the first volume begins with a liberation where europe begins in north africa 1942. if the invasion of morocco and algeria and the campaign across north africa. the second volume of ms. moore across the mediterranean into the invasion of sicily in july of 1942 and southern italy and of timber, 1943.

and then the third volume is one that begins on the eve of the invasion of normandy. june 4th of 1944 and of course d-day and normandy is 1944 and the final volume tells that final chapter of the story all the way through the victory in europe of 1945. >> host: the army of dawn. why do we begin in north africa? >> guest: because that's where the story begins. the decision was made by franklin roosevelt at the urging of winston churchill to not try to cross the english channel in 1942 or 1943 partly because the american army was green, green commanders, partly because we didn't have the landing craft and the other material necessary to undertake that enormous defeat. so, roosevelt, contrary to the advice of almost all of his senior military commanders agreed to invade north africa

november 1942 and that took place on november 8. the british forces fighting not the germans because they were not there yet, but the french and that is where the story begins. >> host: why do we begin by fighting the french? >> guest: the made a deal when hitler invaded france in 1940. and he immediately made his way. he offered a deal with the devil and the gist of this was i will keep the northern two-thirds of france and you can keep the southern one-third with a new capital. a day excused the brigadier but most of them agreed to it and so consequently when we invaded north africa it is the french that are still there, these are french possessions of the

metropolitan france. >> host: how long did it take to defeat? >> guest: today's. and the french army fought pretty and differently. they would have fought ferociously and one of the biggest naval battles of 1942 but then he was in algeria at the time and polio and got along at the bedside of he finds himself trapped by the invading forces and he negotiates a deal with the americans and the british and agrees he will surrender north africa which opens in the middle of november so three days of fighting and a couple of days of heavy wrangling. >> host: you have a recurring theme down in north africa 1942

to 1943 they ranked 17th in the world in size and combat power just behind romania when there was 146 german divisions conquered western europe nine months later the department reported that it could field just five divisions. the coastal defense hadn't been fired in 20 years and the army had them protect even a single american city. the building of the armed forces was likened to the reconstruction of the dinosaur a round three vertebrae. then from the second in the trilogy of the battle from beginning to end, allied war making in the mediterranean tended to be in improvisational, and finally, from the guns at last flight which just came out you wrote the cohesion and the total coherence of the allied coalition had a shared victory

the better alliance one, certainly it was possible to look at the war making on any given day and feel heartsick of the missed opportunities and the blind personalities and wasted. to wonder why the ranks couldn't be brave or at least clever, smarter or shrewd,% or at least in today. but despite its foibles, the allied way of the war went through and then just to finish that off and e-mail from herring in mount lebanon pennsylvania. at the bottom we have the soldiers that one of war. they are rewarded for their diligence and their demeanor with trench but the century, lack of clothing, support, food, they are slaughtered by the hundreds often by the poor planning of their division, core, army an army group commanders. thousands of these men were wasted if for no good purpose. my question, how did we win the war? >> guest: well, that's a

complex question as you might suspect. to try to simplify, we one war from a variety of the advantages. we have far more of anything the germans had to be the material of vintages were enormous. we were creating tens of thousands of airplanes at the time the germans for struggling just to make thousands. we had more tanks and more trucks, more ammunition so that's important. we were making in not only for ourselves and our armed forces but for our friends so we ended up helping the british come out fighting almost everything the french used once they joined the war and a substantial portion of the soviets and others were supplied with, so that's important. we learned how to fight. that is part of what this trilogy is about. we learned from the mistakes were made in the beginning of north africa and italy and certainly there were more mistakes in your up the there's

a great setting out that goes on from the continent to the incompetent from platoon leader all week to army commander of the physical effect to the physically unfit. the lucky and the unlucky this is the treat that he played in his general and it's incredibly important in the war said by that time we get to the summit of 1944, we are pretty good and we have a sizable army so when you put all of those things together and remember that the soviets are hammering out the third reich from the east they do most of the fighting and the bleeding and the killing and the dying, 26 million soviets so it is a good ally to have in the soviet union. you could all those things together and when you have is a winning coalition and formula for global warfare. >> host: you write in the guns

of last like a typical soldier stood 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 144 pounds but the standards were lowered to accept the defect that would have kept men out of uniform and man with 2400 division couldn't be conscripted of the site was corrected to at least 20/40. they would make eyeglasses for the troops and the no longer examined but instead it counted them and they had come true. >> guest: by the winter of 44 and 45 and not only that but initially to be drafted you had to have 12th of the natural teeth and by 44 e-business zero because they drafted the third of all the dentists in the country to make dentures to pull teeth and that sort of thing. you could be drafted in 1944 if you are missing fmr freethinkers

-- warburg three fingers. penicillin they were making in huge quantities by 44. all of this because precisely we were short of men and infantrymen and of riflemen. so it is an effort to fill the ranks. casualties had been running high a pity we can't forget the 4,000 americans died and after the to under 91,000 killed in action. and the war falls heavy always on the infantrymen so this is all part of an effort to keep their ranks filled. they did run out of men and so we were in bad shape to begin the were in terrible shape. >> host: rick atkinson come if you can give the macroview of the split because of the theater's how many men, how many resources, etc.? >> guest: well, the american army put 89 divisions into the

field. about two-thirds of those are in europe. all little less than a third in the pacific. all six marine divisions, u.s. marine corps divisions are in the pacific yet most of the navy is in the pacific and putting all of the aircraft carriers. and most of the bigger battle ships and heavy cruisers and so on. when you look at it that way, you can see that the wage between the pacific there and the atlantic it is pretty evenly split. but when you look in terms of manpower, you can see that it was given to fighting the germans. this is because the decision had been made early in 1942 of the principal called germany first. roosevelt, churchill and the senior commanders believed if you could defeat the axis powers than the others would fall from

the tree like rotten fruit. this is the important principle of the war that turned out to be true. that's why you see the weight is placed on your up even though that is the japanese that have defended us initially in the most grievously with the attack on pearl harbor. >> host: 1942, was that like for the u.s.? >> guest: it was fraught. there's a bitter argument over where to attack first, where to counterpunch. when the decision was made we were going to do against the germans, we in that going to north africa for reasons that we discussed. but this is a mission, an obligation of was called torch to go to north africa that was perhaps the greatest war putative was crossing the atlantic at a time when the german u boat submarine threat is at its greatest. it involves attacking a hostile sure which is always one of the

most difficult kinds of operations against an entrenched enemy. it involves aligning ourselves with the british and waging the war mike and we we are not accustomed to as we go along. and it involves finding the man who can lead other men in the dark of night which is what combat is fundamentally about. all of this is a high of why your act of the first order and that is what 1942 is about is letting that play out. >> host: what was it like at the home front? >> guest: pearl harbor, all of the divisiveness that existed in the united states over whether to get involved in yet another european war, whether to príncipe and providing material to the british and salon fell away so there's a unanimity of

feeling of the prestige of direction and the allies and we are in it to the end and there is a recognition this is an existential war to get our very existence and we of life is at stake. don't forget that in 1942 there are about 130 million people in the united states. 16.1 million of them will be in uniform by 1945. everyone has someone they love in harm's way. everyone has skin in the game and a stake in this and that becomes quite clear to americans pay get almost all americans through the course of 1942. you contrast that today with 313 million, we have about 2 million in uniform. almost no one has someone they know in harm's way. almost no one has scan in the game in the same sense. so it's quite different

