A Day That Will Live In Infamy

[Stearmen]

I was speaking figuratively there -- the "America won the war" mindset is a popular-culture view, not any kind of a historical view, and was the sort of thing you'd expect from kids playing with Army men and looking forward to the next episode of Combat! or "The Rat Patrol," rather than people who'd ever given it any kind of serious thought. I think it's safe to say most of those kids *didn't* grow up to study or teach history, and that apparently a good number of them grew up to be the kind of swaggering oafs who think they're being patriotic when they tell off an Englishman in a bar, or call the French "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." We've all met the type, and even though there aren't as many as there were twenty or thirty years ago, there are still too many of them.

This idea isn't original with me. William Manchester, himself a Marine combat vet of the Pacific theatre, wrote rather bitterly about the pop-culture trivialization of the war in "The Glory And The Dream," just thirty years after Pearl Harbor:

The French surrender myth comes mostly from Winston Churchill. while privately he called Dunkirk "a colossal military disaster", publicly he called it a victory, and quietly went about blaming the French for the loss. Never mind that the French held the perimeter while the British troops evacuated. Most Americans, still think that the French surrendered, then Dunkirk was evacuated!

 

[Guttersnipe]

The French surrender myth comes mostly from Winston Churchill. while privately he called Dunkirk "a colossal military disaster", publicly he called it a victory, and quietly went about blaming the French for the loss. Never mind that the French held the perimeter while the British troops evacuated. Most Americans, still think that the French surrendered, then Dunkirk was evacuated!

The story of the French government's capitulation is also incredibly complex as well. Essentially, the French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, and many elements of the army legitimate government wanted to fight on, after evacuating to North Africa. However, backroom politics made it clear to Reynaud that his cabinet would not support him, so he resigned and Marshal Pétain took power . . .

 

[rjb1]

"I think it's safe to say most of those kids *didn't* grow up to study or teach history, and that apparently a good number of them grew up to be the kind of swaggering oafs who think they're being patriotic when they tell off an Englishman in a bar, or call the French "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."
Wow - that's quite an indictment of the baby-boomers ("a good number of them grew up to be ... swaggering oafs"). Since I am one, and know many more, I can't say that your experiences match mine. Most of us are no more aware of what went on in WWII than any other group. Put bluntly, they don't know who did what in WWII and don't care.
Perhaps it's sad that they don't know more history or care about it more, but they are not likely to insult anybody about it, or even bring it up in a bar or anywhere else.
Those of us (fifties baby-boomers) who did pick up an interest in WWII from our fathers, uncles, and neighbors are as knowledgeable as any other group who have studied any particular topic, maybe more so. The direct personal connection inspired a lot of us to pursue it in some depth. When they were around we asked a lot more serious questions than they were willing, in lot of cases, to answer.

Your choice of William Manchester as a source of comment about mis-perceptions about WWII is interesting. When I was teaching history I used his section on WWII in "The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932 -1972" as the source for the students' first assignment: "Find the Errors".
It has several factual errors that are so obvious that even college freshmen can find them. The object was to prove my contention to them that just because it was written in a book it wasn't necessarily true, and that you had to use original or at least multiple references, to get trustworthy historical information. It's not a pop-culture issue, in this case, but is an issue related to what people know about WWII and how they learn it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Your choice of William Manchester as a source of comment about mis-perceptions about WWII is interesting. When I was teaching history I used his section on WWII in "The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932 -1972" as the source for the students' first assignment: "Find the Errors".
It has several factual errors that are so obvious that even college freshmen can find them. The object was to prove my contention to them that just because it was written in a book it wasn't necessarily true, and that you had to use original or at least multiple references, to get trustworthy historical information. It's not a pop-culture issue, in this case, but is an issue related to what people know about WWII and how they learn it.

You'll note that I didn't quote any aspect of Manchester's recounting of the war. I quoted only his reaction to the trivialization of the war by popular culture, which was well-underway during the 1960s. I don't think there's any factual error in his statement there worth disputing or contending: he was speaking as a veteran who was tired of people who got everything they knew about the war from TV and movies. Evidently there were enough of them rampant in 1971 that they got under his skin, just as I'm sure they get under yours.

