TALKING SPIRITS VI
William G. Ogden
I didn’t much like the army, or war. I did my duty in the Second World War. We all did. We didn’t have a choice, unlike later wars in Vietnam and Iraq. I’ll just share some of my experiences with you. Listen, this is my first diary entry from the war: “So during the fall I went through the actions of becoming a soldier and a radio operator in the field artillery . . . The radio schooling—learning operation of army field radio, Morse code with a finally developed speed of a meager 12 words per minute and then procedure and procedure code & code signals—all this was well broken by drill and fatigue work.” It was pretty bland stuff at first. I’m sorry, I’ll just try to read some here and there, without too much commentary.
“May 18, 1942. The six holds (compartments) which are made over into troop quarters average 250 bunks each piled . . . four high. Lying on my back my nose is six inches from the springs of the bunk above.”
Oh, “P. S. Did not go crazy during the ten day amphibious maneuvers so they are making them longer—20 days this time—
“July 8, 1942. Dry runs. We landed just as dawn was breaking in a drizzle. A forced march with the second wave infantry took us to a farm yard wood about 2 miles inland from Cove Beach. We huddled under the trees as the rain came down harder and harder. That was July 3rd and . . . Lieutenant Doerr announced that it was a poor way indeed to spend his birthday. We all sang Happy B[irthday] dear Lieutenant and tried to cheer [him] up.
“Nov. 2, 1942. Sail on and on! Day after day, night after night. For two weeks we’ve been enjoying the uncomfortable congestion of this floating invasion. Not a very large ship . . . crammed with some 2000 army men, 300-400 sailors. There is enough fuel for the necessary 18 days being spent zig-zagging the Atlantic . . . over 100 tons of ammunition . . . Out of Norfolk we circled south and then north to pick up the rest of our convoy. It is hard to tell how many ships are with us. Some thirty in sight. Three battleships lead the way, destroyers are racing back and forth on the horizon and off the starboard beam sometimes out of sight are three aircraft carriers. Another one is in the middle of the convoy. At regular intervals we change course, keeping the same formation but obliquely to port or starboard.”
We had to travel like that to keep the enemy off guard. Also, when you’re that long at sea everyone starts to wonder what’s going on; rumors start. Here’s an entry I made just a couple days later.
“Rumors have raged wild during our voyage. The worst ones start with the sailors. Submarine attacks, enemy planes, engine trouble . . . the German battleship Tirpitz in our convoy—so many ships they can’t locate her. Lt. Peterson gets the bunch together frequently in his (and the Chaplain’s) stateroom. We have gone over the plan of attack over and over. Still the situation may alter the whole setup. We don’t have the slightest idea what we may run into. Only that we have enough equipment and ammunition to lick an army twice our size.”
I saw my first action just about a week later. The pages describing it I can’t read. The writing’s faded. Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe some things we need to forget. We lost some of our comrades in that battle and the French lost hundreds of lives. It was in French North Africa. By the time it was over there were no more rumors. We knew where we were and what we had been through. After that things calmed down for a while. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s all passed without much of note.
“Highlight of the month of January, ’43 is the review of the 60th Combat Team put on for President Roosevelt and other notorious people present. After practicing our review in a bleak & remote African field, time and again we are told that someone very important will review us. The appearance of Pres[ident] Roos[evelt] is not so much a surprise as a great honor. The President looks old and tired as he passes near . . . A hundred cameras are grinding and clicking as we pass in review and there are generals galore and British & French diplomats all [over]shadowed by our Commander-in-Chief.”
I should have known something was up. By the next month we were moving again.
Here. We soon “tired of our boxcar and the short infrequent stops, and the constant scramble for a place to sit. Enough of that French train with its wheezy whistle and square wheels. And the town of Tlemcen, built up against the side of a mountain, looks good. It’s what travelers call colorful . . . We are a bit awed, at that, by the beauty of the country about us. Nearby is a tall mountain . . . while back to the west the lovely valley ends in the distant rocky slopes.”
A month later we had traveled 700 miles to help repel Rommel and the Axis armies in Tunisia. The sights weren’t as pretty. Here’s a description from early March. “Moving up to Thala under cover of darkness we can see the flash of bursting shells to the east and hear the dull thud which grows louder as we move toward our position. By daylight we have fox holes dug and are ready for action . . . The Germans gave us everything they had during that memorable day. We were under constant artillery and mortar fire from sun up till sun down.
“Shrapnel was flying in a steady whistle. Dick Latham came by with a bleeding gash in his jaw and says the boy with him was killed in his foxhole . . . Another fellow killed [and others] wounded by the bombardment.
“Darkness is welcome, although from the pounding we have taken and the withdrawal of the British, we are of the opinion that the [worst] is yet to come. It is a peaceful night [except] the sounds of heavy bombs being dropped on enemy positions.”
That was in March of ’43. From there I moved on to Italy, Sicily, and then back to the sea. On November 11 I made this note. “Wither bound we can only guess.” We had hopes, or dreams, of home, but we all thought it more likely to be England.
As we passed the Rock of Gibraltar I made this note. “The rock is there, though not as outstanding as I’d pictured. Town across in Sp[anish] Morocco is a rare sight—lit up, a long line of silver lamps along the black coast. A wondrous sight, and illustrative of the pop song, ‘When the Lights Go On Again’.”
We were right about England. Then on to Wales. Many, many months of waiting and waiting. Beer, poker, books, movies, girls and dancing, calisthenics, hiking, waiting and waiting. I met someone and we started dating. “February 23”—this is 1944—“Joan has found little restaurant where we have steak. Then can think of nothing better than a long talk. Too cold to walk so go to my room. Another heavy raid tonight goes practically unnoticed. An unforgettable night. Comes the dawn, etc.” Meanwhile there were many reports of Allied advances on every front.
