Boeing:
This podcast is presented by Boeing. Building a Brighter Future for All, with the help of those who served. With support for hundreds of military and veteran specific programs, Boeing offers opportunities and resources for a career in aerospace. Veterans can use the skills gained during their service directly in their next mission, leading teams in aerospace innovation. Boeing is proud to stand with and support those who served. Learn more about our veteran initiatives at boeing.com/veterans.

John Egan:
Hey!

Gale Cleven:
This is it.

John Egan:
This is it.

Gale Cleven:
Ready to go home?

John Egan:
Ready to see Marge?

Gale Cleven:
I'm Back.

John Egan:
Form 1A.

Gale Cleven:
Checked.

John Egan:
Controls and seats.

Gale Cleven:
Check.

John Egan:
Fuel, transfer valves and switch?

Gale Cleven:
Off.

John Egan:
Leaving a lot of good men behind.

Gale Cleven:
Brave men. Yeah.

Kirk Saduski:
Welcome to the Making Masters of the Air Podcast from the National World War II Museum. I'm your host, Kirk Saduski and co-producer of the series. In this our final podcast, I'll speak with my co-host, Don Miller, author of the book, Masters of the Air. I also speak with Mark Herzog, one of the directors of the Bloody Hundredth, the companion documentary to Masters of the Air, now streaming on Apple TV+. Later in the podcast, we hear again from Callum Turner, Nate Mann, Anthony Boyle and Tom Hanks. But first, Don Miller and I discuss the final episode of Masters of the Air. Don, welcome back to our final Masters of the Air Podcast. How are you?

Donald Miller:
Good. That's very sad, though. We're reaching the end.

Kirk Saduski:
I know. Let's just keep going, right?

Donald Miller:
Yeah.

Kirk Saduski:
Okay. The men of the Eighth Air Force didn't just suffer in the air, of course. We've talked a lot about their time after being shut down and being imprisoned in POW camps. But they also, as the Red Army was encroaching from the East, the Germans started depopulating, if you will, the prisoner of war camps, and forced marched in the dead of winter in 1945. These guys who had been, in some cases emaciated, certainly not well-nourished, very little clothing, westward across Germany in the middle of the winter. We show that in the show. It's called the Winter March. It's referred to as the Winter March, the Blizzard March.

Donald Miller:
I think it's one of the show's major contributions. I know very few people, even people who know a lot about the war, who realize how awful that March was. First of all, was the shock of the approach of the Russians, because life in a prison camp was not a life of unalloyed joy, but it provided security. And everybody knew that they were okay in there, as long as the Germans were holding off in the war. But, the minute the war started to crumble around them and Germany started to crumble, it's a whirlpool of chaos. And part of that whirlpool of chaos is the Germans in their interest in trying to survive and work out a separate piece with the Americans, thought that they could take these prisoners and use them either as human shields ... Maybe Hitler would go to the Bavaria, to his hideaway, and we'd pepper the mountain with huts and tents with airmen on it. A lot of airmen believed in that, the idea of the last Redoubt, Eisenhower believed it for a while.

Kirk Saduski:
Explain what the last redoubt was.

Donald Miller:
The last redoubt was like, where is Hitler? By March we're across the Rhine and at the Ludendorff Bridge. And that's it for Hitler, he has no chance. It's a backward fight from that point on. And how's he going to fight it? Is it going to be a scorched earth thing, which he wanted to do? A lot of his commanders convinced him out of scorched earth on this crazy idea that he could still win the war. The Germans had such a deluded view that American anti-communism would overwhelm everything, that Americans were nuts about this thing about communism and Joe Stalin, because they feared Stalin more than anybody.
The idea of that happening would be terrifying. They played on the American minds. They sent emissaries from the camps to core spots in Switzerland. Some of the messages got through saying, in effect, Germany will lay down its arms. A guy named Berger, a German SS officer, engineered one of these so-called plots. We'll lay down our arms. You collect, inspect the arms, keep us in holding camps. Then, when you start your push to the Russian border, we'll join up. People changed during the war, changed sides. The Finns changed sides. And to Spaatz's credit and to Eisenhower's credit, they never bought into this idea. Never bought into it.

Kirk Saduski:
Don, one of the more interesting episodes at the very end of the war that we portray in the series is the So-called Operation Chowhound. In fact, it was the day that the world discovered that Hitler committed suicide. And the mission was because there was a holdout pocket of Nazi diehards in a certain part of the Netherlands, and they were starving the local population. So, the decision was to try to drop them food at a low level. And the Allies, Ike negotiated with the Germans that if we come in at a low level, not carrying armament, because they needed to carry a lot of weight for the food, that they wouldn't be fired upon. And the Germans adhered to it, and we dropped food on Holland. Tell us about Operation Chowhound.

Donald Miller:
Well, at the end of the war, the last country in Europe not to be liberated, was Holland. The southern part of Holland was liberated by the Canadians largely, after Market Garden. But, the rest of the country was under the heel of a Hitlerite, an Austrian dictator who the Nazis brought in at the very beginning of the war to suppress the Dutch and suppress all opposition. And Holland had been under the Nazi thumb since the very opening of the war. When the Germans began their offenses that finally took them into France, they went through Holland first. So, they had long experience under the Nazis, and there were a lot of protests that broke out in Holland against the Nazis. There was a strong underground movement there. And the German regime, it also started to ship out a lot of Jews as well. And so things got pretty rough. And when the protests broke out, they cut off some cases, they cut off the water and the plumbing. Some cases they cut off food deliveries.
So there is general starvation throughout the country. We don't want to go in there and fight the Germans. The Germans were pretty strong in Holland, and we don't want to go in there and fight. The war is effectively over, and there's this maniac Hitlerite who's holding on. And we propose to the Dutch, to his henchmen that we would fly in B-17s loaded with food and put it in small bags and boxes and drop it in parachutes all over the country. But, there was still a fear that renegade Nazi groups would fire. Perhaps Germans had strong coastal defenses, and we lost a lot of B17s over Holland. And the agreement was that we would do the food drops just outside the villages in fields, some of them next to tulip fields.
The Dutch, as I said, are really hurting. Most Dutch children didn't have shoes. Clothing was in short supply. There was real genuine starvation in the country. Lots of people died, and so they're in a hopeless situation. So, they've recruited Air Force organizations, including the Hundreds to fly these missions and the guys were very excited about that. They wanted to do it. And they wanted to run two kinds of missions at the end of the war that were very exciting to them. Rosenthal, for example, went and picked up POWs from places like Camp Lucky Strike, and then flew them over Paris, went around the Eiffel Tower, brought them back, et cetera, et cetera.
That turned into a catastrophe, because these are starving prisoners and they threw up all over the plane. But anyway, that's part of the operation. And then there's the operation actually of Chowhound itself. And the Dutch were waiting with their orange flags, they were on the rooftops. It's a tremendously exhilarating movement for the, moment, I should say, for the Dutch and for the American fliers to be finally dropping something that isn't an explosive and to be actively helping the people. And the Dutch had done great work with their underground against the Nazis.

