D-Day & Beyond : CSPAN2 : June 8, 2024 6:45pm-8:00pm EDT : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive (2024)

in the atlantic is, that the japanese in particular thought, anybody who was not of japanese descent or ancestry was wasubhuy who was allowed themselves to be taken prisoner deserve, whatever he got, because he lost his honor. it was not quite as bad as that, the atlantic. but there was aix feeling of th. there was a sensibility that our backs to the wall, the future of civilized nation depends on this. so anything goes. so martha gellhorn was absolutely right. they they were, i think, in a vulnerable spot. and you didn't know at any given moment it had the germans that capability, better capability of, attacking ships in the armada. i don't think they would have hesitated to hit the hospital ship, but a hypothetical because they didn't. sou very much, everybody.

david eisenhower has special connections to gettysburg as, of course, susan has as well. having spent a good percentage of growing up years here, and i think that for those of you and including me, did not know david and susan in gettysburg, we have a pretty good opportunity to get to know them. and particularly david's side of the story through his warmly personal and very evocative book, going home to glory, which i treasure, is one of my favorite eisenhower books currently a lecturer at the annenberg school at the university of pennsylvania and blic service. david teaches courses at penn on

communications and the president see his 1986 book is kind of his calling card. and the book, just for those of you who are young and unfamiliar, is eisenhower at war 1943 to 1945. it was at the time not just a bestseller, but part of the conversation about how the allies conducted and ultimately succeeded in crushing, crushing the nazi regime. it's considered to this day an essential work on the final two years of the second world war. david's topic this afternoon is d-day and beyond. so let's welcome him. well, thank you very much, chael tracey, carol, all the panelists, even these have been wonderful discussions that we've had today. dr. simons, it's nice to run into a veteran of officer

candidate school. oscar company here. everyone, i am honored to be here today. i am delighted to be in gettysburg on this beautiful day and delighted to parties repeat in this program. my my job is to bring it to a close by looking at d-day and beyond. so my title is triumph and tragedy. that is the title of winston churchill's six volume of memoirs. published after world war two and by triumph and tragedy, he is referri to the triumph of western arms and the tragedy that the results of world war two were less than a complete victory for the western allies as he saw it. and i would say these twin themes, triumph and tragedy, form the kind of the undercurrents of the post war, which is the childhood of most of us in this room, our world, asm we grew up, we found

ourselves in contact with veterans, people who frankly did not speak very often of their experiences in the war, but. but the war was a pervasive is pervasive in the culture. we experienced the hilarity and the terrors the 1940 and 1950s when the united states found itself in the western world, locked in a cold war with the soviet union. all of this goes back to d-day, and that world that we've heard described today. some of us had contact with europe in that period. others didn't. my first was in the summer of 1962. my grandparent. so i can maybe decided that my si i were now old enough to go on a serious trip to to europe. and so we were going to have an opportunity to accompany them on a 30 day tour of western europe in which we would visit many of the sites. of their way of talking to us about their world.

they were not communicative about their war experiences, particularly the fact that we were hearing gettysburg meant that indirectly eyght eisenhower associated this battle with the battle of normandy, gettysburg, as0th century, 19 century normandy normandy is a 20th century geys and i think that being drawn to this area reflected that. as i say, he rarely talked about the war. one of our favorite family stories involves a commencement in 1954. at the time, dwight eisenhower's brother, milton, is president of penn state. ■(he invites his brother, the president of united states, to deliver a commencement and you know how big a university penn state is? this is a major logistical undertaking. thousands of people outdoors in the event is threatened by rain. and so you have a picture in the president' is wandering around. he's on the phone, gnashing of

teeth. what what am i going to do? what am i going to do? dwight is standing off to the side saying, milton, since june six, 1944, i've never worried about the rain. that was about it. when we were growing up. but in 1962 off, we go to europe and we took a ocean liner. we disembarked at cherbourg, we boarded a train and went down town by town by town along the normandy battlefronts and lo colville, san laurent by you con you all these things. and i remember the tens of thousands of people who gathered at every train station just don't forgettable scenes. the surging crowds in paris and bonn cope hague in paris again, and in london. as my grandfather calls on degaulle, he calls on churchill. he calls on the british prime minister. the wonder of this scene, the euphoria of it, the sadness in a

way, in the tumult. all of this was firmly etched into our minds. and we came to grasp what an important event that had just simply happened just before we were born. as it turns out, by the way, that trip in 1962, dwight eisenhower was part on a diplomatic mission for president kennedy. and so as he met heads of leaders, heads of state, he was tasked with sounding out their flexibility on the question of berlin, which president kennedy felt the soviets were going to stoke again that fall, or perhaps later. and so several years ago, the kennedy library actually sent me a bunch of tape recordings of conversations between it and john kennedy were my grandfather's briefing. kennedy on a visit that i remember. in other words, he would disappear around the corner.

