from peer reviewed studies in part because of the politicization of agricultural science and also because moist research is not out in the real world. it's done in labs, so that you don't see how a whole system operates, and the same way we'll really not get at our challenges by looking at each one separately. in other words, we can't over here, say, we'll deal with biodiversity loss and be competing with other institutions that are dealing with climate change and floods and droughts and all those other things. no, the way we're going to really, really address these challenges is by looking at the whole system, asking questions like, how, how does nature work and how, what might we learn from that and, by, looking at

systems as a whole in the context of social and economic circumstances. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> we'll do that right now. >> hi, everyone, i think we're ready to get started. welcome to politics&pros. my name is emily, i'm a manager here at the bookstore. before we get to the good stuff, so can you silent the cell phones and be in this moment together and be present. that would be wonderful. because we are i am inning with booktv, if you have questions after the talk, if you use the microphone right here. only way to capture sound for the audience not present with us today. don't raise your hand. definitely to to the mic. it helps a lot. if you're not familiar of us we do author events a year.

if you enjoy this event, check a out the events calendar at information desk. see what events are coming up. we have events through december 8th. thank you very much. i'm excited to welcome nina wilner to politics&prose today. she has worked in russia and eastern europe, promoting human rights and children's causes for the u.s. government, non-profit organizations and variety of organizations. in forty autumns" through other history. she tell as story of three generations of indomitable women and tell as picture of totalitarian regime. they write it's a powerful addition to the genre. economist east germany over four decades and how reforms affected

individual lives. please welcome me well -- join e in welcoming nina wilner. [applause] >> thank you, emily. thank you, politics & prose, thanks for joining me today. what is essentially my book launch. i appreciate all of you taking the time out to -- >> can't hear back here.e. >> is this on? is the mic on? [inaudible] >> okay. i can speak up. does that work? okay. there we go. i think that's it. so, again thank you all for being here today. to share this day which marks a culmination of quite a journey for me. before i get started, i would just like to mention a few people with us today..

lt. general tom griffin who, among other postings in his remarkable career, with commander of berlin in the 1980s, when i was posted to berlin. friends, colleagues who are here today. dr. hope harrison, who is one of the leading scholars on east germany and the cold war and i'm honored that she agreed to be the historian for my project. my family, including my mother, who my mother hannah, who at the age of 20 escaped from east germany and ran to freedom, eventually coming to america. and without her courage i of course would not be here tellina you this story today. so, "40 autumns" what is the book about? what happened to my family during the cold war, my mother's escape from communist east's germany, to the family she left behind, large family, mother, father, eight siblings essentially trapped into a prison country.

my going into east germany as am young american intelligence officer and leading operations on soviet territory in east berlin. the story is set in the bigger picture, bigger picture of the framework cold war story. epic clash of soviet americann struggle in the space race and nuclear arms race and conflicts that raged around the world at times. tensions boarded on the brink of nuclear war. within that story is, my family, forcibly separated for 40 years, never knowing if they would ever see each other again. so, i'd like to start off with a little bit of background and put us on the map. i don't actually have a mape today but there are maps in the book. so at the end of world war ii, 1945, soviets, western allies, canadians, brits, french have defeated the nazis and making their way throughout germany tog liberate the country. the americans are first to arrive in a tiny village where

my mother hannah, a teenager at the time, her parents, and her siblings live. the americans stay for a short while but then explain to the villagers that the country has been divided. the west, the west will be administered by the western allies, the east by the soviets. the american sergeant tells thet villagers falls in the east.rg the americans explain they can take one or two villagers withhe them in the west but no one in the village wants to break up their families. oma, my grandmother hearing stories that the soviets are raping german women as they make their way through the country, forces her oldest daughter, my mother, hannah, 17 years old to leave with the americans who are headed westward. several miles down the road hannah catapults herself over side of the truck and goes running back home to her family. the next day the soviets arrive.

