March 4, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the late-great historian Stephen Ambrose tells us the unlikely World War II story of George McGovern, the antiwar presidential candidate defeated by President Nixon in 1972.
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
And we continue here with our American Stories, and up next,
Greg Hengler has an unlikely World War two story about
George McGovern, the liberal, anti war Democratic presidential candidate from
South Dakota who was soundly defeated by President Nixon in
the nineteen seventy two election.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Stephen Ambrose is one of America's leading biographers and historians.
Ambrose's works have inspired Americans to regard its war veterans
with newfound reverence. His best sellers chronicle our nation's critical
battles and achievements. From his seminal war works D Day
and Band of Brothers to Undaunted Courage and Nothing like
(00:56):
It in the World, The Men who Built the Trans
Continent Mental Railroad. Stephen Ambrose passed in two thousand and two,
but his epic's storytelling accounts can now be heard here
at Our American Stories, thanks to the permission from those
who run as a state. Here's Stephen Ambrose to tell
us a short story from his book The Wild Blue
(01:19):
The Men and Boys who flew the B twenty four's
over Germany.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
My next book is a story of the B twenty
four in the Second World War, and it's not exclusively
it's about a squadron and then about the bomb group.
But one of the members of the squadron was George
McGovern who is a pilot of a B twenty four
(01:47):
thirty five missions got the Distinguished Flying Cross. He flew
bombers in the Second World War, and he did. And
how do you open a story? I opened with George.
He had come back from a raid over Vienna. He
was all shot up, with shopping on everything, and the
plane just barely limping along, and it's a good story
in itself. And the crew called up to him, Lieutenant,
(02:11):
we got a bomb stuck in the bomb bay, half
in and half out, and so they're either going to
have to bail out or they're going to have to
get rid of that bomb. And George told him, go
to work on that bomb so you can get it loose.
And they finally called up, and they were now over
a part of western Austria rural and they called up, Lieutenant,
(02:32):
we got it.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
We're ready to drop it, says George.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And they were by this time because they were so
badly shot up down to about ten thousand feet and
it was a clear day and he could see that
bomb going down. He watched and watch and watch boat
He hit a farmhouse and George looked at his watch.
He said, I'm a farmer. I come from South Dakota.
I know what time farmers eat. After the bomb fell,
(03:01):
McGovern closed the bombay doors and headed home. On the intercom,
he and Cooper, the navigator talked. McGovern asked, what's the
highest elevation we're going to go past. Cooper looked at
his map that his calculations and replied eight thousand feet.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
George, eight thousand feet.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
In an interview, Cooper told me, actually it was only
seven thousand feet, but I added another thousand feet because.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I was engaged to get married.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Cooper grinned, and then added, as George was expecting his
first child, he added another thousand feet on top of that.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Back at scheryck Nolo was an easy landing. No one
had been hurt.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
McGovern jumped into a truck and rode over to the
debriefing area, where the Red Cross woman gave him coffee
and a donut. An intelligence officer came running up to him,
the same officer who had handed him a cable back
in December that told him his father had had a
heart attack. And died, and the bomb group commander told
George you can tomorrow off, and George said, no, I'm
(04:02):
not going to take that excuse.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I'm here for a job this time.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
However, the officer was grinning from ear to ear as
he handed a cable to McGovern. He said, congratulations, daddy,
you now have a daughter.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
The cable was from Eleanor.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Their first baby, whom she named Anne, had been born
on March tenth in the Mitchell Methodist Hospital. Eleanor concluded
the cable child doing well. Love Eleanor, I was just
as static, McGovern said, turbulent. But then he thought Eleanor
and I had brought a new child into the world today,
and I probably killed somebody else's kids right at lunchtime. Hell,
(04:42):
why did that bomb have to hit there? He went
over to the officer's club and had a drink cheap
red wine. He was toasted and cheered, but he later said,
it really did make me feel different for the rest
of the war. Now I was a father. I had
not only a wife back home, but a little girl.
