The Stephen Ambrose Controversy: What you Need to Know

Jenn
00:00:00.480 – 00:00:08.744
And as I’m doing my research, this controversy of Stephen Ambrose comes out. I was not even aware of how bad it was.

Scott
00:00:08.832 – 00:00:20.280
The one that I first learned of is Albert Blythe in the miniseries Dies. That’s how Ambrose wrote it in the book. But Albert Blythe had a long career, went and fought in Korea.

Jenn
00:00:20.360 – 00:00:29.860
Are you shocked? Are you like, oh my gosh, is this real? Because that’s kind of how we felt the first time we actually were reading about it too.

So, yeah, let’s get into that a little bit.

Scott
00:00:40.240 – 00:00:44.952
Welcome to Talk with History. I’m your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jen.

Jenn
00:00:45.016 – 00:00:45.736
Hello.

Scott
00:00:45.928 – 00:02:27.938
On this podcast, we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels YouTube channel Journey and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there. Now, Jen, our listeners may not know this, but we took a little break last week. Kind of just needed it. Life got busy.

So we actually haven’t podcasted in a while. We got a little bit ahead. We just need some downtime due to some travel and stuff like that.

So I’ve got a bunch of shout outs, like some podcasts that you’ve been guests on for us to mention.

So I want to first give a shout out to some new supporters at New tippers over@talkwithhistory.com so if you go to talkwithhistory.com, you scroll down to the bottom, there’s a link where you can support the show. You can buy some coffee, a sandwich, whatever. And Larry Myers, he dropped a tip for us over there and you can put a comment in there if you want.

You don’t have to. You can make it anonymous. But you, if you put your comment on there, then it can, it’ll show up on the website.

And so Larry Myers, he’s, we talk to him all the time. He comments on a lot of our stuff. He said, keep doing what you two are doing. Nobody does it better. So Larry is incredibly supportive.

So thank you, Larry, for that. And Calvin G. Who’s actually been following us for a while, I think he may have found like my original family vlog page, which I don’t talk about.

I’d say it’s still live. I just don’t put anything over there. But he said love both of your channels. So thank you so much, guys, for the support.

And if you’re listening and you want to drop us kind of a tip or buy us a cup of coffee or something like that, we really do appreciate it. You can go to talkwithhistory.com support or you can just go to the main website, talkwithistory.com and scroll down to the bottom.

Jenn
00:02:28.034 – 00:02:28.910
Thank you.

Scott
00:02:29.530 – 00:03:01.776
Now, those are our folks who kind of supporting the show. But another thing that we’ve been working on is trying to get you on other. As a guest on other podcasts.

So you were recently a guest on the Pop Culture Culture Passport podcast, which is a whole lot of peas, but you guys were. It’s really.

I really like the concept of her podcast, which is basically traveling to pop culture locations and, and, and exploring that and kind of a little bit behind that. And you guys talked about Hamilton, right?

Jenn
00:03:01.848 – 00:03:21.454
Yeah. So we talked about all the places you can go see in reality around the Broadway show Hamilton.

And there’s a lot out there for you, especially the songs they sing about and kind of references different characters are making. There’s a lot of places you can go and visit. So we talked all about that on her show.

Scott
00:03:21.542 – 00:03:57.030
Yep. And then another one that I’m very excited about. I got you on or you got yourself on. We work together on it on the History Unplugged podcast.

Now this podcast is like, is very big. The. The only way I can really check that is by how many reviews. It has an app in an Apple podcast and it has like a couple thousand views or reviews.

So it looks like it’s been around for quite some time. Scott rank is. He’s PhD historian type. And you guys.

So you got on there and it took us a couple months to kind of time it and get it, get it, get you on. But you talked about the Hatfields McCoys.

Jenn
00:03:57.110 – 00:04:19.606
Yeah, I love talking about the Hatfields McCoys.

That, that all American folklore family feud that is just very much a part of our American story about two families in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia area and how they really had this long going family feud against each other. It was very interesting.

Scott
00:04:19.638 – 00:04:33.218
Yeah. Just. Just a piece of Americana history. It’s referred to everywhere. Mark Twain referred to it, Star Trek refers to it. All sorts of fun stuff.

And, and not surprisingly, you sound like a total pro.

Jenn
00:04:33.274 – 00:04:33.922
Oh, thank you.

Scott
00:04:34.026 – 00:04:42.194
On the podcast. So I will link those in the show notes in the video description if you guys want to go check those out. We’re really excited for Jen to get on those.

