beings and bigger creatures, so although his main work on these

species, origin of species, is a masterpiece, his later work in which he read more about human beings is less so. that is one of the points amake in my book. >> host: paul johnson, who was socrates? >> guest: a 5th century bcathenian who never had a regular job. he was in the army, a distinguished fighter. in fact, one of the things we know about him is when people saw him approaching, they gave him a wide birth so he was a veer roashes man or could be a ferocious map, but he spent time wondering around athens talking to people. he was known as a philosopher, but he never wrote anything. he never published anything. all that we know about him or most of what we know about him,

we get through his plato, but he went around at ms talking to people, interrogating them, asking them questions, listening to their views, and on the basis of this, that is what he taught. he taught people sitting at street corners, in the market place, and so he was absorbing and also emitting wisdom all his life, but in a practical basis, mainly from ordinary people. >> host: why was he killed? >> guest: he was killed because it was thought that he was a sweat of the morality of young people. this was a trumpedded up charge, and it was disturbing in the sense that he questioned all the received and official wisdom of

his day, but he was not a threat to morality except in so far as he made people think. that's what the authorities didn't like. he taught people to think for themselves, and taught them not necessarily to accept anything they heard or that was handed down to them as the official line on anything or the crew or all those things, and he taught them to think out things for themselves, and that's what the authorities didn't like. >> host: paul johnson, here in england, we talked with a lot of authors, and one of the topics that keeps coming up is the so-called special relationship between the u.s. ands u.k.. does it exist, and should it exist if it does? >> guest: well, it does exist. inevitably exists because

throughout the existence of the united states as an independent country and during the long colonial period when it was dependent upon great britain, the relationship between the two countries has been very close in a culture and political and economic sense, and that past has shaped the united states very much so, but it's also shaping great britain too, and people who say the special relationship doesn't exist, ignore that fact. it's not something we can choose about. it's something which happened. we started to happen in the late 16th century, and it's been happening ever since. we are very close to each other. we have very important dirves and disagreements from time to time, and after all, we fought two wars against each other. don't forget that.

the war of revolution, the revolutionary war, and the war of 1812, so we have had our disagreements, and we still have our disagreements. relations are not close at the moment because president obama does not like britain, and he makes it clear that he doesn't, so these things are trivial on the surface things. presidents come and go, and as i've said before, president obama is the winner of the king george iii award for the worst president in american history. >> host: why king george iii? >> guest: because king george iii was the king of england at the time of the american revolution, and was, to a very great extent, responsible for that revolution taking place. >> host: why did president obama, in your view, win that

award? >> guest: well, one thing i didn't like about him is almost the first thing he did when he became president was that he had the boston winston church hill remove from the white house. now, churchill was not any half american himself because his mother was american, and he inherited most of the brains and brilliance from his mother, and not only was he half american, but he was the best english friend america has ever had in my opinion, and he and roosevelt formed a magnificent duo in the war to destroy hitler and defeat japan, and so i resented the fact that he had churchill removed in such a precipitous manner. i think, of course, the roots of president obama are not in america. they are in kenya, and he sees britain as a colonial power

which, in his view o oppressed kenya. that's the intellectual background, his attitude. .. >> guest: the americans were helping, doing as much as they

could, but there was no question of them actually joining us. and things were very, very bad. now, mr. churchill kept our spirits high in three different ways. first of all, he was a great orator. i used to listen to all his speeches on the wireless sitting with my father right through the first world war, and we'd listen to winston churchill and what he said. secondly, he was a tremendous goader of people. he would, he had little papers he sent round to all his subordinates headed "action this day," and then a very short, crisp and to the point instruction which they were to carry out. and they had to carry it out the same day. so that was the second reason. and the third reason was that

people loved him. he'd been through many things in his career including periods of unpopularity. but on the whole people believed in him. they thought that he was going to somehow pull us through. and he is a wonderful example of the impact, the influence of individuals on history. we hear from the marxists and sociologists and all that, that history is controlled by huge forces or enormous numbers of people and so forth. it isn't. history is controlled by brilliance in outstanding individuals. they are the people who make history. and the most outstanding in my career, in my lifetime was winston churchill. because he turned the war around, and he insure that we carried on until russia and the united states joined us and overwhelmed the nazis.

>> host: paul johnson, did you know winston churchill? had you met him? >> guest: yes, i have. and when i was 12, he came to -- no, sorry, 14. he came to my town and, fortunately -- >> host: that was during the war. >> guest: just after the war, yes. >> host: just after. >> guest: he stayed at a little hotel whose manager was known to my mother. and he said to my mother, if paul wants to meet sir winston, winston churchill, tell him to be in the lobby of the hotel at 20 past nine because that's when he's supposed to be coming down to get into his car. so i was there. and he insured that he could -- assured me that he could introduce me to sir winston.

so winston churchill gave me one of his giant matches. he, in order to light his big cigars, he liked to have a very big match which would last a long time, and these were very rare. he had them especially made. they were quite a piece of timber. anyway, he gave me one of my giant matches, and i was emboldened by this to say, mr. winston churchill, sir, to what do you attribute your success in life? and he said, without hesitation, concentration of energy. never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down. and he then went off into his limo, got into his limo and drove off. i've always remembered that. and it's very good advice too. >> host: well, paul johnson, did you ever work with him officially? >> guest: no. >> host: how did you get interested in history? where did you begin your career?

