Mark Rick Atkinson author of the guns at last lights of the war in western europe 1944 to 1945. The Program Starts with an archival newsreel from may of 1945 showing the signing the surrender and the statement from president harry truman. What im this year marks the 75th trying to find a good yeah theory had lived to see this day generalize and how are informed me that the forces of germany have surrendered to the United Nations the flags of freedom fly all over europe for this victory we join in offering our thanks to the providence which is guided and sustained us through the dark days of adversity and into light much remains to be done the victory one in the west must now be one in the east the whole world must be cleansed of the evil from which half the world has been freed. United the peaceloving nation have demonstrated in the west that their arms are stronger by far than the might of dictators or the tyranny of military that once called us salt and wheat the power of our people to defend themselves against all enemies will be proved in the pacific war as it was proved in europe. His historic pictures of the last days of the war in your show american and Russian Troops as they join the river elbow splitting german armies into weeks Red Army General eye meaning that smell that certain german defeat. Inside germany itself the ally sees the famous nuremburg of the capture this famous southern german setting the American Flag now the swastikas in a symbolic gesture american troops destroyed the nazi party emblem. American history tv and washington journal marking the end of world war ii and the european theater. V. Idai victory in europe day we welcome author and historian Rick Atkinson whose final book in the liberation trilogy is guns at last light published in 2013 the final of the three books focusing on the years 1944 and 1945 Rick Atkinson to get our conversation started on v. Idai a quick timeline of where things were and how they came from dday on june 6th 1944 in late august the Liberation Affairs in august 25, 1944. The battle of the bulge in december that year into january of 1945 and then to ve day. Take us back to may 7 and eighth of 1945. How did the war end in europe . The war ended with the germans basically deciding hitlers having killed himself more than one week earlier that there was no profit in dragging it out with the russians in berlin. The russians murdering civilians, killing german soldiers by the hundreds of thousands. The germans decided that trying to make peace with western allies, americans in particular, was their best bet. They were going to get a better deal from washington allies than they were from the soviets. Eisenhower had his third headquarters in the french town in northeastern france. The german delegation who spoke about what the conditions would be. They were told that Unconditional Surrender were the only terms by which the war would end. The operations chief of the local German Armed Forces showed up at eisenhowers headquarters which was a former technical college, a brick building. Reporters were there and it was 2 00 in the morning on may 7, 1945. Articles of surrender had been boiled down to 200 words. The whole ceremony with cameras rolling lasted about 10 minutes. Eisenhower told him that he would be personally held responsible for ensuring that the terms of the capitulation were honored and that was that. It was going to go into effect the next day where they could get time to alert german crews in the atlantic and in norway. The soviets felt it was important to have a surrender ceremony on german soil. They did not want the germans to be able to say that they had never been actually defeated, it never capitulated in germany proper so they insisted that another surrender ceremony in a suburb of berlin which happened on may 9. The soviets, now the russians, consider that to be ve day. To the rest of the world, the surrender went into effect on may 8 and that was the end of the world war in europe. There was still war in the pacific and that certainly had a moderating effect on the jubilation that would have taken place otherwise. No one knew how long that war would go. On the timeline from ve day in 1944, did the final victory in europe, based on your research of u. S. Forces and british forces, did that happen sooner than they thought or did it take longer than they thought . It took longer in the sense that after the battle of the bulge ended at the end of january in 1945, there was a widespread understanding that the germans could not recover from this catastrophe. That they have lost the war. What no one in the west could understand is why they would not give up, why they continued to fight, why one little town, one mediumsized city and even big cities continued to resist. There were 10,400 american soldiers killed in april 1945 in germany. That is almost as many as were killed in june 1944, the month of invasion. It was virtually the last gunshot. As a consequence, there was great consternation about whether they would surrender, whether the last german soldier would have to be killed, whether more german civilians would have to die and of course whether more allied soldiers have to die. I think there had been hope that the war would end sooner. May 8 turned out to be the day. Our guest is Rick Atkinson. It is the 75th anniversary of ve day. We would love to hear from you. Here are the lines. 202 7488000 for the eastern and central time zones. 202 7488001, mountain and pacific. And for those of you who are world war ii veterans or families, if your parents served in world war ii, we ask you to call on 202 7488002. In your book, it is a alarming to read the death tolls. I think in one story you spoke about the training for the day alone. There was an accident that killed 700 soldiers. Looking at the statistics of how many people died and overall military deaths, 417,000 u. S. Deaths. On the soviet side, 8. 8 million to 10. 