Went on strike. That was the day when a police car opened fire and began the battle. After that, it seems the french flag was hanging from every women. The flags were made from curtains, everything it didnt matter. Four days later we heard shouting coming. As we ran, the french army had arrived. I kissed my husband. We began to realize how unhappy we had been for four years and how lucky we were to be alive. Mary Louise Roberts is a history professor at the university of wisconsin madison joining us here on American History tv in our focus on d day to talk about her book d day through french eyes normandy 1944. Professor roberts, we just showed some video from the liberation of paris later that summer. Take us back to before the invasion. What was normandy like on june 5. What were the citizens of normandy like . Well, the french had been under German Occupation since 1940. In normandy the food situation was better than the rest of france because it was the dairyland of france. I tell my students, the wisconsin of france. There was more abundant food but at the same time the germans took pretty much the majority of the food and the milk and the dairy that the normans had produced. So there was hunger, there was a lot of fear. There was the gestapo, members of the resistance were taken away. If they were suspected of terrorist acts. It was a very grim normandy which greeted the invasion on 6 november. Did most french norman citizens have an idea that invasion was coming at some point but they did not know when . Exactly. Particularly in the year between 43 and 44 after the tide turned in italy. The french knew the invasion was coming so this of course fill them with great hope. But they did not know where and when. And bombardment, the bombing of various parts of france took place all over france because it is the aria for americans if they had bombed just normandy it would give germans the belief that the invasion would come there. In fact, the french expected it to come further east than it did. So, they had an idea of where it would be but they actually didnt expect it to be in normandy. Mary Louise Roberts is our guest. She is history professor at the university of wisconsin madison and author of the book, dday through french eyes normandy 1944. That is our focus for the last part of our program this morning. It is the experience of french norman citizens and the initial invasion of dday. If youre living in the eastern and central time zone, that is the line to use. Mountain pacific time zone and for those of you who have french ancestry, french americans that line is 202748 minus 8002. Particularly interested if you have stories of relatives or ancestors who lived in normandy or france at the time of the invasion. Just a couple of reminders on the timeline of the invasion. We are talking about june 6 1944. The invasion was postponed. 75 years ago on june 6 the invasion happened. Sure borg is the bird secured 24 days later. Kohn was liberated and we showed you some video of paris being liberated. The cover of your book shows a scene you are describing. Many of the french accounts show this dreamlike quality of the paratroopers falling into the night and let me ask you, where american soldiers and canadian soldiers were they prepared for what they would encounter in terms of what the citizens there in normandy would be like . Were they given any warning or advice on how to deal with citizens in those first hours of the invasion . Well, the americans and the british were both told that the majority of people still living in that part of france would be collaborators. That everyone else would have in some way moved away or migrated to get away from the war but the collaborators would be protected by the germans and on that premise they would stay. So their initial view of the front was negative. And as far as the paratroopers were concerned, most of them were injured and it was the normans who took care of them because the planes had to fly very low they released the paratroopers to low sometimes. Many of them had broken legs and broken ankles and if it werent for the normans going out into the night and rescuing these people and trying to get them back to american lines there would have been a kind of disaster among the paras. 3000 norman citizens died in the first two days of the invasions. Nearly 20,000 by the end of the campaign. What was the largest cause of death of the citizens . By far bombardment. Remember that the term Collateral Damage was invented in the Second World War because planes were notoriously not good about hitting their targets. I think about half the time it was within a quartermile. There was a lot of Collateral Damage and many many french people who even were in sellers were killed. Often times the village would take refuge in the castles of the small towns because they were behemoth buildings with very thick walls. So despite that, bombardment killed many people. Some people got caught in the crossfire. Normans are stoic people. They would go out to milk their cow even though it was a battlefield. And get killed that way. By far bombardment, but their homes and their backyards turned into a battlefield. Some of them just didnt have the resources or the time given the uncertainty of the location to pick up their belongings and get out in time. You talked about the presence of the gestapo in normandy. You are riding in your book about one of the persons, eight norman, a French Police officer looking at the soldiers, the german soldiers who were stationed there in germany and didnt think much of them. He was a world war i vet and he said they were old with little fight in them. Was that a common impression of norman citizens of who was there manning the bunkers on the beaches and elsewhere in normandy . It was true that first of all hitlers army of 1944 was not hitlers army of 1940 when they first invaded france because by now hitler has literally bled his population drive. So there were older men but mostly there were younger men. If you go to the German Cemetery in normandy you will see that most of these young people were 15, 16, or 17. They were inexperienced and there were older men as well. It is important to keep in mind that only about 20 to 30 of hitlers army was in normandy. The vast majority of troops were fighting on the Eastern Front against the russians. You have really a small proportion of troops and either very young or very old. We are going to open up our phone lines. 