kicking off our morning session on the vonset conference featuring dr. alex richie. you met yesterday and dr. michael nyberg professor of history and chair of war studies at the department of national security and strategy at the united states army work college in carlisle barracks, pennsylvania. we focusing on how this event shaped the holocaust holocaust as well as american reactions. dr. gunter bischoff a presidential counselor for the museum and marshall plan professor of history at the university of new orleans services chair.

under an international historian focusing on diplomatic history in the 20th century. he's a marshall plan professor. but he also serves as presidential counselor at the museum. and one of the conference committee members who helped design this great program and also next year's program as well. so gunter's fingerprints are all over this one. and you know, we really we really are grateful for that. so gunther walker alex and mike an opportunity to make some comments and then open things up with questions as part of an important conversation on this topic. and then with that i'll let go it over from there. so updates of gates low skates 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 under until next thursday, we're going to be starting at 6:00 in the morning.

let me just allow me to make a few preliminary marks the remarks we are talking about. to holocaust this morning amongst other things, but of course what's important to understand? is that the road to auschwitz was a crooked one? maybe starting with hitler's anti-semitism and there is a debate amongst historians. when did they started it start in his vienna years or did it start in his munich years after world war one. i think it started with his vienna years because that's where he encountered for the first time a lot of choose in the city of vienna where he was failing as you know as an artist, when hitler came to power he very quickly began to exclude the shoes from german public life. in january 1939 he gave a famous speech before the reichstag.

the german parliament which he didn't use very much where he issued his famous or infamous. you should say prophecy. he threatened a quote annihilation of the jewish race in europe unquote in the event of war. and added quote if international finance jewelry inside and outside europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war the result will not be the bolshevization both revisation of the earth and thereby the victory of jury, but the annihilation of the jewish race in europe and hitler would use this kind of prophecy often after 1939 now on december 12th 1941. this was today after he declared war on the united states. he addressed a meeting of sectional leaders of the nazi party and of regional leaders cowlighta, and he said coming

back to his prophecy quote regarding the jewish question to fura is determined. to clear the table this from google's diary. he warned to choose that if they were the cause of another world war it would lead to their destruction. and those who are not empty words he added now. the war 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 once a conference, which alex is going to talk about this morning. on january 20th 1942 so i think if you think about. the holocaust don't think about just a straight line from true hating to extermination 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 were talking about the once a conference this morning we couldn't be in a better position to have two very distinguished historians explain these events to us dr. alexandra. richie is going to be the first one. she was the previous convener of the presidential counselors now dr. charles morrow is the group that you've heard about alexandra got her d phil at oxford university at the famous saint anthony's college there and she has a lift in warsaw for the past years and she's teaching at at university called collegium civitas in warsaw international relations. she is the author of two. well-known books faust metropolis sort of a history of berlin.

a lot of faust is usually being banded about when you talk about the nazis. and also a book on the warsaw pricing of 1944. so she's going to speak first and then allow introduce him now too dr. michael nyberg. you already heard. he's the chair of war studies and at the us army war college where he's teaching a history. i find it interesting in his case that he seems to be going back and forth between world war one and world war two. he's written. well known books on. world war one but then usually he comes back to world war two a few years ago. i remember sharing a panel where he was talking about the potsdam conference, which is also a book of his in more recently. he has come back to world war two with the book. that's just out. when france fell and he's going to talk about the that this

morning. so without further ado. i hand it over to alex ritchie. thank you so much gunter and welcome everybody. i know it's a very early and i know that this subject is very very grim and very difficult to face sometimes but it's also very necessary to look at the holocaust to look at the final solution and to understand really how crucial this was in hitler's war in the nazis war and in in the consequences of what hitler began and and it's really the discovery of the of the camps belson and daho, and so on which was really the tip of the iceberg of the of the holocaust in fact was one of those things that shifted our perceptions as to what we were fighting for. so it's a very very important thing. i think to understand some of

the steps that lead to the final solution and that's what the vons a conference was all about. so i'm standing in front of a photo of a beautiful villa 565. bunze i'm glosen vanzai in a beautiful elegant suburb in berlin. and on january 20th, 1942 a number of elegant black cars limousines mercedes could be seen pulling up to this lovely place and the house originally which was owned by a right-wing industrialist in germany had in 1941 been sold to none other than the ss and the ss used it as a sort of a guest house when they wanted to, you know, meet the guys from regard or from minced to come in and have some drinks together and have a meal this was the place that they chose so it wasn't really surprising. that will not day 15 high officials of the national socialist regime had been

invited by none other than reinhard heydrich to a meeting to discuss. quote the final solution of the jewish question in europe it was to be a meeting followed by an elegant breakfast. they didn't invite been invited by hydra who was extraordinarily clever very very cruel hitler called in the man with the iron heart. he saw this as a compliment, but it was also very very important for heydrich because this was to be effectively the rubber stamp of the final solution. now i was going to mentioned and as we all know that already been terrible discrimination against the -- when hitler came to power everything from the nuremberg laws to crystal knott, and in fact the germans and nazis originally wanted to push the the -- out of germany out of austria and the big tragedy, of course as we now know with hindsight was that not enough countries were willing to take them in so hitler and himler and

heidrich came up with other solutions when they invaded poland they were going to create a huge reservation for -- in the lublin area when they took france they were going to send the -- to a madagascar. we're none of these worked what hitler did instead was around the -- up in poland. for example, there were three million -- living in poland put them in ghettos walled them in and of course many tens of thousands died of starvation of disease and so on in these ghettos alone, but this was not yet the final solution many many people were dying, but this was not yet the the final solution now the first phase of what we can call the holocaust really began with barbarossa the invasion of the soviet union 22nd, june 1941 when the army went of course began this enormous invasion and was followed behind by the so-called einzad scotton, and of course other police and other units as well who specific and sole purpose was to murder primarily

