Why did you write this book . That it had never been really told before between the covers of a book. I mean its been told orally and in conversations, but so in 2005, i went to two places. I went to the Eisenhower Library, did a lot of research there in the st. Abilene, kansas. And i went to the Pritzker 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 started working on this book, i started developing it. And i wrote four other books in between including words from the white house. Those were to sort of to keep bread on the table so to speak. I just became haunted by this story and trying to get deeper and deeper into it and discover who the people were, who really saved the country. For me it was a revelatory moment because id go to libraries and places and book sales and trying to look up some of the things i write about in this book like the louisiana maneuvers for example and found almost nothing. I had to really dig, i had to go through a lot of archives and primary source materials, 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 get it right. This is like telling how sausages are made, but i had two pretty full rewrites, i had two line edits, i had two copy edits, i had a lot of people key people, the brigadier general, i taught history at the air force academy and i knew he had been in world war ii in the armour division. He is now 91 and probably 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 really call this particular division, so 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 and its done. You cover a number of topics which i really 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 for what was going on in this country in terms of laissezfaire philosophy and where we were as a country either from Foreign Relations and or military perspective. Well the army was a disaster, it was rated 17th in the world after portugal. It was extremely weak, two years before 39, 37 when macarthur was still chief of staff, he said the whole United States army, officers, enlisted men, the whole deal, cooks, everybody could fit into yankee stadium. And so we had nothing. The army was demoralized, they were paid poorly even in 39, some of their salary had been taken back as part of the new deal belt tightening. The most absurd part of the army i think prior to that date in 1939 was, if you joined the army and you wanted a gun that worked, a calibrated world war i rifle, because they didnt have new rifles, if you wanted one that was actually calibrated and ready to fire in combat, you had to buy it from the army for over 200. 200 plus and it came out of your monthly which was about 21. The deprivation of these poor guys who were in the army if you wanted to change bases, if you wanted to go from one to another and transfer, you had to get out of the army, relist, and pay for the transfer. There was no money for transportation, there was nothing. The United States was at that time very much involved in protecting itself. It was the depression. The great thing that happened, the very same day that the war began when franklin d. Roosevelt, realizing the problems that were out there, franklin d. Roosevelt picked up george c. 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 sort of this genius and this ability to say no to him on certain things. And it was a brilliant decision. The United States at that time was isolationist, it wanted to stay out of the war in europe, but it knew that the pressures were building as39 went on into40. The nazis were attacking britain, france was teetering, everything had gotten worse and worse. There were two fractions in the country, 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, the isolationist, they wanted to build a navy, but not even worry about the army because they cannot imagine us having to fight overseas. And then there were what were called for lack of a better term, the interventionist, people who knew at some moment we would be forced to go to the war. We also had our eye on the other side of the world in japan which was becoming more and more belligerent, making noise about driving the british out of hong kong, driving the americans out of the philippines. This was going on it at both ends. What had to be done was not only did they have to start gearing up an industry, aircraft, etc. Which was quite doable because we had a lot of Brilliant Companies that were looking for sort of a way out of the depression that needed the money and needed to open 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 . How do you go from zero to 70 in terms of an army . Youve got an army of 60, 000, they are not mobile, they are not well trained, they are deprived of many things. Many of the bases had virtually no recreation, no movie theater, no this but they would be out in the middle of nowhere. In39, the bases were horrible, horrible places, especially the ones that were remote in the far west and deep south. There was usually a base and then surrounded by a street of nothing, honkytonks and houses of prostitution and loan sharks. It was a demoralized force and one of the only reasons i could keep their number was the depression that was a steady salary and three meals a day. Having served myself in the military, as well as a americorps member, i am a former armericorps member. I am big proponent of National Service. I have always been interested in the ccc in fact, i think we 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 . I not only argue that it was a precursor, but i argue that it may have saved the army entirely. When roosevelt first came into office, one of his great dreams was this tree army, this army that would go out and reforest the country, that would build golf courses, that would build hiking trails, that would create recreation build picnic tables for state parks, i mean everything you can imagine. Outhouses for National Parks, they would do this enormous job and they would reforest part of the dust bowl, every state, every corner of the country was going to have those guys. Roosevelt realized almost immediately after he declares hes going 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 he says i will do it on one condition, you are planning to cut my junior officer corps, youre planning to cut all my officers by about one third as part of your austerity as you go into the new deal. He said, i will run it, but you have got to give me my officers back. You cannot take my officers. Well looking back later, it was obvious the people he would have to get rid of include eisenhower, patton, mark clark, on and on. Gruenther. Some of the greatest men in world war ii were then at a level of officership where they could have been disbanded. They were not a higher grade officer. So, then what happens is a lot of these officers were immediately given huge numbers of men to take care of. One of them was marshall himself, marshall had tens of thousands of men to take care of. What he realized was, the men who recruited them were the ccc, it was only for men, there were men from all races, but it was segregated. There were huge camps of blacks and huge camps of white. Omar bradley was another one of the ones given a huge number, tremendous number of men to take care of. They had guys who were really down on their luck, some of them were almost verging on a lot of them were running wild on the highways, hitchhiking, they were hobos. They were often involved in robberies and theft and such. They had to call them out. They brought them altogether and they