there were people like council general george messersmith who said the german politicians who think they're going to and there were people like edgar mauer who was a correspondent for the "chicago daily news" who was actually warning jews, german jews, get out of this country. and then there were other americans who thought they were more concerned in many cases about the communist threat-- a coup from the left. because remember, there were radicals from the right and left. this is not too long after the bolshevik revolution. >> warner: one of the things i found fascinating about your book was that after hitler i mean, there was a social life, there was an interaction among at least some of the americans with the senior figures in the regime. >> that americans had access to germany in a way that, for instance, americans in the soviet union did not have access to the elites. and even traveling into the country was a lot easier. so you had people like, again, truman smith, this young military attache, who comes back in the '30s as a senior military attache. and he's hobnobbing with senior ger