Welcome to another episode of “Inside West Point: Ideas That Impact” with Brigadier General Shane Reeves. In this engaging interview, Dr. Elizabeth Samet, a professor of English at West Point and author of "Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness," explores the myths and realities of World War II. With their thoughtful and nuanced discussion, they delve into topics such as the importance of educating cadets about the realities of war and its aftermath, the danger of romanticizing war, and the need for a balanced view of history. 

Along the way, they also touch on the role of literature in understanding human behavior and the lasting impact of World War II on American society. Whether you're a history buff or interested in gaining a deeper understanding of this pivotal moment in world history, we hope you'll tune in and join us for this fascinating conversation!

In this episode, you will learn the following:

• What are some of the myths and misconceptions surrounding World War II, and how can we dispel them through education and understanding?
• How important is education in preparing cadets for war and life beyond?

Chapter Summaries;

[0:00:04] Introduction of Dr. Elizabeth Samet on her Educational Background and Latest Book

[0:02:23] Interview with a Professional Writer and West Point Professor

[0:03:50] Dr. Samet’s Background: Father's Service in the Army Air Corps during World War II

[0:05:43] Evolution of Education and Training During Wartime

[0:08:08] Discussion on the Role of Literature in Understanding Human Behavior

[0:09:50] A Conversation on Education, Training, and the Myth of World War II

[0:11:59] The Myth of the Good War: A Conversation on America's Understanding of World War II

[0:18:05] Exploring the Myth of War and the Language of Fascism: A Conversation on the Legacy of World War II

[0:20:18] Exploring the Diverse Attitudes and Testimonies of World War II through Studs Terkel's Oral Histories

[0:21:32] Discussion on the dangers of American Amnesia and the need for a balanced view of history

[0:27:01] Discussion on the Importance of Reinvention and Balancing the Past and Future in Remembering World War II

[0:28:12] Discussion on the Complexities of War and American Exceptionalism

[0:33:19] Discussion on the Role of Literature and Education in Preparing Army Officers for Warfare and Beyond

[0:37:45] Last Words: How to Compile a Diverse Reading List

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Website: https://www.westpoint.edu/academics

She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Grant and the Hyatt Prize in the humanities. She was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to support the research and writing of her most recent book, Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness, which was published in November, 2022.

Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Samet.

Samet: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, General Reeves.

Dean: Well, it's our pleasure. And I just wanna thank you for taking the time, for being with me this, this afternoon. Really excited to, to have this conversation especially about the, your most recent book, but there's a number of things I wanted to talk to you about and ask you.

So let me just start with a generic question. Tell me a little bit about your educational background as an undergraduate and also as a graduate student.

Samet: Well, I was an undergraduate at Harvard and majored in English there originally thought I was gonna be a doctor, but I still wanted to major in English and then I wanted You were a doctor?

Well, not that kind of doctor and a physician. And then discovered that that was not. Where my, my interest was so majored in English and then decided after a year of graduate school in Scotland at the University of St. Andrews. Mm-hmm. Studying Shakespeare that I wanted to pursue this for a career.

So then I went to Yale to get my PhD and from Yale I came to West Point.

Dean: So you came directly from Yale to West Point? I did, yeah. What brought you to West Point?

Samet: So, there's a long answer and a short answer. The short answer is Ulysses S Grant and my father, and so I will amplify that a bit. I actually found Grant's memoirs, which I, as you know, I subsequently edited when I was a graduate student and I was supposed to be writing my dissertation.

But instead I was reading these memoirs and they were not at all what I expected of a 19th century general writing about war. And the writing felt to me very modern. And I didn't know at the time how anomalous they were, but in fact, they really do stand out in memoirs of the time. Very unusual. And the other thing that intrigued me was that he wrote a little bit about West Point, and of course he, he loved it and hated it both at the same time.

Sure. And he spent, he said that he spent all, most of his time reading novels, but not those of a trashy sort. So I like to share that with my students with the cadets when we're reading novels, but not of a trashy sort. And so when the job announcement for a position in the English department at West Point came up, I sort of, I took a second look at it, which I probably would not have done.

But the other factor there was my father who served in the Army Air Corps in World War II and I grew up listening to his stories of the war. And I think I probably had a slightly different idea of the Army than many of my peers, because he was older than they were. And many of my peers parents, I think had a Vietnam era attitude toward the military.

And I think mine was a little different from that because of him. And so I, I think otherwise I might not have applied, but I, I was intrigued. And the rest is history.

