An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation Paperback - 2002

Summary

First line

BETWEEN 1929 AND THE END OF WORLD WAR II IN 1945, the world was in economic, political, military, and cultural turmoil on a scale unprecedented in recorded history.

From the jacket flap

"I cannot go anywhere in America without people wanting to share their wartime experiences....The stories and the lessons have emerged from long-forgotten letters home, from reunions of old buddies and outfits, from unpublished diaries and home-published memoirs....As the stories in this album of memories remind us, it truly was an American experience, from the centers of power to the most humble corners of the land."
--Tom Brokaw In this beautiful American family album of stories from the Greatest Generation, the history of life as it was lived during the Depression and World War II comes alive and is preserved in people's own words. Photographs and time lines also commemorate important dates and events. An Army Air Corps veteran who enlisted in 1941 at age seventeen writes to describe the Bataan Death March. A black nurse tells of her encounter with wartime segregation. Other members of the Greatest Generation describe their war--in such historic episodes as Guadalcanal, the D-Day invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and Midway--as well as their lives on the home front. Starting with the Depression and Pearl Harbor, moving on through the war years in Europe, in the Pacific, and at home, this unique book preserves a people's rich historical heritage and the legacy of a nation's heroism in war and its courage in peace--in the shaping of their lives and of the world we have today.

Excerpt

From Part II: The War in Europe

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Europe is a stable, economically prosperous continent where the political and financial communities are engaged in historic cooperation. Six decades ago, however, less than an American lifetime, Europe was deeply divided by Fascist ambitions, ruthless military aggression, and fanatical political allegiance. Poland was the first country to fall, prompting Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany but without rushing to Poland’s side.

In 1939 and 1940 Finland fell to the Soviets, who needed a buffer against Germany’s voracious appetite. Germany in turn invaded Norway and Denmark. British and French troops joined Norwegian troops in a stiff initial fight, but the Allies were forced to withdraw by Hitler’s pressures on their own countries.

In the spring of 1940, when Germany was making its lightning strikes into the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, the Nazis had 2.2 million troops in uniform, nine motorized divisions, and ten panzer divisions protected by 3,500 combat aircraft. The Allies–France, Great Britain, and the lowland countries–actually had more men in uniform, more tanks, and more than 1,400 combat aircraft. But they had no common defense strategy and no unified political will.

By June 1940 German troops controlled Paris, and France was humiliated into accepting a puppet government. Charles de Gaulle, one of the few senior French officials to flee, went to London, where he declared in a broadcast to the French people: “This war has not been settled by the Battle of France. This war is a world war. . . . Whatever happens the flame of resistance must not and will not be extinguished.”

Great Britain, however, was not a safe sanctuary. Shortly after defeating France, Hitler began what came to be known as the Battle of Britain, opening with a bombing campaign designed to so diminish British airpower that an invasion would be possible. By then the British had a new, formidable weapon in their arsenal: the bulldog will and powerful rhetoric of Winston Churchill, who had replaced the pliable Neville Chamberlain as prime minister. As John F. Kennedy said later, Great Britain was alone in the late summer of 1940 in resisting the Führer’s thirst for conquest.

The British people had what Churchill would call “their finest hour” in withstanding a withering bombing attack from July to September. The British Royal Air Force was a fierce picket line in the skies against German bombers, and the English people maintained their legendary reserve during the bombing raids that struck at the heart of their capital.

An American in London became the voice of the British people in his daily broadcasts. Edward R. Murrow, a dashing young CBS broadcaster with no traditional journalistic training, brought the war into the homes of Americans by standing on rooftops or recording the hurried footsteps as Londoners filed into Underground–subway–stations during bombing raids. His reports, which began “This is London . . . ,” were at once conversational and grave, as if from a troubled friend.

By the fall of 1940 the war had expanded to North Africa, where the Italians had invaded Egypt but were driven out by a much smaller British force. Italy was proving to be an ineffective military ally for Germany, bungling an invasion of Greece as well.

Nonetheless, nothing diminished Hitler’s confidence or appetite for conquest, and by early 1941 he had sent his forces into Greece, Yugoslavia, and Romania. His brilliant field commander Erwin Rommel mobilized the Afrika Korps to invade Egypt and head for the Suez Canal. In a series of campaigns that seesawed back and forth across the desert, neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage until July 1942, when the British Eighth Army, under the command of General Bernard Law Montgomery, stopped Rommel’s advance at El-Alamein.

In the United States FDR signed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, likening Great Britain to a neighbor whose house was on fire. The president was supplying a garden hose without haggling over the price, fully expecting to get it back once the fire was out. It was part of his genius to reduce complicated and controversial matters to homilies understandable by every level of American society. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States would become much more than a friendly neighbor with a garden hose. It would be fully involved, fighting for its life and values.

In June 1941 Hitler made what would prove to be one of his most hubristic–and flawed–decisions. He invaded the Soviet Union, opening a second major front for Germany. By December Nazi troops were within reach of the Moscow city limits. Other German units lay siege to Leningrad (St. Petersburg), initiating a battle that would continue for two and a half years and cost the Soviets an estimated million and a half lives.

By 1942, while the Germans continued their Soviet offensive, the U.S. Eighth Air Force was forming in England. Major General Dwight David Eisenhower took command of the new U.S. European Theater of Operations. British bombers attacked Cologne, Germany, in the first 1,000-plane raid of the war.

By the fall the Allies had invaded North Africa with Operation Torch, the first step in establishing a launching pad for the invasion of Sicily and Italy and Montgomery had begun his counterattack of El-Alamein. At the same time Soviet forces began a counterattack against German troops fighting for Stalingrad. When the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad, they had lost 300,000 troops.

In January 1943 Roosevelt, Churchill, and de Gaulle met in the Moroccan city of Casablanca. Although still on the defensive for the most part, they agreed to seek unconditional surrender from the Axis powers. They also agreed to begin strategic bombing against Germany and, with the North African campaign complete, to commence the invasion of Sicily. But on the larger question of an invasion of Europe across the English Channel, the Allied leaders deferred a decision. Meanwhile, the fighting in the USSR was raging, with both sides committing millions of troops and mammoth armored divisions to epic battles. Slowly the Soviets were turning the Germans back, at great cost to both nations.

By mid-summer the Allies under Eisenhower invaded Sicily. In September the invasion of mainland Italy began with almost no opposition. By then FDR and Churchill had agreed that in 1944 they would launch Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe across the Channel.

As the fighting in Italy became more intense in the late autumn, German troops replaced Italians, sometimes by imprisoning or extinguishing them. The Italian government had forced Mussolini from power and was secretly negotiating with the Allies. But the Germans were determined to defend their southern flank, and the Italian topography of mountains and rivers was ideal for establishing defensive positions.


From the Hardcover edition.

Media reviews

Praise for The Greatest Generation

“Brokaw offers examples of the many virtues he is celebrating: people who distinguished themselves both in battle and on the home front, men who built careers despite being disabled by the war, women who overcame the obstacles that were stacked against them, minorities who used adversity to improve their people’s lives.”
—The New York Times

“Thoroughly terrific, deeply felt, passionate...The stories Brokaw tells are so powerful that a spell is cast upon the reader, reminding us, in our more cynical and fragmented age, that with enough collective energy and spirit, anything can be accomplished.”
—Doris Kearns Goodwin