cyclically between that period of world war ii and america today. >> host: from the guns at last late may of 1944, england, the crowd of britain soldiered on a bastion of civilization, even amid the war and the dignity outside of the cumberland hotel. as large crowds in oxford sing along with the gusto. this month the screen for whom the bell tolls starring gary cooper and destination tokyo. they play hamlet and now in the third year at the production theater on sunday may 14th, 1944 thousands peddle their bicycles to watch the kings way the cult of the first class merchant, navy and ghana. apropos of the current cold snap

the geographical society sponsored a lecture on the formation of ice that the lakes and rivers. that's 1944 london. >> guest: the british had been at war since 1940. they've been under attack relentlessly by the germans. they were soon to be under attack in a different way from rather clumsily but rather that we flying bombs. it's part of the british landscape. all of a sudden in the midst of this, there are a couple million soldiers showing up in a country the size of oregon. it's potentially compostable but by good leadership and humor, they manage to show great forbearance taking on this

wellbeing from the tense and housing to what little food they had. it's the beginning of the alliance we think of today as a special relationship between the united states and britain. it hasn't developed quite yet on the battlefield especially in the high command. but even though there are plenty of aggrieved british people because of the fact that you have got millions around and they can be overbearing and lazy, the british in general show great character through all of this. and it's fun to write about. it's an interesting part of this long relationship with what had been in the other country. >> host: how did you do your research? >> guest: i am an archive write her as it turns out. i spend a cumulatively weeks, months, years in places like the

national archives in college park maryland, the library of congress, the u.s. army of the hill to reinstitute in carlisle pennsylvania, various british archives in the war museum, and over the course of the better part of 15 years, it's gotten to know those archives very well. every state university virtually has the world war ii archive within its library or its archives on some help. i get enormous that the stuff from the readers saying my dad left this memoir. i don't know what to do with it. it often can be very interesting and valuable to me. i don't interview very many veterans. and that's because my father will be 89. he's a world war ii veteran and he's -- what happened 70 years ago this for everyone who is

still alive from that time. it may or may not be reliable. it may or may not be as vivid and the contemporaneous record and putting thousands of oral history that was done almost simultaneously with the advance that occurred, many of them done by the final army historians it so that you don't need a recollection 70 years after so i do mostly use archives and i try to use mostly contemporary archives. and of course to say the least there been a lot of books written to the amazon lists 60,000 world war ii hardcover titles. some of them are really good need less to say. so i assiduously try to come through that and be diligent and see what others have written to the it >> host: where was your dad station? >> guest: he got to europe at

the end of the war, went to the candidate school with a second lieutenant. he was in a constabulary which was a very interesting unit right as the war ended by can still remember they had a yellow band around it. they were keeping order in who bavaria when the other cities of nuremberg had been utterly destroyed, 7 million dead germans, there is no food, there is no power, there is no running water. it's horrible. so he was there and penn state and he liked it and that he made a career as an army officer. so, we have an interesting role of europe at the end.

>> host: where did you grow up? >> guest: i was born in munich and when my dad went back into the army he was sent to salzburg. this is when the u.s. army was still in austria. the first three years of my life were spent austria. the the army hospital happened to be in munich. from there he was an infantry officer of georgia, idaho, francisco, hawaii, pennsylvania. we moved around quite a bit. >> host: what did you do for a living prior to writing? >> guest: i went to the university of chicago and study english. i wanted to be college english professor. it seemed a little sedentary after a while. it didn't seem like the right thing. i got a job after i finished my master's degree in the newspaper business and small pittsburgh

kansas. it was recalling. i loved the news room and i loved being a journalist. i worked there from about a year and a half and then went to kansas city for several years and ended up at the "washington post" and was a reporter and foreign correspondent for investigative reporting for some time and going away to write books in 1966 for example in the late 80's. then when i took on this topic i left the news room pretty much for blood. i've been back to the post twice since taking this up. >> host: this is our monthly programs one author looking at his or her body of work. rick atkinson is our guest this

month. here are his books beginning 1989 he wrote the long gray line the american journal of the west point class of '66 and then in 1993 crusade, the untold story of the persian gulf war came out and then the beginning of the liberation trilogy started in 2002 and army have gone north africa 1942 to 1943. then he went away from the liberation trilogies and in the company of soldiers a chronicle of combat cannot in 2004. the days of battle came out in 2007 and the boreman ken cicilline then finally the war and western europe 1944 to 1945. to participate in the conversation this afternoon the numbers are on the screen provided by region and we also set aside a third line this

morning for this afternoon for world war ii veterans giving mr. speed a focus we would like to hear from you as well. 210-5881. if you are in the mountain and pacific or yvette and would like to talk you can dial (202)585-3882. we will leave that up in just a minute. but you can also contact us over social media. at book tv is our trigger handle. you can send an e-mail at cspan.com or facebook on this facebook comment field force be eight. beginning with your first book

by the class of '66? >> guest: i kind of stumbled into this story. my dad had a close friend and the army who has a son who was in that class. he's probably as close to an older brother else i will ever have. one day easter did telling me about his class and what they had gone through and how they arrived and they were charged off to vietnam in 1966 and 67. they were shot to pieces, 30 of them killed and cambodia and more than any other west point pluses. then they can home and found they were no longer the leaders, they were outcasts effectively as the country went through this great upheaval after the war. so i went to the 15th reunion.

they always need in the cemetery where a lot of the dead are buried. everyone is crying. it was heartbreaking and was clear this was a powerful story that allowed you to tell the social history of america over a quarter of a century to be and i went back to the union in 1986 and that's when i began working on that as a buck. door 579 men in that class that still owe me at west point and the are an extraordinary bunch not only for what happened to them of what happened subsequently to the editor of three characters and i am still very close to the men from that class. i always will think of them as 18 different ways to bring that west point on july of 1952. i feel a great sense of

detachment. >> host: >> guest: this tool of the three central characters in the same company at west point. one went to war and the other to harvard business school. tom was when did a couple times and they went to specific institutes and found themselves on opposite sides of one of the most contentious issues that haven't in my lifetime in d.c. and that was how over how to honor the dead with the vietnam veterans memorial. jack was the chairman of the committee that built the wall and tom was the most outspoken articulate opponent of the design. different camps or form with a different view and that side was

murdered a couple years ago when delaware come in the unsolved killing. no one really knows what happened except for the killer i suppose. before that happened, that to had reconciled but there was an mistrusting. i tell the story of the fight over the wall and the memorial and how to honor the dead. it's part of a long journey that the class at west point went through beginning in 1962. islamic the untold story. first of all, did you in -- embed? >> guest: i got there at the end of the war. i'd been writing stories for the "washington post" from washington. i was there for about six weeks in march and april reporting for the post but also gathering strength to tell a story from what happened inside.

i spent a lot of time with the likes of the staff and the other generals that ran the war with and those at home, cheney for example, paul wolfowitz and others who've been involved with it. and the british and the israelis because they had a big part when the rockets began falling on israel so that was my involvement. >> host: you write no american military decision since the vietnam war provoked more controversy callamore de bacon delaware cost of commentary than the choice to offer iraq a merciful clemency. >> guest: some of your viewers will remember that was made after 100 hours of ground rules. they had invaded in august of

'91 and they had been evicted and beat up and there was a strategic campaign that is eviscerated parts of baghdad and when they were on the run and being chased back across the river the decision was made to end the war. there remains controversial to this day. we went back in 2003 and invade iraq again in earnest and all of that came out of the decision making them had gone on in that earlier war. >> host: operation overlord. 30 words. you will enter the continent of europe in conjunction with the other united nations come undertake operations aimed at the heart of germany and the armed forces.

what is that? >> guest: was the order given to dwight eisenhower in the allied force that is to invade france. it comes from the combined chiefs of staff. and it's the top generals and admirals in washington and their counterparts in britain. there are marching orders. this is what you will do. invade the continent of europe and essentially you were to defeat the armed forces. and you are to set the conditions necessary for the german surrender because the decision had been made in january of 43 that the only way a kid in this through the complete surrender access power this happened with italy and now the determination was a was going to happen if japan and germany so eisenhower's task is to better than enough that they will surrender unconditionally.

