different way. and what i tried 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's what they observed. you be the judge. what did they get right? what did they get wrorng? and frankly, think about what would you have understood at the time? now, because of what happened in the '30s, what happened in the '0s -- my book starts right after world war i through the republic and through the rise of hitler through the third reich, the beginnings of the third reich until 1941, pearl harbor and the last americans in

germany before they are exchanged before the american diplomats and journalists in the united states. you don't have much of a sense of how much of an attraction germany was to americans. and it was an attraction for all sorts of reasons. of course it was a defeated, humiliated country. two million german soldiers had died in world war i. the economy was in complete free fall. we all know the stories of hyperinflation, the wheelbarrow stories, for instance. one of the stories that really, though, got me in reading up on this was the story of the classical woman with a whe wheelbarrow of money which is now almost worthless. she comes in front of his store, thinks i'm going to duck in here and see if there's anything to

buy with this wheelbarrow full of money. she darts in, darts out, finds that the wheelbarrow is gone but the money is on the pavement. and it is -- yeah, it seems like, you know, a parody. but this was for real. and there was also this political extremism of right and left. all sorts of extremists. there were literally fights in the streets of berlin that are one of the reasons why the republic was farmed in bimar. it was safer than berlin. but at the same time, there was an explosion in the arts. this was a time of dietrich filming the blue angel, you have george gross, you have the diaries of americans and this party of albert einstein wandered in. it's a pretty attractive place. it's also attractive because it's cheap for americans, it's

easy to travel there with the currency you have a lot of -- you could live very well. it's also easy in terms of the sex. edgar anslem bower wrote the period immediately following the warsaw throughout the world a sexual exuberance which in germany reached an intensity. and then he talks about gay sex, straight sex, and he says it is hard to conceive of a much more tolerant society. thinking about what comes later, that feels like quite a statement. and people like, for instance, josephine baker who we always associate with performing in

paris, in 1925, she decides to bring her whole on psalm to a berlin theater and even though there's protesters outside, inside, she gets a tremendous ovation. she's showered with gifts, jewelry, furs invited to these wild after parties. and where she often performs in her loin cloth and she says, you know, paris parties are nothing to compare with. someone like phillip johnson comes for the architecture. he's also a young, gay american. and he's just astounded by the atmosphere in berlin. so all of this brings an amazing cast of american kashlgters to germany. people like sinclair lewis, thomas wolf, george cannon later

who was associated much more with russia, howard case smith who is a very famous anchorman. even the young john f. kennedy flips through the pages of hitlerland with a short visit. of course, his main entries into his diaries have to do with this "young bundle of fun" he picked up at the border. but the -- and this is a term, you know, that's also incredibly pro-american. yes, the u.s. had entered the war against germany at the end of world war i, but very late in the game. and the main attribute of americans as far as most germans was concerned was they were not the french. they were seen as vindictive victors and who were demanding reparations. while americans were sympathetic

to them economically in terms of trying to get them back on their feet and just culturally. and nowhere in europe was americanization what we now often call globalization more eminent than in germany where everything from mass production to hollywood productions to even the first traffic lights were seen as creeping anti-americanism and largely welcomed. so you had all of this going on, which this american community very, very big and very attractive to what they saw. and, at the same time, though, you had the extremists. and one extremist was this local agitator in munich called adolph hitler. and one of the first things i asked myself were who were the first to meet him and what did they think of him? and it turns out the first american journalist to spend

time with hitler is a man by the name of carl von vegand. he comes originally 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. he shows up on the west coast, becomes a wire service reporterr and gets sent to europe because of he was jerman. and he comes to munich because musolini has just come to power in italy. and he's looking at are there kind of mini musolinis in the making in germany. so he meets hitler. and here are his first impressions. the coliseum, he says, he presents himself as a man of the people. and he says -- writes -- he's age 34, medium tall, wiry, slender, dark hair, cropped toothbrush, mustache, eyes that

seem at times to spurt fire. straight nose. finally chiselled features with a complex so remarkably delicate that many a woman would be proud to possess it. that is hitler. one of the most interesting characters i have met in many months. and he goes onto predict that hitler may become a real key player in bavarian politics. and the other american who meets him just about the same time as a young military attache is only 29 years old. he's sent to munich from the embassy in berlin. he makes the rounds and also meets hitler. and what he says about him, he observes him, he writes down his notebooks which are preserved in the hoover archives. it's a marvelous demagogue. i've rarely listened to such a logical and fanatical man.