“March 28 . . . Everything pointing to imminent invasion.
“April 2 . . . Furloughs cancelled . . . could be real thing. We’ve been going goofy with that (could be); almost wish we would go over. Almost.
“April 27 . . . Getting in line, final preparations and with the ships, materials & troops assembling on South Coast—look[s] like the invasion soon
“May 1 . . . Back in camp & it’s in a bedlam. Moving out. Throw away stuff & pack till 1:30.
“May 9—get pass and plastered by 3PM . . . Taken to ‘club’ by Fr[ench] Canadians, slowly black out.—Dancing at Covent Gardens . . . Vaguely, but stiffly, recall fall down escalator. Lovely evening on park bench.
“May 15—Cold and cloudy. Some firing & dive bombers. We’re in front of guns & get used to crack!—whish.
“May 18—All packed, every thing, by noon. Nothing happens & I sleep most of afternoon. ‘Haven’t you gone yet’ gets to be monotonous.
“June 6—Invasion started successfully last night.
“June 7—Wake to see French coast & hundreds of ships, all sizes. Watch Navy shelling during aft[ernoon].
“June 8-12—Sunny morn. Still await barges to debark. Air raids on harbor during nights. I’m hit by 20 [millimeter].” Really, my chest was grazed, worth a Purple Heart, but the friend standing next to me was killed. “Ashore, pretty rough, but our mission called off . . . go into ‘rear’ area nite of 10th [of] June. No sleep. Still shaken by my close call. Have shrapnel removed.
“June 15—Ninth drives west across peninsula . . . We—part of ‘fast, mobile units’ tent. Morn of 15th counter attack almost catches us in bivouac position. We move twice to get out of incoming mortar and small arms fire. It’s march order 3-9 times a day & night. Only naps. Little, but one shelling of our area. Many dead and prisoner[s] & captured equip[ment].
“June 22 . . . Heavy firing both ways, stiff fight, big stuff whistling, landing.
“June 23—Stay in same place again today. When will the cornered Jerries give up!!
“June 24—Street fighting.
“June 26 . . . Rain most of nite & I’m damp & cold till I take over bed roll under radio truck at two. Watch truckloads of German prisoners go by—and morn news tells of white flag over what’s left of 4 German divisions.”
That’s not quite it. There are still mop-up operations on the peninsula, the Normandy Battle would last another month and a half, and the war itself would have a long time to go before it ended.
“June 30 . . . Well, my nerves long since shot, I hope another day or two will end this pen[insula] campaign. These Jerries just delaying us, and to the end. Rough.
“July 1—39th Inf[antry] finish mopping up, END peninsular resistance. Kitchen brings in fresh killed beef & serve all [the] steaks we can eat. Rain and more rain. I sleep in radio trailer . . . on top barracks bags. Katon is wounded by sniper. We relax a bit.”
You get used to things. Now there are other boys in another desert far from home. I wish them well. I hope they can sleep better than I. At the very least I hope they can relax a bit.
Arthur Altmeyer
Social Security was probably the most monumental federal legislation ever proposed. It was a huge undertaking and one that, if we had thought about it hard enough, we may never have tried to do. The idea of administering such a huge program is mind-boggling in retrospect.
Some have called me the Father of Social Security. President Roosevelt used to call me Mr. Social Security. But in reality I was not the father of anything. Were I the father of Social Security the idea would have germinated first in my mind, which it did not. It was really the culmination of work that had been started by the states back in the early part of the century, work like the nation’s first unemployment compensation law, which was passed right here in Wisconsin in 1911. At that time “Wisconsin was probably the leading light or at least one of the two or three states that had gone farthest in social legislation, particularly labor legislation.” That, in turn, was the culmination of groundwork laid down by many social engineers going back into the previous century. So I was not so much the father of Social Security as the executor of the estate handed down by previous generations. It was simply my job to attend to that which was given to me. I was an administrator, not a founder.
But I do think I was the right man for the right job at the right time. It was in my heart. As a teenager in De Pere I worked in my uncle’s law firm and “learned a smattering of law, and I think more important than that learned a great deal about human nature and the difficulties of old people.”
You find that those most often solidly behind social legislation tend to show the human traits of empathy and compassion. But I was also a detail man, an able administrator. Still, I was only one of many people who were appointed to important positions in those early days of Social Security. It took the combination of people we had working together in Washington, D. C. to make the whole program work in reality even better than it should have when you looked at it on paper. “Any law by itself is a dead thing. This is particularly true of social legislation. It is only through the efforts of human beings that such legislation can be translated into action—action based on understanding and sympathy toward human needs.”
My part of that action was administration and for me, “administration is the law in action . . . we honed the administrative machinery so that it functioned effectively and gave the impression (and I think the actuality) of fairness and concern. And, I think that was basically why it was successful. Of course we wouldn’t have gotten to first base if people weren’t convinced that these human beings they met in the offices throughout the country . . . were really concerned about their getting their benefits.”
The success of Social Security was about successful administration. “I have said many times that a successful administrator ought to be about as interesting as spinach—cold spinach at that. That ought to be the idea. Now that’s not the kind of thing you can write a biography about. I don’t think you’ll find anything colorful in my whole career. I’d be surprised if you did.” You don’t take a position like that for fame or glory. You do because you can do it well, and because you believe in it wholeheartedly.
We started small. We wanted it all—health insurance for the masses, which didn’t even begin to come to fruition until the mid-1950’s with the passage of the Medicare bill, survivors’ benefits, old age insurance, unemployment insurance. But we knew we couldn’t get it all, especially all at once. It was time to “either fish or cut bait.”
There was too much opposition from both the insurance companies and the American Medical Association, combined with lukewarm support from labor. What surprised me was the ferocity with which the AMA fought it. “I think the government has the responsibility of breaking down the economic barrier that separates a human being from necessary medical care. That is the fundamental responsibility of government.”
