on hoe innovations can he incop paraded in american classroom. then war account talks bout the war in afghanistan and her attack by the taliban that almost killed him. columnist and republican strategist report on the voters from swing states who supported president trump 2016 election. then at 10:00, jonah goldberg argueses that tribalism, possiblism and national jim are threatening american democracy. he is interviewed by the editor of commentary manage, and we wrap up the programming at 11:00 p.m. with senator bernie sander discussing this book "where we good from here." that happens tonight on book k. 72 hours of nonfiction authors and books this holiday weekend. television for serious readers.

>> good evening. that's very loud. makes me sound kind of cool. very, very glad to see so many of you here and exceptionally pleases to see a lot of new faces don't think i've seen before so please come back. we do this on a regular basis. very, very pleased to be with you tonight, and welcome to louisiana memorial pavilion. also like to welcome our live stream and our audience which will be on c-span because we are that cool. i'm the deck e executive director of the institute for the study of war and democracy at the national world war ii museum.

we like to refer to ourself as a community of scholars and have a number of friendly scholars from the area in the audience tonight. we also do a thingness the institute. we here research services don'td if you've have good, talk to myself, james, keith, jason other, people, we are research for hire for those who are interested in finding out more but awe world war ii next their family. we also off are public programs, not just this but we also offer symposium, full conferences so day-long symposium themed on a topic and offer several days worth of conference each year at the international conference on world war ii. we'll talk more but that after this wonderful program by tonight's guest. first i just want to take a moment to recognize if we have any world war ii veterans with news the tradition of this great museum. well, we recognize them nonetheless. in the vas of the armed forces

in any other era or conflict? please rise and be recognized. [applause] >> also, just specifically in reference to tonight i hope that those who work in the field of studying and understanding autism as medical precisionals and others might take moment to be recognized. anybody here? >> a particular person i need to single out is my dear friend and our dear friend of the museum, dr. bishoff. we thank you for you. suggestions, guenter. is melny sneer she is a well --

is melanie here? our speaker, dr. edith sheffer is focuses on germany and central europe. she has bachelors from harvard in history and literature summa cum laude. i i have a bachelors louisiana state university. her previous book, how east and west germans made the iron curtain waistless book, but we are here tonight about her latest book "answer --" aspergers children. she has broken ground on the life of dr. answer berger and his name as lived on and been better known that behind life and work would we're here to

hear what is a very difficult vs. very challenging stories and she tells nit a come. passionate and sensitive manner. i think recent review in the new york time -- the new york become of the time said defies easy categorization and appropriate if perhaps inadvertent response to her fascinating and terrible subject matter. an that's note and please come to these stairs which are not dangerous, edig sheffer 0, asperger's children,. [applause] >> thank you. i made it. thank you so much for the kind introduction and the invitation to speak here today.

can everyone hear me? and thank you. it is certainly an honor. i'm going to be presenting after joan view of my book asperger's children which focuses on the creation -- i'm getting some reverberation -- which focuses on the creation of the autism diagnosis in nazi vienna, and i would like to be sensitive to the subject. i know many people in this room probably know at least one person, a friend, relative, a loved one, who has been diagnosed with autism or asperger disorder and the material i'm presenting is quite disturbing. so i would -- but die think it's important that this information be known. okay so one in at children are now diagnosed on the autism spectrum in eunited states. this is up from one in 5,000 in 1975. this is an exponential rise.

so what is going on? the reasons for this rise are much debated. medical, genetic, environmental. but one of the many factors is that hans as -- for decade wed in the united states led by the idea of autism, canter look at children who were relatively similar to one another. they had more severe cognitive impairments and more limited speech. asperger had a much broader idea of autism. he included children with milder challenges, who we might today call aspergers and he is credited today with the idea we have on an autism spectrum. now, asperger delved his diagnosis during the third reich and has a -- a reputation

forintses noie sim and cultivated this as having ringed the his tiff 0 protect children the nazi killing program that murdering you considered to be disabled. she supposedly emphasized the special abilities of children with autism, stressingier value to the straight, supposedly he wassing the autism diagnosis as a psychiatric schlinder's list cycle set owl to at the story as a heroic tale of asperger the third like. when i went to the archives in vienna, the very first day and the very first file i look at was enough to show to me that asperger was actually complicit in at the racial hygiene policies the third reich, so i saw this was not a heroic story but actual through a horry store and i thought about abandoning the project. he the files were too terrible and i did not want to be telling this story, but