>> host: what does the dea in hendee de stand for? >> guest: it stands for nothing. soldiers joke is that it stood for death or that is good for day -- day day. it's just a code to read people have tried retrospectively to figure out what really stood for and in fact it has no meaning. >> host: one june 6, 1944? >> guest: it was supposed to be june 5th. it was the day eisenhower pecked. it's very tricky to invaded the norman coast. the tides are extraordinary, 20-foot swing, the moon has to be right if you are going at night in order to allow the paratroopers to see sufficiently and the pilots that are taking them. the wind has to be right, the weather. so june 5th was picked up the

weather was wrong. eisenhower never had good luck with his weather. it was stormy for the invasion of morocco and the invasion of sicily and stormy very unusually on june 5th, 1944. you can usually count on the weather in france to the editor was also he postponed for a day. they have this high as in the rest of it which still obtain in a way that is suitable for this kind of invasion. if he had deleted much longer. there was anxiety the germans were trying to figure out if they had 24 hours of morning that this invasion as coming to normandy rather than some other point on the french coast. what have been catastrophic. is the ideal level is to make the decision to postpone it.

but they did in june 6 is the day we celebrate. >> host: number of troops. there are the divisions that go over the beach is basically there are three airborne divisions to be altogether you're talking about a couple hundred thousand troops going in on june 6th the worst was omaha where. there had been concerned that the number of deaths could run in the tens of thousands, and this didn't happen. bye amines. but they had a tough time of it. but by the end of june 6th, there were canadian troops.

they will longer than 1500 yards. there was a disparity between the resistance and these allied invaders to read and their ability to push in land connecticut is the trick. you want to get in as quick as you can. you want to push out of range so they can share the beach to - that is the most vulnerable. it took several days to get the plant. but nevertheless it turns out so important. choose a -- to secure, you

needed to have an airborne operation. and it's a big one. the 101st and 82nd airborne divisions for the americans coming in the british counterpart. men were shot in their harnesses as they are coming down by parachute. it was successful. it did succeed in the confusion among the dissenters. a few days before the invasion in british it's suicidal as in

the 82nd and. they thought about it for a long time and ultimately decided i've got to do it. i can't launch an invasion. it worked pretty well all in all. >> host: of more than 6,000 jumpers from the 101st. most of the 1500 who had built

beyond the square closing the jobs. maps were torn from local telephone books by french farmers. more than half of all supply bundles lee beyond retrieval at the bottom of water meadows but the loss of radios, mortars and 11 of 1275 no meter hawsers. the sergeant peering into the bar and found none lying in this all wrapped in. with the tension and the fickleness of it, we thought an airplane and the dark from a thousand feet or less. in many cases they jump from 500 feet with people shooting at cubin. airborne troops were volunteer

yet even though you said you wanted to be there you have to believe when push came to shove many of them had second thoughts about it. it's part of the reason the leaders and 82nd airborne division active duty for today and still revered because the attract these kind of groups that go through this kind of experience. we see the 82nd in the 81st fighting elsewhere in britain. they are extraordinary. my admiration for them as unbounded. >> host: one more quote and then we are going to the calls. bombing for the speeches in operation overlord lasted barely half an hour in order to get on with the landings three and

rick atkinson is our guest. we are going to put the numbers up on the screen. we set aside the line for the world war ii veterans. (202)585-3882 is the number. we are going to begin with a call from robert in ohio. we're in ohio are you calling from, robert? >> guest: >> caller: from coralville putative >> host: please go ahead with your question or comment. >> guest: at 16 million he will. how many officers were there compared for today?

triet >> guest: gemmer fattah models like can't recall offhand but you can figure its proportionate. today there are some are on the order of a few less than 300. the ratio then and now is somewhat different. you can see that there are more soldiers per general beah 8.3 million in though it army in 2002. today we have more generals per soldier i don't think it is excessive for this is a debate that is held periodically in the pentagon and whether there is too much my feeling is such that it's hard to make the case there are too many generals except perhaps on the margin.

>> host: laws you are on book tv. thanks for calling. >> caller: thank you for writing about north africa. so few people have done it. i was with the 77th hospital in the university of kansas. but we did is from two other hospitals to take our place behind the front line. thank you. >> host: what was your job? >> caller: i was a surgical nurse. >> host: what do you recall about that experience? >> guest: >> caller: it was unusual because you were so innocent about the war when we went over there and had to just work from scratch practically to set up on

the hospital units and take care of the wounded. >> host: how many women with the unit? >> caller: 4790 leaves. >> guest: that is terrific. i know the 77th in the medical center. my wife is from kansas and my daughter is a surgeon. so, we are enthusiastic and the university of kansas skycam chris the 77th periodically throughout my research. there were no units i'm aware of and the surgical hospitals that did more for a longer period of time in the 77th under these difficult circumstances.

i am in all of it and my daughter -- i told her about what you and your colleagues did. she works with the combat surgeons at the university of cincinnati trauma surgery and she has some sense of what it is you went through. >> host: of a sudden she's from north africa. we're all of the women volunteers? >> guest: there was a women's auxiliary corps. there was no draft of my men. they were subject to it and we got the chances of being drafted dried up considerably. but if you are a woman in uniform or if you are a woman in

an aircraft factory where the ship factory or the drivers. >> host: from 1942 to 1943, rick atkinson writes of a price of 73,000 casualties, one continent had been redeemed in churchill's phrase. the divisions had a combat experience in the mediterranean warfare expeditionary, amphibious mountain, desert and urban. troops learned the importance of terrain of the combined arms of aggressive patrolling, massed armor. they now know what it's like to be. history will be kind to me for all i intend to write it said winston churchill. it is true was he right to insist on the campaign in north africa may be the war would have been shorter if we'd done the

european invasion in 1943. >> guest: this has been debated for 70 years since then and of course we will never know. it's counterfactual to support other than what happened. but my feeling is having looked at it in great depth over a long period of time it played out as it should play out. i don't believe we have the capability to invade france in 1943. i think it would have been potentially disastrous. there were no good alternatives to north africa if and fact you were trying to liberate europe ultimately to the and so, my feeling is that even though there is a bit of improvisation involved, they are making it up as they go along and there are some miscalculations about how easy it will be in north africa. there is certainly miscalculations about what churchill called the soft underbelly side of europe.