-- also political commissars and others specifically dictated by hitler. and this mass murder began right away, and this was called the holocaust by bullets where around about 1.4 million people 1.4 million people. it's hard to imagine. we're simply lined up the edge of pits or in mass graves and forests or whatever and shot infamous of course places like bobby yar outside of kiev, but then there were many many other smaller sites as well. but the point was as hitler figured out it's it's possible to go and mass murder of a million or so people in the faraway areas of russia because nobody really cared. nobody could see was easy to keep it quiet. but what were you going to do with the population of -- for example in poland hitler wanted to create a paradise in the east and paradise can't in the german mind or the nazi mind have a jewish population. so in their minds they began to think well, yes, we have to do something about this as well. and this is where the vons air

conference fits in. as i said hitler had correctly calculated you could shoot people in the soviet union and get away with it as it were but it was going to be much more difficult to do that in poland. and of course as the idea dawned on them that perhaps let's murder the -- of western europe as well. you can't very well go into the center of paris and start shooting people into the sand because this would be noticed by the rest of the world. and so there was this was the sort of beginning of the genesis the idea of the extermination camp and one's remember that this innovation which we now know so much about was entirely new nobody in the world had ever thought needed such a thing. why on earth would you need to move people to a special place in order to kill them? this was this was was absurd and so the nazis put their technological engineering minds to work and began to come up with all sorts of innovations and they put together many things that they'd already developed into this horrific

conclusion. one of the things was of course the euthanasia program, which had been put in place i hitler and the others because they wanted to kill people who had been disabilities who were mentally handicapped or whatever. it might be. they didn't fit into this perfect nazi world and around about 70,000 people were murdered in six different killing centers around germany places like son and stein and this was only stopped because of the because of the activities of some germans who realized that they're relatives had been murdered and people like arch. galen who started to who started to protest against this second piece of the puzzle was the ability to move large numbers of people and this began and things like the olympic games when when you were tens of thousands of people were being moved around berlin, but it was perfected in this sort of sinister purpose by reinhard heydrich and by sorry by adolf eichmann who oversaw the ethnic cleansing after 1939 of what had been polish areas, and that would to be germanized.

he pushed people on trains moved them to other parts of the genital governor and and started to learn how you you move people around in this way. and also as a result of the so-called holocaust by bullets, which i mentioned earlier himmler began to realize that the terrible toll at this this was taking on his poor sensitive assessment. i mean, it's it's really quite terrible to have to you know, shoot tens and tens of thousands of people into pits. i mean, you know that the sensibilities were were being challenged and and so they were looking for a more i suppose kind way of killing people not kind for the victims of course, but kind for the perpetrators. the idea of using gas began to be tested in various places taking off from the euthanasia program the first use of at auschwitz was a kind of a ad hoc experiment by ss hubby how sturmführer called fritzer who threw some cyclone b into the basement of block 11 the hated punishment block in auschwitz

one the main camp and it worked and so they started using the small crematorium at auschwitz one as a as a killing field already before the vantage conference took place, and this was true of two other of what would become extermination camps as well. they were also up and running before vansay took place. the first was hell no where they were experimenting with with gas fans putting the exhaust into the sealed container at the back of a van driving around and killing people that way and then the first purpose built extermination camp was was built started by autocorbotnik in on the 13th of october 1941, and he proposed the construction of a gas chamber at a place called belget and this would be the first actual extermination camp. now the the point about places like hell-known belgians is that they were hidden deep deep in the forest somewhere. nobody could see them, but they were reached by a train a train line which came right up to the

camps. so this of course starts to merge together the idea of a mass killing site using gas plus being able to transport people in secret to a far-off location where they can be murdered and their bodies dispose of without anybody knowing about it. this is a picture of reinhard heydrich and the invitation that he sent sends to the people who are going to go to the bonsai conference. this particular invitation is sent to martin luther and you may be able to see that the original date for the for the conference was on the 9th of december 1941. however, as we all know quite a few important things happen in december 1941 in which would which would turn out to be perhaps one of the most dramatic weeks of the war, of course, we all know that around 5th of december the germans start to feel a pinch outside of moscone and and realize that they're not going to take moscow in that just before christmas but more importantly perhaps for this. is that on the 7th of december

