The Greatest Generation Live Podcast

At a moment when political division feels like the defining feature of American life, historian and author Peter Shinkle takes us back to a time when leaders from opposing parties came together to confront an existential threat.

In his book Uniting America: How FDR and Henry Stimson Brought Democrats and Republicans Together to Win World War II, Shinkle tells the remarkable—and largely forgotten—story of the partnership between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Republican statesman Henry L. Stimson.

Drawing on newly uncovered correspondence and deep archival research, Shinkle shows how this unlikely alliance helped overcome isolationism, build public support for intervention, and ultimately mobilize the United States for victory in World War II. Their collaboration—joined by figures like Frank Knox and Wendell Willkie—demonstrates how crossing party lines was not a political liability, but a national necessity.

As Shinkle explains, this bipartisan effort didn’t emerge in calm times—it took shape amid fierce political conflict, public resistance to war, and deep uncertainty about America’s role in the world. Yet it proved decisive. The defeat of fascism, the creation of the United Nations, and the enduring idea that the United States must help defend democracy abroad all grew from this moment of cooperation .

This program explores how Roosevelt brought Republicans into his cabinet, and how they overcame isolationism before Pearl Harbor. But it wasn’t all easy, and bipartisanship did not guarantee moral clarity. But it did make possible one of the most consequential mobilizations in American history .

Join us for a conversation that connects past to present and asks a simple, enduring question: what does it take for Americans to act together when it matters most?

#WWIIHistory #FDR #HenryStimson #Bipartisanship #AmericanHistory #WorldWarII #Leadership #VeteransHistory #VBC #HistoryMatter

For Women’s History Month, we talk with author and historian Brooke Kroeger, whose recent article, “The Go-Between,” shines new light on one of World War II’s most fascinating and least understood correspondents: Helen Kirkpatrick. Brooke will also discuss WWII reporter Ann Stringer, whose story Brooke captured in A Journalist at War.

Helen Kirkpatrick was everywhere the war burned hottest: London during the Blitz, North Africa, Italy, Normandy, and Paris. She broke major stories, moved with unusual ease among political, military, and diplomatic circles, and became the only woman among 1,600 accredited American correspondents to receive the U.S. Medal of Freedom for her wartime service. How did she gain such access? And why do some of her accomplishments still sit in the shadows of classified files and unanswered questions?

Kroeger also draws attention to a troubling ambiguity: her younger brother, Lyman B. Kirkpatrick Jr., became a high-ranking figure in U.S. intelligence after WWII, and the degree to which his and her careers overlapped raises unanswered questions about whether journalism and espionage sometimes blurred.

Brooke Kroeger will walk us through the life and service of this remarkable reporter who straddled the worlds of journalism, intelligence, and wartime diplomacy. It’s a story of courage, connection, and mystery told by the scholar who knows it best.

Helen Kirkpatrick broke barriers at the eve of World War II when the Chicago Daily News hired her for its London bureau.

As war unfolded, Kirkpatrick reported across Europe. Her dispatches appeared sometimes several times a day, and she was credited with breaking sensitive news based on high-level, confidential sources.

When asked later why she merited awards such as the U.S. Medal of Freedom and France’s Légion d’Honneur, Kirkpatrick often replied with humility — sometimes claiming she didn’t even know. Her wartime papers, now archived, remain thin on direct explanation.

Ann Stringer (1918–1990) was a trail-blazing American reporter whose career with United Press took her from covering domestic beats with her husband to the battlefields of World War II after his death in Normandy. Determined to carry on both his work and her own ambition, she crossed into war-torn Europe in late 1944, even when military restrictions tried to keep her from the front lines. Colleagues like Walter Cronkite and Harrison Salisbury praised her as one of the finest reporters of her generation, and she won lasting distinction for filing the first dispatch on the historic link-up of American and Soviet forces at Torgau on the Elbe. After reporting through the end of the war and covering the Nuremberg trials, she left United Press in 1949, married, and continued to write for major news outlets from her home in Manhattan.

Glenn Flickinger welcomes Doug Cervi, who will offer a general presentation on the Holocaust that blends historical overview with educational insight.

Cervi will situate the Holocaust within the broader sweep of Nazi persecution and genocide — tracing how state-sponsored antisemitism escalated from discrimination and isolation to industrialized mass murder. His presentation will clarify the scope of the Nazi regime’s crimes, including the targeting of Jews as well as Roma, people with disabilities, political dissidents, LGBTQ individuals, and others deemed “undesirable.”

Drawing on decades in the classroom, Cervi will also explain how and why Holocaust education is taught across New Jersey’s schools today. New Jersey was one of the first states in the nation to mandate Holocaust and genocide education. As Executive Director of the Commission, Cervi works with educators to provide curriculum guidance, training, and resources designed to ensure students understand not only the historical facts but the moral and civic questions the Holocaust raises.

