Further, Eisenhower believed that if the Americans tried to race the Russians to Berlin, they would lose.
Ninth and First Armies were four hundred kilometers from Berlin; the Red Army was on the banks of the Oder River, less than a hundred kilometers from the city. And the Red Army was there in great strength-more than 1.25 million troops.
Another consideration: Eisenhower"s goal was to win the war and thus end the carnage as quickly as possible. Every day that the war went on meant more death for the concentration camp inmates, for the millions of slave laborers in Germany, for the Allied POWs. If he concentrated on Berlin, the Germans in Bavaria and Austria, where many of the POW and slave labor camps were located, would be able to hold out for who knew how long. There is a parallel here with the end of the American Civil War. Just before Appomattox, some of Robert E. Lee"s staff suggested to him that he disband the Army of Northern Virginia and instruct the troops to scatter into the West Virginia mountains, where as small groups they could carry on guerrilla warfare. Lee was appalled by the suggestion. He said there could be nothing worse for the South than having armed bands roaming the countryside without discipline or direction.
But Hitler was no Lee. And the SS and Hitler Youth were not only fanatics but were armed with the most modern weapons, which gave small groups of them a firepower greater than that of the Army of Northern Virginia at its peak. Even after the surrender of the Ruhr, the Germans never ran out of guns or ammunition. These boys could get all the panzerfausts, potato mashers, machine guns, burp guns, rifles, and Schu mines they could carry. If they were lucky enough to have fuel, they could have Tiger tanks, 168 88s, and more heavy stuff. This combination of fanatic boys and plenty of weapons and ammunition created a nightmare situation.
After the mid-April surrender of 325,000 troops (plus thirty generals) in the Ruhr pocket, the Wehrmacht packed it in. Lt. Gunter Materne was a German artilleryman caught in the pocket ("where everything was a complete mess"). Out of ammunition and fuel, he destroyed his self-propelled cannon.
"At the command post, the CO of our artillery regiment, holding back his tears, told us that we had lost the war, all the victims died in vain. The code word "werewolf" had been sent out by Hitler"s command post. This meant that we were all supposed to divide up into small groups and head east." Not many did, Materne observed. The veterans sat down and awaited their American captors. There was no attempt by the regular army to maintain a front line.
The Volkssturm, the Waffen SS, and the Hitler Youth were another matter. They fought fiercely and inflicted great damage. The GIs never knew, when the lead jeep rounded a corner, what was ahead. If inexperienced boys were there, they would fire-most often a panzerfaust sh.e.l.l at the jeep. The Americans would proceed to smash the village. "I"m not going to be the last man killed in this war" was the feeling, so when some teenage boy fired on them, they brought down a tremendous amount of sh.e.l.ls. It was chaos and catastrophe, brought on for no reason-except that Hitler had raised these boys for just this moment. The fanatics were forcing the Americans to do to the German civilians and cities what Hitler wanted to do to them, because they had shown themselves to be unworthy of him.
The Allied fear was that Hitler would be able to encourage these armed bands over the radio to continue the struggle. His voice was his weapon. If he could get to the Austrian Alps he might be able to surround himself with SS troops and use the radio to put that voice into action.
Exactly that was happening, according to American agents in Switzerland. SHAEF G-2 agreed. As early as March 11, G-2 had declared, "The main trend of German defence policy does seem directed primarily to the safeguarding of the Alpine Zone. This area is practically impenetrable. . . . Evidence indicates that considerable numbers of SS and specially chosen units are being systematically withdrawn to Austria. . . . Here, defended by nature the powers that have hitherto guided Germany will survive to reorganize her resurrection. . . . Here a specially selected corps of young men will be trained in guerrilla warfare, so that a whole underground army can be fitted and directed to liberate Germany." In September 1944, SHAEF intelligence had declared the German army dead. In mid-December 1944, SHAEF intelligence had missed altogether the gathering of the largest army the Germans ever put together on the Western Front. Having paid so heavily for its complacency in December, SHAEF intelligence went the other direction in March 1945 when it gave Eisenhower a report that was grossly exaggerated ("armaments will be manufactured in bomb-proof factories, food and equipment will be stored in vast underground caverns, with the most efficient secret weapons yet invented") and alarmist.
