Archival

The National Broadcasting Company takes you now to the White House for the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

This is Kenneth Banghart speaking to you from the foot of the steps leading to the South Portico of the White House. Yes, this is a different inauguration, unique in the history of America. Never before has this oath of office been taken in such critical times for the nation. This is a deeply significant inauguration. One that will be remembered as long as there is an America.

Kirk Saduski

January 20, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt takes the oath of office in a quiet inauguration for his fourth term. Three days later, he embarked on one of the most consequential diplomatic missions of the war, to lay the foundations for world peace.

Archival

We Americans of today are passing through a period of supreme test. It is a test of our courage, of our resolve, of our essential democracy. As I stand here today, having taken the solemn oath of office, I know that it is America's purpose that we shall not fail.

Kirk Saduski

This is 1945, a new podcast series from The National WWII Museum, exploring the end of World War II and the beginning of a new world. I'm your host, Kirk Saduski, along with New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller. We start in the early months of 1945, a period marked by intense military campaigns, diplomatic efforts, and significant questions on how this war will end. These final months will become the deadliest of the entire war. Don, what do you think? We're in 1945, set the scene for us?

Donald Miller

Let's start with January 1945. I mean, we've won a big battle, the largest battle fought in Europe, in Northwest Europe, the Battle of the Bulge. I should use the word winning, we're still pushing the Germans out of the bulge, back into Heimat the homeland. It's a great victory. We suffered staggering losses. It was preceded by a period, you could almost describe that as one of victory fever because we moved off the beaches of Normandy with terrific suddenness. But now there's real concern, not among the public 'cause they don't know this. The heads of the various armed forces, including in the Navy, meet at the end of January, and they haven't gotten the Alte reports yet. The surveillance reports on the damage. And what their commanders are telling them is, the Germans have a lot left, so what do you do? We don't have an army at full strength after the Battle of the Bulge. We've suffered, as I said, some not catastrophic, but some staggering losses. And this begins a period in Europe and in Asia. If you switch to Asia, you know, we got another war to fight here. When Marshall sees these reports about the German buildup, he said, "Well, we just mapped out plans for Iwo Jima and for Okinawa as stepping stones to the eventual invasion of Japan. How are we gonna take out two powerful, still powerful enemies who are losing, but refuse to surrender?"

Kirk Saduski

You know what? Stay with that point, Don. It's something we want to talk about throughout the entire series. Two powerful enemies who are losing, but refuse to surrender. I mean, that's really what we're gonna be dealing with.

Donald Miller

This is what it's about. It really is. And as I think long ago, Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman pointed out that most people don't understand—and he was a real student of military history—most wars, particularly wars for national survival, get a lot worse at the end. They speed up because the national survival's at stake. There are usually aren't negotiations. They're surrenders. Okay? There aren't treaties. You just bludgeon the other side until it yells uncle. And that's what's gonna happen here. We worry if the Japanese would surrender. Even if the emperor called for surrender, would they obey the emperor? Because Japan as a nation had never lost a war, and they had a tradition of not accepting defeat. And we got a public that's really anxious to get the boys home. Nobody bargained for a war this long. So we got all kinds of pressure from the public, the competing military forces. Is there going to be an invasion? So everything's in the air here, and you gotta figure the stakes. I mean, this started out as two wars for continental supremacy. Half of the continental, as far as the Japanese are concerned. Half the landmass and water mass of Asia. And Hitler's dreams of complete mastery in Europe. How are you gonna take apart the Germans? How are you gonna take apart the Japanese? What role is the Navy gonna play? How much bombing do we do? And the bombing changes here, becomes out and out terror bombing. Where before the Air Force bombed industrial sites, now we're gonna try to hit railroad stations that are packed with people and packed with troops moving to the eastern front to blunt the Soviet offenses. What happens is this raises, for the first time, a real moral problem. Not a morale problem, a moral problem for the Air Force because all of the marshaling yards are located in the center of cities. And the Air Force knows that pinpoint bombing is an oxymoron. I'll say this though, it was never debated. I read all the Air Force accounts. They never sat down and debated this thing. It was just understood that they had to do it. But it's worrisome to Marshall, back in the States, when he hears about it. It's not worrisome though to the most important person, Roosevelt. He's a real blood and gut guy. I mean, Roosevelt wanted the Germans to feel the war. He used that word often. He didn't have the feeling that the Germans suffered enough.

Kirk Saduski

Remind us, Don, where the Western Allied troops and now the Western Allies are not only in the Americans, but it's also the British, the Canadians. And now the French are also in force.

Donald Miller

And the Australians.

Kirk Saduski

And the Australians. How far have they pushed West? Not quite into Germany in any significant way yet. But again, January 1945, where are the Western allies? And then we'll get to the Red Army.

Donald Miller

We're Tickling the toes of the Germans. We're right there seemingly poised to go across the Rhine, but we're not close yet. We can't go that last 15 to 20 miles because the forest is almost impenetrable.

Kirk Saduski

Remind us where the Red Army is at this point.