Obviously not everyone believes the same. So we started small. “We realized we only could get a very limited beginning and so we looked for the sort of beginning that would be attractive enough to overcome the opposition of the AMA.”
“It’s hard to decide what we had in mind. All I can say is that President Roosevelt and Miss Perkins and I were thoroughly imbued with the Wisconsin Idea, as we from Wisconsin like[d] to call it, of representation of interests in the development of governmental policy . . . I think it is true that we wanted a broader program than just simply unemployment insurance, and we knew that it was impossible . . . even to get through unemployment insurance” at first. Eventually we got that much through. Then it became a matter of administering it well so that it looked like the right decision. Furthermore we also had to plot adding the other elements that we had wanted in the program from the beginning. As I mentioned it took between 15 and 20 years to get to Medicare.
This may sound somewhat strange, but I believe that “we were helped perhaps by the fact that the war came along . . . There was a whole decade there that the benefits didn’t amount to a damn. They were so small compared with the rising wages, and with full employment, who was worrying about it? All the old folks could get work. Even Grandma could get work during the war. So it didn’t have to prove itself during the war years.” Also, and I think this is another important thing about the war, “when the full impact of the war came along . . . I don’t think any social measures could have gotten attention, whether they were good or bad.”
So it’s a good thing we got it passed when we did, and got some of the important missing pieces, including disability and survivor benefits, passed in the 1939 amendments, before the war started. Otherwise the entire program may never have survived. The historical timing was perfect for the initial act and its subsequent amendments to succeed.
But even with the 1939 amendments we did not achieve everything we wanted. A huge segment of this country, the wealthiest on earth, does not have medical coverage yet. President Truman first proposed national health insurance in 1945. Medicare did not come about until after 1950 and even it is a far cry from universal coverage. I believe it will come. Sometimes government moves very slowly. It crawls. It steps forward and then lurches sideways or backwards. But it does somehow ultimately keep moving forward. I do believe it will come. “A person must have articles of faith. I have three: faith in the individual—his dignity, his worth, his potentiality, and his ability to improve himself and the world in which he is a part; faith in democratic government which sometimes seems painfully slow in arriving at a decision; and faith in using our democratic Government to the maximum extent to promote social welfare . . . We strengthen our democracy, and our faith in the processes of our democracy, when we make it possible for our Government to serve us by doing for us what we want but cannot do for ourselves acting as individuals.”
The country is not there yet, but it is closer than it has been. It’s almost time to “either fish or cut bait.”
Gordon Sinykin
“If you were the President in 1945, would you have dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I asked that question of a class of junior high school students, and the great majority promptly responded in the affirmative—they would have dropped the bomb. This came as quite a surprise to me—because after much reflection . . . my answer today would be in the negative.
“But [59] years ago all of us in the southwest Pacific waiting anxiously and fearfully to take off for the invasion of Japan welcomed the end of the war—at whatever cost to the enemy. One can be very selfish when his own life is in peril.” I made a prediction back then. I was happy the war was over, but the new bomb scared me. I said, “It certainly shows what horrible forms war can take. This one will leave its mark for many generations to come, not only upon the physical characteristics of the world but upon man’s moral fiber and virtues. The aftermath of hatred among men will be incredible.”
War took other horrible forms, too. We carpet-bombed Germany and Japan, leveling entire cities, even before the atomic bomb. “You can have no idea how badly [the] once beautiful city [of Tokyo] was damaged by our raids. They say that most of the destruction resulted from only three raids in which fire bombs were used extensively, the new type [at the time], called ‘napalm’ that burns so intensely.” I kept thinking how we would feel if we were in their place. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them even though I was certain we would be treated worse if it were the other way around.”
I was “pretty much a voice in the wilderness among wolves . . . with respect to our Japanese policy.
But you see I grew up in Madison’s ninth ward, the so-called Bush. At that time in the neighborhood “there were Jews . . . there were Italians, and there were blacks. And we played with them and lived with them . . . I didn’t grow up with any feelings of prejudice.” So maybe my viewpoint was different from many of the rest at the end of the war. Maybe as a member of the Progressive Party I had certain ideas that weren’t shared by all. “My parents were very strong supporters of the elder La Follete and stood by him during his opposition to America’s entry into World War I. So I was brought up in that background.”
Regardless of all that, “I was in Manila when the bombs were dropped on August 6 and 10, getting ready for Operation Olympia”, which would have been the huge assault that was planned on Japan. The atomic bombs stopped those plans short.
“At the time I was an officer in the Public Relations Section of General MacArthur’s headquarters. My job as the Operations Officer of [the] PRO [or Public Relations Office], was to take charge of and make the arrangements to take the news correspondents into Japan, together with the officers and men of our section. Some were to go by air and some by sea.
“Another assignment was to take charge of the press arrangements for the surrender ceremony on the Missouri.”
That meant I was witness to some of the most important historical events of my lifetime. I was there when MacArthur arrived in Japan. “It was a most dramatic moment as I watched his plane . . . and the General stepped out, stood on the stair-ladder, surveying the scene in triumph and puffing on his famous corn-cob pipe. The press milled about him like a hungry mob, and photographers shot seemingly endless rolls and feet of film.”
The official surrender of Japan was several days later. “It was six years to the day [after] Germany invaded Poland and set off the spark of total, global war.” What a memorable day it was in 1945 as compared to 1939.
“We woke at 5:00 a.m. and boarded a destroyer waiting to take the press corps to the Missouri. All told there were about 200 of us—keyed up with excitement. As far as the eye could see in Tokyo Bay were battleships, cruisers, aircraft carriers . . .