1941 at the japanese bombed pearl harbor four days later the germans declare war on the united states now hitler seems to considered this to be in a way a trigger to give the go ahead on the mass murder of the remaining -- of europe and as good to mention goebels recorded in diary on the 12th of december 1941 that hitler had gathered his nazi dignitaries to the reich chancellery and returned to his quote unquote prophecy on the 30th of january 1939 that if the -- ever started a world war again, of course because they had started this world wars as we all know it would mean they're annihilation and in reality this meant that the -- of europe were doomed so in the 20th of january heidrich waited as these major officials arrived party officials high ranking ss officers, and they were all well educated aided them had academic doctorates. they were representatives of the top ministries ministry foreign affairs minister of the interior

foreign ministry. gestapo muller was there head of the gestapo, of course adolf. eichman who would become a notorious later on for his trial was there on hand as heinrich deputy and to take the minutes. hi rick opened the meeting by informing the guests. i know uncertain terms that it was who is going to be in charge along with himmler and the ss of this new innovative idea of exterminating the -- of europe? we didn't want interference. thank you very much from the foreign ministry or the interior ministry. so really one of the main purposes of this meeting was to robert stamp the idea of the final solution, but also to make sure that hey rick and himmler at al were going to be in charge. thank you very much. this is a picture of eichmann and what is really very very chilling. i still can't look at this list without without feeling sick. it's a list if you can read it of of the countries of europe and elsewhere as well because you know turkeys included and

morocco and the number of -- that the nazis had figured out live in these places and these were the people who were now going to be as hydric said europe was going to be combed from west to east every single jewish man woman and child was going to be found and they were going to be quote transported to the east what is so shocking is that it's a scale of the crime that they were planning and yet here they were in this glorious villa having a wonderful breakfast and according to eichmann during his trial the cognac had to flow. hi drake, outline the plan and some detail eichmann pointed out that roughly 11 million -- would be included in the death toll. some -- like decorated veterans. who'd fought in the first world war on the side of germany might be allowed to go to the model camp at treze in strat for example, but you know, the rest would would just have to

disappear. the meeting took an hour and a half actually much of the time if you look over the minutes was spent over arguments about what we're michelining and what was going to happen to so called missioning which were the -- in mixed marriages or their children. do you kill them? but then you might offend some germans or do you keep them but then you might offend the germans who don't like -- and it was just back and forth around the table and everybody got in a bit of us sort of hard under the color about it. but anyway that was resolved the nazi machine pulled together to create and run these 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 like treblinka in where most of the -- from warsaw were killed over 850,000 people. most of those people died in one year. it is something of a miracle that we know about this meeting so much relating to the holocaust was done verbally or

not written down or written down and destroyed now heydrich printed out 30 copies. of this protocol and you can see just not a very good picture of part of the protocol and and they were supposed to be destroyed but one person martin luther here of the foreign ministry decided he was going to keep his we don't know why and he hid it away in his papers and so fortunately after the war it was discovered by a person a brit called kenneth duke who was microfilming documents for the for the allies and he handed it over to us prosecutor robert kempner who used it in the later nuremberg proceedings. and also of course in the eichmann trial as for the participants a lot of them died during during the war. and rudolph lange heinrich müller ronald friesler alfred meyer these men perished in the in the you know in for example

in berlin. we're not sure about gestapo müller. he disappeared. he might have escaped like eichmann and we just never know about it. but but as for the other participants who survived only a few were brought to trial after 1945, of course, we know hydra was assassinated, but the rest including state secretary william stuckert or ss major also hoffman george library brand denied when they were questioned that they had understood anything about the bonsai conference. 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 with the mass murder of --. absolutely nothing whatsoever and tragically this argument worked and they didn't go to prison. in fact, they got off scott free and and had successful careers in in west germany after the war. this is a picture of joseph wolf the gentleman in the glasses one man was horrified by this fate and after the war the villa became a school and a hostel the west german government didn't really know what to do with it

and the historian and holocaust survivor. yosef wolf campaigned tirelessly for the villa to be turned into a memorial site. he named nazi criminals who were having wonderful careers in west germany. he tried to explain what bonze had meant, but of course, this was the time of the cold war and he was ignored and sadly he committed suicide in despair in 1974 never seeing the realization of this project. fortunately as we all know attitudes changed in west germany first and then in the united germany, so that by the 1980s holocaust had become very much more of an important subject in both germany, and of course around the world and on in 1992 on the 50th anniversary of the conference the vonsai villa became a memorial an official museum of the holocaust and an educational center. and indeed for those of you who have been on or going to go on my rise and fall tour we go to the vanzai conference, which now has a new display area that's been sort of revamped.

and we also go to auschwitz and it to me is always this terrifying reminder of these 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 of their sort of life comments and discussions. and so what remains so chilling for me is the thought of these educated well-dressed high ranking officials getting together over this lavish meal toasting their success at the planning of the mass murder of millions and millions of human beings. it's a chilling warning from history as to how something like the holocaust can happen. thank you. 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 everybody here in new orleans that i know worked. so very hard to put this together. 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 my working on vichy as gunter kindly pointed out in the book kept me coming back to themes of second world war history of ways in which america's relationship to vishi french 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 what i want to do in the 15 minutes or so i have with you here. talk a little bit about that and talk about the way that vichy france and america is very strange relationship to that very strange political entity conditioned much of what the united states knew and what it did. so just to remind everybody vichy france is a very very odd very difficult to explain

political entity in june of 1940 as you all know francis defeated nevertheless, france manages to get something out of the armistice negotiations and what they managed to get out is an unoccupied or free zone shown here in blue on this map that becomes known as lata francaise or vishi france after the very small spa town in which it centers its government vishi technically is an independent neutral state and crucially vichy 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 what 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 pierre laval uniformly disliked inside the united states dr. seuss drew him as a rat in political cartoons, but laval had a

