4/8: 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
⏱️ 9 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 SHAEF
Transcript
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| 0:19.9 | I'm John Batchew with Michelle Perady. His new book is The Light of Battle about Ike, and he is now February, end of February in 1944, the gathering storm called Overlord. The masters of the battle, the battle captains are gathered round him having an argument that will continue right up to the moment of the |
| 0:25.2 | contact with the Germans. It has to do with something called Operation Anvil and |
| 0:29.5 | something to do with the air plan point blank. |
| 0:33.8 | He now seemed faded into history, but Michelle's done us the favor of bringing them forward. |
| 0:39.2 | What were they talking about at all these meetings? |
| 0:41.3 | They were arguing, that's what they were doing. Let's start |
| 0:45.8 | with Operation Anvil. What was it and why did it be devil Eisenhower? What were the British |
| 0:52.0 | thinking? |
| 0:53.0 | Sure, so, you know, the original plan was not just to invade France from the north across Normandy, |
| 1:00.0 | as we know, but to actually do essentially a continental pincer maneuver with an invasion of Normandy in the north |
| 1:06.3 | and then an invasion of the French Riviera in the south and Roosevelt loved this idea for a lot of important reasons that I get that are easy |
| 1:16.1 | to overlook in hindsight not the least being Roosevelt needed to or felt he |
| 1:20.9 | needed to impress the Russians you The United States was very much an unproven |
| 1:26.2 | world power, really up until D-Day. And when Roosevelt meets Stalin for the first time in early night at the end of |
| 1:35.6 | 43 right around the car within the middle of the Cairo conference they all fly to |
| 1:39.6 | Tehran for the first big meeting between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. |
| 1:44.0 | Roosevelt is very keen to present the United States as not just the second fiddle to the |
| 1:50.8 | British Empire, but really a power unto itself and so the idea that the |
| 1:55.0 | United States could lead this massive continental scale amphibious operation of |
| 1:59.1 | incredible complexity is incredibly diplomatically important for the United States. |
| 2:03.2 | It also, though, is directly contrary to Britain's interests. |
| 2:07.6 | Britain has, you know, a, zero interest in enhancing the United States' posture as a global competitor. But just as |
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