Ep. 16: Dwight Eisenhower and the Holocaust with Jason Lantzer

General Dwight Eisenhower’s visit to the Ohrdruf concentration camp in April 1945 fundamentally changed his outlook on the war and on his enemy, the Nazis.  It also changed the way he carried out his duties later as US Military Governor in charge of both caring for former concentration prisoners as well as dealing with former Nazis, and, later, as President of the United States.

In this conversation with Jason Lantzer, we talk about all of this and more.

You can see some wartime footage of Eisnehower’s visit to Ohrdruf here courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Jason Lantzer is an historian and also Assistant Director of the Honors Program at Butler University.

Lantzer, Jason. Dwight Eisenhower and the Holocaust: A History (2023)

Follow on Twitter @holocaustpod.
Email the podcast at holocausthistorypod@gmail.com

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman (00:01.513)
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Holocaust history podcast. I'm your host, wait, man born. And today we're going to talk about a topic that I think is really, really interesting, which is the role that Eisenhower played in both the Holocaust memory and dealing with the after effects of it, but also the role the Holocaust played in shaping Eisenhower. And, you know, one of the things that, that I never forget because I spend lots of time.

at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC. It's a wonderful place full of wonderful people. And when you get off the elevator to begin going through the permanent exhibit, there is a quote on the wall from Eisenhower. And part of it says, when he's talking about his decision to visit the concentration camps that are being liberated in Germany, and he said, I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position,

to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever in the future there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda. And, you know, we'll talk about this with my guest. Unfortunately, I think we are in that era. And, you know, Eisenhower was very, very prescient in that. And so with me today is Jason Lancer, who wrote a book on exactly this issue of Eisenhower and the Holocaust.

So Jason, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming.

Jason Lantzer (01:32.644)
Thanks for having me, Whiteman.

Waitman (01:34.441)
Great. So can you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what you do in your sort of day job and what you're interested in and then how you got into this particular topic specifically.

Jason Lantzer (01:45.156)
Sure thing. So I am the assistant director of the honors program at Butler University in Indianapolis. I arrived there as a historian. I remain a historian, but I also got into teaching honors classes. And that really opened a new door for me in terms of scholarship, because suddenly I got to develop classes on things that I wanted to teach. I no longer had to teach.

things that maybe were interesting, but not necessarily things that I always wanted to be focusing my time on. And I've been doing that for just over a decade now, full time. And it's been absolutely great. In fact, we're getting ready for graduation. So I've been seeing seniors off as they come by the office and kind of, you know.

doing a little nostalgic, I remember when you arrived on campus kind of stuff this week. So it's been really nice. In terms of this topic, we at Butler are very fortunate that several years ago, a family in Indianapolis started a research fund, gave money to the university to fund undergraduate research on the Holocaust. The main driver behind that,

was the son of two survivors of the Holocaust. And so our university has this opportunity to really have undergrads doing research on the Holocaust. In the second year of that program, one of my former students named Isaac applied for and received the grant. And his project was to look at

the impact of Schindler's List because he remembered seeing that growing up and how people utilize that film to sort of, this was your Holocaust education, right? We're gonna watch Schindler's List in middle school or high school, wherever. Yeah, yep, yep. You knew it was gonna be a good day in class and then, wait, we are watching a movie, but it's on the Holocaust. So he,

Waitman (03:54.505)
They wheel in the TV on the cart kind of thing.

Waitman (04:04.297)
Yeah, not, not, yeah.

Jason Lantzer (04:08.292)
You know, now as a college student, he really wanted to sort of investigate it. So he was going to use the money to go to Poland and take the Schindler tour. However, he had asked me to serve as his sort of advisor on this project. And I said, well, I think it's great. You know, I'm a big fan of being sort of on the ground, history, you know, walking in footsteps and seeing things. I said, but we should probably, you know, look at some.

other sources too, not just the film and not just the tour. So we identified some resources at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC. And he said, well, Dr. Lancer, the problem I've got is I don't have time to go to Washington as well. And I don't have the money. The money is going to the trip to Poland. I said, Isaac, don't worry. I'm going to actually be going out to DC. I will, you know.

take an afternoon and go to the museum and pull what you need. So that's, I.

Waitman (05:13.641)
This is like, by the way, you win like the award for greatest advisor ever. You know, like helping actually do the research is like, you know, above and beyond.

Jason Lantzer (05:16.452)
Well, yeah. Well, thanks. I will put that on my CV. Exactly. So, you know, I went in and as you sort of mentioned, the staff there is just phenomenal and they helped me. It was my first time visiting the Archives Library Museum.

Waitman (05:26.217)
Exactly. Yeah. But put that in for your annual pay raise that you're not getting probably.

Jason Lantzer (05:45.924)
And so I pulled what he needed and then I decided, well, I'm here. I might as well go through the exhibit. And that quote, the Eisenhower quote that just sort of hits you as you start the exhibit is what jumped out to me. And it stayed with me the entire rest of the time that I walked through the museum. It bothered me because it was one of those things.

where I knew that I had read that quote or portions of the quote before.

But I also was, what bothered me about it was I didn't think anybody had really talked about it, right? It's one of those sort of boilerplate things. If you're writing a history of the Holocaust, maybe of World War II, or at least the US Army in World War II, you're gonna place it in there. And Eisenhower visited camp and then he said this about it. And then you move on. And that really, it stuck with me. I can remember going into the library,

or the museum gift shop and just starting to pull books and checking indexes. And sure enough, there's the quote, or Eisenhower visited Orr -Dorff, but nothing else. And then I thought, well, when I get home, I've got a couple Eisenhower biographies. I'll see. And the same thing was happening. And I checked a couple of World War II histories that I had on my shelves, and the same thing is happening. It's a paragraph.

And the more I thought about it, the more I thought there has to be more. I mean, this is a guy who isn't just a general who happens to visit a camp. He's the supreme allied commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, the man who Americans especially will credit with winning the war in Europe. He's the guy. And then just a few years later, he's the president.

Jason Lantzer (07:47.524)
And he's got to deal with all sorts of international relations kinds of issues. Obviously, the war had to have impacted how he became president. I think every historian who's tackled his presidency has at least touched on that. I think it would be kind of hard not to. But I kept coming back to, well, how did his encounter with the Holocaust? And then you start.

You start digging as a historian and you don't know what you're gonna find. But I think I found a pretty compelling story of how the Holocaust, Eisenhower's encounter with the Holocaust coupled with his experience just leading the allies in the Western theater really do end up shaping how he approaches the presidency.

Waitman (08:45.865)
So that's a really great introduction and it's a really great book and I'll put it as I always do in the show links to check it out. But maybe we should take it one step back and talk a little bit about who Eisenhower is, right? Because he went to the greatest educational institution in the United States that I'm not at all biased about, the United States Military Academy at West Point. But it's funny, and I want to hear you to talk about it because going there,

Jason Lantzer (09:02.648)
You

Waitman (09:16.105)
You know, there's a statue of Eisenhower on the plane at West Point and he's, you know, in his World War II uniform, you know, standing there with his, you know, his arms on his, on his hips, his hands on his hips, you know, and he's always this sort of larger than life guy. But, you know, he's a human being. And, you know, I think you would argue that he comes to...

