Mission Over Glory: General George C. Marshall and WWII - Rachel Thompson - Substratum 611

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This video is a part of a seriescreated in collaboration with
the George C Marshall International Center about
George Catlett Marshall Junior and his home, Dadona Manor.
The George C Marshall International Center brings to
life the timeless values of selfless service and unwavering
integrity to develop visionary leaders worldwide.
Learn more about Dadona Manor, view upcoming events, and join

(00:20):
the mission to preserve Marshall's legacy at
georgecmarshall.org. The appeal of this place was
really the outdoors, because Marshall himself liked
gardening. He liked to put on his coveralls
and go dig in the dirt. So that was the appeal.

(00:41):
But on a rainy day, this is the exact place where they would
gather. Was there anywhere specific to
anyone to start at or any any You said you had a couple quotes
or something? This idea of the experience of
studying someone for that long and what the golden Nuggets are

(01:02):
of having studied him for that long.
And then, if it would be OK, I would like to mention what
Truman had to say about his, about who he was and what there
was to say about him at the timeof his death.
You can. Start wherever you want, OK,
whichever whatever point you want to.
Start with, all right? Let me know.

(01:23):
Right now, if you want to, yeah,whatever.
Just like I don't have introductions or anything.
OK, Well, I'm delighted to be here to talk about General
George C Marshall, or we could say Secretary of State Marshall
or many other titles that he held.
But I've studied Marshall for a very long time here at Didona.

(01:44):
Our docents might say that. Well, Rachel has been studying
George C Marshall since the lastcentury, and that's actually
true. So it it's it's almost an odd
thing to spend that much time with one person and their effect
in history. As an American history teacher

(02:05):
at the time I was a teacher, we used to say Columbus to the
Mekong Delta. And by the way, history teachers
have to go a lot farther than the Mekong Delta these days.
But to concentrate on this particular person and the
history that surrounded that particular person has been an

(02:26):
interesting journey and a rich journey that was not framed by
needing to tell the entire storyof American history.
So as a retired American historyteacher, it was a unique
opportunity. So sometimes when I talk to
rising juniors and seniors in high school about Marshall, and

(02:50):
I want to say something that's very succinct, I I refer to
something that President Harry Truman had to say about him at
the time of Marshall's death in 1959 at his funeral service.
And he said this. He said General Marshall was an
honorable man, a truthful man and a man of ability.

(03:14):
And then he says honor has no modifying adjectives.
A man hasn't or he hasn't. General Marshall had it.
And then he says truth has no qualifying words to be attached
to it. A man tells the truth or he
doesn't. And Marshall was the
exemplification of a man of truth.

(03:36):
And then he finishes by saying that ability can be qualified.
Some of us have a little of it, some of us have moderate
ability, and some men have it tothe extreme.
General Marshall was a man of great ability.
So he was a man of honor, a man of truth, and a man of greatest
ability. So if we let all of that study

(04:01):
of this individual sift down to some core thing, that pretty
well covers it. And oftentimes when we study
history, even when we study about leaders who do great
things, if we study deeply, we find an oops, we find a

(04:23):
disappointment in who they were.And although Marshall is by by
no means a perfect man, and we don't present him that way, if
you study him deeply, you will come away with this sense that
he was a man of excellent character, a man of integrity, a
man of truth. You might not always like his

(04:44):
truth, but he was going to tell you what he felt was true.
And I've read lots of opinions about Marshall in terms of what
what were his gifts, what made him special from any other
general who went to the Pentagon, to the war offices or

(05:05):
to the Pentagon with his briefcase.
And may I give you 2 examples? Forrest Pogue wrote a four
volume biography of Marshall, and he said Marshall's genius
lay in his ability to combine animmense talent for organizing

(05:30):
global military and diplomatic operations with a unique sense
of how such organization had to be accomplished in a democracy.
And that is just a huge element of Marshall's strengths.
And there's a background for that.

(05:50):
May I tell you what that is? When Marshall was a young
officer in World War One, he imagined that as a young
officer, you are going to a global war we're talking about
the United States of America andour fortress America, and how we

(06:11):
were going to stay out of European troubles.
But here we find ourselves in a global war, and Marshall learned
a great deal about how to move armies, how to deal with supply.
1000 lessons that were extremelyimportant because I had to do

(06:35):
with whether or not individuals,including soldiers, survived
that particular war. And when that war was over,
General John J Pershing, who wasthe in charge of the American
Expedition Air Forces in World War One, he tapped Marshall to
become his aide. Dekamp and Pershing came back

(06:58):
from World War One as the US Army chief of Staff, and at that
time they were working on a an Army reorganization bill.
And Marshall helped Pershing with the testimony for all of
that discussion. He worked with senators,
congressmen, the president of the United States.

(07:20):
And this is a young man who's very young in terms of this kind
of exposure. He's 40 years old, and he is
working at the very top of this government.
But he came to understand through that experience exactly
what the military can do, given the fact that we are a

(07:42):
Democratic Republic, and that decisions even about the
military and perhaps especially about the military, are directed
by people who are elected by thecitizenry.
And a lot of people don't understand that at all.
And they see the military as their turf.

(08:04):
And I get to do whatever I want.And after all, I'm a soldier and
I'm going to help win battles, all of that.
And Marshall certainly wanted todo that, but he always
understood that there's this construct.
And I used to tell my students that he had an excellent U.S.
government teacher because that teacher taught him that as a

(08:29):
military person, you can make your case before that Congress
and you can make your case before that president.
But in the end, it is those people.
It is that those people are the ones who are ultimately going to
make the decision about what youare allowed to do.
And in this country particularly, we are fearful of

(08:51):
large standing armies to begin with.
And so that experience of being with Pershing at the end of
World War 1 was really formativefor him, I think.
And so it wasn't just that he was a good organizer, that he
could organize global military and diplomatic operations, but

(09:14):
it was how that could be accomplished within a democracy.
And then imagine we are then in World War One.
We were more in association thanan alliance with the British and
the French. But in World War Two we formed
this Anglo American alliance andwe had a formidable ally in the

(09:35):
Soviet Union. So we're not only talking about
interacting with congressmen andsenators and even presidents,
but we are talking about being on an international stage and
we're talking about a second global war in 20 years.
And we are talking about making decisions that will affect, in

(09:59):
our case, the lives of as many as 8.2 million young men who
have been called to serve. So imagine the understanding,
the brokering that had to be done to determine issues of
strategy. And in those wars, both World
War One and both World War 2, and for that matter any war,

(10:23):
there is the problem of scarcity.
There's never enough of what is needed.
And so therefore, he is not onlyoperating in a democratic
environment, but he is operatingin this international
environment. And it involves people like
Winston Churchill, not to mention Franklin Delano

(10:46):
Roosevelt, who had his own desires about how things should
go in that operation. And then let's add Stalin and
Shanghai Shek. So understanding how systems
worked in, in, in something as serious as a global war was

(11:07):
something that Marshall understood.
Not that he always liked it, andnot that he was only always
satisfied with how it came out, but it was something that he was
able. It was an environment that he
could handle and that he did handle.
Yeah, One of the things that yousent me when you sent the little
Mountain really good informationthat you send over one of the

(11:30):
lines there was. Marshall was very much shaped by
his upbringing. He had a rather remanding father
who loved his son but was ambitious for him, a mother
whose guidance was gentle but effective, and older brother who
seemed to be a golden child. Is that how that kind of shaped
Marshall during the early years?I really think so, especially
the contrast between his mother and his father, because his

(11:54):
father could be very stern and demanding.
And he loved his son deeply, don't get me wrong.
But he wanted him to succeed. He we all want our children to
succeed. So in some cases, his father's
method was to be tough with his mother.

(12:16):
And Marshall says that his mother was one of the most
important influences of his life.
When he did something he wasn't supposed to do, he almost
confessed it to his mother, and his mother essentially told him,
you don't want to do that again.And that contrast was huge.

(12:37):
And then playing in the background, you have this older
brother, I I sometimes call him the golden child, where everyone
thinks, Oh my goodness, that Brother Stewart is doing
extremely well. And why isn't George a little
more like him? There is a little bit of that
expectation when you read about their childhood.

(12:59):
And and yet, and we always tell this story of how Marshall
overheard his, his brother Stewart saying to his mother,
you know, you don't cause Stewart had gone to VMI and had
accomplished great things academically and in every other
way at VMI. And he's telling his mother, you

(13:20):
cannot let George go to VMI because he will ruin the
family's reputation. And Marshall says, right then
and there, I decided I was goingto wipe his face.
And it's a, it's a wonderful statement because that sense
that somehow his brother didn't think he was OK to accomplish

(13:44):
what he had accomplished at BMI set him on a particular course.
And then when he goes to BMI it he takes to that kind of
military structure. And even though he was kind of a
squirrelly kid and maybe his brother recognized that, the
fact is that BMI sort of broughthim into focus and it became the

(14:08):
beginning of what what would be a very successful military life.
And when we talk about the formative influences of young
people, because again, we discuss that with juniors and
seniors in high school a lot, oftentimes there is some
catalyst, something that sets that person on a path.

(14:31):
And for Marshall, it was VMI. And one of the things he says
about VMI, which I found very interesting, is he says, you
know, if I hadn't, he becomes the first captain in his fourth
year at VMI. He is the first captain.
He holds the highest rank of anybody at that military

(14:53):
institution. And he says if I had not had
that role, maybe I would have been as slack as I could be.
But I did have that role and I understood that something was
expected of me that I had to figure out a solution to
whatever problem arose. And sometimes problems did

(15:15):
arise, even in AVMI setting where you're basically managing
cadets. And I always find that
interesting where he says, OK, if I hadn't been the first
captain, maybe I would have beenas slack as I could be.
But in this role, I knew I had aresponsibility.

