really, and the fourth division lost 197 men there right on the beach on d-day. but the next day, when we attacked grisbeck, we lost 50% of our men within three or four days. >> this weekend on american history tv on c-span3. >> american history tv products are now available at the new c-span online store. go to c-spanstore.org. >> a panel of world war ii historians and dwight eisenhower scholars discuss the jens of june 6, 1944, and ike's legacy as the operations supreme commander. it's about an hour. >> i'm here just to set the

table for ian isherwood, who is going to moderate this panel, and introduce him very briefly. ian is a historian of war. his research interests are in british history and war studies, where he does yeoman duty at gettysburg college. he holds a master's degree from dartmouth college. ian is currently an assistant professor in the department of interdepartmental studies at gettysburg college. he's the author of "remembering the great war" writing the experiences of world war i, as well as scholarly articles on veterans and war writing. he's currently working on a book on the life and death of an infantry battalion in world war i. ian is going to be our moderator now and will take this slot.

ian? [ applause ] >> all right. thank you. thank you for that very generous introduction, michael. i had the good fortune to have been a student of professor birkner's here in the late 1990s where i took historical methods from him. those methods, of course, i have kept as kind of in the back of my mind and certainly have applied for the rest of my career. so for any of you historical method students in the audience, there's long applicability that comes from professor birkner's lessons. i would also like to thank our organizers has everybody else has. this has been a fantastic day and a very informative day, i think, of remembering eisenhower, remembering overlord and the d-day landings of 1944. one of the many things that i think this day has revealed -- or of the many things this day has revealed are two essential points for me. the first is that in our

speakers, we've heard some really interesting perspectives on events that have been written about by a host of other people, a host of other historians from the moment that the war ended onwards. yet even with such a wide breadth of material that's been written on eisenhower and on d-day and the second world war, there are still a lot of new perspectives and new interpretations that have been written about and that are being written about. and we still have many new insights to learn. there's a real robustness to second world war history and to the history of d-day in particular. i hope our conversation this afternoon can help to reveal not only some additional insights but of course can maybe point in the direction of where some future research might head. the second essential thing, i think, is that we've heard universal praise for eisenhower's decisions, for his demeanor, for his leadership style. and this is a theme that's been

brought up by all of our speakers. and in our conversation over the next 40 minutes or so, i hope we can discuss this theme a little bit more. i think that the lessons that we can learn from eisenhower's personal virtues -- and i'm directly referring to students in the audience too, the lessons that we can learn really come with a degree of intergenerational wisdom and a long applicability forward. so it's now my honor to reintroduce our panelists. susan eisenhower, george colburn, craig symonds, and john mcmanus. you heard earlier from each of these esteemed people in depth upon their own research on eisenhower, the second world war, and d-day specifically. as this is our last academic session of the symposium, my role here is to put each of our guests in conversation with one another and to see if we can flush out some of the broader

themes which we've seen over the course of the day. now, as the chair, i have the opportunity to ask a few questions at first. but as i'm doing so, if you would like to ask your own questions, we have a procedure that we'd like to use for this session that inside of your bags that you've received from e.i., there's a notepad, and there's a pen inside of them. so if you'd like to ask your own question of the panel, simply write it down on your notepad and hold your hand up, and someone will collect that from you and then bring them up to me so that i can then ask your question. so if you'd like to ask something of the panel, if something came up in a previous session that you wanted to ask a question about, or if you have a broad question that you think would be applicable across the panel, please don't hesitate to write it down and ask it. so i'd like to start with what i would consider to be a little bit of a softball question for

the whole panel. as our own professor birkner likes to tell his methods students, a quote i think he got from peter guile, and the quote is history is an argument without end. it's a short quip that reminds us that historians don't have to necessarily agree, but in their argument in and of itself comes a degree of virtue by the process of actually working your way through the history and through the historiography. and i want to take that argument and kind of ask our panel what they would consider to be the major questions and major debates that are still out there that surround both d-day and the normandy invasions. that's the question, yeah. >> well, it's interesting. we heard one of them today

