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mix of important themes that are going to be outlined by some of the best speakers. we could possibly find. and so what i'm going to do right now, rather than any talk myself, is give you brief, brief today with some of the best speakers we could possibly find. what i will do right now rather than make a talk myself is give you a brief introduction of all three of our speakers. then susan eisenhower will lead off for us, followed by doug douds and william matz. let's start with susan. please understand, each of these individuals have had such great careers i could spend a lot of time talking about each of them. i will be as distinct as i could be. susan eisenhower has had a versatile and impactful career. educator, author, soviet expert and administrator.

her resume is far too extensive than to do highlighting a few aspects of her professional life. i will mention her work on arms control, during and after the cold war, american russian partnership in space, leadership of the original eisenhower institute, her best- selling books about her grandmother and her grandfather respectively. and her mentorship of gettysburg college students through her distinctive course, thinking about dangerous times. susan's talk today will focus on early planning for operation overlord. our second speaker is dr. doug douds who has forged a distinguished career as a military officer and f-18 pilot in iraq before moving on to work at the pentagon specifically as a chief speechwriter for the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

his current responsibility is the strategic program at the college. some of you who might recognize him, those of you that walk -- watch the history channel as a talking head on various documentaries. we call it that relating to american wars. his talk today will focus on the german defense of normandy which tends to get overlooked. our cleanup hitter is general n william matz. he is no stranger to this campus. he is a 1961 graduate of gettysburg college and subsequently went on to a very distinguished five decade military career, including a student as a company commander with the ninth infantry division in vietnam where he was wounded in the 1968 offensive.

he later served as executive secretary to two secretaries of defense. he worked in the defense industry before retiring from the army in 1995 and has served on a number of important national commissions. as a capstone to his storied career, in 2018, president donald trump appointed him secretary of the american battle monuments commission. that position he held until march 2021. for the panel this morning he will speak about allied airborne operations in normandy on d-day. with that, the floor is yours. >> thank you very much for that kind introduction. i would like to thank the eisenhower society and everyone who has made this possible. i was on this committee and i

am delighted by the extraordinary talent we have presenting today. i will take a slightly different tack as we had such an extraordinary overview. thank you very much, dr.. it was memorable in every way. i think you have an excellent grounding in so many of the issues that were underway at the time. i would like to use this opportunity to say it has been a real honor of mine over the 15 years i have been engaging actively with student groups selected every year competitively to take five cadres to the normandy beaches. when i go there now there's so many people in normandy that are tremendously worried about whether the story is over because our beloved veterans are passing away. i keep telling them the veterans who were here with so admire any attempt to cast the

story again as a story of young people and what they accomplished. i tell a my students that if yo think about it everybody coming on shore was your age. when we go to the american cemetery i say we are now standing in a kids cemetery. i don't want to call you kids but it is a cemetery of young people. the sacrifices borne by that age group are extraordinary, based on decisions arrived at by their elders. it is with that no i would like to talk about one of those elders.t i wrote a book called how ike led. this really satisfied a lot of things for me both combining what i knew about him personally, but also it satisfied a lot of my interest in strategic leadership, regrettably a piece of leadership i don't think we have nearly enough of today. this is the capacity to bring

together 1 million moving parts. many that we heard about earlier this morning and to make them into a coherent policy . policy that will achieve the most important and in the most efficient and effective way. this is not an easy thing to do or think what will -- we would be much better in contemporary life, but we were so blessed with the level of talent during that war that i personally and doing everything i can to see if i can help young people think about a set of complicated problems in a different way. i say to them, imagine the time we are talking about. no computers, no google maps. no long distance phone calls, no augmented data analysis, no a.i. . all of the planning for this phenomenal invasion that required bring in meaningful

work to 16 million americans but in addition to that, bringing together forces of different cultural backgrounds. by the way, a different view of strategy together for the first time in warfare to accomplish a set of goals. i would add to the many things n that this operation led to was the dawn of a new way of war fighting. not just an alliance based war fighting, but a nationally integrated command. this was the first. that means the british and french in many cases and all of our allies were sitting in a completely integrated office where there was no difference between your nationality. imagine what that took to come in at this job a little late in the day and try to refashion an entire organizational culture

in the short time it was still available for planning the invasion of normandy. this legacy also created a complete change in our own military posture in the united states that led to the whole concept of the joint chiefs of staff and there were two major reforms in the defense department designed to realign the defense department in a way that would put civilians in charge of interservice rivalry and manage that process. finally, it brings us to the point of my discussion this evening about who was this man whose legacy during the war extended all the way to 1961. he was a man who had strategic gifts, but he was also a middle

