Archives Uncovered: Revealing The Third Reich And The Inner Lives Of Extremists

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[MUSIC]

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Good afternoon, everyone in the room and
everyone online as well.

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I'm Eric Wakin, I'm the Deputy Director
of the Hoover Institution and

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the Everett and Jane Hauck, director of
our spectacular Library and Archives.

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It's my great pleasure to welcome you to
this event which is noted in its title,

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aims to, quote, reveal the Third Reich and

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the inner lives of extremists
through the lens of one of

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our most recent new acquisitions,
the Gerd Heidemann Collection.

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It's one of the most remarkable private
archives documenting the history of

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the Nazi Party that's ever been
acquired by any university archive.

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This event also is the inaugural event
of our archives uncovered series which

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highlights newly acquired collections,
newly described collections, and

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talks about how we connect
them to researchers.

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In this case and others also filmmakers,
tracing the role of history and

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archives together.

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Let me share a few quick thank yous.

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Thank you to our director, Dr Condoleezza
Rice for her support of the library and

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archives and

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the priority she has placed on our history
initiatives at the Hoover Institution.

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Also, the board of directors and all the
donors and supporters of the institution,

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everything we do is privately
funded to the generosity of donors.

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Finally, I wanna thank the speakers and
subject matter experts that I'm gonna

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introduce in a moment, and my colleagues,
the staff of the institution for

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setting up this room,
the digital space, and so on.

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I do like to just say a few
words about the institution.

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We were founded as
the Hoover War Library in 1919.

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And from that, founded by Herbert Hoover,
the 31st President of the United States

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and a member of the first graduating
class of Stanford we've grown to become

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the Hoover Institution on War,
Revolution and Peace.

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On the public policy side,
we're dedicated to advancing freedom and

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the Public Policy Center
supports about 200 different,

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more than 200 actually, fellows.

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Researching everything from emerging
technologies to history and

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everything in between.

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And it's one of the great growths of what
Mr. Hoover wanted the institution to be,

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to grow into be more than what
he called a mere library.

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And we do bring scholars
together in that way.

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At the same time, the Library and Archives
dates back to the World War I, of course,

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when Mr. Hoover founded the institution,
and consists of over a million books and

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over 6000 archival collections.

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I'd like to mention that Mr. Hoover
founded the institution with a telegram

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that just said,
essentially collect material on war, and

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that was his gift with a $50,000
gift in 1919 in today's dollars,

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rough, just under a million dollars.

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Today, our deeds of gifts are a lot
different and more intense.

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So I like to say we're very unique in
being both a library and archives and

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a think tank a Public Policy Center,
and it's very, very unusual.

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And Library and Archives does
an enormous amount of activities,

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in addition to collect we
provide scholarships to people.

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We publish with the series,
The Hoover Stanford series, and

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authoritarian regimes.

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And we publish with the Hoover press.

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We bring in scholars,
as I said, through fellowships.

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We have events like this to bring
material out to the public,

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and we try to do everything we can to both
bring people into the collections and

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push knowledge of the collections
out in various ways.

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So I'm really grateful for your being
here to participate in today's event and

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we've been working to get
the item in collection for

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many years and finally got it
over the last couple of years.

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Thanks to the efforts of a number of
people including the first person I'm

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going to introduce which is Dr Katharina
Friedla who's a research fellow and

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the Taub Family curator for
European collections at Hoover.

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Before coming to Hoover, Dr.

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Friedla worked as an associate professor,
a translator, and a scientific advisor for

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universities and institutions in Germany,
Israel and Poland.

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Katharina has published a number of books
and many articles on the Holocaust,

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on nationalism, on identity politics, and
enforced migration in 20th century Europe.

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And as I said, she was instrumental
in building the relationship with

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the Heidemann to make sure
the collection came here.

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In the middle Thomas Weber is professor
of history and International Affairs at

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the University of Aberdeen, as well as a
visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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Thomas is an expert on Extremism,
National and International order and

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democratic breakdown and resilience.

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He has taught or
held fellowships at Harvard Institute for

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Advanced Study of Princeton Penn and
Chicago.

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Among his books are Hitler's First War and
becoming Hitler The Making of a Nazi.

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And we're grateful for his help in
bringing the collection to Hoover also.

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And on my immediate right is an award
winning Dutch documentary filmmaker for

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15 years he's worked as an international.

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He worked as an international
correspondent,

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covering a number of stories and
interviewing people like Tariq Aziz,

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Nelson Mandela, Benjamin Netanyahu and
Mikhail Gorbachev, Mikhail Gorbachev.

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After leaving the news and
current affairs world,

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he transitioned to documentary filmmaking.

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His three-part series The Downing of the
SS Von Imhoff recounts the killing of 650

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German civilians by a group
of Dutch sailors in 1942.

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But for his new project, Deco and
his crew are retracing the 1979

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journey of German journalist Heidemann and
former SS General Karl Wolf,

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as they traveled to La Paz,
Bolivia, to meet Klaus Barbie.

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The travelogues, the audiotapes, and the
photographs from Heidemann's archive serve

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as the foundation for the upcoming
documentary, The Barbie Tapes.

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With that, please give a warm welcome
to Katharina, Thomas, and Foeke.

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>> So, Eric, thank you very much for
your kind introduction,

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we are really delighted to welcome
all of those here in the room and

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also our audience online.

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Before we start, I have a couple
of housekeeping notes to make.

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First, we will start our discussion,

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which will last approximately
between 30 to our 40 minutes.

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Then we are gonna hand over to Eric who
will moderate our Q&A, session afterward.

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Professor Norman Naimark, will deliver
his final and yeah, closing remarks.

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And last but not released I want to
invite everyone to our reception,

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which will take place after our our event.

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So before we gonna move to
our conversation on the inner

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lives of extremists,
I call it the de of Nazi perpetrators.

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First of all, we want to give you
a little bit of background and

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talk about the creator of the collection,
Gerd Heidemann,

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as well as give you some brief overview
of the content of the collection and

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maybe also say a few words
about our acquisition efforts.

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Our work on-site in Hamburg
with my wonderful team and

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Thomas to transfer this
collection to Hoover.

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So Thomas, you're one of the best

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experts who have a profound
knowledge of the collection.

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You are also one of the few
scientists who've got access

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to some materials from Gerd Heidemann
archive a few years ago.

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So what would you say
about Eric Heidemann?

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What character he, yeah,
how would you characterize him?

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>> He really was an adventure.

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I mean he passed away in December
at the age of, I think, 93.

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He was really made and
formed by war himself.

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He had grown up in Nazi Germany,
in Hamburg.

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He was, I think, 14 when the war ended.

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And basically for the rest of his life,
he was trying to make sense of.

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Of his childhood, I think.

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And as a result of that, in many ways,

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he did what Herbert Hoover
always wanted us to do.

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He really was chronicling war and
revolution for

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the rest of his life and
really in two roles, both as a journalist.

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So he became a kind of star journalist for
the most famous German magazine.

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He was sent for decades every time
somewhere a plane went down or

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war break, war happened,
he was being sent there.

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He was on the next plane,
there he took risks that no one else did,

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and lived to to tell the Tale or
live to bring home the photographs.

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Here we see a photograph that
he took in the mid 1960s

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in Africa for
which he won the World Press Award.

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He took crazy risks, for
instance, the Middle East.

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He rescued also the life
of one of his colleagues.

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So this was his own work as a journalist,
as a reporter,

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but he also started in a very much in,
again, I guess,

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in a tradition of Hoover to
accumulate material himself in.

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In a way, the collection really spans
the entire human history from literally

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the beginnings of time
until the day he died.

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But with a special focus
precisely on the period

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covered by the Hoover collections, and

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namely from 1914 to the present.

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This is also why when about ten years ago,

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I first got access to this collection,
and I realized that there was a maybe

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willingness to think about where
there should be a permanent home.

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I immediately thought, whoever would
just be the perfect collection,

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really for two reasons, a, because, again,

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he spent all his life to do what
Herbert Hoover wanted to do.

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But it's also a collection
that really does allow us,

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maybe like no other collection
there was in private hands, to look

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at the inner lives of of extremists and
which we know far too little.

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We know far too little about what was
going on in the heads Nazi perpetrators,

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of other perpetrators,
because when they were in courtrooms,

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they were always playing down their role.

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And here there would have
anything a boast about it.

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So in that sense, this also brings
us to the other side of Hoover.

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It's an amazing collection that
actually allows us to understand

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extremism political processes.

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And therefore through to figure out what
are the ideas that define freedom and

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how can freedom be defended?

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So that is why I immediately thought
this really has to come to Hoover.

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>> I forget, you met Gert Hedemann
just a few months ago,

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when you went together with
Thomas to Hamburg to yeah,

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to conduct an interview with him and
film this basement.

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So I think that was probably your
first meeting with Gert Heidemann.

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How was your impression and

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courage to hear about your
experiences with Gert Heidelman?

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Well, we met him in I think
it was like five days before

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he passed 92 and
I thought still he was very,

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very energetic man,
still full of stories, and

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not just the basement,
where you see a picture here.

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Even as house was full
of these black folders,

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all this material that he
collected.I was impressed.

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>> So maybe now let's talk
about our efforts to get this

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collection to give you
an impression about the size.

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I mean, we're talking about
more than 7,000 biochemists for

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all materials, like different kinds,
reps, the humans.

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And yeah,

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that was probably our first impression
when we have entered the basement.

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You have imagined a place, very shady,
dusty base land in Hamburg.

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So I must say for me, for
the first time I met Gerd Heidemann,

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so Thomas introduced me to him.

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It was in I think spring 2022.

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I was really shocked and I was also afraid
because of this confrontation because

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I knew already what kind of material
do I have to expect in this basement.

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But I was really afraid because of
this amount of Nazi documentation.

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But after several hours of conversation
and having some look into the material,

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I just realized, wow,
this is really amazing, iconic.

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It's really just start to
talk about the transfer,

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the path to get this collection to
go was very long, very tuned land.

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We have negotiated,
I think about more than one year.

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Gert Heidemann was extremely difficult.

