our government does to manage that because these of the most dangerous machines ever built. think this subject has fallen off the radar guided this is the end of the cold war.

>> 84 coming tonight. this book is about to cities can be carried out? this book is about the first to cities to produce plutonium there is an american one and a soviet one the american one is called richland the seven -- the russian -- soviet what was called ozersk. what is so important that our good my book "plutopia" did change their landscape been wasted of yet to fully

digest to militarize the landscape and to turn our communities into different types of communities. i will explain the first i will tell you why i got into this project. item of this tourist but in 2004 i went to richard noble and i wrote an article about it is the editor contacted we wanted me to write a whole book about it as a pivotal moment of history. so i looked into it and realize there to places in the world that spilled almost to where 10 times more radiation into the environment than chernobyl. that is strange and chernobyl was a household word but who had ever heard of hanford?

so i thought maybe i would rather tell a story of these two places. at least they looked into it why don't we know much? of course, chernobyl comes to mind because it was an accident hat -- should have happened in a couple of days and then it was a camera ready event the same with fukushima. but these plutonium site is there room not many accidents, not big ones ever military sites so they were closed off and nobody knew about it but what i realized is all of this build radiation ochered by design design, disasters by design as part of the operating order tons of radioactive waste into the ground, local rivers and into the air and to me that was a chilling

realization. these are not small bomb labs there are tens of thousands of workers in each place for decades hundreds of thousands of people went through these places witnessed it and nobody said anything. not to the soviet union or a democratic united states. why was that? what made these people so complacent in the implicit and silent? the more i thought about it the more realize the answer was the word that i made up called "plutopia" that both of these plutonium plants had special exclusive limited access cities just for the plant operators and only they could live in the town. they created a group of workers in the soviet union

in the 1950's if you understand anything there was a hungry and threadbare place. i came to realize these towns are the reason why people remained silent that basically they created towns where working-class plant operators were paid and lived like middle-class but to do that to associate identify with their superiors managers, engineers and the physicist and "plutopia" was so attractive it is with the chosen few lived that they purchased these people in a very special way that i will explain the first let me tell you about how they were built.

as my son would say, i died or miss taking up the size of half of the county, half a dozen reactors, this is where they process in base plutonium in a series of chemical bath to get it down to the plutonium. and the american army corps broke ground on the hanford plant in 1943 and kgb generals broke crayoned in 1946 of the soviet plan. the first they thought it would be militarized labor then here is the picture of the first residential camp at hanford that housed 60,000 construction workers that were there to build the plant. recall it can't pandered had

the charms of a minimum security prison. also the social programs with a single migrant workers fought, mistral, rape, murder , heavily guarded aired -- here is the women's section with the women lived but the guards are there you can see a woman carrying a package because the wolves were men who work trying to wake robin dash -- break them. but people hated key of hanford. at the peak of construction hundreds of workers walked off the job every day. there is a lot of talk about a labor crisis you cannot get enough workers but i looked into but there were plenty of workers when

headed thousand african-americans' role sidestep for the draft could not go to the army because there're not going to fight. hundreds of thousands of mexican americans in agricultural camps rolling around the agricultural interior of the great plains ready to work but they were considered not to be trustworthy enough to make top secret plutonium plants so they did not hire them. the naacp five the pressure them to hire a minimal quota of 10 percent than the army corps in dupont brought jim crow to the pacific northwest to set up separate quarters for african-americans and white workers in capita mexicans in a separate town. they watched the workers closely here is an amazing shot of african-american woman woman put into a paddy wagon driven off nobody will

see her again she did something that was the specter maybe had a suspicious past like she joined a union or something like that. these were very controlled places rather than hire minority workers that built the prison camp next to the construction site they had white prisoners working at the plant rather than hire 80 more minorities. the soviets built in the middle of the country right between these two cities they are similar towns in 1946 the soviets had no business building an atomic weapon. they were devastated by the

