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[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSFOfw0615U

These are the true heroes of the Jewish resistance movement in Krakow, Poland. So let me tell you the story of the resistance movement...When the Germans invaded, that was September 1, 1939. That was the start of the war. Germany floods across the border in a blitzkrieg. It was an attack so massive that the country of Poland collapsed. In 25 days, they had surrendered. When the Germans moved in, they said, "All right. Warsaw is the traditional capital, but not for us. We're going to make Krakow the capital of the general government." So to the Nazi empire it will be Krakow. Because Krakow was the new capital, they didn't want as many Jewish people in it. So they said, "15,000 can remain, and the rest have to leave." So who are you going to keep in Krakow? Well, you can keep your adults, and the children who are dependent upon them. There was one demographic you didn't need there. Your teenagers. Teenagers largely were sent away.

Now these teenagers who were sent away, they'd never lived on their own. They were city kids all of a sudden thrust in to the Polish countryside. But these were kids who -- It wasn't just a Polish countryside. It was full of Nazis, and Polish citizens who were not sympathetic to them. And these kids thought, "Where will we go?" Well, they remembered, "We have scout leaders."

Shimshon Draenger (assumed spelling) is a newspaper editor. He's 21 years old. His wife, Gusta, is 20 years old. She's a housewife. And one by one these teenagers show up at their home, and they say, "Can we come in to your farm?" And the Draengers said, "Yes. Of course." For a while, the Draengers were isolated from the war with the teenagers there, but bit by bit they started hearing what's happening to their families back in the ghettos. They hear about the actions. They hear about the deportments. They hear about the lineups in the streets. And these teenagers realize that they have to make a choice. Choice number one. They do nothing. If they do nothing, it is only a matter of time before they will die on their knees to the Nazis. Choice number two. They will almost certainly die as well, but they will die fighting back.

Now one of the jobs they needed these teenagers to do was the job of a courier. The job of a courier was to go to the ghetto gates. The ghettos were sealed. No Jewish people in or out. And so it was a way of isolating them. They needed a teenager to go to the ghetto gates, look that Nazi officer in the eye, and convince him that she is Jewish. On her back she is smuggling food, information, money, and weapons. She knows it is likely that one day she will be caught, and if she is, she has sworn never to give up any information about the resistance. Who are you going to use to do that? No males. Because of circumcision, you cannot do it. No mothers. They have children or they have work duty. It only gives you one demographic, and that was your teenage girls. In actual history, girls 15, 16, 17 years old, that is what they would do, face that Nazi officer, talk her way inside the ghetto. Once she gets inside, it is her job to convince the Jewish people she is one of them because most likely she will be smuggling someone out to a safe house. This resistance movement that grew from the couriers in Krakow was known as Akiba, named after a Jewish rabbi from biblical times. And Akiba conducted a raid that was all across Krakow. As a result of the raid, the Draengers -- Shimshon was arrested. His wife gave herself up. That was a pact they had made. Whatever happens to one of us, the other of us will follow. The Draengers were sent to Montelupich prison. Montelupich was the worst of the worst.

The Nazis started with Gusta. They absolutely tortured her. And when they had done it, and Gusta refused to give up a single word about the resistance, then they bring her husband in. They brought Shimshon in. Now those of you who are husbands, or if you have a husband, you know how far that man will go to protect his wife. And he comes in, and he sees what the Nazis have done to her. And he's ready to do whatever he needs to save his wife, but Gusta looks at her husband and she says, "Look at this. They did their worst to me, and I'm fine. Don't tell them anything."

There's other women there also from Akiba who were arrested. Gusta, they'd broken the bones of her hands. So she cannot write. But she starts to dictate her story. Five women are taking the dictation. They're writing it down on strips of toilet paper. They sew the strips of toilet paper together with a thread from their dresses. They had one needle in the cell, and they would share it to sew these toilet paper pieces together. They then smuggled out as much -- They smuggled out all five copies, hoping that at least something would safely get through. This book is what Gusta Draenger narrated from Montelupich prison. We have all but one and a half chapters of her record of this resistance. This is the reason we know it even existed. This is the only reason we know what these teenagers accomplished here is because of Gusta Draenger.

Lodz was the worst of the worst of the ghettos. It was a horrible, horrible place. And then by spring of 1943 I'm going to bring these two couriers in to Warsaw. Warsaw ghetto was the largest of the ghettos. In January of 1943, the Nazis entered with a plan to remove as many as 300,000 Jewish people in to the death camps. The Jewish people fought back. And, in fact, chased the Nazis out of the ghettos. But they knew it was only a matter of time that the Nazis would come back. And, when they came back, they would come back in force. So they began to prepare. By spring of 1943, this man, his name is Mordechai Anielewicz. He was 21 years old at the beginning of the war. He was a career counselor. No military background. This man organized Jewish civilians in an uprising against the Nazi army. On the night before Passover, an announcement went throughout the Jewish population trapped inside the ghetto, and it said, "The Nazis have our ghetto surrounded." And on Passover morning it would begin. Mordechai Anielewicz would lead Jewish civilians, about 450 of them, against the entire Nazi army.

This is a picture of one of the Jewish fighters from the rooftops. They survived longer against the Nazi army than the entire country of Poland lasted against the Nazis. It was always clear how the story was going to end, but for the Jewish people, this was their victory because in this moment they said, "It doesn't matter what our end is. It matters that we chose our end. We chose this. And we did not go down on our knees."

...

"Night Divided" is the -- is a Berlin Wall escape story...you have to understand what East Germany was like in 1964. This is the best way to understand it. At the height of its power, the secret police and the Soviet Union, that was the KGB, they had one secret agent for every 5,600 citizens. So every 5,600 people, 1 secret police. At the height of the power for the Gestapo. That's the secret police of the Nazis. 1 secret policeman for 2,000 citizens. In 1964 the secret police were the Stasi. They had 1 secret police for every 166 individuals. But that wasn't good enough for them. Every apartment building has a spy. Your bus driver was probably a spy. Your postman was a spy. Your teacher was a spy. And then Anna, her best friend in the story, became recruited. Right? If you take the total number of spies and informants that the Stasi used, the number went to 1 in 12...

[Tails82]

Interesting to see the poetry slam man's gradual transition into corporate nerd, but he's still got time to get down with the homies.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOeg0tgDMgw&t=37m
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOeg0tgDMgw&t=1h7m

Emo in a hijab

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOeg0tgDMgw&t=46m

Unhealthy obsession with hair

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOeg0tgDMgw&t=49m50s

X GON' GIVE IT TO YA meets WELCOME TO GOOD BURGER

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOeg0tgDMgw&t=1h11m50s

Adult child levels are off the charts

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=97i7gJLEXRs

(My book) begins in 1958, ten years before King's assassination. And it begins with a stabbing. A little known episode in King's life. King was just becoming famous for his leadership of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. And he was in New York City to promote his first book, "Strive Toward Freedom." And it was going so well. He was at a department store in Harlem. He was sitting at a desk, and he was signing books. And then a well-dressed middle-aged black woman approached him. She fit right in with the crowd. Nothing looked bad. And she said, are you Martin Luther King? And he looked up and said, well, yes, I am. And with that she drew a letter opener, but it was razor sharp like a miniature samurai sword. She pulled it out of her bag. She raised it up high in the air. And plunged it into his chest. And she stabbed him so hard that the handle broke off. And the blade stayed embedded in his chest. It looked like it was right where his heart was. Immediately there was panic and chaos. Someone reached for the blade to pull it out. But then someone shouted, don't do that. You'll kill him if you pull it out. It was true. As doctors would find out later, the blade was so close to King's aorta that any movement, even coughing or a sneeze, could have led to his instant death...Martin Luther King had just narrowly escaped death. And from that moment on, he thought he was living on borrowed time.

by the late 1960s, King's leadership of the civil rights movement was increasingly challenged by younger more radical leaders. King faced a number of failures and setbacks, and these discouraged him. King experienced great self-doubt. And he began to wonder, was he the right man to continue to lead this movement? Was he the right man for the job? Then on April 3, 1968, King was in Memphis, Tennessee to support the city sanitation workers who were striking for better working conditions. King was exhausted from extensive travel. He was faced with a mounting burden of inner doubt about his own abilities as a leader. He was sick with a sore throat and a fever. And that night there was a massive storm with pouring rain and thunder. And the last thing he wanted to do was go outside and go and give a speech. But he did. At 8:30 p.m., King appeared at the Mason Temple and spoke to an overflowing crowd of 3,000 people. And in this speech, arguably the best of his life, he summarized his life and highlighted something that had happened to him ten years before. He told the audience how he'd been stabbed by Izola Curry a decade before.

King ended the speech by saying what I think are his finest public remarks. Even greater than the march on Washington. So he said, like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over. And I have seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm so happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. Then he collapsed into the arms of his best friend, Ralph Abernathy. Later Abernathy said, I've never seen him better.

But he should have feared one man. A few miles away a man waited at a seedy hotel with a rifle. The next day Martin Luther King would be dead, assassinated by perhaps the most unlikely killer. An escaped convict and petty criminal named James Earl Ray. So who was this Ray? He had grown up diet poor in Missouri in a family of career criminals. Strangely, he was just the kind of underprivileged, uneducated child that Martin Luther King would have wanted to help. By Ray's teenage years, he was living the life of a failed criminal. He was in and out of jail until in 1959, he was sentenced to a 20-year term for robbery. And if he had served that entire sentence, we never would have heard of James Earl Ray. Except in 1967, he escaped. So why did he want to kill Martin Luther King? James Earl Ray did not escape from prison with a plan to assassinate Dr. King. No, he escaped to reinvent himself and forge a new life. He traveled to Canada. Mexico. And California. He took professional bartending lessons. Dance classes. And locksmithing courses. The one thing he did not do is stalk Dr. King. For exactly one year from March 1967 to March 1968, Ray enjoyed his new life. There's no evidence he even thought about Dr. King. That all changed when King flew to Los Angeles and gave a speech near Disneyland on March 16th, 1968. The next day on March 17th, King flew home. But on that same day, James Earl Ray packed up all his belongings, got in his Mustang sports car. And drove all the way across the country from California, ultimately to Memphis, Tennessee. And on the way he bought a rifle. Something in Ray had changed. Like a caged homing pigeon or hibernating animal, Ray responded to an inner call that only he could hear.

Unbelievably, after the murder James Earl Ray escaped and disappeared. Speeding away in his Mustang, he fled the murder scene without a moment to spare. One minute after he escaped, the police showed up at the door where he escaped. And they would have captured him on the spot, but he escaped just in the nick of time. His escape launched the biggest manhunt in the history of the FBI. Three thousand agents, half the entire FBI were put on the chase to find the killer. To identify who he was. No one knew the man named James Earl Ray had killed Dr. King. They only knew that an unknown man. It took weeks. Ray eventually made his way to Canada. Then to England and Portugal. And finally back to England when he couldn't arrange passage to Africa, where he hoped to become a paid mercenary in one of the white-ruled governments. In fact, it was only a slip of fate that his passport was double checked at Heathrow Airport in London on June 8th, 1968, leading to his eventual arrest. It took 106 days from King's assassination to raise extradition from England to the United States. And, in fact, it was only 15 months since Ray had escaped from prison. One of history's most shocking possibilities is that, if James Earl Ray had escaped to Africa, he probably would have disappeared for good. And the murder of Dr. King would have escaped justice forever.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuTkYyvRyJI&t=1h8m

Dennis Prager on optimism vs pessimism about the future: "I fight because I owe it to the dead at Normandy to fight for this country. It's that simple. What was their optimism when they went off to Normandy beach?...It's an inconsequential question about being optimistic or pessimistic. You have one task in life. If you're a Christian, did the early Christian martyrs - were they optimistic when they went into the ampitheater in Rome to be fed to lions? No! They knew one thing: I believe in Christ, I'll die for Christ. They didn't think 'Gee, am I optimistic?' Right?

"You do what is right. People before you did it to give you the ability to fight. They gave me America, I will fight for America. I don't know if I'll win, I don't know if I'll lose, and I don't give it two minutes of thought. I know what I have to do. Moses did not get into the Promised Land. That is my guidepost - no one gets into the Promised Land. But he got to see it! That's a big deal. And I don't even know if we'll get to see it. But I'll tell you this, it's better now than two years ago, certainly better now than on election day 2016."

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LyR9K2HZKg&t=37m

Saddam and the baby milk factory

georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ogc/apparatus/crafting.html



This is how easy it is to fool our media into believing civilian casualties, lol

Journalists who were taken to the "baby milk" factory in 1991 saw this hand-lettered sign in English and Arabic.

As U.S. officials pointed out at the time, the Iraqi regime was defending the site as it would a military facility. After the Gulf War, UNSCOM inspectors discovered that three scientists from the Iraqi regime's main biological weapons facility had been assigned to the "baby milk" factory.

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhFf69aSmf8

US-Mexico war and propaganda.

Many of the major battles and prominent heroes of the war received media coverage, if you will, through lithographs. The war coincided with an outburst as lithography, as improvements in the medium allowed producers of visual ephemera to distribute their images to larger audiences than ever before and reach them with an expediency that fine artists cannot match. To today's viewer, the prints you see here may not bear much resemblance to today's newspaper graphics, but during the war, the public viewed prints as news sources and relied on war imagery to accurately convey settings and outcomes in a timely manner. Images were often stylized to evoke sentiments of pride and patriotism and were not overly concerned with accuracy, but nevertheless, maintained journalistic value. Nathaniel Currier, the man today associated with this scenic picture prints, thanks to the ubiquitous holiday jingle, was in his own time considered one of the most prolific and innovative lithographers in the United States, producing over 85 prints of the US-Mexican war alone...

By the time the image was printed, the skepticism of engaging in a seemingly unprovoked war that many US citizens initially felt, was replaced by an acceptance to the idea that the war was necessary to fulfill a manifest destiny. This was, in large part, thanks to images such as this, which makes clear the contrast between the Mexican and US forces and conveys fundamental ideals of US national identity.

So this is imagery of Mexico, early Democrat administration. This'll give you a better idea of how manifest destiny was tied in with emerging progressivism of the Democrats:

The palm tree and cross symbolize the exotic foreignness of the land and the stubborn traditions of its people through their adherence to Catholicism. Although many US citizens considered Christianity the ordained religion of progress and believe that it was the divine right to colonize the lands of native North American peoples, Catholicism, particularly in the context of Mexico, was associated with corruption and an unwillingness to modernize. Thus, as Harney and his troops forge ahead with strength and liberty, of Mexico and its soldiers remain backwards, extolling a corrupt religion, and trampled by a seemingly inevitable -- the seemingly inevitable nature of progress...Currier used the cross as a symbol of Mexico's weakness

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nyM4E6DkVw

They all say Teddy Roosevelt is badass, but can we also talk about how Andrew Jackson took an assassination attempt?

He caned down an armed man at the age of 67, and the guy thought he was royalty too. So Jackson took on Richard III and won

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LPouikAk8U

The Bible in Public Life

It is no exaggeration to claim that the bible has been and by far the single most widely read text, distributed object, and referenced book in all of American history.

the history of scripture in the early United States flowed directly from its history in the colonial and revolutionary periods, but with developments of great significance...During the intermittent imperial crises of the mid-18th Century, spellbinding preachers like Samuel Davies of Virginia routinely defined that conflict as an apocalyptic clash between on the one side France, Catholicism, tyranny and the Pope over against Britain, Protestantism, poverty and the bible.

During the War for Independence...Now it was Parliament, corruption, enslavement by Parliament and a veno-anglican (assumed spelling) church establishment over against the continental Congress, virtue, liberty and the bible.

In those dramatic days, no one had more effectively enlisted scripture for the patriot cause than Tom Payne, the peripatetic English radical whose riveting pamphlet from early 1776 "Common Sense" galvanized opinion against the Monarchy. At the heart of this incendiary work, Payne included a detailed exposition from 1 Samuel 8...This passage explained why the Lord denounced Israel for requesting a king like all the nations. Payne's reasoning was remorseless. Surely, if God himself repudiated the very principle of Monarchy so too should those oppressed columnists who chafed under Britain's corrupt rule.

But then with independence secured, almost everything in the new nation was still up for grabs including general questions about religion and specific questions about scripture. Into that parlous state of affairs, Payne launched a second literary bombshell. It's title was, "The Age of Reason Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology". Payne wrote the first part of this work published in 1794 as a prisoner of the French Revolutionary government which he had traveled to Paris to support, but which had turned on him as it did on so many others. He penned the second part published the next year in England where he had come after an unexpected rescue from the guillotine. Furious controversy followed the publication of this second hyper liberal protest against despotic authority. The consequences of this controversy were momentous. It hastened the emergence of the United States first political parties. It shaped the evolving character of American public discourse and it directly stimulated plans for universal primary education. It also profoundly affected the fate of religion in the new Democratic Republic.

Uzal Ogden (assumed spelling) -- not a common name in the Library of Congress - was the Episcopal rector of Newark, New Jersey. He spoke boldly for those who regarded Payne as primarily a threat to public order. His massive 1790 tone Antidote to Deism" finally got around to defending scripture as such, but only after more than 100 pages devoted to his main concern. In proportion as a neglect he wrote, "As a neglect or attempt of religion maintains, dissoluteness of morals will prevail and when a people in general become dissolute, probing, and virtue, public spirit and generous concern for the interests of the nation will be extinguished."

For Ogden and others like him, the bible is most important for supplying the virtue without which the Republic would fail. This emphasis on the bible usually mixed with early religious concerns decisively shaped much of later American history. It spurred the Herculean labors of voluntary organizations like American Bible Society and American Track Society. It inspired educational reformers and many theological varieties to promote daily readings of the King James version as a mainstay of school instruction. It fed into the emergence of the Whig Party and it would shape the efforts of many consequential leaders like the abolitionists Theodore Dwight [inaudible], Frances Willard, the founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Organization and Daniel Alexander Payne of the African Methodists' Episcopal Church.

By contrast, a second group of Payne's critics agreed with him when he attacked political elites and traditional social hierarchies. For them, biblical religion supplied the fortitude to resist tyranny and corruption without which the Republic would fail. A Virginia Baptist, Andrew Broadus (assumed spelling) spoke for this cohort when he confessed that, "Although I am disgusted with Payne as a religionist, I do admire Mr. Payne as a politician"...Such ones would go on to impact the reforming ambitions of national voluntary organizations like the American Bible Society. They would lean strongly to the Democratic Party, Andrew Jackson and its insistence of a local control over local institutions. But ironically in an extreme form, this kind of criticism also infused the work of David Walker's 1829 appealed to the colored citizens of the world which level a thoroughly biblical critique against slavery and the national institutions that supported the slave system.

The third group of Payne's critics has received less attention in part because they did not want to have anything to do with politics, but rather hope to preserve the scripture in a strictly religious book. Such ones included David Levy, a New York City Jew...Similarly, David Humphries -- a Yale graduate and well-known New Hampshire lawyer -- spent most of his attack on Payne attacking those who viewed Payne as a political threat. Humphries -- a follower of the Sandemanian sect imported from Scotland -- wanted an absolute divide between religion and anything corporately perfect. His stance moved him closer to the anti-Payne-ites who denounced American efforts and created informal Christendom's to replace the formal Christendom's of Europe. But Humphries main concern was not the future of the American public, but as he put it "the honor of God and His saving truth". The way that David Levi and David Humphries defended scripture would also have a consequential future. It was a stance their great contemporary Francis Asberry (assumed spelling) whose single-minded devotion to the salvation of souls made early American Methodism the most effective means of church creation in American History.

It was also close to the sentiments expressed by Abraham Lincoln when he referenced the bible in his second inaugural address.

...

I would like to spend my time today with you talking about just one set of connections that became apparent to me as I edited this collection. Namely just how present the trope of Noah's Ark is when it comes to the bible and American culture. I will spend my remaining time speaking briefly about five moments in American history and culture where the biblical story of Noah's Ark has had a presence in how the bible has been used, viewed and interpreted over the past 300 years in America. The first moment involves children's bibles in the United States. Not surprisingly, the story of Noah's Ark plays an absolutely central role in how the bible was redacted and simplified for children. In fact, the story of Noah's Ark is one of the most commonly included bible stories in bible editions specifically created and marketed to children. Just one of the interesting facets of the Noah's Ark story in such bibles is how the emphasis of the story has changed over three centuries of American Children's bible editions. When the story of Noah and his ark was told in the 18th and 19th Century, children bibles, it was a tale that concentrated on the wickedness of men, and women, and often used pictures of people being left behind to die outside the ark. The emphasis was on the plight of the wicked and the righteousness of God's wrath as he punished those wicked people. Matching this emphasis, the most common illustration accompanying the story of Noah's Ark in the 19th Century edition of bible editions was Gustave Dore's "The Deluge" which depicts young children on a mountaintop about to be overcome by flood waters. The lesson to children was clear.

Be obedient to God's commands or suffer the consequences. As one 1831 bible version stated, "Oh, how dreadful it is to dissipate -- disobey such a powerful God who can destroy in a moment if he please." By the end of the 20th Century, the main point of the Noah story in children's bible editions was something very different indeed.

The fourth moment I would like us to look at today is of a more recent vintage. The colossal art constructed as a centerpiece of an amusement park and religious pilgrimage location in northern Kentucky. Set on 800 acres 40 miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio, the park's centerpiece is an all-wooden built to scale reproduction of Noah's Ark. Built to the specifications outlined in the text of Genesis 6:9. At a cost of $172 million, the park known as Ark Encounter opened in July 2016. The ark itself required nearly four million total feet of timber. It stands 51 feet tall, 510 feet long and 85 feet wide.

Finally, I wanted to touch upon another aspect of the presence of Noah's Ark in American biblical culture. In this case, I wanted to look at how Noah's Ark is a metaphor and a troupe that is seen throughout much of American religious history. Just one case of this can be seen in the preaching of the famous 19th Century publisher, evangelist and educator, Dwight L. Moody. Many know of Moody because of one of his most famous sayings, "I look upon the world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a lifeboat and said, 'Moody, save all you can'." Here the world is awash in sin and Moody in Noah-like fashion is bent on getting all that he can into his lifeboat with him to save him.

Moody often returned to Noah's Ark in his preaching and speaking about how to raise Godly children. He told his congregation, "Every one of our children can be brought into the ark if we pray and work earnestly." And in a famous evangelistic sermon he delivered countless times in his many visits to England, Moody explained his experience by bringing that experience to Noah's Ark. I understand it now. Christ is the ark.

...

The fiery black abolitionist, David Walker was affronted by Jefferson's...comments questioning black abilities. Of Jefferson, Walker wrote, "I say that unless we try to refute Mr. Jefferson's arguments respecting us, they will only establish them." Walker then undertook to refute Jefferson by presenting a reasoned and well-articulated argument for black equality in America from the bible and the federal government's own founding documents. In 1829, Walker published his answers to Jefferson's (inaudible) in his book "Walker's Appeal" in four articles...In his appeal, Walker attacks Jefferson arguing slavery and the general oppression of black people was a sin before God.

Including Jefferson among the enemies of God, Walker predicts that God's judgment will fall upon those who oppress blacks, and those enemies who for hundreds of years stole our rights, and kept us ignorant of him, and his divine worship...For Walker, slavery contradicted scripture because it went against the most basic of Jesus' teachings -- the golden rule as found in Matthew 7. Our divine Lord and master said, "All things whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them" which is found in Matthew 7:12. But an American minister with a bible in his hands holds us and our children in the most abject slavery and wretchedness. Now I ask them would they like for us to hold them and their children in abject slavery and wretchedness? "How -- " Walker asks, " -- could a Christian countenance slavery?" His answer is to approve of slavery is to deny the bible.

In addition to arguing as Walker had that God would judge America for the treatment of blacks, Stewart also contended that African Americans were a people of particular blessing by God. They were children of God's covenant. Stewart's use of scripture seems to invite endless examination. But on almost every level the meeting grows richer as the scriptures comment and illuminate the text into which it has been set. An example of this is the elegance of Stewart's masterful knowledge of the bible and it's clear in five little words which - with which she powerfully frames a new exegetical paradigm. She states simply, "Of those Americans who have grown rich at the expense of the labor of slaves and the oppressed blacks, you fair sumptuously every day." The biblical illusion is clear. Stewart is quoting Luke 16:19-31 "The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man". In "The Parable", Jesus tells of a rich man who dies after a life of ease in which he faired sumptuously every day only to end up in hell.

A southern folk song put it quite strongly, but for the purposes of our discussion today I will replace the more vulgar N word that was found in the song with a politer descriptor "negro". "Negro never went to free school nor any other college and all the white folks wonder where that negro got his knowledge. He chewed up all the bible and then spat out the scripture...in ways that allowed them to survive and to thrive in the Americas." In the biblical text, they found a narrative of liberation that included them even as others thought desperately to exclude them. They spit out scripture in spirituals, and songs, and sermons, and in stories, and they survived. In the end, African Americans were so well versed in the bible they had chewed and so able to argue strong for their humanity by the means of that same scripture that others were left to wonder where that negro got his knowledge. Even when African Americans were at their lowest, even when they were not human in the eyes of the world and sometimes even in their own eyes they clung to the bible and an understanding of scripture that called them sons and daughters of Africa, and sons and daughters of God. In their encounter with religious others, African Americans have tended to emphasize two ideas from scripture -- that God is a liberator and that God who loves humanity affirms their humanity.

...

So, what verse would you guess is the most frequently quoted in "Chronicling America"? Come on, you know you all want to say John 3:16.

(laughter)

That's what I would've guessed -- John 3:16, "For God saw that the world -- ". But that text only became popular at the beginning of the 20th Century and only managed to squeak into the top 10 overall. The most popular verse was Luke 18:16, "Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not." Why was it so popular? Because many newspapers included Sunday school lessons and they often included that verse at the top of the lesson. Coming in second was Matthew 25:21, "Well done thy good and faithful servant" which was a reliable quotation for obituaries. But why was Exodus 20:15, "Though shall not steal" suddenly so popular only in the years 1912 and 1913. It was not because the income tax amendment was ratified in 1913, though that's a pretty good guess.

After Theodore Roosevelt lost the Republican Party nomination to William Howard Taft, he accepted the nomination of the Progressive Party otherwise called the Bull Moose Party. He'd previously quoted the 10 Commandments in his 1906 speech "The Man with the Muckrake". And then, when he accepted the nomination of the Bull Moose Party, Roosevelt declared that his most important principle went back to Sinai, "Though shalt not steal." "Thou shalt not steal a nomination." "Thou shall neither steal in politics nor in business."

Some verses were very popular up to the 1860's and then declined in popularity during the Civil War. Some verses were very popular before and after the Civil War, but not during. Take for instance, Matthew 19:16, "So, they are no longer two, but one. What God therefore had joined together, let no man put asunder." This verse was obviously about marriage, but it had political implications during the sectional crisis over slavery and then again during reconstruction. But it must've had a bitter taste during the Civil War.

1870's-1900's. Psalm 1:33:1, "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity" was a useful text for healing the nation's wounds after the Civil War, but also for forgetting about the promises made to the freed people during reconstruction. And finally, some verses only became popular in the 1920's. Why did John 15:13, "Greater love have no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends" become so popular? Because it became the text that was quoted in virtually every obituary of a soldier or a sailor who died in World War I.

"It is more blessed to give than to receive"...It was often used with a request for donations to churches or charities. It was also used to memorialize the dead, to encourage selflessness or praise generosity, and to advertise life insurance.

It was even used for jokes. After one bout, the boxer Jack Johnson was said to have given more than he had received.

But the real driver of the popularity of this verse was Christmas -- specifically the growing popularity of Christmas as a consumer holiday. Here's an advertisement from the chain of department stores that James Cash Penney founded in 1902. Now the day of rejoicing has come to us for we have in our own hearts realized the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive. By the early 20th Century, newspapers have become more dependent on revenue from advertisers and subscribers...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lYRKrgbF7M

The Coddling of the American Mind

I study morality. That's what I've done since graduate school, and I look at it both from an evolutionary perspective and cultural psychological, or anthropological, perspective...And in the 1990's I began to notice that the American culture was heating up to such an extent that left and right were like different countries, like different cultures. We have different American history. If you ask, what's American history on the left and the right, it's like different countries. If you ask, what's the U.S. Constitution, two different Constitutions. You ask about climate science, if you ask about so many things, we're coming apart -- we were coming apart, and that was in the 90's. So, I began studying about, and originally I was on the left. I was always on the left when I was younger, and I began really studying political psychology in order to help the Democrats win, because after 2000 and 2004 I thought, they have no clue how to talk about morality. I'd like to help them connect with American morality. So, I set out to understand the conservatives read conservative writings and watch conservative TV shows, and what I discovered was that on any complicated issue you want to think about, if you're not -- if you're only looking at one perspective you can't possibly understand it. And I found it was so much fun and so interesting to look at things from a conservative perspective and libertarian perspective. And so, eventually, I just sort of stepped out and I said, okay, I'm not on any team anymore.

I wrote the book The Righteous Mind. It came out in 2012 and then things kept getting worse and worse. But the basic perspective that we are tribal creatures, we evolved for tribal conflict, we're very good at doing us versus them, and this is the nature -- this allows us to do sports. This allows us to do politics. It's all the same psychology. So, while I'm working on this problem, suddenly these strange things start happening in my backyard, namely universities. Beginning in 2014 we started seeing students asking for trigger warnings, protesting speakers on the grounds that if this speaker comes to campus it will be traumatizing or damaging to some students. You know, you might say, well, why don't you just say not go to the talk? But, no. They would say, no, no, we can't have this person step foot on our campus. So, it was a new morality, a new fearfulness about words and ideas. So, Greg Lukianoff and I wrote this book. Greg Lukianoff came to me, he's the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, he came to me with this idea that somehow students were learning to interpret words and books and ideas using the exact same cognitive distortions that he had learned not to do when he learned cognitive behavioral therapy. He had a suicidal depression in 2007. He thinks cognitive therapy saved his life. You learn all these distortions, black-and-white thinking, catastrophizing, mind-reading, labeling, all these things that people sometimes do, but depressed and anxious people do constantly. And, so, the therapist, you stop -- you learn how to stop doing that. And Greg noticed students are beginning to really do that a lot, catastrophizing, everything is good or evil...it's a callout culture. It makes it very difficult for people to work together.

the most spectacular events are mobbing where students circle around a professor, a speaker, and they demand that he be fired or he retract something. Speaker shutdowns where typically a conservative speaker is invited to campus and the students demand that he be disinvited. And if the president of the university won't disinvited them, then they protest. They try to block people from coming in, or they go and they try to shout him down. So, these things happen. There were some of these in the 60's, but that didn't happen for a long time. And then there's a lot now. By a lot I mean a few dozen. It's not happening at every school, but there are dozens of these. These are always videotaped. Everybody pulls out their cellphone and, so, they're on the Internet, and especially right-wing media sites love them because they really show students being intolerant of conservative ideas and speakers.

