followed by president obama campaigning in chicago from earlier today. paul ryan return to his home state of wisconsin. >> this week on "q & a," our guest is andrew nagorski, vice president of the eastwest institute, international affairs think tank. new book is called "hitlerland: american eyewitness to the nazi rise of power". >> andrew nagorski, where did you get the idea for your book "hitlerland"? >> i was thinking for a long time what would be my next book. you go through those periods where you are searching for topics and never wanted to force a topic. there was a conversation with my wife and we were driving and she said there have been all these

books recently about americans in paris, americans in london, anyone really done about the american experience in germany? and even though we lived in germany twice. i was a news correspondent in the cold war days and post-cold war days. i never thought about it. i would pick up a book here and there. when i began to explore, i realized no one had examined the american experience in germany from the end of world war i right through pearl harbor and declaration of war against the united states by hitler.

>> did it have any impact on you when erik larsson came out with "garden of beasts"? >> i finished my manuscript when i realized this book was coming out and my first reaction was, why is someone else writing about this subject, but i realized he was writing in a much more focused, narrow slight, not to belittle him in any way. he focused on william dodd, the first american ambassador to germany when hitler took power and his daughter, which is part of my story, too, but two of many characters in my story which stands a much broader era. in the end, a number of people told me that if they read

larsson's book, it made them more curious about the other america caps and the broader context and i hope "hitlerland" gives it to them. >> give us some of the names, but who are some of the other names that popped up in this story from the end of world war i to the beginning of world war ii? >> mostly in berlin and munich and other places. i decided to first of all, see whoever left interesting material behind and in a couple of cases i could interview a few people. one of the original morrow boys. a young ap correspondent and then onto the c.i.a. he was one of the last americans interned in germany. there were a few people. but i ended up speaking to the

kids, sometimes grandkids, and getting the written records that they left behind in family archives or public archives, libraries and so forth. there was a stunning number of people there who -- some of whom were well known, william scheirer and a power house and a major broadcaster in the early radio days. there was charles lindbergh comes through germany. you also have people -- even john f. kennedy went to germany in 1937. his diary entries aren't revealing other than he is interested in quote, unquote, he a bundle of fun that he picked up at the border.

i talked to debois, not a name you associate with germany, but he spent a fellowship in 1935 and 1936 and had insights from germans and racial doctrine and the playoff and the 1936 olympics. you have people who are associated with russia who spent one tour in germany, which happened to be the critical years right before world war ii. >> who doesn't look good in retrospect? >> there are a number of people who don't look great.

and there are a number of people who, i'd say, have a very mixed record. and one thing i tried to do in this book was not to be sort of rendering judgment on these characters. the whole point of the book and the reason i wrote a book about this period, which i find fascinating, i wouldn't have written a straight period of the history. there have been so many very accomplished -- historians have done that and very effectively. but if "hitlerland" succeeds, it succeeds of putting the reader in the shoes of the americans there at the time, seeing things piecemeal and then trying to figure out what was happening. and inevitably raises the question, what would you have known, you, me, anybody else, if we had been there at the time. it all seems so clear in retrospect, but it wasn't clear then. the more i dug into this, i didn't want to pass rigid judgment on people. of course there were people -- chicago daily news correspondent and a consul who

was very outspoken and courageous and truman smith, who i think was very perceptive, both about hitler who he met as far back in 1922 and the buildup of the germany military and people who clearly blew up. dorothy thompson. she was the most famous american woman correspondent of that era. very smart reporter in many ways, but she goes in and interviews hitler in november of 1931 for the first time. at that point, hitler's party is really on the rise. a lot of people are predicting is going to take power and she

writes immediately after that interview, i thought i was going to meet the future leader of germany. within 50 seconds, i realized, i was not. such was the startling insignificance of this man and wept on to talk about how he had this look in his eyes that is common to hysterics and alcoholics and geniuses and how he has a soft, feminine side and no match for the true german politicians. what i find interesting about that and dorothy thompson obviously radically revived -- revised her views and ultimately got her expelled. even those mistakes of what i call the first draft of history that we as journalists always try to write are revealing and they explain a lot about how hitler fools a lot of people and why so many people did not take