Those other podcasts.

Jenn
00:04:42.242 – 00:04:44.110
Yeah, it was super fun. Thank you.

Scott
00:04:52.170 – 00:07:56.484
I want to tell you a story. And this is a World War II story relayed to me by a good friend of mine, Eric. Eric and I served together in the Navy.

He recently reached out to me about the death of the Father of a friend of his. His friend’s father was a World War II veteran.

Now I’ve kept his name out of this as I got the story third hand, but it’s a hell of a story, so stick around. So for fun, let’s call our World War II veteran Tony. Tony was born in Brooklyn in 1926, enlisted and joined Navy in January of 1944.

18 years old, got his first set of orders, based out of Norfolk, Virginia on board the USS Underhill where he was to serve his initial enlistment. Now apparently Tony was a bit of a rabble rouser and liked to have a good time. But who can blame a sailor for that?

That’s kind of what, what we’re known for. While Tony had been on the USS Underhill for about five months when they were getting ready to get underway to deploy.

Of course Tony and his friends weren’t out on the town the night before one last time before deploying. But he got so carried away they actually missed ship’s movement the next morning. The Navy, that’s a pretty big deal.

So Tony had just missed his ship as it deployed to the Pacific theater where the United States was in terrible back and forth back battle campaign for dominance with Japan. Now in today’s Navy, any sailors that miss ships movement like this will most likely get flown out to meet the ship.

Sometimes they can ride a helicopter out to it or catch a transport flight out to a future port, stop and meet the ship there. But In September of 1944, well, sailors would just get transferred to the next ship. This is what happened to Tony.

The Underhill went on deployment to the Pacific, as did Tony with his new ship. A few months later tragic news came home to the States.

The USS Underhill was sunk in the Pacific Ocean July 24th, 1945 by a Japanese suicide ceremonies causing two explosions, severely damaged and eventually sank the vessel. We don’t know if Tony heard the news of his previous ship while he was underway.

But what we do know is that months later, while Tony stood on the deck of his brand new ship on 9-2-1945 watching Japan surrender to the United States, he must have been incredibly proud to be serving on board the USS Missouri.

Yes, our World War II veteran had been transferred from the Underhill to the USS Missouri, the same battleship that took part in the battle of Iwo Jima, the battle of Okinawa and eventually the existence exact location where the surrender of Japan took place. You wouldn’t have believed how stunned I was to hear this story from my friend Eric.

We were on the middle of spring break, and he just called me out of the blue. He sent me a picture of the special certificate that his friend’s father got for being present at the surrender.

And for those watching the video, I’ll put it up on the screen. Thank you to Eric and his friend’s father for his service long before those of us who serve now. I just thought that was an incredible story.

Jenn
00:07:56.572 – 00:07:57.428
It is incredible.

Scott
00:07:57.524 – 00:08:14.404
Just. It’s a small Navy. Okay, Jen. We were down in New Orleans. We’re catching up on our travels for the past couple months.

Jenn
00:08:14.492 – 00:08:14.852
Yes.

Scott
00:08:14.916 – 00:08:21.848
So we went down to New Orleans, did a bunch of New Orleans history. We had to go to The World War II. The National World War II Museum.

Jenn
00:08:21.944 – 00:08:55.196
Yes. We had to go there. I mean, it is.

I went there for my 40th birthday because I did my 40th birthday in New Orleans, and my girlfriends knew that my birthday in New Orleans had to revolve about something history. And it did the whole time. But one of the things we did was visit the World War II Museum, and that was my first time ever going there.

So this time, it was our first time as a family going there. So we brought our entire family to the World War II Museum in New Orleans, and we had something else kind of special to find there.

Scott
00:08:55.268 – 00:08:56.044
We did.

Jenn
00:08:56.212 – 00:09:38.998
So they have a. If you want to sponsor, contribute, charitable contribution to help support the museum, you can buy a brick.

And they have these bricks all out front, the museum areas, and they have people’s names. You can honor a World War II veteran or you can honor a group. And.

And we bought the brick honoring our service on a ship named for a World War II battle. And so we were able to find our brick. It’s my maiden name when I was in the Navy, your name. And then the ship we served on, that.

It is right behind us, that is named after a World War II battle, and that’s the ship we met on. So it was kind of cool to find that with the kids.

Scott
00:09:39.094 – 00:10:20.694
Yeah, it was super neat.