For the record, the demographic people claim that I, myself, am a boomer. And yes, I do consider anyone who goes around claiming "America won the war, USA USA USA" to be a swaggering oaf, regardless of what demographic cohort he happens to be a part of.

 

[Shangas]

Shangas,



America was more than the Great Liberator. Where in history have you seen a nation engage in conquest or victory over other nations without plundering them? When necessary, America gave far beyond its share of the fighting and then went on to provide succor to every combatant, perpetrator or not. The Marshall Plan was an enormously generous and brilliantly political act that eventually returned the combatants to better than pre-war conditions. America promoted peace and civility as much as possible where possible in an effort to prevent further conflagrations. That is not common international behavior and, unfortunately, it seems America today has forgotten its own moral precedents and responsibilities.

I am not discounting America's affect and contribution to the War. I am discounting the fact that America on its own, WON THE WAR, which I think many people would disagree with, and which sadly, many other people tend to believe, for reasons I never understand.

The whole "If we weren't here, you'd be speaking German/Japanese/Italian by now" may or may not be true to various extents, but the thing I take issue with is the fact that some people tend to think that America should take full credit for certain things. America DID tip the scales of war in the Allies favour, but it didn't come in like Big Brother, shove everyone else aside, and go: "It's alright boys, I've got this. You can go and have your coffee-breaks now..." and just hose down all the Japs and Germans and finish off the war pumping out lead and puffing on a cigar.

while privately he called Dunkirk "a colossal military disaster", publicly he called it a victory, and quietly went about blaming the French for the loss.

I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure the OPPOSITE is true. whenever people talk about the evacuation of Dunkirk, I'm reminded of this quote from Churchill:

We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I am not discounting America's affect and contribution to the War. I am discounting the fact that America on its own, WON THE WAR, which I think many people would disagree with, and which sadly, many other people tend to believe, for reasons I never understand.

Here's an interesting essay from Americana, an academic popular-culture-studies publication on one theory for why this version has taken such hold over the years -- which they call, for better or worse, the "John Wayne Myth."

American popular myths are popular precisely because they sometimes offer social cohesion to that diverse assembly of voters gathered in coffee shops, bars, small–town cafes and juke-box joints to rehearse their communal stories through a lens that is easy to grasp but seductively misleading. This seems a permanent and important feature in a nation so huge, so diverse, and so opinionated. Whenever World War II is discussed in such grassroots locales, there inevitably looms large the hefty image of John Wayne as fighting Seabee or as indefatigable Sergeant Stryker (a movie played to recruits at some Marine bases) or as paratroop leader Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandervoort in The Longest Day, the Allied assault on Europe on June 6, 1944.

They seize on John Wayne as the embodiment of this myth, but he isn't its only representative. I mentioned "The Rat Patrol" in an earlier post -- this was a WW2 action show very popular when I was small, telling about an elite strike force in the North African desert assigned to disrupt and terrorize German operations. The show was based on an actual unit -- one composed of British and New Zealand soldiers. But for American audiences, the unit was made up almost entirely of Americans -- who had had nothing to do with the actual, real-life unit -- and one token Englishman. American kids, especially, lapped this show up -- I got into a fight with a kid in a hospital ward when I was having my tonsils out because I wanted to watch something else -- but the British were outraged. Understandably so.

But that's how legends get spread -- I hate to blame the Boys from Marketing again, but they know Americans don't want to watch Brits and Kiwis fighting the war. Or Canadians, which is why Stephen Spielberg didn't make a movie about Juno Beach. And god forbid, they *really* don't want to see Russians.