child. he had a very outspoken, outsized older brother he was one of seven boys your key was the middle child who managed to reconcile family differences. he brought that talent to the european theater. let's back up again because it really wasn't discussed this morning because i was next up, but one of the things that is really impressive about the gh general strategy for world war ii is that they had to make a decision about where they were going to concentrate the resources. if you read eisenhower's diary he complains a bit about having to go out and argue for the right level of resources for the normandy invasion because we have a two front war or two wars as he calls them. having said that it was very clear that the u.s. policy and strategy was europe first which

took a lot of courage when you think the united states of america was attacked initially by the japanese. adolf hitler made the fatal mistake of declaring war on the united states and that opened the way for an assessment that if we could defeat hitler it would significantly weaken the japanese. in any case, the numbers are legendary of how many people participated in d-day. overlord forces include 12,000 airplanes, 7000 vessels, 24,000 paratroopers, 160,000 soldiers deployed. think about the logistical challenges of getting all of them food and water and rations and emergency medical supplies that they carried with them. imagine out of all of these numbers only 15% were veteran

combat soldiers. only 15%. the rest had not been in combat before. as i say to my students, the vast percentage of people that came on shore that they did not know who they were. they found out in an instant. they did not know if they were brave, they did not know if they were cowards, they did not know whether they could manage their stress, they did not know whether they would live through the day. can you imagine? only 15%. from what i understand, we integrated those 15% with the other soldiers to provide some maturity in each of these units. still, it is extraordinary. let me say something about the kinds of struggles that the man who took responsibility for the entire operation managed as the

young gis as i just described were in one of the most existential moments they would ever experience in their lives. you could say that dwight eisenhower was in an existential moment over the future of his career. what i think is moving about what i've read in research when i wrote my book is that he cared not one whit about how he was remembered. i know that sounds like it is too good to be true, but if you read his musings and his diaries are really the place to go because he thought nobody would ever be reading them. of course, they are now published and you can read them everywhere. he muses about what he called the shortsightedness of the average human and their care about the intense personal outlook that most officers have

even in such critical thing as war. how many times he went on to say that his principal effort is going to do his duty no matter where it led. in doing so he would be meeting a higher calling which was to serve something larger than himself. this is not too good to be true because it was deeply embedded r in his religious beliefs that were fostered right here in pennsylvania not far from, his father grew up not far from harrisburg. these deep-seated feelings of self-sacrifice can be seen in how he handles so many of the arguments that are undertaken. there are so many crises that we started to talk about today but let me say that the

difficulty of bringing together a multinational group for the first time can be as simple as what kind of language are we going to use. will we call this the trunk of a car or will we call it a boot? not understanding which set of vocabulary words to use took a tremendous amount of effort. de there were also differences between the way the british looked at strategy and the availability of resources which had an enormous impact on what choices they wanted to make. the ones they could afford. the ones that made sense for them. there was the american viewpoint and america has never found a full assault on something it did not like. we are very oriented towards being focused on direct action whereas the british have always, always -- i lived in britain for seven years. they are always more interested in going around in a different

and more indirect way. in any case the effort to bring those together underscored in a way one of the biggest problems eisenhower faced. that was that the united states was becoming ascendant over its founding country and britain was beginning to lose a grip on its empire. this is one of the subtexts for the war is to try to keep the empire from including. without getting into too much more of those slightly off subject details, let's just say that the main subject was that his main job is what he called unity of purpose. to bring together in the upper echelon of the alliance a unity of purpose. then in reason -- reading both

his diaries and other research, there were times when i read it and i want to say, stand up for yourself. then i realized he had a different way of going about this. probably the way he managed dinnertable conversations when we were growing up and certainly in the home that he he grew up and that was to let some people win a few minor things to hold back a bit and be an active listener and when you really analyze the problems he was facing he won every site. here is a short list of the headaches he had to deal with. i know that the people coming along after me will give you the full detail on it. first of all, it had to deal with the skeptics of the plan. the british did not like the idea of invading normandie. winston churchill did not come around or heart into the

enterprise until within weeks of the actual deployment in normandie. can you imagine having a boss ve that has no confidence you will pull it off? so that was one thing. then, the size of the invasion force. he fought a huge battle at the early stage were will we have three beaches or five with two divisions and reserve. he fought that battle and he did it through general montgomery. very smart. then again, he said he was very worried about the flag. he knew that there was a flack but he understood that the airborne assault was the linchpin of the operation. the transportation plan, the british war cabinet absolutely rejected this idea. th eisenhower had to say sorry, we

are doing it. fire me if you want. he knew when to soft and up and when to put the pedal to the metal. i think in my book i said i think he is a genius at knowing when to deploy and when to suppress it. finally,y, we have the fight ov strategic bombing which was related to the strategic plan, logistical problems, not enough going to an invasion that is already on the calendar. shortage of ammunition and then a big fight about operation and fill. i don't know how many of you realize that in conjunction with d-day there was to be an invasion from southern france m that would support the operation. as a matter of fact, by the time he talked him into it

churchill had renamed it operation tribune. then i had to deal with the germans that are not only strengthening defenses on the normandy coast. we have not discussed the deep divisions in france but this created a very important diplomatic strategic and operational set of decisions. the weather forecast was the most vexing but if you take that in the context this is one of the most brave things we will remember in history. early in the war he complained a bit that the british press was describing him as timid

looking at the quote here it said, it worries me to be thought of as timid. having to do things that were so risky as to be almost crazy. he did not show how risky he thought it was. he had this capacity to project optimism. for all of the veterans i've met, and he went out and visited as many people as he could preparing for this invasion,or i wish i had the li in front of me. every possible moment he exuded this kind of optimism. even more important he projected that optimism to allies.