And, you know, we dragged the kids to all sorts of museums, but this museum is far, far above and beyond the vast majority of the kinds of museums that we go to. So it was interesting because we were like, okay, what do we do with this video? What do we do with this video? Is this a show and tell?

We kind of have two. There’s story arcs, and then there’s show and tells.

And so we wanted to go talk, go down there and show the museum, but we wanted another story to go with it. And so we Talked a little bit about Stephen Ambrose and the World War II. World War II Museum.

We’ll talk, we’ll kind of get into that here in just a little bit. But how The World War II Museum came to be there was pretty neat.

Jenn
00:10:20.822 – 00:11:44.602
So you have to realize this is a pretty big museum. It’s a six acre campus. They have six pavilions. It has 250,000 artifacts, and it tells 9,000 personal stories.

When you think about all the people who served in World War II, I was looking that number up so we could kind of talk about it. It says civilization.

70 million served in the armed forces and during World War II, and the Americans that served in the armed forces during the war, more than 400,000 were killed or died. And so when you think of that, this is only telling 9,000 stories. So it’s a lot. There’s a lot to tell here.

And that’s why when we were thinking of what are we going to show for this? Like, we can’t show you everything there. We can help tell some of the stories and we do that on Talk With History.

We’ve taken you to Normandy, we’ve taken you to the D Day National Memorial. So we’ve taken you to places. Eisenhower’s birthplace and where he’s buried, like, so we’ve told some of those stories.

And this is the National Museum. And what I want you to understand is like, it was founded in 2000, but Congress designated this the National World War II Museum in 2004.

So this is the National Museum. It’s in New Orleans because people are like, why New Orleans of all places? Why isn’t it in D.C. that was.

Scott
00:11:44.626 – 00:11:46.950
One thing that I thought was really neat to. Neat to learn.

Jenn
00:11:47.030 – 00:12:11.218
So it, it’s kind of twofold, kind of on the one person Scott talked about, who we’re going to talk about. Stephen Ambrose. Stephen Ambrose did a lot for history. He did a lot for bringing history into the limelight.

He did a lot for bringing World War II into popular culture. Think Band of Brothers. And he wrote a book called D Day, the D Day Invasion. And he was a professor at the University of New Orleans.

Scott
00:12:11.334 – 00:12:15.082
And, and he got pretty famous after he started writing some of these books.

Jenn
00:12:15.146 – 00:13:09.164
Yeah, I, I would say Undaunted Courage. We’ll talk about that. The Story of Andrew of Lewis and Clark is probably his most famous work.

But because he is based out of there and because he’s writing all of these things that is really striking America’s interest, he’s kind of focusing on that area as well. It’s one of the reasons the museum is brought there, but it’s because he is sponsoring a location where all of the Higgins boats were made.

Now, the Higgins boats are those small boats that come out of the back of a amphibious ship. Kind of. Look at the Tara behind me here. It’s what’s used in World War II. They make over 23,000 of these boats.

And you can probably remember them from Saving Private Ryan. They. They hold about 36 men. They can go about 14 miles an hour, 12 knots.

Scott
00:13:09.292 – 00:13:14.012
Basically, a big box with a motor on the back so that the troops can be in there and land on the beach.

Jenn
00:13:14.076 – 00:13:35.488
Yeah, they basically. It’s a troop transport. Get them off the ship onto the beach. And Andrew Higgins lived in New Orleans, and he started his factory in New Orleans.

Now, he started as a lumber man, but then started to make these boats. And you have to realize he makes these boats for the topography of New Orleans, which is swamp.

Scott
00:13:35.584 – 00:13:36.208
Really neat.

Jenn
00:13:36.304 – 00:14:04.456
Yeah. So they don’t. They don’t have a draft. Right. Because it’s very shallow water there with the swamps and the mer in the marshes.

And so that’s what these Higgins boats are great for because they can get you right up on the shore. They don’t have a big draft.

And so because he manufactures these boats in New Orleans as a factory in New Orleans, and these boats are so instrumental during World War II, that. That is where the museum is.

Scott
00:14:04.608 – 00:14:07.880
You said they. They ended up manufacturing like, a few thousand of these, right?

Jenn
00:14:07.920 – 00:14:09.464
Yeah, over 23,000.

Scott
00:14:09.552 – 00:14:10.424
Oh, my gosh.

Jenn
00:14:10.552 – 00:14:11.400
Yeah, I know.

Scott
00:14:11.440 – 00:14:14.728
That’s World War II. Wartime production was just incredible.