Dean: Where did you grow up?

Samet: In Boston.

Dean: Okay. Have you by chance seen the SOS house and there's a thing called Constitution Corner, and it's really the only I'd say Memorial, I guess, but it's the only monument, let's say that to the Constitution of the United States.

And I think their graduating class was roughly 490 to 500 people. But the number of them that died not in combat but in training exercises is really shocking. I mean, it's, it's, it's a significant number of their class. And so the Army Air Corps was not for the faint of heart when it, when it first launched.

So when was your dad in the Army Air corps?

Interesting. And a series of bases there. Of course, they were flying missions over the hump to China and then they would fly wounded back. And so that's where he spent much of his war.

Dean: So I'm assuming you went to Harvard, cuz that was the local school in Boston. I'm from Rock Springs, Wyoming in which the local schools, Western Wyoming Community College.

So it's very, pretty much the same thing. There you go. So what so you've been teaching at West Point for 26 years which means you're one of actually the earliest of our permanent civilian faculty. What have you seen change in those 26 years here at the academy?

Samet: I've seen a lot change. When I first came here, we were at peace. As soon as I figured out those peacetime rhythms, we went to war. And of course I've taught most of my time here has been during teaching during wartime. And of course that was something I never could have predicted. And it initially gave, I think, a sense of urgency and a new kind of meaning to what we were doing in the classroom.

I know that I thought about my students in a different way as they progressed and as I taught here longer, those students were deployed, my colleagues were deployed. They didn't always come home. Yeah. And that suggested to me that the stakes of what we're doing here were rather different than I thought they were at the outset.

Sure. I was naive, I think, like everyone else, I knew I was training future officers, but I didn't necessarily have a clear sense of what their careers would look like, nor did they.

Dean: Yeah. It's an interesting point about realizing the realities of, of warfare. you're right, it really changes the tone of what you're doing. And, and I think it brings home the importance of what we do here at the Academy. Over your 26 years, how have you evolved as a faculty member at the Academy?

Samet: Well, I like to tell a story that happened soon after I got here.

There was a, a fellow, I don't even know if he still works here. I haven't seen him in a long time, but he, he used to mow the plane, and then I, as I would walk by to the gym, he would see me and we'd wave and we'd chat and exchange pleasantries. And then one day he said, what's your function? And I said, wait, what?

He said, what's your function around here? What do you do? And I said, well, I teach English. And that was very early on, and that's really how I imagine it. And that's still what I do. But I think that I have a deeper, richer sense of connection with my students and former students than I ever imagined I would.

Dean: If you had to articulate the difference between education and training and what we do on the academic side being education, how would you distinguish between those two?

Samet: Well, I, I think this actually came up in my, in my class this morning. I was re we're reading Macbeth with the Plebes. I am in my class and one of the plebes.

Was talking, I was talking about the Macbeth's and about their relationship, and I, guess I sort of scandalized a few of them by saying it's actually a really good marriage. And by that I mean they talk to each other constantly. You know, they're all these clues that we don't all, we don't see it all the time, but they're talking to each other all the time.

Now they're embarked on a really horrible course, but, but they have this really intense and, and fascinating relationship and it's very close. And the conversation evolved from there. And one of them said, you know, well, I, I can't imagine doing any, I don't know how we're supposed to respond to them.

I can't imagine doing any of the things they do. And I said, well, I'm not, I don't want you to do anything of the things that they do. But I said to read about them and to understand them is different from condoning their behavior. And for me, that's the big difference that, that in a training environment, I may have a, a case study or I may have some particular scenario that.

There is a, there's a rule or a regulation or a law, and I, and I need you to know as a, as someone who's being trained, what is acceptable behavior and what isn't. But in a literature classroom, when I'm teaching, when I'm educating, my hope is that they see the full range of human behavior and they will see the full range of human behavior, some of it admirable, some of it reprehensible, and everywhere in between.

And that's what literature offers them. And I'm asking them to read it without necessarily judging at every turn, but seeking instead to understand what motivates people to behave the way they do.

Dean: Yeah, and that's I mean, that's incredible to hear because, the distinction, if I had to put it in shorthand, I'd say education is preparing our officers to deal with uncertainty and complexity and ambiguity and be critical thinkers in that environment.

And training is really an indoctrination. It's helping someone to answer a, a particular question in a particular right way, or doing something in a repeatedly so that you become good at it. And education is critical to really fighting and winning in a world where conflict is not binary.

