twitter. feature william wyler and thunderbolt. it is about a squadron of fighter planes stationed in italy. he also directed the popular world war ii documentary, "the memphis belle," ." we speak to author and film historian mark harris. , "five came out back: a story of hollywood and ," by mark world war harris. who was william wyler? directors about who my right, he was the only jew. he was an immigrant from a small

france, whenion of he was a boy and a teenager, had been either french or under german occupation. when he came to hollywood and worked his way up and he for the war, it became known as one of the most sophisticated and meticulous and mature craftsman , he was also very conscious of his status as an and they do -- and a jew who is trying to get family members and friends out of europe before the war crashed down. looks as an immigrant -- >> as

an immigrant, you featured think cap rep -- frank capra in your book. take us back to the mindset of the late 1930's and early 1940's. thing that it is hard to recapture now is the idea that before the war, the relationship andeen hollywood washington, d.c., and between hollywood and much of america was very suspicious. there were many isolationists in congress.d in there were certainly many anti-semites in america at a considerable overlap between isolationism and anti-semitism. there were a lot -- the way that played out in the way washington and america related to hollywood

was the suspicion that this kind business, where there was mob infiltration of the unions, where most of the men who ran the studios were first or second generation immigrants. much of them were jewish. a suspicion that these people were not real americans. fomenting an appetite for war that they were creating, interventionist propaganda in their entertainment movies with an eye towards dragging america into war to protect their financial interest and to protect their relatives in the old country. that is the level of paranoia and suspicion and contempt with which many in hollywood were viewed by many in america and by many in congress.

the heat was on people like william wyler, who were jewish and under pressure to assert their american identity above all. they would get pressured by to make as. contribution to the hollywood community chest, a local charity. all of my money is tied up in trying to get people out of europe. sympathize, but i don't care. it is important for us to show that we care about not just our relatives, but our community here. great pressure to assimilate and to be american and great pressure to mute once jewishness or foreignness.

>> he became a u.s. citizen back in 1928. he served as a major in the u.s. army air forces at 31945. he put together three documentaries. >> he made a really powerful documentary called "the memphis belle." it was the first major wartime documentaries to show what it was like to fly missions in a bomber over france and occupied germany. documentaries, there was no restaging. weiler -- wyler and his men trained to fly. all of that commitment led to this documentary, which paid

great attention -- he wanted to create a you are there experience. >> one of the most important -- ruments >> 1:00 cai. >> -- 1:00 high. >> they are coming around. >> 6:00 up. >> an engine on fire. >> b-17 out of control at 3:00. >> bailout. >> i see them. >> watch out. your eye on them, bill.

>> do you see any parachutes? >> that movie and the acclaim for it led to william wyler wanting to make a different movie about another kind of bomber called "thunderbolt." ofwas during the filming extra footage, a little bit more footage that he wanted to get of the italian coastline, that he experienced this personal tragedy. he got out of the plane and had gone deaf in the air. he was shooting in unpressurized cabins and it was freezing cold. the noise from the engines was your drum shattering -- your shattering and he lost his hearing.

overnight, his army service was over. the completion of "thunderbolt" became terribly important to him. by the time he was recovered enough to finish the movie, the war was over and there was no use for this kind of propaganda film anymore about u.s. military might. that is why you have the anomaly of a movie like "thunderbolt," which was attended -- intended for wartime consumption, not being shown until 1947. even then, being barely seen. when he showed it to army brats, the general said, what is this movie for? he really had no answer because the timeline of world war ii had outraced him. >> it is a 42 minute film from

director william wyler. mark harris, thank you for being with us. now a chance to see the film in its entirety. ♪ >> this picture was photographed in combat zones by pilots of the 12 air force. they operated automatic cameras in their planes. behind the pilot, shooting forward and back, under the wing , in the wing, it in the wheel

, in the instrument panel photographing the pilot himself. >> the commanding general is general -- the commanding general has asked me to tell you something about this picture. in 1944,lt was made ancient history. it was made about one fighter bomber group in the italian campaign. the same story could well be told of the royal air force groups which were dissipated so gallantly in the same offensive. the story belongs to all men who fought for freedom. thank you.

