Lessons From Women Who Served in WWII

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, HOST: Well, we turn next to the extraordinary women who served in uniform during the Second World War. 350,000 American women signed up, working in the majority of military roles. From the D-Day landings, to the peace negotiations, their contributions to the war effort are often forgotten. In her new book, military analysts, Lena Andrews, documents the critical roles these women served. And she joins Walter Isaacson to discuss the countless ways they broke barriers.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you. And, Lena Andrews, welcome to the show.

LENA ANDREWS, AUTHOR “VALIANT WOMEN”: Thank you so much. It is an absolute pleasure to be here.

ISAACSON: I read your book, “Valiant Women,” and I must say, I’d always thought of women in World War II as that poster of Rosie the Riveter on the front lines, working, you know, in factories and things. I realized they served in all the branches of the military much more extensively. Tell me about that and why we haven’t heard much about that before?

ANDREWS: Well, it’s great point and it’s a problem and an understanding that I think many people in the United States share, myself included. Before I started working on this project, you know, I thought of myself as a World War II expert, and I’ve read pretty much every book under the sun. And yet, it wasn’t until well into my research and just — and writing about World War II that I discovered this group of incredible women. And of course, I knew about Rosie the Riveter, I think we all do. Some of us know about the spies and code breakers who served behind enemy lines, but it wasn’t until I stumbled on women in uniform that I got a sense of the scale and the scope of women’s contributions. So, as some readers may know, over 350,000 American women served in uniform in World War II. To give you a sense of scale, that’s about the size of the current day navy, activity navy. So, a big group. But even more important than the size was their contribution. They were in these critical support roles that are often underappreciated in our broader understanding of war. So, they were doing things like laying cables on the frontlines or fixing and maintaining planes so that they could be sent back to the Pacific, or training men how to use their guns, all these critically important tasks that are often sort of wiped from our understanding of how wars are fought.

ISAACSON: You talk about support roles, were any of them really on the frontlines though, on combat roles?

ANDREWS: Well, it’s a great you asked. So, technically, women were prohibited from serving in combat as they were for many, many years after World War II. But the fact is, combat is a blurry thing. So, if you asked a member of the Army Nurse Corps in 1944 if she was serving on the front lines, she might have a different response than what is listed on paper. Many of these women, particularly in the Nurse Corp, where they were only a few, you know, miles behind the front, end up being captured behind enemy lines, or shot at on their way into airfields in the Pacific or Europe, you know, they have some very, very harrowing stories. And in fact, I think something like 38 women air force service pilots died during the war, you know, 16 American nurses were killed by enemy fire. So, they were certainly if not on the front, close enough to it to be in real danger.

ISAACSON: You say that World War II was unprecedented, not just in its scale, but the way it was fought, of course. How did that — explain what you mean by that and how that opened the way for role of women?

ANDREWS: Yes. So, I think what a lot of people sort of misunderstand about World War II is it wasn’t just huge, it was really innovative. We were talking about a lot of new doctrine that we hadn’t necessarily deployed at large scale before. So, things like amphibious assault or joint combined arms, sort of military terms, but effectively, really innovative and new types of doctrine.

Now, the challenge of those is not just putting them into practice on the front lines, but also, having the man power and the support infrastructure to ensure that they can be effectively deployed on the frontlines, and that’s where women come in. So, things like, for instance, aviation, which hadn’t been deployed on a major scale up until World War II requires lots and lots of maintenance and pilots and trainers and all of those things, and it puts a lot of pressure on the manpower infrastructure. So, that’s where we see a lot of the women supporting a lot of these innovative doctrines.

ISAACSON: Let’s get to the specific, you begin your book with Ann Baumgartner. A really interesting person, interesting background. Tell me the story and why you picked her to begin with.

ANDREWS: I’m so glad you mentioned her. She’s my favorite — one of my favorites, and that’s why I started the book with her. So, Ann Baumgartner, like many women — or many people, I should say, graduated from Smith College in 1939. Totally adrift. She had no idea what to do with her life. She ends up at a medical research laboratory, bored at the end of the day. On the roof of the building, looks up at the sky and sees a plane cutting through the clouds and she decides, I’m going to become a pilot.

And we should all be grateful she did. She’s an incredible pilot. She joined the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots, the WASPs, and is so good that she’s invited to become a test pilot for the U.S. Air Forces — Army Air Forces at the time. And she goes on to be the first woman to fly a jet plane in the United States and to test the B-29 Superfortress, which, for those of you who just saw “Oppenheimer,” should know is the plane that ultimately drops the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So, she’s an incredible story, but one of many not only featured in the book, but one of those 350,000 Americans stories that we’ve sort of left to history.

ISAACSON: One of the ways that World War II was won was not just by physical power, but by computational power. Tell me the role of women who had become mathematicians at very high rate in the 1930s and how important they were in terms of winning the war through computational power.