Donald Miller

So they're knocking at the borders of the German Reich. They're planning for this staggeringly large invasion, three-army invasion, that's gonna go off in January. And everybody knows it's coming. I mean, they have thousands of tanks. So it's no surprise.

Kirk Saduski

I wanna start to talk about the enemy. And you mentioned Franklin Roosevelt, and in 1943, he, to the surprise of Churchill, announces, we will only accept unconditional surrender. You were started to hint at why that was and what effect did that have? And again, I wanna lead into Germany and Japan and the nature of those enemies, because they were, by early 1945, they were both essentially defeated. But neither would accept or admit it. And so talk about that whole phenomenon, the impact of unconditional surrender and the nature of both Germany and Japan.

Donald Miller

I'm glad we're talking about it because it's a much misunderstood term. Not that I have the answer to this, but a lot of people oppose it. A lot of military historians oppose it. A lot of general readers of history oppose it saying, "Well, that's just gonna make them fight harder, and it's gonna prolong the war if they know that it has to be a complete surrender." Okay, total, certainly the Japanese were against this in all their negotiations with the Americans. When you look at it, I'll use a much-overused word, existentially, 'cause it is an existential problem. It exists and it has to be dealt with immediately, and it has long-range repercussions. That's what existentialism is. As I see it's a peace proposal. It binds us to the idea that we're not just defeating an ugly regime, a barbaric regime, whatever you wanna call Nazi Germany. We're gonna redeem it. We're gonna expunge it. We're gonna stay until they're de-Nazified. So it means, and the same thing with Japan, it means regime change, not just surrender. There's a lot of idealism to that. That's what an occupation is. You sit on a country until it supposedly de-Nazify it. This is what scared the Nazis. They knew what it meant. They knew what it meant. They just couldn't hand over their guns. Regime had to change and it had to be crushed.

Kirk Saduski

And there was also a historic reason because of the way World War I ended. I know, FDR was very cognizant of that and not repeating that mistake.

Donald Miller

He felt if this was going to be a permanent peace, and he always talked about permanent peace, that the Nazis had to disappear from history. They had to be punished. The most fanatically Nazi city in Germany was Dresden, bar none. It'd only been hit twice and lightly before the big raid on Valentine's Day. It got so tough, the casualties were pretty high. Someone in the Air Force, a guy named General McDonald, wrote an interesting, almost insubordinate, letter where he writes to Spaatz and he said, "What we cannot do is take the Air War to the person on the street, to the average German worker, the civilian. What we cannot do is turn this into what the British have turned it into, gigantic fire raids to annihilate entire cities." This also gets me to the point I always make, and I don't think many people make, Roosevelt incredibly, I should put it this way, gave the Air Chiefs incredible leeway. It was a situation like with Grant Lincoln in the Civil War, where Grant would do something and then he'd ask if he could do it. And that's what the Air Force was doing.

Kirk Saduski

On the battlefield, major advances, Allied troops crossed the Rhine in Germany, the Red Army approaches from the East, and Marines land in Iwo Jima. We're joined now by Rich Frank, historian and author of several books, including Tower of Skulls: a History of the Asian Pacific War and Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Welcome.

Richard Frank

It's a pleasure to be here.

Kirk Saduski

We are now in early 1945. It's February to be precise. And one of the most iconic battles of World War II was Iwo Jima. And out of that comes maybe, probably, the single most iconic photograph to come out of combat in all of World War II. But give us an idea, what was the strategic purpose of invading Iwo Jima? We knew that the casualties were gonna be rough. The Japanese had such advanced warning, knew we were coming, were able to prepare. What was the strategic purpose of invading Iwo Jima?

Donald Miller

I don't know. Well, it's debated during the war. I mean, there are two big debates, Pelieu, should we have done that? Halsey was against it. He said, you know, "Stick to the Philippines. My fighter pilots are telling me that they just got beat up airfield there and we're gonna waste a lot of Marines." So I think it's just still up in the air. You know, where you come down depends on where you do your research, where your inclinations are.

Kirk Saduski

Rich, what do you think?

Richard Frank

Basically two purposes that they were looking at in seizing Iwo Jima. The first of which was a plan to base fighter aircraft there to escort B29s over Japan proper. The second purpose was to provide a refuge for B29s that were in distress from battle damage or problems with their engines, which were endemic coming back from Japan and land there rather than land in the water. The B29 effort initially from the Marianas had a very high rate of aircraft that ditched at sea from which the crews were not recovered. So that was a big morale issue with respect to that. I think the other thing that's interesting about Iwo Jima is there's actually a pattern at Peleliu, at Iwo Jima, at Okinawa, where even though we had good radio intelligence, we still didn't accurately calculate the Japanese garrisons there. So like on Iwo Jima, the estimates going into the island were like about 10,000 Japanese. And it's actually like 21,000.

Kirk Saduski

Set the scene a little bit, almost seems unimaginable to be a Marine in one of those amphibious assault boats. Headed for what? Tell us what the Japanese had waiting for our Marines.