so germany is essentially divided into two halves. the western allies take control of what becomes west germany. the soviets occupy the eastern half of the country that becomes east germany. deep inside of east germany, 110 miles inside of east germany is berlin, which just like germany itself divided into two halves. west berlin run by the western allies, east berlin bit soviets. west berlin is tiny island of democracy and freedom completely encircledded by communist territory.ly the east become as police state based on communist authoritarianism. one party communist dictatorship based on the modeled on the soviet union and ministry for state security known as theorshb stasi, secret police, is modeled on the soviet kgb, basically forces the population into submission through fear and intimidation. on the other side, the west is

administered by the nato allies and is based on democracy and freedom. as the marshall plan begins to develop the west the soviets strip the east.gi everything from railroad tracks to farm machinery to toilets, even doorknobs. entire cities and towns are gutted. whole factories are dismantled to be reassembled in the soviet union. food is to be turned into and divided equally among the people is either slow to happen or doesn't happen at all. the communist authoritiesis confiscate private land, private property, and soviets and communist germans impose rules which essentially amount to conform or you're an enemy of the state. words against the regime are enough to have anyone intear interrogated or imprisoned. my mother as village? swhaneneburg, they occupy the

village soviet army comes asas friends and brothers to help build a new germany. but they follow that all food to be relinquished to the soviet command immediately. anyone found hoarding food for himself or his family will be shot. anyone who attack as soviet soldier will be shot and so on so an intense propaganda campaign ensues and more laws are instituted. communist regime takes over society, outlawing religion, media and all forms of information. even trying to broadcast or jam broadcast signals coming from the west. i would like to share a little vignette from the book that illustrates the kind of things happening at this time in east germany. so at this point my mother, my mother lived for a short time in

the border town, which is a border town with west germany. so east and west with her grand that's father. because it was a border town the authorities often afraid it would be easy, quick access for people to make a break. so in sabenow, the authorities kept a close eye on young people. were curfews were enforced, started before sunrise and well before dawn. punishment of those having knowledge of an escape and failed to report it. words against the regime were enough to have person escorted to the seven yesterday headquarters. mft sovie a converted stable where they were interrogated and hauled to prison. took some longer than others to get the message. during a day at school they were milling about in hahn gnaw's

classroom, this boy dieter had tendency to talk too much went too far. how can they teach us this slop, dieter scoffed. teaching us stalin the great leader. two years ago the teacher was teaching stalin was great demond with his tongue out. as he other boys guffawed and he approached the boys by the scruff and hauled out of class. dieter was not seen again. and so tens of thousands of people like dieter were sent to jail and hundreds would be executed. while many were able to flee east germany, in the first years, first five years it becomes harder as east germany fortifies its border with the west and border guards are given orders to shoot to kill. so while food is many coulding into west germany, in the east

people go hungry. my mother hannah tells a story of being sent to work in the fields pulling carrots and being so hungry but she doesn't evenen eat a single carrot for fear someone will see her eating unauthorized food and she will be shot. in the village two girls set out cardboard sign, saying dear communist party, please give fused. not the image that soviets want to portray. they haul the girls off to prison. i know this story having interviewed one of the girls who served year-and-a-half in jail for that offense. in swan menburg, opa, my grandfather is a village teacher who is required to teach soviet doctrine, marxist theory and even russian language which he learns the night before teaching it the next day. oma, my grandmother tries to cope, urging her children to lay

low, follow the rules and not attract undue at attention. the children join young pioneers. hannah's closest sibling, her older brother signs up to be a a tiefer in the communist system. hannah see what is is going on all around her and has no intention of conforming. almost all connections between east and west are severed. there is currency division between east and west. inside of east germany that sees things getting more dire. raises her concerns to her grandfather. he takes her out where the rail lines going toward the west have been pulled up. and are gone. and he tells her if you want ton get out, if you want to get out, do it soon. in less than a year this place will be one big prison. so she makes several attempts at escape. once with her grandfather's help. once she is shot at by soviet soldier.

