School of War - Ep 126: Michel Paradis on D-Day and Eisenhower

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Michel Paradis—litigator, national security law scholar, and author of The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower—joins the show to talk about D-Day and the man behind the invasion, Dwight Eisenhower. ▪️ Times      •      01:49 Introduction      •      01:56 “Wildly under appreciated”     •      05:17 Upbringing       •      11:40 Seeing the world as it is     •      15:01 Not that long ago       •      22:14 British vs American plans     •      32:50 Using strategic advantages         •      36:03 Designing D-Day        •      46:58 Planning for failure Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack Follow the link to buy the book - The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower

Our landings in the Sherborg-Hav area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold, and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air, and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone. June 5th, Dwight Eisenhower. That's the message that Eisenhower penned in the event that the D-Day landings, for which the 80th anniversary is this week, failed. Let's unpack the planning and the truly remarkable man, Dwight Eisenhower, that made them succeed. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamination.

The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a great, We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For maps, videos, and images, follow us on Instagram. And also feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks so much for joining School of War.

I am delighted today to welcome Michel Paradis to the show. He is a human rights lawyer and national security law scholar. He's a fellow at the Center on National Security and the National Institute for Military Justice. He's also an author. And this is his, I believe, second book that we're going to talk about today, the light of battle, Eisenhower, D-Day, and the birth of the American superpower. Michelle, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me on. How did you come to write a book about Dwight Eisenhower?

I think the thing that drew me most to Eisenhower was a general sense that he was, that he was, like, wildly underappreciated. And that may sound strange for someone who became, you know, the president of the United States and even more importantly, the president of Columbia University for a period. But it's true when you look. So I wrote my last book about World War II, you know, before I really had like any sort of deep interest or knowledge in the subject. And, you know, in doing all the interviews, I kept noticing how many books and people were interested in talking about Patton and Churchill and even to Gaul and Truman, not to mention Hitler and Stalin and Roosevelt. And in between all of these people, there's the guy who actually beat the literal Hitler,

actually won the war in Europe. And then of all those people, not only, you know, calmed victory, but then went on to do much bigger and better things, like becoming president, unlike someone like Douglas MacArthur, are perennially fascinated by. And so that fascinated me because I just, in a way, I couldn't understand why people weren't more interested in Eisenhower. And I think the main reason is that he was extremely effective making himself look as bland as possible.

He has this reputation, certainly, you know, in his time as president, he is this guy off the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, right? It's mayonnaise on white bread all day, all the time. And just, you know, knowing a little bit about, you know, politics and history and diplomacy, I just was like, that, that's impossible. There's no way that someone this bland could be this. powerful. And the more I dug into it, the more some of my early sort of suspicions were

confirmed, he was actually just a far more interesting person than he let on. Indeed, his blandness probably was much like his smile, his sort of most lethal way in that caused people to both underestimate him and not really, and basically just assume that he was always on their side. When he often, you know, was, you know, quite ruthlessly pursuing objectives that were very much much at odds with their interests, whether or not that was Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaul or even sometimes Franklin Roosevelt and then later Harry Truman. And so that idea, sort of use of power, mastery of the art of power in an era where you had so many people who almost were statuesque in their personalities to have someone to understand that could be used as like a tremendous advantage.

To really get important things done was, you know, just became really fascinating to me. And so I tried to understand that. I tried to understand how he learned those skills and also how he ended up using them. Because it's often much subtler than, again, the sort of poetic leaders, whether or not it's, again, Churchill or, you know, later figures like Jayette that we look at with a misty eye. You know, but when we look at the sort of set of accomplishments that they have practically, it's often far dwarfed by someone like Eisenhower. So that's really what drew me to Eisenhower. Yeah, I don't think anyone's ever described Winston Churchill as bland. I'm confident.

I'm confident in that assertion. Well, talk a bit about his upbringing then. And what led to this, not to oversimplify what you just said, but the sort of dual duality in the man, this sort of pleasant, bland, outward presentation and this ruthless, roiling inner life. So it's a fascinating story all by itself, especially because he worked very hard, and particularly with the assistance of his brother Milton Eisenhower, who I spent a lot of time sort of exploring as well in the book because I think he's also an underappreciated factor in Eisenhower's both life and also rise to power. Milton Eisenhower was his younger brother by almost a decade

and was for a long time considered the important Eisenhower. When Eisenhower's father dies in 1942, all the obituaries talk about the death of Milton Eisenhower's father. But Milton Eisenhower is an underappreciated or under remembered figure today, even though he had a very prominent sort of life both in Washington, D.C., and then, traditionally, as an academic. But Eisenhower grows up. He's born in 1890, the year of the frontier closes in Deniston, Texas. His father at that point is essentially an itinerant worker who then moves back to Abilene, Kansas, which is the homestead of the broader Eisenhower family, which is a very prominent, wealthy, agricultural family at the time, who were members of the River Brethren, which is, you know,