Kirk Saduski:
Let's talk about our guys when they came home. We ended our series with what we refer to as the CODA, and that's what happened to some of our main characters, Harry Crosby, Alexander Jefferson, Richard Macon, Robert "Rosie" Rosenthal, and of course Gale Cleven and John Egan. I think gratifyingly, they all went on and led wonderful lives, if I can coin that phrase.

Donald Miller:
It's impressive to see that in the CODA. I knew what I was going to see, but it hit me what impressive things they did, that these two African-American fliers became school teachers in Detroit. The accomplishments. Cleven becomes a college president and works with LeMay in the defense industry. Crosby becomes one of the great teachers of writing at Harvard, beloved by his students. These guys look like they came out of the war unscarred. But, when we did our film, He Has Seen War. I think when you scratch ... And unfortunate, we didn't have these guys around to scratch. I could scratch a little bit with the guys I knew. It took me a long time to get Rosenthal to say, and his son helped me with this, that he did get the jitters. He sometimes didn't want to get in the plane, or wondered if he could get in the plane? Rosie never wrote an autobiography. He wrote some very beautiful letters, film and things. But, for him to admit that, for me, it was a revelation.

Kirk Saduski:
Let's get into, because unlike any of us with the production, you got to know some of them. You mentioned Rosie. You also got to know Gale Cleven?

Donald Miller:
Yeah. They considered the reunions really important. He really did. It's a lot like the Band of Brothers group as well.

Kirk Saduski:
And you got to know Harry Crosby?

Donald Miller:
Yeah. Harry was great. He's a melancholy kind of guy and a sentimental kind of guy. But boy, when he talked about Air War, there was a dead seriousness about him. I asked him about fear, and his answer was, "I was always afraid. And anybody who tells you they weren't afraid is a liar. Fighting and flying is all about fear. It's the situation you're in. What has to happen is you have to get over it somehow. Maybe not get over it, he would add. He'd say, "Somehow deal with it." And there's where the help of comrades was enormous, enormously important. Talking to other guys and things like that.

Kirk Saduski:
One of the other men you got to know was Alexander Jefferson. It's very interesting, because even though Jefferson is not in Masters of the Air, he's in another one of your books-

Donald Miller:
An earlier one. Yeah.

Kirk Saduski:
The Story of World War II. And reading that book is what told us, realized that we could expand our story to include some men of the 332nd fighter group or the so-called Red Tails. So, Alexander Jefferson is one of the three men we portray. You got to know ultimately Lieutenant Colonel Jefferson. Tell me about Alexander Jefferson.

Donald Miller:
He really understood why he was in the war, and it was all about the race issue in the sense that it was ... I'd say like, "Why did you sign up?" I would ask him the stock question. It's an all-white force, the bomber force. Okay, the fighter, you got a couple of fly boys and things like that, but there's vast prejudice, and you ran into it at the base. He believed in America. He said, "I was part of the American dream. I really believe, maybe stupidly, that I could make it in this country. I believe that it was just enough cracks, and they started to break a little bit.

Kirk Saduski:
Well, because you met Lieutenant Colonel Jefferson later in his life, obviously, long after the war. How did he look back on it? Did he conclude that he made the right decision?

Donald Miller:
Yes. He did. He did conclude that he made the right decision. But he said to me, "Hey, Don. I wanted to stay in the Air Force."

Kirk Saduski:
He did. He did stay.

Donald Miller:
"I wanted to stay in the Air Force. I thought things were opening up. There were opportunities there. I didn't forget that I was allowed to fly a fighter plane and get recognition for, and newspaper coverage and was a hero back in my own community. And I thought I was doing something for my race and my country, at the same time. And there was no other thing at the time that allowed you to do both. And it did allow me to do both." He said, "I was flying on radar installations along the French Coast and prepared for a second invasion in southern France. I didn't have to get in that close where I got nailed like that. We could easily faked it and stayed out of the range, but we went right in there. Noses on fire." Yeah. They were amazing guys.

Kirk Saduski:
The show, the real heart of our show, and I mean that in many ways, is the relationship between Gale Cleven and John Egan. That's really how you begin your book. That's what got Playtone interested in the world in many ways, was you saw what that was, and we saw what it could be dramatically on-screen. Ultimately, if you can, encapsulate John Egan and Gale Cleven and their friendship.

Donald Miller:
Steven Spielberg told me that he considered it storytelling at its best, and that was a really nice compliment. And he said it all came full circle when, the fact that they're thrown together in the same stalag. And then that long winter march, for example, find themselves eventually in the same town and in a chapel.

Kirk Saduski:
Well, yeah. Let's talk about that, because-

Donald Miller:
The chapel? Yeah.

Kirk Saduski:
... eventually after the war-

Donald Miller:
Well, Gale went to visit. The first thing he did was visit his friend who was shot-

Kirk Saduski:
When he got back to-

Donald Miller:
When he got home. He hitchhiked. He got home. His dad said, "I know you got to go." Two days later, he was on the road hitchhiking what, 800 miles? Had to see the parents and get closure in that regard and then come back. And then there was going to be the wedding. Egan shows up with a parachute, a silk parachute. So one of the women said, "Well ... Talked to the sisters last night. Says, "Well, let's have somebody make a wedding gown out of that." So, he didn't see the wedding gown, obviously. But that morning at church, as she's being led down in the aisle and by her father ... Egan's, always the jokester. He leans over and says, "Parachute?" he goes. "Where's the ripcord? That's what I want to know." And they're buddies forever.