die think it has far reaching implications for how we talk today about autism and asperger disorder. okay so its let's start at the beginning. asperger was born 1906, 50-miles outside of vie indian. he excelled at school with special tall trents in language, literature and history. he was most drawn to science and went at 19 for medical studies at the university of vienna. vie indian was in great turmoil at the time. it had been the cultural capital of europe at the turn of the 20th century, the bigplace of modernism and threaterring salons. then after defeat in world war i suffered severe political and

economic crisis. street children flooded vienna's institutions and the city's child development professionals rushed in to help. vienna founds one of the most progressive social welfare systems in the world. it was renowns as the vienna system. it had an army of highly trained social works and of course eminent describing ocan lists and psychiatrics who were donating time help the children. one leader in these efforts was clemmons, you probably never heard of him but one of most prominent people in vienna. he headed the universe oft vie indian venezuela -- vie indian's children's hopped and turn it into a pediatric facility. he was progressive and open 0 experimentation and to the advancement of women and jews. so, when one idealistic jewish

speeds trix came to him about founding a new clinic, be was game. so lizar want to contracted a new -- i translate as curative i'd indication and the wadding to integrate -- to treat the hold child, very progressive idea at the time. and asperger would inherit this clinic. he and his wife committed double suicide in 1929. they were found in bed lying in a close embrace after 25 years of marriage. this was real shock. pirk was preplace its be the figure of france hamburger. he joined the nazi party when it was still a terrorist organization in austria and was banned. here he is inside a conspicuous

photograph. he was known for his antiscientific atitude and wanted to undo the acheaps. he wanted his doctors to focus on primary care and eugenics over medical specialization and research. hamberger purged jewish and liberal faculties, and he hired faculty that would be on the far right. well, one of his first hires was the 25-year-old hans asperger. asperger reveered hamberger from the first meeting in 193, 1 saying he was eager to help rectify the errors of the pirke leader children and here's a frat -- photograph of hospital staff and answerberg is egg on the lower raying. so he was place the curative education clinic and promoted him quickly within two years

asperger was named head of the clinic at age 28. over the heads of longtime staffers, people who had work in the clinic for decades. despite answer berg'sing you -- -- but he held memberships in several antiliberal, antisocialist, antimodern and antisemitic organizationses in 1934, ten days austria declare themselves as a single party state, asperger joined the single party, the father land front. so bear with me. the slide bears fruits. this is from a digital history project i did with one motor vehicle graduate students it and maps the creation of child psychology and psychiatrist in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s

and we basically assembledded a database of leaders in field and tracked their intellectual and social linkages. we looked what intender with whom, who joined the same organizations, who married whom. and what we found was that intellectually, psychiatry and soak oanalysis could not be disaggregate it at this time as people trained and rub shoulders at each other's institutions them nobel lawyer laureate was an important node in the system and he many were rotating through his clinic, the psychiatric neurological quick lick. many decided to go the trendier fear psycho analysis and you can see sigman freud.

they were tied to the networkers and ehamberger and asperger are in the top with the far right wing psychiatrists. so what this slide shows is that the ideological split in psychiatrist predated the nazi annexation of vienna. vienna's institutions and psychiatric community were already divided, and asperger his crew were already far off from the mainstream. i told you the slide works. meanwhile, let's go inside aspergers' cure curative education clinic. they generated therapies and published articles on the importance of compassion and play, based techniques. we would wreck nice many of their tech knees.

following her let, staff paid attention toking you who seemed to have difficulty socializing and the staff called these children autistic. this is as early as 1934, using the term autistic. they did not consider autistic a negative pathology. it was a character trait. so ward physician frankle and psychologist vice each published articles but a autistic character yikes. they were both jewish and soon emigrated to the united states. for those who might know the history of leo connor, they immigrated with his help. the father of american psychiatry who created the autism diagnosis. think that vice and frank may have brought the used of autism to canner, across the atlantic because he greatly admired frankle's work and his first

case study of autism was based on frankle's notes. meanwhile, in nazi germany in the set 30s, nazi child psychiatrists were also diagnosissing social awkwardness in youth but were much, much harsher about it. so children in the third reich or two price strong community bonds, supposed to be enthusiastic participants in collective activities such as the hitleing you. paul show roadside on the upper left was the leader of nazi child psychiatry and he called this readiness to serve the community -- now gimut is one of germany's famously