Jenn
00:14:14.824 – 00:14:32.390
I mean, I read somewhere that he was kind of like, not doing well successfully until the Navy tested out these boats in the Marine Corps and found his boat was the best at getting them out of the ships onto the beach. And so when they. He got the contract, the government contract, it just completely.

Scott
00:14:32.810 – 00:14:57.678
And it’s pretty neat, too, because they give them the shout out for that right there in. In the. In. In the beginning of the museum, right in the entry or where you’re buying your ticket and all that stuff. And then. Then you.

You get in there and it’s. It’s. It’s such a. I. I actually want to go back because I’d like to go back and.

And not necessarily film, so I can kind of experience a little bit more. But you’re there and you’re getting your ticket and you get on a train just like you’d be going off to war. It was really neat.

Jenn
00:14:57.774 – 00:15:36.726
So they do a very Good job. There’s about 700,000 visitors to this museum every year. It has become a place people want to see in New Orleans.

We were able to walk to it from our hotel. It’s not in the French Quarter, but it’s kind of right outside of the French Quarter, so it’s very easy to get to. Very walkable.

They tell a great story like most museums do. So when you check in, when you buy your ticket, expect to be there two and a half, three hours, easy. You’re going to stand in line to get on a train.

Like what it would feel like for a soldier leaving for World War II.

Scott
00:15:36.798 – 00:15:37.382
It’s really cool.

Jenn
00:15:37.406 – 00:15:54.350
You’re going to see the ticker tape of the. Or the. The. The changing of the train schedules as you stand in line and you get on the train.

Now when you get on the train, you’re given an interactive dog tag to a soldier whose life you follow through the war.

Scott
00:15:54.470 – 00:16:16.110
And some of them are pretty famous. Like, I think I was supposed to have, like, it’s like Bob Hope or somebody. Like, I don’t remember who it was, but it.

I mean, they have some famous actors, because there was actors that were soldiers. Right. So some of them are names that you may or may not recognize. But then you actually have some pretty famous folks that.

That you might have gotten. And mine didn’t end up working. I couldn’t figure it out, but I wasn’t worried about it anyways.

Jenn
00:16:16.190 – 00:16:56.938
So there’s females. I had a nurse. Right. So. And so a female nurse. So you get different people.

And what’s neat about it is you do the road to Tokyo, you do the road to Berlin, you do the D Day invasion at Normandy. So your soldier could have been Pacific, your soldier could have been Germany, your soldier could have been on D Day.

So you follow them wherever they went into theater. And if they didn’t go into theater, you still follow a story, but you’re not following your specific soldier. And they just.

They just make that very interactive. My kids loved it because you could go to these little stations and see what your soldier is doing in the war.

Scott
00:16:56.994 – 00:17:13.450
Yeah, it was. It’s great for kids, great for adults, great for any history. Nut even just the casual fan is going. Casual kind of band of brothers, whatever fan.

Even if you’re just in New Orleans and you want something to do for half a day, full day if you want to. Fantastic place to go.

Jenn
00:17:13.570 – 00:18:22.790
Yeah. So just know it’s going to take time. There’s a lot to see here and. But they do a fantastic story.

When you walk into the road to Tokyo, when you walk into the road of Berlin, you’re going to see right away who are your Axis leaders, who are you fighting in Japan, who are the leaders here, Who. When you go into Berlin, who are the leaders of Germany, who are the leaders of Italy? Like, who are you fighting?

And there’s huge pictures of them, and it makes it very clear what the war was about and who were you fighting and what are you fighting them for? It’s very neat and they tell really great visual stories. And the artifacts that go with these are like top of the line best artifacts.

They have an Enigma machine there. They have the Norton bomb site there.

So things that were being developed that helped us win the war, they have the actual ones used so you can actually see them. Flags, artifacts from the actual soldiers. It just was really, really a great museum.

If you talking about being immersed in the story and feeling like you’re part of it.

Scott
00:18:22.910 – 00:18:38.366
And it’s. It’s world. It’s world class. It really is. Right. So you get what you pay for there.

And we didn’t realize till actually today when we were looking at this, that we missed a big section of it. There’s a whole aircraft section that we just. We didn’t see that day, but we were running around New Orleans doing a lot of stuff.

Jenn
00:18:38.438 – 00:19:04.046
Yeah. So you have to go back. I mean, it’s six acres. Yeah. Right. So it’s a lot. So we found our brick. That was one thing we did there.

Another thing that I had seen that wasn’t there the last time we were there that I really liked was they had a whole section on missing World War II art. And I always love that.