What I'd rather talk about with you, or what you may not know about, is the really subtle ways that the speech climate on campus has changed, and this is very widespread and very damaging. So, I'll just share with you a couple of examples, because now people -- you know, people write to me all the time now with these examples...a professor at Harvey Mudd College, at one of the Claremont colleges in California. And she uses the example of how a student came to talk to her -- well, a student came to talk to her and he started to say, you know, yeah, that's a great idea, because that would kill two birds with, and he covered his mouth. And she said, what? Were you going to say, two birds with one stone? And he said, well, yes, but that would be violent. And he was afraid, because if you say -- like, he could be called out, like he could be shamed for saying that. There's another story from another college in California. Three students, this was e-mailed to me by a friend, her daughter and two other people were walking on campus and her daughter said, wow, I'm starving, and her friends called her out on that. That's insensitive, because there are people who are really starving.

students get prestige by showing that they are more sensitive to various victim groups or marginalized groups. They get prestige by calling out someone for insensitivity. Now, most students are perfectly normal and sane are not doing this, but in any group there are some who are. And, so, if you can imagine what it's like to be a student where you never know when you're going to be publicly shamed. And, of course, someone could not tell you that you're being shamed, they just go and they put it on social media, and now your reputation is destroyed.

This sort of thing happens at universities all the time. Now, it's creeping out into the workplace. So, this is not just on campus. So, a woman who runs an organization on business ethics that I -- that I cofounded, she said a friend of hers was just reported to HR. Why? Because she was on a conference call, and after the conference call the person they were talking to had been speaking so quickly she said, wow, that guy sounded like he was on Ritalin, and a few days later she's called into HR because that was insensitive, insensitive to people who have ADHD. Now, again, you can -- you can discuss whether we should talk about this, but this is the pattern, is you report someone. You don't -- you don't tend to resolve it directly. You report someone. And, so, here's a review of my book on Amazon. Quote, I couldn't understand why my new, bright, young workers kept running to HR for every little interpersonal problem and why they refused to show up to meetings with the person who they thought offended them, because it's very threatening. If someone tells a joke and you're offended, and you report them to HR for having told a joke to someone else, not even to you, just you overheard it, you're offended, it would very frightening and traumatizing even, to have to be in a room with that person. So, you just want to report it to HR, have them punish the person, and leave you out of it. Now, imagine what it would be like to work with people like this.

Let me make clear, this is not the millennials. Millennials are okay. This is the generation after millennials. You see this in students born in 1995 and after...there are only two places in history, in modern history, where there's a clear dividing line. So, in 1946 is one. If you were born in 1946 your childhood was different than if you were born in 1943, because there was a, you know, everything changed after the war.

And, strangely, if you were born in 1995, or afterwards, your child is different than if you were born in 1992 or before. And, so, and the clearest evidence of that is contained in the book iGen by Jean Twenge. She goes through all kinds of nationally representative studies about behavior of adolescents. And what you find is that beginning with kids born around 1994, five, they go out a lot less.

They don't -- they're much less likely to drink alcohol, much less likely to go out on dates, much less likely to have ever worked for money. They are much more anxious, much more depressed. Their lives changed. Their childhood changed. Now, why? So, they were hit with a number of things that are different from the millennials, the most important of which is Facebook opens up in 2006 to the world...there's huge adoption of social media around 2009, 2010 by adolescents in the United States. And right at 2011, 2012 the anxiety and depression rates start going steadily upwards, especially for girls. So, social media is thought to be the main culprit for why things got so bad after 2011, 2012. If you were a millennial and you got Facebook in college, your brain was already mostly formed.

But if you're 13 when you get Facebook, Instagram, all those things, the nature of social relationships is so different and so much social comparison and fear of shame that your sociality is different. So, social media is thought to be the main thing. But the other big thing is the change in whether you got to be independent between ages eight and 12.

So, most of you here are -- the great majority of you are over 40. What I want to ask you is, how old were you when you were allowed outside on your own, meaning you could walk to a friend's house three blocks away? You could go down to the corner store and buy a candy bar, or go get some milk to bring home for your -- you know, for the family?...everybody up until the '90s, including the millennials, got the chance to practice independence before it was too late, before the window closed.

Eight to 14 is a critical -- 13, critical period for cultural learning and accent learning. If you're exposed to a foreign language first at age 14, it's too late. You will never speak it like a native. So, what we've done is, we've systematically taken this critical period for cultural learning, independence learning, and we said, no independence for you until it's too late.

We'll wait until the window closes, we'll wait until the learning period is over, and then we'll say, now you can go out. And guess what? They don't go out. They don't go out. They sit on their bed with their devices and they communicate.

John Haskell: So, you've got a concept in there that there was going to be anti-fragility.

Jonathan Haidt: Right...So, this is such a powerful concept.

it's a term coined by Nassim Taleb, the guy who wrote The Black Swan. It's a brilliant concept. It's a clunky word, but he made it up because there is no word in the English language and we need it. So, if you think about it, like a wine glass is fragile and nothing good happens if you drop a wineglass on the ground. It's fragile.

And, so, we give our kids plastic cups. Toddlers get plastic cups because those are resilient. They don't break, but they don't get better...he was trying to say, well, what we need is something more like the immune system. The immune system is anti-fragile. If you keep your kids safe from bacteria, what are you doing to them?

You're just -- you're just -- you're depriving their immune system of the chance to learn. The immune system is anti-fragile. The reason why peanut allergies are going up in this country is because we've been protecting kids from peanuts. We don't give them a chance to learn that peanuts are not harmful, their immune system doesn't learn.

So, this is our point in the book, children are anti-fragile. They have to be -- they have to face teasing, insults, exclusion. They have to go out and get lost and get scared and ask someone for directions home...my point is, you need a lot of negative experiences in order to become an independently functioning person. And in the name of protecting them, we have denied them the negative experiences that they need. We don't let them have those until they're 15 or 16.

...

Jonathan Haidt: multiple causes...Almost anything interesting, there's going to be all these different intersecting, interacting factors. And, so, we had this very sudden emergence of this new morality on campus in 2014, 2015. It seemed to come out of nowhere. And Greg and I in the book, we trace it out, we say, actually, there's six intersecting threats. There's like six fuses all came together and then they met around 2014, 2015, things blew up. So, I'll just briefly run through them. Number one is the political purification of the universities at a time of increasing political polarization. So, professors have always leaned left, but between 1995, when it was just about two or three to one left right ratio on the faculty, to 2010, by then it's about five or six to one left right. And the core areas, English, history, philosophy, it's more like 20 or 30 to one left right. So, we have universities shifting much further left at a time when the culture war is heating up, so left and right really, really hate each other more.

So, if universities are now more clearly on one side of the culture war, their internal dynamics are going to be much more about fighting the culture war. So, we're not free to just explore ideas. If a conservative speaker comes to campus, it's not like, oh, what does he have to say? I'm sure he's a schmuck. It's, what? We can't give him a platform. So, the rise in polarization and political purification is one of the big factors of why universities have kind of gone crazy. Not most, but the shout downs are almost all in the northeast and the coastal strip of the west coast. That's where the violence and the intimidation is taking place on campus. So, the culture war is a big part it.

Number two, the rise in rates of mental illness. And, again, this is, I mentioned this a moment ago, the statistics are stunning. The self-report anxiety is going up by a factor of two or three in adolescence. It's not just self-report, it's not just that they say they're depressed. Hospital admissions for self-harm, for taking -- drinking poison, or cutting yourself with a sharp object, those show the exact same pattern, way up for girls, not so much up for boys, but way up for teenage girls. Suicide is up 25% for boys from the first decade of this century to the last couple years, 25% increase in the suicide rate for boys, which is huge. For girls it's 70%, seven zero percent increase in suicide for teenage American girls. The same thing is happening in the UK.

So, we have a real crisis on campus. This is even before they get to campus. But now we have all these people with depression and anxiety coming to campus, and some of them say they want trigger warnings. They want safe spaces. They want protection. And what university can say, no, tough it out? You can't say that, because then if she commits suicide, of course, you're exposed to liability. I mean, there's other reasons, compassion, of course, is a major reason. But the administrators, and this is another threat, the administrators become increasingly focused on liability, not on education, so they get defensive. And, so, we get all these things coming together to change the speech culture and the administration on campus so that it's not about healthy debate, it's not about vigorous argument, it's not about fearless inquiry, it's about safety in danger. And what we're talking about the safety danger is, ideas, books, words. So, my kids get this in third grade, it's all about safety and danger, not physical, emotional, and this is a terrible thing to teach kids, that negative emotions mean you're in danger and; therefore, you need protection.

So, there's all these things coming together so that kids born after 1995 haven't been given the chance to practice maturity and independence. We've been overprotecting them...

Kids have to have a lot more unsupervised time. Unsupervised doesn't mean nobody knows where they are, it means no adult is watching. No adult is going to step in to resolve conflict. If someone gets badly hurt they know, okay, we go to Mrs. Smith's house. She's right there. But kids have to have a lot more time to work out conflicts. That's preparation for democracy. When kids play in groups they learn how to work things out, how to keep the game going by being responsive to other people's needs. They learn compromise. They learn how to enforce rules and make rules that are fair.

John Haskell: Why is it worse for girls? Why is the mental health...Situation worse for girls?

Jonathan Haidt: So, we don't know, but the leading thought is this. So, again, this is Jean Twenge, T W E N G E, who wrote this book, iGen. So, think about it this way. All kids love devices. Most of us, when we were kids, we couldn't take our eyes off the TV screen. Our parents said it would rot our brains. It turns out, TV isn't that bad for you, but not playing outside is bad for you. So, the TV itself wasn't so bad. Social media is really different. If you give -- if you suddenly let all kids, you know, by age eight, nine, 10, have a device, what happens? What do the boys do? Just call it out, those of you who have sons. What do your boys do with devices? Videogames, that's right. They play videogames all day long. It turns out, videogames aren't really bad for you. They take you away from outdoor play, but they're often social. My son is playing, you know, they're like -- they're like, you know, they're a team trying to kill other teams. That's actually pretty good for you. What do girls do? Girls are taking selfies, that take a long, long time to compose. They have filters to make themselves look more beautiful. So, we're all aware that models are not real, that girls are exposed to models in magazines that aren't real. We've talked about this for 20 or 30 years, that girls have unreasonable beauty standards. Now, suddenly, their friends, the women -- the girls around them, are distorted to look more beautiful, to the point where now girls and young women are asking for plastic surgery so that they can look more like their Instagram photos.

Girls feel much more inadequate. And, especially, girls' sociality is based on who's in, who knows whose secrets, who is being excluded. Girls are much more about that...And Facebook, Instagram, these things are incredibly powerful ways to let girls know that they were not included in this fun, fun event, which is distorted to look really super fun, to the point where some college girls say, I can't make it to that party. Can you take my phone, take some photos, and I'll post it to make it look like I was there? I mean, this is crazy stuff, but you can imagine how teenage girls, it really does a number on them. If you -- so, if you first get this stuff when you're 18 or 19, it's not so bad. But if you first got it when you were 13, in other words, if you were born in 1995 or after, and you get this stuff when you were 13, it's really bad for girls.

...

at universities we have to make a lot of changes. One reason I'm optimistic is that anybody who is a university president or dean or administrator, it's always been a difficult job, but in the last two or three years they all say their job is becoming impossible, because if there's any conflict between any two students, one person tells a joke, one person makes a reference, one person wears a piece of clothing they bought vacation, that's cultural appropriation. That's insensitive. That's offensive. And these things can blow up to the point where they can get into the newspaper. They never know when there will be a group protesting, demanding that they intervene, demanding that they punish someone. It's an impossible situation. So, university presidents are finally ready to exert some leadership, if they -- if they know what to do. The first two years were marked by an almost complete absence of leadership. One reason is because the complaints often come from either the black students' group, the women students' group, the LGBT group, and nobody wants to stand up against them and appear insensitive. We're very progressive. We're very focused on diversity and inclusion to the extent that a lot of these protests are linked in some way to an identity issue, nobody can stand up against that. One reason I'm optimistic is that in the last year so many people, so many great people, are writing, these are people who are not straight white males, are writing to say the way we're doing identity politics is really bad for everybody, including my group.

So, you know, black scholars are not uniform. There's a lot of diversity among them, and we're beginning to see some, like John McWhorter, a whole bunch, that are now saying, wait, this kind of identity (inaudible) is really bad for black students. Amy Chua, a Chinese-American scholar at Yale Law School, has this great book on political tribes. Francis Fukuyama just came out with a book called Identity. So, a lot of scholars, who are not straight white males, are saying, this is nuts to say let's all band together, us versus the straight white males, because they are the source of the problem and let, you know -- the us versus them thinking that is now rising in prominence on campus, this is a dead-end street. This is never going to lead to a welcoming environment where people feel welcome. It's going to lead to constant conflict.

Political organization for our species is almost always based on ties of blood or soil. You get religions like Islam that transcend it with God. So, either blood, soil, or God. Those are your options. America was an experiment. We talk about the American experiment...America was brilliant in the 20th century at forming an overarching identity, saying we don't care what your blood is, we don't care we came from, if you believe in the American ideals, you're in. America had a way of creating a superordinate identity that was the envy of the world. And now, many of us think we're going down roads of certain forms of identity politics that reverse that and that turn our diversity into a weakness.

University life, we need -- we need our opponents. We need to be challenged because we're all so subject to the confirmation bias, we're all so -- scientists are not just really smart people, and they don't make discoveries because they're so smart, scientists are productive because they have an institution in which they're put together so that whatever they say will be challenged by others. And it's that challenge process that knocks down the bad ideas, that strips us of our wishful thinking. Politics isn't like that. Politics, at its best, can do that, that's what a deliberative body is supposed to be, but they don't do that in the Senate chambers anymore.

...I mean, if Congress is going to legislate how you do something, it's going to be a disaster. So, I don't want the federal government saying, universities need to -- we're going to punish those that don't have 50% Conservatives. I mean, this is not helpful. This is not a good idea. So, I think that we can solve it. I think we now have the will. We now have a much better understanding. I think we can solve this problem ourselves.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4bmxL4PNdY

This reminds me of coronavirus response.

in 1942 the status of enemy alien was extended to all aliens of Italian descent, which is over 600,000. These individuals were required to register and reregister to the post office. There are four dates that are the turning points. Of course, December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor. January 25th, 1942, immediately after Pearl Harbor the Rabas Commission was trying to figure out what went wrong. And some of the suggestions that came back were there were fifth columns within the United States. And January 29th, 1942, we have the first enemy alien relocation that was issued. Then the executive order 9066. So all people were excluded from specific areas...besides to carry all the time your identification card, there were travel restrictions. You cannot travel more than five miles. They were required to hand over all the contraband, which means cameras, weapons, flashlights that can be used to signal across the ocean.

And short-wave radios. This was a very sad time. There was an instance on the west coast, a number of people committed suicide. One man went to the barn and asked his friend to please shoot him. Because his friend refused, he walked out and threw himself under a train. Because he had his family there and grew up there, he felt he was American. He felt betrayed.

All the Italian schools were closed, Italian American meetings became suspected. The American organizations and social clubs...Ultimately, about 600,000 Americans were arrested. 250,000 were interned. Once you are arrested, you have the right to go in front of a panel that will judge if you were considered to be a danger or not. You still have to carry your identification, travel restrictions. Also, you have to remember this: enemy alien prohibited areas. The fact that you could not go into certain areas means you lost your job. Your business was either you have to close it or walk away. You were enemy aliens. Thousands of people lost everything.

52,000 Italian aliens cannot leave their homes between 8:00 PM and 5:00 AM. So all those who work in bakeries, they just lost their job...There were about 1,400 Italian American fishermen in San Francisco and again, they cannot set foot on their waterfront after February 24th, 1942. And this was the crazy part: the fishing industry was considered to be a national priority. Seafood was providing food for the nation. And here we have 90% of San Francisco being either sequestered by the Coast Guard or left idle because people cannot access the waterfront. Even one of the newspapers said, "Fishermen with 23 sons in the Army and Navy are bound to wharf while boat lies idle, and the seafood is needed." I mean, it was so evident. Yet months would pass before the restrictions were rescinded...Not one single person was ever convicted or accused of any anti-American action.

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry1SXOCU0xw

The Lost Library: The Legacy of Vilna's Strashun Library in the Aftermath of the Holocaust

In late - February 1946 Seymour J. Pomrenze was appointed as the first director...And on February 26 the I.G. Farben building official was rechristened the Offenbach Archival Depot, the OAD. Pomrenze was well-suited for the project to shepherd the massive collection, identification and restitution of Jewish books at the OAD. He was proficient in Hebrew, German and Yiddish and before his military service he had served as an archivist at the United States National archives. Like Shonefeld Pomrenze had served in the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. And the months before arriving at the OAD Pomrenze was surveying archival materials in other parts of Germany. Perhaps most important for the task at hand, Pomrenze possessed considerable military administrative experience. The numbers of libraries identified at the OIDA was incredible. For example by March 1946 less than a month in, the staff had identified 67 institutional libraries, 257 private libraries from Germany alone.

When cataloging began many important Jewish libraries from across Europe were discovered nearly intact. For example in March the OAD staff identified and returned three important Jewish Dutch Libraries.

Ultimately some 3,000,000 books were housed at the OAD, but despite the near miraculous survival they were almost lost again. And only due to the efforts of the United States government are they here today. Legally airless property becomes the property of the country of origin. With the ability to identify books country of origin the then existing law required that the books go to the now Jews - murdered Jews original country. Application of the law would have the perverse effect the majority of the books would go to Germany.

Property that originated in Lithuania and Poland, such as that of the Strashun Library was at risk of falling into Soviet control and equally inappropriate results. In Eastern Europe some Jews were murdered after they returned to their homes. How would their books be treated? The USSR was generally antagonistic towards Judaism and unlikely to reserve the books if they did not outright destroy them. By July 1946 the Polish and Soviet Governments had already received Jewish property. Yet there was little doubt how the Jewish property was already - would be treated as according to contemporary news report. The state of Jewish books in Poland was (for) fishes wrapped for sale...

Even if the government elected not to follow the law of (Inaudible) property where should the property go? There was no Jewish state. It was not even clear that there would be a natural location for the books. To address the short comings of existing law in lieu of - lack of Jewish nationhood, Jewish organizations and institutions proposed that for purposes of restitution they should be recognized as proxy's for the exterminated Jews. However without modification to the existing law, the Americans who controlled the OAD were unwilling to grant Jewish body's nation state status. Only after protracting negotiations and without the consent of the other allies, the U.S. government acting unilaterally revised existing law. After which a single Jewish organization was acknowledged as a legitimate destination for Jewish property. A system of preference destinations established...The depth of the United States Army for saving these books is difficult to overstate however there's not only these books saved, but also sought to assist in reviving Jewish Education and providing hope for those in displaced persons camps in the United States zones of occupation. Aside from caring for those survivors physical needs, the United States Army also enabled Jewish practice and study.

This Army played a major role in the rescue of Jewish people from total annihilation...The Hebrew dedication is even more explicit as to the enormous debt and how unusual it is that the government participated in this publication. The dedication acknowledges that this is extraordinary because historically governments have never supported the printing of the Talmud...This is the first time in Jewish history that a government has sponsored the printing of the Talmud.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlRMv1fXFBI

Reading the Bible in the Reformation

One of the most common themes of an older narrative of the Reformation shared by many scholars and the general public alike was that the pre-Reformation church prohibited the reading of the Bible in vernacular languages and allowed the laity to read it only in Latin. Even more ubiquitous was the claim that early Protestant Reformers such Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages so that lay Christians could confront God's word directly and read and interpret it for themselves. Liberated from clerical monopoly and control, so goes this narrative, lay men and women were thus able to read God's word directly without any clerical filter or guide other than the holy spirit. Indeed, reading the Bible in the vernacular became one of the touchstones of the concepts of the priesthood of all believers and sola scriptura so championed by Protestant Reformers like Luther and Calvin. This idea was so much a a part of the popular imagination of the Protestant Reformation that it still finds its way into many general accounts, textbooks and even the work of some professional historians. Recent scholarship, however, has completely undermined these notions.

First, we now know that various vernacular translations of the Bible in French, German and other languages circulated widely before the Reformation both in manuscript and in printed form. And many clergy encouraged the laity to read them as long as they did not question the sole authority of the church to interpret scripture except for vernacular translations associated with heretics such as those connected with the Lollards in England or the Waldensians in the Alps. Vernacular translation circulated freely and without suppression by the church prior to the Reformation. Second, Luther intended his German translation of the New Testament primarily for clergy who were trained to interpret scripture for their parishioners. Lay Christians were supposed to learn the correct interpretation of the Bible through the twin oral remedies of the catechism and the sermon thus by hearing the word rather than through reading it. And as Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss a couple of historians noted a couple of decades ago, Luther may appear to have favored every man his own Bible reader, but after the peasant revolts of 1525, he effectively discouraged lay Bible reading or at least failed effectively to encourage an unmediated encounter between scripture and the untrained lay mind. In fact, according to these same scholars, regular lay Bible reading at home did not become a standard practice for Lutherans until the Pietist movement of the late 17th century, 1680s and '90s. Calvin's preferences were much the same. Ordinary Christians had no business interpreting scripture which was the job of the trained ministers of the reformed church.

...

So many of these Bibles, particularly the large folios, were more than simply books. They were like pieces of furniture. And their format significantly influenced how the readers read them. And this was also true of typeface, layout out the page, and all the early 16th century Bibles like those printed since Gutenberg were in Gothic or black letter typeface. But by the mid-16th century, most, though not all Bible publishers, switched to Roman type. Not because it made them easier to read as most of my students think, which it didn't, because young kids learned their ABC's in Gothic type. Roman type was more difficult to read for them, but it was humanist printers who pushed the shift from Gothic to Roman type in an effort to better distinguish their translations from the Latin Vulgate. The Gothic type was still associated with Catholic Bibles, and the humanist printers who were printing Protestant Bibles wanted to use something different.

And the role of printers is interesting, because they introduced all kinds of things such as verse numbers, chapter numbers. There was no uniformity of this. They put in illustrations, some that they already had on hand, others, that is, the translators didn't have complete control even in Calvin's Geneva. But if we're treating this Bible as a reformed Bible-- There's a Protestant Bible-- since it served as a model for Olivetan and later reform Bibles, how do we square all these images with Calvin's known opposition to images in the Bible? Well, Calvin didn't have control of this edition for one thing. But his reservation stemmed primarily from God's order to Moses in the Old Testament to issue all graven images. But any Calvinist prohibition against images was limited primarily to images of God and Christ. This is one reason why the 144 images in the Bible of Lefevre, 115 were placed in the Old Testament and only 29 in the (new)...And the practice of placing notes to the readers in the margin was an innovation that all later Bibles printed in French both Protestant and Catholic would follow. After this edition was printed in Antwerp in 1530, there came a flood of reform Bibles beginning with the famous translation by Pierre Robert Olivetan printed in 1535...

paid for by the Waldensians of Piedmont and translated by Pierre Robert Olivetan, the pupil of Lefevre d'Etaples and cousin of Calvin. Olivetan intended his Bible to be different from Lefevre's, however. Lefevre's was translated from the Latin Vulgate. Olivetan intended his Bible to be translated from the original Hebrew and Greek, and the title page of his translation could not have been more different. Unlike the heavily illustrated title page of Lefevre, Olivetan's translation printed by Pierre de Wingle a friend of Guillaume Farel and a reformist printer chose a plainer and more simple title page. La Bible, the Bible in big Roman type and then continuing in Gothic type, which is the complete holy scripture in which is contained the Old Testament and the New translated into French. The Old from the Hebrew and the New from the Greek. At the bottom of the page is Olivetan's own famous device, Dieu en tout, God in everything followed by Isaiah 1-- Hear oh heavens and listen oh earth, for the Lord has spoken. And at the very top of the page, a Hebrew inscription from Isaiah 40-- The word of our God endures forever just up here above the title. Like Lefevre's Bible, a number of reader's aids, this was a large folio weighing nearly 5 kilos. Preface to the reader by Olivetan, a Latin preface to the reader by Calvin, multiple tables of contents, two indexes-- one of proper names, other of subjects. Olivetan, unlike Lefevre, placed all of the deuterocanonical books, the apocrypha, separately between the Old and New Testament. Lefevre's Bible interspersed them amongst the prophets of the Old Testament like the Vulgate, and various Protestant Bibles would devise their own order for books. There again, was not a standard order even amongst reform Bibles supervised by Calvin. Some printers dispersed them in a different order. Some collected them separately at the end of the Old Testament. That was a novelty of printers.

One might think with all of the reader's aids, guides to readers in the margin, glosses, that whatever happened to the theme sola scriptura? It might seem that the one thing Calvin didn't want was an unmediated reading of a lay person reading the Bible. They needed all of these reader's guides. He didn't want to put the Bible in the hands of lay readers and just let them off on their own. And Olivetan introduced other printing devices to guide the reader to specific passages. The manicule or pointing hand printed in the margin at specific verses.

We cannot be sure if the passages where these pointing hands were placed were chosen by Olivetan, later by Calvin or by the printer Pierre de Wingle. Nevertheless, these markers were placed in the margins of various books throughout the New Testament, a total of 24 different chapters with most of them in the books of Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians. The key passages linking the Calvinist doctrines of justification by faith and predestination are duly pointed out to readers with a pointing hand next to Romans 8:30 which you see here. There aren't verse numbers yet in 1535. They would eventually creep in around midcentury. In addition to the pointing hand in the margin are printed the following words, predestination, vocation, justification, glorification, Christ gives. And you can see them there on the left-hand side. And at Romans 11:5, 6 the same reader's directives in the margin next to this passage just in the same way and tying those who are left or chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, then it is not by works or grace would not be grace. And printed in the margin were also the following words, salvation by grace not by works, which you can see on the right-hand side. If nothing else, either the translator or the printer or both wanted to make sure the reader noticed passages such as these, significant Protestant doctrines of the faith.

But before really investigating how did readers read these Bibles, we need to establish what kinds of Bibles they were reading. I was stunned to discover when I first began this project that there were comparatively few complete Bibles printed by the end of the 16th century at least compared to the numbers of partial Bibles and Books of Hours which also contained passages from the Bible. Books of Hours contained passages from the Torah, the first five books and the Psalms, always the Penitential Psalms. Altogether, there were 287 different editions of complete French Bibles published between 1530-- That was the first one, Lefevre's, in 1600 inside and outside France. These are all editions published in French in the period from 1530 to 1600, and this is according to Andrew Pettegree's Saint Andrews French Book Project which is now online, part of the universal short title catalogue. On the other hand, there were 1,114 different editions of partial Bibles published in French, various combinations of the Old Testament, the Psalms and the New Testament during the same period. So there were approximately four and half times more readers of partial Bibles than complete Bibles. And in the same period, there were 219 Latin editions of complete Bibles that were printed in 714 partial editions. Though nearly as many readers of books of ours both in French and in Latin as there were readers of complete or partial Bibles. And because the Sorbonne did allow Books of Hours to be printed in French, many Catholic readers already had access to at least parts of the Bible in the vernacular before the Reformation. And while the Saint Andrews data are no doubt incomplete because they freely admit there's some editions that no surviving copies have survived to the present, it gives us a rough idea of how many editions were in circulation.

So how did readers read them? I'll briefly give you a few highlights of the kinds of reader's markings I've found in the 500 or so Bibles to date that I've looked at. These were obviously underlinings and marginalia of various sorts. Among the many garden variety markings were not just underlining of biblical text but underlining of the notes and the glosses whether aids in the margins or underlining in formal footnotes. More interesting are the reader's own notes in the margins commenting on something in the text. I found a number of Bibles, for example, where readers had been struck by the size of Noah's ark...Other markings are equally intriguing such as the underlining of the passage in Genesis where God told Abraham, "Every male among you will be circumcised." So that's what he's underlined, but he also noted in the margin-- And I'm assuming it's a he-- God's order of circumcision. Then just a few lines down over in the gutter margin, he's written something else. Abraham was circumcised at 99 years. Now, it's unclear whether what struck the reader most acutely was whether Abraham was 99 when he did it or that he did it to himself (laughter). ut there are many other markings that reflect reactions to various passages of biblical text, only a few that I found of explicit theological significance. The most striking feature of my findings is there were more markings in the text not directly related to theology at all, but most were out of interest of human interaction with the sacred such as stories of Noah and Abraham. Most common of all was a signature of the reader...I have found scores and scores of Catholic-owned Protestant Bibles. Indeed, the person who has examined the Notarial Archives and knows them better than anyone else in Paris, Robert DeSimone (assumed spelling), says that virtually every Parisian who owned books and left them in his will owned at least one French Bible. And France was overwhelmingly Catholic. Protestantism virtually didn't exist, particularly after 1572. So lots of French Catholics were reading these Protestant Bibles.

I found 989 total readers' marks of some kind in the book of Genesis in the 81 Bibles with readers' marks. Now, it might look at first glance that they were more interested in reading the Old Testament than the New, and that's a fair conclusion, I suppose. But the Old Testament is nearly three times longer than the New. The greatest variation comes in which books readers made marks. As already indicated, readers made more marks in Genesis than any other book in the Bible, 989, and along with the book of Exodus, 231 marks. The first two books of the Bible received more than a third of all marks in all the Bibles I've examined. Now, if you're thinking to yourself, "This is true of every book ever printed." There are more readers' notations in the first couple of chapters, and then they give up (laughter). And I am certainly open to that for a lot of these readers. However, the gospel of Mark with 141 marks was the most widely marked book in the New Testament. And the only other books with at least a 100 marks are 2 Kings or 2 Samuel-- depending on which version you're reading-- Psalms and Isaiah. At the other extreme, I found no readers' marks at all in 13 books and fewer than 10 in 29 others. So, what kind of conclusions should we draw?

First, I would argue that it seems clear that the Bible as a book was not read in a linear fashion by all readers, even if we accept that some of those readers who left marks in Genesis and Exodus perhaps began a linear reading of the Bible and then stopped reading.