basically a branch of the Mennonite religion. But David Eisenhower was the younger son of his father, of his father, who was again a prominent, a prominent planter in Abilene. And David had this very difficult personality, to put it gently. He could be quite physically abusive, both to his children and to others. That included a neighbor boy. David Eisenhower, Eisenhower's father was actually even taken to jail for abusing a neighbor, which in 1898 really, must have been something, just given what the world was like in 1898, Kansas. And his mother, though, was this just Apulian, always describes this just a poignant, smiling, happy personality. This just, you know, this son that sent out light and warmth in every direction. But the family was always very

strapped for cash. And he grows up and again, this very, you know, barefoot existence in Abilene, Kansas, which is the near center of the United States. And he's basically desperate to leave. And there a couple different reasons for that. One, I think, is that he found it desperately boring to be in the middle of Kansas as much as he did enjoy the outdoors and had a good relationship with a lot of his family members. But there was also something really intellectually stifling about his upbringing. And that primarily came from the fact that his father and mother were members of what at the time were called the Bible students. And the Bible students ultimately become the Jehovah's Witnesses. But at the time of the turn of the century, it's essentially a millennial religion. It's a millennial cult, almost.

they are firmly convinced that the world is going to end in 1915 based on the dimensions of the pyramids, which their founder determined dictated the geometry of which dictated the future of the world. Eisenhower grows up in a small house in Abilene and almost the entirety of their living room wall is covered by this diagram of the pyramids that is part of the Bible student ideology, which sort of traces, again, the dimensions of the pyramids to various, important points in the Bible and then subsequent history. And it's a very, it's a very stifling environment for him, both because of its remoteness, but also I think he, you know, didn't connect with the religiosity that his parents sort of instilled. He has a certain, he very much has a

spiritual and I think communitarian side, but the, this superstition, I think, made him very skeptical as doing anyone good. And as some people might know, this is true of, was witnesses even today, they tend to be pretty anti-government. His father was someone who is, you know, again, always moved by great enthusiasms at one point. He runs, he joins the socialist party after Eugene V. Debs comes through Abilene and then runs for school board on the socialist ticket winning, I think, all of a dozen or two votes in town. But that's the sort of like the foment. It's a lot of extremism, in essence, in his household. And so the way he rebels against his parents is he goes to West Point, which is counterintuitive, I think, to a lot of people,

the idea that he would rebel by going to the sort of central American military institution. But in that household, that very much was a former rebellion. Not only is it part of the government, it's the military. And the Bible students like the Jehovah's Witnesses are adamantly pacifist in their outlook. And also it's an opportunity for a free education and a way to see the wider world. And from a really quite a young age, Eisenhower was fascinated by history, particularly military history. Love to the exploits of Hannibal recount the battle of Zuma. down to the individual details.

And so saw West Point as an opportunity to really become the kind of person I think he felt he couldn't be growing up in Abil. And so that's how he ends up in West Point as a young football player who's keen to see the world. There's a sort of Lincoln echo with the cruel father and the angelic mother.

I mean, I haven't made a study of it, but it is fascinating how many prominent people have one or both parents who are deeply cruel. Churchill. terrible, terrible parents, especially mother, right? So I guess it shouldn't be surprising that Eisenhower comes from an environment like that. It's also not surprising that he reacts to kind of the drama that you describe, the drama of

that kind of father by being somebody who is outwardly as undramatic as can be. Yeah, it's a brilliant way of putting it, is that I think he understands intuitively in his bones, the, you know, just the folly of people who are sort of blindly and fervently ideological about things that are impractical at the bottom of it, right? Because his father, again, in his life, goes from, you know, enthusiasm to enthusiasm. And at no point does it provide any sort of meaningful security or comfort for his family. He's a deeply unhappy man, you know, even into old age. And I think Eisenhower just saw it as stupid. You know, that's probably the word he would even, as if he was, if he was honest.

He probably would never be honest about it, but that would probably be the word he would use. I don't know if it's perfect preparation, but certainly sort of poetic preparation for the man who will go on to be the American who faces down, what, two of the three great enthusiasms, evil enthusiasms of the 20th century, right? He defeats Nazism, and then he is among the key designers of America's long standoff with Soviet communism. Sure.

