reagan series. greatness and patriotism is not enough. but the scholars who change the course of conservative politics. texts and tweets with steven hayward live sunday at noon eastern on book tv on cspan2. ♪ tonight we are so pleased to welcome sarah rose for her new book d-day girls sabotaged the nazis and helps to win world war ii. sarah rose draws on recently declassified files, diaries and oral histories until the three week unknown story of three remarkableay women who destroyed train lines, ember should nazis, plotted prison breaks and gathered crucial intelligence. link the groundwork for the d-day invasion that proved to be the turning point in the war. called the 29 a thriller and form of a nonfiction book. in book list and star reviewed

the book is comprehensive and compelling. readers get to know these amazing will women as individuals as her duties unfolding as a backdrop of the war. rose smoothly integrates developing events withde biographical details and glimpses into french wartimein society. calling it a satisfying mix of social history and biography. sarah rose is the author of all the tea in china how england still the world's favorite drink and change history but she's written for the wall street journal, outside magazine, the saturday evening post, and men's journal. 2014 sheto was awarded price and travel writing center were so glad to have you here tonight, thank you. pricks thank you all for coming. before i start i want you to know you have a responsibility here. and that is i need you to ask w questions. going to give a little bit of a spiel the response ability is in

your hands to get me talking. so, with that in mind i want you to picture war being lost your three years into a living war you have nothing to celebrate is not about even succeeded in your city's been practically level to many respects by foreign bombing. all of europe isde gone. europe belongs to hitler forre there's not a democracy left on the continent. you get a call from the government. they say we need your help. you have three children, three little girls under the age of six. the youngest still in diapers. the government says we need your help. wes cannot quite tell you whate need you to do. but, will you come work for us? it will be very dangerous and you might not come home. was a mother with three little

girls, french born living in london she married an englishman. and the government called. her husband is at the front she's a single mother alone and she is givenhu this choice help england, help europe, helped democracy. leave your kids behind. i saw this as a very challenging choice. who leaves three little girls cepotentially motherless? if i was at the front potentially parentless. and odette friend the entire conversation in a mother's language patient what happens to my little girls if england is gone to? if it's not just europe but hitler has the last democracy left, england is also taken over. then where did they go? what kind of world of the growing up and then question should i as a mother do

everything i can to make it safer them? even if it means leaving them. and so she did. she joined the war. she was in the very first class of women into combat. the very first women in, or 39 women like a debt. they were mothers they were divorcees about to become grandmothers. they age from 22 -- 55. they were recruited by government agency, acy secret agency to parachute into france. to arm and train the french resistance so that when someday and it that day it was many years hence, when d-day arrives, it is this word for the day everybody came back in the fight back to the continent. when d-day arrived, their arms in the hands of the occupied nation. there was training that wenthe

hitler went to the beaches to defend against the invading allies they were somewhat at tht rear from getting his reinforcements to get to the beaches too. so odette, 30 old single mother with three small kids trained in parachuting and secret writing,- encryption, hand-to-hand combat she learns 100 ways to kill a man silently with their bare hands but she's onef of 38 womn who did the same thing. and we do not know about it. we do not know about it because then write war histories and women don't, until now. so "d-day girls" is the story of the very first class of the 38 women who were recruited. the recruit overseer's 1942 -- 1944. i wanted to focus on the pioneers the very first women to do a man's job. they weren't just doing a man's job they were doing a job women

were forbidden from. there's no more masculine space on earth in war. there's not a culture on the planet it's not have a combat taboo for women and children. they are swimming upstream and every single respect. it is not as if the allies got super awoke in the middle of the war and wanted to be magnanimous toward women. they had run out of men pay their three years into hitler's war every single man is at the t front. there is a very specific need. whoever goes to france has to speak french. that have to be habituated. they have to look like a parisian. they have to blend in. not just a full the germans because the germs are pretty easily fooled they're not french is not that good. they have to fool the french. three years into the work every able-bodied man has already been conscripted. winston churchill gave his personal approval to send women

into combat in part because he really loved guerrilla warfare, he just thought it was cool. in part he did not have a choice. there were not soldiers on the continent but also in part because it made good battle sense. you could say 40 or 50000 men in combat if you were to put women in soldiers rolls. if you allow them to shoot a gun at an airplane over london. what general would not try to make use of every available asset? if there women in england who spoke french well enough to teach a teenager in france how to use a gun and they wanted to go, they should go. so with winston churchill's blessing they went. there are the very first women in combat. a debt is not alone she is the first in her class was a woman who was in every respect different than odette. odette was very grandiose.