Yet there was a core of truth to it. If the factories and underground storage facilities were imaginative, the threat of Hitler and a radio was not. He could ask his fanatics to hold on and hold out, until the Western Allies and the Soviet Union went to war. There was a receptive audience to that line. Capt. John Cobb of the 82nd Airborne remembered an incident on the day of the surrender of the Ruhr pocket. He was in charge of a temporary prisoner compound. "The German who was the ranking officer made a request to see me. I received him, expecting some complaint about living conditions or treatment. Instead, he requested that he be allowed to join us with German volunteers when we began our attack against the Russians. He was incredulous when I informed him that we had no intentions of fighting the Russians."
Cpl. Friedrich Bertenrath recalled how the war ended for him: "There were still about 150 of us, and forty vehicles. The Americans came up. They searched us but we did not hold up our hands. After a bit, a bottle of schnapps was pa.s.sed around. Each took a sip. An American said, "You are all prisoners."
Someone from our side said, "Forget about taking us prisoners, let us join you to go fight the Russians."
169 " "Forget that," one of the Americans replied. They were decent men. We were allowed to get into our vehicles-they gave us some gas-and we drove with them through the area as if it were peacetime. There was an American jeep in front and one behind us, and in between twenty German tanks and APCs [armored personnel carriers]. It was a beautiful spring day. There were no more planes, no more Jabos above us."
Sgt. Bruce Egger remembered a lieutenant who surrendered to him. The lieutenant spoke perfect English "and was as blond, sharp, and arrogant as a Hollywood version of a n.a.z.i officer. He gave us a lecture about why the Americans should not have waged war on Germany; we should have joined them fighting the true enemy, which was Russia, and that it was not too late. We laughed at him, but as the Cold War developed, I often thought of his words." Eisenhower"s mission was to get a sharp, clean, quick end to the war. The Russians were going to take Berlin anyway. There were more German divisions in southern Germany than to the north. The best way to carry out the mission was to overrun Bavaria and Austria before the Germans could set up their Alpine Redoubt. Eisenhower ordered Ninth Army to halt at the Elbe, First Army to push on to Dresden on the Elbe and then halt, and Third Army and Seventh Army, plus the French army, to overrun Bavaria and Austria.
Put another way, he refused to race the Russians to Berlin. He was much criticized for this. It remains his most controversial decision of the war. It has been much written about, including by me. I have nothing to add to the debate, except this: In thirty years of interviewing GIs, reading their books and unpublished memoirs, corresponding with them, I have not yet heard one of them say that he wanted to charge into Berlin. For the GIs, what stood out about Eisenhower"s decision was that he put them first. If the Russians wanted to get into the ultimate street fight, that was their business.*
Gregori Arbatov was a rifle company commander in the Red Army in the Battle of Berlin. He took terrible casualties. Some of them were men he had led in the Battle of Moscow, and so many others.
Fifty years later he still shook with fury at the thought of Stalin"s insistence on taking the city. Arbatov said any sane man would have surrounded Berlin, pounded it with artillery, and waited for the inevitable capitulation. "But not that son of a b.i.t.c.h Stalin. He sent us into the city, with all those crazy n.a.z.i kids, and we bled." The estimated casualty cost was 100,000.
Day after day over the last couple of weeks, more concentration camps were discovered. On April 15 the British got into Belsen. That day Edward R. Murrow went to Buchenwald, just north of Weimar.
Like Eisenhower and every GI who saw one of the camps, Murrow feared that no one could believe what he saw. He gave a description on his CBS radio program. In his conclusion he said, "I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words. . . . If I"ve offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I"m not in the least sorry. I was there." Martha Gellhorn of theNew York Times visited the main camp at Dachau. Then she flew out on a C-47 carrying liberated POWs to France. She talked to them about Dachau, which they had just seen.
