What if the rich history of World War II could illuminate our current educational challenges?
In this riveting episode of the Theory to Action podcast, we promise a deep dive into the Allies’ extraordinary march into Rome during World War II, drawing on Rick Atkinson's masterful book, "The Day of Battle."
We explore the meticulous strategies and profound sacrifices of American, British, French, and Polish forces. This journey not only brings to life the intensity of those historical battles but also emphasizes the pressing need to revive WWII history in school curriculums. Our conversation sheds light on the troubling decline in public school enrollment and suggests that a robust history education could be part of the solution.
Key Points from the Episode:
We also commemorate monumental milestones—the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings and the liberation of Rome.
By remembering these pivotal events, we honor the courage and resilience that shaped the outcome of World War II.
Discover how the liberation of Rome, coming just days before D-Day, was integral to the success of the Normandy landings.
Join us as we reflect on these crucial moments and reiterate the importance of preserving and teaching these lessons for future generations.
Want to leave a review? Click here, and if we earned a five-star review from you **high five and knuckle bumps**, we appreciate it greatly, thank you so much!
What if the rich history of World War II could illuminate our current educational challenges?
In this riveting episode of the Theory to Action podcast, we promise a deep dive into the Allies’ extraordinary march into Rome during World War II, drawing on Rick Atkinson's masterful book, "The Day of Battle."
We explore the meticulous strategies and profound sacrifices of American, British, French, and Polish forces. This journey not only brings to life the intensity of those historical battles but also emphasizes the pressing need to revive WWII history in school curriculums. Our conversation sheds light on the troubling decline in public school enrollment and suggests that a robust history education could be part of the solution.
Key Points from the Episode:
We also commemorate monumental milestones—the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings and the liberation of Rome.
By remembering these pivotal events, we honor the courage and resilience that shaped the outcome of World War II.
Discover how the liberation of Rome, coming just days before D-Day, was integral to the success of the Normandy landings.
Join us as we reflect on these crucial moments and reiterate the importance of preserving and teaching these lessons for future generations.
Want to leave a review? Click here, and if we earned a five-star review from you **high five and knuckle bumps**, we appreciate it greatly, thank you so much!
Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.
Speaker 2:
Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. As always, let's go right to the book. Shortly before dawn, a column of nearly 300 vehicles rolled through Porta San Giovanni carrying S-Force a detachment of 1,200 American and British counterintelligence and engineering specialists. As the convoy snaked down the Via della Quattro Fontaine, squads peeled away to secure telegraph offices, power plants and pumping stations. Others rounded up Italian utility managers. Rome's power supply had been slashed to about 20% of the capital's needs and repairs to damaged aqueducts were to begin within the day. An S-4's platoon poking through the German embassy found various photos of Hermann Goring, an Arte Che record on the phonograph and half a ton plastic explosives, which were later stuffed in weighted sacks and tossed in the Tiber. A half dozen safes, upon cracking, revealed nothing of an unusual nature. Got across 13 bridges, occupied them on the far side. Last night Harmon radioed Truscott. At 6.30 am, none destroyed. I am the first boy on the far side. Last night Harmon radioed Trescot at 6.30 am, none destroyed. I am the first boy on the Tiber Going up to Genoa, if you want. Trescot replied Not yet.
Speaker 2:
At 7 am, sergeant John Vita of Portchester, new York, wandered through the 15th century Palazzo Viencia to find himself in the Sala della Mondomondo, mussolini's cavernous office. Clad with marble, featured a desk the size of a yacht, stepping onto the Duce's notorious balcony. Vita drew a crowd on the piazza below by tossing out rolls of lifesavers and declaiming victory not for Mussolini but for the Allies. That Allied victory had cost them 44,000 casualties since Operation Didem began on May 11th 18,000 Americans, among them more than 3,000 killed in action, along with 12,000 British, 9,600 French and nearly 4,000 Poles. German casualties were estimated at 52,000, including 5,800 dead. American losses in less than four weeks almost equaled those sustained during seven months of fighting in North Africa. Combat in the Mediterranean had achieved an industrial scale. Columns of weary GIs shuffled through the city. Some carried small Italian tricolors, others sported flowers in their helmets, nets and rifle barrels. Eric Severide watched throngs of Italians sob with joy as they tossed blossoms at the tramping soldiers and cheered them to the echo.
