Affectional observers. So i lean on them heavily. People like ernie pyle, and others, ive is then sent to cover the war in new york with a really wonderful liberation trilogy there is nothing like how it comes out of the european theater. There are some pretty good memoirs. And it holds up pretty well. Bradley wrote to memoirs. A soldier story in a general story. But it was nothing that quite has the resonance and the grittiness of the other book. This is ernie pyle. I look at it this way, if by having by only a small army, we have been able to save a half million lives in europe. If such things were true, i wasnt sure they were true. You just feel the way that it is so knew ye. Here is a guy from indiana writing about aviation and things before the war. And then somehow they accidentally become a war correspondent. They have written millions of words before the war began. Of course, have a great knack of empathy. It is always with a grunt with the emperor chairman. He goes through hardship. There are very few other correspondents who do it as intensely or for as long as ernie pyle does. This is a guy who is in his 40s. He is no spring chicken. Hes not a healthy man, he drinks too much, you ways maybe 100 pounds soaking wet. He is not a robust character. Yet here he is living this awful life with other infantrymen. They respect and admire him. He is a beautiful writer. He writes so much and there is inevitably some junk in there. But passages like that are so illuminating and touching. And they are so vibrated that i just find that he leaves the european theater, hes had enough and he doesnt enjoy at all because he is so scarred by everything he has seen. He has lost the ability to enjoy life even when he is participating in the liberation of paris. He says goodbye to omar bradley and everyone comments on how bad he looks. He ends up in the pacific and if killed on a Little Island in here oshima late in the war in the spring of 1945. Especially for anyone who finds themselves in hawaii, i remember as an 11yearold kid, my father taking me to ernie pyles grave. Its very moving. He is 11 years old. I think for us to remember this, we have to remember ernie pyle. Host we have another quote from your book. If i hear this word ever again, i will believe it will be too soon. Yes, the soldiers get on his nerves after a while. He was not a man that occasionally didnt use a four letter word himself. But anyone thats been around soldiers a lot more than i ever have been. But their intensity of that culture can result in a feeling older, as he was. It can cost you senses of grievance. And there is this outcry come im really tired of being around these guys, but im stuck with them after the war. Host if you are a world war ii veteran and would like to talk with rick atkinson, call the number on the bottom of your screen. The call comes from martha in maine. Caller thank you again for a wonderful three hours. It is an honor to talk to a journalist who writes history. I have become ensconced in my history reading in the summer i am reading bunker hill. I still cannot believe washingtons treating during the french and indian war and he ended up working with general gage. When he was appointed for our American Revolutionary war. General gage is retreating to go to new york and South Carolina with the american revolution. I am just amazed at all of this. Host do you have a question or would you like to make that comment . Caller i wanted to ask about all of the soldiers that were hesitant to fire the shot apparently at lexington. It makes me think of fort sumter in the civil civil war. Nobody wants to fire the first shot. Guest there are plenty of shots fired in world war ii. There was a book that was published after the war it is estimated that a substantial number of combat members filed roughly 25 and they didnt fire their weapons because they somehow didnt have the opportunity and could not see the enemy you know, that is a different kind of thing when youre youre talking about. But certainly in world war ii, the first shot could be fired once the war was well underway. I cannot comment about lexington, but i am not a historian of that time. Host tony is in san diego. Caller mr. Akin sin, i enjoyed your book so much that it inspired me to go onto military academy. Thank you for that. I would like to make a comment about the gentleman that he will jima said and i just feel like the media isnt doing a good job covering the story. We couldnt even sit on the same piece of horizontal furniture. I just dont know what more the academy can do. It just doesnt bring true. I think it is not true for the cadets and those in the Washington Post today. There is a story about a mother of a female who alleged that she was raped by three others, and it is upon. Once is too often. Its not to say that its rampant, most cadets dont recognize the right thing to do and would not intervene given the opportunity to stop this kind of behavior. You know, it may be that the rigid controls at a place like west point are part of the problem in the long run. Certainly the class of 1956, for example. It is all male, it is a hothouse environment that doesnt really allow young 19 or 20yearold man with what we consider normal interactions certainly from the academy and the culture of the academy, it has changed so much about race and gender and so on. I would never argue and i do not think that anyone would argue that this is preponderance with bad behavior. But it is incumbent on the nation to deal with this. The 21st century is a different place when it comes to the role of women in our culture, including our Institutional Culture like the military academy. Host this is from bill, an email about dday. I know that there was plenty of intelligence covering normandie, so i echoplex that they were so prepared for the hedgerows, which hindered their advanced and increased casualties. Thats a really good question. It is perplexing. Part of the issue is that so much attention is paid to getting across the beaches, and we see this in the earlier innovations in north africa and the silly. The ballgame is initially to get a foothold. And consequently it is given to what comes next. In the case of normandie, yes, and i write about about how they recognize that