constructed in 1804, to learn the story of philadelphia society of friends and learn about the history and practices of quakers. >> welcome to arch street meetinghouse. i am the director here. today, i will talk about the building we are standing in, arch street meetinghouse, a bigger place of worship, and a little bit about quakers. around the visitors look the space. of thislot of comparing site to other religious sites people are used to visiting because it is outside of the norm. we have people look around and let us know what is different here versus other historic religious sites they have been to. a lot of times, they notice there are not stained glass candlesor large golden or even a place for a priest or deacon to stand and give a sermon for some -- or something

like that. that is because quakers worship in a way that is different from most folks. , this iscal sunday still an active congregation, and what happens now and what happened 200 years ago, it is pretty similar out here in philadelphia. people gathered and they sit in silence for an hour. historically, people would gather in this space, and that would be quakers you have heard of from history such as susan b anthony and william penn, they would meet in buildings similar to this and sit in silence for an hour. if anybody in the group or the congregation felt the desire to stand up and share a message, if they were moved to speak, they could rise from in the silence and share what they had to share. a question we get often is what was the quakers have said during worship? we like to throw it back to history.

say susan b anthony, which he had a message, it probably related to women's suffrage, because that was on her mind. lucretia muska spoke out a lot, we have records of some of her sermons and talks she gave and they relate to abolition and urging other quakers to feel the same way she did about freeing slaves. sometimes you will hear of quakers referred to as friends, f.h tha capital that is because of the religious society of friends founded in england by a number of people, but mostly george fox. they did not agree with the english church and all of the stuff we talked about today, about simplicity and plainness,

the church was in total opposition of that. things were fancy, it was not about worship. the quakers wanted to pair that down and only do things they felt more useful, the things that were connecting them better to god. they wanted to remove all of the artifice and the middlemen. they thought they could communicate directly with god, and they thought everything else was superfluous. a lot of the early quicker leaders were actually jailed for their beliefs. a were on street corners preaching and they could be thrown in prison or speaking out a way they were about quaker beliefs. faced incution they england is one of the main reasons they started come to america. they originally lived in new jersey and pennsylvania areas. that is one of the reasons william penn was self-motivated to come and start the colony of

pennsylvania, to get away from the persecution going on in europe at the time. >> sunday night on "aft erwords," been fast talks about going to encourage young adults to become engaged citizens in his book. he is interviewed by the founder and president of the millennial action project. students thate, are going to graduate this spring and summer from college going to change jobs three times -- not just jobs, industries, three times in their first decade postcollege. that is new. all of the scary stuff that was aboutrogressivism the idea that job disruption inated unsettling ripples

human capital and social networks. a lot of what people can act about been is what we will experience at work speed forevermore. we will have 45 and 50-year-old get disrupted, not only out of jobs and firms, but whole industries. we will have to create a civilization of lifelong learners, and no civilization has ever done that. >> watch sunday night at 9:00 eastern on c-span twos book tv. on lectures in history, university of kansas professor adrian lewis teaches a class the 1944ha beach and d-day landings in normandy, france, during world war ii. he describes the german and allied military strategies as well as the command structure. he also talks about the challenges for american troops when trying to land on omaha beach and argues the outcome was not inevitable. this class is about 50 minutes.

syllabus, page 10. question number seven and eight, questions number seven and eight on the syllabus, page 10. describe and characterize the normandy invasion, why the allies succeed, analyze german defensive plans, explain victory and defeat, why was the invasion significant? question number eight. why was the battle for omaha beach a flawed victory? those are the questions we want to deal with today. how many have read omaha beach? here we go. [laughter] let me try one more time. how many have read it? ahh. about half. thesis, someone help me out.

what is the thesis? you're going to help me out. the thesis basically is saying that the operations failed and the soldiers were the ones that basically won the battle or succeeded with the operation and they organize themselves on the beach in the the fire to get the operation underway. prof. lewis: great. the argument of the book is that the overall plan for omaha beach failed. the plans the generals put together, the fire plan, the core plan, the airpower, all of those things failed. the consequence of that, sold as were forced to improvise on the beaches. that is the thesis of the book. wasbattle at omaha beach won by soldiers, not one by strategic bombers, not one by battleships, by soldiers on the ground. wife?