him seriously, whether they were germans, diplomats or germans themselves and many german jews. >> dorothy thompson was married to -- >> sinclair lewis. and there were many famous literary geniuses. he falls in love with her. thomas wolfe comes to germany. he is entranced by germany. hailed as a hero at first and then when he first comes in 1936, he really is pretty much oblivious to what is going on because he is just basking in his fame. the next time he comes a year later, he is much more aware and writes a piercing novella which becomes part of a larger book later.

and you even -- i came across an entry in one diary of another correspondent in 1927. hemming way was just through town and saw him on the street with sinclair lewis. josephine baker comes to town. we think of her as paris, entertaining the audiences in paris. but she hears about berlin, amazing party town in the 1920's and she decides to take her whole troupe to berlin and despite the fact there are nazi protestors outside shouting racist slogans, german audiences love her and invited to the after-parties. she performed there often just

in her loin cloth and she says there is no fiscal year, greater place than beer -- there is no freer, greater place than germany. >> how many books have you written? >> this is my fifth book. >> where do you work now? >> eastwest institute, a new york-based think tank. colded in 1980's in the war days and diplomacy between the soviet union, the united states, nato pac -- nato and warsaw pac and now the institute deals with china, cybersecurity, economic security issues. i have been there for the last -- almost four years since i

left "newsweek". >> how many different places did you live writing for "newsweek" and anybody else? >> for "newsweek," i was bought for 20 years, hong kong, once expel led, bonn, berlin, rome, washington. how many places does that make? several. >> we know you were born in scotland to polish parents and your wife is polish and you have four kids. >> four kids and seven grandkids. the last one just finished college about a year -- let me get this right -- about two years ago. and we now -- and the other kids -- the other three kids are all married and have kids of their

own as well. >> you live where? >> i live in new york, just outside of new york in pelham and our kids are in juneau, l.a., austin and new york. >> in your book, you talk about william scheirer. who was he? >> at the time i'm writing the story is just -- he has just turned 30, in paris. he has been a writer for various publications in the united states. he is desperate to go what he thinks is the next big story, which is germany. insays i'm dying of boredom paris. it goes to show once again that as a journalist, your instinct is to go to that next big story and he could see it was happening in germany. and in 1933, after hitler takes power, he gets an assignment from hearst international news service to go to germany.

goes there and is an incredibly energetic, very perceptive correspondent and is hired by ed morrow at cbs and he stays in germany or in vienna right through the beginning of the war. he writes at the time -- he publishes his berlin diaries after he leaves berlin which comes out in 1940, which has a huge impact in the united states. the writing's wonderful and very vivid and really brought home what was happening in germany, of course much later long after the war, he produces "the rise and fall of the third reich," still one of the most authoritative studies. >> did you check to see how many of those have sold?

>> simon and shuster, my publisher reissued that book on the 50th anniversary. i'm assuming we are talking millions of books. >> let's look at a documentary to see what he looked like. >> he caused so many deaths and was the architect of so much evil and he was, after all a man. >> hitler is dead. the thired reich which lasted 12 years, was human butch erie, surpassed anything this earth has seen is now but a painful memory.

how did it happen that a cultured people steeped in christianity, preeminent in modern technology, who gave us luther, bach and beethoven, einstein, collapsed into barbarism in the 20th century. we must follow the germans in the rise of their strange leader through the years of 1920 and 1945. >> what was he writing about hitler and the germans when he was there? >> well, first of all, he was speaking his thoughts which you can see from his diaries are very clear. other people are wondering is hitler for real.

the big question for many people is not whether hitler was he essentially a demagogue or not, but does he mean this stuff. could he really believe these things that he is writing about jews and others and taking over the soviet union and conquering the slavic lands. and scheirer takes it seriously and he gets that into his writing as possible. and broadcasting becomes a problem because it is heavily censored. i thought that clip was wonderful. i owe him a debt because my interest in this "i read the book, but the book's title in part is due to scheirer and other journalists.