twice she is dragged back into the east and third time she makes it. and it's this escape that sets into motion the story. a journey which launches our family through the next 40 years, through the cold war.is p so over the next 40 years we learn very little about theold a family in the east. we're able to exchange a few letters but learn very little what was happening in their lives.wh the most we in the west actually knew at all was east germany was a bleak, reclusive police state that had an appalling human rights record and imprisoned its citizens. in shwanberg, my opa, principled man with a short fuse, can't help but speak up when he sees injustices all around him. even writes a letter to the east german leader speaking on behalf of the farmers suggesting a compromise between the new laws of collectivization and what the

farmers want which is to keep some of their land. well that didn't go over too well. so, now besides being father of a criminal, because he, he is associated with, because his daughter has escaped, he is on the authorities watch list as being a troublemaker and branded politically unreliable. so when ordered to keep his place in society i works hard to prove himself to the authorities. and he joins the communist party.f and one year after hannah has fled to the west, another child, little heidi, the ninth and last child, in the family is born. oma pleads with the authorities to be able to go see her daughter hannah in the west, and after many rejections the authorities finally agree to it but under the conditions that oma will spy on hannah, who is now working for the americans at the u.s. army military headquarters in heidelberg, west

germany. oma is allowed to takeny five-year-old heidi who will meet hannah for the first time. this as it turns out will be the only time the two will ever meet in those 40 years. it's a brief but powerful meeting and heidi grows up idolizing her sister who escaped. so much so as an adult, she never joins the communist partyu in the book i describe how heidi managed with the results of that decision. so, in the ice the secret police intensify their control and manipulation of the population of east germany's 18 million citizens, perfecting methods of penetrating every aspect of a person's life, reading their mail, listening in on conversations, tracking movements, gathering compromising details in the attempt to learn people's weaknesses so that can be exploited. in the book i talk about how the stasi tries to get the family to

inform on each other and sends my grandparents to the west on a second spy mission to find out about hannah's work and her new husband, my father, eddie, who is the u.s. army intelligence officer stationed at the heidelberg headquarters. and this is, by the way my last time my mother will see her parents. in the east the stasi ramps up the use of informants, using its own citizens to work as spies e who report on share neighbors, classmates, colleagues, teachers, even their own family thmbers.s. the program is a success because no one can be trusted and no one knows who the informants are. it could be your friend, the person you share an office with, a teammate on the sports team, the janitor in your apartment complex. the program of using informants would have eventually have one in six east germans informing on their fellow citizens. one interesting story, from a man who is former east german

and today a historian, well-known historian in germany tells the story of after the wall fell in the early 1990s, he was having a conversation with a former stasi agent and he said, i think i would have known if you had sent someone to spy on me. the stasi man answered, we didn't need to send anyone. these were people who surrounded you. and in fact when he got his stasi file, two of his best friends had reported on him. so all this is to say that this became a way of life. and this is how life normalized for the people of east germany. people learn to adapt, self-sensor their thoughts, and this just become as way of survival. as my aunt told me, we survived by following rules, staying below the stasi radar and not could not fronting the system. so in 1953 there is an up rising in east germany.

workers protest living and working conditions and demonstrate for basic humaner rights and for reform and for freedom. but the red army moves in with tanks and crushes the rebellion. hundreds are killed. 10 of thousands are arrested for their role in participating. some 100 organizers are executed.. and along with around 20 soviet soldiers who are executed for refusing to shoot demonstratorso and now the secret police tells the leadership, tells the secret police to do whatever is necessary to make sure an uprising never happens again. by the 1960s, some 3 million, around 1/6 of the population has fled and the regime decides that the time has come to do something to stop the hemorrhaging of its labor force. if they don't want to see their country collapse all together.

