This is Democracy – Episode 265: D-Day and Its Legacies

[00:00:00] Intro: This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:25] Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy.

This week we are going to discuss the D Day landing in June of 1944, one of the turning points in the Second World War. We recently celebrated the 80th anniversary of this important military, political, and cultural moment. And today we’re going to discuss what happened, why it matters for the history of democracy, our topic, of course, each week, and what the legacies are for us today.

What lessons can we learn? The anniversary of the D Day invasion, uh, received quite a lot of attention, uh, in the media. Uh, but that attention, of course, was often on commemorating the heroes of that moment. And those heroes, of course, deserve commemoration. But our discussion today will be about what that moment meant for democracy and what we learned from that moment for our debates and our discussions today.

We’re fortunate. To be joined, uh, by a good friend and leading scholar of American military history. This is professor John Hall, who is the holder of the Ambrose Heseltine chair in U. S. military history at the university of Wisconsin, Madison, where I was fortunate enough to teach for 10 years. Uh, John, in addition to being a dynamic award winning teacher and scholar, he also served 15 years as an active duty infantry officer in the U S army, and he served as a historian.

to a number of important military institutions. He was a historian at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, to U. S. Central, uh, U. S. Central Command, U. S. European Command, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. John is the author of numerous essays and articles and op eds, and a major book, Uncommon Defense, Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War.

John, thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:02:12] John Hall: Yeah, thank you, Jeremy and Zachary. It’s a pleasure

[00:02:15] Jeremi Suri: to be here with you. Before we get into our discussion with Professor John Hall, of course, we have Mr. Zachary’s scene setting poem. What’s the title of your poem today, Zachary? In Leipzig on D Day. In Leipzig on D Day.

You were in Leipzig on D Day, right? Yes. Okay, let’s hear

[00:02:33] Zachary Suri: about it. I walk from the bus stop in Leipzig today with a kippah, my house keys, and an urge to pray. Today I remember, as I often do not, to ask what those boys on the cliffs must have thought. They too were 19 and some were younger, their hands were bloodied, their legs torn asunder, and here so far from the billowing sea, It’s the final city their country set free.

We meanwhile were dying, killed one by one, in the camps now meadows that bask in the sun. In the park on the outskirts of town by the lake, in the final moments for nobody’s sake. But here by the rivers that flow to the sea. Is the final city where we were set free. My brothers and sisters were loaded on trains, tortured in prison cells, shot in the brains, the monuments covered in banners of shame, old streets bore new and villainous names.

And here so far from the treacherous sea is the final city my country set free. And today I walk as many could not, 80 years to the day when the battle was fought. They scaled the cliffs that rose from the sea, so this city and I could always be free.

[00:03:56] Jeremi Suri: Zachary, I love the connection from D Day to Leipzig and your experience walking through that city where, as you reference in the poem, the last battle of World War II was fought, in fact.

Um, what inspired you to write this poem?

[00:04:10] Zachary Suri: Well, part of it was, um, I was in Leipzig studying German Jewish history, interacting a little bit with the Jewish community there. And it was really interesting to me, and sort of very moving to think, while reading all of the material, um, published around the anniversary of D Day, that the only reason that I was able to do this research, or that those people were there, that community existed, was because of the people who climbed the cliffs at Normandy, thousands of miles away.

Um, and it was also moving in particular because Leipzig, as you said, was, um, the last major city that the Americans, um, liberated, uh, in Germany, uh, in April of 1945, um, before eventually giving it back to the Soviets. And there’s a very famous photograph of, who’s supposedly like the last casualty of the war from like late April 1945, who’s like fighting some of the last German snipers in Leipzig.

Um, and so it’s, it’s like a visualization of that sacrifice.

[00:05:14] Jeremi Suri: Sure, sure. John, why is D Day such a big deal in military history? Uh, obviously there were many battles, perhaps important battles, more important battles in World War II, maybe Stalingrad, a number of others. Why does this battle get so much attention from military historians?

