ii editorial cartoons of america's leading comic artists," a sequel to the first venture of dr. seuss in world war ii which was published ten years ago. andre schiffrin has uncovered a new treasure trove of dr. seuss cartoons from world war ii archives. this new book is bringing those wonderful cartoons and illustrations from this moment. andre schiffrin has been an editor for 50 years. as founding director of the new press. his most recent publication before dr. seuss is political education: coming of age in paris and new york. one of the chapters at a seminar year and a half ago.

i am pleased to note that andre schiffrin at the same time donated a wonderful archive, and editorial, worked with industrial democracy which provides a very interesting window into the birth of a new life. andre schiffrin will be joined tonight by milkman, author of a new deal and journalism, the story of p.m.. paul teaches english at the new york city school system and has a ph.d. from rutgers university. andre schiffrin is going to say a few words to provide some context to the book. then andre schiffrin will rejoin the conversation and all of you

will join us hopefully. andre schiffrin, the floor is yours. >> thank you for letting us have this occasion here because this is the perfect place. they have the full microfilm here and the rest of the history that goes around it. what we are going to talk about tonight is a mixture of things. we are going to talk about pictures and text. we are going to talk about the role of p.m. which was the one left wing tabloid to be started in new york that lasted through the warriors. it started the day the germans marched into paris in 1940 and it lasted a little after the war and was succeeded by some other incarnations before dying in the cold war. the importance of p.m. here is it was a microcosm of what the

american left was thinking during the war and the conflict that took place during that period. we tend to look back with a patriotic hayes at the war years at a time of national unity when we were out to beat the axis. that was far from being the case. what we will talk about tonight, paul will talk specifically about p.m. as a newspaper and i will talk about the general politics and we will mention the fact that the words were accompanied by these pictures and this is a collection not just of dr. seuss's drawings which are in the first hundred pages or so of the book but all the other cartoonists who worked for p.m. including some of the ones who became very famous in the new yorker and elsewhere. we have a whole range of people here including saul steinberg is

50 cartoons are for the first time published here since during the war. it is an interesting footnote but i will mention it. steinberg was walking for the 0 s s. donovan had the clever idea of drawing cartoons to be dropped over germany. and that appealed to the germans and became the name of the leading east german paper. but they continued it without his illustrations. these pictures are here for the first time in american printed form as well as cartoons by everyone from out harsh field to people who were known inal hars people who were known in the new yorker for classic--well before anyone else. they were editorial cartoons.

they appeared on the editorial pages. they complemented what was being said in the editorials by others. they also had a clear political stance which i will talk about later, which was typical of the american left at the time on strengths and weaknesses but we will go into that in greater detail later. before i go and tell you more, paul will give you a little context of what p.m. was about and how it differed from other papers at the time. >> p m was the perfect venue for political cartoons not just for reasons of politics but also because of the conscious decision on the part of its founder to create a beautiful newspaper. it is only recently in the last

few years that the press, the newspaper you buy today look as good as p.m. looked 75 years ago. that was a conscious decision. the founder of the newspaper who was very much a leftist was also very much a magazine man and was actually the person working for the creator of life and made life magazine a spectacular photographic entry into journalism that it was. once that happened he wanted to create his own daily newspaper which was going to revolutionize journalism because it was going to empower all of the people who worked for it. riders, artists, photographers, to express themselves unfettered. it was not going to rely on advertising pressures and by the time p.m. went into publication there were no advertising and

alone in the new york press it was vitally connected to pressing for a left version of the new deal. when the paper began, let me show it to you. to prove how beautiful the paper could be i will take it out of its plastic casing to show you what p.m. looked like in the first two years of its existence before war rationing rules relented. imagine a newspaper with three colors, black, white and another one. most of the time it was this orange color although several other issues looked different. it was stapled. it cost $0.05 which was very expensive. all the other papers cost $0.03. p.m. cost a nickel. you had to really want it to buy

it. it created this enormous publicity campaign so that on the first day the paper came out on june 19th, the news stands never even got the paper. delivery trucks were mobbed by people trying to get the paper. they took it over and it relied on photography in a way the new york press just didn't. even though the daily news was the daily picture newspaper its photographs were ugly and the ink ran off in your hands. i am holding the newspaper from 1940 to, 67 years old, and notice how well it still holds together. it has been in plastic but i have no danger of that in running off on my hands. when you look at the photographs they still reproduce well all these years later. similarly for the art that appeared.

