Official website of the
City of Vancouver, Washington

General George C. Marshall and Vancouver

2000 Marshall Lecture

Presented Friday, June 02, 2000

Tom Brokaw

NBC News Anchor

Thank you very much, Senator Hatfield and my friend Governor Locke. It's always wonderful to have the governor of a large and important state like Washington with a wife who works for NBC, because he almost never fails to mention the NBC news organization when he refers to his wife as well.

Mr. Mayor, thank you, and my good friends who are there from the Greatest Generation book, but especially to the citizens who I know have been such generous hosts to all of them out there this weekend.

I'm obviously very sorry that I can't be with you today in person in Vancouver. I cannot tell you how much I looked forward to this occasion, but the news and my day job do have ways of interfering with the best-made plans. Frankly, I'm just off the airplane from Moscow. I left here on Tuesday night, flew through the night to Moscow, conducting the interview with Vladimir Putin-the new president-last night in Moscow. Went without sleep, got on the plane early this morning so I could get back through Frankfurt and into New York in time to share this time with you.

There is an important summit meeting, as I'm sure many of you are aware, this weekend in Moscow between President Clinton and Vladimir Putin. We begin the 21st century with a whole new relationship between these two most powerful countries in the world. Think about it: During World War II they were allies, then for the Cold War we were bitter enemies pointing at each other nuclear arsenals capable of destroying life on earth as we know it. And now, in many ways, the United States is the benefactor and the protector of Russia's future. Russia will have to decide for itself which direction it goes in. But until it is stable, the United States will have a continuing role in terms of national security and economic stability for that great country. So that, too, is something we all have to be thinking about.

I have been thinking about what the man that we honor here today would think of this world as we enter a new century. As you know, I returned from Moscow after the first interview with President Putin. He is the first of Russia's democratically elected presidents of the 21st century, a former KGB agent whose father was a crook for Stalin. That résumé is a breathtaking example of the range of change in the world that we occupy: from Stalin, one of history's most cold-blooded and murderous tyrants, to the agency that enforced the oppressive policies of Communist rule, now to a freely elected president-albeit one with an uncertain vision and a monumental challenge as he takes the reigns of power in that country.

Perhaps General Marshall would not be astonished. After all, remember what he witnessed in his lifetime-flight, electricity, telephones. The splitting of the atom. Two world wars. The end of the British Empire. The rise of communism. The pre-eminence of the United States. Indeed, one of the remarkable traits of George Catlett Marshall was his ability to anticipate change-great, sweeping, cataclysmic change-and to prepare his country for it. Shortly after he left Vancouver, he had the daunting task of preparing America for war at a time when many in the United States were passionately opposed to the idea of getting involved in what was widely perceived as a foreign war with no effect on the United States.

At the time, he was a freshly minted general; a man in his fifties who had labored in the outpost of American military life, continually serving his country and his calling as a military man who knew the world was a dangerous place and that peace was an elusive condition in the turmoil of the mid-20th century. I believe that a thousand years from now, historians will look back with a sense of wonder at what General Marshall was able to accomplish in such a short period of time, with critics in high places and low constantly questioning his judgment and his actions.

From 1939, when the U.S. armed forces consisted of just 200,000 enlisted men armed with outdated weapons, an army that was so anemic it ranked behind Bulgaria and Portugal on the world's scale. From that shameful condition, General Marshall was able to build, train and send to war a fighting force that eventually consisted of more than 12 million Americans in uniform. Moreover, he accomplished this urgent and critical assignment within three years, while war was roiling across the Atlantic and throughout the Pacific. He was quite simply, more than any other single individual, the architect of victory in World War II. A man so vital to the war effort that President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill agonized over the difficult decision of whether he should command the D-Day invasion (which we'll be celebrating Monday and Tuesday of next week), or whether he should stay in Washington to oversee the war abroad and the political needs at home. General Marshall, who had spent his entire life preparing for the command that now would not be his, accepted President Roosevelt's decision without protest. The President said to him, "I would not sleep well at night knowing that you were out of the country."

That six-year stretch of Marshall's life-from 1939 to 1945 and victory, his primary role in saving the world-that alone would mark him as a great man. But of course, there was so much more. As Secretary of State, he would prove that he was as great a strategist in peace as he was in war. Without victory in World War II, the world today would be a much different place. With victory, but without The Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe, what chaos would have ensued? Would we have had a third world war? He was, indisputably, in every aspect of his life-from second lieutenant through Chief of Staff, from Secretary of State to Secretary of Defense and Nobel laureate-a great man. That he has been underappreciated by popular opinion in our lifetime is a travesty. I've been going to New York bookstores on a kind of a random search to see how many books there are about George C. Marshall. You'll find a lot about Charles Manson and Marilyn Monroe in the "M" section, but very few-if any at all-about this remarkable American who was so critical to the preservation of peace-not only for this country, but for the world during the 20th century.