[00:05:33] John Hall: Yeah, well, that’s a big question to lead off with. I mean, so let me focus first, I think, on its sheer military significance, you know, the significance as it was understood. At the time as events were unfolding and I tell my students, this is one of those very rare battles in military history that was recognized by the principles and the participants as being a turning point.

Even before the operation was launched, everybody knew it was coming, but they recognized that this was a decisive turning point in the war. And usually that’s not the case. You know, usually it’s the business of historians with the benefit of hindsight to look back at a war and be able to say with some degree of certitude, but not always that this or that was the turning point of the uh, an example of that.

I think would be from Pacific theater of operations during World War Two, in which historians widely consider the battle of Midway as being the turning point in the allied war against Imperial Japan. Battle of Midway takes place in 1942, right? No one, no one on the allied side is patting themselves on the back after the battle of Midway.

Uh, certain that the war against Japan is one, but historians can recognize that different in Europe. Uh, and different in most military history, uh, where from the very beginning, there were Americans, uh, George C. Marshall, uh, his chief of war plans, Dwight David Eisenhower, uh, among them, convinced the decision against Germany would require eventually a cross channel invasion from Britain into France and then a conventional ground campaign to defeat the fighting power of the German military.

And Hitler himself also regarded this as being the decisive operation of the war. Uh, I think it’s fair to say that, that, uh, while Churchill said that the only battle or operation that kept him up at nights that he thought, uh, you know, would determine the outcome of the war was the Battle of the Atlantic, the actual, uh, convo, convoying of, uh, American supplies, uh, and, and men ultimately across the Atlantic, Churchill understood the stakes of this as well, which I think is one of the reasons why the British were able Uh, relatively reluctant vis a vis the Americans to, to, to press for this operation coming sooner rather than later, because Of the stakes, right?

I mean Britain throughout its history as an island nation with a small population Had been used to being strategically vulnerable Uh, and and didn’t like the kind of operations in which you know the the fate of the nation uh hung by a thread with a decisive defeat and so This was one of those very high stakes direct kind of operations that the americans pushed for earnestly throughout the course of the war You Uh, and once the American lodgment, uh, was secured, you know, within a few days after the landings on, on June 6th, um, I don’t think that there was any serious doubt as to the eventual outcome of the war.

Whereas, Had the invasion been repulsed famously, Eisenhower had written, you know, the announcement of the failure, uh, before the invasion launched and put it in his wallet because he recognized that, uh, he was in a position where as the overall commander He had the, the, uh, the fate of the allied war effort resting in his own hands.

[00:09:18] Jeremi Suri: It’s extraordinary to me, uh, rereading that, uh, handwritten note, uh, that Eisenhower, uh, writes that if, if it fails, uh, which it might very well have, uh, he was going to take full responsibility himself, um, it’s, it’s a, it’s a true leadership moment, wouldn’t you say, John?

[00:09:36] John Hall: I would. And, you know, that’s one of the things that’s remarkable about.

Uh, talent management, if you will, during World War Two, uh, it was very much a culture, uh, in which commanders were responsible for the success or failure of their subordinate organizations. Uh, Tom Ricks has written a book which, you know, develops, uh, uh, on this theme a lot more fully. Uh, but during World War Two, Americans had really no hesitation to fire subordinates, uh, that were not up to the task, uh, or firing subordinates.

And when I say subordinates, I mean generals, I mean senior officers, uh, who, you know, had lost the confidence of their superiors. And after the battle of Kasserine Pass and, uh, George C. Patton’s elevation to Corps command, Eisenhower gave Patton a piece of advice. Do not let event, you know, don’t wait for events to prove your gut right.

If, if your gut tells you something is wrong with a subordinate commander, Get rid of him first and, and, and then, you know, uh, uh, we’ll deal with the consequences rather than wait for a subordinate to prove your, your gut was right. But the other thing that was remarkable about this is, this is sort of like the coaching ranks, right, of, uh, uh, college sports in the United States.