Kirk Saduski:
Yes. They were.

Donald Miller:
And I think being around one another was so important. I don't want to get off the train here, but I talked to a flyer who flew B-29s in the Pacific. And I talked to him till the day he died. And I talked to him not every night, but at least once a month for long periods of time. And he told me something very telling, that he was so beat up in the prison camp as a result of Japanese torture, which didn't largely take place in German camps. But, the isolation of the camp and the despiritization and the whole thing, he went crazy. He said he wanted to keep more than anything else, his marriage together.
But, every time he'd hear a siren or brakes on the street, he'd race to the closet naked or in his jockey shorts and hide in the closet for the night, or start screaming uncontrollably. And he said, "I love my wife so much and she loved me, but she said to me after a while ... " His name was Halloran, Hap Halloran. And, "Hap, I can't take it anymore. I just can't take it." So, Hap represents all our airmen who had to live these personal battles. One airman said to another, "Your war has just begun with the end of this war. And it's going to be a long war, because you're not the same guy that returned from the war. You're not the same guy."

Kirk Saduski:
He Has Seen War.

Donald Miller:
He Has Seen War.

Kirk Saduski:
Don, it's been a long time in coming this show, the realization of your dream and ours. Ultimately and finally, I'll ask, are you happy with it? Are you happy with-

Donald Miller:
Yeah. I really am.

Kirk Saduski:
What do you think?

Donald Miller:
I really am. I got an email from a veteran today who watched it somewhere and was just thrilled with the thing. And I thought, "If it pleases those guys ... " For me, the most powerful moment in the whole movie, even more than the concentration camp, well, equally so, is when Rosie is sitting around and they're musing, he and Crosby, and Rosie's asking him, "Is it worth it?" And what Crosby wants to know is, "You could have gone home. You could have gone home. Why in the hell did you stay?" And everybody wondered that about Rosie. And Rosie never made a speech about anything like that, about just getting through. I think that was part of his strength. They kind of knew there was all this speculation. The one time he said he did respond was, there was all this speculation that he was doing it because he was Jewish, and he told one of the guys who's a reporter for Stars and Stripes, Saul Levitt is his name. He said, "Saul, it has nothing to do with being a Jew. It has everything to do with being a human being."

Kirk Saduski:
Welcome now, please to this our final podcast, Mark Herzog. He's one of the directors of the companion documentary, the Bloody Hundredth. Mark is family at Playtone. We've worked on many, many projects including the decade series at CNN and documentary that we did for Band of Brothers Stand, We Alone Together, another documentary that we made. He Has Seen War. That was a combination of Band Brothers in the Pacific. So, we have worked with Mark Herzog for many, many years and we're happy to have him on the podcast. How are you doing, Mark?

Mark Herzog:
I'm doing well. Thank you, kirk. Don't forget David McCullough Painting With Words as well.

Kirk Saduski:
David McCullough Painting With Words, which was ... Thank you for that reminder. Which was the companion for our series John Adams on HBO. Mark, you had a particular, I want to say challenge, on our series on Masters of the Year in that we really came to you and to help us portray the real men. Of course, we dramatized the exploits of the Bloody 100th of the 100th Bomb Group in the nine episodes of the series. But, it was really you guys and you and Laurent Bouzereau, who was your co-director, to help us explain who the real guys were. So, first impressions. We never got to meet any of the characters that we portray on screen, but there are some living members of the 100th Bomb Group, which we did get to meet, and we did get to interview. So, tell me about all of that, that experience.

Mark Herzog:
Well, I want to go back to We Stand Alone Together, the Band of Brothers companion documentary. We were lucky when we made that 20-something years ago that most of the veterans were still alive. And so, the crew that went out there, Mark Cowan, Eric Jensen, and several others would go into these living rooms and interview these guys, who were telling their stories, sometimes for the first time. With this particular case, the main characters had all passed away. Rosie Rosenthal, Gale Cleven. John Egan died way back in 1961. Harry Crosby, had all passed away. And so, we at first thought that we would interview their children and have them tell us the stories.
We did do that, but one of the lucky things we found was that they had done some interviews with Discovery. Discovery had done some Dresden documentary way back in the '90s. And we found those interviews courtesy of the 100th Bomb Group Foundation, and found them to be fascinating, and not just about Dresden. It was their entire careers. It went through everything. It went through basic training, to what it was like to fly in the plane to their specific missions. And we realized that we had their voices telling the story. And then from there, obviously we went and interviewed some of the veterans who were still alive. "Lucky" Luckadoo, Bob Wolf. You did some interviews four years ago that helped the documentary. There are also some interviews that were done 10 years ago. And so, we compiled all those and found that we built a pretty good mosaic of life in the 100s and the missions that they went through through those three years.

Kirk Saduski:
And I want to say in terms of the footage, the Discovery footage, that's really Robert Rosenthal and Harry Crosby. We really didn't have any footage from Gale Cleven or John Egan.

Mark Herzog:
Yes. There was no footage of Cleven and of Egan, which is too bad. I would love to have had that.

Kirk Saduski:
The last thing in our series, the last thing that people see is what we refer to as the CODA. And that is what became of the men after the war, the primary characters that we portrayed. Let's talk about that, because I think it's one of those things ... I know that's something that Tom Hanks has always been very interested in, and we've talked about it a lot at Playtone, is that how do these guys, wherever they served, whether it was in a B-17 or on island in the Pacific or at a foxhole in Bat Stone, how do you go home and lead a normal life? That's essentially what when we made, He Has Seen War, that's what we tried to explore, that phenomenon. But, let's talk about our specific characters. And you have gotten to come to know what happened to our guys Cleven and Egan and Rosie and Jefferson and Macon. Let's talk about that because I think to a man, they all went on to lead wonderful, productive, happy lives.

Mark Herzog:
Our two main characters Cleven and Egan, stayed in the Air Force and remained best friends throughout that time, up until John Egan died in 1961. John Egan got married to a woman that he knew from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, who was a flyer herself. They got to know each other after the war. They had, I think briefly known each other before and got married and had two daughters. And the Egan sisters, as we like to call them, participated with us and grew up basically as daughters of an Air Force veteran who was taking them all over. They lived in Hawaii, they lived in DC. And unfortunately he passed away when they were only, I think 11 and 13, at the time. So, that was John Egan. Gale Cleven ended up staying in the Air Force. That was interesting. He had a series of different jobs. Crosby became a teacher of writing and a professor. He also was very involved in politics in Massachusetts. I believe he was part of the Dukakis campaign.