It seems clear that most readers focused on specific parts of the Bible, and there are few surprises among the most commonly marked books as those appear to be the ones that 16th century readers were most familiar with already. That is, the most well-known to them from hearing these passages read aloud in church or elsewhere. Second, I would argue that the distribution of marks suggests that most 16th century readers noted passages for particular interest or memorable events such as the size of Noah's ark rather than passages of theological significance. Indeed, one is struck by how much more interest there was in certain books of the Old Testament than in those of the New where salvation by faith alone rather than good works was most explicit. Moreover, even in Acts and Romans where these doctrines and the printed manicules in the margin were most explicit, most of the readers' marks were not made to call attention to these passages about salvation. So while one can say that most readers in the 16th century read their Bibles as the word of God, it would appear that they did not do so primarily for theological training or doctrine. Now, this shouldn't really surprise us as modern scholarship has made it very clear that predestination was not the foundation and focal point of Calvin's theology as scholars of the 19th century have led us to believe. Also, it seems clear that most were interested in the explicitly narrative parts of the Bible rather than the most doctrinally relevant. Genesis and Exodus were the historical narratives of the Hebrews, God's chosen people with whom the Huguenots in France strongly identified. And Mark was not only the most narrative book of the four gospels but also the most narrative book in the entire New Testament. Narratives of human encounters with the sacred resonated much more acutely with readers than abstract theology...Thus it should not surprise us that the narratives of the Hebrews and the Old Testament and of Jesus in the New Testament should be so popular.

Again, as the figures indicate, there were far more people reading individually published editions of the Psalms, the New Testament and Books of Hours than reading complete Bibles. Ultimately, it would seem that neither the advent of the printing press nor the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura resulted in significant numbers of French men and women becoming more avid readers of the Bible than they already were. Now, the slow but steady growth in literacy which was the result of the printing press was doubtlessly bringing in new readers all the time, but it is impossible to tell which of the readers of the Bibles I've examined or at least for the overwhelming majority were actually new readers. Thus, if Calvin and the other leaders of the reform faith were making a serious effort to transform the Bible from an oral text to a written text-- And all the evidence suggests they were trying to do this-- then it would appear that progress was slow. The surviving material evidence of my database of Bibles suggests that most Catholics and even many Protestants were still hearing the Bible read aloud either in church or at home as they were reading it themselves.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXhWrP8Uen0

On the Finland Watch: An American Diplomat in Finland

Now our target subject today is U.S.--Finnish relations during the Cold War. There are many people, how were two countries with totally different perspectives and circumstances heading into the long Cold War able to develop a basically positive and constructive relationship with each other? The United States entered the Cold War as by far the most powerful country in the world. Both economically and militarily. And as the effective leader of what would become the NATO alliance. And deeply concerned already about Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. And concerned about Soviet goals and ambitions towards a Western Europe. Prostrated by the destruction of World War II. So the U.S. had a unique perspective on, on the, on the world as the Cold War began. Finland's perspective, as it entered the Cold War, could hardly have been more different. Beginning with the fact that Finland had been forced into a harsh peace after its wars with the neighboring Soviet Union. Wars in which Finland was able to maintain its independence, but it had to, had to cede ten percent of its territory to the Soviet Union. The very country, the very country at the heart of our Cold War concerns. And a country with which Finland shared an 800-mile border.

Now many, many in this room obviously know a lot about Finland. But I want to review with you the different elements of the Finnish context and history. The parts that I believe was important. And this is the point. The part that was important for U.S. diplomats and policymakers to know about Finland. Which would help us understand Finland's Cold War outlook. And how it was importantly influenced by her long and often arduous history. Moreover, to step back and, and look at, at these factors and historical periods this evening serves as a useful and inspiring reminder to all of us. What this exceptional country and people have endured and overcome during their long history. Few countries have had as, as interesting and as turbulent a history as has Finland. And few if any countries have their histories and their geographical, geopolitical realities had such a direct and lasting impact on their national character and outlook as is the case of Finland...A key element in understanding Finland is to internalize Finland's extreme northern position. And I want to give you two quick perspectives.

Twelve thousand years ago just a reminder that all of Finland was covered by a massive glacier ice pack that gradually receded as the Ice Age ended. Gouging out the ravines and the thousands of lakes surrounded by forests. Which characterized ancient and even a part, a good part of even current-day Finland. The glacier pack history reminds us of how far, how far north Finland is...think of that early group of migrants to Finland, bringing with them the predecessor language of today's Finnish language. Which is we know is closely related only to Estonian and to the Karelian languages that was spoken on the Russian side of the Finnish--Russian border. Now the Finnish language of course is totally unrelated to any Indo-European languages. Including the Slavic languages spoken on Finland's east and the Nordic languages spoken to Finland's west. And I, I'm suggesting that Finland's geographical location, its relative isolation. And then this language which was totally different, totally different grammatic, grammatical structure and vocabulary. I think these have been factors helping to isolate Finland from mainland Europe. And also in maintaining a cohesion among the Finns. And to a certain degree, protecting Finland from unwanted outside influences over, over hundreds if not thousands of years.

When nations began forming in the, in the early Middle Ages, around 1150, Finland came under the domination of neighboring Sweden. And for some 650 years, Finland was controlled by Sweden and indeed became considered as a, as the comprising the eastern half of the Swedish realm. Swedes and Swedish Finns dominated the economic, cultural, and governmental and social heights in Finland throughout that long period. Even though Finnish was the mother tongue of well over 80% of the Finnish part of Sweden. This centuries-long period left strong social, organizational, and cultural legacies that are recognized by sociologists. As having endured to the present time. The next extremely important historical period which had an enormous impact on Finland. Including on its outlook during the Cold War was when Czarist Russia took Finland away from Sweden in the early 19th century during Europe's Napoleonic Wars. Finland had of course had been fought over countless times. Between Sweden and Russia with the Finns fighting alongside the Swedes against the Russian incursions. However, this time, Sweden was forced to cede Finland to Russia. Czar Alexander I in March 1809, Czar Alexander I summoned the Finnish Estates or "diet parliament," if you will. To gather formally in the small city of (inaudible), east of Helsinki. And propose that Finland become a quote, "Grand Duchy of Russia." Alexander I understood it would be a great mistake to try to Russify the newly-acquired Finland. Rather, the idea was to try to loosen the centuries-long Swedish influence over Finland. Under the agreement, the Czar consequently granted, granted wide autonomy to Finland. It would have its own parliament. It would select and manage its own government. Pass its own laws, including tax laws. Finland could raise its own military. Russian citizens had no rights in Finland. Now the Czar did keep the authority to appoint a Russian as the Governor General of Finland. Resident in Helsinki. But the Governor General would report directly to the Czar in the latter's capacity as the Grand Duke of Finland. He would not be responsible to any Russian bureaucracies. Importantly the Czar himself affirmed in his closing speech in (inaudible) at that conference. That the Finns had been quote, "Elevated to membership in the family of nations." Unquote. So these constructive policies permitted and encouraged intense resurgence of Finnish nationalism and awareness. Which manifested itself in the flowering of the Finnish culture and language during the Grand Duchy period.

The use of the Finnish language was vastly widened during the Grand Duchy period. And in 1863, the Finnish language was finally accorded equal status with the Swedish language. The first high school in the Finnish language was not established until about 1844. Not a single, in other words, not a single high school in the Finnish language throughout the entire 650-year Swedish period. One of the leading proponents and promoters of the expanded use of the Finnish language was and culture was Johan Vilhelm Snellman. His famous aphorism was "Swedes we are no longer. Russians we cannot become. We must be Finns." And language started becoming an important issue. There was resentment among some Swedish Finns over the loss of the unique status of the Swedish language. And many Finns of Finnish-speaking backgrounds expressed resentment against the untoward influence wielded by the Finns of Swedish-speaking backgrounds. Nevertheless, many Finns, including Swedish Finns identified with the concept of emphasizing Finnishness. Many Swedish Finns changed their Swedish names to Finnish names. Reversing the process of a previous era when some Finnish-speaking Finns changed their names to Swedish names in order to fit in better with the, the policy, the, the power structure of the time. But there's no denying that the language issue for decades was important in Finland and divisive. Fortunately, only remnants of these feelings can occasionally be noted in today's Finland. Now, all of these positives associated with being a Grand Duchy were swept away with the accession to the throne of Czar Nicholas II in 1898. Ignoring the benevolent and successful practices of Alexander I and his immediate three successors, Czar Nicholas ordered a brutal program of Russification of Finland. He appointed a Russian army general, Nikolai Bobrikov, as the Governor General of Finland. With orders to carry out a strict Russification program.

Here we have General Bobrikov. Actions included the decisions of the Finnish Parliament could be overruled by Russian authorities. The small Finnish army was abolished. Young Finns became subject to conscription into the Russian army. All official government business must be conducted in the Russian language. The Finns were outraged! In a matter of weeks, a petition to the Czar was signed by over half a million Finns, more than half of the adult Finnish population of the time. Czar Nicholas refused even to receive the delegation that brought him that petition. Finnish unrest was dramatized by the assassination of Governor General Bobrikov in Helsinki in 1904. The assassin was a young Swedish-speaking Finnish nationalist Eugen Schauman. Who then turned his weapon on himself and killed himself. He left behind a letter saying his act was in response to Bobrikov's brutal Russification campaign in Finland. Eugen Schauman became an enduring national hero to all Finns of both Swedish and Finnish backgrounds. But it was not just the Russification program of Czar Nicholas II that was the trouble. It was rather a towering incompetence on his part that had introduced a 20-year period, 1898 to 1918, of chaos in Russia. That spilled over into Finland. This became another formative historical period exerting strong influence on the Finnish perspectives during the Cold War.

You had the loss in 1904, the Russian loss to the Russo-Japanese War. The St. Petersburg revolutionary uprising in 1905, resulting in the 1905 Bloody Sunday Massacre. You had the overthrow of the czar finally in May of 1917 within the Revolution of the Mensheviks. And the provisional governor, government of Alexander Kerensky. Who in turn was overthrown by the Bolsheviks of Vladimir Lenin in the October 1917 revolution. And the assassination of Czar Nicholas II and his whole family. All of these events in Russia had tremendous consequences for Finland. Creating and exacerbating serious divisions. There were differences between Finnish political and language groups. About how to continue resistance to the Russification program. The language issue itself became more divisive. The Finnish socialist movement gained strength. The Finns were able, however, in 1906 to take advantage of the chaos in St. Petersburg or Petrograd by then I guess. To approve the new 200-member, single chamber parliament...And then in the 1907 parliamentary elections introduced for the first time in Europe, universal suffrage.

Finnish socialists divided among themselves between the moderates and the hardliners. Similar to and influenced by the split between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in Russia. And indeed the Finnish moderates sort of had their links back to the Mensheviks. And the Finnish socialist hardliners had their links to the Bolsheviks. In the 1917 parliamentary elections, the Finnish socialists with their now more radical social demands lost their majority by a narrow margin. And a non-socialist government, coalition government, was formed by, by headed by P.E. Svinhufvud, who drafted the Finnish Declaration of Independence...Meanwhile, the more radical Finnish socialists organized militia units called Red Guards. And the Finnish conservative movement also formed Civil Guards or White Guards units. Finland was increasingly polarized.

On January 3, 1918, the new Russian leader, Vladimir Lenin, formally recognized Finnish independence. Although both he and Stalin expected that Finland would soon become a part of what was to become the Soviet Union. The hardline Finnish social revolutionaries rebelled against the conservative government of Svinhufvud. They declared a general strike and were supported by the Russian Bolsheviks now in power in Petrograd. The officials of the Svinhufvud coalition government had to flee Helsinki and north to Vaasa where the conservative forces were gathering.

The Finnish socialists established a government they called quote, "Finnish Socialist Workers Republic," unquote. And signed an agreement with the now-Bolshevik Lenin government of Russia on March 1, 1918. The Russian's promised weapons and supplies to the Red Guards. One example of what was at stake. The Svinhufvud government had sent to Parliament a bill to convert tenant farmers into owners of the land that they worked. The Socialist People's Commission instead declared that tenant farmers would become tenants of the state. So the split was final. And the Civil War was on. Kind of interesting slide here. The disposition of, of the Red and White territories at the outset of the 1918 Civil War. Of course there were, there were exceptions and different groups in different parts. But that reflects the basic reality. There were some 70,000 Russian troops in Finland at the start of the war. But most were pulled back by the Russian government to Karelia. In the north, White Guards disarmed and disbanded numerous Russian troops. The Red Guards were untrained and without experienced leadership. At the officer and non-commissioned officer level. In contrast, many of the White Guards had prior military experience. Moreover, they had the most experienced and brilliant leader of them all, General, soon to become Marshal, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim. Born in Finland of a distinguished Baltic-Swedish family. Mannerheim, who did not speak Finnish, attended the Czar's Military School in St. Petersburg. Later becoming the prestigious, the commander of the prestigious Czar's own regiment. During World War I, he was a Major General in the Czarist Army, fighting against Germans on the Eastern front. At the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution, Mannerheim had to flee from Russia to Finland. Narrowly escaping execution by his own troops. Mannerheim was given overall command of the White forces. Which also benefited from significant German material, military material support. Young Finns who had secretly been sent to Germany during World War I for training. And some of whom actually fought alongside the Germans, returned to Finland in the Civil War and were turned into the elite Jager battalion.

On March 3, 1918, the Soviets and the Germans signed a treaty ending Russian participation in World War I on terms very favorable to Germany. General Mannerheim had stated he did not want the assistance of any foreign troops in the Finnish Civil War. However, in April the Germans landed a full division in southern Finland and rapidly defeated the Finnish Red forces. And then went on to capture the capital city of Helsinki. Meanwhile the White forces of Mannerheim, took what was a major socialist stronghold, the city of (inaudible) also in April. And by early May, the Civil War was over.

Brother against brother, veli veljea vastaan. This was a brutal five months short but brutal Civil War with heavy casualties. Some 33,000 Finns lost their lives, one out of every 100 Finns at the time. Even worse, even worse, only one-quarter of the deaths occurred during actual combat. Although it is distasteful, I believe we have to recognize in this presentation with at least this one photo of the numerous war crimes and atrocities that occurred on both sides. Ten thousand of the 33,000 deaths were by summary military executions like the one we see here. Of these executions, some 80% were by the White Guards. And some 20% by the Red Guards. And also, even though the Civil War lasted only five months. Many thousand more Finns died of disease or starvation in prison of war camps. Mostly in the White POW camps. Many of these deaths could have been prevented. The war left a bitter legacy that divided Finns for decades, although the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland helped draw the two sides of the Civil War closer together against the common enemy.

It seems probable that had the Red Guards won the Civil War. Finland would have been joined again to the now-communist Soviet Union. As had been anticipated by both Lenin and Stalin. Instead, Finland was very much within the German sphere of influence following the war. The Soviets had been pressuring Finland to move the Finnish--Soviet border on the Karelian Isthmus westward. Offering Finland some significant land concessions further north along the 880-mile Finnish--Soviet border. But Karelia had a central place in Finnish history and folklore as the origin, the mystic, mythic origin and actual origin of Finnish history and of the, of the Finnish National Epic poem...It was politically impossible for the Finnish political leaders. To agree to moving the border even though Mannerheim warned them that the border was not defensible. Suddenly, on August 29, 1939, the situation changed drastically. Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow the infamous Molotov--von Ribbentrop-negotiated Non-Aggression Pact. Here we see, we see Molotov on the right, von Ribbentrop on the left. And Joseph Stalin in the center. This pact gave Hitler a free hand to invade Western Europe. The two sides agreed to divide Poland between them. And unbeknownst to Finland was a secret provision giving the Soviet Union carte blanche to do whatever it wanted in the Baltic and Finland areas without interference from Germany. This led immediately to renewed Soviet pressure on Finland to cede Karelian territories. Joseph Stalin said, "The Finnish--Soviet border is too close to Leningrad. We cannot move Leningrad, so we're going to have to move the Finnish--Soviet border."

And the Soviet Union attacked. Here was the Soviet Union Red Army plan of attack. You'll notice the arrows penetrating into Finland from all directions. Well as we know, none of these arrows went anywhere. Except modestly but importantly on the Karelian Isthmus. The Soviet Army invaded on November 30, 1939. At the first Karelian town reached by the Red Army, (foreign language), the Soviets established the so-called Finnish Democratic Republic. They recognized it as the official government of Finland. Placing at its head the Finnish communist Arto Kosonen, who had fled to the Soviet Union following the Finnish Civil War. This was a pretty clear signal perhaps of what plans the Soviets had in mind for Finland. The Finns, desperate, pleaded for international support against the Soviet onslaught. The British and French consulted with each other about some kind of joint intervention at some point. But nothing ever materialized. The Finns were on their own against the Soviet Union and the mighty Red Army. A powerful lesson, you think, to be learned? To be kept in mind during the Cold War? To the admiration of the world, Finland fought courageously, inflicting unbelievably high casualties on the Soviet Red Army. Soviet leaders and generals thought that Helsinki, well would be taken in maybe 10 or 12 days. Instead, the war dragged on for months. The spirit of the Finnish resistance can be summarized in a few scenes from the Winter War. And I just simply could not resist including, including a few. Here you have the Finnish ski troops with their iconic white coverings over their uniforms. Here you have a Finnish ski troop column overran a Red Army tank column, a frequent occurrence during the three-month war.

Here you have Finnish Winter War machine gun in placements. Set up alongside of strategic places facing fields, open fields covered with snow and frozen lakes. And the recently purged Red Army Officer Corps and experienced officers marched their soldiers in their, in their brown great coats across the open fields. And open and frozen lakes with some tank support, it is true. Considerable tank support. But the Finnish machine guns mowed them down.

Yes, Helsinki was bombed during the Winter War. And here finally, Red Army dead in their brown great coats. One Finnish general said, "Poor Finland. We are a small country. Where are we going to bury them all?" (Laughter) The world looked on in admiration as Finland held off the far-superior Soviet forces. But no help came. Finland had to sue for peace in March 1940. The Finnish people were devastated because Finland seemed to have won all of the battles. But Mannerheim and his staff knew that the Russian attacks now. With new generals, better tactics, more weapons and more men, could not be stopped by a militarily depleted Finnish forces with tremendous loss of, of equipment as a result of the Winter War. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was getting anxious that the war was dragging on longer than they expected. And so while insisting on their territorial demands which they in fact increased their demands. They forgot about the puppet government...And negotiated directly with the duly constituted government of Finland.

consider the casualties suffered by both sides in the, in the November 1939--March 1940 Winter War. Dead or missing in action, Finland about 26,000. The Soviet Union from between 126,000 to 168,000. Wounded: Finland, around 44,000. The Soviet Union: around 167,000. The, the losses of the Finns, the dead and wounded were by no means insignificant, given their small population. It was a serious sacrifice. But the casualty rate was four or five to one. Which is virtually unheard of in modern warfare. And I want to recognize now, as and many others have. That had it not been for the extraordinary heroism, determination, sacrifices, and prowess of the Finnish armed forces, Finland's fighting forces, and their home front support during the Winter War. And the later Continuation War, the Red Army surely would have moved, moved to occupy Finland. If not in 1940, then in 1944 or 1948 or even later. It seems certain that the Soviet and Red Army leadership decided or concluded that any attempt to subjugate Finland would have met endless fighting and resistance. A proud and definitive chapter in Finnish history, the likes of which few, few countries, if any other countries can point to.

After the Winter War, as determined in the summer of 1940, the Red Army divided Poland with Germany. They invaded Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and forcibly incorporated them into the Soviet Union. They stepped up their propaganda attacks on Finland. The Finns began digging new defensive lines and feared the worst. However, that July of 1940, Germany sent a secret military mission to Helsinki. And let it be known that Hitler was planning to invade the Soviet Union the next spring. Were the Finns interested? (Laughter) Well, the Finns adopted one of the oldest and unwritten rules in international warfare, international affairs and in warfare. My enemy's enemy is my friend. And here was Finland's enemy's enemy. Adolf Hitler on the left chatting with Marshal Mannerheim in the center and President Risto Ryti on the right. However, Finland did stipulate to Germany that they would not be allies with Germany in this war against the Soviet Union. But rather a co-belligerent. That is to say fighting the same enemy but for their own goals. In this case to regain their lost territory. They assisted the German forces, some 250,000. The Finns helped them transit Finland to get up to Lapland. Some 250,000, where they would attack the Soviet forces protecting Murmansk. But Finland would not assist Germany in the siege of Leningrad which (they) easily could have done.

It was almost hard not to do. And nor would Finland move to cut the Murmansk--Moscow railway line which was possible. Which the Allies were using of course to resupply Soviet Union during the war. So when Hitler's forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Finland waited three days and then executed its own planned attack. Finnish forces took back their lost territory and then took over much of Soviet Karelia, and then established defensive lines to see what was going to happen in the greater war. Finland called its renewed fighting with the Soviet Union the Continuation War. Continuation of the Winter War. Here we see Finland occupied Soviet Karelia, that large pinkish area in the center was part of the Soviet Union. It was Karelia, Soviet part of Karelia. The Finns occupied that entire area. And then as I say, sort of established defensive lines and waited to see what would happen. It is quite possible, let's, let's be realistic. Quite possible that had Hitler won the war, there would have been a greater Finland. Including the Soviet Karelia. However, after Stalingrad, when it became clear to the Finns and to many others. That the Soviet Union and the Allies were going to defeat Germany. Finland began secret negotiations with the Soviet Union to get out of the war. Meanwhile, it was talk, talk, fight, fight. Then in June 1944, the Red Army launched a massive military and artillery attack on the Karelian Isthmus. The Finns were overwhelmed and sought the assistance from the Germans to halt the offensive. The Germans initially refused to provide the Finns with the heavy equipment and air support they needed to stop the attack, because they had become aware that the Finns were secretly negotiating with the, with the Soviet Union for a separate peace. It was only when President Risto Ryti of Finland gave his personal assurances that he would not approve a separate peace agreement under his presidency, did the Germans relent and provide to Finland the necessary equipment. To blunt the attack and avoid being overwhelmed.

As soon as the attack was stopped, President Ryti resigned the presidency. The Parliament named Marshal Mannerheim president. And he promptly signed an armistice agreement in September, ending the conflict with the Soviet Union. A cynical maneuver? Ryti's commitment had been personal. And thus not binding on his successor.

The war was over, but prospects for Finland were bleak...

The Soviets demanded further territorial concessions from the Finns. Remember earlier they had offered to give some additional territories all up north along the Finnish--Russian border to some territorial concessions to Finland. Instead, they took a big chunk from (inaudible) and then a big chunk from (inaudible) which was Finland's outlet to the Arctic Sea. Very important demands. They also took some islands, Finnish islands from the Gulf of Finland. And then very importantly, way there at the bottom left, the, you see Porkkala. The Soviets, that's a peninsula near Helsinki. The Soviet Union grabbed up that peninsula as a, as a, as a Soviet naval base. And demanded a 50-year lease on that base, only miles from Helsinki. And then one of the bleakest and most feared events in Finland's history. September 22, 1944, the Allied Control Commission arrives in Helsinki, remains from 1944 to 1947. Emblematic of Finland's precarious position. The Allied Control Commission consisted of 200 Soviet and 15 British members. And was headed by the Soviet Colonel General Andrei Zhdanov. A well-known Communist Party ideologue from, ideologue from Leningrad. With always a special, almost perverse interest in Finland.

The ACC as it was called set up its headquarters in the Hotel (inaudible) in downtown Helsinki. Zhdanov totally dominated the ACC and deeply meddled in Finnish political affairs. He brokered the creation of a Communist front electoral movement called the SKDL. The Finnish People's Democratic League. Which had a good and strong electoral result in 1944 parliamentary elections in Finland. Zhdanov saw these results as very promising and stated that after the election. That he saw Finland as quote, "Being firmly on the road of democratic development. Alongside Hungary and Romania." Hardly countries I think Finland would like to be paired with. And then you had the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947. It included very harsh terms for Finland. The United States could not participate in the Paris Peace Treaty negotiations about Finland. Why? Because we were the only Allied country that never declared war on Finland. The middle of World War II, we did not consider Finland an enemy. It was just a country doing what it had to do to try to preserve its independence. That we had not been at war with Finland explains in part why the U.S. was not included also in the Allied Control Commission in Helsinki.

The Paris Peace Treaty terms essentially reinforced...the territorial transfers to the Soviet Union that we've always talked about. It formalized the mandatory 50-year lease on the Peninsula Porkkala. And demanded war, war crime trials against Finnish conservative and social democratic party political leaders. It placed strict and permanent limitations on the size of Finland's military forces and types of weaponry that would be permitted. Even in future years. And demanded heavy war reparation from Finland. I've seen estimates ranging from $300 million to $600 US-million dollars. And this is where I meant to get now, to this flag. So here we were. The cold, hard facts that Finland and its leaders had to take, had to face and take into account. The, as the World War II ended and the Cold War began. Finland had been abandoned to its fate in 1939 by the Western countries. It faced brutally harsh terms imposed by the 1944 armistice agreement with the Soviet Union. And by the 1947 Peace Treaty. Moreover, in 1948, the Soviet Union imposed a Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance on Finland. Which in effect said that if the Soviet Union should unilaterally decide that Finland might be under some kind of possible threat, from a third country, then the Soviet Union would come to Finland's assistance whether or not Finland wanted it to. (Laughter) So that's what the Finns, that's what Finland faced from the east.

But it must also be noted that signals from the west, that Finland could not rely on Western support against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In a memorandum of a NATO meeting. In July of 1947, the U.S. and British representatives at this meeting recorded that an understanding had been reached by them. That quote, "It was not anticipated that in case, in the case of an attack by the Soviet Union on Finland that action would be taken to assist Finland." End quote. And that Finland should not expect any U.S., quote, "guarantees." End quote. And then a 1951 United States government policy paper stated that, "Taking into account the fact that the Soviet Union now possessed atomic weapons, Finland does not constitute a strategically viable cause for global war." Quote/end quote. So Finland lay outside of the western defense system...it was not under the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

So this had to be recognized. And even before the end of Finland's participation in the war, two major Finnish political leaders, J.K. Paasikivi and Urho K. Kekkonen publicly recognized and argued that if Finland were to survive and remain independent, it would have to strike a new relationship with its superpower Eastern neighbor. Both Paasikivi and Kekkonen spoke out forcefully on the need for a new national realism. The two leaders stressed that Finland's independence could be secured only by winning Soviet confidence that Finland could be relied upon as a good neighbor. Ladies and gentlemen, let me confirm to you, based on my experience and other American diplomats in relations with Finlands and the knowledge of the record of the U.S. Department of State and all other relevant U.S. agencies and departments in Washington. And most especially the responsible U.S. Diplomatic Officers at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki had a full understanding of all of the factors that we have just been discussing. And therefore of Finland's difficult situation. At the beginning of and during the Cold War. We understood that Finnish leaders had drawn the only logical conclusion. If Finland were to survive as an independent state. It would have to establish a new relationship with the Soviet Union as described. But we understood that in return, Finland expected that the Soviets would not interfere in Finland's domestic affairs or form of government. Alas, the Soviets did not always fully live up to their side of the bargain. But fortunately, the two aforementioned towering post-war presidential leaders emerged to guide Finland through these difficult Cold War years: J.K. Paasikivi and Urho K. Kekkonen.

It was a tough sell for, for many Finns. You do not turn off your hereditary, your hatred for your hereditary enemy overnight. And believe that they are now your friendly, neighborly neighbors. And yet, that was what any responsible government of Finland would have to do...The need for the government to try to soften the hard edges of the hatred and the bitterness. Bitter wartime experiences. In order to try to meet the requirements of the new national realism. I could see the conflicting emotions. And I mean it when I say I could see good Finns on both sides of that issue. The government doing what it had to do. And the people and the war veterans unable really to come to grips with the Soviet Union as a friendly neighbor. It was a remarkable experience.

President Urho Paasikivi, the first Cold War Finnish President, becoming president in 1946, succeeding Marshal Mannerheim. President from '46 to '56. By the way, his birth name was Johan Gustaf Hellsten. He was one of those Swedish families that had changed their names from Swedish to Finnish...President Paasikivi had to deal with several difficult situations as president. He was president in 1948 when the Czech communists overthrew the democratic government of Czechoslovakia. There were indications that a similar movement among Finnish communists might be underway in March and April of 1948. Paasikivi put military and police forces on quite public alert. And the crisis passed. And it has never been confirmed whether or not there was a real threat. But Paasikivi's actions underscored that regardless of the participation of the Finnish Communist Party in Finland's Parliamentary Democracy which the Finnish Communist Party, by the way, accepted. Much to the chagrin of the, of the Soviet Union Communist Party.

In his memoirs which were not published until years later, Paasikivi noted that if the President of Finland allowed the Soviet Union to decide which Finns would be allowed to serve in the government cabinet, then Finland truly in effect would have lost its independence. A final major achievement by Paasikivi was his ability to negotiate the early withdrawal of the Soviet military enclave in Porkkala, only 17 miles west of Helsinki. On which the Soviets, if you recall, held a 50-year lease. The very existence of a Soviet base in Porkkala, stood as evidence to many that Finland could not be considered a truly independent country. Paasikivi was able to negotiate Soviet, Soviet withdrawal from Porkkala. And its full return to Finland in January 1956, a huge step in beginning to restore Finland's sense of full independence. President Paasikivi was succeed by President Kekkonen in 1956.

President Urho Kekkonen articulated the same, the same national realism policies and as he stay in office, the policy became known as the Paasikivi--Kekkonen Line. There were major achievements during the Kekkonen presidency. He was able to strengthen contacts with the other Nordic countries to partially offset the Soviet looming presence and pressure. Despite Soviet misgivings, he was able to win their acquiescence in Finland's becoming in the 1960s an Associate Member of EFTA. And a, an important economic grouping of Western European countries. And again, in the 1970s, he was able to win Soviet acquiescence in Finland's, when, when the EFTA and the EEC countries joined together, Finland was able to join on a purely economic basis without any political commitments. These were extremely important measures linking Finland to Western economies. Another major achievement was Finland's brilliant initiative in the early 1970s in promoting developing and negotiating and finally hosting in 1975 the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the CSCE Conference. It's a long story. We don't have time to get much into it, but it created a forum of 37 countries. All of European countries plus the United States and Canada...