Uh, getting fired didn’t mean you were fired. Done, you know, you didn’t go home and take off the uniform. You went to a different position Uh, uh, and we’re still on the bench And and and available for subsequent service Uh later in the war, but it’s entirely in keeping with the ethos of the era and eisenhower’s own character Uh as as a leader He would expect nothing less from any of his subordinates either than to take complete responsibility for what was in their remit

[00:11:36] Zachary Suri: Wow,

[00:11:36] John Hall: wow.

Zachary?

[00:11:38] Zachary Suri: Yeah, what was the reaction from the American public and the perception of the, of D Day at the time, uh, in the United States and in Europe? There were stories that we all sort of heard repeated in the last few days about sort of, extra church services for before the battle and a sort of like real sense of unity.

Is that true? And also how has that perception, I do think changed over, over time? Sorry, it’s a lot.

[00:12:03] John Hall: Yeah. So there was a tremendous amount of secrecy involved. In this, right? The, the, I said earlier that there was no surprise that it was coming, right? Everybody knew that this massive invasion force was marshalling in England.

Uh, Germany had its own spies, uh, able to relay information on the massing of this force. The real question was really just about the timing and then ultimately the location of the landings. And so, The veil was not lifted to the public really until the actual invasion had begun, you know, in the, the, with the airborne drops and the wee hours of, of June 6th.

Um, and shortly after the operation had commenced at that point, both the King of England or the King of Great Britain and, uh, and the President of the United States were able to take to the airwaves and announced to their respective populations that This was happening, uh, and asking for their prayers and their thoughts.

And that’s a, another indication of how significant, how momentous this particular operation was, right? That the, these, these, uh, uh, leaders of their respective countries, um, would take to the airwaves to implore. Uh, their subjects and citizens to join with all their countrymen, uh, to pray for the success of this endeavor.

Uh, the interesting thing, though, about its, uh, immediate commemoration is once it was clear that it had succeeded. Right. And so we know now in retrospect, what a near run thing this was on one of the five beaches, Omaha Beach, but on the other four beaches, it went largely according to plan. What didn’t go to plan necessarily was the timetable for moving away from the beaches Uh after the the initial landings by the time the public got the details The lodgement was was already largely secure and there was still a war to be won Uh, in, in two theaters of operations.

Well, beyond that, it was also in the Mediterranean theater of operation. There’s still an act of war going on. And so neither side had any opportunity to really sit on their laurels and reflect upon this great success. And people were still fighting and dying. You know, one of the participants in the invasion of Normandy.

Uh, said, you know, on D plus one, they weren’t even thinking about D day anymore. They didn’t think they’d won the war. I mean, they had moved from the, the, the frying pan into the fire of the, the Bokaj country and, and, and had desperate fighting yet ahead of them. And even a year afterward, right? So you’ve had victory in Europe and in may already at 45.

So the one year. Uh, uh, anniversary of the landings at D Day. There’s still a war to be won in the Pacific. So no one is pausing to commemorate D Day of, of, you know, uh, as being the signature accomplishment, even on its one year anniversary. You really don’t see it emerge as this touchstone in American and Western history, American history in particular, until the 1950s.

[00:15:45] Jeremi Suri: And what is it that happens in the 1950s, John, to make that shift?

[00:15:49] John Hall: Well, the Cold War Right. The emergence of the Cold War has something to do with that. Um, you’ve had, in 1948, the publication of Eisenhower’s memoir, Crusade in Europe. So now you’ve got, you know, a primary text that sort of lays out The importance of the overall allied war effort, the European theater of operations, and the importance of this particular operation.

Uh, you’ve got disappointment in, in Korea, and at, you know, virtually the same time, the Americans are able to turn to this great hero. of World War II, Dwight David Eisenhower, the author of the Crusade in Europe and and veritably the author of the campaign plan, right, and the supreme, uh, allied commander for the landings at Normandy to rescue the country from, uh, what seems to be a low point as you’ve settled into static, uh, uh, interminable warfare.