she was very dramatic. her wort was an adventure it was a romantic thing she could do to help. elyse was an aristocrat, colonial island off the coast of africa. it had been french used as a stop on the way to its far east empire. he spoke french growing up she had a british passport but she lived in paris most of her adult life. the day hitler marches and she becomes an enemy alien. if she stays in france she will end up in ahe concentration cam. so she flees via spain and gibraltar. she gets to london were brothers always working for secret government agency. hence her name to a recruiter. for her it's a very commonsense decision. white wouldn't i do everything to say france? there is no balance to it for her.

she parachutes in and the very second e-mail terror trooper ever in history. but in the system that captured my imagination about the story, she was commanding troops in normandy on d-day and we do not know about her. there were soldiers under her command, answering to her orders. she was second in command of resistance behind enemy lines. on the most important day of the 20th century and you have not heard heron name. she was second paratrooper second female paratrooper ever. first had not -- had even more interesting story her name is andre she was 22 and into france. untried with completely different. lease is a colonial high-class

very upper-class verysi educated parisian. andre left school at 14. she was a counter girl at a bakery. but when hitler marched into paris sheet marched out with 6 million other frenchmen she walked south of the dick tatian line into an occupied france. and volunteered to become a member of the red cross. she trained as unders. what working as a nurse she joined the underground. she became apartment underground railroad she helpedth get 65 allied airmen out of france back to england so they could continue bombing hitler. sixty-five is a high number per the entire underground railroad over the course of the war liberated about 600 airmen but she was responsible for one tenth. she was so good at it and so successful they put a price on her head. at a moment somebody betrayed her and her partner.

she had to leave france via the underground railroad. so she hikes over the pyrenees, gets to spain stay but she saysh no i have to get back in the fight. she goes to london she trained as a secret agent and parachute back to france. goes to paris where she becomes a member of the resistance that raises up the entire battery circuits only channel coast ahead of the d-day landing.t basically the moment of this idea of guerrilla warfare in france takes root as a systematized governmental strategy for taking on hitler on the day of an attack no one has yet named.re women were part of the battle plan. and women were there leading troops, making a difference. sip is a first in the matter they made a difference.

on june 5, 1944 a signal goes out to all of france it is an encoded signal they know what they are about to hear. and it says guys, we have been dropping weapons. we have been explosives to you for two years. we've been training it we've been teaching you how to use these, this is the night we need you to put all that into action. they get the signal on the bbc the ninth of june 5 our chip before the allies arrive. and they go to work. they blow up bridges, they blow up train lines, they dropped trees across roads a take down power lines they take down phone lines p. when the allies arrive at 6:00 a.m. june 6, 1944 normandy is isolated. you cannot get there from anywhere else in france.

nineteen or 50 cuts roads in maine bridges all over france set hitler wants to get his reinforcements to the beaches he can't. d-day was not a given. it was never obvious d-day was going to work. having time for the allies to get their foothold, for them to get their supplies on the ground, every moment every battle or change the equation of that victory. it took hitler three weeks for his tank divisions to reinforce the beaches. those were critical three weeks and it all happen because the french resistance but it all happened because the pellets formed the french resistance. they were able to arm because that women were part of thatrt plan. you don't know about it because men history. until now. so with that in mind this was a very fun book to write.

not only was it a great meaty story there's no one or worse on earth than a nazi. there is no better story than her was not know about. it was fun and lots of other respects for it is fun to research because these women were my age everyday ordinary women thought if they could do it i at least try? so i jumped out of an airplane. i learned to shoot a gun. i went to his boot camp because they had to go to a boot camp. try to learn morse code i tried to go through much of the training that they went through. only to discover i would make a very bad spy. [laughter] it's not something everybody can do not only was i not fluent in french i've never spoken any french. the person i had to do was move to and learn french.