“Soon we spotted the Missouri with sailors in whites lined up from bow to stern and pulled in along side her. This was the first time I had ever been on a battleship and I kept bumping into everybody as I strained my neck and gawked at everything. My God, those guns fore and aft are the biggest things I have ever seen. I’m almost sure you could squeeze a horse into the barrel.
“All of us who were permitted to go felt like privileged characters. The entire press corps was taken, which left room only for the highest ranking generals, admirals, and foreign dignitaries. The first to come onto the deck were Admirals—Halsey, Turner, Spruance, and then Nimitz. Then came Generals Krueger, Kenny, Spaatz, Eichelberger, Hodges, and a group of lesser lights. The first foreign delegation was, as I recall, the Russians with a big, fat, red-faced General who strutted around as though he owned the place . . . Then came the British group, a naval delegation dressed in white shorts, shirts, and sox, followed by the Chinese, the French, Australians, Canada, New Zealand, and the Dutch.
“In the center of the deck was a long table with a green velvet drape over it bordered in white. A chair stood on each side of the table, and these were the only objects there.
“Suddenly everyone came to attention as General MacArthur arrived, mounted the steps to the deck, and walked slowly across it and out of sight into a nearby stateroom. We didn’t have long to wait before the Japs came. The silence was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Every pair of eyes on that deck was riveted on this group.
“They were pathetic. The foreign minister, in silk hat and frock coat, led the way. The drama of the situation was intensified many fold by the fact that he had an artificial leg. He encountered the greatest difficulty mounting those steps to the upper deck. His fellow Japs carefully avoided helping him for fear it would look undignified. The American Colonel who was conducting him kept opening and closing his fists, and you could see he wanted to give him his arm but struggled against it lest the Minister be offended. All of us suddenly breathed a sigh of relief as he made the last step and took his place standing about 15 feet from the table. The rest followed, several similarly dressed, the others in army and naval uniforms. They looked so bedraggled that I kept wondering if these really could be leaders of a people who had built themselves into such a powerful war machine as to threaten the security of mighty America. The frock coats of the civilians were wrinkled and seamy, their shoes unpolished. They looked as if they had never worn them before, as if they had just rented them for this special occasion.
“The delegation stood almost directly in front of me, not more than ten feet away. If you look closely at the pictures and newsreels, you will be able to see me just behind, to the left facing the table, and slightly below the Japs.”
It still amazes me that I was there. Coming from my humble beginnings, the son of poor Russian immigrants, I achieved quite a bit in my life. I became a partner in my own law firm, one that specialized in First Amendment issues. In that capacity I gained some fame of my own by taking on the case of the Progressive against the federal government when it was revealed the magazine intended to publish an article on the H-bomb. We won some enemies and the case, which is still considered one of the landmark First Amendment cases of the last several decades.
That reminds me of how I started here today. If you were President, would you drop the A-bomb or the H-bomb today? Would you use napalm? Would you use biological weapons? Sometimes it seems like these things are necessary, but I think we really need to think about the repercussions. Give it some thought. Let me ask you again in a few years.
George Mosse
I’ve been asked to talk to you a little about myself, which I am not comfortable doing. My father taught me this, that you just don’t talk about yourself. It’s not the way things are done. So this is uncomfortable for me, you know. But I will do my best. I’ve been asked and I will do my best.
What I can say is that “I’ve been so lucky” in my life. I was born into extreme, very extreme, wealth, real wealth, then lost it all, got it back, and yet, money has never meant much of anything to me. I was as able to live without it as well as with it. It didn’t matter. My father was the owner of the Berliner Tageblatt, the leading liberal newspaper in Berlin and we were one of the richest Jewish families in Germany.
But that is not the only way I’ve been lucky. Throughout my life I always stumbled into things like the right school, my career, and jobs. It’s not that I lacked ambition enough to create my own way. It was simply that things always seemed to open up for me. I’ve always been lucky. As a 15 year old boy I left Germany 15 minutes before a law went into effect that would have prevented my departure. Fifteen minutes, and I didn’t know any better at all. This, I think, could be called luck. “After my last school exam I managed to get on a ferry to Switzerland, on the evening when Hitler made another speech against the Mosses. I passed a line of storm troopers who raised their eyebrows as they inspected my passport, but I was on the last ferry that didn’t require a clearance stamp . . . Life is a series of lucky—or unlucky—episodes.”
It is also, life is also, it is a paradox and we humans are a series of contradictions. I’m a series of contradictions. To know me is to know that I am both an insider and an outsider, though as both a homosexual and a Jew I have always felt more the outsider. I have always been in exile, both at home and abroad. “Everything in life is ambivalent. On the one hand I love to feel grounded, but on the other hand my ideal is to be a free-floating intellectual, the eternal emigrant.” For me exile was always the essence of my being and here I’m talking about emotional exile as much as anything. As a child I was exiled from my parents. We shared space in the same mansions and estates, yet I barely knew them. There was little or no connection. I was raised by nannies and maids. I went to school in places far from home. My family even left Germany without me and when I got out on that last possible night it was by myself.
This exile, this feeling of being an outsider, suffused most of my life. For example, I am a Jew, but I was never religious, I was an early opponent of Zionism, and I lived in places where there were few Jews. Iowa, Wisconsin, these are not the heartland for most Jews. “All the academic departments I worked in were Jewish-free until I arrived.” I started life wealthy and became wealthy again as an old man, yet most of my life I had little. As a professor I was part of the establishment and yet I was a constant critic of it. I was a homosexual, yet I did not act upon it or come out until I was in middle age. I was an outsider, even in those places where I was accepted. I was an eternal emigrant. Not that this matters. I am simply stating my own historical being.
In the study of history, though, in the study of history, there it was I found a home. I could as easily have ended up studying English or law, but history presented itself to me—it was a gentlemanly thing—and I determined to study it. It was not as if anyone encouraged me. In fact, the master at Emmanuel College told me, and I quote, ‘You people become journalists, not historians.’ But I studied it nonetheless and found a passion in my life.