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And a complex personality, but we finally,

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yeah, were able to reach an agreement and

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started to transfer the collection
in the summer of 2023.

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So my wonderful colleagues,
Talia Olszewski,

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of the description department,

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as well as Colin Stenson and Ryan as well.

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The heads of the preservation
team joined me in Hamburg and

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we have been working for
more than two weeks in this basement.

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It was summer, very hot, dusty basement,

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no windows, fresh Earth.

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So that was really, a challenge but

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we were able to pack everything.

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You can see on this picture, so
this is only a fragment of this size.

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So that was really amazing and that was
yeah, we call it a mammoth collection.

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So this one photo is this
truck that's still in Hamburg.

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So we moved the entire material,
the entire archive

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to a secure storage in Hamburg before
we were able to ship it to California,

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just to give an impression
to ship containers and yeah.

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And those are my colleagues when they
yeah, they reopened the crates and

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the boxes when
the collection reached over,

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yeah and
just four months after our expedition.

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We just learned that this pavement
was damaged, so it was flooded.

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So we just realized, wow,
how timely we were, and

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we can actually say that that was
definitely a collection at which so

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we are very happy that we
managed to get it here on time.

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And now,
I think before we gonna give you some

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insights into entire
content of the collection,

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I would start with a fragment of Bucha
documentary is currently working on

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[MUSIC]

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[FOREIGN]

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>> [FOREIGN]

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[MUSIC]

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>> In your opinion, what makes this
archive so unique, so important?

228
00:17:10,430 --> 00:17:14,018
>> Well, first, for me,
as a Dutch filmmaker,

229
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the archive is interesting because here
you have on the right, Klaus Barbie and

230
00:17:20,181 --> 00:17:25,794
on the left, SS General Carl wolf
meeting each other in a hotel in La Paz.

231
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And talking about the Russia's
in February 41 in Amsterdam.

232
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And that is by itself unique
because we've never heard

233
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from the perpetrator side about that
two day Russia where the Germans.

234
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Where the Nazis took
about 400 men from their

235
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homes in the Jewish quarter
of the Dutch capital.

236
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So although that has been
widely published in in Holland,

237
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books written about this is
the first time that we get

238
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this perspective from from Barbie side.

239
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Yeah, so that makes it for
me as a Dutch filmmaker, very interesting.

240
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On the other hand, the archive and

241
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especially this trip of Barbie and
wolf in the summer of 79 is so

242
00:18:20,082 --> 00:18:25,083
well documented by Heidemann,
it's audio tapes.

243
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But it's also diaries he made,

244
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transcripts of more than 17
hours of audio of conversation

245
00:18:33,465 --> 00:18:38,193
between these two men,
and for a filmmaker, well,

246
00:18:38,193 --> 00:18:44,229
it's a gift we should very briefly
just mention for the audience.

247
00:18:44,229 --> 00:18:48,829
>> So in the collapse there's
material that Hieldman collected.

248
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So where he convinced people that they
would part with their private papers.

249
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And it was particularly,
again, this guy, Karl Wolff,

250
00:18:57,721 --> 00:19:01,862
who was a door opener and who helped
to facilitate the acquisition of

251
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a lot of these kind of private
papers that people still had home.

252
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But he also interviewed in the 19th,
particularly in the 1970s.

253
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A lot of perpetrators that
were still alive, again,

254
00:19:15,207 --> 00:19:17,887
facilitated primarily by Karl Rove.

255
00:19:17,887 --> 00:19:22,567
And what we're now talking
about is this trip in 1979

256
00:19:22,567 --> 00:19:25,307
when they went to South America.

257
00:19:25,307 --> 00:19:29,814
Trying to find Menle,
the Auschwitz doctor, and Borman,

258
00:19:29,814 --> 00:19:34,232
both of whom were dead, but
they didn't know that, and so

259
00:19:34,232 --> 00:19:37,229
they were trying to find those two men.

260
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And in the process, under cover,
they traveled through six

261
00:19:42,243 --> 00:19:46,965
countries in South America and
interviewed maybe 20 or

262
00:19:46,965 --> 00:19:51,902
20 to 25 Nazis living in
South America about that time.

263
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And they taped absolutely everything and
so

264
00:19:54,760 --> 00:19:57,772
Klaus Barbie is just one of those stories,
and

265
00:19:57,772 --> 00:20:02,658
it is just amazing what we learned there
about their motivations and so on.

266
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>> Yep,
>> I think it's really, yeah, fascinating.

267
00:20:07,569 --> 00:20:12,899
But I do remember, during my second
meeting with Gert Heidemann in Hamburg,

268
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he just handed over to me.

269
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So here a bunch of documents in Hebrew and
said that, you know what katharina,

270
00:20:20,945 --> 00:20:25,873
you were probably one of the first
people I'm talking about.

271
00:20:25,873 --> 00:20:29,902
Well, for many, many years, I work for

272
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the Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service,

273
00:20:34,413 --> 00:20:38,102
Mossad, and now today we know that.

274
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And of course, he knew I read Hebrew,
so I translated those correspondence,

275
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and then I started to search in Israel for
additional documentation.

276
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And she had just recently declassified
files from the Mossad archive.

277
00:20:52,779 --> 00:20:57,009
And it was clear at some
point that Heidiman And

278
00:20:57,009 --> 00:21:01,794
Karl Rove,
they were not alone during their trade.

279
00:21:01,794 --> 00:21:06,910
So all over the time,
there was one person from the Mossad

280
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who followed their trip and
also documented everything.

281
00:21:12,143 --> 00:21:15,019
So that's very, very interesting.

282
00:21:15,019 --> 00:21:19,718
>> I think it's also important
to point out here is because

283
00:21:19,718 --> 00:21:24,222
there is this kind of public
image of Gerd Heidemann.

284
00:21:24,222 --> 00:21:29,844
If you have heard about him,
it will be typically through the 1983

285
00:21:29,844 --> 00:21:35,470
blood diary scandal, where the guy
who had forced his diaries were had

286
00:21:35,470 --> 00:21:40,542
pitched them to get Heidemann,
he had fallen for the forgery.

287
00:21:40,542 --> 00:21:44,813
And then the story that is being left has
also been particularly in German rule of

288
00:21:44,813 --> 00:21:47,509
when he died,
the rule of obituaries were about.

289
00:21:47,509 --> 00:21:52,754
It was all about the Hitler diaries,
and then they might have mentioned and

290
00:21:52,754 --> 00:21:56,428
he was traveling to
South America with his general.

291
00:21:56,428 --> 00:21:59,438
But I think in order to
understand Gerd Heidemann,

292
00:21:59,438 --> 00:22:04,407
we also have to understand he wasn't just
traveling there with Gerd Heidemann he was

293
00:22:04,407 --> 00:22:06,519
also traveling there with Mossad.

294
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And in many ways Heidemann was,
in a way, so honorable that he didn't

295
00:22:11,798 --> 00:22:16,989
talk about his involvement of Mossad
until a few days before his death

296
00:22:16,989 --> 00:22:22,114
himself publicly, precisely
because he thought, I can't do it.

297
00:22:22,114 --> 00:22:26,731
So in a way, he accepted that
he would be painted this way.

298
00:22:26,731 --> 00:22:33,083
But I think now we can really be able
to tell a very different story and this

299
00:22:33,083 --> 00:22:39,980
in a way will also be part of Foucault's
documentary that will be aired in May.

300
00:22:39,980 --> 00:22:44,604
So what happened during this last
visit just before his death,

301
00:22:44,604 --> 00:22:48,966
we'd initially arranged that
we would interview him, but

302
00:22:48,966 --> 00:22:52,382
then he felt he was too
sick he couldn't do it.

303
00:22:52,382 --> 00:22:56,182
We met up with or I met up with him anyway
but then, as Luca said, he suddenly,

304
00:22:56,182 --> 00:22:59,175
when he realized he could talk about it,
he fucked up again.

305
00:22:59,175 --> 00:23:03,566
It was the last time that he was very,
kind of really lively and

306
00:23:03,566 --> 00:23:06,029
it's then he said, just record.

307
00:23:06,029 --> 00:23:08,591
In a way, it was just then with this,

308
00:23:08,591 --> 00:23:13,226
we recorded the final interview
with him where for the first time,

309
00:23:13,226 --> 00:23:18,798
he also talked himself about how for
20 years he worked together with Mossad.

310
00:23:18,798 --> 00:23:23,403
>> I was surprised, I mean,
it was difficult to find an answer, why?

311
00:23:23,403 --> 00:23:28,740
Because because through his life, he's
been painted as a sort of a Nazi friend.

312
00:23:28,740 --> 00:23:32,129
Why he never explained that he worked for
Mossad?

313
00:23:32,129 --> 00:23:37,064
I mean, in his defense,
that would paint it a complete different

314
00:23:37,064 --> 00:23:40,312
picture of his character, personality.

315
00:23:40,312 --> 00:23:43,080
>> I think the answer is,
because he thought he was not allowed to.

316
00:23:43,080 --> 00:23:47,474
To, I mean, the first time when
he found out that I had told

317
00:23:47,474 --> 00:23:50,364
Hoover that he had to work for Mossad.

318
00:23:50,364 --> 00:23:55,940
At that time, this was a few years ago,
he always went ballistic,

319
00:23:55,940 --> 00:24:01,036
because he said, well,
I'm not supposed to talk about it.

320
00:24:01,036 --> 00:24:04,265
And I said, yes, but
I found a different ways.

321
00:24:04,265 --> 00:24:08,862
So I'm not quoting you,
and we also know in a way,

322
00:24:08,862 --> 00:24:15,114
there's a parallel story about
German domestic secret services.

323
00:24:15,114 --> 00:24:20,139
Because he was approached many years
ago by the East German Secret Service,

324
00:24:20,139 --> 00:24:21,090
by the Stasi.

325
00:24:21,090 --> 00:24:26,389
And he was approached and so
he then went back to West Germany and

326
00:24:26,389 --> 00:24:30,792
talked to the domestic
West German Secret Service.

327
00:24:30,792 --> 00:24:34,434
And he said, I've just been approached
by the Stasi, what should I do?