No more reason why I wanted to get home and
see that child. He returned to his tent and wrote
(05:05):
eleanor a long letter. He did not mention the farmhouse,
but he couldn't get it out of his mind. In
an interview last year, he said to me, that thing
stayed with me for years and years decades. If I
thought about the war, almost invariably, I would think about
that farm. There's been much criticism of the American air
(05:31):
effort in the Second World War.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
People have said, cheese.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
All that production that went into making those bombers, all
of the expense of training those pilots and the crews
that would have been better spent on the Army or
on the Navy instead of on those big bombers.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Plus wick. What they did was just awful.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
They killed women and children, and they never hid any
of their targets.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
According to the critics, we shouldn't have done it. Well,
we don't know. What we do know is the Allies
won the war.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
What McGovern did, what the seven to forty first Squadron did,
along with the rest of the four to fifty fifth
Bomb Group and all of the fifteenth Air Force and
the eighth Air Force, most especially in their attacks against
oil refineries and marshaling.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yards, was critical to the victory. They paralyzed the German army.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
In April nineteen forty four, the Germans were producing oil
at a rate of one hundred percent. They had plenty
of it. This was down a year later to one percent.
Hitler could not get gasoline for his Mercedes. German tanks
couldn't move. They became fixed fortifications. The Germans, this is
(06:46):
the country of Mercedes. The Germans had no trucks. They
had become a horse drawn army. Fighting a twentieth century war, McGovern,
his crew and all the airmen had spent the warriors
not in vain, but in doing good work. Along with
all the peoples of the Allied nations. They saved Western civilization.
(07:11):
George Clemensaw, the French Prime Minister of the First World War,
was living in London in the Second World War and
he watched these air crews in action and he had
this to say, they were kittens in play, but tigers
in battle.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
In nineteen eighty five, McGovern was lecturing at the University
of Nsbroek.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
A director of Austria's television in the state owned station
contacted him to ask him to do a documentary. To
do an interview for a documentary he was producing. An
Austrian World War two. Mcgovernor reluctantly agreed. It was a
woman reporter doing the interview. She said, Senator McGovern you're
known around the world for your opposition to war. That
(07:57):
you were a bomber pilot in the Second World War.
You hit our beautiful cities, Innsbrook, Vienna, you killed women
and children.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Don't you regret that?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
McGovern's answer, Well, nobody thinks that war is a lovely affairs.
Humanity at its worst, it's a breakdown of normal.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Communication, and it's a very savage enterprise.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
But on the other hand, there are issues that sometimes
must be decided by warfare after all else fails. I
thought Adolph Hitler was a madman who had to be stopped.
So my answer to your question is no, I don't
regret bombing strategic targets in Austria. And her face just dropped.
(08:42):
She was terribly disappointed. And George being George, saw that
and he said, well, there was one bomb that I
do regret.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
What was that?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
McGovern told her about the bomb that had stuck in
the Bombay door and had to be jettison on March fourteen,
nineteen forty.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Five, and what happened.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Cut end of interview, and the documentary was showing a
couple months later on Austrian TV, and there's a call
at the station. It's an old man. He said, I'm
a farmer and that was my farm.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
That he had.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It was exactly the way he described it. And I
want you to tell Senator McGovern that I saw that
bomb come out, and I got my wife and our
two little girls and we went into the ditch and
nobody got hurt. And I further want to tell you
to tell Senator McGovern. I don't care what other Austrians say.
(09:42):
I hated Hitler. I hated him so much that the
instant I saw my little farmhouse and my barn go up,
I thought to myself, if this shortens.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
The war by one second, it was worth it.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
The television station called McGovern and told him what the
farmer had said. For McGovern, it was quote an enormous
release and gratification.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
It seemed to just wipe clean a slate.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And what great storytelling by one of the great storytellers
of all time, particularly all things surrounding World War Two.
And thanks to the Stephen Ambrose Estate for allowing us
to use that story, the story of George McGovern and
of course the story of the conscience of a soldier.