Richard Frank

What happened at Iwo Jima that really caused so a higher level of casualties was that the commander on Iwo Jima, General Kuribayashi had, had decided that he wasn't going to attempt to defend the immediate invasion beaches, which were pretty easy to predict based upon the topography of the island and the tidal conditions. That he was going to have his main forces essentially in the more northerly part of the island, which was filled with a lot of high ground and hills. And they had worked very energetically on digging in to Iwo Jima, creating cave positions, pill boxes that were in the ground. Mount Suribachi, which is at the southern tip of the island, this extinct volcano, there was a detachment there and the principle reason why they were there, because there was very advantageous firing positions. If you've ever been on top of Mount Suribachi and looked on the American invasion, I mean, you feel like you're looking down in the palm of your hand. It seems that close. Kuribayashi didn't intend to make the main stand there. When the initial invasion occurred, and they swept across the lower part of Iwo Jima, isolated Mount Suribachi, and then eventually took it with a famous flag raising. Then when they headed north, they ran into these Japanese positions. And the thing that was really eerie about that, was you had this volcanic sand that was very loose. So it was very difficult to dig in without... Like you dig in and then the stuff starts pouring back in on top of you. And the other thing that was so eerie was that the Marines had a powerful sense they weren't fighting the Japanese, who they didn't see because they were dug in. They were fighting the very ground of Iwo Jima. And the other thing that depressed Marine morale was that they'd overcome these positions and wipe out the garrison, but they would die underground, outta sight. And the Marines, of course, could see their own casualties very clearly and not see dead Japanese.

Kirk Saduski

Don, you were saying earlier that you're not sure that strategically Iwo Jima even should have been fought. Why don't you and Rich discuss that, if you don't mind?

Donald Miller

Well, it's just a question of how much loss you're gonna take.

Richard Frank

Doing the numbers on how many B-29s made landings there and the crew numbers there, that's been all kind of iffy. First of all, not all the B-29s that landed on Iwo Jima were really in... total distress. They made precautionary landings. And at one point the Marine Corps was arguing that the total number of air crew saved was more than the casualties that were sustained, which is not, I think, really accurate. It goes back though, I think part of the problem with Iwo Jima was when it was being planned, their estimate of how many Japanese were gonna be on Iwo Jima was way under what the eventual. And secondly, they completely missed what Kuribayashi was doing in terms of fortifying the island. And because the delay between when we originally thought about going there and actually got there, the Japanese had time to dig in and just make it so costly. I think the other thing is that, you know, when they were originally planning this, they were still thinking in terms of what bomber experience had been in Europe. You wanted to have fighter escorts with the bombers and coming up from the Marianas, you didn't really have alternative choices besides Iwo Jima.

Kirk Saduski

War is quite often it's fought on the home front as well, and not just the home front, it's fought in the hearts and minds of the country whose soldiers are fighting in their name. And every once in a while something emerges that seems to symbolize, to illustrate what that fight is. Tell us about the raising of the flag and Rosenthal's photograph, the famous, iconic raising of the flag at Mount Suribachi.

Donald Miller

Well, there are two flag raisings. One's kind of a spontaneous thing, both on Suribachi this dormant volcano, which was a defensive hive. A lot of Marines were killed by mortar fire. Bob Sherrod said, he's never seen bodies so torn up. And so we wanna take out the position, we've already conquered it. They go up there, they raise a small flag. And then Forrestal, the Navy secretary's on the island, and he gets a larger flag and gets to a Marine outfit and sends up a separate operation just to put up the flag. And they did. Rosenthal happened to be there, took the photographs, got them to a photo lab, front page news all over the place, and it did pick up morale. You talk to guys who were there, there was this gigantic burst of euphoria. And this is an all-Marine battle, more Medals of Honor than in any battle, you know, in the Pacific by the Marines. And so I think morale wise, I mean, afterwards Roosevelt talked to Bob Sherrod and he said, "Why the hell did we go into Iwo Jima? Why didn't we just bomb it into the Stone Age?" And Sherrod said that his answer was, "Mr. President, we did bomb into the Stone Age, but they were inside Iwo Jima, not on Iwo Jima." And you gotta remember, think of the American public reading about these battles, and the casualties do come in every day. You're reading about the casualties on Iwo Jima and you're impatient. And I think seeing that flag on that volcano was really an uplifting thing. It was a big deal. It was a big deal. It showed that we were making some progress.

Kirk Saduski

Well, that's what I was gonna say. You know, when a democracy goes to war, you need a map. You need photographs to show progress. You need a map to show we're moving. And that photograph showed that we had taken Iwo Jima, we're about to take Iwo Jima and people could see how deep into the Pacific and how close we were getting to Japan. And I think especially when you're a democratic society, you need to know that your armies, your navies, your Marines are making progress. And there is light at the end of the tunnel. Eugene Sledge was a Marine in the Pacific. He wrote in personal detail about his combat experience in the acclaimed memoir, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. He saw firsthand what America faced against Japan. Gary Sinise Time had no meaning. Life had no meaning. The fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of Peleliu eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all. We existed in an environment totally incomprehensible to men behind the lines, service troops and civilians. Most Americans at the time couldn't comprehend the Japanese determination to win or fight to the death. To the Japanese, surrender was the ultimate disgrace.

