RADIOMay 28, 2024

THIS is Where Inflation is Coming From

The Federal Reserve may claim to be fighting inflation, but Rep. Thomas Massie joins Glenn to make the case that the Fed is also CAUSING the inflation. Between all the money printing, interest rate changes, and bank bailouts, the Fed is toppling the U.S. dollar, Massie argues. And while you’re suffering, the big banks are getting richer. So, because of this, the Fed has got to go! But what would replace the Fed? Massie gives his top choice …

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: There is somebody that I really respect, that is doing something that absolutely has to happen. You want to fix the country, we must abolish the Federal Reserve right now.

And representative Thomas Massie is on the phone with me now.

Hi, Thomas, how are you?

THOMAS: Hey, Glenn. Thanks for covering this topic. It really needs to happen.

We're done nibbling around the edges. I've introduced the bill to audit the fed for a decade.

We're past that, and we have to end it.

GLENN: Yeah. So explain to people, what the fed is, is what it has been doing lately. It's our central bank. And it has nothing to do with the federal government.

It is a private corporation. Correct?

THOMAS: Yeah. Let me just explain what's happened under Jerome Powell. And I hate to pick on him, but he's the fed chairman right now. And under him, we've seen 25 percent of the value of the dollar, disappear.

Meanwhile, during COVID, the investment bankers, and the Wall Street bankers. Had their best year ever in 2020.

And we hit 7 percent inflation. During COVID.

Thanks to the fed.

They are -- and then let me just tell you about Jerome Powell's background. Because it's indicative of the kind of people that worked there.

He started out as an attorney, and he went into investment banking. Then he went to Treasury. Then he left Treasury. And went into banking.

And investment banking. And it was Barack Obama who put him on the federal Board of Governors.

And then it was Trump who elevated him to chairman, and then it was Biden who renominated him.

This guy is the Uniparty person, who makes the investment bankers rich and everybody else poor in this country.

GLENN: But it's also -- people need to understand, the president can't just nominate anybody, or appoint anybody.

The -- the Federal Reserve -- so all of the -- what is it, seven or eight banks?

The biggest banks. We are not even allowed to know who they are, which is incredibly un-American and leads to all kinds of corruption. They get together, and they say to the president. Here are a few names, that we'll accept. You pick from one of them. Right?
THOMAS: Right. And then when that guy takes the job, who do you think he goes out to have dinner with every night?

I mean, there's this argument that we want our monetary policy to be independent of Congress or the executive branch. But it's a falsehood, that it's independent right now. It's not independent at all.

I mean, Jerome Powell lobbies Congress and the White House to engage in more fiscal stimulus. And then they're working.

I mean, when the Treasury gets their debt monetized by the fed. You think that's an independent thing?

No. That's a carefully orchestrated dance. That's what they've done recently. There's three ways you can get money for the government to spend.

You can either tax the people and get money back. Or you can borrow the money. Or you can just create it out of thin air.

And what they did during COVID, is they created trillions of dollars out of thin air.

And this is -- Congress is to blame as well. Congress spent those trillions of dollars. It's the fed that enabled it. And it's the fed that pulls it off.

GLENN: And it's also the fed.

This is what kills me. You know, they said that, you know, in 2008, these banks were too big to fail. And we have to stop that.

And everything Congress did made these banks stronger and bigger, and hurt the small banks that are not part of the Federal Reserve system, so to speak.

They're not on -- you know, they're not one of the owners of the fed. And it seems to me, Thomas, that every time something is done, the American people are the ones that lose, and the banks get the money. They get richer. And in the end, it's going to be those, however.

What is it? Five or six or eight banks, that make up the fed. Do you know?

THOMAS: I don't know the number.

GLENN: We don't even know the number.

So whatever the number is, those guys are going to be the ones that are currently holding our debt.

Now, as I understand it, whoever holds debt, you have to pay that debt. And I have had bankers tell me. Glenn, we don't have to worry about the debt.

Do you know what just our national parks are worth?