And your book does this too, which is why I'm asking the question. It sort of leads up to building the man who then is the person who enters into the camp. Right. And so he comes into that camp with sort of a series of life experiences. What's he like? What's he like as a person? How does he sort of develop? And I think, in addition to that question, you know,

The idea that the issue that runs throughout your book, right, is sort of his moral compass. He has a very strong sort of sense of right and wrong and morality. And I guess where does that come from?

Jason Lantzer (10:19.3)
Well, it comes, I'm very happy to say, because he's a midwesterner. So Eisenhower's a product of middle America. He's born in the late 19th century to a very religious family. That sort of, as you phrase it, that moral compass never leaves him. He's raised in a, I would.

Waitman (10:24.617)
There we go. We can both advocate here. Yeah.

Jason Lantzer (10:48.58)
I would classify it as a loving home. It's also, it's a home that has plenty of rules as homes often did, especially back then, especially in small town America. But he's, you know, his, his youth is, is really family centric. It is defined by that small town. It's also defined, I think by.

As much as his parents may have had rules, I mean, they come from a pacifistic religious background. They also never stopped their boys from exploring things beyond what they saw as maybe the proper, you know, things to do. So for example, Eisenhower as a boy, as a lot of kids, a lot of boys are, especially at that time, he grows up reading.

stories about generals and armies, a lot of Greek and Roman and American Civil War, but American Revolutionary history. And these are the kinds of figures that he gravitates to, he likes to read about. But at the same time, as much as there's a family story, for example, that his mom at one point confiscates all those books and locks them up in a cupboard so that he can't read them.

kind of thing, but eventually he gets them back. And as much as that is maybe a form of escape for him, he's also really thinking, how do I leave this town? Abilene, Kansas, again, as much as it's his hometown, he does have eyes on the wider world, but he just doesn't know how he's going to be able to do that. And thankfully,

Waitman (12:30.121)
Right.

Jason Lantzer (12:41.86)
He and a friend come up with this idea that maybe they can get appointed to one of the service academies. And they're going to sort of take turns trying and maybe raising money while working so that one could go to college. It's this great sort of small town, we're going to escape together kind of idea. And Eisenhower ends up with the appointment to West Point. And it's a great idea.

changes his life. It gets him out of Kansas. It brings him to New York. And it sort of thrusts him as a young man. And he's, I think, about 20 when he gets the appointment. So he's not fresh out of high school by any stretch of the imagination. But he's seen a little bit of life, but not much beyond his hometown. And suddenly, there he is. And he's a.

exposed to a whole different world, a world that, in some respects, is very similar. It's very rules -driven. But it is also a world that is going to challenge him academically. He's basically got an early 20th century high school education, which is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you've ever seen some of the classes that those kids

Waitman (13:49.257)
Yes. It is certainly that.

Jason Lantzer (14:09.22)
had to take back then. But he's not, I don't think, wildly prepared for college in that respect. But there he is, right? And now he has to be. And he does fairly well at West Point. He really likes the fact that he can play football until he gets injured. And then he discovers that he's actually a pretty good coach. He's a f---- -.

A good student, again, this is not surprising, especially as I'm in the midst of grading final exams right now, he's a good student on the subjects he wants to be a good student in. And on everything else, he's going to be really solidly in the middle. Is he at the top of his class? No. But is he at the top of some of his classes? Yes. And then he's looking at a career in the.

the army, this is his great escape. And he graduates just, you know, he would say almost at the right time. The nation is going to enter the first world war. He's expecting, well, like a lot of his classmates, he's going to be off commanding troops in Europe. This is what he's trained for. This is what the sort of expectation is. And then he gets delved a really tough blow in that...

Because he is a good coach, because he has shown promise as a leader and as an instructor, he gets to stay in the US and train soldiers who will be going to Europe. And he talks about this is, especially in the years right after the war, he's missed his chance. He feels that this is going to be a black mark on his career, that he didn't make it to Europe. And.

Everybody in the US Army, in the military in general, in the early 20th century, knows that the US has this tendency of, we still have this lingering distrust of standing armies. We expand our military when we need it to, which means we need a ramp up time. I mean, the Great War is a great example of that. It takes us almost a year from the time we.

Jason Lantzer (16:36.228)
declare war on Germany in April of 1917 to really being able to take part in operations, because we have to literally create an army. I mean, yes, General Pershing arrives with a token force by the fall of 1917, but we're not really part of the line until the spring of 1918. So we take those oceans for granted. And the flip side of that is that,

everyone expects once the war is over that the military will collapse back to sort of peace level. And so Eisenhower's great fear is because he doesn't have combat experience, he is not going to be able to garner promotions moving forward and that his career will eventually sort of stall out. Luckily for him and luckily for us, you know, looking back on it, he...

catches the eye of several prominent generals throughout his career that helped make him into a really, really good staff officer. And who take an interest in sort of expanding his horizons beyond just sort of pushing paper and making sure that everything, all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed.

Waitman (17:58.569)
Yeah, I mean, that's something that's really interesting. Just in general, I mean, Eisenhower manages to become sort of the highest ranking and arguably most important one of the most important generals. Right. And as doesn't have any combat experience, I mean, never really has never led troops in the field ever. Which is really I mean, it's it's it's I think it's both just.

Jason Lantzer (18:14.308)
Yeah.

Waitman (18:28.073)
amazing. It's also a testament, I think, to him as a person and especially what happened, you know, the fact that later on during World War Two, he's able, he gains the respect of generals under him and in the allies who have led troops in combat, you know, and I think that that is something that, you know, I was only in the military for five years. But if you have sort of the ability to get those kinds of people to respect you without that,

experience seems it seems to be a really a positive sort of statement on your personality on your on your character, right?

Jason Lantzer (19:04.182)
Yeah, I 100 % agree with that. He is able, in part because I think he recognizes that if this is going to be his career, he's going to make the most of each and every opportunity he's given. He's willing to learn and to adapt and to take the jobs as they come and hope that something

Next time, it'll be something different, something better. So I think probably if we're looking at people who look out for him, first and foremost, it's General Fox Connor, who's sort of known as the brains of Pershing's American Expeditionary Force during World War I. Connor's the one who sort of brings Eisenhower with him to Panama.

More than one, and I think I echo this in the book, more than one author has referred to this period as Eisenhower's graduate school training, because Connor will give him books to read, and then they'll sit down and talk about it. Books on tactics, book on logistics, books on this, books on that, because Connor sees something in him. And then he does make it to Europe then, eventually. He actually gets appointed to the battlefield monuments commission.

So he gets to work with General Pershing. He gets to travel through France especially and into Germany. He'll eventually then sort of catch the eye of some other senior officers, including Douglas MacArthur. And he'll be MacArthur's aide in DC. And then when MacArthur takes the job of sort of overseeing the military of the Philippines and the American Philippines are.

are on a pathway to independence in the 1930s, overseen by the United States since the Spanish -American War. He takes Eisenhower with him. So he gets to see the world in a lot of respects without leaving the military, without really sort of hopping from one rising star officer to another as his tutors. And it's really phenomenal.

