Saturday at 6 00 p. M. And 10 00 p. M. To watch more anytime, visit to our website www. Cspan. Org history. You are watching American History tv all weekend, every weekend. A panel of historians discuss the different ways dday has been remembered in the United States and abroad. In the u. S. , it has been memorialized. By contrast in germany, theres not a single museum marking the dday invasion. The panel looks at how Different Countries have changed their views. For example in some countries, sympathetic the nazis, dday was seen as in defeatist terms and later the liberation of europe. The museum in new orleans hosted this event. Once again, thank you for joining us ladies and gentlemen. If you are just joining our programming, i am dr. Keith hudson. I now have the distinct pleasure of presiding over a panel of distinguished scholars to discuss the subject of dday and how we commemorate and remember this great decisive event of world war ii down, 70 years on. If you Pay Attention today, one can still see a current news reports where the results of world war ii still reverberate in our world such as in chinese, japanese relations or the situation between russia and ukraine today. If one travels, you will see how different nations remember the war in their own a national museums, monuments, cemeteries, and other places of cultural memory. Joining us today are dr. Michael dolsky and another doctor, contributors to another volume which deals specifically with the Normandy Landings and how they are remembered and commemorated internationally. Dr. Michael dolksy not only was a contributor, but also served as one of the editors of the volume. He holds a phd from Temple University and is a historian with a joint preserve war missing in action Accounting Command Central Identification Laboratory in hawaii. Dr. Gunter bishoff is the professor of history and director of Center Austria at university of new orleans. He was a graduate student of our museums founders, and our ceo at uno. Before going to Harvard University to earn his doctorate in history. He serves as a president ial counselor, a group of renowned historians who advised dr. Mueller here at the National World war ii museum. And joining for our discussion as well is dr. John mcmanus, who is professor of American Military history and served as our keynote speaker, the past two days for our event commemorating the 70th anniversary here at the museum. Gentlemen, welcome. [applause] to begin our discussion today will be dr. Bolsky who will present his ideas and thought about the American Experience of remembering dday. Thank you, keith. First of all, i will like to say thank you to everybody here today and the veterans and this is the reason we are all here for this. First of all, i have to issue a disclaimer that everything i say represents my own ideas and not the department of defense. Ok, allow me to set the stage. Craft overburden with nervous men, cluster soldiers shipped none of our boys are fully prepared for what seemed the wavesthem, and break to show the sure sign. Withering fire. The soldiers eventually force a es. Ak in the defens miller joins them with such a breach. And it quickly dissolves. Theres a depiction that i gave you very briefly with a generalized tale of war on omaha beach. This is similar to what dr. Mcmanus presented yesterday. The details here have been drawn at this point from the 1998 blockbuster movie saving private ryan. It proved to be a very Popular Striking a chord in american society, and this battle continues to act as a frame for our understanding of world war ii. My question is why does dday hold such a sacred place in our understanding of the Second World War . Part of that stems from the dday films. It is the way that our society particularly chooses to understand the past. It takes a look at how people try to understand complex event of the past. We can look at several things like books and speeches and monuments and events such as this. I am choosing to talk about one part of that, and that his major movies. Readilydes a identifiable heroism. Exploring dday films show that there are several things going on in the movies as well as amongst the movies. They are sort of in conversation with each other. I am going to show how there are never to choices among these movies. We will talk a little bit about our society as well. And in particular over time, these movies have changed dday into a tale of american heroes, democratic heroes. Looking into the present, this was a major theme of president obamas address yesterday, well where he called omaha be democracy beachhead. In the nostalgia that weve seen in recent decades, they were just trying to get on with things. This takes you to the end of the 1940s and john wayne. The very popular stance of the wood jima sparked hollywoods interest in the war. Right in the middle of this reemergence of the war as an object of fixation for hollywood movie, fighter squadron. That was in 1948. It is an actual dday movie that weld received saving private ryan. It is not particularly a good movie. It is a melodrama with fighting germans in the sky. The battle seemed to depend on a few guys that take the fight to the germans in the sky. Likewise, there is a 1950 movie called breakthrough. As you can see there. Which depicts a preparation for the conduct of combat in normandy. The central character you see depicted is lieutenant joe mallory. He was an english teacher who struggle to lead his men to combat on the shores of normandy. What is interesting, for any of you that saw saving private ryan, it is sort of a prelude to tom hanks character in that movie. One of the most bloodsoaked sectors of omaha beach, which again, john talked about in his discussions. These early movies showed sanitized versions of the war. Theyre relatively bloodless. Americans fought as heroes. They overcome the enemy on dday. And they win the war. They created very tidy narratives for what are essentially complex events. There were examples of major films of how wars should be fought and won. Largely in reference to the Second World War. We can take a