there was a dr. seuss cartoon in this paper. here it is. i think you can recognize dr. seuss's style by looking at the cartoon. this was the perfect venue. no other newspaper would give an artist that much space on the page as p.m. was willing to do. it was a great place to be if you were a writer, artist or photographer. the other thing that made it different from the rest of the new york press was how totally committed it was to anti fascism as a political credo. that was nowhere near more obvious than in the period from when it came into existence in june of 1940 until two catastrophic events of 1941, the invasion of the soviet union in june and pearl harbor day which we just celebrated the

anniversary of yesterday. those two events -- the first unified the american left because you may recall that at the time p.m. came into existence, already stalin and hitler had signed their pact and the politick was anti fascism was no longer its credo. instead it was peace. ingersoll flew in the face of that politics and similar pacifist politics in the socialist party as a matter of fact to actively crusade for intervention. in that period before june 22nd in particular of 19:41 p.m. was clearly the lone voice demanding active anti fascist activity, demanding the united states go to war at a time when that was not a popular position in the country at large and not a popular position in the american

left either. for reasons already cited. for the group of people surrounding ingersoll, the creator of the paper, this was a unique opportunity to express themselves artistically and to express themselves politically in this crusading anti fascist journal. later i can tell you about some of the crusades the paper went on leading up to the war and after the united states got involved. that general total commitment to anti fascism as being the most important political stance of the time was what made p.m. and unique place to be. >> paul's marvelous book here is based on his ph.d. but in spite of that, one would expect it to

be not as entertaining or well written as is. he has gone against the usual rules of academia. it is a marvelous read and did does explain this -- ingersoll had started out with life magazine and fortune, a paper aimed at big business and before that he had been at the new yorker. he was a yale man who was used to going to all the parties covered in the talk of a town. it was a very unlikely background and we forget at this time how reactionary the loose press was. they were anti roosevelt and pro franco and going into the war. away p.m. was the anti loose. it was a paper that was going to represent all the values.

didn't have. it was an afternoon paper so it came out p.m. but it was meant to be picture magazine. ingersoll use the ideas of life and fortune. fortune got photographs made by walker evans and people like that. one doesn't think of them as being as important to photography as they were. this newspaper was very different in format but also different in its politics. it is important to realize that two thirds of the american press was against roosevelt in 1936. free quarters were against him in 1940. the press was overwhelminglythr in 1940. the press was overwhelmingly republican at the time.

this at a time when 84% of the american population was in favor of helping the allies. one of the differences of the period that resonates today is how adamantly to the right the republicans in congress were. in 1941, most americans having been for it was opposed by 145 of the 159 gop representatives in congress. 17 of the 27. they had not worked out the total discipline they are now showing that they were certainly in that direction. they were just saying no. what is interesting is in the third term we had this cartoon called the third round of

roosevelt fighting this apelike opponent and of course it is an exaggeration. roosevelt everyone knew was crippled and was not going to be in a boxing ring but equally the opponent who looks like an ape is called fascism, nazi is a, unemployment people in tolera e tolerance, etc.. at any moment be critical of what roosevelt did even though they would be against thing of the attorney general was doing or others. he doesn't know what his ministers are up to. for of the war they refuse to be critical of him in any way. one of the surprising things is

the degree to which the right-wing press, they make today's republicans look good, was on the extreme right to the degree they were fondling willingly or not the german propaganda line. dr. seuss and the others constantly had cartoons in which they showed the voice of girls -- the hearst press just to give two examples, when the government was established in 1940, the hearst press this shows europe will be able to cooperate under german leadership. they really bought the burbles line completely or came to independently. i can't say which is which since we don't have information on that but they would constantly come up with arguments that were

parallel to those agreements. when the russians and germans went to work a great many republicans said let's keep out of this. let them kill each other. we are not involved. later on, they said let's fight the war in the pacific and leave europe alone. the republicans weren't worried about the russians taking over your. it is not absolutely consistent in what they were saying. but they were very much to the right and consistent. at the same time roosevelt had his own right wing southern democrats. it is hard for us now to remember if any of us are old enough to remember, to have read since how incredibly racist both the country and the southern democrats were.

the south was a block of reactionary 7 democratic voters who were elected for the most part by roughly 10% of their constituents because of the poll tax. blacks could not vote at all but in the 40s it was repealed it was shown that 70% of the whites hadn't voted either. you had an extraordinary minority government of a racist reactionary time. they got what they wanted out of roosevelt. when that was a symbolic act at that point, before 1940, the southerners, it was going to increase the wages.

they would make $75 a year. in agricultural label. it was still third world wages. the republicans on the one hand and seven democrats. it was very important. they talked to other people in the white house. they had a consistent link to the white house. for a while, walter winchell joined these cartoonists and fell into white house lines.

what is interesting in all of this, is documented in the book to some degree, the degree to which the limits on p.m. or perhaps the limits of the american left. they were the limits on anyone trying to speak up against the racism. before the war they have a long campaign against the ads in the new york press including the new york times which was jewish owned. they said it should not be rented to jews. we shouldn't even discuss blacks. no question of granting anything to them. they were restricted, was the euphemism from the gentleman's

agreement. it is an interesting indication of how far you could get. >> the word restrictive comes from that element. they said christians only. after the end, it was pacified by state legislature, it became restricted. >> this is a period where we were talking about the anti-black feeling at the time when there was half of the country entering public opinion polls saying they were anti-jewish. 53% or 54%. thirty-five% to 40% would have favored an anti-jewish campaign whatever that meant. not just renting an apartment but actually inciting mob to attack jews in the street, to have what was happening mostly

in england, violence not stopped by the police of a racist kind. you had a country in which anti-black was not even a question, it was understood. no one of the was going to talk about that. win p.m. tried to do that they did it in a very gentle -- you will see the imagery, and indy says of -- in decisive fashion. one of them was jewish and the other was black but they were not indicated in any way as to which was which. was a symbolic idea of being against repression. business was totally against hiring blacks and it was only under the pressure of philip randolph and the march on washington that they gave in.

