October 22, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, historian Stephen Ambrose tells us the unlikely World War II story of George McGovern, the antiwar presidential candidate who was defeated by President Nixon in 1972.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
And we continue here with our American Stories. And up next,
Greg Hengler has an unlikely World War two story about
George McGovern, the liberal, anti war Democratic presidential candidate from
South Dakota who was soundly defeated by President Nixon in
the nineteen seventy two election.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Stephen Ambrose is one of America's leading biographers and historians.
Ambrose's works have inspired Americans to regard its war veterans
with newfound reverence. His best sellers chronicle our nation's critical
battles and achievements. From his seminal war works D Day
and Band of Brothers to Undaunted Courage and Nothing like
(00:56):
It in the World, The Men who Built the Trans
Continent Mental Railroad. Stephen Ambrose passed in two thousand and two,
but his epic's storytelling accounts can now be heard here
at Our American Stories, thanks to the permission from those
who run as a state. Here's Stephen Ambrose to tell
us a short story from his book The Wild Blue
(01:19):
The Men and Boys who flew the B twenty four's
over Germany.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
My next book is a story of the B twenty
four in the Second World War, and it's not exclusively
about it's about a squadron and then about the bomb group.
But one of the members of the squadron was George
McGovern who is a pilot of a B twenty four
(01:47):
thirty five missions got the Distinguished Flying Cross. He flew
bombers in the Second World War, and he did. And
how do you open a story? I opened with George.
He had come back from a raid over Vienna. He
was all shot up, with shouting on everything in the plane,
just barely limping along, and it's a good story in itself.
(02:08):
And the crew called up to him, Lieutenant, we got
a bomb stuck in the bomb bay, half in and
half out, and so they're either going to have to
bail out or they're going to have to get rid
of that bomb. And George told him, go to work
on that bomb so you can get it loose. And
they finally called up, and they were now over a
part of western Austria rural and they called up, Lieutenant,
(02:32):
we got it. We're ready to drop it, says George.
And they were by this time because they were so
badly shot up down to about ten thousand feet and
it was a clear day and he could see that
bomb going down. He watched and watch and watch. He
hit a farmhouse and George looked at his watch and
I'm a farmer. I come from South Dakota. I know
(02:53):
what time farmers eat. After the bomb fell, McGovern closed
the bomb bay doors and headed home. On the intercom,
he and Cooper, the navigator talked. McGovern asked, what's the
highest elevation we're going to go past. Cooper looked at
his map that his calculations and replied eight thousand feet.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
George, eight thousand feet.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
In an interview, Cooper told me, actually it was only
seven thousand feet, but I added another thousand feet because
I was engaged to get married. Cooper grinned, and then added,
as George was expecting his first child, he added another
thousand feet on top of that.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Back at scherck Nolo was an easy landing. No one
had been hurt.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
McGovern jumped into a truck and rode over to the
debriefing area, where the Red Cross woman gave him coffee
and a donut. An intelligence officer came running up to him,
the same officer who had handed him a cable back
in December that told him his father had had a
heart attack and died and the bomb group commander told
George you can take tomorrow off, and George said, no,
(04:01):
I'm not going to take that excuse.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I'm here for a job this time.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
However, the officer was grinning from ear to ear as
he handed a cable to McGovern. He said, congratulations, daddy,
you now have a daughter. The cable was from Eleanor.
Their first baby, whom she named Anne, had been born
on March ten in the Mitchell Methodist Hospital. Eleanor concluded
the cable child doing well. Love Eleanor, I was just
(04:30):
as static, McGovern said, turbulent. But then he thought Eleanor
and I had brought a new child into the world today,
and I probably killed somebody else's kids right at lunchtime. Hell,
why did that bomb have to hit there? He went
over to the officer's club and had a drink Keeap
red wine. He was toasted and cheered, but he later said,
(04:52):
it really did make me feel different for the rest
of the war. Now I was a father. I had
not only a wife back home, but a little girl.
