good evening ladies and gentlemen i doctor keith huxen, with the institute for the study of war and democracy, it is great to see you all here and once again to have our friends at seaspan here sharing all this wonderful content with their viewers, to those watching on our live stream at home, welcome, i would like to

take a moment as we start to recognize some individuals, first off do we have any world war ii veterans or home front workers here and our crowd tonight? hard (applause) do we have any veterans of any other era on, please stand. (applause) and do we have any members of our board of trustees on? thank you all for your service, this summer we here at the museum have been busy commemorating the 75th anniversary is of major events of world war ii, the biggest offense was big day, the event

and normandy, and major universities include last month on july the 20th the assassination attempt on hitler in the bunker at the wolf songs, last week they land is in other france took place and this week marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most glorious moments of the war when the city of light paris was liberated at the four years of german occupation. on the eastern front the massive soviet an offensive, the red army approached the river in warsaw, the capital of poland where the war in europe had begun in 1939, this led to the hero of but tragic all were

surprising, tonight we have two premier military historians with us to share their insights and studies on these last two monumental events, our guest scholar doctor cathal nolan was here just last november for a 2018 an international conference on world war ii, doctor nolin is associate prefecture and executive director of the international history institute and boston university. he is an award-winning teacher and scholar of military and international history, his 2017 work on a lure of battle a history of how wars are won and lost, received the prize for military history, the 50,000 dollar prize is coasts collared by the institute of american

history and the new york historical society, it recognizes the best book on military history in the english speaking world, distinguished by its scholarship, its contribution to the literature and its appeal to both the general and academic audience, his other books on a two volume concise history of world war two,, the wars of the age of louis the 14th and a two volume study, the age of the wars of religion, pack insults on military history to the pbs cyst three nova and other documentary films, he is currently writing on decency, mercy and honor and war for the oxford university press, joining the doctor on a stage tonight is the museum own

senior historian and executive director of our institute for the city of war and democracy doctor robert citino. doctor robert citino is the author of ten books primarily focusing on in the german military, he is widely known from the museums various public programs and as one of our featured tour historians on many of the travel programs, first the doctor will give a brief presentation before joining the doctor in conversation on this evening, so now it is my pleasure to call to the stage the doctor and tonight's main attraction on doctor cathal nolan, welcome gentlemen. (applause) on well good evening

and thank you on, we are gathering together in a place that remembers ordinary men and women to many extraordinary things over days and months and years of courage and sacrifice of duty and devotion on my words tonight will not do justice, so let me instead reach out to you with the choir words of the poet, the englishman who invented this in 16 24 and it will be familiar to most of you, annotated on on the mortality and at the end of the day we all share, no man on is an island, every man is a

piece of the continent, if a cloudy wants to a by the sea europe is the less as well as the word, as well as the manner of that friends of the unknown world, and a man's death diminishes me and i am involved in mankind and therefore on never said to know for whom the bell tolls, it tools for the, tonight i am going to talk only very little about two signature events and then we will engage in conversation with you all, the liberation of paris and the destruction of warsaw, for they are connected in time, they are connected by purpose on both sides and they tell us much about how the war ended in triumph for somebody in misery for tens of millions of others,

they were part of the long and game of an immense world war already by the same room 1944 we are at the game world war ii where everyone is going for a position at the committee negotiation table, world war ii, the worst and most destructive, most slaughter filled conflict in all of human history at least so far on, the were started in poland in 1939 where it was invaded not once but twice in 17 days, first by wheeler and then by stolen on. this did on poland was the most, mass murders at war with each other on both sides of the nation, of mass murder in

poland cities and all around, it took five years, colossal effort and sacrifice to get to the tipping point summer of 1944, five years of fighting in the suffering and death in africa in southeast asia, in china and the philippines, in the baltic and the politicians on then under all of the oceans in the legal skies overhead. the price was so high that words loose meaning, numbers lose meaning, even in death loses much of its meaning, we are here trying to comprehend and we will all fill on. the western allies as this plays commemorates broke through the outer wall of healers fortress, 75 years ago in a truly complex and heroic in but never, but i

remind you it was also a multinational one, americans assaulted in just two of the five, in the first 20 minutes of saving private rain which we've all seen, you saw the fate of, edmonton an actual account but i'm going to estimate of about 100 220 man roughly, that is just enough by the filmmakers to leave impersonal but also to remind us of the carnage of the war, as you know as this place commemorates getting just one and took four hours and caused many hundreds of lives and men a lot of man several thousand terribly wounded in body and mind even so on, they were for more beaches on normandy's coast that day, although by omaha was the worst former

