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Victory in Europe: Fifty Years Later

Think Tank Transcripts:Victory in Europe 50 Years Later

ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' has been made possible by Amgen, arecipient of the Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen,bringing better, healthier lives to people worldwide throughbiotechnology.

Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation, theRandolph Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. Fifty years ago thisweek, the war in Europe ended. Liberation and celebration sweptthrough Europe and America. What was at stake? Are there lessons forus today?

Joining us to remember the conflict and its aftermath are StephenAmbrose, director of the Eisenhower Center and professor of historyat the University of New Orleans and author of 'D-Day, June 6, 1944:The Climactic Battle of World War II'; historian Daniel Boorstin,Librarian of Congress Emeritus and Pulitzer-prize-winning author of'The Americans: The Democratic Experience' and 'The Discoverers';Martin Blumenson, author of 'Patton: The Man Behind the Legend,' anda World War II veteran who served in General George Patton’s ThirdArmy; and David Fromkin, chairman of the department of internationalrelations at Boston University and author of the recent book, 'In theTime of the Americans, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Marshall, MacArthur:The Generation that Changed America’s Role in the World.'

The topic before this house: Victory in Europe 50 years later.This week on 'Think Tank'.

The American entry into World War II in December of 1941 came nonetoo soon for the British and for occupied Europe. Soon Americansoldiers and equipment began flooding into a beleaguered Britain. By1943, American airplanes were bombing Nazi Germany by day while theBritish bombed by night.

On June 6, 1994, American, Canadian and British forces hit thebeaches of Normandy in what remains the largest amphibious assault inhistory. During the next year, the allied forces pounded Germany fromthe west, while the Soviet allies fought bloodily from the east.American and allied troops liberated not only the French, theBelgians and the Dutch, but also the victims of Nazi death camps atDachau, Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald.

In May of 1945, in the rubble of Berlin, the Germans surrenderedand the war in Europe was over. Nearly 40 million civilians andsoldiers died in the struggle against Nazi Germany, making it thebloodiest conquest in the bloodiest war in history.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us here today. I wanted to beginby reading a quote from Winston Churchill which is what he said whenAmerica entered the war after the bombing by the Japanese at PearlHarbor. And Prime Minister Churchill said this: 'Hitler’s fate wassealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they wouldbe ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper applicationof overwhelming force.'

You get the feeling from that statement, Dan Boorstin, thatvictory was inevitable. Did you sense it that way at the time?

MR. BOORSTIN: You know, Ben, I’m wary of statements like that,even though they’re so eloquently put, because I think that historyis the cautionary science. And I think it’s -- the only inevitabilityin history, I think, is the force of individual women and men. Allthe other simplifications are things to be cautious of.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. David Fromkin.

MR. FROMKIN: General de Gaulle, too, said at the time that itseemed to be inevitable, but I, too, disagree. I think nothing isinevitable until it happens, and there were several points along theway where the war could have gone the other way.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, we’ll come back to what they might havebeen. Martin Blumenson.

MR. BLUMENSON: It was inevitable only afterwards, it seems to me.At the time, we could have lost the war. For example, on D-Day, if wehad not gotten ashore, we might have lost the war right there. Sothere is no inevitability, as David said, until something happens.

MR. WATTENBERG: All right, Stephen Ambrose, via satellite in NewOrleans, do you agree with your confederates here?

MR. AMBROSE: It’s four for four, yes. Nothing is inevitable.Another what if to add to Martin’s, what if Hitler had gotten thosejet airplanes into serial production in 1943, as Willy Messerschmittwas ready to do. I think Germany would have won the war then.

MR. WATTENBERG: When you were with the Patton headquarters, as youwere executing that sort of mad dash across Europe, did you and yourcolleagues and the troops then feel, at that point, that victory wasinevitable?

MR. BLUMENSON: Yes, we had the feeling that the war was coming toan end and victoriously for us. But this is after the Battle of theBulge, and it wasn’t until after the Battle of the Bulge that webegan to feel certain that victory was just around the corner. And itwas a matter of time, whatever that means, because a matter of timemeans also all sorts of bad things that can happen, too.

MR. WATTENBERG: Stephen Ambrose, World War II produced what we nowsense are larger-than-life heroes, General Patton being one,Eisenhower, Marshall, some of the much publicized heroes like AudieMurphy. Was that a product of momentous times or of remarkable humanbeings?

MR. AMBROSE: It was a nice combination of both. That was aremarkable generation, especially I think in the U.S. Army, thoseguys that stuck it out in the ’20s and the ’30s. Eisenhower was amajor for 14 years. These were men of great talent and ability. Theycould have gone off in any walk of life and gone right to the top,but they stuck with it. And when the time came, they were ready andthey created that miracle that was the United States Army of WorldWar II.

They also had opportunities. Men born earlier than they were orborn later never had the kind of chances that Patton or Eisenhower orMarshall had.