Ultimately I became a specialist in the Holocaust and in fascists. However, even though I was impacted by the events of World War II I did not suffer them the way that others did. I was not a Holocaust survivor. I left Germany well before that became an issue. By the time the United States entered the war I had already been living here for two years. “Like so many others I was listening to the broadcast of the New York Philharmonic concert when it was interrupted by the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“America’s entry into the war first began to intrude into my life in a bizarre way. The Chaplains Corps trained at Harvard [where I was studying], and as part of this training practiced the digging of graves all around Divinity Hall, where I lived. For me, a broken leg was the consequence, but it did not prevent me from presenting myself at the Cambridge draft board early in 1942.”
I was classified as unfit to serve and it seemed that it was not so much that I was of German background as Prussian. I expected it to be that I was Jewish. I feared it was that I was a homosexual and somehow, though it was a secret, the army knew it. I thought perhaps the classification of ‘premature antifascist’ might be a reason—this was actually a classification back then—but I was hardly a known person in the movement. The reason remained a mystery and kept me from contributing to the cause, which I wanted to do as a fervent anti-fascist, premature or not.
It was not until I moved to Iowa to teach and took on the task of training soldiers for the occupation of Czechoslovakia and France that I contributed anything directly to the war effort. By then it was already almost the end of the war. In “fact, all those soldiers whom I had drilled in French and Czech history so that they might be better occupiers were speedily sent to Japan.” So much for my contribution. I guess my true contributions came much later, in my understanding of the rise of Hitler and the cultural construct behind Germany’s fascism and anti-Semitism, and my translation of those ideas into books and courses that some say changed the way we look at history. That is for others to decide.
I wish that I could explain it better. I am sorry. I cannot, in the short time I have with you here today, I cannot adequately describe for you the historical and cultural theories that I developed. That is why I wrote books. Read them some time. The ideas were complex and needed to be developed fully. But I will at least try to give you some idea how I view the study of history.
“History for me took the place of religion, with the advantage that history is open-ended and not exclusive, for one cannot understand one’s own history . . . without trying to understand the motivations of others . . . friendly or hostile. A historian, if he is to get his history right, cannot be bigoted or narrow-minded. Empathy is for me still at the core of the historical enterprise, but understanding does not mean withholding judgment. I have myself mainly dealt with people and movements whom I judged harshly, but understanding must precede an informed and effective judgment.
“It is my firm belief that a historian in order to understand the past has to empathize with it, to get under its skin, as it were, to see the world through the eyes of its actors and its institutions.”
In other words, “We can’t judge the past by the present; we must see the past, as much as possible, in it[s] own context.”
“The attempt to make sense out of the history of my own century, which has been such an unprecedented and largely self-induced abasement of individualism, was also a means of understanding my own past.” This, I think, all artists and intellectuals do, they take their own experience and apply it to the world or they take their understanding of the world and apply it to themselves. They become universal with the world in which they live. This is how I could ultimately accept myself, as a Jew, as a gay man, as the eternal outsider.
“But my acceptance of myself was set within the constant awareness of a past which refused to go away . . . I suppose that I am a member of the Holocaust generation and have constantly tried to understand an event too monstrous to contemplate. All my studies in the history of racism and volkish thought, and also those dealing with outsiderdom and stereotypes, though sometimes not directly related to the Holocaust, have tried to find the answer to how it could have happened; finding an explanation has been vital not only for the understanding of modern history, but also for my own peace of mind.”
I would say now that I am at peace.
William Middleton
As a child I had a natural distaste for war. I believe I’ve mentioned that before. I think it is only natural. But I came from a long line of soldiers so when World War I started I enlisted and followed in the footsteps of generations before me. It was in my blood. It was a privilege to go to war. I felt I owed it to my country for all that had been given me.
I enlisted as a doctor, something that was also in my blood. I announced to the family at the age of three that I was going to become a doctor. That is what I did, and that is how I entered both world wars. I have always believed “the physician is the servant rather than the master.” It was my duty to serve. In March of 1942 I received a letter from the Surgeon General’s assistant which said something along the lines of “It appears that despite my conscientious efforts to persuade you to continue in the job of training more doctors for the military service, you insist upon giving us one really qualified applicant.”
I knew that I would continue teaching no matter what position they might give me. That, too, was in my blood. There were some things certain in my life at that time, that I would always in some way find a way to teach, that I would always in some way find a way to visit patients, and that I would always have a stethoscope around my neck. You see, “I can walk but cannot think without a stethoscope.” That is my motto of sorts. For me, to be without my stethoscope would be like an old man without his cane or a smoker without his cigarettes. Now mind you, I am not endorsing tobacco. I have always been opposed to it. I even made one of General Eisenhower’s assistants quit when I threatened not to treat him as long as he was still smoking. It was not easy. Most of the soldiers smoked in the Second World War. I had a difference of opinion about it.
Really, we all have different opinions about many things. Foot soldiers and generals have different vantage points when it comes to war. Front line soldiers and doctors do as well. Soldiers on the front face the bullets and cannons and either conquer them or suffer. What military doctors see is the result of battle on individual bodies and minds. We see the ones who don’t conquer, who catch the bullet or shrapnel, whose masks don’t work and they are exposed to the mustard gas. We see the ones who succumb to a different enemy—sickness and disease. This is not to say there is no danger for the medics. In the First World War I suffered eight gas attacks. Doctors and nurses also die in wars. It is dangerous for us all.
By the time of the Second World War I had been Dean of the UW Medical School just over five years, but I felt that I had to go in again. “I had no choice in the matter so far as conscience was concerned.” I got the letter from the Surgeon General’s assistant and was accepted back into the army. I was commissioned a Lieutenant Colonel and eventually assigned the position of Chief Consultant in Medicine in the Office of the Chief Surgeon of the European Theater of Operations.
