How this transformation occurred and the impact it had on future wars. Heritage heritage frederick provided the video. Book . Did you read this write this book . Paul it had never been told before between the covers of a book. Conversations, but in 2005 i went to the Eisenhower Library and did a lot of thearch there and i went to military library in chicago which is probably the best military library in the country. There may be one better, but it is extra ordinary and i started working on this book. I started developing it. I wrote for other books in between. Those were sort of to keep bread on the table so to speak. I just became haunted by the story and tried to get deeper and deeper into it and discover who the people were, who saved the country. For me it was a revelatory go to libraries and places and book sales and try to look up some of the things i write about in this for like the maneuvers example and found almost nothing. I had to really dig and go through a lot of archives and primary source material on newspapers, daily newspapers from obscure places like small towns in louisiana and such. That is how i put it together, i came up with this to get it right. How telling how sausages are made, but i had two pretty full rewrites, had two copy edits, and a lot of people key people, the premier general and the air force academy and i knew he had been and probablyii knows more about world war ii tanks than anybody at west point. I had these people going through it for accuracy. This was what you call this particular division, the processes the process was pretty elaborate and it took a while so i am very happy with it and very proud that i got it out. Cover a number of topics which i hope that we can dive into. When nazi germany invaded poland on september 1, 1939, the u. S. Army numbered fewer than 200,000. Can you set the stage in terms of what was going on in this country in terms of lassi fair laissezfaire as a country. Disaster,army was a it was rated 17th in the world after portugal. , two yearsemely weak when macarthur was still chief of staff, he said ,he whole United States army officers, enlisted men, cooks, everybody could fit into yankee stadium. We had nothing. The army was demoralized, they inaid poorly even with 39, some of their salary had been taken back as part of the new deal. The most absurd part of the army i think prior to that date in was, if you joined the army and wanted a gun that worked, a calibrated world war i rival rifle, if you wanted one there is calibrated and ready to fire in combat, you had to buy it from the army for over 200. Monthlyout of your which was about 21. Of these poorn ifho were in the army you wanted to change bases, go from one to another and transfer, you had to go out of the army, relist, and pay for the transfer. There is no money for transportation, there is nothing. The United States was at that time very much involved in protecting its self itself with the repression. The great thing that happened, the very same day the war began when frank indeed roosevelt realized the problems out there, Franklin D Roosevelt picked up george see marshall as his chief of staff. He had to go down about 25 people on the list to get to marshall, but he saw in marshall this genius and this ability to say no to certain things. The United States at that time was isolationist, it wanted to stay out of the war in europe, but it knew that the pressures as39 went on into 40. The nazis were invading, france was teetering, everything had gotten worse and worse. There were two options we could do, one was people wanted to stay out of the war at any cost, basically wanted to get rid of the army. It was a huge factor, isolationist, they wanted to build a navy, but not be worried about the army because they cannot imagine us having to fight overseas. Forthen there were called lack of a better term, the interventionist, people who bought at the moment we would go to the war. We also had our eye on the other side of the world in japan which was becoming more and more abouterent, making noise driving the british out of hong kong, driving the americans out of the philippines. This was going on at both ends. Up anad to start gearing industry, aircraft, etc. Which we hadte doable because a lot of Brilliant Companies that were looking for sort of a way out of depression that needed the money and the assembly lines. But we also had to create an army and that was the biggest problem was how do you create this big army . To 70. You go from zero youve got an army of 60,000, they are not mobile, they are , they arerained deprived of many things. Many of the bases had virtually no recreation, new movie theater, they would be out in the middle of nowhere. In 1939, the bases were horrible, horrible places, especially the ones that were remote in the far and deep south. Was usually a base surrounded by a street of the nothing, honkytonks and houses of prostitution and loan sharks. A demoralized force and one of the only route reasons they could keep their numbers was a steady salary and three meals a day. Having served myself in the former coream a member, i am a big proponent of National Service. I have always been interested in i think wefact, should still have the program today in our country. You argue in the book that the ccc was a precursor for the g. I. Army, can you explain . It wast only argue that a precursor, but i argue that they saved the army entirely. When roosevelt first came into office, one of his great dreams was this army that would go out and reforest the country. Courses,d build golf hiking trails, create recreation build picnic tables for state parks, everything you can imagine. Outhouses for National Parks, they would