And did a lot of research there. And i went to the military library in chicago which is , probably the best military library in the country. There may be one better, but it is extraordinary. And i started working on this book. I started developing it. I wrote four other books in between. Those were sort of to keep bread on the table, so to speak. I just became haunted by the story and tried to get deeper and deeper into it and discover who the people were, who saved the country. , for me it was a revelatory moment because i placeso go to libraries, and book sales to try to look up some of the things i write about in the book, like the louisiana maneuvers, for example, and found almost nothing. I really had to dig go through a , lot of archives and primary source materials, newspapers, daily newspapers from obscure places like small towns in louisiana and such. That is how i put it together, i came up with this to get it right. This is like telling how sausages are made, but i had two pretty full rewrites, had two copy edits, and a lot of people key people, the premier general in the air force academy, who taught history in the air force academy, a man who had been in world war ii in the Armored Division and probably knows more about world war ii tanks than anybody at west point. But i had these people go through it for accuracy. And this was not just little this is what you would call this particular division, and so forth. The process was pretty elaborate and it took a while, so i am very happy with it and very proud that i got it out. And it is done. [laughter] you cover a number of topics which i hope that we can dive into. When nazi germany invaded poland on september 1, 1939, the u. S. Army numbered fewer than 200,000. Can you set the stage in terms of what was going on in this country in terms of the laissezfaire philosophy and where we were as a country . Either from a Foreign Relations perspective and or a military perspective. The army was a disaster, it was rated 17th in the world after portugal. And it was extremely weak. 1939, 1937 when macarthur was still chief of staff, he said the whole United States army, officers, enlisted men, cooks, everybody could fit into yankee stadium. We had nothing. Into the army was and the army was demoralized, they were paid poorly. 1939, some of their salary had been taken back as part of the new deal. Belt tightening. The most absurd part of the army i think prior to that date in 1939 was, if you joined the army you wanted and he wanted a gun that worked, a calibrated world war i rifle, if you wanted one that was actually calibrated combat, you fire in had to buy it from the army for over 200. It came out of your monthly, which was about 21. I mean, the deprivation of these poor guys who were in the army if you wanted to change bases, go from one to another and transfer, you had to go out of the army, reenlist, and pay for the transfer. Now, there was no money for transportation. There was nothing. The United States was at that time very much involved in protecting itself, and there was the depression. The great thing that happened, the very same day the war began , franklin d roosevelt, realizing the problems that were out there franklin d george c. Picked up marshall as his chief of staff. He had about 25 people on the list to get to marshall, but he saw in marshall this genius and this ability to say no to certain things. It was a brilliant decision. Thething at that time was anted states was isolationist, it wanted to stay out of the war in europe, but it knew that the pressures were building. The nazis were invading, france was teetering, everything had gotten worse and worse. So there were two factions in the country. One was people wanted to stay out of the war at any cost, basically wanted to get rid of the army. It was a huge factor, isolationism. They wanted to build a navy, but not be worried about the army because they could not imagine us fighting the fight overseas. And then there were called for called, for lack of a better term, the interventionists. These were people who knew at some moment we would be forced to go into the war. We also had our eye on the other side of the world in japan, which was becoming more and more belligerent, making noise about asia, driving the british out of hong kong, driving the americans out of the philippines. So this was going on at both ends. What had to be done, they had to start gearing up an industry, aircraft, etc. Which was quite doable because we had a lot of Brilliant Companies that were looking for sort of a way out of depression that needed the money and needed to open the assembly lines. But we also had to create an army, and that was the biggest , how do you create this big army . How do you go from zero to 70 . Youve got an army of 60,000, they are not mobile, they are not well trained, they are deprived of many things. Many of the bases had virtually no recreation, no movie theater, no this, and they would be out in the middle of nowhere. In 1939, the bases were horrible, horrible places, especially the ones that were remote in the far west and deep south. There was usually a base surrounded by a street of the nothing, honkytonks and houses of prostitution and loan sharks. So it was a demoralized force. One of the only reasons they could keep their numbers was a the depression, because at least it was a steady salary and three meals a day. Having served myself in the military, i am a former core , and i am aember big proponent of National Service. I have always been interested in the ccc, in fact, i think we should still have the program today in our country. You argue in the book that the ccc was a precursor for the gi army. Can you explain . Argue thatnot only it was a precursor, but i argue that it may have saved the army entirely. Because 1933, when roosevelt first came into office, one of his great dreams was this army that would go out and reforest the country. That would build golf courses, build hiking trails, create recreational things build picnic , tables for state parks, everything you can imagine. Outhouses for National Parks, they would do this enormous job and they would