I’m always very interested in this art that was stolen and did it make it back and why was it stolen and what happened to it and how they recover it and.

Scott
00:19:04.118 – 00:19:04.974
Yeah, that was pretty neat.

Jenn
00:19:05.022 – 00:19:11.228
There are some famous pieces that are still missing I wanted to talk about. Just so you knew what the famous pieces.

Scott
00:19:11.324 – 00:19:14.492
Is that where did they talk a little bit about, like the whole Monument Men.

Jenn
00:19:14.596 – 00:19:14.924
Yeah.

Scott
00:19:14.972 – 00:19:19.932
Thing. Yeah. So if you remember that movie Monument Men, it’s kind of a piece of this.

Jenn
00:19:20.036 – 00:20:14.786
Yeah. So you have Raphael’s Young Boy, Portrait of a Young Boy. That’s the most famous picture that’s missing.

It was taken from a museum in Poland and then they just lost track of it. They don’t think it’s destroyed. They just don’t know where it is. And there’s another Van Gogh painter walking through field or something.

And it’s definitely. You can tell it’s Van Gogh. And those are the two biggest that are still missing.

Now, what’s interesting about this, and I didn’t tell Scott about this, but when I went to the MICK Conference, the Military Influencer Conference, they still have a whole department to this. And I was actually approached that they would put me on active duty. They don’t care what my age is because I have a master’s degree in history.

If I worked out of Washington D.C. no way. And it’s underneath all of the museums there, still trying to recover and find missing art from wartime in different war areas.

Scott
00:20:14.858 – 00:20:21.794
I’m surprised you didn’t tell me that, Scott. Go get orders to dc. I’m going to work in this special art, stolen art unit.

Jenn
00:20:21.842 – 00:22:34.028
Well, since they said age doesn’t matter, I thought I got some time. So that was very cool.

But another story that I thought was very neat that they have emphasized there, because you’re going to always have different exhibits and they’re going to tell different stories, was the four chaplains story. And I wasn’t. I was aware of it, but I didn’t know the specifics of the story. And I was so moved by it.

And I think we happened to be there right around the time when it actually happened. So it was very interesting. But these four chaplains were on the SS Dorchester. Dorchester. There probably is a Massachusetts way to say this. Dorsher.

Dorsher. There’s probably some way it’s Dorchester. And it sank on February 3, 1943. It was a transport ship. It was a.

It was a civilian liner, which they did a lot. They took these civilian liners and converted them from military service.

I mean, you think the Queen Mary was converted for military service to get troops over to Europe? And it was. It left on January 23, and then it was hit in the early hours of January 3rd by a torpedo from a German submarine.

And they lost pretty much everybody on the ship.

And these four chaplains, who are all different religious backgrounds, took their life jackets off, put them on other people, then they joined arms and they sung hymns and said prayers out as the ship went down. And it was interesting because these four men are like a Methodist minister, a rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a American Reformed Church minister.

So you’re getting these different religious backgrounds. Cause Scott knows he used to recruit chaplains. And they all went chaplain school together. They all met at the army chaplain school.

And so they all prepared together. So they knew each other. But as they go down together and they all perished, said prayers and hymns of their particular religious background.

And I thought that was very neat and something to honor. So they have a whole area to them and tell their individual stories and the story of this event. And so I thought that was neat, too.

Scott
00:22:34.164 – 00:22:34.520
So.

Jenn
00:22:34.580 – 00:22:42.000
So those are the two things that I. That were different than the last time I had been there. Besides the amazing exhibits they do just telling the different stories.

Scott
00:22:42.080 – 00:22:42.528
Yeah.

Jenn
00:22:42.624 – 00:22:45.344
They have some great restaurants there. We actually happened to eat.

Scott
00:22:45.472 – 00:22:57.824
Have some great restaurants. Even some artifacts that I thought were really neat. Right. They had the flight jacket of Tibbets. Paul. Paul Tibbets.

Captain Paul Tibbets, who, you know, flew the aircraft that dropped the first nuclear bomb.

Jenn
00:22:57.872 – 00:22:58.096
Yeah.

Scott
00:22:58.128 – 00:23:07.458
Atomic bomb. So they had that there. And that’s actually kind of where you hung out for a little while, talking about kind of our controversial part of this video.

Jenn
00:23:07.594 – 00:23:52.440
So, yeah, let’s get into that a little bit. So, Stephen Ambrose, it’s hard because people love this man, so. And I kind of have a love for this man.