7 million soviet soldiers. That is not just civilian deaths. The soviet union had 190 million people. Total deaths were 26 million. That is a staggering percentage of 13 or 14 of their total population. We had 291,000 killed in action. A little more than 400,000 as you mentioned, all of this including accidents and disease. That is about one third of 1 of the American Population of 130 million during world war ii. As staggering as those numbers are for us, they are monumental for the soviets in particular. The germans lose about 7 million people. About 60 Million Deaths worldwide in world war ii. That is a death every three seconds for six years. It gives you an idea of the magnitude. It is the greatest catastrophe selfinflicted catastrophe in history. And the war ending three weeks after the death of fdr in georgia on april 12 of 1945. Harry truman, the president on ve day. What was the effect stateside when that news came . It was a great shock. Anyone looking at newsreel footage is could see that president was about was not a healthy man. President roosevelt feared he had a trip to malta to meet with churchill and then they flew to meet with the soviet leader stalin. Those pictures do tell, here is a man who is dying. His Blood Pressure was in the stratosphere and he had all kinds of health problems. He suffered a hemorrhage at his cottage in warm springs, georgia, april 12, 1945. The war spreads through the country quickly after lunch and by late afternoon, all americans are aware of it. It is a shock to all of it. He had been president for more than 12 years. He is our war president. He was the president for the days of the depression. There were young men in uniform who had very little memory of the time when roosevelt was not their leader and now their commanderinchief. No onw knew who harry truman was, an obscure senator from missouri, he had been a captain in the artillery in world war i. He is a bit of a cipher in the eyes of most americans with the notion that he is going to step in and fill these very large shoes that roosevelt has left behind, something that a lot of people had difficulty copper comprehending. We have a lot of calls waiting. Lets go first to larry in new mexico. Good morning. Good morning. My father was in the south pacific. On your research, i wanted to know what the role was of the american indian, how much on your research have you done on them, if any and what was their role during the war . Thank. Thanks for the call and thanks to your dad. American indians were important. They had a tradition of being warriors. That was critical when you are trying to put together an army. As you mentioned, there were code talkers and they had their own language and it was assumed correctly that if a navajo talking to another navajo on the radio, that even if the japanese, and we are talking about the Civic Theater in this case, could eavesdrop and hear that conversation, which they could, they would not have been able to decode it because very few japanese spoke navajo. The code talkers were important for operational security. I think there was also a sense with native americans as part of the force that it really was a comprehensive American Force in the same way that we wanted all ethnicities to be represented by 1945. It is a painful process of getting there to acknowledging that there is a rightful role in combat units for black americans. That black amyris can be black americans can be excellent fighters as the Tuskegee Airmen who got into combat showed. For native americans, it was a feeling that first of all they have practical skills that were very useful and second, it is an affirmation that this is a panamerican war. From annapolis, maryland. Welcome. Yes. Our dad fought in world war ii in the pacific. He had Four Brothers lost. He had another uncle who fought in the civic in the fought in the pacific in the navy. My dad was a secondgeneration italian american. The prejudice against italian americans is less than against japaneseamerican. Im wondering why that was true. And the second question, dropping the atomic bomb is probably the reason im talking to you today and wondering how that impact had on the outcome of the war and the ability of more american soldiers to survive. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the call and the question. Yes, i think it is fair to say that the prejudices against italian americans were considerably less than they were against japanese americans. Italians were our adversaries up until 1943 and they switched sides and became our ally. The italians did not launch the kind of attack that occurred at pearl harbor in 1941. I think there is a racial component to it. I think it was easier to dislike asians, japanese specifically. Of course, they were treated dreadfully. We were just talking about native americans in the force. Japanese americans who fought valiantly in italy and france during world war ii, they were exceptionally capable and ferocious fighters. They had something to prove because back home there had been tens of thousands of japanese who had been interned in camps. Treated as not only secondclass citizens, but as noncitizens. In respect to the atomic bombs, yes, i think that the two atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki brought an end to the war in the pacific and probably saved hundreds of thousands of american lives. When ve day occurs on may 8, 1945, one of the reasons the jubilation is not as it was is that the battle is occurring precisely. It was a cave by cave bloodletting. It foreshadows what it would be in attacking the japanese islands directly. There were estimates that american casualties could rise to one million if that were required. Of course, when ve day occurs in 1945, no one knows about the atomic bombs except they small group of businesses in new mexico. No one knows whether it is going to work. Those bombs, as horrible as they were, brings the war to an absolute truncated end. It saves Many American lives. It saved even more japanese lives. Russians were ready to come in. The war was going to expand in the pacific because the russians had