it's a very fun book to write because a very fun book to research. it was fun to interview the veterans and their families was also fun to write because you get to blow stuff w up. which is a writer is just fun. i bet i'm going to redo is about one of my characters, someone who worked with andre and odette actually. it was 45 she was the first sabotage agent. to send her and she was about to become a grandmother. they thought oh my goodness frenchen teenagers are they goig to respect her at all of the going thing the allies are sending a joke? he must be in such a bad way to be sending grandma's to train troops. but in fact she was the very first she was incredibly successful at her job as we are about to see. so parachute receptions, new

moons with both sky went dark set for the stars long sabotage as autumn turned to winter ivanka and a small party travel to a little village. petit barely 5-foot 200 toasters a student of yoga adventure turned to his weight hovered it on the 80 was the only person who could do the job the allies needed them that night. ivanka suspended in the parachute harness or rigging lines quadrupled foror strength, dangling over or rearward tracks will searching for the ground. flashlight beam slice through cloud on her light there was nothing inc. blackberry tunnel entrance at night. no hints of light and played in from the openings on either end of the underpass. there were no noises either before the steady drip of water somewhere. her hands were cold and sticky and smelled like almonds in the chemical residue of plastic explosives. her clothing was tattered and a

pair of underwear she wash and ring out every night. but also some how younger thanom the year before in the best possible sense for tricky years of her life sit her commanding officer but shoots 15 years younger and is definitely found her niche. her torchlight flooded the truck split revealing a shadow is upper running across the seams of france. as a straight drop down comp obstacle would impede a package of and splits as if it was lowered from the air shaft above. the path to the trackss was empy and delegated space. ivanka singled she had what she needed a view of the center of the tunnel depth and grade ofe the tracks under the sloping hill. she was hoisted aloft with swift precision by virtue of her delicate statute and flexibility she was the only person whoug could wriggle up to the ventilation shaft of the

passage. she was also the only one who could perform the reconnaissance by education and authority who might lead french partisan to blow up the railway tunnel. after all she said, i am the only one has been specially trained. the sabotage party was far from the underground explosion when s it began. small flash of light like a bolt of lightning, the sparks blossomed into a blaze and black smoke filled the tunnel. less pulsed and brief like an animal altering to the right flight of the start of warm yellow of a bonfire. the flames and grew until they consumed the passageway, shock waves ricocheted into the arches and shattered the walls. boulders bricks and debris tumbled down littering theth tracks. did not need to be near the village to file the choreography of the explosion, the blazers, the concussion the familiar symphony of elemental chaos

roared like a thousand tin cans crushed at once and lingered long after and hisses and pops. she knew it all too well. she had been home on the night of april 16, 1941 in london when herman had was the best nights of the blitzes. not one night of persimmon bombing lift off the st. paul's cathedral the height of parliament the lower courts in the national gallery. nazi command called a bombing declared we shall go out and bumped every building in britain marked with three stars. they also destroyed ivanka's home and working class. near victoria station to parachute mines and three high explosive bombs went off but what's the blast took out an entire terrace ofe houses. the top floor of ivanka's home was leveled. it was how she'd raised a

daughter to adulthood and watched a marriage crumble. where she confucian philosophy and practiceru meditation. she had played a boardinghouse mom to haphazard collection of bohemians, and kooks in substantially gone ceilings collapsed onto floors, chimneys stood alone severed from their surroundings. sewage flooded up pipes fires burned to the morning. at daybreak the neighborhood smelled of chard would masonry dust and decay. her large house was declared . uninhabitable. everyone survived. except the family cats it of her cats untimely demise more than anything else which made me somehow determined to fight back. and she did. so with that background i'm

hoping you all have questions for me. if not i will prompt you to hav. questions for me, yes please. ask the women in the book the 38 women only one is still alive. she is 98 lives it is dealing she's extremely unwell and private. she is in the book however. i got to the story almost at the very edge living memory therefore hundred 38 agents parachute into france when i started writing there are three alive. there are now too pretty got to interview one. there is a sense of sadness in this incredible story had passed from memory. there is also ann incredible sense of discovery. we do not get access to their files until they are dead. so i get to be the very first historian in some respects to witness the back start with the commanders thought, what was going on around them.

