in lynchburg the kidnapping was big news.v crews set up shop across the street and captured heiko driving his used mercedes coupe. there you were in your fancy car. >> yes. >> you must be worth millions. >> that was a wrong, wrong impression. >> i'm not a rich person, but i will give whatever i can get together. okay? >> we need 10 million u.s. dollars for the release of your family. okay? >> reporter: heiko was lucky in this. when mr. so made his demands, some of the most experienced fbi hostage negotiators in the country were right there, listening in. ready to point out the right way for heiko to respond. literally. >> these are for general visual prompts that we want heiko to think about. we have all the questions related to kevin and gerfa that we think are important for heiko to consider. and while we're doing them we're going to write notes down and pass them to heiko. he would read it and hopefully introduce it to the conversation. >> where's my wife? can i talk to her? if she's okay? where's my son? >> yeah, no, uh,

lee sent away from petersburg to save lynchburg from capture. 30,000 federals, and phil sheridan ends up out here in the shenandoah valley. that is the mission and assignment that jubal early had been out here for, and he succeeded at it wildly. now, for the federal troops, the rank-and-file of the federal troops, they knew their campaign had been a failure. one soldier of the 12th west virginia spoke of the battle at kernstown on sunday, sometimes called the battle of winchester. he said, no words can portray the scenes that occurred on that day in winchester, nor had i the time nor inclination would i want to make them public. a soldier of the sixth army corps wrote home simply, this campaign has been a disgraceful failure. these men knew it. another soldier wrote of the retrieved from -- retreat from kernstown, bull run was nothing in comparison. at this point, jubal early was the king of the valley. it remained to be seen how long he could keep up his deft command of maneuver and quick, lightning marches, avoiding being trapped by larger forces once phil sheridan took command. tha

so on june 13, 1864, he is headed toward lynchburg and he'll arrive two days later and his movement in many ways shock the union army under david hunter in the valley and they'll completely vacate the valley. hunter is not intrigued through the valley. he heads west towards west virginia and completely vacating the valley against his orders. so what is the earliest path. as i said, we have the army of west virginia under david hunter who vacates the valley, leaving the valley completely open and he will eventually lose his job about this, and we talked about siegel before. he's back. siegel is commanding the arm ney west virginia at harper's ferry. he actually puts up a pretty decent short fight at harper's ferry before he's relieved and from my friend in the back there we've got sweet lou wallace, where the 8th army corps will be his initiative in many ways washington d.c. so what's going on with the federal high command here? they're headed north towards the potomac river in maryland, there are reports that there's a large enemy force operating in the valley that's getting all of the

this is dot braden, from lynchburg, virginia, not far from my hometown of roanoke, virginia.she was teaching school in 1942, eldest daughter in a family of four, mom a single mother, her mother, her parents were separated, her mother was supporting their household and dot's salary of $900 a year was supporting her mother at household, and her two younger brothers were already in the u.s. army. she was overburdened by work and what i love about her story is, it shows how u.s. army recruiting strategy was wrongheaded, even as it worked. the u.s. army approach to recruiting schoolteachers whizz to send their handsomest young army officers out to lurk in post offices and hotels throughout the american south at first, eventually all over the country, with the idea that schoolteachers would see a handsome, young officer, and think, if i go to washington i can make a marriage to a man who looks like that. so marriage was much on the military's mind as it was recruiting these young women to come to washington. but dot was trying to get out of a marriage that she was not interested in

he was from lynchburg, virginia. he went on to harvard and then fought in france in world war i. like many of the men who signed up for the ara, he went partially out of the desire for adventure. he felt the united states to boring after the war. he also had dreams of becoming a writer and thought the experience fighting the famine would provide him with a lot of great cereal. he was also a man motivated by assent of service by a sense of service to humanity. he had a certain sympathy for the revolution itself if you was a committed socialist. and reading his letters back onto his mother and father and his diaries and things, i became convinced he was sort of the idealist, if you will, of my history. when i was trying to figure out how i was going to tell the story of the ara and the famine and tell it in a way that would be engaging and would bring people to life, i realize that, to discuss large groups of people, 30 million people starving, or an entire village, it is hard to connect that sort of thing. it becomes almost an abstraction. i wanted to find several of these ara men

central virginia battlefield trust and national advisory board for the civil war chaplain's museum in lynchburg, virginia. please join me in welcoming chris mackowski. >> thank you, sarah. >> in november of 1879 mark twain was asked to give a speech at a rhee union of the army of the tennessee in honor of ulysses s. grant. he turned out to be the 15th speaker on a long list of people offering accolades. he called it the perilous distinction of batting cleanup. he said he was the last speaker on the list, an honor no person probably has ever sought. you guys are going to see something rare, which is a chris mackowski powerpoint presentation. the whole reason i'm doing it so i have an excuse to show edward's map. make me a map dot-com. for the long time, the battle of mine run has been understudied, unappreciated. in fact, nothing happened. so i'll make up a bunch of stuff for about half an hour and we'll see what happens at the end. when edward made this map, that basically doubled the amount of cartography done on this battle. for a long time, the only thing available was what was in the offici