(15:35):
And he says, I knew I had to make decisions that would not
end with the resentment of the people that I LED, which I also
thought was an interesting comment on his part in looking
back on VMI. So between his mother and the

(15:56):
Virginia Military Institute, howwould you define responsibility?
His responsibility? Or how would you define in terms
of because Marshall was like, it's almost like the ownership
of actions, like taking ownership of what happened and
being able to communicate that with other people.
And that's both the responsibility that he did with

(16:17):
his mother but and also at VMI. So how would you define
responsibility? I think he understood that there
were expectations in roles that he held what starting out at VMI
as first captain, that with title came responsibility and

(16:42):
also that a portion of that responsibility had to do with
needing to act. Marshall was not a hand wringer.
You know, it wasn't like, oh, this is too hard.
Imagine the challenges that wereput before him.
And yet in each case, he felt hehad to make a decision because

(17:04):
he held that position of leadership even in extremely
imperfect circumstances. And going back to his mother, I
think a part of and he always talks about her as a, a
formative person in his life. He oddly, he doesn't name his

(17:27):
dad, names his mother. And I think that had to do with
that gentle manner in which she taught him right from wrong in a
very essential way. And by the way, he was also
reared in the Episcopal Church. He was christened in that church
and he went to church all of hisyoung and adult life, young

(17:50):
adult life, and into his old agefor that matter.
And there were these certain keyideas that were taught even in
that church setting. There was a very interesting
gentleman, A reverend at this Saint Peter's Episcopal Church
in Uniontown that Marshall nameswith his mother.

(18:11):
He names this individual as an important factor in his
development. And this man's name was John
Whiteman, Reverend John Whiteman.
Now, this story is so interesting to me because, you
know, as I mentioned, George Marshall as a kid, just kind of

(18:33):
a squirrely little guy. He's got all kinds of projects
going. He can get into a certain amount
of trouble, but And this Reverend John Whiteman was a
young minister who'd come to that Episcopal Church.
It was very interesting because Marshall said that the minister
had been there before, was an elderly man who had kind of died

(18:55):
on the job. And this young Reverend Whiteman
comes to be the Episcopal minister.
It's interesting also to me thatMarshall says that the town, the
people who went to the EpiscopalChurch, it's like they kind of
wouldn't give him a fair shake. You know, he's like, OK, he's
the young minister. And, and Marshall strikes up a

(19:18):
friendship with this young reverend and they go on hikes
and he takes him around to some of the historic sites, as
Marshall's dad took Marshall around to historic sites.
And Marshall was very interestedin that.
But Whiteman sees something in this boy that eventually bears

(19:40):
fruit. And however he was shaping that
young boy, it was hitting its mark so that many years later,
Marshall is saying the Reverend Whiteman in Uniontown was an
important influence in my life. Did Marshall have a lot of?

(20:01):
Have a good ability to no one tobe patient and no one to take
action. Well, oftentimes he had to wait
to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish and what he believed
in. For example, from the beginning
of World War 2, Marshall believed that a cross channel
invasion to destroy the German army was the strategy that

(20:25):
should be pursued, but because of the circumstances of supply,
the circumstances of building anAmerican army, the influence of
of Churchill in terms of strategy.
And water. Thank you.
Marshall had to wait several years really before that was

(20:48):
accomplished, even though he believed that in the war plans.
Division also believed that, by the way, that a cross channel
invasion, not these peripheral side attacks, was the strategic
way to go. But boy, he did not get that and
eventually he made compromises that helped him understand the

(21:10):
stakeholders. You know, nowadays we talk about
stakeholders and that there wereother aspects of strategy that
were driving decisions for NorthAfrica or up the Italian boot
that had to be put in place before this cross channel
invasion could take place. And he accepted that and, and

(21:36):
made course corrections, even though that that piece, that
idea that we don't take real estate, we take armies was still
such a big part of his thinking.And he made all kinds of
compromises that were required. And some people, I I heard some
somebody say, oh, well, Marshallis very uncompromising.

(21:57):
Well, that's just simply not so.He had to make all kinds of
compromises in dealing with these various stakeholders in 12
conferences of that war where you are talking about two
formidable enemies and the stakes are extremely high.

(22:19):
Did you? Want to drink some water?
Right now, yeah. Thank you.
And is it all right if you put the paper down just because the,
the rustling, I don't know. I don't know how much of that
gets on. Also, I also noticed that when
people use their hands more, they usually are like articulate
better. So it's like it was just, it was
just one little thing. I don't think it's a major
problem. And that second quote, did I

(22:40):
mention the second quote about Marshalls abilities, special
gifts and abilities? From Truman.
Not so much from Truman, but what was it about Marshall's
abilities that was different than, say, other generals, and
that a lot of his abilities lay in that experience with General

(23:04):
Pershing at the end of the war in Washington.
But also there was another writer, Lance Morrow, who had
had a military career himself. He wrote an article about
Marshall in Smithsonian Magazinein 1997, and he said he

(23:26):
possessed an extraordinary intellect, an astounding memory,
and what might be called a kinetic military imagination, a
genius for seeing the dynamic interaction of facts through
time. And so if we look at what were

(23:48):
maybe almost like a gift, Marshall's ability to see not
only the big picture, but the moving picture was really
important to what he was able toaccomplish in overall strategy.
Because for all practical purposes, in World War 2,
particularly, Marshall is a, he's a desk warrior.

(24:10):
And yet his ability to see how armies work across time and
across space was almost a gift for him.
And it, it was important. So just having like a.
Like taking the military aspect of it out, just a kinetic
imagination would be just havingan imagination that is not.

(24:35):
Focus on what? Could be, but rather what is?
And then working with that current reality that you have.
Yeah, and he's he. Does that constantly and he is
required to do it constantly. But I was talking with a, a
group of, of military leaders the other day and we were
mentioning a Civil War general, George McClellan, George B

(25:00):
McClellan. And you know, it is said
McClellan was a, he was like central casting for a general.
Even the way he looked, you know, if you were going to make
a movie about a general of the Civil War, you would choose him.
And he could get that army, He could get those brass buttons

(25:21):
polished. He could get them in in rank
order. But he never got any.
But he never. He could never.
Move it. And I, I, I validated this by
looking it up because I thought,well, surely not.
But that general that Abraham Lincoln did write him a telegram
to say, if you are not going to use the army, may I borrow it?

(25:43):
And that is the exact opposite of Marshall.
So a very famous set of plans that Marshall produced was in
World War One in the Muse Argonne offensive, where you had
to move French soldiers in this group of French soldiers out,

(26:04):
American troops in here, you hadto deal with 90,000 horses.
Just try to wrap your head around 90,000 horses, OK.
And yet again, I mean, it was just, and I'm by the way, you
had to do this under the dark ofnight.
You had to move these troops under the dark of night or on

(26:25):
trains that were being shot at by the enemy.
And so it's interesting what he says because it just sounds like
a truism. But he said, I thought the best
way to begin was to commence. But it's very important.
It's hard you've. Got a hard job, but somehow you

(26:47):
have to sit down and do something about it.
And yet this was a young officerof World War One, and he put
together this plan that ultimately was a series of
offenses that was going to bringthe Germans to the point of
surrender. Now, that doesn't mean that it
was a nice neat and tiny or tidySalmiel Muzargon offensive.

(27:13):
It was not. But in the end, the basic
concept of it worked, and that was that idea of being able to
imagine how an army moves through time.
But a larger idea about that kinetic military imagination was
this larger understanding of systems and that that is just

(27:38):
played out over and over again. So Marshall was able to not get
him. Nowadays, we would say, you
know, people get themselves intosilos where they they see only
their channel and none other. And Marshall saw the
relationship between these different pieces.

(28:00):
For example, when he is at Fort,not Fort Leavenworth, but Fort
Benning, he's training these young officers and he's telling
them, listen, you know, you're, you're going to be dealing with
fast moving planes and tanks andarmies that are going to be in

(28:24):
situations far from ideal. What's going to happen to you is
that you are going to be leadingyoung men that have been asked
to go to battle for you and for your country.
And this is a very real thing because when you first got to
Fort Benning, these trainers, for example, it was almost like

(28:46):
they were phoning it in as if they did not realize what is the
other side of that training. And that is the young soldier
that he worked with when he worked with the Civilian
Conservation Corps in the 1930s,this young recruit, this young

(29:07):
draftee. So in looking at systems, he
never saw this training officersover here as an abstraction.
He saw that as being related to this young man over here who's
left his home, his job, his family, and he's being asked to

(29:30):
sacrifice his life if necessary.So it's not like this is over
here in one silo and these boys are over here in another.
It was. There is a connection here and
he always saw that connection. How would you define a?
System. A system is.
Something overarching that you can.

(29:57):
That you can bring. Efficient action to when
Marshall was Secretary of State.Sometimes we talk about Marshall
as the architect of the Europeanrecovery program.
We call it the Marshall Plan. But when Marshall got to the
State Department, and again, looking at organizational

(30:19):
systems, even when he's in the Army as a general, he's looking
at how the Army is organized andhow you can become a more
efficient Army. So he gets to the State
Department. He's had a lot of experiences
that bring him to be the Secretary of State.
Even though he had been a careersoldier, he had been in many

(30:44):
varied scenes of power. But one of the things that he
noticed when he got to the StateDepartment was that all of these
entities, you know, there were the there was a Latin American
group and there was the Europeangroup, and there was the Asian
group within the State Department.

(31:05):
And they were all in their little kingdoms, their little
fiefdoms. And all of them wanted to talk
to Marshall, and Marshall saw, first of all, we need to have
somebody at the top who filters this information and this need
and these questions through, because I cannot be the person

(31:28):
who answers every question aboutthis organization.
So that was one piece of it thatwas important.
But when you started looking at what shall we do about what has
happened to the Europeans because of this global war,
which was his task, you know, hesays first of all, he, he, you

(31:49):
know, that practical sense of groups of people across time and
space, he understood, OK, we in the United States, we like to
talk about democratic institutions and market
economies. But he says the people in Europe
are not interested in institutions of any kind if they

(32:10):
do not know how they're going tofeed their children at night.
So there was that idea that was systemic, that idea that.
There are these basic. Needs for all human beings and
that you cannot accomplish certain things if you just
ignore that kind of reality for people, especially looking at

(32:34):
Europe at the end of World War 2.
And then secondly, he said, you have to have a group of people
who can think about how to solveproblems, so.
He. Found it or he created what came
to be known as the policy planning staff at state as.
Far as I know. I'm almost certain that it still

(32:56):
exists, but the idea was that. Somebody had to.
Have a piece of time and a role that allowed them to think about
solutions. And in fact, this group that was
put together in that first policy planning staff was

(33:17):
made-up primarily of economists at the State Department or
Soviet specialist. Knowledge that.
These are the issues that are going to be tough.
And George McKinnon, he called George McKinnon, the brilliant
George McKinnon, who was also a Soviet expert over from the War

(33:37):
Department, and he put him to work.
Heading up this. Policy planning staff and he
gave him two weeks to create a plan, plan for the
reconstruction of Europe. It took him, It took McKinnon.
Kennon, not McKinnon, but Kennon3.
It took Kennon 3, but that groupof thinkers were able to outline

(34:03):
what became the skeleton of thatplan.
And that is the plan that was the IT was the first output of
the policy planning staff was the plan for the Marshall Plan.
So Marshall, did he sit down? I mean, when I first came here
to the dawn of people wanted to picture him in there in his
little office writing out the Marshall Plan.