>> for the italian man in the street or what is left of the street, this is the fulfillment of a promise. the promise of the fascists to build date 20th century roman empire conceived in tyranny and dedicated that some men were meant to be slaves of other men. special victims were the children. they saw things not meant for children's eyes. from the air, italy is more

remote. never sees the face of the people, only the face of the country. he looked down at the mountain and wonder how armin on the ground ever got through. -- how our men on the ground ever got through. a lot of american blood. made otherriers campaign stuff, too. for the airmen, the ground war is remote. the only war you really understand is the air war. you can see a pattern to it. lots of the country has never been touched. little towns who walk the ridges. this one did not matter.

when something did matter, that was another story. this is how we change the face of italy from the air. they boasted italian trains ran on time. not these. this is what we did to the face of italy. there is a story behind why we didn't and how we did it -- why we did it and how we did it. the story starts on an island the island of corsica. rugged, primitive, mountainous, malaria. they still remember a local boy who put corsica on a map 150 years ago.

this island part of france is liberated by the french in september 1943, but can still left on the wayside where they fell. alto airbase, sunday morning. sunday is like monday and monday is like every other day of the week. a working day. ♪ -- engines wake you ed on wake you at dawn. getting them ready for the days missions.

this is how you live when you are an airplane driver fighting and air war. 20 minutes from the germans in italy. get used to it. you have been washing out of your helmet since july 42. from the holy land to africa, across the desert, or egypt, libya, tunisia. infantry when the moved. sicily and italy. now corsica. this is the best deal you've ever had. collect the country club -- call it the country club. when you talk about air power, this is what you mean.

squadron operations officer. missions. he is 22. iowa.n howard of he is a flight leader. he is 23. or gil wyman from louisville, kentucky. he is boss of the squadron. colonel, commanding. the old man, he is 24.

sunday morning, for the 57th fighter group, three squadrons and a thousand men, another day begins. you could close your eyes and see it this way, spread out like a diagram. home, forweet some time. we share the view with a french group. we do not speak the same language, but we fly the same airplanes against the same enemy. we each lost men yesterday. we get along. group commander -- west point, 1940. he is 27. the first mission group. we do not speak the same language, but we fly the same airplanes against the same enemy. today, a briefing right after breakfast.

the point. get your escape kit. instructions to get you back. just in case. they tell you about your target. you do this every day. sometimes two or three times a day. gil wyman will lead the show. his -- a nurses hacked, a nurses hacked, his girls, he wears it for luck. upstairs, they plan the war. i want something done, they pick phone, you do it. you know there is a reason, it a good one. today, the missions are going out because in italy, the armies have been stopped cold. across the narrowest part of the

peninsula. months.for five 100,000 men sweating it out. we could not move, stalemate. cas 15, we bombed cassino. it was the wrong use of air power. wrong because we were not taking advantage of the airplane's greatest asset, its ability to get behind the enemy. that is what the air planners wanted to do. major general john cannon, uncle joe. , the brasseneral

upstairs. themsaid, let's not hit here. look at them here. let's isolate the battlefield. let's weaken the entire german ofnt by depriving it supplies, fuel, food, ammunition, reinforcements. operation: the plan strangle. this is what we want to do with airplanes. lots of railroads in italy. keep the trains from getting through. a lot of rivers in italy and lots of bridges. the bombers got many important

ones, the bridges are long and narrow targets. it took a lot of trips, bombs, planes, men. we started to use a special weapon. a fighter bomber. the p 47 thunderbolt. bomb onne, one man, one .ach wing, extra fuel tanks they taxi from the dispersal point. -- line upsquadron the squadron. all the pilots have to do is take them away. if you are a crew chief, you get your own p 47. sometimes you think of it as your personal airplane. around and it.

-- in it. no bullet holes. after you have been lending your airplane to one pilot for a long time, you get attached to him, too. if you are a pilot, no matter ist your rank, what counts the combat flying you have done. unless you have done plenty, you're a beginner. -- put a put emissions andmissions behind you -- then you are promoted. you become an old sport. the big shots like gil wyman are called wheels. no one knows exactly why. this fellow is a wheel, too.

richard of tucson, arizona, has 179 missions. your crew chief cannot go along. you always like to tell them what you're going to do. each section is going after a bridge. same old thing. bomb at a left-hand turn about and carry the bombs right on down. maybe we will have a good show. all set to go, but you don't. you wait. you wait for five minutes.

down.o settle relax. .ou'll be busy later if you have any thinking to do, now is the time to do it. take off is always rough. the thunderbolt is a heavy

airplane. you've decorated it like a christmas tree. guns, 500 pound bombs, cameras. clear to take the runway for takeoff. >> roger, i you are clear to take off. >> the mile of steel runway will shrink to nothing under you. halfway down, you will be committed. that means you cannot slam on the brakes and stop. once you are committed, you usually go up. pair.th

first pair off. second pair taxies out. made it ok. smith and atwood.

come on, get her up. last pair. hunziker -- welby and hunziker. the squadron is airborne. over corsica and then out to se a.

