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Jeremy Collins

Welcome to our latest episode of World War II On Topic. I'm Jeremy Collins, the Director of Conferences and Symposia at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. On June 2nd 2020, we had a round table discussion on the significance of D-Day and its legacy. We are proud to bring you that presentation today. Led by Dawn Hammatt, Director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, the round table featured historians, Dr. Allyson Stanton, an instructor at Gogebic Community College. Dr. Benjamin Schneider, an instructor at George Mason University and Dr. Tyler Bamford, the National World War II Museum's Inaugural Sherry and Alan Leventhal Research Fellow.

Dawn Hammatt

I am so pleased to be here with you today. I'm coming to you from beautiful Abilene, Kansas, the hometown of Dwight Eisenhower, and I have some wonderful scholars with me today. We're going to be discussing the significance and the legacy of D-Day, especially with regards to a new generation. So I'd like to introduce our speakers and have them actually introduce themselves so you can see them. First, we have Dr. Tyler Bamford. Dr. Bamford, tell us about yourself.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Thanks so much, Dawn. Hello everyone and thanks for joining us today. As Dawn said, I'm Dr. Tyler Bamford and I am the Sherry and Allen Leventhal Research Fellow here at the National World War II Museum. I got my PhD from Temple University in 2019, and my area of research focuses on American and British Military Relations, Before and During the Second World War.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you, Dr. Bamford. And we also have with us, Dr. Allyson Stanton. Dr. Stanton, tell us about yourself.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

Hi. I'm currently an instructor at Gogebic Community College in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And I got my PhD from Florida State University in 2019 as well. And I study Interservice Rivalry in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Dawn Hammatt

Wow. And finally, on our panel is Dr. Benjamin Schneider. Dr. Schneider, tell us about yourself please.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Morning everybody. My name is Benjamin Schneider. I'm an instructor at George Mason University. I've held fellowships at the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and The US Army Center of Military History. I got my PhD in 2019 and my research focuses on war crimes and military justice in the US Army.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you very much. So I think it's really important if we can conceptualize our conversation before we hop right in. So Tyler, perhaps you can tell us about D-day, sort of put it into context for us.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Absolutely. So D-Day as we know it today and as we're referring to it in our conversation refers to the Allied Invasion of Normandy on June 6th 1944. So the invasion of Normandy, France. The invasion force took off from England, included an airborne drop that took place in the early morning hours of June 6th, by three airborne divisions, the US 101st, US 82nd Airborne, and the British 6th Airborne, as well as a small contingent of Canadian Paratroopers as well. And then the following morning, a beach landing took place on Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches as they were codenamed. And so this is between the Cherburg Peninsula and Pas de Calais. Those are regions in France.

So this invasion was the largest allied invasion of World War II. It was an amphibious invasion as well as an airborne invasion. It involved a total of nearly 175,000 troops, and it basically gave the allies a foothold into Continental Europe. Whereas, previously they had liberated North Africa, they had liberated Sicily and they had invaded Italy, but they had not yet reached Rome, which they actually did reach on June 5th, so the day right before this. So as the allies had battled up through all these other parts of Europe, they had not yet really faced the bulk of German Forces. And so this really started the saga to liberate Western Europe and then to invade Germany, started on June 6th.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you. So how does D-day fit in with the larger war effort? What role does D-Day play in the entire war? Dr. Stanton, maybe you can answer that for us.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

Okay. Well, I think when we're talking about the larger picture of the war, it's really important to remember first off that, this is the Western Allies fighting the Germans and the Soviets have been doing so for a really long time already on the Eastern front and in very, very massive numbers. So we talk about American casualties on D-Day being around 2,500 deaths, I believe on the day itself. But if you look at, for example, Stalingrad, which obviously is we're talking a much longer period of time, but casualties there run 850,000 for German Forces, 750,000 for Soviet Forces, on top of millions of non-combatant deaths. And so the Soviets have already started pushing the Germans back.

And so think it's really important to remember that D-Day is happening in a context of a much larger war. And like Tyler said, if you look at kind of the timeline of World War II, you have Monique Cassino, the outbreak of the ... What is it, the Gustav Line just about a month before this in Italy, they start to break out of Anzio in that same month as well. And then just to about a week later in the Pacific, we have a very large campaign in the Mariana Islands. They land on Saipan on June 15th, and that's incredibly important because Tinian the Island, next to Saipan is going to be the base for B-29s that are going to drop all of the bombs on Japan, including the atomic bombs in August.

So all of these things are going on kind of concurrently at the same time. And so it's kind of important to remember that June 6th is a very important day definitely, but it's important to remember it in the scheme of the larger war in general.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

And D-Day really is late in the war. It's really late in the game. Most of the killing and dying in World War II happens in the last 18 months of the war, but so many of the allies and amphibious invasions take place in the Pacific and in Europe prior to D-Day.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you. So as we have new scholars doing research in the archives, much like the Eisenhower Presidential Library and new documents are, pardon me, available for research, can you tell us Dr. Schneider, what was the aftermath of the invasion? What have we learned since the actual event occurred?

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

So D-Day itself actually is only really a very minor part of the fighting. You can see the dotted red lines are the initial sort of objectives for the D-Day landings. The goal of British Forces is to take Caen on day one. They do not come anywhere near that. And the United States is trying to push out and link up Utah and Omaha Beaches. But none of that is really complete on D-Day itself. It takes another two months of fighting until the end of July, for the beach heads to not only link up for Caen to fall, but for US and British Forces to break through the German lines and to begin in earnest the actual liberation of France.