already. in fact, that conversation about it continued at lunch today, and that is the timing of a second front. the whole military aspect of the war is wrapped up inevitably in the politics of the war, particularly in the relationship between anglo-american allies and the soviet union. stalin, an inherently suspicious and skeptical individual by nature, roosevelt in a weak moment, terrified that the soviets would be overwhelmed and bow out early as they had in 1917, foolishly promised to molotov there would be a second front in 1942. that only gated him to do something in the european theater in 1942. that something turned out to be torched, the landings in north africa. so the interconnectedness of that is critical. but that argument, that awareness of that inextricable link between the politics of the war and the military decision-making, the strategy of the war, is critical. there is a tendency in some

quarters to think, well, the politicians make the big decisions and then turn to the military and say, fix that. and the military's job is to take only military considerations in solving what is effectively a political problem. but, in fact, the two are wed. and that informs the 1942 versus 1943 versus 1944 versus may, versus june -- all of the decisions about when or if a second front, what does it consist of, how much pressure does it take off the russians. all of that, i think, is an ongoing argument that will probably never be solved, but it helps us understand the nature of war and war and politics as a single unit. >> another one that seems to be floating out there is sort of an inevitability argument. in other words, the allies were going to win at d-day. it was going to happen. they had all the advantages. they were going to get ashore, and they were going to win.

i both agree and disagree with that if that makes sense. that's a weenie answer, i know. what do i mean? of course they have the advantages. of course the high probability is they're going to get ashore, and one of the reasons i believe that is romle has the exact wrong concept for how he's going to defend at the water line when his guys are going to be vulnerable whereas you have the terrain inland, which if fortified could have presented even more devastating problems for the allies. so of course, yeah, that's probable and true. but as i hope that maybe i was able to convey a little bit today, this is no picnic. unless you have people who are trained to standard, who are willing to fight, who are willing to shed wloblood, who a willing to die, you're not going to accomplish anything. and not just the ground soldiers but everybody else who assumes some level of risk in d-day. so to me, it's almost like a

pointless history graphical argument, but as history is an enduring argument, which i agree with, i doubt it will end anytime soon. >> you go next. >> okay. well, the mystery for me in putting this program together that isn't together yet is the russian influence. when i started out on this, i didn't know beans about the importance of the eastern front other than the stupidity of hitler in doing -- trying to do what napoleon couldn't do. but when you look at the footage of the eastern front in the winter of '41-'42 -- or is it

'42-'43? >> both. >> well, it's both, right. but it is staggering to look at the piles of bodies, the lack of clothing for the soldiers and so on. i just was blown away again because i'm in a visual medium. and so going into our archives and looking at hours and hours of that footage, it impressed upon me the importance of the russian sacrifice. somebody said russian blood that was shed on the eastern front. so my feeling -- again, i used

to, back in the '90s, shortly after i finished my first specials, when i went out to visit educational institutions, i would take our american textbooks that had the war in it, and i would make comments about what was missing in these pages on world war ii. and you know what textbooks look like, and then i dropped the book on the floor. and clearly the credit that is due to the russian military operation was never there. so my feeling is that if i'm to do something in this short 60-minute film would be to get the russian issue in there. so that's my comment.

>> well, since you mentioned a debate without end, i guess i'm just going to speak about the eisenhower piece since this hasn't been covered so far. you know, it's fascinating for me to go into bookstores and see big volumes on leadership during world war ii and often see eisenhower's picture not there. and so i think -- no, i think it's fascinating because i think what's happened is many of the unflattering, even snarky, you might say, memoirs that were written after the war have had their effect. you hear repeatedly how eisenhower wasn't qualified for the job because he didn't have combat experience. well, i'd like to point out that omar bradley didn't have combat experience too, and nobody's blaming him. and so i think it really gets down to an argument without an

end here related to the nature of leadership itself and what his job description was. there are plenty of places in his memoirs and in his papers where he describes the role as supreme allied commander, and that's very different than the operational command or even the command of land forces or something else. but he's the boss over this. so i think what's helped me a lot is considering the source whether i read this because it would be like some of these accounts would be like reading a book about some successful ceo as written by the disgruntled employees that didn't get enough resources for their own division. and so i think that's going to be one of the continual arguments about whether combat experience was necessary to be a supreme allied commander when, in fact, his responsibilities were for an array of factors