170 "No one will believe us," one soldier said. They all agreed. "We got to talk about it, see? We got to talk about it if anyone believes us or not." Marguerite Higgins of the rivalNew York Herald Tribune was also there. She reported, "The liberation was a frenzied scene. Inmates of the camp hugged and embraced the American troops, kissed the ground before them and carried them shoulder high around the place."
On April 27 the 12th Armored Division approached Landsberg-am-Lech, west of Munich. There were a Wehrmacht unit and a Waffen SS unit in the town. The Wehrmacht commander decided to withdraw across the Lech River. The SS commander wanted to fight. The regular officer told him to do as he wished, but the Wehrmacht troops were getting out of there. When the civilians saw the soldiers leaving, they hung out white sheets. The sight infuriated the SS. "In their rage," Lt. Julius Bernstein related, "they went from house to house and dragged outside whomever they found and hanged them from the nearest tree or lamp post. As we rode into Landsberg, we found German civilians hanging from trees like ripe fruit."
Later that day an awful black, acrid smoke appeared. It came from one of the outlying camps of the Dachau system. When the Americans approached, the SS officer in charge had ordered the remaining four thousand slave laborers destroyed. The guards had nailed shut the doors and windows of the wooden barracks, hosed down the buildings with gasoline, and set them on fire. The prisoners had been cremated alive. Later, Bernstein helped load civilians from Landsberg into trucks to take them to see the atrocity. "Would you believe that no one admitted any knowledge of the camp?" he later wrote. "They told us they thought it was a secret war factory, so they didn"t ask questions. They all defended Hitler, saying, "The Fuhrer knew nothing of this!" They blamed Goering, Goebbels and Himmler, but not their dear Fuhrer." Their dear Fuhrer, meanwhile, declared that "the German people have not shown themselves worthy of their Fuhrer," and on April 30 killed himself. He named Adm. Karl Doenitz as his successor. Doenitz"s task was to surrender-hopefully to the Western Allies only. He therefore sent Gen.
Alfred Jodl, the German Chief of Staff, to Eisenhower"s headquarters in Reims to accomplish that goal.
Jodl arrived on Sunday evening, May 6. He conferred with his aides Gens. Smith and Strong, emphasizing that the Germans were willing, indeed anxious, to surrender to the West, but not to the Red Army. Doenitz, he said, would order all German troops remaining on the Western Front to cease firing no matter what SHAEF did about the offer to surrender. Smith replied that the surrender had to be a general one to all the Allies. Jodl then asked for forty-eight hours "in order to get the necessary instructions to all their outlying units." Smith said that was impossible. After the talks dragged on for over an hour, Smith put the problem to Eisenhower.
Eisenhower felt that Jodl was trying to gain time so that more German soldiers and civilians could get across the Elbe and escape the Russians. He told Smith to inform Jodl that "he would break off all negotiations and seal the western front preventing by force any further westward movement of German soldiers and civilians" unless Jodl signed the surrender doc.u.ment. But he also decided to grant the forty-eight-hour delay before announcing the surrender, as Jodl requested.
Smith took Eisenhower"s reply to Jodl, who thereupon sent a cable to Doenitz, explaining the situation and asking permission to sign. Doenitz was enraged; he characterized Eisenhower"s demands as "sheer extortion." He nevertheless felt impelled to accept them, and was consoled somewhat by the thought that the Germans could still save many troops from the Russians during the forty-eight-hour delay. Just past midnight, therefore, he cabled Jodl: "Full power to sign in accordance with conditions as given has been granted by Grand Admiral Doenitz."