reforest part of the dustbowl. Every state, every part of the country was going to have those guys. But roosevelt realized almost immediately after he declares he is going to start this thing that he does not have anybody to , run it. He realized the logical people to run it is the army, so he goes to general macarthur, who is the army chief of staff and he says, general, we would like your guys to run the army. Macarthur comes back and says i will do it on one condition, you are planning to cut all my officers by about one third. The plan part of the austerity, as you go into the new deal. He said, i will run it, but you have got to give me my officers back. You cannot take my officers. Looking back later, it was obvious the people he would have gotten rid of included eisenhower, patton, mark clark, on and on. Some of the greatest men in world war ii were then at a level of officership where they could have been disbanded. They were not the higher grade officers. So, then what happens is a lot of these officers were immediately given huge numbers of men to take care of. One of them was marshall himself, marshall had tens of thousands of men to take care of. What he realized was, the men recruited into the ccc it was men for men, and it was from all races, but it was segregated. There were huge camps of blacks and huge camps of whites. Omar bradley was another one given a huge number of men to take care of. A tremendous number of men. These were guys who were really down on their luck. Some of them were almost verging on a lot of them were running wild on the highways. They were hobos. They were often involved in robberies and theft and such. They had to corral them. They brought them altogether and they volunteered to go into these camps. But what marshall realized immediately was he had to discipline these men, but he had no authority to punish them. If a guy throws a cigarette butt on the ground and marshall says pick that up, the guy says no, i do not have to pick it up, im going home. The guy walks off and goes home. So, what marshall and bradley and these other Officers Training these men realized they have to learn to discipline, not with punishment, but with understanding, compassion, firmness and giving them a sense of selfworth. One of the first things marshall does for his men is recruiting dentists, because these men have horrible teeth. They are in terrible disrepair. He convinces some of the top dentists in america, he goes to one of the leading academic , andsts in the northwest the dentist says i do not have time for these men. Marshall says wait a second, im going to give you a group of men that are part of every part of the country. It is a perfect random sample, im going to give you these guys and you can do all these tests and all this research. So he builds or he gives all these army guys, he gives these guys a tremendous sense of selfworth. They are given diplomas. Marshall himself would write letters of recommendation for these men. So as world war ii breaks out, these guys are in good shape because they have been fixed up physically, they are educated because the camps had education, they become the backbone of the army. They become the noncommissioned officers, sergeants and a vast number of them go into the military as a noncommissioned officer. They understand drilling, they understand discipline, they understand nutrition, they understand everything. So you have those guys. And another huge cohort of former ccc guys go into industry and they go into industry because of their experience. They do not go as just Common People on assembly lines. End up as foremen in the aircraft industry. It is this great moment in American History where you create a social system which had huge numbers of people out of the lowest kind of poverty. A lot of the men in the ccc were required to send money home to the families so their families did not starve. It basically gave the army a backbone. This is marshall. This helped make the army what it was. We learned so much from these men. Of course now people are talking about National Service again and a lot of people believe that we could use a new ccc to combat Global Warming and to help clean up the rest of the cleanup we have to do in the air and water , and reforest. There is a huge need for reforestation and even repolish some of our recreational facilities. I totally agree. Thats what i was alluding to earlier, i am a big proponent of some sort of National Service program, either military service or americorps or just recreating the ccc or something along those lines that can do so many things. Our National Parks have infrastructure problems, there are a lot of places i think for a reconstituted ccc could benefit. I want to remind everybody if you have questions, we want to hear from you. Please type into the q a bar and ask questions for me to ask paul here. While paul is talking, i will show some slides that include images from the book. If you have not picked up the book, i would highly recommend it. You talked about marshall, a side note about marshall. If you have not been to his home down in leesburg, virginia, anybody that is listening, i would encourage you to go down to leesburg, virginia, right down route 15 and visit. It is a beautiful place and a Wonderful Museum to him and his wife and his work in the army. And as secretary of state and whatnot. You have talked about marshall and some of the other characters, you reach so many characters in the story you tell, whether it is omar bradley, george marshall, patton, eisenhower and others. What did you discover about one or more these individuals that you found interesting or you learned that you did not know before . Paul it is hard to pick one out of the lot, but i think eisenhower is one of the most fascinating ones because he, during this period, he wants to get into a position of authority as an officer and such. We watch him in the book come into the louisiana reserve, when they got the army to go, ready thento world war ii framework of the book is we go from zero to 70. We go and end up because of marshall and all these other people and because of the 1940 draft, we end up with an army of 1. 