he's he's in conference with adenauer and he's conveying messages and so he's briefing kennedy on these very meetings. and then there's a fourth conversation on that tape, which brings me kind of to our theme, and that is a discussion on october 22, 1962. my he's at gettysburg college. president kennedy calls we are about to impose an embargo on soviet ships arriving in cuba. and john kennedy is about to go on the air with a message to the world that we are engaged in a confrontation with the soviets, a nuclear confrontation. at one point, john kennedy asks eisenhower an interesting question. he says, general, my experts are divided half think that the soviets have undertaken this

adventure in cuba in order to strengthen their negotiation position on berlin and the danger is that if we move on cuba, they'll move onerlin. the other half of my experts seem to think that this is simply a improvization their part and they're just looking for advantage and so forth. what say you? there's a long pause and my grandfather says, you will not see a connection between berlin and cuba. no, this is this is great advice. you will not see a connection. this is great advice. but to his credit, this is a great decision that president kennedy makes. and it's a reminder more of an that mylated many times. my father curium, that is president of the united states. dwight eisenhower was paid to make six decisions a year and to make six good decisions a year.

well, in october 1962, kennedy makes a good decision. he earns his pay that day. there is something else that's happening here. this is the world that is brought forward by normandy. we have a period of intense conflict between the united states and soviet union. this is a bipolar international picture. if you are a student of international relations, you know that a bipolar international order is considered by theoreticians to be inherently unstable because they gain by one side is always a loss by another. so we have a bipolar international system ofiw sorts. thomas friedman called it a system characterized by profound distrust between the principles made stable by mual assured destruction. and this was the world that we were living in. post 1944. well, i'm living here in gettysburg at the time. i've got wayne hills here, bob tear of the friends.

they know what i was. i was actually a political. i was innocent of all these things going on in of the for the most part. i was so concerned with working on the farm. i got first job there, $0.25 an hour, painting fences. that was my first job, my first job. i was fired from it in 1963 and then rehired that afternoon playing golf with my grandkids. he told me on the fourth hole, you know, david, i allow my associates one mistake a year and you've had yours. this was my infraction. i had i had stayed out too long over a lunch. but any rate, i knew him as a golfer. i knew him as a skeet shooters or bridge player hunter. and i, of course, aware of all the wonderful visitors that were coming to our farm. but i was, i would say, apolitical, and i would have stayed that way, i think, except that i go off to amherst college in the fall of 1966. my grandmother was directing me

to go over and see julie nixon, who's at smith. i liked her, asked her out for ice cream, realized i'd paid all my money on the cab getting over there. so she picked up the tab. the first time i go back six weeks later. almost didn't happen. you can imagine. i present myself to a proctor and i. i'm david eisenhower and i would like to see julie nixon. and she says one harry truman. so this almost didn't happen. but i persis and so i became political because i became swept up in the great adventure of 1968. this is a very stressful election and this is an election in which we get indications for the first time that we are going to move away from this postwar period. this is an election dominated by the vietnam war, and it characterized by a riddle. the winning slogan in 1960 was a riddle. it was nixon's pledge to end the

war in vietnam and win the peace. america always wins wars to win the peace. we're going to end the war and win the peace. this is all a sign of change. one of the dominant impressions that i took away from that campaign was the single mindedness of it and therefore the importance of mission to leadership. the presidency■x is a mission oriented job. what impressed me with was e futility of attempting to exercise leadership for its own sake. and some years later, i encountered, quote by my grandfather, quote, we succeed only as we identify in life or in war or in anything else. a single overriding objective and base all other considerations upon it that is not only a reflection on leadership in general, it's a reflection on his command. as susan put it so eloquently this morning. well, one of the things that came out of that experience in

politics, determined as i had been as a kid, to become a writer. and if you're a writer you write about things you know about. so i'm going to write about meso do. and we had an opportunity a book which became what michael was talking about, going home to glory. this was familiar. it started with what i knew. i starteworking backwards. i actually had a book in hand and i was anxious for my publisher to say, you've done enough. let's put it out. the problem is, we couldn't start that book. if you're going to deal with eisenhower retirement, you got to go back to the poignancy of his last year in office 1960. this is the great effort to end the cold war with a peace offensive and resolving our ■ differences with khrushchev and the soviets. that crashes with you to. that's a very poignant story. you've got ttell that story. but you can't tell that story

unless you look at the berlin crisis of 1959. you cannot tell that story unless you dip back to the lebanon syria crisis of 1958. formosa in 1958, which requires you to go back to sputnik in a little rock 1957. then you have to take another step if you're going to understand sputnik the suez affair of 1956 that leads you back to 1955, in geneva in 1954, into china and korea, then back to the 1953 election. korea, mccarthy. all of this. and finally, i threw up my hands and started on october 1890. dwight eisenhower was born in texas. then you have another problem. he's born in texas. you want documentation, you find out he's not dwight david eisenhower. he's david dwight eisenhower. he switched his first and second names when he registers at west point because he likes the sound of dwight david better than david dwight.

i really didn't explain it. he lists tyler, texas, not denison, texas, as his birthplace. why? because texans tell me it's better to be from tyler. he neglects to tell the authorities that he had played class d ball in the kansas state league for two years under the son. that's a great mystery about him. did he? he's not going to admit this to west point authorities. well, some years afterwards, i'm with a pr guy who claims that he was with eisenhower at the polo grounds in 1947. this is a fella, red patterson, who is a pr person in baseball. and he says, you know, i confronted the general. i said, general, you know, there are rumo throughout organized baseball that you actually played in the kansas state league in 1909, 1910. and our records=ú say, or apparently under the alias of wilson. and our records say there are two wilsons in that league. which one were you? and he said, the that could hit.

