Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - What If D-Day Had Failed? With Michel Paradis

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Michel Paradis, a leading human rights lawyer and author of the book 'The Light of Battle: Eisenhower D-Day and the Birth of the American Superpower', joins Anthony to discuss the life and legacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Paradis highlights Eisenhower's rise from humble beginnings to becoming one of the most powerful generals in history. He emphasizes Eisenhower's ability to cultivate mentors and his humility in learning from others. Paradis also explores the significance of Operation Overlord and the impact of D-Day on the course of World War II and the world at large. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci and this is Open Book. where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word

from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches. So let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. Michelle Parody joins me today to talk about his incredible book,

The Light of Battle, which discusses the life and legacy of Dwight Eisenhower. Set in the months leading up to D-Day, the book takes us through Ike's growth from a respected general to one of the singular figures of American history. Now more than ever, we need to be learning from the man who made the leader of the free world the mantle of the American presidency. Let's go to the conversation. So joining us now on Open Book is Michelle Paradis. He's a leading human rights lawyer. He's an historian. He's an acclaimed author,

and he's written a best-selling book. And I will tell you, because I am a World War II buff, and this is my favorite part of American history. This is my favorite book of 2024 thus far. The title of the book is The Light of Battle, Eisenhower D-Day, and the birth of the American superpower. It's also a brilliant article in the Atlantic written by Mr. Parody. So welcome to the show. I appreciate you coming on. Before we get into the book, tell us a little bit. Introduce yourself to our viewers and listeners. Tell us a little bit about your background. Sure. So I grew up in and around, basically, Allentown, Pennsylvania, if anyone knows that, moved to New York when I was 17. I went to college and law school here. Then initially was planning on being a big-time Wall Street lawyer, which

I started doing before I had a good quarter life crisis, as they call them now, and went off and got a PhD at Oxford as a way of running away with the circus. And while there, I actually was a lawyer. And so while I was working my PhD, I started doing a lot of international human rights work. And that, in turn, got me into all sorts of interesting places, interesting cases. Some of my sort of more, I think, larger contributions, if I can call them that, were in the Guantanamo litigation. where I was ultimately hired by the Department of Defense to represent a number of detainees, which, as you can imagine, is an extremely difficult, strange, complicated job all by itself. Yeah, no kidding.

And so from there, I continued on. I've written a couple books now. And, yeah, the most recent is about Eisenhower. So what drew you to Eisenhower? I think, you know, the thing that drew me most to Eisenhower, I heard a quote, actually, from the other day that basically said art is there to tell us, and show us the things we overlook and tell us about the things we overlook. And, you know, Eisenhower is someone who, as prominent as he is, right, he was even on the coins when I was a kid, I think it's often overlooked. He's, you know, probably one of the most powerful generals in all

of human history, yet he is raised by religious pacifists in Kansas. He comes from basically nothing to the highest, you know, echelons of power not only in the United States, but in the world. he commands probably the most complicated, intricate military operations of, again, all of human history. Yet in his time in the Army, he always has as his fallback plan, I'm going to go off and become a gaucho, basically a cowboy in Argentina. You know, he's just such an interesting person, and his public image is almost deliberately boring. And that, you know, as a writer just for me, became utterly fascinating because he's as complicated and in someone, ways as contradictory as America itself. And he's a quintessential American figure. And so to me, understanding him, getting behind that received iconography that we have about Eisenhower was really

what drew me to the project more than anything else. So it's interesting because a lot of Americans don't realize this because, you know, we see history, of course, with all this great 2010 vision. I don't think hindsight is 2020, by the way. I think it's 2010. I think it's way. It's way more clear than 2020. And so we go back through history, we see these things as inevitable. But as you write in the book, his rise is anything but inevitable. He hurts his knees playing my alma mater, Tufts University. And he hurts himself at West Point. It's not clear how he's going to progress there. He goes to work for MacArthur. He's the antithesis of General MacArthur in terms of his personality. But then he's very good friends with people like George Patton, another guy that he's very

