first ladies, in their own words, our eight part series looking at the role of the first lady, their time in the white house, and the issues important to them.

we're kicking off our morning session on the vonset conference featuring dr. alex richie. you met we are kicking off our morning session on -- featuring doctor alex rishi -- professor of history and chair of war studies in the department of -- we will be focusing on how this event shaped the holocaust as well as american reactions. doctor -- presidential -- and -- gunter bischof is an international historian, focusing on the 20th century. he is a martial plan professor,

but he also serves as presidential counselor of the museum and, for the conference committee members who helped design this program, and also next year's program. his fingerprints are all over this one and we really are grateful for that. so, gunter bischof, i alex and mike, an opportunity to -- and then with, that i will let gunter bischof you take it over from their. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. thank you so much for being with us this early in the morning. i said to someone, if this program continues until next thursday, you will be starting at six in the morning. [laughs] let me just -- allow me to make a few

preliminary remarks. the remarks we were talking about the holocaust this morning, amongst other things. but of course, what is important to understand is that the road to auschwitz was a crooked one. maybe starting with hitler's antisemitism. and there is a debate, when did that start? in his munich years after world war i? i think it started with his vienna years because that is where he encountered for the first time, a lot of jews in the city of vienna, where he was failing as an artist. when hitler came to power, he very quickly began to exclude the juice from german public life. in january 1939, he gave a famous speech -- the german parliament, which he didn't use very much. where he issued his first

famous, or infamous, prophesy. he threatened to annihilate the jewish race in europe, in the event of war. and added, quote, if international finance inside and outside europe should succeed in plunging the nation's once more into a world war, the result will not be the -- of the earth and thereby, the victory of -- but the annihilation of the jewish race and europe. and hitler would use this type of prophesy often. after 1939. now, on december 12th, 1941, this was the day after he declared war on the united states. he addressed a meeting of sectional leaders of the nazi party and regional leaders. and he said, coming back to his, prophesy quote, regarding the jewish question, the future is determined to clear the table.

he warned the jewish people that if they caused another world war, it would lead to their destruction. those were not empty words, he added. now, the world has come. the destruction of the -- must be the necessary consequence. we cannot be sentimental about it. and december 12th, if you think about, it this was only a few weeks before the conference, which alex will talk about this morning. on january 20th, 1942. so, i think if you think about the holocaust, but don't think about just this great line from -- as holocaust historians have pointed out recently, it was a crooked road involving many contingencies along the way. so, keep that in mind as we are

talking about the conference this morning. it -- we couldn't be in a better position to have two very distinguished historians explain these events to us. doctor alexandra richie will be the first one. she was the previous convenor of the presidential counselors. now, doctor john marrow is. the group that you've heard about. and alexandra richie is it oxford university, a st. anthony's college. there she's lived in warsaw for the past years and she's teaching at a private university called -- . in international relations. she is the author of two well-known books. sort of a history of berlin, and a lot of -- is being banded about when you're talking about the nazis

and also a book on the warsaw. royal a pricing of 1944. the war uprising. she's going to speak first. and i will introduced him now to dr. michael neiberg he is the chair of war studies, where he is teaching history that the university. and he seems to be going back and forth. he is written well-known books on world war i royal but usually he comes back to world war ii. a few years ago i remember sharing a panel where he was talking about the potsdam conference. it's also because it is. more recently he has come back to world war ii with a book that is just out. when france fell. he's going to talk about that this morning. without further ado, i handed over to alexandra richie bergeron.

[applause]. >> it and you so much gunter, and i know it's early everybody and i know the subject is very very grim. very difficult to face sometimes. but it's also very necessary to look at the holocaust, look at the final solution, and you understand really how crucial this was in hitler's war. in the nazis war. and in the consequences. the consequences of what hitler began. and it is really the discovery of the camps, the how, which is really the iceberg which is of this. and it shifted our perceptions of what we are fighting for. it's an important thing to understand some of the steps that lead to the final solution and that's what the conference

was all about. i'm standing in front of a photo of a beautiful villa in the beautiful elegant suburb in berlin. on january 20th 1942 a number of eloquent black cars and limousine's and mercedes could be seen pulling up to this lovely place. and the house originally which was owned by a right wing industrialist to germany, had 1941 being sold to the ss. the isis used it as a guesthouse when they wanted to meet the guys from minsk or rega and meet together have a meal or something. this is the place they chose. it wasn't surprising on that day, 15 high officials of the national socialist regime had been invited by ryan hard -- to a meeting to discuss the

final solution of the jewish question in europe. it was to be a meeting followed by an elegant breakfast. they have been invited by this man who was extraordinarily clever, very cruel. and hitler called him the man with the iron hot the iron heart. but it was important for him because this was the rubberstamp apparently of the final solution. it's good to manchin because there's already been terrible discrimination everything from the nuremberg laws to the -- . and the german and nazis originally wanted to push the juice out of journey out of austria. and the tragedy we know in hindsight, not enough countries were willing to take them in. so hitler and himmler and -- came up with other solutions. when they invaded poland there were going to make an area in

the lublin area and sent in there. when he took france they were going to send them to madagascar. and what hitler did instead, was round the jews up in poland for example, there are 3 million jews living in poland, put them in ghettos, wall them in, and many of these people died of starvation and disease in these ghettos alone. but this was not yet the final solution. many people were dying, but this was not yet the final solution. the first phase of phase of what we can call the hot holocaust, started with the invasion of the soviet union. 22nd of june 1941. when the army began this normal in this enormous invasion. and was followed by the -- and other police and other units as well. who specific and so purpose was to murder, primarily jews and also political common sars and others. specifically dictated by hitler.