Kirk Saduski

February 1945, the most violent urban combat of the Pacific war takes place in the Philippines, the Battle of Manila. Not as well known as either Okinawa or Iwo Jima, but one of the most horrific episodes of World War II. What was different about the Battle of Manila and what was the outcome and who really paid the price?

Donald Miller

The commander of the garrison in Manila was Navy. He was an admiral. They weren't supposed to hold the city. MacArthur of course, wanted it to be an open city, and Yamashita did too. He didn't want to fight there. But the Marines held on to the last person.

Kirk Saduski

The Japanese Marines.

Donald Miller

The Japanese Marines. In a fortress that is no longer on the earth today because it was blown to smithereens by the Americans. The fighting in that fortress was absolutely unbelievable. They broke in, in parts of it, but in areas where they couldn't, where the Americans couldn't break in, they simply used artillery. At one point they lined up 500 howitzers. 500 howitzers, hub-to-hub and just blew the place to nothing, the limestone. So fighting was unbelievable. And there again, as Rich will tell you, the civilians were caught in, it's urban fighting, and you have to take house to house. So go to the roof first and then go down the stairs, room by room, take the room. If you can't take it with gunfire, use fire, flame throwers. And then you get to the bottom, you clear the whole place out. If you're meeting a lot of resistance, you skedaddle and you bring in howitzers and the bulldozers and you destroy the entire edifice. That's how it goes. So the city is leveled, and this is the so-called Pearl of the Orient, one of the most beautiful cities in the Orient and always prided itself on that. What's destroyed, and we haven't talked much about this, is everything that makes you who you are is gone. Rosary beads, clothing, shoes, mementos, pictures, churches, schools, everything that makes you human, it's gone. There's no connection. It's just everything. There's no connection with your past. They destroyed their culture in other words.

Richard Frank

The other element about Manila, which is distinctive, is that the Japanese had occupied the Philippines since December 1941, early '42. And in the Japanese eyes, the Filipinos were spoiled rotten individuals who didn't appreciate their liberation by the Japanese and didn't identify with them. And of course, the Filipinos, you know, mounted what probably was one of the most effective resistance movements in all of World War II. The Japanese, primarily these naval special landing forces, or Japanese Marines who were the principal part of the garrison there. Once they pulled back into Manila, they knew that that was going to be the end of the trail. They were gonna die there. And the element that really ratcheted this thing down into this abyss was that Japanese, besides digging in and seizing positions, they began systematically torturing, raping and killing Filipinos in large numbers. And it's a classic quandary of a hostage situation. If the hostage takers start killing the hostages, what are your options? Well, your only option is to go in and see if you can save some of the hostages. And how do you fight in an urban area like that without having totally unacceptable casualties? You use your firepower to try to breach through things to get in. And besides the normal buildings in Manila, it had a lot of very large public buildings. There were huge edifices that literally we would line up artillery and fire in the thousands of rounds to attempt to breach into the building to get at the Japanese. And when you look at the pictures of the aftermath, it's a scene and next to probably Warsaw or a Stalingrad, Manila was single most destroyed city in World War II.

Donald Miller

Easily, and yet this is despite the fact that MacArthur disallowed bombing, he would not allow the Air Force to go in there and bomb the city.

Kirk Saduski

Why? Why is that?

Donald Miller

Because he wanted to preserve as much of this jewel of the city as he could.

Kirk Saduski

Can you give us some idea of the civilian casualties in Manila?

Richard Frank

How many civilians died in Manila? There is a number, 100,000, which has become commonly accepted with respect to the total number of fatalities.

Kirk Saduski

And remind us the timeframe?

Richard Frank

This is starts at the end of January and goes into February.

Donald Miller

In February.

Richard Frank

Is with so many episodes in World War II, those numbers are always very soft because there was no one running around trying to keep accurate numbers of something as horrific as this. And basically the other thing is, if we did not go in, it did not overrun all of Manila and just left the Japanese free to continue to massacre all the Filipinos within the perimeter they'd established. I mean, what's the trade-off here? You're looking at, you know, the Filipinos were gonna die in mass numbers, virtually any way you turn. It was just in incredible. But there were about 1,100–1,200 American fatalities and virtually the entire Japanese garrison, which about 16,000 was killed.

Kirk Saduski

100,000 in a month. March, 1945, America conducts the most destructive air raid of the entire war, the firebombing of Tokyo. Starting in February or March. March, right?

Richard Frank

March.

Kirk Saduski

In 1945, we start a new tactic, General LeMay, the firebombing of Tokyo.