different from, Omar Bradley, who I think is probably most similar to Ike. But how does he rise? How does he rise? Yeah, it's a great question. And it's what I was fascinated by. I was like, how does that actually happen? How do you get from the middle of Kansas to where he was? And I think a couple different things. An important one is he really knew how to cultivate mentors. And that's an underappreciated skill, particularly for young people. But the idea that, you know, there are people who, have because of their life experience, because of what they've accomplished because of, you know, their education, any number of things, are going to know more than you. And you have to always look for what can this person teach me and have the humility to come to people and really, you know,

be, and this is something that's taught in the military, but I think it's rare outside of it is, you know, a followership, right? The idea that your job is to help someone else get their job done. And Eisenhower understood that really well and always did look for mentors who he could learn from something from. And also, I think, had the basic humility that he looked at everybody as someone he could learn something from. And so he accumulates ideas, ways of behaving, you know, styles of leadership, just even, you know, ticks and expressions from people over time. And one of the great sort of joys of the research of this book was trying to really put his life together and figure out how he collected. all of these ideas. And as you said, it's everything from, you know, the gridiron playing football, but I think probably even more important coaching football, because after he blows his knee out,

you know, he can't play football anymore. He might not even stay in the Army after that because he's injured. But one thing he realizes that he's quite good at, and certainly something the Army really appreciates, is someone who can coach a winning football team, particularly against Tufts. And so they have, you know, he develops, you know, a philosophical sense from all. one of his mentors in Panama. So he reads, you know, great thinkers going, you know, well back, not just in military history, but in philosophy. And you can see him sort of picking up these ideas from people as diverse as Carl von Klaus Woods

and Nietzsche. And he understands, I think, you know, fundamentally that, you know, the world is better off if we approach it trying to solve people's real problems. And one of them, I think, most admirable traits. And in the book is, you know, It's not hagiography, right? I try to present him more to all, but I think one of his most admirable traits is aversion to people who are way too certain about anything, right? He has that, he's not only humble himself, but he projects that on to other people so that when people are

fanatical about ideologies, particularly, he is suspicious of them, and he thinks carefully, and he understands that that's something to be avoided. And I think that's why he's, you know, the 20th century figure who fought the two great fanatical ideologies of the 20th century. fascism in Europe and Soviet communism after that. And so that, that I think, is how he, you know, learned to become the kind of person he was, particularly where he was from, was through humility and really looking to learn from others with a truly open mind. So, you're correct. It's not a hagiographic book. And I'm going to pay you a huge compliment, Michelle.

You write like a fiction writer. I feel like I'm inside the brains of these people. and you're also exposing their flaws. So who are some of your favorite fiction writers that you've been drawn to, whose writing style has influenced you? For me, the ones I often, I'm probably basically stealing. Like Tom Wolfe, I just, I drank. I remember when I first read Tom Wolfe,

and I know a lot of people who've had this experience, you just read it, and you just can't believe you're reading something that clear with that much insight that just has so much energy behind it. Which of his books do you? you like the most? Honestly, the right stuff. I've read that book probably now twice. I love all his books.

Don't get me wrong. There are a lot, and I can even rank them for you if you want to go on, if you want to go deep on Tom Wolfe. But I remember the first time I read the right stuff, and there's that opening chapter where he's talking about basically just how dangerous it is to be a fighter pilot. And he has this almost poetic sort of device that he uses where he says they take the bridge coats out and all the little men line up. And then they start talking about, oh, well, he should have.

have pulled the injection cord faster. Everyone knows they're supposed to look for their bolts. And just in that very, very short opening passage, you not only just have, again, gorgeous, gorgeous writing, but you just get into the heads of these people so quickly and so fast and you see the world the way they do, even though they don't realize, you know, I mean, their own sort of narrow view of the world.

And that's what's so brilliant, I think, about Tom Wolfe as a writer. He really, you know, captures people as they are, you know, warts and all. But that makes you love of them too, because they're fascinating. So Tom Wolfe is obviously a huge influence on me. Tony Morrison, I remember reading her.

