and why eric holder is still our attorney yen? >> you know, that's a question that i get confused about a lot. i mean, i think that the obama administration but specifically the justice department, and i would encourage you to read a book by jay christian adams called injustice because it also details the way the justice department and this administration works extensively. this is when you transplant chicago-style politics into washington d.c. i really do think, you know, trying to add on as to exactly your question for months and months and months, the media's a part of it, but i also think this administration doesn't think they're ever accountable to what they tell everyone else they're accountable there are. eric holder hasn't done that. he's changed his testimony multiple times under oath, and he hasn't been charged with perjury yet. and so, and considering, too, that the justice department decide canned before the

contempt votes were even counted that they weren't going to pursue or even look into the charges against eric holder. there's a lot of corruption going on there, and i think it's just a matter of a lot of them are just covering for each other. they're all buddies, and they think if they can just hold out long enough, that they'll get away wit. i have to have faith in our system, i don't think they will. i think chairman issa's doing a great job at getting the facts for as many as he can, anyway, and there are a few select journalists who are doing the best they can, too, in exposing what's going on. .. going forward how to bring attention to this, the youth,

coming up in november, how do we do to the forefront of their minds? >> i think to spread the word. there's nothing stronger than the voice of the american people. atf and justice department will say the american people are not interested in this. the polls show otherwise. the scandal speaks for itself. given the basic facts and they become more interested. maybe bring up a headline of a story that day or bring up the topic. mexico comes up, that's a perfect example. the top of our relationship with mexico comes up, i'm hoping that this comes up as a debate topic. so i would just take talking about it. using social media to share articles and share informationai about it is the best way to it,t really get the information out there. and read the book.

[applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you would like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv and c-span.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> no from its wonderful roosevelt reading festival, hosted by the franklin the roosevelt presidential library and museum, john potter discusses his book, "the good war in american memory." >> spent the afternoon. it's a pleasure to be here and especially because it is the roosevelt library. i couldn't finish my book if i didn't have the roosevelt archives. and to help of great archivists who know where material is and are willing to help you find it. it took four years for americans to fight in world war ii. but they never have stopped

talking about since 1945. so i predict and suspect the conversation is going to go on for many more years. that sort of interests me as a historian that we spend more time talking and curbing these events and events themselves. and so that particular question or that particular issue caused me to think about, think more about what americans understood about world war ii, how they understood, and how they understood it over time. i'm going to make a few general points and then i will sort of take your hopping and skipping through some memorials into some movies into some novels, and anything else you want to do. later you can ask questions and tell me what i didn't talk about and we can talk about that. first point i want to make an the first generalization is this, we talk about world war ii today, and we talk about it a

lot in recent years, you've all watched the pbs series and all went out and bought tom brokaw's book, and you coleslaw -- you all saw the works in the movies like saving private ryan, and it's been incredible how much world war ii has been with us over the last 15 or 20 years. the point i want to make is this, that the way would primary talk at world war ii today is not the way that the generation that fought the war talked about in the 1940s and the 1950s. there's some similarity in our current and temporary conversation, that there are distinct differences and i want to look a little more at those differences today, and maybe suggest why those changes that changed have taken place. the other day it struck me in looking at the way americans

remembered the war, not so much the war itself, was that there was wide disagreement. there were a lot of issues, and that's to be expected. when we talk today and refer to trend as the good war thought by the greatest generation, we sort of minimize and reduce the complexity in all of the fresh perspectives and attitudes and feelings people have. i mean, what would you expect? you've got 140 million people thrown into probably the most violent struggle in human history. do you think they all sat back in 1946 and said we are the genders -- the greatest generation that fought the big war, or do you think there were issues? in that sort of statement is a historical trajectory or historical pattern where the complexity becomes narrowed and

narrowed and narrowed to greater extend overtime. and because we are at the roosevelt libra today i want to say something about franklin roosevelt place in the public perception and understanding about world war ii, because it changed and changed over time, and because fdr had a very specific argument of why we had to fight world war ii. i think i will be suggesting at the end of my remarks today that we talk and continue to talk much less about roosevelt's specific argument about why the war was necessary than once talked about in the '40s and '50s, especially after he died, his widow, eleanor roosevelt. the problem with remembering war, there are many, but the key problem is this, you need to

mobilize power and you need to engage in massive amount of state-sponsored killing to win a war. that's what robert mcnamara would say in the fog of war. that's what was alluded to earlier about eisenhower's approach to the war. you can win or lose but if you want to win he better be ready to fight the fight, so we could. that's what we did. but you can't get away from the fact that if you're going to win the damn thing, you're going to engage in mass killing, at some point you're going to have people, your own citizens, your own soldiers, loved ones, thinking about whether cost was worth it. the cost of the losing a son, the cost of losing a loved one. people took pride.