At 2A.M. on May 7, Generals Smith, Frederick Morgan, Bull, Spaatz, Tedder, a French representative, and Gen. Ivan Susloparoff, the Russian liaison officer at SHAEF, gathered in the second-floor recreation room of the Ecole Professionelle et Technique de Garcons, Reims. Strong was there to serve as translator. The war room was L-shaped, with only one small window; otherwise, the walls were covered 171 with maps. Pins, arrows, and other symbols showed how completely Germany had been overrun. It was a relatively small room; the Allied officers had to squeeze past one another to get to their a.s.signed chairs, gathered around a heavy oak table. When they had all sat down, Jodl, accompanied by an aide, was led into the room. Tall, perfectly erect, immaculately dressed, his monocle in place, Jodl looked the personification of Prussian militarism. He bowed stiffly. Strong found himself, to his own surprise, feeling a bit sorry for him. While the somewhat elaborate procedures for the signing went on, Eisenhower waited in his adjacent office, pacing and smoking. The signing took a half hour. In the war room Jodl was delivering the German nation into the hands of the Allies and officially acknowledging that n.a.z.i Germany was dead; outside, spring was bursting forth, promising new life.
Eisenhower knew that he should feel elated, triumphant, joyful, but all he really felt was dead beat. He had hardly slept in three days; it was the middle of the night; he just wanted to get it over with. At 2:41A.M. , Strong led Jodl into Eisenhower"s office. Eisenhower sat down behind his desk. Jodl bowed, then stood at attention. Eisenhower asked Jodl if he understood the terms and was ready to execute them. Jodl said yes. Eisenhower then warned him that he would be held personally accountable if the terms were violated. Jodl bowed again and left.
Eisenhower went out into the war room, gathered the SHAEF officers around him (aides Kay Summersby and Capt. Harry Butcher managed to sneak in too), and photographers were called in to record the event for posterity. Eisenhower then made a short newsreel and radio recording. When the newsmen left, Smith said it was time to send a message to the CCS. Everyone had a try at drafting an appropriate doc.u.ment. "I tried one myself," Smith later recalled, "and like all my a.s.sociates, groped for resounding phrases as fitting accolades to the Great Crusade and indicative of our dedication to the great task just completed." Eisenhower quietly watched and listened. Each draft was more grandiloquent than the last. The Supreme Commander finally thanked everyone for his efforts, rejected all the proposals, and dictated the message himself. "The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 0241 local time, May 7, 1945." He had managed to grin while the newsreel cameras were on, to hold up the pens in a V-for-Victory sign, to walk without a limp. After signing the last message he slumped visibly. "I suppose this calls for a bottle of champagne," he sighed. Someone brought one in; it was opened to feeble cheers; it was flat. Utter weariness now descended; everyone went to bed.
It was not at all like the image Eisenhower had held before him for three years. From the time he left Mamie in June 1942, he had sustained himself with the thought of this moment. "When the war ends"-the image of that magic moment had kept him going. When the Germans surrendered, then all would be right again. The world would be secure, he could go home, his responsibilities would be over, his duty done.
He could sit beside a lazy stream with nothing but a cane pole and a bobber, and Mamie there with him, so that he could tell her about all the funny things that had happened that he had not had time to write about. By early 1945, he had been forced to modify the fantasy somewhat, as he realized that he would have to remain in Germany for some months at least, as head of the American occupying forces. Still, he clung to the thought that Mamie could be with him immediately after the shooting stopped. Now he had the sinking feeling that even that was not going to be possible.
As to escaping responsibility, decision-making, and the burden of command, he had already had to face the fact that such a release was impossible. Worst of all, he already feared that world security was threatened. There had been too many of his own officers who listened with approval to the German whisperings about an anti-communist alliance; on the other side, the Russian suspicions about Western motives struck Eisenhower as bordering on paranoia (even before he went to bed, Eisenhower received a message that said the Russians would not accept the surrender signed in Reims and insisted on another signing, in Berlin). It made him wonder if it would be possible after all to cooperate with them in rebuilding Europe. Going to bed on that morning of May 7, Eisenhower felt as flat as the champagne.
172 But Eisenhower"s flatness should not preclude a glance at what he had accomplished and what he had to celebrate, had he had the energy to do so. The problem is that, like Smith, one searches in vain for the fitting accolades to acknowledge the accomplishments of Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Second World War-of what he had endured, of what he had contributed to the final victory, of his place in military history.