He will share reflections on the challenges and opportunities of teaching this history in a time when fewer survivors remain to tell their stories firsthand. As living witnesses pass from the scene, the responsibility shifts to educators, institutions, and communities to preserve testimony accurately and thoughtfully — without sensationalism, distortion, or political misuse.

Finally, Cervi will address why understanding genocide and its human impact remains vital for students and citizens alike. The Holocaust is not presented as distant tragedy alone, but as a case study in how prejudice, propaganda, bureaucratic obedience, and indifference can converge with catastrophic consequences.

Whether you’re new to the topic or looking to deepen your grasp of its historical and contemporary significance, Cervi’s talk will anchor the history of the Holocaust in both documentary fact and the responsibility of memory.

In this Veterans Breakfast Club World War II Open Conversation, Glenn Flickinger leads a wide-ranging discussion on military history, memory, and the stories that keep the past alive. The evening opens with a moving tribute to General William Matz, former head of the American Battle Monuments Commission, with reflections from Rich Sherman, Colin Heaton, and Marilyn Walton on his leadership, combat service, humility, and lifelong devotion to the men he led. From there, the conversation turns to one of the most unexpected World War II stories you’ll hear: the wartime origin of duct tape. Participants trace it back to a civilian worker’s letter to President Franklin Roosevelt and explore how a practical battlefield solution became a household staple. The group then dives into the history of the Medal of Honor, from its Civil War beginnings to famous recipients, unusual medal designs, family connections, and personal encounters with Medal of Honor awardees. The discussion ranges from Teddy Roosevelt and Douglas MacArthur to Royce Williams and the National Medal of Honor Museum. Later in the program, Mark Copeland of the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force shares details about a remarkable educational tour through Germany, including Dachau, Schweinfurt, Moosburg, and Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg, where the war crimes trials were held. The final segment features Greg Yost on the history of the War Powers Act, exploring the constitutional tension between Congress and the president over the power to wage war. This is the kind of open conversation the Veterans Breakfast Club does best: smart, informal, wide-ranging, and grounded in history, memory, and lived experience. Subscribe for more conversations on World War II, veterans history, military history, oral history, Medal of Honor recipients, Nuremberg, the Eighth Air Force, and the stories of the Greatest Generation. 

Come raise a glass and celebrate World War II veteran Russell Freeburg who turns 103 years old on March 4! We’ll mark the day with a special Veterans Breakfast Club livestream celebration with Russ joining us to share his story with Scott Masters and his students from Crestwood Oral History Project.

Russ was born on March 4, 1923, in the railroad town of Galesburg, Illinois. He grew up in the Great Depression, came of age as clouds of war gathered, and served his country on the battlefields of Europe.

After graduating high school in 1941, Russ enrolled at Knox College and joined ROTC. In February 1942 he entered the Army Enlisted Reserve Corps and was called to active duty in June 1943. By March 1944 he was assigned to the 8th Armored Division, 49th Armored Infantry Battalion, C Company.

A Staff Sergeant and squad leader, Russ crossed the Atlantic aboard the HMS Samaria and trained on England’s Salisbury Plain before shipping to France as the Battle of the Bulge raged. His division moved across the Metz front, shifted from the 3rd to the 9th Army, and fought through southern Holland.

He crossed the Rhine and the Ruhr, battled through the Ruhr Pocket, and pushed east into Germany and Czechoslovakia, ending the war not far from Soviet lines. Then came the long journey home—through the “cigarette camps” of France, back across the Atlantic, and finally discharge in February 1946.

After the war, Russ built a remarkable career in journalism. He began at the City News Bureau of Chicago, joined the Chicago Tribune in 1950, and moved to Washington in 1958 to cover the Justice Department and the White House. In 1966 he became executive director of the Tribune’s Washington bureau and later served as managing editor.

He co-authored Oil & War with Robert Goralski of NBC News in 1987—a study of the geopolitics of energy long before it became headline shorthand.

The evening will be hosted by Glenn Flickinger and co-hosted by Crestwood Preparatory College history teacher Scott Masters, founder of the Crestwood Oral History Project.

This celebration will be part oral history, part birthday party—an opportunity to hear Russ in his own voice and to thank him for a century of witness.

Join us for a special livestream about the history of the Battle of Monte Cassino and what it will be like to talk its grounds as part of our VBC WWII Italian Campaign Tour, October 17–30, 2026.

In the spring of 1944, the rugged slopes above the Italian town of Cassino became the scene of one of World War II’s most desperate, costly, and consequential struggles. For four months — through repeated assaults, bitter weather, and brutal terrain — Allied forces fought to break the German Gustav Line and open the road to Rome. The fighting around the ancient abbey and the Liri valley exacted a terrible toll and left a mark on every unit that passed through.

