hitler said in may of 1940 in six weeks, i will be in paris. and he was right. six weeks almost to the day, he was wandering around the highlights of paris. it was a terrible, moral, emotional, physical shock to be defeated that quickly as a proud nation. but let's not forget, us brits, we were also defeated. we had dunkirk, the so-called miracle. if we had not had the 21 miles of the english channel, they would have had scotland. they may not have fallen as quickly as the brits. the wall would have been built, some kind of wall anyway. but the english channel saved us. no one was immune. blitzkrieg was fantastic. it worked. it was the most effective form of warfare anybody had seen.

so, yes, the french were defeated. now, in 1941, when sumner jackson became involved helping downed allied airmen, when he became a resistant, though he didn't join the resistance, even in 1944, on the eve of d-day, there was a very small percentage of french people who were in the resistance. after the war, the mythology, the popular stories are that everybody i knew was in the resistance. it's not true. it's absolutely not true. there is a very large grey area that people occupied during occupation. they did not want to actively

support the nazis, especially when things were going in the germans' way at the beginning of the war. but even in the eve of liberation, there were still very few frenchmen and women involved in the resistance. when they were, they were violent and effective to some extent. but they had no weapons. the reason why they had no weapons is, we made damn sure that they had no weapons. the communists were the ones who would walk up behind you, who were german on the metro, take a single pistol and shoot you. you are a communist if you did that. you are ideologically motivated. we didn't want those guys running france. in fact, when i went to paris, people couldn't believe it when i said, you know, can you imagine normandy, 50,000

american casualties, 9,387 americans buried in omaha beach. imagine that sacrifice for nothing. imagine breaking out on normandy in finding out that the french resistance had taken over paris and lyon and bordeaux and nice. and they're communists. what was the point? what would have been the point of liberation? there would have been no liberation. i hope i've tried to answer your question. i think that the french resistance, finally, to sum up, i think if we had armed them, it would have been the stupid thing to do because we would not have been able to have a democracy in france after the war. the communists heavily armed would have run the country. the reason why we put de gaulle

in paris in 1944, even though we hated him, everyone hated him, was because he was a figurehead. we needed someone the french would believe and support and follow. we didn't want a communist. that's why we ended up with de gaulle. >> we've got time for a quick question to you right, alex. >> the prevailing view i think is that torture is not only barbaric, but ineffective. is that also true with the gestapo experience with torture? >> whose prevailing view is it that it's not effective? it would work on me. i would be having a cup of tea and saying where is the next sandwich?

i don't think it worked on the right kind of agent. if you were vetted properly and had the kind of steel that people wanted, if you are violette zarbo, toquette jackson, the kind of spirit, no, it didn't work. it did not work on people who were superhuman in a way. that couldn't be broken. but on many people, it did. i don't think you can have a kind of binary view, successful or not successful. i'd say in general, it doesn't work. i don't think it's a humane policy. hiroshima was not particularly humane either. when we talk about war, we have to -- certainly in the second world war, we have to talk about how we won it. because it was important to win it. any method in the end, 1945 certainly, when we look at world

war ii, we have to be honest. we have to say it was mass industrial slaughter. so torture becomes a rather arcane moral argument when one night in tokyo, 121,000 people died from their homes being burned around them. we have to put it in that context. yes, i think torture is wrong. we should never use it. but then, mass industrial slaughter is also something we should question. but what isn't questionable is that it had to be done. we had to do anything we could, anything we could do to end that war and be victorious. the consequences of not doing that are still, i think everybody would agree, too horrific to even start to process or imagine. >> i want to take the

opportunity before we thank alex, we have a special guest with us, a world war ii veteran who himself had his own french-american relation during world war ii. even though his language was outlawed, the church and the culture allowed for the french language to be allowed in acadiana. in north africa, he worked with the french military, but also the civilian colonialists. and then he participated in the invasion of southern france. i just wanted to recognize a special veteran, a special hero. thank you. [ applause ]

>> and thank you, alex. >> thank you. [ applause ] while congress is on break this week, we're taking the opportunity to show you american history tv programs, normally seen only on the weekends. we continue thursday night with a look at what happened at the end of world war ii. starting at 8:00 p.m. with the fate of nazi and japanese war criminals after the war. following by how the war changed the u.s. and the rest of the world. american history tv primetime, all this week at 8:00 p.m. eastern. sunday, indepth will feature

a live discussion on the presidency of barack obama. we're taking calls, e-mails, and tweets. april ryan, author of the presidency in black and white. eddie glaude, author of democracy in black. and david maraniss, author of barack obama: the story. watch from noon to 3:00 p.m. eastern on sunday on book tv on c-span 2. ♪ the presidential inauguration of donald trump is friday, january