you have a situation where if big business and republicans had their way you would have no price controls, no 40 hour week because they were against paying overtime, no hiring of minorities, you would have had a situation that makes the day's republicans look somewhat better. it was only because of extra parliamentary pressure like philip randolph's threat to move on washington that these things were finally changed. a threat which the communist party opposed because they were going after the war effort. in today's terms it is difficult to understand how reactionary much of the country was and what a difficult time roosevelt had and his own reluctance in many

instances to do what in retrospect what would have been done. this brings me briefly to the holocaust where i have long documentation in the book because for the most part we're documenting things that aren't there. the p.m. did not say anything about holocaust until november of 1940 to when the rabbi made a famous speech in which he told the country this was happening. what is interesting is the yiddish language press in new york was reporting since 1940 on what was happening. even though bbc reported in may of 1942 that 700,000 polish jews had been gassed and sooner or reports in the yiddish language press before. it is difficult for me to

imagine -- we don't have statistics on this but a lot of jews if not overwhelmingly jewish, that nobody had knowledge of somebody who had the other pictures. they did know or they didn't feel they could run the stories. in spite of the fact that p.m. on other aspects had an extremely good record. they were extremely critical of the french, they had a series of cartoons attacking them and so on. at a time when the american government was dealing with these people and had diplomatic relations and so on. roosevelt was still hoping to persuade the french to work on his behalf when they were totally under german control. when the americans were about to invade north africa roosevelt

drafted a letter starting my dear old friend which was just too much even for churchill who got him to change the salutation if not the content of the letter. the american ambassador's to madrid were old conservatives who were completely persuaded by the local fascists' that they were ok folks. we had the incredible situation and p.m. is really going against the grain completely. when the american troops anchored in north africa they made a deal, earlier said he was hoping for a german victory and did everything he could to help them, to keep the french troops from shooting back. they were only partially successful. they kept the government in

place so that after the american troops were there, you had people -- spanish republicans and people who actually helped the americans to land being kept in prison by the authorities. if any of you have read the writings on the war, they are marvelous. he was one of the few american journalists who could speak french and understand what was going on and he wrote these reports and p.m. ran articles of this kind saying what is this anti fascist war where we make a deal with a fascist government in order to make our conquest easier. >> two things you said earlier, they ran these articles fiercely critical of the state department but acted as though the state department did not have a boss.

everything it said about a state department collaborations with fascism was absolutely right. but it never went further than where does roosevelt fire these guys? they didn't realize the full degree in this respect, roosevelt was very bad. i quote in the book something that i was shocked to discover, roosevelt's french was very good, called up the governor of morocco and said we really would like you to continue keeping these quotas against the jews in place. could you give them a little quota according to the population? we don't want the situation in germany where 50% of the lawyers

and doctors were jews. it was something like 4% of the professions occupied by jews. this is the first time i have seen proof that roosevelt had internalized the nazi propaganda and was still running the war with those ideas in his language which to me was a great job. the abandonment of the jews documents exactly what american policy did to keep jewish immigration from coming to the u.s.. i hadn't realized that it was in so many minds, you had this kind of thinking going on and the americans made a deal or were trying to make a deal, when it was kidnapped by the germans.

they were making a deal and the same questions were raised by the american left. are we going to maintain fascist governments throughout liberated countries? it fell to pieces because the germans invaded all of italy and the government no longer had any power to negotiate. this was part of the pressure from churchill who wanted to maintain right wing fascists mediterranean as later he did when he intervened in the civil war. he had a very consistent pattern that he wanted to make sure it continued to be in the british fleet bolstered by these right wing governments. i don't think roosevelt had that idea in mind but he was willing to go along with the pressure

from the british and maybe from the american military. i don't know who argued for the deal but certainly for the people on the left in the u.s. the question is what kind of anti fascist war is this when all the country's going into it are being allowed to maintain a fascist government but the same thing happened in state with a vengeance. this is the saddest group of cartoons in the book where p.m. constantly hopes the spanish people will overthrow franco at the end of the war with the help of the americans and a few thousand spanish republicans did come from france, from the north towards the end of the war and they were all killed and they did not have the backing of the spanish communist party or the

allies so they were to be exterminated which is what happened. the whole question of the future of europe was a major theme in the pages of p.m. and a group of cartoons on hitler's allies which are very telling. this was not a debate that was taking place, the american -- the new york times followed the government line. the others were on the other side. the american public's ruthless anti-japanese bias in the cartoons, even dr. seuss, are

filled with caricatures of the japanese. pictured as being ready to attack the u.s. and a fifth column, people who should be put in concentration camps. by contrast, the nazi silver shirts were constantly being protected by the supreme court whenever the government tried to crack down on them and there was an intent to do all sorts of criminal things. none of these criteria were applied to the japanese, were moved into concentration camps. as some of you may know, in hawaii there were too many japanese to do anything of the kind and nothing ever happened. there was no hint of activity.