untranslatable word and the romantic period its minute soul. i'll stoic how nazi child psychiatrists use it which was a deep sense of metaphysical connectedness and had a national racial meeting. germans had a lot of it, i from french didn't have it: socialists and communist debts have gamut. it signifies deepness and metaphysical connectionment another man asperger followed was some roder's student, necessary to him, who rode on gamut and became one of the top three leaders in the nazi euthanasia program. this asampling of different diagnoseses that nazi child psychiatrists were devising youch can see three with four made contributions of ga mu ut or string's percentages quantities identifyingsing children's ability to socialize,

the parents were able to socialize, and so the idea -- the upon heres that the idea of autism pervadessed nazi child psychiatry long before asperger name it. he was a very young man at this time, and he was deeply influenced by these diagnoses of mall adjustment whens his time came he would just follow anywhere feetsteps. so morning of march 12th, 1938, the german rolls across the boredder into austria and met jubilant crowds. answer berg nerve anyone witnesses tremendous changing there was vicious violence against jews, requiredly many as the worst in the reich. people assaulted jews in the streets, plundered homes. their stories and synagogues. at the university of vienna, answer -- answer berg -- the

medical school removed 78% of the faculty. 78% of asperger'll colleagues including three nobel prices winners the eye clinics verified unscathed. in fact asperger his colleagues thrived during the third reich. the expulsion created a vietnam tomb and expanded their capabilities. for answer bergeres, one opportunity was naming his own diagnosis. in 1937, before the nazi annexation, asperger warned against creating childhood diagnoses and assertses there as many approaches as personalities and its emfor to establish a rigids criteria for a diagnosis. then just months after the

annexation, asperger introduces his own diagnosis. this well-characterized group of children who he name autistic psychopaths because the confinement of the several has throws a narrow offering their relations so the environment. so, most striking, asperger is calling autism a psychopathy which carried -- he was moving fro nonjudgementle curative education children and now move into the realm of nazi psychiatry. also right after the annexation, asperger begins to work for the nazi government, in april 1938. he begins to consult for the juvenile justice system and the city's reimmediatal schools. her quickly joins several nazi organizations, the german labor

front think national association e socialist people's organization which is not remarkable no someone ambitious and also applied to consults for the hitler using. asperger did not join the nazi party and this is one reason why people have seen him as a resistor and one reason why he called himself a resisterror, but not joining the party was not unusual for someone in his position. only three in ten doctors in vie indian joined in the nazi party. -- and beside, hamberger was a prominent nazi and was already vamping for asperger. he kept asperger on as head of the curative education clinic when he believed that doctors had to be downright saturated with national socialist prisons. that's a quote. hamburg are trusts answer berger in leadership of a signature program, motorized mother advising. they would drive out to rural

areas and disspend medical advice to -- people in need champ sounds great. they were acting as the skies ears of the regime and registering children who withdiaged and who came from family where their might be alcoholism or her red -- her red her red tear illnesses and would be marked for extermination. in the fall of 1940, asperger began to work as a consultant forever -- forever indian -- for vienna's office. it -- dough pore pacing to concentration car. s and killings of people considered to be disabled. this program was the reich's first program of mass extermination. it predated the holocaust. it was begun by hitler in 1949

to get rid of children regarded as a drain on the state and a danger its gene pool but i can't emphasize enough howing you oughts -- euthanasia was a euphemism. the children were deemed to have enemy or behavioral defects defd nothing physical. 5,000 children perished in 37 special wards in the reich. this is inside germany. vie indian -- vienna was the deadliest where 800 people perished and many people knew what was happening. newspapers trade to deny the killings but they were public protests on the street and the fall of 1940, dispersoids by the police and ss. so asperger knew what was going on as he admitted later in life,

there's now question he knew what was happening. in contrast to the mechanizees images of the holocaust, the child euthanasia program was very different. it was supposed to become a permanent part of the reich's healthcare system. so the holocaust, the killing of other groups was happening in a haphazard fashion and meant to be secret. this was a permanent part of health care in the reich. supposed to be legal. and this was intimate killie, by the very doctors and nurses, especially women, who cared for their wards' daily needed. and killings were down any out's own bed, a staff issued youth overdoses of bash bit -- barbiturates inle the children died. france hamburger, was answer

berg's mentor cocoa labbator and conducted numerous lethal experiment ted children's hospital while asperger fee tick live worked down the hall, asperger's feel he students were depriving beavers fat, vitamin a, they were infecting baby and children can tuberculosis. all kind things helping in plain saying. in 1941 asperger and hamburger cofounded the vienna society for curative education. asperger was the second vice president o, the. gund lawas head of racial high generals in vienna and known for accelerating the deportation of jews in concentration camps and was on the administrator side. another cofounder after

