Good evening, everyone. Im robert citino, executive director of the institute for the study of war and democracy here at the National World War Ii Museum. Thank you. Thank you to the museum for hiring me. I appreciate that. Every two weeks i appreciate it. Im also the samuel Senior Historian at the museum which is perhaps my proudest boast. Welcome to another installment of our meet the authors heres here at the museum where we bring you the best new world war ii literature and the men and women who write and create it. For i have just two nights, a man who needs no introduction, let me carry out the tradition of the National World War Ii Museum at all all of public programming. Are there by any chance any world war ii veterans or homefront workers in the audience tonight . There we go. All right. I knew there were two right up front. [applause] and to say we thank you for your service is an understatement of the century. In the veterans of any other service or any other era please sta
Test. Test test. Test test test. That is more or less reflected in the number of the divisions. But more important than that is the dynamics of what is happening. The soviets are about to take berlin. The western allies as well that is the contest for the conferenc context for the conference. Issues that were discussed, the conference apart from the military coordination of the military, the activity on the Eastern Front and the western front, was of course the future of germany. And we talked about that a little bit earlier. The question was whether or not there would be small germanys, roosevelt saying when i was a student and i travelled and everything was wonderful and peaceful, and the german states he has no real problem with dividing germany into a number of states. Chur churchill was also excited about that. Germany, but in yalta he was the one who was pushing for that. And fdr and churchill were champions of that idea and they were in a position where they were not prepared to
Welcome back to the Madeleine Paul hilliard Conference Center here at the higgins hotel. I hope everybody enjoyed their lunch. We spent this morning doing some pretty high Level Analysis of the political and strategic situation that existed amongst the allied leaders. But as we all know, wars are fought on battle feels, not in board rooms, and these summits, though they dictated much of what would happen on the ground, they wouldnt have mattered much if we didnt have armies in the field. So our next session will look at how yalta affected the execution of the closing months of world war ii. To do this, we asked our very own rob citino, dr. Citino is the executive director of the institute for the study of war and democracy as well as the Museum Samuel and mary stone Senior Historian at the National World War Ii Museum and ill beat him to the punch line and say hes got the longest title on staff. Hes an Award Winning military historian, published ten books, primarily on the german army.
Pivotal meeting between british Prime Minister winston churchill, president franklin roosevelt, and soviet leader joseph stalin. Welcome back to the metal and Paul Hilliard Conference Center here at the higgins hotel. I hope everybody enjoyed their lunch. We spent this morning doing highlevel analysis of the political and strategic situation that existed amongst the allied leaders. As we know, wars are fought on battlefield, not in boardrooms. These summits, though they dictated much of what would happen on the ground, they would not have mattered much if we did not have armies in the field. Our next session will look at how yalta affected the execution of the closing months of world war two. To do this we have asked rob citino. His executive director of the museum of democracy as well as at the world War Ii Museum. He is an awardwinning led terri historian. Military historian. He has published 10 books, primarily on the german army. He has taught for three decades including stints at
Cspan3, American History tv. Patrick thank you, steve. let me begin with the origin of the National Rifle association. How did the organization come about and why . Patrick it came about during the civil war. There was poor marksmanship, so two officers decided to form the nra based out of new york with two purposes. Facilitate, build, and grow longrange rifle ranges , and the other was to assist the state National Guards in marksmanship. The nra initially, just so you know, was kind of working to get appropriations from the government and they started off with one organization. They grew to 1700 by 1929. They also are, just so you know, built on, there was an english National Rifle association. In 1859. A predecessor this is supposed to be the american version. The only thing that differentiated the two to start off with was the franchise like model where you could build a rifle club, statewide and you were a nra affiliated rifle club and those rifle clubs within compete in state, loc