there are pluses and minuses they're extremely interesting people i got to know their families. but when you have that personal connection you also feel a personal connection. to fill the pole and desire to tell the story they want to tell and that they think is important to tell. which i did not want to do i wanted to tell a story as i sought from a journalist, historian and storyteller point of view and without feeling a obligated i wanted to honor them when it's built to that. believe that ideal. i did get up sheets to talk to people who had lived through this. but i did not get a chance to talk to my people. yes maria. >> women better than men because of. >> the important diplomatic

answers everybody who did this was amazing. they all went to meet her to behind the lines without any protections of the slope which they were incredibly brave theym were also incredibly human. so many of them made mistakes. the women didn't make more mistakes are in different mistakes thanhu men did higher success rate a third of the women were captured and killed and half of the men were captured and killed but there are so many more men there are ten it's not a very good sample comparison. but they had assets and many didn't happen the allies did noe realize. i think the allies would've hired women sooner had they understood how much they were giving up by not hiringg women. that were always there more women into occupied territories than men. men get captured men get killedh the demographics of war in incredible female place. limit on the home front or what's left of the home. and in france in particular it

was not a peace treaty. in a peace treaty everybody exchanges or soldiers who have negotiated settlement. it was kind of a pause and hitler kept the french army in jail throughout the war. they were in style logss in germany for four or five years. which meant the entire french army was in prison. there are many, many more women than there were men. there is also forced labor, slavery, slavery. in some men were shipped off to germany to build weapons for the war. which meant setting a man into the territory was a pretty obvious move you could see them, what were they doing question requires a 30 both able-bodied man not at war not in prison that's hotel. sent a woman in and look like every other person in france there is natural demographic

advantage. also because the work they are doing it was clandestine and the work the project was recruitment they discovered women were significantly better than men or i will say at an advantage by virtue of being women. it requires a lot of caretaking to say to disaffected frenchman a teenager who's about to be shipped off to germany, don't go. live in the woods. we will send guns to you and train you. it takes a lot of coaxing, controlling and listen to their concerns to get them to do that, to organize them. and when are good caretakers for your bread from the cradle to listen to other people's concerns. who is a men had to learn. the allies realizede recruitmet required a great deal of compassion and care taking care to get the most basic level. france was starving.

the french were lower than everyone else in europe and part with such a fertile place hitler plundered it to send everything to the eastern front. so france is starving. the alex recruiting french teenagers and old farmers to fight for the resistance could act the emperor they're getting food dropped from the sky. it needed a lot of female traitn to do the start. i don't know they were better they were more naturally equipped to. they taught the allies that in fact this was a very important part of a job. this was the first time this kind of warfare had ever been tried. there are no plans they discovered this was a reallyre important job for a spy in women were really good at it. out of question yes? >> how did you come across the

story in the first place? >> so i am a reporter. a lot of freelance work i knew i wanted to do a book i want to sink my teeth into one project. done sprint for the incense of the get is in the paper the next day i wanted a marathon. this is the 2015 a new that u.s. was lifting combat exclusion for all content rules as of january 1, 2016 in america a woman can see it in the combat role a man can be in. there's no or she is for bid including special forces that she can get to the training she can join the navy seals. of jennifer's 2016. this news story is coming women and war is even more interesting. this book i got up every winter because i don't like being cold. my friends are at the ballantine might pick him up and say

preference or in the military. they fight a preconceived public women in melt arc. they had executives look like junior mail executives females in the army should be junior males in the army and that is so not they are. they're incredibly feminine they are incredibly credentialed. i go hiking with the women and the omen that does not have a doctorate. your mind quickly interesting people and all that living extremely feminine products. they were interesting to me. women in war is interesting this new story was coming up and ian was sitting in a hot tub because that is hawaii. [laughter] i sort of ask the question who is the very first woman in war? if i was going to find may be vietnam story. event afghanistan iraq story i

