the 1863more about on the civilmpaign war, explore our nations passed here on american history tv. next, from the national world war ii museum in new orleans, military historian carl nolan chronicles the paris and warsaw uprising that occurred simultaneously in august of 1944. he is later joined by the senior historian for a conversation about those events. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] evening ladies and gentlemen. ofm the senior director research and history here at the national world war ii museum. with the institute for the study of war and democracy. it's great to see you here, and once again to have our friends at the span here -- at c-span

here, sharing this content with their viewers. to those watching on the livestream at home, welcome. moment,like to take a as we start, to recognize some individuals. first, do we have any world war ii veterans or homefront workers in our crowd? [applause] >> do we have any veterans of any other era? please stand. [laughter] -- [applause] >> and do we have any members of our board of trustees? thank you all for your service. the museum, we at

have been busy commemorating the 75th anniversary of major events in world war ii. ,he biggest of which was june 6 d-day, the invasion at normandy. some other recent major anniversaries include last month on july the 20th, was the assassination attempt on bunker.n the lagoon landings in southern france took place. this week marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most glorious moments of the war, when the city of light, paris, was liberated after four years of german occupation. on the eastern front, following the massive soviet summer offensive, the red army .pproached the river at warsaw

this led to the >> tonight we have two premier military historians with us, to share their insights and studies on these last two money mental events. -- monumental events. scholar, dr. cathal j. nolan was here november 4 guest conference on world war two. dr. nolan is associate professor of history and executive director of the international history institute, boston university. he is an award-winning teacher and scholar of military and international history. battle, work, allure of a history of how wars are won the lehrmanceived

prize for military history, the $50,000 prize is cosponsored by the guilder lehrman institute of american history and the new york a storm in society. onrecognizes the best book military history and in speaking world distinct speights scholarship, its contribution to literature, and to appeal to both a general and economic audience. include, aooks two-volume concise history of of the age ofwars louis the 14th, and a blame study, the eight of the wars of religion. historylts on military to the pbs history series moat nova another document or films. he's currently writing, decency,

mercy and honor in war, for the oxford university press. joining him is the museum's own samuel zemurray stone senior historian in our executive director for the institute of war and democracy, dr. robert m. citino . he is the author of 10 bucks, primarily focusing on the german military. he is widely known from the museum's various public programs . and as one of our deterred tour historians on many of the museums travel programs. -- featured tour historians. first, dr. nolan with a brief presentation before joining dr. citino in conversation.

both pleasure to welcome delmon. -- gentlemen. [applause] >> good evening and thank you for the imitation. we are gathered together in a place that remembers ordinary men and women as well, who did many external things over days and months and years of current and sacrifice. of duty and devotion. dr. nolan: my power words tonight will not do them justice. so let me instead reach out to you with the quiet words of the poet, the english men john dunn, who meditated this in 1624. it will be familiar to most of you. meditated on the common mortality that they shared in world war ii and at the end of

the day we all share. no man is an island. .ntire of itself every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. the cloud be washed away by the sea, europe is the less as well as if a promontory were, as well if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. any man's death diminishes me. because i am involved in mankind. , never send to know for whom the bell tolls. it tolls for the. for thee.s tonight i will talk about two signature events of world war ii and then engage conversation with you all. the liberation of paris and the destruction of warsaw. for they are connected in time. there connected by purpose on

both sides. and they tell us much about how the war ended in triumph for some, but in misery for tens of millions of others. they were part of the long end game of an immense world war already by the summer of 1944. we are in the end game of world war two. where everyone is jockeying for position at the coming negotiation table. worst, most, the destructive, most slaughter filled conflict in all of human history. at least, so far. the war started, as you know, in poor, pitiable poland in 1939, where was invaded not once but twice in 17 days. first by hitler's. and then by stalin. squatted, the warded, and

poland for the next five years, in its worst imaginable form. camps,ant -- fs death gestapo police, mass murders at war with each other on both sides of the nation. mass murder in poland's cities and all around. it took five years of colossal effort and sacrifice to get to the tipping point summer of 1944. five years of fighting and suffering and death, in africa and southeast asia. in china, and the philippines, in the philippines, in the baltic and the balkans, on and under all of the oceans, in the legal skies overhead. -- the legal skies overhead. lethal skiesthe overhead. the price was so high that words lose meaning, numbers lose meaning, even death loses much of its meaning. we are here trying to comprehend and we will all fail the western allies at this place commemorates broke through the

outer wall of antlers fetched in rocha -- hitler's fortress europe in a truly compact that heroic endeavor. but i remind you it was also a multinational one. americans assaulted just to of the five in beaches. first 20 minutes of saving private ryan, you saw the fake deaths. i've not done an actual count, of about 120 men, roughly. that is just enough by the film makers to leave it personal but also to remind us of the wider carnage of the war. as you know, as this place to merits, getting off just one end of omaha took four hours and cost many hundreds of lives more than that. and left other men, hundreds of them, ultimately several thousand, terribly wounded in body, in mind, even in seoul.