they were honored by their sacrifice, and others felt their sacrifice was extremely audible. that was true in the '40s. that's true today in the global war of terror. but no one sitting here listening to me right now would say that there are those people don't walk away from that experience with regret. and there are not those people who will suffer for the rest of their lives, whether in combat event a grieving spouse, or a greeting mother or father. and so there's always a tension in the nation, and in this nation threat to 20 century especially, between a virtual review of the work, fought the good war, we did what we had to do, we defeated hitler and evil in the world. god knows that if there ever was evil in the world, it was represented in the form of hitler. but those people who didn't so

readily buy into that memory, that particular story, and so that struggle and many other issues continues and continued long after the war was over. i would suggest, in doing the book, that there were three main ways, i have to simplify here to an extent, in which americans are membered world war ii, even as it was being fought. one was the highly traditional way, that was a patriotic war. we were defeating evil in the world, that our losses were justified because the end result was noble, that the killings that we had to engineer may have been regrettable but were necessary, and something that really came out late in the 20 century strongly was that war builds character. that's the essence of the

greatest generation, brokaw's book. people gained -- people came out of the war stronger than they went in. it builds ethics. they became good, hard-working people out of that experience. the other version of world war ii that was prominent, especially in the '60s, was more critical version or what i call the critical version. and that version didn't accept readily that all the sacrifice was on our part and all the killing we had to engage in was necessary. now, we don't hear that a lot today about world war ii. but it was widespread in the '40s and '50s, in a 20 or 25 years after the war, especially among those that fought that war.

and finally, and then i will work my way through these various approaches, you have roosevelt's approach to the war. and franklin roosevelt, he gave it to the people early on, even before pearl harbor, in his address to congress before pearl harbor, because roosevelt, those of you who know roosevelt, and that history know that he was making quite a bit about hitler, about hitler's expansion in europe, especially and about how to stop it. in a time when you as you also know, millions of americans had no interest at all in getting involved in this thing. it was the first is thing from their mind. but roosevelt was on top of from a very early. in january 41 before pearl harbor he said if we have to fight essentially, there's only one way can be justified and that is how we fight and we achieve and we realize for the entire world our freedom. the display on the four freedoms as you walk down the hallway

here today in this room. the four freedoms are basically human rights, not just for americans but for every men and women everywhere. so that everyone has freedom of speech and freedom from fear, the freedom of religion and the one that really got him in trouble with conservatives, freedom from want. here's a state know what's coming later. you're not going to read much about freedom from want and ambrose and brokaw. so let's look at a couple of sort of classic ways in which, in the classic with him in which world war ii was remembered and see how the critical and humanitarian perspectives play out in american culture over the last 60, 70 years actually. the first thing it did when i decided to write the book was to

try to read any sort of memoir or novel about the war that was written by a veteran. if you are not a veteran i wasn't interested because i knew that that would've been in the eyes of many people the most authoritarian -- the most significant authority in many ways upon the war experience. so you may have read this. i often threatened college students today that i'm going to threaten them to read norman mailer's book, a hundred pages. they won't read 200 pages. if you can put on a dvd or something like that in 55 minutes, maybe. but think of the great novel of world war ii. norman mailer's the naked and the dead. the trilogy by james jones. he sees things in the movie and he saw as as broadway plays, et cetera. from here to eternity, the thin red line, the whistler which was

challenges third novel which was published after he died, or we could go on and on, memoirs about william manchester, and you may want to ask me about some of those later, that's perfectly fine. mailers fundamental point in the naked and the dead, if you read all the under pages when something like this. he was amazed by the fact that american should never stray in the conquest and killing of the japanese. i'll be the first of the japanese showed no restraint in the capacity to kill americans. who knows the pacific war was a cordial. and the bloody place. but mailer didn't see the war as he thought absently the war was justified against him but he wasn't so sure against japan. he thought that was an exercise among americans to spread about in the pacific. you don't have to agree with that but mailer was a vet.