no word of possible sabotage. a controlled experiment between hawaii where the japanese were in greater numbers and closer to the homeland who were totally patriotic americans, in the u.s. people panicked in the streets -- roosevelt and the others were quick to incarcerate them all. from the beginning, p.m. is delighted in japan and over germany. one of the big debates in p.m.

comes from the unitarian pastors. the p m cartoonists -- they were celebrating the annihilation of the german cities. one of the worst cartoons in the book was at the end, a blank page. the day after your a shima with caption so sorry, making fun of the japanese inability to pronounced those words but that was the mainstream opinion to the credit of its readers, a number of people did complain about the ruthlessness of the cartoons and these, without any mention of the real war crimes of the germans, no cartoons

accept a very few addressed to the state department about the holocaust or the equal number or greater number of non jewish civilians massacred by the germans in poland and russia that we were talking before whether it was the fact that the jewish press did not want to make it look like a jewish floor and the leadership certainly, the american jewish committee were very careful in pressuring roosevelt's. they could have said christians are being massacred as well as many catholic poles were killed in auschwitz as a word jews. this information did not make it through and certainly never affected what the cartoonists were doing. you have a picture of the war to

push little representative in any case and p m was not just representative in this respect of the american left but it was representative of the company as a whole when it came to japan and so on. the real battle as far as p.m. was concerned worthy domestic battles. for and against the isolationists and republican opposition on policies of the war in which it included a price control and all sorts of things that look relatively esoteric but was important in terms of the power of the newly hired working class because suddenly both black and white americans were able to get jobs at a decent salary which could easily have been eaten away by inflation.

the cartoonist's understood that early on. the bosses understood as well and wanted to oppose price control completely but keep wage controls. there was a real class war going on between the two sides. as you look through the cartoons it looks odd to say why are these cartoons done by war bonds? so many cartoons about price controls. these were direct if hidden domestic issues that were understood partially by some people but clearly at the heart of p.m.'s domestic agenda. >> p.m. continued campaigning about the war in several ways. they led the campaign to shut down what they considered fascist mouthpieces. they were the first to expose

that lindbergh was anti-semitic and their exposure of his anti-semitism drove him out of politics and out of the america first movement before the war. then they turned their guns on kaska. and the attorney general found himself forced to proceed because of the p.m. campaign and social justice, this vicious internal like fox news is fair and balanced, social justice -- was shut down. on the basis of it having bad ideas and it was p.m. in the forefront of trying to shut it down for having bad ideas. it was obviously one of its campaigns and it campaigned against the hearst press and what it called the mccormick access of newspapers, the chicago tribune and washington times which were owned by the

same families with their fascist politics which you adequately -- you certainly talk about well. they wanted to shut those papers down. it was one thing -- you were not going to shut down the most popular newspaper in the country. they contributed to the political scene by documenting how the leading industrial firms in the nation had cooperated in the arming of germany and japan and had secret agreements to and rich them up to tenrich them up pearl harbor happened. the campaign led to the demand of producing war production. kind of laid the groundwork for

truman's committee to force just that, reconversion. it had a number of direct -- far out of proportion to its size. this newspaper had a circulation of 150,000 people but among those 150,000 people who on a daily basis were the first lady, secretary of agriculture and the vice-president and three supreme court justices, all of whom were roosevelt appointees so that it had a kind of influence on the body politic. >> the lindbergh example is worth pursuing. dr. seuss must have a dozen cartoon's against lindbergh and many more. lindbergh made a speech in which

he could understand the jewish race opposing hitler but they had much too much influence on controlling the press and the media and if a war was to be started they would be the ones to get started. the interesting aspect is this was hitler's line throughout the 30s. when did lindbergh read this? roosevelt tried to do that because he lost a popular figure. the intriguing question of this in direct threat to the jewish race that even the hearst papers said was too much.

there was an automatic assumption, whether they read each other's stuff, i don't know the answer to that. the germans went too far and the german embassy wrote back, on that occasion, it was not simply the destruction of jewish property and so on. the horrendous anti-jewish laws which prevented them from going to libraries and traveling. it was a real indication, i don't think the american public or anyone else to pursue what

seemed like temporary punishments would turn into the beginning of state policy of extermination but at that point american public opinion was overwhelmingly against what germans had done even though the bristol -- was an odd mixture. somehow lindbergh did cross the line from what was initially a reasonable assumption that the germans were too powerful. he said these guys are going to win the war in europe. why are you taking all these risks? it was not an unreasonable position but it was built on this infrastructure of anti-semitism and other feelings

which he unwittingly exposed. there were questions and comments from the audience. >> i am curious -- >> you have to use that. [talking over each other] >> this might be an interesting kind of visual supplement to that in the way these contradictions you are describing our manifest all over the press at the same time. this is really more a cafe conversation question than an intellectual one but what do you think of a book like human smoke from two years ago as a kind of document of this period which simply is assembling these raw materials from the press to show