So as we were planning to do this video, I was like, we should center on a story. Let’s center on a story and tell a story.

Because that’s really what we do with Walk with History, talk with history, is we center on one particular story, especially in a museum, because there’s so much to see. So we try to tell. Show one artifact and tell the story. And as I’m doing my research, this controversy of Stephen Ambrose comes out.

I was not even aware of how.

Scott
00:23:53.300 – 00:24:11.662
Bad it was, and I had no clue.

When you brought this up to me, I was actually pretty surprised because his name is kind of held in such high regard because of the Lewis and Clark book, because of Band of Brothers. I mean, it’s like, in this, like, rarefied air, his name.

Jenn
00:24:11.766 – 00:24:36.102
Yeah. And so a lot of this came out after he dies as well. So what’s interesting is he.

He spoke to it a little bit in his lifetime because he was confronted about it in his lifetime, but he brushes it off. Off. And it’s not until after he dies that more of it comes out. So what is it? You’re like, what is it?

He’s accused of plagiarizing in pretty much every work he has written.

Scott
00:24:36.246 – 00:24:41.814
And. And you said, like, not like, just like a line here, a line there that he didn’t credit, but like, large sections.

Jenn
00:24:41.942 – 00:26:50.040
Yeah. So it’s more than just a couple. Like, like Scott said, it’s. It’s more than just a few sentences. It’s huge.

Sections of his book are found to be cases of plagiarism and it. And it goes all the way back to his doctoral dissertation.

And he plagiarizes such big sections and never gives any credit to where he got those sources from. So it’s not just, I took sections and I didn’t cite them because some people don’t cite in the work.

They’ll put it in their sources used, which is still kind of murky when it comes to being a historian. But he didn’t even cite sources. And he’s taking huge chunks of other people’s work and putting it in his work. Historians don’t really.

We don’t do that. So when I talk about what makes someone a historian. Yes. Do we talk about other people’s writings? Absolutely.

Could I talk about Stephen Ambrose’s writing in something I write? Absolutely. What’s the historiography of D Day? Who’s written about D Day? Stephen Ambrose wrote about D Day.

This is what he wrote, and this is the research he did. And this is why it’s not accurate or it is accurate. I would cite all of that because that’s what a historian does. I’m bringing you the history.

If I’m telling someone’s personal story, I’m. This is what they said on this day. And. And this is the. Where I got it from. Either. It’s some.

Some kind of document that I have that shows their whole interview. So you’re not just making things up. You’re using sources, primary sources to back any kind of thesis or argument you’re trying to make.

That’s how our historian does this. Now, Stephen Ambrose uses more of a storytelling kind of historiography, which is great.

And historians do do that, which is not citing everything right away, but they always cite their sources at the end and they always say, you know, you can always tell where they’re citing someone else’s work because they’ll make it probably smaller print and. And indented on both sides.

Scott
00:26:50.120 – 00:27:41.148
Yep. And some of them are even just kind of were actually relatively obvious. Right.

So, like, I know the one that I first learned of, this was before we went down to the World War II Museum, was when we were doing our Band of Brothers in Arlington. Right. Albert Blythe in the. In the miniseries. Right. Albert Blythe, you know, dies or whatever like that. Because that’s what happened.

That’s how Ambrose wrote it in the book. It looks. And apparently he just kind of wrote him off. He. He never checked on what happened to Albert Blythe or whatever.

But Albert Blythe had a long career, went and fought in Korea and all this stuff. So, like, there’s.

That was one example that when you brought this up, I was like, oh, that’s kind of interesting, because a little bit more people know of. Of that one because Band of Brothers is so popular that Albert Blythe’s family is like, he. He didn’t die right? Like, what. What’s all this?

Jenn
00:27:41.204 – 00:28:23.036
And there’s more instances of that in Band of Brother. That’s not just the. The solid, the single case. There’s over dramatization of things that are happen. There are people who.

They combine their stories to be one story or they’ve completely changed their story, like in this case. And that’s almost why, in a way, you get what’s his name, the Band of Brothers, Dick. That’s why.

That’s why you get Dick Winters, who kind of writes beyond Band of Brothers after to tell his personal account. Because even though he appreciates what Stephen Ambrose did in bringing his story to light, it wasn’t actually accurate.

So Winters wants to make sure he’s telling you the accurate story.