it's not surprising given the fact that he fought for every one of those things he was given in the end. on june 5 he wrote a note that said, my division ii attack is based on the bad -- best information available. if any playing -- blame our fault attaches it is mine alone. this in case of failure don't never had to be used. that is the man who led to d- day. thank you. >> good morning. i would also like to thank the eisenhower society, eisenhower institute and my panel members for engaging this morning. this morning we will take a look

at the other side. it's often valuable to stand in the adversary's shoes. we will understand the environment, what guidance theyh were given, how they define the problem and what approach they chose to use. let's take that back to how things are looking. let's go back to frederick the great and they have a germany problem. they are surrounded by an alliance of strange fellows. they want the defeat of germany. if we think about what the extent of that empire is in both europe and north africa, it will start to be rolled back. starting in november 1943, with the invasion of north africa. this will be when american troops fight germans and ea churchill would routinely warn us you have not fought in the war until you have fought germans. this would be the high tide of the german advance and really

the turning point that would continue to drive the germans back on the east for the rest of the war. than this is when the battle finally turns. the allies will sink 135 u- boats. the three years and three months prior to that they had sunk 153. this is how it turns. this gives the allies naval supremacy. it's a prerequisite necessary for the invasion of northwest europe. in june the combined bomber offensive with the british bombing at night and the americans during the day are following a point-blank directive to slow the german aircraft industry picket forces german aircraft to come into the air. between january and may 1944 there's 2283 german pilots. of those, 2262 will be shot down. that's 99% turnover.

this gives the allies serial supremacy. another prerequisite for the invasion of northwest africa. in july 1943, england and the united states will invade sicily opening the mediterranean to shipping. in september they will invade italy proper. this breaks the apartheid agreement and italy is out of the were forcing at least 10 divisions to go into the italian peninsula and 10 divisions that will be at normandie. in the spring of he19 -- 1944 t russians advance meaning there are two divisions fighting on the thousand mile front. if you are keeping track at home of the 13 divisions that gives you about 58 divisions left. while all this is happening in the east with not a whole lot of to go the idea is something is going to happen here. what we find on top of all this is they are supply not only the

united states but all of our allies. so this really starts in march 1942. hitler says, let's build and atlantic wall. at this point it is truly just a propaganda arm and then you get a bunch of these pictures. that is the coastline that you have to defend and that's a problem. by the way that is actually in the east. one of the things that happens in early 1942 is rommel will pull out of retirement. the oldest field marshal is the last prussian. he will do a study and realize the atlantic wall is a sham, write a report, send it back to berlin and say, hitler should really read this. rare at that time in the war he actually does. that will lead to directive 51 that says he warns of the catastrophic consequences of the allies gaining a foothold in northwest europe. that is the problem statement.

the response to that should be strength in the western defenses and be prepared to drive the enemy back to the sea. to that end, the same directive will sign a field marshal and his staff to go do an assessment of the wall and they will agree it is a sham. with that romelus assigned command of the two army groups and this is when the wall starts to be built. as was brought up earlier, , there's a lot of study about where are we going to build the defenses. so they look at where the allies land in the past and it's always been ports. therefore they prioritize ports. moreover, for all the reasons we talked about besides being under air cover, the closeness to berlin, the idea that is the most likely landing and the most consequential one, most of the resources go there.

when they start to build the atlantic wall this is strengthening western defenses. we should think of this as a living beast. when you see these bunkers they will build 15,000 of them. it's one point 2 million tons of german steel. 5% is in the rebar of those bunkers. think about this as the bones of this defensive beast. that would be connected by trench lines, those are the ligaments that hold it together. artillery pieces from 28 countries in 21 different calibers. is a those germans are so creative to use the captured artillery they found from all those countries they occupy. true, except how do you resupply 21 different calibers of artillery and find spare parts. nonetheless, this is the muscle of the beast. then you think about rid --

radar stations. how do we see that they are an coming. 92 radar stations of which only 5% will still be standing on june 6. nonetheless, these are the eyes of the beast to sense when the adversary is coming. then we think about what is the skin. this ends up being the 6.5 million lines. el the beach obstacles in three lines. this is 325,000. picture six foot tall telephone poles in every field which they think the allies might land. on top of that they flood the field to reduce mint -- mobility and maneuverability. that is the beast. the blood that flows through it are the german troops that are there. let's talk about these for a moment. 800,000 of them. the germans have reached the bottom of the manpower barrel.