Donald Miller

LeMay arrives in the Marianas in early '45 to take over from a guy named, Possum was his nickname, Hansell, who had been trying to use the tactics we were using for heavy bombing in Europe, high-level strategic bombing. The bombing was inordinately ineffective, more so than in Europe because of winds, very heavy winds that could slow you down to almost 100 miles an hour in which case you'd crash. Or up to 400 to 500 miles per hour, which made accurate bombing impossible. So LeMay goes in and he figures it out that we gotta do things completely differently. And he springs it on his staff one day and everybody thinks he's nuts. He's gonna take all the gunners, with the exception of one central gunner, which is top of the plane, he controls most of the guns automatically and pare down the plane so it's a lot lighter and go in low. Usually they bombed it 28,000 feet in Japan, 28 to 30,000, a little higher than in Europe. He went in sometimes at 2,000 feet, not the whole journey, but when they got close to the target, he'd dive in to 2,000 feet and use fire sticks, as they were called. They were bundled together. They were about a foot and a half to foot long. When they hit the ground, they could break up in the air. They're put in were often called baskets. And the basket breaks and about 2,000, 3,000 feet. And then these cylinders drop, hit the ground, bust open, and start a fire. But what they often do beforehand is they use heavy explosives to blow out doors, windows, things like that, to create a draft. They want the fire to create its own wind, to create what are called fire whirls. The firestorms suck the oxygen out of the air. You got hot air rising, cool air colliding with it and creating fire whirls. This is what creates forest fires today. And when the fire starts to move in these fire whirls and it hits something large like a cliff, you know, out in the American West or during the war, a large building or any kind of obstruction, it creates a spin. And this thing can leap across rivers. And the fire is coming at you from every different direction. So you don't know where to run. I talked to a woman who was caught in Germany, in Dresden. She said she saw a friend of hers, a housewife, pushing a pram with her two children beside her. And she just got confused and started to move around and whoosh, she sucked into the fire and they're just immolated. There's nothing left to them. Meteorologists, we checked the meteorology departments in the archives, and everyone said there was this horrible, horrible storm that night with heavy winds in Tokyo. Well there wasn't, there wasn't. It was a mild night. It was a fire wind that's created.

Kirk Saduski

Postwar Europe hangs in the balance. The diplomatic agreements made by Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin will shape the geopolitical landscape for many years to come. We're joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. She's the author of several presidential biographies, including No Ordinary Time, Team of Rivals, and The Bully Pulpit. And her most recent book, An Unfinished Love Story. You've written so persuasively about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, but particularly for our concerns, Franklin Roosevelt. Two things, one, please help us understand the unique position that Franklin Roosevelt holds in the pantheon of American presidents. For me, there's only two that he can rival him at all. That's Washington and Lincoln. But we wanna know what you think.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Oh, I think there's no question in almost all the historians’ rankings, Franklin Roosevelt will come out sometimes just behind Lincoln, sometimes in that group of Lincoln, Washington, and FDR. I mean, it's the combination of having carried us through two of the greatest crises in American history, the Great Depression, and then World War II. And I think people realized that it wasn't simply his wartime leadership and how he assembled an extraordinary team and was able to push that team at times when they didn't wanna go where he wanted them to go. And he was usually right. But it's also how he mobilized the Home Front and was able to bring the country, originally an isolationist country, along to understand the threat that Hitler provided in 1940, 1941, even before Pearl Harbor. And then mobilizing the Allies once Pearl Harbor happened. He's an extraordinary man and I think America will, as the New York Times said after he died, "Men will bend down on their knees 100 years from now to thank God that Franklin Roosevelt was there."

Kirk Saduski

FDR was part of what was referred to as the Big Three. Tell us briefly, again, we wanna stay essentially with President Roosevelt, but tell us who was the Big Three?

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Well, the Big Three turns out to be FDR, Churchill, and Stalin, but initially it was just the Big Two. So for several years it was Churchill and Roosevelt together. And I love the stories of when they first met up in Argentina. Churchill says when he meets him, it's like opening your first bottle of champagne that it was a great hour to live when they were together. And FDR later writes him and said, "It's fun to be in the same decade with you." That personal friendship that they were able to forge, despite differences as to what they should do sometimes with the military forces, turned out to be an absolutely critical part of, I think, what made the Allies win that war eventually. I mean, they developed a sense of enjoyment with one another. When one talked the other would slump down, sometimes. The other would talk and the other one would slump down. They were so used to being in the center of attention, but essentially they stayed up together late at night. Eleanor would come in sometimes when they were having too much to drink at 2:00 a.m. and say, "Isn't it time for you two little boys to go to bed?" But they enjoyed one another. And I think that was so important during the enormous pressure that they were under. And they understood the constraints each was under, long before they met Stalin.