he was at nokia sake five or six weeks after the atomic bomb was dropped. you may not like them but that was his take on the war, and think about a minute. he must've thought as he wrote it, and it would sell. i don't think "the naked and the dead" would sell today even if those 250 pages. it was a critical approach to the war. james jones wrote a trilogy, three novels, from here to eternity, i'm sure some of you remember the movie. i'll remember burt lancaster. but if he took the time to read the book, and not watch burt lancaster chasing debra carr, you would find out that that was a book that was sort of critical. what he was trying to say in the book is that there was an inherent interest in and

attraction within the soul of many ordinary people and men in this country towards violence, and sort of boxing match where frank sinatra could get his. drummer or something like that. -- did his eardrum hurt or something like that. that was a question because if impact of violence is sort of innate in us, our national identity if you will, referring to the earlier talk today, then that makes us a little less virtuous and a little less model citizens, vis-à-vis the greatest generation. jones and his third novel, the thin red line which also became a movie, the whole meditation between our we peaceful people but what happens to us when the calls -- cross the line into war? in the joneses book we find people are attracted by

violence. it's a mess your story in a highly traditional patriotic one where everyone's patriotic anybody wants to defeat the enemy. in his third novel published after he died, jones sets is novel and an army hospital. the vets back from the war. the vet looked at from pearl harbor and from here to attorney, now they're back from the war and this one guy has an injury and the army surgeons want to indicate his leg. i think it's a metaphoric story, he goes through the army house bill, gets all his buddies and they take a vote. they had a vote whether the army should amputate his leg. now, everyone here knows that in the army you follow orders. you don't take a vote, and what these orders are. but that was jones getting the tip of an iceberg, how

widespread the feeling was that while the war at times was justified, some of the actual decision by military leaders was not, and that men were often sent into beach invasions, beaches when things and battles that were not necessary. now, whatever you think of douglas macarthur, and if you want to go down to -- is it -- is down in virginia, newport news, his body is down there, but if you think of macarthur, and a lot of people love macarthur and his you know been removed in he comes back to wild celebrations, but if you go to the truman library and read all the letters about when truman removed macarthur from korea you see a lot of people say how could you do this? this is one of america's war history but there's thousands of war heroes -- letter saying

thank god. thank god you got rid of a guy who'd didn't have the best interest of his men at heart. his own interest was his glory in war. and, therefore, may decisions that resulted in more casualties and were not necessary. i'm not saying that macarthur's decisions were all wrong. i'm giving you a perspective on macarthur's decisions from the men who fought under him. and it was next. if eisenhower had run against macarthur for president in the '50s, who do you think would have one? eisenhower. eisenhower had a reputation for being somewhat considerate and and passive for the faith and the wealth of the guys. macarthur did not. so in that sort of battle weekend get this messy issue about we were being mistreated by the government, or at least by the military, et cetera, and that's all true. now the four freedoms, forgotten

in those novels? in "the naked and the dead," you read 800 pages he's pretty much convinced that the four freedoms are going to happen. that americans -- bringing democracy or human rights to everybody. in james mr. chairman, you can ask of somewhere to see the south pacific but it's always been reproduced in some play, et cetera to those of you could mention a movie notably, south pacific, what is he talking about? is giving you a story of a woman, army nurse was reluctant or navy nurses reluctant to marry a man in the south pacific because he said next rates children. there's a lot of opposition to the. that's his way and if they sit there and you see it as

entertaining. michener's position, in the specific case ending racial violence, like supremacy in the united states. but they don't come out and say that. fatality and story to convey that. and so michener is conveying roosevelt's interpretation of world war ii. i'm not going to talk much about the movies. you can ask me about the movies because that would take all of next year's program probably to do that, that happy to talk about. it's talk about the memorials. now, some of you have gone to see the world war ii memorial in washington, d.c. you see the arches, the patriarchs and the atlantic and pacific. 400,000 american dead but they are represented by gold stars. so you don't get the griping of you don't get the trauma, you don't get the body parts, you get the gold star.