volunteered to go into these camps. But what marshall realized immediately was he had to discipline these men, but he had no authority to punish them. So if you said to a guya guy throws a cigarette butt 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. So 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 he starts recruiting dentists because these men have horrible teeth. They are in terrible disrepair. He convinces some of the top dentists in america, one place that he ran the camps was out in the state of washington. He goes to one of the leading academic dentists in the northwest and the guy says i do not time for these men. Marshall says well wait a second, im going to give you a group of men that are part of every part of the country, it is the perfect sort of random sample, im going to give you these guys and you can do all these tests and all this research. So he builds gives these guys, all of them, army guys, give these guys a tremendous sense of selfworth, they are given diplomas. Marshall himself would write letters of recommendation for these men. So when world war ii breaks out, these guys are in good shape because they have been fixed up physically, they have been educated because the camps had education, they become the backbone of the army. They become the noncommissioned officers, the sergeants and a vast, wast number of them go into the military as a noncommissioned officer. They understand drilling, they understand discipline, they understand nutrition, they understand brushing your teeth, another huge cohort of former ccc guys go into industry and they go into industry because of their experience, they do not go as sort of Common People on assembly lines. They can go in as foreman. A lot of them end up as foreman in the aircraft industry. It is this great moment in American History where you create a social system which had huge numbers of people out of the lowest line of poverty. A lot of the men in the ccc were required to send money home to the families so their families did not starve. It basically gave the army backbone. Marshall and mrs. Marshall too, she wrote a whole thing about this, he said this helped make the army what it was. We learned so much from these men. Of course now people are talking about National Service again and a lot of people believe that we could use a new ccc to combat Global Warming and to help clean up the rest of the cleanup we have to do in the air and water and reforest because there is this huge need for reforestation and sort of repolish some of our recreational facilities. I totally agree. Thats what i was alluding to earlier. I am a big proponent of some sort of National Service program either military service or americorps or just 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 places where i think where a recreated or reconstituted ccc could benefit. I want to pause for a second as just remind everybody if you have questions, we definitely want to hear from you. Please type into the q a bar and pose some questions for me to ask paul here. While paul is talking, im going to also show some slides that include some images from the book. If you have not picked up the book yet, again i would highly recommend it. Youve talked about marshall, a just a side note about marshall, if you have not been to his home down in leesburg, virginia, anybody that is listening, i would encourage you to go down to leesburg, virgina just right down route 15 and visit. It is a beautiful place and a Wonderful Museum to him and his wife and his work in the army and secretary and state. You have already talked about marshall and some of the other characters, you weave so many characters into the story you tell, whether it is omar bradley, geroge c. Marshall, patton and eisenhower and others. What did you discover about one or more of these individuals that you found interesting or that you learned that you did not know before . It is hard to pick one out of the lot, but i think eisenhower is one of the most fascinating ones because he during this period, he wants to get into a position of authority as an officer, as a combat officer and such. We watch him in the book come into the louisiana maneuver, so part of the reason we got this army ready to go into war in world war ii the framework of the book is we go from 0 to 70, we end up because of marshall, because of eisenhower, all of these other people and because of the 1940 draft, peacetime draft, we end up with an army of almost over 1. 4 Million People by the night of pearl harbor. The night of pearl harbor we have got an army that is mobile, welltrained, good morale, ready to fight the nazis on the ground. We did not have to ships to get them over there, but they were ready to go. It took marshall himself had to find the leaders that would become the leaders of world war ii. By the time of pearl harbor, he has picked all of his top guys. Hes so smart and he pickshe starts to watch eisenhower like a hawk, and he sees eisenhower during his maneuvers and he sees eisenhower as these abilities which if not unique, they were singular. His ability to get along with the press, the press loved him because all these maneuvers going on and they are very complicated, a lot of military guys would come out and snowed them with this sort of this tactical stuff. Ike just came out like a guy sitting on his porch and said look heres what is going on here, he had this tan during these massive, massive half a million men maneuvers in the swamps of louisiana and he is got this tan and hes coffee and hes got 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 to relate to their men in service. A famous picture of eisenhower on the evening of dday, eisenhower is in this jacket and they call it the eisenhower jacket. One of the things about it is all the men knew that he was dressed not in fatigues on the evening of dday but he was dressed in the jacket that he would wear. So what he was saying to those men was by just his attire and that picture is one of the classic of all times, that he knew a lot of them were going to die, and this was the uniform he would wear to their funeral. In the book you really follow eisenhower and you see him becoming eisenhower, patton you see becoming patton. 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 texas during a mock battle and does not stay in louisiana like he was supposed to. He goes all the way through texas comes around, and comes behind the other army and he wins. They say well you cheated, they said you went through texas and you bought gasoline for the tanks, because american tanks at that time were not running on diesel but on gasoline. He says you spent your own money on gasoline and did this huge run and it was totally illegal. Patton says, well hitlers going to cheat too and it was that brashness that everybody saw. Down the line, omar bradley, marshall sees him as the great leader and marshall puts his reputation on the line to create the officer candidate school. The officer candidate school was created during the maneuvers, during before pearl harbor. Marshall and bradley believed that every unit had at least one enlisted guy who should have been an officer. This was the first time in history where it was an official way that a highly motivated, well disciplined enlisted guy could become an officer. Those officers were pulled out of from the enlisted ranks and they became the backbone of the officer corps, the junior officer corps in world war ii. They won the war, i mean they helped