what you find is they are recruiting very old. the average age of the regiment that defense utah beaches 36. on top of that, one sixth of those troops are those people from eastern europe are former soviet socialist republics. look at these faces. they are from kazakhstan. you have a problem with language and readiness. they fight well? truth be told it's a mixed bag. some fight very well and others can't wait to surrender. what we should think about this, this is the reinforce for western defenses. what this means is only 18% of the atlantic wall is built in normandy at the time the allies invade. so let's talk about the other decision we have to make. how do we drive them back into the sea? we have about 10 panzer

divisions. this is what you think about when you think about the german army in world war ii. these are mechanized and motorized forces with combined arms, operations second fight in a modern war. as the 58 divisions, 23 are static and cannot fight offensive operations and are not mobile. the panzer divisions are. how to use them? what you will find is two different approaches. the first is proposed by the commander of the west. his attack dog is this guy. both of their experiences fighting in the east against the russians. what they would propose is the atlantic wall is just a tripwire. it's an outpost offense and a minor delay. what we should do is use a traditional doctrinal approach of using mass mobile reserves made up of masked panzers that once the allies commit to where they will land we launch them in a counterattack.

there are some assumptions. first, the german air force should be able to support the counterattack. moreover, the thing we fear more than anything is allied naval gunfire. it's an asymmetric advantage for which we have no real response. it was proven that the counterattacks in sicily and it's a problem. therefore leave it in the back to account for a potential to be able to flow depending on where they limped. this one is largely the brainchild of rommel . his experience is different. where did he get his experience, fighting the british in north africa. he's an armor man but he will say the war has changed. you don't understand. allied air is destroying us. we can do that nocturnal approach. all of those reserves will never make it to the front. allied air will ensure they do not. therefore, we need a new

approach. we need to put that armor up front. the atlantic wall is not tripwire. it is the battle line. we will fight at the coast. if the allies land and take a hold for more than 38 hours we will lose. the assumptions inherent in this is we have no german navy and we have no german air force. that is the debate that goes back and forth. truth be told these guys will push back. here's the thing. this is europe and not north africa. there 66 days of cloud cover. allied air won't be that effective. this is not the desert. it's europe. look at the trees and the rolling terrain. allied air will not be that effective. nonetheless as the debate continues, it goes up to hitler to make the choice. what choice does he make? he splits the baby. he will give some of those divisions to rommel. two he will put up and most consequential and likely

landing. when he will put near normandy. three divisions are given to the south and four divisions are around paris with the idea that they would execute the plan, the traditional nocturnal approach. here's the limitation. you cannot move them until hitler releases them. that is stealing the focus of effort. the panzers that should be able to counterattack have been split up all across the country. therefore they get neither the advantages of one or the other approach. this whole problem is exacerbated by a very convoluted change of command. we have hitler at the top. he has an army, navy and air force commander. the naval and air commander to not report to the commander in western europe. they report back to berlin

meaning he has neither the authority nor the necessary cooperation of those commanders. that translates to all of his commanders are responsible for defending the beaches on which they will land. if you think about all of the ss units that are in france, they are not even in the army. e that goes straight to hitler. on top of this, hitler will routinely reach past the chain of command directly to the people he wants to talk to and has given them the authority to reach back to him. many german commanders call this command by confusion. even the chief of staff would say this is the problem of every tyrannical leader. you don't want to give too much power to anyone leader. however, this command and va control system effectively slows down the decision-making of the german war machine june 6 and thereafter. so what are the results? first of all, the germans only

have one domain response to the invasion. the second one is, we don't have a common operational approach about how to use the best trips not in intent, not imposture and not in use. next, unbelievable to everybody that was around, we have a hierarchical and rigid change in command that disempowers subordinate commanders to be able to act and react at the speed of the problem. ultimately for the german defense they don't have enough resources. there's a fair amount of officers applying a proclivity of armored reserves that failed to recognize that the allies are now a coalition force that can fight air, land, and see inharmonious activity that are well armed, well trained, and well manned.