202 minus 7488000. In mountain pacific 202748 8001. If you are a french american of french dissent or had relatives who were in france at the time, that line is 202 7488002. Our guest is lou roberts from the university of wisconsin. We go first to lily kentucky and this is brad. Good morning. I do have a question for professor parker. But first i do have to say to all of our veterans. I am very aware of the fact that the totally blessed life that any modern american is living today is thanks to a long line of noble bloodshed of young men and women who gave us the ability and im very thankful for that. To all the veterans that are out there that came back home with ones physical and otherwise, you are appreciated , you are loved. I appreciate you. I love you. And i hope you have a good day and i hope things are okay with you. Did you have a question for lou roberts . Brad, go ahead. I thought her name was Mary Louise Parker x there is a Mary Louise Parker. Go ahead with your comment, its fine. At any rate, i apologize. Professor, the role of the French Resistance, i since i was young have never been able to find any good resources on the French Resistance. As far as specifics can you recommend any resources or resources or something dealing with that . Thank you. French resistance played a huge part in the dday invasion. One of the reasons i wrote this book is because dday has always been seen as an american story. And it has been told within a national frame. What i tried to do was turn the lens around. I envisioned roberts picture where he is showing the g. I. As they go up the beach and i turned the camera around. What was that like for the french looking down from the beach and there were civilians which we have already talked about. But there were also a lot of men, a lot of resistance men who were in eisenhowers view equal to 15 military divisions. We are talking about a force. And their job on dday was to create acts of sabotage in particular to stop trains from coming to normandy, bringing supplies and bringing troops. But also to blow up bridges and cripple the Transportation System in the area. They also changed some of the signs in normandy from the right side to the wrong sign to befuddle the germans. They were in many ways active in the struggle. Although we tend to forget them. I dont think there is a mistake that you cant find the sources on them. But, i would recommend one book by Julian Jackson which is excellent on the resistance in france. And not to in any way diminish the great role that the americans played but it is really important to include the many lies that were lost on the part of the french, too. We have a line for french americans or those of you with ancestors who went through normandy or a french dissent that is 2027488002. This is sherry on that line in alexandria, virginia. Good morning. Good morning, go ahead. Time frenchamerican my french mother who was a war bride. I have an aunt who was trained as a nurse in world war i to deal with the handicap of the injured troops. She and her husband were forced to leave home. They worked in the paris offices of the german chemical company. They were warned by their boss that the germans would invade paris and to save their life they needed to get out of there. They moved to printy britney which was the area of her birth and joined the French Resistance. She worked under the guise of a social worker so she could have free access route the countryside and they had to purposes. One was to move messages from the French Resistance fighters to britain and receive them and hand them back to the french and number 2 two harbor british pilots who had been shot down by german planes. I have a mother who was sent by her family from paris to the area of marseille who also joined the French Resistance. Her job was to carry automatic and semi automatic weapons from one place to another and also she was involved with her group in blowing up trains and troops. Anything else that would be helpful to you . That is quite a family legacy, sherry. Lou roberts, any thoughts . Thank you very much. You do have an amazing family legacy. And what you are bringing up is a subject close to my heart which is the many ways in which women participated in the resistance. They were not fully able to participate in military resistance. When the americans arrived they were not given uniforms. So, their roles were shaped by their gender. And they did all the different kinds of things you just so beautifully described. One of their advantages was that they were not under suspicion the way a young man would be. So they were the ones who carried the resistance newspapers or the bombs and when they got through checkpoints they often times acted in a sense, they flirted and they got through in a way a man ever could. My favorite example of that is a young woman in brittany of course as you said was a real center for resistance. Huge amounts of resistance in brittany. It was well known for that. And a young woman was with her mother and they were carrying parachutes and they were participating in the train that would take british pilots or british soldiers through france and then through the pier and hes out through spain and up through england. And they had and they had all these silk parachutes in their suitcases trying to hide them and keep them away from the norman im sorry, from the gestapo. So they get to the strain train station and anyone who has been in a train station knows there are no escalators and i have to go up this light upstairs and they each had their bicycles. At the top is the gestapo. And the young daughter sort of loses it. But the mother says to members of the gestapo, excuse me im not going to be able to carry my bike and my suitcase up the stairs, could you please do that for me or help me out . And in that way they got the german estoppel to carry silk parachutes up the stairs of the station. So