Speaker 2:
I felt wonderfully good, generous and important, he wrote. I was a representative of strength, decency and success. A message to the combined chiefs in Washington and London formally announced quote the Allies are in Rome. How long it had taken to proclaim those five words and how much heartbreak had been required to make it so, and that was an excerpt from Rick Atkinson's the Day of Battle, which is volume two of a trilogy called the Liberation Trilogy. I just finished Day of Battle, which was some 32 hours on Audible, so it was quite a slog, and I finished volume one last year. That volume is titled An Army at Dawn the War in North Africa 1942 to 1943, which was some 26 hours.
Speaker 2:
So over 50 hours of listening on this wonderful liberation trilogy and what a stark reminder it is for as much as you have read and studied in history classes in high school and in college I was a poli sci grad but had taken enough history classes to get my minor in it as much as you have read and studied this great event in history, nothing compares to reading the actual accounts from the great historians. Like I said, this is the second book in the trilogy and after finishing this book, volume two, you just come away with how bad the fighting was all the way up the boot of Italy from Sicily in 43, 1943 to the mainland in 44. Just terrible, slogging all the leg, essentially of Italy, but still I mean just terrible, slogging. Heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story you hear about these guys who would never come home to their families to cover it in the us history class. You know, everything just gets glossed over so easily with the perfunctory. The allies landed here and they fought to this point and then this happened, and that happened.
Speaker 2:
Now I'm certainly aware that you can't teach every battle, on every front, for all of World War II, but boy, it just seems like a huge disservice to no longer even teach World War II as an event, as a war. It's probably one of the most pivotal wars in the history of the world. As a war, it's probably one of the most pivotal wars in the history of the world. And I hear that many schools are no longer even teaching World War II material. I mean that barely gets a mention. Say, for you know they'll hit the hot buttons Japanese internment and the dropping of the atomic bomb, two controversial topics for sure. But we can't teach what our grandfathers and great-grandfathers did in battle. We can't teach the fundamentals of war itself, what we were fighting for, what the axis was fighting for, who has moral grounding, who has the moral high ground? Maybe, maybe that's the reason we have rapidly declining public school enrollment rates. You know, parents during COVID and after that have a great number said no more. I just read where the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2020, when Dr Fauci was telling everyone that remote learning was the best for the student's health like he's an expert, I read where more than a million students never returned, making it the single largest single year decline since World War II the very war that we're talking about today and enrollment levels have never fully recovered.
Speaker 2:
Regardless, this book, the Day of Battle, tells the deep and worthwhile story of the liberation of Europe, starting in Sicily and then moving up through Italy. Let's go back to the book. Mark Clark had neither vermilion face paint nor a laurel wreath, but he possessed a sense of theater, and it was on that Capiltine Hill that he bade his lieutenants appear for a rendezvous at 10 am on Monday, june 5th. At 7.30, clark flew from Natuno by Piper Cub, landing in a wheat field outside the city where two corps had been ordered to arrange an escort of clean tanks, trucks and soldiers. Upon learning that it would take hours to wash the vehicles, clark said soldiers. Upon learning that it would take hours to wash the vehicles, clark said oh, hell with that, and bolted with his retinue up Highway 6 through Porta Maggiore. Within minutes, they were lost.
Speaker 2:
Wandering across the blue-gray Tiber to St Peter's Square, clark flagged down a priest and asked where is Kaplan Hill? My name is Clark. The cleric dragooned a boy on a bicycle to lead the convoy, bellowing out Clark, clark. To clear a path through the teeming streets, arriving at the Via Della Tetra Marcello at the foot of the Capiline, Clark climbed the Cordata ramp, designed by Michelangelo in 1536 to receive the Holy Emperor Charles V, and cross the elegant Capodoglio. To find the peach-hued town hall locked, he pounded on the door, but when a caretaker finally peeked out, clark chose to linger at the porch balustrade until Trescott Keyes, in June, arrived to join him.
Speaker 2:
Opening a map and pointing with exaggerated pompatine toward Berlin, clark turned to the reporters and photographers now gathered on the square. Well, gentlemen, I didn't really expect to have a press conference here. I just called a little meeting of my corps commanders to discuss the situation, he said slowly. However, I'll be glad to answer your questions. This is a great day for the Fifth Army. A hundred flashbulbs popped as Clark delivered a brief victory oration, the equivalent of slaughtering a white bull without mentioning Eighth Army or the other contributors. Bull without mentioning 8th Army or the other contributors. His lieutenants flushed with discomfort, glancing self-consciously at the Movatine cameraman filming the scene. Truscott later voiced disgust at this quote posturing. Then it was off to a luncheon at the Hotel Excelsior, which engineers had searched for time bombs and booby traps. In starched black and white livery, the hotel staff lined the lobby to greet the new occupiers, having said Arrivederci to the Germans.