And so we will pay whatever it is they want, we'll have to give that to the banks.

Which will mean, it's a transfer of wealth from the people, to these big banks. It's just obscene.

THOMAS: Yeah. And they have no intention of selling the national parks, by the way. They are just going to take it out of our (inaudible), that's what they're going to do.

And, listen, to your first point there. The fed acts like they're the firefighters, but they are the arsonists.

GLENN: Yes, they are.

THOMAS: They kept rates low. They had easy money for banks to get.

For so long. That the banks, you know, they just assumed it was always going to be that way. You had a few that failed. They came in.

And, well, they failed because the fed then came in. Which whiplashed and raised rates, quicker than they ever raised them before.

And the banks were kind of in this one model. Then the fed comes and does triage on them.

The fed starts out as the arsonist. Then they come in and too the fire fighting by raising rates. Then they come in and bail out the couple of banks last year.

So they are causing the problems that they come in and allegedly solve. But I think we're almost to a point now, where they're running out of levers, where the rubber bands that attach their levers to our macro economy are stretched as far as they are stretched.

Because right now, they're not really in control of interest rates. They might like to think they can lower the interest rate to stimulate the economy again. But the problem is. When they recently put treasuries out for auction. The sovereign funds. In the other countries that oftentimes buy our debt. Said, you know what, that four and a half percent. I don't think that's a good bargain.

I'm not going to buy those. I need a higher interest rate.

GLENN: Would you honestly.

If you had -- you were in charge of a bank. Or you were making loans as a private individual. And you had somebody who came in and ran their life, the way our Congress runs our country, what kind of interest rate would you demand from them, that you would think it's worth taking the risk for that?

THOMAS: Yeah.

GLENN: I mean, it would be easy. Easy in the double digits. And most likely in the mid-double digits for me.

THOMAS: Yeah. And the other thing is then, we try to inflate our debt down.

In other words, we devalue our currency.

So it changes the impact, of let's say the nominal price of our debt in gold, if you can find some outside reforms.

So the Treasury kind of likes inflation. It kills the little guy. It's -- the big guys don't care. Because like we saw during COVID. They just reprice everything on Wall Street. Then the other assets, the fed will prop up by buying them. So they make sure the rich people can survive during inflation.

The poor people can't. Or even the middle class can't. Because you don't have these sort of financial instruments that everybody else has. That the fed takes care of.

And so it -- then the fed is -- when they cause inflation. They solve a little bit of the debt problem.

But the problem is: We're getting to a point, where it's not going to work anymore.

For a while, we had inflation, that was greater than the interest rate, that we were paying on the debt.

So you can see actually -- people will take your debt at those low interest rates, and inflation is that high. You should probably take on more debt. I hate to say it.

They're wising up in the world.

Now, here is something else that happens.

The US dollar is the world currency.

We've mucked with it. But not so much that people don't want it yet.

GLENN: Yet. Yet.

THOMAS: And when you want to. Everybody likes to do their transactions in dollars. But to do a transaction in dollars, you have to hold dollars. So the whole world is holding dollars.

So when we devalue the dollar. We're not just taxing our own people.

We're taxing the entire world. We're kind of like the credit card gets 3 percent of all the transaction at the gas station. We get that 3 percent if we create 3 percent more money every year. Which we typically do. But the rest of the world is getting tired of being used that way. They're tired of our transaction fees. I.e. inflation.

And when they start using alternate forms of money to do their transactions. Or holding different assets in their own sovereign wealth funds. Then we're not going to be able to do that trick, on anybody, except for US citizens.

GLENN: You know --

THOMAS: Again, this is all coming to a head.

GLENN: Thomas, I said this a while back.

Probably 15 years ago.

When this actually happens. We are going to be labeled. Because no politician, in any other country, is going to take responsibility for their own fiscal madness.

Everybody is going to blame it on the United States.

Because we were greedy. Grotesque. And took on so much debt.

That we devalued the dollar. And it's going to affect the entire world.