hy? what is the argument for why it took such a wrong turn? go ahead, help me out. it was the failure of the combined doctrine, both the rich and american forces have their own doctrine that failed. it was the first time we've ever had to combine operations. good.lewis: that is when you think about the normandy invasion, you have combined operations. you have the british and americans working together to develop the doctrine for the war. you also have joint operations, u.s. army and u.s. air force, u.s. navy, they also have to work together. if i gave the british the same with normandy, they would come up with one solution. if gave the americans the same problem, they would come up with

a different solution. if i gave the french the same problem, they would come up with a different solution. we had two different amphibious warfare doctrine. the army and marine corps developed doctrine. was based on the principles of massive firepower. in a place called iwo jima, they had three or four days of had three or four days of bombardment, destroyers destroying beaches and then the landing took place. that is not what they did it normandy. if you work british, the british tended to conduct operations based on the principle of surprise. they went in with stealth. they went in under the cover of darkness. they were going in against the continent. they had have a different doctrine. we had two different approaches to this. they have the u.s. navy and marine corps doctrine him and you have the british amphibious warfare doctrine, and what they try to do it normandy was merged those into a single doctrine. is thatpened ultimately, neither one of these

-- both stockton said they had, the british doctrine in american doctrine, or better than what they came up with. that is the thesis and the argument we want to make today. however, let's see if we can go ahead and start this discussion. where were we last class? the bombing campaign, and where else were we? stalingrad. this is the extension of germany. he sealed here -- you see over here? we covered stalingrad in the last class. the areas in white, sweden and switzerland. are they really neutral? no. they are not really neutral. they are supporting germany in a number of different ways. that is the full extension. since then, we have landings in north africa. take a look now. , june 6, 1944.

africa is all cleared, we went from north africa into sicily with operation husky, then into italy, and all of that has been cleared. the germans on the site, the russians on the offenses, we had stalingrad, and you can see the russian advance over here. in june, this is the german empire. ats is the way it extends this point in june. let's take a look at geography. .otice the difference here you are enough to germany now. you want to look at the difference between the english channel to germany and over here on the eastern front. where you have more space? .n the eastern front as a consequence of that, hitler's shifts the priority. the priority is on the eastern

front -- have been on the eastern front and the new priority will be the western front. hiller starts shifting divisions on the eastern front to the western front. when the normandy invasion takes place, there will be 60 furman -- 60 german divisions on the western front. if the germans know where the normandy invasion takes place, who went? -- who wins? germany. there will be five invasion divisions, three airborne divisions we would lose. surprise is important. the germans have a problem. this is the german chain of command. hitler's at the top, we have the marshall. of general overall responsible for the american war ever. rundstedt.e general

he is the equivalent of eisenhower. in that theater, he then has two army groups. army group b and g. the one we are most interested in is be, guided by rommel. geyr is strategic reserve. they will have five or six armored divisions in the rear to respond to different situations. that is the thinking. here's the chain of command. if we went back here, take a look here, you have the normandy area where the invasion was actually take place, but what is the shortest distance between two points? right there. the difference between dover and calais? calais, what is the difference? the shortest difference between

two points, where should the invasion take place? the argument would be for the calais area. that would be to argument. it gives you more time over the battlefield. that would be to argument. however, it's take a look here. the germans have a problem. they have constructed the sink we will call the atlantic wall. the atlantic wall with extend all across france and up into norway. they have been building this thing for years now, this thing we call the atlantic wall. it has been under construction. they poured concrete, the put createds and mines, new obstacles for the beach, they created trenches you'd all of these things are along the coast and the collect the atlantic wall. -- along the coast and this atlantic wall. the germansabout and defense. they have been on the offense for great deal of the war.

let me give you two examples. and 1980. 1917 germans are excellent in defensive warfare. they put defense in depth. using the trenches systems from world war i. you have that image in mind. with thes take 1940 fall of france. fast-moving armored formations. to argument for the conduct of the since -- of the defense. there is a debate going on in germany in 1943, early part of 1944 about defense. rommel has one set of ideas and general rundstedt has another. argues thatstedt what we need to do is use the , --oach they used in 1944 1940, used heavy, armored divisions.