soul. there were former beaches on normandy's contested coach that day -- coast that day. bloody omaha was the worst. for more strips of wet sand were fighting hand-to-hand and from distance by shot and shell at the same time. the fight for normandy did not last one day. not even the longest day in rommel's phrase. it took three weeks to clear normandy. another four weeks to liberate just the rest of northern france. southern france took longer. and a second invasion on august 15. paris did not fall until august 25. and it came within hours of being blown apart by the germans. before the french took a back, on their own, with the resistance uprising, and free french sherman tanks raising

cross ofacing down the the range on a berks civil taken on their side. lorraine, joan of arc's symbol on their side. over the seven weeks in france, allied forces together suffered i will round up 200,000 casualties. the germans lost something like 440,000 casualties. over 20,000 french civilians were killed by everyone's artillery. and by british and american bombs. hundreds of french were killed by the gestapo and by the vossen s s including the entire civilian population of the village of ruidoso plan - who wereur glen, herded into the village church and burned alive. that is just normandy. during seven weeks of fighting in the northwest corner france, as you know, there was more

heavy fighting to come along the rhine, in the green are and ardennes forest, in flooded soggy holland, cross northern germany, fighting in italy in the balkans, in southern germany. and more fighting, much more fighting, all down the long eastern front, from finland through the baltic states, and eastern prussia, in the woods of belarus across the embassy fields of ukrainian grain -- across the amber fields of ukrainian grain. in romania, in bulgaria, in hungary and began in poland. all of that before death and justice road across germany on horseback and yes even on camel. the soviets used camels in 19 45. to get to berlin. it rode in heavy lend lease trucks, it road in massive tea 34 soviet tank armies, that

germans could not even conceive pointlier in the war my in this place, is that the war was won by the greatest generations of many nations. that thought the axis powers together. the men and women who defeated heller and fascism, came from two dozen countries. they left home starting in 1939 to fight in foreign fields to free faraway peoples of whom they knew little. smallame from farms and towns in queensland australia. they came from cities like auckland, new zealand on, manitoba. from manchester and melbourne, from montreal and marseille. highcame from the color desert in south africa, from the niger delta, from the mountains of kashmir, and a paul and baluchistan. -- and a paul. nepal.e paul -

the came from trinidad, rio de janeiro, iowa, and maine. fighting men bound for europe climbed onto troop ships in halifax, madras, melbourne. they steamed from a bike and vancouver and then 22 months after it started -- from mumbai and vancouver. then from san diego, seattle new york, orleans, miami, new york, boston. they spoke a hundred leg witches. they faded to a dozen ideas of god. two -- they spoke a hundred languages. they paraded to the great spirit, vishnu, allah and god. they came from hundred 40 countries and it aligns they called the united nations, passed in the 1945 at the generation of the united nations hoped would end war for their children and grandchildren. i say this in all humility asking you to walk in silence in this great place of memory and try trim ever them all.

not just the framed photographic tragedy of the 18-year-old from iowa, the 19-year-old from arizona, or the 20-year-old from nova scotia. who never came home. tens of millions did not even need to leave home. to find the war. the war found them. burned villages and homes, it killed parents and children, it raped the land. polls, yugoslavs, filipinos, chinese, mallett's, many many more people. and by the end italians, germans and japanese all found the war found them. meatgrinderd into a of industrial war. reachede butchers bill 75 million. killed 40 million were in the east alone. lost every500 lives

day in the east, 10 omaha's every day for 1400 consecutive days. we cannot copperhead that. that.cannot comprehend when summing are dying what is the loss of one or a hundred or a mere 10,000. and leaders thought in those terms. they had to. overwhelmed. all personal tragedy. this is the key difference between history and literature. between bar and shakes their. -- between water and shakespeare. war and shakespeare. amid all that in the people and may have war, young men and women discovered and were right to dwell on heroism, sacrifice, moral and physical endurance. that is what i want to turn to now. two examples. maybe less well-known to most american audiences.

the examples of sacrifice of the french to liberate their capital, and the polls who tried to locate -- liberate theirs. on each side of germany, in the summer of 1944, soviet and western armies were advancing at great speed and the war had broken wide open. germany was being pummeled on both sides. actual lesser degree also coming up from the south. in the west it was called overlord, you know it well. in the east it was operation by gratian named for a dead russian general who died at bar adeno in 1812 try to stop another invasion of the homeland. operation smashed and of the greatest force of the german army in one or two, army group center. smashed through it in belarus and headed for poland and parts west. the fight for paris back in the west began while general eisenhower was still busy reducing the blaze pocket.

eisenhower did not want to enter paris at all, although he was undergoing pressure to take the city for, reasons. eisenhower despised city fighting. he despised the idea of a trish and, -- attrition. he rightly feared getting trapped in a series of western-style and grad's peer he would not do it. -- western style and grads -- western stalingrads. the german army was literally collapsing in many cases running and other cases not able to run because it'd been so modernized by aircraft and allied material superiority that infect the german units had to sit in place and were destroyed in place. -- the core land pocket alainehen - couer pocket heading for the rhine, belgium, netherlands and onto the rhine. the road to the french capital was wide open.