strips of sand, wet sand were fighting and shocking show all in the same time, the fight for the normandy did not last monday on not even in the longest day, it took six 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 15th here is tomorrow until august 25th and they came within hours of being blown apart by the germans before the french took it back on the road with the on resistance uprising, and free french german tanks raising down -- racing down the cross of the range on a berks civil taken on their side. -- the cross of 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 ss including the entire civilian population of the village of ruidoso plan - ouridour sur glen, who were 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 t-34 soviet tank armies, that germans could not even conceive of earlier in the war my point 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. they came from farms and small towns in queensland australia. they came from cities like auckland, new zealand, manitoba. from manchester and melbourne, from montreal and marseille. they came from the kalahari desert in south africa, from the niger delta, from the mountains of kashmir, and a paul and baluchistan. -- and a paul. -- name paul - nepal. 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 mumbai 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. to alah, 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. it burned villages and homes, it killed parents and children, it raped the land. polls, yugoslavs, filipinos, chinese, malai's, many many more people. - malays. and by the end italians, germans and japanese all found the war found them. they were fed into a meatgrinder of industrial war. until the butchers bill reached 75 million. of whom 40 million were killed in the east alone. that is 28,500 lives lost every day in the east, 10 omaha's every day for 1400 consecutive days. we cannot copperhead that. -- we cannot comprehend that. 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. raw numbers overwhelmed all personal tragedy. this is the key difference between history and literature. between 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. the 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. and the core land pocket -- koran then - couer alaine 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. it rose on its own. 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. it began when the metro and postal workers walked out. then the police walked out. and 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. germans were 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 mocked -- the engineers mind the 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. so the barricades went up in the 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. german 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. the next day as don broke august 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 combination 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. french and allied politics, american politics, british and german politics. it is best to know this. on the others of europe, at the same time, 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. the vermacht was also retreating which was a factor in the polish decision to rise. but the red army was also fighting serious battles south of warsaw. and it stopped at the vistula. i this is the great controversy of the works are rising. i should mention this is -- of the war's are rising. i should mention this is should mention this is the second warsaw rising. 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. the home army fought bitterly. it fought to the death. in a city that was cut off, by rivers and the enemy, 463 days. the back -- for 63 days. the battle went on into 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. -- it is stalin. 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. but it is not completely 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 -- 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 stalin to help the poland population. 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 in a mission 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. on august 8 in 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 resolve. all tragedy stiffens polish resolved, it is their history. the panzers advanced to the streets, using polish civilians as human shields. poles fought on anyway and the vermacht discovered again that fighting in the city was not something it was capable of doing well. the red army began to resume its 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 major 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 wrong - gotterdammerung - twilight of the gods order. what did it mean? did the twin risings, did

the war save 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. for what the war, -- what 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. the 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 and denied a lasted 12 that was bad enough. >> thank you

(applause) i can listen to speak all night. >> if we go out to dinner we probably would. >> that was a really wonderful top, wow, so many questions going through my mind reno, we are looking at these two key historical events, doing what historians duke, putting each one into a sharper focus, you started by saying ordinary people in at one point you were talking and you are seeing people deciding their own futures, tell us more about how that was imported through the rebels both in paris and worse off you don't mind. >> this is the great war of the nation's, the second world war, it does a disservice to our

understanding into the war itself if we stop with the leaders, churchill, roosevelt, stalin, or the generals and if we overcompensate by going to save it private ryan level, there is a middle level and that is the idea of nations. what it means to be french and polish, they would not have americans come to the capital and liberated, as it is americans in do that and they clean that they did. i mean how many times have you heard the joke that we've saved them not once but twice, it is aggravating. >> and the troops liberated -- which is a double fault. >> apparently hemingway liberated of barr. >> we do know the hemingway liberated a bar, he should have been arrested. >> he wrote the great stories of paris i was actually about drinking. >> you actually put a gun in his holster, he went into a bar and you know were not allowed

to have guns in here, it's, farce it's hemingway. >> when i look at these two events, with your marvelous description, the german response in each one, what was very different to the other so you just quoted some statistics that 802,000 french died in the paris uprising that probably 200,000 poles which is more or less the accepted number we give now, why was the german response and warsaw so much more brutal and intense than it was in the uprising in paris? >> the germans in the second world war unlike the first world war, you know, this the guiding concept was the race war any polls range lower down everyone is categorized racially by the germans and there are more ancient and historic emanate in the french

or more modern enemy, going back to the fighting 800 years and they were truly stated, he pulls were truly hated and made at the germans as well, the level of hate was much higher in the east and the war was so much worse in the east and war produces, doesn't usually start and hate it produces hate and it produces even more hate at the killing level was so high, the absolute destructiveness that tomorrow i'm going to, die the soviets changed one of their classic slogans, workers of the world to unite, in world war ii that became comrade kill you're german it was a complete antithesis. >> so the soviet journalists, kill, kill, kill. >> another thing and i will explore this in the next book. >> i think decency you might be a very thin book, it is, it is sadly but i think that maybe