What better childhood to imbue you with a sense of, skepticism about such thing. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. He, he, he, he, he, anything that smacked of, you know, living in the clouds, I think found, he found deeply alienating. And one of the, one of the points that I sort of draw out of his biography, which I found very surprising and people have generally found quite surprising is, is, he goes through this period in the 1920s when he's in his 30s, essentially of a reeducation by a mentor by

the name of General Fox Connor, who he gets stationed with this remote outpost in the Philippines. And Connor is one of the great minds of the Army in the turn of the 20th century and has this just vast library that he insists the Army cart all around the world with him at any given time. I can tell. And he ultimately takes Eisenhower in a mentor relationship and just gives him a ton to read. That really re-sparks imagination and curiosity in a way that West Point in some ways had beaten out of him. but that, you know, Eisenhower really had from childhood. And among the things Eisenhower reads that I found kind of fascinating,

and Eisenhower very briefly mentions having done this later in life, but he reads a bunch of Nietzsche. And it's not the full Nietzsche that we have come to know and love today. It's H.L. Mencken actually writes a book of essentially Nietzsche's aphorisms that he translates in the early 20th century, and it becomes a sort of mild bestseller. And the part of Nietzsche that Mencken focuses on is this idea of seeing the world as it is and understanding that, you know, in eschewing ideology and

skewing fantasies about the world in favor of the harsh reality and accepting the world as it is, it's really almost a Nietzsche as a stoic figure. And what and sort of with that, like with Stoicism, H.L. Lincoln focuses on Nietzsche's emphasis on the individual and the importance of freedom and manliness. And if you go through Eisenhower's sort of public speeches, not once did I ever find him, say, as Nietzsche once said, of course. But he has all of these just passages from Nietzsche that just get immediately reflected out of his public remark, you know, including in the war when democracy is essentially fighting for its survival. And Eisenhower makes this speech when he arrives in London in 1944, basically saying, you know, soon Gax's powers

will learn that there is nothing more powerful than a democracy stirred action. And that's almost verbatim out of, out of Nietzsche, is that, you know, democracies are weak in peace. but there's nothing stronger in war because man will always fight for his own freedom. So your book is about Eisenhower and D-Day, and we'll have this episode up the week of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, which one crazy thought that occurred to me as I was getting ready for this recording is, even though 80 years is a long time and it kind of seems like ancient history and anybody who was there to talk about it is basically 100 years old. and they were the youngest ones around participating in the operation. Here's a thought for you. I was born in 1981. I feel like saying that I should be careful not to say my Social Security now.

My mother's maiden name. But I was born in 1981. And as long ago as D-Day was in seems, it happened. Let's do some mental math here, 37 years before I was born. 37 years. So fewer years than my life so far. That long ago. It's really not that long.

ago. And it shaped the world to come. And that's sort of one of the major themes that I tried to draw out of the book in both thinking about Eisenhower's role specifically. But in D-Day is this very special moment in our history. Because I, you know, I kind of kept coming back to this question I had that I couldn't quite understand it first. It was like, why do we care so much about D-Day? Why is like D-Day is a generic term of art in, in military jargon, right? It's the day on which something planned is going to happen with the planning term. We have this one D-Day that we call out And there are a lot of very much larger military operations in the Second World War, arguably, you know, tactically more consequential operations or at least more militarily interesting operations. And why is it D-Day?

And we still remember. Why is Steven Spielberg made two movies about D-Day or one movie in an HBO series about D-Day? And I think part of it is, you know, World War II, you know, the superficial part of it is that World War II was the first war where we had a lot of video or a lot of film. of the action. And the Army understood that very well. And there's some interesting discussion of this in the book about the importance of recording what's happening because, you know, the Army wanted a record of it to, you know, give to people like Frank Capra to put into newsreels to the public informed about what was going on. There was a propaganda value to that as well. But there was, you know, a genuine, you know, sense that public demanded to know and to see what was happening around the world. And so the level of photography and videos allowed D-Day within. in literally days of it happening, it's on the cover of Life magazine. And that's kind of remarkable as a, you know, a function of historical, you know, sort of media studies, if nothing else, is that the public was able to really almost see the battle in real time.

But that still isn't quite explained why those particular images, you know, remain as iconic if the moon landing images are. And, you know, the more I dug into it, the more it becomes apparent, the D-Day is also this almost singular moment, or at least opportunity to make. mark the ascent of the United States, you know, as the leader of the free world. You know, the Atlantic alliance, such as it was prior to 1944, was very much British dependent and dominated British. And there was a lot of good reason for that. The British Empire was a quarter of the world at the time, a quarter of the world's territory as well as the population. You know, it was the

center of international banking. The Royal Navy had a port on every continent. And the United States, as, you know, large of an economy, as we had was isolationists in its politics extremely complicated governmentally. We still are, right? We're basically 50 states. And at that time, you know, you said as long ago as D-Day was, you know, it was quite, it's not that long ago. Well, in 1940, 41, you know, the Civil War was just as long ago as the Second World War

as today. And so you have, you know, people in living memory can still remember the Civil War in 1944. So you had this country that literally had torn itself apart. only a few generations earlier. And so, you know, it was often described in terms of who's the senior and who's the junior partner. And throughout the war, which clearly the senior partner, they directed both the strategic direction of the war and led all but a few of the senior command posts on the ground.

