9/11 but an important date nonetheless because on that date a squadron of one dozen b-17 bombers in the united states army air corps took off from base in england and flew across the english channel and dropped the bomb load on a railroad marshaling yard or switching yard in the city stop why is this important -- city. why is this important? it was the first all-american air raid on nazi occupied europe. we had flown with britain but this was the first 100% american raid on august of 1942. a very successful raid, no damage to aircraft or crew. by all of the usual measurements it was a very successful expedition. that is not exactly why it is important. it is important because it marked the beginning -- let me put it this way. it marked to the implementation of a decision made a decade earlier that in the event of a future war, god forbid but in the event of a future war the united states would place its principle tbet on creating and using a new weapon system called strategic bombing. strategic bombing was a doctrine developed by an italian tourist after world war i and the idea was that there was a -- italian the arrest after world war i and the idea was that there was a new invention whereby you could deliver -- italian theorist after world war i and the idea was that there was a new invention whereby you could deliver your payload to the enemy homeland. you could disrupt the economy and infrastructure so it could not sustain force in the field and you could also so terroriz e, the words you use, the civilian population that they would sue for peace. the united states decided in the early 1930's to make this bet, that in the case of a future war this would be a way that could engineer and leverage advantages and we could spare american lives and held the promise of ending the war quickly by striking at the heart of the enemy's economy. as it happens, in a wonderfully delicious turn of the wheel of history, something i did not know when i was writing about this, the pilot of the lead aircraft on that raid was a man by the name of alternates you will -- paul tibbets, you will recognize as the name of the man who dropped the bomb from the in only get. -- you know luxury -- ebnola gay. he opens the war in europe and closes the war in japan. we have the ark of this important -- arc of this important strategic bombing are. notice the date, d-day is almost two full years into the future. the great, dramatic battle of the day comes 11 months. the way the united states carried of the battle was only in the last days of the war on the ground. for three years it was from the air. chapter two, washington, d.c., october 5, 1942. a few weeks after the raid. a meeting in the office of a wartime bureaucrat by the name of donald nelson who have been the ceo of sears roebuck before the war and was now the head of the war production board. his job was to shift the economy to a wartime basis and to mobilize the country's resources to wage the war. he was working on the basis of a great blueprint called the victory program. capital v capital p. with the help of high-octane economists, donald nelson had reached the conclusion but if he could not meet the goals of the victory program in terms of -- conclusion that he could not meet the goals of the victory program without disrupting the civilian economy. he argued for scaling back the mobilization effort so as to preserve the brutality of the -- vitality of the civilian economy. the was a showdown meeting in his office on this date. the white house was representative by the vice president and the decision was taken, two important decisions were taken. one was to delay the event that we know as the day, the cross channel -- d-day, the cross channel invasion, by a year. the original date had been 1943. the second decision was to scale back the size of the armed force to be mobilized from the conception of 215 divisions to just 90 divisions. leaving 90 divisions worth of manpower to work at home. the military called the second decision the 90 division gamble. why did they think it was a gamble? not the least because of the 215 division plan have been based on the premise that the soviet union would collapse militarily or politically, she can exit from the war. -- seek an exit from the war. which takes us through the third chapter, stalingrad, february, 1943. the surrender of the german army to the red army, the soviet forces, and the vivid of the war -- pivot of the war when the soviet union begins fighting an offensive war, pushing germany back into the streets of berlin by the spring of 1945. the soviet victory at stalingrad, if there is one a battle -- is anyone battle that can be said to be the key battle i would say it is stalingrad because the victory gave reasonably good assurance to churchill and roosevelt, the western planners, that the soviets were not going to go down in military defeat and were not going to seek a political exit from the war. there was a reasonable assumption that they would stay and be an effective fighting force. that soviet victory at stalingrad underwrote the viability of the earlier decisions to fight principally from the air and delay d-day for a year and scale back the projected force from: 15 to 90 divisions -- 215 to 90 divisions. this always provokes a good discussion. one pretty good first answer is that the united states won world war ii. you might ask, what does it mean, who won world war ii? if we mean who paid the greatest price it is not the united states. it is far and away the soviet union. but if by who won the war we mean who read to the most advantage from the conclusion -- reaped the most advantage from the conclusion of the war than the advantage is clearly the united states. let me conclude with one last grizzly note. i am going to read you some numbers here about death and world war ii which makes this point in a slightly different way. these are hard to hear, these numbers but they make an important point. i should say by backdrop that we believe the world war ii is the first war, certainly the first modern war, in which civilians casualties outnumbered military casualties. keep that in mind for a moment. the united kingdom, our great ally in the war, hundred 50,000 dead, about 100,000 civilians -- 350,000 dead, about 100,000 civilians. china, 10 million dead, 6 million civilians. poland, 8 million dead, 