Kirk Saduski:
Well, he worked for Governor Dukakis and Congressman Barney Frank. He taught at Harvard. He taught literature at Harvard.

Mark Herzog:
And Rosie Rosenthal went back to New York. I believe he worked for the firm that he was working for before, and then eventually I think started his own firm. And had three kids. And we recount in the documentary how when he came back from the war, went into his law practice, he found that the war wasn't over for him. And when he realized that they were looking for lawyers to be part of the Nuremberg trials, he signed up. On the ship over met another lawyer who would eventually become his wife. They, in fact, were married over in Nuremberg-

Kirk Saduski:
During the trials, by the mayor of Nuremberg. And speaking of Rosie, ironically, one of his jobs was to interrogate Field Marshal Hermann Goering who was, of course, the head of the Luftwaffe. So, he actually got to interrogate. I don't think he did any kind of cross-examination in the courtroom. I think he was too junior an attorney for that. But he did interrogate amongst others, Hermann Goering. And the irony of, he is again interrogating the head of the Air Force that he did so much to defeat.
But, let's go back to the Egan sisters because you and I had an interesting experience. Their mom was actually a WASP. So Josephine, and as you mentioned, John Egan, knew each other. They were not sweethearts. They just knew each other from high school. And then when John found out that Josephine was a pilot, he was very impressed, he got in touch with her. And the rest, as they say, is romantic history. But, what was interesting, if you recall, when we were down at the Eighth Air Force Museum in Savannah with the families, the Egan sisters were touring around. And they came to a gallery that was devoted to the WASPs. And there was a picture of their mother that they had never seen before. Do you remember that episode?

Mark Herzog:
Yeah. I think they were as surprised as anyone. And one of the things that they also conveyed was that they didn't necessarily know a lot about their father's exploits during the war. They got a lot of that from Don's book. And so, they learned so much more. As you can understand, he died very when they were very young and they moved on with life and didn't necessarily maybe go back and understand everything that he went through.

Kirk Saduski:
As you mentioned, they were very young. So, that's not something that Egan would've talked to his young daughters about necessarily. But again, you and I know over the years in all the World War II veterans we've met, that truly the guys by and large didn't talk, particularly to their children about their wartime experiences. Why do you think that is?

Mark Herzog:
Well, obviously it's hard to talk about some of the things that they saw. I think most people wouldn't understand what a B-17 pilot, or a crew member would have gone through. You guys talked about it in one of the other podcasts, you guys, one of the other episodes. One of the veterans that we interviewed from the Pacific, if you recall, talked about how he worked alongside for the post office, another veteran. And they worked together for decades and never talked about what they went through. He said they would joke about certain things, but they would never talk about, as he said, "the blood and guts."

Kirk Saduski:
Yeah. That was R.V Burgin, and they were both Marines. And they didn't serve together, but they were both Marines that saw combat in the Pacific. They both knew that fact, but they didn't discuss it with each other. Yes. And as we've discovered, as time goes on and the men realize that they actually were part of history. I think it took a long time to realize, because so many say, "Hey, it was just my job. I just did. I was no hero. I was just my job. It's what I was asked to do, so I did it." As time passed, they realized, no, this was something really special and they almost never ... You know it as well as I do, almost never call out what they did, but what they did specifically, particularly if it could be considered in any way out of the ordinary or heroic. But, they're very happy to discuss the bravery and the service of their comrades.

Mark Herzog:
Speaking of the two others, Macon and Jefferson. Jefferson ended up going back to Detroit where he was from. He had been a lifelong aviation enthusiast as a kid, and that's why he ended up becoming one of the Tuskegee Airmen. And he went back and became a teacher and an assistant principal. And Macon, I believe, as well. Macon stayed in for a while. He stayed in the Air Force-

Kirk Saduski:
Well, Jefferson stayed in for quite a while. He reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. We mentioned earlier that we never got to meet any of the characters, actually any character that we portrayed in the series. But, you and I were on our way to meet Lieutenant Colonel Jefferson in Detroit. We were down in Savannah, and we were going to fly up to Detroit to meet him when he passed at 100 years of age. We were on our way to see him when he passed. Also, Jefferson was a founding member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the Tuskegee Airmen, both local, the local chapter in Detroit, but also the national chapter.
Richard Macon, who did stay in the war and rose to the rank of captain, stayed in the Air Force for a bit and went back and got his, I think, his master's degree in mathematics. Moved down to, back to Alabama and eventually moved to Detroit to be closer to, who became his best friend, Alexander Jefferson. There's a nice parallel between the stories of Cleven and Egan and Jefferson and Macon, that we try to suggest in those last two episodes of the series. And certainly in the CODA, that just as Egan and Cleven met each other in the service, so did Macon and Jefferson, and they became lifelong friends. You mentioned earlier that we worked ... Well, you interviewed a lot of the families, the Crosby's, the Egan sisters, a nephew of Gale Cleven. We interviewed Richard Macon's daughter. And so, even though we didn't really use any of the footage in the documentary, we certainly benefited from their knowledge and from the photographs and the letters that they let us use. How useful was all that stuff in helping you guys put together the documentary?

Mark Herzog:
It definitely gave a mosaic to the lives that these men led afterwards. It was really interesting to find out what the children of these veterans did know, the important stories, I guess, that were conveyed to them. They would talk about this story, they would talk about that story, that moment. Now, to be sure, Harry Crosby did write a book, and so his kids did have the benefit of being able to read through that book, and I think maybe helped edit the book a little bit. And so, they got that. Richard Macon's daughter, for the longest time, never knew he was a Tuskegee Airman.

Kirk Saduski:
Well, I tell you a story we discovered about Macon. When he was, I don't know, 10 years old or something in Alabama. He was very interested in flying as well. And he won a boy Scout contest. I think he had to write an essay or ... So, he won some kind of a boy Scout contest. And the prize was to go up in an airplane. And this was in the 1930s. To go up in an airplane, I don't recall what exactly type of plane it was, but go up in an airplane with a pilot, go up ... And that was his dream.
And he went up, and he tells this in the interview, in the oral history interview, that the pilot at some point, once they had reached altitude, let him take over in a sense. And that's what according to Macon's interview, that's what cemented his love for flying. He knew at that moment that that's what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. And obviously he was able to do that. When he went back to Alabama after the war, he also, he founded a flying school down in Alabama.