this is a hard place to start a book so i have to skip jump. i go to camp colt, which is here in gettysburg. this is the training young officer. i look at his time with fox conner, who was a veteran of world war one. his service with pershing, other places for the formative moment in his life. and all of this is necessary for a full picture. but it is elusive. the windows, the big story start, perhaps the countdown in the late 1920s as germany beginr order. the first order begins to crumble. perhaps it's the winter of 1933, when d eisenhower has moved to washington and john maynard keynes writes an open letter in the london times to franklin roosevelt saying, you are the trustee of all those who seek to mend the ills of society by reason of experiment, within the

framework of theg society. if you failed, reform will fail with you leaving orthodoxy in revolution to fight it out. that's britain to america. in 1933, saying duty will call. well, but it's still not a straight line. eisenhower is working for macarthur in 33. he goes with macarthur in 1937. what he learned there, i don't know. macarthur, you may recall they later became rivals. macarthur looked back on eisenhower finally in 1952, as the finest clerk i ever had. e back on. he did learn something from ■macarthur, who said he's the finest instructor of dramatics that i ever studied under what? what transpires there is elusive. but by 1939 and the outbreak of war, which is the call to duty to america, eventually. dwight eisenhower is writing in

his diary in manila. it does not seem possible that people who proudly refer to themselves as intelligent would let this situation come about. hundreds of millions will suffer privations in starvation. millions will be killed and wounded because one man so will that. he is a power drunk, egocentric, criminally insane and yet unfortunate li, the absolute ruler of 89 million people, and by his personal magnetism, which he must have. he has converted a large portion of those millions to his insane schemes and to blind acceptance of his leadership. unless he is successful in brute force.he entire world by the final result will be that germany will be dismembered and destroyed. this is intention and an deviating intention. intention. that sort of forms the the mission of eisenhower's command experience in world war two.

there are still some steps to travel. there's still hopes pinned on the french army collapses. in 1940, and the british army barely gets out. but then looking forward, some optimism. i love this quote from jack colville, quoting churchill as the dunkirk evacuation proceeds. it is a sad day and that is indeed true. but at the present time there is another note which may be present, and that is a feeling ofnkfulness that if these great trials were to come upon us, there is a to prove itself not unworthy of those who laid the foundations of our laws and shaped the greatness of our country. so it's a matter of time. but finally, i wind up about where today's conference began. there is a point and that is let's call the tehran conference 9(of 1943 or think the following things can be said. what happens to dwight

eisenhower prior to december picture of his life, but none of it is predictable. none of it could have specifically prepared him for the responsibility that he undertook. then. by contrast, what he does and may 1945 makes it predictable and inevitable that he be president of the united states. i think this can also be said of americans. i don't think anything happens in american experience. prior to 1943 that prepares us for the massive effort of 1944 and 45. and yet what happens between 1944 and 1945 makes it predictable and inevitable that the united states assume the preeminent position that we did assume in the postwar. all of this unfolds at the tehran conference. we've had presentations orategy. i can add this. i think ask people to sort of■'

stepac d-day and to understand what's happening in the&7 fall of 1943 at tehran, which is the first meeting of british primemier in history. four years into the war, four years they come together to see whether there is a common strategy, common interest. and that's unclear in advance of this conferenc b everybody has been proceeding more or less independently. the united states and britain in alliance. we are about also, i think another significant thing here is we're about to change strategy. and what's significant about changing strategy in the fall place is working. germany's losingback in italy. they're being driven back on the eastern front. we now have command of the seas. germany is under round the clock day and night bombardment by british bomber command, u.s. eighth and 15th air force. they are losing. if you're losing, if we are

winning, why interrupt a winning strategy? we're proposing to basically shut down or stop the advance in italy, gather up our resources, gather british resources, go back to great britain, mount an operation across the channel which is the most hazardous thing you can do in a war and take on decisive targets that the germans will defend to the end. we're not attacking weakness, which is standard and military strategy. we're attacking them where they're strong. why? and the answer is, i think, defeating germany was an objective, but it wasn't the only objective. defeating germany with the united states and great britain, assuming a major role, a decisive role in the outcome becomes an overriding imperative. by the fall of 1943. this is fundamental to the self confidence in the preservation of theemtoward the postwar era.

are the soviets going to cooperate with this? well, as it turns out, they going to cooperate. they not only indicated that they would cooperate with our effort to claim a decisive role in this war and therefore a decisive portion of the rewards they insist on it. and in other discussions, which i noted tonight in our war effect, is where the where the book starts. discussions between churchill and stalin over what is to follow. there's a fascinating discussion between them on the night of november 29, 1943. stalin and churchill are debating. typically, roosevelt is moderating stalin and seeking a guarantee from the british that germany will not be allowed to rise and having done so twice in this century. we're arriving at a military bargain here. these red armies can advance from the east. the americans, the british, go

back to the great britain. they advance from the west. we can press germany between two fronts, achieve total defeat of germany. but what will guarantee russia that this will not happen again? and churchill says, well, the fact that we're here together, the fact that we have mutual interests should constitute a guarantee. after all, we're all talking about the same military operation. we we cooperate should represen assurance. stalin demands a guaranteelly sl stalin, no guarantee is possible. nothing is final. the world rolls. all we can do here, tehran, is make the world safe for 50 years,. from 1943 to 1992. for 50 years. i think what he's saying to generations in power to follow 25 plus 25 will have one thought. and thats avoiding the last