there was nothing soft about it certainly in italy. and, you know, i think you can argue that the war and italy went on for too long and it drew to much of the resources. but my feeling is that the decision to invade north africa is quite defensible. >> host: were the americans and the british crop of war on the same page cracks >> guest: they were almost never. it's one of the mysteries of the world how to read it again remain more or less in harness and the ultimate goal. but you from for example over the issue of where to invade initially the british favored not africa. none of the americans favored

north africa with the exception that was franklin roosevelt so this sets the stage for this agreement subsequently and the tactical issues it is a tribute to the men of goodwill to be able to put aside their differences and reach a compromise and make it work even though it is ugly at times and certainly there are bad feelings at times. >> host: you can find social media at book tv is our handle and you can send and e-mail book tv c-span.org or you can make a comment on our facebook page. jam in maryland, go ahead. >> caller: you may have already addressed this question, but it's about what you said about italy that we were

attacked and the germans if we nailed them they would fall like the rest of them fall like rotten fruit. then why was the decision made to go into italy as opposed to going directly into france right away? i heard theories it would have cut the war and so on and giving it another question is how well did the fdr administration handled the patents slapping of the soldier and so on if he was building one of our top commanders, wasn't it kind of irresponsible to have leased until the war might have been finished earlier before if patton supposedly was one of our better generals and so on. and that last question i got is the book was actually on c-span. eisenhower and the patton or some historians argue that after world war i, their superiors trained them specifically and

predicted like you said there's going to be another war drafted, not literally drafted. they were already in the service but they were going to lead the innovations. >> guest: the invasion of italy. well, italy is taken on partly because once you commit to a kind of logic to being in the mediterranean. there is a general agreement as the campaign in tunisia was unfolding and that ended in may of 1943. but the next obvious step is sicily. it's basically a large aircraft carrier in the middle of the mediterranean. and you need basis for the air campaign you want to launch against the axis enemy especially in germany so sicily makes a certain sense that once

you are in sicily it is only 2 miles across the straits so the decision was made we will go to southern italy. there are more bases, there is a certain sense to that, too he becomes a self-fulfilling process. you get into southern italy in 1943 and you want to get to rome. you try to knock the guy telling in doubt. well right away they quite as we are invading the. we in devin italy until the end of the war, 1945. >> guest: part of that is to tie up the troops to keep them away from normandy in their defensive positions. the other part is that there's a momentum to it. the british are very keen on prosecuting the war matt.

it occurs in the war but it doesn't necessarily hold up and you'll get is 70 years after and say why does it do that? the second question about patent, he had to soldiers in 1943 on sicily. we lost control of himself. they were lingering but in fact both of them were in hospitals. if that were to happen today, she would be a cashier from the army and i think rightly so. i just think in a democracy you cannot have your general slapping private soldiers around pity if it did not happen to patton. he was pushed aside for a while as you say. the fact remains secret for several months panetta the story didn't begin until november of

1943 to the end of wasn't roosevelt that intervened. it's eisenhower were trying to decide what to do with his problem and after contemplating a for a while and they had been friends for red. as you recollect - a fine commander he decided he would not. but it cost him probably the role announced a senior american ground commander in normandy. he is shunted aside for several months. he's miserable. and the period of. he had brought on himself and i think eisenhower actually chose a fairly wise course. the third question ninth.

eisenhower believe the second world war was inevitable. they called him a alarmist. after being reduced to a skeleton of itself after world war i they aren't thinking we are going to identify pat-down and belvoir one. he's a lieutenant colonel in 1939 to get he ascends to the five-star rank and something like 45 months. so there is not a deliberate attempt. it happens in part because they prove themselves to be capable professionals. george marshall this chief of the army has an 1939. but they haven't specifically been designated in any way as the future leaders of the armed

forces in a world war ii. >> host: a world war ii veteran. for 30 years since i've been retired at the infantry in world war ii. i've read two of your books. two things i would like you to think about. the rifle company of to hundred 20 men plus the replacements. on d-day there was the high point and it had flanking. the third battalion was wiped

out and the second, the in that taking it. but if it had even written about that when it put. we need a writer like you who are not able to stop the abuse. as of that is a couple things. if you think about it. if you sign that. thank you for the call with a comment. i agree with the service academy and the service. some have been -- some of the leadership has been a little cavalier about and i guess if you treat them properly and unless you.

i am hopeful that the secretary hagle has taken this on and that he's going to hammer some people until the proper thing is done and appropriate training is done. it's important to remember women have only been at the county since i. there is a life span of west point which we had in 2002. so we are trying to get it lower. with respect to -- i agree there is a lot to be done. i want decidable be done by me. i'm not going to do the specifics. but i'm going to leave for a war to with my publisher, henry, that i'm going to do a trilogy on the american revolution. i've been reading trying to get smarter.

they tell them in the tactical foxhole view and the obligation strategic views. and to talk with the characters. the characters are just as fantastic. not only the one you know about like george washington but why -- so that's a line going to do. but surfing. he's written books on the guadalcanal, a loyal biography of mccarthy. he is well into volume one. i will tell him that there are stories. it means to be a certain look. >> host: can you discuss the writing process? how do you know in new.

some have found to the dismay. i think being a newspaperman for many years it's actually helpful and part of it there's a certain this of one light you are accustomed to making decisions about what to throw out and leave and how to make a judgment on the fly. i do the research, it lasts years, i go to archives and read the secondary material. i really -- and i do most of it myself. i don't have researchers could i put a mark on wall and say i'm stopping here. there will be things i don't know, things i never know. this story which was a bottomless, there will be things to right now. i said i'm stopping here. and at that point i.

for this latest book i use the out lanning software in a word. i think it is the greatest invention since the plow. it allows me to not only have a map of where it's going when it's time to write the book but it serves as an index. it tells me where everything is in my notes to vignette when i finish the out when i sit down and write about a thousand words a day to the light can write pretty quickly. that is about the equivalent to a newspaper a day story. ..

>> there were terms adopted in world war ii so that -- but by the time our involvement in north africa began issue much that had. learn in the earlier war was forgotten, and they had to learn it again. it's not just with respect to neuropsychiatric issues, but we

forgot other things about trench foot, for example. they are learning it again in north africa, and they learned quickly how -- that treating it in various ways is more effect ithan others. most soldiers showing signs of combat fatigue is exhaustion. it's combat exhaustion another term for it. they would tend to knock them out, sometimes letting them sleep for several days at a stretch trying not to, except in the worst cases where soldier had really come unglue, they try not to ship them too far to the rear. they wanted to keep them close to the units help to preserve their self-respect and their links to their units, so all this went on. it's important to know there were 900,000 american soldiers hospitalized for

neuropsychiatric disorders in world war ii. it was an enormous toll. today, you have to say treatment of ptsd is pretty sophisticated. we learned a lot from the experience of world war ii, korea, and vietnam. we didn't have the diagnosis of ptsd after world war ii. it's clear to me there were thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of soldiers who came home from war and suffered some experience of it in ways we would now recognize, and, yet, it was not diagnosed then. today, they are better at diagnosing it. they stigmatize it, terrific combat leaders like the first infantry division for a while, now the top american general in africa saying, look, i recognize i've got symptoms of ptsd. oi need treatment. well, when the regime's saying that, it allows the privates and

the sergeant and lieutenant to come forward and say, okay, i also need it. it's not the end of the career. it won't be the end of my comrade's respect for me. we've come quite a ways in that ward. >> host: this is booktv on c-span2, our "in-depth" program, the guest, the last of the trilogy, "guns of last light" came out last month, and he writes, this is from august 1944, "the u.s. stock market tombled in an anticipation of pe and falling corporate profit." >> guest: you know, this is after the the success that we finally had in normandy.