Speaker 2:
Only a day before, clark gave another short address from a second-floor balcony, then slipped into a suite for a private moment. Kneeling on the bedroom floor, he thanked God for victory and prayed for the souls of his men. A hand gently touched his shoulder. Clark turned to find Juan behind him Beneath his bushy mustache. The Frenchman smiled and said I did just the same thing Along the Via Venetio, another happy throng, throng gathered to huzzah their liberators.
Speaker 2:
We waded through the crowds of cheering people, keyes told his diary. A couple of women nearly strangled Juan, much to his amusement and his embarrassment. We had a fine lunch. Launch General Mark Clark not giving thanks and gratitude for the other contributors marching up Italy, namely the 8th British Army and the French. That is the reason why Much of his staff was, and his corps commanders were, very uncomfortable with all the posturing.
Speaker 2:
Let's go back for one more quote from the book. Exhausted soldiers wrapped themselves in blankets and dozed on the hoods of their half tracks, and in stone dry fountains they slept on the street, on the sidewalks, on the Spanish steps. The curator of the Keats Shelley House reported Some felt deflated. We prowl through Rome looking like ghosts, finding no satisfaction in anything we see or do, wrote Audie Murphy. I feel like a man reprieved from death and there is no joy in me. Yet others found redemption in the city they had unchained, a gleaming symbol of the civilized values for which they fought. Every block is interesting, beautiful and enchanting. A third division officer wrote the very city fills the heart with reverence.
Speaker 2:
At 5 pm on Monday, 100,000 Italians jammed St Peter's Square. Bells pealed, priests offered tours of the Vatican to GIs in exchange for American cigarettes. Pius XII appeared on his apartment balcony in brilliant white robes, then later met with reporters as flashbulbs exploded and photographers shouted Hold it, pope Atta boy. The Holy Father advised Roman girls to behave and dress properly and win the respect of the soldiers by your virtue. A papal secretary added with a shrug it's just another changing of the guard.
Speaker 2:
At 6 am on Tuesday, june 6, an aide woke Mark Clark in his Excelsior suite to the news the German radio had announced the Allied invasion of Normandy, clark rubbed the sleep from his eyes. How do you like that? He said. They didn't even let us have the newspaper headlines for the fall of Rome for one day. At the Albergue Sita, a BBC correspondent burst into the Allied Press Headquarters. Boys, we're on the back page now, he said. They've landed in Normandy.
Speaker 2:
Eric Severide later recalled that every typewriter stopped and we looked at one another. Most of us sat back, pulled out cigarettes, dropped our half-written stories about Rome on the floor. We had, in a trice, become performers without an audience, a troupe of actors who, at the climax of their play, realized that the spectators have all fled out the door. Can you imagine that? The thrust, the fighting, the heartbreaking moments, all towards one of the principal Axis capitals of World War II, rome? You have to remember since, before the Pact of Steel, both Nazi Germany and fascist Italy were cooperating heavily, starting formally in 1936.
Speaker 2:
So both countries were completely aligned. Then, in 1939, they signed the Pact of Steel Treaty, that tripartite alliance with Japan, and for various reasons Japan never signed that actual pact. But Germany against the Soviet Union, britain and France. So Italy and Germany were united against the Soviet Union, britain and France. So since 1936, the Allies knew that Rome and the mainland areas of fascist Italy were no longer friendly territories. Areas of fascist Italy were no longer friendly territories. Rome being the capital was especially menacing.
Speaker 2:
And so for eight years, until June 4th 1944, the Allies would look upon Rome as an enemy capital. Now Italy did surrender in September of 43, but very little came of that. The Allies were not able to exploit it for any considerable effect, that the Allies were not able to exploit it for any considerable effect. And so for the liberation of Rome to happen on June 4th 1944, it was significantly overshadowed by the D-Day landings in Normandy, france, on June 6th 1944. Now, while the capture of Rome was a major victory for the Allies, marking the first Axis capital to fall, it was quickly eclipsed by the massive and strategically critical Operation Overlord, which began just two days later. So in today's Mojo Minute we celebrated and honored the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. But let's never forget that June 4th, anniversary 2, some 80 years ago, just last week of the liberation of Rome, the taking of a principal Axis capital was important and paved the way for the success of the D-Day landings. So remember, always remember, always remember and pray and, as always, keep fighting the good fight.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.