war. and then in 1992, a new generation will come along and they will take chances and be in a position to take chances long after the stability and the memories of that conflict have become hisrical and not immediate. anyway, it was in that spirit that the tehran conference breaks up and. the overlord operation is the prime decision there again, italy becomes a secondary theater. the americans are british. launched the long awaited opening of the second front in france. the soviets advanced from the east. they launch coordinated offensives and to gether. think of this as the britain. the pendulum. edgar allan poe. germany is in the middle. they were crushed by two, two walls that impose complete victory over germany. this is going to this is in the

air. as was said this morning, the germans expect the allies to do this significantly. they don't expect the allies to pursue a victory strategy. they expect the allies1a to pure the strategy that they did. that is claiming a major share in the outcome of world war two, forcing the decision, not allowing it to happen, but forcing it. führer directive 51, which was described in one of the conference by by one of the participants today, sets the western front as a priority. and what hitler notes in this is that any reverse on the western front is decisive. we can trade space for time in the east. we must stand fast in the west. and this. this sets the great internal debate. german and german, principally over how to meet the threat of invasion. they have to go through the process that we didsg debating e suitability of beaches where

we're likely to come. i think that the two alternatives were normandy, which was kind of edgy, alternative politically was the conventional alternative. i think one of the virtues of our intelligence is that what it did was it reinforced german conventional wisdom. however people who did not think conventionally t would be the place. and two people that did expect normandy were rommel, who was commander of army group and that of normandy is a feature of the from the very beginning. and the difference between particularly in normandy, as i see it, ithat the party, calais is an instantly fatal target. if we successfully invade party calais and move inland, this is instantly fatal for germany. the ruhr is threatened and germany proper is threatened. the normandy is fatal.

eventually they have an option toiá contain normandy. perhaps they have a they have an option to defeat it. so they shut the door in calais by greasing it as heavily as they do and they leave the door ajar in normandy. however,et this? one thing that i would add to the presentation that we've gotten on the german command debate over this is the french did von french that he was the commander of the gern forces in the west is a peculiar figure. he is somebody who had defeated the french in the british, in 1940. so in addition to being unrealistic about the ability to mount a panzer counteroffensive, he had great contempt for the western democracies, and he felt that they would if if they hit us. this was the appraisal that he developed in 1940 and significantly he would be broughtk to power,

reinstated as commander west in de the our then counter offensive of 1944, which again was sort of an expression of german disregard for for the allies. rommel, by contrast, had fought the allies and he knew what we were capable of. and so there's and so rommel pleads and the compromises described today happened. another thing i would add to that, however, is the termination of the of the german troops. also, the interestingt so many e quarter or more of the■f german troops in france are russian or east european. a lot ofeople say that that means that they were lesser troops. their doubtful was their loyalty was doubtful. they were not going to fight that hard, etc etc., etc. and yet max hastings writes, quote, much has been written about the poor quality of the german troops defending the

channel coast. yet these seamen prevented the allies almost everywhere from gaining their d-day objectives. and on the american beach, omaha brought them close to defeat. even before the crack units of the ss and vermont approached the battlefield. why? well, let's say you're in the seventh or ninth field division protecting conn.say you're the'a regiment, i believe russian regiment attached to the 352nd facing omaha. and you're a russian. you were in the red army. you were given a choice when when you fall into captivity, either serve out the war in a work camp and starve to death or serve in the german army and the soldiers in france were the ones that opted to serve in the german army. now, let's look forward when this war is people ask you where you were from and you're going to be repatriated. and how are you going to fare if you go back to the ur, having served in the german army? think about that.

this is why the 352nd infantry division goes into combat on june 6th with 15,000 effective. and when it is written off on july 31st, had 250 effective. they fought to the last man, the last round of ammunition, in the last ten rations. they were desperately fighting to fend off the allies. they hadg lose. so we were going formidable arme that was determined about the pg of panzers, and so forth. i am talking now and in fact i'm already embarked on eisenhower. six decisions in 1944, the first one, and susan covered it very well this morning. is gathering the resources necessary to make this operation work? that is that is important decision. that also means expanding the tt

area. morgan had up with the three division landing. we we now substitute a five division landing withur airborne elements and so forth. and he does that through montgomery. but the idea is we must we must gather our resources. that means bringing the air under control. it means gathering landing craft. it means. it means insisting on anvil. dragoon and things like that. eisenhower has obstacles in that. we have alluded to that already. one is british strategy, their ring strategy, their idea of avoiding a world war one by direct frontal assault on german positions. head to overcomet.i happen to b, but i firmlyelieve that his most useful ally in overcoming that was churchill. churchill was the person who pledged an invasion of northwest france. as the british forces depart 1940. he is somebody that at every

critical point in conferences and so forth seems to come down on the side of roosevelt over the advice of his marshals. and so forth. he facilitates this even as he raises questions about it. but be that as it may, british rings strategy await the fall of the soviet union, much like our rategy in the cold war is a major obstacle. after all, we're winning the war. why are we going to run risks? the british are quoting marshal von tomah, who's in captivity, and he's saying, you know, germany's only chance is to defeat your land. why are you even considering this? he has to overcome then. another is i think this is even more mischievous. he has to overcome suggestions by his air marshals that they can win the war on their own, that the landing is completely unnecessary. point blank is week in february 1944. writes off the luftwaffe of

