2/8: The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower by Michel Paradis (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Light-Battle-Eisenhower-American-Superpower/dp/0358682371/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
On June 6, 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower addressed the thousands of American troops preparing to invade Normandy, exhorting them to embrace the “Great Crusade” they faced. Then, in a fleeting moment alone, he drafted a resignation letter in case the invasion failed.
In The Light of Battle, Michel Paradis, acclaimed author of Last Mission to Tokyo, paints a vivid portrait of Dwight Eisenhower as he learns to navigate the crosscurrents of diplomacy, politics, strategy, family, and fame with the fate of the free world hanging in the balance. In a world of giants—Churchill, Roosevelt, De Gaulle, Marshall, MacArthur—it was a barefoot boy from Abilene, Kansas, who would master the art of power and become a modern-day George Washington.
Drawing upon meticulous research and a voluminous body of newly discovered records, letters, diaries, and firsthand accounts from three continents, Paradis brings Eisenhower to life, as a complicated man who craved simplicity, a genial cipher whose smile was a lethal political weapon.
With a page-turning pace and an eye for the overlooked, Paradis interweaves the grand arc of history with more human concerns, bringing readers into the private moments that led to Eisenhower’s most pivotal decisions. By deftly integrating the personal and the political, he reveals how Eisenhower’s rise both reflected and was integral to America’s rise as a global superpower.
An unflinching look at how character is forged, and leadership is learned, The Light of Battle breathes new life into the man who made “the leader of the free world” the mantle of the American presidency.
1944
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelor with the author Michelle Peridique. |
| 0:07.0 | The book is The Light of Battle, the story of Eisenhower and D-Day. |
| 0:11.0 | Eisenhower is home for 10 days to visit with his wife Mamie at the same time to satisfy |
| 0:16.7 | George Marshall's understanding of politics and then there is FDR. The meeting at the White House happens for an hour they spend together. But more |
| 0:26.6 | importantly there was a meeting in the car in North Africa in which FDR tells Eisenhower, I've asked Marshall to make you |
| 0:37.1 | Supreme Allied commander for the second front, which is code-named |
| 0:41.6 | overlord. They don't use it routinely. We know it is Overlord. |
| 0:45.0 | And Eisenhower already had a heads up on this, but still |
| 0:49.4 | the mystery of why FDR chose Eisenhower and not Marshall. |
| 0:55.0 | Michelle, you've written that the line that |
| 0:59.5 | FDR used was I couldn't spare Marshall to be away from me in Washington. |
| 1:04.0 | What is your thinking now all these decades later? |
| 1:07.0 | Why did he go to the younger man whose success in North Africa was notable but still Marshall commands the globe. |
| 1:14.0 | Oh for sure and in some ways Eisenhower was probably as surprised as anybody else |
| 1:20.6 | that Roosevelt made that choice. I think it came down to a few things. |
| 1:25.1 | And one is, you know, what you said is Marshall really was the indispensable man of the Second World War and FDR knew that. |
| 1:35.3 | And having Marshall out of Washington, you know, focusing on the war in Europe, |
| 1:40.5 | meant, you know, instability at a time when the tide was turning in the Allies favor |
| 1:46.8 | at the start of 1944. |
| 1:49.8 | But the war was by no means one and particularly in the Pacific and so I think there was just a sense that Eisenhower |
| 1:55.8 | the sorry that Marshall couldn't be spared. I think there's a truth that but I think another truth that was another truth behind that is, is another truth behind that is that |
| 2:09.3 | Roosevelt knew that at this moment not only was the war in a very precarious state but the |
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