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World War II – D-Day, an Oral History – Garrett Graff
153 Plays30 days ago
Ep 057 – Nonfiction. New York Times Bestselling Author Garrett M. Graff discusses his book, “When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day.”
‘June 6, 1944—known to us all as D-Day—is one of history’s greatest and most unbelievable military triumphs. The surprise sunrise landing of more than 150,000 Allied troops on the beaches of occupied northern France is one of the most consequential days of the 20th century. Now, Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff, historian and author of The Only Plane in the Sky and Watergate, brings them all together in a one-of-a-kind, bestselling oral history that explores this seminal event in vivid, heart-pounding detail.
The story begins in the opening months of the 1940s, as the Germany army tightens its grip across Europe, seizing control of entire nations. The United States, who has resolved to remain neutral, is forced to enter the conflict after an unexpected attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. For the second time in fifty years, the world is at war, with the stakes higher than they’ve ever been before. Then in 1943, Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet in Casablanca to discuss a new plan for victory: a coordinated invasion of occupied France, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Failure is not an option. Over the next eighteen months, the large-scale action is organized, mobilizing soldiers across Europe by land, sea, and sky. And when the day comes, it is unlike anything the world has ever seen.
These moments and more are seen in real time. A visceral, page-turning drama told through the eyes of those who experienced them—from soldiers, nurses, pilots, children, neighbors, sailors, politicians, volunteers, photographers, reporters and so many more, When the Sea Came Alive “is the sort of book that is smart, inspiring, and powerful—and adds so much to our knowledge of what that day was like and its historic importance forever” (Chris Bohjalian)—an unforgettable, fitting tribute to the men and women of the Greatest Generation.’
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Transcript
Introduction to Garrett M. Graff and His Work
00:00:00
Speaker
ah Today, i am extremely excited to have on the show Garrett M. Graff for his new book, When the Sea Came Alive, An Oral History of D-Day.
00:00:11
Speaker
Garrett Graff has spent two decades covering politics, technology, and national security. The former editor of Politico magazine and longtime Wired and CNN contributor, he writes the popular Doomsday Scenario newsletter and hosts the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, Long Shadow.
00:00:26
Speaker
He's the author of 10 books, including the number one national bestseller, The Only Plane in the Sky, An Oral History of 9-11, The Threat Matrix, Raven Rock, and the New York Times bestsellers When the Sea Came Alive and Watergate, A New History, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
The Release and Unique Features of Graff's D-Day Book
00:00:44
Speaker
Garrett, how are you today? I am great. Thanks so much for chatting with me today. Your book is out in paperback. I believe that just came out last week. Yes. But I got to give a plug for audio book version, which is phenomenal because it incorporates, um you've got actual speeches from like Eisenhower.
00:01:03
Speaker
and There's like an actual team performing the ah the audio. um Really, switched back and forth between the ah the audio and the paper. ah version It was really great actually to listen to some of these accounts as I'm doing yard work and all that kind of thing. So um plug for the audio book as well.
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah. but um This is the second time I've worked on an audiobook with the same producer. His name is Scott Sherritt. um And he is a maestro of sort of putting together these symphonies of oral histories um with a full cast of speakers of various races and ethnicities and nationalities. Yeah.
00:01:46
Speaker
and And they did a fabulous job with ah When the Sea Came
Exploring the Oral History of D-Day
00:01:50
Speaker
Alive. And ah the audiobook actually won the highest industry award for best multi-voiced podcast.
00:02:00
Speaker
Is that right? oh I didn't put that in the bio. and You know, I can't see the badge when I buy the audiobook on all the awards that it got. ah Well, that's great. Well-deserved, in my opinion.
00:02:11
Speaker
um Well, the first question that I like to ah to to start off with for everyone who comes on the show is ah if you could just tell us, what is your book about? Sure. So this is a oral history, um as you said, ah of D-Day.
00:02:28
Speaker
And it is trying to tell the story of D-Day and Operation Overlord through the voices of the people who participated. So it brings together...
00:02:41
Speaker
In the end, I think it's ah about 700 different first-person accounts, um all ranks, all units, you know German, French, British, American, Canadian, Australian, South African, and so on, um to to try to tell a very kaleidoscopic view of...
00:03:07
Speaker
you know what is probably the most audacious ah military operation in history, um you know the the invasion of continental Europe in the spring of 1944.