Fortunately, George C. Marshall, next to Eisenhower himself the man most responsible for Eisenhower"s success, spoke for the nation and its allies, as well as the U.S. Army, when he replied to Eisenhower"s last wartime message, "You have completed your mission with the greatest victory in the history of warfare," Marshall began. "You have commanded with outstanding success the most powerful military force that has ever been a.s.sembled. You have met and successfully disposed of every conceivable difficulty incident to varied national interests and international political problems of unprecedented complications." Eisenhower, Marshall said, had triumphed over inconceivable logistical problems and military obstacles. "Through all of this, since the day of your arrival in England three years ago, you have been selfless in your actions, always sound and tolerant in your judgments and altogether admirable in the courage and wisdom of your military decisions. "You have made history, great history for the good of mankind and you have stood for all we hope and admire in an officer of the United States Army. These are my tributes and my personal thanks."
It was the highest possible praise from the best possible source. It had been earned.
Many units had a ceremony of some sort to mark the unconditional surrender. In the 357th Combat Team, 90th Division, the CO had all the officers a.s.semble on the gra.s.sy slopes of a hill, under a flagpole flying the Stars and Stripes. The regimental CO spoke, as did the division commander. "I can"t remember their words," Lt. Col. Ken Reimers said, but he remembered counting the costs. "We had taken some terrible losses-our infantry suffered over 250 per cent casualties. There was not a single company commander present who left England with us, and there were only a half dozen officers in the whole regiment who landed on Utah Beach."
The 90th Division had been in combat for 308 days-the record in ETO-but other divisions had taken almost as many casualties. The junior officers and NCOs suffered most. Some of America"s best young men went down leading their troops in battle. Dutch Schultz paid his officers and NCOs a fine tribute: "Men like Captains Anthony Stefanich, Jack Tallerday; Lieutenants Gus Sanders, Gerald Johnson; and Sergeants Herman R. Zeitner, Sylvester Meigs, and Elmo Bell, to name only a few, were largely responsible for my transformation to a combat infantryman able to do his job. They taught me to overcome my fears and self-doubts.
"Not only were these men superb leaders both in and out of combat, but, more importantly, they took seriously the responsibility of first placing the welfare of their men above their own needs."
There is no typical GI among the millions who served in Northwest Europe, but Bruce Egger surely was representative. He was a mountain man from central Idaho. At the end of 1943 he was in ASTP at Kansas State. When the ASTP program was cut, he got a.s.signed to Fort Leonard Wood for training. In October 1944 he arrived in France and went into a Repple Depple. On November 6 he went on the line with G Company, 328th Regiment, 26th Division. He served out the war in almost continuous front-line action. He never missed a day of duty. He had his close calls, most notably a piece of shrapnel stopped by the New Testament in the breast pocket of his field jacket, but was never wounded. In this he was unusually lucky. G Company had arrived on Utah Beach on September 8, 1944, with a full complement of 187 enlisted men and six officers. By May 8, 1945, a total of 625 men had served in its ranks.
Fifty-one men of G Company were killed in action, 183 were wounded, 116 got trench foot and 51 frostbite. Egger rose from private to staff sergeant. After the war he got a degree in forestry in 1951 and 173 served in the U.S. Forest Service for twenty-nine years. In his memoir of the war, Egger speaks for all GIs: "More than four decades have pa.s.sed since those terrible months when we endured the mud of Lorraine, the bitter cold of the Ardennes, the dank cellars of Saarlautern. . . . We were miserable and cold and exhausted most of the time, we were all scared to death. . . . But we were young and strong then, possessed of the marvelous resilience of youth, and for all the misery and fear and the hating every moment of it the war was a great, if always terrifying, adventure. Not a man among us would want to go through it again, but we are all proud of having been so severely tested and found adequate. The only regret is for those of our friends who never returned."
19 - The GIs
I FIRST BECAME AWARE of the phenomenon when I was interviewing the men of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne. I ran into it again and again in doing the interviews for my books on D-Day and the campaign in Northwest Europe. Pvt. Ed Tipper summed it up with a question: "Is it accidental that so many ex-paratroopers from E Company became teachers? Perhaps for some men a period of violence and destruction at one time attracts them to look for something creative as a balance in another part of life. We seem also to have a disproportionate number of builders of houses and other things in the group we see at reunions."