practically which is guarding germany. by april 1944. 26,000 acres comprising the city centers of 43. major german cities have been completely destroyed. we are operating at will over germany and the marshals are saying, in fact, i'll quote one of them. hoyt vandenberg, who was in the allied air force, why a highly dubious operation? this is vandenberg de eisenhower in a hurry when there is a sure way do it. it is much better to win the war. surely, than to undertake such an operation overlord that has truly great risks and so forth. so the air marshals are a problem. and so eisenhower, as a centralized control of the air in his command and set them to the task, not of defeating germany eventually, but supporting our forces ashore. now and that is something that he suzy, has alluded to, the

many conferences. the the disagreement is the command disputes and so forth over that which are legendary and so forth. so he expands the assault. he does all this. and finally, his job is to. well, you choose mass, greatmas. the numbers have been itemized. 6000 ships, 12,000 aircraft, 160,000 men. and deploying our air and naval superiority to maximum effect. this mass is such that there's actually an interesting episode in we were talking about this at lunch. von runge falls captive. he goes to a place called ashcan in belgium in 1946. this is where we're interrogating german marshals. and we bardell smith, who is my grandfather's chief of staff, decided to interrogate von wrenched it himself.

and so, according to the that i read. but el smith's gave the field marshal several opportunities to compliment the fighting prowess of the british and american forces that landed d-day, gave them several opportunities. and von wrench did declined to compliment us. and then he tried again. and he declined again and waved off, saying all you did was you marshaled more airplanes and more you just basically bombed us and so forth into. smith says, well, i couldn't press the point because we planned it. vkthat way. and that's exactly what we did. and this is in place by 19, by april of 1944, finally assuring the unity of the american anadian, french elements, polish elements and so forth. and i think that we've touched on that also today. that■& unity of purpose.

if the conflict is personalized and anybody, it's eisenhower versus montgomery, it's ea to notice their differences. montgo is the supreme army professional passion for tidiness. he is a person of coldness and an instance antipathy. he is a monkish student of war who understood that the conduct of military understood the conduct of military operations. the consummate trainer, motivator of troops and so forth. but in the final■ñ analysis, the various profiles of red ones, one trait stands out, and that's attributed to many of the german marshals. montgomery was a mani with an iron will to prevail. dwight is called a politician. i talkedan party in the 1950s. i said, what do you make of the fact that, you know, the generals that eisenhower served with called him a politician in the politicians he served with in the fifties, called him a

general. what do you make of that? and he said the two finest natural politicians i ever saw in my life. and this is a career going back to teddy roosevelt, where alva happy warrior smith, governor of new york, and dwight eisenhower and great julius is charged. he's a politician. he was somebody that managed a conflict but has been. clausewitz says a powerful emotion must stir thees of a great military leader. if a military leader is to succeed, whether that be ambition. in the case of caesar, whether it be hatred of the enemy, in the case of hannibal, whether it be pride■/ great great, the telling description of dwight eisenhower that i encountered was a person, a commander of relentless clarity of purpose, with an absolute will to win. and this is the spirit that he brought to his command.

sions. he did not permit anyone to advance a proposal unless they could justify it on military grounds. and this shaped the dialog within his command. everybody on the rails. that is in line with his mission to define for him by the combined chiefs of staff in february 1944. quote will enter the continent of europe and in cooperation with other united nations wage military operations aimed at the heart of germany. and that is hisission and everything was to be justified in the way of that. i would say by we were in a position that decision, number one, has made and has succeeded. we're ready tothe solidarity ofn and british forces is is assured is a difficult transition, as suzy pointed out. but we're ready to go and decision number two is to launch the attack.

my favorite vignette we've talked characters of the war. that's admiral ramsey. bertram ramsey was the man who organized the dunkirk evacuation in 1940. now he's commander in chief of the of the naval forces assigned to bring command. and according to his chauffeur, it's about two days before the invasion. they're there in a jeep just the two of them. ramsey asks the chauffeur to pull over. he steps out and looks out over the which is gathering in southampton, portsmouth and so forth. he looks out over that it's a tremendous scene. and he says it is tragic and ironic that the stage is being set. such great sacrifice, but if out of it comes peace and happiness. who would have it. well, on it goes. depends on a weather report. eisenhower gambles on a weather

report and orders the invasion forward on june. about 9:00. according to people in the room when he was presented with all the faors. he sat in silence for 5 minutes and then gave thed. order reluctantly, but gave the order. this decision of tur war since the war in a different direction. some years later, in fact, the 25th anniversary of d-day, there was a supposed him in abilene. shortly after my grandfather's death. one of the participants was admiral friedrich rook, who was rommel's naval advisor on d-day, and he was in command the naval forces, which had not put up much described. at one point in the conference, he says, quote, on june 17th, 1919, this route i was a young naval officer preparing to scuttle the german as a german destroyer at scapa flow.