The Planning and Training Behind D-Day
00:03:21
Speaker
um The book came out last year, ah which was, of course, the 80th anniversary. We're talking now in June 2025 of the 81st anniversary um when the book is coming out in paperback.
00:03:36
Speaker
And ah this is um this book was inspired in some ways by a book that I did in 2019 that was called The Only Plane in the Sky that was an oral history of 9-11 that, again, tried to tell ah the story of 9-11 morning to night, coast to coast in the voices of the people who lived that traumatic and terrible day in the United States. um
00:04:07
Speaker
You know, everyone from firefighters in New York and workers in the Trade Center to, um you know, people at the Pentagon to those aboard Air Force One with President Bush to, you know, school children across America.
00:04:21
Speaker
And that book came out in 2019, which was, of course, the 18th anniversary of 9-11. And that was, as a historical moment, an important inflection point because it marked the moment where 9-11 was just beginning to slip from living memory into history.
00:04:48
Speaker
You had, um you know, at the 18th anniversary, the first people born after 9-11 were going into the military and deploying to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that, you know, began...
00:05:06
Speaker
you know before they were born. um you know You had the first recruits coming into the Fire Department of New York born after that day when 343 firefighters lost their lives at the towers.
00:05:20
Speaker
And my hope with that project had been to try to explain to this new generation who had grown up in in their entire lives in the shadow of nine eleven but never actually known what it was like to experience 9-11.
00:05:38
Speaker
This D-Day book, I think, comes at the other end of that historical arc. And that's sort of the reason that I wanted to try to capture this project in a similar format for the 80th anniversary, which is...
00:05:54
Speaker
you know the reason that the 80th anniversary I think was so poignant last year is this is in many ways marking the final passing of that greatest generation.
00:06:07
Speaker
um you know The youngest of the World War II combatants are now you know effectively 100. And that what you know yeah for dday you had a million allied combatants on the move on June 6, 1944 across the English Channel in the United Kingdom.
Allied Efforts and Challenges in D-Day Preparation
00:06:34
Speaker
And, you know, now we're down to, um you know, really just a few thousand of them left alive. And i wanted to try to do this book for the 80th because it marks the final moment when D-Day is passing from memory into history.
00:06:58
Speaker
um You know, we, you know, you know, blunt terms, at this moment have every first person memory of D-Day that we will ever have.
00:07:09
Speaker
um And so to try to tell this story solely in those first person voices um to put people back, you know,
00:07:23
Speaker
In the troop transports, in the landing craft, on the beaches, in the hedgerows ah of that day, of that experience, in the words and memories of the people who actually lived it Yeah, well, i i I think my audience is probably pretty familiar with the ah history of D-Day, but I do want to just start off with some brief history. Most of my questions are going to be like the questions of the story about the story.
00:07:52
Speaker
um But could you just situate us here at the beginning about D-Day? um What has led the Allies up to this moment um for the ah the landing in Normandy? Yeah. And, um you know, on the one hand, that's like a very simple question. And on the other hand, that is this enormously complex one.
00:08:11
Speaker
you know, and one of the things that I, that really changed for me as I wrote this book was again, when I did that nine 11 book, there's exactly one chapter of the book that takes place before nine 11.
00:08:28
Speaker
Um, you know, there's one chapter about life on September 10th and, So when I started thinking about and researching this book, I was like, okay, I'm doing another oral history about a single day. you you know, might have a chapter or two about, you know, June 5th.
00:08:54
Speaker
And then, you know, the book probably starts the evening of June 5th and, you know, runs through the evening of June 6th. And as you get into D-Day and understanding Operation Overlord and understanding the audacity of it as a plan and an operation and the complexity of the logistics...
00:09:16
Speaker
What you really come to understand is all of the success of D-Day takes place before June 6th. And it's in the planning, it's in the logistics, it's in the training.
00:09:30
Speaker
And so actually 40% of the book, it takes place before you actually get to June 6th. And, you know, I sort of back up and tell this story of...
00:09:45
Speaker
um you know, Britain entering the war... America entering the war and then the way that these two countries learned to be allies together over the course of 1942 and 43. You know, we tell this story in history now of this great, you know, allied alliance and, you know, the incredible partnership between the UK and the US in this war.