his power over the mob must be immebs. those early readings of hitler are not bad when you think about it. but you have others who dismiss him and say very quickly he's very kwt e feminine." he will never stand up against the manly politicians of germany. and then you also have those who actually adore him, who enlist in his cause, the most famous of which comes from the bavarian family on his father's side, but from a bostonian family on his mother's side. she's from boston. her father was a civil war general who had actually car reed lincoln's coffin. and then here is this couple who meets in 1909. they later meet, come to germany in the early 1920s and become close friends with hitler. and putsy, who is a very

talented pianist, plays harvard marching songs for hitler, there are scenes which are just hard to imagine. and hitler has this fascination with his american wife, helen. and i won't go through all of the details, i go through this scene after the beer hall when hitler has atempbted to seize power disastrous ly the police has gunned down 14 nazis and helen's doorstep spends the night in the house and then helen tells him the next morning, she's heard the police are coming to arrest him. and, at that point, helen is convinced that hitler is in despair and he takes an action which involves a pistol which makes her feel he's going to

commit suicide and she talks him out of it. 1923. imagine the consequences of that action if she -- if this american woman was right that he was going to commit suicide then. so you have all of this. hitler then goes to prison and for a while appears to disappear off the map. for a while, what people understood about hitler, that they would understand more and more as he became more powerful. and when the depression hits and his party grows in numbers, he's getting closer to power. what happens is that people misread him even more. for instance, dorothy thompson,

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

some of the most poignant seeds in hitlerland are discussions between americans living in germa germany and german jews. the first in munich working for him, a man by the name of paul dray and they actually observe the early hitler rallies together. and grey kept telling him, nothing will happen. the germans will never elect such a figure. they're much too sophisticated. murphy says i can get you out. so there are a number of these sorts of things that have happened where people are

credulous, of course, one of the most famous credulous americans was martha dodd, the daughter of american ambassador william dodd who thinks hitler is this glamorous new figure. and this, despite the fact that there's been beatings of americans on the street not just germans and attacks on jews. she then, of course, has this lovely odyssey. she begins to have affairs not just with nazis but members of the foreign community, visiting writers like thomas wolf eventually has an affair and becomes a spy for the soviet union. just your typical life's journey. so there are a number of characters here who have some rather startling stories. and then there's a number of familiar characters with a story line i found that was a little

different than i expected. >> it was why he showed up in germany in the first place. whose idea was it? well, the idea was -- initiated by truman smith, that same junior military attache who was in germany in the early '20s comes back in 1935 as a senior military attache. and by that time, he's quite alarmed by the military build up. so he plants the idea with people to have gurring, the commander of the air force to invite lind burg.

he'll show all the test flights and that's exactly what happens. and lindburgh goes to these things, usually brings the military attaches with him, if not, he debriefs them and provides valuable for washington. now, you can ask about his motives and they probably were that they wanted to convince the u.s. that you don't want to tangle with these guys. we should stay out of the war, of course, was his political position later. but whatever the motive, one of the best ones is the wife of truman smith and the seed where he has an elaborate lunch for

lindburgh. and he says -- and he says yes, i do. do you want to see it? and so they proceed to the library. he's this massive man in a white uniform. and this pet lion cub jumps up onto his lap. and the smiths and the lindburghs and everybody else starts coming into the room. the lion starts getting nervous and relieves himself. his uniform turns bright yellow. his face turns bright red. and he goes screaming out of the room. so i have this -- this is one of these scenes you sort of dream of as a journalist.