the border between east and west germany is secured, in berlin, due to interconnected nate tush of the city people are able to s escape into west berlin. by now there are rumors that regime plans some day build a structure, a wall, to permanently separate west berlin from the east, thus cutting off the last hope of escape. by the early 1960s, 2000 east germans a day are fleeing into west berlin. the east german leader tries to quell the surge of escapes going on the airwaves saying, this is a quote, no one has inintension of building a wall -- intention building a wall. but one month later that is exactly what he does. what starts as barbed-wire and brick wall becomes 12-foot high, three feet thick, rounded wall top to prevent grasping, wire america, elect call fencing is installed, tripwires,

searchlights and a death strip, 100-yard wide gauntlet of carefully raked sand which makes it easy to spot the foot prints of escapees. the wall stretches over 100 miles, completely encircling berlin and seals the country. one year later in 1962, to my grandparents, especially my opa's great disappointment, his youngest son, my uncle kai, isrded to be a border guard to serve at berlin wall. between the building of the wall in 1961 and the fall of the wall in 1989, almost 10050 people would be shot trying -- 150 people are shot trying to escape. 1,000 others are killed trying to cross the border elsewhere or drowning in the baltic sea or the berlin river. the berlin wall is built to keep the people in but the east german leadership tells its

people the wall is built to keep subversives out, subversives from the west out but the family in the east knows it. although some east germans might be fooled, millions of others know exactly why the wall was built. milli so by now oma, my grandmother has built a wall of her own. even gives it a name, the family wall.. so i just like to read another excerpt from the book.th the safe haven that she had begun to create the day theavene soviets stepped foot ino sheltee shwanberg to shelter from the suffocation of the regime now had a name. she declared the family wall a sanctuary. they would preserve their souls by keeping the good in and the bad out.by the children followed oma's lead and the concept took hold. inside the family wall the children let down their guard. as the fabric of east german

society began to fray under the yoke of an orwellian climate ofb oppression, families wondered whether or not they could trust their spouses parents or o siblings, oma demanded family trust and loyalty. behind closed doors to opa, oma insisted that they foster the idea of the family wall if they were to have any chance against a regime out to crush the spirit of its people. so the cold war rages on. the space race takes off. the nuclear arms race continues, with both the soviet union and u.s. building their nuclear arsenals. major world tensions pit communism and democracy against one another. president kennedy and soviet leader crew chef go head-to-head in various conflicts. khrushchev eventually says to the west, we wilbury you. after the wall is built, east germany ace reputation, already

at a low, plummets. in an effort to upgrade its image the regime launch as sports program likes of which never seen in history at all. suddenly the tiny country of east germany is producing extraordinary athletes. the country's reputation goes up for a while, the world stopping to watch every time an eastio german shatters a record at world competitions and at the olympics. but then it is discovered that east germany is doping its top athletes. back in shwaneberg, opa speaks up against the regime, chalks up more black marks and pays the price for his belligerence. he is denounced, marginalized from society, kicked out of the communist party and banished to a remote area in east germany. even sent for a time to an insane asylum where he has to undergo reeducation training. the family makes its way in the system.

most of the children grow up to become teachers. they lived their lives by following the rules, following the laws. trying to preserve their self-dignity and trying to live a life of meaning in thistr restricted environment. hide i did, the little sister grows up. she and her husband both do not join the communist party and suffer the consequences especially professionally. but they also create a sort of little secret hideaway, sort of a magical place with a flower garden that becomes a kind of a refuge they escape emotional stresses of society. paradise bungalow they call it, become as tiny oasis of freedom and life energy. i won't rouge that story for you. you will have to read that one. in the 1970s, in america, mostly in falls church, my mother and father raised six children and we lived a very comfortable life in the land of freedom and

opportunity. in the east heidi has an 8-year-old daughter who is an athletic dynamo. she catches the eye of sports talent scouts for incredible athletic ability. she is immediately swept up into the german, east german sports program. then in 1978, in the u.s., my brother albert, who is with us today as well, is an 18-year-old college sophomore on summer break. goes on a backpacking trip toea west germany. and, unbeknownst to any of us, my parents as well, slips into east germany to meet the family behind the iron curtain. so another amazing story i won't spoil for you. in the 1980s, the soviet union has a reform-minded leader, mikhail gorbachev. we have ronald reagan and theea two worked to improve relations. by the time i arrive in berlin