and this murder began right away. this was called the holocaust by bullets. where around 1.4 million people, it's hard to imagine, were simply lined up at the edge of pits, or in mass graves in forests and shot. infamous places. like one just outside of kyiv, and there were many other sites as well. but as hitler figured out, it's possible to go and mass murder 1 million or so people in faraway areas of russia. nobody cared and nobody could see so is easy to keep it quiet. what were you going to do with the population of jews for example in poland. hitler wanted to create a paradise in the east. and paradise in the german mind, or the nazi mind, cannot have a jewish population. in their minds they began to think you know we have to do something about this as well. and this is where the -- conference comes in. hitler correctly calculated that you could shoot people in

the soviet union and get away with it as we're, but it would be much more difficult to do it in poland. and as the idea dawned on them, that perhaps let's murder the jews of western europe as well. you can't go into the center of paris and start shooting people into the sand river. this would be noticed by the rest of the world. so this was the beginning of the genesis and the idea of the termination. and this innovation which we now know so much about this was new. nobody in the world ever thought we needed such a thing. why would you need to move people to a special place in order to kill them. this was absurd. so the nazis put their technological engineering minds to work and began to come up with all sorts of innovations. they put together many things that they had already developed. into this horrific conclusion. one of the things was of course the euthanasia program. that have been put in place by hitler and the others because

they wanted to kill people who had a disability, who are mentally handicapped, whatever it may be. it didn't fit into this perfect nazi world. and around 70,000 people were murdered in six different killing centers around germany. this is only stopped because of the activities of some germans who realized that their relatives had been murdered. and people like archbishop gayle and who started to protest against this. a second piece of the puzzle was to move large number of people. this began and things like the olympic games. where tens of thousands of people were being moved around berlin, but it was perfected in this sinister purpose by reinhart now -- and i commend. and they saw this cleansing after 1939, so he just push people on trains and move them to other parts and started to learn how to move people around

in this way. also, as a result of the so-called holocaust by bullets which i mentioned earlier, hitler began to have the terrible toll that this was taking on his sensitive as s man. it's terrible to have to shoot tens and tens of thousands of people into pits. the sensibilities were being challenged. so they were looking for a more, i suppose kind way of killing people. not kind for the victims of course, kind for the perpetrators. the idea of using gas began to be tested in various places. taking off in the euthanasia program. the first time auschwitz, was an ad hoc experiment that by -- the houthi or some cyclone be into the basement of block 11 of the hated punishment lock in the main camp, and it worked. so they started using the small crematorium at auschwitz one as

a killing field already, before the -- conference took place. and this was also what was to become extermination camps as well. it was all before monday took place. and they were first experimenting with gas fans. putting exhaust into the container and driving people around and killing them that way. and the first extermination camp was built and started by -- on the 13th of october 1941. he proposed the construction of a gas chamber and this would be the first actual extermination camp. so the point about these places they were in a force somewhere where nobody could see them but they were the connected by train line that came right up to the camps. this is a mass killing site.

and you able to transport people and secret where they could be murdered and their bodies disposed of without anybody knowing about it. . this is a picture of ryan hart -- and this is what decent people going to the conference. this is sent to martin luther. you may be able to see the date for the conference, it was the 9th of december 1941. however as we all know quite a few important things happen in december 1941. which would turn out to be, perhaps one of the most dramatic weeks of the war. of course we all know, the 5th of december the germans start to feel a pinch outside of moscow. they realize they are not going to take moscow just before christmas. more importantly perhaps, on the 7th of december 1941, the japanese bombed pearl harbor. four days later, the germans declare war on the united states.

hitler seems to have considered this in a way to be a trigger to get the go ahead on the mass murder for the remaining jews of europe. and it's good to mention, gurgle has reported in his diary on december 1941, that hitler had gathered his dignitaries, and return to his quote unquote prophesy on the 30th of january 1939. if the jews ever started a world war again, because they had started this world war right as we all know, it would mean their annihilation. in reality, this meant that the jews of europe were doomed. on the 20th of january, they waited as these major officials arrived. hi as its officers, well educated people, each of them had academic doctorates, they were met they were representatives of the top ministries. ministry of the interior, foreign ministry, gestapo. mueller was there. adolf eichmann who would become notorious later on for his

trial, he was there on hand as hydraulics deputy and take the minutes. and he open the meeting to open it that he was going to be in charge, along with himmler and the ses of this new innovative idea of exterminating the jews of europe. we don't want any interference from any of the ministries. one of the main purposes of this meeting was to rubberstamp the idea of the final solution, also to make sure that hydraulic and himmler, weird to be in charge. thank you very much. so this is a picture of eichmann and what is interesting and i still can't look at this list without feeling sick. it's a list if you can read it of countries in europe and elsewhere as well because turkey is included and morocco and the number of jews that the nazis had figured lived in these places. and these people were going to

be basically that every single jewish man woman and child was going to be found, they were going to be quote unquote transported to the east. the what is so shocking, it's a scale of the crime that they were planning. yet here they were, this gloria viola having a wonderful breakfast and according to eichmann during his trial, the cognac had already started to flow now. they outlined the plan in some detail and i'd pointed out that roughly 11 million jews would be included in the death toll who fought in the first world war on the side of germany might be allowed to go into the model camp -- but generally speaking, you know, the rest would just have to disappear. the meeting took an hour and a half. actually, much of the time, if you look over the minutes, we

spent over arguments about what we're -- what would happening -- the jewish people in mixed marriages -- do you keep them, but then you might offend germans who don't like jewish people? it was very back and forth. people were hot under the collar about. it that was resolved. the nazi machine pulled together to create new factories of death. and this would turn 1942, in particular, into a horrifying year of the holocaust. one of the most terrible years of systematic mass killing in the history of mankind. for example, camp -- where most of the jewish people in warsaw were killed, most of those people died in one year. it is something of a miracle that we know about this meeting. so much related to the holocaust -- or not written down or written down and destroyed. hi trick printed out 30 copies of this protocol and you can

