On Our American Stories, we often look back to learn from the past, and few periods shaped the world like World War Two. In this gripping segment, legendary historian Stephen Ambrose takes us straight to the heart of the battlefield, revealing the surprising truth about the military transport and weapons that defined the era. Forget the propaganda: you’ll discover how armies truly moved and fought, from unexpected reliance on horses to debunking persistent myths about WWII combat.
As the conflict raged, American ingenuity shone brightest, outproducing and outdesigning the enemy with groundbreaking machines. You’ll hear the incredible story of the robust ’deuce and a half’ truck, the unstoppable Jeep, and the versatile ’Duck’ amphibious vehicle – symbols of US industry that delivered unmatched mobility and reliability. This episode celebrates the remarkable spirit and innovation of ordinary people building extraordinary tools that helped secure victory, a testament to the enduring power of American determination.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: And we continue with Our American Stories. Stephen Ambrose was one of America’s leading biographers and historians. He passed in 2002, but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here in Our American Stories, thanks to those who run as estate. Our next story is the story of weapons used in World War Two. Here is Stephen Ambrose.
00:00:34
Speaker 2: Transport in the Second World War again utilized.
00:00:39
Speaker 3: Nothing really new. Trucks were used, the cars.
00:00:43
Speaker 2: Trucks have been used in the First World War, especially at the Battle of Verdun by Marshal Pétain. The railroad was extensively used in the Second World War. It had also been extensively used in the First World War. Much of the Second World War transport in the European armies, especially the Red Army and the German Army, was horse-drawn. Hitler tried to give the world the impression that he had the most modern army, and and in a lot of ways he did, but it wasn’t as modern as he liked to pretend that it was. And the German par propaganda portrayed as being, uh, for all the pictures that Goebbels released of German tanks rolling down French roads.
00:01:23
Speaker 3: And German trucks following behind.
00:01:25
Speaker 2: For the most part, the logistical supply system of the German Army was rail-drawn from depot to depot, and then from the depots out into the field was horse-drawn.
00:01:36
Speaker 3: That was even more the case with the Red.
00:01:38
Speaker 2: Army, which, in fact, used horses as extensively in the Second World War as it had in the First.
00:01:47
Speaker 3: Although in the First World War there were still…
00:01:48
Speaker 2: Some cavalry units that were attempting to join the battle in the old-fashioned way with the drawn saber and the charge, and that came to a quick end even in the First World War and was never used in the Second World War. And it is a bit of a side. There’s a canard here that is repeated all over the place and…
00:02:04
Speaker 3: Is not true.
00:02:05
Speaker 2: It is that the Poles in 1939 tried to fight German armor with cavalry charging tanks.
00:02:11
Speaker 3: It’s a story told…
00:02:12
Speaker 2: To illustrate, I guess, how poorly prepared the Poles were. And then it’s very often told by people who want to make you think that the Poles aren’t very bright. There was no Polish cavalry attack of German tanks in the same World War.
00:02:30
Speaker 3: And its to brightness.
00:02:31
Speaker 2: The best mathematicians in the world, and the guys that solved the whole enigmave thing were Polish, and I think that’s enoughset about the Poles and intelligence. The best truck of the war was a product of Detroit and General Motors and others, the two-and-a-half-ton all-purpose truck, or ‘deuce and a half,’ as it was called. And they were manufactured in the tens of thousands and gotten over to the European theater and gave two through the Allies and the campaign of Northwest Europe in 1944-45 an unprecedented mobility, never before equaled, never since matched. So great was the mobility of the American army in Northwest Europe that in the crisis of December 1944, Eisenhower was able to move 600,000 men in two weeks.
00:03:18
Speaker 3: M. That’s way better than what Schwartz Cloth had is his capability in the desert at the beginning of the 1990s.
00:03:31
Speaker 2: Another, uh, American vehicle that was widely loved was the Jeep that was built by three or four different manufacturers, all using the same blueprints, but developed in the United States and the envy of the world, and remains, of course, uh, the standard around the world for a light utility truck for military purposes. It can get over any kind of terrain, extraordinarily reliable, very simple design, and easy to fix. Uh, terrible to ride in, but they got you to where you wanted to go. It’s interesting here that the land of Mercedes, BMW, and Volkswagen got out-produced by the land of Ford, Chrysler, and Chevrolet.
00:04:19
Speaker 3: We outproduced them; we out-designed.