And while D-Day itself sees fierce fighting only in the airborne landings and at Omaha beach, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword for the most part, see relatively successful landings without stiff opposition, the fighting in Normandy in June and July is some of the worst of the entire war. American divisions will suffer enormously stiff casualties in their Infantry Divisions in particularly their Rifle Companies. Something like 55% of American soldiers who land on D-Day will be killed, wounded or captured by the end of July. Whereas 75% of Rifle Company Officers and Infantry Division Officers will be killed, wounded or captured by the end of that period.

It is the Bocage fighting. We've got a nice picture of it here. These big thick hedgerows, that form perfect positions for German infantry and armor to hide in that delays the invasion so successfully for those first two months, before the breakout is managed. And it is really the increasing prowess of American and British and Canadian Forces and sort of learning on the ground, how to fight in this terrain. And also of course, the overwhelming air superiority on the part of the allied powers of the Luftwaffe that allows for the eventual breakout.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

I think just…

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Oh, sorry.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Sorry. Good ahead Ben.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Just the last point. Allyson has mentioned sort of how much more vicious the fighting around Stalingrad and on the Eastern Front has been for much of the war. I think it's important to note that while in general, the Western Theater sees less intense fighting than the Eastern Front, scholars have increasingly come to the opinion that the two months that are the Normandy breakout and the immediate aftermath of D-Day, sees fighting as vicious and as intense as just about anything that's seen on the Eastern Front.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

And just to add to what Dr. Schneider was saying. I think that one of the things that has happened over the last 50 years that historians have made use of, is the fact that we have more oral histories available to us, and we have more personal letters and diaries in archives, like the Eisenhower Center, the Eisenhower Presidential Library, that the first historians writing about D-Day, they didn't have access to. It was harder to find these veterans to interview them in the 1950s and '60s. And a lot of them didn't want to talk about their experiences. So now, a lot of what Dr. Schneider was saying is the result of the interviews with airborne veterans and with surviving veterans of the American First Division, Fourth Division that landed at D-Day.

Dawn Hammatt

So the epic saga of D-Day really was incredibly popular even at the time, but it's a symbol. It's a symbol of our military prowess. It's a symbol of these men and these women who participated in this landing. How did it happen? How did it become such a symbol for us?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

I think, I'll take that a stab at that one. D-Day, as I was reading recently, D-Day is catchy, the term itself. If this has been D-Week or D-Hour or something like that, it really wouldn't have caught on as much. But I think that in addition to that, D-Day, it was longingly anticipated, more so than other invasions. Prior to this, it was never really known where the Allies would land and how they would strike. But when it comes to invading Northern France, it's known that the Allies will have to do it eventually. And so the Germans knew this as well, so they were expecting.

This is a massive set piece battle in which the Allies got to choose the place and time, but the Germans also could expect it. They were waiting for them. This battle put on display all of the best attributes that the Allies like to pry themselves in, technological superiority. The Allies actually built artificial harbors and towed them with them to France to use. The audacity of a nighttime airborne assault. And you see that photo on the right there is Dwight Eisenhower talking to paratroopers before the D-Day landings.

So there's a lot of sheer courage that goes into this landing. The fact that it is successful, which was very much endowed at the time, I think, the drama of it, the fact that it's a one ... We think of D-Day as a one day action. Well, in popular memory, as Dr. Schneider said however, that's not nearly the case. This battle goes on for months till July, but we can call it a success because the Allies were successful in their lodgement. British, Canadian and American Forces, they were in France to stay.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

I think, kind of going along with that Tyler, it's also especially for Americans and well I guess, really the Western Allies in general, it's kind of our day, because what comes after this is lots of the intense fighting through all the coast of France. I mean, it takes until the end of August to get to Paris. And in the end, the Soviets are the ones who end up taking Berlin. So how many Americans remember DE-Day or even BJ-Day for that matter? Like this is our time, really.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

You're so right Allyson. And even before the war ends, Eisenhower declares June 6th 1945, which is right after the war in Europe ends, to be a holiday. And one soldier wrote to his family, he's like, "We need another holiday in Europe like we need a hole in the head, but this is what Eisenhower says." And rightly so, that it was right to make a big fuss about this event because a lot of other events in World War II, they're not as clean cut. Pearl Harbor is a disaster for the United States. We remember that as what brought us into the war, but it's not a triumphant moment.

The Battle of the Bulge is the biggest battle that America fights during World War II, but really, it starts as a disastrous defeat. And then you have victory in Europe in May, but the war still goes on and tens of thousands more Americans die after that. So the way the D-Day becomes ingrained in our memory really starts even before the war ends. And then in the immediate afterward period, in the 1950s, it's still commemorated in local newspapers, local news outlets, I think a lot more than some other events.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I think that has something in part to do with the ... I don't want to say the cleanness of the narrative, because I don't think that's quite right, but the drama of it, the decision of it. The fact that after July 1944 and the breakout, there isn't really any question left as to what's going to happen in the war, right? The last major question in 1944 is, will the Western Allies successfully land in Fortress Europe and help bring the water swift to close and by the end of July, that question has been answered.