And but that changes after D-Day. And it changes in a big way. Not only does the United States, you know, really begin to direct the operation of battle or sort of direct sort of the operation of war and the strategy of the war. Europe. After that, the British, you know, become not only economically dependent upon the United States, but political. And you see that in, for example, the Bretton Woods Conference that happens in July of 1984, where Britain essentially has to give over economic dominance to the United States. And the dollar becomes the currency of international trade instead of the IMF and the World

Bank get centered in Washington, D.C. The future direction of sort of the post-war period is dictated by decolonization, which is basically on its face the smashing of the British Empire, which happens in earnest over the next 10 years. The United Nations organization is very much an American project at that point. Even war crimes prosecutions, Nuremberg trials, the British opposed that almost to the bitter end. And so more or less from June 6th, 1944, the United States is now the superpower that is being able to dictate the direction, or at least league. And I actually would make that correction as an important one, is very much in a position to lead the direction that the free world is taking,

very much the expense of the British and French empires. And so I think that's why D-Day resonates so much even today as the singular D-Day is that it's not just this really iconic and visually stunning military operations. It literally is this moment where the United States, a country was founded on democracy, human rights, and individual liberty, sales from the British Empire to the French Empire to destroy tyranny in Europe.

And had that happened 2,000 years ago, it would be in the Aeneid, right? We would teach it as a myth, yet here it is, it's on the cover of Life magazine. And so I think that's why there's something really uniquely powerful about D-Day is that it really shows the United States, at least, what it can do

when musters all of its resources and leads the world in the cause of liberty, democracy, and human rights, which is at least the charter of our country since the 18th century. I have a much less deep observation in the same direction, which is the battlefield itself is a strange and magical place. And I always had a chip on my shoulder, sort of semi-joking chip on my shoulder for me, I think less joking for my dad who would complain that, you know, he had been doing some interesting things on June 6, 1944 with, you know, tens of thousands

of his close friends, namely liberating Rome. But nobody cared about that, you know, and he would kind of joke about it, but also be, like, kind of annoyed. And I, you know, I only went to Normandy for the first time in my life a couple years ago. And it is something else. I mean, to stand there at Omaha Beach or any of the beaches, really. It's difficult to describe what is so powerful about it. Maybe it is Spielberg.

Maybe it's that, you know, I saw those movies in my relative youth. and then to see it in person. I'm not entirely sure. I'm very envious of anyone who's there right now for the anniversary celebration. It's probably going to be the last major anniversary with any actual veterans present. But I think that plays a role.

Can I let me sort of a multi-stage question for you here? At what point in the conduct of the war does the invasion of Europe become central to the discussion and to the planning? And then what are the major schools of thought or opinion on how to go about that? because, of course, as you talk at some length in the book, Churchill is opposed, and the Brits are sort of generally opposed to the straightforward, you know, straight line Britain to northwest Europe,

to northwest France invasion. That's always something the Brits are skeptical of at best. Talk about this planning process, and then we'll bring Eisenhower back into it as he comes into the story. Yeah, well, in some ways, I have to bring Eisenhower back in, and not just because I've been over-facination with him as a biographer at the moment. So very early, in the war in, you know, December of 1941, the British in the United States form a, at that point, historically unique military alliance with what becomes called combined chiefs of staff. You know, the top Navy Army and Air Force generals from, you know, each of the two countries essentially form a standing war council to dictate the terms of the war. And there's a lot of sort of popular

interest in pressing the war in Asia, particularly on the United States, for obvious reasons, right? Japan attacks Hawaii, not Germany. Germany declared. There's war on the United States, you know, arguably with strategic, you know, strategically foolishly strategically. But ultimately, you know, the interest of the United States is very much directed towards the Pacific and particularly the Navy's interest is much more heavily in the Pacific than in Europe. But given sort of the United States is precarious and, if nothing else, green sort of economic or military position at the time.

And it's not entirely clear that the United States can even mobilize economically for war. The British very much do take the helm, and the British have an overweening interest in Europe. And so the joint chiefs, the combined chiefs, agree on a Europe first strategy, and Roosevelt goes along with that in Churchill's behest. And so the early question in 1942 is, well, how do we pursue a Europe first strategy? And one of the first things Eisenhower does as a planner in the War Department is draft up the most straightforward plan to winning Hitler. and that's crossing the English Channel, charging a cross for it, and attacking Berlin. And the British hate this idea. They hate this idea for a few reasons, some of which are good, some of which are bad.