because women were seducers and beautiful and because they knew how to use that as a weapon, they got away with a lot that young men never would and that is their unique role in resistance. Thank you for bringing that up. That caller mentioned brittany and marseille. We are talking about normandy. Was it the case that after the invasion of paris that many citizens from the suburbs of paris had fled to the countryside . We mac that was true but it was more true in 1940. Because as the germans moved east citizens of paris literally began a mass exodus. Every single car and train. The idea was to get to someplace in the west and south of france and away from the germans. But of course the germans at first occupied the north and after the battle in 1942 the germans realized that in fact the threat could be from the south, north africa. So they occupied the whole country in 1943. Lets go back to calls here from bob in bolivia, North Carolina. Hi professor. Great job on the book. My father was an american g. I. And he was in southhampton england loading ships for d day. Anyway, he got to normandy in late july. He met my mother over there. They had no food. You couldnt go to a local supermarket to get food. They had nothing. They had to try to grow their food in minefield because there was no open field and the occupation was pretty heavy in the 40s. Her uncle got shot by the germans because they thought they were shooting at him and he was hunting ducks. She met my father and my father was in the supply end of the army. And my father would go over there and give them food and they never saw canned peaches or a lot of food there before because they were pretty much starving under the occupation. She said the germans that were there were very nice but like you said they were young and some were older. Bob, i think we lost you. But thanks for your comments. Lou roberts. Well, i would just add again that he is absolutely right that most of france was starving. By the end of the war a french writer said that the sound of france was the sound of a growling stomach. And again, this is because the germans took most of the produce and most of the wine and there were always things that were buried in order to save them for the liberation. The beautiful bottle of champagne, the much beloved bottle of wine, one young man when he met an African American g. I. Brought him out back and dug up his jazz records in order to show him how much he loved american music. So, it was a period of great deprivation for the french. And it continued for another year. The winter of 4445 was still quite hard. And because by then france is largely and normandy destroyed. There were towns that the french called martyred. These towns were 80 destroyed. So, it was very hard. Life was very hard during the war for the french. Most people think that the french were collaborators. That they lived on the fat of the land. Again, if you lived in the city it was much harder than if you lived in the country because you couldnt grow your own food. But the war was very hard on the french and it was very humiliating to be occupied by the germans. With the 75th anniversary of dday june 6, mary Louise Roberts is our guest and we are talking about her guests, dday through franchise about the experience of french citizens, and norman citizens on dday. We hear from joshua next from brooklyn. Good morning. Hi, how are you . We often talk about dday as a starting off point. But i wanted to ask you and touch a little bit upon what transpired before hand. Specifically with combined operations. Mulberry was the portable area that was put over so the soldiers were able to disembark and you had a lot of innovation. Talk about the Technical Innovation that went into preparing for dday. Thank you very much. Sure. So, hitler constructed what he called the atlantic wall. And this was basically a series of fortifications on the beaches of northern france. So, this included all kinds of barriers, minds, the building of all tillery. Artillery. There were very large guns on the top and that was why rangers were going up there to take those guns. Unfortunately when they got up there, they had already been removed. But there was a Mighty Fortress which hitler deemed impenetrable. And this atlantic wall was not built by germans, it was built by laborers. Many of them polish or ukrainian men who had been born in conquered countries and then were forced to come to france until the atlantic wall. I dont speak french i do value a correct pronunciation. We see this word quite a number in your times, the french were department. What does the word mean and why is it so important for norman citizens . So, good question. I read last night my book again. And i said i didnt really have to use the word debarkment. It just means the landing. That was the french word for the landings. And it was again a word that was whispered to everyone on the morning of june 6, the landings are coming. It was just a word. There is a memoir in my book and she couldnt understand what this word meant. It was an adult word and she had never heard it before. It was very specific to the war. There was always the hope that the americans would come in the british would come and rescue the french. It was much anticipated. And with it came joy. There were so many mixed feelings they were the conquerors and on ones hand hand they were the destroyers. When they arrived it brought a tremendous amount of anxiety because this is it. This is the moment. If they fail, all hope will die. So, there is a specific kind of anxiety about the debarquement because this is the moment of testing. No one knew that the gis would triumph. Things were in the offing for a while, really until the middle of july. So, there was a lot of anxiety that this would fail and then they would be under the fist forever. He mac that word, debarquement is still used to describe d day. That is how the french refer to dday, correct . That is exactly right. Lets hear from joe next up in new fairfield, connecticut. Hi, how are you . Happy memorial day. My question is more of a personal one. My grandmother was mary Louise Roberts. And my mother and her moved from manhattan to paris