that's the traditional view of the war. it's not that it is a wrong view, but it's not the only view. it wasn't the only view among those who fought the war in the '40s and '50s. when i was a kid in school, we used to have these covers on their school textbooks and they always had rendition of the iwo jima memorial in washington. there you've got these marines fused together in bronze raising the american flag and a victorious battle, a bloody battle at iwo jima as they marched towards the destruction of the japanese empire. but there's no trauma in the iwo jima memorial, just as there is no trauma in the two memorials. there's no grief. think about this. one-third of all marines that died in world war ii, died on iwo jima. one-third of all marines that died in iwo jima and the memorial to iwo jima conveys no

sign of death. okay. do you know he didn't want to go to the dedication ceremonies in 1964? eisenhower. he didn't want to go because he knew that it didn't adequately convey the suffering of the men on iwo jima. not that he was against honoring those who sacrificed and died. he was saying don't do it without honoring the price they paid. and that wasn't done. so he went, stayed about 10 minutes and he left. what i'm about to tell you, you may take it and sort of a humorous or cynical way. but the person he sent there to stay through the whole ceremony was the vice president, nixon. i don't know if he sent nixon because he didn't care what nixon did or he didn't like

nixon, although we've heard earlier today that he sort of accepted nixon and didn't think much about his vice presidential candidate. but think about what i just said about the world war ii memorial, the iwo jima memorial and a presentation in remembrance of the honor of the victory, and they're determined effort to eradicate, the tragic loss of the war. you get the hono article you to patriotism, you don't get the sort of ruins that is left behind. that goes through all of these. that's what we saw in the novel we just talked about. here's two of the memorials i'll tell you about. these you never hear about. there's many more. when i was writing the book, it dawned on me fairly early that there was sort of a story bring in new mexico. i want to find out more about it. and i got the idea in the first

instance when i went, when i heard the story, read the story of a man named manuel. he lives with a veteran, for the japanese in the philippines, in april 1946 after the war is over he gets up on the morning of the day that american surrendered at the 10, several there's later now, 46. he walks was modest house and he lowers the american flag any races a white flag of surrender. he is a humble guy. is not going to make it on any talk shows and is not going -- no one will not pay that much attention to them. he can't forget the laws. he can't forget all his buddies that were left behind, who died either at bataan, or as he was, died in japanese prisoner camps.

he had nightmares for the rest of his life. he would wake up screaming for the rest of his life, in the middle of the night. he could not accept a version of world war ii that was a good war without talking about the fact that he lost some of his best friends. if you were to spend your neck summer vacation motoring through new mexico you would find memorials for bataan everywhere. because when bataan fell, macarthur had already been ordered to australia, he was gone, half of the nearly 2000 national guardsmen who would already been sent there were captured behind enemy lines or killed. they were on the death march of bataan or ended up aspirations of war in japanese camps. and the memory of the war in new mexico is dominated by the

tragedy of the loss. so you go to these local towns, they don't build memorials like you see in washington or iwo jima memorial without loss. they focus on the tragedy and loss. and he was terribly angry at the japanese are extremely angry at the. he met truman once and he said, i'm glad you dropped the atomic bomb. he was interested in the violence and the killing because they were interested in revenge. it doesn't mean they were all wrong, it just means that's what he felt. about two years later i went down to alexandria louisiana, got off the interstate. of course, i certainly was going on the historically, and drove down the street, 1942 lead street was the center of the african-american community in

alexandria. and as you heard in the talk earlier today louisiana was a huge place for military bases during the war. there were thousands of troops trained. so on saturday night in 1942 with a healthy think these people are doing. everybody is celebrating, relaxing and having a good time. but the white soldiers party in one section of town, the black soldiers party in another section of town. and a riot breaks out in the black section. some people say because of police brutality pick the police were doing something, hard to know exactly what happened, we know how it was resolved. military mps and louisiana state police surrounded a 10 block area around the street and just started shooting. just opened up. the black communities said you killed 30 black soldiers. the government said we didn't have anybody but 20 or 30 black soldiers were wounded, they are