All the more reason why I wanted to get home
and see that child. He returned to his tent and
wrote elean Or a long letter. He did not mention
the farmhouse, but he couldn't get it out of his mind.
In an interview last year, he said to me that
(05:14):
thing stayed with me for years and years, decades. If
I thought about the war, almost invariably, I would think
about that farm. There's been much criticism of the American
air effort in the Second World War.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
People have said, cheese.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
All that production that went into making those bombers, all
of the expense of training those pilots and the crews
that would have been better spent on the army or
on the Navy instead of on those big bombers.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Plus wick. What they did was just awful.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
They killed women and children, and they never hid any
of their targets.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
According to the critics, we shouldn't have done it. Well,
we don't know. What we do now is the Allies
won the war.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
What McGovern did, What the seven forty first Squadron did,
along with the rest of the four to fifty fifth
Bomb Group and all of the fifteenth Air Force and
the eighth Air Force, most especially in their attacks against
oil refineries and marshaling yards, was critical to the victory.
They paralyzed the German Army in April nineteen forty four,
(06:26):
the Germans were producing oil at a rate of one
hundred percent. They had plenty of it. This was down
a year later to one percent. Hitler could not get
gasoline for his Mercedes. German tanks couldn't move. They became
fixed fortifications. The Germans. This is the country of Mercedes.
(06:49):
The Germans had no trucks. They had become a horse
drawn army. Fighting a twentieth century war. McGovern his crew
and all the airmen had sent the war yors, not
in vain, but in doing good work. Along with all
the peoples of the Allied nations. They saved Western civilization.
(07:11):
George Clemensaw, the French Prime Minister of the First World War,
was living in London in the Second World War, and
he watched these aircrews in action, and he had this
to say, they were kittens in play, but tigers in battle.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
In nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Five, McGovern was lecturing at the University of Vensbruck. The
director of Austria's television in the state owned station contacted
him to ask him to do a documentary.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
To do an interview for a documentary.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
He was producing, an Austrian World War two mcgovernor reluctantly agreed.
It was a woman reporter doing the interview. She said,
Senator McGovern you're known around the world for your opposition
to war. That you were a bomber pilot in the
Second World War. You hit our beautiful cities, Innsbrook, Vienna,
(08:05):
you killed women and children.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Don't you regret that?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
McGovern's answer, Well, nobody thinks that war is a lovely
affairs humanity at its worst, it's a breakdown of normal communication,
and it's a very savage enterprise. But on the other hand,
there are issues that sometimes must be decided by warfare
after all else fails. I thought Adolph Hitler was a
madman who had to be stopped. So my answer to
(08:31):
your question is no, I don't regret bombing strategic targets
in Austria. And her face just dropped. She was terribly disappointed.
And George being George, saw that and he said, well,
there was one bomb that I do regret. What was that?
(08:54):
McGovern told her about the bomb that had stuck in
the Bombay door and had to be jettison on March fourteen,
nineteen forty five, and what happened cut end.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Of interview and the.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Documentary was showing a couple months later on Austrian TV.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
And there's a call at the station. It's an old man.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
He said, I'm a farmer and that was my farm
that he had.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
It was exactly the way he described it. And I
want you to tell Senator McGovern that I.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Saw that bomb come out, and I got my wife
and our two little girls and we went into the
ditch and nobody got hurt. And I further want to
tell you to tell Senator McGovern. I don't care what
other Austrians say. I hated Hitler. I hated him so
much that the instant I saw my little farmhouse and
(09:49):
my barn go up, I thought to myself, if this
shortens the war by one second, it was worth it.
The television station called McGovern and told him what the
(10:10):
farmer had said. For McGovern, it was quote an enormous
release and gratification.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
It seemed to just wipe clean a slate.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And what great storytelling by one of the great storytellers
of all time, particularly all things surrounding World War Two.
And thanks to the Stephen Ambrose Estate for allowing us
to use that story. The story of George McGovern and
of course the story of the conscience of a soldier.
