world >> the short answer is i'm not qualified to answer that question because i don't know a lot about israeli politics. off the top of my head my guess would be that given the intensity of that conflict, the palestinian conflict and how long it's gone on i am always kind of surprised by the degree to which the israelis have been able to maintain the quality of their democracy and the degree to which although their security services often engage in quite a lot of violence against some of the palestinian community is impressive to me frankly how hard they worked to keep that in balance and how much that troubles them compared for example to the way our country reacted to 9/11. so i wonder if that aspect and not that i'm praising israeli

policy in the palestinian question by taking a position because i'm not qualified to judge it but i'm just saying in the context of that conflict the degree to which they have been able to preserve democratic values is impressive to me. it wouldn't surprise me if they desire not to emulate their persecutors might have played a role but i'm purely speculating because i know very little about israel. it's a fascinating question but one unfortunately i can't give a very intelligent answer to. >> when i was 25 years old i realize for complex reasons i could have easily gotten a ticket to dachau and i wonder if there's not an existential question bedrock in your book an argument that there's basically no biological difference between the germans of those days and all the rest of us and ultimately how many of us in this room have been in germany during the same cultural pressures particularly if we had been young in the 30s would

have done anything different? very few of us really could be heroes were martyrs and if the germans -- meant we were lucky to have lived in a better culture. we are all humans. >> i could spend two hours unpacking your questions because it's so good and so on the money. that's not a complaint. i'm just trying to think about how i can answer briefly. the question, is there something uniquely damaged about the germans is kind of the central question that has been studied by people who specialize in german history ever since the second world war. around the middle of the 1990s after trying this variant that. the other theory we kind of gave up and had to admit what common sense should have told us that they are human like us. there is no such thing as a german brain. they don't have the genetic predisposition to genocide. there remain stereotypes about the german such as players especially obedient which i think is nonsense based on a

reading of their history but you raise this question of if we were put back in that time and place we would not be ourselves. we would be someone else. i guess the bedrock conclusion that i arrived at about human beings is ultimately the hardest thing about studying the holocaust and i think the reason why it has taken so long for a book like might have been written even though the research was there to write it 20 years ago we don't want to pull everything together and look at square on because we are afraid we are going to learn about ourselves. and maybe it was easier for me to study this because i have i spent an optimist. i believe in people so it's -- i was never so worried about that. but i guess the end of my rambling answer is i think the worst thing i learned about human beings is not that we are evil in any essential sense that we are completely malleable by her circumstances.

we take anything and regardless what genetic material or family background that person has you armed them, you raise them at the wrong experiences and indoctrinate them with the wrong ideas and put them in the wrong circumstances you can make them do absolutely anything. you can see this as effectively the shadow side an unfortunate sign something that has otherwise been very positive across the history of humanity and that we are extremely adaptable. not to want to sound pollyanna but as we are adaptable to it we are adaptable to moral progress which has been demonstrated in many ways. thank you for your marvelous question. >> this question is a complex question and potentially a controversial question. i am from that caribbean.

i find, i must say i think it's quite important trying to bring about integrated social science to a complex issue instead of trying to answer it in a total sense. but to call the holocaust for example like being -- people being brought to the west as slaves. the slaughter of native americans, american indians. for i am from the wiping away of caribbean young people simply wiping them away because when the white man showed up they said the white man had no weapons. that is the first basis of the question. the problem of deciding is a more unique than other

slaughters. if it's unique. >> sir the question you raise is so huge and so important i would like to try to answer that and let other people as their questions. i think you know what do i mean what i say unique? this is hugely and hotly-debated in all kinds of different contexts. and part of the problem is when you use the word unique, and especially i guess when you use it in the way that i have used its people sort of feel you are automatically saying the holocaust is worse than the suffering of the jewish people was more terrible, that these victims were more important of those victims. at genocide conference as this is one of the bad things about writing a book like this, you get to go to genocide conference is which is kind of an experience that i think most of you would be happy to avoid. and you know, i'm not in any way saying they are worse.

i am saying the holocaust is different from every other episode in history and the specific dimension that is in the way confronts us with existential questions and because of that i think that is why we give it a particular kind of important and why it frightens us. but it does not in any way suggest that the holocaust is inherently more terrible than the armenian or cambodian genocide or the atlantic slave trade and slavery area that is a comparison by the way that has sort of simmer below the surface of american politics from time to time it has been a source of much contention. the short answer is you can't compare them because these phenomena are so vastly different but ultimately when we are getting to the question of what is worse or what is more terrible or what is more important, you are ultimately getting to a value judgment that is completely subjective. you can make for example the case that slavery because of the

lasting damage is done in our society and the persistence of racism today, the suffering of so many people across centuries you can argue that slavery hurt more people are grievously and did more damage in that sense it's worse. i'm not taking that position. i'm simply demonstrating that this is a subjective value judgment. to circle back to respond to the gentleman's question, i am not really saying that the holocaust was worse. unique is altogether an unfortunate term. i'm just using it as a shorthand for the fact that i think we see it as being somehow in a category by itself and i think i'm correct in making that assertion. yes, the gentleman on the right. >> yes could you comment on the unique role of ideology, specifically daniel guggenheim that germans have not biologically in particular to

develop a unique strand of anti-semitism that was so very want that it can be called exterminate or a and was assured by others? >> yeah the gentleman refers to a very controversial and also a very popular successful book in 1996. hitler's executioners. it was based on his ph.d. thesis in and political science at harvard and the book is exceptionally well-written with a lot of passion and makes a forceful argument. i think this goes a long way to accounting for its extraordinary popularity. the problem however is that the arguments of the book just do not fly. and let me -- not the gentleman has alluded to them and there are really two central contentions that he makes in his book. the first is that the holocaust