Uh, in Korea and the mounting Soviet threat. This is a callback right to what is beginning to take form as a memory of America at its best and at its most powerful. And then the other thing that happens in the fifties is the dedication of the American cemetery at Colville by the American battlefields monument.

So there had been a temporary cemetery there from, you know, June 8th of 1944, but the AB, uh, ABMC, uh, is consolidating all of its European cemeteries and makes this one of the, you know, big 13 concentrations. This being the most important right on the bluffs overlooking Omaha Beach, the portal of liberation, and that cemetery is dedicated in 1956, which coincidentally is the same year that the Soviets occupied Hungary.

It’s the same year in which the U. S. adopted the In God We Trust National motto. And so it’s metaphorically somehow the United States planting the flag again in 1956 on the bluffs overlooking Omaha Beach as a declaration of this is what we stand for. And this is what we are willing to sacrifice to make sure that it is preserved.

[00:18:19] Jeremi Suri: Is there a problem, John, and, and this, this is a question about D Day, but it could be, you know, uh, applied to various other battles that we commemorate historically. Um, is there a problem when we commemorate a battle this way, knowing the results? And therefore looking at it from the, from the, the direction of success, not what you pointed to so eloquently earlier in your comments, the uncertainty, the near run of this, uh, and the, the limits of American power.

In retrospect, it makes the United States look like a powerful liberator when at the moment it might not have been exactly that. Is there a problem with this?

[00:18:58] John Hall: Well, I mean, certainly there’s a problem. If you’re, uh, you know, plumbing, the depths of history is very shallow, you know, and you’re going to rely upon history in, in two dimensions and vivid colors to extract lessons that are going to guide you in the future.

Um, I think if you study something like Normandy, uh, Operation Overlord in greater depth, uh, you know, with, with more sophistication, uh, It’s actually very instructive in a lot of regards to understand how memories and memorialization of events like this, albeit problematic, itself becomes, you know, a driver of subsequent when.

Events, you know, the, the crystallization or concretization of a new late 20th century confident version of American identity. So yeah. And the short answer to your question is, yes, it’s, it’s problematic, but I mean, that’s kind of what we in the business are all about, right. It was right. We, we, we, we gravitate toward, toward problems, uh, like this.

And so, you know, why. Why Normandy? Why, why D Day? Why look of the five beaches? Why lavish so much attention on the one beach where everything went dreadfully wrong? When it wasn’t even the main American effort, right? Between the two American beaches, Utah beach was the more important to the larger operational plan.

That’s why the two airborne divisions dropped behind Utah. Beach, right because that was the that was the american main effort under uh, Bradley to go see sherbork afterwards. So why do we look at this? I think Uh, there’s a couple of of ready answers. I have to that. One of them is it’s not a uniquely american penchant To latch on to the tragic, romantic, heroic, right?

Uh, and, and so we, particularly in a western literary tradition, um, there, there’s something ennobling about, uh, uh, martyred sacrifice. And this isn’t even, here’s one American twist on it though. In this point, the martyrs, despite the, you know, 2, 500 Americans who gave their lives at Normandy, um, it’s not a defeat.

You know, it’s not, uh, Gallipoli. It’s not, uh, the charge of the Light Brigade. It’s a victory. So, you have all of the virtues of ennobling martyred sacrifice, but you win. On top of it. And so there’s that tragic romantic quality about it. But the other element of it is particularly vis a vis World War One in this single place on a single day.

The United States makes a sacrifice. It makes an investment in the blood of its own service members that allows it to lay it. A share a late claim to a share of moral authority in this war that it never acquired in World War One.

[00:22:26] Jeremi Suri: Right?

[00:22:26] John Hall: So if World War One was supposed to make the world safe for democracy and allow Woodrow Wilson to reshape the international order.

Um, of course, he was terribly frustrated. Uh, in, in, in those designs, his own Senate refused to even ratify, uh, the treaty of Versailles, uh, the league of nations, his own, you know, uh, uh, design is something the United States can’t participate in and is relatively stillborn in large measure. It’s because.