328
00:24:34,434 --> 00:24:39,980
And they told him,
go along with it and report to us.

329
00:24:41,255 --> 00:24:44,228
And that story at some point came out.

330
00:24:44,228 --> 00:24:49,073
Then there were these newspaper stories,
I think, in the 90s about how

331
00:24:49,073 --> 00:24:54,012
Gerd Heidemann wasn't just a Nazi,
how he was also working for the Stasi.

332
00:24:54,012 --> 00:24:57,542
Which, of course,
doesn't quite go together and yet

333
00:24:57,542 --> 00:25:01,010
Gerd Heidemann at that point,
could have just said.

334
00:25:01,010 --> 00:25:06,206
Well, look, I was doing this
because the West German Democratic,

335
00:25:06,206 --> 00:25:09,849
the Liberal Secret Service
told me to do so, but

336
00:25:09,849 --> 00:25:12,508
he felt he was not allowed to do so.

337
00:25:12,508 --> 00:25:13,630
>> Yeah.

338
00:25:13,630 --> 00:25:17,697
>> So if you look at the picture, I mean,
plus Bobby on the right doesn't know that

339
00:25:17,697 --> 00:25:21,862
cat Heidemann, who is also in the room,
who took the picture, is a journalist.

340
00:25:21,862 --> 00:25:27,968
And Karl Wolff who is traveling with
Heidemann through South America,

341
00:25:27,968 --> 00:25:32,560
doesn't know that heidman works for
Mars, so yeah.

342
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:34,865
>> Why did you choose this topic?

343
00:25:34,865 --> 00:25:36,321
Why Klaus Barbie?

344
00:25:36,321 --> 00:25:41,087
>> Well first, as I explained for
me, as a Dutch filmmaker, and

345
00:25:41,087 --> 00:25:46,497
his role in Amsterdam, working for
the seafarers polish for a year and

346
00:25:46,497 --> 00:25:51,286
a half, not much has been published
about that in my country.

347
00:25:51,286 --> 00:25:55,857
So that's for
my audience really interesting,

348
00:25:55,857 --> 00:26:01,875
also Bobby is, I think, well,
the well more known name of the,

349
00:26:01,875 --> 00:26:07,224
I think, six people they met
in South America, Walter,

350
00:26:07,224 --> 00:26:12,372
Ralph, and the others, and
the quality of the tapes.

351
00:26:12,372 --> 00:26:16,451
I mean,
this was all recorded in a hotel room.

352
00:26:16,451 --> 00:26:22,198
And, well, Heidemann did a great job,
I mean, technically,

353
00:26:22,198 --> 00:26:26,570
if you listen to It
the audio it's fascinating.

354
00:26:26,570 --> 00:26:32,902
And we were surprised,
we were filming in La Paz three weeks ago,

355
00:26:32,902 --> 00:26:37,637
and went to the same Sheraton Hotel and
the room.

356
00:26:37,637 --> 00:26:43,817
And everything that's like exactly
in the same shape as it was in 79,

357
00:26:43,817 --> 00:26:49,384
except for that beautiful
wallpaper that disappeared, yeah.

358
00:26:49,384 --> 00:26:52,650
>> I think we've picture of that.

359
00:26:52,650 --> 00:26:53,831
>> No, okay.

360
00:26:53,831 --> 00:26:56,790
>> We have a bunch already in.

361
00:26:56,790 --> 00:26:58,290
>> In the clip, yes.

362
00:26:58,290 --> 00:27:03,628
>> So I'm wondering,
just remember the first time when I've

363
00:27:03,628 --> 00:27:09,621
got the digitized tapes of the entire
interview with Laos Barbie.

364
00:27:09,621 --> 00:27:14,920
And my aim was just to prove
the transcript, which was attached

365
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:20,021
to that in German to figure out
if the quality is good enough.

366
00:27:20,021 --> 00:27:26,094
I must say I was spending the whole
weekend working with those states.

367
00:27:26,094 --> 00:27:29,657
And at the very beginning,
I was so disturbed.

368
00:27:29,657 --> 00:27:35,305
I couldn't do that because I
think even if I'm an academic,

369
00:27:35,305 --> 00:27:39,748
I worked on Holocaust for
more than 20 years.

370
00:27:39,748 --> 00:27:42,863
But yeah,
I must admit that I focus on that,

371
00:27:42,863 --> 00:27:46,835
on the other perspective,
on the Jewish perspective.

372
00:27:46,835 --> 00:27:51,952
And, of course,
I knew a lot of Nazi documentation,

373
00:27:51,952 --> 00:27:55,949
of course, I included into my research.

374
00:27:55,949 --> 00:28:01,279
I worked, I translated a lot of Nazi
documentation from trials in Krakow,

375
00:28:01,279 --> 00:28:06,792
47 Auschwitz trail in Frankfurt in
the 60s, and I have Montreal forest.

376
00:28:06,792 --> 00:28:10,430
But just diving into this, as I said,

377
00:28:10,430 --> 00:28:16,232
DNA of a perpetrator who is
openly talking about the crimes,

378
00:28:16,232 --> 00:28:20,235
it was a very difficult experience to me.

379
00:28:20,235 --> 00:28:26,171
>> Yeah, and I think what is
interesting is that as you mentioned

380
00:28:26,171 --> 00:28:32,454
also earlier that this is a first
person perspective from Bobby,

381
00:28:32,454 --> 00:28:36,924
for example,
on what happened in Amsterdam.

382
00:28:36,924 --> 00:28:41,112
But instead of making his role smaller,

383
00:28:41,112 --> 00:28:44,562
he is both towards General Wolf,

384
00:28:44,562 --> 00:28:48,886
who is his superior in rank, obviously.

385
00:28:48,886 --> 00:28:53,451
And for example,
when he talks about the Russia,

386
00:28:53,451 --> 00:28:58,560
which took place over two days,
he brags that it was like

387
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:05,752
three tough weeks of house to house battle
in the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam.

388
00:29:05,752 --> 00:29:10,861
So he he makes his role
bigger than it actually

389
00:29:10,861 --> 00:29:15,165
was compared to, as you said before,

390
00:29:15,165 --> 00:29:20,946
in more in a courtroom or
in a trial like Nuremberg,

391
00:29:20,946 --> 00:29:26,334
where they would make
their role a lot smaller.

392
00:29:26,334 --> 00:29:30,773
>> Just just recently,
I came back to this great set of

393
00:29:30,773 --> 00:29:36,046
entrepreneurs which COVID,
1000s of perpetrators for

394
00:29:36,046 --> 00:29:41,443
his masterpiece, Shah,
he has been working for 14 years.

395
00:29:41,443 --> 00:29:46,537
On this documentary, and
that's for me a comparable

396
00:29:46,537 --> 00:29:51,302
set of documentation,
especially interviews.

397
00:29:51,302 --> 00:29:56,406
But when I came back to hear
those interviews again,

398
00:29:56,406 --> 00:30:03,955
I just Rama as well is totally out of
quality of this perpetrators narrative.

399
00:30:03,955 --> 00:30:04,898
>> Right.

400
00:30:04,898 --> 00:30:09,421
>> Because while Lanzmann was not
able to get all the information,

401
00:30:09,421 --> 00:30:12,280
they still tried to defend themselves.

402
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:17,651
They repeated all over again,
they had no clue about the atrocities,

403
00:30:17,651 --> 00:30:21,031
they were not at all
involved in the crimes.

404
00:30:21,031 --> 00:30:22,407
So this, I think,

405
00:30:22,407 --> 00:30:28,099
this is really unique material which
shows a totally different perspective.

406
00:30:28,099 --> 00:30:32,022
>> Yeah, and
also the atmosphere in the room, I mean,

407
00:30:32,022 --> 00:30:35,156
they address the others by their SS rank.

408
00:30:35,156 --> 00:30:36,599
>> That's cheerleading.

409
00:30:36,599 --> 00:30:40,021
>> Yeah, yes, absolutely,
I think, of course,

410
00:30:40,021 --> 00:30:42,780
also as we've just been I guess heard.

411
00:30:42,780 --> 00:30:47,104
We're not just learning,
through these recordings,

412
00:30:47,104 --> 00:30:51,979
about what happened before 1945,
but also about how these

413
00:30:51,979 --> 00:30:56,580
guys lived after 1945,
how they dealt with this past.

414
00:30:56,580 --> 00:31:00,772
In a way, they reconfigured
their national socialism.

415
00:31:00,772 --> 00:31:04,629
They did not break with
national socialism,

416
00:31:04,629 --> 00:31:08,901
they did not associate
from national socialism.

417
00:31:08,901 --> 00:31:14,057
And yet it's a different
kind of national socialism,

418
00:31:14,057 --> 00:31:20,907
and I think that is also really
an absolutely fascinating story to tell.

419
00:31:20,907 --> 00:31:23,998
And there is about, think 800 tapes,

420
00:31:23,998 --> 00:31:27,721
not just from South America,
in the collection.

421
00:31:27,721 --> 00:31:32,184
The South America stuff is particularly
rich, but there's so much else.

422
00:31:32,184 --> 00:31:36,864
So for instance, another one that is
really important is a recording from

423
00:31:36,864 --> 00:31:39,432
the 1970s with punish Teckenbach,

424
00:31:39,432 --> 00:31:43,100
who is the head of personnel of
the agency within the SS and.

425
00:31:43,100 --> 00:31:46,873
Charge of the implementation
of the final solution.

426
00:31:46,873 --> 00:31:50,602
And a few weeks before his
death from threat cancer,

427
00:31:50,602 --> 00:31:53,495
he spoke very openly about what he knew.

428
00:31:53,495 --> 00:31:57,118
And he shares with
Gert Heidemann what Heydrich and

429
00:31:57,118 --> 00:32:01,257
Himmler had told him about
orders that Hitler had issued.

430
00:32:01,257 --> 00:32:06,426
Of course, we need to take all
these claims, just as the one where

431
00:32:06,426 --> 00:32:12,354
Bobby is boasting with a grain of salt,
we need to look at this critically.

