That came into town, to try to find them housing, to find them jobs, and to basically get through the war years and all of the fears that existed back then together. For more information on booktvs recent visit to long beach, and the many other destinations on our cities tour, go to cspan. Org cities tour. Tonights program is a presentation of the guggenheimlehrman prize in military history. A 50,000 price jointly administered by the hari Frank Guggenheim foundation and the New York Historical society. It is thanks to the leader shouppe of of great trustee, the lincoln and financial history scholar, lehrman, that we have joined with the hari Frank Guggenheim foundation this year in trying to engage Greater Public discourse in wartime studies. I want to acknowledge mr. Lehrmans vision of the importance of understanding military history for aural educated systems and his work on behalf of our great institutions and its many intellectual endeavors. Thank you so much. [applause] i also want to acknowledge the encouragement and support of our extraordinary board chair, pam shaffler, an historian herself. Pam has seen and understood vividly how the study of step to war, the conduct of military campaigns and diplomatic responses to war can play an essential part in the quest for a more peaceable future. Thank you so much, pam, for all you have done. [applause] i also want to recognize other trustees in the audience this evening. Glen louis and russell penoir and thank them for their work and i want to acknowledge the work of my colleague, our Vice President and library director, michael ryan, and the administration of this prize. Tonights program will last an hour. There will be a reception following the program. In our smith gallery outside. And copies of the nominees books well be available for sale in our museum store. We are pleased to welcome Andrew Roberts back to the New York Historical society. He is a distinguish edlerman fellow at the Historical Society and a director of he harry Frank Guggenheim foundation in new york and the chair of the 2015 judging committee for the guggenheimlehrman prize in military history. In 2012 Andrew Roberts wars weighedded the william penn prize, and in 2007, he delivered the prestigious white house lecture, roberts book, was the 2014 winner of the grand prix and 2015 winner of the Los Angeles Times limes biography prize. Andrew robert this author and editor or 12 books, including master and commanders, 1941 to 1945. We are also thrilled to welcome the nominees for the 2015 prize. Matthew j. Davenport, for the first over there. David preston for brad doms defeat the road to revolution published by Oxford University press. Nicholas for the german war, a nation under arms, 1939 to 1945, published by basic books. And t. J. Stiles for a life on the frontier of a new america. Published by knott i would like to welcome our friend, president of the harry graphic guggenheim foundation, the Foundation Supports sponsors Scholarly Research on problems of violence, aggression, and violence, providing grants to established scholars and dissertation fellowships to graduate students during the dissertation writing year. Just before i welcome him to the stage, i remind you to please switch off anything that makes a noise like a cell phone, and now, please do join me in welcoming Josiah Bunting to the stage. [applause] thank you, louise. And let me use the opportunity to extend in behalf of just about everybody in manhattan a bouquet. Her work, and their colleagues, in the transforming of this wonderful Old Institution into what it is today, is absolutely fantastic. We are all in your debt. This is beyond any argument the best state Historical Association in this country. And its a real pleasure for us to be affiliated with you, louise, and with roger and with all of you. You have heard a brief introduction of our chairman. Im going to reintroduce him and all of our judges. Our chairman and good friend, Andrew Roberts, known to most of you as quite simply the best diplomatic historian now writing. Not only is he a great writer and great researcher burt one of these people who appears like Charles Dickens to be able to write all the time ceaselessly, and the quality of the writing and the history and the research and all of that kind of thing is always of a piece. So, we look forward to hearing you, andrew. We have a wonderful panel of judges. Id like them to stand when i introduce them. Flora frazier, a published biographer, currently bestselling writer, the current bestseller biography of the washington family in america. General charles brouwer. Former head of the department of history at west point, academic dean at the Virginia Military institute, and author of what is regarded as the definitive history of americas war Second World War in the pacific. Ralph peters, prolific civil war novelist, a regular whose face must be familiar too many of you on fox news and a columnist for the new york post. Finally w. Patrick language who could k. Patrick lang, who could not be here, the father of arabic studies at west point. This is a wonderful opportunity for us this evening. I would like to say one last thing about this program in military history. Its godfather is lewis lehrman, as you heard earlier. Our debt to him is insystemmable. Military history occupies a relatively low caste on the academic cachet totem peel at most of our prestigious universities. Right down there with homeec and speech. As you say in a university that you have an interest in military history they think you must be a relative of dick cheney or you want to bomb somebody. But in fact, when the american secretary of state in 1947 was asked to speak at the 200th 200th anniversary of the