british breakthrough, and the germans have really no good place to defend until they get to the german border, so we are pushing them across france. we have them bottled up in a place which is between normandy and paris. a lot of them get away. we kill or capture 40,000 or so, but many get away, and yet there's a great feeling of elation, jubilation, the germans are on the run, and so what you find at home as paris is liberated august 25th is is a belief that, okay, it's all over, but the shouting, and that the war is essentially done, that the germans have been defeated, and the next stop is berlin, and there were people who were making plans to

celebrate victory in europe day in august or september of 1944, and, of course, it does not happen quickly as anyone hoped, and the war drags on until may. >> host: paris, august 1944 from the book, "germans spoke in signs, shop fronts replaced by plaques warning supplier of the boss, collaborators pelted with sacks of excriminate, and women strippedded to the waste with swastikas paymented -- painted. they had sheered another wretch, leave her alone, you're all collaborationists. the newspaper resumed publication called arrests and purges, some 900,000 french men and women would be arrested in the purge of whom 125,000 were

forcedded to answer in court for their behavior during the occupation. ron in washington, hi, ron. >> caller: yes, good afternoon, thanks for taking my calls, honor to speak with you. turns out, both my questions have been answered already pretty much, so i'd just like to say that consider the liberation trilogy deserves the same description that roosevelt gave the allied normandy campaign itself, a mighty endeavor. the it's elegant. grateful you followed fdr's priority in addressing european theepter first, disappointed, though, you're not going to turn the attention to the pacific theater where i had my father and two uncles in that theater as well as an uncle in the european theater, and one in the it was first before mcarthur

got there. my question on the italian campaign, though, you noted the british military his tore yaps, several included that the italian campaign was a leadlessly cause show. i want you to go further on that, especially when rome was capture, they diverted a lot of divisionists to the invasion of southern france, post d-day. didn't that more or less argue that the campaign continued in italy after that was up necessary? >> >> guest: well, that's a good question. thanks so much for the generous comments and for that good question. you know, i think there's a plausibility to what you say. there is some sense in capturing southern italy because there are very good airfields, and if you

want to hammer with strategic bombers, not just england, but flying south from italy, hitting oil fields and oil facilities, and plant, and all the rest of the cities, then having those air feels make some sense. as i suggested earlier, the further north you go, the less sense it makes. now, part of the plan, strategic rationale for it is to tie up as many german divisions as you can, and there are more than 20 german divisions including good ones fighting in italy, 20 divisions not facing you in nor map di. i think there's justification with respect to that. you're absolutely right that after rome falls, the decision has been made there's an invasion of southern france. it happens on august 15th, 1944. it was supposed to be simultaneous with the normandy

invasion, but it was delayed months because of shortages of landing crafted and so on, and we pull some of the best units from italy, and the french pull all of their forces. now, the french, in my estimation were as good as anybody, and they had the best field commanders, but we had a country to liberate. i can't justify having four or more french divisions fighting in italy when the opportunity obtains to fight through normandy or to come through southern france. right now, there's seven divisions r and there's many more going through southern france pulled out of italy. the british are bitterly opposed to it. church hill is beside himself, hysterical over the notion of the invasion of southern france, and he believes that if you're

going to invade somewhere else and not just fight in italy, fight up to the river valley and keep the pressure on the germans from there, that you should invade through the head of the adrey yatic, go through a gap, a way to get towards vienna. eisenhower said i'm not going through a gap i can't pronounce. the big boys on the block put their foot down, and churchill has to exceed to the demands of eisenhower and roosevelt, as it turns out, this southern france invasion will take place, that the forces in italy will be reduced, but the fighting continues in italy in 1945 partly to keep forces tied up not allowing them to reenforce the normandy front. >> host: december 1944 from the guns at last light,

particularly alarming to gis with a theater wide cigarette shortage. u.s. army soldiers alone smoked more than a million packs a day in europe, a million packs of cigarettes a day. yeah. you, and dwight eisenhower did more than his share. i mean, here's a guy spoking four packs of cigarettes a day himself. yeah, cigarettes included in rations. soldiers got several cigarettes in every ration pact, and you could take the ammunition, but, lord, not the cigarettes. there was a shortage, a serious shortage. it more to do with shipping issues than natural, physical shortage of cigarettes, and the troops were rioting. this was a big problem for eisenhower. he switched brands to a lesser, cheaper brand in order to show sol solidarity with the soldiers rather than the camels he

usually smoked. patton smoked as many cigar z as churchill, 20 a day sometimes, patton gave them up to show long suffering with the troops who had tobacco shortages. it was part of the culture. you know, you look back and think, my god, what were we doing? they were short of breath climbing the hills of the mountains or fighting in december, but it was a different age, and that was part and parcel of the entitlement a gi expected. >> host: hard to find pictures ofize p hour smoking? >> guest: no, no. it was photographed. there's quite a few pictures with eisenhower with a cigarette. >> host: nateen, a world war ii veteran in huntsville, alabama. good afternoon.

>> caller: hello, thanks very much for taking my comment. i'm a world war ii veteran, 86 years old, and i'm concerned about the people that's committing suicide from the battles. there was a lady that came on, but i was not able to talk to her, so i was wondering if he could get the message, what i'm going to say to her, that the reason i think a lot of soldiers are committed suicide is because of the money because a lot of them, when they get discharged, some of the parents may even be dead then. they go into a city that they don't know anyone, and them they don't have any -- so many of them are sleeping under the bridges and things because they don't have anywhere to go and all of that, so if the army, you know, could give the pay when

they leave the army, we got a 300 pay dissh i don't know, it was so long ago, but we got paid, and we got what they called a 5220. for the first year, we got $20 a week so that we could get adjusted, and i lived with my oldest brother, and i gave ten dollars to him for represent and lived off the other ten dollars a week. >> host: what was your, and we are listening to the comments, but where were you stationed in world war ii? what was your experience? >> caller: oh, i'm from california, los angeles, california, and i was stationed in france and also in germany for a short time. >> host: what was your job? >> caller: 3 #37 engineers, a truck driver, the duty to just take the emps out to the airfield, and then i was free to go to the -- to the red cross

and play ping-pong, whatever, until it was time to pick them up, and then i picked them up and took them back to camp. >> host: thank you for calling in, appreciate it. >> guest: yeah, thanks, thanks for your service. yeah, suicides today are alarming. the new york times had a long story on the subject and statistics are of grave concern of anyone who cares about soldiers, the army, and relationship to the public, and the rates were less than the general population, and now they are equal to or greater than. soldiers, when they leave the military, do get certain benefits, and many soldiers go in precisely for the education benefits they get, and you can build up a good nest egg, but that doesn't necessarily deal with the psychic scars you may

have. there were suicides, of course, among world war ii soldiers. it was not uncommon. >> host: do you have macro numbers? >> guest: i do not. there were 291,000 battle deaths in world war ii, and that difference between 2891 and 4 # 00 includes suicides and accidents and disease and so on. you know, i think the pentagon is taking it seriously with efforts to coup sill soldiers as they get out. there's efforts to make commanders notary public commissioned officers more aware of societal symptoms and symptoms of depression and so on, but i think you are right. you are taken out of the structured environment when you muster out, and you go off to wherever, school, looking for a job, and it's not just the military that needs to worry about it. when you look at the aggregate

