World War II On Topic is made possible by The Herzstein Foundation.

Mark Calhoun
Welcome to a special two-part series of World War II On Topic. I'm Mark Calhoun, senior historian for The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Today is June 5, 2024. We are on the eve of a significant milestone, the 80th anniversary of D-Day. In this podcast, I sit down with Rob Citino, former Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. Rob and I discuss the magnitude and historical context of D-Day 80 years later. I'm really excited today to have Dr. Rob Citino with me. Rob, would you like to introduce yourself?

Rob Citino
Absolutely, Mark. Good to be here with you. Rob Citino here. I was for many years the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian here at The National WWII Museum. I was here when the institute got started. Now the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, and it's always great to be back in New Orleans. I've eaten more food in the last 24 hours than I did in the previous three months. Well, I know I'm back.

Mark Calhoun
Well, this is a really great opportunity for me. Our time here, it didn't really get to overlap very much, Rob. Back when I started my PhD work in the mid-to-late 2000s, I encountered your work and I've been an admirer ever since.

Rob Citino
Appreciate that, Mark. Thanks.

Mark Calhoun
I saw this as a great opportunity to spend a little time with you. I'm going to be going on the 80th anniversary of D-Day cruise here soon. Obviously, we've been thinking a lot about D-Day here at the Museum, and I think with your experience doing these cruises and tours in the past, it'd be a great opportunity to just chat with you about your thoughts on D-Day.

Rob Citino
Oddly enough, my first travel program at the Museum was the 70th anniversary of D-Day in 2014. My wife and I went out to Normandy and all the other sites around Normandy. We really got a great tour of the battlefields. It was really my first trip doing that, and I just remember what a great learning experience it was.

Mark Calhoun
Yeah. My first time going was 2019 with Steve Bourque, author of Beyond the Beach, and we did Normandy and then we also just followed Ninth Army's path on their campaign to Germany. That was a neat experience.

Rob Citino
We need to get Steve here at the Museum as well. He'd be a great addition to this discussion.

Mark Calhoun
That's right. Well, he is going to be here for our program for D-Day that's going to be held here at the Museum.

Rob Citino
Oh, fantastic. Well, I'll see him then.

Mark Calhoun
Yeah, it'll be great. I thought we'd start by talking a little bit about the planning for D-Day. I was a planner when I was in the military, and this is one of the areas that I can't help but focus on when I study history. I find the way operations are planned and then whether or not they turn out the way they're expected is just endlessly fascinating.

To me, one of the things that I find really interesting about the whole D-Day planning effort is the fact that it went on as long as it did without a commander. One of the things I learned as an army planner was, planners don't make decisions. Planners make recommendations, they offer analysis, they help commanders arrive at decisions, but they're not advisors and they're not decision-makers, certainly.

I wonder about Freddie Morgan and the situation he found himself in as the chief of staff for COSSAC, chief of staff for the Supreme Allied Command, and trying to, beginning in early 1943, really spring of '43, figure out, how are we going to do this thing? We don't even know when we're going to do it. We're not even really exactly sure where we're going to do it, but we know we're going to invade France and we have to start trying to figure it out. But there's no commander to brief.

Rob Citino
I'm thinking Morgan probably in the back of his mind said, "Well, I can't plan anything too detailed because there's going to be a commander going to come in or he's going to want to do things his own way." At the same time, Mark, I think we all realize an operation this big, involving this many variables, it is going to require all basic... oh, I don't know if you want to call it the grunt work of planning. So the basic logistics of the effort were going to have to be worked out. I fast-forward into the fall of 1943 in which the Supreme Commanders, the Roosevelts and Churchills are meeting with Stalin at Tehran and Stalin said, "Hey, you guys picked out a commander for this operation yet? Because I found out that operations work better with commanders." Stalin famously told Churchill and Roosevelt. I just think that's a fantastic moment in 20th-century history. Of course, soon after that, they make the call and it's Eisenhower.

Mark Calhoun
That's right. It's actually really cool. He has to meet Roosevelt on the tarmac in Tunis. Roosevelt lands, and they just have a brief conversation in a car and he finds out he's going to be the Supreme Commander. Pretty remarkable how it all happened.

Rob Citino
He was a major one year and a couple of years later, he was a three-star general. That's what the Army was like during World War II.

Mark Calhoun
Right. Eisenhower comes in as the new commander and he has to essentially adopt a plan that he has been briefed on the Overlord plan before as many of the senior leaders in the Allied forces had been. But as you said, at some point a commander is going to come in and start making changes, but nobody had done that yet. Nobody had really... they had seen flaws in the plan, but nobody had taken it upon themselves to make recommendations for changing it.

So when Eisenhower becomes the Supreme Commander, he picks Montgomery to be his overall land forces commander. The two of them start to make pretty significant changes to the plan. They increased the frontage for the beaches, they add a couple of divisions, they add airborne drops behind the beaches. There are some pretty significant changes. I think Montgomery is in his element just like he was during Operation Husky when in May of '43 they just finished the campaign of Tunisia, the commanders can finally really pay attention to Husky, and Montgomery takes a look at that plan and says, "Wait, we've got two armies landing on two opposite sides of an island. How do they support each other?" Insist on significant changes. Then the same thing happens before D-Day.

Rob Citino
Montgomery is known, I guess, as the ultimately cautious commander of the 20th century. In fact, he winds up getting a lot of bad press for historians. Frankly, if I was a soldier and I had to be in somebody's army, Montgomery's not a bad one. Because I don't think he's going to waste my life needlessly. But I often think of the Allied plans for the Normandy landing. I look at the beaches of France, they're going to land in France. Let's assume that.

You could blast right across the English Channel into the Pas-de-Calais, and you're going to be in the teeth of the German defenses. Its 15th Army. It's where the Germans have the densest fortifications and the highest ratio of manpower. That's high risk, but high reward. If you land there, you're halfway to Germany already. I don't know, you could land in near Bordeaux. The Germans don't have anybody there, but of course.

It's low risk, but it's also really low reward. You're going to be a long way even if it works. Normandy often struck me as the middle path, which I think was probably the right decision here, that you have a medium risk. The Germans are going to have some troops there, but it's not going to be their strongest beaches and medium reward. You're not real far from Germany, but neither are you on Germany's doorstep.

It struck me as I think if you have overwhelming superiority and manpower and materiel, and I think we could say the Allies did by then, I don't really see the need to get fancy. The Normandy landing to me is the ultimate unfancy landing, even the expanded version, Mark, as you said, even the airborne drops added all together. But it still seems to me to be that middle path, I think a good place to be as a planner for this operation.