asperger's society was a fellow post doctoral student of hamburgers and he was also the head of the adult euthanasia facility where thousands of adults were killed. he was infamous, everyone in vienna who he was called, called the mass murderer. the bbc reported on his activities and the royal british air force even dropped lea areless calling them the lord with at the syringe. her was egads to history hero's sister, paula. you seek the resemblance. hitler greatly disapproved of the match. we don't know why. perhaps he didn't want his sister marrying a mass murder but he had -- that's what people speculate -- he had him apprehended during a trip to berlin in december 1940 and dispatched to at the eastern front, which is an effective way

to get rid of an undesirable brother-in-law, send him to eastern front. not only disappears berger associated with the top cleared advocates the transfer of most disables children. this as talk he gave in vie indian -- vie indian he -- vienna. he said for rick cases observation is proper like those carried out at my own clinic for the reformer to. transferred children, work fog the public health office and working for reimmediatal schoolings and for one example, he served as a medical expert on a seven-member commission for the city that evaluated children's transfer from one care facility to other destinations and in one day they

evaluated 192 files. and dispatched 35 children to spiegel as, quote, incapable of educational and developmental engage. in one day. and this is a dealing sentence farm fact all 35 children were killed. so, it's unknown and will probably remain unknown due to the fragmentary base how many children he transferred but there are two children he transferred directly from his clinic who died as spiegel. two and a half-year-old was the youngest of nine children. ...

>> asperger also recommended the tr of a 5-year-old. one nurse wrote in a daily report that elizabeth could only speak a single word, mama, and that she, quote, has a friendly nature, is very affectionate and flattering with caregivers. if she is treated strictly, she will cry and hug the nurse. elizabeth was killed four months after she was admitted to spiegel and her brain harvested, kept in a collection of over 400 children's brains in the cellar.

so one thing i really want to show in my book is that asperger's definition of autism was happening at the same time. he was developing his definition of autism as these child killings were happening. so remember he'd written in 1937 that it's impossible to establish a diagnosis for children, right? no such thing, we can't do it. children are too unique. then months after the annexation, he comes out with what he calls a well-characterized group of children autistic psychopaths, and they have a narrowed relation to the environment. well, in 1940 he changes his definition somewhat. he calls a group of abnormal children who we refer to as autistic psychopaths, these loner children live their own lives without an emotional relationship with the environment and, therefore, also react abnormally to the needs of the environment.

so here asperger's language is more pejorative, right? it's more critical. these are abnormal children behaving abnormally, and he's more concerned with social connectedness. these children are loners, and they have a defect of emotion. then in 1944 asperger writes his postdoctoral thesis for promotion, and he ratchets his rhetoric up another notch. in it he writes the autist is not an active member of the greater organism which he is influenced by and which he influences constantly. well, now this is fascist language. we have children's membership in a greater or nhl, right? -- organism, right? this is the fascism of the greater organism. he also in his thesis adopts nazi psychiatry's core tenet. finally, he calls i atism a

disharm anywhere -- autism a disharmony. his language is also quite harsh. he increasingly stressed the cruelty and sadistic traits of autistic psychopaths of autistic acts of malice. so year by year asperger is changing his definitioning to become more and more pejorative and more concerned with children's aptitude for community. so asperger did prize what he saw as the, quote, special abilities of some autistic children in math and other technical subjects. and he said they were on the favorable end of an autism range. but this is a highly gendered view. he declared that, quote, the autistic personality is an extreme variant of male intelligence, of the male character. and so he's echoing stereotypes of the time. he's saying boys have a gift for logical ability, abstraction, precise thinking and formulate aring whereas girls, quote, are

more gifted for the concrete and practical. and autism, he said, the male pattern is exaggerated to the extreme. and whereas asperger believed that many of the boys could be remediated due to their unique male intelligence, he gave these boys intensive help and therapy, he was far more dismissive of girls who showed the same traits. the girls were not to be remediated or educated, but he recommended them for treatment, hormone treatment or sterilization or worse. let's start with the boys. so in one of his two most prominent case studies of autistic psychopath think, asperger or said fritz, quote, fell out of the community, it was impossible to get him to play in a group. his eye gaze was odd and mostly went into space. in his second major case study, asperger said horo, quote, never would join a game with others and has, quote, lost gaze with