And in a similar kind of thing, I remember it was the bluest eye was a book I read when I was in college, and I still remember it. Just sometimes the pros just wash over you in a way that really transforms you and makes you just think about the world in an entirely different way. Who else do I like now? There's a guy now who is a novelist who's really interesting by the name, of Bernard, no, no, I'm going to scrub his first name, but his last name's Labitude.

He's a Chilean writer who's been translated into English. He just wrote a biography, a novelistic biography called The Maniac of Von Neumann. And, you know, he writes these books basically about 20th century scientists. So it's like heavy, heavy stuff that I'm often like holding on with my fingernails in terms of like the science he's talking about. but it's this just utterly humane portrait of these really strange scientific and mathematical figures. He did another book a couple years ago called When We Cease to Understand the World, that was just riveting. I'd never read anything like it. Well, I appreciate you giving me that detail because it's, when I read your book, I said, this man is a man of letters,

and this is a guy that's read a lot, because you're bringing that type of writing style into, with a nonfiction book, which often you don't get. Eisenhower is a very complex guy. Some people view him as a lightweight, including Franklin Roosevelt. What's interesting, though, is Eisenhower views Roosevelt as a lightweight. And Roosevelt views Eisenhower as a lightweight. And the irony is neither one of them are actually lightweights. And so, but they figure it out.

And of course, he's belittling Eisenhower privately. And then, of course, he goes out and gives his big speech. endorsing him, sort of like a sports owner endorsing the manager. Before he's about the firearm, right? He says he's raised by Kansas pioneers. This is our guy, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a 20-teen.

Marshall is another figure here. Mr. Stoicism himself, he never shows you his cards. And so what did Marshall think of Eisenhower? I think the most important fact about Eisenhower and Marshall's relationship is that Marshall really trusted Eisenhower. because Marshall did not trust a lot of people. He had been in Washington way too long. He had been in the highest echelons of the military for decades at that point before

becoming the Army Chief of Staff. He even kept like a little book. I can't remember if it was black or red, where he'd write the names of up-and-coming officers and then if they did something to sort of displease him, he'd just cross their name out, sort of permanently burying them and ensuring that their careers were basically over. And Eisenhower gets onto his staff. They don't know each other. They know some of the same people like Patton, and they have a common mentor and a guy named Fox Connor, who I write a lot about.

But they don't know each other at all. And the only thing Marshall really knows about Eisenhower, other than some nice reviews he's gotten, is that he was MacArthur's guy throughout the 1930s, which is, you know, probably probably something that ordinarily would have crossed him clean out of Marshall's book. George Marshall and MacArthur are probably the most different military figures of America. They're literally antipodes, of course. Truman uses Marshall's help. They come up with a plan, which they ultimately call the Marshall Plan due to Marshall's popularity. But he fires, he fires MacArthur. So we have these very different, very strong personalities.

Have you ever read The In the Age of the Americans by David Frumkin? Oh, no, I haven't. If you haven't read that, it's a great book about these neo-Victorian men. They're born in the late Victorian era. they become neo-Victorians, and they rise to power together, and there's an obligation. They have a public service obligation about themselves where they're willing to subordinate themselves to the greater good of what they perceive to be going on. Of course, they go on and build the post-World War II era.

You've got access to material that's never been seen before. So tell us about that material. How did you get access to it? How did it influence your writing and your narrative in this book? Yeah, a lot of it, you know, this book, writing anything about D-Dade, Eisenhower certainly, but D-Day especially, you know, you're dealing with a fire hose of information. There's been so many great books written about D-Day that, you know, if you're going to write something that's centered around D-Day, you better have something new to say.

And the main things that were really new and interesting came from kind of approaching it fresh, actually, because there's so much literature, my approach was basically to say, I'm just going to avoid reading as much of that as I can as I write this book. And instead, one of the things I found in Eisenhower's archives, which hadn't really been explored, interestingly enough, because they only came into the Eisenhower library in the past 20 years, were his day planners, literally his diaries of who he's meeting with, oftentimes the occasional sort of remarks about what's going on. And I basically used that to reassemble the sixth months of his life from November, 1943, up to June 1944, and almost treated the project as if, like I'm just a fly on the wall. I just want to see what he's doing every day, all day, and then sort of tell you as the reader what I'm seeing go on.