their complexity? >> i haven't read it. >> i have heard -- it is fascinating. the material reflect on the history -- it has been argued there was a way not to fight that. >> he is a quaker. i appreciate your putting out these histories which are very

rich. >> i can't say how much pleasure it gave me in having p m delivered to the fictional household. >> it is left or right or reversal of positions. not the best of the german fascism and how aggressive -- to actually fight an actual war and how it is eager to day to run

away from today's fascism and how the press -- taking the line and quoting essentially -- the extremists and upholding their position, i can help wondering what happened. >> i can't tell you how much, this fascism invented by the bush administration, there are

many things wrong. the japanese opposed -- this impose the racial regime on the world population. the old fascist regimes will stay away from a crusade led by americans with a social agenda very different from mine to lead us into war in the middle east. >> was dr. seuss already an established children's

established children's book >> [talking over each other] >> when did he become political? i never heard of him as political in any way, right, of course central. >> his children books were political. the underturtle if not the underdog. many of the same pictures of the ones he used in the children's books. >> all standing up for yourself. he had several lives. in which he was doing illustrations for anti mosquito

spray are used again. ford unfortunately used a private police force which was dangerous and repressive to a degree. we tend to have forgotten. the children's books are consistent iconographic lead and ideologically with what is in the book and after 42 he went to work for the office of war information. there was a continuity there. >> julia mixed inburg have a book out a couple years ago the political content, we will bring her in for a cold war seminar program in the spring. take a look at that book.

she really does make the political under current and substructure of dr. seuss pretty clear. >> there are three children's authors of note to cut their teeth. john freeman saying pictures for the sunday magazine, you are familiar with the cartoon -- johnson did this strip, later became famous for the children's book that i am forgetting. the kid with the magic crayon. he did this surreal -- in a way almost calvin and hobbes. i am sure you are familiar with

calvin and hobbes. he is an imaginary tiger in calvin's mind. barnaby had an imaginary leprechaun. it continued in other parts of the press. >> this gives new meaning to infantile leftism. >> i was wondering there were two things i wanted to ask about. one was the discussion within p.m. around the hitler/stalin pact and how the editorial stats coped with the change in policy and how p.m. was treated later. what happened during the

mccarthy era. >> the pact happened before p.m. went into existence. when it was published was an established fact. you will see so many people would later be accused of being communists. when ingersoll announced to the staff that he brought the staff together, already hinting of it from the earliest -- when the paper existed, if there was this gigantic communist party faction which it was later accused of being, it would have been mass opposition. in opposition to that campaign to purge little it was largely a

canard, people wanted to see it destroyed before it existed. a very ambitious james wexler, trying to make his career. making the exit by great communist subversion of the newspaper. this call was controlling p m and forcing it to be irrelevant. i have no doubt there was a communist party supervisors. a sympathy for the common man, a

passionate friend of the labor movement. specific moments like the first period during the time of the pact supports the labor, the communist party was not able to do. after a war was declared the communist party sounded like the hearst press in attacking those strikes. the strikes are bad for the war effort but let's understand the grievances of the workers. also there were factional differences in the incipient civil rights movement. p m was on the naacp side of things. on the other hand there were people who have a party. the last of the daily anti

fascist papers was the conference. p.m. veteran and great writer tom o'connor became the editor in chief. he was called and refuse to name names and died of a heart attack at the age of 38. i am told by his former roommate he had terrible lung disease which had weakened his heart. maybe it was not just the mccarthy that killed him. people associated with the left, p.m. is also very strong even when differing with communist party politics in denouncing every single step of the anti-communist hysteria that took place after world war ii and correctly identified the attack on communism as a way to undo the new deal and the

advances that the labor movement had made and defended the right of civil liberties of all of those under attack in the mccarthy period. >> let me add to that, ingersoll, sounding like obama, said he wanted to hear every viewpoint and then he would decide. to do this he asked the head of the communist party to send an official communist journalist to the paper. which they did. and he gave up a few months later. i am not sure what. for the most part the paper -- on the day of the attack on russia, a cartoon saying it will be fun reading the daily worker tomorrow. so they were making fun of the communists.

ancillary to that is the conversation with eleanor roosevelt, amazing to think he had conversations with eleanor roosevelt. imagine that happening now. complained that p.m. was run by trump guys. obviously pcp was not totally satisfied. they did defend, apart from john lewis who was to the right, they did defend the labor leaders including a communist that roosevelt was trying to deport back to australia and so it was a riskier thing to defend him than to defend walter. so they were very strong on those lines. as to the post warfare do you want to say anything about that? >> i tried to answer that. ..

