JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
There is a hole near Antarctica. And no, this is not a story about the ozone layer or the climate crisis. The hole is actually in a World War II-era globe, one that once belonged to President Dwight Eisenhower. A U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly has confirmed to NPR that the globe was damaged earlier this year after an attempted relocation to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's office, as reported by The Washington Post. In the process, it was dropped, creating that hole in its shell near Antarctica as well as detaching it from its mount. The damage has drawn a lot of criticism from historians, including Ty Seidule. He's a retired brigadier general and a history professor at Hamilton College. And he's on the line to talk with us about all of this. Hi there.
TY SEIDULE: Hi, Juana. Thanks for having me on.
SUMMERS: Thanks for being here. So Ty, if you could, just tell us, when you heard this news, what was your reaction?
SEIDULE: It was sadness, anger and, like, what the heck are you doing?
SUMMERS: For those of us who are not as familiar with this globe as perhaps you are, describe it for us. How big of a globe are we talking about here?
SEIDULE: Yeah. It's a 30-inch globe on a large wooden base that rotates around. So you could almost - like, if you grabbed it, you could spin it. And it was created in the mid-1930s by a British company, and Eisenhower had it there in the Pentagon because he loved globes. But it's important as an artifact. So Eisenhower was the lead planner in World War II. And so the current globe is in the Army's G-3/5/7. That's the Army director in charge of operations, plans and training. And that was Eisenhower's job.
And he got that job because he was the most brilliant guy in the interwar Army. He created the first industrial mobilization plan, the first personnel mobilization plan. He was the greatest officer of that generation. And he planned the entire war, really, from there. And it was a simple plan really - maintain Great Britain in the sea lanes, prevent a German-Japanese junction in India and the Middle East, retain Russia as an active participant in the war. So that globe, what it means to the Army is, is that starting in 1942 with Eisenhower, the Army is a global force, and that's represented by that globe and by Eisenhower.
SUMMERS: Now, The Washington Post broke the story, and they reported that Hegseth's staff sent its own team to relocate this globe. I'm not an expert on this. How are objects like this usually supposed to be moved?
SEIDULE: Very carefully (laughter). And so there's a whole team of people that do this. There's the Center of Military History. There are movers that - and one of these had been moved like - and The Post article says this - like - I don't know - four years ago. And that one, they wrapped it up. And they said, we understand we are taking a part of history, of the Army's history, of the nation's history, and we're going to handle this with kid gloves. And it was during - this happened in February. So there wasn't the experts, and rather than wait - because of the continuing resolution, there wasn't...
SUMMERS: Right.
SEIDULE: ...The right people working then. Rather than waiting on them to do it correctly, the staff just went in there. And, gosh, you know, it's too easy, but it does seem as though it is sort of a metaphor, which is Ike builds coalitions. He builds things, and Hegseth breaks them.
SUMMERS: So the Pentagon sent this statement to NPR, and I'm going to quote it for you. It said, "an accident occurred while staff were transporting a replica of the Eisenhower Globe as part of its relocation. Accidents happen." How would you respond to that?
SEIDULE: Well, if you had a team that was meant to do the job, then yes, accidents do happen. But that wasn't it. We don't know if Hegseth ordered, but his staff sent them down to get this without the training, without understanding what needed to be done, and broke it immediately. So the thing is still there in the G-3/5/7, but it's in pieces. And so, yeah - I mean, yes, accidents happen, but accidents don't happen if you plan and you get the right people to do it, all the things that Ike did throughout his career.
SUMMERS: And we should just be clear here that you've been critical of Pete Hegseth's tenure as defense secretary, including criticizing him for overriding an effort you led to remove confederate names and symbology from military bases in the South. I do want to ask you, in that context, what impression does an incident like this one, a situation like this, give you of Hegseth's brand of leadership?
SEIDULE: Yeah. I mean, I think it's shoot first and ask questions later. He's the exact opposite of Eisenhower, who was this great planner. And I think it's the same way with the Confederate commemoration that Congress ordered us to remove all Confederate commemoration of the Department of Defense. And Secretary Hegseth has put back a picture - a portrait of Lee in Confederate Gray with an enslaved servant in the background is back at West Point. He's ordered a monument to go back in Arlington, which features an overweight enslaved, quote, "mammy" figure. And it's a pro-slavery, anti-United States monument that he's ordered to put back at the cost of $10 million. So he's going against the will of the American people through its elected representatives in Congress. So I think this is just more of the same, which is he does not plan well and executes poorly.
SUMMERS: We have been speaking with Ty Seidule. He's a retired brigadier general and a history professor at Hamilton College. Thanks so much.
SEIDULE: Oh, thank you, Juana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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