could point to the first female combatants. a few google searches a little bit of digging andhe elaborate later it wasn't recent was it even vietnam recent. it was 75 years old. there were women in combat in world war ii. its core of limited world works with the purse women in combat i did not know about it and you know about it most of you. you did not know because men have not been telling the story. with that in mind i did a little bit of reading and i came up with what i thought was the story and i pinch-hit my editor, amanda cook about it at a project begat and i started learning french. as for their limit and comment on the russian front? >> there were women combating aggression from this is very important hunting 42 parts the first moment of women in combat. tapping on the russian front it's happening simultaneously on behind enemy lines.

in the west they were never categorized as combatants. the russians had no problems russians i think in part it so large the russians had a very different approach. for them it was a numbers game you are throwing bodies at hitler. you had it many more of them. you headed deep packet a policy bidder to recruit from. it was one more force you could add to h it overpowered force against hitler. also, in russia there was a force of women in the revolution dose considered an organized force. again not qualifies as combat. it's interesting as opposed to strength as a of differences that are minute but ultimately at up to world war ii , 42 women

being recruited. but women were being recruited and overfished. we did not call them soldiers in the east they did 1942 marks this moment are suddenly women are conscripted on a mass scale for the wars going on forever and it's mostly being lost you need every body you can. xps street puts these women were recruited england? three. >> how did america recruiting women spies. >> requests has really good question. spies covered a lot of ground. we have a very vague notion of what spies are. their intelligence agents, these were sabotage agents. there were americans in this force, virginia is the first to limit considered a member. she was a reporter. she worked for the "new york post". by virtue of being american she could go into unoccupied france. written couldn't british people's passports were not

allowed. however america was not in the war until 1941 it did not declare war on unoccupied france until after hitler took it over. still bitten by virtue of herhe passport. other mail agents came in she got them clothing, she got them housing, shut them all ration stamps she got them underground railroad. she had one leg she has this one by good american journalist helping allies out of france and arming and training other agents. she was american. there's another woman in the core's name is nora and her mother because her mary baker eddy and american. by citizenship standards which i

will go through she was thought american in a current sense in a very legal sense and our sense today she would be considered an american by virtue of her mom. she too is a celebrated agent. his father was indian. it actually cast a pretty widel net. recruitment was in london. the commanders were british. but the thing the entire cord needed is they could not have french passports. charles was not having any pre-did not like the idea of any frenchman answering to an allie. commander because he did not want fritz to be a colony of the allies at the end of the war. he could envision a moment where it was protected state under winston churchill. it was not so much better to him than being a state to hitler. he would not let his own citizens fight for this core

which meant ivanka the sabotage agent i just read about she was french born but married to anti italian. at a british passport because of debt was born in france she had a british passport it was kind of everybody but the french but they still had to be. yes.s. >> what did it look like? was it an officer? >> excellent question. it's very bureaucratic on the british side. you get a lot of summaries of having.tions people are you i get there training files. on the french side it's harder to find. where britain has what the sunshine and, everyone is dead old war is over have a look at our archives, france is very much the opposite. it's incredibly hard to shake material out of france. they have yet to come to grips

with their collaboration in world war ii. they only apologize for killing 76000 jews, french jews. in the mid- '90s they are very behind on their sense of reconciliation. that makes it bureaucratically very difficult to work in france. and everything in america's online, everything is great and brilliant go anywhere. so what it looks like in your retelling a story to these bits and pieces ofgh information, patching it together. you get a sense of people'sse personalities through these it dispatches through their interrogations. one thing that really struck me was not just the sexism but the anti-semitism and british government came in these files everyone is debt's you cannot be at them it's shocking how much

of it really speaks you through the page nobody had a problem with being it. [laughter] other questions? yes. the question and a follow-upst question. the first question is these were the first women to the west anyway. as a result of what they did the attitude shift and i'm guessing your answer so the follow-up question is you're going to go talk to some people in congress. will it shift as a result of your book? >> gosh i hope so. the reason one writes is not just to give you a lovely two nights on air but also maybe want to change the minds.

