hitlerland, what i try to do is put you, the reader, and myself in the shoes of these people who were there, the american diplomats, journalists, travelers, writers and say, okay, here is what they observed. you be the judge. what did they get right? what did they get wrong? and frankly, think of what would you have understood at the time? we like to think we would have figured it all out, i came away with a lot of doubts. now, it's worth pointing out because of what happened in the '30s. what happened in the '20s in germany where my book starts. my book starts right after the end of world war i, through the rise of hitler, through the third reicht, until 1941, pearl

harbor and the tour of last americans in germany before they are exchanged for the american dip o diplomats. yes, you have a movie like cabaret, but you do not have a sense of how much of an attraction germany was to americans. and it was an attraction for all sorts of reasons. it was a defeated, humiliated country, 2 million soldiers had died in world war i, the economy was in complete freefall, we know the stories of hyper inflation, the wheelbarrow stories, for instance, one of the stories that got me in reading up on this was the story of the classical woman with the wheelbarrow of money that is worthless and in front of a

store and says i'll see if i can buy anything with this money in this store and darts in and darts out and finds the wheelbarrow is gone, and the money is on the pavement. this was for real. and there's -- there was also this political extremity of right and left, there were fights in the streets of berlin. at the same time, there was an explosion in the arts. this was a time of the filming of "blue angel," you had george gross, and you had albert einstein, he wondered in i and had a discussion with him. it's an attractive place, it's

cheap and easy to travel there with a currency you have a lot of -- you can live very well. and well, you know, in terms of it's also very easy in terms of the sex. yeah, the '20s in berlin were certainly the place to be in terms of the wild lifestyle. all inhibitions gone. a reporter for the chicago daily news wrote, the period after the warsaw -- and he talks about gay sex, straight sex, and he said, it is hard to conceive of a much more tolerant society. thinking about what comes later, that is feeling like quite a statement. and people like, for instance, josephine baker, we associate

with performing in paris. in 1925, she brings her theater to germany. she is showered with gifts and jewelry and furs, invited to these wild after parties. and where she often performs in her loin cloth and said paris parties are nothing to compare with. someone like phillip johnson, the famous architect comes for the architecture and he is a young gay american, he is astounded by the atmosphere in berlin, all of this brings an amazing cast of american characters to germany. people like sinclaire lewis,

thomas wolfe, george cannon, and howard k smith. he becomes a famous anchor man. and even the young john f kennedy flits through the pages of hitler land, with a short visit, most of his entries in his diaries have to do with his young bundle of fun he picked up at the border. this is a germany that is incredibly pro-american. yes, germany had, the u.s. had entered the war against germany but late in the game. the main characteristic about the americans had was that they were not the french. while americans were sympathetic, often to them

economically in terms of trying to get them back on their feet and just culturally. and nowhere in europe was americanizati americanizati americanizati americanization more evident than in germy. so, you had all of this going on, which made a -- this american community big and a track i have to what they saw, and you had the extremists, and one of them was this local agitator in munich called hitler. i asked myself who were the first americans to meet hitler and what did they think of him? and it turns out the first journalist to spend time with

hitler is a man by the name of carl vonvegan, he comes from a german immigrant family. he has a great life story. he escapes from the family farm in iowa, he actually works for buffalo bill at one point. shows up on the west coast, becomes a wire service reporter, gets sent to europe because of his german, and he comes to munich because musilini has just come to power. and he is looking to see if there are mini musilinis in the making in germany. he meeting hitler and here are his first interpretation -- first impressions. he calls himself a man of the people, he is age 34, medium tall, wiry, slender, dark hair,

cropped toothbrush mustache. eyes that seem to spurt fire, straight nose, with a collection so delicate that many a women would be proud to possess it. he goes on to predict that hitler may be a key player in bovarian politics, which is for 1922, before he becomes famous, not a bad prediction. and the other american who meets him just about the same time is a young man by the name of truman smith. he is 29 years old and sent to munich from berlin and makes the rounds and meets hitler and he -- what he says about him, he observes him and writes down in his note books, he is a mar lus demagogue, i have rarely

listened to a man like this, his power over the mob must be immense. those early readings of him are not bad if you think about it. but you have others who dismiss him and say very quickly, he is very quote unquote efeminate and will not stand up against the manly politicians of germany. and then you have those that adore him and enlist in his cause, the most famous is putsy hamstengle, coming from a bostonian family on his mother's side. her father was a civil war general who carried lincoln's coffin, and here is this -- they later meet and come to germany and become close friends with hitler.