son-in-law a man by the name of rene deschambran who was distantly related to the roosevelt's and descended directly from the marquee de lafayette. he came to the united states even before the fall of france to represent these she interests the man on the right is only pay 10. he is one of the great heroes of the first world war for france. he is also a good friend of john pershing's and a man very much loved and admired inside the united states. there are still six american states that have pay 10 streets or peyton boulevards in them. the american administration especially secretary of state cordell hall and the ambassador to vichy france admiral leahy gave these two men a lot of room and a lot of space inside us 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 rene deschambran and

patan's promises that despite everything that had 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 that's operating in north africa. therefore the united states new full. well, what was happening to french -- and chose to do nothing about it. this is a photograph of the roundup of about 15,000 parisian -- at an indoor bicycle arena called the veldiv in southwestern france. laval clearly knew what was going on at one point when laval, excuse me when robert murphy questioned laval laval's answer was well if you don't like what we're doing with you with --, we'll be happy to send them all to you knowing of course that american immigration policy was a sensitive issue inside the united states the united states raised no objection to vishes policy. and raised no significant private objection to vishes policy either. the united states also knew that

those people in the velve and elsewhere inside of france were being sent to this place the general c transit camp if you take the rer line from charles de gaulle airport to downtown paris, you'll pass right by the john c station, which is exactly where this was this building contained just four working toilets. no heat minimal food and minimal water and the united states new all about it. john c is today a museum that just opened where people can come and and see it. it's now an interpretation center similar to what von say has become for the germans. there is absolutely no secret about what vichy was trying to do and about the deep anti-semitism inside the vichy regime itself. this political cartoon here is showing the revolutional nacional. this is the the domestic plan that vishes government had to renew france and you can see some of the symbols inside here. there is a sorry. there is a very clear of course jewish star up there there is a word for laziness there on the

bottom left. there's a word for judaism. there's a word for capitalism all tied together in this vichy and nazi ideology about the role of -- inside europe. foreign -- were in a special target for vichy. they were the first target for vichy but french -- as well were targets in october 1940 the vichy french government issued something called the statue. jweave which excluded -- from professions that influence people a wide open category that soon included teachers doctors anything in the media anything in the civil service and in march 1941, the vichy government created the general commissary for jewish affairs designed to figure out what to do with the french and of what to do with all of these --. 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 sources or was coming from swiss sources that were then sending them 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 state cordell hall sent back the infamous document cable 354 telling sources in europe not to send back any more information about what was going on with -- in europe the secretary of the treasury henry morgan. thou was so angry that he went directly to president roosevelt demanding an answer as to what had gone on with that cable and roosevelt refused to get involved. now what's interesting to me, this all happens in the summer of 1942? on september 16th, 1942 cordell hall gave what i believe is the first is the only first one that i can find the earliest example of any senior american official admitting in public what the united states government knew, this is september 16th, 1942 where he harshly condemned the quote revolting and fiendish jewish policy of sending jewish

refugees back to their native countries in the east the germans quote have announced and in a considerable degree executed their intention to enslave maltreat and eventually exterminate -- under conditions of most extreme cruelty and just for your information this document did not appear on the front page of any american newspaper. it was appeared only in the back pages in september of 1942. why did holt do this if he if he issued cable 354 if he told people in europe don't send us back any more reports what's different in september of 1942? well, two things are different one the number of reports coming out of vichy france where that again the unoccupied zones, so people can operate slightly more freely from german interference. where perch are reaching the world they're reaching the united states government. they're reaching newspapers things like jewish women killing themselves and their children by leaping out of buildings rather than risk deportation reports of the germans melting down corpses in order to make things out of

the bodies that they wanted and reports of vichy french officials actively supporting the deportation and the killings that we're going on inside france these reports were about to be released and were about to be made public by an american rabbi based out of cleveland named stephen wise, so it's possible that what cordell hall was doing was getting on top of the news cycle as we would say trying to get out in front of a story. the second thing that's going on of course and as you can all hopefully figure out from the date, 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 cordell hall trying to lay the groundwork for saying if vichy does not cooperate with us. we're trying to lay the groundwork for a reason to take that regime out and i can talk much more about that if anybody is interested because it's kind of fascinating to me.

now this has become quite controversial again inside france a recent book by a french historian named jacques semelan. argues. that although 80,000 french -- were killed in the holocaust similan argues that the majority of french -- survived not because of any effort by bishit to protect them but despite vishes efforts to protect them or vc's efforts to kill them. excuse me. why is that the case? well similan argues that one thing that's true about vichy. that's not true about occupied france is that it has borders mountainous difficult to patrol borders that can let some jewish escapees get into countries like spain switzerland and italy which was relatively good for -- until the fall of mussolini and the german occupation of northern italy. this is the story of primo levy an italian -- who lived fairly reasonable life until the the end of the war. also remember what i said about vichy controlling the french empire. it's very easy for people to move between typically easy as easy as it could be in more time