 

[rjb1]

I agree that there is a general and pervasive "John Wayne Myth" that is prevalent in the country (US). I was taking some exception that fifties-era baby boomer (males) were more guilty of that than anyone else in the general public of any generation.
At the risk of a generalization myself, I think the fifties-era guys tend to fall into two groups - most don't know or don't care about WWII. If they say that "we" won the War, and if you asked them what battles we won to accomplish that, they might mention Pearl Harbor (which we lost) and maybe D-Day. In other words, as you said, the ones that they have seen movies about.
On the other hand I don't think they would go out of their way to insult or denigrate other countries' effort. They just don't know enough to have an opinion on that issue one way or the other.
On the other side a much smaller contingent of the fifties baby-boomer boys became somewhat fanatical about studying WWII, and I think that came from our exposure in our early years to our friends' fathers and our own relatives who were WWII veterans.
To this day I can say that my best friend's father was in the Navy in the Pacific and my other good friend's father in the neighborhood was a Sherman tank driver in North Africa. My own father was an infantryman in the ETO.
By the time "Rat Patrol", "Hogan's Heroes", and such came out in the mid-sixties we were way beyond being influenced by those (or even willing to watch them). We knew exactly who the Long Range Desert Group was and would not watch "Rat Patrol" in particular - and made sarcastic comments about those who did.
However, we (Americans) are not the only ones guilty of some national chauvinism concerning WWII. I have on a number of occasions looked at a WWII book, and even before checking the author or publisher have identified it as having been written/printed in Britain, just from the photo selection (or especially from a quick glance at the section discussing Montgomery and Eisenhower).

One last quick kick at William Manchester while he's down: I went back and had another look at the book I mentioned and found three more factual errors about WWII that I had not noticed before. I think real WWII scholars could make a parlor-game out of finding errors by WM.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One last quick kick at William Manchester while he's down: I went back and had another look at the book I mentioned and found three more factual errors about WWII that I had not noticed before. I think real WWII scholars could make a parlor-game out of finding errors by WM.

You can kick Manchester until your toes turn blue, but I don't think any author in the last fifty years has captured the mood and general sweep of The Era better than he did. He isn't writing a scholarly history, full of footnotes and citations of obscure archival documents, and errors in a book of such scope are bound to be there -- most of his historical references came from The New York Times, Time magazine, and other popular contemporary media.

I can find half a dozen errors of names and dates just flipping thru his discussion of life during the Depression, but that isn't the point of the book. He isn't writing a PhD dissertation, he's telling the story of a generation, and recounting the impression the events of the period made on that generation. That's what *narrative* history does, and Manchester does it exceptionally well -- when you finish the book, you have a very good feel for the emotional impact events left behind on members of his generation. When I want to know statistics, figures, precise names and dates and sequences of events I go to authors who specialize in those sorts of things. But when I want to know how people actually *felt* about those events -- a subject which is far more interesting to me than names and dates -- narrative historians like Manchester are the best place to look.

My only real gripe with Manchester is that he writes from the perspective of an upper-middle-class college boy from Massachussets, but after all, that's what he was.

 

[jamespowers]

My only real gripe with Manchester is that he writes from the perspective of an upper-middle-class college boy from Massachussets, but after all, that's what he was.

Ok, that right there means I won’t touch it.

You want story telling that gives you an idea about how the time stunk? Read Erich Maria Remarque’s Arch of Triump. :doh:

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yeah, I can pretty much guarantee you'd throw Manchester across the room when you got to his section on the New Deal. Personally, I think he's a bit too rough on John L. Lewis, but that's just me.

Interestingly enough, as devout a New Dealer as he was, when it comes time to discuss the Alger Hiss affair, Manchester unequivocally comes down on the side of Whittaker Chambers (as, in fact, do I). So he isn't a pure ideologue by any means.

Another excellent social historian is Frederick Lewis Allen, who wrote "Only Yesterday," dealing with American life in the twenties, and "Since Yesterday," taking the same approach in dealing with the thirties. Manchester consciously patterned "The Glory And The Dream" on Allen's approach.