do this enormous job part of would reforest the every state, every part of the country was going to have those guys. Roosevelt realized immediately after he declares to start this thing, that he does not have anybody to run it. He realized the logical people to run it is the army, so he goes to General Macarthur who is the army chief of staff and he says general, we would like your guys to run the army. Macarthur comes back and says i you do it on one condition, are planning to cut all my officers by about one third. It, but youill run have got to give me my officers back. You cannot take my officers. Looking back later, it was theous he would have people he would have gotten rid of it included eisenhower, patton, mark mark clark, on and on. Some of the greatest men in world war ii were then at a level of officer ship where they could have been disbanded. Is a lotwhat happens of these officers were huge numbersiven of men to take care of. One of them was marshall himself, marshall had tens of thousands of men to take care of. , the menealized was recruited into the ccc it was only for men, there were men from all races, but it was segregated. Huge camps of blacks and huge camps of white. Omar bradley was another one given a huge number of men to take care of. They had guys really down on their luck, some of them were almost verging on a lot of them were running wild on the highways. They were often involved in robberies and theft and such. And brought them altogether they volunteered to go into these camps. What marshall realized it was he had to discipline these men, but he had no authority to punish them. If a guy there a cigarette but on the ground and marshall says pick that up, the guy says no, i do not have to pick it up, im going home. The guy walks off and goes home. Marshall and bradley and these other Officers Training these men realized they have to learn to discipline, not with punishment, but with understanding, compassion, firmness and giving them a sense of selfworth. One of the first things marshall does for his men is recruiting dentists because these men have horrible teeth. They are in disrepair. He convinces some of the top he goes to america, one of the leading academic interests in the northwest and the dentist as i do not time for these men. Marshall says wait a second, im going to give you a group of men that are part of every part of the country, it is a part of random sample, im going to give you these guys and you can do all these tests and all this research. Guys builds gives these , all of these army guys, give these guys a tremendous sense of selfworth. Marshall himself would write letters of recommendation for these men. World war ii breaks out, these guys are in good shape because they have been fixed up physically, they are educated because there camps had education, they become the backbone of the army. They become the noncommissioned officers, sergeants and a vast number of them go into the military as a noncommissioned officer. They understand drilling, they understand discipline, they understand nutrition, they understand another huge cohort of former andguys go into industry they go into industry because of their end experience, they do not go as just Common People on assembly lines. A lot of them and up as foreman in the aircraft industry. It is this great moment where you create a social system which had huge numbers of people out of the lowest line of poverty. Ccc werethe men in the required to send money home to the families so their families did not start starve. It basically gave the army backbone, Marshall Rodale thing about this, he said this helped make the army what it was. We learned so much from these men. Now people are talking about National Service again and a lot of people believe that we could use a new ccc to combat the Global Warming and to help rest of the cleanup we have to do in the air and water and reforest because there is a huge need for reforestation repolish some of our recreational facilities. Thats what i was alluding to earlier, i am a big proponent of some sort of National Service program either military service or justcorps recreating the ccc or something along those lines that can do so many things. Our National Parks have infrastructure problems, there are a lot of problems places i think for a reconstituted ccc could benefit. I want to remind everybody if you have questions, we want to hear from you. Please type into the queue and a q a bar and ask wes and for me to ask paul here. Talking, i will show some slides that include images from the book. If you have not picked up the book, i would highly recommend it. You talked about marshall, a side note about marshall, if you have not been to his home down anybodyurg, virginia, that is listening, i would encourage you to go down to leesburg right down route 15 and visit. And aa beautiful place Wonderful Museum to him and his wife and his work in the army. You have talked about marshall and some of the other characters, you reach so many characters in the story you tell, whether it is omar bradley, patton, eisenhower and others. What did you discover about one or more these individuals that you found interesting or you learned that you did not know before . Paul it is hard to pick one out of the lot, but i think eisenhower is one of the most duringting because he this. , he wants to get into a position of authority as an officer we watch him in the book come into the louisiana reserve, when he got this ready to go, the framework of the book as we go and end up because of marshall and all these other people and because of the 1940 draft, we end up with an army of 1. 