"hitlerland" is not made up by me but it's a term they made about the country they were covering. >> the cover of your book, is that nuremberg? >> it's actually -- i think -- it looks like a nuremberg rally, but a similar rally in another city. but what i particularly like about the cover when the art department proposed this cover, when you go through a book cover, we looked at various drafts. we said that's perfect because you aren't looking straight on at hitler but over his shoulder. it conveys the idea and the premise of the book is you are getting a different angle on these familiar events. you think you know about them.

i thought i knew about them. but until i wrote and did the research for "hitlerland," i had no idea about the experiences of many of the people who were essentially my predecessors as correspondents or diplomats in berlin. despite the time i spent in germany, i hadn't spent a lot of time of what it would be like to have been a correspondent in the 1920's and 1930's and how would you have operated, what would you have noticed or in the noticed. >> who was putsy? >> one of the most notorious characters in the book. he calmed himself a half american. his father was from a very distinct issued bavarian art family of art dealers. his mother was from a family in

boston, born and bred american family. her father, so his grandfather had been a civil war journal and he helped carry lincoln's coffin. and so putsy is born in germany, but he is german american. he goes to harvard, class of 1909. among his classmates are dean atchison and teddy roosevelt, junior. he is invited to the white house by teddy junior because putsy is very entertaining, plays the piano wonderfully and invited to play the piano in the white house and eventually playing the piano for hitler. after he graduates from harvard he runs the family art business on fifth avenue in new york and meets an american woman whose parents were born in germany and

her name is helen. and in 1921, as a married couple they move to munich and thereafter he meets hitler and interestingly enough, because of his whole american background connecting point for many americans who want to meet hitler and want hitler to gain in prominence. his story told throughout this book is one which intersects with so many of the americans. and what i found fascinating about the research in the book is you get -- you get certain scenes where someone will say, oh, i saw putsy, he came to my house, the ap bureau chief and wore a strange nazi-looking uniform and he has british tailoring and the same scene from somebody else who saw putsy, the editor of foreign affairs and you begin to see that these stories not only

intersect but reinforce each other. it's one of the great fun parts of being the amateur historian journalist and discovering these stories that in these scenes which tell you a great deal about the atmosphere of the times. and here's putsy who is playing harvard marching songs for hitler and hitler is saying, wow, those are great, they have a great beat. we should use them at rallies. and in fact, putsy composes some marches for hitler. it's the kind of thing if you thought about it, a kind of -- in a novel or a movie script, you would say that's too crazy to imagine.

but nothing was too absurd in this situation. >> what was the relationship between hitler and helen, putsy's wife? >> helen was an attractive woman who very quickly became very friendly with hitler as well. hitler was coming over to their house in the early 1920's, when he was still a local figure, not a national figure. and he was clearly attracted to helen. now i won't say what the nature of this attraction was, it's hard to say. helen believed that he was in awe of her for many ways. the subject of hitler's sexual orientation -- i don't think there was nothing sex between them, but he liked being in her company.

and most significantly, in 1923, there is the beer hall push. hitler tries to seize power in munich. and the nazis are fired upon by the police. hitler is injured, his shoulder is dislocated. several nazis are killed, including his aide that he was marching arm in arm with and seeks refuge in helen's house and putsy has fled to austria. and next morning, helen gets a call from her mother in law saying the police are coming to your house next. they are looking for hitler and going to arrest him. and in the scene which i describe in detail in the book, helen goes up to tell hitler, look, get ready, you are going to be arrested and he has a gun in his hand.