432
00:32:12,354 --> 00:32:16,422
But here we get,
as close as we can get, I think,

433
00:32:16,422 --> 00:32:20,593
to kind of the inner lives
of these perpetrators,

434
00:32:20,593 --> 00:32:25,757
including where there is this
potential to learn new things,

435
00:32:25,757 --> 00:32:30,748
for instance,
about the evolution of the final solution.

436
00:32:30,748 --> 00:32:36,334
>> But I find, as Bobby is really open
about the crimes he committed and

437
00:32:36,334 --> 00:32:40,956
boasts to Wolf,
they don't talk about the Holocaust.

438
00:32:40,956 --> 00:32:45,782
>> Yeah, that is a way strange in a way
this goes back to the kind of Bucha

439
00:32:45,782 --> 00:32:49,786
about the reconfiguration
of the National Socialism.

440
00:32:49,786 --> 00:32:54,724
Because you could somehow also think,
if they're amongst themselves,

441
00:32:54,724 --> 00:32:57,839
they would somehow be
proud of the Holocaust.

442
00:32:57,839 --> 00:33:02,123
Because, of course, from a 1930s and
1940s perspectives.

443
00:33:02,123 --> 00:33:07,104
It's like a very dark, rational, bounded
rationality of Hitler, these natural

444
00:33:07,104 --> 00:33:12,170
socialists, they would say, well, look,
we're doing an honorable thing here.

445
00:33:12,170 --> 00:33:14,911
These are the Jews are the originators and

446
00:33:14,911 --> 00:33:20,250
the agents of the greatest crisis Europe
and Germany has faced since antiquity.

447
00:33:20,250 --> 00:33:22,730
So we're doing something noble here.

448
00:33:22,730 --> 00:33:24,334
That is no longer there.

449
00:33:24,334 --> 00:33:28,214
There we have so
there they're celebrating the old days,

450
00:33:28,214 --> 00:33:33,298
they're celebrating Hitler,
they are celebrating National Socialism.

451
00:33:33,298 --> 00:33:38,989
But they kind of have pushed the Holocaust
out, or rather, the Holocaust becomes

452
00:33:38,989 --> 00:33:44,701
something someone else within the SS did,
in a way, it's up absolutely absurd.

453
00:33:44,701 --> 00:33:48,207
These are particularly in
the case of Karl ball,

454
00:33:48,207 --> 00:33:51,464
he can't get much higher
ranking than he is.

455
00:33:51,464 --> 00:33:55,043
He was for
a while the attitude to Himmler, and yet

456
00:33:55,043 --> 00:33:57,865
he's Holocaust nothing to do with me.

457
00:33:57,865 --> 00:34:02,559
>> Found that pure influence so by also
settled after the war in Bolivia and

458
00:34:02,559 --> 00:34:03,977
lived in [INAUDIBLE].

459
00:34:03,977 --> 00:34:07,688
I could identify and
I saw everything because,

460
00:34:07,688 --> 00:34:12,978
the witnesses are talking about
their confrontation with Barbie in

461
00:34:12,978 --> 00:34:18,226
one of the coffee shop and bakery or the
>> He was very public, yeah.

462
00:34:18,226 --> 00:34:22,893
>> Because he was very present,
I mean, in the public and yeah.

463
00:34:22,893 --> 00:34:25,582
>> Yeah, he was member of the La Paz club.

464
00:34:25,582 --> 00:34:31,057
There was a German club where he often
frequented restaurants and bars.

465
00:34:31,057 --> 00:34:37,361
He played piano I mean he was seen around
La Paz for two, at least two decades.

466
00:34:37,361 --> 00:34:41,922
>> And indeed, it is in these clubs
that they were perpetrators and

467
00:34:41,922 --> 00:34:44,287
victims were in the same clubs and

468
00:34:44,287 --> 00:34:49,373
were kind of trying to avoid each other,
but not very successfully so.

469
00:34:49,373 --> 00:34:54,166
>> Well also, I mean, I thought that was
really telling that when Heidemann and

470
00:34:54,166 --> 00:34:56,843
Wolf arrived at the airport in in La Paz,.

471
00:34:56,843 --> 00:34:59,263
And they talk about this on the tapes,

472
00:34:59,263 --> 00:35:03,056
that they are happy to see
Klaus Barbie there as their host.

473
00:35:03,056 --> 00:35:08,612
And it's, it's almost like Barbie is
is running the show at the airport.

474
00:35:08,612 --> 00:35:12,581
I mean, Wolf says,
thank God nobody checked our passport.

475
00:35:12,581 --> 00:35:17,480
And some security man came up to me and
said, well, don't you worry,

476
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:21,964
Mr. General, we'll make sure
that nobody will hear about your

477
00:35:21,964 --> 00:35:25,641
visit to Bolivia will be under the radar,
no press.

478
00:35:25,641 --> 00:35:30,465
And that tells a bit about the influence
that that Barbie had under that in

479
00:35:30,465 --> 00:35:32,297
that in the dictatorship.

480
00:35:32,297 --> 00:35:35,829
>> Yeah I mean, as you can see,
the material is just so rich.

481
00:35:35,829 --> 00:35:39,548
And in the way we're just
giving you through the prism

482
00:35:39,548 --> 00:35:43,858
of the South American trade,
it tastes of what else there is.

483
00:35:43,858 --> 00:35:49,172
What everyone, of course, not just us,
but everyone from around the world,

484
00:35:49,172 --> 00:35:52,649
can do if they come to Google
to use the collection.

485
00:35:52,649 --> 00:35:54,727
But even for South America,

486
00:35:54,727 --> 00:35:58,979
we're trying to help cook
a little bit with this program.

487
00:35:58,979 --> 00:36:04,237
I thought this method
just realized there's so

488
00:36:04,237 --> 00:36:08,969
much more to explore and
not just more but so

489
00:36:08,969 --> 00:36:14,228
many questions we could
be raising with that and

490
00:36:14,228 --> 00:36:20,160
we certainly feel very
tempted to do precisely that.

491
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:24,505
>> Yeah
>> Yeah [INAUDIBLE] Last fragment,

492
00:36:24,505 --> 00:36:26,561
your supplementary?

493
00:36:26,561 --> 00:36:33,695
>> Yeah, I'm still in the process of
editing, but these are two short clips,

494
00:36:33,695 --> 00:36:34,803
[MUSIC]

495
00:36:34,803 --> 00:36:36,894
>> Basement in Hamburg.

496
00:36:36,894 --> 00:36:38,002
[MUSIC]

497
00:36:38,002 --> 00:36:45,573
[LAUGH] Can't hide them on I think
he enjoyed big life for a time.

498
00:36:45,573 --> 00:36:47,156
[MUSIC]

499
00:36:47,156 --> 00:36:51,000
Je was a star journalist for

500
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:56,683
Stan he was one of their star reporters,

501
00:36:56,683 --> 00:37:01,039
and he could live the big life.

502
00:37:01,039 --> 00:37:05,068
>> [FOREIGN]
>> Archives [FOREIGN].

503
00:37:05,068 --> 00:37:09,961
There's a calendar in the center for
Humber, for

504
00:37:09,961 --> 00:37:15,902
some of the zova Nazi Zoe,
the collects, the output total,

505
00:37:15,902 --> 00:37:20,880
particularly Nazi artif, their vehicles
>> I think

506
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:26,255
that is one part of it that
he enjoyed the big life.

507
00:37:26,255 --> 00:37:32,709
Another part was that he thought that he
could combine that with being a journalist

508
00:37:32,709 --> 00:37:38,236
and finding out for the public some
of the biggest stories of his time.

509
00:37:38,236 --> 00:37:42,136
>> He didn't from Professor Weber
>> So I'll explain.

510
00:37:42,136 --> 00:37:43,020
>> Sleep
>> Yeah.

511
00:37:43,020 --> 00:37:53,020
>> [FOREIGN]

512
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:29,638
>> What is really striking is that these

513
00:38:29,638 --> 00:38:33,020
men are still believers.

514
00:38:33,020 --> 00:38:38,260
They out, but
they still have faith when it

515
00:38:38,260 --> 00:38:46,426
comes to first person perspective
of top Nazis and of extremists.

516
00:38:46,426 --> 00:38:50,617
We generally have got to
rely on interviews that

517
00:38:50,617 --> 00:38:54,818
were conducted after 1945 in courtrooms.

518
00:38:54,818 --> 00:38:58,329
And of course,
there people were generally,

519
00:38:58,329 --> 00:39:03,743
with very few exceptions, had a real
interest to dank play their role.

520
00:39:03,743 --> 00:39:08,579
And here we have first person
perspectives of people who where

521
00:39:08,579 --> 00:39:13,326
they really present themselves
the way they want to be seen.

522
00:39:13,326 --> 00:39:18,190
And that is extremely important in
trying to to understand extremism,

523
00:39:18,190 --> 00:39:19,491
both then and now.

524
00:39:19,491 --> 00:39:24,470
>> Just before I take the first question,
I want to again again, thank Katharina,

525
00:39:24,470 --> 00:39:26,167
to Mose and Bucha for this.

526
00:39:26,167 --> 00:39:30,843
And just to amplify what they said,
This collection is really one of the most

527
00:39:30,843 --> 00:39:34,223
incredible we've acquired
in the last many decades.

528
00:39:34,223 --> 00:39:39,163
Started me with Heideman in 2014 really
accelerated in the last two years.

529
00:39:39,163 --> 00:39:43,080
And it's a collection of collections,
like a fund of funds, if you.

530
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:43,843
Investment.

531
00:39:43,843 --> 00:39:48,030
It's, as they said, Thomas Wolfe,
Hitler's personal photographer,

532
00:39:48,030 --> 00:39:50,542
Heinrich Hoffman, last plate negatives.

533
00:39:50,542 --> 00:39:52,979
It's 7,000 binders of material.

534
00:39:52,979 --> 00:39:56,859
Some of it direct you throw out,
but we keep, it's just articles.

535
00:39:56,859 --> 00:39:58,990
It's really incredibly rich and

536
00:39:58,990 --> 00:40:03,277
important thing from the archives
perspective, from scholarships.