Indeed. One became a roofing contractor in Sacramento, another a structural ironworker on buildings and bridges, another a supervisor for the Washington State Highway Department, another superintendent for a heavy construction contractor in Louisiana, another spent forty-five years working with granite in the polishing trade, another a supervisor for installing new lines for the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, another a carpenter, another a worker on high-dam construction. Nine men from the company became high school or college teachers. In this, the men of Easy Company were typical of the GIs. They were the men who built modern America. They had learned to work together in the armed services in World War II. They had seen enough destruction; they wanted to construct. They built the Interstate Highway System, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the suburbs (so scorned by the sociologists, so successful with the people), and more. They had seen enough killing; they wanted to save lives. They licked polio and made other revolutionary advances in medicine. They had learned in the army the virtues of a solid organization and teamwork, and the value of individual initiative, inventiveness, and responsibility. They developed the modern corporation while inaugurating revolutionary advances in science and technology, education and public policy.
The ex-GIs had seen enough war; they wanted peace. But they had also seen the evil of dictatorship; they wanted freedom. They had learned in their youth that the way to prevent war was to deter through military strength, and to reject isolationism for full involvement in the world. So they supported NATO and the United Nations and the Department of Defense. They had stopped Hitler and Tojo; in the 1950s they stopped Stalin and Khrushchev. In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy described the men and women of his generation: "The torch has been pa.s.sed to a new generation of Americans-born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage-and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed."
The "we" generation of World War II (as in "We are all in this together") was a special breed of men and women who did great things for America and the world. When the GIs sailed for Europe, they were coming to the continent not as conquerors but liberators. In his Order of the Day on June 6, 1944, 174 Eisenhower had told them their mission was: "The destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of n.a.z.i tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world." They accomplished that mission. In the process they liberated the Germans (or at least the Germans living west of the Elbe River). In Normandy, in July 1944, Wehrmacht Pvt. Walter Zittats was guarding some American prisoners. One of them spoke German. Zittats asked him, " "Why are you making war against us?" I"ll always remember his exact words: "We are fighting to free you from the fantastic idea that you are a master race." " In June 1945 Eisenhower told his staff, "The success of this occupation can only be judged fifty years from now. If the Germans at that time have a stable, prosperous democracy, then we shall have succeeded." That mission, too, was accomplished.
In the fall semester of 1996, I was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I taught a course on World War II to some 350 students. They were dumbstruck by descriptions of what it was like to be on the front lines. They were even more amazed by the responsibilities carried by junior officers and NCOs who were as young as they. Like all of us who have never been in combat, they wondered if they could have done it-and even more, they wondered how anyone could have done it.
There is a vast literature on the latter question. In general, in a.s.sessing the motivation of the GIs, there is agreement that patriotism or any other form of idealism had little if anything to do with it. The GIs fought because they had to. What held them together was not counry and flag, but unit cohesion. It has been my experience, through four decades of interviewing ex-GIs, that such generalizations are true enough.
And yet there is something more. Although the GIs were and are embarra.s.sed to talk or write about the cause they fought for, in marked contrast to their great-grandfathers who fought in the Civil War, they were the children of democracy and they did more to help spread democracy around the world than any other generation in history.
At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn"t want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful.
At the conclusion of interviews, I often asked the ex-GIs to sum up what it all meant to them. Most men dismissed the question as impossible to answer. Some talked about friendship, comrades, buddies. Not one ever talked about patriotism and pride. Yet it was there. The best expression of it I ever heard came at the end of a group interview. I"ve long since forgotten the name of the speaker, but I"ll never forget what he said. "Imagine this. In the spring of 1945, around the world, the sight of a twelve-man squad of teenage boys, armed and in uniform, brought terror to people"s hearts. Whether it was a Red Army squad in Berlin, Leipzig, or Warsaw, or a German squad in Holland, or a j.a.panese squad in Manila, Seoul, or Beijing, that squad meant rape, pillage, looting, wanton destruction, senseless killing. But there was an exception: a squad of GIs, a sight that brought the biggest smiles you ever saw to people"s lips, and joy to their hearts.