often far away. both boys should be treated with, quote, genuine care and kindness and true understanding and affection. and this was the image of asperger we have today, right? he treats these boys with love and kindness and values their special abilities. and he gave them specialized tutoring on the word and play therapy. well, in the archives this is an unpublished case file i found of christine, and he describes her in similar terms as the boys. she was, quote, difficult to influence from the outside. she was closed, inhibited, hard to reach. she, quote, never cared for the other children. so indistinguishable. we can't know what christina really looked like, but he's seeing her in the same way. asperger concluded, however, that she had no gamut, you can see that note there. and asperger's official

diagnosis of christine was not a psychiatric diagnosis, but a moral be diagnosis. she had a character variant. and you can see his handwriting, he was born left-handed but had to learn to write with his right hand, so lucky me, that's his handwriting at the bottom. asperger ordered her transferred to a contractional institution. she was egocentric, vulgar, oppositional and underhanded. in other unpublished case files, i saw that alfreda and another met even worse fates. margarita, quote, did not participate at all in the community of children. her, quote, facial expression was remarkably empty, and she would stare impassively before her with, quote, a lack of contact. alfreda was supposedly oblivious, quote, to the effect of her entire behavior on

others. so, again, we can't know what these girls actually looked like, but they were described in similar terms. asperger's clinic transferred both girls to spiegelgrunt. clinic notes say staff introduced margarita to -- [inaudible] suggesting she may have been preselected and, indeed, she was transferred to spiegelgrund the same day. asperger's clinic here specifies that alfreda should be sent to the killing department. she already had a sense of forboding before her transfer. she wrote to her mother, quote, i do not know if we will see each other again because i can't know if i won't die on this trip. thankfully, there is no record of the girls' deaths despite them being handed over directly to the doctors, but the fact remained that asperger was issuing diverse fates to children with similar traits.

so asperger's you genesis view is of gender was -- [inaudible] some laud asperger's effusive language about the highly original genius of children at the most favorable end of his autistic range, and he did say they might excel in science or other technical professions. but this benevolent rhetoric was in keeping with nazi psychiatry. many nazi psychiatrists said a lot of nice things about children they thought could be of value. we only see the extermination side, but they valued children they thought could be brought into the fold. but children who were deemed unworthy of life were made this harsh distinction. and asperger was no exception. he said the autism spectrum ranged, quote, down to the most automaton-like mentally retarded

individual. they would grow up, he said, to roam the streets as grotesque and dilapidated. these children could not and would not be helped. thus, as 1944 as he's seeking promotion, asperger's definition was deeply shaped by nazi institutions and ideology. after the war asperger claimed that he had resisted naziism and defended children from the euthanasia killings. he also distanced himself from his nazi-era work. he hardly ever wrote about autistic psychopath think which makes me believe if he ever believed in it. rather, he turned to religious threes and social commentary on child rearing. asperger probably would have been a footnote in the history of autism research had it not been for this woman, lorna wing. she was a leading british

psychiatrist who publicized asperger's diagnosis almost 40 years later in 1981. winged had switched fields to child psychiatry when her daughter susie was diagnosed with autism, and she herself had conducted extensive research, more extensive than as pirger ever had -- asperger ever had. when she published her work, however, she called it asperger's syndrome as a professional courtesy. what she was describing, though, was more her own diagnosis than asperger's work. she wanted to present a neutral position, so she named it a syndrome, and she dropped asperger's fascist rhetoric, and she got rid of his saying that the children were sadistic and grotesque. she wrote what we would consider a neutral diagnosis. as lorna wing's idea gained traction in the 1980s and

'90s, the american psychiatric association added asperger disorder to the american manual of mental disorders, the dsm4, in 1994. and they did not research asperger's nazi-era activities. usually when you award a diagnosis, you're supposed to research the person you're naming a diagnosis after, and the apa did not. so that's why we're in the situation we're in today. so this rainbow is a simplistic image of the autism spectrum that took hold in the public mind, and you can see it's basically an iq chart. on the far left is canter's idea of classic autism, children with greater impairments with asperger's disorder on the far right. so asperger's disorder was increasingly seen as indistinguishable from high functioning autism. i hate the terms high functioning and low functioning, but these are terms that are in

common usage. and asperger disorder was reclassified in 2013 in the dsm5 as autism spectrum disorder. so it no longer exists as a medical diagnosis. although it does internationally. in this country it no longer does. and socially asperger's name remains in wide usage. it's an identity for millions of people. it's a term we apply to loved ones, and it's a personality stereotype in popular culture. most of us never think about the man behind the name. and so the question that this work now brings up is does the man matter. and to medical ethics, it does. because in medicine naming a disorder after someone is meant to credit that individual for describing a condition and to honor them for their work. and in my opinion, asperger merits neither. first, he did not discover is autism. his portrayal of autistic