537
00:40:03,277 --> 00:40:07,058
Perspective is that it will provide
research material for many, many,

538
00:40:07,058 --> 00:40:11,636
many scholars for many decades, and that's
the important thing, to be preserved for

539
00:40:11,636 --> 00:40:14,622
history and not sold to some collector and
hidden away.

540
00:40:14,622 --> 00:40:17,405
So it's just, thank you so
much for your work on this.

541
00:40:17,405 --> 00:40:20,325
>> Now, any questions,
happy to entertain them right here.

542
00:40:20,325 --> 00:40:23,212
First, wait for
the microphones if you could, and then.

543
00:40:23,212 --> 00:40:26,426
Lauren will tell me when we
have some online as well.

544
00:40:26,426 --> 00:40:29,332
>> Hi, thank you so much for
this interesting talk.

545
00:40:29,332 --> 00:40:31,624
I just had a quick question about you,

546
00:40:31,624 --> 00:40:36,058
talk about heideman's reputation as
kind of a friend to the Nazis, and

547
00:40:36,058 --> 00:40:39,883
how he didn't discuss his work
with MOS during his lifetime.

548
00:40:39,883 --> 00:40:43,199
It seems like that would
be potentially beneficial.

549
00:40:43,199 --> 00:40:47,996
Official in his endeavors when
trying to gather these collections.

550
00:40:47,996 --> 00:40:52,619
These materials from extremists
that he had to garner trust from.

551
00:40:52,619 --> 00:40:57,327
I'm just wondering if you have
any insight about that reputation

552
00:40:57,327 --> 00:41:01,523
building he had to pursue to
gain access to these materials?

553
00:41:01,523 --> 00:41:03,092
>> Yes, that is precisely.

554
00:41:03,092 --> 00:41:07,386
What he said, I mean,
I've had actually quite over the years,

555
00:41:07,386 --> 00:41:09,086
he often said this to me.

556
00:41:09,086 --> 00:41:14,275
I mean, he was extremely kind of hurt
by this reputation and in many ways,

557
00:41:14,275 --> 00:41:19,910
in different ways, because he thought
he couldn't talk about Assad and so on.

558
00:41:19,910 --> 00:41:22,785
He was trying to repair his reputation.

559
00:41:22,785 --> 00:41:27,597
Occasion not maybe in the most clever
of ways, the way he was doing it.

560
00:41:27,597 --> 00:41:31,445
But the he kept on saying is
that why do people say this?

561
00:41:31,445 --> 00:41:34,245
Don't they realize I was a journalist?

562
00:41:34,245 --> 00:41:37,132
I had to actually go along with the story.

563
00:41:37,132 --> 00:41:42,675
So if now people just listen into some
conversation I have with journalists,

564
00:41:42,675 --> 00:41:46,327
X they can't just look at
one sentence I said that.

565
00:41:46,327 --> 00:41:48,196
I mean, I was there in a role.

566
00:41:48,196 --> 00:41:50,689
They need to look at my entire life.

567
00:41:50,689 --> 00:41:56,833
Or they would say, well, look, don't they
realize that I was already in the 1950s I

568
00:41:56,833 --> 00:42:02,652
was already trying to find judges who have
actually never been, who had never to.

569
00:42:02,652 --> 00:42:03,864
To our Nazi judges.

570
00:42:03,864 --> 00:42:06,609
He had never had to answer for
their deeds.

571
00:42:06,609 --> 00:42:10,082
So he was extremely hurt and
didn't understand why.

572
00:42:10,082 --> 00:42:13,071
People didn't realize
that as a journalist.

573
00:42:13,071 --> 00:42:18,316
He had to do this in order to build up
that kind of trust.>>I thank you all for

574
00:42:18,316 --> 00:42:20,499
really fascinating, discussion.

575
00:42:20,499 --> 00:42:22,796
I'm wondering if any or all of you.

576
00:42:22,796 --> 00:42:26,916
Could comment on the motivation
first of heiderman.

577
00:42:26,916 --> 00:42:30,935
Was it just cuz he was a journalist and
wanted, I mean,

578
00:42:30,935 --> 00:42:37,066
specifically in going to South America and
interviewing these Nazi figures?

579
00:42:37,066 --> 00:42:41,372
Was it because it was a big story and
he was a journalist?

580
00:42:41,372 --> 00:42:42,838
Was he deeply anti.

581
00:42:42,838 --> 00:42:45,371
The anti-Fascist, anti-Nazi.

582
00:42:45,371 --> 00:42:48,093
Was it the idea of Mossad to do this?

583
00:42:48,093 --> 00:42:50,525
So what he thought he was doing?

584
00:42:50,525 --> 00:42:55,294
And then equally curious is,
what did wolf think was going on?

585
00:42:55,294 --> 00:42:59,767
How was it that he thought it
was a good idea to bring this

586
00:42:59,767 --> 00:43:02,817
man to interview these people for pub-?

587
00:43:02,817 --> 00:43:03,935
Posterity.

588
00:43:03,935 --> 00:43:06,667
>> So I think it's so complex.

589
00:43:06,667 --> 00:43:12,380
I think this Mose story plays
a very big role in this trip,

590
00:43:12,380 --> 00:43:18,093
because when I just got this virus,
they handed over to me.

591
00:43:18,093 --> 00:43:22,709
So there was the whole
documentation Mose to.

592
00:43:22,709 --> 00:43:28,317
Was looking for Mangola and for
Burman probably at that time.

593
00:43:28,317 --> 00:43:32,691
So there was a full
evidence of informations on

594
00:43:32,691 --> 00:43:36,842
Joseph Mangola fingerprints,
photos, etc, etc.

595
00:43:36,842 --> 00:43:43,032
But that there was also, as far as I
remember, Thomas, you can probably.

596
00:43:43,032 --> 00:43:48,552
Worried a little bit more on that,
there was an idea to to create

597
00:43:48,552 --> 00:43:53,967
a series of articles, and
probably also a book on this stories,

598
00:43:53,967 --> 00:43:58,188
or former Nazis who played
to South America and

599
00:43:58,188 --> 00:44:02,976
and Carl wolf played a crucial
role in that, because he.

600
00:44:02,976 --> 00:44:08,773
Opened the doors for Adam and in South
America, so he knew all the people there.

601
00:44:08,773 --> 00:44:11,533
And he was yeah he gave a credit, right?

602
00:44:11,533 --> 00:44:16,868
>> So in a way, I find the I find it most
difficult to answer your question is

603
00:44:16,868 --> 00:44:22,947
with regards to car both because Cal Wolf,
even though he didn't know about Miss.

604
00:44:22,947 --> 00:44:26,411
He does not appear to
have known about Mossad.

605
00:44:26,411 --> 00:44:29,782
He was double crossing
his former comrades.

606
00:44:29,782 --> 00:44:34,368
And what I don't understand is,
why would Kral Wolff do this?

607
00:44:34,368 --> 00:44:38,953
Why would he think it's okay
to kind of deceive people like

608
00:44:38,953 --> 00:44:40,639
glass Barbie and so on?

609
00:44:40,639 --> 00:44:42,818
This would totally go again.

610
00:44:42,818 --> 00:44:47,416
Gangs kind of as a code of honor
would have meant before instance,

611
00:44:47,416 --> 00:44:49,150
that why would he do that?

612
00:44:49,150 --> 00:44:51,058
And I'm not entirely sure.

613
00:44:51,058 --> 00:44:55,915
Maybe it's something to do with
the fact that these were people who

614
00:44:55,915 --> 00:45:00,514
had been significant, who had been
influential, and now suddenly,

615
00:45:00,514 --> 00:45:02,712
after the war, they're either.

616
00:45:02,712 --> 00:45:07,838
Criminals or no one pays attention
to him so this might have been

617
00:45:07,838 --> 00:45:13,156
again to to do something it might
have to do to some kind of quest for

618
00:45:13,156 --> 00:45:18,765
significance as with regards to
heidemann i think maybe the best

619
00:45:18,765 --> 00:45:24,787
way to answer your question is actually
not to look Look at Heideman year,

620
00:45:24,787 --> 00:45:29,836
several year long quest for
these Nazis, but to look at his

621
00:45:29,836 --> 00:45:34,886
previous quest for
someone who's mostly forgotten now,

622
00:45:34,886 --> 00:45:39,076
who was a very famous
adventure writer early on,

623
00:45:39,076 --> 00:45:42,851
B travin Who,
who was this adventure writer.

624
00:45:42,851 --> 00:45:46,769
Whose books were adapted for film, for TV.

625
00:45:46,769 --> 00:45:51,517
But no one knew who is Peter and
where does he live?

626
00:45:51,517 --> 00:45:55,435
They knew he's somewhere in Mexico and

627
00:45:55,435 --> 00:45:59,353
there were all these rumors who this was.

628
00:45:59,353 --> 00:46:04,444
And at some point in the 1960s
Heidemann is asked to

629
00:46:04,444 --> 00:46:09,499
follow up this new lead that this
might have been this left wing

630
00:46:09,499 --> 00:46:14,748
revolutionary from Munich who
had flat Munich in 1919 after

631
00:46:14,748 --> 00:46:19,606
having been condemned to death,
and he then also can't let go.

632
00:46:19,606 --> 00:46:22,744
He basically spends the next six, seven.

633
00:46:22,744 --> 00:46:27,494
Seven, eight years, long after his
magazines had let go, pursuing the story,

634
00:46:27,494 --> 00:46:32,168
writing a book abat then shifted to
becoming this quest for these Nazis.

635
00:46:32,168 --> 00:46:33,275
out this and so on.

636
00:46:33,275 --> 00:46:38,501
So I think this was a whatever six, seven
year quest for a left wing revolutionary.

637
00:46:38,501 --> 00:46:42,664
And that then shifted to becoming
this quest for these Nazis So

638
00:46:42,664 --> 00:46:46,642
I think if we want to understand
these obsessive quests,

639
00:46:46,642 --> 00:46:51,312
we have to understand his personality and
that he really goes for

640
00:46:51,312 --> 00:46:55,807
when he goes for a story and
he thinks he can do it, he will not stop.

641
00:46:55,807 --> 00:46:57,710
>> Good question online, yeah.