brief moment to talk about the steel helmet, which is not a world war ii movie. It was written and directed by sam fuller. A dday veteran. He was he threw this movie together in late 1950. It was going to be another world war ii movie, but he realized with korea, public attention is shifting to the new war. He rapidly shifted it and made it into a korean war melodrama. He threw the guys together behind enemy lines. What is instructive, is that Sergeant Zach was a dday veteran. He constantly referred back to dday and the men of normandy as an example of how soldiers should act given the most pressing of circumstances. So, ok, what is going on here . What i am arguing essentially is film versions of the Second World War and dday in particular existed in a mutually influential relationship with society. Theyre influencing how society views warfare, but society influences the movies being made, as we saw with the steel helmet. Very quickly, because time is pressing, i will run through a couple other dday films to show evolution of some key ideas that are mentioned at the outset. The first major american movie that focused on dday is the 1956 title dday. It begins with the invasion forces. It quickly switches to this melodrama, this relationship between these two individuals and their fighting over the same woman that they have fallen in love with. The guy on the left is british and the guy on the right is american. Interestingly enough, they work out their differences and come together in order to fight on the beaches of normandy in order to assure success. Theres plenty to talk about transatlantic relationships. And what this movie is trying to say even though we have different opinions and we dont always rub each other right way the right way, we can Work Together for success. Very much a cold war issue as well in the 1950s. In the battle scene near the end, these two characters work out their differences. You can see in gangsteresque fashion, the british colonel winters takes the fight to the enemy. Unfortunately he steps on a , landmine and dies immediately. Digression away from the book that was the main source of the movie. In the book, he steps on the mine but survives. The filmmakers were trying to create a capstone to the British Empire and british independence. In a very fitting way to say that the British Empire died on the beaches of normandy, right when the american empire was picking up and running. Ahead. Running full steam ahead. There were certain flaws in the movie. The special effects were pretty spotty. Those planes were handdrawn. It was an action oriented film. It offered a chance for the heroes to earn success. It was brief and relatively bloodless. Again, by the mid1950s, this is a story that was not really all that different from other world war ii movies that were out there. American strength and vigor leads to ultimate success. That film seems pretty different from what most people come to latch onto as the iconic world war ii, if not dday movie. The longest day is based for a closely on the book of that title. There are significant differences. That is something we can talk about later. Some of the major differences like the fighting lead to some rather notable controversies. Again, we can talk about that later. Leans toward the epic. The movie is 1962, a production of the famed Film Producer darryl zanuck who fell in love with the book and purchased the rights to make the movie. He looked to the longest day is a crowning achievement of is long and distinguished career. He fully expected it to be the most important war film ever made. This is an argument that we will see in 1998 with saving private ryan as well. Also as an aside, he saw this as a way to revive his own career. And the viability of 21st fox,ry 20th century which was in dire straits because of the overproduction costs on cleopatra. The Film Producer and the director had a clash of personalities. They did not get along. It was hate at first sight. Early screenwriter. He stepped down. One difference of opinion was darryl zanuck insisted on creating a role for his then girlfriend. She played a French Resistance agent and sex object in the film. Ryan would have none of this. He did not want to make his beloved story into some sort of love story. He felt there was no place for that in the movie. As you can see, darryl zanuck won that argument. Nevertheless, ryan himself admitted the film was a masterpiece. Why did it make such a success . I think you can draw on a couple of things. Zanuck showed what he was thinking when he made a movie. One thing he argued was, the allied made every conceivable blunder or error. The germans were even more stupid. From all this, we can only come to the conclusion that god was on our side. This is an argument that was very appealing. They captured the chaos of the battle in a way that the resources he could devote to the project were immense. While filming it, the film makers controlled ninth Largest Military force in the world, which is absolutely immense. This accomplished storytelling that he was able to portray in the movie also drew on certain themes that were popular by then. Historian Stephen Ambrose says that the film shows the triumph of democracy over dictatorship. That is certainly an undercurrent of the movie. The combination of drama triumphing over good, the seeming accuracy, all of these come together to the immense popularity of the movie. It made 17 million in its initial year of release. You can see, some of the flurry of stars, darryl zanuck at the top chomping on his cigar which is typical when he was filming. That is a scene from the battle right there. In the middle, john wayne who threw his name into the hat at the last minute. Then at the bottom, Robert Mitchum. It is unfortunate that Robert Mitchum got one of the coolest lines and the title. It is not accurate at all. It made for good comedy. It made for good copy. The focus on allies and enemies this is the early 60s after german rearmament. West german rearmament. Were trying to show that even the germans fought well and somewhat honorably as well. It