be the next -- who would do something strictly on instinct. he had no idea that it would work. but he had a very good idea that the americans were not going to be pushed out of berlin. and i think it was interesting, in the obama/mccain election -- i'm prejudiced, i have a daughter who's a writer for obama in the white house. however, this is not the kind of thing that barack obama would do. he wants all the information. he wants to think it out. and john mccain, a very instinctive and sometimes destructive poll big, is the have done something like this against all advice, against all counsel.

i want to say one thing about truman's role in all of this. when i was looking for something to write to what actually got me to write it was that in reading post war, which is a very fine book and david mccullough is book on truman which obviously is a wonderful book on truman,

but in both of those boat is the berlin area gets about two perry wraps. was then i realized that people don't know this in more. they do in germany, but america is where i thought we needed to know it. >> anything publicly? >> they never said anything publicly about being against either. the president is the president, and they are soldiers. the president is the commander-in-chief. >> at thank you both for your comments. i wonder if you might, though, comment, on what was happening at the united nations at the time of the decision to airlift timberland the to in my opinion, the united nations like so many times when the security council members are at odds there is no connection. >> well, the picture that we saw here for a moment to a people talking at a table was the

soviet ambassador david malik. the american representing, this is how the airlift and or the blockade ended, the airlift continued for all while. stalin took another advice nor questions as far as anyone could tell, but american reporters would constantly send written questions to the kremlin in the hope that stalin had something he wanted to say. the chief foreign correspondent for hearst news service had send questions to stall. stalin says to answer those five questions. no one particularly -- dean acheson was the first one who understood what one of stalin's answers mend. when he was asked about berlin the airlift was still going on.

when he was asked about the land he did not mention currency reform which after all, was the acheson once determined and told him that and they then decided that acheson in his next press conference would mention that the stalin answers were very interesting. that was the open part. the behind-the-scenes part was that our delegation to the u.n. would ask the delegation, was the omission of a currency reform deliberate. two weeks later he came back and said yes, it was. and then the question was, the next question, is your leader open to solving this problem at this time, and the answer came back two weeks later, yes.

it tremendous embarrassment for them. they knew that they have lost. defeated napoleon won, hitler, and he is surrounded general winter would defeat the airlift and when it did not he knew that the game was up. >> the neto nations played a role. >> key role. >> back channels on keeping the dialogue open. >> yes. yes. it was one of their real. i think we have time for one more. >> a related question. can you speak to the prime minister of britain and the political situation in britain and how that might have related to the american decision? >> what related to it was, as many of you probably remember, when the conference was set up,

churchill was prime minister. he was then defeated by the labor party. the key figure for the british was not badly but ernst evans, the labor leader who became a great foreign secretary of britain. and in the last month of the airlift for the first time he came over and looked at it and then was asked what he thought of it. he said, this is the eighth wonder of the world, and so was. >> a terrific way to kick off our 2010 programming schedule. thank you very much. [applause] and thank you very much for

doing a wonderful job moderating both of our guests have copies of their books available oil lobby and sticking around for a few minutes to sign copies, so we hope he will join us in just a few moments. thank you for coming and we will see you soon. good night. >> every sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern, book tv airs a program to our archives that coincides with a significant occasion that happened that we can history. for more history programming to cut american history television. a h tv features 48 hours a people and events that help document the american story. watch american history tv on c-span2 or visit c-span.org / history. >> steven jaffe recounts sunny york city responded to conflict as a trading outpost examining how each conflict of like -- affected the city including the american revolution and 18,000 american prisoners of war died

in british prisons to end its opposing and a harbor freight depot executed by a u.s. -- german agents. this event held at the tennant museum is about an hour. [applause] >> thank you. it is a pleasure to be here. thank you all for coming up tonight for this. i just want to second what was being said earlier about the museum, the tenement museum. if you have not taken the two were of 97 orchard street down the block here, which is really the core mission of this museum, to interpret that tenement house and the generation of immigrants who became new yorkers partly through living there, you owe it to yourself. i think there is -- it is indispensable to understanding the york city history in the