And so, the Battle of the Bulge, the invasion of Germany are very much, I think, more foregone conclusions and are also in some ways more complicated than sort of the clean liberation narrative that you get in France, right. You're liberating occupied France from Nazi tyranny and things get more complicated as you move East towards Germany and you start dealing with the problems of hostile occupation and some of the frictions that…

Dawn Hammatt

Do you think any of the technological innovations that they had to have come up with to do this, the invasion and the breakout, do you think any of those innovations helped sort of write the narrative as well?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

I would say that they do, and there's a part of your exhibit at your library Dawn shows this too. The Allies employed a lot of different deceptions during D-Day that were very successful. They dropped fake paratroopers, that they looked like about two feet tall dolls on some parts of Normandy, to try and confuse the Germans and make them think that their forces were bigger than they were. They created a whole false fake army led by general George Patton to make the Germans think that the D-Day landings were really just a side show, that they were just a diversion to ... And it successfully prevented the Germans from moving tens of thousands of soldiers into Normandy for months.

Dawn Hammatt

And what about the American sentiment or frankly, the Western sentiment of anti-Communism at that time and then also in the '50s? How did the communist role play into this?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Well, I think for the communist narrative, it's kind of interesting. This changes a lot during the war and then after the war. During the war, the Communists, they wanted the Allies to land in Western Europe because they were ... Sorry, the Soviet Union, they wanted the Allies to land in Normandy. Stalin had been pushing for this since 1942. And he wanted this because he wasn't sure that his forces could successfully defeat all of German Forces. And if the Allies weren't going to land in France, then he was going to have to face an even bigger German Army than he already was. And the Soviets were already facing the bulk of German Forces.

And now, once the Allies land in Normandy, he's grateful finally. It complicates the narrative because after the war obviously, the Soviets and the Americans developed great animosity towards one another and distrust. And so I think, D-Day plays into that narrative too in that, we can look at D-Day as a triumphant moment, where we can conveniently or historians did conveniently brush aside the Soviet contribution in books about D-Day in the first 30, 40 years after the event.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I think too, that there is something to be said for the fact that right, that the liberation of France, that the landings at D-Day are in some ways more easily adapted into a heroic myth or a heroic narrative than the Soviet War effort, right. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin is a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, right. And a VD units are actively following red army units, right? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is fighting on the Eastern Front when he writes a critical letter of Stalin and is sent to the Gulag and is tortured for weeks, right.

There's the problem of Katyn and Soviet complicity and actions in Poland, right. The problems of the liberation of Warsaw, who Soviet forces pause deliberately to allow the Germans to crush the Warsaw uprising, so that they won't have to then deal with Polish intellectuals and nationalists, once they take over Poland. And the problem of the mass rape of German women that accompanies the Red Army's advance to Berlin. The Soviet red army does an enormous amount to secure military victory for the Allies in the course of the Second World War. They do the majority of the fighting and the dying, but it's not easy to cleanly memorialize or mythologize the war that the Red Army was fighting or what they were fighting for.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

I was just going to say, I think part of this is also Roosevelt's lifetime, because Franklin Roosevelt's still alive in 1944, and he's very good at making Stalin a little bit safer, or Uncle Joe, right. Truman doesn't have Roosevelt's, I don't know, panache. He doesn't get along with Stalin at all. Which I mean, I guess I don't really blame him. Stalin is a horrible person. And so I think Roosevelt dying in April of '45 helps that change from more ... More better, from better relations with the Soviet Union in '44 to they're going to really start getting worse in '45, as things are ending.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

I think you're really right to bring up politics, because we don't think about that much when a lot of these books are written about the military history of World War II, they kind of overlooked the fact that 1944 was an election year. If the Allies hadn't landed in Normandy, would Roosevelt have been reelected? It was already the case in 1942, that Roosevelt was dying to have the Allies land in North Africa before the November elections, which they just barely did because the democratic party lost a lot of seats in the house and the Senate, between when Roosevelt was elected in 1932, and then all the way up through the end of his tenure in office.

And the other thing that I just wanted to bring up, which is mostly on point is the information war. During World War II, sometimes the American Press wouldn't be able to release information about the Normandy landings until the German Press had released it. So they were like, "Okay, we know the Germans know this. Now we can do it." And they sometimes did take their news bulletins right from that. And there were things of aspects of the Normandy landings which weren't fully known and probably still aren't fully known, until many decades after the war.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you. So, Dr. Stanton, perhaps you can tell us, why do you think this invasion, the D-Day invasion took on this mythic lore and other events in World War II did not? What was the difference?

Dr. Allyson Stanton

I think we've hit on this quite a bit already with the whole Soviets taking Berlin. Like we said, we have heroes here. When you were talking about heroes, I thought about Theodore Roosevelt Jr. who didn't need to land. Am I correct? Is he the one with the sword? Is that him?

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

No, I think he's got a cane. I think, he goes up with his walking stick on the beaches. Is that it?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

I know there were some British officers who definitely landed with swords.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Yes.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

And bagpipes for sure, Scottish.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

Right. But I mean, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. gets the medal of honor, I believe on D-Day for making a landing and numerous trips that he didn't have to make as ... Was he a Brigadier General or something?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Yes.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

Right. So we have legit heroes and honestly, I think we're going to come back to this later, but I re-watched Saving Private Ryan the other day. And honestly watching that opening sequence, it's just like, "How did people survive this? How did we land here? How were we successful?" So I mean, it's legitimately a heroic effort there. And I was thinking also as well of kind of the complications of the end of the war, when you think of the end of the war in the Pacific, you have the controversy over the atomic bombs. And so, like you were saying earlier Tyler, I think D-Day is very clean and safe in a way that a lot of other aspects of the war are not.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

And I think the American public has made it so. I mean, the fighting in Normandy was a lot more horrific than we like to remember it. There were atrocities committed on both sides. Germans when they captured American Paratroopers would sometimes light Thermite Grenades in their pockets and burned them to death. But as you were talking Allyson, I was thinking, in the Pacific, if the United States had invaded Japan, it would've been the largest invasion of the war. Would that have ever overshadowed Normandy? And I don't think it would because a lot of American history is more Eurocentric.