As Dean I had continued to make medical rounds and I did the same as long as I could in the European theater. I have always had a deep and abiding interest in the well-being, both physically and mentally, of patients. I felt that even with the additional responsibilities it was incumbent upon me to continue to stay in touch that way. I was able to do so regularly well into 1943. “Of course I [paid] lip service to my post, but every occasion for consultation [was] seized upon with avidity.”
Aside from my personal achievement of maintaining that patient contact I did accomplish some other things as well. I organized the European Theater field hospitals based on the model I had seen in World War I, with adjustments for the problems I had noticed back then. I developed a lecture series, which was well-attended by both American and British medical personnel. I created cards for doctors to be able to follow up on patients’ health after they were transferred away, and I was responsible for recommending doctors for promotions or transfers. “I say without reservation that there never was a single recommendation of personnel that I made that was not respected.” And finally, I convinced the American Board of Internal Medicine to allow doctors in the military to take special examinations for certification wherever they happened to be. Otherwise, these doctors missed their opportunities to take the required examinations. It seemed to me that those who had volunteered for service should not be punished by being precluded from the exams. Fortunately the board agreed with me. They allowed myself and one other doctor to give the examinations in the field.
When the European part of the war ended I was ordered back to Washington for the Pacific Conference. I was to represent the medial establishment of the European Theater to formulate medical plans for the final push in the Pacific. I was ordered from Washington to report to the Pacific and review the medical situation there. That was in anticipation of what was hoped to be our final assault on the Japanese, but before I departed we received word that the collapse of Japan was imminent and the plans were cancelled.
I went home, back to Madison, and resumed my duties as Dean of the Medical School, a position I held for another ten years. However, my affiliation with the military was not yet done. In 1955 I was named the Chief Director of the Veterans’ Administration. I was about to leave the university anyway and the job seemed an interesting challenge. As in the war and at the university I made rounds as often as I could in my new position. It was the contact with the patients that always energized me. As much as I enjoyed teaching, which I did in some way in all of my positions, it was the patient contact that was most gratifying.
I tried to impart this to my students as well, and I hope that I succeeded. In my life’s work there have been two things of utmost importance—treating patients and teaching others how to do the same. “I have been given the privilege of preaching the only gospel I know, bedside medicine; and my greatest reward has been the emergence of the student’s inquiring mind.” There are those now besides myself who can walk, but cannot think without a stethoscope. I like to imagine them at the bedsides of patients, giving whatever care they can, playing the part of servant to the master in the bed.
Helene M. Cassidy
I am not from here originally. I grew up in a suburb of Paris and came here as a young girl to study. I will tell you “my first trip to America was quite a shock. In France we always thought of America as a nation of freedom and of wonderfully mechanized civilization. And then I arrived at that little mountain settlement [in the Tennessee Smokies] and was ordered never to leave the campus without a permit. I, who had just come all the way from France by myself! I, who didn’t even know what a campus was!” This did not seem to me to be freedom.
My start in this country was humbling. On the train to Tusculum College I went to the dining car looking for grapefruit, a rarity in France, and something I very much wanted to have at that moment. My English was not so good at the time. I struggled with the menu and finally ordered half of what I believed to be grapefruit. The waiter tried to stop me. He gesticulated with his hands as if trying to speak sign language. He drew attention to me alone at my table. But I insisted. He reluctantly gave in and returned shortly with half a lemon placed neatly on a large plate.
“I realized my mistake, of course—but with the eyes of the entire dining car on me, what could I do? I pretended it was what I had wanted all along, squeezed it carefully into my coffee—and drank it up, that terrible stuff! I’m sure everyone who was on the train believes that odd custom is why all French coffee tastes so bad.”
Eventually I did learn the language better. It certainly didn’t hurt to be married to a linguist, a man who spearheaded the creation of a new dictionary of American regional English. Still, I had done well enough for myself before Frederic and I met. I moved back and forth between continents in those days. I earned a B. A. and M. A. in French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and a B. A. and M. A. in English literature here in the states. In America I studied at Tusculum College, Oberlin College, and Bryn Mawr. My PhD, naturally enough, was on comparative literature, French and English. That was earned at Michigan. I had drive, but by then I felt I had enough degrees. “I just couldn’t see going back to France to duplicate that [last] degree.” Besides, by that time I had married Frederic and had started a family.
We met at Oberlin College and married in Michigan. Our first child was born while I studied for my doctorate. That was in the late 1930’s. When Frederic, Jr. was six weeks old I went back to my work, and my husband helped out tremendously. “No, it wasn’t hard; babies are easy. You feed a baby and then you plunk him down somewhere and forget him.” No, really, that’s all it takes. I have a theory about them. “Babies don’t like crying any more than you like listening to them. Happy babies don’t cry.” My children were happy.
We moved our family to Madison in 1939 and a year later I became a naturalized American citizen. I always took great pride in that, as well as my French roots, so when war broke out around the world I not only felt loyalty to the United States in her struggle against the fascists, but I also felt loyalty to my own homeland. Most of my dearest family members were still in France. Four of my five sisters were there. The other was in the United States to study psychiatry, hoping to help the French children after it was all over.
My mother, too, was there, eighty years old at the time, and a very feisty eighty years at that. She wrote letters full of resistance and courage. In one she wrote about how fun it was to have an old person’s ration card that took her to the front of the food queue. When the Germans came into Paris she refused to be evacuated. ‘I moved out for them in 1870 and 1916,’ she said. ‘And I won’t do it again. Besides, they’re not going to be here very long this time.’