The good reasons are the British are, you know, have just been ousted from Dunkirk. They understand how bitter the fighting can be and have serious and frankly legitimate outs. The United States' ability to fight as an organized military. It's, you know, it's at that point, you know, rapidly increasing its size from a size of about 200,000. and people at the start of Second World War, which at that point is smaller than the Army of Holland. The British are also quite concerned about a bloodbath. There is a longstanding British aversion to large land wars that part of British military doctrine. The one time they violated that doctrine was the First World War. And so there are very fresh memories in Great Britain of, you know,

the flower of British youth, as Churchill would call them, just being turned to waste meat in trenches for nothing. And so those are, you know, very strong visceral cultural oppositions the British have to mounting a large land war across the European continent. The British also, though, have a much broader view of things. You know, they've been at the empire game at that point for quite a while. They're at that point still the largest empire in the world by order of magnitude. And so, you know, see the sort of much, they see that the Germans are much weaker in the Mediterranean and North Africa, where Britain could also have the sort of secondary advantage of being able to expand its imperial reach. And so in the summer of 1942, the British essentially get their way and

overcome, you know, the United States' interests to just charge into Europe and it's all over with by advancing the idea to first attack in North Africa, an operation known as Torch, which Eisenhower was ultimately put in charge of almost in a ceremonial role at the end of November or to launch at the end of November of 1943, or 42. And all the major commanders on the ground are British. A lot of the direction of the war and planning is even done by the British. And the United States are primarily just the arsenal of democracy at that point. The fighting in North Africa turns out to be much, much harder than anyone planned for.

The rain alone just slows the fighting down all through the winter of 1942, 1943. But ultimately after, you know, a few failures, people like Omar Bradley and George Patton are promoted on the American side. And the fighting effectiveness of the United States in North Africa becomes much, much more efficient. And so by the spring of 1943, the Allies have now cleared the Germans out of North Africa and are beginning to move north. And again, the question comes of, okay, shall we go through the English Channel or should we keep pressing our advantage in the Mediterranean? And the British interest is clear. They agree to continue to plan for a cross-channel invasion, which by this point is given the portentous name, Overlord. But ultimately, the British are far more interested in hunting and pecking and jabbing like a boxer, as they would describe it, all throughout the Mediterranean.

And that leads through the summer of 1943, through a series of island attacks in the Mediterranean, the largest of which being Sicily. And then in September of 1943, the first land attack against Italy, the boot of Italy at Salerno, which ultimately comes off, but is very close and is much closer than people remember. And so over the course of the end of 1943, there have been no major expansions of the operating theater. That's in part because there is a debate about where to go next. Should they continue to press their advantage further east in the Mediterranean, the British are very keen to attack the Balkans and to put them, much more heavy investment in Italy to capture the ancient city of Rome, for example,

whereas the Americans are far more interested in finally returning to this overlord plan. And so that by the time the Cairo conference comes around in November of 1943, there's a great debate about, okay, what is the future direction of the war? Do we go across the English Channel to we open a new front and attack France, or do we continue to press our advantage in the Mediterranean? The British are adamant about continuing to press their advantage in the Mediterranean. They never really come around to Operation Overlord. But the big change by the end of 1943 is that the United States is no longer clearly

the junior partner. It may still sort of be at the kid's table, but it's a very big kid, to say the least. It's producing two to three times the number of airplanes and ships that the British are airplanes and trucks and tanks that the British are producing seven times as many ships. So even Britain's preeminence as the Navy of the world is now. if nothing else doubted as a material matter, if not as a matter of prestige. And frankly, the British just need the United States. And so are in a position or more or less forced into a position to at least come to a compromise.

A compromise is also facilitated by FDR's burgeoning relationship with Joseph Stalin, because as the war has continued, the Russians are the ones for carrying out the land war and absorbing massive casualties as a result. You have millions of men in combat from Ukraine, all the way up to the Baltic. And the Russians are very eager to open a Western front that will take pressure off of their lines. And so at the Tehran conference,

which basically happens in the middle of this meeting between the British and American chiefs of staff in Cairo, Stalin goes all in and says, the Mediterranean is a waste of time. Please send some men to France. Stalin also, just to be clear, is not entirely militarily oriented in that opinion either. He, just as Churchill does,

has designs on the Balkans. and Eastern Mediterranean. And so there's a lot of power politics going on here. And FDR, you know, obviously goes wanting to, it has a strong interest in strengthening the alliance with the Soviet Union, is deeply skeptical of the British imperial ambitions to begin with. And so puts his full backing behind overlord. And so what you get is a compromise where half of the Allied forces

will cross into France with the other hand continuing to fight up the Buddha of Italy. There's this fascinating collision between, two strategic cultures here. You're deep in the weeds of all of this, and I'm not, so I'll just make a series of assertions, and you tell me, if I'm off, it's a privilege of being a podcast, I was, you know, you have the Brits who, as you very eloquently described, have this tradition of avoiding pitched continental engagement, and indeed have, you know, only a generation earlier failed to abide by that dictum and suffer grievously.

And always, I mean, I defining, you know, realizations. for me on the significance of World War II, excuse me, World War I in British Life, comes when we were, it's probably, we can reveal to the audience, we know each other, but when we were graduate students together and the, the arcade outside the chapel

at Balliol College, Oxford, sort of this dim, dark, gloomy, you know, passage, and it's covered with the names of War Dead. And as you walk in, you see a panel devoted to the Balliol Dead of World War II, and it's a lot of names. I mean, it's a good, it's a healthy little chunk of wall that tells all these names of these young, mostly young, young Balliol men who died in the Second World War.