There was concern that President Kekkonen was allowing too much influence, political influence by the Soviets...Also that he encouraged self-censorship, self-censorship by the Finnish media. Some felt that President Kekkonen and his inner circle played the Moscow card. That is to say implying that anyone who did not support him as a candidate for President means that that person was opposed to good relations with the Soviet Union. Full disclosure: I, myself made some of these arguments in my book. And there are several examples...In effect, the Soviet Union was allowed to block the appointment of a high Finnish official.

But President Kekkonen remained in office until poor health caused him to resign in 1982. After Kekkonen's long stay in office, Parliament passed constitutional change limiting presidents to two six-year terms. Which brings us to the next and third and final Cold War President in Finland, Mauno Koivisto, President from 1982 to 1994. President Koivisto conveyed a, a far more laid-back presidential approach than did his predecessor. He was known as having express--used favoring a more vigorous parliamentary role as indeed came to pass within two years in Finland. At the same time, President Koivisto, like his predecessors, recognized the national realism, and was careful like his predecessors to recognize the Soviet Union's security interest in Finland. However, Soviet political influence, and I was there--I was back there by then--had notably and quickly, quickly diminished during the Koivisto period. As did Finnish media self-censorship. And President Koi--Koivisto in no way could be considered to have ever played the Moscow card against his domestic rivals. Although some of his rivals tried to use it against him. Also upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Koivisto moved quickly and unilaterally to remove uni-- renounce all of the treaty restrictions that had been enforced upon Finland by the Armistice, the Peace Treaty, and by the Friendship Treaty. The Cold War was over.

Let me underscore that throughout the 45-year Cold War period, my U.S. Embassy colleagues and I, and there are several of us here today. Drew tremendous satisfaction in knowing that the consistent overriding U.S. national objective with regard to Finland was to support its Western values. And independence and to promote respect for Finland's efforts to be recognized as a neutral country. We knew that our policy exactly paralleled Finland's own aspirations. But we understood that Finland's existential relationship with the Soviet Union meant that Finland could not really acknowledge U.S. support. Much less admit that the only threat to Finland's independence and system of government at any time had been the Soviet Union.

NATO has expanded to 29 countries with nine new countries joining NATO since 2000--since 1999, the year that Vladimir became the effective leader of the Soviet Union, or of Russia, of Russia. Russian Federation. Under President Putin, the Eastern neighbor, once again, has pretentions that it can intervene in and direct the national security policies of its neighbors. Meanwhile, Finland has been reevaluating its security policies big time. In 2002, Finland signed onto the NATO Ukraine action plan. In February 2005, Finland joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program.

In 2008, Russia intervened militarily in Georgia, removing two provinces from that country. In, in 2014, Russia seized by force the Ukraine area of Crimea, including Sevastopol and incorporated them into the Soviet Union. And today, even today volunteer so-called Russian troops still today occupy parts of the East Ukraine and fight against Ukraine government forces. Meanwhile, Finland has signed, and the U.S. signed a Defense Cooperation Pact in October 2016. Was signed by Finland's then-Minister of Defense, Jussi Niinisto, and U.S. Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work. This was during the final year of the Obama presidency. And then you have in 19--last year, May of last year. Eleven, eleven months ago here you have Finland, Sweden, and the United States signing in Washington a Trilateral Agreement to increase joint security cooperation...And then in April of last year, President Sauli Niinisto announced that Finland will host major multinational military exercises in Finland in 2021. He said that the exercises will be similar to those hosted by Sweden in 2017. In which 19,000 military personnel from nine countries participated, seven NATO countries, plus Sweden and of course Finland. Finland has obviously decided it will not be left again alone facing the Russian Federation.

President Trump at one point a year or so ago, was questioning why should the U.S. remain in NATO? On the other hand, we had last month a, an apparently good visit to Washington by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Meanwhile, he was honored also, Stoltenberg, during this trip by very obvious declaration of, of support for NATO by a bipartisan Congress...A clear message by the U.S. Congress on both parties of their support for NATO. Just in case anybody had any doubts. And also, let's, let's acknowledge at the current U.S. Administration, unlike its predecessor administration the Obama Administration, has provided lethal defensive arms and weapons to Ukraine. U.S. last year announced substantial increase military equipment and training for the Baltic countries. More than 5000 U.S. troops have participated in recent military exercises in Baltic countries. In Finland last month, Defense Force Chief General Jarmo Lindberg in a speech in Helsinki stated that it was the Russian invasion and takeover of Crimea that has caused a large and justifiable increase in the level of military exercises in, in, of NATO and countries like Sweden and Finland. And increased defense preparedness. And he strongly supported the need for Finland to buy new generation of fighter aircraft.

...

>> Can everybody hear? Oh, thank you.
>> Thank you. You have one country was not mentioned so much, Sweden.
>> James Ford Cooper: Yes.
>> And in fact Sweden did support Finland on the voluntary basis in the Winter War because official Sweden could not.
>> James Ford Cooper: Yes.
>> But I think of the 9000 men who came over to the (inaudible) sector. They were actually in their other duties. They had been part of the Swedish military. And one-third of the Swedish air force at that time was supporting. It could not do it probably and so I note. And now again, and after these election probably the military cooperation with Finland and Sweden is further strengthened. It has been building up over the last two or three years.
>> James Ford Cooper: Yes, yes I--yeah. I think I acknowledged that. And no, you're absolutely right. Finland received no official help during the Winter War, but they did have volunteers, many from Sweden, and also some from Norway and, and from Denmark. Including a neighbor of ours, Dr. Barnard Rasmussen. Who came to Finland to help on the front and married a Finn and stayed forever.

>> Thank you. I'm curious about the economic position of Finland. I assume that they probably have some trade with the Soviet Union? And I was wondering how that affected things politically within the country?
>> James Ford Cooper: That, it, the Finnish, it became clear to the Soviet Union that it was perhaps a great advantage to have a, a Western-oriented country with links to the Western economies as a neighbor. Because they were able to take advantage of, of, of getting high-tech material and equipment from Finland. And the Finnish--Soviet trading relationship was done almost by barter. And it was like a classic trading arrangement between an advanced country and an underdeveloped country. With Finland being the advanced country providing ice breakers and machinery and woodworking materials and machines. And the Soviet, (paying with) logs and, and timber and gasoline and oil. So by, that was an important relationship. And Finland benefited from that as well.

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH7PnWRIhC0

Dav Pilkey

www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3CEz3lNrQQ

Candice Millard on James Garfield

John Haskell: how did Garfield distinguish himself before becoming president? You talk about his character...

Candice Millard: So as you know, he was extremely poor. He was our last president born in a log cabin. His father died before he was two years old. He didn't have shoes until he was four years old in Ohio. So, in order to go to college and put himself through college, he was a janitor and a carpenter his first year. But by his second year, while he's just a sophomore in college himself, a student himself, they made him a professor of literature, mathematics and ancient languages. And by the time he was 26, he was the university's president. And then he became a member of Congress. He was a state senator. He became a member of Congress. Never, ever campaigning. He said the he was going to live by his own conscious and convictions, and if people wanted to vote for him, they could. But knowing that, you know, he was going to stick to his own ideals. So he never campaigned. He became a congressman, and he was a very, very determined and fierce abolitionist. And so obviously, when the Civil War broke out, that was the first thing he wanted to do.

John Haskell: So what sort of congressman was he? You know, it sounds like a little more workhorse than show horse.

Candice Millard: He was, right. So he was on several committees. It was on the Ways and Means Committee, the Appropriations Committee. He was a big advocate for hard money. But what he really cared about and what he really fought for was black suffrage. So as a young man he had hidden a runaway slave. During the Civil War he was a hero in the Union Army. He had helped to save Kentucky, a strategic state, for the Union. And he argued passionately and incredibly movingly for black suffrage on the floor of the House. And I encourage anybody to read that speech that he gave because it's so powerful and so beautiful.

he was extremely unusual in the fact that he didn't want to be president. He said that when he is, when he ends up being elected he said that this honor has come to me unsought. I never had the presidential fever, not even for a day. Because he had seen what the presidential fever had done to so many of his colleagues who had wanted it so deeply and were willing to make sacrifices to their own beliefs and ideals that he just refused to make. So what happened was there was a lot of interest in him, and people often would encourage him to run for president. He would always turn them away. And so he's from Ohio, and John Sherman is also from Ohio. John Sherman who was William Tecumseh Sherman's younger brother, and John Sherman wants to run for president. And so he realizes the best way to sort of put down this interest in Garfield is to ask Garfield to give his nominating address. So Garfield agrees, and they go to Chicago.

Hayes...had a very controversial presidency, accused of a lot of corruption. So people thought, it's not going to be easy this time, as easy, but everyone assumed that he would win the nomination again. And the person who was giving his nominating address was this very colorful character, Roscoe Conkling. He was a senior senator from New York. And so Conkling gets up and he poses, you know, and everybody goes crazy and he gives this really stirring energetic speech on behalf of Ulysses S. Grant, and the whole hall is really excited. They're shouting Grant, Grant, Grant, and it's time for Garfield to get up. And he's just a very, very different person from Roscoe Conkling. And he walks up and he begins to speak, and he was such a powerful gifted speaker. And this speech was largely extemporaneous. But it's so moving and beautiful that the hall just silences. And everyone's just mesmerized, and they're listening to him. And at one point he says, so gentlemen, I ask you, what do we want? And someone in the crowd shouts, we want Garfield. And everybody just goes crazy, and he has to quiet them down so he can finish his speech. And then when the balloting begins, they're going back and forth and it's really hot and everybody's exhausted and then suddenly, somebody gives a vote for Garfield. And he stands up and he, you know, I'm not a candidate. And they didn't have my consent. And he's shouted down. And so he sits down and thinks it'll just go away. But it doesn't go away. Ballot after ballot after ballot it stays. And then suddenly somebody else, another state, gives a couple. And then another state. And then another state. And then what began as this trickle becomes a stream and a river and then this flood of votes until finally he finds himself the Republican nominee for president of the United States.

John Haskell: Yeah, so conventions weren't quite scripted like they are now. So they're multi, because you have to get a true majority, and so there were multiple ballots.

Candice Millard: Thirty-six.

So yeah, there is a great rift in the Republican Party. So the Stalwarts, they were trying to protect the spoil system. And that's where they got their power, and Conkling was definitely the head of that.

And had mostly wanted Grant to win the nomination again so he could actually be in power. And then the Half-Breeds were the more progressive, and Garfield was definitely a Half-Breed. But they knew that the people who wanted Garfield to get the nomination, they knew that they would never win the presidency if they didn't have the Stalwart's support. In other words, if they didn't have Roscoe Conkling's support. So what they did was there was a man named Chester Arthur who was completely Conkling's creation. In fact, the only other position he had had before he becomes vice-president of the United States was as the controller of The New York Customs House, which was a job that Conkling had given to him through President Grant. And in that job, he made more money than the president. He never showed up for work before noon. You know, he was just, he was, again, complete opposite of Garfield. He liked fine clothes and dinner parties and wine, and he even had changed his birthdate a few years to appear more youthful. So but they tell Garfield Chester Arthur is going to be your running mate. And he didn't have any choice, they forced it on him because they're trying to appease Conkling.

He was among what they called the radical Republicans who were, you know, this is the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments that they felt very strongly about. So it wasn't just abolition, it was, you know, full citizenship and full rights and suffrage so in equal rights for every citizen of the United States. And Garfield was very, very passionate and very much a part of that. He voted to impeach Johnson because of that because Johnson wanted to weaken reconstruction, and he was very unhappy with Hayes who also was going in that direction. And, you know, he would have had a fight on his hands.

And what I think is interesting about Garfield and is rare about Garfield simply because he didn't want to be president. Because he had been thrust into this role, and therefore, he wasn't beholding to anyone. He hadn't made any promises that he didn't want to make. And so he was uniquely powerful in that way.

John Haskell: So he's, getting back to what you said about his background, he's a poor, he grew up a poor kid. Kind of small-town farm more or less. And near Mentor, Ohio. Probably not a lot of exposure to African Americans, I would think. The big question to me then is why was somebody with that sort of background so vigorous on the issue of racial equality?

Candice Millard: Right. Right, well I think, I do think part of it was his faith. And again, he was an ordained minister. It had been a big part of his childhood. But it was also his education, you know. So his mother since she was widowed so young, and he had an older brother who at 11 had to stop going to school and working on the farm. But they always knew that whatever else happened that James had to go to school. James had to be educated because he was obviously just so bright, and he had so much potential. So they scraped and saved, and they ended up giving him $17 so he could start his education. And I talked about how he then put himself through school. And so he very much so it's his heart and his soul, but it's also his mind, you know. He understands history, and he understands that education was his salvation. And he believes that it's going to be the salvation of the country, all people, all races.

(Garfield's assassin) Charles Guiteau was the complete opposite of Garfield. Where Garfield had found success in his life, Guiteau had found failure again and again. So he had tried law. He had failed. He had tried to start his own newspaper. He had failed. He'd even joined a free love commune where he had failed. The women in the commune had nicknamed him Charles Get Out...he was mentally ill. And his own brand of madness was delusion. So in his own mind he was meant for greatness. And so he, when Garfield is nominated president, he believes that he personally will make Garfield president, and Garfield, this is the height of the spoil system, Garfield out of gratitude then will give him, you know, the consulship to Austria. Why not? And so he just becomes more and more obsessed with Garfield...he would move from boardinghouse to boardinghouse to just move out when the rent was due. And, you know, he worked for a time as a bill collector, but he would just keep whatever he managed to collect.

and just kept skipping town. And so he's becoming more and more sort of frayed and hungry and desperate. And he just starts following the president everywhere. And even though this is, you know, 15 years after Lincoln's assassination, there's still no protection for the president. You know, the American people thought, you know, that Lincoln's assassination was just a byproduct of war. And in our country, we get to freely elect, really choose our leaders. And so there shouldn't be any danger, shouldn't be any distance, and there shouldn't be any danger to the president. And so, you know, Garfield would walk around wherever. He had a 24-year-old private assistant, and that's it. And so, here's Charles Guiteau, he's sitting outside of the White House every day.

This is also, again, the height of the spoil system. And so people believed that not only did they have a right to government jobs, even if they didn't have any background or experience for those positions, but they had a right to make their case for those jobs directly to the president himself. So the president had to meet with office seekers personally every day from 9:30 in the morning to 1:30 in the afternoon. And it made Garfield desperate. He wondered why anyone would ever want to be president. So, Guiteau is there every single day and one day he finally (gets in). He walks into the president's office while the president is there in his office. He also goes to, there was a reception, and he met the first lady, Lucretia Garfield, and he shook her hand. And he gave her his calling card, and he carefully pronounced his name so she wouldn't forget it. And so and one day he is sitting outside of the White House waiting for the president. Garfield walks out. He walks down the street to his secretary of state's house, and the two men walk through the streets of Washington with Guiteau following them the entire way holding a loaded gun...he becomes obsessed, obsessed, obsessed. And he then is told by the secretary of state to stop. It's never going to happen. And then he's angry too. And then he has what he believes is divine inspiration. That God has told him that he needs to kill the president. And he says it's nothing personal. And God has told him to do this. So he thinks about, he follows him to church. He thinks about shooting him there. And then he finally, he reads in the paper that Garfield is going to go on a trip, and he's going to be in the Baltimore Potomac Train Station, which is where the National Gallery of Art stands today. So there were tracks right along the National Mall. And so when Garfield goes there on the morning of July 2nd, 1881, Guiteau is waiting in the shadows. And the moment Garfield walks in, Guiteau steps out and he shoots him twice. The first bullet goes through his arm and the second goes through his back. But by this incredible stroke of luck, it doesn't kill him. It doesn't hit any vital organs. And it doesn't hit his spinal column.

they bring out this old horse hay and straw mattress. And they take him upstairs to this room. And there's a doctor there, and they immediately start to probe the wound, sticking their fingers and instruments in the wound in his back. And he, some of his administration had been there at the time at the train station, including his secretary of war who was Robert Todd Lincoln. And interesting thing about Robert Todd Lincoln, he had been at his father's side when Abraham Lincoln died. Not when he was shot but when he died. And he was with Garfield when he was shot. And then 20 years later, he's with McKinley when McKinley was shot. So if you were president, you would want to send Lincoln to China or somewhere, get him out of there. But anyway, so Robert Todd Lincoln remembers that one of the doctors who had been with his father when his father died was this guy named Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss. I mean literally his first name was Doctor. And he knows that Garfield actually knew him growing up years ago, and so he sends somebody to bring Bliss in, and Bliss immediately takes over. And Bliss sees in this national tragedy this once in a lifetime opportunity for him, for his personal fame and power. So he immediately takes over the president's care, and they get him to the White House because at that time, if you were sick or injured, the last place you'd want to be is be in a hospital which is filthy and overcrowded. And so they get him back to the White House which was actually also filthy and falling apart at that time. But it's the best they had. And he immediately lets, so at that point there are like nine different doctors, of them are, again, sticking unsterilized hands and instruments into this wound. And Garfield, or I'm sorry, Bliss dismisses them all and takes charge of the president's medical care.

he was an unusual guy. He had actually been in prison for a little while. He had advocated something called Cundurango, which was supposed to cure like cancer, syphilis, anything. So he had had a spotty career, but he knew the right people and was determined that he was going to be the doctor in charge of the president's medical care.

Bliss is, you know, again, very, very much aware that the world is watching. And very concerned about his own reputation. And Garfield at first, you know, Garfield was 220 pounds, 6"2'. He was strong and healthy. And he fought off the initial infection...But everybody thinks that he's going to die because Bliss had said, you know, it's gone into his liver and he's going to die. But he doesn't. He gets better, but then with this repeated probing and probing of the wound, he starts to get sick again. And it's going wrong.

Bliss is desperate. And so he reaches out to Alexander Graham Bell. And so Bell is just 29 years old at that time. He had invented the telephone just five years earlier. And he had actually left the Bell Telephone Company because he felt like it fettered him as an inventor...as soon as he hears what has happened to Garfield, he drops everything, and he starts working on something called an induction balance. So, it's basically the first metal detector. And he had originally invented years before to stop this static that was in the telephone line that was caused by telegraph lines. And so it would bow to that, and it would stop the static. But he realizes that he can use it as a metal detector. But it's completely unproven. And so he is working night and day in his laboratory, he had this little laboratory, Volta Laboratory here in Washington.

And it's really interesting because when I was doing my research, I knew if you go over to the American Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, they have, you know, what I call the assassination alcove, you know, you can go in and there's some presentation for each of the assassinated presidents. And in the Garfield side they have the induction balance that Bell used. And I saw it when I was doing my research. And then later on when I'm getting ready to write I think I need more information about it. So I wanted to know what kind of wood was used and what are the dimensions and things like that. So I called up one of the archivists at the museum and I asked her these questions. She said, which one? And I said what do you mean which one? And she said, we have all of the prototypes that Bell created while, because he's just inventing this out of old cloth. And he doesn't, I mean it's his reputation on the line too. You know, he's famous at this point. He doesn't know what's actually going to work on a human body. And so I was like, I'm coming back. And so I came back, and they took me down to the, you know, bowels of the museum and they brought out box after box of these induction balances. And it's just astonishing. You know, they're every shape and size, and the wires hanging off of them. And you hold them, and you can just feel his mind racing and his heart beating, and he's trying to figure out how to save the life of the president of the United States. So he gets it to a point where it does work, and he's tried it out on, you know, veterans of the Civil War who are walking around with bullets in them. And he knows that it works. And so Bliss says okay, on this date you can come to the White House and you can try it on the president. But Bliss had publicly declared that the bullet was on the right side of the president because that's where it had gone in and that's where the wound was. And so he'll only let, because he's said this and it's been in the papers, he will only let Alexander Graham Bell run this metal detector of the right side of the body. Well, the bullet was on the left. And Bell can't figure out why it doesn't work.

(Later on) he calls them, and he says, you know, I have a question for you. Is it possible that the president has a mattress with metal coils, which was very rare at that time? And he did. So obviously, that's going to affect a metal detector as well. And so they say it didn't work. But the reason, the actual invention actually did work. And it was another 16 years before the invention of the medical x-ray, and so they use induction balance in the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War on all of these wounded soldiers. And it saved a lot of lives.

If you ever have a chance to get to Mentor, Ohio, that's where his home is. It's now a national historic site. It's incredibly beautiful. But what will break your heart is they have his death mask. And you know, he was just a shadow of the man he had once been. He was starving to death. He was riddled with infection and just suffering unimaginably. And he knew at the end, he knew that he was going to die. And he didn't want to die in the White House. And he had always loved the sea. And there's, you know, someone offered their cottage in New Jersey. And he says, I want to go. I want to go right now. And so what they did is they took a train car and they tore everything out of it, and they set it up so they could have a bed for him. And they laid tracks, they worked, 2,000 people worked all through the night to lay a special set of train tracks that would lead the train directly up to this cottage. And all along the way, it's just really moving, all along the way there are all these Americans standing and watching this train car go by with their dying president. And again, you know, he, where Lincoln's death had only deepened the divide in our country, Garfield's brought them together because he meant something to everyone, you know, to the North, the South, to immigrants, to pioneers, to freed men who had once been slaves or been enslaved people to people who had owned slaves. You know, they all, I mean his inaugural address, he had very few people with him. He had his mother, his wife, and he had Frederick Douglass. And he gave a government position to Frederick Douglass. I mean this was so much a part of who he was. And his, this common loss brought our country together. So anyway, the train finally gets to this cottage, and it can't make it up this hill. And there are all these people standing there. And they literally push the train the last bit of the way up to this cottage, and that's where he dies.

John Haskell: And Arthur took over the presidency when he died. Some of Garfield's legacy is tied up in his Arthur's presidency, right?

Candice Millard: That's right. Very much so. So what was shocking to everyone, you know, nobody could imagine Chester Arthur as president, even when he got, he was, it was found that he was going to be Garfield's running mate. Even Republicans considered it a ridiculous burlesque. And so everyone assumes that Chester Arthur is eagerly waiting in the wings to become president. But the opposite actually happens, and he is devastated and grief-stricken by the assassination. And he refuses even to go to Washington for fear that it'll look like he's just waiting for Garfield to die. And he cuts off all ties with Roscoe Conkling, the person who had created him. And when Garfield does die, Chester Arthur steps up and tries to be the kind of president that Garfield would have been had he lived.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxVzne6cBJI

Leadership Lessons from Lincoln & Grant

Biographies are popular these days, but I sometimes feel we don't spend enough time on the lives of young people. Think of your own lives when you're 16, 18, 20, 20, 22, 24. So, I spent quite a bit of time on Grant and Lincoln. In fact an early review was that, are you spending too much time on this? We -- can't we get onto the adult. And one of my mantras from this, his Grant's words himself. He said, "The reason I do not read biographies is because they do not tell enough about the life of the young person, the formative period of one -- of a person's life." He said, "I want to know what a man did as a boy, or we would say what a woman did as a girl." So Lincoln's life is so unusual. Born in 1809 in Kentucky, moving to Indiana in 1816. He had only one year of formal education. How could someone with but one year of formal education rise to such greatness? So, that's a fascinating story. Grant is what I call a late bloomer. My son is a late bloomer, but he's bloomed. And so Grant seems to not be doing anything that's particularly noteworthy. I spent a week at Westpoint in my research to try to understand what it would mean for a five foot, three inch boy, 17 years old to arrive at Westpoint from the West. Ohio was the West. And so he goes through a lot of different struggles as a young person. But finally, as the civil war breaks out, his leadership, which I would call latent leadership emerges.

Colleen J. Shogan: Lincoln changed his opinion of what it meant to be commander in chief after The Battle of Bull Run. How and why did he change his mind about that particular role of the presidency?

Ronald C. White: Well, early on I think Lincoln thought that he had to give credit and power to those who knew more than he did. So, in the warfare, that would have been his generals, but very quickly he became disillusioned with his generals one by one, by one by one, until he met Grant. So, that's why he had to begin to take command himself. At one point, he almost was ready to take the battlefield because remember the North thought they would win this war rather quickly. They had more than twice as many men in arms, a much greater industrial base. It was shocking that they lost this first battle of either Manassas or Bull Run, depending upon how you want to name that battle. And this forced Lincoln to think, well, what am I to do here as commander in chief?

Colleen J. Shogan: Lincoln and Grant wouldn't actually meet in person until March of 1864, but Lincoln was watching Grant's military career as the civil war went on. What were some of his early impressions of Grant?

Ronald C. White: Yes. Lincoln wanted to interview all his generals. He brought them either to The White House, or he went out into the field, but he couldn't interview Grant because Grant was out in the West. So, I think there are several things that impressed him. First of all, Grant didn't complain. The other General's complained, "I don't have enough troops. I don't have this. I don't have that." He never complained. He took what was given.

Secondly, he didn't ask. He didn't ask for more than he felt the government could give. And finally Grant was, for Lincoln, who was a Western man, Grant was a Western man. He was not filled with himself. He was not an egotistical person. He simply led the battle. In one famous conversation where someone came to The White House to complain about Grant, say, "You should remove this man." Lincoln simply sits and listens and says, "Well, he fights. He fights and that's what I'm looking for. He fights." and he saw this quality in Grant.

I'm a friend of General David Petraeus, and I learned from General Petraeus that he believes without a doubt, Grant is the greatest American General. There is no one even in the same game with him. And part of what Petraeus did in preparing to lead the surge in Iraq was to read Grant, and to ask his generals to read Grant; and the quality that he found most enduring was his indomitable spirit. What Lincoln called pertinacity. We might call it determination. Just this bulldog determination to keep going forward.

Colleen J. Shogan: In 1862, Grant issued general order number 11, and Lincoln was forced to rescind it. So, tell us about what general order number 11 was, and why Lincoln felt he had to revoke it.

Ronald C. White: General order number 11 is his order against the Jews. Grant was very concerned that trading was going on that was benefiting the Confederacy. He was very upset that people in Washington, Salmon Chase, secretary of treasury, didn't understand this and he saw that many of the traders were Jews. They were taking advantage of the opportunity to trade with the Confederacy. So, he issues this order. When the order gets finally up to Lincoln, Lincoln abrogates it just like that. Julia Grant would say, "That awful order." But there's a terrific book by our best American Jewish historian called When Grant Expelled the Jews. And what he shows us is that Grant learned from his mistake. I think that's a great quality of leadership. Do you learn from your mistakes? And actually Grant then will appoint far more Jewish persons in his administration than any previous president. And when a Jewish synagogue was built and the installation was to go forward in Washington, Grant was invited as the guest of honor because the Jews in Washington recognized that he was repentant for what he had done. He had learned his lesson and now he wanted to reach out to the Jewish community, which he did.

If you ever have the opportunity to go to Vicksburg, you need to do that. You can read about it. You can see maps. You'll never appreciate it unless you go there. Here's the possibility of a kind of fortress above the Mississippi river where a relatively small Garrison dug into caves inside the city of Vicksburg are able to hold off any union army. William Tecumseh Sherman had tried to take Vicksburg in 1862. He failed miserably. So, this was a long drawn out battle and it's still into the 20th century was an example in the army war command manuals of how the battle should be fought. I went to the dedication of the statue of Ulysses S. Grant in April of this year at Westpoint and I met several military leaders there who said, "Oh yes, Vicksburg is what it's all about. The strategy, the keenness to understand where were the weak points in the Confederacy, how to keep going forward." What Grant did essentially was he got below Vicksburg and then instead of going directly to Vicksburg and facing the Confederate army, he actually went off to the side and defeated the army's five different battles. Instead of going directly, he alluded them and went off to the side and finally came to Vicksburg. He cut himself off from his supply line. He was a farmer and he believed he could live off the land and he supplied his troops even though he had no supply line. And I think all of these together are why Lincoln thought it was such a great victory. And military historians today would acclaim that this is one of the great victories in modern warfare.

Colleen J. Shogan: Lincoln and Grant agreed on the strategy to hopefully end the civil war, which was to take the fight directly to the Confederate army on at least five separate fronts. Why did they agree on this strategy? Why did they think this was a winning strategy and how was it different than previous strategies that had been employed by earlier generals?

Ronald C. White: Well, the earlier generals had the idea that the way you would defeat the Confederacy was to occupy their main cities. So, if you could occupy Nashville, or you could occupy Atlanta, or you could occupy Memphis, but Lincoln understood and Grant understood also that you will never be able to defeat an enemy in that larger geographical territory. So, the strategy was you do not go after the city, you go after the army, and if you defeat the army, then you will ultimately end the war. And the way wars were fought in those days was you would fight a battle, Gettysburg was three days, and then you would step back. You would retreat -- not retreat, but you'd kind of refit, you'd deal with the wounded and then you'd go forward again. Lincoln and Grant agreed that the way to do this battle was to not ever stop; that if you had a larger army, what Lee did very shrewdly was he would look where the North was coming, the union army, and then he would move his men to block that. Then there'd be a little low and the union army would come get -- well, he'd move his mar -- into -- about that. But if you had the larger army and you kept going forward, there was no possible way that over length of time Lee could possibly stop you. And that's how Grant won with Lincoln's agreement. Here's a funny story though. As Lincoln did trust Grant, Grant came to share with him the battle plan for the spring of 1864. And Lincoln said, "Don't tell me. I can't keep secrets. I can't keep secrets. I trust your battle plan, but don't tell me what it is because I can't keep secrets." I just think that's amazing.

Colleen J. Shogan: You wrote a shorter book on Lincoln's second inaugural focused on that speech. Why do you think it's Lincoln's greatest speech?

Ronald C. White: Well, Lincoln thought it was his greatest speech. He said, "It was my -- it is my best effort." but he also said, "But it's not immediately popular." And why is it not immediately popular? Because as the war was coming to a close, the audience wanted him to do and say two things. First of all, they wanted him to be a little crowing a bit. In those days, the parade was before not after the speech, and there was a float in the parade from a Washington newspaper, which literally said, "It's time for Lincoln to crow a bit after all the criticism what he's done." But Lincoln didn't crow. He used two personal pronouns in the entire address. I say Lincoln disappeared. He used zero personal pronouns in the Gettysburg address. Can you imagine a modern politician speaking like that?

But secondly, he used what I call inclusive language. He kept using the words all and both, to sort of say, "We're all involved in this. We all bear the blame. Do not point your finger at the south." Well, I read the letters and diaries of people who were there that day and they were angry. You and I think people would be excited about inauguration. Why were they angry? Because if you think about it, every person there had probably lost a father, husband, son, brother, and they were angry at the South and they wanted Lincoln to give voice to their anger, but he did not do that. He understood that if the South was meant to bear the blame and the shame alone, they would never be able to reenter the union.