they had this topographical oddities, hedgerows had been built up by farmers clearing fields and pushing rocks and a breeze into walls, essentially, and from those laws grew wines vines and trees. Those have been so specific. Especially in the jungle. Even though there was a knowledge of the train that they were going to encounter. There have not been sufficient thinking by those who should have been thinking about it and how they are going to get through it and how this is going to complicate our lives. How it is a nasty place to fight. Omar bradley said that he was aware of it, but he could not imagine how badly it would be. He should have been aware of it, there were studies that were done saying this is going to be unlike anything you have seen before. These are not easily penetrated by tanks, these are fortresses. Figuring out exactly how we will deal with it is something that we need to be thinking about months before the invasion. Well, it didnt happen and it required a series of improvisations by american soldiers to come up with ways of blasting through the hedgerows. Host here is a quote from the day of battle. For a man that lost the battle in the war, what was observed at the angloamerican commanders made them appear bound to their plans and they were overlooked or disregarded, although the german divisions of highest quality were tied down in italy by the time they were urgently needed in the french coastal area. Guest he was until her years. Because hes one of the very finest german field commanders. Especially offering that kind of critique of a guy that thrashed you, captured you, and imprison you. That is a part that they are making a point out, that they are somehow perplexed by the lack of boldness of allied generals and there is something to that. I mean, the point is this. There has been the germans who tended to be tactically superior. So this is really not what global war is about, but it is about a clash of systems and which can produce the men and women capable of producing the logistics and which system can produce victory of the battlefield in which system can detonate an atomic bomb. The germans could not muster the strength to invade england in 1940. The American Armed forces are projecting and the endless heavens and in that notion of tactical beside the point. Host were they committed not to these or were they are mean and . Host they were army men that were committed not these. Guest not in the sense of being partymen, per se, but certainly under the sway of the fuhrer. And they lived in a house that had been confiscated from a jewish family. He did not step in to stop the deportation of jews in italy were north africa for that matter. Many of the survivors many of the survivors claim that they were simple soldiers not part of the not the ideology and this was false. They were very much a part of the death machine of the third reich. And that is why people like that end up in prison. Host youre watching booktv on cspan2. This is mr. Rick atkinson. We have a caller from california. Caller hello, thank you for your book. There seems to be extraordinarily sustained in burgeoning interest in world war ii. Especially regarding the civil war, let alone world war i. I wonder what factors you tribute to vets. Guest thank you for that question there was an interest in the civil war and there are cycles. In the 1890s we saw a resurgent interest with ken burns and there is no shortage of history coming out about the civil war and i think we visited, in the case of world war ii, more or less afterthefact. I believe that what we are seeing now is of the 16. 1 million in uniform from about 1. 3 American Veterans are still alive. They are dying at the rate of so many per day, next year the number would be set to go million. And then they said the generation is slipping away. They are passing over. And we are finding greatgrandchildren who are understanding what their great grandfathers did because its part of the patrimony and part of their heritage and part of understanding who we are and where we came from. World war ii and very profound ways and we have been talking about it with race. The way we think about our role in the world. We will never be isolationist again the way we were before 1941. In all this tripe from world war ii and i think many of them are so interested in their family histories. And finally, it is the greatest catastrophe in human history. Its hard not to watch a train wreck or look away when they see something so grotesque like world war ii was on that scale and we are on the side of the angels there that there is good and evil and you can differentiate between the two. There is no doubt in contemporary life in contemporary complex that we were on the side of good with the forces of liberation, even though many bad things happen, as we discussed. And i think that that has an appeal. Host in your view, how much did the Strategic Bombing campaign contribute to the defeat of nazi germany, and what was the casualty rate, which he wrote about. Guest the Strategic Air campaign is invaluable. These are large bombers from the british and the americans primarily, flying over german cities or other strategic targets. There was a bitter dispute over precisely how this should be carried out. They believe that bombing cities was most effective as trying to whittle away at german morale and the germans essentially implode. The americans flew mostly by day, they believe that hitting certain strategic targets, starting in the spring of 1944, that oil was the achilles heel of the german war machine. That proved to be true. It is absolutely vital in understanding how the Ground Forces were able to prevail. Knowing that these air forces have for years, by the time we get to 1945, how they have been hammering these targets. The casualties were staggering. The odds of surviving on for filling the quota, initially was 25 missions and then it was 35 missions and then going home became pretty dire. There were few professions that were as dangerous as being on a b17, for example. It was extremely hazardous with flying against german fighter planes. Host jack, youre on booktv with rick atkinson. Caller i am not a veteran of that war, but i wanted to pay tribute to some dear friends of