happened in germany as opposed to some other country because german anti-semitism was unique and uniquely terrible and not like anti-semitism in any other country. the problem is goldhagen made no meaningful comparison to anti-semitism in any other country and this is really a no-no. this is kind of social science 101. you don't make a claim that this country, germany the united states france belgium whatever come is unique and mike every other country in some important way much you compare that country to a lot of other countries. and even worse for his argument had he done so he quickly would have seen something that historians of anti-semitism can tell you right off the bat which is that pretty clearly in anti-semitism was far more widespread deeply-rooted and violent in eastern europe and on the territory of the soviet

union that was in germany during the first few decades of the 20th century. so the second major contention of that book is that virtually the entire, the overwhelming majority of german society subscribe to this fear lent so-called elimination is to anti-semitism and actively approved of the holocaust, that they all basically agreed that the jews should be killed because the jews ought to die it flies in the face of a huge amount of evidence that shows us is like every other society german society on an important question like this there was a huge variation and the character and the intensity of anti-semitic sentiment that homicidal anti-semitism of the

most committed committed not thesis something they are shared by only 100 or 200,000 people at the mouse and the best evidence we have is that the overwhelming majority of the german people were not actively approving of genocide or persecution but that they were just indifferent. there was also the conclusion my chapter that addresses the german people's knowledge of the holocaust. the difference is indeed morally disgusting but the causal factor if the causal analysis is fundamentally different from approval. for this reason for many others the great majority of academic historians modern germany and the holocaust had taken a public position on this book have condemned it or at any rate criticized a very harshly. summing up i have to say it's a really bad book. you know he is a very smart guy. i find a lot to admire in him and yet it took a lot of guts

for him to take this on certainly in his career and he has published three books since then there were better received. but this first book was not his finest hour and it's very misleading. i think we have time for one more question. yes maam. >> you did not approve of the book hitler's willing executioners. however the german people did go along. the masses of people you would see in the movie of the heil hitler and the hysteria and everything. want to ask you where question. germany was unified always. they didn't allow a lot of people and. is there a romanticism and by romanticism i don't mean loving kindness and goodness i mean irrationality to the german aspect that could possibly add into this? am i completely berserk in thinking this way? >> man, clearly from your posture and conduct and tone of

voice you are clearly not berserk so we can discard that. man you are in very good company of thinking this. the number of stereotypes about the german mentality that germans think differently in the think differently and the germans feel differently from us, their culture is different and so on and so forth, these stereotypes proliferated like lead since the end of the second world war. an awful lot of people subscribed to them and the thing is there are two problems i find with them. one is -- actually three. one is even a people claim to be talking about culture they are really talking about psychology and all human beings have the same brain and i don't believe german psychologist different than american psychology. secondly there is no appear to evidence for these theories. germans had particularly harsh toilet training practices and are therefore violent.

when there freudians get into the act you really have to watch out and so on but the biggest problem i have with these theories is they'll were invented after the second world war or after they became aware of the holocaust. i think they reflect not observable differences between the germans and their neighbors. they reflect an understandable desire to push the holocaust away from ourselves and to say this is not a human problem. it's a german problem. i could not do this because i'm not german. that is i think the agenda there so thank you very much for the question. i have time for my concluding remarks. i want to conclude by posing the question, some of you touched on it within your question which is what does the holocaust say about us because after all the perpetrators as best we can tell and a very great majority were completely normal psychologically. most of these men in fact, most of them were men but not all are highly functioning individuals,

well-educated, successful in their careers, loving husbands and fathers rape in their psychological and emotional cognitive equipment, they did not differ by one iota from the people here in this room. and yet they did this. what does that say about us? this fact has inspired over the years an enormous amount of pessimism about humanity, about human nature about our capacity for progress. and the main thought i want to leave you with is that i just want to say that i think to embrace this kind of pessimism is a terrible terrible mistake. we need to remember that it was not enough for one thing to go wrong to cause the holocaust. there were two or three or half dozen. the holocaust had by my count give or take about a dozen causes and they came together in a way that obviously was possible and it was possible

because it happened. but it was not predictable and it was probably an extreme. the holocaust was about as an unlikely historical event can be and yet still happen. consequently i think that you draw from this exceptional event some generalizations about who we are and what we can do. it's a grave error. now i realize i present you with a very sweeping claim and in my presentation today i certainly have not provided you with adequate evidence to support this claim. the evidence is the book. it's the reason for you to go out and buy it. so in conclusion, there are two things i want from you. two things that i hope you will get from reading my book. one, i hope and i rather expect that after you have read my book you both feel with some confidence that you understand why this happened and this is not a mystery to you anymore the

way it has been for all of us for so long. and secondly i hope that you will come to see the holocaust and what i believe is the proper historical perspective. yes it's quite possibly the most terrifying thing we have ever done and at least some interpretation the moral for history and the something we must always keep good in our memory. but not as our destiny. and not ever as an excuse. much less as a valid reason for pessimism about the future of humanity. i thank you very much for listening. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

booktv sat down with hillary clinton in little rock to discuss her newest book hard choices. >> i have learned the secretary of state to expect that unexpected. no one expected the so-called arab spring until it was upon us and we have to learn to be agile and ready for the unexpected. while we try to build the world that we want, especially for children and now for my future grandchild, but we have got to be aware of the fact that all these other countries, all these billions of people, they are made in hard choices every single day. we have to be ready for that because i'm absolutely convinced that we