Mark Calhoun
Yeah, I agree. I think it's also... I mean, it wouldn't have made a lot of sense to land where Hitler expected us to land. The best deception plan is one where you're feeding the person you're trying to deceive what they already want to believe. By landing somewhere other than Calais, we enabled the perfect deception plan. Probably one of the most just impressively successful examples of deception I think I can think of really in military history. The planners only expect it to last for a few days, maybe a week. Weeks later, Operation Cobra, we're still-

Rob Citino
Still a lot of troops in the Pas-de-Calais that were really by now holding non-essential beaches. The Allies had no intention of landing there. The Germans still think in the back of their mind. Mark, I think German officers look at a map and they say, "Well, obviously, you'd land at the Pas-de-Calais." It's the closest to your objective. You're not dithering around here in backwater France. You're closest to where you want to be. I think they just found it hard to break themselves of that notion that someone would land in essentially a non-essential beach, let us call it that, like Normandy. But you're right, it's suppose to last a couple of days and weeks later, there's still troops sitting around the Pas-de-Calais. German troops that could have been better employed elsewhere.

Mark Calhoun
Even after Eisenhower and Montgomery really take over the effort and they start to update the plan and they start to get closer to thinking about execution, there are still some significant issues with the plan as well. Some that maybe people didn't realize how big the issues were until later. For example, Monty thought they might be able to liberate Caen on the first day of the operation.

Rob Citino
"We'll knock about a bit there," I think he said. "We'll land to knock about a bit at Caen." Weeks later, we're still not knocking around Caen.

Mark Calhoun
That's right. I think one of the things... In my work on Ninth Army, I've spent a lot of time in sources written by Brits and other folks who take more of a commonwealth view or a British view of the war than the American perspective. One of the things that those authors tend to emphasize is the fact that the more important part of the plan for the eastern side of the beachhead was the fact that was going to be the place where Montgomery engaged and held up the most powerful German forces to enable the Americans on the western side of the beachhead to have an easier time pushing south through hedgerow country-

Rob Citino
It's the hinge.

Mark Calhoun
The hinge.

Rob Citino
Right. There's going to be all those Germans there. Especially, the concentration of the massive German armor and Montgomery's going to engage them in his entire battle array then to the west he's going to swing to the south and hopefully head-on into Germany. There's a lot of hopes that way.

Mark Calhoun
Yeah. It's interesting. I know you've written a lot about operational art. I find operational art a fascinating concept. This idea that there's a level of war between the execution of tactics and the strategists figuring out how we're going to engage the enemy in these different campaigns. I think it's an example of operational thinking. It's operational art in the plan, this sort of larger than just the tactics. But how are we going to make the situation such that the tactics will be easier to execute because the operational plan has this amazing flank security element to it?

Rob Citino
I'm really glad you brought that up. Tactics, how one of our infantry squads going to approach and engage a German squad of infantry. That's tactics. You have to learn that. There's a science to it and there's the art of strategy. "Are we going to invade France, or are we going to invade Italy? Are we going to be active in the Mediterranean? Are we going to be active in the English Channel?" But there's something between that. So we've decided to land in Normandy now how are we going to get out of Normandy our big force, not just individual men infiltrating through German lines, but the big force?

The overall campaign has to have some shape. Operational art or the art of operations, it's something that I've spent a lot of time considering during my career, and I'll say this, giving some thought to it beforehand is always a good idea. You don't want to say, "Okay, we're here, we're in Normandy. Now what?"

It's the last thing you want to be asking. It's the last thing your troops want to be hearing. They want to know there's some plan. A lot of thought was given to this before it happened. I don't mind saying I'm a Montgomery fan. I have no big problems with Montgomery. I know that's heresy as an American. I've taught undergrad just my whole life. Say you like Montgomery and half the class walks out.

Mark Calhoun
Well, 20 years ago I would've gotten up and walked out.

Rob Citino
Good. Life is a learning experience.

Mark Calhoun
That's right.

Rob Citino
I'm glad we can all contribute to that.

Mark Calhoun
That's right. I think that's an unsung, but really outstanding feature of the plan. Certainly, the operational thinking that went behind it. But then on the other side of that coin, you have the fact that there wasn't a lot of long-range planning that took place. Really, it's a World War II phenomenon in general. You look at Operation Husky in Sicily, we get on the beaches and intentionally Alexander didn't really think all that much about what happens after we've secured ourselves on the beachhead and started to expand it.

We know that we're going to send, you know Eighth Army's going to go up the coast towards Messina, and Patton's going to protect the flank and move along. But there's not a lot of thought put into it. So when the contingency to head West take Palermo and then cut back to Messina.

Rob Citino
Patton's famous end run.

Mark Calhoun
That's right. The end run. That really could have been a contingency that was already discussed and anticipated and instead, it ends up looking, even though it was worked out with Alexander Montgomery, it's portrayed by many historians as just Patton being Patton.

Rob Citino
Right. Just a "I thought about it one night and decided to take the whole army out of [?]."

Mark Calhoun
I was just going to do it.

Rob Citino
From my perspective. I've studied the Germans my whole professional career. But it's still the subject that is of most interest to me. Duke of Wellington famously said, "You never know what's on the other side of the hill in warfare. You know what you have, you know what you intend to do vaguely, but you rarely know what the enemy has exactly where he has it, what he intends to do with it." We look at this, the other side of the hill, I don't think the Germans really had much of an operational thought except somehow beating the landing, warding off the landing, defending the beaches successfully, and driving the Allies back into the sea.

But there were all sorts of problems on the planning side, I don't want to turn this into a dissertation on the Germans, but not enough men, nowhere near enough material in terms of ships, planes, tanks. Most of their divisions, about half the divisions of France were static. That is, they didn't have any transport, no trucks. Mark, you're a professional soldier. I would say to you we're going to send you up against this adversary and they can't move. You'd probably be pretty happy about that. What army is better at destroying adversaries to firepower than the US Army? So it's a real advantage.

Here at The National WWII Museum, I know we are obsessed, our visitors are with D-Day, and especially that central beach at Omaha. But I think we also need to realize that Omaha was somewhat of an anomaly. If you don't mind, let me just go on with this for one more minute. The German corps that was defending the Omaha sector, there's four divisions. One of them is just sometimes we forget defending the Island of Guernsey, the Channel Islands Guernsey and Jersey, I visited them a few years ago for the Museum.