war 27 million killed, a 25 million homeless and 305,000 industries demolished in the raids. those cement or steel in very short of labor. they decided to build with prisoners. they turned the job over to the gulag construction -- construction companies that work pow and also soviet pow when they came back security officials consider they were traitors and put them into the filtration camps to be imprisoned them so here is a shot of the soviet labor prisoners building with the tools of the egyptian

pharaoh it is clear they call their camp camp construction there was no model of controlled of order the prisoners had to guard themselves, and the prison were towards took over and ruled with terrifying violence. one engineer was found after he went missing he was waldrop in a cement foundation of the reactor pat. but then also people working wait 10 murdered in prisoners lived in tents this is a shot making houses out of their own materials and by 1949 built this camp.

but who will work in these plants? the first thought both american and soviet leaders thought they would put soldiers in there to live in garrisons to make plutonium they would be secure but after they watched sees construction camps they saw holocene goal migrant male workers took off they realize that is impossible they could not have workers that would be as polished tile of the product that they were about to make. what should we do? who should be the people to work in these plants? the answer to finding workers was the nuclear family. i cannot find references to them before this point. to secure a trusted workers

for these plants leaders of both countries built state-funded limited access cities for civilian workers to live in nuclear families of the atomic cities. here is pictures of what they look like. here is some of the housing you can see in the distance there is more housing. here is some up close shots the family is getting the award for the best christmas decorations he has the best snow girl you to see is a man of the cloth a soviet town, a downtown park evade soviet family.

so with a pretty intricate system the first selected applicants for their political ethnic reliability in the rich land that means it is reflected for the white this and had trouble hiring jews had rejected mexican and african-americans anyone with a left leading pass. the soviet union in to prise leaders surrounded with barbed wire fence and guarded it then they selected for political ethnic reliability they were mostly people who were ukrainian nationality so here is a classic worker pressure is an amazing koto really they did not have enough male workers of a

hired a lot of women to put the the most dangerous job at the chemical processing plants this is a more contemporary photo is still closed and will off i could never enter it. hear the soviet workers use an aerial shot this teeeight took a 1960 has francis powers was just flying over. this is one of the shots he was trying to do get of the residential quarters. had to keep workers from giving away secrets? >> in the usual ways security officials made workers side security both and had to redo them continuously and in richland they wiretapped phone, read the mail and cultivated

ranks especially in the super community recreation programs and in the schools. the kgb to a similar measures with selection, security, a surveillance they locked people in for the first tenures bank could then leave without permission to. but these words just the first circle of security ironically the men who first charged building the first nuclear weapons were concerned about school school, housing and recreational programs and health care. more so than the chemical processing plants in the nuclear reactors. they wanted to make sure they kept the workers happy the best way is to make sure they were prosperous and lived a the life.

prosperity also ventured a good measure of control. also to remind people to keep quiet there is a russian version i do not even need to translate it is exactly the same as the american one. here is richland again but post suburb 1943. the country's first straight ball comes from richland with the militarization of the landscape so much of that comes during this wertheim model city. people called it the gold coast the federal government owned all the property property, dupont and then general electric managed for

the federal government and they hired an architect to design a series of standards and houses that were reproduced also the shopping centers and the residential development then dupont built and ran the town the only hospital in the entire region the only residents could go to. they selected businesses through the application process then gave them the monopoly. one man's clothing store but to make sure they did not couch they would set prices to make sure they were not overcharging the absence of any tax revenue g allocated federal funds for schools, the public's, hospital, bus service they paid no local taxes and were paid 30 percent more and local said this is socialism it is

fascism but the people who live there did not mind. they loved it and they really loved the housing that they could rent for $35 a month a freestanding house that look like somebody in management with live in and that was terrific. here are few pitchers. everybody says it was a great place to grow up. once it was finished he would rented about $35 a month you had to be white to work in the plant if you were a minority to do construction work or janitorial work you could not live in the town only across the river only in the