The United States shows up so late to that conflict and it’s sacrifice, well, very important, you know, to ending World War I when it did, paled in comparison to the other combatants and the other heads in European states really just didn’t have any, didn’t care what Woodrow Wilson had to say at the end of it.

Here at Normandy, uh, I think the world, The world was, um, uh, uh, made to understand that the United States would, as JFK would later say, you know, bear any burden, pay any price, that this was proof positive of that, uh, and it occurs at, at, at, you know, American insistence under American command and the level of sacrifice made there is part of what makes, you know, Normandy and Omaha Beach in particular, such a poignant element in World War Two, where in retrospect, um, this particular day, this particular battle has more weight than it.

Other, you know, uh, Guadalcanal, uh, Iwo Jima, Hurtgen Forest, uh, the Battle of the Bulge, World War II, you know, is a, is, is a unprecedented event in, in human history. In any theater, in any month, there’s a battle of such epic proportions that, that, you know, it, it rates its own pantheon of heroes and place in national histories.

And so why why does this one stand out? Um, and it is because of its place in a subsequent American morality tale, uh, that that ennobles sacrifice and enables American leadership You know what Henry Luce famously called the American century,

[00:24:54] Jeremi Suri: right? And I think the moral valence that that battle takes on one could argue for good and for ill gives the United States a moral self righteousness in the world that that is hard to argue against for a while, at least correct.

[00:25:10] John Hall: Yeah, no, I think that that’s true. And the interesting aspect of that is at the end of World War. One, uh, as I’ve already said, European leaders, at least, um, didn’t, they weren’t pining for American leadership in a post war order. Um, that’s different, I think. After world war two, uh, where for a moment in time, at least there’s a convergence between this idea, which is self flattering, right?

Uh, and, and, and enable self righteousness, but this idea of. among Americans of what it is to be American, what represents the United States at its best. What is America’s role in the world? That with that formula being exactly what many in Western Europe want and need the United States to be in that moment.

And that’s another one of the reasons why it is particularly powerful. Of course, uh, this narrative, uh, is sully significantly by America’s misadventure in the Vietnam War. And, you know, the, the, that moral valence of D Day loses something when heads of state, uh, such as, uh, uh, Uh, Wyndon Johnson invoke, you know, Normandy to justify a war in Vietnam.

I think many Americans come to question that, that formula and, uh, it’s, it’s underpinnings. But what’s interesting is how readily, uh, they take them up again. After a, uh, we might call a decent interval following the end of that Vietnam War by the late 1970s, Americans are very eager, um, to re remember themselves or restore themselves in an image that is cast by the light of the war.

Omaha Beach, which is why, uh, I think many scholars point to Ronald Reagan’s 40th anniversary commemoration speech at Pointe du Hoc as being another seminal moment. In the evolution of the the importance of Normandy to American national identity. So the kind of pilgrimages to Normandy that that are commonplace today every year there’s a ceremony and then the big anniversaries there’s an even bigger ceremony that wasn’t really a thing until the 1980s.

Uh, and I, I think that’s partly and ironically also a legacy of the Vietnam War. Normandy is as is. As important as it is to the United States today, not just by virtue of what it meant to the outcome of World War Two, the course of World War Two and its ultimate decision and the fate of, of, of Europe afterward, but also.

Equally as much arguably, uh, by the need of the United States to reimagine itself in its best, uh, incarnation after Vietnam. This is the period, of course, when, uh, World War II. Uh, acquires the luster of, of the Good War, right? I mean, derived from the name of Studs Terkel’s book, uh, of the same title, which was published the same year that that Reagan point, uh, spoke at Point to Hak,

[00:28:58] Jeremi Suri: right?

We have the mix of, uh, history and nostalgia there, certainly. Zachary.