see, not a very good picture of the protocol. they were supposed to be destroyed, but one person, martin luther here of the foreign ministry, decided he would keep his. we don't know why. and he hit it away in his papers. fortunately, after the war, it was discovered. by a british person named -- who was micro felling documents for the allies. he handed over to robert kemp near, the u.s. prosecutor, who used it in the nuremberg proceedings -- as for the participants, many died during the war. -- eichmann these -- these men perished. we are not sure about -- he might have escaped law eichmann and we just never knew

about it. as for the other participants, only a few were brought to trial. of course, -- was assassinated. assess major kaufman -- denied when they were questioned that they had understood anything. they said, well, they just said they were deporting these people to the east. we didn't understand what it meant. we had nothing to do about the mass murder of jewish people, absolutely nothing whatsoever. and tragically, this worked and they did not go to prison, in fact, they got off scot-free and had successful careers in west germany after the war. this is a picture of the gentleman and the glasses. one man was horrified of this faith. -- the west german government didn't really know what to do with it. a holocaust survivor -- campaigned tirelessly for the villa to be turned into a

memorial site. he named nazi criminals who are having wonderful careers in west germany. he tried to explain what's -- of course, this was the time of the cold war and he was ignored. and sadly, he committed suicide in despair in 1974. fortunately, as we all know, attitudes changed in west germany and then in united sherman e.. in the 19 80s, the holocaust had become much more of an important subject in germany and around the world. in 1992, on the 50th anniversary of the conference, -- an official museum of the holocaust and an educational center. and indeed, for those of you who have been on the tour, we go to the -- and we also go to auschwitz and to me, it is always this terrifying reminder of these

gentlemen, in quotation marks, sitting around the table, having their wonderful breakfast. and then you go to see the horrors of what the camps really were like and what the consequences were of their sort of blight comments and discussions. after what remains so chilling to me is the thought of this educated, well dressed, high-ranking officials getting together over this lavish meal, testing their success, as they plan the mass murder of millions and millions of human beings. it is a chilling warning from history as to how something like this can happen. thank you. [applause] >> good morning everybody. i want to start by just saying what a pleasure it is to be here in person, at an actual conference, and i want to thank everyone here in new orleans that i know worked so very hard to put this together. i have to be honest with you.

i am not a holocaust scholar and as i was reflecting upon this, i think this might be the first time in 25 plus years of coming to conferences that i've spoken about the holocaust. nevertheless, i am working on -- i gunter bischof, kindly pointed out in the book, kept me coming back -- touched on everything. it touched on the eastern front. it touched on the middle east. it touched on southeast asia. and it touched on the holocaust as well. so, when i want to do in the 15 minutes or so that i have with you here is talk a little bit about that. and talk about the ways that avicii france and america have a very strange relationship to that very strange political entity -- conditioned much of what the united states did. just to remind everybody, vijay, france, is this very odd, very difficult to explain, political entity. and june of 1940, france has defeated. nevertheless, france manages to

get something out of the armistice associations. what they get is an unoccupied or free zone. shown here in play on this map. it becomes known as -- after the very small spa town in which it centers its government. it is technically an independent, neutral state and, crucially, it maintains control of the french navy and control over the french empire overseas. and those two things are critical for american planners who are absolutely shocked that france had fallen. will happen to that fleet and what will happen inside the french empire. the two men most connected with vichy, france. the man on the left is that -- uniformly disliked inside the united states. dr. seuss drew him as a rat in political cartoons. but his son-in-law, a man by the name of -- who is distantly related to the roosevelts and descended

directly from lafayette. he came to the united states even before the fall of france to represent vichy interest. the man on the right is -- he is one of the great heroes of the first world war for france. he is also a good friend of -- and a man very much loved and admired inside the united states. there are still six american states that have -- boulevards in them. the american administration, especially secretary of states -- and ambassador to be she friends -- gave these men a lot of room and a lot of space inside u.s. policy. they had decided directly opposite to what the british were deciding at the same time, that america should not only recognize vichy, the united states should embrace vichy. in part because vichy was anti communist and in part because of the promises that despite everything that happened in 1940, france and the united states could continue with

positive relationships. this is also true of the new american ambassador, robert murphy, the diplomat operating in north africa. therefore, the united states knew full well what was happening to french jewish people and chose to do nothing about it. this is a photograph of the rand up of around 15,000 parisian jewish people in southwestern france. he clearly knew what was going on. at one point when robert murphy questioned level, his answer was, if you don't like what we are doing with jewish people, we would be happy to send them all to you. knowing that american immigration policy was a sensitive issue. the united states raised no objections to vichy's policy. -- the united states also knew that people were being sent to this place, the transit camp.

if you take the line from -- you will pass by the station, which is exactly where this was. this building contain just for working toilets, no heat, minimal food and water, and the united states knew all about it. -- there is a museum that just opened where people can come and see it. -- there is absolutely no secret about why vichy was trying to do and about the deep antisemitism inside of the vichy regime itself. this political cartoon it showing the revolution -- the plan that vichy to renew france. you can see some of the symbols inside here. there is a very clear jewish star. there is also a word for a laziness on the bottom left. there is a word for judaism, capitalism, all tied together in the vichy and not the

ideology about the role of jewish people inside europe. foreign jewish people were -- but french jewish people as well. in october 1940, the vichy government excluded jewish people from professions that influenced people, which soon included people -- anything in the civil service and media. in march 1941, the vichy government created -- now, we know now that most of the information that the united states was getting about the holocaust was coming either directly or indirectly through france. it was either coming from french for sources or was coming from swiss sources that were then being sent through france. the most famous is a cable that came from a zionist living in switzerland, detailing in great detail what was going on inside