ghetto of a town called pasco. you could rent this shack for $100 per month. my mom used to say it is expensive to be pork. so while all the towns had this prosperity here is downtown pasco was going bust in the '50s. but richland really boomed with the federal funds. the pride in their town inspired irrational love for the bomb. today their mascot is still called the bombers and they have a mushroom cloud as their logo. how the locals call them the

chocolate eaters because they got special rations of chocolate and sausage that was to the no radiation from the body out chocolate was an unbelievable luxury in the postwar period in the soviet union by the early '50s presidents had more than chocolate but really nice housing, a private apartments, a city built designed by leningrad architects of the theater theater, recreational centers, a grade schools, paid 15 percent more than everybody else and best of our -- best of all shops that were like the best shops of moscow. one woman said we had in the

stores everything from crab to caviar. and stocked stores for the unbelievable luxury at the time. they had a yacht club. even preschools had indoor swimming pools. it was unbelievable but this is how most people in russia but especially in siberia in the nearby steel town lines formed at 2:00 in the morning for bread and they would still be there the next morning. people would live in the basement dugout and the

local settlement around ozersk had utilitarian names like asbestos. so for many people who arrived in these towns that have lived in the interior of writing in the "plutopia" was like winning the golden ticket that a person had arrived in the material comfort and prosperity they had never expected to achieve in their lifetime. interview her remembers his childhood in the new mexico mining town of company tenements and when dupont true to his family into exactly this house, a two-bedroom plywood house house, his mother cried tears of joy and had never

lived with appliances are plumbing or so new or clean and ralph said his father were riddled time that the plant would shut down in he would lose his job, the supply of plutonium would be lost if he would lose his job for somebody would do something wrong or if he misbehaved and high-school he would lose his job. everybody knew if you lost your job at the point you had one week to get out of tel. -- talent he also understood with his skills could he supports his family so well so the real fear was losing their place of their own special garden of eden. the same thing in the soviet

union. if you would be dip your wife or got drunk you would be pulled before the party meeting in threaded with the eviction for good your kid misbehaved in school or dressed like old as presley then the kid was sent off to boarding school never to return home to his parents. there was a major accident a big explosion at the soviet plant a visible accident people turned in the party carting quit their jobs and left but they found this correspondence to months later they said we were stupid. please take us back we cannot live out here. of even with their health on

the line they decided to go for this consumer "plutopia" the build for themselves. it really took a village or a small city to produce a few kilograms necessary for a nuclear bomb. richland got the all-american city award and ozersk got the prize of the best socialist city it was off the map but they said it was a suburb. they are very desirable places to live. but the funny thing is, amidst the comfort and abundance to engineers and scientists were quietly contaminating the surrounding landscape with tons of radioactive waste. wanting to know about attorney processing, it is

the messiest step on the assembly line of nuclear arms production. you need 100 tons of uranium you bathe it through a series of very toxic chemical bath to get it down to 1 kilogram in about 70 kgs for a bomb. each place produced hundreds and thousands of gallons of nuclear waste. one dixie cup in this room we would be dead and so would everybody across the street. extremely toxic. because they control the territory around these places, and nobody learned about the spread of the contamination until after chernobyl. also they did not learn about the health effects or

the monetary they were secretly doing as a dumping was going on. who was just a target. they were practicing. here are some aerial shots. that is the columbia river. originally they were very secretive they did monitor for radioactive waste to see how much was wear but they did it secretly. these guys are within the zone nobody can get in but on the rangers' farm they would dress as cowboys then they would rankle the sheep with the counter up to the thyroid to measure the radioactive iodine to say this just helps your sheep intel the locals.