[00:29:03] Zachary Suri: Yes. I’m, I’m wondering if you could maybe speak more to how, um, the memory of D-Day and this image of Normandy that Reagan invokes. In his sort of boys at Palm to Hawk speech, um, how that shapes, uh, and changes, uh, in narrative, uh, at the end of the cold war, when we’re sort of re imagining American relationships with Europe in a world without the Soviet Union.

Um, and obviously decisions made in that context, uh, and in the context and in the aftermath of that speech, um, would shape the context that Biden gave his speech in, um,

[00:29:43] John Hall: Yeah, so it’s a very good question, Zachary. I think here is where we see some more of the problems, uh, that, that, uh, Jeremy addressed earlier, you know, enter into the conversation, uh, in terms of the, the self righteousness that, that is associated with this.

So as long as you had this, you know, Epic contest between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, uh, the United States conception of itself, its global talking points, uh, you know, its entire foreign policy was predicated on the idea that the United States led a liberal international order that stood for democracy and freedom and human rights and, and things like that.

And, and it could stand Metaphorically on the sand and shingle of Omaha Beach. And Make this case with some kind of of moral authority, uh, which also licensed to some extent, uh, actions in the name of this broader cause that were hand entirely against the grain of what the United States said about itself.

But with the end of the Cold War. Uh, refer to these as being like guy wires of that had upheld account somewhat artificial, uh, bipolar world, these guy wires snap and the world is thrown into not not chaos, but but a period of And that’s it. Tremendous uncertainty and initially great, great promise, I think that the United States thought, uh, at that time with the end of the Cold War, uh, was probably aptly captured by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his now much derided video.

And later book, uh, the end of history in which, you know, this, this contest is now one, uh, the, the fate of mankind has been determined and it is a liberal international order defined by and led by the United States that is going to determine the future course of, of human history, which. Is why it’s the end of history because nothing significant is going to to happen from from this point forward And of course, that’s not the world that developed.

Uh in in the 1990s and certainly Uh in the 21st century despite, you know, an initial great promise that that it would Uh, the the the Pax Americana that that was supposed to last, uh, uh millennia Lasted about a decade before a new world order emerged, and I think that the United States probably, uh, was too confident in its own success and too confident in what it conceived almost that it’s as its birthright to be, you know, the hegemonic ordering power.

Uh, of the world following, uh, uh, the, the end of the cold war and, and that hubris, um, has consequences, uh, and, and I, I think certainly had statesmen been able to foresee the world as it was rather than as they, they wished it had been, the United States would have made different choices in that era. Um, I wouldn’t go so far as to say the present antagonism with Russia Is entirely derivative of the United States posture at the end of the Cold War, uh, but the United States posture and, and attitude in the, the, the immediate aftermath, um, I, I do not think we’re ultimately conducive to, to integrating Russia, uh, into, you know, the, the system that the United States thought was going to prevail.

[00:33:56] Jeremi Suri: Uh, John, that, that brings, brings us to the question I think we really wanted to close on. And it’s, it’s, it’s a version of a question we ask every week, which is, how do we take this thoughtful, uh, detailed and brilliant historical accounting you’ve given us, Uh, and, and, and how do we use that going forward to think about democracy?

And, and you’ve taken us right to that point. Uh, we’ve discussed the Ukraine war many times on this podcast with various guests. And, and I guess my question for you, uh, the version of that for you is, How do we recognize, as you’ve detailed, the heroism, the good things that are represented, the virtues that are represented in the sacrifice and the leadership evident at D Day, without taking on the hubris, without going too far?

It seems to me that President Biden was trying to walk that line, but it’s very hard when you’re using D Day to justify fighting a new war, a new proxy war in Europe against Russia. On the one hand, you know, Russian aggression is undeniable. It’s not Hitlerite aggression, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it is serious aggression and there is an American role to play and D Day reminds us of that.

But the risk of course, is that D Day leads us to think that we’re inherently liberators and that our power is, is unmatchable when we know from The history of the last century or so that that’s not the case. So, so how do we balance these things? How should we think about d day in the world today? Yeah,

[00:35:28] John Hall: that’s a great question.