6 million civilians and the great majority were jews. japan, one of our principal adversaries, 3 million dead, one million civilians st most japanes civilians kille no i the atomic attacks but in the firebombing raids. that began in late 1945 -- civilians. most japanese civilians were not killed in the atomic attacks but in the firebombing raids that began in 1945. the united states, not a trivial number but you put it on the scale with the numbers and you see the picture. on the civilian side in a war that globally claimed more civilian deaths than military, civilians killed whose deaths are attributable to enemy action in the 48 states that have a star on the flag, the continental united states or lower 48 bear cold today -- -- they are called today, six people. audley and off they dive together in the most improbable place of a forest of the mountainside -- oddly enough they died together in the most improbable place of a forest on the mountainside. the dead were a 26-year-old woman and a five schoolchildren who were with her on a sunday school picnic outing. her husband reverend mitchell, have just dropped his wife and children off while the part the vehicle. -- he parked the vehicle. the heard an explosion and as he ran to the sound he found his wife and the five children laid out like the spikes of -- spoke of a bicycle wheel around something that had exploded. what they had found was a japanese firebomb. it is a little moment episode of the war but the japanese launched about 10,000 of these things from a place outside of tokyo. they were an absolutely primitive device, they consisted of a balloon made out of mulberry paper, listed together with potato paste -- pasted together with potato paste and filled with helium. underneath the balloons was a little gondola with a three pound firebomb. some of them also contained an interpersonal weapon. the idea was that the japanese meteorologist discovered the jet stream before anybody else understood it so the idea was to put it into the jet stream that goes west to east and they would float across the pacific and drop into the western united states and ignite forest fires on such a scale that the americans would be forced to redirect efforts to extinguishing the fires. in its own pathetic way and it is pathetic when you think about it, this was japan's effort to wages for the bombing campaign against the united states. to deliver the blow against not the marines at iwo jima but the american heartland. let me conjure for you a scene. i am taking poetic license because i cannot prove in the documents that it happened but it is plausible. if you can imagine that you are in one of the traits of a b-29 bomber on your way to -- tourette's -- turrets of a b-29 bomber on your way to conduct a raid and you see these balloons drifting towards north america you might have wondered what the devil is that. what you would have been seeing is the evidence of japan's own strategic bombing campaign against the united states. in that scene, it seems to me, is the distillation, if you can imagine that, of what yamamoto have said in 1940. that is the united states is provokes to war and it has sufficient time to mobilize, all of its material, technological resources, it will bring to bear weapons systems that will crush us. you can imagine the b-29 bombers, four engined bombers droning towards japanese cities. going the other direction is as primitive japanese firebomb balloon with no internal pollution drifting towards north america, -- propulsion drifting towards north america. that sums up the essence of the united states's advantages in world war ii, the advantages that it exploded truly -- exploited shrewdly. it used what economists would call the least cost pathway to victory. the united states, for all of the heroism and valor that forces displayed, we in essence reaped victory through materials. i started with the remark about the united states, that me conclude by giving you the next two sentences in that speech. "the united states stand at this moment of the summit of the world," he said, and he went on to say, "i rejoice that it should be so. let her use her vast power not just for herself before the well-being of all people in all lands and a new era will open in the history of man." whether or not that happened is a subject for another day but that is how churchill hoped it would unfold. thanks. [applause] tom birmingham: thank you professor kennedy for that incisive and fascinating presentation. the next keynote speaker is rick atkinson who was a best-selling author and historian and the winner of the pulitzer prize in history and journalism. formerly a "washington post" reporter and editor and foreign correspondent, he is the author of the liberation trilogy an account of the american role in world war ii. the volumes include "an army at dawn," and "the guns at last flight." -- light." his other volumes include "the long gray line," "the story of the persian gulf war," and "a chronicle of combat." is currently working on a trilogy about the american revolution. rick atkinson, if you could come to the podium. [applause] rick atkinson: thank you, tom, thank you to the pioneer institute, and thank you for inviting me here. david kennedy is a professor and a writer and a scholar i have admired for many decades and a tough act to follow. i would also like to thank any teachers who happened to be in the room this morning. i think for every historian who has have some degree of success there is somewhere in his or her past a teacher to fight. in my target was a guy -- teacher to thank. in my case it was a guy that taught medieval history at alexandria, virginia. i have to say that from mr. cohen, i learned that the past is never dead, it is not even past. this is a day for anniversaries. 70 years ago today german commanders surrendered forces in holland, northwest germany, and denmark. 70 years ago today, in austria sulzberger surrendered and suited in her -- so did innsbruck. we were clearing a corridor into czechoslovakia for a talk -- an attack on product. -- prague. 