by the middle of august. eisenhower chose not to take it. but the city would not wait. own.se on its starting with the general strike called by the resistance leadership. a general strike, not a term most americans are familiar with, but a long historical tradition in european politics, where the entire working class is supposed to go out on a general strike for, will not economic reasons. metro andhen the postal workers walked out. then the police walked out. .nd government in paris stopped it was important in paris as it is also the same month in warsaw that two proud nations lay down some claim to self liberation. this is what it all about. and did they understand this would be a marker laden blood? yes they did. they needed to assert in arms

and in but lied and sacrifice their right to decide -- in arms, blood, and sacrifice the right to decide their own futures. polls and the french. four days after the general strike began, the ffi, the free french resistance forces inside france rose in arms. they began attacking key german garrison and government buildings. german armor was moving to the city trying to get past the city and to the north. it was attacked, it was ambushed. molotov cocktails were the primary weapon of choice because the resistance was so poorly armed. but the ssi lay in ambush. it sniped. through molotov cocktails from high windows into passing half tracks. and burned and attacked fuel trucks. germans burned. and therefore they retaliated with their usual cruelty. raging at losing a 1944. and they were losing everywhere. everywhere. in the sky, and italy. in the east, in the west.

so the order was given, to wrecked from berlin -- direct from berlin, destroyed paris. their mocked engineers mind all the great buildings -- never mind the the engineers buildings that were to be reduced to rubble. notre dame, the louvre, the historic bridges built by the louie's, the arc de triomphe, the great iron tower was going to come down. up in thericades went grand french tradition of resistance. the barricades went up, cobblestones are torn out of the street piled in cars and trucks made into barricades. recalling the revolution of 1789, but more recently recalling the french resistance against the prussians. in 1870. hitler's ordered maximum damage done to the city. a week of fighting ensued. during that week of fighting, the best estimates are that summer between 800 and 1000 french resistance fires --

fighters give their lives. churchill pleaded with eisenhower. but i could not come. -- but eisenhower would not come in on the 24th of august, french general leclair disobeyed his immediate american superiors and is sent in a fast patrol of armored scouts that reach the city's outskirts. general dietrich consulates had order from heckler, blow up paris. he hesitated he was in negotiations with resistance. his motive seems to be primarily to spare the lives of his own men. not the city. by all accounts except his own. by all accounts, he was prepared to carry out the destruction order. but he did not. in the end. broke augustas don 25, which we remember as the day of the liberation of paris, the main body of leclair's armor division second french second armored raced into the city's center. down the champs-elysees.

when the french civilians first saw the sherman tanks they thought they were americans or british. then they saw the cross of lorain on the side and they went wild with joy. and what happened to leclair's division over the next two weeks, is what eisenhower feared. in the coronation of wine and sex it disappeared from battle for the next. . it was lost, perfect lender steadily. the same thing happened when the allied armies were liberating the provinces of the and champagne. it did. the wine cellars were liberated. we liberated the hell at that place. the french actually took over 300 casualties. the french second armored took over 300 casualties, there were significant fighting in the street of paris. german snipers were in the buildings, german mortar teams, german tanks were still in the city. they lost 35 sherman's, the french did an hundred 11 more military vehicles. on that day. the gall spoke.

-- the french general de gaulle spoke. in the late afternoon he was waiting and ready for this. you have to quote de gaulle on this. paris outraged. paris broken. paris martyred. but paris liberated. liberated by itself. liberated by its people, with the help of french armies. with the support and the help of all of france fighting france. the only france. the real france. eternal france. ". he is the french churchill. or churchill is the french to gall. -- or churchill is the french general de gaulle. the point is even liberation war is a continuation of politics by other means. politics, allied american politics, british and german politics. it is best to know this. on the others of europe, at the

50,000 man polish home army chose to strike a blow for his country's honor. and its country's politics. deciding it was necessary. politically. not militarily. paul it was going to be liberated. this is not militarily. a necessary decision. it is a politically necessary decision. they needed to rise. to lose, to sacrifice, to die. to be seen to be fighting for their own liberation. lest they be excluded from the victors table. when the negotiations come. we now know there were no negotiations essentially over poland, they were excluded from the table. but they rose. to strike a blow for politics and for honor, not to wait for the liberators to ride inside army tanks red army tanks into warsaw. they timed the rising to the advance of the red army, which as i said earlier was racing

across eastern europe and was racing into poland. although it was getting close to the end of its tether after a 300 mile advance. in operation by gratian. that is extraordinary a 300 mile continuous advanced. considering how the germans broke down and the soviets sped through belarus and poland. vermacht was also retreating which was a factor in the polish decision to rise. but the red army was also fighting series battles south of warsaw. and it stopped at the vistula. controversye great of the works are rising. i should mention this is -- of the war's are rising. i should mention this isi shoule second warsaw arising. the first took place a year earlier in the ghetto in 1943. and it was dealt with with

absolute savagery and brutality. and the last inhabitants, the jewish inhabitants of the ghetto work wiped out down to just a few hundred survivors out of 40,000. germans turned back. germans returned to the city enforce. they began to level it. in an act of pure and murderous revenge. bitterly.rmy fought it fought to the death. in a city that was cut off, by rivers and the enemy, 463 days. 63 days. - for intoattle went on september. the polls managed to kill 2000 germans and wounded 9000 germans. the pulse suffered perhaps as many as 200,000 dead. -- the polls. mostly civilians but many tens of thousands of fighters as well.