The amount of concrete, the Germans poured out to Guernsey. It's amazing. The island hasn't sunk. That's one division down. Two divisions are static. They're numbered in the 700s, still about the high numbers. They're static divisions. They have no maneuver capability whatsoever. Then there's a single division. The general commanding 84th Corps, the German corps in the Omaha sector, plopped it down in the middle of the Omaha sector [speaking French] in famous Omaha Beach. I often think what happened to the Americans in the opening wave at Omaha. You mentioned planners at the beginning. Nobody planned for them to run into a buzzsaw. It's just the luck of the draw. Five beaches. The Allies got to shore all five of them. Four of them made great progress inland on the first day. It was really only at Omaha. But I guess your luck is destined to run out sometime. Big German force versus big Allied force at some point there's going to be an Allied unit in front of a German unit or vice versa and that's precisely what happened at Omaha.

Mark Calhoun
Yeah, it's really a true anomaly in the sense of historical anomalies. On the topic of the Germans, I can't help but think about as we think about the people involved in all of this. There were a lot of things that Hitler did that eased the way for us in this invasion, both executing it, and then after the invasion moving into the battle of Normandy itself, the campaign there in Normandy. What was Hitler thinking?

Rob Citino
What was Hitler thinking? If only I had the answer to that question. It's a really good question. Hitler had risen to the rank of Lance Corporal in World War [I]. He was not an officer. But he had been under fire and trench warfare conditions. I think trench warfare conditions still defined warfare to Hitler. If he could throw the Allies into the sea or short of that form some line in front of them and make them run against it into the teeth of German fire, that's perfect 1916 thinking. But unfortunately, with almost 30 years down the road now into 1944, and you have the Allies who can form concentrations of men in tanks very rapidly and break through certain sectors of the line. It's no longer a line on a line as it had been in 1916 and 1917. Hitler had some decisions, taken some decisions earlier in the war that proved to be inspired.

Thinking of the campaign in France in 1940, France and the low countries largely Hitler's, well, inspiration is unfair. General Von Manstein came up with the plan, but Hitler recognized something in it that might work at a time when most of the professional officers in the German army thought it was foolhardy, this drive by tanks through the Ardennes, which you cut the Allies off from their drive into Belgium. I guess there's such a thing as beginner's luck. There's inspiration, and that was all well and good when Hitler's adversaries were not fully mobilized and not fully prepared.

But that's not what he's facing in 1944. Now his complete lack of understanding of modern tactics of operations and of strategy, I think it had come home to roost. His decisions were no longer inspired. They were now just wrong. They were defective, spending as much money, time, effort, concrete as he did on the famous Atlantic wall, was simply foolish. Under modern conditions, you don't build a wall, you build an army. If you want to defend a piece of ground, you don't build a wall any longer. You build an army. What Hitler lacked in France was an army. I think he refused to see that. He'd look at a division, it would be a flag on a map, and he would think full strength, 1940, 1941 style, German division. But it'd be half that or two-thirds of that without, again, getting too deep in the weeds here. German regiments used to have three battalions per regiment, and now they had two, or these be three regiments per division. Now there are two. So these are drastically weakened.

You have troops in these supposedly German units who are so-called Eastern troops. They're volunteers or POWs from the eastern front who'd been conscripted into the German army, Turkmen and Azeris and Armenians and Georgians. No slam on the manpower. The manpower is fine. But you have to ask yourself, Mark, and this is what I spent a lot of time doing as a historian, what's the motivation for these guys? What is motivating your troops? How firmly do they believe in your cause? I think a typical Azeri who has been recruited into the German army in 1944, and now he's under fighter bomber attack by the US Army Air Force is he's probably saying, "What in the world am I doing in France?"

Those troops, they fought well, they're good manpower, there's no doubt. But what is their real allegiance to the cause? I don't think you really have any, but that's not how Hitler saw it. They were a division or they were a battalion. So I mentioned earlier that 84th Corps defending the Omaha sector there's, I don't know, 40 battalions in the whole corps, and 10 of them are Eastern troops. They're often driving French vehicles, stuff that had been inherited in the 1940 victory from the French army, no longer, shall we say, state-of-the-art by 1944.

There's one way of looking at a situation, and it's the map situation. It would really have helped Hitler to get out to the front a couple of times and talk to a couple of division or regimental commanders about the men under their command. If the situation were right and they felt comfortable enough, which is if, he would've gotten an earful about the situation of the German... No one can see me right now, but I'm making air quotes. The German army that was in occupation in France by 1944.

Mark Calhoun
Yeah. You know what's interesting? So staying on the theme of leaders, despite all these challenges, Churchill really takes a long time to warm up to this idea, this idea of invading France on D-Day. He had significant reservations and he also had an alternate strategy that he would've much rather pursued.

Rob Citino
Which is attack anywhere but France.

Mark Calhoun
Anywhere but France. That's right up through Italy into the Alps, to the Balkans, wherever, anywhere else but there. It wasn't really until the final presentation of plans at St. Paul's School in the 15th of May, that Churchill finally makes a statement in front of everyone that's supposed to show his unequivocal support for this invasion. The statement is, "I am hardening on this operation."

Rob Citino
I'm glad to hear that because it's happening less than a month from now.

Mark Calhoun
Right.

Rob Citino
I'm glad to hear the Churchill was finally starting to get on board. But even that, you hear the doubt. Mark, there's one word, which I think explains Churchill's doubts about this whole venture and it's Passchendaele. Now Passchendaele was a battle in World War I 1917, a great Allied offensive against the German lines in Flanders. It rained, it was muddy. The bombardment brought up the groundwater. Troops were slogging forward in almost quicksand conditions, and it was a fiasco, and it costs hundreds of thousands of casualties. In the back of Churchill's mind, maybe it's hard to be difficult for this not to happen to him, the back of his mind, "Am I going to launch another Passchendaele? I don't want my name to be linked in the future history books next to Son of Passchendaele or the Normandy fiasco or whatever it would've been called?" So it's interesting to hear that this is clearly not a man who's overly excited about the Normandy venture.

Mark Calhoun
Right. He has to live with the Gallipoli issue, and he has the Dunkirk failure or the Dunkirk issue.

Rob Citino
Oh, I mentioned Passchendaele. Maybe the word is Gallipoli. Good point.

Mark Calhoun
Gallipoli. I mean, there's so many examples that Churchill can bring into his own mind to make himself doubt that this thing is even going to be successful. But on the other hand, you have the evidence of multiple successful amphibious assaults getting better each time we execute them, and we have yet to be thrown back into the sea.