00:04:20
Speaker 2: Them, better vehicles, and way more of them, was one of the triumphs of American industry. The most unusual transportation vehicle of the war was the duck. These were amphibious vehicles that could go up to 10 knots in the water and were much more reliable than swimming tanks. I mean, these, these babies really could swim and could handle even a moderate open channel c and were fabulous for crossing rivers. And then we’re just a dream to ride on because they had great big rubber w… once they got on shore, and they could go down an audubon at a top speed of 50 miles an hour with a very soft, cushy ride for up to a squad of men on each dock, or they could carry ammunition or other things.
00:05:17
Speaker 3: Oh, on weapons! I forgot to talk about grenades.
00:05:21
Speaker 2: You know, when you’re setting up that defensive position, you’re also make sure all those infantry have plenty of grenades. The American fragmentation grenade was probably the best grenade of the war, although it had severe limitations, of which the most obvious was you couldn’t throw it very far because it was so heavy. It damn your tear your socket out when you…
00:05:41
Speaker 3: Were throwing it.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: It was a lot heavier than a baseball, and it was about not much bigger in baseball, and Americans tended to want to throw it like a baseball, and they’d throw their socket out very often…
00:05:50
Speaker 3: In doing it.
00:05:50
Speaker 2: And even that, you couldn’t throw the darn thing very far because it was so heavy. The German ‘potato mashers,’ it was called. You all know what those looked like: the brown canister, the explosive, and the…
00:06:02
Speaker 3: Steel around it.
00:06:02
Speaker 2: And then the long wouldn’t handle, and you could take those babies and really toss them a long way.
00:06:06
Speaker 3: The problem was that if…
00:06:08
Speaker 2: It landed over there, and two GIs are standing here talking and they see a potato masher land over there. They saw a fragmentation grenade and American fragmentation grain over there. Who, they’re on the ground. They see a potato masher over there, and they just watch an interest. It’s really not much more explosive power than a firecracker, so you could throw it a long way, but it didn’t do an awful lot of damage.
00:06:29
Speaker 3: Before leaving the land…
00:06:30
Speaker 2: Weapons of war, one other one: poison gas.
00:06:35
Speaker 3: The one weapon that was not used in the Second World War.
00:06:41
Speaker 2: There had been agreements signed between the wars, really the first time that sovereign nations had agreed to limit their ability to kill other people in a war situation—agreements to ban poison gas. It was very much an open question, however, as World War Two began, whether this…
00:06:57
Speaker 3: Agreement would be adhered to. It was, in general.
00:07:05
Speaker 2: I think the reason that it was is, at first of all, poison gas isn’t all that good a weapon, at least the poison gases that were available in the First World War. It didn’t have a long-lasting effect. A man rec recovery was fairly quick from, uh, poison gas.
00:07:25
Speaker 3: It had the…
00:07:28
Speaker 2: Very big disadvantage that it depended upon the wind. Yeah, you could fire poison gas shells, and they would go off. But then, obviously, your weapon, which is the gas itself, is dependent on the wind. If the wind dies or if the wind shifts—and it very often happened the wind would shift—you fire off some poison gas, and it comes back in the face of your guys because of the next shift in the wind. That’s one reason poison gas wasn’t used in the Second World War. But I think the bigger reason was, uh, the experience of the combatants of the First World War with gas. After what I’ve just said, let me add to this: it’s terrible, just an awful thing for human being to be gassed. And almost everybody was in the First World War was, and they all had an agree, including and probably most important of Allidolf Hitler, and they all of them: ‘This is an inhumane weapon.’
00:08:20
Speaker 3: And if Hitler wasn’t going to use it, nobody else was going to use it.
00:08:23
Speaker 2: Everybody kept up their stockpiles; everybody was ready to retaliate if the other guy began using poison gas. But if it was going to be used, it was going to be the Germans who would do it, and they didn’t. And apparently, the reason is because Hitler himself had the experience of being gassed.
00:08:37
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Stephen Ambrose talking about the weapons of World War Two. Go to Our American Stories and type in Stephen Ambrose, and you can hear more of these stories about the weapons of World War Two. As well, my goodness, on the transportation front, the ‘deuce and a half,’ of course, the cheap, and of course the way we produced planes. Will run just knocking out a plane every minute, and not just any plane with the B-24 Liberator. And of course, then his discussion about poisoned gas and how even Hitler thought this was unbecoming and just a devastating weapon of war. Thankfully and luckily, no one used this weapon of war in World War Two. Stephen Ambrose on the Weapons of War here on Our American Stories.
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