(34:25):
No, no, no. And yet he was extremely
influential in how it all came out because of this broad,
systemic understanding of how groups work.
How did Marshall compare? To like the other generals like
Patton, Bradley, MacArthur, Eisenhower.

(34:45):
How did he? I mean, obviously.
Marshall was the chief of chief of staff of the Army, but or
Yeah, Chief of staff of the Armyor chief of staff.
No, he's just the Army of the Army.
So how did he be able to? Because I know Patton had his
own personality. MacArthur had his own
personality. Yeah.
How did Marshall be able to 1 beable to manage all those people,

(35:08):
but also be able to keep? Them in check.
It was something. That he managed and it's
interesting because they Patton is a good example because of
course he had this unique personality that we all have
heard about. And and.
MacArthur. And if you think about wartime

(35:31):
and scarcity, you think about a MacArthur out in the Pacific.
You think about Marshall managing a Europe first victory
before the main thrust of the United States military power
could be invested in the Pacific.
And you think about MacArthur out there wanting the help that

(35:53):
he wasn't getting enough of. And Marshall first.
He understood that, but he was able to stay the course for the
strategic view that you could not let Hitler Rove over Europe
for three or four years while you tried to Vanquish the

(36:17):
Japanese in the Pacific. And yet MacArthur was pushing on
Marshall constantly, and everybody understood why, you
know. And yet Marshall could handle
the likes of a MacArthur and hisdemands.
And he respected MacArthur, too.He respected his generalship,

(36:42):
but he had to manage him, and heallowed MacArthur to be
MacArthur and he allowed Patton to be Patton as long as it did
not subvert the dominant paradigm of strategy for this
war and for MacArthur. As much as Marshall recognized

(37:03):
that MacArthur had legitimate needs out in the Pacific, that
this overarching peace had to berespected and in due time help
would come. And a good example, by the way,
of how he managed these generals, and Patton is a prime
example, is that Eisenhower, of course, Patton is under

(37:30):
Eisenhower. And there's a situation where he
there's a slapping incident withthese soldiers who are
supposedly, you know, suffering mental breakdowns because of the
vicissitudes of war. And you know how all that went.
And it's very famously depicted in the movie Patton.

(37:54):
And then Patton makes these, quote, indiscreet remarks in
England that get him in a great deal of trouble.
And Eisenhower is telling Marshall that Patton has broken
out, has broken loose again. And Marshall basically tells
Eisenhower, you are in command of this operation that you're

(38:19):
planning. And he says I will respect.
It's your decision. You're the one that's going to
need to work with him, and I will respect your decision about
it. And I will handle kind of the
politics of it on this side. The one thing he says in this
letter, this telegram back to Eisenhower, is that Patton has

(38:44):
had tank experience. He mentions that, and he leaves
it strictly up to Eisenhower. And basically, Eisenhower writes
a letter to Patton and tells himif you do this again, you know
you're out of here. It was that idea, but he did not
move patent home, for example, which could have been a

(39:07):
possibility given the fallout from this, but Marshall gives
him permission. Mentions something.
That might be salient. And leaves it there.
So yeah, I I think that he understood that.

(39:33):
Many generals have. Big personalities and that's
just fine. You do not have to be anything
like me. But if it interferes with the
big picture, then that can be a different matter.
So Marshall was. Really good at forgiveness with
room for redemption. Yeah, You don't see.

(39:56):
Him. I don't see him.
Holding grudges, is that what you mean?
I think so, yeah. It's it's business.
It's business, it's the job, andthese jobs are hard.
And he supports these, the challenges that these generals

(40:18):
have, whether it's MacArthur in the in the Philippines or
whether it's Eisenhower getting ready for this Allied Normandy
invasion. But he it's just business.
I need to, we need to win this war and we're working on how to

(40:41):
do that. And that is the main issue.
You have to get something. Done but also know that people
are human and that they're goingto make mistakes and that while
like there's a certain line thatdoesn't get crossed, it's like
still having enough room for. For.
Uncertain circumstances, one of the things.

(41:02):
For example, that that Marshall did was just before the Allied
invasion of Normandy date, he brought Ike back to Washington
for, I don't know, a week because he could see that
Eisenhower was really getting frayed.
You know, his communications with Marshall indicated, listen,

(41:27):
he's he's just stretched to the limit and Eisenhower had
enormous responsibility. And so he bring.
He says Nope, I want you to comeback.
And talk. With the president and see your
wife and have some time to relax.
And of course, Eisenhower said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I can't

(41:50):
possibly do that. Was this around the time?
Eisenhower was the supreme commander of the Allied forces,
Absolutely he. It's we're talking about March
and June is the day we're we're that close.
So you can imagine Eisenhower's oh, no, no, no, no, I can't do
that. And Marshall says, yes, you can
do that. So, you know, he he gets him a

(42:13):
room at the Greenbrier Resort and he meets with Roosevelt and
he has this week where he gets off the scene and that Marshall
understood that that was an important thing.
And there are other examples where he notices that this

(42:37):
general is getting overly stressed and takes very kind of
subtle action to esat a little bit.
And he always recognized that when you are on a battlefront,
you are under enormous stress because the stakes are so high

(42:58):
for you. Just imagine Eisenhower on the
morning of June 6th deciding, looking at the clouds, the kind
of aluminum trailer that he's inis like shaking from the wind
and the rain, and he's supposed to say go or don't go.
Imagine the pressure of that. And Marshall really appreciated

(43:22):
that, going back to a time when Marshall had to make decisions
that had to do with people who had been his friends.
And the mission when World War 2came, there were a whole series
of officers that had been in World War One and had performed

(43:44):
very well in World War One. And now we are building an army
for what became World War 2. And Marshall?
He feels that a lot of these soldiers, I mean, a lot of these
officers, high-ranking officers in this 20 year interim have
gotten, you know, they've they've lost their edge and he

(44:09):
he does not feel that they are physically or mentally capable
of remaining in a war situation.Yeah.
Is it because they? Became like complacent or like
docile, sort of both. Because there's no war going on.
And he says they were either not, they weren't physically
well enough or mentally well enough.

(44:32):
They had lost their edge. And Marshall said, you know, no,
no officer is willing to say that he's not up to the punch.
And so therefore, he had what hecalled a plucking committee.
And 500 of these officers were retired.
Now, Marshall knew, Marshall knew a lot of those officers.

(44:57):
He had worked with them in WorldWar One or in other assignments,
military assignments. And Oh my gosh, there were
officers that would never speak to him again.
But Marshall, the mission was tobuild an army with good
leadership and he did not see that they were capable of it.

(45:20):
And so therefore he did the hardthing.
And he says, I, I think some of them never forgave me.
But it did not keep him from saying, well, I'm going to take
that one out and leave that one in.
It was all based on the idea of are they capable of serving?
Yeah. So is that what kept?

(45:41):
That separated Marshall from therest of the crowd, which is that
even between World War One and World War 2, during like, the
peaceful time, I mean, there wasa Great Depression and
everything. But during that time when there
was no war, he still sharpened his mental sword.
And he kept keeping that edge upso that when the war did come,
he was prepared enough to be able to handle the task of

(46:02):
becoming chief of staff. The day that Germany invades
Polk, Right? Yeah.
As he told his successor, You seem to have left me in a war.
Yeah, because the experience in late the late 1920s at Fort
Benning. Keep in mind that.

(46:22):
Marshall has the experience of World War One in his very fresh
memory. And when he gets to Fort
Benning, he's he's training these young officers.
And toward the end of World War One, he sees, you know, we've

(46:42):
those 90,000 horses are soon going to be replaced by, by
tanks or jeeps or other vehicles.
He sees that this is going to bea mobile army.
He sees that you can't use the past war to train for the next
war. He, you know, somebody said,
well, tell me what's going to happen.

(47:04):
I don't want to hear what happened in the last war.
I want to know what's going to happen in the first six weeks of
the next war. If anybody understood that, it
was Marshall. But again, he's looking at these
officers and he's saying these are the young men who lead, who
will lead troops in battle. And already things are beginning

(47:27):
to heat up again in Europe. So the past doesn't.
Define the future. But rather, it's just a lesson
of mistakes that shouldn't happen again, right?
And and. He simply said it's not the war
we're going to fight. When we fight another war, we're
not going to be in these static trenches.
It's going to be a war of movement, and you have to get

(47:49):
used to the idea that you're going to move armies quickly and
you're going to use machinery todo it, and you're going to go on
terrain maybe on a daily basis that is unfamiliar to you.
It will not be like that last war.
But moreover, it's going to be real.

(48:13):
And, you know, for example, whenhe was at Fort Benning, he
noticed that these training officers, like Fort Benning was
a huge complex. I don't know how much it's been,
how much it's been reduced now, but I mean, it had thousands of
acres. And so this officer who was
doing the training, he was goingout to the exactly the same spot

(48:36):
every single time with these young officers in the training
exercises. And, you know, it was kind of
like you had the answers in the back of the book and they were
given everything they needed to accomplish the task.
And Marshall says that's not what happens in a battle.
What happens is that you don't you may not even know the

(49:00):
terrain that you're in. You may have maps that have
whole sections that are not useful to you.
And you, you are going to be there in the dark of night with
enemy fire coming at you. That is what you're going to be
experiencing. And so even for the trainers, he
says, I want you to go to other parts of the reserve to do

(49:26):
something different. And just that one thing is just
a good example of that. And he tells, he tells these
young officers that are being trained, they come in and he
says he gives them a blank sheetof paper.
And he says, now I want you to write down all of the territory

(49:47):
that you went across, all where,where describe your your journey
to your training spot this morning.
And they're thinking, oh, OK, after they said, gulp, they did
the best they could. But he says you have to be
observant. You have to realize that this,

(50:08):
this business of being in a war,a real war, things are in a
state of flux. You don't know what you're
dealing with, but you have to take the best information that
you can gather and you have to decide something that can
determine the fate of those young men that you're leading.