So it's a fascinating thing to watch Churchill's very gradual warming to the operation. Then at the same time, you have Eisenhower who, as the commander, he is obviously the force that has to keep this thing moving forward, has to ensure everyone is confident and understands their role. I think one of the things that I find really interesting is when you hear about the decision to go. You have the plan is to go on the 5th of June, bad weather on the 4th of June forces a delay decision.

So we're repeating the thing on the 5th of June, what's the weather telling us? Are we going to go on the sixth? I don't know if you've heard this argument, but I've certainly seen more than a few people argue that we were going to go one way or another unless there was a gale that was just going to prevent any sailing happening anywhere near the coast, that on the 6th of June, it was the last opportunity how many weeks we would've had to send everything back to Britain and start over.

Rob Citino
The conditions of the moon.

Mark Calhoun
The tides.

Rob Citino
Yeah, the tides. There wouldn't be that confluence again until sometime in late July, my understanding.

Mark Calhoun
Right. It would've been a huge delay. I think to me, what's really interesting and really reveals the pressure that Eisenhower was under isn't so much this whole discussion of the decision to go, I think it's the failure letter that he writes and that he tucks away into his pocket. When you see that failure letter, you understand the pressure Eisenhower is under and thinking about on the eve of this invasion, "What if it fails? How do I deal with that?" But then to also see that he's misdated the letter, just the incredible amount of pressure that Eisenhower must've been under.

Rob Citino
Here at the Museum, we love the, "Okay, let's go moment." He pulls all his service chiefs around the table, all his aides and advisors, and they're all over the place. Yes, no, maybe, yes, no, maybe. It's all on him now. He says, "Let's go." It's classic Eisenhower not given the flowery speeches. He was famously unable to give a flowery speech as president for eight years. That wasn't his strength. But that simple, "Okay, let's go." But you're right. Also, he covers himself in case of who knows what might happen and notice that letter, "The troops did all they could. Any failures mine alone."

It really is I think one of Eisenhower's greatest, greatest moments. But I agree with you. I think by the fifth in their plan, I think the sixth was going to be it because then you have a real problem on your hands of keeping that entire gigantic force in hand without letting news of it leak somehow a lone aircraft, a lone German aircraft, which slips through your anti-aircraft defenses and entirely possible thing we know could have blown the surprise, but no one wanted to keep those troops all in ships in position for another in five or six weeks. That's impossible.

Mark Calhoun
Right. Absolutely. One of the things we haven't talked about yet, obviously, we've learned throughout the progress and the different campaigns in the war, we've learned that air superiority is absolutely essential to these landings. We also executed the transportation plan. Of course, the bomber war was going on. There were all kinds of aerial operations that took place. There were French resistance operations to cut communications and rail lines and marshaling yards.

So in the midst of all this activity to prepare for this invasion, there are a couple of really fascinating things from that. One is the fact that that didn't give away the objective, right? We were still able to convince Hitler that the Pas-de-Calais was the objective, even though we were doing all this work to prep the battlefield in Normandy, which I just find really fascinating.

Rob Citino
Destroying the French rail net, you could do it from a number of different places.

Mark Calhoun
That's right.

Rob Citino
We had done that. Often here, we didn't bomb the beaches. We didn't bomb Omaha Beach officially. But this isn't a Pacific island. The Marines could get lay off a Saipan and they could bomb Saipan for six weeks if that's what they chose to do. That's pretty much what they did in the course that were longer and longer bombardments. But if we just bombarded Omaha Beach or the Normandy coastline, we might as well have been sending Hitler a telegram about where it was that we intended to land. It is very, very clever. Our great friend, the British military analyst, Basil Liddell Hart would say the indirect approach is to bomb the communication line, the rail lines, the roads leading into Central France because from there you could do a great deal of damage. You could isolate Normandy, but you're not necessarily telegraphing your intentions to Hitler. I'm glad we brought Hitler back into the discussion.

He has a decision to make too. Look, Germany has a couple of dozen really fine divisions. That's what they have in the Army by now. They're Panzer divisions or Panzer or Armored divisions, we would say. Let's say you have 24 of them, you got to keep at least half of those, maybe more in the east, that huge 900 or 1000-mile-long front facing the Soviets. So let's write off 12. Let's write off 14. Let's say you've got 10 armored divisions in France, and what do you do with them? You have two commanders, and one is Rommel, the dashing Rommel, formerly the Desert Fox. That's a long time ago now. Now he's the Normandy fox, I suppose. He's no longer in the desert. But he wants to keep those armored divisions massed near the coast. So when the Allies land and we figure out exactly where they're landing, we can drive them back into the sea.

"Our only hope," he says. His superior commander is Rundstedt, the old-school dude who wants to proceed by what used to be the book. That's, "The Allies they're going to get ashore somewhere, let them come in, and then we'll strike them a blow when they're straggling up off the beaches." This is a debate that's never really adjudicated about what to do with those armored divisions, keep them centrally located, or let Rommel have his way. Hitler does what probably you should never do. "You have 10 divisions? You can each have five."

So you take your trump card and you fritter it away. The Allies had managed to keep the Germans guessing long enough about where they were landing, that Hitler was forced into this expedient. I do mean that he said he gave five to Rundstedt to form into a central reserve in and around Paris, and then five for Rommel to disperse around the coast. Neither plan is really good, but certainly, if you have 10 of something in warfare, you want to put 9 of them.

You want to gang nine of them up on some crucial objective. That way, if you have 10 objectives, why not give one division a piece and completely fritter away? But I often thought that Hitler is in an impossible position. I'm actually defending him right now because of the inability to locate where the point of the Allied main effort. Mark, I know as a former US Army officer, you say Schwerpunkt all the time, the German for the point of main effort. Hitler was never really able to determine just where the Allied Schwerpunkt was. That led to what you might consider the frittering away of his armor reserves.

Mark Calhoun
Right. Then to compound the challenge that created, to go back to the transportation plan and all the other preparatory efforts, it really was extremely difficult to react when the invasion started, especially with Hitler sleeping in and his staff afraid to wake him up to ask him what to do. So a lot of the units that needed his authority to be able to reposition and respond to the invasion couldn't do so until daylight. What happens then? Well, our air power is obviously able to exploit that. It's a-

Rob Citino
Given Hitler's problems as an operational-level commander, maybe having him sleep was the best thing that could have happened to the German commanders. Something else, Rommel's gone. It's his wife's birthday back in Herrlingen. He's bought her some presumably charming French shoes at a shop, and he's delivering them to Mrs. [?] Rommel back in Germany. So he's not there either.