Then you peer down the rest of the hallway, which goes on for like 20 more feet. And then you realize the whole rest of the hallway is covered in the World War I names, like the classes of, if you will, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, they just all died. They all died. I mean, almost none of them made it out. And the psychic impact of that on the nation was greater in some of the, some ways than that of the Second World War. And so you have this aversion to, you know, another Western front. You have this British strategic concept of being sort of the offshore

influencer of things on the continent of having a, you know, a plane where you face the Atlantic coast and a plane where you face the Mediterranean coast and the dominance of naval power means you can kind of play games offshore. They're more politically sophisticated, as you point to, you know, going into the Balkans would have had the advantage of had it succeeded, which I think there were real doubts right about the feasibility of such an operation just because of the terrain and everything. But it would have been a real chip in the competition with the Soviet Union, which Churchill quite rightly saw coming and was more attuned to, I think, than FDR. And then the American plan is very American. It's very West Point. It's very Jomene. It's very military and less political.

Jomeney, not to oversimplify, you know, straight lines, short lines, checklists, let's go. And whatever Eisenhower's campaign in Northwest Europe was, it was not a brilliant war of maneuver. It was a straight line progress on a broad front, which brought superior resources to bear on an enemy that was in a kind of doom loop at a series of levels. Is that all, is that reasonably fair as a characterization? It is. It is. And it was a drive. And as you said, it was a very much military-driven strategy, but that looked at, but both countries, were looking to where their comparative advantages were, right? The British Army is not that big, but the British have, you know, their insular sort of historical culture, which has given them, I literally mean insular, right?

They're an island, which historically has made them relying on the Navy, but also early, very early, much earlier than anyone else, made them heavily in air power. And they, you know, made the judgment. There's a lot of debate about this. I don't want to, I don't think I know enough to super-sophisticate opinion on it. But that they made the judgment that they could strangle the jury. Germany's death through a combination of sea power. By that point, the Kriegs Marine had been basically wiped out of the Atlantic, with the exception of U-Boats, and increasingly superior

air power that they could use to indiscriminately bomb Germany into the Stone Age. And they figured, as long as we're doing that, and the Russians are taking all the casualties on the eastern front, it's only a matter of time before Germany is so weak that we can then come in for the killing blow, like a bullfight. And that very much is written using all of its strategic advantages. Whereas the United States,

I mean, we can produce a ton of stuff. You know, we didn't make the best tanks. We didn't make guns. We didn't make airplanes by any stretch of the imagination. But we made a hell of a lot of them and we got them to the front quickly.

Right. We have, we're America and we're very good at delivery. We're very good at getting people what they want when they want it. That's how we got to El Dorado in the first place. And so we just had far better logistics and a far better ability to amass strength onto very fine points of the battlefield. So that a straight line made a lot of sense because, yes, the Germans panzer tanks, you know, had a 10 to 1 advantage over our Sherman tank.

We had 50 Sherman tanks. And so we could get them to the battlefront quickly. And so it did just make a lot more strategic sense, especially when, again, this is something that's also easy to forget in the context, especially when the United States public was never really that bought into the European war. It's almost sort of a perverse sort of irony of history that the European war has, you know, receives far, far more attention and interests. You know, the fight against Hitler and the Pacific War does. But at the time itself, but of the time of the war, most people wanted to go kill Japanese people

and anything that was distracting from that was not popular as a matter of public opinion. And so, you know, the idea that the Americans would try to go in beat Hitler and then get moving on to Japan where everyone cared about, you know, had a political, a domestic political component of it as well. Right. Once the decision to do overlord is taken, what are the major decision points in the design of the operation itself? And how to, what rolled as Eisenhower's education and study of things play in those decisions, or even just as observations of things, that are happening elsewhere in the war, amphibious landings that are happening in the Pacific, for example, or Torch or Salerno. How does this all play into the planning

of the actual invasion? Sure, I'll do a couple. And one, I think, probably the most important, that actually precedes Eisenhower. And that's seen the selection of the commanding general in the first place. Because when the allies finally do sort of cut the deal to split the forces between the Mediterranean and Italy

and Operation Overlord against France, which also had a southern France component originally that got dropped, that ultimately got postponed until later in the summer. The expectation was that George Marshall would come over to England to lead that operation. At the time, Marshall was the sort of preeminent military figure in the United States as the Army Chief of Staff. And quite unexpectedly, for reasons that I try to unpack a bit in the book, Roosevelt changes his mind and picks White Eisenhower to lead the invasion instead. And that choice was extremely consequential in a few ways that lead to sort of,

of the more specific answers to your question. The first is Eisenhower had no great investment in the existing planning for overboard. You know, the existing plans had been made essentially on a compromised basis to be a fairly small attack that would punch, you know, through what were, what ultimately became the British beaches, you know, in a direct attack on the northern French city of Kahn, and then using Kahn as a base to sort of do a buildup and then charge east towards Berlin. That plan when Eisenhower first saw it in October of 1943,

and he was sort of asked for his general opinions, he was like, this is a pretty weak plan. It's just not, you're only essentially putting it a three-division attack, which is smaller at that point than what they were doing in Sicily or in Salerno. And so Eisenhower, when he gets put in charge of Overlord, immediately looks for ways of expanding the operation into what would ultimately be a seven-division in the first day. And that itself was an extremely controversial move, precisely because the British were looking to make Operation Overlord small enough to drown in a bathtub.

