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 toft americans in germany before they are exchanged for the american diplomats. the '20s are often overlooked. yes, you have a movie like cabaret, but you don't have a sense of howuch 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 ed 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. there -- it is, yeah, it seems like a parody, but 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. one of the reasons why, of course, the bimar respect was established, it was considered safer than berlin. at the same time, there was an explosion in the arts. this was a time of the filming blue angel," you had george gross and in the diaries of americans, albert einstein wondered in and i 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. edgar bauer wrote the period immediately foowg the rsaw throughout the world a sexual - and he talks aboutay 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 statent. and people like, for instance, josephine baker, we associate with performing in paris. in 1925, she brings her whole ensam to a theat. 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 ahitect 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 canndnon, a howard k sth. who later on becomes a famous anchn. and even the young john f kennedy flits through the pages of "hitlerland" with a short visit. of course, his main entries into the diaries haveo do with this

"young bundle of fu he pick upt. 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, ofteno economically in terms of trying to getm and just cultuy. and nowhere in europe was americanization what we now often call globalization more evident than in germany. everything from mass productions to hollywood productions to even

the first traffic lights and plots were seen as creeping anti-americanism and largely welcomed. so you had all of this going on, which made 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 adolf hitler. i asked myself who were the first americans to meet hitler at dand wh they think of him? and it turns out the first journalisptist to hitler is a man by the name of carl vonvegan, he comes from a immigraamily. he escapes from the family fm in iowa, he actually works for buffalo bill aone point.n the wt becoa wire scete gets sent toe because of

his german co omes t munich b musecauseini has just come to power. and he is looking to see if there are mini musilinis in the making in germany. he meets hitler and here a hfir. he calls him -- he presents himself as a man of the people. he writes he's 34, medium tall, wiry slender, dark hair, cropped toothbrush mustache, eyes that seem at times to spur chiseled featuresth wi complexion so remarkably delicate that many a woman would be proud to possess it. that is hitlerne of the most interesting characters i've met in many s.month he goes on to predict that

hitler may be a real key player in bovarian politics. which in 1922, before he becomes famous, not a bad prediction. and the other american who meets him just about t samtime is a young man by the name of truman smi. he is 29 years andent to ni fm berlin and makes the rounds and meets hitler and he -- what he says about him, he observes him and writes down in his nth koreas which are preserved in the hoover archives. he's a 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 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 bah bavarian 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. after he graduates in 1929, they meet and become close friends with hitler. and putsy who is a talented pianist, plays harvard marching songs for hithere are scenes that are just hard to imagine and hitler has this fascination with his american wife helen. and what happens, i will not go into all the details, but it's -- in hitlerland, i go through

the scene after the beer hall when hitler has attemed to seize power disastrously, the police had gunned down 14 nazis. hitler arri with a oc shoulder athelen's doorstep, spends the night in the house, and then helen tells 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 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, 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 some people misread him much more than the people who first misread him. waone of the most famous mpson, 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 -- futureta of germany, but within 50 seconds i realized i was not. look at the sttlin insignificance of this man she goes on to describe how -- how strange a character he is. how -- how his jerkyotns, his ki of feminine side and all is, d dismisses him. at 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 poignant 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. it's time to get out. and he refuses and in 1938 he dies in dauchau. so there are a number of things most famous credulous americans was dodd who comes at glamorous new figure and the first time she meets him she says he exudes a certain quiet charm and almost a tenderness of speech and glance.

and this despite the fact that there have already 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 eventually have an affair with the soviet diplomat 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 '20s, was the first american to meet hitler comes back in 1935 at the senior military, and at that time he's quite alarmed by the military build-up under hitler. he has a lot of sources in the army, but no sources in the air force. so, he plants the idea with gerring's people, to have gering the commander of the air force to invite lindbergh the biggest celebrity of the era because he knows gerring likes to show off. he'll show him all the factories the test flights and that's exactly what happens. and lindbergh goes to these things, usually brings the military atachays with him.