and helen at that point is convinced in her own mind that he is thinking of shooting himself, and she grabbed that gun from him. think about the implications of that, 1923, if he had gone through with that -- we don't know whether she was right. but the idea that an american woman may have saved hitler in 1923 from suicide and in effect, doomed the world to what followed is rather a staggering thought. >> hitler served how long in prison and why? >> he was then arrested in helen's house in 1923. he was brought to trial in early 1924. he was sentenced to five years in prison for this attempted putch. but he was treated very lightly the authorities, both by the judge that basically allowed him to use the trial as this staging

ground to be able to tell the world about his theories. and first time get really major media attention and this is the first time and goes to prison and out of the five years he spends 11 months in prison. and he is generated generously by the authorities and treated like a hero there. there is a lot of popular sentiment that supports him. he dictates "mein kampf." the early 1920's in germany, not only germany defeated in world war i, very demoralized, period of hyper inflation, people's savings wiped out, sense of total collapse and hitler played upon that and the new democracy that had was created was proving to be very ineffective at the time.

so hitler was able to benefit immensely from his prison time. >> you sent me back to "mein kampf." you can get it on google. i haven't read it for a few years, this obsession with jews. did you find anything in your research that told you why? and what did he say in "mein kampf." >> the language, the scorge, the stab in the back theory, somehow germany lost world war i because the jewish politicians stabbed the military in the back, all of which is a very convenient excuse for what happened.

classic scapegoating. in terms of what the jews -- helen talked about hitler even in those early days coming over to her house and playing with her son, who was a few years old and being very charming, but then would go on a rant about jews. and she would say would many people have said since that somehow it could betraysed back to his time in vienna when he was an unsuccessful artist. he tried to get accepted into a fine arts school and rejected. that's another what-if history, but that he had developed raging hatred of jews by then. how you explain that.

i'm not sure there is any simple answer, but it certainly fueled his thinking, fueled "mein kampf" and dorothy thompson when she interviewed hitler, she said take away anti-semitism, and he collapses. and his notion on inferior races, but slavs not far behind. >> how many countries ban that from being bought or read? >> germany still has the ban. the copyright that belongs to the bavarian authorities. they haven't lifted it. fortunately, i think it expires in another year or two. even in germany, it will be available. i'm not sure how many countries still ban it. my feeling is, it makes no sense to ban it. first of all, if anybody who

tries to read and if you picked it up recently or reminded of this, it is hundreds of pages of hitler just ranting. and this is not going to turn someone onto the nazis. in fact, i describe a scene in my book where otto one of the early nazis who broke with hitler describes a 1927 nuremberg party rally where he and a few but these are having dinner at a restaurant. they admit to each other, we never read all of "mein kampf." we could not get through it. the first nazi official who joins and says he has read the

whole book, we will stick him with the tab. they could not stick anybody with the tab. everybody had to pay for himself. >> here is a video of a famous american you write about. you can explain this. >> france not been defeated and despite the propaganda and confusion of recent months, it is obvious that england is losing the war. i have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for england regardless of how much assistance we since. that is why the america first committee has been formed. [applause] are we operating under a government by representation or are we operating under a government by subterfuge? >> charles lambert is most famous for exactly that sort -- charles lindbergh is most famous exactly for that sort of thing.

his solo flight across the atlantic made him the biggest celebrity of the era and the kidnap and murder of his son. all of us have heard the story of men burke and his sympathy for what was going on in -- lindburgh and his sympathy for what was going on in europe. something that i had not realized was that the origin of his visit to germany was not the fact that the germans and invited him because they thought he sympathized with them or that he went there because he sympathized with them initially. it was because a military attache, truman smith, who had been in germany in the early twenties met hitler and came back in 1935 and had good

sources within the german army. he was learning about how it was building up, but he did not know much about the air force. he realizes that lindbergh was in france and england and traveling around as a celebrity. he came up with the idea that if i can guess georing's air ministry invited to england, he will want to show off and showed this man everything. he comes to germany and he is used by the germans for propaganda purposes in many ways. he also gets to see the airfield, the new airplanes. he knows those airplanes and he knows a lot about aviation. he brings the military attaches with him. his motive was probably to convince the americans that this is such a powerful country that