numbers of unemployment among veterans ahigher than unemployment numbers totally in the country, you know there's something wrong about the way we're dealing with veterans in the way we're trying to help veterans after they finished their service. >> host: back to the book, december 1944,ize p -- eisenhower's provost estimated in december 18,000 american deserts roamed the european theater and 10,000 others. the equivalent of a division of military fugitives was believed to be hiding in the per sha, often joining forces with local black marketeers to pee dale rations nor 75 crepts from the tailgates of stolen army trucks, and hundreds of vehicles vanished every day or simply selling the entire deuce and a half for $5 ,000. >> guest: yeah, a lot of bad behavior, no doubt about it, and i think it's important to reck

needs that all the brothers value yept and sisters virtuous. that's nonsense. that's not how it works in the army or out of the army. there was 23,000 deserts in the world war ii, thousands of courts marshalls for felonies, and hundreds of thousands for lesser crimes, misdemeanors basically, and this misbehavior was common. there were rapes, 130 some soldiers executed usually for murder and/or rape in europe in world war ii, french villages, especially in normandy that protested american soldiers and british, and complaints from eisenhower that french women were afraid to go out at night without escorts because they were accosted. this is a part of war. war makes good soldiers do bad

things and bad soldiers do terrible things and i think to believe otherwise is not to understand what war does to the soul. this behavior, it's part of the story of world war ii. >> host: roger in california, go ahead with the question or comment. >> caller: yeah, i was a machine gunner if the first infantry in vietnam, and i taught at cal state, psychology of violence and survival, and your comments are just right on the money. it's really true about what it does to soldiers, but i wanted to ask you i read all three volumes, and your work is not just good, it's brilliant. i hope you get a pretty ser on the latest one. about montgomery. at the command level, there's

enough mania to go around, i think, but month come ri, i think, took the cake, and you're descriptions of the political rig ma roll going on with him are just impeccable. i had to laugh sometimes. it's confirming in other command ways, a lot of stuff you had there. if you could just comment any on how you felt about month come ri, and have you thought about putting your political x-ray eyes on to the vietnam war? thanks. >> guest: thanks, roger, and thank you for the kind comments. montgomery is a piece of work, no doubt about it. the last question first. it is time for somebody to look at vietnam. i think you can believe 40 years after the fact while there's still many veterans like roger who is still alive, there are

documents classified for a long time now unclassified, and that the time may be right for somebody to take on vietnam. i think the best book out there is neil's bright and shining line in 1998, i believe. it's not going to be me. i now look at the revolution. i only do one at a time. maybe if i finish the revolution, maybe vietnam, we'll see. montgomery, gosh. it's important to recognize, first of all, i have sympathy for him because he's got a very difficult childhood, grows up in tasmania, his father is a bishop, has an awful mother. she's kind of loveless, and she is forever saying find out what bernard is doing and make him stop, and so he is shipped off to school in london, and it's a boarding school, and he has to make his own way, and there's an

emotional vir jillty about him that plays out in month come ri's psyche as a self-absorption. there's a guy who is very much involved with himself with poor issue social skills in recognizes how others see him. to some extempt, he doesn't care, but he doesn't pick up cues you'd hope. he's important to the british empire in the sense that church hill's government is on the ropes in north africa, and it's not clear that month come ri, that the british army is going to survive in egypt in 194 # 2, and montgomery is sent out, and he does win a victory, and churchill, thereafter, is the 2349 debt. there's no illusions about a difficult character. there's a german general captured in north africa, and

someone told churchill that toma had been invited for lunch, and churchill said, poor, toma, i, too, have dined with month -- montgomery. eisenhower had to deal with this guy from north africa through sicily, italy, until they both leave at the end of 1943 to prepare for the invasion of normandy, a trial of eisenhower's generalship and a greater trial of the skills as a politician. this is why she's supreme commander. roosevelt calling him the best politician among generals, and that's part of holding together a coalition against all the forces that always pull at a coalition trying to pull it apart, and so, you know, eisenhower and month come ri

almost fall apart, fall away from each other to the extent they ask to have him relieved, and it almost comes to that. it does not. it's a tribute toize p -- eisenhower he can finesse this, but he's great fun to write about, montgomery, you could not invent him if you were a novelist. >> host: where does charles fit in? >> guest: another prima donna with an ego. he thinks he's a tie rapt in the making. he thinks he's not really a democrat, meaning a small "d" democrat, and he does not want to acknowledge that the degall is, in fact, the legitimate head of free france and sees that, in fact, has broad popular support among french mep, that he's really the only guy to deal

with, and there's a certain legitimacy, and, again, degal cob insufferable, but eisenhower turns the other check there and basically harnesses forces to a common good. >> host: speaking of generalize p hour, this is the guns at last light, and nor was eisenhower help, the supreme commander proved an indpint field in sicily, and now he continued in the deficiency watching for more than a week without recognizing or rectifying the command shortcomings of his two chief lieutenants. >> yeah,ize p hour's not a good field marshall, and he's not a battle captain and does not see the field the way great captains

do. he does not have the ability to come nate a battlefield, but that's not his job. his job is, as he defined it, is to be chairman of the board, that's the phrase used. he's chairman of the largest enterprise on earth with the task to hold together this coalition against all the forces. his job is to provide the beans and bullets and bombs necessary to win the war with the job to find the right men who can lead other men in the dark of night, the right men who are the battlefield commanders he needs, and that, i think, he's brilliant. i give him credit where credit's due, and i'm willing to call a spade a spade saying there are occasions, including the pockets where he simply does not see what's happening on the battlefield, does not intervene, he, at the straits in sicily,

does not see the germans and italians get away, and there's several occasions where he simply does not show the skills needed to qualify as a great captain. that's okay. that's not his job. >> host: from the ted theater roosevelt association, this is a tweet. we are so in awe of tr's son, ted roosevelt, what's your thoughts about his service. he's teached in the book. >> guest: in all three of them, and i love writing about him, an extraordinary character. here's someone whose father is the 26th president, young ted tries to live up to a father who is carved on mount rushmore, and he volunteered for world war i, performs rather heroically, wounded in the war, and between the wars, he's very accomplished. he's one of the founders of the american legion.

he's publishing books. he's with double day, chairman of american express, and he's the governor regime of the philippines and puerto rico, and explorer, but he's extruer their, and world war two comes, and he's in the 50 #s at this point. a h at utah beach, been in north africa, in sicily, relieved of command, first assistant commander, breaks his heart, but he get the's chance, comes back with the fourth division, in the first wave at utah beach, recognizes the landings are going badly, that the currents and navigation areas pushed them off course, and he tells his men as they land urn fire on utah beach, stat the war from here, and he never knows because he dies of a heart attack a limit more than a month later in july.

never knows he'll be award the the medal of honor and get his own 90th division. i appreciate him. a beautiful writer, letters home to his wife are fantastic. i hated to say good-bye when he dies in july of 1944. >> host: stormville, new york, good afternoon, howie. >> caller: hello, it's harry. >> host: oh, harry, hi. >> caller: he hole, -- hello, i read two of the books, the trilogy, and well into the third and enjoy them. two questions. the first one is about lloyd, the commander of the seconds core.