(50:29):
And then and I, I don't know, you know, it's interesting how
some the assignments of 1's career can shape a person.
So he does have Fort Benning thing in the late 20s.
He has the experience of a global war unbelievable.

(50:52):
And now he's training these officers and then he's working
with the Civilians Conservation Corps.
That was an amazing assignment for him.
And by the way, he loved it. And you know, that Civilian
Conservation Corps is is it's a Roosevelt New Deal idea.

(51:15):
And he loved that. That was his favorite New Deal
program. And why not?
I mean, you had these young men,they.
Had no jobs. You think about the Great
Depression, 25% of people who wanted a job did not have a job.
And a lot of those were like young single men roaming the

(51:38):
country, riding on freight trains, going down the road,
knocking on doors, asking for bread, literally.
And so that Civilian Conservation Corps was to get
them off of those freight trains, to get them off of those
roads, because this idea of these young, restless men posed

(51:59):
a possible danger to the Republic, if you will.
But, I mean, they came from the city, They came from the
country. They'd never had dental care.
Many of them were literally hungry.
As. As they said that the thing
about the Civilian Conservation Corps is that you had three hots

(52:21):
and a cot, but that was amazing.One Civilian Conservation Corps
young man, he says, Oh my gosh, they brought a platter of pork
chops and you could have as manypork chops as you wanted.
So the idea that they were well nourished, that they were
getting good meals, that they had a clean place to sleep and

(52:41):
that they got training. And Marshall saw, look how they
improve when you give them basictraining.
And he understood perfectly thatthose officers I was training
at, back at Fort Benning, guess what?
These are the guys that you're going to be leading if a war

(53:02):
comes. And when war did come, three
million of those young soldiers had been in CCC programs.
So those It was such a fortuitous set of circumstances
for Marshall that working with Pershing at the top.
Working with these. Officers in that middle ground

(53:25):
and then working with the very young men who were were going to
be called to serve, who had no experience militarily, and yet
we're going to be asked to make this sacrifice.
All of those things. Were incredibly important to
Marshall and he learned from each of those experiences.

(53:49):
You know, sometimes we, we talk to our students and we say,
well, you know, so and so learned from his experiences.
Well, some leaders don't learn from their experiences at all,
actually. And yet Marshall did.
He's always observing. And for example, at the end of
World War Two, he Marshall saw what happened at the end of

(54:12):
World War One with the Treaty ofVersailles and the kinds of
economic conditions that made italmost impossible for these
countries to survive and also set the stage really for World
War 2. I mean, in a lot of ways, World
War 2 is an extension of the issues of World War One.

(54:36):
And, you know, as, as I said, hesaid, you know, look at these
people, they're starving. And so they're not real
interested in democratic institutions.
And the even the idea, by the way, that Germany would be a
part of the Marshall Plan. Now you have to realize that in

(54:57):
the beginning, Germany wasn't Berlin German.
The whole of Germany was dividedinto 4 sectors.
And so we're talking about the occupied portion until that was
no longer the case. But the fact is that Marshall,
listening to his policy planningstaff economist, understood that

(55:22):
you cannot send Germany back to a pre Bismarck Agricultural
Society. And why is that?
Because the German industrial complex is integral to that
whole Western European recovery and that, and Can you imagine,

(55:44):
I'm sure you understand that theFrench weren't real happy with
Germany. And yet even the French came to
understand that to punish Germany is to punish us.
And that kind of broad level of really systemic understanding,

(56:06):
that was a big old piece of it, that Germany piece.
And yet, Marshall said you have to create circumstances where
free institutions could survive.You have to create circumstances
where it's not the, it's not thetask of the United States of
America to put a soldier on every street corner in Europe

(56:29):
because we're not able to do that.
They have to recover. And that involves Germany and
Germany. The recovery and the
appreciation of Germany, by the way, for the Marshall Plan is
huge. Do you want to take?
A small break just so I can makesure everything stays recorded.

(56:51):
I do have one thing I want to. Go to once we once we get back.
All right? Do you want to tell me?
What it is Journey over. The end result, which ties into
the movement being I was kind oftying in like the life lesson
of. Moving rather than.
Stagnating of being always, always having the mindset of, of

(57:12):
being comfortable with change and being always moving and
that's comfort with that chaos. I think there was one.
There was one movie made in the USSR that was obviously like
Soviet propaganda or something, but the way it was made was
really, really good. I never watched it but it well.
Hitler. He had this filmmaker who

(57:37):
triumphed. The triumph of the will.
Yeah, yeah. I think that was one of.
The most influential films, Yeah.
I mean, even at the Olympics, you know, the Jesse Owens
Olympics, this one woman whose name I, I can't remember.
It's I, I haven't conquered her name.
I should because she was very important filmmaker for Hitler.

(58:01):
And I mean, like, she got down under the track, you know, dug a
hole to so that you could see the runners coming in, things
like that, which weren't done atall, but the Frank Capra movies,
you know? Marshall said.

(58:22):
You know when? When?
The. Colonial.
Person, you know, the man, you know, he, he was taught.
Then he, he uses the term Indian.
Of course we wouldn't use that now a Native American, the
indigenous person, you know, comes to his gate.

(58:43):
Then he takes his weapon from over the mantle and he defends
his home, hearth and home. We all get that a man's home is
his castle, but he says, the young man who's going even to
Europe, why am I, why do I have to fight over here for, for

(59:05):
these people, you know that they, they need to be, they need
to understand why they've been asked to do that.
So that why we fight. The first one that Frank Capra
produced was the Battle of Britain.
And by the time you see. It you know you're ready to take
your weapon from over the mantleand head to London, you know

(59:29):
that was that was a good movie. Yeah, it is.
I mean, it's just like you see that, you see that that red BLOB
or that black BLOB going over Europe and closing out the
light, you know, is very good. The other one.
The Longest Day, that was also areally good movie.
That was because that's that's mostly on D-Day.

(59:49):
The the amount of 'cause I thinklike the first 3045 minutes of
the movie is just them waiting for D-Day time in the event
itself is just them sitting around waiting for the for
someone to say all right time togo or not go.
And to have that machine ready to go and to then by the way,

(01:00:10):
perhaps say, no, we're not going.
Talk about. Eisenhower having a a a real
decision to make that came rightdown to him and only him.
And by the way, when? You watch Saving Private Ryan.

(01:00:31):
You see? That opening scene on the beach
and, you know, veterans from D-Day, you know, like in that
opening scene in Saving Private Ryan, I mean, these soldiers are
crying for their mothers. And the soldiers in these
reunions say soldiers crying fortheir mothers.

(01:00:53):
And as a mother to watch that scene, it's just heartbreaking,
you know? But again, it gets back to this
idea of that's that really is what you're asked to do.
And it's a great old big fat ask, you know?
Anyway, don't get me started. It's all right, so.

(01:01:14):
What you said earlier. About movement and how Marshall
was always trying to be on the move, that he wasn't trying to
stagnate. He's trying to sit down and and
wait for something. He always was moving even when
even when nothing was happening was still moving, still doing,
getting stuff done which is partially journey over the end
result trying just enjoying the journey but still having that

(01:01:37):
end goal. But also tying it.
To like personal life. Is there a big difference?
Between being comfortable with stagnation and being comfortable
with movement of always trying to always trying to make sure

(01:01:58):
that you're not holding yourselfback, That's a really
interesting. Question where Marshall is
concerned, because part of it isbeing driven by what he's being
asked to do as a career soldier.And this one person who is on

(01:02:20):
our board, this General Crawford, when he talks to high
schoolers, when they come here for this ethics in leadership
conference that we have, he tells them you, you grow where
you're planted. And that was so characteristic
of Marshall. And it's.
Linked to a sense of duty, this.Is what?

(01:02:45):
This is the path that has been chosen for me.
I'm going to control that path as much as I can, but.
I have a. Responsibility and I just press
on. How would?
How would you define? Duty in terms of Marshall.
It is a a sense of commitment tothe United States of America and

(01:03:08):
its military aims. And it's, it's just a very
strong, clear sense of responsibility that Marshall
has. It's it's patriotism, but it's
not like flag waving kind of patriotism.
It's the idea that you have chosen a military life and that

(01:03:32):
you have been given responsibilities that a
government larger than you has told you you are to do and you
press on. I mean, he had a kind of, I
don't know, endurance mentality.That doesn't mean that he always
loved the assignments that he got, for example, when he got
sent to the Illinois National Guard after Fort Benning and he

(01:03:55):
didn't he didn't love that assignment, but he took it on,
you know, the the United States military.
And by the way, MacArthur was U.S.
Army chief of staff at that time, had sent him to Illinois
because there was labor unrest and it was thought that the
National Guard units there were not up to some of the labor

(01:04:18):
unrest that might occur, say in Chicago.
And so he didn't love going to the Illinois National Guard, but
he took that responsibility on. And in the end, those National
Guard units were up to speed. So duty is.
Doing things that. Are not only for a higher.
Cause but just the right thing to do for the responsibilities

(01:04:40):
that you're given an acceptance.That this is the career I've
chosen. In terms of the other positions
that he held, then you see this sense of duty over personal
preference. I just don't think he could have
imagined what would be asked of him after he retired from the

(01:05:01):
military. They were not going to be going
fishing in the great Northwest and even to go to China to try
to sort out these warring forcesof Mao and Chang mean.
This wasn't what he thought he was going to be doing.
And one of the people who's working on the ground, this

(01:05:23):
General Wiedemeyer, he tells Marshall in the early days, and
I won't be able to set the sceneup totally accurately.
But basically, Wiedemauer tells him, look, you're not going to
be able to do anything about this.
And Marshall, you know, has thislittle flash of temper.
And he tells him, we are going to do something about this, and

(01:05:44):
you're going to help me. And it's like, OK, I get it.
But that is an interesting example because it was a very
thorny task trying to find this peaceful settlement between
these two forces. And some would say that he was

(01:06:05):
not successful in making that happen, even though he certainly
worked very hard to make it happen.
But there was that idea, that scene where Widomar is being
defeatist, and it's like, no. So here Marshall becomes
Secretary of State, you know, you know, he steps off the train

(01:06:29):
at Union Station and he goes to be sworn in as Secretary of
State. No fishing in the great
Northwest, right? And yet and look at the problems
that the State Department had toconsider, primarily what to do
about Europe and the destructionthat has befallen them.