MR. WATTENBERG: Dan, you’re a student of this argument of whethermen make the times or times make the men.

MR. BOORSTIN: Well, I don’t think that’s a discussable question asyou put it. But I do think that there were heroes, and among them Iwould count Winston Churchill, whose foresight and eloquence werewhat saved Western civilization, I think. And also I admire FDR.

The problem nowadays, though, is that heroes are overshadowed bycelebrities. And celebrities -- that’s long been the case, but it’smore so now than ever, when people who are celebrities are the peoplewho are known for their well-knownness and not for their achievement.And the people who are accused of committing horrible crimes arepushing off the front page the people who are leading us in importantconquests.

MR. BLUMENSON: It seems to me that one of the great things aboutAmerican society is that it has produced heroes in times of crisis,and these wonderful people that come up and do the things that needto be done. This is a wonderful function that American society hasproduced in the past, and there is no reason to believe why itshouldn’t continue into the future.

MR. WATTENBERG: David Fromkin, you have written a book about thoseheroes, about President Roosevelt and Eisenhower and GeneralMarshall, and so on. How do you -- were they remarkable human beingsin any age, or did they sort of come out of the process?

MR. FROMKIN: I think they would have been remarkable human beingsin any age. I think that we were especially lucky to have thatgeneration in place when these crises arose.

MR. WATTENBERG: So much of our viewership -- I mean it is 50 yearsafter victory -- really did not live through this even as children,or as very young children. And I wonder if the distinguished panelhere could describe what the United States was like here on thehomefront.

MR. AMBROSE: My father was in the Navy in the Pacific. I had anolder brother and younger brother. My mother held the familytogether. We lived at various parts of the United States. We feltvery strongly what I think everyone in this country felt, that we areall in this together. There was a marvelous sense of teamwork duringWorld War II. As kids we were participants. We were collecting tincans, we were saving tin foil from the gum wrappers. We were growingvictory gardens. We were buying war bonds with our pennies. We werefollowing the war.

And we had shortages, there was rationing. It was nothing like therest of the world, but there were shortages. And anytime anybodycomplained in World War II about this or that shortage or hardship,the answer invariably was, 'We are all in this together.' And thatwas a marvelous feeling that doesn’t come along very often in ademocracy.

MR. WATTENBERG: I remember as a kid growing up frying a wholepound of bacon in order to save the fat to put in that can that youthen gave to the butcher, which would then allegedly go to themunitions factory. How about anybody? You were in service in Europe,Martin.

MR. BLUMENSON: Yes. I was in service here in this country first.

MR. WATTENBERG: Right.

MR. BLUMENSON: But what I wanted to say is that despite thiswonderful unity that Steve Ambrose speaks about, there was someconcern on the higher levels, military and political levels, and thewonder was whether the young men of America, who had a good life andan easy life and were spoiled by the American way of life, there wasconcern about whether the young American men would fight.

And this persisted, I think, through the maneuvers of 1941. And Ithink it was George Patton who more than anyone proved that Americanyoung men would fight and fight well under him, and if they wouldfight well under him, they would fight well under other goodgenerals.

MR. WATTENBERG: If we had this kind of a crisis today, would westill be able to respond in that fashion, in your collectivejudgments? Steve Ambrose.

MR. AMBROSE: Yes, I think so, absolutely. I believe that ademocracy produces the kind of people who spend most of their timesquabbling and fighting with each other over political matters, whichis what’s supposed to happen in a democracy, but when a crisis comes,people pull together in a voluntary teamwork that is the mostpowerful force in the world. There is just nothing that can stand upto it.

The totalitarians cannot stand up to the fury of an arouseddemocracy. So I have great confidence that if we ever have a crisislike this again -- it’s hard for me to imagine one of this magnitude,of course we’ll pull together.

MR. WATTENBERG: That was one of the great lessons of World War II,as was mentioned here, that democracies are not decadent. They onlyseem to be decadent for a while.

MR. BLUMENSON: They seem to be disorganized, but they are not. Andthey are far more efficient than totalitarian states are. And theutilization of people and resources in World War II, I think, provedthat.

It seems to me that yes, we are capable of meeting a crisis in thefuture, depending on the issues. If the issues are fundamentalenough, Americans will certainly make the sacrifices required.

MR. FROMKIN: I think we would respond -- we would respond in thesame way if we were attacked, as we were in the Second World War. Andthe problem for us, I think, as a country is the sort of thing thathappened to us in Korea, where it’s more complex, where we have notbeen physically attacked ourselves.

I think we only respond well, really, when we have been attacked,when everyone in the country can see that we have no alternative butto fight.

MR. WATTENBERG: Dan, how about you? Would we respond in that sortof heroic fashion?