Uh, and any of my students listening to this are going to groan as I again, uh, invoke Ernst Rennan, uh, paraphrasing him to say, uh, you know, part of being a nation is getting your history wrong. There is no such thing as a national identity, uh, that, that is compelling. That is based entirely on fact, right?

I mean, any kind of identity is, is based partly on folklore, uh, uh, contrivance. National mythology that that’s inherently Flattering, uh, it’s the national version of of lake woebegone, right, you know Children are above average The I guess the the thing I would say about d day is if you recognize this about all peoples This is not a particular foible of the united states.

This is true. I think of of any people that that have a Of National identity or, or collective identity, um, wouldn’t you wish that they defined who they are by what is in fact the best about themselves? You know, if you’re going to have a national identity, uh, that it is necessarily partly mythological or at the very least selective and exclusionary, you know, focused only on the good and ignoring the bad.

Should you not wish it to focus on the best and to aspire to be that way. So the namesake of my chair at the University of Wisconsin, Stephen Ambrose, uh, another person I would be remiss if I did not invoke in this conversation. Was also essential to the elevation of D Day and Omaha beach to its place in the collective American memory today by his writings, particularly in the 1990s, which then gave way to the film saving private Ryan, uh, the film adaptation of the miniseries adaptation of his book band of brothers of his book on D Day, he called this his love song to democracy.

And he was very, very explicit. Uh, about his design in focusing so much of his work around this as he meant it to be a civics lesson. He meant it to be a civics lesson for Americans that they would aspire to live up to this standard, uh, raised by what Tom Brokaw famously called the greatest generation.

I mean, there are problems in that. As well, and so in terms of achieving the balance, I think, uh, as an educator, one of the responsibilities that we have is to slaughter sacred cows that deserve to be slaughtered, you know, to point out the myths that are actually harmful, uh, the elements of this, you know, synthetic national identity that are, in fact, Odious and to identify them for what they are.

But at the same time, uh, to give credit to ideas and, and generations and, and the participants in events who actually live up to, uh, and embody Ideals to which I think most Americans Americans continue to aspire to this day. And so I you know, I I think again The key as a historian Is to understand? D day in all of its complexity.

And by that, I don’t mean every single moving part of Operation Overlord and Operation Neptune, but to understand it’s important to the events of 1944, 1945, the post war order, but then also to understand it, it does remain very relevant. Today, uh, and it is not surprising in the least that President Biden and many, many others would invoke Operation Overlord, invoke D Day when addressing the current threat, uh, to liberty and, uh, uh, nascent democracy or, or, you know, democracy, uh, in Europe by calling back to the events of, of June 6th.

1944 I should also add here that a great place to go to reflect upon all of these issues is the national world war two museum In new orleans, uh, and their new liberation pavilion. So if you’ve been there in the past, uh, you you know Have some sense of what that museum has to offer, but that entire Liberation Pavilion, uh, certainly they had no idea that Russia was going to invade Ukraine when they began planning for, uh, this Liberation Pavilion, which is really about the world that World War Two made or, or enabled and, uh, It is that pavilion which I think allows visitors to reflect on all of the questions we’ve been discussing today, and specifically also, Jeremy, the last one that you’ve posed about, you know, how do we achieve this kind of balance?

[00:41:10] Jeremi Suri: Yes. And, and we should say, uh, that both, uh, John and I, uh, have worked with the World War II Museum on the, on the pavilion. And, and both, I think we’re part of a large group of historians who, who think it is an important contribution as John has laid out here very, very well. And we encourage people to go to the World War II Museum in New Orleans.

Zachary, I wanted to come to you, um, on this. Uh, John has laid out a very good case for the, the, the relevance, the urgent relevance, in some ways, of a complex and, um, full understanding. There can never be a complete understanding, but a full understanding of D Day. But, but I, I remember when You know, John and I are about the same age.