that traditional approaches no longer suitable to the changingv competitive environment. the lesson we should take today, you should ask yourself are the united states and allies capable of responding to a radically changing national security environment and maybe martin person -- more important for those that serve today are we able to anticipate the future and react to the ever- changing accelerating character of war. thank you. [applause] i'm i'm bill metz and to be >> folks, it's time to put the parachutes on. we will jump in. i am will matz. i'm delighted to be back on the campus i graduated from years ago and delighted to see all of these experts and professionals that have spent

so much time studying, researching on this particular battle. i am going to discuss the airborne operations, the allied airborne operations that took lace on d-day. it was part of operation neptune. neptune was the assault phase of overlord and consisted of across the beach amphibious invasion and parachute operation that was touched on a little bit here. it lasted june 6 through june 30 . i will talk about the airborne operation which consist of three divisions, 82nd, 101st which i had the opportunity to spend nine years with on active duty and we can't leave our british cousins out. the airborne troops totaled about 23,400, 13,400 u.s. parachuted in and another 3900, 4000 came in by assault

glider. so 6000 brits came in. just as eisenhower and his weathermen were so concerned about getting across the channel and landing people on the beaches, the weather plays a major role in airborne operations. the biggest thing that we worry about is the wind. the wind is a killer. it was not a major issue here but the second issue we worried about is the navigation, the cloud cover, of course, we did hit that. the existing conditions were really worse over france than they were over england and the channel. when considering the airborne plan as somebody already pointed out, we had to take care of the very vulnerable flights.

the airborne operation took place in the peninsula here. you had the eastern flank and the western flank. here's the beaches the assault forces came across. that was a major consideration. eisenhower was a little bit skeptical en masse technical drops after the debacle he had an operation husky in sicily. we learned a lot of lessons there i will tell you little more detail on that after. the airborne operation consisted of the 82nd, called american patch. the screaming eagles and the pegasus patch for the brits. this was general matthew ridgway, taylor, and this is wendy gale, the brit. these folks participated in the earlier airborne operations in sicily and salerno. taylor was

with the 82nd as a commander on that operation. matt ridgway was the commander. under him was general gavin. real airport trooper. let me discuss a couple of things here. one, there was a diversionary plan as part of the operation called operation titanic. consisted of dropping about 500 pair dummies and land off areas away from the actual landing zone. they were dropped in an arc like this. they were dropped by the brits and they called them, the british gave them the name of rupert after rupert the bear in the comic strip. 500 dropped in with some sas troops. it's interesting. they had some little notes attached to some of the dummies. you see when their, they are in

a lot of museums. there about 3 1/2 feet time high wrapped in cloth with sand to fill them out. they attach little note saying, as they dropped in the early morning hours in this area here, good morning we have arrived. but anyway, it was very successful because it did draw off some of the german units to go investigate that. in particular a couple of units that were very close to where the hundred and first would eventually jump into. let me show you the roots that were used. they 82nd came out of departure airfields in this area here, a street south almost. when they got to the channel they went to 450 feet altitude

to get on the german radar. that is pretty low for those big heavy airplanes. when they got to this point here, there was a boat with the light on and they could hone in on that. it had the codename of hoboken. at that point they made a left turn and came in from the west across the french coast and dropped the paratroopers right in this area. the glider troops followed this route and turned here. the glider troops did not come until about 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning after the parachute drops. when they hit the coast was when the weather turned extremely cloudy, navigation was very difficult, as a couple of the speakers have already mentioned, the german flak started opening up on them.

as a result of that, there were 1047 aircraft coming across. they had to disperse. some climb tie, some went to the left or right and somewhat low which is one reason you will see the jump pattern as to why some of the troops did not land on the drop zones. the brits came in here. they were outside also. they did not fly right over the landing beaches like they did in sicily. that was one of the mistakes they did in sicily. in fact, the 504 than five a fifth went into sicily. they had 23 aircraft shot down by naval gunfire because the assault flew right over the beaches. they also did not use pathfinders on that operation. these are some of the lessons

we have learned that the planners looked at and eisenhower insisted they make those changes because he was very skeptical after that operation in sicily. as i say, they came in here on the western part. the british came in here. they flew in what they call a v formation. then you see three aircraft in each formation and then there was nine aircraft. that's how they both approached the 101st and the 82nd. let me mention here really quickly the british airborne. if you go off the map here there were two critical bridges that had to be taken prior to the assaults on the beaches. this was the bonneville and

renville bridge. later renamed pegasus for the brit after the british troop carrier that they used. this was a very daring operation. in my view one of the best operations ever conceived in world war ii. it consisted of six gliders. you see them here. the sixth one actually never made it. he took the wrong bearing and ended up four miles away. these gliders landed right in this area here. that is about 2/10 of a mile distance from bridge to bridge. six gliders landed at the zero 16 led by major john howard. here you see the british loading one of these gliders.

they would carry about 28 men, they were larger than the american gliders who carried about 17 or 18 men. within 15 minutes after they have landed, they totally took the small garrison by surprise. they say about 20 german soldiers. of course, they sat right down here. he was only a few meters from the bridge. he got out quickly and assaulted the brits. they only had two casualties. other tenant was killed as he was crossing the pegasus bridge. one of the soldiers and one of the gliders was killed when a glider landed hard and broke his neck. two people lost and they took

that. this, in my view was a major operation that sealed off these bridges. this is the high-speed avenue approach and there were a number of panzer units and other units out here that could easily come and hit the beaches. the landing went well and eventually link up with these folks and the rest of the british airborne and then jumped in in this area. very successful operation. it was operation dead stick. you don't learn much about it but i could not leave my british cousins out of it. he would come around when i was young officer, howard would come around on tour and talk to us about this operation. so let's go back to the u.s. airborne plan. we had the western sector. this chart shows you.