to move between vichy france and the french empire. that means morocco that means algeria that means tunisia. so several -- appear appear to have been able to get out that way fishy. france also has far fewer cities inside of it. so whereas in the north the chart that alex showed when it had france on there it divided france between the occupied zone and the unoccupied zone those in the unoccupied zone are principally in the big cities of paris leon. in vichy france, most of these -- are scattered throughout the countryside making it harder for police units and police units to come and get them. and juxtamalan argues that there was an active underground operating inside vichy france that was tried to protect these people and get them to safety when they could and again, i want to insist because this has become an issue again in the french political sphere. this is despite. species efforts not because of anything that vichy did to try to protect these --. how do we know that because we know what vg did in 1942 the

year that alex has already cited as being so critically important. vishes own behavior in 1942 begins to change whereas peyton had tried to police the french people as gently as possible by the middle of 1942 vichy officials are getting more aggressive and certainly much nastier here are two of them louis darkier depelcwada, the commissioner general for jewish affairs and every time i read that every time i read a title like that it just boggles the mind to think they created an office like that meaning that they're perfectly upfront and perfectly comfortable with doing what they did the man on the right joseph. darnan who serve for a time in the waffen ss he will become the maintenance secretary general for the maintenance of order. he will head something called the malice, which is the vichy paramilitary force which will operate with greater and greater ferocity and nastiness as the war begins to go on. so the second world war for the

french is very much a war between the resistance and the malice and this has been the memory war in france that french people have been trying to deal with when the united states and great britain entered north africa and entered operation torch. this ends vichy france and german forces come into the south these guys get even more authority and even more backing now, it's not just french forces that are doing this but germans as well and what they'll do is they'll build this network of camps one of which will see on the med crews in the spring. they kneel down in southern 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 fascinated me as you as you walk through france. i've been going to france since the early 1990s and many of the places from which -- were deported, especially in northern cities. they've now created plaques and historical markers to try to indicate what what happened and

where and and what happens so this is one of those plaques and this is what i'd like to end with because i find it so fascinating and i hope some of you in the back can read it and even if you don't speak french, i think i'll be able to explain what what it is. it's talking about deportations on the 16th and 17th of july 1942 when 13,152 -- were arrested and paris and and in its suburbs. this is talking about another one of these roundups or what the french club and these people were sent to auschwitz. now what's interesting to me is about two thirds of the way down here where it says they were placed in in humane conditions. and here's the part. that always strikes me by the police of the government of vishi under the order of the nazi occupiers now to me, these are fascinating as an historian sometimes in france. they will say vichy did this. sometimes they'll do what they do. here be she did it under the orders of the germans. sometimes they'll say the germans did it and sometimes they'll just put it in the

passive voice. 13,000 -- were deported and to me the language of this the way you understand this the way you create in historical memory of this is to me fascinating and this is the political debate that remains ongoing in france today the extent to which you can write this off as being something done under nazi orders or the extent to which you have to wrestle with the fact that much of vishes own anti-semitism was driving the the policies and driving the way that that france behaved now i have to say for the united states. this was not a high moment of high morality for us either when the american forces into north africa the united states raised no objection to the anti-semitic policies that had been going on in vichy. they raise no objection to something called the suspension of the tremula which gave french -- in north africa citizenship the united states allowed vichy officials to continue to run north africa for a good long time after the united states had moved on to tunisia and the

united states raised no objection the deal was that vichy would govern north africa so that the us didn't have to do it while american forces head on headed on to tunisia as a result. no american official from eisenhower on down raised any objection to the suspension of the chamele or insisted upon changes in vichy domestic policy that will change as america's great nemesis charles de gall comes to the four but that is they say is another story. what i wanted to do is just indicate to you the 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 the battles over. language about the battles over the political meaning of these events continues to be something that is very important in the french political sphere. it's important today as they have a presidential election coming up and vichy is back in the news as a result of that. thanks very much.

thank you to both alexandra and michael for the wonderful presentation. i'm going to start out by asking them a question or so, and then we're going to throw it out to the audience for questions and answers. now note that both of them ended with. and appeal to the memory of these events the memory of vanse the memory of vishi and how those battles are still being fought today as michael just told us and this is a reminder for you that we have a memory conference coming up in march. so the museum is paying a plenty of attention to the memory battle. so just as a reminder now the question i have for alexandra is the issue of the importance of the onesie conference on this twisted road tool to auschwitz. i think the older scholarship had one say sort of front and center is deterring point

towards the final solution, but now more recent holocaust scholarship like the germans called a christian gala. they see a continuum towards vansy, you know with hitler's speech of both of us mentioned that of december 12th and so forth. so, could you maybe give us an assessment of how important? say it's important in defining who is a -- you mentioned that at the end who is a michelin and so forth. but what is the importance? you're absolutely right? i think one of the reasons that vanzai became so important in the early scholarship was because we had the proofs of it, you know if you've got the whole protocol and you've got all the information and it's very very rare to have documentation of someone like hydra sitting around a table saying this is what we're going to do and so of course this was in a sense gold dust for holocaust scholars and there and you're absolutely right that this was a this was a step by step process toward the

final solution, you know in the in the 70s and the 80s there were two real schools of thought about the holocaust one called functionalist who believe that the holocaust have been planned when hitler was writing mind camp for even earlier in his mind and it was just a question of when he could do this and the the functionalists who believe that no, this was a the reich. sort of ad hoc, and they were trying to put things together as they went along and the final solution was was a result of this kind of one thing leading to another to another and really with the opening up of the archives in the with the collapse of the soviet union a really the functionalists won the day because we got so much more evidence from from the files including the things like himmler's day book and goebbel's complete the complete global stories, which show really step by step how this came about and there are other very important meetings that took place that we don't have evidence of so for

example meetings between hitler himmler on over the telephone in july 1941 in which obviously this these matters were discussed there were other meetings that again global's refers to but we don't have any minutes. we don't have any proof of them, but it seems that hitler made the decision for the the final solution sometime in the autumn. of 1941 and that again is pointed to by new scholarship and and new evidence from the soviet union. so in that sense to answer your question the valence conference. was rather more a rubber stomping exercise and as i mentioned earlier to make sure that hydrating the ss made sure that there was not going to be entry any interference from other other bodies that they were going to be in charge of this and nobody else was going to get a look in so that's really the significance of it, but it is one in many many other meetings and ideas that came along between 1941 and 42.