We focus a lot more on Europe, just in general than we do on Asia, even though some of the largest casualties took place during World War II in China. And China, as an Allies kind of overlooked, the fighting between the United States and Japan is viewed as so barbaric and a lot of veterans for that reasons, because of the horrificness of it, don't talk about that theater as much. And I think that, that also kind of lends itself to make D-Day in Normandy a much more poignant and a much more publicized event.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I think I'm going to differ here probably in part, because I deal specifically with this in my researches. I don't know the extent to which it's the brutality of the fighting in the Pacific that changes the narrative, right. Fighting in the Pacific is brutal often because it's close in and there's not a lot of room for taking prisoners on small islands or with beachheads, but you see an enormous amount of that in Normandy, right. No one's managed to find it, but basically any paratrooper account that you read will say that General Gavin or Colonel so and so issued orders, that there were to be no prisoners taken on the night of June 5th. That it was going to be knives and grenades, and that no one was going to POW Camps as a result of this action. And there are similar rumors of orders being given out for the beach landings, because again, on D-Day, there's nowhere to send them when you're clearing Omaha Beach.

I think instead it has more to do with who is being fought, right. The Japanese are a clear opponent as a result of Pearl Harbor, but the war that's being fought over there is much more conventional in terms of being about great power politics, regional conflicts, who controls market accessing China, and the war against Nazi-ism is the war against Nazi-ism right? That these are guys who wear black leather and put skulls on their caps and incinerate people in ovens. And I think that, if you're looking for a war that has clear good guys and clear bad guys, it's pretty hard to find one that's cleaner cut than the Americans and the British go fight the guys running Auschwitz.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

And to add to that, I think Eisenhower plays a lot of a huge role in this. The fact that Eisenhower later becomes president and D-Day really makes Eisenhower. It could have broken his image and his reputation too, but having pulled off the command of the largest amphibious invasion of World War II, I think that really makes him man. He's the last general who's elected president. I think that that probably has a large role. And the fact that in the Pacific, you have a lot of different commanders commanding invasions that are spread out all over the place, you do have invasions that are multinational in New Zealand, on Okinawa. There's British and American Forces fighting together. But D-Day is also a really useful analogy for making the case for America's post-war role in the world as the leader of the multinational coalition of freedom loving nations.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you. So this is the 76th anniversary of D-Day. Dr. Bamford, perhaps you could tell us how we've commemorated this event through these years.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

So D-Day, I think has really achieved prominence in history of World War II in the last 76 years, as one of these penultimate events as we mentioned. It's been commemorated a lot, not only in Europe, through the American Battle Monuments Commission Cemeteries that were established in Normandy, which hold 10,000 American soldiers who were killed in action, but also through memorials in the United States, like in Bedford, Virginia, which lost the most soldiers of any one town on D-Day. And then finally, through the National D-Day Museum, which then became the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, D-Day has achieved this kind of predominance in our memory. It's also been a very useful tool politically for presidents who wanted to call for action, whether it's united action among the NATO Allies, but also in ways that might surprise you.

In 1984, when president Ronald Reagan stood on the cliffs of Pointe Du Hoc, where the United States Army Rangers on D-Day achieved a remarkable feat of scaling cliffs under fire. He gave a remarkable speech that encouraged the Soviet Union to reengage with the West, and this was in 1984, again, and to come back into the fold of allies. He said that the United States does not want war. And so at this site of the greatest Western Allies' victory of World War II, he was actually saying that D-Day should be a reminder that this was a united war effort and that the Soviets played such a great role in defeating fascism, Nazi-ism and militarism, that they should come back in the fold.

President George W. Bush did a somewhat similar thing in 2004, when he tried to repair relations with France over the controversy of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and to bolster America's alliance with its NATO Allies and Great Britain as well. On the 75th anniversary of D-Day, a massive paratrooper jumped over Normandy commemorated the event. Some of the participants were actually D-Day Veterans too, which was phenomenal. And you really just don't see this kind of commemoration for any other single event during World War II, and we can point to other memorials. The US Marine Corps Memorial in Washington, DC, that commemorates the flag raising Iwo Jima. A beautiful, phenomenal memorial, but finding another memorial of Iwo Jima would be probably pretty tricky.

Dawn Hammatt

We actually do something a little bit differently at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Kansas. We have a symphony event. We partner with the local symphony orchestra and we have a symphony concert. It lasts almost the whole day. We do patriotic music and we have Fort Riley, a military installation nearby. So the Big Red One participates with us as well. So it's a moment for us to thank our veterans as well. And we had over 50 World War II Veterans with us last year for our 75th anniversary.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

D1-Day really kind of achieves the same level of symbolism and dramatic climax at a war that Gettysburg does for the Civil War, I think. That's the only comparison that readily comes to mind. I don't even know if World War I has a similar battle like it, maybe the Meuse-Argonne. But even here in Pennsylvania, every June on the weekend closest to June 6th, there is World War II weekend in Reading, Pennsylvania, which is one of the largest events that commemorates World War II, and it's a massive airshow and veterans come and re-enacters. And so it's interesting and symbolic, I think that it takes place as close to June 6th as they can get it, every single year.