is just part of the moment of the 60s. And i think part of the reason for the success of the movie as well. Even with the profound success of the longest day, all would not remain placid. I would like to take a moment to talk about our alternate stories that we can tell about dday. The hero celebration movies that i talked about briefly so far, these are the only options. One of them is here with arthur millers 1954 film, the americanization of emily. ,he director, Arthur Hiller himself said one thing we can do toward eliminating war from our world is get rid of the goodness and virtue we attribute to war. Heres very consciously trying to poke apart the celebratory narrative of war. Focusing on the cowardly protagonist portrayed by james garner at the top of the poster, the primary message of the movie is a critique of the glorification of war. You can see this is going in on dday itself. Just the look of abject terror on james garners face. Again, this is very different from the book. The book showed the Lieutenant Commander as sensible and a guy who did not want to die and the on the beaches. In the movie they unpackaged that and made it a story about a complete coward, and is trying to survive the war anyway possible. It wasnt very popular, but it was a movie that was out there. The navy admiral gets the idea to boost the navys reputation by proffering one of its own is as the first dead man on omaha beach. That is how the navy is going to one up the army in the movie. Turning the common dday images on their head you see james , garner storming the beach on his own. He promptly gets hit by a near mortar round and dies. So you think. He is captured on film and he hits all the magazine shelves and becomes the famous face of omaha beach. In the movie. Unfortunately, it he wasnt really dead. The blast just knocked him unconscious. His friend even went so far as to say when he found out, we had a nice dead hero, now we have a live coward. Again, just on packaging the on packaging these un packaging common stories of these common stories of dday glory that were out there. By the mid60s, what was going on is the best United States was going into vietnam. They conspire to push hollywood away from these kinds of stories. This was the last major hollywood depiction of dday till after vietnam, until the 1980s. However, there were references to dday out there. You did not have to depict it. You can draw on some things that were culturally frayed at the time. You could reference things that people could widely understand. I will put out there blazing saddles. I do not know if you have seen this. This is a mel brooks movie. It is a comedy. Totally irreverent. Here, we see a scene nearly at the end of the movie where theyre drawing on some of the iconic dday phrases. There is an assembled group of bad guys, were about to embark on a great crusade. To stamp out runaway decency in the west. The bad guys went out and attacked the village. Does the object of concern. What was mel brooks doing . He was drawn from something that was widely known and prevalent at that time, these dday phrases were something that people understood. Hes trying to turn them on their head. This wasnt the only place you could see dday in the 60s and 70s. The world at war, the very popular documentary from 1973, also showed, im not getting into documentaries, but even there you can see how we depict dday is changing very notably. It is more grim and destructive. Anyway, what the americanization of emily and blazing saddles, what we see is to zany films that are poking holes at the common dday stories. Theyre trying to challenge american conceptions of warfare through dday specific stories. Yet dday in film often told a story that americans want to hear. We are good guys, were winning the war and saving the world and making it right for democracy. With that characterization of the Second World War in general and dday in particular, we can see why dday comes back to its own in the 80s and on. I will talk about a couple of things really quick. One indication of this is a 1980 movie by sam fuller, the big red one. He wanted to make this movie back in 1958. He felt that john wayne was trying to position himself to be cast as a sergeant, a role that would eventually go to lee marvin. Sam fuller did not like john wayne. He thought john wayne would turn it into this hokey story that he could not support. He held off and funding went away. He wasnt able to make the movie until 1978. It was released in 1980. Fullers film treats a small group of men through their hard fight three the mediterranean, northwest europe. Really, it is very different from the longest day, where you get the grand scale and this flurry of stars. You try to conceive of the whole of that. Here, he is zeroing in on a couple of guys and trying to make a more personable, a more relatable story. These guys are good guys, their they are crack ups, jokesters. They do good things, they save civilians in combat. Theyre very different from the germans depicted in the movie. At the end of the movie, we close off with the still smoking ovens in a nazi cap. Camp. It is very clearly setting the moral stakes for you. There is fuller himself while he is directing. One of the dday scenes. For was awarded the silver star for his actions on dday. He was there. He was a decorated vet. Chomping a cigar is a requirement for dday filming. Also shooting the gun. This is something that fuller did during his action movies. He wanted the actors to feel like they were actually there, so he would fire up in the air and sometimes kind of close to them as well. This shows certain blending of vietnam influences. After 1964, when you get rid of production code, you could show things that you see in the movie like interactions with prostitutes that you could not see in earlier war movies. They would not have passed. Theres a difference here. This is not like some of the iconic vietnam movies where there was pointless terror and brutalizing. Combat served a purpose. We won the war and made the world right for humanity. It is Still Critical of highlevel