psychopaths is at odds with understandings of autism today. we don't see autistic children in terms of sadism and depravity. besides asperger's fascist idea was not even his own. he was following in the footsteps of his senior colleagues in nazi child psychiatry. second, of course, i don't think asperger merits the honor. he sent dozens of children to their deaths as a conscious and willing participant in a program of systematic program. so i have proposed that we discontinue this in an op-ed for "the new york times", and this idea has gotten picked up. the book was just reviewed in "nature" by a leading autism researcher. some of you may know him, simon barron cohen, and he is also calling for us to no longer say the asperger label based on this research. there are other conditions that have been named after nazi era doctors that have been renamed as a result of finding out their links to exterminationist

programs. and medicine in general is moving away from e upon mouse diagnoses to more descriptive labels. the problem is we just don't have an adequate vocabulary to talk about autism. children diagnosed with the condition, you probably know many, can bear very little resemblance to one another. and so researchers suggest that autism is kind of a catch-all term right now that likely encompasses many different physiological conditions. and hopefully, one day we will be able to split et up into -- it up into different subtypes or diagnose diagnoses, and right now autism is an expansive umbrella label. and the analogy is similar to the female hysteria at the turn of the century which was basically a label for women who could not control their emotions. but they might be suffering from different conditions; epilepsy,

syphilis, schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, anxiety. science just was not yet at a point to disaggregate these separate conditions. and i think that's where we are with autism right now too. we just don't have the vocabulary. but i think it's an interesting question, what do we do in the absence of science, and to what extent with these diagnoses shaped by cultural influence. so hysteria happened at a time when women were asserting visible roles in public life, and the image of the hysterical woman captured the mix mind. and now -- the public mind. and now i think the idea of an autism spectrum draws on anxieties about our children fitting into a fast-paced world, a fast-changing, fast-paced world. on the one end, youth with autism might face a lifetime of disability and isolation, or on the other hand might be perceived to have superior abilities and be a coding whiz in silicon valley where i live.

so asperger -- hysteria was a diagnosis of overly emotional women. well, now if you think about it, autism is a diagnosis of supposedly underemotional boys. the ratio of the diagnosis is 5-1 boys to girls, and the main image is white, urban, middle chat aapplication. and so this is not to deny the very real challenges, of course, of children diagnosed with these conditions. that's not my purpose here today. my only purpose is to show how diagnoses can be fluid things and that they emerge from the interactions of patients, doctors, social forces, media representations and in a continual foodback loop their -- feedback loop their meanings change over time. and my point with my book, i want to underscore the ethics of treating every child's mind with care because we know so little and showing and warning how easily a society can issue

labels, medications and interventions. and may in this research give us pause -- may this research give us pause in considering how we prescribe and portray others and hope that i can inform discussion from where we go from here with autism. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, edith. i've got the microphone here in the back, center aisle, and i'd gladly bring it to the front row here for your first question. >> thank you for the presentation. it was very informative. i'd like to -- i'm curious of your take, after all of your research how do you feel that these doctors rationalizedded their behavior? whether it was for the greater good or they were just following

orders, why did they do what they did? >> you would start off with the question. [laughter] i just, a brief anecdote. i took my daughter to see anne frank, the diary of anne frank, and we had a backstage talk with the cast afterwards, and people were asking questions about lighting and costume, and my daughter raised her hand, why did they do it? [laughter] why did the nazis do it? i think they thought it was a scientific project. i think they believed it was the advancement of science, and eugenics was an extremely popular, respected science across the world at that time. and, you know, and the united states you genesis leaders were on the forefront, sterilization law was current in 30 states at the time, and nazi germany was often admired as leading the forefront in sterilization. and the child euthanasia program was really an extension, a

logical extension of sterilization. it was to kill children between 0-3 years of age at the beginning. and they just very carefully observed and recorded and track9 these children's daily needs. and sent the reports to berlin and got the reports back. to kill a child was not easy. it was not like other programs of nazi extermination. it was incredibly scientific and distributive. deliberative. they believed in it. >> next row back. >> in walter isakson's biography of albert einstein, he noted that einstein did not talk until he was 4 years old. in fact, his aunt referred to him as my stupid nephew. if a 3-year-old albert einstein had been brought into asperger's group, speculate on how he would have been diagnosed and what would have happened to him. >> yeah. i mean i see exactly where

