Here, he sets the stage for our program by discussing the lead-up to the Normandy invasion and the planning involved in Operation Overlord.

The Guns That Last Light opens on May 15th.

1944.

It opens at St. Paul's School on Hammersmith Road in London.

It's there that Eisenhower, Churchill, Patton, Omar Bradley, King George VI, and several dozen of the most senior commanders of the force that's about to invade France gather to discuss for the last time the battle plan for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy.

They met in an auditorium known as the Model Room.

It's a little like this.

We had to keep

Question must be asked in this day and age, was the American Revolution truly a revolution for freedom, or was it a white patriarchy of slave owners and apologists for slave owners who simply wanted a bigger slice of the money pie?

I don't think they're necessarily completely, uh, contradictory.

Um, certainly, you had some people, white slave owners in the South, for example, who felt pinched economically by the restrictions that had been placed on them.

Uh, but I think that it's not romanticizing that era excessively to believe, particularly when you look at the contemporary writings and what it is they believed at the time, that they had their eye on a grander future than simply a slave-holding country that was a nice place to be if you were white and rich.

Really, we sell them short if we don't acknowledge that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, uh, that they are endowed by their creator, and all those other fine words out of the Declaration of Independence are things they really believed.

They're aspirational, yes.

What can we learn in today's fractious political environment from that period?

Well, I think one of the things we can learn [laughs] is that the nation was born disputatiously.

Hmm.

Uh, that's a hard thing to persuade a, a, a 19 or 20-year-old kid sometimes, that, uh, there is something larger than himself, but Washington was particularly good at it, and he got better at it as the war went on.

Uh, there are so many other things that originate with him, starting with those initial days in Cambridge, when he takes command of the army in July of 1775, including an enormous amount of correspondence that he writes right from the beginning to, uh, uh, state governors, to Congress, to local committees of safety, the subtext of which, throughout the next eight years, is, "I am your servant.

I, uh, affirm civilian control of the military.

Neither I nor the army I command is a threat to the republic that you aspire to build.

I will not be Cromwell." That's an amazing thing that he did at the time, and it's an amazing thing that he has given us.

It's why no, uh, serving or, uh, uh, past soldier, sailor, airman, or marine would ever begin to think of a coup.

Um, you know, how, how does that, um, you know, how does, how does that impact y- you, and, and, and how do you get through that work in a way that you feel like you're ready to give it, uh, to other people?

Uh, is there not a sense in which these great events that you so brilliantly chronicle were avoidable, contingent, there didn't need to be a War of Independence, and it might not have ended the way it did? Should we talk about the history that might have been? If, if George Washington, two years before the de- less than two years before the declaration thinks that civil discord can be prevented and nobody wants it, isn't it, isn't there something somewhat accidental about these events?

Oh, I think absolutely, uh, Niall.

I think that, uh, contingency is always a major operant, uh, in history.

It's, uh, it's like gravity.

It just, it's just part of, uh, the way the universe operates.

Uh, when the shooting starts at Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775, most people, overwhelmingly most people are not thinking about independence.

Uh, they're thinking about a redress of grievances as they define them.

Right.

How different does the middle of the revolution feel to you from other sagas of wars that you've written about?

Um, it's protracted.

The, the American Revolution lasts eight years.

Uh, now we're in Vietnam basically for 10.

Uh, but it's, it's a different vibe to it.

The Vietnam War ramps up until virtually the end when in 1973 we, um, um, basically call it quits.

Um, World War II, the American role of World War II is more compressed.

Uh, I keep thinking about what you said with Thomas Paine saying, you know, "America's out of your reach," and I think about all the things that feel out of America's reach right now, and I wonder if you think we are a great exceptional nation and how we should, how we should reflect on our identity with the, the anniversary.

What is that in Trenton and Princeton? Out

of desperation, and he is desperate, he conceives this plan, famously crosses the Delaware eastbound into New Jersey on Christmas night, 1776, because there's a German garrison there, the Hessians.

And he surprises it.

They are not drunk, is American mythology.

And the commander is not a drunk misfoot, Colonel Rall.

But they are surprised.

They destroy the garrison.

The colonies and the war, what happens in the fighting in the beginning of your second volume?

[laughs]

He, uh, he's willing to change his mind.

He's willing to m- profit from his mistakes.

He's very aggressive, and he wants nothing more when the war begins than one big titanic battle, mano a mano, to settle it all right now.

And he comes to realize, after he gets his butt kicked a couple times, that that is not gonna work out for him, so he adopts what today we would call the strategic defensive, where he's looking for opportunities to nick and bleed the enemy without risking everything in the, in the army.

And so that's what he does, and he, uh, it's an eight-year war, as it turns out.