they would write in classified documents the biggest fear was not a danger from exposure to radioactive waste but danger from exposure to public hysteria. that was the real threat. to change the language to make it about people but not a public health issue but a public-relations issue. as security agents took secrecy farther they be and the city and took off the map entirely. also they had an annual safety exhibit with a door prize to talk about the safety and there is a bunch of lakes and they check everything off the map they also began to the word from being spoken in the town and they had to guess that they

were making bombs for the most part. also with the dumping in 1949 they had run out of the big underground waste tanks they just ran at a space so they had to stop production to figure out what to do. either bury it or put in the river to let somebody else deal with it. they had a little river between 1949 in 51 they dumped 3.2 million into this river it did that tell the people who lived down river who had no wells. they drank from the river river, bathe and fish in water by stocking the crops.

the children are dangerous sources for themselves because they were high levels but the official story is it yet in the official report from hanford nobody died from radiation at the plant but strangely enough i found two cases one man with two autopsies. one guy fell ill at working with home plate on the couch and dido wife called the local ge run hospital he said he died of a heart condition. she was suspicious the fbi was around town cover co-workers came by and said

he was dosed. she was flying the body to chicago she drops the body of that cut court -- cut county courtney -- cook county coroner in he said radiation burns you can see where went into the arm the liver, kidneys they are gone. the evidence. she gets the second autopsy then did ge lawyers are on the plane within a week trying to get the corder to retract his autopsy. they did not manage to do that but they did manage to redact the information from the legal case that ensued so the wife got no compensation and more of war and they they had decreed record of no radiation deaths.

in the soviet union said workers were a big problem remember the plant was built by starving underfed prisoners. from the first day of operation the soviets had accidents a dinnertime they were dirty contaminated places to work but lots of people were working in them. but also no rubber gloves gloves, no rubber boots coming in one lab they did not have stool's soliciting on boxes of radioactive waste. it was a nightmare. within a few years, by 1951 cover prisoners come in very sec bob meeting, losing here that after that girls show up higher than 21 years old given a clean bill of health but they lose their appetite, a complaint about

extreme pain in their joints then they look so old. severe anemia and the start of -- lose their hair. the doctors to have records how much of a dose they got at work with they could detect from the the blood if a worker had been overexposed so far only given called chronic radiation syndrome from long-term exposure to low doses of radiation. these bills eventually died in their late 20s just a few years of working at the plant and 23% of those first workers come up with a chronic radiation syndrome characterized by

aging, organ failure of a severe joint pain, chronic fatigue, immune disorders and and anemia. said workers were a big problem because both countries said nuclear production is completely safe that would be alive then if you had sick workers. irrational this is would be telling its people were looking out. they solve the problem by dividing up the working class so there was an accident or dangerous ground if they needed to build new reactors are alert and dash work along the river they would send in temporary workers workers from pasco as basically jumpers to work with the dangerous ground and monitored for a couple

of months or years thin the with the fed with the possible isotopes' they adjusted and then there radiotracer so the plutonium cities presented a picture of healthy population was. it was a rush but extremely useful. the people in these towns it helped them. they were very loyal and patriotic and that in a sense was purchased by the sense they were select workers a living in the plum towns that were better than every other around doing better in education, sports, housing, and this kind of superiority

gave them a lot of confidence, a false confidence but it was the fact there lived in the towns with no indigents, no elderly the average age was 26, no unemployed, no poverty they felt they were better than everybody else and their leaders were making the right decisions because will get what a great place they give us. they love to count the average educational age, the number of appliances, everything that was better to enumerate and talk about and say things like the machines are appliances are low dash or cars are far more dangerous and people did give them a lot of protection. the people in richland drink

milk shipped from minnesota on purpose their food and there was monitored to make sure it was clean. in the soviet union they did the same thing even the gynecologist what a bore the week fetus in case there was a birth defect. floor because they did not live off the radioactive land street -- landscape. but those who drink from the radioactive river people's

came up with the symptom of the chronic radiation syndrome on top of that thyroid tumors, a rash of leukemia and infertility, heart disease and uncommonly high numbers of birth defects. they had nothing to eat from the landscape they bought almost nothing in stores if you go to the use the geiger counter testing of potatoes they sell at the side of the road ahead of people that live in the still existing villages and nervously trying to avoid eating a meal all from home grown i keep saying i'm not hungry