And the idea that more resources would be poured into Operation Overlord was, again, contrary to British overall interests in the war, but also would put a much greater strain on Britain itself since the United Kingdom was the staging area for the operation. And so Eisenhower's first decision is to look for ways of ultimately doubling the operation in its initial strength. And to do that, he, I think, makes probably one of the canniest political moves of the war, which is to bear hug Bernard Montgomery, who at that time was probably one of the most famous, probably still one of the most famous British generals, you know, the great British hero of the Battle of El Alamein and of Second World War to that point, you know, a celebrity figure, unlike any other, who Eisenhower never got along with at any point in either of their lives,

almost maybe with the exception of the invasion of Normandy when they briefly formed a much warmer relationship. Monty was deeply skeptical of Eisenhower because Eisenhower had never really fought in combat. He saw him as just a glad-handing, you know, mayonnaise on white bread type figure. And Eisenhower thought Monty was an obnoxious prima donna. And they both, I think, grossly underestimated one another

and caricatured one another. But Eisenhower understood that he needed this, If they were going to enlarge Operation Overlord, essentially contrary to the interests of the British government, he needed that decision to seem like it was coming from a British general. and Montgomery was probably the best of all. And so he meets secretly with Montgomery in December of 1943 before Montgomery is officially supposed to have been given the Operation Overlord plans and basically says to Montgomery, I want you to be my general.

I want this to be the great invasion of Bernard Montgomery. But don't you think it's a bit small? Don't you think Bernard Montgomery should have a much bigger invasion force under his command? And Bernard Montgomery is very apt to say, well, of course I do. And so Montgomery becomes fully invested in enlarging the operation. And Montgomery being the celebrity that he is, is able to sell this to the British government. And from then on, Eisenhower, you know, grits his teeth and sort of attempts down the ego of all his American compatriots to call it the Montgomery plan for Operation Overlord. And Montgomery does do some incredible planning.

I don't mean to minimize Montgomery's role. But Eisenhower, you know, had the political instincts to understand that in, you know, in allied warfare, it was very important that the British be fully invested in something that was going to be very costly, not just materially to the British, but also politically as well. So that I think was probably one of his most crucial decisions. And George Marshall would never have made that decision. Wouldn't have made any of those decisions. There's no reason to think Marshall would have immediately turned around and said,

no, this plan that I've been approving for the past year is inadequate. We're going to double the size of it. George Marshall's sort of personal instincts as savvy and as stoic, as he often was, you know, was not to gladhand. He was not a gladhander. There's a famous anecdote where FDR first meets him and says, hey, can I call you George? And General Marshall's, it's General Marshall, sir. And so, you know, George Marshall, for all his great virtues, politics was not one of them, or at least the sort of gladhanding politics that Eisenhower is master of. But on the sort of granular level, I think some of Eisenhower's more sort of tactical choice, I'll run through a couple very

quickly. One is the decision to embrace a very controversial plan to bomb a European, primarily French railways, which have very high civilian casualties associated them with, with allied casualties. These are French people and they're attempting to invade France. But he's very concerned, he very much understands that in an amphibious invasion, you essentially have a race. You're racing to get as more forces across water as you can get across land. And land is just a much easier media to move. large heavy equipment like tanks across. And so he understands that in that zero-sum calculation, they need to do everything possible to slow the Germans down, even if it has very high civilian

casualties, which is, again, very politically costly to him. And he stands by that plan, even when he's getting all sorts of hell, both from the domestic American public and especially the British foreign office who he's having to deal with frequently. He also unifies, you know, command over the theater, which is, which was controversial. It was not something that George Marshall embraced. Even after they enlarged it, you know, he stuck to the idea of making it Montgomery's operation, even though Omar Bradley was primarily responsible for the British beaches, but he very much made sure that Montgomery was seen as the leader of the whole operation. In part, that was because the political issues I talked about before, but he also wanted to make sure there was an integrated

operation across the, across, you know, a couple hundred miles of French beaches. And it was a narrow enough area that they needed combined air support, but it was also a broad enough area that you needed to have, you know, relatively localized command on the ground. And so understanding that the integration of forces in combined arms operations is actually a pretty difficult thing. That's actually a management problem more than it is a, you know, on the field battle tactics problem is something that he had learned, really over the previous year and a half of fighting combined operations in North Africa and then in the Mediterranean. And then the third all just hit. They're a bunch of others, but the third all just hit, which I think is probably, you know, one of the more

remarkable forms of insight is the weather and understanding that in the, that when you're doing combined operations, particularly combined operations that depend on airpower, that the weather is its own sort of form of terrain. He looked back at landings in Salerno, which had almost been catastrophic because of the German counterattack and remembered that the only reason they were able to gain the foothold and push the Germans back was because they could deploy the airborne, which they couldn't have done had the weather been bad. And so he understood very early that the weather was going to dictate the pace of operations. Same thing in North Africa, the rains in North Africa in late 2014-1943 had turned the entire