Kirk Saduski

I can't think of another relationship in history and that is quite both so personal and that accomplished so much. Obviously we don't wanna over-romanticize FDR and Prime Minister Churchill; they had their differences and those differences grew as the war progressed into 1945. But I think they had a unique relationship as far as I know, in human history.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

It's hard to imagine the course of human history being the same way it was without those two together on that world scene. I mean they supported one another at the time when Britain was standing alone against the Nazi might. It was Roosevelt who understood that he had to supply whatever he could to Britain, and there was a lot of resistance on the part of the military to that. We had so limited supplies, we were only 18th in military power in 1940, becoming 17th when Holland surrendered. And they were afraid if we sent our limited weapons to Britain and Britain failed us, they assumed they would to Germany. And then our captured weapons were found in German hands that Roosevelt could be impeached or hung by a lamppost. So Roosevelt was really courageous in believing in Churchill's leadership, believing he could mobilize the country. And then once they got together, I mean Churchill I think was so incredibly relieved when Pearl Harbor happened 'cause he knew that his friend now would be on equal platform with him in terms of mobilizing our country. But I think that friendship will be regarded for time immemorial as something that changed the world. And they don't say that about two people getting together at the same time how lucky they were in that same decade together.

Kirk Saduski

Let's talk about Yalta. So the Yalta was in February 1945, and this is really, by this point, it's obvious that Germany is going to be defeated and probably Japan. It wasn't a question of would the Axis be defeated? It was a matter of when. So let's talk about that. Yalta is, they're preparing, the Big Three are preparing for what comes next, but there were different interests. Each country had different interests, needless to say. Help us understand what those interests were.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

No, absolutely, I mean, each one of the Big Three had really quite different priorities. I mean, for Roosevelt, the most important thing was to get a new United Nations, somehow a world order that could deal with us once the peace came about. And then he wanted to have Russia to help us with the Japanese invasion. His military people had told him that there could be perhaps a million casualties if the Americans invaded Japan and he wanted the Red Army there. So that's Roosevelt's concerns. Churchill is still concerned, of course, with the British Empire, and he has certain real estate in the Far East that he's concerned with. And he wants France to be part of this 'cause he doesn't want any one nation to dominate what's gonna happen in Europe. So he's logging in for France. And then of course Stalin is most importantly concerned with the borders of Poland. As he says to them, you know, that's where Napoleon came through. It's now where Hitler came through. And so he's concerned with what's gonna happen in Europe. That for him, as he said, "This isn't an abstraction, this is our life that's an issue." So they had to figure out when the three of them got together, how they could reconcile those different priorities.

Kirk Saduski

There were some inherent problems, even contradictions in the sense that Roosevelt and Churchill were pushing for a democratized Poland. And Stalin seemed to give some lip service, but that certainly wasn't really in his interest. Give us a little bit of the background. Help us understand why Poland was such a key issue.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Well, you know, one of the things that people had to remember was that there was a sense in which the communist government was already established at this time. And so when he's agreeing to free elections, it's really just a paper agreement on his part. But they don't know that for sure at that time. You know, we look at it after the fact and we see what happened after World War II, and that's where all the argument came up that maybe FDR wasn't as strong as he needed to be at that point in time, that he wasn't well. And of course, he was a sick man, but most of the assessments say that he really was in full possession of his faculties. That what he knew he was willing to give, I think he was willing to give Stalin a lot in return for Japan because that was what was priority on his mind. And they didn't know yet that, in fact, I think people would've said, even if Stalin had agreed on paper to letting the free government that was in London come back into Poland and do more, if he was gonna go the way he wanted to go, the only way we could deal with that was to go into another war. And there was a presumption, of course, that the American people weren't gonna be ready for that. So it's a very complicated situation, but I think it's only later that these rosy assessments that were made at the time that they thought it was great at Yalta, you know, they all toasted one another. It was the first time that Stalin ever fully acknowledged the role that Lend-Lease had played in his country. And he talked about Churchill being brave. And then Roosevelt, he said, was the most magnanimous leader because it wasn't in his direct interest to do this. He did this for the world as a whole. But then later on it proved that it was more complicated than that. And then there were all sorts of arguments about whether or not another leader with stronger impetus than FDR had because of his illness might have gotten us a better deal. I don't think so. I think that was the deal that had to be made at that time. And I think most historians look at that and say it was later events that proved more problematic. And then they would've had, maybe if Roosevelt had lived, he would've had to deal with the problems of Stalin as Churchill did. You know, it's so important to remember, this is where later understandings have to be put back in the context of the times. The concern among the Americans of what it would take for Japanese to surrender was enormous. You know, they knew how hard it had been from one island to another. They were gonna have to commit millions of men. And the thought of a million more casualties after all those who had died already, that was an absolutely primary thing to be able to get the Red Army's help in doing that. And I understand where he was coming from, and I think most historians do as well, that you know, that there was just no capacity on America's part to assume, okay, we're gonna go to war now to save Poland's freedom and democracy.