fine. that debate still goes on today. when we remember train to the rim of the converse he over whether black soldiers were killed by the government and louisiana state police. more than they remember the war. although the our blocks and alexander who are quite proud of having one of their own who became a tuskegee airman. but what i saw when i got on the interstate was a fast open field on lee street and there's this big group of followers. when i met many of the members and talk to many of the members of the african-american committee from alexandria who lived at, in that area at the time, i said what's that we about? they said that's addicott and read. every year we take a wreath there because she was alive at the time and commemorate the war. how? by commemorating the black

soldiers she knew that were killed, regardless of what the government said. i saw letters for years after that back and forth from defense department and everything. civil rights activists in alexandria arguing for full disclosure of what happened and the government would say nothing happened in terms of death. in my opinion it was never resolved one way or the other. the point is we going to look at localities where people suffered and died, suffered from racism, suffered from grief, et cetera. the war is not a good. and the generation is great but not so great. it's a mixed up mess. public memorials in washington are designed in part to a firm certain truths, the noble victory, especially national socialism, but to erase a face, eradicate or marginalize all the suffering and trauma.

and so when i began my talk i said at the end let's say something about roosevelt the roosevelt state on the good war was suffering is only justified if we extend human rights to all the world. because we are all human beings. but as americans, it's all human beings, then we sort of can't see ourselves as better. we have to see ourselves as all human beings. who all deserve human rights. the united nations declaration of human rights in 1948 was a declaration that all human rights have -- all humans have the right for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of on. there was also debate the god forbid all humans have right to health care but we won't touch that. so what you don't get in the debate between whether it was

simply patriotic or whether we should remember the grief and tragedy is you start to get sort of a sliding of human rights. you can find more than half a dozen memorials of the four freedoms in america. you can't find many. you'll get either the patriotic picture of the something i described in louisiana but you don't get a lot of human rights. and all the talk in celebration of the greatest generation, model citizens, about war, about the books about men going into and being excited for fighting for a cause larger than themselves, et cetera, in all of that rhetoric that we've seen in our own times, we get very little of roosevelt. where is fdr? everyone, any of you who know fdr know that when he died in 45, come on, this country was dumbstruck. it was sad and. they had a connection with their

leader. men cried in foxholes and on ships. people cried industries. maybe some of you heard arthur gottfried cbs news commentary of the zero march in washington. godfrey is growing, for god's sake. he said fdr stood for the little guy so he could get a fair shake your people cried because they knew that he stood for the g.i. bill. and social security. effort government playing an active role in helping people get by and have human rights. but the greatest generation celebration wasn't about government playing a role in your life. it was the individuals who had what it took to join the service, fight the good fight, defeat evil in the world and build a great country. there's truth in some of that,

but what is a faced here and marginalized is that mid century progressive thought, which were roosevelt said the center of the political experiment with a government would play and had major responsibilities for your welfare, and could help you. that idea became increasingly under attack after 1945. and as it did, so did roosevelt himself and his ideas, begin to be pushed aside for the public celebration and understanding of thank you. so if you go to washington the next time, you go to the world war ii memorial, you go to the iwo jima memorial, fine. want to see the tragedy? you will see the triumph. now, if you want to go to a memorial that was dedicated in 1997 where people are standing in bread lines and standing crying industry because the

president died and with the president's wife is seated near the inscriptions of the four freedoms, he's got to go out to the side of the tidal basin to see the roosevelt memorial. so we haven't forgotten. it's still there. so the next time you talk about and think about the good war and the greatest generation, remember, those ideas that came after 60 to 70 years over struggle. not the war but what the war meant. and the war we moved away from the '40s and that time, went americans had a sense that they were altogether fighting not only for the defeat of evil in the world, and for the four freedoms of our government to play a role in their economic welfare, we moved away from that, the more we got world war ii as a good war going by the greatest generation. happy to take questions. thank you. [applause]

>> my question is, how did he is missing of the good war, was it for all the wars they came after? when did the good war become a part of our culture? how were all the other wars that were fought after world war ii, how did it influence calling this the good war? >> that's an excellent question. i would give you an a+ if you were in one of my classes. but she probably got a plus as all the time. your question goes to another important area, when did it become -- when did a good war become the good work? the obvious answer is it became more of the good work, et cetera, in the aftermath of vietnam would look to find sort of this virtuous side of identity after world war ii.