1923 or early 20's centuries, and it is really a gift to the city of new york that we have this museum. so i encourage you, even if you have taken the tour before, please come back and take it again because there are new taurus, they are changing, and it is a wonderful experience. as was mentioned, i am here tonight to talk about my book, new york at war. i am going to show you some marriages, power point presentation is really, images, some of which are in the book, others are not. the book itself really covers almost four centuries. i mean, really starts with henry hudson sailing into the harbor in 69 and his initial encounters with the indian people here all the way up through september september 11th, 2001 and beyond. what i am going to do tonight, however, is to narrow chronologically the focus of my

presentation to really kind of make it go hand-in-hand with the time of 97 orchard street down the block which was built in 1863 by a german ever grant and was occupied by successive generations of mostly immigrants newcomers, really up until 1935 when the building was closed. and so what i am going to be doing today is really giving you a slice of the story, really from the civil war, 1860's, up through the 1930's and the onset of war were to. and the book does deal with a bunch of intersecting overlapping themes, economic, political, defense, suggesting the fortifications, a key element, of course. what i want to do in addition to narrowing in the chronological focus is to focus tonight on one of the particular themes of the

book, which is that we work really repeatedly through history, i would argue, a city at war with itself. there is a paradox, really, about the york's role and its various wars. i suppose you could say this about america's generally command and not trying to save new york is the only place in the united states that this has happened, but worse have often been an occasion for unity, cohesion. we are all in this together. we all have to when this together. we have to put our more -- are parochial interests aside and pull together to win whenever wore it might be. at the same time new york, as the great magnet for immigrants come from around the world, from its very earliest days in the 16 twenties onward has been a place

where discreet, separate populations of newcomers have often brought their own political cultures, their own loyalties and allegiances, their ethnic and national religious cultures, and have ended up jostling each other often, and especially at times of war, this has been the case in new york, sometimes with tragic consequences. so i am going to start by showing you these images. starting with the civil war. again, the book starts will for that, but this is where we are starting tonight. so this is april of 1861 after the confederacy fired on fort sumter, and this is where the war began, one of the mass rallies in union square that ensued in new york in april 61, and you see this outpouring of patriotism, flag-waving, enthusiasm within a few weeks

16,000 men from manhattan which was then new york city and portland had enlisted and were going south to guard washington d.c. it is a moment where many new yorkers hope that this unity will persist to allow them to fight the war, to support the work. what to me is kind of ironic and, perhaps, a harbinger of things to come in this view. this guy seems like he is not that happy. this group of militiamen dressed in roof representative -- revolutionary war are going to send take him out. new york was a city that thought its own civil war during the civil war. to understand why we have to step back a little back in history to understand antebellum , pre civil war york.

new york was one center of the northern antislavery movement, the abolitionist movement. this is actually back cover sheets for the american anti slavery almanac which draws on abolitionists, periodicals published both in new york, john in new york and boston. we tend to think of boston, if we have anything about abolitionism which tends to think about boston, large garrison and then in the movement largely where philadelphia, the population being in the forefront of the antislavery movement. but there were a captive -- cadre of new yorkers come often wealthy evangelicals or evangelical protestants were quakers who felt very strongly that slavery was an abomination and a san and the brothers who were wealthy merchants from our man and helps basically bankroll

the endless this movement throughout the north, really henry ward beecher in brooklyn became one of the spokesman, great protestant clergymen for the antislavery movement. this actually shows the cover illustration which is kind of hard to make out. basically showing bounty hunters under it -- this is before the 18525 excuse me, slovak's, but even in the 1830's bounty hunters in new york with literally kidnap or seized a fugitive slaves who had come north to new york and spirit them back to the south, sometimes grab people who were not -- to have been freeborn and carias people back to the slavery in never knew. so new york is a center, it is the battleground for the anti slavery movement. it is also home to a very vigorous african-american community that is working with

some of those white, wealthier professional and business abolitionists. this is out reliance who was -- ran a boarding house for african american sailors. it was subsumed into the knickerbocker houses when the public housing project was built in the top two century, really a bit to the south and east of us toward the east river. anyhow, he had a boarding house that was a station on the underground railroad. he, as well as other black and white new yorkers both groups helped hundreds, if not thousands of fugitive slaves making their way to the north who came to new york and these folks help tide them away from the bounty hunters and then help them get either further north to new england or ultimately to canada.