Waitman (21:34.697)
And so then, and not to skip forward a little bit, right? He finds himself Supreme Allied Commander Europe in charge of everything, right? And I guess this is one of the questions that I think is important that I'm sure Liz is interested in. When he is the Supreme Military Commander in Europe, I guess not just of American troops, but also Allied troops.

but also of American troops. How much does he know about the Holocaust? How much of that is out there? Which is sort of the lead up question to sort of how prepared or unprepared is the US military for what it finds when it goes into Germany?

Jason Lantzer (22:22.948)
So it's an interesting question. It's an important question. And it's a hard one to give you an answer that's going to satisfy anyone. Because on the one hand, there is knowledge about what is going on in Germany, what the Nazis are doing. This is one of those things where Hitler doesn't hide.

His hatred of Jews, he doesn't hide his plans for expansion. I mean, they're right there in Mein Kampf. It's published. It's, you know, there's an English language edition within like a year or two of its initial publication. You can read it. It's those kinds of statements are throughout his, his public addresses. The Nazis rise to power very clear that they're targeting certain individual groups and, and everything.

And there's also no doubt that once they get power in 1933, they begin almost immediately pushing German Jews to the side. You know, we're talking about a group of people who are largely assimilated, who consider themselves on the whole as Germans first, who happen to be Jewish. And suddenly the Nazis are saying, no, you're a Jew and you live in Germany. And we don't like that.

And so we're going to make life really hard for you. You know, the Nazis open camps fairly early on, not death camps, obviously, not the concentration camps as they will develop, but they start arresting large numbers of people, especially after the Reichstag fire. And they're able to basically outlaw the Communist Party and begin arresting large groups en masse. These camps are usually termed as sort of

First of all, they're outside of the established police system. These are essentially government camps, right? And they are, they're deemed at first as sort of re -education camps. But the question that doesn't go answered is, are these people who go there, are they ever going to be re -educated enough to come back or are they ever going to come back? Right? We know about those. That makes the newspapers.

Jason Lantzer (24:50.276)
We know that camps exist very early on once the war starts. And easily by 1941, 1942, yes, the US doesn't, we're not involved officially in the war until after Pearl Harbor. But by late 41, early 42,

The governments in exile that are headquartered in London are reporting, they're getting information from people back in their occupied countries. Poland is a chief example of this. They're saying the Nazis are rounding up Jews and they're taking them to these camps and they're putting them in ghettos. They're doing all these things. We know about that. I mean, when I say we, I mean,

People in power, it's publicly discussed in Parliament in London. Copies of the reports are sent to Washington DC or handed off. But it's also making newspapers. The problem is that if you're talking about the average American in, say, 1940, yes, there's knowledge that the Nazis are doing these things.

But first, Americans are worried about the Great Depression, which is still raging. Second, those news articles, when they appear, aren't necessarily at the top, above the fold of the newspapers. They tend to be the little sort of, hey, this is something that we're hearing reports of in Germany. So they're not even necessarily on the first page. They could be buried in the newspaper. And the idea of a camp, well, what does that mean?

In the American context, and there are numerous GIs that will say this in their letters, you know, you told me that the Nazis were putting people into camps, I would assume you're sending them into something like a YMCA or a church summer camp. I mean, that's a camp to us. So even though the words, right, the nomenclature that is getting used, if you don't know what the Nazis mean by this, you're reading, and they're sending, there are reports that they're

Jason Lantzer (27:13.348)
sending people to these camps. Okay, I guess is that like a prison? I don't know. But wait, the Yankees are playing, right? Let me get to the sports page kind of thing. So there's a base level of knowledge that the Nazis are doing something.

Waitman (27:15.625)
Thank you.

Jason Lantzer (27:33.316)
It is never something, and there are multiple reasons for this, including anti -Semitism within the halls of power. The camps, what's happening to Jews, to others that the Nazis are targeting, is never going to rise in the minds of American policymakers to the level of, this is what we are fighting the war for or about.

Waitman (27:50.849)
Thank you.

Jason Lantzer (28:02.436)
we are fighting the war to stop Nazi aggression, right? From the Germans taking over the world. A subset of that, you know, down the line would be, well, we don't want them doing here what they're doing there. But it's there, there are other priorities, right? And in fact, once Eisenhower is sort of gets the job as Supreme Allied commander, the idea is his job, his really his only order.

in some respects is to win the war, defeat the Nazis. And discussion of the camps, that's not a priority in DC or in London. It's not going to be something that Eisenhower is going to prioritize in 42, 43, even 44. It's just not on the list. And it's not on the list for, and that rolls into a couple other.

implications, which is because it's not deemed a priority, it's not going to be something that American or even allied intelligence is going to be looking into.

The other thing, and this is more of a realistic standpoint, is what, even if it was, what is Eisenhower supposed to do in 1942? Right? Like we just entered the war. We are in this ramp up phase. I mean, again, just like in World War I, it takes us almost a year after Pearl Harbor to be able to launch Operation Torch. And that is not an invasion of Europe or the call to liberation. That's an invasion.

Waitman (29:27.849)
Right, yeah.

Jason Lantzer (29:45.252)
sort of, they're very careful about the I word, of North Africa. And those are French colonies. And that opens up this whole other issue for Eisenhower as diplomat. And so because it's not a priority, it's not something that is necessarily on his radar screen, even if it is something that is sort of baseline known, is a very long -winded answer.

Hehehehe

Waitman (30:16.873)
So is it? No, I mean, I guess my only my only follow -up question is sort of I Guess it's not even something then that like a g2 or g5 g2 being intelligence and I love g5 existed in World War two but like the the sort of civil affairs People we call today the civil affairs people They're not even tracking that. Hey, you know, this is a thing That you might encounter when you go into Germany. They're just not really even

Jason Lantzer (30:43.94)
Well, no, is the quick answer to that. And I think the reason for that is because the Germans don't really establish. I mean, there are a couple. Don't get me wrong. But there aren't camps the way we're going to see them in France, one. And again, the death camps, the sort of Auschwitz's of.

Waitman (30:46.729)
focused on it.

Waitman (31:06.761)
Right, yep.

Jason Lantzer (31:08.708)
of the Nazi world. Those are in Poland. Those are going to be encountered by the Red Army as they start marching on the Eastern Front and pushing the Germans back. So we don't have, again, there are camps, but they're not like on the coast of Normandy. They're not going to be things that we're looking at once we get to overlord. And even once we get past Paris, summer of.

of 44. And we're starting to drive into Germany, and we'll swing up through Holland.

The discussion about camps, because once we're on the ground and once we're moving, G2 is able to, we're expanding our intelligence network. And Eisenhower, this is, on the one hand, it seems crazy. On the other hand, I don't think anything's really changed, right? You've got military intelligence from virtual, I think all the branches. You've also got.

the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, the Foreigner, the CIA, they're operating. So you've actually got multiple reports that are getting collated, usually in Washington, and then sent to Eisenhower.