one of the larger parts of the explanation and you had 12 it's that was not in a noble or heroic figure but at the end of the day he turned out to be more normal than the more traditional decent german, at least he's in the ball instead of modal one of the very few generals of talent that was committed to the race were, fully committed to the race for. >> there is a quote from man other than at off hitler that said i trust him to get the job done but i would never liked to serve under him so that is once at offset about him. he is on record of saying that we have a case of complete destruction of warsaw, watch is about a mile

and a half maybe couple of miles and they wound up doing much more than that. >> there is a phrase from the people of warfare that calls it -- how wide on the side of the cavalry attack could you destroy everything, think of sherman there is about 40 miles on either side of the real road. >> the mechanized era could get a lot worse than that >> so you alluded to the big controversy of warsaw uprising, if you don't mind led to delve into that a little deeper and let's have a couple of specific questions but all but the general one towards you, i love doing this in front of seaspan and all the millions of people out there on. so here is how i learned in graduate school the russians sat there and let the rebels inside warsaw be

destroyed, and you say the river, mississippi style river is not an easy crossing and i'll put you on the spot, is that true? you kind of came on the one hand and on the other side. >> so david came out and wrote, david lance is a specialist in the red army and one thing that he wrote with the point of view of this subject matter because he said this is exhausted they couldn't possibly get across any completely disregarded the idea that somebody had this in mind, but we don't know, but this is still on and it is certainly what stalin contemplated, was capable of so as a historian i can't say we definitively no he did this but also as a historian i think you can say i don't criticize anyone on who assumes -- we can't prove it but it is perfectly reasonable to think that stalin did this. >> you mentioned politics and

you say that it is a continuation of politics by other means, that is what war is all about, the rebels in warsaw were non communists, they were loyal to the prewar polish republican government and here is stalin perhaps desiring to see the non communist resistance in poland. >> this is why it's all about politics to, the allies were already breaking down, poland was going to be a major topic of discussion, already churchill was recognizing the so-called london polls, stalin was setting up an alternative communist pools, the politics are underway already, and i say something i don't think i've ever heard someone else say and i don't want to be misunderstood, and in some ways

it doesn't matter whether stalin left the germans to kill the polls because i repeat this is stalin, had he then taken the city with 16 months he would've killed them, i think the outcome would've been the same, you are right he was going to wipe out the polish national arms resistance when she started to do where he had wiped out them but by insulin came in and wiped out the polish resistance even have the germans not been able to, on he says what happens on the both sides of the line is that secret police are executing hundreds of thousands of people, that is the gestapo and one side and the soviet and keep the on the other. >> this is why the east was so

different in the west, you have the two, well if you throw in now, but you have the few mass murders of history, to great tyrants and none of whom care about the lives of their own people, filler did not care to spare a german lives, that's not what he cared about,, stalin cared nothing of the lives of so do you soldiers and everyone else is trapped between, them you have mass murderers behind, to mass murders in front of you, they are coming at each other with two of the greatest mechanism military forces that we have seen in modern times and 40 million died on. >> so one of the books known as bloodlines of eastern europe, so my colleagues don't like the thesis, i had to agree that's what it was, i think of a few other places that i didn't want

to, be but i can't think of another place i don't want to be except for the eastern front. >> you spoke of policy history as a tragedy and i think of polish that regional anthem, that goes through -- and still poland has not -- if you think of freezing your own it's in the matter what happens poland will remain and they'll always be a poland. >> there are a number of nations that have that history of suffering or think they do, i was born in dublin and if i have to hear one more time of the poor suffering irish but -- well we have this competitive suffering, nurses competition and in particular national historians and that is far off in the case that they are

nationalist historians and an international snowstorms and they are competing in who has the best record, suffered under the british and the atlantic save trade and then that's an exercise and almost, well it's wagner reduction of massive human tragedy to a sports context in which one is scores higher or lower than the next, it's done all the time, you know that boston has erected a statue of a potato. >> for the famine. >> boston not ireland. >> i grew up with -- >> what about the statue of the slave trade which helped found boston, but the potato. >> i grew up with the irish city you know but on the west flight of an cleveland and i know all about the irish, irish tragedies. >> let's move west now to paris,

we will throw dove into the audience, paris, the uprising, so we all know the movie and the phrase it is paris burning, a phone call from hiller but probably from the hillary staff officer to the commander, is paris burning? >> tell us about this, you mentioned the german commander inside, and you say by all accounts he was probably worried about his own man, the own account pace himself differently. >> he did carry out the orders to mind the building so he did go ahead with the physical preparations for destruction at the very end of the day but he blocked because by the time he was in direct negotiations with the resistance and also by that point representative of my players are out of force was joining the negotiations and coaxing him to, surrender