And the consequence of that, because I ultimately did obviously read a lot of the rest of the D-Day books and the great ones and the not-so-great ones as well as the Eisenhower biographies, is there's a whole lot of stuff that is just not part of the standard narrative of D-Day and even Eisenhower's biography, that you would only know if you sort of just sat there with him, particularly the stuff that ends up not mattering.

I think the biggest one and the biggest revelation in the book when I spent a lot of time unpacking, which was very difficult, was he's warned not two months before the invasion that the Nazis are developing nuclear weapons and that there's reason to believe they might actually use at least radiological weapons on the DDA beaches. And he's told this by a major that George Marshall just sends over to give him essentially a secret briefing.

And he's told there's really nothing you can. can do about it, buddy. And you can't tell anyone really either. And he just has to sit with that and figure out how to use this information. And one of the fascinating things I found was this oblique letter that he writes to Marshall just a couple weeks before the invasion, paraphrasing a little bit, but basically saying, hey, I met with that guy a couple weeks ago. Anything to worry about? Anything you can add? And Marshall never says anything to. And so when he's sending, you know, those men into the storm on June 5th to launch the D-Day invasion, He has no idea if the Nazis are basically going to start using nuclear weapons or something they had never heard of, right?

They're all of these, like, that was really the fun of the book was to, you know, really be there in 1944 before everyone knows how it's going to turn out. And really, when they all think it's going to be a disaster, right, they, at one point, I was an IRS chief of staff. And this is a couple weeks before the invasion says he thinks there's a 50, 50 chance of success. and a 50-50-60 chance of catastrophic failure, you know, of the worst kind, world-altering failure. And so to be in that moment, in that pressure cooker, where there's so much going on that ended up maybe not mattering or didn't because we won, but was what was on Eisenhower's mind and understanding Eisenhower, right, how did he deal with all of that? How did he deal with the problem of the problem of, you know, the fall of the British Empire? All of these things are all going on. Yeah, the Suez crisis when he's president.

But you say something in the book that I want to get your reaction to in person. The plan is to have 80,000 troops to go would eventually become Operation Overlord. But Ike thinks it's not enough troops. And he goes to Bernard Montgomery. And I'd like you, if you don't mind, to give us a little bit of Bernard Montgomery's personality with his various peccatoburn. Dillos. And he flatters him. And he tells him, listen, I got to get 160,000 troops. You can run it. Yeah. Okay. And this is a classic lesson about the way you gain power is by giving power away. And Ike understands this intuitively. And of course, Montgomery, this plays to his ego. He goes back to the British forces. And he helps, I get the troop count up to 160,000. Tell us about that

relationship. And for those listeners that don't know, we have a lot of young listeners who Bernard Montgomery is. Tell us a little bit about him. Yeah, yeah, Bernard Montgomery is, you know, to do this day, one of the most celebrated British generals and certainly the most celebrated British general of the Second World War. He leads Great Britain's major successful campaigns in North Africa. He comes to get the Namdegar Montgomery of El Alamein after his greatest victory. And he is often described as so much like George Patton as to explain why they hated each other so, so much, because he's a completely ungovernable subordinate. He is an astounding prima donna. He's quite brilliant, actually, as a strategist, as a military strategist, and he's beloved by the men under his

command. And he and Patton hate each other. They actually, in the invasion of Sicily, essentially get into a race to see who can get to the capital. capital fastest, which they always lured over one another, essentially. But Eisenhower and Montgomery, despite Eisenhower and Patton being actually quite great friends, Eisenhower and Montgomery never like each other. Maybe with the single exception of the sort of month leading up to D-Day when they begin to warm to one another, you know, if the cliche is that everyone likes Ike, Montgomery does not like Ike. They get off to the wrong foot when they first meet when Montgomery sort of scolds him for smoking during a briefing. Eisenhower is and remains basically a chain smoker at this