frederick douglass was one of the people who passed through new york on his way out of slavery in the 1830's. but there is another side to new york, which is the side that is really embedded economically and politically in the slave system of the south. new york was absolutely critical financially and economically to slavery before the civil war. this is a painting showing vessels. [background noises] >> i'm going to wait until the stops. >> don't -- tell -- don't leave without buying my book, you know -- [laughter] >> anyhow, this -- this -- this is a view of sailing ships -- ships from the south on the east river docks are before the civil war. new york was the place that

bankrolled, really, the harvesting, the planting, harvesting, and shipping of southern cousin to the north and across the atlantic to liverpool from which it was sent in to the manchester textile factories in england. so new york merchants, not the abolitionist once by an large, but pro-southern merchants had a vested interest in being pro seven played a role as a middleman between the slave south, financing the slave south, @booktv planters profit. new yorkers are the middle man between the slave south and the industrial revolution in the sense that the anguish factories , the ones taking seven, and turning it into context tiles. sydney york, many new yorkers in terms of the economic aspect have a real vested interest up to the mid civil war in the system. new york cops to create some of

the most racist popular culture in america in the years before the civil war. this is one of the minstrel songs that were pioneer on the stage of the bowery theater and others in lower manhattan. the other connection to the south was that many new yorkers, of course, including tammany hall, de credit party, ties to the national democratic party which by and large was proslavery and pro seven in the years before the civil war. cindy york has about these things going on. it has an anti slavery movement, but it has a real reservoir of pro-slavery, pro-7 racist thoughts as well. and then at the bottom of new york society you have a tinderbox which is that you have , by the civil war about

200,000 irish immigrants, a quarter of the city population. you have about 13,000 african-americans. and these two groups are competing at the bottom of new york society for the poorest housing, for those paying jobs, and there is tremendous friction in many parts of the city economy between them. this is actually have you -- this is germane to where we are today, a view of the notorious five points neighborhood, 1012 blocks from where we are now. the cradle of the lower east side, the place where immigrants first got off the ships and the 18 twenties, thirties, and '40's crammed into old, sometimes even colonial-era wood frame houses built by the mid-19th century, as you can see, so lopsided. family after family, after family cramming into these things. would you do have next to it though is one of these new

townhouses which the next generation of immigrants were occupying, but you have at the bottom of the york city society racism. you have irish catholics feeling discriminated against by white anglo-saxon protestants that present also republicans and irish republic democrats and you have the racial friction between these two groups at the bottom of the hierarchy. at the beginning of the war, as i said, workers volunteered by the thousands and often, as many of you know, with a very strong at the identification. so there were irish regiments, the garibaldi guard which include not only italians, but hungarians, the central europeans. polish contingence, german regiments and so on. but by 1862, 63, the war is

dragging on with no end in sight . and in 1863 the lincoln administration and congress pass a draft law. prior to this is all volunteer. the draft law of 1863 requires men to register in new york and throughout the north, but it has this clause whereby if you pay $300 you can be exempted from the draft and basically the money goes to pay for a substitute, a poor man will take your place. $300.8063 is a phenomenally large amount of money. people are making, day laborers are making a dollar a day. sabine asked sebacic take, if you are poor, it is one year's worth of your -- under salary, but your wages that you don't have because you have been spending it.

to basically it is seen as class legislation, is seen as part of the rich man's war and a poor man's fight was the model the became common in new york and other cities. in july of 1863 when the draft law is implemented all of these background resentments explode. the largely irish working class in new york seeing this as a republican plot against them, seeing it as discrimination in a class sense, they blamed the war by this point on slaves, the fact that slavery exists, so this kid could becomes free african americans in new york. there also fearful that with the mets picked -- the emancipation proclamation, there will be a flood of freed african-americans coming up from the south to work in new york and take their jobs away from them, a fear that is

fanned by some of the new york city newspapers, including the new york "herald". so, you have this tremendous ride the starts and goes on for four days. and it is today the worst riot in american history. at least 100 people died, maybe as many as 500. we are not sure. over 100 buildings are burned down. and here you see, the city and the state and the federal government ought to know yet to bring up troops you were just union troops to had just won the battle of gettysburg a few days before and pennsylvania up to quell this act of civil insurrection and you literally have warfare in the streets of manhattan over the course of four days in the middle of 86 to three. you also have of becomes an anti-black throng. the racism and resentment results and indiscriminate