"Around the world this was true, even in Germany, even-after September 1945-in j.a.pan. This was because GIs meant candy, cigarettes, C-rations, and freedom. America had sent the best of her young men around the world, not to conquer but to liberate, not to terrorize but to help. This was a great moment in our history."
Another bright image came from a veteran who said that he felt he had done his part in helping to change the twentieth century from one of darkness into one of light. I think that was the great achievement of the generation who fought World War II on the Allied side. As of 1945-the year in which more people were killed violently, more buildings destroyed, more homes burned than any other year in history-it was impossible to believe in human progress. World Wars I and II had made a mockery of the 175 nineteenth-century idea of progress, the notion that things were getting better and would continue to do so. In 1945 one had to believe that the final outcome of the scientific and technological revolution that had inspired the idea of progress would be a world destroyed. But slowly, surely, the spirit of those GIs handing out candy and helping bring democracy to their former enemies spread, and today it is the democracies-not the totalitarians-who are on the march. Today, one can again believe in progress, as things really are getting better. This is thanks to the GIs-along with the millions of others who helped liberate Germany and j.a.pan from their evil rulers, then stood up to Stalin and his successors. That generation has done more to spread freedom-and prosperity-around the globe than any previous generation.
John Lydon, a thirty-four-year-old attorney in Chicago, wrote me in 1998 that his father had served in SHAEF. "Most of my young life," Lydon confessed, "I never really understood my father. I blamed him and his generation for everything from McCarthyism to the Vietnam War to Watergate. I never gave them credit for the Interstate Highway System, IBM, NASA, the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the fall of Communism, or any of it. Then I read your book [Citizen Soldiers]. You have helped me understand my father. When my son is old enough, I will give him your book so he can get to know his grandfather."
Sgt. Henry Halsted, who won a Bronze Star, partic.i.p.ated after the war in some experimental programs that brought together college-age German and American veterans in England, and a similar one in France.
The idea was to teach through contact and example. In 1997, Halsted got a Christmas card from a German partic.i.p.ant living in Munich: "I think often of our meetings and mutual ideals. Indeed, the 1948 program and everything connected with it was the most important, decisive event for me. Influenced my life deeply!" And a French partic.i.p.ant wrote, "In 1950 France was in ruins. I saw only a world marked by war, by destruction, by the shadow of war, and by fear. I believed that it was not finished, that there would be a next war. I did not think it would be possible to build a life, to have a family. Then came the group of young Americans, attractive, idealistic, optimistic, protected, believing and acting as though anything was possible. It was a transforming experience for me."
That spirit-we can do it, we can rebuild Europe and hold back the Red Army and avoid World War III-was the great gift of the New World to the Old World in the twentieth century. America paid for that gift with the lives of some of its best young men. When I read the letters from the veterans I"m almost always impressed by their brief accounts of what they did with their lives after the war. They had successful careers, they were good citizens and family men, and many of them made great contributions to their society, their country, and the world. Then I think about those who didn"t make it, especially all those junior officers and NCOs who got killed in such appalling numbers.
These men were natural leaders. They died one by one. Of each of them, I wonder, What life was cut off here? A genius? It is impossible to imagine what he might have invented; we do know that his loss was our loss. A budding politician? Where might he have led us? A builder? A teacher? A scholar? A novelist? A musician? I sometimes think the biggest price we pay for war is what might have been.
Lt. Waverly Wray comes to mind. So do Capt. Anthony Stefanich and Lt. Col. Robert Cole and so many others, gone long before their time, their deaths depriving us of the gift of their lives. When they tolled the bell for Wray, Stefanich, Cole, and the hundreds of their buddies who went down, that bell tolled for all of us.
What I think of the GIs more than a half century after their victory was best said by Sgt. Mike Ranney of the 101st: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I"m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, "Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?"