The armor divisions do get on the road, most of them. One of them actually launches a counterattack in the British-Canadian between the British and Canadian sector. That's as close as they got to driving the Allies back into the sea. But what all those armored divisions soon discover is that movement during the daytime is a nightmare, and it soon proves to be impossible. You're taking so many losses and so many delays in the approach march, that by the time you would actually be in contact with the enemy, whatever force your armored thrust would've is probably already been lost.

This is the fate of the big maneuver units, the German armored divisions and mechanized divisions in Normandy is to move at night, and moving at night has all kinds of problems, even today. But in the 1940s, we're talking about the French countryside. It's dark.

Mark Calhoun
Absolutely, a lot of places you can take a wrong turn.

Rob Citino
A wrong turn, tiny roads, you're running over each other, you're running off-road into gullies on either side of the road. So you're moving at night, movement by daylight is soon proved to be impossible. We're getting from the landing into the post-landing environment. But it's all to me, one seamless problem. It's the Allies have absolute air supremacy over the Normandy battlefield. Actually, over all five of the beaches they landed.

Mark Calhoun
One other thing that's really important to remember, we mentioned Steve Bourque earlier in his book, Beyond the Beach, you travel around in Normandy, and in a lot of the towns and villages, you see these little memorials to the French civilians who were killed in these preparatory bombing efforts. In Saint-Lô, you even have a little, an area where all the gravestones are from that problem. So you think about what the French sacrificed to the things that they had to go through for this invasion to go off and be successful. Yet, whenever we go to Normandy, we're greeted with open arms, the French. I've never sensed any challenges dealing with the French people. They're very respectful of us.

Rob Citino
Certainly not in Normandy.

Mark Calhoun
Not in Normandy.

Rob Citino
As an American, you get bought drinks from one cafe in Saint-Lô to the other. We're talking here about Steve Bourque's book, and Steve points out, I don't have the exact number in front of me, 40,000, 50,000 French civilian casualty. Let's say, 50,000 French civilian casualties in that pre-invasion bombardment campaign. We were really laying on the heavy metal from the air. Unfortunately, the results are going to be civilian casualties.

The Germans and the Americans fighting, or the British Commonwealth forces fighting the German. But of course, you sometimes forget they're fighting in France and the civilian casualties that are going to be taken are overwhelmingly French. It's a horrible story. Given the technology and use at the time and the operational and strategic imperatives, it's hard to imagine this campaign unfolding without a large number of French civilian casualties.

Mark Calhoun
Yeah, absolutely. Another really interesting thing to me is we've talked a little bit about the relative capabilities of the different armies, but within the alliance, you have a really interesting shift in the balance of power after the D-Day invasion. Like most of the invasions in the European theater, the initial landings, you have more British and Commonwealth troops than you have American troops. But very quickly, within just a few weeks, American troops start to outnumber our Allies. By the fall, we have two-thirds of the divisions in the European theater are American divisions.

You saw this balance of power changing. You mentioned The Tehran Conference where you definitely see a different relationship between FDR and Churchill and Stalin as you saw previously, but I think you see it even more. There really is America rising to the ascendancy in the alliance in France. As this campaign plays out.

Rob Citino
As military historians, Mark, we're often called upon to justify our field. Why do you study military history? This event, the Normandy landing in 1944 is the transfer of global power from the previously dominant Great Britain with its empire that spanned the globe. The sun never set on the empire now to the industrial and financial giant of the United States. That happens, as you point out, within a very, very brief moment of time. In June, of course, Montgomery is the overall ground forces commander. All of Eisenhower's aides, the very service chiefs are all British Leigh-Mallory and the others. But soon this came to be an American show. We couldn't have won the European campaign without the British and Commonwealth Allies. We just couldn't have had enough troops to cover the front, let alone form any attack groups. But at the same time, this is clearly the end of British global supremacy and the rise of the new superpower. Soviet Union in the East, not to get too far afield from our Normandy talk, it's a separate issue. The Soviets obviously are dominant land power in the East, but they're also taking such high casualties. I don't think the Soviet Union ever really recovered from World War II despite its status. It had nuclear weapons in the late '40s and into the '50s. So it became seen as the other superpower. Its power and its economy we're just dwarfed by this new giant of the United States.

Mark Calhoun
Yeah, absolutely. I guess we could transition a little bit to the Normandy campaign itself. We've made it onto the beaches. We've managed to expand the lodgement as they say. We've expanded our beachhead and started to push to the South. I think what you see is an operational plan that really does work the way it was intended to work. Obviously, there-

Rob Citino
Maybe a little more slowly.

Mark Calhoun
Little more slowly, but the broader strokes of the idea, the concept behind the plan, generally work out about right. But there are absolutely some challenges, and I think the hedgerows obviously is one of those. Somehow I guess planners have managed to convince themselves that the hedgerows wouldn't necessarily favor the attacker or the defender, which seems hard to understand now. But I've certainly read that plenty of places. I think another interesting thing to me as a planner is that this lack of long-range planning that we touched on earlier, it's not until May of 1944 that you have the commander's appreciation that takes a look at what to do after D plus 90 days. So when we get to 90 days after the invasion, the idea is that the Allies are going to be arrayed along the Seine River and ready to continue the drive to Germany.

What happens instead of this gradual progress towards the Seine over a 90-day period, you have a very slow move, less than half of that distance over about half of that time. Then you have an extremely rapid move to the Seine over a very brief period. This does all things in particular to the logistics system. As you take ground from the enemy, you have to repair the things that either they've destroyed or you've destroyed, preparing the ground for the battle. So the roads and the rail networks and the communications all required effort to get them back into shape to enable the process of providing supplies and ammunition to the front.

But then when you speed up that process dramatically right before D plus 90, it takes the Allies a long time to catch up. Then the other interesting thing is this commander's appreciation identified two routes. Four that they initially looked at, only two they really considered worth pursuing. One in the north, the route that 21st Army group ends up taking, and then one-

Rob Citino
Channel ports towards the big Port of Antwerp. If you can take Antwerp, you have everything you need.

Mark Calhoun
That's right. The most important aspect of the northern route is the objective. The ultimate objective is the Ruhr Industrial Valley, which is where the Germans are able to manufacture all the things they need to sustain their war effort, their most important industrial area. The other route down in central Germany that the Patton's third army really dominates that route. The planners view it as useful, but not as a strategically advantageous route to take to Germany. But it's fascinating to me, just having learned how to plan the way we plan in the army today, or we did when I was in the army. In these modern times, nobody really looked at this until May.