00:10:18
Speaker
And that that's where we ended up, but that's not where we started. And it really took a couple of years for the US and the UK to learn how to be allies. it took It takes a couple of years for the US to build up the industrial might that it is ah it brings to the battlefield in Europe. yeah We have to move literal entire armies across countries ah the Atlantic ah to get them to stage in the United Kingdom.
00:10:53
Speaker
and And then train them all once we get there. And that sort of so much of 43 and 44 are spent in this Herculean training ah effort to deliver the, um you know, to to get these troops ready to fight on the beaches properly.
00:11:18
Speaker
When they land. And one of the things that we've now come to understand, um and this is um something that ah Peter Catech Adams, who's a British historian, calculated for his book Sand and Steel on D-Day.
00:11:33
Speaker
is that there were actually more Americans killed in the training for D-Day than there was in D-Day itself.
00:11:45
Speaker
um And that, ah you know, so one of the chapters of the book deals with Exercise Tiger, um which is the last full-scale dress rehearsal for the ah units that are going to go on to invade what we we now know as Utah Beach.
00:12:08
Speaker
And that, you know, to give a sense of the scale of the training, the UK government actually basically condemns and evacuates an entire county in the in Southern England um and you know forces the entire civilian population to to move out um to create basically the practice invasion beaches um that sort of look like the beaches that these units are going to invade in France.
00:12:45
Speaker
And then, you know, they send full convoys out into the English Channel and they turn around and then come back and invade South Hams in in England.
00:12:57
Speaker
And in the Exercise Tiger, this last full dress rehearsal for Utah... um German PT boats actually get into the convoy in the night before the um exercise invasion and sink multiple landing craft, torpedo multiple landing craft.
00:13:21
Speaker
And that it's this devastating moment for the Americans, both literally in terms of the lives lost, but then also the damage done to this incredibly ah small supply of
Myth vs. Reality: Soldiers' Experiences in WWII
00:13:38
Speaker
landing craft. I mean, it removes the literal last spare landing craft that the US has in its invasion fleet.
00:13:46
Speaker
And it was an incident that was completely covered up by the Pentagon, um you know, for 40 years. And, ah you know, the now believed death toll from that incident is around 700 American ah soldiers, um you know, far more than died on Utah Beach itself.
00:14:13
Speaker
um But the truth is we don't actually know the final death count and that sort of some estimates are that it was actually as much as a thousand um final casualties from Exercise Tiger. And so the book tries to walk through All of these stages from ah you know the British and evacuation of Dunkirk up through Pearl Harbor, up through um you know the the Battle of the North Atlantic to Exercise Tiger, and then the actual loading of the landing craft
00:14:46
Speaker
in the spring, um you know, in the sort of last week and in May and and first days of June in 1944. um Because, you know, so much of the drama of D-Day really unfolds in that part of the day before anyone actually even gets to the beaches in France.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah. And you, um, I love ah oral histories, um, uh, by the way. And one of the reasons why i really liked them is I love the firsthand accounts and you just kind of alluded to this, but the, the American The mythology around World War II from the American perspective is is so strong and it's so um so one-dimensional.
00:15:35
Speaker
and yeah i I grew up in like rural Northwest Indiana. and like you know the The greatest generation, um if you want to call it, I don't know, mindset, very strong there.
00:15:48
Speaker
Always grew up thinking, like you know America won the war, like we saved the world. um and you know, this was our war, this was our fight. And I really appreciated ah reading these these accounts for how like not everything was just like sent down from God for the Americans to to win this war. You just talked about how there were ah mishaps in training.
00:16:13
Speaker
and Some of your accounts that you actually give on D-Day of the the soldiers when they land, like some of them actually aren't like, you know, I'm here to like, I want to go kill Germans and like, you know, I'm really into that. and like some of them naturally scared for their lives.
00:16:29
Speaker
Um, some of them like, feel like the Germans haven't done any harm to me. Like what, do you know, why am i why am I here? um So, you know, I really love how, in particular, ah your your oral history was ah was able to do that.
00:16:44
Speaker
Oh, thanks. i yeah You know, and I think that that's where you begin to be able to pull apart some of this mythology when you get down to these individual um accounts.
00:16:56
Speaker
You know, there were... um You know, I think part of this is when when we write history, when we write narrative history, and I've written plenty of narrative history and in my career and and like it, um there's a tendency to make things seem neater, cleaner, simpler, and more preordained than any of the events actually felt for the people who were living through them.