only 25,000 wounded polish survived. a lopsided ratio which tells you what germans did to wounded pulse. -- wounded poles. like everything else, when you compare the western front to the eastern front, the east was so much worse, it seems like it is two separate wars. an admin respect, it was. -- and in many ways it was. it is still not clear why style and stop the red army. he did allow some armed polish to cross the vistula appeared but he had many more ethnic polish in soviet red army divisions that were ethnically polish that could have crossed. he wanted to cross. there was an attempt to cross, the germans repelled it. getting across a river they down hard thing to do. -- is a hard thing to do. mostly, as you know, and is the controversy contends, stellan sat and watched as hitler's forces wiped out the main armed

resistant -- resistance of the polish nation. in a country were both tyrants conspired together in 1939 to make that nation extinct. did he do it on purpose? it is stellan. he was capable of it and he probably had the thought. he may have done it on purpose. we do not have definitive evidence that he did. we have some. completelyot definitive enough that the controversy remains. it is also i think through member and, that whatever stalin intended, the red army was exhausted by a 300 mile invests -- advance to the vista and was needing to rest, rearm, refit, fix the trucks, advanced with the fuel. they are using capriles. -- camels. churchill pleaded with us talent

population.oland he also pleaded with roosevelt and was refused. this is often forgotten. he sent 200 british and commonwealth aircraft in a desperate one-way effort to drop supplies to the polish people, 500 tons we think. half at least an behind german lines. it was a complete failed effort, 300 air crew were killed. south african, canadian, british. an 41 aircraft lost an omission where the soviets refused to cooperate. -- in a mission where soviets refused to cooperate. warsaw was not paris. hepler and himmler sent in s s death battalions. that's what they were called. and an entire brigade which had been recruited from murderers and rapists in the german prisons. the polish were pushed out of the buildings then murdered in the streets. a single warsaw suburb, 40,000 civilians were

butchered, it may have been more. butchered. without regard for age or gender. there's nothing like this in paris. there's nothing like this. the atrocity stiffened polish resolved. all tragedy stiffens polish resolved, it is their history. the panzers advanced to the streets, using polish civilians as human shields. anyway and the thatcht discovered again fighting in the city was not something it was capable of doing well. to resume itsegan advance in september, south of the city and out tacking across the vistula as well. ultimately it is the red army that forced the germans to leave warsaw, to abandon warsaw. before they pulled out and as

they pulled out, they methodically destroyed every ager building, every key cultural site. they tried to upload rate polish culture with the same means with which they were denying their own. i have lamented warsaw once, 1994, and i flew into the city and had an overwhelmingly sense of historic tragedy. i mean this is no disrespect to the polish. they have changed and are now tree building warsaw. based on historical photographs and blueprints. when i was there 1984, it was one of the ugliest cities i had seen. because it was -- in 1984. it was destroyed by the germans and rebuilt by the russians. we should remember and i will close in one minute that in april, 1940 five, hitler's turned against the germans as well he ordered everything in germany destroyed. everything needed to survive the coming winter. it is called his got her down tterdammerung -

twilight of the gods order. what did it mean? did the twin risings, did the war saved the french and polish national honor and make the world safer democracy? did it secure a brave new order or restore a system that had been smashed by the worst war in history? no it did not. not even the whole war did that. but it was absolutely necessary, to fight that war. all the same. , -- whatthe war dead the war did, it stopped the permanent victory of the axis powers. all that duty all that courage and sacrifice did not remake the world into an ideal place. but it prevented it from dissenting into a protracted fascist nightmare. war, the paris rising, even the failed ror's are rising and short that hitler's promise, that the nazi empire would last a thousand years, was denied,

denied and denied. it lasted only 12. and that was that enough. thank you. [applause] >> i like to listen to you speak all night. if i'm speaking to for the audience. dr. nolan: if we got to dinner, you probably well. dr. citino: summary questions going through my mind. you look at these two key historical events, doing what historians do, the comparative perspective helps bring both, each one into a sharper focus. , he started by talking about ordinary people, quoting john dunn. at one point in your talk you said these are peoples deciding their own futures. tell us more about how important that was to the rebels, both in paris and in warsaw.

dr. nolan: this is a great war of nations. this is a great war the nation, the second world war. ouroes a disservice to understanding and to the war itself if we stop with the leaders, with churchill or roosevelt or hitler's stellan or the generals. and we overcompensate by going down to the saving private ryan level. there is a middle level that is the nations. the idea of nationhood means to be french for what it means to be polish. the french were not going to have americans come into the center of their capital and liberate them. as it is, americans do not do that. and they still claim a day. -- and they still claimed that they did. how may times have you heard jokes we saved you not once but twice. it is aggravating. is thatno: the other patents troops liberated which is a double fault. dr. nolan: up late having liberated a bar. hemingway liberated a

bar. side in the gun on his a holster and went into a bar on the ritz and said i am here to liberate it germans. and they said, they have all left, sir. we do not allow guns in here. it was a farce, it was hemingway. look at these i events and your marvelous description, the german response in each one was very different. you quoted some statistics that 800 to 1000 french died in the paris uprising. polish,probably 200,000 more or less the number we attribute now, why was the german response in warsaw so much more brittle? -- brutal, so much more intense? dr. nolan: the germans in the second world war, unlike the first world war. the guiding concept is race war, the action at her word for.