And, you know, I relayed it. And I know it's for different reasons in some way.

But I look at the way Germany looked at France. At the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II. Is I think the way the rest of the world is going to look at us. We forced. We didn't. France forced Germany into just devastation.

Where they had to inflate their dollar. I mean, it was horrible. We -- the damage that we are going to do, by destroying our dollar.

I don't think we're going to be very popular in the world.

THOMAS: No. And somebody says, okay. If you get -- they've been asking me, what if you get rid of the fed? What do you replace it with?

That's like saying, if you take out a tumor, what do you replace the tumor with?

Then the serious answer is we go back to stable currency.

The government can't manipulate.

You would -- I would prefer to have a gold standard ready.

GLENN: Me too. So I have been told. This is what a serious, serious banker at the fed level has said to me.

Glenn, the reason why we had to get rid of the gold standard. Is at first, we wanted the great society and the Vietnam War. Couldn't afford it.

But there's not enough gold to build and live at the level the world lives, right now.

It -- we had to play funny money. And everybody is in on it. We can't go to a gold standard. Because there's just not enough gold.

Do you buy that?

THOMAS: Well, there's enough gold to do honest transactions.

But you're right. There's not enough gold to do the funny money and to fund all of these wars, for instance. That we've engaged in.

You know, typically, when the government tries to leave some kind of standard that they've been on.

It's because they have to finance a war. And nobody wants to consume enough of their debt to finance the war. So they go off the standard.

Yeah. You can't monetize your own debt. Once you get into that model.

You can't create the funny money. It's real money.

It's hard money. And that's what we should go back to.

And we shouldn't replace the fed with anything. It's Keynesian economics. The whole premise, I know a lot of Republicans may disagree with me. And they may think we need a federal reserve bank.

And that we need to control inflation. But that's the whole notion of Keynesian economics.

That you could create prosperity by tweaking the -- the interest rates and the money supply. And that the free market doesn't have enough signals and feedback. Doesn't react quickly enough. That you can have some experts in an ivory tower.

That need to be turning off to make our lives better. The reality is, the people in the ivory tower, they're investment bankers. They came from investment banking. They're going back to investment banking. They still got ties to it.

And they're tweaking it enough to help their buddies and to keep this going, until the music stops. Which is --

GLENN: So you have introduced HR24 as well, which is the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, to audit the federal reserve. And the act to abolish it. You have a lot of cosponsors. Any chance that this even gets passed, our own House Speaker?

THOMAS: Well, probably not this speaker. But we've got -- not under this Speaker, but under previous Speakers, we have passed Audit the Fed in the House. They've never brought it up in the Senate, or not passed it in the Senate. But yet, people like Bernie Sanders, who sponsored Audit the Fed when he was in the House, then he gets to the Senate and he won't even sponsor it.

But we've got to end it. So we have enough cosponsors. And enough votes to pass audit the fed. It hasn't happened in this Congress. It should happen in this Congress. But, by the way, if it were really part of the government. You could do a FOIA on it. But try FOIA-ing the federal reserve.

GLENN: You can't. You can't.

Thomas, quickly, how can people help?

THOMAS: Yeah.

So the HR number is 8421 for ending the Federal Reserve. We have 22 cosponsors right now. We need more cosponsors. Ask your congressmen to cosponsor end the fed. HR8421.

GLENN: Thomas, thank you very much.

The ONE “forever war” Glenn Beck supports

This Fourth of July, Glenn Beck reveals the only “forever war” he supports. It’s the war Americans have been fighting since our nation’s founding, and we must continue the fight…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Two hundred forty-nine years ago, I think it is tomorrow. Right? Is tomorrow the second, or is it the first?

What day is it today?

So it was 200 -- 249 years ago, tomorrow, that somebody sat alone, in a -- in a one-room hotel room.

And scratched out the words, when in the course of human events. Those are the first six words of a document that is so dangerous!

Still today, so revolutionary.

It was whispered in those candle lit rooms by men who knew. Knew. That if I signed this document, that's a death warrant.