they say what they need to do is put a 10, defensive perimeter along the coast. .ery thin albany do know is where the main attack is coming from. where they figure out where the main attack is coming from, the main attack will start, they will of the situation developed to make sure it is the main and then they want to maneuver their armored formations, those heavy divisions, they want to maneuver those units in the place so -- into place so they can defeat the force. that is one argument for conduct. general rommel has another vision. he did not think that was a good approach to this thing. for he argued for was more the world war i approach. he wanted to build a strong defense along the coast. the book "the of longest day," in the made a

movie about it. those were rommel's words. that is a quote from rommel. he believed the battle had to be onwon on d-day and he believed it had to be won on the beaches. aat he wants to do is put strong defensive perimeter along the beaches. he wants to make this as strong as possible along this area. what is in rommel's thinking? been in north africa, he has fought the british, he is faulty americans somewhat, and he is of the opinion that air power will preclude mobile forces from reaching the beaches. he believes that if they use the other approach -- remember, prerequisite for an amphibious operation is? air support your, -- air support

eriority. rommel believes that allied air significant they will not be of the get to the beaches. so farkeep the defense to the rear, they will not make it forward. rommel will also later be implicated in the plot to tler.sinate hi how many of you have seen that movie? plan that was hatched. rommel is not of the opinion -- you've heard me say this before, for the russians, stalingrad was the most important campaign of the war. the americans and british normandy is the most important campaign. if we had lost, the world would look very different. that's look at what rommel was

thinking at this point in time. longer thinking that germany will have a complete and total victory in world war ii. that is gone. the russians have been of the offense, the germans have lost millions of soldiers. he no longer believes there is going to be a complete and total victory in this thing. atever, if he can win normandy, if you can stop the americans and british and the , iting, then what he can do will be six months to a year before they can recharge to start this again. if we went on the beaches on d-day, then i can take my 60 divisions, moves across europe, stabilize the front against the russians and try to come to a negotiated settlement to end world war ii, were germany maintained at least part of the area they have conquered. he is not thinking in terms of total victory now, but he is thinking in terms of, i have to feed the british and americans

at normandy. if we can do that, we can stabilize the eastern front with the 60 divisions we can move over there and there is still a good outcome in this case for germany. that is his thinking at this point in time. that is why normandy is very important for rommel, also. the germans think they have be successful here, at least along the atlantic wall. what does this mean for the americans? we're going to talk about the cossacks in the planning of the invasion. 1943, planning goes in the invasion, that the normandy invasion was selected because it in 1943.y defended the invasion will not take place for another year. they selected in 1943. in 1943. it it was poorly defended, and they

infantry division. it had a 50 mile front. at omaha beach, they had a couple of italians. battalions. hiller did not give rommel everything he asked for, but he gave him some of the things. as a consequence that, instead ghting the 716, you see this? it will be moved forward. we did not know that. we will find it out 24 hours, division,infantry will learn 24 hours ahead of time. 716, al not be the

good quality division is what we will run into. there was also an intelligence problem, we think about the outcome. part of it is also rommel's concept of defense. during that year he is in charge, not even a full year, he will dig more tank ditches, reinforce the beaches, although that will take place under rommel's leadership. samuel eliot morrison on his book -- in his book, he wrote the following, altogether the germans have provided the best imitation of help for an invading force that american troops had encountered anywhere. even the japanese defenses at you at jima, terawa and were not to be compared.

if you pulled up to normandy, said battleships and cruisers destroy thearted to defenses, it would telegraph to the germans were the invasion was taking place. the element of surprise is significant in terms of the conduct of this thing. it is destroy the important. the other side of this thing, you guys ought to recognize this guy. who is this? president,becomes eisenhower, supreme allied commander. who is next in the chain of command? his deputy is? commander.uty walter smith, he is the chief of staff, who is he? he is an american.

1947, he will become the first director of the cia. central intelligence agency. if you take a look at this thing, all of the seniormost operational commanders are british. i always get that question, why did the british get all of the seniormost operational command jobs? you have an american at the top of the chain of command, however , montgomery will be committing the 21st army group, and under that will be omar bradley, one of the five-star generals we produce. the new have dempsey, a british commander he will be commanding the british second army, which will land alongside the u.s. forces at normandy. is acommand structure holdover from the mediterranean theater. eisenhower was made supreme commander also and the british tend to get the seniormost

operational assignments there. let's think about this job from it. eisenhower. who else might have been in the running for that job? what do you think? patton? you could make an argument for him. he will be given an interesting incitement -- interesting assignment. we will call this operation fortitude. it is a planned invasion with no troops involved. it is a deception plan. patton is given that assignment. we create the illusion we will attack with another army in the area of calais. they put a fake army under patton, and he has a role to play and operation fortitude as part of that. there was a guy named general marshall. he probably would've liked this