thank you. i find it odd or ironic that the official after whose minute survived is a martin luther usually via associate holier holier matters with that name exactly. he did it's very iron. ic he was very he would have been chastised severely by by himmler had himmler discovered he'd kept the minutes, but we were very grateful ironically that he did. okay. thank you. alexandra a question for michael michael you you pointed. towards the fact that roosevelt made this decision to recognize the vichy government and that in your book you say was a very unpopular decision public opinion didn't like that at all. could you enlarge on that a bit yeah the way i love to do. this with students is show clips from the movie casablanca, which is being made at exactly this time and those of you that remember that brilliant film the last scene or one of the last scenes is louis opening up a bottle of vichy water and

starting to drink from it and then throwing it in the trash can american public opinion was turning towards charles de gall was clearly turning towards the dagalas the leader of a free french movement or free france or whatever. they were calling it fighting france cordell hall roosevelt leahy a little bit lastly he was coming to to get very disillusioned by vishi. robert murphy was not saw a lot that they like they saw a government that was stable. they saw government that they thought they could they could manipulate with carrots and sticks and they saw a government. that was anti just an anti-charles de gall both of which were very popular inside washington. so one of the problems and one of the things i look at in the book, is this tension between 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 marshall to launch operation torch before the midterm elections of 1942. this was really what it was worried about that if the midterm elections of 42 turn on

foreign policy at that point autumn 1942, roosevelt is reasonably weak on wartime policy, and that's what they're worried about. so again to me it was just fascinating the way that vishes that the threads of vichy just connect to everything. i think the importance of your book and you you sort of point it out in your introduction is that you are trying to salvage the us french in the war. from oblivion so to speak because americans you say are sort of infatuated or enthralled with the special relationship to great britain. and you say wait a minute. don't forget france. so in your introduction you also make i think an important point. that i'd like her to debate a bit more namely that for the us you say the war began with the fall of france and may june of 1940. not with pearl harbor. could you maybe develop that a bit? yeah, it's some you know, if you think about this, so france the united states.

policy in the 1920s and 1930s 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'll keep the germans away long enough until we can commit at the time of our choosing. when the french army is no longer there and the french navy is in this weird state where it's part of this weird country and vichy and we don't really know what it's going to do those assumptions completely go away and if you look at a map of the french empire in 1940, it includes senegal, which is the part of africa that's closest to south america and interferes with the shipping lanes. it includes martinique, which is where the france is only aircraft carrier is which is in the caribbean also where half of france's gold is so 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 pass the two ocean navy acts the burke wadsworth act which brings selective service in this is

where destroyers for bases goes through these enormous. i had the numbers in the book, but these enormous spending bills that just keep going up and up and up and up and up as people get more and more scared. it's where we actually debate a four million man army a four million. me in 1940 that marshall and roosevelt ratchet down to two million. so it's this flurry of activity that gets the united states involved and the key thing and i credit pete crane who used to run our archive at carlisle matthew ridgway was then in the war plans division and ridgeway is writing memorandum to marshall into president and roosevelt saying look, 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're not prepared to defend anything except the coast of the united states and we're not even sure that we can do that. so it is this moment of absolute panic and again, i don't want to go on too long, but another thing that vichy connects to is roosevelt's decision to tell the fbi just ignore the fourth amendment of the constitution on wiretaps ignore the two recent

supreme court cases and do what you have to do and the beginning of the opening up of this kind of tension between civil liberties and security. so that sort of a point that stephanie made yesterday that the us constitution is under threat with all these more time orders ladies gentlemen, we have about 20 minutes left for your questions. i defer to you your wonderful audience you have lots of lots of good questions and which are surely much smarter than mine would be so jeremy you want to take over? yes, we'll start to your left in the very back, please. thank you very much for this very interesting panel. one question to michael. um, you remember you closed your your presentation with a plague and how big discussions are going on in france about how they should be written and in what sort of memory we should

state vision. now the question is, how would you right this plague after having reached a written the whole book and why? i'm really tempted to give the army answer that as a federal employee. i cannot comment on the intergovernmental affairs of another state. i think i'm gonna do that. i think i'm gonna do that. so what you'll be happy to talk to you offline, but i'm gonna i'm gonna duck that question since i am a federal employee here on official business. i can't believe i got away with that. we'll stay to your left towards the back, please. great answer man. great answer. oh, pardon my voice so i'll do this as quickly as possible. the point was made that we had never seen a killing like this before my mom's family watched