here is utah beach and this is is the 82nd area. this was about a 10 square mile area. this is the 101st. they jumped close to the beach. they had about a 15 square mile area. the dc's are shown here. three for each division. remember, the aircraft came in this way from the west. they did not come across this way. so they come in and dislodge the troops that way. the photo cc here, this is one of the american see 37's. you can see a jump master doing a final check. these are 82nd troopers here. appear you see the two troopers from the hundred and first.

this chapel here is the chapel at dumont. it has an unusual steeple. of course, the troops that jumped miles away could help see that steeple that helped to bring them in. the first to jump was the 101st. they came in, as i say in this area, their objectives were from the beaches to take these causeways that came in lent. there were four of them. also this german artillery had four guns and was another objective. this down was a very critical objective they picked up. than they had four bridges over the river which they were responsible for taking.

that gives you an idea of the objectives. they are always here to link up with the sister division 82nd over here. the 82nd jumped in and their objectives, the five or six roads coming together. they were four german headquarters there most of the time. they were also responsible for two key bridges. this is the river that flows south. it was very key. they had to get those to prevent a german counterattack so this operation is called boston.

they came in with about 69 paratroopers. they were a little bit bigger. remember that before i show you the next chart exactly where the drop zones were. preceding the drop of the major airborne units they sent in pathfinder units. there were three teams that came in for each drop zone. folks, where did they actually land? remember me telling about you when they hit the coast and the antiaircraft fire hit them. also, the cloud cover was bad. some pilots better than others. some had a steady hand and continued through it. some tried to evade it. this will show you where they landed. the 101st started dropping

after midnight and went through 1:40. each dot represents a stick. each load has about 15 to 18 paratroopers to give you an idea. you can see in some cases they actually missed the drop zone. this is drop zone alpha. the aircraft are coming over. this aircraft came here. this stick of dark circles should have jumped in there. the other drop zones, the 101st did a pretty good job. these are pretty tight jumped. this is perhaps the best here. each of these drop zones is about one mile and a 10th across the long axis. general maxwell taylor landed

here. the easy company guy lieutenant dick winter landed over here just to give you an idea. you can see some of these down here. these were troops that are landed anywhere from 10, 15 to 20 miles away. that's how they were scattered. 10, 15, 20 miles away. as a result of trying to evade the flak, the pilots released them. one or two were actually released over the english channel. those paratroopers died, drowned. the 82nd started their operation about 10 minutes after the last serial of the hundred and first. they were coming in this way

here. this is the 50 fifth. galvan was with this group. they actually jump and some of them did land in the town. you know the story of private steel whose parachute got tangled in the steeple and hung there for about two hours. they got out of that quickly. these did not fare too well. look how empty the drop zones are. this one in particular. they dropped a little bit late. this group you see here belong in drop zone 10 go. these folks, it's a shame they dropped in the area along the river. it was only three or

four feet deep but many of them died. this drop zone down here did not fare much better. they were altogether around carrington. those troops that dropped this distance, the germans picked them up in most cases. this is where the 82nd troops landed way off this way, way off this way. just take a look at that. take a look where the plan dropped. in view of the flak and the bad cloud cover, it really was not too bad when you get right down to it.

my last chart here i want to discuss just real quickly. lessons learned, mission applied. a lot of lessons were learned from a salerno and sicily drops. one, the pathfinder. they did not use pathfinders for the sicily drop. they did use them in the 82nd and 101st. this little portable radar station that they jumped in with and sent it up and it sent a signal to the pilots coming in. that helped tremendously in navigation. not in all cases when they jumped into the equipment work. in a couple cases it crashed to the ground. they were not able to set up the drop zones the way they wanted to and the aircraft did not make their exact drop. here

is a picture of a see 37. you will notice white stripes. here is a p 38. there was no designation for the friendly gutters below. they could not tell whether it was enemy aircraft or friendly aircraft. here they made sure that they did. these were very easily seen. are used a p 38. they could easily distinguish that. as i say, great lessons learned here and eisenhower pushed this. incidentally, when they were looking at should we use mass tax for the airport again after the sicily drop one of the biggest proponents was montgomery. he really pushed them. the objectives in the missions. were they accomplished? i say yes, they were. here are troops moving through shortly thereafter.