McGreby Desert into mud, and that had slowed the advance. And so he wanted to have a very clear understanding of the weather. But when he got there in January of 1944, there were like a dozen different weathermen, you know, one for the British Navy, one for the American Navy, one for the British Army, etc. And so he appointed, he essentially gave, made a command level decision to make a weatherman the head of a command. So he got consolidated reports on the weather and then dragged this, this guy who was a civilian, Scottish meteorologist in ordinary life, put him in a uniform and then dragged him to his commander's meetings each week and made him predicts the weather in front

of everybody for the next week. And they would just test him week after week. And not only did that give Eisenhower, I think, a very clear sense of, okay, how are. reliable are these predictions, but it also made the weathermen take their job much more seriously and to think about their, you know, they're not just there to provide intelligence, but they're really, you know, one of the almost combatant commanders. And that had incredible importance in D-Day itself, because the weather, you know, predictions about the weather ultimately was what made the operation go from a potential disaster to the victory that it was. Well, we only have a minute or two left, but on this point of the weather, I mean, I've been to Southic House where Eisen, where the final

conference occurs, and Eisenhower has to make this decision, as you describe it, this is an incredibly dramatic sequence of events, which you'll correct me if I'm misremembering any of the details here, but basically, you know, the operation is supposed to be on June the 5th, if I'm not mistaken. And the weather on June the 4th is some of the nicest weather that Northwest Europe has had, you know, in some time. And the weatherman says you can't, you can't. do it, Ike, and he has to pull it down. And of course, they're right. And the next day, June the 5th, the actual day prior to the invasion is one of the nastiest, you know, is just dramatic storms. And Eisenhower is again essentially advised that you'll have a brief window tomorrow

where you could just pull it off. And by the way, if you don't take, if you don't roll the dice on that window, we're going to be postponed to July. And now you're talking about, you know, you're talking about the lane, delaying VE day. You're talking about, you know, many more lives lost. I mean, this is a decision of great consequence. And it's just last, last thing I'll ask you to reflect on is for all that his role was on some important level, political and about personality management and about planning and about guiding the major muscle movements of this operation. He has this central, essential moment where he has to make this tactical decision, the go-no-go decision, which is basically, as you point out, a weather decision. And just imagine, I mean, just imagine being in that. seat after all these years of preparation and everything hinging on getting this call right.

Imagine being him. How did he, with a minute or two to go here, did he write about that later? Did he reflect on it? Like, what was his self-understanding of himself in that moment? So I think the best window I could find into his mind in that moment is a draft speech that he wrote immediately after he made the decision. because, you know, there they're sitting, and as you describe it, it's in Southwick House. They're in this library that's been converted to a, you know, a conference room.

They get the predictions about the weather. Everyone, you know, gives their various assessment of what they should do. And then he just sits there for a moment and says, okay, we'll go. And, you know, it's like a gunshot going off. Like the team is running out onto the field. And then he's just left there alone. And he's just sitting with that decision. And the rain is racking the windows.

You can hear the wind. And he writes a short speech that he gives planning for the evasion to fail. And he takes full responsibility. It's actually quite a beautiful window into his mind because you can see, particularly from what he crosses out, each time when he starts to say, you know, people did the best think I made the decision. Like he increasingly takes all the blame onto himself. and every time he's making excuses or somehow trying to justify himself,

he just crosses that out and just says, I made the decision, everyone involved in everything they could. They are the heroes I am to blame. And it's just this beautiful moment where he understands exactly the gravity of the situation, the lives at risk, and, you know, that at the end of the day, you can make good decisions or bad decisions. And the good decisions will turn out to be wrong, and the bad decisions might be right,

ultimately it's just on you, and you just make the best decision you can. And then he did. And thankfully, for the world, it worked out. Someone told me, it's sort of the too good to check story. I hope it's true, but that later in life, post-presidential Eisenhower is asked maybe by a family member or something, you know, are you worried it's going to rain, you know, today or something like that?

And just sort of like, you know, normal conversation. He responds, apparently, young lady, I haven't worried about the rain since June 6th, 1944. I haven't worried about the weather since June 6th, 1944. Michelle Parody, author of The Light of Battle, Eisenhower, D-Day, and the birth of the American superpower. Thank you for making the time today, and thanks for the great conversation. Thank you. Good to see you. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.