Mark Herzog:
That's right. Well, and as we say in the documentary, they were basically still segregated within the Army, the Air Corps, in Italy on a base that was primarily all black. And only when they got into and crashed and got into Stalug Luft III was there some integration.

Kirk Saduski:
One of the challenges that you and Laurent and the team had, and your editor Chris Peterson, who did such a great job on this, was for you guys and for us, was to put ... now we can put the efforts of the 100th Bomb Group and also the 332nd Fighter Group in Italy, making a Jefferson's outfit into some kind of historical context. Let's talk about that a bit, because you can't just play the interviews of the men as fascinating as they are, and it gives us that firsthand accounts of their experience. But, we got to make sense of what they were doing. We got to see the forest for the trees, and that was a big part of the job of the documentary.

Mark Herzog:
First of all, the job of the series itself ... I think you guys mentioned this in one of the other episodes is, distilling it down to a smaller story than just the Eighth Air Force. As we all know, if you read Don's book, it is a bigger picture of the Eighth Air Force with some insights into several bomb groups, including the 100th Bomb Group. And as he brings forth Egan and Cleven in their relationship, it's easy to see why you and John Orloff and the rest of the writers focused on that particular relationship. In this particular case, when we were starting to do this documentary, it was a companion documentary. If we did Don's book, and you and I had this discussion, do we do a documentary about the whole Eighth Air Force, knowing that when 100th Bomb Group is part of it? Or do we distill this down to their particular story?
And frankly, we had so much story, we could have done a three-part series on this, on everything that happened with the 100th, that it was easier for us to distill it down to what the 100th went through. How it was formed, taking shape at Thorpe Abbott's, how Cleven and Egan got there in May and June of 1943, and they were shot down by October of 1943. They were there all of, what, four months? And 20-something missions. Rosie was there much longer, obviously, in his famous 52 missions. Crossey went through all the way, but even that, they were really only there for about two years. But, there's a lot of story in those two years.

Kirk Saduski:
Even though, as we've said, we never got to meet any of these men, unlike in the other two series, I have a feeling. Mark, tell me what you think that if Gale Cleven or John Egan or Alexander Jefferson or any of these guys walked in the door, walked in the door of your officer, came over to my place, we would know them. They wouldn't be strangers to us.

Mark Herzog:
Absolutely.

Kirk Saduski:
You get to know these guys from their own words, their letters, Don's words, getting to know their families. I think that's one of the best, even though, again, we never got to meet them, we know them.

Mark Herzog:
Well, I think that's a documentary filmmaking. Right? You do a lot of research, you spin through a lot of interviews, transcripts of interviews. Yeah. I could sit down with any one of these guys if they were still alive and walk them through their lives.

Kirk Saduski:
Yes. Not just their combat experience, but their lives. You're right. Right.

Mark Herzog:
I think they'd be surprised by that, I'm sure. They might be surprised that someone's making a documentary and a mini-series about their lives to begin with. As you said earlier, these guys just did what they were asked to do, what they were supposed to do. They would be surprised. So, yeah.

Kirk Saduski:
The lives that these guys, I don't want to say came home to, they came home and built lives. They didn't come home. Yes. They went back to school, but they came home and built wonderful lives, really, particularly all the men, the primary characters that we portray in the series. And one of the interesting things, I think you probably experienced this too, was Bob Wolf, who's not a character in the show, but was on the Regensburg mission, was shot down, was in the Stalag Luft III. And to see what a wonderful life he constructed for himself with his wife and his children, and we got to meet a couple of his kids. A beautiful home on the water, and what a happy man he was and still is. Thank God, he's still with us. And I think that was so gratifying.
That was a gratifying thing for me to see, because we do know. We know about the PTSD and we know how men came back and was very difficult for every man, of course. How do you go through all that and not have it affect you deeply? But then to see ... Again, I'm focusing on Bob, but I think we could say the same thing about John Luckadoo, who we both have met, how these men ... And you get a sense of the character that it took to do what they did during the war and take that experience and build on it and come home and really build extraordinary lives.

Mark Herzog:
Well, let me tell you a story about Lucky. So, we had these interviews, these archival interviews. They helped shape the story. We realized that we wanted to fill in some holes. And even though we had interviewed Lucky a couple times before, we arranged to go down to Texas and set up an interview with him. We did it in a conference room of a hotel, set up an interview space, and Lucky at 100 came there and I did an interview, conducted an interview with him for four-and-a-half hours. Let me say that again. Four-and-a-half hours. And Lucky could have gone on another six. He was happy to tell his story. He was proud to tell his story. And at the end of this thing, I said, "What are you doing tomorrow?" And he said, "Well, I've got a school group I'm speaking to."
Someone like Lucky and veterans that are still around lucky enough to be around, are very proud of what they've done and want to talk about it. And it was our benefit to have had him in this documentary. He's one of the main voices, as is Frank Murphy. That's another archival interview, frank has passed. But Frank has some of the most emotional moments in here where he talks about what it was like to be a captive, what it was like to come home. He was tearing up in this interview, which I believe was done 15 years ago or so. Tearing up, just remembering coming home to see his mother when he was 22 or 23-years-old.

Kirk Saduski:
Playtone and Herzog have worked together now on most of our big historical series, going back to Band of Brothers. And we always do these companion documentaries. Why do you think we were compelled? Why do we do this? And what do we achieve?

Mark Herzog:
I think that the audience, when they finish the scripted series, has a yearning for more. And I think to know a little bit more about the true-life people. And I certainly found that with We Stand Alone Together, the Band of Brothers companion documentary. And I know people will have it for this. To be able to see the real Harry Crosby, to see the real Rosenthal, to see Macon and Jefferson and understand a little bit about their lives and hear from them. I think it's just a natural question mark that needs to be answered for a lot of people when they finish the series, especially a series as rich as this.

Kirk Saduski:
Thank you, pal. You and I have worked on many things in our careers and hopefully we have some more coming up. But, this was a particular pleasure, I think.