So as we're moving along, those reports are starting to talk a little bit more about the camps. But they're almost always talking in reference, at least what I've seen. These are seen as assets to the German military industrial complex, if you will. So are they a high priority target? Well, they're a camp. They're not a factory, necessarily. They're not thought of in that way.

Jason Lantzer (33:00.228)
What does that mean? Is that where they're keeping workers? Are those workers voluntary? Again, it's a low priority task. One of the G2 officers that works for Shaf, he's an American, he will talk about after he visits Dachau in late April, 1945, he talks about in his memoirs, going back and looking at his reports and thinking, how did we miss this?

Waitman (33:11.913)
Right.

Jason Lantzer (33:30.5)
Like we've got the pieces, right? They're all there, but nobody put them together. It's like a puzzle that you've got. All the pieces are scattered across the room. You should have put them together because you would have seen something much, much different than what you were thinking about.

Jason Lantzer (33:51.204)
Absolutely.

Waitman (33:52.009)
Well, of course, you know, hindsight's always 20 -20 sort of in that regard, too. So again, if we fast forward a little bit, you know, what is the first encounter? What is the, you know, what is the first encounter sort of like for the military, but then also for Eisenhower?

Jason Lantzer (34:05.636)
So the first camp that the US forces are going to liberate is Ordorf, about April 4th. So just not too long ago, we would have hit the anniversary, 79th anniversary. It's by mistake. And that's one of the, if you can find a little dark humor in all this, almost every camp that the Americans liberate, you will see the description of.

We didn't even know what we, you know, we were just like, there's something here. Nobody's looking for these camps. They find some prisoners that are wandering. They find some bodies. A couple of soldiers are dispatched to kind of follow, it seems to be more and more up this road. And they find Ordorf. It's a sub camp of Buchenwald. It has been largely evacuated. And by evacuated, I mean the.

Nazis rounded up the healthiest prisoners and put them on a death march to Buchenwald. It's one of the fascinating things about the end of the war is how much the Nazis are both trying to cover up what they've done when they can, but also maintain their labor force for as long as they can. I mean, we're talking about, we're within a month of the end of the war and they're still moving prisoners thinking, well, we've got to get the healthy ones to a camp that's still firmly under our control.

Jason Lantzer (35:35.524)
And so it's shock. You start to see, and this is one of those across the board, it doesn't matter who's doing the liberating, who's walking into the camps. There's talk of the smell, the bodies, the living skeletons. That's ubiquitous, whether it's British, American, or Russian soldiers who've encountered survivors at the camps. They're living skeletons. I mean, sometimes they're existing on.

you know, 500 or less calories a day by this point. So there's this shocking moment. Fast forward about a week. Eisenhower is on a tour there. His grandson has this wonderful phrase, David Eisenhower, in one of his books on his grandfather talks about how Eisenhower is preparing for a glorious finish. They know the Nazis are on the ropes.

We are pushing deeper and deeper into Germany. Eisenhower's even contemplating, even though he has initially earlier in the year discounted a push towards Berlin, he's now thinking, well, I mean, maybe we can. He's approved a shape plan to at least study maybe an airborne operation that would seize control of the city ahead of the Russians.

He's on a visit with George Patton and Omar Bradley. They're visiting the Merkers salt mines that Patton's troops had discovered a few days beforehand, actually about the same time that Ordov had been liberated. And the Merkers salt mines are one of those areas where the Nazis were storing their loot, the gold.

the artworks, and if you've seen Monuments Men, I mean, this is one of those things, right? There's some wonderful gallows humor where the three generals are riding down, probably with some aides, in one of those very small salt mine elevator, sort of industrial elevators, and one of them quips, you know, what would happen if the chain broke, you know, it set us back, and ha, ha, ha. And then Patton's joking about, well, maybe not all this gold.

Waitman (37:31.689)
Right.

Jason Lantzer (37:53.86)
You know, maybe some of it ends up in a third army retirement fund or something like that. All good day. And then someone, one of the aides says, hey, would General Eisenhower like to go visit this camp we found last week? And Eisenhower says, yes. And that changes the day. It changes his life. It changes the war. I mean, it changes everything. They arrive at the camp.

Waitman (37:54.249)
Right.

Jason Lantzer (38:22.948)
He's immediately surrounded by soldiers who are there caring for the survivors. The people that have come with them are standing. I mean, they're seeing this for the first time. He takes a tour. It keeps going on and on. They see bodies. They go into the crematoria. This is, you know, famously Patton gets sick and throws up outside after sticking his head in. Eisenhower just keeps walking.

At some point in the afternoon, an aide comes up to him, this is General, I think it's time for you to go. And Eisenhower says, absolutely not, I have to get this. It's one of my favorite Eisenhower quotes. No, I have to get this. And what he meant by that was he had to take it all in. He had to see every nook and cranny. They're talking to survivors. He's got an official interpreter, his official German interpreter is back at his headquarters and he's...

ordered to get on a plane and fly up there. Meanwhile, Eisenhower's picked out a GI who speaks German, because that's how they're conversing with the prisoners or the liberated prisoners. And the GI tells Eisenhower, he says, General, my German's not that good. And Eisenhower says, don't worry, mine is. But I need time to process what's being said before I respond. And so.

He goes back to Patton's headquarters to spend the night. He talks with Bradley about it. He cannot fathom what they've seen.

Waitman (39:51.049)
Mm.

Waitman (40:06.281)
And I should, I should jump in really quickly just to note for our listeners, there's video, there's film taken of this visit and, and you can see it. It's on the Holocaust museums website. If you search for it. and it's, I, when I, when I got done reading Jason's book, I spent like an hour just watching the film of him walking through. And it's, it's fascinating because there is that one moment where I think it might've been the crematoria where you, where Patton won't go in, but, but you can literally see Eisenhower like walking in and being like, I'm going in.

Jason Lantzer (40:07.62)
Absolutely.

Jason Lantzer (40:33.412)
No, no.

Waitman (40:36.393)
and that kind of thing. So I don't interrupt what you're talking about to continue, but for those of you that are interested, and maybe I'll link to one or two of them, you can see him actually doing this and going through it.

Jason Lantzer (40:42.244)
And you mentioned earlier that the statue at West Point, his hands on his hips, I mean, in the stills, that's what you take away, is Eisenhower standing there with his hands on his hips, listening to people talk and tell him what had happened here.

But yeah, he talks to Bradley that night about how is this possible? And there are two other things I'd say. One is he takes that night to sort of process things and try and come up with some sort of course of action.

It's also the night that he's going to get woken up because they visit the camp on April 12th, on April 13th, word breaks that Franklin Roosevelt has died. So the president is dead. We're going to get a new president. I don't really explore this in the book, but the more I've thought about it, especially in, and I do touch on his relationship with president Truman a little bit, but I, I'm beginning to wonder how much that also plays into his decision to request.

Waitman (41:42.185)
Right.