(01:06:52):
And was Marshall expecting to bethe Secretary of State?
No. But he applies the systems that
he's found, that he found work for him in a military setting.
He answers Truman's call to try to do something about the
situation in Europe, and he applies what his gifts are in

(01:07:18):
setting up a situation where a plan could be developed that
would be effective for that recovery.
So again, what does he do? He just presses on.
I know I've. Heard multiple times that
Marshall always reserved his feelings for Catherine.
How was his relationship with Catherine?

(01:07:38):
What kind of woman was she? Very interesting.
Woman. Now here is where I like to
mention his first wife and his second wife because Lily, whom
he met down in on the VMI post right off the VMI post where he
heard her playing a piano like his mother did.

(01:07:58):
So he was pretty much a goner early on and she was beautiful,
which helped, but you know, she she was kind of a Victorian
woman and she was the perfect wife for him in the early days
of his career. Now you take Catherine.
That was a totally different story.
First of all, Catherine graduated from Holland's College

(01:08:19):
in 19 O 2. 6% of anybody graduated from college and you
can believe that most of them weren't women.
So we'll start with that. And then she wanted to study
Shakespeare in theatre and really she wanted to act in
Shakespeare in theatre and she pursues that.

(01:08:43):
And you have to realize her, herfather is a Baptist minister,
which is unbelievable that he allows her and her sister to go
to England to study the Shakespearean study.
We use the word study here to study Shakespearean theatre.
And then she ends up acting for this Benson company, which would

(01:09:03):
have been an incredibly reputable Shakespearean company
in, in, in England and just pursues a career in acting.
And eventually, you know, she comes back to the United States
and makes a rather conventional marriage to this attorney and
has the three children. But Oh my gosh, she was an

(01:09:27):
interesting modern woman becausethey got married in 1930.
So this work that she was doing in England, you know, we're
talking about the 1920s and, andyet I, I find it interesting
and, and excellent that Marshall, I think loved both of

(01:09:48):
these women very much. They had successful marriages
and yet they were very differentin their personalities.
And that idea that I, I reserve my emotions for my wife, what
that line that he said, that time, the fact is that he was a
person who did not display a lotof emotion.

(01:10:12):
I mean, he, he, you got what yougot.
And it wasn't going to be, you know, a lot of chitchat.
He's not going to be talking about who won the Redskins game
around the water cooler. That's just not him.
And he felt that this kind of formal, straightforward demeanor
was important. And so every once in a while,

(01:10:41):
you know, he he expressed an emotion.
For one thing, he had a bit of atemper that every once in a
while got to him. But in terms of how he presented
himself to officers, the formality of it was something
that he intended to do and. And I, I think he's.

(01:11:06):
Speaking to that and I think that he felt that soldiers that
the military who saluted him, they wanted this person who
seemed to be in control. And so you don't see too many
outbursts. Now you do see an outburst every

(01:11:28):
once in a while when it when something is subverting the
dominant mission. And that has to do, for example,
with the railroad strike in 1944, when the railroad workers
go on strike and Marshall is in a news conference and the
reporter called him white knuckle angry because and he he

(01:11:55):
references the fact that Marshall had been time man of
the year. You know, he armed the Republic.
Yeah, he armed the Republican. Boy, is he mad?
And that came back, that emotioncame back to that sense of
fairness that we are in a war, asense of mission.

(01:12:17):
We are in a war. And many of these railroad
workers had deferments and, you know, you know, in certain ways,
the economy of the war had movedus out of the Great Depression.
They were getting paid better than they've probably ever been
paid. And they go on strike.
And the equipment and the soldiers of war were moving on

(01:12:43):
those rail lines. Is it?
Does that have to do with? Like in Marshall's perspective,
the workers were more self interested rather than trying to
go for what was most important, which is the the war.
War. Yeah, yeah.
There's, there's another examplewhere toward after Normandy,
after the Normandy breakout where we began to make progress

(01:13:05):
in Europe. You know, there are a lot of
people who have been doing quotewar work.
Who decide that? They're going to leave war work
and they're going to get anotherkind of job because, hey, you
know, the war is going to be over and my job's going to dry
up and all of that. And Marshall, again, that just

(01:13:29):
infuriated him. And he had, he told his generals
in the Pacific because by that time, the war in the Pacific was
really in full tilt. And he says, I want photographs
to come back that show by these soldiers in the field.
And also I want photographs thatshow how the equipment that is

(01:13:55):
being made by American industry,the wartime equipment, whether
it's tanks or bazookas or whatever it is, I want, I want
pictures that show what that tank did.
And he he, he tells. Reporters.
The person who dies on the last day of the war is just as

(01:14:18):
important as the person who dieson the first day of the war.
And so there's a piece of it that says you don't understand
the mission here or you wouldn'tbe doing this.
And then there's a portion of itthat says I have to protect
these young men who are being asked to not get a deferment but

(01:14:43):
put their literal bodies on the line for this country.
And so he wasn't too happy aboutthat.
So you you see emotion. You see true emotion.
And why not? But those, I mean, he keeps that
temper under control a good bit.Yeah.
So he only he only had the emotion when it was.

(01:15:04):
Needed for the task. It wasn't.
It was an uncontrolled emotion. It was more of a motion to show
the passion of the mission, especially we're in a World War.
And if you just want to globalize it a little, you can
say we're talking about 88 million young men that we've

(01:15:25):
asked to do something. And so it is that mission,
winning the war. But it's also what are you doing
as an individual? To to make that.
Happen. And if you are simply thinking
about yourself with no thought for what your action will result

(01:15:47):
in if you leave that job, and now we don't have anybody to do
that job, you know, it's not fair.
Marshall. Really did have a scrupulous
kind of fairness standard, you know, And it's not fair that
you've asked that young man out there in the Pacific, in the

(01:16:08):
jungle, in the incredible heat to do this.
And you, you know, want to get another $0.50 per hour for your
services on the railroad or, youknow, whatever your future job
might be. Yeah.
How would you define fairness? I think in especially in his
case. It's saying.

(01:16:31):
How you fit into the big pictureand that it's not it's sometime
is sometimes it's bigger than your own personal desire, and
especially in the heightened emotion and requirements of a
wartime situation. Are there any examples of

(01:16:53):
Marshall dealing with people whodidn't have that?
Same sense of selflessness in the In the case for example,
where he. Retires these officers, the
plucking committee and this one officer tells him I can't go to
Europe. Marshall tells him he's going to
Europe. He says I can't go to Europe.

(01:17:14):
My furniture is going to be delivered tomorrow.
He says, my God, man, don't you realize there's a war going on?
So that would be, you know, a good example.
You touched on this a few times although, Marshall.
Always had a had to to deal witha little bit of a short temper.
The fact is that he had a great deal of emotional endurance.

(01:17:35):
How do you define emotional endurance?
Just being able to stay the course in these, unbelievably.
Impossible situations, I mean, and, and that's true of other
officers for that matter, like an Eisenhower would be an
example, but he, he just, it just interests me that he's in.

(01:18:00):
These conferences, you know. I, I think of him dealing with
Churchill, for example, and I think I said to you one time
then I, I, I believe Churchill is like a, a mind of 100 years.
I mean, he's just was a remarkable individual.
And during the war, oftentimes Marshall was head, head to head

(01:18:25):
with him because their strategicviews, and for that matter, the
strategic views of the war plansdivision were different than
Churchill's and the and the British.
What kind of personality did Churchill have?
Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness. But he, I mean, he was brilliant
and he was dedicated to his country and almost in the sense

(01:18:56):
it's almost as if the citizenry.Of the British.
Isles is like his own children, I mean, his passion for what
might happen to them. And of course, in the very early
days of the war, you know, it seemed that the British might
not survive and Winston Churchill's, you know, passion

(01:19:17):
to see to it that the goals and aims of the British Isles,
including defeating Hitler, wereserved.
So when he went head to head with Marshall on issues of
strategy, like not Marshall not wanting the North African
invasion, which he saw kind of as a sideshow to the desired and

(01:19:42):
had that cross channel invasion that became Normandy.
I mean, I, I just, I just think Churchill thought, hey, that
Uniontown boy, I can have my waywith him.
And yet Marshall could stay the course and he could, he could

(01:20:02):
communicate with Winston Churchill.
He respected Churchill. And really after the war, they
corresponded until Marshall's death.
But you know, finally, finally, finally in 1944.
It had been decided. A date had even been decided for

(01:20:23):
D-Day and you know, Winston Churchill had fought to keep
that from happening and wanting to have these other campaigns
into Italy, into North Africa. And Winston Churchill later
would always say that those campaigns in North Africa and
Italy weakened the Germans so that when you did have the Cross

(01:20:44):
Channel invasion that we were successful in doing that.
But I mean, they go head to headon these what Marshall calls
sideshows of this effort to cross the channel and defeat the
German army. And I just feel like, you know,
he he probably thought this Union town boy, no, I can take

(01:21:08):
care of him. But he stood his ground with him
and he had the emotional staminato to stand this ground.
And all of these situations dealt with the problem of, as I
mentioned, scarcity. Nobody's going to get what they
want, really. They're going to get portions of
what they want. And yet, Marshall, as this, you

(01:21:32):
know, general of the United States Army, is sitting there
with a person like Churchill. And by the way, Churchill was
not only the Prime Minister, buthe also made himself the
Secretary of Defense so that when you see photographs of
World War Two, you see Churchill.

(01:21:53):
He's sitting among all these generals.
You don't see FDR sitting. Among all these.
Generals, when you see him, he'ssitting with other heads of
state or other ambassadors or secretaries.
But Churchill had this military peace that was separate and

(01:22:16):
apart from being the Prime Minister.
So he's he's down in the weeds of strategy constantly.
And Marshall is, is the one who has to persuade him about the
benefits of this cross channel invasion and he has to also
persuade the Imperial General Staff and many others.