mine who are going down in history. But my engineer expresses with a 181st paratroopers and i will never forget the tears in his eyes saying that my mission was to take the guns and i lost a hundred of my friends doing so and they were not in there. He was not mortally wounded in taking the last bridge, then he went in pattons army throughout the campaign and said this of the soldier who said we had a serious problem with people shooting themselves in the foot, and that is why he loved his job. A lot of our boys died, but not because we werent fighting. Host we are going to leave your comments there. We appreciate you calling in. The email in atlanta, im looking forward to hearing you speak. I was a child of eight years old and i my family had moved to a small village and we were often visited and were given food and they were visited by the facets. We were scared. My question is how effective was the resistance and war. Guest every country had its own flavor of resistance, particularly in italy. It is not until you get into the northern part of the war until may of 1945 that the partisans become a force. They harassed german occupiers, blew up train tracks and bridges, they ambushed patrols and they became pretty formidable and they were aided by the oss and the cia and the british counterparts. So they played a role, it is not a decisive role because there are not enough of them. At the germans are absolutely ruthless. If you are a suspected partisan, you are likely to be executed. In france, it is a bigger network. Again, was part of that and there was a little bit that put a dent in this with the French Resistance. Because the germans would go through and several executed everyone in the village. I think it is important to acknowledge them, especially in Southern France and soldiers who would parachute and help in the French Resistance in various ways with explosives and so on. It is not what decided the battle for france. But its an important part of making them sleep very lightly at night in some instances. Host jack from hot springs. First question. Why in your opinion didnt eisenhower and bradley keep the warning signs that led to the battle of the bulge, and what you think about the decision to let the russians take the lead . Guest the warning signs were fairly opaque. Its easy to see that they wero guest the warning signs were fairly opaque. Its easy to see that they were massing along the border and at the time the germans had been so thoroughly battered to put together this kind of three Army Offensive that took place beginning december 16. There was also an over reliance on ultra, which was the british ability to decrypt the most secret German Military radio traffic. You didnt hear it, but there was a belief that hadnt happened, all of the planning for the battle of the bulge was done facetoface, basically by a written message and that they could then be intercepted and decoded, consequently there was not a recognition that a huge operation was underway. It was unpardonable but they had no clue that this was coming and this was an intelligence order on the first magnitude. Yet there are reasons for it. Why didnt he take berlin . Well, he intended to. That was in the plan for normandy and eisenhower reaffirmed in the fall of 1944 that the ambition of the western allies was to go to her when and then he changed his mind in march of 1945, in part because the russians were virtually on their doorstep in berlin and the russians had, beginning in january 1945, amassed several million troops that were going to fall in berlin. They were still 200 miles from berlin. Physician saturday then made about how germany in general had been divided up after the war, that they would be partitioned with zones for the russians and the americans and ultimately for the french and the same would happen with berlin. Eisenhower came to believe, and he was encouraged by roosevelt to avoid conflict with the russians and he came to believe that it was pointless to risk tens of thousands of casualties racing to berlin on the russians were already virtually inside the city limits of berlin. And he directed it towards the southeastern order to cut germany in half and in retrospect i that it was entirely the right decision. The british were not happy with it. Churchill believed that there shouldve been an effort to push berlin. I think that seven years later the decision holds up really well pieper was a soldier, a lieutenant colonel. He was the point of the spear in that attack that began on december 16 of 1944. His task was to leave an armored column through the american defenses and help capture bridges across the huge important belgian port. And pieper that was this the kid spoke english and french and he had two brothers who had been killed in the war. Very intelligent. Utterly ruthless. So today, what we found with the column was difficult to use right from the getgo. Things were slower than they were supposed to be moving. He comes near the village and there is an American Unit traveling by truck and his forces happen to fall on this unit and they should up the convoy. American soldiers who survived this initial encounter one up and they are massacred. There are more than 80 of them that are shot to death. Others get away and word gets around very quickly. It begins a cycle of reprisal. There are no court orders by some American Units, pieper never makes it to the news come he gets close, but not quite. He doesnt have the combat power, he is running out of fuel. He manages with very few of his men to get back his war crimes and he is sentenced to death and others involved in the killings. It was a tainted procedure in the confessions that had been extracted from the defendants were considered to be under judicial review to be improper. The death sentence was lifted and the life sentence was commuted and he served about 10 years in prison and he became a salesman for the Motor Company porsche and later for volkswagen. He was in charge of american sales and murdered in the early 70s and yet house in eastern france. It was arson. His burned body was found in the case was never solved. Host so he sold cars and had a house in france. Guest yes, he did. Host we tend to overvalue our contribution to the allied effort to defe