you're going with this. and the 3-year-old who was not talking and not developing and hitting the prescribed milestones would be in trouble at the time. and, you know, it was up to the doctors to report children with disabilities, and asperger claimed after the war that he did not report children who he could have reported. and there's no way to prove that he might have withheld the names of some children. he may well have rescued children. i'm not here to deny that. and so if he went into asperger's -- maybe an individual like him would have. but under law at the time or under protocol, einstein would have been had to have been report. >> the next row back. >> you mentioned and give out reasons for getting rid of the term asperger's. do you have a suggestion for what the diagnosis should be

called? >> i mean, in medical terms right now it's autism spectrum disorder. and that's all we have. often people say high functioning and low functioning. i hate that. i don't think that describes who a child necessarily is or, you know, what characteristics are you look at when you say that. so my solution for the moment is to say on the spectrum. and then if people have questions about who that child is, you can tribe the child -- describe the child or describe the person as who they are. so that's personally how i would see it. but i also don't mean to be too dogmatic saying we need to get rid of the label because people do self-identify or people identify their children with it. and for years often people have lived with this for most of their lives, and how can you tell someone how to identify, right? what i'm saying is in the medical community going forward should be careful with this label.

but retroactively i don't, you know, and then as psi is an interesting -- aspy is interesting too, is that a problematic label. but i'm not going to pretend to be an expert and where, you know, i think it was -- the consensus was that asperger's was already a problematic diagnosis, and that's why it was reclassified in 2013 anyway, and the world health organization is poised to do the same, to remove it from the icd-11. >> dr. sheffer, i have a question online here. >> okay. wow, high-tech. >> he's been held to high regard in the history, as you've explained. have you received any blowback from supporters of his or any family members he may have had, or is there any resentment for your findings.

be. >> surprisingly, no. and i was really braced for this. i mean, i've had some negative comments on twitter and facebook, but i think by people who haven't read the book. i think once you see the facts, it's undeniable. i haven't heard directly from people who are personally affronted by this. so, yeah. i think people take it as serious history rather than as an attack of any sort. >> couple questions in the center here. >> you mentioned the -- [inaudible] that occurred at the time. was that driven by parents maybe who did not want their children killed or just general human instinct, you know, care and concern? >> well, sure. so the protests, the slide that i show with the pavilions, that whole complex held both children and adults. and thousands of adults were

being killed there and deported off on trains to gas chambers. and so that is really what the public knew about. the killings of children were sort of whispered about and vaguely known, but what was causing the most outrage was the deportation of adults and the killing of adults. so that's what was known, and those are the rumors that were circulating. and it's really incredible, i mean, the nazi press was denying rumors. it was saying no such thing as gas chambers, right? so -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah. but i should say, to me, for those of you who know the history of the t-4 euthanasia program, it's the only program of mass murder that the german population protested. it's the only -- and they were able to do it quite openly with leaflets, with sermons, with protests. and hitler technically shut down the program as a result of this

popular protest. now, i don't want to give you the wrong idea, it continued in secret, but at least there was some effect. and if you do the thought experiment, well, what might have happened if people had been protesting other forms of extermination and why was it only the killing of other germans that was seen as objectionable enough to put yourself out there on the line. >> in the back towards the center. >> i remember in the '50s and '60s when it first, the concept of autism first came to the united states, they finish finish -- the belief was because it was a cold mother that, you know? and so the poor mother, not only did she have to deal with an autistic child that they usually didn't take in school, but then everyone was shunning her because they were -- it didn't

say like a cold father, it was the cold mother. >> right. the refrigerator mother. >> that's right. and that, you know, she had made this child distant. >> yeah. well, so ironically this is one of the reasons that asperger is praised today, because he held that autism was generic. if you look at his context, nazi doctors are concerned with hereditary illness, right? proving everything's hereditary. every characteristic is inheritable. >> [inaudible] >> right, right, right. and so it's just interesting that today how it's flipped on its head to point, to suggest autism is seen as more progressive than blaming it on the mother, right? >> in the front to your right. >> i was curious about the drawings in the slides. were they done by the child that

was featured? oh, okay. >> yeah. it's a poignant drawing. i don't know how well you could see it because i shrunk it down. but when she was first brought to asperger's clinic, that was margarita, she was brought to take a bath. she had a long talk with the nurse about her experiences, and the nurse be, you know, in her notes said margarita just went on and on, i couldn't wait for her to shut up. and then she drew that picture. and you could see it was a really cheerful house, she had warm ideas of a loving home. but then she put herself as that solitary figure in the corner with the showerhead on in the bath. so, like, seeing herself already in asperger's clinic as the victim. >> next question, i'll ask the gentleman to stand up, please, to your right, edith. >> given how readily you uncovered these really disturbing facts as asperger, why do you think it has taken so