4 Million People by the night of pearl harbor. The night of pearl harbor we have got an army that is mobile, good morale, ready to fight the nazis on the ground. There, to ship them over but they were ready to go. Himself hadarshall to find the leaders that would become the leaders of world war ii. By the time of pearl harbor, he has picked all his tacos. Top guys. Eisenhowero watch like a hawk, he sees eisenhower which were notes unique, they were singular, his ability to get along with the press, the press loved him because all these complicated maneuvers, a lot of military snowed themt and with this tactical stuff. Lookust came out and said heres what is going on here, he had this tent during this massive half a million men maneuver in the swamps of louisiana and he is got this tent and coffee and liquor, so he gets a hold of the press. It is very clear he has this astonishing ability with his men, with the enlisted guys under him that he has this skill which marshall shared. Both had this singular ability inrelate to their men service. A famous picture of eisenhower dday,evening of jacket andis in this they call it the eisenhower jacket. One of the things about it is all men and was dressed nice on the evening of dday, he was wearing a jacket, what he was theng to those men was picture is one of the classic of our times. He knew a lot of men would die, he told them this was the uniform he would work to their funeral where to their funeral. In the book you follow see him becoming eisenhower, patton you see becoming patton. He is bold, he is brash, he is the toughest most dynamic officer you can imagine. During the maneuvers, he cheats. He was supposed to go this way and he goes all the way through taxes texas, comes around, and comes behind the wins. Army and he saidsay you cheated, he youwent through texas and bought gasoline for the tanks, he says you spent your own money on gasoline and did this huge run and it was probably illegal. Patton says, hitlers going to cheat too and it was that brashness that everybody saw. Down the line, omar bradley, marshall sees them as a great leader and marshall put his reputation on the line to create the officer school. This was created during the maneuvers, before pearl harbor. Marshall and bradley believed that every unit had a least one enlisted guy who should have been an officer. This was the first time in antory where there is official way that a highly motivated, well disciplined enlisted guy could become an officer. Those officers were pulled out ranksfrom the enlisted and they became the backbone of the officer corps in world war ii. They helped win the war. Theyople come out of are fascinating characters. One of the great characters in the book for me was bob hope because he was part of the morale that was building, the culture of the g. I. Hope was entertaining the troops well before the war. At one point John Steinbeck was writing as a journalist for the New York Herald tribune. Aeinbeck discovers hope in combat zone and he says when the history of this war is over, bob hope will be one of the heroes. He said this man was fearless, he would go into combat zones, he would entertain severely injured people. Steinbeck said it mustve been taking a huge toll psychically. This room ofnto seriously injured men and he would say well, there is this problem, they are not getting enough powdered eggs. The idea that John Steinbeck would write about bob hope as one of the heroes of the war. There are other people that just popped up, one of the things that marshall does, before pearl isbor he realized that film going to be a great motivator for his own troops. He recruits frank cap are the greatest filmmaker in hollywood and recruit him to make movies to show to the recruits for the draftees, for the men going into the war. Harbor, before pearl marshalling the does, he basically purges the army. He gets rid of about 200 Senior Officers who are either alcoholic, unable to get along with her men, unable to make Firm Decisions and good decisions, he purges them. Many of them he puts in a place where they are harmless. It is a great moment and in their place, i am the same things over and over, eisenhower, patton, etc. This is the magic i found in the book, even that moment of the purge really took courage. He almost had to quit the army, there was such pressure on him. He knew he could not do it and where the war was going, hg wells, the famous writer said one of the things the americans did that was brilliant was purging the officers that did not belong in the army. He said the british did not do it and the french did not do it and they paid for. He said the genius of marshall was he got rid of these guys and basicallyologies and moved the men into place to win the war. In reference to marshall, you mentioned eisenhower, one of my Favorite Places to visit is the eisenhower home up in gettysburg. Again, those listening and watching and tuning in, if you have not been to either or of those places i encourage you to check them out. Lets talk about the draft, in the beginning, it was a 12 month period that folks were drafted for. Franklin Delano Roosevelt went extendress to ask to that decision, what was that decision like . Was the draft itself engineered by a man that very few people have heard of named Grenville Clark who is a wealthy, welltodo very brilliant lawyer in new york who had an impact on American History. 