Colleen J. Shogan: One of the great what ifs of American history has to do with Lincoln and Grant, and the night that Lincoln was assassinated. Now Grant was supposed to attend the theater with Abraham Lincoln and his wife along with Julia Grant, but ended up they did not join Abraham Lincoln at the theater that evening. Do you think if Grant had been there? Would it have made a difference and did Grant think if he had been there it would've made a difference?

Ronald C. White: It's quite a fascinating question. Why did not Grant come? His wife did not want to come. She felt she had been, someone was stalking her all day long. She was frightened. They wanted to see their children who lived in the suburb of Philadelphia. And so they decided not to attend. I don't think Grant could have stopped the assassination. I mean, this man came in John Wilkes Booth from the back. When Grant got to Philadelphia about midnight, someone met him with a telegram and told him what had happened. And he did say, "What if I would've been there? I will think about this for the rest of my life. What if I had been there?" So, yes, he never compared himself to Lincoln. In his memoirs, he said, "Lincoln deserves to be the great person of our time." Lincoln, Grant never compared himself to Lincoln, but I think he ran for president because he watched the terrible presidency of Andrew Johnson and said, "All right, I guess I'm the person that needs to pick up the vision of Lincoln that has been dropped at the end of the civil war."

...Would Grant have brought more security? Interestingly, there wasn't much security in these days. I mean, even as president, Grant would just go strolling out in Washington by himself and people said, "You got to be careful, someone's going to --" "Well, I can take them on if they come after me, you know?" And so of course, John Wilkes Booth was known at Ford's theater, so there was not any surprise that this actor was there in Ford's theater. Nobody thought anything of it. So, I don't think that Grant would have brought any more security that evening than was present.

Colleen J. Shogan: Your book on Lincoln, you have a great line. You describe Lincoln as a gentle leader, free of ego. So, tell us about that and why do you describe them in that way and how did he earn that reputation?

Ronald C. White: Well, none of us are free of ego. Politicians are not free of ego. Lincoln was not really free of ego. Did I really write that line? Yeah.

Colleen J. Shogan: I think you did. I think you did...You said that he was thought of as being. Not he was, but he was thought of.

Ronald C. White: yeah, and part of what I was saying in terms of the Gettysburg address or the second inaugural address, Lincoln always pointed beyond himself. Even as he was traveling on his 13-day train trip from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration, he would say to crowds, it's amazing. He said, "Well," he said, "I know you're not really cheering for me. You're cheering for the office. And if Stephen Douglas was here, you'd cheer for him. And if so and so was here, you'd cheer for him. And why don't all of you who are against me ride with me on the train to the next train stop." He had this sense that he was a temporary holder of this position and that he had been given this office.

I think for, especially for Grant, maybe for Lincoln also, loyalty was his DNA. I mean, this was a virtue, a masculine virtue that was cultivated in the 19th century. You were to be dutiful, you were to be faithful, even if it went against your own instincts or your own good sense. So, in it's strange part of writing about Grant is that he seemed to be a terrific judge of people in the civil war. He knew that Rosecrans who was going to be the guy most likely to succeed from Westpoint was up to no good. He could make decisions about other generals who weren't able to follow through, but when he gets to The White House, somehow he loses this quality. He's loyal to a fault. He's loyal to people who had served with him in the civil war who, what do we say? Washington corrupts, who were being corrupted by the power that they achieved here in this place. He maybe didn't manage carefully enough. He appointed people in his cabinet who he didn't really know, like he knew the generals from Westpoint in the war with Mexico and so he wasn't attuned to what they were actually doing behind his back. What's interesting though is that I think people accrue over a length of time, kind of a power from the people of goodwill. So, even though people were upset with the scandals in Grant's second administration, they never blamed him. And Grant could easily have been elected to a third term when he finished his second term, Julia wanted him to run for a third term because he had accrued such goodwill from the American people.

Colleen J. Shogan: About six months ago, you wrote a Washington post op-ed about a new statue. You referenced it that was erected at Westpoint to honor Ulysses S. Grant. Tell us about why you wrote the op-ed and also comment if you can, about current controversies concerning civil war statues, particularly regarding Confederate statues.

Ronald C. White: Well, this is a, isn't it? It's a very, very contentious issue and I certainly understand the decision for some to want to take the statues down or to move some of these statues or monuments into the library or wherever. However, I was struck by a phrase a couple of weeks ago, I read, by Gordon S. wood, who's our finest American revolutionary historian, professor emeritus at Brown. And Wood talked about what he called his, the historical condescension, that is just overwhelming us today, that we have such moral superiority that we are willing to look back on those poor people in the 19th century who didn't understand what they should have understood. So, I'm kind of one that wants to be wary of this kind of historical condescension of judging people 100 years ago or 200 years ago by our standards; instead of taking the time, it takes time to try to understand their mindset. So for example, when Andrew Johnson wants to prosecute Robert D. Lee for treason, Grant stands up for Lee and says, "You will not prosecute him for treason. Do you not understand he's the spiritual leader of the South? I do not agree with the cause for which he fought, but I do agree with the leadership of this man, we will not prosecute him for treason." Now, that's not quite the same thing as the monument. And I understand the monuments were built, many of them many, many years later in moments of white supremacy. But I was thrilled, therefore, when Westpoint after all these years, this is part of the Grant resurgence, decided to build a statue of Grant. There was no statue to Grant at Westpoint. All the other great Westpointers, there was a statue. So, I thought this was a great moment that we not only should take statues down and we ought to build statues up and we ought to be thinking about if there are women, if there are African Americans, if there are those who have been slighted in our story of American history, we ought to think about building statues and not simply tearing other statutes down.

>> When we talk about character, I had always heard that politics in the 1860s was not exactly clean. That bribery was involved. And I mean totally ignoring the guys bashing the guys on the head. There was a lot of subterfuge going on. Could you describe that, and when did that stop...

Ronald C. White: It never stopped...I would mislead if I'm sort of saying this idyllic angelic Lincoln. I think the movie, Lincoln, maybe overdoes it a bit with dealing with all these guys that are doing this sort of stuff. But Lincoln, we've come to learn was a real person who knew how to work the party machine. For example, he understood that one of the best consistuencies was the German immigrants. And we now know that he actually bought a German newspaper anonymously because he recognized that the Germans who had come from Europe were strongly antislavery, strongly Republican. So, he knew how to work that machine. And he did not become -- he wasn't a novice elected president. He was four times in the Illinois state legislature. He'd run for the Senate twice. He'd been a Congressman once. So, he was a guy that really was very clear about it, and it was rough and tumble. It never stopped. And whether it was more or less that could be debated, but it was difficult at that time. Yeah.

...

I don't believe that that Grant fully understood how good a writer he was. What happened was at the end of his, towards the end of his life, he -- there were no presidential pensions. So, he, one day at his Long Branch, New Jersey summer home, bit into a peach and felt this incredible pain. Three months later seeing a doctor, the biopsy, cancer. He understood that this was terminal cancer. He was very much against writing his memoirs. He thought that memoirs were self-serving, egotistical, and settling scores. Do you realize that during the eight years of Dwight Eisenhower, only one memoir was ever written by a member of his cabinet? Would you like to count how many were written during George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and already Donald Trump?

But now he had to provide for Julia. So, the Century magazine offered him $10,000 to write his memoir, which was a considerable sum in those days. Mark Twain heard about it. Mark Twain said of himself, "I am Grant intoxicated. I loved the man." He charged over to Grant's home at East 62nd street and said, "What did they offer you? That's what they'd offer an unknown Comanche to write his memoirs. I'll offer you to publish it with my son in law and our new publishing company and I'll give you 70% of the proceeds." They were going to give him 10% royalty. So, Grant's prose is direct, simple, straight forward. He's very generous to both friend and foe. He was an editor of his own work, even as he's dying of cancer. And so it is as you suggest, it is a kind of a model. What I want to tell you is that in the last two years, two wonderful annotated versions of the memoirs have been published. And the beauty of the annotation is, you know, you and I might read it and say, "Well, what is this? Who is this?" The annotations are marvelous because they fill in the story of who are these people? What is he really talking about here? I've had so many people across this nation tell me that in reading Grant's memoirs, this was a really a treasure experience for them. So, I commend it to you. It doesn't go into the presidency. He stops at the end of the civil war, but he does talk about a lot of his young life. It's really worth reading.

He will finish it three days before he dies and at the very end he's willing to say, "I may be wrong. I may not have all the facts." What kind of an attitude, what kind of a person is that? Instead of saying I was right and they were wrong. This is the way memoirs were written. This is the way Sherman wrote his memoirs. Grant didn't like Sherman's memoirs. I was right and they were wrong. This is so different than the memoirs that were written in that time.

>> You mentioned the string of generals that proved to be disappointments for Lincoln, and one name that stands out at George McClellan, who Lincoln seemed to be giving chance after chance despite a lot of opposition to Lincoln from McClellan. Can you talk about that?

Ronald C. White: Yeah, yeah. Well, George McClellan was the so-called young Napoleon if his age. When he received command from Lincoln, he was 34 years old and he wrote to his wife sort of saying, "Well, they recognize who I am, and I'm going to be the savior of this country." But Lincoln was caught in a bind because as much as we might look back and see that of McClellan's faults, he was never quite ready. He always was drilling the troops. He overestimated the size of the opposition. McClellan was quite popular with his own troops. He was very popular with his own men. And so Lincoln understood that. So, I think we could fault Lincoln for staying too long with McClellan. But why did he stay so long? Because he understood that McClellan was popular with the men underneath his command.

>> You've spoken really well of both Lincoln and Grant. Do you think that there was a point during the war where they could have lost it, or do you think that their combined abilities would have led them to win the war?

Ronald C. White: That's a great question. Is there a point when they could have lost it? You know, we look back again, we see the huge difference in the size of the armies, the industrial might. James MacPherson and his path breaking book, The Battle Cry of Freedom, which I think is written in some sense is also in the wake of the war in Vietnam where we reckon, and he ends his book with kind of nine different points of contingency. What if, what if, what if, what if, and it's not inevitable that the North would have won that war. There were moments where perhaps the war could have been lost. The South did have some tremendous generals, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and people like that. So, we have to be very careful in looking back and saying, "Well, of course this was inevitable. It was always going to happen." I mean, this war went on for more than four years. We used to think there were 620,000 dead and a demographer about eight or 10 years ago comparing the 1860 census to the 1870 census has now revised our estimate. There were 750,000 dead in a nation of barely more than 30 million people, more casualties than all of our other wars put together. So, yes, the war might've been lost. I mean, Grant thought that by the summer of 1862 was the lowest point of the war and he discouraged by what was taking place, as was Lincoln. And so Lincoln, you may know this, wrote a note to his cabinet where he had received a word from the Republican national committee meeting in New York that you will lose the 1864 election. You will be defeated in New York, you will even be defeated in Illinois. And he brings this note to his cabinet saying, "When we are defeated in the next election, it will be our duty to cooperate with the new administration." Well, then just several weeks later, Sherman captures it later and everything begins to change.

>> One big what if scenario is what if Grant actually had quit again as he had determined to do, chafing under the leadership of General Halleck at the time, who by all accounts was quite jealous of Grant, and thankfully Sherman talked him out of it.

Ronald C. White: Very perceptive comment and question. What the gentleman is referring to is that Grant, we have to say, was surprised at Shiloh. There's no way of getting around it, but the after the first night, he can't stand to be inside the hospital where all these amputations are going on. So, he stands underneath a tree. We're under pouring rain and Sherman comes up to him and says, "Boy, we got our tails whipped today." and Grant says, "We're going to whip them tomorrow." And they do. But Halleck then says, "I'll take the field and you will become second in command." Halleck is the sort of general in chief in Washington. Well, this is really -- grates on Grant. And so at one point, Grant has had enough, he's going to resign for the military. Sherman hears about this. Early in the war, Sherman was in trouble. He was even accused of insanity. So, Sherman rushes over to Grant and says, "You came to my stead when I was in trouble and I'm now coming to you. You are not going to resign. Your day will come." So, then during the civil war as Grant assumes command, he makes Halleck his chief of staff. However, he learns years later that Halleck had been in correspondence with McClellan of how to get Grant. So, in the memoirs, there's an absence. Halleck doesn't appear in the memoirs. He doesn't criticize Halleck. He just kind of is absent from the memoirs.

>> Lincoln's rhetoric frequently spoke to people's faith convictions in the country. Did Grant, who respected Lincoln, disregard that, the essence of that communication, or what was his attitude toward the faith convictions of the country and the healing after the war?

Ronald C. White: Wonderful question. One of my convictions is that the whole faith dimension to use your term has been lacking as we write our American biographies. Whether we think, "Well, that was the 19th century, people believe back there. You know, we don't do that now." No, this is very important. I think the story of the progression of Lincoln's faith is a remarkable story. It's a Presbyterian story. For Grant, it's a Methodist story. He's not nearly as eloquent as Lincoln. He doesn't speak about it, but I think Grant's Methodist ethic is very important and he got that ethic more from his mother than his father. This is where he got his self-effacement or what we would call humility. I initially wrote my biography too long and my editor told me to drop 150 pages. Oh my goodness. So, I took out a story, which I wish I would have been kept in. At the beginning of the second term Grant writes to all the members of his cabinet. And he said, "I want us to meet on Sunday morning at the Methodist church I attend." The Methodist were the first to build a national church in Washington. He said, "I want us to pray together and I think you will like my minister. He's really a great preacher." So, although Grant did not wear his faith on his sleeve, I think we often underestimate the role of religion by asking the wrong questions. How often did a person attend church? And I think that Grant's Methodist faith was extremely important to him. He wasn't always very vocal about it, but I think it was kind of a way that he lived his life.

[Tails82]

So this is a week or two's worth, but have 'em all at once!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNNXcps2ZBk

The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War.

John Haskell: it's interesting, that you told the story from the perspective -- at least, part of the story, from the perspective of someone who is not a congressman, Benjamin Brown French. Who was he, and why was he a key figure in this period?

Joanne B. Freeman: When I was writing the book, I kind of thought that people would assume I made him up, because he's such a wonderful character. So, yeah, he's not in Congress. He's a clerk, and he's (inaudible) for two years, but generally speaking, he's just a clerk, so a minor clerk in the House. What's wonderful about him is he left behind an 11-volume diary, and it's not the kind of diary that says, "Had lunch with Mr. Smith. Walked home at 3:00." He puts everything in there. And among those things that he put in there was some of the fighting. But in addition, he talks a lot in his diary about his feelings about what was going on. What became important to me in this book is that the book tells the story of violence, but what I really wanted to get to was what was the emotional logic of that. How did Americans learn to turn on each other in this time period? And by looking through his eyes and his diary, he kind of enabled me to do that.

He also happens to be like the Forrest Gump...of the 1830's, '40s and '50s. If something important happened, somehow or other, Benjamin Brown French was there.

John Haskell: Wasn't he next to Lincoln in some important historical --

Joanne B. Freeman: He was at the bedside after the assassination. He was holding John Quincy Adam's hand not long after he had a stroke in the House of Representatives. Someone tries to assassinate Andrew Jackson. Who's there watching? Benjamin Brown French. The Gettysburg Address? Who's up on the stage, right near Lincoln? Benjamin Brown French. I even found a picture of that one...

part of what I found early on in the process of writing the book, that I found really interesting was Southerners were more likely to be armed, were more willing to engage in man-to-man combat, and used that advantage in Congress to get what they wanted, often to protect the institution of slavery. And what that meant was there was a lot of intimidation and violence that was Southerners aimed at Northerners and by violence, that means real violence. That means pulling knives, bowie knives, pulling guns on each other, engaging in fist fights, flipping desks, mass brawls, canings and everything else that you could imagine, was going on -- more often in the floor of the House -- the Senate tended toward duel challenges more than anything else. But still, a lot of physical violence going on.

The Congressional Record, for the most part, unless there was a huge brawl, didn't tend to talk about this. The Congressional Record says things like, "The debate became unpleasantly personal at one point." And in one case, someone pulled a gun on someone else, and that is "unpleasantly personal." In another case, it said something like, "There was a sudden sensation in the corner." And in that case, two congressmen got into a fist fight, and they flipped over their desk in the course of having a fist fight. So, initially, I didn't -- it took me researching in private letters and diaries to find a lot of the violence. Then, when I went to the record, I discovered, "Oh, it's there, it's just kind of buried beneath these cryptic statements."

John Haskell: Yeah. That's -- so, you talked about the difference in the approach of Northerners and Southerners in the ethic, with respect to violence...

Joanne B. Freeman: Sure. Now, one of the really interesting things that I discovered early on, is not only did the Southerners have this advantage of being more willing to engage in man-to-man combat, and more likely to be armed, but that was notorious, and they had...phrases that they used to describe the kinds of people who are more likely to fight, and the kinds of people who were less likely to fight. They actually broke their ranks down into -- this is their phrases: "fighting men" and "noncombatants," which tells you something about this topic, that it was pretty immediate for them. So, they were fighting men who were notorious for being ready and willing to engage in combat and non-combatants, who were notorious for not wanting to do that. That line broke down, as I'm suggesting, into Southern and Northern. And what that meant, when it came to slavery, is that not only were Southerners represented to an extra degree, because of the Three-Fifths Compromise that gave at least some enslaved people -- they were counted in the representation calculations, but in addition to that, there was kind of a cultural clout that Southerners used to their advantage, again, to protect the institution of slavery, by threatening and intimidating non-combatants and people who were less willing to fight.

John Quincy Adams, he goes to the House after his presidency -- which all by itself, is fascinating -- but by the time he does that -- so, he's an ex-President, he's the son of an ex-President and a founder, and he's elderly by that point. So, there was a sort of triple whammy. You were not going to slug John Quincy Adams. And John Quincy Adams knew that, and he totally used it to his advantage. So, he knew that he could step forward and really challenge the Southerners...his most persistent attackers, a fellow named Henry Wise of Virginia, and Henry Wise at one point says -- and in fact, it is in the Record, "If you weren't who you are, you would feel more than my words." And Adams, in his diary that night, writes, "Henry Wise threatened me today. He said he was going to kill me if he could." You know, so he was quite aware of what he was doing. But because of that, he knew that he could step forward and really advocate for the anti-slavery cause. So, he had a power. Add that to the fact that he was brilliant at parliamentary maneuvering, and he was a real force to be reckoned with.

John Haskell: Your coverage of the controversies around the Gag Rule was -- it struck me as important, because in that case, am I right? I mean, the tactics of the Southerners to try to use intimidation to get their way backfired a little bit.

Joanne B. Freeman: Right...So, in the 1830s, the American Anti-Slavery Society began really pushing a petition, an anti-slavery petition campaign, and hundreds and thousands of petitions were being sent to Congress. So, it really made -- had an impact. And because of that, particularly the House, which had to come up with rules every time there was a new House, had to figure out what to do about these petitions. One person at the time actually said, you know, "What's the right thing to do for these petitions that people are sending?" Basically, saying Southerners are barbarians, Southerners are horrific human beings. Well, you can do two things. You can silence them, or you can knock them down. And so, they opted, in this case, for the silencing mode of operating, and they essentially tabled anti-slavery petitions, meaning that they -- just what it suggests -- sort of put them off to the side, and decided not to act on them, in the case of these petitions. Now, the idea behind that was to stifle that discussion, and I think they probably thought, to silence them of the debate and the angst and the anger and the anxiety in Congress over the issue of slavery.

But it actually, in the end, did the precise opposite, partly because of people like John Quincy Adams, who knew Americans might not in the North -- and it's Northerners obviously whose petitions are being stifled, that Northerners might not be really upset about the issue of slavery, but they would be darned upset if their right of petition was being really cut back. So, Adams, after a time, really focused on that angle. And he essentially said over and over and over again, "Northerners, your right to petition the government is being compromised here," knowing that that would feel like self-interest to Northerners, and they would respond that way, which they did. And so, in the end, rather than silencing this issue down, it actually really roused the North and created more of a fuss.

John Haskell: So, let's get to the UFC part of the program, now. Let's think about some of the fights. The first one that I thought would be interesting for people to hear about is the duel between Representatives Cilley and Graves.

Joanne B. Freeman: Right. So, that's a duel. It takes place in 1838. That's actually the only thing I knew when I started the book, was, oh, there was that duel in 1838, where one congressman kills another. So, Jonathan Cilley is from Maine. Williams Graves is from Kentucky. The interesting thing about the duel and the reason I focused on it is, they actually had no real issue with each other. What happens is that Henry Wise, who's just a troublemaker, basically -- comes into the House with a newspaper and stands up and says, "I have evidence here that Democrats, and in particular, one Democrat, is corrupt. That Democratic party is a corrupt party." And Cilley, who's a Democrat, stands up and says, "I resent that." Now, Henry Wise is a Southerner -- and this is a great example of what fighting men did to silence Northerners -- he very slowly and dramatically turns around to look at Cilley and say, "Are you saying I'm lying?" And that's a dueling prequel, right? Which Cilley knows, and Cilley says, "No, I'm not saying you're lying, but that's really not true, that the Democrats are corrupt," hem, haw, hem, haw, right? It's kind of an awkward moment. Wise pushes it for a little while, and then says something nasty about Cilley to humiliate him, and that moment passes. But in the course of that debate, Cilley insults a newspaper editor, and the newspaper editor comes riding down to Washington to defend his name. What was interesting about this, to me, was that, in the end, Cilley ends up fighting the friend of the newspaper editor, who was just transmitting letters back and forth. They liked each other fine. They had no problem with each other. The fight really was between Cilley and this editor, but the pull of violence and the pull of dueling and the importance of defending your reputation kind of sucks both of these unfortunate men into being involved in a duel against each other, which ends up being a fatal duel. And it's -- one of the remarkable things about it is, because one congressmen killed another, there's a congressional investigation. There's a big, long report in which they really interrogated every single person that had anything to do with the duel or its arrangements or its aftermath.

John Haskell: And so, when I was reading it, I was like, the duel didn't look the way I thought it would look...I thought -- you imagine what's done on stage in Burr and, you know, Hamilton, where they take 10 steps, and they turn around and miss or hit or whatever. It's not really like that, right?

Joanne B. Freeman: No, no. In a way, it's worse, right? Because the two parties are positioned. They agree in advance how far apart they'll be. In this case, they were very far apart. Nobody thought anyone was going to get killed in this, because they were so far apart. But they're -- they stand facing each other, with their weapons, and predetermined, one of the two seconds, or were sort of assistants in the duel, says one, two, three, present. And then, they have three seconds to fire. And in this particular case, neither man was very good with a gun. And, again, they didn't like -- they had liked each other fine. They didn't have any issue with each other. Right? So, they're bad shots. Cilley needed glasses. The whole thing -- Graves' friends came with blankets because they thought they were going to have to carry his body back from the ground, because there was no way they assumed he could hit anybody with a gun. So, the first time, Cilley misfires, and they have another round of firing, and this time, Graves misfires, and he does so, so embarrassingly that he says, "Well, I need another shot." So, there's a third exchange of fire, and that's, unfortunately, when Graves kills Cilley, who's shot and immediately, basically, dies on the ground. And what you get when you look at this Congressional Report is all the ways in which they were -- you know, I think in addition to thinking that duelists sort of stalk away from each other, and then, turn around and very dramatically fire, you assume that everyone knows exactly what they're doing, and they don't.

John Haskell: And then, they negotiate between rounds.

Joanne B. Freeman: Exactly. Sort of come in and try to figure out, can we end it now? And there's a farmer's kid who's like talking to Graves in between shots, saying, "Is this over something you guys said in Congress?" Like, "Why are you guys dueling?" You know. So, you get every level of detail, but you really see the degree to which no one really wanted this to happen. And yet, it did, with such a fatal outcome.

John Haskell: What was the deal between -- because you said Senators aren't necessarily as -- well, they're more likely to duel, but they weren't having as many fights. But there was an important fight between Senators Benton and Foote. What was important about that?

Joanne B. Freeman: So, yeah. So, this is in 1850, and Thomas Hart Benton and Henry Foote -- that was what ends up being the Compromise of the 1850's, being debated at that moment. By that point, the issue of slavery, partly because of the ongoing Western expansion of the United States, is really becoming heated. In this case, the Compromise in 1850, people really weren't quite sure how that was going to get hashed out. Benton and Foote are on opposite sides of this debate. They had a different sense of how the Compromise should be made. Foote was, I think, just an irritable and irritating human being. There's a lot -- it's not very hard to find people saying nasty things about Henry Foote. Basically, as a historian. So, Foote wanted to humiliate and discredit Benton. Benton was willing to compromise in some ways on slavery. Foote was not. So, Foote, again and again and again, kept trying to find ways to publicly, on the floor of the Senate, humiliate Benton. And then, finally, one day, Benton just snaps, and throws back his chair, sort of throws the table back. You get someone in the gallery says they heard glass smashing. You know, the pitcher came off the table. And he ran at Foote. Now, Foote knew that sooner or later, bad things were going to happen. So, he had armed himself. And so, what happens in this instance is that Benton runs towards Foote, and Foote pulls a gun-- this is on the floor of the Senate -- and aims it at Benton. So, this causes chaos. Right? And people, they were running towards Foote, and they're running towards Benton. And there's a cartoon of it, that shows people running from the galleries and women throwing their parasols, and it's a moment. But it's a moment that really shows you how fraught things were, even in this case, between two people who are not Northerners, between two people who are Southerners on the issue of slavery.

What's interesting about that moment is, among other things, it happens, nothing happens. Someone grabs the gun from Foote, puts it in his desk. They sit down. Someone actually says, "Well, now that that's done, let's get back to work." And someone stands up, actually a New Hampshire senator stands up and says, "Before we get back to work, I hope you all realize in this room that because of the telegraph, within 45 minutes, the nation is going to be hearing that we're slaughtering each other here in the Senate, and there's nothing we can do about it."

John Haskell: You know, the famous fight that a lot of people know about is Preston Brooks versus Charles Sumner, not resulting in a death, but coming close. And that was in the 1850s, right?

Joanne B. Freeman: That was in 1856, yeah. So, that's the one that everyone knows...What's distinctive about this one is partly, it comes about after a series of incidents in which Southerners are attacking Northerners, and partly because both men, in a sense, violate the rules of combat, which I know sounds rather insane, to think that there are rules of fighting. But there were. So, for example, Preston Brooks -- you know, you're not supposed to stage a deliberate caning of that sort in the House. You're supposed to do that on the street. So, I know. How civil of them, I can hear you thinking to yourself. Brooks, for two days, waited outside the Capitol building, trying to catch Sumner on his way in, so that he would stage this in a way that it was supposed to take place. It was only when he couldn't, that he said, "Oh, the heck with it. I'm just going to go in and cane him on the floor." What happens afterwards shows you why that was something to be avoided. The power of that, of a Southerner caning a Northern anti-slavery senator to the ground, in the Senate Chamber, that had a huge power...

John Haskell: And then, there was the -- around that time, I'd say a little bit later, right? There was Congressman Keitt versus Grow. I mean, that was the Civil War, right there, right?

Joanne B. Freeman: And that's in 1858. That was a fascinating fight to uncover. It takes place in 1858. It's during an evening session. Evening sessions are notoriously bad. There's almost always a fight, because congressmen go out to dinner, and they drink, and then, they come back into Congress. So, bad things happen in evening sessions. And in this case, Galusha Grow, which I just love that name, because it's such a wonderful 19th century name. Galusha Grow from Pennsylvania is standing amid some Southerners. Someone objects to something, and Grow says, you know, just let's keep going with what's going on here. He says something to object to what's being -- going on in the room, but he's standing amidst Southerners. So, Keitt, Laurence Keitt, who's a South Carolinian and had had apparently something to drink with dinner, is not happy that there's a Northerner standing amid Southerners objecting, and he says, "Go back to your own side of the House and object." And Grow, who was a fighting man, said, "I'm not going to listen to the words of some slave-driving Southerner. This is a free House. I can do whatever I want." At which, Keitt stands up, apparently muttering to himself, "We'll see about that," and comes right up to Grow, grabs his collar to throw a punch, but Grow responds first, and he floors Keitt. He punches him, and he knocks him flat. At that moment, Southerners, who saw what happened, begin to stream across the House, partly to break up the fight, partly to join into the fight. Northern Republicans who see what's going on begin jumping over tables and chairs in their haste to get to what's going on -- again, partly to save their comrade in arms -- or not in arms, but almost.

And you end up with a huge brawl, with dozens of congressmen in the space before the speaker's platform just engaged in a mass brawl. Huge, you know, punching each other and throwing things at each other. I mean, it's massive. In some ways, it's comical, because it's a bunch of middle-aged congressmen, like sort of running at each other and like, you know, pulling on each other's vests. But, you know, people at the time -- there's a reporter at the time who says, you know, "That was a group of armed men from two different sides, North and South, running at each other in the House of Representatives and fighting. That was a battle." And that, that just sort of sends a chill. Right? If reporters said something was different about that fight -- it was a fight of North against South. It was an armed battle of North against South on the floor of the House -- we're going in an ugly direction.

John Haskell: And then, getting back to Forrest Gump, Mr. French, you know, he always tried to find a middle ground. But in that period, it became increasingly difficult, right?

Joanne B. Freeman: Right. And what's fascinating about him is, so he starts out in his diary, literally, "I will do anything to appease the South, anything to appease the South, whatever I have to do," and over the course of the book, you watch him almost get dragged into a place where he can't say that anymore, where he's feeling more and more like, "What are these Southerners doing? What do they want? Why won't they compromise?" And ultimately, he begins to feel betrayed, and then, he begins to feel angry. So, like, even someone who's as moderate as he is for such a long amount of time, ultimately, in the 1850s, he can't be that moderate person anymore. He's offended, he's defensive. And even he, then, at that point, turns on Southerners as being betrayers who are un-American. And again, that's something that you see in these polarized moments, people go to that space.

...

If you're in a violent culture, or if you're in a place where there's likely to be violence, you actually are more likely to have rules of violence, to keep it in certain channels. And so, they actually -- even as they were doing this behavior that I'm describing in Congress -- there were rules about how you should or shouldn't behave. So, for example, if you're going to insult a man, you should do it while he's present, and not when he's absent, so that he can defend himself in whatever way he chooses. And when someone stood up and insulted someone who wasn't there, he got reprimanded. So, you're absolutely right, that a large part of the violence and the intimidation was for impact more than blood. They weren't out for blood. I mean, if you think about it, these Southerners weren't trying to dissolve Congress. They were trying to get what they wanted. And so, the question was, what did they need to do to get what they wanted. So, yeah, they're not -- they don't want to draw blood, except for, I suppose, a few crazy individuals perhaps who did, but generally speaking, they're trying to have an impact. So, yeah, I think if you're -- if the violence is open in that way, it's going to be more rule-bound, because that's going to be the way that you're going to be able to play with it and deploy it to get what you want.