attacks on african-americans. many people don't know that there was a lynching in the streets of new york. july 1863 there was. this is the william jones who was lynched on clarkson street on what is now the lower west side. two other men, black men, or lanced. three other black men were beaten to death command at least 18 african american men, women, and children were injured during this outpouring of rage and racism. i should say that one of the things that i . out in the book is that there were any number of irish new yorkers who tried to intervene to help african americans, a number of white new yorkers, but the mob was just so out of control that they could not prevent tragedies like this from happening. so basically at the end of the civil war the rioters, to some

extent, had gotten what they wanted. many african-americans left new york not to return. this is the daughter of our overreliance, the boarding house keeper in underground railroad stationmaster who i showed you before, a lovely picture for taken around this time, 1860 in look -- she was a little girl living in that underground railroad station. lower manhattan. the family basically on the third night of the right, their house, the boarding houses burned down. and they have to remove -- they basically moved to providence, rhode island. as she says in a memoir she wrote as an adult, we were living in exile from new york city. so it was a sense in which this riot so traumatizes the by kennedy that it is not for a while before the black population in new york starts cresting again in the later

19th century. the years after the civil war brought new kinds of tensions, actually had already been building before the war, but even though the u.s. was at peace, there was no foreign more , and the 1870's and 80's to speak of you have this sense of, perhaps, a class war in the making. new york, after all, as both the richest and arguably the poorest place in the country with all these immigrants pouring in, but with wall street and manufacturing and shipping enriching in minority of property, businessman, and professionals, and you get these extremes, conspicuous extremes, not only conspicuous wealth, but conspicuous poverty. perhaps unparalleled by any other place in the country. so this is william with les drying room of his mansion,

fifth avenue and 68 street across from central park. it's not there anymore. one of those big fifth avenue apartment buildings is there now, but this is just is drawing room. a finance their his daughter-in-law founded the whitney museum. william britney became secretary of the navy for grover cleveland . but, you see, this is an indication of the kind of great wealth that the successful, the haves, as you well, the 1 percent in new york in the late 19th century could enjoy, of course the other extreme, a photograph from about the turn of the century. kids in new york city playing by the dead horse. i don't know -- i don't know the actual street has been identified where the specifically was, but this, of course, is the other extreme of life in new york.

by the 1870's you have a growing sense of to new york's which might come into collision, chilly in the streets of the city during the 1870's, starting in 1873 there is a bad recession , the recession of 87 victory last for several years and bring some of these class antagonisms to ahead. this is 1874 tompkins square park, allocation in this city which currently has been as site of controversy and confrontation between new yorkers. this was during the depression. various labor unions and working men's groups wanted the city to provide public works projects to fund public works projects of the people were not starving. and .. a misunderstanding they -- the police basically attack

them, as you see in the background. you have all these liberal radicals, labor militants. i mean reformers in some cases basically fleeing for their lives has mounted policeman clubbed them. samuel gompers, eventually the founder of the american federation of labor who at this point was an immigrant english cigar maker of the lower east side was at this event, and it left a lifelong tellable mark on him in terms of understanding class relations in the city. so what do you do when the sense of a city at war with itself seems to threaten the property classis and even the city government. these are national guardsmen in 1895 who helped put down the brooklyn street car workers

strike national guard units. they see themselves as, if they're is a class for we're going to be the fog -- front line of responsibility for property, civility, and security of the city. of course their is a physical dimension architectural dimension to this which is the armories which, by 1910, there are 20 armories in new york city city money, contributions the seventh armory initial state on park avenue the whole point is

to build these castle like or fortresslike buildings with the national guards units controlled , have headquarters, and store weapons. some of the rhetoric that comes out on both sides by 1900, labor activists, they're going to send the troops out to kill us. whereas you have a spokesman for the guardsmen talking about, you know, when the revolution comes this is per going to shoot down, this is where they will send the troops out from but if we are tactual sheet down on the proletariat seven speak from the citadel's. 1898, we entered the war which new yorkers but a very important role in promoting the

spanish-american war. as you pro we remember, the newspapers in new york, particularly a souvenir view. in new york. sailors in new york in 1899. teddy roosevelt played a key role in that war as well. it is important to recognize, of course, lot of jingoism. you hear you have this industrial financial young nation, the united states flexing its muscles. new york is, perhaps, the most muscular part of this country. we need to expand overseas, take over colonies, markets that we deserve and, yet, there is also,

