Pritzker Military Museum & Library Podcasts

Longtime Navy SEAL Steve Fitzgerald—whose personal artifacts are on display as part of the Museum & Library's SEAL The Unspoken Sacrifice exhibit—discusses his experiences from a 24-year career in Naval Special Warfare, sharing insights on the notoriously…

Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson joins James Cornelius, Curator of the Lincoln Collection in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum for a discussion about the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Sponsored by The Churchill Centre. Greg Burns interviews author Paul Reid. William Manchester was a tremendously successful popular historian and biographer whose books include The Last Lion: Visions of Glory, The Last Lion: Alone, Goodbye Darkness, A…

Moderated by John Allen Williams, this distinguished panel discussed the Battle of the Atlantic from a global perspective.

Sponsored by the National WWII Museum. The experience of the already war-wearied American G.I.s who liberated the extensive network of Nazi concentration camps during WWII is something most of us can even imagine and was something they made sure to never…

Sgt. Dakota Meyer, the first living Marine in 3 decades to receive the Medal of Honor, discusses his book Into the Fire, about the battle of Ganjigal.

Sponsored by Easter Seals, Inc with additional support from Chicago Foundation for Women. Moderated by Stacey Baca of ABC 7 News, this distinguished panel discusses the important issues facing female veterans in today's military.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy converted two existing lake steamers into aircraft carriers. The Navy acquired two vessels from the Cleveland and Buffalo Transit Company and converted them into the USS Wolverine and USS Sable. Retaining…

Walter Sobel, despite already being an accomplished architect from Chicago, signed up for the Navy prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, experiencing attacks by kamikaze pilots on the deck of the USS New Mexico in Lingayen Gulf.

Sponsored by the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. A collaboration between the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Pritzker Military Library, we present a powerful conversation between veterans from World War II, Vietnam and the Iraq/Afghanistan…

Sponsored by Norwich University. Pritzker Military Library and Norwich University present a discussion between two highly respected historians and journalists, Rick Atkinson and Sir Max Hastings about the role that embedded journalists play in military…

This program features four United States Generals from the U.S. Army Reserves, the United States Marine Corps, The United States Marine Corps Reserves, and the Illinois Army National Guard, and a Colonel from the Illinois Army National Guard who discuss…

Vietnam veteran Paul Baffico flew more than 200 combat missions with the 101st Airborne Division during the war, and returned home to a community that couldn't--or wouldn't--understand what the military's sacrifice had been about.

This distinguished panel featured three American veterans who were prisoners of war in different conflicts. They discussed their experiences as POWs and how they endured their time in captivity.

Jim Bresnahan leads a panel of historians in exploring an alternate history of World War II in this episode of Citizen Soldier. Sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute.

Serving in the United Sates Navy at the end of the Korean War, James Darby used his love of languages to serve his country, learning to be a Communications Technician and deciphering Russian radio communications during the Cold War.

In support of the Museum & Library’s SEAL The Unspoken Sacrifice exhibit, Mike Ryan shares his experiences over the course of 40 years in the military—including training and graduating with the first BUD/S class to receive the SEAL Trident, operations…

World War II veteran David Markow enlisted in the Army just before the U.S. entered the war; he helped to prepare artillery weapons by testing them at Aberdeen Proving Grounds before ultimately deploying to Europe in support of the troops already fighting…

A Marine aviator and veteran of the 1968 Tet Offensive, Wayne Fischer completed nearly 700 combat missions during the Vietnam War, piloting helicopters for insertions, extractions, and MEDEVAC operations.