you all know was very controversial without getting into all the stuff, so the good war does in part serve as an antidote to vietnam, which is part of your question. i also think it was also, it would explode in 1990 because he came in aftermath of the cold war and i think the cold war sort of reminded us we could win long-term struggles because i think we felt that we won the cold war. ronald reagan actually won the cold war, et cetera. and some people would say. so i think that's part of it. but here's the point i want to stress and distress in the book. the debate between whether good or bad were innocent was a right from the beginning. so when he lowers the american flag in santa fe in 1946, he's also raising questions about any warping a good war. so in the way we understand today i think the victory in the cold war and aftermath of vietnam certainly tries this, the fact that the veterans start

dying off, keep want to show gratitude by another generation to understand that. that's perfectly fine. but as a historian it has a history and there was always a struggle to think is a result more favorably in terms of the good war in aftermath of vietnam and the cold war. thank you. >> i was always a little curious why, in many respects the clips in terms of literature and everything else, in previous earlier global struggle, world war i, at the time president wilson who was also assistant secretary of navy, he said he actually expressed them with language about the war that roosevelt would say the world must be safe for democracy. whereas franklin roosevelt's 20 some years later would say we must be the great arsenal of democracy. in that case, hitler, mussolini.

size countries about that. >> another good question. are you a literary major? how to read the novels of world war i and world war ii? >> i've read some. >> good to let me recommend to anybody. it's a fascinating experience. because, in fact, the world war i generation, hemingway, for example, that's the generation of 20 century american for sure that represents the id of the war novel. they sort of did it and a perfect a sort of novel that is critical of war, critical at a lot of different levels. so there is really not a lot of difference between the critical attitude of world war i novels and world war ii novels except maybe if you read willa cather in world war -- patriotic version. but by pearl harbor i think with pearl harbor, world war i is not a good minute in america's life. you may know that. roosevelt and others who want to get in a position to challenge

hitler have to get us over the opposition to us going into europe again, which is a legacy of world war i and the reaffirmation of isolationism, et al. said get over sort of bad taste better in people's mouths or minds, because this is idea where lead into world war i by the arms manufacturers, dupont. they made money and we didn't get anything out of it. and all these silent movies by the way our great about being critical of world war i. and so world war ii surpasses that any sense because it gives us another event, went to mobilize our patriotism in ways that was being demobilized by the memory of world war i. it wasn't that there wasn't anybody patriotic. it wasn't that world war i was seen increasing list as a patriotic war the closer we got to the fourth. world war ii sort of revise the patriotic position again.

everybody's patriotic, nobody suffers. my favorite world war ii movie to use, ginger rogers gets the news that her husband is dead, falls apart, talks to her young son, you're the greatest dead. he created for you the best world you could ever have. and she says i've got to get out of my life. that was a message to all women. forget it, get on with your life. except that. he doesn't accept that at santa fe, even though the movies saying you should. so that sort of massive amount of cultural expression to support world war ii even pushes both negative and positive aspects of world war i to the side. >> a question about the vietnam

memorial and the korean war memorial verses ghana be a row system of world war ii memorials and it seems like world war ii memorials had to reclaim the high roses and of american soldiers where's korea, vietnam memorials might be different. >> i think it's been harder in american life to build a war memorial that forgets the suffering, at least of our soldiers. we are not going to rewrite the suffering of the enemy, although clint eastwood does in letters of iwo jima. but we are not going to -- i wrote more in the truest sense would be like the iwo jima memorial or the world war ii memorial, as you said. with the vietnam memorial listing 58,000 dead is a sort of direct contradiction to that because it refuses to be consoled by patriotic rhetoric and it refuses to let go of the facts that people suffered and died. you can say it was audible but it won't let go. aurora memorial one that glosses

over or does not mention at all. i think after vietnam it's hard to have, to forget the individual suffering. so korea is a little bit more like that because you got the sort of silhouettes and figures of the soldiers move to a field and this will look like they could get it anytime. it's a little in between -- it's not heroic but certainly and not so much graphically directed towards death, but it sort of is resisting the heroics. but the point i tried to make in the talk today was, and i could do more of this, the memorials in alexandria or in santa fe show that even with the world war ii generation, it's more vietnam that were not heroic memorials. and i can give you memorials, massive ones in richmond, in omaha, all the names of the dead. i don't want, i can't say and won't save that vietnam changes evhi