MR. BOORSTIN: Yes, I think so. I think we must remember, andProfessor Blumenson has suggested it, that a free society is a kindof creative chaos, and we must put up the with the turbulence inorder to have the creativity.

I think also that we mustn’t forget that a characteristic of freesocieties, unlike totalitarian societies, is that totalitariansocieties exaggerate their virtues. Free societies, because they arefree, tend to exaggerate their vices. And that is something -- Ithink if we had to choose between the two, it wouldn’t be difficultto make the choice.

MR. AMBROSE: Totalitarians rule by terror. Democracy rule is bypersuasion. One example from the combat zone, in the Second WorldWar, Hitler executed 50,000 Wehrmacht soldiers for cowardice or fordesertion. The United States Army in northwest Europe executed onesoldier for desertion, Private Eddie Slovak. They felt an example hadto be made. Americans stayed in the front line not because of terror,but because they were concerned about what kind of a world am I goingto live in when this war is over? And if I desert my post and let mybuddies down and if they desert others, we’re going to live in aworld that I don’t want to live in.

And so they stayed because they wanted to. German soldiers, whofought bravely and in many cases magnificently, stayed because theyhad somebody standing behind them with a pistol at the back of theirhead.

MR. WATTENBERG: Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’srecent book has sort of forced the Vietnam veterans to ask thathaunting question, was it worth it? And this has sort of put forth afirestorm. Was there a moral quandary amongst the GIs at that time?Was anybody saying, what am I doing here, you know, this is silly?MR. BLUMENSON: I don’t think so. I never came across anything likethat. Everyone was quite unified and everybody knew what it was wewere doing, and I think everybody was happy to be doing it.Obviously, we’d rather have been home or have been somewhere else,but it was something that had to be done and I think that was fine.

MR. BOORSTIN: But there was another element I think in it, whichwe mustn’t forget in relation to World War II. The First World Warappeared to be the result of the tangle of European diplomacy andimperial forces at war with one another. But the Second World War hada plain moral objective, to exterminate the most powerful force ofbarbarism in modern history. And I think that people were aware ofthat, and I think that gave a strength to the cause. And I think wemustn’t forget that.

We must also not forget, while we assess the horrible losses inthe war, that it was peace, it was Nazi peace that exterminated sixmillion Jews and others. And Stalin’s war against his own peoplekilled between 20 and 30 million people. So that we must assess thesethings in the perspective of our time, and it’s shocking that in ourcivilized century, so many people have died for ideological andracist reasons, more than in any previous -- more even than in thereligious wars of the 17th century.

MR. WATTENBERG: Surely World War II was relevant to deal with anysubsequent perceived global tyrannies, such as the Soviet Union. Itwas -- like Nazi Germany, it was totalitarian, it was expansionist,it threatened us directly. But we are some years beyond the Cold War.Are the lessons of World War II, such as they may be, still relevanttoday, and if so, what are they? Stephen, you have something for us?

MR. AMBROSE: I think that the lesson of World War II is -- we’vebeen discussing it. It is that an aroused democracy is the mostpowerful force in the world. And I think that what is relevant todayabout World War II to young people, who are so cynical, and to somany others is, don’t ever despair of democracy. For all of itsfaults and all of its weaknesses and all the politicians about todrive you crazy, don’t ever give up on democracy.

It’s also the nature of democracy that it doesn’t deal well with anon-crisis situation. And thank God, most of the time in human life,we are not in a crisis situation. But when a crisis comes along, thatdemocracy will pull together. When you don’t have a crisis, that’swhat a democracy is supposed to be about, people fighting with eachother, people squabbling in their parliaments, people arguing aboutthis or that policy.

MR. BOORSTIN: I agree with Professor Ambrose, but I would add onemore perhaps larger lesson. And that is the lesson of the two worldwars is that the last war has never happened and probably never willhappen. The First World War, of course we remember, was fought as thewar to end wars, and within a couple of decades, why, the world wasback at war again. And I think it’s very important to remember thatin the presence of people who have had considerable militaryexperience. But I think we mustn’t pretend that the last war hashappened, and there is the menace -- there is always a new menace. Ifyou believe in original sin and believe that human nature is notperfect, there are always causes for war.

MR. WATTENBERG: What’s the menace now?

MR. BOORSTIN: Well, I think fanaticism, ideology and fanaticism.The idea of a jihad, of a holy war against -- and all kinds -- allreligious fanaticisms I think are equally evil. But when people arewilling to fight for their religion against people who don’t agreewith them, just because they don’t agree with them, because theydon’t have that faith, that is a menace to civilization, no matterwho holds it.

MR. FROMKIN: I think that one of the lessons that we can draw fromthe World War II experience is about the mistake that we Americanstypically make in not being able to think about politics in itsrelationship to war, to force and to power. In the ’30s, manyAmericans, though of very civilized and liberal disposition, werepacifists. They were so much against war that they did not see thatthe only way to stop something as evil as Hitler’s aggression was tooppose force with force.