you to not want to mess with them. regardless of the motive, there is real intelligence here. there is also these amazing stories of the lunch that goring -- daring -- grttin -- gerring attended. he has a pet lion cub and it is called over to his lap. he is a big man on a white uniform. -- in a white uniform. the line and comes up on his lap. the line gets nervous -- lion gets nervous and turns yellow. this is the kind of thing, these episodes that are incredible to

learn about. , hear about from different sources. truman smith's daughter is still alive. i talked to her at great length and she called me and said, did i show you this photograph on my refrigerator? she said, the one with the line and -- lion. after that incident, the line was sent back to the berlin zoo and true and arranged for her to have this photograph taken with it. amidst all of these tragic events, there is a sense of a bit of the theater of the absurd. >> we have some more of video. we were talking about richard c. holland. is he still alive? how old is c.? >> he is 93 or 94 -- how old is

he? he is 93 or 94. >> she felt it was important to let the united states stand up to hitler. >> i wrote a book on the subject which mr. chamberlain did not like much. we did not like mr. chamberlain much either. [applause] >> there is the story of the infamous day, the 10th of november, 1938, when the nazis turned their goons on jewish businesses and smashed their windows. it was called crystal night. it was there and it was presented to people. it was terrible. it was awful. it is perfectly plain. people chose to ignore it. >> what happened to him when he was in germany?

how long was he there? >> he came in the 1930's. he was a young man. i do not remember exactly which your he came in. he was there for three years qaeda first as a student, then working as a wire service -- he was there for two years as a student, then working as a wire report. >> he spoke german? >> most of the students there spoke german and were quite low wind. -- fluent. what happened to him was, he was picked up by the gestapo. he was the only american

correspondent who was imprisoned by the gestapo for several months in 1940. world war ii had already started, but america was not in the war. things are beginning to get more and more difficult for war correspondents. there are theories about why he was picked up. he was not treated anywhere nearly as badly as most estoppel prisoners. it is still something special about being a man -- most gestapo prisoners. there is still something special about being an american. he was kept in prison for several months and then eventually released. many of his fellow journalists felt that he had been more and more disgusted by what he had seen all around him. also, it was a warning to other journalists about what happens when you are a foreign

correspondent. one journalist make it picked on or expelled or so -- or so forth to tell the others that this can happen to you, too. >> what did you find that you did not know? >> there is a long list of things. first of all, something like the back story on charles was one of them. in a more general sense, aside from specific incidents, many of which i did not know about, it was the sense of just how creeping the understanding was of what was happening in germany. one of the things i expected going into the project was that, as hitler rose, it would be a pretty linear progression in terms of understanding of him by americans.

in fact, it was anything but linear. howard k. smith, the future abc news anchor, talked about four stages when american journalists came to germany. one was being completely in awe of germany. it was a well ordered society. people were polite. it was rebounding from the depression. two, they were saying, there are all of this -- these military here. third states is, these people are being trained to kill, to conquer. there is utter terror. some americans went through those four stages really fast. some stayed stuck at one or two. some went to three and back to two.

truman smith, as military attache, the on an american correspondent and -- called on an american correspondent. they had a pretty good read on him. they said, he could go far in this area. that was as far as the imagination could go. >> how big is bavaria inside germany? >> the southern state of germany -- munich is the center. it has always been an entity unto itself. it is near the austrian border. it has a distinct culture. by the way, hitler always felt more comfortable in munich and are very of that he did in berlin. >> let me show some video for

those who do not remember. >> he spoke german better than most germans did. he despised adolf hitler and he said so. he was an obvious target. the germans forbade us to go out and hunt for ruins in birdman. they would not allow it. he got a bicycle -- the germans forbade us to hunt for ruins in berlin. i was there when the estoppel came in, about 8 men. -- the gestapo came in, about 8 min. the phone rang and the head of the gestapo said to me, you speak german.