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah. you know, coming back again to to nine eleven you know, the way that we talk about 9-11 in history books now is, you know, there were four planes and the whole thing begins at 846 with the first crash and is over 102 minutes later with the collapse of the second tower at 1028. And there were four attacks and, you know, the Pentagon and,
00:17:48
Speaker
ah ah the World Trade Center and the crash of United Flight 93 in Shanksville and 3,000 people died over the course of the blah, blah, blah, blah. But for any of us who lived through 9-11, like that's not the day that we experienced.
00:18:02
Speaker
You know, we did not know when the attacks began. We didn't know when they ended. We didn't know for much of the day how many actual attacks there had been. um And the original death toll estimates that day were like 10,000, 20,000, maybe even higher.
00:18:17
Speaker
and so when you tell the the narrative sort of straightforward factual history of a lot of these events, you you take out the,
00:18:30
Speaker
fear and the confusion and the trauma that is so central for the experience of the people who actually lived it. And so, you know we, as you said, you know, have this mythology of D-Day as, you know, one of the greatest, most successful, most noble ah military adventures in human history. um That's the...
00:18:57
Speaker
the memory of the people who were on board the troop transports, you know, crossing the English Channel on the night of June 5th. You know, that's not the experience of the people, of the paratroopers flying into, you know, the drop zones with the Army.
00:19:17
Speaker
um ah sorry, the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions. um And what you see are people who are, you know, scared. They're worried about whether they have what it takes to stand up in combat, whether they're going to let down their friends and and comrades, you know, whether they're going to live to see the end of the next day. And of course, for about 6,000,
00:19:47
Speaker
of the participants ah across D-Day, they didn't um that next day. um But you also see, and and this is where I love a couple of the things that you mentioned,
00:19:59
Speaker
you know, a whole bunch of these soldiers are sort of pissed that they're invading, ah Nazi Germany, you know, that they signed up after Pearl Harbor to go, you know, kill the Japanese and that they don't think that they are fighting the good war in Europe. You know, there's, you know, one guy saying, you know, what has Hitler ever done to me?
00:20:23
Speaker
Um, and, you know, we, we see these, um you know We sort of impart this like level of heroism and courage onto these people in the abstract in historical terms.
Diverse Stories and Histories of D-Day
00:20:39
Speaker
that um Not that these people were not worthy of that, but that that's not the experience or the emotion that they were feeling at the time.
00:20:48
Speaker
Sure. Well, I'm wondering if you, I know the book was published a year ago, um but hopefully um some of these accounts still really stick out in your mind. The 160, how many accounts did you have collected in here? Did you say 160? 700, yeah. 700. Okay.
00:21:07
Speaker
Far more. um Could you share a few that really stick out in your mind as being interesting or important? Yeah, so ah ah um I'll talk about a couple individual ones and then um a couple categories. um um One individual that i I tried really hard to um you know tell his story through this book is um Staff Sergeant Waverly Woodson, who...
00:21:38
Speaker
is a black medic, um one of the only black combat troops to land on D-Day. um He was part of um a anti-aircraft unit um on Omaha Beach that was the only black combat unit to be involved in ah in D-Day.
00:22:08
Speaker
And he gets ashore on Omaha Beach around 10 a.m. um So after the first couple of waves um have been, you know, for the most part decimated by German defenders.
00:22:23
Speaker
And is wounded himself before he actually even arrives on shore. And then proceeds on shore to treat the wounded of Omaha beach for 30 hours before he himself has finally evacuated.
00:22:45
Speaker
He treats, um, uh, somewhere around 200 wounded, um on Omaha beach, which, uh,
00:22:58
Speaker
means, you know, if that number is to be believed, he sort of personally treats somewhere between 5% and 7% of all of the American wounded Omaha Beach over the course of those 30 hours.
00:23:14
Speaker
And ah is one of the only black soldiers ah to be considered for the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor ah in World War II.
00:23:30
Speaker
In the segregated Jim Crow racist army of World War two not a single black soldier, ah sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guard,
00:23:42
Speaker
um you know servicemen of any kind ah receives the Medal of Honor in World War II. And... History ah you know has spent decades trying to fix that.
00:23:58
Speaker
um And President Clinton appointed a commission that awarded a host of of black um servicemen medals of honor in the Clinton administration.