leadership. This scene right before the guys are landing on normandy beaches, they were told it was going to be a cakewalk. We are not going to face any intense opposition whatsoever and then immediately it cuts to the guys cowering under heavy fire, taking many losses. It is critiquing the highlevel leadership, even celebration of eisenhower that was still pretty popular. I think this is instructive for a couple of reasons. I going to wrap up here very quickly. This comes at a moment when people are starting to latch on to dday to talk about american success and american patriotism and american honor. Reagan did this most famously in when he 1984 celebrated the 40th anniversary. He is not the only one. The 80s started an explosion of dday focus. There were Tv Documentaries and books. Stephen ambrose started stepping into dday. I will leave that there. The point is, by the 90s there were plenty of examples of dday as an american Success Story. That is where you get saving private ryan from. It didnt just come out of nowhere. It came as a result of a Stephen Ambrose book in 1994. , read iter red it it, said it would make a great movie. They turned it into very successful and popular movie. Ambrose was not just a historian. He stepped into the circles of hollywood. He helped create this museum that we are at today. He did plenty of things that helped sell his particular version of dday as this success of democratic heroes fighting and preserving the world for liberty. Then really quickly, i will skip through there. You see Steven Spielberg filming. No cigar in his hand. He decides to go for band of brothers in 2001. Due to the success of saving private ryan, another Stephen Ambrose book that he turns into a miniseries. Now we can see that even Cable Television is getting into the game. It is so popular and so successful. Band of brothers, which aired the first two episodes here last night, it was shown in september 9, 2001. Two days later, terrorist attacks. Some of the public proclamations were drawing on our examples from dday in world war ii and how we save and preserve the world for democracy. It was very much out there in the air during presentday events, which is something we could talk about a little bit more at the end. One final movie, i will throw a mention out to it. Just to show tnt made a madefortv movie. Tom selleck is eisenhower in a movie called ike countdown to dday. This was to show that everyone at this point was so interested in telling these dday stories, it was so popular and prevalent that tnt even got into the game. A very americanized tale of the event. The one significant british character portrayed is bernard montgomery. They get the details of an argument he had with eisenhower wrong. I dont need to go into the specifics. But the point is the result of this movie is that dday becomes an entirely american tale, where the british seem completely and utterly opposed to the event. So what does all this tell us . , in the end, how we show the story has changed somewhat. I would like us to think about that for a second. The shift in the upper lefthand corner from allusion. Circled allwe have the way around clockwise. We are no longer alluding. We are very visibly and very graphically showing you what this cost. The point has remained largely stable. The reason we went to war and the reason it was significant remains stable. That is that the americans led the way on the beaches in order to preserve democracy and decency in the world. Ok. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. That is a pretty good look at the mythic framework of americans. Now dr. Gunther bischoff will give us a different point of if you will, the other side of the coin. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I am very glad that you are here on this Beautiful Day in new orleans where you have many other options like the tomato festival. I am very glad that youre here. [laughter] what i will be talking about this afternoon is the german and austrian memory of dday. Just a few preliminaries, because i think the public at large is not aware of the fact that historians today much more than studying the actual events, history left to study the memory of those events. There is a veritable memory boom in historical studies. I think this book we are talking about this afternoon is part of that boom. When historians write about memory, they read about how they write about how individuals remember events like the soldiers of dday, that his personal memories. They write about how nations and societies think about advance, about events, how the americans and germans think about dday. They also think about cultural memories, how museums are constructed to commemorate these events, or how commemorations are being performed to inscribe the memory of this Event International identity. Into national identity. When we talk about the german memory of dday, like this book shows, in all the National Memories of dday, there is cycles of memory. Austere e for the too theyns, 20 didnt really want to think about the war in the late 40s and the 50s. They would rather see themselves as victims of the war, too. Rather than the perpetrators of war crimes. In germany, it really only came about as a result of the 1968 student rebellion that young germans began to ask their fathers, what did you do in the war, daddy . This question was posed in family discourses to start the debate about what individual family members might have done in the war and how they might have contributed to hitlers war crimes. I am the son of a wehrmacht veteran. As you know, austria was taken azi germany. By n my dad fought in the war. He is captured by americans in 1945 and spent a year in a pow camp in colorado springs. I always kept telling him, having studied pows, you were very lucky, dad, to have ended up in an american camp. Probably in german memory of dday, a real turning point came with the 1978 nbc series on the holocaust. That brought the story home again to the germans and the austrians about the real downfall of the germans in nazi germany. One thing that they no longer now