the polish ranked lower down on , they areal category more ancient and historic enemy than the french are more modern enemy. the polish go back to the teutonic knights in the fighting the goes back a hundred years. they were hated by the germans. and they hated the germans as well. the level of hate was higher in the east. and the war was so much worse in the east. war produces, it is not usually start and hate but it produces hate. and it produces even more hate. and the killing level is so high. absolute destructiveness in the sense that tomorrow one was going to die. the soviets changed one of their classic slogans. the original bolshevik, workers of the world unite. in world war two that became conrad, kill your german. they're reverting to core nationalism. dr. citino: ehrenberg the great soviet journalist, kill, kill, kill. dr. nolan: and i'm going to

explore this and the next book on decency. dr. citino: decency and war might be a very thin book. dr. nolan: it is, sadly. i think that maybe one of the larger parts of the excellent nation. holwitz who was not a noble or heroic figure but he turned out to be a more normal or traditional or we can say decent german at least he is in a ballpark. where is on the east. el. citino: mod dr. nolan: was one of the few fully committed to the race war. the germanmodell commander who destroyed the city there's a quote from hepler who -- hitler, who said he trusted them to get the job done but we never want to serve under him. i'm happy to say that at the end of the war he walked into a

forest and shot himself blew his brains out. heis on record as saying advocates the complete destruction of warsaw for thousand meters on either side of the main highway, just level it, maybe a couple of miles. and they wound up doing much more than that. dr. nolan: there's a phrase from medieval warfare they called it havoc radius, how wide on the side of your calorie attack could you destroy everything. think of sherman owing south. was that 80 miles, 40 miles on either side of the railways. dr. citino: in mechanized air i could get worse than that. in horses -- dr. nolan: iron horses take you farther. dr. citino: you alluded to the controversy of the warsaw uprising. i've a couple questions you're my friend i'm going to put you on the spot. i'm going to let love doing this in front of c-span and millions of people.

here so i learned in grad school the russians got to the vista lot and sat there and let the rebels inside warsaw be destroyed. mississippiis a style river is not an easy crossing. i will put you on the spot. is that true? you gave in on the one hand, on the other hand. dr. nolan: david lanza came out since we were in graduate school a specialist in the history of the red army. he came out and said no the red army was exhausted they could not get across. he dismissed the idea that stalin had this in mind. we do not know. is it is stalin. this certainly what he contemplated, was capable of. so as a story and i cannot say we definitively know he did this. -- as a historian i cannot say. but i think you can say i do not criticize anyone who assumes

that stalin did. we cannot prove it but it is partly reasonable to think that he did that for this reason. dr. citino: you mention politics theou quoted klausen, continuation of politics by other means. dr. nolan: the rebels in warsaw were non-communist, they were loyal to the london government the polish government in exile in london, loyal to the prewar polish or republican form of government. perhapsstalin, desiring to see the non-communist poland. dr. citino: there's no question, that is white is all about politics too, the allies were already breaking down. pulling was going to be a major topic of discussion in any postwar settlement -- poland was going to be a major topic. her till was recognizing the london polish government in exile from 1939. -- churchill was recognizing. stalin was setting up an

alternative, the lublin poles. and i want to say some guy don't i've hurt anyone else and i do not want to be misunderstood. i'm not singing morally. in some way it does not matter whether stalin left the germans to kill the polish eared because it is talent. stalin. hadis is he taken the city, within six months he would have killed them. dr. nolan: you're right, he was going to wipe out polish arms resistance. he had started to 9039 and 1940 two wipe out the leadership and would -- 1939 and he would continue to do that. i think he would've come and wiped out the polish national resistance even had the germans not been able to. the great british historian norman davies wrote a book on the norman dust polish uprising -- warsaw uprising. i like your comment per he says what is happening on both sides of the line in poland is that secret place are executing

hundreds of thousands of people. that is the gestapo on one side and the soviet nkbd on the other. dr. citino: this is why the east was so different than the west. you have the two, if we throw in mao, let's leave him out of the conversation for now the two greatest mass murderers not just of the 20th century, but of history. dr. nolan: two great tyrants, neither of whom cares a wet for the lives of their own people. -- cares at all for the lives of their own people. -- cares at all for the lives of their own people. hitler did not care about the german people. stalin did not care about the lives of the soviet population. everyone else is trapped between the pair you have mass murders behind you. mass murderers in front of you. they're coming at each other with two of the greatest mechanized military forces we have seen in modern times. and 40 million died. dr. citino: one of the books on this part of the world in world war ii and after is known as