1940sized in the early that the United States needed to have a draft. He was opposed originally by roosevelt, by marshall, he did not like the idea of a civilian. He put together of this amazing crew of president s of universities, former generals, and they got the draft past. He even hired the pr guy for the new york worlds fair to help sell the public on the idea of the draft. And byt the compromise this time roosevelt is very reluctant to support the draft because he is afraid of what it will do to his reelection chances. Happened is the nomination of woodrow wilkie. The original draft was for one was they were trying to extended and as they got to the war itself, there was a vote in the house of representatives which allowed them to keep the draft going and keep those men in uniform. Towas the closest thing shenanigans, Lyndon Johnson was involved and several other politicians that we still hear about today. Gavel at oneick point in the voting, but it army would meant the keep thousands of men in the army. Hadr marshall said, if that gone the other way, if that gotten rid of the draft, it the warve meant probably would have gone on until and this is marshall speaking until 1950 with a loss of at least another Million People worldwide. He says that his homeport that one vote is. In the book, it is a cliffhanger. I try to read the book as if you did not know whos going to win world war ii. That is what narrative writing is all about, i wonder if he will pull this off . You told me of the day, spoiler alert, we won the war. Things, you somewhat alluded to this early on, but one of the things i learned about from your book were the military maneuvers through the south. That was not something i was familiar with. Talk atou think about those maneuvers. Maybe a little bit of strategy or tactics and their value or the importance they had in the early training. They start drafting guys in the late fall of 1940 and they are building barracks, they are building whole bases, they are putting in storage systems. Massive building in getting ready for these guys, they shove these guys into these bases and all they do the original draftees are trained and then they are drilled every day, they start at 10 00 in the morning six in the morning, they grill for a couple hours, and then they read comic books for the rest of the day. The morel was starting to slip in these bases, especially those that were remote and in places where there was no movie theaters, there is no recreation to speak of. In fact, marshall felt so badly about this at one point he goes, he leaves washington and goes to a base in South Carolina in a civilian clothes, checked into a hotel and wanders through the bars and restaurants and hotels talking to these guys. Here he is the chief of staff and he is dressed up in a sports jacket and a pair of khakis or something. What happens is he realized in order to get this army working, the only thing they can do is they have got to test them in the field. They have got to prove themselves that they can move huge domestic supply, water, eggs, everything. They have got to create this huge mobility. One of the features of the book, ill hold this up so you can see in the end a map pages of the book where the maneuvers are. Was, they started in tennessee and people in tennessee have never seen anything like it, a lot of them have never seen an aircraft before, never seen anything. They start there and they begin to train these troops. Groups are brought from all over the country and then even a larger group is brought into louisiana. The first is in the deep south. About this time there is a half a million men in those maneuvers. Thoseare more men in maneuvers in louisiana in 1941 then were in the whole army in 2000 1919. They segued over to another set of maneuvers in the carolinas. Swampsre testing them in and huge problems with whether weather. In tennessee there were nights that would go blue freezing below freezing. They were testing the mobility and eisenhower, after the war says, what we learned in louisiana and tennessee and the carolinas was we learned logistics. We learned how to move stuff, we learned how to supply stuff, we learned how to feed these guys. We learned how to get their hair cut. Trailers downe there fixing boots. The whole mechanism of the Army Eisenhower later says, it is , it is whatm across got the americans across europe to win the war. It was this ability to move things, to get things where they are needed including things like gasoline and water. One friend of mine who is older than i am was a little kid in watched thesehe huge tanker trucks filled with water heading to louisiana for fresh portable water for the troops. Nobody starved, they were well fed. Eisenhower found a cook in louisiana, he is going off on his own, he spicing the food and eisenhower finds the sky this guy. Eisenhower loves to cook, and he finds this cook and he brings the cook to europe and he is his creek in europe and then the guy opens up a restaurant in new york which eisenhower goes to all the time. It was this moment where everybody got to learn how to do it. This culture emerged during these maneuvers, so there is a young guy who starts doing these wonderful cartoons. Wonderful cartoonists are there this whole period. And they are doing this amazing cartooning and marshall himself works to help build this culture of g. I. Culture. He has a book in which he gives him his own slang. Actually seeing their own slang so they would have a sense of being a cohort of being a group together. I have one final question, but im going to hold that till the end. We have some questions from the audience. Heidi asks paul if you would repeat the two best military libraries that you mentioned at the outset. Library in the chicago, the other place that i did a lot of the research was at the Eisenhower Library in kansas. Thei think the pritzker is one in terms of public libraries, ones that you can join. You have to have a subscription, phenomenalull of material. Fantastic, we also asked, i did share some images while you were talking and