germany. when that cable reached the united states, someone, most likely the secretary of states. sent back the infamous document, cable 3:54, telling sources in europe not to send back information about what was going on with a jewish people in europe. the secretary of the secretary was so angry that he went directly to president roosevelt demanding an answer as to what had gone on without cable. and roosevelt refused to get involved. what's interesting to me, this all happens in the hunt -- summer of 1942. on september 16th, 1932, -- gave the first that i can find -- the earliest example of any senior official a meeting in public what's the united states government knew. this is 1942, where he harshly condemned the, quote, revolting policy of sending jewish refugees -- their intention to enslave,

maltreat, and eventually exterminate jewish people under extreme cruelty -- just for information, this document did not appear on the front page of any american newspaper. it appeared only in the back of pages in september of 1942. why did he do this if he issued cable 3:54, if he told people in europe, don't send us back a more reports, what is different in september of 1942? well, two things. one, the number of reports coming out of vichy, france, the unoccupied zone so people can occupy slightly more freely from german interference. reports are reaching the world. they are reaching the united states government. they're reaching newspapers. things like jewish women killing themselves and their children, rather than risking deportation. the -- and reports of vichy french officials actively supporting

the killings that were going on inside of france. these reports were about to be released and we're about to be made public by an american rabbi based out of cleveland named stephen wise. it's possible that what -- was doing was getting on top of the news cycle, trying to get out in front of the story. the second thing that is going on, of course, and as you can all hopefully figure out from the data, is that the united states and great britain are getting very close to executing operation torch and coming into north africa. the united states and britain have no idea what the response of vichy french forces are going to look like once they get there. this could be part of all trying to lay the groundwork of, if vichy it does not cooperate with us, we are trying to lay the groundwork for -- we can talk more if anyone is interested because i am fascinated by this. this has become quite controversial, again, inside france, a recent book by a french historian, argues that

although 80,000 french and jewish people were killed in the holocaust, the majority survived, not because of any effort by vichy to protect them, but despite vichy's efforts to kill them. why is that the case? he argues that one thing that is true up vichy that is not true about occupied france, that it has difficult to patrol borders, that can lead -- get into places like spain and italy, which was relatively good for jewish people until the fall of mussolini and the german occupation of northern italy. this is the story of cremo levy, and italian jewish man who -- remember when i said about vichy controlling the french empire. it is very easy of what -- to move between vichy, france and the french empire. that means morocco, algeria,

tunisia. so, several jewish people got out that way. vichy, france also has far fewer cities inside of it. so, the chart that alex showed, it divided france between the occupied and unoccupied zone. those in the unoccupied zone are in the big cities. in vichy, these areas are scattered throughout the countryside, making it difficult for police units to come and get them -- operating inside vichy, france, trying to get these people to safety. and again, i want to insist because this has become an issue again in our political sphere. this is despite's vichy's efforts, not because of anything they did to try to protect these people. how do we know that? because we know what they did in 1942, the year that alex has already cited as being so critically important.

whereas -- had tried to release the french people as gently as possible but by the middle of 1942 vichy officials are getting more offensive and last year. here they are here. it and every time i read a title like that, it boggles the mind to think they created an office like that. meaning that they are perfectly upfront and perfectly comfortable with doing what they did. the man on the right. sir for a time in the s s. he will become the maintenance of order. the secretary general for the maintenance of order. he will become the the vichy merit paramilitary force, which will become an operate with more nastiness and create a reader force as a second row work goes on. so the second world war for the french, is between the resistance and the -- .

and this is what french people have been trying to deal with. when united states and great britain entered africa, and entered operation torch this ends vichy france. these guys get even more authority. that's just not french forces who are doing this, but germans as well. and what they will do is build this network of camps, one of which we will see on the mid crews in the spring. in the southern half of france here what i want to do with this to make sure that i end on. time, i want to end with something that is always that has always fascinated me as i yes every time we go to france. i've been going to france in the early 1990s. every place in france that jews were deported, the they have now plaques and historical markers to indicate what happened and where and what happened. this is one of those plaques, this is what i would like to end with. i find it so fascinating. i hope some of you in the back

and read it. even if you don't speak french, i think i can explain what it is. it's talking about deportations on the 16th and 17th of july 1942. one 13,152 jews were arrested in paris and in its suburbs. this is talking about another one of these round ups. and these people were sent to auschwitz. what's interesting to me, two thirds of the way down here and it says they were placed in inhumane conditions. here's the part that strikes me by. the government of vichy under the nazi occupiers. and sometimes in france they will say that yes vichy did this, sometimes they will do what they did here is that the vichy under the orders of the germans, and sometimes they say the germans did it, and sometimes they say the passive voice, 30,000 jews were deported. and for meet the language of

this law you understand this, the way you create a historical memory of this is to be fascinating. this is the political debate that remains ongoing in france today. the extent to which you could write this off as being something done under nazi orders, or the extent of which you have to wrestle with the fact that much of vichy the's own antisemitism was driving the policies in the way that france behaved. i have to say for united states, this was not a high moment of high morality for us either. when the american forces came into north africa, the united states raised no objection to the antisemitic policies that had been going on in vichy, and no objection to the -- law which gave french jews in africa citizenship. they allowed the vichy officials to run north africa for a good long time. after the united states had moved on to tunisia, the united states raised no objection, the deal was that vichy would govern north africa so the u.s.

