Allied Against Tyranny

As the tour bus drove toward Omaha Beach, Steve Hall scanned the coastline for a sign, motioning the driver to pull over when the telltale French bluffs came into view. They parked on the side of the road near one of the five sites where Operation Overlord—D-Day—occurred on June 6, 1944, nearly 80 years ago. Thousands of soldiers crossed the sands of Normandy that day, helping to save Europe from German invasion, and this spot was particularly significant.

Hall called a puzzled passenger to the front of the bus, pointed at the sea, and said, “I’m positive your dad came ashore between there and there.” As a retired Air Force colonel and teacher in the U’s Continuing Education department, Hall relishes moments such as these, when the past comes alive. He had come to France a week before to make arrangements and figure out meaningful connections for his students, some of whom had close relatives who fought in D-Day. 

As memory of the events that led to D-Day begin to fade, the lessons taught in Hall’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute classes and Go Learn experiences are becoming even more significant. The monumental military operation was a turning point in World War II, rife with strategic and moral takeaways, but it also marked a collective stand of allies against tyranny—democracy over dictatorship. The hard-won battle against Nazism inspired a generation to vow “never again”—but as extremist sentiments and Holocaust denials increase, historians wonder if the past could repeat itself. At the U, history classes and library exhibits are keeping the memory alive—and so is Hall, every time he tells the story.

“We went down and stood on the beach just like [the soldiers] did,” Hall says of a recent Go Learn trip. “And this sounds corny, but I think the 4,413 souls of the people who died on the beach knew we were there.”

BATTLE STORIES

You might think Hall would retire after serving in the Air Force for 26 years and completing two other careers after that. But at 77 years old, he is happy to teach Continuing Ed—it’s more of a love affair than a job. 

“I’m evangelical about telling the story and telling it right,” Hall says. “I think it’s unconscionable that important parts of American history just aren’t taught anymore.”

Hall thrills over the details of D-Day that can be overlooked. The massive military undertaking was in the works for two years before it happened, requiring the United Kingdom, Canada, and the U.S. to build and assemble a fleet of boats with flat bottoms just for this purpose. The initial plan was to launch the attack in May, but they were running behind—and running out of time. Each day, the Allied forces risked being discovered and the possibility that Germany would send more soldiers to the area. 

A storm raged in early June, but a break in the clouds—unseen by Germany—gave the U.S. the element of surprise. At 6:30 a.m., the boats floated in and lowered their ramps at five beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Hall quizzes his students at a moment’s notice to check that they remember the names.  

The first waves of soldiers who disembarked onto the beach were under heavy fire, and casualties were high. In the first two hours, 4,413 Allied soldiers were killed. The soldiers who survived changed their plans and scaled the bluffs instead of forging up the valley floor. By the end of the day, 156,000 soldiers had deployed onto the beaches. 

“The plan went to hell in a handbasket almost instantaneously,” Hall says. “Instead of the guys on the beach saying, ‘What do we do now?’ They said, ‘OK, we’ve got to do something different.’ And that turned out to save the day.”

Hall believes the frontier spirit—an “act first, ask forgiveness later” attitude—allowed the Allies to succeed. The importance of being decisive while being flexible is a lesson that still applies today, he says. 

“I use D-Day as an example all the time,” Hall says. “Make your decisions, make them fast, and if they don’t work, do something else.” 

HOLDING ON

Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, fewer than 200,000 are still alive. The war ended 77 years ago, and often, those who can answer questions and say, “I remember, I was there,” are in their 90s. Their stories are at risk of fading away if they are not preserved. 

In the early 2000s, the American West Center in the College of Humanities embarked on a mission to capture those stories in a project called “Saving the Legacy: An Oral History of Utah's World War II Veterans.” As part of the project, the center has interviewed 433 veterans, filling nearly 600 tapes, which are held at the J. Willard Marriott Library. Veterans of subsequent wars have since been included as well. 

“Their contribution was hugely important, and they deserve to be added to the history of our country,” says Liz Rogers BA’99, head of manuscript archives in Marriott Library’s Special Collections department. 

Outside of the oral histories, the library has 510 listings of collections for World War II. Some of the items are documents from donors who gave personal papers from their war-time service, and others are memorabilia—including a field stove the size of a Thermos bottle, a flight jacket, and a Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) scrapbook. (See below for photos of some of the items.)

The library takes pains to preserve each item with acid-free bond paper, boxes, and folders. 

“The main purpose of our division is to make sure that in one hundred years, the collections will still be a viable part of American culture,” notes Rogers. “It will not only be something you can read about; it will be touchable and useful.”

The collections are accessible and used by students at the U or nearby high schools, but occasionally reporters, filmmakers and other media outlets ask to use the material. Some of Rogers’ favorite patrons are veterans’ descendants who come to do research on their family members.

 “The purpose of all libraries is to not only retain knowledge in different forms, but to also make knowledge available to all who want it,” Rogers says.

NEXT GENERATION

Julie Ault takes comfort in seeing the numbers of students who enroll in her “Age of Total War” and “Nazi Germany and the Holocaust” classes. As an associate professor of German and European history at the U, she knows her material can seem bleak and foreign to this new generation, but still, they sign up. 

“Even if they did not have grandparents or great-grandparents who served in the war, students are very much interested,” Ault says. 

It just so happens that Ault’s own grandfather was at D-Day as a war correspondent who came onto the beach in one of the last waves, wading through the water with his typewriter over his head. She sometimes thinks of him when she receives letters from those who say the Holocaust didn’t really happen or wasn’t as bad as it sounds. 

“It is not an accident that we’re seeing a rise in violence now as living memory of World War II disappears,” Ault remarks. “The societal knowledge of what violence and war can bring on society is lessening, and that taboo of violence is fading away.”

The impact of World War II on Europe was devastating and long-lasting. At the end of the war, there was no independent Germany for four years—it was divided into four zones of occupation and became the front line of the Cold War. Wholescale death and cataclysmic disruption of life impacted tens of millions of people, with entire cohorts of society who died. It took the Soviet Union until the 1960s to have equal numbers of men and women again. After bombings across Europe destroyed a massive number of homes, it took years to rebuild housing stock across the continent. 

The course that led to such devastation began with economic hardship around the world in the 1930s. Fascism and communism grew in popularity in response to the Great Depression and resultant deprivation, and people craved action, seeing democracy as weak. When the U.S. disembarked on the shores of France as part of D-Day, it wasn’t to occupy a territory or take power—it was to defend a sense of ideals, to preserve freedom, and to eschew the disregard of human life, Ault says.

Although time is pressing forward, the lessons of D-Day don’t have to fade away, Ault adds. The stories of history and those who’ve gone before can remain in books, in libraries, and in the classroom. 

“I think, more generally, history is really important because it teaches us that we can do better,” Ault says. “We can learn from the past, build solutions, and make things better.”

About the author: Amy Choate-Nielsen is the PR and Communications manager for the Office of Academic Affairs.