I'm dead!

I'm dead.

But in the course of human events, shh.

Jefferson wrote them!

33 years old. Adams would later say, you do well to revere Jefferson. But he didn't write alone. Basically, I was there too.

And so was Ben Franklin. The ideas were forged in the minds of men like Franklin, who is old enough to know better. And Adams, who was stubborn enough, not to care. And they weren't perfect men. But I love this about the left. They try to make you think.

That you think are perfect. I don't think they were perfect! I mean, Ben Franklin used to walk around naked in his house a lot. That shows, I mean, for as smart as that guy was. It shows, maybe he had a lack of mirrors. But they weren't perfect!

They owned slaves. They argued. They compromised.

How does that make them different than us?
I mean, we should be able to relate to them!

What is it that we tolerate right now?
What is it that we compromise on?

What is it -- what are our failures that future generations are going to go, these people just didn't get it? Perhaps what we should notice is that they, unlike most of us. They were willing to gamble their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

For something that had never, ever been done before. Something entirely new!

The idea that rights don't come from a government, or from a king, or from a parliament.

They don't come from the majority voting. Everyone has certain rights.

You know, for all these people who are, you know -- going in Macy's, and burning down towns. And then stealing clothing. And they're like, because I've been oppressed!

And you can't -- I've got rights, you know.
Yeah. Yeah.

You know who the first people were, to articulate those rights?

You know the only country that actually has stood for those rights?

And we're imperfect!

That idea came from the Founders, that you say you hate.

But the actual rights come from God, which you dismiss!

Think of this. Just ponder this for a second.

That all men are created equal! That their rights are given to them, by a creator.

It's not a political assertion. It's a genius. That's eternal truth!

That's theological dynamite, lobbed straight in to the thrones of Europe.

All over the world, it's still dynamite.

They knew what they were doing.

And I don't mean like, they knew what they were doing.

They had it. No. They knew that the British crown had the largest military force in the world. And these guys, they were farmers. They were printers. They were lawyers. They were a ragtag collection of intellectual and idealists, facing down an empire, where they said, the sun never set on the British empire. Meaning, the colonialism was everywhere!

You could not escape England. And yet, they declared it. We're leaving, without apology!

And they said that when a government becomes destructive of the ends of liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness, it's not only the right of the people, it's their duty to throw it off!

Wow. And you know what is amazing? That's not rebellion.

That's -- that's not revolution. That's -- that's responsibility.

That -- that kind of language today, that would have you flagged, shadow banned. Labeled an extremist. In most countries, disappeared!

But that is the foundation of what we call America. The American experiment. And it's that. The American experiment.

And it's just that, an experiment. We didn't know if we could get it right. And we haven't gotten it right. But isn't it worth experimenting?

Isn't it worth trying to get that concept right?

When you fail on that concept, you're like, eh. That's a stupid idea.

That's not a stupid idea. That's the greatest idea of all time.

Why are so many people willing to just quit?

The experiment is self-rule. It's not perfect.

Never has been. Slavery. Jim Crow. Internment camps. Assassinations.

My God! Forgive us, for what we have done.

But at the same time, what nation has done more to correct its own errors?

What people have shed more blood, not for conquest, but for freedom.

Twice in the last century, we crossed oceans. Not to claim territory. But to liberate that territory!

Our sons and daughters fought and bled on foreign soil to push the darkness back, to fight against Naziism and fascism and Communism. And here we are. Here we are today.

After 249 years tomorrow of that experiment, standing at the lip of the very abyss, those men feared.

A godless chaos, rising in the east and a cold atheistic utopia, clawing at the foundations of the Western world. Islamism and Communism, two ideologies that have killed tens of millions of people. Now dressed all in new robes, selling old lies.

And we can't even teach a child where their rights come from. We have replaced Jefferson and Adams with TikTok influencers and bureaucratic groupthink.

We're raising generations to not even know the truth about their own identity.