>> guest: well, i've always loved history. my father taught me history when i was very, very little. he taught me how to paint be, too, because he was a painter. but his hobby was history. and i always studied history very intensively at school. the first book i ever read through when i was 6 was "chronicles," one of the famous books of history in the middle ages. then when i went up to oxford, i studied history, and my main subject, my degree, and ever since then i have written history. books of history. on all kinds of aspects of history. so it's been really the love of my life. >> host: paul johnson received a presidential medical of freedom in 2006 from president george w. bush. have you been knighted here in the u.k.? >> guest: oh, no. no. because i don't like the honor

system in this country, so i don't have anything to do with it. >> host: why don't you like it? >> guest: well, i think it's corrupt. i mean, that some at a higher level. so whereas in america it isn't, so that's okay. >> host: your book, "modern times," which is about the history of the world, you write the first line from that book is: the modern world began on 29, may, 1919. what happened on 29, may, 1919? >> guest: that was when we first became aware of the nature and the consequences of einstein's general theory of relativity. this he had worked on and written about two or three years before during the war, but during the war we hadn't been able to verify it. it was then verified after the, when the peace came and proved

shown to be pretty accurate. and then it was announced at the royal society this london on the date you have just mentioned. so that's when, at any rate, among the cognizant, among the intellectuals and the scientific community the true nature of ion sign's -- einstein's great discovery was, became public knowledge, as it were. so it was an important point in world history because not only did it change the world because it was at the basis of our discovery of the power of the atom, but it also had a kind of metaphysical effect on people's thinking. we began to think in terms of relativity and in terms of great changes in the world. so i picked that as the

beginning of the modern world. there's something a bit arbitrary in that choice, but nevertheless, it's as good a beginning as any. >> host: what effect did world war i have on the world and its structure up to that point? >> guest: well, not as much. inin fact ors as it should have done because the slaughter was immense. the horrors were unbelievable and unprecedented. it destroyed a whole generation, in effect. certainly did in my country, because we didn't impose conscription for a long time, so the big slaughters of the western front which took place in 1915 and '14 and '17 were among the best of our young men who had volunteered. they were volunteers. they weren't conscripts. thier hands and the french, they

were all conscripts. so it evened out there. but in our case the people who were slaughtered were the best. and i don't think we've ever really recovered from that. but the effect in general was to intensify violence and really the second world war began in the first because it sprang out of the first in what the german regarded as the injustice of the versailles settlement. so we really had 4040 years, in effect, of violence -- 40 years of violence. the interesting thing is that since 1945 there has been general peace among the great powers. there have been all kinds of threats, there's been many years of cold war and so on, and there are still threats and growlings and so on. but the fact is that since 1945

we have had no general war among the great powers. now, that is the longest period of peace among the great powers in the whole of history, the whole of recorded history. and what is the reason for that? well, we don't know, but we can't prove it, but in my opinion it is payoff the existence -- because of the existence of nuclear weapons. it is nuclear weapons and the huge destructiveness which we know they would bring to the world which has kept the peace. >> host: paul johnson, back to world war i. was america's role vital in world war i? >> guest: i wouldn't say it was vital, but it certainly, it certainly made, it certainly shortened the war. because in 1918, even in 1917,

but in 1918 americans began to arrive at the western front which was the key theater. in growing numbers. and they were young and vigorous, and they were unspoiled by the horrors of war. they were still optimistic, and whereas all the other powers were jaded and defeatist, as it were. and, therefore, they were an important factor in germany's surrender. i think it would have occurred anyway in the long run, but america probably shortened the war by two or three years. >> host: you've written a book called "intellectuals: from marx and tolstoy to sartre and chomsky." karl marx, an intellectual? >> guest: oh, yes. these were all intellectuals. the way i define an intellectual is someone who thinks that ideas

matter more than people. i don't agree with that, of course. i think people matter much more than ideas. but most intellectuals do fall into that category. and certainly, karl marx did because he didn't think people mattered at all. what he thought mattered were ideas, particularly his own. so i'm rather proud of that book because i managed not merely to identify this great weakness in intellectuals, their concern for ideas rather than people, but i managed to get in quite a lot of jokes, particularly when dealing with people, sound rells like -- scoundrels like russo and percy shelley and marx himself, i got some good jokes in there. so i often get postcards from readers saying thanks for the

all the jokes you put in "intellectuals." and that gratifies me, because one of the things i think that there is not enough humor in books. particularly important, solid historical and formidable books. they tend to be written in a spirit of humorlessness. now, i try and get in as many jokes as i can, because i think jokes are very, very important. the world is a sad place. it's full of sadnesses. it ends in sadness for most of us. and the more jokes we can laugh at during our lives, the better. so one of my aims as a writer is to put in more jokes. and i think i was very successful in that particular book, "intellectuals." >> host: and we're talking with author and historian paul johnson, the author of 50 some books, two of which, "a history

of the american people" and "modern times: the world from the '20s to the '90s." and those are two his recent books. who are some of your faith historians? >> guest: historians? >> host: yes, sir. >> guest: well, i was brought up to belief in lamier who was the great historian of the 18th century, particularly the trade with india and so forth. i very much like the cambridge historian, maitland, who was a great historian of doomsday books. and not least because he said there are plenty of jokes in doomsday book the you know where to look for them -- if you know where to look for them. well, i've looked for them all my life, and i haven't found them. but then, you see, maitland later said, of course, only about six people know where to look for them.

anyway, that's another favorite of mine. i've read a lot of churchill's histories. he was very good for an amateur. he was an amateur. in a sense. and he was very good at it. and i've always tried to imitate historians in making my books readable. it's no use writing books if people don't read them. that's one of the great things in life. and libraries are full of histories quietly collecting dust as the decades roll by and nobody takes them from the shelves. one should always remember that. >> host: how many books have you sold? >> guest: have i? >> host: how many books have you sold? >> guest: oh, sold, god knows. millions. i don't know.