>> because he was too smart, but if anyone looks at the microphone, knows that wexler was writing terrific, really terrific stuff in 1940, 1941 and 94 to on behalf of the trade

unions, and then pretended he didn't do it later because he was too smart to be a communist snoop. anyway, he started as an american progressive, at the same time, ken crawford almost simultaneous with wechsler's resignation from "pm" published an article in the new leader, the socialist party publication that was also currently anti-communist. that accused "pm" of being in control of the communist. he didn't sign his name. everybody knew. everybody knew it was he. but by that time he was possibly was const and newsweek. and moving steadily right as he went. i don't know the article. [inaudible] >> but again, to be fair, and i don't know how representative this was, but they were blind

spot in "pm" after the war. i remember reading an article by richard who some of you may remember was a cbs news caster from prague in 1947, which everything is hunky-dory and etc. when it wasn't quite civil war, but czechoslovakia was really torn enormously between the various factions and the timing is finding one, and what might have been a victory without a convicted they were so well organized that they were about to take control. in any case, but if you read "pm," you would have thought nothing was going on of any kind. so i haven't read "the new york times" cover at the same time, it may have equally been naïve, i don't know. >> in "pm" case i think it was often, it was often a wish come equal to the. roosevelt was invented as a hero are in proportion to what he

was. during the war in abut who fought against hitler was a hero. and that included such odd choices as douglas macarthur and chang kai-shek, who should not have been heroes, obviously. but they were willing, you know, anyone who was enrolled in the war by definition became somewhat heroic or afterwards, the columnist who wrote about the way europe was proceeding had this kind of fervent wish that popular front government would be established in eastern europe. and real popular front government. in other words, not government run by the time his party with other parties being declarations, but total -- told governments of the left. it was actually maza rexx suicide, if indeed it was a suicide in czechoslovakia that brought lerner and another guy who was writing columns into open despair about what was going to take place in eastern

europe, that it was clear that she popular front for politics is not going to happen. you either going to have capitalist governments in western europe where communist participation was verbose, you know, or you're going to have these communist party moscow surrogates in asia and europe. and the kind of -- they're kind of romance about what politics should look like. they recognize after his death was just that, a romance that had no basis in reality. >> there's an odd continuity and personnel also, and it's a footnote, but after "pm" stop, it was succeeded by a magazine called compass in the start. >> the star was next. the star was more or less the same paper. >> but the money marshall field pulled out and they start again

and they tried valiantly to continue it for a few months ended the star continued. one of the editors of the compass was joseph barnes, who as it happens had been the ghostwriter of wendell wilkie's book and had worked for the oss during the war. and made a mistake when the allies entered italy to write broadcasting, we are bringing democracy. and he told me himself and he was severely criticized by his bosses for talking about a democracy in italy. when the government was trying to maintain a monarchy. so you had the battles that were being written about in "pm" at the time, being led out, and of course, an attempt to continue them after the war. but in the time of the mccarthy period, i don't know if you want to see me, it was just impossible.

>> what was the end of policy response to the truman doctrine? >> hated it. they saw the truman doctrine. i think correctly. as the declaration of the cold war, and they were also horrified in particular by what it meant to greece, where anti-fascism partisans relied with the communists were now being chased out on behalf of elaborations with hitler and greece. and the truman doctrine in fact was probably the final break. there were two moments of great despair about truman. the first happen during the 1946 strike wave, and truman's military response to the cold strike. or the steel strike, you know, at the height of that, the steel strike. and they were furious. on the other hand, things got moderated a bit when truman,

yeah, introduced the civil rights program into the democratic party. that was seen correctly as a progressive step. so for some people on the staff, truman was a little better. but with the truman doctrine, the entire "pm" staff was opposed. [inaudible] >> yeah. >> but ironically, "pm" was the only paper in new york to back truman in 1948. >> not "pm." by then it was the star. the star back truman, but the columns were fervently, unit, prologue is to. and he so he was at war. it was a barge was editorials on behalf of truman. and stone, of course. >> even the new york post had given up on truman. >> right. >> it was a lost cause as far as most people concerned, whatever the ideology.

>> you have covered so many events in the air, i'm wondering about both real and imagined so it imagined soviet espionage, how did they react to that? and also korea. >> korea was too late. >> yeah. so i -- korea was indeed too late. the spy stuff, well, they published early a stage -- they interviewed einstein and oppenheimer, and pointed out what they were saying, which was despite what american politicians were saying there was no thing as a secret. in other words, there was no secret of atomic energy, that it was just a matter of applied guesswork. you kept on going. i can't say i remember them actually commenting on the arrests of the late 40s of the initial spies, the initial accused spies.

by the time the rosenbergs were arrested, "pm" didn't exist anymore. but mcmanus who was the film critic the death of "pm," was a cofounder of the national guardian, and the guardian cut its teeth in the late '40s and early '50s in proclaiming the innocents of the rosenbergs. so my guess would be that if "pm" had been rounded probably would have said the same thing. although, i don't know that. >> if you look in the book, you'll see a number of cartoons by "pm" against the martin dies investigations. and also when the common turn dissolved itself and became common form, they were more or less saying, well, that shows the end of any soviet threat. as far as we're concerned. which of course, was not even goes the russian were not members anyway.