It's a battle of attrition, and he's wearing down the British military, and he's wearing down British political will at home, all the while trying to c- hold the army together.

Can you talk about that battle? 'Cause when we look back on 1776, it did not start off well for the continentals.

He's got some

defects as a commanding general.

He's not very good tactically.

He makes mistakes.

He gets outflanked.

à Long Island.

Brandywine.

Benjamin Franklin.

Why?

Well, for the first Civil War, the Revolution, and it certainly anticipates the Civil War, part of it is a feeling that you've been betrayed.

You've been betrayed by your countrymen because they don't take the point of view that you've got about it.

There are hundreds of thousands of Americans during the Revolution who believe that rebellion against Britain is foolhardy.

Britain is the greatest empire in the world.

They have the greatest navy the world has ever seen.

They've provided prosperity not only to Britain but to all of Britain's colonies.

Have you figured out some ways of finding those flecks of gold that are hidden from the usual passing glance?

Is, is that where, what led you to write this, this series?

Uh, well, first, thanks for having me, uh, and talking to me this morning, Rick.

Um, and I should mention that volume two of this, uh, trilogy, knock wood, hope it'll be a trilogy, uh, is just published.

Uh, volume 2 is called The Fate of the Day, and it's about the middle years of the Revolution.

You know, I think that, uh, there are a couple of issues here that you've touched on.

One is that we're just now entering the semi-quincentennial, which is, sounds like a medical procedure.

It's actually the 250th anniversary of our country's founding.

Right.

Basically, had the Brits paid any attention at all at the beginning, they'd have to have won it, shouldn't they?

They had the greatest navy the world has ever seen, uh, but they're fighting an expeditionary war across 3,000 miles of open ocean in the age of sail.

Um, they've got all kinds of logistical problems and, as they soon realize, and I don't think they had realized at- at the beginning, uh, they're fighting, you know, not just a militia, not just a new continental army, they're fighting an entire country.

Now, there's two and a half million people in America at that time, 500,000 of them are Black slaves.

Of the two million white Americans, uh, in America in 1775, uh, you can figure about 20% of them are loyalists.

Uh, they remain loyal to the crown, many of which take up arms, um, many of whom take up arms on behalf of the king.

But, um, you know, what the British find is that, um, the Americans have enough luck, they have enough persistence, they have enough grit, and they have enough capable leaders, both political and military leaders, Washington being foremost among the latter.

I think I visited it when I was a kid with my parents on a battlefield tour, but I really had no idea of the stakes involved or how vicious the battle was.

Yes.

... venerate him.

Uh, yeah, uh, so when he's looking around for guys who can do the job, he sees, for example, an overweight 25-year-old Boston bookseller named Henry Knox, and s- who's got very little military experience, he's been with the militia in Boston, uh, between selling books, uh, and so he knows a bit about artillery, but somehow Washington discerns that this guy is going to be the father of American artillery.

He's a g- he's a gifted gunner, he's a fine leader, uh, uh, he's in, in, in, uh, implacable in his determination to make, uh, gunnery work for the American cause.

Washington looks around and sees a, um, a lapsed Quaker from Rhode Island in his mid-30s named Nathanael Greene, uh, who has not even been able to be, uh, eh, elected lieutenant in his Rhode Island militia company, and somehow Washington recognizes this guy has got some capabilities.

Nathanael Greene is gonna be second only to Washington as the most indispensable man in the Continental Army.

He is a gifted, gifted soldier, and he's, uh, good not only at, uh, commanding men in combat.

But I put it to you.

Warren's oration, uh, which you begin with? And tell us about the Battle of the Lexington and Concord.

Uh, thanks, Jeff.

Thanks for, uh, having me.

It's gr- great to be with you today.

Uh, well, things, uh, had, uh, unspooled, uh, long before March of 1775, obviously.

Uh, for the better part of 100 years, the colonists, let's call them the Patriots, had been largely left alone by Britain, and, uh, that benign neglect had begun to, uh, unstitch in a significant way after the French and Indian War, the Seven Years' War as it's called in Europe, uh, when, uh, Britain first of all tried to claw back some money to help, uh, pay off the debt that they had incurred during the war, and also began posting, uh, troops in America to, uh, h- help keep things settled on the frontier between the colonials and the Indians.

Uh, so we'll go back in, in a few minutes and look at some of the backstory that leads to April 19th, but in general, what you have in, uh, in April of 19- of 1775 is 5,000 British troops, uh, posted in Boston.

Tell us about Joseph Warren and the political context that Mary Beth and Rosemary have helped us understand, then details of the battle that you wanna highlight that you weren't able to talk about on your first round, and then take us to the incredible story of how news of the battle was communicated to Britain, how there was a fight over how to spin it, which had to do with communication technology, and how both sides attempted to, uh, win the propaganda wars.