job, also, as supreme allied commander. there is also a guy named alan brooke. both of them also would have liked this job. job brooke was promised the by churchill several times. what do you think? why didn't he get it? normandy,e you get to american resources, numbers of divisions are starting to dwarf those of britain. when we were in north africa, in sicily, there was a relative purity. the time you get to normandy, the parity is gone. when you look at what is going to happen in normandy, you have 60 american divisions and 16 british divisions in europe. who should be in charge? yeah, the americans. divisionsse british

were canadians. eisenhower is the guy who ultimately ends up with the job. said he, roosevelt once did not sleep well at night when marshall was out of washington, d.c. he had been running the war the whole time and as a consequence of that, admiral king made an that martialdr artist in washington, he got to stay the guy orchestrating the overall effort. so he did not get the job, either. eisenhower was probably third in line for the position. we create this thing called the combined use of staff, these are the orders they get eisenhower. you will enter the continent of

europe and in conjunction with other united nations will undertake operations to the destruction of german operations. mission statement. long,as about two pages but he was a mission statement. it didn't he how to do it. onlyon statement, don't how to do it, just let me go forward with it. that is what they did. selectedeisenhower is or informed he will be the supreme allied commander in december of 9043. montgomery, who will command the british effort, he is also selected in december of 1943. the plans were made before eisenhower and montgomery were even selected. there was a thing called the cossack staff, a guy called general morgan, a british to start at the time and american one star called raymond barker, they will be the guys who develop the initial plan for the

normandy invasion. and eisenhower is selected montgomery comes into this thing, the plans have already been developed. they inherit all of the work that was done by the cossack staff. the chief of staff, allied command, that is what the cossack staff stands for. they did tremendous research. ,hey did research on beaches quality of the beaches, they looked at port facilities, thinking about the logistical things that had to take place. all of that research was done even before eisenhower was selected for this thing. cosac staff does not get credit for this like they should. they will have three divisions landing alongside of each other here at normandy.

they will have two airborne division's in this thing. this area right here, this is all flooded, flooded intentionally by the germans. this is where the airborne operations are supposed to take place. this is intentionally flooded. every commander who served in the mediterranean look to this plan and said, it is too small. there is a story about churchill and montgomery having dinner in december of 1943, and churchill pulls out the plans for normandy and shows them to montgomery. , andomery excuses himself that is not normally what you would do to the prime minister, he excuses himself from dinner, takes the plans up, studies them all night, gets back up in the morning, comes down and talk to churchill and says the plans are too small. he needs tos told report to the united states and talk to the manager and chief.

eisenhower was also given the plan for the normandy invasion. he takes a look and guess what he says? two small. -- too small. in 1943, they come to the same conclusion looking at the initial plan. plant was giving them limitations. they are working with limitations that they had. but this is the initial plan. ultimately, montgomery, who will be in charge of the ground forces, will change that plan. this is what becomes as -- becomes known as the montgomery plan. as a consequence, they will expand the landing and expanded into the area of utah beach. the americans will get that. we end up with omaha and utah beach. the british and canadians on the other side will be on gold

beach. the americans will put two divisions ashore. divisioninfantry common alongside the big red one. where is the infantry division at now? for riley, it is still with us today. ultimately, this is what the plan looks like today. eisenhower is theater commander. airpower, everything is under his authority. montgomery is the ground force commander. he is the guy in command of the overall amphibious operation for the invasion. this will be the largest invasion in history. comes closenothing to this thing. 5000 ships will be involved in this thing. when thousand warships, 4000 transportation chips. it is an enormous event to be orchestrated.

montgomery is the commander of overall. army.radley, first u.s. then we will send in the seventh rps underr -- co collins. and theno in there someone else will command the fifth corps. that will consist of the fifth infantry and the 29th. all of that will be part of the fifth corps that will land at place called omaha beach. the landing -- beaches, we talked about that. these are the ports there will be coming out of. -- for the invasion. the entire area of the british coastline is owned essentially by the military for this invasion.

stockpiles, large stockpiles of equipment. i will run to this again. -- through this again. tons and tons of agreement are stockpiled for the invasion and the cross channel attack. these are churchill's words, the destiny of two great empires seem to be tied to something called an lst. the landing was supposed to take place in may. when eisenhower and then montgomery take a look at the plan and they expanded, they need more landing craft, they .eed more lst's a call goes out to the united states to see how many more they can get together, how many more landing craft can get together. as a consequence of that, the landing is pushed back to june slick get everything they need for the landing. in terms of the equipment, a

division in combat goes through tons of equipment a day. allets, fuel, think about tank and just the gas goes through. all the ammunition it will go through in combat. we think about all of those things, tons and tons of book wouldn't have to be transported english channel appeared to do the thing, they need to pieces of technology. who has been to normandy? did you visit omaha beach? pieces ofeen those this thing called the mulberry? if you go there now, pieces of this stuff is still out there. i think i told you before, i did , andng for nova on this also coast of france, under the water, it is just a graveyard. , all sorts of things left over from the

invasion. right now on the coast of france. this is an lst. they were made where? right here in the midwest. illinois, acago, lot of those things were made right here. it would float them down the mississippi and send them to england. they come doubt so many of these , they do not even named them. they just stuck a number on them, and they'd send them over for the invasion. this is an important piece of technology for the conduct of the landing. it has a ballast in it that pumps water in it now. he gets ready to go to see, it pumps water in salud writes in the water, with getting ready to offload, it pumps water out and the allows them to deposit

stuff off of it. this is another lst with a take coming off of it. there was a lot on this flight, i just want you to pay attention to the bottom. 29 july. 156,000 personnel. vehicles, 332,000. supplies in terms of times, 1,000,602 tons. you see the logistics problem in getting across the english channel with all of the things you need for this? a huge requirement. to do this, they built this thing called the mulberry. an artificial port. this was a british idea. they created breakwaters, that is what you see here, they created artificial lake waters and this thing was like an erector set.

these pontoons were built and they sunk them and they pumped water back out as they got closer to the landing. they had tugboats told them over themaha beach, one in british sector and one in the american sector, and they linked it altogether like an erector set in created a port facility using this system. to create the breakwater, they sunk ships. that is what i mean, also coast of normandy, it is still a graveyard with lots of stuff out there. this is how it works. instant port, bring it with me. airpower. lets the drought the missions of airpower for the normandy invasion. superiority over the battlefield. we've got that.

then we had something copy transportation plan. it was greatly debated, airpower guy said they did not want to do it and eisenhower made an argument for an ultimately the ended up doing it. take a look at what we are trying to do. , and whatband here they want to do is isolate the battlefield. they want to just for transportation, bridges, roads. that is the idea. to do that, what else to they have to do? they have to bomb a lot of other things so they don't give away the location of the site. think about last class we were talking about strategic bombing campaign. how many french funded we kill? -- frenchman did we kill? 70,000. 70,000 frenchman in the process of world war ii.

during the preparation for the bombing in the normandy area, they also had the mission to prep the beaches. before the landing takes place, the beaches have to be prepared. they haven to that, to drop the 82nd, 101st airborne, and then the sixth british airborne on both points of the invasion. the big question is timing on this. what time do we go in with this? that is the debate. this is where i wrote omaha beach. many young -- many long years ago i was standing on omaha beach trying to explain the invasion to a group of cadets. as you know, i am retired army, so i spent a lot of time in the infantry.

when i thought about the way we did this, i thought, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. a daylight assault against a deliberate defense years in the making. who wants to do that? who wants to come out of the landing craft, charge across 100 meters of the beaches into machine-gun fire? there has got to be a better way to do this. that was my argument, that is what i was thinking about trying to explain this to the cadets. anded to serve under a guy we used to plan to fight the russians in europe, this was before the collapse of the soviet union. we would dig in defense after defense after defense, and i could not imagine somebody trying to charge one of these things here and plan on living through this thing. the marine corps will try to conduct an amphibious operation against the japanese defense.

there will be 2000 fewer marines in the process of trying to do this. they had a two hour prep for this. 30normandy, they will have to 40 minutes. by the time they get to you at yuma, marine corps are requiring three to four days before they conduct an amphibious assault. normandy, you will have 30 to 40 minutes. you ask us of, why do it this way? they have landed in north africa and in sicily. both times, they went in at night, under the cover of darkness. underent in and conditions that limited the effectiveness of enemy fire. at normandy, they did not have that. they went in as daylight was

breaking. they went in at 6:00 in the morning. the question is, why did they do this? doctrines,warfare american and british, and they seem to not use either one of them in terms of the process of conducting the invasion. that is the question i explore in omaha beach. let's think about this thing. you are the first infantry division. you have been sitting any ships over 24 hours. the landing was supposed to take thee on the fifth, but weather was bad, and eisenhower decided, we will postpone it. in the shipsitting a while. finally, there is a break in the weather and eisenhower makes the decision we will conduct the landing. everybody now set sail across the english channel.

ship,e in your transport in your starting to move across the most channel. but at 1:00 that morning, the u.s. navy serves you bacon and eggs come and get you a nice big breakfast. everything is good. 3:00, your ship comes to a halt. you are about 11 miles off the coast. 11 miles off the coast of france. the enemy is 11 miles away. it is just completely dark. however, the orders are given to commence landing operations. so now the landing craft go over the side. the weights are 60 high. are six feet high. you have your cargo net, you have your pack, you throw that over the side, put it in the landing craft and you start to climb over the side down the

cargo net. you have to time it just right. if you don't time it right, you could be smashed against the landing craft it comes back up. if you do it wrong the other way, you will be down, you release and fall down and may fall a few feet down and get knocked out. a few people work. a few people fell. however, you are landing craft is full. remember, the navy was good to you, they fed you all that breakfast. you are on the notion that has -- ocean that has six foot waves. a lot of people got seasick. you move away from the ship to what is called an assembly area. the craft are circling, one after the other. they use a system of flags. when you get an entire boat division together, that is when they had in toward the shore.

have -- you are now soaking wet, some of you are vomiting the bacon and eggs. some of the craft are getting swamped, and guys would take off their helmets and start bailing water out. why did they do it so far? why 11 miles from the shore? the british were only five miles from the shore. why did we do this? the navy was concerned that the germans had long-range artillery . as a consequence, they wanted to put the transport area outside of the range of the german main guns, and that is what they ended up doing. your goingt 11 miles to be on the ocean in your small landing craft. all of these craft are heading in. as you start moving in, as you , for theing into

shore, you can see in the arkansas, the uss uss nevada, two of the oldest battleships in the navy, and they are over there and you can see the outline of those things. priest and they will open up on the beaches. it is overcast, and as you move toward the beaches, you can see the b-17s, the b 24th, you can see all the airpower going in toward the beach. with all the airpower and naval gunfire, you get a warm and fuzzy feeling. everything is going to be all right. we will hit these beaches, althoughtoward the beach. that airpower is going to destroy everything, those naval gunfire is going to pound everything, and when we get there, we will also have tank support on the beach. again, you have been in your landing craft for about an hour, you're heading into the beach, and you see some guys, you look

over to the site and see some guys floundering in the water. seven 41st tank battalion. they had this thing called dd tanks. , let me seepposed if i can find one. they were supposed to proceed -- precede the invasion. there were supposed to go into what isr and they had called a duplex drive feared you had to propellers in the back. this is your tank support. let me take you out of your landing craft and into a tank. four tanks and a landing craft here. the first one rolls out into the water. it immediately starts to sink. the second one rolls off and the water. let's say you're in the third tank. the second one rolls off into

the water and starts to sink. you are in the third tank, would you thinking? this is not a good idea. this is not a good idea. some of these ideas are coming to you. however, the third one rolls off. then the fourth one rolls off. battalion in the landing, 25 of them go to the bottom of the english channel. there is your tank support. a good part of it, anyway. there are other tanks that will be delivered all the way to the beach, but the guys in these dd tanks, they went to the bottom of the most channel appeared the of the guys got out of tanks, they had mae west vests. the tanks, theyall of your firepowek

firepower has gone to the bottom now. now, you are still heading in. they have the thing called landing craft with rockets on them. , all thesereat shows rockets launched into the air and you can see the preparation of the beaches. then the sun starts to come up and you see the battleships firing and airpower dropping, and then you get closer and closer to the beach and something seems to be wrong. as you get close to the beach, thosell find, gee, all obstacles are still there. where are all the critters from the artillery fire? he craters from the artillery fire? as you get closer, the germans , andup, fully equipped

they start killing americans on omaha beach. conducted counter battery fire first and instead of concentrating on the beaches, they concentrated on enemy artillery positions. in addition to that, they only to 40 minutes of preparation the first place to destroy those. the air force missed. the rockets missed. my take support is at the bottom of the english channel. not all of it, there are still some it will make it to the beaches. ultimately, when you hit the beaches, what happens? the germans are ready, they are awake, they have all of those obstacles out there. they are in a mood to start killing americans, which is what they start doing. it will be a difficult day for

the americans at omaha beach. page 18. 500-600 euros the shore, the assault force started receiving fire. some landing craft received a direct hit and sank. those men still alive went into the sea and swam as best they could. german machine gunners found that range, fired patterns killed or wounded the first 45 four or fives -- down the ramps. some soldiers jumped overboard to avoid the fire and lost equipment. some leaders suffered inortunately -- suffered orderly high casualties because they were the first off. -- ultimately, the

invasion will be won by soldiers. they were not put ashore in the best condition. some more seasick when they hit this, some of them were blown off course because of the bad .eather and wind primarily, the reason it is so difficult is because the german defenses were completely intact when did -- when the invasion took place. nothing in terms of the fire support plan, nothing they were told would take place took place. as a consequence of that, infantry ended up trying to find -- fight the battle for him hot beach. we had different types of soldiers on the speech, but general omar bradley will make this claim, let me see if i have this. let me get the end, we are running out of time. this is omar bradley. this is about as close as you'll

get a general officer say we screwed up. despite the setbacks that we had suffered as a result of bad weather and ineffective bombings, i was shaken to find that we had gone against omaha beach with so thin a margin of safety. have a less experienced the vision than the first infantry stumbled into this crack resistance, it might easily have been thrown back into the channel. journal omar bradley in his book , "a soldier story," acknowledges that. very bad at omaha beach. let me conclude with these thoughts. i want you to think about this. ,n terms of the historiography omaha beach was the most difficult. as a consequence, many historians have said it was a tactical failure. that the commander of the big red one, he is in part at fault.

i make the other argument, that the overall plan, the operational level, montgomery's plan, bradley's plan, was flawed. what happened at omaha beach could've happened at utah beach, could've happened in the other beaches. it was not the tactical guys. the tactical guys are good against the plan. it was the operational commanders, not the tactical commanders who are at most fault for what happens here at omaha beach. some historians also make the argument that the outcome was inevitable. it was not. we could have lost. tker had given -- hitler had given rummel everything he wanted, we probably would have lost omaha beach. not just omaha beat. we would have lost the landing.

if hitler had given him what he wanted to put the defense there, europe might look very different today. thoughts, questions? how my doing? [laughter] prof. lewis: thoughts, questions? huh?t've done a great job, everybody good? we will call it a day and pick this up again. >> join us every saturday evening at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern as we join students and college classrooms to hear lectures on topics ranging from the american 9/11.tion to lectures and history are also available as podcasted visit our or download them from

itunes. on sunday, author and journalist matt tidy will be our guest. atif you grew up looking thousands and thousands of faces until one day you see one face that you feel was put on earth just for you, and you fall in love in that moment. for me, trump was like that except it was the opposite. [laughter] >> when i first him on the campaign trail, i thought, this is a person who is unique, horrible, amazing, terrible characteristics were put on earth is specifically for me to appreciate or unappreciated, or whatever the fruit is -- the verb is. i have been spending a lot of years without 12

knowing it, preparing for donald trump to happen. >> he is a contributor to rolling stone magazine and the author of several books, including "smells like dead elephants," "the great "griftopia," in his most recent, "insane clown president." during our live three-hour conversation, we will take your calls, tweets and they spoke questions -- and facebook questions. watch in-depth, live from noon to :00 p.m. eastern on sunday. >> this weekend on american history tv, historian eric buckland talks about the leadership qualities and military exploits of confederate colonel john s mosby. here is a preview.

force.as an economy of envision taking his force en masse and attacking theunion calvary unit in conventional manner. --would continue destructive disrupt them, make them worried, make them pull forces back to protect areas. mosby said he thought the greatest thing he had accomplished as a partisan to deprive union soldiers of sleep. anybody who is been in the military knows how precious sleep is. reason, thener just to escape the drudgery you are involved in, but often times, if you have been out on operations, on patrol, the sleep is wonderful. mosby felt that by his operating

at night and coming into places where he was expected, he caused worry and angst amongst the union troopers, calvary especially. >> you can see the entire program at 9:00 p.m. eastern on sunday. american history tv, only on c-span3. >> new york city's bellevue hospital was founded in 1736. it is the oldest public hospital in the united states. next, on american history tv, a pulitzer prize winning historian talks about his book, "bellevue." the lower east side tenement event hosted this hour-long event. >> it is a privilege to ouroduce david ocean ski,