ANDREWS: Yes. It’s a fantastic story because I think a lot of women were found in many of these niche technical trades that we wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be. So, women like Grace Hopper, who was an incredibly brilliant mathematician, has a PhD and is on the front lines of literally the incredible computing power that becomes the foundation for what we are talking about today. Other women had skills and things like oceanography and niche sciences like zoology, which they had been drawn to because they were sort of quirky and, you know, out of the norm for women. But you find them — the navy finds them in many cases and brings them into the fold, because it turns out when you’ve got 16 million personnel, the computational and accounting power that you need to keep track of all those people and all that equipment is extraordinary.

So, women like Grace Hopper, like Mary Sears were at the forefront of a lot of the technical trades that become the foundation for what for winning World War II.

ISAACSON: What discrimination did these women face?

ANDREWS: So, unfortunately, mistreatment for these women was quite common. And — you know, I think it’s important for listeners and audiences to understand that the 1940s were a different time. And for many women, you know, it could run the gambit of sort of basic sexual harassment and workplace discrimination, things like not getting a promotion, because they wouldn’t take their senior officer, up to and including violence and sexual assault, which I try to deal honestly with in the book because it’s part of the experience. I should also add this was worse for women of color who often face not just sexism but racism and other forms of discrimination to compound that. But the last thing I’ll say, and I really try to convey this, is that while this was a part of the experience for a lot of the women, it wasn’t the entirety of their experience. And they dealt with a lot of these injustices with great grace and integrity and poise, which, quite frankly, as a woman in national security, I found very inspiring.

ISAACSON: You talk about how women of color, in particular, faced discrimination. And there’s this wonderful story I think about a Central Postal Directory Brigade which is a black women’s group, tell me that story.

ANDREWS: This is one of my favorite stories, and I have to say that they are finally getting some of their deserved credit. It’s the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion, led by the incredible Charity Adams, who has a fantastic memoir, I highly recommend to everyone. And they were also — in addition to getting recently receiving in the Congressional Gold Medal, they are also going to be the topic of a Netflix feature film coming up, directed by Tyler Perry.

So, if that isn’t enough of endorsement of their work, I don’t know what, you know, the audience needs. But they are incredible. They are the largest unit of black army women to serve overseas. They are behind the front lines in Europe, in both — in France and they are essentially sorting mail, which to most listeners and audiences don’t — doesn’t — may not sound like a big deal, but mail is an incredibly important lifeline for a lot of the frontline forces, and they are dealing with a backlog of months of sort of vermin infected, male and they’re in this gross warehouse and they are doing extraordinary work getting it through to the men at the front lines who need it to keep fighting. So, I highly recommend folks look into their story. It’s a big part of the book. And I’m just — I’m so honored to be bringing the 6888 to a wider audience.

ISAACSON: When we read this book, we are reminded that women were not in combat roles, they were not fully integrated into the military. And likewise, it’s true of African Americans, somewhat segregated, up until Truman does the integration of the military. To what extent are there parallels between what happened during World War II to bring women more into the military and to bring blacks more into the military?

ANDREWS: There are an enormous amount of parallels, and I think it’s really important to remember that the skepticism that women face was also, you know, certainly being applied to men of color as well. And again, as I mentioned before, women of color were facing it from sort of all directions. And so, there is a real synergy between these two parallel stories and the experiences that there were having.

The final thing I’ll add is that in both cases, they served — both of these groups served with extraordinary honor and valor and it was that service that ultimately changed a lot of the minds of the senior commanders who came out of the war, as you said, ready to integrate women and black — and people of color — black men and people of color into the military forces.

ISAACSON: We recently did a show on — a documentary about the Negro Leagues. And it talked about how the experience of World War II, and African Americans in World War II made it almost inevitable, that in the late 1940s that have to be an integration of Major League Baseball. You likewise talk about, what I think you call a ripple effect, which is, what happens to women after they’ve served in the war and how that leads to their rights movement?

ANDREWS: Exactly. I think, you know, the — when we think about contemporary women’s movement in the 20th century, we often think about the suffragists in 19 — the turn of the century, 1920s, and then we jump right to the women’s liberation movement of the ’60s and ’70s. And what we forget is this huge gap in between, which is essentially the women of the greatest generation and especially the women of World War II. And something I, you know, really try and tease out in the book is that a lot of the first battles, especially related to workplace discrimination, were battles that women were fighting in uniform, because while the military was a war fighting machine, it was also an employer. So, you know, the right to have some power over their carrier, to show value that their skills bring to the table, things as simple as being able to wear pants in the workplace, you know, these are the first battles that the women of World War II are fighting, and the become the foundation for the women’s movement of the ’60s and ’70s. Unfortunately, an often-forgotten foundation. But it’s there, and I am certainly trying to bring it out in the — for readers in the book.