And when the war was over, we made the same mistake we had made inthe First World War. There France in effect won the war and thereforedictated the peace. And when Roosevelt came to Yalta, he seemed to bealone perhaps in seeing that the logic of the war was that since theSoviet Union had overrun vast portions of Eastern and Central Europe,they were going to keep it and they were going to dictate the futureof those areas.

As Americans, that was very hard for us to accept, but that meantthat in waging war, we always have to think about the effect of howwe wage war on peace.

MR. WATTENBERG: Could Franklin Roosevelt have done anything aboutthat? I mean, after all, there were the Soviets in Eastern Europe. Imean, what could he have done?

MR. FROMKIN: Nothing. He saw the choice. He saw that if we wantedto get the Russians out of there, we’d have to be prepared to go towar to do it. And we weren’t prepared to do that.

MR. WATTENBERG: Martin, what are the lessons looking forward?

MR. BLUMENSON: I’m not one much for lessons, and I’m not sure thatthere are any lessons at all in history. If everything is a uniqueexperience, it never happens again. There are no such things aslessons.

And I think that we learn the wrong lessons. And I think what welearned in World War II was the strength of the United States, and Ithink that led us places we ought not to have gone in subsequentyears. I think that this lesson that we are so strong took us intoVietnam, for example. So I -- MR. WATTENBERG: But the same lessonthat took us into Vietnam also won the Cold War for us. I mean, youknow, the fact that that generation McNamara now criticizes says thatthe appeasement at Munich was the formative experience of thatgeneration, which in addition to getting us into Vietnam, also wonthe Cold War. I mean, would you buy that?

MR. BLUMENSON: You can say, too, that appeasement came from thefact that if the statesmen in World War I had permitted Austria totake over Serbia, there would not have been a World War I. And sothat’s the wrong lesson, it seems to me -- or perhaps the rightlesson, but we’re talking about things that really haven’t -- MR.BOORSTIN: There is another way of putting this perhaps, and that isthat, to follow Professor Ambrose’s eloquent description of theAmerican tradition, which I agree with, is that perhaps our influencein world affairs ought to be the power of example and not the powerof power. Our long-term influence in the world is not throughAmerican power, it’s through the example of American institutions.

MR. AMBROSE: I would like to point out that after World War I, thegreat lesson the American people took from that war was, don’t getinto any entangling alliances and don’t arm yourself, and you’ll beable to stay out of the next war. So our policies in the 1930s wereneutrality in a world that had gone mad and unilateral disarmament tothe point that our army was 175,000 men in 1940, when Hitler hadoverrun France. That meant it ranked 16th in the world.

Now, we learned from World War II to get into alliancesbeforehand, and we learned from World War II that we’ve got to stayarmed. And we learned a third lesson from 1919 and then 1945. Andthat was to extend our hand to the defeated.

In 1919, we kicked them in the teeth. In 1945, we extended ourhand to the Germans and to the Japanese and helped them back ontotheir feet and brought out the best in a people who had had the worstbrought out from them in the preceding 12 and 15 years.

I think we learned some valuable lessons and I think we’ve appliedthem, and I think that these lessons apply today, very much so. We’vegot to have alliances, we’ve got to stay militarily strong, and weneed to extend our hand to the defeated. I wish we would do more withregard to Russia today, for example.

MR. FROMKIN: I agree entirely with what Professor Ambrose justsaid. And I think we were very fortunate in our timing in the sensethat the generation that was young enough to fight in the First WorldWar was the generation that led us in the Second World War. They knewthose lessons because they had lived it. The timing was just right.

MR. BOORSTIN: If we are defining an American tradition, I think wecan take up Professor Ambrose’s suggestion and Professor Blumenson’salso, that the Civil War and World War II are exemplars of theAmerican approach to the world, I think, and to our relationship. Andthat is, the Civil War is the only war, the only civil war of amodern country fought, at least in large part, for the liberation ofsome of its citizens. And World War II, of course, had a strong moralingredient.

Woodrow Wilson inspired us into the First World War with slogansof democracy, but the result, of course, was not what was intended.Nevertheless, that is the American tradition, to believe that we arean exceptional country, we are here to affirm the opportunity ofpeople from all over the world. And I think that we’ve had manyfaults, but nevertheless we still are in a position to affirm that,and I hope we continue to be.

MR. WATTENBERG: Okay, on that note -- on that celebratory notewith my celebratory tie, thank you, Stephen Ambrose, David Fromkin,Martin Blumenson, and Daniel Boorstin.

Please send your comments and questions to: New River Media, 115017th Street, NW, Suite 1050, Washington, DC, 20036. Or we can bereached via E-mail at thinktv@aol.com.

For 'Think Tank,' I’m Ben Wattenberg.

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