642
00:46:57,710 --> 00:47:02,640
>> We have a question online from Stanley,
can the panelists tell us More

643
00:47:02,640 --> 00:47:07,928
about how Heidemann was able to develop
friendships with both Barbie and Wolf.

644
00:47:07,928 --> 00:47:10,367
Why would they agree to talk with him?

645
00:47:10,367 --> 00:47:14,190
The specifics of this meeting
would be of great interest.

646
00:47:14,190 --> 00:47:18,908
How did he present himself so
as to integrate himself with these Nazis?

647
00:47:18,908 --> 00:47:22,356
>> Well, I think interestingly,
part of his collection.

648
00:47:22,356 --> 00:47:27,368
Which is not here,
was the motor yacht Karen sway,

649
00:47:27,368 --> 00:47:33,280
which used to be Herman Goering yacht,
and he bought that,

650
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:39,190
and it was in the Hamburg harbor,
and he lived on that ship,

651
00:47:39,190 --> 00:47:43,570
and that's why he met so
he invited a lot of.

652
00:47:43,570 --> 00:47:48,627
Former SSS and
officers general monker carl wolf to

653
00:47:48,627 --> 00:47:54,044
come to the ship drink beer and
talk about the old days.

654
00:47:54,044 --> 00:48:00,221
And that being the basis also for
a book that he wanted to write So

655
00:48:00,221 --> 00:48:07,578
that's where the foundation really
lies for his relationship with Wolf.

656
00:48:07,578 --> 00:48:11,725
Also the idea for the South America trip,

657
00:48:11,725 --> 00:48:16,819
as I understood it,
was born on the the car in Sway,

658
00:48:16,819 --> 00:48:21,649
yeah, although the
>> So he initially gets to

659
00:48:21,649 --> 00:48:26,809
know Cal vol when he
is researching a story

660
00:48:26,809 --> 00:48:32,124
about Mussolini and Mussolini's death.

661
00:48:32,124 --> 00:48:36,642
And one of Mussolini's death also,

662
00:48:36,642 --> 00:48:43,647
how Mussolini was freed by
this SS unit In the Mountains.

663
00:48:43,647 --> 00:48:48,450
So in that context,
he first has contact with Karl Wolff,

664
00:48:48,450 --> 00:48:53,448
Gerhard Heidemann was very talented
to build up then a kind of

665
00:48:53,448 --> 00:48:56,599
trusting relationship with anyone.

666
00:48:56,599 --> 00:49:01,401
But I think it's interesting
to look at the cover story for

667
00:49:01,401 --> 00:49:05,226
some South America,
because that, in a way,

668
00:49:05,226 --> 00:49:09,655
is a very different one from
the one of the Carvin Sly.

669
00:49:09,655 --> 00:49:14,582
And this might go to Stanley's question
in South America the cover story

670
00:49:14,582 --> 00:49:18,641
was that he was just helping
Karl Wolf to write his memoirs.

671
00:49:18,641 --> 00:49:23,781
And so Karl Wolff would basically say,
Look, I'm traveling to South America.

672
00:49:23,781 --> 00:49:27,900
And we're doing this and that,
but I'm writing my memoirs and

673
00:49:27,900 --> 00:49:32,266
here is Gerd Heidemann, and
he's helping me, he's one of ours.

674
00:49:32,266 --> 00:49:36,634
And that is why they trusted him and
why they would speak openly.

675
00:49:36,634 --> 00:49:41,039
The story on the carbon spike,
which is just as important, and

676
00:49:41,039 --> 00:49:44,365
again, this is where things are born and
so on,

677
00:49:44,365 --> 00:49:47,873
is a different one in
there's no disguise there.

678
00:49:47,873 --> 00:49:52,516
Yet, Heilman is saying, look,
I'm working on the book where I

679
00:49:52,516 --> 00:49:56,902
bring together former perpetrators and
former victims, or

680
00:49:56,902 --> 00:50:02,417
the governor of Spandau Prison,
the American governor of Spandau Prison.

681
00:50:02,417 --> 00:50:06,738
He all brings them to prison,
he opens them together, he says, look,

682
00:50:06,738 --> 00:50:08,334
I'm recording this now.

683
00:50:08,334 --> 00:50:13,112
And he asked them to sign
release forms afterwards.

684
00:50:14,933 --> 00:50:17,988
>> So I can only imagine that these guys,

685
00:50:17,988 --> 00:50:23,057
by virtue of being recorded,
they know this is for posterity.

686
00:50:23,057 --> 00:50:29,380
But I wonder if on the tapes, they ever
talk about what was said at Nuremberg,

687
00:50:29,380 --> 00:50:33,293
which was also on the record for
all posterity.

688
00:50:33,293 --> 00:50:36,221
I mean, do they ever address the trials?

689
00:50:36,221 --> 00:50:41,019
>> I do not remember such a fragment
in those states I think have to

690
00:50:41,019 --> 00:50:43,989
bear in mind at that time in the seven.

691
00:50:43,989 --> 00:50:45,813
We had no internet, no access.

692
00:50:45,813 --> 00:50:50,719
I mean, they didn't even know that,
I mean, the perpetrators of America that

693
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:55,644
Gerd Heidemann is very well-known
journalist for the Star magazine, right?

694
00:50:55,644 --> 00:50:59,766
So I think that's the question
of a transmission of knowledge.

695
00:50:59,766 --> 00:51:03,680
I think at that time,
especially in South America, they did it.

696
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:08,167
Yeah, it was very hard to get
those informations right from

697
00:51:08,167 --> 00:51:10,331
the maybe from newspapers.

698
00:51:10,331 --> 00:51:16,403
But I do not remember that they engaged
with this topic and talked about it fails,

699
00:51:16,403 --> 00:51:21,135
specifically in Nuremberg, or
probably later in Auschwitz,

700
00:51:21,135 --> 00:51:25,172
where Streckenbach was also interrogated,
right?

701
00:51:25,172 --> 00:51:29,294
>> Yeah, I mean, Streichtenbach
gave testimony at the outskirts and

702
00:51:29,294 --> 00:51:31,041
of course he had been tried.

703
00:51:31,041 --> 00:51:33,631
Of course, also Karl Wolff, of course,

704
00:51:33,631 --> 00:51:37,562
he had already spent four years
in prison and he had been tried.

705
00:51:37,562 --> 00:51:42,696
And if I remember correctly here, but this
is not now, this is not South America.

706
00:51:42,696 --> 00:51:46,281
There's a lot of other
material about Calvolve.

707
00:51:46,281 --> 00:51:52,053
I mean, in a way, the Cal vole collection
is within the probably the biggest one,

708
00:51:52,053 --> 00:51:55,829
because there also is memoirs,
letters, and so on.

709
00:51:55,829 --> 00:52:01,002
So would there i think there
are conversations also about justice or

710
00:52:01,002 --> 00:52:03,830
injustice from their perspective.

711
00:52:03,830 --> 00:52:10,839
About having to answer for those kind of
things but in a way it's never so central.

712
00:52:10,839 --> 00:52:15,840
>> The author was a journalist and
he, when I think of Germany,

713
00:52:15,840 --> 00:52:19,371
I think of a magazine called Dare Spiegel,

714
00:52:19,371 --> 00:52:25,074
which is a fairly conservative,
like our version of Time Magazine.

715
00:52:25,074 --> 00:52:31,158
But was this author working for
a journal, a magazine called Stern?

716
00:52:31,158 --> 00:52:35,778
Which is it more sensationalist
than Der Spiegel?

717
00:52:35,778 --> 00:52:40,859
Would he appeal to a different
audience that's looking for

718
00:52:40,859 --> 00:52:44,424
a a story kind of like Woodwin Bernstein.

719
00:52:44,424 --> 00:52:49,349
Rather than just straight reporting,
in other words,

720
00:52:49,349 --> 00:52:53,855
was his dimension to
increase his his readership,

721
00:52:53,855 --> 00:52:57,635
his clientele, his audience,
>> Speaker and

722
00:52:57,635 --> 00:53:02,309
Stern magazines both were and
are still weekly magazines.

723
00:53:02,309 --> 00:53:06,171
But of course,
there was a lot of competition.

724
00:53:06,171 --> 00:53:11,405
And I totally agree that Stern
was more focused on politics and

725
00:53:11,405 --> 00:53:17,157
history, but more in a, yeah,
sensational [LAUGH] manner, yeah.

726
00:53:17,157 --> 00:53:19,233
>> Although, yeah, go ahead.

727
00:53:19,233 --> 00:53:20,497
>> Yeah, go ahead.

728
00:53:20,497 --> 00:53:25,983
>> I can't really think of an American
equivalent of down because,

729
00:53:25,983 --> 00:53:30,469
in a way, it's not like Newsweek or
time, because,

730
00:53:30,469 --> 00:53:33,980
in a way there is lots of glossy pictures.

731
00:53:33,980 --> 00:53:39,355
There might be also celebrity articles
in there, but then in between,

732
00:53:39,355 --> 00:53:44,566
you have very serious articles,
maybe with lots of images and so on.

733
00:53:44,566 --> 00:53:50,062
But they have a lot of scoops,
they break a lot of political scandals,

734
00:53:50,062 --> 00:53:52,870
so it's very serious journalism.

735
00:53:52,870 --> 00:53:58,772
This is, in a way, also why the Hitler
diary scandal so much was so damaging.

736
00:53:58,772 --> 00:54:04,520
Because, in a way, they had for
about 40 years at that time,

737
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:10,160
to built up this reputation to be
kind of a serious magazine for

738
00:54:10,160 --> 00:54:16,795
the extremely wide audience that
both serious and intelligent people.

739
00:54:16,795 --> 00:54:23,660
But also very, well also still serious but
ordinary people would read.

740
00:54:23,660 --> 00:54:27,611
And that, in a way, was kind of
destroyed by the Ithaca virus camel.

741
00:54:27,611 --> 00:54:31,039
>> So definitely the speaker was
not a conservative newspaper.

742
00:54:31,039 --> 00:54:33,497
I mean,
at least that's not considered to be.

743
00:54:33,497 --> 00:54:37,117
I'm from Germany originally I
used to preach people every week.