could deny. I would say by the 1980s, the germans were beginning to actively think about their world war ii past, which some historians really called an unmasterable past. Meaning with the genocide and the killing of 6 million jews and many other civilians being killed along the way in the war, this was the kind of historical event that would be very hard to inscribe into the National Historical narrative, in that terable. Nmas as for the germans, very often, when they think about world war ii, they use terms that asked how we can master this past . The austrian cycle is very different because austria was taken over as a country, was an occupied by the germans during the war in 1945 and became independent. And austria regained its independence with the help of the allies, they constructed a myth, namely that the austrians were hitlers first victims. They lived with that myth really for two generations. Not like tos did think of themselves as perpetrators. My father served in the war. I dont know what level he was a perpetrator, i never had this discussion with him. That discussion was silenced in many families. Only with the election of Kurt Waldheim in 1986 did the austrians begin to discuss their world war ii past, maybe, you could say in an honest manner, because waldheim said he just did his duty when the issues of his world war ii past came up. Just having done his duty when he served for a long part of time in the balkans and probably knew about holocaust crimes, was no longer good enough to generations after the war. Two generations after the war. That then started an active debate in austria where the austrians were finally beginning to see that they were not only victims, but they were also perpetrators of hitlerite war crimes. Personal memories of german dday soldiers. I have interviewed quite a bit of the german and austrian soldiers when i began work with Stephen Ambrose in the eisenhower center, which is really the cell out of which this museum came. In 1990, i went on interview trip of german and austrian dday veterans. This actually happened to be to be right after my wedding. I took my wife along and she forgave me that i took her on a trip to interview dday veterans. I have yet to make up for that failure. Anyway, german dday veterans, we know this like the writer wrote about this, he wrote about they began going back in the 1950s in order to see the places where they fought. This is also true of a veteran i interviewed quite extensively, an austrian veteran who fought in the pegasus bridge battle. He was with the 21st panzer division. He tried to retake the bridge and failed. Soon thereafter, he was taken prisoner of war and landed in a prisoner of war camp in arkansas. I actually visited with him at the place where he was kept in a rice field in a place that is today a rice field. There is no marker of remembrance that there was ever thousands of german pows there at the end of world war ii. Let me go on. Building of collective memories. I said that as often being done through commemorations. We heard that there are really only in 1984 that a big that the big dday commemorations begin. When president Ronald Reagan came over and gave his speech. Of course since then, every 10 , years, we have these huge commemoration events. Bill clinton went over for the 50th anniversary, george bush on the 60th. President obama was yesterday. 70th anniversary. This has become a very important event in american memory of world war ii. Now, of course, the germans were not included in this. The germans had to tend their own memories, if you keep in mind that some 77,000 german soldiers lost their lives in the normandy battles, i would say about 10 of those were germans, the normandy landscape is littered with german cemeteries. La cambe is one of the biggest. About 21,000 are buried there. They dont get individual american soldiers. They are buried in mass graves. They are anyway commemorated much more anonymously than individual american soldiers which are being commemorated in the landscape of american dday cemeteries. One historian has written and i think it is true, normandy has become an american place. When in 1966, Charles De Gaulle kicked americans at a paris, the nato headquarters, dean rusk, the secretary of state said, does he want us to take the dead american soldiers, too . This indicated how much by then normandy had become an american place. Cultural memories, as ive said, very often big historical events are being commemorated in museums, like this museum here in new orleans. The world war ii monument in washington, and this shows you that normandy is littered with american and british museums. That sense, it really has become an american place. Let me remind you there is no , german or Austrian Museum there. That is not part of the normandy landscape. Whatever the germans left is a permanent reminder of the atlantic wall. Those are the fortifications they built already in 1942, 1943 alliedns to stop an invasion. These fortifications were built by slave laborers. There were built very solidly, so you cant take them down. I understand that some of them are slowly sinking into the sand, but they are permanent reminders of the german presence there. As close as well probably ever get to a german or Austrian Museum in normandy. Finally, yesterday, german chancellor Angela Merkel was in normandy at the 60th anniversary for the first time. A german chancellor showed up. Schroder was there. You could say it has become a place of german conciliation as well. If you think about it, is quite astounding that in 1984, chancellor kohl was not invited. In 1994, chancellor kohl was again not invited. The story apparently was that chancellor kohls brother was gravely wounded in normandy and later fell in france. For personal reasons, he did not want to go to such commemorations. Kohl was very much a Nato Alliance guys. The reinforcement of the germanamerican relationship to the alliance, is astounding and is often been criticized if you look at the present that the 1984, 1994, germans are not invited. In 2004 they were. Maybe, finally a point