blood lands of eastern europe. dr. nolan: some of my colleagues do not like the thesis. i tend to agree that is what it was pretty i cannot give any other place, few other places where i would not want to be for a few days. but i cannot think of any other place where i would not want to be in the whole human history than the eastern front between 1941 and 19 free five. debt and 19.5. -- and 1945. dr. citino: you talk about eastern history. i think pollens national -- poland national anthem the go through tragedies and it in the end, and still poland has not fallen. poland will remain. dr. nolan: there are number of patients other kind history of suffering, i think they dupe it i was born in dublin. and if i have to hear one more time about the poor, suffering irish. dr. citino: i heard the brogue

come out for second. dr. nolan: there is a competition we have competitive suffering. they're often nationalist historians not international historians, they are competing and who has got the worst, we suffered under the british, the british it is nothing, the atlantic slave trade, and then the holocaust and we go on and on. it is vulgar reduction of massive human tragedy, to a nomo sports contest in which one scores higher or lower than the next. and it is done all the time. did you know boston erected a statue of potato. dr. citino: for the famine? dr. nolan: yes. not ireland, boston. a statue to the slave trade which helped found boston. dr. citino: i grub the classic irish name settee no -- satino.

but i grew up on the west side of cleveland and know all about the irish tragedy. let's move west now to paris. a couple of questions and we will throw it open to the audience. paris. the uprising. we know the movie, the phrase, is paris burning? supposedly a phone call from hitler. but probably from a is pariscer yodell, burning? phone call. accounts, thel generals probably worried about his own men, his own account. painting himself differently. dr. nolan: he did carry out the orders to mine the buildings. he did go ahead with the physical preparations for distraction. at the very end of the day, he balked. but he balked because by the time he was also in direct

negotiations with resistance. and by that point, representatives of leclair's armored force was joining the negotiations, trying to coax him into a surrender. sartre shifted from do not blow up two, look, you're going to get overrun and you're going to have to negotiate a surrender for your men anyway. if you block paris is going to go very badly for you. if you not blowout parapets, we can have a traditional -- if you do not blow up paris we can have kind of a traditional military surrender. dr. citino: you think he was maybe a decent ish -ish german? dr. nolan: can we say he was transactional, maybe there was something to be saved, that my life, the life of my men. dr. citino: he just wanted to negotiate. it is usually transactional and attritional sense. in most of the rest of the german army we are knocking to have transitional negotiation, it is going to be a fight to the death and suicide trips. in the same thing without can happen in the

pacific. dr. citino: there's one for my mind as i read the complexities of the situation in paris. , who would youn -to whom would you give credit for the liberation of paris. you described a complex story. i heard ordinary workers, french forces of the interior, general leclair, general de gaulle, the americans showed up. have at it. dr. nolan: in order of importance as a historian, i would say the leadership of the fsi, the free french resistance. secondly, leclair who had the guts to disobey his superior. his immediate superior the name escapes me and then eisenhower, and the whole political leadership of the western alliance i do not give de gaulle, general de gaulle is pushing for this but he is actually not all that welcome by

the leadership of the fsi. he is not a unifying figure for the french. there is a long controversy within the french resistance as to whether they are gauls or not. half the french resistance is communist the other half largely catholic. the two groups you are used to clandestine organization historically. dr. citino: right [laughter] and dr. nolan: within the context of french history. and the communist were active in the french resistance since that nazis were coming to kill them from the first day of the war. limb,s paris, life and nutmeg already. they would do what most sense for people dead, they would hide in the cellar. but there were many thousands of who came out, many young women included. this is captured on film. this remarkable film and axle film which they used. they cut it into the black-and-white film as, is paris burning.

a molotov cocktail takes out a german half track and the german soldiers sniped at the street and is wounded but not dead. and it is 21 or 20-year-old french girl runs over and picks up his rifle because they do not have rifles. they are taking the weapons off the dead germans at the kill them to continue the fight. there is perhaps at least a sane german commander who is willing to do the transactional analysis. dr. nolan: you want to know about the americans. because the american's were involved. the main attack down the psalms elysees was the french second armored vision. the u.s. supported by division on the flank which was in flank support, a classic allied operation. the thing you take away from that is that the liberation of normandy, the liberation of france, liberation of paris, liberation of europe was an allied operation. multinationallex, compact among the decent nations. to liberate city. there were also the british 30th

command was also in the city at the time. dr. citino: allies. go to the before we audience with one last question. i have read allure of battle. i hope a lot of you in the audience do and buy a copy immediately and should have them sign it chevy sign it. national capriles were falling like dominoes in august. warsaw, paris, bucharest. dr. nolan: rome. dr. citino: a lot of stuff in that summer. despite the rosy outlook of that summer, wise the war in europe not end in 1944. a lot of very smart people in the allied high command thought it was going to. why did it have to go on for another eight months of grinding attrition and an ocean of bloodshed? dr. nolan: because the germans would not quit. because the allies outran their