70 years ago today the japanese launched an unsuccessful counter offensive on okinawa. four days from now on may 8 will celebrate the anniversary of germany's unconditional surrender and the end of the war in europe. four months from now will mark the anniversary of japan's surrender and the end of the most destructive war in human history. this is a time to reflect on what the war means and president kennedy got a software great start. john updike called world war ii the 20th century's greatest myth. he call that a vast imagination of a time when good and evil intended for the planet. whose angles are infinite and whose figures never ceased to amaze us. the war lasted 2471 days and left 60 million dead. 1000, 450 dead in our -- 1450 dead for our paul reid: -- pre hour. 60 million dead in six years means a death every three seconds. 1, 2 3. 1, 2, 3. that is world war ii. george c marshall, the u.s. army chief of staff, quoted a great and terrible epic -- called it a great and terrible epic. the worms would be needed to describe it, genocide and superpower. old words assumed new usages -- many words would be needed to describe it, genocide and superpower. old words assumed new usages. stalingrad, anzio, normandy. improbable settings rarely associated with the second world war, places like the aleutians and madagascar and syria and darwin, australia. and now we can add oregon. the united states had been among the last of the large powers to be drawn into the flames but very quickly the war encumbered all of america. when the war began in earnest in 1939 with the german invasion of poland, united states army, still at these, was a puny weakling -- the united states army, still at peace was a puny weakling. we write behind the perennial military -- ranked behind the perennial military powerhouse, romania. it would grow to 8.3 million by 1945, a 44 increase. a total of 60 million women recall call thousand 566 americans -- 16,125,566 americans served in uniform. virtually every american had an emotional investment in the military. virtually everyone have skin in the game. fighting a world war obviously requires manpower, lots of manpower. despite the decision to reduce the number of projected decisions as professor kennedy told us. by 19 -- 1944, 11,000 young men will being drafted into the army and navy every day, and rate of 4 million a year. one in three gis had only a great school education. only one in 10 had a semester in college. a private earned $50 a month although if he earned the medal of honor and lived to describe the experience you got an extra two dollars a month in his paycheck. the typical soldier was five foot eight. the depression had been difficult on the nation's health. the desperate need for bodies in uniform, especially infantrymen led to the drafting of what were known as physically imperfect men. i know many women think the phrase is redundant. [laughter] rick atkinson: standards have been lowered to accept the fact that once would have kept young man out of military uniform earlier in the war. early in the war draftees had to have 12 of their natural 32 chief. my 1930 -- by 1944, how many teeth did you have to have? 0 .that is because the army and the navy drafted one third of the dentists in the united states and collectively they extracted 50 million to and fill the 68 million more -- te eth and they filled the 68 million more all to allow them to masticate army rations. that sounds obscene but it was the standard. a man could be drafted with 2400 vision if it could be corrected to 20-40 in one eye. and you could be drafted if you were blind in one eye. you could be drafted if you were deaf in one ear. if you were missing both external years. you could be -- external ears. you could be drafted with three fingers on each hand including the trigger finger. malarial narrow disease had kept men out early in the war. -- scenario disease had kept -- venereal disease had kept men out early in the war. a good they do that -- how could they do that? penicillin. the extraordinary discovery in the 20's was followed by a massive effort to take a substance that had been made by the graham and -- gram and make it by the kilogram and eventually the tone. mental standards had also been loosened. in april of 1944 the war department declared that iraqis needed only have a reasonable chance of adjusting to military life although psychiatric adjusters were advised to watch for 2000 personality deviations including silly laughter, saltiness, resentful list -- sul kiness resentfullness, and other traits that would seem to disqualify every teenager in the united states. [laughter] rick atkinson: why this? because of the need for soldiers and riflemen. we were running out. the british did run out. the war remained a brutal and voracious to the very end. in april of 1945, the last full month in europe, 11,000 americans will cruise were killed in action in germany -- were killed -- american soldiers were killed in action in germany. it was awful to the last gunshot. world war is a class of -- clash of systems. which system can generate the combat power to prevail? in the form of 12,000 airplanes aloft, the 10-1 advantage in artillery ammunition, the mass production of penicillin, the ability to design and build and deliver an atomic bomb. which system can produce and educate the men? and they were mostly men which is why the war took so long. which system can produce the men capable of organizing the shipping, the rail and truck transportation, the logistic demands of global war? the war cost taxpayers $296 billion. that is $4 trillion in today's currency. to help underwrite a military budget that increased 8000%, president roosevelt increased the number of taxpayers from 4 million to 42 million. in the european theater alone, american industry produced 18 million tons of war material. churchill called it a prodigy of organization. that range from military vehicles to footwear -- ranged from military vehicles to footwear. we turned out 30 billion rounds of small ammunition illustrates. -- plus grenades. the united states had built ships afloat and was making half of all manufactured goods worldwide. how, almost 70 years after the shooting stopped, do we assess the consequence? the legacy of world war ii is as profound as the sacrifices that built the legacy. first, of course, the allied victory strangled the sinister ambitions of germany, japan, and italy. it brought to an end the british and french empires. it politically fractured a continent and individual countries such as korea, vietnam, and germany. it led

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