that had nothing -- i shouldn't say had nothing to do with the war, but were far more comprehensive than the war itself. that would be the political considerations, keeping the allies together, and also to keep really what was nationalism about to burst out the whole time. let me just say in closing on that thought is that to get a really good idea of what he was up against in trying to keep a -- you might see a nonpartisan alliance together is to read the headlines in these respective countries. america was always on his case for being too british, and the british were always on his case for being too american or not british enough. i mean he was in one of the tough positions of having to, you know, reconcile all ends. it's a fascinating set of topics, but i always tell my

students make sure that we understand what your job is before you start holding people responsible for the performance of someone farther down the food chain. >> first of all, i want to second everything susan just said. but i also want to respond to george -- not respond to george but maybe add on a bit, pile on. as there is i tendency in the united states to overestimate our own contribution as compared to the russians, for example, in terms of losses, bloodshed, number of forces committed, i mean the russians in late '42-'43, were finding i think, 212 german and allied divisions, some romanians and poles and others, 212 divisions. the united states only mobilized a total of 97 visions in the whole war in both theaters. so the russians were carrying a disproportion al load, and they remember that today. and that affects their global outlook. here compared to that, we need

to remember in the pacific as well that the united states fought against japan. we think, well, we beat japan virtually single handed from guadalcanal to okinawa, here we come, and then the philippines and so on. but the japanese only ever committed about half a million troops to the pacific war, and 2.4 million troops to the war in china so that china was playing a role in the asian war similar to what the soviet union did in the european war. it tied down the bulk of our foes' ground resources so that the anglo-americans could attack from the periphery, naval and from the air and do what they did best, taking advantage of american productivity. but it's important -- and of course to follow that up, the chinese remember that too, right? to the russians, it's the great patriotic war. to the chinese, it's the great east asia war. and the united states was a bit player as far as they're concerned. >> i'll say one other thing.

i mentioned that my brother was in world war ii. he was in the british navy in world war ii, and i can remember i was a high school student, and he was eight years older than me. having that american or yank bias, i just presumed we had won the war, and it was such a great lesson for me to have my older brother getting the facts on the table about how the brits had kept the war going with us reluctantly going into the draft and then finally at pearl harbor and so on. and i had never seen that or obviously heard that perspective

either in my school life or in the social life of a teenager and so on. but that's really stayed with me, and when i visited england and europe for quite an extensive period in the mid-'60s, that interaction that some of the gettysburg institute students get by interacting with people who see that non-american perspective, how important that is for your understanding of so much about the war back then, but also about, as you put it, the scene today. my visit in 1990 to the soviet union was amazingly eye-opening.

anyway, i'd just say that i try to bring that perspective to the work i do. >> by the way, that kind of narrow minded nationalistic view of we're the ones that won the war is not unique to the united states. several years ago i taught at the british naval academy as a visiting professor for a year, and i happened to mention while we were doing napoleon, i happened to mention the war of 1812, and a hand want up and said you mentioned the war of 1812, what was that? and i said during the napoleonic wars -- and the response from the student was, oh, were you in that too? >> we have a question from the audience, and it has to do with memory and remembering the war.

the question is: we are now the same distance of time from d-day as were civil war veterans when they returned to gettysburg for their final reunion in 1938. that's a compelling thing to think about, right? what can we learn from earlier commemorations of wars when we plan out the 75th anniversary of world war ii? >> well, as a frequent traveler to normandy, i can say that things have changed a lot over the last 30 years, and maybe i started going 40 years ago when actually people were still alive. i met all kinds of people who were living in houses along that coastline and got up in the morning and looked out of their windows, and i met people who were in the french resistance. and at that time, you know, you could rely on the guidance, you might say, of the people who had

been there at the time. over the years, it's changed dramatically, and you've had what i would call a siloing of these beaching. so the british go, and they go to british beaches. and the americans go, and they go to american beaches. and i want you to know, susan eisenhower has initiated an offensive to make everybody come together, at least, you know, once during these events. so i think i've managed to succeed in this for this year, but i've been working on it for four years now because nobody has been willing to agree that it is -- it was a joint effort. i mean, yeah, we all give lip service to it, but still, you know, the siloing effect is important. two other things that are happening. they're beginning to build monuments all over normandy. i have really cautioned them about that, and i think it would be wonderful if gettysburg and normandy would actually have a conference to talk about how to manage memory because we're