ISAACSON: I can still remember the debate over women in combat, and that was many years after the end of World War II. Tell me how — what happened in World War II — affected that debate and why did it take so long to allow women in combat?

ANDREWS: You know, these issues are really complex, and they’ve got a lot of history behind them, which is difficult, but it’s also helpful because it means they’ve got of history behind them. We can learn a lot from how we’ve addressed these problems in the past. And when I think about women integrating into the larger armed forces, and of course combat integration, you know, I’m actually drawn to World War II, into the past, and I think about commanders like Dwight Eisenhower or George Marshall or Hap Arnold who were all extreme skeptics of women serving in any capacity in World War II. And, again, because of the service that they saw, the experiences that they had with women, they eventually changed their mind. And it was in fact Dwight Eisenhower who led the charge for women to be more fully and permanently integrated into the armed forces. So, I think part of it is just exposure, understanding. And unfortunately, when you prohibit people from even trying, you don’t necessarily get that exposure. So, I would just say, you know, don’t take it from me, take it from Marshall or take it from Eisenhower that are more inclusive military is a better military.

ISAACSON: We have a recruitment problem in the military. I think there’s a shortfall of about 20,000 or so. To what extent can that be helped by a fuller understanding of the role women play in the military?

ANDREWS: I’m so glad you asked, this is one of my favorite topics. I don’t think many people are thinking too much about the recruitment crisis but we are in what is one of the most recruitment environments in decades in the United States, and that should worry everyone because, you know, despite all the hype about A.I., people still fight wars. And if we don’t have enough of them, we’re going to be in real trouble. We know this because in World War II where there was a huge scale that we were trying to get to, I’m talking about, you know, 16 million personnel in uniform, that’s quite a bit of the population, nobody could sit out, and that became pretty clear to commanders like Marshall early on into the rest of the American public, quite frankly, a little bit too late into the war. It was until ’42 or ’43 that really came to that fuller understanding. So, I think if we lose this all, we would all be wise to learn from World War II that the time to make changes to personnel and recruitment is early and often and, you know, well before any sort of combat scenario begins. That’s what we didn’t do in World War II and what we should do today.

ISAACSON: Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has held up all military personnel promotions in the Senate because of an objection to the fact that the military allows women to cross state lines, get abortions, helps facilitate that. If he succeeds, how hard will that be to recruit women into the military?

ANDREWS: Well, you know, women are watching closely. I think women in uniform and women more broadly. And again, it’s a — these are very complexissues. I think it’s a bit unprecedented to have this sort of meddling in national security and defense issues, particularly in the middle of, as we just talked about, an enormous recruiting crisis.

But I do think that too often we forget that women in uniform both in World War II and now are often the canaries in the coal mine on women’s issues. So, again, it would be eerie, if you look back for many people, to look at the conversations that we were having about abortion and pregnancy and World War II, which were very much a part of the conversation, they sound pretty familiar to what we’re talking about today.

And ultimately, they become a distraction to the real issue, which is fighting and winning the war. So, I would just encourage folks to understand that women in uniform are often on the front lines, not just of the battle but of the battle against discrimination, in workplace harassment and things of those nature. So, we should all be watching very closely to see how they react.

ISAACSON: President Biden has just nominated Admiral Lisa Franchetti to be the chief of naval operations, the first time a woman would be a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lead one of the services. How important is that historically and how important is it that you get confirmed and not held up by some of these problems we have in the Senate?

ANDREWS: Well, first of all, can I just say how excited and, you know, energized I am that Admiral Franchetti has been nominated. She is not just a woman but an incredible warfighter, sailor. She is — you know, she exactly what you would hope would be the person in charge of our — you know, of our navy. So, she deserves this role and I hope she gets it.

I do think that the holding up of these promotions is — as the secretary of defense himself has said is really troublesome and very — ultimately could be very problematic, you know, over the long-term. I don’t know if there will be any resolution to that, but it certainly a bittersweet moment to have this incredible moment for women’s progress in the military be a bit overshadowed by some of the more political issues that are going on into the Senate today.

ISAACSON: Tell me about the fact that you’ve been a woman in national security. How did that inform this book?

ANDREWS: Well, you know, unfortunately, as a member of the Intelligence Community, I can’t talk too much about my work, but I can say that I stand on the shoulders of exactly these giants, right? These are the women who kicked open the doors for women like me to study military analysis and to succeed in the national defense trades. And had it not been for their incredible work and their incredible sacrifices, I wouldn’t be here today.

So, part of this is my little tiny sliver of saying, you know, thank you, I appreciate what you do, I see what you do and I know your story because it’s also my story.

ISAACSON: Lena Andrews, thank you so much for joining us

ANDREWS: Thank you. I’m delighted I could be here.

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