 

[Stearmen]

They seize on John Wayne as the embodiment of this myth, but he isn't its only representative. I mentioned "The Rat Patrol" in an earlier post -- this was a WW2 action show very popular when I was small, telling about an elite strike force in the North African desert assigned to disrupt and terrorize German operations. The show was based on an actual unit -- one composed of British and New Zealand soldiers. But for American audiences, the unit was made up almost entirely of Americans -- who had had nothing to do with the actual, real-life unit -- and one token Englishman. American kids, especially, lapped this show up -- I got into a fight with a kid in a hospital ward when I was having my tonsils out because I wanted to watch something else -- but the British were outraged. Understandably so.

Actually, Rat Patrol was based on the SAS and their Jeeps, not the LRDG, who mainly operated trucks. The LRDG did have some Jeeps, but mainly ones that they found in the desert abandoned by the SAS. There was a lot of good natured ribbing between the two groups on that. In fairness, the SAS had no way to bring a broken down vehicle back to base, where the LRDG could just hook one up to their Chevy 3/4 ton trucks and bring it home.

 

[esteban68]

LizzieMaine,



And why not? It was England and France who set the stage for WWII with the WWI armistice and League of Nations and then refused to hold Germany accountable for remilitarizing while they plundered the German nation and economy with war reparations. WWII was just WWI, Part B. It was their problem and they should have dealt with it. The Brits and French were just whistling in the dark. We washed our hands of it after WWI. Not to mention, the U.S. generally had isolationist tendencies growing out of its history. I wouldn't give the Russians much credit for anything other than defending themselves. They may have beat Germany but their performance before and after WWII (let alone WWI) is nothing to be proud of.

As a 'Brit' I'd say there is quite a bit of truth in the above...still very proud of the stoic defensive of these little islands though! I think though we need to separate people's and government to some extent as they are often not one and the same.

 

[sheeplady]

I can find half a dozen errors of names and dates just flipping thru his discussion of life during the Depression, but that isn't the point of the book. He isn't writing a PhD dissertation, he's telling the story of a generation, and recounting the impression the events of the period made on that generation. That's what *narrative* history does, and Manchester does it exceptionally well -- when you finish the book, you have a very good feel for the emotional impact events left behind on members of his generation. When I want to know statistics, figures, precise names and dates and sequences of events I go to authors who specialize in those sorts of things. But when I want to know how people actually *felt* about those events -- a subject which is far more interesting to me than names and dates -- narrative historians like Manchester are the best place to look.

There is *incredible* value to people's experiences. As a retrospective researcher, I've found the statement "What people misremember is just as important as what they remember" to be very very accurate. There is a lot of value in what we remember and how we remember it. It is a totally different book to go back and ask WWII vets today what they remember, but it is just as valuable a book because we can understand *what* and *how* something is remembered after 60 years of processing.

As far as dissertations- I have a whole dissertation written on retrospective research. Since my research focuses on the impact that technology has on older adults' lives, understanding how they felt about and remembered earlier interactions with technology was incredibly important. I don't care that the desktop computer was introduced in your office in 1982 but you remembered it being introduced in 1983. I care about what you think and your impressions of it being introduced *now* because I'm not writing history- I'm writing how you tell your story now. How does your self-narrative affect your behavior now?

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

The sad part is that nowadays the criteria for the commemoration of historic events seems to be based, not on its actual historic importance, but on how much people today personally relate to it. In the last several years there seems to have been a number of important historic events that reached its 100th or 150th anniversary that received scant attention but something like Woodstock will be commemorated till the end of time. :doh:

 

[LizzieMaine]

The sad part is that nowadays the criteria for the commemoration of historic events seems to be based, not on its actual historic importance, but on how much people today personally relate to it. In the last several years there seems to have been a number of important historic events that reached its 100th or 150th anniversary that received scant attention but something like Woodstock will be commemorated till the end of time. :doh:

What's important is how people *at the time* reacted to events. And there were an awful lot of people who opened up their copy of Look magazine that particular week in 1969 and thought those kids were absolutely out of their minds. I know that's how my family reacted.

A hundred years from now, when the last Boomer is long gone, I suspect Woodstock will be considered about as important as the 1876 Centennial Exposition is considered today.