When we were coming of age as young scholars, um, there was a kind of allergy to the greatest generation argument, even though it was popular, even though Stephen Ambrose, who John mentioned, was quite popular as a writer and a television personality. Um, there was among those of us who were younger whippersnappers, uh, there was an allergy to that greatest generation argument.

There was an allergy to the heroism of D Day for some of us, at least. You know, because it seemed to say our, the greatest time in our society was behind us and this generation isn’t up to snuff. How does your generation look at D Day today?

[00:42:31] Zachary Suri: I think there’s certainly a lot of that perspective still, but I would push back because I think that the re, I think it’s, it’s, it’s very interesting to me in particular that this Um, anniversary, the 80th anniversary received so much attention, um, and it seemed to, I think, pervade, um, through American media and culture in a way that I, I wasn’t even in the United States, but I perceived as pretty universal.

Um, I think that, that, that in this moment in particular, when it seems like we’ve lost a lot of sort of shared. Identity as, um, Professor Hall was talking about, and a lot of those sort of shared stories that shape, um, a national sense of self and a national mission, um, I think D Day can be a really helpful, um, lens through which to view, uh, America’s role in the world today, and that we should view the world today.

the flaws that we’ve just discussed in the sort of D Day narrative, and the D Day myth, and the many mistakes that it’s enabled, we should view those as lessons to learn, and not as reasons to sort of reject the project that D Day represents.

[00:43:48] Jeremi Suri: I wonder, Zachary, do you think it’d be different when there aren’t any veterans of D Day left?

They’ll, you know, there still are some who are alive, but 80 years on, there aren’t going to be many for much longer.

[00:43:59] Zachary Suri: Yeah, I think, I think one of the One of the real worries and one of the reasons why telling this history is so urgent right now, um, is that so many of the people who lived through these events, um, who for generations were, were the storytellers, uh, and, uh, the parents of the storytellers, the, the sort of source of a lot of our memories of this moment, um, are no longer with us.

And I think that is is troubling. But I also think that, um, in a sense, the, the, the stories live on and maybe the real danger is that we sort of forget the spirit behind the stories, uh, in a sense that we sort of forget the real people behind the stories. Um, and that I think is probably The realist danger in, um, in, in losing so many people who, who fought in D Day and so many people, so many survivors of, of World War II and the Holocaust is that we sort of forget the real human stories behind them and we get lost in the narrative.

itself. Right,

[00:45:05] Jeremi Suri: right, right. And I think that’s one of the core points that John has made, and the work of great military historians like John Hall is the work of, and Stephen Ambrose was doing this as well, there’s so many different kinds of historians who do this, bringing those human stories to life, that war is not a chessboard game, and it’s the human stories, uh, and the accomplishments as well as the limits.

that, that remind us of what really makes a democracy work. As John said, it’s, it’s a civics lesson as well as it is a military history lesson. Uh, Professor John Hall, thank you so much for joining us today. I encourage all of our listeners to look up John Hall’s work and, and read it. He writes across the, uh, full expanse of American military history from the Indian Wars all the way to the present.

Uh, John, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Jeremy and Zachary. It’s been a real pleasure. And Zachary, thank you, as always, for a particularly moving and poignant poem today. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention at the end of our podcast that Zachary and I, because we’re enjoying this podcast so much, Uh, each week, we’re expanding into a Substack newsletter as well, which will start, uh, at the end of June, and we hope you’ll all, uh, take a look for that a little.

It will include more supplementary, um, materials, including, uh, a, uh, printed text version of Zachary’s poem each week. Many, many more. Uh, people have emailed me and asked me for copies of Zachary’s poem. And instead of my having to send you a weekly email with his poem, it’ll be part of our newsletter and there’ll be other material, other, uh, uh, content, uh, including, uh, columns and, uh, material referenced in the podcast.

So we hope that you’ll all take a look, uh, at that sub stack when it’s available. But for now, our, uh, greatest joy is to bring this podcast to you each week. And we thank you, our loyal listeners, for joining us for this week of This Is Democracy.

[00:47:11] Outro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Codini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find This Is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. See you next time.