shifted from john follow-up paris too you're gonna get overrun and you're gonna have to negotiate and surrender anyway, so few blowup paris it's gonna go badly for, you if you don't blow up areas then we can have a traditional military surrender and that is what he went for i think. >> you mentioned maybe use a decent german, decent-ish, could we say it was transactional, that at least he wasn't mad man. he understood there is something to be saved, i could save my men and the men around me. >> it's usually transactional in a traditional sense, the rest of the german army in most cases are not gonna have transactional negotiations, it's gonna be a fight to the death and suicide troops and so forth the same thing we thought would happen and that's another visit, there is one from my mind as i read the complexities of the situation in paris, one big historical question that arises immediately is to, do

what you give credit to the liberation of paris, you described it a very complex story of ordinary workers, french forces of the interior, general mclendon mccaul, the americans showed up, how about it. >> and border of -- i would say the free french resistance, secondly a clair who had the guts to disobey his superior. on and then ice in power and the whole western alliance and i don't get the goal, pushing for this but he is not all that welcome on by the leadership on of the french liberation party, he -- there is a lot of

controversy within the french resistance -- half the french resistance is communist and the other half is largely catholics and the two groups that are used to clandestine organization within france, and the communists in particular were active because nazis were coming to kill them from the first days of the war so the citizens of paris put life and, not majority but there were many thousands who came out, many young women included, this was captured on from there is a remarkable film actual film which they used and cut into the black and white from of paris burning of the french, germany, well motto of cocktail takes out a german half track and then he's wounded but not dead by others 21 or 22-year-old french girl runs over and picks up his rival because they don't have any

rifles and they're taking the weapons off the dead and germans out they kill them to continue the fight and so on. >> then there is this commander who is willing to do the transactional analysis and all that. >> well you want to know about the americans and the main attack was the french second armored division and they were supported by the u.s. division on the flank which was a typical classic allied operation and the liberation of normally and france and paris and europe was an ally operation, this was a complex multi national compact amongst the decent nations to deliberate the city and by the way it is a 30 command in the city as well on. >> so let me ask you before i go out to the audience for one

last question, i read this and i hope a lot of others have, you have and you should buy a copy and haven't senate, national capitals were falling like dominoes the of warsaw and pérez and you have rome and a lot of stuff that is happening that summer and despite the rosy outlook why the war in europe and a lot of very smart people and the allied high command thought he was going to and why did it have to go on for another eight months of attrition and literally an ocean of bloodshed on? >> i think is the germans wooden acquitted and the allies around their supplies and the issue of supply is critical to understanding the war it just is and there is a classic line

of setting logistics, the fact is that the ally fueled all of the problems they did not resolve on the day, the breaking up the, harbors the failure to keep sherbrooke in tact and the montgomery failure to take the shout desk to, erie which forced them to suffer terribly through that from 34 to 30, five all of that ends the, allies look if it stopped at the vista the allies stopped before for the same reason they had to stand over extended, and the tank treads are running out, people are exhausted. >> the equipment and people are getting exhausted. it's about intolerance as it is about

materiality and 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 leading american armies had an abundance of material and not been in the war as long as everyone else peered the british by this time were in 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. citino: 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. >> dr. nolan, 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. >> and after the liberation, 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. 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 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 killed their own 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. >> i think there was a gendered retaliation. the men can collaborate with the germans in all sorts of ways but there is 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 left please. >> i wanted to follow on to your

suggestion the decent-ish german general. i thought his career sort of exemplified 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. am i correct? dr. citino: if you don't mind i will take that one. holtiz was arrested and taken prisoner by allied forces. the allied were listening to all the german generals conversations, they were all tapped for use in later war crimes. as historians we have been swimming in those waters nicely you have all these records. holtiz 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 two different 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. it is one reason why rommel has an inappropriately elevated reputation for morality and decency and so on. rommel's career in fact was directly tied. is a metaphor many are cries. then i realized meters do not rise. -- meet orrick -- meteoric rise. his career was directly attached to hitler's from the days of the polish invasion. hitler 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. another, kesselring. has repetition as a strategist. had he fought in the east, there would have been moral comprise. 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: its pretty hard to resist. >> the next question comes from one of our bigger online viewers, david. i have heard claims the warsaw 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? dr. nolan:

it seems 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. 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 berlin. 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 warsaw liberation uprising -- o bliqueness of the warsaw 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. these cities fell rapidly. there was still fighting. there were terrible efforts -- episodes where the maquille rose against the germans. where 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 munich and. -- 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 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 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 of war,

but there is an american 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 army, let me out them, i want to smash it, and the political stuff will take care of itself. churchill thought the americans 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 positioning for the peace, 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. the americans can reach prague, 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 the boat, 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, why is 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, 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 tour 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 a plug for the travel program. i would recommend you go to the liberation of paris, rather than the liberation of warsaw. >> lets thank the dr. for moderating. [applause] and thanks for a wonderful presentation and conversation. thank you very much.