Here on our American stories,
And we continue here with our American Stories. And up next,
Greg Hengler has an unlikely World War two story about
George McGovern, the liberal, anti war Democratic presidential candidate from
South Dakota who was soundly defeated by President Nixon in
the nineteen seventy two election.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Stephen Ambrose is one of America's leading biographers and historians.
Ambrose's works have inspired Americans to regard its war veterans
with newfound reverence. His best sellers chronicle our nation's critical
battles and achievements. From his seminal war works D Day
and Band of Brothers to Undaunted Courage and Nothing like
(00:56):
It in the World, The Men who Built the Trans
Continent Mental Railroad. Stephen Ambrose passed in two thousand and two,
but his epic's storytelling accounts can now be heard here
at Our American Stories, thanks to the permission from those
who run as a state. Here's Stephen Ambrose to tell
us a short story from his book The Wild Blue
(01:19):
The Men and Boys who flew the B twenty four's
over Germany.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
My next book is a story of the B twenty
four in the Second World War, and it's not exclusively
about it's about a squadron and then about the bomb group.
But one of the members of the squadron was George
McGovern who is a pilot of a B twenty four
(01:47):
thirty five missions got the Distinguished Flying Cross. He flew
bombers in the Second World War, and he did. And
how do you open a story? I opened with George.
He had come back from a raid over Vienna. He
was all shot up, with shouting on everything in the plane,
just barely limping along, and it's a good story in itself.
(02:08):
And the crew called up to him, Lieutenant, we got
a bomb stuck in the bomb bay, half in and
half out, and so they're either going to have to
bail out or they're going to have to get rid
of that bomb. And George told him, go to work
on that bomb so you can get it loose. And
they finally called up, and they were now over a
part of western Austria rural and they called up, Lieutenant,
(02:32):
we got it. We're ready to drop it, says George.
And they were by this time because they were so
badly shot up down to about ten thousand feet and
it was a clear day and he could see that
bomb going down. He watched and watch and watch. He
hit a farmhouse and George looked at his watch and
I'm a farmer. I come from South Dakota. I know
(02:53):
what time farmers eat. After the bomb fell, McGovern closed
the bomb bay doors and headed home. On the intercom,
he and Cooper, the navigator talked. McGovern asked, what's the
highest elevation we're going to go past. Cooper looked at
his map that his calculations and replied eight thousand feet.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
George, eight thousand feet.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
In an interview, Cooper told me, actually it was only
seven thousand feet, but I added another thousand feet because
I was engaged to get married. Cooper grinned, and then added,
as George was expecting his first child, he added another
thousand feet on top of that.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Back at scherck Nolo was an easy landing. No one
had been hurt.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
McGovern jumped into a truck and rode over to the
debriefing area, where the Red Cross woman gave him coffee
and a donut. An intelligence officer came running up to him,
the same officer who had handed him a cable back
in December that told him his father had had a
heart attack and died and the bomb group commander told
George you can take tomorrow off, and George said, no,
(04:01):
I'm not going to take that excuse.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I'm here for a job this time.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
However, the officer was grinning from ear to ear as
he handed a cable to McGovern. He said, congratulations, daddy,
you now have a daughter. The cable was from Eleanor.
Their first baby, whom she named Anne, had been born
on March ten in the Mitchell Methodist Hospital. Eleanor concluded
the cable child doing well. Love Eleanor, I was just
(04:30):
as static, McGovern said, turbulent. But then he thought Eleanor
and I had brought a new child into the world today,
and I probably killed somebody else's kids right at lunchtime. Hell,
why did that bomb have to hit there? He went
over to the officer's club and had a drink Keeap
red wine. He was toasted and cheered, but he later said,
(04:52):
it really did make me feel different for the rest
of the war. Now I was a father. I had
not only a wife back home, but a little girl.