60 miles east to italy. corsica, you fly only 60 miles to get 150 miles behind the german front. now you are heading north. into the mountains. leaders section, read section, -- red section, black section. the game of follow the leader, the section leader. he does not tell you what to do, he does it, and you follow.

turns, you turn. he climbs, you climb. climbing still to 10,000 through .he clouds close, you start looking for the target.

look-alike. ravines wing man, he is back, keep the formation spread out. checkpoint. river.it down to the the first bridge should be down there somewhere. there it is. passover at and come back and attack it from the opposite direction, one of the tricks you have learned. leaders section goes into a string formation, one plane behind the other. wyman peels off.

the rest of the section follows. at two second intervals. last man goes in. pilot does his own naming. -- aiming. bombs burst from the planes i had. -- linda had. head. drop your bombs. pull out.

blood drains from your head. comes back fast. you are all right now. -- leaderson reforms section reforms. a miss. miss.r a hit. section goes down. straddles the target. that should do the trick. bombs.

still plenty of gas, 20 of them out -- plenty of ammo. go on the prowl. ease down on the deck and see what you can find. , not a badd tracks way to find a train. you spot one. give it a few squirts. press the locomotive first.

the train cannot move now. let's see what in those boxcars. everybody takes a few passes. try the cars one at a time. might be something interesting in them, and usually is. got it burning nicely now. take another pass for lock. uck. lighthouse out

there. ammo left? have any yes. radio station. somebody in that field, i wonder who they are. no friend of mine. vehicles parked in that farmyard. more in back. must be a headquarters. it looks kind of suspicious. nothing in that one. nothing in that one.

could be wrong. what do you know? no one is sweating out 65 squadron. 66 is taking off. no one will swept them out either. there are too many missions, nine for the day. when you don't fly, you have things to do. you have to make some sort of life for yourself. you improvise an american community. step off the field, it you are in corsica. step back on, you are in america. this is part of war, too, the endless detail of living.

the dust is a problem. the dust is good for the laundry business. laundry, a three-day service. and for the rugged individualist , the water supply, pump, heating unit, washing machine. the sergeant used to tell us in new orleans. the barbershop. and for the next customer, always something to read. lunchtime special. for the intellectually minded, it is time for more serious things like practicing your yo-yo.

if there is anything you want, do not ask for it. build it. billed as though you will be here forever, -- build as though forever.be here tomorro nobody says you can't have a house. nobody says your squadron cannot have a beach club. nobody says you cannot dam up a river and make eight swimming hole. -- make a swimming hole. this american community had everything. when you come off your shift and someone else is carrying a ball, you try to relax and enjoy yourself. in danger a couple of hours a day.

the rest of the time, it you are out of it. the beach club is a busy place. so is the mediterranean. ittolini once called "our sea," but that was yesterday. the yachtsmen, a few odds and ends make quite a boat. parts.w chief scrounge l.rounge is polite for stea sails.rachutes for when you think it's a px ration of beer, you drink it. then you look like this.

the best deal you ever had. the country club. a lot of land, a lot of sun. your american community has everything except the things you really want. at times she would rather be flying than waiting around and killing time. do notu are flying, you have that feeling of the days, weeks, months slipping by and leaving you standing still. these are your years, years to get started and find yourself. your job, profession, or get married, kids, a home of your own. these are the years that count.

so you have your pets to give and receive affection. in affairs of the heart, some have peculiar tastes. sick sick squadron heading out -- 66 squadron heading out. 65 squadron heading home. a meeting in the air. light. plain when you reform, you noticed it. nobody saw it coming.

it later.hink about now you are waiting for that first sight of home. airbase.he street.on your own tight.e formation when you fly over those other outfits, you want to look good and show them how it is done. you come in low and peel up. speed.l up to reduce space the planes 20 seconds apart for landing. they will circle back when the

first flight is down. drop your gear. second flight peels up. third flight will circle again. all the flying the ground crew sees. they like to give them a kick. sometimes you are tired and you land abrupt. embarrassing. the kernel is not happy -- the

colonel is not happy. how will you explain this? after the interrogation, you relax. .rap some donuts and coffee fly the show all over again on the ground. wyman goes back to work at being colonel. a telegram from the war department has to start somewhere. by mid-april, every rail line in italy was blocked. no train could move south of it. south of it, the railroad system was dead. the germans had to keep this applies moving. -- the supplies moving. they took to the road, so we took to the road. this is what the germans fear

most. we do not blame them. when you clobber a highway, it you burn plenty of ammo. 800 rounds a minute. you have eight guns, 106 bullets a second. rockets. trucks.re not just ammunitionpping before it is fired and you are doing it 200 miles before. from corsica to italy, it was like a trip to the corner

drugstore. you could do it in your sleep. we averaged eight or nine missions a day. the french about as many. the 79th next door. it was good to look up and watch them go by. there were other things. those pillars of smoke. you never knew when you would see them. the p 47 is cooking and there is a man and it. -- man in it. when a unit like this, there is nothing to do but let them burn -- when they hit like this, there is nothing to do but let them burn. why did it happen?