the issue of supplies critical to understanding the outcome and the waging of war. it just is. there is a classic line, amateur study tactics, professional study logistics. the allied fuel, all the problems they do not resolve on the day, the breaking of one of the harbors, the failure to take shorebird intact, the failure to use the britney ports the way they thought would result. then the montgomery's failure to calais, thenot shelf estuary. which of course the canadian army's logs to the netherlands and suffered terribly to that winter of 194445. all of that -- 1944-1945. the russians stopped at the vistula, the allies stopped before they got to the road for the same reason. they had overextended. the tank treads were wearing out. you cannot just fight for week

after week, month after month, people are exhausted. the equipment gets exhausted. and men get exhausted. or is as much about moral commitment and endurance as it is about material. you have to match the two together. which is one of the reasons i think americans consistently underestimate how great a general montgomery was. who is not letting american armies had an abundance of material and not been in the war as long as everyone else peered the british by this time where their six-year. they were exhausted. they were cannibalizing divisions. uncovering with the perfect commander for an army that knew there were no more men in the supply line, whose troops were exhausted. he was cautious, he was careful about the lives of his men. patton could have taken a lesson from that. i do not know what to add to that. we will end on that note. [applause] dr. citino: we will open it up to your questions and just one moment. [applause] >> the first question is in the center. you mentioned the

21-year-old girl who came out to fight against the germans. yet i have read that there were 80,000 german french babies. born during the occupation. of paris. dr. nolan: france not press. -- in france, not just in paris. liberation, the they went through the streets shaving the heads of women and marking them. dr. nolan: they also shot 20,000 of their own people. >> were that go in terms of getting families and people back together, because these were ordinary women, not brothels. dr. nolan: they're ostracized, they were maltreated, some were killed. the general response of the resistance, the ugly side of the french resistance, the ugly side of the liberation.

is that resistance, the french resistance, the fsi and the resistance generally on and it was a hodgepodge of associations it was not a single organization. began to set up resistance courts. they had basically drum head trials and keg records. -- and kangaroo court. the men they convicted they usually shot. the women they shaved, sometimes shot. more often humiliated, ostracized, expelled from the village and so forth. it was a special charge to be brought against women, i'm not making this up. it was called horizontal collaboration. [laughter] dr. nolan: and that sounds, you know. but let's try to put a little humanity into this paid what happens over four years of german occupation of france? what is the german occupation of france? in many ways it is the gestapo and all kinds of horrible things and deportation of a jews. it but it is also a 19-year-old german guard in a french village

who happens to see a 17-year-old girl and they meet each other and they talk to each other and nature takes its course and they have sex and she has a baby and then she gets humiliated or killed or whatever. there is a very ugly side to what happened. that was true in every single country that was liberated at the end of world war two. they turned on their own and calderon. because -- and they killed their own. because of how vicious the war was how vicious the fascists and the germans were. in direct proportion to the viciousness of the occupation, the resistance turned vicious against his own people. it is human nature. genderedk there was a retaliation. the men can collaborate with the germans in all sorts of wastepaper there something in as particularly demonic about a woman and a young woman and a young man at letting us use say nature take its course. dr. nolan: but it is partly normal and prickly natural.

and today i suspect the european union might encourage it but that is another story. i believe it there. dr. citino: general and to your please. >> i wanted to follow on to your suggestion the decent-ish german general. i thought his career example if i did the dichotomy of racial war you spoke to. as i recall, he was the butcher of sebastopol. and had actually been brought by the german high command to paris , on the theory he had a stiff enough backbone to deal with the problematic population. mi correct? dr. citino: if you don't mind i will take that one. was arrested and taken prisoner by allied forces. the allied were listening to all the german generals conversations are there all tapped for use in later war crimes. as historians we have been swimming in those waters nicely you have all these records.

said repeatedly, when i was in crimea, sebastopol you said, i carried out the fuhrer's orders about the jewish question to the ultimate detail. i followed them and asked with a detail. do not brag about it. he said let's be honest, that is what we all did in the east. it brings to light the point that this was to divert wars. dr. nolan: there is a horrible racial war which would seem like the outmost barbarism. in the west police the war tended -- the germans tended to treat the war in a much more transactional contests of strategy. rommel haseason why an inappropriately elevated reputation for morality and decency and so on. rommel's career in fact was directly tied. isa metaphor many are cries. then i realized meters do not rise. eteoric rise.k -- m

his career was directly attached to hitler's from the days of the polish invasion. heller promoted him. he became one of hitler's favorites. most german generals do not regard rommel as a general -- a great general because he did not fight in the east. had he fought in the east, there might've been moral compromise. haser, kesselring. repetition as a strategist. had he fought in the east, there would have been moral copper mice. he was bad enough -- moral compromise. he was bad enough in italy. dr. citino: it was standard her policy to kill and discriminate lay. he attacked the german convoy or snipe a german soldier and managed to kill two or three they came into the next village, took the first 300 people and killed them. dr. nolan: his pre-hard to resist. frome next question comes

one of our bigger online viewers, david. warsawheard claims the pipe elation failed to coordinate adequately with any of the allies, such as through their government in exile in britain. how did the commonwealth supply mission come about? it seems job exclusively been churchill's direct intervention. he could do that. he was usually restrained by alan brooke. churchill had 10 ideas before breakfast, two of them good. dr. citino: everyday. dr. nolan: he was in many ways erratic. this is one of churchill's long-term interest. this goes back to world war i. he is singing postwar. he wants to have western influence -- he is thinking postwar. he wanted to take religion. he could not persuade allies to do that. he wanted to have a free polish government in poland because he is already thinking of containment of the soviet union.