We’ll discuss what made Monte Cassino so formidable: the Abbey, the Gustav Line, the rivers, and the hills that dominated the Liri Valley. We’ll also discuss some of the human stories behind the statistics, from infantry assaults to artillery duels and the multinational Allied effort. And we’ll talk about how this history ties to our itinerary, especially the portion of the trip centered around Cassino:

Day 10 (Mon, Oct 26) — travel into Cassino via the Winter Line and iconic sites of the Italian Campaign.

Day 11 (Tue, Oct 27) — a full day on the ground in Cassino — visiting the Cassino War Museum, both Commonwealth and German cemeteries, the Abbey of Montecassino, and the Polish Cemetery and exhibit.

Day 12 (Wed, Oct 28) — continuing our exploration of battlefield landscapes at Anzio and Piana delle Orme, and then on to Rome.

We’ll touch on the larger arc of the tour — from the landings in Sicily through Salerno, down the Amalfi Coast, across the Winter Line, and up to Rome — and how each segment sets the stage for understanding Monte Cassino in its full historical context.

When Americans picture the Pacific War, they usually imagine palm trees and jungle heat. But in 1942–43, World War II came to the frozen edge of Alaska. On the remote Aleutian Islands of Attu Island and Kiska Island, U.S. and Japanese forces fought a brutal campaign of fog, wind, snow, and rock, the only land battle of World War II fought on American soil.

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a virtual conversation with Allen Frazier, Military.com journalist and historian, whose deeply researched article brings this overlooked campaign into sharp focus. Drawing on military records and human stories, Frazier recounts how more than 15,000 American troops battled not only entrenched Japanese defenders, but exposure, frostbite, and terrain so unforgiving that weather claimed more casualties than enemy fire.

This conversation will explore:

The Japanese attacks on Dutch Harbor and the occupation of Attu and Kiska

Operation Landcrab and the savage 18-day fight to retake Attu

The role of “Castner’s Cutthroats,” Alaska Native scouts crucial to the campaign

Acts of heroism, including Private Joe Martinez’s Medal of Honor charge

The final banzai assault on Attu—and its devastating cost

The bloodless but deadly Allied landing on evacuated Kiska

The forgotten civilian story: the Unangax̂ (Aleut) people, whose village was destroyed and whose culture was nearly erased

Frazier also confronts the moral weight of the campaign: the forced relocation of Aleut civilians, the deaths of Attuan villagers in Japanese captivity, and the fact that survivors were never allowed to return home. The Battle for Alaska secured U.S. territory, but at an immense human cost that still echoes today.

As always, VBC’s livestream will invite reflection, questions, and conversation. This is a chance to revisit a chapter of World War II that is both uniquely American and too often forgotten.

Glenn Flickinger sits down with legal historian John Q. Barrett to explore the origins, drama, and legacy of the Nuremberg trials, the unprecedented post–World War II prosecution of Nazi leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Barrett, a Professor of Law at St. John’s University and Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center, is one of the foremost experts on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt’s close adviser who left the Court in 1945 to serve as chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg. He is currently at work on a major Jackson biography and is the creator of The Jackson List, a long-running email and web project that shares stories and discoveries about Jackson, the Supreme Court, Nuremberg, and related topics with readers around the world.

In this program, Glenn and Professor Barrett will walk us through how Jackson came to lead the Nuremberg prosecution, what was at stake in the courtroom, how the trials were actually conducted day-to-day, and why Jackson later called Nuremberg “the most important work of my life.” They’ll also look at how the trials shaped modern ideas of international criminal law and individual accountability for state-sponsored atrocities, and why Nuremberg remains a touchstone in debates about war, justice, and memory today.

Whether you’re new to the subject or already familiar with Jackson and Nuremberg, this is an opportunity to hear from the scholar who has done as much as anyone to recover and explain this history.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!

Author Eric Setzekorn gives us a new look at World War II’s China-Burma-India (CBI) theatre through the eyes of Joseph Stilwell, the tough-minded American general entrusted with command over all U.S. forces in China, Burma, and India. His new book is Uncertain Allies: General Joseph Stilwell and the China-Burma-India Theater.

Most Americans know little about the CBI, an awkward, sprawling command that stretched from eastern India across Burma into China. It was created mainly to keep China in the war against Japan and to defend British India, using a mix of Chinese, Indian, British, East African, and American forces against Japanese and local Axis-aligned troops.

Japan seized Burma in 1942 and cut the Burma Road, China’s last overland lifeline to Allied aid. The U.S. responded with two desperate improvisations: flying supplies over the Himalayas on the dangerous “Hump” air route and carving a new jungle highway—the Ledo Road—through Assam in India to reconnect with the old Burma Road into China.