for espionage purposes or anything. >> the main were not pcp members, right? [inaudible] >> i'm been corrected here. >> the main spies were cp members. >> into the postwar period? >> yes. >> the rosenbergs were certainly cp members of. >> okay. i stand corrected. sorry. be that as it may, the attitude was relatively naïve, that when a common term was dissolved, there was no threat anymore and martin should have gone home. he should have gone home in any case, and not for those particular reasons. >> should we stop? >> any other questions, comments? if not, we have books for sale.

if you buy, i do we will sign. there is wine and cheese. paul also has a book for sale. and we have wine and cheese in a coming. >> thank you.

this the gentleman has came for you to sign. >> okay. >> one of them is a grandson. anybody, i put their name. jeremy. at how old is jeremy? >> twenty-three or four. >> a couple of years ago. got a grandson -- or he's got a son now if you get it fast. we have limited time. thank you, sir. >> appreciate that.

she keeps me straight. nice to meet you. >> she keeps the books straight, i don't know which. >> nice to see you again. >> good to see you. you're going to get tighter that one day. no, never get tired. i'm glad you're here. >> thank you. >> nice to see you. >> so far so good, no cramps yet. >> my favorite memory is being in an elevator with you in chicago in 1991. i can't believe that. i remember the convention. i don't recall that because i was at his home one time and he had like a reception for me. that was pretty wild.

but i don't remember the one in chicago. >> there was the three of us in an elevator. >> thank you. >> glad to see people interested in it. what do you need from us to run in 2012? >> well, that's too early to talk about that. >> i'm going to write my masters thesis on the federal reserve system. >> good. getting the attention of a lot of people these days. glad your generation is looking into the. they don't destroy themselves that it will take us a little bit longer to make sure we get rid of it. but they are likely to self-destruct. hello. nice to see you.

>> i'm the oldest geezer here. >> no, i wouldn't say that. young in spirit, right? >> hello, congressman. >> military family. >> my dad wouldn't understand that. >> is this yours? this one is yours. trying to give your book away. here you go. hi. >> what do we expect from the summit? >> probably not a whole lot other than behind the scenes that be a lot of mr. plans, but we won't hear about it for a while.

>> they're going to work hard on internationalizing a currency. it won't be very easy. >> ron, thank you. >> i can quote you from some of the study say, but you have any special stuff to go it is a? >> are you going to be there tonight? i don't have any special to say unless you want to ask me something. i mean, we're here to promote the campaign for liberty, and liberty is the subject. part of that of course is dealing with the size and scope of the federal reserve, because they intrude on our liberties through the financial systems. so that's been a key issue for as. >> is that the key issues are going to talk about tonight's? >> it will be a lot of it but it

won't be the only thing. and the concept of liberty, liberty is the opposite of government. one of the enhancers of the government is the federal reserve. if you need to finance more, you can do it direct taxation through inflation. but if you want a welfare state you expand your welfare state without paying for it until later on by just printing money. the monetary system is intertwined. of course, it's corrupt because it serves special interest, and it's totally secret and congress doesn't assume response before it self. >> doesn't seem to be anyway to get get corruption out of government. >> that's what you want very, very small government, because it's the nature of government to be corrupted. so there'll always be that temptation, so the smaller the government, the less harm they can do to us. >> already. that's great. >> glad you stopped by.

>> i think they want to design s'more. >> i can't do it right now. >> some customers who couldn't make it here. >> okay. >> while researching his book, "the prohibition hangover: alcohol in america from demon rum to cult cabernet," garrett peck began getting temperance tours of historic sites in washington, d.c.. booktv joint mr. pak to learn how to temperance movement led to probation in 1920, and why prohibition was repealed in 1933. >> what was prohibition and how did we get? >> it was started once the 18th amendment was ratified, but it was part of a century long movement to ban alcohol in this country.

that movement was called the temperance movement. the idea behind there initially, temperance men to moderate one's drinking, but by the 18 toys, the movement decided that people have to abstain completely from algol. this was led by the evangelical churches. they believe that alcohol was wrong. they called it demon rum. they associate alcohol with a double. and therefore everybody had to stop drinking altogether. this movement lasted a century long. the idea was to clean up and sober of american society and eventually end up with a decent middle-class, white-based protestant american society. ultimately they got to wait in prohibition itself, which was a constitutional amendment, the 18th amendment to ban alcohol in america. that went into effect in 1920 prohibition itself lasted less than 14 years because of extreme civil disobedience, the law of

the land. and a lot of violence here from organized crime, and i think extreme in different here from the american public. they didn't really realize what they had gotten into here by signing up for prohibition. they thought it was simply something useful to have, and then we realized pretty quickly, the country has always been a drinking nation. and a lot of ways the temperance movement was naïve to believe that people which is simply a break the law and not take. >> in your book you seem to indicate that world war i has something to do with the? >> it did. a real pass a part of how the anti-saloon league of the 18th amendment through congress. and the asl has largely been forgotten that. there was only in existence for 40 years. they use the occasion of world war i when united states went to war in germany in 1917, the largest ethnic group in the country at that time were germans. and guess who also were the brewers?