that town was taken by the 50 fifth that was in our hands at about 5:30 this morning. this is the german battery located at the hundred and first they took that out very quickly but for the first -- before the first boat beach. had those guns been in operation we would have lost more than 200 people on utah beach the first day. that mission was accomplished. this was the famous bridge. if you've ever been over there and walked normandy and the historic trails you have probably cost -- crossed this little bridge and seen it. that is over the river here. that was taken but only after a four day fight for the 252 82nd airborne soldiers for the 50 fifth lost their life and a great number of others were injured. so that was tough when they

took that. they also took the bridges, the bridges that were along the river here and were able to take the other bridge that was south right at this point here. they also closed off the western sector, the small pockets of infantry to alert or take care of any enemies that might be coming in from the west. of course, the main thing is they very quickly got these four exit areas coming off of utah beach across the marsh and up into the heart stand. the 101st got that really quickly. that allowed utah beach, the fourth infantry to get in there and get the infantry up rather quickly across the causeway's. folks, that's just a quick rundown on the objectives, the

major objectives. they were really, in fact, taken care of by d+ one. on balance, there was 50% casualties. every report you look on you see different casualty numbers. roughly, the two airborne divisions took about 50% casualties on the first night on five, six june. this included the killed in action, missing in action, wounded and prisoner. wounded, imprisoned. paratroopers, as i say, they used the eureka radar beacons, and the germans really were clearly, clearly disorganized. not able to counterattack in any coordinated fashion for the first two or three days.

they lacked a good general officer presence and leadership at that time. many had been, because of the bad weather, many had gone to a major meeting they were going to have to discuss the landing. they were away from their units and often the town, so they were there. and of course, we kill general sally, who was the general of the 508. the 508 got him and he was killed down here. so the germans were lacking, in my view, a good leadership. another thing i think we need to mention here is the sabotage efforts by the french resistance. it was very, very good there in normandy. they assisted tremendously. once the paratroopers got off the ground, et cetera.

they were instrumental in taking that. the other thing i want to mention is, folks -- the courage, the tenacity, the bravery, the individual initiative of the young troops. and we teach that in army basic training. we teach the young troupe, and these young troopers, 18, 19, 20 years old, landing on drops as they were familiar with or landing and not seeing anybody or not finding their officer, they marshaled together, got together in units of two, three, or four, and started moving toward the objective. to me, this is a major force multiplier on how that young troupe responded, and was very, very influential in the success of the airborne operations. and of course, the american leadership was the best. it was the best. when you have the likes of ridgeway, of galvin, matthew

taylor, of mcauliffe, these are all names you heard later on, and two of them became chiefs of staff in the army. i think maxwell taylor became chairman of the joint chiefs. these were great leaders. so i think this made the difference here. i want to end by saying this here. i want to read just a real quick quote from a german grenadier commander. he was a commanding officer of the 125th panzer grenadier. a good friend of mine interviewed him many years ago. in the interview, when he was asked about how his unit reacted, or asked about the normandy invasion, this is what he said. my regiment was left to fight the american paratroopers. it was madness.

no one knew how many paratroopers had landed, or even where they landed or even where they were. it was a matter of guessing where they were or where they would be. you cannot imagine the confusion i had to deal with. my soldiers did not know where to fight. end of quote. so thank you, folks, and we look forward to your question. , please wait until our student gets you with the microphone so that we can all you. so let's see if there's a hand up. i see a hand way >> the floor is open for questions. the ones we want to say is, if you have a question, please wait until our student gets to you with the microphone so that we can all hear you. so let's see if there's a handout. i see a hand way back. we have to wait until sam gets up to you. spoke about with the stragglers

>> this is a question that is spurred on by what general matt spoke about with stragglers from 101st, 82nd captured because they were so widely dispersed and away from their units. this is on the personal side. my canadian mother's classmate at mcgill university was a third infantry division soldier who came ashore at normandy. canadiens made it about eight miles inland. he was captured, and within 24 hours of landing in france, he was executed by members of the 12th ss. he and 17 other soldiers were in the -- let out by one by one and shot in the head. the question for you sir is, do you know of any guidance as to

p.o.w.s, how they were to be treated versus the ss under it, as you mentioned, a separate command tree? >> can you hear me? does that work? hello? hello? okay. so there's a couple things baked into that. one, ss units are different, right? they are fanatical, rather than a common german who goes, hey, if they already said they're not going to stop until her unconditional surrender, going to fight for my homeland. those are philosophically two different people. on top of that, many of these units that are in france, and for the first two years of the war, is a backwater of the war. they were fighting the russians and soviets, we brought you back to france.