Dawn Hammatt

So, well this question is for everybody, but I wanted to explore the role of films in our collective memory. Who would like to start talking about films and our …

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I'll take a crack at it. This is one of my weirder sidelines. So I think the role of D-Day in film, at least in terms of American memory of the Second World War cannot be overstated. On here, you can see the movie posters for the two most prominent D-Day films, The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan. And the difference between the two is I think telling in many ways, both of sort of American cultural mores of how Americans have begun to reimagine what it means to fight a war. And if you watch The Longest Day, it is something, I think that for its time, certainly tries to play up the brutality of the conflict.

There is a scene where American paratroopers get tangled up on the roof of a Church while German soldiers below massacre them. There's a scene where an American soldier, a ranger at Pointe Du Hoc shoots a surrendering German with his hands up. The German comes out going, "[foreign language 00:34:18]. Please, please don't kill me." The ranger kills him and it's almost played as sort of a laugh fiend, which is a little weird in retrospect. But I think that the overall it's still very much a John Wayne era film. There's not much in the way of gore. The combat is all very clearly staged. It's an impressive production for its time, but it's very much like a 1950s, 1960s Hollywood movie.

Saving Private Ryan, I think, completely rewrites how the average person thinks about combat. The opening 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, you can see its impact in every war movie that's been made since. You can see it in video games, you can see it everywhere. The chaos, the destruction, the gore, the psychological trauma that is portrayed there is unlike anything that had come before, and in many ways, unlike anything that's come since.

Dawn Hammatt

Anyone else?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

I think we should also probably mention Band Of Brothers from 2001 too, as this portrayal of the airborne experience. And I think that that mini series did an excellent job of showing what it was like for paratroopers. Now, I think D-Day is once made for film in that it's this climactic event, but it's also really tough, and that's why we've really only seen it portrayed maybe three or four times in film, because of the scale. And now that Steven Spielberg has done D-Day, I doubt we'll see another one for another 10 years, if that, just because of the undertaking that it is.

I think The Longest Day did a really good job of showing the incredible scale of D-Day, because it kept jumping from all these different places, whether it's British Paratroopers, the US Paratroopers, US Soldiers on the beaches, British Soldiers on the beaches as well, in the way that Saving Private Ryan kind of just took it a little bit smaller, if you say you can characterize it that way, down to the experience of a couple, a small group of soldiers at D-Day. And I think these films are also products of their time, like you were saying Ben. Saving Private Ryan is very much a post Vietnam War film, in that it makes no attempt to make war seem glorious. It's not really a happy ending per se, except for one guy in the war. And that the violence, it's incredibly difficult to watch.

Someone, a cousin of mine actually just said that they were shown in that film in ninth grade and I was appalled really, that they were showed at such a young age. While at the same time, I guess being glad that at some point, students will see it, but also maybe not in high school. I probably wouldn't show it in high school.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

Well, whenever I think of that movie, the last time I went to the World War II Museum, I ran into a veteran sitting outside the doors and that's what we talked about. We talked about Saving Private Ryan and that opening sequence, and he said, that's probably as close as anything that he'd ever seen. It was just 10 times worse than that. You had to picture that and then make it 10 times worse, and that's what it was really like.

Dawn Hammatt

So I know that Dunkirk isn't about D-Day, but does the new film Dunkirk help us set up in our minds, the invasion? How does Dunkirk play into this lore?

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I don't know-

The extent to which, at least for Americans, Dunkirk has a big role. Dunkirk has of course an enormous sort of psychological place in the British and the French war effort and in, I think, their commemoration of the war. But I don't know that it really ... Until the film Dunkirk, I don't know that many Americans really had any sort of visceral associations with it.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

A lot of Americans were just so unaware during the war, of events that were going on overseas. Until the fall of France, no one was paying much attention. And even after that, when Ernie Pyle returned in 1940 from being over in England, he came back and he was on rest. He was resting up in Florida and he was very surprised that people were just at the beaches and they were kind of oblivious to it. America was still very isolated in thought not. We were not immune to what was happening in the rest of the world as we saw.

So I think that Dunkirk the movie, it does a good job again, showing the scale and the significance of that event, and I'm glad that there was a movie made of it. And we could all take up, as historians, we could dissect these movies and make small criticisms. But then again, we don't have to make the movies either.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

I was just thinking. This is a kind of a side note, but you mentioned Ernie Pyle. And I read something the other day about how D-Day for him was kind of an awakening. Whereas before D-Day, he'd been kind of like showing the lighter side of war, acknowledging the darker side, but making it lighter. But D-Day for him was like an awakening. And he wrote this really intense article about it afterwards, because he came on ... I think he landed the next day.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Yeah.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

And he saw the immense aftermath and destruction that D-Day brought. And so he really helped bring it home for a lot of people…

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Yeah, no you're absolutely right Allyson. It's funny. Ernie Pyle had won the Pulitzer Prize, I think, just two months before D-Day. He didn't want to go on the invasion because there were over 100 other correspondents who were going to be there. But then the Commander Omar Bradley, he said, "Why don't you come on my flagship, the Augusta?" And Ernie Pyle's like, "Oh well, I can't rightly turn down that invitation." So he goes. He doesn't go ashore the first day, like you said. And the pieces that he writes, really show ... Ernie Pyle is no stranger to the war at this point. He's been in Italy, he's been in north Africa and he hates the war, but it shows the fatigue that he's now enduring and the difficulty. His pieces in France are the same thing. And he actually goes home, goes back to the United States after being in France for a couple of weeks to recuperate again. He sees more of the war than anybody, but he is an older man. He's in his 40s at this point, and so the war takes a tough toll on his psyche.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