she said hello and i answered in german. she said, why do you continue to answer me in german. i said, i am not allowed to do anything else. she hung up the phone. he was held for several months and was traded for two german spies that we arrested in the united states. >> did richard worry at the time about being held there forever? how afraid was he that the germans were going to do something to him? >> from the initial days of his accounts -- he wrote a story and i talked to him about it. when he was first grown in, he said rationally -- when he was first grown in, he said rationally, they are not likely to kill me because i am an american correspondent. they are not likely to

antagonize the united states that overtly. you reale what kind of regime this is and you can be worried. soon after he was transferred from one prison to another, given better conditions and the american embassy officials were allowed to visit him. the signal was there that something would be eventually be negotiated. he was a young man with a lot of courage and a lot of pride and naivete in some ways. i do not think he was all that rattled, except in the beginning. >> when did the people in the united states start paying attention? >> it is interesting to see that among those correspondents and diplomats that with the worst worried about what was happening and thought there was a looming confrontation and that we in the united states would not be able to avoid this as

much as we would like to, they were frustrated by the fact that many in the united states did not want to hear that. the u.s. had reluctantly got into world war i and thought what did world war i solve? they had gone through the depression and were still struggling their way out of the depression. the last thing most americans wanted to hear -- this was not just the america first movement. even the roosevelt administration was reluctant to of sorb the full import -- to absorb the full import from the people who were perceptive. it was not just turn a list -- just journalists and diplomats. there was a meeting with hitler and he came away convinced that everything he was saying about

the jews should be taken literally. >> what happened before it was all over? >> nothing is simple. in 1936 or 1937, he had been falling out of favor with hitler and was being increasingly marginalized, especially with the chief of propaganda. they never got along. he was taken up in a plane and told he was going to be sent to spain on a mission. he is told by the pilot that, i am told to parachute you behind enemy lines. the airplane stops before they leave germany for refueling. the pilot says a mechanical thing and says, you may want to get out. he eventually ends up in england convinced that there was

a plot to kill him. the nazis said, we were just playing around with this guy. he was an enemy alien in britain and shipped off to canada. even then, he used his connections to get the message to roosevelt saying, i can help you with intelligence about hitler. he is brought to the united states. his son has recently graduated from harvard and is in a u.s. army uniform. >> are there any of his relatives left? >> i met his grandson in munich. he remembers helen and his grandmother well. his grandson is alive in munich. >> what happens to his marriage to? >> that fell apart in the mid- 1930's. he was a well-known ladies' man.

he could be rather forward. helen ditched him. she writes that hitler asked about her and she says -- and said, she is divorced. she is happy to hear that. she is still thinking about him. she divorces and goes back to the united states in the late 1930's and spends the war years there. in the 1950's, she decides to move back to germany and spends the rest of her life there and dies in her seventies. >> what parallel, if any -- i am afraid to ask the question -- what parallel to what happened is there here in the united stes at this time in our lives? >> i never feel that there is a great historical parallel or

straight analogy. hitler was such an extreme case that i am hesitant to make direct analogies. i think there are a number of lessons from which i took away just from living vicariously through the lives of these americans in of the's germany. one -- through the lives of these americans in hitler's germany. the conditions have to be right. the economic conditions and political climate. that does not take away from the response ability of his followers. hitler may or may -- that does not take away from the responsibility of his followers. taylor may or may not have committed suicide. without hitler -- hitler may or

may not have committed suicide. the people who watched him closely -- he was a master psychologist in the way he worked the crowd. the nazis probably would have never won power. germany might have gone into a military dictatorship. we would not have had the third reich or the holocaust or something on that dimension. when an extremist movement makes threats that seem observed and suicidal and out of your rational frame of reference, that does not mean that is enough reason to disregard them. the big mistake so many people made was that, it would be suicidal for hitler to act on all of his threats. >> quickly, there are a number of things that you wrote about that have been written about four years.