point. And so when Eisenhower, and also, and this is, I think, just as an important point, he does not want Montgomery in this job. He asks for a different general, a British general that he had worked very closely with in North Africa and was very eager to have be the lead of, at least the British portions of Operation Overlord. That request gets overruled, and he's essentially assigned Bernard Montgomery against his will in an act that he almost thinks is sabotaged by the British. Because the other fact that why he gives Montgomery this bear hug when he needs to enlarge the invasion is because the British don't want to do the invasion, right? The British are opposed to Operation Overlord for some good reasons, but some less good reasons

are like dealing with their own empire. Yeah, some of it's empire-centric, right? And they have resources and bases in the Mediterranean that they're trying to preserve and they want America's help to keep the empire going. Of course, Roosevelt wants none of that. He has disdain for the British Empire. People forget that Roosevelt lived many years as an adolescent in Germany. He speaks fluent German.

He's listening to Hitler's speeches in German, and he understands the danger that Hitler represents. But he also doesn't like the British Empire. But he's a charming guy, right? What did Churchill say about him meeting him for the first time? It's like opening a bottle of champagne. So they get together. But Monty is an interesting guy to me because he's loved by the troops.

You point out that the victory in El Alamein is one part him, but he also got a lot of air support. You also got a lot of other people helping him to get to that victory. But here we are with these characters, and we're about to assault this beach. And of course, as you know, my uncle, who I'm named after was part of that assault. He was one of the first guys off a Higgins boat in Omaha Beach. Interestingly enough, he survived, as he told us the story, because of where the boat landed and where it was positioned relative to the pillboxes with the machine gun fire, they happened to be next to a decoyed minefield.

A couple of these guys nervously ran into the minefield. My uncle said, okay, those guys are going to get blown up by these mines, but it turned out there weren't any mines. The Germans were trying to push the infantry into the pillboxes. They had run out of cement and rebar and so forth. And so they discovered by accident that they could come up around the Germans where they had landed because of this decoy minefield. That's how he survived on the beach. That's incredible.

That's a great story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I teased it out of him. He never wanted to talk about it. It was after Private Ryan, he talked about it. He talked about what happened on that beach. but you've done a beautiful job in this book.

I guess I got a couple more questions for you if you don't mind. Yeah, of course. You brought these people to life. It was not clear that this was going to be a success. When I read your book, I tried to take it from that point of view. And so take us through what would have happened had it not been successful because you did research on that as well. So what's the alternative history? they fail on the beach, then what?

Possibly the communist, possibly Stalin, cuts a deal with Hitler at that point, right? For sure, right? Because you got to remember, the United States was not, you know, the superpower that it is today. The United States hadn't led a major military operation in the world to that point.

And certainly one of Roosevelt's big reasons for, you know, pushing Operation Overlord as hard as he did, you know, over British objections was both a show of strength to the Soviets, as well as to help the Soviets to take the pressure off the Eastern Front, where about 75 to 90 percent of the German army, depending on how you count it, was in bitter, bitter fighting. And so had that failed, the United States would have been exposed as a paper tiger.

What would the Soviets have done with that information? If they would have kept fighting, they would have, you know, probably had dominance over the European continent for, you know, many decades to come. But that's only if they kept fighting because they were taking enormous laws. losses and very well could have just said, look, the Americans and the British aren't coming to the rescue. We should, you know, cut another truce with Hitler and basically allow Western Europe to remain fascist and Eastern Europe to remain communist. The only strategy available to the United States at that point would be Britain's strategy of essentially empire securing an expansion in the Mediterranean.