Here on our American stories
And we continue here with our American Stories, and up next,
Greg Hengler has an unlikely World War two story about
George McGovern, the liberal, anti war Democratic presidential candidate from
South Dakota who was soundly defeated by President Nixon in
the nineteen seventy two election.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Stephen Ambrose is one of America's leading biographers and historians.
Ambrose's works have inspired Americans to regard its war veterans
with newfound reverence. His best sellers chronicle our nation's critical
battles and achievements. From his seminal war works D Day
and Band of Brothers to Undaunted Courage and Nothing like
(00:56):
It in the World, The Men who Built the Trans
Continent Mental Railroad. Stephen Ambrose passed in two thousand and two,
but his epic's storytelling accounts can now be heard here
at Our American Stories, thanks to the permission from those
who run as a state. Here's Stephen Ambrose to tell
us a short story from his book The Wild Blue
(01:19):
The Men and Boys who flew the B twenty four's
over Germany.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
My next book is a story of the B twenty
four in the Second World War, and it's not exclusively
it's about a squadron and then about the bomb group.
But one of the members of the squadron was George
McGovern who is a pilot of a B twenty four
(01:47):
thirty five missions got the Distinguished Flying Cross. He flew
bombers in the Second World War, and he did. And
how do you open a story? I opened with George.
He had come back from a raid over Vienna. He
was all shot up, with shopping on everything, and the
plane just barely limping along, and it's a good story
in itself. And the crew called up to him, Lieutenant,
(02:11):
we got a bomb stuck in the bomb bay, half
in and half out, and so they're either going to
have to bail out or they're going to have to
get rid of that bomb. And George told him, go
to work on that bomb so you can get it loose.
And they finally called up, and they were now over
a part of western Austria rural and they called up, Lieutenant,
(02:32):
we got it.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
We're ready to drop it, says George.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And they were by this time because they were so
badly shot up down to about ten thousand feet and
it was a clear day and he could see that
bomb going down. He watched and watch and watch boat
He hit a farmhouse and George looked at his watch.
He said, I'm a farmer. I come from South Dakota.
I know what time farmers eat. After the bomb fell,
(03:01):
McGovern closed the bombay doors and headed home. On the intercom,
he and Cooper, the navigator talked. McGovern asked, what's the
highest elevation we're going to go past. Cooper looked at
his map that his calculations and replied eight thousand feet.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
George, eight thousand feet.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
In an interview, Cooper told me, actually it was only
seven thousand feet, but I added another thousand feet because.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I was engaged to get married.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Cooper grinned, and then added, as George was expecting his
first child, he added another thousand feet on top of that.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
Back at scheryck Nolo was an easy landing. No one
had been hurt.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
McGovern jumped into a truck and rode over to the
debriefing area, where the Red Cross woman gave him coffee
and a donut. An intelligence officer came running up to him,
the same officer who had handed him a cable back
in December that told him his father had had a
heart attack. And died, and the bomb group commander told
George you can tomorrow off, and George said, no, I'm
(04:02):
not going to take that excuse.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I'm here for a job this time.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
However, the officer was grinning from ear to ear as
he handed a cable to McGovern. He said, congratulations, daddy,
you now have a daughter.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
The cable was from Eleanor.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Their first baby, whom she named Anne, had been born
on March tenth in the Mitchell Methodist Hospital. Eleanor concluded
the cable child doing well. Love Eleanor, I was just
as static, McGovern said, turbulent. But then he thought Eleanor
and I had brought a new child into the world today,
and I probably killed somebody else's kids right at lunchtime. Hell,
(04:42):
why did that bomb have to hit there? He went
over to the officer's club and had a drink cheap
red wine. He was toasted and cheered, but he later said,
it really did make me feel different for the rest
of the war. Now I was a father. I had
not only a wife back home, but a little girl.