his motives probably were he wanted to convince the u.s. that you don't want to tango with these guys, they're the most -- we should stay out of the war, which of course, was his political position later. whatever the motives, he actually provided realtime intelligence. and provided some amazing stories. est he bes i came across in the diaries the wife of truman smith and the letters, was a scerehe gerring has an elaborate lunch for lindbergh and at a certain point lindbergh turns to gerring and says, i hear you have a pet lion. and he says, yes, i do, do you want to see it? and so they proceed to the library and gerring who is this

massive man in a white uniform sits down on the sofa and this pet lion cub about 4 feet long jumps up on his lap. but the smiths and the coming into the room, the lion gets kind of nervous and relieves himself all 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 p.s. 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 gop go and meet her and talk 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 refrigerator? and i said no, photo on your refrigerator. and she said the one with gerring's lion, sure enough. appened 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 that k. refrigerator. so "hitlerland" has a very serious side, which is and the essential question is, what did people what did they understand, and what would you see or see and

understand? and i think if you put yourself in their -- people's shoes at the time, it looks a bit 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. 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, lindbergh was duped on -- with those -- when he came over to germany to see the airplanes. didn't they move the planes arnd s when they showed them all around a kving the pl convinced that their ai frce was tenimes bigger than it really was? sn't he duped? >> not quite that simp. he was -- goering as i said was trying to impress him with the size oair rce and to demonstrate everything. and yes, they were trying to show him the best they had may have in some cases added some planes for impression.

but the thing about lindbergh, he knew his planes. so he could point to a plane and say this model is better than the french model in this respect but worse than the american inhat 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 everytng wenoff pe but he was still quite impressed and some people did charge that he inflated -- his reports were capabilities.erms of german but overall, i wld sm not viation specialist by any means. but overall, it re-enforced the message that truman smith and other people in any, some of the other americans were trying get across, this place is militarizing faster than you imagine. and the most perceptive

journalists and diplomats, people like george mesersmith said, you know, you had better take this 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 i think overall, lindbergh's information was valuable. of course his views were a total -- on the political situation were something else. yes? over there. >> 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? >> that's a big question. where his obsessive hatred of jews came from. the american woman i told you about who may have saved hitler

from suicide talked about the fact that when she first met hitler in the -- in 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 hitler -- and egon would make him go through this act every time. so he was really a kind individual. 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 austrian experiences in vienna, there are a lot of theorys about that. what may have sparked that.

so i cannot add too much to that cept he clearly arrived in munich already with his hatred extremely intense. and if you go to the rather exhausting exercise of reading "mine kampf" they are splashed across there. in a way, the more interesting question is why more people didn't take it seriously. and i think back at the heart -- i think people in kind of a society whether it's the u.s. or any other society where their certain sense of propriety are limits. and even though anti-semitism as we all know is quite prevalent in the united states then and in the rest of europe too could not imagine that he really meant al the things he said.

and there was this tendency to just dismiss a lot of it which, of course, was a horrible mistake. just because it seemed irrational doesn't mean it wasn't going to 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 prussian a aristocra aristocracy? what degree did the americans make that public? >> the question, how much support did they see? i think the americans who were the most savvy americans that really moved about and there

were many of them, they could see what extent that support was growing. and they were, again, getting back to one of the best journalists of that era, and as edgar of the chicago daily news in 1932 in, i think, it was right before the end of the year. so it was only a couple months before hitler takes power, you asked about him. 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 tells jews already then get out of germany and get out fast. so some people realized 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 ily. after she comes back and he takes power, she revis h view very quickly. she meets germans that she knew before and stunned by how they have been transformed into apostles of his ler. hitler and how they seem to 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,--a keep int of rinnghemselve the diaries that there are many germans that are not blind by this. i do not want to go blind with hatred for germans because of what is happening under hitler. sure? all right, and then dave, yes. >> thank you. former leader of council on germany. >> oh. >> i wondered if you addressed the question of w hitler declared war on the united states after pearl harbor. after all, germany did not attack us?

if they remained neutral, we might not have landed in normandy, might be a totally different planet than we have now. >> this gets to the question of rationality of hitler and irrationality of hitler. escially invading the soviet a. union. here, think about it. he fails. his first plan is to invade with operation sea lion and take england. anat fails. the way to demonstrate his strength is to take on the soviet union, and he throws his army in that direction and is so confident he does so even without offering them winter uniforms figuring the victory was going to be so quick. we all know what happened. when that is beginning to already run into trouble.