again, a sense of unity around that, there are dissenting voices from both sides. you have, for example, on the left, danielle de leon of the socialist labor party, and one of the most important marxists in america in this time, he denounces the spanish-american war and then the war against the filipino rebels in the philippines that succeeded in 1899. he calls it worse started by expansionist capitalists. on the other hand another new yorker who was himself a german immigrant, a liberal from the german revolutions of 1848 who came over and became a republican, anti slavery activist was only a liberal in the early stages of his public career in america. by the 1880's when he settles

in new york city, however, he has become more conservative, and he is one of the anti imperialists. in other words, people who are saying not from the left but he should not taken colonies or extend protector status for cuba and pr and guam and the philippines. he's against it from the right because he sees it as racially dangerous. he says it's dangerous for the assets of america to incorporate a subject population of spanish americans with all the mixture of indian and negro blood and malays and other unspeakable asiatics. sent your note new york is the very immigrant destination. it is far from being immune from our racialist and ethnically discriminatory rhetoric and ideology. there is a long-term something had a little bit chronologically

repercussion the company's role and new york's role in particular in 1898, certainly any number of new york businessman wanted to sugar, they wanted to be able to have a captive market for banking capital and so on. you also have, as a result, more and more destination for break-ins under the projector and then in 1917 there made u.s. citizens and new york becomes the great, even before the 1940's, the great hesperus city

the largest jewish speaking in the country you have in the 1940's this gentleman, the great father of perjury in independence nationalism actually spending the last few years of his suspended jail sentence in new york. new york becomes a note of perjury and activism for the ensuing decades. if you what not to taint all of brega independence nationalism of the terrorist brush, but someone you may remember in 1975, the bomb that went off, the terrorist bomb that went off in lower manhattan that killed five people that was a legacy of a tradition of militants,

portrait of nationalism verging into terrorism that his followers became part and parcel of new york's sort of covert political culture. so all of these ways in which new york is this place that is bringing people and, it gives it a turbulence and a recurrent turmoil that really passes on down through the decades. world war one, 1914, we have to remember that when the great war , world war one began in europe in the summer of 1914, u.s. to not join the war until 1917. we remain the great natural. and because of that you have england and germany and particularly really competing for the hearts and minds of americans.

the way to do that is to propagandize in new york, which is now the media capitol of the country. and so, and 1914 the german government covertly deposits, lot of german bank notes into a bank, or broad rate -- broadway and that money is used through the good graces of the german embassy in washington with its consulate offices in new york to start this magazine, the fatherland, george sylvester, a german american public is tired, and this was basically a pro-german propaganda sheet, very cleverly done, climbed 100,000 american leaders within a few months. now, obviously a large contingents of the leaders who are german-american is to feel proud and see no reason to denigrate their home countries military ambitions.

after all, france, england, and germany can all be claiming to be following their patriotic destiny. and, in fact, when i was trying to say before, i think i misspoke, by the turn-of-the-century after the win in vienna, 750,000 german americans in new york city. so there is a pride. this is also an attempt by the german government without being open about it because it is covered initially that their funding this to counter what is seen as the angle -- anglophilia , pro english and pro french feeling that they see as emanating out of new york city, out of the media, out of wall street's in particular. but new york is not so simple.

it never is. german verses england or france. the world war, the first war from 1914 onward engages all of the different ethnic groups, national groups in new york city many irish new yorkers are sympathetic with the movement for irish independence from england or at least from a more emphatic, will. and so they see no reason to be pro allied. the allies in world war one are primarily england, france, in czarist russia. so there is pro chairman or at least anti and was feeling in new york city to love her prominently among irish-americans. polish americans are split. to is going to get this independence, is it going to be the czar, the kaiser, it is like a tossup, and different factions , as in poland, as in

the homeland, there are factions, and each crew has this -- is looking across the ocean and really thinking about its national ambitious. jews. bizarre of russia is one of the principal allies. you have england with its constitutional monarchy, you know, the bull work of liberalism and the world. you have france and its republic , and in some sense it's revolutionary tradition of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and then you have tsarist russia, which is the most backward, corrupt monarchies in europe. and also, of course, but chilly anti-semitic. a large reason why so many jews come over here from russia and russian poland, ukraine, lithuania and so on, parts of