(01:22:38):
But you see what I mean? Churchill is always just trying
to add another little piece of action that slows down the build
up of that army, those armies inthe British Isles that are going
to launch that invasion. So after even a date has been

(01:23:00):
set for D-Day and Marshall is with Winston Churchill, and
Marshall said that Winston Churchill would always have him
for dinner, like by himself. And as Marshall said, he would
put his arguments up to me. And so there's this scene where
he has Marshall calm. And this is, this is in March,

(01:23:23):
before D-Day in June. And he begins, Churchill begins
to tell him, well, why can't we divert some of these troops to
the Greek island of Rhodes to, to get the Germans out off the
Greek, Greek island of Rhodes. And again, Marshall can't

(01:23:45):
believe it. Like finally we are going to
concentrate on getting everything set up for that cross
town invasion. And he can't believe it.
Churchill is talking about Rhodes again.
So he knows when to back down, but he also knows.
When to be assertive, right? And he said Winston Churchill.

(01:24:05):
Never held it against him, but but his, you know, chief of
staff ismay had to stay up with him all night.
But, you know, something that's kind of interesting about
Churchill is that Churchill absolutely did not hold grudges.

(01:24:29):
That was something that was characteristic of him.
People thought it meant he was fake, but apparently he wasn't.
It was like, OK, I stood my ground, I argued with you.
It got, it went my way. It didn't go my way.
But hey, you know, when I see you the next time, I'm not being
phony to say it's good to see you.

(01:24:51):
Just an aside about Churchill. So both Churchill and Marshall
had a lot of self security. They were very secure about who
they were and not so much cared too much about what other people
think if it wasn't relevant to the mission at hand.
And going back to a Churchill again, I.
I try to compare it to, for example, you know, he, he armed

(01:25:15):
his. Daughters with.
Pistols. If the if the Nazis come, we're
going to take a few out. I mean, he was, it was so
personal what was happening to the people of the British Isles.
It was as if those people were his children in the most deep

(01:25:35):
and emotional sense of it. And everybody felt strongly
about the war and winning it andall of that.
But for Churchill, it was just so very, very personal.
How did Marshall, possibly Churchill as well?
How do they? Identify the difference between

(01:25:56):
something that would contribute to the mission and something
that was a distraction. Well, Marshall?
An example for Marshall had to do with what we call Operation
Torch, the invasion of North Africa in November of 1942, now

(01:26:18):
again from the beginning. And Marshall goes to.
England that right after Pearl Harbor and he's talking to
Winston Churchill and he's talking about this cross channel
invasion already and Churchill sort of gives him the idea that
yes, we're going to do that because guess what Churchill was

(01:26:38):
desperate to to be on good termswith the Americans because after
all, it was the Japanese that bombed Pearl Harbor.
So Oh my gosh, I have Churchill is saying I have got to make
them believe that I'm on their side, so to speak.

(01:27:00):
And so, but when he goes and he has these early conferences with
Churchill and he sort of thinks that he's got Churchill agreeing
to a sort of a cross channel operation the next see the next
spring or under certain circumstances that that's going
to be the strategy of the UnitedStates.

(01:27:23):
And when he gets back, it all begins to disintegrate because
Churchill is really pressing forthis invasion of North Africa
and and Marshall kind of believes that he's insincere.
And then Churchill comes to Washington to make the case over

(01:27:43):
and over again for this Operation Torch North Africa as
an intermediate operation. Yes, we're going to have the
Cross Channel Invasion. But what we're going to do first
is to weaken the German army so that by the time we have the

(01:28:04):
Cross Channel Invasion, then we will be successful.
And he really believed that. And as I mentioned, he made that
case over and over again that those North African and Italian
campaigns, by the time we got to1944, June 1944, that the German

(01:28:25):
army had been considerably weakened.
But that was kind of his way of rationalizing why that North
African campaign could be done. Now keep in mind that the
Soviets, by the time the Germansbegan to attack the Soviet
Union, then the Stalin is looking for help on the European

(01:28:48):
continent. So all of those strategic pieces
are in play. But anyway, Long story short,
and believe me, it wasn't a short story, it was determined
that it would be Torch and that that invasion of North Africa
would take place in November of 1942.

(01:29:09):
And one of the things that Marshall said about it, which
was showed his understanding of the political realities, is that
he says he sort of uses the term, he says the American
people need to be entertained. But that's not really exactly
what he meant. What he meant was that we were

(01:29:31):
attacked at Pearl Harbor and in the Pacific of not only for the
Americans but for the British, everything is a loss.
Virtually everything is a loss. So when are we going to do
something? So that need for that offensive,
even if in Marshall's view, it wasn't the one that he wanted,

(01:29:56):
he understood that it was a necessary thing that the
American people, Roosevelt as the president, had to ensure the
American people that we are going to do something.
But interestingly, as much as Roosevelt was this political

(01:30:17):
person, when it was time to organize the invasion of North
Africa, the Americans part in the invasion of North Africa at
one point. At one point, Roosevelt puts his
hands up as if in prayer, and hesays because it was almost time

(01:30:37):
for the election. And he says before Election Day
and. But as it turned.
Out they were not ready for thatinvasion and Election Day was
passed and Marshall said. Marshall said Roosevelt never
said a word about it when he knew, no, it's not going to

(01:31:01):
happen before Election Day. He never said a word about it.
And he said of Roosevelt, he wasa very strong man.
And so that understanding again,going back to this whole idea of
Marshall kind of understanding constitutional guardrails and
the idea that Oh my gosh, after all of the.

(01:31:26):
Talk. Isolationist talk and FD Rs talk
about how we're not sending yourour boys into a European war
that after Pearl Harbor and the fact that Germany by the way,
declared war on us right after Pearl Harbor, which actually in

(01:31:48):
the end act was to their disadvantage.
You know that the people. The people have something to
say. About what has happened post
Pearl Harbor and we needed to feel like something was being
done besides just surrendering. Yeah, sounds very familiar.

(01:32:11):
Similar to 1776 when you had. Boston Harbor in the beginning
of the of the year and you had New York, which was a loss.
Then the declaration came out. And then at the end of the year,
Christmas time, you know, the Battle of Trenton, it's like you
have the win, loss, declaration.We need another win got at the
end of the year. Yeah.
And and it's does that have to do with a lot of does it revolve

(01:32:34):
around that? A society wants to see itself as
the winner. The society wants to see itself
as a survivor. That this isn't going to defeat
us in the most literal sense. You know, and we had this
Fortress America attitude that said, well, you can't touch us.

(01:32:59):
And and the fact that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor
just broke that wide open. So there was a sense of
vulnerability that was even different than was typical
because we always felt like, Oh,well, you know what these
Europeans are doing, what they're doing out in Asia, It's.

(01:33:19):
Yeah, that doesn't have that much to do with us.
And then they bombed Pearl Harbor, for example, when
Marshall was working on the Marshall Plan, getting it
through the Congress. Now, you had a you had a Truman
was the president. He had become the president

(01:33:41):
after the death of this mega figure.
This mega figure. This was just just into FDR's
fourth term. Yeah, let's see.
He died in April. One year.
I mean, he wasn't even one year into his fourth term, and Truman
had become the president's. Like, who's Truman?

(01:34:01):
Never heard of him, you know? So Truman is the president.
It's a Republican Congress, and in terms of the Marshall Plan,
we're not too interested in helping out the Europeans.
You know, we we want, you know, a new car and buy a house in
Levittown, OK. And so the idea that you could
actually convince the American people that they should do what

(01:34:24):
they did do in this Marshall Plan was extraordinary.
But one of the things that Marshall understood, going back
to these constitutional guardrails, is that the
Republican senator, head of the Republican, the Senate Majority
Leader, was Arthur Vandenberg. And he had been this

(01:34:48):
isolationist senator to the Max of not don't go into the war,
right? Don't go into the war.
Don't. Go into Europe, don't have.
Anything to you know, Fortress America, leave us alone.
We're fine isolationist ideas which were more popular with the

(01:35:09):
Republican Party at that time. And yet after Pearl Harbor,
Manenberg, he shifts over and would eventually become a very
strong internationalist because he said, if the Japanese can
bomb Pearl Harbor, we we are notFortress America.

(01:35:33):
And so therefore Marshall saw that wedge because he knew in
the end and we talk. About this a.
Lot when we're teaching students.
In the end, the European Recovery program was an act of
the United States Congress. So if you don't have Congress to

(01:35:56):
vote on it, you're not having a Marshall Plan.
And sometimes people think, Oh yeah, the State Department, the
Marshall Plan. No, in the end, you're talking
about an act of Congress. And one of the things that was
very interesting about Marshall is that he takes the his
argument about that Marshall Plan on the rogue.

(01:36:18):
Now imagine he's the Secretary of State and he's going out on
what I call the rubber chicken circuit.
You know, he's talking to rotaries, he's talking to
women's groups, he's talking to farmers, he's talking to steel
makers in in Pittsburgh or to tomake the point that we as a

(01:36:41):
country are able to do this. We have the power and we have
the resources to do this. And one of the most interesting
scenes of Marshall is when he's testifying before the Congress
and he says, you know far betterthan I do the political issues

(01:37:04):
involved in this. But he says, I think we can do
this and we must do this becausehe says, and he kind of use
that, uses that karate chop. And he says because the whole
world hangs in the balance. So here you have this Secretary
of State who goes out on the road.

(01:37:25):
And I can't think of a single other one who's ever done that.
I mean, he goes to Georgia, He goes to Tennessee, and he makes
the case that this is something that we can do and that in the
end it will be economically valuable to you to do it.

(01:37:46):
And so he's able to go out and make this case.
But the way he made that case inthe United States Congress, in
the United States Senate, was towork with author Vandenberg and
Marshall said of Vandenberg, again previously isolationist
senator, now an internationalist.

(01:38:08):
He said I could not have worked more closely with Vandenberg
unless I had sat in his lap or he had sat in mine.
But you see the the political acumen, really to know I have to
find an ally. On the other side.
Yeah. So Marshall was a very good,

(01:38:31):
very good identifying. Both the timing of things,
opportunity, but also exploitingchange.
Exploiting the change that is advantageous to what he wants to
get done without it being without that change being forced
upon someone like natural changethat's advantageous.
Wanting to make the case to various.