I found many ways to contribute both to America and France during that trying time. My house became a clearinghouse for relief efforts. I helped with sewing groups. I collected, cleaned, and repaired clothing. I chaired the American Relief for France unit. I remember telling someone back then, “My little ones have had so many things almost dragged off their backs for France, they are a little dubious. But it’s good for them to give.”
I believed that all of us needed to contribute. I received letters from abroad that described the situation. Here is just one, from Lorraine, if you can bear it.
‘The children, many of them orphans, live in caves, cellars, half-destroyed barns. The fields are so full of mines that no one dares use a plow. The destroyed bridges make exchanges with other villages virtually impossible. We opened a school lunch on Monday. Every day the children receive a glass of milk and some cheese or honey to eat with their bread. There is often nothing at home but bread and sometimes a little clear soup.’ I suppose that was if they had a home.
This letter was written after the war, more than a year after victory in Europe was declared. So yes, the military victory was won, but I knew the victory over the aftermath of the war would take years.
What mother would not give her time to help? What mother, looking at her own beautiful rosy-cheeked children would not be willing to collect food and clothing for the war orphans? What child should not be willing to give up a blanket or a pair of shoes to those who need them more? For the survivors these things were desperately “needed, not as a luxury, but to keep a whole generation alive.” I mean that literally. Without American assistance what was left of the European war generation after the war would have perished in the rebuilding as surely as those who perished in the war.
I was happy to do my part. While I enjoyed my later life as a French teacher at every school level it really was a continuation of my work during the war, that of extending a hand across the ocean and bridging the cultures of France and America. I did it by teaching, through a television program on French culture, as President of the French House on the UW campus. But I think it started with my efforts during the war.
Merci.
Villiers Meloche
My family moved from Michigan to Madison to take advantage of the educational opportunities presented here. Between 1910 and 1921 three of the Meloche siblings completed our undergraduate work here. I would have graduated sooner, but World War I interrupted my education. I didn’t serve overseas, but Professor Lenher suggested that I work as an analytical chemist during the war. He recommended me to Carnegie-Illinois Steel in Gary, Indiana. As a result I didn’t receive my undergraduate degree until 1921 and didn’t finish my doctoral research until 1925. I became an instructor that same year. I believe it was that year. In ’26 I received my doctorate. Only a couple years later I was handed an enormous amount of responsibility when Professor Kemmerer suddenly passed away. Professors Kemmerer and Lehner both encouraged me as a young man. I owe a debt of gratitude to them.
To this day “the University of Wisconsin’s chemistry setup is one of the best in the country, and one of the reasons it stays that way is that we don’t limit our hiring to older men with established reputations.” We allow young men to make their reputations.
I would like to believe that Professor Lehner thought that I would make my reputation. I started my career with an interest in hydrochemistry—I worked with Dr. Birge in those days—but there were so many more things that interested me. I developed a keen interest in inorganic chemistry, particularly in the chemistry of four elements, including rhenium, which was discovered in 1925. Back then, in the late 20’s, the cost was about $10,000 a gram, a rather expensive interest. By the time World War II came along it had thankfully dropped considerably. Other elements that interested me were selenium, tellurium, and molybdenum. And, of course, I was very interested in analytical chemistry and, in particular, the instrumentation behind it. Some have credited me with introducing the first course in the nation on instrumental analysis. I don’t know if that’s true. I do know that I was among the first in America to use a polaragraph, and often used spectrophotometry and flame photometry in my work. The new instruments intrigued me. I wanted to see what they could help us do or discover. Often my students and I would tinker with them and push them to do things for which they were not originally intended. Such is the curiosity of youth.
What we did at the university, and part of the reason we were able to develop such a successful instrument lab, is that we developed an approach that allowed the instruments to be available to other departments. We maintained the instruments and provided technical expertise to other groups that needed to use them. Where necessary we trained others in how to use the instruments themselves. We felt it important that we collaborate with others in their own research.
During the Second World War I collaborated with the U. S. government. At that time they were working on what came to be known as the Manhattan Project, the development of the atomic bomb. Most of the work was being done at three locations around the country—Oak Hill, Tennessee, Chicago, and Los Alamos. Most of the people involved at those locations were physicists, not chemists. But chemists were needed to provide the raw materials for the work that was being done. I received secret orders for telluric acid and rhenium, among other things. Like I said, it’s a good thing the price of rhenium had gone down since its discovery. I was asked for as much as 600 grams of it at a time.
Of course I couldn’t talk to anyone about the work I was doing. It was top-secret. I knew that something was being developed, but I think that most of the people involved in the Manhattan Project were kept in the dark about the ultimate ends of the project. Many, many people had to be involved, but not everyone needed to know what the end goal was. It was less likely there would be slips that way. Physicists like Fermi and Oppenheimer knew. Most of the rest could only guess, though I believe many of those in the scientific community guessed correctly. The U. S. already had a reputation in the field of nuclear physics. There was word of nuclear fission. It was not that difficult to put two and two together. For myself I did not want to know too much. I simply wanted to do what I could to ensure our victory in the war effort. If the army asked for 600 grams of rhenium I would provide them 600 grams of rhenium. I did what I could. During that time I was also involved on the University War Council and on the Dane County Defense Board. Students often came to me for help on their draft status.
I was often called upon by students over the years, as well as by the government and by industry, to assist with their needs. Science is so much theory, but there are always practical applications to keep in mind. New applications are discovered all the time. Analytical chemistry is simply detective work. It applies to any man who ever picked up a fountain pen or some other object and wondered what it was made of and if it could be made better. Of course it can. Things can always be done better. The question is how. Analytical chemistry gets to that “how”.
It’s that “how” and “why” that always excited me, that I tried to impart to my students. Ultimately, my life’s work is about my students. I tell you, “when you see how far your youngsters have gone, this is the truly warming part” of your work as an educator. I did everything I could to assist them, from teaching them the basics of their chosen field, to helping place them in industry, to giving them guidance wherever I could. Many, many of them turned out to be successful in the field.