But to question their identity. And they could be, oh, you're a funny, funny colored unicorn today. What do you want to be tomorrow?

We don't teach them anything about truth, or their inheritance, most importantly. Their inheritance. What good are hot dogs and fireworks, if the soul of the nation is up for auction? What is the meaning in Fourth of July, if we have forgotten the why? If we don't even call it Independence Day anymore. Most people don't even know who we fought against for independence.

They think we fought for its independence! Most people think we fought the South!

And yet, we'll light the sparklers, or blow our fingers off, because we're just that stupid.

This Independence Day weekend, would you do me and yourself and your country a favor, and read the words out loud. Speak the words out loud.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with one another.

And to assume among the powers of earth, the separate, but equal station, to which the laws of nature.

And nature's God entitle them.

A decent respect to the opinions of mankind, requires that they should declare the causes, which impair them to the separation.

What are they saying?

Look, we want to be decent people.

We want to be decent people.

And we have to separate them.

But we believe it's only right that we tell you why we have to separate. And it's not because of all the bad things you've done. We'll get to those later. It's because we're different. And you don't understand. You have been telling us all of these things, we no longer believe in. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal, and they're endowed by their creator with certain inalienable. Unchangeable rights.

And just among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, government are his instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

My gosh. Read those words. And let your children hear what thinking and courage sounds like.

That to secure these rights, I'm telling you, the king, who thinks that your government was given to you, by God.

And you are the ruler.

And you will tell everybody what to think, what to do. What to buy. What to sell. What to tax. What not to tax. Who gets land. Who doesn't get land.

No, no, no. Government are his instituted among men, deriving their powers, their just powers, from the people. And that government is only there, established by those men to protect the rights that God has given each of those men.

Let them feel the chill, that runs down the spine, when Jefferson writes, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government, or from the governed. Let them hear the words, of -- of responsibility. What responsibility sounds like, with courage and freedom. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

And to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their a lot of and happiness.

In other words, you have the right, you have the responsibility to stop tyrants. And if the government has gone bad, to throw that government off.

But reconstitute a government, that will do a better job at protecting those rights. Not to form a communist government.

Not to do anything else. But you want a new government?

Fine! Let's find the way to make men more free. This is not a metaphor. This is a declaration of war on tyranny in all of its forms.

I mean, I said, yesterday, freedom isn't free.

It was paid for by somebody's blood. But you have to remember, they paid for their freedom, not for our freedom, necessarily.

We -- there comes a time, we have to pay for our freedom. And God forbid, that it comes down to blood.

But at least shake off the apathy. We -- we must renew this promise of this experiment of America.

We need to fight for it as well. An out-of-control government that seeks to rope us into forever wars, over and over again. We're all against forever wars. I'm against it.

I hate them.

But there is one forever war, that is required in a free society. A different kind of forever war.

A war against ourselves, a war against human nature in each of us. Because of human nature, we get fat. We get lazy.

We get tolerant of abuses. Let your children hear you speak these words. And when you speak them, ponder them yourself.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes.

And accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind is more disposed to suffer while the evils are sufferable than to right themselves, by abolishing the forms in which they're accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a sign to reduce them under absolute despotism.

It's their right. It's their duty. To throw off such government. And provide new guards for such future security.

In one paragraph, we make the point twice. And they tell us, look, we've studied people.

We know you're going to get fat and lazy and apathetic. And you won't want to do stuff for transient causes. Because this is really not good.

But when push comes to shove. And everything is moving towards absolute despotism. Absolute tyranny. Then you must stand up.

I ask you to ponder this. This particular part, when a long train of abuses and usurpations. Prudence will indeed dictate that governments long established should not be exchanged for light and transient causes.

And accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind is more disposed to suffer while the evils suffer, than to right themselves.

Aren't we exactly the same people, that their experience was talking about?

Aren't we the people that are more disposed to suffer, than to right ourselves? Because we're too comfortable. Or we're too afraid, just to stand up and simply say no to lies.

No!

There is a difference between men and women.