did have to do it. while american forces headed onto tunisia. as an result no american official from eisenhower on down, raised the -- attention to the -- law and that will change as charles de gaulle comes to the four front. but that they say is another story. but i wanted to indicate to you the language on these plaques, and just remind everybody that for many people living inside europe, for many people living inside france, the battles over memory and language and the battles over the political meaning of these events continues to be something that is important in the french political sphere. it's important today as they have a presidential election coming up, and the vichy is back in the news again for that. [applause] >> thank you to both alexandra richie and michael neiberg for their wonderful

presentations. i'm going to start out by asking them a question, and then we are going to throw it out to the audience for questions and answers. note that both of them ended with an appeal to the memory of these events. the memory of wannsee conference and the memory of vichy and how those battles are still being fought today as michael told us. this is a reminder for you, we have a memory conference coming up in march. so the museum is being or is paying plenty of attention to the memory battles. just as a reminder. the question i have for alexandra, the issue of the importance of the wannsee conference on this twisted road to auschwitz. i think the older scholarship had wannsee conference front and center as turning to the final solution but now most recent the holocaust --

as the germans call it they see a continue towards versailles wannsee. could you give us a sense of how important is wannsee, and you mentioned this at the end but what is the importance? >> you're absolutely right one of the season one of the reasons that wannsee became so important in the early scholarship, if we had the proof of it. if you've got the whole protocol and all the information and it's very very rare to have documentation of someone like the heydrich sitting around the table saying this is what we're going to do. so this was gold dust for scholars. this was a step by step process towards the final solution. in the 70s and the 80s, there were two real schools of thought about the holocaust.

one called the functionalist, thinking that this had been planned by hitler when it is writing mein kampf. and a question of when he could do this. and the functionalist, who believe that this was basically this was ad hoc, and they're trying to put things together or heydrich as we went along. so the final solution as a result of this one thing leading from one to the other, and really with the opening up of the archives with the collapse of the soviet union, it's really the functionalist won the day because we got so much more evidence from the files. including things like himmler's day book, and the complete garbles diaries. so that shows step-by-step how this came about. and there are very other important meetings that took place that we don't have evidence of. so for example meetings between hitler, have mueller over the telephone in july 1941 in which

obviously these matters were discussed. there were other meetings and again the gerbils are referred to but, we don't have proof of it. it seems that hitler made the decision for the final solution, that was sometime in the autumn of 1941. and that again is pointed out by new scholarship and new evidence from the soviet union. in that sense to answer your question, the wannsee conference was more of a stamping exercise and as i mentioned earlier to mention that it made sure that heydrich and the ses, to make sure there was not going to be any interference from anybody else. they were going to be in charge of this and nobody else was going to get a look in. that is the significance of it. but it's one of many many meetings and ideas that came along between 1941 and 42. >> thank you. i find it odd or ironic that the official, whose minutes

survived, is martin luther. usually, we associated a wholly or man with that name. >> indeed. it is very ironic. he would have been chastised severely by himmler, had himmler discovered he kept the minutes. we are very grateful, ironically, that he did. >> okay, thank you alexandra. a question for michael. michael, you pointed towards the fact that roosevelt made this decision to recognize the vichy government and that you said in your book was very unpopular. probably he didn't like that at all. could you enlarge on that? >> the way i do this with students's show clips of the movie casablanca, which was made exactly at that time. one of the last scenes's louis opening a bottle of vichy water and starting to drink from it and throwing it in the trash can.

-- the call is the leader of a free french movement. roosevelt, leahy, leahy a little bit less, les he was getting very disillusioned by vichy. robert murphy was not. they saw a lot that they liked. they saw stable government. they saw government that they thought they could manipulate. and they thought they were anti communist and anti charles de gaulle, both of which were very popular inside washington. -- the american government pursuing this policy and the intense, intense hatred of that policy inside the united states. and it's one of the reasons why roosevelt pushed martial to launch operation torch before the midterm election of 1942. this is what he was worried about. if the midterm elections of 42 turned on foreign policy, at that point, autumn 1942, roosevelt is pretty weak on

wartime policy. they are worried about that. for me, it was fascinating the way that the threads of vichy connect to everything. >> i think the importance of your book and you pointed out in your introduction, is that you are trying to salvage the u.s. french relationship in the war from oblivion, so to speak. because americans use a are sort of infatuated or enthralled with the special relationship to great britain. and you say, wait a minute. don't forget france. in your introduction, you also, make i think, an important point that i would like you to debate a little bit more. namely, that for the u.s., you say the war began with a fall of france in the june of 1940, along with pearl harbor. could you elaborate? >> yeah, if you think about this, so, france, the united states, policy in the 1920s and 30s, just begins from an unquestioned assumption that the french army and british

navy will do what they did in the last world war. that is, they will keep the germans away long enough until we can come in at the time of her choosing. when the french army is no longer there and the french navy is in this weird state where it is part of this weird country vichy and we don't really know what they will do, those assumptions completely go away. and you look at a map of the french empire in 1940, it includes senegal, which is the part of africa that is closest to south america and interferes with the shipping lanes. it includes martinique, which is where francis only air traffic carrier is. also, where half of france's gold is. overnight, the map goes from something that looks very safe and secure for americans to something that looks terrifying for americans. and it's in this period, these few weeks after the fall of france, that we passed the two notion navy acts. -- this is where destroyers go through. it's enormous. i have the numbers in the book. these enormous spending bills

that just keep going up and up and up, as people get more and more scared. it's where we actually debate a 4 million man army in 1940. that marshall and roosevelt ratchet down to 2 million. it's this flurry of activity gets the united states involved. i credit kramer who used to run our archive. ridgeway is writing memorandums to president roosevelt and marshall saying, we no longer choose the time of our entry into the war now. the fall of france means, this is no longer under our control and we are not prepared to defend anything except the coast of the united states. and we are not even sure we can do that. so, it's this moment of panic. i don't want to go on too long, but another thing the vichy connects to is roosevelt's decision to tell the fbi, just ignore the fourth amendment of the constitution on wiretaps. do what you have to do. at the beginning of the opening up of this kind of tension between civil liberties and security.