25 years later, on the morning of d-day, plus one june seven, 1944, i realize that the lies had established a permanent and that the war was definitely lost. so that is what happens on june 6th. the war is now definitely lost for germany, but we have to make it so because of all these germans are going to fight to the last of ammunition. all these germans whose families are being held hostage at home, the maniacal logic of the nazi regime, the nihilism of it. we're going to have to make this happen. and so that brings usdecisions . one that i can emphasize don't have all the time in the world, but the the landings of d-day. this is a sketch of the landing zones eventually come to look like this like this by middle

the germans successfully contain normandy. normandy. one is getting ashore and the other is breaking out. and by the summer, by mid-july, it appeared that the germans, by piecemeal reinforcement from the politically by collecting all of their panzer reserves throughout france, managed to plug up holes and they managed to contain the allied brigitte. the success the entire enterprise depends upon breaking out and breaking out immediately. we one one more month of reliablere gonna achieve our our d-plus 90 objectives we absolutely have to break out decision number three is to achieve a breakout. that in of itself is an achievement he's considered to be eisenhower a strategist who lacked nuance. but whetheth force would actually move forward in the face of resistance in the balkans and in the cont area was

something that came down to an unspoken many ways casualties, the tremendous casualties, incurring who's going to strike first and draw the german armor into a counterattack? or the americans strike first? who goes first? and so we're sort of stalemated. finally commits bradley and breakout offensive. it does not matter. whether khan was the was the second word. we're going to break out or say hello. the idea was that and, whichever worked, we would reinforce the idea. but we have to get two attacks and off goes goodwood on july 18th, 1944, in the country of montgomery goes first. it's very hard to arrange who goes first and after a day and a half this massive tank offensive against the border of this bridge ridge is brought to a standstill. but is now bradley's turn july 20th. and it rains.

so bradley has another day launch the offensive on july 21st. it rai on july 22. it rains on july 23. it rains no offensive. and as the 24th approaches, eisenhower is going to have to ask montgomery for one more attack. do it again. montgomery's attitude is his turn. so how does eisenhower get this attack? he goes to the british press in cooperation with churchill, stirs up stories about. montgomery's caution, his refusal to attack the company exercises on the western front, so forth, the sacrifices, montgomery's reputation. and finally, on the 25th, as the sun breaks, montgomery, he concedes, and the american attack goes forward at saying low supptelt resumption of offee in the direction philly and they t offensive they needed. i think that is a very critical point because in an allied

command this is expending i really think that you can really i would say disappoint one side once when you've disappointed every side once. i think the command is probably great trouble. the break out offensive is tremendously successful. this brings us to another decision. this would be let's see, this is number four and it's this one with the battle of normandy becomes the battle. french, german peace. will reinforcement go around france converts normandy campaign into the battle for france and whether a position falls apart. in early is in pell mell retreat for the german fronti a pursuit this corresponds with a massive russian invasion of this. yeah. get carried away.

i want you to see the correspone red army offensive in white russia. the liberation of white russia vitebsk. a place like that an operation by gratian this course corresponds with romania finland suing for peace. successful landings in southern france and a pell mell german retreat of rhone river. it appears that2v the entire german position, not just the german in france, is about to collapse. montgomery presents eisenhower with proposalut two armies under my command. american armies under my command. stop. i across the northern plain of europe and i will reach berlin. and we will end the war by thanksgiving. this is an opportunity that will never come way again. we can end the war by thanksgiving. thk he burden of that proposal. if the war doet end well at thanksgiving, who is responsible

winter of 1944, 1945.eopl this is aery mischiproposal. and so eisenhower gives montgomery an opportunity to thdraw it. and montgomery. my grandfather made a diary the day that it was refused, and he kept a similar diary entry or observed that date every day, every year for the rest of his life. september 10th, this is the day i asked his idea because of the mischief it was going to and finally, ll, in substance, what's going on here is that we. inkó■ substance, montgomery's proposal is to put spearheads the rhine and drive these spearheads to berlin. this takes the form of operation market garden. this is aivision with a british

corps. they're going to race across the berlin. the suggestion here is that the german army is dissolving. the german army has 220 divisions in the field. how do three divisionsefeat? 220 divisions? the answer is the 220 divisions are trng to surrender. surrender is in progress. that's the whole premise of the montgomery plan. and eisenhower surveys the scene. he says a surrender is not in progress. we do not have an opportunity to win the war. we have an opportunity to assume position for the inevitable counter offensive that's going to come at us later. we can close the rhine. i think that that was probably a more it was a far more accurate appraisal of things because the german units are not passing in a pure dummy cages. they're"w mthey're refitting. in holland, they're reorganizing. the an 600,000 bolster troops in the fall. they intend to fight. but montgomery would not relieve

eisenhower of the of that decision. so finally on september ten, says, okay, you want to try it, do and he orders montgomery to mount a market garden, which, of course, proves i think the thesis that we're diggingn for a long winter. the next decision, number five is the command transfers that eisenhower must make during the hour. then montgomis spare reserves for the american battle that's raging in the in belgium unless montgomery is in charge of those reserves. and so he has to pass command of the northern to bradley, having upset montgomery in july. he now has to dioi bradley in december. and it's a great grave disappointment when bradley surrenders. the commander of the first army to montgomery,a dark chapter in but it is vitally necessary to

weather the von french tet offensive of december 1944, which we finally do the final decision in 1945, which brings us to the world that we inhabit later is this one basically that one that is in the in the wake of our den to close the rhine along its length. but this one it's the pursued offensive into into germany proper in march and april 1945 when we start to cross the rhine in march of 1945, montgomery resumes resumes his agitation for berlin and eisenhower. and as several people at the conference noted that the encircling of the ruhr in april 1945, we basically had an open front between our positions in berlin, the ninth army reached the river by april 9th with nothing it and berlin. so why do we not press?