that's we recoup, recover, get your replacements before we send you back. that brutal fighting is the background for many of those people who are out there. so when you think about the brutality of the eastern theater, it comes in the mind- set of many of the soldiers were fought in the eastern theater. there's one word that's it's out there, and it's a commando war that's as it should be executed. these are special operators now who are operating between, behind the lines, interfering with governments and all those other things. they have orders to kill. i think this is largely though a number of, these are ss people, the brutality of the war, and to keep this in context, when canadians learn about this -- and they do, because that's in their sector. they also come up with their own rules of engagement, which are, we are not taking any german prisoners below the rank of major. this is about the escalating brutality of war when you take extremely ordinary people who have a fundamental set of values and you put himself in extraordinary circumstances,

and now they are in reacting to the environment they are in. those stories tend to be the exception in the sense that almost everybody has a value underpinning, everybody there is largely christian. the idea that when you are wounded, from one side or the other helping the other, that paratroopers, british paratroopers taking care of german ones, the stories are more ubiquitous than those heinous acts that you just got up. someone elaborate a little bit as moving inland. >> whoever would like to wh address this, feel free to do so. can someone elaborate a little bit as moving inland, why did cossack overlook the geographic significance and obstacles that were going to be presented by the brooke hasch country?

>> what i would offer is, they do know it's there. allied aircraft flyover. they have pictures of -- you know, it's a famous four square- mile picture where there's 1000 individual fields. julius caesar writes about it. it was known. but here's the problem. this is about amphibious landings in particular. first of all, you start off with zero combat power. from the minute you land, it's a race to build a combat power. knowing how to establish a foothold, billy beachhead, and generate enough combat power to break out. what's the one thing most commanders are worried about ? landing. so all of the training, all the time was put on, how do we get on the beach and security beachhead? it was not spent in breakout. those were very very difficult lessons learned, and now you find these combined infantry, engineer, and armor teams as a start to fight through, they are learning in real time.

>> we have a question over here. please, everybody, i'm trying to get a couple more in, but make your questions short. >> i am not picking on the doctor, but my question is directed to him. during the sixth of june, the 21st panzer division made quite a deep foray into the beachhead. could you talk to that and what kind of impact it had on the overall landing? >> it's an interesting one. this is the one panzer division that was in the vicinity. when they realized the airborne operations had started to happen, they actually leaned to the east, but they are on the wrong side of the river. now they have to stop. you got to go back all the way to the southern side before you can watch this as a counterattack. when they watch the counterattack, you are right. ultimately, they get within light of the beach. but they are so strung out.

and who's on their flanks? as dr. mcmanus brought up, the canadians. the orders of overlord are stop the german panzer attack. they are completely set up with armor, artillery to go ahead and try that back. what they find is there's truly not enough weight for the germans to take advantage of that advance almost all the way to the beach. those guys are almost cut off and they will have to pull back. so it is a small window of opportunity. we can play the game of, what if there were more there? what if rommel had been given more panzer divisions? what it is and interesting snapshot. >> the gentleman right here. no, sam. the checkered shirt. >> excuse my voice. i lost it. i do tours of the eisenhower memorial so i been on a lot of tours. general mass, what made gunnery so confident that the

paratrooper drops would be successful as opposed to eisenhower, who is skeptical? rk montgomery of all of the planners and he was >> hello?ound flanks, i think pe to answer, i think montgomery, of all of the planners, and he was a ground commander, he recognized why rent the vulnerability of the flanks. i think perhaps more so than the others. everybody was fixated on just coming across the beaches. montgomery was smart that way. he saw the vulnerability of those flanks, and no one could do it better than parachute troops. this was brought out by one of the earlier speakers. the air marshal, he was so worried about losing the troopers, but folks, he was also worried about losing his airplanes.

that's why montgomery weighed heavy on that. there's a good three or four paragraphs in just that particular decision. while he have the mic, one other thing i forgot to mention -- part of the british sixth airborne, they had one battalion of canadian paris shooters. i can't leave that out. i hope there's no canadians here. they did a great job. >> one quick final question before we go to lunch. >> it is quits, and it's a logical follow-up to the one just answered. after they took their objectives, where the paratroopers supposed to move toward the water, or just stay where they were? >> now, when you make a mass tactical jump like that, the first thing you do is rally on the drop zone and get together with your squads and platoons. in this case, as you saw, so many were dispersed. in fact, there were even 82nd guys that were dropped over close to the 101st.

that's why i say it was the adaptability and the ingenuity and the initiative of these young kids to get together, and they knew where the objectives were. they knew, so they got together and finally they picked up an officer and they move towards the objective. their objective was not to go to the beach. no, just to go to the inland most point of those causeways and take that. >> before we bring the session to a close, i just wanted to go back to the question of the brooke hasch and a key into what general mass just said about this ingenuity. part of the way they get settled out is because of the innovation of informer for the midwest, who said that he had, you know, underbrush problems, and that he wanted to put a

device on the front of these tanks to clear the way. and somehow, from that level all the way up the food chain, it rose rapidly, and it really is a remarkable story of how open-minded these commanders were to new ideas about how to solve problems as they emerged. >> let's think our panel for excellent content. >> if you are enjoying american history tv, then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive weekly highlights of upcoming programs like american artifacts, the presidency, and more. sign up for the newsletter today and be sure to watch american history tv every weekend or anytime online at c-

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