and it was very uncomfortable. but these communities have to live off their radioactive landscaping and it has been devastating with the public health affected but i think 7 percent of the population is designated as healthy and 45 percent of the kids have birth defects. this kid was in the hospital with an immune disorder a and there is a warehouse of a collection of the fetus's that were aborted or stillborn there is a lot of the photos but these are the kinds of kids that were born

and geneticist said already the third generation exposed to radiation would have the most problems if you can see that here. is easy to discredit these farmers they would say we are sick and especially after chernobyl they would say we think we have been undermined by the fleet of said the scientist would say no. you are not sick for radiation that is impossible. you drink it to match your inbred for you are scared but who are you going to believe? the scientist for the uneducated farmers? certainly the people who

lived in "plutopia" for a long time consider themselves more knowledgeable the of their dumb neighbors are is easy to dismiss the claims of their neighbors next door. that is an important point after the lid was blown off the place in active as started to demand our record of contamination has even then the people who lived in the towns defended them. they formed the hanford family and actively opposed the activist defending their plant in their baum provide that that was so strange they prided themselves on education but insisted on remaining ignorant of the severe contamination so

refers started the book i thought i would write about the nuclear security state and i imagined these pioneers of security send the kids through the full body scanner. who were these people? they were our pioneers all willing to do that now and i sort of a magic and a monument imagining the pat down the fathers looking nervously but the mothers handing over the urine sample but i realized there was another moment with

another set of heroes to talk about fat were these people that lived in the contaminated environments environments, have families that were devastated by elvis in the kind that were hard to figure out. yes the cancers and came after after the circulation in the digestive system in severe problems after having six kids come live earth defects coming kids that don't feel well, a chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and these people organized in the late '80s and '90s and became the down winters and groups in russia called the white ways to insist on knowing the record and they continue to insist to this day that living on the redirect of landscape is something no one should never have to do and is

shouldering the burden of our radio genetically to see is something that should be limited to them and should go no farther. i imagine the money but of people that some are pushed to log in wheelchairs' or others that carry the oxygen tank but there are people who refuse to give up in that way. one last photo to leave you i will skip the bunch of others, a school play out of one manager thousand births sadistically, hundred are bored with a birth defect. that is a very high rate. it is usually two or three. this is a special school off

-- a does a great job to illustrate how the wealthier states that produced "plutopia" they are also chronic welfare cases it is just something to consider as you move forward into the nuclear renaissance. thank you. [applause] >> how you get access to those places in russia? >> host: it was difficult. there was an archive i could working as a historian but i could not get into the town a matter how hard i tried i had connections atomic energy, the military comment as the two juniors got more

intense there is a bit of spy mania in the two suspects our americans. i rented a little tiny hot here and i lived in it. very primitive i had a well in the yolk to carry buckets of water in the wood burning stove with a very modern so far wait for it to ring and that was my contact inside the closed city to say i got one for you. i will put him in the cab and drive him out to you in and i would say great. we would meet in a third neutral location because the person who owned the hud did not want to be associated with the nefarious interviewing of witnesses. i would go to a third location.

sometimes they show up sometimes they would say i am so nervous i told them you were estonian that would take care of my accent in russian. others would just look get me and say who were you any way? i would say ashley american historian they would turn around gingko but two dozen did talk to me. mattel be amazing stories mostly because they were afraid because they had to zakat -- signed a security oath for six years but they were mad because they were sick or the grand kid was sick or something pivotal had happened they wanted the story to be known. my a story is biased those that mostly talk to me had an ax to grind. >> you went there. >> 2006. even in richland people

would not talk to me strangely enough. and they were worried about job security for years then they stopped producing plutonium in 1964 than they lived along in the industrialization but then the best job security is the half life of plutonium which is 24,000 years so when did billion dollars so far for the cleanup. >> things are leaking? >> very high level waste plants are leaking it is a terrible mess. >> cleanup jobs are great jobs. >> they will have to look after that site 240,000 years. >> on an individual basis it is the same complement of people that say radiation