It's right a month before the invasion. Eisenhower, he's in France now, he's taken over overall command of the Allied forces, and he's got to make a decision, "What do we do next?" It's on the basis of this new information. Now there's an argument against, similar to Sicily, we didn't really think it through. We can see there are options, but we haven't really talked about it yet, and it leads to another big argument.

Rob Citino
To get back. There's that D-Day, D plus one, the Allies are ashore all five beaches, Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword for those following along at home on your maps. They've had a hard time getting ashore at Omaha, but they're there. They've landed there as well all five beaches. Now they're in Normandy. These hedgerows, those who are listening to us in this podcast, and maybe some of you are going along on The National WWII Museum's travel trip, the educational travel to Normandy. Check out what the hedgerows look like.

In America, I don't know if you're thinking your suburban hedges between two homes. These are eight and nine feet tall. They're thick, thorny bushes that are planted into high earthen embankments. You don't know what's behind one. It could be nothing. It could be an enemy machine gun position. It could be a corps assembling for an assault or some combination thereof. The Allies make extremely slow progress. Mark, as you noted, they're landing more troops every day, top a million troops in Normandy. The Germans are vastly outnumbered in the Normandy sector, especially since some of those diversionary measures are still confusing the Germans as to where the actual landing is going to take place.

But you know what's happening every day? The Allies grinding forward, and they're taking heavy losses, but the technical term is they're attriting the Germans. If it's a one-for-one trade in men, the Germans are going to break down before the Allies. There's nowhere near that because the Allied firepower is so much superior to the Germans. Montgomery is in front of a solid wall of armor, the Waffen-SS divisions, and whatever the finest German units are in Normandy, they're facing Montgomery.

The Americans are in that hedgerow and they're grinding forward very slowly. No offense to our friends in the press, but they're all reporting, "Oh, this campaign's come apart. We're supposed to be blasting forward to the German border by now." People are reading that at home and they're worried about their sons who are at the front line. It's a bad, bad situation. That leads... I've never... Fan is not the right word. I'm thinking of Omar Bradley here.

I've never really seen Omar Bradley as one of the great operational minds of the 20th century. He might not have even seen himself that way, frankly, but he came up with this idea, "Look, if we could just gang up on one poorly held segment of the German line, mile, mile and a half, and we obliterate it, carpet bombing that is heavy strategic bombers designed for wrecking entire German cities, not just a small portion of that front line. We'll break through, we'll have the armored forces, US armored divisions."

Man, nobody's faster. Once they get on track, nobody's faster than the US armored division. We'll blast through the line before the Germans know what happened. That's famously Operation Cobra late July. Now this is seven weeks of hard combat, but it works after a few false starts. There's some friendly fire incidents. The highest ranking US Army officer in Europe, General Lesley McNair is famously killed in one of these bombing raid, a US bombing raid. You can see his grave if you visit the Normandy Cemetery.

Finally, managed to get out. Those armored divisions, they get on track, and they drive... Patton. This is Patton in his element. He's driving across Central France towards the German border. Patton's, practically shouting yee-haw as they go forward. It's really an amazing campaign, but you, I think, identified the real problem. So you've been sitting for seven weeks.

One good thing about that kind of war is supplying your troops is no problem. Depots are 10 miles, 5 miles behind the lines, no problem. But now they're 100 miles behind the lines, or 150 or 200 miles behind the lines. Red Ball Express. I don't care what you do. I mean, you can have all improvisations, but eventually, you're going to run out of gas. You're going to run out of supplies.

The Wehrmacht collapsed for a brief moment in central France. The Americans made them pay, but they didn't make them pay quite enough and that gets us back to the real problem. I think modern war in general is supplying high-intensity combat. I don't think those of us sitting on a table like, "You're a professional, you know it better than I do." But it's hard to imagine the supplies you eat through in a day when your troops are firing all day, and your tanks, which don't get miles per gallon but get gallons per mile. How much gasoline they eat up in the course of these fights? That takes us from the rough June, difficult July, deliriously, happy August.

Mark Calhoun
Catastrophic success.

Rob Citino
Then catastrophic success. Suddenly, screeching to a halt, putting on the brakes, and not because you wanted to, but because you have no choice.

Mark Calhoun
Right. Then the next big decision, the broad front strategy. Even with this commander's appreciation that the planners did, [?] planners did in May, they've identified a route that ought to be the main effort, and Eisenhower agrees it's the main effort. But put yourself in Eisenhower's situation. Can you park all of these American units in the southern part of the line and have them just defend and hold while our Allies take the route all the way to the Ruhr Industrial Valley and win the war with the Americans in a supporting role? This just isn't politically acceptable, right?

Rob Citino
It's not only politically unacceptable, it's militarily senseless. We've already just said that the Americans had become the main force. The British deployed in their own island to the east, and the large Americans deployed to the west of them. That's how they landed. Now they've swung. They've gone from facing south to facing East, and the Americans are in the south. They're on the right wing of the battle array, we might say and the British are in the left wing.

Let's defend Eisenhower for a moment though about this broad front. He first tries a thrust. He lets the British under Montgomery try a very risky, high-risk venture, indeed, the great airborne landings of Operation Market Garden. That's going to A Bridge Too Far. Those of you who love your war movies. That's going to get leapfrogging over these bridgeheads that are going to be seized by the airborne divisions.

Montgomery's armory unit can drive into the rear. That goes wrong in about 15 different ways, which we don't need to belabor, but it's a very risky operation. A million things can go wrong and a hundred do go wrong. It's just enough to derail the entire operation.

Now this is what Eisenhower decided to do, and we can fault him. Let's first give him his due. We outnumber the Germans across the line. Let's just keep chewing our way forward. Sure, it's not going to be flashy. It's not going to bring instant success. But we will continue to put pressure on the Germans. "We will continue to atrit units that cannot afford to be atritted. We will prevent the Germans from drawing out their armored divisions into some position in the rear where they can rest, refit, and launch some vast offensive. It's going to catch us by surprise."

That was the theory. On paper, everything I just said is completely logical and makes sense. The Germans managed to do that anyway, much to the consternation and much of the surprise of US intelligence agencies and that leads us into the December and the Battle of the Bulge, maybe our next podcast.

But there is a method to Eisenhower's madness. The Germans were baffled. Where's operational art? The Germans would've put together some big armored thrust in one or two places, puncture the Allied lines, linked up behind, and formed a vast cauldron, a Kesselschlacht. The Germans call it. That's what they would've done. They all said that in their memoirs. "We didn't know what Eisenhower was doing. We feel if we had Eisenhower's armory, we could have won the war in an afternoon with them."

