The Greatest Generation Live Podcast

In this Veterans Breakfast Club World War II Open Conversation, Glenn Flickinger leads a wide-ranging discussion on military history, memory, and the stories that keep the past alive. The evening opens with a moving tribute to General William Matz, former head of the American Battle Monuments Commission, with reflections from Rich Sherman, Colin Heaton, and Marilyn Walton on his leadership, combat service, humility, and lifelong de...

Come raise a glass and celebrate World War II veteran Russell Freeburg who turns 103 years old on March 4! We’ll mark the day with a special Veterans Breakfast Club livestream celebration with Russ joining us to share his story with Scott Masters and his students from Crestwood Oral History Project.

Russ was born on March 4, 1923, in the railroad town of Galesburg, Illinois. He grew up in the Great Depression, came of age as clouds...

Join us for a special livestream about the history of the Battle of Monte Cassino and what it will be like to talk its grounds as part of our VBC WWII Italian Campaign Tour, October 17–30, 2026.

In the spring of 1944, the rugged slopes above the Italian town of Cassino became the scene of one of World War II’s most desperate, costly, and consequential struggles. For four months — through repeated assaults, bitter weather, and bruta...

When Americans picture the Pacific War, they usually imagine palm trees and jungle heat. But in 1942–43, World War II came to the frozen edge of Alaska. On the remote Aleutian Islands of Attu Island and Kiska Island, U.S. and Japanese forces fought a brutal campaign of fog, wind, snow, and rock, the only land battle of World War II fought on American soil.

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a virtual conversation with Allen Frazi...

Glenn Flickinger sits down with legal historian John Q. Barrett to explore the origins, drama, and legacy of the Nuremberg trials, the unprecedented post–World War II prosecution of Nazi leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Barrett, a Professor of Law at St. John’s University and Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow at the Robert H. Jackson Center, is one of the foremost experts on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, ...

Author Eric Setzekorn gives us a new look at World War II’s China-Burma-India (CBI) theatre through the eyes of Joseph Stilwell, the tough-minded American general entrusted with command over all U.S. forces in China, Burma, and India. His new book is Uncertain Allies: General Joseph Stilwell and the China-Burma-India Theater.

Most Americans know little about the CBI, an awkward, sprawling command that stretched from eastern India a...

Join us for a Veterans Breakfast Club livestream conversation with author Edward Aldrich about his compelling dual biography, Partnership: George Marshall, Henry Stimson, and the Extraordinary Collaboration That Won World War II. In this richly researched work, Aldrich brings into sharp focus one of the most consequential collaborations in twentieth-century American history: the wartime partnership between Army Chief of Staff Gener...

For Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Veterans Breakfast Club hosts a special livestream conversation with historian David Nasaw, focusing on one of the most searing chapters in his new book, The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II: the experiences of Black veterans returning to the United States in 1945–46.

More than one million Black men and women served in World War II, fighting for democracy overseas while living u...

Historian Bruce Henderson joins us to discuss Operation Carpetbagger, a secret war in Europe in World War II that is subject of his new book, Midnight Flyboys: The American Bomber Crews and Allied Secret Agents Who Aided the French Resistance in World War II.

In Midnight Flyboys, Bruce delivers a masterful, richly detailed chronicle of that secret war. Beginning in 1943, the precursor to the CIA — the Office of Strategic Services (...

Glenn Flickinger marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge with historian Walter S. Zapotoczny, author of The 28th Infantry Division and the Battle of the Bulge: Combat, Faith, and Perseverance. The book is a close study of how the men of Pennsylvania’s “Keystone Division” held the line in the Ardennes in December 1944–January 1945, and what kept them fighting when the odds were against them. Drawing on extensive firsthand a...

Glenn Flickinger will continue his discussion of the the VBC’s WWII Tour of Italy in October 2026, where VBC will spend 14 days following the path of the Allied forces through one of the most grueling campaigns of World War II. Todd and Glenn will also talk with Italian Campaign expert, 45th Infantry Division Historian Professor David D’Andrea, who will also be joining us on our trip.

We’ll trace the course of the Italian Campaign,...

Naval historian Craig L. Symonds talks about his new book, Annapolis Goes to War: The Naval Academy Class of 1940 and Its Trial by Fire in World War II. Symonds follows one cohort from plebe year to the fleet, using the Class of ’40 to tell a larger story about America’s rapid transition from peace to global war. These midshipmen arrived at the Academy the year Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland and graduated the week of Dunkirk; more...

Join us on Thursday, December 4 at 7:00pm for a special VBC livestream with Dr. Jim Blackwell, author of the new book Gunners! B-29 Machine Gunners in the Korean War.

Jim Blackwell brings to life the stories of ten B-29 gunners—ordinary young men who climbed into the big Boeing Superfortress and flew some of the toughest missions of the Korean War. Now in their nineties, these veterans represent the last living voices of a chapter ...

We’re thrilled to welcome 103-year-old 82nd Airborne veteran Gene Metcalfe to talk about his extraordinary World War II experience, which included a combat jump in Operation Market Garden, being counted among the dead at the Battle of Nijmegen, a face-to-face meeting with Heinrich Himmler, and months as a POW in Stalag VII-A.

Gene’s story began on On November 10, 1942, at DeKalb (Illinois) High School, when he stood up, walked out,...

Award-winning historian David Nasaw, author of the new book The Wounded Generation: America After the Greatest Generation, talks with Glenn Flickinger about the human costs of WWII in the United States. In his deeply researched and powerfully written history, Nasaw reveals the hidden cost of victory in World War II—the long and often painful homecoming of millions of American veterans who returned to a nation unprepared for their w...

Glenn Flickinger and Todd DePastino discuss the VBC’s WWII Tour of Italy in October 2026, where they will spend 14 days following the path of the Allied forces through one of the most grueling campaigns of World War II. Todd and Glenn will also talk with Italian Campaign expert, 45th Infantry Division Historian Professor David D’Andrea, who will also be joining us on our trip.

We’ll trace the course of the Italian Campaign, beginni...

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a moving conversation with author Kevin M. Callahan about his book Brothers in Arms: Remembering Brothers Buried Side by Side in American World War II Cemeteries. Drawing from years of research, hundreds of family interviews, and a personal pilgrimage to American military cemeteries around the world, Callahan tells the powerful and often heartbreaking stories of brothers who fought and died toge...

Glenn Flickinger sits down with historian and author Paul R. Bruno to trace the Jeep’s unlikely birth—from a desperate 1940 Army request for a ¼-ton 4×4 scout car to a battlefield icon that helped win World War II.

We’ll trace the origins in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the tiny American Bantam Car Company built the pilot Jeep in an astonishing 49 days, before Willys-Overland and Ford entered the fray and the Army standardized the v...

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a special conversation with Brigadier General (Ret.) Paul Tibbets IV, whose military career spans more than three decades and includes leadership at the highest levels of U.S. Air Force strategic operations. General Tibbets brings a unique perspective shaped by deep family ties to military aviation. He is the grandson of Paul W. Tibbets Jr., pilot of the Enola Gay during World War II.

General Ti...