(01:38:53):
Groups of people to to help themunderstand the the advantages to
them, their particular group like the cotton growers you know
who will if Europe is in disarray, who will buy your
extra bales of cotton. That idea, he was willing to

(01:39:19):
help them understand the advantages.
Of. Supporting something like that.
So Marshall and essentially or just a great really good.
Compromiser that. Not everyone wins, but everyone
will win. Everyone gets something.
And by the way, the other thing.About that Marshall Plan, which
was really important was, he says to in the Marshall Plan

(01:39:44):
speech. He says the initiative must come
from the Europeans. My goodness, you mean it's not
going to be? The US of A saying oh.
Hello, Europe. Here's what we think you need to
do. The initiative had to come from
them. They had to be the ones to make
the case for what they needed from that Marshall Plan and all

(01:40:08):
throughout the Marshall Plan, they had to go to Paris to meet
with the Marshall planners and make their case for what was
needed. So if you went to, let's say.
If you went to Austria today, you would find that almost any
huge resort, ski resort in Austria benefited from the

(01:40:29):
Marshall Plan because tourism was a big part of their economy.
So it wasn't the United States of America saying, OK, here's
what we want you to do. Now, did they have to get
approval for those projects? Yes, but the initiative must
come from them and they are the ones who have to make the case

(01:40:50):
for the viability of their economic issues.
And that was unique because, youknow, we, we, we are often sort
of present ourselves as the fix it up chappie.
So it sounds like Marshall essentially would just really.
Was a great initiator, he was, and a lot of that has to do

(01:41:11):
with. Accepting the idea that he had
to do something. So going back to being first
captain, it's like, OK, I have aresponsibility and I must do
something. And and as the Secretary of
State who had experienced World War One and he experienced what

(01:41:32):
happened at the end of World WarOne with the Treaty of
Versailles, he understood it cannot be the same when he's
telling the soldiers at Fort Benning, you're not going to be
fighting the war that we just finished.
It's not going to be the same. And in a way, at the end of
World War 2, you know, he's saying we have to do something

(01:41:57):
different here then because we we learned lessons from what
happened in World War One. Where these countries playing
paying reparations or paying offloans went deeper and deeper
into economic and economic abyssand it didn't work?

(01:42:18):
That sounds really similar to Joseph Campbell's hero's
journey. Where you have your hero starts
out in his world, goes, undergoes change and everything.
And then when they returns back to the world, the world's still
similar, but he's changed. And therefore he creates a new
world That's that works better for the lessons that he learned.
Yeah. And I mean again and I.

(01:42:40):
I I don't want to overstate it too.
Much but. He's a, he's a person who
absolutely paid attention to what was happening around him
and thought, OK, that didn't work out well.
And it's very basic in a way, you know, And it, it, it was his

(01:43:03):
genius. And in a way.
Some people say, well, why woulda why would a person who is a
military person become Secretaryof State?
Well, my goodness, he was so qualified to be Secretary of
State by the time he got there. He really was because of those
varied experiences where he justlooked around him and thought,
wow, that didn't work. Yeah.

(01:43:26):
So like an oversimplified way of.
Marshall was that he observed, initiated, compromised and then
executed. Whatever it was and whatever he
did, he believed. That it was his responsibility
to act, not being a hand wringer.

(01:43:47):
And, you know, sometimes we, youknow, I think about what's
happening today, all of the incredible crises around the
world, and somebody up there is being tasked to do something
about it. And, you know, surely somebody
must think to themselves, oh, mygosh, I have no idea what I

(01:44:11):
should do here. So that sense on Marshall's part
that it may be hard, but I got to think of something here.
And that he would gather the information that he could, he
would talk to people like when he went out to the field.
And he did that often when he could go out and talk to real
soldiers. He loved that.

(01:44:34):
And he would ask him, what do you need?
What do you need? He said.
And I would try to write out if they told me we don't have any
dry socks, I'll get you dry socks, he says.
I know you want the girls. He says I can't supply the
girls, but I can supply the socks.
But it's the idea that he's looking around him and seeing

(01:44:57):
what the problems are. So we're going to mention, are
we going to, we're going to talkabout McCarthyism.
McCarthyism or the allegations was after the war in the 50s.
50s OK, so 5-6, OK, it was. After you know.
China. Mao took over China, read China.

(01:45:17):
So you know, there's that. Who lost China, you know?
Kind of a. A sense that somehow Marth
Marshall had something to do with that, which of course he
didn't. So what's the context around
McCarthyism it? Was just China and over just the
the communist. Takeover and such.
Well, the fact that certainly the Communist takeover.

(01:45:41):
Of China was very big. They, it felt very threatening
to have China taken over by the Communists.
And even though the Soviets had been our ally and a very
important ally in World War 2, obviously they were emerging as

(01:46:01):
our next enemy. So there was this idea that
somehow there were Soviet spies that were operating in the
United States and stealing secrets in the State Department
and in other agencies of the government.
And Joseph McCarthy was the proponent of saying that all of

(01:46:27):
these people in the State Department are communist, even
though he had no proof that whole scene.
And you know, Hollywood, what they were, they were being
targeted because after all, in Hollywood, you, you send out
ideas through the films that youmake.

(01:46:49):
And you know, there's, there's one scene in the McCarthy
hearings where Robert Taylor, who was a very famous actor at
the time, he had made a film in which he said that he had a a
friend, a Soviet friend. And also keep in mind that in

(01:47:10):
World War Two, we were trying toconvince Americans that the
Russians were the good guys. So there were things that made
that point. And now in terms of both China
and the Soviet Union, they are definitely the bad, the bad
guys. So somehow McCarthy makes this

(01:47:35):
point through another spokesperson in the Congress
that somehow Marshall who, who, who lost China, you know, that
somehow he has been influenced by the Communists and people,
you know, his family. They were furious.

(01:47:56):
At these accusations against him.
And he says, you know, at this point, if I have to prove I'm
not a communist, I, I, I really don't have time to deal with it.
OK. Like please.
And there was a situation that had to do when Eisenhower was
running for the presidency, where he was going to Milwaukee

(01:48:21):
and on the stage was going to be.
McCarthy. And so.
Eisenhower had. His had his speech.
And the speech was printed. Out and the speech had been
given to the reporters and in that speech he had talked about
what a great patriot Marshall was and yet when Ike got up to

(01:48:48):
give the speech he left that part out Oh yeah well, the.
Reporters, they were all over. That and so, you know,
especially Marshall's goddaughter and her, his
stepdaughter, they were just furious.
Oh, how could you? That is so wrong.
And Marshall says, you know, I just got caught up in a

(01:49:13):
political situation. He says don't worry.
About it. And again, if I have to prove
I'm a communist, I'm not a communist, you know, I, I, I
don't have time for that. So he dismissed that whole idea,
you know, but we were trying to deal with the idea that this
Soviet Union was emerging as thenext.

(01:49:36):
Superpower. And you know, how, how, how are
we going to manage that? Especially when you think about
the fact that, you know, we, we thought we had this enemy called
Hitler or Tojo, and yet now thishuge country, this powerful

(01:50:00):
country that had been our ally was now emerging as our enemy.
So how did we deal with that in this sense that somehow in this
country, because we had free speech and free access to
information, that there were people who were, you know, they,

(01:50:22):
they were influencing you in ways you might not even know.
There was this idea that they'recommunist about and we went
through that whole decade reallyof of worrying about that and
until it eased off and. Marshall just.

(01:50:43):
He just would have nothing to dowith it.
So what got you interested in Marshall in the 1st place?
I was an. American history teacher and.
I retired in 1994, which is a long time ago, But, you know, I
couldn't just stop thinking about history.

(01:51:05):
And my husband and I lived in Leesburg and this house was not
restored, but I found out that it had been the home of General
George C Marshall. And so I, I didn't know that
much about Marshall. When you teach Marshall in the
high in high school, the place where you tend to stop is not so

(01:51:28):
much as military career as the Marshall Plan.
Because when you're teaching military about military issues
in a survey course of American history, you're not going to
spend long on, you know, the thebig mega invasions of the

(01:51:49):
military in World War 2. It's going to be more like the
cause of the war and the effectsof the war, that idea.
But when I when I understood that.
Marshall had lived here and. That they were going to raise
the money to restore this house.Then I wanted to get involved
and I began to read more about Marshall in a holistic way, not

(01:52:13):
just what he did in the post waras the Secretary of State and
Defense. And the more I read, the more I
became interested. And so it's provided an
incredibly rich opportunity for me intellectually.
And I couldn't have imagined allof the wonderful experiences

(01:52:36):
that I would have because of my work here.
And as I mentioned, the result of all of that is still this
deep admiration for the person who lived here and who would be
amazed that his home is a museum.
Did you, did you see a lot of yourself when you were

(01:52:56):
researching Marshall A? Lot of who you were also
reflected in what Marshall what you learned from Marshall that's
an interesting question. I think that I.
Liked his kind of straightforwardness.
And I like the fact that he was a good guy, you know, and that's
what we strive to be. And because I had been an

(01:53:20):
American history teacher and hadspent a lot of time talking
about leaders who weren't necessarily always good guys, it
was good to find one. And I, I often say, because in
the beginning of my work here, Idid a lot with working with
teachers, talking to teachers about Marshall.

