Getting seasick. You have to have your troops in fighting form, but eisenhower went ahead and gave the go signal. On junesion went forth 6, 1944. This speaks a lot about his character, eisenhower wrote out a note the night before in which he said the invasion failed and he alone was responsible for this failure, in case things went wrong. Fortunately, he succeeded. Host the germans knew there would be some sort of invasion. The question was where and when and from what locations in great britain. Fascinating story on how the allies could keep this in the german military. Yes, it was a topsecret plan, but with something of this scale, you will have a hard time to enable to keep things secret. The fact that we were able to keep the germans guessing on when it was going to come was a Great Success on our part. The germans knew we were going to come at some point, but they did not know we went and where. It was a Great Success for the allies that we were able to go into normandy. The germans that we were going to go someplace else. Ofsucceeded partly because our secrecy policies. Comments on getting twitter at cspan history and facebook as a continue our endrage, commemorating the of world war ii, 70 years ago in 1945. Isth paxson keith huxon joining us. 202 7848000 four eastern and central time zones. 2027488001 for all others. On the question of u. S. Preparedness, do you have a civiliann the u. S. Conservation corps in helping prepare reserve officers and civilian and will ease for Wartime Service between 1933 and 1942 . Keith i dont have much of a comment on the civilian court in particular, but i will say that civilians were not deeply involved in the war effort. The truth of the matter is is that world war ii was a total effort and there were a lot of different jobs. It was not just our 60 million in uniform who are are 16 million in uniform who are fighting this war. A big challenge we had to overcome strategically was preparing ourselves in terms of military resources. I am talking about the airplanes, tanks, weapons, food. All those things it takes to put a soldier onto a beach or in a foreign country and have them fight. Ii, keep in war mind, you have people like children too young to serve or the elderly, tools, who contributed by doing things like growing victory gardens, scrap metal garage, rubber garage, rationing put in place so house lives are cooking with less. Housewives are cooking with less. This was a national effort. The ccc will have some role in this, but i do think it had a major role in actually getting as prepared for the war. Host keith huxon, the tour we just showed, you commented on hitlers suicide in april 1945. Is there any marking in berlin for those who want to see where that took place . Keith my understanding, and i have not been there, is that you do have the underground bunkers still there in berlin. The photographs that i have seen online, however, there is no memorial or marker to that spot. Today isn government very sensitive to these types of questions. They do not want Something Like hitlers death site to become a memorial to neonazis or Something Like that. Host there is a parking lot in berlin where that took place near that bunker. Lets go to paul in colorado. Caller yes, sir. At the end of the last segment, i saw eisenhower deploying the concentration camps after liberation. I was wondering, in what part of the war did we know or were aware of the concentration camps, and whether any military Missions Prior to the fall of germany to liberate these camps . Host thank you. Keith there was not a military the camps. O liberate there was a question during the war that churchill and roosevelt faced on whether or not to bomb the lines to the death camps in poland. The problem we were facing, and we knew about this from 1942 onward, not seize actually come up with final solutions at the conference in january 1942, the problem we faced from 1942 to 1943 into 1944 was that we do not have a toll really on the european continent where we can reach eastern europe. The soviet union is being hit very hard on the Eastern Front at this time, and josef stalin did not want to allow british or american aircraft and cruise on soviet territory, even though we were allies. The only weight we could bomb the Railway Lines would be flying from britain, which means you have to fly over germany and then back. Roosevelt and churchill made the decision that this was not linesle because railway could be built back overnight, the germans were excellent engineers. Every time he walked one of those bombers, youre not just losing an expensive plane, but you are using you are losing 10 members or 11 crew members who are not easily replaced. Roosevelt and churchill made the decision that the quickest way to end the holocaust and death camps was to win the war. It would have to be done militarily and that was policy they followed. Host youre in new orleans and the museum began as a dday museum. Why is it located in new orleans at what role did Stephen Ambrose play in building up their . Stephen ambrose in the mid1960s went to interview general dwight d. Eisenhower, and during the course of this interview, eisenhower asked Stephen Ambrose, do you know Andrew Jackson higgins . He said he knew of him, why . Eisenhower replied, because he is the man who won the war for us. He all most fell out of his chair, but eisenhower explained andrewggins industries, higgins had built the landing uset in boats that we will to land on beaches. Think about the flat bottom tugboats. It came out of louisiana because of the swamps and the oil business down here. The point was that eisenhower made was that without those landing crafts, we could not have followed our strategy of amphibious invasion. Amphibious invasion was a highly controversial strategy i will mention quickly. Been particularly successful before the war. We knew that we were going to have to have amphibious invasions to land in normandy. This is something we try to bring out in the museum. We landedoblems when in north africa, sicily, africa, again and again. There was the question whether this strategy could work. As a result in this, Stephen Ambrose and his best friend dr. Nick mueller decided that they andld, in honor of higgins the men who had landed at dday, have the museum down here telling that story. That is how the museum began. Host you are watching American History tv on cspan3 as we commemorate the 73 anniversary of world war ii. Keith huxon is joining us from new orleans. Our next color is from wisconsin. Frederick, go ahead. Caller i was wondering if you could comment on the Critical Role of the United States merchant marine during the war. Host absolutely. We opened the road to berlin galleries in december 2014, and we are about five weeks away from opening our road tokyo galleries in that building. If you go to our campus, we are also going to open a gallery dedicated to the merchant marine. The merchant marine were absolutely critical to world war ii. I will put it in a larger context because we talked about campaignsdeos in the where the United States had to master five key strategic challenges to win the war. We had to win the war for production, arsenal democracy, technology, it was not enough to produce our enemy but to make better weapons like the atomic bomb, and that we had to win , the airf sea lanes above them, and then planning digs, but if you think about it, in the u. S. , we are building all of this stuff on the home front. You then have this tremendous economic and logistical effort where you have to ship this stuff out. We moved a lot more equipment a there we didse do the air to get to the pacific and europe. It were the merchant marines who are on the front line of that fight. In 1942, the merchant marines were taking most of the american losses in the battle of the atlantic at the german uboats prowling off the shores where they were sinking boats off of the mouth of the mississippi river, north carolina, torpedo junction off of new york, and these are merchant ships that were going down. I believe about 500 ships went down in 1942. Winston churchill, in his memoir, talk about how the battle of the atlantic is what kept him up at night in 1942 because he knew that if we could not get those troops the equipment to the destinations, then the war effort could not succeed but the merchant marines made that happen. Into you have shown different exhibits, the tour we have shown as part of our coverage, you really do put a face to world war ii, the soldiers who fought the war, their story. Keith yes. Ambrosesback to dr. Effort with his books where he began collecting histories in the 1980s, in particular, and incorporating and incorporating personal experiences of the men and women into his books. Basically, if you think about it, the world war ii generation was kind of famous for not talking about their war experiences up until the mid1980s. It was about the 40th anniversary of the dday landing when president reagan formally recognized the achievement of those troops in normandy that sort of the floodgates opened up a bit, and you started to have world war ii veterans willing to talk about their experiences. I think the biggest factor that is hard for those of us today who did not experience these events, it is hard for us to understand that everybody knew somebody who was involved, husband, father, friend, sister, wife, and most of the casualties are going to be men. These men and women saw an awful lot of death, and they did not want to talk about it after the war. It was too much, it was too horrible to describe quite often. Startout the 1980s, we to get memoirs by about the 1980s, we start to get memoirs, men and women running to talk about this, and i think this is a National Treasure more americans in the future to understand our past and what the men and women achieved for country in the world. Host we thank you for sharing this with their audience. Nathan joins us from oregon. Go ahead. That i my question is read that hitler had shifted his focus toward the final solution as the allies were advancing upon him, and that the actually diverted resources like money and fuel toward carrying out the final solution as opposed to helping support the troops, his troops on the front line. Is that true and how much of an impact of that have on them losing the war . Probablythink that it warened the end of the that would be the argument that most historians would make. The war of 1944 into 1945 turned against hitler more and more. He did not divert resources away from the effort of the killing machine, the holocaust, and put those resources toward battlefield. Instead, he is going to try and killing crowns asked if the wound on tim. I think it is hard to calculate recalibrate exactly what type of impact this had, but i think that it is pretty reasonable to say that this was a big strategic error on hitlers part. His helped hasten demise. 