 

[Blackjack]

What's important is how people *at the time* reacted to events. And there were an awful lot of people who opened up their copy of Look magazine that particular week in 1969 and thought those kids were absolutely out of their minds. I know that's how my family reacted.

A hundred years from now, when the last Boomer is long gone, I suspect Woodstock will be considered about as important as the 1876 Centennial Exposition is considered today.

I don't consider it important now....

 

[jamespowers]

I don't consider it important now....

Good man!

 

[rjb1]

If I happened to be sitting next to William Manchester on his front porch (when he was still around) and he was telling stories of what he did in the war or before, and he said something that was clearly historically wrong (even preposterous) I would nod politely, say "uh-huh", and "Please go on."
I do civilian volunteer work for the 101st Airborne Museum at Ft. Campbell and have met and talked at length with a number of WWII veterans and I treat them exactly that way. They also have some strange/incorrect ideas as to what happened in the war.
A lot of times what they say, when considered in the light of real history, shows what people thought at the time, not what really happened. They were deliberately kept in the dark for good security reasons and rumors abounded.
I have done a lot of that sort of interaction and hope to do more with the few WWII veterans who are left.
I do have some reservations about the possible effects of writing these things down in a book (or books) without some disclaimer that the contents are what the author is remembering, right or wrong, not that it is historically correct. I suppose that's what "narrative " means, but that seems to be a bit weak as a disclaimer.
Otherwise, people might think that Los Angeles really was bombed by 15 Japanese Zeroes in March 1942, as Mr. Manchester directly states. A lot of people believed it happened, but it really did not, and that's the important thing, *as long as you know the difference*. (Steven Spielberg made an un-funny "comedy" about that non-event.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

A lot of times what they say, when considered in the light of real history, shows what people thought at the time, not what really happened.

And that's what *social history* is all about -- and much of "hard" history cannot be properly understood without the context of social history. You can know the bare facts of how Americans reacted as they did in the early months of 1942 -- the hysteria about Japanese planes on the West Coast, the exclusion order, the U-Boat scares on the East Coast, the frantic air raid drills -- but you will never really understand *why* they reacted that way until you understand the atmosphere of escalating tension that had been building for years prior to Pearl Harbor, and you'll find that understanding in social histories. Social history fills in the blanks between the recitation of facts and dates and names that "hard" history provides -- and without that social history, all you have is an almanac.

As for the "fifteen Zeros over LA" item, the end notes indicate this and other mentions in the paragraph were culled from various issues of the New York Times, Life magazine, and a popular history of the 1940s published in 1953 by Time. It is not an incident Manchester explores in any depth at all. It would have been better if he had inserted half a sentence -- "later revealed as a false alarm" -- but he isn't writing *about* that incident. He's writing about the tense mood in the first weeks after Pearl Harbor. Even if those anti-aircraft batteries were firing at a weather balloon, the fact that the popular press reported it otherwise illustrates what the mood of the country was at that particular moment in time. There was no "nationwide panic" in 1938 when Orson Welles pulled his Martian stunt either -- but the fact that the press reported one, and that millions of people reading those accounts believed that one occured, tells you a great deal about the tensions of *that* moment in time as well. Even "incorrect" history can be part of "correct" history.

Nobody is suggesting that one should read *only* social, narrative histories, or that William Manchester's works are the only books on World War II that one should ever consult (in addition to The Glory and The Dream, he wrote a memoir describing his service in the Pacific Theatre.) But dismissing his work, and that of other social historians, means you're missing out on an important element of understanding the Era.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't consider it important now....

Actually, Woodstock was *extremely* important. If Alger Hiss hadn't owned and used a Woodstock typewriter to copy State Department papers, he never would have been exposed as a spy. And without the Hiss Affair, Richard Milhouse Nixon never would have become Vice President -- or President. If Richard Milhouse Nixon hadn't become president, there would have been no Watergate. Had there been no Watergate, Gerald Ford never would have become President. If Gerald Ford had never become President, nobody ever would have heard of Chevy Chase. And late twentieth century American culture would have been that much the poorer.

Yes, Woodstock was *very very important.*