these wounded an amazing thing though when men came back on the front and these were symbols. britain was not very forthcoming of their work behind the lines but it was secret it was classified most governments don't tell you what's going onn the secret situations. but one third of these women end up in the camps. britain did not tell people. they were very closed about what happened. they became these symbols for country lying to itself. and rather than celebrating them as heroes and game changers they became a way for not being better in the war. but also happened as they were diminished almost immediately for even when they were doing it their work was considered clerical and secretarial. t and not as important as the men's but they were careers, they were radio operators the thing for men were couriers and

operas but they are celebrated soldiers and they were soldiers. not really have a mechanism for keeping women in the army. these women were during combat roles kind of like squeeze them into their existing without recognizing they deserve to occupy full status the service members. once the air of declassification came in these women are in the '90s that they survived this the greatest generation has become something to celebrate. we could talk about their missions we know about their missions at that moment they became the heroes they deserve heto be. but they had to survive about 65 or seven years after the war for that to be5, true. so my hope is that i knew i went to tells her about these women and war. and he wanted to tell story about war written by one because i am what i had not written wern

histories with any great hunger until this moment. i recognized how mail they were to once i got what i was doing a it was a very much my editor, amanda helping me understand this. it became fun to think about if it casts a feminine lens over everything it really changes our interpretation of the wholee w. winston churchill stops being this colonialist, imperialist bulldog. he becomes also a depressive alcoholic who likes to paint. and that was true he was always as well as an imperialist. men have not been telling that story. we've been getting a one-sided view of the entire ward women have emotional sides my hope is as more women write about it as more women are in war, more

attitudes will change. and certainly yes i'm going to speak to congress and i hope to change some of those attitudes. >> yes. >> first of all thank you for writing about this fascinating in uncovering this important part of women's history. i'm curious about the process of riding in terms of how long it took for research and writing. was not very separate? were you working a day job we are trying to write this book? >> i'm extremely fortunate for two years solid this is my job and nothing else. it took me about a year to research. which included learning french and another year to write too. from final submission to this her hand isg in about another year a lot of that was footnotes. it occupied my life for three years. the year of research any year of writing by enlarged in a year of

admin, thank you amanda. >> how did you learn french? >> first to the eye moved to a beach into immersive french. i'm extremely fortunate i have family in france that i love very dearly put they let me live with them a lot so i could do better and do my work. other questions? >> when you started your reading, there was something aboutg, the parachute which i dd not quite get before she could drop something. >> she is hanging in the tunnel and a parachute harness. >> no no she wants to hang over the tunnel she doesn't want to get to the ground for the need to pull her up. since they have these parachute harnesses that's how agents are being dropped in a just repurposed it for this and turned into a climbing harness for her so they could hang her over, use it as a swing. she can look at the tunnel below and they could pull her back up at. >> they didn't have helicopters

to head the polar questionere quicksilver pulling her up hand over fist. >> they drop them in as a bomber with a hole in the floor. they can only fly in on a full moon. and drop them on pinpoint. you would be in the fuselage of a plane that's not built for you. the bill for bombs. you are all tucked in they get you over the pinpoint and then they drop you in. you are about 8 feet over your target it's not like today where they drop you a mile up. alina pulls her parachute upou behind you and you hope it opens. you land in moonlit field in the dark in france at night. when you are blowing up a rare weight tunnel if you're being dropped in from above you are just wearing the harness and someone is holding you and using

it as a swing. >> no problem. >> being quite young when the war was over i was about five in the war was over pressas fascinated by the resistance. first the film showed chinese japanese did you review any films that showed women in this role? >> i tried to stay away from the fictionalized things like charlotte grady or bunty these wonderful celebrations of these women. i did not want to be infected by a fictionalized version of what was going on. i wanted to stick to what i was reading and getting for my interviews. but that said there are some excellent documentaries

including the very famous sorrow in the pity in which they are interviewing not just resistance members but collaborators in the cup back and forth between people who feel very justified for having collaborated with hitler and the people who are reliving their extremely difficult lives during the war would be in the woods as teenagers. when a state teenagers very young men. if you're old enough in 1942 fight you had been conscripted and you were in camp. she got older after 1942 in france you are conscripted for slave labor and you were sent to germany. so when nay needed soldiers for the resistance this going to be fringes of french they are old people were too useless for german war factory and too old to fight in 1940 where they are kids who are just coming up. so there's a lot of documentary