>> that is a point that stephanie made yesterday, that the u.s. constitution is under threat with all these wartime orders. ladies and gentlemen, we have about 20 minutes left for your questions. i defer to you. you are a wonderful audience. you have lots and lots of good questions, which are surely smarter than mine would be. jeremy, want to take over? >> yes. we will start to your left in the bar -- very back please. >> thank you very much for this very interesting panel. one question to michael. you remember you closed the presentation with a plaque. and how big discussions are going on in france about how they should be written and what's sort of memory we should have of vichy. the question is, how would you

write this plaque after having written the whole book and why? >> [laughs] i'm really tempted to get the army answer, that as a federal employee i cannot comment on the affairs of another state. [laughs] i think i will do that. so, i would be happy to talk with you off line, but i will doc that question since i'm a federal employee here on official business. >> [laughs] [applause] >> i can't believe i got away with that. >> we will stay to your left, towards the back, please. >> great answer! [laughs] part of my boys, i will do this as quickly as possible. the point was made that we had never seen a killing like this before. my mom's family walked across the syrian desert out of armenia about 1915 because there was a killing of the

scale going on. to a better, point though, you guys do great scholarship and i still wish i was a history professor. i am and administrator now. thank you. [laughs] the point being, it's not us you have to be talking to. look around this country. there are people thinking it's okay to be nazis. we have to be speaking to the people that aren't listening to us. we have to make our scholarship accessible and i think if they knew the stories you guys are telling, about how horrible this is and why public history is important to understanding these things, we would be a better country. [applause] >> your point is well taken about the armenian genocide, of course, and hitler himself said, who remembers the armenians? and he was very well aware of the fact that that was a precedent, which he very consciously referred to as,

well, you can mass murder hundreds of thousands of people and nobody seems to be much bothered. yes, it's very important. also, in the run up to the genocide, i think the point i was trying to make was that there have been, had been, genocides, mass killings before. but we made the holocaust into the state makes the final solution slightly different was the use of all of this technological and engineering know how to create an entire system whereby, for example, in treblinka, in one month, july of 42 to august 42, 315,000 people are mass murdered. i mean, it's unbelievable, the scale and the technology and how it was done. this is not to denigrate whatsoever the fate of the armenians or others who, before and since, have suffered in genocide. but simply to say that this was a quite unique mechanism. >> next question is immediately

to your front with connie on the right side, please. >> thank you both so much for excellent presentations. a question for michael, if we can go back to the plaque, and maybe we could see it again? is that possible? there it is hebrew letters. what are they? >> i think they, mean don't forget. right next to the hebrew letters are the french letters, never forget. i think that is what he was referring to. although, i would not bet my mortgage on that. >> we have to find out. >> i am pretty sure it says never forget. >> in hebrew or yiddish? >> in hebrew. because of course, these are -- most of these people would not have spoken yet as, they would've spoken french or -- unlikely to be yiddish. >> just an interesting point to that is the first jewish people

who were transported were jewish people who had fled from poland, who were stateless. and therefore, they were innocence, easy to move. including the young man who's parents were being deported across the german polish border and in such terrible conditions that he murdered an official in paris, sparking -- >> just to be clear, when it says on the bottom there is, passerby remember and it uses the informal form of french. it's an informal, speaking to you as a friend, kind of thing. i don't know with hebrew says, but i would suspect it is a translation of that. >> to your left, towards the front, please. >> was there a relationship between the german campaign against the soviet union and the decisions made and the timing of the decisions made -- >> yes. as i mentioned, the first phase

of what we know of as the holocaust was the invasion of the soviet union. and it was the mass killings in two pits, the holocaust by bullets. and so, this was really the first phase, when the germans had decided, the nazis had decided, that the extermination of the jews was paramount now. it coincides with the closing of all borders, the last place that jews could get out of lisbon -- but decision was made not to try and push truth out of palestine or britain or wherever, but you lock them in and then they were destined for mass murder. it is related to the invasion of the soviet union as the first phase of the holocaust. >> next question is in the center aisle with connie please? >> in his book, hitler's will inhaling executioners, daniel --

goes into great detail explaining how hitler didn't really have to do a whole lot of motivating too -- because for centuries, including all the way back to martin luther, theologians, politicians, writers had discussed germany's jewish problem or the jewish misery and, therefore, like the guys in police battalion one-on-one, took their wives along while they were killing all these people. i would just like to ask you, how was it -- i still have difficulty putting my hat around how a culture of people could just ignore all the stuff and go along with it? they were the ones, the functionaries and the cops and the guys -- they were older, most were not members of the nazi party. they took their wives along as they kill these people. help me understand what happened there. >> again, this is one of the

most baffling questions of history. how could the germans, this land of bach and beethoven and grow to and schiller, become the perpetrators of such a horrific crime? gold haugen has been somewhat discredited as -- he was one of the intentional lists that everything was preplanned and it was because the germans had this history of antisemitism, that lead inevitably to the holocaust. recent scholars -- have put a little bit more nuance on to this. the germans weren't predestined to do this. it was something that happened along the way. in fact, i think that makes it even worse. because it wasn't something they couldn't help in their dna or whatever. it was actually, the holocaust was man-made, it was choices taken day by day by people like the ones i wannsee, who made this decision, they made this decision, which ended up in this horrific mass murder.