founding of princeton university, almost all of his speech was about probably the greatest military and political and historian who ever lived. Politics and war in those things which lead us into Armed Conflict are part of the human condition, and we ignore our obligation to familiarize ourselves with our history and the history of military affairs and wars at our great peril. Thats why we are here this evening, to recognize its foremost practitioners. Roberts. Dr. Roberts. Ready . [applause] ladies and gentlemen, its a great honor to be back here at the New York Historical society. Last time i was here, a couple of months ago, with a very kindly allowed me to sell copies of my book and lady came up and said, i had the authentic accent of a british hollywood villain. And which the great thing was i think she meant it as a compliment, i hope so anyhow. Today were going to be interviewing the four men who have written really superb history books. Absolutely any one of them the judges agreed today could have won the prize there isnt a second rate work amongst them, this is all really first class history writing, and military history writing, and im going to be interview interviewing all of them. I will call them up. The first of them is matt davenport, who has written about the battle of in 1918. This is matt. Matt fought nor the u. S. Reserves and this is a fascinating book about the first battle that American Forces from the American Expeditionary force fought in the First World War. Our next finalist is t. J. Stiles, the pulitzer prizewinning biographer of general custer. [applause] next id like to introduce to you david preston, who wrote a book about a battle that im not going to pronounce correctly. You have to tell me. Is it month mr. Preston. And mr. Preston is a professor at the citadel in south carolina, and lastly, i would like to introduce to you who was written a book called the german war a fascinating insight into German Society between 1939 and 1945. Thank you very much. I want to ask you a question that everybody likes to know. What led you to write this particular book at this particular stage in your careers . Matt . This is your first book. So, what made you choose this particular subject . I knew a veteran of the battle when i was growing up. He was a friend of my grandfathers, who fought Second World War, and he they bought fought with the big red one, except this man had fought in the First World War and used to say i was first of the first. And on his veterans cap was i pronounced it like an american phonetically, a 12yearold, i said kantigni. I didnt know what it was and years later in a history of world war i i saw the name and learned it was americas first battle and victory against the german army in the either world war and it wanted to do more. And every learned more. David preston. My first book dealt with the iroquois people, and the book grew out of that oject. I gained first of all healthy respect for the significance of brad docks defeat at a Pivotal Moment and became very intrigued by the set of characters who were at braddocks defeat in 1755 and also went on to significant careers during the American Revolution. Obviously George Washington first and foremost, but also horatio gates, the victor of saratoga, daniel morgan, a victor, charles lee and also thomas gauge, the future commander in chief of the british army. So, the project first began as more kind of a collective biography that would tell the story of the french and indian war, and its connection to the American Revolution through the lives of these individuals. However, as i started to research the book, including here at the New York Historical society, i came to see that there was still so much to be told about the story of braddocks defeat and the decisions of all of the different players, the french and the british empires, the different indian peoples drawn from half the continent. Especially the french and the indian side of this whole story had never been fully explored, and the nick louse, nicholas, you have been writing this book i wasnt going to write this book at all. The previous one was daunting enough, which was an attempt to write the history of the war and he holocaust through childrens eyes. And i didnt want to do the shortcut of interviewing rather elderly documents about their childhood. I wanted to go and look for drawings which i found first in prague. That was the suckin if you like for that project. Found the drawings, extraordinary pictures mainly by teenaged girls, age 13, 14, from before the war deported to auschwitz where they were gassed. And that was something id never thought about. And i wanted to use them as historyol sources and set off on this hairbrained project which took ten years and after that it foreswore anything to do with the holocaust, nazis, children, and i kept almost none of those resolutions because i got intrigued about one thing which was as part of the work, if you want to situate german children in Second World War you situate them against the parents parentd against society and its become increasingly clear to me that German Society had gone on with the war virtually to utter defeat. But the dominant historical theme in germany decried that and didnt want to talk about it, and had this thing which increasingly sounded like an alibi, all germans had been defeated from stall stalingrad on ward. And the armies are you huge defeat was the turning point, and it was as if you couldnt say you werent there but you could say we didnt want to be there and were waiting for it all to be over. As soon as you ask yourself, how does a whole society go on with total war for an over two more years . Huge periods of time and huge amounts of