“No human in history has ever held the power for which you
now ask. Not Caesar not Alexander--no man—ever.” ~Winston Churchill to
Eisenhower, 1941.
When I teach American History, I like to use historical films
to bring history alive for the students. There are two films that always grip
the attention of the students; 13 Days with Kevin Costner and Roger Greenwood
about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and “Ike; the Countdown to D-Day, with Tom
Selleck as Eisenhower and Ian Mune as Churchill. Both movies lack action seens
but rely on the drama of impending war to build the tension.
Tom Selleck does an excellent
job of acting the part of Eisenhower. Selleck captures the concern for
casualties and the required modesty for Eisenhower to deal with such huge egos such
as Generals Montgomery and Patton, and far worse, De Gaul. As Churchill pointed
out in the first minutes of the movie, “No human in history has ever held the
power for which you now ask. Not Caesar not Alexander--no man—ever.” Huge
stakes and thousands of lives rested on the decision of one man. Seventy years ago today, Eisenhower
has to make a judgment call to invade in the face of bad weather, impatient generals and uncertain
intelligence. He wrote a letter in advance to take full responsibility in the
case of the failure of the invasion, and then went to smoke and chat with paratroopers who
were expected to have casualty rates of as high as 75 percent.
Below is a 9 minute clip of the opening (and one of the
best) scenes in the movie.