744
00:54:37,117 --> 00:54:41,596
And the Hitler Diaries came out about
two years after I finished my school and

745
00:54:41,596 --> 00:54:45,376
started studying, which was really
what Heidemann is known for

746
00:54:45,376 --> 00:54:47,632
in Germany is the public is just that.

747
00:54:47,632 --> 00:54:51,664
I think all the stuff that you
really showed you, which is great,

748
00:54:51,664 --> 00:54:56,220
fantastic, is really something
that's absolutely worth preserving.

749
00:54:56,220 --> 00:54:58,190
But here's my question, right?

750
00:54:58,190 --> 00:55:02,677
So he was heavily criticized, so
two names are very much known, Cuyaho and

751
00:55:02,677 --> 00:55:03,971
Heidemann, right?

752
00:55:03,971 --> 00:55:08,375
Because Cuyaho was a forger who
did the Hitler Diaries, and for

753
00:55:08,375 --> 00:55:11,051
years he was known and Heman himself.

754
00:55:11,051 --> 00:55:16,135
He was criticized because he didn't
really check on the diaries.

755
00:55:16,135 --> 00:55:20,764
Right, he got and then he basically,
more or less published them.

756
00:55:20,764 --> 00:55:23,122
He never had a second check on it.

757
00:55:23,122 --> 00:55:27,138
And he never did anything big afterwards.

758
00:55:27,138 --> 00:55:28,665
Why do you trust him?

759
00:55:28,665 --> 00:55:33,895
I mean, is the sources that you have,
the documentation that you have,

760
00:55:33,895 --> 00:55:37,259
is this trustworthy information,
all of it?

761
00:55:37,259 --> 00:55:41,758
Or has the Hitler diary also
an aspect of maybe he's just

762
00:55:41,758 --> 00:55:44,688
a little careless on some Some things.

763
00:55:44,688 --> 00:55:47,871
>> When only one remark on what you said,

764
00:55:47,871 --> 00:55:52,749
it's not entirely true that
those spakes were not crude.

765
00:55:52,749 --> 00:55:57,217
They were sent to, I think,
one expert in Switzerland,

766
00:55:57,217 --> 00:56:02,711
one another in Great Britain, and
the third inspection, or review,

767
00:56:02,711 --> 00:56:09,155
was still going on at the Bundesarchiv,
especially, they were working on that.

768
00:56:09,155 --> 00:56:13,077
But this turn, the publishers,
and also Heidemann,

769
00:56:13,077 --> 00:56:16,325
probably they pushed
to publish it already.

770
00:56:16,325 --> 00:56:22,767
So they've already had these two reviews
which were positive, that those are real.

771
00:56:22,767 --> 00:56:27,860
Diaries, and this third review
was still work in progress.

772
00:56:27,860 --> 00:56:34,252
And so that was the disaster for
this scandal, because they didn't wait.

773
00:56:34,252 --> 00:56:37,856
So that's the remark on what you said, so

774
00:56:37,856 --> 00:56:43,527
there were attempts to prove
the authenticity of this material.

775
00:56:43,527 --> 00:56:45,230
>> He had actually-
>> No, no.

776
00:56:45,230 --> 00:56:49,094
>> Okay,
Heidemann had actually been diligent for

777
00:56:49,094 --> 00:56:51,647
several years on these issues.

778
00:56:51,647 --> 00:56:57,351
He had actually often when he bought
something, he went particularly

779
00:56:57,351 --> 00:57:02,777
to this expert in Switzerland and
had things tested and verified.

780
00:57:02,777 --> 00:57:06,680
And he was also, when we start,
first started talking to him,

781
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:10,968
he was very open about things that
he we might want to be careful with.

782
00:57:10,968 --> 00:57:13,403
I mean, he said, look, there are one or

783
00:57:13,403 --> 00:57:17,504
two things where I'm still not sure
be careful with that material.

784
00:57:17,504 --> 00:57:19,395
He has been very transparent.

785
00:57:19,395 --> 00:57:25,099
Can we be absolutely sure that absolutely
nothing this is of a question or origin?

786
00:57:25,099 --> 00:57:29,295
No, but the same would be true if
you go to any archive in the world.

787
00:57:29,295 --> 00:57:32,229
I mean,
if you go to the US National Archives,

788
00:57:32,229 --> 00:57:36,160
you might also find material
that maybe shouldn't be there.

789
00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:37,494
So I think, in a way,

790
00:57:37,494 --> 00:57:41,810
we have to kind of treat the collection
that sense like any other did.

791
00:57:41,810 --> 00:57:44,306
And I would also say here is,

792
00:57:44,306 --> 00:57:49,298
I think at some point during
the Hitler diaries scandal,

793
00:57:49,298 --> 00:57:53,983
he kind of wanted to believe
that this was not fought.

794
00:57:53,983 --> 00:57:59,960
However, he was still telling people,
let's wait for the last test.

795
00:57:59,960 --> 00:58:05,053
So in a way, it was at that point his
editors who said, no, let's go for it,

796
00:58:05,053 --> 00:58:10,005
and they, afterwards, threw him under
the bus and got this reputation.

797
00:58:10,005 --> 00:58:14,303
I don't think that this reputation,
that he was this careless guy

798
00:58:14,303 --> 00:58:18,448
who didn't want to anything to be checked,
is an accurate one,

799
00:58:18,448 --> 00:58:23,168
even though you're right, in Germany,
that's a public perception.

800
00:58:23,168 --> 00:58:25,923
>> Thanks to make sure about Katarina.

801
00:58:25,923 --> 00:58:30,455
>> And now let me to introduce
you Professor Norman Naimark.

802
00:58:30,455 --> 00:58:35,373
I know, I'm sure everybody knows him,
but I just do my formality.

803
00:58:35,373 --> 00:58:39,978
And professor Norman Naimark
is a distinguished visiting

804
00:58:39,978 --> 00:58:42,800
fellow at the Hoover Institution.

805
00:58:42,800 --> 00:58:46,603
He's also To the robbery and
Florence McDonald,

806
00:58:46,603 --> 00:58:50,587
professor Emeritus of
Eastern European Studies and

807
00:58:50,587 --> 00:58:55,218
the senior fellow of
Stanford Freeman's Foley Institute.

808
00:58:55,218 --> 00:59:01,263
Professor Naimark is an expert in modern
Eastern European and Russian history.

809
00:59:01,263 --> 00:59:05,561
He's the author of a critic
Collie acclaimed volumes,

810
00:59:05,561 --> 00:59:10,041
The Russians in Germany,
The History of the Soviet Zone of

811
00:59:10,041 --> 00:59:14,623
Occupation 1945-1949, Stalin's genocides.

812
00:59:14,623 --> 00:59:18,477
And in his recent book
Genocide A World History,

813
00:59:18,477 --> 00:59:23,646
professor Naimark examines the main
episodes in the history of Of

814
00:59:23,646 --> 00:59:28,730
genocide from the beginning of
human history into the present.

815
00:59:28,730 --> 00:59:33,868
And we're really delighted to
have you here, Norman, so please,

816
00:59:33,868 --> 00:59:38,411
the floor is yours
>> Thank you very much, Katharina, for

817
00:59:38,411 --> 00:59:43,782
that nice introduction, and
also to allow me to speak a few words

818
00:59:43,782 --> 00:59:49,171
here at the end of this session,
which has been just wonderful.

819
00:59:49,171 --> 00:59:52,674
Thank you all for your contributions.

820
00:59:52,674 --> 00:59:56,403
This is an incredibly important moment.

821
00:59:56,403 --> 01:00:00,807
I mean,
the moment was a few days ago I think when

822
01:00:00,807 --> 01:00:04,454
the archive was actually open for use.

823
01:00:04,454 --> 01:00:09,364
These are extremely important papers for

824
01:00:09,364 --> 01:00:14,273
the history of Nazi Germany, of Hitler,

825
01:00:14,273 --> 01:00:19,041
of the Holocaust, of post war Germany,

826
01:00:19,041 --> 01:00:23,405
indeed, even of the post world war.

827
01:00:23,405 --> 01:00:28,101
So I'm very grateful on behalf
of world scholarship to

828
01:00:28,101 --> 01:00:32,897
note this moment, and
I hope you will know that as well,

829
01:00:32,897 --> 01:00:38,020
a collection like this is sort
of a once in a lifetime thing.

830
01:00:38,020 --> 01:00:41,678
As Eric already noted,
it's a huge thing for

831
01:00:41,678 --> 01:00:46,891
the Hoover Archive,
which already has many such collections.

832
01:00:46,891 --> 01:00:49,942
By the way, it's also important for

833
01:00:49,942 --> 01:00:54,962
our students who are increasingly
able to use the archive and

834
01:00:54,962 --> 01:00:59,293
are accustomed to being in the archive,
not just for

835
01:00:59,293 --> 01:01:03,449
the graduate students,
new PhD dissertations.

836
01:01:03,449 --> 01:01:08,695
But also for undergraduates who can
make their way through the German and

837
01:01:08,695 --> 01:01:11,023
they're more and more of them.

838
01:01:11,023 --> 01:01:16,041
I want to thank the principals involved
in this and that is Eric Waken.

839
01:01:16,041 --> 01:01:19,822
The director of the library and
archives Katharina,

840
01:01:19,822 --> 01:01:24,705
who you've already met,
the curator of the European collections.

841
01:01:24,705 --> 01:01:29,878
And Thomas Weber,
who spent a lot of time looking at and

842
01:01:29,878 --> 01:01:36,404
testing these archives, just as he
has said, and as you have heard,

843
01:01:36,404 --> 01:01:41,708
they have done something
really quite marvelous here.

844
01:01:41,708 --> 01:01:46,111
First of all,
they've brought the collection to Hoover.

845
01:01:46,111 --> 01:01:47,622
This is not easy, and

846
01:01:47,622 --> 01:01:53,351
Katharina already gave you a sense of how
difficult these kinds of things can be.

847
01:01:53,351 --> 01:01:57,949
I've been involved on the periphery
of the acquisition of many

848
01:01:57,949 --> 01:02:02,649
collections over my last 50
years associated with Stanford.