Scott
00:28:23.108 – 00:28:53.338
Yeah, and we say this all the time on tv, in movies, in TV series, that happens a lot because writers will combine characters, you know, in the movie Glory, the. The main character is actually kind of a amalgamation of two characters. So that happens a lot.

But for a historian to put that in their works, and then all of a sudden people start kind of digging stuff up and they’re like, oh, my gosh, he’s done this numerous times across a good portion of his works.

Jenn
00:28:53.514 – 00:30:58.930
And what happens is kind of what happened in our case when we did Mary Weather Lewis’s death is, I read on daunted courage. And when Meriwether Lewis commits suicide at Grinder Stand, Stephen Ambrose doesn’t question it in his book, he takes it as fact.

Because Thomas Jefferson and Clark don’t question the suicide theory, even though it’s very questionable in actuality.

And so as a historian, which I do in our video, as I tell you both sides and the facts from both sides, because there are conflicting primary source facts about what actually happened in Meriwether Lewis’s last hours. And because of that, as a historian, I can’t say undoubtedly that he died by suicide. And so that’s what a historian does. But I.

If you read Stephen Ambrose and you believe him because you have faith in him doing his work as a historian, you wouldn’t question it because you believe he’s doing his due diligence. Well, when it comes out that he’s not, it Makes you question all of his works. And that’s really what happens.

Ambrose is commissioned to do the biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower, right. The supreme commander of the Allied forces during World War II and goes on to become President of the United States.

Ambrose says that Eisenhower contacts him and asks him to write his biography. Well, there’s a letter at the Eisenhower Presidential Library from Ambrose to Eisenhower asking if he can write his biography.

And Eisenhower says, oh, yes, I just read one of your books. Let’s meet. Ambrose claims to have this intimate relationship with Eisenhower. He even is quoted to say, we talked for hours and hours.

We spent hundreds of hours together.

Scott
00:30:59.480 – 00:31:00.928
In hundreds is a lot.

Jenn
00:31:00.984 – 00:32:27.010
It’s a lot. In Eisenhower’s personal diaries and date books, it shows they’ve met three times for less than five hours.

Now there is another researcher who says there might have been more discussion between the two because Eisenhower really wanted to make sure he was painted in a. In a positive light, especially as the Allied commander.

He wanted to make sure that his decision making, especially around the atomic bomb, that those things were really flushed out. And so he says they may have talked more and they may have met more. He doesn’t think it was hundreds of hours.

And so what comes out later is that he’s found to have fabricated interviews and events in the biography of Eisenhower. So much so that Eisenhower really doesn’t talk with him after these biographies come out. So it’s just. And this happens in 2010. So these.

In 2015, there was a book that came out about Eisenhower. And it.

And the person who wrote it said, while some Eisenhower scholars questions Ambrose research, the enormity of his falsifications was not revealed until after his death. Ambrose lied about his relationship with Eisenhower. He fabricated and manufactured many events that never took place.

Scott
00:32:28.430 – 00:32:57.088
And the tough part about that, right, and that’s partly why we, we talked about it like at the World War II Museum. And you did a good job in the video of one presenting the facts and kind of talking about like, this is why it’s good, this is why it’s.

Here’s, here’s the bad, but here, here’s the good that, that Ambrose did at the same time, right? So you do, you, you kind of keep it pretty level when you’re talking about it in the video and saying, hey, what is this? What does this mean?

And you brought that up in the video.

Jenn
00:32:57.224 – 00:34:45.026
Yeah, and I try to make it very clear. I have so much conflict. Like, we all respect Ken Burns. We all respect what Ken Burns has done for documentary filmmaking and history.

He used undaunted courage to do the documentary of the Lewis and Clark expedition, declared that Ambrose takes one of the great, but also one of the most superficially considered stories in American history and breathes fresh life into it, like the Lewis and Clark story we all knew, but no one knew it to that level and depth until Ambrose’s book comes out, and that book is used to make the documentary. So he’s so conflicting because what he’s done for history and how he’s brought it to life and how he’s reinvigorated it.

I mean, Band of Brothers was huge. And he’s one of the reasons why The World War II Museum got built. He’s one of the reasons why it’s in New Orleans.

He’s kind of one of the reasons why World War II history is so interesting to people and why people are interested in it. Without Band of Brothers, there wouldn’t have been Masters of the Air. Like, I don’t know.

Without Band of Brothers, would there have been Saving Private Ryan? Like, it’s just, he’s invigorated history.

But then you have historian David Greenberg, who said in 2015, Ambrose wanton acts of plagiarism and the posthumous revelation that he fabricated interviews with Dwight Eisenhower have rendered his work unusable.