you can get a certain amount in there is tolerance impermissible levels they have a language that justifies it. >> but the russian people are begging to come back? >> no. >> there seems to be a great similarity of the structural approach to the american scientist in to their counterparts in the soviet union. was there any effort to compare notes with an exchange of plants or was it completely independent? >> host: it is interesting

if you drill hole down through the middle of the earth's you did that bin. . . -- richland the revolving around each other and there is an espionage the americans were flying planes and testing the year you can read from radioactive isotopes caught in the filters in the plane's you can read that quite easily they have the signature so they could no great deal they did know what they were producing and how. the russians also had spies fifth in the united states of course, the whole entire manhattan project install a new about it before we did. they're very much in conversation and whenever the americans do something like produce a bomb if the soviets produce a bomb

americans have to produce hydrogen so of the escalation is direct. >> but with the city planning the whole approach of creatine the upper class. >> yes. the soviets had people inside what is it like in their? with the security arrangements? our people living? stolid was second in command they got that information and ask more questions then went in said i wanted just like that. a very much an american and knocked off with a gated hemlock did that is how low solid -- lowe's alamos was. >> are people not enrage

what happened to them? with terrible results. >> edward terry closely with one woman her father was a safety engineer everybody likes to talk and how they explain their cancers is there was the fogging truck because the irrigated the lot because they had a mosquito problem so the jeeps would come with the military surplus ddt in the us kids loved that smell and would run behind the truck they said it is dangerous so many years later when he is dying of thyroid cancer his wife has already died of thyroid cancer in radioactive iodine goes

almost directly and with the radioactive isotopes of mimics the functions of the body needs to drive so the plutonium goes right to the bone marrow because the body soaks up like calcium. the radioactive iodine knicks iodine than once it is there safely embedded in the organs they generate power in the energy and it creates newton cells that then become tumors and cancer by her father's of the hospital and he said there is nothing wrong with my plant against all evidence to the contrary he refuses to believe the reason why she has thyroid cancer, his wife, to read of three kids have died and his

daughter is very ill. a lot of people that live there thought their neighbors were accusing him of making them sick and they would benefit. it was a hard pill to swallow too except -- to accept the death. >> when you lived there? >> i would just go for the day or if i stayed longer my contact was a human rights lawyer who is a real hero in the story in which show up in the trunk of the cab would have several tons of marinated pork if she would say don't worry i have clean

meet in their car because i would be sitting there all day fending off through that is very rude but especially in russia with the table laid for the honored american guest this debate today in the stand the connection? >> was not saying if i will not eat your food because it is to radiated to each one day but you needed every day that one kid is funny in your other kid is funny there was a boy behind me was 30 with the vocabulary about 60 words. >> i that i will get a lot of angry people but so far this science journals have been positively reviewed that i am partisan but critical. i worked with a retired

professor who was a physicist with a degree in engineering that happen to grow up didn't richland very much a defender of richland when we met i said we will be with these documents? he was only too happy to do it and generous of his time and then by the time several years later he was drastically a conspiracy theorist did was so angry with what had happened what his town had been through. the general reception has been pretty good so far. it is only been out six months. the book is already translated into japanese and all that water rushing taking those radioactive

isotopes putting it into the ocean they say that is a big body of water it will be defused but what happens is the fish this is found in the columbia river in the 40's if they fly eight long dash swim through that concentration they soak it up by a greater concentration so the fish will have 40 percent in their body so because they're perfect mix it quickly goes up the food chain to the humans. we may be eating fish this stuff lives forever with just a little bit of radiation but with the other toxins that we take from this stuff that is put on apples, the of grass that