i've given a lot of thought to this. it's an argument that i book that russell whiteley, very esteemed historian, thought otherwise for many years. and that isn the war in and that means defeating germany. and what is happeningar and april 1945 is what was not happening in. august of 1944. what is happening in 45 is that the germans are in fact surrendering. germans are in fact opening the border. the germans are in fact inviting us to enter they are inviting us to enter lubeck. they're invitin're inviting us r everywhere. they are proposing that we start now. stop the russians and my grandfather's slogan during the vietnam when he was asked abouge suspend the bombing to get negotiations? eisenhower's standard reply was, does the enemy hate it?

in other words, what are the germans want us to do? we'll do the opposite until they r side, that we intend to impose surrender on them. and so american forces declined the opportunity to go to berlin. they go to leipzig. american forces declined the opportunity to prague, they go to pilsen. and so forth until the germans fina to his headquarters on may 6th, 1945, to beg for 24 more hours and to try to get people out of the harm's way of the red army. eisenhower gives them 24 hours sign on theill close the front. we will hand over every german unit who tries to us to the red army, the mission of his forces. fulfilled. 2 hours later, the morning of may seven, 1945, when the germans realize the power, the force of determination of this allied enemy in the west and their determination to impose

surrender on germany. so peace does come. these six decisions have a great deal do with the sort of shaping of the conflict? thiseaces hard and bitter peace. it's the one that we grew up with. it is one that is announced by winston churchill when he goes totmmissouri delivers a famous speech in 1946 in which he surveys the ruins of europe and what he calls the un estimated sum of human pain and describes the iron]j curtain, which is descending on europe. he affirms this speech that the soviet union does not want. they want the fruits of war without war. is going to require the western world to take anance tos of the countries that we 1944 a. and this means a hard and bitter

peace. and this was characterized by wars. n the verge of celebrating a 75th anniversary of korea, 60th anniversary of the beginning of the vietnam war. these are wars that are fought as a consequence of our cold war with the soviet union. these are also wars that accelerate the rise of asia in the shift in thats leading to'c pledge to end the war and win the peace over time, we begin to realiz that world has changed. and in the 1970s, early 1980s, we never really change minds about the great traumas that we experienced in these limited wars fought after 1945 and the the plague. still, the frustrationagedy of . undertone here, which is quite bright. in the late 1970s. ask yourself this question, say

about vietnam is where we experienced the great shock, a great defeat and setback. what is the true meaning of the vietnam war? is it that the united. failed of itsin south vietnam, leading to the communist nation in the loss of an and so forth? is that the meaning of it? does that mean that the united states cannot act effectively in th does this call into question everything done since 1945, or is it that the united states for ten years waged conflict in southeast asia, which we thought might be lost the outset? 8000 miles from our shores, fight that war, a stalemate, a settlement which might have held an undertaking that no other in the world could even conceive of doing that tickles of the aspects of overlord, purely miraculous aspects of an operation where americans areofm

home to defend other people. meaning of vietnam? well if you're a countryn sever is resuming over theater and nuclear weapons in europe and so forth, you're asking yourself this question whose side do i want to be on. several years past dark years, failure of arms negotiations walk out, so forth. but james reston in february of 1983, writes a column, he's the principal york times correspondent. washington he says he's walking down connecticut avenue, and he had a funny thought. and the funny thought was, you know, i think we've won the cold war. we don't know it. well, i think people did know it. some people did and this was disclosed to them to the world, enormity by ronald reagan, 1984. in the first speech that he gives.

recommend anybody here visit normandy. the way you're visiting gettysrg today, you go to a battlefield, you understand a battle, go there. but symbolically of a beginning and an end. the beginning■ is reagan's speeh is upon taha, where he says here the rescue. begins june 6th, 1944. he then recesses to the normandy cemetery, the u.s. cemetery, ■rnormandy, and he delivers an equally significant speech, in my opinion, where he dedicates ourselves to the cause of those who fell at normandy, the soldiers who came to normandy, not conquerors, but as liberators. and when these forces marched into germany, he says, they went not to prey on a brave and defeated people to nurture the seeds of democracy, those who yearn to be free today in their memory and for all who fought there, we celebrate the triumph of freedom from a terrible war. we learned that unity made us invincible. now in peace. that same unity makes us secure

in our alliance forged in the crucible of war, tempered in shape by the realities the postwar has succeeded in europe, the threat has been contained. the peace has kept this land is secure. wh finally that that land was secure, our true victory in europe became complete. there were some final chapters to write. we had paris troika glasnost. we had a lot of changes under way in eastern europe. the cold war is not quite over. expert on this. we velvet of eastern europe, czechoslovakia, east germany, poland, romania. the announcement was a significant milestone of. the a new soviet, not the oppression of doctrine, but the frank sinatra doctrine, meaning the soviets are now going to allow eastern europe to, quote, do their way. and so then the berlin wall