Mark Herzog:
This was a very rewarding project, for sure.

Kirk Saduski:
Absolutely. Thank you, Mark, for helping us out.

Mark Herzog:
Thank you.

Gale Cleven:
Look who it is? A stone in my shoe.

John Egan:
Oh, I'm back. How's it feel being back up there?

Gale Cleven:
It felt good.

Harry Crosby:
Look who's back.

John Egan:
Harry?

Harry Crosby:
John Egan.

John Egan:
How are you?

Harry Crosby:
Very good, sir.

John Egan:
Good to see you. You too not still throwing up in there. Are you good? I be back. Danny, how are you? Rosie? What a pleasure. Nice to see you. How are you?

Kirk Saduski:
Earlier in this podcast series we spoke to Callum Turner, who plays Major John Egan, Nate Mann on his role as Major Robert Rosie Rosenthal and Anthony Boyle as Major Harry Crosby. They join us now again to offer their final insight on the series. We start with Callum Turner. For anyone who hasn't read Don Miller's book, Masters of the Air, the first character we meet is John Egan.

Callum Turner:
That's right. Yeah.

Kirk Saduski:
And the first relationship we learn about in the book is Cleven and Egan. In fact, Don sets up Egan in London. That's the key.

Callum Turner:
But, London is where he lets Cleven out of his sights. And then Cleven goes down. And so, it's such an interesting moment in their relationship. He goes and finds him. And I was doing a lot of digging inside of myself to try and work out why he just lets the devil out the bag from himself. And he changes his jacket, his lucky jacket. He doesn't go through the rigmarole of his OCDs or his superstitions before he goes up. And then he goes down. And I just think that's such an interesting ... It was almost somehow it was really battling with this. It was almost as if he wanted to go down. He just abandoned the obligation to himself, because he was so angry about Cleven that he just wasn't thinking straight. And that moment or that lapse of concentration in whatever way is the reason that he goes down.

Kirk Saduski:
Yeah. He didn't even have to go back to base. He could have stayed in London.

Callum Turner:
He could have stayed in London. And he rings up and he says, "I'm leaving. I don't care what you say." He just abandoned the structure that kept him safe. He abandoned his routines, because he thought his friend had died and he wanted to go and get revenge. That brotherhood is truly a special thing. And Cleven, up until he died, talked about Egan. And there's that anecdote. He was his best man at his wedding. Right? It said something like, "It should have been me and you getting married," or something like that. And they just loved each other. And-

Kirk Saduski:
You got to meet Egan's daughters last night.

Callum Turner:
That's right. Yeah.

Kirk Saduski:
Can you tell us about that?

Callum Turner:
It makes everything so much more special. That's why we're doing this. We're telling the legacy of these people that saved our world. And to meet the daughters of someone that I feel like I know on such a deep level really touched me and touched my heart. And they gave me this really beautiful photo of their dad that I'd never seen before. I was like, "I've never seen this photo before. How have I not seen this photo before?" And it's him, maybe he's 38, 39 back in America, and he's in a plane. He's got this boy racer helmet on, and he's obviously having a good time. So, that's probably why I didn't see it, because he was older. And not just them two, but we had four people at the premiere who served in the 100. And that's also a special thing. This is a legacy. This is an honor. This is one of the most important things I'll ever be a part of, because of what those guys did and those girls did for us. And I really, really want to just make that point, that without them we wouldn't be here.

Kirk Saduski:
Nate, after Rosie was shot down the second time, and he's rescued by the Russians and he's eventually being sent back to England, on his way there ... And I've seen Rosie's interviews and he said several times he encountered what he termed "a camp." We see it in the show. It's one of the most important scenes in the show, and it's in the final episode, because it supplies one of the reasons why these guys had to do what they had to do. Talk about that scene and how you prepared for it, what impact it had on you.

Nate Mann:
I knew how essential that scene was. I remember when I first got cast in the series, I was on the phone with my Aunt Ceile. She was talking about my great grandfather. He came over from Hungary when he was just a teenager, and he never saw most of his family ever again after that. They were left in Hungary, they were Jewish. And he went back years later to the town that he grew up in and they still didn't want him there. Mind-boggling.
But, at the time, for Rosie, in the experience you're talking about of going walking into this camp, there was still not a full appreciation of the scale of this devastation, especially for someone who'd been a soldier and confined to the life of being in the air all the time. And for him to see it firsthand, it's not surprise, it's shock. And the moment in episode nine where he says, "There's more of these." He can't comprehend this. And that him coming to terms with the scale of this evil, I think connects so, so much to his sense of duty and responsibility. And, of course, I imagine it stuck with him for the rest of his life.

Kirk Saduski:
Well, yeah. And we'll get to that because what people have to understand is that really, we now know the Holocaust. We know the Shoah, but it wasn't known as such at the time. In fact, the word genocide was just being coined. And so, this really was a revelation to the men on the ground. Obviously, there had been suspicions and knowledge of what the Nazis were doing to the Jews of Europe, but not the scale of it, not the the utter barbarity of it. And we did a little bit of research and the camp that we portray as Obikovo was a real labor camp in Poland. And what Rosie runs into is what's left, because the German basically forced marched ... Anyone who was capable of leaving, they forced out and just left, just executed them and that's what Rosie runs into.
One of the things ... And Tom mentioned at the other night at the premiere and he's been talking about this a lot lately. I was with him in New Orleans about a month ago when he was given an award by the Medal of Honor society. And he talked about the stasis of the world and the people in the world during the war, let's say from 1939 to 1945. No one could really get on with their life until you knew somehow the outcome of the war, win or lose. Certainly, that's the case with Rosie, because when Pearl Harbor is attacked, he'd just started a new career in the law.

Nate Mann:
That's right.

Kirk Saduski:
So, talk about that. And he puts it all on hold. Stays again, putting his life on hold. Comes home. And it's still even after the war, it's after VE and VJ day. He still goes back and puts his life on hold and goes back. And tell us where he went and why he went there.

Nate Mann:
That's really one of the most extraordinary things about him for me, is he ends up going to Nuremberg. I believe he had to get on the phone with a general and say, "Get me over there. I want to get over there.

Kirk Saduski:
He fought to get over there.