No! Communism is to be feared. It's killed over 100 million people, in the last 100 years.

No!

Muslims aren't bad. Islamism is!

It's evil. No!

You can peacefully protest, any time, any place. And I will fight to the death for your right to do that.

But when you start burn cities down to the ground, no!

We're just a few days away. And we have marked our 249th birthday. Maybe. Just maybe, this year, can we stop asking what America was, and start deciding what America will be?

Where it just slips quietly into history. In the dark of apathy and ignorance.

Because the only thing more dangerous than tyranny is the people who have forgotten what it took to break its chains.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

We need REAL jobs in America — Trump should do THIS now!

It is clear we need to create more productive, high-paying jobs for American citizens. But that doesn't mean bringing back the same exact jobs of the past in massive numbers. It means creating and supporting jobs of the present and future that will better the lives of Americans. Glenn Beck and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts break down exactly what this entails and how President Trump can make it a reality.

Watch Glenn Beck's FULL Interview with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts HERE

The most INCREDIBLE World War II story you’ve NEVER HEARD

One of the biggest American World War II cemeteries in Europe is in a small town in the Netherlands, where thousands of Dutch people continue the tradition to this day of “adopting” a fallen US soldier and checking in on his family. “The Monuments Man” author Robert Edsel joins Glenn Beck to tell this incredible story, which he documents in his new book, “Remember Us.”

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Robert, welcome back to the program. How are you, sir?

ROBERT: Great to talk to you!

GLENN: It's great to talk to you.

Can you remind me? You were on with us, after Monuments Men. And you talked about this great service that is still going on, where people that -- they were still looking for paintings and pieces of art, that had been taken by the Nazis.

And if I remember right, didn't somebody in our -- our own audience reach out to you, and say, I think we found one of those paintings?

ROBERT: Yes, sir. Absolutely.

The Glenn Beck audience. And Glenn Beck, you yourself deserve a lot of credit.

Because I hadn't walked out of your studio last time. You know, in Dallas at Las Colinas.

Headed back to our office at Monuments Men and Women Foundation office, before someone in my office contacted me and said, we've already had a lead, as a result of your interview with Glenn. And it turned out someone whose aunt had been given two paintings during World War II.

She had worked for the government overseeing Germany, and these two paintings were missing.

We were able to identify who the rightful owner was, and get them back.

So it's a great thing that you performed. And, you know, it's a magnificent conclusion, though obviously a very difficult part of history.

GLENN: What was it like to give that back to the family?

ROBERT: It was a deeply moving experience. We -- the foundation found and returned more than 30 works of art, from paintings to documents, ancient books. Tapestries, to museums. Individual collectors, and so on.

And, you know, when we see, oftentimes, the people just stand there, and they cry.

They don't even know what to say. Because they may have worked 50 or 60 years, trying to find some work of art that's been missing. And they haven't had leads. And to -- to see us standing there, with something that belongs to them.

Not asking for anything in return. Don't charge anybody for doing it. Because we feel like everybody who went through World War II already paid enough.

Words -- words just fail. It's just pure gratitude.

GLENN: I can't wait for you to tell this new story.

Tell me the story of the care takers. The care takers of --

ROBERT: Well, it's a story that found me, just as Monuments did.

I have written about -- in the Monuments Men, I told the story of two Monuments Officers who were killed in combat, one British soldier and one American, Walter Huchthausen. And Huchthausen was killed. He once did a last casualty at war. He was killed in the last month of World War II, and is buried in the American benevolence, American cemetery, in Margraten in the Netherlands. I knew that story, and I had made mention of a young girl who was harbored in September '45, asking for the address of his mother, wanting to write her and tell her, that she walked 5 miles, several times a week, from her house to the American military cemetery. It was called then. To put flowers on his grave. Because her family knew them. And they were grief-stricken to know that they were killed.

And I knew that story too. I mentioned that. And then in 2015, the nephew of Huchthausen wrote me and included a photograph of this elderly lady with this crown of white hair. And he said, here's a photo with Frida, and I couldn't place who this was.