And unfortunately, he ends up dying during the battle of Okinawa. He's hit on Iejima right at the beginning of that campaign. So he gives his life to the war in all reality.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you. So when I moved to Abilene and started working here at the Eisenhower Presidential Library, it occurred to me that we have to share this story, interpret this story in a manner that reaches generations of people who don't have a public or a personal connection with the story. So Dr. Bamford, as the representative of the National World War II Museum, can you talk about how the museum attempts to interpret this story for your guests?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Yeah. So we, The National World War II Museum started as the National D-Day Museum. And so, a large part of our collection and especially our original exhibits focused exclusively on D-Day. And to this day, we still have a permanent exhibit about D-Day and a lot of our larger artifacts as represented in this slide, relate to D-Day. On the left, you see a C-47, that's a cargo plane that dropped paratroops over Normandy on D-Day. It's got the invasion stripes, which are very distinctive of that invasion. That plane actually was one of the planes that dropped paratroopers at D-Day. Below it, you see a Higgins Boat in the background there. That's the type of craft that landed American Soldiers on the beaches.

The whole point of the National World War II Museum, the reason it is in New Orleans now is because that they built the Higgins Boats in New Orleans. And as Eisenhower said, "It would've been really difficult to win this war without the Higgins Boat." It really made the invasion possible. One of the reasons it took so long to actually land American Soldiers in Northern France, was a shortage of landing boats. Some of the other artifacts that we have, the way we tell this story is always through a personal side, which I really appreciate. The flag on the top, right, was the flag that flew over The Augusta at D-Day, and it was actually appropriated. It was taken as a souvenir by a soldier, a sailor onboard The Augusta, and then a massive search was launched on the ship to find it, but luckily he got away with it and he brought it home and made its way into the museum.

One of the more poignant artifacts, I think that tells the cost of the invasion is a web belt with a number of First Aid Pouches on it. And what happened was, on Omaha Beach on D-Day, a medic, he was taking the First Aid Packs off of other soldiers who had been killed and they no longer needed it, so that he could save men who were still alive.

So I think that one of the things that we do is, we use our artifacts to show the human element, to grab the viewer emotionally, and then also to contextualize it by showing visually the size of the fleet, the size of the planes and the scale and the scope of how many men were involved in making this. And I think that having the museum on the site of a former factory that built things for it, shows that this was truly a national effort.

Now Dawn, I'll throw one back at you. At the Eisenhower Library, what are some of the ways that you portray this invasion?

Dawn Hammatt

Sure. So we actually just completed a full scale exhibit renovation. Our museum was built before President Eisenhower became the president, and it was dedicated to the service members that he served with. So we still have a great deal of our exhibit space dedicated to the war effort and frankly to Eisenhower's military career. The photo that you see here is the D-Day planning table. We do have some nebulous information about this particular table. We believe it came from South Suffolk house in England. Now, what we do know about it is that a very, very prominent donor to Eisenhower, a supporter of Eisenhower, found this in England at a …

Dr. Allyson Stanton

Oh no.

Dawn Hammatt

And had it shipped to England. Oh sorry, to Washington. So the donor sent it to Washington. We have the documents, the letters between Eisenhower and the donor and Eisenhower is saying, "Thank you very much for sending this to me. This is a great remembrance of a great event." And he had it installed in the White House for several weeks, with a little sign on it that said, "This was the D-Day planning table." And it made its way to his Presidential Library. We try to use this to interpret all of the people who sat around this table, the specialties that they brought to the table for planning, the agendas that they had with the planning of the operation. So this is one of our lovely pieces. We're very proud to be able to share that with our community.

Okay. So this is another section of our gallery. This is our D-Day Film. It's a brand new film that we just put together, and quite frankly, I think it's fabulous. I'm sorry, but I do. And beneath the film, you can see a model of the Mulberry Harbour. So this model is actually quite large. It was used to sort of show everyone what the concept for the Mulberry Harbour was. Churchill gave this model to President Roosevelt, who then of course, gave it to his Presidential Library. And then that Presidential Library transferred it to the Eisenhower Presidential Library. So we're really, really pleased to be able to use this as a great opportunity to explain some of the technological advancements that happened during the war.

And this is where you were leaving Ike's military career and moving on into his presidency. And throughout our exhibits, we decided that the best way to tell Eisenhower's story was with Eisenhower's words. We have enough written documents from him and audio clips of his words, that we were able to tell it with his voice. So this sign, this quote, "I hate war as only a soldier who lived it can." We felt was the best representation of setting him up for his presidency. These words encapsulate his administration and keeping us out of war during his presidency. So we decided that it was good to lean on Eisenhower's words to help the guests, to help our visitors understand what was happening.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

That's really incredible. And I think we do a lot of the same at the World War II Museum, because one of our main missions is to preserve the stories of the veterans who are still around. And so even to this day, we have dedicated staff who go around the country capturing oral histories. And of course, the majority of our early collection, especially oral histories related to soldiers who were at D-Day. So I think that using their own words, whether it was correspondence like Ernie Pyle or whether it was participants like Eisenhower, or down to the common soldier, many of whose names have been forgotten, bringing them to the forefront really helps show what an incredible effort this was.

Dawn Hammatt

I agree, and quite a commendable project for the National World War II Museum to have. To have that for future scholars, what an incredible resource.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

And I mean, your library as well, has some of the most crucial documents to understanding this event, including the piece of paper that Eisenhower wrote the night before the invasion, or was it the night before? Where he said, "If this invasion fails, this is all my responsibility." That document's so important, in fact, that a replica of it is on display at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. But I think that document really gives an idea of the caliber of man that Eisenhower was, and the fact that this was a group effort, but he understood that the responsibility rested with him.