evidence i could look at his film but i did not look at fiction. not sure if that answers your question break. >> there is one film showed a very heroic french woman to be seen that one question. >> i have not. that is d-day specifically trying to get france ready for d-day including waiting for the bbc. >> assist too. they needed to communicate inside enemy lines with london. and not get caught as they did it print you can send a letter maybe gets intercepted it's also very slow. you get ate letter out via switzerland or via spain or if you're lucky and airplane dropping in to say collect a diplomat at the very beginning of the work bell airplane. you can get a letter out that way. but in order to broadcast commands to a big country and a give them battle orders you have

to have a quicker dialogue then career over mountains. and so in london they would telegraph to the resistance. and the resistance would telegraph a back they would agree upon certain code phrases that be broadcast into france on the bbc. it sounded like garbage. it sounded like a retail and nursery rhymes, and dirty jokes. but you would hear your dirty joke whatever the limerick was and you would say that means bump this church on the 15th that's where the nazis are holding up. so you actually get a lot of those who come down like the eagle has landed from germany on the 15th but these phrases all came from this moment but the bbc is broadcasting into france every night. this is he is in london he's not

the ground leading soldiers he is in london broadcasting onn the bbc from london every nighto telling france stop what you're doing. it's not your guy he's not a hero, the war is over he is in bed with hitler and you should not agree to just lie down. if you're working in a factory you should make the ball bearings the wrong size, slope work production. don't keep this war machine going. and if youom are a mom, don't jt raise your kids, feed a rebel, help us out. right newspapers and slip them under doors. helping underground railroad.d. keep fighting. his nightly on the bbc argument to the france that resistance mattered for it's going to be this thing that got them through. and it was an amazing project. he had no reason to believe it was true. nobody knows their own future.

you don't get to know how the war ends he's just certain with nothing he really had nothing at a few officers with him he had people who'd stayed in france and britain. he was certain he's going to be president of france afterer the war is going to get there by mobilizing people from the radio every night. and at the end of that program every single night you get that nursery rhymes and the limerick and the dirty jokes those were the orders for the french resistance. so yes. >> rio able to speak with some of the teenagers? >> yeah there are a lot of people. what's great about the story in particular is across the board everyone wants to tell you there war experience. and i think it surprises me that everyone anza say i was five.he my mother told me where she was on d-day. this story i had not heard before but she remembered she remembered listening to the radio preacher remember everyone standing still.

she remembered pearl harbor. these are stories i had not heard. but once you start working on a project like that everyone needs to share. we all want to be part of this collective moment. it's been really exciting very gratifying. >> 's are going to be an exhibit at the museum? >> i sure hope so. i have not been asked that. there ought to be. the fact their women on the ground in normandy on d-day i went talking about until now strikes me as one of the world's great omissions. d-day are women women and that's what this book yesterday copies on veterans question. >> yes very much. x okay thank you. i think it now but be a good time to start signing books is that right? okay. excellent. thank you all foror coming.

[applause] >> thank you so much. thank you all for coming. there's a books available up at the register for you. we will have sarah appear to sign your book for you when you pick it up. so if you could form a line along this isle that would be terrific thank you again for coming out. x thank you. >> thank you. x hello everyone and welcome to the national book festival. >> over the past 21 years partnership at the library of congress book tv has provided in-depth on interrupted coverage of the national book festival featuring hundreds of nonfiction authors and guests. and on saturday to beat returns alive and in person to the library of congress national book festival. all day long you will hear from

and interact with guests at authors such as librarian of congress carla hated journalist david, writer clint smith and moran. the library of congress national book festival live saturday beginning at 9:30 a.m. eastern on cspan2 next week on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday to american history tv documents america's story and on sunday book tv permit you books and authors. funding for cspan2 comes from these television companies and more including buckeye broadband. ♪ ♪ ♪ buckeye broadband