4 Million People by the night of pearl harbor. The night of pearl harbor we have got an army that is mobile, trained, good morale, ready to fight the nazis on the ground. We have to ship them over there, but they were ready to go. And so it took marshall himself had to find the leaders that would become the leaders of world war ii. He has got by the time of pearl harbor, he has picked all his top guys. , and he starts to watch eisenhower like a hawk, he sees eisenhower has these maneuvers, and his abilities which were not unique, they were singular, his ability to get along with the press. The press loved him because all these complicated maneuvers, a lot of military guys come out and snowed them with this tactical stuff. Ike just came out and said look , here is what is going on. Here is what will happen. He had this tent during this massive 500,000 men maneuver in the swamps of louisiana and he is got this tent and coffee and liquor, right thing. So he gets a hold of the press. Clear, really early on, that he has astonishing ability with his men, with the enlisted guys under him that he has this skill which marshall shared. Both of them had this singular ability to relate to their men in service. A famous picture of eisenhower on the evening of dday, eisenhower is in this jacket and they call it the eisenhower jacket. One of the things about it is all the men knew that he was dressed in his nice fatigues the evening of dday, but he was , what he wasket saying to those men was just by his attire the picture is one of the classic of our times. He knew a lot of the men would die. He told them this was the uniform he would wear to their funeral. In the book, you follow eisenhower and see him becoming eisenhower. Patton you see becoming patton. He is bold, he is brash, he is the toughest, most dynamic officer you can imagine. During the maneuvers, he cheats. He was supposed to go this way and he goes all the way through texas, during a mock battle. Comes around, and comes behind the other army and he wins. They say, you cheated. You went through texas and you bought gasoline for the tanks, you spent your own money on gasoline and did this huge run and it was probably illegal. Patton says, hitlers going to cheat too and it was that brashness that everybody saw. And right down the line, omar aadley, marshall sees him as great leader and he puts his reputation on the line to create the officer candidate school. The officer candidate school was created during the maneuvers, before pearl harbor. Marshall and bradley believed that every unit had a least one enlisted guy who should have been an officer. This was the first time in history where there was an official way that a highly motivated, well disciplined enlisted guy could become an officer. Those officers were pulled out of the human listed ranks and they became the backbone of the officer corps the junior officer corps in world war ii. They helped win the war. So, these people come out of they are fascinating characters. I make my there are characters one of the great characters in the book for me was bob hope because he was part of the morale that was building, the culture of the g. I. Hope was entertaining the troops well before the war. And he became at one point John Steinbeck was writing as a journalist for the New York Herald tribune. Steinbeck discovers hope in a combat zone and he says when the history of this war is over, bob hope will be one of the heroes. He said this man was fearless, he would you go into combat zones. He would entertain severely injured people. It was steinbeck said it mustve been taking a huge toll psychically. Double amputees and things. He would go in with gags. He would go into this room of seriously injured men and he would say well, there is this problem at home they are not , getting enough powdered eggs. But the idea that John Steinbeck would write about bob hope as one of the heroes of the war. There were other people that just popped up. You cant believe it. One of the things that marshall does, before pearl harbor he that film will be a great motivator for his own troops. He recruits frank capper, the greatest filmmaker in hollywood , he recruits him to make movies to show to the recruits for the draftees, for the men going into the war. This was before pearl harbor, the other thing that marshall does, remarkably and it is a gutsy thing that he does, he basically purges the army. He gets rid of about 200 Senior Officers who are either alcoholic, unable to get along with their men, unable to make Firm Decisions and good decisions, he purges them. He throws them out. Or he puts them in a place where they are harmless. It is a great moment. And in their place, he brings up i am the same things over and over, eisenhower, patton, etc. This is sort of the magic i found in the book, that even that moment of the purge, it really took courage to do it because he almost had to the army. Quit the army. There was so much pressure on him. He knew he could not do it and win the war was going, hg wells the famous writer said one of , the things the americans did that was brilliant was purging the officers that did not belong in the army. He said the british did not do it and the french did not do it and they paid for it. He said the genius of marshall was he got rid of these guys and without apologies, and basically moved the men into place to win the war. In reference to marshall, you mentioned eisenhower. One of my Favorite Places to visit is the eisenhower home up in gettysburg. Again, those listening and watching and tuning in, if you have not been to either or of those places i encourage you to check them out. Lets talk about the draft. In the beginning, it was a 12 month period that folks were drafted for. And Franklin Delano roosevelt went to congress to ask to extend that service period. What was that legislative decision like . I want to go back for one more second. The draft itself was engineered by a man that very few people have heard of named grenville clark, who was a wealthy, welltodo very brilliant lawyer in new york who had much impact on American History. He realized in the ea