during the depression and her sister, junior married a frenchman and lived there for quite a while. And i was just wondering if roberts is that, in the name, or are we somehow related . Well, i think roberts is my fathers name and my father was from maine. And he supposedly was the descendent of the junk of the colonies. He was on the mayfair. He was kicked out of plymouth colony. That is my ancestry on my fathers side. It is a welsh name. So, i dont know. But i will say that a lot of you have talked about marriages between americans and french. And that was one of the very happy results of the g. I. S being on the continent. The french women and american gis often fell in love. That love lasted and when the war was over the americans came back to get their bride. On a not unrelated subject, you wrote a book called what soldiers do, sex and the american g. I. In world war ii france. Why did you write that book and what sort of reaction did it get . Well, i just got interested in the relationship between the american gis and the french. And what distinguished me was that i looked at both the french archives because i was a french historian by training but then i also looked really quite deeply into the american archival situation. So, i was trying to tell the story from both sides. And, what i found really surprised me actually which is that the summer of 1944, francoamerican relations were really at first rather rough. But once the french realized that the americans were going to try and liberate them, they were ecstatic and joyful. The summer of 1945 was a little different i found. The troops are now coming back in places like port towns. Probably the major gait between the gis and france. And they are suffering from now what we would call ptsd. Many of them have lost buddies, they are bored and they are waiting to go home. They are in many ways war hardened. So in some places there was a lot of drinking and a lot of alcohol abuse and then a lot of prostitution. Sometimes in the open air. So one of the things i read was the correspondence between the mayor of the city and the colonel who was in charge of the troops there. And the mayor did have some complaints about g. I. Behavior. So, there was an interesting shift their between the summer of 1944 in the summer of 1945. And the shift of course is the difference between soldiers going into a war and soldiers coming out of a war. A few more minutes for calls. We go next to peter in provincetown, massachusetts. You are on with mary Louise Roberts, good morning to you. Good morning. I want to wish everyone a happy memorial day. And especially a couple people. I am sitting in a hospital room right now with roger putnam and roger is very ill with cancer. I just want to also say that two weeks ago my father passed away, and there was a very interesting kind of development with his dad. My grandfather was part of the original army staff at the Army War College in plattsburgh, new york just prior to the deployment of u. S. Troops to europe during world war i. And there was a time when my dad thought he was going to fight in japan but in fact he was at Iowa State University training as an officer and there was an instance where we suddenly changed our priorities and rather than invade the philippines. Peter do you have a question for our guest . Yeah. My question is was there any lingering sense of support which the french tapped into and perhaps made the connection from world war i to world war ii. We will ask professor roberts. Yeah. Many of the people had fought in world war ii and they had dads who fought in world war i. And their dad came home describing france as a land of wine and beautiful women. Probably all of that if not most of that exaggerated. So when the gis got there, their expectation was that if they got off of the beach, they would meet beautiful french women who would thank them for their liberation. So the connection in terms of american soldiers was that france got a reputation as sort of the babylon of europe with beautiful women who were loose women. And so, inasmuch as their dad exaggerated that, the sons had a certain set of expectations. As a result there was a lot of prostitution in france. By the fall of 1944 the American Army was quite worried about the venereal disease rate among the troops. So, that is how i would connect the First World War and the Second World War in terms of the American Army. He mac next we go to asheville, North Carolina and this is teresa. Hi, i dont have french ancestry and i was born in 1946, so i wasnt a part of the war. It was over when i was born. But, when i was in high school i took french classes and i had a french teacher who taught us a poem and to my recollection and i may be wrong, the name of the poem and the first line of the poem was used in the normandy go order. And i wondered if you know if that is true and if that is the name of the poem. Your teacher is exactly right. The poem is by a french poet named bellman. And the first phrase of the poem was the signal to the resistance. It was heard over the bbc that they should get ready, get in formation, go out and start to do the sabotage. The invasion was going to happen within the next week. And then on the night of june 5 the second line of the poem was given. And that was when the resistance knew that the invasion was going to come within 24 hours. So, it was indeed a french poem which signaled to the resistance first that the invasion was going to come in a week or so and then that it was eminent. This is rachel in alexandria virginia on with professor mary Louise Roberts. Hi. My name is rachel. I had a beloved uncle who was a p 51 fighter in the war. He was a member of the 357th Fighter Group and he took part in the air war before and after dday. He was involved before dday in a dogfight over paris. He chased his enemy under the eiffel tower and was able to clean that victory. To get out of paris he flew low along the seine river to avoid the anti aircraft. The way he told us and has told the press and everybody else before his death in 2013 that to give hope to the french people so much that the french ambassador to the United States awarded him the legion of honor in