So when it came time for retirement I could do so knowing that I had done my work. I could go to my cottage on Trout Lake and instead of dropping limnology instruments in the water I could simply drop a fishing line. Instead of getting to the core of certain elements I could take an axe and chop my way to the center of a tree. I could get out of the rat race, away from the human race, and simply work on getting my mind in the proper perspective. I could swim, garden, take pictures, discover peace in those little activities, and leave the larger discoveries to the young.
William Bleckwenn
You may have heard this already, but there is discussion these days about using truth serum on al Qaeda operatives to find information about potential terrorist attacks. There are those who believe that we should use whatever means we have at our disposal to win the war on terror. The reason I mention this is that I know a little about the subject. The current discussion interests me. You see, I discovered sodium amytal, a truth serum. There are others, too. The one you’ve probably heard about is sodium pentothal. So the discussion I’ve heard is whether truth serum can be considered cruel and unusual punishment. I don’t know if I can answer that, but I can speak to its efficacy as a truth drug. The honest answer is that there really is no such thing as a truth drug. Alcohol is as close to a truth drug as these others. Anything that relaxes you, gets you to open up a bit, could be considered a truth drug. Now, I’m not saying they’re worthless. They have their uses in psychiatry, and maybe one terrorist might give away something that he would not ordinarily. Who knows?
You see, what they do, truth drugs, in perhaps a little stronger way than alcohol, is that they loosen inhibitions. You’ve seen how people with a few drinks might get bold enough to dance or do something they normally don’t. You’ve probably also seen them spill their guts about how much your friendship or whatever means to them. What the truth drugs do is similar. They make a subject more relaxed and confident and willing to talk, so that a person under the influence might just spill out little secrets that they would not have brought up in normal conversation.
But the dark recesses of a person’s soul are not always that easy to tap into. It’s definitely not the way it’s depicted in the movies, with a detective administering the drug and then the suspect admitting to everything about a crime that couldn’t be solved any other way. Really, that’s not likely to happen. What it was developed for was to help patients feel freer to speak about painful memories or dark demons. It loosens them up enough that they might be more honest with, not so much you, but themselves. But really, it won’t make people spout the honest-to-God truth about every question they’re asked. That’s pure—or maybe impure—science fiction.
Whether it should be used in the current war, I don’t know. I suppose when looking back at the Japs in World War II I would have thought, what the heck, anything we can try that would help us win that horrible war might be worth trying. After all, we dropped the A-bomb and I think most people at the time felt it was a necessary thing to do.
I was in both World Wars. I was such a young upstart in the first one. But I rose to the rank of staff sergeant and then entered the second as a Colonel. I served under General MacArthur in the South Pacific. By the second war I had my degree and was then working at the University of Wisconsin. At the time I was doing a good deal of work in neuropharmacology, the study of the use of drugs in treating nervous disorders or mental diseases. We developed pictrotoxin, an antidote for barbiturate overdose, trytarsamide to cure syphilis of the brain, and, as I mentioned, the truth serum, sodium amytal, none of which meant much of anything by the time 1941 rolled around.
My research was interrupted when World War II intervened. After the first war I had joined the reserves and had gradually risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, so when we joined the second war it was time for me to go back in to the regular army. I went with the 135th Medical Regiment as a Colonel. I’m sure you know I wasn’t the only one who gave my time. Wisconsin should be proud of her sons and daughters who served. They “did a typical Wisconsin job” over there. I had occasion to recruit nurses from the state because we were so inadequately staffed in the South Pacific. My own daughter did her part. Wisconsin did her share.
Let me tell you a little bit about that.
“The first medical officer to land in Darwin [Australia] was Lieutenant Colonel H. Curtis Johnson of Madison. The first American hospitals in the Darwin area were built and operated by our Wisconsin Medical Regiment. The first American fighting division to land in Australia was the Great Red Arrow Division—the famous 32nd.
“The first American hospitals operated in New Guinea before the Coral Sea Battle were established by the Milwaukee and Racine boys. Before the Japs were stopped in their march across the Owen Stanley Range they reached a point seven air miles from our hospital near Port Moresby but our Wisconsin hospital was not moved. It bore the brunt of the casualty load.
“The first division to face the Jap in the southwest Pacific when it looked like they would capture Port Moresby, was our 32nd Division. From the time Japan started its drive south in the East Indies they had never been stopped or forced back.” Until they met our 32nd.
“There [were] thousands of other Wisconsin men in the southwest Pacific. There [were] many firsts among them too. Commander Ed Keek of the Marines, Janesville’s valiant Tank Company at Bataan, and countless others in every branch and arm of the Air Corps, Navy, Marines, and Army. The leading Pacific ace, Captain [Richard] Bong, [was] from Wisconsin. Many naval heroes [were] home [town] boys. We can boast of an ex-Governor who went into action with the marine landing boats on New Britain, and finally the supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific, General MacArthur. He will go down in history as one of the greatest soldiers of all time.”
You should be proud of your Wisconsin boys, and I barely scratched the surface of all their contributions. “There are many acts and deeds of our heroes yet to be told.” We can only wish that there were a truth serum or something that would allow all of the stories to be told, because there are countless individual moments that likely will be lost forever.
You see, I think my point is this. It’s not things like truth serum or smart bombs or even the A-bomb that win wars. The Japanese were ready to give in before the big bombs dropped. What win wars are the heroic men and women who serve on the front lines, the countless unnamed, faceless soldiers who soldier on against all odds, against enemy fire, disease, discomfort, lack of sleep and food, the heroes who are just doing their jobs, who don’t even know they’re heroes. That’s what wins wars, and that’s a truth that can’t be refuted.