the allies tried to cut the germans from tunis and failed to do that from the rush from the invasion area, and they formed positions to defend quite a long front. rapid launched the pass, a disaster, but lloyd was replaced after that as commander of the second core. bradl ergs y recommended the replacement, and eisenhower was satisfied with him saying positive things about him up until then, and the question, i guess, here is do you think he was a fall guy, and do you have any other insights? >> guest: well, thanks, harry. i think that lloyd is the wrong man for the job, and i think that he demonstrated that aptly. i tookize --

took eisenhower awhile to recognize that as he feels his way, and when a commander is sent to him by the chief of staff, who is not only eisenhower's superior, but ten years old, and eisenhower reveres him, and when marshall and mcnear, the chief of army grown forces send lloyd out as respectively the senior combat leader for the u.s. army, eisenhower is going to take awhile to recognize this guy is not up to snuff. there were suspicions, shared them, and they may have been a coward. i don't know that that's true. i don't know they are there to make that kind of damning charge against him. there's ample evidence that he is not the guy to lead second core. when he passed, offensive begins february 14 #th, 19433, he is

nearly parollized. -- paralyzed. he's a hundred miles back from the front. he's taken precious engineering resources, digging in herdquarters from the side of a quash ri, and he recognizes that he is not anywhere near the front, showing signs of being afraid, and showing a less energy. he's relieved, sent home, gimp the third star, given command of the training army in the united states. it's really the last time that eisenhower will be so benign in treating someone relieved for cause. >> host: half way through the program with rick, and this afternoon on booktv, and if you're on hold, i promise, we'll get to the phone calls, stick with us for a few more minutes, promise. he's the author of "the long

gray line," american journey, the untold story of the persian gulf war, and then the beginning of the liberation trilogy, army at dawn, war in north africa, 2002, in the company of soldiers, a chronicle of combat about the iraq war in 2004, and a day of battle is the second in the trilogy, and the war in sicily and italy coming out in 2007, and his final volume in the trilogy, the guns at last light, came out last month. in 2003, c-span covered you talking about the importance of war correspondence. here's what he had to say. >> it's a matter of keeping faith, that's what it comes down to ultimately for me. the issue came up recently. i consider myself a recovering journalist. i, for four years, have not

worked in the news room, write booking full-time now, write specifically about world war ii so i know about war correspondence in world war ii and motivations, but the issue came up again recently with the crisis of sorts in iraq, and i found myself examining my own motivations and own relationship to the military, my own relationship to the journalism, even as i consider myself a historian now, and decided sometime a couple months ago if push comes to shove, i want to be a part of that. why is that? i just turned 50. my knees don't bend as well as they used to. used to a comfortable life in washington. i have two taming -- teenage kids. why do we do this? i find, and i'm hoping, planning to deploy with the 101st airborne, it's part of the

obligation of those who serve and part of the part of those here at home to try to tell the story as both shaun and joe said as completely and fairly as possible to tell it as completely as you can to honor the service of those who serve without being coon thed by the military, and there are not a lot of people who can do that, trying to tow the line of the institution of the military, and representing, even though no one elected us, the interest the larger republic falls on a fairly small group of people, and in this case, war correspondence, it's an important duty and speedometer, and i think it's incumbent to

those who are willing to do it, find the attractiveness of the work to go ahead and do it when you can. ♪ ♪

♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> host: and "in-depth" continues, and the next call comes from russell in connecticut. russell is a veteran of world war ii.

>> caller: hello? >> host: hi, russell, how will you, sir? >> caller: i'm find, thank you. thank you for taking my call. i was command officer of a gun boat. >> host: turn down the volume on your tv, sir. just listen through the phone. >> caller: oh, i was commanding officer of a gun boat in the south pacific in world war ii, and navigator for transport squadron. in the he's and north africa. during korea. i have just finished manchester's third volume on churchill, and i wondered what your reaction was to that book. >> guest: thank you, i don't have a reaction because i have not read it yet. i read the first two, and then he died before he could finish the third one, and i know as a

cowriter, the third came out, and it's well received, but i have not gotten around to reading it get. i will. it's on the list. >> host: next call from guy in colorado. you're on, go ahead. >> caller: privilege to speak with you. i read and enjoyed several of your books, and i really appreciate you. i also read with the "with the old breed," account of the horror faced between fighting in the pacific, and i was moved by it. can you recommend a similar book written by an american soldier who fought in the european theater? thank you. >> guest: well, i rely on

journalists, using that more than most historian historians y because i was one and have sympathy, but they are also paid, all claimed underpaid professional observatives, and i lean on them heavily, and people that you know, like ernie pyle, and others you don't know, wrote about new guinea, covered the war, and then wrote a really wonderful little book called "conquers' road," that's, you know, i have a list on the website, liberationtrilogy.com, books recommend by both historians, but also some of the first person accounts. nothing quite like sledge's book, that comes out of the european theater. there's some got personal

accounts written by soldiers at all levels and good memoirs. i think the memoir -- a general, not at sledge's level, but holds up well. bradley wrote two memoirs, and soldier story and general's story, and there's nothing that quite has the resonance and grittiness of sledge's book. >> host: you mentioned ernie pyle. this is from the day of battle in pyle's featured in all your books as well. this is pyle writing about italy. i looked at it this way, if by having only a small army in italy, we had been able to build up more powerful forces in england, and sacrificing a few thousand lives that winter, save a half million lives in europe. if those things were true, it was best as it was. us not sure they were true, i

only knew i had to look at it that way, or else i couldn't bear to think of it at all. >> guest: incredibly poignant, one of the reason of pyle's great power. you just feel here's a guy bearing his soul in a way. my admiration for him only deepens. here's a guy from indiana who ends up in washington writing about aviation and things before the war, and then somewhat accidently becomes a war correspondent. i think he wrote millions of words before the war began, and, of course, he got the knack of empathy, and that's always with the grunt. he's with them. goes through hardship unlike very what others do.

he's in his 40s, no spring chicken, not a healthy man, drinking too much, weighs maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, and so he's not a robust character, and, yet, here's here's living an awful life with other infantry men, and, of course, they love him for it, respect, admire him, and he's a beautiful writer. he writes so much there's inevidentbly junk in there. he's got to feed the bulldog every day, but pass cammings like that are so illuminating, so touching, and so vibrant that i just find he leaves the european theater, had enough, fell apart, in fairs, and he doesn't enjoy it because he's sered by everything that he's seen and been through, and he simply has lost the ability to enjoy life even in the moments where he's participating in the

liberation of pare. he goes and says good-bye toed bradl ergs y -- says good-bye to bradley, and he is killed then late in the war in the spring of 1945. his grave is in honolulu. i lived there as a kid. i remember as an 11-year-old kid my father taking me to the grave. it's moving, even if you're 11 years old, and i think for us to have rememberedded the war, we ought to remember pyle. >> host: you have another quote in the guns at last light. pyle at d-day, a letter home to the wife or whatever, but it's, like, if i fing hear the word f-ing again, it'll be too f-ing

soon. >> guest: profanity is one of the things that gets on his nerve. he was not a man who didn't occasionally use a four-letter word himself, but anyone around soldiers a lot as i have, and he was around more than i ever even, but the intensity of the culture can -- particularly if you're a generation older as he was, it can cause you some sense of grievance, and there's an outcry of, you know, really tired of being around these guys, but i'm stuck with them for the rest of the war. >> host: if you're a world war ii veteran and want to talk, 202-585 #-3882. next call from martha in belgrade lakes, maine. hi, martha. >> caller: hi, peter, thanks, again, for another wonderful three hours. it's an honor to talk to a