the germans, right? so yet, you had a whole ethnic group whose rights are basically pushed aside. suddenly there was a huge anti-german hysteria in the country, and tricking beer which is what most americans drink at that point, suddenly looked really unpatriotic. so the asl at that point proposed the 18th amendment and it sailed through congress. people thought we needed this year for the war, and it went on to the state without people thinking about it very much. congress voted on a very, very quickly and went on the states, but all but two of the states ratified 18th in the. those dates were rhode island and connecticut. both states had very heavy cap population to realize that prohibition was targeted at them. because the temperance movement had a very protestant sentiment. >> our next stop here is this striking brick church, calvary baptist church in. >> this was designed but i'll know who build a lot of the public building in washington, d.c.. he was a german immigrant and he

was known as the red architect. he was both for the red pollack of use, and office buildings were that bright red. the other reviews known as the red architect was because he was good friends with karl marx. the guy who wrote the manifesto. he was close, hired in 1866 to build his church. there was a church built four years ago and it burned down and in the church that hired him to build his new church. this was the very edge of time and now it's almost downtown washington, d.c.. this is in chinatown. >> we are here at calvary baptist church because of a real important event that happened in the temperance movement. when that happened in 1895. that was when the anti-saloon league had its first meeting in this building.

he recruited a college senior named wayne wheeler. wheeler became the asl is general counsel and he was, i like to call him the karl rove of his day. he is the guy who invented pressure politics. how the asl was going to squeeze these different politicians to force them to vote dry, and not running wet. they met here in this building in 1895 and began a national strategy of how the asl is going to turn the country dry. one of the things they decided was to go after the state's first. by the states, they got the states to allow local option laws, when there was a local option law in place that meant the church allies of asl, and these were an evangelical protestants, could you their political influence to enforce the county to go dry. you still see a lot of dry

cannas, that's because of a strong emphasis, strong influence i should say of the southern baptist convention. once enough states had voted to put some kind of dry law in place, that would enforce the congressman from that stated boatwright, even if they were wet. so by 1950, a majority of the state had some kind of prohibition already on the books. here in d.c. where we had prohibition in 1970, before we even got into world war i, the city was already ostensibly drive. it never was. but legally it was dry. so the idea, we change the constitution to ban a call. that didn't seem so far-fetched. the majority of states were dry, and therefore it seems to be the political will of the country that we should dry up the country entirely. again, the asl used the occasion of world war i once the germans

-- once we declared war on germany and theggest ethnic mine country and also the brewers, were pushed aside. that led asl to propose the 18th amendment. smack somebody interesting things here about the temperance movement itself, it was really an evangelical, white, protestant movement. this was a faith-based initiative to get the country to dry up their deadly part of a time in american history, to about 1920 oh as the progressive era, this idea that society can be reformed. a lot of good stuff came out of this air. women got to go. we got our food laws. we got income tax, well, if that's a good thing or not we have to decide on aerobic but we also got prohibition. that backfired horrendously against the temperance movement itself. this was new a three decade long ago we thought we could have a socially purist society. this is for the benefit of all americans here to clean things

up. at the same time of course, because it was so protestant lead, it really violated a lot of rights of ethnic minority. remember, starting with the irish in the 1840s, there was this great wave of catholics came into this country. half of the germans who came into this country were catholic. and then you have the italians and a huge wave of jews in europe and so on. these people acted differently and they brought their drink habit with the. and not of cases that have violated what the tempest movement thought what it meant to be a good american. this country and we don't drink. were a middle class, properties and people and you cathodes, you need to behave in. so a lot of the cases of temperance, the temperance movement was targeted at the catholics to try to reform their way. >> prohibition actually went into effect a year after the 18th minute was passed. so it went into effect on jangly 16, 1920 or 90 years ago. on the eve of prohibition, all

the you had one last chance go out and buy a call that a majority of the state of trance state are already dry. there was a mock funeral for john barleycorn. led by a man named billy sunday. he was an evangelist and former baseball star. and that this mock funeral he preached the eulogy. this eulogy he said goodbye, john, you were god's worst in me and the devil's best friend. farewell. i hate you with a perfect hate, and by the grace of god, i love to hate you. >> and of course prohibition went into effect the next morning that things turned out quite differently than the temperance movement expected.

>> john article or? >> that was an old nickname for alcohol. also known as demon rum. >> so when you're doing your tour, when you're done with the calvary baptist church, what's next? >> we go next to jump on the subway and go to the woodrow wilson after he was the president when prohibition went into effect in 1920. >> this was a portion of a booktv program. you can do the entire program, and many other booktv programs online. go to booktv.org. type the name of the author or plugged into the search area in the upper left hand corner of the page. select the watch link. now you can view the entire program. you might also explore the recently on booktv box or the featured video box to find reason and featured programs. >> jeremiah denton appeared on

g. courtney lee's radio program to talk about his book, when hell was in session. it's about his years as a pow in the non-and his efforts to inform the outside world about what was happening at the hanoi hilton. this is 25 minutes. >> . .