Kirk Saduski

Poland paid the price. Once again for its geography, being caught in the middle between Germany and Russia.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

What a sad thing to recognize. You're absolutely right, Poland paid the price. No, the most dramatic moment to me is when Roosevelt comes home and speaks to the joint session of Congress. And really, his health is even declining more than after that 14,000-mile trip. And he comes in on his wheelchair, and never before had he done that, he comes into that joint session, there's a hush in the chamber, and then he gives his talk. And before he does, he says, "Pardon me if I'm gonna sit down for this rather than standing." But you know what it's like to have 10 pounds of steel if he'd had to have his braces on after this long trip. And the audience responded with this sustained applause. It was electric. For the first time, allowing people to talk. He never had talked about his incapacity before. Everybody knew that he had had polio, but most people didn't realize he couldn't walk on his own power without those 10 pounds of steel. And that night he was acknowledging where he was. So I think it was the price he had paid for the leadership during World War II that they were seeing. And so there was a great sense of connection, I think, emotionally between the Congress and him that very night.

Kirk Saduski

And the country as well. I think you're so right. There is that belief, that misbelief, that somehow Roosevelt lied about his polio. He didn't lie about it. And it was known, but it was not trumpeted, if I can use that term. They did camouflage it, but they didn't lie about it. But as you said, when he came back from Yalta, he just couldn't, the effort was just too much. There was no point at this point. And I also think that showing that vulnerability, whether he meant to or not, showed how much he shared with his countrymen. How many families had lost someone, how many sailor, soldiers, Marines, airmen had been wounded grievously, would never walk again either. I think he, again, is showing that empathy and his extraordinary presidential leadership.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

I think that's right. He knew when the moments were where he would have to project strength and when he could project weakness or vulnerability and it was okay for the country at that time.

Kirk Saduski

On January 27, 1945, a place of unique horror was liberated by the Soviet Red Army. That place was Auschwitz-Birkenau. Rebecca Erbelding of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum joins me now. Give us a little bit of background and context, because this was really the other... The other extermination centers I should say, and you can definitely differentiate between concentration camps and extermination centers and be specific. But the big one, the one we all know of, we all have heard of, even if the world hadn't heard of it by then in January '45, was Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau to be more accurate. Tell us what happened in January '45.

Rebecca Erbelding

January 1945 is bitterly cold in Europe. It is snowing in Poland as the bombs of the 60th Army of the first Ukrainian front, part of the Red Army, can be heard from Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the largest and longest-lasting Nazi killing center. It was the only killing center still operational in January 1945. And so finally in the middle of the month on January 17, 18, and 19, the Nazis make the decision to try to move prisoners out of the camp. They leave about 8,000 people behind, but the rest, they march out on foot in the bitter cold or they put on rail cars trying to get them into other camps or into the center of Germany and keep them out of the hands of the Allies as long as possible. It takes another 10 or so days, a little more than a week for the actual Red Army to come. They fight in the town, the nearby town of Oswiecim, about 231 Soviet troops die trying to take the town. And then by 3:30 in the afternoon, the Red Army has managed to make it to Auschwitz and liberated the now 7,000 remaining prisoners there. More than 600 people died, were either shot or died of starvation or exposure in the week after the Nazis left. And so this is January 27, 1945. It is now an international Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and killing center.

Kirk Saduski

How many people, Rebecca, approximately were on the forced march?

Rebecca Erbelding

I mean, numbers vary because a lot of people were marched out in the weeks and months prior, or sent away from Auschwitz. You know, there was a sense that Auschwitz could be liberated or could be taken sometime soon by the Red Army. They were in a range to do so for a long time, but the Nazis persisted for a long time. We know that they had Christmas parties with their children in December 1944. So I think there was a delusional sense among the Nazis that this might be able to continue. But by mid-January it was clear that it couldn't. At least 57,000 people leave the camp, are forced out to march in the snow or in these open rail cars in January 1945.

Kirk Saduski

And again, let's be clear as to where they're going. It's not one place, they are deposited throughout Germany. I believe some of the prisoners are given to factories, to farms, and even to municipalities to work as slave laborers. And the municipalities, ironically, some of them were used to clean up debris after the Allied bombing of maybe the night before or two or three nights before or days before. But I think the majority, and you tell us Rebecca, were eventually marched to the concentration camps in Germany, is that correct?

Rebecca Erbelding

Yes, that's correct. So the Nazis are really concentrating people in the middle of Germany at this point. So I think we have to recognize that the process of liberation is a long one and it's a chaotic one. And in some cases, as the Nazis are marching people out of one camp, they actually don't know where these people are going to go. There is no plan for their arrival, there's no plan to care for them, certainly when they arrive anywhere. And so there are reports of marches that last weeks or months as people go one direction and then the war hits them in that way. And so then they have to turn around and go in this direction. The Nazi plan really was to keep the prisoners out of the hands of the Allies as long as possible. And when they could, to eke out any last bit of labor from these people for the German war effort. And so many people are taken to camps in Austria that are in the mountains where the Nazis are building the V2 rockets and other kinds of ammunition and put to forced labor in mines deep in those mountains to create weapons that the Nazis hope will be their last savior and be able to win the war that way.

Kirk Saduski

Briefly discuss the conditions both on the march and then wherever they were eventually deposited.

