8/8: 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
🗓️ 14 September 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
1944 OVERLORD, ROYAL NAVY
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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelne with Michelle Peridee. His new book is The Light of Battle. I highly recommend it because this is the story of the planning. |
| 0:08.0 | Plans are useless, but planning is essential, is a paraphrase of Eisenhower's and he was a planner |
| 0:15.3 | Knowing that when you actually meet the enemy everything goes wrong |
| 0:19.1 | Absolutely everything and it does they want to go on the fifth which means they're going to |
| 0:25.2 | make their decision on the fourth. Southwick House forward-based Eisenhower has a |
| 0:31.1 | headquarters. Michelle tells this charming little story where he comes back from a meeting away, K-driving. |
| 0:39.0 | And he sees that his whole headquarters have been camouflaged so you can't see anything |
| 0:44.3 | above 500 feet but he's enraged who wasted all that time camouflaging my |
| 0:49.6 | headquarters and the only excuse they had come up with is it was a training exercise. |
| 0:55.0 | Okay, so Ike is Ike right to the end but he's got very anxious. |
| 0:58.0 | To yell at camouflage is tense. |
| 1:02.0 | However, we're in the Southwick House on the fourth. There are two |
| 1:06.6 | meetings a day. I get lost in the time. Eisenhower is getting up very early. They |
| 1:11.0 | play bridge all night until the next meeting the fourth |
| 1:14.4 | is when they have to make the decision and stag comes in the room and what does he |
| 1:18.4 | tell them Michelle he tells them that a storm is coming and it's about to tear through the English |
| 1:26.3 | channel which will make the D-Day operation impossible or a disaster. |
| 1:30.6 | It's ultimately Eisenhower's choice that the cloud cover will be down to 500 feet, the |
| 1:35.5 | visibility will be, the fog will be so dense that the visibility will be virtually nills so |
| 1:42.1 | they won't have any support from the ships at sea and the men who are going ashore |
| 1:47.5 | If they're lucky enough that their landing craft don't capsize in the wake |
| 1:51.6 | They'll be so seasick and disoriented by the time to get ashore |
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