in the early 1980s as young u.s. army intelligence officer, the red army has 20 divisions facing the west. it is the height of the cold war and berlin is a hotbed of intelligence activity, now called the spy capital of the world. all sorts of intelligence activity on both sides of the berlin wall are being employed and i was given the job of leading intelligence collection missions into east berlin where we went into the east in teams of two to spy on the soviets. in the book i share a little bit about the teams that did this work, the risk and dangers that came with the job including car chases, detentions, aggressive actions on the parts of the soviets and east germans who were targeting us constantly. stasi archive researchers were even able to come up with photos of my operations, of stasi agents surveilling me and my teams. those pictures are also in theos

book. incredibly while i was working in east berlin, my cousin cordula, who by then had become, had been swept up in the intense world of east german sports, had become a member of the east german olympic training team in women's cycling and was training racing around avello dream in east berlin at same time i was crossing through check point charlie a couple miles away orha conducting operations. we didn't know that until the wall fell. we were able to figure that out. in the book i also tell the story of some very brave souls, not related to family. major arthur nicholson, who i worked with, who is buried atil arlington national cemetery today, shot and killed in 1985 by a soviet century on an mission in east germany. major nicholson became the last casualty of the cold war.

i also spoke to family members and some who were killed trying to escape.sp family members of people trying to, who were killed trying to escape. i also tell the story of political prisoners that i interviewed and about a few dissidents who tried to speak up, for the rights of all. i also spoke to gunter vetsel,l, who has now become a personal friend. some may recall his extraordinary personal story. he spent several years sewing scraps of fabric together, canvas, bedsheets, odds bit of fabric, sewed on his mother-in-law's 40-year-old s sewing machine and built a hot-air balloon. he attach ad home-made burner to it and made along with another family, his wife and his two children made miraculous escape

sailing both families over the wall one dark night in 1979. there is a picture of the balloon in the book as well, the balloon. by the mid 1980s, countries throughout europe taking gorbachev's lead for restructuring an opening up to the west but the leader of east germany, eric hanaker, a hard-line communist digs in and refuses to budge from his position. even vows to be the last remaining hard-line dictator in eastern europe. . .

it's also about never getting out. and finally, it's about the value in understanding the value of freedom tears i'd like to end with this. when i'm doing my research for the book, i asked my uncle reinhardt, why he didn't join the communist party. when he knew he could get ahead if you did. and he said i knew the system was wrong. i wasn't going to trade my integrity for material benefit.h and for me it wasn't about material things.

it wasn't about one in better products food winner of food shortages.gs none of that does matter to me. i just wanted to be free. thanks for your attention. [applause] i went a little bit over, but we can take a few questions if anybody has any. >> thank you very much. a somewhat closely related question, the main one being the whole process and idea of joining the communist party in east germany during the cold war was it easy to do provided --

what were the sort of acquired misery being able to join the party? was anyone, perhaps anyone with a clear criminal record or withd no criminal record allowed to join arrested based on some other level of achievement? >> it was based on your willingness to be a member. that was about it is that obviously, they've added people, but it was not difficult to become a member of the party. they expect today. they welcomed everyone. >> okay, that's simple enough. the other question was just used that in your art operations missions in east germany. the way you put it in your caseo to spy on the soviets and i

i didn't know because you've are really distinguishing between east german government and so be it living in may and operating and is germany. at first her work goes, with their distinction? >> we were spying on any affirmation we could get. they were the major the power we were interested and order information, training, a lot of the kinds of thing as well. it was an opportunity for us to keep our eye on what was going on in the east. and getting as much information as we could.