488000 for those on eastern and central times. And in mountain and pacific, 2027488001. Enormouso back to the losses that allies faced, how did the u. S. And military deal with that . Keith we were caught flatfooted on the battle of the bulge. We could have seen it and we should have seen it coming, perhaps, but it was a successful effort by adolf hitler. Political. S he wanted to divide the british armies to the north from the american armies to the south, and if he could make it into that area, hitler thought he could get the Political Sentiment and that we would basically be willing to end our war with them and he could focus on the soviet union. Basically, it did not happen that way. Our lines. , butre overrun at bastogne you have to tremendous story of heroism and most of the viewers, i would imagine, have seen the , and theton famous scene where he asked the south to try to rescue the troops and bastogne. They famously said to the germans when they demanded surrender, no to surrender. End, but itd in the was not easy. This was the largest battle in the history of the United States army, better than 6000 troops were involved. We took nearly 20,000 dead. Sotimes, the battle was fierce and we were so desperate , at we were pushing up cooks stretcher bearers, basically all the behind the front line troops were coming in and putting them on the front lines and fighting because we had to, so once hitler loses at the battle of waybulge or a more accurate would to be, once he prevailed, the handwriting was on the wall for hitler on the western front where he could not win. And we are going to be driving into germany from that point forward. Host was that the moment, in your mind, or you think hitler knew it was over or was there another moment . Keith i dont think hitler knew it was over from my judgments on his personality and psychology put thee basically bullet through his brain on april the 30th. He had commanders around him who told him, we are not going to win, but he ignored them. Made or, hitler mentioned strategic mistakes. Historians can say that one of his great mistakes was in 1941 invading the soviet union, but dont forget that he declared war on the United States on december 11, 1940 1, 3 days or four days after pearl harbor. The u. S. Did not declare war on germany and we declared war on the empire of japan. Hitler could have just remained neutral and that would fdr have done . He took the pressure off fdr when he declared war on the United States. We were already in a shooting war in the atlantic, although, an undeclared one. Late 1941,ay from the handwriting was on the wall and he was going to be defeated. Winston churchill said after the news came about pearl harbor, that he knew at this point that ultimately, the listed prevail are should say that allies would prevail. Host lets go to alan from new jersey. Keith huxon is in new orleans on this saturday. Go ahead. Caller i want to thank cspan and keith for having this wonderful program. Duringcts what happened the war. I wanted to just mention going back to it keith described when a question was asked about concentration camps and bombing. That did accurately say would be a typical flight the. Omb those facilities and so on [indiscernible] go to groundes to during war in those buildings and the crematoriums in our crematoriums that had broken out. Bombthey decided to do was the plant, which was being built and they did bomb it because that was the military objective. Bombwas the decision, the planes to that one military location. Host thank you. We will get a response. Keith huxon . Keith i had a little trouble hearing everything the caller said. His line was breaking up a little, but i did catch that he was saying we did bomb ball hering plants and i believe said industrial facilities, which is absolutely true. We were intent on bombing the to wage war. And meant industrial plants facilities, ball bearing plants, oil supplies. They are always going to be a prime target. World war ii was a war run on oil, so that is absolutely correct. Those would be our Top Priorities and how to win and wage the war. Lets goco to iris to iris from michigan. Caller i just heard your response to the last caller and it kind of goes against the story portrayed in schindlers list when they were supposed to be making supplies for the u. S. Army. Keith we did not get all of them. Caller everybody was involved in world war ii. We were wrapping bandages, sending letters, baking cookies, peopled, sending grease, were going, neighborhoods were empty, they came back destroyed. When you say people cant talk about it or dont talk about it until 40 years afterward, is because they were brainwashed not to talk about it when they came home. And how far above sea level is this museum . Is it going to last how wise it new orleans rather than someplace where people can see it . Answered