long for his reputation to go untainted? >> that's another $6,000 question. [laughter] i think it took a while for nazi crimes to get uncovered in austria anyway, and a handful of austrian scholars do know, have known about asperger's involvement. it's just by comparison with other perpetrators he was a very minor figure, right? he didn't work at the hospital, he was just transferring children there. so on the scale of perpetrators, asperger was small pry, right? and i think in the u.s. we have different standards for, you know, the horror factor. and then also in austria autism is not, is well known of a diagnosis, so he wasn't of interest due to that connection either. so the story behind how asperger's disorder was accepted

as a diagnosis in 1994, the team that was behind that wrote to archivists, wrote to, i think, five different archives saying what do you know about asperger, can you please tell us because we don't want to go ahead and name this disorder after someone who might have been implicated despite his reputation. and a number of the archives wrote back saying we tonight know anything, we can't help you -- we don't know anything, we can't help you. and i think one scholar wrote back and said we don't know enough to say no, but we know enough to say hold on and conduct more research. but at that time, the world health organization had already put asperger's syndrome into the icd-10, the international classification of diseases, so it was already in existence. and there was a lot of pressure to gets a pirger disorder -- asperger disorder into the american manual. and, you know, maybe there's more to the story than i know about that, but, yeah. >> edith, we have a number of

hands up, and i'm going to try to get to all of them. >> i realize this is not in the scope of your study of your book, but in doing all your research, in doing all your -- did you hear or the first part? >> yeah. [laughter] >> did you stumble across anything that said what did they do with all the bodies of these children? >> they would be buried, and, you know, oh, gosh, there's -- yeah. i mean, they would be, there's just a horrific letter that i found from one man saying, you know, thank you for disposing of the body. i'm sorry we couldn't make the burial. yeah, of his child. >> dr. sheffer, to your left. >> you mentioned all the various ideologies of which genetics is a part. i'm a little uncomfortable with genetics alone being responsible

for a logarithmic increase. what other things do you think might be playing a role in this increase? >> oh, well, i hazard to speak to this because i'm not in the science of autism, but the diagnostic -- the expansion of the diagnostic criteria is one factor that everyone recognizes, right? that what we think of as autism was widenedded, basically, on the idea based on lorna wig's work. beyond that -- lorna wing's work. beyond that i can't speculate. there are all kinds of theories, environmental or -- yeah. >> to your right. >> you mentioned the experiments being done on the children. did you find something in the archive if specifically jewish children were targeted or gypsies or particular part of the population? >> sure.

so jewish children and gypsies were not kept at spiegelgrund in any kind of, you know, dedicated fashion. they were already deported elsewhere. so the children i'm dealing with were, you know, considered aryan. four of the children who perished at spiegelgrund were jewish or half jewish. so i can't speak to mention la's work on gypsy twins or anything like that, because at spiegelgrund, yeah, that was not a factor. i should say just on the question of what happened to the bodies that 400 almost, you know, over half the children who perished, their brains were kept in jars in the cellar as well as some other body parts. so not all remains were disposed of. >> he who controls the microphone controls the last question. >> okay. >> i already know the answer to this, but i'm fascinated by your work and having met you. can you please let the crowd

know what your next project is? >> oh, sure. [laughter] it's a happier project. [laughter] and it's of interest to your museum. i'm writing about switzerland in world war ii. i think switzerland played a terribly important role that has yet to be recognizeed. not only at the economic front with trade and the holocaust gold, but in terms of the spy story with the oss and allen dulles as well as nazi networks. my understanding is that the stalingrad battle plans went through switzerland, and i hope to uncover a lot of the secret stuff that was happening and what you could call europe's post office. so i don't know if that's my title or not. >> well, we hope to have you back for that. >> okay, thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> booktv is on twitter and

facebook, and we want to hear from you. tweet us, twitter.com/booktv. or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. >> good evening. can you hear me? congratulations and thank you for coming out in this weather. you guys are the troopers. you want to give yourselves a hand? [applause] my name is elise adler, and i work for the nashville public library, so it is my absolute pleasure to say welcome and, again, thank you for coming out especially in this weather and to be here with us at lipscomb university for our salon at 6:15 with cal turner jr. in connection with dave ramsey. and i'm especially excited tonight because this is the launch event for