Dawn Hammatt

I agree. And to have these archives available to the public, both at the New Orleans and here in Abilene, and of course, throughout the United States, with the National Archives. What a great resource for scholars and our public.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

And we could only encourage everyone to come see us as soon as we can.

Dawn Hammatt

Soon as your travel restrictions are lifted. So-

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I think.

Dawn Hammatt

Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I was just going to say, I think we've got about 10 minutes left. So do we maybe want to do one last question and get to some of the audience Q&A?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Absolutely. I can see audience questions rolling in. So maybe Dawn, do you want to do a final go around with everyone?

Dawn Hammatt

Sure. So how about some last words. Dr. Schneider, last words?

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I would say that, we're here today to talk about the memorialization, the commemoration of D-Day. And given my work, I tend to focus on some of the uglier and more unpleasant aspects of the war. But I want to say, I think there's value in a perhaps lightly mythologized version of D-Day. That I think people need to have ways to remember and ways to feel a connection to a broader national story. And I think that there are, as we've discussed today, a host of reasons why D-Day has become the potent symbol of the war that it has. And for people who are looking to find a way to think about and to sort of encapsulate the war against Nazi-ism in Europe, I think you could do a lot worse than D-Day as sort of your central focus.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you. Dr. Stanton, would you like to have any final words?

Dr. Allyson Stanton

Sure. I guess along those lines, all I can think of is, I think it's really important to remember all the D-Days that happened throughout the Pacific as well, because I do think they get forgotten a lot, but I don't disagree with your last statement. And I think that if the general public needs a way to keep World War II fresh and in their mind, then fine. Remember D-Day, because I think it is really important not to completely forget what we were fighting for and what we were fighting against.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you. Dr. Bamford.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

For me personally too, D-Day was one of the things, books about D-Day, movies about D-Day that got me interested in history and gave me a lifelong interest in military history and steered my career path. I think that as we look back on D-Day and as we try to get other people interested in history, it's a very useful tool and we should remember that this was a near run thing. The outcome of the war was never preordained, and that a lot of people took part in this. And a lot of whom are forgotten, including one African American Unit that landed on Omaha on D-Day, that is generally overlooked, but that the National World War II Museum has been trying to showcase its activities a lot recently too. There were Canadian and British and soldiers from several other nations and support units as well, and it's important to remember how difficult it is to get the soldiers of multiple nations to combine for a common goal. So it's really impressive.

Dawn Hammatt

Thank you. Did you want to work on the Q&A?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Absolutely. So we've got a lot of questions that have rolled in. We'll just do our best to get to them. And we can run a couple minutes over, because we really appreciate how much interest there has been in this topic.

So one of the first questions we got was from Colonel Hal Hostetler and he asked, "Could the Soviets have defeated the Germans without American and British and Canadian landings in Normandy or elsewhere in Western Europe?" So Ben, why don't you take a stab at that one?

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

The answer is yes. By 1944, the war is for all intents and purposes decided. The question by 1944 is not whether the Soviets are going to be able to take Berlin, but how long it's going to take and at what cost. The other major question of course to be answered is, what is the postwar European landscape going to look like? And again, we should remember that this is the Red Army under Joseph Stalin, and there is something to be said for a completely Red Europe in this situation. So no, the Soviet Union does not need American or British intervention to bring the war to a successful conclusion. By this point, it's more of a question of, what is the cost going to be and what is the outcome going to look like.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

I agree. I would only clarify that if the Western Allies, the threat of the Western Allies kept a lot of British, sorry, a lot of German Soldiers in the West. So, if the British and the Americans are out of the picture entirely, if they're not in the war, the Germans probably could have defeated the Russians. I would say that.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Yeah.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

That's my only ... It's a hypothetical and it's a near run thing either way.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Yeah.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

So Christina Whitley asked, "Was it called D-Day during World War II? Or did someone else coin that phrase after the war?" Allyson.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

So it's mine?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

Yeah. I was just going to say this one is relatively easy to answer. D-Day and H-Hour is just a designation for the time and the date that an operation is scheduled to start, before the time and date is either known or has been announced. And so there are many D-Days all throughout the war. Literally every time the soldier, the troops, not just soldiers, the troops are landing somewhere, it's D-Day. So D-Day on Saipan was June 15th. It just happened that for some reason, we know Operation Overlord and the Normandy Invasion by its initial designator of D-Day. So it's a phrase that's used over and over again. And I looked it up. It was actually first used South Ni'ihau in World War I in 1918 by the US Army. At least according to army records, that was its first use.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Oh, that's fascinating. So, let's see. Our next question, "How much worse might the landings at Normandy have been, had the deception operations in advance of D-Day not been as effective as they were?"

I think quite honestly, all of us could answer this one. I will say that I know that there were half a million German Soldiers still in Norway and Denmark at the end of the war, and there were far more than that and occupied countries. Otherwise, if the Germans had known exactly where the Allies were going to land, they could have probably brought to bear hundreds of thousands more soldiers.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I think another thing that's important to mention here is, one of the great advantages that the Allied Landing Forces have in going into D-Day is that, because the Germans don't know where they're going to land, the Panzer Reserve is stationed further back and further in land because Rundstedt wanted to make sure that he had an armored reserve able to strike at either the Port De Calais or at the Normandy Beaches, depending on where they were likely to land. And because they were so far back, Allied air power essentially destroy the Panzers before they were able to get into action. Or when Rommel wanted to do a short defense, to have the Panzer essentially just behind the beaches and if he had known where Allied Forces were going to land, they would almost certainly have done that and it would much more likely have been a massacre.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

Can I add really fast the weather situation too, because the weather is really important on D-Day as well. The weather pushes the invasion back one day. It was supposed to be June 5th. But also I think we had cut German Radar or not ... But weather capability. So they didn't know that the weather was going to change, but we knew that June 6th, the weather was about to change. And so, they weren't expecting anything on that day because they thought the weather was going to be too bad. And so, the weather allowed us to surprise them as to this specific time and day as well.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Can I pluck one?