about how the germans think about dday. I have studied the german and austrian press carefully, starting in 1984. In 1984, you very often hear the argument that what dday represents for germans, and keep in mind im talking about west germans, because we would really need to talk about to german memories up until 1990 there is a west german memory. East german memory was much closer to the soviet memory, meaning dday was a war that was conducted by the american imperialists, that is how the east germans felt. The west germans felt very differently, and they largely began to argue that dday was the beginning of the end. In 1994, that message came out even more strongly, particularly after the famous beach that the speech that the german president gave about how the germans should think about world war ii. Increasingly, theyre beginning to the grateful to the americans for the beginning of the end. For the liberation of the european continent. I would say that is now pretty broadly enshrined in the public today. In austria, however, since the austrians are always hiding behind the bad germans like into world war ii, there never really made that step towards acknowledging that also for austria, the normandy invasion represented the beginning of the end. That is why i would like to say here in the end as an austrian who was born in 1953, i would like to thank american soldiers and veterans, too, for allowing me to grow up in a free and democratic society. Were it not for the beginning of the end, the normandy invasion, who knows how i would have grown up and if my father would ever have made it home from the war. Thank you for your attention this afternoon. [applause] thank you. Now, we would like to have a discussion. I would like to bring dr. John mcmanus into the discussion to get us started, having listened to dr. Dolski and dr. Bischof. Discuss this idea of memory and world war ii and how we commemorate, particularly dday. We were discussing your work and be memories of soldiers. I was hoping you might be able to start to discuss that in the context of what you have heard today. My great compliments to these two excellent historians on the presentation. I would say, when you look at it from a Soldiers Point of view, and in particular the big red one, it is the longest day and ryans project to gather material from these guys that really solidifies dday in their imagination as something greatly significant that should be commemorated. I will qualify that by saying that there is a kind of maybe reverence is not the right word for it, but there is a deep respect among soldiers in many units that follow on from the initial assault unit from 82nd airborne division, the 29th division, fourth division, so on and so forth, that were there on dday. There is a deep respect and a healthy respect by those who will serve in the months to come. The great majority of the u. S. Army that wasnt there on dday, but will be involved in the campaign in northwest europe. For hearing the stories that those who were at dday and they are the original source, in many respects. Beyond that, there were so my so many subsequent battles, bloody places where people fought, so much that people wanted to forget in the aftermath of the war, that in a way, omaha beach and utah beach and the Normandy Landing era has become one more place it you do want to forget. That is why i say, when Cornelius Ryan reaches out, more from a historical point of view than a journalistic point of view, to try and tell this larger story of normandy, i think it is really at that point that you start to see a bit more commemoration among the soldiers, who were very young men at that point in the 1950s, most of them. Many were 20 years old on dday. Youre talking about 30, 35 and 40 years old, establishing families and careers. In a way, it is not until the sort of approaching retirement years, the big commemorations that both gentlemen alluded to in 1984, 1994 and 2004 they start to see some of the soldier veterans place all this into the larger context of what it meant for history. Seeing how it all unfolded, seeing where the cold war went, seeing where their actions fit into perhaps this larger context and why it was important to remember and perhaps may be to talk about what could be rather traumatic experiences that they had hoped to bury and perhaps not share with family, that maybe there is a motivation for doing so. This is later on. By the 80s and 90s. I think by our own time in 2014, there is a completely different viewpoint among surviving soldiers about telling the story and its significance, just having seen how this has all played out. In summary, from a soldiers memory, initially, there is a hope to forget, and eventually there is a hope to remember. I was struck by something that dr. Bischoff brought out about the concept of reconciliation that i was hoping you gentlemen might discuss. Last year, i visited the cemetery in the former soviet union where, basically, you had a german and soviet joint cemetery now outside of stalingrad. That only took place in the last 15 years, but before, the russians had completely desecrated graves of the germans there. Only in the last 15 years, they gone back and made a mass grave for the germans. They had an architectural competition between the two sides to see who could do better in the commemoration. Hows that different from what we are talking about with the western nations at dday today . Im not sure the question is directed to me, but i think the question points toward something that i should have pointed out earlier, namely, that of course german memory considers the Eastern Front to be much more important than the western front. Because indeed, for most of the war, that is where most of the german dying happened. Some 200 or so divisions fought in the soviet union for almost three years. Millions of german soldiers lost their lives there, which is to say that of course, the families who lost loved ones on the Eastern Front, have a much more intense interest in the Eastern Front. I think that is still true for germany today. There are few german