It's not easy to figure out, it's, it's not black and white, which gets a little bit into, into the conversation on your, on your most recent book.

Okay. So let's talk about your most recent book again titled, Looking for the Good War American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness. First off, congratulations. Thank you. And I'm extremely proud that you work here and you're publishing something of such high level. Can you gimme a brief synopsis of the book?

Samet: Sure. I, appreciate the kind words. The, the book really argues that our current understanding of World War II has been, instead of something that was true from the outset, a myth that evolved gradually and that really took off most energetically around the time of the 50th anniversary commemorations of the war.

And so this was on the heels of the first Gulf War, which I think for many Americans, certainly for the first President Bush, who was of course president at the time, was a way of erasing the shame of Vietnam from the historical record. So he talked about it as, as getting rid of the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.

And I think that it was as anyone, I mean, I watched that war during college, on tv and it was just this amazing, strange experience. And of course this, the narrative was of one of invincible technological mite and of a, of a swift war with a clear ending and a clear stopping point. And around that same time, of course, we had the 50th anniversary commemorations, and I think America was feeling very different about itself than it had in the wake of Vietnam.

And I think that looking back to World War ii, Was a great sense of gave, gave us a great sense of strength. It was, it's a very flattering myth. It is the myth that there are several components as I articulate them through the, the book, but in, in some, it's the idea that everyone was united in the war effort particularly of course after Pearl Harbor, that everyone sacrificed on the home front.

That Americans fight only when they must, and they fight always decently and they are always fighting in the service of liberation. So this sense of ourselves as righteous liberators. And I think World War II was an aberration in so many ways. The unequivocal evil of the enemy, I think was manifest to many.

I think that the idea that fascist tyranny was an existential threat was crucial to an understanding of the, the necessity of the war, and the book does not argue that the war was unnecessary at all. But we have a sort of selective memory. We didn't go to war to defeat fascists, and we went to war because we were attacked.

And despite the fact that President Roosevelt and his administration with the Lendlease program and other other policies certainly knew what side it wanted to be on, we tend to downplay the great feeling of isolationism that followed World War I and Americans. Many Americans viewed this as yet another European quarrel that we should not be dragged into.

And then you have the even more problematic phenomenon of the America First Committee headlined by no less than Charles Lindbergh, a great. Hero for Americans whose sympathies were decidedly with the fascists. And so I think we tend to conflate the consequences of World War ii, which was in fact among, you know, the most prominent of which was to liberate Europe from fascist tyranny with the causes that animated our participation.

And the, the other crucial component to this is this question of unanimity. It is not in fact the case that many people changed their minds, certainly, or thought it politic to change their minds after Pearl Harbor. But only months after Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration was really concerned that Americans didn't feel a sense of urgency anymore.

And that they needed to be reminded that this was a desperate fight that we needed to put our full effort into.

Dean: That's fascinating. Couple of follow on questions from your comments there. When you say our understanding of World War II, are you talking about contemporary Americans understanding, or it's more of a historic understanding?

Samet: I would say that I think it's still our current understanding. I think that there are various versions, but I think that the, perhaps the, the most compelling version of the myth was that created by Steven Ambrose in his histories and by Tom Broka in his books on The Greatest Generation.

Dean: You hear the same thing with law and war. When you talk about the laws of war, it's like those don't seem to go together.

Samet: Right. But I think now we generally accept that that was a good war and Yeah. And so what does that mean? And, and I think the, the real, my, the, the, my motivation for writing the book was that was not to, to downplay , the things that the success, the victory in that war, but instead to suggest that it gave us a really unrealistic expectation about what American military force might be able to accomplish.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah. And you've mentioned also the Vietnam syndrome and, and to some extent the negative feelings and maybe the lack of confide. That again, stereotyping about the United States as a, as a nation felt coming out of that war and, and and how that, how that started to play itself out in lots of different ways.

Samet: Yeah. And, and I don't, and the sense of the, the sort of sense of Cause Yeah. Was much less prominent I think at the time. I mean, so, so the, the rhetoric around World War I was, was very much about cause and it was a sort of messianic rhetoric about a kind of regeneration that one, you know, one could, could fight and that it it would have this sort of effect.

But World War ii, I think it was a much more practical approach. And you, there are all sorts of studies that were done at the time about the four freedoms, how many people could name them, those sorts of things. And, and the sense that cause was, was paramount in soldiers' minds was not necessarily the case.

There's a, a study out of the out of the war college several years ago that suggested that the sense of of cause and the, the awareness of cause was much more important to volunteers of, of this current generation than it was to soldiers of previous generation. So many of whom of course were draftees.

Dean: It's hard for me not to connect the immediate re reaction of the American people post 9/11, where you saw President Bush's number two approval ratings jump into the 90 something percentile. And this expectation, we're gonna do something with what you said following Pearl Harbor. And then very quickly, president Roosevelt is concerned about loss of interest or loss of focus.

And similarly, you saw the United States people quickly fragment following nine 11. And so that's an interesting parallel I've never thought about or thought through. And maybe that's normal. I don't know. Is that your, your feeling is that's a normal response by, by the American people when conflict breaks out?

Samet: Well, I think any, in that case, any response, I think to a direct attack Right, would feel that way. And. People go about their lives. Of course, we were encouraged to go about our lives by the second President Bush. Right? Yeah. We were encouraged to go shopping. Right. And so it, it was an interesting message in that I remember I was here when, when president Bush gave his, what, what was called the axis of evil speech, right?

And, and the sense that, and that language, of course, directly referencing the Axis Powers Sure. People immediately calling nine 11 another Pearl Harbor, which in some ways it was, and in some ways, of course it was not at all. And so th this idea that we, we use this language, the language of fascism turned to Lao fascism.

That the, the, the vocabulary of World War II is still the vocabulary we use to explain our world. And I think our world has changed a tremendous amount. And so thinking about the ways in which wars are explained to us, and the debt that those who explained it to us owe to a World War II way of thinking.

And, and we know that that wars do not have the conclusive endings that perhaps, I mean, who's, who's to say they ever really did, but we looked in the past conflicts, of course, to a series of punctuation marks that turned out to be false endings.

Dean: Yeah. So one of the main points of your book is that the perspective we have of World War II today was not necessarily the way Americans have always looked at it.

And in especially in the midst of it, and in the years that immediately followed when did what you call the myth of war really take hold and, and what's its most important parts of that, that myth as you, as you layout?.

So, studs Turkel was from Chicago, a celebrated radio journalist. And his oral histories were then that he had interviews with a wide variety, everyone from admirals to privates, from people who worked on the home front to those who served in combat.

And he had wrote several books or turned these interviews into several books and the one in particular called The Good War Focuses on World War II.

In that book, he managed to preserve as he did in all of his books a sort of full range of attitudes toward the war. And he made no attempt in that book to iron them all out into a single narrative. They revealed the degree to which the mythology had not quite taken hold. Ah. And so I read in, in their, in that book, wildly divergent testimonies about sacrifice, for example.

So you would have people interviewed and say, we didn't sacrifice for many people who grew up in the depression, the war brought the first job, the first real money they had ever seen, and so people would talk about, I had some money. Right. I, I didn't really care what was going. I had a job. Right. Really prac, and I don't, I don't, I don't condemn them for that. Yeah. Nor does, nor does Turkel. That's the wonderful thing about the book. He preserves these many voices and doesn't try to make them all agree.

You have people who, who served and were deeply patriotic and deeply invested in the cause. You had other people who were drafted and went where they were told, and never and freely admit that. And it was the worst experience of their lives.

So you have the, the full gamut of emotional responses to the war in that book, but only 10 years later, really, by the time of these 50th anniversaries, that narrative really is smoothed over. And I think we have a far less complicated. And more deeply nostalgic and sentimental view of the war, which is embodied, of course in this phrase, good war used without irony.

Not the way Turkle used it, ironically, but without irony. And then the concept of the greatest generation. I mean, my father was a member of this generation. Why would I not want to think it was great, but I don't, I'm not really sure what that means or whether that's a provable claim or why we even need to make it.

It was you. You can honor someone's sacrifice without that kind of hyperbole. And I'm not sure that turning everyone into a hero helps us actually understand the complexities of history.

Dean: What do you attribute the reason for, as you titled The American Amnesia? Like why was this, this narrative smoothed over and this mythology created?

Samet: So it, it fit very nicely, I think with a really a Reagan era message about who America was. And again, it was a, a post-Vietnam kind of resurrection of American power. The end of the Cold War contributed to that, I think. And I think it only intensified really in some ways during our latest conflicts, which seem in their own way, even more confusing than Vietnam.

And so going back to an earlier period, which has a comparative clarity and then even exaggerating that clarity, I think gives us it's a sort of a, it's a, it's maybe a, a very human reaction when we find ourselves in you. You talked earlier about preparing cadets for, for volatility and uncertainty.

That is our world. It's always been our world, but it, it takes new shapes, new guises. But to, to look for a period in which there was greater agreement about things or at which we imagined there, there was gives us a sense of strength and, and comfort. Nations can't live without their myths, but at a certain point they can also do damage because they, they don't let us think about the future clearly.

Yeah.

Dean: So, so back to that point to, to myths and legends. They're, they're important for lots of pragmatic reasons. I mean, there, there is, as you pointed out, you do need. To be able to inspire people to fight. You do need to inspire people to, to rise up and do certain things. You can't have, you can't have soldiers be too conflicted.

Sometimes they have to just act. But you also pointed out that these myths and legends can also be damaging. So does there need to be a balance? How, is there a balance? What's, how do you do that balance?

Samet: I think there really, there, there does need to be a balance. It's the same way that when you, you first teach children about history, you teach them about George Washington and the cherry tree, right?

You don't teach them about the, the his failures and successes and the revolution. You don't teach them about the constitutional convention. You don't teach them a about the fact that he, you know, about the Newberg mutiny, which has its own Sure. Wonderful myth about it. So these are, these are ways to introduce us to, to the complexity of history of the, of the world, of our country. But at a certain point, you have to move beyond those myths in order to grow and change. I mean, I Lincoln, who is I think always, I, I think of him as the sort of the great teacher. But he, he has a speech in which he talks about what would've been the greatest generation of his own era, which was the revolutionary era, the Washingtons of the world.

And he, everybody looks on them with reverence. They're dying off. It's the same way we talk about the greatest generation. And he says they were giants, but he said the, their great virtue, which was passion, they needed passion. They were, they were running a revolution, right? Is not the characteristic that will most help now.

And he's talking about antebellum. Where he's seeing lynchings and riots and mob violence, and he says, we need something else. We need cool, sober reason. And as a result, he talks about the, the fact that he can, he can look at this generation and admire it for what it did, but not necessarily feel nostalgic about it, not feel that we need a return to those earlier values.

I mean, there's a, for me, there's a, great irony that a country that's always been predicated on the future about starting over, about reimagining and Lincoln was one of our great re imagineers. Frederick Douglass was one of our great re imagineers that the great potential of the United States looking toward the future that we seem now to be looking backward all the time.

Dean: What is that? How do you, what do you think that's an indication of looking backwards?

Samet: I think that. That it's tied in with this notion of trying to find a, a kind of greatness, a a lost greatness. I mean, it's a strange, it's a strange place that we find ourselves, Ian. I think that after World War II, we were thrust onto a position on the world stage that we hadn't anticipated, and it gave us a certain kind of significance in the world as a, as a leader in the world, it gave us a kind of mission.

And I think that that has begun to dissipate in many ways. And so I'm, I think it's about reinvention. And reinvention seems to me always about drawing on the strengths and traditions of the past. But moving forward, it's, it's a, it's the challenge we face at a military academy. Sure. Right. We, Dr.

Redraw strength from our,

Dean: I don't know what you're talking about. There's no traditions here to Elizabeth here. There isn't, I've never seen one, but I guess you've seen a few. I do think it is an interesting question. This. This balance, because you're right, there's real power on looking to the past as well as understanding the past so that you can learn from it.

But on the other hand, going, you know, looking back too much in my opinion, also indicates either fear of the future or lack of confidence, or, and so there's something about being able to, and I I'm not gonna say it quite as eloquently as you, you know, as paraphrasing Lincoln, but basically admiring without venerating you know, past achievements and recognizing that maybe we do need to do something different to, to be able to evolve and change.

You suggest there in the book, there are some costs of remembering World War II in, in this you know, this, this, again, I don't, I, you know, this particular way, which might be too rosy, might be too even glamorous. What is the cost of remembering it? Through Rose Prim glasses or looking at it with such, you know, admiration versus seeing it for what it really was or, or as you know, Mr. Turtle basically laid out that there was this variance of voices and opinions and views on, on the conflict both internally and externally.

Samet: So, romanticizing the war in the way that we have leads us to focus on the European theater and not to think so much about the Pacific, because it's harder to tell that story.