across a syrian desert out of armenia and about 1915. because there was a killing of the scale going on. yeah to a better point though. you guys do great scholarship and i still wish i was a history professor. i'm in hiding as an administrator now. but thank you but 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. would be a better country. your your point is well taken about the armenian genocide of course and in hitler himself said who remembers the armenians and and he was very well aware

of the fact that that was a precedent, which he he very consciously referred to as well. you can mass murder hundreds of thousands of people and nobody seems to bother much. so yes, it's very very important. also in the in the run out to the genocide. i think that the point i was trying to make is that there. yes, there there have been had been genocides mass killings before but what made the holocaust into this day 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 treblanca in one month, july 42 to august 42 315,000. people are are mass murdered. i mean, it's all unbelievable a scale in the technology in the way in which it was done. so this is not to denigrate whatsoever. the 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. there and maybe we could see it again. is that possible? there is facing it to the bottom right there hebrew letters, right? and what are they? i think they mean don't forget. so just next to the hebrew letters are the french letters nubian, never forget. so i think that's what the hebrew is referring to though. i wouldn't bet my mortgage on that. okay. well we have to find out. yeah, i'm pretty sure it says it says never free and in hebrew or in yiddish in hebrew in hebrew because of course, these are spartaic --. most of whom would not have spoken yiddish. they would have spoken french maybe ladino if they could jewish language. but unlikely to be yiddish.

yeah, actually just an interesting point of that. is that the first -- who were who were? a transported were -- who'd fled from mostly poland who were stateless and therefore they were in a sense easy to to move including the young greenspan whose parents were being deported across the german polish border and in such terrible conditions that he murdered an official in paris sparking kristallnacht. so it's just to be clear what it says at the bottom. there is not never forget. it says passerby remember and it uses the informal two form of french so it's an informal. speaking to you as a friend kind of thing, and i don't know what the hebrew says, but i would i would suspect it's 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 at bonsai? well, yes as i mentioned the first phase of what we know of as the holocaust was barbara rosa was the invasion of the soviet union and and it was this was the mass killings into pits the holocaust by bullets. and so this was really the first first phase when the germans had decided the nazis had decided that that the extermination of the -- was paramount now it coincides with the closing of all borders the last place that -- could get out of europe was lisbon that was closed off at the same time and therefore -- were the decision was made not to try and push -- out to palestine or to britain or wherever but to lock them in and then they were destined for mass murder. so yes, it is related to to barbara rosa and the invasion of the soviet union as the first phase effectively of the holocaust. next question is in the center aisle with connie, please.

in his book hitler's willing executioners. daniel golgothagan goes into great detail explaining how hitler didn't really have to do a whole lot of motivating to many germans because for a decade for centuries, including all the way back to martin luther of the -- theologians politicians writers had discussed the germany's jewish the jewish misery. and therefore like the guys of police battalion 101 took their wives along when they were killing thousands and thousands of -- and pits and count in poland and i just like to ask you i mean, how is it i mean, i still have a difficulty in putting my head around how a culture people could just ignore all this stuff and go on with it and and but they're the ones that the function areas and the cops and the guys and the police probably tell you one-on-one were older. they both were not members of nazi party at the glenn no long and took their wives longer.

killed out with glee. help me understand the what happened there? well again, this is one of the most baffling questions of history. how could the germans this land of bach and beethoven and goethe and schiller have have become the perpetrators of such a horrific crime. i mean goldhagen has been slam up discredited as one of the he's one of the intentionalists that you know, everything was pre-planned and and it was because the germans had this history of antisemitism that led inevitably to the holocaust recent scholarship people like christopher browning you mentioned garlock and others have have put a little bit more nuance onto this that 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 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 taking day by day by people like the

onesie who made this decision and they made this decision and they made this decision which ended up in the in this horrific, mass. murder and the irony after the wars i said even talking about the people who were arrested and questioned over their involvement in bonsai said we didn't do anything had no idea what you were talking about. we had we weren't involved in this we didn't shoot anybody we didn't go to the camps. i never saw a camp didn't even know the existed and they and they were able to morally distance themselves from from the fact that they of course knew exactly what transportation to the east meant now, they called the -- stuck pieces not human beings and and this language was even deliberately developed in order to distance their themselves morally from the thing that they were doing, but the overall question that you've asked is is one of the great mysteries and when we say never again, and this should never happen again or whatever else it's like what what do we mean exactly? what is it coming back to the question of education?

what is it that we're trying to warn against? what is it that we're trying to prevent and it doesn't help to say oh, you know, well they were they were just anti-semitic from birth. so so that's we'll it'll never happen with us. that's not the answer. the answer is every single human being is capable of great good and great evil and if the circumstances propaganda the conditions are such that people make those immoral criminal choices, you know, question is how does that come about how do we prevent that from coming about? let me add something here. in german, it sounds even better. how could this forked addicted on dengar become this folk the richter on henka. how could the people of poets and thoughtful people philosophers become the people of of hangman's so to speak but on the gold-hung controversy, i would add this. i remember when goldhagen was here at touro synagogue in new

orleans giving a speech and he filled the synagogue more than 1,000 people. so he was a phenomenon when the book came out in germany, too. but then i think him more thoughtful people like chris browning who has been at this conference came and gave them as alexandra said a more nuanced explanation of the police battalion 101. and so i would say today in holocaust scholarship goldhawk. no longer is the gold standard because he came up with a very deterministic argument that the nazis had been anti-semitic since middle ages and they still were at the time of world war two and that explains it all. to your left at the very front, please. thank you very much. then the nazis were a lot of things but they were not chemical engineers or mechanical engineers. can you talk about the role that? german industry played in the in the development and construction