Rebecca Erbelding

I mean, people are starving, people are sick, and they are dying in large numbers. People either die on marches, they're shot because they fall behind or trip at the wrong time. If you are walking for days and only picking up a piece of fruit or some grass that you can eat, you know, there isn't a huge plan to feed these people on the marches. And so people are arriving in a great need of care that they're not getting. And because the Nazi plan is really to just eke out labor, there's no concern about calorie intake for them. There's no concern about medical care. The Nazis are treating these people very much as disposable at this point. And so it's really a horrific time.

Kirk Saduski

As the former prisoners are marched across Germany, of course, many, many Germans witnessed them. Tell us about the impact how the German citizens responded when they saw these emaciated figures being marched through their towns?

Rebecca Erbelding

I think it was very comforting for Germans after the war to tell themselves that they hadn't known what was going on. And it was certainly very convenient for them to be able to tell Allied authorities that they didn't know what was going on. And I don't think that's true. The Dachau camp, right outside of Munich had opened in 1933. It was a huge press story in the United States that the Nazis had opened this concentration camp. Many, many towns had local forced labor camps or local camps where people were brought in not just Jewish forced laborers, but forced laborers from Poland, forced laborers from the Czech lands who were being forced to work in people's farms, in factories locally. This was not a secret. I do think the conditions of the people who are marching through these towns coming from the east, was something that was potentially surprising to people. But I don't think most people responded in a, "Oh no, what have we done?" It's, "Oh no, if they are coming, the Russians are coming too. You know, they are fleeing something and it is the Russians. And that is a concern for me, a German, because I don't want to be occupied by the Russians."

Kirk Saduski

One of the interesting things that I learned doing Masters of the Air was when this, at the same time, there was a parallel march, at the same time that the prisoners were being evacuated from Auschwitz and moved into the various places you've discussed, most of the Western Allied POWs were on a similar march. And there again, there's a historical irony, a cruel irony to the fact that there are thousands of American and British and Canadian prisoners, a lot of airmen of course, and they're on a parallel march. Can you tell us what a little bit about that?

Rebecca Erbelding

Yeah, I mean there were American airmen and soldiers who were captured at the Battle of the Bulge who were in some of the Stalags. And as the war deteriorated for the Nazis, they too were not getting the calories that they needed and that they had a right to under the Geneva Convention, they were no longer being treated within the kind of acknowledged rules of war. And many of them were marched away from the Stalags kind of in any sort of direction. And when they are finally liberated by their comrades, you know, some of them have lost 50 pounds, 60 pounds.

Kirk Saduski

Let's go back, Rebecca, and talk a little bit because it's an ongoing issue and you know as much about it as anyone. But give us an idea, by 1945, what would just the average American have known about this situation? It wasn't really called the Holocaust yet. You tell us what was known about what was eventually gonna be called the Holocaust.

Rebecca Erbelding

What we can say is that in November 1944, the US government published a report that they entitled "The Extermination Camps Auschwitz in Birkenau." It was a report written by escapees from Auschwitz in the spring of 1944. And it has this kind of roundabout life into Switzerland. Finally reaches the United States in full in October. And the war refugee board, which was the government agency tasked with trying to rescue Jews in the final years of the war, decides to publish it. They send it out to newspapers nationwide. And so Thanksgiving weekend in 1944, it is headline news that the Nazis have this camp, they call it Auschwitz. They said that 1.7 million people had been murdered there in gas chambers. We now know that number to be too high, but that was the number that was reported in November 1944. And that was in more than 200 newspapers. And there was a Gallup poll that was right after that where Americans are asked, "Do you believe the stories that Germans have murdered many people in concentration camps?" And 76% of the people responded, "Yes." That is a huge jump from the year before when Americans were similarly asked in January 1943. You know, it is said that, "2 million Jews have been killed in Europe since the war began. Do you think this is true or a rumor?" And only 48% of Americans back in 1943 had said, "I think that's true." And so even though there is quite a lot of information that is available to Americans who are paying attention, and of course we know that not all Americans were paying attention, but to those who were, there was quite a lot of information. But I think it really did take until liberation for Americans to see it in newsreels, to see the photographs, to hear testimony, to get letters from their loved ones who were in the service and witnessing liberation firsthand, for Americans to actually believe it and to understand the scope of it.

Kirk Saduski

To a large extent because there was no context, there was no moral context for the largest war of all time. Murder and mayhem had been on the front page every day for six years. But this was something different.

Rebecca Erbelding

I think there are two explanations from it for that, from a historical perspective. One is that it doesn't logically make sense for the Nazis to be doing this. And I think that was something that the military had decided. I think it's something that many Americans personally decided, is that why would the Nazis be devoting resources to murdering innocent people when there's a war going on that they should be focused on? And that is because Americans just fundamentally did not understand that to the Nazis, they were one and the same. That there was no reason to win the war if Jews were still going to be in Europe. That fundamentally the Holocaust had to happen for, in their mind, victory to be achieved.

Kirk Saduski

Join us next time as the Allies are closing in on Berlin. America is racing to build the most terrifying weapon ever created. The world is shocked by the sudden death of the American president and the horrors of the Holocaust come into full focus.

Archival

If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry.