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Eisenhower National Historic Site's 2025 World War II Weekend will take place on September 20 and 21, with evening programming beginning on September 19. For a full schedule, visit us here.
Explore the leadership of George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower. Discover the legacy of Iwo Jima and the Enola Gay. Learn about the lasting impact World War II had on the United States and those who fought for victory 80 years ago with this year's speaker lineup for World War II Weekend.
See the information below for full bios and talk descriptions for this year's speakers. This schedule is subject to change. The final schedule of programs for World War II Weekend will be published in August.
Please note: There will be two book signings as part of this event, both at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center.
Friday, September 19, 7:30 pm, with Rick Atkinson (this will follow the evening program with Rick Atkinson, see information below).
Saturday, September 20, 3:30 pm, with Dr. Cameron McCoy and Rachel Thompson.
Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian Rick Atkinson
Image courtesy of Rick Atkinson
1945 and Beyond: A Conversation with Rick Atkinson
Friday, September 19, 6:30 PM, Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center
This program will take place in the theater of the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center. This program is free of charge, though reservations are required. Information on tickets and reservations will be available in mid-August.
Eighty years ago, World War II came to an end with the surrender of Axis forces to Allied powers in both Europe and the Pacific. After six years and over sixty million deaths, the deadliest conflict in recorded history was finally over. Though the guns fell silent, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the United States, and the world had been forever changed by the conflict.
Join Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian Rick Atkinson for a conversation on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s leadership, the craft of writing military history, and the legacy of World War II. This program will cover Atkinson’s acclaimed Liberation Trilogy on the Second World War, as well as his recent work on the American Revolution, including discussion of Dwight Eisenhower, George Washington, and their leadership principles.
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Rick Atkinson is two time Pulitzer Prize winning author, historian and journalist, who has written eight narrative histories about five American wars. His latest book, The Fate of the Day: The War for American, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, is the second volume in a trilogy he is authoring on the American Revolution. Atkinson previously wrote the Liberation Trilogy, a narrative history of the liberation of Europe in World War II. The first volume, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, received the Pulitzer Prize and was acclaimed by the Wall Street Journal as “the best World War II battle narrative since Cornelius Ryan’s classics, The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far.” The second volume, TheDay of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, drew praise from the New York Times as “a triumph of narrative history, elegantly written…and rooted in the sight and sounds of battle.” The final volume of the Liberation Trilogy, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, published in May 2013, ranked #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The Wall Street Journal called it “a magnificent book,” and the New York Times Book Review described it as “a tapestry of fabulous richness and complexity…The Liberation Trilogy is a monumental achievement.” His other books include The British Are Coming, The Long Gray Line, In the Company of Soldiers, and Crusade.
Atkinson’s many awards include the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for history; the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting; and the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for public service, awarded to the WashingtonPost for investigative articles directed and edited by Atkinson on shootings by District of Columbia police officers. He is winner of the 1989 George Polk Award for national reporting, the 1989 John Hancock Award for excellence in business writing, the 2003 Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award, the 2007 Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense, the 2010 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, the 2013 New York Military Affairs Symposium award for lifetime achievement, and the 2014 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for Military History. In December 2015 he received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, previously given to Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, and David McCullough. In 2019 he was named a Vincent J. Dooley Distinguished Fellow of the Georgia Historical Society.
Atkinson has served as the Gen. Omar N. Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College, where he remains an adjunct faculty member. He is a Presidential Counselor at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, an elected member of the Society of American Historians and the American Antiquarian Society, and an inductee in the Academy of Achievement, for which he also serves as a board member. He previously served on the governing commission of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.
Born in Munich, Germany, Atkinson is the son of a U.S. Army officer and grew up on military posts. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from East Carolina University and a master of arts degree in English literature from the University of Chicago. He and his wife, Dr. Jane Chestnut Atkinson of Lawrence, Kan., a retired researcher and clinician at the National Institutes of Health, live in the District of Columbia. They have two grown children and four grandchildren.
Author and historian Rachel Thompson
Courtesy of Rachel Thompson
Rachel Thompson--George C. Marshall: Enlightened Leadership Across Continents--from Wartime General to Statesman
September 20, 10 AM, Eisenhower National Historic Site Speaker's Tent
When George Marshall became Secretary of State in 1947, some questioned the choice of a career military man in this role. The answer is that Marshall had treaded the turbulent waters of international diplomacy throughout an entire world war. His collaboration with Dwight Eisenhower in planning of the cross-channel invasion in 1944 was only one part of his delicate and complex negotiations with other formidable leaders whose very survival depended on the outcomes of war, including Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Those experiences uniquely qualified him to take the lead in defining the crucial role the United States would play in post-war recovery through the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan.
Rachel Yarnell Thompson is the Marshall Historian at The George C. Marshall International Center, located on the site of Marshall’s museum home in Leesburg, Virginia. In 2014, the Center published Ms. Thompson’s full-length biography, Marshall: A Statesman Shaped in the Crucible of War. She lectures extensively on various aspects of Marshall’s illustrious career as soldier and statesman, giving presentations in many venues that have included the George C. Marshall Center for European Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany, the United States Embassy in Paris, state conferences for both the Wisconsin and Colorado National Guards, and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, NY. In 2009, Thompson curated the Marshall Center’s exhibition, “With Affection and Admiration: The Correspondence of George C. Marshall and Winston S. Churchill.” In conjunction with seminars sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and Defense, Ms. Thompson also periodically conducts meetings at the Center linked to Marshall’s mid-twentieth century leadership roles.
Ms. Thompson was for thirty-one years a U.S. History and American Government teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia. A 1962 graduate of Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, she holds a master’s degree from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. Although a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, Ms. Thompson makes her home in Haymarket, Virginia, an outlying suburb of Washington, D.C.
Dr. Cameron McCoy
Courtesy of Dr. McCoy
Dr. Cameron McCoy--
"A Contested Legacy: War & the Men of Montford Point"
September 20, 11:30 AM, Eisenhower National Historic Site Speaker's Tent
Dr. Jared Frederick, pictured atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
Image courtesy of Dr. Jared Frederick
Dr. Jared Frederick--I Hiked Iwo Jima: A Virtual Tour of the Pacific Battlefield
September 20, 1 PM, Eisenhower National Historic Site Speaker's Tent
In March 2023, after three years of Covid postponements, Dr. Jared Frederick had the rare experience of exploring perhaps the most famous World War II battlefield in the Pacific: Iwo Jima. He thoroughly chronicled his journey on film, capturing the terrain, artifacts, and cultural encounters along the way. During the course of the journey, he reflected on the experiences of his own grandfather—an Iwo Jima veteran who had a close call with death. The trip was also a meditation on the meaning of Iwo Jima, especially for the children and grandchildren of combatants who attempt to hike the imposing Mount Suribachi. Frederick's visual presentation will include rich photos and anecdotes from an unforgettable expedition on the other side of the globe.
BIO
A recruiting poster for the Women's Army Corps from the Second World War
Library of Congress
Molly Sampson--"Efficiency, Skill, Spirit, and Determination:" Eisenhower and the Women's Army Corps in World War II
September 20, 2:30 PM, Eisenhower National Historic Site Speaker's Tent
In May 1942, the U.S. Army undertook a grand experiment—enlisting women. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was created to solve a looming manpower crisis, its members filling critical support roles within the Army. Before the first class had even graduated from training, the Joint Chiefs of Staff told WAAC Director Oveta Culp Hobby, "Eisenhower's headquarters is badly in need of clerical help and Waacs seem to be the best answer."
This help, in the form of five WAAC officers, arrived in December 1942, quickly followed by the 149th Post Headquarters Company. The transition from WAAC to the Women’s Army Corps allowed more women to serve overseas. As Eisenhower’s headquarters moved to England, WACs arrived by the hundreds. Their service was crucial to victory. After VE Day, General Eisenhower sent the following message: “During the time I have had Wacs under my command, they have met every test and task assigned them. I have seen them work in Africa, Italy, England, here in France—at Army installations throughout the European Theater. Their contribution in efficiency, skill, spirit, and determination is immeasurable. In three years the Women's Army Corps has built for itself an impressive record of conduct and of service, and given the womanhood of America every right to be proud of their accomplishments.”
This presentation will examine the shared history of General Eisenhower and the Women’s Army Corps, exploring how their partnership shaped the wartime experience, expanded opportunities for women in the military, and left a lasting legacy on the U.S. Army and American society.
Molly Sampson is a passionate World War II historian and museum leader whose research explores the intersections of gender, social, and military history, with a particular focus on the Women’s Army Corps and its vital contributions during World War II. Sampson has presented her work at prominent conferences, including the RAF Museum Conference, the Society for Military History Annual Meeting, the James A. Barnes Conference, and the National World War II Museum’s Women’s History Symposium. She has also brought her expertise beyond academia, curating the exhibition The Triple Victory of the 6888th and serving as a historical consultant for Tyler Perry’s film Six Triple Eight. As Executive Director of the Sandusky Area Maritime Association, Sampson leads the Maritime Museum of Sandusky, guiding its mission to preserve and share the region’s rich maritime heritage
The USS Bunker Hill is struck by two kamikaze planes in May 1945
U.S. Navy Photograph
Dr. Guy Nasuti--The U.S. Navy at Okinawa
Sunday, September 21, 10:00 AM, Eisenhower National Historic Site Speakers' Tent
Dr. Jeremy Kinney, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Image courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum
Dr. Jeremy Kinney--The Flight of the Enola Gay: An End and a Beginning
Sunday, September 21, 11:30 AM, Eisenhower National Historic Site Speakers' Tent
On August 6, 1945, the crew of a modified Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare, called “Little Boy,” on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Another atomic attack on Nagasaki followed three days later. The delivery system for these bombs, the Superfortress, represented the latest advances in American aeronautical engineering and bomber design, and its use in the skies over Japan reflected the evolution of strategic bombing doctrine. As a new and deadly weapon, an atomic bomber, Enola Gay facilitated a turning point in human history as it ushered in the dawn of the Atomic Age and the threat of nuclear war.
Dr. Jeremy R. Kinney is the Associate Director for Research, Collections, and Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He leads the Museum’s research, curatorial, collections, and archives departments and provides counsel and advice on curatorial and museum affairs to the Director and Senior Leadership Team. He curates three collections at the Museum: interwar and World War II American military aviation, air racing, and aircraft propulsion. His research focuses on technology in the United States and Europe over the course of the twentieth century. His book, Reinventing the Propeller: Aeronautical Specialty and the Triumph of the ModernAirplane (Cambridge University Press) received the Gardner-Lasser Aerospace History Literature Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