films made about normandy as far as i know, but there are quite a few and very good ones made about battles like stalingrad. Talking about film defining cultural memories, that would be true for germany, too. This is also dr. Hudson going on in stalingrad, these joint cemetery is now being constructed, but it took a very long time, and of course it took eriod tocold war p reach a better understanding about what the war was about. These joint cemeteries are very much efforts in russian german reconciliation. Maybe just a final word. Russian memory of dday and the chapter in this book that we are talking about today points this out very clearly. It is an erratically different trajectory than all the other memories. The russians never really could understand and never appreciated the american and british obsession with dday memories. They always thought their effort of defeating the germans was written out of history. I was just thinking yesterday, when one soldier appear, a veteran, said, what do you date what dday to him also meant was, if they had not succeeded, people of france would speak german today. I actually think he was wrong. If he would not have succeeded, if the allied invasion would not have succeeded, i think the chances would be much bigger to that the people of germany and france would speak russian today, because we should not forget the incredible size of the Eastern Front and the enormous amount of clashes and dying that went on in that front. I think one thing worth keeping in mind is that americans have had a little bit of difficulty in determining how to portray the germans. We like to think of the good work, which implicitly means there is a bad enemy that we are fighting against. When we are talking about the good war, it is this mythologizing. The european war does not get the good war treatment for reasons that john dauer trenchantly points out. If were focusing on this good war story of two sides honorably fighting, that is fine. You can focus on the germans as competent soldiers doing their duty. In most of the movies that i reference, at the end or in some way, the holocaust is lurking underneath. Quite obviously, you cant have good people doing such horrific things. It has been very difficult for us to try to figure a way to incorporate individuals into the story. As gunther alluded, you had the west and east german issue to take on as well. As we are trying to rehabilitate the west germans and incorporate them into our new alliance, some people very consciously tried to boost their combat effectiveness while at the same time playing down these moral issues and implications. I think it very clear example of this tenuous divide is with reagan. Connectivity for, he goes to normandy and celebrates american soldiers that helped liberate france and save the world. In 1985 he tried to do something more Alliance Politics related and go to bitburg where ss soldiers were interned. Theres this huge outrage in the u. S. Press. How could you go to a place that celebrates the people who did the awful thing. It is very difficult. It is something that we are still struggling with to this day. All three of you gentlemen have been to normandy and seen many of the museums and monuments and cemeteries there that are dedicated to memorializing dday. Watching your presentations today, i was struck by couple places that popped up. I was wondering if each of you would be willing to discuss what you believe is the most effective dday the moral or memorial or cultural memory that you have seen, particularly from the american viewpoint . I would say, just in normandy American Cemetery as a whole. Imagine 9000 crosses and stars 9380 seven crosses and stars of david, representing a americannt portion of soldiers who lost their lives at the battle of normandy. The reverence with which the cemetery is maintained, where the place is located, on the cliffs overlooking easy read where such a traumatic battle took place. The fact that gunther mentioned not far away at the German Cemetery there are mass graves. There are no mass graves at the normandy American Cemetery. It is a place of effects you that affects you dramatically when you go there. It really only needs to be that. The other thing to bear in mind is how the soldiers got there, not just in a combat sense, but the traumatic and difficult decisions family by family that led to this, because the government in the aftermath of the war gave families the option of having the remains transferred home to be buried with full military honors at government expense in the cemetery of their choice, including of course arlington if they wished. Much of this work is done in 1947 and 1948 when always all these memories are quite fresh. Many of the decisionmakers in these families had to decide what is best. When you still have an open wound of having lost a person a couple of years before and in many cases parents making the decision of what to do with her their dead son, whether to bring him home whether it was more fitting to keep them in the soil that and the view of Many Americans they died to help liberate. Among those 9387, they are a minority of the about 20,000 or so americans who do die in normandy, and largely that is a way it tended to play out, that the majority, about 60 of families elected to have them brought home. As i understand it, not having been there, just as a historian, this was a decision that often lead to real and deep family crises. Real sorrow and difficulties that sometimes endured for years. Anytime when i visit that cemetery, my thoughts sent to go in that direction, even more so than the combat the took place. That is what dday memory and memorialization means to me, beyond the plans not that theyre not moving or important, but i dont think any of them really hold a candle to that cemetery in that sense. My answer will be very quick. I have not been there, actually. Ive never been to normandy, but i feel like vicariously ive been there for a long time and often, because since the mid1980s, ive been attending professor ambroses world war ii conferences at the university