cut out for a second. 200 yards from the runway, 200 yards from home. we will never know for sure. some, theow is, for war is expensive. we kept up the pressure and by the beginning of may, the roads were practically closed. if one man on a motorcycle appeared on the highway by day, he was a dead pigeon. the germans took to the streets. two months after we started, the strangle was on. the germans had barely enough supplies for two weeks and that is when our ground forces

attacked. in three weeks, we were in rome. the men on the ground pushed north and as they moved up from they saw what was done to help them. 10,000 enemy vehicles destroyed or damaged. in every town -- how many german tanks went out of business because of the

gasoline these trains never carried? they advanced and i saw the bridges -- they saw the bridges. because german shells they could not get across the river? the ground forces exploited the breakthrough. they shot and killed germans. country,ate up the almost 250 miles in one nonstop offensive. the ground forces won a battle, but they still had a war to fight. we were still flying missions. up from first light to last light. only the coming of darkness would stop you. only the coming of darkness

would bring the last missions home. day wouldong work end. some in hit the sack early. ♪ ♪ >> from william weiler, the film released in 1947 titled

"thunderbolt." joining us from new york is author mark harris. as the war came to an end, what was next for the director? the fivem wyler, of directors, was the only one to come back as a disabled veteran. he received a disability check for the rest of his life. something he was very proud of. he poured all of his experience into what i still think stands as a true american masterpiece and the greatest movie about the aftermath of the war. wast years of our lives" the story of soldiers coming home. tois about their adjustment an america that had gone on without them.

the extraordinary thing about this movie was he put himself, with the aid of his brilliant screenwriter, and to all three of these -- into all three of these characters. one man was a family man who was middle-aged who left comfortable circumstances and was coming back to a wife and children he really did not know that well anymore and trying to find his place back in his world. another of the soldiers was very angry at seeing horrible things in the war and came back really not knowing what he was going to do. that captain to the fact that william wyler had -- that tapped into the fact that william wyler had a temper that sometimes got the better of him. he was almost court-martialed during the war from throwing a punch at an anti-somatic civilian. -- anti-somatic civilian.

the third soldier lost both of his hands during the war. -- an actor named harold russell played him. russellentified with because he, too, was disabled and uncertain about how you would regain his place and his life. it is very hard to convey what a seismic impact "the best years of our lives" had. this was a donovan new age of social realism in american -- this was the dawn of a new age of social realism in america. whether it was alcoholism or nervous breakdowns or something that all america was exposed to, the readjustment issues faced by returning veterans and faced by

the people they were returning to. , it wasnd of its run the third or fourth highest grossing movie in hollywood history. he went on to a distinguished .areer making movies his career goes all the way up retired just he before making the movie he had hoped to be able to make, which is a movie that became patton. >> mark harris is the author of "five came back: a story of hollywood and the second world war." thank you for being with us on american history tv. >> thank you. week, american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places. a visit to 20 street in new york

city. >> his legacy still impacts us today. conservation or federal regulation and trust funds or .oreign policy .he panama canal his vision for america, even his time with -- was extremely progressive and something that 95 years aftere his death. still tons of documentaries, tons of books written about him. fascinating and dynamic. tragic death of

his wife and mother and achieves great things. that is a story that never gets boring. libraryt refers to the as the room of gloomy respectability. it is a huge misconception. people refer to him as teddy roosevelt. he hated being referred to as teddy. he accepted it from the public and from the media, but as a , he was nicknamed t.d. military time was equivalent to about three months. the home had all of the modern

amenities available. the pocket doors are a great example of the roosevelt family business. for were doing pretty well themselves, able to buy homes for each of their five sons. it pays to get on the ground floor of anything in life. around 1646 so by the time he is born in 1858, they are well established socially and financially on the island of manhattan. they are in the hardware business originally. then they are involved in the importing and exporting a very fine glass. awayrandfather would break and go into real estate banking and financing. our presidents dad enjoyed spending the family fortune as opposed to making it.

south onfather lived 14th street and broadway. that is where this famous photograph was taken. looking out of a second-floor window from his grandfather some with his brother and president lincoln's funeral procession. it is an iconic photograph. it is a big misconception that this photograph was taken from his house. the street is pretty wide. this is broadway and union square park in the background. they traveled by horse and

carriage -- this is the procession going north up broadway past the grandfathers home and passed the future president of the united states. >> by 1830, alcohol consumption in america reached four gallons per person. university of california davis professor alan taylor discusses why alan taylor talks about how consumption spurred the temperance movement of the 1850's. this is about 50 minutes. >> ok, we have been talking in this class about the american republic, which is a radical experiment for its time.

in a monarchy, the duty of the people is essentially to obey. but in a republic, the citizens must anticipate. they need to vote. they should follow issues. they should be involved in campaigns. and so, a republic asks much more of people. and this is the foundational generation for this american republic. yet, this is also the peak period for alcohol consumption in america. so, there is a paradox in which the political thinking, the political ideology said we need a republic with a virtue.