Jason Lantzer (41:56.228)
an official congressional delegation to visit the camps. He doesn't want this lost. One, he already thinks it's important. It's challenged, and it's changed his view of the war. I think he entered the war viewing in a very American fashion. We're the good guys. The Germans are the bad guys. But that's because we're opposing each other. It's a sports sort of.

thing, which fit with Eisenhower a lot, right? It's us versus them. Of course, we're the good guys. Of course, they're the opposition. But suddenly that moral cast gets brought back up. Like, wait a second, we are the good guys. He tells soldiers, while they're at Orrdorf, he remarks to one soldier, or actually he says it to a group, the American fighting man is often...

And I'm paraphrasing here, has been asking, what are we fighting for? Well, now you know what we're fighting against. He tells another soldier, I think as he's exiting one of the buildings, well, are you having a hard time hating them now, private kind of thing? Like this changes his perception of his opponent in a very, very fundamental way. And so he doesn't want it lost. He's going to request a congressional delegation.

It's almost humorous, especially if you weren't dealing with a nation in mourning from the passing of a president in the midst of a war. I mean, everybody who's anybody in Congress wants to be part of this delegation. There's fighting, there's hurt feelings. That was one of the fun things to sort of to read about was, you know, why did he get to go and I didn't? You know, I...

I'm more senior than he is kind of thing.

Jason Lantzer (43:55.204)
And so that documentation, Eisenhower requesting as well that newspaper editors be sent over, that other public dignity, he doesn't want it to just be the military saying, this is what we found or even, Hey, I'm Dwight Eisenhower, and this is what I saw. I want all of these voices of people that Americans respect to echo what I'm telling you. And.

Part of that has to do with a very, very real desire, a really feeling, maybe more than desire. A feeling that Americans have that propaganda is a bad thing. The P word is a dirty word. We look back on the Great War in particular. And this is something that Americans in the 20s and 30s would continually reference.

that we kind of got tricked into fighting in World War I. The British put off all this propaganda about all these horrible things that the Germans were doing in Belgium, the rape of Belgium, the killing of orphans. And then it turned out not to be true.

And so Americans are very, very gun shy when it comes to what might be deemed as propaganda. That's why Eisenhower says in the quote, right, I don't want anybody to think this is propaganda moving forward. This happened. And to the extent that he can get other voices to show and demonstrate and document. And really that sort of preservation of evidence.

starts almost immediately. It's the video or the movies. I guess we could call those videos. It's seizing paper, documents. It's one of those weird things. As you know, the Nazis on the one hand are trying to hide their crimes, but on the other hand, they're pretty proud of what they did. And they were really good at documenting what they did most of the time. And so we end up with

Jason Lantzer (46:06.884)
A treasure trove, if you're a historian of documents, not everything we'd maybe want, but a lot more than maybe you'd expect to find.

Jason Lantzer (46:21.828)
That's the only one that he visits, as far as I know. His son, John, who's also going to go on to become a general and later an ambassador and a top -notch historian, too. John has just graduated from West Point. He's deployed to Europe. He's going to visit Buchenwald. Eisenhower gets.

Waitman (46:23.913)
Does he visit other camps or is that the only one he goes to in person?

Jason Lantzer (46:50.596)
continues to get reports as more and more of these camps are discovered. And...

Jason Lantzer (46:59.524)
He knows what's going on. And I think we have to sort of forgive on the one hand, because we're talking about he's a busy guy, right? Exactly. But even if we're just focusing in on the Holocaust and the camps part of the thing, you know, Ordorf discovered by the Americans April 4. Eisenhower visits April 12. The war is over.

Waitman (47:14.985)
He's a busy guy. I mean, he's got a lot of things going on.

Jason Lantzer (47:29.668)
May 7th or May 8th if you're the Soviets, because they demand a separate surrender ceremony in Berlin. But the Germans surrendered Eisenhower on May 7th. So it's less than a month. It really is. It holds all those keys to what, as David Eisenhower called it, it could have been a glorious finish. And instead, there's going to be this cloud that comes over Eisenhower that this

Waitman (47:42.409)
Right.

Jason Lantzer (47:57.988)
This is what the war was really about, and we just found out about it.

Waitman (48:10.633)
Well, it seems there's also the sense that as you're sort of saying, like if it had been as he sort of thought it was, then it's like a football game. Game's over. We win. You lose. Shake hands. We go home. You go back to your place. Whereas with the understanding of what the Holocaust actually means, it means that there's a lot more work to be done in Germany. Like you can't just say, all right, we beat you and leave because...

Because there's a lot more to fix than just, you know, we end the game and, you know, that kind of thing. And Eisenhower then gets involved in that too, right?

Jason Lantzer (48:44.004)
Yes. So he's going to be appointed the first military governor of the U .S. Occupation Zone. And that's another thing that that is something that Washington, London, Moscow, the Allies had sort of decided fairly early on was that Germany had to understand that it had been defeated. We accept the fact that one of the things that the Nazis had latched onto was that there was a stab in the back myth.

that the German army was betrayed by domestic politics kind of thing, and that that had contributed to World War II. And so we want to make sure that Germany understands, no, you were beaten. And so Germany is going to be occupied. Eisenhower is going to be the American governor, military governor.

Waitman (49:43.881)
And was it, was it Eisenhower's order to have local civilians go into the camps or did that kind of come about organically of people on the ground also just being like, you know, commanders on the ground being like, we're going to make you see, see what happened here.

Jason Lantzer (49:54.756)
It's a little bit of both. Eisenhower kind of gives that sort of tacit order. So I think that's another thing to mention when it comes to the camps, especially in Germany, is that they are labor camps primarily. Do people die there? Or they work to death? Absolutely. But these are.

Waitman (50:22.313)
Well, and by the end of the war, that's like sort of the the highest mortality is at the end of the war because there's like, you know, they're they're at 250 percent sort of occupancy as well. You know, like it will be it will be sort of thrown into them. And so that they they appear. I mean, as you point out, they're never great places to be. But, you know, Buchenwald in spring of 1945 is a hellscape compared to sort of Buchenwald in, you know, 1943 or something.

Jason Lantzer (50:25.7)
Yeah, exactly.

Jason Lantzer (50:43.94)
Yeah, exactly. But they're intended to be labor camps. And so they're located near towns and cities. You've got evidence. I won't even say stories of German communities and businesses sort of lobbying the government for, yeah, put a camp here. This will be good for business. Because.

It's going to be a place where they're going to be German soldiers, so they're going to have to be fed. and it's going to help our factory? Great.

Waitman (51:27.273)
It's worth pointing out that there are estimates of around 40 ,000 different camps of variety of sizes and shapes and diversity of purposes and function. So you might almost imagine that, I don't know what the statistics are, but it's highly likely that most American servicemen entering Germany would have been able to, or might have encountered one of these places because there are just so many of them everywhere.