agreed to be part of it. The atomic bombs saved a lot of heartache. We are talking about the end of world war ii and the european theater. The 75 anniversary of ve day and joining us is heath from davidson, oklahoma. Hello. Good morning. You are on the air. Thank you. Yes, i was over there on may 6, 1945. We got on a ship on may 15 headed for the pacific. And we stopped by the United States. We would fly in v 24s and we would train on b 29 for a couple of weeks and go into the pacific. During that period of time, they dropped the bomb and ended the war in the pacific. We bombed all of europe from the base in italy. Heath, great to have you with us. Thank you for your story. Rick atkinson, how quickly was the military to pivot the focus on the Pacific Theater . The commanders in europe had been thinking about how to take a good portion of that force and move it to the pacific and how you would do that and who would go and what had failed for those who have been fighting in north africa in 1942 and in italy in 1943 and 1944. And for them to have to find the pacific. There were plans that had been put together. There were units being shifted as he just said in may of 1945. They were getting ready to retrain for the assault on the japanese homeland. The b29 he mentioned was the first of long range bombers doing extraordinary work, devastating japan. They were used to drop those two atomic bombs. It is the belief that you are going to have to take a good portion of that european force, leaving some behind as an army of occupation. But the majority of it was going to end up in the pacific. In the wall street journal, there is a photo of eisenhower flashing the victory pins at the signing ceremony. Rick atkinson, one of your early interviews in 2002 for your first book, you said that in a different photograph that the photograph reflected a buoyancy of spirit that served him well. You are right you write in your final book that his fellow commander and some of the allied commanders were not confident that he was the commander type. The british in particular had doubts about eisenhower. Not all of them. Some of them revered him. He had difficulties through the entire final year of the war. The senior british commander in europe, a very difficult character, it must be said. There were those who had doubts about eisenhower. There were those who had doubts when he had became the commander in the mediterranean in 1942. He and his west point classmates had missed world war i, they had not been deployed. There was a feeling that who is this guy and why is he the one to be the supreme commander. I lived with Dwight Eisenhower metaphorically for 15 years. He was an extraordinarily capable leader. He was an extremely capable general and his primary job was to hold together this allied coalition. Eventually there were more than 50 countries in what was called the United Nations fighting with the United States. Eisenhower was brilliant at Holding Together that coalition against all of the centripetal forces that tried to pull apart every wartime coalition. Eisenhowers honors at the end of the war are fairly earned. He showed himself to be a capable commander and that big smile of his which one of the subordinates said was worth an army corps in morale terms. Was here next from st. Hear from tom next from st. Petersburg, florida. Tom, you are on the air. My name is tom and the reason im calling is i often wondered who engineered the end of the war. Was it admiral dornis and secondly, did he believe throughout his entire career that his losses in the atlantic were not caused by the anemic machine. Thirdly, what happened to him at the end of the war . That is a lot of questions. He was the commander of the german navy at the end of the war. There was not much of a german navy to command at that point. The german submarine force had been almost completely destroyed by may of 1945. In terms of who engineered the end of the war, there were conversations among those who were still surviving in berlin and northwest of berlin about how to go about contacting the allies and how to go about bringing this catastrophe to a close. Hitlers having killed himself on april 30th, had tried to pull the temple down around him as he perished. Had tried. But not everyone was willing to take that route, not everyone was suicidal. There had been an agreement that they would send a delegation to allied headquarters in montgomery. And then they end up at eisenhowers headquarters. They are making it up as they go along. They are very aware that every day that passes, there are more germans who fall under soviet control. This they are determined to avoid. They are trying to stall as long as they can to allow germans to flee westward and they are fleeing westward by the hundreds of thousands and eventually the aliens in order to avoid being under soviet control. When the final decision is made that we are going to give up and concede to the allied demand of unconditionalsur render, at that point Unconditional Surrender. Steve from rhode island. Good morning. I would like to make a comment. I know that the war was decided on the eastern front. The western front was a skirmish compared to the eastern front. There would not have been any western front, there would have been a settlement. The most important issue i want to state is the russian crime when they entered berlin and over 2 million german women were raped by those communist animals. I am a germanamerican and my father is a germanamerican who served in the italian campaign. Steve, we will get a response from Rick Atkinson. Thank you for the call, steve. There were war crimes of the first order committed by the soviets in berlin and all of Eastern Europe as they overran poland and pushed into the eastern precincts of the german empire. The ways that the soviets were doing that besides the lack of discipline was the feeling that the depravity that the germans had visited on the soviet Union Beginning with the invasion in 1941 and extending right on through the end of the