the irony after the war, after -- even the people who are arrested and questioned over their involvement in wannsee so that, we didn't do anything. i have no idea we are talking about. we were not involved in this. we didn't shoot anybody. we didn't go to the camps. i never saw a camp. didn't even know they existed. they were able to morally distance themselves from the fact that they, of course, knew exactly what transportation to the east meant. they called the jewish people pieces, not human beings. this language was even deliberately developed, in order to distance themselves morally from the thing that they were doing. the overall question that you have asked is one of the great mysteries and when we say, never again and this should never happen again or whatever else, which we mean exactly? coming back to the question of education, what is it that we are trying to warn against? what is that we are trying to prevent? and it doesn't help to say, oh,

you know, they were just antisemitic from birth, so it will never happen with us. that is not the answer. the answer is, every single human being is capable of great good and great evolve. and if the circumstances, propaganda, the conditions are such that people make those wrong, and moral, criminal choices, the question is, how does that come about? how do you prevent that from coming about? >> let me add something here. in german, it sounds even better. how -- how could the people of poets and thoughtful people, philosophers, become the people of hang man, so to speak? on the controversy, i would add this. i remember when -- was here giving a speech, and he filled the synagogue, more than 1000 people. he was a phenomenon when the

book came out, in germany to. but then, i think, more thoughtful people like chris browning who has been at this conference, came and gave, as alexandra said, a more nuanced explanation of the pack -- police battalion went to one. i would say today in scholarship -- he came up with the very deterministically argument that the nazis had been antisemitic since the middle ages and they still were at the time of world war ii and that explains at all. >> to your left, at the very front, please. >> thank you very much. but nazis were a lot of things, but they were not chemical engineers or mechanical engineers. can you talk about the role that the german industry played in the development and construction of these camps? and were any of them ever held accountable for their role or

any consequences in making these things happen? >> no, there were nazis who were chemical engineers and biologists and chemists and all sorts of other things, and in fact, the experts in the tea for euthanasia program went on to work as pediatricians and medical doctors or whatever, who then when the euthanasia program started, just transferred themselves into working in the camps and figuring out what was the best way to gas people or whatever else. you are right. the organization -- and many other industrial concerns were involved in the creation of the camps. specialists came to check how do you build a crematorium? specialists came to say, how do you empty -- for the canisters, and so on. on all layers of german society, industry, finance and chemist

and all others, took place in this exercise. all of this, for example, with a building of auschwitz, we have documentation for practically every single contract that was given out to these people. we have evidence of the contracts, for example, of the companies who worked in the warsaw ghetto. -- we have lists and lists of these things. but again, after the war, most of these people got off scot-free because they said i had nothing to do with us, i didn't pull the trigger, i don't kill anybody. and so, with very few exceptions, you have horrific cases of some of the doctors who are involved in the euthanasia program and indeed in the holocaust itself, going back to becoming famous pediatricians or medical doctors in german society. so, i think one of the problems after the war, was the disconnect between the mass of people who were involved in creating this horror and the

misunderstanding that it wasn't just himmler, hydraulic, and hitler at the top. it was many people involved. but there were often cobb's in the wheel, so they could distance themselves. because of the cold war, there wasn't really the enthusiasm to go after everybody who was involved because we needed chemists and engineers and so on to rebuild germany, so became a stable democracy in the heart of europe after the war. so -- who perhaps should have been questioned eye or imprisoned. >> permit me to add a footnote, since you mentioned the role of doctors in the euthanasia program. not too long ago, the california historian, edith shopper, came up out with a book on doctor -- he was an austrian doctor who gave the name to asperger syndrome. and schaffer explained how he was involved in killing children in vienna in the euthanasia program. she pleads for the name asperger syndrome, therefore,

being changed. it hasn't happened yet, but just to again show you how these bottles are still being fought, there is new information. >> next question as to your far-right, halfway back with connie. >> just a quick lead into the question. i was fortunate enough to work with edward teller a long time ago. and teller made a comment in a private conversation we were having and he said, it's going to happen again. holocaust are going to happen again. and i asked him and he didn't mean just to jewish people. he said they will happen around the world. they have. he was right. cambodia, africa today, ongoing, another -- you can perhaps add to the list or correct my comment, so,

question. there aren't probably too many holocaust an irish here in this forum. but there are some around the world. it is -- our forums like this the kinds of research that you all continue to do -- our memorials and clocks enough to prevent more holocaust from occurring? and if not, what else can be done? >> i think it is, again, a huge, huge question. i think that everything that we try to do, whether or not, is the creation of institutions, a respect for human rights and international law and the things that the institutions -- partly because of and after the horrors of the second world war. fighting against holocaust in iraq and the trial against

david irving was a milestone in that regard and constantly trying to say to people who denied the holocaust, look, this is the evidence. i have absolutely, 100%, credible scholarships. so, nobody can say, this was not correct or whatever else. but i mean, i think the real way to prevent such things from happening again is to build democratic, tolerance aside he's based on the rule of law and based on those rights and privileges that were put in place after the war. it is a tall, tall order as you rightly said. very, very difficult. but -- and then, education and information and so on. >> i think this is why the -- debate was so important. if you wanted to, you could read him and say, this is specific to germany in the mid 20th century and we can close the door and sleep at night that this will not repeat itself and this is why the book was such a hit in germany.

it was telling germans, this is done. i wish i could believe that, but as you pointed out, the evidence is that that is not true. i am not sure if what we do reaches the levels that it needs to reach, but the debates that we have our important. and the way that people understand our work is very important. >> to your left -- >> i think ultimately, would it depends on is whether it will get into the schools. we can do it here and we can do it at the university level, but if it doesn't reach schools, and if you ask a school administration -- in texas -- we are in trouble. >> to your left, towards the front. [applause] >> i heard or read one time about a german concentration camp commander are being asked, how could you commit such mantras -- monstrous acts?