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Absolutely. Yeah, go for it.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

All right.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Anyone could choose.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Yeah. So we've got, let's see. Where is it here? "The memory of Normandy is clean because we choose to ignore the bombing of French civilians. Anyone care to comment?" And I would in fact care to comment.

This is a question that is newly come into the public eye because Stephen Bourque has just published recently a book called, Beyond The Beach that looks at the Allied Air Campaign in Northern France and the 70,000 French civilians that were killed in the preparatory bombardments for D-Day. And I think that this is one of the ways in which public memory has become more complex as we've gotten greater and greater distance from the actual war, people are more willing to delve into this question. But one of the things that I think is important to emphasize on this is that, a lot of these issues, whether it's POW killing during the course of the campaign, whether it's some of the atrocities and mutilations like Tyler was bringing up, that the airborne suffer or engaged in are known from a very early point.

If you read memoirs from soldiers that come out in the late 1940s, they are not mincing any words about their experiences. And you can read histories of the Normandy Invasion from the 1980s, that will describe in some detail, the 70,000 French deaths that result from this. I think part of the reason that the memory of the Normandy Invasion is clean for so long is because it seems like more of a question to us. Was the cost worth it? Did these people have to die? And for the generation that experienced the war and experienced sort of this total brutalizing conflict. There's much less in the way of a question about that. And I think you see a similar split on the use of atomic bombs and the use of strategic and incendiary bombings. Yeah.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

I just wanted to add really fast too, that the French remember all the people who die. Charles De Gaulle doesn't go to the D-Day celebrations. He refuses to participate. The French kind of resent, I think, a little bit of what happened with the invasion of Normandy for a while there, after the war and for pretty good reasons, I think.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

William Hitchcock's book, The Better Road To Freedom is another great text about this. And he talks about how a lot of Europeans, even down to this day, think about war a lot differently than Americans do, because they had to witness a lot of the horrors on their families first hand.

So, if I may throw out another? Just one or two more questions. "Could France have been invaded by way of Italy in 1944?" Any thoughts guys?

Dr. Allyson Stanton

We didn't get to the North of Italy until the very end of April 1945. It would've extended the war quite a bit, I think.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

I think you're right.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Yeah. Northern Italy is basically all mountains. It would've been a bear to get through.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

And our final question, the last one that came in. "With the last of the Greatest Generation fading away, how do you think commemorations and representations of D-Day and the war in general will or will not change for the future?" And that comes from Chris Jergins.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Oh.

Dr. Allyson Stanton

I really don't like the name, the Greatest Generation for a number of reasons. I think honestly, I definitely honor all of the men who served in World War II. My grandfather was a CB in the Pacific and I think they did absolutely amazing things and things that were very necessary in many cases. I think, like you said earlier, the Nazis are legitimately bad people and the Japanese were definitely doing very bad things in the Pacific as well. But I think that name kind of overplays and also overshadows a lot of things that happened in the aftermath of the war as well.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Yeah, I would agree with that. A lot of soldiers who fought in World War II were uncomfortable with that terminology, because it grouped them into one thing. There were a lot of amazing men in that generation and women who did incredible things, a lot of heroes. There were also, as there are in every generation, some people who took advantage of the worst situation, who did some horrible things. They didn't have the purest of motives. So I think it's important for historians are constantly things, which is to the frustration of the general public, who want something that's easy to understand, fast. And Hey, we do too, but it would put us out of a job if it was.

I think that going forward, representations of D-Day and memory of D-Day will depend a lot on how it's portrayed in popular culture. I think it will, in movies, in video games and in great books that continue to be written. We will continue to find new sources. We're still finding out new things about wars that happened 400 years ago. There's not going to be any shortage of new books about World War II, but it will be sad when the last World War II Veteran goes, and we can no longer ask them things. But until that time we're going to keep recording this history as best we can. Ben?

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

I think that we're likely to see in some ways what we've seen with a lot of other major historical events. I mean, clearly the Second World War is such an enormous turning point in human history, that it's not just simply going to fall by the wayside. But at the same time, like the American Civil War, like the French Revolution, like the Napoleonic Wars, I think that with the passing of the generation that lived it, you see a greater abstraction of the event and that people begin, I think, to be less interested in it for its own sake, right, to try to understand what happened and why, and to understand in sort of an empathetic way, the experiences that people who went through it. And it becomes more of a symbolic event, something that has political salient for various ideologies or comes to mean something as part of a national myth. And that as we get further and further from it, it will become more and more of sort of a shadow play of the real event, an echo of an echo.

Dawn Hammatt

Well, I would like to thank the three of you and all of our online guests for spending some time here with us today. Thanks so much for your thoughts and comments and I can't wait to see what scholarship you bring to the public in the future. Thank you very much.

Dr. Benjamin Schneider

Thank you so much.

Dr. Tyler Bamford

Thank you.

Jeremy Collins

Thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard, please consider visiting nationalww2museum.org/podcasts for more episodes. Again, that is nationalww2museum.org/podcasts. Don't forget to rate and subscribe. We truly appreciate it. This series is brought to you by The Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation, which supports content like this from the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. I'm Jeremy Collins, signing off.