I suspect that Marshall himself would not protest. For he was, by all accounts, self-confident and a true judge of a life lived honorably and well, if not always on the front pages or on the altars of the public culture. Besides, his legacy lives on. For this great man was the godfather of the people that you honor today: the greatest generation. The men and women who came of age during the Great Depression, when economic despair was on this land like a plague, when there were great bands of migrant workers drifting across America, living from day to day. When in homes and families young people quit school to go to work. Not to buy a video game or to go to a theme park on Saturday. They quit school to go to work to put food on the family table and to buy clothing for their siblings. Then, when there was just the faint glimmer of some hope on the horizon at the end of the 30's, this same generation was asked to go to war on two fronts: thousands of miles across the Pacific, thousands of miles across the Atlantic.

And they answered the call. Mark Hatfield, going down to enlist the day after Pearl Harbor, for example. Bob Bush telling his mother that he wanted to be a medic because he wanted to help people and not hurt them. And their stories were repeated a million-fold across America. From the ranches of western South Dakota to the barrios of the Southwest, to the hard, hot pavement of places like New York City and Chicago, to the Ivy League halls of the academies of privilege. Men went into uniform. And so did women. And those women who could not fight stayed at home to fill the role of the men on the assembly lines, to look after the children, to work harder in the fields of America so that they could produce more food. They went without sugar and nylons and a lot of the things that we take for granted today because the entire country was focused on one objective: to win the war against Hitler and Japan, to preserve freedom as we know it and as we have expanded on it. That generation did that. That generation that had, as its godfather, George C. Marshall, won the war.

And when the war was over, those men and those women in uniform came home to a country that they now wanted to build again. They married in record numbers, they went to college in record numbers, they gave us great new art and science and industry. They weren't perfect; it took them too long to recognize the importance of racial equality in our society, and much too long to recognize gender equality. But those women and those ethnic minorities who were members of that generation, they didn't give up on the American dream. Many of them fought their way into battle and suffered the most shameful kind of discrimination when they came home. But they persisted. For they knew what they had been through could only lead to a greater life for all of us if they put their shoulder to the wheel. And they did just that. They expanded our political freedoms here at home. And then-led again by George C. Marshall-they did, I believe, one of the most remarkable acts of any country that was a victor in war in the history of mankind: They rebuilt their enemies-Japan and Europe-devastated by war. Think of the grief and the resentment and the strident nationalism that would have grown out of those two proud countries, Germany and Japan, if the United States and the West had not stepped in to rebuild them and to restore the idea of democracy in Germany and the idea of democracy which was introduced into Japan. George Marshall was a visionary who helped the greatest generation affect these remarkable and lasting and historic changes.

That generation, of which I've written, did not give up on this country when its values were challenged during the 60's. There was a great schism in America, but their children, young men and young women, and the members of the greatest generation learned from each other. And they found what I believe is the greatest testimony to the greatest generation. They found common ground. The genius of America-this immigrant nation for all of its attendant strengths and natural resources, its political system that stands unchallenged in the world-the greatest genius of this country is our ability to set aside our ideological divisions, our heritages, our economic interests when there is a common challenge and become greater than the sum of our parts.

That generation learned that first during The Depression and then during the war and then in the rebuilding of America after the war. Now I worry that there are great fault lines running across that common ground. If that was the "We" generation, we have, I believe, allowed ourselves to become too much the "Me" generation-worried too greatly every day about our own selfish interests. We've divided America up into special fiefdoms, each concerned only with its narrow place on the playing field of politics, or the economy, or the popular culture.

Now this generation, at the turn of another century, has come back into our lives. And through their stories and by example they remind us again of their legacy. The legacy that was put before them by George C. Marshall which they made great sacrifice to bring to life, and never lost their vision or their values as he had outlined for them first in war and then in peace.

And I would hope that one hundred years from now, when you have another speaker at the George Marshall lecture, that first of all he or she will be able to be there in person and not just off an airplane from Moscow. But I would hope that one hundred years from now another speaker at the George Marshall lecture would be able to say that we finally have a full and keen appreciation of this great American and what he did for all of us. And we have, as well, a rich and renewed appreciation of his children, the greatest generation. And most of all, we've learned from them at the beginning of a new century the importance of restoring the American ideal of common ground and common objectives. Whatever our background, whatever our geographical location in America, whatever our ideology.

There are challenges out there for all of us. We're privileged not to have to face a great depression. Indeed, we are living through the greatest economic boom in the history of mankind. There has never been as much prosperity as there is at this moment. And this weekend in Moscow when President Clinton and President Putin get together-as President Putin told me last night-he would like to introduce to the president the idea that the United States and Russia would jointly work on a missile defense system that would provide an umbrella against so-called "rogue" nuclear powers. That's how far we've come. That's the kind of world that we inhabit today.

So it's up to each of us as individuals and collectively as a society to make a pledge that we will continue the work started by George C. Marshall and the members of the greatest generation. And that one hundred years from now another speaker will look back and say, "That, too, was a great generation. It continued the legacy of a great man and a great generation."

Thank you all very much.