But I don't know that that would have been a politically viable strategy because one thing that we forget is 1944 is an election year. And as much as, you know, Roosevelt certainly harbored suspicions of the British Empire, the American public was deeply suspicious of the British Empire. You know, the war in Europe is remembered with way more nostalgia than it was, you know, believed to, then the public supported it at the time. Most Americans wanted to fight the Japanese and be done with it. And most Americans, particularly those sort of following in the sort of the after-glow of people like Charles Limburg in the America First Movement, you know, saw American involvement in the European War as simply being a toady to Great Britain,

which we had done in World War I to essentially disastrous results. And so I don't even know that we would have stayed in any major significant way in the European theater. It's at least up for grab. Would Roosevelt had even won re-election in 1944? I think that's totally up for grabs. And so you start immediately seeing that, the world that we live in today and we actually take very much for granted doesn't exist if D-Day fails. Maybe something else would have grown up, but the idea that, you know, international alliances

and international institutions like the United Nations, which is what the Allies, you know, called themselves at the time and ultimately, you know, formed what we now call the United Nations organization, you know, that idea was far-fetched in 1944. And D-Day proved that it not only was possible, but that it could actually achieve what it set out to do. And without that achievement, without that show of success, you know, what kind of world, are we still living in essentially the imperial world that we lived in for hundreds of years before? I think there's a very good case to be made for that. So yeah, the failure was an option. And that failure would have completely remade what we all take for granted today, whether or not it's democracy, human rights,

the decolonization, the international world order, America as a superpower. None of these things would have been possible. I want to test the theory on you. Then I'm going to go to the last few questions. I read the book and had that conclusion that there's obviously a butterfly effect in our worlds. And D-Day was a vector that took us in a direction that I perceived to be positive, at least. But we have this tendency to forget worse. When the living memory of the war dies, and this is civilians being killed and their parents

remember it, or our soldiers, we saw several of them a week back. They're in their wheelchairs now. Some of them that are surviving are in their 90s or plus 100. As we get the living memory expires, we have a tendency. Barbara Tuckman wrote about this in the guns of August. We have a tendency towards nationalism, glorifying war, increasing our harsh rhetoric towards each other. Yet after wars like this, you have 60 million people die. There's more of a union situation. European Economic Union, NATO, collaboration, try to defend freedom through alliances. It does seem on the periphery to be breaking down again. Do you think that's because we've lost our memory of the war?

What do you think is happening, Michelle? In the world, I think that's part of it. You know, I always found one of the most remarkable things about Eisenhower's presidency is he's the only president in the 20th century to not send American forces abroad in a new war, which is amazing. to think about, right? That includes, you know, fairly short-lived presidents in 1920s or Jimmy Carter. And I think it's because he, and this is also at a time of incredible international danger and instability, right? This is the beginning of the Cold War when the world is on a knife edge under the threat of nuclear weapons. But he understands that what sending men into battle means. Like, he had seen off the 101st airborne the night before D-Day. And I think the most poignant

thing I read about, you know, that moment, which is, you know, very well chronicled, but this piece of it I had never seen before, that each man he shook hands with, he looked him in the eye and talked to him as a person. And he made himself do it because he had just been given intelligence or an estimate that, you know, at least half of these men might die. And so he knew what war was deep in his bones, and he was sensitive to that. He knew it was necessary, especially to you know, combat dangers like fascism. But he also knew that it had to be a last resort and that it was ultimately a waste of life and of opportunity. And you see that in his presidency. And so I do think there's a big part of this is we have not had a large war, certainly the way, you know, our grandparents

did and your uncle did. I think there also is, you know, a growing sort of, for lack of a better word, boredom, right? And this relates to having a war, but, you know, we take for granted. When I said, you know, freedom, democracy and decolonization, like, it sounds like a bumper sticker. But to say those words as the directions that we should take as a matter of international policy, to say that in 1942 or 43 was like bananas, right? Everyone would have thought that that was at best naive. And at worst, worst, a cynical ploy. And yet we did it. And we built a world that has grown in prosperity, in literal population, in peace, far to surpass anything that had come before. And there is, I think, just like you said, in Barbara Tuckman's writing, there is this sense that once people

live in peace for too long, they start grabbing on to other sources of meaning that are, you know, that seem more ineffable than, you know, solving real problems that real people have in the real world. Because we have a lot of real problems in the real world today. There's no question. I just find it it's an interesting time. We have this great system that we put together and now the system is under threat. It's almost as if the stability of the system and the length of that stability has created some level of instability. But, okay, so I, each of my authors, with my production statement,

have we come up with five famous words. I'm going to read out the word. I want to get your reaction before I let you go. You can give me a sentence, a word, a thought, okay? I was not told it would be a quiz, but I'm happy to... But it's not really a quiz. It's really your insight. You ready?