So, on the one hand, very much, these people are performing before a national audience. They're performing before their colleagues and peers. They're performing before their families and friends. So, they certainly -- a congressman engaged in some kind of fights, worried about his personal reputation. But very much, he's worried about what his constituents are going to think, as well. So, for example, Jonathan Cilley of Maine, he, you know, in my book, I call it the Northern Congressman's Dilemma. He's stuck, because on the one hand, he says, "I don't want to get involved in a duel. You know, I don't want to fight a duel. I don't want to have anything to do with it. My constituents think dueling is some barbaric Southern custom. On the other hand, if I don't, if I back down, I'm going to look cowardly, and I'm going to humiliate my constituents, and I'm going to make them look bad, because my reputation is bound up with theirs, so I have to" -- in the end, he decides to engage with this, because he's worried about the impact of his actions on his constituents and what they'll think of him. So, that's part of what's really interesting about what's going on in Congress in this period. It's part of what intrigued me, is that nothing that happens in that room is only happening in that room, right? I mean, some things are happening behind the scenes, but if it's happening on the floor and receiving any kind of coverage, it's getting a national impact in some way. Congress was really, to a greater degree than now, covered in the press. The majority of column (inaudible) in newspapers were about Congress in this period, not the President.

Andrew Jackson, you know, was a first President of a type, you know, sort of fellow who saw himself as a man of the people in a very aggressive kind of a way and who was a very aggressive, sort of, definitely a fighting man individual who tended to goad his fellow congressmen who supported him to attack congressmen who didn't support him. So, you know, in his case -- and he was, in some cases, putting on a performance. You know, in some cases, his sort of wild, angry Andrew Jackson was, "Now it's time for me to be wild, angry Andrew Jackson. And now, everyone's left the room, and I can sit down and stop being wild, angry Andrew Jackson." But there's a case, for example, there are two -- actually, Henry Wise is one of them. There are two congressmen who end up being very much anti-Jackson. And Jackson, in a room full of people -- a few years before, one of his supporters, actually Sam Houston, the Sam Houston, had violently caned a congressman who opposed Jackson to the ground in the street. So, now, a couple years later, Jackson's in a room full of people. He's talking about Henry Wise and another fellow who he really hates, and he says to this roomful of people, "Someone needs to Houstonize them." Now, right. I love the mix of laughter and ohhh. Right? On the one hand, you know, he made up a word. All by itself, that was like, "Really? He just coined that phrase?" On the other hand, he literally was asking someone in that room to attack these two congressmen, who immediately went and armed themselves, because they knew exactly what that meant. So, you know, the presidency -- in this period, the presidency in the 19th century, it's in a different place, institutionally, than it is now. But it's certainly part of the mix, and when, at the time, you had a President like Jackson, who sort of put himself in the fray in that way, it had an impact.

when I was working on the book, that everybody asked, which is, you know, so then what happens after the war. And interestingly, you know, the first state or two that tries to get back into the Union, they send people to Washington. These men are very sort of proud and high strung and very resentful about the sort of tone of the conversation. So, there's two, I believe, Louisiana congressmen who end up attacking Northerners in the Capitol Building. One of them actually canes someone not in the Senate, but within the Capitol Building. What's fascinating about that is the response. And this helps -- this is part of the answer to your question. Northerners who hear of this in the House and Senate, basically say, "Do we want to let them back into the Union? Do you all remember what it was like here in the 1850s, because that's what we're seeing again." The power dynamic had shifted so fundamentally that what (inaudible) really have clout did not have clout in that way anymore, and you can see that in the response to those little outbursts of violence. And after that point, in a sense, violence shifts to local areas. Violence of Southerners turns on itself, right? Then, you get Reconstruction violence. You have violence and control being asserted on a different battlefield of sorts.

Audience Member 8: Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for speaking. I came in a few minutes late, so you'll have to forgive me, if you've already touched on this, my question relates to the topic of gender...

Joanne B. Freeman: Well, certainly, in this period, there was a -- kind of a mixed response to the presence or absence of women. So, sometimes, when some bad moment was happening on the floor, sometimes, the people engaged in it would actually pause and look up at the galleries, to see how many women were present and sometimes, tone it down. On the other hand, really nasty congressmen would sometimes look up in the gallery to be sure that the wife of the person they were about to attack was there, so that then they could humiliate him even more. So, sometimes, having a woman present was, you know, it's almost a cliche, a taming influence. Sometimes, it wasn't, and the fact of the matter is, not everything was happening in Congress. Boarding houses, there was stuff going on. Women were there in the boarding houses, as well. So, they were part of this debate, and their presence or absence had something to do with what went on. As a matter of fact, interestingly, Preston Brooks, when he went to cane Sumner, he goes into the Senate, and there was a woman in the room. And he sat down and waited for her to leave before he caned her -- caned Sumner. And he apparently sat there, and a friend came in and saw him, like in a chair, just kind of gazing at this woman, and walked over to him and said, "She's rather attractive, isn't she?" And Brooks said something along the lines of, "Yes, I wish she would leave." You know. So, he wasn't going to do what he did in front of another woman. Obviously, over time, that changes dramatically. One of the things that's happening in this period is that you're getting women reporters, to a greater degree. Actually, the first woman in the official press gallery, she's there the day that Foote pulls a gun on Benton, by chance, and writes an account of it, which is not any, you know, dramatically different from anyone else's account, but of course, she's attacked for being hysterical and emotional and all of the things that would be said of a woman doing anything publicly, yeah. So, obviously, that changes tremendously over time. In this period, it's kind of equivocal.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UyPRUILaw8

Jules Verne, the great novelist, after the time of the American Civil War, wrote a book about going to the moon. And, he said it would take eight days, and that's what it did. This is writing out, and they, after the U.S. Civil War in the 19th century, said eight days. It did take us eight days. He talked about stages of the rockets. He talked about three astronauts. He got so much right including, Jules Verne, the great science fiction writer predicted that the first moon mission would leave from Tampa Bay Florida when it was Cape Canaveral.

And, after Verne, that book influenced so many young people interested in the stars and the galaxy. But, the game changer is the Wright Brothers 1903 gives us the age of flight. And, World War 1, in the United States, particularly not far from DC and Langley Virginia, that is where we started putting money into World War 1 under Woodrow Wilson to start perfecting military aviation, wind tunnels, anti-icing. And, so I write in my book about John F Kennedy born in 1917, his generation was the first generation of flight. His whole childhood heroes were like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and CBS Radio. And, the 1920s was putting a astronomers on. And, the idea was, if we could fly, well potentially we could go to the moon some day. And, we started getting a lot of self-styled rocketeers trying to figure out how to do. And, what I mean by the first step of doing it is breaking Earth's gravity grip. How do you put a rocket or projectile six feet two miles straight up? And, then you leave Earth's gravitational grip. And, in the 20s, 30s, into the 1940s that was the game for rocketeers, how can we put an object into innerspace?

David M Rubenstein: Well, there was an American named Robert Goddard who was a leader in that. Can you explain who he was and what he actually did?

Douglas Brinkley: Dr. Robert Goddard was a visionary rocketeer. He taught at Clark University in Massachusetts, not all that far from Brookline Massachusetts where John F Kennedy was born. And Goddard, in the middle of the 1920s started, he would get arrested for like disturbing the peace for shooting these rockets up out of a cabbage field in Auburn Massachusetts. He thought rockets had to be liquid fuel rockets. He was right. But everybody, and particularly the so called establishment of the era, thought he was a quack. The New York Times wrote a devastating article making fun of Goddard's science saying he shouldn't be a professor. Well, this hurt him deeply, this criticism. And he, the never apologized, the Times, for him being completely right until 1969, he had been dead decades. They issued an apology to Goddard. 1929, the stock market crashed, he had no money. Charles Lindbergh had given him some, the Guggenheim some, but not enough to keep operating in Massachusetts, plus he was being harassed. So he moved to Roswell New Mexico, Eden Valley Ranch. If you wonder about space aliens and the like, they weren't nuts, the ranchers and cowhands. Goddard was putting things up into the blue skies of New Mexico in the 1930s.

FDR...had zero interest in rocketry. He thought it was too futuristic. And, so during World War 2 we fund the Manhattan Project and atomic weapons. But, we don't do missiles and rockets. It's very, very low key stuff in America in the 1930s and 40s. But, one country got into rocketry in the 20s and the 30s and the 40s and that's Germany, first under the Wiemar Republic then under the Third Reich of Hitler. And, as I write in my book, their Goddard was Dr. Wernher von Braun who came from an aristocratic German family. And, instead of fleeing in the 30s Hitler's iron grip and extermination of people and the like, he ended up serving the Nazi government. He became an SS officer. And Wernher von Braun and rockets became a big deal for Hitler. They developed, during World War 1, vengeance weapons, the V1, the V2, the V3. And, it's von Braun who breaks that 62 mile thing I was telling you about in World War 2 that we now can put a Nazi rocketeer put the first projectile into innerspace.

von Braun's rockets were weapons of mass destruction. They would be moved on these carts and put in the Netherlands. They, so just take a leafy suburb of Den Haag or Rotterdam, the Nazis would put these rockets there and then fire von Braun's V2s with the aim of destroying London and wiping out the city. Thousands of these were being mass produced to destroy Great Britain. The problem was, though V2s did kill thousands of civilians. However, many went willy nilly, many were duds because they were hurrying it up due to the war and weren't really ready to be fired. But, to build Wernher von Braun's rockets, it was Jewish labor at the Dora camp, a subcamp of Buchenwald. It was one of the most horrendous Holocaust conditions you can imagine. Much of the work was being done in caves, people were getting sick, dysentery, vermin. And, they were building these rockets in caves so the British Air Force couldn't easily see it as a target. And, so von Braun is really, in my book, I talk about his complicity with war crimes in World War 2.

von Braun recognized he does not want to be captured by the British. I mean, as somebody trying to destroy London, he would've been tried for war crimes and would've spent a life in prison in a Nuremberg trial kind of a way. But, he also doesn't want to be taken over by Joe Stalin. He doesn't want to live in Russia or work for that thug's Red Army. And, nobody would want to work in the way Joe Stalin ran things. So his only calling card was the United States. And von Braun read the writing on the wall in late 44, early 45, of 1945. He ends up taking a couple rail trains and grabs all of the blueprints for the first rockets, the V2, and war materials, everything, all of the technology of rocketry filled it on two big train cars, forged a document and smuggled out or left with 137 Nazi rocket scientists. And, they all go and then bury all of the booty in the hill of the Bavarian Alps, blow up the entrance to the cave where they hide it all, leave that spot, sit up in a mountain that was used for the Olympics before World War 2 for Alpine events. And, then he sent his baby brother, Magnus von Braun, on a bicycle to surrender to the U.S. Army and make a trade no war crimes, we'll bring you all of our technology to the United States and we will build rockets for you. The Army Intelligence, a guy from Sheboygan Wisconsin turned a gun on Magnus von Braun, they went through, checked him out, and eventually they got Wernher von Braun, the U.S. Army, the number one war prize. Soviets were desperate to get him, and the Nazi scientists, but the U.S. Got him. And, under something called Operation Paperclip under President Harry Truman, we bring all of the Nazi rocketeers to El Paso Texas, Fort Bliss and they start training rockets in the late 40s and 50s as prisoners of peace working in the United States with a kind of quasi sanitized record for their Nazi past. Because, now they were working for what became Cold War America.

David Rubenstein: So we got Wernher von Braun and some of his top people. But, the Russians got a lot of good German scientists as well. And, as a result of that, they put Sputnik up in 1957. Is that right?

Douglas Brinkley: we just simply misread what Stalin was doing with missile technology. In America, we have to have appropriation for things through Congress. Stalin was just dictatorially pushing their rocket and missile program through...And, the people that wanted NASA created the most were Lyndon Johnson, John F Kennedy, Stuart Symington, democrats who saw that they could say Eisenhower was asleep at the wheel, the Soviets are beating us while Eisenhower's golfing at Augusta...John F Kennedy uses it in 1960 when he runs for president against Richard Nixon.

David Rubenstein: When he runs for president, he says we have a missile gap, in effect, or technology gap with the Russians. Did that turn out to be true?

Douglas Brinkley: We, there was a missile gap. But it was the opposite way. We had the better missiles...(JFK) even was informed, in 1960, by CIA Director Allen Dulles, that in fact we had missile and satellite superiority over the Soviet Union. But, Kennedy wouldn't drop it because it was an issue to beat up on Nixon...(in one debate) he says to Nixon, if you're elected, I see a Soviet flag planted on the moon.

Russians sent Yuri Gagarin. And, that happens under Jack Kennedy's watch. Meaning Kennedy does the inaugural, he's thinking about what to do with NASA, we still haven't put a human in space, and low and behold, I April of 1961 they put Yuri Gagarin into space, a Cosmonaut, another Russian first on Kennedy's watch. And, you know, one of the advantages being a historian, we, Hugh Sidey of Time Magazine left notes of being in the room when Kennedy's yelling at his advisors I want a leapfrog, somebody tell me how we leapfrog the Soviets. Anybody, I don't care if it's the janitor over there, tell me, I want to win. And, we then, he then green lights with NASA thought prematurely Allen Shepherd from New Hampshire whose ancestors were on the Mayflower. And, Shepherd goes up for 15 minutes on May 5th 1961 splashes down and John F Kennedy has a space hero on his hands.

Kennedy goes clear to the Capital in front of a joint session of Congress, makes the pledge, we're going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and bring him back alive. And, everybody as NASA said you've got to be kidding me. We have no technology for this. And, Kennedy's own dad, Joe Kennedy calls the White House to Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary, looking for Jack and finally the father screams goddamn it I knew Jack would do something idiotic like this. He's so reckless.

When you think about it, the liberal narrative is just strange. Here we had people working to defeat the Soviets at home where it mattered, ideologucally and so on. Libs hate that. There was actually another speaker at this event complaining about the Red Scare. At the same time, we have all this money spent on a dick measuring contest with the Soviets in space was fine and dandy and OK to support, patriotic and so on. It's okay because a Democrat president did it. Even though he lied about the missile gap. Meanwhile patriots were fighting commies on the ground where it mattered, you know, stopping people who sold atomic secrets off to the USSR and so on, but to this day it's still RED SCARE REEEEEEEEEEE and doesn't get the credit it deserves. Interesting observation.

NASA's advertising in the 60s was stunning. And, it was Webb who got the public involved...If FDR did the Grand Coulee Dam and Tennessee Valley Authority, and WPA Bridges and Eisenhower did the Interstate Highway System and the Saint Lawrence Seaway, Kennedy decides to go technology and space and put money into the south. Because, he barely won the south in 1960, pre Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Acts...So he does a quid pro quo through the Lyndon Johnson and Webb telling senators in Florida and Texas and Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, how would you like 150 million mass money in your district? How would you like the Saturn Rocket Assembly Plant?

And, the rocketeer that Kennedy is using for all these missions is Wernher von Braun. Kennedy became friends with von Braun in 1953. They were Time Magazine's judges for Persons of the Year. They hung out in New York. They got along fabulously. And, von Braun got hired by Walt Disney, the ex-rocket Nazi was the Disney space and technology guy in his TV show. Von Braun became a big celebrity in the United States. And, they picked Konrad Adenauer of West Germany as Time's Person of the Year, which tells you we were dividing the world West Germany versus East Germany. And, West Germany were the good ones. So von Braun got a makeover as a good German. And, the Navy built Vanguard rockets. If any of you seen rockets collapsing in black and white footage at Cape Canaveral, those were the Navy Vanguards. Von Braun's Jupiter rockets for defense and his Saturn rockets for space, did not collapse. And, so they had the right rocket builder to get us the Saturn 5 rocket that brings Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon was built by Wernher von Braun.

How do you do. There's a Democrat working with an SS Nazi. Walt Disney though, what a fascist. JFK hangs out with the same guy, that's ok. Democrats sure got it good huh.

But, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy did toy with joint missions to the moon with Russia. And, they really thought about seriously. He gave a speech at the UN, Kennedy maybe we do it together but, of course, it fizzles into nothing. But, the best sources, Nikita Khrushchev's son, Sergei Khrushchev who asked his father during Kennedy years, you know, Dad why don't we? Why can't we go to the moon with he United States? Why can't we share and do it jointly? And, Khrushchev told his son because if we do that, the Americans will know what we don't have.

They built the Man Space Center in Houston. You know why? Part of it's Lyndon Johnson. But, the head of the Senate Congressional Space Subcommittee was Albert Thomas the congressman from Houston. He controlled the money...Kennedy wanted to, is determined to win Texas in 64, so November in 63 did a whirlwind tour. And, in San Antonio he goes and gives this amazing speech at Brooks Air Force Base on space medicine, spin off technology. And, then he goes to Houston and he's with Albert Thomas and talking about how much money went into turn the City of Houston into the Astro City instead of the Bayou City. Everything, I looked at a telephone book of Yellow Pages in 1960, you don't see anything about space, by 63 it's Astro babysitters and, you know, Moonwalk Cafes, and it changed it there. Then he goes to Dallas and Fort Worth. And he was supposed to have Gordon Cooper, one of the Mercury astronauts, with him in an open convertible, space hero Gordon Cooper waving with Jack and Jackie Kennedy. And, what happened is, the last minute he got pulled off of going with Kennedy for a test that they wanted him to suddenly take. And, he got taken away from going with Kennedy when Kennedy was shot.

David Rubenstein: Obviously, he's assassinated November 22nd 1963. The Space Program continues. When it is actually time for Apollo 11 to go to the moon, there's an idea that maybe it should be named in his honor. Did President Nixon think that was a good idea?

Douglas Brinkley: It's a great question because the big push by Bill Moyers, you know, Johnson's speech writer, PBS, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan started lobbying that we need to name the rocket the John F Kennedy. And yet there are memos by, some of you remember HR Haldeman of Nixon? Haldeman writes these memos, do not name the rocket after Kennedy, it's an NBC News ploy to Kennedyize space...in another memo all the men saying there's no placating liberals. If you name the rocket the John F Kennedy, they're going to say you didn't do enough, you have to name the moon Kennedy. So Nixon assiduously avoided ever mentioning Jack Kennedy's name.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSZ6KB-_MPA

The British Army in the Revolution unable to gather food and forage from the American countryside without being ambushed relied largely on provisions shipped from England and Irish ports. But, for example, of 40 supply and transport ships dispatched across the Atlantic in the winter of 1775, only eight of those 40 reached the king's forces directly in Boston. The rest were blown by gales back to Britain or blown by gales to the West Indies, or intercepted by rebel marauders. Of 550 Lincolnshire sheep carried aboard ships that actually made it to Boston-- that breed was deemed the fittest to undergo the rigors of that voyage-- only 40 of those 550 sheep arrived alive. 290 hog shipped, just 74 survived the trip. Most of the 5200 barrels of flour in one shipment proved to be rancid. When the British moved to New York in the summer of 1776 and they requested 950 horses in order to pull their artillery wagons and their supply wagons, of the 950 horses that were in fact shipped from Britain, 412 died during the voyage. Hundreds more were ruined beyond use when they actually arrived in America. Similar difficulties plagued the British for years. Logistics is always hard in war. I've personally seen just how difficult it is in Somalia and Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Even when the American rebels were fighting on their home turf, they faced enormous difficulties. Of 75 official letters that General Washington wrote in January and February of 1776, half mentioned munitions shortages, often in pleading, fretful terms, particularly about shortages of gun powder which he just called "the thing". It's difficult to make musket balls without lead. And by the summer of 1776 the Americans were desperately short of the stuff. In New York, more than 100 tons of lead weights from fishing nets and clocks and window sash cords were collected to make bullets. Along with lead from downspouts and window glass (inaudible) and pewter dishes. Without salt, armies and navies couldn't stockpile the meat and fish needed to move anywhere. Two bushels of salt, more than 100 pounds, are needed to cure 1000 pounds of pork. Before the war, Americans imported about 15 million bushels of salt annually. Half from the West Indies and half from Britain and southern Europe. The British Trade Embargo when the shooting started, strangled two thirds of those imports. And to encourage salt works along the coast, including the coast of Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, pamphlets were printed with salt making recipes. All the old women and children are going down to the Jersey shore to make salt, John Adams wrote. But 400 gallons of sea water are needed to boil off a single bushel of salt and that takes huge stockpiles of fire wood. Virginia-- let's pick on Virginia for a minute-- they spent more than 6,000 pounds, a huge sum of money in those days, to build evaporation ponds along the Chesapeake Bay. They collected only 50 bushels. Probably the most expensive salt in the history of salt.

Yet, those problems, substantial as they were, hardly matched Britain's problems. The thousand tons of bread required each month to feed British soldiers in New York often arrived from depots in Cork moldy and infested with Irish rats. And there's no rat as nasty as an Irish rat. (laughter) And those rats soon infested British storehouses on Staten Island. For the winter of 1776-77, the British needed 64 cords of fire wood. 70 tons of candles. The daily allowance of a gill of rum for each redcoat. A gil was five ounces. It's about a gallon a month which gives you an idea of inebriation problems in the British army. That supply of rum took an enormous amount of shipping space. 400 transports and victualling ships to move and supply the large force in New York including to carry the rum.

The war (King George) chooses to wage-- and he chooses, he is driving the train-- that was is brutal, bloody, and often savage. Unlike modern war, killing in the 18th century is usually intimate, at very close range, often with a bayonet. And that's partly because 18th century muskets were mostly inaccurate beyond 50 or 60 yards and mostly hopeless beyond 100 yards. Scholars have calculated that in the fights at Lexington, Concord, and in the British retreat to Boston on the first day of the war-- April 19th, 1775-- the Americans fired at least 75,000 rounds but only one bullet in every 300 actually hit a redcoat. The shot heard 'round the world probably missed. (laughter) On the other hand, mass musket fire by clusters of men firing in volleys sending swarms of one ounce lead slugs down range at perhaps 1000 feet a second, that could be devastating. A man five feet eight inches tall had an exterior surface of 2550 inches of which 1000 was exposed to gunfire when he was facing an enemy frontally at close range. Given the primitive inadequacy of 18th century medicine, which is hardly worthy of the name, if you're hit in the torso, you have more than a 50% chance of dying. If you're hit in the head your chances of survival are even smaller. By the way, later studies by the British Army demonstrated that soldiers wearing conspicuous red uniforms were more than twice as likely to be shot in combat as those in muted blues and grays. (laughter) Duh.

American marksmen, especially those few with rifles which were more accurate than muskets but harder to load and couldn't carry a bayonet, those marksmen learned to target the brightest of the redcoats. Those that were almost vermillion in hue, because they were usually worn by officers who could afford the more expensive dyes that made those coats pop. It was like wearing a sign on your back that said shoot me. (laughter) The Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17th, 1775, the British captured roughly a square mile of rebel held territory at a cost of over 1000 casualties including 226 British dead. "The British are coming" is not something that Paul Revere called while galloping through the Middlesex countryside in the very early morning of April 19th, 1775. That wouldn't have made sense to people who still at that moment considered themselves to be British citizens. What he's quoted as shouting over and over again is "The regulars are coming out", meaning the regular British Army coming out of Boston. The British are coming relentlessly with most of their ferocious, professional army. With nearly half of the greatest navy the world has ever seen. With 30,000 German mercenaries-- Hessians. And they're coming to kill your men, rape your women, plunder your homes, and in some cases burn your town to ashes. It's a dire thing.

General Nathaneal Greene, a Quaker anchorsmith from Rhode Island makes one of the worst operational decisions of the war by leaving 3000 American troops exposed and vulnerable at Fort Washington in Manhattan where in the space of eight hours on November 16th, 1776 they're trapped and killed or captured. This is a period when American generalship is often characterized by miscalculation, misfortune, imprudence and deficient military skills. But Green picks himself up, takes a deep breath, and writes to Cate his wife, "the virtue of the Americans is put to a trial. I'm hardy and well despite all the fatigues and hardships. Be of good courage. Don't be distressed. All things will turn out for the best".

Lesser personalities largely lost to history speak to Americans in the 21st century of constancy and an antique patriotism. "Heaven only knows what may be my fate", Captain John Macpherson wrote in a last letter to his father before being killed at Quebec. "I experience no reluctance in this cause to venture a life which I consider is only lent to be used when my country demands it". Likewise, Lieutenant Samuel Cooper wrote his wife, "the dangers we are to encounter I know not, but it shall never be said to my children, 'your father was a coward'". He too was killed at Quebec... Edward Hull, a young Scottish officer in the 43rd Regiment afoot shot at Northbridge in Concord, then shot again during the British retreat toward Boston, captured by the Americans. In agony from three bullet wounds, sucking on an orange donated by a compassionate rebel, he lingers for nearly two weeks in a twilight of pain and remorse before he too takes heaven by the way.

Or we see Ile aux Noix, the island of nuts. A couple hundred acres in the Richelieu River just above the New York border where thousands of American soldiers retreating from Canada in June 1776 jammed a malarial hell-- half of them suffering from smallpox, dysentery, typhus or some other God-awful malady, infested with lice and maggots. One doctor wrote we had nothing to give them. It broke my heart and I wept until I had not more power to weep. We see Matthew Patton at Bedford, New Hampshire whose son John had survived a gunshot wound to the arm at Bunker Hill but did not survive Ile aux Noix. Mr. Patton wrote simply in his diary, I got an account of my John's death of the smallpox at Canada. He was 24 years and 31 days old. Historian Bruce Catton considered the American Civil War a redemptive tragedy. Surely the same can be said of the American Revolution. It embodied the enduring aspirations of an idealistic people and brought forth a nation abounding with a sense of destiny. No wonder the world was agog. "The cause of America", wrote the essayist Thomas Paine, "is the cause of all mankind".

www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7r9mV0VoD8

David M. Rubenstein: You did the Johnson tapes, is that right? And so, if you had a chance to ask Johnson one question, what would you ask him?

Michael Beschloss: Why did you feel so compelled to get more deeply in the Vietnam War when you knew that it was going south fast? And does everyone know what the Johnson tapes were? He taped his private conversations, about 600 maybe hours from the beginning to almost the end. Terrible invasion of civil liberties but wonderful for historians. I did two books on them.

And so, the most heart-stopping moment in those tapes was in February of 1965, just when he was taking us into the Vietnam War for the first time in a serious way, sending off ground troops, he's talking to his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara...talking about the fact that the war is really beginning. And I'm expecting Johnson to say what he's saying in public which is we expect to win. Instead he says to McNamara, "I can't think of anything worse than losing the Vietnam War and I do not see any way that we can win."

This is the very beginning of the war...if we did not have those tapes, for instance, we would not know how pessimistic he was about the possibility of winning a war for which at that moment, he was sending these idealistic young kids off, many of them to die.

David M. Rubenstein: So let me ask you, you've told this story before and I think people might be interested here in hearing it. Lyndon Johnson was worried that the people were not coming to his Presidential Library. So he wanted to increase attendance. What was the clever way that he came up with to do that?

Michael Beschloss: The story I got from his great friend, Harry Middleton, director of the library, died not long ago...You may have noticed that across the street from that library is a fairly large football stadium? That's maybe 100,000 people. So Johnson was worried about getting people to attend his library which in the spring of 1970 and '71 around that time, he was very unpopular.

And so, he calls over to the stadium and says to the guy that makes announcements at half-time or his boss, something like, "Make an announcement at the next game that anybody who," I'm cleaning this up, by the way.

David M. Rubenstein: Right (laughter)

Michael Beschloss: "Anybody who wants to take a leak or get some cool water can do it at the Johnson Library across the street." And the announcement was made and huge numbers of people came at the front door. They were counted as visitors. This was done at later games and I am told that by the end of that year, Johnson Library became the best presidential, best attended presidential library in the country (laughter)

...

Anyone know the last time Congress declared war? Yes, sir? Yeah, '42, '43 during World War II. Have we had any wars since 1942, 1943? So we've gotten out of this habit of what the Constitution says which is that if someone wants a war, Congress has to declare it.

Why did the founding fathers of the Constitutional Convention say the president is the commander in chief but he or she cannot decide to go to war? Why did they let the Congress do that?
>> Michael Beschloss: When the founders were writing our Constitution, one of the biggest things that they were worried about was that they would write a Constitution that would lead to a dictatorship or a monarchy exactly what they were trying not to do. And because of their study of history, they found that one of the ways that happened was that monarchs or dictators would fabricate reasons for war. This was usually in Europe. And say, we have to go to war. The country would unite behind the king or the dictator. And totalitarianism, greater totalitarianism would follow.

So they thought that it was very important that the president of the United States not be the one that had the war power. That was in the 1780s. Here we are in the 21st century, who now has the war power, is it Congress or our president?

David M. Rubenstein: Now the Civil War, did we actually declare war?

Michael Beschloss: No, we didn't but that was for a good reason. That was that Lincoln said that for us to declare war would be to recognize that the good confederacy was a different country. The whole thing was Lincoln's argument that this was an insurrection so he did not ask for a declaration. He did ask Congress for military support and other things that would help him fight it.

...

And Truman, whom I otherwise love for many reasons, not all, said, "I'm not going to go to Congress to ask for a war declaration (for the Korean War) because it's 1950. There are a lot of fights in Congress. I have to, you know, run a midterm campaign this fall. All it's going to do is arouse problems for me and the administration. I'm just going to go ahead and send troops to defend South Korea. And I don't think anyone is going to object."

Then someone called it a police action and Truman agreed.

David M. Rubenstein: You point out in your books something very interesting that why did we actually have the Korean War in the sense that the North Koreans invaded the South but was that because they were led to believe by Truman or his Secretary of State that we wouldn't respond?

Michael Beschloss: A large reason was a big goof that was made by our Secretary of State Dean Atchison who in January of 1950 gave a speech to the National Press Club implying that South Korea might fall outside our defense perimeter and you know, fairly suggesting perhaps to the other side, why not try to grab South Korea and test the principle?

David M. Rubenstein: So when the North Koreans invade South Korea and we decide to pursue defense...MacArthur does come up with a very good landing at Incheon.

Michael Beschloss: it succeeded by surprise and it changed the terms of the war. And also, it caused MacArthur to think that therefore he had license to do all sorts of things that Truman and the Joint Chiefs had asked him not to. And when he was told not to, he would actually write to newspaper publishers in the United States and say, "The Joint Chiefs and the President is holding me down. You really should urge that the President give me a license to go ahead."