the night of the long knives in 1934. what was it? >> hitler sends out his troops to do away with many of the people he perceives as his enemies, including people who are storm troopers, who are seen as getting out of hand. the more elite unit resented them. he had several of the murders. he had previous rivals within the party murdered, including strasser, who was part of the socialist wing of the party. there was a socialist wing, even though it was a racist socialist wing. >> what were the brownshirts? >> a brown shirt is a storm trooper, the body guards, the

thugs who were the private army of hitler as he was rising to power. they were the auxiliary enforcers what he was in power. >> what is a putch? >> it is a coup. >> you write about three other big events. in 1938, the auchelous. >> it was the annexation of austria. in 1938, many german generals wonder, is hitler out of his mind to go this far? he then annexes austria.

>> 1937 was the munich conference with chamberlain. >> that was where the state of czechoslovakia was in the balance. there were many germans who believed this was a dangerous move on hitler's part. he got the british and the french to agree to the breakup of czechoslovakia. whatever resistance there might have been to hitler in the military totally dissipates because it seems like he was getting everything he wanted without any force. >> the ninth and 10th of november, crystal night. >> the night of the broken glass when a furious anti-semitic campaign is released where jewish stores and jews are attached. many jews are literally thrown out of windows. it is an of anti-semitism, a signal that if anybody had any

illusions at that point, this is for real. >> this is strictly a small -- not small -- you write about hiser's relationship with half sister. >> his half-sister and his niece, the daughter of his half- sister. clearly920's, he was infatuated with her. he is seen going about town with and she moves into his apartment. there are rumors that there was something weirdly sexual about this. in 1931, she is found with a bullets through her. the official story is that she committed suicide. other people say there had been a big fight and there were

rumors in the socialist press that he was somehow responsible for her death. he hushes this up. someone is sent around to make sure this potential scandal is hushed up. >> we do this from time to time. some video of your past. we go back to 1989. let's roll. >> are you going to go back? >> i suspect so. it is hard to stay away. >> house uprising is all of this to you? >> the speed of events is surprising to everyone. my feeling was that in romania, if something happened, it would happen the way it did. it would be a violent revolution as opposed to be peaceful and gentle revolutions in the rest of europe. that due -- the leader left no

room for any kind of compromise. the only thing left was the kind of confrontation we saw last week. >> i see by the video that one thing has not changed, you. looking back on your own life, how would you characterize what you have seen a change since your reporting live and russia and all of that. >> part of my motivation for writing "hitlerland"was that i was blessed to be a reporter before the transformation of europe and the collapse of eastern europe. i have some feeling of what it is to live through historic events and how hard it is during that time when you are in the

midst of it to figure things out. i always thought that that is a symbol of collapse. i cannot say i knew when and how. we were all struck by the rapidity and, as i said there. it made me more and more curious about other things like that and what lessons we learn from it. of course, the world has changed radically in every way. the media has changed dramatically. one of the striking things i found in writing the book was what a powerful u.s. press corps there was in berlin. there -- there were 50 u.s. correspondents in berlin in the 1930's. >> is there any place in the world where we have 50 american correspondents? >> i do not think so. i cannot imagine any place where we have 50 these days. there are various freelancers.

even if you add them all in in places like beijing and moscow, i do not think so. >> our guest has been andrew nagorski. his book is called "hitlerland." we thank you for coming back. >> thank you so much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> wore a dvd copy of this program, call 1887-662-7726. visit us at qanda.org. trespass are also available at cspan podcasts.

>> join us tomorrow about the challenges of moving from paper to electronic health records. patient privacy and other security concerns will also be discussed. live coverage begins at 12:15 eastern on c-span 2. tomorrow, the center for american progress is discussing corporate money and the influence on the courts. our live coverage begins at noon eastern on c-span 3. >> monday night on c-span 2, executives talk about the impact and future of american technology around the world. >> one of the fascinating things about the