But from Eisenhower's perspective, he was winning... I think he knew he was winning the war. There's going to be a lot hard fighting before it was over. But why risk anything? Why do anything more risky? If you think you're winning the war, just keep the pressure on and eventually the Germans will break. I think, Mark, that when we look at wars across the globe, even today, big war raging right now in Ukraine, it's saying how far did the front line move on a given Tuesday? I don't really think it's the crucial way to judge what's happening in modern conflict.

It's very difficult for outsiders. We're not there, and I don't have the intelligence services to tell me exactly who's attriting whom, when Ukrainian and Russian units meet. But something's happening out there. I'm sure once it's all over, the historians that go in and be able to explain it. But there's a certain sense, it's not flashy. Unfortunately, we military historians are guilty too. We like flash.

Mark Calhoun
Right. I mean, this is one of those places where it's the invisible hand. You have strategy. Strategy returns to the fore in these situations because strategy in the sense of what's our recruiting? What's our personnel policy? How deep are we going to dig bringing people in and having them serve in our units? What are our production priorities? How are we going to weight our effort in the different theaters? What are our strengths at the strategic level that we can use to ensure continued success? I think the broad front strategy while unimaginative and possibly also a little bit the result of a lack of long-range planning, it certainly did play into our strategic advantages.

Rob Citino
We could have, I suppose, recruited 300 infantry divisions. That's what the Germans did eventually. That's what the Soviets did. I think Soviets had 500 divisions in the field by the end of the war. But strategic decisions were made at the highest level that is starting in the Oval Office. Then on down America could best contribute to the war by making sure production was running 24x7, 150% at all times, which is essentially what we did. So the Allied battle array in Western Europe is probably the best-supplied force that has ever stepped foot on a modern battlefield that had everything they needed.

If you were US soldier and you wanted to hitch a ride somewhere, there was a vehicle to take you there. The American army did not walk to work in 1944, as most of the Germans still were, most German soldiers still were walking to work. If you've decided an industry is the way you can best contribute to the war, that is almost certainly going to result in fewer men at the point of contact. It's occasionally there's going to be disconnects between where... There're going to be bottlenecks between how much has just gotten to Europe, how much of it has gotten forward to the frontline troops.

But by and large, it worked well enough. Mark, you've seen the film Battle of the Bulge, I'm sure, and the German officer, his reconnaissance unit has just captured an American supply convoy, and it's filled with Boston cream pies. Because it's Christmas coming up, and apparently every soldier in the US Army is going to get his own pie. I forget what the line is, but the officer says, "This is why we're losing the war. Look at the Americans. They can just load down supplies of any sort."

I've taught military history to undergraduates. They're pretty high-energy bunch. They love talking about World War II. Let's say most of the class, not all, but most of the class is males. There's a certain way they like to hear about World War II. I often felt when I said no one had more firepower than the US Army. My students sometimes thought I was criticizing us. "What you mean? We weren't the bravest?" I think all soldiers in world war... Anybody who stands up to enemy fire is brave by definition. You don't run away. You're brave.

If I were in an army, if I were looking to join an army, I want to join an army that can just lay down the heavy metal against my adversary, 24 hours a day, if that's what it requires in perpetuity. That's essentially what the Americans and their British and Commonwealth counterparts, but quintessentially the Americans were able to do in World War II. That's the army I want to join.

Mark Calhoun
That spirit lives on in the modern US Army. One of the things I used to hear a lot was commanders would say, "I'm not interested in a fair fight. Why give the enemy the opportunity to stand up to me? If I can defeat them in detail with overwhelming firepower, why wouldn't I do that?"

Rob Citino
Yeah. There's this notion of when exactly did the US and the Germans have a fair fight. Fair fight? I'd fire my officer, I'd ask him to be removed for cause. No, I want to go forward against a completely leveled battlefield in which the enemy is either gone off to the hereafter or is surrendering in droves. There's no better way to do it yet than modern firepower. Again, when I think of the Allied war effort in World War II, and especially the war effort in Western Europe, where I'm most at home, it's a triumph of firepower. There's great leadership. There's great command and control. Everybody's got a radio. There's all... You crack a seam in the enemy line, no one can move it through it faster than the Americans. That's a fact. But having said all that, give me the firepower.

Mark Calhoun
Absolutely. With all these advantages, the Allies have, you still have a remarkable German recovery in the fall? Some of it has to do with the logistics challenges and getting this whole broad front moving, ensuring it's able to keep the pressure up. But what is it that enables the Germans to recover? You alluded Battle of the Bulge. I mean, there's a moment there where it looks like they're really coming back.

Rob Citino
I think Operation Market Garden, which we alluded to a few minutes earlier, the attack on Arnhem, the attempt to get across the Rhine, and the Germans had managed to recover just enough to defeat that. It was a very narrow line of penetration. If it doesn't work, it's going to be defeated badly. It didn't work and it was defeated pretty badly. I never really liked to get down to the great man theory of history, but the Germans had a new commander in the field by this time, Walter Model, General Model seen as sometimes called Hitler's favorite general.

That's used for a lot of different generals, and I don't even know if it's true. But he was certainly a defensive specialist. He knew how to organize troops, beaten troops, and whip them into enough shape. It is Clausewitz would say, "It's the inherently stronger form of warfare to defend."

You're not running forward against enemy fire. Hopefully, you're hunkered down in some defensive position. You're asked to do less. The German army in late August had pretty much shot its bolt as any offensive force, but it was still able to win a victory over the Allies in Arnhem. I think that worked as a tonic throughout the entire German force. The Americans, they might've looked 10 feet tall when they were breaking out an Operation Cobra, but they're not going to be able to carpet bomb you every day of the week. Those strategic bombers are undertaking other tasks.

The Americans and British alike ran out of gas. The terrain got worse as you approached Germany, now you're in what the Germans used to call their Siegfried Line, these fortifications they had built before World War II. They're no longer up to modern standards. They're no longer really proof against modern fire, but they're better than standing out in the open facing a wave of American fire. The Germans managed to use those fortifications now quite outmoded in many ways as just a support.

There's one other factor too, what looked to the Allies, "Oh, my God, this war is going to be over by Christmas." Now they realized it wasn't. As a little bit of victory worked as a tonic on the Germans, that news worked as a depressant on the side of the Allies. From top on down, everybody thought, "Hey, we're going to be home by Christmas, or it's going to be over by Christmas." Now you're a long way from being over. It's winter. You're out there in the middle of the Ardennes Forest. The Americans are scraping the bottom of their manpower barrel.