(Truman) saw that MacArthur was going to be extremely insubordinate and if you were going to preserve the principle of a military that's under the command of the Commander-in-Chief, he had to fire MacArthur. And part of the bad joke, this is not my joke, but MacArthur came back and the MacArthur famously spoke to Congress, gave his emotional speech, "Old Soldiers Never Die." And the Republicans wanted him to run for president, thought he'd beat Truman. The Democrats were worried he'd run for president and beat Truman. And so it was said that as MacArthur spoke, not my joke, "The Republican side of the House, there was not a dry eye. On the Democratic side of the House, there was not a dry seat." (laughter)

(But by 1952), he was considered to be somewhat politically extreme and also Eisenhower had come back and he was a lot more popular.

In 1948, Harry Truman offered actually to - if Eisenhower would run as a Democrat - Truman said he would run with him on his ticket as Vice-President. And so Eisenhower later recalled that, I think, in one of his memoirs and Truman denied it and said, "I never would have done that." And the problem was that Truman had actually written it in one of his diaries and someone found the diary page later on.

Eisenhower and Truman were on terrible terms especially from '52 when Truman, when Eisenhower was running against Truman's "mess in Washington." But on the day of John Kennedy's funeral, the two of them were outside the cathedral as President Kennedy's casket was being brought out. And the two men were standing when they saw John Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's casket. The two men decided to have a drink at Blair House and they made up all their own differences, their old differences and remembered all they had done together.

Eisenhower said, the way he solved Korea was he sent messages over channels that were likely to get back to the North Koreans and their allies that unlike Truman, he would not refrain from using nuclear weapons, if necessary to end this war. And the war was, at least, an armistice was imposed within about six months.

David M. Rubenstein: Let's talk about the Vietnam War. So did we have a declaration of war in Vietnam?

Michael Beschloss: No, we did not. And this is the problem. You know, when a president like Truman says, "Well, I'm just not going to go ask for a declaration because it's going to cost me problems," it creates a precedent, a precedent that later presidents might use for bad purposes.

David M. Rubenstein: And the resolution is different than a declaration in what sense?

Michael Beschloss: It's legally different and it is, it allows people in Congress who voted for it to say, "I never voted for a declaration of war." Look at the number of members of Congress, no names mentioned, who after voting for resolutions for wars that proved to be unpopular, said they were just voting for a resolution to use force. They weren't voting for a declaration of war.

David M. Rubenstein: But then, in the end, did Johnson know that the Gulf of Tonkin was based on false information?

Michael Beschloss: He knew within a couple of weeks but he did not go back to Congress and say, "It didn't happen." We should have.

I'd like to make it harder for presidents to go into wars unless the American people would support them overwhelmingly. And I'd also like to see presidents who have some of that leadership qualities that I write about in this book. For instance, in Lincoln's case, he had this wonderful empathy. Lincoln, in the middle of the Civil War, there were so many casualties that his people said, "We've got to build a new cemetery. Where do you want it?" And Lincoln said, "I want it built as close to my summer house as possible because it's going to be painful for me but I want to see the graves being dug. I want to be reminded of the terrible cost of these decisions that I'm making."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIJqj3RwjqY

David Brooks: I grew up in the lower east side of New York. My parents were somewhat left wing. So, the story I tell about my childhood was when I was five, they took me -- this was in the late-'60s -- to a be in, where hippies would go just to be. And one of the things they did is they threw their -- they set a garbage can on fire and they threw their wallets into it to demonstrate how little they cared about money and material things. And I was five and I saw a five-dollar bill on fire in the garbage can, so I broke from the crowd, reached into the fire, grabbed the money and ran away (laughter). And that was my first step over to the right.

David M. Rubenstein: So, when you were an undergraduate you met William F. Buckley. How did that change your life?

David Brooks: So, I was a school columnist for the school paper and Buckley came to campus, and I wrote a vicious parody of him for being a name-dropping blowhard...And he came to campus and he gave a speech to the student body. And at the end of it he said, David Brooks, if you're in the audience I want to give you a job. And that was the big break of my life.

David M. Rubenstein: Did he give you a job?

David Brooks: sadly, I was not in the audience (laughter)

I had been hired by PBS to interview -- to debate Milton Friedman on national TV. And you go on YouTube, and if you type in YouTube David Brooks, Milton Friedman you'll see a 21-year-old me with big Jew fro and these gigantic 19'80s glasses that were apparently on loan from the Mt. Palomar Lunar Observatory (laughter). And basically, the show is -- I was then a socialist. I argue a point that I regurgitated from some textbook. He destroys it in about six words, and then the camera lingers on my face as I try to think of something to say. That was -- that was the show.

So, I covered poverty on the south and west side and I -- I thought I was seeing a lot of bad social policy that had the unintended consequences of making poverty worse. And that made me a little more conservative. So, I called Buckley up and said, is the job still there? He said yes, so I flew to New York.

at Chicago they assigned me a book called The Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmond Burke. And at the time, I hated it. I loathed that book. And here was a guy -- I wanted to have a revolution. I wanted to create new ideas for myself. And here was a guy says, distrust your reason. But Burke's conservatism is based on epistemological modesty. Epistemology is what we can know, and modesty is modesty. It's the -- the world is a really complicated place, be careful how you think you can change it. Do it gradually, incrementally, and as Burke says, as if you were operating on your own father.

And so, what I saw in Chicago was social change done badly, and it seemed to confirm in me what Burke was saying. And so, I -- I wasn't a conservative the way The National Review was, but I was suddenly not as progressive.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVYlRMA9kS0

Sandra Day O'Connor, who I think worked better in the legislature rather than legislating from the bench, which was not her job. The author views this as pragmatism and compromise, almost as if it was her job to poll-watch and take some BS position in her opinions that she thought was a middle, whch is also not what she's supposed to do. She is there simply to follow what the constitution says, not to put out her own opinions. It's hinted that her swing decisions muddled the waters, particularly abortion (which she knew was wrong) where people are still fighting over what "undue burden" means. It's nowhere in the constitution. It's another one of those invented court tests where they thought they would settle everything and only ended up causing more problems. People expected her to do the right thing but like McCain, she would fold like a little coward, so it's a base character flaw along with incompetence at the job.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld5q9p1zHZw&t=47m

Racial Science in Nazi Germany

The historical evidence of the complicity of German physicians and biomedical scientists, in Nazi, Eugenic, and racial policy, is overwhelming. Let me enumerate just a few key pieces of evidence for you. Prominent academics advised the Nazi government on eugenic policy. Most medical doctors were willing to report patients to the authorities for compulsive re-sterilization and hundreds of German physicians, as well as leading academics, served as medical judges on the so-called hereditary health courts, which ordered compulsory sterilizations...medical doctors closely associated with leading research institutes, performed medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, and a number of researchers used so-called human material, obtained from murdered concentration camp inmates.

All this evidence of widespread complicity has definitively refuted the apologetic accounts of science and medicine under the Nazi regime, that dominated the west German public's fear, until the 1980s. Today, no serious student of the subject can deny that a large number of Germany's physicians, as well as leading academics in the related fields of anthropology, eugenics, human genetics, and racial science...were complicit in the eugenic and racial policies of the Nazi regime, that culminated in the Holocaust.

The most influential summary of this first wave of critical research on the history of medicine and biomedical science under the Nazis that took place in the 80s, was Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann's 1991 book, "The Racial State"...they argued that Nazi racial policy was essentially the realization of a blueprint that had been developed by racial scientists...Because they saw eugenics as not just addressing medical pathologies, but also as a way of solving social problems, including crime, vagrancy, a-social behavior. Their participation in eugenic policy making was also a way of expanding the medical professions influence into the realm of social policy.

racial scientists played a key role in the persecution and murder of the Roma and Sinti, the so-called gypsies. Because Roma and Sinti were perceived as a-social and criminal, they were targeted by sterilization policy, through diagnoses of feeblemindedness. There were also discussions about specifically targeting all gypsies for sterilization, but these were overtaken by the turn to mass murder.

Burleigh and Wippermann's claim, rested on their understanding of racial science under the Nazis as a cohesive, coherent, field of science. In reality, I will argue that field, the field that came to be known as racial science, was in fact characterized by several different and competing conceptual frameworks, just as there were competing visions of Nazi racial policy, at least early in the regime. In fact, competing conceptions of race and human heredity resulted in a remarkable number of conflicts, and controversies in the Nazi era.

Ironically, the first anthropologist who got into trouble with Nazi authorities, was a scholar who occupied a moderate position in the middle of this spectrum of racial theories between the sort of classic theories of Nordic -- superiority of the Nordic race on one end, and the other end the idea that races are malleable and dynamic and everchanging. And the person who was in the middle of the spectrum, was Eugen Fischer, a professor of anthropology at the University of Berlin, and the founding director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem. And he was probably, during the Nazi period, the most prominent physical anthropologist and human geneticist in Germany.

Two days after Hitler's seizure of power, that is on February 1st, 1933, Fischer delivered a previously scheduled public lecture on racial mixing and mental aptitude, in which he argued that the mixing of races generally had a beneficial effect on offspring. High cultures were usually the product of a mixing of races, not of their purity. The flowering of culture in central Europe from the Renaissance on, he explained, too place in a quote, "Mixing zone," in which the Nordic race had mixed with the Alpine and Dinaric races. Fischer also explicitly addressed the question of race mixing between Nordic races and Jews, making a biological distinction between long-resident German Jewish families, and recently arrived Jews from eastern Europe. He argued that the mixing of Nordic races with German Jewish stock, was unproblematic, while the mixing with (inaudible) was not. Since Fischer made this argument in a public lecture attended by journalists, two days after Hitler had come to power, we may assume that he intended his comments to have a political effect namely, to advise the Hitler government to take a moderate line in discriminating against Jews.

Fischer was vigorously defended however, by (foreign name) who was the person in charge of the section of public health at the Minister of the Interior. He was installed there by the Nazis. He was a committed Nazi. He's basically the person who made the -- who directed sterilization policy and was responsible for the passage of the sterilization law...very much a committed Nazi, and very much a believer in eugenics and racial theory.

But, he in this situation, became a defender of Fischer. And (he) argued in a letter...that Fischer's international academic reputation in racial anthropology, made him indispensable for the regime. And I quote, "A dispute between Fischer and official authorities would easily create the impression in Germany and abroad, that Professor Fischer disapproves of the path that the government has taken in racial policy, and that the government's measures contradict the findings of science." End of quote. And I like this quote because it's rare that you find so explicitly a passage that basically says, "We need this guy for our legitimacy, and that's why we should not fire him."

Fischer decided to adjust his views. And this also is interesting how he does that, although Fischer refused to label the Jewish race as inferior...but it's different in kind, and therefore had to be excluded from race mixing with Nordic races. So, on the substance of race mixing, he backs down, (but) he refuses to put a negative label on the Jews.

So, he caves. On the central issue, he does cave, right? Although it took a while for the campaign against Fischer to subside, I mean this campaign against him actually went on for several years, this concession together with Fischer's willingness to offer training courses at his institute for SS doctors, allowed Fischer to retain control of the Dahlem Institute, which then remained the most important institute in racial science in Nazi Germany. And to become what one historian has called, "The undisputed academic spokesman for racial science under the Nazi regime." Now, my argument would be that the controversy over this lecture shows that it would be misleading to characterize Fischer as a racial scientist who was glad that the Nazi regime would finally allow him to translate his ideas into policy, because as we can see, his ideas were a little different from the ideas of the regime, or those in the regime that prevailed.

Although, Fischer found out that there were boundaries to acceptable discourse on race under the new regime, there was some room for him to negotiate a compromised position on race mixing, precisely because academic and public discourse on race during the early years of the regime, remained surprisingly diverse.

I think what makes the story interesting, is that not all the Nazi policymakers are on the same side. While Nordicists like (foreign name) were fiercely opposed to the notion of a German race, the concept met with considerable assent in other quarters of the Nazi movement and Nazi leadership. For at the outset of the regime, some party members were in fact concerned that proponents of Nordic racial theory, might advocate a racial policy that would introduce distinctions of racial value, among the German population. And that they might even call for racial eugenic measures of Nordification. They feared in other words, that if the notion of Nordic superiority became official policy, then those parts of the German population that were not primarily Nordic, you know, would feel threatened and this would threaten the cohesion of the German national community. Not an unreasonable fear...even into the early 40s, there is movement, there is disagreement, there is conflict in this field.

The course of Nazi eugenic and racial policy, cannot be explained by reference to racial science, because the trajectory, I've argued here, of racial science, does not mirror that of Nazi racial policy. In other words, the role of science and the radicalization of Nazi racial policy, culminating in the Holocaust, has been overstated. Neither racial policy, nor Nazi racial ideology, nor Nazi racial policy, were as coherent as the racial (inaudible) or paradigm has suggested. Instead, all three remained heterogeneous areas throughout the Third Reich. Mitchell Ash has written that science and politics are resources for one another, but of course, neither science nor politics were monolithic. In the case of Nazi Germany, I would argue we need to develop an intellectual map of the different research paradigms, or schools of thought, within the field of racial science. So, on the one hand, this intellectual map. While on the other hand, I think we need a political map of the major parties state in SS agencies, that competed with another for controlling racial policy. And then I would argue once we figured out these two maps and are aware of how heterogeneous both of these areas were, then we need to relate them to one another. And then we can begin to ask, "Who sought alliances with whom?" Which scientists, which policy makers, for what purpose, at what time? And such an approach should help us understand the Third Reich better, by elucidating how both scientists and Nazi officials deployed competing conceptions of race, for strategic purposes at different points in the development of the Nazi regime.

>> Thanks. And I found it very interesting to see how these matters of race were contested throughout the Nazi period. On that intellectual map that you mentioned, where would you find the sort of division between Aryan and Semitic, or did that category of Aryan and the category of Semitic still play a role, or did it peter out, and would that have influenced policy?

Dr. Richard F. Wetzell: It's an excellent question. Thank you. You'll notice that I think probably the word Aryan did not even appear in my talk, right? So, what was so strange, as I began this research, was to find it in the area of racial science...the Aryan race simply plays absolutely no role. And I'm not the first to say it, but I think it has not been said enough. There's some research that already indicated this. So, it turns out that in linguistics in the 20s and 30s, people still worked with this concept in terms of you know, tracing language groups. But among Germany's physical anthropologists, and eugenicists and all these people I've grouped here as racial scientists, it turns out none of them use this term. Now of course, you ask, "Well, then how come we always hear about Aryans in Nazi Germany?" And I did to do some more research on -- to find that out, but what I can say with certainty, is that in the scientific discussions, it doesn't play any role. Among the scientists, it's really either you are with Hans Gunther and you think there are the Nordic and...these six races. And then the Jews also are composed of different races, or you are on the other extreme with (foreign name) and (foreign name) where races are always in the making.

I would argue the main reason as far as I can tell, that the term Aryan is so important in the public discourse in Nazi Germany, is that it essentially becomes a synonym for non-Jewish, right? Because very early on, already in April '33, the Law on the Restoration of the Civil Service is passed...where you had to go back to your four grandparents and show who they were and what they were looking for was evidence that they were Jewish. And of course, the evidence that they were Jewish was just that they were registered in a Jewish community. So, it all came down to religion, because of course, it turns out that you know, there were no biological or racial criteria...the word Aryan, (foreign name) in German, was just simply a synonym for not Jewish.

As the Nuremberg laws make illegal sexual intercourse or marriage between Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans, then again this term Aryan comes back into the discussion. So, that's -- I would say, because of these legal provisions, the term is very prominent in public discussions in Nazi Germany, and in our historiography, but it was actually really surprising to me that in the science, it really doesn't play any role.

...

"Beyond the Racial State," makes, which I didn't highlight here because it's not a dissenter of what I'm doing, but what I do connect to it, is also to say that this racial state interpretation of Nazi Germany, has you know -- of course race was important in Nazi Germany, right? I mean no one would argue against that. Just so we're clear, that I'm not arguing against that. Race was very important. Point 1 would be to say, but don't take it at face value, you can't use it as an analytical category and then think that race explains everything on Nazi Germany...the case for race has been overstated. Not everything in Nazi Germany was about race and was about biology.

So, to start with the Jews, right? I mean, a lot of what the Nazis said about the Jews is there's a world -- world Jewish conspiracy, which has those wonderful two parts on Wall Street and in the Kremlin, which already shows you it's kind of contradictory, right? But there are also longstanding cultural anti-Semitic tropes that continue to play a major role in Germany. If we just stuck with the race, the Jews are...an inferior race, then it would all come down to, "Well, the Jews, you know, (inaudible) so inferior." But of course, that's not at all -- what most of the rhetoric is about how powerful the Jews are, either because they're capitalists or because they're Bolshevik, depending on the argument you want to make. So, they're really anything but inferior. So, several chapters in this book make the argument that as we try to understand Nazi anti-Semitism, we have to remain aware that in addition to racial arguments, which of course are there, there are other cultural arguments.

And I think the same can be said for the Nazi creation of the (foreign name), you know, the community of the German people, which sometimes is translated in English as racial community...this term of course which can mean nation, can mean people, you know? But I would say translating it as racial community is not accurate.

I mean, they're basically caught between a rock and a hard place, because if you go with Gunther, and you say the German nation is composed of six races...and the Nordic one is superior, then you have basically said, "Certain parts of the German people are racially more valuable than others. And that certainly could undermine the racial cohesions." And you know, we have evidence of discussions for instance in Bavaria, how is this going to come out, because this is a part of the population with supposedly less Nordic blood. So, if they go with that, the problem is you're creating invidious distinctions among the population. And then on the other hand, as I laid out for you in this one controversy, if you go with a dynamic notion of a German race in the making, malleable at all times, then some people were worried that, "Hell, the Jews might get into it. If we make it too malleable, you know, then, you know, we're not keeping out the people we want to keep out"...no matter how they play it, whether Germany is all one race, or is six different races, either way, it's potentially highly problematic for what they want to do, and also in fairness, I think of course these controversies and conflicts are strongest in the early years.

But I also want to say again, there are areas where this doesn't matter. The persecution of the Jews as it escalates towards mass murder, that is driven by much deeper ideological factors in the Nazi party, and the racial scientists are nice for legitimation, but they don't drive the process.

...

(Foreign name) means blood similar in kind. Closely related. So, as they were trying to make policy in the occupied parts of Poland, and then also of Russia, right? What they're doing is they're starting a process of racial screening, where they're trying to decide, "Who can we bring into the German people, and who is definitely Slavic and therefore inferior?" and you know, essentially these are people that they let starve and if not actively exterminate. For instance, case of Soviet POWs.

There are areas that are clearly German speaking and there are some that are not, but it's a mixture. It's not ethnically homogeneous. And there are some people that look at the situation and say, "Let's take everybody we can. If they speak German, if they've seem sympathetic to the German cause, if they're willing to come on board, let's take them all in." That's sort of the one side of the spectrum. And I gave you one example was someone who wants to do that, is clever enough to actually call in Hans Gunther of all people, and have him write an expert opinion, saying, "Yes, these people are basically more or less like the Germans are." So, a strategic use of scientific legitimation. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the SS who comes in and wants to measure the skulls and really have racial criteria, for who should count as German and who shouldn't. And only a very small number of people are subject to these kind of racial examinations, and then of course, the problem is as you can all guess, I mean, it's completely made up. I mean, you know, you can measure the skull, but what's it really going to tell you.

And again, it's always clear that the Jews of course, are not it, right? But with other groups, it's much harder to determine that, not just in eastern Europe, but if you think about the Japanese, for instance...the Japanese were allied with Nazi Germany of course at a certain point, and I was recently at a conference. We had this small seminar about race in Nazi Germany, and there was a fascinating paper by someone about the question of the Japanese. And even before the Nuremberg laws are passed, all this public talk about, actually the Aryan race, makes the Japanese nervous. And they want some assurance that they are going to be on the good side of this, right? And there is actually a myth this person in her research showed, there is the myth that the Japanese were considered honorary Aryans. She shows that that's not true. That's just a myth. She found some documentation where the German Japanese society petitions various ministries and organizations. She says, "We need clarification. You know, where the Japanese stand in this." And one prominent sort of racial scientist, wrote a long expert opinion saying, "The Japanese are also on the good side. They are also kind of basically equivalent to the Aryans because if you go back to you know, ancient history and language groups and whatever." But it doesn't fly, because once (inaudible) who does occupy this important position says absolutely not. You know, they're not Aryans. So, there too they actually have a problem. But as you can see, this is just a political debate about the Nazis. I mean, there's -- it's not based on anything. But yes, thank you for making me clarify that. Yes. But the thing is, the thing to remember is, I mean this language of blood is purely metaphorical. They do this research on blood groups, but you know, it doesn't go anywhere.

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_CUbV6zhuQ

1941: The Year Germany Lost the War

I would say if you look at 1941, the end of 1940 and beginning of 1941, you've gone through this period where I think Hitler and his Germany, his Third Reich, has been underestimated for years. First, Hitler himself was underestimated when he was rising to power, for all sorts of reasons. That's a longer topic about -- but people, whether it was foreign observers, German politicians, even some German Jewish leaders, who felt, "This man can't be a serious leader. He cannot become the leader of Germany, or if he is, he's somebody who we will be able to control, and will not do these crazy things he's saying he's going to do." But then, he takes power as we know, in 1933, and by 1938, has embarked on this good on -- he's not only consolidated his power at home, and eliminated any potential rivals and begun things like the attacks on Jews, on Kristallnacht, but he has begun a course which seems to be a collision course with just about everybody else.

September 1, 1939 he attacks Poland, which is the beginning of World War II. And he's -- there's a feeling -- all along, there've been people, not just in the West, but also within Germany, within the German army, within the economic offices and so forth, who are saying, you know, basically, "Hitler, be careful, you're taking on an awful lot." And Germany doesn't -- isn't as prepared as you think and doesn't have the resources to take on everyone. And yet, every time that he makes another move, everybody else retreats. So, he takes over Poland and significantly, he -- to do that, he makes his pact with Stalin, with the Soviet Union, the Nazi-Soviet pact. So, that neutralizes Russia. In fact, it more than neutralizes Russia. It -- the Soviet Union, Stalin's Soviet Union, becomes a major supplier of Nazi Germany in this period.

there's a lot of isolationist sentiment. There is Roosevelt is sympathetic to the British, but he's not about to buck that sentiment. And then, he turns on the west. He attacks Norway, Denmark, the (inaudible) countries, and ultimately France, which is of course the real revenge for World War I. And everything seems to be going his way. And that's by the beginning of '41, his planes, they have not -- the German Luftwaffe, the air force, was unable to knock out the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, but they're bombing British cities, and it looks -- Britain is under attack, and even many of his generals who had thought, "This is sort of crazy. We're taking on all these countries," begin to feel, "This man is -- has an infallible instinct. Maybe we were all wrong and he was right, and Germany is going to win the war."

Grant Harris: And so, you actually start with January 1st, of 1941. You start with a diary entry by Ivan Maisky who is the Soviet Ambassador to Great Britain.

Andrew Nagorski: Maisky's an interesting character...And there is this odd thing where Maisky is smart enough to realize Germany is overextending itself, and he writes in his diary on that day, he said, "Forty-one is going to be the critical year because Germany, in order to win this war, has to win it quickly because once--." He's assuming the U.S. is going to get increasingly supportive of Britain, which means the industrial might of the U.S. So, he said, "And Britain will begin to really gin up its war industry." Once the Anglo-Saxon countries have all the capacity, then in a prolonged war, Germany is not going to be able to win, and which is by the way, what some of the German planners had been telling Hitler, too. So, he says, "Hitler has to do something to win this war quickly."

But what does Maisky speculate? He says, "Okay, now Hitler's really going to attack Britain to make sure Britain is defeated, which -- and that's going to be that big move in '41"...German bombers were already attacking Britain, but they had not been able to attack and mount an amphibious invasion. Of course, looming in the background is another possibility, which Maisky does not care to mention, "Will Hitler honor his pact with Stalin? And what will happen with the Soviet Union?" But that goes to show that even someone like Maisky, who was quite a well -- a smart individuals, but even in his own diary, he didn't dare to question Stalin's judgement, which was, "Hitler's going to honor this pact, at least long enough for us to be able to rebuild after our own setbacks." They had fought the war in Finland and not done so well. There'd been -- Stalin had purged the Soviet military. And so, he -- Maisky doesn't even mention that possibility. So, he's right about 1941 being a critical year. He's wrong about why it's going to be the critical year.

Now, we all know Churchill as the man who makes the famous speech about, "We will fight them on the beaches and on -- in the streets. We will never surrender." But one of the things I've found in one of these again, and one of these personal recollections, this time of his bodyguard, a Scotland Yard detective. On May the 10th of 1940, when he goes in to see King George, he knows he's going to be asked to form a government. He comes out and he talks to -- and he asks his bodyguard, "Do you know why I was summoned to the palace?" And his bodyguard says, "I think I know. I wish you best. I wish that it happened at a better time." And at that moment, Churchill had tears in his eyes, and he says, "I do too. I hope it's not too late." That's a different Churchill than the public Churchill which is always convinced, "It can't be too late. We're going to win." There were these moments of vulnerability.

Another example from a diary from one of Churchill's most fervent supporters. A conservative MP, Harold Nicolson, and he writes, about the same time, while he's also going into this thing, "Why Britain will never surrender, and we have to be victorious," but in private, he's writing -- there's a letter from him to his wife, who is a fairly known -- well-known writer at the time, and says, "I'm glad we have those two pills." Cyanide pills. He says, "If the Germans take Britain, I don't mind dying," what he called, "an honorable death, but I sure don't want to be - be tortured by these bastards"...the fear, the sense that you know, things could have gone either way was very extensive. And then, from previous work, and then I continued it, I mean the extent to which Moscow was on the verge of collapsing, I managed a few years ago to interview someone whose father had embalmed Lenin, who was one of the original embalmers. And his son in the 30's had gone to medical school and was brought in by his father to become part of the team that maintained that Lenin mummy in the tomb, and then helped evacuate the body of Lenin because Stalin knew if Hitler takes Moscow, and he seizes Lenin, the symbolism of that is just overwhelming.

Churchill and Roosevelt had only met in person once at that point, and that was in -- either right during World War I or right at the end of World War I...Years later, Churchill was asked about this. He didn't even remember that he'd met FDR, which did not please FDR. And there was a bit, at the distance, this kind of initial standoffishness. FDR tended to see Churchill as this British imperialist who supported for instance, the Empire and was not very sympathetic to Indian independence and so forth. And Churchill saw Roosevelt as this president who -- he needed him, as you said, but was also sort of very conscious of public opinion in the U.S. The isolationist sentiment...And who was the ambassador in London? Joseph Kennedy. Joseph Kennedy was...very anti-British. And was telling Washington, "Britain's going to collapse. They're not going to hold out. Everyone's predicting that you know, after France fell, Britain's next. So, it's not even worth supporting Britain." And Churchill knew that, and was not exactly thrilled by Kennedy's presence.

my own father fought in '39 in the Polish army...And I think you can't understand this whole relationship between Stalin and Hitler and Churchill and Roosevelt without the origins of the war in '39, because the price of that Nazi/Soviet pact was basically that Hitler would invade from the west, Hitler's armies, and 17 days later on September 17th, Soviet, or the Red Army invaded from the east. They divided up Poland. That was the beginning of the conquest and the Soviets also took control of the Baltic States soon thereafter...the British and the French had pledged to go to war as opposed to when the case of Czechoslovakia, if Hitler invaded Poland. And Hitler believed, I think, that they really didn't mean it for a long time. He really was -- he was sitting there, waiting for Ribbentrop, his Foreign Minister when the Brits and the French gave an ultimatum saying, "You either withdraw or we're going to go to war." He was expecting them to withdraw and when the -- when he was told they've declared war, he was quite taken aback, although for quite a while, that declaration of war didn't have a lot of practical impact. It wasn't as if they were about to march in to fight the Germans in Poland. So, Poland has a central role. It has a central role as also the testing ground for Hitler's armies in many ways, because that's the one big battle that lasts about a -- about a month. It doesn't sound like a lot but compared to everybody else who had capitulated very quickly, there was intense fighting. It became the testing ground (for) the special killing squads that Hitler's armies sent in to kill, in those -- in the beginning, it was Jews, intellectuals, nobility, religious leaders.

Grant Harris: Let's talk about Stalin, some. Stalin was getting intelligence from all sides that Germany was about to attack. And just didn't want to hear about it.

Andrew Nagorski: Well, the thing is, when you look at these two dictators, and sometimes I say, "It's almost as if -- you know, they had achieved incredible power." Of course they share this ruthlessness, this willingness to kill, terrorize, on a scale that was almost incomprehensible. And they were at the pinnacle of their careers, and yet, it was almost like -- I'd like to say in 1941, it's almost like they're having a competition, "Who Could be the Most Stupid Dictator?" Because here's Stalin, he's getting all these warnings. Hitler's not going to observe the terms of this pact. He's getting ready to invade the Soviet Union, but Stalin wasn't ready for that. He knew his army was not prepared. And he believed genuinely that he could maintain this de facto alliance with Hitler, at least for another year or so. And so, he doesn't want to hear the bad news. And anybody who delivers that bad news, is in trouble. So, even on the eve of the invasion, when there are 3 million German troops amassed on the Soviet border, you'd think that's a pretty clear sign something's going to happen, and a couple of German defectors cross over to the Soviet side, and their warnings that they're about to invade go all the way up to the Kremlin. What's Stalin's reaction? Execute those guys. It must be disinformation. In his mind, if everybody's telling me this, my own spies, the western powers, German defectors, it's obviously a plot. I'm being misled. And they want to make me -- force us into this conflict when I don't want to be in this conflict. So, he is blind to that and he, as a result, the Germans initial offensive, really -- it moves very quickly, and his troops are not ready, and they're overrun.