journalist who writes history. i've been ensconced in the history reading, and this summer, i'm reading "bunker hill," and i still can't believe washington training in the french and indian war, and then ended up working with general gage and the -- when general washington was appointed for the american revolutionary war, here he is in boston, and they are retreating to go to new york and south carolina with the american revolution. i'm amazed at all of this, and -- >> host: hey, martha, do you have a question or wanted to make that comment? >> caller: i want to ask about all soldiers he has at that

particular time to fire the first shot. at lexington, there was a hesitancy, and i think of the civil war, nobody wants to fire the first shot. >> guest: well, there's plenty shots fired in world war issue. there was a book that was published after the war that estimated that a substantial number of soldiers in combat never fired any shots, that as many as i can't remember the figure precisely, but roughly 25% did not fire the weapons because they were too frightened or just thought they didn't have the opportunity, couldn't see the enemy, and, you know, that's a different thing that what you are talking about, but in world war world war ii, there's never reluctance to fire the shot once war is under way. i can't comment offend

lexington. i'm a reader of lexington, but not a historian of that period. >> host: tony in san diego, hi, tony. >> caller: i end joy -- enjoyed the long gray line it inspired me so much to go to the military academy, and i thank you for that. with that said, i want to comment about what that gentleman who fought said about the service academies and abusing the women. i just feel like the media really is not doing a good job covering the story. i went to the academy, as you know, and we sat through hundreds and hundreds of hours of sexual prevention. you know the rules about that place. we couldn't even sit op the same piece of furniture as a female cadet. the environment is so controlled and rigid, i don't know what more the academy can do. i mean, i think there's the media so eager to jump on this and say, oh, the academy is

fostering the environment of sexual abuse, and it doesn't link true with the experiences at the academy. >> guest: thank you for the call. it's not true for the overwhelming share of cadets and mid shipmen. in washington post today, there's a story about a mother of a female mid shipmen who alleges if she was raped by three other midshipmen, and it's appalling, and, you know, it's -- once is too often, not to say it's rampant or to say most cadets, most soldiers, most sailors don't recognize the right thing to do, and wouldn't intervene begin the opportunity to stop this sort of behavior. you know it may be that the rigid controls at a place like west point are part of the problem.

certainly, the class of 1966, for example, is all male. it's a hot house environment that does not allow in that time young 19 and 20-year-old men to have what most of the rest of us consider normal interactions with female students, and it's a wonder that the attitudes that many cadets are are not more distorted from that era. this is a different era. classes of women since the 1980s in the academy, and the academy and culture of the academy changed a lot about race and gender and so on, and i would never argue and i don't think anybody would argue that this is bad behavior, but it's incumbent on the nation to deal with this.

the # 1st century is a different place when it comes to the role of women in the culture, and including the institutional culture, places like the military academy. >> host: this is from bill ryan, and e-mail. i have always had an up answered question about the d day invasion knowing there was plenty of preinvasion intelligence covering normandy, so i'm perplexed the allies were so unprepared which hindered their advance and increased casualties. do you have any insighings on this? >> guest: yes, thanks for the good question. per perplexing, isn't it? so much attention is paid to getting across the beaches, and we see this in the earlier invasions in north africa, in sicily, and others that the ball game initially is just to get a food hold, and consequently,

there's short thrift given to what comes next in the case of normandy, yes, they recognize normandy, the american part of the invasion sector have a topographical oddity, built up over the centuries by farmer's clearing fields, pushing rocks and debris into walls issue essentially, and from the walls grow signs and trees and virtual lin inpenetrateble. they were reminded of the jungle of the south pa sick. -- pacific. even though there was a knowledge of this terrain they were going to encounter, there had not been sufficient thinking by those who should have thought about it about how to get through it and how it's going to complicate our lives and how

it's a nasty place to fight. omar bradley, for example, says he was vaguely aware, but could not imagine how bad it was going to be. that's an example of the intelligence and imagination. he should have been aware of it. there were studies down presented to omar and the other senior commanders saying, look, this is going to be unlike anything. these are not hedges where they are clipped and easily penetrate by tanks. these are fortresses essentially, and figure out how to deal with it is something that we need to be thinking about months before the invasion. well, it didn't happen. and that required a series of improvisations by american soldiers to come up with ways of blasting through them to fight op. >> host: a quote from a german general from the day of battle.

ever cheeky for a man who lost both the battle and a war, what observe in september 1945, that anglo-american commanders, quote, appeared bound to their fixed plans k opportunities to strike at my flanks were overlooked or disregarded, although german divisions of the highest fighting quality tied down in italy in a time they were urgently needed in the post areas. >> guest: yes. he is writing this while in jail, and he's in jail for years because he has -- admire him, one of the findest german field commanderrings, but he is cheeky. takes real hutspa to offer that critique of a guy who thrashed you badly, captured you, and imprisoned you. there's a point. opportunities are missed. german generals sometimes perplexed by the lack of

imagination, the lack of boldness and ally generals, and there's something to that. i mean, the point is this. there's been an argument going on for 70 years when a german battalion fought, the jeer -- germans were superior. so what? this is not what global war is about. it's not about confidence at the small unit level. it's about a clash of systems. which system can produce the men and women capable of producing the lo gist ticks, transportation, the material support? which system can produce the commanders that can effect? which system can design, build, transport, and detonate an atomic bomb? the germans couldn't muster enough to cross the english channel to invade england in

1940. the american arm forces project power in the pacific, at lap tick, mediterranean, seven seas, endless heavens, and so that notion of tactical superiority is, in my opinion, beside the point. >> host: where ring, yodel, were they committed nazis or army men? >> guest: army men for the most part committed nazis, not party members r per se, but under the swat of the furyk, and certainly a willing to benefit from ideology, and, you know, they lived in a house from a jewish family. they did not step in to stop the

deportation of jews from italy or north africa for that matter. for generals to claim, as so many did after the war, one dead by then, but many of the survivors claim they were simple soldiers following orders, not part of the ideology, but segregated, this is false, and the german was very much a part of the death machine of the third reich, and that's why people ended up in prison. >> host: watching booktv on c-span2, this is "in-depth," and hew is a vet in california. hi, hugh. >> caller: hi, thank you for your books. the question seems to be an extraordinary sustained and virgining interest in world war ii that growing up in the 30 #s that i didn't see regarding the

civil war let alone world war i, and i wonder from your perspective as a historian, what factors you athreated to the sustained interest? thank you. >> guest: well, thanks for that question, hugh. i think it comes in cycles. there was an interest in the civil war resur gent interest in the 1890s. there was app ash -- an interest with the burn series, and so i think that waves of it come along. in the case of world war ii, of course, 70 years more or less after the fact, and i believe what we are seeing now of the 16.1 in uniform, 1.3 million american veterans still alive dying at the rate of 800 a day,

and next year, the number is below a million for the first time. ten years later in 20 # 24, the number will be below a hundred thousand. the generation inevitably, as generations do, is slipping away, passing over, and i think we'll find children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren now who are keen to understand what their fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers did because it's part of the heritage. ..