Nate Mann:
Yeah. And of course, because everyone knew who Rosie was at that point, he was the legend in the Army Air Force. And he said, "How can I help this prosecution team? I want to look these men in the eyes and I want to make sure that I'm part of taking care of this." He happens on that trip to meet his wife who's also part of the prosecution team. They got on a boat, as I understand it. And they meet one another and by the end of it, they're engaged by the time they get to Nuremberg.

Kirk Saduski:
And were married in Nuremberg by the mayor of Nuremberg.

Nate Mann:
Unbelievable. And then years before that, of course, joining the war. One of the things that stands out to me the most about that time was, it wasn't just him. There was this immense national collective response. I remember I was here in Los Angeles one day and I was learning about the world and the time in this. And I was stuck in traffic obviously. And I was looking around me and all of the cars, hundreds of cars right in front and behind me. And I was thinking it would've been like if there was a person in every one of these cars who said, "I'm going to sign up." He talked about being in Brooklyn and all his friends saying, "Oh, did you put ... ", "Did you get your ... ", "Are you going-

Kirk Saduski:
"Which service are you going into? Are you going into the service? Which service are you going into?"

Nate Mann:
Exactly. "Which service are you going into?" And he was very strategic about the Air Force. At the time aerial warfare was still in its nascent stages. But, he looked at it and he said, "I think this is a very efficient way for us to fight." Little did they know what they were getting into.

Kirk Saduski:
Anthony, Harry and Rosie became very good friends for the rest of their lives, and they became friends over there. And you develop, because once the core relationship at the beginning of the series is Cleven and Egan, obviously. And towards the end of this series, the relationship between Macon and Jefferson becomes very important. But, also the relationship between Crosby and Rosenthal. And they did in real life, and Harry writes about it. Why do you think they became so close?

Anthony Boyle:
Rosie, I think in the overall scope, he is the true hero of the piece. That guy was incredible, going to Nuremberg, putting people on trial. That guy, he's a hero. And I think Crosby saw something in him, and I think Rosie saw something in Crosby, that these are two heroic men. And also when Nate and I discussed when we were filming, that most of my friendships are based on humor. I think most people's friendships are based on, does this person make me laugh? Do I enjoy their company? So, I said to Nate, I was like, "Let's not get bogged down that we're playing war heroes, because these lads don't see themselves as heroes. We're just fellas." Let's try and have a bit of light and try and make each other laugh when we can. If there's ever a little moment in the scene where we can just put a bit of levity into it, let's do it, because that's what all my friendships are like. It's all his friendships are like. Let's try and make it as real as possible.

Kirk Saduski:
That being said, one of the best scenes in the entire series, when you and Rosie have your conversation in episode nine about, where Crosby says something about reading Nietzsche in college. And if you look into the face of a monster, be careful that you don't become a monster. And talking about that conversation, because again it's key. It was one of those scenes where ... One of the challenges in doing a show like this is you don't want to be didactic. You don't say, "Oh, we pounded the good cause." You can't really do that, but you do have to suggest it. And that was one of the scenes where we were able to suggest it, because of the way Rosie ... What Rosie had seen in Poland and came back. And his then discussion with Harry. Talk about that a bit.

Anthony Boyle:
Yeah. Man, I was really happy with that scene. I'd said that Nietzsche quote to John and was trying to work it in-

Kirk Saduski:
John Orloff?

Anthony Boyle:
Orloff, the writer. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good scene, because there's a couple of things happening. I think when you're faced with your own mortality, you think about the grand scope of your life, and I think when there's a new baby coming into the world, you start to think about your own morality and you start to think about death and life. And he's just got this news he's about to have a child, and I think he's going, "What world is this child going to come into to? Am I the right man to raise a child? I've murdered people. I've dropped bombs on people. I'm responsible for the death of so many people. Am I a monster? Will the sins of the father, be visited upon the child? Is a child going to be a monster?" All these different things are happening in his head. And Rosie tells him that, "No. We're not the monsters. We fight the monsters." I think it's a beautifully written scene.

Kirk Saduski:
It's interesting. I just realized this morning. I'm thinking about talking to you and I realized that Harry Crosby, as you said, it turns out to be one of the best navigators in the Eighth Air Force, but Harry Crosby through your voice is also a navigator of our story, because of the voiceover that you provide throughout the entire story, from episode one through nine. That's a real responsibility, Tony. And again, Harry Crosby is our navigator through the entire series., and he actually gets us to our final destination, which is, you have the last lines in the entire show.

Anthony Boyle:
On occasion, the world must confront itself, answer what we are with who we are. I was going home. I just wish more of us were.

Kirk Saduski:
One of the main themes of the show is that the world was confronted with this, "We did this to ourselves, so what are we going to do about it?"

Anthony Boyle:
That's such a beautiful line, man. I'm so happy you got that. I'm so happy you put that in.

Kirk Saduski:
Do you think that's a good summation of what the show is?

Anthony Boyle:
Yeah. I do. It's like these people didn't want to go to war. These people weren't your traditional soldier. I played a couple of soldiers and a lot of the lads who I've met said to me when they were growing up, they wanted to be Rambo, when they grew up, they wanted to be Terminator, they wanted to be at the tip of the spear. They wanted to be at the tip of the bayonet. And that wasn't like these guys. These guys in World War II, they had to go and fight evil. These were teachers, these were doctors, these were Joe Blogs, the butcher. These were just random men that had to answer this call to stamp out evil. I think it's a beautiful quote. I think it sums up the series in a really succinct, beautiful way.

Kirk Saduski:
Don Miller and I spoke earlier with Masters of the Air, executive producer Tom Hanks. This is the final part of that discussion. We've been fascinated ... You certainly have been fascinated and have talked about so much, is that how do you do bomb Regensburg? Hold the line at Guadalcanal? Fight on the dike in Holland, and then come home and sell insurance in 1955?

Tom Hanks:
This is the great Shakespearian aspect of it for me. Sooner or later, you're dealing with Odysseus walking so far inland until he holds up an oar and people say, "What is that?", so he never has to go to see again. Look, I'm no psychologist, but there is a reason that this generation essentially clammed up until much later on. They talked amongst themselves, but there's that ... Steven Ambrose said that there were two phrases that everybody used all the time during the ... One was, "Hey, don't you know there's a war on?" You could not complain about lack of butter, not enough gas. The light's gone. "Hey, man! Hey, buddy? Don't you know there's a war on?" And the other one was, "Hey, we're all in this together." That is the great democratization, if I could say, of what World War II is, not just to the winners, but I think also to the losers as well. We all sacrificed, and after that it's all just relative. Did you sacrifice more than I sacrifice? Everybody was part of something that they share the stasis of that time. If I'm using stasis properly.