right after i've written up the scene, i discover that truman smith's daughter is alive in connecticut. she is 12 or 13 at that time. so i go and meet her and talk to her about her recollections and she has 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 refrigerator. i said no, what photo on your refrigerator. i said oh, the one with the lion. and sure enough, what happened w was. >> and he decided he wanted a photo with the lion and arranged

it to have good contests. and that's one of the photos in my book from the door of that refrigerator. so hitler land had very serious side, which is the essential question, of course, is what did people understand. and i think if you put yourself in the people's shoes at the time, it looks like a very different story. and the stories within it are also stories in and of themselves. and i hope you do have a little bit of that impression of hitler look i looking from behind the scenes and seeing very new events. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> and i'd be happy to take some questions. if you can just wait for the

microphone, i think there's one right here. >> two quick items. first of all, i believe, correct me if i'm wrong on this. it was probably 38. if that makes sense. >> okay, also. i just want to remind you i work for news week. [ laughter ] >> lindburgh was duped when he came over to germany to see the airplanes. didn't he move the planes around so that if hay showed him all around so that he was convinced that their air force was 10 times bigger than it really was?

wasn't he duped? >> it's not quite that simple. he was -- as i said, he was trying to impress him with the size of his air force. yes, they were trying to show him the best they had. and may have, in some cases, added some planes for the impression. he could 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. and one of those test flights crashed. so not everything went off perfectly. he was still not quite as impressed. some people did charge that he -- his reports were inflated in terms of german capableties. but, overall, i'd say from what i -- i'm not an aviation

specialist by any means. but overall, the message, it reinforms that some are trying to militarize faster than you can imagine and that the most perceptive journalist and diplomats, people like william shaier and the council general in berlin in the early '30s said you had better take this seriously. no one wanted to get involved in another war. there was exhaustion in world war i. i think overall, lindburgh's information was value.

>> where did hitler's all-consuming hatred of jews come from? >> that's a big question where his obsessive hatred of jews came from. he then got to know him. he was a frequent guest. he was such a pleasant man. he misunderstood. he was wonderful with my son. in fact bs at one point shlgs he said my son 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 hitler go through this act every time.

so, yeah, he was really a kind individual. oh, yes, he did talk and talk and most of the time it was about how much he hated the jews. he says it stems from his austrian experiences. there are a lot of theories about what may have sparked that. i cannot add too much to that that he clearly arrived with his hatred clearly intense. and if you go to the rather exhausting exercise of mei mein kamph, which many people did not, it's there, it's splashed across there. i think, in a way, i think that gets to the part that people are

in kind of a society whether it's the u.s. or any other society where there's certain sense of propriety are limits and even though anti-semitism, as we all know, is quite prevalent in the united states then and the rest of europe, too, could not imagine that he really meant all the things that he said. just because it seemed irrational didn't mean it wasn't going to happen. and if there was a lesson in that for today, you can draw it. the support from hitler, especially the support from the upper classes, the prussian

aristocracy and so on. to what degree did the americans make that public? >> yes, the question, how much support they saw the americans who really moved about, and there are many of them, they can see to what extent that support was growing, yes, among a large part of the pop dwrulation. and they were alarmed by it, for the most part. and they were, again, getting back to one of the best journalists of that era it was only a couple months before hitler takes power. 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 the 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? u you know, it will g away and, you know, buy into it a little bit and things will be okay. and, you know, the view was he was telling jews already then get out of germany and get out fast. so some people realized it. but people could see it happening. she totally misjudged hitler initially.

she revises her view very quickly. and she goes back and meets many germans wlo she had known before and she's stunned by how many of them had been transformed into apossibles of hitler. and the reason -- and how they seemed to accept this new rule. but further down the line, as war is broken out, remember, these many americans stay all the way through 1941 because they're not -- america's not at war yet. and they -- even people like scheiver who are furious with what hitler is doing, make a point of reminding itself. i don't want to go blind with every german because of what's happening with hitler. yes? okay, frank.

thank you former american council of germany. i wonder if you could address the question of why hitler declared war on the united states after pearl harbor. i think this ges into the question of the irrationality of hitler. just like his whole plan to conquer europe at some level was irrational rksz especially invading. he fails. his first plan was to invade with operation sea lion and take england. that fails. so he decides that the way to