While Hitler on the other hand is so overconfident about defeating the Soviet Union quickly, that he invades, in the end of June of '41 which by the way, is exactly 129 years to the date after Napoleon invaded Russia, and that did not turn out so well. And yet, he sends in his troops without winter uniforms because he's convinced they will not need them. They'll win by then. So, both create -- have these huge mistakes, but Stalin's paranoia and Stalin's -- when finally, the Germans invade, he retreats to his (foreign name) and (foreign name) Bureau is looking for him and says, "You've got to make an announcement. You've got to do something." And finally, they're waiting for him to come out...Finally, they march in...and there's Stalin sitting there and he's looking at them. And he said, "Why are you here?" And at that point, one of the (inaudible) Bureau members said, in his recollection says, "I realized, he thought that we were here to arrest him." And in fact they said, "No, we're here to get you to organize an emergency committee and you'll be the head." And then Stalin realizes, he's still in charge.

throughout '41, there's this whole question, especially among British officials and by many U.S. officials who are very sympathetic to the cause and feel the U.S. should get directly involved. When is it finally going to happen? And many people are kind of -- feel that Roosevelt can't quite make up his mind what to do. Then Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, and what happens? Well, first of all, remember they hit Pearl Harbor, and Roosevelt convenes Congress and asks for a Declaration of War on December 8th, but it's a Declaration of War against Japan, not Germany. So, that's -- people tend to forget that. And the immediate aftermath is first against -- but Churchill felt at this point, it was inevitable that you know, first of all, Japan, Germany, and Italy were -- did have what was called the Tripartite Pact, so they were supposed to operate together, although their alliance was very shaky. But Roosevelt does not ask for a Declaration of War against Germany, and in fact, so what does Hitler do? Three days later, he declares war on the United States. And it gets basically Roosevelt off the hook.

So, Hitler's next step, he's like an obsessive gambler. Something didn't work. First, he was an obsessive gambler. When things worked, you upped the ante. You took Austria. Then you take Czechoslovakia. Then you attack Poland. When things didn't work, you also upped the ante. So, when Britain failed to collapse, he decides, "Okay, now we'll attack the Soviet Union," and then the Soviet Union will be taken over and then Britain will really collapse, and the U.S. won't get into the war. So, when none of that works, said, "Okay, now Japan's in the war, we'll declare war on the United States and Japan in the war is very good news for us." Why? Because Japan has never lost a war, ostensibly, according to Hitler. And that it will tie down the U.S. in the Pacific and the U.S. will no longer be capable of supply -- of helping with this and supplying Britain and the Soviet Union, which had begun to do under Lend Lease as well. So, he had these -- always the rationale that the next escalation was going to be the one that does it for him. But like his planners said, you know, eventually if you have everybody against you, the odds don't look too good. By the end of '41, and this is why I say it's the year Germany lost the war, Germany is up against the United States -- Britain, which was the only one they were up against first. Then the Soviet Union, and the United States. Together, those countries had three times the population, seven times the territory, at least twice the GDP, control of much of the natural resources, and as one of the German historians wrote, said, "If you declare war on the whole world, it usually doesn't work out very well."

Grant Harris: Let me ask you now about December 16. In Moscow, Stalin had met there with the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, and Stalin handed to Anthony Eden a draft treaty for post-war territories and boundaries. And of course, it had -- Stalin had Poland and the Baltics, other areas, going to the Soviet Union.

Andrew Nagorski: It's very interesting that even before that -- Eden's trip in December, as soon as Germany invaded the Soviet Union, even when it looked like Moscow might fall, Soviet -- Stalin was insisting basically, on a post-war order where he would retain everything he had gained in that Nazi/Soviet pact. That means, eastern Poland, control of the Baltic states. And I think -- there are people who say, and I think a strong argument can be made, there were some people within the U.S. government, people like George (inaudible) who had served in Moscow, Lord Ismay who was the Chief Military Advisor to Churchill, that Churchill and Roosevelt should have taken a stronger stand against Stalin, not allow him to be dictating terms at a time when his own survival was at stake, and especially to institute -- basically incorporate all of the gains of a pact with Hitler.

But remember one thing, the main fear of Churchill and Stalin -- Churchill and Roosevelt was that for a long time, they were worried that Stalin -- that Hitler/Stalin alliance might become permanent and even more -- even closer. And by the way, Stalin at one point, even after the war, told his daughter, Svetlana at one point, something to the effect of, "Ah, if Hitler and I had stayed together, we would have been invincible."

they hated each other on some level, but they also admired each other's ruthlessness, terror, and so forth. And the fact that Stalin had cut a pact with Hitler, was always in the minds of the Americans and the British, and there was a fear, even maybe once it was no longer justified, that he might do so again if he gets irritated enough with Churchill and Roosevelt. And he used -- manipulated that and used it very skillfully. And he outmaneuvered them I think in many ways. Roosevelt I think was much more naive about it. He really believed his assurances that, "Oh, we'll introduce a democratic system in Poland and other countries where we basically impose the government." Churchill knew that was not the case, and I remember when in July of 1941, after the German invasion, he really pressured the Polish government in exile in London to make a deal with the Russians since they were ostensibly on the same side. And he said, "It was my invidious responsibility to advise the Poles to rely on Soviet good faith." And he knew what that meant...And you know, you make the alliances you have to make, but we could have played that alliance better.

>> Well, thank you very much for being here and for your talk. And it seems to me that you have done research for many, many years on this topic. And I was wondering what some of the best primary sources are? I think you mentioned somewhere in your book that it was the interviews you were able to get with people before they passed on the scene -- away from the scene. But if you began your research quite a while ago, I was wondering whether you were able to get into the Soviet archives before they closed again?

Andrew Nagorski: Yes...I did not spend time in the -- so much time in the archives myself because that took -- that takes an incredible amount of time, but when I was started -- first researching, particularly that the German invasion and the Battle for Moscow...I got a lot of documents that were -- for instance, the NKBD, of course, the forerunner of the KGB, gathered up from the battlefields, the letters and diaries from German soldiers shot on the front. So, you often had the accounts of the foot soldiers right up until the day they died. You also had of course the records of the censors who were alarmed to see -- be intercepting letters saying, by some Soviet citizens, not just in Ukraine and (foreign name) and the Baltic States, but even Russia itself, "Hey, these Germans are coming. Maybe they'll get rid of our regime and Stalin and things will get better." It wasn't because they knew anything really about Hitler and the Nazis, they just couldn't imagine anybody who'd be worse or more terrifying than Stalin and his regime.

1941 -- by the way...is also the year when the Holocaust is set in full motion.

And there's a diary entry -- another interesting diary entry, from one of the German generals...in charge of the army group center that was driving through Moscow, and was running out of supplies, uniforms, ammunition, fuel. And he writes an indignant letter back to headquarters...he's not objecting on ethical or moral grounds. He says, "there were some train loads of Jews deposited in our rear lines...to be murdered in the east. We need those trains for our own supplies." And so, even from that point of view, it makes no sense, but yet, Hitler had his fixed ideas.

But because again, up till '41, he had managed to defy the odds so incredibly and gotten so far, there were -- he was convinced that he could do no wrong...At least Stalin began to learn from some of his mistakes, and began to -- he had terrorized his own Office of Corps, and so forth and killed many of them. But gradually, he began to gain some faith in someone like Marshall Zhukov, his famous general. Hitler's response to the first setbacks was to fire some of his best generals and to put himself -- and make himself commander of the army.

Goebbels said right up to the very end that the Nazis' big mistake was that they didn't purge the German army like Stalin did with his. One dictatorship to another, they thought Stalin's purges were the secret to his success rather than weakening him for a long time.

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_VKXxv7Pww

The liberal world vs the illiberal world

It was the end of the Cold War, there were two university ideologies that had been clashing with each other, and one of them basically committed suicide...this was the major story of the end of history idea that came from Francis Fukuyama. It was not that everybody is going to become like America, it was not that everybody is going to become democratic, but to be democratic and capitalist was synonymous of being modern. Modernity was the other name of democratic capitalism. And from this point for Central and East Europeans the idea was we are going to imitate the West. I'm saying this because now people are saying, oh, this was very much the imposition of the West on the East. It's not exactly the case. I'm Bulgarian, I was 25 years old in 1989, we wanted to be like the West, we wanted to hear your institutions, of course, prosperity, we wanted to be the West. And the stories of what happened, and this is the East European story which basically what I want to tell is that in Eastern Europe the idea of 1989, the work that was most quoted politically just after the end of the Communist system was normality, we want to be normal. And to be normal means to be like the West.

The problem with imitation is...the West all the time is telling you how well you are imitating them. And this was particularly true during the European accession process in which basically Brussels is saying you're only 53% like us, you (need) 27% more. And as a result of it three things happened and from this point of view when Francis Fukuyama was talking about the end of history for him the process of imitating the West was a kind of harmonious process. He believed that it's not going to be very exciting to leave at the end of history, but it's not going to be highly antagonistic. But at the same time imagine when you want to imitate somebody the first thing is that you acknowledge that he's better than you. If I want to be like you what's the problem with me? Secondly, if I want to be like you in a certain way I want also to take your place. And this antagonistic nature of the imitation in my view was slightly neglected in different analyses for the rise of illiberal political parties and governments in Central and Eastern Europe. But if you are reading carefully Mr. Orben or War and Justice Party in Poland they're making a very strong point, we don't want to imitate anymore, we want to be ourselves.

(Orban) he's a particularly interesting case because when you talk in his case illiberalism means he's an ex-liberal. And in the way basically to a great extent Communism was delegitimized by ex-Communists. Part of the problem of liberalism in Eastern Europe was very much the result of the work of ex-liberals. So Viktor Orben, he's coming from a very humble background, he's coming from a kind of a poor family. They used to have running water in their house for the first time when he was 14 years old, so he was not particularly interested in politics when he was younger, he was very much interested in football. And I'm saying this because many of these kind of populist leaders that you're talking today they are very much socialized was sports...victory, you're either winning or losing. So he started as a leader of a very young liberal party and he was very much part of this imitation imperative in 1994, and then his major accusation was liberalism does not understand power, he said, it's not the win-win game, for me to win somebody should lose. And he started to make it a very strong point about this kind of a nature of the political process, he started to concentrate power, and the most important thing about these people is they don't believe that they're nailed to an institution. Every institution which is not controlled by me, obviously is controlled by my opponent. If I'm not controlling the court then your position is controlling the court. If I'm not controlling the media then the opposition is controlling the media.

And he had two points which very much equaled with the Hungarian public. Listen, in 2008, 2009 Hungary was very much struck by the financial crisis. One million Hungarians had world money in Swiss francs and then basically the devaluation of the forint and there basically loss became 40% higher. This was the middle class people who had borrowed in order to buy apartments, they were going to lose their apartments. And then he came and said I'm going to fix by degree the interest rate between the Swiss franc, exchange rate between Swiss franc the Hungarian forint. And the forint banks got huge losses, but the Hungarian middle class said they saved us, we're going to keep our apartments...Orben is an extremely gifted politician, he's a very high risktaker. For example, he bet on President Trump, he took the Trump side in June 2016. I do believe that 80% of the Republicans didn't bet on Trump in 2016, he did it.

...

1848 when the universal male suffrage came to France there was a very important poster of this moment and in the poster there is a worker who has a rifle in one hand and ballot in the other, and the interpretation was ballot for the class enemy, bullet for the national enemy. Part of the problem of the competition in the democratic society is the two parties compete, but there is something that keeps you together. And what keeps you together during the Cold War, it was very important, is that the war can come and the way you are competing and voting against each other, you should be next to each other if the war starts. I believe one of the, paradoxically one of the things that happened to the Western democracies is that this type of cohesion which came from social policies that came also out of this unity that comes from the kind of critical experiences of the wars is not there anymore. And if you see some of the political leaders that we're writing about they much more behave like city war leaders, they believe that the domestic political opponent is a much bigger problem, for example, than the external enemy. In a certain way this is something that in my view has fundamentally changed and this makes democracy not so much more competitive, but much more divisive than it was before.

you can explain through economic argument the rise of Viktor Orben, it's much more difficult to explain what happened in Poland. For the last 30 years the GDP of Poland tripled. The country did not have a recession since 1992. This is the fastest developing European economy in the last 30 years. The social inequality in Poland has declined in the last 10 years. And 70% of the Pols declared that they are satisfied with their individual lives. Then the question is why people who are doing so well basically vote for parties, were so angry? Where did the anger come from? And here is where the demographic argument is critically important. Demographically Central and Eastern Europe is the fastest shrinking part of the world...when today you ask East Europeans in every single country what is the best thing that happened to you after 1989? They are going to say the opening of the borders. What worries you most? The opening of the borders.

John Haskell: So switching gears to Russia, which is many respects a story of Putin as you all describe it, how does he exploit the weaknesses of the West and what was his imitation imperative?

Ivan Krastev: It's an interesting story because there are two things about Russia, which people normally neglect. The first is the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russians didn't understand why and how. But this is true, it became very quickly, you don't know. Secondly, many Russians were very happy for Communism to go, but very few of them were very happy for Soviet Union to go...If you read the titles of the books that have been published immediately after the end of the Cold War you are not going to see much of triumphalism, you're going to see a lot of uncertainty. For example, a classical Cold War is Brzezinski, the title of his book was Out of Control, Ken Follett, The New World Disorder.

in the 1990s Russia was one-third of its GDP. The life expectancies in the country declined seven years. In a period of 10 years basically people start dying, the level of suicides was very high, there was a major kind of a loss of not simply incomes but social status and so on. And in the crisis of 1998 destroyed -- the first financial crisis destroyed basically the third generation of the Russian middle class...And then came the war in Yugoslavia and particularly NATO operation in Kosovo, and then even the pretention that Russia was a great power was not there anymore. Russia said we are strongly against the war and then NATO told them it's your problem, and they could do nothing because there was total asymmetry.

And here comes President Putin...in the beginning they start to imitate democracy and democratic institutions for purposes slightly different than the ones that we usually talk about. So go back to 2004 and the question that we ask in the book is the following, why President Putin? He's rigging elections, which otherwise he was going to win if they were free and fair. And, secondly, why he's rigging them in the way that everybody knows that they are rigged? Because it's not a very subtle type of rigging of the elections. The famous joke in Russia is that there are three things that if you're Russian that you don't choose, your parents, the place where you're born, and your President. So from this point of view, but why is he doing this? In 2004 all of his opponents would agree that if the elections were free and fair he was going to win, the country was doing better financially, there was a weak opposition. And our major argument is that the famous Russian talk about the managed democracy, he's not so much faking democracy, he's faking management.

First, you use elections to show that there is no alternative to President Putin, he's competing against the leader of the Communist Party, which is not a highly charismatic figure...So from this point of view you look around and he looks as if this is the only person (for the job) because he's not allowing other people to run. You are creating a story in which you basically are saying there is no alternative. Secondly, on the Russian Presidential elections you are not choosing President, but some governors can lose their job because you are using the elections to try to see how much your governors are controlling the situation, can they bring people to vote? Because Russia was traumatized by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there are parts of Russia like Chechnya and so on that was very much on their way out at a certain point of history, and then you end up on the night of the elections and you see that Chechnya is voting 99% for the President and this idea of unity psychologically you go back and say the situation is under control. So from this point of your elections play the very important result, and this system was reproduced and the source of legitimacy was it's a rigged elections, everybody knows that they are rigged, but people are not protesting.

And then came the protest of 2011-2012, it was a regime change, but not the regime change we all expected because certainly President Putin understood that this type of system cannot work anymore. So when people said occupy the squares, occupy the streets, he said better to occupy Crimea. And from this point the foreign policy became very important for the legitimacy of the regime, but the moment when it happens he starts to imitate the United States in a totally different way...trying to use imitation as a subversive technology. I'm just going to give you two examples. When Russia, when the Russian President read a statement about the recognition of Crimea he used the whole paragraph of the statement of the NATO recognition of Kosovo. He was talking all the time about human rights, the rights of the people to self-determination, so you're mocking the language of the opponent to say there is no difference between us, you are about geopolitical interests, we are about geopolitical interests, there is no values. Or the second story, which was very much shocking to people, in the first 48 hours after the Russian Special Forces went in Crimea the Russian President personally said there are no Russian troops in Crimea. Politicians lie, but normally they lie about things that is difficult to be proved. In this kind of a world in which we are living, three hours after he made the statement American or German policymakers they knew the names of the people, why then, why are they doing this, why are you lying like this? He lied in order to be called a liar, and said 'a liar like you, what about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?'

this is at the heart of this type of imitation used as an instrument to delegitimize the liberal order without being pushed to give an alternative to it...Putin is not saying we are better than you, we're saying we're the same. And to be honest this works very well with the public, particularly around people who are cynical, believe anything, they said, okay, he's about power, they're about power. And the moment when this moral kind of equality, it starts this already basically is destroying the foundation on which is a liberal world.

...

President Trump came and tells to the American public for the last 30 years, which everybody believes was the American age, America is the biggest loser...and many of the American public said you're right, so he touched on something...what is this liberal order in which the biggest commercial winner is a illiberal power like China?

China was never part of the age of imitation. They could be warring, they could never be imitating, they're always insisting that everything that they're doing is the Chinese characteristics. And this was part of their identity, in a certain way if you go back to 1989 and Tiananmen, the major story is we're not going to allow to imitate the West. This was the moment in which the protesters in Tiananmen made a kind of a small model copy of the Statue of Liberty, that the decision was taken they wanted to be like America, we don't like to be like America.

China is not interested simply to populate the world with its own replicas for two reasons. First, because unlike the Russians who politically has an inferiority complex, China has a superiority complex. They don't believe that others can really imitate them...But, secondly, because China in the 1970s was exporting Communism much more than the Soviet Union did, Mao was really kind of aggressively exporting and they saw the resistance, they saw the dark side of it.

United States basically knows the world, to the extent that people from all over the world comes to America and making out of them Americans, the famous melting pot. So America knows the world by transforming it. For us the opposite to the melting pot is the Chinatown. Chinatown does not want to basically change the big cities in which they are, but they want first to keep their identity and they try to exploit as much as possible the opportunities, particularly economic out of it. So from this point of view we do believe that there are going to be a major power competition between the United States particularly and China, but we don't believe that this is a return to the classical Cold War. Soviet Union, here the diverse ideology, they have claim on the future, they believe that the world is going to be like them if not in 50 years, in 100 years. And the liberal world also has a universal claim because most of them are coming from the European enlightenment, they said we are the future, the world is going to be like us. While for the Chinese basically it's much more power politics...

During the Cold War, as you remember, the moon was one of the symbolic places in which the Soviets and the Americans have been competing...the Chinese just in the beginning of the last year made a special mission and they discovered what is called the dark side of the moon...So the story was we are not competing with you about the Cold War moon because we went on the other side of the moon. And in my view this was a kind of a symbolic story basically telling the story that the next competition, great power competition is going to have a slightly different nature than the Cold War.

...

You see the major crisis now this Christian Democratic Party in Germany, we don't know for example a strong politician...how she's going to be remembered to be honest. I have a personal a lot of respect for her, but she's not doing at the moment well for her party, she could be years after this people can say probably she missed the moment to leave and so on and so on. So but democracy is never based on one single person because even a strong leader, Russia is a great example of this, Mr. Putin is so much everywhere that people cannot imagine how a post-Putin Russia is going to look like and this is a problem. In a certain way he's kind of closing the door for the future, you believe that as one of his advisors and now Speaker of the Parliament, he said if there is no Putin there is no Russia. He's a mortal person, do you really believe that the mortal person that if he's not there Russia is not going to be there? I do believe this was the most anti-Russian statement ever made.

The interesting story about Brexit is that there are two totally different groups of people who on one side you have of course particularly part of out of London very much English countryside, that are nostalgic for a different period, and they have a good argument to claim that they have been abundant because it's going to come to surprise for you, but quite a big number of the poorest regions in Europe are in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom looks great because London looks great, but if you go to some of the places, like Sheffield and others, you're going to see really it's -- when people are trying to understand what are the major factors that are going to determine how people are going to vote it appeared that loss of communication with the big cities, for example, small towns which lost their buses to go, for example, to London, loss of population are critically important, so you have this story. At the same time you have a global elite, you have people like Boris Johnson who believes that Europe is not global enough, that basically the United Kingdom stays part of European Union and if European Union is going to have a crisis the United Kingdom is going to lose. How these two groups are going to go together is difficult.

the Prime Minister of Albania made a comment which was very important on this, he said 'when I see Westminster these days it is not much more different than the Bosnian Parliament.'

for the last 40 years Britain has never been negotiating any type of a trade deals because all trade deals was negotiated by Brussels. So now Britain is ending up in a position of its former colonists, it has a passion of independence and all the trade expertise is on the Brussels side to the extent that Britain borrowed from New Zealand trade experts in order to go to negotiations because you need thousands and thousands of people to negotiate the break with the European Union.

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTUhdeeGITE

Music in America's Radio Propaganda in Korea

Voice of America was one of the most significant radio propaganda channels for the US government during Cold War.

Surprisingly, the OWI's Korean Language Radio News transmitted by the OWI, surprisingly, this material have not only verbal messages but also music. Like other foreign language radio news transmitted by the OWI, almost all the Korean Language Radio News had the same basic format. Around 10 to 15 minutes of Korean Language Radio News and followed by about two minutes of music. It was such a wonderful discovery in my life as a musicologist. This Korean Language Radio News transmitted by the OWI had hardly been studied at all.

In 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the US government not only entered the war in the Pacific Theater but also initiated intensive psychological warfare against Japan. This circumstance made the US government begin to pay attention to Korea, because Korea had been under Japanese occupation since 1910. Many Korean people held strong anti-Japanese sentiments and carried out an independence movement against Japan. Thus, US government officials saw an opportunity to weaken Japanese power by encouraging Koreans to rise up against the Japanese. Shortwave radio broadcasting was a powerful weapon for US wartime propaganda. Thanks to shortwave radio technology, the United States was able to transmit its radio programs directly from the United States to Asia. The shortwave radio technology mattered, especially in propaganda toward Korea. Because the Japanese colonial government strictly banned American culture, in colonial Korea after the outbreak of the Pacific War. That is to say, under Japan's strict ban on American culture, the US radio broadcasts were the only channel by which Korean people could access American music and messages from the United States.

In 1882, Korea and the United States signed a Treaty of Peace, Commerce and Navigation. This treaty allowed American missionaries to visit Korea and thereby introduced Western music into the everyday experience of Korean people. Through the missionaries, Korean people learned protest and hymn. The first Korean Christian hymn book was published by an American missionary, Horace Grant Underwood in 1894. This hymn book included 117 American hymns and gospel songs translated into Korean. The missionaries also taught Korean people to play Western instruments such as organs and violins. Through this effort, Western music spread rapidly in Korea. And during the Japanese occupation in the 1920s and 1930s, American jazz was imported into Korea.

However, the outbreak of World War II changed the circumstances in Korea. As the United States supported Great Britain against German, the empire of Japan explicitly expressed its disdain for the United States. In the second week of October in 1940, the State Department evacuated US nationals from East Asia. At the time, American missionaries who had contributed to the dissemination of Western and American music in Korea also returned to the United States. As enemy music, American music was banned in Korea by the Japanese. In this context, the US government transmitted its Korean Language Radio News broadcasts to the Korean Peninsula together with music.

A memorandum written on February 15th, 1943 in the OWI describes the effort to convince Koreans of four points. First, that Japan will be defeated. Second, the Japan's common defeat is Korea's opportunity. Third, that there will never be peace under Japan's present government. Fourth, that the United States is committed to a policy of making Korea like other oppressed nations free again.

"As US citizens, we will never avoid our responsibilities. We require a peace that is permanent. If we end the war, that will be the end of all wars. We will root out the battlegrounds caused by vicious and inhumane minds. The Nazis were powerful in the past. However, they have done so many horrible and brutal things. As a result, they are now on the road to collapse. The Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor are paying for that in their own land. it will never be enough for us, the United States, to just conquer our enemies. We will keep fighting against all kinds of suspicions, fears, disdains and greed which caused such a terrible war until we conquer all of them completely."

American missionaries who visited Korea and returned to the United States contributed to the creation of Korean Language Radio programs in the OWI. Former American missionary E. W. Koons was one of those who provided information about Korea and gave guidelines for script writers for Liberty Bell. Horace Horton Underwood, another American missionary also worked for the OWI. As a son of Horace Grant Underwood who published the first hymn book in Korea, he had long continued his father's missionary work in Korea...In 1944, Underwood send a message to the Korean people through the OWI's special program entitled Voice of Freedom.

"Since the war began, not only Americans but also the US government understood and sympathized with the political conditions of Korea and the oppression which Koreans have suffered from Japan. At Cairo, it was said, the three powers, China, Great Britain the United States, mindful of the enslavement of people of Korea are determined that in due course, Korea shall become free and independent. The three countries deciding in this way, not only Koreans in America but many people in the three Great Powers have greatly rejoiced. A meeting was held in the town hall in New York City, when many hundreds of people gathered to hear about Korea and to rejoice with Korea. That even I had an opportunity to say a few words that night. I considered as a great honor. A society to help the Independence Movement of Korea is now being organized."

As far as it is possible to tell from the recordings, the musical repertoire in Liberty Bell come from the well to the OWI's general policy about music. On August 25th, 1942, the head of the Radio Bureau in the OWI, William Lewis, held a meeting to discuss music for the broadcasts. Twelve people from the Office of Civil Defense, the War Department of the War Manpower Commission and the OWI participated in the meeting including Harold Spivacke, the chief of the music division of the Library of Congress. The participants in this meeting called attention to the example of a popular propaganda tune. We will slap the Japs right into the laps of the Nazis.



The participants mentioned this song as an example of the kind of music the OWI must avoid. Written by Lew Pollack with lyrics by Ned Washington, this song was published as sheet music in 1942 as a reaction to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The OWI committee described the song as slushy and flip. Presumably, they found it to be in poor taste. This song was filmed by R.C.M. Productions as a Soundie in 1942.

The committee felt that this music overtly revealed America has racist sentiments against the enemy and treated the idea of war casually. During World War II, some European critics working under Nazi rule described the United States as a barbaric country without culture or taste and denigrated jazz. By contrast, Western classical music was associated with the social prestige for many people around the world. In Korea too, Western classical music was associated with the social prestige and considered as high culture. Given the prestige, it is understandable that the US government often chose orchestra music for propaganda abroad instead of focusing on jazz, a more uniquely American musical form.

It is not difficult to find Korean newspaper articles describing the United States as a country of freedom and American culture as modern. Nonetheless, these traits were described in very negative tones. For example, a writer in the Dong-A Daily wrong in 1930..."Modern American women are crying out freedom. There are not so many women from other countries who have gained as much freedom as in the United States. Ironically, however, modern American women enjoy being enslaved. They have the freedom to cut their hair like a man. In short skirts revealing their knees, they flaunt down the streets with hips swaying. They smoke a pack of cigarettes every day and drink a bottle of wine. They are modern women from the United States. They seem to have freedom. In fact, however, their thoughts are corrupted. American women are the slaves of the tyrant named fashion."

At the time, jazz was considered as a symbol of decadence and vulgarity in Korea. A symbol of all that was modern in the United States. On January 16th, 1934, The Joseon Daily wrote about jazz as follows, quote. "Morbid eroticism is one of the tumors that have kept growing behind modern culture. The Korean police revealed that the number f cafes, restaurants and bars in which erotic stimulation is the only asset and waitresses sing jazz under red and blue neon lights. If we do not exercise rigid control over it, we will go in a direction that corrupts public morals."

Unfortunately, it is difficult to find documents demonstrating Korean people's perception of Liberty Bell. Since comments could not appear in the press because the Japanese government's general Korea controlled descriptions of American culture. They were not to be published in Korean newspapers or magazines during the war. However, there are some clues that Liberty Bell was influential in Korean society...And in 1942, the Japanese government general of Korea imprisoned about 150 Koreans who worked for broadcasting stations in Korea. They were accused of listening to the OWI's Korean Language Radio programs. Not only these workers but also more than 100 other Koreans were subjected to an investigation for listening to the OWI's broadcasts. This incident suggested that many Korean people were able to hear Liberty Bell, and it was influential to the extent that the Japanese colonial government imprisoned the Korean listeners.

When Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces on August 15th, 1945, the US Army established the US Army Military Government in Southern Korea. The northern part of Korea was occupied by the Soviet Armed Forces. The US Soviets' joint trusteeship on the Korean Peninsula continued for three years. In 1949, the joint trusteeship ended, and two different Korean governments were established respectively in the northern and southern parts of Korea. And in 1950, the Korean War broke out and fully cut off ties between the North and South, establishing the divided Korea we know today. After the Korean War, as a traditional US ally, South Korea played the role of the ideologic buffer zone against communist North Korea, China and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Back to 1945 after Japan's surrender, in keeping with the messages they had heard from the OWI, many Korean people considered the US occupation forces to be liberators. On the streets, Korean people put up banners welcoming American soldiers.

Around 10,000 Korean citizens participated in the welcoming parade for the US soldiers that was held on September 12th, 1945.

The Voice of America Korean Language Radio programs succeeded the OWI's Liberty Bell with a playlist composed of Western classical music. The music was not necessarily written by American composers. However, all the music in these programs had to be at least performed by US citizens if not composed by a US citizen. American jazz or popular music was only occasionally broadcast. Like the musical repertoire in the OWI's wartime radio programs, the music policy of the US military government in Korea did not pay much attention to promoting American jazz or popular music. Rather, the US military government made great efforts to foster Western classical music in Korea. The US military government fully supported the Koryo Symphony Orchestra, the first South Korean orchestra made up entirely of Korean musicians, which could not have existed in Korea under Japanese colonial rule. It is noteworthy that under Japanese colonial rule and the US military government, many Korean musicians wanted to learn and perform Western classical music. In his interview with an official of the US military government in Korea, Tokko Son, the director of the Koryo Symphony Orchestra Association said..."The cultural and racial pride of Korea had always been suppressed by the Japanese, who did not allow the Koreans any freedom at all in cultural pursuits. Western music had always been appreciated by Koreans, but it is necessary to familiarize them with it once more and on the scale whereby they could take pride in their own knowledge of the Western music. Thus, the organization's aim was to promote Western music in Korea and to contribute to the musical advancement in the Korean Renaissance."

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWPlKECpBeo&t=1h30m

lol

[Tails82]

4 things I've watched recently have had seizure strobes going on in some scenes, and only 1 gave a warning. Seizure risk aside, for the typical viewer this is just plain obnoxious.

[Tails82]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jAyShizMFU

Reposting here because I keep looking for it from time to time and have a hard time finding it, it's in the Lincoln library channel but WWII history lol.

The Japanese government hadn't signed the Geneva conventions and adopted the kamikaze view where surrender was not an option for their men, so they had no respect whatsoever for surrendering American POWs and treated them as slaves. Imagine having your ship shot down and floating out at sea in the dark all half the world away, alone all night, at the age of 17. This POW then toiled on the Burma railroad with nothing but a mess kit, blanket and the clothes on his back, and nearly died of malaria. Many would not return home.