00:24:12
Speaker
Waverly Woodson was not one of them um because his personnel records had been lost um by the time sort of history came back to reevaluate. And his unit ah in the First Army has spent, you know, years since, along with congressional ah representatives and senators like Chris Van Holland of Maryland, ah have spent years trying to get him Rightfully recognized for his work. He received a bronze star when in in World War Two for his actions on Omaha Beach. And actually ah last year after the book came out,
00:24:52
Speaker
um he was finally upgraded ah very belatedly to the Distinguished Service Cross. um And um he, you know, the the quest continues to get him, you know, I think the Medal of Honor that he rightly deserves, but he is, um you know, at least I think moving forward into one of the stories that we try to remember from Omaha Beach, that of the sort of incredible heroism and gallantry on the battlefield there.
The Compilation Process of the Book
00:25:33
Speaker
One of the other things I really worked hard on in this book ah was actually to tell the Canadian story um as sort of an overall category, um which is, you know, I think In the shorthand that we talk about D-Day, um you know, D-Day for most people means Omaha Beach.
00:25:55
Speaker
And, you know, it means those first waves, you know, that are the first, you know, 10 or 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. um And, ah you know,
00:26:08
Speaker
That's true as far as it goes, um but you know there were three beaches that were not American, um Sword, Gold, and Juneau.
00:26:19
Speaker
And that even among those other beaches, um the Canadian beach, Juneau, I think traditionally does not get the attention that it should um in historical terms. And ah it in um as you sort of, you and your readers, or you and your listeners may remember, they the Canadians bore the brunt of the disaster at Dieppe.
00:26:50
Speaker
And and ah so for them the, soldiers and as a country, um you know there's this special emotional poignancy to returning to invade the england the European continent.
00:27:08
Speaker
And so i really wanted to try to make sure that the Canadians are are at the the center of the D-Day story as well um and was able to gather up some really amazing ah oral histories of the Canadian units um that, you know, I think help ah reestablish ah that beach and its importance in the the overall arc of that day.
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah. and how did you, I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure what goes into the making of an oral history. This is kind of a technical question, but how do you come across these accounts? Yeah.
00:27:49
Speaker
Is it, is it on an archive? Is it, do you out and interview people? i know you yourself made a ah trip, um, to, to the beaches. Talk about that process. Yeah. So this is, um so I, uh,
00:28:04
Speaker
ah The answer is a little bit of all of the above, which is for this particular project, I gathered probably 5,000 personal histories.
00:28:17
Speaker
um And a big chunk of those ah came out of archives, um both at the National World War II Museum in the US and then the Imperial War Museum in the UK.
00:28:32
Speaker
And then, you know, dug up a lot of memoirs, um you know, local historical society interviews, um ah you know, TV specials, documentaries, ah you know, radio interviews. You know some of them are ah you know, a passing comment that a soldier made to a you know, correspondent for Stars and Stripes or Yank Magazine at the time, you know, in theater, um you know, up to, you know, Dwight Eisenhower. um And, know,
00:29:17
Speaker
And so, you know, I take those sort of 5,000 and I go through them. and And what you're really looking for, the way that I talk about it in terms of oral history, is yeah when you're going through oral histories um to compile a project like this, what you're looking for are the ordinary and the extraordinary.
00:29:41
Speaker
You know, you're looking for... what is the typical experience of a American infantryman in a Higgins boat heading into the beach?
00:29:57
Speaker
Um, you know, what is the typical experience of a paratrooper, ah from the British airborne, you know, heading on a troop transport to, ah you know, drop down and secure uh,
00:30:12
Speaker
um you know, the Eastern flank of D-Day. Um, and then you were looking for the extraordinary, you know, the, the truly atypical, uh, you know, one in, you know, a hundred thousand stories of weirdness or bravery or combat.
00:30:36
Speaker
Um, you know, the, I, I sort of, of course, you know, gathered up a bunch of, ah first person memories and and ah from Easy Company of the 506th Infantry, Parachute Infantry Regiment, which is the unit um you know that we know is sort of the Band of Brothers unit, the you know the Dick Winters um Band of Brothers unit.
00:31:05
Speaker
And that that, um you know, their story that day is is some of the most incredible that we see, um you know, the units that held and fought at Lafayette Bridge, um you know, which is some of the fiercest combat that's experienced. um Some of the accounts I actually thought that people had of each other were very interesting. yeah Like ah i'm I'm forgetting exactly.