" "No," I answered, "but I served in a company of heroes." " So far as I am concerned, so did they all.
176 Sources In this volume I"ve woven a narrative of the war based on the books I"ve done with my editor, Alice Mayhew, and Simon & Schuster over the past fifteen years. They are Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952 (1983);Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 (1985);Band of Brothers: E Company, 506thRegiment, 101stAirborne from Normandy to Hitler"s Eagle"s Nest (1992);D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II(1994); And Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945(1997). Where necessary and appropriate I"ve provided bridges between sections taken from the different books. To help the flow of the narrative, and to avoid repet.i.tion, I"ve eliminated notes from the text. Interested readers can go to the original works for specific citations. In this list of sources, I"ve included the names of the men and women I"ve interviewed over the past two decades, and those of men who have given written memoirs to the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. The bibliography of books and articles is not intended to be a comprehensive list of the major works on World War II; rather it is a list of the publications I"ve consulted and cited for the books listed above.
Bibliography Air Ministry.By Air to Battle: The Official Account of the British First and Sixth Airborne Divisions.
London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1945. Allen, Max. Medicine Under Canvas: A War Journal of the 77th Evacuation Hospital.
Kansas City, Mo.: The Sosland Press, 1949.
Ambrose, Stephen E.Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler"s Eagle"s Nest. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
.Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945 . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
.D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
.Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect, 1890-1952. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
177 .Eisenhower: Soldier and President. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.
.Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe. New York: W.
W. Norton, 1967.
.Ike"s Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981.
.Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944.New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
.Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938. New York: Penguin, 1972.
.The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971.
Ambrose, Stephen E., and James A. Barber, editors.The Military and American Society: Essays and Readings. New York: The Free Press, 1972. Astor, Gerald.The Mighty Eighth: The Air War in Europe as Told by the Men Who Fought It. New York: Donald Fine Books, 1997.
Baldridge, Robert C.Victory Road. Bennington, Vt.: Merriam Press, 1995.
Balkoski, Joseph.Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Infantry Division in Normandy.
Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1989.
"B" Battery.The "B" Battery Story: The 116th AAA Gun Battalion with the First U.S. Army. Pa.s.saic, N.J.: The B Battery a.s.sociation, 1990. Bischof, Gunter, and Stephen Ambrose, eds.Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts Against Falsehood. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992. Blair, Clay.Ridgway"s Paratroopers: The American Airborne in World War II.
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985.
Blumenson, Martin.Breakout and Pursuit. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Army, 1961.
Booth, Michael T., and Spencer Duncan.Paratrooper: The Life of Gen. James M.
Gavin. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Boritt, Gabor, ed.War Comes Again: Comparative Vistas on the Civil War and World War II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Bradley, Omar.A General"s Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
.A Soldier"s Story. New York: Henry Holt, 1951.
Bradley, Robert.Aid Man! New York: Praeger, 1970.
Brown, Anthony Cave.Bodyguard of Lies. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
Bryant, Sir Arthur.Triumph in the West. London: Collins, 1959.
178 .The Turn of the Tide. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1957.
Campbell, D"Ann. "Servicewomen of World War II."Armed Forces and Society, Vol.
16, No. 2 (winter 1990).
Capa, Robert.Robert Capa. New York: Grossman, 1974. Carell, Paul.Invasion-They"re Coming: The German Account of the Allied Landings and the 80 Days" Battle for France. New York: Dutton, 1963.
Center for Military History.The Army Nurse Corps. Washington, D.C.: GPO, CMH Publication 72-14, 1993.
Chandler, David, ed.The D-Day Encyclopedia. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Chernitsky, Dorothy.Voices from the Foxholes, by the Men of the 110th Infantry. Published by Dorothy Chernitsky, 18 Country Club Blvd., Uniontown, PA 15401, 1991.
Churchill, Winston S.The Second World War (especiallyThe Hinge of Fate, Closing the Ring, and Triumph and Tragedy ). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1948-1953. Clark, Mark Wayne.Calculated Risk. New York: Harper & Bros., 1950.