Jason Lantzer (51:50.404)
Yeah, and I think that's a staggering thing for us to comprehend, too, especially when it comes to the German reaction, which is that they don't know what's going on there. It's something that Eisenhower doesn't believe from the get -go. The commanders, as they encounter the camps, in that period of early mid -April, they are

sharing the shock, but they're also very quickly taking the initiative and Eisenhower is going to endorse that initiative. I mean, he even says it when they're at, at, Ordorf, you know, bring the German, the locals in, they have to see this for themselves. this is, this was done in their name and, almost instantly Eisenhower is going to doubt that the average German living anywhere near these camps.

didn't know what was going on. So civilians, German civilians are going to be forced to go visit the camps. They're going to be forced to.

interned bodies to clean up the camps, to care for the survivors. One of the reasons that there's going to be movies made of these camps, which is something Eisenhower orders, is that the Signal Corps is going to put together a compilation. And this during the military occupation phase, German civilians are going to be rounded up and taken to movie houses and

forced to at least sit and watch. I mean, a lot of them close their eyes or refuse to look, but you're going to go there for an hour and you're going to watch. And this is what was done in your name. Eisenhower is a very early proponent of denazification from the very simple thing of blowing up cement, limestone, Swazika ornamentation on buildings to changing street names to

Jason Lantzer (53:59.94)
We've got to figure out, and this is something that I think he struggled with a little bit.

The US struggles with the allies struggle with, but how do we exactly define what a Nazi was? Are you a Nazi just because you're German? Are you a Nazi because you wore a Swazika armband while you were in the army? Are you a Nazi because you actually joined the party that you held a political post? But we round up, we arrest, we imprison, we try a lot of Germans.

in that, especially in that first six months to a year after the war. And then the Cold War sort of intervenes.

Waitman (54:53.129)
Yeah, which is a whole nother, a whole nother conversation. You know, we could talk about the sort of failures of post -war justice. What are the, what are the challenges for the army? Cause I guess the army is, is officially, or at least initially officially responsible for dealing with the immediate aftermath and taking care of the people in these camps.

Jason Lantzer (55:07.3)
It's, I mean, if it wasn't real life, it'd be sort of funny. It is tragically funny. And I say that just because this was a war aim in some results or in some respects, right? We are going to, we're going to occupy Germany. We're going to defeat them. We're going to occupy them. We're going to denazify them. but no one really sits, starts to sit down. And this is true within the military to a degree, but also especially in.

places like Washington, DC and London, no one's really thinking about what does that mean? Right? We're going to...

Of course, we have plans, right? Yeah. So eventually, there's some plans that are started to put forward. But one of the things, and Shaf will work on sort of a general occupation plan. But the military's perspective is,

Waitman (55:47.753)
I can't imagine that the military would, I can't imagine the United States would get involved in occupying a country without having thought about how it might deal with.

Jason Lantzer (56:11.78)
Look, our job is to go in and beat the Nazis. And yes, we're going to make sure that the situation is calm. But then it's up to the civilians to come in and actually administer things. It's a military occupation, but that's not our job. And...

very quickly after the end of the war, it becomes evident that nobody really has a plan. And that civilian agencies, even if they are willing to come in and are ready to come in and administer things, don't have the logistics behind them. The military is going to have to play a role. And so I think that's one of the key things, the key factors in Eisenhower's decision to agree to be

the initial military governor is, OK, we're going to have to make sure that this is set up for success, set up so that civilians and eventually Germans who've been denazified or cleared to do so can start really taking care of themselves. And so that's going to include rebuilding German infrastructure, which we have largely flattened. There's concern right away that

Well, yeah, it's early May, but we're only five, six months away from winter. How are all these people going to be fed? We're not just talking about bringing food now in for, say, US servicemen and women. German civilians have to be fed. All these former camp prisoners who were going to be

relabel as displaced persons. We've got to care for them. wait. We've also rounded up, I don't know, close to a million German former soldiers. We dropped the label of POW very, very quickly because, well, there's no Nazi Germany anymore. So these are unarmed enemy combatants or something like that. They get reclassified. But they're imprisoned.

Jason Lantzer (58:32.196)
while we figure out when we can send them home and all that. We're talking about millions of people that we are now responsible for feeding and caring for and making sure that once winter comes, they're not freezing to death and rebuilding an infrastructure. And I think Eisenhower and it's primarily the Army, so we'll give credit where it's due, they do a hell of a job.

and making sure that all this stuff happens. There is no famine. Is everybody as well fed as they would have liked or during pre -war times? No. But everybody's, yeah. Yeah.

Waitman (59:19.145)
Well, this is something that this is something that I ask you to talk about and let's address it head on because it's one of those things that, but it's related and it's actually really interesting because it's related to precisely what Eisenhower was concerned about in some ways, which is sort of distortion, what I would call Holocaust distortion in the sense that a lot of your sort of neo -Nazi slash Holocaust denier slash far right people will make this claim.

that it's basically whataboutism regarding the Holocaust. And it's basically saying, well, look, Eisenhower intentionally caused millions of German POWs to starve to death sort of after World War II, you know, deliberately. And it becomes this sort of whataboutism of, well, you know, America, you're not that great, right? And let's be clear.

Jason Lantzer (01:00:09.892)
I'm sorry.

Waitman (01:00:14.345)
the reason we're addressing it, just so we have it on record, I can point to it later because this is not the case, both intentionally and factually, right? This was not sort of an attempt to exterminate German prisoners of war. But what is the truth of this? Is it what you're talking about? We're just sort of, you know, people do die, but it's very small numbers and sort of hard to avoid some of that.

Jason Lantzer (01:00:35.268)
So 100 % Eisenhower is a believer in, especially right now in the aftermath of the war, this is a harsh piece. The Germans are responsible. The Germans have to understand what they did. Not just that they were defeated, but literally because of the Holocaust and the encountering of the camps of what they did. That there's no moral high ground for them to stand on. On some level,

You know, you see this with German accounts in particular. They'll talk about, well, the air war was bombing Berlin, firebombing Dresden. Those are just as bad as anything that Hitler did in the camps. No, they're not. They're bad. Yeah, people died. But they're not the same. So this notion that this...

Waitman (01:01:24.937)
Right.

Jason Lantzer (01:01:33.924)
Guys, it's probably, I think, over a million German POWs, or unarmed enemy non -combatants, or whatever their former combatants. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. yeah. Da -da -da -da -da -da. What's his name? Yeah, yeah, other losses. This argument that Eisenhower deliberately starved Germans to death, there's just.

Waitman (01:01:49.801)
I forget the guy that wrote that book. It was like... Countless... Something like countless... I have to get...

Waitman (01:02:00.937)
other losses, right?

Jason Lantzer (01:02:03.812)
It's just not there. A lot of what he claims as deaths, well, first of all, it's been debunked by several different scholarly looks. But a lot of what he claimed as deaths were actually prisoners who were released to go home. And so they're not on the rolls anymore. And he said, well, that's because they're dead. No, it's because they actually got to go back.

Yeah, exactly. And so yeah, we're not feeding them anymore because they're not in these prison camps. And is there room, of course, again, we've mentioned this before, right? Hindsight's 2020. We could have done things better. We could have done better for them. We could have done better for the displaced persons, the former, the actual camp inmates who are liberated, right? Who are.

Waitman (01:02:38.601)
It's like the opposite of being dead. It's like the best thing that could happen to you.