theady new orleans location question earlier, but well give him a chance to talk about the physical location. Keith we were originally founded as the dday museum. We did such a good job of it, dr. Ambrose and dr. Miller did, that congress, in 2004, passed a revolution where they said we would become the nations World War Ii Museum, the National World war ii museum, charged with telling the entire story of the war. That is why the busiest is located in new orleans that is like the museum is located in new orleans. To the other part of your question on the aftermath of the war. Our museum tells the story of the American Experience in the war, how it was fought, white won and why it was what it, means today. We are hoping to raise the money to build another pavilion, a liberation pavilion is what we call it, the current pavilion we are opening, the campaign pavilion, i called the war building, it tells the middle part of our mission, how we won the war. What it means for the today part, we went to show the public how the war basically shaped our modern world today and keep the story evergreen, so we are going to build this liberation pavilion that will address things like the holocaust, the monuments, priceless art treasures, we will cut about faith in wartime, we will talk about faith in wartime, and how the United States took the lead in the postworld war ii rebuild. Anxiety the marshall plan, nuernberg think of things like the marshall plan, nuremberg, and but we went to do is also talk about the impact of the war on the men and women who came back, ptsd is a very real thing, posttraumatic stress syndrome, this week, i would say that i went and spoke with a fellow who is in afghanistaniraq veteran. And he spoke before a group of high school students, and i did not know this, but a terrible fact, but 5900 combat casualties have taken place in the middle east in the last decade or so. We have had 42,000 suicides of u. S. Soldiers coming back. The world war ii generation suffered ptsd as well, although, they did not collect that back then. This is something that we do want to bring to the foreground of the publics knowledge, that the war was not over for a lot of these men and women. It stays with them their whole life. Imagine that, for example, your father was killed during the war, and you grew up and that is something, even though you may be 70 years old or 80yearold, that will mark you for the rest of your life. We are very dedicated to this liberation pavilion in telling those stories and trying to help the public understand what great impact the war had on our country and its people. Host a few more minutes with keith huxon. Teresa from new jersey. Law was a father in he wasnazi germany and africanamerican. He was part of the 33rd baton, do you have anything on them in your museum . Host thank you, teresa. Keith i dont think we would have been thing on the three 33rd, it does not ring the bell. Our great challenge is we can address all the individual units, although, there were some mentioned but we have to tell our story on a high level, think army level or Something Like that. We are dedicated to telling stories of americans who are marginalized in American Society at that time. Thatrony of world war ii dr. Ambrose pointed out in one of his books, the United States fought one of the two most racist regimes in history, not to germany and imperial japan, not to germany and nazi germany and imperial japan, and this is part of the story that we went to tell. Things like the womens rights movement, the civil rights movement, they go back and world war ii as a result of that war and the aftermath. It is not an easy story and i do not want to be taking it too simple, what to make it too simple, but we want to talk about the trajectories of change that take place in American Society as a result of this. We tell the story of japaneseamericans, africanamericans, native americans, hispanic americans, their place in the story, and the overall arching context of the story of the war. , director ofuxon research and history for the World War Ii Museum. He has been joining us live from the cspan box located outside the museum. Its ui for your time, insights, and we greatly appreciate it thank you for your time, insights, and we greatly appreciate it. Keith thank you for having me. Host we will continue our coverage and we take you to the pacific battle. We will take your questions about the significance and some of the Key Developments that led to allied victory against japan as we continue from the World War Ii Museum and memorial. We will begin with the uss tang submarine experience to give you a sense of what that was like. Is seth paridon. Right now, we are standing in the uss tang submarine experience. Uss tang was built in 1943 and commissioned in 1944 during the second world war. Vallejo class submarine, which at the time in 1944, was the most modern submarine of the day. She was a rather large summary. She had endless men and officers. Her sole main purpose was to patrol the Pacific Ocean and sink japan war and merchant ships. By 1944, Technology Advanced and so much so that the boats that were commissioned earlier in the war, they were not obsolete by any means, but the ones commission, such as the tang bal