00:31:30
Speaker
it might be this name sticks out because it's just a name that sticks out. I believe it's private malarkey. Yes. Yeah. Who, and I hope I'm not confusing him with somebody else, but some guys like, gosh, I i saw him kill like a thousand Germans or something. And it skips to his perspective. And he's like, I killed so many goddamn Germans today. Something like that.
00:31:50
Speaker
And I love just like seeing the that the perspective that people had on people that they were fighting with. Yeah. and And that was really, um you know, so, you know, once you sort of get that giant pile, then it becomes, you um I'm Vermonter and I talk about it in terms of, you know, it's sort of like boiling maple syrup.
00:32:10
Speaker
um You know, you start with a huge vat of sap and then you just sort of slowly boil it and boil it and boil it. And so the first draft of this book was...
00:32:22
Speaker
was about 1.4 million words. And then, you know, over months, you know, I cut out 90% of that and, you know, got it down to, you sort of the 160,000 words that it actually published.
00:32:43
Speaker
um published Now, here's a kind of a ah ah process question, but I think it's an interesting process question. um i've had I've had people on this show, I've been lucky enough to have several people come on and talk about World War two um from a a researcher perspective, in especially in like a European context. you know it's just it's very The European perspective is just much different than the American perspective, you know the German perspective, the French perspective, obviously, you know very different wars.
00:33:12
Speaker
And so I've had people come on and talk about how it was very difficult for them, for example, to get information um in French archives for Jewish relatives. Now, obviously that's the Holocaust, but that's different.
00:33:25
Speaker
I've had um a historian come on talking about Germany and and talking about how very hard for those archives to be opened um to do some of this research. And the answer that you might have to this might be a quick no, but did you have any obstacles in getting that research or getting these other accounts where, you know, not quite as heroic ah as the the American perspective?
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah. heroic the The German memories are legitimately hard to gather. um They are... um made harder uh there is actually a uh very famous and well-known and well-sold um book about the um you know sort of oral history of the German experience at D-Day ah that most serious historians now believe is entirely fabricated.
00:34:22
Speaker
um And so you know you sort of first stumble upon- Is this guy, the same guy who wrote like 14 fiction books? Did he write like- ah the Like heroic books about Nazis way out in like the sixties or something. I can't figure it yeah i mean, maybe maybe there's, there's another one, but the one that I'm thinking of um is ah by someone who there's sort of no proof that this author actually ever existed um at all. Yeah.
00:34:50
Speaker
um And ah so, you know, you sort of first stumble upon you're like, oh, this is fabulous. This is exactly what I want. And then, you know, it turns out no. um But there, um you know, I think...
00:35:05
Speaker
there's some There's been some really good work to gather, some French perspectives, some good work, not as many as I would have liked ah to gather the German perspective. um you know That was really challenging for a lot of the period after World War II because...
00:35:21
Speaker
you know, the Germans didn't really want to talk about their experiences in, in World War two Um, and, um, I, uh, uh, you know, I, I found myself for the most part drowning in more than I could gather, um or a more than I could sort of read.
00:35:50
Speaker
um you know The Canadian perspective is a particular hole in this. um There have large-scale efforts to gather these stories um on the US side, large-scale efforts to gather these stories on the British side, less so on the Canadian side.
00:36:09
Speaker
um But I was able to get um some really great stories um actually from a Canadian journalist who wrote um a book about Canada at Juneau, um who you know was just incredibly generous to me.
Recognizing D-Day as a True Allied Effort
00:36:25
Speaker
And you know I called him up out of the blue recently.
00:36:28
Speaker
And, ah you know, because as I was talking about with these stories slipping into permanent history, you know, the it is next to impossible to actually go out and and gather new Canadian ah interviews. But he had spoken to a whole bunch of Canadian soldiers about 25 years ago.
00:36:47
Speaker
And, you know, he like went out into his garage, dug out his, you know, boxes of manuscripts and went down to Staples and, you know, scanned them and emailed them to me so that I could draw upon them.
00:37:00
Speaker
Well, um before I kind of transition to to modern day type stuff, um any other accounts that, or not not just accounts, but any information and in your your reporting and and writing this book, um and anything else that is new information? in like you know D-Day has been written about extensively.