he made a comment, he said killing one tree was hard, but it made killing ten easier. killing ten jews was hard, but it made killing 100 easier. killing 100 was hard, but it made killing 1000 easier. i don't know if you have ever heard that, but would you like to comment on how this thing kind of snowballed and got worse and worse and worse? >> this is a common phenomenon. as stalin said, one is a number, 1 million is a statistic and people forget statistics. this is true of i think a situation like this, where even people like eric -- and himmler were worried about the sort of one-on-one killing. and himmler goes to minsk in 1942 and watches a killing take place. and he is shattered by it. he gets blood on his tunic and

he says it was terrible. but -- says to him, you see, himmler, this is just 100 people. just imagine what my poor man are facing with the killing of over 1 million people. and this was very much the impetus for the holocaust. for the extermination camps. which, of course, were very different from the camps like -- which we know in our public memory. because they were precisely that. the statistics. the numbers got so high. when you think, 1.1 million people, murdered at auschwitz, who can imagine what that looks like? whereas, a group of ten people, we can somehow relate to. i agree with you, the higher the numbers got, the more distance they were from our little, tiny imaginations. >> you said the perfect thing. >> next question is to your right. >> this is a when did you know

and -- there will be some point when america's military and political leadership understood what was going on in germany, when was that? >> that is a really tough question. you have information coming in, how do you piece it together? how do you figure out what is going on? i think what goes on is the evidence -- for some people, what is being discussed is so horrible and unimaginable that they don't believe that it's actually happening. i think for others, the decision-making calculus is okay, we know what is happening, when is the best way to stop it? the u.s. government, senior levels of the u.s. government, clearly knew by the fall of 1942 what's germany's intent was, what they were doing to achieve it. the question was, do you make any special effort outside the war effort, to stop it? i asked this question to a few

world war ii veterans in my family. my family is jewish. when did you know what was going on? the answer was, we are terrible, terrible things, but not until 1945 did we know for sure that those rumors were true. we just could not psychologically process it. >> and there is the story of -- who of course was a career in -- he flew to see roosevelt who dismissed him. he had gotten himself smuggled into the warsaw ghetto and into the transit camps -- and he goes to talk to then-chief justice frankfurter. he says, this is what is going on. these are the crimes that are being committed. i witnessed it. and frankfort says to him, it's not that i say that you are lying. it's just that i don't believe you. >> i think the debate came to the floor in the debate about -- if you recall, the assistant secretary of war, john j --

we heard about him yesterday. he decided not to do that because he wanted to concentrate all the effort on winning the war first. and that would liberate the jews, he thought. i think that debate took place in the fall of 1944. so, that is when it was discussed within the u.s. government. >> to your right, about halfway back with connie, please. >> good morning. it's funny how you remember things. years ago, i watched a movie, i think all the town without pity. it was not about the holocaust. but one of the comments was, it was about a trial in germany, i think it was an american soldier. after the war. one of the comments from a german that was interviewed, i think kurt douglas. she said that the people didn't know anything, the german people. we didn't know. and i it was a kid so i

believed that comment at the time. years later, as i did more reading, i said, there was no way they could not have known. i'm not talking about the people who are working at the camps or in the industry. just the general population. so, can you comment about -- we talk about what the united states knew. what about the german population? and were there any efforts within the population to help some juice? >> i think you are referring to the case of -- she was a young woman in bavaria, who somehow got interested in what's in her town no? i think it was -- in bavaria. she found out that nobody knew anything or said they knew nothing, but then she discovered that there was all kinds of -- i think that is what you are referring to. but in the larger question, let me answer it from an austrian

perspective. i was born in a small village in the austrian outskirts close to the swiss bird or. and there were no jewish people living there. people had probably a general antisemitism becaui tend to act. however if you lift in a town like vienna that had 200,000 -- that more than 10% of the population was tuition. of course, they they were gone after 1938. there is no way you could not know because you saw people later on being deported if they hadn't left on their own so. i would generally say in urban areas. you must have known in rural areas people might get away with saying i didn't know. and just add to that the from the different perspective the soldiers going off to the front, especially if you were on the eastern front in 1941 42, there's absolutely no way that you wouldn't have either seen yourself and there was sort of

massacre tourism people going there with their little like a cameras and taking pictures of these these massacres, although sometimes it was frowned upon but at least you certainly would have heard about the what the einstate more up to you would certainly know about the treatment of the soviet prisoners of war 5.2 million of whom a word captured and about three three point five million of whom died in terrible conditions. so it was impossible for even an ordinary very much soldier who was in on the front at that time for example not have had knowledge of the sorts of crimes that were being committed by the germans. they were all letters home. they were all so going home. leave there were ways in which this information sort of filtered into the society, but the question was you know, what could a german do about it if they heard that there was some sort of massacres going on on the eastern front. and so i think a lot of people stepped back want to accept responsibility and and chose to effectively do nothing and just

close their minds to what was going on so there so it's not that they did not know but they choose not chose not to pay attention. but there was also germans and austrians who resisted that was another option, but those were the brave people and that we're going to talk about next year in the symposium the european resistance, but let me just mention two cases. the white rose students to show your brothers and sisters in munich who protested because they knew terrible things happened on the eastern front. of course, they were executed by the nazis. and that was a lesser known austrian case frantiaga state very simple farmer. living in where hitler was born close to an upper austria. he refused to be drafted. and he was executed too for refusing to be drafted because that couldn't be tolerated. so those were brave rare cases.

of people who knew and were horrified by what was happening. ladies and gentlemen around round of applause for our panel thank you to guntur alex and mike they will all be outsidery.

now we're going to shift a bit. we're move into our next session a panel on the evolving relationship between germany and the soviet union from the inner war years through the second world war. we have dr. ian johnson the pj morgan family assistant professor of military history at the university of notre dame. pretty cool and dr. sean makikan the francis floor and i professor of european history at bard college. welcome, we'll provide a new interpretation on this topic. and then our very own dr. nick mueller awful comments before opening up the panel to