this is a postwar policy. in the end he went ahead and authorized the mission with the agreement of the british air teams. and it was a disaster. a written in question. we talk about a bleakness of the four celebration uprising -- o warsawess of the uprising. dr. nolan: by the time of dragoon, the 75th anniversary on the 15th of august, by the time those landings took place the german army in france was in full-scale retreat in the north. they had begun to run from the southern cities as well. so they fell fairly rapidly. i'm talking about toulon, marseilles. the city so rapidly. there was still fighting. there were terrible efforts -- episodes where the maquille

rose against the germans. were six to 500 young men and women who had run away and run a mountaintop. they thought the british were flying in paratroops applies, it turns out they were germans who landed and began to slaughter thousands. the south was a different campaign. it was fluid, mobile, tanks and trains. the germans were running. it was a joint french and american invasion. it was the french army alongside the american army. they went up to the south and france, they got across from germany and turned. the other ones who went into southern germany and headed to yeahh and check the back and east. -- czechoslovakia and east. >> moderates prerogative my own question. the liberation of france was a glorious event, eisenhower did not want it.

he wanted to bypass paris. i said the liberation of paris france i met the liberation of paris. and then have to be responsible for it. this is the great what if. what would have happened in the war if those resources had gone to montgomery and bradley and pushing east. i'm not an operations expert, but it seems the allied forces in general were reaching the end of their tether. the reason there was an argument, do we supply monti, do we supply patent, is because we were running out of supplies. the broad front approach rather than the single trust -- the single thrust. although ike did support operation market gardens in the

netherlands, which was a disaster. i'm not sure the turning points are this fine. eisenhower didn't want to take paris because he didn't want to get bogged down there. you used the phrase german way an americanthere is way of war, there are national ways of war. this is the american way of war, traditionally it has been. they are not interested in territory, not interested in cities. where is the enemy, let me out them, i want to smash it, and the political stuff will take care of itself. americansthought the were being incredibly naive about not understanding that war is a continuation of public policy by other means, and the war had become no longer one to defeat germany. germany had been defeated, the fighting was going to go on, but it was defeated, the war was now about petitioning for the piece, and that meant what we were going to do about stalin. >> question from the audience?

then i think that will wrap this up. >> what do you think about the american and soviet position for the following year come for the prague uprising? i am more familiar with the soviet than the american. prague,icans can reach but they pull back and let the soviets go there instead, because roosevelt and the americans are committed to the idea that we have already made a deal with stalin. churchill doesn't think it is going to work out, but that we have already made a deal with stalin, don't rock about, trust but verify. the united nations will take care of all of it. if you want to be really critical, you could say this was american geopolitical naivete at its worst.

but the results are still the same as in warsaw. >> look, had the americans taken prague, under the terms of the existing agreements they would have handed over to the russians. so why expend american lives fighting germans, wise it worth a single american life when we are going to have to give it to the russians anyway. the other thing people were very concerned about was that the red army is charging through germany one way, we are charging through germany the other way, to massive armies are going to collide with language differences, cultural differences, we could have all kinds of friendly fire problems. and there were some, there weren't many, but there were some eerie but it could have been awful, and they were very concerned about that. there is something else. when the americans stopped at their green lines, the british did this as well, they started

turning back german refugees at gunpoint, who were turned back and told no, you don't surrender to us, you stay over there and surrender to the russians. i would like to toss in a plug for the museum. we have an educational travel program here and we take guests all over the world. we go to paris a lot and you can see the sights of the liberation of paris. but we also have a rise and fall of hitler's' is germany that visits the warsaw uprising museum, and we visit many sites that are crucial to this uprising about which you have heard so much tonight. just applied for -- just a plug for the travel program. recommend you go to the liberation of paris, rather than the liberation of warsaw. lets thank the dr. for moderating. [applause] for a wonderful presentation and conversation.

thank you very much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ontoday at 6:00 p.m. eastern the civil war, the 1863 tele houma campaign in tennessee. >> bragg orders everyone to concentrate on tele houma. after they leave the highland rim it is somewhat anti-climactic, because with rosecrans at manchester, bragg at l a houma, bragg is ready to fight it out in the trenches. >> at 8:00 in lectures in history, and emory university professor on her lawsuit against a holocaust denier, david irving. survivors,holocaust no plan, no 6 million, no leadership from hitler's, no gas chambers, and the last point is

that this was all made up by jews. >> and sunday at 5:00 p.m. eastern, a discussion on shakespeare's influence on politics, and the norman rockwell museum traveling exhibit on fdr and the four freedoms. explore our nation's passed on american history tv, every weekend on c-span3. in 1607, jamestown, virginia was the first english settlement in north america. the summer of 1619 marked the arrival of the first african slaves and the first meeting of the general assembly, which established representative government in the colony. tv, an american history commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the first virginia general assembly. host: governor northam, speaker