(01:53:43):
And as I've said so many times, leaders can do great things and
still be very disappointing as individuals.
And also there are people who live in your neighborhood who
are very honorable and have wonderful integrity.
But when you have somebody like a Marshall who he exerted or

(01:54:08):
acquired a great deal of power, he truly was not tempted to
abuse that power. We know from reading.
History that people who acquire.Power are often tempted to abuse
it. And so that was a quality that I
really admired about him. And I remember when we were

(01:54:33):
talking people asked me about the fact that Marshall did not
become the supreme Allied commander of the Normandy
invasion. And you know when you are a
soldier, I know this from reading my history, you want to
be boots on the ground. You want to be at the scene of

(01:54:54):
the action. But because of Marshall's skills
that he developed in the particular circumstances that he
came to, that was not to be his case.
And by the time the decision to name the Supreme Allied
Commander the Normandy invasion was at hand, Marshall skills

(01:55:15):
that he had learned going all the way back to Pershing and
through his various roles in theinner war years, he was best
where he was. And did he know that?
Did he want to be the Supreme Allied Commander?
I suppose in his heart of heartshe did, although he would have

(01:55:38):
been on a steep learning curve, by the way, because Eisenhower
had been on the scene for quite a while.
But the fact is that FDR was willing to give him that role.
All he had to do, as Marshall's historian said, was to open his
hand. And Roosevelt asked him, you

(01:55:58):
know what, what, what is your, What would you want?
And Marshall tells him, I, I don't want to presume what my
role should be in this war. I want you to use me in the very
best way that you can to win this war.
And of course, I'm paraphrasing.But then Roosevelt, Roosevelt

(01:56:20):
tells him, well, I don't think Icould sleep at night with you
out of the country. And you know, Marshall writes
out he has to. Write a telegram to go.
Out to Stalin to say that the Supreme Allied commander will be
Eisenhower and the draft of that, that became the telegram.

(01:56:41):
Marshall took that and he wrote at the bottom, dear Ike, I
thought you might like to see this because it names him as the
Supreme Allied commander. And Eisenhower later says that.
He says that's framed and it's in my office.
But the point I want to make is that later this reporter comes

(01:57:03):
out to do a photo spread. Actually, it was a photographer
who asked him this. And he says, asks, asks him, are
you disappointed that you didn'tget to be Supreme Allied
commander? And like, you just say this
little flash of temper, you know?
And Marshall says, in the face of the casualties that were to

(01:57:26):
be expected in that operation, my role in my.
Opinion was. Totally irrelevant and totally
immaterial. And again, I'm paraphrasing, but
you get the idea. So I think the photo
photographer understood the answer.

(01:57:46):
But there you have it in the nutshell.
The mission is bigger than my own personal preferences.
Do I have personal preferences? Yes, but not not.
He felt that he understood by the way, first of all, that
Roosevelt was going to tell him where he was best suited.

(01:58:07):
And that secondly, I think in his heart of hearts he knew that
he was in the place where he wasmost effective.
A lot of people say, oh, he was terribly disappointed.
Well, OK, I'm sure he was disappointed, you know, in
certain ways. But I think he understood also
himself and saw that his strength was exactly where he

(01:58:30):
was, you know, and you know, we,we always say that this thing
about Marshall understanding howthe Democratic Republic works,
that God bless democracy. I believe in it, but I suffer
from it greatly. So I'm not saying you didn't
suffer from it. But I think he understood that
he, first of all, that it was the president's job to tell him

(01:58:55):
where to go and that secondly ofall, he had kind of grown where
he was planted. Is that because Marshall never
focused too or? Didn't focus too much on his
pride or his. Ego.
And that a title does not necessarily reflect the value of
responsibility. One of the things that he felt
about titles, for example. He didn't feel the need to be a

(01:59:17):
five star general. He said he wanted to go to the
Congress with his skirts clean. He didn't want, You know, you're
giving me a 5, a fifth star. Does that mean you're expecting
something from me? But also he did not like the
attribution of great things to asingle individual, especially

(01:59:40):
like himself. Attribution or expectation
Attribution because for. Example you know the.
The bill that became the European Recovery Program
eventually morphed into the Marshall Plan.
So, you know, instead of using the name of the congressional
bill, you know Marshall's plan. Became eventually the Marshall

(02:00:04):
Plan. Marshall didn't call it the
Marshall Plan. If he did, he said the so-called
Marshall Plan because he didn't like the idea that a single
individual was given credit for the work of many.
And that was just absolutely core.
He just did not believe that, OK, I did this all by myself.

(02:00:29):
There were people who were thinking a lot during the war
and afterwards about how their individual success would be
noted in books. Marshall would not write a book
about himself. Many generals did, and he did
not condemn them for that. But he just said my service to

(02:00:49):
my country is not for sale. And he said that the honor of
serving in the United States Army was recognition enough.
Now, obviously, there have been a lot of biographies written
about him, including mine. But you know, Pogue, Forrest
Pogue, who wrote this 4 volumes about him, and he interviewed

(02:01:12):
him right here in this room on alittle tape recorder.
He was convinced by others, including Truman, that if his
biography was not written, that a lot of history would be lost.
And so he agreed to do it. And he said neither I or my

(02:01:35):
family will profit from the saleof this biography.
And he says I, I won't. It wasn't for him.
It wasn't. It was just he was going to tell
the. Story.
There were certain things, if hecouldn't be honest, he was, he
wasn't going to say it because, for example, Pershing at the end

(02:01:57):
of World War One, he wrote his memoirs and he said really harsh
things about some of the people who had been generals in World
War One. And Marshall wasn't going to do
that, but he also wasn't going to gloss it over.
So he tells Pogue that, you know, And so once again, he he

(02:02:19):
doesn't condemn, he states the facts as best he can.
And if he can't state it in sucha way that doesn't destroy
somebody, he doesn't say it. It's remarkable, really.
So can you tell I really like? This guy?
No, no, I thought, I thought. This sounds like a side project

(02:02:40):
or something. Right.
Yeah, All right. I don't.
Have any of the? Things that I was going to ask.
Is there anything that you wanted to mention?
No, I just can say that. It's been a very rich experience
to be here and I, I have been. Honored to do my part.

(02:03:03):
To advance this cause. And now, you know, we're working
with these young people, rising juniors and seniors, because in
the beginning, when people came here, many of them were they
were older. People, many of them.
Were veterans. There were people who came here
who said, you know, I, I got, I got butter and bread at my

(02:03:30):
school through the Marshall Plan.
A person that came in and she was from Germany.
So, you know, you had a generation of people who really
knew who Marshall was and some who had actually benefited from
him. But now no.
And so going back to the the value of teaching about Marshall

(02:03:56):
in the school is to go back to that idea that when you find a
person who did big things, big powerful things, and yet
retained his good character and you're in a teaching situation,
that's just a really nice combination that you want to
point out. What's one thing that you found

(02:04:17):
that is a big disconnect between?
People my age and people who understood the effects of the
Marshall Plan, I don't think that.
Our the the generation. Here in this country, I'm
talking about here in this country, it's hard for them to
grasp the deprivation of war andthe and because we have, we do

(02:04:48):
send our soldiers to war. But for many of our generation,
your generation, the generation of my son, my grandsons, they
have not been asked to go to war.
And it's hard to imagine the sacrifices of a real war.

(02:05:08):
Don't get me wrong, we've had wefought some real wars, then
we've sent soldiers to those wars in post World War 2, even
post Vietnam. But it's a.
It's it's a little bit abstract for most of this current
generation, and it's hard for them to imagine that they would

(02:05:32):
be asked to make that kind of sacrifice without volunteering
to do it. What's?
One thing that you. Would want to tell.
The younger generation that would keep them from becoming
complacent of peace, of peacefultimes, well, when you tell the

(02:05:52):
story of war. When you tell the story of
people who made great sacrificesto confirm a peaceful world for
them to live in, it's never a done.
Deal it. Is you know we we can't imagine

(02:06:12):
that we would be called upon when I look at my 18 year old
grandson who's on the cusp of his life that he would be asked
to do what American soldiers were asked to do in World War 2
seems unthinkable. But for this generation to
because we we have a lot of things our your generation has a

(02:06:35):
lot of things a lot of interesting travel or.
You've got your cell. Phones you've got, you've got
lots of things that make you happy and that give you a rich
life, which is incredibly good. And for my grandchildren and for
my children, I I'm glad for that.
But it is never a finished thing.

(02:06:58):
And that if, if George Marshall were here right now, I'm telling
you, he would give you that warning.
In my mind, there's not a big disconnect, but a.
Of a lack of a connection between.
Learning about history and then being able.
To apply that to real life, to like current days, events.

(02:07:20):
So what would be one thing that you would want someone who's
learning about Marshall to know that they can apply to their
life to really, truly believe in?
This government that. We live under and this country
that it's history is rich and yeah, we we want to keep it

(02:07:47):
sometimes in our, in this country, especially when it's we
have peace and we have a lot of prosperity.
We don't think that we could ever be required to make a
sacrifice to maintain that. And if we read our history going

(02:08:09):
all the way back to our revolution, for that matter,
there were people who literally made the sacrifice of their
lives for us to maintain this government that we believe in.
And I always think about Americans that we are believers
in our democracy. Now, you know, democracies are

(02:08:32):
very messy little things, and after a while, we kind of want
to tidy them up, you know, with somebody who's to fix it up,
Chappie. But that democratic underpinning
is deep in this culture. And if you mess with it too
much, we want to get it back. But most of the time, we don't

(02:08:58):
think we have to do that. We think we're just fine and
everything's going to be OK, butwe cannot ever, you know, take
that as a given. Is there anything else you
wanted to talk about? No, But I.
Certainly have enjoyed talking. To you typically.
I have two questions at the veryend, which is.

(02:09:19):
Who do you want to be 10 years from?
Who do you want to be 10 years from now?
And what would you have told yourself 10 years ago?
Of course, you're 85, so I don'tknow where you're going to be 10
years from now, 10 years from. Now.
OK, better. Question would be, what would
you have told yourself 50 years ago?
50 years ago. Yeah.

(02:09:41):
Yeah, 50 years ago. You know I.
Think when I was, when I became a.
Teacher I. Always took that as what I was
going to be, you know, and you know, I, I feel that being a

(02:10:02):
teacher is a noble career. If you're not just phoning it
in, if you're really doing that job in a serious way, you have a
tremendous influence. And so to me, it's, it's noble.
They might not think so, but I always felt like I was.

(02:10:24):
Doing an important job. And the public school is the
purveyor of the concepts that wehold dear as citizens.
And if you teach American history and government, you are
laying down those foundations that you hope those kids will

(02:10:45):
find important enough to value themselves, you know, and that
they they will see that it's a beautiful thing.
This this country is a beautifulthing.
And you want it to survive even though I may not be in it in. 10

(02:11:06):
years you. See.
Well, thank you. Thank you.
It was a lot of fun. Yeah.
You're going to be busy with that editing.
Yeah, I know.

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Mission Over Glory: General George C. Marshall and WWII - Rachel Thompson

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