of new orleans. Ive actually encountered many of the famous characters personally that are in his books, meaning the pegasus bridge characters, the german side and colonel howard on the british side. Cockney, very funny man whose stories i could never hear enough of. Of course, i heard the stories from winters. I was involved in collecting the stories for ambroses dday book in 1994. We collected some 1300 oral histories which are now here at the museum and started that boom of collecting stories from soldiers so they would not be lost to history and essentially provide us with the tools to write the history of dday in great detail from the bottom up, as ambrose called it, the soldiers experience, which is a concept here at the museum, two. Too. Ambrose has accomplished, i think he has accomplished more than any other historian to define one historical event like dday for an entire nation through books and the museum. In that sense, i feel like it is that i have been often there, but never really in the place. I would like to add that both of those, firstly with gunther, you can take ambroses impact and spread even further than that. With some of the movies i discussed, theyre based not only on his works, but on his active input. He was very involved in them. You could go further. I would have to go with john. It is the normandy American Cemetery for me, in short. A you can look at the success that that place has had in spreading the message that we like people to have of dday. Even by 1983, they kept accurate records of visitor attendance there. It was like 1. 5 Million People every year. Then they stopped because there were a few too many people. Most of those were europeans. It costs a lot of money and it is hard for americans to get out there, but there are still hundreds of thousands every year. If you look at the commemorative events, theyre happening at the cemetery. Steven spielbergs movie starts and ends in the cemetery. It is a place that evokes awe and reverence. It is very successful in doing that. I believe we have a few minutes for some questions from the audience. Raise your hand, please. We will bring a mic. Can we talk about the french . They were collaborators and took part in the holocaust, and i sometimes feel they get by. Yeah, i can mention something about the french. It is something covered in the book that gunther and i contributed to. As much as i said about the american incorporation of the german story, the french story of dday is very disliked it. Reflective. Youth have at the local level in normandy, there is immense destruction and devastation. The people there had to deal with the losses, personal losses, there were more french civilians killed on dday than american soldiers. It is not just a Success Story of liberation from their standpoint. There is liberation, but theres also destruction, pain, sorrow and loss. Dealing with that has been an issue for the decades ever sense. Theyre still doing that. Even though it is turned more to thebratory story because of vast amount of american visitation to that area, it is a very americanized section of france. It changes over time at the local level. It goes from sorrow and loss to sorrow and loss and celebration of victory. An interesting microcosm there. Beyond that the local memory in , the normandy, also in relationship with the National French memory, where it gravitates over time from alliance solidarity, to the charles dewhere gaulle wants to kick the americans out and liberation gets downplayed. In fact, they do not call it the liberation. They called this the landings. They downplay what else is been said and focused on what we did for france, if that makes sense. It is very contested and very complicated. In 1964, Charles De Gaulle did not go to the commemoration. He did go a few weeks later in Southern France commemorating the landings in Southern France, which was largely a french force thats landed and contributed to the liberation of france. You could almost say he was probably envious of all the attention that the british and americans were getting in normandy. On the other hand, you also have to say that the french have been very gracious hosts since 1984. The french president is always there at the big commemoration. They have certainly played up to it. An important point that michael was making is that when we talk about memory, we have local memory and national memory. We think about the world war ii regional the local or memory of the war largely , bringing in that figure of Andrew Higgins back into historical limelight. That is a local memory. At the same time, it also contributes to the national memory. Did we have another . I dont really have a question, but one thing i have heard the last couple of days is the number of french children and older adults that take care of the cemeteries and help with that and bring flowers and everything, do you offer anything about that . Yeah, i will offer small anecdote. Forgive me if you were here yesterday to hear my talk, because i mentioned this yesterday. Perhaps some of you werent. One of the soldiers i wrote about was a guy named pfc. Norman specular. He was killed almost instantly hour dday morning. The way he was killed, he was carrying explosives. The explosives were touched off, and he was blown apart. I heard a few weeks ago from a frenchman who maintains his grave. He wondered if i could provide him with any information about specular and his background and what had happened to him and how he died. Though it wasnt at all a pleasant story to relate, i was at least able to do that and perhaps personalize him a bit more for the gentleman who takes the time to maintain that grave and the memory of specular. I think he is something of a microcosm for many french, whether children or adults, who do just that. This is considered to be a great honor. France is not unique in that respect, either. The same thing goes on in dutch cemeteries and other spots in europe, as well. Any concluding thoughts, gentleman . Please join me in thanking our panelists. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014]