Yeah, sure. So if I say the word Churchill, you think of what? I think of probably the most literary world leader we've ever had. Yeah, incredibly gifted man. Incredibly gifted, absolutely. A foresight. But a real imperialist, though, no? Genuine, absolutely.

He was a full-blooded Victorian as well. Victorian imperialist. Yep. Right back to the Boer War. Okay. I say the word Roosevelt, and I mean Franklin Roosevelt, not Teddy. So I say FDR. You say what?

He is probably the canniest politician that we had in the 20th century. There's a reason he got four terms, and it's because he understood politics. And not in a dirty word sense, although he understood that too. But he understood that politics was really about people and meeting people's needs and so that he could mobilize just a country that was deeply and violently divided far more than we are today, to be perfectly frank with you. Two common causes, both in combating the Depression and obviously and then ultimately in World War II. So, yeah, he is the consummate politician, and I mean that in a positive way. Yeah.

And listen, he's being revised negatively now because of the Japanese internment. the fact that he didn't allow the Jews to come into the country during the Holocaust. There's a lot of us think he's perfect, but to me, he's the quintessential American leader. He really forged the American century and gave birth to a much wider middle class because of his objectives and policies. Okay, I say the word Operation Overlord. You say what? When you say Operation Overlord, I don't want to repeat myself, but I do think it was not only the beginning of the end of World War II, but it was the beginning of the beginning of an entirely new world

that benefited enormously from American leadership, but was not even defined by American leadership. And this is just one point, if I can make, to tell you what I mean, is when Eisenhower announces the invasion of Normandy to the European continent, he doesn't say the United States once. He says, the United States is here to liberate you. or sorry, the United Nations, which is what the Allies called themselves at the time. The United Nations are here to liberate you. Not America is here to conquer you, but the United Nations are here to liberate you. And it was true.

There were a dozen countries participating in that operation. And so that's what I think of when I think of Operation. I think from a leadership perspective, we did a very good job of explaining that unlike the First World War, which you appropriately point out, we're going to meld the troops. And so we're going to make it one fighting force as opposed to national, fighting forces on the battlefield. And I think that was something that we have to give him credit for. Okay, I say the word D-Day, which is different from Operation Overlord, the actual event itself.

You say what? It is the hinge point in Operation Overlord. It is this one moment. It's a culmination of so many historical forces and great personalities all on a single improbable day, which is why we call it D-Day, right? D-Day is just a bit of military slang. for the day on which something's going to happen. It's something planners used to make sure that all the planes are running on the right schedule.

And yet we call this one, June 6, 1944, we called this one day D-Day, because that single day was the culmination not only of, again, all of these historical forces and great personalities, but of so much heroism and ingenuity by everyone from, you know, the buck privates hitting the beach all the way up to sort of the great leaders like General Marshall and Churchill, for that matter. So that's what I think of. Okay, so is my last word, but I will say this. You did ruin me, because every time I think of the word Eisenhower now, I think of this poor SOB using his pistol shooting at a rat in a house in France,

breaking tile in the bathroom as he's trying to kill the rat, and he wounds him one time and then finally gets him. But when I say the word Eisenhower, you say what? He's the quintessential American. He comes from nothing. He lives the American dream, which often is, you know, derided as a fantasy, but he pulls it off. And he doesn't pull it off through magic or any sort of inevitable operation of, you know, the laws of a democratic society. He pulls it off through a combination of ruthlessness, to be perfectly frank, but of talent and of really, you know, the dedication to

something that was not himself and his own grandiosity. And that served him incredibly well in dealing with these grandiose figures. But it also ensured that he always had his eye on the prize, just like a good football coach. You know, no one goes to the, no one goes to the game to see the coach. They go to the game to see a win. And that's how he viewed his life. That's how he viewed his responsibilities as a general. And I think that's also how he viewed his responsibilities as president.