comes down in 1990, the hundredth anniversary, dwight eisenhower's birth. and on january 1st, 1992, at the dawn of the 50th year,■! that winston churchill spoke of at there is the dissolution of the ussr, an entity formed, i believe, in response to a german invasion of 1917, sustained by the second german invasion in 1941. and finally, after 50 years and 50 years of reappraising their place in the world dissolves gambling on the goodwill of the west and the world. after such privations. this amazes us still, because i don't think any reality that grew up with seemore fixed than the division of europe and the menacing presence of the■q soviets and the prospect. however, of nuclear war. but i think we can appreciate in hindsight the wisdom of

statesmen who believed that the strange alliance of 1941 through 45 and subsequent, but could be stabilized over a period of however long it took. 50 years after a and bitter something like complete victory. now that victory is some time ago. one thing about this conference is that we acknowledge that nothing is final, the world rolls on and the battle in normandy is now histo. and the way that the battle of gettysburg is history. and so we study it. and in fact, we are living in a future beyond the post war, which but normally, like gettysburg, will always be a significant place. it will always have a special aura for the timeless qualities it symbolizes, which is ingenuity, bravery, dedication, and courage. qualities that we as free people have in, qualities which we

summon when the times require it, and when duty calls. thank you. at a time. pardon? okay. i'm happy to. there's one person. thank you. very nice presentation. i think the two words that you uttered unconditional surrender changed the whole complex of the war after the conference, when they said that stalin, i think, insisted on it. the germans knew that they were

doomed. they would have surrendered earlier. i do believe the assassination attempt on hitler and july 20th, the would have never surrendered. but the italians did take the bait. they did surrender. so those two words, i think, changed history. and also the domino effect for for vietnam they sold us on the domino effect. i was over there. yeah, well, thank you. the german war spirit, so to speak, is something that is a great puzzle. my wife and i really enjoy watching a lot of foreign films. we watch a lot of german films, french films forth, and a lot of them these days have gone to that subject. you know, to ask the question why we fought on unconditional surrender, what impact did it have on germany? one of the things that stands out in watching these films is the deliberate and systematic criminalization of the german people by the nazis that is sleeping, everybody in crime,

implicating them in the course of, the regime as, goebbels puts it in early 1943, burning the bridges of the german people close so that they can never contemplate surrender. this was done in a thorough and methodicalat it meant that it it preordained a fight to the finish in germany is a fight to the finish until russian and american forces set foot on german and then it dissolved. and i think it's because internal elements in germany realize that that ra forces close enough where they can now defy nazi authority and get out from under. but until that point, the germans fought fanatically in the challenge that we faced in normandy was very, very daunting. japan, don't know, would have surrendered. that's a very good question. that's a war that i know much

less about. iuniversity pennsylvania. my speech projects are all based on primary research and i've had a number on the a-bomb. and one of the interesting factoids, it's up in several projects done on the a-bomb is of our japanese records that in july of 1945, in anticipation of an american invasion, a japanese air force of 8000, all designated kamikaze, all thousand were prepared to greet the american landings. so they might have fought on. you don't know. but you're right. each of the axis members, a certain different level of and we had to develop it. america was relatively safe in the thirties. remember, germany could not invade. they were not going to be able to invade us and yet we developed the resolution we saw

the stakes. they were intangible, but we were able to connect those stakes to our future. and therefore we were able to go abroad and accomplish the great work that we did. and i say that work was miraculous miraculous. yes. hello. hello. i'm sure there's one right back there. several. hundreds. yeah. and you, sir, y talked you said the strange alliance. of 1941 to 45 and the hard and bitter peace of the cold war led to a final eventual victory. how long would you say that victory lasted? basically, would you count only the nineties to 2000 to the

september. 2001 as the period of victory? or would you count everything up to, say, the russian invasion of ukraine then and resumption of conventional war in europe? was that victory? i'd be really interested in suzy's views on that. she would have. a lot of expert knowledge on that. my, my is and this is through running speech projects and things like that that a phase of this now that phase is what begins in 84 and 85. the thing the reagan speeches, by the way, which are decisive in the 1984 election. this is a good question for anyby he over and gives ceremonl speeches in normandy and they turn a close election into a cakewalk for reagan. why do these speeches have the impact that they do? because there is a message in

these speeches which the american people receive eve and believe is endorse it. and that is that the cold war is, in fact, over. that's the message. and the americans embrace this. and what happens starting in 85 and 86, you look back on those years, remember the rededication of the statue of liberty in, the summer of 86. in this■j spirit of triumphalis, francis f*ckuyama history has ended. there is no longer any history, no longer any debate in the world over the form of human society liberal democracy has prevailed. this goes from 84 through 21. that's a phase of the long peace. and i think starting in 2001, what america realizes is that there are out there, there are alternative lives, there are people who have different ways and see us as antithetical to those way. so so cpeting and resumes the degree of that competition know we can debate it and carol is

tapping her watch we are overdue but i just want to say more time how much it means to susie and me to be here at gettysburg and to i would say, associate ourselves with the normandy campaign that we've at one level or associated ourselves with throughout our lives, by virtue of living in this wonderful town.

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