of these camps and where any of them ever held accountable for their role or any consequences and 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 the experts in the t4 euthanasia program went on to work from you know, but they were they were pediatricians and and medical doctors or whatever who then when the euthanasia program stopped just transferred themselves into into working in the camps and figuring out what was the best way to gas people or whatever else and you're right that the organization tote and all many many other industrial concerns. we're involved in the creation of the camps even a specialists came to check which how do you build the crematory specialist came to say? well, how do you how do you empty the cyclone b into the canister from the canisters and so on on all layers of german

society industry finance and chemists and all others took part in this exercise and all of this, you know for example with the building of auschwitz we have we have documentation for practically every single contract that was given out to these people. we have we have we have evidence of the contracts for example of the companies that worked in the wood ghetto or in the warsaw ghetto the tobin's brush factory. i mean, we've got we've got lists and list of these things but again after the war most of these people got off scott free because they said i had nothing to do with this. i didn't pull a trigger i didn't i didn't kill anybody and so with very very few exceptions and you have horrific cases

question. i was fortunate enough to work with edward teller long time ago. and teller made a comment and a private conversation. we were having. and he said it's going to happen again. holocausts are going to happen again. he didn't and asked him he needed mean just to -- said holocausts are going to happen happen again around the world. they have he was right cambodia africa today ongoing others

kosovo. you can perhaps add to the list or correct my comment. so question, there aren't probably too many holocaust deniers here in this in this forum, but there are some around the world is our forums like this. are the kinds of research that you all and others hear continue to do our memorials and plaques enough? to prevent more holocaust from occurring and if not, what else can be done? well, i think it's a again a huge huge question. i think that everything that we try to do whether or not whether or not is institutions respect for human rights and international law and the things that the institutions that were put in place partly because of and after the horrors

of the second world war fighting against holocaust nios. i mean the trial against david irving was a milestone in that regard and and constantly trying to you know, say to people who denied the holocaust look this is the evidence have absolutely absolutely 100% credible scholarships so that nobody can say hi. you see this wasn't correct whatever else but i mean, i think the the real way to to prevent such things from happening again is to build democratic tolerant societies based on the rule of law based on those rights and religious that were put in place after the afrch sadowski and himmler

were worried about this sort of one-on-one killing. in fact himmler goes to minsk in

1942 watches are killing take place and he's shattered by it. he gets blood on his on his tunic and he's you know, isn't this terrible and found a box says to him you see him. this is a killing of just a hundred people. just imagine what my poor man are facing with with the killing of over a million people and this was very much the impetus for the holocaust as i said for the for the extermination camps, which of course we're very different from the camps like dahl and jackson hse they were t the statistics the it's so high. you know when you think as i said 1.1 million people murdered at auschwitz how who in this room can imagine what 1.1 million people looks like, you know, whereas a group of 10 people we can somehow relate to so i agree with you that the that the higher the numbers god the more distance they were from tiny imaginations. you haven't he said the perfectly.

next question is to your right. this is a older, you know one did you know it question there had to be at some point when? america's military and political leadership understood what was going on in germany. when was it? you what is a really tough question? so you have information coming in? how do you piece it together? how do you figure out what's going on? i think what goes on is the evidence for some people what's being discussed is so horrible and so unimaginable that they don't believe that it'shink fore decision-making calculus is okay. we know what's happening. what's the best way to stop it the us government senior levels of the us government clearly knew by the fall of 1942 what 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 of a few world war two veterans that were in my family who my family's jewish when did you know what was going on and their answer was we heard terrible terrible things but not until 1945. did we know for sure that those rumors were true? we just couldn't psychologically process it and there's the famous story of john koski who of course was one of the couriers and in poland who got to london and actually flew to see roosevelt who dismissed him actually he had gotten himself smuggled into the warsaw ghetto and also into one of the transit counts for hell. no, and he goes to talk to then chief justice frankfurter and says, you know, this is what's going on. this is these are the crimes that are being committed. i'm an eyewitness to it and frankfurtis says to him, it's not that i say that you're lying. it's just that i don't believe you. but paul, i think the debate came to the four in the debate

about whether the trunk lines to auschwitz should be bombed and if you recall the assistant secretary of war john j mccloy we heard about him yesterday. he sort of decided not to do that because he wanted to concentrate all the effort on winning the war first and that would liberate to chooses as he thought and i think that debate took place in the fall of 1944. so that's when it was discussed within the us 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 it was called a town without pity and it wasn't about the holocaust but one of the comments was that it was it was about a trial in germany of i think it was an american soldier after the war but one of the comments from a german that was interviewed by i think was kirk douglas. she said that the people didn't

know anything the german people. we didn't know we didn't know and i believe that was a kid, so i believe that comment at the time late years later as i did more reading i said, there's no way they could not have known. i'm not talking about the people that were working in the at the camps or in the industry just the general population. so can you comment about i mean we talk about what the united states knew. what about the german population? and were there any efforts within the population to help? those some -- can i give it a stop? yeah, i think you're referring

t 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 out