Waitman (01:03:07.973)
Right. When I think this is something that that's something sorry, that's something I think is interesting too, because, you know, I think it's fair to say that Eisenhower is generally really just a really good person. But I think it's fair to say that, you know, both in your book and in general, you know, it's not a hagiography. Right. I mean, like he there are things that didn't go according to plan. And one of the things that you show in the book, you know, is that there were some and it may not be.

Jason Lantzer (01:03:33.284)
You

Waitman (01:03:35.977)
directly Eisenhower's fault, except in the sense of like, you know, when you're in charge, you're responsible for everything that happens and fails to happen. but you know, there are instances of American soldiers and people who are in charge of the displaced persons camps, not behaving in sort of the, the best manner or the way that we would have liked them to sort of behave as representatives of the United States. Right. And he, he finds out about that, you know, and then does take action to sort of improve those situations.

Jason Lantzer (01:03:51.492)
Yeah, I mean.

Jason Lantzer (01:03:56.836)
Yeah. And I think with displaced persons, the big moment is that, and I also think it's really hard for us sometimes to understand just how fast paced this actually was. There are reports that get back to Washington, for example, in the summer of 1945 about poor conditions and

in some of the displaced persons camps. And again, the DPs are, by and large, former Nazi prisoners who've been liberated but haven't been released to go home yet. Maybe medically they can't, maybe because their home doesn't exist. And this is actually the best place for them to be. So President Truman is going to task a guy named Harrison. He's the dean of, I think, the

I think he's the Dean of the law school, the university of Pennsylvania to go over and sort of is on a fact finding mission. Harrison goes, he does this, this, trip. He meets with Eisenhower. He meets with Schaef. He visits camps. He comes back, he writes up the report, the report gets released in the fall. and it's kind of a bombshell. It really, especially if you're Eisenhower, this is, it's an attack on the army and what it's done.

And Eisenhower points out in his reply, I think that's end of September, early October of 1945, again, we're talking just a few months after the end of the war. He writes back and he says, look, the report's dated, essentially. First of all, we've been doing the best we can. We were fighting a war for a good chunk of this time. Then we find these prisoners. And so we come up with something to do.

to help them as best we can. And yes, as the war ends, as the allies pull into their occupation zones, as we, things got better. And in fact, if you, you know, visited these camps as I have, and he does, he visits several of the DP camps, you find out that the things have gotten better. And when I found out about things that haven't been going well, I've made adjustments. Probably the biggest adjustment and this

Jason Lantzer (01:06:22.788)
you know, leads into the fall of George Patton as a general is that Patton, yeah, he says some, some in -politic things about our, still at the time, Soviet allies, you know, kind of telling, going off the cuff that we should have continued to drive into Moscow and into communism, just like we ended Nazism. And by the way, you know, the Nazis, they're just a political party. I mean, this was a guy who visited a camp and he's ready.

Waitman (01:06:35.209)
Yep.

Jason Lantzer (01:06:52.676)
by late 1945 to be like, yeah, well, they weren't really that bad. They're not as bad as the Soviets. Still are.

Waitman (01:07:01.083)
Yep.

Jason Lantzer (01:07:02.436)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Waitman (01:07:07.689)
And, you know, not only a little bit anti -Semitic either, and racist, you know, I mean, like Patton has significant sort of moral compass issues of his own, we might say.

Jason Lantzer (01:07:09.764)
He, yes, he does. While being a pretty darn good general most of the time. It's this weird, weird thing, right? But yeah, so Eisenhower essentially sacks him.

Jason Lantzer (01:07:27.556)
And, you know, once, once Patton is, is removed again, things change. And, and that's another thing he, he issues orders. This is another thing that contributes to Patton's sort of downfall in this regard is Eisenhower gets upset that he's issued orders and Patton has decided not to follow through with them. and so no, that's it. Right. so he does address things. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, with.

Waitman (01:08:03.369)
And these orders have to do with the occupation. So I mean, again, it's, you know, it's a great example of, you know, I think one of the things that comes through, and I want to move into the post -war period, into his presidency, but, you know, one of the things that for me as someone that was in the military and is also an historian and also an historian of the Holocaust, and something that comes through in your book, Eisenhower is just a, is the consummate conscientious guy.

Like when he's in, when he's responsible for something, he devotes, he gives his full effort to doing that thing. And, you know, he expects that of his subordinates too. And so like when he's, when he's trying to win the war, he gives everything, you know, he, he smokes like 20 cartons of cigarettes a day and like doesn't sleep, you know, to make that happen. But when he's in charge of the military government and occupation, he's just as focused and dedicated.

Jason Lantzer (01:08:41.016)
You

Waitman (01:09:01.353)
and workaholicy in that regard. And so then obviously when Patton is not, he treats it the same as if he had ordered Patton to do something on the battlefield and he hadn't done it. Cause he's like, you know, I'm taking this just as seriously as I did, you know, fighting the war that there's no sort of we're over now so I can just go on vacation. Kind of scenario.

Jason Lantzer (01:09:13.028)
Yeah, I mean, he jokingly says that once the war is over, he wants to go back and go fishing in the US. Instead, he accepts employment as military governor. He really sets up the American zone of occupation. He's there until November. He does get to go home eventually. But.

No.

Waitman (01:09:45.801)
Yeah.

Waitman (01:09:50.217)
but he doesn't get to stay sort of retired for very long. He ends up being a university president, which I think is amazing and worth pointing out. And then he's sort of called, he's roped back into public service.

Jason Lantzer (01:09:54.18)
He's pulled back in. Yeah. Truman is going to lean heavily on Eisenhower's reputation in order to establish the legitimacy of NATO. Eisenhower is going to, he gets maybe, you know, like about two years where he's, but even then, even when he's, he's at Columbia as president, Truman's constantly calling him back to Washington for advice. I think he's even restored to rank.

while he's still technically president as Columbia, something, something weird, there's some weird legislation that gets passed to allow him to sort of do more than one job. It's yeah. Yeah. And then he's, he just doesn't go back. and so, you know, that, that leads into this, this sort of his eventual presidency is he really identifies.

Waitman (01:10:45.897)
He takes a sabbatical to be the head of NATO or whatever.

Jason Lantzer (01:10:53.572)
the world, but also to an extent in the US that there's a need for leadership and he knows he can lead. And there's, I think, a couple of moments where, well, first of all, I would say he doesn't grow up necessarily, he's not like, one day I'll be president. He's perfectly content with his life as first in the army and then...

I think he really did enjoy being president of Columbia. He kind of like, you know, he saw this as, this is going to be a nice little retirement gig kind of thing. I'm done. But he gets called back into service. And Truman almost, you know, the story is Truman asks him in 1948 if he wants to run for president. And if he says yes, if he'll run as a Democrat.

then Truman will step aside and support him. And Eisenhower says, no, I'm not political, right? As it turns out, he is more sympathetic to the Republican Party. But before he announces that he's going to officially retire and run for president, he talks with leading Republicans. And one of his litmus tests, especially when he talks to Senator Robert Taft, who's the presumptive

front runner for the Republican nomination in 1952 is, you know, basically, what do you think about international affairs? What's your plan? And Taft is a very much a, as much as he had supported the American war effort once we got into the war, he is an old school sort of isolationist, America first, you know, we should focus on domestic issues, what's going on in Europe, what's going on in Asia. Those are secondary concerns.

to what my administration would be and Eisenhower says, no, then I'm going to have to run for president. And he ends up being a pretty good politician for a guy who never held elective office before.