In the Pacific, the immediate calls to war after Pearl Harbor were calls for vengeance, it's hard to equate calls for vengeance with the figure of the righteous liberator that we have developed. And so we focus on the European theater to a greater extent.

And I think that because we back date our interest in defeating fascism, we really distort the war itself in, in some very powerful ways. One of, one of the stories that I tell is that of a group of people called the premature anti-fascists, the paths, as they were called, and these were Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War.

Some of them were communists, not all of them were, but of course they were a lot. Russia was fighting on the same side. And when they came home, they ended up having FBI files opened on them, and when they tried to join, In World War ii, they were often not allowed in combat positions because they were not trusted.

Mm-hmm. And the OSS made good use of them. But these were people who actually were anti-fascists from the thirties on and recognized this danger. And so there was a great irony in being labeled a premature anti-fascist. But the very fact that we did that suggests something about our attitudes. Countries don't go to war for one reason and one reason alone.

There's a complex network, as you well know of motivations both individually and nationally. But when we reduce it to this one story and a story of liberation, I think we've come to expect that anytime we go to war, that is somehow going to happen. And it ties in with a, a feeling of American exceptionalism that when we use violence, it's always in the service of liberation and it will always achieve those ends.

And so we seem, even though this is not in the war, since this is not worked out the same way, That we seem to be, to have an endless capacity for surprise when it doesn't work out that way. And I think that that's a real danger because it, it costs the, the lives of people. You and I know quite well.

Dean: Two books full of, of many different kinds of, Thinkers, writers and artists from war correspondent and novelists to painters and poets. Can you gimme a few details on a few of some of your favorites that you describe in the book?

Samet: Sure. So one of the people I find most interesting is Ernie Pile, and he's probably the most famous of these journalists of the, the war journalist ends up being killed in the Pacific before the end of the war. And Pile is known for celebrating the gi and the, the, the, the grunt. Yeah. And he does that.

And yet, and he's sort of been, I think he's sort of been co-opted by the, the myth, but when you read a lot of Pile, you realize that it's a lot more complicated than that. Yeah. Right. And that, just reading the whole tapestry of, of those works and thinking about the ways in which he thought about war and thought about peace the ways in which after he came home from London, Which was being bombed at the time and came home to the United States, and it was a completely different world.

And thinking about what does this mean? What, what is America's role? What is its responsibility in this new world? And I think that that feeling is shared by many war correspondent who came home, AJ Lek. Eric Severide, who had, who had been covering the war before the United States entered it. And they came home and the world was on fire and America seemed to sleep to them.

And you know, the lights were on. Yeah. Liebling comes home and he comes on a, on a ship. And he, that's when the news that the America's joined, the war comes, and, and he, he's sort of, it's confusing to him cuz he's been at war, right? Yeah. And, and he, he looks, and the, the lights in the port are all on and he, it just isn't, it doesn't make any sense to him because that's not the world he's been living in.

And so the. The distance between the United States and the rest of the world is really made clear by so many of these journalists who served really bravely throughout, throughout the war.

Dean: So how has your comprehensive works that you have done helped in your interactions with cadets?

Samet: Well, maybe I would sort of flip that around and say if I, if I hadn't had the interactions with cadets, I don't think I would've written the books that I've written up writing.

It goes full circle, but surely I wouldn't. I mentioned reading Grant in graduate school, and, and I did, and he actually was in my, ended up being in my dissertation. I sort of found these military members, but it wasn't the main point. It wasn't what I set out to write about.

It just sort of seized my imagination. But I don't think that I would then have pursued. The, the, the literature and the ideas that I now write about had I been teaching elsewhere. It's possible, but I doubt it. Yeah. Because of course, you know, I, I don't see in my students today little Ulysses s Grant Right.

Running around, but I, but I do see a kind of continuity I love, for example, to take them to the archives and the, it's what I call the hidden history of West Point. We go on Monument Tours all the time. Sure. That's the public history. But what's the hidden history? Well, you go to the archives and you see the 19th Century registers, the library circulation records where you see people like Grant and Sherman and Lee, and then a bunch of unknown people checking out books.

And I tell them that was you right. Centuries ago when you didn't have Netflix. Yeah. And when you were, when it was a privilege to check out a recreational book, and you could only do it on Saturdays. And you had to return it. And if you got in trouble on the, on the fly leaf of some of those circulation records, it says, you know, cadet Reeves cannot check out books by order of the superintendent, because Cadet Reeves had run afoul of the regulations.