and putsy who is a talented musician. plays harvard marching songs for hitler, there are scenes that are hard to imagine and he hitler has a fascination with the american wife, helen. and what happens, i will not go into all the details, but it's -- in hitlerland, i go through the sound after the beer hall, when hitler has tried to seize power disasterously, he arrives with a injured shoulder at helen's door step and spends the night in the house and she tells him in the morning that she heard the police are coming to arrest him. and at that point, helen is convinced that hitler is in dispair, and he takes an action which involves a pistol which

makes her feel he will commit suicide, she talks him out of it. 1923, imagine the consequences of that action, if this american woman was right that he was going to commit suicide then. you have all of this, hitler then goes to prison and for a while, seems to just disappear off the map, what is interesting, what i was beginning the research on hitlerland, i thought there would be a straight projection of what people understood about hitler. that they would have understood more and more, as he became more powerful, when the depression hits and his party grows in numbers. he is getting closer to power. what happens is, that some people misread him much more than the people that first meet him. for instance, dorothy thompson, was one of the most famous female correspondents in that

era, and she meets hitler at the end of 1931, a little more than a year after he -- before he is ready to take power. and she has an interview with him. and she walks in the room and says, and promptly says, that i thought i was coming to meet the future leader -- futurer dictator of germany and within 50 seconds i realized i was not. look at the startling insignificance of this man, and she goes on to describe how -- how strange a character he is. how -- how his jerky motions, his kind of feminine side and all this, and dismisses him. that even if he gets some power, he will not be able to exercise that power. but, we do have to remember that it was not just some of the americans who got it wrong.

some of the most sad scenes in hitlerland are discussions between americans living in germany, and german jews. for instance, robert murphy the first consol general in munich had working for him a man by the name of paul dre, from a distinguished family and they observed the early hitler rallies together and dre kept telling him, nothing will happen, the germans will never elect such a figure. they are much too sophisticated. and even after murphy left, hitler takes power and murphy said in the '30s, i can get you out, it's time to get you a job. and he refuses and in 1938 he dies in dauchau, one of the most

famous americans, comes at age 24 and thinks he is a glamour us new figure and first time they meets him she said he has a quiet charm and tenderness of speech and glance and this despite the fact that there have been beatings of americans on the street. not just of germans and attacks on jews. she then of course has this lovely odyssey, begins to have affairs not just with nazis but with members of the foreign community. visiting writers like thomas wolfe and becomes a spy for the soviet union. just your typical life's journey. but, there are a number of characters here who have rather startling stories. and there's a number of familiar characters with a story line i

found that was a little different than i expected. charles lindburg, yeah, everyone knows charles lindburg was sympathetic of much of what was happening in germany at that time, what i did not know was why he showed up in germany in the first place? whose idea was it? the idea was initiated by truman smith. that same junior military man who was in germany in the early 'twe '20s, was the first american to meet him. he has become concerned about the military build up under hitler. he has sources in the army, but no sources in the air force. so, he plants the idea with gerring's people, to have gerring to invite lindburg, he

knows that gerring loves to show off and he will show lindburg everything. and that is what happens. and lindburg goes to the things and has assistants with him and provides inavailable generals on the air force for the u.s. you can ask about his motives and they were probably were that he wanted to convince the u.s. that you do not want to tangle with these guys. they are -- we want to keep -- we should stay out of the war, which of course was his political position later as in the american first movement. whatever the motives, he actually provided real time intelligence. and provided some amazing stories. one of the best ones i came across in the diaries of the wife of truman smith and the letters, was a scene where gerring has an elaborate lunch

for lindburg and at a certain point, lindburg turns to gerring and said i hear you have a pet lion and gerring said yes, i do. do you want to see it? so they proceed to the library, and gerring sits down on the sofa and this pet lion cub, four feet long jumps up on his lap. and the smiths and the bindburgs and everyone -- and the lindburgs and everyone starts to come in the room, and the lion gets nervous and relieves himself on gerring. his face turns red and he get out of the room. this is one of the scenes you sort of -- dream of as a journalist, and as a writer, to

have it from a couple of sources both published and unpublished these memories, in great deal. and there's a ps on this story. right after i had written up the scene, i discover that truman smith's daughter is still alive in connecticut. she was about 12 or 13 at that time. so, i go and meet her and faulk to her about her recollections and she had some very interesting ones. and the next day, she calls me and says, oh, my daughter asked me did i show you the photo on my fridge? and i said no, photo on your fridge? and she said the one with gerring's lion, sure enough. what happened was, gerring was upset with the lion and sent it back to the berlin zoo, and smith decided he wanted a photo

of his daughter with the lion, and that is one of the photos in my book. from the door of that fridge. so, hitlerland has, yeah, has a very serious side and the essential question of course is again, what did people see and understand and what would you see or i see and understand, and i think if you put yourself in the people's shoes at the time, it looks like a very different story. but the stories within it are also stories in and of themselves, and i hope you do have a little bit of that impression in hitlerland of looking from behind the scenes and seeing familiar events anew. thank you very much. applause applause. and i would be happy to take