win the war. These people come out of they are fascinating characters. There are characters in the book, i mean one of the great characters in the book for me was bob hope because he was part of the cult morale that was building, the culture of the g. I. And 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. Steinbeck discovers hope in a 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 on him psychically, seeing these men with double amputees and things. And he would go in with these gags and he would go in these rooms of seriously injured men and he would say well, there is this real problem at home, 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 were other people that just pop up, you cant believe it like one of the things that marshall does. Before pearl harbor he realized that film is going to be a great motivator for his own troops. So he recruits guess who . Frank capra, the greatest filmmaker in hollywood and recruits him to make movies to show to the recruits, for the draftees, for the men going into the war. This was before pearl harbor, the other thing that marshall does remarkably and its a gutsy, gutsy thing that he 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 without apologies and basically 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 to congress to ask to extend that decision, what was that decision like . The draft itself was 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. He realized in the early 1940s 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. They got the compromise and by this time roosevelt is very reluctant to support the draft because he is afraid of what it will do to his reelection chances. The miracle that happened is the nomination of woodrow wilkie. The original draft was for one year and it 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. It was the closest thing to shenanigans, Lyndon Johnson was involved and several other politicians that we still hear about today. There is a quick gavel at one point in the voting, but it essentially meant the army would keep thousands of men in the army. Later marshall said, if that had gone the other way, if that gotten rid of the draft, it would have meant the war 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. One of the 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. Why do you think talk at 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 moral 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 it, this is a map in the end pages of the book where the maneuvers are. What happened 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 a tank. 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. There are more men in those maneuvers in louisiana in 1941 then were in the whole army in 2019. It was that big. They segued over to another set of maneuvers in the carolinas. They were testing them in swamps and huge problems with weather. In tennessee there were nights that would go 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. There were semi trailers down there fixing boots. The whole mechanism of the Army Eisenhower later says, it is what got them across, it is what 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 louisiana and he watched these huge tanker trucks filled with water heading to louisiana for fresh Potable 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 this guy. Eisenhower loves to cook, and he finds this cook and he brings the cook to europe and 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. He is 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. It is the library in chicago, the other place that i did a lot of the research was at the Eisenhower Library in kansas. But i think the pritzker is the one in terms of public libraries, ones that you can join. You have to have a subscription, but it is full of phenomenal 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 . 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 are out there 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. Beth asks, were blacks drafted to serve in world war ii and could easily enlist . Were blacks drafted to enlist . Yes, that is a great question because a major portion of the book is about the struggle, the huge struggle of blacks to become part of an integrated army. Many blacks were drafted, but they were required to stay in their own barracks, they did not eat with the white 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 best, in fact, in 1940 im sorry, 41. In order to integrate the army, they threaten a march on washington of 100,000 people. [indiscernible] that is the famous one we all know about, the march on washington. It is an amazing battle and it does not end. In the book i go through the truman 1948 order, but truman does not enforce it and truman is forced to do it. Black people at that point are going to boycott the draft. A lot of the enforcement comes with eisenhower who is going to profusely enforce it. It is not until 50 years afterwards that secretary of defense 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 those part in world war i, they could not participate in those, right . Could not participate in those. All africanamerican units out of massachusetts, a phenomenal unit had in world war i done well and they are disinvited to the maneuvers because they are all black including their commanding officers. What they are afraid of was it was a colonel, we get to louisiana and every lieutenant and every sergeant would have to salute a black man. That is how bad it was, they marginalized them officially because they were so afraid of what it would do to the jim crow what 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. Those for the two victories so hence the double the. My final question is going 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 that you always come back to the same l word, leadership. Leadership, and the brilliance of being able to work, keeping your eye on the prize. My favorite example may be that you have to fight the war and win it. There is some reluctance. What he immediately does is that he appoints a republican. He basically creates this model of cooperation. Even though they were very critical of the new deal and some of the economic policies, they are the ones that won the war and brought everyone on board. To me 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 or the nazis, you might be in trouble. Any closing comments or thoughts . Maybe something from the book that we havent covered tonight . I think there are a lot of really strong personalities in my book. Somebody said to me the other day, your timing is perfect. Here is a book that is very upbeat that makes you proud of america. Subtracting all of a whole business of jim crow. 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 were just pulled out of their jobs and there is very little resistance. 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. I 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 commemorating the 75th anniversary of various world war ii milestones. Dday and the invasion of normandy last year. This august 12 is the celebration of what we did in japan. I want to thank you for being a guest. 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. Paul, thank you so much for being our guest. Youre watching American History tv, every weekend on cspan 3, explore our nations past. Cspan 3, created by americas Cable Television company as a public service. Brought to you today by your television provider