And we're all the better off for it. I think you also bring out that Milton, his younger brother, had a big, impact on him and was also quite helpful to him through his life. And when you say the American dream, it's interesting because this is not an American dream about money because it's not, he wasn't a wealthy guy, he wasn't shooting for wealth. This is American dream about the fulfillment of aspiration and being there to be the American that we all want him to be, which he's serving all people, and he's doing his very best to make the society better as a human being. And so all of that comes out in your wonderful book. And so

apologize for the sirens in the back, but the title of the book is The Light of Battle. It's Eisenhower D-Day and the birth of the American superpower. It's an absolutely fantastic book. You obviously know that because you're hearing Michelle Paraday talk about his book. And I wish you great success. What's next,

Michelle? I'm figuring it out, but I'm really interested at the moment in turn of the 20th century, New York. It's the city I love. It's where I've lived for most of my life. And it's a fascinating period. So that's what I'm looking at. That's a teaser.

I don't want to commit myself just yet. Okay. Yeah, well, I've been here the whole time. I can, and I work for Giuliani, so I can tell you a lot of things that went down. And I can give you some good sources if you want to talk about some people that work for the, who's now the madmare. But at that time, he was our savior here. All right, well, thank you very much for joining us on Open Book.

I hope I get a chance to interact with you again soon. Yeah, me too. Thanks so much. It's a great conversation. What an incredible book. Michelle Paradigie wrote, unbelievable detail about Ike, his decision-making, his team, how he thought about things, the strange stresses of putting all those people in harm's way, the casualties. I don't think he overlooked much in the dissertation of Dwight Eisenhower's leadership ability,

but I will say something to you that Dwight Eisenhower once said, anybody that wants to be president of the United States is either an egomaniac or crazy. or what Eisenhower also said, or both. Okay, so it was a reluctant job for him. And I'll just point out to people, just reminding people, when Ike left the presidency, he went to John Kennedy, his successor, and asked him to sign an executive order that he be called General Eisenhower. He did not want to be called president in his post-presidency.

He wanted to return to the military role that he had. And ironically, that's the role that led to all of this great success for him. So my amazing story about Dwight Eisenhower, please go out and get that book. Ma, Ma, I had a guy on that wrote a biography about a time in Dwight Eisenhower's life leading up to D-Day, right? And that's important part of our family's story, right? Because my uncle Tony, right? My uncle Anthony was at D-Day. He fought in that war, right?

Absolutely. It was the first one off the Normandy boat. He got trapple in his way from a friendly fire. When it was over, someone went nuts and through late, and he got the Purple Heart for that. No, I remember all that, and he went to the Potsdam Conference. He met Harry Truman, and we have all that stuff. But let's talk about Dwight Eisenhower. So do you remember what Uncle Tony used to say about Dwight Eisenhower?

Not so much. I don't. Okay. Well, you met, you didn't meet him, but you saw Dryde Eisenhower in Manhasset when he was campaigning for president. In Manhattan, he was shaking over everyone's hand. Our class went to Manhattan to see him because they knew we was going to be. He was campaigning on Long Island, right? Right.

Okay. Did you like Eisenhower? Yes. Tell me why. He was to the country. He definitely was for our country. Right. Do you think he was like sending out nasty tweets about people while he was planning his cabinet, Ma?

Or what do you think? Absolutely not. So what Uncle Tony said about Dwight Eisenhower actually is he loved them. He said because he really cared, it would really wait on him the responsibility of putting those troops and harms away. I thought Truman was a good president. You're not old enough to really remember Roosevelt, though, right? Or are you?

Well, every year that my birthday came, that you were born up. Yeah. Yep. Roosevelt was born on January 30th, 1882, so 142 years ago. But you're not that old, Ma. You're still going. Still going, Ma. I guess.

Yeah, come on. You know you're doing well. All right. Anything else you want to say before I let you go? No, I love you very much. All right. Love you, baby. All right. Bye.

I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you.

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