849
01:02:02,649 --> 01:02:07,552
And it's really hard work and
difficult work and complex work,

850
01:02:07,552 --> 01:02:10,109
and it doesn't always succeed.

851
01:02:10,109 --> 01:02:14,220
So we're very grateful to them for
this succeeding.

852
01:02:14,220 --> 01:02:19,484
And the second thing to say is
this collection could have easily,

853
01:02:19,484 --> 01:02:26,101
easily been dispersed or bought by a price
private collector and hidden forever.

854
01:02:26,101 --> 01:02:31,703
So it's open, right it's open
now to scholars, to researchers,

855
01:02:31,703 --> 01:02:37,499
to our students, and for a very long
time to come, as Eric indicated,

856
01:02:37,499 --> 01:02:42,337
so let's give them a round of applause for
their efforts.

857
01:02:42,337 --> 01:02:43,215
>> [APPLAUSE].

858
01:02:43,215 --> 01:02:49,216
>> I wanna reiterate how important this
collection is to the study of Nazism and

859
01:02:49,216 --> 01:02:51,674
the Holocaust in particular.

860
01:02:51,674 --> 01:02:57,415
I mean, you may well be aware,
for the first decades after 1945,

861
01:02:57,415 --> 01:03:02,685
people paid very little attention
to the Holocaust in general.

862
01:03:02,685 --> 01:03:06,590
There weren't any
scholarly works until 1961,

863
01:03:06,590 --> 01:03:12,488
when Raul Hilberg wrote his famous book
on the destruction of the European Jews,

864
01:03:12,488 --> 01:03:16,753
and even then he had a lot of
trouble publishing that book.

865
01:03:16,753 --> 01:03:23,842
He published that book, by the way,
using almost strictly Nazi documents.

866
01:03:23,842 --> 01:03:29,656
Not the Kinds of first hand
materials that are available,

867
01:03:29,656 --> 01:03:35,826
for example, in this collection,
was a very slow process for

868
01:03:35,826 --> 01:03:43,973
historians to begin to accept that you
could take testimonies from ex Nazis.

869
01:03:43,973 --> 01:03:49,189
Or still, or Jews as real historical

870
01:03:49,189 --> 01:03:54,249
documentation for what happened.

871
01:03:54,249 --> 01:03:59,126
It took a long time, really, until then,
the early 1990s in some ways, for

872
01:03:59,126 --> 01:04:03,597
historians to take these so called
ego documents and say, wait a minute.

873
01:04:03,597 --> 01:04:10,601
They really teach us something about
the past that official documents don't.

874
01:04:10,601 --> 01:04:17,038
You will recall maybe that the Holocaust
Museum didn't open until 1993,

875
01:04:17,038 --> 01:04:21,916
and that Steven Spielberg's
collection of testimonies by

876
01:04:21,916 --> 01:04:26,324
Holocaust survivors
didn't start until 1994.

877
01:04:26,324 --> 01:04:28,754
So this is all fairly recent, so

878
01:04:28,754 --> 01:04:34,694
it's wonderful to have these ego documents
here, and they will become very,

879
01:04:34,694 --> 01:04:40,199
very important then to the further
development of the historiography.

880
01:04:40,199 --> 01:04:45,056
Now, some of you know that I've been
involved in the kind of subfield

881
01:04:45,056 --> 01:04:48,491
of genocide studies,
charming field, right,

882
01:04:48,491 --> 01:04:52,116
of genocide studies over
the past 30 years or so.

883
01:04:52,116 --> 01:04:53,561
And a subfield of that,

884
01:04:53,561 --> 01:04:58,415
that's developed fairly recently is
something called perpetrator studies.

885
01:04:58,415 --> 01:05:01,209
There's even a journal
of perpetrator studies,

886
01:05:01,209 --> 01:05:03,542
if you wanna publish your article there.

887
01:05:03,542 --> 01:05:07,877
[SOUND] Anyway to learn
about perpetrators,

888
01:05:07,877 --> 01:05:13,147
to discover their motivation,
to figure out who they

889
01:05:13,147 --> 01:05:18,182
are is not just important
to understanding Nazis is

890
01:05:18,182 --> 01:05:23,819
important to understanding
perpetrators everywhere.

891
01:05:23,819 --> 01:05:31,230
Perpetrators who kill and there
are some here in these documentations.

892
01:05:31,230 --> 01:05:36,168
Perpetrators who send
people off to the camps and

893
01:05:36,168 --> 01:05:41,708
trains and there are some
here in these collections and

894
01:05:41,708 --> 01:05:47,982
just collaborators,
people who went along with Nazi plans.

895
01:05:47,982 --> 01:05:52,624
And these kinds of perpetrators
are involved in all kinds of genocides.

896
01:05:52,624 --> 01:05:57,452
So psychologists,
psychiatrists, criminologists,

897
01:05:57,452 --> 01:06:01,774
sociologists, and
others who use this material,

898
01:06:01,774 --> 01:06:07,014
as well as historians who
are trying to reconstruct the past.

899
01:06:07,014 --> 01:06:10,666
Here we have all of
this kinds of material.

900
01:06:10,666 --> 01:06:13,654
Now it's true and
people have brought it up.

901
01:06:13,654 --> 01:06:15,871
Memories will deceive.

902
01:06:15,871 --> 01:06:20,290
We know that these guys
who are interviewed

903
01:06:20,290 --> 01:06:24,474
in the 70s are gonna distort the past.

904
01:06:24,474 --> 01:06:29,379
But at the same time and Thomas has
said it well, you check it against

905
01:06:29,379 --> 01:06:34,906
original documents, you double check
with other kinds of documentation.

906
01:06:34,906 --> 01:06:39,544
And when you do that,
you get extraordinary insights

907
01:06:39,544 --> 01:06:44,288
into their motivations,
into their psychology, and

908
01:06:44,288 --> 01:06:48,738
what it means to undertake
these kinds of actions.

909
01:06:48,738 --> 01:06:55,805
Memory deceives, we know this from our
own experience with our own lives.

910
01:06:55,805 --> 01:06:59,170
But checked again against reality in

911
01:06:59,170 --> 01:07:03,952
other kinds of documentations,
we can learn a lot.

912
01:07:03,952 --> 01:07:09,199
Now, there's a far more to be said about
this collection, or better collections.

913
01:07:09,199 --> 01:07:12,881
It's many collections, really in one.

914
01:07:12,881 --> 01:07:15,630
You've seen some of the materials.

915
01:07:15,630 --> 01:07:20,030
Let me just mention quickly,
those on post-war Germany,

916
01:07:20,030 --> 01:07:23,207
which for me, were totally fascinating.

917
01:07:23,207 --> 01:07:29,245
This has to do, by the way, with American
intelligence in Germany after the war.

918
01:07:29,245 --> 01:07:33,887
The CIC, which is basically
army counterintelligence

919
01:07:33,887 --> 01:07:38,826
working together with circles of Nazis,
including many of

920
01:07:38,826 --> 01:07:44,077
the people we're talking about today for
their own purposes.

921
01:07:44,077 --> 01:07:47,317
This is long before Mossad,
I think, is involved.

922
01:07:47,317 --> 01:07:52,044
American intelligence is working
with these people and helping them,

923
01:07:52,044 --> 01:07:57,648
in many cases, get out of Europe to South
America through these so called ratlines.

924
01:07:57,648 --> 01:08:01,827
And the ratlines come
also via the Vatican.

925
01:08:01,827 --> 01:08:05,713
So we've got Washington in the Nevada,

926
01:08:05,713 --> 01:08:10,636
the holy of holies helping
get Nazis out of Europe.

927
01:08:10,636 --> 01:08:15,355
And this is documented very
well in these collections.

928
01:08:15,355 --> 01:08:20,589
Also, you may recall that Americans
are taking ex-Nazi scientists and

929
01:08:20,589 --> 01:08:25,652
web weapons specialists and
moving them directly to the United States

930
01:08:25,652 --> 01:08:30,828
to engage then in the development of
armaments for the coming Cold War.

931
01:08:30,828 --> 01:08:35,500
So there's all kinds of really,
really interesting stuff here about

932
01:08:35,500 --> 01:08:40,581
the formation of German society after
the war, the formation of the state.

933
01:08:40,581 --> 01:08:43,871
You mentioned already this controversy.

934
01:08:43,871 --> 01:08:50,542
About Hitler's Diaries, which is not just
a kind of obscure historical controversy.

935
01:08:50,542 --> 01:08:55,325
It makes up, really,
the character of post-war German society.

936
01:08:55,325 --> 01:09:00,247
It's an extremely important, as you know,

937
01:09:00,247 --> 01:09:05,435
a piece of post-war
German cultural history.

938
01:09:05,435 --> 01:09:10,562
So in conclusion,
we have a treasure trove of documents,

939
01:09:10,562 --> 01:09:14,549
a fantastic I mean,
how many lives do I have?

940
01:09:14,549 --> 01:09:18,886
Not that many, but a few years anyway,

941
01:09:18,886 --> 01:09:23,229
to spend some time in this collection.

942
01:09:23,229 --> 01:09:26,964
It fits perfectly
the mission of the Hoover

943
01:09:26,964 --> 01:09:31,851
as an institution to study war,
revolution and peace.

944
01:09:31,851 --> 01:09:36,710
And it's a huge attainment,
as you've seen today, for

945
01:09:36,710 --> 01:09:41,886
the archives, for Hoover, and
for scholarship as a whole.

946
01:09:41,886 --> 01:09:46,001
So thank you very much,
appreciate your thanks.

947
01:09:46,001 --> 01:09:48,798
>> Thanks Norman for those wonderful words
about the archives in the collection.

948
01:09:48,798 --> 01:09:51,888
Thanks everyone on the stage,
thank you in the audience.

949
01:09:51,888 --> 01:09:55,313
We're gonna break now and
have our reception across the way.

950
01:09:55,313 --> 01:09:55,990
Thanks very much.

951
01:09:55,990 --> 01:10:01,864
>> [APPLAUSE]

952
01:10:01,864 --> 01:10:07,018
[MUSIC]