the czarist russian empire is because of those anti-semitic policies, because of the bronze and because of the oppressive draft, military draft in czarist russia. so running the pro german fatherland, very shrewdly he plays that card to try to get eastern european jewish immigrants in new york to be pro german or at least anti allied, and this refers to, this is supposed to be very ironic and sarcastic. my beloved jews, the czar nicholas the second on the left holding a shield with a jewish captives down on it referring to the fact that during world war one on the eastern front the tsarist troops are often going to jewish villages and sort of driving to choose out from villages toward the german lines , almost like a human shield as they move forward so

that the germans would shoot the jews fewer of the czarist of soldiers, so they're trying to mobilize, again, mobilizing hearts and minds. new york, throughout the war, is an ongoing business. the germans, in addition to propagandizing for their cause coverley sabotage new york and a certain sense before we join the war because by 1915 wall street and the railroads and the manufacturers who have headquarters in and around new york are supplies food credit and so on hand over fist to the allies the french and english troops are hauling on

desperately. wall street is as important a place as london or paris for the allied war effort. manufacturers are making a lot of money. it is also putting a lot of new yorkers to work, working-class. an economy before we were even in the war. good for new york in that sense. much of this stuff is being sent out of new york harbor house and the medal of liberty state park. a little plaque about it embedded in their grass, but if you look carefully with a magnifying glass to my appeal to find. i'm being sarcastic. you can find in an glad the is there among but you do not have a sense of the magnitude of this place, this compound, this depot on barbara, on the jersey side of the harbor where trains from

across the midwest, northeast, they're pouring into jersey city to this place, and loading guns, ammunition, food, uniforms, meals, horses, all of which will be loaded onto cargo ships, american and neutral and allied cargo ships and send it to england and france to fight in the war and to help the allies to continue fighting in 1916 the german government and less a small number of seven taurus the whole thing goes sky high when the blesses shattering all over manhattan, jersey city hoboken the u.s. government was aware of

some other german satellite to going on, at the time the inquest concluded this was a freak accident after the investigation had proven that the german government had actually triggered this thing the inquiry, adolf hitler wanted to and hand over money for this to america. the west german government did after the war, and the payments continued all the way up from west germany to the u.s. all the way up to 1979. well, we finally entered the war on the allied side in april of 1917 after the germans had resumed their submarine warfare

against american vessels at sea. and, again, there is this sense of this moment of unity of new yorkers and americans coming together. this is a photograph from june of 1917. new yorkers lining up to register. my favorite in the picture is actually a hat that that woman is wearing on the right, but the sense that we are all pulling -- again, we're all going to pull together and when this thing. but, as many of you know, it was not to unfold precisely that way a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, a lot of these and paranoia about the next nature of american society of which new york city was the most salient example of all these different immigrant groups. had the unify them? buts of germans persuading people, and lots of germans are actually working to seven josh

and spy on us as we speak. the war, that brief time we were in the war, 1970 to 18, there was a really vehemence efforts to sort of and today to commend the chair, and to shame german-american are entering the war on the allied side. this is a newspaper cartoon. the old post office that used to be there. the actual title is the bless of the hon being the german threat. this sort of spilled over into, for example, real, you know, the

wilson administration and congress passed an alien act, sedition act which really cracked down on anything that smacked of radicalism, passivism , resistance to the war and country to form, the most careful scrutiny or the most critical scrutiny was aimed at immigrants, not only germans, but the sense that, for example, jews might be the cause. enter into a sort of the public consciousness in new york. also, the very real threat that the germans may actually attack. the german military from afar. the german fleet might sail and. and this is actually jussive banal. it is one of the war bonds, already loaned posters from 1918

which is, you know, trying to get you to be patriotic and buy war bonds to help find the government's war effort by showing this scary image of beck statue of liberty destroyed in the background on the right. it may be hard to see, but that is lower manhattan in flames. a german you both, and the germans have managed somehow to send planes over here to bomb and destroy any york. the head and the crown and the statue of liberty reminding me of charlton heston at the end of henry the eighth. anyhow, this was not as far-fetched as this was, and everyone realize that this was a long shot that anything like this would happen, the germans did send a u-boat's over to the american coast a lot of cargo ships, one of the u-boat's cut so close to the new york office of the narrows of of l.i.