works sitter just agree with the radiation in my fear is the of what has already happened but in 30 years we will get to a new normal of what it means to be human biologically. higher rates of cancer led we are in an epidemic of we don't recognize it. childhood cancer was a rarity now you see kids on the bus advertising chemotherapy. we have a new norm of what we expect biologically from our bodies that will continue to do cline without review disorders, a strange and powerful allergies, people with digestive angus circulation problems. and higher rates of cancer. >> with the militarization of the landscape kid you talk more with that will

look like? >> let's start with a strip mall. that was great because you have this building with a party not all a rounded because no people have cars but if there is a crisis, a bomb threat or an accident at the play activity -- a everybody can retreat to the building in the parking lot serves as a firebreak. national defense highway which i drove on to get here, a big arteries so you could get a lot of people out of town really fast. . .

another wartime surplus was mustard gas. that's the first chemotherapy medicine effective in curing cancer. it gets a little eerie when you think about it. then one more point is that this sort of segregated landscape, where you have a community of all-white people trusted and certified and a community of other people that come in and go the -- do the dirty work and more my

grant. you think of the all-white suburb. it's highly subsidized by loans, you know, under the government underwriting loans. if you are african-american, you can't get a loan. you can't live in the all-white suburb by definition. those types of those are a product of the militarization. [inaudible] >> is it that or the -- [inaudible] as you said before, richland became, like, a southern town. there's a transplanting of jim crow and racial segregation. it may not have existed in that part of the country beforehand. so is it, you know, a militarization of civilian life, or is it, you know, [inaudible]

plain and simple like -- [inaudible] is it just a reflection a hierarchy of society of that particular time? you know, you had racial inequality all over the country, but the military you certainly had had a lot of southern -- right. >> you know, -- >> yeah. i think the pasco ghetto and -- it's more like downtown baltimore and town send; right? it's the difference between a blighted older area is no longer, you know, you can't even get a loan there anymore because it's blighted. and the new and the brand new suburb where everybody wants to live who can. that sort of kind of segregation far more than the southern sort of segregation, which is neighborhood by neighborhood and

institution by institution. that kind of spatial segregation occurred in the post war period an all over the country. not just in the south. you a question back there. >> what is your next project? >> thyme writing -- well, i'm writing a book about a guy a russian-american. he was in on this manhattan project security from the ground up. before that he fought on the russian civil war on the side of the monarchists. pretty antisemitic, very much anti-communist. he gets to the manhattan project security. he's the one -- robert. and all the student they were from east european jewish stock. he was sure he was going give the bond to the soviet. he goes with the american army to europe of it a liberation and zooming around trying to find russia, german scientist.

he meets up with the nazis using prisoners -- human subjects to test the theory in the new drug and the new all of that. he likes these guys a lot. he didn't like the other guy but he likes these guy. they start working in american lab and companies throughout the country. there's 1500 of these guys. also a lot of nazi intelligence guys come in. because they knew the soviet union they were fighting them. what you find in the post war period, what i came upon when i was writing the book, the strange uptick on testing on human subject in the united states. in the post war period. the american -- certainly not tuskegee 33 guys, a couple of hundred here, a

couple of hundred there. tens of thousands and willing and unvoluntary subjects. a lot of them are soldiers, children in war, or fan inches, people in asylum and minorities. it's an awful story. i think the guy is one of the soldiers who brings the cold war warriors, who brings the old hatred of the crumbling european empire and refreshes them to make the global-american empire. that's my next book. another happy topic. >> this is great. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> and hopefully in a better soil than -- [inaudible] [laughter]

let hope for the best. test it out and come back and let us know how it worked out. thank you. she'll be here to sign, for those of you who haven't purchased the book yet. consider purchasing it from us. thank you, again, for coming. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] you're watching booktv, non-fiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. why does it matter? it matters because world war ii literally shape the world we live in today. it preserved, what is easy to forget this. it sounds like a cliche, it preserved the world for democracy. world war i, which we're going mention in a moment, had the slogan that woodrow wilson