Into this tangle stepped Lt. Gen. Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell. A career officer, fluent in Chinese and with long experience in Asia, Stilwell was chosen to be Chiang Kai-shek’s chief of staff and the commanding general of all American forces in China, Burma, and India. Washington hoped his language skills and blunt, no-nonsense style would bridge gaps between the Allies and turn China’s vast manpower into a more effective fighting force.

Instead, Stilwell found himself at the center of a constant political and strategic storm. He clashed with Chiang Kai-shek, whom he saw as corrupt, cautious, and more interested in preserving his regime than fighting Japan. Chiang, for his part, distrusted Stilwell’s plans to rebuild and control Chinese armies and resented American pressure on Chinese strategy.

Stilwell also collided with fellow American Claire Chennault, the former Flying Tigers leader who commanded the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force. Chennault believed that a strong air campaign from Chinese bases could batter Japanese cities and lines of communication. Stilwell argued instead for a ground-first approach: reopen Burma, build the Ledo Road, and reform Chinese ground forces before committing to large-scale air offensives. Allied leaders in London and Washington tried to mediate the difference but often ended up deepening the rivalry and confusion over priorities.

Each of the Allies, it turned out, had its own priorities. The British wanted to defend India and recover Burma. The Americans wanted China as a major fighting partner and future base against Japan. Chinese leaders pursued survival in a grinding civil war against Chinese Communists even as they resisted Japan.

In Uncertain Allies: General Joseph Stilwell and the China-Burma-India Theater, historian Eric Setzekorn uses Stilwell’s story to make sense of this complicated, often overlooked front. Drawing on American, Chinese, and Japanese sources, he shows how mismatched expectations, clashing personalities, and limited resources shaped the campaigns in Burma and China—and how the CBI became an early example of the political-military challenges the United States would face in later conflicts.

Setzekorn’s analysis draws on newly available archival materials, including declassified U.S. records and Chinese- and Japanese-language sources — a research base far wider than most earlier accounts of the CBI. The result is a more balanced, granular, and realistic portrait of war, alliance, and policy than the sweeping, often sentimental narratives that dominated postwar memory.

The book doesn’t pretend that Stilwell was entirely right or wrong. Rather, it shows how his blunt, soldierly pragmatism, his insistence on a transactional, militarily efficient approach, collided repeatedly with the political realities of global alliance, Chinese internal weaknesses, and divergent Allied priorities. The CBI campaign emerges not as an unalloyed triumph, but as a case study in the deeper challenges that would continue to haunt U.S. military-political engagements for decades to come.

For readers of the Greatest Generation, Uncertain Allies offers fresh insight into a theater of WWII that rarely gets the attention it deserves.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!

Join us for a Veterans Breakfast Club livestream conversation with author Edward Aldrich about his compelling dual biography, Partnership: George Marshall, Henry Stimson, and the Extraordinary Collaboration That Won World War II. In this richly researched work, Aldrich brings into sharp focus one of the most consequential collaborations in twentieth-century American history: the wartime partnership between Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

While the canon of World War II history is filled with battlefield commanders and frontline exploits, Partnership shifts the lens to the strategic heart of the U.S. war effort in Washington. Marshall and Stimson, working from adjacent offices with the door intentionally left open between them, built and directed the Army’s dramatic expansion, oversaw logistics on a global scale, and helped shape the Allied strategy that would defeat the Axis powers. Their decisions touched virtually every dimension of the war—from training and equipping millions of soldiers, to strategic planning and coordination with Allied leaders like Winston Churchill, to considerations about the postwar world order.

Aldrich’s book is more than a military history: it is a dual biography that traces how two very different men—Marshall, the Army organizer of victory, and Stimson, the seasoned statesman and civilian leader—came together under President Franklin D. Roosevelt to manage the greatest industrial mobilization in U.S. history. It draws on primary sources including Stimson’s wartime diary and Marshall’s papers to illuminate not only their accomplishments but the character, disagreements, and mutual respect that defined their long collaboration.

In our livestream, Aldrich will reflect on what it meant to write this book: the gaps in the historical record he sought to fill, the insights he gained into how civilian and military leadership can function in concert, and how Marshall’s and Stimson’s partnership shaped not just the Allied victory but the postwar international order. We’ll explore why understanding their relationship matters for the broader story of World War II, and why their example resonates with readers interested in leadership, strategy, and the often invisible networks of decision-making that define war and peace.

Whether you’re a lifelong student of the Second World War or are discovering these towering figures for the first time, this conversation will shed light on how two leaders behind the scenes helped win the most vast and complex war in history—and why their extraordinary collaboration still matters today.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!