some questions. i think there's one a microphone right here. right here, frank. >> two quick items. um, first of all, i believe, correct me if i'm wrong on this, that hitler was the -- voted the man of the year for "time" magazine in 1938? >> he was voted man of the year, i cannot remember if it was '38, that makes sense. >> before the war. >> yes. >> i just want to remind you that i worked for "newsweek." okay, please. >> you have to keep up on your competition, you know? also lindburg was duped when he came over to germany to see the airplanes, didn't they move them around, so they showed him all around and they were moving them all around, and so he was

convinced that it was ten times bigger than it was? >> gerring was trying to impress him with the size of the air force and to demonstrate everything and yes, they were trying to show him the best they had. and may have in some cases added some planes for the impression, but the thing about lindburg, he knew his planes, he could point to a plane and say this model is better than the french model in this respect but worse than the american model in that respect. so, that was valuable information. in fact, in one of -- and they also got to see some test flights, in one of the test flights, it crashed. so it was not only -- not everything went off perfectly. but he was still quite impressed and some people did charge that he inflated -- his reports were inflated in terms of german capabilities. but overall, i would say, i'm

not an aviation specialist by any means. but overall, it re-enforced the message that truman smith and other people in germany, some of the other americans were trying get across, this place is militarizing faster than you imagine. they were saying, you know, you had better take it seriously. and of course, in the united states, at the time, a lot of people did not want to hear that. no one wanted to get involved in another war, there was exhaustion from world war i, so overall, lindburg's information was valuable, but his views were something else on the political situation. yes? over there. yes. >> thank you. where did hitler's all consuming

hatred of jews come from? i know it was a anti-semitic culture, but where did it come from? >> it's hard to tell. the american woman who may have convinced -- saved him from suicide talked about the fact that when she first met hitler in the -- in the 1921 and then got to know him, he was a frequent guest. said he was a pleasant man, misunderstood. he was wonderful with my son. in fact, at one point she said oh, my son egon, he tripped and fell and banged his head on a chair, and hitler got up and spanked the chair and said bad chair bad chair and he would make eg -- and egon would make

him go through this act each time. and he did talk and talk and most of the time it was about how he hated about the jews. and it was thrown in casually. saying it stemmed from his a austrian experiences in vienna, so i can not add too much of that, he arrived in munich already with this hatred. very intense. and if you go to the rather exhausting exercise of reading "mine kampf" they are splashed across there. the interesting question is why more people did not take it seriously. and i think that gets to the heart, i mean, in part, i think

people the time, the society, whether notiin the u.s. or othe societies, there's a sense of limits. and even though anti-semitism was prevalent then, could not imagine that he meant all the things he said. and there was a t, tendency to dismiss it all. that was a horrible mistake. just because it seemed ir rational, doesn't mean it would not happen. if there's a lesson for that today, you can draw it. yes? >> the americans in germany, at that time, were aware of the support for hitler, especially the support from the upper classes, the prusian royals, to

what degree did the americans make that public? >> the question, how much support did they see? i think the americans who were the most savy, americans that really moved about and there were many of them, they could see to what extent that support was growing, yes, among a large part of the population and they were alarmed by it and for the most part. and they were again, getting back the to one of the best journalists in that time. in 1932, in i think it was right before the end of the year, so it was only a couple of months before hitler takes power. you asked about tisen, he was at a lunch for a group of bankers in berlin and he realized during the lunch that they were all jewish. and during lunch, he also

realized, and this scene is in hitlerland, that several of these bankers had given money to the nazi party. and he asked them why would you do that? and one of the bankers said, well tisen and others tell us go ahead, give them a little money, all of it is rhetoric to motivate the base, and it will go away and buy into it a little bit and things will be okay. and mauer's view was he was telling them get out of germany and get out fast. so some people understood it. in terms of the overall level of support, people could see it happening. and they were alarmed. americans who are lived there before hitler comes to power and afterwards. even dorothy thompson by the way, i talked about how she misjudged hitler initially.

after she comes back and he takes power, she revises her thoughts quickly. she meets germans that she knew before and stunned by how they have changed, and how they accept this new rule. but further down the line, as war is broken out and remember these many americans stay all the way through 1941. because they are not -- america is not at war yet. and they even people like shiver and others who are furious with the nazi movement, and what hitler is doing, keep -- make a point of reminding themselves in the diaries that there are many germans that are not a lined with this. i do not want to go blind with hatred for jgermans because of

what is happening under hitler. sure? all right, and then dave, yes. >> thank you, i'm wonder if you addressed the question of why hitler declared war on the united states after pearl harbor. after all, injugermany did not attack us? >> this gets to the question of rationality of hitler and irrationality of hitler. just like his plan to conquer all of europe is irrational. especially invading the soviet union, he fails. his first plan is to invade with operation sea lion and take europe. that fails. and the way to