called making the world safe for democracy. it didn't work out that way. it made the world ready for yet another war. in this case, if the access had gained more mom tument, they might well have snuffed out the largest democratic society in the world. that's one element of it. it also ended the depression. the new deal had failed to do that, despite strenuous attempts, but the start of large expenditure in may of 1940, is what finally started putting the depression to bed. from that point on, the economy grew by leap and bounds because of the war effort. in doing that, it put a whole generation of unemployed american back to work and then some. a lot of people who had never worked. when we talk about sacrifice, which we will in a couple of

minutes, it's an iranic -- ironic thing that war made a lot of americans much better off than they had been in the past, if at all. because they had gone through some -- a lot of them had gone through some very hard time. it created all kind of modern institutions. everything from the tax system to social security, which was on the books then, but which was in effect, nailed down during the war. it created what we know call the industrial military complex, and it created literally the american military. if that is the way that this war turned out, nobody saw this pretty much at the beginning. that is where this story starts. i want to make two or three basic points that really govern where the book went.

the first -- excuse me, the first of these, is that there's really two eras that we're talking about here. they are very, very different. the first one, which we call "preparedness" begins when hitler invaded poll land and goes to pearl harbor. the 27-months is the most difficult time of all. we are not in the war. we don't want to be in the war, we want to, in many cases, pretended we have nothing do with the war. i'll explain why in a moment. as a result, it was very difficult to get america to start mobilizing its defenses. so this period is full of conflicts, disputes, denials, and so forth. the second point is that one of the reasons why you have this

kind of difference is the legacy of world war i. the end of world war i left a very bad taste in american's mouths. it didn't come out the way it was supposed to. the idealism got crushed. it ended up with very cynical treaty of versailles that set the stage for world war ii. you did not -- there's that old tom leahr joke we beat the germans and they have hardly bothered us sense. they have bothered us since. more important for americans was how the war ended at home. number one -- we sometimes forget this, on the tail end of the war came the worst epidemic in modern history, the great flue epidemic which killed over 20 million people world war wide. quite a number of american. that was just sort of a side

car. number two, the american economy had ramped up to produce armaments for the war. ironically, most of the armaments never got in the war. when we went to the war in april of 1917, we used mostly european weapons. for example, we started building airplanes, the same -- not a single one got the war. not a single american tank got to the war. the hand grenades we bought from the british. by that point, 1918 we had the largest armament industry in the world. almost immediately after the armtists and the end of the war, the government started canceling contracts. when i say canceling, i mean, just like this. without warning, they pulled them. factories were left, you know, literally with production lines

half full. thousand of workers were let go without warning. a state like connecticut really felt this. it had so many of these kinds of plants, and companies were left with buildings, factories, plants they had built to produce armaments. well, they said, you have to do something for us. what are we going do with the buildings and the machinery and so forth? at the very least give us some kind of tax credit so we can carry these in case they are ever needed again. government wouldn't do it. and the result was that in almost every case, these companies, everybody from remmington arms to you name it, simplier to down the factories. gutted them because they didn't want to carry the expense of them. the result was by the time you get to 1939, we have no armaments industry. so when the war breaks out in

europe, we're in very pitiful shape. the u.s. army is something like 28th in the world. when it went on maneuvers in 1940, which were kind of a farce, "time" magazine said that after looking at these, it appeared as if they might give a good battle to a group of boy scouts and not much more. all of this coupled with the scandals that emerged after the 20s and the '30s over munitions contracts, bankers, they're developed as whole idea which became very popular that the war had been brought on by the bankers and the munitions manufacturers simply for profits. and that weighed very heavily. so when it came time in the

1939-'40 period to talk about mobilizing preparedness, one of the themes was we're not going to make another generation of instant millionaires. franklin roosevelt was very sensitive to this. he obviously, had his conflict with the business community. he wasn't about to threat -- let that happen, but at the same time, he to get this process moving, and so that was one of his many data -- dilemma with the innovation of poland. you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. next josh blackman taking a behind-the-scenes look at obamacare. this is about an hour and a half.