when that not see you votes came back they did precisely that same thing in the next war. there was actually a scare in 1918, the rumors started in the newspapers that maybe it germans can put -- they figured out a way of putting planes on board these u-boats'. if they can do that they can send these planes and bombers. then already been bombing london, paris, antwerp, and other allied capitals during world war one. and there were actually siren alerts where people in 1918 according to the new york times, may be the alarm went off and

maybe it is an air raid. we don't think of that, but people are already worried about this new form of warfare actually being able to reach the atlantic. this, of course, and finds the entire german feeling in terms of germany to five germans and the york. this is a nationwide thing, but the wilson administration has -- german emigrants to have not taken our citizenship are supposed to go to their local precinct and be fingerprinted and identified and a record kept on them. this is profiling, of course, but it is also meant to deter any wrongdoing by the -- you know, they're saying, lot of german americans became citizens , immigrants, and some of them are serving in the western front. we don't distressed those, but those who did not take up their citizenship, what is holding them back? is a presumption of guilt, a

presumption of the notion that these guys may be a threat. this is a picture in new york. hard to make out, but the poster in the background of a cop who is fingerprinting is partly yiddish. so german-american being fingerprinted. the law actually required the wives of non-citizens germans in the u.s. to be figured -- fingerprinted, too. that meant that even if he were a native-born american woman with no german connection at all but married one of these guys, you still had to be fingerprinted. so a climate of suspicion, fear, great tension. i should say before i move on from that just briefly, very apropos to this museum, the spills over after the end of the war and to, again, well, we don't have -- excuse me, because it did not fight anymore. there has been a russian

revolution. radicals takeover in russia, communists, and when of the u.s. army intelligence officers stationed in new york city during world war one, and i @booktv a guy named john d. trevor who had spent the war -- spent the work tracing german spies to size by 1919 that the next threat is going to be that the juice on the lower east side, bolsheviks, after all communism as a jewish plot he has decided, he gets the defense department to send him 5,000 springfield rifles to new york just in case the site explodes in revolution, but the punch line to the story is that trevor in 1924 along with madison grants, another new yorker, hired as consultants to congress when they drafted the national origins act which is

the keystone of 1920's u.s. immigration revision which is, quite frankly, meant to keep interior immigrants out of the country, jews, italians, catholics generally, anyone who might be a radical based on a new racialist sense of a hierarchy that has become prevalence among some americans in the early 20th-century, the notion that anglo-saxons and, perhaps, even germans ironically enough, nordiques, are superior. trevor helps drafted this legislation. the it fanned mantle from adolf hitler before retakes power. they basically help to draft a law which severely restricts who can integrate into the country until 1965 when the law is

reform began. new yorkers, both immigrants and very much anti-immigrant in this time are really affecting public policy for the nation. jumping ahead to the 30's, these are american nazis, and east 86 street. the german american. really, a minority was in the german-american community. or for one was so traumatic that a lot of german-american willingness to sort of get out there and the nationalist, there was a small group of german american nazis, most of them are immigrants or recent immigrants from germany, and they marched on 86 street and held rallies in madison square garden and so on.

this time in new york is really, a simmering time where, because of the depression and people's feeling, economically stressed competing for jobs, and because the international situation, the rise of nazism with stalin in the control of the soviet union, miscellany in control, italy, and invading ethiopia, with the japanese invading china, i mean, or ever you look in asia and europe, civil war in 1936, it stirs things up between these different, not only ethnic communities, but political communities. german-american is, obviously, that jewish community in new york, protesting against this. fist fights with these guys. in italian harlem and black harlem african americans and italian-americans are fighting in the streets because mussolini has invaded and conquered ethiopia and africa.

you have demonstrations in chinatown against the japanese invasion of china and so on. this just sort of keeps the pot stirring. some new yorkers as well as other americans take this outside the country, to spain in particular, 1936-7, the abraham lincoln brigade, as the communists from and not exclusively. so we went to fight against generalissimo franco rebellion against the spanish republican staff franco republic against the spanish revolution -- republic. so we have dress rehearsals for world war ii 3,000 americans identified , as many as one-fifth to one-third are from new york city. and so they're putting themselves on the frontline of