Waitman (01:13:16.329)
Yeah, and I think this is a good place to add in, you know, what do you see as the influence or effects of his experience liberating camps on the way he conducts his policy as president? I mean, does it have an impact? Does it have a stamp on sort of his presidency?

Jason Lantzer (01:13:30.436)
So I don't think you can separate what he saw both at the camps and then in Germany proper from how he deals with the world and the United States, frankly, as president. Like a lot of men who saw the war, who had taken part, and I mean, we talk about...

Aerial bombings of Germany, you know, flattening of cities, all that stuff. Well, Eisenhower ultimately approved all that and sometimes called for more aerial bombardments or, you know, we need to, we'll have to destroy that area, whatever, right? He's, he's responsible for that. And I think walking through Germany, seeing that destruction, he doesn't want that to ever happen again. He doesn't want to happen to Europe. He doesn't want to happen in the United States.

And it's also something that's echoed. And once the US deploys the atomic bomb against Japan, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki are destroyed with a single bomb, Eisenhower knows that war has changed. He's going to work to make sure that this weapon one is not mainstreamed. This isn't just some super weapon we can try it out whenever we need it.

This is actually a pretty horrible thing.

And so, you know, the sort of shaping of US nuclear policy. And when you think about the 1950s during his presidency, this is, you know, hotly, we're going to go from literal bombs to missile technology by the time he's served his two terms.

Jason Lantzer (01:15:24.292)
But just the rebuilding effort, he sees things in Europe that's going to inspire things like, and we get the interstate highway system in the United States because Eisenhower saw the Autobahn. And the way he gets that passed is to make an argument that it's a military necessity. If we get invaded, if the Soviets invade us, we have to be able to rapidly move men and supplies from point A to point B. So we need an interstate system.

And it echoes back to another thing that he did after World War I, which was take part in a cross -country convoy that moved goods from Maryland to California. And he basically wrote, our roads suck. I mean, that's the gist of his report. And so now he's president. So he's going to do something about that. He's going to make moves. And we can, this is one of those.

those things that are sort of far afield from talking about the war and the Holocaust and yet are also related in certain ways. He's going to make strides and set things in motion when it comes to civil rights for African Americans in the United States, in part because of his experience with the war, in part because of what he saw in Germany, in part because when he believes that somebody's told him they'll do something, they'll do it. I mean, this kind of echoes Patton, but...

Governor Farbus of Arkansas, you know, that's the whole little rock thing. I mean, what does Eisenhower do when...

students, African -American students aren't allowed at Little Rock High School, he sends in the army. He makes a point, right? No, the Supreme Court has a Supreme Court which is shaped in part by Eisenhower appointments has issued the Brown decision. You're going to follow it.

Jason Lantzer (01:17:17.924)
There are all sorts of things where you can point to moments of him being Supreme Allied Commander that are going to echo once he's president. And that includes the Holocaust. That includes his commitment to making sure that we don't forget what he saw. It includes a commitment eventually as he comes to understand the role that

the state of Israel can play in the Middle East in sort of the sort of larger geopolitical sense, but also in the sense that we can't allow this new country that has so many Holocaust survivors to be wiped off the map. And it sort of radically changes in some respects his Middle Eastern policy. If you look at where...

where we started, where we were going to be allies with Israel, but we also wanted to be allies with Arab states in 1952 to, well, we're going to be an ally to Israel first. And then the Arab states need to get on board with that fact by, say, 1958. And then the other thing is he will, whenever he is asked to do it by Jewish groups in the United States, the White House,

without fail and oftentimes in Eisenhower's own hand issues a statement talking about commemorating liberation of the camps, talking about what an important event that was in terms of shaping the sort of moral outcome of the war and making sure that that never happens. And then the last thing, and this is, it's really a footnote even though I spent a couple of pages on it.

You know, Eisenhower's president when Adolf Eichmann is captured by Israeli agents in Argentina. And while the US doesn't have a direct role in that, Eisenhower, I make the argument, helps to orchestrate the fact that from a international diplomatic standpoint at the UN, the US is firmly behind. Hey, look, Israel did what they had to do. Was it what we would have done? Well, actually, maybe, because Eisenhower loved covert operations. But let's not.

Jason Lantzer (01:19:43.588)
Let this derail good things that are going on between, say, Israel and South American governments. And also, let's remember Eichmann is a Nazi, and he's a bad guy.

Waitman (01:20:04.297)
Right. Yeah. Yes. Very clearly so. Even if it was, you know, sort of legal adjacent, you know, we'll sort of let it go in that sense. Well, Jason, thank you so much. I want to close with our, with our, what is it we're looking for with our, our standard question, which is, you know, what is, what is one book on the Holocaust that you'd recommend?

Jason Lantzer (01:20:25.092)
Well, I have two. OK, good, good. Thank you. So the one that probably, so I guess I should back up just a smidge. And that is say, 10 -year -old Jason loved World War II. I mean, I grew up watching the History Channel when all it was was World War II documentaries. And yes, exactly. And.

Waitman (01:20:32.905)
for our readers to check out.

You can have two, I'll give you two.

Jason Lantzer (01:20:54.34)
And so if you had asked 10 -year -old Jason, what would I be studying? I would have said, yeah, it's going to be World War II. Now, it took me until a couple of years later to get around to really doing that. But here I am. So when I started this project, and I came into it with largely a general knowledge of World War II literature, but not so much the Holocaust. But one of the first books that I

Waitman (01:21:00.009)
back when it did some history.

Jason Lantzer (01:21:22.244)
that really hit home for me in sort of shaping my scholarly understanding is Raoul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews. It is, I still think it's one of the best comprehensive books. And this comes out like in 60 or 61 of the Holocaust in a lot of ways. And then the other one is Robert Geletti,

edited it, but it's Leon Goldson's, Golden Sun's, the Nuremberg interviews. He was a US Army psychologist who interviewed just about every top Nazi that we had in prison. And to read their transcripts, to read those transcripts of those interviews is, I mean, it's a picture into the heart of

darkness that was Nazi Germany and the sort of despite the end of the war, despite being imprisoned, just the sheer number of those guys who were totally unrepentant and believe that what they had done was the right thing is one of those things that's to me is just a reminder just how close, you know, you can justify what you want to do. And

despite the evidence that what you're doing is the absolute worst thing that humans could possibly do to another human being.

Waitman (01:23:10.537)
Yeah, an important sort of important warning from history that, you know, we still continue just to kind of struggle with. So, Jason, again, thanks so much for coming on. For everybody else, thank you for listening. If you have a moment, please give us a like, give us a rating. These things help.

Jason Lantzer (01:23:32.228)
Wait a minute, thank you very, very much for having me.

Waitman (01:23:37.865)
And, again, Jason, thanks so much for coming on and giving us some time and talking about your project.