commitment. Well be coming on to that at well. T. J. , what brought you to custer . I began with failure. Failure was my starting point. I was im very fascinated and have been throughout my writing career with the way in which the American Civil War and the reconstruction period are so often separated and yet theyre really one. The United States enters the door at one end and enters as a place completely different than anyone imagined and its the war and the consequences of the war carried United States by the military that completely change American Society and americanals. After writing about jesse james, which is a civil war and reconstruction story, and vanderbilt, about the rise of the corporate economy and that transformation in the same period. I wanted to write about the idea of civil rights, of racial equality as it was written into the constitution of the civil war generation, and i couldnt come up with a book that would succeed in doing that. So i began thinking about the larger expanse of the United States, i began thinking in terms of biography, which i love to write, and how we can develop great themes in biography, and i went from thinking about how custers life is a great travel log to this person. We have the rise of modern wall street at one end, the death of slavery in the south, and still have prenomaddic people, and custers life carries you bath back and forth. Then i realized that his life was a about the temporal frontier that in many ways, including many suspects of his military aspects of his military career, he life was about the birth of the modern United States and this personal difficulty in adapting to these changes. You do go into the central fact that his death, the one thing that we know so much about, the ultimate failure in a sense, not just because he died but because he lost the battle as well, and is you have it as your rather than a central feature of his existence. Id like to ask, both you and also you, david, because obviously youre boat writing about battles that the indians won, and won so successfully to massacre for all intents and purposes, first at little big horn. Hasnt it been historically pretty racist to present these great indian victories as effectively having been the result of mistakes made by the made by their white opponents . Strikes me that both at the reno inquiry and also just very term braddocks defeat, which was originally given to it in the 18th century. There will almost in both cases sort of attempting to sort of take away from the inherent truth which is that the indians won the battles sue personally superbly. Thats absolutely correct. The way in which i examined the little bighorn is through this court that was held two years later, and i leave aside the battle entirely and come back to it the way americans try to reconstruct it, rather than having an omniscient narrator who cares you through the battle and its in dispute every access to the process of discovery, the fact it takes place off stage after a very intimate narrative of the figure, who recorded his life so well, and that tellouts what the narrative is. What did we do wrong . So from the u. S. Military and then from the selfconsciously white United States, thinking about how it had messed up, and custer himself is one reason why that battle is famous. Nelson miles or other figures at an equivalent level had died there i dont think it would have become quite the cultural touchstone Stocker Custer going into it is significant. Again, with custer is this controversial figure in his lifetime, the army wants to know what it did wrong, and we overlooked the essential fact that as the historian of the indian wars noted, its not so much that the army lost or custer lost is the indians won. That brings us on to braddocks defeat. What extent was braddocks defeat as oppose told the french and the indians victory . Right. The historians who have written about braddocks defeat have always approached it from a angelo send anglocentric perfect and thats partly a function of ethnocentrism as you observe. The earliest accounts of the bat that emerged, the reason they were shocking in the minds of many brittons was that the earliest accounts suggest thread were only maybe as many as 300 native warriors, and so the shock was that such a large British Force could be so decisively beaten by so small a number of native warriors. Nonetheless the battle is very much a testament to the real military power that native people still possessed in 18th 18th century america. The other way that reinforces the anglocentric perspective is simply the source material, that for the british, irimagine as well for the u. S. Army, and the 1870s there was a lot to explain. A lot of fingerpointing, a lot of blame. One of the things that all four of these books have is an awful lot of slager. And we have slaughter. We have the 66 of people who of braddocks army who were killed or wounded. 100 , of course in the case of custer and the group around custer at the little bighorn, 10,000 german soldiers a day dying in the 1945 up until the end of the war in 1945, and some 1600 out of the 4,000 american soldiers being killed or wounded at cantigny. Can you give us a sense what it was like to fight day after day, a or two and a half day battle and much more going on afterwards when youre losing, where the attrition is Something Like a tenth of the people getting killed and a quarter getting wounded. Well, its tough to get a sense without, as dave discussed, getting into the source histories and taking it on its own terms and hearing what the survivors actually wrote about the experience; they started with 2500 and got reinforced by about 1500 more, and they had to hold lines for two and a half