No more reason why I wanted to get home and
see that child. He returned to his tent and wrote
(05:05):
eleanor a long letter. He did not mention the farmhouse,
but he couldn't get it out of his mind. In
an interview last year, he said to me, that thing
stayed with me for years and years decades. If I
thought about the war, almost invariably, I would think about
that farm. There's been much criticism of the American air
(05:31):
effort in the Second World War.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
People have said, cheese.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
All that production that went into making those bombers, all
of the expense of training those pilots and the crews
that would have been better spent on the Army or
on the Navy instead of on those big bombers.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Plus wick. What they did was just awful.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
They killed women and children, and they never hid any
of their targets.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
According to the critics, we shouldn't have done it. Well,
we don't know. What we do know is the Allies
won the war.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
What McGovern did, what the seven to forty first Squadron did,
along with the rest of the four to fifty fifth
Bomb Group and all of the fifteenth Air Force and
the eighth Air Force, most especially in their attacks against
oil refineries and marshaling.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yards, was critical to the victory. They paralyzed the German army.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
In April nineteen forty four, the Germans were producing oil
at a rate of one hundred percent. They had plenty
of it. This was down a year later to one percent.
Hitler could not get gasoline for his Mercedes. German tanks
couldn't move. They became fixed fortifications. The Germans, this is
(06:46):
the country of Mercedes. The Germans had no trucks. They
had become a horse drawn army. Fighting a twentieth century war, McGovern,
his crew and all the airmen had spent the warriors
not in vain, but in doing good work. Along with
all the peoples of the Allied nations. They saved Western civilization.
(07:11):
George Clemensaw, the French Prime Minister of the First World War,
was living in London in the Second World War and
he watched these air crews in action and he had
this to say, they were kittens in play, but tigers
in battle.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
In nineteen eighty five, McGovern was lecturing at the University
of Nsbroek.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
A director of Austria's television in the state owned station
contacted him to ask him to do a documentary. To
do an interview for a documentary he was producing. An
Austrian World War two. Mcgovernor reluctantly agreed. It was a
woman reporter doing the interview. She said, Senator McGovern you're
known around the world for your opposition to war. That
(07:57):
you were a bomber pilot in the Second World War.
You hit our beautiful cities, Innsbrook, Vienna, you killed women
and children.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Don't you regret that?
Speaker 3 (08:09):
McGovern's answer, Well, nobody thinks that war is a lovely affairs.
Humanity at its worst, it's a breakdown of normal.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Communication, and it's a very savage enterprise.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
But on the other hand, there are issues that sometimes
must be decided by warfare after all else fails. I
thought Adolph Hitler was a madman who had to be stopped.
So my answer to your question is no, I don't
regret bombing strategic targets in Austria. And her face just dropped.
(08:42):
She was terribly disappointed. And George being George, saw that
and he said, well, there was one bomb that I
do regret.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
What was that?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
McGovern told her about the bomb that had stuck in
the Bombay door and had to be jettison on March fourteen,
nineteen forty.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Five, and what happened.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Cut end of interview, and the documentary was showing a
couple months later on Austrian TV, and there's a call
at the station. It's an old man. He said, I'm
a farmer and that was my farm.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
That he had.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It was exactly the way he described it. And I
want you to tell Senator McGovern that I saw that
bomb come out, and I got my wife and our
two little girls and we went into the ditch and
nobody got hurt. And I further want to tell you
to tell Senator McGovern. I don't care what other Austrians say.
(09:42):
I hated Hitler. I hated him so much that the
instant I saw my little farmhouse and my barn go up,
I thought to myself, if this shortens.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
The war by one second, it was worth it.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
The television station called McGovern and told him what the
farmer had said. For McGovern, it was quote an enormous
release and gratification.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
It seemed to just wipe clean a slate.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And what great storytelling by one of the great storytellers
of all time, particularly all things surrounding World War Two.
And thanks to the Stephen Ambrose Estate for allowing us
to use that story, the story of George McGovern and
of course the story of the conscience of a soldier.
Here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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