So I would say if you use his work, if you cite his work as a historian, always go back to what he is using as his source and go to that primary source. I wouldn’t even source Ambrose. I would go to whatever source Ambrose used and use that as your source forever. You’re writing.

Scott
00:34:45.138 – 00:36:11.596
Yeah. And that’s what you said in the video, Right? Because in the video, we can’t go into the depth that we get to do here.

But you basically, you kind of summarize it. You do a really good job. And we weave in, kind of showing different things at World War II Museum. And obviously the video will be linked in the.

In the podcast show notes. But you say, like, what does this mean? What does this mean about Ambrose and you and you.

And you say, and I think you said it succinctly, is like, he’s a great place to start. He’s a great place to start. Right? And he.

There’s something to be said about being able to tell a story like that with history, all the facts that you gather and stuff like that.

Now you do kind of have to take everything into account with not citing things and making, you know, in for certain works, you know, making things completely up. But it’s not a black and white. It’s not, he did do a lot of good there and he didn’t cite, he just didn’t cite things. Right.

So it’s a good place to start. And if you’re, you know, I think it was Larry who was telling us he’s going back to school and working on, on history stuff.

And you know, if you’re a student watching this, right, and you’ve, you just read one of Ambrose’s books, that’s what you got to do is you got to go back and check the sources that are cited.

And if you can’t find a source, source that’s cited, that might be one of the sections that he just didn’t cite or he plagiarized or whatever part of it is. You have to be, you have to have that, that kind of professional skepticism. And, and that’s what historians do.

Jenn
00:36:11.668 – 00:37:03.440
Yeah.

And I think we do that well in the, in the Merryweather Lewis video, we start to question Ambrose’s work and we do that because there are conflicting primary sources that he doesn’t add.

And as a historian, you don’t get to pick and choose the sources that you’re, if you’re looking up an event, you don’t get to pick and choose what part of the event you want to put in there or what part of the story you want to put in there. If it’s a primary source, you have to put in all of it. And you can say this may or may not seem plausible, but this is what was said at the time.

So that’s what builds trust as a historian. So like I said, Stephen Ambrose, great storyteller, opens us up our eyes up to a lot of great moments in American history.

Probably not the historian you want to cite on any of your works if you’re getting any kind of degree further on in history. But the museum is fantastic.

Scott
00:37:03.520 – 00:37:52.514
Yeah, the museum is fantastic. It was interesting and kind of fun to explore the Ambrose topic. And, and really we, we need to go back to the museum.

I need to kind of set my camera down the next time that I go and just experience it.

And I would encourage you, if you’re watching this to, if you are in New Orleans and if you’re watching this, you should go watch, you should go to the museum and then you should tell all of your friends to go to the museum because it’s, it’s incredible. It, it’s absolutely world class. It’s like a Disney level experience.

And it was just an absolute blast to, to go down there and find our brick and take the kids and, and show them all that stuff. So we got our own little piece of history down there, there. But thank you so much for joining us today. And if you want.

Again, if you want to support the show, if you want to support the podcast, you can go to talk with history.com. support you. Buy us a coffee, buy me a sandwich. You know, you can buy Jen a T shirt. Another history.

Jenn
00:37:52.602 – 00:37:53.186
Another history.

Scott
00:37:53.258 – 00:37:54.082
Another history shirt.

Jenn
00:37:54.146 – 00:38:15.120
Yeah. And if you. Is this, if this is your first time hearing any of this controversy about Ambrose, please let us know in the comments. Are you shocked?

Are you like, oh, my gosh, is this real? Because that’s kind of how we felt the first time we actually were reading about it too. So let us know how you feel about that.

Does it change your opinion? Does it not? And just how, if this is the first time you’ve even heard this kind of controversy.

Scott
00:38:15.620 – 00:38:17.100
All right, we’ll talk to you next time.

Jenn
00:38:17.140 – 00:38:17.676
Thank you.

Scott
00:38:17.748 – 00:38:46.830
This has been a Walk With History production. Talk With History is created and hosted by me, Scott Bennie. Episode researched by Jennifer Bennie.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode. Talk with History is supported by our fans at the History Road trip dot com.

Our eternal thanks go out to those providing funding to help keep us going. Thank you to Doug McLiverty, Larry Myers, Patrick Bennie, Gail Cooper and Christy Kohtz.

Make sure you hit following that podcast player and we’ll talk to you next time.