Kirk Saduski:
I think, and I want you to follow up, Don, but I want ... Tell me what you guys, because I'm really interested in what you two think. We talk about World War II as being the largest war in all time. Well, that's obvious. I would suggest it's the largest event in world history, in terms of no part of the globe was unaffected and no amount of people, whether you do it proportionally or in raw numbers was affected by one defined event, 19 ... Whether it's '36 or '39 to '45, as World War II. Would you agree with that?

Tom Hanks:
Can I just say one thing? If you take a map of the entire planet Earth at the absolute height of the war on both fronts, in Europe and Japan, and you just color with red, the territory that has been enslaved, not just conquered, but the people there have been enslaved, by either the Nazi Germany or the Japanese Empire. And then you add to it in a slightly different color red the areas that they wanted to enslave and had not yet been able to do, it is most of the planet Earth. All right? That's how big this event was, that came out of the minds of a handful, a handful of people. So, yeah. The Black plague doesn't even carry that-

Kirk Saduski:
Even proportionally, it does not-

Tom Hanks:
... kind of global reach.

Donald Miller:
I think that's what gives Masters of the Air some additional layer and nuance, because these guys from England knew the state of the war. They knew where the allies were. They knew who was winning and losing, whereas Tom's Marine in the Pacific doesn't.

Kirk Saduski:
I think one of the most gratifying things about Masters of the air is that now we've seen what happens to many of our main characters. And whether it's Cleven, Egan, Crosby, Jefferson, Macon, Rosenthal certainly, they all seem to have gone on, with the exception of, unfortunately, John Egan dying too young from a heart attack when he was in his forties. But, they all went on to lead great lives. A lot of them in education, but they all led successful, wonderful, productive lives. And I think in some ways it's one of the most heartening things.

Tom Hanks:
The question I ask of all those guys of their great histories is, how long did it take them? Was it an equal number of days of stasis from the combat that they experienced from whenever they enlisted to 1945? Let's look at those years of 1946, '47, '48, '49, '50. Look at the profound changes that were going along economically, technologically, societally. TV did not exist prior to 1945, and by 1949 there was live broadcast.
So, I would love to go back over and get the same sort of detailed report psychologically, like you were talking about, that were there at Thorpe Abbots about what was going through their heads. How did they sleep? How did they rest? What nightmares or dreams or fantasies or lapses of conversation ... ? How long did they have to go on before they began to fade? And what replaced them instead was, "I have to get up again today and provide for a family or my future," or what have you. But, I am just as intrigued as what the battle inside any individual psyche to get past. Because don't tell me Gale Cleven didn't wake up sometime wondering what was wrong with engine number three.

Kirk Saduski:
I think in terms of going back to Rosie, he said that his war ended for him when he was at Nuremberg, and he could look the Goering and Keitel and some of those guys in the eye and know that they were in the docket. And that was when his war ended.

Tom Hanks:
There's the greatest line, and I think what is the greatest either war or anti-war movie exists, which is The Best Years Of Our Lives, is when Dana Andrews comes down out of that junked B-17 that's going to be turned into scrap. And the guy says, "What are you doing up there?" "Oh, I used to fly one of these things." And the guy says, "Oh, yeah? Well, when you guys were up there, I was down in the tanks." And Dana Andrews says, "Hey, I'd love to hear about your war stories, pal," and that is 19 46 in a nutshell, as far as I'm concerned.

Donald Miller:
Precisely. Paul Fussell, one of the great writers of World War II, said, "If we could only transfer that kind of attitude that you saw in combat to peacetime, universally, we'd have a great society. We'd have a great society," because people didn't care about money. They shared everything. They'd risk their lives for each other. They'd write letters for each other.

Tom Hanks:
They'd stand in line in order and wait their turn.

Donald Miller:
Exactly. And wait. Yeah. He said, "If we had been able to carry that over somehow.

Tom Hanks:
I think this is one of the things, the other reason that we do this, is that it is a primer for behavior today. We do not celebrate the nostalgia of 60 years ago, 80 years ago. We actually, I think, magnify, bring a type of focus in on, this is all about individual choices that we still make. Believe it or not, there is a right thing to do that still exists right now. And sometimes it's cutting somebody some slack. Sometimes it's waiting your turn. Sometimes it's paying your fair share.
And if we had this type of, "we're all in this together, my friend. Don't you realize that there's a struggle going on and we're all part of it?" That's another reason why I think his writing, Don's writing, speaks to me in such a big way. And that we keep coming back and do it, because no more than any other movie, or any other story, be it West Side Story or something else from some of the air, we're talking about the decisions that a bunch of 19-year-olds made guys fresh out of high school, somewhere before they started the rest of their lives. They took time out, to what? To do the right thing. This is why we still make things like Masters of the Air.

Kirk Saduski:
As we conclude this podcast series, Don Miller and I want to thank you for joining us each week and for watching Masters of the Air. No need here to repeat the central concern of Masters of the Air. How did those men keep getting back into those planes? But then again, where did all the soldiers and marines find it within themselves to climb out of all those Higgins boats? How did merchant Marine sailors brave each U-boat, menaced mile? How did nurses remain upright for as many as 18 hours, tending to grievously wounded men? And how did mothers and fathers hold their breath day after week, after month after year, until it was all over? I suspect most would've said, "It was my job," and indeed it was. Thank God they and so many others around the world were up to the task.
This podcast is produced by the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. Special thanks to the museum's production team, Bert Hidalgo, Amy Ngo and the indispensable Meredith Richards. We would also like to thank my colleagues at Playtone for all of the help they provided. We would also like to thank the teams at Herzog & Company and the Formosa Group. A special thanks to the teams at Apple TV Plus. Again, we could not have done this without them. Masters of the Air is an Apple original series from executive producers Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman. As we conclude this podcast series. Thank you for joining us each week and for watching Masters of the Air.