ahead of them in terms of this experience. now, finally, the one thing that causes murmurs on the coast every time the national anthems are played of all these countries is the playing of the german national anthem. and now there are german troops everywhere. as a matter of fact, ladies and gentlemen, when we had our government sequester, we were not allowed to send representatives to normandy, but the germans turned up. okay? well, anyway, increasingly as you're seeing from the high-level attention major anniversaries get, normandy is becoming a scene of reconciliation rather like gettysburg became a scene of reconciliation 50 years ago. for some people, it's going to get a little hard to get used to, to see the germans everywhere singing their national anthem and, you know, also trying to talk about this heroic struggle. but actually it's going to give normandy, i think, an even lo

longer -- a longer importance globally because it becomes that place of reconciliation. otherwise, it would just be another battle. so i do think there are tremendous connection points there. >> i would sort of add to that a little bit and say that like it or not, memory brings up politics. >> right. >> and current politics, future politics, whatever, have been and tend to always be shaped by whatever the political agendas of the time are. think back to the gettysburg commemorations in 1938, the reconciliation there to a great extent is done atop the carcass of jim crow, you know, to bring these white veterans, primarily white veterans, not exclusively, then together to get along that well. that's one of the things that has brought them together. so too with normandy, the germans being part of this. were the germans part of

commemorations in 1964, do we think? not to my knowledge. maybe individual people there but recognized as such? even a soviet's last russian participation of any kind in relation to the cold war. and also the french memory. the french

>> if i could just ask a follow-up, what do you think the role of -- what do you think the role of historians are during commemorations? these are kind of great times for historians because if you have a book that you're working on, you're going to find a publisher during an anniversary, right? but with anniversaries, there's a bit of tension with historians as well because a lot of the stuff that gets propagated isn't the right story. it doesn't match with our standards of accuracy, but it also sometimes is a continuation of old myths and a resurrection of old myths. so at this time, like how would

you address kind of our role? >> i'll just say very quickly that the historians i admire the most are, just to use this as a political example, are democrats who read about dwight hiezen ho eisenhower or other republican presidents and conclude something other than what their party line is. it's very easy to argue the same set of arguments, but testing those assumptions against all the politics, by the way, that overlay everything after the war, including the memoirs of various generals and others lower down. >> i want to go back to the history textbooks, and in the realm of the historian's world, we believe that the textbooks

are written by abds, right? these are people who go in and write the textbook material. abds are "all but the dissertation." these are those who have given up the dissertation pathway because tehey need a job. i am appalled -- i have to tell you i am so appalled by the textbooks where i gave you that example. i did this in dozens of places with the textbooks. i was at the harry truman library. there are 50 or 60 teachers out there, and i had shown part of my program on president eisenhower, and made my drop-in on the wooden floor of these fat

textbooks and tell people why this, this, and this was all wrong. it was 20 years behind what historians were writing. i got a guy in the back of the room said, dr. colburn, does that mean you want me to change my lesson plan? i didn't know if he was the jokester in the crowd or he was serious, but i played it seriously. and the teachers, the textbook producers and so on, have to get with the program because our students are not learning the essence. why is world war ii important? it's more important than, oh, we won. but all of these lessons to be learned are not being taught. you know, i went into a school less than five years ago.

a social studies teacher said, these are 30 of the top students from all four grades, george. and five of them thought they knew who eisenhower was. it's just mind-boggling. it really is. and it really pushes me in my work to create, especially in this electronic era what we call electronic learning modules, basically streaming modules into the classroom. we have to do something about the teaching of history below the good teaching you get at gettysburg college. >> just as a brief answer to ian's question, i believe that historians, as much as possible, because we all have biases too, let's be honest, the rule in is

in times of commemoration like that to be the sober voice in a room that is otherwise perhaps intoxicated on the cocktail of nationalism, political agendas, honest, well-meaning commemoration and excitement and whatever else it is, to perhaps get beyond that veneer and say, well, here are the facts as we see them. here is an honest kind of interpretation as we see them while still respecting exactly why you're here and understanding the political component in context of the time that perhaps you can then fall back maybe on the historian to be the informed voice to get beyond some of those agendas. we would always hope. >> the sober voice in the room. i think i'm going to take that and use that in my memory class, or the designated driver. >> that's funny. i was going to say the role of the historian in a conference like this is obviously to be

decorative. >> we had a bunch of questions that came in that are specific military questions. so i'd like to do these in rapid fire order. marines were barred from the 1944nd laing. some say eisenhower did not want them to get credit or because of their size or because they were in the pacific. marines were known for amphibious assaults. why were they not consulted in this plan? >> i'd love to take that. actually the marines were in on the landings a little bit because you had shipboard marines who would have been aboard some of the american ships, and a few of them did go ashore, though obviously not in a major assault role. the question contains the answer. the marine corps is already stretched to its full limit by the middle of 1944, fighting in the pacific. it's the largest it's ever been, going on the way to six divisions. certainly they have a lot of amphibious doctrine that the army can learn from. and i think the questioner is right that the army could have learned a lot more from the marines and also from army

commanders, who had been part of amphibious landings in the pacific. so why? because there was a sense among some in the allied high command that europe was the big leagues and that these little invasions in the pacific on tangential islands did not necessarily coincide with continental lit orel operations and the kind of logistics that are going to be necessary for that and the kind of seapower was different and the air power changed the equation. so i think this is unfortunate. the commander of the 7th infantry division, for instance, was on the way to being transferred to 19th corps and offered to sit down with omar bradley because he had invaded at kwauj alynn, and he had said this is how we operate here. i'd love to impart the lessons to you and so forth, and bradley was not that interests. it's not necessarily an upbeat answer. >> there are significant logistical differences between

the atlantic and pacific and particularly between normandy and tie pan, kwauj align. one of the them is the landings in the pacific, the entire invasion force and its support had to go in a single unit, often in excess of 1,500 miles at a time rather than shuttle back and forth quickly across the channel as the lsts were doing in the weeks and months after the landings in normandy. the so the logistical problems are of a different character. secondly, though, there was an effort, i think, for the naval commanders of the invasion force were sent out to the pacific to sit down with nimitz and has staff to talk about some of the difficulties they had encountered during amphibious operations and how lessons could be applied. it's not that they operated completely separately, but it is true that they operated mostly differently, and the grounds was that the circumstances were different. that's a short answer but -- >> we have another one that has

to do with gliders. what happened to the gliders after d-day? >> you mean what happens to the physical gliders or doctrinally? >> physically. >> well, they recover as many as the gliders as they possible can. so they do a recycling effort in 1944. the ones that weren't completely destroy destroyed, broken apart into a bunch of pieces, dead bodies inside, there were quite a few that could be recovered. this continued with operation market garden in which many of the gliders are in much better shape than the ones in normandy. it was a major recycling effort. we tend to focus on the paratroopers, the glamorous guys of operation overlord, but almost any paratrooper of the time would tell you they'd rather go in by pair churachute those gliders. the murkiness of the night landing and, you know, you're

riding with sometimes ammo or with jeeps or things that if jostles around could cause a lot of casualties and did. the glider pilots in particular had their own ethos, which i find fascinating because many had been rejected for propulsion fighting, and they had a chip on their shoulder every. they were daredevilish and determined to prove themselves and they were a bit of a handful after they landed because it's like, what do you do with these guys? so they'd be roaming around, grabbing souvenirs and getting involved in battings when they hadn't been trained. it was proposed a full-on training program to give these guys infantry training and all that as the british had done. but in doing that, he gets into a kind of bureaucratic battle with the army air force that's saying, no, these are our pilots. you're not going to take them

into infrantry trainer. this never quite happens for the americans. the pilots are not recycled the way gavin would have wanted. the glider planes are. >> i just have to say that is the most military decision i have ever heard. you can't fly a powered aircraft, so we're going to give you one without an engine. i mean that's the most military thing i've ever heard. i will say to go from the air to the sea, some weapons platforms -- i would include the gliders. i don't know what the percentages are, john. maybe you do off the top of your head. the number that were simply used as a one-use item, that was certainly true of the higgins boats. they built tens of thousands of the higgins boat and on the landings, in excess of 90% of them were lost during the operation and nobody worried about that because they're cheap. we can build more. it's not a problem so that the american throw-away society that we became in the years after

world war ii maybe got its start in world war ii because we were so good at building so much, so fast, in such unprecedented numbers that the idea of losing a couple hundred higgins boats? get a couple hundred more. not a problem. >> our next two questions, i'm going to combine them into one. they have to do with media and some of the sources that we have. the one question has to do with realtime reporting being the first draft of history. and how did radio and newspaper coverage did on their d-day reporting? the second question has to do with how much film footage there is actually out there of generals speaking on camera? undoubtedly this was brought by your film, george, which had that one shot of a giddy eisenhower talking about rooting out the fox, right, the desert fox? >> that's a rare piece of footage. >> so how was the invasion covered? was it covered accurately in hind sight, and how much footage

is there out there? >> well, i'll start. i'm not sure i'm the best qualified to answer this, but i'll tell a quick story. that is that one of my books called decision at sea is about five one comes from 1988 in the persian gulf. there was no existing first draft of history other than what was reported at the time and i found those to be remarkably accurate it was one guy who reported repeatedly from the front and those became in effect a material so the short answer to all of the time in 1944 and rightly so because those people were there risking their lives to get information

and to help me out so that i think was be a different kind of culture than we have right now that we are so much more scott: bitter about skeptical but in those days the news was the news, >> the next question has do with oh, go ahead, george. >> i like to make a few comments on that. first of all, the footage is available in our public archives , it's pretty incredible. when you watch film, a cameraman right next to a rifle man, it

is jaw-dropping. the marines in the pacific, we've got to show there is a war outside of europe on and i've got marine corps footage, it was like i was there the cameramen, you see them every once in a while holding up a q-card and someone will turn the camera on to know where the data is and where they are they are right on top of things and there's a joke that goes around about for every two marines there's one cameraman. they knew pr like nobody else, but what i saw in the your in footage was quite

amazing. then, the interviews that i did going on to become a best-selling author in the united states. but, in all they are fighting over there, we are going to go out there, they send back dispatches, they were out of press conference behind the lines and they were out there watching and walter cronkite was one of the great world war ii journalists many others who went out for some of them to fame and fortune. so, my feeling and a media coverage day it came back for

these well-known correspondents and this went out unfiltered the decision was made to show the american marines in the sir on and someone that was quite a traumatic moment for american, not the americans who had already lost children but it was of the day. so that's my impression and i will stick with that. >> so, for those of you in the audience who have been brought here by others and may not know that much about world war ii and might know more about literature, it's a wonderful biography by martha gellhorn who was a great journalist and

she was married to ernest hemingway at the time and the two of them were highly competitive. she managed to stowaway on a british ship during the invasion of normandy and he never forgave her. >> that's an amazing story, she pretended she was a nurse, it was a british ship bringing casualties back and she was, all the correspondence on the other side and she was on the beat talk into wounded soldiers . it's a phenomenal story. >> we have one more question and it stems from something that's been brought up many times, the idea that the arriving generation is not playing as close attention as they should be.

i will say that the sentiment is refuted by the students in the room currently, some might be here under persuasion but because of their enthusiasm for the subject, one of the great things about keeping it at a place like gettysburg college, it does attract students that are interested in history, military history, and with that being said, there's a perception and i don't want to engage with the question necessarily from a negative perspective, i will put a more positive spin on it and ask you what you think the most important part of ike's legacy or the d-day conversation, what you think the most important parts of that should be conveyed to the next generation and how do you think should convey it? it's a really easy question? >> i will start because i take students there. one of the most stunning things about taking young people to

normandy is the sheer realization about lot everyone is trained about 80 leeann some people get cut down in a minute and others survived to tell the tale it's a stunning exam of some that everyone is comfortable with, the idea of being lucky or unlucky. i say that because i think the real album with the teaching of history is that still, despite everything we have too many disruptors intent on making sure you know about dry treaties and dry alliance, and we actually miss the fact that embedded in the word history is story. i would say for the teaching of dwight eisenhower, there's been a tendency to dismiss him because he had kind of a boy scout image, almost too stupid to be true type of thing but i really do know of many of the struggles. one of the struggles was that he felt that it was to do his

duty as he perceived it, which was the highest sense of duty which resolves self-sacrifice. he had to be alone and not and i can only imagine that he was a very solitary person, i don't think he was hard to know or hard to guess what he was thinking. that's a very powerful thing that to tell students and other young people about the struggle of responsibility and the struggle of aloneness knowing you are the person that's going to be forever remembered for something you do. always think about the stories, not to make them commercialized, cheesy, but to talk about the

basic human things that others who went before had to show in very stark ways. >> this idea of young people will in history or whatever for the benefit, when are they ever ask i mean 100 years ago when i was young, youth is always looking forward. it's the nature of the beast but at the same time if we believe today that young people aren't learning history and there's a real problem, then i think that, as history professors to impart their knowledge and understand that it's really important to the facts of the story. the human story brings all of this to life and makes this much more relatable. to see it

upfront, from going there, i think nothing replaces that. maybe i am biased because i don't see the problem i see out there, it seems my students are excited about history and i think that's great. because of the human stories that we can all relate to. >> i tend to think eisenhower's legacy is one of moderation one of disinterested patriotism. it's one of the reasons he becomes president. is that going to happen again anytime soon? >> does that say that things have changed somehow? i don't know. when i think of eisenhower, to

sum it up in a couple words, what are the things that come to mind? accountability ? all these kinds of things are major lesson learners so as far as somebody who oddities that he, i agree, but also someone that is fascinating. absolutely. >> in my case, i've had a lot of young people work for me with eisenhower legacy projects. every one of them, at the end, whether we have the program done where it the end of the quarter for interns, they go out as clearly dedicated eisenhower fan.

they are basic listening and learning in this video or out looking at footage and so on and, because eisenhower, 1941 through 1961, it's a little point i like to call it the eisenhower era but, if it's presented in an interesting way and they have people like me hanging on to answer specific questions, that it is very, very teachable and i had just broken in a new assistant editor , maybe 30 years old but, the idea of getting it in front of

them and getting them to focus on it, they could easily identify the polity in eisenhower. it's not difficult i know my older daughter called me about a year ago and she said, dad, they want to study history and it's your fault. both she and her husband are number crunchers and the whole idea of joshua going off somewhere to major in history is appalling to her. so use that as an example because my view, on the other hand my granddaughter is in london goes to normandy and doesn't go to the beaches. she's there to study culture

and cooking which i thought was appalling. but, i still go back to the textbook and the messengers and the teachers in the classroom and so on and that takes you back to teacher education but then i don't think we do a very good job of making history exciting and essential i have a facebook page and every time i can put a post or repost up, this is why history is important is my comment. thank you. >> well, as much as it bothered me that history a little bit

was gone, i will say that it's true that the younger generation has always believed they are looking ahead and they don't need old people telling them what's what but on the other hand i do think there's a problem in history education generally and i have to cope's for them. one is the perception that the purpose of an education is to make money. you see this stated expressly in college promotional material. our students get better jobs and make more money so cost them has become and i'm all for stem, people have tried to modify that by talking about steam but there's no age in the acronym, the perception is that studying history will not help you get a job, it will not make you a rich man. we are all evidence of that.

>> that is one, the other one to a certain extent is the internet and not for all the usual reasons that you assumed when you've just grown, but also this one and there's a tendency to think that in teaching history it's not nesses very to teach a thing because you can just look those up so, i don't really need to know that but what i need is a broad understanding of the way human beings interact with each other, but i believe you have to have a diplomatic context with those things and that is what i think is abs but of everyone in the country today . >> thank you for our panel. [ applause ] brian mccullough

talks about how the internet. >> it's the story of products and companies we would all be familiar with aol, napster, the iphone, all of the things that have come together over the last 25 years that have made the internet technology that have infiltrated every credit of modern life . >> monday on cspan-2. we've been called the biggest little city on the map and what it meant is that there was so much excitement and culture and action happening in reno but it is the biggest

little city around . there are not very many cities in north america that have what reno has that were on the edge of a vast wilderness and we think of the natural environment been a crucial determinant of what like is like in our home city. >> the city stores on the road going the american story with the help of our spectrum cable partners, we take you to reno nevada. >> reno, 100 years ago was known as a lace to come get a divorce. then, reno became known as a place to go gamble and that's been drying up from the past 25 years. we have this reputation and we have tesla come to town and big the largest factory, the giga factory, it changes the narrative in the story is that reno is a town that's reinventing itself and something new. >> watch the city store of reno nevada this saturday at noon

eastern on cspan-2's book tv and sunday at 2 pm on american history tv on cspan-3, working with our cable affiliates as we explore the american story. >> normandy, the airborne invasion of europe is an hour- long documentary reduce the u.s. army air forces. the film details the planning, training and combat operations and after battle summaries of airborne forces, with an emphasis on more than 500 gliders dropped behind enemy lines on the morning of june 6. >> ladies and gentlemen, the picture we are about to see