00:37:21
Speaker
and Anything like new or especially interesting that's worth mentioning? Well, I think the thing that I... the thing that I really tried to make clear in this project um was the sheer breadth of um both the complexity that went into this, but also that the real meaning of an allied effort, um you know, and to try to capture,
00:37:57
Speaker
a lot of voices um that people are not going to be familiar with as they dive into this story to try to make clear just how broad and important that alliance was um as it was all coming together in the spring of 44.
Dedication to History Teachers and Preserving History
00:38:16
Speaker
Yeah. Well, um for fast forwarding to where we're at now in history, you dedicate this book to history teachers. um Why is that important to you?
00:38:30
Speaker
um there's There's both a personal ah level to it, which is i am ah you know I am who I am today because I got interested in history early on as a student and you know just love it.
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah. But more broadly, ah you know at this very particular moment, I think as a country, we would be well served to understand more of our own history and certainly the complexity of our own history then ah than we mostly do.
Evolving Narratives of WWII and Lasting Impacts
00:39:08
Speaker
Now, do you feel like... I i don't know if you know World War two is I think i'm i can say that it's like the last, in general, it's like the last war that America fought, that there was like a clear good guy and a clear bad guy.
00:39:25
Speaker
um i think you know your your book definitely like challenges a lot of the traditional narratives, but I'm curious if you think where we're at right now in history, if the narrative around World War II and our involvement is changing, and maybe not for the maybe for the better, but maybe for the worse, you know, maybe we're, maybe the, maybe we're, we're taking the myth in a different direction. um i guess I'm just curious in your thoughts, the, this the modern state of how we teach ah World War two ah if you think that's going in a bad direction.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think for me, the thing that i thought a lot about is what we are doing as a country with the legacy that the greatest generation left us.
00:40:17
Speaker
That this is, um you know, this is a generation that not only fought and won World War II, but then set up the global America-centric liberal world order that helped ensure that we didn't have world wars ever again um and and by ever i at least mean in the 80 years um you know 81 years since the end uh uh of world war two and you know we are
00:40:57
Speaker
We are in a moment where we are having a lot of conversations about what America is and what it isn't and what it stands for. and I think.
00:41:10
Speaker
The simplest answer to that question is ah you are what you are willing to fight for. And i think one of the questions that we have to wrestle with as a country right now ah is are we as willing as a country to fight for freedom and democracy and a stable world order now as that generation was in 1941 through 1945. You know, not to get, and this is not a political show, but obviously like war, you know, it it touches politics. and As Klaus Schwitz says, war is politics by other means.
00:41:56
Speaker
Thank you. I i always ah love a good Klaus Witts reference on this po on this podcast. um you know The other day, i was um i've never you know i don't want to get into to the President of the United States too much, but um you know he he had said something that I actually think is is kind of a common way of looking at the world around the country.
00:42:22
Speaker
in the The German chancellor was in his office and um he said that they were it was about to be D-Day. This is just last week. and And the president goes, oh, that wasn't a good day for you guys.
00:42:34
Speaker
And then the the chancellor responds, well, actually, that's the day that our country was liberated from um authoritarian dictatorships. And it you know it got me thinking that you know we still kind of have this, um i know like I don't want to i don't want to ah reduce this to like a sports game, but kind of this mentality of like ah winners and losers and um not maybe not an understanding that you know um what's going on in Europe today, you know it's it's not quite as um
00:43:12
Speaker
I don't think what the the word I'm looking for is, but what I'm getting at is like a misunderstanding um that there is like a winner and loser and we can all go home and be friends now. What do you think that as far as like attitudes on us winning World War II, do you think that needs to change?
00:43:31
Speaker
Should it change? um I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, so I think, um, so, ah you, you know, this, but, um, for listeners, I have another book coming out in August, um, which of course marks the end of the 80th anniversary of world war II.
00:43:53
Speaker
That is another oral history, um, about the Manhattan project and the atomic bombings. Um, and.
00:44:03
Speaker
August, of course, 80th anniversary ah of the bombings of Hiroshima and and Nagasaki and and then the german sorry the Japanese surrender um in on August 15th and leading up to the surrender ceremonies with Douglas MacArthur on the Missouri on September 2nd.
00:44:24
Speaker
And,
00:44:27
Speaker
you know, the war with Japan in the Pacific was an entirely other struggle um you know in some ways there is not that much linkage between ah you know the axis nations of uh uh in europe and and imperial japan in um except that they were sort of both wars unfolding at the same time um with sort of the same alliance on the other side um
00:45:01
Speaker
it And I think, you know, in a weird way, one of the things that we should be proudest of as a country about the legacy of World War II is...