a wonderful ceremony held at the National Dday memorial in bedford, virginia. My question is in your research for your book did you find any documentation of this . No, i didnt. And i will tell you why which is, first of all it is a terrific story. It really is. And it is very common in the sense of people getting rescued by the french or pilots getting rescued by the french. But my research for this book really focused on normandy. I went to to archives in normandy. The provincial archive and then a special archive which is a memorial to dday. I wouldnt have picked this up unless i had gone someplace in paris. But it is a great story and i will say there are many such wonderful stories. One of my favorites is when a pilot was down in someplace in central france. Five people on the airplane died, or four people died and one was a survivor. And there was a standard number of people on these planes, the village french people decided that they had to create a coffin for the fifth person. So they literally buried for people on the plane and then just put sand in a fifth coffin so the gestapo would not be suspicious if someone had survived. And was often the case they made sure that pilot got to safety, went through the peer knees and back to london. We have one more quick call here from bill in california. Good morning. Yes, good morning. I have a question please. A book like yours is fantastic. But are these things and these facts in them taught in french schools today . Frankly i feel and this may be only my opinion that the french themselves are the most ungrateful people on the face of the earth. We lost hundreds of thousands of wonderful young men freeing them and i dont think today the young french especially realize the sacrifice by the british, the americans and the canadians that was made to free them. Thank you. Professor roberts . Well, im going to have to disagree with you. And actually this is one thing i really wanted to make sure that the viewers today new which is that the french are profoundly grateful. To the americans for what they did. And i think most americans go to paris which is a large cosmopolitan city. If you step outside big city and you go to the countryside, particularly normandy or brittany you are treated specially as an american. I remember once, i am tall and blonde and i was in normandy during research and someone mistook me in a cafe for german. And i suddenly found myself eating yesterdays bread with my sandwich. And being scorned upon, then assuming i was a german. And when i got up to leave, i said in french, im not a german, i am an american. Their faces completely changed. And they were very apologetic. So, i think if you go to france outside of paris you will see that the french are very very grateful. My sister, kathy, once her car broke down in the south of france and it was fixed on a holiday at a reasonable cost because this auto mechanic remembered the americans. So, i have to differ with you. I think they are quite grateful and i think the young people are also quite grateful. But a lot has happened since 1945 and that also has to be taken into account clearly. Joining us from the university of wisconsina madisons professor mary Louise Roberts. We have been talking about her book dday through franchise ahead of the 75th anniversary of dday on june 6. Professor roberts, thanks so much for being with us this morning. Sure, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. This is a special edition of American History tv. A sample of the compelling history programs that air every weekend on American History tv like lectures and history, american artifacts, real america, the civil war, oral histories, the presidency, and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan three. Wednesday American History tv looks at the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Alliance. Historian mark stein joined us from the Stonewall National monument in new york citys Greenwich Village to talk about the six days of protest starting in june 1969. That became a turning point for rights in the u. S. The Stonewall Alliance starting at 8 pm eastern here on cspan three. Cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up wednesday morning mike davis, founder and president of the article 3 project on the groups role in supporting president trumps judicial nominee. And then frederick discusses efforts to improve medical bill transparency as well as the state of healthcare in the u. S. And center for growth and Opportunity Research director megan hansen will talk about new research for how to improve the management of public lands. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal live at seven eastern wednesday morning. Join the discussion. Sunday on cspan q a, in 1962 after nixons last press conference, 10 years later he would win a 49 state landside. And then it all came apart. Columnist and political commentator pat buchanan who served as a speechwriter to president nixon discusses his book nixons white house wars, the battles that made and broke the president and divided america forever. I wrote him a memo saying i think you ought to keep the dean tape of conversation. I didnt think they would be that damaging to us. And keep the tapes and the foreignpolicy stuff, the stuff you need. I said take the rest out and burn it. And shut down the special Prosecutors Office now before this thing grows into a monster. And i didnt know it at the time but nixon had called and haig and fred and entertained this idea that he should burn the tape and they said well, it will be obstruction of justice. I didnt recoend burning subpoena tapes, secondly they are his property. There was executive privilege and everybody knew it. If he had simply gotten rid of them and said in effect, impeach and be dams, i think he would have moved right through it. And president nixon said in his memoirs if he had burned the tapes, as i had urged him to do that he would have survived and i think that is right. Sunday night at eight eastern on the cspans q a. The 1944 documentary dday to germany was shot, edited and narrated by jack lieb, a news of the day correspondent who was assigned to he shot this film himself while