And so, you know, thinking about that, thinking about what they read, about what they enjoyed. And so I, I became, I think, deeply interested in military issues, but because I saw in them not just purely an academic field, but something that was real and vital and that had a distinct connection to the people I teach.

Dean: That secret history of West Point, I haven't really thought about, but it's, it's really there. And you point out the archives are a fascinating place to go. And just look around and, you know, you'll see even Whistler will have little. You know, whimsical drawings on his book, like he's sitting in class and board, right?

I mean, it's, there is that connection. What do you think our responsibility as educators is to the next generation of Army officers? How can we best prepare them for what. Some will say is the most difficult of human interactions, which is warfare.

Samet: So I think there are many pieces to that puzzle. And I, and I'll, I'll say as a, I won't answer as a sort of academy wri large, but I'll say from the educator's perspective that I think my responsibility, there are plenty of people around here who prepare them to go to war, technically, tactically. I sometimes think of my role as preparing them to come home in the sense that they always have to, despite the fact that the uniform transforms is meant to transform them and that they learn a sort of new sense of self and they learn how to be officers.

We were just talking about this in, in class today because one of the things that we ask the plebes to do is to memorize and perform a speech from Shakespeare. And I was talking about performance and I said, I think we normally think of that as inauthentic, but you're all learning how to perform. Right.

The, the public performance of an Army officer, you're different. I said, you're different with me. You don't talk to, to me the way you talk to each other in the barracks. And they sort of looked at me, and of course they don't. And I said, you don't talk to me the way you talk to your parents at home either.

Right? That's a different, different thing. So I said, you know, instead of thinking of performance as inauthentic, there can be authentic performance, but sometimes you have to perform, right? You have to, to put on something. And so sort of thinking about that, making sure that they're self-aware, making sure that they never lose who they are when they got here before they got here.

So I have seen sometimes sometimes this happens just after 47 months at West Point. Sometimes it happens after a 30 year career. But I sometimes see people who, who don't have much left after they take off the uniform because I think they've forgotten who they are without it. And I think that all of the.

You talked earlier about the, this is sort of coming from a circle, but you talked about the difference between training and education. I think education is about helping them figure out who, who they are and who they will be even after their service, no matter how long that that is, that there is an authentic self there.

And that they need to, to remember always who that is and, and that they have an identity and resources and resilience that will help them because they're gonna have to deal with a lot of difficult things in uniform and out. Yeah. That's good.

Dean: How do you compile a broad and diverse reading list? You just figure out like, I just wanna read something and pick it up, or how do you do it?

Samet: How much time do you have?

Dean: You have 10 seconds go.

Samet: So for the cadets or just in general?

Dean: For yourself?

Samet: Well, I guess I just sort of let my curiosity wander and take me in different places. I've certainly ranged far a field from a kind of conventional literary reading list. I sort of a, a broad range of interests. I think it, it, it is, there are sort of important topics. Military history is one of them. I, I love collaborating with the historians and trying to sort of figure out the ways in which literature and history might illuminate each other.

I, I often get that request from students. I'm going here or I'm going there, and sometimes the stakes are pretty high. You know, I'm, I'm deploying Yeah. Over the last several years, and I need I need a list of your favorite books or the books that I need. In fact, a friend of mine who's a battalion commander just texted me and said, I'm, I'm asking people for, which is a great idea, but I'm asking people for what, what is the, the most important book that I need to read?

You need to say, looking for the Good War. Well, there's that, of course. But I think, I'm not sure that the most important book that for me is the most important book for you. So I'm often hesitant to Sure. To say, I mean, I'll say, this book was really formative for me. But it may hold no interest for you whatsoever.

So I I it's a, it's a very difficult question. I kind of, I, I do ask the cadets to do a version of this. Yeah. In 1 0 2, I ask them to compile something called Desert Island Books, which is based on the BBC program. Desert Island. S a good idea. Yeah. So what books do they wanna take with them? And, you know, I tell them that the, if they answered it on on a Wednesday, they might have a different list on a Thursday, which is often for me, the case, you know, one week I'll be celebrating one book, and then I'll find something else the next, and that'll be the most important book to me that week.

Dean: I would take numerous books on survival in the surviving and desert on. So this will be my final question. So there's been 15 deans of the academic quarter. Where do you rank me in those 15?

Samet: Oh, well, need you asked?

Dean: No, I don't think I do. All right. thanks Elizabeth. Thanks for taking the time.

Thank you. It has been really, really fun.