and you know, it just depended on what the requirements are in any governor given day. >> you are able to get in on a representative of the press or what was -- >> i detailed that in the book as well. due to a four power agreement after world war ii to have small teams. to go into territory. all of east germany. and the soviets were able to access west berlin and west germany. the official the official job was to exercise our right by the

agreement. but give us an opportunity. and some are not so overtly -- so over. in the context of the story of the major events and those are kind of diverse. i was wondering if you could talk about your research process and how you did your research. >> so, my research was done in three parts i would say. one was archival or document research, photographic research. i found a lot of my information through a american, british, german, russian archives that are easily accessible.

some of them on the internet. you know, recent ci, kgb documents classified state department and also i was able to get information from the archives and that's sort of thing. letters that were exchanged between the families on memoirsa diaries and especially photographs were very important. interviews or conversations witi

and hungary on their perspective and experience during the cold war so that was helpful for me to understand the experience. go to all the locations in the book is one of the funnest things for me to do because they made the research everything from the little village of schlumberger where he met the manager and i was able to throw the keys on the porch when they were done. and it was like walking back into time. b it was set up so you could research the cold war in that village and everything from

communist flags to communist propaganda, symbols of secret police the ledgers and i was able to seek my grandfather's writing and things like that.ri and there is even a mockup of a classroom and that little tiny mu museum. some of the chairs and tables which might have been in my grandfather's classroom. i was also able to go to paradise bungalow. often i've been back to paradise bungalow. i visited the town where my grandfather and family wasather banished after he spoke up one too many times.ny so i think i was really important. going back to berlin, of course, if any of you spent any time,

you know what like then if you haven't been back yet. what looked like once upon a time. >> several years ago, smith dida a biography and several people there including frank clay talked about the early days and 45 and 46 and the american intelligence penetrated eastst berlin intelligence. that's the east german relay 47. does the lack relations when you're there. in the 70s that began when

story was told is a lady named john clark they were building for the american embassy and that can be her embassy andgoin under it beneath this one of your tunnels because your stasi is right across the street. they were amazed that she knew that. >> interesting. thanks for sharing that. >> this is a question from a moral point of view i sympathize with everything you said, but when we in america were supporting regimes in iran andee not america en masse using

similar tools, how do you equate the cold war trying to have morality in the world? >> well, that's a tough question. that i think requires a lengthy discussion frank lee that i don't think there's a simple answer to that one. maybe that is something we can talk about if you stick around after a fine country and signed a few books i'd be happy to go into that more. but that's a loaded question. >> hi. i'm curious to know when you started thinking, did your mother tell you these stories? as you were growing up so it's always something that you knew or did it come later and when did you start taking this might become a story that you wanted to tell? >> so, i open the book and i won't spoil the story for youoi

either but i open the book as a federal program told you don't have any relatives. the truth of the matter is my father besides being u.s. intelligence army officer also happens to be a holocaust survivor, so he was alone in thl world. and then my mother did not have her family. so i wondered why i didn't have relatives. so it was always with me from that point on. but my mother didn't talk about it a lot. she wanted to get on with her life as both my parents did. you know, we didn't have much information coming from the east. so i'll renew was this her little brothers and sisters. but after that i was there. if there was anything to come out. it is very sparse information. if it had anything to do great

crime here. and of course we've pulled over those untried to get as much information as we could but we didn't have much information at all. there's nothing i was able to meet those people. after the first 10 or 15 years for us to get to know each other. time for us to get a fresh breath of freedom and learn to adapt and get on with their lives inside germany. so it wasn't until 10 or 15 years after the wall fell and we got to know each other and i was able to ask more questions then little by little in the next

year, heard more of the story from all the different relatives. and then pieced them together. you know, some of them, there were some amazing discoveries, for example when my cousin and i realized when she told me she was training in the years i was there. i grabbed a map. and that's essentially how the book was written. any other questions. >> hi, tim powell. i just wanted to say when i knew you guys back in colle0