00:45:17
Speaker
is the rebuilding of both Germany and Japan, um you know, more broadly Europe through the Marshall plan.
00:45:28
Speaker
Um, but that, you know, by the 50th anniversary of, um, D-Day and and certainly by the 60th, Japan and Germany were two of the you know biggest, most powerful economies and democracies in the world.
00:45:51
Speaker
um And that's an incredible... legacy and testament to the hard work that you know the the greatest generation put into not just the war, but what came after.
00:46:07
Speaker
um And the thing that I worry about right now is i think it is not a coincidence that that we are watching a lot of the unraveling of that world order and the sort of democracy backsliding um in the United States and overseas at precisely the moment that we are losing the greatest generation.
00:46:41
Speaker
um that because I think we are losing the generation who knows how hard that work actually was and who knows, um you know, how hard it was to actually keep the peace in the way that it was kept.
00:47:03
Speaker
And, um you know, there's an Eisenhower quote from when he was leaving as president um in 1960. And he says, um you know, something along the lines of, you know, the proudest thing that he did as president was keep the peace.
00:47:24
Speaker
And, you know, by God, I can tell you that that didn't just happen, that they sort of had to work every day to keep the peace um during his time as president during the Cold War.
Graff's Personal Journey with D-Day
00:47:38
Speaker
And and I think I worry that we're going to really miss the the um you know sort of rules-based international order and um you know the sort of strong democracy ah movement globally ah once it's gone. Yeah.
00:48:04
Speaker
Well, Garrett, it's been an an excellent interview. I've loved your answers to my questions. my My last question um is ah about you personally. And I'm curious, um for you, you write about in your epilogue how you've had a lifelong fascination with D-Day since you were a kid.
00:48:22
Speaker
um How has your understanding of D-Day changed writing this book and going through the experience? So I think Uh, one of the fun things for me as a historian is the chance to go back to topics that I sort of would have told you I knew a lot about right up until the moment I actually started writing a book about it.
00:48:44
Speaker
Um, and, you know, I wrote, uh, a previous history of Watergate, um, uh, then, um, you know, the, this book on D-Day is sort of two of those examples, um, where, you know,
00:49:02
Speaker
I grew up on D-Day mythology. You know, I, you know, watched Saving Private Ryan. You know, I read, um, you know, all the Stephen Ambrose books of the nineteen ninety s and,
00:49:15
Speaker
ah and Then when you actually start to sit down and write a book about a subject, you approach it with an entire other level of depth and intimacy.
00:49:29
Speaker
And, ah you know, it's... ah I think one of the things I really came away from this project with is As much as I've talked about over the course of this podcast, you know, trying to undo and and peel back some of the my layers of mythology that have been built up around D-Day.
00:49:51
Speaker
um The D-Day actually deserves the reputation that it has. you know It is um you know this grand, audacious event that is unlike anything humans had ever under undertaken before or since.
00:50:07
Speaker
um you know It really was one of the most noble causes ah humans have ever fought for. um you know An effort to liberate an entire continent from...
00:50:18
Speaker
totalitarianism and authoritarianism, um you know, an invasion, unlike almost any other in human history, launched not for conquest, but for liberation. And, um you know, I i think in in a lot of different ways, you know, we should, as a country and as a people and as a democracy, ah you know, be just as proud of D-Day as the mythology tells us to be.
00:50:47
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we will end on that note. um Well, Garrett, if people want to stay in touch with what you're doing, actually, where can they follow you? do you have a website? do you have some social media handles? Yep. um I am GarrettGraph.com and I'm Vermont GMG, the state and my initials, Vermont GMG on blue sky.com.
00:51:11
Speaker
um And as I said, my next book comes out in August and it's the another oral history called The Devil Reached Toward the Sky, an oral history of the making and unleashing of the atomic bomb.
00:51:27
Speaker
and Well, consider my pre-order ah pre-made then on that one. Well, Garrett Graff, When the Sea Came Alive, An Oral History of D-Day. um Now I'm paperback. Go buy a copy. Go check it out from your library. Don't discount the audiobook either because it's incredible.
00:51:44
Speaker
And Garrett, thank you so much for your time today. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you.