I had no idea who it was. And I realized, my God, this is that 19-year-old girl that is still alive. So I flew to England. She married a British soldier after the war. And I went to meet with her. She started showing me photographs of when the American -- Americans liberated her area of the Netherlands.

And all these American soldiers that they knew.

And she said, you know about the American military cemetery.

She said, have you been there?

And I said yes. And she said, so you know about the great adoption program?

And I said, what? She said, the great adoption program.

I said, I have no idea what you're talking about. So I started doing some research on this. And learned, at the end of World War II, our largest World War II cemetery in Europe, was not Normandy. It was the Netherlands American cemetery, where 17,800 boys and a few women buried at this cemetery by May 1946.

And by that time, every single grave had a Dutch person, a local person, who volunteered to be an adaptor of that brave.

Go out there on the first death date of the soldier, Veterans Day, Memorial Day.

And if they had the contact information for the next of kin, send them a photograph of the grave.
And a letter.

Because they realized, it was okay to adopt the bodies of dead boys.

But where the real need was, was to reach across the ocean, into the American homes and try to assuage the grief of the families.

And they knew some of these boys. And I found it the most heartwarming, uplifting, and certainly unique conclusion to a World War II story that I think has been written.

GLENN: So are they still some of them still doing this?

ROBERT: Not some. In fact, there were about -- in 1940, 748.

American families were given the choice to have their loved ones sent home, or to be left overseas in a military cemetery.

The Army had no idea, how many -- how many families would want their boys sent home, and as a consequence, they couldn't tell how many cemeteries they would need.

We thought almost everybody would want to have the families sent home. But it turned out not to be the case. So about 61 percent came home. About 39 percent stayed in Europe, which was about the numbers from World War I.

Although, the numbers in this area, in the Netherlands were higher.

The -- the graves that are there now.

There are 10,000 boys there. And four women.

8300 graves. 1700 names on the walls of the missing.

Every one of them has an adaptor for 80 years.

All those graves have been adopted, without interruption.

There's a waiting list of almost a thousand people in the Netherlands, to become a doctor. This is a -- not just a --

GLENN: This is --

JASON: A privilege. Because they take their kids out to the cemetery. They turn the cemetery into a classroom. And you go out there. And, yes, there's a somber element. They're instilling in their kids, you're able to think, and say what you want to. Because of the freedom that was given to you, by this American girl or boy. And we don't do that in our country anymore.

GLENN: So this is one of the most incredible stories that I've -- I've ever heard.

And I'm shocked that the world doesn't know this!

Is -- have you -- is there anything like this, anywhere else in the world?

JASON: No. We couldn't even find a comp of any nature.

There are -- that is not to say, the people in Normandy area, don't care about Normandy and other cemeteries. They do, of course. As do the Belgians in other cemeteries.

But there's no place that created an organic great adoption program, during the war, in January 1945!

These people in this area of the Netherlands were so grateful, having been neutral in World War I.

And having not lost their freedom for 100 years!

And they didn't like it!

And when the Americans liberated them in September 44. I'll never forget this woman Freda. This elderly woman I met, looked at me, the first time I interviewed her. I knew her for eight years. The last eight years of her life.

I delivered a eulogy two summers ago. She looked at me, there were the eyes of the 19-year-old. And she said, when I saw that first tank over the hill and I realized, we were saved.

I looked at my dad, and I said, Papi, these American boys come all the way across the ocean to say this. And there were tears in her eyes.

Because they didn't -- they couldn't imagine how we could have moved that equipment across -- across the ocean.

And why we would have cared so much.

So there isn't anything like it.

But January 45, these people in this little town of Margraten.

A mile from the cemetery, organized a meeting of the town leaders. The town who got 1200 people.

And they were trying to find an answer to the question: How do you thank your liberators, when they're no longer alive to thank? And they came up with this idea of this great adoption program, and it's a story that I tell, following the lives of about 12 different American combat soldiers.