They bring a division forward, the 106th Division famously, just gotten to Europe. Unfortunately, it's that division that's going to be the target of this German Counteroffensive in mid-December. There's a lot of factors. Often my joke with my students is, "What led to the German revival in the fall of 1944? A lot of things." Germans catch a couple of breaks. The Americans and Allies suddenly realize they're in a longer fight than they guaranteed. Those things together, I think really work to stop the Allies just short of victory and to make sure the Germans dragged the war on into 1945.

Mark, it's too bad because it's going to be a very, very bloody partial year, those next five months from January to May, very, very bloody, maybe the bloodiest five months of the war.

Mark Calhoun
Yeah. When you look at the casualty statistics, they're surprisingly high from January through May of '45. The German production stays at a very high level through 1944, the violence of the campaigns and the battles doesn't decrease at all. If anything, it increases. The Germans are fighting closer to and eventually on their home soil, the further back we push.

Rob Citino
Often defending their own village. Well, there's no greater motivation for any soldier than defending your homeland. We think that wars fought and they get worse and worse and they reach a climax in 1942, and they slowly drag to an end a couple of years later. But if I can bring our friend Clausewitz back into the discussion for a moment, he said, "Well, violence has just a way of ratcheting itself up and it keeps ratcheting itself up until one side collapses."

That is precisely what happened in World War II. It is very rare that an adversary in order to be beaten, has to be physically destroyed, and the entire home country of that adversary occupied. Typically, the war ends... I study war from the ancient times to the present. Typically your war ends a lot earlier than that. We could probably have another hour talking about the reason for that. I'll say two words Adolf Hitler, but there's more to be said.

Mark Calhoun
Absolutely. Rob, this has been a great conversation. I guess I'd like to end it on a question. As a new historian here at the WWII Museum that is going to be going on an anniversary cruise for D-Day for the first time, what's your advice to me? What should I be looking out for? What was the best experience that you had on one of these anniversary trips?

Rob Citino
I think there's a couple of things I would mention. Standing out on Omaha Beach or any of the beaches, Omaha because we're Americans and you'll feel the emotional pull of what happened on Omaha Beach. You've seen photos of it 1,000 times, and you'll be standing there. Sometimes going to a modern battlefield, Mark, can be difficult. There certainly are moments in the Normandy campaign, I'm thinking of the Falaise pocket battle, very confusing, swirling. You're on a hill. You're not sure what direction you're facing half the time. It can be difficult. But not so with an amphibious landing.

You're going to be standing on the bluffs overlooking Omaha beach and you're going to be looking out into the ocean and you can put yourself into the shoes of some German landser, some German ground ponder who'd been deployed on the beach. Suddenly, he looks up and there they are. It looks like every ship, the Allies own is suddenly sailing towards you and the bombardment begins. To me, I've done it a few times now and it never fails to be emotionally moving.

The other thing is when you're in Normandy is to remember that Normandy has thousands of years of history. It's where William the Bastard, the Duke of Normandy who later invaded Britain and became William the Conqueror. It's where he was. That was his bailiwick. You can go visit the Bayeux Tapestry this, what do we call it, graphic novel, which he had commissioned of all these images of how his forces conquered England.

Two things, really immerse yourself in World War II, and you can do that at all of the beaches. At Arromanches you can see portions of the Allied Mulberry, these artificial harbors. They're still out there and presumably, they're going to be there forever. But also, let yourself be carried away by the deep history of Normandy and really get to know Normandy on a little better level. You can do both, and each one is exquisite. They're just a wonderful experience.

Mark Calhoun
I guess another thing I think about a lot, this 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion is it's a significant anniversary. A long time has passed since the war. One of the things that I know is really important in moving part of these experiences is having the veterans on the trips at the sites in Normandy, on the battlefield, interacting with the guests, the friends of the Museum, something that's been a really important part of the experience here at the Museum since it was founded.

But as we know, our veterans are growing fewer and far between every year. This year, we will have several veterans on the trip, but we're also concerned that this might be one of the last times we're able to do that. I think that's a reason to be even more excited and also more respectful and awed by the memory of what these veterans did and accomplished for us. Just a really important part of the opportunity to travel to France for this event.

Rob Citino
When you're on Omaha Beach with a US veteran of World War II, these guys are rock stars. They're treated like rock stars by the visitors who are going along with them, by the locals. We should treat them that way. 16 million, give or take, Americans put on a uniform in World War II. They're less than 200,000 left today. If you're doing your math, that's 99% of that cohort has passed away. There's 1% is left. I think we can say the next big anniversary, Mark, 20 years from now, it's going to be the 100th. It's hard to imagine outside of some unusual circumstance that there'll be any veterans left there. I think the war is about to leave human memory and enter in a purely 100% way the history books. That's always a transition. There's something else I think about too. We mentioned earlier that when the US took over from Great Britain as the supreme global power, I think we need to think about that a little more. United States used to pride itself on minding its own business and bragging about the oceans on both sides.

It immunized us against the battles, especially of mainland Europe, but also what had been happening in Asia. But by 1944, those oceans weren't as broad as they used to be because of air power. Today, of course, they can be traversed by missiles in a matter of minutes. Those oceans for all intents and purposes have disappeared. Here were American boys from, I don't know, let's say Des Moines, just choose some city in the central portion of the country.

They'd been trained, they'd been shipped to the coast, the eastern coast. They've been put on various shipping and transferred over to Britain to wait for their opportunity to land in mainland Europe and beat the Germans in France. Sure, we had formed a force in World War I as well, but they didn't have to fight their way ashore. The fact that American troops were willing to do that showed that there'd been, I think, a shift in consciousness amongst the American people. I think most Americans now realize it's a big world out there. It's a dangerous world. Like it or not, America was going to have to play a role in it. Given America's power, strength, and wealth, it was going to have to be a big role. I think Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944, I think that's the time and place that we can see that new consciousness manifesting itself.

Mark Calhoun
Absolutely. Great. Well, it's been a real pleasure talking to you about-

Rob Citino
Likewise. Mark, it was a blast.

Mark Calhoun
... the D-Day today. I appreciate your time.

Rob Citino
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.

Mark Calhoun
Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast from The National WWII Museum. Join us for part two tomorrow, June 6, for an episode devoted entirely to the voices of veterans who fought on D-Day.