someone wrote that they had never seen these pictures before, does your book how are the attribution credits in terms of where they can find the original sources . Paul yes and no, a lot of them i had to buy, a lot of them are not in public places. A lot of them a lot of newspapers are getting rid of their morgues, i bought some of them on ebay and others were old army pictures i picked up. There are very few pictures that in the public. I think the library of congress has four or five. They are sort of hardtofind. A lot of them were taking by the army which had this huge Publicity Department going during the maneuvers. I just shared a handful, i encourage you to pick up the book, there are some wonderful images that paul used in the book. Another question if you have any questions, this would be the time to ask because we are coming up close to the end of the program. Drafteds, were blacks to serve in world war ii and could easily enlist . Blacks drafted to serve enter the easily enlist . Paul yes, that is a great question because a major portion of the book is about the struggle ofe huge blacks to become part of an integrated army. , butblacks were drafted they were required to stay in their own barracks, they did not eat with the white shoulders. Soldiers. They had been treated badly in every war, in world war i, the combat troops who were africanamerican were not allowed to fight with the americans, they had to fight with the french. They had to fight with the french colonials. The struggle during the war is 1940 imt, in sorry, 41. Army,er to integrate the they threaten a march on washington of wondered thousand people 100,000 people. [indiscernible] that is the famous one we know about, the march on washington. It is an amazing battle and it does not end. Truman 1948igo the order, but truman does not enforce it and truman is forced to do it. Point arele at that going to boycott the graft draft. A lot of the enforcement comes who is going to profusely enforce it. It is not until 50 years afterwards that secretary of cullen who says the army is now integrated and may be the first perfectly integrated element of american life. It probably still you can probably still make that claim. Close to 40 of the military is now people of color. I believe you mentioned even during the maneuvers in the south about like the 366 which were part of the world war i could not participate in those. All africanamerican units out of massachusetts, a in world warit had i and they are disinvited to the maneuvers because they are all black including their commanding officer. Of was are afraid it was a colonel, we get to louisiana and every lieutenant and every sergeant would have to salute a blackman black man. That is how bad it was, they marginalized them officially because they were so afraid of crowit would do to the jim with they used to call segregation. The amazing story that comes out in the book is that the blacks really outdid themselves, they believed in the double v which was the big campaign of black people in the war. Victory over the enemies and victory over jim crow. Is goingal question back to lessons that we learned in 1939 with my final question, how would you think about the Lessons Learned during that time. And of ramping up, read to win, whatever you want to call it, into the fears, number one military in the world . I think that the answer is the you always come back to same work, leadership. Leadership, and the brilliance of being able to work, keeping your eye on the prize. Be thatite example may you have to fight the war and win it. Reluctance. E able tois immediately do is that he appoints a republican. Modelically creates this of cooperation. Even though they were very critical of the new deal and some of the academic some of the economic policies, they are the ones that won the war and brought everyone on board. To meet that is leadership and brilliance, that you can do that. Otherwise if you cannot put together the country as a whole, whether you are fighting covid nazis, you might be in trouble. Do you have any other closing thoughts . Anything else we havent covered . I think there are a lot of really strong personalities in my book. Here is a book that is very upbeat that makes you proud of america. About the way that we marshaled ourselves. People now say, i do not want to wear a mask. It is a hindrance on my freedom. People were drafted during peacetime. They drafted vanderbilts and rockefellers. They drafted the guy who is the head of the new york stock exchange. I think that is the other thing. If you think of the american spirit, it comes alive during this time. Was reading a book about the 1918 plague, influenza. I want to get away from the viruses. Your book is also timely because in the past couple of years, we have been the 75thting anniversary of various world war ii milestones. And the invasion of normandy last year. 12 is thet what we did in japan. I would encourage folks to pick up the book, the rise of the g. I. Army and you can get at the downtown bookstore. Again, our next program is august 12. We hope folks will tune in on that. So much foryou being our guest. Are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend, on cspan3. Up next on lectures in history, Cornell University professor Maria Cristina garcia talks about the United States refugee policy since world war ii. She discusses who qualifies as a refugee and how that has changed over the years, as well as legislation governing quotas and procedures. Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing to europe at this very moment. Can anyone tell me from what countries they are fleeing . Leighton. Ok, syria. Any other countries . Tess . Kosovo. Prof. Garcia sarah