Bomber recipients.

Tankers.

Because we don't know that story.

We don't what knows to an American story, when they're killed on the field of battle.

Because it's depressing.

We move on to the next scene in a movie.

Well, I want people to know, you started your program with freedom is not free.

It's ugly.

Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what the cost is.

Let's talk about the stripping line that the body goes through, and the removal of dog tags, one being put in the mouth, if there's still a head. And the other being nailed to the cross, because they don't have time to stencil the names on yet.

Let's talk about that, and let people know, it's not just a Marvel movie. Or a gang war.

This is real. This is painful. And, of course, at the end of the war, when we Americans declare victory, and move on with our lives, there's millions of family members in the United States, whose lives will never be the same.

So it is -- it's still happening today. It's still happening today.

GLENN: The name -- the name of the book is Remember Us.

And take us -- I mean, because that's really kind of the -- the -- the beauty of it.

Take us through the rest of the book, just briefly.

It starts with what?

ROBERT: Well, I follow -- I began what a nice life was in the Netherlands. Until May 10, 1940.

And the Netherlands does not get much attention from World War II, and yet everybody has heard of Battle of the Bulge. And Battle -- those are all within 50 miles of what we're talking about.

They happened around there. Of course, World War II, in western Europe, begins right here in this area. Because the German tanks roll across the border.

So I cover the life of these 12 different Americans. I interviewed all their family members. Some make it through the war. Some don't.

You read the book, you realize who makes it, who doesn't. But their lives converge around this area of the Netherlands. And when post-world War II stories end, with the war being over, remember us kicks into a transcendent moment when the Dutch come up with this idea of this great adoption program. The Americans refuse to provide the names and addresses of the next of kin.

So they're foiled with trying to achieve their ultimate objective. Which is to try to contact all the American families.

And frustrated, there was -- one of the key figures of the book.

A woman who is the mother of 12 children.

Who takes it upon herself. She's a woman of action.

She writes president Truman. And pleads for him to get involved.

When that doesn't work. She gets on the first airplane, she's ever flown on. She leaves her kids behind.

She flies to New York. Lands in LaGuardia Field.

She goes to Washington, and meets the members of Congress. Including a young guy from Texas, named Lyndon Johnson.

Who says, young lady, you need to go to Texas. Because there are so many military bases there.

She flies to our hometown. And lands in Lovefield.

In June of 1946. And is met by two family members. And for five weeks, she lives with American families, that lost somebody during a war.

And to each of them she says, leave your boys with us. When the election comes.

We will watch over them, like our own forever.

And they have done that. Now, today, these 10,000 Dutch doctors only have contact information for 20 percent of the American families.

They couldn't ever get the others.

GLENN: You're kidding me. Where is the list? Do you have a list?

ROBERT: Yeah. The Monuments Men and Women Foundation entered into a joint venture with the Dutch Foundation for Adopting Graves.

Not charging anybody for this. And we have created a website called foreverpromise.org.

And on that website is a list of all 10,000 men and women, more women that are buried at the cemetery, or whose names are on the walls missing.

And it's a searchable database. We're asking people to go and see. Do you have someone you know, or a relative, who is buried there.

And if so, we have a short questionnaire. What's your relationship? Are you aware of this great adoption program? Are you in contact with your adopter? Would you like to be? Would you allow us to share your contact information?

I connected a lady from Richmond, Texas. Saturday night. To her -- to this young Tammy, that's the adopter of her brother.

She's 93 years old.

She was in tears. At the thought when she leaves this world, there will be someone there to watch over her brother.

And that's what we're all about is this connecting.

GLENN: Rob, I have to tell you.

You've really done something with your life. I mean, I know you don't need me to say it.
But what a great job you have. And what a great service you have done for so many years.

Thank you so much.

Please, look this up.

The forever promise project.

You can find it at foreverpromise.org. Foreverpromise.org. Robert Edsel is the author's name. The book is Remember Us. It's a perfect read for this week.