All the more reason why I wanted to get home
and see that child. He returned to his tent and
wrote elean Or a long letter. He did not mention
the farmhouse, but he couldn't get it out of his mind.
In an interview last year, he said to me that
(05:14):
thing stayed with me for years and years, decades. If
I thought about the war, almost invariably, I would think
about that farm. There's been much criticism of the American
air effort in the Second World War.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
People have said, cheese.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
All that production that went into making those bombers, all
of the expense of training those pilots and the crews
that would have been better spent on the army or
on the Navy instead of on those big bombers.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Plus wick. What they did was just awful.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
They killed women and children, and they never hid any
of their targets.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
According to the critics, we shouldn't have done it. Well,
we don't know. What we do now is the Allies
won the war.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
What McGovern did, What the seven forty first Squadron did,
along with the rest of the four to fifty fifth
Bomb Group and all of the fifteenth Air Force and
the eighth Air Force, most especially in their attacks against
oil refineries and marshaling yards, was critical to the victory.
They paralyzed the German Army in April nineteen forty four,
(06:26):
the Germans were producing oil at a rate of one
hundred percent. They had plenty of it. This was down
a year later to one percent. Hitler could not get
gasoline for his Mercedes. German tanks couldn't move. They became
fixed fortifications. The Germans. This is the country of Mercedes.
(06:49):
The Germans had no trucks. They had become a horse
drawn army. Fighting a twentieth century war. McGovern his crew
and all the airmen had sent the war yors, not
in vain, but in doing good work. Along with all
the peoples of the Allied nations. They saved Western civilization.
(07:11):
George Clemensaw, the French Prime Minister of the First World War,
was living in London in the Second World War, and
he watched these aircrews in action, and he had this
to say, they were kittens in play, but tigers in battle.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
In nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Five, McGovern was lecturing at the University of Vensbruck. The
director of Austria's television in the state owned station contacted
him to ask him to do a documentary.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
To do an interview for a documentary.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
He was producing, an Austrian World War two mcgovernor reluctantly agreed.
It was a woman reporter doing the interview. She said,
Senator McGovern you're known around the world for your opposition
to war. That you were a bomber pilot in the
Second World War. You hit our beautiful cities, Innsbrook, Vienna,
(08:05):
you killed women and children.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Don't you regret that?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
McGovern's answer, Well, nobody thinks that war is a lovely
affairs humanity at its worst, it's a breakdown of normal communication,
and it's a very savage enterprise. But on the other hand,
there are issues that sometimes must be decided by warfare
after all else fails. I thought Adolph Hitler was a
madman who had to be stopped. So my answer to
(08:31):
your question is no, I don't regret bombing strategic targets
in Austria. And her face just dropped. She was terribly disappointed.
And George being George, saw that and he said, well,
there was one bomb that I do regret. What was that?
(08:54):
McGovern told her about the bomb that had stuck in
the Bombay door and had to be jettison on March fourteen,
nineteen forty five, and what happened cut end.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Of interview and the.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Documentary was showing a couple months later on Austrian TV.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
And there's a call at the station. It's an old man.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
He said, I'm a farmer and that was my farm
that he had.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
It was exactly the way he described it. And I
want you to tell Senator McGovern that I.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Saw that bomb come out, and I got my wife
and our two little girls and we went into the
ditch and nobody got hurt. And I further want to
tell you to tell Senator McGovern. I don't care what
other Austrians say. I hated Hitler. I hated him so
much that the instant I saw my little farmhouse and
(09:49):
my barn go up, I thought to myself, if this
shortens the war by one second, it was worth it.
The television station called McGovern and told him what the
(10:10):
farmer had said. For McGovern, it was quote an enormous
release and gratification.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
It seemed to just wipe clean a slate.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And what great storytelling by one of the great storytellers
of all time, particularly all things surrounding World War Two.
And thanks to the Stephen Ambrose Estate for allowing us
to use that story. The story of George McGovern and
of course the story of the conscience of a soldier.
Here on our American stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.