lynchburg. we'll focus our attention here. the guys are moving from west virginia down into this region of southwest virginia. on may 6th, crook and his men are going to skirmish at princeton. on the 8th they'll skirmish at jeffersonville. they're coming up against troops under albert jenkins and john mccausland. they've covered about 45 miles on their campaign. this brings us to the major battle? their movement. this is the battle of employed's mountain. fought on may 9th, 1864 near dublin. this battle is going to pitch about 6,000 troops under crook against about 2,080 under jenkins. the battle lasts about one hour. but the union force lost 10% of their available troops. also at this battle, we have two future presidents, rutherford b. hayes and william mckinley. the results of the battle are ruled as a union victory since crook's regimen will continue on. they'll wreck parts of dublin, virginia. >> these losses and this type of fighting is comparable to the battle of new market between sigel and breckinridge. it's a forgott

here who died on omaha beach, i interviewed a guy in the second wave, he was trom company b from lynchburg virginia 20 miles to the north of me. he said he came in on the second wave and he landed on omaha beach after the boys and all he could see was dead bodies. you were as likely to die in the second, third, fourth wave because by the time the second and third waves arrived, the germans knew we were coming and it was target practice often and the most lethal sectors. it was literally target practice by the time you got to the second wave. >> we have been talking a good deal about the landings on the beaches. you also write a great deal about the parrot troopers and grindders enemy lines. describe those gliders. and how many men were delivered that way? well say the british fect tacularly took pegasus bridge, the first successful operation of d-day. they were let loose basically in a wooden and canvass glider at 6,000 feet at mild night on june 6, 1944. the pilot had a compass and a stopwatch. that was all. in the case these pegasus bridge, they crashlanded, 30 gase, gripping each other

jerry falwell, of course, had his own segregation academy in lynchburg, virginia and this is what gets jerry falwell and these other features motivated. is theho i think architect of the religious right, has cooperated this. i have had personal conversations with him and he is utterly emphatic on this point. he said i was trying to get these people, even? 's, involved in politics since 1964, and i couldn't get them interested. i tried everything i could think of. school prayer the equal rights , pornography, opposition to the equal rights amendment, abortion, nothing of their attention until the school issue surface, and that is what finally galvanized them to the into a political movement. there is a second part of the story for the rise of the religious right. the bob jones case and similar cases is what caught the attention of the evangelical leaders like falwell and others, but he was also savvy enough to realize that he needed a different issue in order to get grassroots evangelicals behind this movement, which we know of as the religious right. and what happens is that in 1978 in

. >> that's richard out of lynchburg, virginia. how should we feel about today and the anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall? >> i think we should definitely feel positive. i mean, it ended a horrible system. it was more or less the last nail in the coffin of the communist system of eastern europe so i think we should have positive feelings about it understanding that maybe we have exaggerated ideas about how easy it would be to integrate the east and west germans. i think the point to make if it was that hard to integrate east germans into west germany, how much more difficult it's been in the rest of eastern germany and the post soviet states to make this transition. it's been 30 years. it's going to take a very long time. i think we should feel positively but we should be realistic about how long it should take to get over the defamation of this system. >> professor angela stent, you can follow her on twitter @angelastent and the book, the latest book, putin's world, russia against the west and with the rest. thank you so m

from lynchburg, virginia on the republican line. caller: how are you doing today?t: fine thank you. caller: i was in the service for four years. that calling for branches of the service, the top dogs, and president trump to shut down and talk about bombing that involves they are not going to tell trump to bomb if it is not absolutely necessary. when i was in service you could not make a mistake. really work hard. i cannot tell you what airplanes but a bunch of them. you could not make a mistake. i think service people would be trust worthy to talk over what we are going to do when we go forth here. trump and all of the four major services and commanders. get all of them together. talk some over before we do something. host: from scranton, pennsylvania. jack has this comment. with foreign policy anyone who does not lie every time their lips move and who thinks america first and not me first. from the house this past week, representative tulsi gabbard of hawaii with these comments. >> president trump has committed an illegal and unconstitutional act of war wishing ou

host: another caller on the independent line in lynchburg, virginia. caller: good morning. would like to pose a question. bidenestion is, if joe the primaryome person for the democratic party , then all of this would have been worth no one's time. meaning that donald trump did all of this for nothing. he dug his own grave. and i don't understand why he felt that nobody else could have possibly been the front runner for the democratic party. host: patch, in dallas, texas, on the republican line. i'm against impeachment and i will tell you why. in the house,n -- no republicans voted for impeachment. -- and ther thing other thing, i truly believe when president trump was on that call, he was talking about the ,orruption that was in ukraine and this new president of ukraine had just taken over, and there was still corruption, and he was trying to let them know that they needed to stop it if they want to the aid from us, and that included the bidens. biden, underent obama, he was the one that -- i'm trying to think of who represented. host: to the point that you have made, are t